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Thursday reading round-up
Feb. 7th, 2019 11:00 amA few weeks ago, I saw a NYT review for Wendy Guerra's novel Revolution Sunday (originally published in 2016, as Domingo de Revolucion, but only recently translated into English) and I was able to pick up a copy the other weekend. Since then, I've been reading it slowly, one or two chapters at a time before I go to sleep. It’s formatted well for that: there is an overarching plot, but the chapters themselves can be read as individual vignettes.
The main character, Cleo, is an internationally celebrated poet whose works are banned in her native Cuba and who lives in the shadow of constant government surveillance. She is approached by a filmmaker who wants to make a documentary about her father— not the man she knew as her father, who died alongside her mother in a car crash the year before, but a man she’d never heard of, a "Cuban Rambo" who was executed the year she was born.
On the e-book side of things, I've been on two- and four- and six-week waiting lists for a handful of different books on Libby (Overdrive's app) and they all decided it was my turn at once, because of course they did. One of those books was Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, which I put on my list because it's one of those Literary Classics and I'd never gotten around to reading it. I knew it was going to be an uncomfortable read, but figured I could handle it or compartmentalize it or whatever, considering I recently read a book on the real, non-fictional Golden State Killer case. Reader, I could not.
( Warning for references to child sexual assault. )
On the bright side, my to-read list is that now much shorter! I'm currently reading Little by Edward Carey instead. It's historical fiction, presented as the memoir of Madame Tussaud – still known, as of the section covering 1789-1793, as Marie "Little" Grosholtz – so I guess this week’s theme is art in a time of revolution.
The writing itself reminds me of Imogen Hermes Gowar's The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, in that it's not quite a historical pastiche but doesn’t exactly feel modern, either. It almost has a sense of fantasy about it as well, in Marie's tendency to anthropomorphize objects. There’s a scene where, left alone in a cavernous, creepy new house, Marie speaks to the house and all its creaks and shadows, convincing it she's not there to do it harm, and the house seems to settle and grow kinder. She also tends to… reverse-anthropomorphize...? people, creating a fairy-tale sense of people turning into animals or objects. Her childhood as an orphaned servant for an agoraphobic sculptor of wax models and his business partner – a rather Madame Thenardier-esque widow, and the mother of Marie’s first love – is certainly straight out of the first half of Cinderella.
I was curious about how historically accurate this book might be and did some very quick googling; Wikipedia says that Marie’s mother was still alive for the move to Paris with Doctor Curtius, which seems like a pretty big artistic liberty to take, so I’m guessing that the answer to that is going to be "not very." I actually read another historical fiction novel about Marie Tussaud back in my high school French Revolution phase, which unfortunately I remember absolutely nothing about (the book, I mean, not the French Revolution) because it would be interesting to compare the two.
Anyway, the writing is great, the story is great if super dark and of dubious historical accuracy, and it has weird, cool charcoal illustrations.
The main character, Cleo, is an internationally celebrated poet whose works are banned in her native Cuba and who lives in the shadow of constant government surveillance. She is approached by a filmmaker who wants to make a documentary about her father— not the man she knew as her father, who died alongside her mother in a car crash the year before, but a man she’d never heard of, a "Cuban Rambo" who was executed the year she was born.
On the e-book side of things, I've been on two- and four- and six-week waiting lists for a handful of different books on Libby (Overdrive's app) and they all decided it was my turn at once, because of course they did. One of those books was Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, which I put on my list because it's one of those Literary Classics and I'd never gotten around to reading it. I knew it was going to be an uncomfortable read, but figured I could handle it or compartmentalize it or whatever, considering I recently read a book on the real, non-fictional Golden State Killer case. Reader, I could not.
( Warning for references to child sexual assault. )
On the bright side, my to-read list is that now much shorter! I'm currently reading Little by Edward Carey instead. It's historical fiction, presented as the memoir of Madame Tussaud – still known, as of the section covering 1789-1793, as Marie "Little" Grosholtz – so I guess this week’s theme is art in a time of revolution.
The writing itself reminds me of Imogen Hermes Gowar's The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, in that it's not quite a historical pastiche but doesn’t exactly feel modern, either. It almost has a sense of fantasy about it as well, in Marie's tendency to anthropomorphize objects. There’s a scene where, left alone in a cavernous, creepy new house, Marie speaks to the house and all its creaks and shadows, convincing it she's not there to do it harm, and the house seems to settle and grow kinder. She also tends to… reverse-anthropomorphize...? people, creating a fairy-tale sense of people turning into animals or objects. Her childhood as an orphaned servant for an agoraphobic sculptor of wax models and his business partner – a rather Madame Thenardier-esque widow, and the mother of Marie’s first love – is certainly straight out of the first half of Cinderella.
I was curious about how historically accurate this book might be and did some very quick googling; Wikipedia says that Marie’s mother was still alive for the move to Paris with Doctor Curtius, which seems like a pretty big artistic liberty to take, so I’m guessing that the answer to that is going to be "not very." I actually read another historical fiction novel about Marie Tussaud back in my high school French Revolution phase, which unfortunately I remember absolutely nothing about (the book, I mean, not the French Revolution) because it would be interesting to compare the two.
Anyway, the writing is great, the story is great if super dark and of dubious historical accuracy, and it has weird, cool charcoal illustrations.
