benedettal's reviews
395 reviews

Intrinsically, a book about mommy issues. I guess Hermann Hesse really has a flare for writing books about quasi-religious journeys, and in many ways this reminded me of Siddhartha. Granted, I think I enjoyed this more because the religious themes are much less pronounced, and although I was afraid it was gonna follow those same plot beats, it ended up being an entirely unique tale of self-discovery and friendship. 

Or I don’t know if self-discovery is the right term; Narcissus is very sure of himself, and really he’s marginally active in the plot, having only a bookend presence. He’s still pivotal, and right enough he’s the vessel through which the logic of the story is conveyed. He represents the rational mind, seeking elevation and realising itself through negation. Goldmund, on the opposite side of the spectrum, doesn’t know himself at any point of his life journey. He follows what Narcissus tells him to do, which is to live his true life, leaning into the differences between the two friends. He’s a free spirit following his instincts, seeking to fulfil himself carnally, reaching the apex of existence by experiencing everything. He doesn’t seek to possess a huge deal of agency, he only seems to push his luck with zero logic. His relationship with women is weird, he seems to form very surface level attachments, and they are hardly fully fledged characters. It’s hard to understand where his supposed love for them comes from, when he also wants to have everyone else in sight. The sisters scene was too much man. 

But I guess it’s an interesting thought experiment after all. What if one was to follow their instincts entirely, leading to a life of hedonism, dissolute yet pure. He’s being true to himself, and really we’re not concern with the feelings of anyone else around him. And even when he has it all, he’s still a very humble wanderer who is just going with the flow. 

Plus the big sell of this book is the beautiful prose. The aimless wandering lends itself to lovely descriptions of Goldmund’s thoughts, and the friendship with Narcissus is described in such sweet terms. It’s hard to give it justice in a few words, but it’s certainly something to behold.

Really don’t know what was going on with this one. I guess I was waiting for the opening acts about the incest to somehow come back to haunt Pericles and his daughter, perhaps I was afraid they would mirror the first father-daughter couple by mistake in a very tragic turn (v much in the style of Titus Andronicus, just pure awfulness), but no.

Unsurprisingly critics think that Shakespeare only wrote parts of this, presumably the latter acts, which are a lot more cohesive. I enjoyed the scenery, the nautical vibes, Marina is a great name, but that’s really about it. The things that happen to her hardly follow any logic and I’m not particularly charmed by her either. Also the deus ex machina at the end came out of nowhere, and for what. I think this was just a bit of a mess, even though the writing is fairly good.

This book is so hard to describe without contradicting myself. It’s a very straight forward historical fiction novel revolving around a fictional love story, yet there’s so many other layers. It’s simple yet complex. Ambitious and unique, yet very traditional, to a fault. Its characters are split between extremely fascinating and rather dull and one-dimensional. I wish I’d liked it more, yet I didn’t. Now that I think about it, it reminds me a lot of hunchback of notre dame.

One of the novel’s most outstanding qualities is its setting, right in the heart of nero’s rome, with none other than petronius opening and closing the novel. The amount of historical figures features is incredible: seneca (wish he played a larger role), poppea, saint peter and saint paul, nerva gets mentioned a few times, as well as all the lesser known higher ups of nero’s court. It’s fascinating to me that a polish author in 1890something would be writing about this era, I feel like it’s quite a rare occurrence, anywhere in europe for that matter. Obviously it’s a period in time from which we have extensive sources, but I still find it impressive that he decided to bring these characters, especially petronius who’s better known as an author than a character, to life.

At the same time, I think the choice of subject matter, however faithful to history, is too far rooted into a christian pov whereby that is the one truth, and we as readers have to accept the miracles for granted, in a non-magical realism way but in an accurate semi-historical way. I know it is fairly well documented how the christians died piously during the persecutions, and of course the religion survived, but it’s the personal (fictional) stories that felt more far fetched to me. Vinicious’ conversion happens too fast, and is too closely related to his love for Licia. Other character’s conversion also felt disingenuous, so did petronius’ tolerance, albeit qualified by the fact that he said it wasn’t for him. I think the conjectures about nero’s behaviour were probably more accurate - but that is considering that sources that survived were incredibly biased against him, and this does perpetuate a lot of myths about the emperor during the fire of rome. Still, that’s probably more on the sources rather than on this author. Another thing I appreciated but would have liked to have seen explored further is the fact that stoicism, at its peak with seneca at the time, is remarkably similar to christianity - glad it was acknowledged anyway.

The new characters made up for this novel are extremely banal imo. Vinicius and Licia’s love story is practically impossible to buy, it’s a bizzarre love at first sight followed by so many red flags, even for 1800s standards. In that sense the romance is very dated, their love is never questioned and taken for granted almost immediately, even though they’ve only spoken to each other once. Plus Licia is an absolute mary sue, she’s always running away, being hidden and being captured. She doesn’t have any kind of agency or any role to play besides this holier than thou early christian that all the christians love and all the women are jealous of. 
But as I already mentioned, peter and paul are great, if a bit useless all in all. They get to preach through this novel, which is a bit much, but their time in rome is certainly an interesting story to tell. I didn’t realise that the title itself was lifted from peter’s story (it was buried deep into my subconscious as a really old memory, felt pretty dumb when I put two and two together), but yeah if anything maybe they should have had a bigger role. 

The final issue was the language. I obviously read in translation, didn’t look at the date but I don’t expect new versions to the italian to be updated often, and this felt unsurprisingly very dated. Maybe it was just a faithful translation, since I’ve read the polish is also very heavy. But yeah, in any case it was not the easiest prose to process, and that’s always a bit of a pity. Still, a very interesting book to read, especially if you like historical fiction set in rome and closely related to the emperors, since nero is heavily featured.

This was a pretty solid continuation of the story laid out in Swann’s Way, taking us through the narrator’s adolescence. I’m not a huge fan of teenage years in general, but to be fair the narrator never really feels young, his point of view is never condescending even though he’s recalling an age in which he was a lot more naïve. In the meantime, this is a great time to discover one’s attitudes, and we see that through his friendships with the writer and the artist, and of course his growing fascination with girls.

This book is split into two very distinct parts, one in Paris, dominated by Madame Swann and Gilberte, and the other in Normandy, with the group of girls and the narrator’s relatives filling his days. In a way, the settings themselves are nothing special. What shines through is the introspection that the external events and surroundings bring about. 

I can’t say that anything in particular stood out to me, it’s a very choral novel that is great in its entirety, rather than as the sum of its parts. I suppose the narrator’s game with Gilberte, his longing for her while also trying to keep his distance, only for his ultimate resolve for reconciliation to be shattered unexpectedly, was a high point. But generally, as I said for Swann’s Way, what I enjoy is the deep exploration of the male mind. Proust is a but of a romantic, sure, but even if this is not your average boy’s inner dialogue, I find it extremely alluring and dreamy. Still expect more from the later parts though, I want to see him as a fully realised man at last.

I went into this with great expectations, because Euripides’ Medea is probably my favourite tragedy ever, but if anyone could do it better, that would be Seneca. So is it better? I’m still processing it (also it doesn’t have to be a competition), so please excuse the rambling as I try to put my feelings and thoughts into words.

The first striking difference I noticed, this being my first Roman play, was the heightened violence, physical and verbal. This version of Medea pulls no punches, is not going for sympathy, she’s going straight for revenge. In Greek theatre, deaths typically happen off stage, so I was all the more shocked to picture Medea killing her boy right in front of the audience, tossing the small bodies aside. Brutal, I love it. I’m sure Nero would also have appreciated that detail. Anyway, moving on.

As I mentioned, this version of Medea is direct and to the point. Creon has a very small part, Aegeus is gone, which at first I thought it might weaken the plot, but in the end it worked great. We mostly get Medea herself, talking to her nurse, absolutely boiling with rage. She is clearly eaten up by regret and shame, after having sacrificed everything for Jason, her reputation tarnished, and now finally discarded. Throughout the play, I think one of the major themes is agency, in particular her coming to terms with it on one side, and Jason perpetually rejecting his on the other. 

Their confrontation, the first one especially, is the high point of the play. Jason is a lot more unlikeable to me than in Euripides’, he is so quick to throw all the dirt in Medea’s face. He refuses to accept that she did it all for him, and obviously we know that’s just vicious behaviour on his part given the circumstances, it’s just such an excellent breaking point for Medea. She finally realises that if she is going to be painted by a villain by ungrateful Jason, she might as well become one. 

As heartbreaking as the murders are in Euripides, the coldness in which she goes about killing them in Seneca is possibly even more stunning. Not that she lacks passion, on the contrary; yet, it’s the lack of compassion, the thirst to hurt Jason above all, the way she refuses to spare the second one that dominates the scene. What good would that do? Wouldn’t bring anyone back, wouldn’t make her any less of a monster in everyone’s eyes if she did. And this time, she fully takes responsibility for her actions. It’s all her this time, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy after all. 

Ultimately I get what Seneca is trying to say, and I also understand why the chorus would support Jason’s decision, rationally, to avoid turning a second king against him when he already needs protection from one. But I still think, even though Seneca doesn’t spend as much time with Medea in an introspective way, that he does make a compelling case for her madness. She has been used and abused, even in this version. Her mistake is letting herself being ruled by emotions, rather than logic, which leads her on a scorched earth path which ultimately hurts herself, destroying what’s surely most dear to her and losing everything, winged dragon or not. 

It goes without saying that nobody is learning about virtue from Medea. But I will never cease to be amazed by how ancient authors loved to play with her story, and were never banal in their rendition. Medea is never flat, never a caricature. In Seneca, Medea becomes a godlike force, capable of punishing mortals who cross her, unbound by piety and all-powerful. Maybe she’s not as feminist as in Euripides, our resident soft boy tragedian, but she is truly something to behold, and the profound ambiguity in which she is portrayed, after all, makes this play endlessly entertaining. And the dialogue between Medea and Jason is probably one of the highest points of literature, ever.

Okay so here’s the thing, the prose in this book is inspired, the story has this rare addictive quality, the characters are colourful and the narrative choices the author makes infinitely elevate the reading experience. But due to some glaring flaws, it fell slightly short for me in the end. Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly.

The structure of this book very much reminded me of the only other Garcia Marquez I’ve read, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in so far as the book opens with events that take place far in the future, around the end of the novel, and works things backwards. I don’t know if this is his trademark, but I think it’s a pretty genius choice and executed to perfection. 

The writing itself is so unique and enchanting. The author lingers on details that are secondary, yet really bring the setting to life. Even though you have fundamentally two perspectives throughout, either following Florentino or Fermina, the narration is not introspective, but rather one that is do attentive to the background they operate in. I guess this ties in with the character development. Especially with Fermina, we don’t know her motivations or feelings, she does have agency and a strong personality that shines through every page, but there are so many important aspects of her life that are completely glossed over, for example her relationship with her children. Same with Urbino, though he’s not a protagonist of course, but we only get small nuggets of his story, which nonetheless perfectly relate his personality. It’s really something to behold honestly, means that the novel is never boring, never formulaic. 

Florentino Ariza deserves his own space because he’s slightly different from the other characters. I think the narration is mostly told from his pov, and therefore is particularly unreliable in his regards. He is ultimately a man of contradictions; he is faithful to his resolve to get Fermina after Urbino’s death, even holds on to the thought of saving himself for her, but in reality his actions entirely betray his intentions. I suppose it might have been very modern at the time to separate sex and love so drastically, but I don’t think any reader bought it. He’s a great subversion of the romantic hero: his actions and his thoughts are almost completely divorced from each other, he does firmly believe he only loves one woman, but he uses everyone else in the meantime. Ultimately, my only possible deduction here is that he is made to be somewhat unlikeable on purpose, maybe a victim of his circumstances perpetuating a cycle of toxicity, but still. 

In general I guess the men in the story are just a bit gross. The author implies that Juvenal Urbino prays on his patients, not often, not maliciously, still nobly in a way, but that’s the irony of it. The more animalistic behaviours are told in a way that is hot, I’ll concede, but it makes you feel awful if you think about it. And I think this is also reflected in the way the women are portrayed. Yes, most of them are supposedly strong, but I guess that’s what our pov needs them to be in order to reconcile the fact that these men are using and abusing them. I think the author is trying to make a point about sexual empowerment, but it’s quite sloppy at times. Also, I’m sorry but all the talk about bodily functions was entirely gratuitous, really don’t understand the fascination with it all.  

And then there’s the ugly. The most glaring red flag is the treatment of black and mixed race women, which follows every stereotype imaginable. It’s so casual too, I don’t really see much in the way of social commentary about it. They are liked because of how sexual their bodies are, being cheated on with a black woman is more shameful, stuff like that. It probably reflects a reality at the time in which the story is set, but it’s still gross and unnecessary, feels like punching down. And obviously, the thing that really did it for me was the late grooming-incest combo, with Lolita level graphic details, that is just wrong. I mean why? What is it adding? Are we supposed to root for this guy? It’s not even cultural at this point, and he knows he’s doing something deplorable, he’s just deluding himself. Why romanticise it? It really poisoned that much awaited reunion at the end. 

The ending is obviously emblematic of how much has changed in 50 years, how much has been sacrificed and lost. It speaks more broadly of a decaying rather than decadent society, somewhat stuck in the past. As I said, hard to root for them when Florentino, who already had a dodgy track record with women, becomes a certified child rapist, but I suppose it also says something about love enduring all, even putting up a fight against old age. 

In fact, I probably shouldn’t dismiss what the book is trying to say about love that endures all, that condemns the lover to a life of sacrifice away from the loved one, just because of societal pressures and injustices against them. The fact that Florentino is so sure of his young love as to endure in his purpose, and that Fermina embraces him after all that time, recognising in her tears that she too was robbed, despite living an otherwise happy life, it is a powerful statement about the strength of a bond, of human emotions. It survives decades, other encounters, age itself. Maybe this story is really about how when someone is so important to you, everything else just becomes a way to get to them, somehow, even if that means just waiting at a certain point. And Fermina is really perfect in the eyes of Florentino, in a way that is quite aspirational, thanks to the seductive narration. One can only dream of being that in someone else’s eyes.
But again, I could not help but think of Lolita when reading this book, not so much when Florentino first meets Fermina, I think that’s definitely cultural, and their age difference is passable; and not even with Juvenal, that felt a bit dodgier but she was a little older then. But every other relationship felt extremely exploitative, culminating with the one with America, at which point I felt like the author was revealing to me that everyone was actually truly awful, as if it wasn’t obvious from the cheating and the underlying racism. And then the whole illusion about love kinda crumbled.

So yeah, unfortunately the issues are too big to overlook, and ultimately diminish an otherwise incredible work of writing. 

Honestly, wasn’t sure what to expect, and it’s not like I was disappointed. It’s just a really hard book to rate because it’s also a hard one to read, really. The book of the dead is a guide to prepare one after death, with the aim of ending cyclical life. What this translates to in reality is a bunch of prayers and mantras, quite repetitive at times, that you’re supposed to repeat over and over as you meditate. 
It’s very interesting to learn, or at least get a glimpse of, how buddhist rituals take place, especially the prayers after one has died, as well as to the pantheon and the conception of the afterlife and regeneration. It’s so cool that monks in Tibet, for centuries, live life preparing for an out of body experience, rejecting all forms of attachment this way. And this is such an ancient text too! Very impressive and fascinating. Just not the smoothest read. 

Yeah, didn’t feel a huge amount of attachment to this one. It kinda reminded me of a non-tragic Othello, but then again, what’s the point? I suppose I’m not the biggest fan of problem plays, I’m not entirely satisfied. Still valid, but understand why it’s not one of Shakespeare’s better remembered works.

Man, Freud really did a number on the Viennese society of his time. This novella heavily lingers of themes of lust, the subconscious, and the place of the oneiric in reality. There is no straight forward way of explaining it: the entire narration veers into unexpected directions continuously, our main character mostly just following his urges and being almost transported by everything happening around him.
I guess another theme explored is one of infidelity, and whatever that means. The story opens with a confession of chance encounters that didn’t amount to anything in the end, fantasies basically, and later the rough same reoccurs in the form of a dream. The effects of these non-actions are nevertheless very tangible on the ego of our protagonist.
On the other hand, his adventures seem to be almost justified in his mind, he follows his instincts without thought and finds himself on the lap of random women, without fail. Bit hard to believe, when we know from his perspective how neurotic he is, a bit objectifying too. But I guess I liked how much the story lingers on lust because of how wild it is. Classics, even from this time, are hardly ever so explicit (in a way that actually sounds hot, looking at lady chatterley’s over there). It’s too outrageous not to appreciate it. 
I wish I had more extensive thoughts on it but it’s really a lot to unravel for such a short piece of work. Don’t know if I fully support the message, and the characters aren’t the most likeable, but it’s wild ride and that’s enough. 

I mean, this is excellent, what else could it possibly have been? Annie Ernaux writes of the summer the haunts her, over 50 years later, a time she sees as crucial in her development, in the crystallisation of her self. 

Playing with memory in a very Proust-ian way, we are transported to 1958, and the author speaks to the reader in a way that almost seems like she’s trying to explain herself, confide her secrets in us. She reminisces about her feelings then and now, but also at intermediate points, like when she reads Simone de Beauvoir and is forced to reckon with the cognitive dissonance between what’s happened to her (under a feminist lens) and how she feels about it. I like the way this is not a straight autobiographical narration. I mean, they hardly ever are straightforward, but Annie Ernaux pushes the limits a lot further, her approach is a lot more modernist. She breaks the fourth wall, it’s like her narration is a hybrid between a speech and poetry. 

The subject matter is equally as fascinating. It’s quite stunning how the author is so good at recalling her feelings as an 18 year old, but then again I think there is a certain banality in describing a rite a passage for every one of us. Everyone has a story along these lines, some more dull than others, and granted, hers is pretty wild. It’s a story of attachment and wanting to be wanted. She is characteristically unsentimental, but it felt very related to me in that sense. What I liked was how she didn’t lean into how she was wronged by the people around her, she doesn’t deny her agency in it all (even after reading the second sex), and is not ashamed that her experiences that summer, at camp, led her on a journey of self-improvement, even if for the wrong reasons (bulimia aside). That’s something I strongly relate to and I’m not mad about it. If anything, there is hope that a proactive stance might be beneficial, whether it achieves the primary objective, or it leads one to an unexpected destination.

By saying this I don’t mean to dismiss her trauma. It’s obvious that no amount of irony will bury the sentiment of not being able to reflect upon the summer of 58 until over 50 years later. There is a underlying bitterness, almost, in her narration of the events through the eyes of a girl who didn’t know better, surrounded by peers who never had her best interest in mind. I guess I choose to see it as a power move, and with the benefit of hindsight I know things turned out better for her than for anyone who wronged her, and her outing them in this masterpiece feels like revenge well served. Or maybe I’m just impressed with the way she chose to talk about trauma, never making it too heavy, always unsentimental. 

I obviously had a soft spot for Ernaux’s wanderings through North London. I didn’t expect that from her, but I’ll take any novel that romanticises the city, so yeah bonus points for that. 

Generally, I think the broad theme was that there are life moments that change the trajectory of self, that remain with us, remembered in shame or with pleasure. As a reader, it’s cathartic to see a writer, as someone has the time and talent to do it, revisit them and free themselves from the burden of “the fear of dying without having put this story in writing.” Memories shape us almost as much as the same moments they recall over and over again. Youth is so fragile, so formative and yet it’s gone so quickly. The people are so far gone that there’s no point even looking them up. And even though nobody else would be able to recall these embarrassing stories, I appreciate Ernaux for embracing her lack of self-awareness and never ending contradictions and sharing her experience this way.