literaryjasmine's reviews
6 reviews

come up for air only to find bombing planes hovering around, buzzing in your ears, breaking promises of peace. come up for air only to suffocate another way, the air choked with pollution, the lands housing parasites—where fishes should be, you'll find tin cans and cigarette butts and dickheads who mistake the picturesque for nature's best kept gifts. come up for air and acknowledge the break before another descent. what is left? what remains? what is new? what continues? swallow the novelty. move before looking closer. it's all fake; you're archaic and they're all ghosts playing house, only you're the fool who can see through.

run back to the bleak, now dressed in that sweet and sinful nostalgia. you'll think it's home. 

(you're now the fool who looks past.)

...but you see, Mr. Bowling, you're still lucky. you're a man. you could go wherever. you can spend that seventeen quid on alcohol. you can contemplate the inevitable war. you can fancy taking in a woman. you can hate. you can hope. you can even dare to change things. your wife, Hilda, cannot. the kids are at home. the chores are for her taking. the endless meals she must place on the table. the kids and a manchild (you) to raise, to care for. she worries about the immediate future, because her present is eternal.

besides, men like you created the shit show you are in. they're men like you, only they are drunk with power, and you're drunk with low-quality booze. you come home with your stinky breath and false teeth, waiting for dinner and a fresh set of clean clothes. you at least have a life that's yours. Hilda lives for others so suck it up, that air you've rambled on about for 270 pages.

this is me being honest as you've inspired me somehow. you've said a lot of right things. but you don't have to vilify women. you know they have it worse.

 This has beautiful illustrations, and the story was heartwarming at times. I also like the main character and rooted for her 'till the end. It's just that I found the structure to be somewhat disjointed. There seems to be no steady sequence to it that, at certain points, it's like I was reading other versions of Briana's story.

Thank you for the ARC, Fantagraphic Books and Netgalley.

 I wish I could say I got something out of this, and I really tried to, but my life is not as tumultuous to find this enlightening. I've never been a sprinter. I love the slow life. If anything, I even want time to stop. That is to say that, as many others, I've already been living its ways. 

Something about this was so raw and honest and humble that I could forgive the meandering in the latter half, especially that even as it dwelled on the intricacies of Sensei's past, the prose continued to flow like a stream—ever patient to move towards its own end.

Within Kokoro are three men chasing ideals against a reality of entropy. They see the self as a sculpture, of which the resulting image—the present soul—must be righteous to the eye for always until the foreseeable end. If not, then, to dust. 

RTC

Describe a book by starting with “A family without men” and say less. I’ll get to reading. Not to declare myself a misandrist but it is uncommon for a household not to revolve around a man’s needs. She is always present, a woman compromising down to the most trivial things, and so this was a fresh-squeezed orange juice. Refreshing.

Set in North Carolina, the story follows three strong-willed women in their daily lives as they navigate family concerns and attend to patients all over town. An “easy life” for these women means a life free from the mental cage of a patriarchal society. They reject it and live by their own code, not depriving themselves of the fullness of life.

This principle is most discernible through Charlie Kate, the revered unlicensed doctor, the model of the “easy life” which she passed down to her daughter Sophia and her granddaughter Margaret. While her successors did not inherit her desire for a life of action, they have her strength of character. These women do not cower in front of men. They know they are an equal and act like it.

The characters also reminded me a bit of the Gilmore Girls only, and thankfully, without their unlikeable traits.

3.5 because I wasn’t satisfied with Margaret’s ending. Maybe the author intended to write a sequel?

 ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ follows a poet who attempts to resist the “money-world” through imposed destitution but inevitably finds himself trapped in the ills of it, unable to think of anything but what’s left in his pocket. With a rotting soul, he relentlessly philosophizes on money—humanity’s modern god, and in his defiance of its worship, he throws away any semblance of a life.

Gordon Comstock, the struggling poet, despiser of aspidistras, insufferable about principles, is perhaps a part of Orwell he felt most vulnerable about (1). Having written this in a time of financial low and writer’s block, the overall tone of the book is snarky. The prose borders on a plain synopsis of “a man throwing a tantrum” but Gordon’s polemics are justified, and of his wrongs, he is very much self-aware. His infectious spite leaves a bitter taste, but the feeling of helplessness dilutes it.

Orwell indulged this amplification of his agonies and, in turn, criticized capitalism that pushed the world into decay and bound the human soul to the “money-code”. If only he knew how long it drags on and how much it gets worse.

As someone with a corporate job who has already taken two "career breaks," I knew what was going to happen from the very start. What Gordon failed to see in his circumstance is the very gift of it in terms of his art (2), not to romanticize poverty nor to view it as necessary, but to acknowledge that that is his leverage among his “moneyed” peers. Art is at its best when wielded by the marginalized, but an iron will is needed, reminiscent of an aspidistra.

Knowing a bit about Orwell’s life made this a more pleasurable read. Of course, at times, it's like he was screaming at me through Comstock but go off, I guess? LOL.

(1) He wrote in a letter that this “was written simply as an exercise and I oughtn't to have published it, but I was desperate for money. At that time, I simply hadn't a book in me, but I was half starved and had to turn out something to bring in £100 or so.”
(2) An example is a poem he finally completed after a sobering night.