I shouldn’t have used this as a chaser for Vladimir because this has absolutely the same elements that don’t work in that. It’s meta in a short hand didactic way I find to be lazy writing. There are heavy subjects broached with regards to immigrant experience, mostly in the only section I made it 80 pages into (Lilly) it deals with racism and misogyny culturing intense fear. And so Camus’s Stranger and Algeria are used as intertextuality to talk about the past, literature, and this current experience for the protagonist. But it’s all vignettes that devolve into this toothless satire because what is actually unfolding on the page is not the thing doing the work! Her emotion is a proxy via references, as is her consumption of the environment. Yeah, I get it, it’s taking the piss on systemic, entrenched cultural staples—but things also need to actually happen in a novel. Presumably meaningful things, yes?

The notion of Satire on its head is made in it as well. With a double figurative meaning in this case, since the protagonist talks about how the immigrant experience is one of being on your head and seeing things from different angles. No doubt another meta nod to the format of the book. But I just didn’t want to finish this story, let alone take up a whole new perspective. There’s just not enough there, there, for me. It’s exasperating to be intentionally discombobulated and yet situated in a intertextuality bubble all the Damn time for the purposes of “satire”. No to this trend in lit. No.