3.5 rounded up

A folkloric abstraction ostensibly meant for the narrator as well as someone whose attentions are flighty. Maybe our own, based on how the narrator treats us. That’s why it feels folkloric, or like a parable, maybe. Essential information being boiled down to the intrinsic qualities: aesthetics, faith, feelings unexplained. I think it’s an unabashed, queer lens—or feels like it. Undeniably beautiful at times in its articulation of two people meeting at the right time, or maybe the wrong time. Their future a hallway with the mirror at the end, but then each section looking at it askew.

I can see why people love it so much, but it’s prescription often ground against me. As did the soft world building paired with aesthetics you just need to roll with and the constant doubling back and alliteration. It’s obsessed with musicality, and to be fair you do find out why. But I can’t say for that much of it I found it an enjoyable experience. Even as I do think it was worth reading and finding out some of the answers. The thoughts it provokes, too. Just not quite to my taste, even as I can appreciate it at the distance the narration and framing kept me at. I never even had the opportunity to feel emotional, I feel. Though that appears to common outcome for this work.