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madgerdes's Reviews (970)
Eileen was the most startling and brilliant book I read in 2017, so I had been anxiously awaiting the release of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Ottessa, as bold and subversive as ever, did not disappoint!
Our nameless narrator is a pretty, rich, Columbia grad that takes a year to (hopefully) seal the black hole in her heart in life by doing her favorite activity - sleeping. With the help of a questionable psychiatrist, she loads herself up with any combination of drugs she can come up with. The next year is spent drifting in and out of hibernation, emerging for coffee, bodega coffee, and appointments (drug deals) with her psychiatrist.
Only Ottessa Moshfegh could write a book about a year of sleep and make it compelling. She is able to enter the vast and ugly internal life of an individual within a capitalist and materialistic world. Our narrator's existential dead, apathy, and dissatisfaction seeped into my own soul and made me feel recognized. Moshfegh explores an area of womanhood that female authors are discouraged from entering - the apathetic, ugly, selfish, listless, and dirty. She somehow can induce simultaneous discomfort and elation. I hate her characters and I love them. I see myself and I see what I never want to be, I see what I hate and I see what I love. Those last few sentences are the kind of flowery garbage our narrator's friend Reva would spout (much to our narrator's dismay) but it's truly how I feel.
Thank you to Netgalley for the review copy!
Our nameless narrator is a pretty, rich, Columbia grad that takes a year to (hopefully) seal the black hole in her heart in life by doing her favorite activity - sleeping. With the help of a questionable psychiatrist, she loads herself up with any combination of drugs she can come up with. The next year is spent drifting in and out of hibernation, emerging for coffee, bodega coffee, and appointments (drug deals) with her psychiatrist.
Only Ottessa Moshfegh could write a book about a year of sleep and make it compelling. She is able to enter the vast and ugly internal life of an individual within a capitalist and materialistic world. Our narrator's existential dead, apathy, and dissatisfaction seeped into my own soul and made me feel recognized. Moshfegh explores an area of womanhood that female authors are discouraged from entering - the apathetic, ugly, selfish, listless, and dirty. She somehow can induce simultaneous discomfort and elation. I hate her characters and I love them. I see myself and I see what I never want to be, I see what I hate and I see what I love. Those last few sentences are the kind of flowery garbage our narrator's friend Reva would spout (much to our narrator's dismay) but it's truly how I feel.
Thank you to Netgalley for the review copy!
In Bogotá, Columbia we find Chula and her family living in a comfortable gated community. Despite their relative isolation, they cannot escape the realities of life outside their privilege. Car bombs, kidnappings, power outages, droughts, and the constant threat of violence from either the paramilitary, guerillas, or Pablo Escobar himself plague the entire country.
Chula's family hires Petrona, a girl from a local "invasión" who lived a very different life from Chula. Chula becomes fascinated by her family's new maid, and is determined to understand her. Through this fascination, she slowly begins to piece together the danger that Petrona might be in.
The narration in this novel is phenomenal, alternating between Chula and Petrona. Each narrator has her own mottled view of the world which Ingrid Rojas Contreras does an incredible job of developing. The innocence and confusion of Chula, age 9, allows the emotions of the story to take the center stage - not the political events happening at the time. Petrona, being 15 years old and a little older than Chula, has a more clear view of the world but her stubbornness and youth pour in through the cracks. These two girls advance the story in a way that a third person narrator would not be able to. I became extremely attached to the narrators, and the other characters as well. It was hard not to love Chula's family after hearing the way she and Petrona both speak about them.
This book is as much a coming of age novel as it is the elevation of an important voice. We talk about refugees and immigrants in the news everyday, but rarely stop to consider the trauma these individuals went through. Fruit of the Drunken Tree was beautiful, heartbreaking, and educational all at once. I am adding it to my shortlist of books to recommend! Thank you #NetGalley for the free copy for review!
Chula's family hires Petrona, a girl from a local "invasión" who lived a very different life from Chula. Chula becomes fascinated by her family's new maid, and is determined to understand her. Through this fascination, she slowly begins to piece together the danger that Petrona might be in.
The narration in this novel is phenomenal, alternating between Chula and Petrona. Each narrator has her own mottled view of the world which Ingrid Rojas Contreras does an incredible job of developing. The innocence and confusion of Chula, age 9, allows the emotions of the story to take the center stage - not the political events happening at the time. Petrona, being 15 years old and a little older than Chula, has a more clear view of the world but her stubbornness and youth pour in through the cracks. These two girls advance the story in a way that a third person narrator would not be able to. I became extremely attached to the narrators, and the other characters as well. It was hard not to love Chula's family after hearing the way she and Petrona both speak about them.
This book is as much a coming of age novel as it is the elevation of an important voice. We talk about refugees and immigrants in the news everyday, but rarely stop to consider the trauma these individuals went through. Fruit of the Drunken Tree was beautiful, heartbreaking, and educational all at once. I am adding it to my shortlist of books to recommend! Thank you #NetGalley for the free copy for review!
