MOON MOON

I wanted to start this year right by rereading the first two books of the Wolf Hall trilogy so I can finally read the last book. I've been looking forward to it but I wanted to get the full experience by freshening up my memories of the first two books. Wolf Hall is every bit as good as I remember it. Maybe even more so because now I have a better grasp of the characters, which was the main challenge when I first read it.

As with every great books, there's an accompanying sadness at the idea that you may never find a book quite as good. Mantel ignited an interest in historical fiction in me but I fear that no one can do it quite like her. Admittedly, this is a baseless presumption because I haven't read much (or any?) historical fiction. I intend to read every book that Mantel has put out just to fill the void that the Wolf Hall trilogy will surely leave in its wake once I'm finished with it.

I don't know much about England's history but I believe Cromwell is widely regarded as a villainous character. It amazes me how Mantel was able to look beyond that to create a Cromwell that has a softness you would normally not associate with such a harsh historical figure. Mantel's Cromwell is loyal not just to his master but to those who are under his wing. It made me want to believe that everything he did was justified.

Mantel's writing has so much wit and style. It will perhaps require some getting used to but I love it. I'm going to jump straight in to the second book. I probably won't be able to finish it fast because I get back to work tomorrow but I'm excited, nonetheless.

I didn't think I'd be finishing anything else this year, me being swamped with work on top of being a slow reader. I managed to sneak in this book before the year ends and I'm kind of bummed about it. I already listed my top 5 books of 2022 so this book didn't make the cut. Not because it's not amazing but because I finished it too late. At the same time, you know how the books that started your year barely makes the cut for year-ender lists just because you read them "too long ago"? I suspect this book won't make next year's cut, either, because I read it too early. Dilemmas, dilemmas. Am I even making sense or is this a problem that only I have? (Speaking of top 5 books, it would have made more sense to post it here rather than instagram, I just realized. Oh well. I didn't have much to say anyway other than one short paragraph. To be honest, even though I read more this year, I feel like the quality of the books I read last year were better.)

Anyway, if you haven't already guessed, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was so long but at no point did it feel like a chore to get through. The story spans generations so I suppose that's one reason why it never got boring. I just realized how much I actually enjoy family sagas. There is something so satisfying about piecing together different lives and seeing how it all connects. I honestly couldn't tell you an accurate summary of this book because I feel like it contains so much. Central to the story is history. Ailey traces back her family's history and, in doing so, we feel her anger and her sadness, but we also feel her pride. Her family's history is of course closely intertwined with America's racist history and it was painful to read at times.

Another thing that I thought was interesting about this book was its depiction of the casual misogyny in the family. Even the men in Ailey's lives who we see are honorable casually dismiss her when she brings up the fact that women are being excluded from the conversation.

I don't really have much to say other than I enjoyed reading this a lot. Sometimes I find that I have more to say about books that I don't like compared to books that I did enjoy. If you are intimidated by the sheer size of this book, don't be. It honestly didn't even feel like 800 pages. The prose has a certain lyricism to it that makes it easy to just glide through.

This book hits so close to home. If you had told me that Glory is about my home country I would have believed you. The parallels between my country and Zimbabwe's experiences of neocolonialism and corruption is truly uncanny. The anger I felt while reading some sections of this book was so palpable. I couldn't even comfort myself by thinking that this is purely fictional because I've seen these things happen in real life. I admit I've never paid attention to Zimbabwe's politics (although I did vaguely recall the 2019 internet shutdown trending. Unless that was another country's protests resulting in a similar internet shutdown in which case the world is a bitter place where horrible people rule and exchange ideas on how to maximize the misery of others). However, the scenes remained familiar to me. My country's previous president also used to invoke hatred for the west to cover up his human rights abuses and incompetence. I am also a staunch hater of the west just like Glory's dictators but refusing to be puppeteer-ed by the west isn't enough. It should be accompanied by a genuine empathy and radical love. Otherwise, every single one of us who were once colonized and are now shackled by neocolonialism will forever be stuck with people who claim lip service to lofty ideologies that they only use as rhetoric to gain support and fatten their own pockets. My country's current president is the breed of animal who has no ideologies and is clearly only there to maintain his family's power and wealth. I could draw so many more similarities. Religion numbing citizen's anger by teaching resilience, by creating another world where everything is so good that it would make your suffering in this world somehow worth it, by teaching forgiveness to a fault. Regionalism. Police violence. People with one foot out of the country.

The ending was truly uplifting and I only wish that my own country can finally band together to demand for the things that are rightfully ours. I say that but I am complicit by virtue of my passivity. Nevertheless, I truly wish that I can live to see and participate on that day. I initially thought that the choice to present the characters as animals ala Orwell's Animal Farm was perhaps a little unnecessary. Now I think that it works quite well because it blunts the violence in the novel. I mean, if I wanted to read about the brutality of dictators, I would just read the news. Nevertheless, I do agree with some of the reviews that the novel is a tad long for what it's trying to say. I don't mind long novels at all but this one could benefit from a little bit of trimming. Another stylistic choice is the constant repetition of words and phrases to drive a point home. Now this is one style of writing that I absolutely detest. I understand that repetition can be lyrical but as someone with an attention span of a toddler, it's not my favorite. It was annoying at first and it required some getting used to but it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. It was actually quite lovely at times.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I appreciate the weight of its themes. However, much like Orwell's Animal Farm (or even 1984), I won't be coming back to this. That is, I'm glad I read it and it will certainly stick with me but I don't think I can list it as a favorite.

(As soon as I woke up, writing this entry is the first thing I'm doing. See how committed I am to this? I am having difficulties navigating dreamwidth, though. As a a hag, it is very difficult for me to learn new technology. My brain just refuses to understand anything, at least not with the same ease as 10 years ago. I can't seem to type down anything when I'm in the "post" page. I'm doing all this in quick update section of the homepage. My dedication to this challenge I've set up for myself is truly astounding me.)

I severely misjudge this book. As a resident scrooge and hater of romance, I thought this book was going to be romantic relationships. I frankly didn't want to be seen reading this in public (not that I ever go out just to hang out these days) because I have a street cred to uphold. I didn't even want to read this book in the first place but due to circumstances mentioned in the previous post (i.e wanting a fun and light read to get away from the miserable and dark life that I am living), I thought, "Why not?"

I am humbled to say that this might make it into my top 5 books of the year. (I only ever choose top 5 because I frankly don't read enough books to make a top 10 list. I am slow reader. I am a busy person. I do not have the brain capacity to make a top 10 list.)

This book is by no means about romantic relationships. Or at least not solely. Dolly's journey through the vicissitudes of romance eventually leads her to the profound realization that friendship is love. Friendship is perhaps love that runs deeper than romance and lust. The chapter Homecoming is basically a love letter to all her girl friends and it made me equal parts happy and so fucking sad. I have lost a lot this year. I don't think I have a single friendship left. It hurts to admit that the friendships I thought would last me a lifetime now runs so tepid. It hurts even more when there is not great or dramatic fall out. It was just a natural progression of life. I could blame myself for not reaching out more; for refusing to be vulnerable or being afraid of reaching out when I need it. Perhaps in my insistence to avoid being a nuisance, I've alienated my friends when what I want most is to be comforted. Reading about how much Dolly loves her friends and has managed to keep her relationship with them made me yearn for a time when I could also confidently express the same. I still love my friends but everything is different now. Tiny, imperceptible shifts have now compounded to something so huge that it is looming over my head: the realization that I have truly no one in this world. I hate to be dramatic but that is the theme of my this current period of tumultuousness of my life.

That aside, I couldn't quite relate with Dolly's experiences. I've never been a wild person. I've never had the desire to go out and party. I've never thought of a night out drinking as a fun or exciting activity. I've never been in a relationship much less have romantic exploits. I've always been mediocre. I've always lived a mundane life full of schoolwork and now, work. Has anyone similar to me (in the sense that I'm a boring bitch) ever written a memoir? I would love to see how someone can spin something out of the mundanity of this life I'm living.

The last parts about Dolly's fear and finally, acceptance of turning 30 made me feel scared but also somehow relieved? I'm 26 and I'm already worrying about getting older. I'm relieved that someone is telling me the worry is premature. I should wait until my 29th to start beating myself up about the inevitable procession of time. At the same time I'm scared because I understand what she was afraid of. I understand the fear of doors closing. I understand the fear of not achieving anything amazing anymore because everything you do at 30 is just normal shit that 30-year olds should be doing. Not that I think I will ever achieve anything remarkable even if you give me 20 years to live out my 20's. I firmly believe that I would still be the same sad sack. But the fact that even the possibility is permanently over is what's scary and depressing and frustrating.

I love this book best when it's not talking about boys and romance. Although I feel like a lot of the parts necessarily have to have romance and boys as preliminary to whatever it is she really wants to talk about. I think I want to revisit this book in the future. Maybe I'm a late bloomer. Maybe I'll start to understand her obsession with romantic love when I'm 30, who knows. But for all the other parts, I feel like I know her and I understand her.

My first Cusk happens to be a confusing one. I've been drawn to her works primarily because of the gorgeous covers. I admit I dived into this one with hardly any background knowledge other than seeing it on someone's best of 2021 list. (To be fair, though, it really doesn't take much for me to include a book into my mental TBR list. I only need one person to recommend it. I don't even need to know their reason for recommending it - as long as I respect the person enough then I will gladly read anything they recommend. All this to say that I have had a lot of misses throughout the year because I do not know how to curate my list.) I had no expectations, good or bad, for this book so I can't say I'm disappointed per se. I'm just confused, I guess.

Second Place has some good moments and I often found myself connecting with the main character in unexpected ways. My problem is that it takes awhile to get to that understanding. Perhaps it's the way Cusk writes or maybe the problem lies with me and my resistance to obfuscation of language in the name of artistry, but I found myself having to read some lines several times before it starts to make an iota of sense and sometimes even then, the point still eludes me. I would have tolerated this if the work was atmospheric enough that I could go on with feeling my way through it but it failed to that as well. The only feeling I get was weariness because the characters were neither real enough to feel relatable or unreal enough to be magnetizing.

The story (if it even matters) takes place in a marshland where our main character M. invites a painter, L., to her guesthouse because she was once drawn to his art and hopes to have him uncover something in her as well. It sounds uncompelling because the plot really doesn't have much to do with what the book is really about (which is woman makes philosophical observations about her womanhood through her relationship with an asshole stranger, her stoic husband and her daughter).

Regardless, this book has some choice passages that I really liked.

"...about how lonely and washed up I felt, about how he never gave me any real attention of the kind that makes a woman feel like a woman and just expected me to sort of give birth to myself all the time, like Venus out of a seashell. As if I knew anything about what makes a woman feel like a woman!"

Her womanhood is a performance and her lack of audience in her husband throws her out of loop, forces her to define herself in her own terms which she finds herself unable to do. I liked this line mostly for the imagery of birthing yourself, giving yourself form and definition "all the time", every day, every minute as if we are formless blobs that can only take shape once we decide to. I think this part of what makes this book so hard to digest is because you half-expect M. to be a perfect feminist icon because that's such a common trend with mainstream media - this woman who is so in control of her destiny and doesn't allow any man to get into her head - yet here we have M. who almost seeks the male gaze. It gives the reader a pause, a moment to reflect if we are meant to relate to this outburst or not. 

"for Tony a view has a kind of spiritual significance, not as something you describe or talk about but as something you live in correspondence with, so that it looks back at you and incorporates itself in everything you do."

I love this because I am exactly like this.

"But for me there is a healthy kind of talking, though it's rare - the kind of talking through which people create themselves by giving themselves utterance" 

Another example of M. seeking an audience but this time she is creating herself through her own words, her own realizations. Nonetheless, she requires an audience, perhaps as a mirror through which she can see herself, give herself form, to "birth" herself. 

I meant to quote her every line that I had bookmarked but that's too much chore. Anyway, I'm feeling lazy now so I'm going to end it here. Here's to more half-assed "reviews"!