Carolina Novo
Okay. It's very difficult to talk about this book, because, honestly, I just don't know what can be said about it instead of 'read it '. Might not be your favourite book, might have flaws or whatever, but it's truly one of those that I think cannot be experienced if not by reading it. Schmidt wrote a novel that is so layered and about so many things, that at a certain point - I have to confess -, I, too, didn't know what to think about it. I was a bit lost. But then. Oh well. Then it all makes sense. And then it hits you. And then, after all the things it was about, it becomes about something you didn't see coming. at least I didn't. It is not only a plot twist that made me gasp out loud, shocked. It's a whole turn, it is a new book. And it beats and suffocates you, and seems a bit repetitive but I think it's on purpose, and if you are like me, you'll feel numb for a long time reading it, like the characters, and then, you will be brutally shaken back to life.
Exceed my expectations by far.
there are many criteria you can follow to review a book, but I don't feel like I can apply them here, and I don't want to. some books are just brilliant because how they make you laugh, cry, be glad to be alive, wrap around you like a warm hug. this is exactly the book you need if you want a page-turning, lovely and sad story about sisters, if you want to restore your faith in the world. this is a real comfort book, so warm that you can't stop reading it - but it was touches very important themes such as female health and available responses, addiction, pain and grief. it is also very beautiful, emotional, and well and sensibly written. also: potentially extra destructive to people with sisters. be careful.
this was one of those books I only discovered after wandering around the bookstore for hours, waiting for something to catch my eye and beg to be taken home. this one shouted at me - with its title, cover, premise - and I’m so glad I listened. Andrea does something absolutely incredible, something I’ve also recognized in other authors like Layla Martinez and Irene Solà: she writes in a way I’ve simply never, ever seen before.
It’s striking how these women manage to write from the gut; more, with their guts - that’s really what it is. they spill their pain, love, rage, disgust, and violence onto the page exactly as they felt and feel it, with no filter or polish, as if they opened up their stomachs and laid everything bare in front of us, without shame or flinching. that’s how we end up with works like this, unlike anything else — in my opinion. they speak to us face-to-face, in the language of our childhoods and teenage years, or of our aunts and grandmothers, our mothers or the old women of the village.
the author doesn't just tell a story - she creates a world so solid, so close to the one we know (yet with its own peculiarities) that it’s impossible to pass through it to the other side, it’s too thick, too dense. the language and form in this book are brilliant too: a mix of the popular people and from the teenagers who live far from everything and slowly learn about the world through "méssejer" and other ways that bring news, bit by bit, to places where nothing moves or changes, not even the wind.
preserving the unique ways of speaking in the Canary Islands isn’t just a valuable and remarkable political or social act of rebelion - it's literary gold. and here, the excellent translation work must be also acknowledged. the collaboration between the Portuguese and Spanish translators resulted, in my opinion, in one of the best translations I’ve ever read. sure, I didn’t read the original, and I know nothing about translation, but I know that I never once felt like I was reading one (which often happens to me), and at a certain point, I honestly forgot I wasn’t reading Andrea Abreu’s exact, original, words.
the author has been compared to Ferrante, and I get why - it's especially obvious in the friendship-competition-desire dynamic between the female protagonists (Isora and the narrator here, Lila and Elena in Ferrante). I have to say - and maybe this is just a personal thing - that this kind of dynamic isn’t really my favorite thing; in fact, it makes me deeply uncomfortable (which I suppose is partly the point).
maybe it’s because I was once the kind of kid who would “jump off the bridge if she told me to” for my best friend, but I find it hard to relate to the “leaders” of these pairs — Lila and Isora, and their meaningless and casual cruelty. I know the complexity and violence in these relationships is intentional (and masterfully crafted), but it always makes me feel a bit more distant from the characters.
that’s probably one of the only things I “liked less” about the book, although obviously, it’s completely personal and tied to my own feelings, haha. additionally, I just feel like the characters (all of them, really) are so rich that they deserved a bit more development, and that the real ending of the story comes just before the final page. I think it would’ve been stronger if it had ended slightly earlier.
still, I’m giving it five stars — because, once again, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’m in love with Andrea.
There's so many good things about this book — the precise, wonderful way it is written, the character development, the narrative arch, the language, and how Spanish and English blend together through it. But, finishing it, I was left with such an overwhelming warm and longing feeling, and that's what I recall best right now. It's one of those stories which is so humane that it just hugs you, makes you cry and laugh, and when it is over, leaves that innocent, almost childish feeling of ‘Oh, I'm gonna miss them'. And it's true — I've fallen deeply for Yolanda, Angel, Amadeo, Connor, and I just wanted to know more and more about them, about Las Penas, the rites of love and salvation and pain in this community of New Mexico. This is why we read, mostly, isn't it?
I am not gonna lie – I struggled with keeping on reading the book a couple of times. Not only because I found most of the characters extremely unlikable, but also because the ones I actually liked (Gracie, Louis, Noreen) seemed a bit underdeveloped; it all felt a bit flat, to be honest. I craved more depth and detail and I think that the plotline was a bit too scattered and left with some loose that needed to be tied up. Also, as I said before, I grew fond of Gracie, for many reasons - she is the oldest daughter, she is trying so hard, she is caught in one of the most difficult moments of her life and everyone seems to be unable to see that it is about her, not about all of them. I really liked her vulnerability, the fact that she is the only one that shows emotions and cries in public while the others recoil in embarrassment. So I would love to have more of her, too.
This is all to say that I spent all the reading with mixed feelings, thinking that there was always something missing, that the story wasn't fulfilling me completely. But then, right at the end, I wonder if Ann Napolitano played a little trick on me. Maybe it's just my opinion, but something on the last page (yes, last page) makes me forgive a lot of the other things. Catherine, the matriarch, says “I am lucky enough to recognise this for that it is: one of those perfect, full-to-bursting moments you wait a lifetime for, when it all comes together”. And somehow, that trespasses the narrative and becomes about that bit of the book, too. Maybe the rest of the book, incomplete, with some bits missing here and there, is a waiting room for this moment.
That is the last line of the novel. But if you go through the next pages, you'll find the ‘Acknowledgements'. I read them, and somehow, again, the book became a different thing to me. It became a very dear memory. And I know, I know – the author is one thing, the book is another. I honestly don't care. What Ann wrote, in this re-editing of her first novel, was what I needed now. She says “I wrote Within Arm's Reach a lifetime ago. It was published in 2004, when I was thirty-two years old, and while I was writing it I was convinced it would never be published. I'd already written two other failed novels in my twenties, and I had little reason to think this time would be any different. My first novel had been rejected by eighty literary agents; the second secured me an agent but my agent was unable to sell the book to a a publisher. At that point, I felt like a failure with a capital F. I was working as a personal assistant to pay my bills, and my father had started sending me law school brochures in the mail [...] I'm a different writer at fifty-one than I was at twenty-nine, I'm a different woman. Thank goodness for that! But this is the best book I was able to write when I wrote it, I was proud of it then, and I'm proud of my younger self for writing it now. I had so little belief in my ability when I wrote this novel, so little belief in my right to be a writer at all, that it feels miraculous and brave that I summoned this story and put it down on the page.”
And somehow, this brought me down to tears and to reason. Of course. She should be proud of her first novel. I'm proud of her too. It is confusing and something with some holes, but who cares? It came together at the end.
Demorei um mês exato a ler este livro, e acabei-o no dia 8 de março - o que talvez não signifique nada. Acabei de o ler no dia 8 de março, que é dia da mulher. É também um dia com um significado especial na família, de fim e renascimento. Um dia em que um ano salvámos alguém e noutro perdemos outro alguém. 8 de março. Talvez não signifique nada, mas talvez signifique muito. Porque é impossível olhar para a vida da mesma forma depois de ler este livro. Tem mais de 700 paginas e não tirava uma única; pelo contrário, só queria que continuasse, continuasse, continuasse. Foi demasiado cedo para não sabermos mais nada da Tali, da Rosario, do Juan, do Gaspar e do Estebán. Queria que nunca acabasse.
pensei várias vezes em que avaliação dar. hesitei entre o 4 e o 5, embora nenhuma delas faça jus ao trabalho da Susana, embora tenha terminado o livro a chorar e a querer ir para a beira da minha avó, embora saiba, no fundo, desde o início da leitura, que há livros aos quais não se dá pontuação, porque não há forma de os pontuar de modo justo e não há pontuações para coisas assim. na semana em que perdemos Maria Teresa Horta, acabo de ler Susana Marques, que me leva a Maria Lamas e a todas as mulheres que, entre elas, foram capazes de narrar. quando os livros são assim – revolução, história, tempo, espaço, feita de pessoas e para pessoas que nunca estiveram em livros nem em revoluções –, não há pontuação que encapsule o seu valor. por isso, vai cinco estrelas. mas só porque a Susana é brilhante, e vale a pena apontar nisso nesta escala que não vai mais longe. no entanto, não faz sentido e não chega. não é esta a medida certa. talvez só se meça o que quer que seja, ou só se valorize, de facto, o livro, quando o lemos. há livros que só honramos lendo, e dizendo às pessoas para os lerem, até ao fim.
Freya had her tidal year - a year, following her brother's death, during which she compromised to swimming in every tidal pool in England, along with her friend Miri. I know that we always find a bit of ourselves in everything we read; that the things others feel are always mirrors of what we, too, had felt at some point. So, I was aware, naturally, that while I hadn't, thank god, lost someone as intrinsically close as a brother, and had never swam in a tidal pool, the book was going to resonate with me. I just didn't know to which extent. Sure everyone has a tidal year – one of those when we feel like drowning and suffocating at the same time, when we are overcome by grief and sadness for whatever we've lost, and days last forever, grim and thick. I saw my 2024, somehow, in Freya's year, and, with that, I felt we also left the water together at the end.
they say to Ona at some point – you should write about your mother, your mother's sisters, your grandmothers. you already have everything you need to write.
they were right, of course. and I'm so glad Elizabeth Acevedo was also told that at some point, and decided to write this beautiful, beautiful novel.
sinto que acabei de ler exatamente o que queria encontrar escrito por uma autora portuguesa contemporânea. encontrei a terra, as mulheres que têm nas mãos o sangue e os calos, as casas da aldeia de cortinas fechadas para que não se veja mais nada, já se viu demais. a Susana agarra com as duas mãos, molda as personagens, dá-lhes não só silhueta mas olhos, dentes, entranhas. são reais, sujas, domésticas. e se o que descreve é cru, violento, feio, aberrante, a escrita dela vai na direção contrária, como (penso que) deve ser. narrar o monstruoso, o que se esconde nos buracos com a mesma poética e beleza que se fala de ameixas a balançar com a brisa do verão. os únicos pontos menos positivos, foram, para mim, a relação de Fred e Laura - que me pareceu a mais próxima de ser banal, e que não senti como particularmente relevante -, e o final que achei muito bom mas também um pouco apressado. penso que teria sido ainda mais incrível se ardesse mais lentamente, como o resto do livro. mas. mas quero um livro sobre cada uma das personagens, especialmente a Luz, a Lena, o homem dos caixões, a Miranda. tantas casas para varrer e limpar e destapar.
apetece-me berrar e berrar e encontrar a Layla e ir ao pueblo da Layla e lá ficar, mas não podendo, fico só aqui a ter a certeza que este é um dos melhores livros que já li. é um dos meus livros preferidos.
as minhas avaliações são sempre muito mais pessoais do que analíticas ou de crítica literária, portanto têm a validade que têm - mas. mas este é simultaneamente o livro que eu queria ter escrito, que tento, em grande parte, escrever, e o livro que eu queria ter lido. não é fácil encontrar exatamente o livro que se quer ler, ou ler-se um livro e ele ser exatamente o que se queria, mas aqui está ele. há várias coisas a dizer; sendo que começo por repetir uma delas - queria que isto fosse meu. mais meu, pelo menos. queria chegar mais perto, porque Layla escreve tão bem que nos faz chegar tão, tão perto, mas não é suficiente, queremos mais. outra coisa: há sempre aqueles livros, que por razões muito diferentes, ao longo dos anos, quando acabados, deixam a sensação de “agora não vou encontrar nada igual para ler, e se não é igual não quero”. alguns desses, para mim, foram a saga do Harry Potter (a pedra filosofal foi o primeiro livro que li, a sério, o primeiro livro depois dos livros de crianças), o ensaio sobre a cegueira e o memorial do convento, o remorso de baltazar serapião, do Valter Hugo Mãe, o the virgin suicides, do Jeffrey Eugenides, o crossroads do Franzen, o você nunca mais vai ficar sozinha, da Tati Bernardi, o lisboa, luanda, paraíso, da Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, o oranges are not the only fruit, de Jeanette Winterson, o conto heat, da Joyce Carol Oates. são alguns, apenas, outros existem, mas estes aqui ficam para que Carcoma se possa juntar a estas obras que são corpos gigantes e pesados no meio da (minha) história; há um antes e um depois.
a narrativa, de trauma intergeracional, classe social, justiça, vingança, de bruxas, de enterros e desenterros, de homens em buracos e paredes, de aldeias, avós e netas e mães, de fantasmas de cada uma delas e fantasmas de espanha e do fascismo é tão bem contada que parece simples. mas não é simples, é só tão orgânica, carnal, crua, popular (digo, do povo, da terra, da aldeia, mesmo), desmascarada, que se cola à pele, que quando damos conta já é pele. Layla fala de entranhas e de como casas e famílias e entranhas são tudo parte do mesmo, e quando damos por nós também lá estamos, também nos abriram e meteram no meio das entranhas delas, somos as avós e as mães e as filhas e as sombras também. assim se fazem as famílias, destes rasgos e enchimentos. a autora faz de nós parte da família assim, rasgando-nos e cosendo-nos de volta.
não me parece haver outra forma de escrever sobre tudo isto sem ser como Layla o escreveu, e, digo também, não me parece poder ser escrito noutra língua que não o espanhol, exceto talvez o português (o volver, de Almodóvar, não podia ser de outro lugar senão de Espanha, não podia ser noutro idioma que não o castelhano). é algo que só se pode escrever assim, junto à terra, pegados ao chão, nestas cozinhas onde as abuelas nos fazem a mesma sopa até ao fim, e acho que só poderia entender essas palavras se escritas nestas duas línguas (que me perdoem todos os outros idiomas que não conheço e serão maravilhosos; não sei explicar este pensamento). talvez esta seja a review menos útil de sempre, mas finalizo dizendo que terminei o livro e pensei entendi, Layla, e não porque compreendi todas as palavras ou referências mas porque sei daquilo que ela fala, sei de onde ela fala, sei onde é, sei como é estar lá. de alguma forma ela falou de algo que algumas de nós conhecemos bem; ninguém o diz muito alto, mas conhecemos.
tudo o que seja sobre família é, à partida, o meu tipo de livro. mas este desiludiu-me um pouco. talvez (também) por ter lido em português (sinto que o espanhol lhe teria dado mais carne e sumo), parece ser superficial em algumas análises - melhor, não nas análises, mas na forma como são descritas. penso que Sara Mesa compreende muito bem as famílias, a claustrofobia delas, mas, na minha opinião, passou-o de uma forma algo leve, sem muito por onde agarrar. nada disto tem a ver como a não-linearidade da narrativa e a troca de narradores, de que gostei muito, nem mesmo com a incompletude de muitas narrativas - a vida é mesmo assim, às vezes acaba-se e não se sabe bem como e porquê, para onde foi aquela pessoa, como está aquela casa -, que me cativa. tem, por outro lado, a ver com a sensação de que o potencial ficou por cumprir, que as personagens e a família não são aprofundadas o suficiente, e as feridas causadas pelo ambiente doméstico - que são, supostamente, o foco - não as vemos nas personagens à medida que crescem. ficamos com as ações dos pais para com os filhos quando eram crianças, mas depois os filhos desaparecem e os pais também, e sinto que não se explora mais para que “serviu” tudo o que é, inicialmente, descrito como acontecendo na família. quero ler mais da Sara Mesa, acho que ela tem tudo para que me apaixone por ela, mas este livro parece, de certo modo, ter acabado quando ainda estava a começar.
3.5
absolutely loved Ottessa's writing and ideas, and was very captivated by the strange, violent and disturbing setting and atmosphere (that is pretty much my cup of tea), but can't help to feel that something is missing. would have loved if the book went deeper into religion and spirituality, their contradictions, and explored more of that raw and primitive human condition that he author introduces so well. also, I understand that the characters are made to be unlikable (and believe me, they are), but they also feel a bit like caricatures (particularly Villiam) which I don't love. nonetheless, I am already an Ottessa's fan and feel that what she writes is very different from everything that I have encountered before. this girl has a troubled mind and I love her for that. it's weird because I didn't love the book and yet I am feeling obsessed by the author. good thing I guess
ps: Marek's character just reassured me that I don't want children. if you read the book you know
took me three years to read but it was worth it. what a beautiful and clever analysis of those times and places where the personal clashes with the political (well, it always does) and history and histories are changed forever. how to write politics without writing non fiction, that is something that Anna Burns does really well. it's a wonderfully written story (for me, at least, I understand that many people aren't fans of the obsessive stream of consciousness, but I love it) story about the many lives that occur while your country and your own life might be ending at any time.
if you want to be completely devastated, then sure, go for it. jesus
it hurts but it's a beautiful and brave book, about grief and death and illness, and about family - and being a sister. It made me think a lot about who we are at the end - the author says we return to the childhood - and who we are when we see others at the end as well. I think we also return to childhood then.
