This book was a bit of a shock to me. First I want to say I'm actually a fan of Luiselli. I've already read "Tell Me How it Ends" and "The Lost Children Archive" and loved them. However, this book was a big miss for me. I didn't get what was going on, I didn't understand the relevance of Gilberto Owen, and I found the mysterious vagueness of the writing took away from the message of the struggles associated with being a woman. Sometimes, the point just needs to be said or the message gets lost. I was also confused about her relationship with Dakota. Were they just friends? Lovers? Was this also about the narrator (well one of them anyway) questioning her sexuality? Or was Dakota just an escape from her unhappy married life? Again, the vagueness resulted in me feeling as if I'm writing the story myself when sometimes I just want to be told (especially at this point in the semester I'm not going to lie).
By far, the biggest hurdle I had while reading this book was the character (don't know what to call him honestly?) of Gilberto Owen. The turning point for me, when I started to think about his relevance, was when the narrator mentioned masturbating to his picture. While they both share similarities such as unhappy marriages, I had a difficult time finding these similarities. Again, this comes down to the message that I tried to find in this novel. If this is a novel about the struggles of being a woman in adulthood or balancing personal life with motherhood, then I don't see how Owen's point of view reinforces this theme. As Jon mentioned, this book is about obsession, and while yes, there is definitely an obsession from the female narrator (who I assume is Luiselli herself?), I don't see how this intertwines with the other main themes that were occurring throughout the book. Quite honestly, I just found the Owen sections annoying as they got in the way of the interesting tidbits on the female narrator's life and struggles.
Another thing that got me a bit confused was how time was displayed throughout. I physically groaned in frustration when the line "A vertical novel told horizontally" was used. While the female narrator's part read in a somewhat linear fashion, the back and forth between Owen's sections at the increasing rate where there were a couple of parts that I didn't know whose perspective I was reading made the pace of this novel stall for me a bit. Which is odd, because there was a lot of descriptive movement.
Overall, this novel wasn't for me. I would still encourage everyone to read her other two books though because I thought they were fantastic.
Question for the class: What message do you think Luiselli was trying to get across through the character of Gilberto Owen?
Luiselli's unclear language in the novel and unique way of telling stories aren't for everyone (not for me for sure!!), which shows how different reading experiences are. It is commendable to see someone promoting her other works and showing how popular Luiselli's stories are.
ReplyDeleteI love Lost Children Archive, too--in fact, I think it's a genuine masterpiece. This book is not as good, but re-reading it I was struck by overlaps, or ways in which it anticipates Lost Children Archive: the doubled structure, for instance, which eventually meets with the last line of this book, "Found!"
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