11.01.2025 (1): My Year of Rest
Jan. 11th, 2025 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunshowerdandelionI'm not sure about this one. I read lots of 'rich people problems' books (lots of Anita Brookner novels feel like that) but this one - maybe it's the sort of New York rich that I don't actually care for? Like care for in the sense of 'I don't see her lack of problems as interesting.' She seemed very angry about a lot of things. I didn't find her unlikeable, I just didn't care much about her initially. She is a bad friend though, which I objected to.
I found the novel's tone a bit blandly strange, but that was the point. New York to me has always felt very insulated, very float-y, so I had no trouble being blase about it. So: The setting is blandly weird. The ekphrasis is blandly weird. The strange blandnesses the characters get up to weren't absurd to me - they sounded like things rich people got up to, which I guess is the point. I wonder about the language though - did the rich set actually talk like that, at the time? I think of all the characters, I found the psychiatrist to be the most implausible, hence the most like a plot device.
The unnamed narrator (I'm tempted to call her Lauryl) I found sympathetic. She's very obviously grieving. The parts where she describes her being scared, anticipating bad things, trying not to hurt herself, I found to be the best. Under all her unlikeability she's very obviously human.
What can I say about the plot? I don't think it's very subversive. Unlike Eileen, where the character is straightforwardly weird, this narrator's blanched out, and so the plot feels blanched out. I liked all the bits describing naps though.
I don't think I like many of the works described as satire.
I found the novel's tone a bit blandly strange, but that was the point. New York to me has always felt very insulated, very float-y, so I had no trouble being blase about it. So: The setting is blandly weird. The ekphrasis is blandly weird. The strange blandnesses the characters get up to weren't absurd to me - they sounded like things rich people got up to, which I guess is the point. I wonder about the language though - did the rich set actually talk like that, at the time? I think of all the characters, I found the psychiatrist to be the most implausible, hence the most like a plot device.
The unnamed narrator (I'm tempted to call her Lauryl) I found sympathetic. She's very obviously grieving. The parts where she describes her being scared, anticipating bad things, trying not to hurt herself, I found to be the best. Under all her unlikeability she's very obviously human.
What can I say about the plot? I don't think it's very subversive. Unlike Eileen, where the character is straightforwardly weird, this narrator's blanched out, and so the plot feels blanched out. I liked all the bits describing naps though.
I don't think I like many of the works described as satire.
