pick3.5/5
In Seeing Red, we follow Lina whose bleeding in her eyes is making her blind. Doctor appointments, family worries, her relationship with her partner, her anguish, her fantasies, her hopes, her fears: we're witnessing it all.
Lina Meruane is very good at materializing a scene through her writing. This book is definitely an experience to be read.
pickThis is such a poetic, visceral journey. She describes her terror, her frustration with her boyfriend and family. Ultimately, we never see acceptance, only terror. It is the same kind of terror we see in Saramago's Blindness and even Day of the Triffids. It is a desperation and hope that her sight will be restored and near the end, a willingness to go to extremes to regain her sight.
bailedI expected this autobiographical novel about a Chilean American woman going blind to be riveting; sadly, whether it was the translation or what, by the 50% mark I found it to be quite putdownable so that's what I did.
pickThis book is.... absolutely horrifying and intense and impossible to look away from, no matter how much you may want to. It follows a character (named after the author) dealing with a medical trauma, and how it affects all of her moat intimate relationships.
pickThis was powerful! It's about a woman in danger of losing her sight, and it's harrowing and raw. First person, so you're in the protagonist's mind the whole time. It's uncomfortable and great.
The mattress was in motion, alert but unconscious or dreaming; just like my mother, I thought.
pickThe first two pages are as stunning and raw as anything I've read recently. I like this emergence of writing on the potential and pitfalls -- for art & life -- of the human body.
Seeing Red | 
