Welcome to Litsy!

Need more green in your wardrobe? Non-linear narrative w/ a disconcerting core, haunted by women in green. Threats overt & oblique—river overflowing, black shadow creature, doubles of friends, mysterious women in green. Challenges of family life, beautiful descriptions of daily life minutia, but disconcerting at the core. Anchored by evocative photographs that make no sense. Cusk+Sebald? Dreamscape. This is not a memoir. We are all haunted. 2005

This strange little book won an award for creative non-fiction and is what happened when the author Marie Ndiaye was asked for memoir. Between the floodwaters rising and the mysterious women in green, it reads like anything but reality. It was a quicker read I selected for Women in Translation Month. Translated by Jordan Stump, who must have had a puzzle on his hands.⤵️

"Against melancholy, against regret, common sense and cynicism can do nothing."

"All the young women are in shorts and sandals. The sandals‘ soles smack their heels with a certain resolute gaiety. What makes that sensual? Is it the slightly slack strap that lets the foot slip this way and that, and the heel slap the sole?"

"All the young women are in shorts, because it‘s a shimmering spring morning, and in the amber air there‘s an imperceptible threat of the sweltering summer that will unavoidably follow this season, so mild and at the same time heavy with that warning—it‘s a wall shining bright white in the blazing sun, for example, or a shadeless gravel courtyard I cross through on my way into the town hall...."

#recommendsday Anything by Marie Ndiaye! This one is my favorite and at only slightly more than 100 pages is a quick read but Ladivine is another one of my favorites!⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️