A biologically androgynous society (p 93-94): “Room is made for sex, plenty of room; but a room, as it were, apart…Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between [17] and [35] or so is liable to be…”tied down to childbearing” implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be - psychologically or physically.”
“The unknown…that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action… Tell me, Genry, what is known…the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?” “That we shall die.” “Yes. There‘s really only one question that can be answered Genry, and we already know the answer… the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
pickThe characters‘ struggle with permanence, even as adults, broke my heart - it‘s almost like they use the idea of nothing ever being permanent in video games as a protective lens in experiencing life. The progression from the childish denial to the gradual acceptance of all BUT one thing in life not being temporary - death - will stay with me for some time.
“What is a game?” Marx said. “It‘s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It‘s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig-tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a grey skull.Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them.But they were part of me. They were my landscape.
“I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”
“I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.”
pickThis books makes me feel tired. Tired of repressing every self-doubting thought, packed in a little pocket of worries in my brain, about the future, myself, and how I allow others‘ opinions on these to shape my own life. I feel like I almost betray Plath with the way I lead my life (as if she would care) - setting a bell jar around my own life, with my own hands. This book paints my Bell Jar bright red, right in my face, and I hate that.
“What is a game?” Marx said. “It‘s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It‘s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
pickFrom the ‘small‘ ways in which the Last Front was edited to be more ‘accessible‘, to June‘s attempts to be more authentic by going to Chinatown and trying to talk to the first Chinese person she sees… The way privilege is concealed under ‘simple ignorance‘ re conversations regarding ethnicity etc and how it resurfaces to be intentional blindness as we realise that June‘s learnt literally nOTHING at the end of the book…Cannot recommend it enough!
pickThe lover of the protagonist who is a ‘little bit crazy‘ with doing and being anything and everything for the protagonist, and the protagonist whose feelings mainly revolve around lust for a body and desire for connection to escape war.the idea of these characters being in love for me was absurd. I read the story with fascination mainly with Catherine Barkley whom Hemingway did his best in not depicting as interesting but ‘typically hysterical‘.
“If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them yo break them, so of course it kills them…It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impairtially. If you are nonr of these you cab be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” Also one of the most gut wrenching war/death scenes written for me personally around p 47.
so-soVery easy read however I am not sure if I would recommend it to anyone
so-soWas an easy read, quite predictable in my personal opinion, with an expected message at the end so it was okay, however I also wouldn‘t really recommend it to anyone.
panFirstly, the ending was so frustrating that I actually threw this book away (onto grass so all is well). I really enjoyed the way Gogol breaks the 4th wall and adds his own personality onto the descriptions, yet the ending of this book is full of incomplete sentences and an entirely missing section which is where the chaos built up was supposed to unfold. I‘m upset right now - maybe I‘ll think differently when I‘m a bit calmer. What do you think?
so-soBeatrice, who was so reluctant to be away from her husband, physically and mentally distances herself by the end, fianlly choosing her own opportunity to reunite with her son in death over a broken life with Axl. Axl who consistently tried to hold onto Beatrice throughout the book tries to help them get over his betrayal yet ends up moving on to a life of loneliness until the boatman (death) comes back for him as he said he would.
so-soI definitely felt dizzy and confused, as if I had been affected by the Mist myself; it felt like a fever-dream until the end, and I cannot remember spending this much time to try and finish a book. Shame as it was due to, for me, the writing style and too much descriptive detailing. The characters all exited the storyline in a very swift and meaningful way, and I would‘ve liked to have known more about them beyond the last 100 pages…
pickWould I have continued to live if I, too, knew the ending of my life to be like this? How would it feel to know that even the action of ending my own life would not alter the ending to my existence; that I would remain to be a donor, implying that my life had no meaning? Could I ever miss something, like the ability to divert from a set pathway, I never knew? Then again, having this ability now myself, how much of it have I exercised anyway?
pickWhat a beautiful way of exploring loneliness and despair. I have not related to a character as much as I have to Mikage. The writing is so eloquent in its structural simplicity; the ability to convey such extreme emotions through the eyes of a girl who is not-so-extreme herself has really touched me. I wish I could reread this book for the first time.
“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer, again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won‘t let my spirit be destroyed.”
“Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.”
“When was it I realised that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time. I‘ve alwayd lived with that knowledge rooted in my being.”
so-soI think I finished this book literally in two days; the suspense of not knowing who the killer was, and the curiosity, made it easy to read it in a short span of time. However I was disappointed to find out that the murderer had been the person I had guessed from very early on; the clues were so obvious that I had initially thought the author had done it on purpose, and that there was going to be a massive plot twist. Still great though!
…you see, for Rosa, nothing else in life would be more important than to be married to someone in the position I was in. Perhaps that makes her sound a little shallow…In her own way, in the way that she knew, she loved me deeply…It‘s just that in Rosa‘s case, well, the way she is, she‘s able to love me only under certain circumstances. That doesn‘t make her love for me any less real.
