Our story begins with our mothers'- for when she is conceived, one half of us is already present in her. Metaphorically, yes? But let's come down to the bare bones. A girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have- we are a part of our mothers long before we become an idea, a desire, a wish. I've avoided picking this book for the longest time; I am known to cry copiously, especially at emotionally charged words. And an ode to a dead mother who ends her life at 51 years was certainly going to have me weep buckets. It didn't. Handke writes about his mother seven weeks after her death-in parts to make sense of this loss & to capture the entirety of 'her'. So he begins- she as a child, as a young woman learning the vocabulary of this world, a wife, a mother, an essential but ignored limb of the society, a matron who finds herself (better late than never) to only realise just how late that is & then… I didn't know there were controversies around Handke. This work, though, is just a testimony to love felt and experienced. This pithy German book, mere 78 pages, is held down by the beauty of the prose. Grief has words and more than wrenching your heart out- they wipe the muck off our vision. If sadness were words- A Sorrow Beyond Dreams would be those. And what it really says is… It's already too late, it's already too less. Go tell your mother you love her. #peterhandke #asorrowbeyonddreams #germanbooks #pushkinpress #nobelprizeliterature #austrianliterature #translatedliterature #translatedbooks #delhibookstagrammer #indianreaders #bookstagramindia #addictedtobooks #coffeeandbooks #bookishthoughts #neverwithoutabook #nonfictionreads #nevernotreading #januaryreads #2023readingchallenge #indianbookstagrammer #mumbaibookstagram (at India) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn8b4EzLM6q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
