Impressions not Reviews

mostly book (sometimes movies too) impressions, spells of poetry, and language love. also, ¡spoiler alert!

[zelihatrifles]

The Museum of Innocence

Went back to Orhan Pamuk after a while. The Red-Haired Woman and My Name is Red, both are pretty draining novels, in a good and pretty intense way. Then there was this: The Museum of Innocence. Read this during two long train journeys, and experienced the passage of time and space in a very tangible way.

Pamuk paints the picture of a life of love and obsession. Someone said, like Lolita, but much more empathetic and profound, and it certainly does not leave you feeling vaguely guilty for having felt for the protagonist. The writing is beautiful, and comes close to piercing the fourth wall quite a few times. Kemal perfects the subtle art of non-verbal communication over suppers and dinners for eight years. Pamuk admits that Kemal was able to keep on visiting the Keskins all that time not in spite of the prevalent traditions and customs but because of them. There's a kind of poetic timelessness in this quotidian routine, because "there was a beauty in doing things together".

He looks at his beloved Fusun's expression at something happening on the screens rather than watching the screen itself, literally, seeing the film through the beloved's expressions. The reader is carried by Kemal into "the ambiguous realm in the cleft between the felt and the imagined". He is a veritable "majnu", an aristocrat who also develops a class awareness thanks to his love.

You read through erotic scenes which intertwine the sensuous and the sensual, which become even more intimate precisely because Kemal also notices the tiniest sounds, smells and sights of the mundane surroundings. You walk with him as he wanders the roads of the city of Istanbul, and you fall in love with the city too. "Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space", and through Kemal's obsession, you realise the nuanced value of everyday objects. And when Kemal claims that he has lived a happy life, in spite of all evil rumours an scandals, you believe him with all your heart. You are left with a deep sense of content as you turn the last page. And you wait for your opportunity to visit the actual museum of innocence.

[zelihatrifles]

Honor

"... there's no such thing as a long story. There are only short stories and the ones we don't want to tell." Another Elif Shafak book that wrenches your heart. You can relate to the story in some deep way, because "the world must be full of variety, but human beings were the same everywhere", yet, you struggle to understand why the characters do what they do.

"The real world with its real people resembled a mixture of sugar and soil, and was, more or less, of the same taste." That stays true whether you are a dacoit in a remote village, a cabaret dancer, a medicine woman, a weed-smoking hippie, or a young Turkish boy in America. "Dervishes, eccentrics and lovers aside, for the rest of the people nothing was astonishing, and everything was as it should be."

There is one section on class consciousness that is both funny and sad in a thought-provoking fashion. "Authority - it was another one of those adult words Yunus had heard before but never quite understood. Once he had asked Tobiko what it meant, and in her urge to make a wisecrack she had told him, 'It is what fathers have in abundance, mothers never have, and boys like you are, by definition, denied until you're old enough.'

And a wide-eyed Yunus had asked, 'You mean it's a moustache?'"

Mothers take up a huge space in the story. Especially Turkish mothers, who show their love through forbiddings rather than affection. "Not once had she told me about what was possible and permissible; her powers of communication were reserved solely for rules and prohibitions." Shafak writes, "Mothers don't go to heaven when they die. They get special permission from God to stay around a bit longer and watch over their children, no matter what has passed between them in their brief mortal lives." There is a plot twist in the novel, but you can hardly call it a thriller, because it deals with so much more. Shafak shows the culture clash of East and West taking place in very subtle ways, then exploding in an extreme expression of identity, and honour. The story leaves you with questions of morality, identity, coincidence, guilt, pride and shame - how everything is so very intricately woven together in life. And you once more understand why you leave reading Elif Shafak so much.

[zelihatrifles]

The Book of Everlasting Things

But he had realized that history was never just about the events that had once transpired. It was also about who narrated the events and who heard them; who wielded time, fashioned the years, lived, or resisted them; and who ultimately was bequeathed the archive.

Oral historian Aanchal Malhotra writes her first novel, and the way she interlaces fiction and anecdotes into the highly emotional fabric of the divided history of the Indian subcontinent is bound to move you deeply. Star-crossed lovers and national disasters always make a good recipe for tear-jerking stories, but you'd never know that love and loss can be felt so painstakingly until you read this book.

They'd been married for a decade, but the mere sight of her was still enough to make Altaf blush.

What does it mean to be in love? It isn't the most original question, nor is it the most unusual one... But what does it mean to be in love with someone who is no longer around, no longer available, no longer alive?

Malhotra brings in the ancient arts of perfumery and calligraphy into the novel, and makes it a landscape that calls to all of your senses, to your soul, to your forgotten memories. Especially, she looks at how perfume, and ittar, becomes personal and poetic.

In fact, a perfume without memory is a body without soul.

The art of perfumery, thus, is all about association and evocation. It is the union of chemistry and poetry.

Our sense of smell, regarded by so many as secondary, is one of the most extraordinary ways to preserve intimacy, history, and, of course, memory.

There is an intimate connection between smell and emotion, for they are processed in the same part of the brain.

When I read this, I was going through a personal grief myself, and the loss resonated with me so much. You probably cannot feel the novel well enough if you don't shed at least a few tears when you turn its last pages. You recognise the politics and aesthetics of remembering and forgetting, and every tiny feeling and incident take on a larger significance in this beautiful world of everlasting things.

The present had never been enough until it became the past.

It is difficult to forget, but it is even harder to keep remembering. 

[zelihatrifles]

Soif

Tu a choisi un livre, quasiment par hasard, et tu n'a pas attendu autant de plaisir qu'il t'a fait. Amélie Nothomb écrit d'une manière tellement humeureuse de la vie et des pensées d'un jeune Jésus. Elle donne une explication de l'expérience de Dieu.

Il y a des gens qui pensent ne pas être des mystiques. Il se trompent. Il suffit d'avoir crevé de soif un moment pour accéder à ce statut. Er l'instant ineffable où l'assoiffé porte à ses lèvres un gobelet d'eau, c'est Dieu... Tentez cette expérience: après avoir durablement crevé de soif, ne buvez pas le goblet d'eau d'un trait. Prenez une seule gorgée, gardez-la en bouche quelques secondes avant de l'avaler. Mesurez cet émerveillement. Cet éblouissement, c'est Dieu... Ce n'est pas la métaphore de Dieu, je le répète. L'amour que vous éprouvez à cet instant précis pour la gorgée d'eau, c'est Dieu.

L'amour de Dieu, c'est l'eau qui n'étanche jamais. Plus on en boit, plus on a soif. Enfin une jouissance qui ne diminue pas le désir!

Pour éprouver la soif, il faut être vivant. J'ai vécu si fort que je suis mort assoiffée.

C'est peut-être cela, la vie éternelle.

Voici quelques citations que j'ai trouvé profondes.

Il n'y a pas d'art plus grand que celui de vivre.

C'est à cela que l'on sait si l'on est amoureux: à ce que l'on ne choisit pas.

Rien de plus extraordinaire pourtant que la vie commune.

La foi est une attitude et non un contrat.

[zelihatrifles]

The Garden of Evening Mists

Something moved in me deeply when I read this book. Historical fiction is one of my favourite genres, and I hadn't yet read about the Japanese brutality in Malaysia. The camps, and the sheer inhumanity of the officers who themselves had family back home, juxtaposed against something as beautiful as a Japanese garden, that is an arrangement you cannot get over. When Teo Yun Ling is adamant to learn the art of Japanese gardening, it is like an exercise in control - her life with her sister in the slave camp had wrested away all control from her, which perhaps she is trying to regain. War, memory and art play intricate roles in this novel which lingers in your mind like heavy evening mists long after you've finished reading and moved on to other books.

[zelihatrifles]

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

"Every civilisation begins with a genocide. It is the rule of the universe. The immutable law of the jungle, even this one made of concrete."

A bestseller that begins so is bound to get your attention. You can think of the ancient Greeks and Romans, whose civilisations flourished precisely because they had slaves whom they forced to do everything, leaving them leisure to excel in intellect an aesthetics. Or you may think of today's world married to capitalism where everything hinges on production but those who do the actual production have no power.

"Power is when you can issue threats without speaking them."

So, the least you can do is be aware of things. To do something knowing what the consequences and the implications can be.

"You expected the worst... Asked the laws of probability to swing your way, which isn't the same as pleading to an invisible God. Or, is it?"

Karunatilaka makes you question fate and life in equal measure, forcing you to think of death and how the greatest killer in this universe is just bad luck. Hence, that is what you pray against. Instead, you can pray for what this fuckboy Maali had.

"'I make what all the world's millionaires do not.'

Stanley raised an eyebrow. 'What is that?'

'Enough.'"

To be content or to be ambitious? To stay complacent or to keep striving? You must decide.

"We are a flicker of light between two long sleeps.

We must all find pointless causes to live for, or why bother with breath?"

[zelihatrifles]

Lady Bird

"Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?"

not to endorse this out of context, but i find this beautiful.

[zelihatrifles]

Resurrection

What people in the last centuries viewed as nobility of nature we call God complex. Even the victim has severe Stockholm syndrome because she is bent on absolving her abuser of all his sins because he was only a curious virile young man, of the aristocracy nevertheless. Hence commences a journey of self-discovery, and resurrection of honour in a sense. The hero also turns philanthropist though, and somewhat socialist too. Therefore, a good reading, and I'd forgotten how convincing and earthy Russian writers could be.

[zelihatrifles]

Motorcycle Diaries

Che Guevara was not very different from your average young adult. He also wanted to travel the world, had a charming wit, made pretty bad choices, took quite idiotic life risks, and he too experienced the immense joy of being young and free. He was initiated into the beauties of remote nature, and was assailed by the ever-present desire to escape the worldly woes and live in the Andean lakes, like Lacar lake (Argentina) and Lake Osorno and its volcano (Chile):

"Perhaps one day, tired of circling the world, I'll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes, if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another."

But he was not an ignorant brat. In his motorcycle trip with Alberto, he met countless underprivileged people, and wondered miserably at the absurd conditions of mine workers:

"The only thing that matters is the enthusiasm with which the workers set to ruining their health in search of a few meager crumbs that barely provide their subsistence."

He came across and was welcomed by marginalised people like lepers, Indians, drunkards, poor people. Steadily, his journey paved his life-path too, to his persona that we know today, the revolutionary. Revolution must come, "... and there is nothing that educates an honorable person more than living within a revolution."

He underscores the importance of humanity and kindness and how they form an integral part of the revolution:

"In fact, the revolution today demands that they learn, demands that they understand well that the pride of serving our fellow man is much more important than  good income; that the people's gratitude is much more permanent, much more lasting than all the gold one can accumulate."

[zelihatrifles]

Divertimento

A beautiful story of a young girl whose dream is to conduct an orchestra. Women are of course not expected to occupy any positions of power, be it administrator, be it conductor of music. She is made fun of because she is a nobody, because her family is immigrant, because her right to music is derived from her father's deep love for it, not because he is rich or influential. She is made fun of because she is too poor to be thought sophisticated enough for chamber music. She struggles with the exam for conductors, with backlash from some classmates, with despair. But her biggest strength is those who love her. Her parents who build her and her sister a soundproof studio at home to practise in, with innumerable egg trays, so that the neighbours can't complain anymore. Her sister who is talented enough on her own as a cellist but never fears getting overshadowed by her conductor-sister. Her teacher who treats her like his own daughter, rebuking her, insulting her, being proud of her. Finally, her friends who won't let her stay in bed depressed because of one failed exam, and who come to the front of her apartment building, and they set up a triumphant public orchestra right then and there, open to all passers-by, to be conducted by her enthusiasm and love. Classical music may have started off as elite, but what it is governed by is not its highness of class but its underpinnings of passion. So, Divertimento ends up advocating for open access of all to classical music, with the true story of an ambitous young girl who is not too far away from having her conducting dreams come true.

[zelihatrifles]

Pyre

You didn't want to start reading this at all because it felt like it might hit too close to home. The title itself gives you the spoiler. It is the story of an intercaste marriage in a remote conservative Tamil village. Indians any way are not too fond of love marriage. And then there is a widowed mother, expectations from the only son, oppressive patriarchal conventions. There is almost too many social issues to even begin analysing. But the emotions that Murugan expresses are so raw and triggering. The way Kumaresan's widowed mother insists on incessantly insulting Saroja is horrifying - it doesn't help to know how much she herself had suffered in life, because that can never justify the pain she deliberately keeps on inflicting on the new wife. It is enough to chip violently at your rosy dreams of marriage, because not everything can be adjusted to. It is very difficult to keep hope towards the end of this small and sparse novel that threatens to break you down badly. Good luck if you think of reading it.

[zelihatrifles]

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Chaos chaos chaos. Angst. Pleasure. Dejection. Expectations. Social norms. Black holes. Turbulent emotions. Revenge. Coming out. Connecting. Kindness. Ambition. Peace. Bliss. Love. Silence. Chaos again.

[zelihatrifles]

anatomie d'une chute

Here you have a child who is precocious, bilingual, visually impaired, deeply caring, loving, intelligent and decisive. Here you have too a mother who is frustrated, famous, foreign to the land and its language, beautiful and dedicated. There you had a father as well who is difficult to understand, with his deafening music habits, writing ambitions and crippling guilty anxiety. Here you also have a dog who is a "super chien" (super dog) and helps the boy navigate both spaces and life situations. And there you have a good lawyer who never won a case, who clearly once had a soft spot for the accused, and who takes it on himself to try and acquit her from the murder accusations. And of course there is one rude public prosecutor who is bent upon invalidating and belittling anything presented by the witnesses that might be in her favour. It bothers you till and beyond the very end, because of all the nuances that point to all possibilities of accident (most comforting as a conclusion), murder (most appealing and newsworthy), or suicide (very cliché for a failed writer), how each of these seem to fit into the narrative so organically. And in spite of the (surprising) lack of an open-ended denoument, you are left wondering what really happened, wallowing in the deliberate discomfiture of death. 

A film absolutely worth its Palme d'Or.

[zelihatrifles]

From Up on Poppy Hill

A family(ies) drama, very very pretty visuals, no supernatural elements but still magical, disappointment almost turning into grief then turning into a deep deep companionship based on love and mutual need, innumerable cycle rides and cleaning sprees, domestic responsibilities and bliss, and an almost epic-like backstory that paves the way towards an unexpected triumph.

[zelihatrifles]

My Neighbor Totoro

Pretty pretty visuals, a haunting soundscape, endearing characters sometimes with a creepy smile, an actually (and realistically) happy ending, and vagaries of a child's and a genius' imagination.

[zelihatrifles]

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Márquez, the great magic realist. Márquez, the great storyteller of our times. Márquez, the turmoiler of our emotions. 

Although it was a foreseeable event, the circumstances were not. 

You can never grieve enough for the loss of a loved one. You of course know that the loss is inevitable but you never really expect it, or see it coming. Here, it is about the veteran gypsy Melquiades.

He writes things that make you question the whats and whys of your life, things that break your heart and twist and turn it in unforeseeable ways, things that are so simple and profound yet stay unnoticed. 

... but in any case, he could not understand how people arrived at the extreme of waging war over things that could not be touched with the hand.

The title itself plunges you into a swirling tornado of alone-ness and loneliness. It makes you contemplate what distance and time does to relationships and self-perceptions. Márquez pins down sensitivity to estrangement.

They had not seen each other for such a long time that Colonel Gerineldo Márquez was upset by the aggressiveness of the reaction.

The old Catalonian bookseller who is another Melquiades-like figure in the book, he often spews pearls of wisdom. When he is returning home by ship, he laments the degeneration of the world and the values it's come to prioritise:

"the world must be all fucked up," he said then, "when men travel first class and literature goes as freight."

All the untruths, fabrications, deaths, violences and losses in the novel which spans so much more than hundred years lead the old bookseller to lose his sense of repose and constructs new truths as he leaves his home of so long.

Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that day leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

[zelihatrifles]

Wonka

If you make the mistake of asking me how was Wonka, I'd of course say it was amazing because I'm in love with Timothée Chalamet, Roald Dahl characters, musicals and all things chocolate. Even then, this was so much more enjoyable than I expected! The Tim Burton movie on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was definitely amazing, but it showed Wonka's backstory as much darker than it should be. Given Wonka's extreme eccentricity, he must have had a troubled childhood or at least some really sad memories that drove him into this insane chocolate-making. Paul King crafts a much more believable (according to Wonka's character arc that is, you have to discount realism) backstory with "a hatful of dreams" and the "secret ingredient". The movie also negotiates with power, conspiracy and greed in a very graspable manner, all the while staying true to the comedic musical tone. It does justice to this favourite Roald Dahl character of mine, and has just the right bit of magic to lift it up to another level altogether.