| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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i thought it was okay. i learned things i didn't know about detroit. it might have meant more to me if i read it when i was younger. it's been kind of a long time, i am not remembering anything interesting to say. |
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i read it and enjoyed it a lot. i never did understand why he/she referred to his/her brother exclusively as Chapter Eleven, other than perhaps the narrator thought he was intellectually bankrupt. i loved the history of detroit of course too, but also the rich detail of his grandparents' history in greece. |
other people who had read that book already had also wondered about the "chapter eleven" thing, so i kept my eye out. as far as i can tell, it has to do with the fact that, after the father dies, the brother takes over the hot dog business and goes bankrupt in less than five years. so the nickname is retroactive. i don't quite see why he has branded with that name for the whole novel. maybe it's an inside joke on eugenides part. i also thought "would've meant more to me when i was younger." i think that means i would have had more of a will to trust my feelings about the book. i think graham greene said something like: in our youth, we look to books that point a way; later in life, we look for books that confirm what we already think. when i was 20, i probably would've been all fired up about this book and run with it. at 42, i'm not confident i have anyplace left to go. then again, the narrator and main character (cal) of the book is just a year younger than i. i liked the fact that the story of this hermaphrodite started 3 generations earlier in a greek village in turkey. i saw a bit of my father's family in the stephanides (minus the incest, as far as i know). my family basically fled ireland and came to america that treated them like shit. i remember my father taking me to a kennedy museum when i was a kid to show a picture of an old "help wanted. irish need not apply" sign, pointing to it and saying "see! see!" my father is pretty much an irish version of cal's father milton: money-obsessed, emotionally distant, and a staunch republican. looking back on it now, i think that moment in the kennedy museum was the closest he ever came to explaining to me or to himself why he is the way he is. the whole hermaphroditism thing is another can of worms. at least in the way that i could apply some of the things in the book - the sense of physical abnormality and coming to terms with it, the callous treatment of the medical community, among other things - to being paralyzed. outside of all that, i thought it was a cracking good read. it dragged in parts, but when it got going it was great. i especially liked the death of milton stephanides and it's "occurence at owl creek" touch. |
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i remember becoming frustrated that it took so long, nearly the end of the book, for she to become he. |
tomorrow i'll be starting a book about shit. literally. |
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I'm reading Alternadad by Neil Pollack and the graphic novel Incognegro right now. I highly recommend Incognegro but haven't gotten past the first paragraph in Alternadad so no opinion yet. |
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i'm reading books about toilet training, temper tantrums, and breastfeeding. yee haw. |
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