Whilst its opaque perspective draws on modernist tropes of disruption, Pheby’s novel is also crucially a historical novel, and through its depiction of real life events it offers a perspective on the upheavals of the century subsequent to Schreber’s own.
The whole novel comes as the incomplete sum of angular measurements against maternal figures, breaking away scenarios, secrecy, personal chronicles, confinement and changes.
We speak derisively of being slaves to routine, but if all obligations were eliminated, if we were confronted by complete freedom of choice, who among us could honestly say that she would not be paralyzed?
The book is, at its core, an argument, even a challenge: to bypass a country’s literature is to also ignore its history, its people, its love and its pain, and to care about them is to read them.
Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff
Groff gives herself a generous budget for histrionics of language. If it’s guilty of excess, well, recall the wailing and breast-beating, the hair-pulling and eye-gouging of the Greek tragedies.
Cries for Help, Various – Padgett Powell
While Powell’s disengagement is unnerving, what is somewhat infuriating is a lack of critical response to his blatant sexism. Reviewers praise Powell as a visionary and kooky weirdo.
Not on Fire, but Burning – Greg Hrbek
If I could only praise Not on Fire one time, I would applaud its ability to make immediate and pressing a question that ordinarily feels naive and pointless: What if things had happened another way?
Now and At the Hour of Our Death – Susana Moreira Marques
Moreira Marques captures something essential about death in her book’s first half by touching only lightly on the specifics of the people she encounters, and rarely mentioning herself.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl – Carrie Brownstein
Brownstein doesn’t need to vomit to show us what’s inside her. She has the supernatural capability to unstitch her skin and show us her insides without bile or blood.
Memory Theater – Simon Critchley
For all his clarity in explaining philosophical concepts, Critchley is also adept at the use of ambiguity to create an aura of mystery that invites speculation long after the book is done.