Mariana Dimópulos
Auteur de All My Goodbyes
Œuvres de Mariana Dimópulos
Imminence 1 exemplaire
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All My Goodbyes
3.5 Beautiful prose, but strange story. The narrator can't bear to stay in one place for long (all the goodbyes) and this chronicles her time in a handful of places (Madrid, Malaga, Berlin, Heidelberg, Buenos Aires, Patagonia) but none of it is told sequentially - it is almost as if we follow her memory as it jumps from place to place and significant person in each place. She finds employment and a connection at each juncture, but sheds them like a snake sheds skin - with no remorse or regret. Her ability to leave possessions behind is interesting and admirable too and this compulsion almost comes off as a disease or a problem - she talks about her "bad" heart that won't let her love or cling or stay. Since this is so antithetical to my world view, it kept my interest and kept me reading. Also intriguing was her allusions to a brutal murder - which never is fully explained -- is she involved? Is that why she is unable to settle anywhere? It took me awhile to get the hang of jumping around and identifying each place (Heidelberg was the bakery, Berlin was the IKEA and Julia, Patagonia was the murder and Marco, etc) but it is such a short read that I didn't get too frustrated and tried to just soak in the experiences like she did. Overall, I wanted to know more.… (plus d'informations)
Recently, I went to a most impressive art exhibition at the Carlisle Street Artspace at the old St Kilda Town Hall. The young artist Daniel Coulson is upfront about his struggle with mental health, and the artworks on display were a testament both to his sense of disassociation and alienation, and his recovery. He draws and paints in what is called Expressive Art, and you can see the style he uses and the artists he admires at his Pinterest page. I'm beginning this review by reflecting on my experience of seeing a visual representation of dislocation and alienation, compared to reading about it. When I look at a painting like this one, the play of light, colour and texture shows the paradox of the self dissolving and at the same time insisting on breaking through. The eyes of the young woman suggest that she is determined not to submit to the torment she feels. It's a very powerful painting.
But reading Imminence is a more depressing experience. A young woman drifts through a day and a life without feeling. As the book begins, she has come home from a prolonged stay in hospital after the birth of her baby. She cared so little about the existence of this infant, that she left the decision to abort it or not, to her lover. Now she feels nothing for it, and abandons its care to Pedro. And it's not post-natal depression because she's been like this all her life, an observer of others, disengaged from the business of living.
Her cynical friends are contemptuous of men, and love, and commitment. Her male lovers — Pedro, Ivan and Cousin — are perfunctory experiences. There are episodic events in a haphazard chronology, but the only one that engaged me at all was an episode of sheer stupidity when the narrator and Ivan were stranded in the desert because their car broke down. I understood that this extreme event was to show the extent of the narrator's lack of feeling: it really is the ultimate in not caring about yourself and others when you put yourself in danger to no purpose, but still, while I recognised that I was meant to empathise with the narrator, I felt more in sympathy with the 17-year-old boy who had to risk his own safety in order to help her out.
In his thoughtful review, Joe at Rough Ghosts comments that some readers might find it hard to 'forgive' the narrator's detachment — and I think that's how I felt.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/07/25/imminence-by-mariana-dimopulos-translated-by...… (plus d'informations)
But reading Imminence is a more depressing experience. A young woman drifts through a day and a life without feeling. As the book begins, she has come home from a prolonged stay in hospital after the birth of her baby. She cared so little about the existence of this infant, that she left the decision to abort it or not, to her lover. Now she feels nothing for it, and abandons its care to Pedro. And it's not post-natal depression because she's been like this all her life, an observer of others, disengaged from the business of living.
We're alone together, for the first time. I have to touch him now. I try stroking a foot, then a shoulder. But no current lifts in me, nothing pulls at my chest the way they said it would.
The baby has a foot that shines silver from the wool of his bootie. I try again, but I can't even get close. Removing the covers, removing any of his layers, is suddenly unthinkable. I laugh to myself. I tell myself it's impossible, and the thought is like a soothing caress; nothing is wrong, it will pass. (p.1)
Her cynical friends are contemptuous of men, and love, and commitment. Her male lovers — Pedro, Ivan and Cousin — are perfunctory experiences. There are episodic events in a haphazard chronology, but the only one that engaged me at all was an episode of sheer stupidity when the narrator and Ivan were stranded in the desert because their car broke down. I understood that this extreme event was to show the extent of the narrator's lack of feeling: it really is the ultimate in not caring about yourself and others when you put yourself in danger to no purpose, but still, while I recognised that I was meant to empathise with the narrator, I felt more in sympathy with the 17-year-old boy who had to risk his own safety in order to help her out.
In his thoughtful review, Joe at Rough Ghosts comments that some readers might find it hard to 'forgive' the narrator's detachment — and I think that's how I felt.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/07/25/imminence-by-mariana-dimopulos-translated-by...… (plus d'informations)
All My Goodbyes
by Mariana Dimopulos
Translated from Spanish by Alice Whitmore.
2010 Argentina
Transit Books
5.0/5.0
I absolutely fell in love with this book. Not at first. The fragmented paragraphs, once I got use to it, really added to the overall feeling of being lost and alienation. The Argentinean writer masters it in this novel. The constant movement, the running from murders she will never escape, this novella about a woman who feels broken, down on herself and lost, only finding solace in leaving places....departing....so she is constantly moving between Berlin, Madrid and Heidelberg, according to her frame if mind. Each place has significance to her.
Brilliant....beautiful....unforgiving and unforgettable. A must read.
"My freedom always implies the slavery of another. So, my heart asks (and at heart I'm no good): if I enslave myself, does that mean someone else is set free"
"He was naive with his wisdom, a well- intentioned butcher of innocence. On the weekend we'd go canoeing on the river and get ice cream on Avenida Maipu. The cars we saw racing by were converted chemical energy into kinetic energy, and the trees were using gravity to stay still because, even though they had roots, without gravity they would be floating in the sky. At night I would dream, inevitably, of floating trees."… (plus d'informations)
by Mariana Dimopulos
Translated from Spanish by Alice Whitmore.
2010 Argentina
Transit Books
5.0/5.0
I absolutely fell in love with this book. Not at first. The fragmented paragraphs, once I got use to it, really added to the overall feeling of being lost and alienation. The Argentinean writer masters it in this novel. The constant movement, the running from murders she will never escape, this novella about a woman who feels broken, down on herself and lost, only finding solace in leaving places....departing....so she is constantly moving between Berlin, Madrid and Heidelberg, according to her frame if mind. Each place has significance to her.
Brilliant....beautiful....unforgiving and unforgettable. A must read.
"My freedom always implies the slavery of another. So, my heart asks (and at heart I'm no good): if I enslave myself, does that mean someone else is set free"
"He was naive with his wisdom, a well- intentioned butcher of innocence. On the weekend we'd go canoeing on the river and get ice cream on Avenida Maipu. The cars we saw racing by were converted chemical energy into kinetic energy, and the trees were using gravity to stay still because, even though they had roots, without gravity they would be floating in the sky. At night I would dream, inevitably, of floating trees."… (plus d'informations)
I was about half way through All My Goodbyes by Argentinian author Mariana Dimópulos, and a bit baffled by its fragmentary style, when I remembered Michael Orthofer’s indispensable The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction. Bless him, he is the soul of brevity and tells me exactly what I need to know in less than four short pages.
Short summary: famous South American authors who cast a long shadow – Borges, Márquez, Llosa and Fuentes. √Yes, I have read ’em all. Only Isabel Allende broke through the period of repression under Pinochet et al. √Yes, have read her too). Then this bit:
So, thus armed, I turn to Orthofer’s summary of Argentina’s contemporary literature. Argentina, in the early C20th was wealthy, culturally aligned with the US and Europe, and with a thriving literary culture. Borges is the towering figure, distinctive and influential. There are others but the one that interests me is the one mentioned alongside Borges in the Giramondo blurb for All My Goodbyes: Julio Cortázar (1914-1984).
Now, I’m starting to make more sense of All My Goodbyes. I certainly seem to be caught in a loop, and since the narrative is all over the place (just like its narrator, flitting from one place to another with no apparent purpose), perhaps it wouldn’t matter what order I read the pages in. √Yes, she’s describing an unfulfilling life in places on the other side of the world. What’s more, the settings (Málaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) are indistinguishable from one another as if all cities are the same, signified by universal markers of modern urban life such as Ikea, a bakery, an anonymous auto-parts supplier and the ubiquitous café. All her jobs are mundane and badly paid and all of them involve unreasonable working conditions.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/11/08/all-my-goodbyes-by-mariana-dimopulos-transla...… (plus d'informations)
Short summary: famous South American authors who cast a long shadow – Borges, Márquez, Llosa and Fuentes. √Yes, I have read ’em all. Only Isabel Allende broke through the period of repression under Pinochet et al. √Yes, have read her too). Then this bit:
… only recently have a post-Boom generation come to the fore. Many writers have now repudiated magical realism and embraced American pop and consumer culture with as much fervour as the older generation denounced American imperialism. The McOndo movement – its name openly mocking Garcia Márquez’s Macondo, the setting of One Hundred Years of Solitude – is one of the most prominent recent literary trends… (p. 389)
So, thus armed, I turn to Orthofer’s summary of Argentina’s contemporary literature. Argentina, in the early C20th was wealthy, culturally aligned with the US and Europe, and with a thriving literary culture. Borges is the towering figure, distinctive and influential. There are others but the one that interests me is the one mentioned alongside Borges in the Giramondo blurb for All My Goodbyes: Julio Cortázar (1914-1984).
… Hopscotch (1963, English 1966) is one of the major novels of the Latin American Boom. (p.190) The first section of the novel is a conventional story, and Cortázar said that the nearly one hundred supplementary chapters of the second were expendable. The protagonist of this soul-searching novel is Horacio Oliveira, who describes his unfulfilled life in first Paris and then Buenos Aires. As the author explains, the novel’s 155 chapters can be – but do not have to be – read in the order in which they were printed. Cortázar supplies instructions for an alternative sequence, which ultimately leave the reader caught in an infinite loop. While Cortázar’s presentation might appear to be a gimmick, it is carefully and well done and allows for different readings of the text, including the traditional one of front to back. His novel 62: A Model Kit (1968, English 1972) builds on Hopscotch, specifically the sixty-second chapter of the earlier novel, putting into practice the theory outlined there, of a new kind of novel. Melding place – the three locales of the novel: Paris, London, and Vienna – and presenting fragmentary material, this novel also demands more active participation from the reader. (p.390)
Now, I’m starting to make more sense of All My Goodbyes. I certainly seem to be caught in a loop, and since the narrative is all over the place (just like its narrator, flitting from one place to another with no apparent purpose), perhaps it wouldn’t matter what order I read the pages in. √Yes, she’s describing an unfulfilling life in places on the other side of the world. What’s more, the settings (Málaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) are indistinguishable from one another as if all cities are the same, signified by universal markers of modern urban life such as Ikea, a bakery, an anonymous auto-parts supplier and the ubiquitous café. All her jobs are mundane and badly paid and all of them involve unreasonable working conditions.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/11/08/all-my-goodbyes-by-mariana-dimopulos-transla...… (plus d'informations)
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 7
- Membres
- 43
- Popularité
- #352,016
- Évaluation
- 3.7
- Critiques
- 4
- ISBN
- 11
- Langues
- 1