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Chargement... The Sunken Cathedralpar Kate Walbert
   Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  write-review | Nov 4, 2021 |   How to describe Walbert's short novel of interlaced lives of people living in New York City under the pall of sad memories and impending doom? Something like being confined to a single room in gloaming caused by an unending rain storm seems about right. This isn't to say the novel isn't good, for it is in its own special way; it is to say the novel is not for everybody and certainly not for those who like a soupçon of joy in what they read. Walbert opens with three elderly women--Helen, Simone, and Marie--seeking to occupy their time and share by participating in a painting class led by the disheveled and not very successful artist Sid Morris. In time, readers meet Elizabeth, a renter in Marie's brownstone burdened with an incubus from her childhood, and her husband and teenage son. Later, along come the leaders of Progressive K-8, the school Elizabeth's son attends, and then Jules, son of Marie, and his partner Larry. Periodically, readers also learn about the women's deceased husbands and their lives together, much of this related in extensive footnotes. Not really ancillary to the stories but integral to understanding the melancholy of the women's lives, these are an unusual and interesting but not always welcome way to expand upon the backstories of the characters. Death and longing play a large part in the stories, as does the fear of destructive natural forces. In case you're wondering, the title refers to the inspiration for Helen's painting in Sid's class, Claude Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie piano prelude, an impressionistic piece attempting to evoke the sense of the legend of the mythical city of Ys built off the coast of Brittany by King Gradlon. He built it for his daughter Dahut who ultimately opened the gates to flooding in a besotted fit of possession by the devil himself and destroyed it. In fact, you might say, Walbert's novel is much like Debussy's aural attempt, except Walbert's is an impressionistic piece in words of lives in a city that will eventually sink into the ocean. It may work for some but certainly not all of us. (  ) write-review | Nov 4, 2021 |  ) GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 | Its a gorgeous book made up of interweaving voices - a French woman who came to America after WWII, her young tenant uneasily negotiating life in a post 9/11, post Sandy world, a painting teacher in an illegal Chelsea squat. Footnotes to the text take the reader even deeper, uncovering memories or stories characters are otherwise reluctant to share. Highly recommended, especially to New Yorkers, though y'all may want to move before you finish it. My bookpage review here: http://bookpage.com/reviews/18241-kate-walbert-sunken-cathedral#.VfA9KU2FNXI ( ) laurenbufferd | Nov 14, 2016 | ) gayla.bassham | Nov 7, 2016 | aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Distinctions
"In Sunken Cathedral, Kate Walbert tells the stories of four women living in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, more or less now. Two, Marie and Simone, friends for decades, are widows in their seventies, yet robust, engaged, appetiteful, even ready to find love again. They were immigrants, survivors of World War II in Europe, and now are living alone in the houses where they raised their children. Elizabeth is Marie's tenant, the mother of a 13 year old boy, a woman convinced that others have some secret way of being, of contending with the world, some confidence and certainty she lacks. She is increasingly unmoored, baffled by her son, her husband, the elusive role she is meant to play. The Art Historian, who takes a painting class with Marie and Simone and works on a series of paintings of the city underwater, is a witness of sorts, a woman who watches the neighborhood, the weather (it is post-Sandy or some cataclysmic event like it). Shifting points of view and protagonists, interweaving long narrative footnotes, Walbert paints portraits of marriage, of friendship, of love in its many facets, and of a particular moment in New York, always limning the inner life, the place of deepest yearning and meaning and anxiety. In stunningly beautiful sentences, she has written a profoundly wise novel that has the subtle magnitude and artistry of chamber music"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.22)
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How to describe Walbert's short novel of interlaced lives of people living in New York City under the pall of sad memories and impending doom? Something like being confined to a single room in gloaming caused by an unending rain storm seems about right. This isn't to say the novel isn't good, for it is in its own special way; it is to say the novel is not for everybody and certainly not for those who like a soupçon of joy in what they read.
Walbert opens with three elderly women--Helen, Simone, and Marie--seeking to occupy their time and share by participating in a painting class led by the disheveled and not very successful artist Sid Morris. In time, readers meet Elizabeth, a renter in Marie's brownstone burdened with an incubus from her childhood, and her husband and teenage son. Later, along come the leaders of Progressive K-8, the school Elizabeth's son attends, and then Jules, son of Marie, and his partner Larry. Periodically, readers also learn about the women's deceased husbands and their lives together, much of this related in extensive footnotes. Not really ancillary to the stories but integral to understanding the melancholy of the women's lives, these are an unusual and interesting but not always welcome way to expand upon the backstories of the characters. Death and longing play a large part in the stories, as does the fear of destructive natural forces.
In case you're wondering, the title refers to the inspiration for Helen's painting in Sid's class, Claude Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie piano prelude, an impressionistic piece attempting to evoke the sense of the legend of the mythical city of Ys built off the coast of Brittany by King Gradlon. He built it for his daughter Dahut who ultimately opened the gates to flooding in a besotted fit of possession by the devil himself and destroyed it.
In fact, you might say, Walbert's novel is much like Debussy's aural attempt, except Walbert's is an impressionistic piece in words of lives in a city that will eventually sink into the ocean. It may work for some but certainly not all of us. (