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Other Reflexes
Fleshed out on the porous boundaries between memoir and fiction, five interrelated tales – each dedicated to one of the senses – recount what it means for domestic, interpersonal and systemic violence to be the primary component of one’s world. From the streets of 1980s postcolonial Cyprus to present-day European metropolises, we follow the unnamed protagonist in her quest to construct meaning in a class and a cultural context that lack any sort of support or analytic tools. Deploying a language that vibrates with synaesthetic sensuality, Georgiou captures a life riven by injustice and its inscription on the senses.
152 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2022
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 17, 2023
It was just one more thing to get through; like all the other disasters, it too bore the brunt of the island, and so we would overcome it in a style that was entirely our own and completely antithetical to everything and everyone around us. This was our power, a power we cultivated day after day, and the one which reassured us that we were indeed the sane ones in this society. In this alienating aberration that we experienced as public life, we were actually free because of our alienation.
Other Reflexes is published by Book Works "a leading contemporary arts organisation with a unique role as makers and publishers of artists’ books."
The first person narrator of the novel is the daughter of an Eastern European mother and Greek Cypriot father, growing up on “the island”, as she refers to Cyprus, a place to which she often returns, although she now lives in London.
The Prelude is addressed to her lover, who has temporarily left her, and concludes:
For us to start listening to each other, I will have to give you a biography of the senses, a detailed explanation of how my faculties were slowly distorted. I hope that through these stories I will be able to explain to you why my relationship to listening is a little strained, why it is that, when things get a little difficult, my impulse is to run away from it all. And yet, it is you who ran, not I. When you read this, I want you to know that I am here, waiting to listen to everything you have to tell me, when you’re ready, of course.
The novel then comprises five separate chapters, each linked to one of the senses Sonic Memories (14pp), Good Taste (17pp), Final Touches (62pp), Visual Pleasures (16pp) and Heavenly Smells (25pp).
Sonic Memories focuses on the narrator's development of selective hearing as a child to avoid hearing her father's violent abuse of her mother, and a transformation of her attention to reading:
Words came to transform my relationship to sound. It was a gradual process. It started with the ability to read — and I mean reading in the broadest sense. From reading words and the stories that they string together, to interpreting images or deciphering the codes of conduct around me. Simple readings, like trying to fill in the shapes of a colouring book according to the visuality that surrounds us. One reads the smiles of people one encounters, and in time discovers that a curled lip is not always an indication of pleasure. We read words that at first sound foreign, and sentences which seem so long that, halfway through, we return to the start in an attempt to reassemble their meaning.
I recall sleepy breakfast sessions that consisted of pronouncing every word on the milk carton and cereal box. Mysterious contents comprised of numbers and letters, long parenthetical words with many vowels, and no explanation of what they all meant. From slogans proclaiming a sonic-oral experience — ‘snap, crackle, pop’ — to assertions that consuming the contents would fortify our little frames with a tiger’s stamina. This habit then made its way into daily experience almost compulsively. Reading the contents of shampoo bottles promising ‘no more tears’; marketing flyers for must-have household items stamped with a seductive white font on red circles trumpeting the word ‘SALE’; spotting every error on a bilingual menu; unfolding the meticulously pleated paper wrapped around the pain- killers, reading the horrific things that they could induce, and painstakingly refolding this opaque compilation of side effects neatly to fit perfectly back in the box.
Good Taste is also from her childhood and covers the complex history of Cyprus via its culinary influnces:
Grandma used the almonds to prepare some kalon praman, which literally translates as good thing. This recipe, like much of our mysterious cuisine, called for an intricate process of combination and exclusion.
Final Touches is the most conventional of the pieces in style, almost a novella in it's own right, a lively story of the narrator's late teenage years, as a lesbian and part of an alternative scene of people exploring their sexuality and gender - In this deeply conservative and patriarchal society it became clear that sexuality was firstly a matter of gender, and then domination.
Visual Pleasures is set some 15 years later - the narrator, now in her early 30s is in Cyprus again, with perhaps her first real lover, but one who still doesn't want their relationship to be public. The two attend a Deep Purple concert and the narrator also meets her father again for the first time since that period 15 years ago.
The last piece, Heavenly Smells, has the narrator's best friend from the Final Touches era contracting breast cancer:
It was just one more thing to get through; like all the other disasters, it too bore the brunt of the island, and so we would overcome it in a style that was entirely our own and completely antithetical to everything and everyone around us. This was our power, a power we cultivated day after day, and the one which reassured us that we were indeed the sane ones in this society. In this alienating aberration that we experienced as public life, we were actually free because of our alienation.
…
I still carried the smell of Jay’s temples and her neck. She has been using the same shampoo for as long as I can remember. All the memories that her scent awakened made me emotional, teary and wistful for something I couldn’t exactly recall, even though my mind felt so compartmentalised and vigilant from all the high- alert activity. Was it a period of time? A specific occasion? What memory from our shared history was I grappling for? I say memory, but it would be more like an impression than an exact recollection of an event within a linear temporal sequence. Her scent evoked a sensation, not a memory, from childhood to the present moment, and what I longed for was fearlessness. At school we were frequently reminded that faith was the opposite of fear, so much so that, even when we had lost our religious faith, we remained fearless. It was her scent that made it clear to me that the fearlessness we embodied was the effect of our union, a faith in our union, at a time when our faith in the world was gradually disintegrating.
Impressively done.
Other Reflexes is published by Book Works "a leading contemporary arts organisation with a unique role as makers and publishers of artists’ books."
The first person narrator of the novel is the daughter of an Eastern European mother and Greek Cypriot father, growing up on “the island”, as she refers to Cyprus, a place to which she often returns, although she now lives in London.
The Prelude is addressed to her lover, who has temporarily left her, and concludes:
For us to start listening to each other, I will have to give you a biography of the senses, a detailed explanation of how my faculties were slowly distorted. I hope that through these stories I will be able to explain to you why my relationship to listening is a little strained, why it is that, when things get a little difficult, my impulse is to run away from it all. And yet, it is you who ran, not I. When you read this, I want you to know that I am here, waiting to listen to everything you have to tell me, when you’re ready, of course.
The novel then comprises five separate chapters, each linked to one of the senses Sonic Memories (14pp), Good Taste (17pp), Final Touches (62pp), Visual Pleasures (16pp) and Heavenly Smells (25pp).
Sonic Memories focuses on the narrator's development of selective hearing as a child to avoid hearing her father's violent abuse of her mother, and a transformation of her attention to reading:
Words came to transform my relationship to sound. It was a gradual process. It started with the ability to read — and I mean reading in the broadest sense. From reading words and the stories that they string together, to interpreting images or deciphering the codes of conduct around me. Simple readings, like trying to fill in the shapes of a colouring book according to the visuality that surrounds us. One reads the smiles of people one encounters, and in time discovers that a curled lip is not always an indication of pleasure. We read words that at first sound foreign, and sentences which seem so long that, halfway through, we return to the start in an attempt to reassemble their meaning.
I recall sleepy breakfast sessions that consisted of pronouncing every word on the milk carton and cereal box. Mysterious contents comprised of numbers and letters, long parenthetical words with many vowels, and no explanation of what they all meant. From slogans proclaiming a sonic-oral experience — ‘snap, crackle, pop’ — to assertions that consuming the contents would fortify our little frames with a tiger’s stamina. This habit then made its way into daily experience almost compulsively. Reading the contents of shampoo bottles promising ‘no more tears’; marketing flyers for must-have household items stamped with a seductive white font on red circles trumpeting the word ‘SALE’; spotting every error on a bilingual menu; unfolding the meticulously pleated paper wrapped around the pain- killers, reading the horrific things that they could induce, and painstakingly refolding this opaque compilation of side effects neatly to fit perfectly back in the box.
Good Taste is also from her childhood and covers the complex history of Cyprus via its culinary influnces:
Grandma used the almonds to prepare some kalon praman, which literally translates as good thing. This recipe, like much of our mysterious cuisine, called for an intricate process of combination and exclusion.
Final Touches is the most conventional of the pieces in style, almost a novella in it's own right, a lively story of the narrator's late teenage years, as a lesbian and part of an alternative scene of people exploring their sexuality and gender - In this deeply conservative and patriarchal society it became clear that sexuality was firstly a matter of gender, and then domination.
Visual Pleasures is set some 15 years later - the narrator, now in her early 30s is in Cyprus again, with perhaps her first real lover, but one who still doesn't want their relationship to be public. The two attend a Deep Purple concert and the narrator also meets her father again for the first time since that period 15 years ago.
The last piece, Heavenly Smells, has the narrator's best friend from the Final Touches era contracting breast cancer:
It was just one more thing to get through; like all the other disasters, it too bore the brunt of the island, and so we would overcome it in a style that was entirely our own and completely antithetical to everything and everyone around us. This was our power, a power we cultivated day after day, and the one which reassured us that we were indeed the sane ones in this society. In this alienating aberration that we experienced as public life, we were actually free because of our alienation.
…
I still carried the smell of Jay’s temples and her neck. She has been using the same shampoo for as long as I can remember. All the memories that her scent awakened made me emotional, teary and wistful for something I couldn’t exactly recall, even though my mind felt so compartmentalised and vigilant from all the high- alert activity. Was it a period of time? A specific occasion? What memory from our shared history was I grappling for? I say memory, but it would be more like an impression than an exact recollection of an event within a linear temporal sequence. Her scent evoked a sensation, not a memory, from childhood to the present moment, and what I longed for was fearlessness. At school we were frequently reminded that faith was the opposite of fear, so much so that, even when we had lost our religious faith, we remained fearless. It was her scent that made it clear to me that the fearlessness we embodied was the effect of our union, a faith in our union, at a time when our faith in the world was gradually disintegrating.
Impressively done.
October 7, 2024
A beautiful heart-wrenching story that left me full and empty at the same time. It’s written in such a soothing and poetic way that it almost felt like a really sad lullaby.
I highly recommend this book!
I highly recommend this book!
July 26, 2023
An interesting study of oppression of queer people and in particular queer women in cisheteropatriarchal society such as Cypriot one. I loved it how oppression is made a thing of senses, or rather how oppression is a sensory and sensuous thing, adding layers upon layers of affliction on the lived body over the time. But also, how lived body does not let itself give up no matter how exhausting the multisensory oppression is. A nice companion piece would be A Good Year by Polis Loizou.
January 15, 2025
I found this book in a hotel library and tbh thought it was awesome. Judging off it only have 10 other reviews I don’t think it did so great but Jadore
April 21, 2025
Beautifully and poetically written. Raw and honest account of violence lived by queer women in Cyprus across decades.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews