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Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking
The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know.
She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows - almost - about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape.
Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is the story of a young woman coming of age in a town reckoning with its brutal past, for readers of Milkman and A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows - almost - about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape.
Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is the story of a young woman coming of age in a town reckoning with its brutal past, for readers of Milkman and A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
286 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 20, 2024
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October 12, 2024
Portrait #2
Tops of heads
In this portrait, there is an actual portrait. It is the portrait I that appeared in the lift in the section of the building the almost daughter lived in, the week before the strange time began with Oksana, the new and wild girl at her school, and all the things that were hidden under other things. It was with her father that the almost daughter first saw the portrait in the lift. There was no immediate logical connection to Oksana.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize, judge Abigail Shinn's verdict on Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking reads:
The novel, which the author has said she wroteto think about silences, almostness, poetry, distortions of history, more, is told in 77 short chapters, or portraits, the first of which opens, setting the scene:
Portrait #1
The haunted
This is the portrait of who she used to be. She was a daughter - or rather she was almost a daughter because that was just the way things were - and she had always known what kind of cursed place she lived in, to a lesser or greater extent at different times.
She knew broadly, for instance, that her own mother's grandmother had been sent to the region from a better, cleaner city, in the west of the country and years ago. This was where the story ended: this great-grandmother was dead now and had always been dead, thick in the layers of mothers and past things. She had always been dead but did have something to do with the other woman who lived alone and had no family to visit her on weekends, so that the almost daughter's family came instead.
This is specific as the novel gets in terms of setting.
But the reader will naturally, including from the author's biography ('grew up in Japan, Russia and elsewhere') and powerful social media feed think of the legacies of the former Soviet Union in modern day Russia. And later in the novel there are passing references to an event similar to the invasion of Ukraine and to another similar to the 2012 Pussy Riot trials.
And towards the novel's end some chapters have titles written in Russian (Google Lens rather helpful here) which draw on the poetry of Anna Akhmatova ('И если зажмут мой измученный рот' is from Реквием (Requiem), a line translated by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward as 'and if a gag should blind my tortured mouth') and Marina Tsvetaeva (e.g. a line from Дом). Untranslated poems by both also form an afterword.
The allegorical approach is reminscent of, but distinctive from, two of the finest novels of the last 7 years, Milkman, and Study for Obedience, and this deserves it place alongside them. It continues with the novel told primarily from two close third-person narrative perspectives:
- that of a teenage girl, 'the almost daughter'; and
- and portraits of the elderly woman referred to above, known in her sections as 'the woman with the cave inside her', and who thinks of 'the almost daughter' when she visits as 'the lazy ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the atrocious ghost'.
These latter begin in a somewhat hazy, confused style, representing perhaps both the age of the woman but also the repressed memories:
The only thing to do back inside is to find the papers that will make her feel better. They will make her feel calm, or soft, and on the ground again, for a little while at least and are the only things that do this. Not just papers - what are they? Letters. And a photograph. The photograph of the face that wil make her feel safer. They are somewhere. She keeps them hidden, just in case, even if she is not sure in case of what. She hides them well every time. She puts them back. She hides them from the woman and the lazy children except that once or maybe twice she did not hide them but she held them out and screamed things. They are hidden but now they are too well hidden. If she could remember where it was she hid them she would have them in her hands this moment.
But as the novel progresses, her memory and her connection with the almost daughter's family become more concrete.
The 'almost daughter' lives with her brother, who watches online porn, but warns her against what he sees as immoral behaviour, and is becoming involved with a form of martial arts club that is evolving to something close to a youth militia; her relatively passive father; and her mother who does online language exchanges with an English woman from Bristol, through which the almost daughter, and the reader, learn of her view on the events described below.
From early on, the almost daughter acknowledges there is a hidden side to their town - why were people 'sent to the region from a better, cleaner city' (as per above) years ago, and what did once stand where now there is a sportsfield where they compete with neighbouring towns:
She inevitably heard what the students from other regions said about the fields, in between their own phases of only cheering and shouting. They were the ones who said the word haunted, and sometimes said labour and detained and the other words. They were the ones who pointed to the blunt rows of what had indeed unmistakeably been barracks, before they boarded their buses and left again.
So of course the almost daughter had guessed, though equally naturally, she already knew. Clearly, everybody else knew as well, because why would she - just one boring, almost-person - be special in her guessing or knowing?
And yet no one really asks any more, until the events that trigger the plot of the novel, which unfolds over two short months, and in particular two groups of visitors to her school:
- one are people from a modelling agency, or rather 'not exactly people from the modelling agency', which leads the almost daughter, and her friends Valya and Elda into a rather murky area of posing for photographs for men who claim this will be a fast-ticket to becoming an international supermodel. The coming-of-age element of this story captures well how the three girls are both aware of the risks involved (the almost daughter's brother is quick to tell them they will end up as Whores or a best Escorts) and yet at the same time hoping, with some justification, that this may be their own chance to escape their lives. And in this world the almost daughter explores her sexuality with one of her brother's martial-arts training friends.
- the other is a 'a man with the broken briefcase' who comes to drum up support for a project to restore a memorial to the history of the area, and to build a museum, a project opposed by the nationalistic authorities although not prohibited ('...yet' as more pessimistic supporters comment). The most enthusiastic student as the school is Oksana, a girl with purple tinted hair, expelled from her previous school (the reason for which leads to much schoolyard speculation) and as the almost daughter gets involved in this project, she also tentatively sees another side to her sexuality.
And as this second strand progresses, the almost daughter, and the reader, increasingly learn more of the grim reality of the town's past.
This leads her to leading two parallel lives, both of which she largely conceals from her family:
A person could be in the split versions of herself, doing things that were right in their versions and the pieces of her did not have to meet.
And her inner conflict is symbolised in the art she makes in the privacy of her room, from a combination of use bottle tops and plastic necklace beads.
One place where the two split versions do meet, in space if not at the same time, is at the Palace of Creativity and Youth, a rundown former facility.
NB the books' title is taken from a mistranslation when the almost daughter's mother tries to explain the name - which has itself been misprinted as The Palace of Creativity and Entertainment in a government brochure - to her English friend - развлечение the word for entertainment but mistransposed as разрушение which means destruction/wrecking.
The meetings of the memorial project team take place, secretly, in a basement of the disused building, while Valya, Elda and the almost daughter do their supermodel fitness training on some run-down outdoor gym equipment at the site. In passing, I'll note that the asymmetric training machines, their oval arrangement and the elliptical cross-trainer do seem a neat nod to the nature of the prose.
And perhaps inevitably, and as each split version becomes both more dangerous in itself, but also coincide and become in conflict, the almost daughter has to make a choice, although Smith's story is certainly not one that follows a predictable path, and she leaves us with a poignant ending.
A wonderful novel - unsettling, intriguing and powerfully moving.
Tops of heads
In this portrait, there is an actual portrait. It is the portrait I that appeared in the lift in the section of the building the almost daughter lived in, the week before the strange time began with Oksana, the new and wild girl at her school, and all the things that were hidden under other things. It was with her father that the almost daughter first saw the portrait in the lift. There was no immediate logical connection to Oksana.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize, judge Abigail Shinn's verdict on Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking reads:
"Composed as a series of portraits, some fragmentary, all multi-faceted and allusory, Smith’s novel is a hallucinatory window into what it means to excavate the past in a world committed to its erasure.
At once a poignant coming of age story and an exploration of how language is shaped by ideology, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is tender and merciless in its slanting look at the history of state violence and its unacknowledged but profound effects on individuals and communities.
An important reminder that the stories we tell can serve as propaganda and as powerful works of resistance, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking, demonstrates how the novel can reflect and resist the double speak of our own time.
The novel, which the author has said she wroteto think about silences, almostness, poetry, distortions of history, more, is told in 77 short chapters, or portraits, the first of which opens, setting the scene:
Portrait #1
The haunted
This is the portrait of who she used to be. She was a daughter - or rather she was almost a daughter because that was just the way things were - and she had always known what kind of cursed place she lived in, to a lesser or greater extent at different times.
She knew broadly, for instance, that her own mother's grandmother had been sent to the region from a better, cleaner city, in the west of the country and years ago. This was where the story ended: this great-grandmother was dead now and had always been dead, thick in the layers of mothers and past things. She had always been dead but did have something to do with the other woman who lived alone and had no family to visit her on weekends, so that the almost daughter's family came instead.
This is specific as the novel gets in terms of setting.
But the reader will naturally, including from the author's biography ('grew up in Japan, Russia and elsewhere') and powerful social media feed think of the legacies of the former Soviet Union in modern day Russia. And later in the novel there are passing references to an event similar to the invasion of Ukraine and to another similar to the 2012 Pussy Riot trials.
And towards the novel's end some chapters have titles written in Russian (Google Lens rather helpful here) which draw on the poetry of Anna Akhmatova ('И если зажмут мой измученный рот' is from Реквием (Requiem), a line translated by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward as 'and if a gag should blind my tortured mouth') and Marina Tsvetaeva (e.g. a line from Дом). Untranslated poems by both also form an afterword.
The allegorical approach is reminscent of, but distinctive from, two of the finest novels of the last 7 years, Milkman, and Study for Obedience, and this deserves it place alongside them. It continues with the novel told primarily from two close third-person narrative perspectives:
- that of a teenage girl, 'the almost daughter'; and
- and portraits of the elderly woman referred to above, known in her sections as 'the woman with the cave inside her', and who thinks of 'the almost daughter' when she visits as 'the lazy ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the atrocious ghost'.
These latter begin in a somewhat hazy, confused style, representing perhaps both the age of the woman but also the repressed memories:
The only thing to do back inside is to find the papers that will make her feel better. They will make her feel calm, or soft, and on the ground again, for a little while at least and are the only things that do this. Not just papers - what are they? Letters. And a photograph. The photograph of the face that wil make her feel safer. They are somewhere. She keeps them hidden, just in case, even if she is not sure in case of what. She hides them well every time. She puts them back. She hides them from the woman and the lazy children except that once or maybe twice she did not hide them but she held them out and screamed things. They are hidden but now they are too well hidden. If she could remember where it was she hid them she would have them in her hands this moment.
But as the novel progresses, her memory and her connection with the almost daughter's family become more concrete.
The 'almost daughter' lives with her brother, who watches online porn, but warns her against what he sees as immoral behaviour, and is becoming involved with a form of martial arts club that is evolving to something close to a youth militia; her relatively passive father; and her mother who does online language exchanges with an English woman from Bristol, through which the almost daughter, and the reader, learn of her view on the events described below.
From early on, the almost daughter acknowledges there is a hidden side to their town - why were people 'sent to the region from a better, cleaner city' (as per above) years ago, and what did once stand where now there is a sportsfield where they compete with neighbouring towns:
She inevitably heard what the students from other regions said about the fields, in between their own phases of only cheering and shouting. They were the ones who said the word haunted, and sometimes said labour and detained and the other words. They were the ones who pointed to the blunt rows of what had indeed unmistakeably been barracks, before they boarded their buses and left again.
So of course the almost daughter had guessed, though equally naturally, she already knew. Clearly, everybody else knew as well, because why would she - just one boring, almost-person - be special in her guessing or knowing?
And yet no one really asks any more, until the events that trigger the plot of the novel, which unfolds over two short months, and in particular two groups of visitors to her school:
- one are people from a modelling agency, or rather 'not exactly people from the modelling agency', which leads the almost daughter, and her friends Valya and Elda into a rather murky area of posing for photographs for men who claim this will be a fast-ticket to becoming an international supermodel. The coming-of-age element of this story captures well how the three girls are both aware of the risks involved (the almost daughter's brother is quick to tell them they will end up as Whores or a best Escorts) and yet at the same time hoping, with some justification, that this may be their own chance to escape their lives. And in this world the almost daughter explores her sexuality with one of her brother's martial-arts training friends.
- the other is a 'a man with the broken briefcase' who comes to drum up support for a project to restore a memorial to the history of the area, and to build a museum, a project opposed by the nationalistic authorities although not prohibited ('...yet' as more pessimistic supporters comment). The most enthusiastic student as the school is Oksana, a girl with purple tinted hair, expelled from her previous school (the reason for which leads to much schoolyard speculation) and as the almost daughter gets involved in this project, she also tentatively sees another side to her sexuality.
And as this second strand progresses, the almost daughter, and the reader, increasingly learn more of the grim reality of the town's past.
This leads her to leading two parallel lives, both of which she largely conceals from her family:
A person could be in the split versions of herself, doing things that were right in their versions and the pieces of her did not have to meet.
And her inner conflict is symbolised in the art she makes in the privacy of her room, from a combination of use bottle tops and plastic necklace beads.
One place where the two split versions do meet, in space if not at the same time, is at the Palace of Creativity and Youth, a rundown former facility.
NB the books' title is taken from a mistranslation when the almost daughter's mother tries to explain the name - which has itself been misprinted as The Palace of Creativity and Entertainment in a government brochure - to her English friend - развлечение the word for entertainment but mistransposed as разрушение which means destruction/wrecking.
The meetings of the memorial project team take place, secretly, in a basement of the disused building, while Valya, Elda and the almost daughter do their supermodel fitness training on some run-down outdoor gym equipment at the site. In passing, I'll note that the asymmetric training machines, their oval arrangement and the elliptical cross-trainer do seem a neat nod to the nature of the prose.
And perhaps inevitably, and as each split version becomes both more dangerous in itself, but also coincide and become in conflict, the almost daughter has to make a choice, although Smith's story is certainly not one that follows a predictable path, and she leaves us with a poignant ending.
A wonderful novel - unsettling, intriguing and powerfully moving.
December 22, 2024
Eerie and impressive how this book conjures what it actually means to live in a oppressive regime and what’s lost when the past is being used to control the present.
The new committee was called the glory of history or the truth of history or the victory of truth or the glory of the history of the victory of truth and they would have their museum and their rally and their monument.
It always ends like this.
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a clever novel of a girl trying to escape into modelling with a group of fellow girls from school while also being pulled into the past by an exciting new girl in her class. Constant surveillance through a painting of the president seems implied, her brother turns misogynistic and traditional, enlisting in a martial arts brigade and military parades and propaganda against foreign adoptions signal repression.
And then there is a mysterious woman with a cave inside her who every few chapters seems to hint on a deep relationship in the past.
For quite some time I didn’t think the themes gelled together but in the end I was quite impressed by Han Smith.
We are offered parallel lives centred around the titular palace, the place where the girls exercise in a supermodel regime but also serves as a backdrop to not forbidden, yet meetings about how to unearth the past. The ensuing moral dilemmas this leads to feel real and personal.
In a sense the book starts of slightly alienating, with for instance the narrator being consistently called the almost daughter. Soon we also find out that there are things in the past of the town she lives in that are disturbing and indicative of forced labor, detainment, immigration and barracks.
The mother of the almost daughter speaks to someone in Bristol, father works at a gas plant. Only new girl Oksana, rebellious and with purple-black hair, speaks out for liberalism, while the friend of the brother of the narrator clearly represents the aggressive, masculine and traditional point of view.
The almost daughter tries to escape, initially into modelling with a group of fellow girls from school but also at the same time into exploring the history of the town with Oksana. Valya, the lead girl with who the almost daughter tries to stay in the good book, is the hyper-sexualised counter to Evgeni, the muscular manly ideal pushed by society.
The almost daughter moves between the opposing forces, confirms to some and takes actions diametrically opposed to some professed positions as well. She lived somewhere in the blur of the middle, and nothing more
Loyalties are being put into question:
Are you normal?
Can you prove it?
Numerous portraits in the old palace of creativity (mistranslated by the mother of the almost daughter into the title of the book) serve as a structure to the novel. These are often more metaphysical in title than actual, however they can be as seen in chapter 2: In this portrait there is an actual portrait.
Desire is awakening, in a sense excavated as are the camps in the neighbourhood of the town.
We also learn more about history, including starvation and skeleton children, who are fed on flour mixed with tree bark out of desperation.
The sense of being torn between what society values in womanhood exemplified in seedy men who photograph her for her looks on the one hand (It’s my melancholic princess of darkness) and being called a whore or at best an escort by her brother, and also what the past and a sense of justice demands, becomes ever stronger as the book progresses.
A choice needs to be made: There was wanting to see and needing to see.
The parents of our narrator are touching in a way, with how unable they are to really speak with their almost daughter but deeply, without power to protect, caring for her nonetheless.
A sobering and captivating read, with clever symmetries and usage of the word portrait in its broadest sense.
Quotes:
When she typed the letters now in English she found that casting came from words that meant throwing: To throw, throw with violence, to fling, and hurl. To throw into a mould, pour into shape, fix into form, to harden. And later paths: to assign a role, to communicate widely, to set a cracked bone. All of it was fixing that could not be uncast, in shapes, and roles and positions and bodies.
It’s image control and it’s dangerous
And the pounding of glory was relentless and deafening.
Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye, forget the past and lose both eyes.
The new committee was called the glory of history or the truth of history or the victory of truth or the glory of the history of the victory of truth and they would have their museum and their rally and their monument.
It always ends like this.
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a clever novel of a girl trying to escape into modelling with a group of fellow girls from school while also being pulled into the past by an exciting new girl in her class. Constant surveillance through a painting of the president seems implied, her brother turns misogynistic and traditional, enlisting in a martial arts brigade and military parades and propaganda against foreign adoptions signal repression.
And then there is a mysterious woman with a cave inside her who every few chapters seems to hint on a deep relationship in the past.
For quite some time I didn’t think the themes gelled together but in the end I was quite impressed by Han Smith.
We are offered parallel lives centred around the titular palace, the place where the girls exercise in a supermodel regime but also serves as a backdrop to not forbidden, yet meetings about how to unearth the past. The ensuing moral dilemmas this leads to feel real and personal.
In a sense the book starts of slightly alienating, with for instance the narrator being consistently called the almost daughter. Soon we also find out that there are things in the past of the town she lives in that are disturbing and indicative of forced labor, detainment, immigration and barracks.
The mother of the almost daughter speaks to someone in Bristol, father works at a gas plant. Only new girl Oksana, rebellious and with purple-black hair, speaks out for liberalism, while the friend of the brother of the narrator clearly represents the aggressive, masculine and traditional point of view.
The almost daughter tries to escape, initially into modelling with a group of fellow girls from school but also at the same time into exploring the history of the town with Oksana. Valya, the lead girl with who the almost daughter tries to stay in the good book, is the hyper-sexualised counter to Evgeni, the muscular manly ideal pushed by society.
The almost daughter moves between the opposing forces, confirms to some and takes actions diametrically opposed to some professed positions as well. She lived somewhere in the blur of the middle, and nothing more
Loyalties are being put into question:
Are you normal?
Can you prove it?
Numerous portraits in the old palace of creativity (mistranslated by the mother of the almost daughter into the title of the book) serve as a structure to the novel. These are often more metaphysical in title than actual, however they can be as seen in chapter 2: In this portrait there is an actual portrait.
Desire is awakening, in a sense excavated as are the camps in the neighbourhood of the town.
We also learn more about history, including starvation and skeleton children, who are fed on flour mixed with tree bark out of desperation.
The sense of being torn between what society values in womanhood exemplified in seedy men who photograph her for her looks on the one hand (It’s my melancholic princess of darkness) and being called a whore or at best an escort by her brother, and also what the past and a sense of justice demands, becomes ever stronger as the book progresses.
A choice needs to be made: There was wanting to see and needing to see.
The parents of our narrator are touching in a way, with how unable they are to really speak with their almost daughter but deeply, without power to protect, caring for her nonetheless.
A sobering and captivating read, with clever symmetries and usage of the word portrait in its broadest sense.
Quotes:
When she typed the letters now in English she found that casting came from words that meant throwing: To throw, throw with violence, to fling, and hurl. To throw into a mould, pour into shape, fix into form, to harden. And later paths: to assign a role, to communicate widely, to set a cracked bone. All of it was fixing that could not be uncast, in shapes, and roles and positions and bodies.
It’s image control and it’s dangerous
And the pounding of glory was relentless and deafening.
Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye, forget the past and lose both eyes.
October 13, 2024
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2024
This book fully deserves it Goldsmiths shortlisting and could well be a strong contender to win the prize. It is stylistically innovative and powerful. Definitely worth reading, and worth persisting with if you are struggling with the first few pages.
This book fully deserves it Goldsmiths shortlisting and could well be a strong contender to win the prize. It is stylistically innovative and powerful. Definitely worth reading, and worth persisting with if you are struggling with the first few pages.
December 6, 2024
A young teenager (without a name but called ‘the almost daughter’) comes of age in a cold, authoritarian, and repressive state, and through an elderly friend of her deceased grandmother (also without a name and called the ‘woman with a cave inside her’) and a rebellious schoolfriend (Oksana) finds her sexual identity and political determination.
The publisher says the author Han Smith grew up in Japan and Russia, which made me guess, without admittedly much thought, that I was in North Korea. Dealing with a repressive attitude to homosexuality, human rights and freedoms, in truth, it could have been one of many countries around the world, but a few instances of Cyrillic text probably mark it down as Russia. Normally, this would not be much of a consideration, but with a lack of any other context, a shortage of these fundamentals gave the story a dislocation and abstract quality that at times didn't allow the story to engage with me.
Nonetheless, the influences of the elderly friend and the young Oksana are nicely balanced and clearly separated into their own chapters, though I found the writing between these two influences discordant in their style, and ultimately the quality of the writing.
Reading Han Smith’s poetry is refreshing; occasionally vague and curiously elusive, she plays with syntax and unexpected expressions and phrases. She’s won accolades, plaudits and prizes in her young career, and I came to this debut novel through its nomination for the Whitbread Award. She adopts this poetic approach as a prose style for nearly half the book when writing in the voice of the elderly friend, and the awkward syntax and disarming quality fits perfectly with the confusion, lost memories, and contradictions that pass through the mind of a traumatised elderly person. The elderly friend is a curious foil for ‘the almost daughter’s’ reasoning, where the teenager's private thoughts are interestingly filtered, summarised, and voiced through the elderly friend. The elderly friend's voice is idiosyncratic, disjointed and fragmented; on the subject of her socks, she writes:
‘If they are on, and one on each, and it is still the morning, there is a chance for order and calm. There is the possibility that she will, today, remember and have the force to slice things and boil them, or layer them inside a pan, which will not exhaust her even as she lifts it, and she will remember first the butter in the pan.’ And also in a more lyrical musing:
‘How really to know? Hands rawed red and ears rawed violet, and ragged cloth around hands to protect them but minced and lashed and open-scoured anyway.’
Yet my huge disappointment was that the other part of the story, where ‘the almost daughter’ finds a sexual identity and political determination with her friend Oksana, immediately struck me as naïve in the quality of its delivery. There was little distinction to the prose, a lot of mundane happenings which I found ordinary, especially compared to the relative sophistication of the elderly friend’s tone of voice. It lacked depth and a rounded appraisal of experiences, as a teenager’s writing often might, yet I thought Marieke Lucas Reijneveld’s, ‘The Discomfort of Evening’, was much better with respect to the quirkiness of a teenager’s viewpoint of life. Though Reijneveld’s subject matter is less confrontational and urban, the impact of adolescence on her and Smith's protagonists are similar. I found Smith's prose only rose above this mundanity when ‘the almost daughter’s’ interacted with siblings and friends, especially when ‘the almost daughter’ and her friend's attempt to become models. These interactions are well observed, droll and entertaining, however, the bigger more serious issues of sexuality and political protest, I didn’t find handled in an interesting way.
‘The almost daughter’s’ classmate Valrya’s vacuous understanding of modelling is well drawn when she says (ladled with irony), ‘that it was such an honour to use her body and her womanhood this way, and that she did not want to exaggerate too much but she really felt that she had found the centre or meaning or core purpose of her life.’
I also felt there was a lack of passion around these issues of sexuality and politics, surprisingly since I’m sure both followed from the author’s personal experiences. Though a lack of names suited the voice of the ‘woman with a cave inside her’, it gave an impersonal feeling to the rest of the writing that made it difficult to form a connection with the characters. Likewise, setting the story in an unstated place and time appeared to sanitise any indignation and anger towards the political regime, making it difficult for the author to land a blow against the state's intransigence: ‘Fuck Putin the murdering bastard’ might have laid down clearer battle lines. Finally, ‘the almost daughter’s’ vacillation with her sexuality dampened the sexual intensity from the coming of age scenario (I’m not sure the coming of age was ever fully arrived at).
For me, this book didn’t work as a story, or further advance thoughts about non-cis sexual identities, liberality, or protest, which it appeared to want to do. Though I’m sure Han Smith will eventually put out something worthy in the future about all, some or none of these issues, for me this wasn’t it.
The publisher says the author Han Smith grew up in Japan and Russia, which made me guess, without admittedly much thought, that I was in North Korea. Dealing with a repressive attitude to homosexuality, human rights and freedoms, in truth, it could have been one of many countries around the world, but a few instances of Cyrillic text probably mark it down as Russia. Normally, this would not be much of a consideration, but with a lack of any other context, a shortage of these fundamentals gave the story a dislocation and abstract quality that at times didn't allow the story to engage with me.
Nonetheless, the influences of the elderly friend and the young Oksana are nicely balanced and clearly separated into their own chapters, though I found the writing between these two influences discordant in their style, and ultimately the quality of the writing.
Reading Han Smith’s poetry is refreshing; occasionally vague and curiously elusive, she plays with syntax and unexpected expressions and phrases. She’s won accolades, plaudits and prizes in her young career, and I came to this debut novel through its nomination for the Whitbread Award. She adopts this poetic approach as a prose style for nearly half the book when writing in the voice of the elderly friend, and the awkward syntax and disarming quality fits perfectly with the confusion, lost memories, and contradictions that pass through the mind of a traumatised elderly person. The elderly friend is a curious foil for ‘the almost daughter’s’ reasoning, where the teenager's private thoughts are interestingly filtered, summarised, and voiced through the elderly friend. The elderly friend's voice is idiosyncratic, disjointed and fragmented; on the subject of her socks, she writes:
‘If they are on, and one on each, and it is still the morning, there is a chance for order and calm. There is the possibility that she will, today, remember and have the force to slice things and boil them, or layer them inside a pan, which will not exhaust her even as she lifts it, and she will remember first the butter in the pan.’ And also in a more lyrical musing:
‘How really to know? Hands rawed red and ears rawed violet, and ragged cloth around hands to protect them but minced and lashed and open-scoured anyway.’
Yet my huge disappointment was that the other part of the story, where ‘the almost daughter’ finds a sexual identity and political determination with her friend Oksana, immediately struck me as naïve in the quality of its delivery. There was little distinction to the prose, a lot of mundane happenings which I found ordinary, especially compared to the relative sophistication of the elderly friend’s tone of voice. It lacked depth and a rounded appraisal of experiences, as a teenager’s writing often might, yet I thought Marieke Lucas Reijneveld’s, ‘The Discomfort of Evening’, was much better with respect to the quirkiness of a teenager’s viewpoint of life. Though Reijneveld’s subject matter is less confrontational and urban, the impact of adolescence on her and Smith's protagonists are similar. I found Smith's prose only rose above this mundanity when ‘the almost daughter’s’ interacted with siblings and friends, especially when ‘the almost daughter’ and her friend's attempt to become models. These interactions are well observed, droll and entertaining, however, the bigger more serious issues of sexuality and political protest, I didn’t find handled in an interesting way.
‘The almost daughter’s’ classmate Valrya’s vacuous understanding of modelling is well drawn when she says (ladled with irony), ‘that it was such an honour to use her body and her womanhood this way, and that she did not want to exaggerate too much but she really felt that she had found the centre or meaning or core purpose of her life.’
I also felt there was a lack of passion around these issues of sexuality and politics, surprisingly since I’m sure both followed from the author’s personal experiences. Though a lack of names suited the voice of the ‘woman with a cave inside her’, it gave an impersonal feeling to the rest of the writing that made it difficult to form a connection with the characters. Likewise, setting the story in an unstated place and time appeared to sanitise any indignation and anger towards the political regime, making it difficult for the author to land a blow against the state's intransigence: ‘Fuck Putin the murdering bastard’ might have laid down clearer battle lines. Finally, ‘the almost daughter’s’ vacillation with her sexuality dampened the sexual intensity from the coming of age scenario (I’m not sure the coming of age was ever fully arrived at).
For me, this book didn’t work as a story, or further advance thoughts about non-cis sexual identities, liberality, or protest, which it appeared to want to do. Though I’m sure Han Smith will eventually put out something worthy in the future about all, some or none of these issues, for me this wasn’t it.
October 15, 2024
There were moments when I was reading this trippy book where it felt like I was watching the events through a filter. Or like someone was telling me about their dream. There’s a clarity and a haziness at the same time (if that makes sense).
I loved parts of it - mostly really enjoyed the chapters (portraits) about the almost daughter digging into her country’s history whilst also dreaming of becoming a model as a way to escape.
The chapters (portraits) with the woman with the cave inside her being visited by the ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the ghost (!) are really beautiful but they get more and more hazy and I found my attention wandering.
A novel unlike anything else I’ve ever read. I don’t know if I’d read it again. But I enjoyed (most of) the trip.
I loved parts of it - mostly really enjoyed the chapters (portraits) about the almost daughter digging into her country’s history whilst also dreaming of becoming a model as a way to escape.
The chapters (portraits) with the woman with the cave inside her being visited by the ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the ghost (!) are really beautiful but they get more and more hazy and I found my attention wandering.
A novel unlike anything else I’ve ever read. I don’t know if I’d read it again. But I enjoyed (most of) the trip.
July 18, 2024
This is an amazing book! An awesome debut novel that uses form in an inventive, original way to give voice to the difficulties of saying the unspeakable or the unspoken. I also found it compelling as a meditation on the consequences of censorship on identity - the novel is often focalised through a school-girl and I loved the way that macro political issues like taboos over histories of violence and heteronormative and patriarchal oppressions are woven into a Bildungsroman of a teenage girl. Highly recommend and can’t wait to see what she does next!!
November 2, 2024
Worthy of being on the Goldsmith's Prize short list.
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmmlQ...
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmmlQ...
January 22, 2025
Life in a version of Russia, described using allusive (elusive?) language.
June 28, 2025
What a book! Han Smith’s Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking was inspiring to read and I am even inspired to write. I loved how Han took liberties with the structure, the characters and the events. There is so much movement in this book, I noticed. The gym, the digging of bones, the visiting and meeting. Readers must slow down to read unexpected phrases and sometimes read over. The subject is erasure, holding onto memories, photos, pieces of people who were wiped out and also relations, the odd jerkiness of men, the promises of women, the protests and activism. I longed for more of the woman with the cave inside her. I stopped worrying about the name of the almost daughter and what they were going to do to the women in the modeling place or the facial expressions. There is so much in this book and it’s worth the try.
Han’s last words are: “This book is a work of fiction but the consequences of silencing are very real.”
I don’t know what to quote for you. Something late in the novel:
“Valya’s face in the water rippled and clotted when Oksana arrived, and was gray and deflated. It clotted because of Oksana’s sigh, and because of meeting with people who were perverts, or were friends with perverts, or looked like perverts. They were perverts and also extremist and disruptive, and the bars that made one triangle were the edges of of the triangles as well. Where one shape ended and the next began was a matter of concentration and choosing.
“Thanks for coming, the almost daughter said, and they sat on the chipped embankment wall. Oksana only sighed at first, and smoked, and then she spoke to the river.”
I so wanted the almost daughter and Oksana to get it on.
Thank you for this, Han Smith.
Han’s last words are: “This book is a work of fiction but the consequences of silencing are very real.”
I don’t know what to quote for you. Something late in the novel:
“Valya’s face in the water rippled and clotted when Oksana arrived, and was gray and deflated. It clotted because of Oksana’s sigh, and because of meeting with people who were perverts, or were friends with perverts, or looked like perverts. They were perverts and also extremist and disruptive, and the bars that made one triangle were the edges of of the triangles as well. Where one shape ended and the next began was a matter of concentration and choosing.
“Thanks for coming, the almost daughter said, and they sat on the chipped embankment wall. Oksana only sighed at first, and smoked, and then she spoke to the river.”
I so wanted the almost daughter and Oksana to get it on.
Thank you for this, Han Smith.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2024
An artistically written book that reads as half-prose, half-poetry, this is a novel that takes work to appreciate and that probably needs to be read multiple times to attain the full depths of. A coming-of-age story that explores character development, personal autonomy, growth, learning, and the influence of others in the formation of one’s own life, this is a novel that speaks to people who have resisted, struggled, or felt like a background character in their own story. Rife with subplots and raised questions, the book will keep you wondering, but the journey is more important than the ending. Read slowly, think deeply, and grow with the protagonist and plot. Give it time to unravel. This is not light reading, this is the art of life.
December 4, 2024
When I first saw the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist, Han Smith's Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking was the title that stood out to me as the one I most wanted to read.
Now that I've read it I'm not sure how to write about it, exactly. I know that I liked it, and that it's written well, but finding a way to talk about what it is is eluding me.
This is a book that I read slowly. Part of that is because it's only available in a physical edition, which limits the amount of time I'm able to give to it. I read a lot in bed at night with the lights off, or on the bike at the gym after a workout, and both of those scenarios require my Kindle. So I had less time to dedicate to this, but it's also a book that seems to resist being read quickly. Smith's writing often feels like a prose poem, especially when combined with the frequently very short vignette-like chapters, and I found myself pausing after each "Portrait" to reflect on what I was reading and to try and glean some meaning from it.
Abigail Shinn, one of the judges of the Goldsmiths Prize, writes this about the novel:
The key word for me in this is "hallucinatory". Much of the prose here slips sideways into an ethereal, dreamlike quality. The old woman the main character - known to us only as "the almost daughter" - visits thinks of her as a "ghost of a ghost of a ghost of a ghost"; we see scenes in fragments divorced of geography and time; we're given barely anything of the setting, or the era, or the relationships we're exploring. This is a novel full of very deliberate holes, the vaguest web of meaning that we're asked to stitch together.
At the time that I write this I'm still chewing over this book and trying to figure out, in large part, what I actually read. I do know that I liked it and that it's worth reading, though, and I think this was a very worthy addition to the Goldsmiths shortlist.
Now that I've read it I'm not sure how to write about it, exactly. I know that I liked it, and that it's written well, but finding a way to talk about what it is is eluding me.
This is a book that I read slowly. Part of that is because it's only available in a physical edition, which limits the amount of time I'm able to give to it. I read a lot in bed at night with the lights off, or on the bike at the gym after a workout, and both of those scenarios require my Kindle. So I had less time to dedicate to this, but it's also a book that seems to resist being read quickly. Smith's writing often feels like a prose poem, especially when combined with the frequently very short vignette-like chapters, and I found myself pausing after each "Portrait" to reflect on what I was reading and to try and glean some meaning from it.
Abigail Shinn, one of the judges of the Goldsmiths Prize, writes this about the novel:
Composed as a series of portraits, some fragmentary, all multi-faceted and allusory, Smith’s novel is a hallucinatory window into what it means to excavate the past in a world committed to its erasure.
At once a poignant coming of age story and an exploration of how language is shaped by ideology, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is tender and merciless in its slanting look at the history of state violence and its unacknowledged but profound effects on individuals and communities.
An important reminder that the stories we tell can serve as propaganda and as powerful works of resistance, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking, demonstrates how the novel can reflect and resist the double speak of our own time.
The key word for me in this is "hallucinatory". Much of the prose here slips sideways into an ethereal, dreamlike quality. The old woman the main character - known to us only as "the almost daughter" - visits thinks of her as a "ghost of a ghost of a ghost of a ghost"; we see scenes in fragments divorced of geography and time; we're given barely anything of the setting, or the era, or the relationships we're exploring. This is a novel full of very deliberate holes, the vaguest web of meaning that we're asked to stitch together.
At the time that I write this I'm still chewing over this book and trying to figure out, in large part, what I actually read. I do know that I liked it and that it's worth reading, though, and I think this was a very worthy addition to the Goldsmiths shortlist.
March 24, 2025
Such a strange book. We follow our point of view character without being party to most of what she says to people or even a lot of what she's thinking. We're left to infer her state of mind, her thoughts and feelings from what little is imparted. We never even get her name.
This makes the book confusing at first and almost sterile at first until you start to tune in to its way of imparting the information the reader needs and the whole thing culminates in a sort of joyous explosion where the reader gets their clearest view of what's important to her and how she feels at the moment it comes barreling out of her. That at least was my experience and it was almost euphoric. I loved this book.
This makes the book confusing at first and almost sterile at first until you start to tune in to its way of imparting the information the reader needs and the whole thing culminates in a sort of joyous explosion where the reader gets their clearest view of what's important to her and how she feels at the moment it comes barreling out of her. That at least was my experience and it was almost euphoric. I loved this book.
Read
December 10, 2024I don't know what I read except from the review posts/ blog posts about the book that I read. I love experimental books but this felt like forced experimentation
August 21, 2025
It took me a while to understand what was going on in the book, but was worth the perseverance! I loved how the portraits intertwined and advanced the story alongside the hints we get of the town’s dark past. A really clever debut novel.
June 18, 2024
Wow! That was excellent. Very powerful and very original in style. It wasn't clear at first where we were or what was going on but all is gradually revealed while the tension mounts. Post Soviet Russia where people are living with the consequences of silence and oppression with flashbacks to previous atrocities. Incredible writing that left me reeling.
November 29, 2024
Portrait #68
In May
This is the portrait of a day in May. It is the portrait of a day that was close to exactly two months after the day that was for celebrating women. The women's day had been the one when the almost daughter had found Oksana in the corridor and upside down on the chair. It had been only two months, close to exactly, but the two months had been broad with the outdoor gymnasium, the stationary bicycle, the forest, the graves, the dirty sofa and the handcuffs, the haunted site and the silhouettes with chalk, and the fences. And the painting, and coloured jewels and beads, and paper bags and questions to take with the vegetables. This is the portrait of the almost daughter waking and feeling upside down. She was upside down and not in a chair but in her bed, and she knew that she would never be not upside down and positioned the old way ever again.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize and my favourite on a strong longlist.
Han Smith is a queer writer (as well as translator and adult literacy teacher) who is already had prize recognition for her short stories and novellas – and this is astonishingly her debut novel.
Astonishingly as it both: perfectly fits the Goldsmith criteria of “fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form” – the book is written in 77 numbered and titled Portraits (short chapters), many key characters have titular-style identities rather than names; but is also being a powerful examination of the suppression and excavation of the past in an unnamed allegorical country mired in historical state violence (in passing I would note that Smith grew up in Japan and Russia, her admirable Twitter account features political prisoners in Russia, and that the book features untranslated Cyrillic towards the end).
Further it is an examination of silences and storytelling - and all of that alongside a story which combines a coming of age story of burgeoning sexuality with a complex multi-generational family tale.
The first Portrait introduces us to the narrator – a teenage schoolgirl known only to us as the almost-daughter and with a quick introduction to the tale at its heart:
This is the portrait of who she used to be. She was a daughter - or rather she was almost a daughter because that was just the way things were - and she had always known what kind of cursed place she lived in, to a lesser or greater extent at different times. She knew broadly, for instance, that her own mother's grandmother had been sent to the region from a better, cleaner city, in the west of the country and years ago. This was where the story ended: this great-grandmother was dead now and had always been dead, thick in the layers of mothers and past things. She had always been dead but did have something to do with the other woman who lived alone and had no family to visit her on weekends, so that the almost daughter's family came instead.
That woman who is visited is “The Woman With The Cave Inside Her” and just under a third of the chapters are so entitled and are written from her interior viewpoint – locked, after a fall, into a word of fragmented and repressed memories and limited external perception of the family that visit her – the “almost daughter” for example being 'the lazy ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the atrocious ghost'. As time progresses her memories start to come back largely prompted by the monologue of the almost daughter when she visits on her own (her mother often too busy practicing her English online, her father rather mentally absent) and uses the old woman as a silent recipient of her own musings on the various dilemmas she faces both in knowing when to speak up and in knowing how to navigate her feelings, dilemmas which mirror those faced by the lady in even more repressive times some decades previously and which lie at the heart of her relationship to the almost daughter’s family.
These resonances are particularly well done – one of the almost daughter’s many quirks is some bead mosaics she makes as a form of self-therapy, and two discarded beads – one black, one green, take on a symbolic import for the older lady.
Meanwhile the almost daughter finds herself coming to two awakenings – political and sexual, both with their associated dilemmas.
The first is when she realises a previously unacknowledged truth – that the sports-fields of her school are near some historical barracks and then partly via some visitors to her school and partly due to the rebellious and non-conventional new girls at her school – Oksana – is drawn into a project to excavate and memorialise some of the town’s past, a project which draws both censure and violent opposition.
The second as she and two more conventional and conventionally ambitious friends decide to try out with a rather dodgy agency which claims to offer access to a potential career as a super model, an opportunity made greater if the girls agree to a series of posed photographs. Meanwhile she starts to exercise her allure onto the body building friend of her brother (himself involved in a quasi-militaristic group who are more associated with national pride than dragging up the shame of the past) and also had to deal with the ambiguity of her feelings towards Oksana.
And with a book that has so much else going on – I have I think barely scraped the surface of its side themes and side stories – there is a really strong ending as the almost daughter (and our) views of her family and their own willingness to memorialise both their national and family history is challenged in an uplifting way and the idea of Portraits becomes central, contested and ultimately commemorative.
Simply superb and so far my Golden Reviewer Book of 2024.
January 6, 2025
“A portrait is a thing that can happen and change. A portrait is a force that is not a sealed surface. It is everything beneath its layers, and is sculpted out from cubed ice blocks, unfinished and inexact and still shaping.” Really beguiled and compelled by Han Smith’s boldly original novel, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking. Written as a series of 77 conceptual portraits, exploring the post-USSR life of a teenage girl, the “almost daughter”, a local woman whose life is connected to hers, and eventually a new girl at school, Oksana, whose wildness and purpose soon drives the almost daughter’s life forward in unexpected directions. The novel seems purposefully slow and stunted at first, wrestling against itself, until Oksana’s emergence catalyses its true nature, as something timely and urgent and deeply political. Its concern with propaganda and fascism and who determines a narrative is well done and clever, and not too overdone; and formally it feels impressive in its ambitions. The manifold iterations of portrait, and Smith’s astute eye for original and detail-oriented prose, leave so many memorable visions behind: “Her own almost face, in a portrait of before.” “This is a portrait of still trying to figure out, or at least figuring out whether to try to figure out. There is nothing decided but there is aching to decide. There is some kind of branch path to take. No - to make. This is the same portrait over several waking nights.” “This is a portrait out of order. It is out of sequence but not out of place.” “This is the portrait of the two newest questions that would not leak away and dissolve.”
August 1, 2024
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Told with poetic flair through a series of short chapters or "portraits" it is a carefully crafted coming-of-age story set against a bleak and mysterious backdrop of repressed secrets and hidden lives.
Is this the sort of theme I normally seek out in my reading? No, it is not. But I was instantly captivated by Smith's lyrical style and the unusual structure of her book. Answers are promised but so is a journey. Is the story set in Russia? Maybe; there are clues but nothing is ever specified. Does the almost daughter have a name? Probably; after all, her friends do. How can we be held vaguely at arm's length in one moment and then feel the sharp, very real stab of petty high school jealousy in the next? The answer is the quality of the writing and the passion of the author.
Portraits is an ambitious work of both commentary and creativity. I very much enjoyed the journey and the process of slotting the puzzle together, sometimes in an "aha" fashion and sometimes in a way that was unexpected and surprising. At the end, when a few pieces seemed to be missing from the final portrait, I found some of them by starting again.
Don't rush the read! Like a visit to an art gallery, take time to absorb each portrait before moving on to the next. The layers of this story need to be unearthed slowly in order to appreciate the details and the fine craftsmanship of this work.
An ambitious and intriguing debut novel. Highly recommended!
Is this the sort of theme I normally seek out in my reading? No, it is not. But I was instantly captivated by Smith's lyrical style and the unusual structure of her book. Answers are promised but so is a journey. Is the story set in Russia? Maybe; there are clues but nothing is ever specified. Does the almost daughter have a name? Probably; after all, her friends do. How can we be held vaguely at arm's length in one moment and then feel the sharp, very real stab of petty high school jealousy in the next? The answer is the quality of the writing and the passion of the author.
Portraits is an ambitious work of both commentary and creativity. I very much enjoyed the journey and the process of slotting the puzzle together, sometimes in an "aha" fashion and sometimes in a way that was unexpected and surprising. At the end, when a few pieces seemed to be missing from the final portrait, I found some of them by starting again.
Don't rush the read! Like a visit to an art gallery, take time to absorb each portrait before moving on to the next. The layers of this story need to be unearthed slowly in order to appreciate the details and the fine craftsmanship of this work.
An ambitious and intriguing debut novel. Highly recommended!
January 5, 2025
I enjoyed the way it felt like the stream of consciousness of an omniscient narrator. The story is more built on things unknown than known and it makes it so enticing and desirable. It creates an odd feeling, because at first you feel this desperate desire to know names and exact details about the setting. But slowly, as you keep reading and learn more, you realise that names are not essential at all to knowing something, and you come to accept that despite everything left unknown in the story, you have learnt a lot of very meaningful details.
The book also makes you question knowing, and about how much knowing and knowing what allows you to know someone.
It’s amazing how Smith manages to capture the awkwardness and feelings of insecurity in the almost daughter through this almost confusing style of writing.
This book is reminiscent of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin in the way you seem to be dropped in the middle of a world already in the midst of action, almost past action, and you’re just watching everything move toward something you seem to know nothing about.
The fact that it is able to navigate so many themes without compromising them is astounding. Smith looks at history, knowing, radicalism, sexuality and emotion, learning from the past, history repeating itself, everything!
Magnificent read tackling history and censorship, and reminiscing on what we know about Russian life and history without being explicit in its mission.
The book also makes you question knowing, and about how much knowing and knowing what allows you to know someone.
It’s amazing how Smith manages to capture the awkwardness and feelings of insecurity in the almost daughter through this almost confusing style of writing.
This book is reminiscent of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin in the way you seem to be dropped in the middle of a world already in the midst of action, almost past action, and you’re just watching everything move toward something you seem to know nothing about.
The fact that it is able to navigate so many themes without compromising them is astounding. Smith looks at history, knowing, radicalism, sexuality and emotion, learning from the past, history repeating itself, everything!
Magnificent read tackling history and censorship, and reminiscing on what we know about Russian life and history without being explicit in its mission.
December 18, 2024
A very powerful debut from Han Smith. A beautiful piece, with such a fully constructed world and cast of misfits and brave hearts - with lives as separate, and intertwined, as the Soviet blocks in the town. The novels is full of watchful gazes from windows and silent neighbours. Suspicion and sympathy abound, both in silence. The stylisation and naming felt poignant; a seemless, fluid dance between the past, present and unknowable future in a town where memory and the past - and the truth - feel so uncomfortably buried in the shadows. With friends raising voices for each other, and the lives of people who were hidden away, or killed, I could feel their bravery between the words on the page, tragic and beautiful all at once.
January 14, 2025
Oooof this was so good. Surreal and spooky setting which is perfectly executed to create the atmosphere of living under a silencing fascist regime that wants to hide its own hideous past and suppress any dissent and one teenage girl who doesn’t fit in anywhere trying to find different ways of being. We see the story unfold through a distance and without any specifics that adds to the unreality of the setting. Extremely well written, going to keep an eye out for more from the author.
February 23, 2025
A haunting, powerful story. It took a while to get into this book, and at first I found it hard reading - but the reward is well worth the effort. The book asks for your attention and focus, and sometimes things would feel hard to picture, and then the images would come swimming and vivid. It moved, surprised, and by the end also changed me a little. Lots to think about and feel.
January 16, 2025
4.5 stars
Want to read
January 24, 2026Not yet published • Expected 3 Mar 26
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