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Aurelia, Aurélia
Todo comienza en un barco. La autora, de dieciséis años, viaja hacia Europa a una edad en la que uno puede «probarse personalidades como vestidos». Tiene la confianza de una adolescente que cultiva sus primeras obsesiones —Woolf, Durrell, Bergman—, segura de la vida que le espera. Luego sucede que la vida sigue su propio camino, indiferente a los deseos, los planes, las aspiraciones.
Este hipnótico libro es una meditación sobre el modo en que la imaginación da forma a la vida, y cómo la vida, a medida que avanza, da forma a la imaginación. La experiencia del duelo es el motor de estas extraordinarias memorias: un viaje interior por el arte y la literatura, sus recuerdos y las series de televisión, sus enamoramientos de juventud y las películas… Davis nos lleva de una experiencia propia a una interpretación con la agilidad de su lenguaje: un revoloteo entre los abismos, en las tierras intermedias que nos ofrece la existencia.
No está claro cómo funciona este libro, el misterio y magisterio de sus transiciones, pero vaya si funciona. Aurelia, Aurélia supera los límites convencionales de las memorias. Es un logro asombroso.
Este hipnótico libro es una meditación sobre el modo en que la imaginación da forma a la vida, y cómo la vida, a medida que avanza, da forma a la imaginación. La experiencia del duelo es el motor de estas extraordinarias memorias: un viaje interior por el arte y la literatura, sus recuerdos y las series de televisión, sus enamoramientos de juventud y las películas… Davis nos lleva de una experiencia propia a una interpretación con la agilidad de su lenguaje: un revoloteo entre los abismos, en las tierras intermedias que nos ofrece la existencia.
No está claro cómo funciona este libro, el misterio y magisterio de sus transiciones, pero vaya si funciona. Aurelia, Aurélia supera los límites convencionales de las memorias. Es un logro asombroso.
125 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2022
28 people are currently reading
1002 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Davis
47 books182 followersKathryn Davis is an award-winning American novelist.
Davis has taught at Skidmore College, and is now senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
She is a recipient of the Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 2006.
Davis lives in Montpelier, Vermont, with her husband, the novelist and essayist Eric Zencey.
Davis has taught at Skidmore College, and is now senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
She is a recipient of the Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 2006.
Davis lives in Montpelier, Vermont, with her husband, the novelist and essayist Eric Zencey.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
November 6, 2023
‘Aurelia, Aurélia’ es una memoir de Kathryn Davis, autora estadounidense cuyas novelas (lamentablemente) no están traducidas al español. Esta lectura ha sido una experiencia curiosa porque mi camino habitual es leer novelas y, si tengo curiosidad, averiguar más tarde sobre la vida de quien las escribe. Tras leer estas memorias, y ver lo que es capaz de transmitir, conmover y crear a partir de los momentos cotidianos que pueblan la vida de cualquiera, me muero de ganas de saber qué puede hacer con el mundo sin fronteras que ofrece la ficción.
Me resulta difícil ordenar mis pensamientos en torno a ‘Aurelia, Aurélia’, que es (casualidad o no), un texto fragmentario y que no sigue una estructura lineal. Se compone de textos cortos donde recuerdos, experiencias de su infancia, juventud y madurez, que se engarzan con reflexiones sobre literatura, música, cine y series (en concreto, sobre Perdidos) que giran, de una forma u otra, sobre el duelo, la memoria y el tiempo (no faltarán numerosas referencias a Woolf en este sentido). ¡Ahí es nada!
A pesar de que es un libro corto (menos de 120 páginas), la lectura me llevó bastante tiempo. Es un libro intenso (que no difícil), del que no quieres perderte nada, pero que juega al despiste con esa estructura pensada para sentirse desordenada, que lo hizo fue poner todos mis sentidos en alerta, y así leerla con mirada atentísima y corazón abierto.
Los capítulos van y vienen en el tiempo, llevándote de allá para acá en el mundo, para ir aproximándonos a la vida de la autora en un formato que bien responde tanto a cómo funciona la memoria, algo así como flashes desordenados, y también el proceso de duelo (no lineal, con altibajos emocionales, con revelaciones y recuerdos que salen a la luz cuando menos las esperas) que está en el core todos los capítulos.
Así, desde lo personal, desde retazos de la infancia, una vida de pareja en común, de viajes que lo cambiaron todo, de paseos diarios…habla del dolor universal de la pérdida, de alegrías y disgustos, de éxitos y fracasos, de amor y de cuando este se acaba… todo ello con una voz me ha conquistado.
Un libro donde a partir de la enfermedad y muerte ajenas, la autora pone el foco en ella, no en quien ya no está, en su vivencia, en su camino, su duelo, su dolor. El dolor que también supone el enfrentarse al inevitable y doloroso choque que es contraponer tu realidad, tu vida, con las ilusiones y sueños que una vez tuviste. Esto queda plasmado en un viaje que Davis realizó a Europa con dieciséis años en el barco Aurelia, que no solo da nombre al título, sino que será un elemento recurrente en toda la narración.
Un libro corto que contiene una vida. Un texto sincero y conmovedor, a pesar de la ausencia de escenas dramáticas, lleno de referencias. Sin duda, un libro al que volver, de esos con los que, en cada lectura, no solo ves cosas nuevas, sino que te encuentras con partes de ti que no esperabas.
Me resulta difícil ordenar mis pensamientos en torno a ‘Aurelia, Aurélia’, que es (casualidad o no), un texto fragmentario y que no sigue una estructura lineal. Se compone de textos cortos donde recuerdos, experiencias de su infancia, juventud y madurez, que se engarzan con reflexiones sobre literatura, música, cine y series (en concreto, sobre Perdidos) que giran, de una forma u otra, sobre el duelo, la memoria y el tiempo (no faltarán numerosas referencias a Woolf en este sentido). ¡Ahí es nada!
A pesar de que es un libro corto (menos de 120 páginas), la lectura me llevó bastante tiempo. Es un libro intenso (que no difícil), del que no quieres perderte nada, pero que juega al despiste con esa estructura pensada para sentirse desordenada, que lo hizo fue poner todos mis sentidos en alerta, y así leerla con mirada atentísima y corazón abierto.
Los capítulos van y vienen en el tiempo, llevándote de allá para acá en el mundo, para ir aproximándonos a la vida de la autora en un formato que bien responde tanto a cómo funciona la memoria, algo así como flashes desordenados, y también el proceso de duelo (no lineal, con altibajos emocionales, con revelaciones y recuerdos que salen a la luz cuando menos las esperas) que está en el core todos los capítulos.
Así, desde lo personal, desde retazos de la infancia, una vida de pareja en común, de viajes que lo cambiaron todo, de paseos diarios…habla del dolor universal de la pérdida, de alegrías y disgustos, de éxitos y fracasos, de amor y de cuando este se acaba… todo ello con una voz me ha conquistado.
Un libro donde a partir de la enfermedad y muerte ajenas, la autora pone el foco en ella, no en quien ya no está, en su vivencia, en su camino, su duelo, su dolor. El dolor que también supone el enfrentarse al inevitable y doloroso choque que es contraponer tu realidad, tu vida, con las ilusiones y sueños que una vez tuviste. Esto queda plasmado en un viaje que Davis realizó a Europa con dieciséis años en el barco Aurelia, que no solo da nombre al título, sino que será un elemento recurrente en toda la narración.
Un libro corto que contiene una vida. Un texto sincero y conmovedor, a pesar de la ausencia de escenas dramáticas, lleno de referencias. Sin duda, un libro al que volver, de esos con los que, en cada lectura, no solo ves cosas nuevas, sino que te encuentras con partes de ti que no esperabas.
January 10, 2022
Stunning prose reminiscent of Nabokov’s Pale Fire.
December 20, 2022
I am occasionally reminded that pretention and breathtaking intellect are not irretrievably bonded, that they can exist wholly independently. Kathryn Davis has provided me with a beautiful, graceful, moving proof of that fact.
This very brief memoir in essays about the woman she is and her relationship with her late husband, Eric Zencey who taught and wrote about economics, philosophy and climate change. Though it is clear that Zencey was a brilliant, loving, and supportive mate, parent, and academic this book is not about him other than in relation to Davis and their daughter. The focus here is on Davis herself, She shares her illusions about who she was going to be back when she was a student traveling by ship to her European study-abroad on the ship Aurelia, from which the book gets its title, and about the way things actually unfolded. It is about her growth traveling alongside this man (and earlier, briefly, as a single woman and with her starter husband.) It is also about our place on this planet (Davis and Zencey are/were passionate advocates for the planet, and she says of Zencey that he considered the entire planet to be his personal home.) It is about rage and beauty -- she is very knowledgeable about music and talks a lot about Beethoven, about how his experience of and feelings about deafness found their way into his spectacular later work. The work is unfiltered, but not in the cringey sense, rather in a radically honest and vulnerable way that is instructive and truly moving. Also, the writing is transcendent. This is prose, but in the nature of poetry there are no wasted words, no clunky dumbed-down transitions. Davis trusts the reader to move with her, to fill in some pivots, and I was never lost, I knew where I needed to go and loved the process of melding with her and trusting her guidance. This requires careful reading and that care and time is rewarded tenfold.
This is the second book this year that I have read that made me double down on why Dirtbag Massachusetts was a bad book. After reading this I think I see what Isaac Fitzgerald was trying to do in that book and how he failed. After reading that book I had issues with the form, and those issues are now gone. Used correctly this form, a memoir in moments of decision, of quiet passion, pain and joy succeeds like nobody's business. Now I need to edit my Top 10 nonfiction books of the year list.
One additional note -- the number of books in my tops of the year from Graywolf Press (Danez Smith, Percival Everett, Kathryn Davis and more) is pretty amazing. I think I need to just start reading whatever they publish.
This very brief memoir in essays about the woman she is and her relationship with her late husband, Eric Zencey who taught and wrote about economics, philosophy and climate change. Though it is clear that Zencey was a brilliant, loving, and supportive mate, parent, and academic this book is not about him other than in relation to Davis and their daughter. The focus here is on Davis herself, She shares her illusions about who she was going to be back when she was a student traveling by ship to her European study-abroad on the ship Aurelia, from which the book gets its title, and about the way things actually unfolded. It is about her growth traveling alongside this man (and earlier, briefly, as a single woman and with her starter husband.) It is also about our place on this planet (Davis and Zencey are/were passionate advocates for the planet, and she says of Zencey that he considered the entire planet to be his personal home.) It is about rage and beauty -- she is very knowledgeable about music and talks a lot about Beethoven, about how his experience of and feelings about deafness found their way into his spectacular later work. The work is unfiltered, but not in the cringey sense, rather in a radically honest and vulnerable way that is instructive and truly moving. Also, the writing is transcendent. This is prose, but in the nature of poetry there are no wasted words, no clunky dumbed-down transitions. Davis trusts the reader to move with her, to fill in some pivots, and I was never lost, I knew where I needed to go and loved the process of melding with her and trusting her guidance. This requires careful reading and that care and time is rewarded tenfold.
This is the second book this year that I have read that made me double down on why Dirtbag Massachusetts was a bad book. After reading this I think I see what Isaac Fitzgerald was trying to do in that book and how he failed. After reading that book I had issues with the form, and those issues are now gone. Used correctly this form, a memoir in moments of decision, of quiet passion, pain and joy succeeds like nobody's business. Now I need to edit my Top 10 nonfiction books of the year list.
One additional note -- the number of books in my tops of the year from Graywolf Press (Danez Smith, Percival Everett, Kathryn Davis and more) is pretty amazing. I think I need to just start reading whatever they publish.
May 3, 2022
Aurelia, Aurélia is a memoir that is sporadic, all over the place, doesn’t make sense sometimes, but so rewarding from the first page. It is also quite random, but the writing charms you, beguiles you, and makes you stay. I haven’t read much by Davis. I think only one book in the past, Duplex which I immensely enjoyed, so I definitely had to read this one.
This book is a memoir – about the death of Davis’s beloved husband, Eric. It is about grief, its contradictions, shuffles between time – from when Davis was sixteen to present-day to recent past to the reader’s some present-day making sense of all the profundity packed into such a short book, one hundred and eight pages long.
This memoir just like her novel is wonderfully strange, turning grief into a universal emotion from a personal one, and to then talk about her cultural preoccupations and interests – from Hans Christian Andersen to the movie, The Seventh Seal, to Beethoven’s Bagatelles, and Virginia Woolf’s, To the Lighthouse.
Aurelia, Aurélia was read slowly by me, and I think that is the way to read it. I might even get back to it again before the year ends, just to also make sense of some of the writing. I loved the last chapter of the book the most – the part when Davis explains the book’s title, and how it all ties in with the core of the book.
Aurelia, Aurélia is a book about memories- disjointed ones, about a couple and their life together, about being alone (though not so explicitly), and haunting, inviting you to make sense of the limitless connections, and the knotty and most complex way of grief.
This book is a memoir – about the death of Davis’s beloved husband, Eric. It is about grief, its contradictions, shuffles between time – from when Davis was sixteen to present-day to recent past to the reader’s some present-day making sense of all the profundity packed into such a short book, one hundred and eight pages long.
This memoir just like her novel is wonderfully strange, turning grief into a universal emotion from a personal one, and to then talk about her cultural preoccupations and interests – from Hans Christian Andersen to the movie, The Seventh Seal, to Beethoven’s Bagatelles, and Virginia Woolf’s, To the Lighthouse.
Aurelia, Aurélia was read slowly by me, and I think that is the way to read it. I might even get back to it again before the year ends, just to also make sense of some of the writing. I loved the last chapter of the book the most – the part when Davis explains the book’s title, and how it all ties in with the core of the book.
Aurelia, Aurélia is a book about memories- disjointed ones, about a couple and their life together, about being alone (though not so explicitly), and haunting, inviting you to make sense of the limitless connections, and the knotty and most complex way of grief.
February 17, 2022
I have been a Kathryn Davis fan for many years. This memoir is the perfect vehicle for her well-stocked, fantastical brain. Davis is the queen of transition, sliding from death to music to philosophy to childhood all within a page. Sometimes in a paragraph. We lucky readers go right along with her, trusting that the story she is weaving will change the way we understand narrative, time, and memory. Pick up this book and enter a magical realm. Balm for the grieving heart.
January 13, 2023
reading a memoir like this and, once again, i am struck breathless by the way that some people are able to weave their grief and memories through literature in the most rewarding and empathetic way.
also, i am forever grateful for books that i had never heard of to be lovingly thrown into my lap.
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thank you Lemony Snicket for constantly proving to be the loveliest human ever and sending me your favourite book of the year every Christmas through booksmith:')
also, i am forever grateful for books that i had never heard of to be lovingly thrown into my lap.
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thank you Lemony Snicket for constantly proving to be the loveliest human ever and sending me your favourite book of the year every Christmas through booksmith:')
April 20, 2022
“What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-to set us dreaming”. Gustave Flaubert
Not sure I can describe this little memoir other than to say that it is dreamy. Beethoven, and snippets of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales are interspersed with the death of Davis’ husband, a poorly planned camping trip, and other memories. I think that’s how your memories come back to you, in those little pieces. And I guess I was entranced for a bit by Davis’ little pieces.
Not sure I can describe this little memoir other than to say that it is dreamy. Beethoven, and snippets of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales are interspersed with the death of Davis’ husband, a poorly planned camping trip, and other memories. I think that’s how your memories come back to you, in those little pieces. And I guess I was entranced for a bit by Davis’ little pieces.
March 25, 2022
“We were somewhere between where we started and where we thought we were going. Did the place even have a name?”
May 31, 2022
An extraordinary memoir on grief written in a nonlinear style as grief itself is not linear.
The prose is stunning.
The prose is stunning.
September 4, 2023
i liked the dreaminess of this, and the prose was stunning at times, but i guess i am just not that impressed by memoirs that are entirely fragmented without any narrative throughline
June 29, 2023
i am but a little water strider, floating prostrate on the surface of a pond that is this memoir, unable to break through the surface tension of the prose and dissonance of paragraphs and delve myself into the dark recesses of freshwater as to drink in the relief of understanding.
July 16, 2024
“There are points in your life when you think you’re about to become whatever’s next.” is maybe one of my favorite opening lines for a book ever. i was so ready to love this based on that first sentence and the description. unfortunately, i think this one was a bit too esoteric and fragmentary for my taste in memoirs - it’s not exactly a memoir in essays but it’s also not written in a linear way, making it difficult to follow.
davis jumps back and forth between her travels during her teenage years, time spent with her husband while he was still alive, her grief after his death, and the music and books that she loves. there were moments of beautiful writing but ultimately the ideas presented were too disconnected to resonate with me. i think one of the major things that can make or break my reading experience with books of this nature is my familiarity with the references the author makes, and there was very little overlap between my knowledge and the children’s stories and classical music referenced here (through no fault of kathryn davis, it’s just how it is).
my favorite chapter was “ghost story two” where davis visits a cottage her daughter was staying in. the description of the setting was detailed and cozy, and there was a good mix of writing about grief and ghosts and literature.
overall, this was super dreamlike, which historically isn’t my favorite style of writing. it reminded me a lot of patti smith’s year of the monkey. i’d be curious to check out a novel by kathryn davis at some point but unfortunately, this was not the memoir for me.
davis jumps back and forth between her travels during her teenage years, time spent with her husband while he was still alive, her grief after his death, and the music and books that she loves. there were moments of beautiful writing but ultimately the ideas presented were too disconnected to resonate with me. i think one of the major things that can make or break my reading experience with books of this nature is my familiarity with the references the author makes, and there was very little overlap between my knowledge and the children’s stories and classical music referenced here (through no fault of kathryn davis, it’s just how it is).
my favorite chapter was “ghost story two” where davis visits a cottage her daughter was staying in. the description of the setting was detailed and cozy, and there was a good mix of writing about grief and ghosts and literature.
overall, this was super dreamlike, which historically isn’t my favorite style of writing. it reminded me a lot of patti smith’s year of the monkey. i’d be curious to check out a novel by kathryn davis at some point but unfortunately, this was not the memoir for me.
March 27, 2024
There is nothing about this that is not excellent. I would have given it it 5 stars, but for the length. There was not enough of this for me, though I am very happy for what is here.
I have read several novels by Kathryn Davis and have had the honor of meeting her. She teaches at Washington University here in St Louis and I admit to gushing like a fanboy the first time I met her. This last time I interacted with her was at Megan Kakimoto's reading from her new book at a function on the Wash U campus. She remembered me and told me of her latest book. I couldn't tell if she liked me or not, but I reserved the book at the library the first chance I had.
Listen, she called this a memoir, but it isn't exactly a complete one. Almost anything I could write here would be a bit of a spoiler. If you have read anything she has written and liked it, you will surely like this. It is not terribly long, I finished in an evening.
Hers is an impressive intellect, but not in a threatening way. There are quite a few references here, literary, musical, film and TV. Woke some stuff up in me, I am not of her generation, but not too far behind her. I liked this, but I like her novels as well. Any fan should read this.
I have read several novels by Kathryn Davis and have had the honor of meeting her. She teaches at Washington University here in St Louis and I admit to gushing like a fanboy the first time I met her. This last time I interacted with her was at Megan Kakimoto's reading from her new book at a function on the Wash U campus. She remembered me and told me of her latest book. I couldn't tell if she liked me or not, but I reserved the book at the library the first chance I had.
Listen, she called this a memoir, but it isn't exactly a complete one. Almost anything I could write here would be a bit of a spoiler. If you have read anything she has written and liked it, you will surely like this. It is not terribly long, I finished in an evening.
Hers is an impressive intellect, but not in a threatening way. There are quite a few references here, literary, musical, film and TV. Woke some stuff up in me, I am not of her generation, but not too far behind her. I liked this, but I like her novels as well. Any fan should read this.
May 25, 2022
An insightful and beautiful memoir from a favourite writer of mine. The thought processes, the switches in place and time, are reminiscent of her style of fiction writing, but perhaps more coherent, more pared back, more closely linked. But just as full of imagination and intelligence, and much closer to the voice of Kathryn Davis and not a third person narrator. Whereas what I’ve read of Kathryn’s fiction is often nearly omniscient in scope, here we have a particular limited point of view, in speculation and observation, contending with grief and time and everything the world has to shove down our mouths. There is a moment I loved where Kathryn describes the feeling of her own mortality as she sees and predicts her parents’ passing, which spoke so much to how I see time and my own brief human life. This book is made up of a series of brief vignettes, and has a vigor I crave from non-fiction. If I were teaching a class on creative non-fiction, this would be on the syllabus.
April 3, 2022
gorgeous and delicate. engages with other texts in a way that feels both associative and intentional, improvised and inevitable. structurally unique in an understated way.
man. just really fuckin beautiful.
"And then the road bent left. 'I had seen people turn pale before, but I had never seen blood leave skin so thoroughly and so fast,' the book went on to say. I dreamed I was picking red flowers. To the right, a large tree of some kind beginning to leaf out, one gray asbestos wall of the general store visible behind it. We had just met. By summer the green Valvine advertisement no longer in view. The eyes staring fixedly without blinking. The scaling of the mountain of the elements. Place the wrist at the point between the eyebrows. The arm so thin as to be a line and then it was gone."
man. just really fuckin beautiful.
"And then the road bent left. 'I had seen people turn pale before, but I had never seen blood leave skin so thoroughly and so fast,' the book went on to say. I dreamed I was picking red flowers. To the right, a large tree of some kind beginning to leaf out, one gray asbestos wall of the general store visible behind it. We had just met. By summer the green Valvine advertisement no longer in view. The eyes staring fixedly without blinking. The scaling of the mountain of the elements. Place the wrist at the point between the eyebrows. The arm so thin as to be a line and then it was gone."
May 7, 2022
Good to the last drop. Uncategorizable.
January 26, 2023
Super beautiful, super weird. Non-linear, dreamy, with lyrical prose. A memoir of marriage and death that is unique unto itself, though in topic it reminded me of Abigail Thomas's Safekeeping and A Three Dog Life. Experimental, so not for everyone, but short enough that it's accessible even so.
June 20, 2023
This is very similar to Elizabeth McCracken's book The Hero of This Book and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Notes on Grief. They are similar in that they are inert and fail to move, an elegy lacking lamentation.
If a reader chooses to find meaning, edification or emotion in them she can do so but I do wonder if that is a decision rather than a response. These books, whether memoir, novel or undefined, bear no resemblance to the real life of anyone.
I am intrigued by the stealthy daughter in this memoir. The writer refers to her so covertly that it is almost like she does not want to admit she is a mother. There is a fashion now for this type of small-woman book, as if becoming very vague and elliptical somehow elevates you. Culturally, it could be a response to perceived vulgarities and loudness that exist now. If so, perhaps it goes too far. Wispy, ephemeral and, in my view, forgettable.
If a reader chooses to find meaning, edification or emotion in them she can do so but I do wonder if that is a decision rather than a response. These books, whether memoir, novel or undefined, bear no resemblance to the real life of anyone.
I am intrigued by the stealthy daughter in this memoir. The writer refers to her so covertly that it is almost like she does not want to admit she is a mother. There is a fashion now for this type of small-woman book, as if becoming very vague and elliptical somehow elevates you. Culturally, it could be a response to perceived vulgarities and loudness that exist now. If so, perhaps it goes too far. Wispy, ephemeral and, in my view, forgettable.
April 22, 2022
It's hard to describe how a narrative so disparate can cohere. Davis moves through slivers of scenes--the author aboard a ship, climbing a hill in Greece, singing with her dying father--as well as brief discourses on Virginia Woolf, "The Seventh Seal," a wonderful section on the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, all sort of thrown together and drifting. A sensibility infuses the whole endeavor, so these fragments float near each other in an approximate, airy formation. Each element drives at the question, how can we stand to be alive, knowing we'll lose it all? An affecting and intelligent memoir.
March 10, 2022
This book is smarter than me. I had to google unfamiliar vocabulary/French writers and read each essay twice, but that actually made it more fun because it became an interactive experience. This memoir in essays has everything: a clear through line, patterning, structure, research, voice.
This book is a delightful surprise.
This book is a delightful surprise.
May 13, 2022
“When someone you have lived with for a very long time dies, memory stops working it’s regular way - it goes crazy. It is no longer like remembering; it is often, like astral projection.”
July 28, 2025
En la escritura de Kathryn Davis —y, en especial, en esta obra—, he encontrado dos cosas que me han gustado mucho: una voz muy similar a las de Abigail Thomas y Ann Patchett; y las memorias de una vida en forma de pequeños relatos plagados de recuerdos.
En ‘Aurelia, Aurélia’, Davis atraviesa el duelo por la muerte de su marido, el también novelista y ensayista Eric Zencey, —que falleció en 2019—, a través de sus recuerdos de infancia, adolescencia, su primer matrimonio, y la culminación de la enfermedad fatal y posterior muerte de su segundo marido, Zencey. La música, las películas y los libros cobran especial relevancia en la historia, colándose entre los recuerdos y acompañando a la autora en determinados momentos vitales.
Ese viaje en barco —el Aurelia— que realizó a Europa de adolescente donde vio la proyección del film ‘El séptimo sello’, que comenzó a configurar su personalidad; ese segundo viaje en autobús escolar al lado de su amor platónico el último año de instituto, que le hizo descubrir las diferentes intenciones de cada uno y plantearse el espacio-tiempo existente entre el nacimiento, el enamoramiento, la convivencia, la vida compartida y la muerte; hasta ese viaje en tren camino de un compromiso profesional muchos años después que, debido a un fallo, tuvo que desalojar para hacer noche en un motel de carretera.
Esa voz similar a la de Abigail Thomas en ‘Una vida de tres perros’ atravesando la enfermedad y posterior muerte de su marido o las vivencias personales, familiares y profesionales narradas en ‘Lo que cabe en un instante’. Los recuerdos y reflexiones en forma de ensayo de Ann Patchett, su forma de entretejer la vida y la mirada a un mundo privado y personal que se convierte en algo digno de compartir en ‘Estos días preciosos’.
Davis se une como una más y se convierten en tres mujeres que viven, que cuentan, que narran, que acompañan, que atraviesan enfermedades ajenas y transitan duelos por la pérdida de un ser querido; que abren las puertas a sus memorias y que nos invitan a reflexionar sobre la vida, la muerte y el tiempo.
@floresyunlibroenblanco
www.dondecrecennuestrasflores.wordpre...
En ‘Aurelia, Aurélia’, Davis atraviesa el duelo por la muerte de su marido, el también novelista y ensayista Eric Zencey, —que falleció en 2019—, a través de sus recuerdos de infancia, adolescencia, su primer matrimonio, y la culminación de la enfermedad fatal y posterior muerte de su segundo marido, Zencey. La música, las películas y los libros cobran especial relevancia en la historia, colándose entre los recuerdos y acompañando a la autora en determinados momentos vitales.
Ese viaje en barco —el Aurelia— que realizó a Europa de adolescente donde vio la proyección del film ‘El séptimo sello’, que comenzó a configurar su personalidad; ese segundo viaje en autobús escolar al lado de su amor platónico el último año de instituto, que le hizo descubrir las diferentes intenciones de cada uno y plantearse el espacio-tiempo existente entre el nacimiento, el enamoramiento, la convivencia, la vida compartida y la muerte; hasta ese viaje en tren camino de un compromiso profesional muchos años después que, debido a un fallo, tuvo que desalojar para hacer noche en un motel de carretera.
Esa voz similar a la de Abigail Thomas en ‘Una vida de tres perros’ atravesando la enfermedad y posterior muerte de su marido o las vivencias personales, familiares y profesionales narradas en ‘Lo que cabe en un instante’. Los recuerdos y reflexiones en forma de ensayo de Ann Patchett, su forma de entretejer la vida y la mirada a un mundo privado y personal que se convierte en algo digno de compartir en ‘Estos días preciosos’.
Davis se une como una más y se convierten en tres mujeres que viven, que cuentan, que narran, que acompañan, que atraviesan enfermedades ajenas y transitan duelos por la pérdida de un ser querido; que abren las puertas a sus memorias y que nos invitan a reflexionar sobre la vida, la muerte y el tiempo.
@floresyunlibroenblanco
www.dondecrecennuestrasflores.wordpre...
March 10, 2022
“To prognosticate is to look into the future, a place, assuming it exists, I’ve never been all that keen on. One day my father took me into the cellar, pulled open a drawer in his workbench, and extracted a gun. He wanted me to promise that if at any time in the future he lost all his faculties, I’d put him out of his misery.”
Grief by association—ghost stories, sense memory recall, poetry, meditations on the moment. We follow Kathryn Davis through her mind, we spring with her from recent past to former lives, pausing here and there to fill in details.
Between memories of youth and musings on literature and something between a dream and an allegory, we get glimpses of life with her husband. These glimpses accumulate slowly and we’re left with passing phrases, “But you don’t have to leave the house, I said. You could haunt it.” Trying to preempt the inevitable grief.
There are also just breathtaking renderings of the feeling of being young, channelling past anxieties to relate to current situations: “In 1956 my job was to keep vigil over the night sky for the plane that was carrying the bomb that was going to turn us all to bone and then to ash and then to nothing.”
I think the shortness of the book allows for an easy revisit, to peel back another layer of meaning.
Grief by association—ghost stories, sense memory recall, poetry, meditations on the moment. We follow Kathryn Davis through her mind, we spring with her from recent past to former lives, pausing here and there to fill in details.
Between memories of youth and musings on literature and something between a dream and an allegory, we get glimpses of life with her husband. These glimpses accumulate slowly and we’re left with passing phrases, “But you don’t have to leave the house, I said. You could haunt it.” Trying to preempt the inevitable grief.
There are also just breathtaking renderings of the feeling of being young, channelling past anxieties to relate to current situations: “In 1956 my job was to keep vigil over the night sky for the plane that was carrying the bomb that was going to turn us all to bone and then to ash and then to nothing.”
I think the shortness of the book allows for an easy revisit, to peel back another layer of meaning.
May 20, 2023
This memoir, a shattering, glimmering portrait of grief, is unlike any other I’ve read before.
This is not a linear story — it’s sporadic, shuffling through time and space, just as I imagine Davis did — and likely continues to — in grieving her husband. I’ve read other attempts at this style and found them wanting, but the writing here is so utterly charming and beguiling, so rewarding from the very first paragraph, that I was captured by it, and felt myself moving through time in its same haphazard way.
This is a short book, but that doesn’t make it a fast read. Rather, it’s best done slowly because there’s so much here to take in — the unspooling of grief as both universal and intensely personal. I loved the way Davis wove in other works and writers here — from Hans Christian Andersen to The Seventh Seal to Beethoven’s Bagatelles and all the way to Virginia Woolf’s Lighthouse. And the last chapter? It took my breath away.
I can’t recommend this book enough. It absolutely stunned me. It’s not just worth reading — it’s worth rereading. I buy very few paper books now, as our small Scandinavian apartment makes that a chore, but this is a book to have a physical copy of, close at hand, for when it’s needed.
This is not a linear story — it’s sporadic, shuffling through time and space, just as I imagine Davis did — and likely continues to — in grieving her husband. I’ve read other attempts at this style and found them wanting, but the writing here is so utterly charming and beguiling, so rewarding from the very first paragraph, that I was captured by it, and felt myself moving through time in its same haphazard way.
This is a short book, but that doesn’t make it a fast read. Rather, it’s best done slowly because there’s so much here to take in — the unspooling of grief as both universal and intensely personal. I loved the way Davis wove in other works and writers here — from Hans Christian Andersen to The Seventh Seal to Beethoven’s Bagatelles and all the way to Virginia Woolf’s Lighthouse. And the last chapter? It took my breath away.
I can’t recommend this book enough. It absolutely stunned me. It’s not just worth reading — it’s worth rereading. I buy very few paper books now, as our small Scandinavian apartment makes that a chore, but this is a book to have a physical copy of, close at hand, for when it’s needed.
May 14, 2022
Davis always surprises me with her originality, with how she plays with time & expectations for storytelling. Pivoting around her husband’s death, this very slender memoir moves through transitional moments, fragments of her life which seem so disparate, but are threaded together gracefully. She quotes extensively from other authors, weaving their words into her story so skillfully that it never feels like filler. This is an unsentimental, but no less moving meditation on death, grief, the strangeness of memory, how literature embeds itself in our psyches & the astonishing brevity of life. This writing transcends something & it is beautiful.
"That's all you get," my husband cautioned on his deathbed. "The ripple is what we live on, and we get to pull up one ripple of the water the way cars create a vacuum as they race around a track like clamshells. That's all you get, a ripple, a little bitty thing, a wave, because the world is so huge, you just get to use it for a little while."
September 6, 2025
“You might say that the smaller the container, the greater the possibility of perfection. This is the ‘fast and incidental, almost unnoticeable’ spirit in which Flaubert said his lovers had to get down off their horses.”
Early references to Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” frame this memoir as an exploration of place: between them, on the way to them, never quite knowing where we stand. That sense of dislocation extends metaphorically to life and death, movement and stasis, always filtered through literary criticism as Davis considers the loss of her husband and its impact on her spiritual and spatial sense of self.
Written in what she calls a discontinuous style—looping fragments, long sentences, sudden flashes of humor—the book reads as if cut up and reassembled at random. Names and antecedents surface and disappear, but this disjunctive form mirrors how the brain processes grief: we are both nowhere and somewhere, bound by and outside of language, floating and buried at once.
Early references to Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” frame this memoir as an exploration of place: between them, on the way to them, never quite knowing where we stand. That sense of dislocation extends metaphorically to life and death, movement and stasis, always filtered through literary criticism as Davis considers the loss of her husband and its impact on her spiritual and spatial sense of self.
Written in what she calls a discontinuous style—looping fragments, long sentences, sudden flashes of humor—the book reads as if cut up and reassembled at random. Names and antecedents surface and disappear, but this disjunctive form mirrors how the brain processes grief: we are both nowhere and somewhere, bound by and outside of language, floating and buried at once.
March 10, 2022
I love Davis’ fiction. It is quite interesting to watch the author place snippets of her life in a memoir, but for it all to feel so much like her fictions. As if a dream of her fiction.
It doesn’t always work for me. There are bits that feel a little flat, too personal, or not personal at all. What are we doing with these details? Just recognizing the way we’ve been influenced, inspired, and lost by the art we read/hear/see?
Maybe I need to revisit this one later in life. Some books I read and think “I need more years before I appreciate what is happening here.” Hopefully I get the chance to sit down with this one again- in a distant future.
It doesn’t always work for me. There are bits that feel a little flat, too personal, or not personal at all. What are we doing with these details? Just recognizing the way we’ve been influenced, inspired, and lost by the art we read/hear/see?
Maybe I need to revisit this one later in life. Some books I read and think “I need more years before I appreciate what is happening here.” Hopefully I get the chance to sit down with this one again- in a distant future.
February 29, 2024
Thin air, nowhere, without a trace, impossible to survive-all of these are key words and phrases, as is the end of life as we know it. From "time present and time past" to "time past and time future." From "two horses munching leaves" to "go go go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality."
"That's all you get, my husband cautioned on his deathbed. "The ripple is what we live on, and we get to pull up one ripple of the water the way cars create a vacuum as they race around a track like clamshells. That's all you get, a ripple, a little bitty thing, a wave, because the world is so huge, you just get to use it for a little while."
"That's all you get, my husband cautioned on his deathbed. "The ripple is what we live on, and we get to pull up one ripple of the water the way cars create a vacuum as they race around a track like clamshells. That's all you get, a ripple, a little bitty thing, a wave, because the world is so huge, you just get to use it for a little while."
July 30, 2025
Death and transition. Davis deals with her husband’s passing and in the process uncovers the annoyances as well as the quirks of their marriage. She writes of bardo or the transitional state of life in (Parker Posey voice) Buddhist beliefs and other transitions such as those found in Beethoven and Woolf. This reads to me as the freewheeling sister of Didion’s Blue Nights. It’s rambly and referential, a hit or miss. I wanted to latch onto an emotional hook, but it was hard to find one. She can write though. I might be open to checking out something else of a different format from her in the future.
March 24, 2022
This memoir was unlike any other I ever read. It was terribly disjointed and therefore confusing to this reader. Actually, I could not continue reading beyond the first third of the book. It had so many references to books that I read in my 1964-1971 English classes that my head was spinning. The author is obviously a deep thinker, applying her observations to each referenced book. Probably her previous readers would like such a memoir. However it is mystifying to me why this would be the case.
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