Waking

by Eva Figes

Creates an unusual, incisive portrait of a woman, focusing on seven mornings in her life that reveal her changing perceptions and goals as she moves from early childhood to old age.

Genres: Fiction, Feminism, British Literature

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Eva Figes (born Eva Unger) is a German-born English author.

Figes has written novels, literary criticism, studies of feminism, and vivid memoirs relating to her Berlin childhood and later experiences as a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. She arrived in Britain in 1939 with her parents and a younger brother. Figes is now a resident of north London and the mother of the academic Orlando Figes and writer Kate Figes.

In the 1960s she was associated with an informal group of experimental British writers influenced by Rayner Heppenstall, which included Stefan Themerson, Ann Quin and its informal leader, B. S. Johnson.

Figes's fiction has certain similarities with the writings of Virginia Woolf. The 1983 novel, Light, is an impressionistic portrait of a single day in the life of Claude Monet from sunrise to sunset.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems like I've been on a bit of a roll lately in regards to discovering some truly amazing, yet sadly forgotten, British female writers: and here's another one. This eighty-eight page novella is absolute genius. And I'm talking Virginia Woolf's The Waves level of genius, or at least close to it. Just how on earth can you portrait that of a woman's whole life if you only cover seven days from youth to old age through her thoughts during the small gaps of time between sleeping and waking, and still be so utterly moved by the end that you feel you've lost someone close to you. I mean, it's barely an hour's reading. Choosing these various seven moments wisely is obviously the key. This has some of the most beautiful and affecting prose I've come across by a female writer, which seemed to get even better during the second half of the narrative; but, whilst life does bring much joy, I do not want to paint the impression that this is a particularly happy little novella, because it certainly isn't: but then who didn't have moments of loathing during adolescence; marriages do, unfortunately, turn sour; teenage children can treat their parents with contempt; solitude can be completely devastating during later life. Maybe for women readers the feeling of sterility is pushed too hard, but I can only go with my own experience. It's worth it for the writing alone. The attention to detail; learning so much about this woman's life in only a short space of time is quite astonishing. This time last week I hadn't even heard of Eva Figes: who was part of a group of experimental British writers starting out in the 60s, but now feel I would want to read everything she ever wrote.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One more day. I come back slowly, letting go of the child in my arms, how he wriggled to escape my clutches, as a child will do, slithering with his soft buttocks in my palms before I woke and remembered he is a man now, with a child of his own. Nowadays my sleep is all flesh, turgid with sex, I toss and turn in his shadow, it is on me, round me, I surround it, the dark shadow of a man who makes me grasp, twitch in spasm. Without a face, and quiet without emotion. My body is a landscape, a bubbling quagmire across which the shadow falls.

During the day I do not think of such things. Not because it would be ridiculous, unseemly, to expose my sagging flesh to scrutiny under lamplight, drop my clothes on the patterned carpet glowing amber and blood as I once did in the old days, though it would be an undoubted embarrassment. But because I am calm now, free of such notions. I cannot remember the last time I looked at a man and said yes, you. I regard love as a virus, an idiotic feverish condition which I have survived to become immune, and sane. Though it did, of course, give colour to colourless days.

Another grey day coming through the window.

(p. 78 - 79)

A quiet, sad, beautiful short novel depicting an unnamed woman’s life from birth to death in seven chapters, each chapter depicting her waking up in the morning and her thoughts as she does so. It’s a very simple premise and a very slim page count, but Figes’ language is superb and she has a willingness to plumb uncomfortable emotional depths that I find extremely admirable.

Waking is seriously gorgeous, devastating stuff. I’ll definitely be seeking out more from Eva Figes.

Highly recommended.

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oof!!! Books to make you call your mom. I wasn't sure about this when I started it last night, but it snuck up on me in a big way. One of the most brutal, gorgeous books I've read in a while-- it's kind of what I wanted Mrs. Dalloway to be when I read that, because although I liked it I felt sort of kept at arm's length, like I appreciated it but never fully connected all the way. This, meanwhile, cuts deep, a little modernist masterpiece in 83 pages telling the story of an entire painful life from start to finish. The 5-page final chapter channels a bottomless feeling of despair that I've only ever gotten from "Mayakovsky" by Frank O'Hara. That poem is about an identity-fragmenting breakup though, which feels almost inconsequential compared to the confrontation with mortality in the last few pages of this one. Hurts me a lot, but worth the pain for just how beaaaaaauuuutiful it is. I'm gonna drink some water now.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely, and very very sad. A perfect bite-sized leap through the arc of a life.

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book with seven chapters each capturing a morning at different ages through out a woman's life. This is a beautiful book that is written with specific details in expanded moments. I found it sad. She wrote one of the early books in the feminist movement, Patriarchal Attitudes: Women in Society.

[Joe Milazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The structural principle here is so simple, and so truly elegant, you kind of end up missing just how experimental this text is. The closest thing to Sarraute in English I've yet read.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the authors writing style. Left an impression of an unfulfilled life, and one of regret.

[Tessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Waking is a compilation of 7 excerpts from a woman's life, from childhood to near death. It paints a picture of the struggles that women face in patriarchal societies, the internal conflict between doing and being what is expected of you and living a happy life, the strict spoken and unspoken standards for women, and the pain of abandonment and neglect from those closest to you. Figes is a moving writer and while the book is quite short, a little under 100 pages, I felt completely connected with the character and her experiences by the end of the first chapter. Her writing is entrancing, bringing the reader into a similar dreamlike state that most of the book is set in.

[Elizabeth Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

I liked the contrast of grayness to light and color. Her descriptions were both amazing and one of the weaknesses.

[jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - lots of pelvis and navels etc

[Noah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Womanhood's a sham