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Desgarrado
La segunda novela de Chloe Aridjis retrata la existencia contemplativa de Marie, guardia de seguridad de la National Gallery de Londres. Rodeada de pinturas, sus meditaciones la llevarán a obsesionarse con el significado de las grietas trazadas tanto en la superficie de los lienzos como en las emociones humanas. Sus cavilaciones se verán enfrentadas a raíz de un viaje a Francia en el que buscará comprender el deterioro que imprime el paso del tiempo en el vacío de la existencia.
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
26 people are currently reading
1843 people want to read
About the author
Chloe Aridjis
26 books150 followersChloe Aridjis was born in New York and grew up in the Netherlands and Mexico City. After receiving a BA from Harvard, she went on to receive a PhD from Oxford University. A collection of essays on Magic and Poetry in Nineteenth-century France was released in 2005. Her first novel, Book of Clouds, followed in 2009, winning the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 129 reviews
February 7, 2015
There is a brilliant review of this book on amazon. It says:
“There are silly mistakes when talking about the gallery :
There is no gallery 88
There is no gallery 67
Human Resources haven’t been based in the Gallery building for the last 10 years.
Human Resources have nothing to do with picture movements and informing staff”
Other than that, the reviewer deems the book ‘enjoyable’. The reason this review is brilliant is that it is almost metaliterary – it feels like it’s a review written by one of the characters stepping out of the pages of Asunder to voice their complaints. It could’ve even been Marie - Asunder’s narrator who is a guard at the National Gallery in London or one of the other characters who populate this seemingly quiet and introspective novel.
But don’t be fooled, because there is suppressed violence almost on every page, just underneath the surface. In fact, the characters just like the prose itself threaten to explode and rip the book apart, and yet the novel manages to restrain itself. There is also this unacknowledged sexuality in it that creeps around the edges and also poses a danger to the delicate balance.
Everything in ‘Asunder’ seems fragile – from the peace in the galleries, to Marie’s little art project (creating crumbling sculpture landscapes with moths) and even Marie’s friendship with Daniel needs to stay within clearly defined boundaries so as not collapse.
The patron saint of the novel is Mary Richardson – a frail looking, petite woman, who nonetheless was a militant suffragette and one day she walked into the National Gallery and slashed Rokeby Venus with a chopper before anyone could stop her (and one who should’ve stopped her was Marie’s great grandfather who was a guard in that room at that time). This event serves as a leitmotif for the book as much as such a book can have a leitmotif, because as a reviewer in Publishers Weekly rightly pointed out 'Asunder' can’t be reduced to a single theme.
What I love about Aridjis and her books is how hypnotic her prose is, how lyrical and how interested in all those sensations no other writers concern themselves with. Chloe Aridjis matches my literary DNA – for each of her guanine there is my cytosine, for her adenine there is my thymine.
Read this book if you want to know all my secrets. And here is one to get you started:
“At night I prefer to take the bus home though it often means transferring. To descend into the brightness of the Tube cancels out the day’s end too brusquely, while buses do the opposite by carrying you through the pensive streets.”
“There are silly mistakes when talking about the gallery :
There is no gallery 88
There is no gallery 67
Human Resources haven’t been based in the Gallery building for the last 10 years.
Human Resources have nothing to do with picture movements and informing staff”
Other than that, the reviewer deems the book ‘enjoyable’. The reason this review is brilliant is that it is almost metaliterary – it feels like it’s a review written by one of the characters stepping out of the pages of Asunder to voice their complaints. It could’ve even been Marie - Asunder’s narrator who is a guard at the National Gallery in London or one of the other characters who populate this seemingly quiet and introspective novel.
But don’t be fooled, because there is suppressed violence almost on every page, just underneath the surface. In fact, the characters just like the prose itself threaten to explode and rip the book apart, and yet the novel manages to restrain itself. There is also this unacknowledged sexuality in it that creeps around the edges and also poses a danger to the delicate balance.
Everything in ‘Asunder’ seems fragile – from the peace in the galleries, to Marie’s little art project (creating crumbling sculpture landscapes with moths) and even Marie’s friendship with Daniel needs to stay within clearly defined boundaries so as not collapse.
The patron saint of the novel is Mary Richardson – a frail looking, petite woman, who nonetheless was a militant suffragette and one day she walked into the National Gallery and slashed Rokeby Venus with a chopper before anyone could stop her (and one who should’ve stopped her was Marie’s great grandfather who was a guard in that room at that time). This event serves as a leitmotif for the book as much as such a book can have a leitmotif, because as a reviewer in Publishers Weekly rightly pointed out 'Asunder' can’t be reduced to a single theme.
What I love about Aridjis and her books is how hypnotic her prose is, how lyrical and how interested in all those sensations no other writers concern themselves with. Chloe Aridjis matches my literary DNA – for each of her guanine there is my cytosine, for her adenine there is my thymine.
Read this book if you want to know all my secrets. And here is one to get you started:
“At night I prefer to take the bus home though it often means transferring. To descend into the brightness of the Tube cancels out the day’s end too brusquely, while buses do the opposite by carrying you through the pensive streets.”
August 10, 2016
A vague sense of foreboding persistently stalks the reader on every page of this narrative, as if something potentially dangerous and forbidding awaits one at the turn of the next page. But then the pages fly by, nothing truly nefarious ever materializes and the feeling finally settles in that the substance of this narrative lies not in a likely event of cosmic importance or even in the anticipation of its occurrence but in the minutiae a reader usually glosses over. Like the everyday happenings, some of them mystically inexplicable, some of them a little odd but so commonplace that they do not merit even a second thought let alone further introspection - the things we breeze past in an effort to dwell on the more materially satisfying aspects of life without realizing that each one of these discrete snippets of time spent with people in places is what makes up the structure of life itself.
As I glanced at the blurb (which clearly does not do the book justice even as a half-hearted synopsis), I felt a stab of sympathy for whoever wrote it (author/publisher/random intern), because not only is it very difficult to clearly define the contours of this book but it is equally trying to put one's finger on one strongly resonant theme in it since there are many.
There's the subject matter of the suffragettes (the term used for women campaigning in Britain in the late 19th and 20th centuries for the female ballot) and a young Mary Richardson who had taken a blade to assault one of the priceless works of art in the National Gallery on the eve of the First World War while Marie's great-grandfather Ted was a guard at the museum. It's no coincidence that our protagonist is the namesake of this revolutionary since the shadow of Mary Richardson's act of bravado looms large over Marie's life, silently influencing her in ways she remains oblivious to.
Hence it can be stated that feminist undertones are delicately woven into the the narrative without being glaringly obvious.
There's also an overarching feeling of the protagonist's unnerving indifference to most things, her tacit refusal to take the wheels of her own life and letting herself be propelled by happenings and the decisions made by people around herself. In the beginning I was speculating on the possibility of some sort of unique psychological condition plaguing her in an attempt to convincingly explain her aloofness from life or what could even be called her cowardice. But by the end of the narrative, I realized, a little bit of Marie's dogged impassivity lives inside all of us.
She is haunted by the spectre of her own isolation in the midst of people and her inability to steer her life in the direction of romantic entanglements and fulfillment of any kind. As a guard at the National Gallery in London, Marie comes across many visitors from day to night who spend agonizing minutes peering over works of art which have been witness to centuries of history. With the passage of time, she starts equating the cracks and fissures showing up in the fabric of her life with the craquelures in these paintings. And finally when she confronts her own hesitations after an enigmatic encounter with an owner of a chateau in France, the reader is left with the parting message that Marie has finally summoned the courage to destabilize the status quo in her life just as a certain young Mary Richardson of yesterday had dismantled the status quo in the socio-political landscape.
Chloe Aridjis is a gifted story-teller. Her writing is richly atmospheric and often plays out like a discordant symphony, combining too many erratic musical notes together and yet sounding so perfectly melodious. Same can be said about her choice of original but beautiful metaphors.
This book made me feel thankful for my relationship with Netgalley which has allowed me to discover such promising new female authors as Chloe Aridjis and Nina Schuyler. In other words, this is very highly recommended.
4.5/5
As I glanced at the blurb (which clearly does not do the book justice even as a half-hearted synopsis), I felt a stab of sympathy for whoever wrote it (author/publisher/random intern), because not only is it very difficult to clearly define the contours of this book but it is equally trying to put one's finger on one strongly resonant theme in it since there are many.
There's the subject matter of the suffragettes (the term used for women campaigning in Britain in the late 19th and 20th centuries for the female ballot) and a young Mary Richardson who had taken a blade to assault one of the priceless works of art in the National Gallery on the eve of the First World War while Marie's great-grandfather Ted was a guard at the museum. It's no coincidence that our protagonist is the namesake of this revolutionary since the shadow of Mary Richardson's act of bravado looms large over Marie's life, silently influencing her in ways she remains oblivious to.
Hence it can be stated that feminist undertones are delicately woven into the the narrative without being glaringly obvious.
There's also an overarching feeling of the protagonist's unnerving indifference to most things, her tacit refusal to take the wheels of her own life and letting herself be propelled by happenings and the decisions made by people around herself. In the beginning I was speculating on the possibility of some sort of unique psychological condition plaguing her in an attempt to convincingly explain her aloofness from life or what could even be called her cowardice. But by the end of the narrative, I realized, a little bit of Marie's dogged impassivity lives inside all of us.
She is haunted by the spectre of her own isolation in the midst of people and her inability to steer her life in the direction of romantic entanglements and fulfillment of any kind. As a guard at the National Gallery in London, Marie comes across many visitors from day to night who spend agonizing minutes peering over works of art which have been witness to centuries of history. With the passage of time, she starts equating the cracks and fissures showing up in the fabric of her life with the craquelures in these paintings. And finally when she confronts her own hesitations after an enigmatic encounter with an owner of a chateau in France, the reader is left with the parting message that Marie has finally summoned the courage to destabilize the status quo in her life just as a certain young Mary Richardson of yesterday had dismantled the status quo in the socio-political landscape.
Chloe Aridjis is a gifted story-teller. Her writing is richly atmospheric and often plays out like a discordant symphony, combining too many erratic musical notes together and yet sounding so perfectly melodious. Same can be said about her choice of original but beautiful metaphors.
"It began with those viragos, he'd tell me, comets detached from the firmament, deviant and sharply veering, long-haired vagabond stars, hissing through the universe on their solitary paths, a tear in the social fabric, threats to the status quo. Yes once war broke out, Ted said, their battle eclipsed by larger events, became no more than one of many lit matches in the stratosphere."
This book made me feel thankful for my relationship with Netgalley which has allowed me to discover such promising new female authors as Chloe Aridjis and Nina Schuyler. In other words, this is very highly recommended.
4.5/5
November 3, 2014
This is one of those very beautiful novels where very little seems to happen. Marie is a museum guard at London’s National Gallery, following in the footsteps of her great-grandfather, who was on duty in 1914 when a suffragette vandalized a painting. Aridjis ponders art, decay and the traces ordinary people leave behind.
Like the protagonist of Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Marie is an almost anonymous wanderer. She curates other people’s stories, but barely seems to have her own. Instead, she is a spectator, surrounded by more vibrant secondary characters. “I did what I had always done best,” she notes. “I stood back and observed, withdrew into the quiet, neutral zone that felt comfortably familiar, registering voices and movements without interfering.”
There are clever symbolic connections throughout the novel. Deploying a wonderful artistic vocabulary and style, Aridjis makes many a setting resemble a still life or landscape study.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
Like the protagonist of Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Marie is an almost anonymous wanderer. She curates other people’s stories, but barely seems to have her own. Instead, she is a spectator, surrounded by more vibrant secondary characters. “I did what I had always done best,” she notes. “I stood back and observed, withdrew into the quiet, neutral zone that felt comfortably familiar, registering voices and movements without interfering.”
There are clever symbolic connections throughout the novel. Deploying a wonderful artistic vocabulary and style, Aridjis makes many a setting resemble a still life or landscape study.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
March 14, 2017
This is the prose I love to read. It is varied and interesting. Unfortunately, this was not the book I anticipated based on the GR description and I feel as if that great writing was wasted. Still, I kept reading, ready to see where the author would take me.
It is told in the first person by a woman who is perhaps the most passive character in all of literature. She is perfectly suited to her job as a guard at the British National Museum, where she looks and watches day after day. The book doesn't stay with her on the job site, but there is enough to know what it is like. She conjectures about the day her great grandfather saw Mary Richardson slashing Velasquez's Rokeby Venus in a protest over the detention of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. We're with her as she listens to an art restorer lecture some students about the cracking that naturally occurs in old artwork.
Perhaps the most telling of her passivity is a conversation with her friend, Daniel, in which they study William Dyces painting Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858. Daniel suggests Donati's comet is included in the painting (I don't see it.)
It is told in the first person by a woman who is perhaps the most passive character in all of literature. She is perfectly suited to her job as a guard at the British National Museum, where she looks and watches day after day. The book doesn't stay with her on the job site, but there is enough to know what it is like. She conjectures about the day her great grandfather saw Mary Richardson slashing Velasquez's Rokeby Venus in a protest over the detention of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. We're with her as she listens to an art restorer lecture some students about the cracking that naturally occurs in old artwork.
Perhaps the most telling of her passivity is a conversation with her friend, Daniel, in which they study William Dyces painting Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858. Daniel suggests Donati's comet is included in the painting (I don't see it.)
...crowds had thronged the streets, rooftops and bridges to catch a glimpse of Donati, which was not only the second brightest comet of the nineteenth century but the first comet ever to be photographed.I wanted so much more for this. I was frustrated with Marie. Do something! Last night when I finished, I thought this was at best 3 stars and I'll leave it at that. But as I write this, I'm thinking I might have left a star behind.
‘No matter how greatly you shine,’ I later said to Daniel in the pub, ‘it’s all over before you know it. And what’s left? A white brushstroke, only visible if you really look.’
‘That’s better than nothing.’
‘Well, most of us don’t even leave behind a brushstroke.’
August 27, 2015
This novel is too precious. Or, trying too hard. Examples: The protagonist, an intelligent 30-something woman slumming (let's be honest) as a museum guard, has a hobby creating diorama landscapes in which dead moths feature. Her best friend, also a museum guard but at a different gallery, has a severe limp. He acquired this limp mystically, having gone to a Hungarian hypnotist for severe headaches. The hypnotist cured him of his headaches, but the permanent limp replaced them the same day.
This is probably horribly unfair, but I'm aggrieved by characters who are in their 30s and still have flatmates. I know: wrong. London is expensive. But I hate reading about the flatmates, their gross lovers, and the dirty dishes piling in the sink. Do some fucking dishes.
Aridjis is one of those novelists who dribbles unnecessary, inconsequential details into the narrative. "The flat smelled of gunpowder and candyfloss, as if a clown had just departed." Is there some connection between clowns and gunpowder I've never learned about? At any rate, this descriptive factoid adds nothing to what we need to know about this flat. These driblets should be resisted, as should an overdependence on the past perfect tense.
Another of Aridjis' habits is putting ideas in the mouth or head of a character when they would sound less forced as part of an omniscient narration. "That's the strange thing about Paris, Daniel concluded, you go in search of its vestigial glory, seeking traces here and there, but apart from the occasional current, the past denies you entry..." It feels like Aridjis just wants to lay on us this lyrical idea about Paris, but for some reason feels this would be too direct, so she assigns the line to a specific speaker or thinker.
There are plot linkages that also feel forced: British suffragettes in the early part of the novel and old photographs of mentally ill women late in the novel; and the face of the Rokeby Venus being slashed, which occurred in the room where Marie's great-grandfather Ted was a museum guard, and all these years later Marie's face is slashed by the fingernail of a disturbed châtelain whose chateau she is visiting with Daniel.
2.5 stars.
November 16, 2023
very little plot, all vibes, but the vibes are passively anxious
December 28, 2018
4.5/5
I spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over my shelves, combining and recombining in an effort to filter out the noise and narrow down to the work best fit for my current frame of mind. The last year or so has been devoted to challenges in combination with bibliographic completionist tendencies, but now I am taking a turn towards the less well regarded side of things, specifically books with a rating of 3.7 or less. The success of this work cements that decision for the time being, and it serves to remind me that the status quo likes their urban alienation with more pointless sex and bad prose than I do. The feminist intransigencies were a welcome surprise, and indeed, the subtracting of a half star above is largely due to a hoped for climax refraining from occurring, leading to a narrative admirably subtle in its pull but unwilling to commit more fully to a less than apolitical plunge. It gives me hope for reading Adrijis' other works, although the mention calls too offputtingly to mind Black Deutschland, so it will be filed away for more sporadically serendipitous findings.
My currently dating a woman has given me fresh perspective on what exactly I am looking for in a partner. I'm not sure whether Maria (blink and you'll miss the mention of the main character's name) would be someone I could form a lasting romantic relationship with, but her true self-control, her curiosity, her innate appreciation for a field I have amateur interest and no professional experience in, even her not easily awoken righteous fury appeals on the the level of filling in various lacks in my own personality, endlessly mentally fidgeting and easily angered as I am. Thus, I was more engaged in this narrative than I am in the average tome through my sex drive of all things, the way in which bland hetero intercourse is circumvented only titillating me all the more. A lack of reliance on stereotypical tropes of "modern" literature, coupled with the art, the history, the memory, the hobbies, the one flatmate, the one "friend", the one disaster of a past male enamorment (I wish I had only had the one), the brief travel, the intruders both elevating and otherwise, all was singular without being try hard outlandish, intriguing without showing off, and the prose. Here is a writer who learned the rules well enough to be wonderful in the breaking of them. Her other works look a tad too busy for my taste, especially the soon to be published one, but I've never been one to resist for long a familiar name that I greatly liked and nearly loved.
This was a welcome surprise, and my only regret is the one who recommended me it way back when isn't on as often as she used to be. In any case, I am committed for next year, in addition to my various challenges, to ferreting around the lower rated side of my shelves, as I've spent too much time buying into the whims of hype and forgotten my well earned disdain for mass propagated gradations. I was debating between squeezing in yet another work before the year is out so as to give myself enough reading while enabling a fresh 2019 start, but that would mean five reviews, including the two today, sent out before Tuesday dawns, and there's no reason to exhaust myself so close to the finish line. Besides, as this work well attests, even the shorter works deserve their time to stretch, and I would hate to cramp another misunderstood jewel into the pack of my current reads.
I spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over my shelves, combining and recombining in an effort to filter out the noise and narrow down to the work best fit for my current frame of mind. The last year or so has been devoted to challenges in combination with bibliographic completionist tendencies, but now I am taking a turn towards the less well regarded side of things, specifically books with a rating of 3.7 or less. The success of this work cements that decision for the time being, and it serves to remind me that the status quo likes their urban alienation with more pointless sex and bad prose than I do. The feminist intransigencies were a welcome surprise, and indeed, the subtracting of a half star above is largely due to a hoped for climax refraining from occurring, leading to a narrative admirably subtle in its pull but unwilling to commit more fully to a less than apolitical plunge. It gives me hope for reading Adrijis' other works, although the mention calls too offputtingly to mind Black Deutschland, so it will be filed away for more sporadically serendipitous findings.
My currently dating a woman has given me fresh perspective on what exactly I am looking for in a partner. I'm not sure whether Maria (blink and you'll miss the mention of the main character's name) would be someone I could form a lasting romantic relationship with, but her true self-control, her curiosity, her innate appreciation for a field I have amateur interest and no professional experience in, even her not easily awoken righteous fury appeals on the the level of filling in various lacks in my own personality, endlessly mentally fidgeting and easily angered as I am. Thus, I was more engaged in this narrative than I am in the average tome through my sex drive of all things, the way in which bland hetero intercourse is circumvented only titillating me all the more. A lack of reliance on stereotypical tropes of "modern" literature, coupled with the art, the history, the memory, the hobbies, the one flatmate, the one "friend", the one disaster of a past male enamorment (I wish I had only had the one), the brief travel, the intruders both elevating and otherwise, all was singular without being try hard outlandish, intriguing without showing off, and the prose. Here is a writer who learned the rules well enough to be wonderful in the breaking of them. Her other works look a tad too busy for my taste, especially the soon to be published one, but I've never been one to resist for long a familiar name that I greatly liked and nearly loved.
This was a welcome surprise, and my only regret is the one who recommended me it way back when isn't on as often as she used to be. In any case, I am committed for next year, in addition to my various challenges, to ferreting around the lower rated side of my shelves, as I've spent too much time buying into the whims of hype and forgotten my well earned disdain for mass propagated gradations. I was debating between squeezing in yet another work before the year is out so as to give myself enough reading while enabling a fresh 2019 start, but that would mean five reviews, including the two today, sent out before Tuesday dawns, and there's no reason to exhaust myself so close to the finish line. Besides, as this work well attests, even the shorter works deserve their time to stretch, and I would hate to cramp another misunderstood jewel into the pack of my current reads.
The longer I applied what I'd just heard to the living specimens around me, imaging more and more fissures in their façades, the louder these fantasies of decomposition start to gather force, like a creature that after years of slumber at the bottom of the ocean in blackish-blue darkness is nudged by a current initiated somewhere far off, possibly by a small boat skimming the surface of the water leagues overhead, and, awakened, opens an enormous eye and prepares for the next voyage.
January 25, 2014
So the Guardian's review said, "Strange, extravagant, darkly absorbing...thrills with energy." Where? What energy? Did I read the same book?
While the writing was well done and there was an undercurrent of something building, absolutely nothing came of it. The only positive I can say for this book was that it was a quick 192 pages. I wanted something to happen! There were moments where I thought,"Aha! Something is about to go down! Finally, the plot is going somewhere!" but I was let down every time. This book is simply about a bored museum guard and the tiny world she has constructed within her tiny confines of a life. It was utterly boring. How can it not be? It's about a bored museum guard who spends the majority of the book in the museum observing the same paintings she has stared at for a decade. I guess I should have known better.
May 18, 2018
This is mostly a first-person exercise in storytelling characterized by excellent prose and a powerful feeling of violence underneath the surface (which only rises above the surface for a moment, and that moment is part of the novel’s present story (of the narrator herself), which is otherwise of little note). Some things about this short novel don’t work, and the narrator is yet another brilliant underachiever, but there are many wonderful stories and observations here, and the novel’s sensibility, especially its undertow, makes it something special.
February 23, 2019
As subtle and beautiful as the wings of a moth. 4.5 stars.
January 5, 2014
I really wanted to like this book. I loved the description and was looking forward to experiencing a story with an introverted woman as the main character. The only thing that I ended up being even remotely satisfied by was the quiet and almost eerie atmosphere that Aridjis painted. You could really feel Marie's restlessness and dissatisfaction with her unremarkable existence as a museum guard. Though I get why the plot wasn't very flashy, I found myself waiting for the story to actually begin. I was still waiting when I finished the book.
October 9, 2013
I felt like the book had promise that it didn't fulfill. The writing was lovely, but I felt that it was a trifle dull. I just didn't engage with Marie at all, felt that the Jane and Lucian storyline could have been more developed. Didn't see how they were relevant to the story except as foils to highlight Marie's character (Jane) or to shed (a very little) light on her past (Lucian). The whole thing felt stalled to me.
September 16, 2021
Marie, a museum guard at the National Gallery in London, lives an uncluttered existence, "content to carry out life at low volume," and "more interested in being than becoming," and for her, there is no fear of acedia - boredom - as some of the other guards experience. If there's a thing called generational museum guarding, then she is second generation: her grandfather was a museum guard at the National Gallery too, and she loved listening to his stories. Sometimes this novel was very absorbing, at other times, I fell to acedia. Marie, intelligent and intellectual, is not always interesting, nor is her life, despite her fascination with making tiny dioramas in eggshells and with craquelure - the cracks that occur on the surface of old paintings. What breaks the timid languor of the novel are two trips Marie takes: a weekend to northern England with her flatmate Jane where their B&B is next to an insane asylum, and two weeks in Paris with her best friend Daniel, a poet and museum guard at Tate Britain, a trip that becomes unsettling for her when a poet joins them and she's further unsettled during a visit to a crumbling chateau. Why Marie has been content with this frictionless life, why she has no friends other than Daniel, why she seems uninterested in creating a richer existence for herself, isn't supplied.
January 12, 2015
A short take:
I loved this book for its quiet, intimate story that drifted from thought to thought like the meandering museum visits Marie witnesses day after day. What a full and wonderful experience I had reading this on a winter's Sunday evening on the couch with my family and cups of coffee for company.
More thoughts:
I very much like how un-dramatic the story is, which completely vies with the "read-on" breathlessness of the book's silly description on the back (which I only read upon finishing the story, as I hate the way book descriptions can bias a reading). Lately, I've questioned how much "conflict" a story needs to be interesting or worthwhile. In this book, Marie's thoughts and observations are fascinating--at least, to me they were, so much that I experienced that incredible sensation of being wrapped in the right book at the right time.
What a lovely read this was!
I loved this book for its quiet, intimate story that drifted from thought to thought like the meandering museum visits Marie witnesses day after day. What a full and wonderful experience I had reading this on a winter's Sunday evening on the couch with my family and cups of coffee for company.
More thoughts:
I very much like how un-dramatic the story is, which completely vies with the "read-on" breathlessness of the book's silly description on the back (which I only read upon finishing the story, as I hate the way book descriptions can bias a reading). Lately, I've questioned how much "conflict" a story needs to be interesting or worthwhile. In this book, Marie's thoughts and observations are fascinating--at least, to me they were, so much that I experienced that incredible sensation of being wrapped in the right book at the right time.
What a lovely read this was!
July 10, 2015
"Don't judge a book by its cover." Well apparently I did. The striking cover, a damaged female portrait, the parchment-like feel of the pages and the suggestion that this short novel would be both psychological and disturbing, dealing with art and reality, built up my expectations for an intriguing read. Unfortunately the book was a disappointment, as drab and unpleasant as its female protagonist whose obsession with destruction and decay disgusted me. And the author's final image of a street artist unfurling and then carrying off his replica of "The Last Supper" was a poor attempt to imbue this novel with religious symbolism and a depth it doesn't deserve.
September 28, 2016
I am working my way through the Whangaparaoa library and am currently on authors starting with A. This was a strange book centred around a woman who works as a museum guard at the National Gallery in London. It seems to suit her and a lot of the book focuses on her invisibility and thoughts. Not a lot happens but I did enjoy the description of the paintings although I would go stark crazy doing that job.
February 2, 2016
Technically complex, substantively threadbare.
Read
January 2, 2023I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand there’s some beautiful prose and I can tell the writer is skillful and whatnot, but I was also just bored out of my mind for most of it
February 25, 2021
Astounding novel. I have been reflecting on why it slowed my reading pace so significantly; I usually read through books twice its length in half the time. For one thing, there are no throwaway sentences, rare among novels. For another, Chloe Aridjis writes poetry in her prose, careful and elegant observations that deeply probe the surface level. In Chapter Six, she considers angles, literal and figurative, that took place during a significant event in the story; in other places, she considers the decay of art--of everything--and how art was meant to create something out of chaos, only to succumb to chaos in the end.
The heroine, Marie, is weird. She picks up a stagnant job for that very reason--and sticks with it for nine years! She paints landscapes in eggshells, scouring London for art supplies to capture specific shades and textures, and then mounts dead moths into them. She likes peeking into taxidermy shops. She was in love with a man who owned the skull of a 12-year-old boy from the 1800s. Her love life, on that note, is even lonelier than Emily Dickinson's. She is fascinated by the mundane and the macabre, much like the entirety of this novel. Were I to sum up the plot, it would fit in a sentence. So much is happening within interiority--Marie recalls different people in her life, the odds and ends of their lives. It's a novel that reflects the pace of someone whose vocation is spent watching others, a vocation that allows for infinite amounts of think-space. She recalls her great-grandfather, a fellow art museum guard, who once witnessed an aggressive act by a suffragette, and Marie constantly returns to this memory she herself does not actually possess. The dynamic juxtaposed against her passive, undisturbing life. Until it gets disturbed, but even then, the novel takes its time getting there.
This is definitely not a story for everyone, and I can easily see how someone looking to be engaged in a plot would grow fatigued by how long it takes for a plot point to occur. (Indeed, the book flap describes an event that doesn't actually occur until three quarters into the novel.) But if you're looking for something quietly interesting, unsettling even in its simplicity, check this one out. I found myself reading it slowly, sometimes only a chapter at a time--not my usual--but enjoying myself to the very end.
The heroine, Marie, is weird. She picks up a stagnant job for that very reason--and sticks with it for nine years! She paints landscapes in eggshells, scouring London for art supplies to capture specific shades and textures, and then mounts dead moths into them. She likes peeking into taxidermy shops. She was in love with a man who owned the skull of a 12-year-old boy from the 1800s. Her love life, on that note, is even lonelier than Emily Dickinson's. She is fascinated by the mundane and the macabre, much like the entirety of this novel. Were I to sum up the plot, it would fit in a sentence. So much is happening within interiority--Marie recalls different people in her life, the odds and ends of their lives. It's a novel that reflects the pace of someone whose vocation is spent watching others, a vocation that allows for infinite amounts of think-space. She recalls her great-grandfather, a fellow art museum guard, who once witnessed an aggressive act by a suffragette, and Marie constantly returns to this memory she herself does not actually possess. The dynamic juxtaposed against her passive, undisturbing life. Until it gets disturbed, but even then, the novel takes its time getting there.
This is definitely not a story for everyone, and I can easily see how someone looking to be engaged in a plot would grow fatigued by how long it takes for a plot point to occur. (Indeed, the book flap describes an event that doesn't actually occur until three quarters into the novel.) But if you're looking for something quietly interesting, unsettling even in its simplicity, check this one out. I found myself reading it slowly, sometimes only a chapter at a time--not my usual--but enjoying myself to the very end.
February 19, 2021
what an odd little book on decay
August 10, 2013
A Solitary, Constrained Life
Marie works as a guard in the National Gallery in London. Although most guards are older, often retirees, Marie is young. She's been working as a guard in galleries since she dropped out of university. It's all she wants to do. She comes by the desire through her great-grandfather, who was also a guard in the gallery and narrowly missed stopping a suffragette from taking a knife to Venus, one of the gallery's masterpieces.
On a trip to Paris with her best friend, Daniel, her world starts to unravel. Although she isn't sure where she's going, she begins to walk away from her past.
If you like character studies, you'll enjoy this novel, otherwise, it gets a bit tedious. Marie doesn't do much but contemplate the paintings and try to keep her life as constrained as possible. I did find the descriptions of the visitors to the gallery and the life a guard fascinating, but it wasn't enough to make me recommend the book. The writing is at times mesmerizing, but in the end the lack of plot and a rather dull protagonist makes the book easy to put down.
I reviewed this book for the Amazon Vine Program.
Marie works as a guard in the National Gallery in London. Although most guards are older, often retirees, Marie is young. She's been working as a guard in galleries since she dropped out of university. It's all she wants to do. She comes by the desire through her great-grandfather, who was also a guard in the gallery and narrowly missed stopping a suffragette from taking a knife to Venus, one of the gallery's masterpieces.
On a trip to Paris with her best friend, Daniel, her world starts to unravel. Although she isn't sure where she's going, she begins to walk away from her past.
If you like character studies, you'll enjoy this novel, otherwise, it gets a bit tedious. Marie doesn't do much but contemplate the paintings and try to keep her life as constrained as possible. I did find the descriptions of the visitors to the gallery and the life a guard fascinating, but it wasn't enough to make me recommend the book. The writing is at times mesmerizing, but in the end the lack of plot and a rather dull protagonist makes the book easy to put down.
I reviewed this book for the Amazon Vine Program.
November 18, 2021
Selected topics and references this book shared with Aridjis’ Sea Monsters:
-- discussion of angles
-- archaeology
-- literature & poetry
-- fountains
-- dying insects
-- goth friends
-- sleeping pills
-- abandoned mansions
-- a noted gap in front teeth
-- a trip with a friend whose relationship is at times ambigious/ambivalent, and who abandons-- -- -- attention towards her for another companion
Selected odd encounters with odd men in this book:
-- the inmate pen pal
-- the Swiss poet
-- the Hungarian hypnotist
-- the escaped asylum patient
-- the chatelain
Selected forms of confinement in this book:
-- actual prison
-- mental asylum
-- one’s body
-- moth trap
-- chateau residence
-- job
-- the male gaze
-- political disenfranchisement
-- egg shell dioramas
Selected references of distress to faces
-- Jane’s facial creams
-- Craquelure in painted portraits
-- Marie’s scratched cheek
-- discussion of angles
-- archaeology
-- literature & poetry
-- fountains
-- dying insects
-- goth friends
-- sleeping pills
-- abandoned mansions
-- a noted gap in front teeth
-- a trip with a friend whose relationship is at times ambigious/ambivalent, and who abandons-- -- -- attention towards her for another companion
Selected odd encounters with odd men in this book:
-- the inmate pen pal
-- the Swiss poet
-- the Hungarian hypnotist
-- the escaped asylum patient
-- the chatelain
Selected forms of confinement in this book:
-- actual prison
-- mental asylum
-- one’s body
-- moth trap
-- chateau residence
-- job
-- the male gaze
-- political disenfranchisement
-- egg shell dioramas
Selected references of distress to faces
-- Jane’s facial creams
-- Craquelure in painted portraits
-- Marie’s scratched cheek
August 7, 2022
It's weird, the blurb of Sea Monsters didn't sound that interesting to me and then I loved the book because the writing was amazing. The blurb of this book sounded very up my alley, but then I didn't think it was very well-written.
There were so many details that felt added to just *feel like literary fiction*. The eggshells, the moths, the suffragettes, the letters to a murderer, the count at the end. While there were moments of interest within these, they never added up to anything. Often I found them very convoluted, eg. the eggshell sculptures, which I could never picture.
Maybe that's the point, all these overlapping, decaying details that never go anywhere, just remain vague and ominous. But it just never felt like the author was in control of them.
There were so many details that felt added to just *feel like literary fiction*. The eggshells, the moths, the suffragettes, the letters to a murderer, the count at the end. While there were moments of interest within these, they never added up to anything. Often I found them very convoluted, eg. the eggshell sculptures, which I could never picture.
Maybe that's the point, all these overlapping, decaying details that never go anywhere, just remain vague and ominous. But it just never felt like the author was in control of them.
February 5, 2014
Beautifully written, atmospheric and evocative. However, I felt it suffered from the absence of a clear narrative thread. But I also think that feeling that proves that I'm the kind of person that likes my novels ham-fisted, with a PLOT and BACK STORY and A CLEAR CONCLUSION. Perhaps this novel was too smart for me; I kept feeling like I was trying to put my arms around fog. The writing is wonderful, did I mention that? But--what the...?
May 3, 2016
Reading Asunder is such an unusual experience, and remembering the characters and plot is much like remembering a dream. This novel is a series of vignettes accompanied by beautiful descriptive language. The narrator Marie is a museum guard at the National Gallery in London, observing paintings and visitors with a mix of tedium and passion. Her grandfather did the same job for 40 years. As Marie follows the routines of her life, and then its unexpected turns, her journey becomes life-changing.
February 14, 2014
A very good book. Subdued but not detached, subtly unreal and always hinting at something just off the edge of the page. It's more a mood than a novel, but a compelling one, and sometimes deeply philosophical. Aridjis reminds me of a more accessible John Banville or Amelia Gray, though there are shades of a (very European) Murakami in her focus on daily life.
September 29, 2019
Kept waiting for something to happen, for the story to take off, but it never did. Very disappointed with the almost stream-of-consciousness writing. The actual writing did not match the cover description very well. Not impressed.
February 22, 2025
2⭐️
In the beginning I was honestly bored and thought if I had to read „suffragette“ one more time I was gonna lose my mind. Around page 100 you get used to the writing style but honestly, I would only recommend this book to people that read for the vibes. Plot wise, there isn’t anything going on.
In the beginning I was honestly bored and thought if I had to read „suffragette“ one more time I was gonna lose my mind. Around page 100 you get used to the writing style but honestly, I would only recommend this book to people that read for the vibes. Plot wise, there isn’t anything going on.
May 29, 2014
What's it about? Being a museum guard? The male gaze? Crazy rich people? It felt like a feminist Camus.
May 26, 2018
I have to say I'm kind of disappointed in this book. I enjoyed the first half of the book but overall I felt the plot lacked direction and the ending was both subpar and boring.
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