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Self
Fictional autobiography of a writer and traveller who suddenly finds his gender changed overnight. Now female, she meanders through a rich, humane, complicated and bittersweet world. --summarised from back cover.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 23, 1996
96 people are currently reading
3010 people want to read
About the author
Yann Martel
43 books5,245 followersYann Martel is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
Martel is also the author of the novels The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil, and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to Canada's Prime Minister 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He has won a number of literary prizes, including the 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2002 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.
Martel lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with writer Alice Kuipers and their four children. His first language is French, but he writes in English.
Martel is also the author of the novels The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil, and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to Canada's Prime Minister 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He has won a number of literary prizes, including the 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2002 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.
Martel lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with writer Alice Kuipers and their four children. His first language is French, but he writes in English.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 232 reviews
May 22, 2020
I can only assume that part of the reason this book has such a low rating is the horrified fans of Life of Pi, who, confused by Ang Lee’s pretty movie, remember that story as a cute fairytale about a kid and a tiger in a boat and are still high on fairytale dust. Oh, shocker! Yann Martel writes about sex. Cover your eyes and hide away. He uses the word cock, too, in reference to something other than one of his beloved and frequently used animal metaphors. Nothing metaphorical about the cocks in this story.
Okay, seriously now. If you’re put off by graphic sex (not plenty, but a fair amount) and need an explanation for a man magically turning into a woman and subsequently acting as if nothing happened, you’re looking at the wrong book. I personally think it’s a great – and, sadly, rare - trait in a straight male author to successfully assume a female voice and write – oh, so vividly – about [random example] giving head to a dude or being sexually harassed by men. Try as I might, I couldn’t separate the author’s maleness from his story. I’m more impressed with Martel successfully impersonating a female character than I would have been with a woman doing it. Does this prove that I completely missed the point of the whole book? In fact, I’m not even sure what said point is. Is it, as suggested by Chapter 2, that we are who we are and gender shouldn’t matter too much in how we perceive a human being? Is it that gender is within ourselves and biological sex shouldn’t define us? Does it have to do with social perception and how different an experience life is for a woman compared to a man? Or maybe there’s some underlying religious message that I fail to notice, but I wouldn’t be surprised of its existence, religion being, apparently, a subject of great interest to Martel (life sucks and god is a nice escape perhaps?).
Throughout the story, the narrator (whom, for convenience, I will call “Self”) is blurring the lines between male and female. On Self’s personal level of perception, the distinction is irrelevant. He doesn’t suffer important interior alterations when he changes sex and his transition into the role of female is smooth and almost imperceptible. For Self, this is a non-event and Martel treats it accordingly. It only comes as a shock to an outside audience, namely readers who can’t understand how a huge twist like this can be brushed over so lightly (with a simple change of passport, to be precise).
Naturally, the sex change brings with it a change in peoples’ attitude towards Self. A particularly relevant example is when Self (now a woman) and her travel companion, Ruth, face the constant harassment of Turkish men. The unwanted attention of men is, I’m sure, a reality all women are familiar with. In one of the most exquisite parts of the book, Martel writes about an unfamiliar feeling with surprising familiarity, choosing his words perfectly, from how he introduces the subject all the way to its conclusion.
Aside from Martel making an excellent woman, there’s a lot else to love about this book. I enjoyed a great deal Self’s childhood memories that account for charming sentences such as “My time as a rabbit was closely related to that strange condition called sleep.” or “At the time I thought the sun and the moon were opposite elements, negations of each other. The moon was the sun turned off, like a light-bulb, the moon was the sun sleeping, the dimples on its surface the pores of a great eyelid”.
Significantly different from Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil, Self bears a small resemblance to them both in the common theme of animal violence vs human cruelty, which is, however, not dwelled upon as much. Self’s endearing habit of comparing objects to animals (“I treated the vacuum cleaner - a distant cousin of the elephant - and the washing machine - a relative of the raccoon - with the greatest respect.”; the TV is an animal too, but selfish and uncaring) makes way to cruelty as he grows up: he cuts a worm and a snail in half, buries fish, sets a hedgerow on fire. Horrible images, but don’t get too caught up in these diversions and miss the bigger picture: humans inflicting pain on one another. Just so you know what to expect, I’ll quote a passage about animal cruelty:
Another tie to his other books (and that’s where the similarities stop) is that Martel has this weird habit of making things awkward by bringing up religion and capital-c Christ at inappropriate times. It’s like hanging out with a bunch of people, having a great time, and, out of the blue, someone drops some religious comment that goes beyond the usual “oh my god” followed by uncomfortable silence, everyone avoiding eye contact and showing a sudden interest in the closest bottle cap.
Self is not perfect. The story tends to slide into banality when Self starts dating, but that’s a momentary lapse and, overall, it’s a masterfully written novel that includes quite a few autobiographical elements and explores gender and sexual identity in an unconventional way.
………………………
A few quotes:
"On the way home she gave me the First facts of my sexual persona. Things were far more limited than my open mind had imagined. There were in fact only two sexes, not infinite numbers. And those little bums and little fingers that I had seen in the various I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours exercises I had conducted were the complementary sexual organs in question, all two of them, one little bum for one little finger. I was amazed. This question of complementarity referred merely to a vulgar point of biology, an anatomical whim? The menu for ocular fish had only two items on it? And it was decided in advance which they could select, either little bum or little finger, steak or chicken? What kind of a restaurant is that, Mother? I had indeed noticed only little bums and little fingers so far, but I thought this was simply a reflection of the small size of my sample. (In a similar vein, though most of my coevals at Jiminy Cricket were white, on the basis of the skin colour of a few of them, reinforced by things I had seen on television and in magazines, I was quite confident that there existed people who were black, brown, yellow, red, blue, orange, perhaps even striped.) But no, there were only two, my mother insisted. Even more astonishing, she said that little bums were to be found exclusively in girls and little fingers exclusively in boys. Girls, by definition, were females with little bums who could only be wives. Boys, by definition, were males with little fingers who could only be husbands. I should remember these permutations for there were no others. No, husbands could not be girls. No, a wife could not marry another wife. No, no, no."
"I sought guidance where I could. At one point I turned to the French language, which gave me the gender of all things. But to no satisfaction. I would readily agree that trucks and murders were masculine while bicycles and life were feminine. But how odd that a breast was masculine. And it made little sense that garbage was feminine while perfume was masculine - and no sense at all that television, which I would have deemed repellently masculine, was in fact feminine. When I walked the corridors of Parliament Hill, passing the portraits of my future predecessors, I would say to myself, “C’est le parlement, masculine. Power, it’s le pouvoir.” I would return home to la maison, feminine where, as likely as not, I would go to my room, la chambre, where I would settle to read un livre masculine, until supper. During the masculine meal, feminine food would be eaten. After my hard, productive masculine day, I would rest during the feminine night.[…]
I would look up at the male yellow sun and the male blue sky. I would turn and smell and feel the female green grass. Then I would roll over and over and over down the incline till I was dizzy, mixing up the colours and the genders. I felt neither masculinity nor femininity, I only felt desire, I only felt humid with life."
"Travelling is like an acceleration: it’s hard to stop, you don’t want to stop. Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change."
"This is as close as I can come to an explanation of why I started to write: not for the sake of writing, but for the sake of company."
"…if you asked me for the one destination of which I could say, “Go there and you will have travelled,” if you wanted to know where El Dorado was, I would say it was that place ubiquitous among travellers: the middle of nowhere."
Okay, seriously now. If you’re put off by graphic sex (not plenty, but a fair amount) and need an explanation for a man magically turning into a woman and subsequently acting as if nothing happened, you’re looking at the wrong book. I personally think it’s a great – and, sadly, rare - trait in a straight male author to successfully assume a female voice and write – oh, so vividly – about [random example] giving head to a dude or being sexually harassed by men. Try as I might, I couldn’t separate the author’s maleness from his story. I’m more impressed with Martel successfully impersonating a female character than I would have been with a woman doing it. Does this prove that I completely missed the point of the whole book? In fact, I’m not even sure what said point is. Is it, as suggested by Chapter 2, that we are who we are and gender shouldn’t matter too much in how we perceive a human being? Is it that gender is within ourselves and biological sex shouldn’t define us? Does it have to do with social perception and how different an experience life is for a woman compared to a man? Or maybe there’s some underlying religious message that I fail to notice, but I wouldn’t be surprised of its existence, religion being, apparently, a subject of great interest to Martel (life sucks and god is a nice escape perhaps?).
Throughout the story, the narrator (whom, for convenience, I will call “Self”) is blurring the lines between male and female. On Self’s personal level of perception, the distinction is irrelevant. He doesn’t suffer important interior alterations when he changes sex and his transition into the role of female is smooth and almost imperceptible. For Self, this is a non-event and Martel treats it accordingly. It only comes as a shock to an outside audience, namely readers who can’t understand how a huge twist like this can be brushed over so lightly (with a simple change of passport, to be precise).
Naturally, the sex change brings with it a change in peoples’ attitude towards Self. A particularly relevant example is when Self (now a woman) and her travel companion, Ruth, face the constant harassment of Turkish men. The unwanted attention of men is, I’m sure, a reality all women are familiar with. In one of the most exquisite parts of the book, Martel writes about an unfamiliar feeling with surprising familiarity, choosing his words perfectly, from how he introduces the subject all the way to its conclusion.
“When I look back now, some of these hassles were unacceptable. They had one common link: men. Men who openly stared up and down at us. Men who cracked smiles at the sight of us and turned to their friends, pointing us out with a nod of the head. Men who brushed themselves against us to pass us in streets that were not busy. Men who brushed themselves against us to pass us in streets that were not busy and who ran their hands over our breasts. The young man who ran up to me from behind in a dark street of Ankara, pinched my ass and vanished just as quickly. The one in Istanbul, too. Men who clicked at us. Boys who clicked at us. Men who felt they had the right to ooze their unctuous, unwanted attentions upon us regardless of our words, opinions or indifference. Men who decided they knew what we wanted, what destination, what product, what service, what price, before we had even opened our mouths. The bus driver who, seeing that I was asleep on the last row of seats, stopped his bus on the side of the highway, came back and kissed me, so that I woke up to this stranger looming over me and pushed him away angrily, calling out to Ruth, while he walked back smiling and laughing, proud of himself. The man who exposed himself to me at a roadside stop, grinning and playing with himself. […] It wore us down. More than we realized. Some doors became very important to us in Turkey: the doors to our hotel rooms. When we closed and locked them, it was not to secure Ruth’s camera, but to secure our shelter. Shelter meant a place to be together - and away.[…]
Which is not to say that we didn’t meet Turkish men who were nice. We did. Lots. Who were nice; proper; civil; friendly. But this approach - some good Turks, some bad Turks - is all wrong. My point is neither demographic nor democratic because it was not primarily individuals that struck me, so much as an attitude. And an attitude can slosh around like the sea, rising in one man, ebbing in another, surging forth anew in a third — all beyond the accounting of numbers.”
Aside from Martel making an excellent woman, there’s a lot else to love about this book. I enjoyed a great deal Self’s childhood memories that account for charming sentences such as “My time as a rabbit was closely related to that strange condition called sleep.” or “At the time I thought the sun and the moon were opposite elements, negations of each other. The moon was the sun turned off, like a light-bulb, the moon was the sun sleeping, the dimples on its surface the pores of a great eyelid”.
Significantly different from Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil, Self bears a small resemblance to them both in the common theme of animal violence vs human cruelty, which is, however, not dwelled upon as much. Self’s endearing habit of comparing objects to animals (“I treated the vacuum cleaner - a distant cousin of the elephant - and the washing machine - a relative of the raccoon - with the greatest respect.”; the TV is an animal too, but selfish and uncaring) makes way to cruelty as he grows up: he cuts a worm and a snail in half, buries fish, sets a hedgerow on fire. Horrible images, but don’t get too caught up in these diversions and miss the bigger picture: humans inflicting pain on one another. Just so you know what to expect, I’ll quote a passage about animal cruelty:
“I burned ants with a magnifying glass. I starved two small turtles to death. I asphyxiated lizards in jars. I exploded spiders with firecrackers. I poured salt on slugs. I attempted to drown frogs and, when they would not drown, I threw them against the wall of a boathouse and watched them float upside down in the water. I killed a huge toad by throwing broken roof tiles at it. I committed these atrocities in solitude, without glee, deliberately. Each cruelty, each final spasm of life, resonated in me like a drop of water falling in a silent cave.”
Another tie to his other books (and that’s where the similarities stop) is that Martel has this weird habit of making things awkward by bringing up religion and capital-c Christ at inappropriate times. It’s like hanging out with a bunch of people, having a great time, and, out of the blue, someone drops some religious comment that goes beyond the usual “oh my god” followed by uncomfortable silence, everyone avoiding eye contact and showing a sudden interest in the closest bottle cap.
Self is not perfect. The story tends to slide into banality when Self starts dating, but that’s a momentary lapse and, overall, it’s a masterfully written novel that includes quite a few autobiographical elements and explores gender and sexual identity in an unconventional way.
………………………
A few quotes:
"On the way home she gave me the First facts of my sexual persona. Things were far more limited than my open mind had imagined. There were in fact only two sexes, not infinite numbers. And those little bums and little fingers that I had seen in the various I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours exercises I had conducted were the complementary sexual organs in question, all two of them, one little bum for one little finger. I was amazed. This question of complementarity referred merely to a vulgar point of biology, an anatomical whim? The menu for ocular fish had only two items on it? And it was decided in advance which they could select, either little bum or little finger, steak or chicken? What kind of a restaurant is that, Mother? I had indeed noticed only little bums and little fingers so far, but I thought this was simply a reflection of the small size of my sample. (In a similar vein, though most of my coevals at Jiminy Cricket were white, on the basis of the skin colour of a few of them, reinforced by things I had seen on television and in magazines, I was quite confident that there existed people who were black, brown, yellow, red, blue, orange, perhaps even striped.) But no, there were only two, my mother insisted. Even more astonishing, she said that little bums were to be found exclusively in girls and little fingers exclusively in boys. Girls, by definition, were females with little bums who could only be wives. Boys, by definition, were males with little fingers who could only be husbands. I should remember these permutations for there were no others. No, husbands could not be girls. No, a wife could not marry another wife. No, no, no."
"I sought guidance where I could. At one point I turned to the French language, which gave me the gender of all things. But to no satisfaction. I would readily agree that trucks and murders were masculine while bicycles and life were feminine. But how odd that a breast was masculine. And it made little sense that garbage was feminine while perfume was masculine - and no sense at all that television, which I would have deemed repellently masculine, was in fact feminine. When I walked the corridors of Parliament Hill, passing the portraits of my future predecessors, I would say to myself, “C’est le parlement, masculine. Power, it’s le pouvoir.” I would return home to la maison, feminine where, as likely as not, I would go to my room, la chambre, where I would settle to read un livre masculine, until supper. During the masculine meal, feminine food would be eaten. After my hard, productive masculine day, I would rest during the feminine night.[…]
I would look up at the male yellow sun and the male blue sky. I would turn and smell and feel the female green grass. Then I would roll over and over and over down the incline till I was dizzy, mixing up the colours and the genders. I felt neither masculinity nor femininity, I only felt desire, I only felt humid with life."
"Travelling is like an acceleration: it’s hard to stop, you don’t want to stop. Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change."
"This is as close as I can come to an explanation of why I started to write: not for the sake of writing, but for the sake of company."
"…if you asked me for the one destination of which I could say, “Go there and you will have travelled,” if you wanted to know where El Dorado was, I would say it was that place ubiquitous among travellers: the middle of nowhere."
April 21, 2008
Er, it seems that I am one of the only people on goodreads that loved this book. And love it I did. I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed every aspect of it, from the fluidity of gender, to the beauty of involving different languages, to the pain and bliss of love, sexual awakening and travel. It was a rollicking good read. I felt like I actually knew the narrator inside and out, which is something that I've found lacking in a lot of the books that I have read recently.
The rape scene at the end was indeed painful to read, and a real disheartening ending to the book. But I liked it. It dealt with loss and heartache and real things. Don't pick up this book if you want a pick-me-up or a light read, but do read this book if you want a fascinating portrayal of what it is to be human.
The rape scene at the end was indeed painful to read, and a real disheartening ending to the book. But I liked it. It dealt with loss and heartache and real things. Don't pick up this book if you want a pick-me-up or a light read, but do read this book if you want a fascinating portrayal of what it is to be human.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2008
It is SO HARD FOR ME TO LIKE THIS BOOK. It's like somebody told Yann Martel: "You know what's really hot in contemporary lit right now? Poetry, transgender issues, and made-up memoirs. YOU should write one."
People read autobiographies because the personalities behind them have led fascinating, meaningful existences. If you're going to MAKE UP an autobiography, you have the opportunity to magically create some of that aforementioned fascinating-ness: "There, have some meaning! BAMMO, be a fascinating character!" Look, Martel has the chance to invent a whole life: instead of inventing an interesting one, he obliges us to observe the flat, emotionless life of a 20-something who stumbles through the story with a barely-there passiveness, where the only non-ordinary thing that occurs is an inexplicable gender change.
People read autobiographies because the personalities behind them have led fascinating, meaningful existences. If you're going to MAKE UP an autobiography, you have the opportunity to magically create some of that aforementioned fascinating-ness: "There, have some meaning! BAMMO, be a fascinating character!" Look, Martel has the chance to invent a whole life: instead of inventing an interesting one, he obliges us to observe the flat, emotionless life of a 20-something who stumbles through the story with a barely-there passiveness, where the only non-ordinary thing that occurs is an inexplicable gender change.
June 27, 2019
I always enjoy Yann Martel's writing and appreciate his creativity and symbolism - that said, I feel Self is in a class of its own; intelligently awkward, boldly candid, and beautifully empathetic.
As with any coming of age story, we follow our main character through his/her journey, all the while reflecting on our own past experiences. Drawing parallels, relating, and reliving memories or feelings left behind.
I struggled a little with my thoughts on this one... Having grown up myself in a French Canadian household yet completely immersed in English-speaking surroundings, I understand all too well the duality of conflicting cultures and identities, the balancing act, and the figuring out.
Perhaps because it hit so close to home made it difficult for me to truly let go and separate the mind from the heart, the reality from the fiction... Still, the life of a chameleon is one to embrace - with Self, Martel proves to be a multilayered storyteller and point of view master.
As with any coming of age story, we follow our main character through his/her journey, all the while reflecting on our own past experiences. Drawing parallels, relating, and reliving memories or feelings left behind.
I struggled a little with my thoughts on this one... Having grown up myself in a French Canadian household yet completely immersed in English-speaking surroundings, I understand all too well the duality of conflicting cultures and identities, the balancing act, and the figuring out.
Perhaps because it hit so close to home made it difficult for me to truly let go and separate the mind from the heart, the reality from the fiction... Still, the life of a chameleon is one to embrace - with Self, Martel proves to be a multilayered storyteller and point of view master.
October 15, 2014
This is a great example of how amazing writing can carry an entire book. I tried to explain to a friend why I loved this book and why they should read it but literally I've no idea how to explain. Yann Martel has a talent for story telling. I think unlike a lot of readers because I read 'life of Pi' about 7 years ago (when it first came out), I wasn't expecting anything like that when I picked this up. This was a story about life, about love, travel, growth, language, friendship, men, women sex, gender, coming of age, trauma, heart break, healing. It wasn't perfect, but it was such a true representation of what it is to be a human being, that I'll take the flaws.
I was intrigued by the aspect of growing up without religion and how that changes the way you view love and the role of men and women. So it's about a man who wakes up when he turns 18 to realise he's now a woman. But this isn't really what drives the plot because Yann almost ignores the 'impossible' aspect of this phenomenon. The protagonist just continues on with life. The main thing that this event did with the plot was made us realise the subtle every day differences between being a man and a woman. His/her first period was hilarious and heart breaking. His/her first sexual experience with a man as a woman was bizarre. There were many romantic interests but this isn't a romance. It's probably one of the most realistic representations of a life in a book (besides the whole sex change event).
'Self' was honest, transparent and unashamed. But it's kind of ruined me for mediocre writing for a while...
Note
I was intrigued by the aspect of growing up without religion and how that changes the way you view love and the role of men and women. So it's about a man who wakes up when he turns 18 to realise he's now a woman. But this isn't really what drives the plot because Yann almost ignores the 'impossible' aspect of this phenomenon. The protagonist just continues on with life. The main thing that this event did with the plot was made us realise the subtle every day differences between being a man and a woman. His/her first period was hilarious and heart breaking. His/her first sexual experience with a man as a woman was bizarre. There were many romantic interests but this isn't a romance. It's probably one of the most realistic representations of a life in a book (besides the whole sex change event).
'Self' was honest, transparent and unashamed. But it's kind of ruined me for mediocre writing for a while...
Note
February 2, 2008
I'd read 'Life of Pi' a few years ago, so when this book came to me as a birthday gift I was excited to read another book by Yann Martel. It took me a few pages to get used to the writing style presented here - a mix of flashbacks and future shots and short bits that didn't make much sense at the moment. After the first 20 pages or so, I could barely put it down and fell in love with the style. A great book, though some of the events are a bit mystifying and other ones downright tragic and heart-wrenching. I plan to re-read it as I feel I've missed some things that turned out to be important later.
December 3, 2012
For a brief time, towards the end of the novel, I was actively enjoying reading it. A bit before that, it was at least tolerable. But with the late game-changing plot-twist, the book lost me.
The novel is about the life of a person who is biologically born (and identifies)as a (cis) man. Then, when he wakes up on his 18th birthday, he discovers he has turned into a biological/cis female, and begins identifying as such.
There is no surprise, no change of psyche. She just goes "oh huh I'm a girl now. Ok." Later, when she re-encounters her aunt, who knew her as a man, the aunt isn't surprised or reacts either.
We never learn this person's name, except an offhand mention that it is androgynous and can work for a man or a woman.
Before the sex change, we're lead through his childhood and early experiences. This includes his growth through puberty and frequent masturbation. Which I found very tiring to read about.
The first part of the novel does do some work on gender/gender roles/the differences between the genders/sexes (the novel considers them to be pretty much the same thing). These themes are discarded after the sex change.
Rather, it beings to follow the woman's relationships through her time at university, getting her BA, and life afterward.
At one part, when she's 21, she encounters a forty something woman traveling alone in Greece. They hit it off, and soon become lovers.
There is an interesting section while they travel through Turkey, and the narrator describes living under the male gaze/being subjected to sexual harassment due to men who through they were entitled to her body.
Despite being/identifying as a woman at this point, the text never refers to her relationship with the other woman as a lesbian one.
On the other hand, when she begins to have sex with men, she thinks of it as a homosexual/gay relationship, even though on the surface and as far as her partner's know, it's a cis/heterosexual relationship.
My favourite section of the book is when the unnamed narrator is living with Tito, the first and only person she loves. I enjoyed hearing about their happiness, loving each other, and how he buys her a hideously ugly bulldog for Christmas.
However, this is interrupted when Tito is away on the trip. While going to her office (a sparsely furnished apartment where she writes, as the narrator is a mostly unsuccessful author), she lets in a strange man who says he wants to see what it looks like inside.
He beats and rapes her.
Afterward, she returns to the apartment she shared with Tito and their dog. She has a breakdown (understandably -- and partially because she thought she was pregnant with Tito's child), and then turns back into a biological/cis man.
The narrator, now a he again, flees with the west, leaving his life (and Tito) behind, without explaining to Tito why. Earlier, the text established that Tito is straight and not attracted to men, so presumably their relationship wouldn't have survived the second sex change.
Emotionally and psychologically shattered, he loses track of time and events while traveling through the prairies. For some time, his only sexual encounters are meeting with other men in the park, and having cheap hookups (which, he mentions his rapist left him with herpes type b, and so I can't help but wonder if he spread this to his subsequent partners).
At one point, he meets a woman and begins a relationship with her. He thinks of himself as a "tepid lesbian," but they stay together. He abandons the novel he was working on before the rape, and I don't think he resumes writing.
The novel ends soon after, with the character introducing themself in gender neutral terms by their blood type, that they speak French and English, their eyes are x colour and their hair is x colour, and as a Canadian.
I didn't like the book because it was too senseless. The sex change was inane and unexplained, and the novel itself doesn't do any meaningful work on gender/sex or sexuality. So I don't really understand what the point if it was.
The novel is about the life of a person who is biologically born (and identifies)as a (cis) man. Then, when he wakes up on his 18th birthday, he discovers he has turned into a biological/cis female, and begins identifying as such.
There is no surprise, no change of psyche. She just goes "oh huh I'm a girl now. Ok." Later, when she re-encounters her aunt, who knew her as a man, the aunt isn't surprised or reacts either.
We never learn this person's name, except an offhand mention that it is androgynous and can work for a man or a woman.
Before the sex change, we're lead through his childhood and early experiences. This includes his growth through puberty and frequent masturbation. Which I found very tiring to read about.
The first part of the novel does do some work on gender/gender roles/the differences between the genders/sexes (the novel considers them to be pretty much the same thing). These themes are discarded after the sex change.
Rather, it beings to follow the woman's relationships through her time at university, getting her BA, and life afterward.
At one part, when she's 21, she encounters a forty something woman traveling alone in Greece. They hit it off, and soon become lovers.
There is an interesting section while they travel through Turkey, and the narrator describes living under the male gaze/being subjected to sexual harassment due to men who through they were entitled to her body.
Despite being/identifying as a woman at this point, the text never refers to her relationship with the other woman as a lesbian one.
On the other hand, when she begins to have sex with men, she thinks of it as a homosexual/gay relationship, even though on the surface and as far as her partner's know, it's a cis/heterosexual relationship.
My favourite section of the book is when the unnamed narrator is living with Tito, the first and only person she loves. I enjoyed hearing about their happiness, loving each other, and how he buys her a hideously ugly bulldog for Christmas.
However, this is interrupted when Tito is away on the trip. While going to her office (a sparsely furnished apartment where she writes, as the narrator is a mostly unsuccessful author), she lets in a strange man who says he wants to see what it looks like inside.
He beats and rapes her.
Afterward, she returns to the apartment she shared with Tito and their dog. She has a breakdown (understandably -- and partially because she thought she was pregnant with Tito's child), and then turns back into a biological/cis man.
The narrator, now a he again, flees with the west, leaving his life (and Tito) behind, without explaining to Tito why. Earlier, the text established that Tito is straight and not attracted to men, so presumably their relationship wouldn't have survived the second sex change.
Emotionally and psychologically shattered, he loses track of time and events while traveling through the prairies. For some time, his only sexual encounters are meeting with other men in the park, and having cheap hookups (which, he mentions his rapist left him with herpes type b, and so I can't help but wonder if he spread this to his subsequent partners).
At one point, he meets a woman and begins a relationship with her. He thinks of himself as a "tepid lesbian," but they stay together. He abandons the novel he was working on before the rape, and I don't think he resumes writing.
The novel ends soon after, with the character introducing themself in gender neutral terms by their blood type, that they speak French and English, their eyes are x colour and their hair is x colour, and as a Canadian.
I didn't like the book because it was too senseless. The sex change was inane and unexplained, and the novel itself doesn't do any meaningful work on gender/sex or sexuality. So I don't really understand what the point if it was.
April 30, 2012
Self has good characterization and fluid writing, but nothing to hold it all together. The descriptions are vibrant but not thought-provoking. I enjoyed the use of the novel as a format to adumbrate imaginary stories and novels (those "written" by the narrator) which would never work as actual books, a technique also found in Slaughterhouse Five and the stories of Jorge Luis Borges. In Self, Martel uses various experimental postmodernistic techniques (such as starting Chapter Two on the last page, splitting the internal monologues into two columns in two voices, and segmenting the narrative into lists and plays) seemingly without any reason behind their use. Including several blank pages at the end of the book comes across paradoxically as being simultaneously unorthodox and clichéd, unorthodox because I've never seen another book do it (aside from one or two blank pages needed to bind the book properly), clichéd because it's just the physical representation of the overused concept that future life is like the blank pages of a book. The book as a whole has no sense of cohesion or purpose, no soul.
February 18, 2013
I am seriously at a loss about how to rate this book. I felt almost voyeuristic when reading this at times. I wanted to shake or comfort the main character frequently. There were parts that dragged and dragged. More than once, I considred setting it aside and moving to something else, but then I would remember that beautiful bit at the beginning describing love as fish in his eyes, and I would give it another shot. And would then find another beautiful snippet that would keep me going. I had to skip over a few things that were too graphic for me. But I reread several parts too, to allow the language to seep into my brain. I have not been so challenged and so rewarded by book on a very long time.
The ending --- oh, well, it broke my heart and then offered me the smallest -- and I do mean Smallest -- thread of hope before the one and only sentence of chapter 2 slammed the door closed. And I was not allowed to see into this life any more. Just when I wanted to most.
This will stay with me a long time, but it rates only a three because for more than half of the book I was disengaged. But having said that, this book is a prime example of why I always try to finish a book once started. Even though it was diificult to get through it, it was worth it in the end.
The ending --- oh, well, it broke my heart and then offered me the smallest -- and I do mean Smallest -- thread of hope before the one and only sentence of chapter 2 slammed the door closed. And I was not allowed to see into this life any more. Just when I wanted to most.
This will stay with me a long time, but it rates only a three because for more than half of the book I was disengaged. But having said that, this book is a prime example of why I always try to finish a book once started. Even though it was diificult to get through it, it was worth it in the end.
May 23, 2025
Definitely not Life of Pi. 👀
June 20, 2018
Self is the book that you're not expecting from an author whose work you have vast appreciation and for whom you have great respect. Where Life of Pi and The High Mountains of Portugal are both spiritual journeys, speculative, searching, and piercing in their expression of language and allegory, Self is raw, meandering, painful, and entirely unashamed in being so.
It is about what it is to seek and to be; a questing sentience; and what it is to be a specific thing. How you see the world while embodying that idea, and what happens if we decide to grow outside those boundaries and examine the world in entirely different ways. Told entirely from the viewpoint of a single narrator, it follows that person from birth into their thirties. As is often with Martel, there is a great deal of allegory, though not as much as with Pi and Portugal, much is suggested, very little is obvious, which is perhaps another point to the author - it's a mirror image of the search for self.
The integration of several different languages and how they're presented in the book in columns is very effective, creating a metaphor for the blending of personality, and place. The narrator drifts between genders, lovers, countries, jobs, and ideas.
Many portions of the book are practically pornographic, the narrator seeking identity almost entirely in the physical, sexual identity acting as a muse, of sorts, for purpose. But Martel also explores language, love, nationality, craft, trade, art, and education as factors contributing to the whole of a person, and their identity. The latter are by far the more interesting, exquisitely written as is the norm for Martel, though somewhat marred by the former. While I did find the lewd aspects excessive at points, I do think they serve the larger narrative in establishing the context and tour of the narrator's journey. It also presents some very thoughtful questions. What happens if we identify ourselves entirely by the physical? Isn't the physical a large part of identity? Is it not? What happens if how someone identifies themselves gets taken away? What then?
Self is, unsurprisingly, undeniably human; a spiritual search for personal identity as much as it is an earthly dance with debauchery. It's the Sistine reach of Adam tainted with puberty and a long stare into a hand-mirror. It's beautifully written, engaging, a coming-of-age story of sorts as much as it is Martel meditating on life. It's a complicating, dividing, work. I very much enjoyed most of it, and I may return at some point. It's certainly not for everyone, and I'd only recommend it to a specific audience for which I have no specific criteria at the moment.
It is about what it is to seek and to be; a questing sentience; and what it is to be a specific thing. How you see the world while embodying that idea, and what happens if we decide to grow outside those boundaries and examine the world in entirely different ways. Told entirely from the viewpoint of a single narrator, it follows that person from birth into their thirties. As is often with Martel, there is a great deal of allegory, though not as much as with Pi and Portugal, much is suggested, very little is obvious, which is perhaps another point to the author - it's a mirror image of the search for self.
The integration of several different languages and how they're presented in the book in columns is very effective, creating a metaphor for the blending of personality, and place. The narrator drifts between genders, lovers, countries, jobs, and ideas.
Many portions of the book are practically pornographic, the narrator seeking identity almost entirely in the physical, sexual identity acting as a muse, of sorts, for purpose. But Martel also explores language, love, nationality, craft, trade, art, and education as factors contributing to the whole of a person, and their identity. The latter are by far the more interesting, exquisitely written as is the norm for Martel, though somewhat marred by the former. While I did find the lewd aspects excessive at points, I do think they serve the larger narrative in establishing the context and tour of the narrator's journey. It also presents some very thoughtful questions. What happens if we identify ourselves entirely by the physical? Isn't the physical a large part of identity? Is it not? What happens if how someone identifies themselves gets taken away? What then?
Self is, unsurprisingly, undeniably human; a spiritual search for personal identity as much as it is an earthly dance with debauchery. It's the Sistine reach of Adam tainted with puberty and a long stare into a hand-mirror. It's beautifully written, engaging, a coming-of-age story of sorts as much as it is Martel meditating on life. It's a complicating, dividing, work. I very much enjoyed most of it, and I may return at some point. It's certainly not for everyone, and I'd only recommend it to a specific audience for which I have no specific criteria at the moment.
March 4, 2010
It's almost unbelievable that this and Life of Pi were written by the same author.
The tone of Self is so absurdly different from Pi's. It offers no conclusion to speak of, nor explanation, it is ragingly atheist almost to the point of being nihilistic.
And yet it is just as enlightening.
That is to say, it's a much more difficult read. Self holds your hand less than the grand majority of books, offers no guidance as to what you are supposed to grasp from it, yet it offers so much to the philosophical reader.
Martel writes at top form here ( though I expected no less ), with the book feeling more like a conversation than a grand Author talking down at you.
The content is much more difficult though, with parts so personal reading them feels like intruding, and a final act difficult to read even for my jaded self.
All in all I recommend tremendously ( five stars ) but only to those who can stomach it ( and this is where it loses a star. ).
The tone of Self is so absurdly different from Pi's. It offers no conclusion to speak of, nor explanation, it is ragingly atheist almost to the point of being nihilistic.
And yet it is just as enlightening.
That is to say, it's a much more difficult read. Self holds your hand less than the grand majority of books, offers no guidance as to what you are supposed to grasp from it, yet it offers so much to the philosophical reader.
Martel writes at top form here ( though I expected no less ), with the book feeling more like a conversation than a grand Author talking down at you.
The content is much more difficult though, with parts so personal reading them feels like intruding, and a final act difficult to read even for my jaded self.
All in all I recommend tremendously ( five stars ) but only to those who can stomach it ( and this is where it loses a star. ).
July 25, 2012
I HATED THIS BOOK!
I was so disappointed, since it was recommended to me by two different friends whose tastes I respect. It made me think: am I missing something here?
There were a few sections that I really enjoyed - Yann Martel's descriptions are always so colourful - but as a whole, I just found the book sloppy and confusing. Parts of it just outright annoyed me. Maybe it's because I don't think [spoilers removed]. I got to the end and flipped through the last few pages, thinking "is this really it?!" Apparently I looked disgusted and confused, because a fellow bus rider commented "bad book?".
Not one I'd recommend, but maybe I just didn't "get it".o
I was so disappointed, since it was recommended to me by two different friends whose tastes I respect. It made me think: am I missing something here?
There were a few sections that I really enjoyed - Yann Martel's descriptions are always so colourful - but as a whole, I just found the book sloppy and confusing. Parts of it just outright annoyed me. Maybe it's because I don't think [spoilers removed]. I got to the end and flipped through the last few pages, thinking "is this really it?!" Apparently I looked disgusted and confused, because a fellow bus rider commented "bad book?".
Not one I'd recommend, but maybe I just didn't "get it".o
April 12, 2008
For the first five-sixths of this novel I was thinking, "Ohmigod this is the platonic ideal for novels. This is hands down the best book I have ever read." It's a faux-memoir about a person who magically and for no apparent reason fluctuates between gender, which is bizarre yet totally fascinating, and the language and storytelling are utter rhapsody.
And then, at the five-sixths point the WORST POSSIBLE THING HAPPENED: It turned into a concrete poem. About rape. Yann Martel, why did you do it?? It was going so well, and then you wrecked it with the lamest trick in the entire Western canon + modern literary pretense + ugh.
So, if you read it, maybe don't read all the way to the end.
And then, at the five-sixths point the WORST POSSIBLE THING HAPPENED: It turned into a concrete poem. About rape. Yann Martel, why did you do it?? It was going so well, and then you wrecked it with the lamest trick in the entire Western canon + modern literary pretense + ugh.
So, if you read it, maybe don't read all the way to the end.
May 28, 2007
This is by far the worst book I have ever read. I believe that I frequently threw it across the room while reading it, which is a testament to my stubborness because I still finished it.
The main character of the book has an interesting history, but everything becomes convoluted when he changes sexes in the middle of the book (not through a sex change: the character unexplainably becomes a woman). The writing is strong and paints beautiful pictures, but the plot was too twisted for me to enjoy.
The main character of the book has an interesting history, but everything becomes convoluted when he changes sexes in the middle of the book (not through a sex change: the character unexplainably becomes a woman). The writing is strong and paints beautiful pictures, but the plot was too twisted for me to enjoy.
November 22, 2008
it's one of those books that you feel like you're long time friends with the character, who's hiding nothing from you. very personal and emotional, it surprised me time and again. being really bold in some descriptions. funny at times but also dramatic and sad.
December 31, 2011
Couldn't stand this one. What a complete 360 from The Life of Pi.
January 6, 2013
I could not help but dislike this book. It was like Yann Martel was trying to be as edgy as possible and because of this the book lacked reality. I'm actually surprised this was published
March 22, 2014
To me Self is an example of a novel being stronger as fragments, rather than the sum of its parts. Martel's first book is an adventurous experiment in narrative, one that features numerous languages and constantly forces the reader to question it. As a full length novel, I think Self fails because it is just too ambitiously scattered. Perhaps intentionally, the book is similar to the attempted stories written by the narrator. There is plenty thought and big ideas behind the writing, but they take precedent over forming a cohesive novel. The result is a book that feels like an attempt at literary shownmanship.
For me the high points of the book are small moments. Martel is certainly not a bad writer, and there are passages that I found beautiful in their depiction of life and the narrator's point of view. He has a very unique voice that combines a lot of literary allusion with more down to earth settings (this reminds a bit off Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red", a Greek myth portrayed in a modern setting). I also enjoyed some of the tangents in experimental writing, having the parallel columns of Hungarian and English was quite neat. Unlike some passages which just translated the foreign language (to a point) I'm certain the Hungarian is completely different (mostly due to the conversational nature, proper nouns etc), providing a great reinforcement of the scene the narrator is describing in English. Likewise the point near the end which splits things into narration on one side and the psychological reaction on the other is also quite interesting.
That said, in the end I couldn't completely say I enjoyed the book. Martel himself has even been noted as saying he isn't particularly keen on the book, and I feel like it's a prime example of a talented young author attempting to overreach himself.
For me the high points of the book are small moments. Martel is certainly not a bad writer, and there are passages that I found beautiful in their depiction of life and the narrator's point of view. He has a very unique voice that combines a lot of literary allusion with more down to earth settings (this reminds a bit off Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red", a Greek myth portrayed in a modern setting). I also enjoyed some of the tangents in experimental writing, having the parallel columns of Hungarian and English was quite neat. Unlike some passages which just translated the foreign language (to a point) I'm certain the Hungarian is completely different (mostly due to the conversational nature, proper nouns etc), providing a great reinforcement of the scene the narrator is describing in English. Likewise the point near the end which splits things into narration on one side and the psychological reaction on the other is also quite interesting.
That said, in the end I couldn't completely say I enjoyed the book. Martel himself has even been noted as saying he isn't particularly keen on the book, and I feel like it's a prime example of a talented young author attempting to overreach himself.
February 21, 2016
I just don't think I understood this book. It was written like a diary but there were (almost) no chapters or dates. One of the comments on the back of my copy of the book says the novel is a meditation on identity but I only really noticed one aspect of identity and that was an exploration on sexuality. So I didn't really notice too much exploration into the character's identity.
One of the issues I have with this novel is that it's about a writer trying to write a novel. I think this is a theme with Martel because I know at the start of Life of Pi one character is looking for inspiration for a story and, if I remember correctly, in Beatrice and Virgil a character was also a struggling writer. So I find it annoying there is this consistent theme through his books. Self is even more annoying because there are so many "unwritten" stories of the main character.
There is a section on page 272 and 273 that describes this novel well, "I finished my novel. It was a bad novel...I would return to (the novel); then salvage parts and incorporate them into my next novel." I think Martel had so many little ideas that he wanted to turn into novels but could never fully complete them. He put them all into this novel and made a significant part of Self about all these little story ideas.
My favourite line of the whole book was from page 231 which reads " ...love, like any living thing, settles where is feels it has a future"
Also I don't even know if the character's name is mentioned.
I still don't get this book
One of the issues I have with this novel is that it's about a writer trying to write a novel. I think this is a theme with Martel because I know at the start of Life of Pi one character is looking for inspiration for a story and, if I remember correctly, in Beatrice and Virgil a character was also a struggling writer. So I find it annoying there is this consistent theme through his books. Self is even more annoying because there are so many "unwritten" stories of the main character.
There is a section on page 272 and 273 that describes this novel well, "I finished my novel. It was a bad novel...I would return to (the novel); then salvage parts and incorporate them into my next novel." I think Martel had so many little ideas that he wanted to turn into novels but could never fully complete them. He put them all into this novel and made a significant part of Self about all these little story ideas.
My favourite line of the whole book was from page 231 which reads " ...love, like any living thing, settles where is feels it has a future"
Also I don't even know if the character's name is mentioned.
I still don't get this book
September 20, 2019
I'm not exactly sure what to say. I questioned myself many times whilst reading this - is finishing this a waste of my time? I can't exactly tell you why I did finish... I think I just wanted to know if it got better or if anything would redeem it for me. No. the effects of the gender swap plot twist sat very uncomfortably with me. I can't help but attribute that discomfort to feeling something like, well, that Martel has appropriated the female experience. FULL ON appropriation. Why does this bother me so much when I think it's perfectly fine for a male author to write a female character? I think it's the fact that this is an autobiography/fiction work. He's describing in detail things that are uniquely an embodied female experience as if it's his own. Such as periods, having sex, being raped and what it is like to walk as vulnerably as a female in this ridiculously patriarchal world (that turns away from make violence against women rather than stamping it out as the abomination it is). Anyway, these are things that a cis male can only theoretically understand. So to describe them in such vivid, embodied detail implies ownership of those experiences and that feels like a patriarchal invasion to me funnily enough.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2008
*sucks air through teeth*
Oooh. Hmm. This is a tough one. This book took me an uncharacteristically long time to read. Not because it was difficult, but because it didn't really hook me at any point. Then I blasted through the last 100 pages when it went from a plodding tale to a roller coaster ride because it was heaven and then hell and allmovingsoquickly. Then the brakes were slammed and it was all over. I felt like I had missed something. Did I miss something?
I don't suppose stories have to have a tidy ending, but what was the purpose of the gender switching other than being an interesting element? Why did the character become male again immediately after being brutalized as a female? Was that supposed to be deep? Why did the main character meet the girl in the cemetery and then just sort of settle? Did they literally become one in the end? Am I being too literal? I'm trying to figure out some of the symbolism here but I can't quite find it.
There were parts I enjoyed and parts I didn't. I liked the fluidity of the character's gender change mentally and emotionally. I found the story itself a bit cumbersome. Overall, for me, it was just ok.
Oooh. Hmm. This is a tough one. This book took me an uncharacteristically long time to read. Not because it was difficult, but because it didn't really hook me at any point. Then I blasted through the last 100 pages when it went from a plodding tale to a roller coaster ride because it was heaven and then hell and allmovingsoquickly. Then the brakes were slammed and it was all over. I felt like I had missed something. Did I miss something?
I don't suppose stories have to have a tidy ending, but what was the purpose of the gender switching other than being an interesting element? Why did the character become male again immediately after being brutalized as a female? Was that supposed to be deep? Why did the main character meet the girl in the cemetery and then just sort of settle? Did they literally become one in the end? Am I being too literal? I'm trying to figure out some of the symbolism here but I can't quite find it.
There were parts I enjoyed and parts I didn't. I liked the fluidity of the character's gender change mentally and emotionally. I found the story itself a bit cumbersome. Overall, for me, it was just ok.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 7, 2010
A strange book that I am not sure if I liked or not. I think this is Martell emerging as the writer who created Life of Pi, but he is nowhere near his later standard with this novel. Self is incredibly self-indulgent (perhaps purposefully, given the title). At times it works well and it makes some valuable reflections of life and existential dillemas, other times it comes across as completely contrived and hollow.
I found the frequency of sex scenes distracting from the story, not least of all because of their intricate, detailed descriptions, as with the frequent discussion of menstruation. I don't even know where to begin commenting on the spontaneous gender shift of the central character. Again something I think of more as a contrivance than serving any real purpose in an otherwise thoughtful novel.
I found the frequency of sex scenes distracting from the story, not least of all because of their intricate, detailed descriptions, as with the frequent discussion of menstruation. I don't even know where to begin commenting on the spontaneous gender shift of the central character. Again something I think of more as a contrivance than serving any real purpose in an otherwise thoughtful novel.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 19, 2013
At first, I was enjoying it... then I thought, How dare he? What the hell does he know? The joys, the wonderful gift of menstruations, the lovely cramps, the beautiful flow of stinky blood? Why doesn't he take it a step further and talk about the wonderful and pleasureable journey of cervical cancer, chemoradiation, brachytherapy and the close and loving relationship one develops with one's tumour why doesn't he?
I am usually very open minded and very eclectic about my reading and opinions, but this book rubbed me the wrong way. It's just so simplistic and ridiculous. It's like reading the same stupid meme all the way through.
Martel just doesn't have a clue as to what he is writing about : women. Seriously. He should stick to tigers.
He tried, he failed.
I am usually very open minded and very eclectic about my reading and opinions, but this book rubbed me the wrong way. It's just so simplistic and ridiculous. It's like reading the same stupid meme all the way through.
Martel just doesn't have a clue as to what he is writing about : women. Seriously. He should stick to tigers.
He tried, he failed.
November 14, 2007
coming off of life of pi, i had high expectations. i saw potential in the opening pages, in the play with gender identity, but it wasn't long before it fell flat. and i mean FLAT. remember in life of pi, when you're lost at sea convinced you'll never be found and drenched in boredom, excruciating boredom? well, that happens here too only without all the confidence that a couple hundred pages of compelling fiction can give you.
i say skip it. or read it and prove me wrong.
i say skip it. or read it and prove me wrong.
September 20, 2014
Probably the saddest ending of a book I have ever read. Sort of felt like the entire book was a set up to shove you off the cliff that was the end. Nevertheless, still a pretty captivating read. I probably marked down the most quotes from this book than any other I've read recently, but to me the story didn't necessarily match the beauty of the prose. Probably my least favorite Martel book, but that's not really saying much, considering they are all wonderful.
February 19, 2008
Weird and difficult at times. Addresses issues of gender and self (see title). Certainly not for everyone but if you are willing to read something weird and different and kinda good but not great...
June 1, 2008
I read this a long time ago, before Martel was famous and I enjoyed it. It's a difficult read in the sense that time and point of view are very flexible, not to mention that the plot is a bit cloudy.
October 3, 2007
As is typical of most Canadian fiction, this is a strange strange book. Yet it intrigued me and kept me reading. For that, I am appreciative. Would I recommend it? The jury is still out on that one.
October 30, 2011
I didn't finish this. I absolutely loved Life Of Pi but cannot waste anymore valuable reading time on this. It's not for me.
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