The Left Parenthesis

by Muriel Villanueva, Megan Berkobien (Translator), María Cristina Hall (Translator)

The narrator of this novel, a writer, arrives by train at Casetes Beach with her month-old daughter on her back. She prepares to spend a few weeks in one of the cottages by the sand. Her husband has recently passed away and she needs to open the parenthesis of her life: to forget something, and to discover something else. But the appearance of an overly assertive starfish precedes a series of disturbing events, and as the narrator begins to lose a hold on reality, we are immersed in the uncertain territory of allegory.

With a lively and direct style and overwhelming poetic force, Muriel Villanueva guides us through the daily motions of life, and at the same time a fantastic journey of a woman in search of her own maturity.

Genres: Literary Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 20, 2022

Reviews

[mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5★ The Left Parenthesis is short, unusual, and surreal novella. At first, I was often confused until I got into the flow. Muriel travels with her baby girl Mar to the seaside town where she plans to write, mourn, and, most importantly, find herself again.

Thanks to Open Letter for the ARC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review, and all opinions are my own.

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a hard time with this Spanish novella. We have a woman who has lost her husband and retreats to a cabin on an isolated Catalan beach, with her baby daughter, to write.

It starts very well: "The train takes off, I turn my body one hundred eighty degrees and, right past the other platform, I see a brilliant sea and a white sail unhurriedly cutting through it. I’m traveling in old jeans and a nursing shirt the color of faded sea. Against my breasts now heavy with milk, inside an ergonomic carrier, a baby—my child— sleeps with her face to me. I’m thirty-eight and a widow."

The beach has the form of a left parenthesis and I suspect the idea is that at some point the right parenthesis will close a period of mourning for her husband and reflection.

Unfortunately, as the story progressed, I found it more and more difficult to engage with the character or the story, which in turn made me less open to appreciate the points that were being made. When you are somewhat distant it also makes surreal elements (there are strange starfish in this story) and symbolism harder to accept.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some interesting and often gorgeous writing here, but for such a short, strange book it seemed a bit repetitive.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎]

gooey and vague.

[el · Rating 2 out of 5]

unwieldy surrealism for a book so brief

[Alix · Rating 3 out of 5]

A weird little novella that’s a metaphor for grief, motherhood, and rebirth. The story revolves around the narrator coming to terms with her widowhood and being a single mother. Her marriage wasn’t a great one, and she often reflects on the times where she felt her husband was a child and she had to mother him due to their large age gap. Yet, she loved him deeply which is evidenced in her grief.

I liked the whole concept of the parenthesis and her trying to figure out where her parenthesis ends and if she can reach that end. Overall, this is a very metaphorical story that I liked but didn’t love.

[Isa González · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5/5
M'ha semblat molt interessant la manera de retorçar la realitat de la Muriel. La prosa és exquisita i encara que el llibre és durillo, el final m'ha agradat molt.

[Mahnoor · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you let go of the wounded child and the controlling mother within you? How do you avoid making your child feel like they need to mother you, and how do you mother your child without overextending that role to others? How do you create a love that doesn’t suffocate either person? How do you sit comfortably in silence, but speak when you need to?
THE LEFT PARENTHESIS is the most touching and surreal book I’ve read in a while. I read it in one sitting, and it has become a new favorite. The book refuses to tell you what it is exactly. So here is what it is to me. It’s allegorical without being obtuse, exploring the standards we set for ourselves and our loved ones, along with the distrust that can sabotage our relationships. It is about the body, and the heart, and the expectations and restrictions placed upon both. It is about writing until your pen is empty and you’ve spoken your piece. It is about forgiving yourself and allowing yourself to forgive other people. It is about motherhood, in all of its various manifestations and permutations. It’s about guilt and love and evolving relationships. It is about the “kinesthetic, visceral” nature of the written word, as described by the epigraph and reaffirmed by the stunning illustrations peppered throughout the book. These sketches bring the book’s imagery to life without constraining your imagination, because above all, the book is about being able to imagine a life for yourself that exceeds the limitations you’ve set for yourself.
The narrator is writing her novel in a beachside cottage, with her nine-month-old daughter and a starfish clinging to her body. She has come here to open a parenthesis in her life, a pause from reality that represents her rebirth. She is searching for the closing parenthesis, but she isn’t sure what it looks like. Newly widowed, she is unsure what to do with her mother-of-my-husband persona. She navigates the dichotomy between mothering and being mothered. Her body crumbles. She sees men as either needy or capable of terrible things. She believes she is searching for people who won’t mother her nor want her to adopt them. But really, she’s in search of someone to care for her, for once, and someone who doesn’t frighten her. She is buried. Her baby, for a moment, talks. Her dead husband Skypes her relentlessly. She is neither mother nor child. She learns to ask for help. She realizes her child must never mother her. She learns to forgive herself and others. She learns what it means to live with uncertainty—with an open parenthesis.

[Nora Rawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me of a few other recent works in translation about motherhood, but with a purity and logic of its own. Perhaps due to the length I didn't find myself frustrated by abtuseness or vagueness; things were always moving, evolving, and the leaps of imaginative metaphor made sense. A lovely meditation on becoming parents, on evolving love, and in fact on an age gap relationship--the unique terrain of it, not as any generic idea, but as involving two individuals, relating to one another, growing with one another, doing their best.

[Colton Walworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per un llibre breu, uns coments breus. Un viatge d’una dona viuda escriptora amb un nadó on el dolor i la pèrdua requereix un renaixement surrealista on la realitat i la fantasia mescla sense contenció. Àgil, colpidora i ben escrit.

Moltes gràcies!  

[Mariona Teruel Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

No crec q llegeixi res tan bonic en tot aquest any! Quina delícia encara amb la pell de gallina. Se que algun dia em tatuaré un parèntesi esquerre.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

A concoction passing for a novel

[Ada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sense més.

[Júlia Gumà Martí · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obrir-se el cor.

[Reisse Myy Fredericks · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s as if an Aubrey Plaza movie—“Black Bear,” maybe any of them—and a GANNI ad came together under the banner of contemporary Catalan symbolist storytelling. Reminiscent in parts of “It Lasts Forever And Then It’s Over” and “The Seas,” especially in its literal use of syntax as an embodied plot device. Olga Ravn’s “The Work” also comes to mind. A zombie thriller meets Venusian classicism, with a twist of Leonora Carrington and the horrors of motherhood, possession, loss.

Strangely metafictional and told along a nonlinear, surrealist timeline, the story whisks together the traumas inflicted on a woman’s body (and mind) by men and childbirth—a chicken and egg. The narrator wrestles with the dualities of love and fear, grief and grammar, comfort and selfhood, writing and silence, as her body literally falls apart under (wait for it) the erotic fixation of a predatory female starfish that slowly eats her alive. She is consumed, thematically and metaphorically—an apt and tragic representation of womanhood, unbounded—even as the writer exists in conversation with herself as a character.

And somehow, all these elements mature together perfectly, percolating into a hardy, balanced blend. A short but wildly engaging and porous read. Language at its most playful. I loved it.

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Villanueva has written an interesting book: strange and surreal, whilst also beautiful and warm. The narrator and the author blur, as do the sparse details of the plot, even as the foundational thread of the narrator's love for her daughter remains.

For such a slim book there is a breadth of theme: dependence on another human being is the most prominent. This is shown in motherhood primarily, both the emotional effects and the physical impacts of giving birth. Too, the book is occupied codependency, with mothering. Care unwanted or unasked for such that 'husband-as-child' and 'wife-as-mother' stifle a marriage.

The language is beautiful, as in this description of the left parenthesis of the title:
"I began writing to close a parenthesis, to escape a widowhood that had its knife at my throat, and to mourn as if drowning in an evaporated puddle."

I'm very glad I read 'The Left Parenthesis', though I may have to come back and reread. I'm interested to know what my impression of the book will in a few weeks time.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Torn between a 3 and a 4. I loved the poetic style of writing, but none of the parts that referred back to her husband worked for me at all. And the ending was disappointing. And I felt that the metaphors were a bit heavy-handed. I did enjoy the writing style and the dreamy quality of the novella, though.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally written in Catalan. A beautiful and peculiar novella that embodies the transformation that grief might wreak on a person, how very real that literary symbolism can truly be. Lovely and strange tiny book.

[Marina Furmanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was like reading through someone else’s dream. Flowing, unpredictable, connected, and disconnected all at once. Each sentence was sculpted with allegory and depth. The book was short and sweet. A nice light and quick read.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A curious little book about about motherhood, life

[Míriam Freixas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una història preciosa i al·legòrica molt ben escrita.

[Ceraphina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavy in the symbolism for grief and loss, but I didn't fall in love with this one.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. I loved the weird writing. I loved the metaphors. I loved the starfish.