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My Monk
“Harriet Zabrosky believed in love at first sight-- until it happened to her. He became a monk. She moved back to America.”
This book weaves a story of sadness, humor, and pathos.
In My Monk author Elizabeth Dembrowsky weaves a story of sadness, humor, and pathos. A young, idealistic American arrives in England for graduate school and finds herself involved in an unlikely friendship with a young, temperamental Romanian poet who is nurturing religious aspirations. Harriet- a liberal atheist- draws closer and closer to her fellow graduate student, attracted to him because of their differences. Alternately invoking back story and taking Harriet forward in time to her life in New York City, the novel is unique in format and style: it includes nearly 90 footnotes of anecdotes, hundreds of parenthetical phrases that express digression and free association, and a dozen original poems. My Monk is a delightful story of love and growth. It reminds us to be open to the wild ride that love can take us on, but also to remember that we don't control where it will leave us.
This book weaves a story of sadness, humor, and pathos.
In My Monk author Elizabeth Dembrowsky weaves a story of sadness, humor, and pathos. A young, idealistic American arrives in England for graduate school and finds herself involved in an unlikely friendship with a young, temperamental Romanian poet who is nurturing religious aspirations. Harriet- a liberal atheist- draws closer and closer to her fellow graduate student, attracted to him because of their differences. Alternately invoking back story and taking Harriet forward in time to her life in New York City, the novel is unique in format and style: it includes nearly 90 footnotes of anecdotes, hundreds of parenthetical phrases that express digression and free association, and a dozen original poems. My Monk is a delightful story of love and growth. It reminds us to be open to the wild ride that love can take us on, but also to remember that we don't control where it will leave us.
136 pages, Paperback
First published July 29, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2020
First thoughts:
Really fun style! Highly meta, a combination of stream-of-consciousness journal, slam poetry, E.E Cummings. My only complaint right off the bat is that the author seems to be trying too hard to be literary. She even said at one point "maybe you're reading this for school," which sort of comes across as arrogant.
Final thoughts:
In the end, the style doesn't hold up for a full 300 pages. With nested upon nested upon nested parentheticals AND multipage footnotes, you had to keep a stack of threads in your head. Reading this book was like manually resolving a recursive function. Even that was okay for a while; I just had to only read it when I was very attentive. I was enjoying the first third, since it was so strange and quirky, and it made me laugh several times. However, eventually, it became tedious. Maybe it's just because I don't like poetry, and this book is absolutely written by a poet. (I was grateful for the multipage footnote of verse that started by saying that if you don't like poetry, skip this. I did.) It felt like a collection of a prolific writer of stories and poems creating a framing story for them instead of publishing an anthology.
The absolute best part of this book was the side story about the exam for the Foreign Service.
Really fun style! Highly meta, a combination of stream-of-consciousness journal, slam poetry, E.E Cummings. My only complaint right off the bat is that the author seems to be trying too hard to be literary. She even said at one point "maybe you're reading this for school," which sort of comes across as arrogant.
Final thoughts:
In the end, the style doesn't hold up for a full 300 pages. With nested upon nested upon nested parentheticals AND multipage footnotes, you had to keep a stack of threads in your head. Reading this book was like manually resolving a recursive function. Even that was okay for a while; I just had to only read it when I was very attentive. I was enjoying the first third, since it was so strange and quirky, and it made me laugh several times. However, eventually, it became tedious. Maybe it's just because I don't like poetry, and this book is absolutely written by a poet. (I was grateful for the multipage footnote of verse that started by saying that if you don't like poetry, skip this. I did.) It felt like a collection of a prolific writer of stories and poems creating a framing story for them instead of publishing an anthology.
The absolute best part of this book was the side story about the exam for the Foreign Service.
April 23, 2014
I actually did like her writing style, I enjoy ramblings... but I'm not sure it WAS ever woven into a story; the book was made up of conversations and thoughts strung together in a linear (mostly) timeframe - with half the book made up of (sometimes related) typography tangents. Captured me enough to continue reading but not enough to recommend.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews