Clara Schindler > Recent Status Updates

The way Saunders talks about a story likens it to the mind’s awareness of any perception: you perceive something, you your mind immediately makes predictions about what to expect next or about what this sensory input means. A story is the same: with each line that you uncover with your attention, you update your expectations (and are disappointed or satisfied)

Laclos proving to be an early feminist with his Madame de Merteuil letter that explains the lot of women in that time

Almost gave it up but now it’s getting interesting again, talking about the paradoxes of Socratic inquiry. Everything before - the review of ethical theories in western philosophy - was not engaging at all

The narration device of telling the story from the perspective of the wax child is interesting, it kind of serves like an omniscient narrator who is biased towards the women since they are the ones who have it life

Already loving this so much!! I am immediately immersed in the setting, and the narration is so so skilled. The author manages to narrate in the third person and yet it’s very clear when we are taking Elwood’s point of view versus Gaunt’s. And I can already tell this star-crossed lover story is going to break my heart 🥲

A secunda parte “cartografias” é menos forte que a primeira

A Ana Martins faz a poesia parecer leve, engraçada e delicada. Por exemplo no poema “Papel de seda”, é descrito como houve um tempo em que se usava papel de seda para separar as palavras e as imagens de um livro. O poema se pergunta que preocupações levaram a essa decisão. Mas a narradora só se preocupa em rasgar o papel de seda, “erótico como roupa íntima”. Genial!

So far really enjoying learning about Peri's personality, her arrival at Oxford (so many goo descriptions of the effects Oxbridge has on you as an international student!), the setting of Instanbul

Also enjoying how Shafak reveals certain parts of the plot early on, for example that Peri will never finish her degree at Oxford, without explaining what will lead to that, so it gets you keen to read more

A current theme so far that I find very stimulating is that what mathematics and literature have in comment is some form of constraint, which often is the springboard for creativity. Constraint in poetry is the most obvious (poetry is literary the art of writing with very specific imposed constraints), but contraint in fiction also exists: literary form, structure

Really enjoying this! Sarah Hart writes in a very pedagogical way that makes it impossible not to be interested in whatever she is trying to explain to you