jaemie > Recent Status Updates

darl’s libido as a 28 or something year old is actually eye opening for me knowing and being familiar with his overall character - his deep observational skills are intimate, this night time act with himself is a mirror to that. it’s not erotica, but rather, another facet of his intuitive and perceptive character; i’m interested in his hyper aware eventual breakdown during their journey.

end of cora’s chapter. “someone comes through the hall. it is darl. he does not look in as he passes the door. eula watches him as he goes on and passes from sight again toward the back. her hand rises and touches her beads lightly, and then her hair. when she finds me watching her, her eyes go blank.” i’ve never seen someone portray unrequited love in a dry, but almost sensual way.

darl starts this novel off strong; strength in physical imagery and ends the chapter in an unsettling way, which i think is the perfect opening for the novel’s dry horror. i loved jesmyn ward’s preface, it was beautifully written. hearing a black woman’s history growing up in the same mississippi faulkner wrote so beautifully and intimately about was really something else.

took a pause cause i watched the netflix movie and now my brain is too absorbed with the story to read the book again

“But I never dared ask Mrs Danvers what she did about it. She would have looked at me in scorn, smiling that freezing, superior smile of hers, and I can imagine her saying: ‘There were never any complaints when Mrs de Winter was alive.’

Mrs Danvers is as chilling as she is demented. Manderely isn’t somewhere the second Mrs de Winter lived, it was somewhere she had survived

i will never not forget this opening- “last night i dreamt i went to manderley again.”

it captures the spirit so early on, i feel war torn into pieces before we’ve started

seriously am in love with this hotel. not in love with mrs. van hopper though, americans are always snobs lol even in the 1930s

honestly, there was no other better way to end this book than connell going off to new york; and yet they still love each other. even it’s over time and over a far distance. this book killed me. as it should.

OK. one of my biggest fears— a former school mate mine dying while we’re in graduate school. the timeline is just messed up. poor rob.

also this boom should just be called “depressed people” because genuinely what’s wrong with the world. especially marianne’s family, those people in the world. what is wrong with them. sweden, seriously…

haven’t logged any thoughts, haven’t had time to properly articulate them TT

i have paused reading at the moment, school is up the rear

you know me, he says
i did once.

not marianne calling jamie just plain ugly hahaha

denise is nicer in the show than the book tbh

her and jamie are just weird - at least gareth was somewhat normal (cough no pun intended), just a little agitating.

on pp. 132 - "seen from his point of view, she says, you're a lot taller, and you're the person who used to fuck his girlfriend." ALRIGHT OKAY.

connell's response: "that's a nice way of putting it."

DAMN MARIANNE.

the teacher paula is HELLA WEIRD. poor guy TvT

"three months later - july 2012"

i love joanna, peggy is a vibe too. niall is great (these are marianne and connell's respective friends)

(cont..) or a year after in trinity when he suspects she's pregnant after she starts crying about a pregnancy in a movie they watched. she says she's not pregnant but wonders what he'd do or say if she was. he says without thinking that he'd support her and be involved because "it felt like the thing to say, that was all." even though he had no prospect of providing for her or a baby.

i think connell's issue is he too readily says things he's not sure he means yet. this is not to suggest he doesn't mean them. he just says them without confidence / certainty. for example, when he first tells marianne that he loves her after she opens up to him about her abusive father / family in april 2011.

she smiled. you wouldn’t have to be involved, she said.
well, i would support you, whatever you decided.

he didn’t know why he was saying he would support her, since he had virtually no spare income and no prospect of having any. it felt like the thing to say, that was all.

i’m gonna read this again come late september

i’m in my pausing books era. i will finish this book when i feel like i’d like to pick it back up again.

i’m in my pausing books era. i will finish this book when i feel like i’d like to pick it back up again.

end of november 2011. he knows she’s acting funny and coy because she wants to show him she’s not bitter. he could say: i’m really sorry for what i did to you, marianne. he always thought, if he did see her again, that’s what he would say. somehow she doesn’t seem to admit that possibility, or maybe he’s being cowardly, or both. i don’t know, he says. good question, i don’t know.

i like how they don’t work in extremes. it’s not “you broke my heart, i hate you,” it’s “i’m dating someone new, yeah, but i saw you at a party and simply told you i missed you.” it makes the narrative less caricaturized. she’s not doing better than ever without him, she just grew up while they were apart. she’s not the hottest most popular, she just put on a maroon lip.

monikers part ii.

earlier i talked about marianne’s avoidance of actually being othered vs. normal, not hyperbolic, societal divide. connell, in college, is the same way. he’s protective but not in a labeled or programmed way. he’s introspective and anxious without being overly poetic and shy. their qualities make up their personalities, not define them.

i love the aspect of being nice and well-liked has trapped connell in this state of having to hide marianne away.

“a joke doesn’t become a moniker” - what i mean by this, is, when people laugh and say marianne is mental or has mental issues, that doesn’t become what she’s known by. it doesn’t consume her personality in the way narrative tends to blow up a singular detail and create the character from or around it. joke about mental health automatically = reality. versus a joke just being a joke, not a plot line.