Olya Z > Recent Status Updates

It feels like a fever dream or a aesthetic nightmare, with a living forest hunting down people.

“Monsters recognize monsters.”

this is the book where atmosphere and action are doing much more work for you than character psychology. not my genre, apparently

“work is the force acting upon an object to displace it…”

The Central European setting feels deliberately unglamorous, and the events that define István’s childhood are really disturbing. Thanks to that uncomfortable authenticity, the book feels genuine, and very hard to read.

“Lately he had realised he was learning to live with non-existence. He could not mourn for long the passing of something–himself–that he could no longer quite recall.”

“They could manage your descent, but they couldn’t prevent it. Stay away then, monitor your own decline, then when it was no longer possible to work, or live with dignity, finish it yourself.”

“I was lying down, but could not sleep. I felt myself burning with a kind of happy fever, which was none other than life.”

“As a man, did I know myself? I was only just born and could not yet know what I was being born into. That is what had to be learned.”

“Was it finally that morning that I was going to be born?”

I have thus been that little wretch who knew only hunger, physical humiliation, poverty, fear and degradation.

From such galling attitudes as these I have drawn reasons for glory. “That's probably what I am,” I would say to myself, “but at least I'm aware of it, and such awareness destroys shame and affords me a feeling that few know: pride.

“In short, the greater my guilt in your eyes, the more whole, the more totally assumed, the greater will be my freedom. The more perfect my solitude and uniqueness.”

over 300 pages without a single moment of anticipation, fascination, or discomfort, even. but you can, obviously, recognise Byatt’s erudition and craft clearly while feeling nothing

“I become so good. Then, even better. I choose music, cheap white wine, porn. I read books, get jobs, get a flat. I meet Josh. We’re best friends. He takes care of me. I take care of him back. It’s all good. It’s all great. I survive.”

“I am … I stuttered. I am … At first I could get no further than this. I am … I am the Beloved Child of the House. Yes. Immediately I felt calmer. Was any other identity even necessary? I did not think that it was.”