Shivanee Ramlochan > Recent Status Updates

Only Lestat would contrive a way to make a narrative he seldom narrates so deeply, entrenchedly Lestatian.

Oh, Lestat. So bitchy and immaculate already. I love you.

"A dull roar at first and then a pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a huge drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other." (22)

"I went over there empty. He turned out to be empty, too. I pressed myself to him thirstily. His body trembled, even the cheeks of his face. Among the yellowed English paperbacks spread across the floor of his room, we covered each other in kisses. Every day, the atmosphere was fleshy, wet, and breathy. [...] We drank milk as soon as it was set on the stoop and rose from our ashes again."

Goddess-damn, Roemer. God.

"Noble and naked, I wanted to lead my own life. I would lead that life of my own, even if there was no one else to tend to my wounds. I would not allow myself to be preyed upon every hour of the day and night. I would watch over my body. Keep vigil, the way priests watch over their temple. And if I granted him entrance, it would only be to bring me offerings. Myrrh, Incense. Gold. Especially Gold. All kinds of gold."

Robert Macfarlane says as a young man he loved mountains so much he thought he could at times die of that love for them, which is 100% the energy I crave in a future (deep-time) spouse.

In the world of this novel, you'll want to root for the living nonhumans as much as the mortals of flesh and bone. It feels like the way the world should be, and maybe, once upon a time, was. And maybe too, in some hidden and sacred places, might yet still be.

"For it is a land without borders, a lover's body. You discover it, not at once, but step by anxious step, losing your way, your sense of direction, treading its sunlit valleys and rolling fields, finding it warm and welcoming, and then, hidden in quiet corners, running into caverns invisible and unexpected, pits where you stumble and cut yourself." (p.78)

It's been a long time of wanting to read this, dear Sylvia. And I'm loving it in all the ways I expected I would, but you, my darling, wrote some profoundly racist shit, didn't you?

Shafak tells us that memory lives in living objects, too, not only people: that when a tree dies, so too does the memory of someone else, buried with it forever.

It's difficult to believe I'm so captivated by a retelling of Jane Eyre, a book I hold in high and sharp critical sight, but I'm not surprised Mimi Matthews has done it. Her gentle, powerful worldbuilding is in fine, atmospheric effect here: palpable and chilling.

Cole invites and obscures, masks and excavates: the reading is less linear than I imagined, but I also don't know what I imagined. If I had any preconceptions about this book, they've been evacuated from me, rolled into a dusty carpet. The reading is only half of it, or less: in Blind Spot, sight matters. You imagine you're seeing these photographs like Cole saw them, but maybe they're taking reverse images of you.

Sharp intimations of ruin, sacred places I didn't think existed anywhere but in the dead-archives. Something strange is up with the light in these poems -- and I want to run headlong into it.