Jan Priddy > Recent Status Updates

so very French

<spoiler>Violette's daughter was deliberately killed by her husband's sex-toy, and Violette kills her + probably others, and probably killed her ex was her fist kill.</spoiler>

And since revealing th lie, the story becomes darker and darker. I'm sorry for that. I can manage innocence suffering. Deliberate ugliness is beyond me. The world today, my country wrong again.

I find this interesting, as she claims not to be writing "as a Christian" and assumptions that she is are in error. People have at various times assumed I am a Christian or Jew, that perhaps I have some other faith. And that might be because, though I will claim to be "politely agnostic," I am interested in religion and have been since childhood. I am respectful of faith, even while finding some faiths absurd.

Preface wherein Sayers warns that the ability to read the word CAT is not the same as understanding what a cat is, that the confusion of information, opinion, and fact about Christianity ""is transformed in the popular mind to a confused jumble of mythological and pathological absurdity."

As a teacher, I was horrified by the need to teach the difference between fact and opinion.. So I understand her frustration.

This is what I am reading, except I have the Book Club edition with a different cover, and with the Preface, it has over 240 pages.

...her father beats the backs of her legs for running away from home. With a metal garden post. He beats her until she's bruised and bleeding. But who does she blame? Her mother—of course, she does. Her mother hit her too and that was the reason she ran away. She accuses/blames her mother of favoritism, but her father only seemed to take her side sometimes because she mattered less to him. It was all about #1 son.

I attended a writing retreat with Gish Jen, and I'm curious to discover whether this story aligns with what she told me there.

I read 34 pages and then the last 15... and I think I'm done

My copy trans. by American Margaret Swanson Lacy with an unfortunate pink-tinted cover. The image here is closer to Cassatt's painting and with yellow title.

Well. One question is answered. Two to go.

I am 2/3 through this book and still waiting to understand what this novel is doing. Not horror, but kind of horrible. They get the animals wrong. They almost always do. The goats. I like multiple POV characters, but while the writing is excellent, the situation was too pitiful. I taught students in similar family situations [seriously] and this is just so very sad. Sad doesn't cut it.

To me, it's still dysfunctional-family instead of some creepy version of fantasy. I'm enjoying being in the heads of multiple characters.