Kate > Recent Status Updates

There are some glimmers but this is such a drag omg.

No desire to connect w randoms on Goodreads as unfortunately the same thing applies here as on every social media site. Ya nasty etc..

Yah happy to eat my humble pie as ever. This got way better around midway through, with the Infermiterol but especially around a funeral. Like, poignantly good. Horribly resonant. I enjoy reading about the narrator’s relationships with other humans but find her self-isolation a deeply unpleasant read and her misanthropy more so. She is mildly more sympathetic now tho, which helps.

Where to even start. The protagonist and everyone around her (except maybe her friend Reva) is so deeply unpleasant I hope the NYC in 2000 setting hurries up and delivers relief by air.

Very sobering and arresting glimpses into the protagonist’s childhood, her inner world, the men around her, are keeping me going or t least in the territory of “Get this over with ASAP” as opposed to tapping out entirely.

Enjoying this so far

My head KOd by work (just about recovering from my reward for back to back events: COVID) is an inhospitable environment 4 the attention Suttree requires. May benefit from being read on a device with an inbuilt dictionary - am having to look up oodles of words. Some of these are McCarthyisms, so after getting smacked out of the immersion I get smacked by shame at my lack of will to infer meaning.

Finished Franchesco’s bit, which picked up halfway through (page 80 or so): when it starts to show how he interprets life and the people and world in it in his work, how they are reflected back, and how people react to how they are depicted. Glad I resisted the urge to give up. 🙂

Not really found my perch with this yet. First few pages especially turbulent in that regard. Ali Smith’s characteristic reverence for small joys & time passing stews in these pages, but it’s so far not been enough to offset the fact I so far don’t find the character’s life as an artist interesting & CBA with overburdened sentence structures. Hope powering through gives way to enjoyment.

🫥