a_reader’s Reviews > Solenoid > Status Update

Made it to Part Four! 🎉

Read up to Part 3. Long descriptions of one nightmare after another. The body mutilated in grotesque manners I hate to think about. My fears written down and I’m forced to confront pure evil. I can only handle one chapter at a time, and often not even everyday. It’s too much to be in this world for a more extensive time.

“Diseases, parasites, deformities, the ruins of the most noble temple on the luminous face of the world: the blessed human body” This pretty much sums up this brick of a book in one sentence.

A real mind fuck. I’m enjoying about 95%, some of the digressions are tedious but they’re few and far between.

Just read what is probably the most excruciating passage detailing dental work. I pray that I will never have to experience such misery and suffering myself.

Ok, the scene at the school with the bloody tooth just made my stomach turn.

Cartarescu’s imagination is staggering. A blue gelatin dome is placed over your childhood neighborhood that hardens to stone over time. “The neighborhoods of childhood exist nowhere on Earth.”

Okay, the idea of tattooing your internal organs is a new one for me.

“Nothing is strange to a child, because he lives in the strange, this dreams and old memories seem made from the same subt.”

Just encountered the first digression that I didn’t care for: Caty the chemistry teacher.