The Woodland Witch

Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage.  I don't think I've felt this confused about a novel since Combray . Truly, opening the book to two full pages of a spiderweb of characters was daunting, to say the least. It reminded me of the time I attempted to read a story wherein the cast was made up of 700 characters... safe to say that I was unsuccessful.  Moving past that, the childhood that Elena the narrator describes was to me, riddled with psychological clues--insecure attachment, abandonment issues, family issues (mommy issues, so to speak)--about how Elena's life might unfold. Unfortunately, I was not surprised.  The entire story--even the way it begins with an almost vengeful feeling from Elena in the prologue, wanting to foil Lila's plan to disappear by taking it upon herself to write the book--seems to me, as a third party, like an unhealthy entanglement. Elena and Lila are everything to each other in the most literal sense of the word--not in a romantic kind ...

  Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage.  I feel as though I've said this about every book I read so far, but I hope that it does not come off as disingenuous when I say that this was an intriguing read.  Tragically, the Spanish Civil War is not my strongest suit in history--although, I've had to grapple with the discipline many times in order to remember the most basic facts--so I read this novel almost as if it were entirely a work of fiction, accepting the historical facts of the matter as Cercas put them and taking everything in stride as if they were the rules of the story.  So instead of following the historical thread of events, I entertained myself by identifying several, somewhat arbitrary connections to previous books that I read throughout our literary journey together--and there were a good few. For instance, Cercas always comes back to the concept of writing--it ties the novel together a bit loosely, I think, because while it seems clear that i...

Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage.  The journey back to the cottage after last week's adventures (featuring Calvino) has not been without its bumps and mishaps--I nearly wrote about the wrong book because I misread the schedule, and was a good chunk into The Soldiers of Salamis  before I checked the lectures and realized I was a whole week off. Thank goodness I caught that in time, but it also means I have yet to finish Money to Burn  at the time I am writing this very post. Returning to the topic of the novel itself, I am rather refreshed by the new genre that Money to Burn  presents. Despite the fact that the stories we have encountered thus far do vary in their styles and themes, this one seems a bit more pronounced (for lack of a better word). There was a sense of urgency created by all the heist jargon in the very beginning, which felt like a much faster introduction than the ones that came before--I say faster to mean that I was quicker to become immer...

Hello everyone,  This week I'm breaking character because what is this book. I remember being so sad when I was reading blog guidelines at the start of term and seeing that Tumblr got a specific restriction (which of course is probably for good reason, but still) BUT this was such an interesting read that it makes up for the loss, even if it was a bit slow at times (I learned early on that it got very purple).  Admittedly it did trigger a certain feeling of rebellion (one that you'll be familiar with if you are also a fellow consumer of reader-insert content) that comes with works using the second perspective, like what do you mean I did this. No I didn't.  The biggest 'no I didn't' for me was probably the assumption that 'Reader' is male, like okay. I think the very beginning was just vague enough that I was nodding along, like yeah I can get with this. I believe that this is happening. Okay, I went to a bookstore and bought this book despite all these ...

 Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. First of all, I hope all of you had a restful reading break, and enjoyed reading The Time of the Doves . As per usual, I find myself sitting down to write a little before making it to the end of the novel, but at this point I'd like to put down my thoughts before I forget them reading the rest of the story.  As some of you may have guessed from this week's title, I do not like Quimet. I think that he, alongside all the frustrating male characters we've encountered so far, make me even more uncomfortable because there is a good chance that one could encounter them in real life. There is no reassurance that they will remain fictional figures, any of us could meet a Quimet and that  is truly terrifying to me.  If Natalia represents a woman's life gone to ruin, Quimet represents the reason.  My goodness, the things he does to marriage's good name--if I can even give it a good name after seeing what it's done to poor, poor...

 Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage.  I can't even begin to tell you the number of times I sighed during this week's read, and that's only for the beginning. But what an optimal time it was to read Agostino , considering that I recently learned a little more about Freud's ideas (what a silly, peculiar figure he was) and coincidentally was revisiting the rendition of Oedipus that I grew up on.  It's this thread that I'd like to pull on this week--especially because it is relevant to the question presented in lecture (what kind of effect does the omission of certain details create?). I learned the story of Oedipus from a particular series of books on Greek mythology (no, it was not Percy Jackson) when I was very young, and the choice words that the narration used throughout the series to signify the occurrence of sex were 'married' and 'fell in love' or 'made love', which certainly seem like curious and inaccurate substitutes now . ...

Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage.  I feel as though this week's read has been the most intriguing and immersive so far, and though again I write these thoughts before I have even finished the book, this time it's really because I'd like to get these thoughts down before I forget them.  First of all, how curious is it that my mind would compare The Shrouded Woman  to Brontë's  Wuthering Heights ? This may be a funny, even ridiculous thought in hindsight, should I go on to have a greater understanding of both these novels (perhaps even this week, once discussions take place), but the atmospheric energy and voice of the shrouded woman (Ana María, because I would never write a title in intentional lowercase) was to me, reminiscent of Brontë's Catherine--especially in one of Ana María's first memories when she recalls her childhood and Ricardo (is it too ridiculous if I were to call him her Heathcliff?).  Hopefully it isn't ridiculous--or insulting--for...