Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

2016; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 90; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2016.0274

1945-8134

Jim Hannan,

Themes in Literature Analysis

motion the two men’s stories, the chapters alternating between Ochoa and Tony, their similar histories of abuse and neglect, their complex romantic relationship. There isn’t a character in Tiger who is not in some way damaged, and more often than not that damage is of a sexual nature. At its heart, the novel is about regret, guilt, and very human characters learning how to live with themselves. It is about the transference of trauma and how we deal with it, whether we transfer it ourselves. The most fascinating moments come when Mayne directs her intensely empathetic and detailed eye on the inner struggles of the characters, most notably a harrowing scene in the Indian jungle involving the priest and a tiger. The issue with the novel, the frustrating bits, are that Mayne is so talented that she does not turn this kind of language off when describing even the most mundane actions. The same skill and poetry that will make your heart break when applied to the difficult inner lives of the characters will have you screaming for mercy when applied to a character taking a walk down a cold street in Brooklyn at night. Every detail lovingly rendered, expanded upon, and then expanded upon yet again. This Russian nesting doll–style of prose is both the novel’s blessing and curse, at points taking us to high moments of literary bliss and in others, as the author puts it, “wander[ing] in ever-widening circles, like a horse dragging a broken plow.” J. David Osborne Tigard, Oregon Guadalupe Nettel. The Body Where I Was Born. J. T. Lichtenstein, tr. New York. Seven Stories Press. 2015. 208 pages. “We perpetuate unto the newest generation the neuroses of our forbearers, wounds we keep inflicting on ourselves like a second layer of genetic inscription.” In The Body Where I Was Born, 2016 Neustadt Prize nominee Guadalupe Nettel describes the history of a young girl with an abnormality in her eye. This abnormality is the obsession of her mother, who adamantly insists on fixing her daughter. Nettel describes the resilience of children and their uncanny ability to adapt into any environment forced on them, whether it is the separation of parents, trauma, or constant critiques from family members. The story unfolds as the narrator speaks to her psychoanalyst about her past. The narrator recalls her relationships with her mother, father, grandmother, and the handful of friends she was able to connect with as a child. The narrator often compares herself to cockroaches because of their ability to overcome extinction and their ability to hide behind walls and in crevices unnoticed . She feels a kinship to the “ancestors of the trilobite,” and she hallucinates insect companions throughout her daily life as a child. She addresses being abandoned by her father and then her mother, mental illness , the isolation in being deemed “abnormal ,” and the romanticism with which we color our childhood memories. The Body Where I Was Born infuses the reader with an intimate portrait of the astute and wondrous depth that children use to observe and makes sense of humanity. The language in the book is poetic yet accessible, and at certain points Nettel hits you with a sentence so brilliant and poignant that you have to read it another time in order to fully indulge the narrator’s oral recollection of who she was. This book is fierce and from the gut. It is a testimony of a woman finding agency in her body because it is physical evidence that connects her to the planet and the rest of humanity. Rios De La Luz Tigard, Oregon Salman Rushdie. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. New York. Random House. 2015. 210 pages. In his captivating new novel, the title of which adds up to the magical storytelling Eduardo Lalo Simone David Frye, tr. University of Chicago Press Although at turns a passionate love story and a political and social commentary on life in Puerto Rico, Eduardo Lalo’s Simone primarily concerns writing: the singular word that he uses as the first sentence of his novel. The sparse narrative unflinchingly depicts two lonely and uncertain lovers as they meet and...