I'm doing a count-down to my return. My flight is tomorrow night, so I will reach home the next morning. I have taken Monday off, so I have some time to get laundry done and catch up on sleep.
I will probably be down with the post-holiday blues.
Oh a reading note: I have finally finished Sodom and Gomorrah! Yay! It has only taken me 11 months! What a book! What a whiny prick of a narrator!
The narrator makes me want to smack him for his whiny jealousies for Albertine. It's not that he loves her, but rather, he wants to possess her for himself alone. When he is assured of his possession over her, he is bored, and he sends her away, claiming it is a mistake and he will not marry her. But the moment he is informed of Albertine's association with Mlle Vinteuil and her "professional Sapphist" friend (pray, do tell: what is a "professional Sapphist"? It's a career choice, like say, a professional plumber, a professional footballer? They get paid?) -- he is wrecked with jealousy and he breaks into tears. He lies to her about a woman he was supposed to marry, and he packs Albertine off to Paris.
The book ends with him telling his Mama he wants to marry Albertine.
This man is sick. He is obsessed with the bittersweetness of the unfulfilled desire. It's a kind of emotional masochism. It's almost like a soap-opera. I give it 3 out of 5 stars for sheer melodrama. I can't wait to pick up the next volume though -- I heard the action really picks up from there on.
Meanwhile, I am about 118 pages into Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.
2 comments:
oh dear... is this book highly rated? i guess it must have been important in some way or other, in its time, to still be in print...
but perhaps not one for today?
Highly rated? That's a good question. It's one of those books I guess, a lot more people have heard about than read? but it has this status in French literature, so we must read it?
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