Fog

Reading memory, reading memoir, my thoughts on books by Annie Ernaux and Carmen Maria Machado and a reading update.

Hallo, it's me, Laura King. A thing about me is that if I don't write about a book as I'm reading it or immediately upon finishing, it will just be lost to the mists of time forevermore. Obviously, the more I liked a book the more I'll remember, and for books I loved in years gone by I'll often remember the feeling of reading it so strongly, or I'll be able to tell you exactly where I was or what was happening in the rest of my life at the time, but please do not ask me about the plot. 

This is why I've kept a book diary in the last few years. I’m most of the way through my third such notebook now, with a snazzy new one lined up - and full of new notebook potential! I haven’t been as consistent with writing in it lately, perhaps because I’ve fallen into the bad habit of making initial notes in my drafts of this newsletter and just keeping what I wanted to publish, instead of using the notebook as a space for my initial thoughts, and not necessarily intended for a wider audience. But, I'm sure I'll get back into the habit again soon. Keeping a notebook works really well for me because it allows me to deep dive into a topic at the time, maybe engaging with it on a deeper level than just a short review or summary, but when I reread it it serves as a kind of time capsule from my reading past.

While this particular habit may not be for everyone, I would recommend to other readers to keep any sort of log if they feel their reading memory is a bit foggy. Before I kept this particular notebook, I had been logging what I read on Goodreads (or sometimes a similar app, Storygraph), and I still use an app to keep track of what I read when and a very basic star rating (and sometimes a one or two sentence review) so I can jog my memory over time.  I think this kind of app, or even a simple list, is really handy for readers who find they can't ever remember what they read. This can be annoying if you can’t remember anything you’ve liked lately to recommend to or gift a friend, or if you often almost re-buy a book you already have read (guilty.) 

I think I've mentioned before, I am endlessly fascinated by books about memory, and particularly how this is handled in fiction, which I want to get into more in a kind of “sequel” newsletter next week. However, this week when thinking about brain fog, and “book fog” and writing to record memory, I also reflected on two excellent memoirs I've read that also explicitly deal with the subject of memory.  I haven't written about these books here before but I want to make sure I remember to recommend them.

In "A Girl's Story", Annie Ernaux revisits the summer of 1958 when she was in her late teens and she worked at a summer camp. There, she had her first taste of freedom where the councillors played at adult life, and spent two nights with a man older and more worldly than herself. His subsequent disinterest in her, and the shame she felt then and at how it prompted her actions in the years to follow, from self destruction to restriction, are explored in a fragmented, fluid way that mimics the main "point" of the project, that of the impossibility of accurate remembering and representation of this experience. 

This was my second Annie Ernaux after Happenings and on both occasions I wondered how the author would be able to sustain interest in so many books about her life (she has several others I have not yet read), particularly as her focus seems to be more on the act of remembering, and even the act of writing a memoir. However, this is exactly what I'm interested in, the writing or rewriting of the self through the gulf of memory, and the difficulty of understanding that gap between lived reality and our current experience of the past. This book is sometimes repetitive, or sometimes seems to flit back and forth in time,  or as Ernaux writes: "I can only write about what happens next by jumping from one image or scene to another... The progression of life between two images has long been invisible to me." The girl she was, "the girl of '58" is unknowable to her now in some ways, but in others seems more immediate than the women she has been in the meantime. She writes "I am not constructing a fictional character but deconstructing the girl I was". This deconstructing is in itself fascinating, but also brings with it some element of understanding, and even catharsis in sharing: of fully capturing the importance of this time in order to let it go.

When I came across a description of the as-then unpublished  In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, I was intrigued enough to request an advance copy for review but was not prepared for how uniquely clever, disturbing and powerful it was. It is a memoir of a time in the author’s  life when she fell in love with a woman who seemed to give her everything she needed in a partner, as well as being her first proper girlfriend, but after drawing her in and gaining her trust gradually became increasingly controlling and abusive.  The book explores how we see or don't see women as abusers, or abuse in romantic relationships between women. I felt her shame, fear and anger so clearly I found it hard to sleep after reading it at night.

I was hooked from the epigraph which stated that memory is a form of architecture, since I had spent a good portion of my undergraduate and masters degree arguing for meaningful links between memory and trauma in landscapes and, more particularly, houses. I had taken "dream house" to mean something like the toy "Barbie Dream House", an idealised house and home life that one might dream of when they are young. However, in this context "dream house" is viewed from all sorts of angles, and provides the framework for the narrative about this author's life and the abusive relationship she survived. At the beginning of the memoir, first person narration becomes second person, also referring to the author, but by doing this she distances herself from the past, traumatised self. It also has the effect of making the reader feel complicit and drawn into what we know will be a horrible story. This is made explicit, as all her stylistic choices are, which doesn't make them ineffective but instead gives us a map as to how to read this book. Brave, intelligent and necessary, it was one of my stand out reads of 2020, and I was delighted to see it picked in that viral New York Times list of the 100 best books of the 21st Century so far - and I would gladly throw hands if it was left off any such list in future. 

Reading update 

Physical book: I was obsessed with Butter by Asako Yuzuki (and translated by Polly Barton) when I read a lot of it earlier in the week and last weekend, but have had a few days where I've not felt in the mood for it lately. It is so good so far, but I am finding it slow and will need to set some time aside to get back into it. 

E-reader: I have no idea where Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell is going but it has the right kind of mix of trope and originality that I love to see in a rom com so it's all good. 

Audiobook: I am actively fighting against listening to the audiobook of Doppelganger by Naomi Klein in any free moment, and in a completely unprecedented moment yesterday didn't notice 90 minutes passing as I cleaned the apartment, an otherwise torturous task. I am completely hooked. 

Thank you for reading, and I hope you join me next week for a new instalment of LauraEatsBooks… Rememberings.