Jul 13, 2025
What did I just read?
This book reads as an extended poem on chaotic feelings of love and connection. I couldn't really make sense of it. It was written with a surreal voice and style, almost as if you were in Lóri's confused stream of consciousness or if you lived in her feelings.
Lóri has to struggle with herself before she is ready to fully connect with Ulisses, the professor. It was almost like she was battling a necessary self-destruction (or self-acceptance?) in order to love him.
I appreciate how the prose lives in the intuitive realm. It doesn't have to make rational sense for her feelings of joy, anxiety, loneliness, shame, fear, warmth to coexist. Miraculously, she doesn't come across as a schizophrenic. The fact that we see her feel all of these different, shapeless, contradictory feelings makes them valid and ultimately humanises her. There is no analysis paralysis, there is just living.
I really don't know what to make of it all. I have surely failed my apprenticeship.