Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg's stories are such wonders, I fell for them one after another. Every concept, every story, brought a new world and characters to life, so much so that I felt I was falling into a much larger tale with each new entrance. Ranging from disturbing to amusing, and touching on every emotion in between and beyond, the stories here are on the weird side of literary (in a very good way), and they pack such emotional impacts that they consistently reminded how much power can come show more through in short fiction, and I'm only sorry I didn't get around to reading the collection earlier. Even more impressive, although van den Berg's stories here explores some similar themes and territory, there's never any feeling of repetitiveness, and while some single-author collections can become one-note when exploring similar themes, this one never falls into that danger zone.

All told, after reading this collection, I think I'll read anything else van den Berg puts out. Certainly, I'll be seeking out her already published works sooner than later, and I'd absolutely recommend this one. show less

There are a great many similarities between ‘Find Me’ and [b:California|18774020|California|Edan Lepucki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1400863574s/18774020.jpg|26407781] by Edan Lepucki. Both were recommended to me by this Vulture list, both are recent first novels by female American novelists, and both claim to be dystopian. Unfortunately, neither of them lived up to my hopes. Nor did they meet my personal definition of a dystopia, which must make some comment on society today show more rather than merely using catastrophe as a decorative background. [b:Random Acts of Senseless Violence|1129928|Random Acts of Senseless Violence|Jack Womack|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348132999s/1129928.jpg|511869] was a genuine dystopia in my opinion because it dealt with the causes and consequences of urban poverty and violence with great thoughtfulness. The narrator lived within a carefully constructed social context. By contrast, ‘Find Me’ is concerned with individual trauma and suffering, which could probably have been examined more effectively without an imaginary plague. (I think it would have been much more powerful if the outbreak had been HIV, for instance.)

Admittedly I enjoyed ‘Find Me’ more than the terribly dull [b:California|18774020|California|Edan Lepucki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1400863574s/18774020.jpg|26407781], mainly because the first half takes place in a fairly atmospheric quarantine hospital. Once the narrator escapes from this intriguing place, the plot flails about rather, combining some elements of magical realism with flashbacks to child abuse. I intermittently struggled to connect with Joy, the narrator. At first I wondered if the problem was me, then I remembered that [b:The Goldfinch|17333223|The Goldfinch|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451554970s/17333223.jpg|24065147], one of my favourite novels, features a similar young orphan protagonist who anesthetises themself against past trauma using substances. Joy just doesn’t have the same vividness of Theo Decker and the secondary characters remain entirely enigmatic. Nonetheless, Joy’s wish to find her mother was a great deal more interesting and appealing than the limp romance central to [b:California|18774020|California|Edan Lepucki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1400863574s/18774020.jpg|26407781].

I feel cruel being so critical of first novels, however this trend for faux-dystopian literary novels concerns me. It seems to me that the whole point of a dystopia is that the main character is the flawed world. The writer needs to devote space and time in the narrative to establishing this world and what its problems mean. A dystopia is not a novel entirely focused on individual relationships which takes place during or after some disaster. Basically, the disaster should be the main character! This needn’t mean neglecting other characters, of course. The best pandemic-focused dystopia I know is Saramago's [b:Blindness|2526|Blindness|José Saramago|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327866409s/2526.jpg|3213039], which shows how catastrophe warps both individual and social bonds with incredible vividness and sensitivity. That’s what I’m looking for in dystopian fiction. There is undoubtedly a place for novels that don’t want to do that and just use collapse as set-dressing. I enjoy them sometimes, while generally wishing they had a bit more depth. And if you’re after a very strange novel set in a hospital, rather than a dystopia as such, may I recommend Toby Litt’s [b:Hospital|826871|Hospital|Toby Litt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1356457715s/826871.jpg|812597]. show less

This book is the same as bad poetry: melodramatic indulgence of the author's incredibly niche personal experience, in an intentionally vague but simultaneously obvious manner. In my opinion, the quirky framing device doesn't excuse the form; there is a difference between "experimental" and "half-baked". Overall, it just barely qualifies as an interesting first draft, but I desperately wish some other author would have taken this outline and then developed it themselves.

Bonus Commentary: I'm show more a born and raised Floridian, and I weathered both the pandemic and the New Normal there. I did not find her Florida commentary to be particularly insightful, compelling, or effective. This novel could have been set in any muggy climate without any adjustment in the plot or attempted themes. show less

this book requires a slow, slow read to absorb and reflect on what is going on. it's confusing and disorienting and unsettling and reading it makes you feel unmoored and like you have no idea what's going on and what is reality. which, of course, is just putting us directly in clare's shoes. clare, who is in a sea of grief and who doesn't have a foundation of good communication and a support system to lean on, who doesn't know how to navigate it. clare whose compass is taken away when she show more most needs it.

when richard, clare's husband dies, there are unfinished conversations, secrets untold, and so much for clare to process. but because of her childhood, she's not so great at facing hard thing head on, she leaves when sometimes she should stay, she turns her back when sometimes she should look. and so she is thrown, and finds herself both leaving and staying, turning around and around, coming and going. she's all over the place and she is haunted by conversations she never finished with richard, by not knowing those secrets and so wondering how much they knew each other in the end. she's haunted by him as she deals with the grief of his death, and what she knows is the upcoming death of her father.

she really is driven nearly crazy by this grief time, but it's what finally enables her to be there for her father as he is dying, what brings her back to herself in the end.

the writing is really, really good. it can be hard but it's so worth it. the way she uses the ideas of the horror movie and the tropes you find in it as a through line in the book is pretty brilliant. and then, also how that relates to the theme of seeing people in general; we are seeing what they're projecting, and there is this constant push/pull of the public persona versus the private person and who they when they're alone. how she grew up without being seen as herself and how she is so often pretending with the people she meets.

there is so much to think about here, and i love that. this is fantastic.

"Some forms of watching were designed to obliterate the subject."

"Behind every death lay a set of questions. To move on was to agree to not disturb these questions, to let them settle with the body under the earth. Yet some questions so thoroughly dismantled the terms of your own life, turning away was gravitationally impossible. So she would not be moving on. She would keep disturbing and disturbing."

"She had started to notice people almost exclusively in fragments. An arm under a desk, reaching for a fallen pencil. A back bent over a water fountain. A hand frozen under the amber beam of a lamp."

"What was it about men and humiliation? Clare had wondered...and would keep wondering as she watched killer after killer respond to humiliation with masks and knives. Was humiliation supposed to be any easier for women to take? She didn't think so, even though the world kept insisting they were built for it."

"She could go on into infinity, and yet she understood that knowing another person was not a stable condition. Knowing was kinetic, ineffable, and it had limits, but the precise location of those limits, the moment at which the knowing stopped and the not-knowing began, was invisible. You would know you had reached the border only after you had surpassed it."

"She did not know how to grieve in the context of her life." show less