nomadreader

The backstory: The Offering  is longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Prize . The basics: Madeline is 34. She has been in an insane asylum for twenty years and cannot recall the events that put her there, but a new psychiatrist thinks he can help her recover the traumatic memories. The story unfolds both in the present: Madeline's life in the asylum and her therapy sessions, and in the years and months before she was committed. My thoughts: Madeline has lived her entire life in two very different, but very sheltered environments. Her father was deeply religious and believed and moved them to an island where believed God wanted him to spread the word. Since the age of 14, she's been locked in an insane asylum and hasn't had a visitor in years. To her mind, which in many ways, is stuck at the age of fourteen, she observes parallels between these two disparate parts of her life: Interestingly, over the years that I have been here it has not escaped my notice that despite t...

The backstory: I first heard of this novel in Yelena Akhtiorskaya's Year of Reading entry this year . The basics: The titular princess of (New York's) 72nd Street is an artist with manic depression. My thoughts: Kraf takes the reader inside the mind of a woman with manic depression in a way that made me better understand the disease. There are moments of humor, moments of stunning insight, and moments of confusion. In some ways, the princess is an unreliable narrator, as she contradicts herself in different moments. Instead, however, I think is unreliability is what makes her reliable narrator of depression: "I have discovered that my thoughts can become most clear and ordinary when I am thinking about the past. It is the present which breaks up into pieces like lovely flickering white moths." This novel is slim, but it is intense, particularly in the dark times. It consumed me as I read it. As much as it transported me to New York City in the 1970's, ...