Mutmainah > Recent Status Updates

Really like how this has explicitly contextualized “the troubles” within wider anti-colonial movements

And another:

“he had a heart returning to her at least; that anger, resentment avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past; yes, some share of the tenderness of the past. She could not contemplate the change as implying less.— He must love her.”

2 more things:

“He had an affectionate heart. He must love somebody”

“A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!— He ought not—he does not.””

And

“She understood him. He could not forgive her—but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire of giving her relief”

2 things:
“She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest”

The pacing and rhythm is absolutely insane. I love when books have a pulse, like they couldn’t be read in iambic pentameter. And you can see the mastery of language at work in the way Baldwin slows and speeds up that rhythm and intensity without drawing attention to it. Reminds of the idea that literature must engage with the written form/ language in some way to be considered such.

“We feel what the poem tries continually to be: the replication of a miracle”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion” Lady Bird teas

"wicked smiles" are to Emily Henry love interests as grins and smirks were to ya male protagonists circa 2014

A lot of the stuff around the boys’ school reminds me of ‘The Trojan Horse Affair’

And this: "Even the simplest interaction racked him with anxiety. He was always missing cues, it seemed. He had never asked her why; he was afraid that if he reelected too deeply, she would realize her mistake. He just kept the thought close to his chest, and polished it and cherished it as he had sine the day she had said yes to him: Mercy loves me."

The family dynamic is as precise (as always) but something about David really hits close to home. Lily's thinking of times "when they were still a family" basically broke me.

Back to Anne Tyler as a reset, and immediately started tearing up at this line “Oh, what makes a family not work?”

I’ve completely lost patience for all this melodrama

I probably wouldn't have picked this up if I'd known this was the direction the plot would be going in. Beyond that, this doesn't really feel rooted in time or place, which poses a problem for a historical fiction. The prose and dialogue keep pulling me out of what is supposed to be post-war Japan.

These characterizations (Nori as an 11 year old, Nori and Akira's sibling dynamic) feel ever so slightly off but maybe that's the point.

3 non-editing things:
I have no buy in to this relationship because the characters are so underdeveloped
Nur's woe is me shtick is getting real old. All we've seen is him being a bad son, friend, and partner. Am I meant to still be sympathetic to him?
The discussions of social justice issues feel so shallow

2 editing things:
"somalian"
i can't stand when there's no variety in sentence structure. The prose is exhausting because it's just sentence fragment after sentence fragment. Very short. Very Choppy. And all the characters speak the same way.

Oh he’s insufferable