Andrew Stewart > Recent Status Updates

“on a winters day, while a blizzard raged through the streets of Toronto, Lilah Kemp, inadvertently set Kurtz free from page 92 of Heart of Darkness”

OK, that’s a pretty intriguing opening sentence, I’m in.

There are dystopias and then there is this book that makes all the other dystopias seem pleasant in comparison.

Trollope somehow manages to make his books feel like great literature and a guilty pleasure at the same time.

What confronted us now was a group of pickpockets. My mother stabbed the air with a butcher knife. “One step closer and you’re dead” she snarled. Ale and I clung to her like koalas we’d seen pictures of. We must’ve looked ridiculous because we were taller than she was. “Don’t worry my precious little girls. I’ve got everything under control. Watch and learn kids how to deal with motherfuckers.”

Mules didn’t live long. They looked 90 but the oldest they lived to be was about 35. Usually they died from being mules, but sometimes they died at the hands of the military are the secret police who liked to use them for torture practice, and then throw their bodies into unmarked graves.

mules were Indian men who waited outside the markets. They had ropes dangling and their feet looked like old shoes. If you accepted the mule bent over and his back became the counter on which you piled your belongings. He would grunt as the load grew, eyes on the ground. After awhile, all you’d see was two brown legs with the feet shifting around. When you were done loading, you kicked the mule in the shins.

“ in Peru, if you wanted to look up the definition of a word, youd need two dictionaries: the Poor Peru dictionary, and the Rich Peru dictionary. If you looked up the word bathroom in the poor peru dictionary, the definition would be “just over the hill there”. If you looked it up in the rich Peru dictionary it would read “marble room with gold taps and its own servant to keep it sparkling”.

“And, though we'd been taught from the start of night flying training that we must believe the instruments every time, it was very easy to disbelieve them. Sometimes you were convinced that you were upside down when the instruments told you you were right side up. It could literally be fatal to trust your own instincts in the dark.”

“She said to him, "Let's get the fighting over first, darling - then maybe we can talk about love, eh?”

“he appreciated his coquettish reception by Mrs. O’Dwyer, an amputee confined by severe edema to a hospital bed in what had been her dining room. ”

Gah thats on the first page thats so depressing. Your hospital bed where you used to dine. Ok give me more 👍

Unless there is a dramatic turn of events in the final chapters, then even the one single thing I thought I knew about this story I was wrong about. It’s good to be ignorant sometimes.

🎵everybody’s making love or else expecting rain🎵

That lyric and song has been in my head throughout this book

Frantically burning through the pages until my boy quasimodo starts fkn people up

Keep him away from the goat

The priest is getting pervy now. And that strains my credulity not one bit.

The goat unwittingly testified against her!! Oh mon dieu

Do what you will with esmerelda, but dont you dare lay a hand on that goat

“It sees with but one eye,” remarked Damoiselle Guillemette; “there is a wart over the other.”
“That is no wart,” replied Master Robert Mistricolle; “that is an egg which holds just such another demon, who also bears another little egg containing another demon, and so on ad infinitum.”

“What on earth is it, sister?” said Agnès to Gauchère, gazing at the little foundling as it shrieked and writhed
“What is the world coming to,” said Jehanne, “if that is the way the children look nowadays?”
“I don’t know much about children,” added Agnès; “but it must surely be a sin to look at this thing.”
“It’s no child, Agnès.”
“It’s a deformed monkey”

And these are nuns lol

I know Quasimodo has an ill fated love affair with Esmerelda. And that’s about it. I couldn’t have named another character. I’ve never seen any of the film adaptations, not even Disney. And if I read any children’s versions I’ve forgotten them. So this should be a good adventure. Hugo being Hugo, it took a few chapters to get moving. But those splashes of paint are starting to form a picture now.