recordyas’s Reviews > Shame > Status Update

“I have always wanted to write the sort of book that I find it impossible to talk about afterwards, the sort of book that makes it impossible for me to withstand the gaze of others. But what degree of shame could possibly be conveyed by the writing of a book which seeks to measure up to the events I experienced in my twelfth year.”

“Yet who can say that an incident following in the wake of another is not lived in the shadow of the first? And who can say that the natural order of events does not carry meaning?”

“The fact that I experienced such inertia and nothingness is something that cannot be denied. It is the ultimate truth.
It is the bond between the little girl of 1952 and the woman who is writing this manuscript.”

“The fact that I have put it into writing does not make it any more significant. It remains what it has always been since 1952 - something akin to madness and death, to which I have never ceased to compare the other events in my life in order to assess their degree of pain, without finding anything that compares to it.”
“I want to breath life into it and strip it of its sacred aura”

“I believe that for months, maybe even years, I waited for the scene to be repeated. I was positive it would happen again. […] I was on alert as soon as they raised their voices; I would scrutinize my father, his expressions, his hands. In every sudden silence I would read the omens of disaster. Every day at school I wondered wether, on returning home, I would be faced with the aftermath of a tragedy.”

“I considered writing about it to be a forbidden act that would call for punishment.“