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From Publishers Weekly
Davis (Break It Down, a story collection) plunges into fiction-as-catharsis in her absorbing and lucid first novel. The narrative is comprised of the unnamed narrator's memories of and reflections upon her ended love affair with a nameless man 13 years her junior; its history infiltrates the books she reads and translates, as well as the novel she is struggling to write, which is this novel. As she probes the moments and minutiae of their relationship, the man's identity fades, and he becomes material for her fiction: like a backward-spiraling track into memory, a labyrinthine sentence mimes the diminishing roar of his car when he leaves her. Scenes gather, dissolve and reassemble, as does the man's fragmented image, with impressions and facts seeping through the narrator's consciousness and dreams-the man's skin, hair, clothing, his charm and flaws, his lies and his library, the money he fails to repay. Avoiding the earthiness of dialogue, of which there is none, the narrator experiences much of the world as "floating" ("his essence floated inside me")-the man's anger, her own features in a mirror, another story wafting loose in a room where a book lies open. Bereft, she turns stalker and voyeur, searching for her lover (as for story material) through streets surreal and noir, peering into his room and the gas station where he works. Finally, a cup of bitter tea, offered in a bookstore, provides ritual closure to the story of her search for her lover, though "something continued, something not formed into any story." Despite Davis's writerly self-consciousness, her novel works as an aching love story recollected in tranquillity. Translation, first serial, dramatic rights: Georges Borchardt.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
The narrator of this novel, who never reveals her name, is writing a novel about an obsessive relationship she had with a younger man. Although the woman did not seem totally committed while the couple was together, she became completely obsessed with her former partner after they separated. This first-person remembrance, with events imprecisely defined and sometimes out of sequence, is self-conscious and introspective. The narration is highly descriptive, and there is no dialog. The narrator comments that "my thoughts are not orderly-one is interrupted by another, or one contradicts another, and in addition to that, my memories are quite often false, confused, abbreviated, or collapsed into one another." A more apt description of the style would be hard to imagine. For anyone who has had a failed intimate relationship, this book could be uncomfortable reading. From the author of Break It Down (Farrar, 1986), a short story collection.
Kimberly G. Allen, MCI Corporate Information Resources Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Kimberly G. Allen, MCI Corporate Information Resources Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The last time I saw him, though I did not know it would be the last, I was sitting on the terrace with a friend and he came through the gate sweating, his face and chest pink, his hair damp, and stopped politely to talk to us. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The last time I saw him, though I did not know it would be the last, I was sitting on the terrace with a friend and he came through the gate sweating, his face and chest pink, his hair damp, and stopped politely to talk to us. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lydia Davis, Where Language is Down,
By
This review is from: The End of the Story (Paperback)
Something I've gotten really into; the idea that a novel doesn't need a story. Lydia Davis asks the reader to engage her in a dialogue with the language, usage, tone and cadence of her writing.This doesn't come as a shock; Davis' work has always been careful not to involve her audience in the kind of gratification employed by some of her colleagues in the hih-brow writing world. Take "Samuel Johnson..." a very deconstructive collection, more like a poetic undertaking than a collection. Unfortunately, her own personal indulgences shine through in this, her most recent book, and it is more of a paranoid meandering than a globular entity. And, fortunately, her conservative embrace of the literary world, often seen through a jaundiced (French translator's) eye, is much more of a likeable read. It will remain acessible, so long as those who chose to take it on will exhibit the same amount of patience that Davis has in writing this book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing work, my favorite book,
By Christine Farnum (Northern California, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The End of the Story (Paperback)
From the moment I read the first lines I found myself saying, "aaaahhhh, yes..." Lydia Davis has created an incredibly precise yet simultaneously fluid and organic work that details not only great love but also the processes of passion. It is familiar and surprising, a rare treat.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful Book,
By Naomi Himmelhoch (Northern California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The End of the Story (Paperback)
Lydia Davis has written a breath-taking book about how writing transforms both a writer and her subject. A wonderfully written study of how the process of creating a written record about her unlikely obsession with a younger man eventually freed her from it. I recommend this book to everyone I meet.
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