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A review by emsemsems
Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo
5.0
I didn’t expect to be so blown away by this book, but I did – and I got tossed hard. It’s like an abandoned lovechild of Clarice Lispector and Lydia Davis – picked up and fostered by Ottessa Moshfegh. The first few stories only tugged me gently, but the later stories absolutely dragged me – and my mind was wrecked in the best ways possible. Absolutely magical, darkly witty, and oh so irresistibly charming.
My carefully considered/selected favourites from the collection:
The Head Pressed Against the Window
“Mademoiselle Dargère was extremely pretty, and the children loved her, but a constant worry had settled between her eyebrows in the shape of vertical wrinkles that somewhat spoiled her beauty. Her nights were plagued by insomnia, and during those wakeful hours she would hear a chorus of dreams, wraithlike, arising from the sleeping children in their white nightgowns in the dormitories, each with twenty beds, where she would deposit a daily kiss on every brow.”
Diorama
“For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country. He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.”
Forgotten Journey
“Before they were born, children were stocked in a big department store, mothers ordered them, and sometimes went to buy them directly. She would have liked to see them unwrap the package and open the box that held the baby, but they never called her over in time in the houses with newborns. It was hot and they could barely breathe inside the box, and that’s why they arrived so red and cried all the time, curling their toes.”
Bare Feet
“Cristian secretly missed their distant, different, confident love affair. It was so easy to have faith in what didn’t matter that much. Those romantic idylls in cafes, on grocery store corners, on beaches: they robbed him of nothing, not his sunny morning walks, nor his hours of leisure, nor the loneliness that made him fumble around for a human connection, nor the visits to his cousins’ house, nor the divine generosity of time, nor his misery of constant solitude. He remembered Ethel Buyington and the unpredictable… Ethel finished her studies more ignorant than when she began and went on to travel the coasts of Africa with a French family. ”
Given some time and enough enthusiasm, one can easily argue that this book is a bloody masterpiece. I am too tired at the moment to do so, but regardless – I can confidently recommend this book to most readers. I am not even sure if I can call it magical realism because to me it’s more like something that flirts with hyperrealism and/but sassily adorned with odd knots and twists.
My carefully considered/selected favourites from the collection:
The Head Pressed Against the Window
“Mademoiselle Dargère was extremely pretty, and the children loved her, but a constant worry had settled between her eyebrows in the shape of vertical wrinkles that somewhat spoiled her beauty. Her nights were plagued by insomnia, and during those wakeful hours she would hear a chorus of dreams, wraithlike, arising from the sleeping children in their white nightgowns in the dormitories, each with twenty beds, where she would deposit a daily kiss on every brow.”
Diorama
“For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country. He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.”
Forgotten Journey
“Before they were born, children were stocked in a big department store, mothers ordered them, and sometimes went to buy them directly. She would have liked to see them unwrap the package and open the box that held the baby, but they never called her over in time in the houses with newborns. It was hot and they could barely breathe inside the box, and that’s why they arrived so red and cried all the time, curling their toes.”
Bare Feet
“Cristian secretly missed their distant, different, confident love affair. It was so easy to have faith in what didn’t matter that much. Those romantic idylls in cafes, on grocery store corners, on beaches: they robbed him of nothing, not his sunny morning walks, nor his hours of leisure, nor the loneliness that made him fumble around for a human connection, nor the visits to his cousins’ house, nor the divine generosity of time, nor his misery of constant solitude. He remembered Ethel Buyington and the unpredictable… Ethel finished her studies more ignorant than when she began and went on to travel the coasts of Africa with a French family. ”
Given some time and enough enthusiasm, one can easily argue that this book is a bloody masterpiece. I am too tired at the moment to do so, but regardless – I can confidently recommend this book to most readers. I am not even sure if I can call it magical realism because to me it’s more like something that flirts with hyperrealism and/but sassily adorned with odd knots and twists.