blurb:

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.

my thoughts:

slight spoilers!
i enjoyed reading this and the language is beautiful. this book ignites in me the desire to have a house in nature, with big windows and a beautiful garden. i enjoyed the charcaters, william and hodge being my favourites. the "mystery" is quite tame, but this book didn't need anything intense. a cozy, quick read. i can see myself re-reading this. i am, though, quite das, that gilly chose not to embrace her inner witch.

quotes:

blurb:

"Smuggling the most up-to-the-minute contraband in antiquated charabancs-that's what I like doing," Gombrowicz said of his work and in this later day Gothic novel he uses all the traditional paraphernalia of haunted castles, mad prince, and riddle from the past to tell the very modern story of two young people caught up in a drama of shifting identities.

my thoughts:

the first half was certainly more slow and detailed in a way, while the second half / last third picked up a lot in pace. i think many readers might enjoy one or the other more. i personally preferred the second half, as it was much more entertaining to me, while the first half i mostly continued due to the beautiful language and descriptions. in general a sort of absurd story (not only in the obvious such as the tembeling towel but also in the sudden way characters are introduced especially in the second half) with gothic elements. a large fraction of the books theme deals with "sameness of character". with the obession with yourself and thus with the person that mirrors you and how this can take on a rather toxic cycle of provoking each other (which leads to crisis about your own character as the person, after all, is your mirror). in a way it is about hunger for life as well, and societal critique. i liked the ending.

quotes:

• "a certain violence of temperament"
• "the forest was heavy with the fragrance of the evening"
• "then, filled with an unbearable yearning, he sought relief in running. He took off as if trying to flee his own presence."
• "afraid, above all, of the menace that she sensed lurking in the depths of her nature, at the root of her rash, impetuous, greedy thirst for happiness"
• "she was simply astonished that he was the way he was, that she was the way she was, and that such was their true nature"
• "at the same time he experienced a kind of release, as if he were in the process of sliding away from himself"
• "the evil monstrous vision pursuing him everywhere"

blurb:

A nice young man, of stolidly unimaginative, good bourgeois stock, is surprised to inherit a house on an island in the Rhône, in the famously desolate and untamed region of the Camargue. The terms of his great-uncle's will are even more surprising: the young man must take up solitary residence in the house for a full three months before he will be permitted to take possession of it. With only a taciturn shepherd and his dog for occasional company, he finds himself surrounded by the huge and turbulent river (always threatening to flood the island and surrounding countryside) and the wind, battering at his all-too-fragile house, shrieking from on high. And there is another condition of the will, a challenging task he must perform, even as others scheme to make his house their own. Only under threat can the young man come to terms with both his strange inheritance and himself.

my thoughts:

the book is quite dense and at times slow-paced, so it took me quite some time to get through. oftentimes it feels more like a sort of meditation by the author channeled through the book's character. the language has a beautiful poetic quality, which is something i highly value in a book and was the reason why i kept on reading, especially the first 60% of the book (at that mark a surprisingly fast-paced chapter follows, in stark contrast to the heavily character-driven portion before).

i think if you talk about the book there are certain topics one can discuss.

the already mentioned meditative quality and the dream-like states the main character experiences, often reaching into delirium and reminding of almost supernatural/religious visions. talking about this, the river (rhône) has to be mentioned, which is a focal point. it is woven into the whole story, the fear and fascination are oftentimes pondered and in the final arc it is central, representing the border of death and life, of repentance and forgiveness.

other than that the book focuses on solitude (and simultaneously found family). the main character leaves his gentle family and life in mild nature for a life in solitude, surrounded by "wild beasts," harsh winds, and, as i mentioned, the unforgiving river.

this contrast is highlighted by familial ties. ancestry and "blood"* is central in the book, and is not only something the main character often highlights (the contrast of his gentle megremut blood vs. his wild malicroix blood) but is also the motivation/obsession of the antagonistic notaire (though it has to be mentioned that in another chapter a briefly mentioned megremut cousin, who is not part of the malicroix family, also has a wild heart, so the blood metaphor is not as strict as it might seem initially). the main character is constantly in conflict with his upbringing, his gentle and loving family that represents patience, dependency, practicality, prosaicism, traditional religious practices, and his yearning for "malicroix," which represents wilderness, solitude, a mythical dreamlike world. i think this is why it is called a coming-of-age story.

in general i do not think that this book is for everyone, as it is very slow and to some might even read a little pretentious, but it is a good book, which i enjoyed.

* to the modern reader this can read weird. i personally would like to consider it simply a metaphor, related to provençal romanticism, but i think it is important to engage with this critically in relation to fascist ideology. i find the thoughts in this blogpost and its comments interesting (also a much more in depth analysis).

quotes:

• "reduced to imagining him, I did so with such violent sympathy that the moment I saw him – created in me, by me, body and soul, and as fierce as possible – a strange wildness, akin to his, emerged from my own being. I felt as if, through our taste for solitude I shared his blood."
• "Here ran the water beast, the monster's spirit, swollen by the winds and rains of autumn."
• "It was as if an infiltration of icy, sad waters had entered me, and that one branch of the river was already flowing toward my barely warm heart."
• "Only the sounds of this very reasonable thought rattled my understanding; the thought itself did not reach me. My reason welcomed it, but the soul, impenetrable, remained deaf. The soul was living on the island, with this fire, this sky, this river, and these shadows, scornful of the common sense that dreaded them."
• "my wild isolation – a whole, limitless world sank into my soul, widening its narrow boundaries to suddenly create huge spaces alive within me."
• "I became nothing but a flight of echoing sounds, one following another with dizzying speed. All boundaries between me and the storm collapsed;"
• "a mysterious void, where my whole soul throbbed until dawn."
• "Desire indistinct from me, formed deep within my spirit and my flesh, in the intimacy of my being;"
• "it was only the shifting lights and shadows within me that announced their arrival or departure."
• "I must have swallowed too much air and too much light"
• "You are nothing, but we love you."
• "I was not beginning, I was continuing, and as naturally as possible – which is to say, with no emotion at the moment of transition and no plan for the troubling future ahead."
• "Here, the very heart of things was mute."
• "I was alive, yes, but in another space, at once confined and infinite."
• "It was a naked fear, an elemental terror"
• "At such moments there is only one thought, the very one we seek to destroy, which possesses us."
• "The weather was bad that day, and for a long time I thought about the wonderful bird that had continued its journey by flying into the storm."
• "His trust sometimes filled me with terror. But I dared not flee. I loved my fear."
• "and the silence of the creature whose name no one wanted to utter on this earth"
• "as it entered me, I felt arising within me the sense of my own solitude, along with a great winter for my heart"
• "the stranger was here – I was the stranger."