Ariana Harwicz

All style over plot; if you like the style or it interests you then you won’t mind that, but if the opposite is the case then it has little appeal. Personally the plotless novel or novella already starts off on the back foot with me, a couple of goals down before the ball is even kicked. It needs to be fairly special to mount a comeback, meaning I’m open to the possibility and I’ve seen it happen, but in my experience, most don’t make it.

The style here is something of an intense, disturbing, transgressive prose poetry. Personally speaking again, when one of the main if not the main selling points of a work is its “transgressiveness” (here that includes mother-son incest) it’s not likely to be of great appeal. Transgressiveness for its own sake, or with no apologies as a fan might rather describe it, to be fair, isn’t something that holds much literary interest for me.

Beyond that it’s a quick-cut deluge of scenes and stream of consciousness that come at the reader without pause, this novella being one long chapter. Some of the prose poetry lines I found very good, but they ultimately get buried in this chonk of text. Perhaps I like work that is more considered than breathless, as well.… (altro)