Rate this book

Vedi Adesso Allora (2012)

by Jamaica Kincaid(Favorite Author)

2.71 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8845974804 (ISBN13: 9788845974809)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Adelphi

review 1: This book was by far one of the most confusing books I have ever read. This book was like attending a literature seminar with an author that enjoys creating inferiority complexes. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing the work necessary to learn from the author’s metaphors but this book generated a lot of homework with very little reward. Here is a quick summary of what I learned from the book:There are three metaphor based themes that I can identify. The first is the comparison with a Greek tragedy. I recognize the naming Heracles (aka Hercules), Persephone (Goddess of the Underworld) and the use of Myrmidons (heroic soldiers that followed Achilles in the Iliad). The author shows the link between the Greek mythos and Mr. Sweet’s father/son conflict within the book... more. The Greeks were among the first to show desire of father to kill son and son to kill father. She also reveals the pain of lost love told time again in the ancient poems. I get the allusion of Persephone and the possibility that she may not be alive in the present. The second theme is the prison of Shirley Jackson house. This house appears beautiful and sweet at first but warps to become a sad prison of lost memories. Finally, the constant reference to “Paradise Lost” by John Milton reveals the impact of sin. This reference shows how the injection of sin (adultery and pride) degrades this heavenly home of the past into a hellish current reality. The difficult part was the fact that reviewing all these hidden meanings does little to add to the value of the characters within the book. Most of the greatness that was possible from this book is lost by the author’s desire to jump between the past and the present. This was after all the title’s purpose “See Now Then” but it creates such a difficult plot that all the magic of the similes failed to return a richer understanding of the characters.
review 2: A kind of monologue that you must, at times, surrender to. It comes from a place of pain so great she must turn to different forms and shapes. A book that challenges one to think about what a book of fiction is and ask ourselves what we want from our own work. Kincaid places herself in a line of Caribbean writers rewriting the canon--Derek Walcott's Omeros and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, but I wondered at times how successfully--i.e. "Persephone" as a name worked more for me than "Heracles," for the maternal power/rage/displacement it evoked. less

Download links for: Vedi adesso allora

Advertising