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Infrared (2011)

by Nancy Huston(Favorite Author)

3.13 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1770870296 (ISBN13: 9781770870291)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

McArthur & Company

review 1: This is a somewhat rambling description of a 1 week Tuscan holiday to which the main character-Rena Greenblatt, a photographer in her 40's, originally a Montrealer, but living in Paris-treats her father Simon & stepmother Ingrid. Rena's experiments with infrared photography to explore the hidden inner aspects of her subjects & views herself as an infrared sensitive film capturing hidden events. As the trip unfolds, it is apparent that Rena hates it, because she dislikes her dull conventional stepmother, and also has a lot of hangups stemming from abuse by her brother as a child(he is a gay jazz violinist), and her neglect by her mother-a lawyer defending prostitutes-who dies in a car accident when Rena is a child. Rena is a sensualist who has had a great deal of varied sex... moreual experience which she describes in explicit detail. She has travelled all over the world and has had a host of lovers in every place, but her current lover Aziz, an Algerian whom she adores, works for the same publication. He contacts her several times to return to Paris to do the photos for newscoverage of riots in the poor NE suburbs stemming from the electrocution of 2 adolescents who fleeing from the police, sought refuge in a transformer. She refuses his appeals&those of her employer, and ends up losing her job&her lover. She also gets her backpack stolen with her camera, wallet, credit cards...The holiday is disappointing, in that they miss many major sites, due to Simon&Ingrid's indolence&frequent need for food. At the end of the book Simon trips on a curb hitting his head& is assessed in hospital, where the injury is found to be innocuous, but he is found to have a malignant brain tumor-Rena facing the loss of a parent along with her other losses.A fairly good read, and very well written.
review 2: Claude just finished it and it sounds yummy. It's about time I read something French again, and something fictional after New Yorker investigations and now The Shallows, which is good with some new info that I hadn't actually already read in MacLuhan, New Yorker science and media articles, and wherever else I roam. Starting this one may slow that one down, but mostly it's work does that.End of March: This one has taken a while, because it's still a busy time and I do read articles between the evening pillow reads. I was irked at some aspects (that I talked to Claude about), but am often irked these days, so am not certain it's the book, really. Intriguing are the Italian contexts that create her flights of memory with her ''friend'' or more logical alter ego, and I sympathized with the irritations with her father and mother-in-law. I also appreciate how they come out as more positive and loving in the end, which might bode well for the uncertain ending as she returns to Paris. There's room for more thought and the style seemed fine for the task, but it's still not my language, sadly, so I shan't venture an opinion there. less

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