In \u201cRoom,\u201d an unnamed narrator finds herself locked inside a white room in Vienna, where she has come to finish a book, and becomes increasingly agitated. \u201cNight,\u201d the longest section by far, brings us another unnamed narrator in a room. This woman\u2014a German writer\u2014suffers from insomnia and spends her hours sifting through her own memories, imaginings, and histories, particularly those of women artists in pre\u2013World War I Berlin. These pursuits swallow her present, which appears as a surreal kaleidoscope reflecting an almost painful sensitivity to the world around her. Her only companions are the \u201cnameless woman\u201d she shares the room with\u2014a bizarre, mutable figure\u2014and a neighbor she watches through the window. \u201cMedusas,\u201d told in the third person, follows a group of women and their children on a beach vacation. The women are glued to news of atrocities on their phones, only roused when their children are badly stung by jellyfish. The book closes with \u201cBurials,\u201d a second-person account of a mother and daughter visiting another family near a forest in central Europe. The mother (\u201cyou\u201d) enjoys nature, sleeps deeply, and considers the family\u2019s dog, soon to be put down. Later, she asks her friend to bury her up to her neck in soil so she may \u201clie down inside of the earth, enter the womb.\u201d The narrator of \u201cNight\u201d notes that the artists she studies all suffered from \u201cwar, lovelessness, mania,\u201d and the women Friedland fashions are no different. While its rapid shifts between thoughts and scenes can be jarring, this book succeeds in constructing a \u201clineage,\u201d a \u201cfemale history\u201d (and thus an alternative and even reparative history) of women suffering through unprecedented times. In addition, Friedland conveys a profound truth: Awareness of this lineage is a heavy burden. When holding the weight of one\u2019s own memories and the memories of the many that have gone, passed through oral storytelling, archives, and even the internet, how could one possibly rest?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In \u201cRoom,\u201d an unnamed narrator finds herself locked inside a white room in Vienna, where she has come to finish a book, and becomes increasingly agitated. \u201cNight,\u201d the longest section by far, brings us another unnamed narrator in a room. This woman\u2014a German writer\u2014suffers from insomnia and spends her hours sifting through her own memories, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}