RMST 202 Blog

 Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa. It is narrated by a Gecko named Eulálio, who lives in Felix's house and witnesses all the people who go through the home.  I was originally confused about the title including "Chameleon" because the narrator is a gecko, and I thought these were two different animals. I did look this up and they share similar traits but are ultimately different animals. One fact I found interesting is that geckos are the only type of lizards that possess a voice which made sense that Agualusa would choose for the narrator to be a gecko. Upon completion of the book and reflection, I really like the title because it related to pretty all of the characters in the book. Chameleons are able to adapt to their surrounding by changing the colour of their skin to camouflage, which is essentially what Felix helps people to do as he creates pasts for people. Furthermore, the stories of each of the other characters be...

Hello everyone! Week 10's book is Money to Burn  by Ricardo Piglia, a thriller type book following a group in Argentina who commit an armed robbery, and then flee to Uruguay, where they were eventually discovered in an armed shootout.  I am not sure what to write about other than how disturbed I felt reading this. It was very heavy and there were lots of things to think about and digest. Apart from the obvious heist, steeling things and killing people, there was complete sexualization of a 15 year old girl, numerous use of slurs, graphic descriptions of a child's murder, and I think it was all just too much for me. The way the book nonchalantly explained horrific acts was unsettling. Even writing this I'm having trouble paraphrasing but for example on page 52 describing the way a man was drowned in a lake after he had sex with and chained a foreigner to a post. Another example, is when the 15 year old girl was being described and completely sexualized throughout the book....

 Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Lover by Marguerite Duras, set during the French colonial occupation of south east Asia. It is an autobiographical story of Duras' family's struggles with death and poverty, as well as her affair with "the lover" a Chinese man who is 27 years old, 12 years older than her. Overall, I don't know what to think about this book. I understand where the author is coming from and how she may have genuinely loved him in the end. However, throughout reading I could not stop thinking about how I know the nature of this relationship to be entirely wrong.  I think the power dynamics in their relationship are important to understand how Duras portrays the relationship. First of all, the obvious age gap, she is 15 and he is 27, he has much larger level of maturity and understanding of consent than she could have. Second of all, he is very wealthy compared to her, and she needs his money, at the beginning even saying that the relationship ...

 Hello everyone! This week's book is The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, a short text that follows the diary or stream of consciousness of a narrator, Rodrigo, writing about a girl he had seen, Macabéa. Frequently, the narrator would question his own writing, saying things like "I'm not a professional" (pg 9). Knowing a bit of Clarice Lispector's background from the introduction, I thought this could potentially be a manifestation of Lispector's own reservations, being a "self taught writer" (pg viii).  I found some parts of this reading almost comical, sometimes at the absurdity of what I was reading or the narrators thoughts. For example, when he said "but I suspect that all this chitchat is made just to put off the poverty of the story, because I'm scared" (pg 8-9) because it seems like procrastination, which is relatable. I also laughed when he said "now I want to speak of this northeastern girl" (pg 10), spoke abou...