Name: Alice Monroe
Year Won: 2013
Read: Lives of Girls and Women
Original Language: English
Reason: "master of the contemporary short story"
About: Lives of Girls and Women/i> details a young girl's life growing up in rural Ontario. She is surrounded by many colorful characters who she interacts with as she grows to maturity.
What I liked: The description is beautiful and unique and the characterizations are aptly done.
What I Disliked: The plot is literally just..."this girl grows up". Which is very literary since who needs plots? But also makes for a story that doesn't have much motive power.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. The Nobel committee does like this sort of thing.
Next Up: "Ballerina" by Patrick Modiano
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Frog by Mo Yan
Name: Mo Yan
Year Won: 2012
Read: Frog
Original Language: Mandarin
Reason: "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary"
About: Frog follows the life of several characters (the most interesting to me being a midwife) through a fictional Chinese village (in which the children, strangely, are all named for body parts.)
The midwife (Gugu) deals with the one child policy, sexism, and just existing in Communist China.
What I liked: The characters are generally interesting and it's a really intriguing look at a turbulent time and era from the past.
What I Disliked: The story is written almost as a fable, which makes things often feel flatter and less impactful than I think they otherwise might. I get why this was done (censorship and maybe to create a sense of timelessness), but it often for me, at least, dampened the seriousness of the subject matter.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. It's the sort of thing that the committee likes (arty and literary), while also covers significant subjects. It's definitely more *important* than a lot of the books on this list.
Next Up: "Lives of Girls and Women" by Alice Munro (this will be...interesting)
Year Won: 2012
Read: Frog
Original Language: Mandarin
Reason: "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary"
About: Frog follows the life of several characters (the most interesting to me being a midwife) through a fictional Chinese village (in which the children, strangely, are all named for body parts.)
The midwife (Gugu) deals with the one child policy, sexism, and just existing in Communist China.
What I liked: The characters are generally interesting and it's a really intriguing look at a turbulent time and era from the past.
What I Disliked: The story is written almost as a fable, which makes things often feel flatter and less impactful than I think they otherwise might. I get why this was done (censorship and maybe to create a sense of timelessness), but it often for me, at least, dampened the seriousness of the subject matter.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. It's the sort of thing that the committee likes (arty and literary), while also covers significant subjects. It's definitely more *important* than a lot of the books on this list.
Next Up: "Lives of Girls and Women" by Alice Munro (this will be...interesting)
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