lettersfromgrace's reviews
90 reviews

Poems with a tight use of phonology & great existential, almost redolent of Eliot outlook. I particularly liked Living, Vers de Société, Old Fools, and Forget What Did. They feel very authentic, very English, very paternal. It’s like someone’s father speaking to you, drunk, or drunk on poetry.  

This novel has such incredible brevity and succinctness, balanced perfectly with its ability to bring forth so many levels of analysis. 

Firstly, on a superficial level, it is a kind of philosophical treatise that to me, seemed almost existentialist and focused on the nature of freedom, defying convention— as The Child does following the death of her fellow women. This is enjoined with the text’s ethical concerns, over debates like euthanasia and the idea of dignity in death, which greatly interested me as an ethics student. 

Secondly, it can be viewed as an allegory in a prismatic volume of ways— capitalism, patriarchy, even the Holocaust— are somewhat symbolised here, in a way that aids the novel towards feeling entirely relevant and human, even in a barren terrain. We realise we are united with The Child regardless of her humanity or not, because like us she experiences pain and despair, but hopes, and lives, and most importantly remembers. 

What I think compounds these two themes is really the idea of legacy and how it meets with creativity and hope. The ending felt almost redolent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ in the saving grace of the written form to The Child. This text was also with one of the best closing sentences I have read in a long time. 

To The Child, 

Beautiful escapist fiction that feels like summer and first love, whilst being as reflective and tormented as the latter sometimes is. I needed to read this right now.

A gorgeous stream of consciousness that reflects on the nature of self-destruction and life when in absolute despair, with its glimpses of kindness meant only to make you carry onwards, cruelly, in the protagonist’s view— but you wish to defy her, to tell her her hope is for something, and the ambiguity and open-ending on the novel means it might be. As a reader, we hope for our narrative, and hers, through which we have been forced to meet ourselves. 

I thought this novella’s meaning came from its failure to achieve. It does not capture the present, it cannot capture the unity that it searches for in removing the ‘you’ and ‘I’, it ultimately does fail; but Lispector is not afraid of failure, for it is there that we read what is unwritten. 

Though we may never be able to lose ourself, we may never be able to capture the present, O, we can try, we can think we achieve, and that is a gift; to be able to live, experiencing such ecstasy and sadness, having a secret we must speak, even if in silence. 

Three Women was incredible, almost shakespearian, and very poignant. There were a few poems I hadn’t read before like Mystic that I enjoyed & overall, it was a selection of many of my favourites from Plath, Purdah, The Rabbit-Catcher, and The Other. Plath is a master, and always will be to me.

the happiest existentialist novel i have ever read!! i rejoice to see existentialism made something really essential and vital and ephemeral rather than tragic in its eternity of that. thank you j.l carr.

A masterfully structured novel that is an ode to the act of reading and simultaneously an exploration of the relationship between reader and writer in all of its nuances. One of the best books by a male author that I’ve read this year. 

Carol Ann Duffy can be accredited with writing the poem which was the first poem I felt I truly connected with and understood, ‘Havisham’, from that and her ‘Stealing’, she became the poet I turned to when at 14 I wanted to learn more about modern poetics. ‘Feminine Gospels’ and ‘The World’s Wife’ were there for me in all of my teenage angst, and alongside finding Plath and discovering confessional poetry, Duffy was vital towards helping me to realise that poetry is fundamentally a great way to channel and use one’s emotions for something good. Later at 15, I read ‘Rapture’, which allowed me to recognise the sapphic sentiments I was feeling. All in all, Duffy has been an incredibly significant poet within my life, and getting to reread and revisit some of my old favourites, like ‘Warming Her Pearls’ and ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls High’ was so enjoyable and nostalgic. It brought me back to myself and allowed me to reflect upon how I have grown as a person since I first read Duffy in how these poems have changed in my perception too. I will be forever grateful to have existed in a world where her poetry found me.