Seeing Red

by Lina Meruane, Megan McDowell (Translator)

This powerful, profound autobiographical novel describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke, leaving her blind and increasingly dependent on those closest to her. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships.

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Literary Fiction, Disability, Contemporary, Novels, Womens

157 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Lina Meruane (Santiago de Chile, 1970) es escritora y ensayista. Ha publicado el libro de cuentos Las infantas (1998) y las novelas Póstuma (2000), Cercada (2000), Fruta podrida (2007), premiada Mejor Novela Inédita por el CNCE, y Sangre en el ojo (2012), por el que recibió el premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. También ha publicado ensayos como Viajes virales (2012), Volverse Palestina (2013) y Contra los hijos (2014). Ha recibido el premio Anna Seghers por la calidad de su obra, entre otros.
Actualmente, dicta clases en la Universidad de Nueva York y es la fundadora del sello Brutas Editoras.

Reviews

[Book Riot Community]

This book is harrowing and intense and wonderful. It tells the story of a young woman facing blindness: she has known for a while that she could lose her sight, and then one night at a party it happens. Her boyfriend doesn’t get it and thinks she’s drunk as she stumbles around. But her eyes have filled with blood and while she hopes an operation might help, she knows it may not. The novel is written in the first person and we spend the entire book experiencing all her thoughts and emotions with her. It’s a powerful experience.

— Rebecca Hussey


from The Best Books We Read In December 2016: http://bookriot.com/2017/01/03/riot-r...

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primer libro que leo de Lina Meruane y estoy fascinada. Escribe con una fuerza que te atrapa desde la primera página. No se diga la historia, personal y durísima, pero hay algo en su uso del lenguaje que me conquistó. Tiene una urgencia que te empuja a seguir leyendo esta historia, que no sabes si pasó tal cual o no, pero como las grandes historias, tampoco es que importa, porque es una maravilla. Vivida entre Nueva York y Santiago, tiene amor, el vivido por ella, familia, hermanos, y en definitiva la enfermedad como la vive la protagonista, escritora, autora.
Buenísimo descubrir a esta genial escritora chilena.
Una belleza.

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nervy, staccato novel about one woman's descent into near-blindness after the blood vessels in her eyes burst. It begins in the heady confusion of a house party, and the perspective never really pulls out – we spend the whole thing very close to her thoughts, her impressions, unsure of what is happening elsewhere. This is due in no small part to the prose style, which is all choppy phrases, unmarked direct speech, and short chapters bereft of paragraph breaks.

The protagonist is also called ‘Lina Meruane’, though it's not clear to me exactly how autobiographical the book is supposed to be – clearly, a lot of it is based on Meruane's own health issues, though she hasn't actually ended up blind in real life. In any case, the device allows her to write in a way that's viscerally subjective, with a strong focus on physiological impulses and sense-impressions, sometimes to a degree that feels claustrophobic.

Personally, I thought more could have been made of the sounds, smells and textures of New York City and Santiago de Chile (the two main focus points of the book), but instead Meruane's attention is fixed inwards. Before he died, Roberto Bolaño tipped Meruane as being at the head of her generation of Chilean writers, and this angsty novel, rendered into perfectly natural English by Megan McDowell, gives you at least some idea of why.

[Rocio · Rating 4 out of 5]

fuaaaaa, después del 25 hago mi reseña #ahre #sectura

[Alaíde Ventura · Rating 5 out of 5]

El horror no está en el mundo, está adentro, pero tampoco propiamente adentro, sino en la membrana de la experiencia, en el acto mismo de ver sin ver.

Me encantó este libro, ojalá me dejen analizarlo en mi clase de migraciones.

[Pilar]

Hace muchos años, la hermana de un amigo perdió la vista producto de una enfermedad. Él estaba irritado y, en medio de su dolor, me dijo “las personas que se quedan ciegas están llenas de rencor”. Ya no me veo más con ese amigo ni pienso en él, pero esa frase se hizo visible, de repente, con esta lectura.
Esta novela es tan oscura como la oscuridad que te produce la ceguera. El relato es tan desesperante que hasta los intersticios por donde se cuela la luz, te perturban.
Tiene muchos elementos autobiográficos. Tanto la autora como la protagonista son escritoras, comparten nombre, son chilenas viviendo en nueva York y deben enfrentar la pérdida de la visión a parir de su diabetes.
Nunca hubiera leído una novela así, pero Lina Meruane (y la Sectura) me tendió una trampa con una descripción llena de detalles minuciosos, por momentos milimétricos, del avance de la enfermedad en los ojos de la protagonista. Su escritura está llena de sangre, se escucha el avance de la sangre, hay sangre en las imágenes, hay olor a sangre por todo el ambiente. El relato está tan bien escrito que la autora hasta se toma el atrevimiento de incluir oraciones con finales abruptos, tan abruptos como sería perder el sentido de la vista de un día para el otro en medio de una fiesta.
Mientras una padece el abombamiento que te producen las las palabras que te retumban en la cabeza, la autora incluye temas como la transformación de los vínculos cuando se enferma una persona que uno/a ama, la vampirización de quienes la sostienen, la ira que provocan los ojos sanos de los demás y la fantasía de la incondicionalidad del amor (materno, de pareja).
Lina no quiere ser víctima y el odio y el rencor no la van a dejar quedarse en ese lugar. A través de la manipulación emocional que ejerce sobre Ignacio va a transformarse en la victimaria de la relación.
También es un libro que denuncia la falta de empatía y brutalidad del sistema de salud, el maltrato de los médicos, los seguros que se niegan a pagar las operaciones, la burocracia de los papeles. Pero Lina, ya empoderada, decide entregarse a esa violación colectiva.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I was reading Seeing Red I had a sudden vivid wish to gather some women writers together who i realize have similar energy and similar honesty in their writing as Lina Meruane has in her writing, and whose writing is, like hers, brutally physical--by which I mean, not violent, but even so, deeply felt in the body. There is no distance at all in their writing. They write about blood and love and life and death.

Seeing Red begins, literally, with blood and love, in medias res, at a party, where the protagonist--who has been told by her doctor that any pressure at all--too hard a cough, or just bending over--might cause the diseased blood vessels in her eyes to burst and cause blindness--has just moved the wrong way, and then watches her eye as it fills with blood from the inside and her vision darken. From the outside there is no sign of her injury. Her lover doesn't understand why she stumbles, not at first--he thinks she is drunk.

The voice of this novel is detached in a way that adds to its nearly unbearable pathos rather than creating distance. In this way it reminds me of Lorrie Moore's voice in the story "People Like That Are the Only People Here," and indeed along with Meruane, Lorrie Moore is one of the writers I would invite to this imaginary gathering, as well as Guadalupe Nettel, author of The Body Where I Was Born, another short vivid novel about the particular physicalities of of living inside a female body, and Maggie Nelson would be there, too, because Meruane's writing also reminds me of The Argonauts, for its relentless focus on the difficulties of love between consenting, flawed adults. And Maylis de Kerangal, author of the novel I just read, The Heart, would be there, too, because her novel, like Meruane's, is a fearless examination of the terrors of living inside a broken body.

so that's a good party.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Lina Meruane's 'Seeing Red' when I stopped by at the bookshop a few days back. The cover grabbed my attention and refused to let me go. Then I read a quote by Roberto Bolaño on the back cover raving about Lina Meruane - well, who can resist that. I started reading it a couple of days back and finished reading it yesterday.

'Seeing Red' tells the story of a woman, who has a delicate health condition. Her eyes are in a delicate condition - her blood vessels in her eyes can burst any time and she can go blind. Her doctor warns her that she has to be very careful during her everyday life - she can't drink, smoke, make love to her boyfriend, can't even bend down. There are so many other things she can't do, simple everyday things, that we normally take for granted. She lives life in this careful way, avoiding anything which can result in the unfortunate event happening. But one day she is at a party and the dreadful thing happens - the blood vessels in her eyes explode and she becomes blind. She is able to see vague shapes and some light and shadow though. She tries meeting the doctor but she is able to get an appointment only a few days later. When she meets the doctor, he says it is hard to say anything. He says they need to wait for a month and then can think about an operation. He asks her to go on a holiday and spend time with her family in Chile. Well, I won't go into the rest of the story. How her reunion with her family goes, what kind of support her boyfriend gives, does the operation help her - for answers to these questions, you have to read the story.

The heroine of our story, has the same name as the writer, Lina Meruane. I later discovered that the novel is based on the writer's own experience. It shows in the story, because the way Meruane describes the way blindness explodes into our heroine's world and plunges her into despair - it feels so real. The relationship between the heroine and her boyfriend is so beautifully depicted. The reunion scenes with her family, her very different relationship with her mother and her father, her two different brothers - they are all beautifully portrayed. I loved the character of her doctor. I loved this particular description of him -

"I never noticed Lekz rushing a single syllable or discreetly checking the time; there wasn't a single clock on the walls of his office, no phone ever rang, he didn't have a cell phone. No one ever interrupted him. He was an absolutely dedicated specialist, true Russian fanaticism inculcated by his Soviet lineage."

That doctor was a no-nonsense character, dedicated to his work, never made any promises that he could't keep.

I love the way the book describes our heroine's descent into blindness, how navigating everyday things becomes a challenge for her, for example in this passage -

"I got tangled up in rugs, I knocked over posters leaning against walls, I toppled trashcans. I was buried in open boxes with table legs between my fingers. The house was alive, it wielded its doorknobs and sharpened its fixtures while I still clung to corners that were no longer where they belonged. It changed shape, the house, the rooms castled, the furniture swapped places to confuse me. With one eye blind with blood and the other clouded over at my every movement, I was lost, a blindfolded chicken, dizzy and witless."

- how simple things she took for granted are now challenging or impossible, how for someone who is a reader and a writer and a researcher, this is a kind of irreparable loss. Our heart goes out to the heroine and we sink when her heart sinks. But the book also descibes how our heroine handles these challenges with style and aplomb - it is inspiring. For example, in this sentence -

"As the car set off and began to gather speed, I looked into the rearview mirror with my mind's eye..."

- and this passage -

"Yes, but I'm only an apprentice blind woman and I have very little ambition in the trade, and yes, almost blind and dangerous. But I'm not going to just sit in a chair and wait for it to pass."

- and this passage -

"when he opened the door Ignacio exclaimed joder, the sun is coming up. But the word sunrise evoked nothing. Nothing even close to a sunrise. My eyes were emptying of all the things they'd seen. And it occurred to me that words and their rhythms would remain, but not landscapes, not colors or faces, not those black eyes of Ignacio's that I had seen spill out a love at times wary, sullen, cutting, but above all an open love, expectant, full of mirages that the crossword puzzle would define as hallucinations."

There is a scene in the book where our heroine kisses her boyfriend's eye - it is so beautiful, sensual, even erotic. It was amazing, because I never thought that a description of a person kissing someone's eye could be that way.

The description of Chile in the book is fascinating and beautiful and takes us a little bit into Chilean history of the past half century and makes us want to read more about that period. The ending of the book is unexpected and stunning - I didn't see that coming. Then I stepped back by a chapter and discovered that there were clues strewn around by the author. It was like watching 'The Sixth Sense'.

I loved the structure of the book. It is not very long at 157 pages. It is divided into short chapters, between two and four pages long. Each chapter has a title. Interestingly, each chapter is also made up of only one paragraph. Punctuation is used minimally. There is no distinction between a statement, a question, a dialogue. Sometimes the speaker of the first sentence is different from the speaker of the second sentence and there is no signpost to indicate that the speaker has changed. This kind of stuff might bother some readers. It didn't bother me. I loved it and the story flowed naturally for me. Lina Meruane's prose is soft, gentle and smooth and flows beautifully and quietly like a river. Reading the book is a meditative experience, which is very fascinating, because the main theme it addresses is a bit dark and bleak. Meruane's prose softens the blow and makes us turn the page.

There are places in the book where I couldn't help wonder how a particular passage would have read in Spanish, how it would have been even more beautiful and poetic in the original. For example, this description -

"That accent, so unmistakably Chilean, harbored the glacial poem of the mountain peaks and their snows in eternal mid-thaw, the dark whisper of the south dotted with giant rhubarbs, the mourning of roadside shrines, the herb-garden smell, the rough salts of the desert, the sulfurous copper shell of the mine open to the sky."

- and this phrase -

"to interrupt the peace of the worried"

- and this sentence -

"While outside the street revives - a gust or a whisper in the distance - and the sun peers indignantly through the gaps in the curtains to track us with its flame"

If you get to read this book in Spanish, I will envy you.

I also loved the fact that there was a lot of white space surrounding the words in a page - a beautiful place where the reader can write comments and notes. I love a book when it has that.

I loved 'Seeing Red'. It is one of my favourite reads of the year. I hope to read it again one of these days, more slowly, focussing on my favourite passages.

#Quotes

I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

"I'm the heroine who resists her tragedy, I thought, the heroine trying to drive destiny crazy with her own hands."

"Good was a word Lekz sometimes slid out like a crutch, and other times it seemed to weigh heavy on his tongue, like a rock that sinks in silence, leaving only ripples. The word had an expansive effect in the room."

"The lyrics of the song explain : what makes you live can kill you in excess. The refrain repeats : too much sun, too much sugar, too much water, too much oxygen. Too much maternal love. Too much truth."

"The finger is no longer there. My hand isn't there and neither is my arm. I'm not me anymore. Lucina vanished, her being is suspended somewhere in the hospital. What is left of her now is pure biology : a heart that beats and beats, a lung that inflates, an anesthetized brain incapable of dreaming, while the hair goes on growing, slowly, beneath the cap."

#EndOfQuotes

Have you read Lina Meruane's 'Seeing Red'? What do you think about it?

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I watched an infinite number of treasured and uneven memories parade before my sick eyes, memories of the times when I’d pretended to erase my illness, moments that were falsely happy when I’d made myself think I could be someone else; they'd debilitated me and left me at the mercy of a foreign solitude that was only mine.”

From the beginning, the staccato sentences and underlying sense of urgency set the reader right along with Lucina, a young woman who suffers some sort of episode (stroke, most likely, but never stated) in the first few pages of the book. She remains calm even as she "sees red", her eyes filling with blood, progressively blinding her.

The first-person narrative is especially effective here, in the seat of Lucina as she experiences the doctor's visits, falls and injuries adapting to her new state, and the growing dependency on her boyfriend Ignacio, and later her family in Santiago, Chile. Her descriptions and details change, to that of the other senses, specifically the smells and memories behind them.

The stream-of-consciousness / internal style worked well here, especially in the short section model, each being 2-3 pages. Her descriptions of interactions with her mother specifically hit me - she captured something very specific - a nameless emotion - within an adult daughter/mother relationship.

[Guillermo Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con diferencias mínimas de lo que se entendía en la Grecia antigua como tragedia, esta brutal novela de Lina Meruane podría ser leída como tal: sin coro, y con un reparto mínimo de actores, la narradora nos hunde en el sufrimiento de la vida de una escritora, una investigadora, que pierde la vista, al menos temporalmente.

Aunque antes de movernos a la compasión, siento que se acerca más más al espanto, al horror; y al mismo tiempo a una belleza ciega, una belleza del sonido, de los aromas, de las texturas; del recuerdo y la memoria privadas del sentido de la vista, y esto inserta la novela en un plano de ficción increíblemente rico y extenso, que se divide en más de un plano de comprensión.

El texto está narrado con una prosa que guarda un gran equilibrio entre lo cerebral, lo lúcido, lo sensato, sin perder un ápice de lo onírico de la situación, alguien que deja de ver porque solo ve sangre. Alguien que deja de ver a su amante, a su casa y amigos, a su familia, pero que sabe que están allí. Alguien que siente el abandono intelectual de sus colegas:

“‘Quizá pensaban que sin ojos ya no era posible pensar. ¿Pensarían que para pensar era necesario estar al tanto de la última teoría?’” (p. 149)

La narradora no escatima recrearnos ese nuevo mundo por medio de una voz que abarca demasiado, y que incluso es diestra en guardar silencio a algunas cosas, claves en la lectura y su desenlace.

Algunas preguntas entre líneas de la novela me parecen magistrales como, ¿qué estás dispuesto a dar por amor?

Segundo libro que leo de Meruane y la imagen que me hago de ella es la de una mujer con una fuerza descomunal, de una persona que “observa” el mundo con una mirada inquisitiva de detective que lo pone en duda todo.

Novela relativamente breve que se puede desgranar con parsimonia y sosiego para disfrutar su lectura como quien aprecia un buen cuadro, una buena pieza musical, una obra de arte; porque eso es Sangre en el ojo: una pieza magistral que no se empaña nada a los ojos del lector.

Mi fascinación por la escritura de Lina solo crece y va en aumento con cada cosa que leo de ella, la imagino como un ser sumamente despierto, con una mirada atenta a todo cuanto la rodea y con una lucidez extrema que le permite traducir su comprensión del mundo en palabras y estructuras narrativas muy bien concretadas.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense, disturbing, and vividly written, this little novel treads the border between autobiography and fiction, fantasy/horror and realism.

Our narrator, Lucina/Lina is a type 1 diabetic apparently suffering from the final stages of diabetic retinopathy. An unfortunate but chance incident at a party leads to a stroke and all her retinal veins bleeding out, flooding her vitreous humour, and causing blindness. The rest of the book deals with Lina, her boyfriend, doctor, and family confronting this blindness, each in their own way, as depicted by Lina. This all sounds fairly standard but Lina is far from a standard narrator and her "vision" is profoundly dark, unflinching, and more than a little unbalanced. The final pages are, well... disquieting.

Highly recommended.

[Alejandra Arévalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuando hablamos del terror y el cuerpo siempre pensamos en muchas cosas menos en la pérdida repentina de algo de nuestro cuerpo y cómo lidiar con ello en la realidad. ¿Qué sucede con una enfermedad misteriosa? ¿Quién estará contigo no importa qué suceda? ¿Quién te daría su vida para que tú vuelvas a la normalidad? a través de una narrativa autoficcional, Lina Meruane nos lleva a través de sus pensamientos al comenzar con Sangre en el ojo, un suceso extraño en sus ojos la ha dejado casi ciega, de pronto, dejar de escribir, depender de otros sentidos y sobre todo de su pareja parecen estar cambiándole fuertemente el humor y su forma de "ver" todo su contexto. La forma en que decide narrar esta historia, con largas frases que parecen cortarse de repente, contagia de alguna manera ese sentimiento de terror y respiración al saber que quizás te quedes para siempre ciega. Eso me pareció magistral de muchas maneras, no todos los escritores logran contactar en su forma de narrar la situación nerviosa a sus lectores. Definitivamente una novela un poco extraña que termina en un final curioso que le da la cereza al pastel. No creo que sea una lectura para todos pero si se animan, uff, qué viajesote.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this autobiographical novel about a Chilean American woman going blind to be riveting; sadly, whether it was the translation or what, by the 50% mark I found it to be quite putdownable so that's what I did.

[Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un drama potente y vertiginoso, que explora muchos temas. Con una protagonista en estado de negación, furiosa consigo misma, con las situación que le toca vivir y también un poco, con quiénes la rodean.

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Albeit a fascinating read I did struggle at times with the style, not sure if some of this is down to translation, but it did feel like a constant stream of consciousness which I found quite heavy at times.

Despite that, it’s such an unusual story, semi autobiographical as I believe the author experienced blindness following a stroke, so it’s a pretty horrific journey through the terrors of blindness, peppered with dark humour.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will say this again and again: Megan McDowell is doing really phenomenal work in translating all these outstandingly unique Spanish novels into English. RTC.

[Nora Eugénie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se trata de una novela muy sensorial. A través de los ojos físicos de Lina vemos la sangre, sangre que tiñe y enturbia sus rutinas, como una cortina de terciopelo rojo. A través de los ojos mentales de Lina, que a menudo toma prestados de Ignacio, de su madre o de su doctor, vemos todo lo demás. Vemos el dolor, la angustia de perder la vista, de sentirse sumida en una tiniebla, la desesperanza, acontecemos a los comentarios hirientes de quienes creemos nos quieren y aceptan, a la hipocresía y mala educación de las personas. Y también olemos y palpamos, porque si algo tiene esta novela es que es perturbadora y visceral, utiliza todos los sentidos para erizarte la piel y conseguir que empatices, que puedas ponerte, al menos durante 177 páginas, en la (aterradora) piel de una persona que se queda repentinamente ciega.

[Lilith Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde las primeras líneas, la relación entre este libro y yo se volvió íntima. Tuve un diagnóstico tardío de diabetes tipo 1, tan tardío que, entre varias cosas desagradables, terminé con una retinopatía severa y lentes de por vida. No solo tuve que acostumbrarme a la insulina, sino que también a un tratamiento que me dejó ambas retinas agujereadas, quemaduras de cigarro les digo yo. No tengo ninguna certeza del futuro, puede que empeore o puede que no, la juventud no garantiza nada porque ya vivo una vida irreversible.

Así que fue brutal leer a Lina. Fue horrible encontrarme, sostenerme en ella. Fue siniestro observar su relación con Ignacio y luego mirar al lado, a mi propio enfermero, y analizar una vez más mi forma de vincularme con él y con el mundo.

Fue brutal, repito, pero un alivio. No me sentí sola. Me sentí comprendida. Gracias Lina por tu escritura cercana e hipnótica.

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so good I sent Meruane a giddy fan letter. It began as a sedate, polite note about how much I enjoyed the novel and spun out from there because... Wow. It was fantastic. I devoured it. I read it in the original Spanish, but I understand that Meruane worked closely with her translator for the English edition, Seeing Red, so it's bound to be excellent as well. Definitely seek it out. Definitely read it.

[Agustina Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble. Lo terminé de leer con taquicardia.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

an unsettling and disquieting look at a woman's descent into blindness, lina meruane's seeing red (sangre en el ojo) melds autobiography with fiction. meruane, a new york-based chilean novelist and lit professor, was awarded the 2013 sor juana inés de la cruz prize (given to spanish-language women writers) for this work. with a first-person narrative chronicling her own ocular decline, seeing red bears witness to the inter- and intrapersonal struggles that force the narrator to make sense of the relationships around her, all while relying upon those very people for support, aid, and comfort. meruane's gifted prose lends the story both immediacy and persuasiveness.

and in the minutes that passed while i pulled up my skirt over my dirty underwear, put on my sweaty socks, my boots, pulled on my undershirt, scarf, sweater, and anxiety over the verdict, i watched an infinite number of treasured and uneven memories parade before my sick eyes, memories of the times when i'd pretended to erase my illness, moments that were falsely happy when i'd made myself think i could be someone else; they'd debilitated me and left me at the mercy of a foreign solitude that was only mine.

*translated from the spanish by megan mcdowell (zambra, et al.)

[Marjorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is described as a new-to-me genre – autobiographical novel. Apparently the author, Lina Meruane, had a stroke and suffered temporary blindness, necessitating surgery. Her novel’s main character, also named Lina Meruane, is based on the author, also being an author having serious problems with her vision. The literary character literally sees red from the burst blood vessels behind her eye.

The book is written in short chapters with a stream of consciousness aspect to them. Having been through a period of blindness herself, the author writes a very realistic portrayal of a woman’s deterioration of vision and the effects of her impending blindness on not only herself but her loved ones. While Ms. Meruane did a wonderful job describing all of the terrors of blindness and its devastating consequences, there was an element of black humor that I wasn’t able to appreciate. It’s an intelligent read and one I feel I should have been able to immerse myself into more than I was able to.

This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que no se sostiene por su argumento, estructura o personajes, sino que por la narración misma. No es una prosa bella, pero si una que puede transmitir muchísimo. En cierto sentido es un libro denso, acongojante, para ser leído de forma pausada. Me recordó por momentos la incomodidad que siento al leer a Kanzaburo Oe.

Es extraño, pero intentó buscar más elementos positivos en la novela, y no los encuentro, tanto los personajes como su argumento me resultaron poco atractivos, incluso, hasta desagradables. A pesar de la tragedia de la protagonista, me costó sentir empatía por ella. Una escritora chilena que hace su Ph. D en Nueva York, después de haber vivido en España, hija de padres médicos, con sus dramas existenciales de persona de primer mundo que nació en el tercero. "¡Que quede ciega!" pensé durante todo el libro "que tenga un poco de verdadera tragedia".

A pesar de lo anterior, es un libro que me gustó bastante, ya que logra estremecer e incomodar. Incluso sus defectos devienen en virtudes, su opacidad contribuye a lograr la atmosfera que hace de esta de esta novela algo fuera de lo común.

[Arelis Uribe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es la historia de una ciega que lo ve todo. En este libro, Meruane tiene una prosa súper visual, va narrando todo lo que percibe alrededor, usando el gusto, el oído y el olfato, y al contármelo, me lo imagino todo visualmente. Es un libro bellísimo, oscuro y melancólico, con una prosa llena de frases que una podría ponerse como estado de Facebook y sonar inteligente y sensible.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read texts like this, I'm often a bit distracted, wondering how much is based on autobiographical events. The narrator also goes by "Lina", and many aspects of her life are quite similar to Meruane's own biography.

I was really enjoying Meruane's prose in the first 50 pages or so. The complex interpersonal and family relationships are treated in a nuanced and realistic way; I can certainly relate to Lina's interactions with her parents under the shadow of her health crisis. The novel is entirely composed of 2-4 page paragraphs. Long paragraphs are often tough for me, but it helps that each is within a titled section. I was ready to give this 4 stars, but eventually felt that the material was stretched out a bit much (I know, I know, my usual complaint).

I do feel a bit callous about not appreciating this more, especially if it's autobiographical. It's not helpful that my copy of the newly translated Mariana Enriquez just arrived, and is exerting its irresistible gravity. Megan McDowell translated both! Not a bad way to start my reading year.

(3.5 stars)

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story of a woman who loses her eyesight, inspired by an episode of blindness experienced by the author, is a visceral, internal account of the fear of of losing control, the challenges of navigating the world with the mind's eye, and the anxieties and pressures a person in crisis can put on those close to them. Lucina is only six months into a new relationship when veins in her eyes begin to bleed, robbing her of her vision. Waiting for a chance to try surgery, she flies home to Chile where her partner joins her to try to salvage a vacation they'd planned—now primarily restricted to staying with her doctor parents. The narrative unfolds in single paragraph sections that extend for several pages, "seen" entirely from Lucina's unseeing perspective, building in intensity as she careens headlong into an uncertain future. I found the energy irresistible, the style very effective and the translation excellent.
https://roughghosts.com/2022/04/21/lo...

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great little novel in an incredible translation by my Goodreads friend Megan McDowell. It's all about the narrator’s voice, the way she describes things, people, relationships (her verbs as much as her adjectives), the way she remembers, how visceral she is, her transitions and lack thereof, the way she starts her short chapters, everything she does and the way she does it is wonderful, original, and holds together with little in the way of plot, just some spurts of dialogue, and characters only as they are to the narrator. There is one section toward the end that feels conventional, and it’s a shock, clearly an intended one. This is one of the few novels that, at my age, I will keep and read again.

[Susana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente libro. Nunca pensé que un libro sobre enfermedad, sobre ceguera, sobre negación, me iba a gustar tanto. La escritura de Lina Meruane es tan maravillosa que supera cualquier perjuicio que pudiese tener, que me obligara a enfrentarme al dolor y la sangre:

"Y tú estabas ahí, como otro tuerto, sin comprender lo que había sucedido. No podías calcular la gravedad. No te animabas a hacer todas las preguntas. Te las guardabas arrugadas, como ahora, en los bolsillos."

"El río empapaba el aire de nubes bajas y desflecadas donde las palomas se quedaban sin aliento."

"Regresaba a una ciudad en la que nunca había estado."

Hay que leer a Lina Meruane.

[Reckless Serenade · Rating 2 out of 5]

«Vivo adivinando, me está matando tanto acertijo».

Para mí sólo ha sido la novela que trata sobre una chica con las venas de los ojos rotas.

Sin embargo sabe engancharte, ya que estás toda la novela con la intriga de sí volverá a ver o no pero ya está, creo que no es una novela tan profunda como parece.

[Nicolás Tauriani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un descenso a la locura, con las mejores tres últimas páginas de un final que deja al lector con gusto a más. Droga.