Skip to main content

Writing In White Ink




"Point of view is becoming my subject" says Sofia, the central character of this fabulous novel.

This is indeed a densely imagined discussion of points of view: how we view ourselves and how we are viewed by others and how the two are interpreted, particularly by - and through - language.

The text of the novel is prefaced by a short quote from Hélène Cixous' The Laugh of the Medusa and one could see what follows as an exercise in ecriture feminine; the approach to writing that Cixous proposed which would allow women to describe themselves in ways which reflect how they engage with the world and their own consciousness.  

Sofia's estranged father who left her mother many years before perhaps encapsulates the perspective which enraged Cixous: 

‘Sofia is a waitress for the time being’ my father said in Greek.

I am other things, too. 

…I do not resemble an acceptable femininity from my father’s point of view. '

‘How do we set about not imagining something?' is the apposite question posed at one point. Not imagining is a reflection of curtailed perspective. 

An anthropologist by training, Sofia works in a coffee shop and is now in Spain looking after her mother who has problems walking and is attending a clinic in Almeria. As her mother is weaned off her extensive medication and starts to walk and drive in a way that suggests that she actually has no physical problems with her legs, Sofia is stung by the medusas (the jellyfish in the sea in which she bathes) into starting to observe herself and others in quite different ways. In effect she anthropologises herself.

‘Anthropologists have to veer off track otherwise we would never rearrange our own belief systems’

In this she becomes involved with Ingrid and Juan (who runs the treatment table for jellyfish stings). With the latter in a relatively straightforward way. With the former with an extraordinary level of complexity in which Ingrid appears as a whole range of different aspects of womanhood, ironically from the original meeting in which Sofia sees her shoes under the cubicle in the women's bathroom and thinks she is a man to an athletic horsewoman reminiscent of the Amazons of ancient legend. 

‘Ingrid and Juan. He is masculine and she is feminine but, like a deep perfume, the notes cut into each other and mingle’.

The anthropologic process entails Sofia understanding her mother and understanding herself and the reciprocity between them; the milk that supported her as an infant continues to inform the way that the world is interpreted and described.

In a little over 200 pages the reader has been given a dense, rich, allusive exposure to the complexity of how we invent ourselves and the significance of our relationships with others which seems to reach right back to antiquity.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Best Films of 2024

  My Letterboxd account confidently provided a detailed thematic breakdown of the 225 films viewed this year: Quite what to make of this is somewhat less clear. Either I broke the algorithm or my ideal film is a low key, droll, genre hopping, weird, relationship drama with philosophical pretensions. Which might actually stand as a description of my favourite film of the year.  Certainly, on review, 2024 turns out, slightly surprisingly, to have been a strong year. So even before reaching the top 10 there are another ten films very worthy of note: On Becoming A Guinea Fowl   The Dead Don't Hurt   Green Border    The Outrun   Good One Showing Up   The Holdovers   Femme   The Settlers   Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry   Then the top ten in traditional reverse order: 10.  Janet Planet  Wonderfully understated, subtle examination of our perception of connection to others seen most profoundly in the determination of a teen...

Anni Albers: Sculpting With Thread

Wandering around this kaleidoscopic  exhibition  at the Tate put me in mind of so many other artists that I began to wonder whether Albers was a conduit for their influence or whether I was simply engaged in a procession of imagined serendipity. It may seem strange to begin with a sculptor given that Albers primarily worked with textiles but I was constantly reminded of Brancusi. The wonder of Brancusi is that he aims to reveal and develop the inherent nature of the material whether stone, wood or metal. The form that he finds is therefore perfectly suited to the stuff with which he is working. What is striking with Albers is that she does exactly this with the techniques applied to different types of material. Development In Rose (one of my favourite pieces in the exhibition) is made from linen and the impurities and imperfections in the thread are used in essence as highlights. The slightly muted colour also captures the often slightly faded nature of t...

Pourquoi J'Aime 'Les Amants'

It has Jeanne Moreau. It has the most exquisite andante from Brahms String Sextet. It has extended sequences that involve both Jeanne Moreau and the (exquisite) andante from Brahms string sextet. It  is directed by one of the most fabulous French film makers, Louis Malle, and probably ranks alongside Smiles Of A Summer Night as amongst the most swooning meditations on romantic love (albeit on this occasion without Russian roulette). Did I mention, it has Jeanne Moreau. It has a sequence in which a very a la mode Parisienne wakes up with a groomed daschund already in the crook of her arm. It has the most extraordinary sequence of laughter in any film in which the laughter is both such a release and a realisation of how much laughter has simply been missing for so long that it is delirious and painful in equal measure. It is a beautifully observed portrait of Paris and the provinces with all the droll superficiality that implies. But above all it is the utte...