The Memory Room
Another good blog. Bookslut links to Living Small’s stimulating discussion of the NYRB review of Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, mentioned here below on January 8th. Its comparison of Sebold�s massive-selling book with Mary Rakow�s comparatively neglected novel The Memory Room prompted me to renew interest in the latter. How good is this book? Living Small says it is “harrowing, stunning”. But as it is described by the publisher as “a poetic novel in verse” and is over 500 pages, I am tempted to believe it to be over-long and unreadable like The English Patient or The Bone People. The acknowledgements, reprinted on the publisher’s site, increase my doubts. Yet an extract, including fragments of Paul Celan’s fragmentary poems, makes me want to give it another chance. However, there don’t seem to be many reviews out there.
It seems that Rakow is an adult convert to Catholicism, and Living Small’s interest seems to derive from its own concern with religious faith. While this would usually have me running for the nearest clove of garlic, I wonder if artists for whom questions of faith are still at stake are more interesting than those for whom they are dust-covered shoeboxes in the attic of culture?
Other SpikeMagazine.com posts of interest:
- Paid To Blog
- Apathy Blog
- Small, Mobile, Intelligent Units
- Your Ghost Rachel Whiteread’s memorial to the H…
- Bad Religion
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