Sabina Berman

I've had some disappointments lately, and a string of three- and four-starred books. I thought this one might be special, so I was saving it up. Happily, I was right.

Like The Hangman's Daughter, this is a translation (from Spanish). Unlike The Hangman's Daughter, this translation was done so well that I almost never noticed any odd phrases. This is what literary translation should look like! Hats off to Lisa Dillman.

I felt so good reading this book. Karen's voice was so engaging, the aspects of her autism so logical and understandable, that I felt as though I was listening to a good friend tell the story. And it was feminist-friendly, so I got to see some great women in action. Even Yasuko, Karen's brilliant business partner and high-profile social handler, who could so easily have been a villain or a footnote, is multidimensional and real.

There were some supremely funny moments as well. You never feel sorry for Karen, who never feels sorry for herself.

I know I'm not going into detail--unfortunately I was lazy and didn't do my write-up right away--but I cannot recommend this book enough. It was beautiful, fun, detailed, and so, so worth waiting for. Definitely not a book for the charity shelf!

Quote Roundup

13
--Just thinking about our furious You and Me classes is giving Me a headache right this minute.
--And I'll concede 2 more things:
--1. Even now, 32 years later, I still can't quite accept that anyone, with the exception of Me, could ever be a Me.
--2. I still think that glass shattering into 1,000 pieces is the most wonderful sound in the world.
In hindsight, perfectly understated foreshadowing.

17
I make a note of [the dictionary] because it's been the biggest difference between my aunt and Me: she thinks that words are things in the world, whereas I know that they are simply pieces of sound and that things of the world exist with no need for words.

54
--He asked Me:
--Can I touch you?
--He reached out a big hand to my thigh and, startled, I raised my boot up to place it between his face and Me.
--Okay, he said to the sole.
--And he pulled his hand back to him and took his wallet out of his breast pocket and from that took out two very green little leaves and offered Me 1, and only then did I lower my boot.
--We each tore our leaf, rubbed it between 2 fingers, smelled the fresh-cut lemon scent. In silence on the calm sea.
This scene made me so happy. So many writers would have made this a rape scene, but instead we get the beginning of a beautiful, mutually respectful friendship. Ricardo was such a good friend to Karen--I loved their interactions, and I even loved how their relationship just kind of tapered off while still leaving a permanent, important impression on Karen's life.

58
--That happens when you kill. Something else, something like a hole, opens up in you right here.
--He touched the red cross tattoo that was under his chest hair and over his heart.
--A hole where fear gets in. Horror, but you don't know what it's horror of. That's the worst part, you feel so scared and you don't know what you're scared of.

75
Pretty much this whole page, though I'm not going to type it up.

91
--At the end of the last class, the professor promised me I'd get an A and I asked her for the results of the psychometric tests she'd given Me.
--That's neither useful nor recommendable, she said. Let me stress: you're perfect.
--Give Me my diagnosis, I demanded
This whole section was extraordinary, and a great way to delve into the meat of Karen's diagnosis through Karen's perspective--though it did strain credulity a bit. Again, Doctor Glickman could so easily have been a villain, but she wasn't shown that way. She wasn't shown as anything but what Karen perceived as herself.

107
After many words and 24 pages, Descartes wrote that happiness is a matter of the senses. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting: that is happiness. Then Descartes wrote many other pages full of words, which is a shame because he'd reached the truth on page 25.

118
A beautifully written scene in which a rabbi gives a speech in the open air...but the highlight isn't what he says.

125
The only thing that was clear to Me was that despite its name Chicken of the Sea sold white tuna--albacore tuna--but called it chicken, and for some reason I couldn't comprehend, ecologists were more concerned about dolphins than they were about the tuna themselves, or the sea turtles, or the tiny little anchovies that dolphins swallow by the kilo each day.

155
--Karen, sweetheart, I love you like the daughter I never had.
--1 of those impossible sentences only human fantasy could come up with. Gould loved Me as much as a nonexistent girl.

179
--When human being started studying ant colonies 24 centuries ago, they asked themselves, who's the boss in this society? Someone had to be the boss, in their view, because human beings had only ever invented societies where someone was the boss and the rest of them obeyed. And then they noticed that the ants took very good care of the mother ant and that she did nothing by lie there reproducing and they said: Of course, that 1 there who doesn't do everything and everyone attends to must be the boss, and they called her the queen.
--Aha, says the detective. That was 24 centuries ago. So why do we keep calling her the queen ant today?
--Stupidity.
--Aha, he repeats. Of course, of course.

209
Most of this page, in which Aunt Isabelle talks about shit and hope for the human race from her seat on a toilet.… (more)

I enjoyed this story of an autistic woman (Karen) who is a savant in the areas of animal husbandry and aquaculture. She is the narrator of the story, and her voice rings true throughout, as she matures and learns coping mechanisms.

Like other reviewers, I found some of the auxiliary characters stereotyped, and the relative ages of Karen, her mother and her aunt don't seem to line up in any feasible way! But, overall, I enjoyed the book for its quirky writing style and the way it allowed me to see the world from Karen's perspective.… (more)