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moirainocencio's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
sarcastic_fish's review against another edition
4.0
dizzying
how when you spend your time adapting yourself to your lovers you’ll never know who you are, and then you’re searching for yourself in other people, no wonder you always feel like you’re acting or pretending, and cause you don’t know who you are of course you never experience any deeper love either…if you don’t have it for yourself how could you ever expect to share it with anyone else
this gave me emotional whiplash and i might need a hot sec to recover
fucks sake sabina
how when you spend your time adapting yourself to your lovers you’ll never know who you are, and then you’re searching for yourself in other people, no wonder you always feel like you’re acting or pretending, and cause you don’t know who you are of course you never experience any deeper love either…if you don’t have it for yourself how could you ever expect to share it with anyone else
this gave me emotional whiplash and i might need a hot sec to recover
fucks sake sabina
graynymph24's review against another edition
5.0
My new favourite book. Nin captures what it is to be a woman playing man.
utzvictoria's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
definitely a good read about the emotion love. definitely want to reread in the future with a new perspective
2357aya's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
insp84's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
mmefish's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
"At night too she puzzled over the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind.*
*This was the gaze Sabina had always encountered in Don Juan, everywhere; it was the gaze she mistrusted. It was the alchemy of desire fixing itself upon the incarnation of all women into Sabina for a moment but as easily by a second process able to alchemize Sabina into many others."
"She was proud of walking at his side, as if bearing a trophy. As a woman she was proud in her feminine vanity, in her love of conquest. This vainglorious walk gave her an illusion of strength and power: she had charmed, won, such a man. She felt heightened in her own eyes, while knowing this sensation was not different than drunkenness, and that it would vanish like the ecstasies of drink, leaving her the next day even more shaky, even weaker at the core, deflated, defeated, possessing nothing within herself."
"For a moment she saw her love anxieties as resembling those of a drug addict, of alcoholics, of gamblers. The same irresistible impulse, tension, compulsion and then depression following the yielding to the impulse, revulsion, bitterness, depression, and the compulsion once more…"
"On the shelf she found face powder, comb lipstick in shell rose wrappings. She smiled at them. Wife? Mistress? How good it was to contemplate these objects without the lightest tremor of regret, envy or jealousy. That was the meaning of freedom. Free of attachment, dependency and the capacity for pain."
gaybf's review against another edition
3.0
quotes
- He looked at her again with a professional frown.
- The trust she felt in his evenly modulated voice, both warm and light, in his harmonious manners never sudden or violent, in his thoughts which he weighed before articulating, in his insights which were moderate, was so great that it resembled a total abandon of herself to him, a total giving.
- Sabina wants to be the woman whom Alan wants her to be. At times Alan is not certain of what he wishes. Then the stormy, tumultuous Sabina waits in incredible stillness, alert and watchful for signs of his wishes and fantasies.
- (Later he told her: if you had spoken then I would have walked away. You had the talent of letting everything else speak for you. It was because you were silent that I came up to you.)
- (complicated esp the family part after this quote??):
"I know, but it cannot be," he said very gently. And then suddenly the anger overflowed: "For me, it's everything or nothing. I've known this before...a woman like you. Desire. It's desire, but not for me. You don't know me. It's for my race, it's for a sensual power we have." --???
He reached for her wrists and spoke close to her face. "It destroys me. Everywhere desire, and in the ultimate giving, withdrawal. Because I am African. What do you know of me? I sing and drum and you desire me. But I'm not an entertainer. I'm a mathematician, a composer, a writer." - (and continuing)
"That was not me."
Any devastating words addressed to the Sabina he had possessed, the primitive one, could not reach her then; she was already halfway out of the forest of their desire, the core already far away, invulnerable, protected by flight. What remained was a costume: it was piled on the floor of his room, empty of her. - I understand his madness, why does he run away from me? I feel close to him, why does he not feel close to me, why doesn't he see the resemblance between us, between our madness. I want the impossible, I want to fly all the time, I destroy ordinary life, I run towards all the dangers of love as he ran towards all the dangers of war. He runs away, war is less terrifying to him than life...
- Guilt is the one burden human beings cannot bear alone.
- "That's not a man you are describing, and not even a father's love. It's a fantasy-father, an idealized father once invented by a needy child. This love you need, Alan has given you. But you will lose him one day, for there are other Alans exactly as there are other Sabinas, and they too demand to live and to be matched. The enemy of love is never outside, it's not a man or a woman, it's what we lack in ourselves."
sigynmoon's review
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs and Racism
Minor: War