aliceilbruco2's review
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
amethystdeceiver86's review
2.0
Gave up on this one. I thought Barnes' prose was gorgeous & almost poetic, but that didn't add up to a narrative that either made sense or was hugely engaging. A novel for college literature majors only.
tlascends's review
3.0
Good book; very confusing. Definitely worth a second read, but only for illumination on all of the crazy nuances within.
chumwhat's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
binstonbirchill's review against another edition
4.0
What a wonderful confounding novel. I read it twice in a row to try to understand what I just read. I’m not entirely sure that if helped but I really enjoyed the experience. I’m writing this a few weeks later and I want to read it again. Once I do it may become one of my favorite novels. It might already be there, but for now I’ll leave it at 4.6 spectacular stars.
raluca_p's review
5.0
《We look to the East for a wisdom that we shall not use—and to the sleeper for the secret that we shall not find. So, I say, what of the night, the terrible night? The darkness is the closet in which your lover roosts her heart, and that night-fowl that caws against her spirit and yours, dropping between you and her the awful estrangement of his bowels. The drip of your tears is his implacable pulse. Night people do not bury their dead, but on the neck of you, their beloved and waking, sling the creature, husked of its gestures. And where you go, it goes, the two of you, your living and her dead, that will not die; to daylight, to life, to grief, until both are carrion.》
《those who turn the day into night, the young, the drug addict, the profligate, the drunken and that most miserable, the lover who watches all night long in fear and anguish. These can never again live the life of the day. When one meets them at high noon they give off, as if it were a protective emanation, something dark and muted. The light does not become them any longer. They begin to have an unrecorded look. It is as if they were being tried by the continual blows of an unseen adversary. They acquire an ‘unwilling’ set of features. They become old without reward, the widower bird sitting sighing at the turnstile of heaven, ‘Hallelujah! I am sticked! Skoll! Skoll! I am dying!’》
《Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the “findings” in a tomb. As in one will be charted the taken place of the body, the raiment, the utensils necessary to its other life, so in the heart of the lover will be traced, as an indelible shadow, that which he loves. In Nora’s heart lay the fossil of Robin, intaglio of her identity, and about it for its maintenance ran Nora’s blood. Thus the body of Robin could never be unloved, corrupt or put away. Robin was now beyond timely changes, except in the blood that animated her. That she could be spilled of this fixed the walking image of Robin in appalling apprehension on Nora’s mind—Robin alone, crossing streets, in danger. Her mind became so transfixed that, by the agency of her fear, Robin seemed enormous and polarized, all catastrophes ran toward her, the magnetized predicament; and crying out, Nora would wake from sleep, going back through the tide of dreams into which her anxiety had thrown her, taking the body of Robin down with her into it, as the ground things take the corpse, with minute persistence, down into the earth, leaving a pattern of it on the grass, as if they stitched as they descended.》
《Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two are buried at opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both.》
《those who turn the day into night, the young, the drug addict, the profligate, the drunken and that most miserable, the lover who watches all night long in fear and anguish. These can never again live the life of the day. When one meets them at high noon they give off, as if it were a protective emanation, something dark and muted. The light does not become them any longer. They begin to have an unrecorded look. It is as if they were being tried by the continual blows of an unseen adversary. They acquire an ‘unwilling’ set of features. They become old without reward, the widower bird sitting sighing at the turnstile of heaven, ‘Hallelujah! I am sticked! Skoll! Skoll! I am dying!’》
《Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the “findings” in a tomb. As in one will be charted the taken place of the body, the raiment, the utensils necessary to its other life, so in the heart of the lover will be traced, as an indelible shadow, that which he loves. In Nora’s heart lay the fossil of Robin, intaglio of her identity, and about it for its maintenance ran Nora’s blood. Thus the body of Robin could never be unloved, corrupt or put away. Robin was now beyond timely changes, except in the blood that animated her. That she could be spilled of this fixed the walking image of Robin in appalling apprehension on Nora’s mind—Robin alone, crossing streets, in danger. Her mind became so transfixed that, by the agency of her fear, Robin seemed enormous and polarized, all catastrophes ran toward her, the magnetized predicament; and crying out, Nora would wake from sleep, going back through the tide of dreams into which her anxiety had thrown her, taking the body of Robin down with her into it, as the ground things take the corpse, with minute persistence, down into the earth, leaving a pattern of it on the grass, as if they stitched as they descended.》
《Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two are buried at opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both.》
misha_devi's review against another edition
4.0
3.5
another one that i would appreciate re-reading due to its heavy use of poetic language and symbolism
Re-read 2022:
So glad I re-read this one. I can’t believe uni had me rushing through this in two days. For me, Nightwood is a book to be read slowly, savouring its aesthetics, revelling in the exquisite prose of Djuna Barnes and getting to know its strange cast of characters. The book sets a scene of decaying 19th Century European values populated by melancholic characters attempting (badly) to live some sort of authentic life and getting lost in debauchery and hopelessness. It is definitely a no plot, just vibes kind of book so I wouldn’t go in looking for a story. The doctor’s monologues could be insufferable if you’re not looking to untangle language and metaphor. It is more like sitting in a 1930s Parisian café night after night, listening to people’s strange conversations and then following them home to see their intense shame and fear behind closed doors.
another one that i would appreciate re-reading due to its heavy use of poetic language and symbolism
Re-read 2022:
So glad I re-read this one. I can’t believe uni had me rushing through this in two days. For me, Nightwood is a book to be read slowly, savouring its aesthetics, revelling in the exquisite prose of Djuna Barnes and getting to know its strange cast of characters. The book sets a scene of decaying 19th Century European values populated by melancholic characters attempting (badly) to live some sort of authentic life and getting lost in debauchery and hopelessness. It is definitely a no plot, just vibes kind of book so I wouldn’t go in looking for a story. The doctor’s monologues could be insufferable if you’re not looking to untangle language and metaphor. It is more like sitting in a 1930s Parisian café night after night, listening to people’s strange conversations and then following them home to see their intense shame and fear behind closed doors.
cady's review
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
lunarleila's review
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Robin in Nightwood is basically Shane from The L Word if she were worse (and alive in 1936)