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spenkevich's review
4.0
‘One escapes the external evils, certainly, but monsters are generated inside these walls.’
The need for safety is a powerful motivation, and one that has been exploited time and time again for purposes of power. Sara Mesa’s Four by Four is a profoundly chilling investigation into the hierarchies of power, privilege and the abuse that spills out from them. Told in three sections spiraling through multiple perspectives and a ‘found documents’ technique, Mesa’s tells the story of Wybrany College: an elite boarding school that offers a stable education and protection from the violence and degradation occurring in the cities. For a hefty price, that is, which for some means money and for the less fortunate means something far more sinister. Behind the walls of the school meant to keep riots and danger out, we find it is often the wall builders who are the true evils. Mesa’s sharp, concise language constructs a neo-gothic atmosphere where violence and corruption feel overwhelmingly present yet can’t seem to be directly understood or observed. With each new revelation the horrors build to a fever pitch but the ability to address them diminishes. Four by Four is a ‘mystery about rules that are established but never completely defined,’ the way these rules enforce a hierarchy of power where one will always oppress anyone below themselves and the unspeakable fates that befall those who would challenge this order or get in their way.
‘The rules exist. They’re strong, unquestionable, but they’re not written anywhere. Therefore, they can’t be obeyed or disobeyed.’
(TW for the book: sexual abuse, suicide, animal cruelty)
The majority of the book is spent in the confines of Wybrany College--the ‘colich’ as it is always referred in the text--which is purported to have been started long ago by a Polish immigrant. The school, however, seems far too recently constructed to fit this narrative thus beginning the countless obfuscating aspects of all life and behavior on school grounds. Wybrany, meaning ‘selected’ in Polish, lives up to it’s name through maintaining an elitism and respectability with students from notable families in the political, entertainment and business realm who pay seemingly exorbitant tuition in order to keep their children there. There is a second class student, the ‘specials’ as opposed to the ‘normals’, who are part of the scholarship program which typically means a parent is part of the work staff. While headmaster Señor J. assures parents there is no difference in treatment between the two classes, the treatment--especially between the students themselves--is markedly different. The school is also divided into a boys and girls school, and the two rarely interact. Order and control is immediately apparent here and Mesa’s approach of contrasting the instability of the novel’s narration with the extreme hierarchy of order at the school is delightfully destabilizing.
Each section of the novel offers a different voice and perspective of the school. Part one rotates between a first-person POV with Celia, a young “special” from a broken home in the poverty-stricken districts of the city who is considered difficult and volatile by staff and peers, with the third person story of Ignacio. Ignacio’s narrative follows him from being bullied to being a bully under the guidance of the Headmaster, who considers him his Garasim from [b:The Death of Ivan Ilych|18386|The Death of Ivan Ilych|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1663546974l/18386._SY75_.jpg|234915]. Similarly, Celia is taken under the wing of the Advisor (called the assistant headmaster in pt 2), granted visits to her mother and a cat in a shadowy and menacing exchange the reader only understands in whispers. Part 2 and 3 are written as “found documents”, the first being the diary of substitute teacher Isidor Bedragare who, in reality, took the position under false pretenses, and the latter being a surreal and sinister short story written by the teacher Bedragare has replaced.
‘Plenty of matters that are best kept secret. The thing is to pretend you don’t notice.’
Each section is like a different flashlight beam into a dark pit of depravity, bringing certain dark truths out of the shadows yet still lost in a menacing unknown where the unseen and unspoken seems to be screaming. The reader must piece together impressions and half-told stories to get at the heart of darkness that casts its gruesome shadow over the school, though even after the timeline of events is ironed out and the stories told we can never fully know the truth in its totality. ‘That’s how sewers work,’ Bedragare writes, ‘occasionally, the stench seeps out, we smell it, but the sewers remain below, out of sight, unmentioned. As if they don’t exist.’ And though ‘we all know more than we pretend to,’ this unseen, unspokeness of Wybrany becomes it’s entire essence from the purpose of its power structures to the unspoken social rules that seem to dictate everyone’s lives but can never be quite explained with words. Despite the crystal clear prose, everything in the novel is blurry and out of focus--much like Bedragade’s worsening eyesight--as Mesa teases each mystery to a fever pitch of frustrated reality.
‘We’ve entered a new age,’ Bedragare muses in his diary, ‘from now on, we will be ruled by other codes, other norms, a hostile environment to which we must adapt to survive.’ And Mesa crafts a perfectly horrifying hostile environment indeed, one that cuts deep into the inherent violence of social hierarchies. ‘Certain students are afforded special protections that also serve the protector,’ Bedragare observes, particularly noting that Ignacio’s blatant sexual violence against his classmates goes unpunished while the victim is left to face reprimands and social shame from the encounter. Those further up the hierarchy also tend to always punch down on those below them, a near law of society that entrenches those with a little bit of power in a position above those with less.
Ignacio was once beaten and mocked but once he had the protection of the headmaster, he channels his rage into a quest for power, sexually assaulting other submissive students until he has a achieved a bully status that is glorified by the other bad-actors of the institution and quickly becomes top of the food chain amongst students. The book shares a kindred spirit with Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite as a criticism of the forces that build such oppressive hierarchies and the hope they instill in us that if we just climb their ladder we can escape the worst oppressions below us but in doing so must inevitably become the oppressor.
‘You speak and they listen. You order and they obey.’
The second section thrusts the reader into the chaotic reality of the teachers, who were mostly shadowy figures in the former section. Here Mesa details an equally sinister hierarchy, dominated by the Headmaster Senor J., the now-assistant headmaster, and Marieta, in charge of curriculum and seemingly has replaced the female administrator--dubbed The Booty--from the previous section, though her existence seems to have vanished without a trace. Mesa imbues these authorities with an air of menace, such as Marita where ‘her smile has all the beauty of a mask,’ combining a vibe both totalitarian and straight from a horror film. Contrast these with Bedragare, a ‘from-below sort’ with an extreme case of imposter syndrome where his necessity for laying low is always at odds with his moral sense to sniff out the unknown evils of the colich. For the most part, with the exception of one particular teacher who’s conscience has him noticeably sickened, the teachers seem content to let the lurking evils of Wybrany go ignored. Professor Martinez mentions that it’s best to just enjoy the comfortable lifestyle the school affords, which recalls [a:Hannah Arendt|12806|Hannah Arendt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1608634661p2/12806.jpg]’s concept of the ‘banality of evil’ and serves as a direct indictment to those who allow the greatest ills of the world to linger as long as they don’t affect them directly. They allow evil to occur through their inaction.
What is particularly brilliant in Mesa’s crafting of the school is that, for all its pomp and circumstance and elite-level fees, we are told it isn’t all that prestigious. There are dignitaries, sure, but not the upper-elites, and the staff is qualified but nothing noteworthy. It seems they have risen to comfort status in society and created a microcosm where they are the top, or, as Laurence Peter once satirized ‘In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.’ The formation of a self-enclosed hierarchy is what helps retain power, and weapons of gaslighting and isolationism are used to enforce it the way bullies, abusive husbands and dictators have done to keep their victims subjugated.
Though Wybrany College is not mere buffoonery as we learn while details slowly creep in. What happens to the students who do not succeed, the ones Senor J. remarks ‘we remove them from the bushel before they spoil the rest.’ Why has a girl “special” disappeared? Who beheaded the cat and why are their multiple suicides (and are they truly suicides)? And why will nobody do anything to stop it? These mysteries amalgamate with a slow ominous swelling to the point of pure terror in Mesa’s expert hands.
‘It’s a simple trade, a healthy, hygienic exchange in which both parties benefit; this exchange has always existed, no point in denying it.’
Perhaps the most important theme of the novel, however, is how this was able to happen. It is a simple trick, one used by tyrants since the dawn of time. ‘The nicer it is in there,’ Celia thinks, ‘the more disturbing it is to go out.’ This is equally reinforced by fear-mongering about the outside world, highlighting the violence and riots that are occuring in the streets-- a tactic which, politically, is used to delegitimize movements against oppressive rulers. ‘Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, ofttimes in the name of good,’ observed [a:Maya Angelou|3503|Maya Angelou|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1379017377p2/3503.jpg] in a 1982 interview. We see this in Wybrany. Wybrany built its walls to keep the students in--for safety-- pledging ‘solidarity with the neediest’ as a marketing promise with no intention of upholding it. It is about creating the image of good and care (anyone currenty observing the US will be familiar with the bad-faith rhetoric of walls ). Here the students and teachers are able to feel comfortable from the evils trumped up by their leaders and become resigned as a herd of livestock, well-tended, comfortable livestock.’
They are perfect victims for those in power. We watch them be stripped of their ability to address the ills around them (‘language is useless’ Ignacio remarks when he is being bullied), and without the language to address what they are experiencing they are unable to really name it. Hence why everything evil there ‘happens without words.’ In her essay on climate change--it is hinted in the book that this has ravaged the countryside--[a:Rebecca Solnit|15811|Rebecca Solnit|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535567225p2/15811.jpg] wrote that ‘any revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality’. Hierarchies of power, as seen here, work by controlling the narrative and rhetoric, so that you cannot even have the language to argue against it. We see this with bad-faith framing all the time in politics where their name does not match their intents or meaning. And anyone who tries is either punished or framed as inept. This, perhaps, is the true evil lurking in the heart of the school, the inability to fight against your own victimization.
Four by Four is a horrifying yet incredibly well-crafted and engaging novel. It’s a book that serves the patient reader well and it’s best to just get lost in the disorienting labyrinth of narrative instead of fighting for comprehension. Like real life, many answers are unclear and many things never explained. This frustration is part of the point, and Mesa does an extraordinary job of delivering that message without it sullying the enjoyment or leaving the ending feeling incomplete. This is a powerful criticism of the powerful and the hierarchies they enforce to attain and then retain that power, as well as their selective ‘grace’ to pick and choose from the oppressed who may rise up and who will be feasted upon. Even in a time when gothic novels and boarding school novels seem to have oversaturated the market, this one stands out as truly unique and an intellectual success. This is a truly haunting novel, one that won’t soon be forgotten.
4.5/5
‘I lost my sense of clarity a long time ago. The world seems like a work of fiction; the things that happen are like projections on a movie screen...I can’t change--or even understand--them.’
The need for safety is a powerful motivation, and one that has been exploited time and time again for purposes of power. Sara Mesa’s Four by Four is a profoundly chilling investigation into the hierarchies of power, privilege and the abuse that spills out from them. Told in three sections spiraling through multiple perspectives and a ‘found documents’ technique, Mesa’s tells the story of Wybrany College: an elite boarding school that offers a stable education and protection from the violence and degradation occurring in the cities. For a hefty price, that is, which for some means money and for the less fortunate means something far more sinister. Behind the walls of the school meant to keep riots and danger out, we find it is often the wall builders who are the true evils. Mesa’s sharp, concise language constructs a neo-gothic atmosphere where violence and corruption feel overwhelmingly present yet can’t seem to be directly understood or observed. With each new revelation the horrors build to a fever pitch but the ability to address them diminishes. Four by Four is a ‘mystery about rules that are established but never completely defined,’ the way these rules enforce a hierarchy of power where one will always oppress anyone below themselves and the unspeakable fates that befall those who would challenge this order or get in their way.
‘The rules exist. They’re strong, unquestionable, but they’re not written anywhere. Therefore, they can’t be obeyed or disobeyed.’
(TW for the book: sexual abuse, suicide, animal cruelty)
The majority of the book is spent in the confines of Wybrany College--the ‘colich’ as it is always referred in the text--which is purported to have been started long ago by a Polish immigrant. The school, however, seems far too recently constructed to fit this narrative thus beginning the countless obfuscating aspects of all life and behavior on school grounds. Wybrany, meaning ‘selected’ in Polish, lives up to it’s name through maintaining an elitism and respectability with students from notable families in the political, entertainment and business realm who pay seemingly exorbitant tuition in order to keep their children there. There is a second class student, the ‘specials’ as opposed to the ‘normals’, who are part of the scholarship program which typically means a parent is part of the work staff. While headmaster Señor J. assures parents there is no difference in treatment between the two classes, the treatment--especially between the students themselves--is markedly different. The school is also divided into a boys and girls school, and the two rarely interact. Order and control is immediately apparent here and Mesa’s approach of contrasting the instability of the novel’s narration with the extreme hierarchy of order at the school is delightfully destabilizing.
Each section of the novel offers a different voice and perspective of the school. Part one rotates between a first-person POV with Celia, a young “special” from a broken home in the poverty-stricken districts of the city who is considered difficult and volatile by staff and peers, with the third person story of Ignacio. Ignacio’s narrative follows him from being bullied to being a bully under the guidance of the Headmaster, who considers him his Garasim from [b:The Death of Ivan Ilych|18386|The Death of Ivan Ilych|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1663546974l/18386._SY75_.jpg|234915]. Similarly, Celia is taken under the wing of the Advisor (called the assistant headmaster in pt 2), granted visits to her mother and a cat in a shadowy and menacing exchange the reader only understands in whispers. Part 2 and 3 are written as “found documents”, the first being the diary of substitute teacher Isidor Bedragare who, in reality, took the position under false pretenses, and the latter being a surreal and sinister short story written by the teacher Bedragare has replaced.
‘Plenty of matters that are best kept secret. The thing is to pretend you don’t notice.’
Each section is like a different flashlight beam into a dark pit of depravity, bringing certain dark truths out of the shadows yet still lost in a menacing unknown where the unseen and unspoken seems to be screaming. The reader must piece together impressions and half-told stories to get at the heart of darkness that casts its gruesome shadow over the school, though even after the timeline of events is ironed out and the stories told we can never fully know the truth in its totality. ‘That’s how sewers work,’ Bedragare writes, ‘occasionally, the stench seeps out, we smell it, but the sewers remain below, out of sight, unmentioned. As if they don’t exist.’ And though ‘we all know more than we pretend to,’ this unseen, unspokeness of Wybrany becomes it’s entire essence from the purpose of its power structures to the unspoken social rules that seem to dictate everyone’s lives but can never be quite explained with words. Despite the crystal clear prose, everything in the novel is blurry and out of focus--much like Bedragade’s worsening eyesight--as Mesa teases each mystery to a fever pitch of frustrated reality.
‘We’ve entered a new age,’ Bedragare muses in his diary, ‘from now on, we will be ruled by other codes, other norms, a hostile environment to which we must adapt to survive.’ And Mesa crafts a perfectly horrifying hostile environment indeed, one that cuts deep into the inherent violence of social hierarchies. ‘Certain students are afforded special protections that also serve the protector,’ Bedragare observes, particularly noting that Ignacio’s blatant sexual violence against his classmates goes unpunished while the victim is left to face reprimands and social shame from the encounter. Those further up the hierarchy also tend to always punch down on those below them, a near law of society that entrenches those with a little bit of power in a position above those with less.
’Ceding to power, power expands: one plus one is always one more.
The rest of us are left out of this equation.
We add nothing. We take nothing away.’
Ignacio was once beaten and mocked but once he had the protection of the headmaster, he channels his rage into a quest for power, sexually assaulting other submissive students until he has a achieved a bully status that is glorified by the other bad-actors of the institution and quickly becomes top of the food chain amongst students. The book shares a kindred spirit with Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite as a criticism of the forces that build such oppressive hierarchies and the hope they instill in us that if we just climb their ladder we can escape the worst oppressions below us but in doing so must inevitably become the oppressor.
‘You speak and they listen. You order and they obey.’
The second section thrusts the reader into the chaotic reality of the teachers, who were mostly shadowy figures in the former section. Here Mesa details an equally sinister hierarchy, dominated by the Headmaster Senor J., the now-assistant headmaster, and Marieta, in charge of curriculum and seemingly has replaced the female administrator--dubbed The Booty--from the previous section, though her existence seems to have vanished without a trace. Mesa imbues these authorities with an air of menace, such as Marita where ‘her smile has all the beauty of a mask,’ combining a vibe both totalitarian and straight from a horror film. Contrast these with Bedragare, a ‘from-below sort’ with an extreme case of imposter syndrome where his necessity for laying low is always at odds with his moral sense to sniff out the unknown evils of the colich. For the most part, with the exception of one particular teacher who’s conscience has him noticeably sickened, the teachers seem content to let the lurking evils of Wybrany go ignored. Professor Martinez mentions that it’s best to just enjoy the comfortable lifestyle the school affords, which recalls [a:Hannah Arendt|12806|Hannah Arendt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1608634661p2/12806.jpg]’s concept of the ‘banality of evil’ and serves as a direct indictment to those who allow the greatest ills of the world to linger as long as they don’t affect them directly. They allow evil to occur through their inaction.
What is particularly brilliant in Mesa’s crafting of the school is that, for all its pomp and circumstance and elite-level fees, we are told it isn’t all that prestigious. There are dignitaries, sure, but not the upper-elites, and the staff is qualified but nothing noteworthy. It seems they have risen to comfort status in society and created a microcosm where they are the top, or, as Laurence Peter once satirized ‘In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.’ The formation of a self-enclosed hierarchy is what helps retain power, and weapons of gaslighting and isolationism are used to enforce it the way bullies, abusive husbands and dictators have done to keep their victims subjugated.
Though Wybrany College is not mere buffoonery as we learn while details slowly creep in. What happens to the students who do not succeed, the ones Senor J. remarks ‘we remove them from the bushel before they spoil the rest.’ Why has a girl “special” disappeared? Who beheaded the cat and why are their multiple suicides (and are they truly suicides)? And why will nobody do anything to stop it? These mysteries amalgamate with a slow ominous swelling to the point of pure terror in Mesa’s expert hands.
‘It’s a simple trade, a healthy, hygienic exchange in which both parties benefit; this exchange has always existed, no point in denying it.’
Perhaps the most important theme of the novel, however, is how this was able to happen. It is a simple trick, one used by tyrants since the dawn of time. ‘The nicer it is in there,’ Celia thinks, ‘the more disturbing it is to go out.’ This is equally reinforced by fear-mongering about the outside world, highlighting the violence and riots that are occuring in the streets-- a tactic which, politically, is used to delegitimize movements against oppressive rulers. ‘Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, ofttimes in the name of good,’ observed [a:Maya Angelou|3503|Maya Angelou|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1379017377p2/3503.jpg] in a 1982 interview. We see this in Wybrany. Wybrany built its walls to keep the students in--for safety-- pledging ‘solidarity with the neediest’ as a marketing promise with no intention of upholding it. It is about creating the image of good and care (anyone currenty observing the US will be familiar with the bad-faith rhetoric of walls ). Here the students and teachers are able to feel comfortable from the evils trumped up by their leaders and become resigned as a herd of livestock, well-tended, comfortable livestock.’
They are perfect victims for those in power. We watch them be stripped of their ability to address the ills around them (‘language is useless’ Ignacio remarks when he is being bullied), and without the language to address what they are experiencing they are unable to really name it. Hence why everything evil there ‘happens without words.’ In her essay on climate change--it is hinted in the book that this has ravaged the countryside--[a:Rebecca Solnit|15811|Rebecca Solnit|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535567225p2/15811.jpg] wrote that ‘any revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality’. Hierarchies of power, as seen here, work by controlling the narrative and rhetoric, so that you cannot even have the language to argue against it. We see this with bad-faith framing all the time in politics where their name does not match their intents or meaning. And anyone who tries is either punished or framed as inept. This, perhaps, is the true evil lurking in the heart of the school, the inability to fight against your own victimization.
Four by Four is a horrifying yet incredibly well-crafted and engaging novel. It’s a book that serves the patient reader well and it’s best to just get lost in the disorienting labyrinth of narrative instead of fighting for comprehension. Like real life, many answers are unclear and many things never explained. This frustration is part of the point, and Mesa does an extraordinary job of delivering that message without it sullying the enjoyment or leaving the ending feeling incomplete. This is a powerful criticism of the powerful and the hierarchies they enforce to attain and then retain that power, as well as their selective ‘grace’ to pick and choose from the oppressed who may rise up and who will be feasted upon. Even in a time when gothic novels and boarding school novels seem to have oversaturated the market, this one stands out as truly unique and an intellectual success. This is a truly haunting novel, one that won’t soon be forgotten.
4.5/5
‘I lost my sense of clarity a long time ago. The world seems like a work of fiction; the things that happen are like projections on a movie screen...I can’t change--or even understand--them.’
lunacarmona's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
fast-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
3.75
beraspa's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Eating disorder, Pedophilia, Suicide, and Trafficking
Moderate: Child abuse
Minor: Body shaming
moonenergy1897's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
cander's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-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
3.25
annamcsnail's review against another edition
I was 1/5 thru this…. No idea whats going on and then it got very dark so sorry no thanks
lausbiana's review against another edition
5.0
«La satisfacción que produce sobrevivir, una especie de voluptuosidad, puede convertirse en una pasión peligrosa e insaciable. Aumenta con cada ocasión. Cuanto mayor sea el montón de muertos frente al que nos alzamos con vida, cuantas más veces lo sobrevivamos, más intensa e imperiosa se hará la necesidad de sentir dicha satisfacción. Las vidas de héroes y mercenarios ponen de manifiesto una suerte de adicción irresistible a ella».
Cruda, turbia, cruel (a veces demasiada), es una novela que no te deja impasible. El mundo de Sara Mesa te atrapa desde la primera página. Definitivamente uno de mis mejores descubrimientos del año pasado, estoy obsesionada con ella.
Cruda, turbia, cruel (a veces demasiada), es una novela que no te deja impasible. El mundo de Sara Mesa te atrapa desde la primera página. Definitivamente uno de mis mejores descubrimientos del año pasado, estoy obsesionada con ella.
ru_th's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Language is useless. Words are corrupt and he doesn’t know how to go back to the beginning.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, and Animal death
Moderate: Body shaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, and Classism
Minor: Alcoholism, Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Mental illness, Self harm, Blood, Trafficking, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
selenajournal's review
1.0
This is one of maybe 4 books that's I've abandoned in a decade. It's not even that long. I just don't see the point of reading it and find myself dragging my heels about the act of reading when this is the book I have with me.
I assumed the problem was me. So I let it go a while and then came back to it in better climate and disposition and still wanted nothing to do with it.
Maybe someone else will love the 'colitch' life. But this wasn't close to good for me.
I assumed the problem was me. So I let it go a while and then came back to it in better climate and disposition and still wanted nothing to do with it.
Maybe someone else will love the 'colitch' life. But this wasn't close to good for me.