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abbie_'s review against another edition
reflective
sad
slow-paced
2.0
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!
I was so hoping to love this one but unfortunately a couple of things didn’t work for me. Never something I like reporting about books, but especially one that’s both queer and translated! 😭
I was so hoping to love this one but unfortunately a couple of things didn’t work for me. Never something I like reporting about books, but especially one that’s both queer and translated! 😭
Wound is a highly autobiographical work of fiction which details one woman’s journey to bury her mother’s ashes in Siberia. Usually I’d love something like this, as I love books that take a deep dive into mother/daughter relationships. And indeed that part of the novel was fascinating, even though I found the prose (possibly the translation) a little uninspired at times.
I like the lingering over the logistics of death, the mundane technicalities that have to be taken care of in the throes of grief. Packing your mother’s ashes swaddled in socks so it won’t get smashed by a careless airport worker, booking in a slot to say goodbye to a parent in a funeral home, all of this while dealing with a gaping hole in your life.
But it was impossible to forget the throwaway mention of the protagonist’s ex-girlfriend who accused her of r*pe. The narrator dismisses these claims on some ridiculous grounds around blurred consent. Whether or not this is fiction or not made it extremely difficult to spend the rest of the book with her, and it made me feel very uncomfortable.
This was my first pick for #WomenInTranslation month and thankfully my next two are looking better.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Death of parent
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, and Lesbophobia
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