Reviews

I chose to read the letters as they were presented in the book (so, out of order), and the effect was confusion and fragmentation - the main narrator's identity was ambiguous and some letters had no addressee or signature. This worked really well with the mix of raw emotions and snippets of memories, so I kept oscillating between being heartbroken and infuriated.

beetsnbees's review

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want to come back to this later

mel_fck's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense 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

2.5

robinks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

4.5

The afterword really helped to contextualize this novel, which made me appreciate it more. I read it cover-to-cover, though Miaojin suggests reading in any order, but I still found it very challenging to follow the emotions of the protagonist and the narrative (though I suppose that might be the point).

Content Warnings

siria's review against another edition

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challenging dark

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This book's achievement is also its weakness: Last Words from Montmartre really does read like a series of letters written by a messy, melodramatic woman in her early 20s who feels like every relationship drama is the end of the world. It's a lot, and my tolerance for this kind of solipsistic, sophomoric navel-gazing is low.

I might have gotten on better with Qiu Miaojin's writing better if there had been more incisiveness to it, if her character portraits had been clearer. But none of the people mentioned here really comes to life or has a distinct voice (it's not even clear how many narrators the book actually has), and a lot of what seem to be intended as profound statements are just rather baffling. For instance, Qiu at one point writes that that the term "'[s]ecular life' assumes a kind of passive, moralistic 'loyalty.'" What this actually means isn't unpacked at all by the narrative voice, but it doesn't make any sense. How does the term do so? What did Qiu think 'secular life' meant? Because it doesn't seem to match what most people would think of the term.

I'm also really uncomfortable at how this book is marketed/discussed as offering some kind of profound insight into queer love, because the relationship(s) Qiu writes about are clearly toxic:

Spoiler

full of emotional manipulation (threats of suicide to try to make a partner stay) and physical abuse

. This probably came across differently in the mid-90s than it does today, but reading it in the 2020s just made me wince.

Plus, even with the caveat that this is a work in translation, the prose in general has nothing winning to it. Qiu succeeded in writing one of the worst and most confusing descriptions of the female orgasm I've ever read.

Spoiler

"She knew what rhythm to follow and when to enter my cunt, to brush against all those obscure curves, the creased cliffs, the canals, climbing the steep slope of arousal and suddenly planting a crimson flag there. The Virgin Mother of burgeoning flowers reproducing asexually and gushing forth in clusters from the slender internal palace..."

What.

tahinisaltsummer's review against another edition

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dark sad

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

5.0

Heart-wrenching masterpiece. Felt almost wrong reading such a raw an intimate book

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