A review by metamorphesque
Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit

challenging dark mysterious tense 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

2.25

• incredibly challenging read; complex jigsaw timeline told through jumbled narration 
• this novel is so freaking dense, someone plz teach this woman how to and where to put an end to a sentence
• frailty, guilt, grief, disillusionment, political fervour
• bleak, ambiguous, infuriating ft cannot claim to understand any of it maybe should've read the translation diary Catching fire alongside it too
• two unnamed characters, resentful of each other grapple with their past and try navigating life without the revolutionary action they used to be part of 
• joined by loyalty rn rather than the love they used to have for one another 
• bed symbolism: battleground accentuating the gulf that has grown between them but also a refuge from the world outside and around them 
• cell symbolism: political and biological meaning used throughout 
• stream of conscious narration, the woman's thought are incredibly jumbled 
• story deliberately left unfinished? mimicking chile's current political history? absence of justice for innumerable crimes perpetrated by Pinochet’s regime/closure for the families of victims?
• I get that the prose is both intense and circular so that it matches the claustrophobic confinement of their current lives, and the repetition of their daily routines, it's supposed to reflect their suffering
  • however all it did was bind the narrative in torturous language
• the only breaks from this dense plot were unfortunately not really breaks - a rather scatalogical description of the woman’s duties as some form of home help; a fairly gruesome account of a traffic accident and equally gruesome one of a violent bank robbery ://

 The metaphors of cells and cramped quarters were repeated too frequently, personally imo there was no need for the novel to be this obtuse. In all honesty, I didn't really care for this book, it sent me into a massive reading slump months ago. I also think it is ridiculous that you'd need to read another book (a freaking translation diary!!!) alongside this one in order to actually understand it. Reading other reviews I stumbled upon this: 

"read the first 50 or so pages of the novel until the prose becomes too dense/tortuous to be enjoyable, then skip to the diary for light relief and then return to the novel at intervals" - Goodreads 

An actual reading strategy for this?? Sorry??? I get that sometimes reading the translator's notes and thought process can be very helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of the themes, the characters etc of a novel... But to read such notes to gain a basic comprehension/understanding of the novel in the first place? 
Yeah, no. If you're gonna read this, good luck, it gets 2.25 stars from me :I