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A review by casskrug
Exposure by Olivia Sudjic
5.0
this is exactly my type of nonfiction - bite sized, referential, and reflective. exposure is a synthesis of so many ideas and writers that are prominent in my own reading, as a backdrop for olivia sudjic’s own struggles with the need to create an online identity and put herself out there into the publishing world.
in the first part of the book, sudjic writes with such clarity about her experiences with anxiety after the publication of her first novel (which is also a 5 star banger), accurately describing the way that the feeling manifests for me, even though we’re anxious about different things. the focus then shifts to a group of women writers (maggie nelson, chris kraus, rachel cusk, jenny offill, clarice lispector, and elena ferrante) whose works are her talismans in navigating the double standard that women writers face: their fiction is taken to be the absolute truth about their lived experiences, and their nonfiction isn’t believed to be true.
i’m someone that tends to prefer more personal writing, and this slim book challenged my thought processes surrounding that preference. i found this to be incredibly applicable to rachel cusk’s newer work, which i have struggled to formulate thoughts about due to the detached style that has prevailed in her work since the outline trilogy. sudjic’s quotations about cusk obscuring herself in her recent works due to the negative critical reception of her more personal works really helped me wrap my head around her recent novel, parade: “She describes the reception to Aftermath as threatening her with total silence: I have lost all interest in having a self, being a person has always meant getting blamed for it.” how can a writer balance the risk of self-annihilation due to exposing too much about themselves with the need to create? why do we as readers feel such a strong pull to devour these self-exposing narratives?
if you’re a fan of asking these same types of questions about the books we read, or if you love any of the authors mentioned above, you truly can’t go wrong here. sudjic is such an underrated author in my opinion and i hope we get more nonfiction from her in the future.
“Like most people, I read not only to encounter difference but to find communion. To feel as if my inner life and the author's have briefly merged. To find skinlessness communicated on paper.”
in the first part of the book, sudjic writes with such clarity about her experiences with anxiety after the publication of her first novel (which is also a 5 star banger), accurately describing the way that the feeling manifests for me, even though we’re anxious about different things. the focus then shifts to a group of women writers (maggie nelson, chris kraus, rachel cusk, jenny offill, clarice lispector, and elena ferrante) whose works are her talismans in navigating the double standard that women writers face: their fiction is taken to be the absolute truth about their lived experiences, and their nonfiction isn’t believed to be true.
i’m someone that tends to prefer more personal writing, and this slim book challenged my thought processes surrounding that preference. i found this to be incredibly applicable to rachel cusk’s newer work, which i have struggled to formulate thoughts about due to the detached style that has prevailed in her work since the outline trilogy. sudjic’s quotations about cusk obscuring herself in her recent works due to the negative critical reception of her more personal works really helped me wrap my head around her recent novel, parade: “She describes the reception to Aftermath as threatening her with total silence: I have lost all interest in having a self, being a person has always meant getting blamed for it.” how can a writer balance the risk of self-annihilation due to exposing too much about themselves with the need to create? why do we as readers feel such a strong pull to devour these self-exposing narratives?
if you’re a fan of asking these same types of questions about the books we read, or if you love any of the authors mentioned above, you truly can’t go wrong here. sudjic is such an underrated author in my opinion and i hope we get more nonfiction from her in the future.
“Like most people, I read not only to encounter difference but to find communion. To feel as if my inner life and the author's have briefly merged. To find skinlessness communicated on paper.”