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A review by literarywanderess
Ava by Carole Maso
5.0
Ava Klein, you are a rare bird.
Ava by Carole Maso. Ava Klein, 39 years old, a professor of comparative literature, lies dying in a hospital bed on her last one on earth. The reader is submerged in the maelstrom of Ava’s conscious as she clings to the last remnants of her life, as she chases after memories, places, and loves, as she scours the literature and the writers of her life and work to find some way to save herself.
What odd constellation of events has brought us here?
My passionate, promiscuous reading of the literature of this world.
In Ava, there is no linearity. Not even from line to line, separated by white space. Her thoughts drift between past and present. Between her own thoughts and the words and texts of others. Between reality and art. The traditional narrative structure has been shattered to pieces. A breakdown in narrative structure to mirror the breakdown of her body, leaving the reader to piece together the fractured fragments.
What is this ache, deep within, for something I do not directly remember, but which was mine?
Finally, it is the power of the individual lines that makes this book so stunning. Each of these lines or short blocks of text consists of words, phrases, sometimes a sentence or two. Each line, standing alone in a sea of blank space, demands to be looked at individually, forcing you to linger on the poetic brilliance of each line, before you grasp at possible meanings and connections to the juxtaposing lines, before you place it back within the larger picture and her life as a whole. Ava is a book filled with so much beauty— a spare and poetic beauty that has the power to haunt you long afterwards.
There is a necessary melancholy that comes over one when it is realized that there will remain places unseen, books unread, people untouched. Ferocious, hungry, amorous as I imagined myself to be—
And it will seem like music.
A blue like no other.
Ava.
You are ravishing.
Ava by Carole Maso. Ava Klein, 39 years old, a professor of comparative literature, lies dying in a hospital bed on her last one on earth. The reader is submerged in the maelstrom of Ava’s conscious as she clings to the last remnants of her life, as she chases after memories, places, and loves, as she scours the literature and the writers of her life and work to find some way to save herself.
What odd constellation of events has brought us here?
My passionate, promiscuous reading of the literature of this world.
In Ava, there is no linearity. Not even from line to line, separated by white space. Her thoughts drift between past and present. Between her own thoughts and the words and texts of others. Between reality and art. The traditional narrative structure has been shattered to pieces. A breakdown in narrative structure to mirror the breakdown of her body, leaving the reader to piece together the fractured fragments.
What is this ache, deep within, for something I do not directly remember, but which was mine?
Finally, it is the power of the individual lines that makes this book so stunning. Each of these lines or short blocks of text consists of words, phrases, sometimes a sentence or two. Each line, standing alone in a sea of blank space, demands to be looked at individually, forcing you to linger on the poetic brilliance of each line, before you grasp at possible meanings and connections to the juxtaposing lines, before you place it back within the larger picture and her life as a whole. Ava is a book filled with so much beauty— a spare and poetic beauty that has the power to haunt you long afterwards.
There is a necessary melancholy that comes over one when it is realized that there will remain places unseen, books unread, people untouched. Ferocious, hungry, amorous as I imagined myself to be—
And it will seem like music.
A blue like no other.
Ava.
You are ravishing.