Victor HeringerRezensionen
Autor von The Love of Singular Men
5 Werke 68 Mitglieder 2 Rezensionen
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The Love of Singular Men von Victor Heringer
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icolford | 1 weitere Rezension | Jun 3, 2024 | This was a Peirene subscription book last year, translated from the original Portuguese. The author, a successful journalist and author died young and I found it kind of hard not to read this with that in mind. The blurbs on the book reference and accentuate this lost potential.
Heringer draws on his own childhood growing up in Rio, from the perspective of an over-protected young boy whose parents are better off than the rest of the community. His life changes when his father brings into the house a young orphan. The adult Camilo looks back at the short, hopeful period for the newly expanded family. Then Cosime's stay with them was cut short by tragedy. Camilo is viewed as 'less than' due to his disability by both his family and the wider community, from well-meaning pity to exclusion and casual violence. His sexuality puts him further outside the pale, with the narrative describing both his present day experiences of exclusion and the effects of childhood attitudes.
Heringer plays around with format, including lists and photos amongst the text, and questioning characters' accounts and experiences. For such a short book, it manages to pack a lot in, from the normalisation of state torture to candomblé and the lives of street children.
"We had no idea of the problems that had plagued our parents' marriage in recent months. We didn't even know who ran the country. We lived under the weird dictatorship of childhood: we looked but didn't see, listened but understood nothing, spoke and were largely ignored. But we were happy under that regime. Like a thick shroud, the fabric of our young lives shielded us completely."
Heringer draws on his own childhood growing up in Rio, from the perspective of an over-protected young boy whose parents are better off than the rest of the community. His life changes when his father brings into the house a young orphan. The adult Camilo looks back at the short, hopeful period for the newly expanded family. Then Cosime's stay with them was cut short by tragedy. Camilo is viewed as 'less than' due to his disability by both his family and the wider community, from well-meaning pity to exclusion and casual violence. His sexuality puts him further outside the pale, with the narrative describing both his present day experiences of exclusion and the effects of childhood attitudes.
Heringer plays around with format, including lists and photos amongst the text, and questioning characters' accounts and experiences. For such a short book, it manages to pack a lot in, from the normalisation of state torture to candomblé and the lives of street children.
"We had no idea of the problems that had plagued our parents' marriage in recent months. We didn't even know who ran the country. We lived under the weird dictatorship of childhood: we looked but didn't see, listened but understood nothing, spoke and were largely ignored. But we were happy under that regime. Like a thick shroud, the fabric of our young lives shielded us completely."
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charl08 | 1 weitere Rezension | Feb 12, 2024 | Diese Seite verwendet Cookies für unsere Dienste, zur Verbesserung unserer Leistungen, für Analytik und (falls Sie nicht eingeloggt sind) für Werbung. Indem Sie LibraryThing nutzen, erklären Sie dass Sie unsere Nutzungsbedingungen und Datenschutzrichtlinie gelesen und verstanden haben. Die Nutzung unserer Webseite und Dienste unterliegt diesen Richtlinien und Geschäftsbedingungen.