Een vrouw raakt blind door net liesbloedingen en wordt in de eerste weken daarna overvallen door vragen wat dat betekent voor haar leven ( )

This is the third book I've read which Megan McDowell has translated and I do appreciate the occasional fluttering of Spanish words which infiltrate the text. The book maintains some of its Chilean character through the presence of these words and reminds me a little of Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon, where the Spanish words stand strong, without robbing the reader of their monolingual understanding.

The story itself is not comfortable, although it is a compelling read. Some descriptions of what happens to her eyes made me a bit squeamish, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did. I'm also glad that I entered it naively and had no idea that the story was a fictionalized version of true events; by the time I realized, I was already hooked. ( )

In this (somewhat autobiographical) novel a Chilean writer becomes blind from a complication of Diabetes. While there is description of the clinical progression of her condition, it is much more about her sense of self and her relationships, particularly with her lover and her mother, as she becomes (or is perceived by them to become) dependent on them. ( )

While not exactly autofiction, the narrator is a Chilean writer named Lina Meruane, and the narrative is a fictionalized maturation of an event in the author’s own life. At a friend’s party in New York, aforementioned narrator Lina suffers a mild stroke that leaves her completely blind in one eye and partially blind in the other. Lina has to navigate through a few major life events which are difficult (but not impossible) and many small, daily life events which become more and more so. She not only has to learn for herself what it means not just to be blind, she has to teach her loved ones as well–when she literally and figuratively can’t see the future ahead of her. Lina is incapable of speaking the same emotional language of her loved ones. The prose is composed of short scenes, rather than chapters, with titles that are impressionistic rather than episodic. Entire sentences burn away rather than conclude. A searing view of the world through the disabled body is published by Deep Vellum–my new favorite publisher of international literary fiction in translation. ( )

Lina Meruane’s title seems to have a double meaning. She was quite literally seeing red because of bleeding into her eyes that was slowly making her go blind; but metaphorically, she was seeing red (i.e., becoming angry) because of the predicament that this unfortunate condition placed her in.

The novel’s narrator is based loosely on Meruane, who experienced a brief period of blindness as a complication of diabetes. It is an intimate portrayal of a person determined to preserve her eyesight at all costs. Joined to this intense, unsettling and highly personal account of what it is like for a sighted person to experience blindness, Meruane also manages to explore several larger themes: illness and identity, caregiving and predation, frailty and need, culture and language, medicine and its limitations.

Meruane’s narrative is lyrical and often poetic. But foremost, it is a remarkable evocation of what it is like to be ill: the inconveniences of endless doctor’s appointments, fear and the need for reassurance, surgery and hospitalization, loving and often cloying concern of loved ones, the intense demands of rehabilitation, denial and anger. Strangely, the one thing Meruane does not touch upon is acceptance. Instead Lina rages throughout. ( )