Scan barcode
A review by karieh13
The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm
3.0
Before writing this review, I did something I’ve never done before. I read other reviews of the book. Not because I wanted to get an idea of what to say in my review…but because this book left me so confused that I was hoping for some insight as to what happened. Even who I had been reading about, for that matter.
I’m not a reader who requires closure, or an ending all tied up with a pretty bow. Give me an unreliable narrator and I’m good. Most of the time. I love guessing, and not knowing EXACTLY what happened. But I have to have some idea that SOMETHING happened.
The other reviews that I read didn’t give me any big clues, but they did confirm something I suspected…that something was lost in the translation. Some of the confusion in the narrative and certainly some of the repetitive phrases (“so to speak”) must come from the translation that was done.
That said, “The American Girl” is not for the faint of heart. The character names, actions, realities are more than a bit ambiguous. Much of the work is left for the reader to do as s/he experiences life in “The District”. The author has a neat trick of turning the lens as well as turning the hands of the clock either backwards or forwards so that without breaking stride, the reader learns what another character felt or did in conjunction with an event. Which can be illuminating…or confusing.
I think this is a story about human emotion, at its core. There is a mystery surrounding the American girl that came to The District years ago…but that may be just the center point around which all the other characters lives pivot. It’s about the feelings involved in trying to find one’s way in the world, especially when one is emotionally damaged.
In growing up, in discovering sexuality and maintaining relationships with others.
“Because what did this mean now? Was this the step into adulthood? The moment when everything changed at once and became something else? The moment when the story about Doris and Sandra took another road? But in that case, then which one? Was it the road toward the definite and limited, which also had a name? That which was not so open to all possibilities like the winding road they were now on?”
There are some amazing insights into this book, complex thoughts summed up in such a simple way that they strike right to the heart of the matter. One is repeated throughout the book and stayed with me after finishing it:
“Belonged to the kind of hard things in the soul from which stories cannot be woven.”
I just wish I understood more about what happened in “The American Girl”. I know there are so many things I missed…and not for lack of description or detail. I can’t believe it’s all a function of the translation. And I know part of it must be me…but…
I don’t know what was truth in this book. I do think the author got so far into the characters minds to make us understand that there is no one truth, and that even to a person who experienced an event, there is no one version as to what happened. Too much is colored by what happened before…and as time passes, gets colored even further by what happens later. Too much is interpreted in different ways by who we are. And that, I suppose, is the message in this book.
“But there are also storytellers, a special kind of mythomaniac who can serve versions of, above all, their own life stories, stories completely unlike each other, all just as false. And yet not lie.”
I’m not a reader who requires closure, or an ending all tied up with a pretty bow. Give me an unreliable narrator and I’m good. Most of the time. I love guessing, and not knowing EXACTLY what happened. But I have to have some idea that SOMETHING happened.
The other reviews that I read didn’t give me any big clues, but they did confirm something I suspected…that something was lost in the translation. Some of the confusion in the narrative and certainly some of the repetitive phrases (“so to speak”) must come from the translation that was done.
That said, “The American Girl” is not for the faint of heart. The character names, actions, realities are more than a bit ambiguous. Much of the work is left for the reader to do as s/he experiences life in “The District”. The author has a neat trick of turning the lens as well as turning the hands of the clock either backwards or forwards so that without breaking stride, the reader learns what another character felt or did in conjunction with an event. Which can be illuminating…or confusing.
I think this is a story about human emotion, at its core. There is a mystery surrounding the American girl that came to The District years ago…but that may be just the center point around which all the other characters lives pivot. It’s about the feelings involved in trying to find one’s way in the world, especially when one is emotionally damaged.
In growing up, in discovering sexuality and maintaining relationships with others.
“Because what did this mean now? Was this the step into adulthood? The moment when everything changed at once and became something else? The moment when the story about Doris and Sandra took another road? But in that case, then which one? Was it the road toward the definite and limited, which also had a name? That which was not so open to all possibilities like the winding road they were now on?”
There are some amazing insights into this book, complex thoughts summed up in such a simple way that they strike right to the heart of the matter. One is repeated throughout the book and stayed with me after finishing it:
“Belonged to the kind of hard things in the soul from which stories cannot be woven.”
I just wish I understood more about what happened in “The American Girl”. I know there are so many things I missed…and not for lack of description or detail. I can’t believe it’s all a function of the translation. And I know part of it must be me…but…
I don’t know what was truth in this book. I do think the author got so far into the characters minds to make us understand that there is no one truth, and that even to a person who experienced an event, there is no one version as to what happened. Too much is colored by what happened before…and as time passes, gets colored even further by what happens later. Too much is interpreted in different ways by who we are. And that, I suppose, is the message in this book.
“But there are also storytellers, a special kind of mythomaniac who can serve versions of, above all, their own life stories, stories completely unlike each other, all just as false. And yet not lie.”