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Fem by Magda Carneci, translated by Sean Cotter and published in 2021 by Deep Vellum Publishing. This novel was originally published in Romania in 2011.
It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the language on the page and to get under the skin of this story. Repetitive, sometimes quite abstract, this is the second debut novel I have read that was written by a poet (in 2021 I read Mrs Death Misses Death) over the course of this project.
"The walls undulated like sheets of paper in the wind. As my bed jumped crazily up and down, I, frightened to the depths of ever cell, paralysed by a limitless terror, was sure the the end of the world and the last Judgment had come, to raise the dead from the earth and throw the living in Gehenna.; then I thought that there had probably been a giant atomic explosion, somewhere faraway, and in the next moments of my life, it would destroy my world and the entire planet."
The protagonist, describing and exploring her past, outlines her journey to her "darling"
"Oh, darling, you ask ironically for the name of my first guide, my first teacher. You imagine it was a man. Know now that I initiated myself alone."
Sometimes I loved this novel, occasionally it bounced along and I enjoyed the ride, sometimes I found myself rolling my eyes in frustration at the repetition, at the narrator's self-absorption.
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