Name: Solenoid
Rating: 4.3125 (12 reviews)
ISBN: 9789735050597

Mircea Cărtărescu

Solenoid

Borgesian and Kafkaesque, this existentialist novel brings you on a strange and unsettling journey into the author’s mind: Hair mites, cartilage, a Brobdingnagian (#shoutout Jonathan Swift) girl, tuberculosis summer camp, levitating sex, and more.

Amidst genuinely depressing and drab backdrop the author paints, that of failed authoritarian state-socialism, failed attempt at poetry, failed love lives, failed escapes, failed efforts to make amends, despite it all, life must be worth living.

The god-creation language gap is hilariously portrayed through an “A Bug’s Life”-esque sequence that left me somewhere between dumbstruck, impressed, and “how the fuck did he do that”.

Cartarescu runs with Kant’s ontology, waxing on and on and on by way of basic human biology, making me uncomfortably aware of my skin that carry my meat pack that wraps around my bones — making points about the detachment between our mind, our body, and all that surround us. Despite being deeply sympathetic to that ontology, he imbibes it with animism, vivifying structures, buildings, and streets as if they have a life of their own too.

Around the end he plays with the idea of the trolley problem between life and art, eventually making a firm stand between that two.

This was a challenging read: One, I do not enjoy strictly existentialist texts because of their insularity. Two, he says that he wrote this without any edits, and honestly it shows, some sections overstay their welcome and go on for too long, albeit with arresting prose. Three, things only fell together in the last fifth of the book, when I finally realised the picture he was painting. Good things do come to those who wait.

Ghee

Borgesian and Kafkaesque, this existentialist novel brings you on a strange and unsettling journey into the author’s mind: Hair mites, cartilage, a Brobdingnagian (#shoutout Jonathan Swift) girl, tuberculosis summer camp, levitating sex, and more.

Amidst genuinely depressing and drab backdrop the author paints, that of failed authoritarian state-socialism, failed attempt at poetry, failed love lives, failed escapes, failed efforts to make amends, despite it all, life must be worth living.

The god-creation language gap is hilariously portrayed through an “A Bug’s Life”-esque sequence that left me somewhere between dumbstruck, impressed, and “how the fuck did he do that”.

Cartarescu runs with Kant’s ontology, waxing on and on and on by way of basic human biology, making me uncomfortably aware of my skin that carry my meat pack that wraps around my bones — making points about the detachment between our mind, our body, and all that surround us. Despite being deeply sympathetic to that ontology, he imbibes it with animism, vivifying structures, buildings, and streets as if they have a life of their own too.

Around the end he plays with the idea of the trolley problem between life and art, eventually making a firm stand between that two.

This was a challenging read: One, I do not enjoy strictly existentialist texts because of their insularity. Two, he says that he wrote this without any edits, and honestly it shows, some sections overstay their welcome and go on for too long, albeit with arresting prose. Three, things only fell together in the last fifth of the book, when I finally realised the picture he was painting. Good things do come to those who wait.

Mircea Cartarescu

Sean Cotter

Rosa

just how I like it — beautifully written, gross, and surreal. Also by far the densest book I’ve ever read, it took me two months to finish

jess

the solenoid of life: intricate interconnectedness of the enigmatic coil of universe—the reflection of human condition, of its ephemeral nature of time, the fragility of memory, and the eternal quest of its meaning. its prose dances with an ethereal quality, seamlessly interweaving the mundane and the extraordinary, on its upmost surrealistic note. with poetic finesse, the exploration of labyrinthine corridors of human mind, unravelling layers of consciousness and delving into the enigmatic realms of memory and self. what an amazing read. 4.5

Solenoid

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