The Beguiling by Zsuzsi Gartner
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33 “GOD” by Bon Iver
The Beguiling by Zsuzsi Gartner follows Lucy, a lapsed Catholic who, after her cousin’s death, begins to experience strangers confessing their various sins to her.
This book is, perhaps—no, scratch that, it is—the strangest book I’ve ever read. I mean that in the best way possible, though. The writing is all over the palace, disjointed and choppy, but sharp, and witty, and it works. I don’t know how — it just does. I was invested immediately. The exposition, in the beginning, is strange, too; Gartner never gives away too much, starting with benign things and revealing the shocking bits with casual ease. Everything about this book is strange, weird, odd, all of the above. I loved it. Reading it is like getting whiplash, over and over.
Our main character, Lucy, meets and is confessed to by this cast of characters, some of whom are just passing by, telling her the deepest secrets of their lives while she goes about her monotonous days. Some of their lives, though, we get intimate glimpses into — the book often goes off on tangents after Lucy meets someone, detailing their lives and their confessions. It’s disorienting, but I learnt not to expect anything linear or normal from this book.
In the spirit of this wonderful mess of a book, I am just going to throw some things at you that appear in The Beguiling, in no particular order and accompanied by no explanation at all. Here we go:
Woman giving birth on a cop machine resulting in pictures of her just-born child, boy burns down church (accidentally, maybe), monologue delivered by plants, woman fakes cancer, incest (sort of), twins framed for murder, biblical tableaus, man who has memories of being in the womb, cannibalism, a sentence that is a page long, cave witches, labyrinths, dog churches, woman with no arms, the devolution of time, and so on and so forth.
This is a short review because I believe it’s much better to go into it knowing as little as possible. You’ll either love or hate this book; I’d certainly encourage you to read it, but don’t expect anything from it, except, of course, strangeness.
All of Bon Iver’s lyrics are intensely layered and complicated and I do believe are open to subjective interpretation so I will not be dissecting this entire song, rather the general themes and what I feel fits in with The Beguiling.
The song is, in essence, about questioning a god. Lucy, in the book, certainly does this; she’s a lapsed Catholic, unsure about every aspect of her life, and after the confessions start she begins questioning if it is a coincidence or something of a higher meaning.
This line, specifically:
“These will just be places to me now”
is first of all, devastating, but I think represents Lucy’s disconnect from both her religion and a sense of belonging, as well as how she leaves the confessions behind, or tries to.
As a side note, I do think the compelling strangeness of 33 “GOD” (and the entire album) fits perfectly with the strangeness of The Beguiling, but that’s just a vague notion of companionship between the two. The song’s disjointed lyrics and distorted speaking at the end parallels the complete and utter disorder of The Beguiling.
That’s all for now, take care of yourself
a weird book with religious connotations? OH! SIGN ME UP!
*sighs* *adds book to tbr*