Ava: A Novel

I approached reading this book obligatorily-- I'm a grad student (studying literature) and it's on my comps list. If I had been reading this for pleasure / were not obliged to see this thing through, I probably would have put it down after the first thirty pages or so. As familiar as I am with the concepts of the nonlinear, the fragmented, the experimental, the literary collage (whatever you want to call it), the beginning of this for me was utterly incomprehensible. It reads like an array of random thoughts spat out by a vague / hazy / initially unknowable narrator who is--understandably--not in her right mind. While I always recognized the inherent power in the concept, in the thought that I was inside a woman's head during the last day of her preempted life, I found myself wishing we were privy to the last month or so and that this final crazy day were only a 10-page addendum at the book's end. As loathe as I am to admit it / as ready as I was to hate this novel (although I am still reluctant to use the "N" word in conjunction with it), meaning does in fact begin to accumulate. In a way, this is like a ridiculous detective story, as you are faced with the sometimes infuriating but ultimately rewarding task of figuring out who the hell this Ava woman is. The conclusion I have come to is that, if this story were told in any other style / any other format, I would really hate her. Ava is capricious, self-destructive, frustrating, selfish, unfaithful, and too cosmopolitan for her own good. She is the kind of existential-dilemma, woe-is-me, why-can't-I-find-true-happiness? character who, under any other circumstances, would be entirely loathsome. But the knowledge of the fact that she is doomed is somehow redemptive; this makes her more sympathetic than she could otherwise ever (for me, at least) be, which I suppose is a prime example of form meeting function. [And I should probably also admit that my mom died of a rare form of blood cancer long before she was ready to say goodbye, so on an emotional / gotcha level, this had me from hello.] It should also be noted, however, that if you are not ridiculously well read, you will often be puzzled by what Ava--a professor of comparative literature--is talking about. Just going from memory, before you begin reading this book you should be familiar with the works of Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Milan Kundera, Goethe, Gabriel Garcia Lorca, Samuel Beckett, William Blake, Proust, Umberto Ecco, Ezra pound, Hemingway, Faulkner, Helene Cixous, and Primo Levi, just to name a few. Of course you will get the gist even without this contextual understanding, but the depth of what Maso is saying, unfortunately (I think), necessitates a whole other body of prerequisite knowledge. She's obviously talking to those who are in the comp-lit club and excluding those (such as non-grad students) who are not.

Consisting mostly of single line paragraphs, all separated by blank lines, this novel is not just one of the simplest, most pleasurable reads (not in little part because of the language of the piece, so often described at musical), but also one of the fullest. I could review it based solely on its handling of death or of travel or of life or of creativity or of appropriation or of meaning or of so on, each filling up paragraphs, but that would spoil the book. It's something to be read, not read about.

Experimental novel. It captures the fleeting qualities of thought and sensation from the point of view of a woman who is trying to celebrate a life well-lived. Definitely a feminist novel in the way that it mentions feminist icons and tries to subvert patriarchal norms. Not intended for a reader who is uninterested in digging deeper.

Loved it, loved it, loved it. Lyrical, wistful, sad, nostalgic... felt like AVA was me.

nutty

Yes, I read it all, and, no, I'm not a literary traditionalist by any means. Being a fan of speculative and experimental fiction, I figured I should give Maso a shot, having heard innumerable raves about her work. And it's interesting, though I came away from AVA feeling ultimately unsatisfied. I couldn't help thinking that, for all of Maso's concern with the body and physical desire, the book is really pretty anemic. Flip to any page and you'll find there's far more white space than print; pages go by without a line reaching the left margin. Which, yes, I get, since it's about the increasingly fragmented memories of a dying woman. Plus she (Ava or Maso, if there's a difference) mentions that she's interested in intervals, the liminal spaces. So the text formally enacts what it's laying out discursively. Okay. But, apart from the theoretical justifications of the form -- if she's interested in liminal spaces, a novel arranged in slabs of ink would appear to undermine her argument -- what else is there? How does the form actually do anything to the memories of Ava Klein? How does it help us as readers know Ava better, rather than knowing Maso better? I'm honestly not sure. As I read, I wondered (rather snarkily) if literary theory had so deeply permeated literary culture that AVA was a gesture toward doing away with the novel altogether and getting right to the criticism. And, yes, I realize the book exists in a literary liminal space, between fiction and poetry and criticism and whatever else. Or that's the idea, at least. Trouble is, I found the idea of the book more interesting than the book itself, the discussion surrounding it more compelling than the writing in it.

At first, this novel seems incomprehensible and pointless, nothing more than a collection of random phrases and information, but after a while the phrases find echoes, the information finds order, and the ultimate effect is haunting and devastating. (Indeed, I soon found myself incapable of reading more than 20 pages or so at a time because it was emotionally overwhelming, though I've yet to figure out the exact source of this power.)Maso has said elsewhere that this book is, in some ways, related to Virginia Woolf's "The Waves", and I would agree, though in many ways I think Maso's is a more compelling and perhaps even richer book than Woolf's. "Ava" bears a certain relationship to "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse" as well, for Maso, like Woolf, has subsumed her narrative within the perspective of her protagonist. The story lies between the lines.This book can't be read impatiently, nor can it be skimmed or speed-read or soundbyted, for its effect relies upon accumulation: the accumulation of ideas, events, and even the sound of the words. It requires an active reader, one willing to put forth effort of both thought and feeling. The effort is rewarded a thousandfold.

One Feels in the End the Need for Thousands of Daughters