Status
Checked out
Genres
Publication
Deep Vellum Publishing (2016), 170 pages
Description
"Seeing Red describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke which leaves her blind. It charts her journey through hospitals and an increased dependency on those closest to her to cope. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, science, and human relationships."--Publisher's website.
User reviews
LibraryThing member hubblegal
This book is described as a new-to-me genre – autobiographical novel. Apparently the author, Lina Meruane, had a stroke and suffered temporary blindness, necessitating surgery. Her novel’s main character, also named Lina Meruane, is based on the author, also being an author having serious
The book is written in short chapters with a stream of consciousness aspect to them. Having been through a period of blindness herself, the author writes a very realistic portrayal of a woman’s deterioration of vision and the effects of her impending blindness on not only herself but her loved ones. While Ms. Meruane did a wonderful job describing all of the terrors of blindness and its devastating consequences, there was an element of black humor that I wasn’t able to appreciate. It’s an intelligent read and one I feel I should have been able to immerse myself into more than I was able to.
This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.
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problems with her vision. The literary character literally sees red from the burst blood vessels behind her eye.The book is written in short chapters with a stream of consciousness aspect to them. Having been through a period of blindness herself, the author writes a very realistic portrayal of a woman’s deterioration of vision and the effects of her impending blindness on not only herself but her loved ones. While Ms. Meruane did a wonderful job describing all of the terrors of blindness and its devastating consequences, there was an element of black humor that I wasn’t able to appreciate. It’s an intelligent read and one I feel I should have been able to immerse myself into more than I was able to.
This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.
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LibraryThing member ozzer
Lina Meruane’s title seems to have a double meaning. She was quite literally seeing red because of bleeding into her eyes that was slowly making her go blind; but metaphorically, she was seeing red (i.e., becoming angry) because of the predicament that this unfortunate condition placed her in.
The novel’s narrator is based loosely on Meruane, who experienced a brief period of blindness as a complication of diabetes. It is an intimate portrayal of a person determined to preserve her eyesight at all costs. Joined to this intense, unsettling and highly personal account of what it is like for a sighted person to experience blindness, Meruane also manages to explore several larger themes: illness and identity, caregiving and predation, frailty and need, culture and language, medicine and its limitations.
Meruane’s narrative is lyrical and often poetic. But foremost, it is a remarkable evocation of what it is like to be ill: the inconveniences of endless doctor’s appointments, fear and the need for reassurance, surgery and hospitalization, loving and often cloying concern of loved ones, the intense demands of rehabilitation, denial and anger. Strangely, the one thing Meruane does not touch upon is acceptance. Instead Lina rages throughout.
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The novel’s narrator is based loosely on Meruane, who experienced a brief period of blindness as a complication of diabetes. It is an intimate portrayal of a person determined to preserve her eyesight at all costs. Joined to this intense, unsettling and highly personal account of what it is like for a sighted person to experience blindness, Meruane also manages to explore several larger themes: illness and identity, caregiving and predation, frailty and need, culture and language, medicine and its limitations.
Meruane’s narrative is lyrical and often poetic. But foremost, it is a remarkable evocation of what it is like to be ill: the inconveniences of endless doctor’s appointments, fear and the need for reassurance, surgery and hospitalization, loving and often cloying concern of loved ones, the intense demands of rehabilitation, denial and anger. Strangely, the one thing Meruane does not touch upon is acceptance. Instead Lina rages throughout.
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LibraryThing member Jan.Coco.Day
While not exactly autofiction, the narrator is a Chilean writer named Lina Meruane, and the narrative is a fictionalized maturation of an event in the author’s own life. At a friend’s party in New York, aforementioned narrator Lina suffers a mild stroke that leaves her completely blind in one
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eye and partially blind in the other. Lina has to navigate through a few major life events which are difficult (but not impossible) and many small, daily life events which become more and more so. She not only has to learn for herself what it means not just to be blind, she has to teach her loved ones as well–when she literally and figuratively can’t see the future ahead of her. Lina is incapable of speaking the same emotional language of her loved ones. The prose is composed of short scenes, rather than chapters, with titles that are impressionistic rather than episodic. Entire sentences burn away rather than conclude. A searing view of the world through the disabled body is published by Deep Vellum–my new favorite publisher of international literary fiction in translation. Show Less
LibraryThing member seeword
In this (somewhat autobiographical) novel a Chilean writer becomes blind from a complication of Diabetes. While there is description of the clinical progression of her condition, it is much more about her sense of self and her relationships, particularly with her lover and her mother, as she
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becomes (or is perceived by them to become) dependent on them. Show Less
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2012
2016 (English translation)
Physical description
170 p.; 5.2 inches
ISBN
1941920241 / 9781941920244