Publication
Amsterdam Koppernik 2021
ISBN
9789083174419
Language
Collection
Description
Fiction. Literature. LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.) HTML: On the heels of I Am the Brother of XX and These Possible Lives, here is Jaeggy's fabulously witchy first book in English, with a new Peter Mendelsund coverA novel about obsessive love and madness set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy's eerily beautiful novel begins innocently enough: "At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell." But there is nothing innocent here. With the off-handed remorselessness of a young Eve, the narrator describes her potentially lethal designs to win the affections of Fréderique, the apparently perfect new girl. In Tim Parks' consummate translation (with its "spare, haunting quality of a prose poem," TLS), Sweet Days of Discipline is a peerless, terrifying, and gorgeous wor… (more)
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User reviews
LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
The narrator of this slim novel is a teenage girl who’s spent most of her life on extremely exclusive boarding schools, having her future mapped out by very distant parents who she rarely meets. At Bausler Institut in the Swiss alps, she makes friends with the chilly and perfect Frederique, and
I thought this simple set-up sounded fascinating in an Amelie Nothomb sort of way (which is something very positive in my book), but was disappointed . It’s so understated it’s virtually static, and never seems to leave ground, despite a nice, detached writing style and a melancholy tone in it’s claustrophobic world. The closeness of life in a secluded school in a small village far from everything is well captured, as is the environment. But it’s just not enough. A few late twists, not unexpected but interesting enough, save the book somewhat, but it remains front heavy and not quite worth it. Read Nothomb’s AntiChrista instead. Or Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.
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discovers a new side of herself, a streak of darkness and self-destructiveness.I thought this simple set-up sounded fascinating in an Amelie Nothomb sort of way (which is something very positive in my book), but was disappointed . It’s so understated it’s virtually static, and never seems to leave ground, despite a nice, detached writing style and a melancholy tone in it’s claustrophobic world. The closeness of life in a secluded school in a small village far from everything is well captured, as is the environment. But it’s just not enough. A few late twists, not unexpected but interesting enough, save the book somewhat, but it remains front heavy and not quite worth it. Read Nothomb’s AntiChrista instead. Or Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.
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LibraryThing member reganrule
This novel has the flavor of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground combined with the clipped sentences of Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten. Not un-coincidentally, the novel names Robert Walser in its first lines: "At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell. This is where Robert Walser
What follows is a feminine parallel to Walser's novel,Jakob, the purported diary of a well-off young man who enrolls in a servant's school where he, according to Coetzee's review of it, reflects "on the education he receives there—an education in humility—and on the strange brother and sister who offer it."
In Jaeggy's reimagining, which I take to be an homage to Walser, the setting is the equally confining all-girl boarding school, and about how relationships formed there and the discipline learned there are always at risk of becoming fetishized. For the inhabitants of the girls' school, and for Jakob von Gunten, and for the man himself Walser, such discipline necessarily makes one go truly mad.
While the nihilistic narrator of Sweet Days of Discipline claims that she and her fellow boarders "didn't know the author," (i.e. either personally or through his works), they nevertheless come to know him--and madness--through their experiences in the shared landscape.
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used to take his many walks when he was in the mental hospital in Herisau, not far from our college. He died in the snow. Photographs show his footprints and the position of his body in the snow. We didn't know the writer." What follows is a feminine parallel to Walser's novel,Jakob, the purported diary of a well-off young man who enrolls in a servant's school where he, according to Coetzee's review of it, reflects "on the education he receives there—an education in humility—and on the strange brother and sister who offer it."
In Jaeggy's reimagining, which I take to be an homage to Walser, the setting is the equally confining all-girl boarding school, and about how relationships formed there and the discipline learned there are always at risk of becoming fetishized. For the inhabitants of the girls' school, and for Jakob von Gunten, and for the man himself Walser, such discipline necessarily makes one go truly mad.
While the nihilistic narrator of Sweet Days of Discipline claims that she and her fellow boarders "didn't know the author," (i.e. either personally or through his works), they nevertheless come to know him--and madness--through their experiences in the shared landscape.
Show Less
LibraryThing member boredgames
a strange, cold book that seems to borrow a lot from Duras' self-conscious literariness. it has beautiful turns of phrase and is quite moving in its evocation of underloved rich boarding school girls with their undeclared queerness, but i found the casual racism toward "the black girl" unpalatable
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and the novel was slight, i am not sure it'll linger with me. Show Less