Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet I bought this book for a class I had, and it wasn't really the kind of book I usually read. I found there to be no plot line and it bored me to death. It's good if you like a story that is focused on what's written between the lines.
Stunning and original, dark and mind-warping When I first read "Jealousy," I had never read anything else like it--because there is nothing else like it. For starters, the book is written in first person, yet it never uses the words I, me, my, mine, we, our, or us, or any other first person posessives. When it's time for dinner, instead of saying, "And now we sit down to eat," the author says something like "And now it is time for dinner," and he describes there being three plates, and mentions two other people eating. Also, the book is incredibly precise in its details. It names every tree in a bananna forest, spends pages describing a woman brushing her hair, and meticulously records where every shadow in every corner of every room falls, to the point that if he hasn't yet described a part of a room, you wonder, "Well, what's in THAT corner?" As a result of this unique perspective, and of the author's close attention to detail, the reader forgets the story is in first person at all, and grows to trust the book as an exact, almost scientific account of everything going on. But, what's going on isn't science--it's an affair. It's the narrator's wife having an affair with a neighbor, in a hot, foreign, plantation-style setting. As the narrator gets more suspicious and prejudiced, so does the reader. As the narrator gets more distrustful and angry, so do you. This book is brilliant--it's French experimentalism at its best. It explores themes of love and identity and jealousy and reality (despite its author claiming he wants the reader not to find any intended symbolism in it, but only to observe it as one would real life). It's antilinear and unconventional, and explores several dark motifs, such as a squashed centipede on a wall that seems more and more violent with every mention, and with every moment passed in the narrator's growing rage and paranoia. At times this book may be hard to read, but it's always worth it, and it's always genius. Buy it, but it, buy it, buy it. Your mind will never be the same again.
Wow! Compared to his other works, i did not enjoy it as much. But this is a brilliant writer. Anything he writes overflows with creativity. I recommend this book. But i recommend The Voyeurs or The Erasers first.
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