Afbeelding van de auteur.

Pamela Erens

Auteur van The Virgins

7 Werken 354 Leden 22 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Fotografie: Author Pamela Erens at the 2016 Texas Book Festival. By Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52968345

Werken van Pamela Erens

The Virgins (2013) 159 exemplaren
Eleven Hours (2016) 120 exemplaren
The Understory (2007) 58 exemplaren
Matasha (2021) 5 exemplaren
Die Unberuhrten : Roman (2015) 2 exemplaren

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A coming-of-age novel set in an East Coast college/boarding-school in the late 70s; teenagers getting to grips with adulthood and sexuality; a striking girl who is every male student's object of desire; a love story which can only lead to tragedy; an unreliable narrator who, years after the events described, tries to make sense of them but is so clearly driven by conflicting emotions (nostalgia, guilt, self-pity) that we can never be sure whether or not he is telling the truth...

So far, so ordinary.

What makes this novel worth reading is the way in which Pamela Erens combines (hyper)realism with a poetic language which bathes the most mundane of details in a warm glow, gradually fuelling the narrative's intensity. "The Virgins" reminded me of Eugenides's "The Virgin Suicides" but, without the latter's quasi-surreal touches, it is much more believable. This novel is a lyrical meditation on loss - not just of virginity, but of childhood, innocence, friends, family ties and, ultimately, life itself.
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JosephCamilleri | 7 andere besprekingen | Feb 21, 2023 |


Another enjoyable addition to the [Middlemarch] appreciation collection.

Erens, like many readers, revisits the novel periodically, and is enriched by reading it at different times in her life (maybe every decade). She credits its resilience to Eliot's compassion and empathy to a wide range of characters, to beautiful writing, and the imperfect humanity Eliot depicts.

Talking about her own trials and tribulations as she goes, and sharing how this reengagement with the novel has supported her in personal growth, and growth as a writer.

She has managed to communicate the sheer joy that can be had in regularly rereading a book that gives you deep pleasure in revelling in the words on its pages. And being at the mercy of the quill in mistressful hands (despite her having to present herself as a master!).

I'm planning my fourth reread in March/April.

I've also added a couple of other volumes in the 'Bookmarked' series to my cart (Woolf's Mrs Dalloway - Robin Black/Baldwin's Another Country - Kim McLarin).
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½
 
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Caroline_McElwee | Feb 2, 2023 |
As I continue down my Tin House Books rabbit hole, I decided to read one of their newer titles that I heard a lot about Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens. The good news was that it is another fantastic and well written book under the Tin House banner. The bad news was that it is also an extremely heavy book about broken relationships.

The whole story takes place over the course of eleven hours as Lore, a single pregnant mother, is about to deliver her baby. By her side is her nurse Franckline, a tough yet caring person. Both women have been thrown together by happenstance, but both women are dealing with broken relationships and secrets.

Lore's story involves her friend Julia and her friend Asa. Asa and Julia were at one time childhood lovers and have been on and off lovers as adults too. Julia convinces Lore to date Asa. There is a broken triangle relationship between the three of them.

Franckline is pregnant, but has not told her significant other yet. She has had several miscarriages and keeps fearing the baby within is also dying. Her paranoia and fear has kept her from being truthful to her husband about this new baby.

It is also the story of these two women who have now been brought together. Franckline initially does not like Lore's attitude or demands, but grows to see that Lore is doing the best she can with the situation she is in. Lore doesn't enjoy Franckline's nature, but grows to see that Franckline is doing the best she can to take care of Lore and feels lost without Franckline in the room.

As stated, the whole book takes place during the contractions portion of the delivery of Lore's baby and is told as if it were a train of thought book. We sometimes jump into Lore's story and Lore's thoughts and at other times we are following Franckline. There is not break or any chapters to allow for such transitions. Mid page and a paragraph jump and we might be in a different woman's head. The entire book is a single chapter.

The structure makes the book a tad difficult to follow at times, but it also lends to the idea that thoughts are flowing constantly during downtime and when left alone. Lore while waiting for the next contraction in the room alone might have a memory of how she got into this situation. Fanckline while working at her desk would think about her situation, so it works on that level. Having the person jumps though, mid page, was difficult in a few locations.

This is not a feel good book. While there are certain movies that one should watch even though they are heavy dramas, the same is with books. This is a heavy book. These two women's lives are not perfect in any sense of the word. They are in situations they do not want to be in. They are filled with worries and doubts. I will not spoil the end, but it isn't an easy delivery for Lore. I read the ending in the morning before going to work and that was a huge mistake!

The book is so well written that the story keeps moving. We feel the pain Lore is in both physically and emotionally. We are with Franckline as she struggles with her world. These women are alive and breathing characters.

While it isn't a book I will be ready to read again any times soon, I gave this one 4 stars.
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Nerdyrev1 | 5 andere besprekingen | Nov 23, 2022 |
A novel about a touching, tragic love story set at a boarding school in the late seventies, a golden age -- before AIDS and the Moral Majority brought the curtain down on the party -- recalled through shafts of golden sunlight and clouds of pot smoke. It's something of an accomplishment to bring the seventies-era teenage experience to life without falling into shameless pop-cultural cliche -- I'm happy to say that "The Virgins" didn't remind me of Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" even once, and I don't think she mentioned any pop songs at all. The book's three main characters -- Aviva and Seung, the book's presumptive golden couple, and its narrator -- are also impressively well drawn and struck me as believably complex and vulnerable. All this is to say that Pamela Erens is a good writer. I'm not sure why I hadn't heard of her before I found this on Amazon's Kindle deals page.

This isn't to say that "The Virgins" is an easy or comforting book. There is so much thwarted lust, dysfunctional teenage love, and simmering anger at the school's rather antiquated rules on display here that it was sometimes painful to read. Erens doesn't hide the fact that things end badly from the reader, so "The Virgins" just gets harder to read as the novel's painful ending begins to play itself out. I'm a bit removed from it now, but I think that the author also seems to get a lot about the teenage experience right: for her young characters, each tiny ritual and new experience or encounter is almost unbearably important. The author, in other words, takes her teenage characters as seriously as they take themselves. What's more, while the time period and the social environment that her characters inhabit is fairly soaked with sex and sexual tension, Erens handles their sometimes dangerously combustible intimacy with real skill. It's hard to write sex scenes that don't make the reader cringe, but Erens manages various times here.

The only thing that doesn't quite sit well with me is the way that Erens deals with the inner conflict that troubles Aviva, one of the novel's pair of namesake virgins. Erens seems to want to portray the seventies as an exhibitionistic age: Aviva dresses to seduce when she doesn't necessarily have to, and her long, curly hair can't help but remind the novel's young male characters of That One Thing. She and Seung aren't at all shy about displaying their affection for each other at an institution where it is strictly prohibited to even set foot in opposite gender's dorm. But the book's title is what it is, and the deed doesn't quite get done for a good long time. What's wrong with Aviva -- psychologically, physically, emotionally, culturally, or spiritually -- isn't really resolved, and while I don't think of myself as the kind of reader who bangs on the table for pat resolutions to the novels I read, but I felt that this loose end seemed to implicitly place much of the blame for what goes wrong on this novel on her. I don't think of myself as the kind of reader who waits for sequels, either -- and I hardly think I'll get one here -- but I found myself hoping that she wasn't, as she suspected, so fundamentally maladjusted that love doesn't find her later in life. Perhaps book affected me in ways I didn't quite expect it to. Recommended.
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TheAmpersand | 7 andere besprekingen | Jun 26, 2022 |

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Statistieken

Werken
7
Leden
354
Populariteit
#67,648
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
22
ISBNs
26
Talen
1

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