The Enchanted Clock A Novel by Julia Kristeva translated by Armine Kotin
is the newest work by one of the most sophisticated writers and french linguistics, teacher at the Université de Paris VII.
The story is told historically, jumping back and forth in the various centuries touched by the story and the historical or fictional characters created by the author.
A wise, original, dense writing-style will permit at this book of spacing through time, and space, in a structure that I would define fascinating because the impact is never strong, but, I would define it "distant" from the stories told because lived in the intimacy of the narration, vibrant.
The reader will read and appreciate a lot of historical anedocts regarding Louis XV fixated with death (he died because of smallpox, leaving the reign at the last king of France, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette), his passion for science, but also his inability of speaking a lot and much more.
In this scenario is inserted the story of monsieur Claude-Simeon Passemant, the constructor and engineer of an astronomical clock that would have meant to him fame and a secure future because very well seen by the kingk located in Versailles.
This clock had various characteristics: lunar phases, movements of planets and this clock would have been alive 'till 9999.
This one the purpose of the constructors.
At the same time in the contemporary age, there is an explosion in the Chateau du Versailles. Stan, a teenager and son of Nivi, is absolutely fascinated by that clock.
The mother is worried. What was that explosion?
A terrorist attack, a false alarm...
In this book you will find a lot of current events read with the intelligent eye of someone who asks first of all to herself questions; also in this sense the book is an introspective work.
Nivi Delysle is a pscyhoanalyst but also the founder of a new editorial project.
With the introduction of this reality, also an excursion in the world of media and difficulties experienced by the sector in this moment.
If Nivi's son Stan has some problems, but these problems don't avoid him of being an intelligent teenager Nivi, for other different reasons, will be mentally captured by the biography of the creator of the clock.
Astronomy, time, new stars and planets, her love for Theo...
Nivi's relationship. She writes: "I am trying out metaphors, appropriating your vocabulary to translate our way of being together: invisible to others, incoinceivable for our friends, insane for ouserselves." I picked up just this one, but I found all the expressions and phrases of love all the times incredibly intense and reals.
A terrible episode,will involve one of Nivi's reporter; and in an episode the clock will be stolen.
You musn't imagine a thriller. This book is something else. A reflection about our society, where we go, and where we are, but also a book about our human condition, our relationships; friendship, love, people, astronomy, time, smartphones and technology, current events, sex, passion, happiness, unhappiness, problematic families, children and revolutions. All, filtered in a dense, erudite, writing-style.
The Enchanted Clock is a metaphor of trip, as well: the existential trip, the introspective, analitic trip of a soul who analyzes every human aspect with terrible profoundity and visionary truth, someone in grade to navigate in the wild, agitated existential waves that this Ocean of uncertainties is bringing at the man of this part of XXI century dissectioning the various angles of the living.
In one of her digressions, this one about Venice and tourism: "The globalized wave....is still oppressive. ..These fake travelers do not inhale the scents of the city, the colors, the lines, the lights, the years incrusted in the stones, the bells ringing the celebrations, nothing...They're in a hurry to buy, to shout, to eat, to telephone, to leave. To fabricate memories, to save them."
Highly recommended.
I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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