Sara Baume

The title, [b:A Line Made by Walking|30971749|A Line Made by Walking|Sara Baume|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488552364l/30971749._SY75_.jpg|51589488], is taken from a performance art piece where the artist, Richard Long, in 1967 created a short, straight track worn by footsteps back and forth through an expanse of grass and builds sculptures which fall apart naturally. He specializes in "barely-there art." The narrator of the book is an artist in her twenties who has read up and delineates with "I test myself" on dozens of such works of performance art throughout her story. Examples are blowing up a shed, cats striking piano keys, man stepping up and down off a stool at thirty steps a minute as long as he can, acrobats hoisting themselves up a flagpole, a studio cell without media or communication for a year (Hsieh), "This way brouwn" (1960-64) about being lost & seeking directions, daily postcards saying "I got up" (Kawara 1968-1979), tiny birds made from fingernail clippings and glue (Hawkinson), moving a cement block wall back and forth across a thoroughfare (Yilin), penis amputation (Schwarzkogler), dress made of electric lights (Tanaka, 1956), What Does an Artist Look Like (New Yorker photos of artists 1999-2001). "Why must I automatically assume that every strange object is a sculpture, that every public display of unorthodox behaviour is an act of performance?" wonders Frankie. She has moved into her late grandma's cottage in the Irish countryside for the summer while coping with her depression and spends her solitary days bicycling, lying on the carpet, listening to the radio, watching TV, reading and thinking about her childhood and OCD impulses. She also has begun a project photographing dead animals and the chapters are labeled for such critters: hare, rabbit, badger, rat. Her mum visits occasionally, as does her sister. She has an appreciation for the quotidian and solitude which reminds me of Claire Louise Bennett's [b:Pond|25333047|Pond|Claire-Louise Bennett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428656359l/25333047._SY75_.jpg|45069198] or Kate Zambreno's new novel, [b:Drifts|48585697|Drifts|Kate Zambreno|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1578676099l/48585697._SY75_.jpg|73920928] and which I found soothing. It was a memorable reading pleasure.… (lisätietoja)

Despite the NYT Book Review blurb on the front cover that Seven Steeples was one of the most beautiful novels the reviewer had ever read, the majority of the beauty dropped off for this reviewer after the first chapter or so and quickly turned into a tedious slog. Baume is a gifted wordsmith throughout, but Seven Steeples is far more of a delirious ode to rural Ireland in poetic cant than what I would consider a story, and the preciousness of her stylized prose quickly wore while I waited for something to happen. It never did, and instead we're drawn into the aimless lives of a young, rudderless couple who have retreated to a cottage by the sea beneath a mountain they just can't find the interest or energy to climb.

In fact, they don't do much of anything, and the absolute lack of ambition or joy in either of the main characters is progressively draining as the place-poem rambles on. Bell and Sigh are ostensibly anti-social, anti-family, and anti-capitalist, but all of this really amounts to anti-interesting as the novel slooooowly tells the story of their unwillingness to cook, to clean, to care for themselves and each other, instead preferring to turn their backs on everything joyful the world has to offer except for a routine walk, swim, or the occasional fishing trip in the sea. Meanwhile, everything is changing through the seasons and decaying all around them: the very structure of their rented house, their scant belongings, their appliances, their clothing, and their relationships with the outside world.

Everything in Baume's vignette gets slowly and ponderously used up, including my patience, as I struggled to find some redeeming qualities in these characters or a reason to care about the nanoscopic cycles of life and death around them while they frittered away their existences against the backdrop of the rural-gothic Irish landscape. I even felt sorry for their two dogs, who were easily the most interesting characters in the story, but only because they were totally hapless and existing purely at the whim of their heedless pet-parents.

Lovers of alembicated language and dilapidated-cottage-core might get more out of this than I did, but I was really hoping that Bell and Sigh would get off their asses and do something – anything – that might serve as an inspirational inflection point to counter the eulogistic reverence for self-loathing indolence that masquerades as the real main character of this novel. Like, climb the bloody mountain, already, gang. FFS.… (lisätietoja)