Book Review: Passing
Nov. 16th, 2021 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI meant to read Nella Larsen’s Passing slowly so as to discuss it with asakiyume, but once I started reading I grew so absorbed that I accidentally devoured the book in a morning. In my defense it is very short. The book grabs you by the throat from the very first page, when Irene receives a letter from an old childhood friend: Clare, who is now passing for white.
Although Clare is married to a deeply racist man, which makes any connection with her old life fraught with danger, she yearns to be among Black people again… at least on an occasional basis. Irene remains embedded in the Black community, but, light-skinned herself, she occasionally takes advantage of her ability to pass to use white-only facilities - which is how she runs into Clare, after not seeing her for over a decade: both women are drinking iced tea in a rooftop hotel restaurant in Chicago.
Irene is scornful of Clare’s choice to pass permanently, but she can’t help admiring the moxie it takes to do it… as well as Clare’s sensational, magnetic beauty, on which Irene comments every time that she sees her, which generally happens after Irene has sworn that she will never see Clare again and then goes to see her anyway, because Irene just can’t seem to resist her.
When I bought the book, the used bookstore clerk commented, “I’ve heard really toned down the sapphic overtones in the movie.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment, but I intend to report back once I do.
This is a point of personal preference rather than a literary criticism, but I did sigh resignedly when, inevitably, the book developed into a love triangle between Irene, Clare, and Irene’s husband. My feeling (which may not be what Larsen meant me to feel, but it is a door she left open) is that the love triangle actually exists only in Irene’s head, and she’s projecting her own magnetic attraction onto her husband: “Of course he can’t resist her! No one could!” But this makes less difference than you might expect in the Love Triangle Reading Experience (™).
On the whole, though, an excellent book. Larsen milks the premise for both drama and sociological insight, and it's a pleasure to see a premise so absolutely wrung dry.
asakiyume, but once I started reading I grew so absorbed that I accidentally devoured the book in a morning. In my defense it is very short. The book grabs you by the throat from the very first page, when Irene receives a letter from an old childhood friend: Clare, who is now passing for white. Although Clare is married to a deeply racist man, which makes any connection with her old life fraught with danger, she yearns to be among Black people again… at least on an occasional basis. Irene remains embedded in the Black community, but, light-skinned herself, she occasionally takes advantage of her ability to pass to use white-only facilities - which is how she runs into Clare, after not seeing her for over a decade: both women are drinking iced tea in a rooftop hotel restaurant in Chicago.
Irene is scornful of Clare’s choice to pass permanently, but she can’t help admiring the moxie it takes to do it… as well as Clare’s sensational, magnetic beauty, on which Irene comments every time that she sees her, which generally happens after Irene has sworn that she will never see Clare again and then goes to see her anyway, because Irene just can’t seem to resist her.
When I bought the book, the used bookstore clerk commented, “I’ve heard really toned down the sapphic overtones in the movie.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment, but I intend to report back once I do.
This is a point of personal preference rather than a literary criticism, but I did sigh resignedly when, inevitably, the book developed into a love triangle between Irene, Clare, and Irene’s husband. My feeling (which may not be what Larsen meant me to feel, but it is a door she left open) is that the love triangle actually exists only in Irene’s head, and she’s projecting her own magnetic attraction onto her husband: “Of course he can’t resist her! No one could!” But this makes less difference than you might expect in the Love Triangle Reading Experience (™).
On the whole, though, an excellent book. Larsen milks the premise for both drama and sociological insight, and it's a pleasure to see a premise so absolutely wrung dry.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-16 11:19 pm (UTC)I thought her wanting to just sleep, sleep, sleep was another aspect of it.
I also thought this was super well-observed:
And this absence of acute, unbearable pain seemed to her unjust, as if she had been denied some exquisite solace of suffering which the full acknowledgment should have given her ... Or was it that she lacked the capacity for the acme of suffering? “No, no!” she denied fiercely. “I’m human like everybody else. It’s just that I’m so tired, so worn out, I can’t feel any more.” But she did not really believe that.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-16 11:50 pm (UTC)I bet that if Irene could look her attraction to Clare right in the face, she'd discover that she could experience the acme of suffering and of love right then and there. But she can't, or won't let herself, which comes to the same thing in the end.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-16 11:50 pm (UTC)