Reading and Language 26 Jun 2006 12:59 am
the squealing pomegranate, the sugary fritters of love
I don’t generally mention books I dislike by name, lest their authors show up around here and whine at me. But this prose is so purple, I can hardly help but share it. The book is Pomegranate Soup, and it’s dreadful. It’s a first novel; someday the author will look back and wince, and in that she has all my sympathy. Occasionally a description of food will rise to plain competence, or even a little better. Overall, though, the writing is as subtle and elegant as a brick to the head. I slogged through the first couple of chapters and then started riffling around to find out whether it got any better. No, but it did get sillier:
Layla was indeed still in the throes of a hiccup fit, but she was nowhere near suffering. The young girl was lying upstairs on the mattress the three sisters shared, splayed out like a star fruit with soliloquies of love-struck Shakespearian heroines running across her muddled brain. The image of Malachy’s sapphire eyes sent tremors through her body; the hot node below her belly tingled and sent waves of pleasure down to her toes.
So this was how love was supposed to feel, Layla thought, like the ecstatic cries of a pomegranate as it realizes the knife’s thrust, the caesarean labor of juicy seeds cut from her inner womb. Like the gleeful laugh of oil as it corrupts the watery flour, the hot grease bending the batter to its will and creating a greater sweetness from the process — zulbia, the sugary fried fritters she loved so. Falling in love was amazing. Why hadn’t anyone ever told her so?
I can’t imagine why nobody’d ever mentioned the shouting pomegranate of love to the poor girl.
All that said, I know of a woman who would go absolutely gaga over this book. There’s no accounting for taste.
on 26 Jun 2006 at 1:43 am 1.desolina said …
i’m picturing the gleeful oil twirling its mustache in an appropriately villanous manner as it corrupts the flour, which is tied to the railroad tracks.
oh the humanity.
on 26 Jun 2006 at 5:10 am 2.Rechercher said …
Wha??? I thought “Well, maybe Cam’s exagerrating, maybe embellishing a little.” But I don’t think you’re capable of prose that awful. No offense.
on 26 Jun 2006 at 7:10 am 3.Other Josh said …
I had to check to make sure that book wasn’t written by a local “author” I used to know, who wrote a similarly dreadful book a couple years ago. Thankfully it wasn’t; I can still hope she’s never disgorged a second literary abomination.
on 26 Jun 2006 at 7:16 am 4.Mia said …
Falling in love is like being pan fried? No wonder the pommegranites were squealing.
I was reading the synopses on the link to the book and it says the author grew up in Argentina (post Iran). I’m wondering if the extreme purpleness of the prose is also attributable to linguistic and cultural translation.
You can get away with that sort of thing in Spanish more easily than in English, I’ve found. It is the work of a skilled translator to make it work in English. So some of this may be about poor translation (even if it’s in the author’s own mind.)
on 26 Jun 2006 at 12:14 pm 5.Velma said …
“shouting pomegranate of love”
Er, yeah. Right. *backs away cautiously* On the other hand, that’s better than the concept that something would be ecstatic during a caesarian.
on 26 Jun 2006 at 1:10 pm 6.cissa said …
Ye gods. I think that’s even past purple.
on 26 Jun 2006 at 9:29 pm 7.mizducky said …
Oh. my. god.
It’s only pity for the poor author that’s holding me back from posting a link to that on eGullet–the hyenas on that site would definitely gather to chomp down on that ol’ pomegranite. Wow.
(Oh god. I wonder if the author’s an eGullet member. It’s a big site. That would be really awkward.)
And the damnedest thing is, I really *like* using pomegranites, in rituals and such, as symbols for women’s vulva. But now it may be a long time before I can do that again with a straight face.
on 30 Oct 2006 at 3:32 pm 8.Anonymous said …
I feel that this book is actually quite good. The author uses very simple, yet powerful language to tell her story. The food aspect of the novel helps to bring the reader closer to the charatcer because if you have been in a kitchen before, then you would understand the magical sensatiosn that food instills in most people. Obviously, you have no love of food, or you are just ignorant. Either, I feel that you should give this book another shot.
on 08 Nov 2006 at 12:26 am 9.Chris said …
I feel before you make comments about purple prose you should be able to spell!!!!!!!
POMEGRANATE
Also try not to steal other people’s reviews! ie Purple Prose!!! IDIOT!!!
[Dude. — Sculpin]
P.S Dont be a pack of dogs until you actually read the book for yourself its actually very good
on 06 Dec 2006 at 2:37 am 10.Cee said …
Aah, nice to find someone else who disliked this dreadful book. I wrote about how much I hated it, and had a whole lot of lovely anonymous commenters telling me how wrong and ignorant I was, and quoting from the blurb to prove it. Very weird - either this author has a whole gang of friends refuting negative reviews for her or some seriously intense fans.