Quake by Kitty Mrosovsky

summary

Quake by Kitty Mrosovsky almost didn't survive. Written in the late 1980s, unpublished in her lifetime, composed after an HIV diagnosis — it is her last and most powerful work. The novel follows a woman named Olivia through an erotic odyssey, written without taboo, with the precision of a Flaubert translator and the hunger of someone who knows time is short. Mrosovsky was 48 when she died. That the book exists at all is the point.

Big thank you to McNally for sending an advanced copy!

hailo's annotations

"Even with just one or two people, a restaurant becomes an event, an intercourse; but until the diners come, it's simply a great area awaiting a rite." (5)

"When he was quite near I looked up and met his eyes" (6)

"And where do people put their lives? Where do they store their decades?... If only people could clear out there minds like cupboards. Throw some of it away. And then say one interesting thing. Like you might wear one lovely piece of clothing. Radiantly. Compellingly." (20)

"Like snowballs, people's minds take over. Their own opinions getting bigger, rolling faster and faster. Is it just a space problem in the mind? Or is it like an irreversible chemical reaction? Something that makes it intrinsically impossible to let go of one point of view and latch onto another, because all the tiny particles inside your brain are already all linked up to each other in a clased circle, so all you can allow in are particles identical to those already inside, combinations that can't effect any change, can only thicken the circle?" (22)

"You're a crypctic young lady. We don't understand you." (23)

"Ruth appeals to Sally-Ann. --Oughtn't a book be moving?

--My dear... their hostes tilts her black hood and blinks, --there are times, I know it's dreadfull, but there are times... when I could read the saddest thing and not be moved at all. Sick animals are always sadder than stories. And there are other times... when I ought not to cry-- but I do. I remember ... after the war, I was living in a flat, and I had a quite terrible pianist living just above. Terrible. She used to play that Mozart, you know, Daah dah dah, dee diddle dah... And she literally got worse--worse and worse-- every time she played. No rhythm, and then the wrong notes... I really wondered why she played. It was painful and then suddenly one day she stopped. Months went by and not a note. I felt... so guilty. You know, as if I'd killed her. It was much worse than when she played. I... it was a silly idea, but I even thought of going out and finding an old piano and trying to play her piece myself. I've never played, so I was sure to play it even worse than her, and I thought maybe that would encourage her. Anyway... one day, suddenly there is was again. Daah dah dah, dee diddle dah... I cried and cried when I heard her. Of course, she'd improved just a tiny bit because of not having touched the keys for so long..." (33)

"Not that I'm one of those people who say they wouldn't live their lives again if you paid them. If I could, I would--for the sake of being with the people and in the places I love. Once you stop loving someone, then it's different: no point in checking the buses, even, between Now and Again. And as for another person's past, it's still more inaccessible than one's own." (55)

"My memory's a bunch of mediocre witnesses." (57)

"I reached and twisted a strand of his hair around my finger, lightly, and pulled it towards me, and his head followed, and the weight of his body, and his mouth. It felt like gratefulness, as well as just ordinary desire." (69)

"That sort of life burns you up" (82)

"He wanted his way without any yesses, although all I wanted was to give him all the yesses I had." (85)

"Waiting for trainload after trainload of strangers does strange things to you. After a while, the strangers are almost no longer strange. The line between knowing or not knowing them seems to melt into the creases on their foreheads, to vanish on the surface of their skins. These people, as well as any others, might be your friends. As pleasant, as close, or closer, than any you have. Their faces are unfolding, they have nothing to hid, for a moment you see their roots, running down into life, like plants in water, or are they rootless, spreading their faces like the ones in dreams that are not the ones you want to remember but wandering substitutions full of grief, normality, grey eyes, a fringe, a boy's fingers, a bright T-shirt, boots sneakers, a corpuletn swing and snappy glasses..." (145)

"But I waited only a short time. I'd lost a person, and I was in pain. But I recognised myself as fortunate in my waiting, because I, at least, had every reason to believe that Rosaria was extremely well and happy. Those who love a person, a child maybe, and wait in fear for their life and safety, must suffer something so unimaginably painful that it's the greatest anguish a physically untortured person can undergo." (157)

"Principles are established, it seems, by being first broken. One learns not only from one's mistakes but from one's risks, and not least when these are most successful. The truth is that the only way to refuse the second half of the cake is, on the whole, to eat the first half. Principles are compromise boundaries, like fences put up with the wood chopped from our neighbour's estate." (203)

"Once you see the person you want, you forget how you fussed and fretted. Their face is the sun. It melts the chill" (214)