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Marigold and Rose
Marigold and Rose is a magical and incandescent fiction from Nobel Prize laureate Louise Glück.
"Marigold was absorbed in her book; she had gotten as far as the V." So begins Marigold and Rose, Louise Glück's astonishing chronicle of the first year in the life of twin girls. Imagine a fairy tale that is also a multi-generational saga; a piece for two hands that is also a symphony; a poem that is also, in the spirit of Kafka's Metamorphosis, an incandescent act of autobiography.
Here are the elements you'd expect to find in a story of infant twins--Father and Mother, Grandmother and Other Grandmother, bath time and nap time--but more than that, Marigold and Rose is an investigation of the great mystery of language and of time itself, of what is and what has been and what will be.
Simultaneously sad and funny, and shot through with a sense of stoic wonder, this small miracle of a book follows thirteen books of poetry and two collections.
"Marigold was absorbed in her book; she had gotten as far as the V." So begins Marigold and Rose, Louise Glück's astonishing chronicle of the first year in the life of twin girls. Imagine a fairy tale that is also a multi-generational saga; a piece for two hands that is also a symphony; a poem that is also, in the spirit of Kafka's Metamorphosis, an incandescent act of autobiography.
Here are the elements you'd expect to find in a story of infant twins--Father and Mother, Grandmother and Other Grandmother, bath time and nap time--but more than that, Marigold and Rose is an investigation of the great mystery of language and of time itself, of what is and what has been and what will be.
Simultaneously sad and funny, and shot through with a sense of stoic wonder, this small miracle of a book follows thirteen books of poetry and two collections.
55 pages, Hardcover
First published October 11, 2022
About the author
Louise Glück
91 books1,824 followersAmerican poet Louise Elisabeth Glück served as poet laureate of the United States from 2003 to 2004.
Parents of Hungarian Jewish heritage reared her on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University.
She was the author of twelve books of poetry, including: A Village Life (2009); Averno (2006), which was a finalist for The National Book Award; The Seven Ages (2001); Vita Nova (1999), which was awarded The New Yorker's Book Award in Poetry; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America; Ararat (1990), which received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. She also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.
In 2001, Yale University awarded Louise Glück its Bollingen Prize in Poetry, given biennially for a poet's lifetime achievement in his or her art. Her other honors include the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize (Wellesley, 1986), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection, The Wild Iris . Glück is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award ( Triumph of Achilles ), the Academy of American Poet's Prize ( Firstborn ), as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Anniversary Medal (2000), and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
Glück also worked as a senior lecturer in English at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, served as a member of the faculty of the University of Iowa and taught at Goddard College in Vermont. She lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teached as the Rosencranz writer in residence at Yale University and in the creative writing program of Boston University.
Parents of Hungarian Jewish heritage reared her on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University.
She was the author of twelve books of poetry, including: A Village Life (2009); Averno (2006), which was a finalist for The National Book Award; The Seven Ages (2001); Vita Nova (1999), which was awarded The New Yorker's Book Award in Poetry; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America; Ararat (1990), which received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. She also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.
In 2001, Yale University awarded Louise Glück its Bollingen Prize in Poetry, given biennially for a poet's lifetime achievement in his or her art. Her other honors include the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize (Wellesley, 1986), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection, The Wild Iris . Glück is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award ( Triumph of Achilles ), the Academy of American Poet's Prize ( Firstborn ), as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Anniversary Medal (2000), and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
Glück also worked as a senior lecturer in English at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, served as a member of the faculty of the University of Iowa and taught at Goddard College in Vermont. She lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teached as the Rosencranz writer in residence at Yale University and in the creative writing program of Boston University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 477 reviews
March 20, 2024
In their different ways, the twins were beginning to remember. They remembered different things. Or they remembered the same things differently. It seemed to Marigold that you remembered things because they changed. You didn’t need to remember what was right in front of you. And the twins were still too little to have much behind. But Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember.
On the evening of the 13th October the news that Louise Glück (1943- 2023) had died, popped up only a few minutes after I had put Marigold and Rose in my handbag to take with me to read on the train when I would be travelling back home after taking a test for which I had been preparing for a couple of weeks. The news added a sense of timeless and intensity to a couple of themes and ideas that Louise Glück explores in this prose piece.
It is a small book – a mere 52 pages – on big themes (memory, loss, consciousness, family dynamics, siblings, bonding, being (still) wordless and locked-up in oneself but dreaming anyway ) seen through the prism of the reflections of two infants.
Marigold and Rose are infant twins, but as marigolds and roses are a different kind of flowers, they are not the same. They are different kinds of personality – one is introspective, turning inwards, one is more outbound and reaching outwards. Nevertheless the twins might be one as well, two souls in one person, one persona deduplicated in two bodies, showing that every person is a multifaceted creature, defying facile and reductionist labelling in extravert or introvert personalities or other predominant features that do not represent the multiplicity of reality.
(Gustave Klimt, Bauerngarten, 1907)
I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading this piece despite the infant angle, a perspective that I presumed would rather irritate me (as it apparently did some other readers). Indulging in the prospect of having a miniature break from a diet of technical textbooks for studying, this naturally came along as a little treat, a welcome dollop of beauty refreshing my mind after weeks of hard work in which I had to steer clear of the temptation of words that were not directly functional.
As the last published work of Louise Glück before her death, it is tempting to look at this tale from the perspective of a circle that is completed, the fulfilment of the cycle of life, connecting the infant phase and to the end, particularly when connecting this piece with the last poetry collection that she published in 2021, Winter Recipes from the Collective.
While Winter Recipes from the Collective was, as obvious from the title, a wintry book, focussing on old age and death, Marigold and Rose, with its flower symbolism and focus on the baby time is devoted to the beginning of existence. Yet, like in Glücks poetry, childhood doesn’t obfuscate death which is present from the onset on, from the beginning the awareness that everything will disappear is a leitmotif that cannot be unheard.
Thank you so much Jennifer for drawing my attention to this tiny gem.
On the evening of the 13th October the news that Louise Glück (1943- 2023) had died, popped up only a few minutes after I had put Marigold and Rose in my handbag to take with me to read on the train when I would be travelling back home after taking a test for which I had been preparing for a couple of weeks. The news added a sense of timeless and intensity to a couple of themes and ideas that Louise Glück explores in this prose piece.
It is a small book – a mere 52 pages – on big themes (memory, loss, consciousness, family dynamics, siblings, bonding, being (still) wordless and locked-up in oneself but dreaming anyway ) seen through the prism of the reflections of two infants.
Marigold and Rose are infant twins, but as marigolds and roses are a different kind of flowers, they are not the same. They are different kinds of personality – one is introspective, turning inwards, one is more outbound and reaching outwards. Nevertheless the twins might be one as well, two souls in one person, one persona deduplicated in two bodies, showing that every person is a multifaceted creature, defying facile and reductionist labelling in extravert or introvert personalities or other predominant features that do not represent the multiplicity of reality.
(Gustave Klimt, Bauerngarten, 1907)
I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading this piece despite the infant angle, a perspective that I presumed would rather irritate me (as it apparently did some other readers). Indulging in the prospect of having a miniature break from a diet of technical textbooks for studying, this naturally came along as a little treat, a welcome dollop of beauty refreshing my mind after weeks of hard work in which I had to steer clear of the temptation of words that were not directly functional.
As the last published work of Louise Glück before her death, it is tempting to look at this tale from the perspective of a circle that is completed, the fulfilment of the cycle of life, connecting the infant phase and to the end, particularly when connecting this piece with the last poetry collection that she published in 2021, Winter Recipes from the Collective.
While Winter Recipes from the Collective was, as obvious from the title, a wintry book, focussing on old age and death, Marigold and Rose, with its flower symbolism and focus on the baby time is devoted to the beginning of existence. Yet, like in Glücks poetry, childhood doesn’t obfuscate death which is present from the onset on, from the beginning the awareness that everything will disappear is a leitmotif that cannot be unheard.
Thank you so much Jennifer for drawing my attention to this tiny gem.
October 15, 2023
‘We look at the world once, in childhood,’ worte Louise Glück in her poem Nostos, ‘The rest is memory.’ Winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for her life’s work full of this incredible poetry or, as the Committee wrote, for ‘her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,’ Glück has a gift to harness words to unlock the abstractions of one’s interior life and put it on dazzling display. Writer of many collections of poems and essays, Marigold and Rose is her first book of fiction yet retains all the power of her poetry. In this way, it is deceptively simple. Being a quick 55 pages on the inner lives of two infants, Glück explores the twins differences and their perspectives on life. That they do not yet have words is both their struggle but also the purity of their impressions. With writing that feels like a forest path between prose and poetry and says far more than just the words on the page, Marigold and Rose is a charming yet heavy look at the world, language, loss and the possibilities of existence.
‘Everything will disappear but I will know many words.’
The lives of the twins feels very akin to a line from Glück’s poem, Tango, in which she writes ‘of two sisters / one is always the watcher / one the dancer.’ Here, silent, observant Marigold is the watcher and charming, sweet Rose is the dancer. Margold loves to watch the world and think about it, or look through her alphabet book despite lacking the ability to read. Rose smiles, gets the affection of all who see her. The twins have a curiosity and loving understanding of each other, seeing in the other things they feel lacking in themselves. ‘Rose felt sometimes that she lacked depth,’ we are told, ‘she felt a little one-note, like a highly decorative cave painting,’ while Marigold wishes she could interact with the world more.
‘We have inner lives, Rose thought.’
The story follows through the course of a year through a short series of impressions of the family, their garden, and all leads up to the twins' first birthday. There is a humorous confusion for Marigold that if they become one on their birthday, were they nothing before? This points forwards the impressions of mortality that permeate the story, with the non-existence before birth weighing on Marigold’s infant mind just as much as the absence after death. ‘Everything will disappear,’ she often thinks. This also leads to questions of existence, such as who she is herself, such as here when she observes herself amongst the family like a single seed amongst the hundred her mother uses for gardening:
While it all seems a bit much for an infant to be thinking of, the narrative implies that none of this occurs in words but in a grappling with impressions that is always just out of reach. There is a beautiful simplicity tinged with the twin’s frustrations because nothing ever makes full sense.
‘Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember.’
In this way, the book becomes a look at language. There are impressions of the world we can form, yet without words to categorize and snare our ideas into something we can turn over in our mind, it is harder to understand them. It makes for a clever way to look at how the twins discover the world. ‘It was not a happy time, we are told after the Grandmother’s death, ‘this was the first the twins understood that word, happy, but they understood it because it was gone.’ Marigold learns how absence can be a great learning tool, understanding emotions only once they have passed and juxtaposing all feelings with others. Through all this, Marigold decides she wants to write a book and is always bending her mind towards that idea. No matter that she has yet to develop words. The desire for adulthood ‘with its vast cargo of words,’ becomes her desire for life, with all its aches, joys, pains and love.
‘Long, long ago: that is how she would begin her book.’
This is a lovely little philosophical narrative. I have long loved the poetry of Louise Glück (a favorite is Departure which I highly encourage reading) and Marigold and Rose feels like a natural extension of her poems. It captures the magic of words and the contradictions of life in such lovely prose and while it is bite-sized novella, it fills your mind like a meal.
4.5/5
‘Everything will disappear but I will know many words.’
The lives of the twins feels very akin to a line from Glück’s poem, Tango, in which she writes ‘of two sisters / one is always the watcher / one the dancer.’ Here, silent, observant Marigold is the watcher and charming, sweet Rose is the dancer. Margold loves to watch the world and think about it, or look through her alphabet book despite lacking the ability to read. Rose smiles, gets the affection of all who see her. The twins have a curiosity and loving understanding of each other, seeing in the other things they feel lacking in themselves. ‘Rose felt sometimes that she lacked depth,’ we are told, ‘she felt a little one-note, like a highly decorative cave painting,’ while Marigold wishes she could interact with the world more.
‘We have inner lives, Rose thought.’
The story follows through the course of a year through a short series of impressions of the family, their garden, and all leads up to the twins' first birthday. There is a humorous confusion for Marigold that if they become one on their birthday, were they nothing before? This points forwards the impressions of mortality that permeate the story, with the non-existence before birth weighing on Marigold’s infant mind just as much as the absence after death. ‘Everything will disappear,’ she often thinks. This also leads to questions of existence, such as who she is herself, such as here when she observes herself amongst the family like a single seed amongst the hundred her mother uses for gardening:
‘Who am I, she thought to herself. Or really, which am I of the hundreds in the original packet…Marigold needed something that stood for herself as Rose stood for Rose.’
While it all seems a bit much for an infant to be thinking of, the narrative implies that none of this occurs in words but in a grappling with impressions that is always just out of reach. There is a beautiful simplicity tinged with the twin’s frustrations because nothing ever makes full sense.
‘Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember.’
In this way, the book becomes a look at language. There are impressions of the world we can form, yet without words to categorize and snare our ideas into something we can turn over in our mind, it is harder to understand them. It makes for a clever way to look at how the twins discover the world. ‘It was not a happy time, we are told after the Grandmother’s death, ‘this was the first the twins understood that word, happy, but they understood it because it was gone.’ Marigold learns how absence can be a great learning tool, understanding emotions only once they have passed and juxtaposing all feelings with others. Through all this, Marigold decides she wants to write a book and is always bending her mind towards that idea. No matter that she has yet to develop words. The desire for adulthood ‘with its vast cargo of words,’ becomes her desire for life, with all its aches, joys, pains and love.
‘Long, long ago: that is how she would begin her book.’
This is a lovely little philosophical narrative. I have long loved the poetry of Louise Glück (a favorite is Departure which I highly encourage reading) and Marigold and Rose feels like a natural extension of her poems. It captures the magic of words and the contradictions of life in such lovely prose and while it is bite-sized novella, it fills your mind like a meal.
4.5/5
December 12, 2023
i read my first glück on the day of her passing, having picked it up in my favorite bookstore weeks before—primarily because it was on sale, i love short literary fiction, and this cover is striking. (i judge books by their covers. so do you. be honest.)
i wasn't sure what to expect, but i found it a marvelous and real glimpse into the wonder and magic of childhood.
it was the first but surely won't be the last.
bottom line: rip louise glück 💛
i wasn't sure what to expect, but i found it a marvelous and real glimpse into the wonder and magic of childhood.
it was the first but surely won't be the last.
bottom line: rip louise glück 💛
November 8, 2022
A short listen as I was falling asleep, but I was struck by how clearly I saw the world through Marigold, and how her experience was one I’d never had before.
December 26, 2023
Louise Gluck’s novella is a treatise on time, memory and language. The author is a Nobel Prize poet.” Marigold and Rose,” her first novel, combines prose and poetic imagery to create an internal monologue that follows the first year in the lives of the eponymous twins.
Marigold and Rose enjoy the symbiotic relationship that develops between two organisms cocooned in a mother’s womb. Once gestated, they retain their special intuitive bond and begin to develop their own idiosyncratic personalities.The flower marigold often connotes power, strength and inner light. Roses can be associated with passion, enthusiasm and connectivity. The twins’ personalities differ much in the way their floral namesakes diverge. Marigold is the taciturn observer.Rose is the gregarious extrovert.
Over the course of ten chapters and fifty two pages, the first year of the twins’ lives and development unfolds. Their inner lives are revealed through their highly developed linguistic thoughts despite their actual lack of developmental articulation.This literary conceit suggests that infants have a vibrant inner life even though they are unable to read, write or articulate.Their thoughts swirl about and encompass concerns about connection, personal dynamics, relationships, grief and happiness.
The twins’ thoughts, for me, expand into an examination of the wonder of words and the role of memory as a gateway to language.The twins attach feelings to words they can not say or speak. Their swirling impressions drove me back to my formative years,conjuring images of an innocent time that I have not often revisited.4.5 stars.
Marigold and Rose enjoy the symbiotic relationship that develops between two organisms cocooned in a mother’s womb. Once gestated, they retain their special intuitive bond and begin to develop their own idiosyncratic personalities.The flower marigold often connotes power, strength and inner light. Roses can be associated with passion, enthusiasm and connectivity. The twins’ personalities differ much in the way their floral namesakes diverge. Marigold is the taciturn observer.Rose is the gregarious extrovert.
Over the course of ten chapters and fifty two pages, the first year of the twins’ lives and development unfolds. Their inner lives are revealed through their highly developed linguistic thoughts despite their actual lack of developmental articulation.This literary conceit suggests that infants have a vibrant inner life even though they are unable to read, write or articulate.Their thoughts swirl about and encompass concerns about connection, personal dynamics, relationships, grief and happiness.
The twins’ thoughts, for me, expand into an examination of the wonder of words and the role of memory as a gateway to language.The twins attach feelings to words they can not say or speak. Their swirling impressions drove me back to my formative years,conjuring images of an innocent time that I have not often revisited.4.5 stars.
March 22, 2023
A sweet and insightful exploration into the inner life of infants through the eyes of twins, one of whom represents the rational and the other in the irrational. one representing pleasant engagement the other unpleasant self-involvement. When I was is raising a small child it sometimes felt like I had birthed two boys and someone was switching out children on me. Some days I had my sweet, trusting and engaged child and others my obstreperous, dubious and independent child though both were housed in one body. While I loved both of these children with every fiber of my being, I greatly preferred living with one of them and hoped fervently for his return when his complicated twin showed up. The read made me think a lot about that time, and it was a fun revisit.
(I realize these were supposed to be actual twins in the book, but it is also said that between the two they had everything, a yin and yang sort of thing, which made them feel like a single being with differing moods.)
This was about a 45 minute read, and absolutely worth the time
(I realize these were supposed to be actual twins in the book, but it is also said that between the two they had everything, a yin and yang sort of thing, which made them feel like a single being with differing moods.)
This was about a 45 minute read, and absolutely worth the time
October 31, 2022
As always, a big fuck you to poets who write novels. They make me cry and I hate how emotional they make me. I feel like Marigold a lot and I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like her. I hope she finds joy and happiness (and looks into neurodivergency). I loved this.
November 11, 2022
Magically weird and brilliant. A short revelation.
January 29, 2023
snatched this from the library 100% for the cute cover
March 18, 2024
a quick interesting read, swimming in the mind of two infants, the first year of two twin baby girls.
i picked this one up because the cover looked cute and it was short so why not try?, i found it pretty enjoyable and it shows the magic of childhood, i felt more drowning towards marigold
"𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥"
loved seeing the world through two small pair of eyes, and how the twins were so different yet so much alike, the writer is a poet so obviously the writing style will draw you in easily, overall it was a very delightful quick read.🤍
"𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶."
i picked this one up because the cover looked cute and it was short so why not try?, i found it pretty enjoyable and it shows the magic of childhood, i felt more drowning towards marigold
"𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥"
loved seeing the world through two small pair of eyes, and how the twins were so different yet so much alike, the writer is a poet so obviously the writing style will draw you in easily, overall it was a very delightful quick read.🤍
"𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶."
April 15, 2023
Sådär artsy och höglitterär så det gick mig över huvudet.
July 18, 2022
interesting writing and POV, but didn't really do much for me
November 26, 2023
A beautiful and rich and quietly tragic little read. Wow.
October 24, 2022
We are inside the head of two twins as they portray their world from their cribs. One represents rationality, the other spirituality/emotion. Each insight about family, goals/purpose, death, growing up/old is juxtaposed against her twin’s. Interesting concept, but without plot or dialogue, these insights fell flat for me.
March 8, 2023
What a delightfully strange little book!
December 11, 2022
The cover said transcendent. Not so. Gluck’s poetry is transcendent, not this fiction piece. The story of twins: one an extravert and one an introvert. I was unsuccessful in finding the pearl in this oyster. Disappointing.
December 20, 2022
Gluck, Nobel Prize winner in Poetry, has written "a fiction." 55 pages, with lots of white space between paragraphs, somewhere between prose and poetry, fable-like and sweet. Marigold & Rose is about the inner lives of these twin infants. Quarreling sisters figure in a lot of Gluck's poems, and so too here. Marigold, the quiet watcher, can't, of course, read yet, but in her mind she's at work on a novel. Rose, the people-pleaser, is gregarious, thinking already that perhaps she lacks the depth of her twin. There is loss, hints about social class, the slippery, complicated place that the world is. A delicate short story.
December 12, 2022
The best feature was its brevity.
April 2, 2024
A sweet story about language and understanding told from the perspective of two babies, a set of twins.
December 9, 2022
Louise Glück’s great first novel explores consciousness through the need for writing and the impossibility of writing from the perspective of twins that will become someone different than what they are without the language adults share. They exist on their own and for each other. They are two and one, separate and united by a force that is not understandable to us, grown ups.
October 10, 2023
Delightful shortread!
October 17, 2022
It's more like an "experiment" than a novel. It finds a brand new angle, baby's eyes, to explore the rationality of modern life. Two babies representing brain and soul (spirit and flesh, rational and emotional) without any prior knowledge to the "human world" are put into this experiment and observed to see how brandly new brain and soul are accomodate and cognize the world.
I love this experiment providing a brandly new perspective to monitor and understand the world (I mean, who won't love it?! It's an-easy-to-miss worldview and interesting to think how the worldview is formalized to a 0-1 year old baby, from both rational and emotional perspectives.) I'll definitely continue to use this perspective to gauge the real life.
LOUISE uses baby's eye to observe the topics appeared in her works previously, like death, love, life, philosopy, etc. And tons of new findings were revealed which makes this small book "thick". I won't continue disclosing to leave the opportunity to yourself. ;)
This book also seems a bit different with LOUISE's previous poems (I haven't read many of LOUISE's works, but instinctly feel the difference.) that for the first time I feel there is a little warmth in LOUISE's novel comparing with the extreme cold, indifferent, calm, speculative in historical poems. I like "this" LOUISE more than the previous ones.
I love this experiment providing a brandly new perspective to monitor and understand the world (I mean, who won't love it?! It's an-easy-to-miss worldview and interesting to think how the worldview is formalized to a 0-1 year old baby, from both rational and emotional perspectives.) I'll definitely continue to use this perspective to gauge the real life.
LOUISE uses baby's eye to observe the topics appeared in her works previously, like death, love, life, philosopy, etc. And tons of new findings were revealed which makes this small book "thick". I won't continue disclosing to leave the opportunity to yourself. ;)
This book also seems a bit different with LOUISE's previous poems (I haven't read many of LOUISE's works, but instinctly feel the difference.) that for the first time I feel there is a little warmth in LOUISE's novel comparing with the extreme cold, indifferent, calm, speculative in historical poems. I like "this" LOUISE more than the previous ones.
December 27, 2022
The author is a poet, so you know the writing will draw you in. This little book (64 pages) explores the inner lives of a set of twins during their first year. They are pre-verbal, and quite different from each other.
Insightful and lovely with touches of humor. I was moved and gulped it down. It's a really short read - a collection of vignettes really - and when I closed it I looked at the world with new appreciation. An unexpected delight.
Insightful and lovely with touches of humor. I was moved and gulped it down. It's a really short read - a collection of vignettes really - and when I closed it I looked at the world with new appreciation. An unexpected delight.
February 5, 2023
perfect tub read & a reminder of how differently all of us experience the world.
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August 13, 2023Na contracuberta leo que unha aproximación da crítica estadounidense a este libro procede dende parámetros psicoanalítico-metafóricos, coma se as dúas xemelgas encarnasen a dobre natureza creativa da propia Glück. O libro, para o meu gusto, perde por completo o interese dende esa perspectiva. Penso, pola contra, que a deriva ficcional da poesía de Glück, máis acentuada en cada un dos seus últimos traballos, desemboca dun xeito completamente orgánico nesta pequena fabulación pensada dende o abraio infantil, ou polo menos tentando facerse cargo dese sense of wonder mesturado coa inquedanza e a vulnerabilidade propia de alguén que se sinte aínda pequeno para enfrontarse ó mundo. Igualmente, quedo coa sensación de que o libro está concebido case coma tentativa, coma un pequeno anaco —ou sucesión de sketches— do que podería ser un traballo máis estimulante e articulado sobre esa idea fascinante do mundo pre-verbal. O ton que imprime aquí Glück está moi próximo a unha voz en off algo naif, un recurso que xa emprega nos seus libros anteriores pero que aquí ocupa unha posición absolutamente central, case granítica: a estrutura do libro semella implacable, as súas formas coma unha liña recta que en realidade é un punto…
December 27, 2023
endearing. now I’m sad I can’t remember what I thought when I was a baby, actually hold on she spoke about this in the book
“It seemed to Marigold that you remembered things because they changed. You didn’t need to remember what was right in front of you. And the twins were still too little to have much behind. But Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember”
“It seemed to Marigold that you remembered things because they changed. You didn’t need to remember what was right in front of you. And the twins were still too little to have much behind. But Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember”
October 25, 2022
Marigold and Rose: A Fiction by Louise Glück is my first read by her. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author and she was great! It’s a story about twin babies in their first year of life and explores their differences. It was an interesting and unique perspective for sure. This is a short book about 1 hour so I actually listened to it twice before writing this review and my thoughts stayed the same. It was good but not a fave. I’m still interested to read her poetry one day.
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Thank you to Macmillan Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!
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Thank you to Macmillan Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!
January 4, 2023
different from the norm, but it was kind of intriguing and i could appreciate marigold’s thoughts and outlook on life but that was pretty much it. i thought the book would follow the twins as they progressed and got older but it didn’t and i felt like the book might have been more impactful if it did
March 26, 2023
Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück is a fictional short story, exploring the inner lives of two twins and their oppositional dynamics, examining themes of relationships, love, jealousy and growing up as a twin.
Firstly, Louise Glück can craft a sentence like no one else. Her writing is evocative, spellbinding and melancholic and it is evident that she is a poet. Additionally, the two twins were relatable and I saw parts of myself reflected on paper.
However, I personally thought her writing style was telling too much instead of showing. We were constantly told that Marigold was the introverted dreamer and Rose couldn’t stop interacting with other people, but we were never actually shown that this is the case.
The hazy vignettes weren’t my cup of tea either, because Glück was in essence shifting between prose and poetry, not being able to form a coherent “storyline” (for lack of a better word). I just wish the vignettes actually had something to do with each other because they barely did.
All in all, Glück should probably stick to poetry, as I think it isn’t in her nature to write a novel/novella. 2.5 stars from me!
Firstly, Louise Glück can craft a sentence like no one else. Her writing is evocative, spellbinding and melancholic and it is evident that she is a poet. Additionally, the two twins were relatable and I saw parts of myself reflected on paper.
However, I personally thought her writing style was telling too much instead of showing. We were constantly told that Marigold was the introverted dreamer and Rose couldn’t stop interacting with other people, but we were never actually shown that this is the case.
The hazy vignettes weren’t my cup of tea either, because Glück was in essence shifting between prose and poetry, not being able to form a coherent “storyline” (for lack of a better word). I just wish the vignettes actually had something to do with each other because they barely did.
All in all, Glück should probably stick to poetry, as I think it isn’t in her nature to write a novel/novella. 2.5 stars from me!
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