#august blue

[tomoleary]

Henry Scott Tuke - Preliminary Sketch for “August Blue” (before 1893)

Source

Henry Scott Tuke - August Blue (1896)

Source

[lazyydaisyyy]

I undressed and left my clothes on the sand. I was not at ease with my body, not even in the darkness of night. It had been unloved, perhaps forever.

Deborah Levy, August Blue

[amarenamoccha]

A little update on my reading list:

August Blue - Deborah Levy

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Café - Mary Simses

The Guest - Emma Cline

Sistersong - Lucy Holland

The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Let me know if you want a more detailed review on these books!

[valkyrieland]

August Blue by Deborah Levy

[josiepugblog]

My extremely objectively correct media favorites for 2023:

Books

Fantasy

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torsz

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Other Fiction

The September House by Carissa Orlando (horror, arguably fantasy)

The Winter Guest by W.C. Ryan (mystery/historical drama)

Kala by Colin Walsh (mystery)

The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel (historical drama, arguably fantasy as well lolll)

August Blue by Deborah Levy (contemporary fiction (for once!))

Nonfiction

No Ordinary Assignment by Jane Ferguson

A Village in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman

The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy

Nazi Culture by George L Mosse

Movies

Polite Society (action/comedy, dir. Nida Manzoor)

Rustin (historical drama, dir. Colman Domingo)

Saltburn (dark comedy, dir. Emerald Fennell)

Flora and Son (comedy/drama, dir. John Carney)

Past Lives (drama, dir. Celine Song)

TV

The Bear

Slow Horses

Succession

Doctor Who (RTDv2)

Beef

[ademella]

Currently reading

[without-ado]

August Super Blue Moon l Rami Ammoun

[emmersreads]

August Blue - Review

2/5 stars

I was drawn to this book by an inarticulable affinity for the title, probably due to its similarity to August Rush (of which this is a reinterpretation). That’s a very thematically appropriate way to approach the novel, but it did little to improve the actual reading experience.

The classical music world gets a bad rap for being dull, elitist, and pretentious, and August Blue does little to refute that perception. As the title might imply, August Blue is the depressed and cynical reinterpretation of August Rush. What if instead of an extremely corny plot about an orphan prodigy reuniting his parents though the power of music (demonstrated by the protagonist playing a rhapsody that spontaneously captures the attention and emotion of the audience), the orphan prodigy grows up as the golden child of the elite world of classical music but when the time comes for her rhapsody, the untraditional departure from the tradition of performance is immediately crushed and ignored. Our prodigy finds herself unable to perform, navigating the realization that she will have to discover the identity of her parents (and by extension herself) from the clinical language of her adoption documents.

That premise may sound engaging, but it’s because I’ve omitted basically all the details. August Blue has a bad case of literary-itis. It is at the intersection of literary fiction and classical music, two things that people who mostly don’t actually engage with them see as pretentious and boring. Unfortunately while both these art forms are more interesting, exciting, and accessible that one might think, August Blue isn’t going to convert you. This is what people who never read literary fiction but hate it nonetheless think all litfic is: unpleasant people doing boring things. It’s not great about the music either. Protagonist Elsa might as well be a talented athlete, or stock trader, or airline pilot for all her career seems to matter. My point of reference here is Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. I didn’t like that book half as much as I wanted to but the one thing that was unreservedly great about it was how effectively it established its characters’ passion for music. August Blue spends a lot of time with Elsa teaching young students, but can’t seem to summon any emotion at all for music. It’s about people… in the most boring way imaginable.

The central emotional issue of the novel is Elsa’s identity as the pseudo-daughter of former maestro Arthur. She was materially his prized student but emotionally closer to his adopted daughter and when her identity as a piano prodigy is challenged by her failed performance, every other element of her sense of self is thrown into question as well. Her double the manifestation of her desire for a self-image that isn’t dependant on her audience; a woman just like her but unselfconscious of her desires and eccentricities. I am saying this to demonstrate that I did understand the book, that understanding just doesn’t lead to me liking it any more.

August Blue just approaches this emotional arc in such a dull and bitter way. There’s no sense of joy and beauty in the music and there’s no sense of joy and beauty in anything else. Elsa jetsets across Europe — Greece, Paris, London, Sardinia — but these might as well be different terminals in the same airport for all the interest they bring. Technically, the novel does effectively establish Elsa’s alienation from anyone else in her life but does that even matter? This book has no soul. It could be technically perfect and it would still fail because it makes me feel nothing at all. Elsa is disagreeable and unpleasant in a realistic way for someone who was a piano prodigy first and a person second, but I found myself wishing the book was a little less realistic because it’s just such an awful grind to get through.

For my money August Blue’s original sin, the thing that makes it actively bad rather than lacking in good, is its commitment to extreme stylistic naturalism. One can easily see how, in another book, this could be a unique authorial flourish, meriting (for example) a Booker prize nomination. However, here it is combined with the tendency for childish absurdity peculiar to rich British people. We got a glimpse of this with Spare; whether you’re team Harry or team Windsors, they’re both the kind of people to call their parents ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ their whole lives. Due to various unfortunate events (being British), I’ve interacted with a number of rich English people and they’re all goofy as fuck. It’s a very strange echo chamber — the confidence of global privilege convincing them that every thought they have is philosophical, even if it’s ‘if you’re not here, then where?’ For discerning audiences from outside the bubble, a huge amount of August Blue’s dialogue is simply ridiculous, a second grader’s first essay delivered with the confidence of a tenured professor who should have retired decades ago. It sucks to read because this dialogue is obviously absurd but the people who do speak like this have more than enough money to make fetch happen.

If you want a book about music and identity read Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson or Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress is also about the interaction of family identity and art. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is a surprisingly touching exploration of feeling existential malaise when there’s nothing actually wrong with your life. Maybe you just have to be in your thirties to appreciate this book. I’m not going to wait around and find out. The nicest thing I can say about it is at least it was short.

[supposedlyserious]

[ub-sessed]

[pensivegladiola]

August Blue by Deborah Levy

[lazyydaisyyy]

I knew I was running away from everything, but I did not want to plunge a fork into my life and look at it too closely.

Deborah Levy, August Blue

[valkyrieland]

August Blue by Deborah Levy

[gailstorm]

A couple from tonight