#the empsium

[bigspicysynopses]

Review of "The Empsium"by Olga Tokarczuk

Spoilers, thoughts and feelings below the cut. Maybe I need to devise a system to rate books too...

The book was a really interesting look into the psychology and culture of central Europe (specifically Germany and Poland) in the 1910s. There were a lot of philosophical discussions and quotations that mostly served to distinguish the protagonist from the "other learned men" in the story. The undercurrents of the horror elements were not always present, and tied up really quickly in the last few chapters. Whether the supernatural elements are nature spirits or extra dimensional beings or the collective will of the divine feminine is intentionally very blurry.

The protagonist explores his and eventually her feelings on being intersex and how that ties to outward appearance in the time period. This first manifests to the ready as Mieczyslaw being a paranoid person, then perhaps it's the local liquor making him think that, then it's revealed to be that Mieczyslaw has been brought up this way to hide the difference in his body, and was socialized male despite it. Then when the nature spirits refuse to accept him as a sacrifice he quickly leaves the town and decides to start living as a woman stealing a dead woman's passport and her name.

It is really hard for me to nail down exactly how I feel about the book just now. I feel like the ending is rushed, but the discussion of philosophy and psychology was really dragged, repetitive and heavy handed. The main characters float through the motions and then it switches to full speed. The main character has agency but seems to take forever examining things and being confused. The plot seems to meander, uncertain and then it rushed to the finish line with a brief epilogue summing up the fates of the characters.

Perhaps the entire book is meant as a look at the confusing nature of naming one's gender identity and the horrors and discomfort and desire to hide one's body are all wrapped up in that. Wandering vaguely and then one day there's a eureka moment and everything is clear from that point forward.

It's a ponderous work that I'm glad I read, but I'm putting it back on the shelf not feeling dumbstruck by the depth of the message, but wondering if it could have been accomplished in a more punchy, striking way.

I'll try to think up some rating scale for the next book I review on this blog and hopefully do a better job reviewing a chapter or two at a time.

Let's call the Empsium a 6/10. Beautiful prose and a setting that I've never before experienced. I was fascinated by the early chapters of exposition and where the book ended up. I wrote down a few quotes from the book but I'm not sure how much I'll remember offhand. I'd definitely give the author another try, but I'm hoping to see something more succinct.

[bigspicysynopses]

Chapter 2

Things are moving fast and slow! The protagonist has just gotten his initial treatment plan while he's stuck at the guesthouse waiting for room to open up in the sanitarium. It's only his second day here in Görbersdorf and there's been a death... The way the other characters react don't imply anything other than what it seems to be, but the author is really showing a lot of the fucked up philosophy and psychology of the time period. What is considered comforting or logical is making the protagonist and ourselves very unsettled, but we just met them and we're strangers here, so it's hard to say anything.

They bring out the local wine/liqueur (after eating off of the same table the body was on a few hours before.) and things begin getting odd... Is it alcohol, delusion or something darker?

Quote of the Chapter: "In a man, a strong will can help him to combat the temptations of madness, but women are almost entirely devoid of it, and thus have no weapon for the fight."

[bigspicysynopses]

Chapter 1

So far Tokarczuk is establishing a very interesting scene. The setting of a "health resort" in the early 1900s Germany with a Polish main character is already proving to be super stimulating. There's so much "new" and "unknown" to myself and Mieczyslaw Wojnicz that I'm taking to googling pronunciation, German and Polish words and locations. Just like the protagonist, moving in and looking around.

Line that hit the hardest: "No, we do not regard it as an obsession, at most an innocent over-sensitivity. People should get used to the fact that they are being watched."