Sort of impactful, well written in a subtle way that was easy to take seriously but didn’t exactly blow me away. I like Leonard Michael’s short fiction better from what I’ve read of it. This was sort of like a less exhilarating version of Anatole Broyard’s Kafka was the Rage, the pinnacle of bad relationships among NY intelligentsia, though the time periods differ. Sylvia was well drawn out and easy to hate and sympathize with, I really didn’t get how the narrator could’ve stayed for so long but I guess that’s what destructive romance is like. I’m happy I read this book but don’t know how long it’ll stick with me.

I liked it. I needed a novella to get back in to reading. But now I want to know Sylvia's side of the story...

Cinque stelle per questo romanzo di ispirazione autobiografica perché è scritto in modo sublime: doloroso, disperato e rassegnato allo stesso tempo, fatalista e speranzoso, il racconto è incentrato su una delle figure femminili più disturbanti che mi sia capitato di incontrare. Sylvia è egocentrica e instabile e la sua natura imprime la sostanza di un rapporto sentimentale che da subito si rivela malato. Bello, nonostante i sentimenti contrastanti che si provano durante la lettura: nulla ci fa sentire simpatica Sylvia, difficile anche la compassione. Eppure è un personaggio che incanta.

Superbly written account of Michaels' marriage to the zestful Sylvia; when he first meets her 'the question of what to do with my life was resolved for the next four years'. They have a bumpy, at first exciting relationship played out against the demi-monde literary society in early 60s New York. Indeed this was one of the bonuses of the book, describing Greenwich Village, Columbia University, the cafes and bars where the group meet and argue and see Lenny Bruce and Miles Davis, mingle with the Beat poets, watch Antonioni movies, smoke dope and set the world to rights as dawn comes up over Manhattan. Sounds great but was in fact sometimes boring. The relationship cracks and I would have liked to hear Sylvia's side to the story, but she commits suicide (a year or so after they split, although they do still see each other occasionally).
*It is billed as a novel, but it really is a memoir, hence my novel and non fiction tags.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5

☆ ɪʟ ᴍɪᴏ ᴘᴀʀᴇʀᴇ ☆

▪︎ #shortbutshockbooks ▪︎

Siamo nella New York del 1960.
Leonard e Sylvia si incontrano in un appartamento del Village.

Leonard Michaels racconta di Sylvia, una bellissima ragazza dai capelli neri, lo sguardo sbarazzino e un'intelligenza fuori del normale.

È un colpo di fulmine, si innamorano e poi si sposano nel giro di brevissimo tempo.

Vanno a vivere nel quartiere MacDougal Street, dove la Beat Generation sta nascendo grazie ad artisti come Kerouac e Allen Ginsberg.

Quello tra Leonard e Sylvia è un rapporto di amore e odio, le incomprensioni sono all'ordine del giorno, le liti furiose fanno parte della routine quotidiana
L'ira di Sylvia è qualcosa di incontrollabile e impossibile da contenere.


Sylvia, è un Memoir ma allo stesso tempo è un canto di dolore, un diario in cui Leonard sfoga le sue insicurezze, la sua disperazione per un amore così intenso ma veramente troppo complicato.

Un amore che si fa a pezzi continuamente, le liti impossibili. Un rapporto malato, scandito da rabbie furenti.

Fin dalle prime pagine si respira un'aria che pesa, si ha da subito il sentore di tragedia immenente.

Complice è la scrittura è tagliente, affilata come un rasoio.

Impossibile non venire risucchiati da questo racconto. Un vortice letterario, da cui non ci si può sottrarre e porta il lettore in un inferno allucinante.
Una storia potente e cupa, assolutamente imperdibile.
Una lettura che si insinua nel lettore e ci resterà per sempre.

Questo libro è dedicato a Sylvia Bloch, la prima moglie di Leonard Michaels, morta suicida dopo quattro anni dal loro incontro.

Un libro scritto benissimo, assolutamente imperdibile.
Un capolavoro della letteratura americana.

Letto con il mio gruppo di lettura #shortbutshockbooks

Sylvia di Leonard Michaels potrebbe ricordare Follia di McGrath per alcuni passaggi e anche nella trama. Anche qui si precipita in un amore ossessivo, famelico e distruttivo che finisce per annientare i protagonisti e lo stesso lettore.
Sylvia è la prima moglie di Leonard Michaels e fin da subito il loro rapporto "cominciò senza un inizio". Sylvia è un essere fragile, indifeso, un essere che "non stava dalla parte della vita". Il loro è un rapporto malsano, doloroso, opprimente e catastrofico per entrambi che finirà per distruggere soprattutto Sylvia stessa che arriverà al suicidio.
Un romanzo breve, ma intenso, lancinante, allucinante. E' di una bellezza che fa male e che si insinua pian piano nelle pieghe dell'animo e del cuore lasciando spossati e distrutti.

4.5☆

I think I liked this book, at first I thought it was ok, a very avarage coming of age about a guy studying literature (I've read that many times), but Michael's writing got better halfway through and so did the story. I liked the way he described his mom, some places and overall life in NYC during the sixties. But I have a lot of problems with the way he talks about his wife and other women (Sylvia's friend for example), and with his reasoning when he tries to explain why he stayed with her, why he married, how he never did anything wrong... I'm sure there is a lot he didn't say, either because he didn't want to or because he truly doesn't remember. It's a sad book about what living in the 60s was like, a failed marriage and mental health. I just wish I could read Sylvia's version of this story. Her story.

‘Sylvia could be happy and funny, but it is easier to remember the bad times. They were more sensational; also less painful now than remembering what I loved. There were moments when we’d happen to look up at each other while sitting a few yards apart in a crowded subway train, or across a room at a party, or in the slow flow of drugged conversation with four others in our living room, the grey dawn beginning to light the windows, and we’d smile with our eyes, as if we were embarrassed by our luck, having each other.’ Pg 94.

Poetic and thought provoking writing, and beautifully captures the atmosphere of New York in the 60s. You are thrust into the story with no escape until you reach the very last sentence of the very last page.

I was affected by cultural radiations from newspapers, radio, movies, television, but my life was MacDougal Street, voices through the walls, traffic noises through the windows, odors floating up the stairwell, and always Sylvia.

Not until the book hits these sentences on page 8 did I realize how narrow its vision would shrink: "Then, from behind long black bangs, her eyes moved, looked at me. The question of what to do with my life was resolved for the next four years." Soon after, the elaborate, grand scope of its adventurous first few pages become intimate, unadorned, raw. Isn't that how it is—especially with young romances—the other person becoming world? Although subtitled "A Fictional Memoir" and published decades after his first wife Sylvia committed suicide, I've no doubt this is primarily nonfiction (though I admit that, as Sylvia says, Michaels may be distorting and omitting Sylvia's perspective, painting himself as the victim). Even though I knew how it would end before I began, the final pages are devastating. Their dysfunctional relationship is completely irrational, but nonetheless, as Phyllis Greenacre tells Michaels, they're "feeding off each other" (but too "in it" to have insight, to see how, exactly). Despite, or perhaps due to, the endless chaos and violence of their relationship, the two seem to obliterate a distance between self and other that's otherwise impossible to bridge.

Quanto è grave rivedersi come in uno specchio in alcune dinamiche della coppia protagonista?

read in one sitting. it’s so deeply melancholic and sorrowful.