The Bruise

Magdalena Zurawski's novel The Bruise is so beautiful.

It's written in this soft unrelenting rhythm. The voice of the narrator focused on conveying the nuances of thought. It's intoxicating in its use of repetition, and it has a dreamy quality, at the same time that there is this solid substance there, which is about observing all the senses and trying to find the meaning in sensory experience. She so thoughtfully scrutinizes everything she encounters, every tree, every poem, every work of art. It is very much an existential coming of age story. And the prose is just stunning.

"My ghost followed me so closely that if for instance I moved my arm to grab an apple I had not only the feeling of the apple in my hand but also the feeling of watching someone's arm grab an apple so that I felt both that it was my arm grabbing the apple and not my arm grabbing the apple. Something that so clearly should have felt like my own experience seemed both to be my own experience and the experience of another person who I never was able to reach but always seemed able to watch."

"I could hear it now as if it were inside me and maybe it was. The hum echoing an emptiness as if my rib cage were a house made to hold nothing."