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Tomb Song
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
11 posts | 8 read | 5 to read
An incandescent new voice from Mexico, for readers of Ben Lerner and Rachel CuskSitting at the bedside of his mother as she is dying from leukemia in a hospital in northern Mexico, the narrator of Tomb Song is immersed in memories of his unstable boyhood and youth. His mother, Guadalupe, was a prostitute, and Julian spent his childhood with his half brothers and sisters, each from a different father, moving from city to city and from one tough neighborhood to the next.Swinging from the present to the past and back again, Tomb Song is not only an affecting coming-of-age story but also a searching and sometimes frenetic portrait of the artist. As he wanders the hospital, from its buzzing upper floors to the haunted depths of the morgue, Julian tells fevered stories of his life as a writer, from a trip with his pregnant wife to a poetry festival in Berlin to a drug-fueled and possibly completely imagined trip to another festival in Cuba. Throughout, he portrays the margins of Mexican society as well as the attitudes, prejudices, contradictions, and occasionally absurd history of a country ravaged by corruption, violence, and dysfunction.Inhabiting the fertile ground between fiction, memoir, and essay, Tomb Song is an electric prose performance, a kaleidoscopic, tender, and often darkly funny exploration of sex, love, and death. Julian Herbert's English-language debut establishes him as one of the most audacious voices in contemporary letters.
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review
Taylor
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Mehso-so

There‘s way more politics than I felt like reading about; and the prose is so filled with unrecognizable references and annoyingly difficult trains of thought that it was tough to just settle in and enjoy the non-story, the retrospection and lack of narrative.

Herbert writes with this brand of hypersexualized machismo that I‘m not a particular fan of.

Thank God it‘s a short novel.

BarbaraBB Excellent review! 6y
Taylor @BarbaraBB Why thank you. 6y
6 likes2 comments
quote
Taylor
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert

Regaining your senses means your demons have returned to their place. They can‘t torment anyone any longer. Except you.

review
DreesReads
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Panpan

What did I just read?
This book was too weird for me. I don‘t like books that “inhabit the fertile ground between fiction, memoir, and essay” with the author as a character in their own novel. I love novels, I love memoirs, and I prefer them to be distinct. This book was translated by Christina MacSweeney, who also translated Luiselli‘s The Story of My Teeth—which was also too weird for me.
#tournamentofbooks #tobsummerreading #intranslation

susanw Glad I skipped this one. Did you read The End of Eddy? is this similar? I don‘t think I‘m a fan of this new genre of autofiction. But the tournament guys seem to love it. 6y
DreesReads @susanw I did not read The End of Eddy, and I don‘t think I will! It reminded me most of The Story of My Teeth (also Mexican, with the same translator, and also too weird and too much not-a-novel for me). I also found Sudden Death to be weird, but it last it had a story. 6y
BarbaraBB @susanw I read both and they are a completely different kind of books. 6y
BarbaraBB @AudreyMorris I know what you mean, I felt the same about both. I couldn‘t connect to them at all! 6y
27 likes4 comments
blurb
Jokila
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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review
pgh.femme
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Mehso-so

Reading this book for my book club felt like a grim arm wrestling match I was determined to win. It is decidedly masculine and so far outside of my comfort zone that I cannot even say whether I recommend it or not.

review
CindyE09
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Panpan

This book is a prime example of why I don‘t really like memoirs or autobiographical novels. Way to much self-reflection, analysis, and meandering away from the main point. The strongest parts of the novel focused on the main plot, in which a man sits at his mother‘s sick bed as she dies of cancer, remembering his childhood as the son of a prostitute in Mexico. Some strong writing in parts, but overall a struggle for me. #tob #translatedbooks

Anna40 I'm not a big fan of memoirs either. Very few can write about personal and intimate events without making me feel uncomfortable - like a voyeur. 6y
102 likes1 comment
blurb
DreesReads
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Time for lunch, and time to start a new book! #tob #summerreadingchallenge

review
mklong
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Pickpick

This is an autobiographical novel with several meta insights into the challenges of writing an autobiographical novel. I loved much of it, but it feels like the sort of book you should read in one sitting to really be swept up in the feverish prose. Unfortunately, because of well, life, I wasn‘t able to read it that way. Breaking it up the way I did seems to have broken the spell for me, and I had a hard time diving back in after I put it down.

monalyisha Great title! 6y
CouronneDhiver Sounds interesting! 6y
61 likes2 comments
blurb
DreesReads
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Picked up the early-June #tournamentofbooks #summerreadingchallenge —it had a queue! Now I need to squeeze this is too! #tob

review
BarbaraBB
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Mehso-so

A mother lies dying in a hospital, her son Julián Herbert is at her side. When she is asleep he feverishly writes in his notebook. About growing up as the son of a prostitute, about poverty and violence in his Mexico, about drugs and trips abroad, about his pregnant wife. It‘s a chaos in his head, sometimes hard to follow and hard to relate to. In the mean time his mother lays there. Great writing, but all in all a so-so read for me.

#ToB

emilyhaldi Mexican version of ??? 6y
Graywacke Sounds like a rough life. I‘m kind of curious...ok, maybe only a little. 6y
BarbaraBB @emilyhaldi I liked Fever Dream much better. This was indeed quite rough, @Graywacke , one of the reasons why I prefer Fever Dream. 6y
See All 10 Comments
Reggie And yet, your review sold me on it. Stacked lol 6y
BarbaraBB @Reggie I am happy you did, I know it is a good book, just not for me! 6y
BkClubCare I was going to read this but time slipped me away from my good intentions. I do have Circe underway and I finished An American Marriage last month. Unfortunately, I can‘t get the TOB discussion to open on my phone so it will be next week before I visit that. 6y
BarbaraBB @BkClubCare That‘s too bad that it won‘t open, the discussions are always good. 6y
Taylor Just finished it. Did not care for it. 6y
BarbaraBB @Taylor I can hardly remember what it is about. Not a very impressive book...! 6y
Taylor @BarbaraBB Dang you read it a while ago. It‘s been on my to read list for so long. 6y
66 likes2 stack adds10 comments
blurb
RidgewayGirl
Tomb Song | Julian Herbert
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Starting this one for The Morning News Tournament of Books Summer Reading Challenge. It goes head to head with Tayari Jones‘s An American Marriage in June.

BarbaraBB You started already. Of course! Is it good? The theme doesn‘t appeal to me much but mostly the ToB has excellent taste! 6y
RidgewayGirl @BarbaraBB It‘s interesting so far. I like that the setting is in the poorer corners of Mexico and not New York or London. And, yes, I‘m unable to refrain from reading ahead. 6y
BarbaraBB I just bought it too. Couldn‘t resist. In fact I bought them all 🤦🏻‍♀️ 6y
22 likes3 comments