Synopsis:
Affect is the surreal love story of a graduate student who, hyperaware of the absurdity of love in a universe where all is finite and death is inevitable, interprets the developing relationship through philosophy.
Edition:
Paperback
Disclaimer:
I received a copy of Affect from the author. This does not, *ahem* affect my review in any way.
My Thoughts:
Charlene Elsby has a real knack for writing compulsively readable brain-melting works of fiction. Is her work for everyone? No, probably not. But it is for anyone who enjoys experimental writing and/or philosophy.
I’m not going to lie to you – I’m no philosophy expert. In fact, I understand fairly little outside of the most basic concepts. But Elsby’s style of writing is just so damned engaging that it doesn’t really matter. She’s educating without lecturing. Dumping you headfirst into philosophical concepts and allowing you the opportunity to experience them in real time. She did it with Hexis, and she’s done it again in Affect.
“Can you be something you’re not?” “I could, if I decided to be that thing, became it, and then was it. There’s nothing magical about that. It’s what we do.”
The protagonist meets a man named Logan, and she falls in love. As the relationship progresses, we experience her every thought and feeling. Sometimes this is conceptualized, and sometimes actualized. A thought might just be a thought, or it might be a whole realistic experience. Elsby has taken the seemingly simple act of loving someone and turned it into an absolute mind-bender. Because really, is loving someone ever simple? I don’t think so. The blossoming of new- and maintenance of existing love are fraught with complications, emotional turmoil, and mental/social/emotional hangups. I think she really captures all of that in Affect.
About the Author:
Charlene Elsby has a Ph.D. in philosophy from McMaster University, where she worked on Aristotle’s notion of non-existence. She is the president of the North American Roman Ingarden Society and vice president of the North American Society for Early Phenomenology. She is the author of several academic works on metaphysics, ontology, aesthetics, literature, and logic. Her first novel, Hexis (Clash Books), was published in February 2020. She lives in Ottawa.
Rating:
While Affect didn’t have the incredible, visceral impact on me that Hexis did, it is still an incredibly well written and strange book and I highly recommend it.
Affect By Charlene Elsby Porcupine's Quill Published: October 21, 2020 ISBN: 9780889844377 Format: Paperback 152 Pages
