![]() In between we follow Qiu's protagonist into the streets of Montmartre into descriptions of affairs with both men and women, French and Taiwanese into rhapsodic musings on the works of Theodoros Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky and into wrenching and clear-eyed outlines of what it means to exist not only between cultures but, to a certainextent, between and among genders. ![]() The book opens with the death of a beloved pet rabbit and closes with a portentous expression of the narrator's resolve to kill herself. Each letter unfolds as a chapter, the narrator writing from Paris to her lover in Taipei and to family and friendsin Taiwan and Tokyo. The opening note urges us to read the letters in any order. Last Words from Montmartre, written just as Internet culture was about to explode, is also a kind of farewell to letters. Instead, this is a book about how love, passion and life can lead one to kill oneself. ![]() In a voice that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to hubris, compulsive repetition to sublime reflection, reticence to vulnerability, it can be read as both the author's masterpiece and a labor of love, as well as her own suicide note. Last Words from Montmartre, by Qiu Miaojin Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich. "An NYRB Classics Original Last Words from Montmartre is a novel in letters that narrates the gradual dissolution of a relationship between two lovers and, ultimately, the complete unraveling of the narrator. ![]()
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