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| AVA | 
 enlarge | Author: Carole Maso
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy Used: $2.97
You Save: $9.98 (77%)
New (23) Used (29) Collectible (2) from $2.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 274
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1564780740
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781564780744
Publication Date: May 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: light shelf wear and spinal creases, gently read
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Amazon.com Review
This haunting novel questions the border between poetry and prose. Ava Klein, lover of life and professor of comparative literature, is dying. On this her last day, she recalls her experiences in unique and lyrical detail; a meditation on war, an ode to joy, a celebration of life. Helene Cixous praises AVA as incorporating "a language that heals as much as it separates." Publishers Weekly called it "heartbreakingly familiar emotions in an utterly original form."
Product Description
In a celebration of life and joy, a professor recalls the thirty-nine years of her life as she lies dying, revealing emotional and intellectual richness and variety, including the horrors of her family's experiences during World War II. Reprint. IP.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 the empress is naked June 19, 2006
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Yes, I read it all, and, no, I'm not a literary traditionalist by any means. Being a fan of speculative and experimental fiction, I figured I should give Maso a shot, having heard innumerable raves about her work. And it's interesting, though I came away from AVA feeling ultimately unsatisfied. I couldn't help thinking that, for all of Maso's concern with the body and physical desire, the book is really pretty anemic. Flip to any page and you'll find there's far more white space than print; pages go by without a line reaching the left margin. Which, yes, I get, since it's about the increasingly fragmented memories of a dying woman. Plus she (Ava or Maso, if there's a difference) mentions that she's interested in intervals, the liminal spaces. So the text formally enacts what it's laying out discursively. Okay. But, apart from the theoretical justifications of the form -- if she's interested in liminal spaces, a novel arranged in slabs of ink would appear to undermine her argument -- what else is there? How does the form actually do anything to the memories of Ava Klein? How does it help us as readers know Ava better, rather than knowing Maso better? I'm honestly not sure. As I read, I wondered (rather snarkily) if literary theory had so deeply permeated literary culture that AVA was a gesture toward doing away with the novel altogether and getting right to the criticism. And, yes, I realize the book exists in a literary liminal space, between fiction and poetry and criticism and whatever else. Or that's the idea, at least. Trouble is, I found the idea of the book more interesting than the book itself, the discussion surrounding it more compelling than the writing in it.
 From a Writing Student to a Writer's Fan March 13, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I had the honor of taking a creative writing course under Carole Maso and must say that her prose poetry is both captivating and hypnotizing. Although very passionate and sensual, this story is also very grim. It shows that in the mind and heart, things are ill-defined and often the feelings of love, desire, and passion can also become intermingled with dying and death. So, here I am, having gone from being her writing student to being this writer's fan. I also recommend Ghost Dance if you have a chance.
Brilliance in the space. January 31, 2004
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is amazing. I have never loved such a book that keeps me going back to it each year.
Deeply and mysteriously resonant August 22, 2002
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
At first, this novel seems incomprehensible and pointless, nothing more than a collection of random phrases and information, but after a while the phrases find echoes, the information finds order, and the ultimate effect is haunting and devastating. (Indeed, I soon found myself incapable of reading more than 20 pages or so at a time because it was emotionally overwhelming, though I've yet to figure out the exact source of this power.)Maso has said elsewhere that this book is, in some ways, related to Virginia Woolf's "The Waves", and I would agree, though in many ways I think Maso's is a more compelling and perhaps even richer book than Woolf's. "Ava" bears a certain relationship to "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse" as well, for Maso, like Woolf, has subsumed her narrative within the perspective of her protagonist. The story lies between the lines. This book can't be read impatiently, nor can it be skimmed or speed-read or soundbyted, for its effect relies upon accumulation: the accumulation of ideas, events, and even the sound of the words. It requires an active reader, one willing to put forth effort of both thought and feeling. The effort is rewarded a thousandfold.
 An Interesting Experiment, but... December 10, 2000
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Carole Maso's Ava is an attempt to build a symphony out of words instead of musical notes.Like a symphony, it is comprised of discrete themes, many repeated over and over again, sometimes with slight variations of rhythm, instrumentation, and harmony. Like a symphony, it has specific sections. However, unlike a symphony, Ava does not resolve in a meaningful manner. Perhaps Maso is trying to make the point that death does not resolve in any key. Maso takes the fascinating subject of what a sick woman thinks during what the narrator, Ava Klein, expects might be one of her last days to live. She is only 39 and she is dying in a New York City hospital on August 15, 1990. As she floats through the day, few things impede her thoughts. Nurses asking her to roll over, talking about going to the park, and discussing the invasion of Kuwait are some of the few notes of the outside world that bleed into her consciousness. Some number of her ex-husbands and lovers are (or may be) in the room with her, but a description of her environment is sketchy. Her thoughts vary from the mundane ("The child draws the letter A"), to ruminations on music, Europe, and literature ("Just once I'd like to save Virginia Woolf from drowning"), to the philosophical ("We live once. And rather badly"), and to thoughts of the men in her life ("I would have married you, after just one night. Had I not already been married at the time"). But the problem with Ava is that her thoughts are so scattered that they fail to come together in a cohesive way. Ava has clearly had an interesting life, and while she is in no hurry to die she is also unwilling to continue to endure treatments for the sake of having treatments since her condition is judged to be hopeless. And it is difficult to ascertain what really happened in her life, what happened in fiction she read, and what she wished had happened in her life.
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