🌟 "Orlanda" by Jacqueline Harpman

I read the Dutch translation, translated from the French by Eveline van Hemert. Available in English with the same title, translated by Ros Schwartz. Girlhood is rough, and being a woman is not much easier. Don't express this, don't do that, don't show this, don't pursue that. For some it's a lifetime of pushing down genuine personality traits and interests in favor of becoming what society deems a respectable woman. A good girl. Someone that isn't shunned. Now imagine pushing so much down and down, so much over so many years, that it's basically enough to form its own person. And now image that pushed down person saying: 'Hey, I'm sick of always being pushed down.' Not only that, now imagine them jumping ship, leaving you, literally exiting your body, and kidnapping the body of a random man so it can go lead its own life. What happens now?! There's only half of you left! Harpman's novel is fascinating. It goes into gender, sexuality, womanhood, what it even means to be you. The…