Gabrielle Grosbety 's Reviews > Quicksand

I was, for better or for worse (😊😬), fully invested in this story and the character of Helga, but then the ending came and I was more than done with her and how self-serving, painfully aloof, and uncaring she was towards others. Her emotions and any sense of resolution were also sped through at a rate that I couldn’t connect with in how this narrative was just rushing by on an irrational, half-way deranged train track to find a way to be done or complete.

By the end, there is such a collapse of all reason and lack of sincerity in what Helga decides to do that disappointed me in that for all the soul-searching she never arrives at anywhere authentic enough for me to believe that she has any capacity for compassion, genuine growth, empathy, or connection to others. For all the journeying and traveling she can’t ever get away from herself and that is precisely the problem that hinders her.

In that same vein, there could have been more meaningful focus on moments and scenes because throughout I never was able to get a clear handle on the truth of Helga’s interiority and why she felt compelled to recklessly abandon everything, but perhaps the closest I could get is that it became too wearing, too mundane, too permanent, reflecting how Helga can’t be contained for too long, as she longs at different intervals for flashiness, intrigue, novelty, and belonging.

She unfortunately also continually gives in all too willfully, and at times selfishly, to every whim and passing desire no matter how tumultuously it will affect the lives of those around her. She tries on different identities and lives in hopes that one will finally suit her and that part was fascinating because among different places she feels different types of free, whether it be physically or more spiritual.

I was additionally most interested in dissecting and understanding the sense of malaise that lives inside of Helga as I think we all can at different stages have a tormented restlessness that occupies our inner beings. That part of the story was emotionally, sensitively captured, the prose elegant, as ennui overcomes our capacity to go on as we remain problematically stuck in the here and now, with no chance at a more tempering respite or escape.

We each have inner flirtations with danger as we can’t always err on the side of caution when it comes to taking control of our own lives, but Helga takes the reigns in such a way that felt all too cataclysmic, like she was bowing out of any personal responsibility for certain things, and far from how I wished parts of her existentially frustrated dissatisfaction would’ve been explored. Although this did have redeemable, eye-opening parts and meditations, I’d give Nella Larsen’s Passing a try instead or before you read this!