Babel thoughts

Not a review, just me trying to make sense of my thoughts and feelings to the ending of this incredible book...

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Sep 11, 2024

I have just finished Babel. I have just sobbed my heart out to the final chapter. My brain is working overtime to process what I have spent the last 3 weeks reading.

I don't know if I can even begin to discuss the deeply ingrained politics of the book and do it justice. No amount of words on my part could tell you how excellently this book was crafted - the woven threads of politics, family, justice, inequality, friendship, hurt, love, ambition and destruction run throughout on such a deep level that it almost becomes impossible to explain the book to someone who has not read it (I tried - it took me 10 minutes and even that did not scrape the surface of the heart of this book, it was just a shoddy play-by-play of the biggest events).

R. F. Kuang is an incredible talent. Her writing is mesmerising and the endless footnotes throughout were an addition I loved, one which truly tells you just how much work and research went into the novel. The pages of descriptions of Oxford life and language were just so interesting (for lack of a better word) and immersed me in this academic world each time I picked it up. I don't know how many of the historical events were real, although it's told so well that you could pick any one, tell me it's fact, and I would believe you.

I feel so monumentally moved by it. In particular by the ending, but reflecting back, by the book as a whole. My mind races with thoughts of Oxford and the nineteenth century. Of the Empire and silver, racial inequality and colonialism. I feel that somehow, unnoticed by myself until now, reading this book has changed the fabric of my very being. I am not the same person I was yesterday. And for a book that I simply enjoyed (but did not love) whilst reading, the intensity with which the ending has hit me has been a strange experience. Maybe it's that in the tragic ending I can begin to see the book in whole. Maybe that is why I feel so different.

On a side note - I love tragic endings. I love sobbing over the loss of love or the death of a character. Maybe it's a bit masochistic of me, but I want to feel something when I read a book. And for me, crying is tangible evidence that I have been so moved by the words on the pages in front of me. There's nothing like sobbing your heart out at 1am in the dim glow of a bedside lamp and the silence of a sleeping world.

All in all, that's to say Babel was a fantastic book. If it's your kind of read (long, wordy, historical, academic, political) then I would highly encourage you to pick it up. You will probably like, if not love, it.