give us ferality**
Mammoth, by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches, is 5.25 x 7.5 x 0.3 inches & 144 pages.
Welcome to Purse Book, a weekly newsletter about reading hot little books & being a gal on the go. If you haven’t already, you absolutely may subscribe now:
Mammoth, which came out in early August, is the final novel in Eva Baltasar’s loose triptych, following Boulder and Permafrost before that. While there was one scene that dropped my whole jaw in Boulder, with Mammoth it wasn’t so much as moment as an emotion that floored me. It’s really an incredible feat to concoct an unexpected, never-before-considered emotion so believable but unbelievable that it absolutely stuns.
In Mammoth, a former sociology researcher in her late twenties decides she must become pregnant. She’s gay and doesn’t want any form of partnership involved in this decision. When her first attempt fails, she flees to a rural patch of land and lives mostly in deep solitude, apart from sheep, a dog*, some semi-violent semi-strangers, and a few frail lamb runts that she’s slowly nursing in order to later eat them.
Eventually, pregnancy occurs. Not that I’m an expert, but I agree with a bunch of the feelings including this one:
One of Mammoth’s richest themes is the slips between domesticity, cultivation, wildness, and the fuzzy menacing areas between them. The emotional ledge that the protagonist walks up to and leaps from, I think, seems like a fling into the feral**. It’s dizzying and new. It all makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense in the human, social world—it only makes sense in this totally new world that Mammoth manages to inculcate. It’s really just astonishing! I’ll never stop thinking about it!
*Great dog character, no surprise.
**Ferality, it turns out, is not a word but the Oxford English Dictionary says that people have been pretending it was a word as far back as 1885. Give us ferality!
Mammoth was the most recent Purse Book Gals-On-The-Go Official Book Club Book.
Here’s what a few Gals on the Go thought:
“I think this frenzied and all-encompassing desire drove her, gave her something to work toward… When I get fixated on something, I have a hard time focusing on anything else. Everything is just a series of events leading to whatever my current obsession is. To me, this book was about existing alongside and within that restlessness, the growing pains of that pursuit, followed by the shock (and often disappointment) of getting what you thought you wanted.” — Tyler B., who read this on his friend’s couch over the course of two afternoons in Providence—never even made it into a purse!
“I’ve been thinking about her titles: Mammoth, Boulder, Permafrost. They’re ancient-seeming, big, powerful, slow-moving, feel so much like they pre-date humans. I feel like even though these books each have a narrow focus on one person’s life, there’s something huge always happening below the surface. OH, now I realize the whole time I thought of ‘mammoth’ as the extinct animal, which really worked even though I never expected one to show up. But, I realize it’s also a descriptor of enormity.” — Anna L.
“INTO IT.” — Emily C., via text.
“Dude, I’m sad there isn’t another one to look forward to! And Baltasar is a poet which means the next work might be poetry and I want these NOVELS. Can you say something?” — Mac A., who is very sweet for thinking I have power here.
If you’d like to join the club, email pursebookletter@gmail.com.