Kate Zambreno, a renowned author and critic, has just unveiled her latest book, The Light Room, and in conjunction with its release, Corsair is reissuing her earlier work, Heroines, which initially garnered traction over ten years ago in the US. Both texts are the focus of the following review.
Described by Jamie Hood as a gripping, extraordinarily visceral confession that serves as a bulimic manifesto catering to the turbulent, indefinable and excessive art of desolate girls, Heroines is a revolutionary piece. Rising to prominence through her previous blog, Frances Farmer Is my Friend, Zambreno was a trailblazer of auto-theory and a fusion of personal memoirs. Heroines dissects the stigmatisation of women perceived as ‘mad’ and the silencing of literary female figures such as Vivien(ne) Eliot, Zelda Fitzgerald and Jean Rhys. It highlights how such characters, especially Emma Bovary, are often trapped in fictitious narratives created by male authors.
Zambreno’s writing style is both self-indulgent and theatrical. She admits to finding pleasure in her reading habits, sharing that sometimes she feels remorse for handling library books in such an intimate manner. Through her writing, she both questions and reinforces the notion that women are personified as untamed, violent and erratic forces of nature.
With The Light Room, Zambreno introduces a new perspective. She discusses art as an outward examination rather than a focus on the self. In comparison to the fevered introspection in Heroines, The Light Room offers tranquil contemplation set amidst the soft glow of half-light. Capturing the current pandemic period, Zambreno reflects on her responsibilities as a parent to two young children and shares her thoughts on motherhood and caregiving. Her prose remains balanced and adorned with literary critique, including an analysis of the work by Joseph Cornell and Natalia Ginzburg.
Zambreno deliberates on a piece where an author didn’t desire motherhood, worrying it would turn her into a “landscape”. This is where the main difference between the two books lies: in The Light Room, Zambreno changes the viewpoint. Instead of focusing on herself and using the stories of authors’ spouses to tell her tale, she explores art – an outward-facing endeavor.
In the concluding part of The Light Room, Zambreno employs a third-person narrative that broadens the universality of ideas about the overwhelming nature of early parenthood, with its fatigue, despair, and minor happinesses; it’s a testament to the labour of love and the love in our labour.
Both works draw to a close with a thirst for transformation. In The Light Room, Zambreno echoes the words of theorist Silvia Federici, emphasizing the overestimation of individual capability. Her closing remarks in Heroines reject the importance of traditional roles: she dismisses conventional literary theory and canon, while exclaiming her contempt for the male-dominated literary world.