...the triumphant realization of a stunning artistic vision, a novel as black and bitter and bloody (and beautiful) as its central conceit ... Seeing Red offers no answers, or judgement, of course; only an unblinking gaze into the abyss. But her exploration of what dependence does to love is harrowing. And as the novel winds to an increasingly torturous conclusion—dead-ending onto a twist I hadn’t anticipated until I was literally reading the words—her blindness becomes a metaphor, at last, for the tyranny of human frailty and need, the strangling hunger of bodies that break and fail, and the whirlpool of our shared mortality.
Seeing Red becomes a searing commentary on the limits of family relationships and the cruelty that, under duress, we are capable of exerting on those we love ... Meruane's sentences burn with vigor and urgency. Occasionally, they dissolve before concluding, forcing the reader to complete the thought, as if words themselves had been cauterized, like veins
What is and isn’t true in Seeing Red, ultimately, doesn’t really matter. That small reminder of forgotten happiness coming when it does penetrates your bones like a blast of wind in January. Seeing Red does this repeatedly and consistently, revealing one emotional truth after another, not all of them pretty or easy, and weaving them into a larger story that may or may not have happened as it was written down.
From this moment of darkness, the narrative hurtles forward, obsessed by Lina’s physical and emotional pains, which are examined with a vibrant, Kahloesque fascination ... The sharply wrought and attentive prose, crafted here into compelling English, would probably be enough to keep our attention. But it’s the threat of what Lina will do next? ?that makes this novel un-put-downable.
