I'd have a parasocial relationship with a hot poet too

Luiselli’s novel navigates the trials and tribulations of keeping her creativity alive while performing her motherly duties. She also explores just how blurred the lines between reality and imagination can become when one becomes obsessed with their means of escapism, which in her case is the poet Gilberto Owen. Through her movement through different liminal spaces and the switch between first-person narration, we see how the obsession consumes her. Her navigation of these spaces causes the reader a sort of confusion at first wondering what is real and what is imagined. I found this a tad bit hard to follow but found that it only added to the narrative of losing yourself in escape. Her fixation on Gilberto points to how we can form these fixed ideas of people who we don’t even know. The mother fabricates this image of him in her head, creating these encounters that never really happened. This reminded me of the parasocial relationships that people tend to form with celebrities. I mean I guess if a person's work speaks to you or that much or you find it really helped you through a hard time, it can be easy to form this kind of relationship. 

Her novel felt like such a raw punch to the gut in regards to many mothers who have had to put their dreams aside to raise a child, including my mother. The representation of this strain in the form of short bursts of writing as if she was struggling to get it all out in each breath, made me too feel as if I was out of breath, reading her words in a frenzy. “Novels need a sustained breath.That’s what novelists want. No one knows exactly what it means but they all say: a sustained breath. I have a baby and a boy. They don’t let me breathe. Everything I write is—has to be—in short bursts. I’m short of breath.” (Luiselli 4). 

This was definitely a more difficult storyline to follow but I really enjoyed that. I like how this novel sort of made my head spin. It felt as if we were able to enter the mothers mind and see the world how she did. We all see the world through our own experiences, and this novel also makes you add in your own interpretations based on your experience with the text. 

"No, Mama, it’s flies. And mosquitos. During the day, they hide inside the shower and at night they bite us." (Luiselli 145). I found this quote at the end to be especially troubling. It felt as if he was referring to the the bugs as the things that haunt us at night, nipping at you. They hide during the day when things are busy but at night in the dark and silence they come out.

Also I don't usually add in song recs to go along with the novel but as I was shuffling through my spotify playlists I came across this song that felt a lot like what reading this novel felt like ↓

https://open.spotify.com/track/5UJD2UkKSsRYeyii3MdRhp?si=8a7ea737da59453b 

My question for you: Do you think parasocial relationships are always unhealthy? I think her relationship with with Gilberto was unhealthy as it blurred her lines between reality and imagined scenarios but what about less severe parasocial relationships, are they just as bad?