The Narrative of a Young Writer is an oeuvre which attempts to describe the diurnal life of a normal, nondescript, none-too-out-of-the-place student as she trudges to school with ideas about the evolution of mankind and an absurdly heavy satchel, pencils, pens, and a few books which provide butterfly colors to life. It mocks the sexual exploits of a motely gamut of men, inclusive of modern politicians, and celebrates the phenomena of health, life, and academia - whilst providing an open window to novel concepts about a different type of diversity to biological existence, a newer philosophy, a fresh take on the real and potential states of humanity in a world of dreamland.
This is obviously the summer of a particular someone's life rather than fragile and precarious spring, so that there is an underground cynicism: it's a tone that pervades throughout the novel implicative of things being not as they were, but as they will be, despite the frequent vicissitudes of existence where cities are grey and trees are startlingly green, birds are a topic of converse, nature pours itself upon us in stunning waves of miraculous creation, and people fall (sometimes disastrously) in love. There is nothing too morbid about the development of this ingenuous piece of writing, but there seem to be knots and puzzles wrapped around her stereotypical character-role of humble university student that fairly tease her out of thought - éclats of natural wonder - which provide material for her diary-entry genre of confessional composition.
Since the world is a busy place, concepts meld together almost subconsciously as the protagonist Alice (myself) strolls throughout the streets of at least two cities in a quest for her missing degree, which she's well worthy of even after several a year of expert bread baking - and which she acquires, the conventional way, after months of test taking and an adequate perusal of books. Although the pathway to a separate sort of independence is almost clear, and the precepts of math and science definitely continue to be there; there's such a quantity of surprises waiting for her, and such a jealous spread of quasi-preternatural imagery that the student is forced to set aside her numerous bags of preconceived notions in an attempt to redefine the universe as being both known and starkly unknowable, confusing, and problematic.
The snow is not snow anymore unless it has a structured form to it, and randomly flung-about laundry is not a display of mere clothes anymore but an intense show of will, that is the fabric of dreams, and presumptions about the earth which is a wide and mystical place, where observations as beliefs frolic around and dance as if the world were populated by disembodied minds and spirits. As Alice flips through chapters of histology and calculus, she cannot help but look in unexpected directions - because the rain will fall, keeping one indoors, and the wintery storms will invariably howl - thereby making a labyrinth for herself where fantasies crisscross and wild beliefs strive upward in an attempt to come true. The sun shines upon strange whorls of wood grain and grasses that bend into recognizable shapes, also illuminating rocks that look more like monkeys or ponderous bears. The protagonist is inclined to perceive that marble is not a paltry surface of cold, immutable stone anymore but has bizarre qualities that instigate a fine sense of wonderment that's the sum of the story - aside from a few events that suspiciously lack the zest of friendship, because the young writer is predominantly alone.
Alice reaches for a ladder to the moon, but has neither technical, scientific skills nor developed ideologies by which to move upward, thus compelling her to congeal a pathetically thin broth of evidence for the ultimate realization of her unconventionally modern fantasies. By this broth alone she is neither satisfied nor nourished, nor can she ever...