This book is published by a groundbreaking small UK publisher Tilted Axis who publish “books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the veThis book is published by a groundbreaking small UK publisher Tilted Axis who publish “books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.” Their name refers to their aim to tilt “the axis of world literature from the centre to the margins ...… where multiple traditions spark new forms and translation plays a crucial role.”
It was founded by Deborah Smith, the English-Korean translator of Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” and “The White Book” and the winner with her of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for the former book.
This book is a perfect example of what Tilted Axis was founded to do – seemingly among the first modern Thai literature translated into English and the first chance for English readers to access an author who has genuinely transformed the literary culture of his country.
Prabda Yoon is a Thai writer, novelist, filmmaker, artist, graphic designer, magazine editor, screenwriter, and media personality. He himself is a Thai to English translator (including of Salinger and Nabakov). His primary education was in Bangkok but he then studied in America for 10+ years before returning to Thailand in 1998.
His first two books, both published in 2000, were Muang Moom Shak (City of Right Angles), a collection of five related stories about New York City, and Kwam Na Ja Pen (Probability) – stories largely based in Bangkok. The latter book (per Wikipedia) “won the S.E.A. Write Award, the most prestigious literary prize in Thailand, making Prabda a household name and icon of his generation”.
“The Sad Part Was” is a collection of 12 of Prabda’s short stories in English, 8 of which made up “Kwam Na Ja Pen” and was translated by Mui Poopoksakul a first time translator with a mixed Boston/Bangkok upbringing and a law practitioner who then studied literature at Harvard and cultural translation at the American University of Paris. The book has been shortlisted for the inaugural Society of Authors Translators Associations First Translator Award, which very impressively was funded by Daniel Hahn with his winnings from the 2017 IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award as translator of “A General Theory of Oblivion”.
The stories are playfully post-modern in style, most clearly in “Marut by the Sea” where the narrator of the story addresses the reader directly, openly criticising Yoon’s writing style – cynically an English reader could thing this approach a little too familiar albeit sign of a promising literary talent, but it is clear that for Thai literature Yoon’s style was innovative and revolutionary and that his courage to depart from traditional literary forms came just as Thai society was going through its own modernisation, and so struck a chord with a young readership. Yoon is also renowned for his wordplay in Thai – and Mui Poopoksakul seems to do an excellent job of making the stories read largely naturally in English while often maintaining much of the sense of the original story (for example the incongruously archaic language used by the two irreverent lovers in “Something in The Air” or the key role played by excessive spacing between words by “Miss Space”).
Many of the stories address generational relationships – often with strong respect from the younger to the older generation (“Pen in Parenthesis” where the protagonist designs a Dracula themed advert for breath mints as a tribute to his grandparents; “Ei Ploang” where the young narrator learns to observe others and discern their characters). Two stories “Miss Space” and “Shallow/Deep: Thick/Thin” (about a traveler who discovers, but refuses to reveal, a secret from space) – both play on the idea of miscommunication and how speaking without listening acts as a barrier to communication. Although much of Yoon’s writing is playful, it can also pack an emotional punch such as in “Snow for Mother” where what could have been a rather whimsical tale, turns into an deeply moving one culminating in the ending reflection of “How many mothers …. get to say thank you to their child as often as I do”.
Overall a very enjoyable collection, made all the more admirable by the pioneering nature of its translation....more
This book is published by a small UK publisher Tilted Axis who publish “books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons thatThis book is published by a small UK publisher Tilted Axis who publish “books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.” Their name refers to their aim to tilt “the axis of world literature from the centre to the margins ...… where multiple traditions spark new forms and translation plays a crucial role.
It was founded by Deborah Smith, the English-Korean translator of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and winner with her of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize – and now shortlisted with her for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize with the clear standout novel on that list The White Book.
This book is written by Hwang Jungeun and translated by Jung Yewon and was one of Tilted Axis’s first publications.
Paul’s review here, informed by his knowledge of Korean culture and language contains a very detailed discussion of this book which I could not hope to match.
I must admit though that where Paul calls the book “deceptively simple” I found it disappointingly simple (particularly having read reviews which perhaps over-emphasised the fantastical elements of the novel) – and while his review contains some of the deeper quotes in the novel, it omits some of the almost banal parts which perhaps culminates in a discussion of whorls (most of which consists of the word “whorl”) and which takes up nearly 3 pages of what is a less than 150 page book....more
In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.
Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice.
In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.
Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.
With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book, and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound …… I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written
Now (and not surprisingly) shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.
This book was started by Han Kang during a period living in Warsaw (not identified in this book as such) – a period which enabled her to reflect on a story she had known (and had been part of her identity) all her life: that her mother’s first child died .. less than two hours into life.
Walking Warsaw, after seeing a film of it obliterated in 1945 she realises that
In this City there is nothing that has existed for more than severnty years. The fortresses of the old quarter, the splending palace, the lakeside villa on the outskirts where royalty once summered - all are fakes. They are all new things, painstakingly reconstructed based on photographs, pictures, maps. Where a pillar or perhaps the lowest part of a wall happens to have survived, it has been incorporated into the new structure. The boundaries which separate old from new, the seams bearing witness to destruction, lie conspicuously exposed.
And that further reminds her of her sister A person who has met the same fate as that city. Who had at one time died or been destroyed and the way in which her own life is somehow bound with the life her sister would have lived had she survived and is in some ways built on the broken pediment of the sister’s life – in the same ways Warsaw is built on the ruin of its former self.
This causes her embark on an journey of the imagination I think of her coming here instead of me. To this curiously familiar City whose death and life resemble her own.
That journey, this book, consists of 60+ titled but unnumbered short chapters – each a reflection on a white coloured object, including those in the list above which opens the book.
The book itself is beautifully presented – with (performance) artistic black and (mainly) white photos, and with acres of blanks pages and white space. These features serve to further enhance and place focus on the meditative quality of the prose poems which make up the text.
Overall a moving and beautiful book from a wonderful author, brilliantly and sensitively translated by Deborah Smith (winner with Han Kang of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize) and founder of Tilted Axis Press....more
If this were a criminal case, The Case Against Sugar would be the argument for the prosecution
And if I were the judge in the case, I would probabl
If this were a criminal case, The Case Against Sugar would be the argument for the prosecution
And if I were the judge in the case, I would probably struggle to resist turning up for the first day in court wearing a black cap to signal the pre-ordained outcome of the trial – an outcome the cover of the book anticipates with its sugary noose.
My own distillation of current wisdom on diet would probably be something like “everything in moderation, except refined sugar which you should avoid as much as you can”.
So I am predisposed towards the arguments of this book, which would go even further than my initial fears about sugar, by seeking to pin almost all modern/Western illnesses (gout, hypertension, even cancer and Alzheimer’s) back to sugar via its effects on insulin resistance and disturbances on hormonal and metabolic processes.
Nevertheless I struggled when reading this book.
Were it a court case of course Taubes own witnesses would be subject to cross examination by the defense, and the defense case itself would be presented (with Taubes having the opportunity to cross examine their witnesses, but with those witnesses being able to respond to that cross examination).
Instead we get a one sided case – with witnesses (normally nutritionists or those in the associated fields of medical science) for the defense quoted selectively and with their conclusions and motives (normally that they are in some way funded by the sugar or associated industry – either to defend that industry or to deflect blame elsewhere, most successfully to dietary fats) impugned by the prosecution; whereas witnesses for the prosecution (effectively drawn from the same bodies, albeit with more emphasis on medical scientists than nutritionists who Taubes believe lack the rigour of the scientific method) given a free ride (we are for example never told if any of their work was funded by those industries associated with dietary fats) and some of their studies are blatantly subject to the same faults (often selective sampling or confirmation bias) as those Taubes criticises.
Taubes also I feel lacks sometimes scientific rigour – the very fact he accuses other (particularly nutritionists of).
He applies the principle of Occam’s razor to argue against a multi-factor (for example bad cholesterol fats, sedentary lifestyles) cause of Western illnesses – arguing the principle means you should seek for only a single cause.
As a statistician I struggle with this conclusion when it is not backed up by some form of multi-variate analysis.
He also seems to confuse correlation with causality and this (like his Occam’s razor approach) is crucial to his refection of a multi-factor cause.
And the book is much the weaker for these two faults – as despite the overwhelming evidence I wanted to hear the counter arguments and weigh them up for myself.
I was reminded in this respect of a number of books on man made climate change – where despite being pre-disposed towards their conclusions their selective polemic actually meant the books made me more rather than less unsure of them by the time.
So overall definitely an important book – for anyone who is a sugar-is-bad sceptic (or thinks there is no difference between a sugar calorie and another calorie) I would strongly recommended it.
For those already convinced of the sugar-is-bad hypothesis you will find much here to confirm your views (if that is what you are after) but little to help you test and (if I can be pardoned the pun) refine them....more
This book is published by one of the leading UK small presses, Fitzcarraldo Editions an independent publisher (their words) specialising in contemporThis book is published by one of the leading UK small presses, Fitzcarraldo Editions an independent publisher (their words) specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays ….. it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language . Their novels are (my words) distinctively and beautifully styled, with plain, deep blue covers and a "French-flap" style, and are often complex and dense (perhaps a little too complex and dense for my tastes).
This book is an English translation of Esther Kinsky's “Am Fluß”
The first party, German-Jewish, London-dwelling narrator of the book has moved out to an unfamiliar (to her) area on the North-Eastern outskirts of the City, where she lives alone: gradually exploring the banks of the River Lea as it heads towards its mouth; remembering past rivers that that have featured in her life (the Thames, the Rhine and Oder of her childhood, a largely dried up river in Tel Aviv, and rivers from her travels including in Canada and the Balkans); reminisces on aspects of London which struck her as an outsider; observes and interacts with the multi-ethnic and multi-national community of shopkeepers and eccentrics near her flat; all the while taking polaroid pictures of what she sees as well as seeking out other pictures in junk stores.
And the link to Sebald, as well as the title of the collection serves as an introduction to how I initially viewed this book : strongly reminiscent of Sebald with its black and white photography, its East Anglian setting, and travel writing combined with general reflections on life (albeit without the historical or literary references that Sebald bring in); focusing on land, water and in particular the area of confluence between them at the edge of rivers – marshes, wastelands - and the theme of crossings and borders.
Over time though I began to find aspects of the book a little disconcerting – London as described by the narrator is filled with bomb craters from terrorist attacks, plagued by winds so strong that people are physically lifted from one part of the City to the other and by torrential rail storms. The narrator works in a Borgesian/Kafkaesque variation on the BBC World Service.
Gradually I realised that there was a pattern to what at first seemed a disconcerting mix of aspects – the chapters cycle in sets of four which cycle though the four areas above: River Lea exploration and different areas of North East London; other rivers and the narrators experiences of them; observations on London which are almost entirely an outsider’s invented (or at best exaggerated) versions of aspects they observe (IRA attacks, poor weather, the BBC); a fascinating portrayal of a community of outsiders, migrants and eccentrics.
With this realisation my enjoyment of the book increased. Overall this is an enjoyable book – but one (not unlike other Fitzcarraldo books I have read) perhaps a little too long and best dipped into rather than (as I did) read from cover to cover....more
Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into
Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.
Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn’t make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can’t imagine them having anything in common, or why they’re still living together. But it’s not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It’s because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It’s the only story
The book is narrated by Paul some 50 years after, as a 19 year old, he commenced an affair with a much older, woman Susan, after the two are picked as mixed doubles partners (chosen by lot as the two remark at intervals later) and consists of her memories of their lengthy relationship.
But here’s the first problem. If this is your only story, then it’s the one you have most often told and retold, even if –as is the case here –mainly to yourself. The question then is: do all these retellings bring you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away?
You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it ……. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer …..
Immediately then we recognise that Julian Barnes is returning to some of the same themes and ideas as in his novel The Sense of an Ending - which of course, won the Booker prize, against an infamous longlist picked by Stella Rimmington and her fellow jurors to be “readable”. Perhaps ironically, Sense of An Ending failed to win the Costa Prize in the same year (the prize explicitly designed to reward books which make reading enjoyable) despite being shortlisted.
That book featured a narrator with unreliable memory and self-delusion, and an apparent resolution of a mystery at the end of the novel (albeit with the reader believing the actual truth may still differ). This novel is very different – the narrator is well aware of the subjectivity of his own memories and the ways in which he lied to himself over time, the only real mystery here is in the narrator trying to understand his true views on his experiences, and there is no resolution to be had there by narrator or reader.
The initial affair commences in a village in respectable, middle class, suburban Surrey, in the early 1960s (Paul one of the first intakes to Sussex University).
At first Paul comments
The time, the place, the social milieu? I’m not sure how important they are in stories about love. Perhaps in the old days, in the classics, where there are battles between love and duty, love and religion, love and family, love and the state. This isn’t one of those stories. But still, if you insist. The time: more than fifty years ago. The place: about fifteen miles south of London.
But the reader realises that the social conventions of the time are key to the novel – in particular a certain type of English resolution to avoid addressing difficult situations, and later Paul reflects
Another thing he had come to understand. He had imagined that, in the modern world, time and place were no longer relevant to stories of love. Looking back, he saw that they had played a greater part in his story than he ever realized. He had given in to the old, continuing, ineradicable delusion: that lovers somehow stand outside of time.
And in those two paragraphs something else changes – the first is in the second person, the second in the third person, and this is another important and distinctive aspect to the novel – as Paul looks back on his only story, the story of his first love, his tale changes over time in person – broadly starting in the first person (in the flush of the lengthy initial affair – carried out with Susan’s husband’s clear knowledge but also disgust), moving to the second person (as the relationship matures and Susan leaves her husband and becomes more difficult as Susan begins to drink) and then to the third person (as Susan lapse into complete alcoholism can no longer be denied or ignored), before poignantly returning to the first person. This progression is not entirely smooth and is mixed up with a much more irregular variation in tense between present and past.
Two crucial passages address this directly:
And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realize that there are other persons, and other tenses.
And
For instance, he thought he probably wouldn’t have sex again before he died. Probably. Possibly. Unless. But on balance, he thought not. Sex involved two people. Two persons, first person and second person: you and I, you and me. But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person. Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed.
Many themes, phrases (a washed out generation, Susan’s husband hitting a ball as though he hates it) and ideas which Paul remembers (or in some cases imagines/dreams) recur throughout the book - for example an indelible image which had pursued him down his life: of being at an upstairs window, holding on to Susan by the wrists.
Paul also collects in a notebook famous sayings on love, deleting or adding them as his ideas on love change – over time he realises that many concepts about love, and their exact opposites, apparently are equally true, and perhaps, and one of his favourite phrases is:
In love, everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd
And ultimately, reflecting on his life-defining, joyous but impossibly difficult relationship with Susan, he reflects on the profound lines from Tennyson, which are so well known as to be almost banal, but which nevertheless get at the heart of the great unresolvable in Paul’s story:
One entry in his notebook was, of course: ‘It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ That was there for a few years; then he crossed it out. Then he wrote it in again; then he crossed it out again. Now he had both entries side by side, one clear and true, the other crossed out and false.
I did find a small number of false notes – which seemed out of place in what is otherwise a meticulously crafted novel (just as we would expect from Barnes) - - a football terrace chant and most oddly of all (if acknowledged as such by Paul) a crassly obscene suggestion to Susan involving root vegetables. Other odd notes seem to have been randomly lifted from other writers. For example there is a passage on an interesting but rather detailed list of reasons on why people do crosswords (with various sub-bullets added) – which almost reminds me of Simon Okotie; a concept taken from a Formula One race commentary which stands out for its specificity (with the location of the race and the driver and commentator involved) in a book of generalizations, and perhaps reminds me more of Ian McEwan; and an obsession with Susan’s precious ears with their elegant helices which can only have been lifted straight from some working notes on a translation of Haruki Murakami.
But much of the imagery is very memorable – I particularly enjoyed
To remember her back to what he still thought of as her innocence: an innocence of soul. Before such innocence became defaced. Yes, that was the word for it: a scribbling-over with the wild graffiti of booze.
And the book contains much wisdom on love in particular, my favourite and one I have sadly learned myself over the years
Nowadays, at the other end of life, I have a rule of thumb about whether or not two people are having an affair: if you think they might be, then they definitely are.
Overall an excellent book – and one which poses already a quandry for this year’s Booker committee. Do they short/longlist it and get accused of conventionality (Barnes has been shortlisted for the Booker three times before winning it) or do they omit and thus ignore what is already I think likely to be one of the deservedly widest read literary books of 2018.
My thanks to Penguin Random House UK for an ARC via NetGalley....more
Really well written and extremely informative book on the science of sleep which is at the same time detached (relying on decades of scientific evidenReally well written and extremely informative book on the science of sleep which is at the same time detached (relying on decades of scientific evidence) , passionate (particularly for the need for a regular 8 hours of sleep opportunity), helpful (for example I found the advice on controlling Jet lag very useful), imaginatively informative (I found the link between bird behaviour in flocks, dolphin sleeping techniques and first nights in hotel rooms very interesting) and quirky (I loved the explanation for alien abductions).
I read the book while at the same time, using a Fitbit to measure, imperfectly of course, my own sleep patterns and found the correlation between the book and my own empirical evidence very strong. ...more
History in books? Nonsense, even a bronze statue of a military man on a horse has more life …. Written history is past tense.
This book was publi
History in books? Nonsense, even a bronze statue of a military man on a horse has more life …. Written history is past tense.
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press “a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation”.
It was part of their turning point series from 2013: “Three internationally acclaimed female authors depict pivotal historical moments from within a domestic setting.” – the other two books being The Mussel Feast (an allegorical examination of the fall) and Chasing the King of Hearts (a remarkable, true life account of the Holocaust).
The pivotal historical moment here is the publication of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” and the way it set up the tension between science and faith, and the vacuum the loss of certainty left behind, one of course filled in terrible ways in the 20th Century as foreshadowed in an unattributed pub conversation.
You preach science and progress, but what happens when the sacred leaves through the back door? Wordly gods come along and replace the sacred. Soon they’ll start behaving as if they were omnipotent
The book is set in the Kent village of Down – whose most famous inhabitant is Darwin, never a character in the book although his gardener, Thomas Davies (recently widowed, with two children, one physically weak, the other seemingly mentally handicapped) is a key character who stands out in the village for the strength of his grief and the weakness of his faith.
The book gets off to a false start with an opening chapter which seems to attempt to fit bird noises and village life to the rhythms of Church bells and Church liturgy. Whether this is a translation difficulty or down to the original is unclear, but it is definitely a misstep, and one which places the reader on the backfoot in the remainder of the opening in coming to terms with what is an unusual (but actually very effective style).
Large parts of the book are narrated using a polyphonic approach which flits between the different villagers (in a small number of cases speaking collectively as we) with characters starting in the named third person and then quickly moving to the first person, mainly in an unadorned style and in the present tense, for example:
Jennifer Kenny is folding clean sheets on the kitchen table, even though it is Sunday. She looks out of the window. Thomas Davies, the gardener whose wife died strides along the road. I took soup and bread to the house of mourning but he merely started darkly and grunted something
Where the I is in fact Jennifer Kenny rather than a universal (or omnipotent) narrator – although in the very last sentence of the book a narrator takes possession of the I.
Over time via this very effective mechanism, we learn more of the lives of the villagers, their thoughts and struggles and relationships and also something of the village as both a group of individuals and as a collective. One section, narrated in the past sentence, tells of an incident when the disgraced villager verger returns to the village and is beaten up by the man of the village (acting almost as a collective); another section (from which the above quotes are taken) reproduces snatches of conversation and observation from an evening in the local pub when the local reading group of women is interspersed with the male regulars; a closing section includes a small enconium to the English spring.
Threaded through the book though is a meditation on faith and science, on grief and consolation.
Late in the book, Thomas meditates of a snow scene
No traces in the garden either; no footprints left by Mr Darwin, no traces of his stick
But actually the traces and footprints of Darwin’s work are threaded throughout the book.
In complete (and presumably deliberate contrast) to the quote which opens my review – this gentle but profound book (written of course mainly in the present tense) brings history to life and completes an outstanding set of novels it published in 2013 by this excellent small press....more
She lays out the cards and sees everything: man with blond hair, in love, in other words the king of hearts. See he’s already out of the door. Tere
She lays out the cards and sees everything: man with blond hair, in love, in other words the king of hearts. See he’s already out of the door. Terenia studies the picture card and suddenly her voice becomes gleeful: your king has a trip ahead of him, what are you worried about. Sher’s right, there he is second row, first card on the right – the king of hearts. Next to him is the six of hears, which means a triup. Of course those three spades are a bad sign, Terenia explains, but even that’s not so tragic: you should be getting news any day now
This book was recently longlisted for the US Best Translated Book Award after its publication their in 2017: by coincidence I had recently purchased it from Peirene Press (alongside an on-going subscription) who published this translation (by Philip Boehm) in the UK in 2013. The book was originally published in Polish in 2006.
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press “a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation” and whose style is described by the TLS as “Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film”
The book tells the story of Izolda Regenburg – a Polish Jew and her experience during the holocaust. A story that is remarkable, because it is different from the conventional (if ever shocking and harrowing) holocaust tales – Izolda does not spend the war in hiding (as did the book’s author who hid in a cupboard) and was not killed in a concentration camp (although she spent time at Auschwitz, she persuaded Josef Mengele to allow her to act as a nurse on a transport heading towards Austria). Instead, starting with bribing her way out of the Warsaw Ghetto she spends the war in motion, under the alias of Maria Pawilcka, often arrested or detained, at one stage tortured as a suspected Polish resistance member, but always escaping, trading what she has (including her own body) to survive and to continue in her search for her husband, detained in a concentration camp.
And remarkable too because this is a true story - looking back after the war, in Israel, Izolda thinks
She listens to stranger’s tales with genuine sympathy, one person hid in a basement, another in a root cellar, an attic, a closet, a haystack. They lived through terrible things, but there experiences weren’t so varied. Unlike hers. She grows more and more convinced that her life is a great subject for a book. Or even a film ….. {Elizabeth} Taylor could play the lead
But instead she ultimately ends up with her story being told in the book we have in our hands.
The book is written in a simple present tense, in a series of captioned sections, and this captures well the nature of Izolda’s war time life, living day to day, subject to the vagaries and arbitrariness of war and the Nazi regime, focused only on finding her husband.
The thought of her husband makes her heart ache so much she feels it will explode. She breaks into tears and the woman from the next bunk gives her a scolding look. You’re crying over a fellow aren’t you. I can bet it’s not for your mother. Now listen here and don’t you forget; you can have as many fellows as you’d like, but you can only have one mother …. I know, she agrees. I only have one mother, but as far as I am concerned the whole world can go up in flames or disappear – just as long as he stays alive
She takes refuge in playing cards to convince herself he is still alive – giving the book its title (as per the opening quote).
At times the cast of characters that Izolda interacts with and her relationship to them can be bewildering but this too is I think a realistic reflection of her wartime life, those around her are either steps along her path to find her husband or people she treats kindly as part of a grand bargain with God to save her husband’s life – and she will make use of any contact or connection to keep herself and her quest alive.
She’s supposed to meet a man they call “The Doctor”. She doesn’t know him. He’s an acquaintance of Sonia Landau (Izolda barely knows her). [Her husband] Shayek’s sisters were friends with Sonia [as children]”
Eventually Maria “Finally admits she is a Jew because she has had enough” – to her bafflement the Gestapo agent torturing her suddenly treats her well saying
If you were working for General Anders, you would be our enemy. Naturally you would die just like an enemy does. Since you are a Jew, naturally you’ll also die, but you aren’t guilty …. You can’t be guilty for the faith of your fathers
The last third of the book is set after the war’s end – Izolda and her husband (her eventual discovery of him being an anti-climax for her) try to disguise their identity unsuccessfully in communist Poland. Her husband is haunted by the death of the rest of his family and cannot but blame Izolda for having not done more to prevent it – and the two drift apart.
After what the Gestapo officer said to her, Izolda resolves that her own children, if she has any, will not be punished just for being Jews, but to her bewilderment her daughters both migrate to Israel after the war
Izolda remembers her conversations with Nicole – about her children not dying, guilty of nothing but … It must have been an evil hour when she said those words, she thinks terrified
It was neither a sign nor a coincidence that we were going to have mussels that evening …..what we’d had in mind when we were planning the mussel f
It was neither a sign nor a coincidence that we were going to have mussels that evening …..what we’d had in mind when we were planning the mussel feast was pretty insignificant, certainly less important than the immensity and gravity of what actually happened
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press “a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation” and whose style is described by the TLS as “Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film”
This book is a perfect example of the genre: A 1990 publication which in Germany has become a school set text and which has been translated across Europe (but until this 2013 publication not in English); A 100 page monologue set in a single evening and thus ideally designed to be consumed over an evening.
The teenage female narrator, her teenage brother and their mother, sit at a dining table where thy have prepared a large pot of mussels, waiting for the father of the family (some form of logician and lecturer) to return home from a business trip where he should have all but clinched an important promotion. The family live in the West having escaped from the East. The father figure is clearly tyrannical, strongly opinionated particularly on the notion of a proper family, how it should behave and how its members should be and act (Everything in our lives revolved around us having to behave as if we were a proper family) – and simultaneously disappointed (for example in the area of education) with the lies of the East and the degeneracy of the West. The other family members individually and collectively adapt to their father’s moods and wishes, suffering individual abuse when they fall short of them and also being pressured by him to blab (inform) on each other and unwilling to dissent in private due to the risk of other family members blagging.
By now, as it was already seven o’clock and he still hadn’t arrived, my father was undermining his own notions
As the evening progresses, and it becomes increasingly clear that the father is firstly late and then that he may not return at all, the mood of the family changes, they dare to openly share their own harsh views of their father and collectively and individually begin to break free of his tyranny.
The book was written just before the fall of the Berlin Wall as the grip of the East Germany state on its citizens started to collapse and serves on many levels as an allegory for that revolution - both in the views and actions of the father and the family (just as one example the father's frustration and anger at his family's failure to behave as a proper family could be taken as an analogy for the failure of any Communist state to live even close to Marxist ideals) and even in the ever present and frequently referenced pot of mussels.
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press “a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literaThis book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press “a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation” and whose style is described by the TLS as “Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film”
This book represents a slight variation on both of these themes: firstly as a translation of a Quebecois novel (the author Larry Tremblay lives in Montreal and is the author of some 30 books, although this is only his third novel; the translator Sheila Fischman has translated more than 150 Quebecois novels into English); secondly it is even shorter than the normal and in my case easily read on a 40 minute train journey
The attached link gives a comprehensive summary of the plot of the novel and its key themes:
Despite always being interested in new additions to the twins-in-literature genre (particularly when such twins are identical) and enjoying the deliberately country-free and therefore more figurative nature of the examination of civil/tribal wars, I felt strangely dissatisfied by the setting of the later dénouement of the earlier action in an acting classes play. In particular I started this section hoping that it was a clever (and deliberately self-referential) critique of the pretensions of Western artists to believe that their artistic endeavours enabled them to fully emphasise with the reality of life in a war zone; but concluded it with the sense that this book itself was a classic example and celebration of that pretension.
Re read following its longlisting for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize and shortlisting for the EBRD prize.
This book was published by the UK Re read following its longlisting for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize and shortlisting for the EBRD prize.
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation.
Perhaps what is most impressive about this book is its origin – certainly the first Latvian novel I have read and I expect one of the few to have been translated into English
As with all Peirene novels, the book opens with a quote from the founder Meike Ziervogel explaining the book and implicitly her reasoning behind publishing it. In this case, to quote it in full:
At first glance this novel depicts a troubled mother-daughter relationship set in the Soviet-ruled Baltics between 1969 and 1989. Yet just beneath the surface lies something far more positive: the story of three generations of women, and the importance of a grandmother in giving her granddaughter what her daughter is unable to provide – love, and the desire for life
.
The book opens with each character recounting their birth – the daughter in 1969 (9 months after Jan Palach’s self-immolation in Prague); the mother in October 1944 (the month when the Russian forces liberated Riga from the German occupation). Thereafter the book has alternate first party sections written by the two of them – although often they will continue to narrate the same scene (or say the daughter will say what her mother is doing or saying): further I found it hard to distinguish between the voices (or at least the translated voices) of the two characters which seemed a weakness to the book given their very different generations and characters.
A clear “milk” theme runs through the book – but at times I felt it was overlaboured and unnatural at least in English: for example the water of a river in Summer is described as “warm as milk” which really did not work for me, and I still have no idea what Jesse – stop fussing! We’re on the Milky Way playing dipping our legs in until our feet disappear really is meant to signify.
I understand from Paul’s review of this book that there is a chance that this translation may have been deliberately condensed to fit the Peirene housestyle, described by the TLS as Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film and to be honest if this is the case then I think the novel was all the stronger for it – I felt I was already struggling to be interested the Latvian poetry and Soviet songs which were simplified or condensed in this translation.
I found some of the side-characters in the book – a hamster which eats its own children and a hermaphrodite odd and rather over-engineered imagery for the situation of the two main characters. The book also seems to rely far too frequently on dreams to convey character development and feeling.
Where the book I feel succeeds best is in the excellent insight not just into Latvian society but into how the effect of the Soviet occupation (and the complexities of the impact of the Great Patriotic War on Latvia) played out across different generations.
The grandmother, scarred by her own history, both her first husband’s deportation and the complex past of her new husband (once a soldier in the Great Patriotic War, both his service in the guard of Latvia’s president and his brother’s voluntary enlisting in the German army were obscured by this illustrious background) effectively keeps her head down, at least when not in the privacy of her own home, for many years. She urges the mother to be an active member of the Communist youth organisation ... a honourable and faithful young Soviet citizen.
The mother reacts the opposite – within me blossomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence. We carried flags in the .. parade[s] in honour of … Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot – a bitterness which turns into despair and lethargy after her promising career as a doctor falls foul of the Soviet authorities in Leningrad.
The daughter meanwhile is initially naïve about the history of her own country, uncomprehending of her mother’s despair and resignation, initially ignorant of her grandparent’s secret patriotism – but overtime develops her own more naïve and optimistic pro-freedom views, which are shaken when she is force to denounce a liberal teacher but which still allow her to greet with joy the loosening of Soviet Power and the fall of the Berlin wall which ends the book.
Overall certainly an interesting book – full of many faults which if it were in English would make it a below average literary novel, but redeemed by the insight it gives into a different society....more
Charco Press is an exciting new, small UK publisher which “focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to neCharco Press is an exciting new, small UK publisher which “focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world” – this was one of their first three novels produced in 2017/early 2018 – all by Argentinian authors.
It is the third book by an Argentinian author I have read in the last 12 months (and possibly the fourth of my life, following on from the Man Booker International Shortlisted Fever Dream and the Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlisted and Man Booker International longlisted Die, My Love (also by Charco Press).
Both of these had an underlying sense of danger and menace and served as an examination of motherhood. For “Fever Dream” the underlying themes were: the longlasting effects of pesticides on animals and humans; and the tendency of mothers to be haunted by the “worst case scenario” for their children. For “Die, My Love” it was the potential for motherhood (particularly in the countryside) to become a trap of conventionality and banality.
The President’s Room continues this sense of underlying menace – although in a much more understated way, and by contrast to the other two is written from a child’s point of view.
Since long before basements were banned, people were building rooms for the president. Every house has one. Or at least houses owned by people like us. The blocks of flats in the City Centre don’t. And because they don’t, they lose their privileges. I don’t really know what these privileges are, or even whether our parents know what they are, but nobody doubts they exist. In our neighbourhood, all the houses have a president’s room. And yet the president has never been to visit us. It’s not that we’re expecting him, because to be honest, most of the time we forget the room’s ever there. Most of the time we forget
As this short novella unfolds – we learn more about the President’s Room: his mother solemnly opens it once a week to clean it; from time to time family members acquire and propose objects to be added to the room; a boy at the narrator’s school is believed to have been visited by the President and the narrator is wary of the boy, who seems to carry a worry or burden. We also learn from the narrator that: basements are banned in building, because of terrible things that used to happen there; he uses the attic as a hiding place and for solitude, and a tree outside the house to observe the President’s room; his younger brother goes missing from time to time.
Eventually the boy believes he observes a number of visits from the President, but his family do not acknowledge them and he does not mention it to them – becoming increasingly distant as a result and eventually living in isolation in the room.
This is clearly a deeply allegorical novel – and one that seems to be based around a rigid, right-wing, dictatorial state – for me the basements alluded to torture centres, his younger brother to the “disappeared” and his increasing breach from his family to the use of children to inform on their parents.
Overall this is a short, easy to read but memorable and powerful novella with what reads as a very natural translation by Charlotte Coombe....more
Charco Press is an exciting new, small UK publisher which “focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to neCharco Press is an exciting new, small UK publisher which “focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world” – this was one of their first set of novels, all by Argentinian novels, produced in 2017/early 2018 – all by Argentinian authors. The others being: Die, My Love – which I was, as a judge, delighted to shortlist for the 2017/18 Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses; the deeply allegorical The President's Room; and the delightfully playful Fireflies.
“Slum Virgin” is a more flamboyant novel with a richer writing style than the other books (particularly the first two) – although still with a very strong sense of violence.
The book is mainly narrated by Quity, a journalist who together with an Intelligence officer Daniel (who set met covering crimes) visits a Buenos Aires slum, in search of a story that she hopes will win her a journalism award and enable her to quit and return to literary academia. The slum has gained a certain fame due to a transvestite Cleo. Cleo after a beating and gang rape at a police station, was saved by a visitation from the Virgin Mary – and continues to receive advice from her, becoming a leader for the slum, which she turns into a vibrant community (although one still shot through with violence, sex and drugs) including a project to farm carp stolen from the local Japanese gardens.
The book is narrated after the event by Quity, with occasional chapters interjected by Cleo when she feels that the full story is not being told, with the two of them living in Miami, now rich due to a cult opera they have produced about the slum. The slum itself was cleared in a violent attack by local armed police – with 100+ deaths including that of a young child that Quity had effectively adopted; Daniel takes revenge by murdering the crime boss that ordered the clearance; Quity and Cleo become lovers and then parents to a young girl.
The author herself was one of the collective of that founded Ni Una Menos – a feminist movement which campaigns against gender based violence.
And such violence, particularly by crime gangs and officals such as the police, is a clear theme of the book – from Cleo’s rape and beating, to the slum clearance to an episode that Quity recounts where she comes across a prostitute being burnt alive as an example killing after she tried to escape the gang pimping her, and decides to cut short her terrible death by shooting her in the head.
The translation comes across as natural, despite its need to capture a range of voices and dialects (even Cleo seems to switch between slum slang and old fashioned religious statements) but it can be hard to judge this against a story which celebrates sexual diversity and transgressive behaviour by the most marginalised members of Argentinian society.
Overall I felt that there were perhaps too many barriers between me and a proper appreciation of the book. However I would urge Goodreaders to subscribe to all of Charco's publications to date and to their 2018 catalogue....more
Galley Beggar Press is a small Norfolk based publisher responsible which aims to “produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taGalley Beggar Press is a small Norfolk based publisher responsible which aims to “produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature” and which declares an aim to publish books that are “hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose’. This description has been taken as the criteria for the Republic Of Consciousness prize for small presses (http://www.republicofconsciousness.co...) for which fittingly it has been shortlisted in 2016 (with Forbidden Line) and to date longlisted in 2017 with We That Are Young. Its most striking success though to date has been in being prepared to publish A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing which had taken 9 years to find a publisher and of course went on to win the Bailey’s Prize.
Tinderbox is based around Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, or more accurately (due it emerges at the end of the book to the reluctance of the Bradbury estate to sanction an earlier version of the book which was a Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, only blonder) to the Francois Truffaut film of the book and to the SparkNotes reading guide to the book, more than the book itself.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book which has a special place in my own literary history. I was a big fan of Ray Bradbury as a young reader, he introduced me to short stories as a form - I particularly remember his time travel short story A Sound of Thunder, which of course introduced the concept of the Butterfly effect many years before Lorenz incorporated it to explain chaos theory. I also have distinct, Proustian memories of a plastic bound copy of Fahrenheit 451 which (if not false) I believe means I must have borrowed a copy of the book on multiple occasions from the mobile library van which used to visit my village in Norfolk.
Years later, in 2004, having recently joined my first (and only) Book Group, the other (all female) members of the group mentioned they had never read a science fiction novel and asked me to recommend two for the group to read – my choices were “Fahrenheit 451” and (13 years before the mini-series) The Handmaid's Tale, and they caused the group to shed all their previous prejudices against the genre.
This book similarly ranges across Dunn’s life, with a literary bent. Ostensibly the book follows her attempts during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to write a 50,000 word novel (a homage to Fahrenheit 451) and tracks across each day, as she frets over her word count (writing to a self imposed thirty minute deadline) each day and to the direction of the novel.
Quickly though other elements of her life begin to impose on the book – as she thinks back on the dissolution of her marriage, and more centrally on her career with the Borders Book Chain (and the events leading to its own liquidation) and more generally on Bradbury’s book and how the future has actually worked out, compared to how he predicted it would, this in turn causing her to reflect on creative writing courses, the rise of Amazon, the ever growing influence of best sellers, the rise (and fall) of e-readers and on literary snobbery.
Although this is to simplify the book – which manages to feature (as key characters) Julie Christie’s hair, Grand Theft Auto, The Teletubbies, Jodi Picoult and much more.
The book – which started as a novel, undergoes a gradual metamorphosis into the part literary critique, part autobiography which we have in our hands.
“I’m writing a book about Farenheit 451” I explained the ruckus with the estate. The end of borders. [He] looked uncomfortable “Sounds a bit meta” he said “Yes it is a bit meta” I reached up and touch my face, cheek burning. Time for another apology. “That’s the last thing we need” I said
On the contrary, no apology is necessary and in the (now future) world of literature we now live in, a world of Amazon and mega-sellers of dubious literary quality, what we need more than ever are risk taking small publishers like Galley Beggar Press, and wonderful books like this one....more
Am I doing the right thing be telling stories? Wouldn’t it be better to fasten the mind with a clip, tighten the reins and express myself not by me
Am I doing the right thing be telling stories? Wouldn’t it be better to fasten the mind with a clip, tighten the reins and express myself not by means of stories and histories, but with the simplicity of a lecture, where in sentence after sentence a single though gets clarified, and then others are tacked onto it in the succeeding paragraphs. I could use quotes and foot notes …. I would be the mistress of my own text …. As it is I’m taking on the role of midwife, or of the tender of a garden whose only merit is at best sowing seeds and later to fight tediously against weeds. Tales have a kind of inherent inertia that is impossible to fully control. They require people like me – insecure, indecisive, easily led astray
This book is published by one of the leading UK small presses, Fitzcarraldo Editions an independent publisher (their words) specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays ….. it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language . Their novels are (my words) distinctively and beautifully styled, with plain, deep blue covers and a "French-flap" style. They are also (my experience) typically complex, lengthy and dense and as a result more admirable and worth than truly enjoyable.
This book – a translation from the Polish by Jennifer Croft (and so smoothly translated that it reads like a book originally written in English) is the winner of the 2018 Man Booker International prize.
Overall this book is difficult to categorise – its effectively a mediation on transitions – particularly modern travel but also on fluidity and mobility, but with some lengthy historical diversions (typically relating to anatomical themes – the human body and the historical parallels between mapping the complexities of the body and mapping the world is a key theme) and with some even more lengthy fictional tales. These include: a series of stories about a man Kunicki whose wife and children temporarily leave him on a small Croatian Island they are visiting on holiday; as well as the story which gives the book its English title about the Russian mother who on an impulse flees her disabled son and war veteran husband to live a life as a drifting vagrant on the Moscow metro inspired by a member of a movement-fetishing sect which gives the book its original, Polish title.
The book has interesting parallels with many other books, the number of parallels showing how wide ranging the author’s meditations travel from their centre (itself of course an embedded metaphor).
For example the narrator’s early experiences of the River Oder which seemingly plant in her the idea of travel versus stasis are very reminiscent of passages in Esther Kinsky’s River (by the same publisher). Also early on the narrator (whose voice largely disappears for much of the book) talks about her studies in a passage:
I studied psychology in a big gloomy communist city … that part of the city had been built up on the ruins of the ghetto, which you could tell if you took a good look – that whole neighbourhood stood about three feet higher than the rest of the town. Three feet of rubble.
Which reminded me of Han Kang’s The White Book (also longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International), a book written in Warsaw and whose central conceit is that the narrator’s live is somehow built on the “broken pediment” of the life her sister would have lived, had she not perished as a very young child, in the same ways Warsaw is built on the ruin of its former self.
The frequent visits to and obsession with anatomical museums (the back of the book includes a list of those visited) is very reminiscent of Jessie Greengrass’s Sight: A Novel (longlisted for the 20918 Women's Prize).
A very interesting angle I found was in a discussion on how the concept of linear time is associated with the move from a traditional agricultural to a mercantile economy:
Sedentary peoples, farmers, prefer the pleasures of circular time, in which every object and event must return to its own beginning, curl back up into an embryo and repeat the process of maturation and death. But nomads and merchants, as they set off on journeys, had to think up a different type of time for themselves, one that would better respond to the needs of their travels. That time is linear time, more practical because it was able to measure progress towards a goal, a destination … And yet the innovation is a profoundly bitter one: when change over time is irreversible, loss and mourning become daily things
Interesting to me because my book of 2017, Jon McGregor’s 2018 Reservoir 13, explicitly looks to reinsert the concept of circular time into literature by examining how quotidian dramas play out against the rhythmic seasons of village life and the natural world, while time continues to pass incessantly.
Overall the parts of the book I most enjoyed were those relating to 21st Century travel – partly I believe due to identification with its theme (given my frequent transatlantic flights on which much of my reading takes place) and partly due to the brevity and focus of those sections. I particularly enjoyed for example
Whenever I set off on a journey I fall off the radar. No one knows where I am …………… [those like me] show up all of a sudden in the arrivals terminal and start to exist when the immigrations officers stamp their passpots, or where the polite receptionist at whatever hotel hands over their key”
She falls asleep too fast, exhausted from jetlag, like a lone card taken out of its deck and shuffled into another, strange one.
The other sections at times dragged – summed up I think best by a section "A VERY LONG QUARTER OF AN HOUR" which in its entirety says
“On the plane between 8.45 and 9 a.m. To my mind, it took an hour, or even longer.”
Some of the pages and sections of the book felt very much the same to me – too discursive and unfocused. In particular I would unfavourably contrast the book with Charco Press’s Fireflies by Luis Sagasti which manages to roam across 20th Century history (particularly the history of flight) and 20th Century art in only 85 pages.
Overall though as the quote at the start of this review makes clear – the discursive, flowing style is very deliberate here and associated precisely with the state of fluidity and transition that the book is exploring, or to give another quote.
There are different kinds of looking. One kind of looking allows you to simply see objects, useful human things, honest and concrete, which you know right away how to use and what for. And then there’s panoramic viewing, a more general view, thanks to which you notice links between objects, their network of reflections. Things cease to be things, the fact that they serve a purpose is insignificant, just a surface. Now they’re signs, indicating something that isn’t in the photographs, referring beyond the frames of the pictures. You have to really concentrate to be able to maintain that gaze, as its essence it’s a gift, grace.
As a supporter of UK small presses – I was naturally predisposed to like this book: its published by the Norfolk based publisher Salt (whose books ratAs a supporter of UK small presses – I was naturally predisposed to like this book: its published by the Norfolk based publisher Salt (whose books rather wonderfully are normally sent with a handwritten postcard and a packet of salt enclosed) and written by Meike Ziervogel, the publisher of Pereine Press.
However, even without this predisposition there is much to like here, in this ultimately uplifting tale of war-induced mass migration.
The book commences:
Once upon a time there was a German town in Pomerania, a medieval fortress with four gates and eight towers …. Our story starts one morning in the early Spring of 1920. In an apartment.. lives five year old Trude. Her mother [Agatha] is a seamstress and her father a carpenter. He fought in the Great War and came home with a wound in his chest and three missing toes
And, told from the viewpoint of Trude, in the present tense and in simple prose, we witness the traumatic birth of her brother, who we then learn dies only a few days later, revealed in a heartrending scene with Agatha still rocking the dead baby’s crib and expressing milk, with Trude, busy playing a fantasy game where she imagines marrying a prince, only really remembering how the baby was compared favourably to her during his few days of life He sleeps and drinks and doesn’t cause any trouble. With you, Trude, it was a different story.
The book then moves forward thirteen years:
A Real Prince did eventually arrive in Trude’s life, but it took a few years. In the meantime, her father died of the war wound in his chest and her mother became a respected seamstress …. So one sunny Sunday afternoon shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Trude was strolling along .. when … she spotted a young man sitting on a bench …..
Albert is smoking a cigarette. His camera is on the tripod next to him. Business has been good today.
To my initial surprise, the present tense and simple if lyrical prose, which I had initially assumed was meant to capture a child’s view, continues as Trude reaches maturity and then through the book – however over time I realises that this was a deliberate stylistic device, one key being the first phrase of each excerpt above, with their deliberate evocation of fairy tales, a theme which continues throughout the book.
Albert – from a dubious background - gives rise to a unresolved conflict between Agatha (whose father gave up a life of near aristocracy by marrying a maid – her mother: and whose legacy Agatha believes she and Trude’s father spent a lifetime overcoming) – a conflict which reaches a crisis during the war, when Agatha (innocently assisted by Trude and Albert’s young son Peter) reveals to the authorities that he is a subversive draft-dodger, leading to his being called up (which Agatha sees as basically a death warrant given his lack of soldiering skills).
The second section of the book: Flight, tells one of the key stories of the book – the forced migration of Eastern Germans, fleeing the advancing Russians and allied bombs, to a resentful, already occupied West – although was I felt was the weakest, the simple style starting to wear on me and I felt not really giving me any particular insight.
The book, however recovers its emotional strength in the third section, which starts with Albert returning from a PoW camp (having survived the war as a photographer) and thanks to the Red Cross, reunited with Trude, Peter and Agatha. A number of related conflicts dominate family life: Albert and Peter have a difficult relationship, Peter having found some form of escape route in boxing but the war scarred Albert not approving of the violence that underpins it; Albert and Trude both keep to themselves horrors they witnessed and compromises they made in the war; and Agatha’s betrayal of Albert remains unacknowledged and unresolved until the book’s surprisingly upbeat ending, bringing us back to the world of fairy tales and at least the hint of a “happy ever after” ending amongst the suffering and devastation.
Ultimately this is a deeply moving novel – and one which explores how the traumas of war pass down across generations, and explores how humanity and family love can nevertheless survive in the most trying of circumstances....more
Waking with fortitude, living with compromise and sleeping with stress is normal for an architect in Britain. Even during the best of times, Lottie
Waking with fortitude, living with compromise and sleeping with stress is normal for an architect in Britain. Even during the best of times, Lottie has spent weeks drawing up plans for prospects over which clients have then backtracked, changed their minds and cancelled. Experience has taught her that nothing is ever built without compromise, and yet she expected better from marriage. For just as we expect sweetness from the milk we first drink, so the child born to a happy union is wholly unprepared for disharmony. Lottie had failed to understand what she risked when marrying Quentin; but then waking with optimism, living with laxity and sleeping without self-reproach is normal for a journalist
Lottie and Quentin’s marriage is on the verge of dissolution, due to irreconcilable differences, principally that Lottie will not accept Quentin’s continuous affairs. However with Lottie being made redundant from her architectural firm and Quentin’s journalistic and TV career as a commentator and columnist almost stopped (the number of enemies his combative style made on the way up, ensuring he receives almost no help on the way down) – they are struggling financially. The central conceit of the novel is that, while they wait for the London market to pick up enough to enable them to sell their house and raise enough funds for a house each, they let their home and move out to a, strangely cheap even if run-down, farm house in Devon, living off the rental differential.
The cast of characters includes: Quentin’s parents – his long suffering mother and dying father (an ex-teacher at a local private school, a minor poet infamous for his affairs with ex-pupils and for his bad temper and tyrannical parenting style); Xan – Lottie’s mixed-race child from a one-off encounter when she was younger, struggling to accept his rejection from Cambridge; the Polish girlfriend he meets at the local pie factory – the only real source of local employment but dominated by immigrants due to its poor environment and zero-hours, minimum wage contracts; Lottie’s German mother – still living in her run-down but ridiculously valuable house in London; Lottie and Quentin’s two younger daughters; their landlord – an ageing pop star and his family living in luxury in the nearby country mansion house; is housekeeper Janet (with an odd daughter Dawn – seemingly once pretty and intelligent, now neither) living in the gatehouse and used as cleaner by Quentin; a local health visitor, tormented by her inability to have children with her small holding sheep farmer husband.
Quentin had bought colour, humour and fun into her life, just as she bought order, calm and seriousness into his. They shared many interests, and were both the children of teachers. Yet the differences between them have made it clear that no reconciliation is possible.
Differences, and how, if at all, they can be reconciled is a key theme to the novel – between people but also between London and the country, with the Brexit vote ever present in the background and the book serving as an examination in particular of rural alienation.
I was reminded, in some ways, of John Lanchester's Capital – although there is a stronger link between the characters here with Quentin and Lottie and their family completely central to the book, rather than a true multi-narrator approach.
What however really lets the book down is the plot constructed around it – Lottie and Quentin learn early on (although later than a vaguely attentive reader) that the previous inhabitant of their house was decapitated in an unsolved murder. Disappointingly this storyline dominates and spoils the end of the book – with a rather ridiculous series of melodramatic confrontations and unlikely revelations.
I could only help but draw a contrast with the wonderful Reservoir 13 – another novel of a rural community – and one which in my experience much better captures the dynamics of such a community. There a dramatic event (the disappearance of a missing girl) is, very cleverly and very unexpectedly for the reader, not resolved, and instead over time its impact fades while never quite disappearing; here by contrast we have an event which could have simply served as some local colour, but whose resolution is effectively forced on the reader against their wishes.
As a result – two books, what could have been a good (if not brilliant) examination of differences and reconciliation; and what could have been an entertaining but throwaway rural mystery; are combined into an unsatisfactory mix....more
I could not help but admire the author’s versatility and bravery in writing such a very different book.
And despite its conventionality (in complete contrast to its predecessor) there is much to admire here: Egan’s strong writing wears the considerable research behind the book lightly - although the diving parts are detailed this do not seem out of keeping for Anna’s narration; the book captures brilliantly a different sense of New York as a sea-facing City; the book conveys the changing social attitudes of the time, the forced acceptance of woman and blacks in previously male dominated areas of society and industry (but still against a background of deep prejudice and with a sense that post War this may prove only a temporary opening); each of the main third party characters – Eddie, Anna and Styles are sketched as complex and nuanced characters, both in their inner thoughts and their interactions with others – Eddie and Anna’s mutual belief that they somehow let down, and were let down by, the other being an example.
However where the novel is weakest is that it seems to be an amalgamation of a number of overly familiar and unoriginal tropes – particularly the gangster TV series/movie and the (in my view excessively long and close to completely redundant merchant navy convoy/u-boat induced shipwreck/fight for survival piece.
Famously Egan was quoted extensively a number of years back as saying that “A Visit from the Goon Squad” was inspired by The Sopranos and by Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time – the Sopranos inspiration being its polyphonic cast structure (with secondary characters coming to the fore) and its lateral sense of plot development. Here unfortunately the Sopranos inspiration is rather more immediate and unsubtle.
Overall an enjoyable read from a clearly talented author – a book with a cinematic feel though (and from me that is never a recommendation for a book)....more
I even began searching my emails and texts for “evidence” of our affair
That night I decided to start reading over my old instant message conversati
I even began searching my emails and texts for “evidence” of our affair
That night I decided to start reading over my old instant message conversations with Bobbi …. It comforted me to know that my friendship with Bobbi wasn’t confined to memory alone, and that textual evidence of her past fondness for me would survive her actual fondness if necessary
Our [Frances and Nick’s] relationship was like a word document which we were writing and editing together
Sally Rooney is a 26 year old debut novelist – with a back story which included being the number one competitive debater in Europe.
Frances (the 21 year old first person narrator) and Bobbi were lovers when 17 having met at high school, and, as (Trinity College Dublin) University students still remain very close friends, performing spoken word poetry together (with the more reserved Frances as writer and the provocative and more charismatic Bobbi as the lead performer). At an event a literary website writer Melissa (married to a moderately well-known and strikingly good looking actor Nick) approaches them and proposes she writes (and illustrates with photos) a profile of them. The group of four start to meet frequently together – Melissa and Bobbi immediately strike a bond of mutual fascination, while somewhat relegated to the background Nick and Melissa end up chatting, which quickly move through flirtation, online and phone sexually charged conversations, a seemingly one-off sexual encounter, and then a full flown affair (which starts when the two students join the married couple, and some of their friends, on vacation at a large house in France).
The affair is complicated by the other strands of the “ménage à quatre“ – Frances and Bobbi’s past and current bonds, Bobbi and Melissa’s mutual fascination, Melissa and Nick’s marriage (with Melissa as the dominant character and Nick a passive player).
It is played out not just through sex, but through conversations, phone calls, computer messaging, text and emails – an important aspect of the book and of Frances’s view on relationships (as the quotes above imply). At times the technology can seem slightly age-inappropriate (Email and text seem to be the preferred communication media. Tinder and Facebook make only brief appearances, Snapchat/Instagram/selfies not at all).
The affair also takes place against a background of Frances struggling with: a condition which she keeps hidden as far as she can, particularly form Nick, but turns out to be endometriosis; with a drunk and absent father for whom she has lost all feelings (albeit she is very happy to take his support payments) set alongside pressure from her separate mother to stay in contact with him; and with Frances’s (clichéd but no less valid) worry about what commitment Nick as a married man, unprepared to leave his wife has to their relationship. She sporadically indulges in low level self-harm, and even tries to engage (fairly superficially it has to be said) with Jesus and his gospel message. We see little of Frances’s poetry – which at one stage she describes as just writing and pressing the enter key frequently – or a Bobbi-inspired short story she writes (after she forgets to press the enter key for a long time).
All this makes Frances while not a completely sympathetic character at least a partly deep one – as perhaps the biggest issue with this book is the superficiality of the other characters and their privileged, directionless lives.
Of debating Rooney commented “you need to have a taste for ritualized, abstract interpersonal aggression” – and “you must be clear in your attempts to get the better of the teams arguing the opposite side of the question, but subtle in undermining the other team that’s arguing your side. It’s against the rules to contradict them openly. Instead, you need to emphasize at every opportunity that your arguments are the more important.” and she clearly transfers some of that approach to Bobbi. Whether this is meant to make Bobbi an interesting character I was unsure – she is described as charismatic – but I found her arguments immature with constant references to the overarching flaws in capitalism or patriarchal systems.
A final observation on this book – neither praise nor criticism – is that, in my view very unusually for an Irish literary book, the Irish setting of this book has almost no impact, in fact it could easily have been set in London or East Coast US.
Overall certainly an interesting debut by a young author writing with a fresh new voice about a young character experiencing a very old story (a woman having an affair with an older married man)....more
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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Books:
2018
(190)
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