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| 178463221X
| 9781784632212
| 178463221X
| 3.85
| 125
| Nov 15, 2021
| Nov 15, 2021
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really liked it
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The retreat, she thinks, is not what she expected. On the other hand, when she dwells on this, what she expected seems vague. But it wasn’t this. The R The retreat, she thinks, is not what she expected. On the other hand, when she dwells on this, what she expected seems vague. But it wasn’t this. The Retreat is the 5th novel from Alison Moore, whose first, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize. All have been published via the wonderful Cromer-based Salt Publishing. The Retreat is told in two separate strands. The first has Sandra recalling the first time she saw the island of Lieloh, itself seen from a childhood visit to the (fictitious) channel island of Liel: Liel was an in-between place. Lying one hundred miles from the English coast, the island resembled Sandra’s known world but it had its own currency and its own system of car number plates; its post boxes were blue and its telephone boxes were yellow. It was not far from France but was not French. The island had its own distinctive language but Sandra had only heard English spoken there, though in a foreign accent. … It was from the dining room window of Liel’s Sea View hotel that Sandra first saw the smaller island of Lieloh, sunlit on the horizon. It looked like the dome of a sea monster’s head, as if it were crouched on the seabed and might suddenly rise up. Her fascination, almost obsession, with the island is only increased when her mother tells her that Lieloh is privately owned by a former silent-movie actress, Valerie Swanson, whose career finished abruptly with the advent of talkies, but who had inherited the island from her family’s wealth. Sandra’s story then moves forward to 1999 (dated by a reference to Titanic sweeping the Oscars the previous year). She had hoped to become an artist but instead took a more secure position as a receptionist, still dabbling as an amateur painter. To her delight she comes across an advert for an artist’s retreat on Lieloh, in the Swanson family residence. She travels to the island with 5 other (wannabe) artists, where they discover there are no phones and no mobile signal. It sounds like a set-up for an Agatha Christie murder mystery but as Sandra remarks: In case of emergency, there’s a radio, but it’s not like this is a shooting trip; someone might suffer a paper cut, or a twisted ankle, that’s about it. The alternating chapters are told from the perspective of Carol, a short-story writer who wants to write a fantasy novel. While undated these chapters are set closer to the present day (Carol’s ambition is for her the screen rights to her novel to be optioned by Netflix). Carol is offered the use of a private island by its current owner, to focus on writing her book. For Sandra, the retreat is not what she hoped: She should never have come here. It is not what she imagined – she is in the wrong house, and her community of artists does not exist, or at least she is not a part of it. The other five artists form a strong bond but she is excluded (and excludes herself). For example as the sole vegetarian the others cook hearty dinners for each other but for her a cheese sandwich, while she helps herself to the others’ pastries that she failed to order on arrival. And her attempts to paint the island are unsuccessful, as her fellow retreatees are only too happy to confirm. This part of the novel is close to a comedy of middle-class-manners, the ultimate insult coming when another painter also called Sandra arrives, instantly proving more popular and more successful with her art. Carol meanwhile finds the deserted house rather spooky, not helped by her friend Jayne who sends her letters and encloses comparative weather reports showing rain where Carol is and sunshine at home, and stories set on islands, novels – by Agatha Christie and H.G. Wells and William Golding – in which things take a nasty turn. Indeed literary portents abound (also Angela Carter, Roald Dahl, Shakespeare, Maurice Sendak, L Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Enid Blyton, Tove Jansson, The Brothers Grimm etc), DH Lawrence’s The Man Who Loved Islands particularly relevant to both Carol and Sandra, as well as other repeated motifs in both stories such as a Josephine Baker record, the smell of garlic and reported sightings of a red-backed shrike. And Carol gradually gets, from both ghostly goings-on in the house, as well as Joyce’s missives a sense of what might have happened in 1999. But best I say no more… She supposes, in that sort of environment, there can be personality clashes, moments of tension; she thinks of the cabin fever of Big Brother, and the recent news report of a scientist at an Antarctic outpost stabbing a colleague who kept telling him the endings of books. An excellent read, playful yet portentous, great fun but with much to say about female artists and artistic creation. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 29, 2021
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Dec 30, 2021
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Dec 28, 2021
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33
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| 1838856277
| 9781838856274
| 1838856277
| 3.43
| 963
| Nov 02, 2021
| 2021
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really liked it
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There are but tenne figures that are used in Arithmetick; and of those tenne, one doth signifie nothing, which is made like an O, and is privately cal
There are but tenne figures that are used in Arithmetick; and of those tenne, one doth signifie nothing, which is made like an O, and is privately called a Cypher. The Grounde of Artes (first published in 1543) Ghosts, look at me. I was twice-queen, mother to three daughters child of good birth, keeper of land that holds three good rivers and takes two days to cross. I had retinue, wealth, my pack of sweet bitch-dogs, four bay horses strung with my colours, hawks, thick veils for summer sun, a chatelaine hung till it touched my belly. I was thick with names. All gone. And I am thought to be dead! Perhaps I am. Perhaps Lear, entering the long hall of eternity, stood briefly and stroked his beard straight, as he did secretly at the threshold before he came to my room, early in our marriage. And the girls, turned young again by the grace of God, before light and husbands entered and cracked them — maybe they ran for me. So, dead and not dead. A feather held between two pages. I am left marooned on this island with nuns instead of peculiar beasts. In all honesty I'd prefer the beasts. Learwife by J R Thorp REGAN I’m glad to see your highness. LEAR Regan, I think you are. I know what reason I have to think so: if thou shouldst not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, Sepulchring an adultress King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4 Thus to our grief the obsequies performed Of our too late deceased and dearest queen, Whose soul I hope, possessed of heavenly joys, Doth ride in triumph amongst the cherubins; Let us request your grave advice, my lords, For the disposing of our princely daughters, For whom our care is specially employed, As nature bindeth to advance their states, In royal marriage with some princely mates: For wanting now their mother's good advice, Under whose government they have received A perfect pattern of a virtuous life: Left as it were a ship without a stern, Or silly sheep without a pastor's care: Although ourselves do dearly tender them, Yet are we ignorant of their affairs: For fathers best do know to govern sons; But daughters' steps the mother's counsel turns. A son we want for to succeed our crown, And course of time hath cancelled the date Of further issue from our withered loins: One foot already hangeth in the grave, And age hath made deep furrows in my face: The world of me, I of the world am weary, And I would fain resign these earthly cares, And think upon the welfare of my soul: Which by no better means may be effected, Than by resigning up the crown from me, In equal dowry to my daughters three. Opening lines of "The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella" King Lear's wife receives but an oblique mention in Shakespeare's play, in Act 2 Scene 4, when Lear suggests that Regan's affection for him is only natural, and he would doubt her late mother's fidelity otherwise. But in the anonymous play on which Shakespeare is believed to have drawn, she is mentioned in the very opening lines of the play, Lear attributing his need to test his daughter's affections to the fact that he has little knowledge of them, since as daughters he left them to their mother's care, who is now no longer alive to provide he and they counsel. Gordon Bottomley, in his 1913 play King Lear's Wife attempted to fill in the missing history of the Queen, attributing the disintegration of the family and much of the troubled nature of the characters in the play to her death. But in J R Thorp's Learwife, the Queen is not, in fact, dead but rather banished to a nunnery. The novel begins just after the play ends, with her learning of the death of Lear and all three of their daughters: The word has come now that he is dead, and the girls. And that it is finished. ... I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear's wife. I am here. History has not taken my body, not yet. The author has acknowledged the inspiration she took from Eleanor of Aquitane: A Life "Exiled to an abbey, married to two very different kings, where can I take this? It seems like an interesting model for what might have happened to this woman." Her Queen (we,ánd she, learn her birth name towards the novel's end) is indeed twice-married, first at 17 to a pious Christian King, to whom she was engaged as a child, but who later died, and then to the pagan Lear at 25 (he was then 20). After 15 years of marriage, with Cordelia barely a few months old, she was suddenly taken from the palace to the abbey, for an offence of which she professes to be unaware, with, for the next 15 years, no subsequent contact with her family, the outside world or indeed most of the nuns. On learnings of Lear and her daughters' deaths she plans to leave the Abbey to seek their graves. But pestilence confines her to the grounds (the isolation due to a sickness oddly resonant today, although the novel was completed pre-Covid). When the Abbess herself succumbs, the Queen decides to stage a contest to decide which of two pretenders should assume her position in charge of the Convent, one that perhaps gives us some clue as to where Lear's desire to test the affections of his daughters may have arisen: Ah, but God knows power and its tenderness, and where to wield and fold! Did He not lay a competition among Cain and Abel for His love that led to a bloodied skull, and push Abraham to the darkest part of himself at his son's throat? (Though perhaps it would have been different, had Isaac been a girl. Daughters being lesser, bringing fewer gifts, in the desert, and generally.) What's holier? And I ask for so little. No smashed brother-brain, no hands dyed with son-blood. Just pledges, small tithings, proof of their desire. Crumbs. The above may make this sound like a plot-driven historical novel, but it is anything but. Indeed the plausibility of the plot (how the Queen could spend 15 years hidden without even Kent seeming to know where she was? why does she only seem to really ask why she is there after 15 years?) was perhaps a slight weakness, and the significance of the inclusion of the stories relating to the Queen's first husband rather passed me by. This is instead an intense, psychological study, the Queen analysing others forensically, but also allowing the reader to examine her, particularly as her sanity disintegrates towards the story's end. The novel's prose is wonderfully rich. And the mathematician in me enjoyed the focus on the concept of zero. 4.5 stars and a strong prize contender for 2022. ...more |
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14
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| 1838059288
| 9781838059286
| 1838059288
| 4.16
| 160
| May 27, 2021
| May 27, 2021
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it was amazing
| Winner of the Barbellion Prize Entry No: 1 Wind: force 0 to 7 in ten seconds Winner of the Barbellion Prize Entry No: 1 Wind: force 0 to 7 in ten seconds What Willow Says, published by small indy époque press, is the Winner in the 2nd year of the Barbellion Prize: A book prize dedicated to the furtherance of ill and disabled voices in writing. The prize is awarded annually to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and/or disability. It was also previously highlighted as one of the best books of 2021 by two critics whose opinions I strongly respect. In the Irish Times Books of the Year from writers and critics, author Rónán Hession states "In a strong year for Irish writing, the standout was the poetic What Willow Says, by Lynn Buckle." And one of my favourite book bloggers, Robert Pisani, picked the novel as his overall #1 choice for books published in 2021, stating The second I finished What Willow Says, I was stunned. The writing is so beautiful, I was speechless. It’s a tender story full of warmth. As a plot it’s an interesting one: As Robert's comments suggest this is a beautifully written and moving novel. A grandmother bonds with her deaf 8yo granddaughter after the loss of her daughter, the girls's mother, over a shared love of trees, and the girl's desire to understand, through her grandmother, their language: I want to find the stridulations which she imagines, the psithurisms of rustling leaves, their sighs and modulations. If they have them. The story is told in a series of 29 diary entries, the first of which is key. Language is key to the novel, the two communicating through sign language, both official (in which the granddaughter is fluent and the grandmother barely literate) and their own invented signs, through English and Irish language and English and Ogham writing systems, through touch and vibration, lip-reading and their familial bond. I am learning to read her signs, signals, body movements, eyes, and gaps in between all of these. Sign language being the least, it seems, of her many languages. I am not a slow learner. Although fifty years her senior I am quite able, within the tyranny of hearing, to communicate. It is just so difficult. The descriptions of the trees are poetic and respectful, at times anthropomorphic, with the author explaining in an interview: I am also indebted to Dr Suzanne Simard’s research on trees, as were Richard Powers, Peter Wohlleben, and the many other authors who drew upon her work to write about the natural world This when the grandmother first tries to listen to the willow tree in her garden - the girl’s communication sign in italics in the text: It is easier for me to stay quiet. I do not know how to talk. And the novel also covers, but not didactically themes of albeism and sexism, as well as threading Irish myth throughout. The author has written about her own experiences here. Powerful and moving - 4.5 stars which I will round to 5. what do the willows say? I ask, and watch my shiny children dancing in aquamarine....more |
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Dec 16, 2021
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Dec 18, 2021
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Dec 12, 2021
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157
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| 1635575362
| 9781635575361
| 1635575362
| 3.86
| 8,190
| Feb 09, 2021
| Feb 09, 2021
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it was ok
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Zorrie came highly recommended by various GR friends, including in the Mookse & Gripes 2021 'Best Of' Poll, and as a finalist in the US National Book
Zorrie came highly recommended by various GR friends, including in the Mookse & Gripes 2021 'Best Of' Poll, and as a finalist in the US National Book Awards, but I am afraid left me rather bored. There is some great writing at the sentence level: Later it seemed like a mist had fallen in front of her eyes, and when it cleared, whole herds of years had again gone galloping by. This troubled her more than it had in the past, this coming wide awake to the evidence of time’s ruthless determination: this figure thrown back to her from the mirror, with its splotches and thick ankles and twisted fingers and thin gray hair. But in a relatively short novel there was (still) rather too much repetition for my taste. At frequent intervals Zorrie essentially recaps in her thoughts on the, rather slight, plot: She thought of Noah standing at the edge of the field years before, holding a letter in his hand and talking about whirlwinds in his head. She thought of him standing with a saw in his hand, talking about falling and falling, and she thought about Virgil lying somewhere in Frankfort, waiting to be lowered into the ground. She thought about Harold falling through the sky and Opal sitting in an ice bath and Mrs. Thomas eating carrot stubs out of her hand. She thought of Noah standing over the fire at the Fourth of July picnic, thought of his long arms in the red light, thought of Oats and her red carpet, thought of Noah, crying no more than two feet away from her, thought of her arms going out like they had for Ruby, thought, I am thinking more than I need to, and I ought to get home. And it was all just so dull. There is a story of sorts about the Radium Girls but it gets little airtime versus the excitement of sit-on lawnmowers and other riveting topics: For some years she had looked with more than moderate disdain upon her neighbors who sat crook-backed and flop-armed astride the extra-padded yellow plastic seats a John Deere came equipped with and droned back and forth and around for hours, just so at church or at the bank or anywhere they saw each other they could have the upper hand in conversations about their lawns. Many times Zorrie, who for years had thought lawn work should always stand about tenth on the list, had been treated to commentary and insinuations about the objectionable state of her yard, which had resulted in her getting out her old push mower even less frequently. Now, though, as she rode around on her new machine, with its easily adjustable mechanisms, its various well-thought-out safety features, and, yes, its more than comfortable seat, she had to admit that she had, as Candy Wilson gleefully observed, “caught the bug.” This is fishing in similarly territory to the (re-issued) Stoner and Marilynne Robinson's novels, of purposeful lives lived quietly, but doesn't really live up to the comparison. And I was left a little bemused at the critical success it enjoyed in 2021 when there is so much more interesting, and diverse, writing to choose from and so many more interesting and timely topics to discuss. To be blunter, in 2021, I find it almost unfathomable (being polite) that a book can be promoted as being about an “ordinary” life when that life is white, English-speaking, heterosexual, Christian, cis-gender, mid-west American, albeit that is largely the fault of the publisher and not the author. Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC but one I would recommend avoiding. ...more |
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Dec 11, 2021
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Dec 11, 2021
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77
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| 1529079675
| 9781529079678
| 1529079675
| 4.01
| 566
| Feb 17, 2022
| Feb 17, 2022
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really liked it
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When Linda went into the amusement place she saw that the ghost train was still there. A straggly little queue waited to be not very scared. She put h
When Linda went into the amusement place she saw that the ghost train was still there. A straggly little queue waited to be not very scared. She put her money in the machine to get a metal cascade of tokens and then she tried a couple of the Penny Falls machines, losing and winning and losing again. There were bells ringing, electronic squelches from the machines, disco music echoing in the big hall. She thought of Mike and Rae in the Wellness Centre at the Secrets Bonita Beach Krystal Cancun. Wendy Erskine’s debut short story collection Sweet Home was shortlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciouness Prize, perhaps the UK and Ireland’s finest literary award, a prize for which this year (2022) Erskine is a judge. My review of Sweet Home commented that the collection was perhaps a little more conventional than I might associate with the RofC Prize but that “Erskine's stories are typically around 20 pages long, and what is most impressive is how, in that limited amount of words, she manages to create genuinely engaging characters, in whose story the reader becomes emotionally invested. Her modus operandi is typically to provide her characters with a backstory, usually a past trauma, which only gradually emerges in the story and explains their current behaviour.” Dance Move, her 2nd collection, builds on the strengths of the first with 11 stories in 224 pages. Short story collections can be of mixed quality but here every story works, my personal favourite Memento Mori, wonderfully sketched and the ending a literal punch in the face, as well as including a side-character called Wendy, a short-story writer (at her book launch her friends admit to relative indifference: “Although they had all bought the book, dutifully, they agreed that they didn’t read short stories, or even like them all that much.”) See Gumble Yard's excellent review for an overview of each story: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Recommended Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC. ...more |
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Dec 23, 2021
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Dec 24, 2021
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Dec 08, 2021
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| 1913505081
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| 1913505081
| 3.39
| 457
| Sep 07, 2021
| Sep 07, 2021
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really liked it
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Shortlisted for the 2022 Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize and Gordon Burn Prize THE LITTLE DETAILS OF OUR INTIMACY, 2006 B Shortlisted for the 2022 Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize and Gordon Burn Prize THE LITTLE DETAILS OF OUR INTIMACY, 2006 By fifteen I’d make the dishes she taught me. Sweated onions and potatoes. Sulu yemek. Yahni. These were the meals that slid oil into you, that kept you full when you wanted to eat more but couldn’t. They heated our skin as the three of us ate on trays, flicking channels until I had to go out. While they waited outside, my friends could see me through the gaps in our curtains. I watched them from the mirror and styled my parting with a rat-tail comb, the skin on my scalp stinging under the pressure. I didn’t stop until I had the perfect zigzag part. And then I left. The wonderful independent bookshop Burley Fisher recently tweeted a teaser as to their 2021 book of the year written by Caleb Femi their author of the year in 2020: https://twitter.com/BurleyFisher/stat..., A beautifully stunning book revealing a realm of London most wouldn’t know. Through my read, I wavered between palpable nostalgia and questions about the future of the community that conceived this story. From reviews I had read and blurbs from other brilliant authors such as Michael Donkor in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...), and Derek Owusu, Lisa McInerney, Salena Godden and Irenosen Okojie, I suspected the book was Keeping the House, and with my guess was lucky enough to win a signed copy of the novel, thanks to the author and bookshop. Keeping the House spans the period from around 1999-2012, although non-linearly and is set in the Turkish Cypriot community in Tottenham. The rich cast of characters is centred around three generations of women introduced in the cast list as: Damla – Daughter of Ayla. Born in 1991. Ayla – Washes up in high heels. Doesn’t like people who think too much. Makbule – Mother of Ayla. Green-fingered. Varicose veins. Makbule still suffers from PTSD from the aftermath of the 1974 conflicts in Cyprus. Ayla, after Damla's father is arrested, finds herself with some drugs she needs to dispose of, and ends up involved in the heroin smuggling trade, developing a complex scheme, inspired by the cabbages her mother once grew in Cyprus, which brings in more colourful denizens of the area such as: Topuz Paşa/Ali – Drives cabbages. Loves bright suits. Has hopes for Ayla. Sadi – Looks after Nehir supermarket. Always gets pickle juice in his moustache. Agata – Crucial side character. Works in Moruk cafe. Angela – Gives hot tupperware. Eyes beyond house. Has a little brother, Kwame. Filiz – Thinks her dad Ufuk sells fruit on Lordship Lane as a job. Babo/Bekir – Top boss from Mêrdîn. Loves birds. And Damla, who narrates many of the chapters, observes them all, while coming of age. As the author explained, she is: almost a fly on the wall in some ways. She watches a lot of people outside of her field of reference and describes them but does not have access to their experiences in a full way. Through this, I think that became the mood that I wrote with, to use that outsider perspective as a linguistic tool and point of reference, never trying to inhabit the people I wrote about, but instead showing a specific narrator’s views of them. The fractured narrative blends in poetry and also, with inventive typesetting, embeds languages (Turkish, Greek, Turkish Cypriot, Kurmanji) into the text, as the author has explained: I always wanted translation to feel an active breathing voice in the book ... We wanted to experiment with the shapes of the translations, so that they sometimes broke up the lines and sometimes formed the word, this was especially the case with the translation for “maydanoz” (parsley). [Alex Billington, the typesetter] hand-drew it all tendrilly. It makes for a wonderfully atmospheric and different novel. 4.5 stars. Interview with the author and her editor Max Porter: https://www.andotherstories.org/2021/... Another interview: https://tinhouse.com/transcript/betwe... ...more |
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Dec 11, 2021
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Dec 16, 2021
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Dec 03, 2021
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97
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| 1911284444
| 9781911284444
| 1911284444
| 3.80
| 5,219
| Aug 01, 2006
| Nov 26, 2020
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really liked it
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Runner-up for the 2021 Warwick Prize for Women In Translation Yong’an is a city in which spirits, beasts and humans mingle, brushing shoulders in the s Runner-up for the 2021 Warwick Prize for Women In Translation Yong’an is a city in which spirits, beasts and humans mingle, brushing shoulders in the street, falling in love, even having children. No one dies a good death. Strange Beasts is Jeremy Tiang's translation of Yan Ge's original novel 异兽志, and published by Tilted Axis Press who have blazed a trial in translations of Asian literature and for cultural diversity generally. Yan Ge, who now lives in Norfolk, has switched to writing in English in the last few years, but this work dates back to 2006. One of Tilted Axis's novel's signature features is a brief introduction explaining the meaning of a key word in the original text, and here the original word behind "beasts" we are told was "originally used to describe the act of hunting [..but..] shifted over time to the object of the hunt, the prey" and now "denotes the absence of humanity, and carries the connotations of savagery and wildness." The novel is set in the fictional city of Yong’an, and takes the form of a bestiary, with 9 chapters each introducing us to one of the beasts that lives in the city. There is a certain irony in the choice of the term used in the original, since in many respects the beasts are like humans, and even in their stark differences represent stylised aspects of our urban society. The first breed of beast introduced is the 'sorrowful beasts' and the following is typical of the way this is done in the novel, with the colourful descriptions and anthropology ("other than that, they’re just like regular people" something of a regular refrain). Sorrowful beasts are gentle by nature, and prefer the cold and dark. They love cauliflower and mung beans, vanilla ice cream and tangerine pudding. They fear trains, bitter gourd and satellite TV. The males of the species are tall, with large mouths and small hands, scales on the insides of their left calves and fins attached to their right ears. The skin around their belly buttons is dark green. Other than that, they’re just like regular people. The females are beautiful—slender figures with reddish skin, long, narrow eyes, ears a little larger than normal. For three days at the full moon, they lose the ability of human speech and squawk like birds instead. Otherwise, they’re just like regular people. Sorrowful beasts never smile. If they do, they can’t stop—not until they die. Hence their name ... Legend has it that a sorrowful beast’s smile is so beautiful, no one who sees it could ever forget it. But no matter how many jokes you tell them, they never laugh, let alone smile. This makes the loveliness of the female beasts all the more to be prized and pitied, and the tycoons of Yong’an City take pride in marrying them—the females can mate with people and produce human offspring. The males can’t do this, and so Leye Estate is filled with desolate bachelors, while the ladies end up in the wealthy district to the south, having fled so fast their feet barely touched the ground, their faces like ice. At one point, the city’s zoologists raised an outcry in the newspapers: if things went on like this, these rare creatures would surely go extinct. And so the government passed a law: sorrowful beasts could only marry their own kind. If they wished to couple with a human, special permission would be required, and could only be balloted for once every five years. As a result, having a beast-wife became an even greater status symbol, and the extra demand from the elite greatly increased the government’s revenue. Typically in each story, it transpires that the accepted zoology as set out at the start of each chapter, particularly the behavioural aspects, is misleading and the truth is very different. The different chapters can rather read as "rinse and repeat" variations on the a theme and indeed I understand these were originally serialised as separate, albeit related, pieces. To the extent they come together, it is largely in the narrator's own life and what she discovers about origins as she encounters the beasts. She is a former, and failed, zoology student who then made a successful career writing (somewhat trashy) romance novels. She also writes a newspaper column about food and drink. But recently has decided to combine her novelistic career and former studies to write the stories of the various beasts. The novel's style, I think deliberately parodies cheap romance novels, so that her own life is rather tangled, with other key characters including her former zoology professor, the leading expert on beasts (who, mysteriously she never actually physically meets in the novel, Zhang Liang, son of a rich businessman and a current student of the professor who acts as his intermediary, and who is somewhat in love with the narrator, and her friendly Charley, a socialite and gossip merchant (I was at University where I first met Charley. I’d bump into him in the zoology department. He was neither a student nor a teacher, just a weirdo who always sat in the back row of the lab, looking like he wanted to laugh as he watched me carrying out my experiments.). All four, including the narrator, prove to have deeper connections with the beasts than the reader, and in some cases they, might have suspected. It all makes for a fun if not, at surface level, terribly profound read, although Alywnne's insightful review - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - brings out links with Chinese literature, and this is certainly a novel that feels very different to typical Anglophone literature. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. ...more |
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Dec 08, 2021
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8
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| 0571368689
| 9780571368686
| 0571368689
| 4.18
| 191,635
| Nov 05, 2021
| Oct 21, 2022
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it was amazing
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Winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize But it cut him, all the same, to see one of his own so upset Winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize But it cut him, all the same, to see one of his own so upset by the sight of what other children craved and he could not help but wonder if she’d be brave enough or able for what the world had in store. Small Things Like These is a beautifully judged novel from Claire Keegan, the sort of exquisitely crafted book one hopes creative teaching writers thrust in the hands of their MFA students as an exemplar. Set in Ireland in late 1985, it takes its inspiration from the societal scandal of the Magdelene Laundries that, almost incredibly, persisted into the 1990s. But rather than detailed historical fiction, this approaches the story through the figure of Bill Furlong, born to a young single mother, who might easily have ended up in such an institution herself had Mrs Wilson, a Protestant farmer, not taken her in. Furlong had come from nothing. Less than nothing, some might say. His mother, at the age of sixteen, had fallen pregnant while working as a domestic for Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside of town. When his mother’s trouble became known, and her people made it clear that they’d have no more to do with her, Mrs Wilson, instead of giving his mother her walking papers, told her she should stay on, and keep her work. On the morning Furlong was born, it was Mrs Wilson who had his mother taken into hospital, and had them brought home. It was the first of April, 1946, and some said the boy would turn out to be a fool. Bill is now almost 40, with 5 children, all girls, of his own, and with a coal merchant business, which he set up with a donation from Mrs Wilson. He takes great delight in his family, and his own relative comfort: Although the next day was a school day, the girls that night were allowed to stay up late. Sheila made up a jug of Ribena while Furlong stationed himself at the door of the Rayburn, toasting slabs of soda bread, comically, on the long fork, which the girls buttered and spread with Marmite or lemon curd. When he burned his black but ate it anyway, saying it was his own fault as he hadn’t been watching and had kept it too close to the flame, something caught in his throat–as though there might never again be another night like this. But he finds himself often troubled at night by the poverty around him, thinking back on his own origins: Some nights, Furlong lay there with Eileen, going over small things like these. Other times, after a day of heavy lifting or being delayed by a puncture and getting soaked out on the road, he’d come home and eat his fill and fall into bed early, then wake in the night sensing Eileen, heavy in sleep, at his side–and there he’d lie with his mind going round in circles, agitating, before finally he’d have to go down and put the kettle on, for tea. He’d stand at the window then with the cup in his hand, looking down at the streets and what he could see of the river, at the little bits and pieces of goings on: stray dogs out foraging for scraps in the bins; chipper bags and empty cans being rolled and blown roughly about by the driving wind and rain; stragglers from the pubs, stumbling home. Sometimes these stumbling men sang a little. Other times, Furlong would hear a sharp, hot whistle and laughter, which made him tense. He imagined his girls getting big and growing up, going out into that world of men. Already he’d seen men’s eyes following his girls. But some part of his mind was often tense; he could not say why. And when he has to make a delivery to the local Convent, what he finds their disturbs him and leads him to a choice - whether to turn a blind eye, or whether to take the risk of intervening, helping someone else but, in a society still dominated by the Catholic Church, perhaps putting his own families peaceful existence at risk. What most tormented him was not so much how she’d been left in the coal shed or the stance of the Mother Superior; the worst was how the girl had been handled while he was present and how he’d allowed that and had not asked about her baby–the one thing she had asked him to do–and how he had taken the money and left her there at the table with nothing before her and the breast milk leaking under the little cardigan and staining her blouse, and how he’d gone on, like a hypocrite, to Mass. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is explicitly referenced, and this has the same bittersweet sensibility and redemptive ending. Strongly recommended. ...more |
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Dec 07, 2021
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| 111975867X
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| 111975867X
| 3.98
| 60
| unknown
| Jan 13, 2021
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it was ok
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The author clearly knows his stuff and there are useful insights throughout, but this is all relatively well-trodden ground. And if this all about a tr The author clearly knows his stuff and there are useful insights throughout, but this is all relatively well-trodden ground. And if this all about a transformation of your business, then it's a shame it isn't a transformation of the decades-old business book formula - buzzwords, acronyms, 2-by-2 matrices and case studies abound, which doesn't make for a compelling read. Here this was exacerbated by the author somewhat preaching to the converted (so using a lot of jargon) and case studies that often seem more like adverts for his business, and which, as they don't use real company names, are hard to appreciate. On the positive side, it's good to see a book written post-Covid and which uses insights from our collective experience there, in particularly the speed of transformation, to illustrate its points. Interesting also that the author is a fan of Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, and of course Covid has taught us all about exponential growth. Although per Kurzweil, the Singularity is less than 25 years away, which rather makes one wonder why we humans are bothering to build businesses now. Perhaps a book best taken as a reference handbook than read cover to cover, although most of the key concepts can be found here: https://principus.si/2021/04/10/nigel... - for example: Six things that leading digital businesses consistently do very well. The first quality that they share is to have a very clear idea of what need they are serving or what problem they are solving and for whom. Digital businesses are also very quick to understand the value to the customer of what they do. They are very clear on what the benefit of their product or service is to the user. They also understand the value to their business. A digital business will quickly go from “we are creating this much value for the customer” to “here is the value to us in our business and here is how we can be valued”. Leading digital businesses focus on designing the experience. They understand that there is a direct link among value to the customer, value to the business and quality of the experience They are applying data, AI and machine learning to keep pace with changes in customer expectations and needs. They are powered by engineering. Even more important than that, their engineering capability and mindset provide them with the final quality of a leading digital business: the ability to continually refine themselves using their data and inputs. ...more |
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Nov 13, 2021
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Nov 14, 2021
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Nov 12, 2021
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| 1911284576
| 9781911284574
| 1911284576
| 3.78
| 54
| 2021
| Jul 29, 2021
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really liked it
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Shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize 2022 Manaschi is the third translation of Hamid Ismailov’s novels written in Uzbek (he has also written in Ru Shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize 2022 Manaschi is the third translation of Hamid Ismailov’s novels written in Uzbek (he has also written in Russian), each published by Tilted Axis Press. The first The Devils’ Dance (2018) and this Manaschi (2021), both translated by Donald Rayfield, are unpublished in the original, the original of Manaschi also written in 2021. The middle novel in English, Of Strangers and Bees, translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega was from a 2001 original. Together the three form a trilogy of sorts of Central Asian novels, all books very different to the usual fare for Anglophone readers and which truly do tilt the axis of world literature towards wider world cultures. This novel opens with the focal character Belsen, a radio presenter, experiencing a dream: On the last day of the third twelve-year cycle, Bekesh had a dream which might have been a hallucination. He dreamt that he had crossed many rocks and hills to see his Uncle Baisal's yurt on the highland pastures. In one gauntleted or gloved hand, his uncle was holding Tumor the hunting eagle, while in his other hand was a bowl full of fresh or sour milk. When the fierce Tumor saw Bekesh, who had not been very cautious in his approach, the creature grew alert, as if he were about to fly off to hunt; then he flapped his thickly feathered wings and crashed against the door through which Bekesh had just entered. Bekesh greeted his uncle and sat down across from him, his face pallid with anxiety. His uncle proffered the bowl he was holding and said, 'Drink!' The drink in the bowl was white, but neither fresh nor sour milk. If it was salt, it didn't taste salty; if it was snow, it hadn't melted; if it was sand, it wasn't grainy. When he was a child, in pioneer camp, Bekesh had had to down a liquid slurry called gulvatal, and this was what he was reminded of in the dream. If he had to sip it, he couldn't have; if he'd been told to chew his teeth wouldn't have coped with it. Baisal is his uncle but also his foster-father and a Manaschi, a Kyrgyz bard and shaman responsible for the recitation of the national epic poem, Manas. Shortly afterwards Bekesh learns that Baisal has died and returns to his native village of Chekbel which straddles the Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan border (with the added complication that the Tajik community in the village live inside Kyrgyzstan and vice-versa). There he inherits Baisal’s horse and his hunting eagle but also, not entirely to his comfort, his destiny as a Manaschi. The ancient stories and poems of the Manas are intertwined with the modern-day reality of Chekbel caught in border disputes between the two countries, but with the added complications of Islamic fundamentalism and the Chinese Belt and Road project, much of which seems to be repeating the history of Manas. Fascinating and highly worthwhile. One for those wanting translated novels to stretch their cultural and literary horizons. Other reviews: https://dannyreviews.com/h/Manaschi.html https://www.calvertjournal.com/articl... https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/ma... https://www.themodernnovelblog.com/20... https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog... ...more |
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Dec 19, 2021
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Dec 21, 2021
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Nov 06, 2021
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142
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| 0907383351
| 9780907383352
| 0907383351
| 3.50
| 2
| unknown
| Jul 30, 2000
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liked it
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Well-written history of St Paul's Girls' School (see a graphical precis here https://spgs.org/about/history-of-st-...). The first section on the histor Well-written history of St Paul's Girls' School (see a graphical precis here https://spgs.org/about/history-of-st-...). The first section on the history of the school is most likely to be of wider interest, and even for the interested parent/student/alumni, as it puts the school's origin in the context of wider educational developments including the Clarendon Commission, the Schools Enquiry Commission which gave rise to the Girls’ Public Day School Company and the different vision the Mercers' company had in launching their own girls' school. The second, on the High Mistresses, was interesting where their influence on the school was explored, but less so with their own personal back histories which I ended up skipping. And the third, on Paulina's rather blended two things - notable Paulina's down the years, and something of a history of life at the school - e.g. its rather unusual uniform policy (a complete lack thereof). To me this would have benefited from more structure in terms of organising by topic, such as the uniform, rather chronological. And, as a recent parent, an update on the book, now published c20 years ago, would be fascinating. ...more |
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Dec 02, 2021
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Dec 02, 2021
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Nov 06, 2021
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| 1642861081
| 9781642861082
| 1642861081
| 3.78
| 6,656
| May 15, 2020
| Mar 01, 2022
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liked it
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Originally written in Danish by Stine Pilgaard and published in 2020, with the English translation from Hunter Simpson due in early 2022 (I read an AR
Originally written in Danish by Stine Pilgaard and published in 2020, with the English translation from Hunter Simpson due in early 2022 (I read an ARC). It’s not like I’m some kind of sick stalker, I say. What are you then, Anders Agger asks. The gravel crunches beneath my feet, and I shrug my shoulders. Do you want to tell me an idea for a documentary, Anders Agger asks. He is often sought out by people eager to shed light on a particular topic. I shake my head and say that I’m just a transplant, and I’m having a hard time talking to the Velling locals. Anders Agger concedes that the flow of conversation may be a bit different, and he says that, in contrast to everyone else, he has the opportunity to edit the pauses out of his programs. That’s a cheap trick, I say, and I criticize him for giving a distorted picture of reality. To be honest, I think the people of West Jutland have a negligent relationship with communication, I say. A different one than you in any case, says Anders Agger. Even the names of the towns are terse, I say, Tim, Hee, Noe, Bur, Lem, Spjald, Tarm. Vemb, Asp, Tvis, Skjern, says Anders Agger, and he drums his fingers against the roof of the car. In Velling most people work with the wind, the earth, or animals, he says. Nature doesn’t talk back, and that can be contagious when you live here. A charming and humorous story with a slight edge, the narrator pitched somewhere between the eponymous Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and the wonderfully memorable Helen in Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, although closer to the former, as she attempts to learn how to speak to folks in West Jutland, her oversharing nature rather at odds with the tactiturn locals, wrestles with sleep deprevation due to her young son, drives a succession of driving instructors to despair, stalks the (real-life) documentary maker Anders Agger, writes an idiosnycratic advice column in the local newspaper that usually comes back to her own issues rather than her correspondents', and fights off one of the students who is trying to seduce her boyfriend, a teacher at the Højskolewhere he works and they both live (indeed some of the letters she receives seem rather too on point). A few choice highlights: Early on as our narrator demonstrates that she is no Eleanor Oliphant when it comes to quality tea, and as she gets used to the lack of privacy in the area: THE PRINCIPAL KNOCKS three times in quick succession and lets herself in. That’s how we do it out here, she says when I look up at her in surprise. Doesn’t anyone in Velling have sex, I ask, isn’t there anyone who watches porn or masturbates, you can’t get your clothes on after just three knocks. People manage, says the principal, and she takes two cups from the cabinet. She has bought a bag of black tea and a little sieve for herself, because she doesn’t care for my Pickwick. That’s a coffee drinker’s tea, she says, only one step above Medova, and no one wants to go there. The text also includes various songs, apparently typical (per the helpful translator's note) of those sung at Danish Højskole, which can also be listened to online, and although I didn't follow up on those, I suspect they would add another element to the novel. Trying to learn the conversational etiquette in the area: AT HOME IN my living room I have a cry over my conversational woes. I’m going to end up like a cat lady without any cats, I sob. My boyfriend tells me I’ve got to understand that the grocer isn’t rejecting me, he’s just adhering to the rules of a genre. You think in prose, he says, but people here are more concise. Like haiku, says my boyfriend, who compares everything to literature. Seven syllables, nature plus the present tense. He frequently employs his intellect as a shield against my big feelings, and if I’m lucky then I get a lecture thrown into the bargain. It’s not as complicated as you think, says my boyfriend, who is from a small town. Conversations in public spaces reinforce the imposed community that is a rural village. But the grocer asked me himself if we had settled in, I say. My boyfriend wags his finger and shakes his head. Wrong, he says, the grocer acknowledged that you happened to be in his store, and that you both live in the same place. The start of a typical answer from her 'Dear Letterbox' column: This isn’t supposed to be all about me, but let’s take the example of my son’s pediatric nurse, a very considerate person, who, for the record, I like. Dealng with sleep deprevation: The lullabies took on an aggressive intonation that night, tensions rose, and we passed our son back and forth between us like a trophy no one wanted to claim. Our googling grew desperate, developing from: How do you get a baby to sleep, to, long after midnight: How early can you identify a personality disorder. We spoke openly of our revenge fantasies. How, in sixteen years, we would wake our son with giant gongs whenever he had a hangover. We would go around the house playing the trumpet after he’d stayed up all night gaming and eating cheese puffs. In an instant of undiluted evil, we wished that he would one day have a healthy, happy baby who never slept a wink. When he one day came to understand what he had done, and called us to apologize, we would take a deep breath and say: Ah, those nights, but that was so many years ago. We would display our benevolence, affirm that we bore no grudge, but we would also make it clear that we expect an exceedingly comfortable old age. Frequent visits to the nursing home and souvenirs from all of his trips. A soft bed when the end is near, gentle songs, and unconditional love until we ourselves close our eyes. Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 as I found this an entertaining, if light, read. ...more |
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Nov 10, 2021
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Nov 13, 2021
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Nov 04, 2021
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| 0241391490
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| 0241391490
| 3.85
| 433
| Jun 2021
| Jun 03, 2021
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it was ok
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The concept of meritocracy has attracted a lot of attention, and a lot of opprobrium recently, ranging from the revolt of the elites that drove Brexit
The concept of meritocracy has attracted a lot of attention, and a lot of opprobrium recently, ranging from the revolt of the elites that drove Brexit/Trump/etc to books such as Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?. Indeed the very term was coined in a book, The Rise of the Meritocracy, that was intended as a dystopian satire to rival 1984 and Brave New World, one that did foreshadow much of what came to pass. As the author pointed out in 2001, when the term had been taken up by, at that time, the centre left: I have been sadly disappointed by my 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States, and most recently found a prominent place in the speeches of Mr Blair. (from https://www.theguardian.com/politics/...) Adrian Woolridge's book is, in response, a spirited defence of the idea, largely based on a history of the key role meritocracy has played in driving our modern world. He argues that the issues, such as falling social mobility, that have arisen in recently times, in many senses as Young predicted, are actually a failure in seeing things through, and allowing meritocracy to be rolled back in favour of dynasties of the elect. E.g. he points out that, ironically given his railing against the elite, Trump is actually a classic example of a family rising through meritocracy, but then staying at the top by buying their position there for future generations, including the Donald himself) The historic elements of the book, that comprise 11/12ths of its pages, are very well balanced. Although Woolridge's own biases are clear, he presents both sides of the historic arguments and evidence, and gives the reader sufficient information to form their own view. And, while he doesn't make the analogy, I would say Woolridge's key conclusion is analogous to Churchill's view of democracy, i.e. that meritocracy is the worst way of organising society, apart from all the other ones that have been tried. However, the most disappointing part of the book for me was the 'so what' i.e. Woolridge's conclusions and policy prescriptions. Firstly, after 366 at times rather laboured pages on history, his own conclusions are covered in just 33 pages. He rather assumes the reader has read books like Sandel's so while implicitly rebutting their arguments doesn't actually explain what they advocate in the first place nor present such a balanced account. Secondly, because his historical analysis was relatively balanced, it isn't particularly clear that his conclusions follow from his analysis. Ultimately his big idea seems to amount to the reintroduction of standardised testing at an early an age as possible to sift the wheat from the chaff (the abolition of the 11+ and of Grammar School's in the UK he regards as a significant historic blunder). He counterargues against those that point out that one may simply be rewarding those who won the genetic (as opposed to the parental) lottery by arguing, correctly, that effort as well as natural talent is needed to succeed - but then ones family and environmental situation can't help but play a role. He also counterargues against the question about the impact of those left behind by arguing for a much greater role for vocational qualifications, more emphasis on the value of manual work etc (very much as Michael Young argued), but then that rather weakens the case for the turbo-charged meritocracy of the cognitive elite that he has advocated. Dominic Cummings gets only two mentions, but the two sides of his personality and influence seem key to Woolridge's ideas. His advocacy of a technocratic meritocracy, particularly in the civil service, rather echoes Cummings ideas, but Woolridge's solution to the other-side of Cummings, the populist campaigner for Brexit and against the elites, is to actually roll back on democracy, particularly of the direct kind. It isn't clear Woolridge agrees with Churchill on democracy, as he rather suggests there are other better systems which have been tried from time-to-time, most notably in modern China and, Woolridge's ultimate poster child, Singapore. On the latter, Woolridge's enthusiastic endorsement of the country's leading education establishment glowingly tells us that “Almost all of Raffles’ students take advanced maths as one of their four A-level subjects; just 8% focus on the humanities”. Even as a mathematician, that grates to me as something to which to aspire as a society. Similarly praising South Korea's system and saying students there seem happier seems to rather go against the 헬조선 views of the young. That's not to say that Woolridge's approach may not have merits, but his 33 brief and one-sided pages failed to convince me of them and left me rather disappointed. 2.5 stars ...more |
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Nov 06, 2021
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Nov 09, 2021
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Nov 03, 2021
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Hardcover
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93
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| 3.75
| 28
| unknown
| Nov 01, 2021
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really liked it
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The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize is for original works of less than 2000 words, and, in the Prize's own words, the aim "is both to celebra
The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize is for original works of less than 2000 words, and, in the Prize's own words, the aim "is both to celebrate the best of new short fiction and to give winners the most visibility possible for their writing", winning writers receiving writing residencies and all shortlisted authors getting the opportunity to publish their work, both in this annual anthology, but also in associated publications - see https://desperateliterature.com/prize/ The equivalent anthology for 2019 is Eleven Stories - The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize Shortlist Selection 2019 (a shortlist which include the brilliant Shola von Reinhold who would go on to win two major prizes for their first novel Lote) and for 2020 Eleven Stories: The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize Shortlist Selection 2020 The prize also stands out for the stellar judging line up - which have included some of the UK's finest writers such as Rachel Cusk, Eley Williams, Claire-Louise Bennett. The 2021 panel is perhaps the best jury I've seen for any literary prize featuring Isabel Waidner, Derek Owusu and Ottessa Moshfegh. The full list of the 2021 shortlisted stories is as follows: A Certain Degree of Ownership | Jan Carson After Western Deep | Jack Gain An Account of the [War Heroines] of the First Independence War [by An Unnamed Soldier] | Isha Karki (RUNNER-UP) Cables | Phillippa Finkemeyer Gannin Hyem | Victoria Manifold Ohenemaa | Paige Cowan-Hall (WINNER) Raise, or How to Break Free of the Ground, or The Lakeland Dialect for ‘Slippery’ is ‘Slape’ and to Form it in the Mouth Requires an Act of Falling | Katie Hale (WINNER OF THE GEORGIA WRITERS’ HOUSE PRIZE) Section 22 | Nick Mulgrew (RUNNER-UP) Skullseeds | Samuel Glyn Spread | Campbell Andersen Two Different Decembers | Erin Scudder Isabel Waidner's take on the entries: ‘I loved reading the shortlist selection which realizes the Desperate Literature team’s ambition to reimagine and diversify contemporary writing. The stories represented are inquisitive, irreverential, critical, and fully committed to their respective creative projects. I’ve never been more hopeful for the future of fiction, and the Desperate Literature Prize plays no small part in this.' This was a diverse, and fascinating collection, with talented writers doing more with 2,000 words than most authors listed for other prizes do with 50 times that length. It feels unfair to single out one story but my favourite was the gloriously irresponsible narrator of Jan Carson's A Certain Degree of Ownership. There are three of them, or rather two and a half. Anything younger than sixteen counts as half in my book. Sean disagrees. Sean likes children. Occasionally, he raises the possibility of acquiring some. I've told him I'm not interested. I suspect Sean has no specific interest either. He sees children as something which should be done at our age. He has similar feelings about personal trainers. I make my way up the beach, squeezing the water out of my hair. I stare at them. They haven't noticed me. She is leafing through a glossy magazine, pausing between pages to tip the ash from her cigarette into the sand. He is dozing on his front, one hand draped heavily across her thigh as if afraid someone will run off with her while he sleeps. Her thigh is the fake mahogany colour of a flat pack desk. His swimming trunks are Barbie pink and printed with anthropomorphic pineapples. The pineapples dance across the hump of his backside, shaking their tiny maracas and tambourines like billy-o. The baby is wearing nothing but a white, disposable nappy. It is stuffing sand into its mouth in greedy handfuls. The sand is stuck to the snot running out of its nose. I look at the baby's face. It reminds me of an ice cream dipped in hundreds and thousands, but dirtier. I should feel sorry for the baby. I don't. The person I feel sorry for is myself. I shouldn't have to share my beach with them. Highly worthwhile ...more |
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Oct 28, 2021
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Oct 28, 2021
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Oct 27, 2021
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Paperback
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42
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| 0349700907
| 9780349700908
| B07RPNSXPP
| 3.40
| 279
| Nov 07, 2019
| Nov 07, 2019
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really liked it
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The last monk told the tongue that holding a naked sheep’s head underwater would undo it all. (from 'Filamo') I first encountered Irenosen Okojie's sto The last monk told the tongue that holding a naked sheep’s head underwater would undo it all. (from 'Filamo') I first encountered Irenosen Okojie's stories when the title story of this collection was featured in Best British Short Stories 2020 and then was drawn to read the whole collection both from the power of that story, and the conversation at the LRB the author had with my favourite author, the incomparable Isabel Waidner. Ojokie's take on Waidner's brilliant Sterling Karat Gold, "a sublime, mesmerising feat blending the surreal and political. Waidner is a ferocious, uniquely gifted talent and the world feels all the better for it" could stand for her own work as well, albeit the politics is perhaps less explicit here. In interviews Okojie has discussed the influence of her Nigerian and British heritage on her writing and, in particular, its own surreal nature: I feel it’s in my writing DNA, by that I mean, I can trace it back to those stories I was told as a kid in Benin which were often fantastical so I carried that inside me. It adds other layers and dimensions to the work. It allows me to stretch the boundaries of form and language. I’m curious about in between spaces that appear indefinable, you know those spaces where you never really fully comprehend what you’re experiencing but you’re compelled by it, you’re intrigued to keep wanting to know it. It does that for me. If I’m curious and excited then that reflects in the writing. This sense of "spaces where you never really fully comprehend what you’re experiencing but you’re compelled by it, you’re intrigued to keep wanting to know it" is very much what Okojie's writing achieves. The prose alterates between the poetically surreal - the sort of writing that always brings to my mind Invalid Litter Dept by At The Drive In, and what seem relatively conventional stories, although the fantastical is never far away - and tongues recur frequently as a motif (often separated from their body). From Cornutopia I watched a light drizzle of snow falling for a few moments, steadying my breathing, hands on the window sill, in the spilled soil brushing the foreign growing sixth finger communicating silently with the hoof. I remembered that I used to have a recurring dream about ventriloquist dolls tumbling in the air through angles of snow, as though being baptised, the sly white tufts melting into their sinister expressions. And each time they landed, they searched for different things: pink tongues curled into the white, boomerangs they’d use for their next stretch of flight, damaged hearts, which were bombs ticking in the snow, waiting to explode at the feet of children threading between pavements, in the gazes of foxes at night, rummaging through overgrown shrubs, in the blind spots of bruised women wandering the city. From Kookaburra Sweet, a story about a woman who literally turns into licorice (both surreal and also political, in terms of the objectification of black female bodies): She switched on the light. The 60-watt bulb stuttered in anticipation as she rushed to the mirror, light flickering sporadically as though arguing with itself. Chest heaving, she stared at her reflection, her breath pale magician’s smoke. Sure enough she was not herself. Or she was herself but something different. Something skewed and accidental, something tainted with the margin particles of an incense-smelling man who could mimic the curves of a sidewinder. Her bathroom had become a circus balancing on two hinges, rocking unsteadily in the ether. She took tentative steps closer to the mirror. Sure enough she had transformed into liquorice, a black, sweet liquorice woman, a liquorice sweet black woman, bendy, stretchy, adaptable in harsh conditions, resplendent and irrepressible. Reconfigured heart oozing liquid midnight, necessary external jaggedness flung out like day traps, moist-turning tongue set anticlockwise to catch soft light, soft memory, soft landing. From Daishuku, one of a number of stories with a south-London setting, both recognisable (the famous pink elephant) and yet otherwordly: There’d been four occurrences of his body bending time backwards. Nobody would believe it but it had. Here. In this instance, he was fifty, fallen through the speckled void into London, languishing in one strip of intersecting subways pulsing like the city’s varicose veins. Here. Elephant and Castle. Night time. Homeless. A howl in competition with the roundabout’s traffic lights, the screeching of tyres, impatient bodies milling about. Daishuku prised his cold lids open as if to counter the ache in numbed fingers clutching a Styrofoam cup of tea he didn’t remember, of course he didn’t. He’d inherited the tea, the frost, the oil spillage on the steps leading in, the smell of chips in hastily coned paper, the patter of footsteps streaming to and fro, the looks of contempt, the swirl of coats hiding invisible pregnancies in thin linings, the occasional drop of coins threatening to scatter the murmurings of his head, like mosquito legs in the cold. He took a sip of the tea, shoulder-length stringy hair streaked with grey dipping forward. Mouth warmed, he gulped some more, a dark trail running into his beard. He set the cup down with a shaky hand, his knuckles red, the skin around it pale and thin, a cluster of tiny brown spots edging towards his fingers. He patted himself down slowly. He was clothed in rags; the scent of sweat mixed with beer lingered. He tasted beer in his throat, beneath the bland warmth of tea. Worn plimsolls on his feet were wrapped in white plastic bags. He considered the sum of his new beginning. Its parts separated in the dank subway. He considered the bleakness of it, crawling gently towards stained chip paper refashioned into greasy blueprints. He began to chant, ‘Daishuku.’ A name. A memory on his tongue. He poked coins in the silver bowl before him. A fleeting image appeared: the grotesque shopping mall’s pink elephant drinking oil from the subway steps before skidding on the ice, breaking its neck to interrupt the overwhelming feeling of loneliness. Fascinating ...more |
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Nov 04, 2021
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ebook
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134
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| 006309357X
| 9780063093577
| 006309357X
| 4.01
| 16,092
| Dec 07, 2021
| Dec 07, 2021
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liked it
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Everything about Jejudo is different from the mainland, starting from the sea. It is light turquoise near a sandy beach, and deepens to emerald-green
Everything about Jejudo is different from the mainland, starting from the sea. It is light turquoise near a sandy beach, and deepens to emerald-green and sapphire-blue farther from the shore. In some places where the black volcanic rock dashes off to a sudden bluff, the indigo waves look like they’re reflecting the night sky even when it’s sunny and bright. In midwinter the camellia trees with their glossy green leaves were in full bloom, and when the wind blew, their red flowers fell on the black cliffs or tumbled into the sea. The air smelled of salt and ripe tangerines. Hesoon used to say that Jejudo is the most beautiful place in the world. I haven’t seen much of the world to truly know, but she may have been right. Beasts of a Little Land, set in Korea from 1917-1965 is both a historical novel (of the Japanese occupation of Korea and the independence movement)combined with a love story, but one where neither the tides of history nor love run smoothly, both frequently diverted by tragedy and division. I say 'love story', but this would better be described as a story of Inyeon (인연), or more specifically first-love Inyeon 첫사랑과의 인연, a concept that denotes a strong life-long connection between two people, here Jade and JungHo (정호), both born in the latter half of the first decade of the 20th century. Their first connection is coincidental and one that the characters themselves don't realise even when a clue emerges decades later. The hanja in JungHo's name mean Righteous Tiger, and Korean tigers (한국 호랑이) are a key motif through the novel. As the story opens in 1917, a Japanese party in the Korean mountains are being (deliberately we discover later) astray by Baek, a travelling silk merchant who they have press-ganged as a guide. At the same time a hunter Nam is tracking what he thinks is a leopard, only to find it is a young tiger, which he doesn't shoot, remembering his father's advice, despite his own reputation for having killed a huge beast, that one only kills a tiger to protect one's own life. Nam has gone too far from home and into the snow in his hunt, and collapses from exhaustion, but is discovered by the Japanese party, who first save him, with heat, food and drink, but then rely on his skills to save them and guide them back down the mountain. En-route they encounter a much larger tiger, but Nam scares it away, saving both the men and the animal from harming each other. On arrival back in the town, a Japanese major executes Baek for his incompetence, while a captain gives Nam the gift of a silver cigarette case. In another strand of the story, we discover that Baek traded silk with Silver, a courtesan in Pyongyang. But secretly Silver also raises funds for the independence movement, which Baek then traffics back to them. Learning that Nam's family buried Baek, Silver sends them a gift of a silver ring. Meanwhile, Jade, a young girl is sold to Silver as an apprentice. A few years later, Jade is sent to live with another courtesan in Seoul and at the same time Nam's son, Jung-ho, arrives in the city from the countryside, making his living as leader of a gang of beggars, his two prized possessions, which he keeps for the rest of his life, the ring and the cigarette case, both inherited from his late father. And there the two meet for the first time. Rather neatly the Inyeon concept enables what otherwise might be seen as contrived plot coincidences to become a key part of the book's themes. I mentioned the connection between Jade and Jung-ho, but there are several such connections - almost 30 years later Jung-ho's life is spared when the Japanese captain, now much more senior, recognises the cigarette case. And yet, as so often in this novel, tragedy follows redemption, and post-war the same cases leads to him being condemned as a collaborator, despite his war heroics in the resistance. Some favourite quotes: The island paradise of Jeju-do, where Jade finishes the novel in a first-person postscript - this quote is where she first heard of it, from her aunt's maid: Jade begged their maid Hesoon to tell them stories of her childhood in Jejudo, the magical southern island where there were trees without any branches and wild horses running freely under a snowcapped mountain. Hesoon said her mother and her four sisters were all seawomen who dove in the water to harvest abalones, holding their breath for two minutes at a time. The rather fractured nature of the resistance (which was to carry forward into post-independence factionalism): MYUNGBO RETURNED HOME LATE that week after meeting with his comrades in the Coalition. It tied together groups from all points of the political spectrum under the one banner of independence: the Anarchists, the Communists, the Nationalists, the Christians, the Buddhists, and the Cheondoists. He was one of the senior leaders of the Communists, but among their ranks there were those who saw the struggle as primarily between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the rich and the poor, and not between Japan and Korea, as MyungBo had always believed. The Anarchist credo was that any social order was destructive and oppressive. The Nationalists were the conservatives and some of them put more faith in America than in Korea itself. They also opposed the Communists almost as often as they fought the Japanese. Then some of the Christians were Pacifists, although a few of them had gladly assassinated Japanese generals and governors before putting a gun to their own heads. All the groups believed that Japan would send every Korean man to the mines and every Korean woman to the military brothels rather than admit defeat; their opinions diverged on what they could do to implode Japan from within before that point. The Andong Kim family (from which my mother-in-law originates): Where is your family from?” “I was born in Seoul, but my family is originally from Andong.” “You mean you’re an Andong-Kim?” SungSoo blurted out, and HanChol gave a slight bow of his head. His intuition about the kid being exceptional might prove true, after all. He surely came from an impoverished cadet branch, but he still belonged to one of the most important families in the country—one that even kings have feared over the centuries. 3.5 stars - historical love-stories aren't really my thing, so 3 stars for me, but recommended more generally to fans of the genre. ...more |
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Oct 24, 2021
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Oct 25, 2021
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98
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| 0231160666
| 9780231160667
| 0231160666
| 3.86
| 71
| 1977
| Jul 03, 2012
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really liked it
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Yes. Time—through which silkworm larvae spin lovely raw silk out of mulberry leaves. Time—the formlessness that transforms floating dust and other obj
Yes. Time—through which silkworm larvae spin lovely raw silk out of mulberry leaves. Time—the formlessness that transforms floating dust and other objects the way a blotter soaks up ink. You can’t see it—you can only feel it. Time exists in the chill you feel when you grope for a light switch when it starts to get dark. It’s there in the whiff from the armpit of the man sitting across from you in the tearoom when he lifts his cup of lukewarm liquid after wearing you out with his chatter. The first disease whose name you can remember, the pleasant sensation you get from a slight fever, the secret pleasure you take from doing something bad, the first time you made love, the times you’ve kissed someone—they all sink into the swamp of time and dissolve, finally to reappear, skillfully woven back together, each with its own sound, color, tint. Thus rewoven, they look so different from how they first appeared. Novelist 오정희 was born in 1947. Her first collection 불의 강 (River of Fire) was published in 1977 including her debut story 왕구점 여인 translated here as The Toyshop Woman, which was begun when she was at high school and won of the 1968 중앙일보 annual award for aspiring writers. She went on to win both of the major South Korean literary awards, the 이상문학상 수상 in 1979 for 저녁의 게임 (‘Evening Game’) and the 동인문학상 수상 in 1982 for 동경 (translated as ‘Bronze Mirror’). This selection of her stories, chosen by and translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (who have done so much to bring Korean literature to the English speaking world), includes 4 of the 12 stories from 불의 강, three stories from the 1980s and two from the 1990s. It has to be acknowledged up front that this isn’t really intended to be a “best of” collection from the author as several stories had been included in previous anthologies translated by the Fulton and they largely avoid duplication in this one, with only one of the 9 stories previously published in English in an academic journal. For example each of the key award winning stories were previously published and absent here, The Bronze Mirror in In Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction, and Evening Game In Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers. See https://londonkoreanlinks.net/authors... Nevertheless the collection adds to the body of the author’s work and gives a good overview of her development across her career particularly when read alongside the translator’s afterword which puts the work in context. For example there is the contrast from the intensely focused stories from the first collection, all told by an unnamed first person narrator, to the broader canvas of the later stories, such as Morning Star which features a reunion of college friends over a decade later, switching limited third person perspectives to show each characters situation as well as their differing perspectives of each other. Although throughout there is a psychological depth to the stories which aren’t afraid to explore the darker aspects of life. The time spans of the stories also show the development of Korea over the period, from the legacy of the Korean War to the pro-democracy protests of the 1980s. “My parents always told us to avoid big crowds. I’ve been wondering about that. You think there’s a fear of massacres somewhere in our collective unconscious? Or a large-scale loss of life—maybe that’s a better way to put it. Think about all we’ve experienced—the wars and such, situations nobody should have to go through—just because we were defenseless. And I’m not just talking past tense. One of these days we could all end up dead in a nuclear war.” The Fultons do their usual excellent job, my usual bugbear of their preferred Romanization aside, although I did need a dictionary for a few folksy Americanisms (e.g. “taffy”? - still not quite sure what that translates as in English English). A sample passage of their prose: After the pharmacist had left, Kwanhŭi realized he was drained. Lowering the bamboo blinds over the door, he pulled two chairs together and lay down. The metal chairs supported his back, yet he felt he was sinking endlessly into the ground. The fan had to work at capacity to circulate the turbid air, which was laden with the odors of camphor, naphthalene, the wild-sesame oil that gave wooden vessels a shine, the patina Kwanhŭi could manufacture by applying sulfur to an object. The cedar clothes chests, the large wooden basins, the mortars, the candlesticks appropriately rusty for their vintage, the incense burners, the dining trays, all these antiques sat weighted down with a thousand years of time. Kwanhŭi closed his eyes and breathed deeply, wishing everything would fade. But there remained his bewilderment, along with an elusive, stifling sensation, as if he’d become a spirit fated to wander underground, and finally the words whispered by the pharmacist, his body reduced to a diseased shell—My days are numbered. Vibrant, simmering sounds from outside assailed his ears—the whir of tires against pavement, the blaring of horns, the footsteps of passersby. Tony of Tony’s Reading List, the blogosphere’s leading reviewer of K-Lit gives his verdict here: https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.co... 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 for appreciation of the author’s and translators’ importance. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 19, 2021
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Oct 21, 2021
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Oct 19, 2021
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Hardcover
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99
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| 0811224309
| 9780811224307
| 0811224309
| 3.80
| 1,355
| Sep 03, 2007
| Nov 02, 2021
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really liked it
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Cremation is Valerie Miles' translation of Rafael Chirbes 2007 novel Crematorio. In 2019 a poll of critics in El Pais ranked this 13th in a list of th Cremation is Valerie Miles' translation of Rafael Chirbes 2007 novel Crematorio. In 2019 a poll of critics in El Pais ranked this 13th in a list of the best books of the 21st century to date - a list topped by 2666 and Austerlitz, and featuring novels by Emmanuel Carrère, Javier Marias, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Javier Cercas amongst others. I had previously read the author's On The Edge, in Margaret Jull Costa's translation. This was published in 2013 in Spanish, and 2016 in English, and set in the post-financial crisis Spain of 2010, and the aftermath of the bursting of the money-fuelled construction boom. The two novels make fascinating companions. Cremation takes us into the world of pre-financial crisis Spain, when the boom was at its peak. Crucially, it was finished in February 2007 and published that year (although not published in English until 2021); the novel highlights the hubris of the age, and hints at the likely fall from grace to come, but this was not written with hindsight. It is set in a coastal town, Misent, ficticious but based on the Valencian resorts of Dénia or Xàbia. The latter (Jávea in Spanish) is coincidentally where, in the immediate post-Franco early 1980s, I experienced my first Spanish beach holiday in the early stages of the mass tourism movement. But by 2007, Misent is a riot of concrete and construction Misent, a place far removed from any. thing a person truly has to do in life. Like an insipid theme park, a stupid place for a vacation. There's quality of life, but only relatively. She and Juan decided to stay in Misent after they married, hoping to find that quality of life—when Federico Brouard first settled in Misent, he too talked up the quality of life there (now he complains bitterly), the sea, the sky, the landscape and climate, the gardens in bloom all year round, flora to the heart's content, Brouard had said—but any time you have to do some-thing out of the ordinary, grab a train or a flight, go somewhere else, the whole experience plummets: it's hard to get out of Misent with the constant traffic jams on the roads that lead in and out; there's no train, there's not even a good bus system, uncontrolled development is crushing the city, half-built structures in use all over the place, construction sites everywhere, it was built for a population only half its size off-season and a fourth of its size in summer. Juan says you have to resign yourself to it, because heaven and hell are promiscuous and always travel in the same coach. What else can you do, he says, though also: Theologians should be analyzing the city, not urban planners. It deserves a postmodern reading of Revelations, of the Divine Comedy. Juan says: Misent's recent history works like the parody of a voyage, except backward: it starts in paradise and ends in hell. And at the heart of this activity, and the novel, is Rubén Bertomeu, an idealistic architect, cultured in his younger days, now in his early 70s and a ruthless building magnate. He likes to tell other that I’m a bricklayer whose head happens to be a little more organised than the others’, I’m all about building, the rest of it is only what I need to do to make it happen, but this 'rest' includes not only bribes for planning officials and forceful persuasion of those who won't sell up, but also involvement in the local drug trade. As the novel opens his younger brother, Matías, an idealist to Rubén's pragmatist, has just died after a long illness, causing those associated with him to reflect on his and their lives. Each of the novel's 13 chapters are told in a single paragraph from the point-of-view (at times 3rd and others 1st person) of different members of the extended family and business: Rubén's second wife Mónica, over 40 years his junior; his daughter from his first marriage Silvia, older than Mónica with two teenage children of her own, Miriam and Felix, and who works as an art restorer; Federico Brouard, an author of novels, a childhood friend of Rubén, but now estranged from him after a dispute over Federico's land; Juan, Silvia's husband, a literary professor who is writing a biography of Brouard; Ramón Collado, formerly Rubén's right-hand man and fixer and Yuri a Russian gangster, both of these men in love with the same woman, a prostitute who is the lover of a more senior Russian mobster, Triain. It's a rich cast of characters with some potentially juicy sub-plots, and in Spain the book was also adapted into a hit TV series (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crema...). But the novel doesn't go in the direction of plot and drama but rather its strength lies in its prose, so hectic and yet dense that I found myself needing to pause for breath at the end of each chapter and often in-between. Indeed, looking back on my review of On The Edge (translated by Margaret Jull Costa), the same comment I made then would apply here: "It all makes for an effectively powerful but somewhat unpleasant read. The stream-of-thoughts style of the novel means it is best read in long sittings, but the subject matter and indeed length (400 pages) makes that difficult." One criticism here might be that the voices of the family members (less so Collado, Yuri and Mónica) can sound somewhat similar, but then they do stem from the same family line, and the novel is fascinating in it juxtaposition of culture and capitalism, Silvia scorning the source of Rubén's money but happy to use it to live a lifestyle rather beyond an academic art restorer and lecturer. Although the novel felt more grounded and subtle that On The Edge which at times I felt went beyond realism into exaggeration and polemic. I also commented on On The Edge that "not a comment I often make on books, [it] perhaps overstayed its welcome" and my tolerance for long novels has reduced significantly since Overall: I certainly wouldn't rate this as highly as the El Pais critics, but another fascinating work by Chirbes. 3.5 stars rounded to 4. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 23, 2021
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Nov 28, 2021
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Oct 16, 2021
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Paperback
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138
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| 3.60
| 10,871
| 1994
| May 01, 1995
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liked it
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The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 ws awarded to the Abdulrazak Gurnah, “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of co
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 ws awarded to the Abdulrazak Gurnah, “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. In their biobibliography (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lit...) the Nobel Committee explained that: Gurnah’s fourth novel, Paradise (1994), his breakthrough as a writer, evolved from a research trip to East Africa around 1990. The novel has obvious reference to Joseph Conrad in its portrayal of the innocent young hero Yusuf’s journey to the heart of darkness. But it is also a coming of age account and a sad love story in which different worlds and belief systems collide. We are given a retelling of the Quran’s story of Joseph, against the background of a violent and detailed description of the colonisation of East Africa in the late 19th century. In a reversal of the Quran story’s optimistic ending, where Joseph is rewarded for the strength of his faith, Gurnah’s Yusuf feels forced to abandon Amina, the woman he loves, to join the German army he had previously despised. It is characteristic of Gurnah to frustrate the reader’s expectations of a happy ending, or an ending conforming to genre. Which rather sums the novel up, so little need to add any comments of my own, although I found the Azīz figure (Potiphar in the Biblical account) - here Uncle Aziz -the strongest character and I would have liked to have seen more focus of him and less on the rather hapless Yusuf: His Uncle Aziz came to visit him at that time. His visits were brief and far between, usually accompanied by a visits were of travellers and porters and musicians. He stopped crowd with them on the long journeys he made from the ocean to the mountains, to the lakes and forests, and across the dry piains and the bare rocky hills of the interior. His expeditions were often accompanied by drums and tamburis and horns and siwa, and when his train marched into town animals stampeded and evacuated themselves, and children ran Out of control. Uncle Aziz gave off a strange and unusual odour, a mixture of hide and perfume, and gums and spices, and another less definable smell which made Yusuf think of danger. His habitual dress was a thin, flowing kanzu of fine cotton and a small crocheted cap pushed back on his head. With his refined airs and his polite, impassive manner, he looked more like a man on a late afternoon stroll or a worshipper on the way to evening prayers than a merchant who had picked his way past bushes of thorn and nests of vipers spitting poison. Even in the heat of arrival, amid the chaos and disorder of tumbled packs, surrounded by tired and noisy porters, and watchful, sharp-clawed traders, Uncle Aziz managed to look calm and at ease. On this visit he had come alone. (Oddly even when the story directly follows the Quran version, with the plot hinging on a shirt being ripped from behind, as the characters directly acknowledge, Azīz is referred to as the Pharaoh) As for the Nobel Prize? Well my twin Gumble's Yard, who had read this and one other novel by Gurnah pre the Nobel and is now reading most of his novels commented on reading one of them that this was "a Prize I am increasingly realising feels justified less by his often-flawed individual novels than by their collective power and the intelligence, insight and importance of their themes and ideas" (and I'd add Gurnah's contribution to the study of post-colonial literature). This was also shortlisted for the 1994 Booker, one of the Prize's oddest shortlists, referred to at the time as the 'Mogadon Booker' and dull but well-written at the sentence level and worthy is perhaps the best description for this one. ...more |
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Oct 22, 2021
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Oct 23, 2021
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Oct 07, 2021
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122
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| 1529083222
| 9781529083224
| 1529083222
| 3.63
| 5,989
| Nov 11, 2021
| Nov 11, 2021
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liked it
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How much is the fine, anyway, though however much it is she can’t afford it and she’d rather have an untreated fracture than risk prison, even more st
How much is the fine, anyway, though however much it is she can’t afford it and she’d rather have an untreated fracture than risk prison, even more stupid to end up in prison because you couldn’t bear being locked up at home than to go get yourself into trouble on the fells when you should know better. Sarah Moss's The Fell is the first novel I have read that accurately and piercingly captures the lived experience of Autumn 2021 in England and the second lockdown, emphasising both the alterity of the world in which we found ourselves living, and its banal nature: Hope rises for a moment, that he can maybe at least make a toastie and put some music on, not that he can’t do those things when she’s around but he could do them better, more peacefully, if she’s out, though of course she can’t be out, not even for a walk, not for another six days, seven hours and twenty minutes. Give or take. The fourteen days, he heard her ask on the phone, what time does it end, is it noon or midnight or from when I last saw my colleague, which would have been about five o’clock on Thursday? Stylistically, I enjoyed the writing which, if not quite stream of consciousness, focuses on the characters' thoughts more than their actions. As with Ghost Wall this is a commendably brief novel, although as with that book it feels this could have been slimmer still, with the second half rather lacking the impact of the first, which perhaps points to one issue I had personally: that the mountain rescue story itself didn't really grab me. And in part this may be because the characters in the novel felt like types more than people (and they know it: she’s becoming a grumpy old woman, that’s what, she’s even boring herself, it’s going to be avocados she’s complaining about next). Overall 3.5 stars ...more |
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Oct 08, 2021
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62
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Dec 30, 2021
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Dec 28, 2021
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33
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really liked it
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Dec 31, 2021
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Dec 26, 2021
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14
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| 4.16
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it was amazing
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Dec 18, 2021
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Dec 12, 2021
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157
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| 3.86
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it was ok
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Dec 12, 2021
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Dec 11, 2021
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77
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really liked it
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Dec 24, 2021
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Dec 08, 2021
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46
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really liked it
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Dec 16, 2021
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Dec 03, 2021
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97
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| 3.80
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really liked it
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Dec 10, 2021
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Nov 24, 2021
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8
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Dec 07, 2021
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Nov 19, 2021
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173
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| 3.98
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it was ok
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Nov 14, 2021
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Nov 12, 2021
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70
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really liked it
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Dec 21, 2021
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Nov 06, 2021
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142
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Nov 06, 2021
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101
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Nov 13, 2021
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Nov 04, 2021
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156
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it was ok
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Nov 09, 2021
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Nov 03, 2021
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93
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Oct 28, 2021
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Oct 27, 2021
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42
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Nov 04, 2021
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Oct 22, 2021
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134
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Oct 25, 2021
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Oct 22, 2021
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98
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| 3.86
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Oct 21, 2021
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Oct 19, 2021
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99
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Nov 28, 2021
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Oct 16, 2021
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138
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Oct 23, 2021
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Oct 07, 2021
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122
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Oct 08, 2021
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Oct 07, 2021
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