Month: June 2014

Near to the wild heart by Clarice Lispector

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Near to the wild heart

Near to the wild heart by Clarice Lispector

Brazilian fiction

Original Title –  Perto do coração selvagem

Translator – Alison Entrekin

Source – personnel copy

 

He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man via goodreads also inspired the title for this book .

Well it’s nearly here the world cup in Brazil ,so for the next couple of post I’ll be reviewing a couple of Brazilian ,this the first is a cornerstone of Brazilian literature from the most well-known writer of her generation Clarrice Lispector .I had long wanted to read Lispector but inertially when I started blogging ,there wasn’t any in my library system ,then New directions brought out this and four others in us and in Uk on import but then heard Penguin was doing a uk version  ,that I am reading in the Uk penguin Editions .Clarice Lispector was born in Russia and with her family escaped the aftermath of world war one ,the family settled in Brazil .She was studying and working as a journalist on the side when she wrote this book her debut novel .It was translated once before but this is the latest translation from 2012 .

“Daddy , what shall I do ?”

“I already told you : go play and leave me be !”

“But I’ve played ,I swear ”

Her father laughed

“But there’s no end to playing …”

“Yes there is >”

“Make up another game ”

I thought this conversation when I was looking after my nieces just yesterday , kids hey !

 

So near to the wild heart is a modernist piece of fiction (I know some people cringe at that word , but for me it always seem to me something challenging or innovative ) .The book is the story of Joana ,her life is told in snippets in the stream of consciousness style ,from her as a youngster, whom is  beguiled with her father telling herself poems about him ,through growing up temper tantrums ,her marriage to a man with a wandering eye , the book has an episodic feel at times as we jump in and out of Joana’s life the good ,the bad .She is called a strange creature by family members and through her thoughts and emotions  as we read them comes across a  a women ill at ease and very complexed .

The dense ,dark night was cut down the middle split into two black blocks of sleep .Where was she ? Between the piece s, looking at them (the one she had already slept and the one had yet to sleep ) isolated in the timeless and spaceless in an empty gap .This stretch would be subtracted from her years of life .

I felt this could have easily come from Marquez the feel of her words remind me of his descriptions and magic realism .

Now this just knocked me back ,I still can’t believe she was 23 when she wrote this book ,especially in the passages when Joana is older  married .Her writing mixes, the best of European modernism but with a shot of Latin american Heat and Humidity at times ,its hard to describe yes of course  its stream of consciousness but that is banded about so much but the book for me  evokes ,James Joyce ,at times the early Joana  parts of her life reminds me of Stephen Dedalus in a portrait of artist as a young man  describing his childhood ,but later on I felt more of Virginia Woolf, Lispector does a similar thing to Woolf in books like Miss Dalloway when she captures Joana disappoint in her marriage and husband .I choose this of the two Lispector books my wife brought me the other being Hour of the star ,but now I feel maybe I want to read her books in order to she her development as a writer .A must for fans of a strong female voice ,Modernism and wanting during the world cup to discover a bit about Brazil and its culture .

Have you read Lispector ?

#bookaday 9 A film tie in book

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I generally don’t buy many film tie in covers having usually tried to have read any book I really love well before a film is made now the first choice I had for this wasn’t a tie in version but I was sent it when film was due out tarantula by Thierry Jonquet that became the film the skin I live in and is one of the most hit post on this blog with 2000 plus views .Instead I went for this bbc series tie in from last year I missed series working over Christmas but brought the book to read before it made it too netflix and is one of three books by Zola I hope to read soon .Do you but film tie-in coves ?

#bookaday 8 books you have more than one copy

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I don’t as a whole double up on books or so on ,my budget for books is tight so it has to be a bargain like these two I had these two I had the old orange penguins of each .The Waugh I brought as most of the waughs I have are these covers so want to complete the set at some point ,The Steinbeck I just loved the cover of this tortilla flats so it was 20p added to pile .I do like to try new translations when they appear and have thought of doing comparison post from one translation to other so I may double books up more but they be different actually .Why if you have various copies do you get them ?

#bookaday 7 a book you forgot you had

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Well I decide for today just go to my shelves and have a good look around and the first I saw and went oh yeah I brought that and haven’t read it yet .It was this Herman Hesse short story collection which I picked up a few years ago with German lit month in mind ,but also to remind folks Hesse had written other things apart from Steppenwolf ,Siddhartha and Glass bead game .I remember I stuck it to back of the shelves as the cover as you see is rather surreal ,but finding it this morning I think I will keep it now in mind for this years German lit month
What book had you forgotten ?

#bookaday day 6 the one you always give as a gift

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Stones in a landslide I reviewed here was the second book by Peirene and still after all this time is one I like to give to people and also gift people when I have chance , a story of a simple girl Conxa who’s life in the Pyrenees is change when she goes to work for her aunt in another village .Village life so different yet in distance she travelled so little .what is you favourite book to give to people ?

Never any end to Paris by Enrique Vila Matas

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Never any end to Paris

Never any end to Paris by Enrique Vila Matas

Spanish fiction

Original title – París no se acaba nunca

Translator – Anne McLean

Source – Review copy

Gil: Would you read it?
Ernest Hemingway: Your novel?
Gil: Yeah, it’s about 400 pages long, and I’m just looking for an opinion.
Ernest Hemingway: My opinion is I hate it.
Gil: Well you haven’t even read it yet.
Ernest Hemingway: If it’s bad, I’ll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it’s good, I’ll be envious and hate all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.

From Midnight in Paris via Imdb 

I have reviewed a book by Enrique Vila Matas on the blog before and that is one of my favourite from my time blogging so it was with both hope and fear I approached this one ,it came out a couple of years ago in the US ,but today sees the UK version come out .So I rather gave away a bit what the book is about with the Midnioght in Paris quote .

I went to Paris in the mid seventies and there I was very poor and very Unhappy .I would like to say that I was happy like Hemingway ,but then I would go back to being the poor young man ,handsome and stupid , who fooled himself on a daily basis and believed he’d been very lucky to be able to live in that filthy Garret that Maguerite Duras rented him

Dreams and different times sometimes aren’t as good at they seem or are they !

Well like Dubliners which is the other book under review on the blog here it is a book about Literature and writing ,this time it is a man called Enrique Vila Matas (that may or may not be the writer ) whom has read Hemingway’s moveable feast and has been inspired to go to Paris and rent a Garrett from great French writer Marguerite Duras and try to be a writer ,to try improve as a writer ,he has already had one book published and is working on the second whilst learning about writing in Paris ,the second book The lettered assain is an actual book (more about that later ) So has Paris swallowed Enrique or has he discovered his muse whilst trying to be Satre or Heminway in seventies france ? well you have to try to find out .

I think I unconsciously reflected this dichotomy between Rimbaud and Mallarme in The  lettered assassin ,where I invented two diametrically opposed writers .

Oooh  so want see this one in English either that or learn enough Spanish

Now I was going to leave this until Spanish lit month but no its an early taster and it is just because I want to shout buy this book ,although if I know the folk that read this blog all the time a book about trying to be a writer in Paris is going to be up everyone’s street ,this is a classic struggle of the writer taking a small room or garret and then trying to put out that masterpiece or go mad from Maugham Philip trying to be an artist in Of human bondage ,through Knut Hamsun Hunger ,Borges put himself in his  story Borges and I like Vila Matas has here ,then recently Bolano where every one of his characters is  a part or to use that Borges style a reflection of him Bolano and yes this Enrique Vila Matas in this book is reflection of himself .He also evokes that time of post 1968 France a sort of country searching for itself slightly which is something France did pre Mitterrand.Oh and it would be a great chance to have translated the Lettered assassin and bring it out the same time as this me for one would have brought it after this as it is in some ways a long advert for that book good or bad you just want to find out more about it after you put this one down .The cover is a great Homage to a Hemingway cover for farewell to arms ,thanks knew when this arrived it remind me of something ,rob of robaroundbooks pointed it out

Have you a favourite book about writing and writers ?

#Bookaday 5 book(S) that don’t belong to me

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These are a collection of Charles Dickens novels I had seen since my early teens when my parents both remarried ,these were owned by first my step grandfather whom carried one of these in his pocket every day of his working life ,then my dad and my step mum and latterly I borrowed these ,the date from the 1930’s and you can tell how much my step grandfather loved them and Dickens words there is a feeling these are books that have been read but also cared for .They also mean one day I will be doing a huge reading of Dickens ,as i have read most of these in my teens on my holidays to my dad and stepmum  in Belfast and then Dromore ,or when we went to Donegal

What is your book that dosen’t belong to you ?

#Bookaday 4 Least favourite book by a favourite writer

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The Insufferable Gaucho

Well it isn’t his best book as many of you know from following my blog .I have reviewed a number of books by Roberto Bolano four so far on the blog and I had also read 2666 and Savage detectives just about the time I started blogging (five years later this month ) .Now don’t get me wrong The Insufferable Gaucho isn’t a bad book it has all the Traits of Bolano ,Poets struggling ,Borges inspired prose it just didn’t  bring anything new to the Bolano Cannon to me ,this is also the last but two book from him due in english with A little Lumpen Novelita and Diorama due out (Hope this is it ,I hate it when they drag the barrel of a writers past to out out every piece ever written .)

Spanish Lit links

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I promised a few links for Spanish lit month –

El Mundo the best 25 books from Spanish 1989 (thanks Arcadia books for link their Blind sunflowers is on the List ,plus two books by Juan Marse that Maclehose is publishing soon .

Conversational reads has another list of 20 great books from Spanish .

Scauffi has a longer list here in Spanish a lot of Marquez on this one

The telegraph has ten best Latin american novel here ,Not all Spanish but mostly

Flavourwire has another list with out  Marquez of best Latin American fiction

and there is a few more links and lots of Spanish fiction on my co-host Richards Blog

You can also find many books here from Spain ,Chile ,Argentina and many others in my books read section .

#bookaday 3 one with a blue cover

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Well two Blue cover these exquisite hardbacks are both from Twisted spoon a small Czech press that translates Mittel European fiction   into english .I’ve reviewed a number of there books on the blog .These are both due on the blog laater this year A bouet by Karel Jaromir Erben is a collection of Czech fairy tales ,and the legs of Izolda Morgan by Bruno Jasienski a Polish futurist writer .What is your favourite Blue cover ?

The Hanged man of Saint Phoilen By Georges Simenon

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the hanged man of Saint Pholien

The Hanged Man of Saint Pholien by Georges Simenon

Belgian Crime fiction

Orginal title –  Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien

Translator – Linda Coverdale

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast

Macbeth after he killed the King and felt Guilt 

Well another stage on the trip through the new translation of the Maigret series ,this is the third in the series which is coming out in order of release .So 72 after this to review (well I’ve read number four and part way into number five) .

The man was shabby and looked for all the world like one of the chronically unemployed found in every big city, always on the lookout for an opportunity. Except that he was pulling thousand-franc notes from his pocket and counting them, after which he wrapped them in grey paper, tied the package with string and addressed it. At least thirty notes, 30,000 Belgian francs! Maigret had frowned at that, and when the unknown man left after paying for his coffee, the inspector had followed him to the nearest post office.

What made Maigret follow the man in the first place

Now this focus on Maigret following his nose ,he sees a man of disheveled  appearance ,whilst working in Brussels .He observes this man with a very large amount of money for his appearance .So the Inspector being the inspector follows the man ,we see him having his case change ,Maigret sharing the room next to him and then next day the man commits suicide .This leads him to a case full of bloody clothes after some investigation he finds the mans name is Lecoq initially he was thought to be Jeunet but when Maigret discovers his real name we start to see what brought this man to this point it was an event ten years earlier that involved Lecoq ,Van Damme (now a business man ) and a few others that where students at the time .a secret club they where in lead to them trying a killing this is what drove the man to suicide after they had killed a man ten years earlier and left him hung in a church .

Maigret found a seedy-looking hotel at 18, Rue de la Roquette, right where it joins Rue de Lappe, with its accordion-band dance halls and squalid housing. That stretch of Roquette is a good fifty metres from Place de la Bastille. Every ground floor hosts a bistro, every house a hotel frequented by drifters, immigrants, tarts and the chronically unemployed.

The hotel was Jeunet /lecoq ended up living ,

Now this isn’t really a straight forward crime novel ,no its more a dissection of a man’s life after he has died .When Jeunet as he thought at the time committed  Suicide had caught the inspectors eye and had just decide to follow which lead to the mans earlier history as he tried to find out why this guy had all that money and what had driven him to kill himself .That then lead to the second case the killing of the man ten years earlier .I enjoyed this one it was maybe to compact for the complex nature of the plot so although you got the crime in full it maybe felt you were blinkered at times as some of the minor characters were quite one-dimensional .So next time I will bring you a tale on the Canal and Maigret .

#BOOKADAY DAY 2 Best Bargain

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Folio

Now my best bargains have been from my Local book sale are these 50p Folio  society books, yes you read right 50p for each one ,I have a few more these were at hand they are Maupassant selected stories ,Chekhov A life in letters ,Goodbye to all this by Robert graves and Father and son by Turgenev  .Now these aren’t the only one I have brought from there I have three or four more including a wonderfully colourful Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron.These are really treasured as I couldn’t afford them full price so was so happy to get these few .

Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov

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the dead lake

Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov

Uzbekistan fiction

Orginal Title – вундеркинд Ержан

Translator – Andrew Broomfield

Source – Review Copy

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan from Good reads

 

I don’t need to tell you how much I look forward to the three books and theme every year from Peirene Press ,so here we are in the year of coming to Age it is the first of three book this year ,written by Uzbek Journalist ,poet and Writer .He escaped in 1994 from Uzbekistan to the Uk .He has since worked for the World service and he has published a number of book which have been translated into various European languages .His books are banned in his Homeland .

Anyway , I was standing at one end of the carriage , gazing out – for the fourth day already – at the deary, monotonous steppe ,when a ten or twelve-year-old boy appeared at the other end .He held a violin and suddenly started playing with such incredible dexiterity and panache that at once all the compartments doors slid open and passengers dowsy faces appeared .

Is it a young boy thou ?

The Dead lake (a title for UK edition the Russian version is called prodigy Erjan ,But I prefer our title because it captures what the book is about Yerzhan the main character of the book enters the Dead lake and his life is forever frozen by the one short act .For this is the soviet hinterland and the pollution caused by the Nuclear industry in the Kazak  countryside .Yerzhan is a musician that plays the Folk violin ,he is in love with his neighbour’s daughter .So we see what happens when a boy on the Cusp of manhood has it whipped away from him after swimming in  the dead lake and stays the Boy we meet him before during and after this when as a man in his mid twenties he hasn’t aged a day and is now a man in a boy’s body .

The water was dark Blue , its own blueness added to the blueness of the sky ,Yerzhan saw his own reflection as a vague blob .His eyes had grown tired from uninterrupted galloping ,with nothing but yellow steppe flowing into them .

The first sight of  The dead Lake .

Now of course ,I read the review in the guardian and Gunter Grass Oscar comes to mind ,but I was also reminded of  F scott’s Benjamin Button for the story is partly a story of Love lost a point when love might have been but due to one growing old and the other staying for ever you this love can never be .Also music is a big part of this I’ve not listen to Uzbek Music but have heard a number of Ukrainian and Russian Folk music over the years so have an Idea and Of course this is maybe the one Job left for Yerzhan as a musician where size doesn;t matter ,Then there is the other side the Post Soviet Fallout of Pollution , Atomic test sites etc ,etc .We here so little of this but according to figures mention it effected 200000 people in the soviet era in just Uzbekistan ,shocking figures really .So is it going to be another bumper year from Peirene press ,well yes Meike has turn up trumps  again .

Have you a favourite Soviet or Post Soviet era book