Month: January 2015

Eastern Europe month March 2015

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File:EasternBloc BorderChange38-48.svg

Now I do like a  good reading month, so far  I have run two Spanish Lit months and now want to do an Eastern european reading month , i tried and failed to do a Polish one a few years ago so East Europe seems a better chance more countries more writers .What countries you may ask  , so all the countries in this picture  , or them since the split of the eastern bloc so this map shows it just before the split ,of course there is many more countries now .I for one have a huge collection of books from the former Eastern Bloc countries waiting to be read also some of my favourite pulishers, publish from their Istros books and Twisted spoon  .Have you a favourite country and writer from the former Eastern Bloc ?

 

 

The lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

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The lowland cover by Jhumpa Lahiri

The lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Indian fiction

Source – Review copy

 

 

Boy, you’re going to carry that weight,
Carry that weight a long time
Boy, you’re going to carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time

I never give you my pillow
I only send you my invitations
And in the middle of the celebrations
I break down

I choose this Beatles lyric because sometime we do have to carry a weight for a family member

Well I ‘m going back here to late 2013 to review this book , I had a quick reread of it in bits over the weekend .I decide to finally review it because Lisa had ask me to join her in doing a Shadow Jury for the DSC south asian book prize , which I said yes as I had read two this book and Mirror of beauty (longest book on the list ) , I also had Noon tide toll on my shelves and could order another from Library leaving me one book to get when Amanda gets paid in a couple of weeks just before the prize .It’s nice to be judging with Lisa and Tara  .Now why didn’t I review this book , well it wasn’t that I didnt’ like it far from it was good but not stand out enough to be saved from Mount unreviewed .I had read Lahiri before both her short story collections , I was always nervous that her style wouldn’t work on the change from short story writer  to Novelist .Anyway to the book at last

So many times Subhash and Udayan had walked across the lowland .It was a shortcut to a field on the outskirts of the neighbourhood ,where they went to play football ,Avoiding puddles and stepping over mats of hyacinth leaves that remained in place .Breathing the dank Air

From opening page that gives rise to the book’s title the Lowland ,si near where the boys grew up .

The lowland is a classic story in many ways , a story of two brothers growing up , but also growing apart as they do so .Now the two brothers Udayan and Subhash , split apart from each other  one drawn into a world of politics the other drawn into a life far away from the India they grew up in .The brother drawn to Poltics Udayan is drawn to this protest at the poverty with in the country , this is 1967 and they are just following what had happened elsewhere in the world , but will it have a lasting effect on his life and his family , to a young wife and his parents .Meanwhile his brother Subhash has left to study in the but a moment of madness means , he comes home marries his brothers now widowed wife and returns with her to America , leading to a knock on for the next generation and the parents .

He was unwell ?

He was killed .

How ?

The paramilitary shot shot him .He was a Naxalite .

I’m sorry .It’s a terrible loss to bear .But no you’ll be a father .Yes .

Listen it’s been too long ,Why don’t you and your wife come to dinner one day .

Just after he lost his brother Subhash back in the US

Well The  lowlands , takes a classic story of brothers going  on different paths in their lives  .Then throws into it a real  event from  Indian history” the Naxalite cause “and the protest around that time .Brings this vast story down to the family level and looks at how politics ,l families and loyalty to ones loved ones .I loved that Lahiri managed to capture in a novel what she does so well in her stories and that is the interpersonal relationships between people on a daily level .At the core the brothers and the way the lives diverge but also cross each other again after one event leaving one gone and another with a new life and direction .I ‘m not sure it is the winner of the prize but it deserves it place on the DSC shortlist .

Have you read this book ?

Stones in a landslide by Maria Barbal

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stones in a landslide

Stones in a landslide by Maria Barbel

Catalan fiction

Original title – Pedra de Tarera

Translator – Laura McGloughkin and Paul Mitchell

Source – Review copy

Bored yet busy with my hands
Cargill you’ll have me round the bend
Cargill you’re pulling all the strands
Of my heartstrings entangled in your net

My luck’s turned thrawn
Always the quayside chores
A sister on each arm
Strong of shoulder weak at the knees
Cargill I’m the finest catch that you’ll land

Cargill do not presume to understand
The dread of counting home the fleet
The sudden thrill of seeing you’re safely back
Your catch has fallen at your feet

King Cresote Lyrics for Cargil from his recent album seemed perfect he comes from a small village near my Aunties house in fife .

Well when asked for my favourite book by Peirene , I always say this one , I sometimes thnk I may be the only person  that thinks it is their best at the time  when I read it five years ago was a perfect book .So I was a bit scared to reread this one , would it be the same now as it was then ? would I connect with it as I did five years ago ?  Well we will find out in a min , the real sad point of this story is Maria Barbal hasn’t had any more books translated and brought out in English  since this one came out  , which is a shame !

My aunts and uncle’s house was very big almost as big as my parents house ‘ at Ermita .Many years ago it must have been a house full or people and hustle and bustle because it had a ground floor and two storeys and then a loft under the roof

Amazed at the size ,but also how empty the house she has come to work is .

Stones in a landslide is the story of one woman , well woman when we first meet her she is really still a girl Conxa , who at 13 is sent from her own little village to another Village , to work for her better off aunt .This is like being torn from one world to another for the young girl , then years later she falls in love with a man .But is this to be cut short by the spanish civil war ?

They liked everything ; the chorizo and the black pudding ,the cuts of ham .They liked the bacon .Its much tastier than the stuff down their ,they would say .I enjoyed seeing how they kept helping themselves to more and the way they used their knives .

early on in new village , I choose the same quote as I did in the first review as it shows Conxa’s wonder at her new life .

Now in my first review , I marvelled in the small world of Conxa , how even the short journey from her home village to her aunts village ,in her eyes is like moving from one world to another ! .I compared it at the time to the Northumberland I heard of as a young man working in a day centre with the elderly ,when they used speak about the small villages and places in and around Alnwick struck me the same as conxa’s world and still did .But now more than five years ago ,has this world gone ? when we all spend our lives looking at glowing screens of various sizes , has the village died ? somewhat but through books like this it is kept alive .A world caught in Amber so to speak and we are the outsides looking in at it .So did it hold up to my placing it top of Peirene pile well yes it did , is it still my favourite yes it is so to go back to last part of my review and actually part of my early reviews I may bring back !

Winston’s score

mountain goat a bit mad I used compare books to things but this book is like the mountain goat symbol of the Pyrenees this book is tough and clings to the mountain of the mind !

spainsh goat ,via telegraph website

Winston’s Music frozen blue aeroplanes !

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Well its been a while since I done a Sunday music post , so what has made it on to my phone (my main way of listening to music these day is downloading and listen offline via spotify ) .First up is one of those bands that at the time I vaguely like and had one album from and thanks to spotify have now been able to go back and listen to again and that is the Bristol band Blue aeroplanes , an art pop ensemble with various members over time but a core of two brothers and a dancer .Any way beat songs by them has been one of my main listening in the last month .

Well by the title now the other thing I have been listening to is the Frozen soundtrack, I got to finally watch the Kids favourite at christmas as it premiered  on Sky tv over Christmas .So I got to see what all the fuss is about , I loved it as a kids film  it had something more than usual Disney offering but two songs stuck in my head” let it go” which as we all know is the big hit the other is “do you want build a snowman “.So yes in my old age I am going soft but sometimes we all have to be a kid at heart .

Winstons first secondhand book buys of 2015

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Well a change today from  my  usual book choices sees me only buying just  one translated book today , that said it gets hard to find books I’ve not read in the local charity shops as most books in translation that tend to be given are the popular ones that I’ve read or haven’t an interested in reading any way to the first three books of 2015 .So whilst waiting to meet Amanda after work in town I did managed to get round all the shops in town .

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First there  was these  two books from Oxfam’s sale .At swim two birds by Flann O’Brein ,I am going try and buy a number more books from Ireland for a project later this year or even next to bump up my books from Ireland , which is rather small and as it is the place I was born and my family comes from that is rather sad , so I’m wanting to put that right .The second book is closely observed trains by Bohumil Hrabil , I have this on dvd so want read and compare to the film .

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The third book was from save the children is a collected box set of a collection Finbar’s hotel and Ladies night at Finbar’s hotel , it looks like this collection came out about fifteen years ago and had a collection of the best of Irish writing at the time names such as Colm Tobin and jenifer Johnston both of which seem to be favourites of Kim over at reading matters who actually reviewed a book by Tobin today .

what are your first book buys of 2015 ?

Falling out of time by David Grossman

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Falling out of time by David Grossman

Hebrew Fiction

Original title –נופל מחוץ לזמן 

Translator Jessica Cohen

Source – Library

 

 

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on,
‘Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven.

I was struck by this song the first time I heard it the same way I was with this book Eric clapton’s Tears in Heaven is also about the loss of a son

I’ve review a book by David Grossman before his wonderful book from a few years ago To the end of the land , which I really enjoyed so when I saw he had a new book out and it had made a few end of year lists including Boyd Tonkin (usually an early sign for the IFFP prize ) .I decide it was time to read a book by him again .Since I last reviewed him , he has been involved in protests about the further settlements in Israeli where he was actually beaten by the police .He lost his own son in 2008 how like most Israelis was serving his military service and was killed in the line of action at just 20 ! .Like the earlier book this one looks at the Grief ,but in a different way .

Woman :

The earth

Gaped open.

gulped us

and disgorged

Don’t go back

There , do not go ,

not even one step

out of the light

Man :

I could not , I dared not

look into your eye,

that eye of

madness ,

into your noneness

a the start when he mentions going home .

Falling into time is one of those books that is hard to pigeonhole in many ways as it is rather like a play with characters names and what they said , but then like a poem with rhyme and rhythm to the words spoke by each of the characters , then there is a story in their as well .The book follows a man and woman as the walk to the place where their son died , as they go along they gather up more people each telling of their own losses along the way almost like a chorus building a nation of stories of sons and children lost as the town they live in comes together in some sort of collective grief as the town all starts to walk along the man and woman .

Walkers :

But they are so

alive ! they flicker

with flash of smiles

with questioning and sorrow ,

as if those longing , desperate faces

wish to try out

every last expression

one more time,

to thereby taste

the potency

of plundered feelings ,

The collective walkers in the story talking as one about the dead .

Now I said hard to place this book the nearest two books to it I can think of are under Milkwood , which is shares a spoken feel  to the words  , this book is one that probably work  best if read a loud to get the full power of Grossman’s prose .The other book I was reminded of was Mr Darwin’s garden that came out a couple of years ago from Peirene press anoother book of voices again set in a small town like this book and like this it also built as the book went along .But unlike them there is little about the place they are in or where they are this is a book about grieving for a son a daughter a bother husband wife etc .Another feeling is almost the words go back to be almost like the words we all know from prayers or bibles with a feeling of repetition to hammer the words and their meaning home to use as the reader  .Heartfelt is what I came away with from the book a real feel of a writer pouring out on the page what he must have felt be feeling since the loss of his own son .But what he has also done with the lack of place and time has turned the grieving into universal grieving so the parents could even be Arab ! .

have you a favourite read about Grief and Death ?

 

 

The Black signs by Lars Mørch Finborud


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The black signs by  Lars Mørch Finborud

Norwegian fiction

Original title – De svarte skiltene

Translator – Becky l Crook

Source personnel copy

Who’ll build a box for Black Paul?
Ah’m enquirin on behalf of his soul
Ah’d be beholdin to ya all
For a lil information, just a little indication
Just who’ll dig the hole?
When ya done ransackin’ his room
grabbin any damn thing that shines,
throw the scraps down on the street
Like all his books and his notes.
All his books and his notes and
All the junk that he wrote
the whole fucken lot right up in smoke
Ain’t there nuthin sacred anymore
Won’t someone will build a box for Black Paul?

rather large quote but I imagined this woman a bit like the character in this Nick Cave song 

Lars Mørch Finborud is a Norwegian writer born in Oslo , he also runs a record label and writes articles  for various magazines in Norway .This is his first novel , he has previously published books about the history of art about Bauhaus , Christopher Nielsen and performance art .

                          Jan Holmboe (1725 – 1762 )

It was here that Jan Holmboe was run over by a horse drawn carriage with a tipsy coach man on January 7 , 1767.He died four days later at the hospital in Christiania from injuries suffered

One of the black signs the lawyer finds maybe the first death to drink driving ?

Now it is interesting that Lars has written about art for that is one of the main parts of this book , it follows a lawyer as he enters a house of a dead client to catalogue all the items within the house for an auction .The book is in two parts really the first is a collection of letter he finds between the grandson of the houses owner and his friend .The discuss a lot of what is found in the house things like the black signs , these are memorial plaques to events and people , but in lots of ways minor people and events with no real sense behind them .Then there is the second thread in the book the objects this woman  , the grandmother collected and catalogue over a number of years .She kept things from people she met whether a napkin, a glass , letters , signed books .We see her interaction with some of the most famous figures from 20th century culture with each is a label of when where and who she got them from and what happen briefly  and the condition of each item as thou they were in a sale or mounted in a musuem .

HARALD SZEEMANN’S DIRTY NAPKIN(1971)

The napkin used by Harald Szeemann in the restaurant “La Vache ” in Kassel .Used to remove sour cream from his beard just before he scolded Alina Szapoczinhkow for asking if he could provide funding for the production of a large abdominal sculpture for Docenmta V. Szeemann had shout his response “You have to get resources and realize the project yourself and then and only then , will we decide whether it should appear in Documenta or not !” Alina stood up and left in protest , but grandma was able to grab the napkin before following he out of the door

Paper napkin and sour cream

G-(mold on the napkin)

jg24211

Harald Szeemann curated the fifth docuenta in Kassel the four yearly modern art show there , that I went to see a number of years ago there .

 

An interesting made book that builds a picture of a very eccentric woman whom we never really know fully just through these objects and signs .Also through her grandsons unanswered letters to his friend .A woman that touched but never found fame , that knew people but maybe was never fully known by all .A truly wonderful examination of what make people , the stuff we are , why do we keep certain things and if we went to this extreme where we kept everything that had been touch or given by the famous and talented .what are we when we die , will she end up with her sign or will her memories just be in the objects the lawyer is shifting through in this book ? A book that as one reviewer in Norway says gives you no answers maybe just makes you question who this woman and her grandson was and even more who is the mysterious friend that he has been written to but never seemed to have replied to all these letter ?

Do you like books that maybe make you paint the picture or fill the dots in for the story ?