Month: July 2015

Uppsala woods by Alvaro Coloomer

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

UPPSALA WOODS

Uppsala woods by Alvaro Colomer

Spanish fiction

Original title – Los bosques de Upsala

Translator – Jonathan Dunne

Source – review copy

I never realised the lengths I’d have to go,
All the darkest corners of a sense I didn’t know.
Just for one moment, I heard somebody call,
Looked beyond the day in hand, there’s nothing there at all.

Now that I’ve realised how it’s all gone wrong,
Gotta find some therapy, this treatment takes too long.
Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway,
Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late.

I chosen the last two verses of 24 by Joy Division as they maybe reflect Ian curtis mind for those of you that don’t know he commit suicide shortly after record the bands second album.

 

Now my second book for this years Spanish lit month is from a Spanish based publisher Hispabooks  whos motto is a great one for Spanish lit month I feel Spanish literature for worldwide readers isn’t this just what this month is about . I have read two books by them and enjoyed them both there is a number on their site to check out .Alvaro Colomer is a journalist reporting on such things as prostitution .this book is the last part of a rough trilogy of urban death . Also according to his spanish wiki page he is a huge Thomas Bernhard fan ( aren’t we all lol ) . This is his first book to be translated into English and I am only a year late in reviewing it .

My wife isn’t hiding under the bed , or behind the shower curtain , or anywhere else in this apartment , but she has left her bag on the coffee table , so te only place she could be is at the neighbour’s house , This old woman who lives in apartment two on the seventh floor .

Julio maybe for the first time glimpse what is to come with Elena here when he arrives home and she isn’t there

Uppsala woods deals with a married couple Julio and Elena . Elena tells her husband she is losing the will to live , she wants to die . This is the story of the days that follow him finding out his wife no long wants to live and how he goes to work every day and pictures coming back to her hanging from the centre of their house which is built-in the shape of the cross . This shows how the Husband tries to stop Elena getting drawn further into the darkness and what do you do when you can’t stop this happening .What happens when he returns on their wedding anniversary and there is no one there it seems ? Why has she suddenly hidden in their closet

All of a sudden three days have gone since my wife sought the confines of the closet . In all this time , we have avoided talking about what happened , letting the television chat in our place and even turning a deaf ear when , on a tabloid talk show , a guest described his grotesque attempt to hang himself using his mother’s pantyhose .

Suicide and mental illness are two of the hardest things to talk about maybe more books like this would make it less of a taboo .

Now I have made this seem doom and gloom , but no this is maybe a spanish cousin to Bernhard Julio is like a Bernhard character in that laconic way of trying to battle his wife’s depression . Julio is a classic Bernhard male in the way he views the world  in terms of black and white .But never quite getting it right he is an entomologist so sees the world maybe to black and white where as Elena is firmly caught in the grey of the world getting drawn ever closer to the Black abyss . I like how he tackled death and Suicide here it is a subject not often touch on in fiction in the right way .As Julio tries to hold on to his wife by holding in safety . Also the allusion to the church in a subtle ways the house being built-in a cross and Elena may die in (or on the cross ) so to speak .Powerful book I hope Hispabook publish the other two books in this trilogy .

Have you a favourite book dealing with mental health ?

 

Shadow IFFP Bye, Hi “Shadow MANBIP ” the new tranaslation prize

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

 

There was an announcement today about a change in two big prizes in the world of translated fiction ,in a way become one the merging of Independent foreign fiction prize with the Man Booker international prize . Sees the prize move forward similar to the current IFFP , with Boyd Tonkin Chairing the new Man book international prize in its first year . A new yearly prize with a much bigger prize in terms of money than either prize had but for a single book not a  body of work like the current IFFP is . I am sad to lose the old version of the man prize which saw the writer listed for a body of work . It is just a shame people never really got this , maybe we could done a shadow for it but that has pasted . Now talikg shadowing I will continue to shadow this prize like I had the old Independent foreign fiction prize over the last four years  . I hope to be more involved in shadowing than this . I think in long run this is a sign of how translated fiction has grown in the last few years . It would be nice for two prize , but for me the renaming and connection to the booker prize if promoted right could be a great turn for PR . The IFFP connection to one english paper maybe lead to less coverage in other papers .I’d love more prize thou this is a step forward and if it works maybe could be a platform for smaller awards like the French book prize  the Goncourt has done over the last few years . Say  a prize for best small published book , best retranslation and maybe one for body of work like a judges prize . So we in the UK get a big prize for translated fiction let’s get behind it and promote it !!! I will be with the first shadow man booker international prize next year .

Good offices by Evelio Rosero the 500th translation review

~ winstonsdad ~ 7 Comments

Good offices BY Evelio Rosero

Good Offices by Eveilo Rosero

Columbian Fiction

Original title – Los Alumerzos

TRanslator – Anne McLean and Anna Milsom

Source – review copy

 

“The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn”

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There’s a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There’s devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you’ll dream of foreign lands

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was curing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

This pogues song reminded me of the debauchery in the book .

Well been mulling over what to pick to be the 500th translated title on this blog I passed 500 reviews a while ago . So after a nudge on twitter .I choose a Maclehose press title , a publisher that in a way has been around as long as this blog and strangely was the first that decide to send me copies of their books to review . So as the first title for this Spanish lit month I’ve chosen a former IFFP winning writer .Evelio Rosero is a Columbian writer and Journalist , he has written nine novels so far . I love his motto ” A heart that feels , Eyes that see” so true of every great writer .

Of indefinable age , Father Matamoros – Reverend Father San Jose Matamoros del Palacio – was indeed a rare bird in the parish church , grey and featherless , come from heavens know where . He wore dark clothes and a grey turtleneck sweater instead of a dog collar ; his jacket looked borrowed , it was too big for him : his round toed school shoes , almost black , were scuffed and the soles were gone , the laces white ; he wore square glasses , one lens cracked down the middle , one arm mended with a dirty strip of sticking plaster .

Would you trust this man ?

Good Offices is a story of two worlds and the institution that connects them in Columbia . The story follows two events the first is the meal. That a Father Almida is going to with a rich benefactor to his church . His church is one that deals with the street folk of the city .Now back at his church , he has given the service to an old drunken Vicar Father Matamoros to run things at his church  a church with a rota of visitors street folks , prostitutes and the blind each have their day in the week . Now things back at the church descend into a drunken feast as the events going on are observed by the hunchback Tancredo as he joins Matamoros in the drunken party to end all parties .All this is being viewed  The Lillas are the old women and had prepared the meal for him but didn’t see what was coming .

Father San Jose’s mass was no ordinary Mass .

To the surprise and delight of the congregation that evening , it turned out to be a sung mass . Who could have imagined that father Matamoros beside bringing his own water to the altar, would turn out to be a perfect cantor

Well the night is young  here !

I reread this book in a day after not getting to review it when it came out a couple of  years ago .I enjoyed it at the time but in this reread I really got the humour the satire side of the book , a descent into madness .I love the contrast between the drunk goings on and the posh meal . Also the way it shows the two worlds in this country the wealth and the poverty .Mamatmoros is like a Latin american extra from father Ted a drunken Latin American Father Jack , but this also has echos of Graham Greene in a way that it exposes the catholic church and the way it runs in the church .The original title maybe suit the book dinners as it is a book about contrasts in the way it unfolds the two dinners in two worlds that maybe have this one connection the church .I enjoyed this if I get chance I will be reviewing his latest book later this month on the blog .

Have you a favourite novel that involves the church ?