Month: April 2023

That was the Month that was April 2023

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  1. Boulder by Eva Baltasar 
  2. The power and The glory by Graham Greene 
  3. Conversations in Bolzano by Sandor Marai
  4. The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon
  5. The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier
  6. Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth 
  7. A System so Magnificent it is Blinding by Amanda Svensson

I am finally back on track after the move initially this month; bookshelves running late, and other things slowed the blogging, but I managed to review seven books. I started with a poetic Catalan novel that follows a love affair in Iceland. Then a priest on the run Is chased through Mexico. Then we catch up with Cassanova on the run after escaping prison, heading back for an old love and a former rival he fought over. Then we have a man awakening to a dead body and refacing the world. These three were my entries for the 1940 club, which I love whenever it comes around. Then I reviewed a trio of international booker books. Firstly, a French Hamlet sees a night of violence and secrets come to light. Then a daughter estranged from her mother returns home, watches her, and looks back on her life. Then a set of triplets over the world and then return home when their father disappears, and secrets are finally revealed.

Book of the month

I missed including the Booker ones as we shadowed them, but this was a real gem and reminded me how much I loved Greene. He is one of those classic English writers, who mixed tense, human emotions, and catholicism so well.

Non-book events

I queue from 5:30 to get my record store day records. I got the Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian Mcculloch, Pixies, the Fall, and the two Heidi Berry records as a splurge, but I have some great memories of artists I have loved since my teens. We also have Netflix back, as it is part of our new tv package. So we have watched a series called The Watcher, a series about a couple that moves to the dream house and then gets a weird letter from someone calling themselves the watch and several odd things happen along the way. We also watched a film called Woman at the Window, a twist on the rear window story in a way.

Next month

I will round of the outstanding booker reviews we will be announcing the shortlist for the shadow jury choices this month. I have many books read and ready to review, and I hope to get to a few backlisted from my own tbr pile later this coming month. Other than that, I will just do what I always do flow my own path.

A System so Magnificent it is blinding by Amanda Svensson

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A System so Magnificent it is Blinding by Amanda Svensson

Swedish Fiction

Original title – Ett system så magnifikt att det bländar

Translator – Nichola Smalley

Source – Personal copy

There are always one or two books on the Booker longlist that are new to me. There is so many books coming out it is hard to follow everything that comes out in Translation every year.  I had Read Nichola’s other book she had translated on the Booker longlist. SO knew this, like her other translation, would be a  complex book. Amanda Svensson won two large book prizes in Sweden with this book. She has written four novels. This is her last to be published in Swedish but is the first to be translated into English. The book follows a set of triplets. It is a complex book of many layers and narratives.

Like his own to Violetta, from the day she came into the picture until what happened finally happened.

During his years with Violetta, Sebastian had spent more and more time with her family, and less and less with his own. Perhaps it was easier to belong in a context where belonging was less a matter of course.

Violetta was also an only child. Shed learned at an early age to demand the love Sebastian had taken for granted – to stop at nothing to get

As I say her death is a void in this family

The book follows the Isaksson triplets, that have spread themselves all around the world. When an event draws them all back to their Homeland Sweden the Father has gone missing, but as this happens, their mother throws them a curve ball over the origins alongside the father disappearing. The main Triplet is Sebastian he is settled in London a leading scientist in his field, and has joined the strange London Institute of Cognitive Science. He has a patient he is working with that only sees the world in two dimensions (this made me remember the scene in  Supermen where the villains are sent into exile in a 2d world). Then Clara visits Easter Island to join a Doomsday cult, but as she visits the island a few times, she bumps into someone related to Sebastian’s boss. This is how the stories cross over. Then there is the final triplet. Matilda has escaped Berlin to her Hokmeland as she is on the run from a colour. These stories cross and intersect at times this is a complex book then we have a space well what may have been the space filled by Sebastian’s girlfriend that committed suicide and has often left a void in those she touched with in the family.

He got off at Mornington Crescent. A Dalmatian peed on a lamppost, the tiles on the Tube station opposite shone blood-red in the sunshine. The air smelled of exhaust fumes and caramelised almonds and expensive perfume evaporating from the sweaty skin of women, it smelled of marijuana. Sebastian was, by nature, a very honest person, he rarely lied to anyone, not even to himself – naturally, he knew why hed come here. He wanted to see her house, her door, her windows, he wanted to see the magnolia in her garden that she’d spoken about with a kind of tenderness in her vocal cords. He wanted to see her child, perhaps. Her husband, her shopping bags, her pot plants, if she had any. He tried to convince himself that this wasn’t pathological behaviour, but he wasnt sure. Was it really so strange, to want to know everything about another person? Wasnt that the very essence of love?

I like the locations in London and Mornington Crescent always makes me smile.

I must admit I struggled with this one I think more than it not being a great book, it was the wrong time for me to read the book; its reading spanned the House move. I had read about 35%  before we moved and then hadn’t returned to it till last week, so I maybe should restart the book, but the book follows the triplets. The part of the book I connected with the most top was the bits in London; it made me wonder if she had spent a much time in London. Especially mention of Mornington Crescent made me wonder if she was a radio four fan, as well as it is a game on I’m Sorry, I haven’t a clue. This is part family saga, part road movie sprinkled with some magic realism. I could picture Wim Wenders in his prime making this a world-shaking road movie film with the triplets at its heart. It has humour at times, but to me, I wonder if it needed unpicking and would make a striking quartet of books the triplets and then the space left by Violetta’s death, it is a book brimming with ideas and stories, but m,e as a reader would like a few things tied up better at times. Also felt it could be a book double the size to fill the bits I maybe want to know about but didn’t get answers for, if that makes sense; she seems like a writer full of great ideas to write about. But this is one of those sprawling books that maybe needs to be read few times to fully get the sense of all that happens. It is hard. I want to love this one, but I felt it just missed the mark for me.,

Winstons score – -B I just maybe read it at the wrong time. I may reread it at some point and see if I feel better about it.

Is Mother Dead ? by Vigdis Hjorth

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Is Mother dead by Vigdis Hjorth

Norwegian fiction

Original title –Er mor død

Translator Charlotte Barslund

Source – personal copy

This is the second book by the Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth I have read; I have a copy of Will and Testament by the same writer and have reviewed A House in Norway. It was mentioned in the review comments to Will and Testament, and this book, it seems, are thinly veiled works of auto-fiction that use her own life as part of the story. This book came after the family reaction to the book Will and Testament. This book follows her own splitting with her mother and sister. It is a novel but has part of her own experience sprinkled over it. This is open book from the longlist I would have gotten to. At some point, I am a sucker for these great Nordic works of fiction that blur the writer’s own life and their fictional worlds.

Ruth thinks talking to me won’t do Mum any good. Mum can’t take any more. Mum hasn’t been able to cope with what has already happened, my sudden departure, my work, which exposed her to shame, that I didn’t come over during the diff-cult time, for Dad’s funeral. Mum is finally over me and any contact with me might reopen old wounds. I understand.

Early on we see what ghas caused the rift with her mother.

The book is a novel about family and family connections, in this case, two daughters with their mother, but what happens when one daughter has made a piece of art that has upset the mother as it is about the mother and their childhood. What is it like to be that daughter, the artist looking in now on the relationship with your mother that is broken and her relationship with your sister? This is the premise for the book Joanna recently widows and has had to return to her home country of Norway. She had been on course to become a lawyer in her earlier years when she met an art teacher and fell in love. The course of her life changed, and she produced art that made a rift. Now she has to confront the rift her art has caused her works on motherhood as we see her become a spy on her mother and watch her. Still, also, as she is doing this, we see her looking back at her and her sister’s interactions with the mother her hatred is focused on the sister Ruth in a lot of ways after a rather blunt text from her sister about she’d only let her know when her mother was dead.We see Joanne spy from as distance in the house they grew up in many years after her last visit past and present merge in one as she tries to get a handle on the now from what has happened.  The title in Norwegian is a play on words around death and murder, as the words are similar in Norwegian. Will she be able to fix what she has broken her parental and sibling relationships with her art.

In the house where I grew up and the house we moved to when I was in my early teens, there were several photographs of Ruth and me on the large antique bureau in the living room. A black-and-white photo of each daughter on her third birthday, taken by a professional photographer. We had bows in our hair to keep our fringes out of the way. Confirmation pictures and then wedding photographs followed, first Thorleif and me in front of the old stone church, then Ruth and Reidar in front of the same church, the summer before I left.

As Joanne sits opposite hidden watchuing her Mum’s house the house she grew up in

I said it was autofiction because it is partly the fallout of her previous book, which made accusations that her father had caused a rift in her own family, like what Joanna’s paintings have in this book. There was a similar reaction to Knausgaard’s work when he brought out his epic book. Sometimes it is hard to face the truth as Joanne sees it in her reaction to the past and her art  and then to deal with the aftermath of your truth. It also looks at sibling relationships the feeling that can bubble under with those you are closes to the things you see from the outside like Joanna does that make her wonder around what happened years ago. This is a work that uses a writers own life in opart but then uses it to build a compelling npovel about loss of a relaionship , the past and what to do with it. The triangle of the relationships in this mother daughter and sister with sister. Yet another twist on the theme of motherhood on this years longlist reading. Have you read any books from Hjorth ?

Winston score -A  This novel pulls apart a mother daughter spilt can it be mended ?

The Birthday party by Laurent Mauvignier

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The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier

French fiction

Original title – Histories de la nuit

Translator -Daniel Levin Becker

Source – Personal copy

When the longlist came out there were a couple of books from Fitzcarraldo, as there is every year, it seems, and I hadn’t got them, but as they are a publisher, I have yet to read a book I have really hated (that said I rarely read bad books I have a built-in radar for books I enjoy). Mauvignier is a writer that studies art and has written several books a couple of which have been translated by other publishers over the years. This is his first book from Fitzcarraldo and was the last book by him to be published in French. The title is different from the French title. I do wonder if it is to give the books a little nod towards the Pinter play of the same title, which shares a few characteristics. He has also written for tv and film. There is a sense of that this could easily be a six-part drama series in a novel.

Well, instead of chitchatting, you’d better hurry up.

It’s true, Christine is right, he has to put up the decorations in the living room and set the table, go into town

– not exactly next door, because of the risk of traffic on the ring road – it’s Bergogne who speaks of the ring road, while Christine, incorrigible Parisienne that she is, calls it the périph, as though the name would change anything about the reality of the fifty-odd kilometres Bergogne has to travel to pick up his wife’s gift.

Early on as the night is getting underway .

The book is set over the course of one evening in Rural France as a husband comes home to sort out the 40th birthday party for his wife, Marion. Marion is due home later. She is a figure of mystery to fill out the village they live in. There is a daughter Ida and a neighbour, Christine, an artist whose star is fading. Still, she actually spends most of her time looking after Ida after school as the parents have to work hard to keep her head above water Patirce, the father and husband of the family, is working the family farm, and his wife is working to help out. So Ida spends more time with Christine than with her parents. The other house in the three-house hamlet of three lone girls is empty. So the evening begins to unfold a car appears, and there have been some letters sent that have unnerved the family, and there is a sense that there is more to Marion, the wife’s life before they meet is a blank slate as she talks little around it. So her husband is unaware of why she has this huge tattoo and why she has it. What is her real past? What happens when a person’s dark past catches up on them and the past and present collide? This is what is at the heart of the story; it is a thriller about when ones past catches you in the present and the fallout from that meeting. Who has come to three lone girls on her 40th birthday? What is her past? Why is there so much violence from her past?

For now, the only thing that really changes with Bergogne’s arrival is that one of the two men, the older one, the one who said his name was Christophe and who wanted to see the house for sale, said he’d have to go down to, he said, welcome Mister Bergogne.

That’s what he said: welcome Mister Bergogne.

Mister Bergogne, and Christine thought just you wait to welcome Mister Bergogne’s fist to your face, pretending not to be surprised that in saying this the man had above all confessed to her that he wasn’t here by chance, that he knew the names of the hamlet’s residents; and in spite of her anger, she still can’t get over these words that seem so respectful and polite but that are really what, she won-ders, these words that beneath their polish barely hide their irony and sarcasm, Mister Bergogne,

The two home invaders are there when Patrice returns but

I said this could have been a six-part drama. The way the story unfolded reminded me of the Canadian tv series Cardinal which, like this book, is a slow burner of a series and this is that type of book slow but still page-turner novel it is hard to combine both and make it work. He does to some point aI still would have like to have seen 100 or so pages cut but is has a French feel to it reminding me of slow-moving films like le boucher where the action is slow and also set in a village has a lot of violence but also has a similar pace to this book. That is because, actually, sometimes in real life, these things are slow to develop it just is as the night happens, we see the past of his wife come to light as these men have done a home invasion and taken all of these small hamlet hostage. All of this is standard thriller territory. The home invasion, the dark past, and the social position the family find themselves in rural politics is also thrown into the mix. It is like someone has hired Thomas Bernhard to write an action thriller, and this is his take on the thriller. A book that is a take on a thriller using a more modernist in style than a page-turner may be the first thriller of the slow movement !!

Winstons score – B,I’d love see what he writes next, if this is just a one-off or if he is writing a new style of thriller !!

The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon

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The Strangers in the House by Goerges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title – Les inconnus dans la maison

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – Personal copy

I am late again for my last book for the 1940 club. I’d love a fortnight for it myself. I am like a kid in a sweet shop when I read the list of books for every year when it comes out I have reviewed 3 books, but I had actually brought six for this week ready. But I think the others are books I will get to at some point. There is a given for most years we get to read from for the club and that there is more than likely a book from Georges Simenon as he was such a prolific writer in his lifetime and that was the case for this year it was one of his roman Durs books his darker stand-alone works he wrote and this had a new translation from the ever-growing Penguin series that aims to put all his books out in English. Here we have a book that uses a classic bit of crime novel writing, and that is the found body no one knows at the start.

He could have sworn that the sound didn’t come from the bed, which must be to the left – at least it had been there the last time Loursat had gone into his daughter’s room by chance, perhaps two years earlier.

“Open up!’ he said simply.

Just a minute..

The minute was a very long one. Behind the door, someone moved, trying hard to make his or her movements as silent as possible.

When he hears the shot sand wonders what it was only to fiund out the truth!!

The book finds a reclusive drinker, a man who, after his wife who left him nearly twenty years earlier. He has withdrawn from the world. This all changes when his daughter and her friends living on the edge bring a man they had hit with a car home, and it is that man who is shot dead by the shot that wakes the reclusive Hector Loursat. He used to have a law practice before the divorce and his decline into the bottle, so when he reappears to all those in the small town, many of which he knew before those years away. After many years it is with a sense of strangeness from those in the village, and when Hector wants to find out what really happened on that night with his daughter and her friends, did his daughter’s boyfriend kill this man in cold blood? Who is the man? A father shares a house with his daughter but they are two bodies swimming in different worlds in the same space but in separate worlds. Only after the events does Hector tries to find out about the gang she runs with and her life and save her man! Will he find out who fired the shot that morning that brought him?

Poor Chief Inspector Binet! He hadn’t expected such a greeting. He stood up, then sat down again, apologizing.

It was Josephine who had admitted him to the study while it was still light. She had left him to his fate, and he had stayed seated with his hat on his knees, first in the half-light, then in complete darkness.

I thought I ought perhaps to bring you up to date on . . . I mean, it did happen in your house, didn’t it?

The police are a bit hopeless in the book and jump to a conclusion about the events of that night

This has two classic crime novels things the first is the body appearing in a room dead from Body in the Library by Christie to Silver Blaze by Conan Doyle. The found body and the events thereafter have started a great crime novel. Then we have a group of suspects in His daughter Nicoles, her boyfriend, the chief suspect in the law’s eyes and the gang they run with. This book has a plot but is more driven by the characters in the book and their stories as much as what is happening in the book. It sees a man coming back into the world after so many years. It sees a father uncover his daughter’s actual life. It sees them both facing ghosts from their past and the events many years ago that lead Hector to become a recluse. I had probably read this at some point. My aim is to read as many of his books as I can over the next few years, and the Roman Durs these are the books I have not read as many of, but in this one, he has managed to mix a few classic crime novel traits alongside a  character study. Have you read this book or have you a favourite from his Roman Durs ?

Winstons score – B A solid Simenon not my favourite by him but not the worst I have read.

 

Conversations in Bolzano by Sàndor Màrai

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Conversations in Bolzano

Hungarian fiction

Original title – Vendégjáték Bolzanóban

Translator – George Szirtes

Source – Personal copy

When I look at the list of books from 1940, I always love to pick a translated book that came out that year. There were a few I had hoped to bring two this week, but this is the oner I will fit in and the other I will be bringing out a review on Monday. This appealed as I had read two other books by the Hungarian writer Sàndor Màrai over the years and have reviewed The Rebels here a few years ago. A writer in his day was considered one of the leading writers in Hungary described by Le Monde as Hungarian Sándor Márai was the insightful chronicler of a collapsing world well this is a book set outside his insightful books into the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire but it follows a man welll Casanova but actually in the book it is often missed it is him using his forename and maybe describing him as more of a myth than a man. Lost Love is in the book love lust friends and also a man that is larger than life.

‘Five,” he grumbled, and bit hard on his lower lip, wagging his head. Screwing up his eyes, he gazed into the fame, then into the deep shadows of the room, then finally into the far distance, into the past, into life itself.

And suddenly he gave a low whistle, as if he had found something he had been looking for. He pronounced the name,

“Francesca.

He thinks back on her when he her mention of the Dukes name.

I was drawn to this a Cassanova is one of those figures in History that is part man, part Myth the real and the false blend. SPO a story following his prison break from Venice and his heading to Bolzano a small village where the Duke had fought a moonlight duel for a woman much younger than both the men and lost the Fair Francesca, barely legal at just 16. They five years earlier when he had fought the duel with the 60-year old duke for this woman’s hand. He has now escaped on the run and has managed to borrow money along the way he turns up dishevelled at the hotel in the town and demands the finest suite in the Hotel. this reminds me of a scene in Withnail and I where Withnail and Cassanova are similar characters. He had scars and had been told if he returned, he be dead so why has he returned what has driven him to come back? What will the Duke do? What will Franseca make of Casanova and his drive to want her as he rhymes lyrically about his feeling for her.

He touched the scars with his fingertips, itemizing and remembering them. There was a line of three scars on his left, all three just above the heart, as if his enemies had unconsciously yet somehow deliberately, instinctively, aimed precisely at his heart. The central scar, the deepest and roughest of them, was the one he owed to His Excellency of Parma and to Francesca. He put his index finger to the now painless wound. The duel had been fought with rapiers. The Duke’s blade had made a treacherous incursion above his heart, so the surgeon had had to spend weeks draining the blood and the suppuration off the deep wound; and there had also been some internal bleeding, as a result of which the victim, after fever fits, bouts of semiconscious delirium, and stretches of screaming and groaning insensibility, finally bade farewell to adventure.

The scars of the first meeting and duel that nearly killed Cassaanova

I love Màrai writing he captures the simmering love of Cassanova so well, and also a love triangle at its most dangerous duel death threats and promise to leave all add to the book. He also shows maybe the true poetic nature of the man that was Cassanova a normal man that had that thing that, as we say made woman weak at the knee a certain air and way with words that drew people in. This is a slower-paced book than I usually like, but it had some great interplay and managed to bring to life a figure I wanted to know more about in Cassanova I suppose looking back at the events now it seems very outdated a 20-year-old woman being argued over by two men both a lot older than her. It is a sign of how times have moved. But also, there is many a Cassannova around still those men that women just can’t help but Love well in Withnail’s case, there is always a sense of the character being larger than life and maybe hiding his own sexual feelings. But there is no doubt about Cassanova feeling for the younger Francesca a muse to this man. Have you read any books by Màrai? He wrote more than 50, but we only seem to have less than ten of his books so far in English.

Winstyons score – +b A yarn may be outdated in its content but still fun.

 

The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene

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The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene

English fiction

Source – Personal copy

I love when Simon’s and Karen’s six monthly year club as it gives me a chance to read the books that came out that year I hadn’t read and ion this case go back to a book I had read many years ago. I was always a fan of Greene I think I was 11 or 12 when I first came across him, and I think it may have been through a radio version of Our Man in Havana a different book to this one, but that was my intro to his works, and through my early twenties I read a lot of his books. I am not a huge fan of rereading books for me the process of reading the time, and the memories of that reading are like a fly caught in amber that one moment remembered, and one always worries if a book will be as entertaining or grabbing as I remembered this book was.

The lieutenant walked in front of his men with an air of bitter distaste. He might have been chained to them unwill. ingly – perhaps the scar on his jaw was the relic of an escape.

His gaiters were polished, and his pistol-holster: his buttons were all sewn on. He had a sharp crooked nose jutting out of a lean dancer’s face; his neatness gave an effect of inordinate ambition in the shabby city. A sour smell came up to the plaza from the river and the vultures were bedded on the roofs, under the tent of their rough black wings. Sometimes, a little moron head peered out and down and a claw shifted. At nine-thirty exactly all the lights in the plaza went out.

The lieutent a man of polish and belief in his quest

The book came about after Greene had visited Mexico and saw the persecution of the Catholic church at the time was for a non-fiction piece, but he later wrote this novel about a priest on the run. Always unnamed, we follow his journey and see a man with many faults, not the perfect priest. There is a joke about the type of men that go into the priesthood in Ireland, and one of the men that are said to join the priesthood is the drinker. Well, this is a perfect example of a whiskey priest a man that has had a child, and Brigitta his daughter is a strange child that he is drawn to help and loves her. Even thou as she has a look around her. But he is on the run as he is being chased by the Lieutenant a man who has vowed to rid Mexico of the Catholic church. It is the story of two men with beliefs, two sides of the same coin in a way driven to uphold what they believe in but also at polar ends of the spectrum. But who will win will the priest be drawn back because of God?

She said savagely, ‘I know about things. I went to school.

I’m not like these others – ignorant. I know you’re a bad priest. That time we were together – that wasn’t all you’ve done.

I’ve heard things, I can tell you. Do you think God wants you to stay and die – a whisky priest like you?’ He stood patiently in front of her, as he had stood in front of the lieutenant, listening.

He hadn’t known she was capable of all this thought. She said,

“Suppose you die. You’ll be a martyr, won’t you? What kind of a martyr do you think you’ll be? It’s enough to make people mock.?

Then the other side the priest here is him described

Greene is, of course, known for being a catholic novelist, but for me, this has both that and also a sprinkling of what he used to call his entertainment to it. The title is a nod towards the lord’s prayer. This is also where he admitted later in life he found his faith through those pheasants he had seen and the priest that worked underground and was the bases for the priest in this book. It has a pace to it, and I always feel Greene is the master of tension in his writing. He knows how to pitch it just right and he does that so well here as we get drawn to the end and discover what happens to the two main characters in the book. Two men that, as much as they are different, are the same and driven, by belief. As Lucretius said, Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion, and in both men, you can see this. Have you read this by Greene, or do you have a favourite book by Greene?

Winston’s score A – The book has stood the test of time and I loved it the more the second time around.

do you like rereading ?

A quick Hi on Easter Sunday

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I hope to be back later this week as I had trouble with deliveries to the new house if I had been told this was going be an issue I may had got things delivered elsewhere so I am busy reading a couple of books for this week 1940’s club from Simon and Karen have been doing different years twice a year for the last couple of years. I hope to get a couple of the books I had ordered to read. But what did arrive and I had put together today made my Desk set up which will be the first time in all the year I have been blogging at winstonsdad I have an actual desk to write on instead of on my knee. it is similar to my desk at work as I am so tall it is easier to have a sit to stand desk which can go a little higher and i have a two monitor set up and a keyboard and mouse which is similar to my work set up. and a chair from Ikea. So just a couple of bookcase and the room will be finished and I will be back to normal blogging hopefully.

Boulder by Eva Baltasar

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Boulder by Eva Baltasar

Catalan fiction

Original title – Boulder

Translator – Julia Sanches

Source – Personal copy

I had seen this doing the rounds before the Booker longlist came out, and I had read Permafrost but had to have it back at the library before I could review it. So I knew when this made the longlist it was a book I would like as I had intended to read it at some point. Because I love poets that become novelists, they usually have such remarkable visuals and imagery in their language. I have also enjoyed many of the recent books I have read that have come from Catalan in recent years. Eva Baltsazr is, as I said a poet. She released ten volumes of poetry and she has won several literary prizes this book and the other book I read form a triptych of books about three different women. She lives in the mountains with her wife and two children.

She doesn’t like my name, and gives me a new one. She says I’m like those large, solitary rocks in southern Patagonia, pieces of world left over after creation, isolated and exposed to every element. No one knows where they came from. Not even they understand how they’re still standing and why they never break down. I tell her I’ve seen rocks like those in the middle of the ocean. The ships skirt them in silence, as though some mythological creature could awaken and attack them. They’re not always by themselves. Sometimes there are more just a short distance away. Sometimes they form labyrinths you would be wise to avoid. Samsa lets her hair down and tickles my forehead, my eyelashes, my neck.She calls me Boulder and I don’t know why we laugh. Maybe love is unfurling above us like an enormous branch that bends and touches all the most sensitive, reticent parts of us.

How Boulder became Boulder.

This is a complex book about relationships, desire, lust and also motherhood. it is the story of two women; the title character Boulder is as she says early on in the book that she is a self-taught cook on a merchant ship sail around the world, but what happens when this lonely woman a loner, is maybe on the ship because she loves being herself and in a constant movement around the world. She is hit sideways when one night in a bar, she meets an older woman Samsa. They have a fierce, passionate night of passion as we see Boulder fall for Samas and decide to change the course of her life when she finds Samsa has taken a job in Iceland. They settle down and the years drift by and we see the two drift apart slowly Samsa rises up the career ladder and we see Boulder drift like an unanchored ship from job to job as this happens, Samsa decides she is getting no younger and wants to be a mother. Not as keen, Boulder agrees, and they have a child, but this sees the relationship dynamics change, and Boulder starts to feel outside the trio. What will happen? Will they weather the storm of motherhood?

Ragnar insists we have to celebrate. Here I was thinking we were friends. I tell him all I have to celebrate is the fact that Ive reached new heights of stupidity, that I can’t bring myself to hurt or leave Samsa, to understand the magnitude of her desire and say no. He tells me he felt the same when he had his first kid but that everything changes after the second or the third; they come out of their moms and grow up all on their own, all you have to do is feed them. He makes some dig that I can’t remember about the food truck and slaps my back so hard i choke.

After years in iceland Boulder never settles but tries to stay with Samsa

This follows a usual path of a relationship with a burning passion that draws us together, then the settling period and then what happens next it uses a queer relationship to follow this path. I loved the imagery Baltsar used at times; the passion of the relationship jumped off the page. I felt the could be a little more character-building, but I felt I knew these women. The Boulder character reminded me of a few people I knew years ago in Germany. So even thou they are mere pen sketches of characters, you feel as thou you know them. It captures that first flame of passion as the two make love, but it also manages to do what next, which I haven’t seen much in books because life isn’t happy ever after it is warts and all. Then throw in Motherhood and what happens when the relationship balance has changed and one of the couples feels pushed out by the baby. It is a great slice of relationship literature. It touches on some of the same subjects: Still life motherhood and not wanting children but this is more about the effect of motherhood on the relationship dynamics and the passion that started that relationship.

Winstons score – B A little novella that packs a punch.

That was the book that was March

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

Well, I hit a new low with a single review this month of Whale, which is one of the books on the Booker international longlist. I had meant to get more reviewed, but with packing and getting rid of many books for the move, I just haven’t felt like blogging until today. The chaos of the move is slowly going we moved in and slowly getting sorted. My book is half unpacked as I need to get a bracket to hold my shelves to the wall. I hope to get that sorted early next week then I’m getting a desk for my new library which is something I’m so excited to get. I’m tall, so I’m getting a sitting-standing desk and a monitor set up similar to the one at work well work is raised to suit my height. Anyway, I hope to have that all by the middle of the month and for the first time have a proper base to write the blog. I can’t really pick a book of the month as I only read one. Anyway, with the move I change broadband and tv provider and a bonus as part of the tv package in the new house was a basic subscription to Netflix so last night Amanda and I sat and watched the first two episodes of Gullermo Del Toro tv series Cabinet of curiosities a collection of horror stories a sort modern spin of the twilight zone, that I had been wanting to watch since I saw it was out but hadn’t felt it worth getting back on Netflix. I also read the most pages I had for over a month when I had managed to read 130 pages of the Clemens Meyer book While we were dreaming a fast-paced story of a group of boys adjusting and getting used to the fall of the  Berlin wall and the huge changes that will bring to there lives and the world they are living in this is a group of working-class boys rather like the writer himself in fact you can see how this slips in with the other books I have read by Meyer. Any way a smaller post I hope to be back with a review on Monday