Month: May 2023

The Atom Station by Halldór Laxness

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The Atom Station by Halldór Laxness

Icelandic fiction

Original Title – Atómstöðin

Translator – Magnu Magnusson

Source – Personal copy

This is the second book by Laxness I have reviewed I had wanted to review this particular book next and it wasn’t till I moved I found it after much searching in my old room it had got at the bottom of a pile in a place I hadn’t thought it would be. So I had wanted to read this next as I had read it was a satire and had been the book that got him a large following in America as it follows the US efforts to try and get a base built in Iceland, and it was based on actual events at the time in those post-war years just before the cold war came and Russia and the US are both eyeing up Iceland as somewhere to base. The story uses a simple girl from the very north of Iceland that has come to work in Reykjavik for a Politician in his house as a maid. We see the world of the Capital through her eyes.

My trunk had already been moved in, as well as my harmo-nium. I had bought the latter that same day with all the money 1 had ever owned in my life, and it had still not been enough.My room was on the attic floor, two storeys up; I was allowed to practise whenever I had the time, except when there were visitors. My job was to keep the house clean, get the children off to school, help the cook-housekeeper and serve at table.The house was much more perfect than the sort of gilt-bordered Christmas-card Heaven which a crooked-nosed woman would sacrifice everything to attain in the next world: it was an all-electric house, with machines being plugged in and started up all day long; there was no such thing as a fire; heat came from hot springs underground, and the glowing embers in the fireplace were made of glass.

Her first night in the House

Ulgas is a simple Country girl hard-working, and she is very principal, so when she gets a job to be made in the House of a Politician, she takes it, but she initially feels out of place in their world. Her north country background means she is seen as a country girl by the other servants in the Household, but she settles then starts to want to learn to play the Organ on her days off. Alongside this, in the House, they are things afoot. The US Ambassador is trying to get the government to let them build a Nuclear base in Iceland. This shows that even in the North, there are corrupt politicians. As we see, the Prime minister has taken money to do this. Ulga unloads this with the people she meets at Organ practice, a mixture of free thinkers and communists. At the same time, she also has an affair with a constable and then with Bei, the head of the House she works at. The book sees this world of corruption and self-centredness through the eyes of a girl that grew up with the Saga as her world, a country different from the one she is now in.

“I am quite sure you will not commit any such lechery, my friend,” said the organist. “Suicide – masturbation multiplied by itself! You who are a god! No, now you must be joking.”I have seen all the pictures from Buchenwald,” said Benjamin. “It is impossible to be a poet any longer. The emotions stand still and will not heed the helm after you have studied the pictures of those emaciated bodies; and those dead gaping mouths. The love life of the trout, the rose glowing on the heath, dichterliebe, it’s all over. Fini. Slutt.

Tristram and Isolde are dead. They died in Buchenwald. And the nightingale has lost its voice because we have lost our ears, our ears are dead, our ears died in Buchenwald. And now nothing less than suicide will do any more, the square of onanism.

Sh has her eyes opening in the fre thinking chat at the Organists house

This book was sparked by actual events in the post-war era. As the two superpowers looked at Iceland, it captured how the US wanted a foothold in the Island like they had on Greenland with their Bases. There was also a way of moving the Nuclear missiles near Russia. The book was considered weak when it was written, but it was the first time he had written about Reykjavik and shows how it is becoming a more urban city than it was. The characters are thinly veiled accounts of actual politicians at the time, which made me laugh as they could have all easily been Tories the way they went on with bribes and affairs. It is a fun look at events in that era and the use of the Ulga to cover the events, but also, seeing how living in the city has changed her as a person is an exciting angle over time. This leaves me with five more books on my shelves to Review from Laxness four I have to read and Independent People, which I had read just before I started the blog. I think I will read the recent Archipelago Wayward Heros to read next, maybe later this year. Have you a favourite book from Laxness ? or Iceland?

Winston’s score -(A) it’s excellent to see politicians have always been the same corrupt types as we have now.

That was the month that Was May 23

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  1. 533 A Book of Days by Cees Nooteboom
  2. I’ll do anything you want by Iolanda Batallé
  3. I served the king of England by Bohumil Hrabal 
  4. Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig
  5. Balkan Bombshells Female writing from Serbia and Montenegro 
  6. The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg 
  7. All the devils are Here by David Seabrook

Well, the month started with a series of vignettes from the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom. Then we headed to Spain, and a woman’s a sexual awakening as she discovered her sexual side. Then a waiter climbs the ladder in the inter-war years but the dark shadows of world war two are already there. Then a failed detective finds out why a dead woman in a wedding dress drifts past some clubbers. Then Istros book has collected together the cream of Balkan female voices in a new collection. Then a fable-like tale of a child saved from the horrors of the Holocaust and finally the dark side of the some Kent seaside town. I read books from seven countries this month. There is no new publishers this month.

Book of the month

I had to pick Balakn Bombshells. This is a month that has been strong on the blog I can’t remember a month with so many great books reviewed. But this captures the voices of the top writers in Serbia. The dark years of the break of Yugoslavia are there, but also a sense of writers breaking free of that of women writing about being woman female issues/

Non-book events

I had a post around my favourite podcast this month, which I have been listening podcast a lot more recently.I think this will show as I aim to head into the world of Marias a bit more. I also caught Peter Davison Campion again, which I had not seen for years, and I had mistaken a crime journalist that had worn a Campion tie thinking it was a Kames Joyce tie many years ago at a crime writing meal I got invited to. Amanda and I have watched a couple of series; ten pound poms followed a group of people that followed the Aussie dream for various reasons, a sort of call the midwife in the Sun, almost that Sunday night sort of show, but it was fun. We are now halfway through Small Light which uses Mieps Gies the woman that helps hide the Franks during world war two it is a new take on the story that shows their world of being Dutch and under Nazis rules the different attitudes to the events. Music wise I’ve been on a retro kick a lot of Fury in the Slaughterhouse, Pet shop boys, Depeche Mode, and the month finished off with a new album from Califone, a band that I have loved for years, and this is maybe their best album.

Next month Book wise

I have a backlog of 16 books to review, as I have just read the 50th book of the year and have reviewed 34 this year. This includes the last of the bookers to review. We announced the Shadow winner this month. I also have a couple of classics. Then a couple of new books. Mostly from Europe, but I need to catch up, so I hope to do so this month. I’m of the mind to read a couple of really long books this month. I fancy Shira by SY Agnon, and maybe another to help catch up on the review backlog, and summer nights are great for reading longer books. What are your plans for the next month?

All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook

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All the devils are Her by David Seabrook

English Non-fiction

Source – personal copy

I said a few posts ago one of my favourite podcasts was Backlist. In the recent break, they played some earlier episodes, one of which was with the writer Rachel Cooke from the Observer, which was around this book by the writer David Seabrook. Seabrook was a crime writer who had written two books before sadly dying too young. He was a writer that looked at the underbelly of people’s lives. In his other book, he wrote about the uncaught serial killer Nick the Stripper, that had killed 8 prostitutes in the sixties; he drew the case and alluded to who he thought was the killer, and then there is this book that seemed to follow him on a number of bus rides from his home in Canterbury to the seaside towns that surround him. But he gets to the dark underbelly of these towns and their past. If you go to any town, spend time in the pubs with the drinkers and look at the dark parts, you’ll enter the world he talks about.

Evenings. Dead-eyed drinkers six deep at the bars, not always alone but often unspeaking, unsmiling – as if the pubs were cider houses and Rochester were Hardy country, far away.

Staccato laughter strafing the Casino Rooms just off the High Street, where audiences are entertained by comedians such as’X-Rated’ Jimmy Jones or Roy Chubby’ Brown, big men who tour England ceaselessly like lardy takes on the Ancient Mariner, bringing none of the poetry and all of the guilt. And finally, down by the station, all the year round, scores of prosti-tutes, some of them very young indeed – and every soul desperate for trade. They hassle locals hurrying home; they go down on drivers waiting for the lights to change; they pound locked cars like gibbons at Longleat. Residents have set up surveillance cameras to monitor the situation but the girls still show every evening at Gundulph Road, New Road and the base of Star Hill and they still take it in all the usual places (including the arm) . Theirs is an indsutry in turmoil, the first sign, on the way to Chatham , tht the sailorsn havre gone for good.

A look at the darker side of life

The book is in three parts. I’ll mainly talk about the first part, which sees David looking into Rochester, the seaside town that Dickens lived in but was another character in the village, an inspiration to Dickens, the writer. Richard Dadd, the painter who killed his father and was sent to the asylum at Broadmoor, inspired Dicken’s  Mystery of Edwin Drood, inspired by Dadd’s time in Rochester. The book is a thinly veiled look at the town of drug addiction and what happens when drugs go too far, as with Dadd. The strange thing is, as I looked back at the book today to review it, There is mention of the green man myth, which is strange as there is a pub. There is a controversial sign that used to have a figure on in the town of Ashbourne where we have just had a weekend away it is odd how these connections happen at times with books and life, The book is his looking at each place and spinning stories around those places the dark side of nature from a gay boxer Freddy Mills or was he ?  and Charles Hawtrey the Carry on the actor, then fascist shadows in the dark past from Lord Hawi- Haaw relative he meets along the way on his days out from Canterbury.

In 1864, the year in which he was transferred to Broadmoor, Dadd handed over the painting to its dedicatee, George Haydon, the steward at Bethlem. In January 1865 Dadd, possibly at Haydon’s request, provided a key of sorts to this picture in a long, digressive poem entitled Elimination of a Picture and Its Subject’. Dadd treks through his cast list, throws in a few scandalous tidbits such as the patriarch’s penchant for clubbing fairies, and ends meanderingly, with an admission of defeat: ‘But whether it be or be not so / You can afford to let this go / For nought as nothing it explains / And nothing from nothing nothing gains. No good, then. But why should he want to ‘eliminate the picture and its subject? Is he making a pun?If it isn’t a pun, what is it?

Dadd and his strange art and his life is looked at .

This is the dark cousin of Sebald’s rings of Saturn. If he had been a drinker and a near do well of writer, this would have been the book This is the World of a Drinker, a man of the pubs of the night dark alleys, dirty toilets and old men. I am so pleased I caught the backlist this was mentioned on, as even before the show had finished, I had ordered the book. I will be getting his other book at some time as this is the sort of book if I was going write, I’d write a book of free-flowing thinking and thoughts, a sort of interlink work that isn’t about anything but is actually just compelling, like staying next to that guy in the pub that has the lowdown on the whole town the secrets hidden this is the sort of sales you hear from taxi drivers late at night.  I often feel Kluge is the master of this sort of book, but this is the top-shelf version of his book. We have seen the dark side of these towns in other books from Brighton Rock or Carver’s dark LA Stories, but this is real life which proves the maxim fact is often stranger than fiction.

Weekend away and some books brought

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Amanda and I have just had a weekend away. We do this every year with Amanda’s parents, sister and Aunt and Uncle. This year we chose a country hotel between Ashbourne and Leek on the edge of the peak district. We arrived Friday and wandered around Ashbourne, but as it was late, things were closing, but we had something to eat and planned to visit in the morning. We headed out in the morning, had coffee in Ashbourne, and then headed to the Oxfam bookshop. I had been a few years ago and often find Oxfam bookshops about the best charity shops to look around for books, and this was the case again.I found three books in there. We had a look around the antique shops. I am searching for a Victorian writing slope for my library come office to finish it off but to no avail. Anyway, here are the books.

The three books are Beckett’s essay on Proust and three dialogues. I don’t know a lot about this, but I Have enjoyed the Beckett I have read over the years. Then from Joesph Roth’s The String of Pearls, another book a Writer i have read but hadn’t heard the title of before, I have reviewed two other books from him over the years of the blog. The last is a former Prix Goncourt winner, Fields of Glory; I have in my head either a run-through former Goncourt winner or Nobel winner as a long-term project or both not quite decided yet. It is something I have been thinking over for a couple of years to do.

We then headed to Leek, a town I had often driven through as it is on the way back from my childhood home of Congleton to Chesterfield, but on all those trips through, I had rarely stopped, and we were surprised it was bigger than I remember it had a flea come antique market. I was nearly tempted as there were two writing slopes, but one had no lock, although I could replace it with the other lock, and the other was a tad too large, and neither had a secret compartment a must in my eyes the search will carry on. We visited the Oxfam in Leek, just a shop, and I found two books.

Murakami’s Birthday Stories a collection of short stories he chose a number of years ago with one of his own stories. I looked at this over the years and felt I should get it. Then Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess. I am a huge Burgess fan, and having all bar one of his novels, I am now on to the non-fiction titles, and this cover matches in part the copy of Dead Man in Deptford by Burgess I have. Then as is the case, I felt the need for a coffee and some cake. We stopped at a cafe called Kiek just off the marketplace, and it was the best Dairy free Brownie I have ever eaten. So tasty. Then we headed to the bookshop in Leek on two levels, which reminded me of Scriveners in Buxton. I brought some more books there

First of all, is Nature writing by Little Toller called Snow, One of my favourite books of all time is Encyclopedia of Snow by Sarah Emily Miano (A book worthy of being on the Backlisted podcast, a real lost gem, a book that is more Sebald than Sebald!) anyway this is another book around snow. Then there is Jean Cocteau’s debut novel, a short book from Zola, a nice weekend, and some unusual books that are less well-known by great writers. Have you had a good weekend?

 

The Most precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg

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The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg

French fiction

Original title – La Plus Précieuse des marchandises

Translator – Frank Wynne

Source – Library book

I headed to the library the other day to try and pick up some novellas I could read, as I just fancied a few short books to read. I think they are great when the days get warmer and lighter nights. I usually finish them in a day. This was the case with this the French writer and Playwright Jean-Claude Grumberg. He has been haunted since childhood by his father’s death in the Holocaust. This has been a theme in many of his works, as in this book.

Outside, the train had been slowed by drifts of snow. It suddenly stopped for a moment, then once more juddered into life, as though it, too, were suddenly asthmatic. It was then that it dawned on him.

Elbowing his way back through the crowd, he made his way to the woollen Pyrenean shawl. The important thing was not to choose, the important thing was not to think, but to scoop one of them up, without choosing between boy and girl. He took the child nearest to him. From his pocket, he had already taken his prayer shawl. The child was dozing.Dinah looked at him for a moment then she, too, closed her eyes and hugged the other twin to her.

The momnet he chose which twn to throw through the window

The book has a fable-like feel as it is a simple story of a woman living in the forest. She is the wife of the woodcutter that has always wanted children. But thinks that time has gone. So when she goes out foraging every day, the train line goes through the forest. But now the trains she sees daily taking people to their death. Then one morning, she happens as a father and husband in his jacket pockets on one of the trains in the convey of trains, this is 49 his beloved newborn twins. He sees a chance to let one of them go to freedom, so he makes it to the small window on the train and throws his daughter, wrapped in his prayer shawl, into the forest. This is rural Poland as they head to one of those death camps. He is lucky that he throws it near the woodcutter’s wife, who takes in the child and hides her and raises her. Meanwhile, will the rest of the family leave the camp will they see each other again?

 

The poor woodcutter’s wife feeds it a little of the cooking water, then once again holds out her finger and the child sucks again. Little by little, as the cooking water quenches its thirst and the kasha staves off its hunger, the child in the arms of the new mother grows calm and the poor woodcutter’s wife whispers a song in its ear, a lullaby that resurfaces from the shadowy past, surprising even her.

‘Sleep, sleep my little cargo, sleep, sleep my own little bundle, sleep, sleep my own little child, sleep.’ Then she delicately sets her precious treasure in the hollow of the bed. Her eyes alight on the unfurled shawl, which she hangs on the end of the bed to dry. It is a magnificent shawl woven from slender chreads, twined and knotted, fringed at both ends and embroidered with gold and silver threads.

She helps takes her in and looks after her most precious cargoe

This short book I read in a couple of hours; shows that goodness and hope can live through the darkest moments, and hope can live through horrors. It is partly based on his father as the train is the same one his father went to his death on. He was a small child at the same time as this happened. The book tackles the darkest moments of one man’s life that become a moment of light for a lonely wife. Grumberg has stripped the story and made it into a fable, and it becomes more powerful for the horror of the events in the camp. But the world of the simple Woodcutter and his wife in the forest world try to raise and hide this child in the Hope of it making it through the war. The man faced the choice of his twins to save from the window. The woodcutter’s wife feels blessed but also becomes the child’s protector. It is a powerful little book that will be remembered for a long time after I have finished it, and wonderfully translated by Frank. He seems to capture the spirit of books like this so well in Engish. Have you a favourite novella about the Holocaust? Also, I loved this cover not sure what it has to do with the book other than being trees, but very eye-catching.

WInstns score – A powerful new spin on the Holocaust novella that works as it has power and seems like a fairytale at the same time, a fine line to work.

Balkan Bombshell women’s writing from Serbia and Montenegro

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Balkan Bombshells Contemporary Women’s writing from Serbia and Montenegro

Serbian and Montenegro fiction

Translator (also compiled by )

Source – review copy

I am late to review this book I had half-read it before the move and fell in love with the collection of writers Will had chosen to assemble in this collection of  17  contemporary writers from the Balakns. As many of you may know, I have long been a fan of  Istros books for several years and have kindly been sent most of the books over the years to review here on the blog. So there were a few of the writers in this collection I had come across as they had been brought out before from ISTROS and also in the Peter Owen Istros collection that came out a few years ago. But most of the writers were new to me and showed me the strength and breadth of Balkan writing. So I finally picked it up this week and started the book again and worked through the collection I will only mention a few stories; I always loved to leave most of a collection like this to be discovered by other readers.

The man in question had chosen the biggest piglet on the farm, paid a good price for it and then sat down in the yard to taste Budimir’s rakija. ‘Nenad, he said, shaking Marijana’s hand and smiling to reveal a few bad teeth. Ma-riiana didn’t dare to speak while Nenad talked about his house in the forest, far from the village and the neighbours.

‘It’s peaceful and quiet where I am, he said and looked at Marijana. ‘Do you also like peace and quiet?’

Marijana meets the Forester that wants her hand in Marrige will it work out

The opening story is of a girl unmarried Marijana, a poor girl; it seems as if the first thing we are told is everything she could own would fit in a blue Bag a friend had brought her back from Macedonia. Her brother like Bikes, but she loves to bake. The locals are always asking when she will get married and are told when the right man comes along. So when a forester comes and asks for her hand in marriage, she is off to the hills is he the one she has waited for ? Bojana Babic’s story is simple but has an undercurrent to it. Next is a fever dream of a story. We meet Bambi as she enter a grey house, but as she does, it seems to move around her she bumps into people. Something is happening next. She is on the toilet, and has she had an abortion? This unnerving story from Zvanka Gazivoda reminds me of those great Argentina writers of recent years. The last story I will discuss is about someone returning to Belgrade after spending a long time in Canada due to the war. But as she arrives in Serbia, it is precisely the same time as Slobodan Milošević has died so how those she knew before have changed over the years she has been away? The people she knew had either gone and fought elsewhere, shrunk as people or died. The story is first the account of her trip, then the second part is a written letter as an email that arrives simultaneously.

There’s one now who wasn’t there a moment ago. Shorter than Bambi. He comes towards her and Bambi holds out her hand, but he just grabs her upper arm and wants to drag her away. She resists half-heartedly and looks around in wonder, but her friends are busy with themselves – fixing their hair, brushing their sleeves or buttoning up – and now they go for a walk around the house. Skull remains, for-tunately, but he goes to the window opening and lights a cigarette. It’s as if smoking is prohibited inside, so he won’t break the rules. He looks out and doesn’t turn round.

Rain is pouring steadily.

The fever dream of this story it drags you in to Bambi and what is really happening ?

 

I choose three stories as it leaves so many others, and some are great. I like some like the ‘The Title”  as a Mother and Daughter fight over her play’s provocative title. Then folk lore creeps into other stories like young pioneers where old cures can be used to help out. THIS IS A collection that works I often find short story collections can be a little bloated as they try to fit too much into the collection. These work as they are a collection of Amuse Bouche stories sort shot over in a few minutes but leave a lingering taste in your reader’s mouth. This collection shows how strong Balakn’s writing is and also the connections the Translator and Compiler Will has gone around the Balkans to find these solid female voices. Have you a favourite female writer from the Balkans?

Winstons score – A A whistle-stop tour of the best female writers in the Balkans

The return of Stu’s Favourite Podcasts

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It seemed a while since I had done a post around the bookish and a couple non-books podcasts I have been listening to in the last while I did a post many years ago, but some of the podcasts have gone others had evolved over the years. SO lets get into it

First is The Mookse and Gripes. Trevor as a blogger has been as around as long as I can remember being on the net which is about the time I started this blog. He has done the podcast for a number of years firstly with his brother and now with Paul. This version for me really works there is an excellent connection as they chat over books it is a mix of deep dives into writers and publishers and a list of books around a set topic. Of course, it has a lot of books in Translation mentioned.

Next up is tea or Books. Simon and Rachel have long been a favourite for me. I love their chat I love the fact they discuss books, so out of my sphere of reading it reminds me of what is out there; the show is split into a discussion around a question around books do you like books set in a bookshop or such. Then the second part is two books that share a theme or trait and which they like best.

Next up a really new shiny podcast, Lost in Redonda is a new podcast it is also split into two parts. The first discusses a backlist title the second half is a journey into the world of The King of Redonda, Javier Marias. He is a writer. I have read but have always felt that over people love him I am hoping well it has so far it has made me want to take a deep dive into Marias at some point and discover this writer more than know already.

Next up is Frances One Bright book podcast she has been involved with the Shadow Booker international since the start. Her podcast is a discussion around a single book that they all read it is great to see how different readers that broadly have similar tastes react to the books they read.

Next is another Newish podcast. The pair are young and host this unlike the other podcasts where I have known or known the people connected to the podcast This is a podcast dedicated to NYRB classics they are going to read all the books from them (I bet Trevor from Mookse is kicking himself he has long championed them )

Then we have Biulaq a podcast focused on Arabic Literature featuring the people behind the Arablit Blog and the Arabist blog. This has given me so many books in the last year or so even in this week’s episode I had read two of the three books I will be reading the other book they mention if you want to learn about Arabic fiction in translation.

Then we have the Anthony Burgess podcast that is working through his 99 novels and also has shown around him as a writer as you may know I have a huge soft spot for him and I am enjoying the trip through the 99 best books he had chosen as the best in English.

A little different a writer podcast the poet Sally Bayley talks about writing, poetry and life on her narrowboat a mix of her life poetry and nature a sweet podcast.

Mentions for Book podcast

Backlisted -a mine of great backlisted titles

Reading McCarthy – all about Cormac McCarthy and his boooks

Vollmania – All around William T Vollman

Chatting lit I’m very new to this but seems interesting so far

Then we have

99% INVISIBLE

This design podcast has been going years it looks at design and how we often miss it one of my favourite ones was about Thomassons those piece of street furnture maintain but totally useless now this came from American Baseball payer that was useless when he played in Japan this lead to people using his name for pictures of these unused piece of street furniture.

Have you a favourite podcast ?

 

Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig

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Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig

German Fiction

Original title –Die Linie zwischen Tag und Nacht

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – Review copy

I was excited when this dropped through my; letterbox as I was a massive fan of Roland’s first novel to be translated into English, which had come out several years ago and also had one of the memorable titles of recent years ‘One Clear, ice-cold January Morning at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century. I said at the time, he is actually best known as a Playwright in his homeland as his plays are amongst the best known in the German-speaking world, and he is the most performed in Germany. He initially worked as a journalist before turning to Drama. The German title is the line between day and night, and that is what the book centres on the situation of people caught between the world of the day and the dark of the night.

Two helicopters circled above Görlitzer Park, but they were flying far too close to one another; what if they touched, what if they plummeted from the sky into the dancing crowd?

But were there really two helicopters circling above us?Maybe it was just one; having been awake for more than twenty-four hours I might be seeing double.

Dancing next to me by the canal were a Colombian draughtswoman, a Croatian roofer, a Portuguese waitress, a Syrian IT guy, an Indian girl who could breathe fire, and a very tall, very thin, bearded Russian who described himself as a mystic. The Russian, Ivan, was the only one I knew.

All of them were wide awake yet deathly tired, and they all shared what they had on them: cocaine, MDMA, ketamine, speed, beer and vodka.

The nscene as the body drifted past Tommy and nthe fellow Clubbers

 

The book opens with the line she floated in her white wedding dress on the green water. A dead woman is floating past a techno club in Berlin, and no one bats an eye not sure if it is just a show or something but it is Tommy, a disgraced drugs officer, that sees that girl is dead and isn’t some sort of art piece floating by the multitudes dance a collection of Croatian roofers, Portuguese waitress a tall thin Russian this is the collection of people that have drunk and taken drugs together in the club all that night. Tommy decides to discover more about the dead girl, a journey that takes =him to the dark heart of Berlin’s nightclub scene. Drawn into the world he used to try and police. He was a great officer, but he got tainted by the drugs and drawn into the night as he drags this dead girl out of the canal, he has to face his past mistakes and try and discover who she was and also how she ended up floating dead in a wedding dress down a canal as the clubbers just carried on dancing.

I sat with Gianni in the restaurant, which was still empty.By now we were onto our fourth grappa.

We talked about Csaba. We talked about saba’s trip to Hamburg.

-That’s what he’s like, Gianni said. It’s not greed, it’s a lack of restraint.

Gianni asked me about the dead woman in the canal. I asked him how he knew about her and he said, I was there.

Half the city was there. The television cameras were there.

You’re famous, Tommy, but then again you’ve been famous for a while now.

Gianni made a gesture as if he were holding a camera.- It was nice to see you, Chef de Police à bord, he said as I made to leave. “Chef de Police à bord” is what Csaba once called me.

Tommy has to go into his own past as he tries to find out what has happened!

This isn’t a thriller or a road trip into the dark heart of the club scene and its darker side the drugs and how so many young people fall along the way.  We follow Tommy as he wades through the flotsam and jetsom that is the line between the sea of drugs and the land of the day and everyone else. Tommy knows this place well he has been caught up in his own flotsam and jetsom for far too long. This would make a great Wim Wender film s it has Berlin at is heart and Wenders Berlin, through his lens also captured that line between day and night, between drugs and trying to live in the day. This is the story that should be his next movie. I was reminded of some of the scenes in Wenders Faraway so close. So many souls in this book had drifted off in the sea of drug casualties of the night. Have you read any books by Schimmelpfenig or seen his plays ?

Winstons score – +A One of the best books from Germany I have read in recent years.

I served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

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I served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

Czech Fiction

Original title – Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále

Translator – Paul Wilson

Source – Personal copy

I am not much of a royalist ut had a fun idea that this book would be perfect for today. I’ve had this on my shelves for a while I have reviewed three other books from Hrabal over the years he is a writer that used to be better known and was one of the leading if not the leading Czech writer of the 20th century. He had studied law before World War Two and qualified after the war but was a man of many jobs a man that loved to hang around pubs this led to the nature of his writing this is a man with the ear for people and the way they act. He was a fan of the book The good soldier Svejk (which I had read many years ago and the character of this book is similar to the main character in this book).

Every morning at six and again in the evening before bedtime the boss would come around, checking to make sure I’d washed my feet, and I had to be in bed by twelve.So I began to keep my ears open and not hear anything and keep my eyes open and not see anything. I saw how neat and orderly everything was, and how the boss didn’t like us to be too friendly with one another, I mean, if the checkout girl went to the movies with the waiter, they’d both be fired on the spot. I also got to know the regular customers who drank at a table in the kitchen, and every day I had to polish their glasses.

In those early years he works hard but sees all that is happening around him.

The book follows Ditie through his life. He starts off as a busboy but he sees the waiters he works in a grand-sounding hotel the Golden Prague but it is more of a small country hotel. He sees rich people having parties and bringing prostitutes for sex this is where he loses his virginity in a brothel. Then as the years go by we see him moving up the ladder as he heads to a larger hotel in the city he finally is a waiter and starts to notice money, a woman. and taking pride in himself. Aspiring to be the Head Waiter one of them leads to the title of the book he had served the King of England. Ditie is a simple man but he wants to move on and the book is a story of how he does that alongside the fact all this is taking place whilst the 30s is happening and the darkening cloud of nazi is there and he gets drawn into marrying a German woman that he does as he sees what is happening to a number of his fellow Czechs the boy flows him in the post-war years and communism a life that parallel the writers own years.

And that was how I first found it out, because when I asked the headwaiter a basic question–How do you know all this?- he answered, pulling himself up to his full height Because I served the King of England. The King? I said, clapping my hands.Do you mean you actually served the King of England? And the headwater nodded his head in satisfaction.

The scene that gave the book its title and of course the reason I reviewed it today.

Hrabal is a writer I love and was reminded of how much I did by the guys at Feeling Bookish who sent, me a message on Twitter. I had listened to their episode on this book a while ago but they remind me about it as I posted on TwitterI was reading this book and thanks to them I learnt a few facts Ditie means child in Czech a nickname he gathered along the way for his child-like looks. Hrabal also wrote this book in 18 day sprint. He captures a simple man travelling through a world but with a sort of luck, it is like a Czech Forest Gump at times if it had been written by Woody Allen.Ditie is a satire on those years but also a warning on those years . It is also a man growing up but never really becoming an adult as the child is still there and one thinks there is a lot of that in Hrabal himself.  Alongside this, we see the passage of that year the pre-war dying embers of the Austro-Hungarian empire leave the void that the Nazis filled then we see the post-war communist year as his life rides a wave itself the latter part of the book seems to have some of Hrabal own insights into life this was written when he was in the later part of his life when he wrote this book and there is a feeling of maybe it being his words mixed with the narrator’s own words. Have you read Hrabal?

Winston’s score – A From one of the masters of  European writing in the 20th century.

I’ll Do Anything you want by Iolanda Batallé

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I’ll Do Anything You Want by Iolanda Batalle

Catalan fiction

Original title – Faré tot el que tu vulguis

Translators- Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent

Source –  Review copy

I was so pleased I was able to get a copy of this sent by 3 times rebel press as I had been a huge fan of the first two books the I had read last year they are a small publisher that has decided to publish working-class female voices from around the world in minority languages. This tie it is from the Catalan writer Iolanda Batallé. She is a teacher and writer. But she has also set up a number of publishing Imprints and raised international awareness in Cultural projects in her country. She also runs a bookshop called Ona in her Home town(one for the bookshop bucket list ) an emblematic bookshop a house of culture and a house of literature(sounds simply wonderful) . She has written four books.

THE COST OF LIVING KEEPS RISING, AND YET HUMANKIND HAS recently gone down in value. Nora strode along the jetway without looking back. She knew he was watching. His gaze held a deep nostalgia, a feeling so tangible, so solid she could almost knead it, the way she did when she had baked with her grandmother. Nacho watched her, her black skirt just above the knee, her blazer, her swaying hips. He noted with amusement that the men desired her and even the women were looking at her. He’d always wanted to know what had happened to his mother, but he’d never found a single clue.

His mother had turned blue after being with a man who was not his father. Dead. He’d witnessed it by chance, he was supposed to be at school. Mother’s turned blue! There’s nothing that can be done. That’s when he decided to become a shark. Seven years later he heard the song king of painter the first time.

I loved the clever use of this song as she has the affair and sees her sexual awakening in an S&M world

 

This book follows one’s sexual awakening Journey we meet Nora she is a housewife bored of her life in many ways. So when she starts an affair that then leads her into a world of High-class prostitution. Her world starts to come alive as she dives into a world of S&M . But in Nora’s head this is almost a dream-like feeling for her but as we the reader are an avatar on her journey we maybe see the slim lines of darkness and the danger as she drifts further into this world. As she as a woman is sexually awakened to the new level of desire these meets bring to her body, we see how she and her husband drifted apart over the 25 years of their marriage. This is a woman’s journey into her own body and what lust and sex can awaken in a woman. But there is always a feeling of what might happen in the background of her thought the sexual looking-glass journey. As we follow a sexual Alice as she eats and licks things and other things that make her body and desire grow!

SOMETIMES SHE FELT LIKE SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE SHE WAS.She wondered if it was all really happening. But there was no evidence to indicate it wasn’t. She’d avoided phoning Júlia for days, because when she did everything became all too real. Júlia had told her to break it off, she’d said it wasn’t right … that wasn’t what she’d meant when she spoke of infidelity. Ah, so now, to top things off, I need to be unfaithful the way you want me to be! Nora had yelled before hanging up on her. She needed to tell someone about what she was going through, but there was no one. The people who would have listened without judging were dead, and Robert obviously wasn’t an option. Teresa, her therapist, had passed away.

The dream like feeling of her journey is described her

This is a wonderfully poetic book that sees our narrator on her journey. The nod to Alice is mentioned on the cover and there is a feeling of someone dreaming through a world that isn’t dreamlike and that yes is giving her a lot of power in herself and her own desire but then on there other hand is dangerous like putting a hand through a flame you’re going get burnt eventually. This reminds me of the rabbit holes you went down in books William S  Burroughs wrote about sexual awakening his were around sex and drugs but this is driven by a woman who wants to break free of her boring world and feels that is something Burroughs also did well they want to break free and feel something else!! Or Anais Noin those first waves of writers that tackled what are taboo subjects in their books. This has led to writers like Iolanda that can now enter a sexual world of high-class sex for money a woman that is navigating that world as a woman empowered for now.!! The over thing I loved was the use of music in this book it used piece of music as a sort of tag for the sexual events as a way of remember the nights of passion. This is another gem from a press that is publishing hard-hitting books.

Have you a favourite book that deals with sexual desires?

533 A Book of Days by Cees Nooteboom

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533 A Book of Days by Cees Nooteboom

Dutch Non-Fiction

Original title – 533: een dagenboek

Translator – Laura Watkinson

Source – Personal copy

I featured an Interview with Cees many years ago on the blog. I haven’t had many interviews recently, and I love getting insight from a writer. This is the fifth book from Cees I will have reviewed. He is one of those great writers that can write across various styles of writing poetry, fiction, and travel writing, and this is something of a memoir of his life and those books he has consumed over the years and the writers he has known all and a love of literature that shines through this book. This is a book compiled over years of his summer vacations in Menorca. Another of the books I read by him was his lament every year when he had to move. This is him in the summer mulling over memories of his years of writing and the writers he has encountered. He is. writer that should have won the Nobel by now one of the great voices of his nation.

Literary politics (such a thing exists: hegemonies, influences, triumvirates, legacies) and death. Elias Canetti (“The Prophet Elias [Elijah] defeated the Angel of Death. My name is becoming increasingly uncanny to me.”) on Thomas Bernhard. He claims him for himself but is afraid he will have to surrender him to Beckett. “I elevate him to my student and of course he is that, in a much deeper sense than Iris Murdoch his former lover], who changes everything into pleasantness and light and has essentially become a clever and engaging entertainment writer. For that reason alone, she cannot be a real student of mine, because she is obsessed with sexuality. Bernhard, on the other hand, is, like me, obsessed with death. Recently, how-ever, he has been under the influence of a man who puts my own in the shade, namely Beckett. Bernhard’s hypochondria

I love his thoughts on Bernhard !!

The book comprises several Vignettes that see Cees looking back on his life or, over time, talking about the catus in his garden that all have names. So he recounts things like Canetti’s death and how Thomas Bernhard was obsessed with death . Then we see how a walk on the Island connects him to god as he did it. This is a book that collects his thoughts a lot about plant and how Yucca leaves looks like Daggers. Then we have pieces around the night sky. Thoughts around Finnegans wake ( a book that I have yet to tackle and always love people’s view of it ) He then has a section around Hungarian writers which mentions Count Banffy, who I have read the first part of his trilogy. Then Peter Esterhazy and his epic novel Celestial Harmonies, a book that has been unread on my own shelf for far too long. In a later piece, he mentions Miklos Szentkuthy, another writer who has been on my radar for too long. Witold Gombrowicz is a writer who has a lot to say about as well as so many of the writers that were and are around as he has been a writer. This is one of the significant figures of European literature writing every summer over his many years in his villa in Menorca.

 

As I write on, Gould, in 1981, plays sonata number 42 as an illustration of Szentkuthy’s proposition: the difference between that sonata and my cactus is the difference between the classical-rational structure of a “work” on the one hand, and biological forms (my cactus – as I am writing this, I see him before me as though I were looking into my garden in Spain) on the other. “My own writings for the time being,” says Miklos Szentkuthy, “belong to the cactus category: if I can have a role in literature it is the direct tangibility of biological lines and forms of instinct in my sentences. ‘Experimental novel’ was said about Prae in more than one place, by which one was supposed to understand an anachronistic relic of the old-fashioned mood of the roth century.” Prae, in spite of the huge reputation that the book has in Hungary, has been translated into few other languages, which prompts both suspicion and curiosity.

Prae is one of those books I must read at some point !!

I am a massive fan of Cees. I should read him more often, but he is a writer I want to have books left from, but in this book, he reminds me as a reader of those books still out there to discover and made me think of how underread I am in some areas of my reading. I love books like this, a glimpse into a great writer’s mind and workings and musing. He does mention writers’ diaries in passing; at times, this isn’t a diary but more a collection of moments and thoughts caught over time, a lifetime from those early days of his as a writer, his debut novel, which I have yet to read. I also love the talk of his planets and his garden as someone who isn’t a gardener but hopes to get some great plants in my new garden (well, when my rear lawn is laid ). This is hard to pigeonhole as it covers so many different subjects it just needs to be read !! Have ypu read any books by Cees ?

Winston’s score +A – I love a book that spurs me on as a reader to read more and discover more !!