Month: November 2023

Anyone who utters a consoling word is a tratior by Alexander Kluge

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Anyone who utters a consoling word is a traitor by Alexander Kluger

German fiction

Original title –Wer ein Wort des Trostes spricht, ist ein Verräter

Translator Alta L Price

Source – Personal copy

As you may know, I am a massive fan of Kluge’s written works. He is a writer, filmmaker, and maybe the greatest secret of German writing. I still find it problematic that someone so similar in style to Sebald in his writing has not been better known in English. His works on the whole deal with the war and tend to look at it in great detail and try to take apart what happened, and here is the same it uses the post-war trials in Germany after the war of SS officers and those involved in the holocaust. It is a tribute to the German Jewish Judge Fritz Bauer, the man who tried Eichmann.

A wise man from Salamanca-doctor, theologian, jurist and forebear of Fray Luis de Léon–was a visionary. He could wind his way along the paths of the INTELLIGIBLE WORLD, parallel to the mere world of factual reality, to navigate the tunnels of the future. He never told a soul exactly how he did it. In the period prior to the 1492 edict of expulsion, it became glaring that Saint Dominic’s zealous followers posed the threat of persecution.

This sage advised several of Salamanca’s Sephardic families to emigrate to Lisbon before the forced expulsion. But they shouldn’t trust the Catholic rulers of Portugal for long, either; rather, he advised they continue their journey before 1497, moving on to the more tolerant Ottoman Empire or the Netherlands.

The Spanish Jews trying to escape

As always, his stories are like a whole view. He has mentioned he likes the Buchner quote I’ve always wanted to see what my head looks like from above.” That is how the book is made it events from France around Proust and certain French generals. I appreciate how the train line is so well built in Poland. He mixes little tales and history so well together. Tales like the expulsion of the Jews from Salmanca moved first to Catholic Lisbon, but then they headed north to Holland and Amsterdam. How the sheer number of forced labourers in 1942 had overwhelmed the Reich, and plans were in place if they reached India. Later on we see another mention of those Jews from Salamanca about Spaniards in the Fatherland. He has to lead Jewish history and life from 1492 to 1942 at times and the massacre of these Jews. We also witnessed Mass shootings at the camp, and then the post-war era led to the trials overseen by Bauer.

In the summer of 1942, the number of forced labourers from the Eastern territories in the German Reich reached its peak.

The units carrying out raids and organizing the transports were already overwhelmed. By the beginning of 1943, companies had begun rejecting many of the labourers being sent to the Reich because underage, incapacitated and sick people were being included, so they were loaded right back onto return transports to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The condition of those shipped back home (often to the wrong place) appalled the local population–this was yet another organizational error that made itself felt anew every time another load of people was picked up. These errors were brought up at the Central Conference of Reich Labour Commandos, and it was proposed they be prevented by better staff training going forward. In the meantime, the VALUE OF THE LABOUR FORCE, which the Reich had easy access to in the previous year but was now increasingly difficult to obtain, was recognized in principle by Reich leaders.

The sheer number and loss of those made to do forced Labour

The book title is a partial quote from the motto of the art theorist and avant-garde artist Bazon Brock and suits the work Kluhge has made the war his own in his writing he is a fan of the writer and theorist Adorno. He has the talent to mix fact and fiction, walk the line of truth and justice, and the dark times in his own country and shine a light on what happened during those years. I am still not sure why he is not better known in English, maybe because he is on a smaller publisher, his books are online and easy to get hold of. He has said in speeches he likes to tread the line of fact and fiction.  Theory and practice, he also used the full quote from the title of the book. The poet can’t do that, but he can certainly tell about it – constellation, documentary and the authenticity of the original experience. No consolation stories. Whoever speaks a word of consolation is a traitor. He is the voice of the Germans’ soul and regret of those times. So this is the 6th book from Kluge I have reviewed. I have two more on my shelves. Have you read this book?

Winstons score – A 48 stunning stories

The Opppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

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THE Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

German fiction

Original title Die Geschwister Oppermann

Translator – James Cleugh

Source – Personal copy

 

Now, when I saw it was German lit month coming up I hadn’t seen or brought much German lit tjhe last couple of years. I have a lot on my shelves to read. But a trip to Matlock and I have an eye for Persephone books I can spot them on a shelf that grey cover just makes them jump out, and I had missed they had republished this book.  I had recently seem my American friends posting the Mcnally edition of this book online. I saw this in the Oxfam in Matlock and thought this be a perfect choice for German lit month. As Feutchwanger was a fierce critic of the rise of Nazis in his homeland, he was Jewish and a good friend and inspiration for his fellow writer Bertolt Brecht. They had written against the rise of Hitler together in the book. His house had been raided and stripped of things by Nazis agents. he managed to escape to the US. This book is the middle book of a trilogy but it stands alone as a novel that follows the years up to 1933 of a Jewish family in Berlin as the world closes in around them.

On the wall above his desk hung, as in all the Oppermann business offices, the portrait of old Immanuel. He felt a slight pang at the thought that it was no longer the original, but a copy. It was, of course, fundamentally a matter of indifference whether the original hung here or at Gustav’s. Gustav had, no doubt, more appreciation of it. He certainly had more time to look at it, and it was hung in a better position in his house.

Ultimately, too, Gustav really had a better right to it. Still, it was annoying to feel that from now on he, Martin, would no longer have the original before his eyes.

The past of the buisness the grandfaather that bstarted it but now that world had shrunk.

 

The book follows the family we learn that the grandfather of one of the main characters started the furniture business started by Emanuel Opper, a merchant who settled in Berlin and started the furniture business by selling to the German army. Now a successful business, we meet his grandson Gustav, a writer in the middle of writing a biography of Gotthold Lessing this comes up throughout the book as he is working and reworking the book, His two other brothers, Martin he is the ones running the family business and it is his world we see changing a lot and the other brother Edgar a doctor is suffering by the rise of antisemitism and lose of patients then the loss of his job at the hospital. We see this happening as it is heading to 1933 the family and friends around them in the Jewish community as others decide to go abroad to Switzerland. Other friends think it will not get worse; others, like the Oppermanns, try their best to get by in this shrinking world of freedoms and chances. First, they changed the name of the business to a German name then they had to merge with a business. Their house is raided, and things are taken. This finally makes them think of escape.

The question of transferring Oppermann’s FurnitureStores to Jaques Lavendel, who was a naturalised American citizen, had been under consideration several times; but the idea had been abandoned for various reasons. Curiously enough, Martin did not now advance any one of the many practical objections but said rather spitefully, ‘Lavendel would not be a good name for our stores.’ ‘I know that,’ replied Jaques quietly. ‘As far as I know there never was any question of it,’ he added, smiling.

The transformation of the two branches into the GermanFurniture Company was really not quite as simple as it appeared. There was a mass of details to be discussed; Jaques Lavendel had many useful suggestions to offer. Martin had to admit that Jaques was the more resourceful of the two of them.He expressed his thanks. Jagues stood up and took his leave with a firm, hearty handshake. ‘I, too, thank you sincerely,’ said Liselotte warmly in her strong, deep voice.

The having to change name and the owner of the buisnees to avoid losing it fully.

Originally he had worked this as a film script to be made into a film in the UK about the rise nazism and how easy it is to see the world shrink and people change, but then the film was dropped, and he reworked it into a novel, I loved how it drew you into their world and how you see the slowly the darkness and hate to draw in around them.  It is a family saga of a family being slowly pulled apart, and that is the beauty of this book it is subtle. The things happening around them come bit by bit, always feeling this is it, and then the next thing happens to them, but no. His books were burned by the Nazis at the time he was one of the best-known German writers alive. His work had been translated into English, but his book had dropped out of print until Persephone brought him back into print I hope the other two books in this trilogy come out for me this is an important book it was on the Deutsch Welle top 100 German books as the choice for 1933 (a great list for anyone wanting some new books in German to read). So this is my second book for this year, German lit month and a great discovery. Have you read this book ?

Winston score – +A Powerful yet subtle look at one Jewish family as Fascism rises in Berlin

Blueprint by Theresia Enzensberger

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Blueprint by Theresia Ezensberger

German fiction

Original title – Blaupause

Translator – Lucy Jones

Source – Personal copy

I have been missing this year’s German lit month. Still, I think for the first time in years, I just hadn’t planned for this month, so I am posting a lot fewer books than I have in other years, but this is the first of two books I will be reviewing. You know, strangely, it isn’t too. I came to sit and do this review; I think the two books have similar themes in the time they were set and the underlying story of the time, both set in the years before World War Two. But this is a modern story written by the daughter of one of Germany’s leading thinkers, Hans Magnus Enzenberger, a cultural commenter. This was her debut novel, and she has since written a second novel, which was listed for the German book prize when it came out last year.

For a moment, Gropius seems confused at my being in his room; then he collects himself. ‘Come in, sit down. What can I do for you?’ Now it’s my turn to be confused. He’s the one who asked me to come, after all, so why do I have to explain myself?

Perhaps institutional mechanisms at the Bauhaus work in the usual bureaucratic way – an invisible hand consisting of protocol, regulations and appointments bringing people together who aren’t exactly sure how they ended up there.

I explain that I’m new to the Bauhaus and that I was asked to introduce myself and bring my portfolio. Gropius’ face brightens.’Ah, that’s right, a new student.

Luise meets the great man as she is due to start at the Bauhaus as a student

Blueprint is about a student, Luise Schilling. She has lived in a traditional family in Berlin and wants to change the world around her as she studies architecture. She has decided to go to the Bah=uhaus and study under Gropius. We see her meet the man himself but get drawn to the alternative thoughts and lifestyle of those studying at the Bauhaus. The young Luise is drawn to a group of students following a spiritual path and an enigmatic student, Jakob, who is involved with the group. This is a girl becoming a woman as her eyes are opened by the students and world around her. But this is the late twenties, and events back with her family in Berlin, where violence is bubbling under the surface of the city. Whilst she is with her parents. This is all before the Bauhaus moves to it famous home, which happens later in the book. There is also the tale of her trying to get her ideas around social housing accepted.

Luise Schilling: There Goes the Neighborhood. Social Enclaves in the Shadow of Urban Planning, Sichter Verlag, Stuttgart. 368 pages, 12,80 DM

If you’re interested in architecture, these days, chances are you’re probably interested in the Bauhaus school.

Such a proclivity will make this book by German-born American, Luise Schilling, who studied architecture at the Bauhaus before the war, all the more astounding. For her There Goes The Neighborhood, she makes a case against the kind of holistic city planning preached and practised at the Bauhaus. Instead, Schilling demands that the city is seen as it is: a cluster of small, independent economic zones and organic communities. According to the author’s indignant thesis, urban planners are out of touch with urban populations.

Later her ideas get taken on board as show later near the end of the book.

There are benefits and downsides to her choice to use the Bauhaus as the book’s centre; that is, we all know of it, but then it, for me, needs a little more depth around Groupis. The main thing is that it makes you want to read the book but then feel you want more of the Bauhaus. But then it is mainly Luise’s story, which is one of a woman growing up escaping an overbearing father and initially finding freedom of thought and ideas in a group of students. Still, later in the book, we see how, in a way, the restrictions of her being a female are still there when her ideas are sidelined. But then later, when seen after the war, her accurate visionary idea comes to light. Add to this is the story of what is happening in the background with her family in Berlin, away from the dreamland that is Basuhaus and the events that lead to the rise of Hitler are there to be seen. The other book I am about to finish is set a few years after this and shows the events after this book well. Have you read this or any books by her father? I have a book under review by him as well.

Winston’s score – B – a great coming-of-age story that shows how females still couldn’t go as far as they wanted, even in the Bauhaus.

Summer Fishing in Lapland by Juhani Karila

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Summer fishing in Lapland by Juhani Karila

Finnish fiction

Original title – Pienen hauen pyydystys

Translator – Lola Rogers

Source – Via Translator

I was contacted by Lola as, over the years, I have reviewed several books that she has translated from Finnish, and this had passed me by. Still, when I read the blurb of this book, I loved the idea it seemed to do the thing that Finnish fiction does very well, and that is genre-bending literature. Some of the recent books I have read are like this mix of murder and magical realism, and here, Juhani has used the myths and creatures of Lapland to tell a story of a fishing trip and a chase and the myths the writer obviously grew up listening to.  The other characters in this book are the nature and views of Lapland and the remote places they go fishing.

Elina got to the pond before the clouds did. She unhooked the black nine-centimeter Rapala lure from the rod line guide, pressed the reel release, and swung the rod back, ready to cast.

Then, on the other side of the pond, the knacky surfaced.It rose up out of the water slowly, like an ancient statue uncovered by a receding tide. It was as beautiful as a Greek god. Elina knew that it could look like a man or a woman or an androgyne, depending on the person it was trying to entice.

Anyone who made the mistake of looking into its eyes would get lost in them. Some people fell in love with the knacky, and some were so love-struck that they walked straight into the water and drowned.

She sess the Knacky on the opther side of the pond

The story follows an annual pilgrimage made by Elinas from the small village she grew up in east Lapland, and every year, she returns to take this pilgrimage to a lake to try and do battle again with the PIke of the lake. But this is also how she has reset herself yearly on those three days at the pond. But this time it is different as a spirit from the water appears, and they appear other creatures appear around her.  She sets of to fish, but the pike is a clever fish and is as elusive as ever as the Knacky spirit from the water appears. Then there is a side story of a detective, Janatuinen, who thinks Elina has committed a murder. He sets off immediately after his partner ensures he can’t make the trip north. He follows behind her, visiting the same bait shop, but he is an outsider, and the world he sees differs from Elina’s. The story drifts from the two main characters back into the youth of Elina as we see the two stories twist and turn, and we have a sprinkling of odd creatures, a sort of Finnish bigfoot, a hairy man-like creature, but he is a little dum,. Elsewhere, a farm hand is fighting off his own death but, at the same time, starts sprouting branches and leaves. This a quirky nove. Will he catch Elina? will she get her fish?

Janatuinen used Gunnarsson’s belt to make a tourniquet for his leg, then she drove him to the hospital entrance, waited for the nurses to get him and his suitcase out of the back seat, asked them to close the car door, and drove off without a glance in the rearview mirror.

It was a two-hour drive from Oulu to the border. One hour in, Janatuinen sat in a service-station café, eating breakfast and looking out the window. The wind was dying down. Birch branches tapped wearily against the glass, as if knocking to get in.The border came into view at nine a.m. The guard booth had a broken window. The window frame had been taken out and leaned against the wall of the booth. The barricade boom was broken, too, and had been carried behind the booth in two pieces. In its place was a green Suzuki jeep, parked in the middle of the road. A boy in a billed cap sat in the driver’s seat asleep, his head resting on the steering wheel.

His partner breaks his leg just as he is about to go nmorth to follow her

I loved how he has mashed up a murder, fishing, rural lapland and myths so well. I was reminded of the book from Olga Tokarczuk’s book Drive Your Plough a book that is set in the countryside and has a feel of myth and reality mixed at times. In an interview, he mentions an Estonian Novel, Old Barn by Andrus kivirähk. I looked this book up it hasn’t been translated into English another book has been translated, though.  I think I may have that one somewhere the cover looks familiar, so I may look and see if I brought it with me when we moved.  Andrej Sapkoski is another writer; he says he mixes myth and place well. A number of his books have been translated. This book has a real sense of place. The, swamps and world of Elinja’s youth jump off the page. Also the myths that come to life seem so real he has made it seem like a piece of magic realism rather than a work of fantasy. Have you a favourite Quirky novel from Finland?

Winston score – A -I love the quirkiness of Finnish fiction at times, they seem to mix genres so well

Lets go home ,son by Ivica Prtenjača

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Let’s go home, Son by Ivica Prtenjača

Croatian fiction

Original title -Sine, idemo kući

Translator – David Williams

Source review copy

I move on to a prize-winning novel from Croatia and one of the first novels I have read dealing with COVID-19 and living through the lockdown. I think this will be a literature theme for years to come, whether it is about the pandemic or uses it is a starting point for a novel. Ivica Prtenjača is a well-known figure in Croatian literature both as a writer himself, where he has one of the biggest book prizes in Croatia twice, first for his novel The Hill and then for this novel. He has also tirelessly promoted Croatian literature and is a radio host in Croatia (I love that a well-known novelist is a radio host, not some Z-list celeb like here ). He is also a prize-winning Poet.

I remember Dad trying to plaster the ceiling of our bungalow. He mixed some runny concrete and tossed it in the air with a trowel, hoping it would stick. He stood on an upturned tin drum, while I filled the concrete bucket down below.I was twelve years old, and I remember that winter morning because before we settled into our work, I’d watched Kubrick’s A Space Odyssey for the first time, wonder-struck, and in near ecstasy at what I’d seen and barely understood.Dad couldn’t get the hang of the hand movement, the secret angle you needed to toss the runny mix in the air, spread it out, and have it stick to the ceiling. He tossed it up vertically.And vertically it fell back down on his head, getting in his eyes. Not wanting to hide, I remained at my father’s side, sharing his torment, so it fell on me too. He tossed two full buckets up, and when it all fell down, I’d faithfully pick it up, add a bit of water, and dump the lot back in the bucket. He eventually got down, lit a cigarette, and parked himself up on a concrete block, staring at his watch.

He watch his father make the home and there is some humlour along the way like here

What happens when your father is seriously ill and you know the only hospital that can treat him is in Zagreb, where there is a slim chance he can get better. But this means you, his son and your mother all making the trip to be with your father away from your Dalmatian home by the coast. A baker has suffered after years of breathing flour has left him ill. But whilst this is happening to you and your family, the world is seeing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, you end up living in Zagreb under the lockdown, unable to return to the coastal home. This is all made worse when the treatment for your father starts to falter. As your father is recounting with you all the past the meeting, how they meet a recounting of love and marriage and having a son as he does this, he is all the more driven to want to be at his home by the coast. What to do? This is a bond between father and son. What would you do for your father? How far will a son go to help his dying parent|?

On a small plastic table, the photographer set out a bunch of retouched photos, children, old folk, children, even a few group photos where he’d used a ballpoint pen to draw outlines around everyone’s eyes and coated their faces in sepia, to increase the contrast. The pictures looked like they’d been taken in a circus. Posing for God knows who, these poor people had become dead clowns, playthings in the hands of a provincial hawker, who reckoned that he’d breathed new life into them. When my grandad saw the people in the pictures, he almost shuddered.

His fathers memories are brought back by the pictures of their lives together

This is a personal novel, almost auto-fiction. It seems the heart of the novel came from Ivica’s own experience of losing his father, a baker, and this also happened around the pandemic. It is a pandemic, but more so a novel of death and life and the bond between father and son. The sorrow and love in this book drips off the page. What happens when death is near and all you want is to be in the home you built with those you have loved and lived with? Bugger, the pandemic he needed to get home the call of the home and the sea that special place is at the heart of the book. We all have those places so intertwined in our lives that they live as spirits in us a house a view, a smell and this is at the heart of this. His home is that to his father a place he built but also a place that is so close to him he is almost part of the home. Subtle work of a man dying a son greaving and trying to help his father. This is one of those quiet books that linger in your mind and for anyone who has lost some close but also has a place close to the family’s heart like this is! Do you have a favourite book about a father-and-son relationship?

The Blue Soda Siphon by Urs Widmer

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The Blue Soda Siphon

Swiss fiction

Original title – Der blaue Siphon

Translator – Donal McLaughlin

Source – Personal copy

I am a little late to starting this year’s German lit month in fact, I m not as organised as in other years, but I feel I will just post a couple of books this year as I’ve other books to read so this has been on my shelves for a couple of years. I am a massive fan of the publisher Seagull Books. They seem to plough their own furrow and have these lists of books from certain countries or places; this is from their Swiss list. Widmer grew up with literature. A frequent visitor to his house growing up was Heinrich Böll. He was an editor and then a freelance writer. He was known for his exciting plot twists, often surreal parodies using classic book ideas and spinning them into something new. He may feel like one of those writers who should been better known in English. He has several books on Seagulls list I have another apart from this, which is a short novella that twists on the time travel genre.

In the evening that day, a Friday, I went to the cinema, a city-centre cinema showing a film of which I knew only the name and that it had been praised in the morning paper or evening news. I’d confused it with something else, presumably, as the film was peculiar – more than just odd – not my taste. I was also completely alone in the cinema.Maybe it was a Monday. As ever I sat at the front, in the very first row, as I like to drown in films.Those widescreen films are already a thing of the past now, those CinemaScope worlds I could plunge into so deeply, I could never see everything, only parts, like in real life. For example, only when I saw Doctor Zhivago on TV much later -a moveable postage stamp, in comparison – did I realize that I’d seen but part of the action, on the right of the screen or the left.

The first visit to the cinema after which he goes back fifty years.

The book is clever as it has two chapters and two time travellers. I feel it is the same person, but it is not fully clear.. The first a man in his fifties goes to the cinema to watch a film and then when he leaves the cinema. He finds himself going back fifty years to his old house with his parents and to his own past it is looking at events that happened then as an adult that happened when he was a child. It is the day he has disappeared as a three-year-old for a single day. This mirrors the events in the book’s second half, as he can not remember them. He sees how his parents react. Now, in the second part of the book, a three-year-old goes to the cinema, and he leaves and is flung into the presence of the Narrator in the first book and is guided by a force to the house he now lives in. There is also a dog that seems to follow him into the future.

The dog shot out of the kitchen, raced yelping towards me and, licking me enthusias-tically, jumped at me. Hardly able to fend him off, I laughed and tried to save my face from his tongue. My mother appeared with a kitchen knife in her hand. She was wearing a bright summer dress and had a dish towel tucked into a narrow leather belt. She looked at us, the amorous dog and me, fighting back and giggling, and shouted,

“Jimmy! heel!’ And to me,’Couldn’t you have rung the doorbell?’

The dog he knows more than the others !!

This short book is almost an adult fairy tale. I was reminded of the opening of Quantum Leap, where it was said Sam, the main character, travelled within his own lifetime, and this is the case here. The title comes from a bottle his father has on his shelf. Whilst in the past, he saw his wife as a child and his parents it is the end of the war years, and there are references to this, and in the present when the book is set, it is around the time of the Iraqim war this is a sort of nod to the two wars. He uses movies as a way to time travel, the one about a lost Indian boy  the other films all seem to link to the book’s narrative. I like how he also changed the language from the Adult narrator, and the child narrator’s view of the world is very well done. This is a Swiss version of Quantum Leap but with the same character jumping as an adult and a kid to see the war over two different times. A playful, unusual book from a writer I would like to read more from. Have you read Urs Widmer?

Winston’s score – A – solid adult fairy tale of time travel.

MY reading Habits

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I been inspired t write this by the recent Mookse and Gripes episode, where Trevor and Paul talked over their habits and other bits around them as a reader. I thought I would talk a bit about my reading life and world. I am not as organized as Trevor and Paul. I never will be. My dyspraxia mind is chaotic a lot of the time. But I do have some routines, and over the years, I have blogged how me as a reader work has constantly evolved. I still manage to read over 100 books every year I may not review them all, but since I started last year to track my reading more on Goodreads, I have seen that it is about 120 books a year I read, and I think I will move the stat keeping to Storuy graph as supposedly it can give you more detail even this is a struggle at times for some that constantly will forget to update things due to my dyspraxia one of the worst things I have is this lack of constancy with doing things like this. But over the last few years, I am getting a little better. When do I read well, I am a chunk reader I am not someone who puts bits in here and there. I read the morning I hope to get between 30-45 minutes most mornings  work or not. On my days off, I try to read for a couple of hours during the day. I tend to work 3 days one week and four days the week after. I read every evening for about an hour times more if I’m nearing the end of a book, so that means I tend to read 18-20 hours a week, which sometimes is less, sometimes more. I find I read more in the winter, more so this year, since I inherited my aunt’s serious read lamp. This lamp has a natural light, and I think will add a little more reading in the evening this winter.

Paper/e-book I do have a paperwhite kindle. But I have maybe read 10 e-books in the last ten years I just don’t get on with it. I love the idea the change of font size and font is all brilliant it is just an interaction with the kindle for me never quite works.,I love seeing my progress in a  paper book. I keep the Kindle mainly for Booker International reading as I sometimes need to spend a lot on books, and the books I have read in recent years have been for Booker International. I have tried to use Netgalley but never read the e-books I try to get. So yes I am a paper books man.

Audiobooks had you asked me this a year ago, I said no. I would always say I love book-based podcasts like The Mookse and the Gripes. But I finally decided to try Audible and have since then read and listened to four books so yes, for me yes I LIKE Audio books if they will add another few books to what I read or help me tackle longer books that be great. Book length I am someone that have always preferred books under 300 pages. I have more and more in recent years been avoiding longer books in fact, this was the one tip I did get from Trevor and Paul to spread longer books court over a long time, a chapter or section of pages at a time. I will be trying this more next year. Thanks guys.  I have posted about being a single book read I have a hybrid version of this these days where I’ll read multiple, but I will tend to read chunks of books like Base Camps on Everest. This is something I have done for the last few months, and it has meant I have read more books than I used to as I tend to switch if I feel my reading of a book slowing

MyTBR I have two yellow trolleys, one in my library and the other in our lounge. One is the current TBR books. The other will be when I have a project reading like Czech Lit Month or Club 1962 etc, where I will find all the books for the said project and put them in my library trolley. This is something I have seen Simon Savidge do and I thought it was a great idea to sort them once a month as they tend to also get overloaded with books. I love project reading the year clubs Simon and Karen do are highlights of my years, as is the booker international longlist reading Czech Lit Month, German Lit Month and, of course, Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month. As for me and my mind, the focus it brings gives me clarity, and I’m sure these periods are when I read most. Where I read well I have my sofa downstairs which is by my serious light and upstairs my old reading light is next to a chair from Ikea in my library. I like listening to instrumental music and can cope with some lyrics but more on the acoustic country vibe than some of the punk, new wave industrial goth music I like, which is too distracting to read. Notes I use a few book tabs on passages I love and take pictures of pages I think I will quote, and with longer books take a few notes on index cards this is something I am doing more and more every year. I think in the process of writing my post these days, they are longer I like meaty quotes that I usually mention in the review. Well that’s me, nothing new A chaotic reader who has more order than I did when I started this blog but will be the most planned and ordered reader, but this chaos I have in my mind is what drives the wanderlust in my reading and the driving passion for books in translation as I have a very obsessional mind which is what makes me constant look for those underlooked gems and the sheer solo drive in my mind is for books in translation and world lit which will never change. I am so passionate about this as any of you who have met me will agree with it.

Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux

~ winstonsdad ~ 8 Comments

Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux

French literature

Original title – Se perdre

Translator Alison L. Strayer

Source – Review copy

I read this last year and never got around to reviewing it, so I am a recent convert to Audiobooks. I have been signed up to audible for a few months so when I saw this was on there, I decided to list, and I was so pleased I did I’m not sure who the narrator is without going back (Tavia Gilbert, it is ) her voice just suit the book and will forever be th3e voice I will have in my head for Annie Ernaux. The book follows an affair she had with an official from the Russian Embassy. This is the diary of the time. She had also written about it in another book at the time, and this is much later, and she decides it is time to let her innermost thoughts at the time be published.

The outside world is almost totally absent from these pages. To this day, I continue to feel it was more important to record daily thoughts and actions, the things which constitute the novel oflife that a love affair is (details from the socks he did not remove while making love to his desire to die at the wheel of his car), rather than the current events of the period, which can always be checked in archives.

The world for that year is just her and him in this book

There affair starts when she is sent on her first trip to Russia this is the age of Gorbachov, she meets on of the Russian Officials on the trip she calls him S, and that is how she refers to him throughout the book. She says he is 36, but he looks like he is 30, slim and tall and makes her feel petite when she is next to him they sleep on one of the last nights of the trip. He then tells her he is going to France to be part of the Russian Embassy in Paris and thus begins a full-flung affair. Early on, he tells her that he is only there for about a year, and the initial period they meet is before his wife has come to Paris to be with him afternoons of passion with S, but as they grow closer, she remembers her previous affairs and relationship and how drawn, she is to S, and then she has so many doubts about him. Why hasn’t he rung as the year goes on, these doubts grow. She meets the wife and sees them together as she is often invited to the embassy for this event. As that day when he is gone grows nearer, her thoughts of him does he love her is this just passion for the things they have done? She has let him do things no one else had ever done. This is the innermost workings of the affair, being that woman waiting for the call waiting for the afternoon of passion here and there.

 Song by Edith Piaf : Mon dieu , laissez le-moi , encore un peu, un jour, deux jours, un mois, le temps de sadorer et de souffrir…(Oh god, leave him with me,just a little longer, one day,two days,a month…give us time to worship each other and to suffer)

The longer I live, the more I abandon myself to love. The illness and death of my mother revealed the strength of my need for the other. When I say, ‘Ilove you to S, lam amused to hear him reply, ‘Thank you!’ which is not so very far from ‘Thank you, think nothing ofit! And he says to me with happiness and pride, You’ll see my wife! As for me, I’m the writer, the foreigner, the whore the free woman too. I’m not the ‘good woman, whom one possesses and displays, the one who gives consolation. I can’t console anyone.

I loved the Edith Piaf translation the longing in those lyrics

I said I had read this, but it wasn’t till I got the voice I was so drawn into her worries and fears I just got them that thing of an affair or relationship at a distance. It connected me to my long-distance relationship with a German girl I had many years ago, the counting of days and the thoughts that can intrude on your mind when you have time apart and when the mind thinks about the past and what the other person is doing she captures that so well in her thoughts and the openness about her sexual acts with S and how he made her feel just jump off the page. I am so pleased I left this and went back when I finally got the voice of the writer it just made her prose jump off the page so much I have ordered another two of her books from the library. Do you find it easier to get the writer’s voice when reading?I often struggle to get the voice and find when I have the voice of a particular writer I fly through their books.

Winston score – A – a year of passion and worry and the feeling it will end so heartfelt in her words.

October 23 lets look backat the month.

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments
  1. The city of the living by Nicola Lagioia
  2. Without Waking Up by  Carolina Schutti
  3. The rider by Tim Krabbé
  4. My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon 
  5. The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
  6. Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz 
  7. Big Sur by Jack Kerouac 
  8. Conversation with three wayfarers by Peter Weiss
  9. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck 
  10. Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon 
  11. Shining by Jon Fosse 
  12. Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

Well, it was a great month I managed to review 12 books, including A Murder in Rome which shocked that city. To a girl growing up and not feeling in place. Then a man is in the middle of a cycle race, describing the race and his memories of being a rider. Then the first of two Maigret’ this. Month sees a man claiming to be his friend a fake picture, and an inspector from Scotland Yard. Then a young writer from Senegal finds a lost book and a lost writer and sets out to find more about him, Then a man caught up in the revolution in Egypt. A writer goes mad slowly from drink, drugs and fame in Big Sur. Then a story from three brothers that drifts through time and place. Then we Follow John Steinbeck on his way around a bygone America. Then back to Maigret and a man sees him on a Saturday to only disappear a few days later, leaving his wife and her lover and his former employee. The month started with Jon Fosse winning the Nobel and ended with me reviewing his latest short novella, where a man gets stuck in the woods and then follows some lights in the woods. Finally, it was Halloween yesterday, and I decided to review Hound of the Baskervilles, a creepy novel with lots of Atmosphere.

Book of the month

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr the Senegalese writer, is a rising star of Francophile writing this is his second book and won the Prix Goncourt a fictional take on the true story of a fellow sub-Saharan writer. A book that came out just before the second world war and a writer that just vanished what did he do after a scandal about his debut Novel.

Non-book events

We’ve watched a few series this month firstly Them is a creepy show set in the 50s when a couple moves to a mostly white neighbourhood and strange things start to happen both in real life and in their minds. Then a new series based around Goosebumps, which saw the children of parents who had done something in the 80s attacked by a spirit. I also found an 80s Nick Cave Vinyl, not the reissue, which was great. I think autumn is always a time I like to read more.

Next month

I plan to get a number of books I have been sent reviewed I have a collection of short stories from Iceland. poetry from  Bosnia, novellas from Japan and A quirky Finnish Novel. Also, the latest from Jhumpa Lahiri which is one of the books I have most wanted this year. I had hoped to get the New Peter Nadas books but I will have p[ass them as my darling wife lost her job and we need to watch the pennies a little the next few months. How was your month and what are your plans for next month . Oh I forgot it is also German lit month so expect a couple of more books from German. Not sure which yet!