Month: January 2024

That was the month that was Jan 24

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  1. What you are looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
  2. May the Tigris grieve for you by Emilienne Malfatto
  3. The Cake tree in The Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka 
  4. The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
  5. Masks by Fumiko Enchi
  6. Not a River by Selva Almada
  7. Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop
  8. Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada
  9. A childhood by Jona Oberski

I managed 9 reviews this month. I added 5 books to January in Japan. I start with a book about a magic librarian that helps people find the exact book when needed. Then I saw a girl in Iraq who is facing her own death after losing her fiance, meaning she will be a single mother. Harrowing story. Then we have a collection of short stories on the last day of world war to in Japan I loved the tale of the lonesome whale falling for a submarine. A factory worker questions his job and what they are all doing in a mysterious factory a nod to the mega factories that the writer had worked in. Then, in a Japanese classic, a woman has two suitors and a manipulative stepmother. Next, we head to Argentina and a story of three fishermen on an earlier trip and a death on that earlier trip; then a plant collector finds plants but also an enigmatic chief daughter he falls in love with so much that his last words are her name Miram. Then a woman goes on a road trip to Nagasaki and has an affair with a younger man with Scars. Then lastly, a man recalls being a child in the middle of the Holocaust in Amsterdam and in the prison camps a book that captures a child in all the horror.

Book of the month

Such a hard month. I like every book I read this month. In fact, since finishing this book, which was my book of the month, I have taken a few days to find a new read. I loved how he captured the voice of child amongst all these horrors and kept it feeling real. I was pleased to have reviewed nine books this month. I had that post-new-year slump happen in the last two weeks of January. But I think it is passing. Does anyone else has that feeling of doing great those first few weeks of the new year, and then you hit a wall? Well, I have it most years. It is usually this time or early in February.

Non-book events

I held back on buying too many records. A couple is coming up. I would like a couple of Robert Forester reissues for the next two albums to be rereleased, which I have my eye on. then there is the vast Waterboys box set 1985 around the album This is the Sea expanded out to 6 cd worth of material from the time this is just as they found what Mike Scott called the big music sound. I love their early stuff, so pleased I’m will get to hear all these songs and the different versions of them. I may have to leave that as it is a little out of my reach at the moment, but I will hope to get it at some point. Amanda and I have nearly finished The Crown. We have 5 episodes left to watch. Then, I think we will move on to Master of the Air. We enjoyed a couple of films, particularly Edie, starring Shelia Hancock as a pensioner determined to conquer a mountain in the highlands. She makes friends with a young man as she attempts to reach the summit. I also found a great book vlogger, Shreds Tube, worth checking out. He is a very well-spoken vlogger and has some interesting books and some great scenery in his videos. I

Next month

Mookse is hosting a read-along of Savage Detectives starting on Feb 10th. I had read this just before I started blogging so I am ready for a reread. I am reading and listening to it at the same time. There is a schedule on their substack. I have a number of books awaiting review. I had promised myself to keep on top of reading and reviewing simultaneously, but over the years, I ran off reading and not reviewing everything I had read. Other than that the usual mix of old and new. I have to try to get my century of translation slowly moving.I’m in the middle of the first book for it and will order the second book in due course.  I hope get over this slight slump of not getting down to anything I been pick this and that book up for more than a week b ut not getting overly gripped by any of them I hope to find that one book to kick start me again. It is hard after a run of such great books this month.

 

What are your plans for February?

A childhood by Jona Oberski

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A Childhood by Jona Oberski

Dutch autobiography

Original title – Kinderjaren.

Translator – Ralph Manheim

Source – Library book

I have over the last few years always try and put a book up for Holocaust Day . I had found this in the Library I do have a couple more on my shelves but there is always a feeling over time that there are fewer books about the Holocaust being talked about. I have Primo Levi on my shelves but he isn’t spoken as much as he once was. Anyway, this is a memoir about a Dutch boy. Jona Oberski was that Dutch boy who grew up with a new family after he lost his parents through the Holocaust. Anyway, he grew up to be a Nuclear Physicist. But in the mid-70s he attends a poetry writing class with the Dutch poet Judith Herzberg where he started to recount the events he saw as a child when he lost his family in the Holocaust.

“Aren’t you going to unwrap your presents?”

I looked at my father. The colours of the things on the table were reflected in his eyes. I gave him a kiss on the nose. That made him laugh.

“Don’t you want to see your presents?” He wanted to put me on the floor, but I was so comfortable just as I was. I had one arm round his neck and I held him tight.

“All this is for you.” My mother smiled at me and pointed at the table and kissed me. She picked up a red package, began to open it, and asked me to help her. While she held the package, I tried to get the paper off with one hand. It tore.

There is a real tension underneath this piece of his birthday, I was reminded of the last birthday in Anne Franks’s diary.

We see the events of the Holocaust through a very young boy’s eyes.  How it affected the young Jona in a series of snapshots. The power of this book is how he captured the voice of the child. Those few memories we all have have captured her the events before the view of the family life in Amsterdam as a Jewish Family as the world around them is heading towards madness. He has a birthday but the way he describes it and the sense his parents know this is the last proper birthday they may all have together. When he hears his parents crying. Then when they finally head to the camps he and his mother are split from his father. But she is a resourceful woman and manages to find a way for the three of them to end up together for what would be the last time. He is in Bergen Belsen seeing the horrors but a chance event meant he luckily was able to live and write his own story.

My father was gone a long time. Somebody closed one of the wagon doors. My mother got up and stumbled to the door. She leaned out and yelled my father’s name. She yelled that the door had to be left open. She pointed and sang out: “There he comes.” She pulled my father in and other people helped. They all fell in a heap. They shut the other door. It was dark. I asked if they were coming over to me. My mother said:

“We’ll come as soon as we get used to the darkness.” Light came in through the cracks. Somebody tugged at the sliding doors but he couldn’t get them open. My mother sat back down on the bundle.

One of the last times he saw his father when the got to the Camp.

I missed bits f this book as it is a short book touching with a tine that has that child-like view of the world I am a fan of when writers get that childlike view of the world right and this is the case here a young boy seeing the horrors unfold but not knowing why. The parents cry but he isn’t quite sure why. It’s about the way they get treated as their world is changing.  His father’s world changing. Then on the camps and how he is just with his Mother, she shields him as best she can. That last time they are all together. This is a short book but powerful There is a quote from Alan Sillitoe called this the book of the century. I wouldn’t go so far but I am always in the belief that Holocaust literature should be read in schools. Also, it is worth going to Beth Shalom The national Holocaust Museum and centre which is near Newark I have a couple of times. A place of remembrance. Have you a book from a Holocaust survivor you Like? I won’t score this book, I never do this type of book the are just so important and need to be promoted and read. Our candle

Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada

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Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Rokusendo no ai (六〇〇〇度の愛),

Translator  -Haydn Trowell

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to get sent this as I had reviewed her other book last year as part of my January in Japan reading. Touring the Land of the Dead was a different book, so when I saw it coming out from Europa, I requested a copy. Maki Kashimada is a member of the Japanese orthodox church she is married to a member of the clergy. In her writing career she has won a number of big prize in Japan including the Akutagawa Prize and this book won the Mishima Yukio Prize. The book has a tip of the hat to the great Duras Hiroshima, Mon Amour.

It was around nine o’clock in the evening when the woman checked into the hotel in Nagasaki. She looked over the pamphlet. The hotel was built and decorated in a Portuguese style, it read. The photos of the mosaic in the courtyard and the stained-glass windows by the stairs caught her eye. She had left her house as though in flight. Her nerves were on edge. She wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while. The only option available to her was to wander around town until sleep bore down on her. She left her bulky suitcase at the front desk. I’m going for a walk, she said. Fierce thirst struck her. She asked if there was anywhere nearby where she could get a drink. The concierge at the front desk suggested a bar in a hotel by the shore, a converted ferry ship. It had a good view of the bay, he told her. For the first time since she had married her husband, the woman went to drink by herself.

Drawn she arrives late in the evening to the hotel where she will soon see the the Youth

The main character is a housewife and on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, she has been haunted by images of the mushroom cloud and what happened on that day. Whilst she is at home with her child this makes her drop her world and leave her child and husband and head to Nagasaki drawn there by some unknown feeling of history a sort of collected memory of that day in Japan and how it still haunts so many. Soon after she arrives she meets a young man a Russian Japanese man she is drawn to this younger man and he has a condition that means he has skin that resembles the skin of survivors of the bomb. This is one of those books with no names he is simply called the youth. She may see in him the spirit and look at those who had survived the events in the city many years earlier and then begin the affair This is a sort of Brief encounter for the Atomic generation those haunted by the bomb and its aftermath a strange affair short passionate then she returns home.

The youth’s mother was born and raised in Moscow. When she was twenty-six years old, she met a Japanese man, an inter-preter, and returned with him to his home country. At that time, she had been a citizen of the Soviet Union, acquiring Japanese citizenship shortly before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The youth was born in Japan.

Based on your age, you must be a university student, the woman said. That’s right, the youth nodded. I just graduated.

This is my graduation trip.

The youth is much younger than the woman as they both head out and study the city they find themselves in.

I think a lot of people found this book hard it is like those films My other half hates a film where there is gaps and things maybe aren’t fully filled in to the viewer. This book has a nod to Duras but also the films of that time in a way Last year in Marienbad the lack of names can drive some readers I have seen Hot so many times it isn’t annoying to me as it once was. I said in a way that reminded me of a Brief encounter a woman sees a man briefly in a fit and fever of passion that ruins high driven by the heat of the Bombs maybe ? She is driven by a sort of collective unconscious of the bombs dropping a spirit of the people sends her into the arms of this man who due to a condition looks like he has been burnt by the bomb that has been haunting her dreams and this is where the nod to Duras is strongest as it has similar scenes of passion in it. I loved this odd little novella. Have you read either of her Novellas?

Winston score – b solid novella about a sudden passion after the haunting images of the bombs destroying Nagasaki

Beyond The Door of No Return by David Diop

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Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop

Senegalese fiction

Original title – La Porte du voyage sans retour

Translator – Sam Taylor

Source – Personal copy

I bought this book just after Christmas; I have been watching it since it came out. I don’t think it will make the Booker longlist these days. The list seems to have a turnover of new writers every and David Diop had won the International Booker in 2021. I was a fan of the book he won with All blood is black. It captures the war from an African soldier’s point of view wonderfully. This is his latest book. This time, he has gone farther back in history and back to his homeland of Senegal, a tale of the early years of the French involvement with his country told through a French Naturalist and the chief’s daughter.

Ndiak kept telling me that he resembled his mother more than his father. She was the noblest and most beautiful woman in the kingdom of Waalo, possibly in the whole world, and–since he had inherited her beauty- he was quite naturally the most beautiful young man I had ever seen.His features were stunningly regular and symmetrical, as if nature had calculated the proportions of his face using the same golden number as the sculptor of the Apollo Belvedere.I merely nodded and smiled when Ndiak boasted, which encouraged him to say, without laughing, to anyone who would listen: “You see, even this toubab Adanson who has seen more lands than all of us put together, including five generations

Ndiak learns him the local languahge as they head out to find Miram

The materialist Michel Adamson is dying, and his daughter is attending to him. When he finally passes, he has one word on his lips: a lady named Miriam. His daughter has never known her father mention this name and has no idea who this woman was. So she found his journals from the 1750s when he was sent to collect plants from Senegal. Which he had done, and on his return, he had written one of the first guides to Flora and Fauna in Senegal. This was an actual trip the real botanist took. But the story of this man and his meeting with Miriam Seck, the beguiling daughter of a chief, is Taken and taken to be a slave is a nod to the title of the book, which is the name given to a door on the island out of Senegal and the last door that many slaves went through when they left Senegal. Anyway, she escaped and returned to her homeland in what is now Cape Verde, the islands just off the coast, with his young companion, a 15-year-old Ndiak, who teaches him the Wolof language, the language that is the most spoken in Senegal. The book focuses on when these two meet and the relationship and sparks that fly between them so much that fifty years later, when he is dying, he has her name on his lips.

Now that I am an old man, I do not believe that the sin for which I reproached myself was really so great. Is it not absurd to attach moral judgments to natural urges? But I must acknowledge that it was my religion that kept me from offending Maram Seck. Had I made advances, I would almost certainly have lost her trust and she would not have told me her story. If the world in which we lived had given us that chance, I would have one day asked her to marry me. And if she had accepted, I would have known her, in the way nature invites us to when a man loves a woman and a woman loves a man.

He is drawn to Miram

This is a story that mixes the violence that followed slavery and how it tore families apart. But it is also how a French man, by finding how the language of the locals works, gets more connected to the tribes and the locals and how the oral tradition of the country is opened up when Adamson learns Wolof. I love the way we are drawn into the story. The use of his last words, Miriam, is, of course, very much like the last words of Citizen Kane. This is his Rosebud moment, that moment when that one love that slipped through your hands is there, and this is a woman, an alluring, powerful, and brave woman, so much so she has become part of the vocal tradition in her country. I enjoyed this way of tackling slavery through both the African and French eyes, using a real person for the main character’s work. There were many people like Adamson who, when the world was unknown, went to hunt those plants that many of us would now call common in our Gardens. Have you read this book? and do you think it will be on the Booker longlist? For me, I’d love to see it there.

Winston score – A I hope it makes the longlist an interesting historical work

 

Not A River by Selva Almada

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Not A river by Selva Almada

Argentine fiction

Original title – No es un río

Translator – Annie McDermott

Source – Personal copy

I decided to take a Charco subscription out just to get their books this year; I have been a fan of them, and they have brought us some great books from Latin America. This happens to be the last in a loose trilogy of books around masculinity by the Argentina writer Selva Almada. This is the first book I will have reviewed by her. But it seemed incredible to have her as the 50th Book from Argentina. I will have checked on the blog. Selva Almada studies social communication and has been writing for 25 years. When her first short stories appeared, she was acclaimed as one of the leading female voices from Argentina. She has also written nonfiction and runs literary workshops. Anyway, when I read this about three men going on a fishing trip, I immediately thought of Craver’s short story So Much Water So Close to Home which is part of his shortcuts collection. Where so fishermen find a dead body. But this is a darker tale.

Just then he hears the engine and the lapping of waves. He moves aside, begins swimming to shore. The boat goes by, bounding over the water, ripping it in two like a rotten old rag. Attached to the back of the boat, a girl in a bikini is water-skiing. The boat swerves sharply and the girl is thrown in the water. From a distance, Enero sees her head emerge, her long hair plastered to her scalp.

He thinks of the Drowner.

Gets out.

El Negro and Tilo are standing on the shore, arms folded, following the boat with their eyes.

Youngsters making a racket.

Says El Negro

The three men notice women so quickly

 

The story is of three men going on a fishing trip a few years after an earlier where the three men there were all the same age and friends, Enero, eEl Negro and Eusebio, head out on the earlier trip and then when they got back Eusebio had died and the two men now years later meet and have decided to take the son of the late friend on this same trip down the river. They are setting off to the same place where Tilo’s Father had died, and as they do, they take a gun and shoot a stingray. This is an odd way to fish, but it did remind me of a story my dad told me of how the locals used to feel in Donegal, where they used to stay every summer as kids, which involved explosives and catching the fish that had died in a net. But they then hang the stingray. This is almost like a sacrifice or such in a way, but when it is seen by a local, he is highly offended. This also leads to the three men meeting the daughter of this villager, and their story mixes with the three men and the past. These are back countrymen. Violent, yes, but that is their nature. In a way, it is a harsh world, and this is a story of fathers, sons, daughters, men, and all that can bring the older lust after the young village girls that will always cause trouble. Then, there is what happened on the earlier trip in the background.

He’d known El Negro since forever, but Eusebio had moved to their part of town not so long ago. That year, after the July vacation, he started at the school.

The family had come to live in the grandma’s house after the old lady died. Apparently they’d not been on good terms, which was why they’d never visited before.Their arrival didn’t go down well with the neighbours.Some folks said Eusebio’s dad had done time and the old lady had never forgiven him. And that Eusebio’s mother saw men for money.

The three men had been close but Enero and El Negro had been close for so long.

This is a powerful book of secrets of past lives, violent worlds and violent men and what happens when you do something that offends the locals and the mysteries of that earlier trip. The local girls aren’t all they seem, and this is where we may sort of drift into a dark magic realism in this book. This is a Powerful book with echoes of classics like Faulkner and Evening Hemingway, both written about men in a male world. But she has made this a book about how toxic men can be. Also, the way the men act toward the girls is another. I will go back to the other books by Almada in the next 50 books. But this is fitting for the 50th book from a country I love to read books from and shows how in the last 14 years since this blog has started much has changed when it was almost all male writers from Argentina I could read but we have so many great female voices these days but also so many more voices to read from there. Have you read this book or any from the trilogy ? or have a favourite book from Argentina.

Sunday catch up

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One of the things I wanted to do this year more is a sort of chatty catch-up post of life, sometimes about books but also about life in General. It is that time a couple of weeks after the new year we all feel slow down after the excess of the Christmas period. We had a very quiet Christmas this year; Amanda had lost her job in the run-up to Christmas which rather put a spanner in our plans it is our first Christmas in a new house but we had a smaller Christmas and it was lovely. We had time together. So, like many guys my age I was shocked when at work we weight ourselves, this time last year we had all in our work team tried to lose weight and I had since last year put 10kg on,so I am pleased to say in the last two weeks I have lost 4 kgs of that but it was a wake-up call I had planned to make a few diet changes in the new year I am a carb eater iI love potatoes (with an Irish heritage going back 500 years it may be genetic at least that is what my dad says) . So I am cutting back swimming again and going to the gym and hope to build habits by slowly building them rather than making huge changes all at once. So we have not been far this year, just around Chesterfield. But we do have a flourishing record fair every. month and that was on earlier today. One of my great loves of recent years is buying Vinyl I upgrade my record player a few years ago to a Sony one that had great reviews. I went today but had a small budget, but I managed to find a stand with a lot of new albums that were only ten pounds. I love a bargain. so I found three albums

 

I firstly found the latest album by Shearwater that came out last year. I have been a fan of this band that is an off shot , well it was at the start I think it may be a separate band no of the band Okkervil River to showcase there quieter more acoustic songs. I first really got into them with there album Rook, they members of the bands are birdwatching fans hence a lot of birds on there covers and album and band title in Shearwater. So I  loved finding this one.

Then I found this collection of early songs and pieces from Beirut, a band I am aware of. I have a couple of the albums on CD, so this maybe will get me more into the band. They use a lot of world music rhythms in their music and often crop up in film soundtracks.

Then a real gem of a find a collection of b-sides and rarities from the one and only Bright Eyes. I first got into them with the album Lifted over 20 years ago. Conor Oberst is just a great songwriter and should be better known. I loved Lifted the first album. So not bad for 30 pounds three albums ok two off them are collections of songs rather than albums but will give me a few weeks of listening. I also had got just after chirstmas with some money I got for Christmas another favourite.

It is another of the records that had been rereleased of Tom Waits mid-career records. I have them all on CD, but I just want to get a few of them on Vinyl, and this is one of them. I loved Frank Wild Years is a song cycle about a man called Frank, a drinker like most of Toms’s characters. It is a stop-gap til we get a new album from him. Finger crisis it may be this year!

So that has been this weekend I have also been out with Amanda in the car. She is learning to drive it and I am helping her between lessons which is new being in the passenger seat but she is doing well she has had a dozen or so lessons and is doing better than I was at that stage, I hope she will pass it will give her such freedom like it did myself when I passed. We have been busy still working through The Crown. We have three series to watch and have left them in 1977 when we last saw it; I remember seeing the Queen as she came through Hazel Grove in 1977, and I used to have a commemorative coin from School for the Silver Jubilee. We are enjoying the series Amanda is enjoying learning about the time as she didn’t know as much history of the royals as I did. So that is a quick glimpse to my every day Life I back to work in the morning and will be back with a review on Tuesday and hope to have another catch up in a few weeks when I may have more to chat about and hopefully be a little lighter still.

 

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

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Masks by Fumiko Enchi

Japanese fiction

Original title – Onna Men,

Translator –  Juliet Winters Carpenter

Source – Library

I am bringing a new voice to the blog today. I had seen this Vintage cover just before Christmas; someone had posted it somewhere, and I liked it I then looked and found it was a writer I had missed. Privately tutored in literature. She began writing in the late thirties with a play and some early novels. and wrote during the war. Burt was bombed out of her house at the end of the war. She was married to a journalist. She had numerous health struggles in her life, and this novel came out in the fifties when her writing focused on female psychology and Sexuality. This book took its inspiration from the main character from the Tales of Genji.

Yasuko was the widow of Mieko Toganö’s late son, Akio.

Their marriage had lasted barely a year before Akio was killed suddenly in an avalanche on Mount Fuji. After the funeral.

Yasuko had not gone back to her parents but had remained in the Togano family, helping her mother-in-law edit a poetry magazine and auditing Ibuki’s classes in Japanese literature at the university where he was assistant professor. She was also involved in a detailed study of spirit possession in the Heian era, a continuation of research that Akio had left unfinished. Ibuki and others supposed she had chosen this as a way of staying close to her husband’s memory.

Yasuko introduced as her husband dide on Mount Fuji

The novel has a lot of nods to Traditional Japanese culture. It had been split into three sections, each named after masks from the traditional Japanese Noh. The book opens as a two men meet at the station and the y are both in love with a widow they know. Yasuko had lost her husband in an accident. The two men, Ibuki and Mikame, also mention her mother-in-law, an overarching figure in the book. One of them takes the daughter and mother-in-law to see a collection of Masks and costumes. When an incident happens, and they see a particular mask, Yasuko faints. She is torn between two men one is married she likes more but is maybe drawn to the bachelor. She lives with her. mother-in-law and her husband’s twin sister. Then she has nightmares about her husband. The is a lot of reference to classic Japanese text and works, and the mask was a lot of googling. The book has two other parts as the relationship between the widow and her two male friends is also affected by the mother-in-law of her late husband.

They’re at the Camellia House on Fuya Street, said Ibuki. ‘This afternoon Mieko is going to call on Yorihito Yakushiji, the Nö master. He’s showing some of his old masks and costumes, and she’s invited me along.

‘Really? How long has she known him?’

‘It seems his daughter is one of her pupils. Their storehouse is open for its autumn airing, and I’ve heard that some of the costumes are three hundred years old or more. Don’t vou want to come?’

‘Well, old masks and costumes aren’t exactly what I had in mind for today, but then again I would like to see Mieko and Yasuko. I had thought when I came in here, I’d just stop for a minute and then maybe go and look up a friend of mine in the medical school, but I think I will join you, if you’re sure no one will mind.’

They get invited to look at tsome old masks and she is shocked by one of them

This is one of those post war Jpaanese books that maybe deals with the big change in the country I was remind of this woman living with the in laws after her husbands death. But with two men one married the other a bachelor. But then having her mother-in-law sort of playing these all off together was interesting, and I loved the part of the book.I struggled that my knowledge of classic Japanese text and culture isn’t maybe as good as it shou,d be I am aware of the Tales of Genji and knew a little about it but haven’t read it. I may need to read more of these classic works over time and return to this book. I like the recurring theme of masks, which are influential in Japanese culture. I remember watching the Onibaba, a Japanese horror classic where a man in a mask played an important role. This would have made a great film by Japanese master Ozu, who made so many great films of the life of Tokyo’s everyday people and relationships this would have worked. I found I struggled just because I would have loved to have known more about the masks each section was named and how they tied into the story itself. But it is worth reading a story of a widow and a mother-in-law trying to move the piece around her daughter-in-law’s life. Have you read this book or any books by Fumiko Enchi?

Winston’s score of B was interesting and made me want to learn more about the masks and things mentioned in the book.

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

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The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Kōjō

Translator – David Boyd

Source – Personal copy

I had decided to mix old and new fiction from Japan for my Japanese literature Challenge this year and this is a reasonable new book I think it came out in the US a while ago, but this edition that came out this year really caught my eye as it matched in with the other book by her they published and had what appears a crow on first sight but then seems like a raven or a darker blackbird. This actually was published in Japanese before the two other books that have been translated into English she had written. Oyamada had worked in several Jobs, one being in a large car factory, which inspired her to write this book. She is also a fan of Kafka and Llosa’s works. It is maybe near Kafka’s book, but it also reminds me of some other writers.

I DIDN’T WANT HIM ASKING WHAT KIND OF WORK IT WAS. I didn’t want to tell him. Fortunately, when I said I was going to be a contract worker at the factory, he didn’t bother asking anything else. He just gave me this look like I should probably report them to the Labor Standards Bureau. I told him I’d be going to work five days a week, starting Monday. “It’s full-time, though?” he asked, then told me to calculate my monthly rate.

“They’lI cover your commute, right?” They would, apparently.

The interview ended and Goto walked me over to the shredder station. It was also in the basement, but farther back. The Print Services Branch Office was a long rectangle with doors on the north and south walls, both of which led to the stairs. On the other side of the door to the north was the reception desk and the space where I’d had my interview.

When she finds out her job as a shredder.

The book is at a sister factory where we meet three workers who all seem to have random jobs in this place and seem to have no connection or idea of what is happening in the factory. This is all told in a flat tone that adds a sister edge to the work as it makes it seem odder and withdrawn in a way. Yoshiko she is an arty student that had been to the factory when she was a child. Goes for a job and is told the perfect job for her is just to be a paper shredder and make her own hours. This seems. odd but as she spends time we hear of washer lizards strange things going on in the main factory elsewhere . Then a moss specialist, as the roof is a living roof of most a nod towards environmental issues. Yoshiko is the moss man, and then his brother becomes a proofreader of factory documents, which are all a little odd. Then, add to these sinister blackbirds hanging around the factory. All ask what their jobs are, what the point of it all is, and what the factory is!

“What kind of work are you doing there?” my brother’s girlfriend asked. Goto warned me about saying too much to out-siders, but I hadn’t come across any document that was worth leaking, that I could possibly be paid for. Any secret worth protecting wasn’t going to end up at the shredder station. Departments would handle anything that sensitive internally. It’s obvious if you think about it. So why not tell her? When I said I work in print support, shredding documents, she jerked back and said, “Seriously? You mean you’re on your feet all day?” Well, I have a chair. I’m sitting most of the time. Of course our chairs are old hand-me-downs from who knows what department.

The factory has so many depatrments and jobs around it

I was reminded of Hrabal with his character in Too Loud, a solitude working with waste paper. Then even Wolfgang Hilbig Dark Factories, a sister, feels what the factory does. This is a huge place, and there is a sense I went around the old Ford factory in Liverpool, and it is like a town itself, and like this book, those in there can feel disconnected from the whole. The tone of the book and how it is narrated recalled Olga Ravn at times, the sense of the voice in her book The Employees, and the sense in that book where who was human and who wasn’t. Add to that a slight touch of dark magic realism. This is one chilling and odd little novella. This is how it feels to be a small cog in a factory. this isn’t the gritty social realism of Saturday night Sunday morning, not the mundane factory line; no, this is the darker side of a jobs that seems to have no meaning in the wider realm of things. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – +B a solid novella dark and odd in places.

The Cake tree in The Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka

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The Cake Tree in The Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka

Japanese short stories

Original title 戰争童話集（Sensi doca shū)

Translator – Ginny Tapley Takemori

Source – Personal copy

I looked for Japanese books that appealed to me when I went to York. This caught my eye. I loved the title , but I have always enjoyed the pocket-sized, more miniature classics Pushkin does. They are just pretty and easy to carry little books. I hadn’t heard of Akiyuki when I bought the book, but I then decided to Google him; I don’t know about you, but I would like a little background on the writer. It just helps me place them and why they wrote the book they did, etc. I was shocked to discover he was the man who wrote Grave of Fireflies, which, if you haven’t seen, was made into one of the saddest and most touching films that followed two children after the war had ended in Japan. This book is set actually on the day the war ended. That made his appeal to me, but he was also in the House of Councillors and a Chanson singer and TV star. I loved this nugget of information.

The whale had come of age in the winter spanning 1944 to 1945, when the war between Japan and America was drawing ever closer to the Japanese mainland. The humans who’d waved at him were Japanese soldiers on their way to defend Iwo Jima against the Americans and, aware of their impending death, they’d been envious of the peacefully napping whale. The small ship he’d swum alongside was a fishing boat there to detect the American planes as they headed for Japan, while the man in the clumsy little yellow boat was an American pilot who’d been shot down and was hoping against hope that he might be rescued. Far from wanting to kill the whale, they knew they themselves might die at any time and so they were friendly towards him.

The Whale came of age during a war it knew nothing about.

This is a collection of  12 stories all set on the 12th August the day world war two ended. I will mention a few of the stories. They all have a fable-like quality to them. But with that same underlying sadness and remembering what happened in the war, we saw in Grave of Fireflies. The collection opens with the tale of a Sardine whale a female of the species that has ended up alone at the end of the war and has just fallen in love with what it thinks is a male whale but in reality, is a submarine. This leads to shock when she discovers it is a submarine with little men inside not a whale. Then, we have the tale of a boy and his parrot hiding from the American bombers that are going over. He hides away after his mother dies, shocked and unable to talk. His parrot still telling a sad story. This reminds me most of Grave of Fireflies. In others, a mother becomes a kite to save her children. A zookeeper looks after his elephant. They all have fable-like turns in them. This is a touching but heart-wrenching collection.

His mother’s body floated up in the strong breeze that always followed an air raid. “Mama, where are you going?” Katchan called in surprise, but his mother merely smiled at him the same way she always did. Relieved, he ran after her, but then a strong gust of wind suddenly whipped her up and away, higher and higher into the sky. “Mama!” he called again and again, and each time she turned to look back at him. Like a kite her body was drawn up into thePost-blaze sky, and remained there dancing there like and angel until eventually she disappeared from view.

A mother changes to save her children in this fable like short story.

 

I loved this I think even if I hadn’t known he’d written Grave of Fireflies, I’d liked this collection he has a way of using a fable like style of tale with out it seeming to twee or losing its heartwrenching meaning this is a collection that reflects on a country broken and falling apart. At the start of the book, it says that since the early 80s, the 15th of August is now a day of remembrance in Japan. This collection is a remembrance of the war and the cost to Japan, from children losing their parents to broken men returning in a submarine to find a whale falling for the craft. This is a collection for both adults and children. I think he has written it mainly for children. There is nods to traditional folk tales like the wolf looking after the Girl is a classic tale. Have you read this collection or any other piece by this writer?

Winstons score – A this book should be better known.

A century of books, A century in translation

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I spoke with Simon from Stuck in the books on Twitter. He had mentioned he was thinking of doing another century of books. This is something he has done a couple of times over the time I have known of his blog. In fact last time he did it I did think about doing something similar but held off well. This time I am going to review books in trnalstion for each year between 1924 – 2023. The year will be the year the book was published in there original language. I had in mind to try for 100 countries, but I feel that it may be asking too much. But I will try to read as widely as possible so I can cover as many countries as I can. I am not putting a time frame on this at the moment. So far, I have looked at the first two years, 1924 and 1925. I have one book on my shelf for 1924 I read a number of years ago and failed to review and that is Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi it is an NYRB book and was widely reviewed when it appeared a few years ago I think that is why I didn’t review it. It is the tale of a spinster and her parents as she is sent away. I’m looking forward to reading this one again. Then, in 1925, one book jumped out at me on the list of books from that year. It was Chaka by Thomas Mofolo, one of the earliest African writers to be published. He wrote in the 20s, and this book came out in 1925. and he had spent some years working on this book, which follows the rise and fall of a Zulu warrior King. There is an online number of this book available, so I will make this my 1925 book. I think after that, I will move from decade to decade, doing a couple of years at a time rather than going year by year. I think 1960 may be the next stop and for that I have Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz which came out last year in a new translation I think I may have the old translation as well to compare. Anyway, that is part of the journey. This is going to be fun project I loved it when I saw how Simon did it for his taste in books. I’m hoping to find as many books around the world as I can to make this a journey of discovery. Here is a link to Simon’s 2018 Century of Books a few books I have read on his list.

May the Tigris grieve for you by Emilienne Malfatto

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May the Tigris grieve for you by Emilienne Malfatto

French fiction

Original title – Que sur toi se lamente le Tigre

Translator – Lorna Scott Fox

Source – personal copy

This is one that had been on my radar since it came out in April last year, so when I saw a copy, I grabbed it and was so pleased I did. Emilienne is a photojournalist and writer. This was her debut novel, and it won the Goncourt Prize for a debut novel when it came out. She is known for her work around social, feminist and post-conflict areas. She has also worked in the Middle East a lot. She has also worked with NGOs and Doctors without Borders. This is a story of one girl’s life falling in as she is unwed and pregnant in Rural Iraq. A book that mixes family and the myth of Gilgamesh and the Tigris.

And then my periods stopped coming. The first month I hardly noticed, it sometimes happened. The following months I thought it was because of grief. I thought Mohammed’s death had dried me up. When Father died I didn’t bleed either, not for months. It’s because of sadness, the doctor said when Mother finally took me to see him. He looked at me kindly, intently, while she was talking about the worry of having an abnormal’ daughter. It was already shame enough to be seeing the doctor about that, may the neighbours never find out, how could they find out, but that was one of my mother’s great dreads. The doctor reassured her, called her Ma’am and said the bleeding would return when my grief had subsided. He had seen several such cases since the war began.’Psychosomatic,’ he said, but we didn’t know that word in Arabic.

She had to go and be sure at the doctors but that set the ball rolling of events later

The book is divided into small chapters as we. We meet a girl who has got up and struggled to do so with black drops on the floor. When she goes up, she goes with her mother to the father’s grave. Then, a doctor. At this point, the girl knows she is pregnant, but when they see the Doctor, the girl knows what this means. They are in the rural area of Iraq. As the country is under the grip of Islamic state fever her life is danger. She is in a village near the river Tigris; the text is interspersed with pieces around the river and the great myth tied up with this region. As Gilgamesh is of the land and memories of those that have lived there as the Tigris follows through the land he lived and she lived. Her boyfriend had died in a friendly fire incident, but that was too late. Now the wheels of what is to happen are set in motion. We hear from her brother and others as we see how a young girl’s life is about to end due to her other half dying before they married.

I am the brother and the dealer of death.I am the man of the family, the eldest, the repository of male authority – the only authority that matters, that has ever mattered.I am the brother who shouldered the father’s mantle. I reign over the women.

I am the killer. Soon I will kill, but I don’t know that yet. What would I do if I knew?Would I turn on my heel in the dusty alleyway? Soon I will kill, believing that I had no choice. Her life or our honour.It is not I who will kill, but the street, the neighbourhood, the town. This whole country.

The brother is faced with a tough decision about his sister and what he has to do

This is a little gem of a book it is under 80 pages and can easily be read in an evening. It is told firstly from the girl’s point of view, then we have other people’s voices as we find out what happened to her. It is an insight into the horrors that have occurred under an Islamic state. In her photojournalist job, you can see how the writer has connected with the world she is describing. The prose’s simple style manages to convey a powerful message and show how females were treated under the Islamic state. As you see ow, a family deals with the horror of losing a daughter and a son killing her, and a mother dealing with these both. A bleak look into Femicide and family pride in the islamic state. The book is made up of short chapters, most less than two pages long, and is one of those books that seem much longer than it is.

Winston score: A powerful look into the Islamic State in Iraq from one girl’s point of view when she feels pregnant out of wedlock and the aftermath no matter the reason why.

 

 

What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama

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What you are looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

Japanese fiction

Original title – お探し物は図書室まで

Translator – Alison Watts

Source – Personal copy

What better than a feel-good piece of literature to kick off 2024 for Winstonsdad. A book about the power of books and libraries is even more suitable, and a translation is the icing on the cake, and it is one for the Japanese Challenge 2024. Michiko Aoyama was a newspaper journalist. After her degree, she worked in Australia and then back in Japan. Became a magazine Editor. This book was shortlisted for the Japanese Booksellers Award.It has since been translated into twenty languages. So, I start the year with a feel-good book about a wonderful librarian who knows the exact book to help people out.

The library is also on the ground floor. I pass two meeting rooms and a Japanese-style room at the back of the building beside a small kitchen. The door is wide open with a sign on the wall that says ‘Library. Rows and rows of bookshelves fill an area about the size of a classroom. A counter to the left of the entrance is marked Checkouts and Returns. Near the front counter a petite girl in a dark-blue apron is arranging paperbacks on a shelf.

Feeling shy, I approach her. Excuse me, where are the books on computers?’

Her head jerks up and she blushes. She has huge eyes and hair tied back in a ponytail that swings behind her. She looks young enough to still be at high school. Her nametag says’Nozomi Morinaga’.

Tomoka visit the local library not quite sure why.

What a great job a librarian is! I have always thought about the ability to help readers discover books. So when you read a book about one extraordinary librarian, Sayuri Komachi can help the characters that all visit her ,library in the book. In the four stories, five lives are touched by the books she gives them. The young shop assistant, Tomoka, selling womenswear, sees a dead end and is feeling trapped in her job is given a book that helps her find a way out of her boredom and connect with those around her. Then, a man Rto is in his mid-thirties and works in an office at the furniture factory. she also helps him tap on his genuine passion for antiques, but not able quite to see this as a way out, is given a book she gives him is to help him see the light. That is what the book is about not getting there, but the books they’re given, like all great books, make the readers think or connect with those around them and thus help them make that choice from a young girl to a retired man each at a personal crossroads this is, of course, a story we have seen lots. How will the others be helped by Komachi’s book choices for them? this is subtle book about what happens when people are given a gentle nudge towards the light.

My dream is to quit this job and open my own shop. I’d fill it with the things I like, and never have to talk to anybody except customers who are like-minded antiques lovers. But I can’t quit. I have less than one million yen saved up, which is not enough to start a business, and with all the work I have to do, it’s impossible to find the time for the necessary study and prep. But time is slipping away while I’m stuck in this office grind.

Then Rto wants to escape the 9-5 but will he be able to with Antiques.

This is one of those books that leaves you with a warm feeling as a reader. I’m reminded of the TV shows I loved as a kid: Highway to Heaven, where the character helps someone in need when needed, or Quantum Leap, where a moment in time needs to be changed. But this is subtle. Rather than doing it, this is someone nudging the five characters in the book. That book in their hands is like a map to freedom. They have to do the rest. That is what i love about it so subtle, but the change it can, make shows the power of books and the power of a great librarian. One thinks of people like Nancy Pearl, who has promoted libraries and reading this is like a magical version of that where that book they find is nearly perfect every time for the reader at that time!  Have you a favourite feel good book from Japan ?

Winston score – B solid piece of feel-good fiction that is about the joy of finding the right book and reading it but also how much more a book can do for you: open doors, give you ideas, and set the reader on a brand new path in their lives.