- The observable universe by Heather McCalden
- Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon
- White Nights by Urszula Hineek
- And the stones cry out by Clara Dupont-Monod
- Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró
- Clara reads Proust by Stephane Carlier
- Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro
- The book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes
- What is Mine by Jose Henrique Bortoluci
- Two for the road by Roddy Doyle
- The book of all love by Agustin Fernandez Mallo
- January by Sara Gallardo
- Birthday by César Aira
- The following Story by Cees Nootebom
- The Wounded age by Ferit Edgu
I had wanted to do a book a day in May, but I didn’t; this challenge pushed me to 15 reviews this month and made me see I could fit more reviews in here and there. We started with a memoir about a daughter’s quest to connect her loss of her parents to Aids, and her mother’s love of crime drama and computer viruses make up this memoir in vignettes. Then, a man opens a dog home on the orders of his ex-father-in-law in Venezuela. Then we are in Rual Poland with a series of interconnecting stories. Then we have a sister coping with a disabled sibling. Then, a woman seeks justice for a sexual attack. We move to Paris, and a woman discovers Proust as a writer.Then, we have a female captain who lets her saviour swim in the sea, and the book takes a strange turn. In the letters over twenty years, Emma Reyes recounts her poor childhood. Then we have a son recalling the conversations and life of his truck-driving father in the later part of the 20th century as Brazil changed and had a dictatorship rule. Then a pair of dubliners discuss the days news over a pint Then a trio of stories in Mallo’s new novel. A young woman next in Argentina struggles to hide a pregnancy and how she became pregnant. Then, a man turns fifty as he sits and writes. A man then awakes in Lisbon and falls asleep in Amsterdam. Is he alive? Finally, a pair of novellas see Turks heading to the Kurdish part of Turkey and having their eyes open. I covered 13 countries this month. One new publisher is MTO, publisher of the White Nights.
Book of the month
This was a hard choice, so many great books this month, but the one scene in this book where the narrator of the first book has a dream of an old man fishing and fishing up dead bodies of women and children in his net is a haunting image.
Non book things this month
After Record Store Day, I only picked a couple of records up. This was one of them: Beth Gibbons’s new album. I have loved her voice since she was in Portishead many years ago, and she has done a few collaborations since then, but this is her first new work in a long time. On the TV front, we watched last night a light thriller about oil getting infected with a virus and the chaos that would follow that. The series The responder we have started watching the series The Veil but haven’t finished yet.
The month ahead
I am currently reading the first Hungarian book from Istros Books, and I will then move on to a mix of review books and books I have brought or borrowed from the library. I will also be reviewing the latest Arab lit quarterly, which is around Gaza and has several writings from inside Gaza.
How was your month ?
