Month: August 2024

Living with Our Dead by Delphine Horvilleur

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Living with Our Dead by Delphine Horvilleur

French non-fiction

Original title – Vivre avec nos morts

Translator – Lisa Appignanesi

Source – review copy

I had partly read this when I was sent it. Then, I felt it would be best to put it to one side for Woman in Translation month as there are never that many non-fiction works covered, and this book needs to be better known. Delphine Horvilleur was only the third female Rabbi in France and has been the editor of a popular Jewish magazine for several years.  A leading figure in the Liberal Jewish culture in France. She also became very popular during COVID-19 for her Zoom talks on Jewish texts, which even brought a non-Jewish audience to watch her videos. This book covers her dealing with the funerals, what she knew of the people, and how each person and funeral arrangement differs.

The Hebrew word for cemetery is a priori absurd and paradoxical. It’s beit chaim, the “house of life” or “the house of the living.” This isn’t an attempt to deny death or to conjure it away by erasing it. On the contrary: it’s an attempt to send a clear message to death by placing it outside language. It’s a way of making death know that for all its obvious presence in this place, it is not victorious; even here it will not have the last word.

The Jews understand this verse from the Torah, formulated in the book of Deuteronomy, as a divine injunction:

“I have put before you life and death… Choose life …

(Deuteronomy 30:19) To prove that they apply the commandment to the letter, the Jews invoke it and choose life in all circumstances.

L’Chaim, “To life!” they say each time they raise a glass, thumbing their noses at mortality

About Elsa funeral and the words chosen by Deplhine

She tells us of 11 services that she had been a rabbi and about the people, their families, and how she talked about their lives. I will pick two that really touched me; the first is the second funeral she talks about, and this is of the psychoanalyst of Charlie Hebdo, Elsa, who died in the massacre that happened at the magazine. Of course, the attack itself had to do with religion. This shows how she chooses quotes, and then in the service, a comment made me smile when she was described by a person at the funeral as a secular rabbi, which she takes well. But then, at the end, another person from Charlie Hebdo comes and says he would have her to do his service. I have seen this with a local person who has the talent she seems to have, and that is to connect with people. The second funeral is two funerals, but two people connected by one of the darkest moments. Simone Weil and Marcelina Lordina-Ivens, or as they called themselves, the Birkenau girls, had been in the same carriage to the Birkenau concentration camp. Both after the war wrote about the experiences Simone better known. I haven’t cover her but had reviewed Marcelina book a powerful book the two die with in months of each other when Simone dies she has many famous faces there and there is a line from Marcelina where she said Simone was the most beatuiful birkenau girl. A touching look at two women’s lives that saw the horrors of the world around them. This book is about how you deal with people’s lives, keeping them alive or the spirit alive to those a celebration of someone’s life.

Around us, a few women raised their eyebrows and gave us disapproving looks. I think the Simone within each of them was speaking loudly. Marceline, as ever, pretended not to hear.

At the end of his address, Emmanuel Macron announced that Simone Veil would be buried in the Pantheon. Marceline applauded noisily. “That’s wonderful for her,” she said, before adding, “But I’m warning you, I don’t want to be put in the Pantheon. Boring as hell there.”

Later, at Montparnasse Cemetery, Marceline spoke. She told us how her friend was a “hottie,” the most beautiful of the “Birkenau girls.” Her charm had worked on everyone throughout her whole life. Simone’s sons then recited the Kaddish, together with the two rabbis, a man and a woman, as they had wished, who pronounced the words of the ancestral prayer with them.

“Yitgadal veyitkadash shemei rabba …”

From Simone Veils funeral the comment about her from Marcelina

I said this book needed to be better known as it is a book that isn’t about death but more about how we celebrate those who pass and make them stay alive in those who attend the funeral. I said there was a local humanist preacher. I have been to several funerals where he has spoken about people I have supported or known. He has a great way of gathering information and making those he talks bout come to life. He is brilliant, and this is the sense I got from Delphine. There is a sense of why she is such a well-known Rsabbi in France. The way she talks about the people in the book makes them jump off the page. This book deals with death but makes you, as a reader, see the ghosts of those souls she is talking about. Have you ever been to a funeral and felt the preacher, no matter their religion, has done a great job at celebrating the life of those they are there to talk about?

Winston’s score- Just read it; I won’t score a book like this just feel you should read it!

 

 

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran

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Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran

Chilean fiction

Original title – Limpia

Translator – Sophie Hughes

Source – Library book

I had read her earlier book, Remainder but it was the year I stepped back from doing so much of the Booker international longlist, and it was one of the books that year I didn’t get to. There always seems to be one I just never review in the rush to review them all, which I usually want to do before the shortlist is announced. Anyway, when I saw this was out, I decided to wait and see if it would turn up in my local library to order in, and it did, so I ordered it in. I had wanted to read her nonfiction book that came out around female killers. I will do so when I see a copy that is cheap enough to buy. Anyway, this is her second novel to be translated. The previous one made the booker shortlist, and this tale of a nanny is as good as the earlier book, if not better. I really was drawn into the narrative here.

I didn’t see the señora the next morning. She left for work without saying goodbye and called me at around three.

Estela, make a note of this, she said.

Educated, hard-working, a discreet maid.

I was to defrost the chicken breasts and stuff them with spinach and toasted almonds. I should also make roast potatoes and prepare a round of dry pisco sours.

Nothing like a homemade pisco sour, she said, as if she were talking to someone else.

The señora wanted to know if I knew the measures. I told her I did, but she repeated them to me anyway. Three times she warned me not to overdo it on the sugar.

Nothing worse than a sweet pisco sour, she said.

After that she asked me if I could go to the supermarket.

Estelita, she said, can you get angostura bitters, lemons and organic eggs?

One of the very precise shopping lists she has to deal with

Estelle is a nanny. As the book opens, we discover she has been locked in a room by the couple she has been working for. What follows is her telling us of the events that lead up to her getting the job and what happened whilst she was working for the couple. What we see is a woman broken by this couple and the events that lead to the death of the daughter. Julia dies after she has been many for seven years, but it is how, over time, Estelle has lost herself as she falls foul of how this couple treated her over those seven years. It is a gaslight of a young woman by the couple, a class tale of power and who has it. But this is also mirrored by events away from the house. But it is those unseen souls in a home, those working for those with money, and how they get treated is at the heart of this story, and what happens when it all goes wrong like it does here.

By now you’re probably wondering why I stayed. It’s a good question, one of those important questions. Do you feel sad? Are you happy? You know the sort of thing. My answer is the following: Why do you stay in your jobs? In your poky offices, in the factories, in the shops on the other side of this wall?

I never stopped believing I would leave that house, but routine is treacherous; the repetition of the same rituals – open your eyes, close them, chew, swallow, brush your hair, brush your teeth – each one an attempt to gain mastery over time. A month, a week, the length and breadth of a life.

The señora deducted the cost of the blender from my pay, then got over the impasse. That’s what she said, ‘Estela, I’m over that impasse?

This is a question you do ask as you read about what is going on in the book

This is a gradual book. Things at the start seem ok tyes. She struggles to fit in, but then it turns and twists; the couple have sex, and she captures them. She looks at Senora’s dress; each little thing that happens makes them treat her hard. This is a story of a young woman who is powerless over time. In those seven years, we see her get more and more under the thumb of this couple. All this happens as we see the power struggle happening outside the house, and she is on the opposite side of it, those powerless, those unseen. There is a great line in Gosford Park where one of the detectives basically dismisses the servants as not having any involvement in anything as they are just there doing a job and aren’t important. What I loved so much is how our Narrator, Estelle, draws us into her world as we see how she ends up locked in a room. You think I’d done this, but would you do it if you were her? There is almost a Fait acompli about her story. We hear about couples doing this every few years, taking young women, and then they go from Nanny or Maid to slave or prisoner of the couple. This is one of the first books I have read since the booker prize this year. I think, oh that it should be on the longlist. Have you read any of her earlier books?

Winston’s score = +A is One of the year’s books so far for me .

What Darkness was by Inka Parei

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What Darkness was by Inka Parei

German fiction

Original title – Was Dunkelhiet war

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – personal copy\

I move over to Germany with my latest book for Woman in Translation month. This book won the Ingeborg Bachmann prize and is the second book I have reviewed from the writer Inka Parei. Having studied sociology, political science and sinology as a student. I love the phrase on the English translation of her Wiki pages, which describes her as a writer with the ethos of quality over quantity in her writing. So far, she has published three novels. This is the second I have reviewed Cold Centre by her, and her debut is called Shaow Boxer. They have all been published by Seagull Books. I picked this for today because it was one of those occasions when you read books within a short time and talk to each other, and this is the case. This book, like yesterday’s reviews for Yell, if you still can, also has a man nearing his death, and, like that book, it sees him looking back on his life.

The old man lowered his binoculars, his hands trembling. He had rough, sturdy hands covered in age spots and white patches devoid of pigment, the veins raised visibly beneath the skin. He had the furrowed hands of a man who does physical work even though he had never really done hard labour; he’d worked at the post office.

He could almost hear the hissing sound the leather of the belt made as it slid out of the loops. The younger of the two girls risked a glance outside, which suddenly grew long, hesitant, as if she had seen him. Then she turned away and ran to the door and someone extinguished the light.

This piece remind me of my grandfather he would watch comings and goings when he was alive

We meet an unnamed narrator who has collapsed in bed, and what follows is him thinking over what had just happened. He saw a stranger on the stairs, a series of odd doors fitted by one of his neighbours. This is September 1977, a period in West German history where the past of the country and the future were on fire. This is the time of the Badder Meinhof, kidnappings and general unrest and uncertainty. As he takes to his bed he also thinks back to the war years and how he end up in this city and with this house. Past and present mix as he tries to find out who the stranger on the stairs is. A man dying with this last puzzle and the question of his own dark past.A book that covers those twenty-odd post-war years that led to the events of that year. One man’s thoughts as he is near death. Who is the stranger? What is happening?

It took him a moment to notice the stranger. The old man was standing on the second step, lost in thought and annoyed at himself, and looking distractedly down at where the end of the stairs vanished into the darkness of a small reception room. A few patches of light from the lamp in the yard fell through the door. There was a zinc pail against one wall, next to it a scrubbing brush.

A deaning cloth had been spread out over the pail and had dried into shape draped over the edge. Someone had knocked it off and now it lay inverted, pointlessly mimicking the opening of the bucket, on the doormat.

He saw the tips of two shoes and knees swathed in grey flannel, and it was not until then that he recognized the rest, the whole of the man sitting against the wall with his legs drawn up, apparently unconscious or asleep.

The moment he saw the stranger that he questions through the book.

I love her writing, and Katy Translation Ikna Parei is a sparse writer who gets to the soul and haunting past of her country. She has a nod or maybe is from the same style of writing as Herta Müller. That feeling of mystery is strong in this book. Unanswered questions, dark pasts, we never quite see it all, and that is okay because this is one man’s vision of those years and what was happening in the late summer of 1977. This is one of the reasons I love Seagull books they bring us voices we would never see this is a delicate book well written a gem of a read that can be easily read in an evening that captures the country at that time and what had brought it there in some ways. Have you read this or any other books from Seagulls book’s German list? They have brought some great books out.

Winstonsdad scored A. I just need to get ahold of her debut novel, Shadow Boxer; as this writer, I enjoy reading.

Yell,Sam, If you still can by Maylis Besserie

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Yell, Sam, If you still can by Maylis Besserie

French fiction

Original title – Le Tiers Temps

Translator – Cliona Ni Riordâin

Source – Personal copy

I am back on with another book for WOman in translation month. I picked this up in Norwich on my recent holiday it is a book I hadn’t seen mentioned. It is also from a new publisher to me, Lilliput Press, and a writer I wasn’t that aware of. She had won the Goncourt prize for a debut novel. This book is the first of a trio of novels she is writing about literary connections between France and Ireland. The second book looks at the later life of the poet W B Yeats, and then a book about Francis Bacon’s Nanny. The other two books have already been translated by the same press. This book came out two years ago. Maylis Besserie lives in Bordeaux, and she works as a producer for a French cultural radio station. His connection to Irelan is the summers she was sent to Ireland by her family as a teen to learn English.

I could have spent happy days at Guinness’s, that radiant, flourishing brewery. Happy and hoppy. Alas, the memories come flooding back now that I’m finished. Now that I no longer know how to write. That I no longer write. Almost not at all.

I used to drink with Joyce too. In gorgeous glasses. We’d drink at nightfall, when the beasts return to the byre, huge quantities of white Fendant de Sion. Joyce converted everyone to his tipple – which reminded him of the urine of an archduchess, he used to say. Joyce converted everyone. Joyce was a real archduchess.

Guiness and drinking in the past with James Joyce

The book follows the last days of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett as he is in a nursing home, Le tiers Temps in Paris as we follow his life there, it is like he has become a character in one of his plays stuck in this nursing home the book is told by Samuel as we see his day to day life in the nursing home this has breaks asw e see his nursing reports the meds he was on and how he is doing viewed by the staff. The book sees a man looking back on his life and his complex relationship with his mother, May. Then, his time typing out Joyce’s Finnegans wakes up when he works for Joyce. Then, there are nods at his day-to-day life in the nursing home and the characters in his plays. It is waiting to die and, looking back, a great writer near the end haunted by his past and those ideas that have always been in his works of fiction.

May was a nurse. I could have taken advantage of a moment’s fatigue on the way back from a night shift in the wee small hours. I could have put an end to her suffering and to mine. No, to have done things properly I would have had to have killed her before my birth. Or in childbirth, giving birth to me, why not? That would have been ideal. A lucky birth – night and day. Of course, the best solution of all would have been if my grandmother hadn’t been born either. We would all have been nipped in the bud. That would have been the simplest solution. But chronologically, I admit, it’s a fucking mess.

One pieces of Beckett thinking of his late mother May

I enjoyed this. I like a book with an inventive idea of the connection between France and Ireland with writers and thinkers. Whether it is enough to last over the three books. For me, this worked. I don’t know Beckett as well as I maybe should, but I did watch a lot of his plays years ago, as channel four in the UK did a lot of them. But it worked; it is an old man looking back on his life and remembering working alongside Joyce as they drank, and he was typing out Finnegans wake for the great man and his mother, May. She was a significant influence on who he was as a person. Then, his nursing home has some characters he could have written himself. Are they his characters, or is that how he viewed the world? The next book in the series sees Yeats returning as a ghost in Paris, where he was buried. I think the Irish translator worked as it gave an Irish feel to the English. If that makes sense, well, it felt that way to me. Have you read any of the other books or this one by this writer? If you like quirky tales of famous writers, this is for you.

Winstons’ score – B solid novel about the last days of one of the greatest writers as he sees his world in a Paris nursing home.

Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou

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Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou

Cypriot fiction

Original title – Brandy Sour

Translator – Lina Protopara

Source – Personal copy

When it comes to Woman in Translation month, I always try to get a new country and publisher in every year. This year, I have done both with one book. This is the first book from a new publisher that seems to be doing books from around the Med. It is from the Cypriot writer Constantia Soteriou, who has written three novels and won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2019 and the national book prize in Cyprus last year. Her earlier books have also been shortlisted for book prizes. This is her first book to be translated into English. This book is very clever as it is a novella made up of vignettes that cover the last fifty years of  Cypriot history. I love the covers of the Foundry Edition books. This cover design is inspired by a detail of a Hellenic vessel from the third century; the other books are also inspired by local designs.

They say that a barman invented the cocktail for King Farouk of Egypt in the 4os – a dark time for the king, who is already grown and in trouble, no longer the handsome, athletic boy charming Europe with his Western manners but a heavy, middle-aged man facing all kinds of political headaches in Egypt – and elsewhere, too – who has to conceal his fondness for alcohol. They say that he had come to Cyprus for a break after a trip to England; that he stayed in Platres, the island’s most cosmopolitan village; and that he lodged in the only hotel that could possibly host him, the Forest Park.

They say that he stayed in the village for a single night – just time enough to compose himself. They say that he had booked an entire floor of the hotel and had shut himself away in a room for hours and hours, eating and drinking – as he always did – and smoking too

The opening of the first story the title story Brandy Sour

Brandy Sour opens with the title story as the first story of how a barman made the first Brandy Sour for King Farouk, a drink with a connection to Cyprus, the tale of a small village and local ingredients in the drink this was in the fifties the early part of the history of the country in modern times. Each story follows how to make the e drink, and each drink has a conn section to people involved with a hotel in Cyprus, The Ledra Palace Hotel so, from Lavander tea to cocktails of Sherbert local spirits holy water, even piss in one story of a painter. We get a picture of this history from a hotel maid who remembers Yuri Gagarin drinking the iced sweet wine Commandaria. Zivania, drunk by an archbishop, brings up what happened in 1974. rose grown by the doorman, he ikes to make his rosebud tea. A soldier for the UN stopping the island from going back to war has lemonade to cool down in the heat. This collection follows the years since the hotel opened through the civil war and the aftermath.

Zivania is a favourite of the villagers up in the mountains.

They pour it into tiny shot glasses and they down it all in one go at weddings and big celebrations. They drink it when they close deals. In the cities, when people celebrate, they drink wine. When they close important deals, they pour some wine on the ground, for the soil to drink. The English drink whisky in big celebrations. They don’t like zivania – no need for their throats to burn that way. The Archbishop does not drink zivania – he despises all alcoholic beverages and he doesn’t eat any meat either and he only drinks water. Behind his back, the priests accuse him of being a little conceited. Zivania he uses only for having his back rubbed. There’s an old man in the archdiocese who’s good at cupping and bruising it

One of the local spirits, I would like to maybe try one day

I loved the framing of each person’s drink; its history connects with the drinks each person has had throughout the years. Why they were drinking it, and the little bit of history. It was an interesting and original idea to mix history and drinks. All centre and what was meant to be a bright shining beacon when it was built, the Ledra Palace hotel. I felt it would make a clever little film with each drink leading into a tale of the little piece of history dropped through the book as we see the employees, local guests, and others have the drinks through the seventy years since the hotel opened. A great first book from Cyprus for the blog. This is a great debut from a new publisher and should be better known. I think this is an inventive book if you are a fan of books told in vignettes this is a book for you. If you like a little history of the island and what people drink there, this will also appeal to you. Have you read any books from Cyprus or from Foundry Editions?

Winston score – A This is a powerful novella made of interesting vignettes.

 

 

Better days ahead I hope

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Some of you may have seen me on Twitter yesterday saying I was low and had a bad day. I am off work at the moment. This all started with a change of routines and other things at work that sent me into a real spiral several things all happening at once is to much for me to cope with, so I have been off for a few weeks. I had seen an event and other stories in Sheffield. I rarely go to Sheffield, but we have been going early morning as I struggle with crowds and have been getting the tram, so I decided in my silly wisdom I may drive park up, and there is a new food hall I want to try at some point. But it had opened a week or two ago. Anyway I even paid for the parking but woke up yesterday and my mood has been low I also was struggling with the factor how busy it would be. If I go places alone, I always zone out with headphones and avoid crowded places, as I recall struggling with them. So I decide to cancel the trip which I was real annoyed with as I had let myself down so that was maybe the final straw on mental health yesterday was a tough day I was struggling all day. Hence, post on Twitter. In hindsight the fact I am putting in for an autstic diagnosis will explain a lot my routine in going places which is tend to be very early and going before the crowds get there. Changing too much is why I am off work, struggling to cope with work changes. Anyway. I sat and let amanda know how low I was which helped a bit I am going try get talking therapy with work. I struggle in most social situations I always thought it was just natural shyness, but in hindsight, it was maybe just the fact I am autistic and small talk is something I struggle with. I feel since I decided to talk about how I struggle with things like changes, breaking a routine like going on the tram but then think it is ok to drive to Sheffield like that. Then there is also how I struggle to talk in social situations. I may have worn a mask until I saw how much it affected me. I am constantly overwhelmed and often struggle with many small things. Anyway, I told Amanda I would try to say more; she is my rock. So I hadn’t sleep well but I want to make up for yesterday we head to Southwell a small town about an hour from us my best friend said He liked going there isn’t a lot there but a few shops the Minister and it is where the first Bramley apple was grown. It was also where Charles the first spent his last night, and  Byron lived there for a while. It also had a nice little second-hand bookshop. Anyway, we headed over, had a look in the bookshop books below, and also visited the minister’s, originally built in 1099 and extended over the years. Amanda brought me an angel keyring as she feels I need a guardian angel at the moment I think I do but today was better than yesterday. I will be trying to do some more reviews for Woman in translation month but I have cut my good reads and storygraph target back this may help.I just wanted to explain what is going on. This isn’t me looking for pity. I just want to clarify, as a man at a later age, that you may have had a condition your whole life that meant a lot of things in my past. Would have been easier and explain situations and just the way my life has panned out any way I am on the start of the journey to be diagnosed I have done all the tests out there which clearly show the tendency for being autistic. I am taking life one day at a time at the moment.

The Bridegroom was a Dog by Yoko Tawada

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The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yoko Tawada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Imumukori

Translator – Margaret Mitsutani

Source – personal copy

You know what? I am slow with my reviews for WIT month. The weather is hot here in the UK. I am going to try and catch up on some reviews the next few days. This caught my eye on holiday last month. I had read scattered all over the world by her. I am always amazed that Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese /German. This particular story has been translated from Japanese. I think the US edition of this book has a couple of other stories thrown in. Still, we have just this one story by her in a nice little hardback book, one of those books that is perfect for reading on a summer evening, a novella about a teacher, a myth she makes up and what happens after that.

‘The Bridegroom Was a Dog'” Miss Kitamura began, and the children listened carefully until the end, but the tale was so long that the younger ones got mixed up when they tried to tell it at home, and the older ones were too embarrassed to repeat it,

so curious mothers were left to piece together the fragments they’d overheard for themselves, but, anyway, the story went like this. Once upon a time there was a little princess who was still too young to wipe herself after she went to the lavatory, and the woman assigned to look after her was too lazy to do it for her, so she used to call the princess’s favorite black dog and say, “If you lick her bottom clean one day she’ll be your bride “

Her weird myth after talking about The Crane Wife

Mitsuko is a teacher at the Kitamura school, which is a cram school, but she is a strange one with a weird set of rules and how she deals with her pupils. The tissues she has a strange habit with them, leading to her being talked about by both the pupils and teachers. But she is good at another job.But when one day, she decides to make up her own myth after talking about one of the most famous Japanese myths, the Crane wife. She twists this to a myth about a bride betrothed to a Dog. But what happens when, a short while later, a young man appears in her life with Cannine-like teeth? Has fantasy and reality crossed over in this tale? When he arrives and says did you get my telegram? I wondered if they still have telegrams in Japan as a small aside. Taro, the young man, starts to enter her world.

The town where all this happened was made up of two distinct areas to the north and south: in the north were the modern housing developments that had sprung up along the railway with the station at its hub, while the southern district that lined the Tama River had prospered since ancient times, and yet many people in the Tama region didn’t even know it existed, even though the public housing complexes that drew people to the north had only been in existence for about thirty years, whereas

the south was really old, with the remains of ancient pit houses discovered near the river-human dwellings that dated back farther than you could imagine –

The town described her

This is one of those weird, quirky books I love from Japan. It does have a bizarre storyline and some really odd sexual and hab it’s in it, but in a way that adds to the quirkiness of this story.Yes, it is bizarre, and maybe in a way, I feel the US edition may be better as it had a couple of other stories, but if you don’t fancy this novella, it means there isn’t anything else. I can see this as one of those books that can divide opinions. For me, the surreal ideas behind it actually brought the main character to life in her job as a cram school teacher, which in itself is a job that is intense and hard for the pupils attending the school. It is a book with little habits and things like that well observed, those quirky bits that can make a narrative, and we don’t always see a person do, but when we do, we can’t miss it if that makes sense. Then I did wonder if it was meant to be a tale set a long time ago with the mention of a telegram unware if Japan maybe still has telegrams or if this is to make it set in a certain time post-war Japan I’m not sure really but if you have a thought on this I’d like to know  I look forward to more books from Yoko. I know another one is due soon. Have you read this quirky tale ? Do you like a really short book you can read in the evening?

Winston score – B quirky, surreal sex may need a couple other stories.

Mammoth by Eva Baltasar

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Mammoth by Eva Baltasar

Spanish fiction

Original title – Mamut

Translator – Julia Sanches

Source – personal copy

I think this will be the big translated book of the summer. It’s no shock that her two other books in the loose trilogy have succeeded, with Boulder on the Booker longlist. Eva Baltasar started as a poet, and she won the Miquel de Palol prize when it came out. She then turned to novel writing with this trilogy of books about relationships and how motherhood or the wanting of children can affect a relationship; here we have another unnamed narrator, is it me or are these unnamed narrators a bit of a trope these days? For me it seems like every other book I  have read recently seems to have an unnamed narrator in it. I also saw this could be a companion book to Sara Mesa Un Amor as it has a similar starting point for the story of a young female heading into the hinterlands and a small village.

I have a used car. A rusty old Peugeot the size of an egg carton. I bought it from a stranger for two thousand euros because I wasn’t about to leave Barcelona with my belongings piled on a bicycle or take a train only to wind up stranded at a rural station in the back of beyond. The Peugeot is red, and while the doors may not close prop-erly, the paperwork is in order and it runs like a dream, which is all that really matters. I spend my first week at the inn driving from towns to villages and visiting real estate agencies. Most of the agencies are actually small accounting firms where farmers and cattle ranchers drop off their paperwork, although they tend to keep a list of cottages and farmhouses that are for sale or rent. The real estate market here is insane: the cost of renting a refurbished house is astronomical, and all I can afford are ruins, with the caveat of having to renovate the place myself

Her reasons for leaving  like many yoiung people the cost of housing

As I said, our narrator, a 24-year-old lesbian, has been wanting to have a baby and had slept with a number of men in the city to try and conceive a child. She has a daytime job as a researcher, interviewing a lot of old people in old people’s homes about their lives. But when this ends, and the job turns to Excel spreadsheets, she loses interest in the job, and thus, this helps her leave the job and set off in her small Pegeuot car to find. A rural idyll, she ends up in the mountains with a simple life and finds a job in a nearby village as a waitress. She also has an older man, a shepherd, who is her nearest neighbour. She also does battle with the stray cats is it me or are stray cats just a thing in certain parts of the world I remember a band otf stray cats when I was younger in an apartment in Portugal. Our narrator also decides to help the shepherd by becoming his cleaner. This is a lonely time, and these two unlikely lonely souls find themselves slowly drawn together. What will happen? Will she end up with a child?

The shepherd’s a good man. He must have noticed that times are tough because he asked if I could come by twice a week to clean his house, at my convenience. Naturally, I said yes. What I make waiting tables barely covers the rent.

He’s always home in the mornings, tending to his sheep.

Basically, moving shit from one place to another: sweeping out the pens, loading dung and soiled bedding into a wheel-barrow, and dumping it in the manure pile where it’s left to ferment in the sun. He makes a minimum of ten or twelve trips a day and the entire house reeks of shit. At first, it made my stomach turn, but a few days in I stopped noticing

The nearest neighbour is the shepherd

As I said, this had a similar start to Un Amor, a narrator leaving the city for the call of rural life. In this case, it is actually a totally alone place. This is a place with no real near neighbours. This is the wilderness and the closest person is the Shepherd to her, she heads to the village to work the cafe. The difference here is when they arrive, she starts to settle in, and in the relationship with the shepherd, we see one of those unlikely relationships build between the two. I loved the narrator as a voice, I was saying this book followed so well in Sanches translation. The mix of wilderness stray cats, the quirky shepherds, and being in the middle of nowhere all jump off the page. It is great to read this I haven;t read permanfrost and also see she has written a new novel this year. I think she may make the booker list again, but we will have to wait and see. It has a lot of modern issues, loneliness, wanting to escape the present you live in, WAnting a child as a lesbian, how to make this happen, and The rural dream. All of these are touched on in this book. Have you read any of this series of books by Eva Baltasar?

Winstons score ++A close to the best book I have read this year so far.

 

 

Alice, The Sausage by Sophie Jabès

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Alice, The Suasage by Sophie Jabès

Italian fiction

Original title – Alice , La Saucisse

Translators – Catherine Petit and Paul Buck

Source – personal copy

Well , I’m a little late with getting off on this year’s Woman in Translation Month reviews. Actually, this is the fourth book I have read, so I have three more to review, I chose this as my first book as I think it is a hidden gem, and I always love the choices Dedalus make as a publisher. They have brought some great gems out in the last few years. We have Sophie Jabes, a French writer born in Italy and has lived in several countries. She has worked in both the US and France. This was her debut work and is one of those stories that is quite unique. This is a book about a woman who takes her own fable-like path after a stray comment from her father.

He remained silent for a while and then, with a suddenness that Alice took for lucidity, he adopted a solemn air that terrified her. He took hold of her hand and squeezed it very hard.

“Women, women, women… My dear, you re not Marilyn Monroe, so remember, you must be nice, very nice to men.”

Alice stared at him, horrified, as if an enormous storm had suddenly unleashed itself inside her head.

“I have to be nice to men?”

“Yes, very nice. If you’re a woman, either you’re beautiful, or you’re nice. You don’t have a choice, you understand?”

“No,” Alice whispered. She was shaking.

“It’s very simple.” He took her hands in his again. “Are you cold?” He rubbed her fingers absentmindedly. “You are not beautiful, so you must be … nice. I can’t find any other word. I mean very nice to men

The comment from her father that changes the course of the book.

 

Alice lives with some nuns. Her father and mother are divorced. Her father now lives with a Croatian woman and visits her infrequently, usually when they meet; she also meets her brother, a blind street artist. She feels the men’s eyes on her as she heads out on the street and feels she is very attractive to men. But there is a stray comment from her father when she meets him, and he has just fallen out with his lover. He tells Alice that she is no Marylin Monroe, so she must be nice to men. She tries to seek solace, but a. conversation with her mother is cut short as her mother is after an Asian man like her father. She is caught up in her own world, not her daughter’s life. This single comment is like a dagger through her heart and how she feels about herself. So the next day, her world is changed, and she seeks comfort, which she finds in food. We get a description of food she starts eating in large amounts, especially an ice cream cornet, which she delights in, as well as the tart and acid of raspberry and lemon ice creams. She then starts to change and put weight on as she sees. Even now, men are looking at her, but she continues to abuse her body.

Alice devoured all voraciously, forgetting for a moment the gaping wound she was dressing with provolone, parmesan and strained ricotta. Nothing satisfied her. Neither the tramezzini with ham, nor those with hard-boiled eggs, nor the slices of bread covered in mascarpone, or Nutella, nor the gnocchi with rosemary, nor those with tomato sauce. Each time she tried a new flavour, she hoped to find an answer to her anguish. Wanting to fill the intense emptiness in her being with penne and pappardelle

Next day she starts her eating and her is some of what see eats.

This is a tale about how we view ourselves and how a single comment can change a person’s life and how they view themselves as people. It has a fable-like description. It is about body image and how it can be twisted. Then there is the toxic nature of her parents toward her as a person. Her sorrow is drawn in the food she eats and the food is so well described the pizza ice creams jumped of the page. There is a hint of her descent into a world of food, the sexual nature of food, and her being caught in a Kafka-like descent into a world controlled by food. I found this a book that leaps off the page as we see Alice, whose body has changed, but in the later stages of the book, is starting to affect her health. A gem of a book, one of those that has a bit of this, and that seems like a book about a girl on the cusp of being a sexual object to men at that start until she is burnt, and she then sees food as her only escape from being nice to men. Have you read this or any other books from the Dedalus short series?

 

That was the month that was July 2024 plus Spanish Portuguese litl

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  1. Last date in EL Zapotal by Mateo Garcia Elizondo
  2. Joseph Walser’s machine by Gonçalo M Tavares 
  3. Manual of painting and Caligraphy by Jose Saramago 
  4. Un amor by Sara Mesa
  5. The implacable order of things by Jose Luis Peixoto
  6. The Time of Cherries by Montserrat Roig 
  7. The land at the end of the world by Antonio Lobo Antunes 

It was Spanish and Portuguese lit month, so if you want to put any post in the comment for this post, that would be great. My journey started in Mexico with a man in his last days in a Mexican town. Then, a man tries to get by with his highly routine life as his home town has been invaded. Then, a man paints rich businessmen whilst having an affair with his secretary simultaneously. Then, a woman moves to a rural village in the hinterland.of spain . In order to escape her past. But She struggles to fit in, and things get darker when the house has problems. Then a pair of conjoined twins, and the father makes a deal with the devil. Then, a woman returns to Barcelona years after she left as the Franco years are ending. Then a man scared by war as he tells a woman about his time in Angola.I visited three countries Mexico, Spain and Portugal

Book of the month

It was, again, hard, but I just think Antunes is a special writer whose books are unique in style and voice. This book follows the horrors of the Portuguese involvement in the war in Angola. As a doctor, he saw the worst of the conflict and its impact on the young soldiers and those having to treat them, drawing from his own time in Angola, a Portuguese Vietnam. I have a number of more of his books but I ration them as he is one of my alltiime favourite writers and I don’t want to have none left to read , Have you any writers like that you feel about?

Non book events

Amanda and I had are holiday this month I did a post of this. I maybe taken time post holiday to get back to the blog but I am now back in the groove . We haven’t really got into many television  series this month. But I have been trying to keep my letterbox app up to date I do my goodreads and storygraph . SO I  have tried to get consistent with Lettebox for the films I’ve been seeing so there was a few films I Loved this month the fun Mrs Harris goes to Paris is a film about a cleaner want to by a Dior dress a comedy of class and being true to yourself . Then Iron claw is wrestling film of a group of brothers that wrestled but then died one by one sad and a24 at its best. The I have Jacqui from the blog Jacquiwine to thanks for watching The witch’s mirror a sort Flipped version of the film Rebecca from Mexico. I also was watching the later stages of the European championship I actually watched more matches for this championship than I ever had such a shame England fell at the last post but we had a large chunk of luck to get that far and we now await a post southgate England team.

Next month.

I will be doing books for women in Translation month. I have a few in mind I would do a pic of them but I know what I am like as the month goes on I will shift from here to there  but it will all be female writers in Translation. I have finished a couple of books one a quirky tale of the last days of Samuel Beckett will be my first review for the month. WHat are your plans ?