Month: July 2025

July I wandered in what to read next this month but a tiny book shone a light on what to do

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  1. The proof by Cesar Aira 
  2. Supporting act by Agnes Lidbeck 
  3. People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi 
  4. The accidental garden by Richard Mabey 
  5. The child who by Jeanne Benameur 
  6. The Ship by Hans Henny Jahnn 
  7. La Belle Roumaine by Dumitru Tspeneag

It was an odd month. I took time off at the start of the month, and I have felt lost in my reading, maybe since the International Booker has finished. I got the waiwright longlist books, but I tried a couple and they didn’t grab me, so I reviewed accidental garden, which I enjoyed. I read an AIra, which was great, especially the nod to the band The Cure. Then a book about Timor was very well written, linking the island of three periods of time, and also as the World Cup was taking place in 1998. Then a family with the mother gone and the son wandering the woods with an imaginary dog. Then, a lost modern classic of German fiction, the ship sees a stowaway in love with the captain’s daughter on a mysterious vessel that seems to change as they sail, and strange things happen. Then a woman in a European city catches a man’s eye, but who is she ?

Book of the month

This odd novel is unlike anything I have ever read. It feels like a horror book, but it is that subtle horror, brooding like a Nick Cave song, dark and never quite sure when he would break into something profound and unknown back in the day. I think this is a lost gem, and I also hope someone takes a chance and translates the rest of this trilogy.

Non-book things this month

I brought the latest Swans album, an album of noise and long tracks and Michael Gira’s obsessions. This meant it would be the last of his cumbersome records. But we will see. Then on TV I watched Mix Tape, a love affair cut short when a young couple split just as they were falling deeply in love. Years later, she wrote a book. He is in a marriage that he feels trapped in, and it turns out his ex is as well. The mini series sees them first re, remember the past, confront what happened, then eventually reconnect. I like the music in this; the setting was meant to be Sheffield, but it was mainly filmed in Dublin. A bit annoying, the record shop in it was in Dublin, not a local Sheffield shop I would know.

Being lost and what I am doing next month

I have said I felt lost for a lot of the last few months. I think I need to stop watching a lot of booktube and maybe remember what is dear to me as a reader . I love nature writing and ordered the Wainwright longlist. Luckily, most of the books were available in the library, but I read one and got two-thirds through another book, and then felt this wasn’t for me. I just feel I’m lost in what to read next sometimes. I have been letting x, y, and z folks on YouTube, mainly, but elsewhere as well. I’m not usually like this, but it led me to think I want to read the Booker longlist, even order a few books, which I have opted to return, as I was thinking about it while driving today. My dad’s to meet old family friends that I had not seen for many a year. I needed a book, and as the booker books were all hardback, I picked up a book I had ordered a while ago that had arrived yesterday. A very me book, I may say, A summer with Montaigne had been on my radar since it came out, and I finally decided to get it, so pleased I did it. The book follows a summer teaching the French Essayist Montaigne. It shows what he liked to write about, but what made him a reader and a man. It reminded me of the things I hold dear, learning about the world, but also world lit. I think I’ve been overthinking the post-booker international reading slump, not so a slump as I am reading a little slower it may need me to stop overthinking looking to this and that rather than just getting on with world lit I love and just look at my tbr books like the ship or Lebelle Roumaine and as the summer with Montaigne has shown we just need to think about what we love a little closer. Hope this makes sense, I am a chronic overthinker and can be a little impulsive when I see a prize list or talk about a prize list. I am a huge list fan as it is a list of favourite books, albums, films, etc. So my plans for next month are reading books for Women in Translation Month 2and adding a few more classics to my list. What about you does list tempt you or others’ enthusiasm for books? Take you, off course?

 

La Belle Roumaine by Dumitru Tspeneag

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La Belle Roumaine by Dumitru Tspeneag

Romanian fiction

Original title – La Belle Roumaine

Translator – Alistair Ian Blyth

Source – Personal copy

One of the things I did early on in this blog was buy as many Dalkey Archive books as I could. I have a good number, but I’ve held them on the shelves for a while. However, I am slowly going to start reading them as Dalkey has brought out literature from all around the world, and when I started the blog, they really grabbed me. I have a few books by Tspeneag. He was a founder member of the Onric group of writers, of which Cartescu was a later member. Tspeneag had spent a lot of time in Exile when he disagreed with the communist regime in Romania. He went to France and has lived there since. But he fell out with other exiles as he held very left-wing views, even in exile. This book is partly set in Paris, where he made his home for many years.

SHE ALWAYS SAT DOWN at the same table. Hard to say how she found it vacant every time. Especially in the beginning or, to be more exact, on the first three days: nobody else occupied the table before she arrived. It was, let us say, mere chance. On the following days, however, it was no longer down to chance, but to Jean-Jacques, the proprietor, who made sure the table remained vacant, so convinced was he that the beautiful blond would continue to come. Conviction, or rather desire: the two came together in his mind and led him to behave in such a way that he ran the risk of looking odd in the eyes of his regular customers. But since he also performed the job of barman, he could hardly have been expected not to keep a watch over the more or less aleatory movements of his customers; he could hardly have been expected, on occasion, not to intervene:

The opening linbes as she is seen in the cafe

The book is about a Romanian woman who wanders around Paris. Her name is Ana, she starts going to a cafe with her paper, which is a note, early on, isn’t LE monde but the Paris Turf. She captures the eye of the cafe owner, Jean-Jacques, who is also an exiled Russian. The two men like her, the owner makes sure her table is always free when she gets there, but as the book moves on, she seems to be liquid in who she is; her name changes in others’ eyes. Her story of a father who was at Auschwitz, a Jewish surname. Who is the strange young woman? IS she an exile or something else? What I love is we are never quite told the full story of her, but it adds to the oddness and also the comedy as those around her look at her.As we follow her life and affairs with various men.

 

I enjoyed this book; it has a clever twist of us never quite knowing who the woman was. She was a nurse, a lover, a spy .Is she Romanian, German, or even French for some? She is a modern-day Irene Adler to me (A character from Sherlock Holmes, another woman who isn’t all she seems and like Ana, makes men swoon for her ). This book is all about being out of place and exile, but also trying to fit in, and the little things that can give you away over time. It is a book that leaves the reader with questions of why this and that happened, but also has a lot of humour in it that sort of black humour from being in exile. I feel the woman is someone that Tsepeneag will have seen in a cafe, a passing glance, or a woman he has seen for a few days. I love this and won’t be waiting a long time to reread it. Have you read any books by him or have a favourite writer from the Dalkey Archive group of writers ?

 

Her gestures had become increasingly precise. True, they were the same gestures she’d made so many times before. She rid herself of her handbag and then her trench coat, which she hung up on the peg. This time, she was wearing a short, tight skirt. She no longer concealed her legs. On the contrary. And quite rightly so, since she had splendid legs: they were far from being slender, but nor were they too thick; the round, well-honed knees betokened long but generous, welcoming thighs.

She sat down. She took a deep breath and looked around her, smiling. From her handbag she took a handkerchief, wiped her brow, lips, nose. Then she took out a book, a different one than last time, and on the cover Jean-Jacques thought to glimpse the famous bridge between the Louvre and the Académie. He was almost sure of it

she gets notice more and by the men is she a honey trap ?

The Ship by Hans Henny Jahnn

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The Ship by Hans Henny Jahnn

German fiction

Original title – Das Holzschiff

Translator – Catherine Hutter

Source – Personal copy

I discovered a while ago that several old Peter Owen books are now available as print-on-demand titles. Owen had a great back catalogue in a way they were fitzcarraldo before fitzcarraldo, they had some noble winners and writers that were just brilliant, as in this case, Hans Henny Jahnn has been on my radar, I thin,k since I was working one summer in a German factory with some university students and we played a guessing game of writers artist and such this name came up and for years I had want to read this book as my german wouldn’t be good enough ton get through all three volumes of this is part one wood ship of a river without banks from Henny. Henny was a writer who was best known =for his other job as an organ builder. He escaped Germany during both world wars, first in Norway, where he farmed. He also attempted to establish his own religion, being deeply drawn to the natural world and traditional religious ideas that were pre Christian in the way he looked at the world.

“The interior of a ship,” said the captain. “A mysterious sight for a novice.” But a few further thoughts came to him-that a hull was not a cathedral, but the walls of water all around it created a festive atmosphere to which only a hardened soul could be insensible. Just as the pit of a mine was a hollow amid rock, a ship was a hole in the water in which lungs could breathe. A human being had to fear mountains and water. A single piece of ashlar lying somewhere along the road bore witness, in its very immovability, to how much the flesh stood in need of protection, and how negligible was the weaponless hand. The beautiful law of the curve, reflected in the ribs of a ship, heightened the feeling of exaltation that emanated from the laden craft, from the being hemmed in by an element that was denser than air.

“People like to enliven the mysterious with their own fan-tasies.” The captain picked up the conversation where he had left off. “They imagine creatures like themselves, but invul-nerable, armed with a cloak that makes them invisible, with magic potions, and on ships they believe in ghosts. They hear their voices, they hear the noises of their secret activities, they have to be. And faith demands that there be a secret hiding place where they live.”

Hints at how the ship is more than it seems.

The ship is one of those books that is unique, quirky, and odd, yet in a way, nothing happens, but so much does. It is about a wooden ship with blood-red sails and the super cargo held in a box nailed to the ground. It is about Captain Waldermar Strunck, his daughter Ellena, and her lover, Gustav. Gustav has stowawayed on the boat. They are taken the mysterious cargo, the supercargo, somewhere. Still, the ship itself, as the voyage heads on, sort of becomes alive as they start to travel the shape of the inside to the ship moves and evoles it seems there is a sense of weird things happening a darkness around the ship and the crew, so much so that after a storm, a lot of crew disappear. All this is slowly unwound. This is a book about the strange, unknown, and how the mind plays tricks on you. This is the first part of a trilogy, and let’s hope someone will eventually revisit and complete all three books.

Suddenly the fog descended like rain. Cold squalls nestled in the sails. The ship listed to leeward, groaning. Waldemar Strunck came hurrying along the deck, out of breath. His command was unexpected. “Bring the ship around.” The sailors were roused from their duties. Their feet slapped on the deck planking. Everyone hurried to his station, singing. They tore at the block-and-tackle— an ordinary maneuver-but now it took place in a hurry. The captain’s mood had changed, noticeably. His brow was furrowed. And the commands of the man at the helm were tense. The second helmsman ran from aft to port and back again. A few minutes later quite a few of the men broke out in a sweat. All anybody knew was that the barometer had fallen threateningly fast.

Strange weather and things as they sail

Jahnnis one of those writers I wanted to read I have a minimal list of writer that have books that are either out of print or just very hard to get hold of to read. Jahnn was near the top of that list. I love the rabbit holes of literature, of going from A to B, and have a list of writers in old notebooks that I want to explore at a later date. To me, this book is like one of those films you watch where nothing much happens, but everything unfolds like a Bela Tarr film – a slow, unwinding narrative and a sense of dread about the world. I wonder if Krasnahorkai has read him. I can’t find anything online, but the ship has a similar eerie feel to the whale in his books. There is also a sense that maybe some loved puzzle boxes and the working of the organs he built, Jahnn, the way wood can sometimes be made to look whole, but then, with a push and twist, secrets are revealed. This book is like those small parts become bigger, and we discover things inside that weren’t there at first glance. This is one of those books that should be better known but is maybe too different to anything else to be that well known ? Have you read or heard of Hans Henny Jahnn ?

The Child Who by Jeanne Benameur

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The Child Who by Jeanne Benameur

French fiction

Original title – L’Enfant qui,

Translator  Bill Johnson

Source – personal copy

I picked this up earlier in the year when I went to Cambridge for a holiday. I picked it up because Le Fugitives has been one of my favourite publishers over the last few years; they have been bringing out some excellent female writing, initially from French authors, but I know they are now also bringing out English writers. Jeanne Benameur was a French professor before becoming a full-time writer. She has written both for adults and children. She also runs writing workshops in prisons, as her father was also involved in the prison service. She also works with children in distress, and that has fueled her literature. I obtained a lot of this information from her French Wikipedia page, which connects with the book, which is about a small boy who has lost his mother, father, and grandmother.

You’re running. You’re running. So no eyes should have the time to see you, so your face should not be captured by anyone’s gaze. How long has it been since your mother’s eyes last rested on you?

How long since there’s been no mother?

The calendar counts in days in months in years. But you, you don’t know. You live with only darker moments and brighter moments. In your head, time finds room for itself where it can, the way that space threads its way among the trees in the woods.

Sometimes you lose your mother’s face. You haven’t yet learned to find it in a faraway icon, near a blue blue sea, looking up tenderly in a painting of the Italian Renaissance. You’re thrown into a panic. I hear your breathing. It bumps up against something hard in your chest. You run you struggle against the hard thing in there, a rock. Between your ribs the air is constricted, it whistles. At such times you feel you’re still alive. From the pain.

In the woods away from the pain

This is a book that looks in on these characters and how they deal, or in the most part don’t deal, with the loss of a daughter, a wife and a mother. IT is mainly about the small boy, there are a few names and little place names or the time when the events are happening, but for me, that means it can be any time, and makes it feel like a tale for all. The small boy likes to wander off to the woods, and he walks with a dog. Is it a dog or an imaginary friend he has made? Maybe it is his mother, my Amanda always says robins are my mum visiting me when we see them ,checking in on me. A father who has moved on, the mother was a sort of ghost in their lives. The way she is described evokes the kind of things that evoke a person’s past, as well as a place, a time, etc. The mother is never fully present, but her spirit is. The boy struggles. I loved him early on as he was off, and his grandmother turned, expecting him to be just by her elbow, but he was gone. I think this is a book that touches the silence of death and tries to bring words to it.

The dog is trotting next to you. No one aside from you can see it, this dog.But you don’t know that. Its presence by your side sets my mind at ease. It’s strong, and can smell things that you can’t see.You can push ahead with your journey. Your woollen top always hangs down on one side, you’ve buttoned Monday with Tuesday, your grandmother says.You don’t entirely understand what that means. It’s just that the days no longer know how to follow one another.You’re a child who leans. The dog restores the balance.

At times a burst of joy moves through you. You don’t know where it comes from.It’s the morning lark that finds its rising flight in you. From your feet to your head and much higher than your head, an irrepressible surge lifts you up. There’s no reason for the joy. It carries you. And you move forwards.

In the wooods with the dog but it captures as I said silence in this world

I can see how the things she has done around her writing in prisons with distressed children have given her a real insight into how to make silence fly off the pages in words, something that is hard to grasp. But she also captures how we may remember someone who was never fully present; that spirit of the mother is still with me. I wonder if the dog was hers or just a way for the boy to be in silence and not always feel alone, if that makes sense. This book brings me to book 179 in my review of 200 French books, and it’s from one of the publishers that I feel has brought some of the strongest female voices to us from France. Do you have a favourite book from French? Favourite publisher that has brought out French books?

The accidental garden by Richard Mabey

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The accidental garden by Richard Mabey

Nature writing

Source – Library

I mentioned just before I left that I had obtained a number of the Wainwright longlist books for nature writing. So far, I have read this, and one of the initial books that jumped out at me. I think it was purely because I had a Little Toller classic from Mabey; he is one of the greats of nature writing in recent years. He hasn’t won the Wainwright prize but has won several other awards. This was also set in Norfolk, and since our holiday was in Suffolk, a book about the local nature appealed to me. Mabey is known for his writing, particularly around foraging for food, so this tale of his garden shows how man and nature can work together.

So being as realistic as we could, we decided to divide our responsibilities, though it it was hardly a fair appor-tionment. Polly, the energetic one, wise in the cultivation of things, would attend to the more organised parts of the garden, raising vegetables and making the best of the herbaceous border we’d inherited. I’d take on the wood and the pond and the rough grassland between. A soft touch, I admit, but philosophical pondering takes it out of you, too. I’ve always been foxed by vegetable gardening, bewildered by the refusal of these pampered plants to follow any botanical rules.

Polly set to work almost immediately in what became her very personalised style. She created strange-shaped beds, edged with stones or transplanted wildflowers – poppies, cornflowers, feverfew. She hung up switches of thyme as insect deterrents using bindweed as string. Soon a galaxy of other wildings made a bid to be the vegetables ornaments: tutsan, thornapple (whose seeds must have been dormant in the soil), foxgloves and felt-leaved mul-leins. It was about as wild and Wicca as it could be within the discipline of raising a crop.

It is about the plants and the rewilding in parts of the garden as a soft obrder to the surrounding nature \1

Mabey talks about his garden, a boundary between his home and the wild world beyond his garden, a place full of wildflowers As he wanders around his place in Norfolk, he talks about various writers and poets, and this is mirrored about how he talks about juis garden the way we look at gardens they can be so much more than lawns. This shows how Richard, over the course of twenty years, had worked his garden to be part of the surrounding environment, rather than just a garden. If that makes sense, he was championing what is rewilding, those little bits of land left to go back to how they were, to allow nature to creep back in!

But I can hear my old philosophy tutor, John Simo-polous, reprimanding me. ‘Richard, you know very well what people mean when they say “reconnecting with nature”: Oxford philosophy in the 1960s had a strong interest in ‘ordinary language use’. John once set me an essay on ‘is a broken promise a lie?’, and he would have urged me to respect this usage as signifying a conscious engagement with the natural world, and more ordinarily of a time spent outdoors with forms and systems of life that aren’t entirely determined by humans.

Yet such a casual attitude towards the language we use to describe our relations with the rest of creation is now counterproductive. It’s creating gross generalisations, false chains of cause and effect and dangerous hierarchies of organisms. The ‘tree’ trumps all other plants; ‘pests’ include any organism that someone, somewhere finds irritating. As for ‘nature’, I’ve collected a few of the more extreme uses of the idea over the years. Pride of place must go to the Tree Council’s declaration during the great storm of 1987 that ‘Trees are at great danger from nature’ – thus placing the republic of trees entirely within the kinedom of man

Trees are the life blood of our nation its shame we have lost so many

I like Mabey’s style of writing, where the natural and literary worlds are hand in hand in his words, as we follow the years spent gently working his garden, intertwined with the local nature and the world he lives in. The writers he reads, like John Clare, amaze me with how their poetry rings through the centuries. This is a book that captures our gardens and what they can be, a little of letting wildflowers in, and maybe being a little free with how our garden looks. But he also captures how the Englishman’s garden is so much more than he says: the seas of grass, we can have so much more in it. How the lines between nature and gardens can blur over time.I loved this book I will read his earlier book at a later date Have you read this or any of the longlist books for this years Wainwright Prize ?

 

People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi

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People from Oetimu by Feix Nesi

Indonesian fiction

Original title – Orang-Orang Oetimu

Translator – Lara Norgaard

Source – Personal copy

I moved to Asia and the third book I have reviewed from Indonesia. This time, it is published by one of my favourite publishers, Archieplago Books. Their books are just lovely. So, when I saw this a while ago, it was one I had to buy from them. Felix Nesi is from West Timor. The book looks back at the dark history of his part of Indonesia, and he has conducted research on this period, particularly focusing on slavery in the past. He is also a writer from the Iowa Writing Programme. He also has a bookshop, library and runs a book festival. I always love it when writers give back to their community by encouraging reading and writing.

The armed men kept their distance as they walked behind her, fortifying their courage with the few fragments of prayers to their ancestors they’d managed to memorize. Women and children hesitantly trailed behind the men, curious and afraid. Since the stranger lurched forward without so much as a glance to her surroundings, more and more town residents joined the crowd. Some men were still unsure of themselves and would rebuke the others for getting too close, wary of the possibility that the creature might radiate witchcraft. When the throngs reached a storefront – one of the few thatched buildings in town that proudly displayed its slogan, “Stay Steadfast and Prosper” – the appalling woman collapsed to the ground. The moment her bottom hit the rough, broken pavement, she started to cry intense, loud sobs; she reached both arms to the sky and then punched her bloated stomach. It was the first time Laura had cried since her mother and father were killed, and it had been a very long time since she’d made any sound at all. Nothing could hold back her thundering wail.

The violence is hard to read at time

The book moves between periods of time from the Jaopanese invasion of the island the independence movement against Portugal in the seventies. But the book opens with a locals in village gathering in  the local police station to watch the 1998 World cup . The locals are all wanting the Brazilians to win against the french. This is a game I remember watching back in the day this is something I love connecting with a book over and event. Then we see how the independence movement was handed over from the Portuguese government. The book drifts through he years This shows both the brutal time of the seventies, but then also sees how the Japanese treated the locals back in the forties. It is a book that is dark and captures the brutal history of his homeland, but also contains a glimpse of human life, especially in the story of the 90s, which revolves around football. Additionally, there is a sense of uneasy nature to the locals and their world. It captures the brutal nature of the country’s history over the years through the story of one village and its locals.

That said, it’s not as though every officer took such delight in beating people up. There were other soldiers stationed on the southern edge of town; they also wore uniforms and went into the center of Otimu to buy cigarettes and razors at Prosperity General Store. These men were muscular and always seemed to be smiling, since they had slightly buck teeth (as was often the case with people from Java). If they passed by the mototaxi stop, they’d share a pack of cigarettes with the boys and ask if anyone knew of girls they could sleep with. Other than Neeta, that is, since she was a little crazy. She had a very big mouth and was famously good at sucking cock, but she also got a kick out of gossiping about how small Javanese soldiers’ dicks were compared to those of the Timorese militia, which made the men uncomfortable. Since the moto-taxi stop was right in front of Oetimu High School, the boys promised that the soldiers would be the first to know if there was ever a young girl who decided to become a prostitute.

The military and how it effects the locals

I feel this captured the brutal world of Timor, a country which, iunntile maybe the last twenty years, had seen so much violence from the Japanese invasion to the cruel end of the Portuguese rule and the first government of the country, and then the wanting of East Timor to be its own country. It connects the timelines well through the characters we meet in the book, but also it use the folk history of the place to weave into the brutal tales. I think this is a nod to people Marquez and the other Indonesian writer I have read Eka Kurniawan. It captures the post-colonial struggle in Timor, a place that was torn apart during this time. IT faces the past and doesn’t dwell on the violent aspects. Have you read any books from Indonesia?

Supporting Act by Agnes Lidbeck

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Supporting Act by Agnes Lidbeck

Swedish Fiction

Original title –Finna sig

Translator Nichola Smalley

Source – Subscription book

I have long been a fan of the books published by Peirene Press over the years, even though they are now in different hands. The concept of novellas that can be read in the time it takes to watch a film remains the same. Another of their years had miniature epics, and this book would fit in that selection of books. It is a small epic. One Woman’s Life is told over the span of this book. I find it amazing that this was the debut novel; the narrative and arc of the book feel like they are from a far more experienced writer. Agnes Lidbeck had worked for the Swedish Institute while writing this book and has since been a cultural commentator for a Swedish newspaper. Her father is a well-known Swedish director, and her half-sister is an actress.

When a woman becomes a mother, the unit of measurement for her worth shifts from that denoting her power to attract to that denoting her body’s durability.

Motherhood can be likened to the wearing of religiously coded clothing. The flesh becomes anonymous, suited for things other than desire.

The mother must not be an individual who – through the force of her unique proportions, waistline to nail length – can be distinguished from others.

For that reason, she must no longer be called by a name or by some onomatopoeic metaphor. Instead, she must, like all tools, be named for her function.

One of the quotes from what must be old gudies to motherhood!

 

The book follows Anna, whom we meet as she has become a mother, and how her life changes as a result of motherhood, as well as her connection with her husband, Jens. This is a book about what it is to be a mother. Still, it also has a sprinkling of what looks like old guides to being a mother and over the years, the relationship between her and Jens becomes flat, and she is now just the mother of his kids. She and Jens grab moments, but there is a sense it isn’t enough. The kids are growing and in time theystart having there own lives this is when the book sees whether Jens and Anna can spark there marriage back but when in the latter part of the book by chance she meet the writer Ivan she falls fr this older man, but this leads to her having another female role as soon after she gets a divocrce and they get together Ivan and Anna he starts to have dementia and with his kids she becomes a caregiver.

Lying beside the person you know so well and still trying to creep imperceptibly closer: as though rejection would be less painful if it were not spoken out loud.o.

She curves her back but still Jens does not press himself against her. She breathes as though she is sleeping and he soon drifts off. She lies awake, tense so as to be as clear as possible: here are my arse and thighs, there is no belly here, here are my breasts, where a hand might land as if by accident. Jens will not wake; she feels her construction crumble: her arse and thighs suddenly insignificant, her stomach bearing the traces of two children, her breasts too, they are used up and have no further meaning. What gives him the right to respond or not respond as he wants?

What is this mechanism that gives him this right to have other thoughts in his head?

The cracks appear when she wonders what Jens is thinking ?

I loved the arc of this book, it is one woman’s life. It may be, in a way, the female version of Stoner, a life in a book. Anna’s life seems on a course, and always when the light is there for it to get better, it disappears. But it also captures the traditional female role. I laughed at the interchapter quotes from what seemed to be old motherhood books and later about being single and a caregiver. Showed how the female role is viewed. I was also thinking of the before trilogy just as I had watched a video of that selection of film this is like a few glimpses of a life the passion of early mortherhood, then the mother role, then the empoty nest and what happens next and finally what happens when love dies and temption gets in the way. I said it feel like it is a book that is written by a writer that had written a lot if books it flows in Nichola translation, I have loved all the books she has translated in recent years. For me this should be on next years international booked it is high on books that will be on my books of the year. Do you have a favourite book you’d call a small epic?

The Proof by César Aira

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The Proof by César Aira

Argentine fiction

Original title – La prueba

Translator – Nick Caistor

Source – Personal copy

I always pick up one of Aira’s books when I see them in the wild, so to speak. He is a prolific writer, having written over a hundred books, with several translated into English so far. However, it means we have a lot more to translate in the years to come. He is one of those writers whose every book is a new revelation of his writing and a different one, set around his home, but this one features females as its main characters, which, in the books I have read so far, is a first. But I also loved the nod to a few bands I love in the text.  This book is about girls and sexual awakening, but also being wild and free. For more on Aira, I would try the Mookse and Girpes podcast episode on him.

The two punks looked at her with neutral, serious expressions. That expression, which expressed noth-ing, was one of pure violence. They were violence.

There was no escaping the fact. She wasn’t going to emerge scot-free from her audience with the punks, as she had absent-mindedly assumed. This was not the same as any other strange specimen in society, which could be dealt with by finding the proper setting in which to examine it. Because they themselves were the setting. She resigned herself to it: she had never set foot in this Pumper before, and had no problem in never coming back if they were thrown out.

But the so-called Mao had an idea, and didn’t keep

it to herself:

‘Do you want something, Marcia? A Coke, a beer?’ This had its funny side. She was asking her if she

‘could buy her a drink’, and that was one of the classic chat-up lines.

Marcia meeting the two girls

The proof is a three-hand book it is a about a lonely girl Marcia who is wandering around her hometown when she passes a group of punks, as she thinks are, but next thing she hears one f them talking to her not quite what they said they start to speak The girl asked her if she “WANNAFUCK”  Marcia is startled by what they said to her. The girls introduce themselves. Lenin and Mao describe them selfs as Goths. This leads to a chat about the band The Cure, which they are fans of, and they talk about how they are drawn to Marcia. Saying they love her, but how can this love be proven, and what must the three of them do to get this proof? This draws the three girls into action, and their lives will change after this. All this happens at a lightning pace as the girls whirl Marica into their odd world.

‘Are you saying that because I’m … overweight? asked Marcia, who was hurt and whose eyes showed it despite herself.

Lenin seemed almost about to smile: ‘Quite the

opposite…

‘Quite the opposite,’ Mao repeated fervently. ‘How

can you not see it?’

She paused for an instant, and Marcia’s astonish-

ment floated in the air.

“You were right, Lenin said finally to her friend.

‘She’s incredibly stupid.

Marcia ate a spoonful of ice cream. She felt excused

to try another topic.

‘What do you mean you’re not punks?’ The only response was a click of the tongue from Mao. ‘For example, don’t you like The Cure?’

Like two sphinxes.

Lenin deigned to ask: ‘What’s that?’

‘The English group, the musicians. I like them.

Robert Smith is a genius.’

‘Never heard them.’

They chat and they tell her of their love of The Cure

I loved this; it was a very fast-paced book of one of the oddest encounters someone could have it is about love, sex, politics, power and also being a teen and having all these lines blurred, and what is right and wrong being hard to follow the right line but is also about those crazy moments we all have in our lives those turning points. I remember a few drunk nights in my early twenties joining about taking Alnwick castle back with a Scottish friend who had a royal Scottish standard and putting it onver the castle of course this never went further now the old pully escape system in another friends flat we did try going down from a third flow window in this harness that lowered you. So I could relate to the waiting of the proof that the girls, Lenin and Mao, have one of those unhealthy, twisted relationships. I was also reminded of the film Ghost World. And their relationship reminds me of this pair somewhat. It also is a pair that have extreme things happen in the relationship. Have you read this Aira?

 

 

Winstonsdad running out of steam

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

Over the last few months, since the international booker, I have run out of steam both blogging-wise and reading-wise. You know, when you get that thing where you just start this and that book so excited to try and find rthat beat thatg moment again to bottle the thing that you lover in your reading but then I turned around yesterday and saw I must have a dozen books with sort of base camps in them that first hundred pages read a marker in the sand but then mislaid and forgotten as I grabbed the next book that next chance of capturing and bottling the joy I often find in books. I have this ever so often, that moment of self-doubt, of worry about my reading tastes. I feel this is never helpful, where every person on social media seems to be posting their books, and you either feel you are out of the loop or you are under-read. However, in recent years, I have not felt that way, as I now view my reading as a reader who sees my reading journey as a sailing boat on the waters of world literature. So this is my doldrums period, that place in the middle of the Atlantic where there is no breeze. You just have to sit and wait to you catch the breeze or steam up again whether that is reading some of the wainwright longlist that came out yesterday and triggered this post when I saw how many books I had to finish or a gem I find next week I have a few days in Suffolk with Amanda I have an aunt that lives there I will be seeing. Other than that, I hope to visit Southwold and Aldeburgh while I’m there, both of which have bookshops, and I am like a bloodhound when it comes to finding bookshops in the wild. Anyway, I just wanted to post that I’m in the reading doldrums; no need to panic, regular service will resume next week after my holiday. How do you overcome these little dips in reading or enjoyment and wanting to read?