Category: Spain

Attila by Javier Serena

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Attila by Javier Serena

Spanish ifction

Original title – Atila. Un eseritor indescifrable

Translator Katie Whittemore

Source – personal copy

I also recently ordered these, as I want to support Open Letter, which had lost some grant funds, by purchasing a few books from them that had caught my eye over the last few months. Open letter brought out two books with the same title, Attila. This is the one written by Javier Serena, a Spanish writer, whose other book examined the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. In this book, he features his fellow Spanish writer Alioscha Coll, who is the author of another book titled Attila, which he  wrote . He died shortly after this book was published, and it is now considered a masterpiece. Serena himself has spent time in Paris, which is where the book is set and where Alioscha Coll spent most of his adult life as a writer in Paris after he had left his studies as a doctor. What is captured is the time he spent writing his book and himself as a person.

This seemed to be his only aim: to finish the book as soon as possible, working around the clock, refusing to feel sorry for himself over Camille’s jilting, taking refuge in his idiosyncratic endeavor to string together words and thereby not confront the absolute isolation in which he was immersed. He clearly avoided the subject of his reclusion as we looked for the exit from the park, for as we climbed stairs and left ponds and leaf-strewn dirt paths behind us, Alioscha wanted only to talk about his recent reading and certain technical aspects of his book, making no mention of the despair I knew the young university student must have caused him. Nor did he confide in me when, having left the bounds of the park, we ran out of literary topics to discuss. As we moved farther from where I had found him, I remained uncertain whether Camille’s departure was a temporary, mutual decision, or if she had unilaterally resolved never to sleep in my friend’s company again.

Regardless of what Alioscha did or did not tell me, he certainly showed obvious signs of having gone too long with no one to talk to: it was partly the nervous way he had of speaking, his expressions more clipped and abundant than usual, along with the worsening of his physical appearance, evidenced by long greasy hair and obvious pallor.

He has a on/ off relatonship with his girlfriend

The book is divided into three parts, all of which revolve around the writing of his historical novel Attila. The book is told from the point of view of a friend of Coll, a fellow writer who talks about a hit man who may be caught out of time. From him not reading any modern novel. We see him later on diving into a bin of discarded books, hoping to find a lost gem of a book. He is described as a man who could sit and read a three-hundred-page novel in a single sitting, coming from a relatively well-off family with a number of his relatives having fame as well. This is a writer on the edge like a modern day figure from a Somerst Muagham novel, living in a one of those numerous small parish flats writers and arritst inhabit when trying to be famous and struggling to get by that was Coll he was a volatile man that had an up and down relationship with his girlfriend. But also struggles to be a writer in the modern age. He is drawn to history, and this current book he is writing, which is other book that Open Letter has published in this pair of books

This seemed to be his only aim: to finish the book as soon as possible, working around the clock, refusing to feel sony for himself over Camille’s jilting, taking refuge in his idiosyncratic endeavor to string together words and thereby not confront the absolute isolation in which he was immersed. He clearly avoided the subject of his reclusion as we looked for the exit from the park, for as we climbed stairs and left ponds and leaf-strewn dirt paths behind us, Alioscha wanted only to talk about his recent reading and certain technical aspects of his book, making no mention of the despair I knew the young university student must have caused him. Nor did he confide in me when, having left the bounds of the park, we ran out of literary topics to discuss. As we moved farther from where I had found him, I remained uncertain whether Camille’s departure was a temporary, mutual decision, or if she had unilaterally resolved never to sleep in my friend’s company again.

Regardless of what Alioscha did or did not tell me, he certainly showed obvious signs of having gone too long with no one to talk to: it was partly the nervous way he had of speaking, his expressions more clipped and abundant than usual,

As a character he capture Alioscha well .

 

I loved this. I picked this way around to read this fictional account of the writer. I’m not sure how much is the writer himself and how much is what Serena has imagined. But the bones of the story are the actual fact that he was writing this novel at the time the book was written, and he had struggled with his mental health. I do wonder how much is his and how much is Serena’s own experience as being a lone writer in Paris. However, the book captures a writer on the edge trying to be distinctive, as evident when he states in the book that he avoids modern writers of his age. This is a view of a soul trying to get his final book on paper, a book he knows is essential, but as he does this, his whole world is falling apart, and other things are happening./ An interesting mix of books to publish the book of the writer and the book from the said writer is an interesting idea. I will review the other Attila novel at a later date. Have you read either book?

 

 

Poundemonium by Julian Rios

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Poudemonium by Julian Rios

Spanish fiction

Original title – Poundemonium

Translator – Richard Alan Francis with Rios himself

Source – Personal copy

I start this month with an experimental piece of postmodern fiction from Julian Ríos. This is the second book I have read by him. I read House of Ulysses a  few years ago. He was called by Carlos Fuentes the most avant-garde writer in Spanish. The previous book was, in a way, an homage to James Joyce. He is a huge Joyce fan. One would imagine that being a Joyce fan led him to Ezra Pound, as Pound was an early champion of Joyce’s works. I will hold my hand up; I have a real problem with Pound’s political views, which is why I haven’t read him. We all have the choice to read who we want but for me I have no time for facists like my view with Mr Morrisey I just take the view to miss the material he makes and I am somewhat the same with Pound I see where he fits in the canon and that for me is all I need to know. This book is about fans discovering he had died in Venice and then retracing his life in London.

On repeating it uneasily, death’s ironies, brr waggishly, Luz! dully t-t-t-temptingly here nude at such an early hour,* ye gods! they stole the light bulbs again! in this high dark tiled bathroom, such an odor of lye, or semen….

Gotta condense or revive in a luminous point, a lifelight, the flame’ [soflame] of the funeral wake from a Night of All Souls from which by the end there are barely remains.

The mention of a wake is maybe a nod to Joyce as well

The book is full of wordplay and allusions to Pound’s work, but, as I said, having not read him, I am unaware of how much the prose here and his works are connected. The book follows three Bohemian spanmsih guys that discover mid way ion the book that Pound has died in Venice and what follows is them thinking of him but also the place he had been whilst in London a sort of psychgeography biography of the man short vignettes is later back up with pictures of the places mentioned in the book. Thus is all there remembrance of Pound, a man who had a huge influence on literature in the early years of the 20th century, but then, post World War II, is always connected to his fascist activities in the war.

A hoarse voice, she said, gruff. Vociferous luz, light of lights?’ or perhaps nothing more than incomprehensible stutter, Lux … Lux?4 …as he makes his surprise appear-

ance against the tennis court fence, nervously indicating with his head, or was it a nervous tic? in the direction of Luxembourg Gardens… And she, babelic interpreter, still sitting on the bench, despite the deathfright he gave her, could see clearly that his eyes-iceblue—were filled with tears. There’s nothing more sad, she said, than seeing an old man weep. [Beati que lugents

… Babelle de nuit dixit,

so early in the day, on leaving her sad moist dream, her cheeks shiny from crying, good mourning! Bon jour tristesse! I’ve met you so very late, très tard!6… That nightmare turned you into a crybaby, the Burlador of Sexville teased her, but she’ll probably keep reviewing her dream: there, lost in the room, there were you are, the old man with the blanket, freezing to death, teeth chattering k-k-k-k, and he never stopped scratching the backs of his bony hands. [Rashly?]

some word play here

If you are a Pound fan, you’ll love this if you are a Dalkey Archive fan this is a book for you. I like Rios’ writing style again; this is a book for you. I struggle with Pound. On the one hand, I can’t say I want to see certain politicians just disappear, and the rise of the right in the current day fade away, so we can see the sheer nastiness behind many of these policies. I don’t just mean in the US. There are countries, such as Hungary and Italy, and now even New Zealand, to name a few, pushing people’s freedoms back. So if you want to see where he went in London, this does capture a London in the pictures, I feel, is now gone. Sorry, I enjoyed this as a fun piece about three guys wandering around London, but the Ezra Pound thing is something I will always struggle with. I have Rios Larva, which is actually the first book in a series. I hadn’t known that, but I think they can be read separately. The book has lots of word play, and one can see the translator would have had to work with Rios to work some of the word play or other places where it is explained that the Spanish word for writer can be an anagram around Christ! That’s on my TBR for a later date. Have you read Ríos or Pound?

Far by Rosa Ribas

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Far by Rosa Ribas

Spanish Fiction

Orignal title – Lejos

Translator – Charlotte Coombes

Source – Personal copy

you are probably fed up of hearing me blow the trumpet for Foundry editions I actually have no connection to this publisher it is just they have brought out such great books in their first year, and this is the last of them Far from a writer considered the queen of Spanish Noir and the two trilogy of books she has brought out in the most have been well received in Spain. She has written a series set in 1950s Spain. This book saw a change of direction as it is set in La Mancha in a building site of an estate that was never finished. It captures the life of those caught when the real estate bubble burst in Spain. It appears this is the first book of hers that she translated. The book she wrote with Sabine Hofmann also seems to have been translated into English.

First, she zigzagged her way through the area of terraced houses where she lived. Then into the part where the large villas were. Each one was a different colour, so nobody got their houses mixed up. Luxurious two-storey villas, with double garages, terraces, balconies, gabled roofs, and dor-mers; with extensive gardens, with ponds and flower beds; with loungers in dark wood and cast-iron tables and chairs, covered with custom-made cushions for sitting and drinking beers or lemonade in summer. All built nice and far apart.She carried on through the streets of apartment blocks.

The first phase boasted full occupancy. There were gaps in the following blocks, but only a few. The ratio increased into Phase 2, then went down again in Phase 3, with its most recent buildings barely occupied. Phase 4 was filled with unfinished buildings and surrounded by a metal fence.

The fence that sperates these two worlds

The book came about when the writer was taken to a small town in Spain where a sort of wonderous luxury estate of buildings in Seensa was due to be built. Still, when the building bubble burst, the place was half-finished and half-filled. Some people live there with Jobs and try to get on like our narrator. She has a hu=]house built and a job but is just trying to get a new start in her life after being separated. The other half of the estate has not attracted those wanting a roof over their heads in the half-finished apartments. This is the framing for this book: a woman who is sinking more into drink and depression than a man trying to get by but is caught up in the darkness of his fellow incomers to the vacant flats. The book sees the two main characters draw together, but there is also the underlying r=tension of those who were brought into a dream of swimming pools and green lawns in the middle of the dry, arid Spanish central area. This is the land of LA Mancha that Don Quixote travelled as a fiesta draws close. Will this poowe=der keg of two different classes of people finally blow up?

Finally it was dark. He waited a few more hours, however, before going out to do a recce of the site to check if it was safe.

He toyed with the idea of having a drink. There was a drinks cabinet: one of those old-fashioned ones with a folding door and a mirrored interior that multiplied the bottles and glasses to infinity. He picked up a bottle of vodka but immediately put it down. Dust clung to that too. He wiped his hands on his trousers. He would not drink. On his first outing he needed to have a clear head. Bumping into someone could be fatal. They might alert the police to the fact that an intruder was living there. Then maybe the others would connect the dots.

His side of the fence a darker world at times

It is a common thread in Spanish literature: the unnamed narrators in there books. I know some people hate it, but for me, it makes the characters seem universal. I am hard-pressed to think of an Equivalent of this for the UK, maybe one of those dying UK seaside towns where there once hoped, and it has now gone, and the flotsam and jetson of human existence has drifted in. Maybe one of those new Scottish towns full of dreams and hope that never quite got off the ground would be the nearest. What it captures is tow worlds:s those who were brought into a dream because the bubble had burst in them are trapped as much as those who came to escape and just find shelter, a sort of drifting underclass that is never that far behind the scenes in everywhere if you know how to look at the broken capitalist world we have. This is a book that captures that clash of classes so well. You can tell she writes Noir. The Guardian review mentioned Claudia Pinerio, and I can see that myself. It has that creeping slowness and building tension she does well. It also mentions J G Ballar, the master of buildings and stories. Yeah, this has a nod to a book, maybe like Super Cannes: A Broken Utopia, a Broken Dream of a Place, the darker side of broken dreams when classes and what that brings, like uncertainty and worry about what an underclass can do. The book builds the tension of this well. Alongside the drawing closer of our two narrators at the same time! Have you read any of the Foundry edition titles?

 

Spanish Beauty by Esther Garcia Llovet

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Spanish Beauty by Esther Garcia Llovet

Spanish fiction

Original title – Spanish Beauty

Translated – Richard Village

Source – Subscription

I am so pleased Foundry have gone the subscription route as last year the books I read from them were both in my books of the year. So when this the first book of this year fell through my letterbox, I put aside everything else and read it in a couple of sitting . Esther Garcia Llovet qualified in clinical psychology, but she also studied screenwriting and became a documentary scriptwriter. She has cited Bolano as an influence on her writing. Also; the work of Raymond Carver is a Noir Novella, the first of a trilogy. This is set in the least Spanish city of Benidorm and has a world-weary detective that walks the line of the law on both sides. But this detective is a female with a British father in the most British place outside the UK.

Benidorm. Cheap culture. Beach culture. People who speak three languages without ever studying, corner shops, Belgians, watered-down gin and tonics, gays. Second-hand Tom Clancy novels, swollen with damp, crunchy with sand, sand on your pillow, sand in your paella, in your G-string, in the shower, all-day fry-ups, all-day Thai massage, cicadas at night. Piles of sick, pissing against walls, and Tom Jones songs. Melanomas, cystitis, diarrhoea all round. ChlamydiaAnd the sea. Like the desert of the Levant, of the West, of Las Vegas, shadows of skyscrapers on the beach, reaching higher and higher, shadows that go on for miles, stretching over the surface of the lukewarm sea at ten at night whilst families eat fried chicken on the shore, Mediterranean steel Godzillas on the cold dawn sand.

This opening capture some of what I said about eindorm as a place

Michela McKay is maybe the best way to describe her is rather like DI Burnside from The Bill; she is one of those [police officers with a dodgy reputation about her. We see her trawling through Beindorm in a twin quest. At first, she heard that a famous Dunhill lighter that was once owned by Reggie Kray and last time it came about, had been sold to a Russian Mafia figure is in her City. The other hunt is that of her Absent British father. It captures the dark side of a seaside town the seediness that often in the place of pleasure is just below the surface. This is like a modern take of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock in Modern Spain. She sees the gangsters, lowlifes, and ex-pats among those everyday holidaymakers. It is a ride through the darker side of a place of sun, sea and sex.

“I want to have a laugh with the Russians. We have to have a laugh with the Russians, right, because the Russians know all bout laughs. Vodka, polonium-210, and a stray dog in space. Who can top that? They never go brown, so they come here, to Spain, to our bottled flamenco sun, and we can’t get our heads round why. To buy flats, apartment blocks on the beach, the biggest mansion on the whole Costa de la Luz, a villa with acres of land around it, a Mediterranean pine forest and a golf course with a president chucked in.We see them, all these Russians, in the clubs, in cars, in the restaurants in packs of six or seven. The French and the English, sometimes you see a lone one on the loose, but never a Russian. You only ever see lone Russians lurking around the doorways of five-star hotels, neither in nor out, as if they can’t make up their minds, but they know exactly what they want. They want Spanish hedonism. Dionysian hedonism that only the tourists and the travel agents get to see, because the reality here is that we’re always really pissed off, and really burnt, not just by the sun. The Russians want the hedonism we don’t get to enjoy, they want the prices we can’t afford, they want the siesta we can’t even take. And they want music, music all night long, Benidorm! Fiesta!”

The russians behind the scenes

I liked this. I can see she is a Bolano fan. I read a review that mentioned this book as having a fragmented nature, and it reminds me so much of those early Bolano books, like Skating Rink. Which had a similar feel of being told in little snippets at times. It also felt like a detective novel, but it never was, and this is the same. It is a crime novel but more about the hunt and the people Michela meets. It also has a feeling of being. Made to be filmed . So when I heard it had already been sold and was being made into a film, I wasn’t surprised it had that feel of a book that would work well. The range of characters would suit many British and other character actors .As we trawl the darker side of Benidorm. A place where dreams are made and broken like most Flash seaside towns, it has a darker side. Blackpool in the sun, as it is called, is a place where, just a few corners away from the front, you can be caught up in a darker world than you can imagine. Place full of lost souls, souls on the run. And broken dreams make the world of Beindorm Michela Mckay work through a darker place than many see on holiday. Do you have a favourite book set in a seaside town?

 

Hungry for What by Maria Bastarós

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Hungry for What by Maria Bastarós

Spanish short stories

Original title  – No era esto a lo que veniamos

Translator – Kevin Gerry Dunn

Source – re4view copy

I was reminded that I had yet to review this when to was picked as one of the Guardian translated books of the year. In recent years, Daunt has brought some great books out in translation. This book fits in well with several Latin American and Spanish books I have read from female writers in the last few years. Maria Bastarós is an art historian and writer. She has previously written historical novels and worked as a screenwriter and creative writing teacher. Both of which you can see in these stories here; they have a scenic quality to them and feature lost, lonely children and women. These are voices you don’t often here, and darker undertones and sister macabre things.

As she waits, she reviews the table: theres wine, there’s foie gras, there are baby eels. All the things her father and mother used to eat when they sent her to bed early so that they could have dinner alone. She can hear shouting and crying from the babysitter’s movie. A woman is screaming, her voice shrill, punctuated by the occasional help or please don’t. The girl knows this sort of cry means the babysitter’s movie is almost over. And when the babysitter’s movie is almost over, it means her mother and the new boyfriend are almost back.

Tonight, in fact, they come back a little earlier than usual.

The girl’s face sharpens like a cat’s when she hears the key in the lock. She hears her mother shuffling around, then the door gliding over the parquet and swooshing like a broom. The babysitter hurries to turn off the TV, but she’s too slow. The new boyfriend’s deep voice wends its way into the kitchen:

The meal prepared like she had seen

There are thirteen stories in the collection, and I will only mention the couple I really connect with. The first one I really got was a small girl from divorced parents, and you get the sense that I did when I was young. She is treated by the teacher, and then when she gets home, and her mother doesn’t give her a gift, the lies start. This grabbed me the way she did, and you can. I did as a kid, those innocent lies your parents told you from one parent to the other for the birthday celebrations. One line made me laugh. Her father says something as they drive and passes something, and she says this is where the lies start! Heartbreaking but true. Added to this, her birthday wish and whether it will come true to add a dark overtone to the story.  The opening story sees another small girl making her first grown-up meal. Using a triangle of cheese instead of brie and other child-like replacements for a romantic meal between her later father and mother, one glimpsed by her. but the mother misreads the situation, thinking the meal is for her and her new partner. But no, it is the girl’s way of trying to cling to the hope of her parents reuniting. When that is impossible! The last story I will briefly mention is Girls Don’t, a tale of a group of girls. Gone Rogue is a story of a group of girls with boxes of spiders and scorpions making people look and have them on their arms. It is a very clever twist on what would maybe fifty years ago have been a group of boys doing similar things.

‘Make a wish!’ the teacher says.

This troubles the girl: there wasn’t enough time to think of what she wanted, and now a whole panful of wishes is ricocheting around her head like popcorn. She reflects for a moment before choosing one. Maybe this? Or that? No, this! That’s it. That’s what she’ll wish for. Definitely.

‘Will it come true?’ she asks.

Will the dark wishes come true ?

I chose three stories, and they all had child narrators or characters for me, they captured, particularly in the first two, the feeling of being a child of divorced parents. For context, my parents divorced when I was ten and the feelings and way the children viewed the world hit home on fact too much. The birthday girl reminded me of my parents and those little white lies and also the bitterness in a broken marriage that lies just underneath the lies. Elsewhere, we have violent acts, a woman on a psychiatric hospital ward.It is to compare with Fernanda Melchor. Both capture the dark side of the ordinary world at times. I also thought of Roald Dahl, a master of stories like this that, in many ways, have two layers on one surface and can seem a slice of everyday life, but with a hefty dose of the dark and sister we don’t often see is captured. A meal that is both a sweet act and heart-wrenching and maybe a statement from a girl missing her father. Wishes that can be dark as well as light, etc. Anyway, this will be near the top of my books for the year! Have you read this collection?

Count Julian by Juan Goytisolo

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Count Julian by Juan Goytisolo

Spanish fiction

Original title –  Reivindicación del conde don Julián

Translator – Helen Lane

Source – Personal copy

One of the events I love is Simon and Karen’s twice-yearly clubs, where we are all encouraged to read books published in a certain year. I always buy too many books each year, and this is the case this time, but I will not mention unread books. But this was the first of the books I read for this round of the club 1970. This jumped out of the list of books as I had reviewed Marks of Identity several years ago, which is the first book of this trilogy. I had also found a copy of Juan the Landless, the last book, so when the chance came up to review this and thus, at some point, get to Juan the Landless, I couldn’t say no. As I was reading this last week, I was brought back to the blog’s early years when Juan Goytisolo was a regular name mentioned around the Nobel, which was announced last week. Still, as I am writing this, it is tomorrow. He ended up on the list of writers alongside his brother of writers that should have won. Nobel, that alternate list of writers. I would love to make a list of those writers one time. So, as I listen to the Door play Spanish Caravan, we have a book like many of his books written in Exile, but as much as that is about the heart of his homeland, he so wants to see change.

the life of an émigré of your stripe is made up of a discontinuous series of events that are very difficult to assemble into a coherent whole: though it no longer enjoys its former prestigious international status, the city is still a melting pot for all sorts of exiles, and its inhabitants appear to be living in an uncertain present that is very enjoyable and full of material riches for certain people and a time of hardship and austerity for the rest: a test tube for complicated chemical experiments involving elements of the most disparate origins and background: cautious bourgeois, nobles mournfully remembering the past, suspect petty tradesmen, dishonest speculators, examples of all the infinite gradations and subtle shadings within the very complex, multicolored, prodigious family of sexual flora: ingredients that are juxtaposed but never mingle: like geological strata formed by centuries

The Narrator like Goytisolo himself was is in Exile in North Africa

 

It is difficult to describe this book. In part, it is about a man in North Africa, Tangiers, looking back at how he ended up there. But as the back cover describes, this book is like Finnegan’s Wake of the South! So we have a book that is rich in words in culture, in ideas shot through with a trace of bitterness and longing for me; this is a book about what the Portuguese call Saudade. That yearning and longing is what is at the heart of this book. Goytisolo picks Count Julian as the figure like Franco, who was at the crossroads of his country’s history. Added to that a rfage at what his country is this is a book of extremes from Seneca to queens there is very few people that s[=don’t get filled with his bile and wanting for a land he wanted. As he tore apart the fascist state, his country had become piece by piece and dreamt of a new world.

Seneca? yes, Seneca

that is to say, his portrait in the Prado Museum

if not a gypsy’s head, then that at any rate of a retired torero, standing on the threshold of old age listening

it used to be said of the famous Lagartijol that he talked like Seneca, and Nietzsche called Seneca the toreador of virtue: as for Manolete, his life and his art, his entire career, his philosophy so eloquently summed up in the proverb what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, are fed by the eternal springs of the Senecan tradition at its purest: the family line of Seneca, resembling a river at times disappearing underground like the Guadiana, at times meandering across the land at surface level, at times swelling to a mighty, majestic stream, has never died out in Spain: the stoic acceptance of the fate of the nation is 1 A celebrated matador of the beginning of the century.—-It.

He picks various Spanish figures to talk about.

This is one of those books that is virtually impossible to review as it is more a piece of art than a prose piece a man looking at despair at the land he loves and now hates so much. I said Saudade in other parts, it is a sort of Saudade. It is a man wrestling with being in exile, those tortured ideas and dreams broken. I love his words pl, and it cover over my head. Helen Lane has done an excellent job of bringing what must have been a complex book into a readable state in English. As he dives from here to there back and forth in history from Myth to fact. All this as he is in Tangiers and all that involves.

 

Living Things by Munir Hachemi

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Living Thing by Munir Hachemi

Spanish fiction

0riginal title – Cosas vivas

Translator – Julie Sanches

Source – personal copy

I have missed several fitzcarradlo books over the last few years. So I decided to cancel a subscription and try to get some of the books I missed from their backlist. This is another writer from one of those Granta lists. Munir was on the 2021 list of the best Spanish language writers. His story of vital signs was part of that collection. The first book of Spanish writers produced so many great writers like Rodrigo Hasbun, Pola Ooixarac and Andres Neumann, to name a few. There have been a couple from the second collection that came out. I reviewed another book by the writer Martin Felipe Castagnet. Munir Hachemi’s father is from Algeria. He studied Spanish and has a master’s degree in Spanish. This was his debut novel. It is part auto-fiction, part dialogue on industrial farming.

Sunday, 14 July

I read Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory from start to finish. An unexpected surprise. It’s a social novel where the main character – a guy – takes us through the ins and outs of the artistic field; there is no anecdote outside the field of cultural production (exactly!). The book was recommended by my ex-girlfriend Mónica, now a close friend. Her current boyfriend recommended it to her. I consider ringing her but don’t actually want to; besides, it’d be expensive and I’m not sure she’s read the book yet.

Instead I call Marta, my current girlfriend, and realize I don’t have a lot to share. I say things are all right; I have no idea if she can tell it isn’t true. My mission to obtain experience, as I referred to it, has been a failure. I have a new understanding of Piglia’s famous question: how to narrate the horror of real events?

We’re running out of food.

A mixof reading and the slow way the trip falls apart as the food goes and the still drink

The book follows what happens when four friends from university decide to head to France with the initial idea of joining the grape harvest.( I did something similar in Germany many years ago, working in a vineyard for a week. ) Munir, G, Ernesto and Alex head in a Suzuki Swift. Our Narrator, Munir, is full of ideas about being a writer. In the book’s first part, he describes how different writers describe being and how to start writing as they head for this summer of what they feel will be fun grape picking. But then, when they get there, they are told there isn’t any work in the vineyard to harvest grapes for four Spanish students. This shatters their plans, so they take what turns out to be a dark turn and find a chop in an industrial chicken factory where the four start to work and have their eyes open to the horrors of industrial-scale factory farming and the effect of this on the four of them. The co-workers’ menace and the place turn this from what would have been a fun summer working trip into something darker. As they drink, they become a little wild and don’t fit in on the family campsite they are living on, as the madness and horrific nature of the day job leads to wild nights. We see all this through Munir’s journal, but as he says earlier in the book, this is the writer; this is another Munir.

Today work has shown me the true nature of animal ex-ploitation. The site reminded me of the end of the world: a massive, modular, bleach-white industrial unit in the middle of a scorched wheat field. In the background the sun rose, wanting to drown the world in the blistering co-lours of dawn but finding everything in that narrow space to be yellow or white, and nothing else. Access to the complex was through a pavilion-like annexe. We got in a queue, and a veterinarian handed each of us a soft plastic suit that looked like a giant, shiny white potato sack, and a headpiece made of the same material with a see-through window for the eyes. Then he sprayed us with some sort of disinfectant hose. The scene reminded me of Holocaust documentaries, except we weren’t so much naked as overdressed. They informed us we wouldn’t be able to leave until our (lunch) break at eleven-thirty. At first I was alarmed because I had to pee, but it took me less than an hour to sweat every last drop of water from my body. Even though I bore it out, I’d go so far as to say it was unbearable.

The descripition of where they end up working in the factory farm.

This is only 114 pages, but as you see, it has a lot more to it. The writer discovers his voice in the book by describing the books he loves and the four having a wild summer. Part criticism of the other nature and brutality of factory farming and its effect on the four of them. As we follow Munir’s journal of the summer. This had echoes of Bolano in many ways. The description of writers he loved reminds me of the love of poetry and poets in the first part of Savage Detectives. But then it vias into environmental and green issues around factory farming and the horrors he sees he compares at time to the way we looked at the holocaust pictures. This is a powerful debut from a writer who seems to love playing with the nature of his writing and the genre he is writing. This has auto-fiction, thriller, Bolano-like prose, and green themes all thrown into a hard-hitting short novella. Have you read any of the writers from the second collection of Spanish writers from Granta?

Winston’s score is a B. It is a solid debut novella that is fast-paced and can be read in a few hours.

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.

 

 

Un Amor by Sara Mesa

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Un Amor by Sara Mesa

Spanish fiction

Original title – Un Amor

Translator – Katie Whittemore

Source – subscription

I haven’t reviewed as many of the recent books from Peirene Press as I used to the older ones, but this came from a subscription to them, and I had seen them picture it on social media. I was pleased to have the chance to review another book from Sara Mesa, as I had reviewed Scar from her a few years ago when it came out from Dalkey Archive. She has also had open-letter publisher books in the past. She is known for how she can put her characters into uncomfortable and unusual situations. Thus, she gives them depth as we see how they cope emotionally with the conditions. So, this story of a woman escaping past mistakes to only face a whole load of new challenges appealed to me.

Country people, he sighs. Nobody keeps track of these things. They’re stupid and stubborn, and often cruel to the point of savagery. He was brought a greyhound the other day. The animal was torn to bits. Nothing he could do to save it. She simply cannot imagine how hard it is to work in a place like Petacas. Like running into a brick wall, he says, day after day. Nat listens wordlessly. Her problem now is an economic one. Chipping and deworming Sieso, plus buying good dog food, is going to cost a lot more than she’d bargained for. And still, she fears, there’s the question of his shots. But even with the money she’ll spend, the blow to her budget, the most unpleasant part of the process, the most costly, will be interacting with the landlord

Here is a great observation about those left in the village

Nat has left her past in the city, where she had some problems that led her to move to the rural village of La Escapa. She has found a small house she feels is okay, miles away from her past, and is settled. She and the dog got a gift from the landlord, but the dog isn’t a fan of its new owner. She starts with an idyllic life in her new home, but even a feeling of more is in the background. But she soon. Little things begin to happen around her, like the house having a few things that are not right, then the strange bunch of locals. This is a twist on the. Village life where things are weird, she isn’t local, and this shows. Then a intense relationship with a man known as the German he had come to help fix the roof. The village is a holiday place as many houses are empty. Maybe this is part of the reason those left have become such an odd bunch of characters. The book gets darker as it goes on after she accepts a strange request, and things turn sour for her.

‘I left my job,’ she says at last. I couldn’t take any more.’

*What did you do?’

Nat pulls back. She doesn’t want to go into detail. It was an office job, she says. Commercial translations, correspondence with foreign clients, stuff like that. Not badly paid work, but definitely a far cry from her interests. Piter lights a cigarette, squints with the first drag.

Well, you’re brave.’

‘Why?’

‘Because no one quits their job these days.’

Her past is hinted at her and there in the book like this about leaving her old job

This is a slow burner of a book, a woman with scattered fragments of why she ended up in the village. She and the dog make an odd couple, but things start sour. it is like the sepia glasses she had the first few days have gone, and we see that you can’t outrun problems as you may have left them behind. But there is always a new problem and new set of issues to deal with, and this is what Mesa does so well in her books; I have found how people deal with those twists and turns and the slow-burning tale of one woman escaping from the city, fast love affairs, and the outcome of both. Unsettling ideas and plot lines leave you unsettled as you read. This book would make a great series as it slowly burns, and like all the great Peirene books, it feels much larger than its mere 150 pages. A book that takes you into one woman’s journey and eventual escape back to the city. It shows there are problems no matter where, but also how vulnerable a single woman can be in certain situations. One wonders if the title of the village is twofold: an escape to go to and escape from? Have you read this book?

Winston score – A reminds me of what I loved about the early Peirene books: As an escape into another world for a couple of hours.

The book of all loves by Agustin Fernández Mallo

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The book of all loves by  Agustin Fernandez Mall

Spanish fiction

Original title – El libro de todos los amores,

Translator – Thomas Bunstead

Source – subscription

I took out a small subscription to Fitzcarradlo as I had fallen behind with their books over recent years. They bring out a lot more than they first did. I ewas pleased this was one of the books from them I was snet as I have been a huge fan of Mallo’s Nocilla trilogy . He is a writer who likes to play with what a novel is and test the bounds of fiction. So his latest book to be translated into English is about love, but as ever, it is also about the world ending simultaneously. Only Mallo could work both these ideas into a novel. Maybe we have a future Nobel winner from the Nobel stable of Fitzcarraldo are gathering.

It is animals, not us, who live in the prison-house of language, because they are not able to leave and stand outside it and think about it. This is only because it is impossible for them to access the ideas that surround words.A dog never crosses a road, because it does not know what a road is. This, among other things, is why dogs get run over. It isn’t that the dog fails to look both ways before crossing, it’s that it does not possess the idea of a road.Its gaze is another gaze, its crossing is another crossing.Hence the fact that an animal cannot give or receive love either. It’s not that it doesn’t love, it’s that its love is other.

(Language love)

One of the love aphorisms

 

The book has several different streams to it. There is a series of aphorisms around love, such as independence, parcel, and language love, to name a few, as it runs through the book. Maybe love is all that is left, one wonders, as maybe that connects to the other story around something called the great Blackout, an apocalyptic event on earth with a single couple left. This is where we get the third stream of the husband of the couple and an earlier visit to Venice he had made. This is a mix of thoughts about love and what makes love. A past love of a place and visit to Venice, an Alexa machine while there all have the traits of Mallo’s other works, he likes recurrent themes like love, tech, and place and adds to that a couple surviving the end of the world you have a book that breaks the bounds of what fiction is. A book that need to be read to be captured fully

VENICE (1)

Month of June, first foor of a palazzo whose foundations stand below the waterline of Venice’s Misericordia Canal. There is a room, and a high window with views across the domes of St Mark’s Basilica and across a sea that will shift in colour throughout the day. There is also a woman – a writer — who, were she to look up, would be able to see all of this, but keeps her eyes down instead, tapping at the keys of a typewriter. Her typing produces slight movements in a small snow globe containing a miniature version of Venice to her right on the desk, raising a layer of snow up inside the globe, where it swirls before falling across the plastic city, and the writer goes on typing, and on, while outside, in the real Venice, the Venice of tourists and water and stone, the June humidity ushers in an early summer storm. Now, as the sequence she is working on grows in intensity, the table turns quivering fingerboard and the snow rises in the globe, and again it rises, once more hitting the tiny glass vault and falling on empty palazzos and waterless canals. The books and papers strewn across the desk, all of them on one single subject – love – receive these blows without so much as a flinch. Inside the globe, a snowflake has just landed on St Mark’s Square,

A long passage and the first remembering a trip by the husband to Venice

Mallo is a physicist I am always drawn to C P Snow and what he said about the two cultures of Humanties and Sccience he himself crossed these two cultures as he was a fellow scientist come writer. But what Malo has done is not only cross the lines between the two cultures, he has dragged the theory of Snow and thrown it in a blender by adding Calvino, Twitter, modern tech and scientific mind, also throwing in a touch of post-end of the worldness in for good measure and produced a book that only some like him could.I feel he is breaking the barriers of what fiction its and making us as readers work through this myriad of versions of love as we also witness the aftermath of the great blackout whilst also trying to remember a distant holiday with a few unusual things happening it like a waking dream of a wim wenders film it is like what he tried to do in Until the end of the world capture so much in such a small space. Have you read Mallo?

Winston score – A may be the first of next year Booker international books ?

 

The Strangers by Jon Bilbao

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The Strangers by Jon Bilbao

Spanish fiction

Originl title- los extraños

Translator – Katie Whittlemore

Source – Personal copy

I often talk about publishers I like and one of them the is Dalkey Archive in the last few years they have brought a few great books from Spain so when I was browsing for a new book to buy and saw this had just come out from them I chose it as it is a perfect read in a day book as it clocks in at just over 120 pages. Plus, the blurb sounds to me like it could have been an old episode of X Files a family move to a town where there have been UFO sightings, and there have been so many great books from Spanish in recent years that have Erie or another feeling to the narrative, and I felt this may be like those books.

The estuary curves around the base of Monte Corbero and discharges into the sea at one end of the beach. It courses, piguant, after all the rain. The beach looks very different from the image it projects in the summer, when she and Jon typically come to spend a few days and his parents are home and take care of everything and insist that Katharina and Jon go have a swim and relax as much as they can. Now, dark bands of marine litter and plastic debris cut across the sand.Jon’s parents winter in the Canary Islands.

The arrival at the winter home seaside at winter always an odd place.

The book sees a couple Jon and Katherine take a trip to the Cantabrian coast to overwinter there they have got sort of jobs which means they can now work remotely after living for years in the city.There is a sense this is maybe a chance to come together again as a couple. So They are stay overwinter in a family members house at the coast. but as the time goes by they drift apart this is the first off the three parts of the book the couple settling in and then coloured lights appear at night and the winter retreat becomes home to some more family when another couple claiming to be cousins appear said to have been raised by grandparents in Latin America.Markel and Virgine appear and initially Jon is wary of them but his wife persuade him to let the couple habng around. BUut are they connected to the lights. There is also a growing amount of UFO watcher and a feeling of something other than them being around them.

There’s a dog in the foreground at one edge of the frame. Only the back half of it is visible, out of focus. Definitely a German Shepherd. It walked in front of the camera just as the photo was taken.

The boys are looking at it with identical expressions: mouth opened in an “O” of surprise and smiling eyes. The dog has turned them into twins.

“I thought you two had never seen each other before,”

‘ says Katharina.

“That’s what I thought,” Jon replies.

“Me too,” Markel agrees.

“Where is this?” Katharina asks, peering closely at the picture.

Have the cousins meet before ?

This is a short book that has three parts to it the  couple settling in the lights appearing and the second part the cousins or supposed cousins of Jon he has no memory of them but some families can be like that we have second cousins I ‘ve met maybe twice in my life from my father generation . Then the last part is what the other is in a way . This has a wry feel to it remind me of a mix up of xfiles episodes there is the comic ones there is a sense of humour in this book but also that sense of creepiness the sense of the other being there something that I have seen so well done in recent years in Argentina fiction fever dream or the danger of smoking in bed. Its as if the xfiles had a latin American writer the main couple have a feel of any modern couple trying to escape the rat race but the grass insn’t green and that is just where they were at when the lights appeared adding a turning point of the story the other couple could have walked of a x files episode they have that feeling of holding secrets and not quite seeming what they are how many of these type of people are their in the x file episodes. As you can tell I was a huge X file fans so anything with a ufo theme is going drawme back into the world of mulder and scully bnut this has a distinctive Spanish twist. Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – A – tightly told tale in three parts of a couple trying to escape and rebuild but then buzzed by UFO’S

None So Blind by J A Gonzalez Sainz

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None So Blind by J A Gonzalez

Spanish fiction

Original title – Ojos que no ven

Translator -Harold Augenbraum and Cecilla Ross

Source – personal copy

I reviewed a couple of books from Hispabooks that published a number of Spanish writers and their books into English based in Spain they broke through a number of the recent writers I have loved Navarro and Barba being two of note that they published first over here. This is the first book by the Spanish writer Jose Angel Gonzalez Sainz to be translated into English he has written a number of novels. He won the Herralde prize one of the big book prizes in Spain. He was the founder and editor of the magazine Archipelago He has also translated a number of works from Italian to English including the works of Claudio Magris with whom he is a good friend. Nine so blind is the first of his books to be translated into English.

Diaz carrion, Felipe Diaz Carrion, knew from an early age, from the first times his father , may he rest in peace, took him along on the road to the field, that Egyptian Vultures were the first vultures to arrive on the scen wherever there was carrion, Genrally they are quiet and quick, his father told him, impressing him to the point of awe, quieter and quicker than anypne else, and despite their large size they don’t make type of dramatic commotion other vultures do, so sometimes they go unnoticed even thpugh they’re always there from the beginning, going about their buisness.

Maybe felipe is like the vulture unnoticed at times a quiet man and his world

The book focuses on the life of Felipe Diaz Carrion a printer that has always work in print shops what we follow is his life the three generations his relationship with his father. His time with his wife. The book follows him leaving his g=hometown and the fields that his family had worked and lived in for many years there is a recurring image of a Vulture and Egyptian vulture that is white and as is point out at a distance looks like a stork at times a motif of life and death this is a story of a quiet man a no one but when he moves North when his wife suggested that they will have a better life and his work life will be better in the Basque region he works at a print shop but is always the outside and the sense of tension there is at the Basque of the time the book is set the height of the recent troubles seems to simmer all around them as things turn for the worse he has a son but they chose to not take the family name of Felipe so we have the third generation of the family with Juan Jose or  Juanjo as he is known growing up in the height of the Basque regions as the famoly start to get involved with the world around them and Felipe often turns a blind eye or maybe doesn’t want to see what is happening around him. This is a story of one man’s life a man with morals in a world of fewer morals a man that tries to do the right thing but is often at odds with those around him.

But the years, now marked by the rhythm of that commute, which had gradually become as familar as his old road to the field, were passing comfortably. Asun, his wife, after a difficult adjustment period seemed to be feeling more and more at home as time went on, and their son- their elder son, because a year after they moved there, they’d had another one, and withthis one he had insited, perhaps for reason of nostalgia, on naming him Felipe – was well into his teenage years and had began not only to go out with his posee of friends but to be out with them at what might call every waking hour, in fact. To him, there was nothing more important at his pose, and no household routine or opinon, or, in any case, not his fathers, held the least valuefor him compared to those his friend would spout.

Caught between tradition and the real world at times

There is a dark shadow over this book with the Basque ETA situation it adds to the world they come to when they move to the Basque region this is a man that seems to lose every way he turns a quiet man that leaves all he knows to move to for a dream. But the reality sinks in the recurring theme of the Vulture is hoovering over is like the death of a family in a way death of a tradition. For me, I was reminded of the undercurrent that I felt visiting Northern Ireland in my youth at the height of troubles the constant sense of undercurrent that was there the normal world that isn’t normal. There is also the ease one can get caught up in the passion and fury that is in that world.

Winstons score – B – an insight into one mans life.

Working Woman by Elvira Navarro

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Working Woman by Elvira Navarro

Spanish fiction

Original title –La trabajadora,

Translator – Christina Macsweeney

Source – personal copy

Another of the writers that were on the first Granta best Spanish writer list(note there is a new edition out if it is half as good as the first as there have been so many great writers from the first list) . Elvira Navarro studied philosophy at university and has written six novels and a number of collected stories. She has won many prizes for her writing. She is known for her innovative writing making her one of the leading writers of her generation most of her novels have been translated into English. This is the first book I had read from her.

Then one fall day, Fabio turned up. He was Mexican, thpough no would have guessed it, given his Irish looks. I had kind of an obsession with anything blond{She made a vague gesture, like a Thompson gazelle lying in wait for a camera in a wildlife documentary. I was about to say something, but..} One day my psychoanalyst said I was looking for the child I used to be all the blond men I fell in love with. A second shrink, Jungian this time came out with the idea that I worshipped the Ayran race{I looked at the floor, if susana wanted to beleive her, these ridiculous observations weren’t helping, but on the other hand, the part of me that curiously observed and envied her freedom in constructing an image of herself gave a faint signal of delight, I was accustomed to her exggarations , even to her lies

What is truth is a big part of this book who is real as well !

The book is a story of two roommates Susana and Elisa, Elisa is a copy editor and proofreader that has seen her job shrink and has had to move to a smaller place and then even couldn’t make ends meet she takes in Susana as her roommate. So she has left the center of Madrid and had to move to the outer suburbs. The book flicks between both their lives as at times we see Susana’s life through the eyes of her roommate as she writes down her roommate’s stories. What we see are to women struggling with their lives mental health is touched on the loss of dreams the struggle of life as the two are drawn Elisa is a lost soul as she wanders the town the graveyard both actual and the left behind abandon house half-built dreams in the dead of night. Susana an artist is making maps out of clippings and pieces of the local area. It is a story that sees you at the limit of what is life a woman on the edge is there even two women is Susana a sort of creation for Elisa to live out her fantasies in a way Susana is described in such a way she seems too good to be sometimes !! Is it a friendship or just a dream this is where Navarro does well to tread a line that as a reader you are never sure? Add to that all a relationship with a dwarf !!

Becoming an indepedent contractor had been the first step. Then they started getting behind with my paychecks, only making them promptly when i complained. They used to say this courtsey- meeting their obligations- was a sign of how much they valued me. When winter came around, I hadn’t been paid for two months, and I’d started without much success, testing the waters at other publishing houses.I wirker till late on galleys that left me without the slghtest desire to read to go on looking at the screen, and then I’d need to get outside , walk and have a couple of beers.

The tough publishing world has woirn her down and seen her move out of the city

When I saw on the back cover that Lina Meruane had called her disturbing and had an eye for the unusual I was drawn in and her novel seeing red I loved. This is a story of two women or is it one woman Elisa is failing in her job as she is working on editing a memoir she has a psychiatric condition which she is trying new meds is this all an illusion is Susana a character created to comfort her to inspire her with her tiny maps and her being the opposite of Elisa or is she real. Navarro has drawn the two roommates so well as at times the story goes between them and at times Susana’s story is told by Elisa. Not the easiest read it sees how easy it is for us to all fall into despair and a downward spiral. I do wonder if Navarro is a soft cell fan with the whole dwarf side story reminded me of the song of theirs from the 80s sex dwarf! Have you read her ?  which book would you recommend next?

Winstons score – -A near-perfect gem from a talented writer.

London Under Snow by Jordi Llavina

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London Under Snow by Jordi Llavina

Spanish Fiction

original title – Londres nevat

Translator – Douglas Suttle

Source – review copy

I am late to this it was sent last year but I tried to read it during the first long down but I wasn’t in the mood for a subtle work like this is. The writer Jordi Llavina is a Catalan writer and cultural journalist He has hosted a tv show on books and radio shows as well. He has written novels, poems, and short stories and it is with a short story collection we get to read him for the first time in English. He won the Josep Pla prize one of the big book prizes in Spain. This is the second book from the new press Fum d’estampa press that brings a mix of the best in contemporary and classic Catalan literature. Another possibility for the Booker international prize maybe ?

I first arrived London on a Feburary day in 2009. I was thirty years old. Among my persopnal effects I had a black leather notebook like those that Le Corbusier once used to sketch out architectural ideas or to note down some of his theoretical or techincal thoughts . On the second blank page, I wrote a title “London Under Snow (and other reflections) ” in pencil

Five day before I was to set off for the English capita, a colossal snowstorm had set alarm bells ringing and I was worried that the tick blanket of snow shown on the newspapers front pages would turn into s terrible layer of ice- I didn’t realise that the sefvices in London actually work reasonably well snowploughs, workers with reflective jackets and armed with spades and salt all work together to remove the settled snow.

Just as he is to go to Londo it is turned white and the lakes around get frozen up.

The book has six short stories that all have a theme of memory and loss involved in them they blur the line between the writer’s real life and a fictional world. The collection starts with the title story a look back at the first time the writer visited London. A wintery London he describes it being shown that it is snowing in London before he arrives it see him try and get a hat for a friend that is from a costly shop ending up with a fake but then trying to get the original only to try and return years later and the shop is gone. This last part of the story reminds me of when Helene Hanff went to the carcass of 84 Charing ross road. The next story is about a family one a message of a cousin the Andalusian had stopped at his parent’s house many years ago he had shared a room he remembers unpacking his stuff and that he went to live in a small village in Mexico he laments the loss of contact with other family members as his life has moved on. The other stories also see him have a couple that is coping with the grief of losing a baby. Loss of a home with a homeless man. There was another about a man who reminds him of his old drama teacher.

My Andlausian cousin is dead, A few days ago. I received a telegram sent from a post offive in the Mexican village where he had lived since the ninties. It had been sent by a woman with a name that was almost as pretty as that of the village where she had most likely spent the last few years of her life with him. I hadn’t heard anything from him for around a decade and a half but, while we having had little to do with each other’s life, we were quite fond of each other. Three had been a period when he was still living in Andalusia, before the rude interruption of electronic mail, that we would write long letters to one another on a monthly basis.He was eighteen months younger than me and had died [rematurely at the age of Forty-five.

I was remind in this of the end lines of the film standf by me where the narrator of the film talks of his friend chris he hadn’t seen in manyu year but would never forget!

There is a theme of memory and loss around these stories. I am reminded in this collection themes are in that Portuguese word Saudade that is a feeling of loss and longing is hanging here. From a tale of a hat , the notice of the loss of a family member. The style is subtle gentle writing of his life those he has known as I said I struggled to get the voice of him in my head as I read but this time I did. Proust came to mind in the first story the hat was a similar device to that of Proust’s Madeline that unlocks the memory of trying to get the hat for his friend. It blurs the lines of fiction and biography so you not sure it if is the writer’s actual life or just a mere work of fiction. A wonderful intro to a new voice lets hope we get to read some more from this thoughtful writer. Have you read any of the books the Fum d’Estampa has brought out in the last year or so?

Winstons score A-