Category: Spanish Portuguese lit month 2024

The implacable order of things by José Luis Peixoto

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The implacable order of things by José Luis Peixoto

Portuguese fiction

Original title – Nenhum Olar

translator – Richard Zenith

Source – Personal copy

I hate it when the UK and US have different titles. I started to read this book, which I thought was another book by the Portuguese writer José Luis Peixoto that I had missed. I have a copy of Piano Cemetery somewhere; I hope it got misplaced in the move. I read Blank Gaze 13 years ago and had meant to read another book by him. He was at the time he wrote Blank Gaze, the youngest winner of the Jose Saramago book prize. But I hadn’t checked that this was a different book, so when I was about halfway through the book, I thought some of this sounded familiar, and then I found out it was Blank Gaze, the book I had read several years ago. But the US title is different anyway, so I continued to see if it was a book I still liked. And to review it 13 years later.

TO THE RIGHT OF OLD GABRIEL sat the two brothers with their parallel gazes, fixed on abstract, unfocused points. Their gazes were equal but didn’t see the same thing. They were the same gaze, seeing two different things. During the months when the oil press was idle, it was the brothers who looked after it. Always together, always at each other’s side, they had aged simultane-ously: they had the same curve in the back, the same halting gait, and, although they didn’t know it, the very same number of white hairs on their heads. Many more than seventy years had passed since the clear August morning when together they emerged from their mother’s womb, ripping her up inside. Old people told the story, which they’d heard from their parents, of how the mother, as soon as the umbilical cords were cut, looked and saw that they were Siamese twins. She died, without a word, a few minutes later. It was considered to be a terrible tragedy

The twins are born

The book, like yesterday’s book, is set in a village. This time, we move to the southern tip of Portugal to an unnamed town, and some of the locals, as we follow a few decades in this village, all come into contact with the devil. Firstly, a shepherd, Jose, works on the estate of the Mount of Olives, attending to the sheep. His wife is sleeping with a giant that is bullying Jose, all this is told to him by the devil. The book has an episodic feel and is filled with its share of odd characters, conjoined twins, inseparable but only connected at the tip of a finger. Fall in love with a cook who talks via her food, which she makes into art. This is an odd world. Add to that a blind prostitute to the mix a shop called Judas, and there is a religious overtones in this world of the village.

The sun of late September was almost as hot as the sun of August, but the season for sitting in the doorway at night had passed, and Moisés and the cook stopped seeing each other. But Moisés was the kind of man who won’t give up, and one day he thought: it has to be. The next day he again thought: it has to be.
The day after that he again thought: it has to be. And two weeks later he contrived to meet the cook at the door to the grocer’s.
They got married on a Saturday, the date of which they forgot.
Since the cook’s house was larger, it was the two brothers who moved. They loaded three wagons with chests and junk. They rented out their place for not very much money, but it helped pay expenses.

About the twin and the lover the cook.

I am not a bigger rereader, but this was a book I loved the first time around. It was one I loved in the early years of this blog. It stood up, and I liked how I noticed more of the religious overtones in the book.It has an episodic feel that shows the village around the Mount of Olives is a place that feels it is drifting on the edge of the Abyss with the devil causing trouble. This is a sunnier cousin to Satantango. This has nods to religious world names shared with figures from the bible. The devil tempts folks and tells folks home truths. I found it poetic again but this time it seemed a little darker than the first read. There is a menacing feeling behind this world. They are stuck in a sort of world that is dying but don’t know it as we see how, over time, things are changing as we watch it over a couple of generations. Have you ever read a book as the title differs from the UK edition especially after 13 years. I will get to Piano Cemetery, his other book in English. This has been wonderfully translated by Richard Zenith. Have you read any books by Peixoto ?

Winstons score – -A dark world on the abyss and the devil is hanging around ?

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.

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by Jose Saramago

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Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by Jose Saramago

Portuguese fiction

Original title –  Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia

Translator – Giovanni Ponteiro

Source – Library edition

I’m having a slow Spanish / Portuguese  Lit month this year, but I aim to review mainly books from Portugal, which is the second from Portugal. This is also from the best-know Writer from Portugal, the late Jose Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize. I picked this from the library because it was an earlier book I have reviewed a later novel and the earlier novel by him Skylight that came out a few years ago in English for the first time. It also came not long after the fall of the fascist regime in Portugal that had reigned the country for many years. The book looks at the later part of the Salazar regime and the use of the Painter and Industrialist as the book ends those hit by the government.

It was not until fifteen days later that S. explained why he wanted this portrait, so much at variance with his nature and outlook as a man of his time. I never ask my clients in this blunt manner why they decided to have their portrait painted. Were I to do so, I should give the impression of having little esteem for the work which provides me with a living. I must proceed (as I have always done) as if a portrait in oils were the confirmation of a life, its culmination and moment of triumph, and therefore accept the inevitable fact that success is the prerogative of the chosen few. To ask would be to question the right of these chosen souls to have their portrait painted, when this privilege is clearly theirs by right and because of the large sum of money they are paying and the sumptuous surroundings in which they display the finished work, which they alone appreciate according to how they value themselves.

Talking about the painting

The book follows an artist called H, who is commissioned to do a portrait of an Industrialist called just S. There is a fun line early on in the book when he passes comments on the art and how S looks in real life. While doing this, he also beds the great man, the secretary of S, while doing the painting. All this is told by H a man in the Bourgeois world of the regime just keeping in there by his art, which isn’t the best, but he dreams of being like the great artists of the world as he talks about their paintings, this saw a lot of looking up art like the man with grey eyes.All this is because he is having his fling with Olga. Alongside this, a close friend of his is arrested by the secret police and is in prison. He meets and has another fling with his friend’s sister. He talks about the pictures he has seen as he works on this second portrait of the great S. Another interesting was a list late on of great Portuguese novels and then trying to find them in English and discovering there were only a couple available to us in English.

In the presence of the couple from Lapa (reminiscent of certain characters in Portuguese novels: Os Fidalgos da Casa Mourisca by Júlio Dinis, A Morgadinha de Val-flor by Pinheiro Chagas, Os Teles de Albergaria by Carlos Malheiro Dias, As Donas dos Tempos Idos by Caetano Beirão, O Barão de Lavos by Arnaldo Gama, Os Maias by Eça de Queiroz and O Senhordo Paço de Ninães by Camilo Castelo Branco) the chameleon did not change its skin.

Boring but this was the liost of portuguese novels with just a few availlable in English

I like this book steeped in art. I think this is Saramago making a personal voyage around the art that has touched him as a writer. It is a very visual book but a book full of relationships that are passionate in nature but brief, firey sex and games. He fleshes out H as an artist with this. He is a man who has that artistic charisma, if not maybe the talent that always goes with it. It also has the backdrop of a secret police coming and taking artists and intellectuals.The latter bitter and of the Salazar regimes is burning in the background. the creative process seen through H eyes but also a man struggling with the desire to be like those great portrait artist he has seen over the years. Have you a favourite book by Saramago? Where next do I want to leave his big ones to review last. Have you a favourite book by him,

Winston score – B exciting look at an artist and what inspires him in the later years of the Salazar regime?sa

Joesph Walser’s machine by Gonçalo M. Tavares

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Joesph Walser’s machine by Gonçalo M Tavares

Portuguese Literature

Orignal title -A Máquina de Joseph Walser

Translator – Rhett McNeil

Source – personal copy

I am going to try and focus mainly on Portuguese writing this Spanish/Portuguese lit month. As for me, I felt it has been a country in Europe that, as a blog, I haven’t focused on or reviewed enough books from over the time I have blogged. But also, it is a country that isn’t mentioned much. I got a couple of novels from Gonçalo M Tavares. When I first came across him, I read Jerusalem, another book from this series of books he called his Kingdom series. They are all set in an unnamed country of vaguely Germanic country. His fellow Portuguese writer Jose Saramago said he would win the Nobel prize. His books have inspired plays art, videos and operas. I didn’t get around to reviewing Jerusalem, but I will get it reviewed at some point, as his other books are hard to get hold of now.

“No one wears shoes like that anymore.”

How many times had Joseph Walser heard that phrase in the last two weeks? What was going on? He had worn these shoes, or similar ones, for years. No one had ever bothered him about them before. No one had ever before cared about his shoes in the least, neither their color nor shape. Why now?

“I don’t care about your shoes or your ideas, do you understand, my dear Walser? What I told you yesterday isn’t important to me, but it is extremely important to you. Can you see the difference?

Can you see the difference that exists between the two of us?

Between my shoes and your shoes, between my ideas and your ideas? I’m not interested in your shoes and I’m not interested in your ideas. But you’re interested in my ideas; that’s the difference between us, you see

His shoes this made me smile as for me they always say oh your laces is loose as it is alway undone

The book opens with the lines that he was a strange man. That strange man was the lead character of the novel Joseph Walser a man living in an unnamed city. He is a man of routine and habits. But also the style of Joesph’s shoes, which are an older style. He is a man that stands out in a crowd. But what happens when the city he lives in is suddenly invaded? How will this man of routine be? As the world around him dissolves and the people and world he knows to start to change, he just wants to follow the routine of working on his machine and then, in the evening, play a game with people he knows. The chapters see little by little how he copes as one more thing is thrown in his way and in the way of his routine. What happens when a character stepping out of a lowry is stuck in a war?

Joseph Walser went out every Saturday night to Fluzst M.s house, where he played dice for low-stakes bets with three other work-mates. The five men all worked at the same factory. They were all low-level employees and made average wages. Over the years their passion for games of chance had brought them together. There was no exceptional friendship among them, but they rarely missed a Saturday. The amounts being bet in the game could be considered small, when compared with other underground games around the city, but in proportion to their wages the amounts were large. All five men were married; for the players, their wives were the most difficult thing about their gambling. There wasn’t a single wife who didn’t complain about her husband losing a certain amount of money in the game.

More of his routiune life here

Now, I have read this through my eyes. I am going through the process of a late diagnosis of Autism, having done several tests and scored high in them. So autism is in my mind at the moment, and when I read about Joesph Walser, it was like, yes, this guy is so autistic his life is led by a routine, but it seeing how he copes, which he does, but you can always see he may be on the verge of melting down as the world he knows collapse around him. This is a nod to how that war machine interferes with a man-machine in Joseph’s daily routine. Add to that his collection the hyperfocus a lot of autistic people have. Outside as ever, I connect with the book I am reading. This is just how I read. Connections over the distance between different worlds and lives give me the greatest pleasure. Still, that thread that runs between the fictional world and mine really connects me with literature in translation, which is, of course, my area of hyperfocus.I imagined Waslser as a lowry-like matchstick man marching through his city to his machine every day, and how would that connect to the horror of an invasion happening? Have you read any books from Tavares?

Winston’s Score B is a vital book with an exciting but mundane character’s reaction when his routine world is smashed and changed. Need to read more of this series.

Last Date in El Zapotal by Mateo Garcia Elizondo

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Last Date in El Zapotal by Mateo Garcia Elizondo

Mexican fiction

Original title – Una Cita con la Lady

Translator – Robin Myers

Source  – subscription edition

I am late to Spanish lit month, but I must start with this book. Which book better says why we read books translated from Spanish? This is from Charco Books, a publisher that, for me, has been bringing out the best of Latin American fiction in recent years. This is a new writer but a writer with a fantastic heritage, as both his grandfathers are among the cream of the first wave of Latin American writers. He is the grandson of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Mexican writer Salvador Elizondo. In this book, he has cited another great writer, Juan Rulfo, as the novel nods toward his great book, Pedro Paramo. The book is called Date with a Lady in Spanish, and the lady in the title is Drugs.

It’s been a long time since I’ve managed to control the part of my mind that takes logical decisions, although I know it still exists. I know I’ve still got some reason in me, I just don’t really know what governs it. Maybe there’s more than one kind of reason. Sometimes I get the sense that there are two people inside me: one – the one I identify as ‘me’ – trying to extinguish itself, which means shedding the weight of matter by using the quickest, most painless methods at his disposal, and another one, far more stubborn and vicious and evasive, who stays alive in spite of everything and drags me around wherever he goes.

As he admits how his life is going the loss of his mind to drugs

The book is told by an unnamed narrator as he heads to the small village of El Zapottal to end his life in the backwaters of Mexico. The town is full of lowlifes, and the flotsam and jetson that wash up in small towns like this are the places people go to die, and this is what the narrator is doing. He is a heroin addict, and he hasn’t said he is going to take his life. He has just run out of the road, and like all those that run out of road in this life he has washed up in EL Z capital, a sort of Blackppol or such in the jungle a place of broken dreams and lost souls ghost of his past the regrets a woman a dog so many offer the years as he replays where it all went wrong and other pasts of other lost souls blend in. He is looking for a man called Juan. Who is this strange man? This is also made a nod to Rulfo as he heads into the jungle. He starts to lose the boundaries between what is real and what is dreams as the ghost walks, or is he a ghost thinking he is alive? The book is so fluid that his point.

The village darkens around me, the trees and their foliage blur into the background, the contours of the houses dim, as if the whole place were draining of light. Or maybe I’m going blind. I walk straight ahead without encountering a single obstacle or exiting the town limits. I still haven’t found the road to All-Souls’ Hill, but as I search I come across a stone cabin shining from the inside. I see five kids kneeling on the floor, holding hands, a lit candle in the middle of the circle.The oldest is a girl who looks to be about sixteen

As he heads into the jungle his world starts to disolve from around him

In the chorus of Japan’s song, ghost David Sylvian sings just when I think I’m winning. When I’ve broken every door, the ghosts of my life blow wilder than before. Just when I thought I could not be stopped when my chance came to be king, the ghosts of my life blew wilder than the wind. Ghosts are there; they are the same ghosts and demons that we see in films like Leaving Las Vegas, which drew Nick Cage’s Character to the end of his life in Las Vegas and Lost Souls’ ghost of his life as well. Yes there is a huge nod to Rulfo, it reminds me there is a new translation of  Pedro Paramo I need to get to at some point. But in the later stages of the book, when he heads to the edge of the jungle, I was reminded of the fluid nature of the writing of Wilson Harris in his book about the ghost of the jungle he writes about. This is a book about those last days of a junkie when the end is there and you hooover between life and death as the world drifts away and you go into another world of death. Have you a favourite book about the last days of a Junkie?

Winston score – A powerful new voice from Mexico with a fever nightmare of regrets and ghosts.

Edited in Prisma app with Watercolor

Spanish Portuguese lit month the 2024 Edition

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JULY 2024 

Well, I hadn’t intended to do a Spanish Portuguese lit month this year. I started it with Richard of the much-missed blog Caravana de recuerdos .We started it as Spanish lit month in 2010 on and off, a few years after it was expanded to include literature translated from Portuguese.So when Jacqui asked if I was I took a few seconds and a look at the TBR and said yes it would be great to do it again this July. I know it is short notice, and I am thinking of two things: review a book from Charco Press as they have brought out so many great books translated from Spanish and Portuguese from around Latin America. Then, the last week of July, I would love people to review a book by the Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes.

Here is the list of his books from Wiki; most of them have been translated to English. His name is often on the list of potential Nobel winners. He looks at the heart of his country’s history and dark past, warts and all.

  • Memória de Elefante (1979). Elephant’s Memory
  • Os Cus de Judas (1979). Translated by Elizabeth Lowe as South of Nowhere (1983); and later by Margaret Jull Costa as The Land at the End of the World (2011).
  • Conhecimento do Inferno (1980). Knowledge of Hell, trans. Clifford E. Landers (2008).
  • Explicação dos Pássaros (1981). An Explanation of the Birds, trans. Richard Zenith (1991).
  • Fado Alexandrino (1983). Fado Alexandrino, trans. Gregory Rabassa (1990).
  • Auto dos Danados (1985). Act of the Damned, trans. Richard Zenith (1993).
  • As Naus (1988). The Return of the Caravels, trans. Gregory Rabassa (2003).
  • Tratado das Paixões da Alma (1990). Treatise on the Passions of the Heart, first section translated by Richard Zenith (1994).
  • A Ordem Natural das Coisas (1992). The Natural Order of Things, trans. Richard Zenith (2001).
  • A Morte de Carlos Gardel (1994). The Death of Carlos Gardel
  • O Manual dos Inquisidores (1996). The Inquisitors’ Manual, trans. Richard Zenith (2004).
  • O Esplendor de Portugal (1997). The Splendor of Portugal, trans. Rhett McNeil (2011).
  • Exortação aos Crocodilos (1999). Warning to the Crocodiles, trans. Karen Sotelino (2021).
  • Não Entres Tão Depressa Nessa Noite Escura (2000). Don’t Enter That Dark Night So Fast
  • Que Farei Quando Tudo Arde? (2001). What Can I Do When Everything’s on Fire?, trans. Gregory Rabassa (2008).
  • Boa Tarde às Coisas Aqui em Baixo (2003). Good Evening to the Things From Here Below
  • Eu Hei-de Amar uma Pedra (2004). I Shall Love a Stone
  • Ontem Não te vi em Babilónia (2006). Didn’t See You in Babylon Yesterday
  • O Meu Nome é Legião (2007). My Name Is Legion
  • O Arquipélago da Insónia (2008). Archipelago of Insomnia
  • Que Cavalos São Aqueles Que Fazem Sombra no Mar? (2009). What Horses Are Those That Make Shade On The Sea?
  • Sôbolos Rios Que Vão (2010). By the Rivers of Babylon, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (2023).
  • Comissão das Lágrimas (2011). Commission of Tears, trans. Elizabeth Lowe (2024).
  • Não é Meia-Noite quem quer (2012).
  • Caminha Como Numa Casa em Chamas (2014).
  • Da Natureza dos Deuses (2015).
  • Para Aquela que Está Sentada no Escuro à Minha Espera (2016).
  • Até Que as Pedras Se Tornem Mais Leves Que a Água (2016). Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water, trans. Jeffe Love (2019).

I have reviewed three of his novels and have several others on my TBR . I will try to review another book from Portugal to take my total of reviews from there to 10, which seems poor. I look forward to seeing what books from around the world everyone reads I have done a few images for the month the one at the top and the two below.

Edited in Prisma app with Watercolor
Edited in Prisma app with Watercolor