Tag: 2017

The House with the Stained-Glass window by Żanna Słoniowska

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The house with Stained-Glass window by Żanna Słoniowska

Polish fiction

Original title – Dom z witrażem

Translator – Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Source – review copy

This is another from Maclehose new collection of press editions of books from around the world. This book is by one of the rising stars of  Polish fiction. Żanna Słoniowska she won the Conrad prize a prize for a debut novel and also the Znak prize which had over a thousand books in contention for it. She was born  In Lviv in Ukraine but now lives in Krakow. She works as a Journalist and Translator.

On the day of her death, her voice rang out, drowning many others, rancous sounds. Yet death, her death, was not a sound, but a colour. They brought her body home wtrapped in a large, blue and yellow flag – the slag of a country that did not yet exist on any map of the world.She was tightly shrouded in it, like an Egyptian mummy, thoug in one spot on the surface a dark, blood-red stain was breaking through. As i stood and starred at that stain, I was strucj by the feeling someone had made a mistake.

The opening and her mothers death and the first mentio of Blue and Yellow .

This book is set in the town of Lviv, in fact in a way it is as much as a character in the book as the people that live in the House with Stain glass. The story is told through the three woman who all live in the house and really cover the whole of the last century. The house in Lviv in Ukraine is home to Great Grandma grandma Aba and Mother Marianna and her Daughter. All live in the house the books open as Marianna is killed, she is a famous Opera star and leader of the movement to free Ukraine from the Soviets. The story is told from the daughter’s point of view she tells of her grandmother’s  struggles and during the wars. The loss of the fathers in history. Also, the grandmother could have been a painter and due to circumstances missed out. The daughter herself many years later start an affair with an older man as we see how the fight to get the blue and yellow flag was flown has affected all those living behind the stained glass window in Lviv four woman and hundred years of history.

That winter in the mid -1990’s , Balconnies started falling on peoples heads and walking close to the houses became dangerous.

“Mind your head!”wnet the refrain to anyone who ventured outside.

“Yesterday, on So and Son Street, balcony mouldings from tje second floor of house number six collapsed onto the head of a woman walking below” I read in the newspaper “Although the pieces of plaster were not heavy, she was seriously injured and taken to hospital.#

This made me thing of those advert” have you had a balcony hit you !! ” as the kept falling on people .

The other great female writer about Ukraine Svetlana Alexievich this book shows the true spirit of females in the Soviet Era. Also the constant struggle of the sleeping giant that was Ukraine. This is a portrait of family but also on a great scale of the country. from the grandmothers war time and exile from the original homeland through the mother’s struggle to lead the first movement to freedom, To the present day told from the daughter and those recent years we also saw on the news where the country kept going one way to another. The other character in this book is Lviv one of those great towns full of ghosts and touch so much by the history of the 20th century. An amazingly confident book for a debut novel.

 

Warwick prize for woman in translation Longlist

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One of the things that has come about due to things like the woman in translation month is this new prize. The longlist has announced a mix of Adult fiction, Children’s fiction and Poetry. It is great to see a mix of lit in a prize. My personal favourite is the book from Istros life begins on Friday as Susan has been so supportive of this blog over the years.

  • The Art of being a Tiger by Ana Luísa Amaral, translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (Liverpool University Press, 2016)
  • The Song of Seven by Tonke Dragt, translated from Dutch by Laura Watkinson (Pushkin Children’s Books, 2016)
  • Clementine Loves Red by Krystyna Boglar, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Zosia Krasodomska-Jones (Pushkin Children’s Books, 2016)
  • Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from Russian by Bela Sheyavich (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016)
  • Life Begins on Friday by Iona Pârvulescu, translated from Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth (Istros Books, 2016)
  • Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from German by Susan Bernofsky (Portobello Books, 2016)
  • The Fox was ever the Hunter by Herta Müller, translated from German by Philip Boehm (Portobello Books, 2016)
  • Eva Sleeps by Francesca Melandri, translated from Italian by Katherine Gregor (Europa Editions, 2016)
  • Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors, translated from Danish by Misha Hoekstra (Pushkin Press, 2017)
  • Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg, translated from Polish by Eliza Marciniak (Portobello Books, 2017)
  • Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell (Oneworld Publications, 2017)
  • Swallow Summer by Larissa Boehning, translated from German by Lyn Marven (Comma Press, 2016)
  • The Dutch Maiden by Marente de Moor, translated from Dutch by David Doherty (World Editions, 2016)
  • Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Lucy North (Pushkin Press, 2017)
  • Mårbacka by Selma Lagerlöf, translated from Swedish by Sarah Death (Norvik Press, 2016)
  • The Coast Road by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, translated from Irish by Michael Coady, Peter Fallon, Tom French, Alan Gillis, Vona Groarke, John McAuliffe, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Michelle O’Sullivan, Justin Quinn, Billy Ramsell, Peter Sirr and David Wheatley (The Galley Press, 2016)

I have read four of the books from the longlist and have also reviewed other books by a couple of the writers. Nice to see the first longlist of this new prize more details about the prize. Have you read any books on the list?

The sixteen trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

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The sixteen trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

Norwegian fiction

Original title – Svøm med dem som drukner

Translator – Paul Russell Garrett

Source – Review copy

I missed his other novel when it came out in English. The book was a huge success,  Norweigan Wood chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way. The book has since been brought to be made into a movie. he works as a journalist and editor. he has written four books, this is the second of his books to be translated into English.

Why did he torment the trees? I stood there for a long time that night, between the white trunks that seemed to be an infinty of flagpoles, rehearsing an anger towards a man who was dead, an an anger which I soon set aside because I realised that I was merely copying Bestefar.

His Grandfather  Bestefar still hits out at the Uncle the great wooodworker by his treatment of wood far different.

This is the story of one man trying to unravel his families past. Edvard is a farmer in a remote part of Norway. He only has his grandfather, as his parents died in France to a poison gas grenade.His grandfather is a simple man that makes simple things in wood. But also has a dark past as he fought on a theNazii side in the Norweigan Legion in the war the haunts the family as well. Then there is his grandfather brother his great Uncle Einar a renowned woodworker in his day. But something happened in the past and he left the family home and ended up living in the Shetland Islands. When a wonderfully craft coffin arrives at his grandfather home. Edvard decides it may be time for him to start setting straight all that had happened in the past. But what happens the number they have for Einar inj SHetland is said to be that of a Hairdressers, but as he goes there and he starts to discover his great uncles past he finds he was in love with the said Ladies Hairdresser. He also meets Gwen a posh English girl also looking into her past and Einars past lead him to the Somme and the wood he found in the horror of the war.

“There’s a bit of Einar in you ” the priest said. “He coukd capture the form of something he had seen and use it in another context. Einar interpeted everything the experienced, he was a thinker and a dreamer”

“But when did he make the Coffin? ” I said

His gaze grew distant. When he answered,it was as though he had not grased what I had said

“Einar” he disappeared from us. Twice disappeared. The villag’s foremost cabinetmaker. One of the best in all of Gudbrandsdalen

The local priest sees some of his great uncle Einar in Edvard himself.

This is a sort of mystery novel about families past. It is showing the rigs of the family like the trees that keep cropping up it shows the ages of this family. As we follow Einar as he tries to piece together the jigsaw of his grandfather and great uncles falling out. But also his own parents past and their deaths that he never really knew much about. A trip that goes from Norway via Shetlands and then France in the present day, but then the Russian front and the Somme in the past. Edvard has taken his past like a lump of wood in a lathe and worked it into a family tree unique and maybe full of dark parts but also love and love of wood. I also loved Edvard talking about the music he listens to through out the book.

Dance by the Canal by Kerstin Hensel

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Dance by the Canal by Kerstin Hensel

German fiction

Original title – Tanz am Kanal

Translator – Jen Calleja

Source – Review copy

Well, I always love reading the Novellas Peirene, choose every year. Over the time I have blogged, Peirene has been publishing books. I have been reviewing them on this blog. This third book of the year is by Kerstein Hensel the German writer initially trained as a nurse in the former East Germany and then studied literature. This book originally published in Germany in 1994. Only a few years after the reunification of Germany. She has won numerous prizes for her works. Including the Lessing Prize for the body of her works.

I avoided Fraulein Brinkman. I knew that I had to do something to not stand out.The “I” was a sign in the register. From then on I did my fair share of staple throwing and chair rocking. My fellow pupils cheered me on and accepted me as one of them; Ha , the doctors kid wants to play too!

The first teacher at school had her down as an I from the intelligentisa the only one in the class !!

Told from the point of View of Gabriela. Gabriela is born into a family of Nobility in the Former East Germany. Her full surname is Von Haßiau. She is the daughter of a Surgeon, her mother is a society Hostess. Now, this would be great a wonderful start to life in the west but this is the old east of Germany. Gabriela is expected to follow in the family way so when she is just five she is appointed a Violin teacher. Although her playing never amounts to much it is her teacher that touches her. after she lost her Uncle the one they called the Bad German is shot by the regime. Frau Popiol and her red hair have a lasting impact on the young Gabrielia as she compares her first school teacher unfavourably to this woman. On her first day at school, her fellow pupils laugh at her name. As she is described by the teacher as A bourgeoisie relic for using the Von piece of her name. But as her father intervenes for her next day is different. But she has one friend at school. Katka is the poorest in the class is her friend they connect most to her mother’s dismay. THey get on til the teen years where Katka grows up after her first period. But Gabriela starts to go down hill. Ending up under the bridge living by the Kanal.We also see through her childish eyes. The family fall apart, early on in the book she describes her mother drinking. Then later finding her in bed with another man. Then Her father who she says only talks about Varicose and his clinic. He like many fell foul of the east German regime. We see all this as Gabriela tells her story when the wall falls down as a homeless woman in East German to a west German Magazine.

Katka left me standing there. I wasx suddenly alone. Wanted to get away. Where to? Whereever you want. I walked through the city. The city eneded aty the canal. Where to now? Yes or no.Wherever you want. I don’t know where I wantto go. Yes. No I’ve never been kissed. Don’t lie.On the canal there’s a little house. Who lives in this little house ? Yes of no. Steer clear of it. Why? don’t know wherever you want.Dance by the Canal

The passage icluding the title she had danced earlier there with Katka in thr town of Liebnitz she grew up in.

 

The parents say the daughter is Blnka when she was bad and Ehlchen when she was good.But this is a story of a girl that never really fits. Her parents you see from her point of view are distant then her school doesn’t work. This doesn’t help when her father won’t let her join in certain organizations within the school that all the other pupils are in but her. It is a story of a downfall. In the intro to the book on the Website says you look into the face of a homeless person and wonder why them not me. I get this sense myself. If our lives twist one way or another would we be Gabriela? What she shows is that even the highest can fall but also I feel the path is laid for Gabriela in a way. She has parents that we see maybe have other agenda in their lives but her and then she puts her self straight on the back foot at school. One downfall is a maybe the voice of thousands that fall through the cracks.  Also, shows the darker side of life on the streets when Gabriela has something happen and isn’t believed.

A Czech crime trio

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Earlier this year I found one of this trio of books written by the Late Czech writer Josef Skvorecky. Around the Sixties, he wrote about Lieutenant Boruvka of the Prague Homicide Bureau. The books reflected the Czech regime of the time and things like LSD arriving there. Last year one of the book was recorded for radio here. It was said in his obituary the four books of Borkuva could be read as an epic work, I have the three books as they are said to convey the everyday life of Prague at the time very well.I hope to read them soon have anyone else read them?

 

In red by Magdalena Tulli

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In red by Magdalena Tulli

Polish fiction

Original title –  W czerwieni

Translator – Bill Johnson

Source – personal copy

One of the publishers over the years I have discovered is Archipelago. I have reviewed a number of their books over the years and have brought a lot as they are so pretty in their design. Magdalena Tulli is one of the writers from them I hadn’t tried and this short novella seemed a great intro. Magdalena Tulli is a writer and translator she has been five times on the prize list for the Nike prize in Poland (the polish Booker Prize), this book was one of the books to make that prize list.

Left to prey to foreign forces, stitchings filled with stories that previously no one had ever heard or wanted to hear. In the house of pleasure, in the downstairs parlor, at night officers in jackets unbuttoned in contravention of the regulations fell madly in love, sang. andlaughed; during the day the other ranks were let in through a side door and took the creaking stairs to the second floor. They thronged the poorly lit corridor, wreather in cigarette smoke, grasping metal tokens in their sweaty palms.

The town is change by Germans , this passage remind me of the Brel song Next where a soldier loses his virginity.

This book follows a small town in Poland Stitchings a town where time stands still even thou the world moves on around them.We follow the town over the period pre world war one to pre world war two. This story tells little tales of the multitudes from the workers in the main factory their Loom and son and the two other big factories in the town. German invaders the officer and the ranks their impact on the town both during the war and afterwards. The creation of Poland is proclaimed after the war to the citizens of the town. A young woman who has to decide between the two most eligible bachelors in the town. This is an odd world like that of say Dylan Thomas llareggub full of dark characters that are touched with a bit of magic realism but also the dark realism of that period of history.

Every morning the unemployed demoblized soldiers, a snarl of anger frozen on their faces, would read the newspapers, in which there was not a single piece of good news for them. They lit one roll-up cigarette from the previous one, and blew the acrid smoke up towards the ceiling. They paced from wall to wall in their basements, irritable and gruff

The men left after the war have little hope in stitchings .

I liked this book it is in the spirit of the likes of Calvino and Saramago that fine line between realism and magic realism. Stitchings is a surreal mix of dark characters that like fireflies in the night appear for a second then disappear as death hovers over the town itself. We meet folks then they die it is a strange place. But I felt in a way it is an attempt to capture the madness the encapsulated Mittel Europa in those first forty years of the twentieth century. Where lives burnt brightly at times and lives were short at times. I enjoyed Johnson translation he managed to keep the feel of this being magically real at times. The spirit of how a town is shaped by war and death is what Tulli tries to show here and that is what works it is about the place rather than the people in way.

Such small hands by Andres Barba

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Image of Such Small Hands

Such small hands by Andres Barba

Spanish fiction

Original title – Las Manos pequeñas

Translator – Lisa Dillman

Source – personal copy

Here we have Another of the writers that were on the Granta list of the best 22 Spanish writers. Andres Barba has had another book translated into English. This is the first book by him, I have read. He has written ten novels.He has a number of prizes for his books. He also works as a translator doing the works of Joesph Conrad and Alice in Wonderland being among them.

One day she said , “We have the same name: Marina.”

And what if , like her , Marina started to have fewer memories, hardly any memories,no mermories at all ?

“we have the same name ”

Because dolly was the only one who didn’t lie . She was the only  one calm, as if halfway through a long life. and she looked different from everyone else, Time passed over her, and she remained ever alert, like a visionary, astonished, lashless eyes(broken; now even when you laid her down, they wouldn’t lose)

The doll is the only one she trusted as others lied.

This is a very short novella clocking in at just 86 pages. It only arrived today and I took it with me when I went with Amanda to an appointment and read it whilst she was with the doctor in about an hour. It is the tale of Marina an orphan that has lost her mum and dad in a car crash,  or as she keeps putting it .””My father died instantly and my mother in Hospital. The book opens as she is pulled from the crash. Awaking with a scar on her tum. Also, a number people talking to her trying to get her to open up. One way is to give her a doll. The doll she also gives the name Marina. She is then passed fit to leave the hospital and travel to the Orphanage.This is where the story moves into two narratives her the first Marina,  then a collective voice of the fellow Orphans,  as they greet Marina. The orphanage is a strange world to her all them in bright dresses and the same black shoes. The Orphans aren’t kind to her and we see Marina through their eyes as well as hers in a frightening look at being young and lost in a world of fellow lost souls.Also, the violent and horrific way kids can treat each other.

When class was over we liked to play. We’d sing as the jump rope hit the sand with a dull crack. To get in the circle you had to pay attention, had to calculate the jump rope’s arc, its speed, adapt your rhythm to the chorus. Once you were in you felt exposed, tense, as if each time the rope cracked down, it hit your mouth, or your stomach. with each thump you went around the world.

There is a brutal nature to this play rather like in Lord of the flies which this part remind me of

Another of the current crop of books, I have read from Spanish in recent years.  That has a creepy surreal edge to the narrative two that spring to mind is The children and fever dream. Which both feature children and like this walk a line between real and surrealness. The Orphanage is where this story starts to turn a strange way.  Although the way MArina talks at the time has a vacant feel about it as though her heart has been ripped out of her. The black and whiteness of the statement about her parents hang in the air when she says it. This in Lit terms is an Amuse Buche of a book. A book that sets you as a reader minds racing far beyond it mere 86 pages. Also have to say the cover is rather creepy to this book as well.

That was the month that was August 2017

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  1. The ultimate tragedy by Abdulai Sila
  2. Winter Quarters by Osvaldo Soriano
  3. Inventing love by Jose Ovejero
  4. Seeing red by Lina Meruane
  5. The painter of birds by Lidia Jorge
  6. FAdo Alexandrino by Antonio Lobo Antunes
  7. Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin
  8. An animal called mist by Ledicia Costas
  9. The exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto
  10. The white city by Karolina Ramqvist

I managed to review ten books on the blog last month. From 8 countries, no new publishers this month. But one new country for the blog Guinea Bissau with the first book to be published in English. Bring the total books reviewed this year on the blog to 75 still in the range of getting 100 books reviewed this year on the blog.

Book of the month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fado Alexandrino by Antoino Lobo Antunes

A novel that looked at the disaster that was Portugal at war in Africa a sort of European Vietnam from the point of view of five men that fought at the same time and lives went in different ways after what happened there. Proof if need, why Antunes runs high in Nobel, Lit betting in recent years.

Non-book discovery

Well , I’ve been taken back to my childhood recently with Drama the UK Tv channel starting of the long running UK police series The Bill from the beginning which was in 1984 , it was one of the first shows I was allowed to stay up and watch as a kid so I am enjoying rewatching them 33 years later.

Next month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a number of new books I have brought a couple from the US publisher  Open letter and the latest Javier Cercas one of my favourite writers of all time.

What was your favourite last month ?

The White city by Karolina Ramqvist

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The White city by Karolina Ramqvist

Swedish fiction

Original title – Den Vita Staden

Translator – Saskia Vogel

Source – review copy

I end this woman in translation month with another great  Nordic novel from a female writer this time the Swedish writer Karolina Ramqvist. Most of the best female writer I have enjoyed the last few years have been Nordic Lena Anderson and Therese Bohman both Swedish writers as well spring to mind. This book won the Per Olov Enquist lit prize in Sweden. Karolina Ramqvist has written novels short stories and essays. She has also been the editor in Chief of Dagens Nyheter. Her books have translated into many languages this is her debut in English.

He’d been the one who’d wanted to have kids. He had whispered his wishes in her ear. Suggesting a new direction for them, an opportunity. Word after Word, long decriptions of how he loved her and what it would be like to have another her, wh was also one of him .

For him, the idea of a child was a window opening; for her it was one closing. She thought of all the women she’d seen stand before their men, holding out their children and pleading for them to change rheir ways.

Dream was more his idea than her Idea.

 
This is a modern tale in a way, one of greed but what happens when greed leads to Crime. This is the story of one woman after that happen, Karin, She married to John. A man who gave her social status with his money. But it turns out he was on the wrong side of the law and now she is alone in her huge home. That isn’t going to be her home much long as the vultures are circling her life of high spending is over. She has very little time to sort out the future for her, but she also has her baby Dream one they had planned together. But she has now left Holding the baby as John is gone. She is trying to reach out to friends and family to stop losing everything to the government. 
She lay on the sofa with Dream. The sky was heavy and the air was too; it felt as thick as fog. She didn’t know how man days had gone sice she’d last gone outside.
She pushed the blanket and robe to one side and positioned herself so he r nipple nudged dreams round cheek. Eyes closed, she opened wide and turned her head, taking the breast in her mounth and pressing her tiny hand against it so it would empty more quickly.
Dream and her alone in the house for days on end
 
This is the tale of what happens when the good times go and the wife is holding the baby as her world a. she knows is crumbling around her. This like the other Nordic novel I have read by Swedish female writers. It is about strong female voices even thou her world is falling apart and her baby is still being breast fed. she is managing to keep it all together. A tale of what you do when those nearest have betrayed you and left you hanging and you were oblivious to it all going on around you. A woman her baby and the bad weather drawing in and trying to keep her warm and feed. Whilst the cold draws in the large house, even down to stealing the neighbour’s wi-fi. Ramqvist makes the weather feel cold as winter draws in around the former family home that she has little time left in. 

 

The exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto

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The Exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto

Finnish fiction

Original title – Tumma

Translator – David Hackston

Source – review copy

When I went to the London book fair earlier this year one of the people I finally got to meet after many years of chat on twitter was Karen who runs Orenda books a publisher of mainly crime fiction and a number of them in translation.So this Finnish novel is also one for Woman in translation month. This is the second book by Kati Hiekkapelto the Finnish writer lives on an island and is also a singer in a Punk band and  I have reviewed the first was defenseless this book also features the same detective but this time we follow Anne Fekete back home to the Balkan village of her birth. S

Just then Anne felt a violent shove at her back. She was buffeted against the table – so hard that Tibor’s wine glass toppled over.Golden yellow Furmint trickled over the edge of the table on to the ground and splashed on Anna’s trousers. Tobor leapt to his feer and shouted something, and it was then that Anna noticed her handbag had disappeared from the chair next to her.

“My handbag” she shouted. “Someone’s taken my handbag”

Tibor and Erno dashed into the crowd of people

Drink with people that knew her dad, he bag is taken by a thief .

Anne is back with her family in the Balkans on holiday when her bag get stolen one day. But when the thief is found dead by the river. Her passport and credit card had gone so when the local police take the death of the man who is a Romany, Anne natural instincts take over when the robbery happened she happened to see a young girl with the now dead man. But as she starts to investigate the crime, she is drawn into a bigger picture of refugees and how the Romani community is treated with in Serbia. Also into past crimes that someone wants to keep from Anne and also maybe involves Anne’s own family her own father was a local policeman. This book shows the growing intolerance to refugees and other ethnic groups that do not just fit in with the locals as the past and present collide and Anne finds more out about herself and her family.

“Wouldn’t it make sense to be sure this is the same man who stole my handbag? I think I’m the only reliable witness. Admittedly, I only saw him from behind. But I noted his size and what clothes he was wearing.

“He was found lying next to your bag” said the chief of police

“And if h’d been found next to a boat, would that automatically make him a fisherman? Or if he was near a church would you assume he was a priest ? or behind a hospital…”

Anne gets the push off by the police that makes her want to dig deeper into the crime .

This works well as it can be read as a standalone read, the problem with crime series novels is sometimes you need to read them in the series but with these books, I find you don’t .But what we do learn her is more of the mysterious Anne Fekete past, how a girl from the Balkans ended up as a Finnish police detective. Can Nordic noir work with out the ice and snow and dark night yes? This book is a multi layered book of murder, family, refugees, and secrets.  But this is more than a crime novel it is a look at modern society in Europe from the Balkans to Finland we could easily say the rise of hate of other is growing and a death like this has probably been overlooked in every country by the local police

An Animal called Mist by Ledicia Costas

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AN ANIMAL CALLED MIST

An Animal Called Mist by Ledicia Costas

Spanish (Galician) fiction

Original title  FF

Translator – Jonathan Dunne

Source – Personal copy

Well it is near the end of the second month of Spanish lit month and the end of woman in translation month so I decide to combine both with this review another from the small publisher Small station who have been brought out the brightest voices from Galician in the last few year I have reviewed a number of their books this is another and a new writer to this blog. Ledicia Costas has mainly written for YA and has won prizes for her books including the Galicia prize from Children’s literature. She has also written for TV working in documentaries in particular (according to Wiki).

There’s one part however, that not only impresses him, it bores a hole into his chest: the monlogue by Captain Quint a survivor of the world war II USS indianapolis disaster, relating thr sinking of the ship that carried the uranium and partd of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima to the Mariana Islands. Three minutes abd Forty-seven seconds during which Hunter remains on the alert his fist clenched, his senses fixed on the television screen in a kind of paranormal connection woth Captain Qunint .

Whilst watching JAws Hunter learns of what happen to the Uss idianapolis but wants to know more.

This is a collection of six stories all focus on the second world war. From the opening tale in Leningrad following how the people of the city coped with the famous siege. Then one of those strange things happened that when we are reading books the second story in the collection recounts events on the Uss Indianapolis from the point of view  of someone trying to find out about the ship Hunter Scott  heads to the library the ship was sunk near the end of the war by two torpedos and was the single greatest loss of life for a single ship in the war. This strangely I was reading this last week when the team funded by Paul Allen found the ship itself on the sea floor. THe next story follows the events before and after Enola Gay drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the plane following the pilot, student at school an engineer on the train. The two other stories in the collection one follow Italian Partisans and the other uses the actual dialogue of the trials of three Nazi post war including the trial of Goring.

On the morning of 6 August, Aiko, a pupil at the femine school in Hiroshima, had gone out with her friends to do some outdoor acivites. They walked in the vicinty of the river Ota, obvious to the world, in search of flowers to make garlands. It was only a few days until the Floral offering, a festival of colour that celebrated the gifts of nature

The morning waqs a mirror of calm in the surroundings of the river.This was a special place foor Aiko.

On the day the bomb was dropped on the city a girl collects flowers by the river.

This is a collection of voices and stories from the war that don’t read like history but actual events although she seems to squeeze the story around the events, I like the way she choose the every man to show the nature of the human condition and a child  trying to discover about the Indianapolis as they don’t believe it actually happened and this is maybe what can be said about this collection it shows that Truth is often stranger than fiction. We see the fragility of life at times those souls on the ground before the bombs arrive and then the other side of nature the brutal side with those voices from the Nazi trials. This shows what is called Great prose elsewhere those tales that walk the fine line between fiction and non-fiction.

 

Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin

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Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin

Quebec fiction

Original title –  le Vieux Chagrin

Translator – Shelia Fischman

Source – Personal copy

Well, I have read a number of books recently but this one has jumped straight to the top I read it in one sitting on Friday. Jacques Poulin is considered one of the best writers of his generation of French Canadian writers, he has won numerous writing prizes during his career and has published fourteen books. I have to say I love the cat on the cover of this book from Archipelago books.

Dear Marika,

Welcome, Old Mr blue and I hope your visit here will be a pleasent one, as much as out inhospitable shores allow. Try not to let the cold and the damp bother you much. Walk on the beach and the sandbar as much as you want: that’s an excellent way to shake off your worries, as I’ve often discovered myself.

I have lived alon for a long time and solitude is propitous for my work, but it warns my heart to know that you’re at the other end of  the bay. Now that you’re there, everything seems possible, even the wildest, most secret dreams, the ones we never talk about, those that lurk beneath the surface of ourselves, I cannot help thinking that your presence is kind of invitation to begin everything again, to start from scratch.

Thought I don’t yet know your face, you already live in my heart.

Jim writes a note to the unkown woman owner of the book his one human connection.

This is a tale of a writer, Jim he is trying to write a great love story. this is hard for a man that lives by himself in an isolated part of Quebec in his cottage. Jim has withdrawn from life, he was a professor teaching Hemingway to his students, but something we never told what made him end up trying to write about love. He admits he has never been in love and to add to this he finds some footprints on the beach near the house and follows them into a cave and in this cave on a rock shelf above the tideline he finds a copy of 1001 Arabian nights, the book has a name on it Marika.He then starts writing notes to this imaginary woman. Then we find out there is a refuge for woman near by and a spirit soul of a woman Jim calls La Petite appears at the house and talks with Jim at times, this is where we find out about Jim’s past. The only real thing we meet is his Cat Mister Blue and he is maybe the one thing that Jim really loves, as we see when he panics when the cat disappears and Jim Panics.

I waited all week for Marika to come and visit. But in vain. Ten times a day I leaned out of the attic window , hoping to see the women I’d invited,  the womanwho was creating such a strange turmoil in me, on whom I was counting to bring my story back to life.

When she doesn’t come he starts to panic, is she real or just a fragment of jims past that has reappeared!

This is a gentle book about solitude Jim imagines so much it is hard to see what apart from Mister Blue is real in his world at times the Writer’s Block as he is trying to write a love story. Love is there in this world imagined love the notes to this woman Marika are playful and flirty, La petite a parental love in a way and Mister Blue the love we have for our pets. A view of a man that obviously has a secret in his past but like his hero, hemingway Jim is a man’s man so he doesn’t dwell on it but the sense is of a forgotten past at times. A book for lovers of subtle stories of being alone and the tricks it can play on one’s mind.

Fado Alexandrino by António Lobo Antunes

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Fado Alexandrino by António Lobo Antunes

Portuguese literature

Original title – Fado Alexabdrino

Translator – Gregory Rabassa

Source – Personal copy

When I choose to expand out Spanish lit month to include literature from Portuguese, one of the  writers I had in mind was another book by Antunes, I read knowledge of hell a couple of years ago and after that brought a number of his books to read in recent years he has been on the list of possible Nobel prize winners. This book is considered his best book. Antunes like the men in this book served in the military in Africa, he also worked as a doctor with men after the wars in Africa as a Psychiatrist.

“I was married and had a daughter this high “the second lieutenant said, smiling at the spoons the waiter was serving the mear with. “I was living on the Rue da Mae d’Agua, below the fountain, and after intimacies, even with the light off, I could see the round ball of the paper lamp, looking like an enormus moon, sowing Japanese ghosts in the darkness.(The breathing of his wife beside him and of his daughter in the otger room flooded the floor with a murmur of sounds that rose and sank like the soft flutter of a dress.

The men recall better days at times but always with a sense of loss in the words the say.

Fado Alexandro is a book in three parts that follow five men through the periods of their lives. Thye five men although four tell the story the fifth the captain of the men is in the background, the men are all in the military a soldier, a Lieutenant Colonel, a communication officer and a second lieutenant. The book opens in the years before the Revolution in Portugal and the war in Mozambique they all take apart, in fact, not all came back. Then there is the fall of the regime in the Carnation revolution, it is part of what happens there that cause the rest of their lives to go on the paths they did. Both lieutenants marriages fail and they take up with the different woman as one wife was upper class and a large amount is remembered of how hard it was for them to get together. Then there is buying a young girl in Africa. A death and the communication officer’s daughter tells her father story in the later section. The book follows the four as they all are scarred by war and their relationships with woman.

“Four of these lady friends plus the four  of us make eight hot whores ,” the lieutenant colonel told the second lieutenant , still suspious of the champagne , massaging his stomach. “What will your neighbours say when they see us ?”

Me, for example, I’m my mother, he thought , a ridiculous old woman who wore gauze, rings perfume, makeup and creams , her artifical nylon eyelashes fluttering like insect winhs, clumsily attempting to seduce the grocer in hop of a little discount on a jug of wine, because I started drinking towards the end of my life,

THe view of woman isn’t the best at times

This is a complex book about the time that followed the fall of Estado Novo regime following a coup by the military. The many wars in Africa as the Estado Novo tried to keep the old Portuguese colonies under their rule, in this case, Mozambique, Antunes spent time in Angola but both wars were very brutal in what happened there. Through the five men we see the brutal nature of the war is recounted in the stream of consciousness of the men’s lives and relationships, in particular, the  wives, woman they fuck and women the don’t fuck these are very nasty men in their natures All this book like Ulysses happens over one night as the four remaining men meet for a meal and get very drunk and recount their stories as record in the novel. So there is a sense at times of lines of the men and their stories blending that thing you get as men with a shared experience and recounting it the who, what, why and how can get blurred sometimes.  A powerful of men and war from a European version of what happened to American Vietnam in Africa.

The painter of birds by Lidia Jorge

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The painter of birds by Lidia Jorge

Portuguese literature

Original title – O Vale da Paixão

Translator – Margaret Jull Costa

Source – personal copy

Well, I managed to return after a busy while, my first lot of nights in my new job and a course and two long days meant the days off I had in between all this I hadn’t much chance to blog. But as I said last month I choose, to add some literature from Portugal, I looked up on Wiki a number of writers from the region and decided to choose those that were available second hand. Lidia Jorge is considered one of the leading voices of the new wave of writers that came after the Salazar regime. She spent time in Africa married to a military man then she lived with a well-known Journalist. This book won a number of prizes when it came out.THis book also covers woman in translation month.

For that reason,  on the night Walter Dias visited her, the bullets and the revolver were out of sight, and he wanted to take the gun away from her on that rainy night , he wanted to take the gun with him, but she realized that if he took it, when walter did disappearm he might disappear entirely. He even said to her “Don’t be silly!”But she couldn’t give him back the weapon. Giving it back would be like handing over the fragile link that bound his existance to hers.

They meet but she doesn’t want to let him go and break that bond that links them .

The painter of birds is the story when a young woman the narrator of the books starts to look back other her absent father’s life. SHe has a strained relationship with him and in the family farmhouse where she is just inland from the Algarve where Jorge grew up is salt worn from the sea. He painted pictures in his letter home from his many travels as she read through these letters and she sees the father she never really knew. There is no strong time line in the book so there is a real sense of the present and past drifting together as she reads and the world and place he went to coming alive.As the bits she knows the pictures family tales bring Walter Dias a man she only twice met in her younger years.A rogue of a man who left the nearest neighbours daughter her mother with child and started to travel the world with the army fighting in the various wars from the 30s onwards.

Francisco Dias used to talk about Walter too.

It was clear to him that black cloud hung over his youngest son. He would say so to anyone who would listen when he had free times on Sundays, before dozing off, though never speaking directly to Walter’s niece, but then he never spoke to her anywayy. He did not, however, conceal from her the difference between Walter and his other sons, should she care to hear, if she could hear.She walked among them as if she were deaf, and didn’t care whether she heard him or not.Francisco Dias put it all down to school, the place where, in his opinion, the life of a man was not only shaped but also summarized and foretold.THis is how he explained it.

Her grandfather had a very different view of his wayward son .

I like the narrative flow of this book it had a crime like pace but with a sense of  piecing  the past together piece by piece but also a sense of not seeing it all as Walter is a rogue but also does these wonderful bird pictures, but then there is the past of Walter from her  family tell her of him a man that ran out on her and her mother and briefly appeared in her she wants to love him, this will appeal to the fans of books like English patient as both share a sense of piecing  the past together from fragments and piece of gossip and side stories.