Tag: 2018

The end of A family story by Peter Nadas

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The end of a family story by Peter Nadas

Hungarian fiction

Original title – Egy családregény vége

Translator – Imre Goldstein

Source – Personel copy

Well, I pleased that this cycle of the year club Simon and Karen run is on 1977. As when I looked up books that had been published in the original language that year.One of the books I found was the debut novel by Peter Nadas, I reviewed his Magnus opus Parallel stories a few years ago. Nadas is one of the most regarded European writers. He own story reads like a novel he lost his mother at 13 and his father when he was 16 leaving Nadas and orphan. When his father committed suicide he was the head of a ministry that had been accused of various things.

When Grandpa died, grandmama filled the largest pot with water and put it on the stove. She poured two handfuls of salt into it and some black powder and then kept stirring . In the boiling brew she cooked her brown, gray , and dark-blue dresses untill they were black it was bad about the gray one, I liked that dress, especially when she wore it with the gold butterfly broch.Only her satin dress with the big flowers she didn’t cook, she left it the way it was – black flowers on a white background.

Death is a recurrent theme but like this passage I was remind of how Victorians mourned at times.

Like parallel stories, this is a novel set in the heart of Communist Hungry.This is a first thread and how they were able to break families But also it has a second and third part. The second line is a family saga. Simon the grandson of a family is in sent to an institution where everyone lives in silence. He keeps himself going with remembering over time his family story from his grandmother and grandfather at home the grandfather whom at times seem half dead. Had been one of these men that loved telling stories and tales these are what heartens the boy in a silent world. They also lead to the third thread in the book which is stories and thoughts around religion and communism. Both Catholic church and the Jews histories are told to the boy from his grandfather bring threads of their lives to Rome and the other way to Jerusalem. as a young boy becomes a man as he has also in this time lost his father and mother and being drawn into the adult world much earlier than he should have been Simon only solaces is remembering those tales and trying to draw some heart out of them.

One day up in the attic Grandpapa was telling me about our ancestors. Grandmama had brought fish from the market. She was very glad to have got one because Grandpapa loved fish. She stood in line for two hours, but she couldn’t go to the church with the fish.When she got wind of something being available she’d take me along, too. I didn’t like that because people would yell at her.” Look at her shoving and pushing!” “Don’t they know where the end of the line is ? Back there!” “Must be deaf””Where are you bulldozing your way to now ?”

Simon was used to help fetch bits from the market in those hard communist days of waiting being a sport this is later in the book showing the shifting feel of time at times in the book.

Like in parallel stories Nadas paints bleak times with a brush that makes his words float off the pages and through Simon and his world show even in the worst of times there is a glimmer of light to lead the way. It is a book that drifts through time this is also something he did in Parallel stories. Then there is Death and one must feel the fact that both Nadas himself and Simon had lost their parents the feelings of loss must be Nadas own and death is a recurrent theme in his books, lives being cut short. But also a sense of how the communist world of the 1950’s when the book is set would strangle those who did fit in and break the others who tried to be themselves.

Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda

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Death in Spring by  Mercè Rodoreda

Spanish Catalan fiction

Original title –  La mort i la primavera

Translator – Martha Tennet

Source – personnel copy

Well, I read the first of my post-holiday reads in a day. This book came out a few years ago in the US and earlier this year here as part of a new penguin series into European voices. Merce Rodoreda was considered one of the leading novelist of her time. her novel The time of the doves has been considered the greatest Catalan novel. She lived most of her life in Exile in France and Switzerland away from the Franco regime only returning later on in her life to Spain towards the end of the Franco years.

I craned my head out of the water. The light was stronger now, and I swam slowly, wanting to take my time before leaving the river. The water embraced me. It would have seized ,e if I had let it , and – pushed forward and sucked under- I would have ended up in the place where nothing is comprehended.Reeds grew in the river; the current bent them, and they let themselves be rocked by the water that was carrying the force of the sky, earth and smow.

The opening lines have that feel of nature cling to the people of the village .

Now I said this was a novella I wanted to read as I saw it as a male version of the book Stones in a landslide.Which was one of my favourite novels of all time. But this is a very different coming of age novel. This is a visceral novel of a boy becoming a man in a remote village that still clings to the past. There is like the scenery around the book vines and forest of death as it is called there is a sense of a world. Being caught out of time and maybe for our narrator, there is no way out of it. Nature captures people, like the dead body in the river. returned to the river.The bridges that never seem to be used a dense forest give the Narrators world a closed in feel. The other characters his father dying, his stepmother the Blacksmith and his odd son all give this a sense of the beauty and horror of nature. A boy becomes a man in a strange world a wonderful narrated world of mountain villages.

When they pulled the boy from the river, he was dead, the returned him to the river. Those who died in the water were returned to the water. The river carried them away and nothing was ever known of them again.But at night, at the spot where the bodies were thrown into the water, a shadow could be seen.Not every night. Not today or tomorrow, but on certain nights a shadow trembled,They said the shadow of the dead returned to the place where the man was born.They said that to die was to merge with the shadow.

I was so remind of Marquez with this lines and the river which in his books is a powerful prescense as well.

This is a novella that like many great shorter books seems much more than its parts. It is full of descriptions of the world around them at times this is maybe a metaphor for how Franco strangled the country. There is also for me an echo of the works of Marquez the village her is a Spanish cousin of Marquez’s Macondo village. The same sense of a place cling to its customs and superstitions of the outside world this is a world the character is trapped in like those vines and even if he escapes there is moss to slip on, bridges to cross and rivers to survive. Hope is always there but like a dim light in the valley below the village.

Holiday books a Mexican death and some great new books

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Well, I failed in reading Middlemarch, I didn’t actually read much on this holiday as I wanted to spend time with Amanda my in-laws and their foster baby who bless her she is only nine months old. It was a joy to see her experience, so much for the first time. It was also the first time since our Honeymoon eleven years ago. Amanda and I had returned to Torquay. Unfortunately, the restaurant where we had our meal on honeymoon in. We had hoped to return but it had gone in the years in between Which was a shame. But we did manage to take a steam train ride and a tour of a replica of the golden hind.Lots of nice meals and I couldn’t resist a few books along the way. When I decide after fifty pages of Middlemarch this maybe wasn’t the holiday read for me.But here are my book buys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waterstones in Torquay was the first bookshop. I found these two from not a great selection of translation. Well for someone that read as much as me there is not many that I hadn’t read but there was a few Georges Simenon and this the latest Maigret was one that was most interesting as the great man is looking back on a case he may have got wrong. The I have read nearly all my current Modiano books. This is the one I next wanted as I know Frank the translator really wanted to translate this book. It is his first three novels all link by being set during the occupation of France or the effects of that on people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then We visited Totnes and they have a great independent bookshop. In which I found these three gems. The day before happiness by Erri de Luca an orphan boy coming of age and his relationship with the guardian. It is also an ode the city of Naples where the book is set.Then I am really keen on this one Death in spring another coming of age novel of a teenage boy in the Catalan mountains. It reminded me of the great book Stones in the landslide which is also a coming of age tale. But a young woman in the Catalan mountains. Then A book by Arto Paasilinna, I loved his year of the Hare so hope this one is as interesting.It follows a man called Gunnar restoring a MIll in a small village but  Gunnar isn’t all he seems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I find an Oxfam shop hard to resist when I see one like the one in Totnes and here I found two old Penguin modern classic. Boris Pasternak’s Last summer came out long before Doctor Zhivago and heralds the last summer before world war on and the Russian revolution. Then a lesser know Faulkner work he is a writer I loved when younger but haven’t read for years and have been adding to my copies of his lesser known books. The Tove jansson this is her only novel and seems to have similar themes to her other adult books. The Noght wood a classic modernist novel that I have heard is quite a challenge to read. 

Then there was the sad news of the passing of Sergio Pitol. A writer who I have on my kindle after kindly been sent it by his Publisher Deep Vellum had passed so I felt as I had never got to this great man’s books. This trilogy is about his life and those writers he meets and what inspired him as a writer.I ordered these and they were here at home when I arrived home today off holiday.Also, I had three other books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I had these books at home Scenes from a childhood is a selection of Short stories from Jon Fosse the Norweigan writer is often cited as a future Nobel winner I reviewed him a few years ago Then Romain Gary last novel one of the great French writer and also a twice Goncourt winner the only one as he used an Alias to writer his other winner. Then last is The blind spot essay of fiction by Javier Cercas and the line between fact and fiction which is one his own books walk like a tightrope at times.

Love by Hanne Ørstavik

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Love cover

Love by Hanne Ørstavik

Norwegian fiction

Original title –  Kjærlighet

Translator – Martin Aitken

Source – review copy for Asymptote book club

A fellow blogger Marina of the blog finding time to write is involved with the website Asymptote. Ask me if I want to review this book to highlight there Book club they also have a page on book trail. I was happy to review this as it is the second book by this writer her first was available from Peirene in the Uk the blue room I reviewed it here. This is her latest to be translated to English Hanne Orstavik has lived in Oslo since being 16, her first novel came out in 1994 when she was 25, she has since written twelve novels this was her third novel.

She gets through three books a week, often four or five. She wishes she could read all the timer, sitting in the bed with the duvet pulled up, with coffee, lots of cigarettes, and a warm night dress on. She could habe done without the TV too, I never watch it, she tells herself, but Jon would have minded

The opening I wish I could do four orr five books a week. Most weeks I struggle to hit three books.

Love is maybe a strange title for this book as it is about love but maybe the distance in love. The story is about a mother and son. The two the Mother Vibeke has moved her and her Son Jon too a distant village as she has taken a new job as an Arts officer. A lot of her story is about what she likes books trying to find articles that have been talked about at work. There is a sense as the narrative jumps between the two of them that there is a distance in the relationship it is a matter of months since they moved there. Jon is trying to fit in we see this as he goes around selling raffle tickets for the local sports club he has joined as he tries to fit into his new home. All this is the evening before Jons ninth birthday as we see him going out alone. This is a book that shows the detachment of modern society sometimes they both seem in the own world as the evening unfolds.

Jon goes back over the road, back to the house. Stepping inside he makes sure the door behind him, there’s ice on the sill. He pulls his mittens and drops them in the little white basket in the corner. He goes downstairs to his room with his coat still on, and puts the bag down woith the raffle book and the money in it from the old man. On the his way out the man cut him a little chunk off a ried ham hanging from a hook in the vestibule. He puts it down on his desk

Jon arriving home here grabbed me as so lonely an eight year old just wanders in by himself.

This is a cold book in a way a mother and son that have grown apart. A strange dark feeling as for why she would let her eight years old out to sell the raffle tickets in the evening unsupervised. Maybe this is my oldfashioned views of the world but it just felt as thou the mother was so absorbed in her own world she hadn’t even thought of her poor sons birthday. A simmering undertone of a relationship broken by the move and a young boy drifting towards disaster. I can see why Karl Ove called this her strongest book it is bleak and dark but also a compelling read as over the even the story of the two characters unfolds. As an ever-growing sense of foreboding is given in the book. The Asymptote book club is a great idea to draw reads into world lit and this is a great choice as it leads to the current crop of the great Nordic writer’s around at the moment like Karl Ove or Helle Helle which Martin the Translator of this book has translated.

One clear ice-cold January morning at the beginning of the twenty first century by Roland Schimmelpfennig

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One clear ice-cold January morning at the beginning of the twenty-first century by Roland Schimmelpfennig

German fiction

Original title – An einem klaren, eiskalten Januarmorgen zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – review copy

Well, I decide to via of the MBI list and this is one book I have been dying to read since it arrived at Winstons towers earlier this year. It is based around Berlin which for me has always been a city that has given me as a reader rich pickings. Roland Schimmelpfennig is best known as a playwright in Germany. Where he has developed a unique style where the actors interact with the public and his stories often have surreal or fantasy elements to them. One clear ice cold… is his debut novel.

Then he saw the wolf was standing in front of the sign at the side of the snowy motorway, seven metres in front of him, no more

A wolf Tomasz thought, that looks like a wolf, ot’s probably a large dog, who would let their dog roam around here, or is it rerally a wolf?

He took a photo of the animal in front of the sign in the driving snow.The flash in the darkness.

A moment later the wolf had vanished.

Tomasz takes his later to be famous picture of the wolf where he hasn’t beenin a century and a half.

One clear ice-cold January morning .. starts with a snowy day and a wolf is seen for the first time in more than 160 years. A Polish Man Tomasz is stuck on the motorway between Warsaw and Berlin heading back to Berlin to be with his girlfriend Agnieszka. He is a hard-working man in construction that is trying to keep him and his girlfriend together. When he looks out to the hard shoulder and glimpse the Wolf and manages to do what no-one else has so far and that takes a photo. Which he later sells as he struggles to get by and keep his girl with him. Then we have a boy and girl that are on the run and initially befriended by an older man who was a failed teacher but later drawn into just getting by on the streets Of Berlin but occasionally get some help. A woman burns her mothers diaries. A Romanian Chilean man also trying to get by in the Modern Berlin.

The girls mother did nothing. It wasn’t the first time the girl had failed to come home.

But that evening a woman from the police was at her front door and then the missing person announcement was issued.

Yes she and her daughterhad quarrelled.

The policewoman was also from the village. She knew the two children, she knew the boys family and she knew the girls mother two

A boy and girl elope to the city but will the dream of Love and everything live on.

The book is told in a series of small stories as we jump in and out of the characters lives. This is the outsider’s view of Berlin like the Wolf wandering west it shows the struggles of the Modern immigrants to the city. Also like many children in the past the boy and girl seem to disappear onto the streets. Like many the classic tales of Berlin this like Berlin Alexanderplatz shows the underbelly of the city. I was remind of Wim Wenders angels wandering the city especially in the second film he made in the city Faraway so close a film which  like this  book shows, the unified city but also the cracks for those just getting by and like Cassiel and Daniel we jump in and out of many peoples lives as we see how all those that had been touched by the wolf whether seeing it or its tracks as they also headed to Berlin.Detached voices at times the Boy, the girl the older man all give a sense of a wider story of the modern city and the people who are drawn to it. The book is out this Thursday to try it have you a favourite Berlin-based book of Film.

Happy Easter that was the month of March 2018

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  1. The gold rimmed spectacles by Giorgio Bassani
  2. Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli
  3. The dinner guest by Gabriela Ybarra
  4. Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes
  5. The white book by Han Kang
  6. Six Memos for the next millennium by Italo Calvino
  7. Die, my love by Ariana Harwicz

Winstons books a few old favourites and an English classic

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I haven’t done a new book post for a while so I will bring some recent purchases and a couple of review books.First two for review.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First up is the latest translation from French writer Antoine Laurain. Smoking kills is the tale of Fabrice a headhunter in France that is trying to give up smoking in the wake of a ban on smoking at work. As an ex-smoker I will find this fun and I have reviewed the four other books by Antoine Laurain in recent years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next from Canadian publisher is the second book they have been published by them from Eric Dupont Like life in the court of Marane this is a complex book that weaves tales from the last century. He has been called the Quebec Marquez. I read his debut in English and am looking forward to this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now a couple of books from the Yale University series and A Margellos world republic of letters. This is the only novel of the great Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz he won the Nobel prize and is maybe fading out of sight a bit he was a lit critic that struggled with the decadent world of the west which is a theme in this novel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another from them is this novel by French writer Hedi Kaddour set in the Tunisia of 1920’s following a group they  have an influence over the local society a mixture of French, Arabs and Americans present a clash of cultures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I had ordered this at the library but it seems to have got lost in the system so when I spent a while ago on some books from Waterstones and got a free ten-pound voucher. I decided I would get this book as I only have a couple of the Man Booker list to read this is a mystery built out of the death of French writer Roland Barthes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No don’t fall back in Horror but I am on Holiday in April down In Devon with family. I couldn’t think of which books to choose so decide to read a British classic and this is the one that I decided on as its length means I will probably not need to take any other books. But I more than likely will buy some whilst on holiday.

 

 

Die, my love by Ariana Harwicz

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Die, my love by Ariana Harwicz

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Matate, amor

Translators – Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff

Source – review copy

This is the last of three books I was sent by Charco press earlier this year. I had reviewed the other two before the Man Booker longlist came out and this was on my reading pile so it was great to see it on the longlist and also a new publisher like Charco press on the list.Ariana Harwicz had been compared to Virginia Woolf and Nathalie Surraute. she is one off the most radical writers in Modern Argentina. This book is the first of a trilogy and her debut novel. She currently lives in France and this is the first book by her to be translated into English.

I’m at the table after dinner. The meal has been cleared away and all that’s left is my glass. The plates are drying on the rack, the salt is in its place and my husband has gone to lie down. The new dog is about to pisss somewhere. I know I have to get up, but I don’t I stretch my legs out onto another chair and nod off while sucking on a toothpick. Now the dog’s coming to piss under the table but I still don’t get up. My trousers are unbuttoned.

Her life has drawn to a halt in places and she can’t be bothered at times like here .

The book is narrated by an unnamed female narrator. She lives with her husband and their kids in a rural area of France. Now this is a book that floats in a world of no setting really as there is no names given to anyone just her husband my son and her. What we see is a woman struggling with her world. the world is one of those who dream of a world away from the city. You are given that this woman had followed her husband dreams to live this rural dream. A back to nature that for her is like an ever decreasing circle a world that is shrinking daily for her. At one point she mentions read Mrs Dalloway and there is a shared feeling of  being trapped in a world that we see over space of one day in Woolf’s  work here the whole experience is more drawn out and more horrific for it the gentle grinding hatred of her world the sheer horror of being alone in this rural idyll that has for her become like a journey into Conrad’s heart of darkness were violence may be the last way out.

I stay in the car, the windows foggy. I turn up the volume and take my foot of the clutch. “Mrs Dallowway is a novel about time and the interconnectivity of human existence”. How long has it been since I’ve heard that kind of language? Interconnectivity. Fucking hell. I try to turn the plastic cog but the seat win’t recline. My husband watches me swear from afar, reading my lips and smiling.He has a cigarette behind his ears like a shopkeeper. I wonder wg=hat i’d make of this very woodland , this rustic setting, the half built house, the man nailing down planks of wood, if a critic said my writing dealt with he “interconnectivity of human exixtence “I burst out laughing

A black humoured look at her life and lack of cultural outlets for her in the rural world alone as she is

This isn’t an easy read it is very much in the style of Woolf and for me, I was reminded of Duras the books I have read by her. It is a slow burning book of rural life but the underlying hatred of her world is slowly burning and shrink around her. I felt at times the scene in Brief Encounter where Laura is just sat listening to Rachmaninoff and her world seems to have trapped her. The Narrator is like Laura as she is trapped in her marriage she hasn’t an Alec for a glimmer of light no just a build hatred and disappointment of her life and her family as she shows her vulnerable nature and broken dreams, which can easily become some far worse you feel.

 

Six memos for the next milennium by Italo Calvino

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Image result for six memos for the next millennium cover

Six memos for the next millennium by Italo Calvino

Italian Non-fiction

Original title –  Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio

Translator – Patrick Creagh

Source – personal copy

I have been rather remiss of Italian lit month, so I have decided to extend it into April so I can get a few more titles up on the blog. Today I have chosen a non-fiction work by a writer that I have featured a number of times on the blog Italo Calvin a writer whom I have featured four times before on the blog. This collection unfinished is the last thing he was working on before he died a series of lectures for the Charles Eliot Norton lectures. He had written five of them which are featured here.

After forty years of writing fiction, after exploring various roads and making diverse experiments, the time has come for me to look for an overall definition of my work, I would suggest this my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of wieght. I have tried to remove wieght from structure of stories and from language.

In this talk I shall try to explain – both to myself and to you – why I have come to consider lightness a value rather than a defect; to indicate the works of the past in which I recongnizemy ideal of lightness; and to show where I situate this value in the present and how I project it into the future.

From the first lecture Lightness on how he lightened his workover time.

The five lectures are titled lightness, quickness, exactitude visibility and Multiplicity. He opens in the first lecture by saying in the lectures he wants to show his journey as a writer of forty years from a realist to a member of the Oulipo group.He references over the first four lecture many writers he has been touched by as a writer from Ovid to the German writer Robert Musil. One writer that recurs through the pieces in the great Italian poet and writer Giacomo Leopardi best known for his epic collection of notebooks the Zibaldone,  which I got two thirds through the other year. Calvino describes how he wrote so clearly on Astronomy when he was just fifteen. Then later a connection between the infinite nature of writing and maths. The last piece is the one I will describe more fully as it is the one that grabbed me it is called multiplicity and is about the multiple nature of narrative. He starts with a description of Gadda as he says he is a writer that isn’t often read in the US. A piece very much connected with the later period of Calvino’s writing he mentions how he used this concept in his book  The Castle of cross destinies, which I reviewed it is a story using a pack of cards to direct the narrative. He also mentions his fellow Oulipo writer Perec work Life which like the castle has multiple narrative threads in it.

Carlo Emilo Gadda tried all his life to represent the world as a knot a tangled skein of yarn; to represent  it without in the least diminishing the inextricable complexity or, put it better, the simultaneous presence of the most disparte elements that converge to determine every event. He was led to this vision of things by his his intellectual training, his temperament as a writer, and his neuroses.As an engineer, Gadda was brought up on the culture of science, equipped with techincal know-how and a positive fervorfor philosophy.

I was remind of CP Snow and his talk of the two cultures

This one will appeal to fans of Calvino want to know more about what drove him as a writer. The piece almost follows his career from the first lecture where he talks about at first trying to be a realist writer this is shown in his book Into war which I have also reviewed. Then he later talks about being drawn to Folktales and writer like Petract drew him to write Italian folktales in the middle part of his career. then he explains how he was drawn towards Oulipo and the multiple nature of narratives and what they can do. I enjoyed this I have a number of his other books on my shelves so this is a great companion to them and what drove him as a writer. Have you a favourite book by Italo Calvino.

The White book by Han Kang

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Image result for han kang white book cover

The White Book by Han Kang

Korean fiction

Original title – 흰

Translator – Deborah Smith

Source – personal copy

I must admit first up for me as a reader, I was never as swept away by the vegetarian as some other readers were. So when this Han Kang’s latest book was on the longlist ,I wasn’t maybe as keen to read this as some as the others on the longlist. This is the third book from Han Kang to be translated to English and was published in Korea in 2016. It is also a different book from the first two books as for me it is a narrative prose piece for me.

Faced with that question, it was this death that came to me. It was a story which I had grown up inside.The most helpless of all young animals. Pretty little baby, white as moon shaped rice cakes. How I’d been born and grown up in the place of that death.

“White as moon-shaped rice cake” which never made sense until at six, I was old enough to help out with making rice cakes for Chuseok, forming the dough into small crescent moons. Before being steamed, those bright white shapes of rice dough are a thing so lovely they do not seem of this world.

I loved this image of the rice moon and child’s face.

Now for me as an English reader the white book as a title seems less dark than if this book was called the Black book , but in a way that  should be the real title of the book. It is a series of small vignettes split into three sections that mainly focus on the birth of Han Kang’s older sister that was born and died after two hours after her mother 22 gave birth. A child that is described as looking like a rice moon cake when born the first section the vignettes seem to interlinking with a few recurring motifs in the prose pieces a list of white objects , but as the pieces unfold we see how white is never really white. From the child’s face to a moon rice to snow in all its forms from thick blizzards to sleet showers. An ode to a sister that was never known but also to the colour of mourning in Korea which is white and things connected to mourning in Korea like rice also the is a colour connection of Blood mention and the fact in Korea Red chilli powder is put in the rice at a funeral. A wonderful mix of piece that draw you as a reader into a young woman”s grief but also a poetic vision of grief and mourning.

sleet

There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality. Sleet falls as she walks these streets, holding this knowledge inside her. Sleet that leaves cheeks and eyebrows heavy with moisture, Everything passes. She bears this rememberance – the knowledge that everything she has clung to will fall away from her and vanish- through the streets where sleet falling, that is neither rain nor now, neither ice nor water, that dampens her eyebrows and steams from her forehead whether she stands still or hurries on closes her eyes or opens them

Such a poets mix of life and death in a vision of sleet.

I so pleased this has come after the vegetarian as anything after this would be a let down for me as a reader this book has a fragile nature like a pile of rice barely held together. It has a sense of the fragile nature of life the sense of grief of losing a daughter so early in ones own life. But also the poetic side of the list of white things that litter the book. The ones around snow I found so poetic the way sleet turns to water on contact with skin almost like the daughter life a brief moment of time this is about how brief life. This is a perfect choice of why I read world lit these books that open our eyes as readers to the wider world poetic visions and grief so

 

Vernon Subutex 1 By Virginie Despentes

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Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Depsentes

French fiction

Original title – Vernon Subutex

Translator – Frank Wynne

Source – Review copy

Well I am pleased that Frank is the first person to have books from two languages he has translated on the short list he also translated from Spanish The imposter also on the Man Booker longlist.As far as I can see looking back this is a first for the prize even going back through the IFFP years. He won the Old IFFP with his transition ofWindows of the world in 2005. Anyway back to this book and the writer is well known as well she wrote her first book Baise Moi in 1999 which she also made into a film. Virginie has written a number of novels since then this is the first of a trilogy. She also worked as a rock journalist at about the time this novel starts.

Vernon had just had enough time to rediscover his love of a long lie in – for more than twenty years, come hell or hideous hangover he has rolled up the metal shutters on the shop six days a week no matter what. Only three times in twenty five years, had he entrusted the keys to one of his colleagues: a bout of gastric flu, adental implant fitting and an attack of sciatica it took him a year to relearn the knack of lazing in bed and reading in the mornings. It felt like it .

Vernin starts slacking after his shop revolver closes down.

The book follows the downward spiral of Vernon Subutex. He was once the owner of the most well-known record shop in Paris.A man that like Joe from empire records one of the great films from the gen x years a man people wanted be and has a magnetism for women.  His story is maybe a reflection of the music industry in a way. But also a thesis on Generation X. He finds he in the early 2000’s is without a shop and had been helped by a friend Alexandre a heavy drug user from his past.Is his help  to get by with rent and his daily life but when the friend dies he has to go round visiting old friends and spends time sofa surfing one of those homeless people that avoid being homeless till they have run out of them this is what we see with Vernon a man alone in the world after all his dreams have fallen spend time with old friends from an ex-lover that has a sterlie flat , a wife beating husband who he never really knew as he falls through these peoples lives we see a mryiadof the city of paris what happened to the hipsters when they aren’t hipsters anymore.

Friends are diffeerent. Spending years together listening to records, going to gigs, arguing about bands, these are sacred bonds, You don’t stop seeing each other simply because of a change of venue. But what had changed was that he had to call and arrange to meet, whereas before they could just come into the shop if they were in the neighbourhood.He was not in the habit of organising dinner parties, trips to the cinema.

I was remind in these lines of John Cusack character in High fidelity Vernon friends are shop friends.

This is a searing knife through the social lives of a generation cutting into the gen x lives and what has happened to them it is like a Parisian version of the slacker film as we follow Vernon going through those who moved up and down through those years as he had met them when he was hip. He is also a story of how music has suffered record shops where the hiding meeting and place to be seen a generation ago for me when I was young it was a shop called beat route  alas like Vernon shop it is no more as music is online these days the other thread is the last recordings he has of his friend and benefactor Alex Bleach a well-known star. I can’t wait for part two to see where it takes us with Vernon and like one of those classic works of French lit by Balzac or Zola more about how modern Paris treats those on the downward spiral. Which for me is always far more interesting than a rise from the bottom to the top what about you?Also, this is one of the most eye-catching covers in the last year I think also slightly disturbing.

 

The Dinner Guest by Gariela Ybarra

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Image result for gabriela ybarra the dinner guest harvilThe Dinner Guest by Gabriela Ybarra

Spanish fiction

Original title – El Comensal

translator -Natasha Wimmer

Source – review copy

Well I had initially had decided not to do all this year’s man booker longlist. But when this year’s longlist came out. I had reviewed so little but read a number of the books. This was due to be reviewed this week so I have moved it forward as I now have a number of books to review and luckily have start ten days off work. Gabriela Ybarra is a new writer this is her debut novel. is from Bilbao but now lives in Madrid.This book won the Euskadi Literature prize.

The story goes that in my family there’s an extra dinner guest at every meal. He’s invisible, but always there. He had a plate,glass, knife and fork. Every so often he appears, cast his shadow over the table and erases one of those present.

The first to vanish was my grandfather.

The opening lines and the spare chair at there dinner table for the The dinner guest.

The book follows Gabriela as she looks back into her family history and two main events that have shaped her present. The first is the death a number of years before the birth of Gabriela her grandfather disappeared. When three men from ETA appeared at her grandparent’s house and took him away at gunpoint.He later dies after a failed kidnapping that led to his death. Then her own mother died of cancer as she was growing up. The title refers to the habit of living a space at the dinner table for a missing guest a blank space to be filled with the spirit of those once there. As she grows up Gabriela in the present decides to reach out and discover about her past using google , but as we do we see other rabbit holes on the internet she falls down like after reading a book by Robert Wasler leads her on a google search and shock when the second picture has a dead body in it. This is a story of families past present and trying to discover your own past when it has been clouded by family. Also discovering a grandfather she never knew a man that stood for so much and life was ended before she was even there.

Robert Walser 15 April, 1878- 25 December, 1956. Buried in 2011 with three hundred thousand other photographs of himself in google images.

In thins book the writer goes out for a walk one morning in 1917. He must have done the same thing that Christmas day, about four decades later.Perhaps sitting in his room at the Herisau asylum and thought it had been years since he gave up writing

The picture is of the dead writer Robert  Walser in a snow just a single file of footprints the picture is in the novel.

This is a style of book that Spanish writers seem to love writing a true life novel I have like the two novels in recent years by Javier Cercas  the Imposter and  Anatomy of a moment that have a similar feel to this taking real life and turning it to fiction. But not quite as closely as this has to Gabriela as this is her own family history she is disecting  not with the slashing cuts the Karl Ove does with his life this is a small piece of her life that she has put under the microscope and brought her Grandfather into the now an event six years before her birth has haunted and fascinated her life only the memory of what her late mother had told her. This shows how close the past can be through modern tech we are never far away from finding out what happened on a certain day something twenty years ago would have taken a few days to put together is now there at the touch of a button so this is a modern novel from a new Spanish writer and a great first step on this year’s man Booker longlist.

Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli

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Image result for carte blanche carlo lucarelli

 

Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli

Italian crime fiction

Original title – Carta bianca

Translator – Michael Reynolds

Source – personal copy

I’m on too the second book for Italian Lit month and a crime novel. Italy has produced some great crime fiction over the years. A number of these have been brought to us in English by Europa Editions the English arm of an Italian publisher. Carlo Lucarelli studied History and Literature at university in doing research for his thesis he came across stories and events that he put into this and the follow-up novel of the De Luca series. He also with Marcello Fois and Loriano Macchavelli the Gruppo 13 group of writers.I have featured Marcello Fois twice on the blog.

The bomb exploded suddenly, with a ferocious blast, right as the funeral procession was crossing the street. De luca threw himself to the ground, instinctively, and covered his head with his hands as a section of wall collapsed onto the sidewalk, showering him dust. Everybody started shouting. A sergeant from the Republican National guard stretched a machine gun out over De Luca’s body and fired an endless burst that deafened him and brought a deluge of broken pantiles down onto the street.

The opening and De Luca is caught in a blast.

This is the first of a trio of novels Carlo wrote about Detective De Luca. This is set as the world war is drawing to a sticky end and Italy is in tatters. When a bomb is set off in Milan as most of the Italian fascists are travelling or in the city trying to escape from the American and allied forces as they move north in Italy. Someone is killed Vittori is a lady man and has a number of lady friend that is connected to figures high up in the fascist regime. The case is handed to De Luca a good guy in a world full of bad people a good old fashion cop. He has just arrived from being involved in the political police and has a first case that involves dark secrets sex and drugs all this as the country is falling apart and he is trying to find the killer. As others want him to finish the case as quick as possible.

He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and turned a page over. ” Rehinard Vittorio,” he read. “Born in Trento, on November 22 1920.Member of the Fascist Republican party since July 15, 1944. Membership passed thanks to the open sponsorship of Count Alberto Maria Tedesco. He had an assignment, was  secretary of the office responsible for the party’s relationships with the Holy see and in particular the diocese, but nobody in there if at party headquarters ever saw him. He sure like the ladies or rather the ladies liked him; they’d run fter him, and according to that officer.Rehinard was a kept man

The victim has a number of lad friends and is a ladies man .

I read almost blue from his other series of novels a number of years ago just before I started this blog. I liked the style of his writing then it has a dash of Hammett and hard-boiled crime fiction of America writers of the time the novel is set. De Luca has that feel of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders trying to be the stand-up man in the big world. He has seen the world he knows falling apart Lucarelli captures in the world around De Luca the madness of Italy in 1945 the figures trying to leave the country. Lucarelli had researched the time for his thesis and I’m sure a lot of what he wrote is comparable with actual events, Policing during the fall of a regime is always hard and a lot of events like those in the book happened at the time.

That was the month that was February 2018

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  1. Slum virgins by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
  2. Bled dry by Abdelilah Hamdouchi
  3. Love/war by Ebba Witt-Brattstrom
  4. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin
  5. Maryam keeper of stories by Alawiya Sobh
  6. Istanbul Istanbul by Burhan Sönmez
  7. The Black notebook by Patrick Modiano
  8. So you don’t get lost in the Neighbourhood by Patrick Modiano

I managed to review eight books last month. A quieter month than last year. But I feel every book, I read this month was one I would recommend to any other reader. I managed to read two of the three books for the EBRD LIT prize shortlist. I had to read for the Shadow Jury. I read books from six languages and seven countries. Also Seven publishers. No new publishers to the blog this month.

Book of the month

As I said it was a hard month. To Choose the book of the month.  All the books could have been a book of a month on another month. This is maybe the most important book on the list lit-wise as it is one of the cornerstones of Modernist literature and finally we get a better idea of what Doblin had in mind for his journey through the darker side of Berlin. Michael Hoffman has breathed life into this book.

None book discovery

Well, I am a fan of streaming films tv shows. I found another new service this month. Filmstruck has been in the US for a number of years.  It has a partnership with the Criterion collection the US DVD company, this means it has some gems in the collection. Gems from them on her include Three Colours, which I have the DVD of but not seen in HD. They also have a number of Andrei Tarkovsky’s films including Stalker.I look forward to seeing what else they have to watch.