Tag: Baltic fiction

The Cut Line by Caroline Pihelgas

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The cut line by Carolina Pihelgas

Estonian fiction

Original title – Lõikejoon

Translator – Darcy Hurford

Source – Review copy

I was pleased to receive this from World Editions, as the two books I have previously reviewed from Estonia have been by male writers, so it is great to have a female voice.  Carolina Pihelgas is also a poet and is considered one of the best prose writers by Estonian Literary magazine Sirp, according to Estonian critic Piret Põldver.  Her previous novel had focused on three mother-daughter relationships.  Prior to that, she was a well-known poet.  This book marked a change in her writng style, as it focuses on the main character, Liine, who has moved to the countryside to escape and recover from the end of her 14-year toxic relationship.  This is her first book to be translated into English.

A large fly waddles across the outhouse wall, drowsy and content. I am the large fly’s antagonist. I take a chair outside but only sit there for a moment as I can’t keep still. I grab my gardening gloves and begin pulling the weeds out from around the flowering quince.

I haven’t done any weeding for years, but I discover that nettles are the nicest; pulling them out by the roots feels so agreeable. Dandelions are annoying, whereas ground elder is easy to pull out. Perhaps you only let me go without much of a fight because you don’t believe I’ll stay here longer than just a weekend.

You probably don’t believe I have any right to break up with you. I’m just like a part of your body you feel incomplete without. But what do I feel? Right now simply panic, I guess. Id known for a long time that I needed to get away, but also that you wouldn’t let me go that easily, that it was the departure that scared me the most, the anger and rage that would start building up inside you, swelling and swelling and then exploding and pushing their nasty roots inside me. I’m afraid that when I turn on my phone the day after tomorrow to connect my laptop to the internet-be-cause it’ll be Monday and I’ll need to start answering work emails-that there’ll be messages from you

The sense of disconnect initally from the toxic past

We follow as Liine heads to a remote cottage to escape the relationship she has just got out of after fourteen years. What follows is a woman recovering from Trauma. But also have to struggle in the present as there is a sense of the current situation in the Baltic states, as the Miliitary are around the sense of the horrific past of the country itself, the soviet damage of this land is still there what we get is a poetic look at a women sloly rebuilding her life in Nature but also as she does we get small glimpse into the poast of those fourteen years how her relationship became toxic.  The book depicts a grieving, cleansing process in her world as she lives a rural life far removed from her city life. She has escaped to this rural wilderness, but as she does, the tension in the country is heightened by constant troop movements and exercises. As we see her dealing with anger, then recovery, as the world around her darkens.

It comes from deep within, an anger I’ve never dared to feel before. It’s a wild feeling of injustice that I’ve been treated like an inferior kind of being that doesn’t deserve respect. Like someone who can be pushed about, who can be manipulated, who can be reproached, humiliated, and who won’t fight back.

Why didn’t I fight back? Why did I put up with it all?

I’m mad at myself as well. No, hold on a moment.

That’s another thing that’s been planted in me: blame yourself, descend into an endless labyrinth where you find nothing but your own faults. Analyze only what you did wrong. Consider what you did to deserve it. And anyway, if it was so bad, why didn’t you leave sooner? Stop.

The anger that comes later when the past becomes clearer

This book, for me, captured trauma, but also the death of a relationship, the grief and anger, the way we all deal with moving on.  There is a fragmentary nature to the past as we see glimpses of memories, the snapshots of fourteen years in little bursts of how a relationship soured and became so toxic over the years. It is done in the way you feel the writer herself has gon through or knows someone close who has gone through this process. The anger, the loss, and the realisation of what has happened fully hit her. The way the past creeps up when the stillness and slowing down of her life and the routines of nature capture her. I was reminded of Thoreau in his cabin; by escaping the world, he saw how life is, and here we see Liine slowly seeing life in full again. In parts, I was also reminded of The River by Laure Vinogrodova, the Latvian novel I read last year. Both see female characters travelling to the countryside and seeing the world differently; they also deal with environmental issues in their respective countries. But what Crolina also does so well is capture the current tension of the Russian threat, which has grown much closer since the start of the Ukrainian war, and Putin could turn his attention to the Baltic states; this is shown by the NATO troops in the book. Have you read this or any other books from Estoniaxxsssssss

?

The river by Laura Vinogradova

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The river by Laura Vinogradova

Latvian fiction

Original title – Upe

Translator – Kaija Staumanis

Source – Personal copy

I passed 16 years of blogging yesterday, and this book is the perfect example of all I had in mind for this blog. Translated book, from a small press, from a female writer from a country with very few books translated into English. This book is the second in a triptych of books that Open Letter has just released from Latavia. In some way, this is the sort of book I love and have always championed, those sorts of tales that touch me as a reader. Laura Vinogradova is someone who started off with a business degree before discovering her passion for writing a few years ago. She then published a couple of children’s books before this, which was her first book for Adults. It was nominated for the European Literature Prize and shortlisted for the Latvian Book of the Year.

Rute sits on a small stool in front of the stove, her head resting between her knees and her hands submerged in a bowl of warm water. She’s washing dishes, slowly and clumsily. She’s used to having a dishwasher, and the plates slip out of her hands, the forks prick her fingers. She sets the clean dishes on the floor next to the stool. Then she picks up the bowl of water, now full of coffee grounds and bits of food, to dump it outside behind the house. She opens the door carefully, the full bowl in her hands, and stops, startled: a young woman is in the yard, a little boy stands at her side and another child kicking in her stomach. Rute doesn’t see this, but can sense it. The woman’s coat is fastened only over her breasts, her stomach stronger than the buttons, splitting the coat in two.

Rute arrives athr fathers little house in the countryside !

Anyway, the book follows the stories of two sisters, or is it the story of Rute, the sister who is left behind? Her sister, Dina, disappeared many years ago, and is only present in the book through the frequent letters written by Rute to her sister, which litter the book. In the book, we meet Rute, a woman who seems to be at a crossroads in her life as she points out she is now maybe the older sister, as she is now much older than her sister was when they were last together. She is in a relationship, but she has also discovered that her father, a man she never really knew, has passed away. She heads to the property he owns in a small village. This is where she meets the couple next door and their young son. But it is also where the reality of who her father is, a man her mother said was a waste of space, comes alive in the eyes of the couple, an odd couple of single mother and brother next door, and the man she thought she knew is not the man he is. Add to this her escape from the city and perhaps her own problems. This is what happens when you step outside your own typical life, look at someone else’s life, a past you never had, and wonder where you move forward. All this, along with the small house that later develops its own problems, prompts Rute to reassess her own life and future.

Dear sis!

I planted the dahlias. For you. I dug up the ground with a dull shovel and tore out the weeds. Matilde was right the soil here is all clay. But I planted the bulbs and did some thinking. Ten years. Do you still remember me? Or think of me? Are you planting dahlias for me, somewhere?

Life seems to happen on its own. I would’ve never guessed that I’d one day be planting dahlias at our dad’s house. Never. But life happens. In all kinds of ways.

Sis, I want to tell you about the river. About me in the river. It makes me tremble and shiver. It makes me laugh.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt this alive. The water is fairly clear by the dock. Deep. I can’t touch the bottom, I’d have to go under a bit. You can cross it in no time. If you want get a good swim in you have to kind of circle around. You can feel the current. If you let it, it’ll carry you, though I don’t know how far.

Sis! I want to stay in the river.

I wish you’d come back …

Love you.

One Rute’s letter toher sister long disappeared but she still writes to her !

Now this is what I call a small epic, a novella that feels like an epic work. It packs a lot into a small book. Loss of a sister, moving forward with a relationship, our parents, and our own vision. In our lives, all these are looked at in this very short novel. As I said, this is the type of novel I love: personal, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and a gem that needs to be widely read. It reminded me of those early Peirene books from well over 15 years ago, books that can be read in the time it would take to watch a film, and in this case, will leave you with a lot more than most modern films do. This tugs at what makes us human as readers. Do you have a favourite novella that feels epic ?

 

Berlin by Andris Kuprišs

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Berlin by Andre Kuprišs

Latvian fiction

Original title – Berlin

Translator – Ian Gwin

Source – Personal copy

I brought this trio of books from. Open letter books just after I read about the withdrawal of the funding for so many great publishers in Translation. I had some other books preordered from different publishers. However, I had been keeping an eye on this collection before the announcement. I had this down if I was going by one of the three books that Open Letter calls a translator’s choice for a country. It reminds me of the Peter Owen series of books, which they released several years ago, featuring three books from each country per year. I think someone could run with this as a long-term project to build a collection of world literature, with the opportunity to acquire a selection of books from each country. I noticed after reading the collection that Andris Kuprišs holds a master’s degree in photography. I can tell the very short stories are like a wonderfully framed photo, a glimpse at a life, a moment.

He put his hand on her stomach, sliding it lower. With his fingers he found her hip bones and felt them. He brushed her left leg, his fingers sliding down to her shin, then back up, his fingertips resting just above her knees.

“You were away when it happened. He was already drunk when he got here, the door was unlocked that night. At first I wanted to tell him to leave, but he insisted he had something important to tell me. He asked me to pour him a drink, so I let him have the last of the whiskey from my birthday. We satin the kitchen until I finally said something, that it was time for him to get going, but he just sat there, listening and slowly drinking. I said he had to hurry up because you were coming home soon, and he said I had nothing to worry about because he knew that night you weren’t.”

He had stopped caressing her and was sweating again.

A woman recounts something thagt happened in the story The Rape

The collection now comprises 19 short stories and a novella titled Berlin. I will leave Berlin to you, a reader, to say that it captures the expat experience in that city. If you are from the Baltic states, the rest of the collection is also set there. So, the rest of the book is composed of a collection of short stories and what may be flash fiction. A couple are in bed as the woman tells the man about what had happened whilst he was away. A friend, drunk at the time, came into the flat when she invited him in, she tells her partner. Then she says she couldn’t get away after she had let him in. This is a theme that runs in some of the stories, unease another sees a young boy fearful of answering a ringing phone. The short pieces are like little gems. How do we view someone in two ways? Why are his hands cold?

The first way in which the following situation differs from an-other, similar situation, is that I met him—a person I respect and regard quite highly—here, where I figured I would never have met him at all.

The second way, no less important to this situation, but perhaps far more important than the first, is that just as I went to shake his hand and ask him what he was doing here, he took me by the hair and forced me down. I fell to my knees, my face nearly touching the ground, him angrily saying almost shouting-“Learn humility!”

From the story two way in. which the following situation differs

Again a play with duality of life here in this flash fiction piece

There is a pervasive sense of sorrow and melancholy throughout this collection. It is a series of stories about the darker side or the underside of life. Being maybe an outsider in a town, and how that affects you moving forward. I also said this is like a collection of black-and-white photos. I wonder if that was his medium in photography, where the world is very black and white, with shadows and a feeling of gloom over the world we visit. He also plays with two characters interacting at the heart of some of the stories, which is that interplay and the way power and mood can shift between them. Whether it is a teacher and student, parents and their children, lovers in bed, or a man awakens in a bed and the man next to him thinks he is Jesus (I remembered the NYRB book about The Three Jesuses of Ypsilanti). Do you have a favourite book from the Baltic states?

 

The brother by Rein Raud

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The Brother by Rein Raud

Estonian fiction

Original title – Vend

Translator – Adam Cullen

Source – personal copy

Well, I’m on book review 999 on the blog and I have decided on a novella from the Baltic states an area I haven’t covered enough I feel so my second read from Estonia is from the well known Estonian scholar Rein Raud. He had a philosophical show on the tv there for a number of years From a talented family his brother is a musician his parents were both writers. He has written several novels in which a number has been translated into English. This was his first to be translated into English. It is also another from Open letter book the US publisher of books in translation.

“I would have expected anything” Brother said while unlacing his knee-high boots; the brother, of whichshe hadn’t the slightest clue just a  moment earlier, but whom – she now knew- se had awaited for so long.

“I would have expected anything, but not that,” said Brother. “When I arrived at the villa’s front door was locked and no one came to open it when I rang the doorbell. I went around back to te garden to see if you were walking the paths or sititing in the gazebo, but my heart was already punding with fear od finding,perhaps that the windows facing the yard had been boarded up  and not aa single soul occupied the house anymore, because i had come too late.

Her brither appears out of the blue.

In his afterword, he tips his hat to both Clint Eastwood and Alessandro Baricco’s works. This is a spaghetti western plot in a way or a classic revenge thriller in a way as it has the character of the stranger at its heart a man just known throughout the story as the Brother. The stranger heer is the half  Brother that Laila doesn’t know she had when he appears at her door in his hat and knee-high boots making him stand out. This happens after she has been cheated out of her inheritance a villa by the men of this town that is run by the males. Laila had taken this loss but the brother has come to take on these powerful men they have powerful jobs within the town A banker, a lawyer, and notary (I felt this was a nod to the western as Notaries are often mentioned in Westerns). As he starts to ruffle the feathers in the town the locals try to find out more about this new challenge to them and find out about Laila half brother what is his story? a rat-faced assistant of the lawyer starts digging into the past. The brother also has a fling whilst in the town.

 The notary’s secretary accidentally knocked over an inkwell, which spilled accross ten or so signed contracts awaiting archiving, and the lawyers wife was complaining of chronic headaches every evening. The banker was still in a bind with his branch office: customers were closing their accounts there en masse, and in order to resolve the temporary liquidty problem, he had been stable for a long peroid of time; shares, whichlaunched into an unexpected rise two days laters. However, all these kinds of things shouldn’t have lasted for very much longer.

The pressure the brother brings starts to show on the main chanracters lives.

I mean the obvious example of the main character in this book is the character played by Clint Eastwood in the classic western High Plains drifter as a stranger enters a town to sort something out another film I remembered was the Bruce Willis film Last man standing where he goes to get revenge on a corrupt town.  Even The equalizer  I remember those lines in the advert Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer and the brother is like that Laila has been beaten down this is a book that draws the line that this is males inflicting the loss on a female character. The brother is her savior as she had lost hope and excepted the status quo. The novel has a great atmosphere the chapters are short almost like short scenes in a fast-moving western as the action moves from here to there as the brother starts to ruffle the feathers and they find out how Laila was conned out of her inheritance by deceit and trickery. A great little gem as with the Peirene books this is easily read in an evening.

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

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Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

Lithuanian fiction

Original title –  Lietuviai prie Laptevų jūros

Translator Delija Valiukenas

Source = personal copy

I am trying to fill in the gaps for the Peirene books I haven’t read here is another.from their Home in Exile series and a work from  Dalia Grinkevičiūtė she wrote on scraps of paper after her escape and return to her homeland from a Gulag and then buried the book was discovered in a Jar four years after her death. She spent time in gulags first with her family in the war years this is the period covered in the book. Then later on in the ’50s by herself. But also became a doctor on her return to Lithuania. This book is now considered part of the national canon of Lituania.

I’m touching something. It feels like cold iron. I’m lying on my back …. How beautiful … the sunlight …and the shadow

I am aware tgat a phase of my life has come to an end, a line dran underneath it. Another i beginning, uncertain and ominous. Twenty four people lie nearby. Asleep? who knows? Each of them has their own thoughts. Each is leaving behind a life that ended yesterday. Each has a family, relatives, friends, They’re all saying goodbye t their loved ones. Suddenly the train jolts. Something falls from the upper bunk No one is asleep now. Silence I dress hurriedly- I have to say goodbye to Kaunas

The opening as she is on the train heading she doesn’t know where

The book follows Dalia her mother and her older brother as the family is wrenched out of their home in Kanuas and deported by the regime as she joins a lot of fellow Lithuanians on a train covered so no-one knows where they are going. The journey last weeks as they are spilt in to groups as they are sorted and divide. The conditions on board  are horrid on board. They have dreams they are heading to America but end up by a river and in some wooden huts trying to keep together sing national songs they get wood from the forest and try to get by but this is shortlived now on a barge they finally reach the Artic and the tundra is a  wasteland freezing as they are dressed in the clothes for a Baltic summer and now have to work building a fish processing factory. Hundreds die that first winter but Dalia manages to get through. This is very hard work as they live in simple jurt with next to no clothes as the winter draws in and those around her start to fall apart she has a overwhelm spirit of hope that shines through her words As we see the dark underbelly of the Soviet regime and how it tried to break the people from the Baltic states.

I look around and am chiled to the bone. Far and wide, tundra, naked tundra, not a sprig of vegetation, just moss as far as the eye can see. In the distance, I notice something tat looks like a small hill of crosses. We learn that these are the graves of the Finns. Two weeks ago, they were brought in from Leningrad already debilitated as a result of the blockade, starved and suffering from typhus, and now they are dying, suddenly, I’m gripped by rear. What if this becomes a “death Zavod” rather than a “fish zavod” ? I hear the steamer sound ger horn and start to move, manoeuvring our empty barges through a maze of rafts .

They arrive on the island and the horror of this world faces her the line about the crosses in just twoi weeks is chilling !!

it is great when works like this are found that pay testament to the hardship of the Soviet-era regime. It is like a Soviet Anne frank they both share that hope of spirit that gives them such hope for the future no matter how horrific their present is. The Gulag has been well documented in the work of the great Russian writers Solzhenitsyn and Kochergin A day in the life and Christened with crosses are two powerful works. I covered Midnight in the century by Victor Serge that followed another writer being in Exile. The world she wrote about is so well written the biting cold the fish factory being built the starving the being looked down on by locals on the island that view these prisoners from around the soviet states as underlings. Powerful work and so thankful it survived discovery from the KGB.

Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena

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Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena

Latvian fiction

Original title – Mātes piens.

Translator – Margita Gailitis

Source – review copy

Rather late getting to this one as I await the first title from this years Peirene selection I looked back and last year I hadn’t reviewed one of there books which is a great shame as I have covered most of there books from the first three in year one. Anyway, this is written by the Latvian writer Studied in Latvia then moved to New York to finish her studies. She on her return to Latvia set up the Latvian literature centre and started writing herself she has published over twenty books and has had two translated into English this is her first novel translated to English she also has a short story collection in English life stories is available still.

I don’t remember 15 october 1969. There are people who swear they remember their birth. I don’t. It’s likely that I was well positioned in my mothers womb, because the birth was normal. Not particularly long, or particularly short, with the last contractions coming every five minutes. My mother was twenty five, young and healthy. Her mental state, though was not so healthy, as I learned later.

I do remember , or at least I can picture, the golden, tender calm of October, alternating with forebodings of a long peri=oid of darkness. It’s a kind of boundary month, at least in the climate of this latitude, where seasons change slowly and autumn only graduallly gives way to winter.

The opening liunes as the daughter remembers the autumn month but not her own entering to the world!

I read this first last year and struggled to get into it and thus left it unreviewed but when stuck the other day with a feeling of nothing grabbing me I’d started half dozen books and got thirty pages in and lost interest. But this time I was really grabbed by the voice of the daughter describing her mother and then got the book the nameless narrators tell the stories in flipping narratives the daughter born in 1969 both mother and daughter born in the same month twenty-five years apart. The daughter growing under the Brezhnev regime her mother never feed her on the breast leading to her hating milk. Milk is a recurring motif in the book. The relationship is strained the, mother a tough woman in her story we see how she ended up in a small town a doctor but not allowed to [ratice in the field she studied which is birth and is a researcher on the effects on woman when she tries to help an abused wife and is banished because her husband was a ranking Soviet figure to be a simple country GP all this is told in her story the daughter only sees her mother now a broken woman she struggles to be herself her mother loves western books reads the poorly type books those Samizdat works will these two ever get what they want from their lives and even get to leave the village.

The river was warm as milk. Only late at night could it providerelief from the sweltering heat. The days felt interminable; the short night brought the balm of darkness. At the end of July the ambulatory centre was closed for a month. I began a long, lonely, senseless time. I lay naked in my shadow-filed room,trying to kill the nights and days.

A use of milk her as the description of the river.

I loved the unnamed narrators as their tale is not just a personal story but the tale of the whole under a regime where people could see their dreams destroyed in a single moment. The common theme in Peirene books over the years of the mother-daughter relationship, in this case, is even given a third fold as the state in Soviet times view its self as a mother and the milk they feed some of its citizens was bitter at times leads to  motif of milk from the mother not feeding the daughter milk  but to the daughter not having milk at school the theme of milk is recurring I felt a comradeship with the daughter not drink milk my whole life I get the hatred of this pure white liquid that maybe like its Soviet regime isn’t pure or white is just an emulsion of fat and water very apt for the regime !. I enjoyed this and it was a great intro to Latvian fiction as this is my first book from Lativa having reviewed books from the other Baltic states  I know have the last one covered by this book. It does what it says for the series and shows who even thou the two are at home they aren’t as there home is a  world they can’t get to under the soviet shackle.

The last day byJaroslavas Melnikas

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The last day by Jaroslavas Melnikas

Lithuanian fiction

Original title – Rojalio kambarys

Translator – Marija Marcinkute

Source – Reivew copy

I’ve been late getting to this as it came out a while ago from the small press Noir press whose books I have reviewed before. They have been bringing some of the brightest writers from Lithuania. Jaroslavas Melnikas has written six novels, collections of philosophical essays in Lithuanian he has also written poetry and prose in Ukrainian and a novel in French. He has worked for a number of Magazines including Laima and Woman. He is a member of both the Lithuanian and Ukrainian writers union. He won the BBC book of Ukraine with this book. This is his first work to be translated into English.

A very strange situation unfolded in the country and across the whole planet. Everybody was convinced that a divinity existed. But where was it? The sun shone, as always, the sky was still there, as were the clouds, the trees and animals. The world hadn’t changed; everything was alive, vibrant, but the hidden divinity was nowheere to be found. There was just that book, which appeared out of nowhere.that simpy infuriated everybody.God, if you decide to reveal that you exist, and in such an original manner, then show yourself!

The book of everyones last day changes the way the world is and they think about God.

This is a collection of eight short stories some from a few pages to others about fifty pages long. The collection opens with the title story the Last day based in an alternative world where someone has the power to find out when everyone dies and these days are published in books this shows how people deal with knowing when the last day is and what they do. The second story we find a man Jura thinking about the times he has played his grand piano at his home in his grand piano room only for his family to deny there was ever such a room he even remembers his wife seeing him play but she denies this ever happen he is left question as he walks through a door to a different plan or has he just imagined all this. Other stories see a woman grow younger a sort of female version of Benjamin Button she rediscovers her sexual prowess. Other see a man following directions but where are they leading him? Then a man ends in a cinema watching a film that never ends about a girl called Liz where reality and life get blurred.I laughed at an early line about the film saying it was a film that seems pointless as it was plotless.I was reminded that is something My Amanda would say about some of the films I watch.

Nikodimova was sixty when she noticed the small bloody discharge. She didnt take any notice at first, but then the skin under her eyes became smoother. Just like that. She began to feel like living and enjoying herself. And the birds and spring. In the mornings, while in the morning, while in the shower, she discovered her body was astonishment. Not in the prime of youth, of course, her skin drooped here and there, but still, in shape, sufficently supple.

She could reach hjer toes without bendingher knees, the stream of water pleasantly drumming against her vertbrae and her waist, running in a warm stream down her bottom and thighs

The tale of Nikodimova and her growing younger when she turns sixty.

 

This a great collection. The stories all make you as the reader thinks about what is the truth behind each one each story.  There is a lot about who people are, what we are! who we are.! Those major questions like how we look shown when the Nikodimova the sixty year starts growing younger she get the neighbors talking. The other thread is the community as in the Soviet era of close living where everyone was on top of each other at times the identity gets blurred as shown in the grand piano room a story about shifting truths with a nod to the Soviet past. These would make great short tv series in the style of something like The outer limits used to be.  Where we are asked to accept various views of the world. Then asked to read greater into the stories than what is on the surface. An interesting collection of stories from a new writer to us in English. Noir press have brought an interesting writer out one of the best short story collections I have read in recent years.

Shtetl Love Song by Grigory Kanovich

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Shtetl Love song by Grigory kanovich

Lithuanian fiction

Original title – Местечковый романс

Translator – Yisrael Elliot Cohen

Source – review copy

I reviewed the first book from the new publisher Noir press Breathing into Marble which I enjoyed. this their latest book from Lithuanian is a true gem of a book. Grigory Kanovich is a well know poet and writer. He currently lives in Israel and before he emigrated there was the head of the Jewish community of Lithuania. He also served as a people’s deputy during Soviet times. Born into a tailoring Jewish family of the Shtetl community if Jews in Lithuania before world war two. what he brings in this book is the lost world of his family and their friends. 95% of Shtetl jews died during world war two when Germany invaded.

For a long time I have intend to write about my mother with that joyous enthusiasm and the kind of abundant detail with which it is fitting to recall one’s parents, the people closest and dearest to you. But to my great shame, for one reason or another, i have kept putting it off.Or, if I have started, then I have written nothing more than casual scraps, limiting myself to separate episodes that dealt with my relatives and the other people from my hometown. Wanting to somehow soften my feeling of guilt, I began to recall things, conjuring up memories even when I was sleeping, However the following morning I would mercilessly erase the words that has seemed so appropriate the night before

Grigory explains his struggle with this book he want to honour his mum and home town.

The book starts with Grigory saying he had long wanted to tell the story of his mother and family in pre war Lithuania in those years before he turned twelve and they had to leave and returned later to a changed country. I saw somewhere that said the Grigory was maybe the only person that could bring this world to us as readers as so few people are left alive from that time.. This follows his father and grandfather and their spouses Mama and Dovid ,Grandma Rokha as they leave their home and head to Lithuania after the end of another war to first Vilnius and then on to the home town of Jonava. What follows is the history of the following years of the family as they grow into village ,life but also stat planting roots which we see his mother Hennie settle and explain the village around them the rabbis, traders and characters. This is a description of a world long gone but also a family history a view of the world they live in which at the time was one where their is big changes as the country they live in Lithuania that had just become a country but is also trying to stay a country and not get eaten up by either of the two large powers that are  nearby the Soviet and German regimes have their eyes on the country.

Wake up. Hirshele! Wake up, my golden one! today it’s an important holiday. Pesach! Passover! I’m going to take you today, my little dove, to the synagogue for the first time. To the Beit Knesset Hagadol .

“Where?” my eye. still not unstick from my sweet sleep expressed nothing but fear.

“To the great synagogue. You’ve never been before.Each day Gotenu, our dear god, decends from heaven to there. We will be pray together and thank our protector and Benefactor for delivering us from Egypt thousands of years ago and liberating us from the Pharohs.

I love and fear going place like this with my grandmother at times.

I have read a lot of lit about the war and Jewish life , but there isn’t many books  out there that touch this book for the way it captures the day-to-day family life As many of you know I am a huge fan of those books that capture village small town life and this is what this does . But also the black humour the jewish community is well-known for shine through at times that saw their world change. The action is in the pre war period but the sense of the wider world invading the small is evident as the family goes on but their world will be for ever changed. Grigory has written all his life about the Litvak community of Lithuania. This is his most personal book and the last he has written so far, it won a number of prizes including the Lithuania National prize. I loved the small boy on the cover he capture this world so well in a way.

Breathing into Marble by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

 

Cover +1

Breathing into Marble by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

Lithuanian Fiction

Original title – Kvėpavimas į marmurą

Translator – Marija Marcinkute

Source – review copy

As I said yesterday in my wrap up there was three new publishers last month and here is another Noir press is a new small press focusing on Baltic fiction. They contact me and said This may be perfect as my first book from Lithuania as I had yet to review a book from there. Laura is a prize winning writer this book won the EU prize for lit .She studied Lithuanian become a Journalist and then a writer she has had a number of books published and translated into a number of languages this is her first to be into English and the first by a living Lithuania writer to be translated to English.

HIS EYES wer brwn, with irises that seemed as thick as steel- they had none of the softness that would be characteristic of a child.When Isabel was taken to the group, they all simultaneously turned towards the door and a hush fell upon them. Isabel froze in deadly silence, pierced by fifteen pairs of starring eyes. And the a ripple out from the corner, a short, slight stir as the boy pressed his tiny fists into his mounth and his eyes flashed.Hardness was probably his most distinctive quality

She meets Ilya for the first time maybe she saw more than she realised in his eyes there

Breathing into marble is a story of family Isabel , who has a son Gailus , but this lad is suffering from Seizures which are  getting worse, the family are trying the best for him. The Isabel meets an orphan Ilya whom she decides they are going to adopt to help their son and also give him some company.This new arrival to use the old saying is like setting a cat amoung the pigeons and he is trouble he wrecks this quiet families life .What we see is the ripple effect of his arrival on how people get effect by one event .The mother and father trying to maybe replace the faulty child with a new one but he isn’t no this six year cause a rift and doesn’t take to his new step brother .

Galius had never met a person who took up so little space “Its like ILya always trying to become smaller ” he said to Isabel .He behaved as though he was not two but ten years older than his brother. He would not complain to his mother when things began disappearing from the drawers of his desk – pencils and his Tragi-comical everyday reflections – what he called the pieces of paper with his scribblings on them.

The two brothers meet and the older orignal son observes something about his step brother .

This is a tough one to describe in her winning interview about this book for the EU lit prize she notes the books isn’t plot driven its a book of psychology of the human soul she says it is to see how people react to one event the event here is a death at the heart of the story that turns the wife and husbands world upside down . This is like a lot of new fiction around europe about famlies in the worst points , I felt a connection to The Boy which I reviewed last year another novel dealing with the fallout of a child’s death. This also seems to be part of a group of writers In Lithuania writing Noir fiction another influence I felt is Simenon roman Durs novels those psychological novels he wrote about the darker side of human nature at times and how we all react in certain situations . This is a dark look into ome couples past and secrets they had to bury many years ago , death and recovering or trying to recover from it .