Tag: BOOKS THAT DEFINED ME

The Shining by Jon Fosse

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The Shining by Jon Fosse

Norweigan fiction

Original title – Kvitleik

Translator – Damion Searls

Source – Personal copy on kindle

Well, this is the first book after Fosse won the Nobel. I did a short post on the day he won the prize. I had reviewed three books from him before the Prize, the first of his septology, Aliss in the Fire and Scenes from a childhoood. I had read the other two parts of Septology and as I often do, hadn’t got to review them. As I said in my last post, my dreams of blogging more often fall short, but I am getting there, so this isn’t me moaning it is just a fact of life I read more than I can possibly ever review, but yes, this is my sixth book by Jon Fosse and to be truthful, I loved this it is a short book 48 pages in the paperback so in comparison to his other books this is actually probably the favourite I have read from him. Although at some point, I will go back and read septology in a single bite. Anyway, I was going to wait for this, and then I listened to the Mookse and the Gripes podcast with the translator about Jon Fosse, and I just had to get it so for quickness, I got it on the Kindle as it is about the length I can read on kindle.

What am I talking about, I thought. There’s the forest in front of me, it’s just a forest, I thought. All right then, this sudden urge to drive off somewhere had brought me to a for-est. And there was another way of talking, according to which something, something or an-other, led, whatever that might mean, to something else, yes, something else. I peered into the forest in front of me. Forest. Yes.Trees right next to one another, pines, pine trees.

He questions his action heading down the path

The book is in the mind of a man who has, for some reason, headed down a forest track, turning off the main road. He is in his car, and then he gets stuck on the path. As he does, he thinks about the points he could have turned back. Then he initially stays in the car warm and just waits for someone to come. Then he decides to head into the forest it is turning to night but he feels to drawn into the forest. He then starts to see a glow in the distance. What is it as he is drawn to the light, the light seems to come closer and closer. But what are these lights?He seems drawn to the lights and maybe is in a moment of his life is he alive, or is this his soul drifting you are never quite sure if this is real or imagined. Then it moves on when he reaches the lights, but that would spoil a 48-page book to say more it is wonderfully evocative.

No reason at all. And so why did I drive onto the forest road then. It was purely by accident, maybe. Pure chance.Yes,you probably couldn’t call it anything else.

But chance, what’s that anyway.No, I can’t start in with that kind of silly thinking. It never goes anywhere. And what I have to do now is get my car free, yes, just that. And then I have to try to turn it around. But that.Yes it’s because I didn’t pass anywhere I could turn the car around, if I had then of course I would’ve turned around, a long time ago, because the forest road is pretty much the most boring road to drive on that you can imagine.

He is maybe in a altered state I wondered at times or has something alse happened to him ?

I loved the short nature of this after the septology it is like a  palate cleanser in a meal, it is full of Fosse but intense and just a mouthful of him. I love the otherworldly ness of the lights, and the events after the lights appear in the forest. The forest has long been a place for things happening but also the mind to wander from the tropical Jungle of Wilson Harris and the way spirits and the forest can talk to you. Through things like Twin Peaks which is what I thought of her I had to wonder if a log lady would turnup there is also a sense of the spiritual of been between worlds what has happened to draw him down the forest road and why did the car break down? Why wander off these are all questions unanswered about our narrators actions. Have you read this the first of his books to come out after his Nobel win this year.

Winstons score – A an Espresso shot of Fosse

The Rider by Time Krabbé

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The Rider by TimKrabbé

Dutch fiction

Original title – De Renner

Translator – Sam Garrett

Source – Library book

This is one of those books that had been on my radar since the early days of the blog, I think one of the old book blogs, I Loved Back Then Parish Lantern or Inside Books, must have reviewed this Dutch masterpiece and I have seen it on the list of the best books around cycling, and I have long followed the tour de France and kept an eye on cycling so I knew one day I would read Tim Krabbé’s book. The writer himself was a competitive cyclist he had raced in France so the route he described in the book is one he would have known. Krabbé is also a well-regarded chess player and writer around chess if you follow road cycling for a long time you’d know there is a chess-like quality to making the right move and positioning yourself for the win. He came from a creative family and has written many novels he also wrote a huge 800page work of nonfiction called Friends, a chronicle about the kidnapper and murderer Ferdi Elias, who he had grown close to his wife in writing this book. A number of his books have been turned into films. This was made into a Dutch film and a less successful US film

Kléber is standing in front of me. We greet each other. I point to his bars. ‘New tape?’

He smiles apologetically. ‘For morale

Kléber is my regular training buddy. The two of us checked out the course together. We both like long races with lots of cols. But he rides for Barthélemy’s team, and sticks strictly to that during the competition.

I’m standing at the back, but it doesn’t matter. I used to think it never mattered. Until race number 145, on August 31, 1974. It was my first really long road race in the Netherlands, the Four-River Tour. A race over 175 kilo-meters, I figured, so there’s no hurry. We rode at a snail’s pace through the streets of Tiel, behind the race director’s car. Twenty-wide the riders rode, curb-to-curb, without a single gap to move up into. Strange, I thought.

One of the cyclist he knows during the race

The book is set on a single day and is in the mind of a cyclist called Tim Krabbe as he is about to do the one day Tour de Aigouat, a single-day race in France, this has also been used as a stage twice in the tour de France a race with five cols on the route (Hills), and the book describes his thoughts of the race on each kilometre but also those around him, as well as him remembering, his own cycling career. We follow his races over the years the wins, the losses, the cyclists he has ridden with the conditions and places. There is also a few nuggets of cycling history from the greats like Jacques Anquetil, who had a habit of moving the water bottle of his bike to his back pocket at the start of every climb was asked why by one of his Dutch Liutenants ask him why he did this ritual. Then we have the sad tale of Tom Simpson, the British rider who died on one of the stages of the Tour de France. As the race continues, he talks about cyclists around him, the ones he knows he calls by their names and what they do in situations like this. That chess-like quality iof cycling the player 9cyclist know each other, but when he doesn’t, he refers to them by their team jerseys (I had to check the teas as they are older teams from before my time he used the real times of the late seventies when the race is set. As the race gets near the end, we see he is doing well, and his mind of Tim turns to how to win the race.

My sporting career: 1958

A Dutchman had won the Tour! It was Charly Gaul. In fact he was a Luxembourger, but he rode in the combined Dutch-Luxembourg team, and in Paris I had personally seen him enter the Parc des Princes. I was standing outside, by the gate, and the whole peloton came in as one. I looked for the yellow of Gaul, saw it flash by and noted his look of satisfaction.

One of the sections that he remebrs his cycling life and cycling history as well here

This book has captured how we all are when we ride, even if it is just for fun I don’t cycle as much as I had done. There was a period when I lived in Germany, I cycled every day, and that is how your mind is you are thinking about various things at once. took me back to the regular cycle I did in the Netherlands from Germany. I think he has captured the nature of cycling I said I have watched the Tour in particular since the late 80s, and I am aware of the chess-like nature to cycling, watching those other riders and how each day has twists and turns and they watch each other as that one move can changer a day just like in chess. I have only read one other novel which had cycling at its heart, and that was another Dutch novel that used Ventoux the great stage finish and climb as a location for two cycle rides a year apart. But this one just captures the peloton and how it feels to be a racer and how it is to be a great cyclist but in a pack of great cyclists, just be ordinary like most of the cyclists in the peloton thsere are only a few Anquetil, Merckx etc. This deserves the title of the best cycling novel as it is, but it is also like a thriller in the way it unwinds as the kilometres drop. This reminds me to get some of those backlist books I must find and read.

Winston score ++++ A. This is one that has gone straight into my all-time favourite books.

Without Waking Up by Carolina Schutti

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Without Waking Up by  Carolina Schutti

Austrian fiction

Original title –Einmal muss ich über weiches Gras gelaufen sein

Translator Deidre McMahon

Source – Review copy

I love it when new publishers reach out for me to review books in translation and it is great when they are outside the uk like Bullion Press the Irish-based press. Asked me to review this Austrian novel from the writer Carolina Schutti I said yes it had won the EU literature prize, a prize from which I have read a few books over the year. This book’s German title also grabbed me it is in English I must have walked on soft grass once. I love the enigmatic nature of that Schutti got a doctorate on b the work of Elias Canetti and has written a number of novels and poetry works. This is her first book to be translated into English.

There are various Babushkas. Some resemble each other down to the finest details and some have different pictures on their fronts. A different picture on every front and you know immediately which story belongs to it. And the big Babushka holds all the stories together like the cover of a book of fairy tales. You need to study the smallest picture especially carefully because if you are lucky, even this tiny surface has a background showing a forest or a stream or flowers. I was lucky. My Babushka was particularly beautiful. I can remember every picture and I still know the stories that went with the pictures; they translated themselves without me noticing.

Marek often asked me to tell him these stories. I thought that maybe they reminded him of the stories of his childhood, because they were similar, but perhaps he only wanted to prevent them fading from my memory.

The various woman through her life she had called that name.

The book focuses on a little girl Maja over a number of years we get fragments of her life. She is now living in Austria having come there from Belarus. Hence when the book opens she refers to a distant Austrian aunt by the Russian term Babushka. But that is also a hint at the book nature as it is about a woman that Maja had called through the years it is a doll-in-doll nature to the book as we go further in Maja’s life. this is a woman looking back at the fragmented memories of her youth a broken youth that maybe is reflected in her present her only childhood connection to a Polish man Marek and maybe in his life stories is that shared sense of loss of place that she feels and how her loss of identity when she lost her mother tongue. The past is a lost country is the opening line of the go-between another story of youth and jagged memories and the past is post definitely another country and life.

She can remember every bird and every stray thread of that tablecloth. But Marek’s face. The birthmark on his chin, the grey hair that was always a little too long on his neck, his dark incisor-tooth, the light-brown spots in his eyes, the face on the photograph she took out of the envelope. Fifty-fifty, the letters in white touch-up pen raised off the paper. Maja sees the face in the photo, she only ever sees that photograph face, as if she had never known any other.

I’m always amazed at what we remember in the past I remember photos of the past and they differ from my memory

 

I love books with fragment memories of how the mind plays with our thoughts of the past and it has always made for great literature from Proust biting into that Madelaine or the first line of L P Harley’s go between this is a book about Maja trying to piece those remembered fragments of the Babushka’s she had seen. I was reminded of last year at Marianbad where the idea of a past was now distorted and faded and forgotten that is the case her heritage is fragments of a lost connection to a Polish man her aunt didn’t like as I said the original title has a certain enigmatic nature to it and this novel does it is a series of memories stacked like the Russian dolls on the cover of the book but maybe like peeling the layer of an onion back the tears are here to be seen and the sorrow of that past but maybe also the ripples in Maja’s present life and situation/ This would be the sort of book you’d like if you have enjoyed the early books from Peirene press it would have sat with them well. I’ll end with another quote and this is one of my favourite Counting Crows songs but this book is like this too.”If dreams are like movies, the memories are films about ghosts.

Winston’s score – I am a sucker for fragments of a life in a novella so

this gets an +A from me

September 23 Round Czech Lit month 23

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  1. Case Closed by Patrik Ourdeník
  2. The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz
  3. The living and the rest by José Eduardo Agualusa 
  4. Summer of Caprice by Vladislav Vančura
  5. Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg 
  6. The questionnaire by Jiri Grusa

I managed 6 books this month but I did read four for the first Czech lit month I only review Male writers which I ran out of time and the other book I read unfortunately had a print error which is a shame as it was from a female writer. I feel I managed to get a number of the great writers of the 20th-century  Czech fiction reviewed. We went from a village in the thirties to an imagined island , a novel handed around in the seventies and a detective story that isn’t a detective story. So I will do this again next year and have more female writers. I do have a couple of female writers under review already. I also read a great piece of magic realism from a writer I love and a short Italian novella that I loved. It was a great selection this month. I will hope to get a few more reviews done next month and I have a number of days off next month.

Book of the month

I chose this as I love a twisty tale and a number of the books this month have been twisting tales but this detective story isn’t a detective story I loved it I like books that fragment narrative and twist plots. I could have chosen any of the books I read this month as they were all great reads.

Non-book events.

We had a holiday and I wrote a post about that. I brought a second-hand Suede Album which I never got on cd so when it was quite cheap the B-side collection was on three vinyls. But end the month on a YouTube rabbit hole of old disaster movies some made for TV and some like City on fire from the late seventies with a great cast led by Henry Fonda. These were big films back in the day. I also started watching an Australian black snow that has been shown on BBC 4 here.

Czech Lit month

Thanks for all that took part if you’d kindly link your reviews in the comments below I d be very grateful. I will  try and add comments to you all. I will be doing it all again next year.

Next month

I have a few books read to review four at least so I’ll get to them first I have a lot of new books to read so I think next month will be a mix of new and African fiction I’m aiming to add a number more books from Africa by the end of the year.

Holiday books Northumberland 2023

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Amanda and I headed for a week in Northumberland this is there fifth year we have spent time there, and this time we decided we would have a change next year, but we still had a great time. I brought lots of books as ever, with both Barter books and the Accidental bookshop in Alnwick and a reasonable-sized Waterstones in Morpeth I got an excellent selection. Apart from Books, we had a day in North Berwick where we visited the excellent STEAMPUNK cafe, a roastery and fair trade cafe worth a visit sat out in the garden outside in the sun was beautiful that day the lifeboat station was open, and we had a look =around and chatted to a lifeboat man that was servicing the boat. This for Amanda was a highlight as he said he had been on an episode of Saving Lives at Sea a show Amanda loves to watch and we do like to visit the RNLI shops around the country are fridge is a testament to that with a number of magnets from shops around the country. . My highlight was the short ride on the Aln Valley railway it was on an old city train, not the steam train, but it was great to go along the old line that has been partly rebuilt from Alnwick towards Alnmouth, of course. This went on to what is Barter books which was the station, and on towards Rothbury I have seen a film of this railway working when I worked in Northumberland we had a video of the fifties that we showed at the day centre and the people I looked after used say oh that is so and so and know a lot of the people of the film that was one the rail trip to Rothbury and then filming in Alnwick Town centre. We also flew a Kite on the beach which was fun and took me back to being a kid. Anyway I have three pictures of books I got the first two are from the two shops in Alnwick then from Waterstones in Morpeth.

First of is, these all from Barter books I have read one book from George Sand, and this grabbed my eye as it was a Pushkin press edition and a perfect pocket book to read when out and about. Then a book from Choukitsu Kurumatani, a Japanese writer I hadn’t heard of, but this story of a man who is living like a drone but then flies to the city and finds a job and the underbelly of Japan, living between a madam and a Tattoo artist. Then a Prix Goncourt winner. I have often flirted with the idea of reading all the Goncourt winners but some of the older ones are hard to get or very expensive this is about a lover of Brecht. Then a Mexican novel with undertones in 1920 Mexico City of things happening elsewhere in the world. Then eastBound from Maylis de Kerangal and writer I have reviewed a couple of times this is set on a train. Then a novel from one of Angola’s most respected writers, the tale of a man born in prison I am hoping to feature a lot of fiction from Africa as I feel I have not read a lot but I also to start talking about areas and styles of writing from around Africa to start changing my own view of the books I have read and will read to more the country, location and language.

I used to get sent Fitzcarraldo’s books, but I have maybe not reviewed them on time so I haven’t been getting them I am buying the ones that appeal, and Macunima is one of those. Then oine from the recent series of novels from Pushin Press from Japan, this one is meant to be quite horrific, and I need a few for January in Japan. Then a sort of novella by Nataile GInzburg I have partly read this, and her writing is so readable you get drawn into this tale of a son that is a bit of a layabout, These came from Accidental bookshop. The other two are Dutch novels I have yet to read Mulisch’s discovery of heaven but felt this may be a short intro to his writing.  Another book that is on the ten best Dutch novels of all time Out of mind. I miss Iris Dutch’s book week from many years ago. I wanted to read this book when I saw the list of the ten best Dutch novels many years ago. Although I think two are still not available in English the Office and Public Works in there English title lets hope one day we got the Reve a few years ago.

Then, just three from Waterstones in Morpeth I recently got the My Friend Maigret in the pocket cloth books from Penguin and decided the next would be Italo Calvino’s Cosmiccomics, another pocket book to read when out and about. Then a book from Elie  Wiesel, and I liked a couple of books from him I have read. The last book is one both Amanda and I picked as she likes the sound of this Japanese book, and I love these lighter books as they just are a break from anything too heavy when reading. Plus, another choice for January in Japan. I didn’t do as bad as ever; I went for less-known books to add to my TBR . I will be back with a review on Thursday.

 

That was August 2023 on Wintsonsdad

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  1. Angels of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap
  2. Wound by Oksana Vasyakina 
  3. Misdunderstanding in Moscow by Simone de Beauvoir
  4. The performance by Claudia Petrucci
  5. Voices of the lost by Hoda  barakat
  6. Rombo by Esther Kinsky
  7. The Taiga syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza
  8. The missing word Concita de Gregorio
  9. The Remains by Margo Glantz
  10. A sunday in Ville-de Avary by Dominque Barberis
  11. Crimson by Nivaq Korneliussen
  12. Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza
  13. A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi

Well I started this month with a bang but the last two weeks I just hadn’t blogged I think I just finishing work and now have two weeks off the first fortnight off since this time last year. But I did review thirteen books which is the best I have done in a month this year and shows I am back in a sort of blogging routine the journey this month went from German and some Slovenian Germans and then to Russia and a mother’s ashes going back to Siberia. Then we stay in Russia for a modern classic from a French writer a couple spend time in fifties Moscow. Then a woman has a breakdown and two meet try to fix her in there own ways. Then a series of lost voices in the form of letters from a Lebanese writer tell the refugees stories. Then a number of adults recall the devastating effect of an earthquake when they were kids in Italy. Then a detective uses fairy tales to solve a crime. Then a woman talks about her ex killing her daughters. Then a woman is at her husband’s wake as she drifts back and forth in time to their lives together. Then a pair of sisters in Paris discover something about one of them. Then growing up in Greenland in the LGBT community. We meet an art critic who talks about the art she is involved with and finally, a bookshop in Algiers history is recalled. Well that is 13 books all written by women for Woman in Translation Month I had hope to do more but I maybe should have prepared a little earlier.

Book of the month

Well, I pass as there are quite a few I could think it was such a great month. The first book from Greenland was great these are all worth trying as each is a very individual book.

Non-book events

I have caught two new series Only Murders in the Buildings the third series of this comic crime series that use three characters that do. Crime Podcast this time a well-known actor is found dead and also add to this the addition of Meryl Streep is class she is always amazing in everything she does. Then there was the latest Star Wars series Ahsoka the latest Star Wars spin-off. I’m not sure what I think so far Three episodes in and it is okay but not quite grabbed me there is a feeling of milking the cash cow dry maybe. What do you think ?

Next month

It is the first Czech Lit Month I hope have a review up over the weekend to set the ball rolling and then get four or five more books read and reviewed this month. I am mid-way through a  Maigret and have a couple of books from before Woman in Translation Month to be reviewed. What are your plans for next month ?

A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi

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A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi

Algerian fiction

Original title Nos Richesses

Translator – Chris Andrews

Source – Personal copy

I brought this in this year’s Waterstones sale. It caught my eye as it is about a famous bookshop in Algeria. Kaouther moved to France with her family when she was eight. One of her incredible memories is of her father taking her to the library every week( I used to love my library trips as a kid and actually still do, although I don’t use my library as much as I should these last few weeks have been great getting books for the woman in translation month). She took up writing after doing well in a short story contest while at university. This book is set in her homeland; she did go back to the mid-90s to report on what was happening in the country at that time. The book uses the shop as a prism to all that has happened in Alegria in the 20th century.

But you will follow the alleys that lie open to the sun, won’t you?You’ll come at last to Rue Hamani, formerly known as Rue Charras.You’ll look for b: it won’t be easy, because some of the numbers have disappeared. You’ll stand there facing a sign in a window: One who reads is worth two who don’t. Facing History, with a capital H, which changed this world utterly, but also the small-h history of a man, Edmond Charlot, who, in 1936, at the age of twenty-one, opened a lending library called Les Vraies Richesses.

In the present its ghost lives on in the library on the same site.

The book drifts from the present, where the shop’s site is now a lending library, so the spirit it had is still living in a way. Then back in time to the glory years of this shop that was opened by Edmond Charlot a free thinker if there ever was one, he imagined Les Varies Richesses as a melting pot of literature, art and friendship a meeting place for those in love with books, not only did he open a shop he also published books from that shop as well. It had been where Camus first saw fame with his first book launched at the shop. It was also used in the war to publish FREE French propaganda. A book is in a number of forms, all different the present is in Alegeria with its problems and Post-independence as we see Ryad clearing the book to sell but is the shop just a shop? What is it soul? We have Charlot’s own journal that sees how he got books out there from Camus and Giono, how the shop managed to just get through the war, and then in the years after the war, we see how Alegeria is moving towards independence so many countries started to after world war two.

May 5, 1936

This will be a library, a bookstore, a publishing house, but above all a place for friends who love the litterature of the Mediterranean. As soon as I took possession, I was overjoyed. I’m starting to meet the neighbors, the storekeepers, the waiters. These new characters in nmy new world. REVOLT IN asturias is on sale. People are saying that e.c stads for EDITIONS camus. They’ll see through the ruse soon enough, but we’re in no hurry to set the record straight, the main thing is, the play is Selling

Camus the man he first publuished and a man thart would sit outside the shop and smoke from timt to time.

This book is clever as its main character is the shop but not the shop. More of the dream of what the shop could be, a place for ideas. The shop and its history is a lens on the country around it as history happened to like those involved in the wars of the period took damage, so did the shop. But its spirit is still there in some way. I loved the parts of Charlot’s journal that harks back to an era when dreamers and free thinkers could have almost changed the world when a bookshop can be so much more a publisher, a melting pot of ideas, a place for thinkers to chat and talk over the world this is a book that reminds you of the power books can have and the freedom even in the present there is the chance to get a book and break free in those words of your present. This is one of those odd books that walks the line between fact and fiction and leads us to a small shop and a man with dreams and one of the greatest writers in the 20th century in Camus, that loved the shop. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score = +B, A tale of a long-gone shop and a place I would have enjoyed, I think !!

 

The Taiga syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza

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The Taiga Syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza

Mexican fiction

Original title – El Mal de la Tagia

Translators – Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana

Source – library

I went to the library just to get a few more books for a woman in translation month also maybe find a few that I had wanted to read and this is one such I remember reading about this and think that sounds odd and just up my street. When I saw Jonathan Lethem had called her Mexico’s GREATEST  living writer I was drawn to read this book first from my Library pile. Then I remembered after I had finished this book, I had actually read her book the lilac crest several years ago so this is the second book by her I will have read.

So, is she Hansel or Gretel?” I asked, truly curious, still staring at the images.
“Gretel, I suppose.” The man hesitated, taken aback.
“Maybe she is the woodsman or the witch or the woman who wants to get rid of the children in order to have enough to eat,” I said more to myself than to the man who had begun to smile, stupefied.
“This is not a fairy tale, detective,” he said, interrupting me again. “This is a story about being in love.”
“Or being out of love,” I corrected him.

when the detective first mentions Hansen and Gretel the client is taken aback.

I loved the detached nature of this story. It is just a bit bizarre a retired detective is hired by a husband whose wife has decided to run away and has seemingly gone to somewhere called Taiga with her lover. So he passes the man a fit on all he knows about his wife and her location, and then the detective says this is a bit like Hansen and Gretel in the woods. The man says no, but the detective takes the job and seems to have his own fairy-tale way of looking at this case and what it entails. To find the runaways ( or are they or have they just left to find their own love’). As the detective hits their trail, it takes him to Taiga a wacky place of kids on the loose like the wild ones almost and other characters that had just stepped. out of fairy tales This is a world were fact and fantasy blend. But maybe the old world of Grimm’s fairy tales forms a cautionary narrative on the modern world. Will he find them?

That lumberjacks can be cautious I knew, or sensed: either way it doesn’t matter. Their proximity to sharp-toothed heavy tools must have something to do with it.
Occupational hazards. Their close relationship, so para-doxical, almost organic, with the forest they kill and that sustains them. Do these thoughts pass through the mind of a lumberjack as he saws and cleaves and hacks at the tree bark? During those days, I asked myself that question frequently. And I answered: They think all this and more. Or they would.
It was the lumberjacks who walked along the edge of the cabin carrying him. It was they who led him – “dragged him” would be more accurate -to the central market where just the day before the translator and I had found salt, a little black tea, sugar, three or four potatoes. Some utensils. A pewter plate. Two cups.

I couldn’t help but think ofmmonty python here it made me smile

This is a very short novella, less than a hundred pages, that mixes the real and fantasy but also sees how the old tales can be transposed onto the modern capitalist world. As it is just as cruel as the medieval time when these stories were set and our detective uses them as the cornerstones of his investigation. Children people get lost in the modern world even more than in the Grimm’s time. I loved the first couple of series of Grimm tv show where they imagined those characters from Grimm’s world as humans living in the modern world but with the same traits and characteristics as they used to have, and this is the same the old tales and yes a couple seem tempted to a far off place like Hansen and Gretel is as modern a tale now as it was then. It is a clever book that draws you into this fable-like world that seems like our own but isn’t quite. IF Grimm and Chandler had lived and written a book together, Their world in a book would be a hard-boiled fairy tale detective novel like this is !!. A world-weary detective transported to Grimm’s fairy tale world. Have you read this book or any other book that mixes the modern world with Fairy tales well?

Winston’s score – B a clever take on the modern world using old fables as a guide!

July 23 The month that was !!

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  1. Karios by Jenny Erpenbeck
  2. The Dear Ones by Berta Dávila 
  3. Ada’s realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo
  4. Riambel by Priya Hein
  5. Fox8 by George Saunders 
  6. Heartland by Wilson Harris 
  7. Impossible by Erri De Luca 
  8. Pharricide by Vincent De Swarte 
  9. Tranquility by Attila Bartis 

I reviewed 9 books this month, given that we had spent 6 days in Scotland helping my dad sort my late aunt’s house and her funeral, and a week later, we went up again to bring her car, which she had wanted me to have. To get nine books reviewed was good any way my journey started with a relationship in old east Germany looked at again then we had a powerful tale of a mother and a decision she makes. Then a novel about race, gender and place with women all called Ada through the centuries. Then a young girl growing up in the slums of Madagascar looks at the rich folk and her life, and a mix of food history in the form of recipes is a potent mix. Then a fox shows us his home that is now a Mawl, as he calls the Mall they built there!. Then a man goes mad in the Guyana heartland as several ghosts appear from the jungle. Then a cat-and-mouse interview of death in the mountains unfolds in front of us. Then madness again with a man going mad in a lighthouse, and finally we have a man looking back after his mother’s funeral at how she controlled his life really in a book that has a slice of Bernhard chucked in it. We visited 8 countries this month and had a couple of new publishers on the reviews to the Blog. I also added Guyana to the blog. A very successful month which will make it hard to choose a book of the month this month.

Book of the month

I choose Wilson Harris’s book as it is maybe the most experimental book I read this month from a writer that should be better known than he is and someone I will be reading again soon. It was hard as this month there wasn’t a single bad book, infact, any book could have been a book of the month.

Non book events-

Firstly we were drawn into the four-part BBC drama The sixth commandment that followed the murder of Peter Farquhar by an ex-student a compelling drama of a man that was motivated by greed to kill older people well acted drama. Then I caught the  Dylan Biopic” I’m Not There” which I have on DVD but it was on Mubi so I watched it again I loved the album that came with this film I like how they used each actor to reflect a different side of Bob over the years is a clever touch for a singer that has had many faces over the decades. Still, with Music, I got one reissue on vinyl the Suede debut which had a parallel with My Aunt passing as many years ago on a visit to her house I brought the debut single from Suede in a shop in Kirkcaldy in May 1992 many years ago so to listen to the Debut brought memories of that holiday and time spent with her. The other release was Blur’s new album which has a melancholy  to it and echoes their earlier works with being completely new in itself

Next month –

Well, it is Woman in Translation month, and I am planning for every book next month to be from a female writer I have an ambitious idea, but as I tend to fail when I pin my flag to the pole, I wait to see how far I get with my plan for the month. before I mention too much. Anyway, there will be a number of female writers reviewed next month. What are your plans for next Month ?

Pharricide by Vincent De Swarte

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Pharricide by Vincent De Swarte

French fiction

Original title – Pharricide

Translator – Nicholas Royle

Source- Personal copy

I was recently in Scotland for my aunt’s funeral, and we had a couple of hours free over the time we were there and we visited St Andrews, where I called in  Toppings, but it also has a couple of good charity shops that sell books as well this is where I found this book. Vincent De Swarte was a writer for children and Adults. He won a prize for this book, and in one of his other books, his life was cut short due to Cancer he died in his mid-forties. This is the first book by him to be translated into English. The book follows the six months a man spends on a lighthouse in what he thinks is initially solitude isn’t for long as his mind and the world encroach on the time he is spending there.

3 October

My mother called me Geoffroy, like my elder brother, stillborn a year before me. (My father entered a monastery a month before I was born and has not been heard from since.) I’ve always been frightened of my Christian name, the very sound of it, and have never liked to hear it combined with my surname, Lefayen.

At school, people called me His Lordship, despite the fact my mother kept chickens on the wasteland surrounding our dilapidated 1960s house on the outskirts of Saint-Brieuc. Later, when I was working, I became known as the Egyptian (a reference to my being disinclined to conversation, a trait not particularly unusual, however, among deep-sea fishermen).With hindsight, the nickname was appropriate. Itwas an omen

Even early on there is a sense of something Dark about Geoffroy

The story is formed from the diary of the man who has decided to take six months in the oldest Lighthouse in France, The Coudouan at the mouth of the Gironde estuary is going be Geoffroy Lefayen home for the next six months. We are introduced to this man. He seems a loveable oddball, a significant oaf of a man that had been bullied as a young man and like many people that are bullied, he has a hobby that, in a way, is suited to being alone he is a taxidermist. We look back on his early years but then, like in the Studio Ghibli film, we have darkness lurking in the corner of the world he recalls. But this tale of a lighthouse keeper shows that, it shines light around, but often they are dark inside, and as time goes by, we see a man starting to go mad. So what happens when he has already stated he has brought his knives out of retirement as they saved him, and an Engineer is sent to fix something? What will Geoffroy do to him? Then when a woman turns up at the door, a stunning red-haired woman called Lise, a fan of his taxidermist art, it all goes downhill and the dark of the inside of the lighthouse and the madness of being alone and the repressed nature of this man that we initially see as a sort of clumsy large dog isn’t what we thought he was !!

28 November
I had a nice surprise when welcoming the engineer this morning. It’s not the bloke I spoke to on the radio, but a woman. A beautiful woman of about forty, red-head, like Steeven but more so.
For the twenty-five metres that separated the launch from the beach, one of the men carried her in his arms.
On the beach, she removed her heels and put on a pair of boots. She looked at her watch and the launch moved away.
Once at the lighthouse she took off her boots and put her heels back on. She has lovely legs and fine ankles, almost too fine. I noticed a little plaster above the heel, under her tights.

Lise appears just after the engineer does

This book sends shivers down you as you read it, the world you are flung into as we see Geoffroy’s world. But a man with a dark shadow, a man that has cut up animals and carefully removed the hides that take time, and a man that has been bullied and has a lot of darkness locked up in him. I thought of the recent film The Lighthouse, which showed the film’s case of two men descending a dark hole that was alone even when. There are two of you for an extended period of time madness is there and paranoia.  This book captures what happens when a man with Pandora’s box at his heart is left alone long enough for that box to open. We see the macabre outcome of that happening when he finally meets people again, from murder to a bizarre marriage, as he said Cordouan saved my knives from retirement. This is a gem of a book I’m so pleased I found.

Winstons score – A  One man descends into a dark place and madness takes over

 

Impossible by Erri De Luca

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Impossible by Erri De Luca

Italian fiction

Original title – Impossible

Translator – N S Thompson

Source – Library book

This is the second book from the Italian De Luca. A writer that was called the writer of the decade by Corriere Della Sera. He had been, in his earlier life a left-wing activist, even after he had been very vocal about a particular train line that had been built and was sued for his comments around it. He has been writing since he was 20, when he published his first book. He has published nearly a book a year since then and is now in his seventies. He has had a few books translated into English. The other book I read by him was The Day before happiness around a Child, which shows a versatile writer. This latest book links to his own left-wing activism. A love of the mountains.

Q: Let’s start again from the beginning of that day, shall we? You don’t recognise the person in the photograph
I’ve shown you?
A: No, I don’t recognise him. I’m not good at faces and with good reason after so many years. I can only repeat what I’ve already said.
Q: Perhaps, but possibly you could add something you haven’t said before?
A: Perhaps, but this isn’t a friendly chat between passengers on a train. I’m being questioned by an examining magistrate in a pre-trial investigation. It’s your decision what to ask, mine to decide if I want to talk about a memory or not.

The opening lines of this book

The book works as a two-hander with a few side characters. An old man, a former left-wing activist, has been held after he and another man had set off to hike in the Dolomites. They weren’t together, but when one man returns, and the other dies, so the older man is held. We have the scenario for the book, a series of interviews between this man. A young up-and-coming magistrate sees this older man as the murderer of the other man initially; the story is told as thou the two men weren’t connected as the man is kept in solitary confinement. The first chat hadn’t the solicitor, but he is there for the rest. The novel is mainly in the form of questions and answers as the two men lock swords and the lawyer is in the background. As they set off that day for a walk in the hills, the two men appeared unconnected on their own hikes for that day. But they had been comrades many years ago. But we are getting the mountains as a character as the man talks around that day and the relationship and the falling out many years earlier between the two men. This is the basis of the younger magistrate thinking he is a killer. We also see the old man talking to his wife, adding a perspective on where he thinks he will get off. but as time goes on, his hope changes.

Sweetheart, I’m thinking of that photo you sent me at Christmas of you as a child. That rascal face of yours looking directly into the lens, decisive, sarcastic, triumphantly defiant. I started to smile and the smile wouldn’t leave my face. You were seven years old.
I don’t know when you’ll read this letter. For now I’m writing it to keep myself company with thoughts of the two of us being together.
The cell holding me for twenty-three hours a day is for solitary confinement, but I’m not isolating myself at all from you and what matters to me. I’ve lived in worse places. I have paper, a pen and time. I do gymnastics and go over everything i know by heart: songs, poems, proverbs

The old man talking to his wife about his time in jail initally

This is a powerful little book that reminds me of the best two-handers by, say  Harold Pinter plays, where throughout the novel, the initial tale changes and evolves as the two men that set out on that hike that day past connection is revealed. This is a story of Italy’s dark past, those violent years of the seventies when the two men were connected. This is also a nod to De Luca’s own left-wing past. It also shows how people view people involved in that time. It is also an ode to the mountains, which, given he had a protest around a rail line that went through this area, you can tell De Luca loves. I love the way he unfolds the interaction of the two characters during the interviews like a classic noir film interview as bit by bit it becomes clear it is a wholly   Have you read any books by him? I was also reminded of Lawrence’s poem The Mountain Lion for some reason a poem I have loved since my teens  ( It is published by Mountain lion press)

Winston’s score – B he seems the master of short books. Both books I have read have been Novellas, and lets hope we see more. He has a huge backlist.

 

Riambel by Priya Hein

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Riambel by Priya Hein

Mauritian fiction

Source – Personal copy

The times now I buy a new book that isn’t translated because I have heard about it on social media is slim really. But this book I saw mentioned on Youtube, and after I got it, a few other people mentioned it, I love a slow word-of-mouth book, and this is what I think it is from Indigo Press, a new name to me. Apart from the word of mouth when I saw on the cover, it had a blurb from LE Clézio and her fellow Mauritian writer Anada Devi a writer whose book I loved when I read it because, like this book, it seemed to capture a significant slice of this tropical island but not the lovely beaches from those on the edge of the beauty getting by. Priya Hein had written a number of children’s books and short stories before this her debut novel. She has also won a number of awards, and she now splits her time between Mauritius and Germany.

We live in a cite,or Kon krool( which is how we like to refer to our shanty town). It’s also known as Africa Town – a slum where the poor and the undesirables are dumped together in hastily constructed barracks. Like tins of sardines placed next to each other in a higgledy-piggledy way. Whatever’s found in the trash somehow ends up in our cité, which is nothing but the waste of Riambel discarded in a heap that slowly rots away. A trash-strewn ghetto where everything is starving and fighting to survive – even the dogs.

Her home a shanty called Riambel everything is hard there.

The book is formed around the story of a young girl. She has to finish her school life and join other family members in the big house of The De Grandbourg family. They live in the Riambel, the slum of the city. Noemi is faced with no choice around this change. Still, we see the world through her eyes, those rich people on the other side of the road in the world, but it also mixes the history of the island but with a female twist to that and also has a beautiful idea of using recipes local to the island as well those sort of recipes passed on mother to daughter even the way they were written I had a sense of a card box like my mum had with those precious recipes passed down through the years. But as you read them, there is a sense of how the Western world has crept in on these island recipes over the years as they have been rewritten or verbally passed on. The book is also intersected with poetry from the island that evokes the spirit of the island and its struggles. As we see a young girl wrestling with a life of servitude and recounting how little can change, there is a glimpse of hope. A woman that came on a holiday and stayed seems interested in her. This shows the tension simmering under the island, an island with affluent ex french families still owning land and running things.

Make sure that your prawns are fresh by checking they colour. They should look transparent and smell of the sea Give them a quick rinse in cold water. Pull off their head, tails and legs before removing the shells and the black veins, Once this is done, rinse the prawns again under cold water.Using a ros kari or a stone mortar, crush some garlic cloves together with a small finger of fresh ginger. Pour a little oil in a pan and fry the paste over a medium fire. Add one chopped onion and continue to fry until golden. Throw in your prawns and cook for a couple of minutes. Add one or two chopped tomatoes and one sliced chilli and stir.Throw in some masala and a few curry leaves. Don’t make it too spicy for the whites, otherwise they’ll complain about their delicate stomachs. Stir well until it thickens. Add a little sea salt, but not too much, as the prawns are already salty. Pour in a dash of water if needed. Sprinkle with fresh coriander and serve with pickled vegtables – enn ti zasar legin – and freshly cooked rice

one of the recipes her for a prawn curry I liked the sound of this one.

I think I am amazed by the book as it is a debut novel. It is so well crafted. I love the ways she weaves Noemi’s voice, the island’s poets, and the island’s recipes. It is a personal history of an island, whereas Noemi says the history they learn isn’t there’s. It has the simmering below the surface of a Mauritius, something you felt in Devi’s novel, a sense of a powder keg that never entirely blows. A sense of things not changing. This is an island out of time with other places. Slavery is gone but only in name, and this shows how little hope there is in a slum-like Riambel, no matter how Noemi sees it as having a double meaning. And it is really Rive en belle Beautiful Shore (I love this thought. It captures her as a girl of a certain age). I also loved the usage of the recipes as a way of talking about the island with food as a way of showing changing tastes and how Western ideas drifted in. I hope this has been seen by someone near the Booker. It reminds me of the gems you used to find years ago on the Booker lists. Have you read this book?

Winstons score – ++++++A best book of the year so far !!

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Doudua Otoo

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Ada’s Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo

German fiction

Original title – Ada’s Raun

Translator – Jon Cho-Polizzi

Source – Review copy

I am a fan of writers that have a story in the bio, and Sharon seems to be one of those writers. Born in London to Ghanaian parents in London she, like I did decided she would live in  Germany, unlike me who returned after a couple of years she stayed on and made her home in Berlin. She has been a poet and writer all that time initially, her first two novellas were published in English, and then she chose to start writing in German, so her first novel is in her new language. She had already won one of the biggest German literature prizes for a short story she had written. This book covers centuries and uses a number of women sharing the same first name over those years.

Totope, March 1459

During the longest night of the year, blood clung to my forehead and my baby died. Finally. He had whimpered in his final moments, and Naa Lamiley had caressed his cheek. How lovely, I had thought, that this would be his final memory. She lay just beside him, the child between us, and her head resting next to mine. Naa Lamiley’s eyes shimmered as she assured me it would not be much longer now, “God willing”. She whispered because all of our mothers were sleeping on the other side of the room, but Naa Lamiley’s voice would have given out at any moment anyway. Together, we had cried and prayed at my baby’s side the last three nights. I could barely hear her, and 1 understood her even less.

The book oopens with Ada losing another baby in Birth!

From the first Ada is in africa when we meet her she has lost a child and is geiving in 15th century Ghana as she loses anpother child just after birth . This is a book about shared sorrow and can you hold the past of someone with the same name it is a richly weaved novel that sees uis next in Victorian London and Ada Lovelace (Stranger this is the second novel this year she has cropped up in as a character in Thread Ripper) with nan imagined relationship; with Dickens then we are in another Ada a Polish woman now but is it the same soul and she is trying to get by in a Nazi death camp.what would this Ada do to get by !! the story seems to circle in on itself and we have a Ghanian Ada in modern day Berlin on the hunt for a roof over her head. The four womans stories twist and turn through out the book so we have a book like a escher painting as we go across the centuries and coninents to see each ada in there time and how it has a ripple effect on each other!

Lizzie had looked away because she was not quite sure of the answer herself. She had no idea that I was calling her. In the end, she attributed her disturbance to the fact that – despite it all – she still worried about her mistress.

Should Mr Dickens yet be present when Lord King arrived, Lizzie could not imagine that Lady Ada would get out of the ensuing confrontation unscathed.

In victorian London Ada Lovelace and DIckens meet ?

This is a wonderfully playful book with narrative and linear structure as it breaks them up as I say iot is like an Escher painting as no matter what time it is the woman seem to be in the same holwe and have the saeme issues of sex, race and postion in the world . WHat is even more impressive such a cimpolex beast has been brought out by a writer in a second languane . But part of me wonders does it work better like that written in German for Sharon as a writer. Just imagine for a moment if Toni  morrison and WG sebald had a bastard child this would be the book she would write.No doubt as  it mixes thoughts about  places and race history and also how it cvan sometimes coil on itself remember Sebalds books twisted one way and then another and Morrison alway showed how important race can be in peoples lifes. so what we have is an epic book with four woman at its heart. Showinfg even thou time has moved that one soul maybe can repeat the same things loss of a child, love, Just serving via sex and then having a home those basic human needs and rights through the ages. Have you read any of Sharons books? Or any writers that have written books in two languages ?

WEinstons score – + A – This is a writer to watch a strong voice and not afraid to take risks with her writing and brings them of in stunning style !!

That was the June 2023 lets look back

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  1. The Atom Station by Halldor Laxness
  2. While we were dreaming by Clemens Meyer
  3. In the Belly of the Queen by Karosh Taha
  4. Brendals Fantasy by Gunther Freitag 
  5. The Widow Couderc by Georges Simenon 
  6. The Boarding House by Piotr Paziniski
  7. Nightwalking BY John Lewis stempel 
  8. Azúcar by Nii Ayikwei Parkes 
  9. The Strangers by Jon Bilbao

I felt I was back on track blogging, is I had managed 9 reviews in the last month. I started in Iceland and a political satire told by a made in the minister’s house. Then we have a group of lads growing up in post-unification Germany a thinly veiled piece of Autofiction of the writer’s years growing up. Then we have a pair of stories telling the outcome of a group of Kurdish refugees when one hits another, causing waves we have two narratives from this event. Then a dying man went to Northern Italy to stage a show. A widow lets a man into her house. What will happen when he meets her kids !! Then a man travels to visit the boarding house his grandmother lived in with fellow holocaust survivors. The ghost of the memories lingers in the air. Then four seasons of walking through the night and what you see. Then an imagined Caribbean country has issues when its sweetened rice crop begins to fail, and a couple that met years ago reconnect. When a couple wintering at the coast as UFO appears an unknown family? We went through 8 countries, a number of genres and one new publisher.

Book of the month

I had some great reads this month, but this grabbed me and was the one I had hoped would win the Booker International. It is a great coming of age for a group of hard living working class lads.

The halfway mark

A lot of you tubers have a half check-in. Well, here is mine. I have reviewed 43 books on the blog. I have read 58 books this year, Goodreads tells me. I had set 125 for the year and think I will hit that in my head. I want to review 100 books here if not a few more. I had added up and the country counts for the blog is at 116. Another plan is to get to 120 by the end of the year.

The book so far – while we were dreaming by Clemens Meyer

Discovery of the Year – all the devils are here by David Seabrook; a repeat of backlisted put me on to this gem.

A new writer to me – well not a new writer but I have read one and am finishing another by Javier Marias. I had read him before, but this year I finally got him as a writer which is great. I have a lot by him to read.

looking forward to The new Mathias Enard sound simply mad, then I have ordered the second book by Olga Ravn, and there is the two Peter Nadas books coming out.

Non-book events last month-

We finished a small light, and then we started to watch Archive 81, a horror series on Netflix from a podcast about a woman and a strange building in New York. I’ve been watching the two Denise Mina adaptions that BBC brought it a few years ago.

The month ahead

I am in Scotland for a family funeral the first week in July so I may not get to blog much that week, but I will try. I have a number of books on the go at the moment A long Hebrew classic I am midway through, a short German Satire and then Berta Isla. I have after this a plan to read a Nyrb classic and an Archipelago book not sure which I do yet I have so many on my shelves, and I plan to read one a month for the rest of the year. I am always inspired by the like of `Trevor at Mookse and the guys behind the unburied books podcast to read some more from these publishers but as ever I am a reader in the wind so plans can change just like the wind!

What has your month been like?