Tag: Charco press

On Earth as it is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia

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On Earth as it is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia

Brazilian fiction

Original title – Assim na Terra como embaixo da Terra

Translator – PAdma Viswanathan

Source – personal copy

I have a subscription to Charco Press, but to be honest, I have had the books arriving and thinking I’ll get to that one a few days down the line, and not getting to them. So, as I needed a very short book while waiting, I picked this up as it was 100 pages long and finished it in two sittings. I just got drawn into this dark tale. Ana Paula Maira is both a novelist and a screenwriter. I think you can feel the cinematic nature of the book, and the way the characters interact would make for a great film. She has been said to be a fan of Quentin Tartatino and Sergio Leone. Both of which I could see in this book af a remote Brazilian prison colony gone rogue.

Taborda separates the hide from the bone and hangs the skin from a tree branch. He cleans out the boar’s head, skilled at the job. The stench around him means only flies come near the bloody scraps. With a small knife, he scrapes off any flesh still sticking to the bone, drying sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. It pleases him to see a pile of shredded flesh beside his leg. Getting up, he takes the skull and a shovel and heads towards the anthill behind the central pavilion. Hundreds of ants emerge as he deftly digs a hole in the earth and places the boar’s skull inside. He shovels earth back on top of it and hurries away, shaking his legs and stomping his feet.

In two months, the ants, eating day and night, will have stripped the skull entirely of any flesh not removed by hand. He picks up the hide from where it hung on the tree branch and takes it to an abandoned room, used in the past for hay storage, to cure it with rock salt.

One of the animals hunted and how they kill and prepare it

The book is set in the remote wilderness, where indians used to live, in a colony prison, far away from everywhere. As we are there, it seems it has been completely forgotten. We see the cruelty of the prison a mad Melquiades is the warden, a man in love with Hunting. It is just the local animals he wants to hunt, as once a year, he hunts the prisoners, as he lets them try to capture them, echoes of the hunting of slaves in Africa when they escaped. Then we have the inmates, most nameless, but there are some of those who have been there for years and have served the wardens’ moonlight hunts many a time. Valdenio, A man who for years was beaten and broken and walks with a limp for the years it took him to get used to prison life. Then, Bronco Gil, a hitman who turned on the people who hired him to kill a mayor, was the only one who ended up in jail, a killer who has killed since then and lives through the brutal prison on his wits. A novella of a cruel world where death is just around the corner, and the guards are ruthless, the environment is brutal, and the fellow prisoners are brutal. A glimpse of humanity is slim here. But this is a dark tale of being hunted, historical darkness that is the history of death from the indians that lived there through slavery.

Bronco Gil’s killed various kinds of men and women, but he’s only serving time for one crime: the murder of a small-town mayor. It was good money, but he ended up getting caught. The guy who hired him didn’t give Bronco the protection he should have. Anyway, Bronco squealed, told them everything he knew. He took five other people down with him.

‘So what about you, Indian, what are you in for?’

asked the prisoner at the end of his own story.

‘Killing a mayor, he replied, terse.

‘Oof, killing a mayor is complicated. Pain in the ass?

‘Sure is.’

“Was it a hit?’

“Yep.’

Bronco Gil one of the prisoners

I loved this book; it is brutal and feels like a film when you read it well. It did for me. The mad warden and his guards could have come from a Tarantino film, and the prisoners were the jungle version of Leone desperados battered by their environment.  Another book I kept thinking of is Lord of the Flies it has that same place gone slightly mad if it were adults and not kids left to go feral. I think it also has a lot of nods to the place it has set the ghost of the jungle, be it Indian or Slaves that all died there as well, are echoes in the violence of the present, the way they are hunted by the warden in the moonlight hunts like the slaves hunted down when they had escaped in the previous century. Do you have a favourite book set in a prison ?

 

Tidal Waters by Velia Vidal

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Tidal Waters by Velia Vidal

Columbian fiction

Original title – Aguas de estuario

Translator Annie McDermott

Source – subscription edition

For the last few years, I have been adding subscriptions as I get sent fewer books than I once did shame, as I only review books in translation. But my Charco subscription is one I wanted to do. They have brought out so many good books as I have 1500 reviews on the blog over the years I have been blogging I have seen the changes and how publishers like Charco have changed the horizons of what is read from Latin America, I had read a few writers from Columbia, but they were all male and none of them were writers of Colour. So when I saw this was one of the first books from an African American writer and a female writer, I knew it was one I had to read. I love her story. She had been a successful person, a TV presenter in Medina, when the chance came, and she took it to go back to her small home town, as she says, where the Pacific meets the Caribbean. Work against the local tide to get youngsters reading in the poorest communities. We all know the power of books.

What are you trying to do? Take up what little space in my heart wasn’t already yours?

Well, you’ve succeeded. You’ve filled my whole heart, you’ve won it all, by going out of your way to help us take Dayana to Medellín for her birthday. I’ve learned here that a lot of things that many people find quite ordinary, for others are a great gift. Ana wanted her daughter to take a plane for the first time, to see a city with her own eyes. You and various other friends made it possible.

The gift might seem to have been for other people, but deep down it was a great gift to me. Knowing I can count on you, knowing I can count on so many friends who have put themselves, their families and their resources at my disposal to help make this dream come true.

Did you know you’re all telling me you love me very much?

A sea of thanks.

Kisses and hugs,

Vel

One of her letter show her vibrant mood in some of the letters

The book is a novel form of letters from a fictional version of Velia writing to a friend about the time she left Medina and took the job Founding Motete her project in the Choco region, among the poorest of the five places she tries to shine a light with books and literature. Like her love of the ocean, her fluid letters see a woman battling but, as she does, has a huge sexual awakening by returning to her roots. As she pours her heart out in her letters, we never see the answers one imagines, As she deals with those whose life has always just been to work and not be touched by the culture, she struggles but carries on and finally grasps the minds of those kids she wants to bring literature to a melting pot of races and a place that has rural, sea rivers and hard-working folk but there is always the sea to wash her worries away.

Doing the accounts, paying the accountant, planning the projects, talking to other organisations, managing my time, not letting go of the chances to read or write. Sometimes I get scared. Then I remember that the best decision I’ve ever made was coming to Chocó and being able to see the children smile when we get off the bus with a bag full of books.

I remember the mothers who come over and hug me in the street, or the little hands that high-five me from a passing moped after someone aboard shouts,

‘See you, Seño Velia!’

How she touches those via her work in the project

I was touched by this epistolary work by a writer who shines a light on the struggles to bring the arts to those who often get missed. She was on a list of the 200 most powerful women on the BBC website and also took part in an essay collection in conjunction with the British Museum about artefacts from Latin America in their collection, I must try and get hold of this book at some point. This is a woman rediscovering her joy and herself both in her work and her personal life as she comes on fire in the letters it has a feel of hope and sorrow it covers a range of emotions and, like a lot of books, I have read from Charco, they have this habit of picking a small epic book that are more than the page count. Books that break barriers break new ground for the reader of their books. It is fair to say I like this book. This is one you just need to read. Have you read many female writers from Latin America and many writers of colour from Latin America?

Winston’s score – +A is one of the best epistolary books I have read.

Last Date in El Zapotal by Mateo Garcia Elizondo

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Last Date in El Zapotal by Mateo Garcia Elizondo

Mexican fiction

Original title – Una Cita con la Lady

Translator – Robin Myers

Source  – subscription edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited in Prisma app with Watercolor

Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

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Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

Argentine fiction

0riginal title – Por Que Volvías Cada Verano

Translator Maureen Shaughnessy

Source – Personal copyStrange, we had our annual chat on the shadow jury today about the booker international longlist books. I hadn’t noticed this was on the list of books eligible for this year’s prize. We had discussed the undercurrent theme of most of the books being auto =fiction, so when I read this yesterday, I was struck by why this piece of autofiction, although a short book is powerful it deals with an incident in the writer’s own life when she visits her uncle and he sexual assault her for several summers. When Belen had a happy childhood until the summers, she visited her uncles in her early teens. Her mother was a journalist, and she followed suit. In her early twenties, she decided to confront the past and go to the police to make a complaint about her uncle. This is a fictional version of the following events. How did the family react to what she had said?

My mother had gone to work that morning. She almost always took the bus at noon, but that day the magazine offices were closing early and my brother was at work. So I was alone, lying in my single bed in my room with pink walls, wearing the summer pyjamas my godmother had given me for my fifteenth birthday: a pair of turquoise shorts that hung low on my hips and a black tank top printed with dancing butterflies on the chest.

He walked into the apartment with a smile on his face, still wearing his uniform. I had forgotten what it was like to have to untie his boots. He set his gun down on top of the dining room cabinet, up high where it was almost out of view, and went to my brother’s room to get undressed. He wanted a quick shower before heading out on the road. I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

He comes to the house when she is young.

The book is made up of a ix of legal documents that follow the path she made through the justice system. Her uncle was a high-ranking police officer, which made it hard for her to come forward. The book opens with ther complaint to the police about his attacks over those summers to her when he put his fingers in her. She told the story as it happened, and then we had detailed reactions and nameless statements from those around BELEN about what happened. Then, we see all those involved give statements about the legal system. we get the disbelief that follows her opening up about what her uncles did over that summer and how she fights for Justice. This is one woman’s journey for justice and the truth to come out,

Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Juan. l’s a real

pleasure to meet you, you re much taller in person. Your mum told me a little bit about what happened. You’re really brave, you know that? That son of a bitch is going to jail. How could he go and screw up your life like this?

Just look at you, you’re a wreck. Don’t worry, he’s going to pay.

Come here, sit down. Tell me more about it. How did it start? Your mum told me that you were thirteen, but we’re better off saying you were eleven. That’s how things go with the law. See, you have to exaggerate a little.

To all effects, it’s the same, right? What difference does it make? One year more, one year less? He raped you either way. Ah, no. That’s right, he didn’t rape you. Then, why are you here? What was your name? Oh, right. It was almost rape. Close, but no cigar. Bloody hell. We would have been better off. This way, our case is screwed. Judges are more sympathetic to rape victims, the younger the better. With just some fingers or groping, I doubt they’ll give him more than probation. But, oh well, we’ll get something.

Meeting one of her legal team early on in the book

It is hard not to lump this in with the #METOO movement. Nut, for me, this has more power studies show how little women actually follow through rape or sexual abuse cases. This is a powerful tale of one woman’s search for justice. I am shocked this passed the judge by as it is a powerful novella it has a lot of white space in it so it is shorter than the 160 pages it takes up the patchwork nature of the book and builds up layer on a layer as everyone has say and she tells how her uncle slips his fingers in her regularly every summer when she went to live with her aunt and uncle in law in her aunts home. Tjhis capture the aftermath of accusing a family member. The courage that one act takes but then follows it through so she gets the justice she deserves. Have you read this book? Is it a powerful piece of autofiction that missed the longlist this year? I love how Charco is bringing these strong female voices out there. Have you read this book or another book maybe inspired by the #METOO movement

Winston score – A powerful personal story of one woman’s journey for justice against her uncle

 

A little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro

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A little luck by Claudia Piñeiro

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Una suerte pequeña”

Translator – Frances Riddle

I’ve held a few books back so over the next week or so I can do a few books I think may be on the Bookkr international longlist whether they have been from a writer that has been on the list before like this book or they just struck me as a book that may make the list I will then near the longlist announcement do my own pick of the books I feel may make the longlist. Before I take uo shadow jury duty yet again it is such an annual thing now I look forward to it. I am amazed at how much it has grown since the old IFFP prize days and how much more notice is taken of books in translation these last couple of years. Any way we have a writer here who, in the last few years since she moved publishers, is viewed differently. I always considered her a crime writer, but she is so much more about family loss, guilt, secrets, and so much more. I hope it gets longlisted, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see another from Charco make the longlist.

The Garlik Institute, the school I work for, is prestigious and well-known not only in Boston but across the United States and Latin America. This prestige is based, above all, on the fact that students who graduate from our school can get into the best universities in the United States and Europe without much difficulty. It has one of the highest rates of acceptance to Ivy League colleges. This is thanks to the method Robert developed to prepare his students for success in college, a method that made him famous in the world of education. There was a time in which every single week he was giving a conference to explain his method to different schools around the country – his country, the United States. And for years, Robert, who was the director of the Garlik Institute until the illness kept him from getting out of bed, arranged educational cooperation agreements so that other schools, in other parts of the world,

Robert took her under his wing but in a way he also gave her the chance to return years later

The book follows Mary Lohan from Boston to take up a post-teaching in Argentina. But as the book progresses, We gather she has used this chance to go back into her past when she wasn’t Mary but Maria and had a husband and a different life. So, as she settles into her old neighbourhood with a mission in mind, she sees faces from her past. This book is about her and how she ended up in Boston. She meets Robert, and they talk books and writers but also, in doing so, about the hidden guilt in some of these writers, and this is what she has returned for she escaped catching the first plane out of the place and was lucky the first person she met was Robert and rebuilt a life. But there was something important she had left behind those twenty years earlier, and now she is returning for it. What happens when one’s past and present crash into one another ?

The barrier arm was down. She stopped, behind two other cars. The alarm bell rang out through the afternoon silence. The red lights below the railway crossing sign blinked off and on. The lowered arm, the alarm bell, and the red lights all indicated that a train was coming. But there was no train. Two, five, eight minutes and still no train in sight. In the back seat, the kids were singing a song they’d learned earlier that afternoon in school. ‘Incy Wincy spider went up the water spout. The children had been singing for so long that she’d tuned them out and their song did not disrupt the exterior silence of the afternoon.

The incy wincy spider crops up as a motif in the book

 

I am teasing here a lot. I think this book needs a little head back, and I am usually a big gossip and will let go of important bits, so I’ve tried to hold back here . Instead, like Elena knows, Piñeiro is the mistress of letting a story flow, but she also, like a good Burlesque dancer, reveals just enough to pique your interest in the story. It is also a classic return to an old-life tale. This is something many people imagine doing, but doing it like Mary/Maria has is hard, and the scars of the past leak into the present so much. This is why I feel it may make the longlist: it is just how well-paced it is, and sometimes a good-paced book that draws you in can be a refreshing change from something that can sometimes fry your brain. This is one for readers who like books from the likes of Highsmith or even a fellow Argentine writer like ELoy Martinez, his books can be well-paced.

Winston Score – B solid page turner from a writer I’d love to read more from,

 

Not A River by Selva Almada

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Not A river by Selva Almada

Argentine fiction

Original title – No es un río

Translator – Annie McDermott

Source – Personal copy

I decided to take a Charco subscription out just to get their books this year; I have been a fan of them, and they have brought us some great books from Latin America. This happens to be the last in a loose trilogy of books around masculinity by the Argentina writer Selva Almada. This is the first book I will have reviewed by her. But it seemed incredible to have her as the 50th Book from Argentina. I will have checked on the blog. Selva Almada studies social communication and has been writing for 25 years. When her first short stories appeared, she was acclaimed as one of the leading female voices from Argentina. She has also written nonfiction and runs literary workshops. Anyway, when I read this about three men going on a fishing trip, I immediately thought of Craver’s short story So Much Water So Close to Home which is part of his shortcuts collection. Where so fishermen find a dead body. But this is a darker tale.

Just then he hears the engine and the lapping of waves. He moves aside, begins swimming to shore. The boat goes by, bounding over the water, ripping it in two like a rotten old rag. Attached to the back of the boat, a girl in a bikini is water-skiing. The boat swerves sharply and the girl is thrown in the water. From a distance, Enero sees her head emerge, her long hair plastered to her scalp.

He thinks of the Drowner.

Gets out.

El Negro and Tilo are standing on the shore, arms folded, following the boat with their eyes.

Youngsters making a racket.

Says El Negro

The three men notice women so quickly

 

The story is of three men going on a fishing trip a few years after an earlier where the three men there were all the same age and friends, Enero, eEl Negro and Eusebio, head out on the earlier trip and then when they got back Eusebio had died and the two men now years later meet and have decided to take the son of the late friend on this same trip down the river. They are setting off to the same place where Tilo’s Father had died, and as they do, they take a gun and shoot a stingray. This is an odd way to fish, but it did remind me of a story my dad told me of how the locals used to feel in Donegal, where they used to stay every summer as kids, which involved explosives and catching the fish that had died in a net. But they then hang the stingray. This is almost like a sacrifice or such in a way, but when it is seen by a local, he is highly offended. This also leads to the three men meeting the daughter of this villager, and their story mixes with the three men and the past. These are back countrymen. Violent, yes, but that is their nature. In a way, it is a harsh world, and this is a story of fathers, sons, daughters, men, and all that can bring the older lust after the young village girls that will always cause trouble. Then, there is what happened on the earlier trip in the background.

He’d known El Negro since forever, but Eusebio had moved to their part of town not so long ago. That year, after the July vacation, he started at the school.

The family had come to live in the grandma’s house after the old lady died. Apparently they’d not been on good terms, which was why they’d never visited before.Their arrival didn’t go down well with the neighbours.Some folks said Eusebio’s dad had done time and the old lady had never forgiven him. And that Eusebio’s mother saw men for money.

The three men had been close but Enero and El Negro had been close for so long.

This is a powerful book of secrets of past lives, violent worlds and violent men and what happens when you do something that offends the locals and the mysteries of that earlier trip. The local girls aren’t all they seem, and this is where we may sort of drift into a dark magic realism in this book. This is a Powerful book with echoes of classics like Faulkner and Evening Hemingway, both written about men in a male world. But she has made this a book about how toxic men can be. Also, the way the men act toward the girls is another. I will go back to the other books by Almada in the next 50 books. But this is fitting for the 50th book from a country I love to read books from and shows how in the last 14 years since this blog has started much has changed when it was almost all male writers from Argentina I could read but we have so many great female voices these days but also so many more voices to read from there. Have you read this book or any from the trilogy ? or have a favourite book from Argentina.

The Delivery by Margarita Garcia Robayo

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The Delivery by Margarita Garcia Robayo

Columbian fiction

Original title – La Encomienda

Translator – Megan McDowell

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to get sent this by Charco press there have been bring some tremendous Latin American fiction the last few years and this is the second book I have read by the Columbian writer Margarita Garcia Robayo I read Holiday heart and loved it. She has written for a couple of newspapers in Columbia and Argentina she was also director of the Tomas Eloy Martinez Foundation (A writer I loved when he was alive). She has written four novels and number of short story collections. I read this and it remind me of a song I loved by Velvet Underground The Gift saw a boyfriend decided aft er a long sepration and longing to be with his girlfriend post himself to her. This ism a story about a woman that has escpaed her past and she thought her mother as well.

A few years ago, I went back to my country to renew my passport. My sister invited me to stay at her house with her family. Since she and her husband worked and the kid – back then it was just the one – went to day care, I was home alone a lot. They gave me my nephew’s room, and I slept in a low little bed with Power Rangers sheets, and I had to bend over a little to look at myself in the closet mirror. Then I would go to the dining room, make some tea and sit down to write. Sometimes I took breaks to nose around. I didn’t find much that was remarkable; my sister is an obvious person. Her only secret was a photograph of our father hidden in her closet. I’d seen that photo before – when I moved away from the country, she told me I could take it if I wanted.’No, thanks, you’ll take better care of it, I told her. So why was it a secret, then?

She had come home once but it felt odd.

 

The delivery has a narrator  that tells us early on that she had left her homeland. never mention where  but a latin american country .She had tired to be a writer and failed then left snd she has a freelance job currently working ion a piece about a cow .it isn’t what she dreamed for her life and this is ashown in her attitude to others around her. But she is settled but her life is maybe empty and there is a feeling of a woman hs broken free but then hit a wall on whart to do. Her only connection to the past life is a conversation via the internet and letters with her sister. But when she  learns her sister is off for a long break and days after there is a large box delievered to her house she leaes this box eventually bring it in and opening it up and she discovers it has her mother. Now this is a mother that is one of those overbearing take charge types it immediately becomes so clear why she had to get so far away from her as she takes over the runnning of the house. As the past and present collitde this is a book that follows a few days after shegets the parcel and the finds out it had her mother in it and then facing ones own past and the mistakes that happened.

‘It was delivered almost two days ago, and it’s still sitting out here?’

The weight of the box is too much for me.

“Can you help me, Máximo, please? It’s really heavy.

Máximo snorts. He slides in on one side between the box and the wall and grabs it long-ways with his arms outstretched. He says ‘excuse me’ but still pushes me with his body, which is bulky like a bulldozer, and he half-drags, half-lifts the box inside and drops it onto the sofa, sideways.

What is this?’ I ask.

Máximo snorts again. He takes a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and wipes his sweaty face. He mutters on his way out and slams the door behind him.

The box waited days how was the mother still alive ? I do wonder this

I said it vaguely remind me of the giftas is the mother there I asked my self left for days in the box then she appears ? I do wonder if that is what happens or if ther fact her sister is going on a cruise made her think this is what may happen. I also thought of the end of the The gift by Velvet Underground were the boyfriend is stabbed is this what hapened here it isn’t mentioned but I just wonder is the mother there or her spirit at times. In a sort of surreal idea not unlike FIaght club where the Brad Pitt character is just imagined and maybe she needed a character and that character is her mother as she is maybe smothering and as I said one of these take over mothers.For me a book about families but also about the sort of cautionary tale of how when we get to the othe side of the fence irt isn’t always as green as it seemed when we were at home. I liked this book it isabout family and also about loneliness and loss.

Winstons score – A solid tale of a daughter that tried to escape her mother and maybe lost something more.

The remains by Margo Glantz

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The remains by Margo Glantz

Mexican fiction

Original title – EL rastro

Translator – Ellen Jones

Source – Personal copy

I brought this in my recent trip to Fife I have been a huge fan of Church Press which seems to get its as readers the cream of  Latin American literature. SO I always look for them when I am in a shop I know will have some books from them Like Toppings in Saint Andrews does. I brought it forward fro this month as it was on my trolley with all the possible books for this month. I had seen a review mention Sebald and Ducks Newberryport, both books I loved, and also the mention of Glenn Gould, of course, made me think of Thomas Bernhard. Now Margo Glantz is a perfect fit for Church Press given what they had done for Claudia Pinerio. Glantz is in her nineties and has had a couple of books translated into English yet is huge in Mexico and Spain but she has never really set the English-speaking world on FIRE. I WAIT THE DAY A Lesser known writer in English wins the Nobel like MODIANO ( I struggled to get anything before his win I did and reviewed it|) Glantz maybe isn’t up in the Nobel ranks I don’t know enough to know if she would be any way I was captivated to read a book from a writer virtually unknown in English.

My name is Nora Garcia.It’s been years since I last came to the village: I park my car, then go shyly, warily, up to the front door and into the house. I barely recognise it, it’s changed, and not for the better, the garden’s overgrown, the plants are dry, the grass is yellowing, there are patches of bare earth where before there were flowering shrubs. Down in the ravine – flame trees, trees with wide canopies. The place is full and I almost lose my nerve, my heart shrinking: there are a few people I know, no one I’m especially fond of, and perhaps others I’ve forgotten: it’s been a long time.

The opening as she returns to nhis childhood village

The book has a stream-of-consciousness style. We follow a widow at a wake a celebration of his life for her Husband. Juan, he was a pianist-composer and a bit of a lad. The narrative follows his wife, Nora, as she talks to those that knew him and she drifts between the present and their long life together as in Proust moments that send her back to little snippets of her and Juans life. She is back there in her and Juan’s life. From the mildew smell around his coffin that reminds her of him. To talk to his friends about remembering him.The interactions they all had, the music they all lovcd etc. Then there are mentions of Glenn Gould with a classical pianist. It is hard to not mention him and how he played discussions around his performances and records. His heart surgery mixes as the friends and people they knew to remember Juan and her relationships.

I’m murmuring to myself (like Glenn Gould while he recorded the Goldberg Variations in the CBC studios), I cannot, cannot shake off that flowery scent, but mainly the smell of mildew: it surrounds me like a halo, like the halos around the heads of saints in paintings and statues.

I’ve listened to so much music the last few days, these terrible last days of the year, and I’ve cried so many painful, bitter tears, (black tears),I’ve cried so much while listening to music that I can’t listen any more, I can’t bearit, I’m full to the brim with it

Music can touch and make us rememebr a moment a look , a touch , a feeling !

 

This book is about grief but also about what we remember when that person is gone. Those Proustian things smell a tune, a place are the hooks we hang memories on. This is our closet of life the many coats a person wears over their lives together. This is a book that remembers a loved one. I love the bit that mentions Thomas Bernhard’s book about Glenn Gould, which they didn’t really get on with i, I loved that book, but as a musician, I could see why. This is about the essence of a person I think back on a book like Edouard Leve’s books that were about what made him at its heart, the art and likes. This is a book about what makes us look back. Another book I was reminded of was Naja Marie Aidt’s book about her son’s sudden death, which also looked at how we deal with Greif I loved this book it was an afternoon in Nora’s life but a lifetime in her and Juan’s world. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – A – This is a writer I’d love to read more from!

 

Stu’s year of Books winstonsdad best of 2021

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I am late to the mark here with my best-of list basically I’ve been reading other Blog and Vlogs best-of list for the last year and completely missed that I had not done my own hitting the ground review and reading-wise it isn’t till now I have decided to go back over the last year and pick those books that have stuck with me. Now this may be a different set of books from highlights I have pick of the months of last year as I feel books change after we read them some grow some just stay others just wilt away. So I am not a huge stats person to now I am moving forward using Goodreads a lot more as a way to track my reading and also gain some end of year stats. I reviewed 91 books from 30 countries. I had want to read more African books last year I had read a few more but there is room for a couple more this year. I read books from North and south America, Africa , Europe and Asia but missed books from Oceania and the Pacific which I need to fix this year.any way here are my books of the year I am doing them in the order I read them in the year.

At night all blood is black by David Diop

This tale of two African soldiers in the trenches a story that hasn’t been talked about a lot it follows what happens when your best friend is shot and the enemy is there and you have to get revenge.

30th April 1945 by Alexangder Kluge

Anyone that has followed this blog in the last couple of years will know a writer I am championing and absolutely love is Alexander Kluge here with have vignettes fact and fiction that circle the world on the day that is near the end of world war two.  His books are rabbitholes for the mind it is hard not to pick the other book by him I read but I will resist anyway go out pick him up !!

Tower by Bae Myung- Hoon

I read a hell of a lot more Korean books this year than I have previously and this was one that really stuck with me a futuristic tower building a dystopic world of interlinking stories that in place are funny.

A musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

I’m seeing a theme her of interlinking stories in the book here is another collection that has music at its heart and a diving board for the tales with like Kluge a mix of fact and fiction I loved his previous book I think he is my favourite Latin American writer at the moment

In memory of memory by Maria Steponova

Oh well, another book that drifts as she goes through her grand flat she looks back on her own families history and her homelands at the same time a book that is in that grey area between fiction and non-fiction in a way.

Elegy for Joseph Cornell by Maria Negroni

Oh another collection here of prose and poetry piece that area a bio and tribute to the artist Joesph Cornell a lost gem from Dalkey a man that like to wander his home city of New york

The cheap eaters by Thomas Bernhard

A new translation of one of his lesser-known books a man is drawn onto a group of men that eat the cheapest meals every day in a government-run restaurant in Vienna. I am a long time Bernhard fan and it is always great to add another title to the list of books I have reviewed by him.

The return of Caravels by Antonio Lobo Antunes

Like Bernhard Antunes is a writer I love and this a bok that mix the past and those seafarers returning to Modern Lisbon much to there horror a writer that always deals with his own countries past so well and openly.

To see out the night by David Clerson

A writer whose novel I loved returns with a collection of short stories, I said in the review I am not a short story fan well going through this years choice I think I am a bigger fan than I think anyway QC have been brought use some great books from Quebec her we have people turning to great apes and secret cities under cities.

Special Needs by Lada Vukic

As many of you may know I work on a ward caring and helping get better people with Learning disabilities that are in crisis so I was wary of this book as it is hard to capture that voice of someone with learning disabilities without it seeming wrong but for me this is the best such voice I have read it is such a voice of someone with Autisms view of the world.

 

3 Minutes and 53 Seconds by Branko Prlja

A series of vignettes form a bildungsroman using the writers love of music and the songs for each year I like this as a lot of the songs I knew some I loved other I didn’t but it was a great way to show the upheaval in the  Balkans in his teen years having to move to a new city and his use of music to convey that another underrated gem from Dalkey

Three Bedrooms in Manhatten by Georges Simenon

I have been working through the Penguin books as they have brought out a lot of his books in New translations here is a book from his time in the US capturing those dark post-war years before the shining fifties to lost souls in a big city.

Well there they are my twelve books of the year as ever I feel I am on my own journey in books I love books that have interlink stories of vignettes around themes and also champing small presses and writers I have loved for a long time. What were your books of the year where did your journey take you last year did our paths cross?

 

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro

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Elena Knows by Claudia  Piñeiro

Argentinean crime fiction

Original title – Elena sabe

Translator – Francis Riddle

Source – Review copy

I have often looked at books by the Argentina writer Claudia Piñeiro her books were previously brought out by Bitter Lemon press I have one on my shelves All yours which I have had on my shelves for a couple of years but when this arrived from Charco Press a publisher whose books over recent years.  I have really enjoyed it. The new book also mentions she is one of the most translated writers from Argentina and also has won awards for crime and lit fiction.  I decided it was time to read a book by her and with the mention of Thomas Bernhard on the back of the cover and a quote from his book Gargoyles at the start I knew this was the right book to start. The book is set over the course of one day as a mother tries to find out what happened to her daughter.

The trick is to lift up the right foot, just a few centimetres off the floor, move it forward through the air, just enough to get oast the left, and when it gets as far as it can go, lower it. That’s all it is Elena thinks. But she think this, and even though her brain orders the movement, her right foor dosen’t move forward through the air. It does not lower back down. It’s so simple. Nut it doesn’t do it So Elena wits and waits. In her kitchen. She has to take the train into the city at ten O’clock; the one after that , the eleeven O’clock, won’t do because she took the pill at nine.

She captures Elena’s struggle to move through her Parkinson’s

Elena is in her sixties and has Parkinson’s the book follows the day. The book follows her medication regime so we see how the symptoms of the disease mean this day will be a real ordeal for her so as the tablets help ease the pain she has she heads out across the city.As Elena does this she fills in the parts of Elena’s life. She has set out to find out what happened to her daughter Rita a devout churchgoer that was found hanging in the church she used to go to but it had been stormy and raining that day and she never went in storms as she had a phobia of lightening These and other things around her daughters’ death that aren’t just right. And she feels the police who opened and closed the case quickly saying it was suicide. She found out that her daughter had a connection to a woman Isobel a friend of the two of them whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years and this is what the day is about to find out what she had to do with Isobel and can she find some more out about Rita. Will it answer the questions she had? will she learn more and why did Rita end up at the church?

From the start Father juan was one of the least willing to talk about it, repeatedly deflecting Inspector Avellenda’s attempts to meet with him. Either you’re not insistent enough on Father Juan takes you for an Idiot, Inspector You’re not saying I should add him to the list of suspects are you Elena ? i already told you, you have the obligation to investigate all possible theroies Elena waited for the right time,, not too close to the daily masses, or the hours reserved for confessions, or to siesta.

Such a tight window to talk with dfather Juan what had the church to do with Rita’s death ?

This is the afterword is an attempt to relaunch Piñeiro as a more lit writer which this book is at its heart is a question that are larger than Rita death of the Church and the country the book was written just as the laws around Abortion changed in Argentina when the book came out in 2007  maybe that was something to do with it but you need to read the bok=ok. Know the question of Bernhard it is mention there is a style of writing like his and there is Elena journey has pacing like a Bernhard novel I think of something like his book which also takes place over a period of time and there is also a bitterness driving Elena to discover the truth of what happened. As her books from what I read have a crime element but also a large dollop of woman and Issues and social Issues. I will be reading her other book for next year’s Spanish lit month as her is a perfect crossover for both the second month of Spanish lit month and Woman in Translation month. Have you read her other books ?

Winstons score – B+ A great intro to a new writer to the blog

 

Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París

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Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París

Mexician Fiction

Original title – El nervio principal

Translator – Christina MacSweeney

Source – personal copy

I’m rather late starting this month’s Spanish lit month well I have started with another Charco press book before I get to the week one book of a perfect cemetery. I have both the books that have been translated by Daniel Saldaña París into English which is the reason I decided it was time to read one of them. He has been in the list of the best Mexican writers that came out in 2017 and the Bogota 39 list of the best writers under forty from Latin America. He started with three poetry collections and then has written four novels two of which have been translated into English. This book follows one man looking back on his childhood as he is laid confined to a bed.

Teresa walked out one Tuesday around midday. I can’t remember exactly which month, but it must have been either the end of July or the beginning of August , because ,y siter and I were still on H=holiday. I always hated being left in the care of Mariana, who systematically ignored me for the whole day, barricaded in her bedroom with the music playing at a volume that even to me a boy of ten, seemed ridiculous. So that Tues, I resented it when, Mumgot up from the table after lunch and announcecd she was going out “look after your brother, Mariana”, she said in a flat voice , that was the way shegenerally spoke, with hardly any intonation, like a computer giving instructions or someone on qutismspectrum(Even mow, when no one else is around, I sometimes imitate her, and it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that writing this is, in some form, an effort to find an echo of that monotone voice in the written world).

The opening lines and his mother walking out in 1994

This is a novel that our unnamed Narrator traces a man’s childhood as he tries to piece together what happened in his youth when his mother Teresa  just left him and his sister and father on a Tuesday. As our narrator tries to piece together the past.why his mother just left to join the Zapatistas and left them with a father who is distant a man that struggles to cope. Our narrator becomes obsessed with origami which he did to occupy time but also made him a quiet boy as his 10-year-old mind fills the gaps, but it also meant he grew into a quiet lonely man. So in the story, as he recalls this we question what we remember as now 32 he is laid in a bed the family bed that his father had passed away from a few years earlier. It is that he is sorting through his family’s papers as he learns some truths that have struck him down. he is unable to get out of bed. So he thinks of the time in 1994 when this all happened. It is a story of growing up with a huge void in one’s life but it also questions how we remember our lives when we are so young what do we recall is it colored by what we read and saw at the time. It is a book about coming of age amidst the chaos that was Mexico at the time when a man that is a reclusive soul looks back at what may be made him that way all the years ago.

My attempts at origami grew worse by the day, or at least that was my impression. Beforethe mastering the crane and the frog, I launched unto more complex figures. The result; unrecognisable lumps of paper that had been folded and unfolded too many times (Pper has that drawback; it’s made to remember all our errors, whether it’s when writing on it, as I do noe, or when folding and unfolding it, as I did then.)

His hobby shuts him of from the world but is maybe the way he remebers the past fold by fold but are they in the right order !

This is one of those books that hasn’t a lot of plot but a lot of how the world was for one small boy as the action flicks between the action of the past and the present it is a  book about what makes our memories of these timelines twist at times as we see how the present can ooze into the past. I enjoyed the pieces where he recalled the world cup in 1994 which I remember as at the time I was living in Germany as was visiting the Uk with my German partner at a time shortly after some of the events in the book when Bulgaria that had earlier played Mexico knocked out the germans. like is origami this is trying to fold the past into a swan or something without missing the folds memories fade and get blend with what we learn after them this is what we learn here. A story of a lonely boy as a lonely man piece together his past.

Winstons score – B A strong story of childhood recalled after the space left by a mother that has gone !

A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

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A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

Argentinean fiction

Orignal title – Una ofrenda musical

Translator – Fionn Petch

Source – Personal copy

When it comes up toward the man booker every year I try to buy a couple of books. That I feel may be on the longlist. This is the first I have brought to read. It is the second book the Charco press has brought out from Luis Sagasti. I was a huge fan of his first book so don’t know why I haven’t got to this sooner but you all know the quandary too many books too little time and I can be such a firefly in my reading habits buzzing brightly from place to place. Sagasti is a teacher now he was a curator at one point as well as a writer and art critic.

The most famous performance of the Variations, a feat not unlike swimming across the magellan Strait, is by the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. In fact, he recorded two; between them stretch twenty-six years in the life of a planet. The first version is as urgent and flamboyant as Baroque music permist, and was taped in 1955, when Gould was just twenty-three years old, The second is a recording made shortly before he died from a stroke at the age of fifty in 1981. For all his ggenius, Gould couldn’t escape the fate of the wise; the slower pace of the later version is that of someone who knows we only leave a circle before taking the first step.

Gould was also used as a character in  a novel by Thomas Bernhard.

I must admit before I review this I am no classical music fan I do have the Goldberg variations I had brought them after I watched the film 32 short films about Glenn Gould a number of years ago. So I was pleased that this book had chosen one of the few pieces of classical music I have to listen to more than once. The book like his earlier book is a collection of interconnection short stories that all interlock like one of those puzzle balls made of wood where they interlock to form a complete the stories range from just a couple of pages to two longer stories. The opening story the main one about the Bach work is about how it came about as a harp piece to ease into sleep the count that was Bach benefactor. This leads into digressions of Glenn Gould the Beatles connections between them both this is a book with no real plot but you can not put it down. Other stories range from a massive organ that sets off an avalanche over the village of HimmelHein. A rift of Silences from Ligeti work through the works that lead up to Cages 4 33 of silence where the silence is always different due to the setting then the lack of silence on the Beatles interlocking back to the other stories.

The funeral March composed for a deaf man , by Alphonse Allais , could well be a forerunner of 4′ 33′, though it is more like a painting than any other art form, as the silences are not even marked on the score. Unlike Cage’s piece, the march was not intended to be performed.

Allaishad created a series of monochromatic works. firsr communion of Anameic girls in the snow of 1883 would appear to predate Malevich’s white squre. But total silence can’t be possible there, not with such a figurative title.

A art piece that was a music core that was similar to Cage’s 4′ 33′

I am a huge fan of most of the books the Charco have brought out. I know I tend to be positive about most of the books I read but this is one of those I put in the class above everything If I did a letter score it would be mostly B’s or C’s for what I read but this is an A+ in the time I have blogged if I get two or three of these a year I am happy this is one of those books that fire the brain makes you root out the album you not listened to for a long while or want to rewatch the film about Gould also I had my Beatles CDs on today. The Bach piece has been in a Bernhard book and The Richard Powers book the Gold Bug Variations. Sagasti’s works are often compared with Sebald or Flights both mentioned in connection to Sagasti. But for me, I was also reminded of the Nocilla trilogy and another Spanish book I read last year Glass eye. Both of which like this mix fiction and history together which for me is a mix I love it’s like a mixtape to get it right takes time and thought to get the right mix of stories is harder than you think. Anyway as I said earlier here we go my first score. Have you read this or any other titles from Charco press that have you enjoyed?

Winstons Score A+

Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo

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Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo

Columbian fiction

Original title – Tiempo muerto

Translator – Charlotte commbe

Source – personal copy

I add a few books to my TBR that I felt maybe in line to make the man booker list that I hadn’t been sent just to get a leg up so here is the second novel to be translated into English by the prize-winning Columbian writer Margarita Garcia Robaye that has been brought out by Charco press that has been bringing out some wonderful books from Latin America the last couple of years. Born in Cartagena on the coast of Columbia she won the prestigious Casa De Las Americas prize for her book worse things. She currently lives in Argentina.

Ar around 5 p.m. he received an email from Gionzalo and Elisa – Gonzaloandelisa@gmail.com- invinviting them over fro a barbecue. They lived nbext door and they saw them often but not particularly close friends. He bumped into Gonzalo most days when they each took out the rubbish to the bim they shared, halway between two houses. The bin was a bit further away, so they walked that stretch together as they discussed the news. usually terrorism, They talked about Isis, Boko haram, Hezbollah and the FARC as of discussing the performance of different soccer teams. He couldn’t recall how this had become their go-to-subject, but they’d kept it up for years, This was handy for Pablo because it allowed them to dance around more delicate subjects such as the fact that Gonzalo, a while back, had stuck his hands up Pablo’s sister’s skirt

There friends afre most latin American but it seems strange that talk could be about anything but Covoid nowdays.

What this book does is dissects a relationship falling apart a marriage dissolving. The heart of the book is a Columbian couple living in the US Pablo and Lucia. Maybe at the heart of what the problem is the way they have adapted to the change of Homeland Pablo is still feeling drawn to his homeland and keeping his identity whereas his with it seems has never really felt at home. They have made a life with their twins but even then Lucia takes the front foot on how the kids are raised. They have split and then Pablo ends up in Hospital with what is called Holiday heart and this it seems is a condition that is caused by over living so when at Christmas people overeat and drink it cause temporary heart issue. Pablo trying to write that epic novel of his homeland whilst his wife writes a piece about their life in the US this is what seems to be the heart of the problem one moving one-way one moving another way. This so the view of both outdated racism that hasn’t changed since their time in the US. Pablo is a man of his homeland he likes to womanize in a way he could have been a character from a Marquez novel. This is an insight into a marriage falling apart bit by bit and looking at how and why?

That night , after they’re all showered and fed, Lucia logs onto Skype and calls Pablo so the kids can say hello. It’s hard to get full sentences put of the children, but they tell him, as best they can about the seaweed, the brunch, their bodies burried in the sand, Then they started yawning and Lucia sends them off to their twin beds, in the room Cindy had decorated with iold stuffed toys she found in the apartment, left over from a previous life.

“They’re shattered” she say. She is sitting at the table. The sounds of the waves drifts through the open balcony door. Pabli is wearing the same dressing gown he had on when she left. She wonders if he even showered

HEart breaking in place I remember my parent divorce diffferent circumstances but the loss of time over the years.

This is an interesting look at how the immigrant life can strain but also changed people over time what has happened is they have moved in two ways Lucia although they live in a sort of Latin American bubble with there friends and family she has settled and maybe it seems never felt settled in her younger life whereas Pablo writing about his home maybe has more of a Columbian heart than a holiday heart as he has left but still lives there in his heart he drinks to much and cheats frequently as his marriage falls apart this is told with an honest eye on events. Has he a real heart problem or is it just the bitter dregs of a marriage? WE see they should be apart but it is the time and the twins that kept them going as an observer those cracks seem so much wider than they would in the bubble of a marriage.  Have you read this book what did you think of it?

Fate by Jorge Consiglio

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Fate by Jorge Consiglio

Argentinian fiction

Original title – Tres Monedas

Translators – Carolina Orloff and Fionn Petch

Source – Personal copy

Another gem from Charco Press. I didn’t get his first book from them Southerly. But ordered this the other week as it appealed. Jorge Consiglio has published four novels as well as Poetry and Short stories. He has won a number of prizes in his native Argentina and in Spain as well.  This is the second of his books to be translated into English. There is a great intro about the book by the writer where he mentions a woman that missed a train that crashed in Buenos Aires a crash in which 51 people died. This leads to a thought about Fate what is our fate and then he said whilst writing the book he was also watching and was drawn into the story of the film “The Third man”.

The Colombian disappeared into the subway Karl walked down Corrientes towards Pueyrredon. He was taller than everyone else. He crossed Uruguay Street and stopped short in front of a bookshop. His eye roved over the window display beofre he carrid on. Marina  Kezelman was turning forty in two weeks and he wanted a gift that would suprise her. They had met in a bar in Madrid a decade before. Everything had happened very quickly. Moved by desire and, above all, an extaggerated sense of honesty, they’d made their decisions.

KArl has no idea of what lies ahead here in his first chapter.

The book is two stories intertwined both are about relationships but one is starting that of Amer an up and coming taxidermist he is in a  therapy group where he falls for the younger than him Clara. This relationship is just beginning, But Clara is the one person in the book that is just told through the eyes of another Amer he has a view of her and you hope that the real Clara is near that or will Fate interrupt them ! then we have a relationship at the other end of the spectrum and that is  Karl an Oboist and his meteorologist wife Marina we meet her as she is trying to kill the ants in her house and her Son Simon. Then as the story unfolds in the short chapters that shift from one character to another Marina is having a fling with a work colleague Zarate. This leads to a violent scene that affects Karl’s oboe playing and reminds me of the sudden burst of violence that was in the third man which is the link to the whole story who was the third man when the body appears. Then later on in the book, there is another nod when the son Simon has a love of The Ferris wheel.

Clara also changed position – and subject. She talked about life after her separation. Dammed blessed happiness, she said. Amer put the kettle on again to prepare some more mate. They say beekeeping is good for reducing stress, Clara remarked. Amer felt as if he were watchoing a performance, but this impression didn’t weaken Clara’s words. She was silent for a few seconds.

Amer views clara through his rose tinted glasses.

This is a well-paced novel that follows two relationships but like a train, on the track, the fate of all those involves seems on a track the marriage breaking up, but also the workings of having a failing marriage what to do with Simon this is sort of a rerun for Karl as he has another child back in Germany from an earlier marriage. Then we have Amer a man that works very hard on his animals and maybe he is building a Clara like one of his dead animal the outside of them appears perfect but then he has worked her to be maybe more than she was. The nods to the Third man like Simon liking a Ferris wheel which of course is where there is a great monologue from Harry Lime. This follows four well five if you include Marina’s affair with Zurate over what are two of the hardest things starting a relationship making the right move what card has fate dealt you and then the break up of marriage but when that path is changed what happens when fate intervenes! Have you read either of his books ?