Tag: Daunt books

Bait by Eugenia Ladra

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Bait by Eugenia Ladra

Uruguayan Fiction

Original title – Carnada

Translator – Miriam Tobin

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to have been sent this book from Daunt Books, and I was excited, as I have only read three other books from Uruguay over the years. I’m always looking to expand the scope of books from various countries on the blog, and this debut novel struck me as a perfect choice. It is always great to highlight new talent; the three previous writers I have featured from Uruguay have all been fairly well established.  This is a debut novel from a rising new writer that has been listed and won prizes elsewhere. It seems it is set in the small town the writer grew up in, a fishing village that has since become a port for huge container ships. A town full of pagan like ideas and macho idealsas a summer sun heats things up.

It was an afternoon at the beginning of that summer.

The heat started to relent and gradually Paso Chico ceased to be the deserted land it became after lunch, when the sun beat down brutally and not even the insects could rouse themselves out of their hiding places. People surfaced from their siestas, aired out their musty homes and joined the crowd that had gathered outside, partly to scope out what was going on, and also to get some air now the cool had descended, to see if they could refresh their sluggish bodies and dispel all that humidity.

A town on the point of boiling over in the heat

 

The book focuses on Marga, who is turning thirteen and becoming a young woman.  But in the small town of Paso Chico, she is shunned by those in the town.  This is one of those towns where time hasn’t quite caught up; traditions live on, from carrying a figure of the Mother Mary from house to house. It reminds me of the rural towns in Italy where things like this still happen.  Add to this that when she was born, Marga’s mother died, and the town had gone from drought to flooding, and this poor girl is one of those people who are seen but not seen, almost like a ghost to all in the village.  So, for her, when a ship arrives and a mysterious man, Recio, appears in this small town of stray dogs and sleepy bars full of men slowly getting drunk.  A place of traditional values in the heat of the summer.  This is a perfect mix for something to happen, especially when he captures the eye of this young marga. Especially as, like her, he has set the town twittering about who he is and what will happen if he stays. This in turn sets off a chain of events that blend violence, fear, and a town caught up in its own superstitions.

That same night Recio turned in early, not to follow the rules, but because he was in need of the sleep hed missed out on during his late nights at the bar. It was only at noon the next day, when Justa, Olga and Marga were having lunch as they did most days, their eyes engrossed in the soap opera, that the boy appeared. He wandered out of his room with one hand rubbing the sleep out of his eyes while the other covered his cock standing at half-mast from having just woken up. He dashed quickly to the bathroom and before disappearing behind the door, polite boy that he was, greeted the three women with a nod of his head, as if seeing them in the street at a distance.

Recio and Magra are like to ends of a newtons cradle each havong a knock on effect when they see each other

 

This is one of those books that female Latin American writers are doing so well.  The simmering undercurrent of male violence in a male-dominated world is captured here.  But also that mix of almost pagan-like superstitions and that sort of strong Catholic Christian beliefs, where both have become intertwined, so a change in weather or someone appearing out of the blue is seen as a curse or a foreboding that something is going to happen. It captures the chaos this can bring to a young girl on the cusp of being a young woman. It has a mix of Graham Greene’s Power and Glory, Fernando Melchor’s  Hurricane Season, and a nod to Juan Carlos Onetti with the construction of a fictional town on the cusp of the River Plate, like his Santa Maria, a dark, brooding place alongside the river.  It is a tale of coming of age, of not being wanted, and of the dark place that can lead one to. In a town full of men, a young girl becomes a woman in a masculine world. Do you have a favourite book from Uruguay?

 

Journeys and Flowers by Merce Rodoreda

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Journeys and Flowers by Merce Rodoreda

Catalan Fiction

Original title – Viatges i flors

Translators – Gala Sicart Olavide and Nick Caistor

Source – Library book

I read Death in Spring a few years ago by Merce Rodoreda and was pleased to see this on the shelf at the library. I was grabbed by the fact it was vignettes of villages and flowers but with an undercurrent going back years before the book was written which was 1980s but hark back to the war years in which she had first escaped the Spanish civil war heading to France but then when the Nazis took over France she had to move again. She was regarded as one of the leading voices of Catalan fiction had won all the big prizes for Catalan fiction on her wiki page there was this prologue from one of her books I think it capture whart she does in this book so well. “I write because I like to write. If it didn’t seem like an exaggeration, I would say that I write to please myself. If others like what I write, the better. Perhaps it is deeper. Perhaps I write to affirm myself. To feel that I am … And it’s over. I have spoken of myself and essential things in my life, with a certain lack of measure. And excess has always scared me”That last line struck me this is a short but hard hitting book

I suggest you go to the village down there, can you see it? The view is blocked by the trees, but it’s right behind them, come on! Can’t you see it, obscured by the foliage?’ This is what an ageless woman said to me, dressed all in black, her ample skirts gathered at the waist. Her round face framed by a scarf neatly tied under her chin. ‘You’ll fall in love with it. And she gave a half smile.

The day was ending by the time I reached the village, a village more or less the same as any other, with low one-storey houses, two-storey at most; streets, some narrow, some wide; a square with arcades; a watering-trough; an inn; all kinds of shops and an undertaker. I strolled round the village, went everywhere in it, and thought the woman’s idealised view of this completely boring village must stem from nostalgic childhood memories. I left it slowly, my thoughts lingering on the people living there. They looked like normal people yet something in their eyes was disturbing.

The thoughts of those that were there struck me !

An unnamed narrator is wandering from village to village, where the town has no real names but is the village of warriors, well-bred rats, the two roses, and glass. Each village is told in a fable-like way, so reality and the surreal drift into one. The violence of war haunts the background of these places, women wrapped in cocoons, men playing at being knights. It is not as it seems, and is at the same time. I like this, it reminds me of what Calvino did well, using slightly surreal things to convey things. The second part is odes to flowers, which are mainly made up of flowers and the meaning and thoughts behind them. Blue flowers, desperate flowers, to Dead flowers. Again, they are thoughts about the war years and the meaning of flowers at times.

Ballerina Flower

She is yellow and very dishevelled. Four tendrils emerge from her stem. She opens in mid-summer, at dawn with the sun. Her slender round petals are born in tiny pushes, and hang down. She gives off a perfume which combines the smell of woods – that is, dry – and mown grass – that is, damp. Once she has unfurled all her splendour, the tendrils spread, wrap round the nearest branches: they become as taut as wires. Captive, the flower begins the exhausting work of freeing herself. She slowly folds in on herself with little shakes, right and left. Forwards, back-wards. She tries, but when after a great deal of patience and grief she has only managed to become more entangled, she abandons her efforts.

This had such hidden thoughts to me

 

I liked this collection if I see it second hand i”ll pick tit u;a s I think it will need a few more readings to fully grasp the beauty of her words and ideas. It is something that you will see something more every time you reread them, I think. There is something about the cut down nature of these short tales that leaves so much to be filled in by the reader and thought about if that makes sense.It goes back to the earlier quote about excess in her life and her writing, it seems. It also mixes the beauty of her homeland with the horrors, violence, and divisive nature of the Spanish Civil War, which bleeds through these pages as you read these little gems. Have you read any of her books in English?

Hungry for What by Maria Bastarós

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Hungry for What by Maria Bastarós

Spanish short stories

Original title  – No era esto a lo que veniamos

Translator – Kevin Gerry Dunn

Source – re4view copy

I was reminded that I had yet to review this when to was picked as one of the Guardian translated books of the year. In recent years, Daunt has brought some great books out in translation. This book fits in well with several Latin American and Spanish books I have read from female writers in the last few years. Maria Bastarós is an art historian and writer. She has previously written historical novels and worked as a screenwriter and creative writing teacher. Both of which you can see in these stories here; they have a scenic quality to them and feature lost, lonely children and women. These are voices you don’t often here, and darker undertones and sister macabre things.

As she waits, she reviews the table: theres wine, there’s foie gras, there are baby eels. All the things her father and mother used to eat when they sent her to bed early so that they could have dinner alone. She can hear shouting and crying from the babysitter’s movie. A woman is screaming, her voice shrill, punctuated by the occasional help or please don’t. The girl knows this sort of cry means the babysitter’s movie is almost over. And when the babysitter’s movie is almost over, it means her mother and the new boyfriend are almost back.

Tonight, in fact, they come back a little earlier than usual.

The girl’s face sharpens like a cat’s when she hears the key in the lock. She hears her mother shuffling around, then the door gliding over the parquet and swooshing like a broom. The babysitter hurries to turn off the TV, but she’s too slow. The new boyfriend’s deep voice wends its way into the kitchen:

The meal prepared like she had seen

There are thirteen stories in the collection, and I will only mention the couple I really connect with. The first one I really got was a small girl from divorced parents, and you get the sense that I did when I was young. She is treated by the teacher, and then when she gets home, and her mother doesn’t give her a gift, the lies start. This grabbed me the way she did, and you can. I did as a kid, those innocent lies your parents told you from one parent to the other for the birthday celebrations. One line made me laugh. Her father says something as they drive and passes something, and she says this is where the lies start! Heartbreaking but true. Added to this, her birthday wish and whether it will come true to add a dark overtone to the story.  The opening story sees another small girl making her first grown-up meal. Using a triangle of cheese instead of brie and other child-like replacements for a romantic meal between her later father and mother, one glimpsed by her. but the mother misreads the situation, thinking the meal is for her and her new partner. But no, it is the girl’s way of trying to cling to the hope of her parents reuniting. When that is impossible! The last story I will briefly mention is Girls Don’t, a tale of a group of girls. Gone Rogue is a story of a group of girls with boxes of spiders and scorpions making people look and have them on their arms. It is a very clever twist on what would maybe fifty years ago have been a group of boys doing similar things.

‘Make a wish!’ the teacher says.

This troubles the girl: there wasn’t enough time to think of what she wanted, and now a whole panful of wishes is ricocheting around her head like popcorn. She reflects for a moment before choosing one. Maybe this? Or that? No, this! That’s it. That’s what she’ll wish for. Definitely.

‘Will it come true?’ she asks.

Will the dark wishes come true ?

I chose three stories, and they all had child narrators or characters for me, they captured, particularly in the first two, the feeling of being a child of divorced parents. For context, my parents divorced when I was ten and the feelings and way the children viewed the world hit home on fact too much. The birthday girl reminded me of my parents and those little white lies and also the bitterness in a broken marriage that lies just underneath the lies. Elsewhere, we have violent acts, a woman on a psychiatric hospital ward.It is to compare with Fernanda Melchor. Both capture the dark side of the ordinary world at times. I also thought of Roald Dahl, a master of stories like this that, in many ways, have two layers on one surface and can seem a slice of everyday life, but with a hefty dose of the dark and sister we don’t often see is captured. A meal that is both a sweet act and heart-wrenching and maybe a statement from a girl missing her father. Wishes that can be dark as well as light, etc. Anyway, this will be near the top of my books for the year! Have you read this collection?

The time of Cherries by Montserrat Roig

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The time of Cherries by Monrserrat Roig

Catalan fiction

Original title – El temps de les cireres

Translator – Julia Sanches

Source – Review copy

I have been somewhat remiss with my Spanish lit month reviews. I will have to do one next week, but this is a book I had seen around, and when I got the chance to be sent it from Daunt Books, I had to say yes. I have read several beautiful books in Catalan by female writers, so this appealed, and I have always had a fancy for the Franco years and after in Spain. She had taught in the UK and was a socialist and strong advocate of the Catalan world she has written books about Those from Catalan who suffered under the Nazis in the war. The story is of a woman in her forties returning to Barcelona after several years away.

Patrícia’s flat hadn’t changed. Though she wished she could have updated the kitchen, laid down ceramic tiles and put in new cupboards. Esteve left me nothing but problems, she said. I can’t raise the rent either – the tenants have been with us for years! I was lucky to get an offer for the down-stairs. The sale went through when Esteve was still alive, and he left me a lifetime annuity. The enclosed balcony was still the same; on one wall, the painting Francisco Ventura had given them – the watercolours that Francisco, of the Mundetas, God rest his soul, painted in the style of Modest Urgell – the two rocking chairs, one with a hole in the seat- what do I have to do to get it fixed? – the brazier table, the sewing box…

Her aunt she is close to and the way she looks at the world in tthe book

Natalia has returned to her home town of Barcelona after 12 years away, living around Europe part of that time like the writer herself spent in the UK where she had an affair with Jimmy. They lived together, and we found out he had moved on, and she had now come home to face the ghost of her past. Her family, her mother and her didn’t get on due to the fact her mother put most of her effort into looking after their brother Pere AND judit her mother has never quite been able to rebuild her relationship with her other children in fact, for Natalia it is her aunt is maybe a more of a mother figure added to that her other brother and his wife that she finds a little boring and not to her taste as we see this world through Natalia’s eyes and she describes everything in the home and world around her from the Tupperware to the food. The book is a ripping apart of a family and seeing what has brought it to a certain point as a family. her siblings =marriage her parents and Aunt patrica wh had a poet for a husband after he heard she was wealthy. Then Natalia’s past may be inspired by Roig’s, and support for causes makes her seem like she is partly from Roig’s own life. The places she loved are now ghosts a tree and pond aren’t there any more. This is a look back and edging towards a brighter future post-Franco world.

Now Patrícia says she drinks to drown her sorrows. She knows it isn’t a sin: Jesus turned water into wine during the wedding at Cana; Jesus spoke a great deal about wineries and winemakers; Jesus made the wine his blood at the Last Supper. Patrícia had read it in the Bible: ‘No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskin , and bot are preserved .

More of her aunt but looking at how her world has changed over the years

You know I love Catalan fiction. This is a perfect example of why she has brought us to the heart of a family and a world in change. She arrives just as Puig Antich was killed after a robbery where a policeman was shot. He was a figure head of that Catalan cause a cause celebre in his time many felt Franco would cancel the killing but this was the dying years of his regime. He was one of the last killed by Franco, and a name many people remember, so she comes just after this happens. The tension of this is in the background as she does an autopsy on the family, and we see how they all end up where they are. The relationships, fallingouts, jealousy, and the outcome of a mother’s love for just one son are all laid bare in this book. s well as the political scene at the time. The city itself is almost a character in the book at times. You feel its presence throughout the book. Have you read this book ?

Winston’s score – rich prose of a family, city and time not long gone.

Family and Borghesia by Natalia Ginzburg

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Family and Borghesia by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – Famiglia was Family’s title 

Translator – Beryl Stockman

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to get sent a copy from Daunt Books of the latest reissue of books by Natalia Ginzburg. I have reviewed three of her other books. So these two short novellas are the latest of her books to be brought back out. Ginzburg won the Strega prize in her lifetime, and she was also a member of the Italian Parliament when she was younger. According to Saint Mathew, She also starred in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Gospel. She was considered one of the leading Anti-fascists of her time and was a member of the Italian communist party. These two stories show her ability to look inside the soul and heart of her characters.

The woman was called Ilaria Boschivo. She had been a widow for several years. She was thin and wrinkled with short, woolly grey hair and big blue eyes. She lived alone.

Her daughter and son-in-law lived in the flat next door, and her brother-in-law, Pietro Boschivo, in the flat above.

Pietro Boschivo was an antiques dealer and provided for them all. He was the brother of her late husband, Giovanni Boschivo, a theatrical impresario. A winding staircase separated his flat from hers. Her daughter and son-in-law, who were both eighteen, usually had their meals with her as they had no money and no desire to cook. The daughter was called Aurora and the son-in-law Aldo, his surname being Palermo. Ilaria and her old servant, Cettina, always did the cooking together.

The widow and her cat she does a lot for those in the house.

Family, the main story in this collection, follows a couple who were together until they tragically lost a child. Architect Carmine has moved on when he meets his ex-wife, his new wife, Ninetta. He had studied abroad after Ivana, and he had lost their child, so when they meet, Newton’s cradle-like effect starts on the two of them. What might have been in their lives without that one tragic event in their lives? Eventually, the old flames start hanging out with his ex, and Ninetta is initially ok, but then she changes as the two seem closer. That bond of a lost child is there as we see their past. Carmine had dragged himself up Ivana, a translator on the look for her next ob most of the time. It looks at the ebb and flow of relationships that might have been in people’s lives. Next is another tale looking character. This time, in Borghesia, we have a widow, Ilaria, who is given a kitten. Still, a series of misadventures see her having some similar cats in quick succession as she is living with her brother-in-law and his child. She is like a live-in housekeeper. She connects to the cats, but then as we see what happens to the cat, the events in the house are taking a darker turn.

There were a lot of people with cats and dogs in the vet’s waiting room. Several hours passed by. She spoke to a woman sitting near her, who had an enormous dog on a lead.
‘This is the first time I’ve been here,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can tell you’ve never had an animal before,’ said the woman. Ilaria was struck by this and wondered how the woman could tell.
Perhaps it was the fact that her cat was wrapped in a shawl.
Everyone else had theirs in suitable pagoda-shaped baskets, so convenient for travelling or for taking them to the vet.
That day, she felt as if she had truly penetrated the circle of pet owners and animal lovers, a very special group of people united by a tenuous and yet extremely close bond.

She becomes a pet lover.

I love her style of writing. It is clear and gets to the heart of her character. I was reminded that Jhumpa Lahiri is a fan, in fact, when I read both of her books since she has been living in Rome, and she had included Ginzburg in her ten great Italian stories collection. Both writers are great at human insight, but Ginzburg is also sparse in her writing, and I can see this has now gone into Lahiri’s books. In the first novella, Family captures those what-if moments in life but also regrets shared loss and lives as class and Italian life. Also, how we move on after an event like the death of the first child. How in the son he knows Carmine has not been happy, and maybe he wonders what the first child would have been like. The second tale is sometimes darker as we see cats come and go, but also how the cats in the family home affect all those around Ilaria. These tales look into the heart of families, those little everyday things that makeup life. Have you a favourite book by her?

Winston’s score—A: The aftermath of a breakup and the loss of a child are looked at. Why do the cats keep dying in this house?

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

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Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – Valentino

Translator – Avril Bardoni

Source – Personal copy

Well, I had intended to post a Czech book today, but do you ever have that situation where you read a book and want to straight away read it again well I had that yesterday. I usually have a coffee and sit and read an hour before work after dropping Amanda off at work. Yesterday I decided to take this having just written up the books I got from Holiday and I felt this was a perfect choice at 60 pages there was a good chance I would finish it in one sitting. I have read The Little Virtues and Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg before so I pick this uo when I was away and was just blown away by it.

My sister had never believed that Valentino was destined to become a man of consequence. She couldn’t stand him and pulled a face every time his name was mentioned, remembering all the money my father spent on his education while she was forced to type addresses. Because of this, my mother had never told her about the skiing outfit and whenever my sister came to our house one of us had to rush to his room and make sure that these clothes and any other new things that he had bought for himself were out of sight.

Early on she reveals her sisters view on her brother.

The book follows a number of years in a poor middle-class family we have Caterina one of the sisters to Valentino he is the apple of the eye of the family his mother and father have saved to get him an education as a doctor. His father had been a schoolteacher; later, this is also the job Caterina and the mother help out with piano lessons. So when he is treasured by his parents, but as his sister describes him he is maybe a little lazy at his studies Valentino announces out of the blue he has a fiancé and they are marrying the family thinks he will turn up with some Beauty also when this plain older woman with her tortoiseshell glasses turn upon the family don’t know what to do. They say the father’s heart is weak so Mother talks to them as they wonder why Valentino has picked Maddalena as his wife she has land and money but she is so different to who they pictured their precious son marrying. They do marry and the book then goes forward through the years and have children then a cousin of Maddalean turns up Kit a tall balding man who captures the eye of our narrator but will the couple stick together what is going on between Kit and Valentino.

‘He’s gone home to bed. Here are your gloves,’ I said and tossed them to him. ‘But aren’t you a bit past Mysteries of the Black Jungle?’
‘Stop talking like a schoolmistress,” he replied.
‘I am a schoolmistress,’ I said.
‘I know; but you needn’t talk like one to me?’ My supper had been left on a side table in the sitting room and I sat down to eat. Valentino went on reading.
When I had finished my meal I sat on the settee next to him. I put my hand on his head. He frowned and muttered something under his breath without raising his eyes from the book.

I laughed when he said the schoolmistress line to his sister.

This is a lifetime in 60 pages the course of a marriage the dreams of one generation to the next one. They want Valentino as the father says to be a man of consequence but he is far from that  This is all told in a dry tone by the narrator and there is a sense she knows her brother isn’t as great as the parents feel he is or could be. It is also about class and the difference between Maddalena, her cousin Kit, and the in-laws. Such as when they marry straight away to replace the furniture in the lounge. The book sees the parents die rather quickly after one another. The other sister struggles with her children and our narrator the spinster sister. I loved this slice of a family’s life. Caterina then lives with her brother after the los of her parents and there is a line where Valentino turns to her and says you sound like a schoolteacher she says I am a schoolteacher reminds me of my own gran who was a headmistress. it is fair to say I will be getting the other Ginzburg from Daunt books or seeing if my library has any. But for Italian fiction, my best book is  NYRB classics that Ginzburg rated Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morrante is an epic book. Have you read books by Ginzburg or Morrante?

Winston score – A small gem of a book seems much more than its slim size.

 

A Sunday in Ville- d’Avary by Dominique Barberis

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A sunday in Ville-d-Avray by Dominique Barberis

French fiction

Original title – Un Dimanche á Vile-d’Avray

Translator – John Cullen

Sources -Personal copy

This book is another holiday buy, but this time it was last year’s trip to Northumberland I brought this book. I think I may have seen Jacqui mention it 9feels like a book she would love to me ). So I got it. I have seen several excellent books in translation in the last couple of years from Daunt books. Dominique Barberis was born in Cameroon as her father was a diplomat. She studied at the Sorbonne, then went on to teach, had a job in insurance and then became a professor of foreign languages. She has published several Literary studies books as well as eight novels. This was her latest novel and focused on the relationship between two sisters.

I believe my sister stayed under the spell of that literary love affair for a long time, while I, younger but clearly more practical-minded, developed a crush on my first-year Latin teacher, Monsieur Jumeau (Bernard Jumeau). My grades climbed up to the heights. I knew my declensions by heart. I worked hard to dazzle him. Things went so far that predictions for my future employment shifted from cashier to Latinist or archivist-palaeographer – which had been Monsieur lumeau’s first vocation and fondest dream; he told us about it in the course of a gathering in the faculty room. Blushing and modest, I stood between my parents the whole time. I was twelve.He suggested the same future for me, a suggestion I took as a declaration of reciprocal love and a discreet way of making our engagement official.

Her sister feel in loove with books when they were younger.

The book is about two sisters who, as kids, were close, but as often happens when we grow, the distance comes between us, and time flies, so we meet Jane. She tells us about her other half, Luc, and how he hates going to the sister who is married to a doctor, and they live in Ville-d -avary one of these posh commuter towns on the very edge of Pasris as she says it seems hard to get there, but it isn’t it is just fact the two sisters now live in different worlds than they once did. So when Jane heads out one Sunday to meet her sister, Claire Marie, she hasn’t; let her know she is turning up as she feels her sister knows how to press her buttons. (doesn’t every sibling know this !!) So when they talk, and an odd comment about Jane is happy in her life leaves her wondering and then she finds out about a connection her sister has made to a mysterious man she has just told her about many years earlier that offered her a lift one day. Marc Herman, he is a man of mystery and the two connect, and she meets him again and again. But also, the area is seeing things happen at the same time odd men hanging around, crime. Added to this her sister as a child was obsessed with Rochester from Jane Eyre as a child for a really long time. Who is Marc? He said he knew her from her husband, but does he?

Then may I drop you off?

They went back to his car, chatting as they walked, and after a detour found themselves pleasantly strolling the streets in the vicinity of the Chaville train station.’Let’s just say goodbye here,’ my sister said, all of a sudden. ‘It’s much simpler. You needn’t trouble yourself. It’s late, and mine is the very next stop. I’ll take the train.’

But Marc Hermann didn’t look like a man in a hurry. He protested: ‘But why? Don’t go yet.’ She stayed. She wondered how she’d be able to get away from him. Would she have to thrust out her hand?

When she meet the mystreious Marc Hreman he is almost a Modiano character

This is a book that captures that commuter life well but also how it can have a dark underbelly and that shimmering tension that there can be between sisters. I was reminded of Simenon or Modiano, both of which do tension. Both also show that often there is darkness and other things just under the surface no matter how perfect the streets are, and this is that sort of town perfection but with a little crack little piece of darkness and this shows a little of them but also the sibling connection it is a modern sibling story were sisters are more distant than they used to be. Desire and jealousy are here just below the surface, also lost loves. Have you read any of the recent books from Daunt books which one shall I try next?

Winston’s score – B – just below the surfaces simmer a lot between the sisters but also where she lives

 

The Dry Heart By Natalia Ginzburg

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The dry heart by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – È stato così

Translator – Frances Frenaye

Source – personal copy

I mentioned on Twitter I was struggling to finish and concentrate on reading books recently. So I decided when I was in Macclesfield the other day to look for a short novella that was from a writer I have enjoyed before as maybe a way to kick start my reading as I hadn’t finished any book for more than a week. So when I saw this from the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg which I’m sure I’ve seen this month around twitter of this book and others by her. she is one of those writers `I read and knew I would read everything I could get my hands on. Ginzburg, she worked for one of the best publishing houses in Italy. A publisher that had published the likes of Carlo and Primo  Levi, Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino some of my favourite writers. Since she has been republished in the last few years she has had a revival and after reading this it is welcome to see people reading her.

‘TELL ME THE TRUTH, “I said.
What truth?’ he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it
and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief.I shot him between the eyes.

He had asked me to give him something hot in a thermos bottle to take with him on his trip. I went into the kitchen, made some tea, put milk and sugar in it, screwed the top on tight, and went back into his study. It was then that he showed me the sketch, and I took the revolver out
of his desk drawer and shot him between the eyes. But for a long time already I had known that sooner or later I should do something of the sort.

The opening is also the end in a way of the relationship

The Dry heart it is told from the perspective of a wife. The book opens as she shoots him between the eyes as she puts it what follows is a sort of remembered version of their time together of her meeting and falling in love with Alberto. She met him one day in the cafe but from the first, there is a sense the relationship is one-sided he asks her about her but when she tries to discover. more about him he is evasive about his life.The two form a bond she likes his interest in what she sees as her boring life as a teacher. They get close but he is always at at a neutral place like cafes or by the river. But then it isn’t til something happens to his mother that she finally gets a glimpse behind Alberto’s facade when he greets her in a dishevelled state. This maybe makes them see him as more human. But she still senses there is a real sense of two souls that shouldn’t be together coming together. Ginzburg draws you into this relationship and how it started and then fell apart from the perspective of some caught in the car crash of a relationship told in a way it is subtly explained and drawn in

BEFORE WE WERE MARRIED, when we went for a walk or sat in a café, Alberto enjoyed my company even if he wasn’t in love with me. He went out of his way to call on me; yes, even if it was raining he never failed to come. He sketched my face in his notebook and listened to what I had to say.

But after we were married he didn’t sketch my face any more. He drew animals and trains, and when I asked him whether trains meant that he wanted to go away he only laughed and said no.

The changes after they marry are the start of the relationship crashing

As I said I wanted a writer that I had enjoyed and this was the case with Ginzburg I had read the little virtues I had thought it was only a couple of years ago it turns out it was four years ago at the time I knew I want to read another from her but hadn’t thought it be so long anyway this is a book that even thou written in 1947 shows the power of great writing as it feels as thou it was written yesterday. it shows the dynamics of relationships are the same. The narrator tells the relationship in a fragmented nature we see how she ends up at the end which is also the beginning of the book shooting Alberto. It shows how a relationship is built bit by bit but like if you build a house on the sand the house is never stable and won’t ever last and this is the case here you read between the lines of the relationship growing there are gaps which we see in this relationship as they get drawn together but even the narrator sees this herself but is in denial or maybe just wants to ignore the faults she sees this is maybe what I like most about the book the sense of human nature in it how blindly we move at times through the world especially those nears to use we sometimes miss the faults and Alberto is a man that has many. it6s the fly on the wall that looks at a relationship from the female perspective that even 75 years later sounds familiar. Have you read any books by Ginzburg if so which should I try next?

Winstons score – a – it is amazing how it is still relevant and reads as thou not was written yesterday.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernadez

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Space invaders by Nona Fernandez

Chilean fiction

Original title – Space Invaders

Translator – Natasha Wimmer

Source – personal copy

I saw the cover of this book on Twitter and it caught my eye so when I was away last week in Northumberland and I had seen it in the new book shop in Alnwick and started to feel the Drag of books in translation again I decided it would be a great choice for this Spanish lit month. Nona is a pet name that the writer had growing up and she has had a variety of jobs firstly selling clothes growing up and Began to write she wrote her first novels whilst living in Barcelona. Her writing is considered part of the literature of Children’s canon(Literatura de Los Hijos) a term coin around a group of novels from Chile mainly but elsewhere in Latin America that view the years of the dictatorships around Latin America through children’s eyes. the term was originally coined by Alejandro Zambra. I have reviewed books by him here.

Santiago de Chile. 1980. A ten-year-old girl walks into Avenida Matta school holding her father’s hand. A leather satchel hangs on one shoulder and the laves of her right shoe are undone. Outside, the pavement is strewn with the remains of a celebration; flyers, empty bottles, trash. The new constitution proposed by the military Junta was approved by a broad majority. The school caretaker sweeps the litter from the gate, watching the girl’s father. The man takes off his officer’s cap to say goodbye to his daughter. He gives her a kiss on the cheek and whispers a few words in her ear. The girl smiles and heads down the hallway with one shoelace trailing on the tiles. In front of the statue of the Virgen del carmen, she kneels and kisses her thumb

The opening a girl with one lace undone is the centre of the book.

So this is a strange book as it isn’t a linear story more a collection of pieces memories, dreams, nightmares and letters about a class and one of the pupils in that class Estrella. She was in the class but her father was a high-ranking official in the Pinochet regime over a period of years from that ten-year-old girl with her father just as the new constitution was proposed. Then someone in the class remembers her two long braids and pulls them this is the nature of the book a fracture scattering of the class and what happens over time as they grow first in the present in retrospect that time and their present. Things like the regimented nature of the class line up singing the anthem(these bits remind me of old communist schools I remember seeing on the tv years ago that indoctrination at a young age). Then what it means to live under the regime when a teacher stumbles when asked about politics shows how dark these times were deaths in the poor areas common described through the eyes of the children. as the class moves through time we come back after each life lost a few years later to we come to them as adults. Add to this is a chunk of the 80s

a green glow in the dark hand. Riquelme keeps dreaming about it, can’t shake it. This time he sees it on a television screen, The hand advances rapidly, in the pursuit of extraterrestrial children. They run back and forth, fleeing in terror, but the hand clutches at the first martian within reach and at its touch there is an explosion. The body of the little Martin flies apart into coloured lights that vanish from the tv screen

The liking to the space invader as one of the other characters plays it.

This book tries to see how you cope with the trauma of being a child in a conflict and how those events can haunt our waking moments and or dreams as kids Estrella was in their class and the events around them were out of their control so this is a horrific fragment journey into there lives around Estrella and the events and how in retrospective they seem a lot darker. Nona uses the space invader of the title as a sort of framing device as the story moves on each part is life in the game. I have read a number of books from the children of literature over the years and they all have a fragment sent to them and also that sense of how we view and remember childhood events and then what happens when later in life parts cross again. I enjoyed this it is a mosaic of time and events it’s left for you to fill the gaps at times and it is like a collection of soundbites of the time. The book is a short one I read it in an evening and have reread a lot of it this morning. Have you read any books from the literature of children genre ?

Winston score – B what happened to the class is remembered and what it meant rinds deep.

Winter In Sockho by Elisa Shua Dusapin

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Winter in Sockho by Elis Shua Dusapin

Swiss fiction

Original title – Hiver à Sokcho

Translator – Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Source – personal copy

I picked this up in a charity shop recently as I am one to avoid hype books but when I read the book blurb again it grabbed me somewhat and the writer of the book Elisa Shua Duspain a writer from a french Korean background that grew up around Europe and had won a number of writing prizes including the National book prizes for the best-translated books. The book was popular when it came out and had a rather eyecatching book I am always wary of books that seemed hype but it is a short book perfect for sitting and reading on a winter day off so that is what I did today.

My mother was squatting in the kitchen, her chin pressed top her neck, arms plunged into a bucket. She was ixing fish liver, leeeks and sweet potato noodles to make the stuffing for the squid. Her soondae were known to be the best in Sockho.

“Watch me work the mixture. See how i spread the stuffing evenly”

Iwasnt really listening. Liquid was spurting from the biucket, pooling around our boots and running towards the drain in the middle of the room. My mother lived at the port, above the loading bay, in one of the apartments reserved for fishmongers. Noisy. Cheap.My childhood home. I went to see her on sunday eveninggs and stayed over until Monday, my day off off. She’d been finding it difficult sleeping alone since I’do moved out.

Her mother struggles with her not being there

The book follows a relationship between a young french Korean girl and a Fench comic artist that has come to stay at the Guesthouse where she has been working for the elderly owner. But now it is winter in the resort she is in is this summer resort that is like one of those western towns with tumbleweed getting blown around as the tourists have now gone and it is a ghost city as it is winter. so when Kerrand appears this older French man catches her eye, as he is the opposite of her boyfriend an airhead that is trying to forge a career as a model the fumbling embrace where see describes his hand touching a scar on her leg that scar which causes her to bite at this airhead as she expects him one day to ask her to change herself for him. This is heightened by a fellow guest that has had recent facial surgery laying low in the winter town. So as Kerrand gathers are narrator can speak french he asks her to introduce him to the real Korea as they take a road trip to the border she is more drawn to this man. Although she despairs at the fact he isn’t that into the food as her mother the other main person in this book is a woman that can prepare the deadly pufferfish. I was reminded of the Simpson’s episode where the chef had maybe wrongly cut up the fish that Homeer had eaten a fine line. They used to share a bed in her mother’s small apartment and she is starting to struggle as she is away most of the week working at the hotel. This is a young woman drawn to the mysterious older man as she dreams of him noticing her even more than he does. Will he write his comic book about the place?

Kerrand was listening to me intently, head down, one hand on his forehead tohold back his hair. The only display that had caught my attention was one with schoolchildrens shoes from the north along with Choco pies packaged in blue instead of their trademark purple. Were they the real thing? Did they actually have a cake inside or had they been specially made for the Musuem?

She is so drawn to this mysterious older man

I liked the descriptions in this book she caught that feel of a seaside town when the tourist have gone in the winter I remember visiting my grandparents that lived in a seaside town in winter it is an eerie place a place of spaces that was this is echoed in the narrator description of his drawings full of white spaces. The story is a classic older man younger woman with a boyfriend that isn’t all he seems I was reminded of Lost in Translation the connection between these two is less intense but the feel of them discovering places is the same as she views those places again when she goes with Kerrand. it works it hasn’t that feel of Woody Allen at times where the relationship between a young woman and the older man feels forced what effect has she had on Him if any? It is a perfect winter read it is a subtle take on a relationship like those french movies Amelie for example where her encounters are brief and intense like our narrators take on these days of visiting small conversations. What are your favorite books or films around brief encounters?

Winstons score – B+ a wonderful short read set in a dead seaside town.

A cat, A man And two women by Junichiro Tanizaki

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A Cat

A cat, a man and two women by Junichiro Tanizaki

Japanese fiction

Original title – Neko to Shōzō to Futari no Onna

Translator – Paul McCarthy

Source – personnel copy on Kindle

I have been using my Kindle a bit more recently as I had a few books I had brought cheap and want to read this being one of them. Tanizaki is a writer I had to want to feature on the blog for a while. He was one of the best writers of the mid 20th century. He himself was a translator working a lot during his life translating the Epic Tales of Genji into modern Japanese. He also was known forthright intimate nature of his writing. This is a lesser work but for me a very personal insight into a family life.

Shozo repeated the same thing over and over again. He would give her a fish, then himself a little drink, and calling ‘Lily’ would raise the next prize high. There must originally have been some twelve or thirteen mackerel on Shozo’s plate, each about two inches long, of which he himself had actually eaten perhaps three or four. For the rest, he had simply sucked out a bit of the vinegar dressing before giving the flesh to Lily. ‘Ohh-ohh … owww! That hurts!’ Shozo let out a shriek: Lily had leapt onto his shoulders and dug in her claws.

Shozo even feeds the cat more than himself

The book as the title suggests is about a Man Shozo, he is on his second marriage that is the two women referred to in the title of his first and second wives. There is also Shozo Cat Lily. The story focus on the relationship between the four characters. This happens when the first wife asks for Lily the cat back Shinako a seamstress by trade hasn’t got over losing her husband. She knows that Lily the cat may bring him back to her. Now his current wife isn’t a fan of Lily this is shown when she isn’t happy when she cooks 13 pieces of fish for her husband and he gives most of it to the cat. They even share the bed together at night. Who will win this power battle between the two women the rather lazy husband and the cat Lily?

Now, Fukuko was a cousin of Shozo’s; and, given the circumstances under which she became his wife, there was no need for her to worry about pleasing a difficult mother-in-law. So from her second day of married life, she did just as she pleased in everything. All the same, she could hardly stand by and watch her husband trying to wield a kitchen knife, so in the end she made the marinated fish for both of them, though under protest. To make matters worse, they had been dining off mackerel for five or six days running. Then, two or three days ago, it had struck her: Shozo wasn’t even eating the food he’d insisted on having, ignoring his wife’s complaints; instead, he was giving it all to the cat! The more she thought about it, the clearer it all became: the mackerel were small, with little bones, easily chewed; there was no need to fillet them, and they could be served cold; and one got a lot for one’s

He married a distant relative but his mother made life hard and now the cat and ex aren’t helping either !

This is really a mans ode to the cat. Lilly is the one character from the book I’d like to meet. Shozo is a lazy man that has lost one wife. But end with a younger model but at the end of the day is more into his cat than his wife even sharing the bed with the Cat then we have Shinako a perfect example of the scorned wife she wants to use Lilly as a pawn in her game to get back her man from the younger wife. She also loved this tortoiseshell cat and her man. This is one lonely lady that wants something back into her life. Fukuko his current wife has to find her place with him in there married life and somehow keep Shozo and keep him happy even if this means he gets to keep his cat! There is all of human life here love, loneliness, marriage, divorce and one man and his cat. This is a recent reissue from Daunt books and shows why it is good to bring lesser works by great writer back especially when like this they have a certain timeless feel to them. I haven’t read enough by him to say if this is the best entry book but I read it in a night and it brought a smile to my face and made me think of Winston and Merlin my two ex-pet dogs.