Tag: fum d’estampa press

Through the Forest by Laura Alcoba

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Through the Forest by Laura Alcoba

French fiction

Original title – Par la forêt

Translator – Martin Munro

Source – Personal copy

I decided to join the subscription for Fum d’stampa press they’ve been going a few years and I had reeviewed a number of the earlier books before deciding to subscribe to keep up with what they are publishing. I hope in the future to be able to subscribe to more and more publishers. But this is one of ther e latest it is from a writer now based in France that moved to france when she was ten from Argentina. So her work has the beaty oif both places she has grown up. She had to move when her father a poiltical prisoner escaped to France. She recounded this event in one of her other novels. She alos translates a number of books from writers like Yuri Herrera and Fernando Melchor. This book tackles one of the hardest topics to write about Fillicide about a mother killikng her sons. A case from thirty years ago picked apart to find out why but also the aftermath of such an event on those involved at the time

It was because of this fuel oil episode that a few days before that Friday in December 1984 Claudio and Griselda woke up well before their usual time. To greet the tanker, all because of this historic coldness. So, she had come down from their loft backwards, in the dark, clinging to the ladder, searching with her toes for the rungs that she had no trouble finding. She had come to know this lodge by heart. The smallest corner. Even the gaps between the rungs of the ladder, the one that gave access to their loft and the other one too, where the children were. Claudio had cut some planks and then he had put together the two lofts, all by himself. Without that, how could they have lived with five people in there?

They need to get away from Argentina like Laura family did

The book looks back on why Girselda a mother of three suddenly onewinter day she drowned her two sons. Like the writer Griselda is living in France in exile. Our narrator tries to pick apart the events of thirty years earlier to se what lead up to Griselda actions.in Killing her sons Boris and Sacha. We are drawn back intot her writers own Past and Griselda with her husband Carlos are in Argentina this is the time of people disappearing. The family life is like a gradiual drip seeing how Griselda is slowly pushed by events her suicide attempts just little things here and there edge her to the killing of her sons. The writer shares her background with the family she finds thirty year later the sister of the dead brother and talks to her about her recollection of the events that happened and what happened to her mother after all that This is a book that loks with out to much emmotion or getting hung up to much on the judgement of the events. We also see the toll of all this on the mother that killed her sons .

She did the same with Boris and Sacha. She dressed them in their coats, she took care to cover their ears well, to slip their hands into their mittens; mittens are always easier with the little ones. The boys were still in their pyjamas, but it didn’t matter, it was only a few minutes, all she had to do was cross the street to drop Flavia off at school, just across the street. The most important thing was that they put on their big socks and their boots, under their pyjama bottoms so as not to leave any part of their calves exposed.

Her two sons that she killed getting them dressed like she did every day.

This is one of a nunber of books over the year I have read around parents killing there kids. Beside the sea is the first title that cmae to my head. but for me this is near Mother don’t by Katie Aguirre another story around a mother that killed two sons in her case twins and again this is anjournalist that knew the killer years ago. One can see the coincetioin and why Laura choset this tragic story she also like the Griselda escaped Argentina and has probably the same scares on her personality she does. This is a book that looks at the aftermath and what happened to Griselda and her Daughter after all this has happened . which o none of the other books I have read about this suject. How did Griselda and her daughter move on after all this > Have you read any books about Fillicide.

Winstons score – B story of a killing and the aftermath of a mother killing her two sons.

 

The Others by Raül Garrigasait

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The Others by Raül Garrigasait

Spanish (Catalan) fiction

Original title – Els estranys

Translator – Tiago Miller

Source – review copy

I end this year’s Spanish lit month with another book from the publisher of Catalan fiction Fum D’Estampa press.This interesting take on a historic novel has an interesting angle and style to it. This was the prize-winning novel from the Translator and writer Raül Garrigasait he has translated a number of books from both Greek and German into Catalan.Plato, Goethe, Alexandros Papadiamandis, Joseph Roth, and Peter Sloterdijk are all writers he has translated he is involved with a project to translate a number of classics into Catalan. The other is his debut novel and won a couple of big [rizes when it came out in Spain.

Wieldemann wandered through the grounds of the sanctuary.Next to an entrance both of old, dark stone, the roofless pillars and arches held themselves aloft among the nettlesx and weeds, surrounded by an assortment of discarded rocks. It was nothing more than half finished, abandonedbuilding but there was something apocalypitic about it. He went into the empty church; all the pews had been removed all the way up to the Baroque altarpiece where golden figures ornaments shone in one gleaming glorious mess

Erarly on as he heads to the war but does he he finds an abandon building .

The others are set mainly in the late 1830s as the Carlist war is being thought in Spain. We view the war we viewed through the adventures of a young Prussian that has come to fight in the war.  Rudolf Van Wielemann is a young man trying to prove himself. He believes in the war and has high hopes to be in the forefront of the action but when he ends up in a small town he is struggling to get on with the odd set of locals he is a true outsider no language skills the comrades he wants think at times he is |Russian that is how he ends up at the hospital with a doctor in the small town as he is fish out of the water. The only real connection he makes is with a doctor who when they talk we see how the war has touched them both. as they have a shared love of music.  We follow his adventures on the edge of the war as he tries to find out who he is what to do when the war isn’t at his door. it tackles the absurd nature of the war and the absurd nature of it. The book has another dimension which sees Rudolf and his time being looked up by the writer as a number of chapters do a clever piece of autofiction as the fourth wall is broken and the writer becomes a character in the book and how he came up with the idea for the book with a character he found that was there at the time.

Between the pages on Wielemann, responisibility dictates I must translate, at least a bit

When it came to writing ,Prince Lichnowsky had no time for verbose or ornate prose, trather making his words fall in with the style of a competent commander, sure , efficent, exact. Given his importance he placed on calling things by their name, his book it as free from lyrical outpouring as his life was. Nevertheless, on the few occasions he did feel inclined to poetry he drew less on his military resolve, always knowing where to draw the line.

One of the chapters about the writer writing ther book, her finds a prussian charcater from the time.

I enjoyed this book it takes that over the approach to war we that of not being in the frontline so we have a chance to see the boring side of a conflict where we can sometimes gleam the absurd nature of war but also young men can discover themselves at the same time as not fighting a war.I also liked the way he moved to his writing of the book by breaking the fourth wall narrative about researching the book and how he came up with the idea of a Prussian character. There are touches of books like The good soldier Schwelk and The tartar steppes the latter where we see a young man guarding a similar distant outpost of the war. There is a mix of absurd nature and pathos of wart also of not quite getting to the front.An interesting mix of war and coming of age in a way Rudolf set of to find himself and prove something to his family but winds up not doing so but maybe finds out more about himself. Have you a favourite novel that is set in a war but not at the front line ?

Winstons score – +B An interesting take on the historic novel with a clever second narrative in the present.

London Under Snow by Jordi Llavina

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London Under Snow by Jordi Llavina

Spanish Fiction

original title – Londres nevat

Translator – Douglas Suttle

Source – review copy

I am late to this it was sent last year but I tried to read it during the first long down but I wasn’t in the mood for a subtle work like this is. The writer Jordi Llavina is a Catalan writer and cultural journalist He has hosted a tv show on books and radio shows as well. He has written novels, poems, and short stories and it is with a short story collection we get to read him for the first time in English. He won the Josep Pla prize one of the big book prizes in Spain. This is the second book from the new press Fum d’estampa press that brings a mix of the best in contemporary and classic Catalan literature. Another possibility for the Booker international prize maybe ?

I first arrived London on a Feburary day in 2009. I was thirty years old. Among my persopnal effects I had a black leather notebook like those that Le Corbusier once used to sketch out architectural ideas or to note down some of his theoretical or techincal thoughts . On the second blank page, I wrote a title “London Under Snow (and other reflections) ” in pencil

Five day before I was to set off for the English capita, a colossal snowstorm had set alarm bells ringing and I was worried that the tick blanket of snow shown on the newspapers front pages would turn into s terrible layer of ice- I didn’t realise that the sefvices in London actually work reasonably well snowploughs, workers with reflective jackets and armed with spades and salt all work together to remove the settled snow.

Just as he is to go to Londo it is turned white and the lakes around get frozen up.

The book has six short stories that all have a theme of memory and loss involved in them they blur the line between the writer’s real life and a fictional world. The collection starts with the title story a look back at the first time the writer visited London. A wintery London he describes it being shown that it is snowing in London before he arrives it see him try and get a hat for a friend that is from a costly shop ending up with a fake but then trying to get the original only to try and return years later and the shop is gone. This last part of the story reminds me of when Helene Hanff went to the carcass of 84 Charing ross road. The next story is about a family one a message of a cousin the Andalusian had stopped at his parent’s house many years ago he had shared a room he remembers unpacking his stuff and that he went to live in a small village in Mexico he laments the loss of contact with other family members as his life has moved on. The other stories also see him have a couple that is coping with the grief of losing a baby. Loss of a home with a homeless man. There was another about a man who reminds him of his old drama teacher.

My Andlausian cousin is dead, A few days ago. I received a telegram sent from a post offive in the Mexican village where he had lived since the ninties. It had been sent by a woman with a name that was almost as pretty as that of the village where she had most likely spent the last few years of her life with him. I hadn’t heard anything from him for around a decade and a half but, while we having had little to do with each other’s life, we were quite fond of each other. Three had been a period when he was still living in Andalusia, before the rude interruption of electronic mail, that we would write long letters to one another on a monthly basis.He was eighteen months younger than me and had died [rematurely at the age of Forty-five.

I was remind in this of the end lines of the film standf by me where the narrator of the film talks of his friend chris he hadn’t seen in manyu year but would never forget!

There is a theme of memory and loss around these stories. I am reminded in this collection themes are in that Portuguese word Saudade that is a feeling of loss and longing is hanging here. From a tale of a hat , the notice of the loss of a family member. The style is subtle gentle writing of his life those he has known as I said I struggled to get the voice of him in my head as I read but this time I did. Proust came to mind in the first story the hat was a similar device to that of Proust’s Madeline that unlocks the memory of trying to get the hat for his friend. It blurs the lines of fiction and biography so you not sure it if is the writer’s actual life or just a mere work of fiction. A wonderful intro to a new voice lets hope we get to read some more from this thoughtful writer. Have you read any of the books the Fum d’Estampa has brought out in the last year or so?

Winstons score A-

The Madness by Narcis Oller

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The Madness by Narcis Oller

Catalan fiction

Original title – La bogeria

Translator – Douglas Shuttle

Source – review copy

You ever think you reviewed a book and then discover you haven’t well this is a case in point I can remember writing about this book but I must have deleted it or part wrote and left it but anyway I return today with a classic of Catalan fiction from Narcis Oller. He translated books by Tolstoy and Dumas into Catalan also his french edition of one of his books was given a forward by Emila Zola. So he is in that vein of naturalism and realism of writers like Zola and Dicken. He wrote a number of well-received books. Here he captures through two men who meet over a period of time the political strife that would lead towards the civil war. This is from a new press Fum D’estampa specializing in Catalan

fiction

Daniel Serrallonga was older than us and must have then been around twenty-five years old. But his pale, hollow face, thick, unfuly beard and short, auburn hair made him look a lot older. Hiseyes, round and grey and hardly visible through the thick glass of his gold rimmed Prince-nez, ever balanced on the bridge of his hoked twisted nose, added years to him or , at least , provided him with an air of being of a somewhat undefinable age due to his clear lack of youth and the veil of sadness that they conferred on him.

He paints an interesting potrait of Daniel a sort of firey man by this description.

The story revolves around two men Daniel Serrallonga who has moved to the country and are narrator we don’t get told much about our narrator just he is a lawyer who has another friend Armengol whom he first met the young man daniel at a coffee house. As they meet our narrator observes who the young man challenges the local police officer who was booed by the other in the coffee house as he takes things to far our narrator sees this as an odd action. Daniel ends up in prison. Where he starts to write political pieces, but when he is released he discovers that his articles never saw the light of day as they were just destroyed by his friends that  he had trusted to put them out there for him. what follows is over the years the three men’s paths cross the narrator’s friend Armengol swaps careers and becomes a doctor later in his life as we see daniel fall out with his family or an inheritance becomes involved with various theories to the assassination of General Prim a would-be prime minister it is either this or his family woes with his sister that lead to Daniels downfall.IS he Mad ? what drove him there.

Four years passed without me hearing anything aqbout Daniel, and had it not been for bumping into Armengol in a bar in Barcelona, it woukld have been even longer.

“Hello, hello” grinned Armengol “What are you doing here ? Its great to see you!

“You too! What a concidence!”

I’m just back from Madrid. Oh, and you can take your hat to me,I am now offically a gradute doctor. I arrived atthis morning because of some carlist stopping the train at Calaf. And You

Later it is through Armengol who sees daniel in the medical sense more in the latter stages of the book.

I enjoyed this as many of you know I work with Learning disability patients we have a number that also has mental health issues which we usually see as they are in crisis when they arrive at our ward. So I am always interested in literature that involves mental health we see daniel fall apart throughout the book this is a time before understand of what is mental health with his theories etc and the swings in his behavior he has some sort of psychosis. The novel shows the background of the time the fragile state assassinations police corruption then through Daniels family we see what happens when the family falls out. This is a sad tale of one man’s descent into the well of misery. This is seen through two sides a look back at events from the present and then the events told as they happen. This shows Oller view of the times from the three main characters point of view