Tag: german lit

Rombo by Esther Kinsky

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Rombo by Esther Kisky

German fiction

Original title – Rombo

Translator- Caroline Schimdt

Source – review copy

There is a few writers that I really really love, and Kinsky is one of them. She is one of those writers I think I love her shopping list because, you know, with her, it wouldn’t just be a shopping list. She is cut from the same writing style as Seabed and Kluge another two writers I adore. Ester Kinky lived in London for many years. She was married to the late German translator Martin Chalmers. The last book I read by her saw how she dealt with that grief. She is also a translator from English, Polish and Russian into German. She is the German translator of Olga Tokarczuk ( This has a feel of flights at times). She now lives in Berlin.

Among the boulders, pebbles and shards of glass washed milky and smooth are variously sized concrete fragments that stand tilted, defying the water in a different way than the leftover solid and stony things which gradually submit to the currents and learn to want to reach the sea. The concrete fragments are rigid and in-flexible, positioning themselves against any current.

They distinguish themselves from the meticulously smooth stones with implicit drawings and lines and veins of a different nature, and seek the edges, the banks, the coves set apart from the current, where they come into their own as wreckage, maintain their fragmented nature and remain witness: earthquake breakage, remains of house and farm and charge, things carted away that do not submit to anything new. A young addition to the old river: the earthquake rubble.

The way the enviroment his hit as hard as those that live there !

What she does here is take a slice and event the world-changing earthquakes 0f 1976 in the Friuli area of Northeast Italy. She takes apart the events through one village and seven of the people that lived in that village and she how their lives were ripped apart after the earthquake in May 1976 as we hear the memories of that event from seven people and how each of their worlds was ripped apart and how it affected their families and changed there lives alongside this there is how the earthquake had changed the world around the people and also a collection of found items photos of those who were just lost in the events the two earthquakes months apart left nearly a thousand dead but also changed the course of so many lives like the seven Silvia on holidays Toni remembering their car. Mara thought of how many kids her mother had given birth to. Lina remembered a neighbour’s laughs as out hit each recalls over the course of the book the events and the aftermath of it on them.

MARA
My mother gave birth to nine children. Three died, three went abroad and never returned. At first they wrote occasionally, or sent a photograph, but eventually even that stopped. My mother began forgetting early on. She forgot the soup on the stove and the goats in the shed and her basket on the field. But if one of us became sick, without a word she walked to a spot where some herb grew, to remedy the illness. And she always knew where to find her favourite flowers. Sometimes she sat outside on the bench and rocked back and forth, speaking with her children dead and disappeared. She was still able to remember their names, but not ours. Had she forgotten us? I’m not sure. Although I cared for her, I was no one to her – she called me and my remaining siblings by random names, never by our own. And later, when I had to lock her in her room, she would hit and scratch me. But her children who had disappeared, who had left – they were still with her. What does it mean to remember, what does it mean to forget?

Mara thinking  of her mother and her siblings

Kinsky is a writer in the vein of Seabald. More so, Alexander  Kluge, I’d say, as his work uses a patchwork of vignettes of memories of events. to recall and describe what happens, voices and facts mix together. These make books that have no straightforward linear narrative to them, but the work is more like a giant portrait of the event given 3d and even a fourth dimension of time, as a whole, does not form a picture of the events and as you move out from the reading you see the possibilities of those earthquakes but also the aftermath which is something you don’t often see mentioned is how people cope after the event and how it changes there lives. As the book firmly ties those seven lives to the environment they live in, and the environment of those remote mountains themselves are a character twisted and changed as much as those that live on them. A combination of the life of those seven before, during and after is drawn into the pattern of words that form her style. Have you read any books by Ester kinsky or Alexander Kluge using this vignette style?

Winstons score – `+ A  – Every book by her I have read is in the top books of the year and this is just the same.

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Doudua Otoo

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Ada’s Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo

German fiction

Original title – Ada’s Raun

Translator – Jon Cho-Polizzi

Source – Review copy

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

Totope, March 1459

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

The book oopens with Ada losing another baby in Birth!

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

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

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

In victorian London Ada Lovelace and DIckens meet ?

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

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

Karios by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Karios by Jenny Erpenbeck

German Fiction

Original title- Karios

Translator Michael Hoffman

Source – Library

I’m back I had spent the last week in Scotland and had hoped to blog but time was against me so I return with a writer I have in the past struggled with in the past some writers I don’t connect with as much as others do and I feel this is the way with Erpenbeck. It isn’t the fact I don’t like her writing I just don’t get why so many others love it when it too me is just average any way this was in the lOcal Library sir I decided as it would be a Booker international book for next year I would read it. I want to see if this is a more personal story of a relationship that broke up being looked back on after the death pod one of the two lovers.

She has a suitcase of her own, full of letters, carbons, and souvenirs,”at product” for the most part, as the archivists like to say. Her own diaries and journals. The next day she climbs up the library steps and takes it down from the top shelf, it’s incredibly dusty inside and out. A long time ago, the papers in his boxes and those in her suitcase were speaking to each other. Now they’re both speaking to time. A suitcase like that, cardboard boxes like that, full of middles and endings and beginnings, buried under decades’ worth of dust; pages that were written to deceive alongside other pages that were striving for truth;

The past in a few boxes is picked apart

The book opens as Katherina remembers its she is asked to the funeral of Hans a much old writer she once had a relationship as she works through she has a suitcase and boxes from him as they form a casket of ghosts of this relationship as she works through those years and their relationship. They initially are perfect although he is maybe a father figure come lover for her at times he likes to show her what he knows and try and make her understand. The relationship is one of him trying to mould her and her much younger infatuation with the older man which is as we know never a good combination for relationships this has been the plot of many a book over the years. But as ever this is set in the downfall of EAST Germany from the early days when they are in a stable east to the tremors and then the downfall of the country and all the changes in the dynamics of the relationship add to that the discovery of Hans that his young lover had a one night stand this one moment serves as a turning point in their relationship as his view and treatment of Katherina changes and the story takes a darker turn all together

All fragments, fragments of endings, fragments of beginnings.Katharina leaves the two black bags, stuffed full of the life of the last six months, untouched, and a few days later takes them to her new apartment: back courtyard, old tenement building, studio room.Just a moment ago, she was working at the printshop, now her training is over, she is a qualified worker, she has successfully concluded her course in typography, and she’s writing her resignation letter:As per our spoken agreement and by mutual consent, I hereby request the termination of my contract with the Staatsverlag, Berlin, effective on July 7, 1987, the July 1 having been granted me for my move, and the days from July 2 TO 6 for my regulation Holiday. At this time, I love and do continue to love the regular freelance broadcaster and writer , Hans W

Later on and the relationship has changed

This is a wonderful insight into a relationship that is always doomed there is always an imbalance at the heart of the relationship add this to the backdrop of the wall falling and the effect that had on the two of them. I do wonder in this part of her life did Jenny have an old partner at some point it? A dark look at the heart of a relationship imploding and how someone you love can be so brutal is so well brought off here. It also shows the difference in the generations Hans is a perfect example of a man that grew up in the East and because of his job and he was happy in the East as in fact, that was all he knew. Kathrina wants to break free like many of her young peers did at the time. Well, I like her more after this book bit she seems to have opened up a bit in this book the voice of her as a writer felt stronger I do wonder if that is Hoffmann who has also brought her writing to life for me a bit more?  I think this will be a Booker international contender next year. If Gunter Von hagens wrote about relationships rather than doing autopsies this would be how he wrote.

Winstons score A -A doomed relationship in a doomed country is pulled apart after a death.

 

Brendel’s Fantasy by Günther Freitag

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Brendel’s Fantasy by Günther Freitag

Austin fiction

Original title – Brendels Fantasie

Translator – Eugene H. Hayworth

Source – Personal copy

After the last two books followed growing up in Germany. We are moving now to neighbouring Austria. And a book from Haus Publishing. A novel by the Austrian novelist Günther Freitag a writer who is also a teacher and has had a number of novels and plays published in German, and he has won a number of prizes over the years. A number of them over the years are around classical music like this one. Here we meet a man at the end of his life as he is dying and wants to see his final and grand ideas. The book follows his decision to move to Italy for a man dying.

CASTELNUOVO SITS ON two sprawling hills, whose slopes are planted with thick vines. Vineyards, a few craftsmen, several shops with food for daily needs, at the edge of the village a manor that has specialised in sheep farming. The ideal place for the Fantasy, Höller thinks on the way to Felsina farm.The rest home is situated on an elevated point from which the entire city can be viewed. In a display case in front of the community hall, a poster annoujncess a meeting of the delegates of the province abd the mayors from the surrounding areaa. A discussion of  enviromental devastation and sale of land to foreign investors.

Maybe this is why he struggles to get his idea off the ground to the local.

 

The book follows what happens when a successful businessman Höller is told that he has a terminal brain tumour. He is at the crossroads of what to do with the time left. Like many in his position, we see a man who has a family that has been pulled apart and affected by his job and work. His with high flying and sons that pay little heed to him now. He has one other passion in his life: Franz Schubert’s works, especially when they are conducted by the Great Alfred Brendal. So what follows is his decision to sell up and use all the money he has left to Go to the sleepy Tuscan village of Castelnuvo. There he decides he wants to put on his own piece of Schubert, the one he has always loved Wanderer fantasy using the locals, which are a bunch of unusual characters including the old man from theold people’s home, a drunken priest a dwarf that is the mayor’s right-hand man these all stand in his way. But he wants Brendel to perform it for him, so he writes a series of letters to grab the great pianist’s attention and bring him to this sleepy backwater. As events unfold, his mind becomes affected, and reality and hallucinations become hard to work out, which is when dreams and reality mingle. But will Höller finally get to see his dream of Franz Schubert done by Albert Brendel in this sleepy Italian village be he shuffles off this mortal coil !!

Back OUTSIDE, Höller imagines the dwarf as an usher. The black uniform with gold braid shall make the deformed man an authority who will not tolerate any rebellion and will squelch every insurrection with his squinting gaze, emphasised by an ominous, dancing Adam’s apple. But he will not be able to buy the uniform readymade.Höller walks to the piazza. More than four hours before the meeting begins. The political bigwig will already have made the journey, sitting in the back of a black Lancia and studying the press reports on the parliamentary sessions of the last week. How did the journalists react to his speech? Do they quote one of his colleagues for his remarks? Does the chairman of the party advance their position? Then he reads letters from his constituents, all written in clumsy sentences and always with the same requests. Can’t you drive any faster? As you command, Onorevole, whispers the pale driver.
The carabinieri drive past Höller in their blue Alfa at a walking speed. The passenger in the front seat looks at him briefly, then the car accelerates and races on toward the centre of town

As he imagines what will happen if it gets it off the ground

This is a dark comedy of the final roll of the dice of one man and the madness of it as he dreams of the great performance he is bringing. This is a smaller-scale version of the dreams of Herzog in Fitzcarraldo when he dreamed of bringing the Italian Opera Tenor Caruso to those in the Jungle. This is an equally bleak journey through the sleepy village and the hurdles they put in the way of his dream. The last effort of a dying man to escape and live in a dream, almost away from his present, will succeed. This is an unusual book mix of death and desire and hopes all in one book are hard to make work.

Winston’s score – B  interesting idea for a book

 

In the Belly of the Queen by Karosh Taha

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In the Belly of the Queen by Karosh Taha

German Fiction

Original title -Im Bauch der Königin

Translator Grashina Gabelmann

Source – Review copy

I was sent this unusual book from V&Q by the Kurdish-German writer Karosh Taha; she came to Germany with her parents when she was just ten. Her family settled in Duisburg, which isn’t to far from the part of Germany in Kleve in the Ruhr area. She had trained as an English teacher and worked teaching English initially as her writing career took off. This is her second novel. Both are set and deal with close-knit Kurdish communities living in Germany in high-rise buildings. This book tells the same story from two different angles and can be read in two ways female first, then a male story or the opposite. Way around. The book uses a fight Amal has with her young classmate Younes and the book is told from her perspective and Younes’s best friend Rafiq’s perspective.

I tell Younes my father never wore jeans, and he nods, he knows that, and he smokes like my father did. Younes remembers my father better than his own. For Younes, his father means waiting and enduring, enduring the wait.
I tell Younes he only ever wore black trousers with his shirt loosely tucked in, he was lanky, that’s why the shirt fluttered around the sides of his torso – his clothes seemed too large for his body, yet just right. His only accessory was nonchalance, and I wonder how he dresses now, whether he still wears clothes from his time as a student.

Amal remembering her father and the way he was.

As I said, the book is really two novellas that follow the same events over the same time frame from Amal the young female and the main character of the book. As she hits the young Younes, her father jumps to protect his daughter, but he abruptly leaves her, and she ends up. Living with the boy she hit and his mother, as they like her, have been pushed outside. Her father defended her, but at what cost to himself and what knock-on effect does this have on her life after this, even in this close-knit community as Younes is an outsider due to his mother Shahira, a free spirit, a woman that lives by her own rule. This world of Younes. We see through the eyes of his best friend Rafiq, a young boy initially drawn to his mate’s mum but then repulsed by her free spirit as he sees his Kurdish culture come through. But he ends up in a relationship with the equally free-spirited Aal. What does he want thou, Rafiq? This is the sound of the two cultures clashing the tight-knit and relatively similar to their homeland Kurdish community. They live in the high rise tight-knit choking on its way, or can they escape to live as Germans? All these floats around the three youngsters as they grow up. This book has layers to it it follows the aftermath of one event and the tug of war growing up in this situation. This is maybe closer to English books like Brick Lane or the early books from Hanif Kureishi than most German books.

I want Shahira  to lick her spoon; I want to see her tongue wan. But she never does, and she’s always pleased to see me tion. burn in, Raffig: She saunters barefoot into the kitchen She’s wearing leggings like the girls in our year, with her shir just covering her butt. Every curve’s still visible. When she’s nor wearing heels, she’s the same height as Amal, and I could easily put my arm around her. Her dark hair falls in waves over her breasts and shoulders. Sometimes she puts her hair up – then you can see her neck, which is browner than the rest of her body.I don’t know what her belly looks like or the folds underneath her arse. Amal’s are white because she goes to the tanning studio.Shahira sometimes tans in the afternoon sun, but not often – it gives you ugly wrinkles and spots, she says. She used to sit on her balcony wearing a summer dress and let the sun shine on herglistening legs for half an hour

Rafiq sexual awakening are muddled here

This is another book that reminds me of my time in Germany. I worked alongside a number of refugees some from Iraq and others from Former Yugoslavia. Some people in this book could have quickly been working in the Jugendwerkstatt I worked at. The wonder of this story is how it shows the gender divide in the community she grew up in and how people can view one event and the aftermath differently over time. It follows a girl that goes on to be a very strong woman in Amal. But it also shows the outfall of war and having to move on children when thrust into a different society with different rules. As I said, this book is maybe nearer to some books like Bribk Lane or A book like Interpreter of Maldives, both books that follow second-generation immigrants, those kids growing up on that divide between family past and the present and the country they live in. I loved the use of two narrations for the same event it is like what Durrel did with Alexandra Quartet as the same timeframe is told two ways the unreliable nature of the youngster’s narrative comes to the fore, and also how swayed they can be by gender and their own culture. Have you read this unusual book ?

Winston’s score – A – This is a look at growing up in two cultures in this case in Germany but it is a universal story of two cultures clashing

While we were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer

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While we were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer

German Fiction

Original title -Als wir träumten

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – Personal copy (I did have an e-galley)

I am late to a couple of the international booker reviews. I have left this as it was my personal favourite of this years longlist. Meyer is a writer whose work I have long admired. He was first brought to us by And other stories that brought out All the Lights which I reviewed on the blog 12 years ago. He has since then been published by Fitzcaraldo; such is the nature of books in translation that this was his debut novel, and his second novel, bricks and mortar, which I had also reviewed, came out I loved. But this novel captures him. as a raw young writer. Meyer is a writer who has lived a life growing up in the East. He has worked blue-collar jobs as a security guard and forklift driver. He has been in the situations and worlds his characters live in. This writer has lived in part of the world he writes about, and this group of lads trying their best to make their way in their world after the wall fell and their world changed utterly.

The shooting was over. The green lamp at the shooting range for the electric rifles had lit up one last time, a hit, my last shot, six out of ten, not bad at all, and the pop of the air rifles had stopped over in Room Two where the Free German Youth had been shooting. We put the electric rifles down on the tables and went to the door.
‘Did you see, Danny? I was really good,’ Mark said down in the schoolyard, and he laughed and slapped his chest. ‘Almost like Old Surehand! You’ll never beat my nine

The boys at the fair shooting early on things get darker when they get older .

 

This classic piece Bildungsroman focuses on the tight n=knit group of four boys living in Leipzig and trying to see the world beyond their brewery quarter hard living tough streets.Rico, Mark, Paul and Daniel. We see their world as they try to get through every day in their hard-hitting world. From drinking, stealing cars, Danny getting prison tattoos, the boxing matches, this is a man’s world. Danny and his dad support football his dad an alcoholic. We see the football club they love and the violence involved in the football of the late 90s, as the boys try to get to Manhood as they run through the nights, escaping the law and running illegal clubs. This is a world of a world emerging from oppression, hope but no hope really at this time. Danny is Meyer. He is, as Tony put it in our group chat, the one that is there but seems to avoid the worst of the trouble. One imagines Clemens has rewritten himself slightly.

the Tattooist and Thilo the Drinker donit know each other, and that’s a good thing cause Thilo be Drinker talks a lot of crap and pisses people off and wort stop talking stupid crap at them when he’s had a drink and he’s almost always drinking.
Tattoo-Thilo doesn’t drink much; he broke the habit in jail. He’s been to jail a couple of times even though hes not yet twenty, and he doesn’t like people talking stupid crap at him. I don’t know exactly what he did time for, but GBH was on the list.
I get my tats from Tattoo-Thilo ’cause he’s got a pretty good reputation when it comes to tats, not just in our neighbourhood. Rico told me there are even guys from the red-light district who go to him, and Rico got inked by him as well, but that was in jail. Rico doesn’t talk about jail much, but I know almost all tattooists get their training there.

Danny gets his tattoos

I was drawn to this before it came out or was on the list of comparisons to Irvine Welsh. I get that part.I was a huge Welsh fan back in the day. I was in my 20s a lad I loved drinking, loved football, got in fights, have been in tricky situations and have known a number of shady characters, but I am maybe more of a Danny than any of the other characters I am a bit straight-laced at times. But to me, this is more bloody Shane Meadows all four of these characters could have fallen off the screen into the pages of This is England series set over the same period and also following a similar group of lads through their ups and downs. I know there is a film of this but I tell you, Meadows would make this book a masterpiece of a film. It captures the lost hope of the working-class world. It is the ghost of those early Springsteen songs running the streets on the edge of the law. It is hard to hold back how much I loved this it reminds me of the kitchen sink and working-class novels I loved in my youth. Have you read any books from Meyer?

Winston’s score of A++++++++ is just stunning !!!

Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig

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Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig

German Fiction

Original title –Die Linie zwischen Tag und Nacht

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – Review copy

I was excited when this dropped through my; letterbox as I was a massive fan of Roland’s first novel to be translated into English, which had come out several years ago and also had one of the memorable titles of recent years ‘One Clear, ice-cold January Morning at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century. I said at the time, he is actually best known as a Playwright in his homeland as his plays are amongst the best known in the German-speaking world, and he is the most performed in Germany. He initially worked as a journalist before turning to Drama. The German title is the line between day and night, and that is what the book centres on the situation of people caught between the world of the day and the dark of the night.

Two helicopters circled above Görlitzer Park, but they were flying far too close to one another; what if they touched, what if they plummeted from the sky into the dancing crowd?

But were there really two helicopters circling above us?Maybe it was just one; having been awake for more than twenty-four hours I might be seeing double.

Dancing next to me by the canal were a Colombian draughtswoman, a Croatian roofer, a Portuguese waitress, a Syrian IT guy, an Indian girl who could breathe fire, and a very tall, very thin, bearded Russian who described himself as a mystic. The Russian, Ivan, was the only one I knew.

All of them were wide awake yet deathly tired, and they all shared what they had on them: cocaine, MDMA, ketamine, speed, beer and vodka.

The nscene as the body drifted past Tommy and nthe fellow Clubbers

 

The book opens with the line she floated in her white wedding dress on the green water. A dead woman is floating past a techno club in Berlin, and no one bats an eye not sure if it is just a show or something but it is Tommy, a disgraced drugs officer, that sees that girl is dead and isn’t some sort of art piece floating by the multitudes dance a collection of Croatian roofers, Portuguese waitress a tall thin Russian this is the collection of people that have drunk and taken drugs together in the club all that night. Tommy decides to discover more about the dead girl, a journey that takes =him to the dark heart of Berlin’s nightclub scene. Drawn into the world he used to try and police. He was a great officer, but he got tainted by the drugs and drawn into the night as he drags this dead girl out of the canal, he has to face his past mistakes and try and discover who she was and also how she ended up floating dead in a wedding dress down a canal as the clubbers just carried on dancing.

I sat with Gianni in the restaurant, which was still empty.By now we were onto our fourth grappa.

We talked about Csaba. We talked about saba’s trip to Hamburg.

-That’s what he’s like, Gianni said. It’s not greed, it’s a lack of restraint.

Gianni asked me about the dead woman in the canal. I asked him how he knew about her and he said, I was there.

Half the city was there. The television cameras were there.

You’re famous, Tommy, but then again you’ve been famous for a while now.

Gianni made a gesture as if he were holding a camera.- It was nice to see you, Chef de Police à bord, he said as I made to leave. “Chef de Police à bord” is what Csaba once called me.

Tommy has to go into his own past as he tries to find out what has happened!

This isn’t a thriller or a road trip into the dark heart of the club scene and its darker side the drugs and how so many young people fall along the way.  We follow Tommy as he wades through the flotsam and jetsom that is the line between the sea of drugs and the land of the day and everyone else. Tommy knows this place well he has been caught up in his own flotsam and jetsom for far too long. This would make a great Wim Wender film s it has Berlin at is heart and Wenders Berlin, through his lens also captured that line between day and night, between drugs and trying to live in the day. This is the story that should be his next movie. I was reminded of some of the scenes in Wenders Faraway so close. So many souls in this book had drifted off in the sea of drug casualties of the night. Have you read any books by Schimmelpfenig or seen his plays ?

Winstons score – +A One of the best books from Germany I have read in recent years.

Blue Jewellery by Katharina Winkler

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Blue Jewellery by Katharina Winkler

Austrian fiction

Original title – blauschmuck

Translator – Laura Wagner

Source – Personal copy

It is that time of year again when it is German Lit month and this is the first book I read this year it is. I choose one of the books from Seagull books. This one is by the  Austrian writer Katharina Winkler this was her debut novel and won a number of prizes when it came out and has been translated into a number of languages.I picked it as my first read as it is based on a true story but is also one of those stories that need to be repeated it is a universal subject of abuse no matter where it is the result is the same as in the book. She has since published another novel.

I have to cut the wedding cake, and after that they will lead me to the bedroom. I stare at the icing on the cake and the white rose made from marzipan, the music stops and finally Yunus is standing beside me, and Yunus’ mother, who is now my mother, places a knife in Yunus’ hand and my hand on top of Yunus’ hand, and together we cut ourselves towards my virgin. Dessert plates with cake and marzipan roses on them are drifting all across the room, hands that end in people are stuck to their underside. Men, women and children with laughing mouths, who take their parties as they come, and who don’t mind my virgin. A plate is pushed into my hands.

The start of Filiz Horrors begins not long after her wedding day

The book is based on the true story of a Kurdish woman and the inner life of her marriage. The two meet in their early teens Filiz is swayed by the beauty of Yunus. The pair marry against her family, but the sense is this can lead them to freedom from the small village in the Anatolia mountains and head to the west. The book sees the young Yunus see other women with what she calls Blue Jewellery is hidden away. The marriage soon takes a turn as FILIZ s sees the true nature of Yunus when he starts to abuse and attack he giving her her own Blue Jewellery this cycle continues as the pair dream of leaving but each time she is attacked she becomes more to his beatings and hiding the marks of it as they have children. Yunus becomes closed to the world of their home veiled and at the mercy of Yunus and her world shrinks around her.  They do eventually head to Austria via Istanbul with their young family Will fillip and her children Halil, Selin and Seda escape? what will happen? How far will the cycle of violence go?

When the girls from the Neighbourhood come and the giggles flow into the courtyard, I cannot remain a silent shadow. The giggles reach up  to my knee, and my heart beats.

I am a child , wife that I am

I join the giggles and hug the girls, and I laugh and show my open mouth.

Younus is beating me

He has to beat the child out of my bones

The girl put of my guts

He has to beat the wife into my bones

These lines so haunted me when I read them

What this captured so well is how often Abuse can be viewed as normal and how can a young girl’s life change so quickly at one point she said he beat the girl out of me and the wife into me struck me as so sad this is what she had as a marriage and accepted it. The start of the book almost made the abuse seem part of everyday life. I was reminded of some of the scenes in. Call the midwife this is a society caught out of time where the male role and role model have been skewed. The fact this is based on a real story is even more horrifying. As I said this is a universal story though it isn’t just a Kurdish story abuse happens everywhere and that is the important side of the story to highlight to make sure people know it’s wrong.The book has a sparse poetic nature to it. So if you like stories of village life a marriage doomed and a tough woman at the heart of it this should appeal to you as a reader if you like books like this.

Winston’s score – A – I wish I had read this last year a powerful insight into an abusive marriage

Walking in Berlin by Franz Hessel

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Walking in Berlin by Franz Hessel

German Non-fiction

Original title – Spazieren in Berlin

Translator – Amanda DeMarco

Source – personal copy

I managed to just squeeze the third read in for this week’s 1929 club and it was one I saw on the list of books when the year was announced earlier this year and was reminded about it I had seen it when it came out and had intended to look at it then but it had passed me by. So to get back to it Franz Hessel he was a friend of the great Walter Benjamin who has an essay at the start of the book about the book. He calls how Hessel a flaneur should look t the city afresh. The city of his birth with fresh eyes. Hessel himself with Benjamin had translated the works of Proust into German.

In the half-light of tinted lamps hanging in a number of smaller halls and rooms in the north as well as the west, same-sex couples circulate, here the girls and there the lads. Sometimes the girls are dressed, in a more or less pleasant manner, as men, and the lads as ladies. Over time their appetites, once a bold protest against the dominant moral laws, have become a rather harmless pleasure, and visitors who like to dance with the opposite sex are also allowed into these mellow orgies. They find a particularly favourable environment here. The men learn new nuances in tenderness from the female cavaliers, their partners learn from the masculine ladies, and your own “straight”-ness becomes a peculiar stroke of luck, as it makes you seem rather exotic. Oh, and the light fixtures are positively magnificent: wooden or metal lanterns with serrated frames, reminiscent of the fretwork of our boyhood.

I was reminded of cabaret her and imagine Isherwood sitting in his Berlin

I loved the idea of this book as I had just rewatched the two films Tilda Swinton had made more than 20 years apart, in fact, they could be seen as a cousin of these the first was just at the cusp of the wall falling and the second is the unified Berlin. She covers the same route on a bike across Berlin many points on her route  Hessel visited in his book. t Hessel had walked his Berlin in the late twenties what I first got from the book is that he had a way of looking but not jading the times one passage in the book really grabbed me about girls looking like boys and boys looking like Girls those characters that had fallen out of Cabaret or an Isherwood novel of the time. He captures a city that has underneath the horror that happened in the 15 years after he walk the city. meandering the city that would a few years later be gone. The longest piece is on a tour called the tour of the churches like St Peters etc. Also the old Royal buildings of Berlin, and the National Gallery. This is a flaneur a wander of the city this metropolis his fellow citizens. Then the Zoo places like the Newspaper district a place I wonder is dead like Fleet Street its London counterpart.

Excursioners in light-colored skirts and shift dresses climb the steps leading up to the station. Those lucky things, enjoying such a nice autumn day. Some also go through the narrow entrance to the little Wannsee train station. What I’d really like to do is follow them. A sail. boat, or even just a paddleboat.1 Potsdam and the Havel. see, the secret soul of Berlin, otherworldly places here on earth! And today a weekday. But now we’re arriving at Potsdamer Platz. The first thing to say about it is that it isn’t really a plaza at all, but rather what they call a carrefour in Paris, a crossroads, an intersection; we don’t really have the right word for it in German. That Berlin once came to an end at the city gate here, with country roads branching off from it–you’d have to have a well-informed eye to recognize that from the shape of the inter-section.

Part of the longest section of the book the Tour which remind me of Bois as Homer as he walked down Potsdamer Platz

Another image that came to mind when I read this was of Homer played by Curt Bois in Wings of desire (I so want the blu ray box set of Wenders going out soon but it is out of my price range I’ll have to wait). Bois’s character is seeking what was Potsdamer Platz in the rubble of the city in the late 80s. Bois walk also has old film of Potsdamer back in the day (Hessel is by Potsdamer in the section Fashion around Fashion houses and shops in the city and also the tor section). It’s a Shame Hessel died in the early years of the war in France a follow-up to this would be great like Swinton and my own remembrance of the city I have only been for a day and wish I could go back to Berlin it is a city that has had so many changes in the nearly hundred years since this book came out. This book is a forerunner of Psychogeography a distant cousin of Benjamins Opus to Paris Arcades (I have been reading this on and off for years ). Have you read this or any other great flaneur works of people wandering cities on foot and just taking it in like it was new and fresh to the writer’s eyes.

Winston’s score – A- a gem from this week’s 1929 club reminds me of a place I’d love to go and explore more and each for his ghosts and the ghost of what happened.

Cinema Stories by Alexander kluge

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Cinema Stories by Alexander kluge

German fiction

original title – Geschichten vom Kino

translators – Martin Brady and Helen Hughes

Source – personal copy

If you have been following me for the last couple of years you will know since I discovered the works of Alexander Kluge. for me he should be better known than he is all those people going on about Sebald well this guy is like him but has been writing his documentary-style fiction usually around an event or subject I have reviewed four books by him so far. I have just been navigating on a personal odyssey through his works as I buy them. This is one of the books that maybe cross over his two main fields of filmmaker and writer. As ever it is a series of Vignettes 39 in total.

The ELDORADO movie theatre was located close to the border dividing the centre of Beirut from the South of the city, and still within the area destroyed by aerial bombing. Razed to the ground, only the foundation remained. The married couple who had run the venue for decades had cleared away the rubble and erected a tent on the flat concrete floor of the building, The projectors, which had been rescued, stood under this tent. In front of them, are rows of makeshift seats (chairs from a cafe); and in front of those, the screen. The sound of battle, sometimes coming closer, sometimes moving away, merged with the soundtrack of the films. The audience was somewhat safer under this tented roof than in the surviving houses, because destroyed buildings were seldom attacked for a second time and also because in this “cinema auditorium” there was no danger of being buried by falling masonry

The opening of the book and the story cinema in a state of Emergency

I will mention a few of the vignettes and leave you a lot to discover they are all around the subject of cinemas. The collection opens with a story that is a little way reminds me of a scene from the film Cinema Paradiso this is the story of a cinema in Beirut and the couple that ran the Eldorado cinema trying to keep it running with the war going on and how they showed whatever they could get hold of it to remind of when the cinema burnt down in cinema Paradiso and the carried on. Then we see how Erich Von Stroheim maybe was one of the first people in the film industry to invent who he was not the son of a hatmaker from Vienna he became a von and lived up whole was working his way up through the cinema. Then he turns to Walter Benjamin and his observations on how cinema and films can be used as propaganda. Then I read one that was a connection to a book that I had read that was by the wife of the Filmmaker Joris Ivens here we see how when his filming was interrupted by rain he then made a piece describing fourteen types of rain, like rain in the country, never-ending rain and the concentrated rain in Hurricanes. This is just a glimpse of the book I feel it is hard to write about many of the 39 vignettes in the collection.`I want to leave a few to be discovered.

1 A week of Rain with Joris Ivens

The radical documentarist Joris Ivens took advantage of a week of rain in Holland, during which he couldn’t shoot anything else, to film variations on the theme of rain. Hannes Eisler later composed music for these film sequences. His piece is called fourteen ways to describe rain

It reminds me of how many words the Inuit have for snow types and looks of snow. And how many words do we have for rain here in the UK!!

 

this book mixes the two worlds that Alexander Kluge is best known for cinema there is a real sense of some of these small tales he’ll have heard over the years and then he has used his writing talent to bring some of those sorts of insider tales gems he will have heard or even been involved with. The vignettes cover a myriad of subjects from actual cinemas, to what the power of film is to actors, filmmakers and myths of cinema. For me he is a writer you just want to read cover to cover in every book he is like that uncle with the great stories we all have someone that can talk and describe the world around us and make it interesting and Kluge’s world is c=inema he is an insider and these are those tales. I am still not sure why he isn’t better known here in English maybe it is the fact he falls in between styles of writing as a writer he has parts of short stories, narrative non-fiction, memoir or documentary fiction he is a polymath a true gem of the German cultural scene. Have you a favourite book from Kluge?

Winstons score – + A compelling vignette around his other job as a filmmaker.

After Midnight by Irmgard keun

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After Midnight by Irmagard keun

German fiction

Original title – Nach Mitternacht

Translator – Anthea Bell

Source – library

I got this as I reviewed  Child of all nations by her last November and fell in love with her writing style which seems to perfectcly captures the world of being just an adult and her again the narrator is 19 Santa we are drawn into her world. This was the first book keun wrote herself after she went into exile from the Nazi regime herself as some of the novella parallels her own decision at the time to flee Germany. it also mixes the  actual events at the time such as Hitlers visit. which is set in the late 1930s follows what happens after the day Hitler visited Frankfurt  as we see the change of attitude sweeps over Germany at this time after people her him speak.it captures the country just as the madness that lead into the descent to war is just happening.

Gerti called for me at noon today, because she was going to buy a pink blouse and wanted me to come along to the shops and tell her which suited her best. Even Lisa says I have good taste in clothes, and people are always wanting me to knit them sweaters. Actually I can knit fast, and well. If I really do marry Franz, I can always earn us a little money by knitting. How ever, here in Frankfurt I’ve been moving in circles which are quite different from anything Franz is used to. I mis with high-class, rich, intelligent people here. Franz wouldn’t know what to say to them

I loved how even thou it is nearly 90 years old Sanna at times is so now.

Our narrate is Sanna she has lived with her aunt for a time but when some of the view she says about the way some of the Nazi leader talk it means that it has a knock on effect when those near her aunt and her cousin that she has feeling fall call in the police so she moves to Frankfurt to live with her half brother Alois and his wife in Frankfurt with his wife that is an artist this is also where she connects with Gerti whom has a fallen for a Jewish boy all this happens whilst we see the views of those around them harden as Hitler is due to come to Frankfurt and speak. what we see is the world she knows shrinking as those she is friends with either start to think about leaving or become entranced with the rhetoric of Hitler. Alois her brother is already at odds as his books have been banned and when she sees the effect on there wider circle of friends like Gerti’s love dieter there comes that time to decide what to do stay or go. the last few chapters also introduce an older character as they decide what they are doing.

But politics is in there air even the Ladies these days. Gerti says she supposes it’s something if you find one without a lavatory attendant who expects you to say “Heil Hitler” and wants ten pfeninigs into bargain

And now, suddenly, Gerti is weeping bitterly =, because she didn’t see Dieter Aaron today. So I have to comfort her. Why does a girl like Gerti have to go falling love with a banned person mixed race, for goodness sake when there are plenty men around the authorities would let her love? Its hard enough to know your way around the rules the authorities lay down for business, as we all know, ban be very tricky organised- and now we have to know the rules for love too

This captures the slowly creeping changes in the world but shows how hard they hit

What she does so well her is uses Sanna eyes a young woman just wanting to be a young woman at the time. Some of the bits I love is the usual teen things she is trying to do but then sees the events of the time stopping or changing what they can do.we then see how this chain of events is impacting on her life from having to leave her aunts to the time in Frankfurt when the attitudes of those around them changes as views become juxtapose and the way forward is split into accepting the status quo keeping quiet and not being able to be yourself. the other option is to flee and go into exile this actual series of events follows much of the decisions that Irmgard Keun followed herself. Her books were banned like Alois books were at the time. She also linked to actual events at the time which was Hitlwers list to Frankfurt when he spoke at the Opernplatz. It also captures the way German was changing and how some never spoke up and others used the way things were for other reasons like the events around her Aunt where was it what she said or the fact that she was falling for her cousin. Have you read her books where should  I go after this one ?

Winstons score – + b It captures the times well as the country is on the tip of entering war and the horrors that followed through a young persons eyes.

Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp

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Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp

German fiction

Original title – Marzahn, mon amour: Geschichten einer Fußpflegerin

Translator – Jo Heinrich

Source – review copy

I have been a fan of Peirene press since they started and have reviewed most of their books of the time of blog which is about time they have been bringing out books they bring out their books out every year around a theme and here is the first book in this year’s series a book that was chosen for Berlins one book where the city all read a book at the same time I love that idea. Any way Katja Oskamp is from the same area of East Berlin and was well received with her first work the Halbeschwimmer a collection of short stories that dealt with the falling of East Germany from the view of a teen swimmer. This book is the first since she trained herself as a podiatrist a job she has been doing for the last seven years. This book also follows a middle-aged writer in what is called in the intro of the book those invisible fizzy years when you are too far from the shore you started and it is out of sight and is not near enough to the end shore of life. I love that description as someone caught in the fuzzy time myself.

Frau Guse parks her walking frame and hangs her jacket on the coat stand, breathing heavily. She waddles into the chiropodist’s room with her shopping bag and sits down on the chiropody chair. I help her take off her shoes and socks and roll up her trouser legs. Together we lower her feet into the footbath I’ve prepared, I pluck two gloves frk their box and slip them on, turning to frau Guse who mentions as she does at this point every time, that she has had breat cancer, I nod and say as I do at this point every time, that her her operation was almost seven years ago and that the tablets she’s had to take ever since have terrible side effects, such as shortness of breath and diarrohoea.

One of her first clients Frau Guse.

The book is a series of vignettes of the clients our newly qualified Podiatrist meets when she retrains as one as she is struggling to make ends meet as a writer so when she starts working she meets the locals of Marzahn a run-down part of Berlin as it is described in one of the German reviews outside the ringbahn the central part of Berlin. Starting with an elderly lady Frau Guse a survivor of Breast cancer as she rubs the dead skin of her feet she sighs a colourful woman in loose clothes hiding her missing breast I love the detail she observes in the people whose feet she works on. One that really struck me as she says the is those that feel that Marzahn has many former GDR bigwigs or Sed officials but it isn’t except for one of her clients the cold Herr Pietsch as she described him as a dye in the wool party member he has a sort of detached manner with her that is in contrast to most of the other clients in the book. I’m only mentioned three of the clients as it will leave loads for you like me the reader to discover the last is Gerlinde as she says the area of Marzahn has many refugees and she is one from Prussia that fled to Berlin near the end of the second world war often in her plastic shoes how with her family fled on a ship called the Lappland back in the day. but never got that far when the ship didnt’t get too far and they end up on a refugee train and end up in Berlin.

Herr pietsch, taking off his shoes and socks, stares out of the window. By now I know the routine: he is always wary at first , only to drastically overstep the mark later. I bend down, push the footbath into place and look up into his protruding eyes – two bulging orbs. Herr pietsch speaks with a Thuringian- Saxon accent, a little indistinctly as he’s  on his thiurd set of teeth: “There are certainly a few things I’m not happy with, but I”m getting by. I’m on top of life ”

One of her clients as she bserves is an old party Type!!

As you can see I loved this there is a warm heart to these little vignettes and to the characters she meets someone’s foot maybe tell as much as a  hands do about our lives. what comes across is that even in the most down and out areas like Marzahn as it is observed by one of the characters it is built on a former sewage farm site. The character with her job occupies the same space as the Hairdresser or the barman someone that people tend to open up to maybe a little more than they would in over situations small talk but over time as in these vignettes it sometimes grows and yes like frau use who seems to have a script of her life or maybe this is also a sign of her having dementia as she often recounts the same story over and over again. This is a slice of those that are often passed as I described in a review years ago the flotsam and jetsam of the world those that can’t escape where they are or maybe just have always been there I was also reminded of the Character that was played by Curt Bois Homer an elderly poet in the film Wings of desire or in its German title Der Himmel uber Berlin another glimpse behind the net curtains and high rise of Berlin. Characters who like Homer is looking for a way home to their past this is the case in a lot of these vignettes the past weights heavy in their tales at times it ? if you are a fan of interlinking stories or stories about everyday folk this will appeal. Have you read this collection ?

Winstonsdads score – +A A great collection of vignettes about the locals of a high rise rundown area of Berlin.

The Voice Imitator by Thomas Bernhard

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The Voice Imator by Thomas Bernhard

Austrian fiction

Original title – Der Stimmenimitator

Translator – Kennerth J Northcott

Source – personal copy

I am a little late start this week Bernhard week sorry anyway it is the second time I have done a week dedicated to the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I am a fan of his work he has a style I like his characters always seem to be at odds with the society they are in and he has a very caustic way of looking at the world around him till now all the books I have reviewed on the blog have been novels or novellas nine of his books I have reviewed I also have a piece from the last Bernhard week by the writer Andrej Nikolaidis he wrote for this blog about his love of the writer and his importance to his journey as a writer. So welcome to the third Bernhard week well let’s say fortnight this week and next week. Have you a favourite book by him? I now get on to his collection of microfiction

A man from Ausburg was comitted to the Ausburg lunatic assylum merely because, throughout his life he had claimed at every possible opportunity that Goethe’s last words were mehr nicht ( no more) tather than mehr licht (more light) , something that in the long run and as time went on, is said to have frayed the nerves of those with whom he came in contact that hey banded together to get this ausburger , so unhappily obsessed with his claimm comitted to a lunatic assylum. It is reported that six doctors refused to commit him to a lunatic asylum but that the seventh immediately arranged to have him committed. This doctor was, as I learned from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, decorated with the Goethe badge of the city of Frankfurt for his efforts.

The story the Claim about a man that refused to change his mind of Goethes last words!!

This is a collection of 104 stories or more snippets none is more than a single page most are just a few lines he has taken headlines tales he has heard and turned them into 104 stories there is a number of recurring themes in the stories such as Madness, bad luck, death and suicides these characters all have a little touch of what you expect from Bernhard he has touched on Madness in Wittigensteins Nephew which was set in an asylum which a number of these stories are one had a real tongue in cheek comic turn a man sent to asylum only after a number of doctors had refused to the last doctor said yes what was up with him as he refused to admit that his version of what were the last words of Goethe was no more (Mehr Nicht) as opposed to the given which is more light (Mere Licht). Then an orchestra plays and the audience claps encore after encore only to be told they had played to the Deaf school. The death of a woodcutter reminds me of the title of one of his other books. A man that was Tito’s double these tales he took from all over the place and range from comic to sad to profound to surreal.

A so- called Chamber Music asscociation famous for playing only ancient music on original tnstruments and for having only Rossini, frescobaldi, Vivaldi, and Pergolesi in its repertoire was playing in an old castle in the Atterseeand had its greatest success since it was founded. The applause continued intil the Chamber Music Association did not have a single encore left on its program to play. It was not until the next day that the Musicians were told that they had been playing in an institute for death mutes.

The story The most successful concert an orcestra plays a number of encores and then are told the truth.

 

I had wanted to try a few of the other things he had written so choose this for this year I will next year be doing either the poetry collections of his plays. This collection reminds me style-wise of things Kluge does in his writing where he uses snippets of this and that to build a whole and this is what happens here as the stories unfold themes grow like the books by Luis Sagasti his two books have underlying themes and his style of storytelling is very short like these. a writer that jumps to my mind a couple of times in some of the stories was Saki yes Saki there is a similar feel Saki had a great way of being quick caustic and comic at the same time something Bernhard pulls of so well here. It shows he must have worried about his own sanity at times it crops up a lot in these stories as people end up in what would be on a ward like the ward I work on but not for LD patients. As over the years I have read so many books by him you can see in his work he walks that fine line of depression and stress it is almost as thou for Bernhard his writing was an outlet he had very bad health for most of his life. I enjoyed these collections as it was more accessible than his novels and has a little bit of what is in all his books. Have you read this or any other of his plays or poetry?

Winstons score – A – as much as I loved this in some way it is dated in the terms used and also some of the stories are close to the bone these days but they were written in a different era and most of them are great still.

 

 

The High Rise DIver by Julia Von Lucadou

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The High Rise DIver by Julia Von Lucadou

German fiction

Original title – Die Hochausasspringerin

Translator – Sharmilaa Cohen

Source – review copy

I take another turn in this year’s German literature month. This time I have a new novel from a debut Novelist Julia Von Lucadou. She was nominated for the swiss book prize for this book. She had been working as an assistant director and editor before writing this novel. There is a sense as I read this that the person who wrote it had an eye for tv or film in the way it read as it paints a very visual world of a horrific near-future dystopic world. The book follows the decision of a HIgh rise diver to stop training.

The most popular internet conspiracy theory about Riva’s resignation is that it has to do with relationship dramam tht Riva left Aaston for someone else and that he’s now forcing her sto stay with him against her will A well-known gossip blog regularly posts drone videos of them in their apartment,alleging violent situations. Analysis has shown that the images are current, but were manipularted after the fact. Fans post comments daily on Riva’s offical website, encouraging her to be brave ad urging the police to arrest Aston. Building security has been reporting break-in attempts by fans trying to “Free” Riva.

A world of twisted videos and threoies of what is happening.

The book follows what happens when Riva who is the High rise diver of the title a superstar of her time in a world where her every move is followed by her fans. This is a world where people don’t always have a birth family that they live with or as it is called here Bio parents. But they are bred from Breeders !  and then raised within organizations. So when Riva goes off the rails stops training and resigns. She needs to be brought back in line we meet Hitomi who has to try and bring Riva back to the High rise diving and training and for the investors to continue to make money from Riva. So the world we enter everyone sees everything as the world is now full of camera that follows people like Riva’s every move as we see Hitomi trying hard to push her back into the high rise dive programme all part of a new culture of celebs that the peripheral as they called follow those born and working for these huge companies. What we see is a woman trying to break free in a world where everyone now has a place in this new disturbing world of children growing up in companies without families in a new horrific world. A world not far moved from our own culture these days of celebs and increasingly intrusive media. will they get Riva Back will Hitomi survive if she doesn’t !!

“The smell of the peripheries always made me nausesous as a child. I would already start to feel sick days before a compulsory casting. During the casting, I had to take medication to avoid vomitinf on stage. The heatm the smog. My skin grayinsh, sickly after just a few hours, I showered several times a day. Andorra made fun of me. She didn’t mind the dirt and the bad air. She was ecited when the next casting approached. She believed in being chosen, in making early breakthrough. I reminded her of the statsitics abd thet we weren’t dependent on being chosen. That our education at the institute separeted us from the unpredictability of a casting jury. But Andorra lost any semblance of being a rational person when it came to our future. When I had long since given on the dream of high rise diving.

The world is set the divides are there from the start in this world !

I don’t read a lot of sci-fi but when I do it would be dystopic works I would pick. Here is a book that has a world that isn’t that far from our own. In Riva her character isn’t far from the character of Syliva in the recent Polish film “Sweat that follows her Online world and the consequences of her growing stardom which saw her have a stalker.  The struggle of having to appear on cam all the time !!. In the other parts of this world, the mega-companies as iot seems is another thing that is with us from Google, Meta, Amazon etc. Then if we look at the work culture of Japan where there is a sense of work for a company singing for them etc. Here is a world where Riva isn’t a person more a product to be marketed and sold as a package to her fans so when this product goes off the rails we see how Hitomi tries various increasingly more pressure on Riva to push her back into place. So if you have like books like Handmaiden tale or Orwellian universes this is a book for you. it follows the modern world of a new sports star and the dark turns and corners of a celeb world. Have you a favourite dystopic world? do you think the worlds media is too intrusive these days?

Winstons score – B A clever take on the world of Celeb and its increasing intrusion and commodifying nature