Tag: latin american fiction

The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez

Argentine fiction

Original Title – La casa de papel

Translator -Nick Caistor

Source – Review copy

I was pleased to see this fun novella reissued by Thousand Horsemen. As it was the second book I reviewed from Argentina back in 2010, it will now be the 58th book and the first reread I have done for Argentina, in fact only the second reread I have done for Argentina, over the years. But this is one of those novellas that, firstly, can be read in an evening. But it is also an ode to books themselves, as a single book is the main character in the book itself, and that is an old copy of Conrad’s The Shadow Line that was sent to a man who has since died.  Since I first reviewed the book, Carlos is still living in Uruguay; he is more of a critic than a novelist.  He writes for two papers in Uruguay as well as El Pais; he has also written a biography of Juan Carlos Onetti. Nick Caistor is still translating many wonderful books.

It was indeed a book, but not of the kind I had been expecting. No sooner had I opened the package than I felt an instinctive nervousness. I went to the office door, closed it, and returned to the broken-spined old copy of The Shadow-Line. I was aware of the thesis Bluma was writing on Joseph Conrad. But the extraordinary thing was that there was a filthy crust on its front and back covers. There was a film of cement particles on the page edges that left a fine dust on the surface of the polished desk.

I took out a handkerchief and to my astonishment picked up a small piece of grit. There was no doubt it was Portland cement, the remains of a mortar that must have been stuck more firmly to the book before someone had made a determined attempt to remove it.

The rather battered Shadow line in the parcel !

Now our book is narrated by the person who has taken over Bluma Lennon’s job as a professor of Literature, after she was struck by a car whilst reading Dickson. The discovery of a parcel from Uruguay containing a rather battered copy of Joseph Conrad’s Shadow Line.  This sends our narrator on a trip to Uruguay.  To find Carlos Bruna, the man that had sent the book. to the now dead Bluma. This leads our narrator to find a man who has disappeared as well, but who was a mad book collector in the process of building his own huge library in a remote part of Uruguay.  Leads our narrator into a world of bibliophiles, books, and the histories of the books they have and their readers. It is a sort of mystery, a love of books, and an obvious love of Uruguay.

He smiled a conspiratorial smile I willingly shared.
‘But unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘how many hours a day can I devote to reading? At most four or five. I work from eight o’clock to five in a position of some responsi-bility. But all the time I’m longing to be back here. In my cave, if you’ll pardon the expression, where I can spend a few happy hours until ten o’clock, when I usually go upstairs for supper.
I’m not interested in first editions. What I want is to have the book within reach in the best possible condition, otherwise I become anxious. These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repel-lent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust. From time to time, though, I have them fumigated just in case, because you can never be too sure. Silverfish drove Brauer mad.’
‘Did he keep his books in glass cases?’ I asked,

One of the many book collectors they meet trying to find out who carlos Brauer was

I see some people find this book annoying but a think it is a book that is sparse nature of the book with the gaps in the book are maybe meant be there they are alomost like gaps for the reader to fill. I said it was fable-like in my first review; I still think that it is a clever twist on the detective tale, centred on a dead woman, a missing man, and a book that connects them, but also about what books bring to us and how obsession works. I hadn’t reread Shadow Line when I first reviewed the book, but this time I got my edition and am slowly reading it, and it may have just a connection of the line between being a boy and a man; maybe the shadow line here is between being a book lover and a complete bibliophile obsessive. It is a book about books, readers, bibliophiles, and what happens when that goes over the edge: a woman killed reading Emily Dickinson rather than watching the road and a man who had built a mad library that has disappeared as well. I loved this more the second time around. I think reading 1500 books over the years has made me connect more with the characters. Do you have a favourite book that has books as part of the story in it?

Bait by Eugenia Ladra

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

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?

 

We are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

We are Geen and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Argentinian fiction

Original title – Las niñas del naranjal

Translator – Robin Myers

Source – Personal copy

I have read the two other books to have come out in English from this writer, and I was.  A fan of Slum Virgins, which was her Debut book.  But this had been on my radar, not least because both the UK and US editions of the book have very eye-catching cover art, so I would have got to see that she is part of this wonderful crop of strong female voices from Latin America.  I often say that, over the 16-plus years I have been around the blogosphere, the nature of Latin American fiction has shifted from very Male-heavy to fairly even these days.  Gabriella is a creative writing teacher, so she will no doubt be setting forth the next generation of great Argentine writers for us all to read.  This book, like the other book, features a woman in a male world, this time living as a man in the New World.  Antonio is writing back to her home and the priory where her aunt, the Prioress of the Basque Priory, lives.

…that is a story I will tell you in time, dear aunt. Let me tell you now about the fragrances of the forest, which are strong as the spirits soldiers drink, as village rotgut, and about the other flowers, mammoth and fleshy and carnivorous, nearly beasts, for bere in the jungle the animals bloom and the plants bite, and I believe I have even seen them walking, I swear this to you, and leaping, for vines do leap; all things seethe bere, whereas the forest rustles, as well you know; I remember your attention to the presence of the fox, with its faint rustle of leaves in your forest, and to the bear, with its beavy rustle of trunks and branches; the forest rustles, but not the jungle, the jungle seethes, full of eyes; life surges inside it as lava surges in volcanoes, as if the lava were trees and birds and musbrooms and monkeys and coatis and coconuts and snakes and ferns and caimans and tigers and trumpet trees and fish and vipers and palms and rivers and fronds, and all other things within it were amalgams of these primary ones.

Writing to the Aunt about the world she is in the New World

The book is a mix of these letters home.  Narrative it tells the tale of Antonio in her adventures in the New World or Cayalina as she was known has seen it all the violence of the old world hanging death of native culture as the conquestordors move opn the the country as they are trying to conquer the New world and this is how He Antoino has ended up with a ragtag bunch around him two Two Gurani girls he saved from a life of slavery a couple of monkeys hand horse in this Jugle where the world becomes a mix of dreams and nightmares as she recounts the vents she had seen to get where she had been with her jounrey to the new world from singing on a ship to the various other jobs he had along the way ad s the book goes on the Jungle itself is almost a character as the bunch try to escape can the find a place this is a book that has a lot of layers for such a short book.

He hears the rattle. A snake. He’s lucky to have his sword within reach. A bit blunted but better than nothing. He stands, armed, and stamps the earth with his feet. He listens. Silence, save the growls of the dog slowly calming. The horses wander back. He wants to keep writing. He needs to leave the girls somewhere safe. The tree. He wraps them in his cape. Michi is so weak that he supports her head by pulling the cloth taut.

He puts the monkeys in, too, binding them to his back, and climbs. He lays them down in a nest-like gathering of boughs and ties the cape to the strongest branch. He sits with them.

An African once told him tales of enormous serpents. One had swallowed an elephant. It looked like a hat, said the man. His troops wouldn’t need an enormous one to devour them. Any old serpent could gobble the girls and the monkeys for breakfast.

In the jungle it is alive at times

I think this is a book that maybe could have done with being a little longer.  There are a lot of ideas, the church, religion, the new world, woman in a man’s world, so many, it is like it has been stuffed into a box and is fit to burst.  I feel that maybe means the book suffers at times; it is a great book.  I still like SLum virgin best of her books, but that may just be me being a reader who finds books set near my own time much easier to connect with.  The main character is based on a real figure from the time, a woman who lived as a man in the New World.  I kept going back to the Filmsof Werner Herzog set in the New World and imagining if Klaus Kinski’s character Aguiree had been had been a trans character in the Jungle, it would be like this book a man tinged by the violence of the world they are in another film that cmae to mind around the two girls was Apocalypto the shere violence that is seen at times.  I believe the writer herself has highlighted Studio Ghibli as an influence on her writing.  I just felt it would have been a better five-hundred-page book than the 200 it is, and I rarely think that it is a book jam-packed with ideas and history, and a character at the heart of the book that should have been better known as a trailblazer for their time.  Have you read this or any of her other books ?

The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti

~ winstonsdad ~ 10 Comments

The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti

Uruguayan fiction

Original title –El astillero

Translator – Nick Caistor

Source – Personal copy

I haven’t focused this year much on Latin American fiction as I have in other years. But I had read this book a few months ago. I have wanted to read Onetti for a while, a high school dropout who worked for a newspaper after he published his first novel. He was a friend of the Argentine writer Robert Arlt, a writer I need to get to next year. Onetti was also imprisoned for six months, but a campaign was held by a number of the leading Latin American writers of the day, Marquez, Lhosa and Benedetti. After this, he relocated and spent the rest of his life in Spain.

Larsen again gauged the hostility and mockery on the immobile faces of the two waiting men. To challenge and repay hatred might give his life a meaning, a habit, some pleasure; almost anything would be better than this roof with its leaky sheet iron, these dusty, lopsided desks, the heaps of files and folders stacked against the walls, the thorny vines winding themselves round the iron bars of the gaping window, the exasperating, hysterical farce of work, enterprise, and prosperity that the furniture spoke of (though now it was vanquished by use and moths, rushing towards its destiny as firewood); the documents made filthy by rain, sun and footprints, the rolls of blueprints stacked in pyramids all torn and tattered on the walls.

Further on the despaier is there a little more

The book is set in the fictional town of Santa Maria, a setting where Onetti set much of his fiction. The book follows a man returning to the city after five years in Exile, brought back to try and get the failing shipyard back into action. The man, Larsen, heads into the yard full of ideas. Still, as he works through the yard and the blueprints of old ships and past glories, there is a deep sense of how this is a place that has gone beyond the point of no return. The decay of an industrial place can be as fast as the lack of work and bleakness is caught in the various other people we glimpse in the book.As we see how this all hits Larsen

So Larsen was already under the spell, his fate decided, when he went into Belgrano’s the next day to have lunch with Galvez and Kunz. It was never entirely clear whether he chose to head the monthly wages list with five or six thousand pesos. In fact, his choice of one or the other figure could only have mattered to Galvez, who typed out several copies on the 25th of each month, stopping every now and then to furiously rub his bald patch. Every 25th of the month, he once again discovered, was forced to recognise, the repeated, permanent absurdity he was in the grip of. This realisation made him break off, stand up, and pace about the huge deserted office, hands behind his back, his brown scarf wrapped round his neck, pausing at the drawing board where Kunz was always ready with his hollow, silent, exasperated laugh.

I loved the style of this book. I was reminded of the Hilbig books. Similar to his book, there is a sense of a place on the edge of decay, a man with a hopeless task, which brought back memories of the main character in Dino Buzzati’s Tartar Steppe. On a personal front, I was reminded of a friend of my father who was in charge of a shipyard in the Tyne, which, like here, was in steep decline. How hard ot can be to turn back an operation like a shipyard when the decay is already there. What remains all these weeks after is how futile Larsen’s job is and the despair that it can bring to one man. Have you read this book or any others by Onetti? If so, which one to try next?

For Fans of –

Wolfgang Hilbig, I have reviewed two books by him

Also, The Tartar Steppes by Dino Buzzati

 

On Earth as it is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

On Earth as it is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia

Brazilian fiction

Original title – Assim na Terra como embaixo da Terra

Translator – PAdma Viswanathan

Source – personal copy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

asked the prisoner at the end of his own story.

‘Killing a mayor, he replied, terse.

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

‘Sure is.’

“Was it a hit?’

“Yep.’

Bronco Gil one of the prisoners

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

 

Letters from a Seducer by Hilda Hilst

~ winstonsdad ~ Leave a comment

 

Letters from a seducer by Hild Hilst

Brazilian fiction

Original title – Cartas de um sedutor

Translator John Keene

Source – Personal copy

I picked this up last month on my trip to Suffolk from the excellent Aldebrough books. If you ever get a chance, pop into an excellent shop with a wide selection of books. I was drawn to the cover art, it reminds me of those folio-shaped flower photographs that Robert Mapplethorpe did. In a way , this book is like some of his other photos. Like yesterday’s book, this is another slim novella from a country that, years ago, had few female writers translated. It shows that this writer died in her late seventies, and it isn’t until the last few years that we have got her books in English. A writer who liked to challenge in her time, Hilda Hilst was known for her challenging writing that would tackle sensitive political and, in this case, sexual subjects. This book is a set of letters from Karl, a libertine, to his sister. This book has a nod to the European writers she likes, such as Joyce and De sade. I also felt she must have been a fan of Casanova because this man is perhaps a Brazilian version of the great lover.

I tiptoed out and still could hear Franz’s guffaws and Frau Lotte’s sobs-giggles-farts. Listen, Cordélia, seriously: you told me in your last letter that Albert’s balls and cock and little asshole are of no concern to you. That you’re not interested any more by all this filthy sex stuff. I feel you’re lying. But anyway, you said “filth.” And then you talked about “feelings.” But please, dear irmanita, you never had them! Are you calling

 

‘feeling’ what you were exuding for father? Hanging around the room’s terrace, behind that B. Giorgi sculpture, massaging your pussy while papa played doubles, are you calling that a feeling? I had reached my lovely 14 years, you your 24, I was lifting your satin nightgown and standing up screwing you in the ass right there behind the statue (the sculpture there before), while you were masturbating yourself moaning, babbling childish things that always ended in Ohs, Ahs, and you were squatting, crouching down, finishing all sprawled out atop my harmonica, howling, howling, and that never stopped.Later still I licked you, you lying beside the stone vases, and the ferns concealed your view of father on the court, and you propped yourself up on your elbows to see him better, then you saw him… and you would jump up (I still with the tongue hanging out) roaring: bravo papa! bravo!

I picked this as it is totally shocking but like most of the book also in a way!

The book is in three parts. It has an introduction of letters from Karl to his sister Cordelie about his sexual acts and the acts they had when he lived at home. This is very eye-opening. You can see how Hilst, as a writer, likes to push the boundaries in her writing. The book then moves as Karl discovers the works of a lost poet whose letters he finds in the trash. The last two sections see these other letters intertwining with the conquest of her brother, as we see a very. Male sexual view of the times the other man the lost Poet Stamatius is from the pother enbd of the social class a dpown and out man just getting by and having lioots of sex like Karl as well this is a book that questions class, sex and also is the poet really just Karl in a way if that makes sense this is a book that gives a nid towards the modernist writers she liked.

I do have a lover but she’s married, that I’m afraid to pick up women out there, all this AIDS-related stuff alarms me and because of that I always have to masturbate. I cited several men illustrious defenders of masturbation, John C. Powys, Havelock Ellis, Theodore Schroeder etc. But I spoke with much brilliance, with much elegance, slightly agitated, occasionally passing my hand on his thigh like a very manly man, sympathetic, relaxed. I described wonderful moments of getting it in and when I detailed an uncommon position (do you want to know, irmanita? She with legs open at the edge of the bed, me licking her and under the bed another woman sucking my pod) he laughed with pleasure, made nervous movements with his leg, and I glanced at him and visualized the dick stuffed inside his pants. I asked abruptly: you never masturbated with your friends?

I laughed when he tried justify himself by using some well known writer about there sex lives

This is a book that isn’t for those who get easily offended by a lot of sexual chat and discussion of acts that are maybe taboo even when the book is set but this is a man obsessed with sex and telling people about that but maybe imagining himself as the down and otut opoet and his poems and conquests as well this is if Cssanova had been latin american he would been karl sending these dispatches of his sexual acts and conquests in Brazil rather than in Venice. This is a book designed to provoke the reader. I was reminded of the splurge of sexual references in Pierre Guyotat’s book. I tried to find a connection between these two writers, but all I saw was a shared attempt to shock their readers. As I said, the Mapplethorpe-like cover, phallic in its appearance, is apt for the book. Have you read any of her books that have been translated into English?

The Proof by César Aira

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

The Proof by César Aira

Argentine fiction

Original title – La prueba

Translator – Nick Caistor

Source – Personal copy

I always pick up one of Aira’s books when I see them in the wild, so to speak. He is a prolific writer, having written over a hundred books, with several translated into English so far. However, it means we have a lot more to translate in the years to come. He is one of those writers whose every book is a new revelation of his writing and a different one, set around his home, but this one features females as its main characters, which, in the books I have read so far, is a first. But I also loved the nod to a few bands I love in the text.  This book is about girls and sexual awakening, but also being wild and free. For more on Aira, I would try the Mookse and Girpes podcast episode on him.

The two punks looked at her with neutral, serious expressions. That expression, which expressed noth-ing, was one of pure violence. They were violence.

There was no escaping the fact. She wasn’t going to emerge scot-free from her audience with the punks, as she had absent-mindedly assumed. This was not the same as any other strange specimen in society, which could be dealt with by finding the proper setting in which to examine it. Because they themselves were the setting. She resigned herself to it: she had never set foot in this Pumper before, and had no problem in never coming back if they were thrown out.

But the so-called Mao had an idea, and didn’t keep

it to herself:

‘Do you want something, Marcia? A Coke, a beer?’ This had its funny side. She was asking her if she

‘could buy her a drink’, and that was one of the classic chat-up lines.

Marcia meeting the two girls

The proof is a three-hand book it is a about a lonely girl Marcia who is wandering around her hometown when she passes a group of punks, as she thinks are, but next thing she hears one f them talking to her not quite what they said they start to speak The girl asked her if she “WANNAFUCK”  Marcia is startled by what they said to her. The girls introduce themselves. Lenin and Mao describe them selfs as Goths. This leads to a chat about the band The Cure, which they are fans of, and they talk about how they are drawn to Marcia. Saying they love her, but how can this love be proven, and what must the three of them do to get this proof? This draws the three girls into action, and their lives will change after this. All this happens at a lightning pace as the girls whirl Marica into their odd world.

‘Are you saying that because I’m … overweight? asked Marcia, who was hurt and whose eyes showed it despite herself.

Lenin seemed almost about to smile: ‘Quite the

opposite…

‘Quite the opposite,’ Mao repeated fervently. ‘How

can you not see it?’

She paused for an instant, and Marcia’s astonish-

ment floated in the air.

“You were right, Lenin said finally to her friend.

‘She’s incredibly stupid.

Marcia ate a spoonful of ice cream. She felt excused

to try another topic.

‘What do you mean you’re not punks?’ The only response was a click of the tongue from Mao. ‘For example, don’t you like The Cure?’

Like two sphinxes.

Lenin deigned to ask: ‘What’s that?’

‘The English group, the musicians. I like them.

Robert Smith is a genius.’

‘Never heard them.’

They chat and they tell her of their love of The Cure

I loved this; it was a very fast-paced book of one of the oddest encounters someone could have it is about love, sex, politics, power and also being a teen and having all these lines blurred, and what is right and wrong being hard to follow the right line but is also about those crazy moments we all have in our lives those turning points. I remember a few drunk nights in my early twenties joining about taking Alnwick castle back with a Scottish friend who had a royal Scottish standard and putting it onver the castle of course this never went further now the old pully escape system in another friends flat we did try going down from a third flow window in this harness that lowered you. So I could relate to the waiting of the proof that the girls, Lenin and Mao, have one of those unhealthy, twisted relationships. I was also reminded of the film Ghost World. And their relationship reminds me of this pair somewhat. It also is a pair that have extreme things happen in the relationship. Have you read this Aira?

 

 

Río Muerto by Ricardo Silva Romero

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

Río Muerto by Ricardo Silva Romero

Columbian fiction

Original title – Rio Muerto

Translator – Victor Meadowcroft

Source – Review copy

I have been sent most of the books over time. World Editions has been doing some great books recently that may have gone under the radar; this is another example from them. This is from a prolific Colombian writer, Ricardo Silva Romero, one of the writers in the Hay festival collection, Bogota 39, which came out about fifteen years ago. He is a prolific writer, journalist and film critic. This is his first book to be published in English. Her has written 198 novels and a book about Woody Allen, which takes us back to a dark [=ast in his own country, the early 1990’s a time in which Columbia was very violent country to live in and this is told through the death of a mute called Salomón Palacois and the aftermath of this.

They soon took control of everything. A year before his execution-“They’ve killed Salomón the mute!” – there had occurred on the banks of the clear, gentle Río Chamí-which would then become known to all as the Río Muerto, the dead river-that “massacre of the collaborators,” or “culling of the hands,” in which the strongest black and white men in the settlement were tortured and shot, and the left hands of their wives and children lopped off and tossed into the current, for having continued to support the guerril-leros, in secret. Later, in the Plaza del Pan—the main square always referred to as the “Bread Square,” since it contains nothing but three bakeries, the enormous Pentecostal temple, and the five abarco trees that still haven’t been cut down-the now infamous Public Notice 00001 was circulated, leaving no room for doubt:

BLOQUE FÉNIX

CLEANUP CREW INFORMS:

The leader of the local gang that has killed Salomon

The title of this book in English is actually Dead River, and this is about a town, Belen del Chami, that is one of those small towns that isn’t on a map, and because of that, is a place where the local politicians and paramilitaries carry on as they want that is until they Kill Salomón and this makes his widow a string woman with a sharp tongue Hipólita is wanting to make sure that those that killed her man and widowed her and left her two sons with out a farther will finally be brought to justice. It is a tale of how a man who was a mute who only communicates via his yellow notebook with his nearest and dearest, is said by the local Paramilitary leader to be a snitch! Why was he really killed? This follows the town where the dead river runs through it soon after the death of her husband another man in the town is found dead in. the river this is a book about the corruption, murders and violence of this time in these town off the mmap where the rukle of law isn’t there but what happens when one woman faces up and tries to get justice.

Salomón pretended not to hear, because ignoring a friend’s nonsense is the brotherly thing to do. He noticed in the rearview mirror that a gang of snot-nosed kids was watching them. He heard a funereal song- an alabao-coming from the window of the house next door. An old man was yelling at a boy, “You’ll get yourself killed if you keep poking your snout where it don’t belong.” And then he set off, starting up the truck and taking the steep, green, uneven road to San Isidro, Antiquia, with that stubbornness of his, that pig-headedness, which led him to make the mistakes he made in his life but kept him calm the rest of the time. His friend, his pacha, would be safe in that settlement where the guerilla had entrenched itself. Get yourself to San Isido and see how you get on.

Is this what cause his death a mute being called a snitch seems madness

It is hard to believe it has taken so long for this writer to arrive in English. I think he was on the Bogota 39 list of fellow writers from his homeland, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, another writer who has written historical books and has had several books written. But now we have him in English for the first time, so let’s hope we get others. His latest is called Alp d’Huez, which, of course, is a famous place for being a stage on the Tour de France. Anyway, this book captures the world of the early 90s, a violent time in the framing of this village and the death of a mute man who was meant to be telling secrets about a gang. Add to this a cast of characters from corrupt police, vicars, gang members, and former lovers helping in her husband’s death, you see the wall that she has to break through and maybe make the death river be renamed! I loved this, it is a book that is told from the dead man’s point of view, and sees his lover fight for him. Do you have a favourite book from Latin America

 

A carnival of Attrocities by Natalia Garcia Freire

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

A carnival of atrocities by Natalia Garcia Freire

Ecuadorian fiction

Original title -Trajiste contigo el viento

Translator – Victor Meadowcroft

Source – Review copy

I took this away with me as I just needed a break from prize-listed books and something different from what I had been reading in the last few weeks. Plus, when I saw it was actually the first book from Ecuador I had read, I was even keener. Natalia Garcia Freire has a master’s degree and teaches creative writing in Madrid. It is noted in Hay-on-Wye’s biography that she also has a cat and a garden. This is her second novel to be translated into English. As I say, it is also the first book from Ecuador on this blog9i have a collection of short fiction from there, I thought. I had reviewed, but I hadn’t. This caught my eye as it is set in one of those far-from-anything villages, as it says, nestled between the Jungle and the Andes.

The whole of Cocuán continued to sing, but other voices, the voices of a man, woman and child said:

Mildred.

Sweet and powerful Mildred.

Those who live in fear will become savages.

Look at them, they said. And the voices swelled like the high tide, the waves crashing into my ears. Look at them in their Sunday finest, huddled so close together.

Look at them, Mildred, deaf to the wind and blind like corrupted animals. With the wills of slaves. Look at the men and women created by the Word, molded from the dust of dead stars. Look at their body, which is the body of Christ, and look at their disoriented eyes, their old bones on the brink of snapping. Look upon the town of God that has abandoned you. Look upon the town of God that you have cursed.

This is an example early on in the book how she is viewed

The book uses a chorus of voices from the same village, Cocuan, as they all recount incidents and events surrounding a young girl who, many years earlier, had been taken from the town when her parents had both passed away after a series of strange events. What I loved about this book is that we have nine different people talking about the Girl Mildred and how she was, and it shows what can grow into a void left when someone leaves a small village under a cloud. So is this girl the witch, as some of those retellings remember their view of the events, and as they do, the lines between what is real and what is a dream world blur. Some strange events around the time Mildred and her parents died are recalled. A priest cut off his ear. The woman dies, and as her husband is there, someone attacks her body. A man goes to desperate ends to settle a debt. Did Midlred really see future events, and why did certain things? Locals want her to join them? This is a tale of a young girl who has had a bad life, then maybe sees things that might happen, and thus gets caught up in a whirlwind. With what happened with her mother dying and her father running off, it is one of those situations where myths are born.

Death is just like a pirate,

It eats tough meat and drinks salt water.

Death is just like a pirate,

It bares its ass, then goes for the slaughter.

This is what we sang on the way to the waterfall where Victor believed the old man might have gone, because several times before we had found him teetering there, with his eyes closed, covered by the water, and been forced to drag him back to the house like a stuffed dummy I would have liked to watch burn on an enormous bonfire fed with ragweed and rue to chase away the old man’s evil spirit, the fleas and the flies. But no one wanted to hear my dirty plans, least of all Víctor, who loved the old man with a stupid love. So that’s where we were headed, once again, to look for him.

Things get connected like an old man vanishing

I love how this looked at Mildred through the nine characters as they cross into other stories, but each has a different take on her and the events. It also has a large chunk of the mysticism, folklore, and magic realism that make up the world Mildred and the locals are from, where simple events unconnected get drawn together and at the heart of it all is this girl now gone. I loved the mix of dream magic realism and just the way things like this can happen, a sort of super Chinese whispers around this one girl. Yes, she was a little odd, and maybe events tied with things she said, but that happens sometimes.It is just by accident, or perhaps she has that sort of second sight that D will occur because A and B have happened. I was reminded of the film The Big Fish if it had been made by David Lynch, as this is one of those tales that is about a place, the town itself, which is between the savage jungle and the barren, endless Andes, a sort of place where events happen. I was reminded in Big Fish that the events seem surreal, but there is always a little bit of truth in what you are being told. From tiny acorns mighty oaks grow, and this is the case here. Events have grown in the people’s minds.

\

 

Tidal Waters by Velia Vidal

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments

Tidal Waters by Velia Vidal

Columbian fiction

Original title – Aguas de estuario

Translator Annie McDermott

Source – subscription edition

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

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

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

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

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

A sea of thanks.

Kisses and hugs,

Vel

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

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

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

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

‘See you, Seño Velia!’

How she touches those via her work in the project

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

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

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran

Chilean fiction

Original title – Limpia

Translator – Sophie Hughes

Source – Library book

I had read her earlier book, Remainder but it was the year I stepped back from doing so much of the Booker international longlist, and it was one of the books that year I didn’t get to. There always seems to be one I just never review in the rush to review them all, which I usually want to do before the shortlist is announced. Anyway, when I saw this was out, I decided to wait and see if it would turn up in my local library to order in, and it did, so I ordered it in. I had wanted to read her nonfiction book that came out around female killers. I will do so when I see a copy that is cheap enough to buy. Anyway, this is her second novel to be translated. The previous one made the booker shortlist, and this tale of a nanny is as good as the earlier book, if not better. I really was drawn into the narrative here.

I didn’t see the señora the next morning. She left for work without saying goodbye and called me at around three.

Estela, make a note of this, she said.

Educated, hard-working, a discreet maid.

I was to defrost the chicken breasts and stuff them with spinach and toasted almonds. I should also make roast potatoes and prepare a round of dry pisco sours.

Nothing like a homemade pisco sour, she said, as if she were talking to someone else.

The señora wanted to know if I knew the measures. I told her I did, but she repeated them to me anyway. Three times she warned me not to overdo it on the sugar.

Nothing worse than a sweet pisco sour, she said.

After that she asked me if I could go to the supermarket.

Estelita, she said, can you get angostura bitters, lemons and organic eggs?

One of the very precise shopping lists she has to deal with

Estelle is a nanny. As the book opens, we discover she has been locked in a room by the couple she has been working for. What follows is her telling us of the events that lead up to her getting the job and what happened whilst she was working for the couple. What we see is a woman broken by this couple and the events that lead to the death of the daughter. Julia dies after she has been many for seven years, but it is how, over time, Estelle has lost herself as she falls foul of how this couple treated her over those seven years. It is a gaslight of a young woman by the couple, a class tale of power and who has it. But this is also mirrored by events away from the house. But it is those unseen souls in a home, those working for those with money, and how they get treated is at the heart of this story, and what happens when it all goes wrong like it does here.

By now you’re probably wondering why I stayed. It’s a good question, one of those important questions. Do you feel sad? Are you happy? You know the sort of thing. My answer is the following: Why do you stay in your jobs? In your poky offices, in the factories, in the shops on the other side of this wall?

I never stopped believing I would leave that house, but routine is treacherous; the repetition of the same rituals – open your eyes, close them, chew, swallow, brush your hair, brush your teeth – each one an attempt to gain mastery over time. A month, a week, the length and breadth of a life.

The señora deducted the cost of the blender from my pay, then got over the impasse. That’s what she said, ‘Estela, I’m over that impasse?

This is a question you do ask as you read about what is going on in the book

This is a gradual book. Things at the start seem ok tyes. She struggles to fit in, but then it turns and twists; the couple have sex, and she captures them. She looks at Senora’s dress; each little thing that happens makes them treat her hard. This is a story of a young woman who is powerless over time. In those seven years, we see her get more and more under the thumb of this couple. All this happens as we see the power struggle happening outside the house, and she is on the opposite side of it, those powerless, those unseen. There is a great line in Gosford Park where one of the detectives basically dismisses the servants as not having any involvement in anything as they are just there doing a job and aren’t important. What I loved so much is how our Narrator, Estelle, draws us into her world as we see how she ends up locked in a room. You think I’d done this, but would you do it if you were her? There is almost a Fait acompli about her story. We hear about couples doing this every few years, taking young women, and then they go from Nanny or Maid to slave or prisoner of the couple. This is one of the first books I have read since the booker prize this year. I think, oh that it should be on the longlist. Have you read any of her earlier books?

Winston’s score = +A is One of the year’s books so far for me .

Birthday by César Aira

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments

Birthday by Cesar Aira

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Cumpleaños

Translator – Chris Andrews

Source – Personal copy

I am back in Argentina this evening and a writer I came late to I think I did first review AIra in 2010. But then left it till two years ago, and I think it was the frequent mentions on the Mookse and the Gripes podcast about him they did a special episode about him. It reminds me that I need to read more from him. He has written over a hundred books, and they are all fairly short, and a lot of them are focused on Pringles, which is where he grew up as a youngster. His book also features autobiographical details like this, set around the time the writer turned fifty and is about the writer returning to his hometown.

 

My style is irregular: scatter-brained, spasmodic, jokey – necessarily jokey because I have to justify the unjustifiable by saying that I didn’t mean it seriously.But if necessity intervenes, it’s no joke. I wasn’t really joking when I made that stupid quip about the moon.And of course it didn’t fool anyone. The gaps go on being gaps forever, unless some wildly improbable circumstance happens to correct me. If they were only gaps in knowledge, I wouldn’t be so worried; but there are gaps in experience too, and again they can only be  plugged by serendipty.The numbers in this game of chance are so enormus that just thinking about them make me dizzy . Whahcan I hope for , realistically. IF all the pbjective conditions required for such an event  line up once in a million years.

I wonder if that what he means about his own writing ?

He opened up about what it is like to turn fifty. This was, for me, a nightmare mare; I just felt it was a huge turning point in my life in the book, a writer is in his home town of Pringles. But this is what happens after his birthday: a series of small events. A walk with his wife leads him to talk about the moon and a childhood idea that he has kept thinking about. Then there is a section where he visits a shop, and the is a 17-year-old female shop assistant who knows he is a writer, but as she asks him what it is like to be a writer, he actually finds more about her than he even reveals, to her about his life and being a writer. As with other books art creeps up its a book that has ten short chapters and drifts from here to there like the other books i have read by Aira over the last few years.

For the same reason, my mind is in continuous move ment, flittering restlessly. Making a note of everything is beyond the bounds of human possibility. One thing I have idly fantasised about is inventing a notepad capable of capturing the hyperactivity of the brain.That must be the source of my fetishistic attachment to stationery and pens. I really should use some kind of shorthand, but I manage more or less with normal writing. In the end, all these daydreams about being the designer of one’s own peculiarities are futile because they are just metaphors for what ends up happening anyway: I became a writer and my little novels fulfil the roles of mystic writing pad and shorthand.

Again about the writing process maybe for Aira Himself.

I will hold my hand up and say I am late to Aira as a reader I wish I had followed up the first book I  read in 2012 and come back quicker to him.I have seven books by him. But there is a lot more out there, and I feel for me to get him more, I need to line up several books by him. I like the mix of memoir and surrealism at times. In this book, he seems to be a writer that can jump from the everyday to the surreal in such a small book, and it all seems to flow. I like the discussion with the shop assistant that felt like something he may have done I know writers often get asked about the writing process and must often like this hear more about her[person than explaining how it is to be a writer. I struggle with this as it is different from the first one I had read by him but is set around the same place as Artforum this is a writer whom I need to discover more as a reader to build his world and style in my mind. Have you read Aira? If so, which would you recommend buying? I may try and read a run of his books later in the year as they are all short.

Winston’s score: B. I need to read more of his work to discover him more as a writer.

January by Sara Gallardo

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

January by Sara Gallardo

Argentine fiction

Original title – Enero

Translators -Frances Riddle and Maureen Shaughnessy

Source – personal copy

I have long been a fan the American publisher Archipelago books there books are works of art the titles they choose are always interesting like this one which go even the wave of Argentine female writers we have had the last few years. It was about time someone published an earlier female writer from Argentina. Because this debut novel from the writer Sara Gallardo is required reading in some schools in Argentine the writer was from an Upper-class family that had farming interest one could imagine one of the farms or farmworkers the family had was the inspiration for the main character intro book which in a way is a vary forward thinking book for one that came out in 1958. But it also fits in with other books around the world by female writers of the time.

She carries the package in front of her on the sheepskin where it crinkles with every step the horse takes. She passes countless hoof prints on the road that the wind erases like a huge hand wiping them away. The ears of the dapple-gray horse twitch at the sound of an automobile that kicks up a trail of dust as an arm waves out the win-dow. Luisa, Nefer thinks, on her way to buy cigarettes… and she watches as her horse’s hooves speed up in agitation along the road.

She dismounts when she reaches the gate: held shut by a rough branch that has been rubbed smooth by wire. She pulls it open and sidesteps the mud churned up in the night by the cows from the milking yard. In the yellow-green field the lapwings shriek and flutter and the pond gleams in the sun, prickly with reeds.

Her world around her.

The book flows 16 year old Nefer who lives in a small farming community in the countryside. She is pregnant, but we are never quite told how and why this happened it is eluded to that it was after the rape and the community she is in is a powerful Catholic community the book explains how this young girl deals with the pregnancy and is trying to find a way to explain to herself the events that lead to the pregnancy she looks at a certain boy and says it be ok isa he was the father. But he wasn’t the father. As she searches for the answer to what happened to her how did she end up like this. She is also wrestling with how to avoid anyone seeing the changes in her , whilst trying to work out the next move for her and what happens next but we have a feeling this is maybe a catch-22 situation and no matter what happens her life is fatally changed by this one event.

She kicks and takes off at a gallop, steering toward the thick grass that will absorb the footfalls. She doesn’t want to think about the end of her journey, about the old lady she’s never seen but with whom all her hope now lies. Her eyes pick out objects one at a time, attributing an exaggerated importance to each. Thistle, she thinks, thistle, par-tridge, dung, anthill, heat; and then she hears – one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four – as the hooves hit the ground. Slowly, sweat begins to appear behind the horse’s ears and runs in dark strands down his neck where the reins chafe against his coat, churning up dirty foam. Little voices, little voices speak to Nefer, but she continues her journey, indifferent to them. Cow, she thinks, a Holstein, and another and another. That one’s overheated. Lapwings. Two lapwings and their chick. Those piercing shrieks!

She follows leads to find a woman who may help her get rid of the baby for her

One of the first books from Archipelago was a new-to-English classic book, Wonder by Hugo Claus, one of my all-time favourite books. They have a real eye for a book that stands the test of time even though it is over 60 years old. It captures the world of NEFER SO WELL. it is like so many great writers around this time that were capturing female lives so well. Like Francoise Sagan and another WORK I felt really connected to this is ‘A test of Honey” by Shelagh Delany, which in a way mirrors events in this bookman unwanted pregnancy but due to the race of the baby, this is because of a rape. But both were written in 1958 and show women all around the world dealing with the same topics of birth this is the years after World War Two and pre-the pill when women want more for their lives but sometimes didn’t have control of the pill in later years. I loved the way we observe Nefer coping with what on the outside seems nothing but a downward spiral of her life after was raped and how she hasn’t an obvious out of the sad situation. Have you a favourite book that is a rediscovery like this book or others that have come out in recent years

WINSTONS SCORE – -A solid look at a hopeless situation for the main character Nefer.

The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes

~ winstonsdad ~ 1 Comment

The book of Emma Reyesa memoir in correspondence by Emma Reyes

Columbian Memoir

Original title – Memorias por correspondencia

Translator – Daniel Alarćon

Source – personal copy

Well, I will now review a couple of Latin American memoirs. This is the first from the Columbian artist Emma Reyes, who was known as the godmother of Latin American art. Her art ranges from simple child like sketches to vibrant painting. One of her fans was her fellow Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who had encouraged he to write down her life story. She struggled to put down her thoughts until she happened upon the letter form, and hence, the letter she wrote over a few decades described her early years. She had a hard childhood, and when she grew up, she became a citizen of the world and mixed with leading artists and writers of the time. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in particular, The book has 23 letters that give an insight into what happened til she escaped a convent at 19 and started her life.

The house we lived in consisted of just one very small room with no windows, and a door that faced the street. This room was located on Carrera Sép-tima in a working-class neighborhood in Bogotá called San Cristóbal. The tram passed directly in front of our house and stopped a few meters ahead at a beer factory called Leona Pura and Leona Oscura.

In that room lived my sister, Helena, another child whose name I didn’t know whom we called Piojo, and a woman I remember only as an enormous tangle of black hair; it covered her completely, and when it was down I’d scream with fright and hide under the bed.

The house she was born into as a child with her older sister

It is easy to say Reyes had one of the toughest childhoods with her older sister. She was born in a room with no windows in a working-class area. Her mother was troubled, and they had a tough childhood. Emma’s earliest memories are of emptying the family bedpan on the garbage heap in the morning. She and her sister follow their mother around various rooms in Bogota and are looked after by various community members who take care of the girls. They also try to avoid being seen when left alone by their mother. But all this ends when she leaves them at the gate of a convent for an orphans where her and her sister 6 and 7 at the time spend the rest of their childhood a tough Christians upbringing as they are viewed as being born in sin. They live with a variety of nuns, from the strict to an aged Italian nun with poor Spanish, but all are hard on the sister as she seeks to use her mind to escape the world she finds herself in. Parts of this feel like a nod to Marquez at times. A hard few years in the convent where all they earn is by attending masses for this and that; I loved the list of how many they had attended.

My dear Germán:

There were no girls in that convent. It was a convent where they made nuns. There were some very young ones, but they were all novitiates, and we weren’t allowed to be with them. We weren’t allowed beyond the first courtyard, where the entrance and the visitors’ rooms were. Next to the entrance were two rooms, one where the doorkeeper slept, a very old, pigeon-toed lady who talked to herself all day; in the second room, full of furniture and packages, they arranged a bed for the two of us, because Helena didn’t want me to sleep alone. In the doorkeeper’s room was a large table, where food was left for us whenever the nuns brought food for the doorkeeper.

When they were left at the convent door

I brought this up after seeing it had made some end-of-year list a few years ago, and the quote from Diana Athill she said, “No other book I’ve read has left me so deeply involved with the author” This is so true, I think hitting on the letter as the form to tell her story draws you in as a reader the little snippets love the years the letters are from thirty years she wrote them from mainly Paris you sense how she must have tried to remember every detail, but she also captured the childlike feeling of being in these horrific situations living hand to mouth with her mother., then the brutality of the convent life. I think this should be better known. It is a wonderful insight into poverty, sisters , a mother that abandons you and the horrific nature of growing up in a covenant. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – B solid memoir of the early years of one of the leading Latin American artists of the 20th century.