Tag: latin american fiction

Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

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Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

Argentine fiction

0riginal title – Por Que Volvías Cada Verano

Translator Maureen Shaughnessy

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

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

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

He comes to the house when she is young.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meeting one of her legal team early on in the book

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

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

 

Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon

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Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon

Venezuelan  fiction

Original title – Simpatía

Translator Noel Hermandez Gonzales and Daniel Hahn

Source = personal copy

I move on to another from the Booker international longlist. I have a couple more after this to review over the month. This was one of the books from this year’s longlist that I knew very little about although I do have a copy of Bogota 39, which had Rodrigo in it is a long while since I read that book, but it is always great to see another writer from that list of the best Latin American writers under 39 that came out in 2007 he was one of two writers from Venezuela that made the list. The book deals with a time when all the people with money and talent were leaving the country. This is the story of one who was left behind when his wife left him. We see Ulise’s Kan world.

Only now did he register the book that was directly in his line of vision. Its thick white spine stood out among the dark blue row of other volumes. He took it out and looked closely at the cover. He climbed off the chair, sat down, and read the title again: Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim. He checked the index and found the title that Martín had mentioned: All the Dogs of My Life. He knew enough English to understand the title at least. Perhaps Nadine could read it. He took the book with him, returned to the bathroom, and stored it away on a shelf under the sink. He came out again and headed for the bedroom. Nadine and Martin turned to see him come in, then went on talking.

One of the little Easter eggs early on in the book welll I felt they were easter eggs

This was when there was a drain of those who could leave Venezuela during the Maduro government. Ulise’s wife has decided to escape the struggling country. So when his father-in-law dies, Ulises is shocked when he is challenged by his father-in-law in the will to get HIS mansion, Los Argonauts and to have it up and running as. Dogs home with a set amount of time. This is a tale of those left behind, and when all the owners have left, there are a lot of stray dogs out there for him to rehome at the dog home with a couple the General had chosen alongside Ulises to set up the foundation for the dogs home. If he doesn’t complete the task within a set time, he will lose it all, including his own flat to his ex-wife and be homeless himself. But he is helped by the fact his father-in-law was high up in the army, so he sets out on his quest to find and rehome the strays and left behind dogs from the exodus of Venezuela.

General Ayala left specific instructions on where to set up: the clinic; the food, cleaning, and medical storage facilities; the administrative and accounting offices; Jesús and Mariela’s permanent bedroom; and many details more. Despite all this, the description of the project still did not account for all the available space at Los Argonautas. The one thing General Ayala didn’t leave a single word about was the garden. Should they install the dog kennels inside the house or in the garden? If the garden, they would need to build a roof. Should they use all the land or just part of it? And what would happen to Sonny, Fredo, and Michael if they used the whole garden?

His will set out what he wanted them to do!

This is a book that I wanted to love, but it maybe has a lot of ideas and maybe should been longer or less thrown into it . I loved the nod to the Ulysess myth with the name, a modern-day quest to save the dogs. It’s about family ties how. Even though his daughter and his son-in-law have split, he is still more connected to his son-in-law, who stayed, than his own daughter, who fled the country so which gives Ulises a chance to have a better life and gives use to the mansion after his death. This is about the system that caused so many to flee. That is the problem. It is a very heartfelt book, but I felt he just wanted to do so much in the book it maybe fell short due to that. I loved using dogs as what was left behind when everyone went. There are also a few that, if they were in a film, would be easter eggs like Bovilar Dog, books about dogs from famous writers we meet along the way. i hope to try another book by him at some point as there was a few bits of this I liked it just needed something a little not quite sure what but thats just a feeling I had. Have you read this or ay other books from Venezula?

Winston’s score is B. It just needs to be a little less or a little longer, but I loved some bits of it.

 

 

 

A little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro

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A little luck by Claudia Piñeiro

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Una suerte pequeña”

Translator – Frances Riddle

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Not A River by Selva Almada

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Not A river by Selva Almada

Argentine fiction

Original title – No es un río

Translator – Annie McDermott

Source – Personal copy

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

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

He thinks of the Drowner.

Gets out.

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

Youngsters making a racket.

Says El Negro

The three men notice women so quickly

 

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

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

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

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

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

The Delivery by Margarita Garcia Robayo

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The Delivery by Margarita Garcia Robayo

Columbian fiction

Original title – La Encomienda

Translator – Megan McDowell

Source – Review copy

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

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

She had come home once but it felt odd.

 

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

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

The weight of the box is too much for me.

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

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

What is this?’ I ask.

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

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

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

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

Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza

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Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza

Argentine fiction

Original title – El Nervio óptico

Translator – Thomas Bunstead

Source – Library copy

I took a break over the weekend I had originally intended to blog every day of the Woman in Translation month but I had a busy weekend with Amanda my Father visited my house, and we had a meal then we had a day in the peaks Sunday and a roast which we hadn’t had for a few weeks with all the trips to Scotland anyway I am back and back to the woman in translation month reviews and this a writer I have had on my list to get to and so when I saw this on the shelf at the library I felt it was time. Maira Gainza is a well-known art critic and writer for a number of papers in Argentina. She also writes for the Magazine Artforum, which is, of course, the title of a novella by her fellow Argentina writer Cesar Aira. This was her debut novel. This book is about art a woman that loves art but what also connects us to art.

Hunting scenes were quite common in Dreux’s day, evocations of a sport that had been a class marker since the Middle Ages, when the hunt became an elite pastime and often the only means of preparing men for war. An unintended by-product was that it gave the nobility a way of measuring itself – though only against itself. The first ever enclosures of forests and common land came about to enable exclusive access to big game. Commoners had to make do with birds and rabbits; bears, wolves and deer became the landowner’s right.

The hunting scenes in the opening chapter remind me of those I seen in a country houses over the years.

We meet our narrator as she is showing rich people around the art sights of Buenos Aires. This is one of those books that hasn’t any plot other than her describing her interactions with art and how others connect to the art she loves. this is one of those books you need your phone nearby to google the art she is talking about I hadn’t heard of Dreux a painter of wildlife scenes hunting scenes with Deer in the sport that many years ago we saw in most country inns. the `Candido Lopez, so the book goes on as she mixes art and literature in that way I WISH i could I have a visual memory I can recall most of the art I have seen and place in find=e detail, but when it comes to quotes IMy mind is a sea of jumble words with islands of pictures so I envied her as a narrator. The one artist I did know a little around is Mark Rothko an abstract painter that art you can fall into. So when she sees  A rothko on a hospital wall(an odd choice for hospital art imho), she makes a connection as her other half is ill.

The years of his greatest success, from 1949 to 1964, coincided with Rothko’s life unravelling: his marriage fell apart, his friends got as far away from him as they could, he drank just about anything he could get his hands on and became racked with hatred. He was on his way down, the spiral tight-ening. One stormy night, as he went to leave his apartment building, the porter told him to take care in the foul weather. To this Rothko said: ‘There’s only one thing I need to take car of : stopping the Black from swallowing the red”

How tru Rothko art is alway one I felt can overwhelm when  you see them!!

I loved this book it reminds me how much I miss art shows we used to have on tv I don’t go as often as I should to see the latest art shows not as much as I did a couple of decades ago when the art world was more covered, and I knew the artist names more then. I miss those days. This reminds me how much one can connect with great art and the power it can well up in a great writer here like Maira Gainza I know she has been compared to some English language writers Oliva Laing and Rachel cusk both of whom I have to read, although I recently brought a CUSK.  So for me as a blogger and reader, I can only reference a couple of her fellow Argentine writers. Firstly is Luis Sagasti, another book that deals with how we experience and deal with art, another book where the feeling and connections are more than the plot. Then we have the great Cesar Aira I wonder if they know each over give his book around his obbbsession with the magax=zine Art Forum which I think in his book is more an imagined concept of a magazine but he has a love of art as one of the other books deals with a famous painter.

Have you read this book or have you a favourite novel that blends art and literature

The remains by Margo Glantz

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The remains by Margo Glantz

Mexican fiction

Original title – EL rastro

Translator – Ellen Jones

Source – Personal copy

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

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

The opening as she returns to nhis childhood village

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

The Taiga syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza

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The Taiga Syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza

Mexican fiction

Original title – El Mal de la Tagia

Translators – Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana

Source – library

I went to the library just to get a few more books for a woman in translation month also maybe find a few that I had wanted to read and this is one such I remember reading about this and think that sounds odd and just up my street. When I saw Jonathan Lethem had called her Mexico’s GREATEST  living writer I was drawn to read this book first from my Library pile. Then I remembered after I had finished this book, I had actually read her book the lilac crest several years ago so this is the second book by her I will have read.

So, is she Hansel or Gretel?” I asked, truly curious, still staring at the images.
“Gretel, I suppose.” The man hesitated, taken aback.
“Maybe she is the woodsman or the witch or the woman who wants to get rid of the children in order to have enough to eat,” I said more to myself than to the man who had begun to smile, stupefied.
“This is not a fairy tale, detective,” he said, interrupting me again. “This is a story about being in love.”
“Or being out of love,” I corrected him.

when the detective first mentions Hansen and Gretel the client is taken aback.

I loved the detached nature of this story. It is just a bit bizarre a retired detective is hired by a husband whose wife has decided to run away and has seemingly gone to somewhere called Taiga with her lover. So he passes the man a fit on all he knows about his wife and her location, and then the detective says this is a bit like Hansen and Gretel in the woods. The man says no, but the detective takes the job and seems to have his own fairy-tale way of looking at this case and what it entails. To find the runaways ( or are they or have they just left to find their own love’). As the detective hits their trail, it takes him to Taiga a wacky place of kids on the loose like the wild ones almost and other characters that had just stepped. out of fairy tales This is a world were fact and fantasy blend. But maybe the old world of Grimm’s fairy tales forms a cautionary narrative on the modern world. Will he find them?

That lumberjacks can be cautious I knew, or sensed: either way it doesn’t matter. Their proximity to sharp-toothed heavy tools must have something to do with it.
Occupational hazards. Their close relationship, so para-doxical, almost organic, with the forest they kill and that sustains them. Do these thoughts pass through the mind of a lumberjack as he saws and cleaves and hacks at the tree bark? During those days, I asked myself that question frequently. And I answered: They think all this and more. Or they would.
It was the lumberjacks who walked along the edge of the cabin carrying him. It was they who led him – “dragged him” would be more accurate -to the central market where just the day before the translator and I had found salt, a little black tea, sugar, three or four potatoes. Some utensils. A pewter plate. Two cups.

I couldn’t help but think ofmmonty python here it made me smile

This is a very short novella, less than a hundred pages, that mixes the real and fantasy but also sees how the old tales can be transposed onto the modern capitalist world. As it is just as cruel as the medieval time when these stories were set and our detective uses them as the cornerstones of his investigation. Children people get lost in the modern world even more than in the Grimm’s time. I loved the first couple of series of Grimm tv show where they imagined those characters from Grimm’s world as humans living in the modern world but with the same traits and characteristics as they used to have, and this is the same the old tales and yes a couple seem tempted to a far off place like Hansen and Gretel is as modern a tale now as it was then. It is a clever book that draws you into this fable-like world that seems like our own but isn’t quite. IF Grimm and Chandler had lived and written a book together, Their world in a book would be a hard-boiled fairy tale detective novel like this is !!. A world-weary detective transported to Grimm’s fairy tale world. Have you read this book or any other book that mixes the modern world with Fairy tales well?

Winston’s score – B a clever take on the modern world using old fables as a guide!

Heartland by Wilson Harris

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Heartland by WIlson Harris

Guyanese fiction

Source – personal copy

I have been listening to the 99 novels section of the Anthony Burgess podcast which covers the 99 books that Burgess had chosen as his favourite post world war 2 novels, and this is one of the books he had picked for that list from the Guyanese writer Sir Wilson Harris a writer that really should be better known as he is one of the most modern and experimental writers to have come out of the Caribbean 9 I do question is it Caribbean or actually a Latin American country maybe as it is the only English speaking country in Latin America. Anyway, Wilson Haris trained as a surveyed and had spent much time in the Heartland of Guyana, which comprises dense jungles and massive wide rivers. This scenery is at the heart of this book. Harris wrote many books about his homeland, and some of the characters in this book appeared in his other books.

Stevenson’s speculative frontiers collapsed with a rude shout from Kaiser and he turned abruptly. The man was here at last. Stevenson could never stop being curious every time he saw Kaiser, as if he wanted to confirm that this must be the strangest, most haunting or haunted creation of all things and beings he visualized. It was not merely the blackness of Kaiser’s skin, within whose flesh appeared incandescent eyes lit as from the density of coal.
It was the ghostly ash of the garments he wore; a breath of wind would surely have dispersed them, the most attenuated vest and shorts Stevenson had ever seen, pluckedin the nick of time, he was inclineds to swear, from some ancient fire.

One of the characters that seem ghost leike at times

We meet a prominent figure from Guyana’s life Zechariah Stevenson who is in disgrace as he is accused of defrauding people. But this son of a wealthy family as ever with people of money has been sent here into the Heartland of Guyana where the vast jungle and to watch over there, his family gets the money from the timber the forest in the jungle. The people he meets in the dense jungle just appear. Like Kasier, a shopkeeper and then Da Silva, he is a pork knocker, as they call gold prospectors here.  We often wonder if are they real, especially when he comes across the dead Da Silva, a long-dead body. This is a place where the present, future and past all seem to drift, and a man is thrown into this untamed world as his grip on the world around him starts to slip as he is caught in the fever dreams of the jungle and the vast rivers of Guyana as they drift through time.

Stevenson scrambled out of the river and grabbed his towel, holding it against his body as if he felt alien eyes upon his nakedness. The head of the morning sun had risen above a fist of trees across the river. And the events of yesterday seemed almost indistinguishable from a watchful dream in the past night. Nevertheless, they possessed enduring substance for him since on his return to the clearing on the river bank at Upper Kamaria – after recovering Kaiser’s line – he had opened the depot and counted three or four boxes labelled DaSilva. Kaiser had not been indulging in an idle trick or fanciful token after all.

Later on as he drifts between the resal and unreal at times

This is a hard book to describe plot-wise as it is more about place and atmosphere, that feeling of being caught in the dense unrelenting jungle and how it can affect from Heart of Darkness onwards we have seen the madness of being alone in the jungle can bring on someone. Even Stevenson’s name is a nod towards the great Robert Louis Stephenson, another man tainted and, in the end, died in a jungle environment. This is a land Harris knew well. He had worked in the Heartlands to look at the viability of taming the rivers to make Hydroelectricity of them `(my Dad has worked at these hydro plants from around Niagara, where the US side uses some machines still from the 50s ). For me, this book has more connections to the Latin American cannon with its use of magical realism (well, MAGIC HORROR REALISM ) , fever dreams, ghosts and also the use of the jungle as almost another character to the book reminds me of the great number of books I have read in recent years from Latin American writers like Samanta Schweblin or Mariana Enriquez. I wonder what Harris’s standing is like in Latin America ? is it just the influence of place, or is he well-known there? Have you Read Harris?

Winston’s score – A – one of the greatest writers can’t believe I’ve just discovered him will be reading him again !

The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camilo Sosa Villada

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The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camilo Sosa Vilada

Argentine fiction

Original title – Las Malas

Translator – Kit Maude

Source – personal copy

I often think I don’t read enough LGBT lit, but when I come across some great books in translation, I always get them, and this is one that caught my eye in the last few months. I love the cover but I loved the story of the writer’s own life. This is mirrored somewhat in the novel, a story of a boy that becomes a woman who starts to dress in her. Mother’s clothes in her teens. Then as her father had said, she ended up on the streets but has written and been a voice of the transgender community in Argentina; this is the story of those she saw alongside her in the streets of Cordoba Camila Sosa Vilada writes for the stage and also been an actress in several films. She is a leading voice in the trans community in Argentina.

THE TRAVESTIS walked from the Park to the area by the bus station at a remarkable pace. They were a caravan of cats, hurried by circumstance, their heads down to make themselves invisible. They were going to Auntie Encarna’s house.

The queerest boardinghouse in the world, during desperate times it had offered shelter, protection, succor, and comfort to an endless stream of travestis. They were going there because they knew it was the safest possible place for them to be, carrying the baby in a purse. One of them, the youngest, worked up the courage to say what they were all thinking.

“It’s a cold night to spend in jail.”

“What?” Auntie Encarna demanded.

Her house is a refugee to them all

The book is one of those great books that walks the line between fiction and memoir, an inspiring and touching piece of autofiction that chronicles the lives of the Felloow Travesti. The women that hang around Sarmiento park at night, our narrator, a fictional version of the writer herself takes us into this world of short skirts and those woman selling themselves at night in the park a family of their own these are their tales from finding a baby. How they end up there from a. the male nurse that becomes Nadine at night, the group revolves around Aunty Encarna. This character reminds me of when, many years ago, I read Anna Madrigal as a character the sort of central hub around these characters’ lives. The sort of heart of the group Aunty Encrna takes them down and out like the deaf girl Marie or the baby boy that sets off a chain of events. This shows the highs and lows of this world with mental health issues suicide at the heart of it and the hopelessness of some of their lives. Camila’s own story is at the heart of the book, her journey and the way she ends up as one of the found family of Sarmiento park.

BEFORE I met the travestis of the Park, my life could be summed up by my childhood experiences and the instinctive transvestism I began when I was still just a girl. Until I met them I was completely lost, I didn’t know any other travestis, 1 didn’t know anyone like me. I felt as though I was the only one in the world. And in my daytime world, in the university, the halls of the Faculty of Social Communication, and later the Theater Department at the Art School, that was certainly true. My

whole universe was the men and women I met at college and the tricks I turned at night.

Camila’s own young years when she first saw the world of the park at a distance

I hope this makes the Man booker longlist. It is a powerful book that looks at a group of people with very little written about trans working girls of Latin America. She brings their lives and their world to life as I say, some of the characters, significantly Aunty Encrna jump off the page as Camila’s own story this is a piece of autofiction in the classic sense. It has the beauty and violence of this world, the comradeship and found a family that is formed in situations like this from worlds like Maupin’s Tales of the city that captures a community like this and at its heart has two characters in Aunty  Encrna alongside Anna Madrigal are cut from the same block of wood. I was also reminded of the tv series set around Bradford’s red light district and the same sense of a found family of women interacting together. It was great to see this being made into a tv series as it feels it would work as there are so many little stories in this book Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – A – a recollection of a world of violence and sex and those we take on as a family.  when we have to be ourselves in a hostile world!

Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin

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Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin

Argentinan  fiction

Orignal tile – Siete casas vacías

Translator – Megan McDowell

Source – Library book

This is the third book I have reviewed from Samantha schweblin. It is the first I have really connected with as a reader before I got them and why people loved them but it hadn’t been a total bowl over for me. The other books my fellow readers on the shadow just seemed to have connected with more than myself. She has been on the Man booker list with her three previous books, so it I thought it was a good idea to read her latest just in case it made the longlist. This is a collection of short stories. As with her other books, it has a dark side to her stories. Samanta Schweblin lives in Berlin and has written five books. One of them is currently being filmed by Netflix. So let us enter the Erie unsettled stories she has given us.

My mother, who was in the process of getting out of the car, freezes a moment and then drops back into her seat. I’m worried because night is falling, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the car out in the dark. The forest is only two houses away. I walk into the trees, and it takes a few minutes to find exactly what I need.

When I get back, my mother is not in the car. There’s no one outside. I approach the front door of the house.

The boy’s truck is lying on the doormat. I ring the doorbell and the woman comes to open the door.

“I called the ambulance? she says. “I didn’t know where you were, and your mother said she was going to faint again.”

The opening story of the mother and daughter None of that.

A mother and daughter head out in a car. Where they end up in the middle of nowhere and end up on a posh estate and the. other goes into a house. The mother starts to wander around the house as though drawn by some spirit and things just go strange as the oddness of the actions. Then the longest story in the book breaths from the depth. The story has a classic hook to it in the newcomer in the area when a single mother who moves next to her and her longstanding husband. They lost their sons many years ago. But Lola gets weary when her husband is drawn to the young boy next year all this is back as Lola’s health is waning. But who is this neighbour why does she feel familiar at times she is fat but there is something there. elsewhere people are caught between homes. A teen strips and redress in some underwear. I loved this collection.

The list was part of a plan: Lola suspected that her I life had been too long, so simple and light that now it lacked the weight needed to disappear. After studying the experiences of some acquaintances, she had concluded that even in old age, death needed a final push.

An emotional nudge, or a physical one. And she couldn’t give that to her body. She wanted to die, but every morning, inevitably, she woke up again. What she could do, on the other hand, was arrange everything in that direction, attenuate her own life, reduce its space until she eliminated it completely. That’s what the list was about; that, and remaining focused on what was important.

The opening of the longest story in the book breath from the depths

I loved the stories especially the short ones like when the mother and daughter head into the village in the middle of nowhere. Then into the backyard of the house and into the house itself. When she is drawn to a sugar bowl the story has such an undercurrent to it the sense of something more to it. Like Lola, I was reminded at times of the Pinero novel that made this year’s Booker list. As it had a similar feel to the character of a person in pain and with. A lot in their life. This collection uses the usual hooks in Horror fiction, strange places, haunted feeling houses, and people on the edge. But I think what She does so well is making the normal everyday humdrum characters. Seem just enough off-kilter and odd to be believed and not over the top. I love the cover art for this book. We have to ask ourselves will this make the longlist again , I think it may do the only reason it may not is if they want to give other writers a chance to make the longlist. Have you read any of her books?

Winstons score – +A Finally loved one of her books.

 

Artforum by César Aira

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Artforum by César Aira

Argentine fiction

Original title – Artforum

Translator – Katherine Silver

Source – Personal copy

I had read one other book by Aira it seems it is the one most people read it is An episode in the life of a landscape painter. That was in 2016 and I had brought a few of his books but they just went on to mount TBR and I think with them being short I had just never got to them so when I saw it was on the Moose on the gripes podcast last month I decided I would listen to them chat about him as he is a writer I felt I should have read more of as ever Trevor and Paul’s sheer joy grabbed me so what did I do I went and ordered two more book that would make six books I have to read and I choose this to start with as it seemed short and also a book about obsession appears I tend to be a flighty obsessive Itend to deep dive in and out of things so I will thing of a band I loved order loads cds and vinyl listen to them then be on to something else. Like many of his books it follows a man that lives in Corona Pringles. He has been drawn to getting and discovering the art magazine Artforum.

WHEN I MADE THE TRANSCENDENT DECISION to take out a subscription, I thought that all my problems were over. It wasn’t easy, I had to overcome the internal resistance of the primitive economist that I was, who didn’t buy anything if I couldn’t hold it in my hands and pay with banknotes I pulled out of my pocket. I had never taken out a subscription to any magazine, and it was strange that I hadn’t subscribed to Artforum until then, not only because it was my favourite magazine but because of how difficult it had always been to procure.

He takes the plunge and decides to subscribe to his favourite magazine

 

This is a quest a man’s quest obsession for a square Magazine (I was reminded of archipelago books here they are always on the whole square editions and always collectable ) He has spent years trawling shops overseeing and wanting this Magazine from America he in the ends even subscribes and he does that dance which I think many of us, well I know the is it here yet dance has the postman got it and then there is an added dimension he feels the postman may steal and sell the magazine to the book stalls and he laments that over time he had brought copies of art forum from there then he hears of some that have died and his collection is in a shop this reminds me of the weekly flick through records my local record shop does it has all the new second-hand records and if I see that one I may one I can’t wait to get there to get it myself. Then as it seems to happen a lot of books by Aira from what Trevor and Paul said there is a sudden change of tack and suddenly we are talking about a broken clothes spin (peg we would call it) this leads him to Claes Oldenburg therapist that made giant everyday objects. What happens when it stops coming?

WITHIN THE DAILY ROUTINE OF THE HOUSE-hold, small inexplicable incidents also occur. Why did it happen, why didn’t it happen? Nobody knows. All we know is that something happened. What?
Well… so many things! Something is always happening, and it’s difficult to set one incident, one anecdote, apart. How to know what deserves mention? One should talk all the time, or remain silent forever. The trifles that feed innocent chatter sink into the subsoil of the silence of the responses. Sometimes a chance repetition insinuates a meaning.
“Another clothespin broke! What bad luck!”
“I’ll fix it.” (I thought that the spring that connects the two halves had gotten detached.)
“No. It broke. It can’t be fixed.”
“Throw it away!”
“Throw it away!”

Then we discover a broken clothes peg almost like a chapter from another book had fallen in this book.

I loved this short novella I am someone that so gets obsession with something as I have a little of that and also that feeling of wanting something I think this is something that has changed in my lifetime and maybe what he has caught here is a lost world in the future what he captures is that going through racks looking for that lost copy that lost record that whatever, which is something I n the click and get off the modern world we are losing. So I am thankful that I decided to listen to Mookse and gripes podcast I m sure you all do but if you don’t subscribe they just make you a reader who really wants to discover and revisit books. We follow a man’s obsession and get drawn into his world for a short time will it come today or not? How often have I waited for that book to arrive or that record etc. Do you have obsessions or go down a rabbit hole? Have you a favourite book by Aira ? where should I go next?

Winston’s score – +A rediscovering a writer you think you may love

Empty Words by Mario Levrero

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Empty Words by Mario Levrero

Uruguayan fiction

Original title – El discurso vacío

Translator – Annie McDermott

Source – personal copy

I am back with another for my Spanish lit month and this time I am heading down to Latin America and one of the countries that I really should have read more books from over the year and that Is Uruguay and her we have a book from the late writer Mario Levrero a writer that as the translator said in the intro he is hard to put in a Genre. I liked in his Wiki page that it said he had left school due to a Heart murmur. Then he had spent his time listening to tango music and reading. He spent the latter part of his life trying to finish his novel The Luminous novel which he had spent a number of years working on he had been influenced by Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll. This is the first book I have read by him and it was like going down a rabbit hole.

My graphological self-therapy begins today. This method (suggested a while ago by a crazy friend) stems from the notion – which is central to graphology – that there’s a profound connection between a person’s handwriting and his or her character, and from the behaviourist tenet that changes in behaviour can lead to changes on a psychological level. The idea, then, is that by changing the behaviour observed in a person’s handwriting, it may be possible to
change other things about that person.

My aims at this stage of the therapeutic endeavour are fairly modest. To begin with, I’m going to practise writing by hand. I won’t be attempting calligraphy, but I’ll at least try to manage a script that anyone could read – myself included, because these days my writing’s often so bad
that not even I can decipher it.

What he is trying to do is explained .

What happens when you get some writer’s block. Well, our narrator unnamed has been told by a friend to just write with a pen and paper every day ( this is something you see a lot these days in self-help videos and how to become creative). What we have here is his jotting the life his outpouring and over time you see how Levrero has let his narrator pour out his life and his life is one that is seeing him wanting to go up the ladder at work he writes crosswords and his mother is now showing her age. His stepson is distant so most of his time is spent Wirth his dog Pongo. But what we see is a man trying to write trying to expand from tales of his dog and the cat next door. This is one of those books that is just great but is hard to describe I’ve seen it compared to Bernhard in a way especially as he had Also written about trying to work through writer’s block.

4 October
A bad day for calligraphical exercises, and for lots of other things too. It’s raining (which I enjoy, though it makes me even more inclined than usual to sleep and do nothing). Yesterday (today) I went to bed after five in the morning; at ten thirty I was woken up by a truck with loudspeak-
ers attached, which stopped right outside our house and held forth about some stupid raffle, at great length and appalling volume. Then, without having got back to sleep properly – I’d been dozing, but that was it – at twelve thirty I was woken up once and for all by Juan Ignacio and his
grandmother, who were shouting for the dog in a deafening chorus. Because of all this, my eyes are burning and I don’t feel like doing anything. I notice, however, that except for the odd slip-up, my writing is large and clear.

A few days later and we see how he is getting on with his daily task of writing.

 

Another review said that Uruguay is known as the place of the strange ones when it comes to writers. I think that this would be one I struggle at times it is one of those books that hasn’t any real plot other than we know he is writing every day to free his writing up. this is an overweight guy with heart issues ( this is another nod to Bernhard in a way how often his characters have a sort of spite to their own world !!). It is maybe a writer trying to write about a writer trying to escape writer’s block whilst the writer himself is trying to escape the writer’s block he is suffering. His other book the luminous novel is also like this about trying to escape writer’s block. He likes to take the reader down rabbit holes of a writer struggling in his life there is a sense of the absurd nature of the world around us at times. The writers mentioned by his translator are evident Kafka there is a sense behind our narrator there are more mentions of having to live away from his home in Uruguay.An interesting book for this year’s Spanish lit month I will be getting his other book. Have you read this or any other writers from Uruguay? this is a Spanish Kafka trying to get out of writers block by imaging he is Thomas Bernhard whilst following his dog into a rabbit hole.

Winstons score – B a solid intro to a writer I liked to read more from a book that is unusual and challenging but the sort I love as a reader.

 

The Shape of Bones by Daniel Galera

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The Shape of bones by Daniel Galera

Brazilian fiction

Original title – Mãos de Cavalo

Translator – Alison Entrekin

Source – Personal copy

Well, I’m back posting here post- heatwave and working nights during said Heatwave sapped my energy so I am running late with Spanish / Portuguese lit month-wise . BUT I think a few books was planning to read, I can carry over to next month rot go with my women in translation books I have planned to read. Anyway, it is back with a book I finished just prior to my holiday a book from a writer I had read before, I like blood drenched beard by the Brazilian writer Daniel Galera, a writer and translator that has worked on E-zines, launched his own publishing house and has seen a number of his works made into films and plays. He is considered to be one of the best young writers from Brazil. This is the second book from him I have reviewed. As we are near the endow this year’s Tour de France. A book that at its heart has a couple of bike rides seems very apt.

The Urban cyclist lies in the middle of the street for at least ten seconds, his leg still caught in the bike, while the neighbourhood dogs bark in a frenzy. When his brain starts working again, the first thing that occurs to whims is that his face must be deformed. He runs his hand over it and finds a little blood on his thumb. His tongue registers the sour taste and what appears to be a small flap of loose skin on his lower lip. He frees his leg from the bike, the right one and examines it. A small white circle under his knee begins to sprout minuscule red dots, which become drops of blood that swell and start to run down his leg.

I think we have all had a fall from a bike like this as a kid or an adult that bad crash.

 

The book has a twin storyline that both focus on Hermano a young surgeon and husband but he is distant in his marriage as we see him sneak away from his sleeping wife and child. As we follow him as he sets off early one morning to drive through Porto Allegro to fetch a friend for a ride. We see the man remember his childhood in the rougher side of time and the group of friends he knew then a bunch of rough kids as they tore through the streets like a character on a bike from an early Springsteen song as they grew up in Esplanade district of the town a working class young part of the city.  As we follow him in the present trying with a friend to scale a mountain ( apt as yesterday was the last day in the mountains in the Tour) he passed through his old neighbourhood on the way the past comes to the fore in his mind as the start to climb the mountain and we see how what happened in the past with the boy shaped the man how the urban cyclist and his gang made this distant surgeon in the present. How one event in those years is still haunting him in the present.

The street that served as a finish line at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t very busy, but it was still a miracle that there hadn’t been any deadly collisions with motor vehicles. The most skilled riders managed to stop their bikes with a skid before they got to the kern, but the manoeuvre came with its own risks.

This is one of the passages that made me think of those early Springsteen songs of kids in cars ion his songs but tearing through streets like they do here on the bikes on the edge of life.

I love novels that use the twin storyline as a narrative tool because when it is pulled off like it is here it is a wonderful way to give insight into a character’s past and why they are like they are in the present you get the sense early on that there is something in Hermano’s life that isn’t quite right yes he has it all the life away from his childhood home, the wife, the child the dream job but there is that niggling sense the way he sneaked off the way the drive through a place sparked the past that one moment in the past that set the present this book does that brilliantly also the pacing with the drive and ride on the mountain as pacing to the book as the morning and the memories of the gang the tearing through the streets this is a man-made good but at what cost!! I am teasing you as this is a book that I think maybe slipped under the radar blood drenched beard of Course with the title which grabbed people I would imagine is a great book but for me, this is the better book by him. Have you a favourite book that uses two timelines in the Narratives?

Winstons score – +A a man faces his past whilst on a bike ride perfect reading whilst the tour is on.