Tag: latin american fiction

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.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernadez

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Space invaders by Nona Fernandez

Chilean fiction

Original title – Space Invaders

Translator – Natasha Wimmer

Source – personal copy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel

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Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel

Mexican fiction

Original title – La Hija Unica

Translator – Rosalind Harvey

Source – Personal copy

It is always good to get back to a writer you have read and enjoyed it is like getting that old jumper out of the draw you know it will fit you perfectly. `So I am late to my Spanish lit month but I am starting in Mexico with Guadalupe Nettel. A writer from Mexico has written a. number of novels and short stories and we are lucky that most of her books have been translated into English. She is one of the group writers in the Hay Bogota 39 group a number of years ago. I have reviewed her twice before on the blog and both those books were ones I loved so when I saw this had come out I just had to get it to read especially when I read the theme of motherhood and being able to choose to have children something that has taken years for society’s view on women having children.

It is easy, when we are young, to have ideals and to live according to them. What is more complicated is acting consistently over time, and in spite of the challenges, life puts in our way. Shortly after I turned thirty-three, I began to notice the presence – the appeal, even – of children. For two years, I had been living with an artist from Asturias, who would spend hours in our apartment devoted to his work, impregnating the air of our shared space with the heady scent of his oil paints. His name was Juan. Unlike me, he knew how to be around children, and enjoyed it. If he came across a child when we were out at the park or at a friend’s house,

Nettel, Guadalupe. Still Born (p. 21). Fitzcarraldo Editions. Kindle Edition.

The book follows the path around the theme of motherhood or whether to be a mother around a couple of friends Laura and Alina who are high fliers in their jobs and are both climbing the career ladder. They don’t want to have children at the moment well Laura doesn’t want to and she felt as though her friend had the same feeling as she did. So when the two women go on their own paths as one decides to have not children Laura makes sure she can’t have kids. But at this point, her friend meets someone and then decides that she wants to have a child this is the second strand her first IVF treatment which is told with a wonderful detached nature that gives it that clinical feel to such a personal moment in a woman’s life. Then when during the birth there is a twist that will change the future of `Alina and her partner Aurelio when they discover their newborn will have a disability which makes them reassess their future and what motherhood will be for them with a child with a disability and short-lived outlook. Then add to this there is a second tale of motherhood with the son of a neighbour.

On Monday I turned up at my gynaecologist’s office without an appointment and asked him to tie my tubes. After asking me a series of questions to gauge how certain I was, the doctor looked at his diary. I had the surgery that same week, convinced I’d made the best decision of my life. The surgeon did his job skilfully, but while I was recuperating in the hospital, I got an infection caused by one of those superbugs are so hard to eradicate. I returned home with a fever and spent several days like that without telling anyone what I’d done, not even Juan. Afterwards, when I was given the all-clear, I called Alina, feeling sure that only she would be able to understand me.

Nettel, Guadalupe. Still Born (pp. 22-23). Fitzcarraldo Editions. Kindle Edition.

 

This is an insight into the world of choosing not to have a babe and it uses the two friends as a wider comment on how society views motherhood and having children. I thought back to a film like Parenthood that dealt with having kids but society has moved on and there are more women wanting children Later in life or not at all as they want to pursue a career. It is all about choices and the ability to have them. But it also tackled the problem of having a child with a disability, after 30 plus years of working with people with disabilities you find there are certain ways parents over time have dealt with their children but also the way things have changed over time. The narrative times in the book have a detached nature at times that may be due to Laura being the one that is narrating the events and is the one that isn’t into children or being a mother. She views the world in her way and that gives it an interesting perspective and feel to the book. bu Laurt has a close bond with her friend and the horror of learning about they’re  Child’s disability and the effect it will have on everyone. Have you read any books from Nettel ? or around motherhood or choosing not to have children?

To sir with love by E R Braitithwaite

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To sir with love by E R Braithwaite

Guyanese fiction

Source – personal copy (on kindle)

I posted my interest in the Jubilee reading list and this is one of the books on the list it appealed as I hadn’t reviewed a book from Guyana and I have never seen the film and it is rare I’ve not seen the film to a book especially when it is a well known film so I decided to read to then hopefully at a later date I will be able to see the film. Anyway E r Braithwaite Had studied in New your before he joined the RAF this is where this novel starts as it is autobiographical.He like the character in his book went to the Uk after the war. We see his struggle and how he Fell into teaching this lead to him have a long connection in. the education system where he worked for a number of years along side his writing career as a educational consultant for UNESCO. He actually lived to the ripe old age of 104 when he passed in 2016.

The bus pulled away from the stop, but I remained standing there, feeling suddenly depressed by the prospect around me. I suppose I had entertained some naïvely romantic ideas about London’s East End, with its cosmopolitan population and fascinating history. I had read references to it in both classical and contemporary writings and was eager to know the London of Chaucer and Erasmus and the Sorores Minores. I had dreamed of walking along the cobbled Street of the Cable Makers to the echoes of Chancellor and the brothers Willoughby. I wanted to look on the reach of the Thames at Blackwall from which Captain John Smith had sailed aboard the good ship Susan Lawrence to found an English colony in Virginia. I had dreamed. . . .

Braithwaite, E. R.. To Sir With Love (Vintage Classics) (p. 9). Random House. Kindle Edition.

His dream ideas and reality hit one another

The book follows Ricky Braithwaite a fthinly veiled version of the writer himself and the book opens as he is in the Rf and is getting demobbed where he struggles with getting a job in the field he is trained for from his RAF job as an engineer so struggling he takes the one job he can get as a teacher in an East end school. The school is eye opening for Ricky as the students aren’t ike he was as they struggle to read and learn this along with the fact he is constantly tease and disrupt with noise and other things by the students. Then he worries about the female students and their periods. This see him try a new approach where he want to show them there is more to life and with Gillian another young teacher he tries to show them Museums and the wider world. As the two teacher grow closer. His methods work but not everyone sees that as some prefer the old fashioned tough approach to the students and the way the behave.

The smells arose from everything, everywhere, flowing together and remaining as a sickening, tantalizing discomfort. They flowed from the delicatessen shop with its uncovered trays of pickled herrings, and the small open casks of pickled gherkins and onions, dried fish and salted meat, and sweaty damp walls and floor; from the fish shop which casually defied every law of health; from the Kosher butcher, and the poulterer next door where a fine confetti of new plucked feathers hung nearly motionless in the fetid air; and from sidewalk gutters where multitudes of flies buzzed and feasted on the heaped-up residue of fruit and vegetable barrows.

Braithwaite, E. R.. To Sir With Love (Vintage Classics) (p. 9). Random House. Kindle Edition later on the same and next page this evoked for me Call the midwife so much in this description of the smell of the East End!!

This is a book that opens the eye to attitudes in post war Britain and how they changed for Braithwaite character from the time he was in the RAF in the war where he felt that he was an equal the shocking crash to earth afterwards where the doors close. But that lead to him teaching and that was a passion he had all his life. I loved the descriptions in the book of theEast End of the day it was similar in feel to the early series of Call the midwife in fact as I reed through the book I imagine the class full of the students and kids seen in that show. It shows what one person can do to change those pupils life it is a look at the old system of teaching that was around discipline to what were newer ideas to nourish and inspire pupils which is what I always try to do here. I really want to watch the film which I haven’t seen or if I had I can’t remember this sits along side the early wind rush books as showing how it was to come to the Uk from Guyana or the Caribbean in those post war years when the were hopes for a better life often dashed like early in Ricky’s time but some do like Ricky make a way and become a success.I would love to read another book that was written by one of his former pupils to see how he viewed the experience of Ricky teaching him. Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – -A an interesting ;book at post war Britain and education from a teacher struggling to teach and be accepted.

Phenotypes by Paulo Scott

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Phenotypes by Paulo Scott

Brazilian fiction

Original title – Marrom e Amarelo

Translator – Daniel Hahn

Source – personal copy

Now I am back on the long listed books for the Booker international. This time it is a book from Brazilian writer Paulo Scott. I thought I had reviewed his earlier book nowhere people but I hadn’t when I looked back so this is the first book I have reviewed by him he studied public law and taught it for a number of years, he was also involved in student politics and was involved in the re-democratisation of Brazil. He has now written six novel and seven collections of poetry. This book use the tale of two brother to put under the spotlight the question of race in Brazil which is something I hadn’t know a lot about or thought much about.

I was an important researcher into the so-called hierarchy of skin colours on pigmentocracy and its logic in Brazil, on the perversity of colourism, on compensatory policies and their lack of understanding among Brazilian elites, that I’d advised NGO’s in Brazil, in Latin America and the rest of the world, that I’d consulted for Adidas, oh yes that’s right , Adidas the famous German-founded company making High performance sportswear, the man was foolish enough to emphasise, as if that were the high point of my biography, and did consider interrupting him, saying like hell did I ever consult for Adidas, That I’d merely acted as intermediary for an agency that did advertising for them

This was how he was introduced but also shows how facts can be twisted and rewritten so easily.

The novel focuses on Federico and his brother Lourenco. They have a father who is black and mother that is white.The brother  have a huge difference in the skin tones and are different Federico is much light in his skin tone than his brother he could pass as white as the book opens we see him in his late forties as he is the last member of a government appointment committee that is dealing with quotas in High education as he is introduced in the opening lines we see how much he has done but also maybe a bit up himself as he complains how they talk about him getting his name wrong a small project with Adidas that they seemed to think more important but as the project he is involved with grows he starts to question what is happening he grew up in Porto Alegre and hadn’t much been touched by race mainly due to his light skin tone and the fact he hadn’t been touch  by racism as much. But when events from within his own family and the fact that som thing that happens with his brothers family makes him question the nature of race but also how absurd some of the solutions to this problem can be and how maybe a software program isn’t the answer. This is a novel that asks to question the hard question of race and also look under the skin of a nation.

It isn’t a gremlin match day, but it’s the eve of the eleventh, the last day on which let December the Gremio team won the Intercontinental cup, the Toyora cup, the day on which, every month the Gremistas, en masse, go around in the club shirts to commemorate the historic victory. As it’s Friday, it’s not surprising to see a group of friends won’t be able to meet up in the Saturday marking the occasion in advance at domestic barbecues, in restaurants, in bars, on the streets

1983 was there greatest moment the home team of Porto Alegre not much to do with the story but I am a huge football fan so I like this celebration of that moment even after decades.

I enjoyed parts of this novel and in places not many I didn’t it felt as thou the message was more than the story at times.  I didn’t connect with, but the story it was telling is an important one and maybe in the use of a family it tackled it the best way as we see how the tone of the skin of each member of the family and also how they are viewed this is the question at the start does race effect the chance but then how do you deal with it the is a section where the program is mention then a fellow member of the group talks about skin tone as thought it was like the myriad of paint tones. What he is trying to do is lift the lid on the question of race in Brazil as Daniel explains in his after word this is hard to convey from one language to the next as it is a lot about the language used and maybe this is what is missed but I am not sure I like it in parts and others it wasn’t grabbing me. This is one I may reread at a later date and see if I connect more with it but in parts this is great the opening draws you in `and things like the discussion of the software has a touch of the comic at times. Then the family events around Federico niece grabbed me. race is a hard subject to tackle and for me a white male a hard subject to write from my perspective but I can see how hard this subject and how to make the system fairer is hard to tackle as it is so complex and this is an interesting insight into it. Have you read any books that try to tackle this subject.Have you a favourite novel around race ?

Winstons- score B a brave book about race

One in me I never loved by Carla Guelfenbein

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One In me I never loved by Carla Guelfenbein

Chilean fiction

Original title – La estación de las mujeres,

Translator – Neil Davidson

Source – Review copy

One of the things many years ago that annoyed me at the time is when you discovered a writer you had enjoyed and then find they hadn’t anything else translated this is something that over the time I have been blogging happens a little less so it was great to get through the port another book from the Chilean writer the third to be translated and it is the second I will be covering here I loved her first book to be translated to English which came out in 2011 The rest in Silence. I did read the other book that was translated but never got round to reviewing the book In the distance with you although I did enjoy that as well so when this arrived I knew it would be one I like she is another of those great female latin American writers she has worked as the fashion editor and also the art director of Elie in Chile she has won a number of prizes and the title of this novel was The woman’s station in Spanish I prefer that to the English title myself.

My body unlike his, is expanding and collapsing alittle more each day, creasing, wilting, falling in on itself in weary rolls. Sometimes I hardly regonize it as mine

Someone else’s body is a place for your mind to go

Today is my fifty-sixth birthday. It’s ninein the morning and I’m sittingon a bench carved with Jenny Holzers texts. Phrases of hers gone onto t-shirts, golf balls, caps, mugs, and even comdoms. The bench is oin the public garden opposite the gates of Barnard college, where dozens of shameless butteflies flit in and out withkirts up to their crotch and backpacks of their shoulders. I watch them.

She mentions the comdom on the first page with her husband.

I love novels that are composed of vignettes or short stories and this is what we have here an interlinking collection of stories that take place in two-time frames in the present we have the story of a woman Margarita who is turning 57 that period in our lives where you are looking forward to your retirement and such. But her life is spun out of control by a number of events first her husband a teacher is having an affair but also the concierge in her building a young woman called anna has disappeared but was reading a book about how we can all disappear in America what has happened to Anna. Then an older friend ask her to help find someone that many years ago helped change the course of her life. Then we have a second thread around the poet Gabriela  Mistral and the letters she wrote in the late forties to her love Doris Dana add to this we discover that her young lover had a fling with another woman near her own age. An image far different from the one that was portrayed of Mistral all this is packed into a short novel and uses a number of styles part epistolary part spoken and part detective at times.

It is half past eleven one moning in this year of 1948. Light through the unopened letter is, Doris Dana can almost see it sinking into the counterpane of her unmade bed. Her head rings with the fish sellers unending whistling and the clatter of his cart on the cobbles. And woth the knife grinder’s howls “BRiiing out your kniiiiiives and scissoooors! she knows him. His name is Sid, and boasts of being the finest knife grinder in New york. She covers her ears with her hands then presses her fingertipsto her tired forehead. It is the third letter from Gabriela in five days. Or the fourth? she does not need to open it to know the words are bitter

I loved the lost nature of this opening to Doris’s story especially the word counterpane as someone i looked after used it all the time !

I loved the patchwork nature of this book it isn’t really about the plot more about glimpses into the private lives of a number of women over two different eras. That is why I prefer the Spanish title have we caught them at a point in their lives almost like being at the station where are we going there are many options and that is what is here piece of lives some answers, not all of them it is one of those books that leave you after you have read it filling in the gaps making you own conclusions and for me, this for some people is annoying it is like those films that don’t end with all the threads fastened in neat bows and that is because life isn’t neat and tidy it is about life and love lovers cheating husbands cheating people disappearing find someone once lost so many threads this is something I like in her other books and that is she is a writer that is able to squeeze so much into her writing it is intense and like one of those finger food collections where we have little versions of things that have the taste and feel of the bigger versions of what they are meant to be this is a micro view of these life just little bits small moments of Margarita life also what is happening round her then also the lovers in the late 1940s and a betrayal. Have you read any books by Carla Guelfenbein ? or another female writer from Chile ?

Winstons score – B a novella  with a yearning to be that Epic “honey I want be a big novel !! “

Home reading service by Fabio Morabito

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Home reading service by Fabio Morabito

Mexican fiction

Original title – El lector a domicilio

Translator Curtis Bauer

Source – review copy

I take a break from all things German and one of those writers that I feel is at home in winstonsdad as the life of Fabio Morabito has seen him live in two countries and use two languages. Born in Egypt to Italian parents he grew up in Milan until his parents emigrated to Mexico when he was 15 although he didn’t speak much Spanish but learned and has since written all his books in Spanish. he has written four collections of Poetry and also four of Short stories. He has also translated a lot of Italian poetry into Spanish. He won one of Mexico’s biggest literary prizes with this novel.

I never knew if the Jimenez brothers had been married beofre. The thing now, as old men, they lived together like bachelors. Their home, and judging by the long hallway thart connected to living room to the rest of the house, it must have had lot of rooms, or at least I imagined it that way.

Luis, the one who looked a little dimwitted, was crippled andf seemed to be the older of the two. It was difficult to knpow if he really was dimwit or not. While I read out loud., he sat stifly in his wheelchair.

The opening lines as he read to the two brothers.

the book follows one man Eduardo he lives in the Mexican town of Cuernavaca. He has been sentenced to one year of community service and the task he has been given for his sentence is to read to the towns old people and disabled.  As his father says it was a misfortune that cause the sentence and loss of his driving license. So he sets forth to read to these people. So as he starts to read the books to his collection of listeners and in one case lip readers, he isn’t really absorbing books like Henry James or Dostoyevsky. to an odd cast of characters that makes up the people he has read to. People like the two brothers one mute that the other one speaks to a retired colonel (I was reminded a bit of Marquez, he had a lot of retired military men in his books) an opera singer in a wheelchair a deaf couple with hearing children. But as time moves of=n what happens is we start to see Eduardo a mna absorb in himself even though he lives in a crowd home with his father who is dying with cancer, his sister and a Celeste the women she looks after. But it is later on when he discovers his father had a long time ago Isabel Frarie as he reads this poetry it finally dawns on him all this reading and this poet’s words unlock a door. This is a tale of a man discovering a world he hadn’t seen that isn’t the violent Mafia lead world of his town.

What I was sure of is that Papa didn’t know Isabel Faire, and that it hadn’t ocurred to him that he could have known her. For all he knew, Isabel Faire could have died thrirty years ago or already have been dead when he’d started to read her poems.

I ;ooked for the poe Papa’d copied in his ledger and I found it right away. I wpndered of he’d copied the poem to read to margo. I took it out of my briefcase to compare it to the orignal.Papa’d copied it out perfectly without adding or omitting anything, and that unfailing fidelity made me sad.

As the door opens and he discovers his father like the poet Isabel Faire !

When this arrived I knew it would be one for me. Eduardo is a man that isn’t moving anywhere fast in middle age living with family it isn’t to this sentence sends him around meeting people he didn’t know was there and people that slowly along with the discover life in a book that mixes dark parts of the world they all live in but also past romance those people getting by day to day. so what we get is a mix of dark humor at times and discovery of his own family’s past through the poems his father had once slowly copied and spent time writing for a romance many years ago. Another interesting writer from Mexico. as it is described it shows the healing powers of words and how they can transform one man’s life. If you love poetry and fiction and the power they can have this is the book for you it shows how we can all be touched when the find that key to unlock the door to the library of literature. All through Eduardo’s eye an everyman for a lot of modern Mexican men stuck in a groove just above being a criminal. Do you have a favorite book that involves books and reading?

Winstons score – -A nearly perfect read.

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro

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Elena Knows by Claudia  Piñeiro

Argentinean crime fiction

Original title – Elena sabe

Translator – Francis Riddle

Source – Review copy

I have often looked at books by the Argentina writer Claudia Piñeiro her books were previously brought out by Bitter Lemon press I have one on my shelves All yours which I have had on my shelves for a couple of years but when this arrived from Charco Press a publisher whose books over recent years.  I have really enjoyed it. The new book also mentions she is one of the most translated writers from Argentina and also has won awards for crime and lit fiction.  I decided it was time to read a book by her and with the mention of Thomas Bernhard on the back of the cover and a quote from his book Gargoyles at the start I knew this was the right book to start. The book is set over the course of one day as a mother tries to find out what happened to her daughter.

The trick is to lift up the right foot, just a few centimetres off the floor, move it forward through the air, just enough to get oast the left, and when it gets as far as it can go, lower it. That’s all it is Elena thinks. But she think this, and even though her brain orders the movement, her right foor dosen’t move forward through the air. It does not lower back down. It’s so simple. Nut it doesn’t do it So Elena wits and waits. In her kitchen. She has to take the train into the city at ten O’clock; the one after that , the eleeven O’clock, won’t do because she took the pill at nine.

She captures Elena’s struggle to move through her Parkinson’s

Elena is in her sixties and has Parkinson’s the book follows the day. The book follows her medication regime so we see how the symptoms of the disease mean this day will be a real ordeal for her so as the tablets help ease the pain she has she heads out across the city.As Elena does this she fills in the parts of Elena’s life. She has set out to find out what happened to her daughter Rita a devout churchgoer that was found hanging in the church she used to go to but it had been stormy and raining that day and she never went in storms as she had a phobia of lightening These and other things around her daughters’ death that aren’t just right. And she feels the police who opened and closed the case quickly saying it was suicide. She found out that her daughter had a connection to a woman Isobel a friend of the two of them whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years and this is what the day is about to find out what she had to do with Isobel and can she find some more out about Rita. Will it answer the questions she had? will she learn more and why did Rita end up at the church?

From the start Father juan was one of the least willing to talk about it, repeatedly deflecting Inspector Avellenda’s attempts to meet with him. Either you’re not insistent enough on Father Juan takes you for an Idiot, Inspector You’re not saying I should add him to the list of suspects are you Elena ? i already told you, you have the obligation to investigate all possible theroies Elena waited for the right time,, not too close to the daily masses, or the hours reserved for confessions, or to siesta.

Such a tight window to talk with dfather Juan what had the church to do with Rita’s death ?

This is the afterword is an attempt to relaunch Piñeiro as a more lit writer which this book is at its heart is a question that are larger than Rita death of the Church and the country the book was written just as the laws around Abortion changed in Argentina when the book came out in 2007  maybe that was something to do with it but you need to read the bok=ok. Know the question of Bernhard it is mention there is a style of writing like his and there is Elena journey has pacing like a Bernhard novel I think of something like his book which also takes place over a period of time and there is also a bitterness driving Elena to discover the truth of what happened. As her books from what I read have a crime element but also a large dollop of woman and Issues and social Issues. I will be reading her other book for next year’s Spanish lit month as her is a perfect crossover for both the second month of Spanish lit month and Woman in Translation month. Have you read her other books ?

Winstons score – B+ A great intro to a new writer to the blog

 

Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París

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Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París

Mexician Fiction

Original title – El nervio principal

Translator – Christina MacSweeney

Source – personal copy

I’m rather late starting this month’s Spanish lit month well I have started with another Charco press book before I get to the week one book of a perfect cemetery. I have both the books that have been translated by Daniel Saldaña París into English which is the reason I decided it was time to read one of them. He has been in the list of the best Mexican writers that came out in 2017 and the Bogota 39 list of the best writers under forty from Latin America. He started with three poetry collections and then has written four novels two of which have been translated into English. This book follows one man looking back on his childhood as he is laid confined to a bed.

Teresa walked out one Tuesday around midday. I can’t remember exactly which month, but it must have been either the end of July or the beginning of August , because ,y siter and I were still on H=holiday. I always hated being left in the care of Mariana, who systematically ignored me for the whole day, barricaded in her bedroom with the music playing at a volume that even to me a boy of ten, seemed ridiculous. So that Tues, I resented it when, Mumgot up from the table after lunch and announcecd she was going out “look after your brother, Mariana”, she said in a flat voice , that was the way shegenerally spoke, with hardly any intonation, like a computer giving instructions or someone on qutismspectrum(Even mow, when no one else is around, I sometimes imitate her, and it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that writing this is, in some form, an effort to find an echo of that monotone voice in the written world).

The opening lines and his mother walking out in 1994

This is a novel that our unnamed Narrator traces a man’s childhood as he tries to piece together what happened in his youth when his mother Teresa  just left him and his sister and father on a Tuesday. As our narrator tries to piece together the past.why his mother just left to join the Zapatistas and left them with a father who is distant a man that struggles to cope. Our narrator becomes obsessed with origami which he did to occupy time but also made him a quiet boy as his 10-year-old mind fills the gaps, but it also meant he grew into a quiet lonely man. So in the story, as he recalls this we question what we remember as now 32 he is laid in a bed the family bed that his father had passed away from a few years earlier. It is that he is sorting through his family’s papers as he learns some truths that have struck him down. he is unable to get out of bed. So he thinks of the time in 1994 when this all happened. It is a story of growing up with a huge void in one’s life but it also questions how we remember our lives when we are so young what do we recall is it colored by what we read and saw at the time. It is a book about coming of age amidst the chaos that was Mexico at the time when a man that is a reclusive soul looks back at what may be made him that way all the years ago.

My attempts at origami grew worse by the day, or at least that was my impression. Beforethe mastering the crane and the frog, I launched unto more complex figures. The result; unrecognisable lumps of paper that had been folded and unfolded too many times (Pper has that drawback; it’s made to remember all our errors, whether it’s when writing on it, as I do noe, or when folding and unfolding it, as I did then.)

His hobby shuts him of from the world but is maybe the way he remebers the past fold by fold but are they in the right order !

This is one of those books that hasn’t a lot of plot but a lot of how the world was for one small boy as the action flicks between the action of the past and the present it is a  book about what makes our memories of these timelines twist at times as we see how the present can ooze into the past. I enjoyed the pieces where he recalled the world cup in 1994 which I remember as at the time I was living in Germany as was visiting the Uk with my German partner at a time shortly after some of the events in the book when Bulgaria that had earlier played Mexico knocked out the germans. like is origami this is trying to fold the past into a swan or something without missing the folds memories fade and get blend with what we learn after them this is what we learn here. A story of a lonely boy as a lonely man piece together his past.

Winstons score – B A strong story of childhood recalled after the space left by a mother that has gone !

That was the month that was June 2021

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  1. The woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault
  2. Blind man by Mitja Cander
  3. The passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  4. Red Milk by Sjón
  5. Lamentations for 77,297 Victims by Jiri Weil
  6. Eulogy for the living by Christa Wolf
  7. The cheap eaters by Thomas Bernhard
  8. To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young

Well, I managed 8 books this month Which has taken me to the halfway point of the year with 54 books reviewed which is well on course for the 100 I hope to review this year well this months journey start with a woman haunt by a death that happened in a split second of her life but has a huge impact. Then a man struggles with his sight loss as his homeland stumbles in the post-communist world. THen a man tries to escape the closing net of Nazisism around him just after Krsytalnight will he get away. Then A man gets drawn into a group of Neo Nazis and winds up dead on a train in England after following the trial from Iceland of the Nazis. Then a lament for all those lost Jews in the war from Czechslovakia a new publisher for the blog as well with the Modern Czech classics from Karolinum press. Then one of Germany’s greatest writers struggles with her childhood in Nazi Germany. Then a man is drawn by a group of men eating the cheapest things on the menu in Vienna as he struggles writing his thesis. Then a group of Koreans try and find a new place in a world after a Virus has wiped out all the world.

Book of the month

The Cheap eaters by Thomas Bernhard

A novella by the great Austrian writer long out of print back in a new translation that sees us enter the world of the Cheap eaters and what brought them out and made them eat the cheap meals.

Non book events

I watched one of Ken Loach’s latest films” Sorry we missed you ” the story of a couple struggling to get by in the new gig economy selling the family car to get a van to makes deliveries as a franchise but this shows the worst side of this new way of working all day every day that doesn’t give them the freedom we felt they would get as they get caught up in fines for missed jobs and lost equipment. We had a weekend away only up the road from us in Matlock but it was with Amanda’s family for a family celebration it was nice catching up with family. I got a number of records from the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Birdland, Will Oldham, and Mark Eitzel a mix of styles.

This month coming

it is Spanish lit month I hope to start with a Central American novel from Mexico about a son who lost his mother when she walked out on him and his dad then I have the first of our two reads. I have the two read-along works and hopefully a couple more books from Portugal I hope this month.

Elegy for Joseph Cornell by Maria Negroni

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Elegy for Joseph Cornell by Maria Negroni

Argentinian fiction

Original title -Elegia Joseph Cornell

Translator – Alison A. deFreese

Source – personal copy

Here we have another great female writer from Latin america the Poet Maria Negroni had translated the bio of the artist Joseph Cornell written by Charles Simic. She had won a Guggenheim award and a pen award for her poetry as one of the best books when it was translated into English. What she has done is a tribute and elegy to the artist that defies genre it is prose biography poetic all in one almost like his boxes where a collection of found pieces that fit together when put together. Another gem from the Dalkey archive literature series who else would bring out a book that is only 90 pages long and probably is less than that when the space in the book is removed.

Notes for a short Biography 1

The man loved getting lost in the city in which he lived. He was born at 1:13pm. From a blue heart insofe a seashell that someone had left in a hotel room. We know that his mother loved to playing the piano and that his father sold fabric, that several children lived in the house – including one that was paralytic – and that they all played together on Utopia Parkway. These were earthly games with the semblance of prayers – as are all games – and children threw themselves into their play as if they were magians and trapeze artist or flea trainers in the mythical circus of their yout. The children had grown now, and the man worked alone in the basement.

The first of a number of small bio snippets the reference to his brother he looked after all his life and the solitary adult he became

This is a collection of vignettes poetic pieces that flow between a bio of Cornell life snippets such as his love of wandering the city he loved New york comparing him to other great Flaneurs such as Baudelaire, Nerval, and Proust.His single solitary lifestyle a man that to many was an enigma.The grey man of New York a solitary figure wandering the streets, The second thread is around his paintings and his avant-garde films. The little vignettes that either describe the film or are an ode to those famous pieces of his like Children’s party, the Aviary A third thread is a tribute to his collecting items a list of things he owned. This is one of those books that is hard to describe itis a tribute to a unique man with a work that is a patchwork of styles.

The Duchamp Dossier

It’s a cardboard box in which, for years, Joseph Cornell collected small keepsakes from his friendship with Duchamp, The box contained 117 items of various types. The French artist empty tobacco pouch, two cleaners for his famous white pip, a napkin from Horn & Hardart(one of those automats that was all the rage in the 30’s and where they almost certainly met), letter, photographs, postcard of the mona lisa, several yellowed notes in his handwritin, gallery posters and even dry cleaning receipts which reveal Duchamp’s unusal habit of sending evertything to the dry cleaner, even sock and handkerchiefs

The box was put on display for the first time in 1998, on the occasion of the Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp: In resonance exhibition held in the Philadelphia Musuem of art.No one can explain how Cornell managed to acquire such “Mementos”

A piece about a box , but  nod to his habit of eating junk food all his life such as Automat cafes

I was aware of Cornell mainly through reading up on Jonas Mekas the last few years a filmmaker Avant Gardelike Cornell that knew Cornell and inherited his work when he died. At the heart of this book is the man Cornell a man who wanders New york finding collecting items to use art at some future point. The book is a journey a walk through his life but we only pick a few snippets of his life this is his box. The box for Joseph Cornell is a collage to the man a mix of style and genres. If you like Cornell this will appeal to you if you are a fan of experimental fiction this would appeal to you.

Winstons score – A+ these are the gems I write this blog for books that challenge us as a reader and defy genre !!

 

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed By Mariana Enriquez

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The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Los peligros de fumar en la cama

Translator – Megan Mcdowell

Source – Personal copy

I’m back on with the last few Booker International prize books with the shortlist been announced yesterday, the shadow jury will announce our shortlist in due course. One of the things I have really enjoyed the last few years is the emergence of a new generation of Latin American writers and in that, we have a lot more female writers to read than there were when I started Winstonsdad. This is the second collection to be published but as is the way in the world of translated literature this was actually the first book of stories to be published by Marian Enriquez. She studied journalism and Rock Journalism and was a fan of Stephen King and HP Lovecraft when growing up.  Both masters of the Horror short story. She has also written four novels her last won one of the Major book Prize the Herralde Prize.

I found the bones after the rainstorm that turned the back patch pof earth into a mud puddle. I put them in a bucket. I used for carrying my treasures to the spigot on the patio where I washed them. I showed them to Dad. He said they were chicken bones, or maybe even beef bones, or else they were from some dead pet someone must have buried a long time ago, Dogs or cats. He circled back around to the chicken because before, when I was lttle, my grandmother used to have a copp there.

What are the bones who are they ?

This collection opens with a Will Oldham quote which to me was a sign I would like these stories. When the collection opens with the spirit of a dead baby after the bones are found by a granddaughter in the grandmother’s garden. These stories all hark back to those dark years of the Junta and Dictatorship. So we have teen girls using an ouija board to try and talk to those they have lost. I loved the opening of this story as it mentioned the Band Slayer who my best friend is a huge fan of this is a nod to those classic horror genres of teen girls horror films and Metal music a nod to the times. Then I was reminded of a book I read earlier this year by another story in the collection when those children that disappear start reappearing which reminded me of the Novel A luminous republic which had a group of list children suddenly reappearing this is another classic horror story and movie. The rest of the stories all have classic nods to the horror genre and a look at the times they are set in especially the abuse of Girls which crops up in a number of the stories a powerful collection.

At that age there’s music playing in your head all the time , as if a radio were transmitting from the napoe of you neck, inside your skull. Then one day that music starts to grow softer, or it just stops.When that happens, you’re no longer a teenager. But we weren’tthere yet, not even close, back when we talked to the dead. Back wthen, the music was at full blastand it sound like slayer, Reign in blood .

We started the Oija board at Polack’s houser locked in her room. We had to do it secret because Mara, the Plack’s sister was afraid of ghosts and spirits. She was afraid of everything – man, she was a stupid little kid.

The last story in the collection.

Like the later collection Enriquez, she is a master of the Horror Genre I used to read a lot of Stephen King stories in my teens and she has lifted the lid on the dark corners of the human souls and the darkest of times in her homeland this is like a collection of testaments to that time this is a theme I see cropping up time after time in a lot of literature from Argentina it seems the time has come to look back and try and piece apart what happened. This isn’t a collection that sits easily with the read no it is dark and brutal at times may be less polished than her later collection it is still worth reading. A mix of the macabre, folklore, and the dark of the times. Let’s hope her novel is as good when it comes out next year in English Our share of the Night the one that won the Herralde Prize.

Winstons score – B+  a dark collection

The Imagined Land by Eduardo Berti

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The Imagined land by Eduardo Berti

Argentinean fiction

Original title – El país imaginado

Translator – Charlotte Coombe

Source – personal copy

I have had this on my shelves a couple of years and when I was looking for something that maybe had a love story or romance at its heart this struck me as a contender. It is written by the French-based Argentinean writer Eduardo Berti A cultural Journalist based in France he was elected to the Oulipo group of writers being the first writer from Argentina to be elected to the group. He also works as a transxlator he=aving translated works from Alberto Manguel and Romesh Gunesekera. He has published 15 books of novels and short stories over the last thirty years.

ON the first day of the new year, my father was in such a good mood that he was hardly recognisable; he was usually so moderate, so restrained. He saw that there sun, that the air was fresh, and there wa no threat of clouds on the horizion, of the “corner of the sky” as my grandmother used to call it. This all seemed to be a good omen, since nothing was more desirable for the chu-yi than a crystal clear dawn, Shortly after, at midday, he reminded ius enthusiastically that in the evening we would be joined for dinner bt tje family of his friend Gu Xiangong, who lived about a two hour drive away by car from our city. This was a dangerous ambigous distance

Thy had three daughters the visits why are they coming to visit the family.

This book is set in CHina pre reveloution in a small city we view the life there through the eyes of Ling she is 14 and nurses her grandmother as she says her parents don’t trust him to nurse her. The Grandmother is old and has a great collection of old books that she  has read to her grandchildren especially her granddaughter. The book are to be taken out to stp insects eating them she is told by her father this is something that Ling does herself as her brother isn’t bother this isall part of some old ideas and pratices that her father has that make them seem out of time to those around them. But when pone day they are visited by a local family as there daughter Xiaomei as her brother future bride but the young 14 year old ling is dumbstruck by the beauty of this girl and then decides to befriend her as the two meet in the park over time. This is also intersped with Ling talking with her grandmother who has now passed about what she is feeling and her grandmpther spirit is a guide for her. The two girls discuss going ona run , her brother admits he is in love with a different girl will she be found a husband were will the love take them all and what do the do to follow there parents wishes.

Give me your hand, said Xiaomeri, and I did

Interlacing her fingers with mine, she formed one hand using both out hands and guided it  into the basket. We clumsily grabbed the first piece of paper within our reach.

Xiaomei unfolded the paper to reveal a melon

We will have lots of children,Ling ! she said, laughing.

We laughed even more, however, when before we saiud goodbye, she unfoilded all the pieces of paper to tecveal the drawings melons, melons, nothing but melons.

The two girls grow close as they meet in a park !

If you have followed this blog for any time you know I am a huige fan of fiction set in villages or small city that have a real sense of place  as they have that air of being caught in amber in at times and here is a village that is looking far back to tradition in the values like buying a blackbird the book starts with a blackbird and ends with the vchaning as the bird seller isn’t in the ,market anymore the book is set in the twenties and follows ling to the edge of the reveloutin through the Japanese ocupation. It is obvious as I read in an interview with Berti this China in the book is a mix of real and inmagined China the china of the west the way we like to view it but I was remind fo the documentry channel four showed years ago Beyond the clouds which showed small villages that like this city had got lost in time. That had like this place missed the call of time touched by the modern world like when Ling talks about watchiong films especially of the silent film star Ruan lingyu who died young but was called the Greta garbo of China for the emotions she showed in her film. Ling says Xiaomei is even more beautiful this is a tale of the first love not sexual but of attraction and the blossoming of a young girl struggling with who she is !! Then there is her and her brother struggles to conform with their parents and try and keep the family traditions and values alive. If yoiu like books like Reef where coming of age is mixed with the scenery of a place and spirt this mixes the spirit of the small village. Ann interesting book of a place long gone from a new writer to the bog Have you read anything by Him? Happy Valentine’s day all !!

Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo

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Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo

Columbian fiction

Original title – Tiempo muerto

Translator – Charlotte commbe

Source – personal copy

I add a few books to my TBR that I felt maybe in line to make the man booker list that I hadn’t been sent just to get a leg up so here is the second novel to be translated into English by the prize-winning Columbian writer Margarita Garcia Robaye that has been brought out by Charco press that has been bringing out some wonderful books from Latin America the last couple of years. Born in Cartagena on the coast of Columbia she won the prestigious Casa De Las Americas prize for her book worse things. She currently lives in Argentina.

Ar around 5 p.m. he received an email from Gionzalo and Elisa – Gonzaloandelisa@gmail.com- invinviting them over fro a barbecue. They lived nbext door and they saw them often but not particularly close friends. He bumped into Gonzalo most days when they each took out the rubbish to the bim they shared, halway between two houses. The bin was a bit further away, so they walked that stretch together as they discussed the news. usually terrorism, They talked about Isis, Boko haram, Hezbollah and the FARC as of discussing the performance of different soccer teams. He couldn’t recall how this had become their go-to-subject, but they’d kept it up for years, This was handy for Pablo because it allowed them to dance around more delicate subjects such as the fact that Gonzalo, a while back, had stuck his hands up Pablo’s sister’s skirt

There friends afre most latin American but it seems strange that talk could be about anything but Covoid nowdays.

What this book does is dissects a relationship falling apart a marriage dissolving. The heart of the book is a Columbian couple living in the US Pablo and Lucia. Maybe at the heart of what the problem is the way they have adapted to the change of Homeland Pablo is still feeling drawn to his homeland and keeping his identity whereas his with it seems has never really felt at home. They have made a life with their twins but even then Lucia takes the front foot on how the kids are raised. They have split and then Pablo ends up in Hospital with what is called Holiday heart and this it seems is a condition that is caused by over living so when at Christmas people overeat and drink it cause temporary heart issue. Pablo trying to write that epic novel of his homeland whilst his wife writes a piece about their life in the US this is what seems to be the heart of the problem one moving one-way one moving another way. This so the view of both outdated racism that hasn’t changed since their time in the US. Pablo is a man of his homeland he likes to womanize in a way he could have been a character from a Marquez novel. This is an insight into a marriage falling apart bit by bit and looking at how and why?

That night , after they’re all showered and fed, Lucia logs onto Skype and calls Pablo so the kids can say hello. It’s hard to get full sentences put of the children, but they tell him, as best they can about the seaweed, the brunch, their bodies burried in the sand, Then they started yawning and Lucia sends them off to their twin beds, in the room Cindy had decorated with iold stuffed toys she found in the apartment, left over from a previous life.

“They’re shattered” she say. She is sitting at the table. The sounds of the waves drifts through the open balcony door. Pabli is wearing the same dressing gown he had on when she left. She wonders if he even showered

HEart breaking in place I remember my parent divorce diffferent circumstances but the loss of time over the years.

This is an interesting look at how the immigrant life can strain but also changed people over time what has happened is they have moved in two ways Lucia although they live in a sort of Latin American bubble with there friends and family she has settled and maybe it seems never felt settled in her younger life whereas Pablo writing about his home maybe has more of a Columbian heart than a holiday heart as he has left but still lives there in his heart he drinks to much and cheats frequently as his marriage falls apart this is told with an honest eye on events. Has he a real heart problem or is it just the bitter dregs of a marriage? WE see they should be apart but it is the time and the twins that kept them going as an observer those cracks seem so much wider than they would in the bubble of a marriage.  Have you read this book what did you think of it?