Tag: lolli editons

Thread ripper by Amalie Smith

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Thread Ripper by Amalie Smith

Danish fiction

Original title – Thread ripper

Translator – Jennifer Russell

Source – personal copy

The last couple of years there has been books from the publisher Lolli editions on the Booker international longlist so I decided rather than wait I would get their latest and this is it. By Danish writer Amalie Smith, she is a graduate of the danish academy of creative writing. and has got a three-year grant to write. This is her second novel to be published in English. I have really enjoyed all the books in the last few years I have read from Denmark they always seem to take a fresh angle on writing styles. So when I read up on this apart from its eye-catching cover with a small picture of Ada Lovelace (someone who does feature in the book) it has a lot of narrative threads to the book. So will it be their book for Next year’s International Booker?

PART 1
THE WAVERING PENELOPE
While Odysseus is away on his long journey, Penelope weaves. Her loom, I imagine, stands by the window. On the road, outside stand her 108 suitors. Penelope leans out. ‘Suitors,’ she says, ‘let us make an agreement. I am weaving a burial shroud for my father-in-law, Laertes. Not until I have finished this shroud will I remarry.

The suitors accept and retreat from her window. Penelope continues her work at the loom. During the day, she stands by the window – weaving as agreed but at night she returns and unravels the days work.

The opening and we see Penelope waiting for her husband’s return and holding off suitors by needlework.

The book has a number of threads the main storyline follows a woman in the present that is working on a big commission to weave a tapestry. Then the narrative then rips apart as we get various threads of thought and as we go from Penelope wife of Odysseus as she is working on her tapestry waiting for the return of Odysseus we are never told what she was working on her loom. it also looks at computers using Ada Lovelace the mother of computing programming as a sort of thread to tie it to. Threads like the moth that originated the term Computer bug which in the late forties was an actual bug, not a programming bug like now but an actual moth. The term had been used earlier but this was the use that came to be used in modern-day stems. Then it threads around invasive plant species like a Japanese bamboo All these treads like the main character working her complex tapestry weave into a work that is unique work.

I select a combination of wool, silk and acrylic fibres in ten colours and, by programming a variety of
satin weaves on the loom, the colours are mixed to create 42 different shades that appear in a gradient at the bottom of each woven swatch. The fibres are dyed using plants and chemicals I’m not familiar with. We continuously adjust the colour scale, either by switching out the fibres or altering the weaves on the computer.

Neural networks see with the eyes of the paranoiac: there are faces concealed in flowers and flowers in faces. Everything is a sign. Space and scale collapse.
Details come flooding in the nuances, in the gradual
transitions.

The loom’s algorithms, on the other hand, are never in doubt: the weft goes either over or under the
warp, never through. How to transfer the images generated by the neural network to the loom?

In the present the complex nature of her commission is shown here.

As I have come to expect this is a complex and compelling work from Lolli edition the books that have made the booker prize the last couple of years have been the ones on the list that have challenged me most as a reader and this is a perfect example it hard not to compare it the tapestry that forms the main character in a way in the book as the threads from programming a complex tapestry in the present to Penelope working and weaving a. shroud as suitors await as she waited Odysseus return. Then the thread around computers Lovelace a female history of computing I love this as I knew about Lovelace but some of the other historic events like the origin of the term Computer bug I wasn’t aware of how the term had come about. This is a fragmented work that weaves a line through tapestry and computing the automation of weaving and how women have been involved over time. I hope this makes next year’s booker as it is a unique work one I won’t forget quickly and will be rereading as it grabbed me so much the first time around. Have you a favourite book from Lolli edtions? Have you a favourite book from Denmark?

Winston’s score – +A is an unusual book mixing the past and present and history.

After the sun by Jonas Eika

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After the Sun by Jonas Eika

Danish fiction

Original title – Efter Solen

Translator – Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg

Source – personal copy

Every time the booker or old IFFP list comes out there is always open or two books on the list that have just passed me by I especially this last couple of years don’t keep my ear as close to the ground as I once did. So this was one I wasn’t aware of which was the same for the title last year from Lolli editions it seems like a publisher I should maybe keep a closer eye on. This is the first book by Jonas Eika to be translated and is his second book this won the Nordic council Literature prize as Paul on our shadow jury point out this is a prize that has former winners such as Dag Solstad, Son, Kim Line and one of the other Longest writers Jon Fosse. So  for me it must have something about it so I picked it up last week and read the first story but just didn’t connect so I decided yesterday to just sit and read it cover to cover it is under two hundred pages and is a collection of five stories but two are the same story at different angles.

He was sickly pale in the way that people tend to be in pictures from the nineties. “This is me at KFC when the first one opened in Denmark.. Me at the first Burger King, did you know they proposed a whopper-big Mac mash up, in the name of world peace?.. Here I am at subway.. dominoes..The bagel company when they opened their first shop on Gothersgade in 94 I sear, tasting these things for the first time was completely…How should I say unique. Like I was tasting them and only them.I always take pictures for the first time

This description of various fast food and the whhoper Mac mash up made me smile.

I think the reason I didn’t connect with it initially is  the style of his writing which is fast and jarring at times and the first story Alvin our narrator arrive back to fix the bank software as that is his job this is where his path is halted as he arrives the servers he is due to work on and the bank its self has collapsed the story follows the aftermath of this but then like most of the stories in the collection go here and there. The one story that really caught me is the middle story in the collection Rachel Nevada which to me had one of the greatest change of plot in a short story I have ever read and the story follows an elderly couple who had lost both there daughters and then decided the only way for them to cope with this is to sell up and hit the road and this is how they end up at Rachel Nevada this leads to the Husband in the story getting drawn to an object in the desert that seems to be calling out leading to Antonio want to find out more about it.This small town is just near Area 51 the heart of what is UFO country even down to the A’le inn the local pub. But then there is a great plot change and a minor character that had already appeared just in passing we get a bio of her career as a singer songwriter I found myself trying to find if this was an actual singer as the bi was so real. Other stories deal with beach boys and rich customers on the seats.

Antonio awoke almost choking on his own breathing. The pain burned sour in his throat. coughing made the plastic tube writhe in the wound. He took it out of his mouth, leaned his head back and opened the passageway. Then he got back up on his legs and shock the images out of his head, images of jackrabbits with long erect ears and black spotted coats.Hundreds of jackrabbits hopping across the steppes, dry lakes and mountainsides, the jackrabbit being a kind of Totem anti animal in Karen Ruthio’s universe.

Antonio in the desert sees images and also links to the latter part of the story Rachel Nevada.

There is a lot of talk of the Maximalist novel well I think what we have hear is the maximalist short story what Jonas has done is pack lots of ideas they just fall of the page as we see a mind that drifts here and there in the stories hence they seem at times chaotic but isn’t modern life chaotic at times. In an interview I saw with him and his translator he talk about writing just after his nights and just having to get the words out but also means it was a hard book to translated as it has a a feel of being here and there but that is how it was written I was reminded of Burroughs and the effect was like the first time I read Burroughs I remember just eating up Naked lunch then his two trilogies which used the cut up technique this has a feel of that as I said it had a feel of his work also Kerouac that energy you get from On the road which I am just reading at the moment as well.As I said this is the opposite of a the likes of the craved down Raymond craver this is like as he said in the interview the Ursula le Guin essay about writing sci as being like a carrier bag and that is what this is a bit of this and that all stuck together it a fusion of ideas a story that could be a dozen novels in one. This is one of those gems from the longest that I wouldn’t discovered it maybe is chaotic and disorienting but it is also brilliant vivid captures the zeitgeist of the moment and a fresh view of the world.Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – +A one to watch so much energy in these stories maybe the first collection of Maximalist short story collection.

The Employees By Olga Ravn

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The Employees A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn

Danish fiction

Original title – De ansatte

Translator – Martin Aitken

Source – personal copy

I start my journey through this year’s Booker longlist with a publisher I haven’t read a book from before and the one book from the list that had passed me by.  Olga Ravn has been a critic, translator, and editor in her time her first novel appeared in 2015 this was her second novel and she has since published a third novel. Her last book title My work in English won the Politiken literature prize. This was the book that struck me as most unusual as it is a sci-fi novel that takes the form of a series of statements from the crew of a ship that is on a trip from Earth to a new planet called New discovery. There has been an investigation asked for by the committee.

Statement 014

The first fragrance in the room is a delicate one, its right there, as soon as you walk in: citrus fruit, or the stone of a peach. Sitting at the table in front of me now, do you think of me as an offfender? I like ti be in the room. Ifind it very erotic. The susopended obeject I can feel sex between my lips. I become moist, regardless of whether I’ve got anthing there or not, The hunters on my team have a name for this object we call it the reverse Strap-on, That may be crude, but I’ve already said I don’t necessarily share your way of seeing things here. Maybe that’s why you think of me as an offender. Half Human. flesh and technology. too living

One of the earlier statments in the book

The crew of the ship the six thousand is a mix of Humans and Humanoids as they take the ship from earth on a voyage to the new planet called New Discovery. But most wonder what the strange objects that are in the ship. They also have seemed the lines between Human and Humanoid seem blurred as the crew ask if they are human if their memories are real or they have been given them. They talk about their work to start with things like cleaning the rooms how hard this can be this made me laugh at two rooms being hard for them. Then the is mention of helmets and how when they put them on they just fit in with the others around them. This is a search for both the Human crew and Humanoid crew to what makes them although there is a biological difference there is also the question of is the longing they feel there all implant in them. The point of the statements is to find out the feeling in the crew but also to find the humanoids and in the end to get rid of one of them to help the ship complete the voyage who will go! The book, later on, takes a dark turn. What will the Committee decide to do?

Statement 054

After I lost my add-on un the accident, I’ve started seeing it everywhere, it’s like it’s stalking me. It pulls at my clothing and sometimes I fell I’ve got to pick it up, cuddle and kiss it. other times, when it appears there between the benches, half digital animal, half child hologram, like the ones allocated to som of the crew members who’ve lost their biolgical childreb, I scream with fright and yell at it and  maybe I jump to my feet as well and give the add-on a slap in the face to make it go away. No one else can see it except me. I’d like to accept your offer of medication

the lines of who is who blur as the book goes on.

This book has echoes of a lot of things I have either read or seen over the years the first and nearest is Blade runner the questions at times remind me of the scenes where Deckard as he questions the androids and the lack of emotions shows. But he is told later that Rachel who thinks she is the niece of the factory owner is an android this is similar to the book where they question have been given memories to make me feel human. Of course, a huge ship that has been out of control from the crew is also like the classic Universe by Robert Heinlein which has a huge ship that has become divided over centuries as the crew has mutated leading to a bizarre history. This is a future where the line between man and machine blur and even crossover at points as those on the six-thousand forget who they are. This is a patchwork of voices we never hear any names just their ranks and also numbers occasionally and jobs done. If you threw in Blade Runner the office and had it written by Franz Kafka this would be the result. An interesting and different start to this year’s Booker longlist.

Winston’s score – -A