Tag: Machlehose press

The Fire by Daniela Krien

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The Fire by Daniela Krien

German fiction

Orignal title – Der Brand

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – Library book

Do you have any must-read writers? These are ones you have read before and loved, and you must get to their next book when it comes out. Daniela Krien is one of those writers. This is her third book to be translated into English. I have reviewed and loved the other two. She is very good at relationships and personal interplay. She has been a full-time writer since 2010 and has four books out. Her latest has not long been published in Germany. There is an interview with her and her translator, Jamie Bulloch. Where Daniela talks about how she came up with the idea behind the book but needed a way into writing the book, and when her own holiday cottage burnt down, it gave her a way to talk about the couple in the book and how their marriage is at the point of the book this is a couple dealing with the past a couple with as they say an empty nest,

They would have been leaving in three days. They’ll never be able to find something similar at such short notice, not this yeat, not in the circumstances. Without much expectation she enters her requests on a holiday apartment website.

No matches. She tries again on another site – with the same result.

Rahel goes to the website with the Alpine cabin. She clicks from picture to picture, from the geraniums in the window boxes to the small veranda with a view of the mountain range opposite, and back to the house, this time from a different angle. Then the stone basin by the well and the colourful wildflower meadow, and all of a sudden she can picture the blazing fire on the mountain. She sees animals fleeing, a column of smoke rising into a night sky studded with stars, and in the middle of it all Peter and herself, as if on a funeral pyre

The cottage is gone whwere now for them, the farm.

So when their Alpine cottage is burnt down in a fire at the last minute before they are due to go away. Rahel and Peter have to find another destination and go to a farm where, as a kid, Rahel spent many summers. She is a psychotherapist, and Peter, a professor, is one of those men struggling to cope with the modern world. This is a marriage that requires TLC. Grown daughters cause them problems when they visit them. Then, something Peter has said in his job has made him be seen as a transphobic. He is a man caught in the past. This is about when you lose touch with the youth, your wife, and your kids. It is a book about a man who is lost in time and in the West as they are both children of the East. This is the book’s point: what happens when your values are outdated and your children are Western? Your job is now Western.

He chose Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. At a castle people are celebrating a wedding that ends in a drama, while an errant planet passes threateningly close to the earth. When it speeds on its way, the danger seems to have been dispelled, but then it turns, heading straight for the earth. The collision cannot be prevented, and only the depressive Justine – the bride – is serene about the impending end of the world. The film concludes with the planet Melancholia hitting the earth, destroying it. Peter kept staring at the screen for minutes afterwards. The credits were finished by the time he snapped out of his torpor.

Peter reaction to this is maybe more than it seems mabye his world is being destroyed!!

I love subtle books. This is one of those books about a couple at that age when the world has changed just enough to make you seem out of time, even more so when you grow up in the old East German, and the world you live in now is like Wtrst germany values attitudes have changed. Peter is a typical male of his age if he was here he’d be a fan of Rowling and Farage I could see buying a daily mail and moaning about the world he lives in. Yes, this is a universal story of empty nest cou,le but what happens when the gap is between you and, like Rahel, she wants to light the spark, but Peter is maybe too far gone to get a spark from. This would make a great film. The tension between the couple would be perfect. The marriage in Children’s Act Falling Apart is a perfect example of two great actors. This is a tremendous two-handed film. A younger version of on golden pond in a way a couple trying to escape and find a new path as memories and the future collide. Can you think of any other books dealing with Empty nests and a marriage falling apart and how some men are just stuck in the past.

Winston’s score: A 3 down from Krien. I can’t wait for book number four. She is a must-read writer for me.

 

And the stones cry out by Clara Dupont-Monod

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And the stones cry out by Clara Dupont-Monod

French fiction

Original title – s’adapter

Translator – Ben Faccini

Source – review copy

I love it when you are sent a book from a writer you have reviewed before, and the book you have been sent is completely different from the one you had reviewed. This is the case with this book from the French writer Clara Dupont-Monod. Her previous book I had also reviewed from Maclehose Press, was a historic novel that was about the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Here this is a book set in the present. But actually, some details are sparse. It is about three siblings dealing with a disabled brother. This has a little connection to the writer’s own life. She grew up with a disabled brother. She had already been up for some of the top prizes in France, but this won two, the Prix Femina and GoncourtDes Lyceensa; it became a bestseller in France.

Three months went by before anyone noticed the boy didn’t babble. He remained silent most of the time, apart from the odd cry. Sometimes a smile appeared, or a frown, or a sigh after he finished a bottle of milk.
Occasionally, he got startled when a door slammed. That was it: a few cries and smiles, a frown, the odd sigh or a twitch. Nothing else. He didn’t wriggle. He stayed calm.
He was “inert”, his parents thought without admitting it out loud. The baby showed no interest in faces, in dangling mobiles or rattles. Above all, his shadowy eyes didn’t settle on anything. They seemed to rove from side to side, while his pupils reeled and turned, as if following the dance of an invisible insect, latching onto nothing in particular. The boy couldn’t see the bridge, the two houses, or the courtyard separated from the road by an old wall of reddish stones.

The brother and the house they all live in with the stones that are refered to in the title

The book is about a disabled child and his siblings. The book is told from three points of view of the brother and sister who are around when the brother is alive. There is a very detached nature book. The children are just older brothers and sisters. There are just thoughts of connection, like the older brother getting his face next to his brother and just being there with the child, described as having large black eyes that drift in and out of focus. A plump child with translucent skin and blue vein legs. It made me think of one young man I looked after many years ago who was in a wheelchair but had a child-like appearance. The sister she is distant I really felt her part having spent years working with people with Learning disablities I had seen many sisters and relatives like the sister it is hard having a brother with a disability you can resent the time they suck up from your parents and this is caught well here. Then there is the brother that comes after the disabled brother has passed the child to fill the void, but also you are touched when they said they checked to see everything was okay when he was born, but he has his own issues living in the shadow of what had come before. I loved how she took emotion and names and made the time fluid. It made it feel universal and connect with everyone who grows up with a disabled sibling.

SHE RESENTED THE BOY FROM THE MOMENT HE WAS born. Or rather from the moment her mother waved an orange in front of his eyes and realised he couldn’t see.
The sister’s bedroom window looked straight out on to the courtyard. So she’d seen the bright stain of the fruit’s colour, her mother crouched down, and heard the faintness of her tender, sing-song voice before it fell silent. She remembered the raging chorus of the cicadas, the tumbling roar of the river, the guffawing of the trees shaken by the wind. Yet nothing remained of that summer sound. There was only

The sisters story and how she feels about her brother .

Now I can see why this caught the mood in France. They love a piece of autofiction. But is does capture so well the dynamics of growing up with a disabled brother . The way many siblings go from the devoted sibling to the older brother, he has a wonderfully symbiotic relationship. He knows what every noise and twitch means. I remember a mother that used bring her son for repite that was like this that new her non verbal son so well. Then we have the sister that feels as if she is second best. I have seen this and have not seen it. The sibling mentions that she is never there. The relation, you know, feels like this. After thirty years of supporting various patients and families, these are all observations I have seen. Then, the replacement brother is well written. It captures how maybe the curious incident did capture the autistic view of the world well. It seemed a view at the time. This captures theĀ  inner working of a family with a disabled son when he is there, the void that is left when they die and how it can touch and affect each sibling. This is a gem of a novel that should be better known. Have you read a writer who can write such different books as a historical novel and a heartfelt story of a disabled brother?

Winstons score – A gem of a novella

 

A perfect day to be alone by Nanae Aoyama

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A Perfect day to be Alone by Nanae Aoyama

Japanese fiction

Original title – Hitori biyori (ć²ćØć‚Šę—„å’Œ,

translator – Jesse Kirkwood

Source – Review copy

I take a side step from Booker International with today’s post. I look at a book from Jpan as one of the big missing things from this year’s list was the lack of a Japanese novel. Here we have a book from 2007 from one of the rising stars of Japan. Well, as this is the first Adult novel from this writer to be translated into English, it also won the Akutagawa prize when it came out in 2007. The writer has cited Francoise Sagan and Kazuo Ishiguro as influences on her writing. This book sees a young woman sent to live with a relative as she has just turned 20, and her mother has had to take a job in China, leaving Chizu living with the 71-year-old Ginko and the two cats that live in the ramshackle Tokyo home she has been sent to live at.

When I got back to the house, Ginko was sitting under the kotatsu blanket, doing some embroidery. The blanket’s unusual thickness was explained by the fact that it was actually a series of different blankets: a heavily pilled beige one followed by a brown one, and on top of that a red feather quilt.

“I’m back.”

“Oh, hello again, replied Ginko, pushing the reading glasses that had slipped down her nose into place. Trying to block out the memory of my pathetic exchange with Yohei, I flashed her a good-natured smile as I slipped my jacket onto a hanger.

“Fancy some yokan?”

“Oh, yes please.”

 

The two are in different worlds in a way

The book I read at the same time I saw Perfect Days, the recent Wim Wenders film, not that they have a lot in common, but the main character’s apartment in the film maybe felt like the sort of area the Chizu is sent to live. The book follows the young woman over four seasons as she takes lots of pointless jobs and she collects items from people, but at the heart of the book is a lonely woman making her way through a busy city living with an elderly relative and her cat pictures and her embroidery is a world away from where the young girl wants to be as we see her glimpse others lives, but her own life is lonely and that sort of weightlessness ine feels at that age not knowing where life will go but want it to go somewhere she does the mindless jobs but hasn’t found her path going home to a flat that rumbles as the trains go by. A female coming of age in a modern city.

Today’s event started at seven in the evening. That meant I had to be at the company’s office in Chofu by half five, where I’d get changed, do my makeup, attend a briefing, and then go and get the banquet hall ready.

I hadn’t told Ginko I worked as a hostess. I figured she wouldn’t even understand the concept, so I’d just told her I was washing dishes at a banquet hall. If I’d really talked her through everything the job entailed, shed probably conclude it was some sleazy operation. I didn’t want to have to defend my choices, and in any case I was planning on moving out as soon as I had some cash saved up.

In the meantime, I just wanted to enjoy myself and avoid rocking the boat too much.

Then she takes a job that maybe risky

This is the flip side to a story like Please Look After Mother of Ozu’s Tokyo story, about a younger person lost in the city. There is often talk about loneliness in this modern age with everyone so absorbed in ther smartphones and the world seemingly quicker than it was a few decades ago. What she has captured is the world just as this is happening, the first ripple of what is ahead it is 2007 so smartphones are just taking oiff this is the year iPhone appeared. We have a hint of a case for many a young woman or man in any modern city: loneliness. In fact, the title in Japanese is being alone. I mentioned the film Perfect Days. This is like the niece in that film, a girl lost in her world. Maybe we have a sharp comic, at times, looking at the world. Some great clashes iof generations between Ginko and Chizu. But as the year goes on, we see the character grow till, in the end,, we see a different girl, well a young woman really. I am reviewing this early as it is one of those books that I feel will be popular when it comes out. Have you a favourite tale of loneliness ?

Winstons score – A tokyo story for a modern age a girl lost in the city and lost in herself most of the time.

The Silver Bone BY Andrey Kurkov

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The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov

Ukrainian fiction

Original title – Samson I Nadezhda

Translator – Boris Dralyuk

Source – Review copy

I was lucky that when the longest for this year International Booker was released I had already had two of the books sent to me in proof form from the publishers which meant I could start that evening and this was one I was in two minds to read when I got sent it . I do like the occasional crime novel and I have liked a lot of Andrey Kurkov earlier books. It is always interesting to see a writer try a book in a different Genre. His books are often political satires in Nature about the absurd nature of life sometimes. The penguin trilogy I loved but I haven’t read as many of his recent books. I especially must get to his war diaries which were partly released in the Guardian at the time he was writing them. Anyway, this book was written in 2020 a full two years before Russia invaded Ukraine. But as it deals with the red Army taking of Kyiv in 1919 it is hard not to draw parallels with the current war and tensions. What we have here is the first of a trilogy around Samso Kolechko’s life. He is drawn to the police in this book.

The doctor, smooth-shaven and grey, silently treated Samson’s wound, applied a gauze pad with ointment and bandaged his head.

Somewhat calmed by the noiseless flat, Samson looked at the doctor in quiet gratitude and unclenched his right fist.

“Can the ear … be saved?” he asked, barely audible.

“I couldn’t say.” The doctor shook his head sadly. “I’m an ophthalmologist. Who was it?”

“Don’t know.” The young man shrugged. “Cossacks.”

“Red anarchy,” Vatrukhin replied, heaving a heavy sigh. Then he went over to the table, rummaged in the top drawer, took out a powder box and brought it back to his patient.

Samson removed the lid. The box was empty. The doctor tore off a piece of cotton wool and lined its bottom. The young man lowered his ear into the box, closed it and stuck it into the patch pocket of his tunic.

His ear in the sweet tin at the start of the book.

So the book opens with Samson losing his father to a Cossack Sabre as both Red and White armies fight over Kyiv. In the same attack, Samson himself loses his own ear which he keeps in an old sweet tin. But then discovers that he can hear through this served ear (this is a nod to the absurd and surreal nature of his earlier books).So when their flat os taken over by two Red Army soldiers he is able to hear all that they are talking about at this point. He decides to be a policeman and is drawn into a crime involving the said silver bone of the title a full-size silver copy of a leg bone draws him into murders and intrudes. But for me, this is where I had a little problem as it felt like the book ended with me as a reader wanting a little more and this is because it is the first of a trilogy.

The thought of a new regime made Samson chuckle bitterly. When there was one regime, albeit an old one, life seemed unsightly, comprehensible and routine. That regime was also routinely disparaged, although, even after the outbreak of the World War, the difficulties people experienced under its rule were, in comparison with what was to come, not so much difficulties as inconveniences.

Yet the old royal regime collapsed, and in its wake came many petty furious ones, replacing one another with much shooting and hatred. It was only during the time of the German garrison and the invisible Hetman of Ukraine, Pavlo Skoropadskyi, that life seemed to grow relatively safe and quiet again, but this lull ended with the terrible warehouse explosions and fires in the Zvirynets district that left hundreds of Kyivans dead and thousands crippled and homeless.

This insight tickled me about the change of regimes

As I said I like the setting and some of the plot to this book I felt it was a decent description of the chaos of both red and white armies and the Ukrainians themselves this is all a nod to the events that followed shortly after this book where again Russia tried to take over Kyiv. Samson is a character I would read more from there is a few of his absurd pasts that crop up in this crime novel. The worst point for me was the actuqal crime at the centre of the book just seemed to end a little to quickly and there was more I WANTED FROM Samson but maybe that was the point of leaving you hanging as a reader. It is hard to weigh it up as a crime novel as I read so few of them. But as a historic work, he seemed to capture the Kyiv of the time. I feel this is a trend of having a book from Ukraine on the longlist. To be honest iI haven’t read many other novels from Ukraine in the last year to say if this was the best choice but it is worth having a book from Ukraine on the longlist to remind us all of what is going on as hot shows history has a habit of repeating itself. Have you read this book or any other interesting books from Ukraine?

Winston score- B will look forward to parts two and three to get the full picture pop this as a series of novels.

Winstonsdad annual Guesses at the BOOKER INTERNATIONAL LONGLIST 2024 edition

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Its that time of year when all us bloggers that love books in translation look into our Crystal ball well in my case what I have read in the whole 9 of the 12 books I have picked will be ones I have read Ā and 3 are books that I hope to read.

I start with The end of August by Yu Muri the tales of a century of Japanese Korean history told through a pair of marathon runners grandfather and granddaughter in Morgan Giles stunning Tranlstion. This is one of the two I really hope make the longlist.

Star 111 by Lutz Seiler Translator Tess Lewis is the other book I have longed to see on the longlist. It is set during the Berlin War and partly based on the writer’s own life at the time and also his parents’ life at the time, as he stayed in the East and they headed west.

Next up are two choices from Machlehose Press. First is Vengance is Mine by Marie NDiaye. is bout a middle-aged lawyer who is hired by someone she used to know to try a case, and as she does, the past becomes clearer. Translated by Jordan Stump Then we have Wound by Oksana Vasyakina. It is the tale of a daughter taking her mother’s ashes back to her mother’s village in Siberia. As she is doing so, she looks back on her life. It is one of the first openly lesbian novels in Russian. Translated by Eliner Alter

Next and Epic prose novel from Sweden Ēdnan by Linnea Axelsson Translator Saskia Vogel is the tale of two Sami Famlies through the 20th century shows how there world has changed. Also be a great to see and indigenous writer on the longlist.It has the feel of a epic told in verse could be told around the campfire.

Off to Italy its been a while since an Italian book has been on the longlist and I loved this novelisation of a true life event The city of the Living by Nicola Lagioia translatror Ann Goldstein pulled apart the events that lead to the death of Luca Varni was killed by two men similar age to him in a planned murder that looks at the darker side of masculinity and being male in Modern Italy.

I love to support small presses, and one of my favourites in the last couple of years is Three Times Rebel Press. They have been bringing out thought-provoking books for the last couple of years. The Dear Ones by Berta Davila. This is a powerful little novel about motherhood and struggling with motherhood when you have a child but then have an abortion. Translated by Jacob Rogers

The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr translator Lara Vergnaud this is part road novel part look at being an African writer in France also use a real novel that was accused of plagrism and has also just come out as a starting point when a writer reads the imagined novel that was withdrawn and goes on the hunt for the writer. I hope this makes the longlist ine I really connected with as a reader.

About uncle by Rebecca GislerĀ  Translator Jordan Stump. This has been my favourite Peirene for a long while and follows a family looking after an odd war veteran and his odd habits about family and what happens when one member need all the other to look after him.

Now my three I haven’t read with a quick explanation why

The annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild by Mathias Enard translator Frank Wynne

Just about to start this hard say why I haven’t got to it as it is translated by one of my favourite translators Frank Wynne and Enard ois a writer I love to read.

Anomaly by Andrej Niokladis Translator Will Firth Ā Lets hope this is out from Peirene a new publisher for his works he is a writer I have long championed and have met he has also done a piece for this blog. He is one of the best writers from Central Europe at the moment

Lasstly is a Nobel winner The children of the dead by Elfriede Jelinek Translator Gitta Honegger is meant to be her greatest book I have read a couple by her so am looking forward to this one.

Nothing Belongs to You by Nathacha Appanah

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Nothing belongs to you by Nathacha Appanah

Mauritian fiction

Original title – Rien ne t’appartient

Translator Jeffrey Zuckerman

Source – Review copy

It took years between her first book I read and her the last Brother, which I reviewed on this blog. The Last Brother 13 years ago, I’ve read another of the two books that have come out since by her,, but this is her latest and is with a new translator. Jeffrey Zuckerman has taken over for this book, the last but one novel to come out in French. Like her other books, she is very good at mixing childhood with the present. Also, a theme I have seen in the other novels I have read from Mauritius is a class divide, and the main character in this book is someone who has seen both sides of the divide as a kid and then as an adult. We meet Tara in the present but see how her life has twists and turns.

My heart aches again. I should start by clearing the sofa, arranging the cushions, tossing a tartan rug over it, that’ll be the first thing Eli sees, sentimental man that he is, inclined to believe that belongings gain a mysterious, almost human, aura in how they enter our possession, over the years or in connection to some particular moment. He’s attached to things, a dried leaf, a pebble, an old toy, a yellowing book, a faded T-shirt, a broken wooden necklace that belonged to his mother, this sofa. It was on this sofa that his father died three months ago, and I can still smell it there, his scent, trapped in the cushions fibres. It’s not really the scent he had when he was alive but something that remains of him, that tugs at my heart, that brings me back to his absence and everything that’s fallen apart since his death. Notes of vetiver, a touch of lemon, but also a trace of something powdery, slightly rancid.

Her flat is in disarray

The book follows our Narrator, Tara. She is at a low point in her life. Her husband Emmanuel has died, and her world has fallen apart. Her Parisian Is she going mad? Is she losing it? Her kids are worried about her. She is raising a small boy, and this, as she sees him around the house and area, unlocks the past for her. She had a different name. She was called Vijaya and had a privileged childhood with her parents. They were outspoken, and when disaster struck them, she left the young girl in an orphanage and faced a different future than the one she was expecting. The young girl became the woman Tara, and the past is a way for her to change the present. Like most of her books, she deals with death, class, and also memories so well. Also, the dark past of her country shadowed the life of these two characters, who are the same girl/woman. The lost dream of her youth when her parents and now the loss of her husband bring back the past and her struggle after her parent’s death.

When we went into the village, my father didn’t let go of my hand. All eyes followed us, the rich atheists from the huge house, the girl who danced but didn’t go to school, the man who went on the radio and even IV to say that all this coun try’s inhabitants were the same, that every soul should have the freedom to pray to the god he wanted to or not to believe in just one god, that the leaders were idiots, the man who spoke several languages in the same sentence, the husband of the sorceress. Those glares became a swell behind our back.

As the years went by and the swell grew, I had the feeling that it was hissing at us, berating us. At those moments I couldn’t get back to the house soon enough to find my mother, Aya, the school in the alcove, the evenings listening to music and playing cards. I started wishing I wouldn’t grow up, wouldn’t understand, would stay as I was: Vijaya in the grown-ups shadow.

Remembering Ā her parents and when she wasn’t called Tara but Vijaya a rich girl.

I love her writing it always uses childhood and memories so well. Also, the past is another theme in her books and also her homeland and its highs and lows, the slums, and the high-class world that lives alongside one another.It is one woman’s painful life at the two lowest points in it and how the heart can be broken and rebuilt but at what cost. Loss of parents then the loss of her opartner but the small boy makes he rember how she got past the pain in the past . But also she has held bqack all the sorrow over time and that is shown at the start of the book. Where we see a woman faling apart after the loss of Emmanuel she has stop caring and her flat is in total disarry as her son tries in vain to help her out f the maze of grief it takes a boy and memories to see her change. Like her other novels she seems to pack a lot into a small book this is under two hundred [ages and is one of those books that feels like an epic novel after you have read it.

Winstons score -A One of the best french language writers around.

 

 

 

Vengeance is mine by Marie Ndiaye

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Vengeance is mine by Marie Ndiaye

French Fiction

Original title –La vengeance mā€™appartient

Translator – Jordan Stump

Source – review copies

No wonder I never get sent books. I fall behind in my review copies all the time I am just a butterfly read floating here and there, but I need to use my social media more for new books and review them quicker anyway, enough about me. But this is one I should get to soon I have read reviews of two other books from the Prix Goncourt winner Marie Ndiaye and have loved them. She is a writer I think is just getting better she has won the Goncourt longlist for the International Booker and also the International Dublin Literary Award. This was her last novel to be published in French. She is very good at using various threads of stories in her books, and this is the same with this book, all based around the case of a woman accused of killing her three children.

“Sharon, you should have gone home, they’ve shut down the tram for the night.”

Me Susane turned off the riotous lights beaming down from the ceiling.

Sharon, you don’t have to switch on every light in the apartment, MĀ° Susane didn’t say either, because that mark of respect, that show of thoughtfulness you think you have to offer your employer when she comes home late and tired by dazzlingly illuminating her entrance, none of that suits my spirit of frugality, economy and temperance in every act of daily life, no, Sharon, really, switch on only the lights you can’t do without for your work, MĀ° Susane would never, absolutely never, tell her.

Sharon her strange and wonderful Housekeeper

As with her other books, Ndiaye is a weaver of subplots and side stories in this book, as the main driving force in the book is Gillers Principaux, a husband trying to find a lawyer for his wife Marlyne, who is accused of killing their three sons. He arrives at the offices of Maitre Susane small town law practice. She feels she knows this man, and that is one of the threads through the book, a long-hidden event in her youth that involves this man. The other is her trying to find out what happened with Marlyne, who on the surface, is seemingly a normal housewife living a perfect life. But is that what made her break. Then we have another story of Susane’s housekeeper Sharon and her husband who are they? Why is some of the paperwork that Susane needs seemingly lost? how will she react when she hears her employer is defending this woman accused of killing her sons. What did the couple say about what they did after the children were found dead/ Will Susane remember those events many years ago?

Because Gilles Principaux seemed not so much devastated by the death of his children as bent on absolving Marlyne in the eyes of the world.

And why not? thought Me Susane.

And what did it mean to be “devastated”, what unambiguous conclusion was there to be drawn from Gilles Principaux’s dry eyes, his strange smiles before the cameras, his obvious pleasure in holding forth on the horror of it all?

According to what unassailable criteria, both moral and psychological, could one conclude, simply because he smiled so abundantly, that his children’s deaths did not affect him as deeply as they should?

Those unsavoury, vengeful sites had put their finger on one true thing, thought Me Susane: Gilles Principaux had an unusual reaction to the event that was supposed to have shattered his existence.

These lines made me think of the Parents Of Maddie and how there reactions where looked at so closely after she disappeared

I loved this I can see why others hate it as it is one of those books that is like many great French films where what is happening is never quite sure. I think of films like Le Boucher, where a murderer is slowly revealed or last year in Marianbad, where events from the past are forgotten. There is so. many levels and twists in this book. If you take the best physiological thrillers from Highsmith or Du Maurier, throw in some French noir, childhood secrets and then a housekeeper and family with their own secrets. I keep seeing this book in cinematic terms and maybe that is me imaging how it would make a great film with the flashbacks at youth side plots and the whole infanticide, which I have barely mentioned I experienced the feeling that this many years ago in another French novella Beside the sea saw a mother kill her children as well. This is a very French book it seems to me. Ndiaye takes us to dark places and looks at how memory works and how the past ripples into the present. Have you read her books? Have you ever read a book and thought that would just be a stunning film?

Winston’s score – A – One of the greatest living French writers does it again

The Living and the rest by JosƩ Eduardo Agualusa

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The living and the rest by JosƩ Eduardo Agualusa

Angolan fiction

Original title –Os Vivos e os Outros

Translator – Daniel Hahn

Source – Review copy

I decided as the last Czech book for Czech Lit Month was a piece of magic realism, it would be fun to have another very different piece of Magic realism from Angolan writer JosĆ© Eduardo Agualasa, a writer I have featured twice before on the blog and a writer I love to read he has such a rich imagination and this book sabout a group of writers that end up getting cut off on an island after a storm just appealed and as. The last book had an island in it. The two seemed good to review together. Agualasa has been on the Booker international list, so that was another reason I wanted to read this as he is a writer who could end up again on the list, and I am sure he must be near the top of some Nobel lists; it wouldn’t be a shock to me for him to win in the next decade.

-My character, Jude, is a brutally self-centred guy, narcis. sistic, machista, and misogynist.”
“You aren’t afraid readers will mix the two of you up?”
“You think I’m a jerk?”
Daniel laughs nervously.
“The narrator of this book has your name, he’s a writer.”
“I like exploring the possibility of being someone else, someone unlike me, while still being myself. I like confusing
readers, too.”
The conversation continues. Jude talks about the new wave of African writers, who are more concerned with being writers than with seeming African. He talks about cosmopolitanism, localism and identity. Finally Daniel asks the audience if they have any questions. One girl raises her hand.

I agree with new African writers changiong how we view lit from Africa

As I said, the book follows seven days after a cyclone hits an island on the eve of its first Literary festival and the group of writers that had arrived early are cut off, not knowing what has happened to the mainland and unable to contact the outside world this is the framing device but what follows isn’t so much as the survival story but how a group of writers let their imaginations go wild. Even though they all seem to be African writers that had got their early from Angola, Mozambique and Nigeria there is a feeling that you may know some of these writers they are well-known writers not quite painted enough you can say oh that is Okri or so on but yes you feel as thou they are writers you have read well I do and the in-jokes about how African lit is viewed in the rest of the world ( I often feel guilty of this I must try and separate out writing as every country has a style of its own etc etc you know I am planning in the last few months of this year to add a few more titles from Africa) anyway there is a sense of them knowing each other a sense of being in the circuit together at book fairs, festival etc. But as they days go on some of them see the lines between reality and dreams and the works blurring as they days go by Have they lived or are they in limbo what happens when a group of imaginative writers is cut off and have no sense of the outside world around them? well, you find out here

.Jude smiles, amused at her distress. He tells her he spent years wearing shoes with platform soles. He had them custom-made, at an old cobbler’s in Lagos, who managed very skilfully to disguise their height. Whenever conference organisers asked him if he preferred to speak standing up, at a lectern, or sitting down, he always went for the second option. He also preferred being photographed sitting down. It took him years to get over his complex.
“You’re really not as short as all that,” says Luzia. “I’m serious

This made me smile just as I thought of a famous actor very small that has shoes that make him taller.

This is the second book in recent years that has used a literary festival as a framing device for the story, but they go in different ways after that the other was Pola Olioixarac Mona. But this has more in common with a book like Lord of the flies except this is what happens when a bunch of writers with great imaginations are cut off and left to live without the everyday essential of internet phones contact with the outside world what happens when the mind drifts between the real and the uin=real between life and death what happened after the storm. This is a book that blurs those lines I was reminded of some of Antonio Lobo Antunes’s book The return of the Carvals that saw the orignal the great figures of Portugeese exploration reappear in Lisbon. But here we see the myths and legions of these writers growing over the day. An clever piece of magic realism that shows the power of the imaginagtion and how we can sometimes forget we are alive when there is. no one to tell you have survived something. Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – B soild book from a great writer I think it may have a chance of the booker longlist

Wound by Osaka Vasyakina

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Wound by Oksana Vasyakina

Russian FIction

Original title -Š Š°Š½Š°

Translator – Elina Alter

Source – Review copy

Well, on to the second book for this year’s Woman in Translation month, and we are with a debut novel in ENGLISH FROM THE Russian poetess and curator Osaka Vasyakina with one of the first Lesbian novels in Russian. The book won the NOS prize in Russia when it came out. Osakana lives in Moscow, where she teaches writing and feminist literature. This book is the first of three she has written about her family. This one follows the death of her mother. The other two books are about her father, that died of Aids and her aunt Rose. The book is formed of the journey she took with her mother’s ashes to the small working-class town she grew up Siberia.

The cousin didn’t know that I was a lesbian. But I wanted to say to him that he knew nothing about gay people. Why do you have this fixation on anal penetration? Why do you want to insert an automatic rifle lubed with lard into the German’s anus? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t bother. And after all, condoms don’t hurt anyone, rather they help save lives. While what’s a rifle for? A rifle exists to kill people.

It was stuffy from the heat and the stink of the little pine tree air freshener. What misery, I thought. And said nothing.

She kept her sexuality secret from ost of her family.

The book opens as Oskana’s mother is on her deathbed. We see her talking and interacting with the nursing staff as she nears the end of her battle with Breast cancer in a hospice. Then as she passes, she thinks about her own position, and at that moment, she is dealing with an accusation of sexual assault. This leads her to feel about her partners and the consent of those partners and her current situation. So over time, this happens as she lays her mother’s ashes in her home town in distant Siberia. So she gets her mother’s ashes as she heads on a mammoth train journey into her own past her mother’s past as the train mothers closer to her mothers home town we see a woman dealing with her mother’s death as grief-stricken but also how her mother dealt with her sexuality and how that affects her life. This shows how hard it is to be a lesbian under Putin’s regime. It also has a poet’s soul in it. The middle section, an ode to her mother, is a powerful piece of writing.

And also love. Though love is more complex than death.In death only one person is involved, but love is a space of cooperation. I tried to weld love and death together inside myself. I didn’t want vulgarity; I wanted life, a daily practice, labour. And then I wrote a poem. Love brought me pain, and death brought me pain. But love brought the pain of being, while death brought the pain of non-being. And that was where they met, through pain.

women young women are becoming sand
beautiful slim in nylon glitter are becoming sand
I’m reading you Inna Lisnyanskaya’s poems from her book
In the Suburbs of Sodom
and in one poem she compares her stomach her old worn-out stomach. Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  Ā  to waves of sands

She writes poetry around her mothers death on the train ride.

This is a powerful book from a strong female voice. In fact, this is maybe the perfect book for women in translation month. I works like this are what it is all about, those voices that should be heard worldwide. Oksana Vasyakina is a brave writer. She has written here the first openly lesbian novel written in Russian, although it is just one part of the story of her life and the life with her mother. But current events in her life, with the accusations and such, show how hard it is to be Homosexual in Russia. But most of all, this book mediates a mother-daughter relationship and the ghosts of that relationship now that her mother has passed. As she heads on the train, we see the lacework of her mind piece together the past and their relationship as we head to her mother’s cold and working-class history of the village her mother is from. The book I recalled Maria Stepnova’s book in memory of a Memory, another Russian book dealing with memories and death, the ghost we all have in our past and what happens when we open our minds and let those ghosts and memories free to walk on the page and her they have such heartfelt words. Have you read this book? What are your woman in translation plans?

Winston’s score – = A powerful book around the loss of a mother from the daughter’s perspective.

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Doudua Otoo

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Ada’s Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo

German fiction

Original title – Ada’s Raun

Translator – Jon Cho-Polizzi

Source – Review copy

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

Totope, March 1459

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

The book oopens with Ada losing another baby in Birth!

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

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

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

In victorian London Ada Lovelace and DIckens meet ?

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

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

Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig

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Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig

German Fiction

Original title –Die Linie zwischen Tag und Nacht

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – Review copy

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

533 A Book of Days by Cees Nooteboom

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533 A Book of Days by Cees Nooteboom

Dutch Non-Fiction

Original title – 533: een dagenboek

Translator – Laura Watkinson

Source – Personal copy

I featured an Interview with Cees many years ago on the blog. I haven’t had many interviews recently, and I love getting insight from a writer. This is the fifth book from Cees I will have reviewed. He is one of those great writers that can write across various styles of writing poetry, fiction, and travel writing, and this is something of a memoir of his life and those books he has consumed over the years and the writers he has known all and a love of literature that shines through this book. This is a book compiled over years of his summer vacations in Menorca. Another of the books I read by him was his lament every year when he had to move. This is him in the summer mulling over memories of his years of writing and the writers he has encountered. He is. writer that should have won the Nobel by now one of the great voices of his nation.

Literary politics (such a thing exists: hegemonies, influences, triumvirates, legacies) and death. Elias Canetti (“The Prophet Elias [Elijah] defeated the Angel of Death. My name is becoming increasingly uncanny to me.”) on Thomas Bernhard. He claims him for himself but is afraid he will have to surrender him to Beckett. “I elevate him to my student and of course he is that, in a much deeper sense than Iris Murdoch his former lover], who changes everything into pleasantness and light and has essentially become a clever and engaging entertainment writer. For that reason alone, she cannot be a real student of mine, because she is obsessed with sexuality. Bernhard, on the other hand, is, like me, obsessed with death. Recently, how-ever, he has been under the influence of a man who puts my own in the shade, namely Beckett. Bernhard’s hypochondria

I love his thoughts on Bernhard !!

The book comprises several Vignettes that see Cees looking back on his life or, over time, talking about the catus in his garden that all have names. So he recounts things like Canetti’s death and how Thomas Bernhard was obsessed with death . Then we see how a walk on the Island connects him to god as he did it. This is a book that collects his thoughts a lot about plant and how Yucca leaves looks like Daggers. Then we have pieces around the night sky. Thoughts around Finnegans wake ( a book that I have yet to tackle and always love people’s view of it ) He then has a section around Hungarian writers which mentions Count Banffy, who I have read the first part of his trilogy. Then Peter Esterhazy and his epic novel Celestial Harmonies, a book that has been unread on my own shelf for far too long. In a later piece, he mentions Miklos Szentkuthy, another writer who has been on my radar for too long. Witold Gombrowicz is a writer who has a lot to say about as well as so many of the writers that were and are around as he has been a writer. This is one of the significant figures of European literature writing every summer over his many years in his villa in Menorca.

 

As I write on, Gould, in 1981, plays sonata number 42 as an illustration of Szentkuthy’s proposition: the difference between that sonata and my cactus is the difference between the classical-rational structure of a “work” on the one hand, and biological forms (my cactus – as I am writing this, I see him before me as though I were looking into my garden in Spain) on the other. “My own writings for the time being,” says Miklos Szentkuthy, “belong to the cactus category: if I can have a role in literature it is the direct tangibility of biological lines and forms of instinct in my sentences. ‘Experimental novel’ was said about Prae in more than one place, by which one was supposed to understand an anachronistic relic of the old-fashioned mood of the roth century.” Prae, in spite of the huge reputation that the book has in Hungary, has been translated into few other languages, which prompts both suspicion and curiosity.

Prae is one of those books I must read at some point !!

I am a massive fan of Cees. I should read him more often, but he is a writer I want to have books left from, but in this book, he reminds me as a reader of those books still out there to discover and made me think of how underread I am in some areas of my reading. I love books like this, a glimpse into a great writer’s mind and workings and musing. He does mention writers’ diaries in passing; at times, this isn’t a diary but more a collection of moments and thoughts caught over time, a lifetime from those early days of his as a writer, his debut novel, which I have yet to read. I also love the talk of his planets and his garden as someone who isn’t a gardener but hopes to get some great plants in my new garden (well, when my rear lawn is laid ). This is hard to pigeonhole as it covers so many different subjects it just needs to be read !! Have ypu read any books by Cees ?

Winston’s score +A – I love a book that spurs me on as a reader to read more and discover more !!

What we leave behind by Stanislaw Łubieński

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What we leave behind by Stanislaw Łubieński

Polish Nature Writing

Original tile – Książka o śmieciach

Translator – Zosia Krasodomska-Jones

Source – review copy

As many of you know the last twelve months I have featured a lot more nature writing on the blog so when I was sent a book in translation. that was a nature book it was great to combine to the two genres I really love books in translation and Nature writing. Stanislaw has written a number of books. He contributes regularly to paper in Polish papers and magazines this is his first book to be translated into English. He won the NIKE reader prize for one of his earlier books. The birds they sing. It says on his bio he grew up watching birds with his Soviet binoculars (reminds me of the early days I used bird watch a lot with my grandad’s old military binoculars).

Let’s start with a clarification to avoid any misunderstandings: hunting ducks has no practical justification – it’s purely for sport. A display of dexterity, like shooting live clay pigeons.

But what have the ducks done to deserve to die? Pond owners sometimes complain that they eat fish food. They certainly do. According to studies from the 1980s, they eat between 2 and 7,5 per cent of distributed feed. That’s not very much.

Scientists say that the presence of many bird species at ponds brings advantages that outweigh the drawbacks. Ducks, coots, grebes and even herons prevent the surface water from becoming overgrown, they eat the larvae of predacious insects that feed on spawn and fry, and they clear sick or dead fish from the surfaces Why do we kill ducks, then? Simple: it’s tradition.

The question about the value of Duck hunting is there any these Days !!

The book has the subtle A birdwatcher’s dispatches from the taste catastrophe. The book is formed of eight chapters a number of which take waste he had found. As you know I love correlations to my own life as a reader the journey isn’t just that of escape but sometimes reminds inklings of one’s own world and experiences. The first chapter had a collection of shotgun cartridges just left in the woods he speaks about the growing anti-hunting movements around Europe the ducks in the pond. reminded me of seeing shells often in the area I walked around Northumberland when I lived there many years ago with my dog. What Stanislaw does is mix the waste we see and the world he observes it just shows you how near we are to losing it all at times. The third chapter mentioned Gannets which as I had this some been to North Berwick home to one of the biggest Gannet colonies. He talks about the discovery of huge bands of waste drifting in the oceans discovered by sailors I remember how a container of Rubber ducks scattered in the sea. It had shown how far rubbish lost in the oceans can drift. But the worrying thing he talks about is microplastics are now getting into our food chain and the effects of that are relatively unknown long term. A book that sets you thinking and being watchful about your own impact on the world around you.

It’s more than twenty years since the sailor Charles J. Moore discovered a huge rubbish dump floating in the ocean between Hawaii and California. A mass of plastic packaging, bottles, lids and countless tons of unidentified waste. The area was named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its growth has been monitored apprehensively ever since. New debris accumulates rapidly, carried there on the North Equatorial Current.

The huge rubbish dump was found drifting in the oceans.

It is fair to say I loved this it was inspiring and also an insightful book and also sounds a warning shot of how waste is everywhere even in some of the most remote places he visits he is shocked to see waste there. But each piece of waste in itself is a story of where it came from. Then how it could have ended up there. Even how discarded waste at times has changed nature itself over time. The concept of the book is very entertaining and also hits topping home it combines nature but also the great environmental questions facing the world. Do you have a favourite nature book that combines the natural world but also alongside the current environmental situation? It shows you how much we have to go to sustainable resources and move away from Plastic which is happening but it needs to quicken. As one of the first books to match my two reading styles books in translation and Nature writing this was a great book and shows we should try and get more nature writing from around the world. I will be trying to get some more books from around the world. That deal with nature when I see them around.

Winstons score – A this is an insightful book into the current situation of plastic waste and its effect the natural world.

 

Standing Heavy by GauZ

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Standing Heavy by Gauz

Ivorian Literature

Original title – Debout-PayĆ©

Translator – frank Wynne

Source – Copy

Well it seems apt to review a book that frank has translated the day after we all watched him announce the Booker international winner last night this is the first book for a few month I have read that Frank has worked on this jumped out with its eye catching(lol) cover art. It is the debut novel by the Ivory Coast writer Gauzthe pen name of writer Patrick Armand-Gbaka Brede. As a young man he loved the books of Amadou Kourouma and Louis Ferdinand Celine and has also said the Maryse Conde and Romain Gary have influenced his writing. This was his debut novel and came after he had spent a number of years living in France and it follows a number of fellow Ivorians over three generations. as they try to get by in France.

THE BLIND WOMAN
Accompanied by her husband, her daughter and her dog,Ā a blind woman is doing the sales. The man chatters to herĀ constantly; his accent is from somewhere in the South of
France, and he speaks in precise, carefully constructed sentences. She spends time stroking the fabrics in order to makeĀ her choice. From time to time, he gently places his hand
on hers to steer her in the right direction. Another coupleĀ compelled to touch. Another display of tenderness. AnotherĀ relationship based on co-dependency. The woman’s disability enhances the communication of those around her.

One of the character pen pictures we get throughout the book.Here about a Blind woman in the shop.

As I said the bookfollows three generations of a men as they arrive in Paris from the Ivory Coast and how over time they have often end as Security guards as they try to get by with out the right papers. The first in the 60s is Ferdinand(A nod to Celine I wonder) His story remind me of the wind rush literature I have read recently for he like many in those oaks arrived full of hope only to have it dashed. Then in the 90s We follow two Ivorians as they see a Paris in Flux then we have some that maybe is some like Gauz himself that’s traveled in the millennium years and ends up as the all seeing eyes of the security guard. Now that is a quick breeze through those three for me the part of the book is the little vignettes that we get a sort off Guards speak and Knowledge names customers etc what we get is a satirical view of their mundane lives but how they see all there but as so often not see by most shoppers barring the Arab princess.He capture the comradely but also the struggles of the immigrants.

Ā Security Guards in the Movies

In the tens of thousands of movies and B-Movies that have been made since the Lumber brothers first made The arrival of a train at La ciotart, no security guard has ever been shown as a hero. On the contrary, security guards are usually the characters who quickly and casually killed off as part of the hero’s plan to get final confirmation with the bad guy in the last scene

The Last scene of Brain De Palm’s scarface, when Tony Montana’s house is attacked is a perfect example of the senseless slaughter of security guards in cinema

They are sometime like the Guys in the red uniform in the first series of Star Trek a one episode Job!!

I enjoyed this is as I regularly work with some agency staff at work everyday who work along side us and there to help with the risks we have with a patient and a number of them are from Nigeria and Ghana and when they chat about there work and lives it struck a chord with Gauz Ā characters and their stories and shows how certain jobs end mainly being done by African immigrants as they are just suited and have the skills for them. So I love it when you connect to works of fiction on a personal level and this especially when it is in books of translation so when these guys chatted it felt like some of the chats we have at work.I loved his eye for detail those little vignettes and pen pictures about what they see and how they work but also however time you can read people so well. It is an insight into those guards. I mean how often do we see them Ā apart from as it is point out those Babies always seem to smile or they try to make them smile. Now this is Gauz Debut novel and as Tony mentioned in his review he has written another book that sort of flips the story here as it follows a white man in the Ivory Coast in the 19th century. Which I we may hopefully see.If you are after a satirical look at life as a Guard in Paris. Do you know any other novels that highlights those people that we pass unseen in jobs that are there but we don’t see the cleaner, waiters, etc. A great new voice and one I hope we see more from him and Frank has brought this vibrant book to life.

Winstons score – +A an insight to that man in the corner of the shops in Paris.