Tag: NEW BOOKS

What is mine by Jose Henrique Bortoluci

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

What is Mine by Jose Henrique Bortoluci

Brazilian memoir

Original title – O que é Meu

Translator – Rahul Bery

Source – subscription copy

I said yesterday I was staying in Latin America and a second work of nonfiction. This time, we move to Brazil and Jose Henrique Borotoluci’s account of his father’s life as a working-class trucker in Brazil from the 1960s onwards.I was drawn to this after reading the back cover, where He said he had been influenced by Annie Ernaux and Svetlana Alexievich. He has caught his father’s words in some interviews he had done over time since Cancer had taken its toll on his father’s life. This is the sort of book that Fitzcarraldo has been doing so well, and they managed to get such great non-fiction works.

My father studied until he was nine, worked on the family’s small farm from the age of seven, moved with them to the city at fifteen. He was only twenty-two when he became a truck driver. I was young, but I was as brave as a lion. He started driving trucks in 1965 and retired in

2015. The country that he traversed and helped to build was very different then from how it is now, but in recent years there has been a sense of familiarity: a country seized by frontier logic, the principle of expansion at any cost, the ‘colonization’ of new territories, environmental vandalism, the slow and clumsy construction of an ever more unequal consumer society. Roads and trucks occupy a key position in this fantasy of a developed nation in which forests and rivers give way to highways, prospect-ing, pasture and factories.

His father had to take work up early.

Didi Jose’s father had been a truck driver all his life, and we have his personal recollections of the time from the sixties onwards as he worked on some of the mega projects in Brazil, like the trans-amazonian highway. He says earlier on, his father never wanted to talk about the military dictatorship years but he will talk about his fellow drivers and the route he took. He says he always spoke about giant muddles where he got in the back and beyond. His fellow drivers, Like Nestor a driver showed him that if they tied meat to the outside of the exhaust in a certain place, he would have barbecued meat by lunch to eat.  The places they stopped deep in the jiungle. The protesters had dived or disappeared over the years. Another driver friend of his dad’s had died of Aids. All this as his father is fighting cancer about how the fight is going. He has taken recording and this is where the book comes from the recollections of the years spent in his wagon. For me, one of the hardest scenes is where he talks about his dad asking him about money and how he sees the gulf between his father’s life and his own as his father had to watch every penny growing up. There is a reference to movies about being a trucker that had been made in the seventies.

It was Nestor who taught me about exhaust barbecue. Above the truck’s exhaust there’s a plate that gets red bot. This is inside the engine, not the pipe where the smoke comes out. It’s a part that’s attached to the engine, welded metal, concave, big enough for one or two kilos of meat. You’d tie a piece of meat there in the morning and when you stopped at midday the barbecue would be ready. It was delicious, so good. Or you’d make the food at lunch and fill a pot with food for dinner, but at night you didn’t need to light a fire, just open the truck’s bon-net, put the pot there, leave it on top of the exhaust which bad been beating up all day. Then you could shower at the petrol station, have a few drinks, come back to get the pot and it was piping hot. That was life.

Didi talking about the tricks Nestor had taught him.

This is a personal look at a turbulent time in the country’s history but how one man and his family had made their way through the world. Didi’s story reminds me of when he talked about cooking on the truck. I remembered an episode of Home Improvement with some truckers talking about the ways they could cock on the trucks. Then the talk of trucking movies took me back to my own childhood and the movies of the seventies that were about truckers. There is a quote from Joao Guimaráes Rosa: ” My father always away and his absence always with me. And the river, perpetually renewing itself” hit the nail on the head. This is full of love of his father and the sacrifice he and many more of his generation made in the country. We can see the nods to Alexievich and Ernaux in how he worked around his father’s memories of his trucking life. Have you a favourite book about being working class?

Winstons score – A This is what we love Fitzcarraldo for these gems from around the world they find

Ultramarine by Marietta Navarro

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

Ultramarine by Marietta Navarro

 

French fiction

Original title – Ultramarins

Translator – Cory Stockwell

Source – review copy from translator

Now, I was sent a couple of proofs from Heloise, which was kind. I had been sent their first book, and I just never got around to reviewing it. So, I owe them a review or two. They are another publisher that champions female voices as they say on the website. Héloïse Press champions worldwide female talent. Héloïse’s careful selection of books gives voice to emerging and well-established female writers from home and abroad, with a focus on intimate, visceral and powerful narratives. This is the debut novel from French poet and playwright Mariette Navarro. She came up with the idea of the book after she went on a writer’s retreat that was two weeks on a cargo ship from France to the West Indies. Although she had seasickness, the book was inspired by the notes she took while on the ship.

THEY SLIP INTO THE WATER.

The tips of their toes and then their entire bodies: the sharp pain of the cold and the burning salt that seems to become more potent as it touches the skin. Ribcages compressed by the immense ocean, as though the enormous mass, grey in places, didn’t allow itself to be penetrated quite so easily – witness how, from the beginning of the voyage, the water has systematically closed back in upon itself behind the freighter that does everything in its power to cleave it. You can’t tear it like a piece of cloth; you don’t leave any imprint on it, as you would in sand or snow. By plunging into it, you condemn yourself to invisibility

There is something sexual as she watches them in the water

 

Ultramarine is a poetic book that follows a cargo ship on the journey she took from France across the Atlantic. The big difference she wants to make in her story is that the captain of the ship in the book is female. She is the only female on the ship, but she is respected and well-known, as her father was also a well-known captain on the same shipping line. But when she decides that as the sailors would all like a swim in the ocean a sort of  take on the Neptune festival when you cross the from the hemispheres so they are all lower in a lifeboat the twenty of them but did more come back, there is a point while they are swimming where they try to count the sailor and get 21? But after this piece of freedom, the boat has a weird feeling. The boat slows, and things are going strange. Her connection with the crew changed after that event.

She kept going along these lines, feeling her way for-ward, and for a few weeks that was enough to recreate a kind of link – tenuous, shifting – between her and this captain without a ship. Among her clearest visions was the face of death, which her father had clearly witnessed in a way no one living should see, and which explained his silences better than all the medical scans he was made to undergo.

She thought of that passage from the Odyssey that had made such a mark on her when she was small. Ulysses, lost at sea, arrives by chance in the kingdom of the dead, and proceeds to visit them. He meets sailors who have recently died, shipmates whose death he’d been unaware of, and finally, after a dramatic and tearful build-up, his mother. He’s the only person in the world to have ever been offered the chance to speak to his mother one last time. As for her father, perhaps he also found Ulysses’ secret pathway, but didn’t come all the way back, instead remaining there in this world between worlds where it matters little whether you walk in the rain

this is near the end but Mariette said she loved the Odysessy so this passage jumped out at me

This book has a poetic feel. The Beyond the Zero Podcast features an interview with both the writer and translator, which made me want to read the book. It explained that the seed of novella was from the two weeks she spent on the cargo ship. But the main part of the text is from her notes on the two weeks she spent on the boat. But she wondered what would happen if. The captain, instead of a man, was a woman, and if they had this event in the middle of the cruise, what would happen? The later part of the book has an eerie feel. At times, something isn’t quite right, but you can’t put your finger on it. She mentioned she is a fan of sea-based books from Odyssey to Moby Dick, even though the title is a nod to the deepest blue, a nod to the ocean, a title that was also used by Malcolm Lowry for a ship-based book. Also, there was a band called Ultramarine, best known for the United Kingdom album, which would fit well with this book. it is poetic and dreamy at times. The writer is working on a new novel that will be out later this year in France, and hopefully, we get another poetic slice from this writer. This is one of those books that hasn’t a lot but has such beauty in the writing and the translation. They talked about how some of the ship terms were hard to translate and how poetic Mariiette’s writing is? Have you read any of the books from Heloise Press yet?

Winstons score +A stunning poetic book about a captain and her crew after a swim

 

Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

~ winstonsdad ~ 1 Comment

Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

Argentine fiction

0riginal title – Por Que Volvías Cada Verano

Translator Maureen Shaughnessy

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

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

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

He comes to the house when she is young.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meeting one of her legal team early on in the book

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

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

 

Some recent buys

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

A break from all things booker today. I’ll do a round-up of some books I got on two recent days out. First, as many of you know, My Mum’s ashes are spread in Macclesfield, and as it was recently Mother’s Day here in the UK, I went to take some flowers, and we had a couple of hours in Macclesfield. They have a small Waterstones. I always get a nature book from there as my mum loved Nature, and this time, I chose another from the Little Toller classic series.

This was an earlier work from the Children writer Michael Morpurgo about a farm he ran in the countryside for Farms for city kids at his farm in North Devon. I was torn between this and another in the series. I hope it will be there next time I go back. There is also a OXFAM small again but it has not often had any good books but this time I hit a nice selection of books.

First up the title of this book Kafka was the rage a memoir written by a former leading book critic for the New York Times book critic about his time in Greenwich Village when it was there hip place to be,

One that has been on my radar for a few years is the first part of four of Dorothy Richardson’s Modernist masterpieces, the Pilgrimage. I will watch over time for the other three parts of this series. dealing with the life of Miriam Henderson

Next up is another on the series of short story collection from Oxford university press this collection is set in Barcelona compiled by Peter Bush who also translated them all they range from Cervantes through Josep Pla and Juan Marse to Quim Monzo as one of the modern writers involved in this vibrant city. I have other books from this series.

Ever since I had seen this had come out from And other stories in a new edition, I was reminded I wanted to read more from Hines, best well-known for Kes, and the script for Threads, which I recently watched a terrifylng look at how a nuclear war would end up shocking as it was set in Sheffield. So I was pleased to see this old film tie on of the Gamekeeper on the shelf.

Amanda and I also had a nice day in Sheffield where they have a large waterstonmes. BNut as I had literally three days earlier brought most of the booker longlist as I need most lof the books I limited myself to three books from there this time.

First off was Butter by Asako Yuzuki. I have seen this posted a lot. It has a very eye-catching cover, a story of a female serial killer who cooked  for and then killed her men. She is interviewed by another woman as the two talk. The woman is interviewing and starts to see the world like the serial killer, an interesting-sounding book. I need a few new Japanese books as I read a lot of the ones I had at the start of the year

Then, another from Japan, a woman pretends to be pregnant for nine months. How will she get away with it and why? I liked the sound of this, and it has been on a lot of other blogs, so I wait and it will be reviewed next January, I think. A little forward planning from me. I also love the cover of this book.

Then this was the main book I had gone for as I am a huge fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have reviewed six other books from him at the time of the blog. I was excited when I heard that his last novel had survived. He wanted it bin, but his sons kept a copy, and we have this story of a faithful wife who goes away on holiday every August and has an affair whilst she is on Holiday. It is strange as he mostly had male lead characters in his books. But illicit love is something he always tackled in his books.

What new or second hand has hit your shelves recently. Are you looking forward to the Marquez as well? It is a writer’s last book he wanted to be destroyed. Was it worth saving just to have it ?

February 2024 what did I read and do

~ winstonsdad ~ Leave a comment
  1. About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler 
  2. Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson
  3. The Rainbow by Yasunari Kawabata
  4. Erasure by Percival Everett
  5. What You Need From The Night by Laurent Petitmangin
  6. Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki
  7. A little luck by Claudia Piñerio 

I started with a Swiss book about an uncle who is looked after by his relatives. Then we have an epic prose poem about the Sai people through a few people. We trace the history of this indigenous tribe through the 20th century. Two half-sisters discover they may have a half-brother as they live with their father. Then we have a writer who becomes a star, writing a book in a ghetto style, and how he copes with his newfound fame, which is now the film American Fiction. Then, a father is shocked when his son is drawn into the right wing in North Eastern France; then we have three summers as we follow three sisters in Greece in the inter-war years. Then a woman returns after twenty years to return to her old life and discover what happened to those she had left behind. So i read books from  7 different countries from seven publishers. Not a bad month

Book of the month

I chose About Uncle. I loved this and it remind me of what i have loved about Peirene. Then they got the right book that hit the spot, and this was one of those short books about an uncle, a veteran who has mishaps like trying to escape down the toilet. This book has humour and sadness, family love and hate in equal measure.

Neon book events

I covered a bit this month. I have brought some records. The most recent is another from the Tom Waits reissues, his Blue Valentine, still in his jazz-style era, had always been a favourite and was the first album I got on tape when I was younger in my twenties. TV-wise, we are in the middle of watching The Jury, which shows two juries viewing the same murder trial taken from an actual case and seeing how each tackles their verdicts. Again, I have been mining YouTube for old TV or movies. I am currently watching the early 70s series Doom, an environmental show about a government agency tackling things that are affecting the environment.

Next month

I am finishing the latest BorasChung as I write this I may finish it this evening or tomorrow then I will move on the Mathias Enard’s The annual banquet of the Gravediggers Guild. Then I have Out of Earth on my tbr . These three have all been mentioned as potential Booker international books, and I am yet again doing the Shadow Jury this year, which is our 12th year. Well, for the original few, it is hard to believe the shadow jury  itself will be turning into a teen next time. So after March 11 it will be the books I haven’t read from the longlist which is handy as I  have a few days off just after it is announced. I intend to do my own guess list soon and hope cover a few more hopefuls in the time beofre it is announced.

MY reading Habits

~ winstonsdad ~ 10 Comments

I been inspired t write this by the recent Mookse and Gripes episode, where Trevor and Paul talked over their habits and other bits around them as a reader. I thought I would talk a bit about my reading life and world. I am not as organized as Trevor and Paul. I never will be. My dyspraxia mind is chaotic a lot of the time. But I do have some routines, and over the years, I have blogged how me as a reader work has constantly evolved. I still manage to read over 100 books every year I may not review them all, but since I started last year to track my reading more on Goodreads, I have seen that it is about 120 books a year I read, and I think I will move the stat keeping to Storuy graph as supposedly it can give you more detail even this is a struggle at times for some that constantly will forget to update things due to my dyspraxia one of the worst things I have is this lack of constancy with doing things like this. But over the last few years, I am getting a little better. When do I read well, I am a chunk reader I am not someone who puts bits in here and there. I read the morning I hope to get between 30-45 minutes most mornings  work or not. On my days off, I try to read for a couple of hours during the day. I tend to work 3 days one week and four days the week after. I read every evening for about an hour times more if I’m nearing the end of a book, so that means I tend to read 18-20 hours a week, which sometimes is less, sometimes more. I find I read more in the winter, more so this year, since I inherited my aunt’s serious read lamp. This lamp has a natural light, and I think will add a little more reading in the evening this winter.

Paper/e-book I do have a paperwhite kindle. But I have maybe read 10 e-books in the last ten years I just don’t get on with it. I love the idea the change of font size and font is all brilliant it is just an interaction with the kindle for me never quite works.,I love seeing my progress in a  paper book. I keep the Kindle mainly for Booker International reading as I sometimes need to spend a lot on books, and the books I have read in recent years have been for Booker International. I have tried to use Netgalley but never read the e-books I try to get. So yes I am a paper books man.

Audiobooks had you asked me this a year ago, I said no. I would always say I love book-based podcasts like The Mookse and the Gripes. But I finally decided to try Audible and have since then read and listened to four books so yes, for me yes I LIKE Audio books if they will add another few books to what I read or help me tackle longer books that be great. Book length I am someone that have always preferred books under 300 pages. I have more and more in recent years been avoiding longer books in fact, this was the one tip I did get from Trevor and Paul to spread longer books court over a long time, a chapter or section of pages at a time. I will be trying this more next year. Thanks guys.  I have posted about being a single book read I have a hybrid version of this these days where I’ll read multiple, but I will tend to read chunks of books like Base Camps on Everest. This is something I have done for the last few months, and it has meant I have read more books than I used to as I tend to switch if I feel my reading of a book slowing

MyTBR I have two yellow trolleys, one in my library and the other in our lounge. One is the current TBR books. The other will be when I have a project reading like Czech Lit Month or Club 1962 etc, where I will find all the books for the said project and put them in my library trolley. This is something I have seen Simon Savidge do and I thought it was a great idea to sort them once a month as they tend to also get overloaded with books. I love project reading the year clubs Simon and Karen do are highlights of my years, as is the booker international longlist reading Czech Lit Month, German Lit Month and, of course, Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month. As for me and my mind, the focus it brings gives me clarity, and I’m sure these periods are when I read most. Where I read well I have my sofa downstairs which is by my serious light and upstairs my old reading light is next to a chair from Ikea in my library. I like listening to instrumental music and can cope with some lyrics but more on the acoustic country vibe than some of the punk, new wave industrial goth music I like, which is too distracting to read. Notes I use a few book tabs on passages I love and take pictures of pages I think I will quote, and with longer books take a few notes on index cards this is something I am doing more and more every year. I think in the process of writing my post these days, they are longer I like meaty quotes that I usually mention in the review. Well that’s me, nothing new A chaotic reader who has more order than I did when I started this blog but will be the most planned and ordered reader, but this chaos I have in my mind is what drives the wanderlust in my reading and the driving passion for books in translation as I have a very obsessional mind which is what makes me constant look for those underlooked gems and the sheer solo drive in my mind is for books in translation and world lit which will never change. I am so passionate about this as any of you who have met me will agree with it.

October 23 lets look backat the month.

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments
  1. The city of the living by Nicola Lagioia
  2. Without Waking Up by  Carolina Schutti
  3. The rider by Tim Krabbé
  4. My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon 
  5. The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
  6. Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz 
  7. Big Sur by Jack Kerouac 
  8. Conversation with three wayfarers by Peter Weiss
  9. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck 
  10. Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon 
  11. Shining by Jon Fosse 
  12. Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

Well, it was a great month I managed to review 12 books, including A Murder in Rome which shocked that city. To a girl growing up and not feeling in place. Then a man is in the middle of a cycle race, describing the race and his memories of being a rider. Then the first of two Maigret’ this. Month sees a man claiming to be his friend a fake picture, and an inspector from Scotland Yard. Then a young writer from Senegal finds a lost book and a lost writer and sets out to find more about him, Then a man caught up in the revolution in Egypt. A writer goes mad slowly from drink, drugs and fame in Big Sur. Then a story from three brothers that drifts through time and place. Then we Follow John Steinbeck on his way around a bygone America. Then back to Maigret and a man sees him on a Saturday to only disappear a few days later, leaving his wife and her lover and his former employee. The month started with Jon Fosse winning the Nobel and ended with me reviewing his latest short novella, where a man gets stuck in the woods and then follows some lights in the woods. Finally, it was Halloween yesterday, and I decided to review Hound of the Baskervilles, a creepy novel with lots of Atmosphere.

Book of the month

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr the Senegalese writer, is a rising star of Francophile writing this is his second book and won the Prix Goncourt a fictional take on the true story of a fellow sub-Saharan writer. A book that came out just before the second world war and a writer that just vanished what did he do after a scandal about his debut Novel.

Non-book events

We’ve watched a few series this month firstly Them is a creepy show set in the 50s when a couple moves to a mostly white neighbourhood and strange things start to happen both in real life and in their minds. Then a new series based around Goosebumps, which saw the children of parents who had done something in the 80s attacked by a spirit. I also found an 80s Nick Cave Vinyl, not the reissue, which was great. I think autumn is always a time I like to read more.

Next month

I plan to get a number of books I have been sent reviewed I have a collection of short stories from Iceland. poetry from  Bosnia, novellas from Japan and A quirky Finnish Novel. Also, the latest from Jhumpa Lahiri which is one of the books I have most wanted this year. I had hoped to get the New Peter Nadas books but I will have p[ass them as my darling wife lost her job and we need to watch the pennies a little the next few months. How was your month and what are your plans for next month . Oh I forgot it is also German lit month so expect a couple of more books from German. Not sure which yet!

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

~ winstonsdad ~ 8 Comments

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

American Memoir

Source – Personal copy

When I read the list of books I could read for the club 1962, I looked at one book that leapt of the page to read, and that was this one another reread. Unlike Kerouac, this is a road trip like his books are but this is from one of my all-time favourite writers, Steinbeck he just stood for so much his books we social commentaries on time and covered the tougher side of life. He captured an America that is now gone, and in this book he tries to do that. I do think he picks his tales here and it is, in a way, a modern tale. I love the idea of van Life is something that appeals to me the ability to go here and there every day, and this is what he did he took out his camper he’d called Rocinante after Quixotes horse. Now the companion for his trip was his blue French poodle Charley as he turns sixty, Steinbeck wants to see the small villages and towns of America before they go.

We didn’t give George any trouble because for two nights we stayed in Rocinante, but I am told that when guests sleep in the house George goes into the pine woods and watches from afar, grumbling his dissatisfaction and pouring out his dis-like. Miss Brace admits that for the purposes of a cat, whatever they are, George is worthless. He isn’t good company, he is not sympathetic, and he has little aesthetic value.

“Perhaps he catches mice and rats,” I suggested helpfully.

“Never,” said Miss Brace. “Wouldn’t think of it.

And do you want to know something? George is a girl.”

I had to restrain Charley because the unseen presence of George was everywhere. In a more enlightened day when witches and familiars were better understood, George would have found his, or rather her, end in a bonfire, because if ever there was a familiar, an envoy of the devil, a consorter with evil spirits, George is it.

George the Cat from his friends at Deer Island

The book starts with him explaining why he decided to make this trip a last chance to capture a world slowly going in fact, at the time, it maybe was nearly gone when he did the trip. He shows how he got Rocinate ready. His family wanted to go, but ultimately, he chose the dog as his companion and set off around the States. Nearly losing the camper and his boat in a storm on the eve of the trip, he sets off. He says he is just a guy, not Steinbeck, the famous writer but some ordinary Joe on a road trip with his dog. he notes how he uses the dinners and radio to get the feel of the places in Maine as he drives through this has one of my favourite parts of the book he visit someone he knows on Deer island that is the owner of a grey cat that is the least cat like cat he has ever meet harte people and dogs and make any guest at the house feel unwelcome even when he isn’t in the room. He meets migrant workers from Canada and compares how they pack the farm up to what English families did in Kent every summer when they went hop-picking. He likes to blend with the common man at truckstops, nearly getting shot, then having a coffee with a game warden on an estate. s he winds around the country, retreading ground in his old home of  Salinas, lamenting the changing country and the way it has become upper class no more fish guts on the beach from the canneries; he also laments the way this is the way the country ad a whole is changing as the freeways disconnect towns and everything becomes the same like the way people speak till he gets to  Texas where he notes how separate all Texans still are and how individual they can be. He laments what has gone from the America of his youth.

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.”

His thoughts on Texas.

Well, I could go on I love this writer and this book so much. I think he has rose-coloured glasses in a way and has picked maybe the best tales of this trip, but he has also caught what has gone the lament of the loss of language accents and identity between towns is all something we see more and more, and since his day every town is the same with the same shops and restaurants etc. What he also captures is migrant workers from those from Quebec to those he used to know in Monterey who have now moved on from when he wrote Cannery row (my favourite novel by him) . I must try Geert Mak’s book, where a few years ago he retraced this trip and saw how the country was now. This captured America before Vietnam, but post-Korea, that golden glow of the post-war years is fading. This is like a Norman Rockwell painting of a book, but you can see just at the edges of the images he paints the world he loved, and we get corporate America. I even forgot to mention the visits to the vet well that is for you to find out. Have you read this?

Winstons score A I love steinbeck and lament the loss of his world even if it is a bit overly romantic.

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Doudua Otoo

~ winstonsdad ~ Leave a comment

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  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  morrison and WG sebald had a bastard child this would be the book she would write.No doubt as  it mixes thoughts about  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 !!

The Strangers by Jon Bilbao

~ winstonsdad ~ 1 Comment

The Strangers by Jon Bilbao

Spanish fiction

Originl title- los extraños

Translator – Katie Whittlemore

Source – Personal copy

I often talk about publishers I like and one of them the is Dalkey Archive in the last few years they have brought a few great books from Spain so when I was browsing for a new book to buy and saw this had just come out from them I chose it as it is a perfect read in a day book as it clocks in at just over 120 pages. Plus, the blurb sounds to me like it could have been an old episode of X Files a family move to a town where there have been UFO sightings, and there have been so many great books from Spanish in recent years that have Erie or another feeling to the narrative, and I felt this may be like those books.

The estuary curves around the base of Monte Corbero and discharges into the sea at one end of the beach. It courses, piguant, after all the rain. The beach looks very different from the image it projects in the summer, when she and Jon typically come to spend a few days and his parents are home and take care of everything and insist that Katharina and Jon go have a swim and relax as much as they can. Now, dark bands of marine litter and plastic debris cut across the sand.Jon’s parents winter in the Canary Islands.

The arrival at the winter home seaside at winter always an odd place.

The book sees a couple Jon and Katherine take a trip to the Cantabrian coast to overwinter there they have got sort of jobs which means they can now work remotely after living for years in the city.There is a sense this is maybe a chance to come together again as a couple. So They are stay overwinter in a family members house at the coast. but as the time goes by they drift apart this is the first off the three parts of the book the couple settling in and then coloured lights appear at night and the winter retreat becomes home to some more family when another couple claiming to be cousins appear said to have been raised by grandparents in Latin America.Markel and Virgine appear and initially Jon is wary of them but his wife persuade him to let the couple habng around. BUut are they connected to the lights. There is also a growing amount of UFO watcher and a feeling of something other than them being around them.

There’s a dog in the foreground at one edge of the frame. Only the back half of it is visible, out of focus. Definitely a German Shepherd. It walked in front of the camera just as the photo was taken.

The boys are looking at it with identical expressions: mouth opened in an “O” of surprise and smiling eyes. The dog has turned them into twins.

“I thought you two had never seen each other before,”

‘ says Katharina.

“That’s what I thought,” Jon replies.

“Me too,” Markel agrees.

“Where is this?” Katharina asks, peering closely at the picture.

Have the cousins meet before ?

This is a short book that has three parts to it the  couple settling in the lights appearing and the second part the cousins or supposed cousins of Jon he has no memory of them but some families can be like that we have second cousins I ‘ve met maybe twice in my life from my father generation . Then the last part is what the other is in a way . This has a wry feel to it remind me of a mix up of xfiles episodes there is the comic ones there is a sense of humour in this book but also that sense of creepiness the sense of the other being there something that I have seen so well done in recent years in Argentina fiction fever dream or the danger of smoking in bed. Its as if the xfiles had a latin American writer the main couple have a feel of any modern couple trying to escape the rat race but the grass insn’t green and that is just where they were at when the lights appeared adding a turning point of the story the other couple could have walked of a x files episode they have that feeling of holding secrets and not quite seeming what they are how many of these type of people are their in the x file episodes. As you can tell I was a huge X file fans so anything with a ufo theme is going drawme back into the world of mulder and scully bnut this has a distinctive Spanish twist. Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – A – tightly told tale in three parts of a couple trying to escape and rebuild but then buzzed by UFO’S

Weekend away and some books brought

~ winstonsdad ~ 8 Comments

Amanda and I have just had a weekend away. We do this every year with Amanda’s parents, sister and Aunt and Uncle. This year we chose a country hotel between Ashbourne and Leek on the edge of the peak district. We arrived Friday and wandered around Ashbourne, but as it was late, things were closing, but we had something to eat and planned to visit in the morning. We headed out in the morning, had coffee in Ashbourne, and then headed to the Oxfam bookshop. I had been a few years ago and often find Oxfam bookshops about the best charity shops to look around for books, and this was the case again.I found three books in there. We had a look around the antique shops. I am searching for a Victorian writing slope for my library come office to finish it off but to no avail. Anyway, here are the books.

The three books are Beckett’s essay on Proust and three dialogues. I don’t know a lot about this, but I Have enjoyed the Beckett I have read over the years. Then from Joesph Roth’s The String of Pearls, another book a Writer i have read but hadn’t heard the title of before, I have reviewed two other books from him over the years of the blog. The last is a former Prix Goncourt winner, Fields of Glory; I have in my head either a run-through former Goncourt winner or Nobel winner as a long-term project or both not quite decided yet. It is something I have been thinking over for a couple of years to do.

We then headed to Leek, a town I had often driven through as it is on the way back from my childhood home of Congleton to Chesterfield, but on all those trips through, I had rarely stopped, and we were surprised it was bigger than I remember it had a flea come antique market. I was nearly tempted as there were two writing slopes, but one had no lock, although I could replace it with the other lock, and the other was a tad too large, and neither had a secret compartment a must in my eyes the search will carry on. We visited the Oxfam in Leek, just a shop, and I found two books.

Murakami’s Birthday Stories a collection of short stories he chose a number of years ago with one of his own stories. I looked at this over the years and felt I should get it. Then Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess. I am a huge Burgess fan, and having all bar one of his novels, I am now on to the non-fiction titles, and this cover matches in part the copy of Dead Man in Deptford by Burgess I have. Then as is the case, I felt the need for a coffee and some cake. We stopped at a cafe called Kiek just off the marketplace, and it was the best Dairy free Brownie I have ever eaten. So tasty. Then we headed to the bookshop in Leek on two levels, which reminded me of Scriveners in Buxton. I brought some more books there

First of all, is Nature writing by Little Toller called Snow, One of my favourite books of all time is Encyclopedia of Snow by Sarah Emily Miano (A book worthy of being on the Backlisted podcast, a real lost gem, a book that is more Sebald than Sebald!) anyway this is another book around snow. Then there is Jean Cocteau’s debut novel, a short book from Zola, a nice weekend, and some unusual books that are less well-known by great writers. Have you had a good weekend?

 

Boulder by Eva Baltasar

~ winstonsdad ~ 1 Comment

Boulder by Eva Baltasar

Catalan fiction

Original title – Boulder

Translator – Julia Sanches

Source – Personal copy

I had seen this doing the rounds before the Booker longlist came out, and I had read Permafrost but had to have it back at the library before I could review it. So I knew when this made the longlist it was a book I would like as I had intended to read it at some point. Because I love poets that become novelists, they usually have such remarkable visuals and imagery in their language. I have also enjoyed many of the recent books I have read that have come from Catalan in recent years. Eva Baltsazr is, as I said a poet. She released ten volumes of poetry and she has won several literary prizes this book and the other book I read form a triptych of books about three different women. She lives in the mountains with her wife and two children.

She doesn’t like my name, and gives me a new one. She says I’m like those large, solitary rocks in southern Patagonia, pieces of world left over after creation, isolated and exposed to every element. No one knows where they came from. Not even they understand how they’re still standing and why they never break down. I tell her I’ve seen rocks like those in the middle of the ocean. The ships skirt them in silence, as though some mythological creature could awaken and attack them. They’re not always by themselves. Sometimes there are more just a short distance away. Sometimes they form labyrinths you would be wise to avoid. Samsa lets her hair down and tickles my forehead, my eyelashes, my neck.She calls me Boulder and I don’t know why we laugh. Maybe love is unfurling above us like an enormous branch that bends and touches all the most sensitive, reticent parts of us.

How Boulder became Boulder.

This is a complex book about relationships, desire, lust and also motherhood. it is the story of two women; the title character Boulder is as she says early on in the book that she is a self-taught cook on a merchant ship sail around the world, but what happens when this lonely woman a loner, is maybe on the ship because she loves being herself and in a constant movement around the world. She is hit sideways when one night in a bar, she meets an older woman Samsa. They have a fierce, passionate night of passion as we see Boulder fall for Samas and decide to change the course of her life when she finds Samsa has taken a job in Iceland. They settle down and the years drift by and we see the two drift apart slowly Samsa rises up the career ladder and we see Boulder drift like an unanchored ship from job to job as this happens, Samsa decides she is getting no younger and wants to be a mother. Not as keen, Boulder agrees, and they have a child, but this sees the relationship dynamics change, and Boulder starts to feel outside the trio. What will happen? Will they weather the storm of motherhood?

Ragnar insists we have to celebrate. Here I was thinking we were friends. I tell him all I have to celebrate is the fact that Ive reached new heights of stupidity, that I can’t bring myself to hurt or leave Samsa, to understand the magnitude of her desire and say no. He tells me he felt the same when he had his first kid but that everything changes after the second or the third; they come out of their moms and grow up all on their own, all you have to do is feed them. He makes some dig that I can’t remember about the food truck and slaps my back so hard i choke.

After years in iceland Boulder never settles but tries to stay with Samsa

This follows a usual path of a relationship with a burning passion that draws us together, then the settling period and then what happens next it uses a queer relationship to follow this path. I loved the imagery Baltsar used at times; the passion of the relationship jumped off the page. I felt the could be a little more character-building, but I felt I knew these women. The Boulder character reminded me of a few people I knew years ago in Germany. So even thou they are mere pen sketches of characters, you feel as thou you know them. It captures that first flame of passion as the two make love, but it also manages to do what next, which I haven’t seen much in books because life isn’t happy ever after it is warts and all. Then throw in Motherhood and what happens when the relationship balance has changed and one of the couples feels pushed out by the baby. It is a great slice of relationship literature. It touches on some of the same subjects: Still life motherhood and not wanting children but this is more about the effect of motherhood on the relationship dynamics and the passion that started that relationship.

Winstons score – B A little novella that packs a punch.

Leaves of Narcissus by Somaya Ramadan

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

Leaves of Narcissus by Somaya Ramadan

Egyptian fiction

Original title – Awraq Al-Nargis

Translator – Marilyn Booth

Source – personal copy

I was drawn to this book when I ordered it a couple of years ago as it had the mention of Ireland in the description and would be the second Egyptian novel that had been set in Ireland I had read Temple Bar by Bahaa Abdelmegid and felt this would give a female perspective on the same experience of leaving Egypt to study abroad. Somaya Ramadan herself had spent time in Egypt studying English and then she studied in the early 1980s in Dublin she went to trinity college which I  feel maybe where she drew inspiration for this book that also follows a female student from Egypt as she heads to Ireland to study and start a new life there. she had written a couple of short story collections before this novel came out. This novel won the Naguib Mahfouz medal when it came out.

I walked in the direction of my lodging, across from the train station, and fished out my keys, ignoring the source of that invasive scream. The noise that had now subsided distilled a single, terrifying insight: that what I live is not the condition which other human beings live. That my senses and my comprehension of life are not those of anyone else, of anyone else but me. Something very alarming was beginning to weave itself together there in front of me, slowly, growing to giant proportions as it came ever nearer, a fearsome cold tidal wave edging toward me to swallow me completely to bring darkness over all to bring stillness.

The arrival in Dublin of Kimi the sense of being overwhelmed is here

The book follows Kimi a sensitive woman that has the ability to feel the emotions of those around her and she is about to head to Ireland to study. This is the start of the book and it deals with the usual clash of cultures that a move like this can bring a person to the edge as she struggles to fit in the style of the narrative of Kimi and the world is a nod to Joyce we see her inner working as she settles into her lodgings at Westland row in Dublin as she walks a tightrope as she struggles with her mental health as the move is overwhelming to her as she is a fragile soul as her world and the lit world she is studying at times almost touch and blur as she tries to fit in an exile in a country with its own selection of exiles this is a classic slice of culture clash and also a nod to classic modernist writing.

The map of exile fixed to the wall was not a yearning for the homeland. There was no exile. All there was, in that place, was another homeland, another nation. A nation inhabited by its own images, its own brands of hypocrisy, its own deliberate silences and its own pretense, that it alone existed and that anything east of London or west of Boston had no real place in the calculations of geography. These were unknown reaches, better left unknown. The only condition was silence and the pretense that here was all there was

As I say being an exile is a theme in the book as both countries have had so many over the years.

Ramadan herself is also a translator of English books into Arabic, you can see the influence of that on this as one of the writers she has translated like  Virginia Woolf into Arabic. Kimi is like a Woolf character that fragile line between being there and losing one’s mind in the world she is in. That Woolf did so well in her books. It is also a classic look at culture clash and being a fish out of water. But alongside this is the culture clash of Kimi in a new country and studying there as well. There is a nod to the common ground of Egypt and Ireland being in countries with many exiles and being an exile from your own country in that country that has a lot of exiles in. This is like a Rachel from a voyage out or later characters from the waves had stepped out of a Woolf novel and become Egyptian in Dublin this is a fragile woman in a new world and has a wonderful amount of lit quotes it is easy to see how in love the writer is with English literature with a sprinkling of quotes here and there in the book. I said this is a perfect companion piece to Temple Bar another fish out of water this has a female take on that experience. Have you read this or any other AUC(AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CARIO)  books?

Winstons score – A – A lost modern gem of Arabic writing about being an outsider in Ireland

We had to remove this post by Hanna Bervoets

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments

We had to remove this post by Hanna Bervoets

Dutch fiction

Original title – Was wij Zagen

Translator – Emma Rault

Source – Personal copy

Sometimes you see a book and then forget about it and then see it again and go I should got that book that was the case with this I went through a lot of the books that were in Waterstones post Christmas sale this book is one I had nearly got at the time it came out the middle of last year. As the subject matter had appealed it appealed as there aren’t many novels yet about social media that have been translated. The job of content moderator has to be a hard one this is the seventh novel from the Dutch writer Hanna Bervoets she has a wonderful website with lots of info about the awards including one for the body of work she has written so far. she has only this book translated so lets hope she has some more books translated. She lives with her girlfriends in Amsterdam.

were given two manuals that first day, one with the terms and conditions of the platform and one with the guidelines for moderators. We didn’t know at the time that those guidelines changed constantly and that the tome we received was already outdated when it was put into our hands. We weren’t allowed to take the manuals home with us, so we learned by doing. On the first day of training, a series of text-only posts appeared on our screens, and then, from day three, photos, videos, and livestreams. Each time, the question was: Is it okay to leave this up on the platform? And if not, why not? That last part was the trickiest. The platform doesn’t allow people to post things like “All Muslims are terrorists,” because Muslims are a PC, a “protected category,” just like women, gay people, and, believe it or not, Mr. Stitic, heterosexuals. “All terrorists are Muslims,” on the other hand, is allowed, because terrorists are not pc besides, Muslim isn’t an offensive term

The first day and what makes the cut and what is unacceptable according to the company

Kayleigh has taken a job at a social media company called Hexa part of a larger company she joins a team of content moderators, that view any content flagged as inappropriate or unsuitable(in the time of Musk taking over Twitter these people’s jobs are so important or else we go down a dark path) she likes her co-workers she even falls for one of them but this book is about the group here and the drip drip effect of the content and the constant pressure of what is acceptable and not and does you over time become use top this content so you let through the content you’d not thought about letting through at the start. Alongside this is a new relationship with  Babara then she falls for Yena a mismatched relationship. The coworkers take legal action with the pressure and sheer mental health issues this job causes them and also we see how each person has their own axe to grind from. Jewish coworker that gets into arguments and another coworker who is flat earth believer all add to a book that feels far more than its 130 pages.

That night we ended up kissing for the first time. After work Robert passed around another rollie, and at the bus stop we all took a swig from Souhaim’s stylish horn hip flask, so when we walked into the sports bar around seven we were still in high spirits- in fact, we were whooping as if we’d all won in the Olympics. Inside, some people were dancing. That was a rare sight in the sports bar, but Michelle must have picked up on her clientele’s mood and had cranked up the volume on the playlist all the way.One girl from our cohort was making out with a huge guy. It took me a moment to recognize him it was John, who always wore blue gingham button-downs in the office, but who was now swaying his hips in a soaking wet T-shirt, the fabric drenched with sweat even though it wasn’t very warm inside or outside.

They go out and that shared experience that leads to them falling off each other and being friends.

This captures what it is like to be on the knife edge of what makes the cut to be ok and what is demanded unacceptable to be seen this also shows how doing that as a job can be heartbreaking and heartwrenching and also cause those doing it to feel numb to the content they are viewing. There is a part she describes a sex scene and you sense how she has seen this content so often she even knows what will happen next. This is a book that did the rounds on social media given not social media content but for me, it is an age-old job of the moderator who viewed the video nasties and checked books for content. the police that watches videos. All these people have mental health from doing this job. It also shows relationships and comradeship in these jobs and how easy it is to have relationships with co-workers from the shared experience =but then there is also the side of that yes the shared experience but there is also the person as a whole that is outside that and that is what is shown in the two relationships of Kayleigh in the book. A book that captures a hard job and the outfacing of that on one person and the group she works with! Have you read any books about social Media?

Winstons score -B A great attempt to capture the social media world and its employees.