Ambivalence by Brain Dillon

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Ambivalence by Brian Dillon

Irish Memoir

Source – Subscription book

I have had a Fitzcarraldo subscription for several years. I have always picked the mix of fiction and non-fiction because I see the white Fitzcarraldo as books that are culturally important and challenging, and also as books I would never normally buy, so they are there to remind me to be more daring as a reader and to read books in translation.  So I have a few other Brian Dillon books.  But the reason I picked this one up is that it follows Brian growing up in Dublin in the late eighties and early nineties, and since he is three years older than me, I knew the events in the book and the times I could relate to. Plus, I am a sucker for coming-of-age literature, whether fiction or non-fiction.

4 He is not always alone on his excursions into town.

For at least a year he has been in love with his best friend,

S: his blue eyes and his blue hair, an androgyny that was once flagrant and recently is becoming fixed into a mode of being that is more obviously gay (still secretly gay) and from which, once they have left school, he will feel himself slowly excluded. For now they keep to a near-nightly routine of long gossipy phone calls in which classmates and teachers are torn apart for their dullness, poor taste and pitiful efforts at wit. On evenings when S does not phone, or fails to return B’s calls: agonies of abandonment. Since their early teens they have shared an expanding star-chart of camp coordinates: girl groups of the 1960s; via Boy George (the singer who to their schoolfriends they insisted was not gay) the autobiography of the movie star Frances Farmer, incarcerated and abused at a psychiatric institution; the vicious-affectionate tone of TV comedians (Julian Clary, Victoria Wood) they imitate on their annual visits to the Ideal Homes Exhibition.

Boy George was a groundbreaking figure in many ways

I think I am maybe far below the likes of Dillon in my ability to talk about books and my life, but this book is about his growing up, and for me, it is hard not to compare this life to my own. I didn’t lose my parents at the age he did.  But I did have them split when I was young. I have two sides to my life: my mum and stepfather,  a man who, if still alive, would be a Reform Party voter, a vile man who, in many ways, ruined my teen years with the way he got in my head.  Then my dad and my stepmom.  My dad is a very clever man in his field, an expert. He has, ever since I can remember, had a book in his hand.  He is a leisure reader, a fan of thrillers and westerns, but between him and my grandmother, an English teacher like Brian, I grew up in a world of books.  But for me, I read the old white men of American Lit: Updike, Roth, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Bellow, and, of course, I have always loved Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess.  But for me, I never was adventurous enough to read people like Brian Read as a young man: Barthes, Benjamin, et al  .  Seeing those years in his eyes, and his journey in books, reminds me of how much I need to read, but also of how life takes us on our own paths. I say this as whenever I mention things like this it sounds as though I am putting myself down; no life is life; you can’t turn back time.  Anyway, back to the book, I really have not even spoken about it yet.  Anyway, another parallel is when Brian, as a young man, connects with Bowie, hence the title of the book and how Bowie helped people with the ambiguous nature of their gender and sexual identities at a time this was rarely touched upon. Of course, being a few years older, my Bowie was, dare I speak his name, Morrissey, a man I defended for too long, thinking that the 80s persona was the real persona of this singer. Anyway, he talked about gender roles back then.

• An idea of androgyny is the guiding principle of his aesthetics-and politics. He has never been so certain of anything as he is of the necessity of this and all related terms-ambiguity, ambivalence, equivocation, paradox, etc.—which sound weak and boring compared to the god or goddess androgyny. He tries to imagine what it would mean to translate this way of being into prose, into the texture of response to the world, into a morality to replace the one he has been taught but not believed in since the age of twelve. He believes in a kind of abstract androgyny, which would render the world somehow more subtle, less sure of itself, but also irradiated with style, an affront to settled states of being.

I remember Morrissey saying something similar back in the 80s to this sad the change anyway

Anyway, I haven’t really said much about the book; it is a great personal Bildungsroman about a man I need to read more from, which makes me want to renew my Fitzcarraldo subscription to read his other books.  Another thing I may do is go back and draw a reading list of books mentioned by Brian in the book as a small project as all us readers know there is nothing better than making a list even if it ends with the list or even if I get the books for a future date it will make me remeber this book and how life is full of books books form so much of our lives alongside family and music. from a singer to a book from a family member it all inter.  connects and then connects with us as readers, thus forming a never-ending chain of connections.  Well, that is how it feels to me, as that is the sort of reader I am a reader of memoirs, of times of music, of connections we all make. I think this is a must-read for anyone like me in love with books and being a reader.

Deepfake by Makis Malafekas

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Deepfake by Makis Malafekas

Greek Fiction

Original title – Deepfake

Translator – Jenny Steel

Source – Subscription book

I must admit it is great to see Foundry Editions bringing out a book from Greece.  Over the years, I have often felt it is a country underrepresented for its size in what we get to read in English.  This is the eighth GREEK NOVEL i have read over the time of the blog. I do have an older book I’ve been hunting for over the year, Drifting Cities, if anyone wants a reprint so I could get a cheap copy; I’d be happy. Anyway, this is the sixth book and the third noir novel by the Greek writer Makis Malafekas. He has studied art history and social anthropology, has taught comics at the Sorbonne, and has written extensively about Athens nightlife.  He set this book with the Johnny Depp trial in 2022 as a backdrop to the events in the book.

The guy next to me was likely a travel agent, with his doom-themed monologues and particular obsession with “the Gypsies”. He said we should send them to Afghanistan where they’d have the time of their lives, in fact he said we should send them “back” to Afghanistan. But when for the third time he slurped noisily at the dregs of his frappé, with the end of the straw down in the foam and ice, and said somewhat sadly, “The ice is melting in Norway, as well, fuck it…” I allowed him back into my world, and let him take his place next to me, with me, because in the end it was all my choice.

Because that’s somehow where we found ourselves. Me, and everyone else. In Norway, with the ice melting and running down our backs, all washed up in a bar somewhere in Afghanistan with expensive undrinkable coffee and a broken air conditioner by the door, having the time of our lives.  With no rhythm, no flow, no style.

Somone spouting from the news he probably read

This book is a great slice of modern noir lit fiction it appears this is the third instalment of a series around the main character in this book Michalis Krokos and he is such a typical noir character: a washed up writer a man of the Athens night that has spent a lot of time in the city and this is how he is asked by a prosecutor to help out Rebecca a trans sex worker he had known a few years earlier as she has been targeted by a right wing news site in a case of Blackmail. This leads to Krokos going undercover at the NHIT news site, a far-right group spouting out their right-wing hatred. This brings him face to face with Tsechlentidis, the boss of this news site.  They are both Athens Native and in a way this makes Michalis fit in as he also dislikes the way his city is now a tourist trap but that is all they share all this is happening as he had got caught up in the Depp trial as he has dark drives with what seems like dark ends in an athens night as we see insidce the beast of the ALT right news machines and those involved with them.

Presented with the nineties Ibiza she laughed and asked if it was one of those silent electric models or if it operated by mind power. Going up Syggrou Avenue she explained why it was that Vikings: Valhalla was crap in comparison with the original Vikings, just phoney, and I should never see it. On the way up Asklipiou Street she told me that her name was Lora, at the entrance to the building that the downtown area was intolerable and how could I put up with it in general, in the elevator that she would like to live downtown for a certain time for the experience, and in the living room she got excited that I had the Depp trial on 24/7 and said she did too, and that woman was definitely crazy and had been a disaster for him but okay, he wasn’t exactly normal either. I set out two glasses. Amber was still testifying. Johnny was talking things over with his lawyer and not giving her as much as a glance.

The Depp trial caught the eye all around the world

The book was up for the European Prize for Literature last year; this prize, over the years, has provided so many great books in English as it ever has. changing selection of books around Europe.  This book is a great slice of modern noir with a large chunk of what is wrong with Greece and Athens itself, the city that is a melting pot of people and is always full of tourists these days.  Also, the choice to use the Depp /Heard trail as a backdrop alongside alt-right news feeds shows how twisted our modern way of finding news is and what even the real news is these days.  Michalis is trying to help Rebecca find out who is blackmailing her in the sweltering heat of an Athenian summer, as everything is just simmering beneath the surface in the book as it goes.  I loved Michalis; he is a classic noir character, an imperfect human being with his own baggage, part Spade, part Marlow, and a noir comic book character.  He is the classic flawed character trying to do good.  But this book also, underneath it, raises questions about Athens as a city trying to forge its own identity in the 21st century.  Then there is the alt-right news angle and how this affects those as targets of the news but also affects those reading this trash.

June 26 Halfway point

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  1. Bait by Eugenia Ladra
  2. Nothing Grows in Moonlight by Torberg Nedreaas
  3. What remains by Brais Lamela
  4. The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez
  5. Night train by Xu Zechen
  6. A Summer with Montaigne by Antoine Compagnon

Oh, another month with not many reviews. I have been suffering from a drop in confidence at work, and I think this is having a knock-on effect here and also on my blogging, adding to the heat wave.  But I managed six books with a young girl and a mysterious man in Uruguay.  Then a woman spills here life out over the course of an evening to a random man.  Farmers moved by Franco from the past and present effects of it.  Then a man dies, and another disappears, and a book connects them. A young man who wants to travel is made out to be a killer, but what will the effect of this lie be on his life? Then a summer of radio essays around Montaigne from french radio

Book of the month

Book cover of 'What Remains' by Brais Lamela, with a pale yellow background, abstract lines, and a pastel blue-purple landscape; translated by Jacob Rogers.

What Remains mixes fact and fiction and is one of those books that has lots of styles in a very short book that covers a piece of lost history from the Franco years in Spain

Non-book things

Well, the discovery of the great player app with its schedule of Hallmark mysteries had a lot to answer for. I am a sucker for cosy Hallmark crime films; they are no effort to watch, so I have watched a few this month.  Music-wise, my record player is awaiting a new needle, so I have the recent Pixies bsdie album and the new Beth Orton record to listen to. I got a Japanese copy of This Mortal Coil’s It Will End in Tears on CD, but as I had the UK CD and vinyl, I just like the Japanese edition.

Next month

I need to find my review and blogging Mojo and get back in a routine; also, I need to read a bit more; last month I read less than I had in other months. I have a few subscription books and a couple of review books to read, and I’m sure something else will appear out of the blue; it usually does. What do your plans look like ?

Happy Blogannivesary 17 years of Winstonsdad

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It seems to come around quicker every year as I pass another year of blogging, and it has been 17 years since the first blog post. In that time, as of today, 21st June, on the blog there is –

2587 posts over the last 17 years means 152 posts a year, or a post every 2.5 days, over the last 17 years

I have written 1,521,156 words over the last 17 years

1572 books reviewed, which is an average of 92 books reviewed a year I aim to hit 200 by the time the blog turns 21

From 136 countries, I slowly like adding a country every once in a while for me, the aim isn’t to read a book from every country it is depth in every country over time, so it will be much the same as I am currenttly doing where so far this year I’ve read 51 books from 22 countries 45 of those books were in translation this year so far .

 

The most read countries over  the last 17 years

  1. France 187 books
  2. Germany 126 books
  3. Italy 72 books
  4. Spain 71 Books
  5. Japan 66 books
  6. Argentina 58 books
  7. Austria 51  books
  8. England 43  Books
  9. Netherlands 37 books
  10. US 37 books

A top ten I can see over the next decade: Korea maybe coming into the top ten. The next ten countries after that are a number of Latin American countries, with over 150 Latin American books over the years.

Blog Highlights ]

Going to both the Old IFFP prize ceremony and the London Book Fair.  Getting asked to talk to the Swedish translators.  Having the blog mentioned on a book cover a few times. Doing the shadow panel, of course. Being part of the blogging community, I have still tried to comment more this last year or so. I never quite got over the loss of Google Reader for keeping up with blogs, as I still see a bright future for blogging among passion bloggers like me, where it is about reading and sharing my reading journey, not trying to be anything other than the everyman of world lit!

The coming years

I am always flirting with the idea of Vlogging but can’t see it happening. If anything, I am now going to work on the quality of the pictures on the blog for posts; try to tie the blog in with my Instagram feed more over time.  For me, this is a hobby, and I won’t be trying to make money from it. I don’t have a Ko-fi or Patreon account, or a wishlist of books I’d like for myself; this is a passion, not a way to make a little bit of money.  I pay for my WordPress these days, but I don’t mind as it means I don’t have to worry about running out of space for the blog. I aim to hit 2000 books by the time the blog turns 21 in four years’ time. I would love to maybe join in a podcast or such once in a while. I also see the trend of my review posts getting longer over time; they have slowly grown since I started the blog. I also do hope to get back to London in the near future. I also hope to meet more of my fellow bloggers over time. Here is to the next 17 years of blogging fun

On a personal note, I’d like to thank everyone for the comments, the books sent for me to read, the invites, and the chances I have been given over the last 17 years; it has made all this worth every minute.

A summer with Montaigne by Antoine Compagnon

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A Summer with Montaigne by Antoine Compagnon

French nonfiction

Original title – Un été avec Montaigne

Translator – Tina Kover

Source – Personal copy

 

I picked this as one of my summer TBR books because I had read it last year but hadn’t reviewed it. I still ned to read more than the couple of Essays from Montaigne I have read.  This book was taken from a series of radio essays that were done over a summer by the literary professor Antoine Compagnon, where each day over the summer a passage of Montaigne’s was read, and these essays were then read where he used his ideas to compare to the modern day to help maybe make people want to read Him. The series must have been successful, as he did a series about the French poet Baudelaire after this, and the series itself ran for a number of years, covering over writers and Poets over the years.

This is one of the most moving passages in the Essays; it is rare for Montaigne to talk about an event in his life, a private moment, in such detail. The story is about a fall from a horse, and the loss of consciousness that followed. “In the time of our third or second troubles (I do not well remember which), going one day abroad to take the air, about a league from my own house, which is seated in the very center of all the bustle and mischief of the late civil wars in France; thinking myself in all security and so near to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I had taken a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but was not very strong. Being upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use of this horse in a kind of service that he was not accustomed to, one of my train, a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse, that had a very ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the brave and set on ahead of his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where I was, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse, with such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over and over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air:

The fall from the Horse

So each of the forty short essays picks part of what Montaigne wrote about or stood for as a person; alongside this, we learn a little of his history from him,oving riding the acident he had and how this led to him spend the years he did in his tower, where he wrote the essays in a world were he read and wroote about his thoughts and his life.  From the first essay around engagement and how Montaigne hadn’t been so taken with the ideas of Machchiavelli when he read The Prince. Then through how Montaigne conversed with people and how he was a plainspeaker, not someone who wanted to stuff ideas into people.  Then about the horse and his fall from the horse, which is in his essays. To his obsession over the essays with Death from the fall on the horse to how we are all going to die.  What emerges from this is a desire to read Montaigne himself; the passion that Compagnon has for him comes through in the essays, but also in how, even after all this time, the themes and ideas he wrote about still have echoes in the present.

Death is one of the major subjects on which Montaigne ruminates, and to which he returns again and again. The Essays are also a sort of preparation for death, from the chapter “That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die” early in Book One to the end of Book Three and its final two chapters, “Of Physiognomy,” in which Montaigne praises the stoic attitude of peasants, who are exposed to the ravages of war and plague and yet remain as composed and tranquil as Socrates on the verge of drinking hemlock, to “Of Experience.”

His obsession with Death in the Essays

I loved this. I am a huge fan of radio essays. I spent a lot of my younger years listening to Radio Four and love the likes of Alistair Cooke and shows like Something Understood.  The series was broadcast with an actor reading a section of Montaigne that each essay uses as its source material.  The book is a great intro to Montaigne; I will be reading his essays in the near future. I have a feeling I will be looking back and cross-referencing Compagnon’s thoughts on the essays, but also, like he does, thinking about how what he wrote about touches us now.  Montaigne lived in a time of war, and we seem to be living in increasingly darker times. But I also think Europa have missed a trick by not doing the other books in this radio series; it seems every series has been published as a book after the summer. It would be an interesting collection to have.  Do you have a favourite series of radio essays or, even these days, podcasts ?

Night Train by Xu Zechen

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Night Train by Xu Zechen

Chinese fiction

Original title – 《夜火车》Night Train

Translator – Jeremy Tiang

Source – Review copy

One of the publishers i first learnt about when I started this blog was Two lines press they are based in US they started in 2013 which is a few years after I started this blog and they are a press I have got books from when I found them as they have mainly published in the US but they are now publishing some of the books in the Uk as well which is great I was lucky to have been sent a few ttitles they have brought out in the Uk this is the first one I decided to read as it appealed .I am always searching for a Chinese novel that captures modern China, the China of huge megacities and a country that in some ways is very tech-savvy. Now this isn’t that book but Xu Zechen is a highly regarded writer and has been writing for twenty years. This book was his third novel, published in 2008; he is also the editor of the People Literature magazine and was on a list of the best writers under 41 a few years ago.

Having puked, Munian feels perfectly sober again.

Xiaoyi is an open book: Jin Xiaoyi, male, Han Chinese, thirty-five, unmarried, four previous live-in girlfriends though the good times never lasted long. Hasn’t had sex in more than a year and he’s pretty much forgotten what it feels like. Painter, mostly in oils. Taught at an art institute in Nanjing, where he staged a performance piece that irretrievably upset his bosses; a year ago, he voluntarily accepted a job teaching third-rate students in this small town. He stands by his performance piece, it was very meaningful, very humanist. He’d felt unattractive women were discriminated against at the university, so he rented the student rec center and threw a party. At the door, he charged the pretty girls while the less attractive ones got a blooming rose and free admission. For one night the tables were turned. Unfortunately, that’s not how the school saw it. He was told hed mortified the less-beautiful female comrades, and the party was shut down early.

A neighbour i did wonder if this artist was based on someone ?

The book is about Munian, a man from a poor family, who has worked as a gardener at the university and, over time, has studied and worked to the point where he can become a graduate and then pursue postgraduate studies. But he has set his mind on travelling out of his small city by train and, in particular, a night train. The night train is a Motif through out the book it is almost as thou they lead to.  Brighter Future, or do they? But when his father refuses to give him the money for this short trip, he comes up with a plan, and this is the point that pivots the novel. He then pretends he is on the run from killing someone; he goes and tells his father. He knows his father has some money that could be used for the trip his father had previously said no to, but when faced with the possibility that his son could be arrested, he gives him the money. But the pivot happens when he returns, and his father told the police what he said he did . What happens when you say you killed someone and you didn’t? It has a domino effect on his life and his studies; his life pivots from this one idea. It shows how one event can change a life, the perception of that person by others, and maybe even lead to the thought that he said he did?

On Friday, Munian gets off work early and goes to the library. Nothing to do with classical literature this time, just trains. During work, he mentioned the freight train launch to Fossil Xu, who didn’t seem surprised. “This ought to have happened long ago,” he said. “If this town had been connected to a rail line ten years ago, the whole place would be completely different. Trains are what allow economies to grow and talent to flow.” Munian has never really thought about this-to him, trains are just a manifestation of his wanderlust. “Think about it,” said Fossil Xu. “You have to see the overall picture.”This made sense to Munian, so here he is in the library.

I say trains and tain trips are a recurring them in the book

I enjoyed the way the story pivoted on that one moment, but what I found interesting was that, yes, Munian suffered for it, yet he still had a job through one of his professors. It captures a life in Limbo what happens when people lose trust. Added to this is the mix of characters we get, from the chaotic people in his dorm. There is a sense of them all being caught in a trap of studies, their world of studying; hence, when he has the train to escape this, it appeals even for a few days. Then to those he meets as he starts to fall through the cracks in society. It captures a man trying to get ahead in his life, caught by a single lie and the knock-on effect of that, but also captures the hamster wheel of studying; maybe the train is the only escape in this world a train to the day!  Do you have a favourite Modern Chinese novel ?

 

 

The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez

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The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez

Argentine fiction

Original Title – La casa de papel

Translator -Nick Caistor

Source – Review copy

I was pleased to see this fun novella reissued by Thousand Horsemen. As it was the second book I reviewed from Argentina back in 2010, it will now be the 58th book and the first reread I have done for Argentina, in fact only the second reread I have done for Argentina, over the years. But this is one of those novellas that, firstly, can be read in an evening. But it is also an ode to books themselves, as a single book is the main character in the book itself, and that is an old copy of Conrad’s The Shadow Line that was sent to a man who has since died.  Since I first reviewed the book, Carlos is still living in Uruguay; he is more of a critic than a novelist.  He writes for two papers in Uruguay as well as El Pais; he has also written a biography of Juan Carlos Onetti. Nick Caistor is still translating many wonderful books.

It was indeed a book, but not of the kind I had been expecting. No sooner had I opened the package than I felt an instinctive nervousness. I went to the office door, closed it, and returned to the broken-spined old copy of The Shadow-Line. I was aware of the thesis Bluma was writing on Joseph Conrad. But the extraordinary thing was that there was a filthy crust on its front and back covers. There was a film of cement particles on the page edges that left a fine dust on the surface of the polished desk.

I took out a handkerchief and to my astonishment picked up a small piece of grit. There was no doubt it was Portland cement, the remains of a mortar that must have been stuck more firmly to the book before someone had made a determined attempt to remove it.

The rather battered Shadow line in the parcel !

Now our book is narrated by the person who has taken over Bluma Lennon’s job as a professor of Literature, after she was struck by a car whilst reading Dickson. The discovery of a parcel from Uruguay containing a rather battered copy of Joseph Conrad’s Shadow Line.  This sends our narrator on a trip to Uruguay.  To find Carlos Bruna, the man that had sent the book. to the now dead Bluma. This leads our narrator to find a man who has disappeared as well, but who was a mad book collector in the process of building his own huge library in a remote part of Uruguay.  Leads our narrator into a world of bibliophiles, books, and the histories of the books they have and their readers. It is a sort of mystery, a love of books, and an obvious love of Uruguay.

He smiled a conspiratorial smile I willingly shared.
‘But unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘how many hours a day can I devote to reading? At most four or five. I work from eight o’clock to five in a position of some responsi-bility. But all the time I’m longing to be back here. In my cave, if you’ll pardon the expression, where I can spend a few happy hours until ten o’clock, when I usually go upstairs for supper.
I’m not interested in first editions. What I want is to have the book within reach in the best possible condition, otherwise I become anxious. These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repel-lent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust. From time to time, though, I have them fumigated just in case, because you can never be too sure. Silverfish drove Brauer mad.’
‘Did he keep his books in glass cases?’ I asked,

One of the many book collectors they meet trying to find out who carlos Brauer was

I see some people find this book annoying but a think it is a book that is sparse nature of the book with the gaps in the book are maybe meant be there they are alomost like gaps for the reader to fill. I said it was fable-like in my first review; I still think that it is a clever twist on the detective tale, centred on a dead woman, a missing man, and a book that connects them, but also about what books bring to us and how obsession works. I hadn’t reread Shadow Line when I first reviewed the book, but this time I got my edition and am slowly reading it, and it may have just a connection of the line between being a boy and a man; maybe the shadow line here is between being a book lover and a complete bibliophile obsessive. It is a book about books, readers, bibliophiles, and what happens when that goes over the edge: a woman killed reading Emily Dickinson rather than watching the road and a man who had built a mad library that has disappeared as well. I loved this more the second time around. I think reading 1500 books over the years has made me connect more with the characters. Do you have a favourite book that has books as part of the story in it?

What remains by Brais Lamela

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What remains by Brais Lamela

Spanish Galician fiction

Original title – Ninguén queda

Translator – Jacob Rogers

Source – Personal Copy

I have read a few books from Galicia over the years, one of the regions of Spain that has a distinct identity and history. The book is written by one of the region’s rising stars, Brais Lamela. He is considered one of the best writers under 40 and has won a prize for being one of the best writers under 40; this book, his debut novel, was also on EL País’ books of the year when it came out. The book sort of mirrors the writer’s own life, as the narrator is a man studying in New York and from Galicia himself, like Brais, who is studying at Yale. The book is set around a piece of history that involved Franco trying to modernise the country, and this involved relocating a group of Farmers from the remote valleys that Franco had ordered to be filled and made into Dams, so they were forced to move to the Terra Cha, the farming land in the Galicia region, but as incomers torn from their homes.

It’s not the first time I’ve found a reference to a trip of the sort. When I first started researching the U.S. government’s aid to the Franco dictatorship, I stumbled upon the story of some hydraulic engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, who had developed a new system for pumping underground water in the desert flats of Southern California, and travelled to a few colonial settlements in southern Spain to install it.

Thanks to their help, the dictatorship’s engineers were able to penetrate the depths of the earth and extend their control to the world of underground channels. I hadn’t found much about their trip, but I’d been left with an idea that those connections might be the most useful material for my thesis, revealing the inconspicuous flow of information between American capitalist institutions and Franco’s dictatorship, like synapses of a vast and terrible nervous system.

The narrator discovers the past

The novel is framed as the student in New York trying to look back at the events of the Franco era; when he comes across this mass relocation from the hills to the plains of grassland in Galicia, as they are now expect to be dairy farmers, the story is further framed when the narrator finmds the story of a woman that had disappeared around the time all this had happened. The second half of the book sees our narrator revisiting the places he had looked at in the first half as he recounts what happened to those who stayed in the mountains; now the remains of the village are a hippie commune. To the dairylands of the TERRA CHA, how the people lived on from those still living, and how it was all for show at times. It captures one man’s look into the past, how it touches the present, and how often history repeats.

I stop the recording, realizing that the story I was looking for had been there all along. It hadn’t caught my attention at the time, one more story in the litany of tragedies the colonists had faced. I’d been distracted by the anecdote about Franco (which I’d heard in other recordings, though some mentioned a different government figure). Now everything seems to make sense, and the anonymous figures acquire names: the important visitors’ were almost certainly Tannenbaum and his team, and the expelled woman was the ill-fated Leonita, who in a matter of days found herself not just widowed but homeless.

Talking to thiose that were there and How they made it look different when Franco appeared

This is one of those books that is hard to pigeonhole; it is a novel but also a memoir a thesis about the times, a look at the Franco Regime and the dark past it meant for those forcibly exiled due to him wanting Dams built for Hydro power as I said in the last passage It is also a sign of how history can repaet how many more Dams have been built around the world by regimes. I was reading this and thinking of all the people who were relocated when China built the Three Gorges Dam; over a million people were displaced to make way for the dam.  This book is a clever twist on a piece of history with the framing of looking through the archives this is part of Brais Lamela own studies is into archives one can see how pieces of history being the seed for this clever story of exiles and one woman who dosappeared it has it all the sense of belonging, getting lost on the turbulance of all this the aftermath years later when our narrator returns to the places in the first half of the book! I think this is one of those gems that has gone under the radar. A must for fans of writers like Sebald or Luiselli in particular, as they both live in New York, and this being a book that captures both the old and the new world, another book I was most reminded of was Bilbao- New York- Bilbao, another multi-layered novel of diaries, memories, place, folklore and time ab Basque work that covered bith sides of the atlantic as well ! Do you have a favourite book from Galicia?

 

Nothing Grows by Moonlight by Toborg Nedreaas

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Nothing Grows by Moonlight by Torborg Nedreaas

Norwegian fiction

Original title – Av måneskinn gror det ingenting

Translator – Bibba Lee

Source – Personal copy

There is a wave of books being published in the last few years that capture extraordinary female voices from across Europe as we try to fill in the gaps that have been overlooked, from Tore Ditlevsen to Natalia Ginzburg, to name two. I had seen this book being mentioned as coming back out; it had come out in the late 80s but was overdue for a reissue and is from a prize-winning and controversial writer when it was published, with its look at back-street abortions and how women had to go to these people to avoid children.  She was also a writer who focused on working-class voices in her literature and was a lifelong communist; she asks us to consider what we would do in the main character’s life and what options we would have.

“This must be god-awful boring to you. Well, I assume you’re telling the truth. Love, well. There should be no name for it.

Because it is… well, it’s not something you can put a name on.

Some of the murkiness that lives its bacterialike existence in a young girl’s fantasy is mixed up in it. No, I’m lying. The murkiness has more profound causes, of course. I’ll leave that to psychoanalysts to mess with. But then a man arrives, a real live man, and he’s been there the whole time. Some are stuck on movie stars during that period, some on sports idols, but those of us who are basically faithful continue to build on our childhood infatuation. Caress it maybe, nourish and cultivate and all the stuff we do to explain the facts. All right by me.

she was 15 when she started her relationship with Johannes

The book is framed by a man meeting and taking pity on a woman at a train station, then taking her home. The book is him looking back on this extraordinary evening and the nameless woman whose path he crossed that evening. The book is the story of this woman’s life. She is a working-class woman who has desires, but when she meets an older man, when she is just 15, she starts a sexual relationship with the older man. He, Johannes, is a school master; he is her lover on and off in this affair for the next twenty years, as it seems he has her at his beck and call. This also affects her everyday life, as all this happens in the small mining town they live in. So when she falls pregnant for the first time, we see her description of visiting a backstreet abortionist; as the years move on later in the book, she performs this herself. This is a tale of a woman who had sexual desire but is caught up by what now would be seen as a predatory male figure. all over the course of one evening, this life is spilt out to this man and us as the reader.

‘Up there where we live. It’s different. Maybe it’s the same other places too, but up at The Mine and in our town especially you have to be like everyone else. You can’t hurt, not any worse than others. You can’t have fun; you can’t show you’re having fun, at any rate. Yes, it’s worse than anything, showing you’re happy. And above all you must never be different than you normally are; they can’t take any surprises from anyone. Take, for example, a girl who never goes dancing, who isn’t interested in kissing the boys. A girl who gets paler and more silent and ugly and hollow-eyed every day, a girl who goes to church and cries during the singing of psalms.

‘She can’t suddenly one day go to the youth centre and start dancing, laughing, and taking a swig with the boys behind the barn the way the other girls do. There would be an earthquake at The Mine and down in town.

The small town she lives in shuns her after the affair and the way she lives her life !!

The voice of the narrator in this book captures her life as she pours out to this man, over the course of one night, twenty years of her life. Visiting a back-street abortionist reminded me of scenes from the film Vera Drake about a woman who was a back-street abortionist in the UK. I was also reminded of the kitchen-sink dramas of the sixties; here, this is a sort of anti-Taste of Honey: the woman who chose her life. It makes you question the society at the time; it shocked the country when it came out with its graphic descriptions, especially when she =uses kiniting needles to do an abortion herself. But it is meant to make you question it all; that is the point: this woman is a sort of everywoman; how many women have faced the decisions she made? nameless, but everyone in a way? What also struck me is how much, within the US, certain states are now taking back years of women’s rights to decide about their own lives; how much more poignant this book is now than even ten years ago! A powerful tale that captures human suffering and a broken woman so well .

 

 

 

Bait by Eugenia Ladra

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Bait by Eugenia Ladra

Uruguayan Fiction

Original title – Carnada

Translator – Miriam Tobin

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to have been sent this book from Daunt Books, and I was excited, as I have only read three other books from Uruguay over the years. I’m always looking to expand the scope of books from various countries on the blog, and this debut novel struck me as a perfect choice. It is always great to highlight new talent; the three previous writers I have featured from Uruguay have all been fairly well established.  This is a debut novel from a rising new writer that has been listed and won prizes elsewhere. It seems it is set in the small town the writer grew up in, a fishing village that has since become a port for huge container ships. A town full of pagan like ideas and macho idealsas a summer sun heats things up.

It was an afternoon at the beginning of that summer.

The heat started to relent and gradually Paso Chico ceased to be the deserted land it became after lunch, when the sun beat down brutally and not even the insects could rouse themselves out of their hiding places. People surfaced from their siestas, aired out their musty homes and joined the crowd that had gathered outside, partly to scope out what was going on, and also to get some air now the cool had descended, to see if they could refresh their sluggish bodies and dispel all that humidity.

A town on the point of boiling over in the heat

 

The book focuses on Marga, who is turning thirteen and becoming a young woman.  But in the small town of Paso Chico, she is shunned by those in the town.  This is one of those towns where time hasn’t quite caught up; traditions live on, from carrying a figure of the Mother Mary from house to house. It reminds me of the rural towns in Italy where things like this still happen.  Add to this that when she was born, Marga’s mother died, and the town had gone from drought to flooding, and this poor girl is one of those people who are seen but not seen, almost like a ghost to all in the village.  So, for her, when a ship arrives and a mysterious man, Recio, appears in this small town of stray dogs and sleepy bars full of men slowly getting drunk.  A place of traditional values in the heat of the summer.  This is a perfect mix for something to happen, especially when he captures the eye of this young marga. Especially as, like her, he has set the town twittering about who he is and what will happen if he stays. This in turn sets off a chain of events that blend violence, fear, and a town caught up in its own superstitions.

That same night Recio turned in early, not to follow the rules, but because he was in need of the sleep hed missed out on during his late nights at the bar. It was only at noon the next day, when Justa, Olga and Marga were having lunch as they did most days, their eyes engrossed in the soap opera, that the boy appeared. He wandered out of his room with one hand rubbing the sleep out of his eyes while the other covered his cock standing at half-mast from having just woken up. He dashed quickly to the bathroom and before disappearing behind the door, polite boy that he was, greeted the three women with a nod of his head, as if seeing them in the street at a distance.

Recio and Magra are like to ends of a newtons cradle each havong a knock on effect when they see each other

 

This is one of those books that female Latin American writers are doing so well.  The simmering undercurrent of male violence in a male-dominated world is captured here.  But also that mix of almost pagan-like superstitions and that sort of strong Catholic Christian beliefs, where both have become intertwined, so a change in weather or someone appearing out of the blue is seen as a curse or a foreboding that something is going to happen. It captures the chaos this can bring to a young girl on the cusp of being a young woman. It has a mix of Graham Greene’s Power and Glory, Fernando Melchor’s  Hurricane Season, and a nod to Juan Carlos Onetti with the construction of a fictional town on the cusp of the River Plate, like his Santa Maria, a dark, brooding place alongside the river.  It is a tale of coming of age, of not being wanted, and of the dark place that can lead one to. In a town full of men, a young girl becomes a woman in a masculine world. Do you have a favourite book from Uruguay?

 

10 TBR books of Summer

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Annabel, on her blog, is doing a 20-book TBR for the summer. I would struggle to pick and stick to 20 boks over the next three months. I am just not that sort of reader, so I had a look through my endless piles of TBR books. I buy books all the time as part of my one-day super grand library; well, that’s what I tell myself. So maybe it is time to do a few TBR challenges.

My choices are –

I read this last year but didn’t review it, and I want to read more of Montaigne’s work other than the couple of essays I have read over the years. plus, it has summer in the title

A woman gets over her relationship falling apart in the summer one of the few Elena Ferrante books I haven’t read.

I don’t know much about this, but it is by Christopher Maclehose, Mountain Leopard Press. I trust his judgment on books. It is a road trip in Patagonia

From Seagull Books, Kite is a book that walks the line between fiction and memoir: a relationship spanning over twenty years between two men from the Egyptian-Lebanese group is seen as one looks east, the other looks west.

A variation on Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. I will watch Beckett and then read this; it is a short piece in a trilingual edition here with the French and German versions.Another from Seagull books

Another summer-connected title follows a teenager as he is caught up in events as his world spirals out of control on the last days of his holiday.

One of those books I was reading, put to one side and never got back to, is a spin-off of the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, set in the modern day, a prose poem. Plus I spent a couple of nice summers near the Rhine when I was younger.

A relationship is caught as they never quite get there, but the tension of nearly being together from Balzac. I enjoyed the last book I read by him.

 

Pushkin’s verse novel has been on my TBR a while, and I keep thinking I need to read more russian works.

Last I thoubng to throw in a book from a new country a book from Nepa that I have had for a good while.

There is a binbgo card for this event here. I think these books could tick a few boxes.

Have you joined this challenge at all ?

 

 

 

May 26 round up

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  1. Ilaria or the Conquest of Disobedience by Gabriella Zalapi
  2. Things fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  3. Bound to Violence by Yambo Ouologuem
  4. Outsider Everywhere  BY Mercedes Halfon
  5. Too great a sky by Lilana Corobca 
  6. On the Edge by Markus Werner
  7. Tree by Aya Koda
  8. Monique Escapes by Édouard Louis

It was a quieter month than I had wanted, but I managed 8 books. I started with a young girl on the run with her father driving through Italy, then a clash of the African tribal world and the Western world in an African classic.  Then another classic from Mali, rediscovered after it was used in part in the Prix Goncourt winner The Most Secret Memory of Men, which was inspired by Bound to Violence.  Then a look at the great Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. Then a train journey in World War II and then living in exile. Then two men talk about marriage, love and divorce; who is the older man ? Then, a collection of stories about trees and the writer’s interactions with them. Then Edouard Louis’s mother finally escapes another abusive relationship and finds peace at last.

Book of the month

Book cover: 'On the Edge' — A Novel by Markus Werner, being held by a hand over a patterned surface

It was a hard pick; there was a dud book this month, but this book was a real favourite and one I will be thinking about for a few evenings, especially the interaction between the two main characters. It just drew me in?

Non book things

Amanda and I watched the end of the series The Last Day of Ptolemy Grey with Samuel L. Jackson as a man who has taken an experimental drug to reverse dementia for a short time; not just that, but to make him remember all his life what was the treasure he had found as a kid and who killed his nephew are the two main threads. Music-wise, I got the recent Adlous Harding Album, Train on the Island; I still love lots of what 4ad brings out on their record label.

Next month

I have a few TBR books for the TBR of summer challenge; a post later this week about that.  Other than that, I have a couple of books from Two Lines Press to read, and I can’t wait to get the latest book from Dasa Drndric in Translation.. Lots of options I am off for two weeks now so hope catch up on some reading.

Monique Esacapes by Édouard Louis

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Monique Escapes by Édouard Louis

French Auto fiction

Original title – Monique s’évade

Translator John Lambert

Source –  Personal Copy

I think one of the writers whose books I have enjoyed, if that is the right word. But connected to him is Edouard Louis, whose books about his life are shocking yet also show how life can move on over time. I have read three of the five books translated into English so far, so when I was in Macclesfield last weekend, I happened to see this book on the shelf in Waterstones. I decided to get it because another thing about Louis’s books so far is that they are slim novellas that can easily be read in an evening. This is what I did with this book. I will hold my hand up, and this book had me crying it is a very long time since i did that. I’m not sure.  If the visit to Macclesfield, where my mother’s ashes are scattered, had raked up some memories about my relationship with my mum and my strained relationship with my stepfather.

The day after her escape, at eleven in the morning. I’d just woken up. I drank a couple of coffees and called her:

‘How are you today?

She looked like she was out of breath, as if she’d been running.

I’m still tired, but I’m okay. I slept a lot. I’m glad I left?

That reassured me; I’d started to worry again that she’d regret her escape and go back.

That had worried Didier too: ‘Now that she’s got the hardest part behind her, she needs to hang in there and not go back to that man. It takes so much energy to escape and break free that often, right when you’ve almost made it, you give up and go back.’

The hardest was leaving him, and it’s now a day later !

The book opens, and Edouard is on a writer’s residency in Athens when he gets a call from his mum. His mum has basically repeated the mistake of her past relationship with Edouard’s father and fallen in with a man who is a drinker but now is starting to abuse her and control her. She left her home to move in with the guy. Edouard knows this, so the book follows how, at a distance, he helps his mum get herself together, and he then helps her plan a way out of this situation. He connects to his sister, it turns out she didn’t like his book about their father, and they hadn’t spoken for years, but when he rang, they joined to help their mother.  We saw him return to Paris later in the book, and how it had empowered his mother; she was still friends with the man, but now on her own terms. The most touching section was when he invited his mother to see the staging of his book in Germany. His mother had never flown and was so proud of her son this evening.

The day of the performance and our trip approaches. She talks about it a lot and as we talk I become fully aware of all the dimensions of our imminent departure for Ger-many: my mother has never crossed a border in her life, she’s never seen a country other than her own, apart from one afternoon on a boat off the coast of England with her school, just a few kilometres from the port town in the north of France where she grew up, she’s never walked down a street and heard a language other than her own, she’s never been in contact with another culture, another civilisation, she’s fifty-seven years old and she’s never taken a plane in her life, she’s never seen the sky from the inside and the earth from the sky, she’s never slept in a hotel room, she’s never been to the theatre, except to see a few school plays when she was around ten or twelve, she’s never seen a real performance directed by a real director, of course, she’s never seen a show in which she’s the main protagonist, she’s never been invited to travel by an institution the way artists or politicians can be.

His mother did so many firsts on the trip with Édouard.

I think Louis is maybe one of the best writers at capturing the horror life can bring. Whether in the past his relationship with his Father or in this case the horror of the repetition of the past in his mother’s life. He shows how people can escape violence, and over the course of the book, we see Louis’ mother grow in confidence. This was the first time in her whole life she had lived by herself. The freedom to just do nothing and live her life on her terms shows a woman growing. As I say, I connected with this book on a personal level. The things I  should have said to my mother when she was alive about her world that haunts me still. If you liked his other books or books from the likes of Annie Ernaux, this is a male writer who voices his life like hers. Have you read anything by Édouard Louis ?

 

Tree by Aya Koda

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Tree by Aya Koda

Japanese Non-fiction

Original title – 『木』 新潮社

Translator – Charlotte Goff

Source – Review copy

I was so excited when I saw this was available to review. The main reason is the connection to the film Perfect Days by Wim Wenders, which is set in Tokyo, and the main character Hirayama is shown as a reader, and when he one day visits the book shop, the book he picks up is this book. The shopkeeper says Aya Koda she deserves more recognition, she uses the same words we do, yet there’s something so special. What more could you want as an introduction to a writer? Aya Koda had been married and divorced before she ever wrote a book. In her forties, she wrote several books about her relationship with her father, Rohan Koda, a well-known Japanese writer, and also wrote novels. Also books in this style Zuihitsu a japanese style meaning follow the brush a way of piecing together memoirs in a stream of conciousness style this is a book made up of her reaction to trees.

Some kabuki costumes are uncommonly thick, such as Matsumaru’s in the tale of the three brothers Matsu-maru, Umemaru and Sakuramaru – named after pine, plum and cherry trees respectively. I have never touched Matsumaru’s costume, and have only ever glimpsed it from a far-away seat, so I suppose I can’t say for sure how thick it is, but whenever I look at the bark of an old pine tree, I remember Matsumaru’s kimono. Pines wear a heavy kimono. Or they wear them heavily, is perhaps more accurate. Their skin is covered in rough, dry fissures forming tortoiseshell-like patterns, the thickness of their bark clear to see from the depth of these cracks. Matsumaru’s costume features pine trees with snow-laden branches against a charcoal back-ground, creating a cool, clear colour scheme of black, white and blue; the kimono worn by real pines has a dirty kind of colour, its hexagonal fissures lending it an imposing quality. Incidentally, Matsumaru’s hair is incredibly thick, and pine trees will also often be blessed With a luscious head of needles.

 

 

Their rare fifteen pieces in this collection range from personal insights like a sapling she had from her father. To visit an island where the trees are covered in volcanic ash.  For me, I picked three pieces that show her drifting style. The first is the tree kimono around the way bark on some trees looks, and the history of trees and the kimono in fashion see unusual trees in a forest all stitched together. Then we have a chapter around a pair of brothers and their relationship to the woods and trees as master carpenters, their view of when trees are living and when they need to be felled. The sort of knowledge built over a lifetime is evident in the way she watches them treat the trees and wood around them. Then a story about the Sugi Cedar that starts with her looking at a concrete tetrapod and ends with the shape and symbolic nature of the Sugi tree. In Japanese culture, the tree is believed to be among the oldest living trees in the world on certain islands.

Back when I lived in Nara I was lucky enough to hear a number of stories from the Nishioka brothers, both of whom were master carpenters, but the lesson that left the deepest impression on me – which they emphasized in all of their tales, at every possible opportunity – was the living nature of wood.

The wood the Nishioka brothers were referring to was not the kind in trees still standing, but rather wood as a material. These carpenters believed that, just as trees have their way of living, wood has its own life, too. They suggested that we call the period while the tree is standing its first life, and its time as a material its second. Imagining that timber is simply dead tree, they told me, betrays a lack of understanding. Theirs was truly a craftsman’s way of looking at things. I remember, once, I was speaking to the younger brother, and he told me not to focus purely on the life of wood, either, but to also think about, as he called it, ‘wood which has died “

The chapter Trees standing up , trees lying down

 

Now this is one of those books I love. If you are a fan of Wenders films, you will love this. It is a perfect book for his drifting, road-movie-style filmmaking. I can see why it may have been chosen as the book brought in the film. If you are a fan of nature writing, it will appeal, as it captures a distinctly Japanese view of trees and their connection not just to the writer but to Japanese society as a whole. Also, I think it will appeal to Sebald fans. I just loved her passion for the natural world, seeing how trees have impacted her life, and the trees she has seen throughout her life.  The book was published after her death. I will now need to find her novels.  Has anyone read any of them?