'Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay' by Elena Ferrante (Review)

While Women in Translation Month is all about highlighting the overlooked, it's also nice to celebrate those female writers who have already managed to become well known in the Anglosphere.  Of course, if you're looking for big-name female writers in translation, nobody quite seems to have captured attention over the past year or so like Elena Ferrante, the elusive, reclusive Italian writer whose Neapolitan Novels have impressed so many readers.

With the third in the series about to be released, Ferrante's reputation seems set to keep rising, but does the latest instalment measure up to her earlier books?  Well, I'll let you know very soon, but be warned -  it's impossible to discuss this book without giving away details from My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name.  If you'd prefer not to know, please look away now...

*****
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (translated by Ann Goldstein, e-copy supplied by Europa Editions) continues seamlessly from The Story of a New Name, with Lenù introducing her new novel at a bookshop.  When a middle-aged man is less than complimentary about her work, she's taken aback, so it's fortunate that a white knight appears to defend her - none other than Nino Sarratore, her childhood friend (and crush...).

While Nino disappears again soon after, his work as a university lecturer means that he's in the same field as Lenù's fiancé, Pietro, and it's inevitable that they will catch up again.  Lila, however, is back in Naples, and with little contact between the two old friends, it seems as if their friendship has finally run its course.  Little does Lenù know, though, that she's fated to return to her hometown again and again - it's not quite as easy to turn her back on Naples as she'd like...

Those Who leave..., the third book in the Neapolitan Novels series (the series was originally meant to be a trilogy, but it will now extend to four books), looks at the friends' adult years, with a focus on marriage, kids and work, as well as a generational shift.  The spotlight, though, is on Lenù, as we are shown her life in Florence after marriage.  Initially, she is overjoyed by her success as a writer, but this soon passes and her liking for her new family also turns sour:

"...what am I to the Airotas, a jewel in the crown of their broad-mindedness?.." 
p.50 (Europa Editions, 2014)

With the inevitable, premature addition of kids, the intelligent writer soon gets bogged down in the minutiae of domestic life, her plans of a glittering career slowly fading beneath a pile of nappies.  It's a bit of a dull life...

Outside Lenù's apartment, though, things are a little less sedate.  This is the late sixties, a time of unrest throughout Europe, and students are rioting in the hope of creating a new world order.  In these tempestuous times, especially in the universities, there is a real sense of danger, from which Pietro is certainly not exempt (he's not exactly a man of the new era...).  While her next book is a bit of a struggle, Lenù is able to dabble in journalism, tempted into becoming a voice of the people.

While her friend plays with theory in Florence, Lila is living the practice down south.  Nothing seems to get on top of her, and even in a exploitative factory, her intelligence shines through.  She soon becomes a focus for action against the management, and as the pressure builds, matters are always going to come to a head.  You see, in terms of violence, whatever the rest of Italy can do, Naples can always do better...

Those Who Leave... is an entertaining book, but, in truth, I don't quite rate it as highly as I did the first two; there's a sense of its being a bridging book, a continuation of The Story of a New Name and a set up for the final part of the series.  Part of the beauty of the first two books was the electric relationship between the two women, a tie which, while never broken, was often stretched or tangled:

"I simply listened, overwhelmed.  With her, there was no way to feel that things were settled; every fixed point of our relationship sooner or later turned out to be provisional; something shifted in her head that unbalanced her and unbalanced me." (p.222)

This is largely absent here as the two women go about their separate lives, and even when they do meet, it's usually in the presence of others, and the expected confrontation is avoided.  Several times the tension builds to what we think will be a dramatic scene, only for the emotions to ebb away without ever coming to the boil.

The focus here is much more on Lenù, and that isn't necessarily a good thing.  Her life in Florence, as mentioned, is a little dull, and she actually develops into a fairly unpleasant character over the course of the novel, particularly in the second half.  In My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name, she is our voice, our eyes, and she always cut a fairly sympathetic figure, especially when Lila managed to bring her down with a sarcastic comment.  Not any more - at times, she's downright obnoxious...

Why?  Well, throughout the second half of the book, she shows herself to be selfish, lazy and aggressive, in addition to being annoyingly passive when she should be doing getting things done.  The story is basically setting up Nino's return, and this means that poor Pietro is in for some pretty shoddy treatment.  I actually thought that for much of this book, a view through the husband's eyes would have been much more interesting, looking at the friends and their families with the eyes of an outsider.  Perhaps we'd see Lenù then in a very different light.

Again, I hasten to assure you all that I did enjoy the book, and I do think it's worth reading.  However, it's not a book that can really be enjoyed without having read the previous two novels first, and I still believe that it doesn't quite match up to those.  Having said that, I suspect that my doubts will be set against a tidal wave of support for the book when other reviews start coming in.  One of the key ideas of the novel is the frustration Lenù feels at being stuck at home with the children, having to put her career on hold while she sacrifices herself for her family, and I suspect that this aspect of the story will be appreciated far more by other readers.

The reality, though, is that Those Who Leave... spends a lot of its pages building up to the final book in the series.  The lack of interaction between Lila and Lenù in this third volume is slightly frustrating - surely the final book has to bring their relationship to a head:

"Too many bad things, and some terrible, had happened over the years, and to regain our old intimacy we would have had to speak our secret thoughts, but I didn't have the strength to find the words and she, who perhaps had the strength, didn't have the desire, didn't see the use." (p.19)

I have a feeling the climax to the Neapolitan Novels will be a rather stormy one.  This is a relationship which needs to be examined further, and I'm hopeful that the two friends will finally get to the core of their friendship next time.  It's definitely time for a good, long talk, one in which those 'secret thoughts' are finally revealed...

'The Days of Abandonment' by Elena Ferrante (Review)

Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Trilogy has been getting rave reviews from just about everyone who has read the first two books (My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name) - everyone, that is, apart from this year's IFFP judges, who didn't think the second book worthy of a place on their longlist.  Still, everyone else is keenly awaiting the third volume, out later this year, and while I'm itching to get my hands on it, I thought I'd scratch the itch by trying another of the elusive Ms. Ferrante's works...

*****
The Days of Abandonment (translated by Ann Goldstein, review copy courtesy of Europa Editions) is a shorter novel than the other two I've read, but it packs a lot into its 188 pages.  The story begins with a bombshell, when Olga, a Neapolitan living in Turin, is informed by her husband that he is leaving her.  With that, Mario walks out of the apartment, and his shattered wife is left to adjust to a life without him.

While she initially attempts to deal with events calmly and rationally, this facade soon crumbles, and her fiery southern nature comes through.  She becomes more aggressive and louder, taking her anger out on innocent bystanders.  However, it's only when she finds out the true reason behind Mario's departure that she really begins to unravel...

The Days of Abandonment is an extremely emotional novel, a story which is by turns intense, passionate and violent.  Olga is a woman completely thrown by an unexpected event, unable to comprehend why exactly her husband has left her.  She begins to blame herself and also deludes herself into believing he'll be back, despite knowing full well that the break is for good.

The break-up has a devastating effect on her, emotionally and mentally, as she begins a descent into madness, becoming a different person:

"I began to change.  In the course of a month I lost the habit of putting on makeup carefully.  I went from using a refined language, attentive to the feelings of others, to a sarcastic way of expressing myself, punctuated by coarse laughter.  Slowly, in spite of my resistance, I also gave in to obscenity."
p.26 (Europa Editions, 2013)

This complete change of character brings her to do things she normally never would, and what ensues is violence - and sudden, random sex...

The calm collected woman of the start of the novel can no longer think straight.  She is unable to remember the smallest detail, forgetting whether she turned off the stove or not.  The frustration she feels boils over, ans she lashes out at her kids (and the poor dog) as she, and her apartment, spiral into sickness and decay.  The broken phone, with random, intermittent hisses, is an apt metaphor for the break with the outside world.

Of course, this is all made worse by the fact Mario is happy without her, returning with a smile and a glow:

"Mario entered loaded with packages.  I hadn't seen him for exactly thirty-four days.  He seemed younger, better cared for in his appearance, even more rested, and my stomach contracted so painfully that I felt I was about to faint.  In his body, in his face, there was no trace of our absence.  While I bore - as soon as his startled gaze touched me I was certain of it - all the signs of suffering, he could not hide those of well-being, perhaps of happiness." (p.38)

Olga is resentful, and quite rightly so.  After years of love and sacrifice, moving around to support her husband in his career, she has been, quite simply - abandoned...

The writing is excellent, as is the translation, with Goldstein recreating Olga's internal monologue in English, an anguished, desperate cry for justice.  It's violent and breathtaking, and often intensely claustrophobic - at times we sympathise, at others we cringe.  It makes for extremely uncomfortable reading at times, but it's always compelling, driving the reader on towards the culmination of the tragedy.

Ferrante has certainly succeeded in creating a story of the woes of abandonment, but whose abandonment is it?  While it's true that Olga is abandoned, she, in turn, abandons everyone else in her life.  She's certainly not a character you can support without reservations.  The Days of Abandonment is a still a great tale, though, of the dangers of taking things for granted - and of refusing to accept the inevitable, no matter how hard it is to swallow...

'Dispute over a very Italian Piglet' by Amara Lakhous (Review)

Finding the right book for the right occasion can be difficult at times, but sometimes it just happens.  Recently, I had to spend a day at the local shopping centre while my car was being given a once-over, so I needed something short(ish) that I'd be able to read while 90s power ballads were playing in the background and kids were running around screaming.

Who'd have thought that it would be good too? ;)

*****
Amara Lakhous' Dispute over a very Italian Piglet (translated by Ann Goldstein, review copy courtesy of Europa Editions) is a short novel set in Turin towards the end of 2006.  Enzo Laganà, a journalist with a sense of humour and a liking for the finer things in life, is caught out when some murders occur in Turin - mainly because he was in bed with his girlfriend in Marseilles at the time.  He manages to cover his tracks by coming up with a theory of an Eastern European mafia war, giving himself time to get back to Italy undiscovered.

However, Enzo's white lie hits a chord with popular sentiment, and the story spirals out of control, with the public desperate to know more about the conflict between Romanian and Albanian criminals.  As Enzo desperately tries to backtrack (and find out what's really going on), he gets involved with a beautiful film-maker and a couple of grumpy detectives.  And that's without even mentioning Gino.  Gino?  He's a pig...

Lakhous' novel is a clever story, a tale of a city built on corruption and racial discrimination.  From the very start, as we learn about Enzo's Calabrian roots, we see that ethnic diversity will play a large role in the novel, with each group despising the next to arrive.  Even Enzo's Ukrainian cleaner is caught up in the trap:

"Natalia can't stand the Romanians, it's impossible to make her change her ideas or at least sow some healthy doubts in her mind.  The more I go on, the more convinced I am that prejudice is an incurable disease.  There is no medicine or preventive measure that works.  What can we do?  Maybe we have to reluctantly accept living with prejudice.  That likable genius Albert Einstein wasn't wrong: it's easier to split an atom than a prejudice."
p.92 (Europa Editions, 2014)

This racial tension, however, is exactly what makes it easy for Enzo to get away with his exclusives - including getting an actor friend to provide the voice of the 'Deep Throat' informers!

The second main story, though, is that of the piglet, and it's a very good one.  When a video surfaces of a pig running through a local mosque, it's seen by the local Muslim community as a calculated insult, and only one man can be the culprit.  You see, everyone knows that Joseph from Nigeria keeps a pet pig in his apartment, and there's no chance of porcine mistaken identity.  There's only one pig around who likes wearing a Juventus scarf...

It's up to Enzo, in between fake meetings with informers, to keep the peace and try to negotiate a solution to the problem.  In doing so, he has to talk to Joseph, the local Muslim community, animal welfare activists and the local right-wing leader, all in an attempt to (literally) save Gino's bacon.  As Joseph solemnly states:

"Enzo, the important thing is for Gino to emerge from this business with his head held high." (p.128)

What can Enzo do?  He can't leave a fellow Juve fan in the lurch ;)

As you may have realised. Dispute... is a very funny book, but the humour hides some serious issues.  Lakhous looks at the vicious circle of racism towards new arrivals in the city, despairing of ever really being able to achieve harmony in a world of differences.  The incident with the pig is just a small example of the kind of misunderstandings that arise in a multicultural society.

However, the real story is hidden deeper within the book, and anyone with a passing knowledge of Italy might be able to guess where the real problem lies.  The harder Enzo digs in attempting to solve the puzzle of the murders, the clearer it becomes that far from being a matter for outsiders, this issue is a very Italian affair.  Gradually, Enzo realises that he needs to be very careful who he trusts, no matter how friendly (or beautiful) they are...

This is Lakhous' third book, and all have been brought into English by Ann Goldstein and Europa Editions; on the basis of this one, I'm very keen to try the others.  It's a clever work, one which deals with some heavy themes by surrounding them with some pig-shaped antics, fitting a surprising amount into 160 pages.  I highly recommend it - especially if you're hanging around a shopping centre waiting for a call from the local mechanics...

'Bound in Venice' by Alessandro Marzo Magno (Review)

I'm very much a lover of novels, and there's not an awful lot of non-fiction on my reading list.  However, when Europa Editions sent me a copy of today's book, it piqued my interest immediately.  The main reason for this is that it has to do with publishing, and let's face it - I'm nothing if not interested in books ;)

*****
Bound in Venice - The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book (by Alessandro Marzo Magno, translated by Gregory Conti) is a look at a golden era, both for Venice and the fledgling art of publishing.  We find ourselves in the early 16th century, where the author paints a picture of a Venice which has become the world centre of the publishing trade, a city with books for everyone in a wide range of fields.

The aim of the book is clear from the start - Marzo Magno shows us life in the Serene Republic and explains why and how Venice became a publishing powerhouse.  Thanks to a mix of intellectuals and astute businessmen, available capital and a cosmopolitan clientele, all set against a background of relative liberty and (most importantly) no censorship, the scene was set for the birth of a major publishing industry, the New York or London of the day.

Of course it wasn't just in publishing that Venice was ahead of its time.  It was a fabulous city, a cosmopolitan metropolis with Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Germans and Greeks milling around the streets and piazzas.  There were:

"...books in foreign or remote languages, but spoken by many visitors to the city, which as a melting pot is perhaps rivaled only by present-day New York."
p.17 (Europa Editions, 2013)

In fact, Venice was not just a city, but a powerful empire, with lands in eastern Europe, all throughout the Mediterranean and even reaching far into mainland Italy.  Little wonder then that it became a centre of learning - and literature.

Chapter by chapter, Bound in Venice looks at a different area of the publishing industry, covering topics such as maps, music and medicine.  The recent voyages of discovery had led to a boom in the field of cartography, and maps of new lands were followed closely by newly-made maps of the human body.  Of course, in a volatile political environment, with the Ottoman Empire desperate to make Venice bleed, books on war are also rather popular...

The work is most interesting though when it focuses its gaze on a single topic.  The chapter on the Hebrew publishing industry looks at the creation of the first printed Talmud in the language, appearing (naturally) in the city with the first Jewish 'ghetto' (back when the word didn't quite have the same connotations as it does today...).  Venetian publishers didn't discriminate though; another section looks at the fairly recent discovery, by researcher Angela Nuovo, of a legendary lost Koran.  Printed in Arabic for the first time in Venice in the early 16th century, the book turns up unexpectedly in the library of San Michele monastery (uncovered in a delightful literary detective story!)

Marzo Magno also introduces some of the stars of the renaissance publishing era.  The first is Aldus Manutius, super publisher, father of the semi-colon and italics, as well as a man the writer credits with inventing the first paperbacks (or libelli portatiles).  Small in size, with no academic commentary, these were cheap, portable books allowing the masses to enjoy a hobby previously restricted to the rich:

"Aldus Romanus (as he was fond of signing his name to honor his Roman origins) is the first to conceive of the book as entertainment.  He is the inventor of reading for pleasure, and this invention brings about a bona fide intellectual revolution that transforms what was an instrument used for praying or learning into a pleasant pastime." (pp.43/4)

OK, everyone - say thanks to Uncle Aldus ;)

Renaissance Venice also saw the rise of Pietro Aretino, the first star writer.  He came to public attention with his Sonnetti Lussuriosi (Salacious Sonnets) in 1527 and became notorious as a scandalous writer, a man loved by the masses.  Aretino was also a master of self-promotion (nothing changes...), raising his profile above that of other writers.  Of course, he had the city to thank for his success:

"The symbiosis of writer and city is total.  In no other place in sixteenth century Europe could Pietro have become the Aretino, in almost no other place could he have written such things without landing in jail, in no other place could he have found a publishing network able to guarantee him the press-runs and distribution." (p.202)

As Marzo Magno makes clear on several occasions, Aretino's success was only possible in a free Venice...

There's a lot to like about Bound in Venice, but be warned - it is a bit dry at times.  This is particularly true of the long first chapter, which is full of 'interesting' statistics.  Despite the pictures painted of 16th-century bookshops, this section is rather dull and a poor introduction to what lies ahead.  Another aspect of the book which might split readers is the writer's style as his rambling, comma-filled sentences where tangents (and tense switches) abound may not be to all tastes.

So, will you like it?  Well, it's very much a book for book lovers.  If the hunt for a rare error-filled Koran in a monastery library has you nodding off, then no.  If, on the other hand, you can't wait to get on to Wikipedia and find out what Glagolitic script looks like, this might be one for you.  Come and visit the Serene Republic - and don't forget your reading glasses :)

'The Story of a New Name' by Elena Ferrante (Review)

After reading the wonderful My Brilliant Friend a few months back, I was itching to get stuck into the sequel to Elena Ferante's novel of a Neapolitan childhood.  Luckily for me, Europa Editions have just published it - and it's another superb read.  A note of warning before we begin though - in reviewing the second book, I will (inevitably) be revealing some plot details from the first one.  *Please proceed with caution* ;)

*****
The Story of a New Name (translated by Ann Goldstein, review copy courtesy of the publisher) picks up where we left off, with the cliffhanger at Lila's wedding.  Her decision to wed to escape poverty appears misguided from the very start, with her husband having seemingly betrayed her to the people she hates most in the world.  As Lenù looks on (slightly distracted by the handsome figure of Nino Sarratore), she begins to feel that for once Lila has overplayed her hand...

Soon enough though, it is Lenù herself that starts to feel lost.  As Lila slowly adapts to life as a married woman, her friend struggles with her studies, always doubting her ability to truly fit in with the people around her.  Having deliberately distanced herself from her family and friends, Lenù now finds herself caught in a no-(wo)man's land, stranded between two social spheres, neither of which she really belongs to.

Again, the old competitiveness and jealousy raises its head, and Lenù tries to console herself that she is, at least, happier than Lila.  The new Signora Carracci, however, is a woman both enigmatic and fearless, and no matter what life throws at her, she is likely to get what she wants in the end.  Which is when Nino enters the story once more...

From the paragraphs above, you might be forgiven for thinking that I've decided to start reading romance fiction, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Taking up the themes of My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name is a twisting, caustic account of the life of women in mid-twentieth-century Naples, a feminist look at the struggles women faced in escaping from the poverty trap and a lifetime of subservience to men.

The first part of the book largely takes place in the neighbourhood, an oppressive, cramped world in itself, where a handful of families rule the roost, lending money and cheating customers at the grocery scales.  While Lila has ostensibly married into this 'ruling' class, she is a woman, with no real rights, and like all wives who hesitate to accept this 'truth', she will suffer for her obstinacy.  Lenù, our eyes and ears, is frightened by a sudden realisation of what happens to women when they become wives and mothers:

"That day, instead, I saw clearly the mothers of the old neighborhood.  They were nervous, they were acquiescent.  They were silent, with tight lips and stooping shoulders, or they yelled terrible insults at the children who harrassed them.  Extremely thin, with hollow eyes and cheeks, or with broad behinds, swollen ankles, heavy chests, they lugged shopping bags and small children who clung to their skirts and wanted to be picked up.  And, good God, they were ten, at most twenty years older than me."
p.102 (Europa Editions, 2013)

Lila is now one of these women, and her introduction to married life is brutal and upsetting.  It does not make for pleasant reading.

The new name of the book reflects Lila's new state as a married woman - Lila (or Lina) Cerullo has become Signora Carracci, and this change of name does bring some advantages.   She gains financially, moving into a large, modern apartment, and she never needs to worry about money, taking freely from the tills of her husband's businesses.  She has also risen in the world in terms of status, walking around the streets of the neighbourhood like a Neapolitan Jackie Onassis.  But at what cost?  Her freedom, her intellectual development and her self-respect...

The widening gulf between Lenù and Lila reflects the general division in the novel between the literate, intellectual characters and the rest of the neighbourhood.  Those wanting to further their minds are able to retreat to a place in their heads where their partners, friends or enemies are unable to reach them, and Lenù sees a need to keep away from her oldest friend, fearing that Lila's problems will drag her back down into the morass of the neighbourhood...

Part of the magic of Ferrante's work though is the way that the two women's lives are so inextricably entwined that there is never a chance of a complete break:

"But Lila knew how to draw me in.  And I was unable to resist: on the one hand I said that's enough, on the other I was depressed at the idea of not being part of her life, of the means by which she invented it for herself." (p.274)

Every time Lenù believes that their friendship is finally over, she can't resist going back to see her friend, looking for something she could never really explain - praise, redemption, a feeling of superiority?

Whatever it is, she's unlikely to leave satisfied - no matter how successful Lenù becomes, there's something about Lila, something innate, which allows her to effortlessly surpass her friend, to always be two steps ahead.  It's a tortured relationship at times:

"When I saw Lila again, I realized immediately that she felt bad and tended to make me feel bad, too.  We spent a morning at her house in an atmosphere that seemed to be playful.  In fact she insisted, with growing spitefulness, that I try on all her clothes, even thought they didn't fit me.  The game became torture." (p.97)

Ah, friends...

A further strong point of Ferrante's writing is her wonderful characterisation.  The two main women are strongly depicted, and can be very attractive, but there is no black and white here.  Lila is whimsical, changing her mind more often than is good for her (and the people around her), but she can also be perversely stubborn, often when giving in a little might actually benefit her.

Lenù, despite being our conduit into Ferrante's world, is a coldly honest portrayal of a character the reader might be tempted to associate with.  Egotistical, immature and often self-serving, she is also somehow easily swayed and unable to keep her nose out of matters that don't concern her, even if she kids herself that she wants no part of life in the neighbourhood.  These flaws though, far from marring the two women, make them real, complete, people we can truly sympathise with.

Ferrante's novel reflects another time, another world, one in which, of the two paths the friends choose, Lila's housewife role seems the most likely route to success.  Sadly though, that's not really the case.  Even in twenty-first-century Australia, true equality is very far from being a reality...

After our recent Federal election, won comfortably by the conservative opposition, the new Prime Minister (a deeply religious and conservative politician) announced his new cabinet.  Of the eighteen ministers announced, only one was a woman, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (Abbott himself decided to take on the women's affairs portfolio...).  A cartoon in the newspaper the next day had a worried-looking colleague asking Abbott if having one woman in the cabinet was a problem.  The cartoon PM replied by saying that it would all be good - she'd be overseas most of the time anyway...  Just a joke, right?  I'm not convinced...

In a climate like this, books like Ferrante's are a reminder of how far we've come, but also of how far we've yet to go - and it's another great read.  So, can I have the final book in the trilogy now, please? ;)

'70% Acrylic 30% Wool' by Viola Di Grado (Review)

Today's post is on another gem from Europa Editions that I missed out on the first time around, but it's a book that was well worth waiting for.  The writing is strange, and subtly disorientating, but the setting is very, very familiar...

*****
Viola Di Grado's 70% Acrylic 30% Wool (translated by Michael Reynolds, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a wonderfully bizarre novel, one set in the English city of Leeds.  From the very start, the city plays a starring role in the story, mostly as a dark, depressing place, a town where it's always December and daylight is just a distant cultural memory.

Of course, we're not meant to take this literally (I think...) - this view of the city is an outward projection of the mental state of the main character, Camelia Mega.  Born in Italy and brought to Leeds at the age of seven, she is struggling to cope with the loss of her father (caught in flagrante with a lover - in a car crash) and her mother's retreat into an inner-world, one of denial and wordlessness.

Camelia seems set to follow her mother down the spiral when a chance encounter on the street with a young Chinese man, Wen, provides the impetus she needs to start living again.  In fact, Leeds even manages to get past December (eventually...).  A love story with a happy ending then?  You obviously don't know Viola Di Grado...

70% Acrylic 30% Wool is a fantastic book, a novel which defies simple clichéd explanations.  It gets its power from Di Grado's manipulation of language and the way in which she makes the ordinary bizarre, constantly leaving the reader grasping at thin air.  For me, this was a more personal reading than for most because I lived in Leeds for a few years, very close to the places Camelia describes; however, the Leeds of the novel is less that of my student years and more one of some post-apocalyptic nightmare.  As any self-respecting southerner will tell you, it's grim up north:

"It must have been seven in the morning but it was dark outside, like at any self-respecting hour of the day in Leeds.  They discriminate against daylight hours here, ghettoizing them behind curtains."
p.19 (Europa Editions, 2013)

I don't think the city's tourist board will be hiring Di Grado as an ambassador any time soon...

Things start to get better though, when Camelia meets Wen, the manager of a clothes shop, and starts taking private Chinese lessons (let's ignore the fact that they met after he recognised her clothes as something he'd thrown out in the rubbish...).  Camelia had been planning to study Chinese at university before her father's death, and she soon gets swept up both with her studies, and her growing passion for the young teacher.  However, when Wen (no pun intended) fails to respond adequately to her advances, things start to get very messy.  Occasionally literally.

As you might imagine from the mixed linguistic background of the story, languages and words (or the absence thereof) play a major role in the novel.  Camelia becomes obsessed with Chinese characters, painting them on pieces of paper, plastering them across the walls of her home and tracing them manically onto her arms and legs while watching television.  Everything she sees is decoded in the form of the radicals of the characters, transformed from real objects into inky-black depictions.

Her journey into language contrasts with her mother's retreat into silence (the silence, at times, threatening to infect Camelia, forcing her to vomit up words...).  Having said that, languages do not necessarily require verbalisation, and mother and daughter somehow communicate very well with glances.  And, of course, there's always music:

"She stood up there, so red at the top of the steep narrow stairs, stairs rotten with dust, like an upside-down Tower of Babel that instead of multiplying languages had destroyed them all.  And all this, the elision of all languages, just to get to this moment, to her standing there mute and breathtaking as she always was after playing her favorite piece." (p.157)

Camelia, though, most definitely prefers words - and action...

I still don't think I've managed to quite get the idea of the novel across adequately - this book is ever so slightly twisted (in a good way, of course).  As well as the above, there'll be blood, sex, betrayal, mutilation of defenceless clothes and flowers, and symbolic references to holes.  And Leeds.  Lots of walking about the centre and student areas of Leeds.

Which brings me to the only bad thing I have to say about 70% Acrylic 30% Wool...  Michael Reynold's translation is a good one, a very good one in fact, but it's written in American English, and for me that detracted from the finished article a little.  I was just too close to the setting of the book to be able to gloss over some of the vocabulary choices, even if the style of the language isn't noticeably American.  The place I used to go and buy crisps at late at night is not a 'gas station'; the thing I used to walk on to uni most days (OK, some days) is not a 'sidewalk'; wherever Camelia found the clothes, I'm pretty certain it wasn't a 'dumpster'; oh, and while Leeds can be pretty bleak at times, it's definitely not 'gray'...

Rant over :)  This is a great book, and I really hope that more of Wunderkind Di Grado's work is available in English soon (my Italian ain't all it could be).  It's not always easy to get your head around, and understanding Camelia's actions can be a nightmare at times, but you should definitely take 70% Acrylic 30% Wool for a spin.  Definitely not one for delicates though ;)

'My Brilliant Friend' by Elena Ferrante (Review)

While the photo to the left may suggest that I'm at the cutting edge of translated fiction, those with keen eyes may judge that the opposite is the case.  You see, while Europa Editions were kind enough to send me a copy of today's book, the only reason I got an uncorrected proof is that there were no reading copies left - because the book was published last year.  Yep, I've got my finger on the pulse all right ;)

Still, better late than never - and the book was definitely worth waiting for...

*****
Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend (translated by Ann Goldstein) is a wonderful novel, one I enjoyed from start to finish.  It tells the story of two girls growing up in 1950s Naples and is actually the first part of a trilogy.  The story is narrated by Elena, a bookish girl you suspect is an alter-ego of the writer, but the central figure of the novel is her best friend Lila, a character who defies description, both for the reader and Elena herself.

Lila is a young woman who can't be pinned down.  A poor girl with a fierce intelligence and an undeniable charisma, she chooses Elena as a friend at a young age, and while Elena is never able to rid herself of the feeling of coming off second-best in every possible way (looks, intelligence, sexual allure, success), she feels proud that Lila has singled her out as the only person in her neighbourhood worthy of being her confidante.

The neighbourhood is itself a focus of My Brilliant Friend.  The two girls are growing up in a poor area of a poor city in the poorer part of Italy, and Elena acquaints the reader with a suburb used to violence:

"I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence.  Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day, but I don't recall having ever thought that the life we had there was particularly bad.  Life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us."
p.37 (Europa Editions, 2012)

Violence, actual or imminent, pervades the novel: husbands and wives brawl; fathers and sons injure each other in senseless quarrels; and on the streets, knives and guns are more common than you would expect...

The concept that drives the story along is that this is a place, and a life, to escape from, and while the two friends start off with the same idea, studying hard in the hope of some day becoming rich enough to escape, they eventually drift onto different paths.  While Lila is the genius, it is Elena who manages to stay on the academic straight-and-narrow, striving to be top of the class each term despite having no clear idea of what advantages might arise from her efforts.  Lila, on the other hand, decides that a long-delayed possible future success is not for her - instead, she thinks that marriage may well be the way to escape her fate.  Towards the end of the novel, flaws begin to appear in Lila's perfection though, and we begin to wonder which of the pair the 'brilliant friend' actually is...

There's a lot to like about My Brilliant Friend.  In its depiction of an unequal friendship, narrated by the less confident of the two friends, it reminds me of classic novels like Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes and Günter Grass' Cat and Mouse, and as in those novels, it becomes increasingly clear that the lot of the 'superior' friend is not always the happier one.  As a child, Lila is streets ahead of everyone else, but even she cannot extract herself completely from the social ties binding her, slowly pulling her down into the traditional fate reserved for Neapolitan women.  It appears that she has made her choices freely, but how free can she be in a man's world?

The book is also a stark, at times brutal, look at class differences, and the way your future can often be ordained at birth.  Most of the action takes place in Elena and Lila's neighbourhood, but the girls do venture further afield at times.  When they do, it can come as bit of a wake-up call, as is the case when they walk into a richer area of Naples:

"It was like crossing a border.  I remember a dense crowd and a sort of humiliating difference.  I looked not at the boys, but at the girls, the women: they were absolutely different from us.  They seemed to have breathed another air, to have eaten other food, to have dressed on some other planet, to have learned to walk on wisps of wind." (p.192)

The group of friends from the poor suburbs feel out of place among the well off.  The choice they have is to retreat to their part of town, or adapt and fit in.

This class difference is also shown linguistically.  The native language for most of the characters is dialect, and the switches between dialect and Italian usually represent class differences between characters and situations.  The more educated Elena becomes, the more she uses Italian, even if she still retains mastery of her first language.  It's tricky to balance these two sides of her character though - some areas (such as the mysteries of the Holy Trinity...) just can't seem to be discussed in dialect...

My Brilliant Friend is a book which makes for compelling, compulsive reading, one I sped through in a couple of days, and it's also a novel which makes you reflect long after the last page has been read.  While we are living the story through Elena, and following her slow progress towards an education, maturity and (possibly) future prosperity, we are also witness to the alternative path taken by Lila, wondering if she has miscalculated in her plan to escape a life of poverty and drudgery.

The book ends dramatically, and not in the way you expect.  Even if I hadn't known My Brilliant Friend was the first part of a trilogy, I would have been expecting a sequel - there are too many questions here left unanswered.  Luckily, we won't have to wait long, as Europa are publishing the second part, The Story of a New Name, in September.  Rest assured, I won't be leaving it as long to get around to Ferrante's work the second time around ;)

The City of the Dead

It's week four of Spanish Lit Month, and that means that I have the fourth of my reviews to delight you with today - and it's another intriguing one.  When I requested a review copy of Lorenzo Mediano's The Frost on his Shoulders from Europa Editions, I was lucky enough to be offered another Spanish-language book to review, Santiago Gamboa's Necropolis (translated by Howard Curtis) - an offer I couldn't refuse ;)

*****
Necropolis begins with a famous writer living in Rome, who is recovering from a lengthy illness.  One day, he unexpectedly receives an invitation to speak at a conference in Jerusalem, from an organisation he has never heard of, on a topic on which he is far from being an expert.  His interest is further piqued by the generous remuneration offered and the fascinating variety of invitees, including an ex-con, a porn star and a stamp collector (now why don't I get invited to conferences like that?), and before long he is on a plane making its way to Israel.

When he arrives, Jerusalem is a city under siege, and the conference is held against a constant backdrop of gunfire and explosions.  In the middle of the chaos, the delegates continue with their talks on the theme of words and biographies, with one of the most successful being that told by José Maturana, a former convict and murderer who turned to religion after an encounter with a charismatic preacher.  However, just hours after his contribution to the conference, he is found dead in his hotel room - suicide?  Possibly...

The previous two paragraphs give you a rough idea of the background of Necropolis, but they don't tell you just how extraordinary the book actually is.  While the story starts plainly enough in the words of the writer (presumably a variation on Gamboa himself), it then becomes intermingled with chapters detailing Maturana's life story.  Once we get into the second section, one third of the book is devoted to three more stories told by the delegates, none of which appear to move the story on at all.  It's only when we get to the final section that some of the relevance of these tales become apparent - but only some.

The conference is all about life stories, and a major theme in Necropolis is the twisting and intermingling of stories and life.  This idea is foregrounded right from the start when the writer is choosing some books to take with him to the conference:

"...I started to wonder if those written lives were real or if their only reality was in the writing itself, the fact that they had been turned into words, into filled pages destined for people almost as desperate as themselves..." p.29 (Europa Editions, 2012)

His musings about the blurred line between real life and what gets written down about it set the scene for the way we need to approach the many stories we experience later in Jerusalem...

The one story that we have to analyse in detail is that of the unfortunate Maturana.  When we first hear it, spread over three chapters sandwiching the writer's experiences at the conference, it sounds plausible enough, the story of a man redeemed by a modern saint who himself turned out to be fragile and only too human.  However, once he is dead, the writer (and the reader!) is able to hear several different sides to the story, forcing him to use his judgement as to how 'true' each of them is. 

The only thing we can be sure of is that when a story is told, we are learning what the storyteller wants us to hear.  Some of the stories are deliberately shocking, using brutal 'honesty' to win over the audience; others are deliberately underplayed, hoping to make the reader respect the speaker's intelligence; others, perhaps, are not quite as based in reality as they are made out to be - the line between fiction and biography is a rather unclear one...

Necropolis is another excellent, fascinating piece of Spanish-language literature, but I did have a couple of issues with the book.  While the various stories were excellent, and an integral part of the book, I did find that they distanced me a little from the core narrative.  On finishing a chapter (and most of them were fairly lengthy), I rarely felt like immediately pushing on with the book - the self-contained nature of the sections often left me treating Necropolis as a collection of short stories rather than a novel.

A much bigger issue though was one which, in some ways, is coming to typify my Latin-American reading experience.  Throughout Necropolis, there is a sense of machismo which is hard to ignore, no matter how related it is to the story.  Women only appear to exist as sexual objects, with none of the female characters (with the possible exception of the porn star...) coming across as real people, and the stories contain references aplenty to prostitutes, orgies and rape.

While some of the context justifies it, I thought that it went a little overboard at times, and the character of Marta, a highly-sexed Icelandic journalist who is a walking cliché of Nordic sexual attitudes is one that pushed things a little too far for me.  There's no doubt that there is a purpose behind the sensationalism, and I'm sure that the idea of making the most of life in a city where bombs are falling would explain some of this away, but I'm not sure that everyone would buy into these excuses.

Despite these misgivings though, I thoroughly enjoyed Necropolis and would recommend it.  Just as in last week's offering, Dublinesque, the expected separation of life and fiction is playfully tampered with, forcing us to look forwards, backwards and outside the text to fully understand it.  What we come away with is an understanding that each story is special in its own way, regardless of who it's about or what that person has achieved.  As Gamboa says:

"What there is at the end of a life is irrelevant, it isn't the result that makes a life exceptional, but the path trodden..." p.162

Something to ponder as we go about making our own life stories... 

The Danger of Giving Someone the Cold Shoulder...

After my (ad)venture into classical Spanish literature, it's time today for some more contemporary fare, although the setting is actually anything but modern.  There is a connection though - today's hero is tilting at some pretty big windmills...

*****
Lorenzo Mediano's The Frost on his Shoulders (translated by Lisa Dillman, review copy kindly sent by Europa Editions) is a novella set in the Pyrenees shortly before the Spanish Civil War.  The story begins when the inhabitants of the small mountain village of Biescas de Obago become aware of an article in a regional newspaper, dredging up old history and besmirching the name of the town.  Infuriated, they charge the local teacher with writing a response to the article, determined to refute the allegations made.  The teacher takes on the task, but is reluctant to do so for several reasons: firstly, he knows full well that it's a waste of time; secondly, he also knows that the article is much closer to the truth than the tales spun by the villagers.

After fulfilling his useless task, the teacher then decides to secretly write down what really happened, the story of a young shepherd boy, Ramón, and his wealthy beloved, Alba.  It's a story of star-crossed lovers, two young people who can never be together - not because of any animosity between the families, but because the very idea of love straddling the social divide is so dangerous that it could tear the whole village apart...

The Frost on his Shoulders is a fascinating story of what happens when one man decides to stand up against what fate and tradition have decreed to be his future.  Although it starts a little slowly, what begins as a potentially predictable story of thwarted lovers soon becomes something much more than that, a tale of history at a crossroads.  The teacher explains to his audience that:

"...it's all well and good for a shepherd to be able to count, so he can tell if any sheep are missing, and the fact that everyone here can sign his name lends our town a bit of prestige; but that's enough.  Because any more than that and people start dreaming, wishing things were different than they are..." p.36

The way they are is, to be honest, feudal.  A handful of wealthy families own all the land surrounding the village, and anyone not lucky enough to be an heir to one of these houses is a nobody, a possession.  The local workers are bound by unwritten rules, stuck working in the same place and unable to marry as they are needed to labour for the rich families.  Even if they were, the local tradition of disposing of many female babies at birth (women are only needed for producing heirs...) ensures that there aren't enough women to go around.

Against this background then, the slightest sign of insubordination is seen as a threat, a challenge to the status quo, and our story bears this out.  Ramón, educated above the normal degree for a rural worker, decides that he wants to rise above his station, earn money and marry the delicate, beautiful Alba, heiress to the richest house in the area.  The ruling class decides that he must be crushed, denying him the opportunity to work, but as Ramón undergoes immense hardship in the mountains to make it on his own, the undertrodden villagers slowly begin to support him, seeing in him a role model, a symbol of change and progress - exactly what the landowners feared...

The story builds to a stunning, and slightly unpredictable, climax, with the reader willing Ramón on to achieve the unachievable, all the while knowing that the odds are against him.  Allowing the young upstart to attain his goal will open a crack in the carefully-constructed social edifice which sustains the profitability and survival of the village against the harsh, unforgiving environment it is surrounded by.  In a tension-filled village, with violence only ever a heartbeat away, it is inevitable that there will be bloodshed...

As mentioned earlier, the story is narrated by the teacher, an outsider who acts as a sort of guide through the alien culture of the villagers.  He has had to adapt to a place where life seems stuck in the 1620s, not the 1920s, and he is our voice in the wilderness.  However, it's probably best not to trust him too much...  His version of the story is just as subjective and personal as that collected from the accounts of the villagers, and most of what he recounts is hearsay.  He is, to say the least, more than a little biased ;)

*****

I enjoyed The Frost on his Shoulders, but there was one thing I was confused by.  The cover of my edition has a blurb on it, "A gripping piece of eco-fiction set in the Pyrenees Mountains", a comment which I initially found puzzling and rather superfluous.  I had never heard of eco-fiction, and I really couldn't see any environmental influences in the book.  Then, last night, I was flicking through a book on literary fiction (a work I've been slowly perusing for the last few months), and it all suddenly became clear.

Ecocriticism is a strand of literary theory which looks at literature from the viewpoint of nature, putting the environment, usually seen as merely the setting for events, in a central position.  Instead of focusing on what the characters do, we look at how the environment they live in has shaped them, and The Frost on his Shoulders is a perfect example for this train of thought.  Life in the mountains is hard, precisely because of the isolation and the extreme weather conditions, and the type of society which exists there has been forced upon the villagers by the problems the environment poses.

However, Ramón, while rebelling against society, is actually supported by nature.  The harsh conditions make it possible for him (with a lot of hard work) to make a success of his life, and his upbringing in the mountains allows him to find food and shelter - and survive - in a place where many people would simply keel over and die...  This idea of the book as a work of eco-fiction is new to me, but it's a very interesting one, and extremely apt here :)

Whether you buy this idea or not, the setting is of paramount importance to the story.  Our narrator excuses the brutality of life in the village by referring to the difficulty of life there:

"Try to understand, dear reader, that these innocent jokes, though cruel, are less so than life in the mountains; and if village women want to know every little thing you're up to, it's only because they lead empty lives; and if we make light of everything, it's only to keep from crying." p.39

I think that by the end of the book, anyone who tries The Frost on his Shoulders will know exactly what he means...