Tracks in the Snow

Today's book is by Swiss writer Peter Stamm, who some of you may know from his novel Sieben Jahre (Seven Years).  However, the bus won't be heading to Switzerland on today's trip; instead, we're off to the frozen north.  Make sure you're wearing your thermals...

*****
Ungefähre Landschaft (Unformed Landscape) takes the reader to a small village in the north of Norway, where we meet Kathrine, a customs officer who inspects Russian fishing vessels to check for contraband vodka.  She has lived in the village for most of her life, and (as we are later to discover) has never been south of the Arctic Circle.  Divorced with a child, she drifts along in a happy but monotonous existence, until she meets Thomas - who decides that she is the woman for him.

In less than a year, the two of them are married, and Kathrine's new husband, an intense, single-minded man, begins to form his new life the way he wants it, shaping Kathrine in his own image as he does so.  She goes along with things for a while, but on discovering that her new marriage is all based on lies, she decides to leave, finally getting out of the small village which has been her whole world for so long.

Stamm's novel is about a woman who has been sleep-walking her way through life, burning through two marriages, and bringing up a child, without ever really being aware of what she has been doing.  Her travels in the south (although pretty much anywhere is south when you start off in Norway...) serve as a kind of wake-up call, and a voyage of discovery for a fairly naive young woman.  As she catches train after train, heading through Europe by day and by night, she sees different places and meets new people, even though none of it really makes an impression at first.  By the end of the story though, her experiences have given her the strength she needs to make a new life for herself.

There are several similarities with Sieben Jahre, not the least of which is the simple, almost colourless prose.  Stamm's style is deliberately slight and pared-back, simple sentences following one after another, falling into place like snowflakes onto the page.  The thing with snowflakes though is that enough of them together can turn into a suffocating layer of snow, and the first twenty or thirty pages give the feeling of Kathrine being being slowly suffocated by the minutiae of dull, everyday life.

Another similarity with Sieben Jahre is the idea of a character with an unswerving obsession.  In that book, it is Iwona, the Polish student, who sets her sights on the hero and simply won't let go.  In Ungefähre Landschaft, this role is played by Thomas, a man who is trying to change the world around him to suit his desires, carefully removing any signs of Kathrine's individuality.  He even attempts to alter reality, twisting facts to show himself in a better light - and Kathrine struggles to do anything about it...

The reason for this is that Kathrine, despite being in her late-twenties, has yet to really mature because she hasn't experienced life.  When Thomas bursts onto the scene:

"Sein Leben war ein Strich durch die ungefähre Landschaft ihres Lebens."
p.31 (Fischer Verlag, 2011)

"His life was a line through the unformed landscape of her life."
(my translation)

By the end of the novel, thanks to her journey out of her comfort zone, Kathrine finally finds the strength to stand on her own two feet and decide what it is she wants from life.  Nothing earth-shattering happens, but that's not the point.  Ungefähre Landschaft is a modern Bildungsroman for a woman who learns that there's more to life than an unhappy marriage in a Norwegian fishing town...

Poets and Patriots

Today I'm moving on from novellas to poetry, with a couple of short works I randomly threw together.  Of course, as is often the case, if you look hard enough, you can find connections anywhere - and today I didn't have to look very hard at all...  Fasten your seat-belts; today sees us crossing the Rhine (in style, of course!).

*****
First up today is Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, a late-18th-century pastoral story of a rural romance.  Hermann, an innkeeper's son, is out one day offering supplies to refugees fleeing from the French troops who have pushed the Germans back over the Rhine.  Suddenly he sees a beautiful, gentle maiden who is taking care of a woman and her child - and, well, you can guess the rest...  After a brief trip home, Hermann returns with a couple of friends, determined to find out more about the lovely Dorothea and, if possible, to bring her home as his wife.

While I originally had my doubts, Hermann und Dorothea is actually poetry, written in unrhyming hexameters.  I only found this out after the event though - you see, my Kindle version didn't keep the original lines, leaving me thinking that it was stilted prose with capital letters in funny places :(

There is a rather political background to this work.  The setting is a time when there was no German nation, just an abstract dream of uniting hundreds of independent fiefdoms which shared a (fairly) common language and heritage.  Goethe is setting up his two characters as examples of Germanic ideals, prime caring Teutonic citizens who work hard for the common good.

To be honest though, this was not my kind of story.  I found it simple and uninspiring, and the resolution was never in doubt.  I really didn't like the writing much either - its focus on dialogue over description was disappointing.  I hate to say it, but this might be another Goethe nominee for a Golden Turkey (the second nomination in a row!).  For one of the undisputed greats of world literature, Goethe really doesn't have a very high strike-rate around these parts ;)

*****
Moving on fifty years or so (it's lucky that the bus has time travel as a standard feature...), we're crossing the Rhine once more - in the same direction, but with very different feelings.  The German poet Heinrich Heine spent most of his later life in self-imposed exile in Paris, reluctant to expose himself to danger from the ever-present Prussian censors.  Like any good German though, he did get homesick, and the result of one of his rare journeys home resulted in the poem Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale).

The poem, preceded by a prose introduction, is the story of Heine's journey (as shown on the map) across the border, up through the Rhine country and Westphalia, to his family home in Hamburg.  As he presses further into his home country, he describes the landscape, the people and the institutions with quick wit and poetic licence - and his opinions are rarely favourable.  He comes to bury the Prussians, not to praise them...

Things have changed since the writing of Hermann und Dorothea, and not for the better.  German unification is only a matter of decades away, but it will be achieved under the jackboot (and I use the word deliberately) of the powerful state of Prussia.  The creation of a major German-speaking state is to be achieved not by a coming together of minds, but by one state gobbling up dozens of others and becoming a major player in European politics.  When English speakers today think of typical negative German stereotypes, it's often the legacies of the Prussians that we have in mind.

Heine despises the Prussian authoritarianism and misses no opportunity to mock its people and institutions:

"Noch immer das hölzern pedantische Volk,
Noch immer ein Rechter Winkel
In jeder Bewegung, und im Gesicht
Der eingefrorene Dünkel" (Caput III)

"They're still the same wooden, pedantic folk,
And still with ninety degrees
In every movement, and in their face
Darkness in a deep freeze" *

* Translated very loosely to keep the rhyme ;)

As a native of Hamburg says, after the fire that destroyed much of the city, the other German states were quick to offer aid:

"Man schickte uns Kleider und Betten genug,
Auch Brot und Fleisch und Suppen!
Der König von Preußen wollte sogar
Uns schicken seine Truppen." (Caput XXI)

"They sent us all clothes and bedding enough,
With bread and meat and soups!
The King of Prussia even desired
To send us all his troops."

It may sound at times as if the poet hates his home country, but that is not the case.  In fact he's very patriotic - he just has a different idea of what this means to the people who are in charge...

I did enjoy Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, but it wasn't the beautiful poetry I had been expecting.  It seems more like comedy at times, a little slapstick and verging on limerick-style in places.  In his introduction, Heine says that in getting the book past the censor, some of the bite has had to be extracted, and that there is, perhaps, too much humour. I would certainly agree that the satire is a lot tamer than it might have been.

Despite that though, it does make for good reading, and it's probably a good one for anyone wanting to try something in German.  The short sections, and the straight-forward verse, make it a fairly simple read, even if you're a little short on confidence.  All in all, Heine's poem is entertaining stuff - and certainly not what I was expecting...

An Intriguing Tale of Love

My second post for Week One addresses a play, one I intended to get to last year (but never did).  If Goethe is the undisputed Batman of German Literature, then to find his Robin we should look no further than Friedrich Schiller, noted playwright, poet, historian and philosopher (it's a wonder he also found time to fight crime...).  Back into the bus with you all - we're off to the south-west of Germany today...

*****
Schiller's 1784 play Kabale und Liebe, or Love and Intrigues, is set in one of the many German principalities of the time.  The plot revolves around the romance between Major Ferdinand von Walter, the son of a high-ranking politician, and Luise Miller, the daughter of a musician.  Despite the disparity in social status, Ferdinand is not merely dallying with Luise's intentions, fully intending to make an honest woman of his lover.  However, his father has other ideas, and with a little help from his trusty assistant, he begins to think about how best to break the happy couple up.

Schiller peoples his play with some wonderful characters, all of whom have a pivotal role to play in the events to follow.  Miller, Luise's father, is a cantankerous musician with a sarcastic tongue, a man who is well aware of the dangers involved in looking too high for love.  Wurm (whose name is well chosen...) is the assistant to Ferdinand's father and has designs on the lovely Luise himself.  Lady (Milady Johanna von Norfolk) is a ruined English aristocrat who lives off the bounty of the Prince - but secretly has feelings for Ferdinand.  And Ferdinand's father?  Well, he is a cunning politician who is hoping to pull the strings to his benefit...

I came into this work with an open (read 'empty') mind, knowing little more about the play than the writer and the title, and from the first few scenes, I actually had the impression that it was to be a comedy of errors, with everything working itself out in the end.  Gradually though, the tone changes, and by the middle of the play, it is clear that this is a story which is unlikely to have a happy ending.

While the 'Liebe' of the title is fairly self-explanatory, the intrigues may need a little more explaining.  At the time of the play, Germany as a country did not actually exist.  Instead, in addition to the larger states such as Prussia, Austria and Bavaria, hundreds of tiny Principalities and Grand Duchies operated as mini-states, each with its autocratic ruler and hangers on.  Ferdinand's father, the President, has achieved the highest of ranks in this principality, having *somehow* removed his predecessor from office.  Ferdinand's romantic wishes are awkward for his father, as he is hoping to use his son's marriage to further strengthen his position - by marrying him off to the Prince's mistress...

The tragedy of Kabale und Liebe is that things could end well, despite the intrigues, if only everyone could be a little more patient.  Wurm's cunning plan (and there is a little of the Baldricks about the President's side-kick) has several weak points, but unfortunately Ferdinand's jealousy means that he is blind to the obvious falseness of the plot, even when one of the main perpetrators confesses that it is a lie.  In fact, Ferdinand shows himself to be completely immature, a man who has captured the hearts of not one, but two, women - and is unworthy of either one of them.  His arrogant appeal to God is typical:

"Ich will dich nicht zur Rede stellen, Gott Schöpfer - Aber warum denn dein Gift in so schönen Gefäßen?"

"I don't wish to put you on the spot, oh God, Creator - But why do you have to store your poison in such beautiful containers?"

Oh, the irony...

As a tale of star-crossed lovers, the comparison between Kabale und Liebe and Romeo and Juliet is obvious.  However, the scenes between Ferdinand and Luise are not particularly exceptional (the two lovers are fairly weak characters compared to some); in fact, one of the best scenes in the play is the one between Ferdinand and the English Lady, when the immature nobleman proposes in a way guaranteed to provoke rejection, and she flings his offer back at his feet after laying bare her love and humiliating the abject suitor.

In a story where the two young lovers are both forced to choose between romantic love and loyalty to their father, the real tragedy is that they make different choices, leading them down the road to disaster.  It's a familiar tale, but Schiller handles it deftly, at the same time thumbing his nose at the ruler of the Principality he was forced to leave in  a hurry.  Yes, it's over two-hundred-years old, but (just like Shakespeare's work) Kabale und Liebe still speaks to people today because it concerns basic fundamental human truths: people fall in love, and other people do nasty things to break them apart.  So ist das Leben...

October 2012 Wrap-Up

October sees a slight change in my monthly wrap-ups.  Rather than giving a list of all the books read in the month (and thus leaving half the books on the list with no links as the post hasn't been published yet), from this month I'll be listing the books reviewed in the month instead.  The stats though will still refer to my reading patterns - look, it makes sense to me...

*****
Total Books Read: 14 
Year-to-Date: 101

New: 14

Rereads: 0 

From the Shelves: 4
Review Copies: 3

From the Library: 1

On the Kindle: 6

Novels: 5
Novellas: 5

Short Stories: 1
Plays: 1
Poetry: 2

Non-English Language: 13 (9 German, 2 Icelandic, French, Japanese)

In Original Language: 9 (9 German)

Murakami Challenge: 0 (0/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (6/12)

Australian Women Writers Challenge: 0 (5/10)

Japanese Literature Challenge 6: 1 (5/1) 

*****
Books reviewed in October were:

1) The Promise of Iceland by Kári Gíslason
2) The Gate by Natsume Soseki
3) The Creator by Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir
4) À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs by Marcel Proust
5) Where I Left My Soul by Jérôme Ferrari
6) The Greenhouse by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
7) Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope
8) When I Whistle by Shusaku Endo
9) Angst (Fear) by Stefan Zweig
10) Stone Tree by Gyrðir Elíasson

Tony's Turkey for October is: nothing

Once again, nothing that I disliked.  Next year, I'm really going to have to force myself to choose one each month ;)

Tony's Recommendation for October is:
- Gyrðir Elíasson's Stone Tree

Even ignoring the books covered by last month's post, I had some great choices.  Zweig's novella was excellent, and I was very happy with Endo's novel.  Orley Farm is one of Trollope's better efforts while Ferrari's story is a good bet for an IFFP longlisting next year.  However, I was really taken with the brief stories in Elíasson's collection, so it's an Icelandic book which takes the honours again :)

*****
Now that my month is organised by reviews, not books read, November means just one thing - German Literature Month.  Get ready for a (magic) mountain of G-Lit reviews over the next few weeks...

It's All About the Journey, Not the Destination...

Welcome one and all to another German Literature Month!  After the success of last year's inaugural event, Lizzie and Caroline were forced delighted to do it all again in 2012, and I, for one, will be putting a lot of energy into a month of German-language reading and posting :)

Week One is all about plays, poetry and novellas, and I'll be starting off today with a couple of pieces from a master of the short-prose form.  Oh, and for those of you who are eager to know the result of my Stefan Zweig giveaway, the winners will be announced after the reviews :)

Well, what are you waiting for?  The engine's running, and the bus is ready to roll...

*****
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer (born in what is today the Czech Republic...) whose works are staples of the Germanic school curriculum even today.  I had one of his novellas, Brigitta, lying around on my shelves, and I decided to read another, Bergkristall (Mountain Crystal) on my Kindle in order to compare the stories.

Brigitta is the story of a young man who accepts an invitation to stay with a holiday acquaintance on his Hungarian properties.  After a long, leisurely journey through the Hungarian countryside, he arrives at his friend's property and comes to love the relaxed lifestyle.  Nevertheless, he is confused about the nature of his host's attachment to this sedentary life, especially as his friend was a man prone to travelling all over Europe - that is, until he visits a neighbouring estate, owned by a certain Brigitta...

Brigitta is a slow, meandering story which moves along at its own pace.  Stifter treats the reader to lengthy descriptions of the Hungarian countryside, sketching out both the stony, barren wastelands and the lush pastures and orchards of the Major's estates.  Amazingly, the majority of the tale is the frame of the real narrative, in which we hear the tale of the title character and her unfortunate love.  Brigitta is actually said to be unattractive (unusual for literature!), but her pride will not allow her partner to take her for granted:

"Ich weiß, daß ich häßlich bin, darum würde ich eine höhere Liebe fordern, als das schönste Mädchen dieser Erde."

"I know that I'm ugly, and that's why I would demand a higher love than the most beautiful girl in the world."

As mentioned above, the story is slow to unfold, but Stifter eventually gets there with a culmination of events which resolves everything nicely :)

*****
Bergkristall is a later work, but the style is very similar to that of the earlier novella.  It is set in an isolated village on Christmas Eve, where two children, outsiders because their mother was born in a neighbouring village, take a wrong turn in a snowstorm, taking them up the local mountain for what is to prove to be a very long night...

Again, the story progresses in a relaxed fashion - Stifter won't be hurried into lifting the pace of his story, even when it appears that there aren't enough pages left to even start one.  Most writers would probably get their heroes onto the mountain in the first few pages of a forty-five-page novella - by that point in Bergkristall, the children's parents haven't even met yet...

Once again, the writer excels at portraying the beauty of nature, describing the ice on the mountain, showing us huge caves and ice fields:

"In der ganzen Höhlung aber war es blau, so blau, wie gar nichts in der Welt ist, viel tiefer and viel schöner blau als das Firmament, gleichsam wie himmelblau gefärbtes Glas, durch welches Lichter Schein hineinsinkt."

"But throughout the depression it was blue, so blue, like nothing else in the world, a much deeper and more beautiful blue than the sky, almost like sky-blue coloured glass into which rays of light are absorbed."

The brother and sister, all alone on the mountain, are witness to beauty beyond the dreams of most people.  The fact that this beauty has a definite bite to it only adds to the weight of Stifter's prose...

As in Brigitta, the ending is a little kitschy and melodramatic, but the path to the conclusion, winding as it is, is wonderful.  I doubt that Stifter is for everyone - anyone who spends much of their time imploring the author to get on with it should probably stay well away.  However, if you like your novellas descriptive and fairly eventless, then Herr Stifter may well be the writer for you :)

*****
And so to the winners of my Stefan Zweig Giveaway :)  Using the usual random-number-generator thingy, I tossed the entries into the pot and left it to fate to see what came out - and the winners are...

The Pushkin Press (English-language) edition goes to: Jereme Gray

The Fischer Verlag (German-language) edition goes to: Bettina @Liburuak

Congratulations!  Both winners will be e-mailed shortly, so as soon as you reply with your full name and address, I'll be getting the books off to you.

That's all for today then - but stay tuned,  There'll be a lot more G-Lit going on around here this month...

Books and Dreams

From the first of November, things will be going all Germanic around these parts with the start of German Literature Month.  However, before that all starts, I just have time to bring you one last taste of Iceland, and a wonderful one it is too :)

*****
Gyrðir Elíasson's Stone Tree, translated by Victoria Cribb, is another short story collection that the wonderful Comma Press were kind enough to send me a copy of.  Unlike the others I've reviewed though, Stone Tree's offerings are more akin to flash fiction - the 116 pages contain 25 different stories.  These vignettes work superbly though, describing slices of life, glimpses of a moment in time like a photograph, or a video lasting but a few brief seconds.

Not a lot happens in some of the stories, but the reader is still intrigued as to why events unfold (and are set up) as they are.  For example, in A House of Two Stories, two men living on different floors in the same house translate different books by the same author - and that's it.  Elíasson's skill lies in sketching this out in a few hundred words in such a way that the reader feels that there is something more to the story than this and is engaged enough to wonder what exactly that could be.

The literary theme is one that runs through the collection (a comforting one for bibliophiles like myself!), but the stories can often contain subtle warnings about the danger of becoming obsessed with literature.  In Book After Book, a story which may hit too close to home for many readers, a man wanders about his house aimlessly, picking up some of the many books he possesses.  Some are in the fridge, some are crammed into boxes, others share the bathroom cabinet with prescription medicine...  While he is certainly not lacking for reading material, the man's world is eerily flat and empty.  Perhaps it's no coincidence that I took sixty books to the local charity shop the day after reading this story...

Readers may get a mention, but one of the central ideas of Stone Tree is the writer, a solitary figure seeking time alone in an attempt (usually a vain one) to squeeze some words out onto the page.  In several of the stories (e.g. The Summerbook, The Flight to Halmstad), this search for necessary tranquillity comes at the cost of relationships, with marriages slowly disintegrating in the absence of human contact.  In others though (e.g. The Writing Room, The Bus), the writer's solitude allows him to connect with something outside his usual world, his dreams bleeding uncannily into his waking existence.

If this all sounds a little dull and arty, rest assured that Elíasson is not without a dry, laconic sense of humour.  There are many gems scattered throughout his stories, such as:

"On the little table beside the bed an ancient coffee maker boiled and bubbled, producing a strange, black viscous fluid that we decided by tacit agreement to refer to simply as coffee, although in reality it was something altogether different."
p.48, The Writing Room (Comma Press, 2008)

Or, perhaps you would prefer the writer's attempt to describe beautiful scenery:

"It was past midday when their car pulled up beside the houses of Saksun.  The sky was overcast but no rain was falling here and the mountains were free from fog.  Saksun is an extraordinary, romantic place.  It would have been the perfect setting if Keats, Shelley and Byron had ever needed a retirement home."
p.81, Watershed

Scattered jokes like these help to prevent the stories falling into a humdrum, predictable pattern - and also keep the reader on their toes :)

With such short, mystery-laden pieces of prose, it will come as little surprise that Elíasson is also a poet, and in an interview published back when Iceland was the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, he admits his tendency towards 'anorexic prose', an influence of his poetic writing.  This poetic side comes out in a comment a character makes in his story The Carpentry Woodshop, after the death of his sister:

"Later, when things were almost back to normal, Dad said that I should have carried on and joined him in the carpentry business.  I answered that two carpenters in the family were enough, and that I would take up woodwork again if he could build a stairway to heaven.  He said he couldn't do that.  I said in that case I would weave one out of words."
p.78, The Carpentry Woodshop

Of course, even the most poetic and lyrical of writers is nothing in a foreign language without the help of a good translator, and Victoria Cribb is one of the best.  I have praised her work before (she is the translator into English of Sjón's work), and even if Elíasson has a very different style - dare I say it, a little less flamboyant... -, it still comes across well in the foreign language.  I'm not sure if Cribb has translated any other Icelandic authors, but I'm almost inclined to seek them out and read them just on her name alone :)

*****
All in all then, Stone Tree is a wonderful collection of stories, a fitting end to this stage of my journey around Icelandic literature.  Before I finish up though, I just want to look at one more story, one which I came back to time after time.  Chain Reaction is just three pages long, yet it is full of hidden meanings, a puzzle which the reader longs to crack.  It's another of the stories which centre on a writer at a retreat, where the protagonist, hearing the sound of chains in the attic, leaves the house and goes for a walk, ending up sitting by a pool.

So far, so prosaic.  However, it's the detail which fascinates me so much in this story.  The writer flees immediately he hears the sound of chains - does he have a guilty conscience?  In leaving the house, he locks himself out, the keys are still inside - is there a deeper significance to this?  The book he (inevitably) takes with him is a biography of Houdini...  As he approaches the pool, he compares a cave to the one where Merlin was stranded after losing his powers - an allegory for writer's block?  The name of an old girlfriend pops into his head, and a light immediately comes on in a building in the distance.  And I haven't even mentioned his dream yet...

You cannot help but admire the way Elíasson almost casually throws all these elements together in fewer words than it has taken me to review his book.  Despite the brevity of the tales, these are not stories that you speed through; with all the dense imagery, the reader needs to slow down and take heed of what is happening.  Rob, of Rob Around Books, a noted fan of the short story, wrote earlier this year about the way he always reads a short story twice, recommencing immediately after finishing the first read.  At the time I was, to put it mildly, a little dubious about this - however, this is pretty much what I did for the majority of the stories in Stone Tree.  And it works. 

Stone Tree is a great book.  Elíasson is an excellent writer.  This (as far as I am aware) is his only work in English.  More, please :)

There Goes The Fear Again (Let It Go...)

A hearty welcome to everyone joining me from Judith's Literary Blog Hop for this special giveaway post - please visit her page for a list of all the participants :)  As German Literature Month is just around the corner, I thought I'd use today's review to promote Caroline and Lizzy's wonderful event and highlight an excellent writer too.  Last year, I read Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle (Chess) for the first German Lit Month, and it was one of my favourite books for the year, prompting me to rush out (metaphorically...) and order Angst (Fear) - only to leave it on my shelves for the best part of a year...

I'm making up for that oversight now, and after my review, I'll be giving you the chance to get a copy for yourself.  Oh, and don't worry if your German's not quite up to scratch; those lovely people at Pushkin Press, obsessed as they are by Herr Zweig, have a lovely English-language version of Fear, and I'll be giving away one of those too :)

*****
Angst, like Schachnovelle, is a wonderful, psychological tale.  It's a relatively short work, but right from the first words, Zweig plunges us into the world of his hapless heroine:

"Als Frau Irene Wagner die Treppe von der Wohnung ihres Geliebten hinabstieg, packte sie mit einem Male wieder jene sinnlose Angst." p.9 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011)

"As Irene Wagner walked down the stairs from her lover's apartment, she was once again gripped by that pointless fear." ***

Irene Wagner is a wealthy married woman who has taken a lover to get out of the rut of her boring bourgeois existence, driven to the affair by the eventlessness of her life.  The thrill she initially experiences becomes the 'Angst', the 'fear', of the title, and her relationship becomes a series of brief moments of excitement and happiness, surrounded by long periods of crippling anxiety.

We enter Irene's life at a crucial point, as her world begins to crumble once she reaches the bottom of those stairs.  As she attempts to leave the building, a woman stops her, claiming to be a girlfriend that Irene's lover has cast off in favour of his new conquest.  Panicked and confused, Irene (hidden behind a veil) thrusts some money into the woman's hands and flees, hoping never to see her again.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that.  The woman somehow finds Irene's house and threatens to tell the wealthier woman's husband about what has been going on.  Irene's initial plan of brazening it out crumbles immediately under the strength of her rival's onslaught, and she agrees to keep paying her blackmailer.  As the sums begin to get higher and higher, Irene doubts that she can continue to pay for much longer without her husband becoming suspicious.  And indeed, Herr Wagner is suddenly very concerned about his wife's strange behaviour...

Angst is another brilliant book, one I can recommend to anyone.  The theme of the novella is fear itself and the incapacitating effect it can have on the human mind and body.  Having been attracted into an affair by her humdrum everyday life and the perceived glamour of such a relationship, Irene is actually ill-suited to such an existence.  As Zweig says:

"...wie die meisten Frauen, wollte sie den Künstler sehr romantisch von der Ferne und sehr gesittet im persönlichen Umgang, ein funkelndes Raubtier, aber hinter den Eisenstäben der Sitte." p.25

"...like most women, she wanted the artist to be romantic from a distance and very civilised up close, a sparkling predator, but behind the iron bars of manners." ***

Irene feels trapped by her unchanging, tedious, bourgeois existence, but she soon comes to realise that this is the way she is meant to live her life (in fact, after the initial excitement of the affair, it becomes just another part of her weekly routine, slotted in between her visits to friends and in-laws...).  Once the affair is discovered though, this all changes, and she begins to suffer the consequences of her betrayal.  Zweig repeatedly shows us the physical effects of the psychological strain - cold chills, electric shocks of emotion, a racing pulse, fatigue...  But what is she actually afraid of?

Her mental torture has little to do with the outside world - Irene is her own torturer, subconsciously punishing herself for her indiscretions (well, this is Vienna, after all...).  The writer constantly repeats the words 'Angst' and 'unterirdisch' ('subterranean' or 'underground'), emphasising the psychological nature of her struggle, a struggle against herself.  Even in her dreams, she can find no respite from her emotions:

"Wie zwischen Kerkerwänden, müßig und erregt, ging sie auf und nieder in ihren Zimmern; die Straße, die Welt, die ihr wirkliches Leben waren, waren ihr gesperrt, wie der Engel mit feurigem Schwert stand dort die Erpresserin mit ihrer Drohung." p.42

"As if between prison walls, idle and excited, she walked up and down in her rooms; the street, the world, which were her real life, were barred to her - like the angel with the flaming sword, her blackmailer stood there with her threat."***

Her fear prevents her from confessing the affair to her husband, but as the story progresses, we begin to wonder if that is the whole truth.  Why is she doing this to herself?  What exactly is it that Irene is so afraid of?  The answers, to these and other questions, may well surprise you.  As well as being a wonderful psychological story, Angst has a great ending :)

*** All English translations in the text have been messed up by yours truly :)

*****
So, on to the giveaway!  I will be giving away two copies of the book reviewed above, one in the original German and one in the 2010 Pushkin Press English-language version.  If you want to enter, simply:

  - comment on this post, stating whether you want the English or German version
  - write the word 'please' somewhere in your comment; manners are important :)

  - a contact e-mail would be nice, but I will endeavour to track down the winner!
  - commenting on my review is welcome but not obligatory ;)

This competition is open to all, but please note that I will be using The Book Depository to send this prize, so it is limited to people living in countries where The Book Depository has free delivery.  Entries will close at midnight (Melbourne time) on Wednesday, the 31st of October, 2012, and I'll be announcing the winner shortly after.  Good luck to all, and may your dreams be free of fear...

Whistling in the Dark

Were it not for the fact that in 2011 (like every year) I cheated by choosing a series, Shusaku Endo's Silence may well have been chosen as my book of the year - which makes it surprising that I still haven't got around to reading the other of his novels lying on my shelves (Deep River).  Luckily, the sound of another couple of books dropping through my metaphorical letter box recently (the real one's actually outside...), allowed me to renew my relationship with this Japanese writer, as Peter Owen Publishers were kind enough to send me copies of a couple of recently reissued novels.  While I wasn't expecting them to measure up to Silence, I was very keen to see what else Endo was capable of...

*****
When I Whistle (translated by Van C. Gessel) introduces us to Ozu, a typical middle-aged salaryman on a business trip to the Kansai region of Japan.  This return to his childhood home evokes a feeling of nostalgia for the past, and he begins to relive certain pivotal experiences from his high-school days.  Anyone who is immediately reminded of the start of Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood is in very good company (i.e. me); however, where Murakami's book is a story which lives entirely in the past, Endo's novel is a two-track tale.

One strand follows Ozu down memory lane, describing his life after the arrival of a new student at his school, the enigmatic (and curiously-named) Flatfish.  The arrival of his new friend, an easy-going, smelly, oafish boy from the sticks, is a memorable event in Ozu's youth, not least because it leads to an encounter with a high-school girl, Aiko Azuma, with whom the two boys are doomed to be obsessed.

The other takes place in the present, about 30 years later, and is focused on Ozu's son Eiichi, a doctor at a Tokyo hospital.  Greedy, self-centred, and ruthlessly ambitious, Eiichi blames his underachieving father for his lack of progress in the highly nepotistic hospital environment.  To make up for his social shortcomings, he is prepared to sacrifice any morals he may have, ready to prescribe useless medicine and experiment on dying patients - which is when a certain Aiko Nakagawa is admitted to his hospital...

When I Whistle is an excellent novel, switching between the two stories to examine the differences in Japanese life in the 1940s and the 1970s.  We get to look back at what was and what might have been - before being shown what actually eventuated.  There is an overwhelming sense of a loss of a simpler way of life, one which may have been less comfortable, but perhaps more ethically right.

While Ozu is a decent, helpful soul, his son is, simply put, a nasty piece of work.  To say that he has dubious morals would be flattering him to the extreme.  In his quest to "make it" (whatever that may mean), he is prepared to keep quiet when necessary and betray colleagues when it will advance his career.  In a typical conversation with a patient, Eiichi shows how immune he has become to his way of life:

"Doctor, will I have to have surgery?"
"That's the reason you were hospitalized, isn't it?"
"If the surgery is successful, will I be able to work the way I used to?"
"Of course.  You can play golf and do anything you want."
Eiichi had got used to lying to cancer patients.  Lying to them was part of a doctor's job.
p.56 (Peter Owen, 2012)

Ozu's son is contrasted with another doctor, Tahara, who stands up to his bosses and is promptly sent packing to the provinces.  However, what would have been a fatal blow for Eiichi is actually a Godsend for his colleague.  The time away from Tokyo allows him to appreciate the freedom to work for his patients rather than himself - something Eiichi could never understand.

One of the more interesting aspects for me of this novel was the treatment of the war experience, something I haven't read too much about in Japanese literature.  Of course, it is seen from a very different, Asian perspective: 

 "The war spread to Europe the year Ozu and Flatfish entered their fourth year at the school.  Hostilities were no longer limited to the struggle between Japan and China." p.62

A statement which would probably bewilder those Europeans who assumed that the war started over in Poland!

Endo uses the earlier side of the story to set the scene of the war years: the hysterical patriotism of the early years, the constant drilling students had to go through each week, the going-away parties for new recruits...  Once the tide of the war turns though, we can also see the effects of the lengthy conflict, with food and clothes shortages.  Ironically, in the later half of the story, the children of the survivors seem unappreciative, to say the least, and are sick of hearing the old people talk about the war all the time...

What also comes through again and again in When I Whistle is the corruption of the powerful and the consequences of the Japanese tendency to blindly follow authority.  Officers beat new recruits half to death, and nobody bats an eyelid.  Surgeons prescribe useless drugs because of links to pharmaceutical companies, and the doctors nod and scurry off.  Those same doctors lie through their teeth to cancer patients, and the patients treat them like Gods.  At times it's all a little depressing.

This is a very different book to Silence, and while it never reaches the heights of Endo's masterpiece, it's still a very good novel.  With its setting in a Japan which has moved on from the war, it reminds me a little of Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter, another Japanese novel which doesn't need to emphasise its Japanese-ness (for want of a better word!).  However, it is also a trip down memory lane, allowing the reader to reflect on the price of the progress that has been made.  As Ozu returns to his old neighbourhood, lamenting the disappearance of his old train line and the beautiful pines surrounding his old school, we share his disappointment.  Change is not always for the better...

The Law or Justice?

Sad as I was to reach the end of another rereading of Anthony Trollope's Palliser books, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  You see, last year I was lucky enough to win a Twitter competition run by Oxford World's Classics, and the prize was four more of Trollope's novels - and I was able to choose four that I hadn't previously read.  All of which means that there are plenty more Trollope reviews to look forward to in the months to come :)

*****
The one I was most interested in reading was another of Trollope's bulky, two-volume, 800-page epics, Orley Farm.  In his Autobiography, the writer considered this one to be his best novel, and while that may be stretching things a little, it's certainly one of the better ones I've read.  The story revolves around a codicil to a will made twenty years before the main action, an addendum which leaves the titular farm to the baby boy of Sir Joseph Mason's second wife.  The old man's other children suspect that their step-mother has somehow been involved in the forgery of this document, but a court case clears her of any wrong-doing, and Lady Mason is free to claim the property and run it on behalf of baby Lucius until he comes of age.

Twenty years on, Lucius is an educated, intelligent (if somewhat grumpy) young man, and he has decided to turn his attention to farming his own land.  In the process, he antagonises one of his tenants, a lawyer who married the daughter of the attorney at the centre of the original court case - and a man who subsequently finds a document which casts a different light on the events of the past...

Court cases and mysteries have featured in other Trollope works I've read (Phineas Redux, The Three Clerks and The Eustace Diamonds are some which immediately spring to mind), but Orley Farm is a novel which is more closely concerned with the workings of the law than any other I've read.  Trollope himself talks about 'sensational' literature and compares his work with that of Wilkie Collins, but it is actually Dickens' Bleak House that we are most reminded of.  Like Bleak House, Orley Farm is a doorstopper of a book, peopled with a wide cast of personalities from all walks of life, set partially in London and partially in the provinces.

While Orley Farm is of similar length to Bleak House, it is, of course, the focus on the law and, in particular, the rather loose link between the law and justice, which connects the two novels.  Where Dickens criticised the archaic institutions which led to fortunes being squandered in legal fees, Trollope examines the gladiatorial trial system where winning is more important than finding out what actually happened.  The writer's dreams of barristers working together to uncover the truth sounds somewhat idealistic, but the alternative - trained bloodhounds savaging innocent, honest people in the hope of discrediting them and obscuring the truth - hardly sounds like justice either...

Besides the over-riding theme of law and justice though, what I enjoyed most about Orley Farm was the way in which the characterisation was a little less black-and-white than is often the case.  Lady Mason could easily be compared to Lizzie Eustace (The Eustace Diamonds), but she is a much more complex and nuanced figure than her pretty, young counterpart.  We learn more about her character as the novel progresses, making it just that little bit harder for us to judge her - and to decide if she really is guilty or not.

While there are the usual sweet, blushing maidens and nervous, but manly, suitors, even the romances in Orley Farm are more intriguing than usual.  A stay at a country house sets up two love triangles: sweet Madeleine Stavely is pursued by upstart lawyer Felix Graham and wealthy heir Peregrine Orme; Sophia Furnival, a barrister's daughter, catches the eye of both Augustus Stavely and our young friend Lucius Morris.  While in other Trollope books, both the ladies would be pure and chaste, and the preferred suitor would be obvious from the start, things are not quite so clear here.  All of the young men have their good and bad points, none really standing out, and as for Ms. Furnival - well, I'm not sure she's playing the courting game quite as she's supposed to...

All in all, Orley Farm is definitely one of Trollope's more ambitious books, and it deserves its high reputation.  However, I was left thinking that it could have been that little bit more impressive if Trollope had only been released from the restraints of the Victorian culture and his own conscience.  Despite the attempts at ambiguity, the ending has to be morally correct: the characters must look to God for forgiveness, the good are rewarded, and the nasty are (for the most part) punished.  It's what the people wanted at the time, but today it detracts a little from the more balanced tone that runs through the novel.

Still, it's not for me to pass judgement on Trollope's treatment of his creations; I'm not sure my version would have been any better really.  And this is the real moral of the story.  As easy-going Judge Stavely says:

"...judge not that you be not judged." Volume II, p.122
(Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

As Orley Farm shows, the danger in judging is that you're very apt to make mistakes...

Everything's Coming Up Roses

When I first started my bout of Icelandic reading, I asked for a few recommendations, and my readers were happy to oblige.  Aside from the usual suspects of Halldór Laxness and Sjón, a book which came up a few times was Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir's novel The Greenhouse, one of many Icelandic works published this year by Amazon Crossing.  The winner of several awards, both in Iceland and elsewhere in Europe, it seemed like a good way to continue my current obsession...

*****
The Greenhouse (translated by Brian FitzGibbon) introduces us to 22-year-old Arnljótur Thórir, a young Icelander who is about to embark on an exciting journey into the unknown.  Having inherited a love of horticulture from his mother, Lobbi (as his father calls him) is all set to fly off to a new job in an unspecified European country, restoring a world-famous rose garden in a monastery.

While he is taking a trip into the unknown, what he is walking away from is a little clearer.  He is still getting over his mother's untimely death in a car crash a couple of years back and is leaving his over-protective father and his Autistic twin brother behind.  Oh yes, and there's the small matter of the result of a few hours of passion in the family greenhouse - his baby daughter, Flóra Sól...

After a slightly unfortunate (and painful) start, Lobbi embarks on a lengthy, unhurried journey to the rose garden, somewhere in the heart of Europe.  As he drives through forests and villages, meeting new people on the way, you start to wonder if he's ever going to get to his destination.  Once he arrives at the monastery, the pace continues to crawl, but that's a good thing - as Lobbi himself discovers, it's the journey, not the destination that counts.

The Greenhouse is very much a Bildungsroman, one in which our young friend takes time out from the world to look around and think about what it is he wants from life.  In leaving his home territory and transplanting himself (like the roses he takes along) into a foreign climate, Lobbi is forcing himself to confront his issues.  It's very much a step into the unknown, at times coming across as a bit of a fairy-tale, as he discovers small restaurants hidden in the woods and tries to fit into the world of the monks.

This all makes him reevaluate his situation, the new experiences helping him to compare his old life with the new one.  It's a very different environment to the harsh Icelandic landscape:

"Can a person who has been brought up in the heart of a thick dark forest, where one has to beat a path through multiple layers of trees just to take a letter to the post office, have any conception of what it's like to spend one's entire childhood waiting for a single tree to grow?" p.62 (Amazon Crossing, 2012)

Then, just as he is adapting to his role as a rose gardener, he receives an unexpected visitor...

I greatly enjoyed The Greenhouse; it's the kind of book ideal for a couple of afternoons lounging about somewhere warm and slowly making your way through the pages.  The writing (and translation) is excellent, and there's also a dry sense of humour underpinning the story, with Lobbi (and his red hair) the butt of many a subtle joke.

He's a typical 22-year-old, sexually charged to the point of distraction, but also fairly shy, meaning that he misses certain obvious signals from women (a running joke is that several people actually think he's gay...). He's also constantly cringing from comments people make about the child he fathered from what he calls "a half-night stand" - every time he shows a picture of the blonde baby to the dark-complexioned natives, he is told that she doesn't have enough hair... 

There's a lot to like about this book, but it's not perfect.  A twist about two-thirds of the way through threatens to turn an intriguing, slow-burning story into a twee piece of chick-lit, but luckily the writer manages to keep the sugar to a minimum and comes up with a resolution to the story which works and satisfies the reader.  Still,it does feel like a bit of a girly book at times.

Nevertheless, The Greenhouse is a novel that most people will enjoy, literary enough to intrigue but with a character the reader cares about.  The man we see at the end of the 260 pages is very different to the immature youth we began the novel with; and if his future isn't quite settled, we can be sure that he's on the right path.  Everything (literally) is coming up roses :)