'The Sorrow of Angels' by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Review)

After enjoying the excellent Heaven and Hell recently, I was eager to dive into the next instalment of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's trilogy set in the wilds of Iceland.  It's a bit risky sometimes, reading a sequel of a book you really liked, as the possibility of being disappointed is always at the back of your mind.  Luckily then, I have very good news for those of you who liked the first book - this one is better :)

*****
The Sorrow of Angels (translated again by Philip Roughton, review copy courtesy of MacLehose Press) picks up very shortly after the end of its predecessor, with the boy settling in to his new home in the cold, isolated village.  Taken in by the beautiful Geirþúður, he is beginning to enjoy a more comfortable life, his days spent helping housemaid Helga with domestic tasks and reading translations of Shakespeare to the blind sea captain, Kolbeinn - that is, when he's not flirting with the beautiful young Ragnheiður.

However, this semi-civilised existence is interrupted one day by the arrival of the local postman, an arrival which is both comical and serious at the same time:

"Helga looks down at Jens and the horses, all three nearly unrecognisable, white and icy.  Why don't you come in, man? she asks, somewhat sharply.  Jens looks up at her and says apologetically: To tell the truth, I'm frozen to the horse."
p.17 (MacLehose Press, 2013)

Once the burly postman has recovered from his ordeal, he decides to set off on another long trek, deputising for a sick colleague.  With a long, arduous journey ahead of him, some of which will involve rowing across treacherous fjords, it is decided that Jens will need a companion this time if he is to make it back in one piece - and so the boy sets off into the wilderness once more...

From the very start, The Sorrow of Angels grabs the reader's attention and doesn't let go for the next three-hundred odd pages, sweeping them up and taking them on a guided tour of the writer's creation.  The first part of the book is set in the village, and as well as meeting familiar faces and hanging around inside old haunts, the reader is introduced to a few new people as Stefánsson widens the circle of our experience.  One highlight is getting to visit the local hotel and restaurant, drinking with the local intelligentsia (the schoolmaster, the watchmaker) while the local big-wigs (including Ragnheiður's father...) dine in another section.

As interesting as this is though, we soon sense that this is merely the introduction, and that the restless Jens will soon be setting out again into a hostile landscape - and if you thought the boy had problems in the first book, think again.  Compared to the journey he undertakes in The Sorrow of Angels, his first trip through the mountains was a walk in the park...

The false comfort of the village gives way to the reality of life outside the small settlements people have created to protect themselves from the elements.  This is Iceland in the nineteenth century, and the reality is that many people live far away from company, isolated (literally) in their sturdy cottages, buried beneath the snow for the extent of the winter.  How long is the winter?  Well, it's hard to say.  In some places, it's difficult to know if spring ever comes at all.

When Jens and the boy stumble across these outposts of civilisation, islands of warmth in a sea of endless snow and driving winds, they become the centre of attraction, sources of news and novelty, people to talk to (often, the first company in months).  In an age of instant gratification, with digital downloads and online grocery shopping, it's confronting to see people thirsty both for letters and books, and for coffee - using the last of their precious grounds to warm up the unknown visitors...

...and they certainly need warming up.  Much of the novel takes place on the heaths, with Jens and the boy lugging the postbags from farm to farm, a task made more difficult by the constant snow storms and the ever-present threat of freezing to death.  The titular 'sorrow' refers to snow, but while it certainly brings sorrow, at times it also entices, invites, the weary traveller to sink into its embrace.  It is little wonder that the further the two wanderers get from civilisation, the greater the feeling they have of not being alone in the storm - out on the wiley, windy moors, indeed...

Bleak?  Unreadable?  Not at all.  The Sorrow of Angels is a beautiful book, one you need to savour - a novel to read over a good few days.  It's certainly one I enjoyed reading and coming back to after a break.  Once again, Stefánsson's writing is wonderful (and if that's the case, it's also important to acknowledge Philip Roughton's immense contribution in bringing it into English).  He has a wonderful, light touch with words, and most pages had something I was tempted to mark for inclusion in my post:

"Stars and moon vanish and soon day comes flooding in, this blue water of the sky.  The delightful light that helps us navigate the world.  Yet the light is not expansive, extending from the surface of the Earth only several kilometres into the sky, where the night of the universe takes over.  It's most likely the same way with life, this blue lake, behind which waits the ocean of death." (p.24)

It's a beautiful idea, and one which sums up the themes of the novel.

Which isn't to say that Stefánsson isn't equally adept at changing the mood and tone, adding a wry aside for the reader's enjoyment.  As mentioned in my review of Heaven and Hell, there's a touch of Saramago in his style, and the book is full of witty one-liners:

"Kjartan would curse roundly if he dared, but God is, despite all else, higher than all storms and men; he hears everything, forgets nothing and collects his dues from us on the final day for every thought, every word, every touch, every detail.  It can be tedious and downright depressing to have such a God hanging over one; we'll likely exchange him as soon as something better is available." (p.188)

Or how about:

"The dead are egoists, making the living toil for them, as well as filling them with guilt for not doing so well enough." (p.287)

There are plenty more where those came from...

Alas, while Stefánsson is a master of his game, I am but a poor scribbler, out of my depth when describing books like The Sorrow of Angels, so I'll leave it there with just a few more words to help emphasise my feelings about the book.  To the publisher: please submit this for next year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  To next year's IFFP panel: please shortlist this book.  To the wider audience out there: please read the book - it's great :)

'Open City' by Teju Cole (Review)

My focus on literature in translation means that I rarely read English-language fiction, but there is the odd exception.  My last-minute decision to attend an event at the Melbourne Writers Festival a while back led me to make one of those exceptions, as I really enjoyed the way American writer Teju Cole talked about the future of the novel in his keynote address (and the ensuing discussion).  Of course, it's a little risky to read a novel because you like the person, but don't worry - the book certainly lived up to the good impression the writer made on me...

*****
Open City probably needs little introduction; Cole's first novel has been a worldwide success, winning a string of awards.  It centres on Julius, a Nigerian-born Psychology resident working and walking his way through the New York winter.  Having recently broken up with his girlfriend, he spends much of his time outside work alone, listening to classical music, reading good books and pounding the pavements of his adopted hometown.

Julius enjoys his walks, which allow him to process, and escape from, the mental rigours of his daily work.  He's a man who needs solitude, and even when he does catch up with friends, there's a sense of detachment, a feeling that while he is present in body, the mind is still roaming the streets of New York.  A short trip to Brussels, a vain, half-hearted attempt to reconnect with a family member, is a short distraction, but it proves to be in vain.  Julius is a successful, well-educated man, one who you'd expect to be happy, and the reader gradually begins to wonder if his detachment has a cause...

Cole's novel is a beautiful book, an elegant story of a city in four dimensions, and a haunting tale of a man who struggles to find his place in it.  What strikes the reader on reading the first few chapters of the novel is the importance of the setting, and Open City, at times, comes across as a love letter to New York, a subtle ode to the big city.  Within a few chapters, the adjective 'Sebaldian' came to mind, as Julius' tangential asides about the buildings he passes and the streets he walks through instantly reminded me of the style of The Rings of Saturn (as I quickly found out, this wasn't exactly a unique comparison I was making...).

What makes Cole's novel even more Sebaldian though is the way in which Julius sees beyond the current status, experiencing the past of the city as well as the present:

"Out, ahead of me, in the Hudson, there was just the faintest echo of the old whaling ships, the whales, and the generations of New Yorkers who had come here to the promenade to watch wealth or sorrow flow into the city or simply to see the light play on the water.  Each one of those past moments was present now as a trace."
p.54 (Faber and Faber, 2011)

Julius' New York is not just a maze of skyscrapers and subway stations; it's a hole where the World Trade Center used to stand, which once stood on narrow streets, which had replaced markets, which in their turn had been built on land inhabited by native Americans.  Most people don't notice the traces of the past that hide amongst the clamour of the present, but Julius (and perhaps Cole) feels almost more at home amongst these reminders of a distant past.

Which is not to say that the novel neglects people, individuals - far from it.  Julius has many encounters with fellow citizens and travellers, and the majority of them are, like our 'hero', newcomers, immigrants, men and women who are straddling the divide between two (or more) cultures.  From Professor Saito, Julius' academic mentor, to Dr. Mailotte, a Belgian surgeon Julius meets on a plane; from the man who shines his shoes to the aggressive autodidact running an Internet café (and studying) in Brussels; Cole shows that the world is full of people struggling to adapt to their own four-dimensional existence, trying to reconcile past and present.

Just as the novel deals with both the then and the now, it also discusses the global and the individual.  Julius talks with the people he meets about their lives and concerns, but the bigger picture is never far from our view.  One of his clients, a native American historian, writes about the conflict between her people and the conquering white settlers, and the effect history has at a personal level:

"I can't pretend it isn't about my life, she said to me once, it is my life.  It's a difficult thing to live in a country which has erased your past." (p.27)

In many ways, Open City is a gloomy, pessimistic novel, with a sense of decay and entropy, leaving the reader feeling that it is not so much about progress as it it about decline.  Then again, I suspect I'm beginning to read a little too much into things here...

It's not just what the book's about which makes Open City such a good read though; it's Cole's style which really makes it enjoyable.  The soothing, flowing prose accompanies the reader on a thinker's tour of New York, and while you may struggle to discern a plot of any kind (especially throughout the first half), there is a gradual development of sorts.  In the talk I attended, Cole mentioned the slow solace of the novel, something which helps you to slow down from the hectic pace of the digital world, and it's an idea he has definitely built his own work upon.

In fact, you suspect that there is a lot of the writer in the book, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  However, I wonder how he plans to follow up the success of Open City and where he wants to go from here.  Will he continue with his Sebaldian mixture of descriptive narrative, or will the next book bring something completely different?  I have no idea, but I'll be very keen to accompany him on his next walking tour :)

'Under this Terrible Sun' by Carlos Busqued (Review)

Today we're looking at an offering from another new translated fiction press, Frisch & Co., run entirely from Berlin.  How does that work, you ask.  Well, you see, it's all electronic - we're moving into a paperless era here ;)  Once again, I'm delving into Spanish-language fiction - we're off to Argentina...

*****
Carlos Busqued's Under this Terrible Sun (translated by Megan McDowell, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a short, laconic and occasionally disturbing book.  The story begins when Javier Cetarti, a man approaching middle age with little to show for it, gets a phone call from someone he's never met - unsurprisingly, the news the call brings is not great:

"Daniel Molina", retired petty officer of the air force and represented here by Mr. Duarte," had killed his lover and a son of hers at noon the previous day.  That is, Cetarti's mother and brother"
(Frisch & Co., 2013)

Cetarti manages to get his act together and drives all day to get to the provincial town of Lapachito, where he meets the aforementioned Duarte, has his mother and brother cremated and goes along with Duarte's ruse to scam some insurance money.

On his return to Córdoba, Cetarti decides to quit his apartment and move into his brother's old place, a ramshackle house full of rubbish - and an axolotl salamander.  As he settles into a life of smoking weed, eating pizza and watching the Discovery Channel, he slowly makes plans for heading off into the sunset.  Little does he know though that Duarte is not who he seems - and that their fleeting meeting in Lapachito is to have far-reaching consequences...

Under this Terrible Sun is a book which starts off incredibly slowly (despite the dramatic phone call), and after a few of the many, fairly brief, chapters, I was starting to wonder if anything was going to happen.  All of a sudden though, we get to see beneath the dull veneer, and it's fairly disturbing.  The fact of the matter is that the air-force veteran Duarte is a nasty piece of work.  Whatever you do, don't go down to the basement...

"Without untying him, he adjusted the boy until he was in a stable seated position"

This sentence appeared just as randomly and disturbingly in the book as it did in my post.  It comes out of nowhere, and the reader suddenly suspects that the book is about to take a new direction.

Let's be blunt - Under this Terible Sun soon becomes a dark twisted story about some sad, nasty people.  The initially affable Duarte is a criminal, sick and unforgiving, one with a penchant for model planes and vile pornography:

"There's some pornography you don't watch to jerk off, you watch it more out of curiosity about how far the human species will go."

Let's just say that he's not a very nice man...  He is ably supported by Danielito, a big man addicted to junk food, marijuana and the Discovery Channel, one who is a side-kick to both Duarte and his own (rather strange) mother...

However, the central character of the novel, Cetarti, isn't much better.  He's listless and drifting, spending his days smoking joints and avoiding anything which might lead to action.  He's a man who really doesn't like to get involved - in anything:

"But getting out of the car, talking, making himself understood, paying etc., it all seemed like an unworkable task that broke down into an almost endless series of muscular contractions, small positional decisions, mental operations of word choice and response analysis that exhausted him in advance."

Danielito's father provides a connection with Cetarti, but the two men have more in common than their messy family ties.  They're both losers with little going for them apart from a messy apartment, a bag of weed and an interest in TV documentaries.  Sad men, with wasted lives.

A symbol for this sense of inertia is the pet Cetarti finds at his brother's house, an axolotl - a salamander which doesn't need to evolve or grow up.  It lives at the bottom of its tank, stagnant, unmoving.  It's a rather apt pet for the unevolved Cetarti...

Under this Terrible Sun is a short read, and interesting in parts, but it's not a book I loved.  For me, it never really got going, and I was rarely sure where it was going (or why).  Also, as alluded to above, it's another of those Latin American books with some very graphic scenes, which reminded me (in passing) of certain sections of Carlos Gamerro's The Islands.  If you didn't like those (and those who have read Gamerro's book will know exactly what I mean), you may not like this...

*****
While the book wasn't really one for me, I'm definitely still interested in the publisher.  An all-electronic press, which is a fairly new concept, has the advantage of allowing Frisch & Co. to deal with other publishers and get books out quickly.  With contacts to various big European presses, they should be able to bring out a few exciting books.  I'll definitely be trying another one - hopefully, I'll enjoy the next one a little more ;)

'Ghosts' by César Aira (Review)

It's the final stop on my reading tour of Spanish- (and Portuguese- ) language literature, and the last author on the trail is César Aira.  My first encounter with the Argentine novel(la)ist was the enigmatic, and slightly confusing, Varamo, but I'd been assured that today's selection was a much more enjoyable choice...

*****
Ghosts (translated by Chris Andrews, published by New Directions) takes place in, on and around an apartment building in Buenos Aires on the final day of the year.  A Chilean family is living on the roof of the unfinished building while the father, Raúl Viñas, works there as a caretaker.  On a sweltering morning (northern hemisphere folk, take note: December = summer), the future residents of the building come to look at how things are progressing.  All in all, the building is fairly packed - workmen, tenants, children and ghosts.  Yep, ghosts.

The ghosts are real, gliding about in the background, men covered in dust, naked and invisible to the visitors.  However, the Chilean family living on the building are able to see the strange apparitions, and most of them simply accept the figures as part of the background.

"The children weren't there, but the other characters, those bothersome ghosts, were legion.  They were always around at that time.  To see them, you just had to go and look."
p.47 (New Directions, 2008)

Fifteen-year-old Patri is a little different though, and the quiet young woman observes the ghosts as she walks up and down the stairs.  And then they begin to talk...

Ghosts is confusing, but strangely comforting, a story which initially makes little sense but is nevertheless enjoyable.  The story meanders along, wonderful rambling vignettes interrupted by tangential asides and the odd glimpse of naked men hanging in the air.  At one point, Patri has a dream during her siesta, one which serves as a lengthy digression on the nature of architecture and the importance of non-building in primitive cultures.  While it's nice to see a few pages devoted to the culture of Australian Aborigines in the middle of the book, you do start to wonder if Aira might have got ever-so-slightly sidetracked...

There is a method in his apparent madness though, and despite its brevity, Ghosts does deal with a few clear ideas.  One is the difference between the Chilean main characters and the Argentines they are living among; in the sense that they are invisible migrants, the family are just as much ghosts as the real things.  Aira describes the contrast between the Chileans and Argentines as one between rich and poor, delicate and brash, real and superficial.  Patri's mother Elisa explains that in Argentina, money is the only form of virility (I think the writer is trying to say something about his mother country here...).

In contrast, the extended family are shown as people who can enjoy life and use time as they see fit rather than being strangled by it.  Theirs is a relaxed existence, seizing the moment with little thought of the future, and it's one which appears to work well.  Raúl's drinking may well end up badly, but it gets him through the day, and the wine (which he cools by putting the bottles inside the ghosts...) is drunk at exactly the right time.  Even the melon eaten at the party has reached its exact peak at the time it is to be consumed.

However, Patri is the odd one out, tenser and more preoccupied, and Ghosts is really about how she starts to think about what the world may have in store for her.  The ghosts are reminders of masculinity and her inevitable fate - and they're not exactly subtle reminders either:

"Although well proportioned in general, some of them, the majority in fact, had big bellies.  Even their lips were powdered; even the soles of their feet!  Only at odd moments from certain points of view, could you see the foreskin at the tips of their penises parting to reveal a tiny circle of bright red, moist skin.  It was the only touch of color on their bodies." (pp.54/5)

In a sense, the ghosts may represent a metaphor for a sexual awakening, and only Patri's mother senses that her daughter might be in danger.  While the other children race around the building with little fear of a slip, Patri might just be falling for a rather dangerous idea of happiness.  Waiting for the ideal man is a little like waiting for a ghost to appear...

While I enjoyed Varamo, I wasn't quite sure if Aira was my kind of writer, but Ghosts has convinced me that he's definitely on my wavelength.  There's so much to like in such a short book, and while a lot is made of his 'process' of writing a page each day and then just letting himself be forced to move the story along, I suspect that a lot of thought does go into the stories.  Certainly, I felt that this story was extremely cohesive, with all the tangled strangs coming together in a dramatic climax.

And that's it - I've finally made it through my library loans :)  Since finishing my IFFP reading, I've managed to try twelve books by six new writers (in between racing through my ARCs and a few choice works from the shelf).  Hopefully, I'll be able to find some time to revisit a few of them in the future - and if I do, I'm sure Aira will be high on the list :)

'Multiples' by Adam Thirlwell (Ed.) (Review)

I first heard about today's book a good while back when McSweeney's Quarterly Concern devoted a whole edition to its game of literary Chinese Whispers.  Having been tempted to give it a go back then, I was very pleased to hear that it would be appearing elsewhere in book form - and it's now even reached Australia...

*****
Multiples, edited by Adam Thirlwell (review copy courtesy of Australian distributor Allen & Unwin), is a book centred on a simple, yet potentially dangerous, idea.  An original text is taken, translated into a second language, then translated into another language, then... you get the idea.  There are eleven strands to the book, and most of the original stories eventually end up in six different, mutated versions.  As you can imagine, the end product rarely bears much of a resemblance to the original...

The cover proclaims that the book consists of "12 stories in 18 languages by 61 authors", and if you think I'm going to review all of them, you've got another think coming.  While not all of the efforts were stellar, there were several which had me noting the writer's name down for future reference (and a couple which had me adding names to my Sheldon-Cooperesque list of mortal enemies).  The best way to look at this though is probably to take a couple of examples from the strands.

One of the shorter pieces was 'Geluk', originally written by Dutch author A.L. Snijders, and Lydia Davis' (presumably) faithful translation ('Luck') was followed by Yannick Haenel's French version, 'Chance' - one which was a lot smoother and may have betrayed the style of the original a little.  Of course, as Haenel says in his endnotes:

"And no doubt I wanted, when translating this heartbreaking text in which a young man and a young woman do not manage to fall in love, to re-establish the love that - I'm sure of it - exists between them.  I make them live together when, it seems, everything keeps them apart.  I swear that I didn't do this deliberately.  I really believed what I wrote, while I was writing it.  You see, I'm not an anarchist, a little antichrist, and above all, whether I like it or not, I am French."
p.94 (Portobello Books, 2013)

You see, it's not his fault he changed the story - his blood made him do it ;)

I was quite happy to accept Haenel's tongue-in-cheek excuses, but the next step wasn't quite as palatable.  Heidi Julavits ('Chance') back-translated Haenel's version into English, but as her French wasn't amazing she decided to use a dictionary guess the words she didn't know...  Which meant that Peter Stamm's typically elegant version ('Zufall') used, and built upon, some of the ludicrous errors Julavits incorporated (including moving the music lessons detailed in the story from the attic to the garden!).

Once Jeffrey Eugenides had given the story its third lease of life in English ('Happenstance'), it was over to Sjón to tie things up in Icelandic ('Atvik').  Sadly, I wasn't able to make much of this one, except to note that it was about a third of the length of the original.  Happily, the great man cleared this up for us in the notes - you see, he allowed his son to memorise Eugenides' version and then had him recite it back three weeks later.  And into the book it went...

Hopefully, the above description gives you the idea.  Each time the stories go through another pair of hands, something happens to them.  Sometimes the changes are minimal, occasionally the style changes radically, and in some versions the story is radically altered.  Danilo Kiš' story 'Cipele' ('Shoes') survives several interpretations virtually unscathed, but when Camille de Toledo gets hold of it, it is transformed into a tale of a writer's struggle to the death with Google Translate (and a most interesting one it is too!).  While John Banville's subsequent rendering is a beautifully elegant piece of writing, I'm not quite sure how he managed to return to something close to the original after de Toledo's effort...

Of course, these digressions are what makes Multiples worth reading; if the job had been carried out by professional translators, with larger foreign-language vocabularies and smaller egos, the end result would probably have been more accurate, but not half as entertaining.  I'm not sure many readers would have stuck around for six fairly similar renderings of a short story, especially when half of them are in a foreign language...

Having said that though, Thirlwell cleverly acknowledges that many readers will not be that proficient in foreign languages themselves, and every second story in each strand is in English.  I suppose that's just the way the world is...  English is also privileged in another way - the stories written in foreign languages actually use a slightly smaller font (possibly as the publisher isn't expecting those stories to be read as much...).

As you would expect, I gave it my best shot, and while the Icelandic, Urdu, Hebrew and Chinese stories were beyond my reach, I did attempt to read as many of the versions as I could (or thought I could, which is by no means the same thing!).  Luckily, thanks mainly to the predominance of Romance and Germanic languages, I was able to at least struggle through all but seven of the interpretations.  I'm not saying it was easy though ;)

There's one more point to be made about Multiples though, and it's one which may surprise you.  The original stories come from a variety of languages and include some by very well-known writers (e.g. Enrique Vila-Matas, László Krasznahorkai, Franz Kafka, Kenji Miyazawa), but... they don't actually appear in the book in the original form.  When I first realised this, I was a little confused (not to mention disappointed), but the further I got into the book, the more I thought that this was a shrewd decision.  You see, it seems rather apt that the reader gets to see copies of copies of an original whose existence we have to take on trust, which all makes for an elaborate construction based on a hollow centre - very deconstructionist ;)

I'm not sure this will be everyone's cup of tea (and you'll certainly enjoy it more if you have at least some background in languages), but Multiples is a fascinating look at what happens when writers are let loose on a task which really belongs in the hands of trained professionals.  While some of the authors do their best to stay on task, often doing a respectable job, many are unable to resist the temptation to adorn the texts with their own style.  Perhaps the final word, addressing this point, should go to Dave Eggers, in what is the whole of his comments on translating his Kafka piece:

"I took some liberties." (p.159)

'Days in the History of Silence' by Merethe Lindstrøm (Review)

My first attempt at requesting books from Netgalley, a couple of years back, ended in confusing cyber-failure, and the e-mail suggestions I've received from them on a regular basis since then have been, well, let's say 'underwhelming'.  A while back though, I saw on Twitter that there was something a little different available, a novel which had won the Nordic Council Literature Prize (the Scandinavian equivalent of the Booker Prize).  I clicked a few buttons, and the publishers (Other Press) were kind enough to allow me an e-copy.  So how did my second Netgalley adventure end up?  Let's find out...
 
*****
Merethe Lindstrøm's Days in the History of Silence (translated by Anne Bruce) took out Scandinavia's top literary prize in 2012.  It's a fairly shortish novel, one which is written in the form of an extended monologue.  Eva, a retired school teacher, lives alone in her house with her older husband, Simon.  If that sounded like a strange sentence, it was deliberately so; Simon has retreated into his shell, and the silence is becoming deafening for his frustrated wife.

While she considers whether or not to fill in the application form for a nursing home, Eva thinks back over her life and particularly over the last few years.  While Simon had a tough start to life as a Jew in 1940s Europe, it is a more recent event which may have triggered his withdrawal, the sacking of the couple's Latvian housekeeper, Marija.  As Eva thinks back to what she might have said to change events, she begins to discover that secrets can come back to haunt you, even when there's nobody to tell them...

Days in the History of Silence has a very tense opening, when a stranger enters the house, for no good reason and leaves after a few nervous minutes.  The event has no real tangible connection with the rest of the novel, and this is very typical for the book.  It is full of unrelated events, occurrences which the reader will try to connect, looking for unspoken links below the surface of the page (or screen!).  It's a very subtle story for the most part, Eva's monologue serving only to keep the most important matters hidden from view.

As Simon's descent into silence becomes more complete, Eva's frustration increases.  Suddenly, she feels as if she is alone, trapped inside a large, empty house:

"I need to tell this to someone, how it feels, how it is so difficult to live with someone who has suddenly become silent.  It is not simply the feeling that he is no longer there.  It is the feeling that you are not either."
(Other Press, 2013)

Eva is understandably upset at being abandoned, emotionally, by her husband; however, it can't be said that she's entirely free from blame herself.

One of the major themes in the book is the importance of the unsaid, and in Eva's house there are plenty of topics which were never mentioned.  The house invasion at the start of the book is a secret which has been kept for years, and Simon was never able to tell their three daughters about his experiences during the war.  When the couple decided to let Marija go, the daughters are unable to understand why their parents would fire a woman who had become a part of the family - and Eva simply cannot bring herself to tell them.  By keeping silent for all these years, Eva has created her own cocoon of silence, one she's unlikely to escape from.

One of the better aspects of the novel is the way it describes the life of the elderly (or, in Eva's case, the not-quite-elderly).  Life goes on elsewhere, but for Eva and Simon it's winding down, leaving them trailing along in the distance - alone, together.  At times, it seems that there are no more words simply because it's too late; the time for them has passed and gone forever.

It wasn't all good though.  Eva's monologue was a little tiring at times - there was nothing really outstanding in the writing, or in her voice, to make the reader enjoy the experience of her company.  The book also places a lot of weight on the reason for Marija's dismissal, dragging out the pivotal event until near the end.  When it finally arrives, it feels like an anti-climax, a revelation that wasn't really worth waiting for (although it does fit in nicely with the understated nature of the novel).  I get the feeling that many people will love this book, but for me it just drifted by.  At times, it was just too understated for its own good...

With all the stories from the past (the intruder, the dying dog, Simon's past, Marija...), you get the impression that there's something there, something that remains tantalisingly beyond reach.  I'm really not certain what it is though.  One thing's for sure - Eva is afraid of what lies ahead:

"Again that thought pops up, that underneath everything, the house, the children, all the years of movement and unrest, there has been this silence.  That it has simply risen to the surface, pushed up by external changes.  Like a splinter of stone is forced up by the innards of the earth, by disturbances in the soil, and gradually comes to light in the spring.  And that is what really frightens me.  How that reminds me of something else.  Is it meaninglessness?"

Perhaps the worst thing for Eva is not the upsetting events of her past.  It's the realisation that this is the way it's going to be from now on - a life of silence and regrets...

'From the Fatherland, With Love' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

As you may have seen, back in May Pushkin Press laid claim to 2013 as the year of Ryu Murakami, releasing four of his novels (three reissues and one new translation) in a striking series.  I've had this hardback monster on my shelves for a while now - so it's high time I finally got to grips with Murakami's nightmare take on Japan's future...

*****
From the Fatherland, with Love (translated by Ralph McCarthy, Charles De Wolf and Ginny Tapley Takemori - review copy courtesy of the publisher) was originally released in Japan back in 2005, so its 2011 setting pushes it into the realms of speculative fiction.  In this near-future scenario, Japan is on a downward spiral, economically weak and politically right-wing, and its former allies are beginning to distance themselves from Asia's one-time powerhouse.

Meanwhile, just across the sea, North Korea is slowly beginning to improve relations with its neighbours, and the US, while sticking to its hardline beliefs.  Of course, if attention could be further deflected from the regime, perhaps by involving Japan in a domestic crisis, this might ease the tension on the 'Fatherland' even more.

The idea the 'dear leader' comes up with is a scheme which, while initially sounding unworkable, quickly becomes a reality.  A small group of elite commandos lands near the Japanese city of Fukuoka and takes hostages, pretending to be a group of dissidents fleeing North Korea.  As the disorganised Japanese government dithers, unable to make a decision to take action which may endanger Japanese lives, more Koreans set off for the Land of the Rising Sun.  With international opinion split by Japan's inaction, it appears that Fukuoka is destined to become a rebel North Korean province.  However, anyone who has read a Murakami book before will know that even in mild-mannered Japan, there are a few people who are not averse to a little ultra-violence...

From the Fatherland, with Love is a long roller-coaster of a novel, an attempt to analyse the state of the Japanese nation, take a peek behind the Iron Curtain dividing North Korea from the rest of the world, and write a scenario which would be best made into an action movie.  How to describe it?  How about Tom Clancy meets Pokémon?  There can't be many novels which switch between cabinet discussions and a teenager whose weapons of choice are metal boomerangs with serrated edges...

One of the more interesting features of the novel is its focus on the North Koreans, and Murakami (who interviewed defectors from the country) does a great job of describing them.  The invaders are lean, mean fighting machines, albeit puzzled by lacy undies, bright lights and free tissues from taxi companies.  When the first commandos are en route to Japan, they are asked to make small talk to practise their disguise of South Korean tourists - and struggle:

"And yet they had not learned how to engage in the joking banter of South Korean tourists.  Time had not allowed for that, and such instruction was unavailable in any case.  There was no shortage of instructors in the art of killing people or blowing up facilities, but no-one in the Republic could teach you how to behave like a traveler from the puppet regime."
p.94 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

Killing?  Yes.  Banter?  Not in North Korea...

The writer gradually focuses more on the individuals, rendering them a little more human.  The effect of relative freedom - and nice clothes - has an apparent softening effect on them, and there are times when they don't appear all that different from the locals.  Every so often, though, the writer reminds us (and usually not very subtly) that they are still, first and foremost, killing machines.

Murakami also turns his critical eye on Kasumigaseki, the Japanese governmental precinct in Tokyo, and he's not too happy with what he sees there.  The government is old-fashioned and moribund, totally unable to deal with new threats, concentrating on sealing off Fukuoka after the invasion instead of actually dealing with the real issue:

"Yamagiwa felt a sense of hopelessness wash over him.  On turning fifty, he had gone through a midlife crisis and had been on anti-depressants for a couple of years.  Here in the crisis-management room, watching these people frantically at work, he got the same sour taste of futility that sometimes made him feel like saying to hell with it all.  At first he thought it was because he'd been left out in the cold, but he was beginning to feel it was more than that.  Being outside the frenzy of the round table, he had become painfully aware of the Japanese government's inability to see the big picture - and if he could see it, no doubt other outsiders could see it too." (p.230)

There is a dawning realisation that Japan just can't cope with this attack, and this fiddling while Fukuoka burns shows the weakness of democracy.  In a landscape of vested interests, politicians are scared of taking risks and unwilling to make unpopular, risky sacrifices.

You'd expect the inhabitants of Fukuoka to feel upset at being abandoned, and they are, initially at least.  However, not everyone is distraught, and as time passes, many people start to think that it's time to get on with life.  Having been abandoned by Tokyo (which sees them as country hicks anyway), the locals begin to cooperate more willingly with the 'Koryos'.  It's a Stockholm Syndrome of sorts, and the daily television broadcasts by a photogenic and charismatic Korean soldier help make the occupation more palatable.  Only those locals who have closer dealings with the Koreans know that the friendliness doesn't extend much below the surface.

So, with the Japanese government neglecting its responsibilities, it's inevitably left to the outcasts, the dregs of society, to do something about it.  One of the survivors of the apocalyptic events of of Popular Hits of the Showa Era has gathered a gang of misfits around him, and unable to fit into society, they don't have same inhibitions as most Japanese people.  While they initially see the invaders as kindred spirits, eventually they decide that this is the real enemy - and set about plotting a way to bring the invaders down for good :)

As I mentioned at the start of my post, Pushkin released four of Murakami's works this year, and having read them all, the choices make perfect sense.  In a way, the three reissues prepare you for the style, location and ideas of From the Fatherland, with Love.  We have the gangs living in abandoned shopping towns of Coin Locker Babies, the joys of youth (and Kyushu!) from Sixty-Nine and, of course, the crazed losers of Popular Hits of the Showa Era.  This novel is Murakami's big (ambitious) attempt to tie it all together - and in this regard it's very similar to what namesake Haruki was trying with 1Q84...

...however, there is another, less flattering, similarity with that book - it's too long.  There are frequent info dumps, pages and pages of unnecessary information which can slow the story down.  At times, the writer gives lists of names, with plenty of unnecessary backstories - there's a Tolstoyan list of characters at the start of the book, but most of them are superfluous.  There's also a whole lot of of repetition, and you can't help feeling that the book needed some more critical editing (obviously, writers called Murakmi are immune to this sort of editorial interference...).

Still, it's a great story, and one whose ending works very well.  Without giving too much away, there aren't too many happy endings floating around - real life doesn't work like a Hollywood movie.  And Murakami?  Yes, he's synonymous with violence, sex and darkness, but these four works show a far more versatile author than you'd think. He's definitely a writer whose novels warrant a try :)

August 2013 Wrap-Up

August was an interesting month with lots of reading and a few other activities too.  The highlight was my trip to the Melbourne Writers Festival - you can read about my experiences by clicking on the links below:

Prelude
Laurent Binet
The Future of the Novel (Teju Cole)
Andrés Neuman 

As for normal service...

*****
Total Books Read: 11
Year-to-Date: 82

New: 9

Rereads: 2

From the Shelves: 2
Review Copies: 6

From the Library: 3

On the Kindle: 3 (2 review copies)

Novels: 6
Novellas: 3

Short Stories: 2

Non-English Language: 10 (5 Spanish, Icelandic, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Various)

In Original Language: 2 (German, Various)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (3/3)
Japanese Literature Challenge 7: 1 (8/1)

*****
Books reviewed in August were:

1) Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) by Thomas Mann
2) All Dogs are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão
3) In Translation by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky (eds.)
4) Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
5) 70% Acrylic 30% Wool by Viola Di Grado
6) Lonely Hearts Killer by Tomoyuki Hoshino
7) Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa
8) The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal 

Tony's Turkey for August is: Nothing

A good month - come back in September :)

Tony's Recommendation for August is:

Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain)

Apologies to the seven other books reviewed in August - you never stood a chance.  Honourable mentions must go to Pedro Mairal, Viola Di Grado, Jón Kalman Stefánsson and Mario Vargas Llosa (in fact, there wasn't really a poor book among the reviewed choices).  The fact is though that Mann's classic towers above the others - a bit like a mountain...

*****
Well, after that month, I need a break - not that I'll get one ;)  There are plenty more books to be read and reviewed, and German Literature Month (which I'll be observing whether it happens or not) isn't too far away either.  September should be fun...

Tony at the Melbourne Writers Festival (Part Three)

As I mentioned a while back (and as regular readers would no doubt have already guessed), my main reason for attending the Melbourne Writers Festival for the first time this year was to see the session entitled Traveller of the Century, in which Argentine-Spanish writer Andrés Neuman discussed his award-winning novel.  A word of warning before we start: don't rely on me to be too objective with this one.  Most of the following was written whilst wearing rose-tinted spectacles ;)

*****
As with the Laurent Binet session, the interviewer was Radio National's Michael Cathcart, and the show was once again planned to be aired on radio.  Thankfully, it wasn't live this time...  We were back at ACMI, this time in a more intimate studio, and around seventy to eighty people were crammed into the rows of sofa-type seats (not great on my back, unfortunately).

From the very start, Neuman showed himself to be erudite, witty and fluent in English, able to keep the conversation rolling along in a way that Binet perhaps couldn't quite master earlier in the day.  After a brief discussion of the writer's roots (having left Argentina before high school, he said: "I feel half Latin-American and half European."), Cathcart quickly brought the discussion around to the book itself, one which revolves on the idea of identity, both personal and national.

Cathcart mentioned the setting for the story, the shifting town of Wandernburg, and Neuman explained how this invented place was following in the footsteps of such great writers as Calvino, Borges and García Marquez, all of whom used imaginary towns as the settings for their philosophical experiments.  Wandernburg's location, on the border of two powerful neighbours in a time of constant regional conflicts, means that the town frequently changes hands, forcing its inhabitants to master the art of swapping allegiances at the drop of a hat.  This is important when the focus of the novel moves on to the idea of the nation state and national characteristics, as the idea of 'typical Germans' makes no sense when there is no real Germany to shape the people.

A topic which appeared early in the conversation, reappearing towards the end, was the sex in the novel, which (as Cathcart rightly pointed out) only comes after a 300-page flirtation.  Neuman explained how readers today are unlikely to be shocked by sex scenes, and the way he decided to get around the readers' jadedness was to lull them into a false sense of security.  He did this by making the 'courtship' resemble something from Austen, before suddenly allowing Hans and Sophie to give in to their more physical instincts (in a rather un-Austenesque manner...).

Sophie is one of the more interesting characters in the book, and when Cathcart mentioned 'the beautiful Sophie', Neuman interrupted, asking why he thought she was beautiful - it's never really explicitly stated in the novel.  While most readers (yours truly included!) would have an image of a beautiful young woman in mind, the writer never describes her as such, instead allowing her intelligence and charisma to persuade the reader that she is beautiful.  In fact, in the scene where she is shown naked for the first time, Neuman goes out of his way to show the reader that she is not a flawless goddess, but a normal woman...

Another point Cathcart (who I suspect really loved this book) noted was that there were a couple of striking parallels in the novel, which Neuman was happy to agree with.  While Rudi Wilderhaus (Sophie's fiancé) is Hans' rival in love, Professor Mietter, the dogmatic centre of the literary salon, is just as much a rival, but an intellectual one.  And as we're mentioning the literary salon at the Gottlieb residence, what are the gatherings at the cave with the organ grinder and friends if not another kind of salon?

One of the most fascinating stories came from Neuman himself though when he revealed that the basis for the whole story lies with... Franz the dog!  As the audience looked on expectantly, the writer explained how the inspiration for the novel came from Franz Schubert's Winterreise, a song cycle with lyrics provided by poet Wilhelm Müller.  In the last of the twenty-four songs, the traveller comes across an organ grinder playing alone, with only dogs for an audience, and the traveller decides to throw in his lot with the old man.  And there you have a large part of what makes up Traveller of the Century...

I could go on all day, but I'll just mention one last area of interest.  Neuman has a background in translation himself, and he was naturally very enthusiastic about the process of having his work appear in the English language.  He worked hard with the two translators (Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia) and credits them with the success of the English-language version saying: "What you're reading is the translators' prose." and "It's an original creation, based on the original."  For anyone familiar with the discussion about BBC Radio's recent Front Row programme on literary translation, those are heartening comments indeed :)

*****
At the top of the review, I warned you all that my objectivity was ever-so-slightly compromised today, and there's a very good reason for that.  Not only have I now read the book twice (and loved it both times), I've also been in contact with Andrés on Twitter, and before the festival, we agreed to try to catch up when I came to his event.

I thought we might just snatch five minutes to chat, or perhaps sit down for a while over coffee; instead, once Andrés' signing duties had been fulfilled, I went with him and his lovely wife to a café and chatted for a couple of hours (which simply flew by!) about life, books and travel.  While I, naturally, was very interested in his work, he and his wife also praised my blog scribblings...  I'm happy when anybody deigns to take a look at my posts, so to have two such intelligent and erudite people appreciate what I do...

...well, let's just say that for this post, objectivity has flown out of the window :)

Tony at the Melbourne Writers Festival (Part Two)

As noted in my prelude post, the decision to attend the Melbourne Writers Festival session described today was very much a last-minute one.  However, being a fan of the longest form of fiction, a session entitled The Future of the Novel was always going to attract my attention :)  The session was one of many around the world celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the legendary World Writers' Conference held in Edinburgh, and while this session was a little more low-key than the chaotic events in Scotland in 1962, it was still entertaining.

The session was chaired by Scottish-Kiwi academic and writer Liam McIlvanney and also featured 'transmedia creator' Christy Dena (even after briefly chatting to her, I couldn't tell you exactly what that means - my fault not hers, I assure you).  The star attraction though was Teju Cole, author of the prize-winning novel Open City, and it was Cole who kicked things off with a ten-minute keynote address.

He started by explaining what he felt about the novel, focusing on works which (in the words of Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky) 'elongate the perspective of human sensibility', with Cole saying that: "...excellence in the novel is not one-dimensional."  After a brief summary of the history of the novel, including a comment on the retreat of English-language writing into the safe realm of consensus and prize shortlists, he moved onto his main focus, Twitter, which he described as a novel with no end, evergrowing, but with no single responsible author.  Is this one form of the novel of the future?

*****
After this, the three writers sat down for a panel discussion, one which primarily focused on Twitter and other forms of social media.  Cole and Dena discussed the idea of the 'perpetual present' of Twitter, whereby the 'reader' is carried along on a stream of... well, consciousness.  In fact, it was suggested that Twitter may well be the end destination of the journey of writers like Joyce and Woolf towards penetrating the human psyche and exposing it to the world.  Nobody was saying that this is entirely a good thing though ;)

A further idea which was explored was the effect that online exposure has on a writer and, consequently, on their work.  Cole talked about readers: "finally having that conversation with the author you admire - and being disappointed", to great laughs from the audience.  McIlvanney asked whether this time spent online could affect writers and eat away at their valuable writing time, but Cole was of the opinion that, for him at least, this time was productive and helped with his thought processes.  He doesn't like the mindset which tries to convince him that he's wasting his time online and that he 'should' be working...

However, he does admit that the immediate nature of responses on Twitter can affect the writer and their thoughts.  As he wryly noted: "All opinions are valid - until you start encountering all opinions!".  It is here that the novel has a great advantage as it still offers the reader solace, in what Cole described as 'a place of perfect slowness'.  This relaxation is something you may find hard to find online...

In the following Q & A session, I asked the panellists what they thought the novel would look like in thirty or forty years (mainly as I thought the discussion had wandered away from that focus at times).  Dena thought that the print book would still be around, but mainly as a collectors' item, and she envisaged the future writer as a master of multiple media, print, social media and audio.  Cole's initial response was of information downloaded instantly to contact lenses - and everyone would be reading something like Fifty Shades of Grey ;)  Afterwards though, he said that it didn't really matter whether the print novel would survive in its current form.  There would always be people with drive and talent (or, as he put it, 'forceful creativity'), and these people would always create great works of art :)

*****
This was a great session, very entertaining and informative, even if I'm not quite sure that the speakers really stuck as closely to the topic as I'd expected.  While McIlvanney and Dena spoke well, their role was really to act as a foil for Cole, a very intelligent and likeable speaker who namedropped international writers (including Australian poet Les Murray) in a way guaranteed to endear him to me.  While it's probably a very bad idea to read books based on how nice a writer is, I may well have to check out Open City at some point soon... (postscript: I'm about half-way through the book and enjoying it immensely.)

And that's all for today, but stay tuned for my final piece from the festival.  My next post will be my report from the Andrés Neuman session; hopefully, Cole's comment about meeting authors you admire won't ring true...