'The Swimmers' by Joaquín Pérez Azaústre (Review)

Frisch & Co. is a new publisher specialising in translated fiction, with all their titles appearing in digital form only.  I didn't have much luck with the first book I tried, but from the start, today's choice was the one I really had my eye on.  Reviews compare the book with works by Haruki Murakami, David Lynch and Paul Auster - and while those comparisons are fairly apt, this writer has a style all of his own...

*****
Joaquín Pérez Azaústre's The Swimmers (translated by Lucas Lyndes, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a novel in fifty short chapters, mirroring the fifty 50-metre lengths the protagonist swims three times a week.  Jonás, our water-loving friend, is a photographer who, after breaking up with his long-time girlfriend, takes a step back from his career, instead taking pictures for newspapers.

Recently, his time has been spent drinking, working part-time and swimming with his best friend, Sergio, and he has been content to let the world slide by at its own pace as he gets on with his life, one length of the pool at a time.  However, when his father informs him that his mother has disappeared, uncontactable for a couple of months, Jonás realises that something is very wrong.  You see, his mother is not the first person to go missing - and she won't be the last...

The Swimmers is an excellent novel, and the comparisons above are (to me, at least) fairly apt.  In Jonás, we have a very Murakamiesque protagonist, and the slow, measured build-up, with the action implied rather than confronting, builds the tension nicely.  The pivotal scene of the book towards the end is comparable to what Murakami does in both The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore - as is the ambiguous ending.

Jonás is a loner, who is simply not adapting to life in his new flat without his partner.  He's begun to retreat from his commitments, almost living just for his swimming and his lunches with Sergio:

"...because his whole life is strapped to his back and right this instant it takes up no more space than that backpack, he could go practically anywhere, he wouldn't be leaving anything that important behind, in truth there's nothing waiting for him, just that fifty-meter stretch across the water."
(Frisch & Co., 2013)

The one thing that allows him to feel in control of his life is the beautiful rhythm of swimming long distances.

The book can be seen as a subtle criticism of society, one where people no longer make the time to see each other.  As Jonás says to his father:

"And don't go obsessing over this thing with Mom.  There are thousands of families in this city who don't see each other on a regular basis, friends who lose track of one another, and that doesn't mean anyone's vanished into thin air all of a sudden.  I've had friends where if I fall out of touch or lose their cell phone number, if they move to a new place or change their email address, I've got no way to find them."

Tired, permanently stressed, he (like many of us) has no time for family and friends.  Modern life, well, it's rubbish...

While I talked about the Murakami feel of the book above, another novel that came to mind while reading The Swimmers was Saramago's Blindness, not so much because of the style but for the connection between the central ideas.  Like Saramago's contagious blindness, Perez Azaústre's mysterious disappearances seem to impose a bizarre new problem on a fairly normal society, with people gradually becoming more and more frightened as they lose contact with their loved ones.  As in Blindness, it doesn't take long everyone to start to panic.
 
However, it's also possible that the disappearances are merely an allegory - perhaps it's Jonás who's taking a step back from life.  The ever emptier streets and the uncrowded trains might just be a symptom of his problems, representing his gradual withdrawal.  The shadows he sees at the swimming pool, vague outlines lurking behind the large plate-glass windows, might represent the people he's left behind, or lost along the way.  Jonás is certainly nostalgic about his childhood and his lost love - perhaps The Swimmers is a reflection on the loss of contact modern life brings.

The style of the novel is beautiful with long, elegant, sentences mirroring the powerful, driving strokes of Jonás the swimmer (it's no coincidence that there are fifty chapters...).  The writer uses themes of water, light, shadow, heat and coolness to... well, I'm not quite sure, but I'm sure they're there for a reason ;)  The mentions of water are particularly frequent, as you would expect, and there seems to be a connection between the pool, the abandoned water park and the canvas Jonás' mother was working on, one that eventually makes sense.  Even so, it's hard to get your head around everything on a first read - it's a book which deserves to be reread.

I had a quick look around, but I couldn't find any other example of the writer's work in English, which is a surprise.  I loved this book, and it's the kind of novel that many other readers would love too.  Kudos to Frisch & Co., and Lucas Lyndes, on bringing Perez Azaústre's work into English; hopefully, they'll team up again in the future to publish more of his books.

And while we're speaking about the translator, there's a great little piece on the publisher's web-site, in which he discusses the process of translating The Swimmers, with particular mention of style and sentence length.  Anyone interested should definitely take a look :)

The Year So Far...

It's not long until I have my latest bloggerversary (five long years...), but that joyous occasion is usually ignored, coming as it does at the turn of the year.  I thought then that it might be nice to slow down and reflect now, at a time when I'm feeling less rushed than I have been of late.  And, of course, having recently passed a milestone also makes this a good time for a round-up...

Last week I brought up the century, 100 books down for the year, just half-way through October.  That's not too shabby and is comparable to the pace set over the last couple of years.  The big change though has been in the percentage of translated fiction read and reviewed on the blog.  You see, of those 100 books, only eight were originally written in English...

It's not a statistic that should really come as a surprise (to me or my readers).  The last two years have seen an increased, wider focus on literature in translation on Tony's Reading List, starting with my participation in the IFFP Shadow Panel last year.  Where previously I had only really read a lot of German- and Japanese-language novels, 2012 and 2013 have seen a much more varied diet of literature in translation.

Recently, however, I've decided that it's just a bit too much (8%?  I could start a new backlash blog...).  In fact, at times, it seems that I've actively been avoiding Anglophone writers and picking up anything with an exotic feel.  Next year, I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up a few more English-language books - it's definitely time to catch up with some neglected writers...

Another change this year was in the number of review copies falling into my letter box.  In previous years, I've had the odd whinge about not getting freebies, but while I'm still ignored a bit (especially by bigger publishers), I've received many more review copies this year.  In particular, some of the newer, smaller publishers of translated literature have approached me to review books - obviously my fame has spread ;)  Still, at around 50% of my total this year, review copies have taken up far too much of my reading time.  It's time to cut down on ARCs and try more of what I really want to read, regardless of when it was published.

So, what do I want?  Well, don't expect major changes...  As mentioned, I'm hoping to try more English-language writers (Tóibín, Banville, Hollinghurst), and I suspect that the library will be getting more of a workout next year.  Here in Melbourne, we have an excellent library service, and I really should use it more (it came in very useful both during the IFFP reading and my period of Spanish-language literature education earlier this year).

An area that has really suffered over the past few years is rereading, and I'm constantly telling myself to rectify this - why have a big personal library of books if you're not going to reread them?  I've recently reread several books, and I'm really enjoying rediscovering the works on my shelves.  Also, if they've already appeared on the blog, it means I don't have to write another review ;)

As for the blog itself, I doubt there'll be too many changes.  Next year, once again, I'll be trying to restrict myself to two posts a week to protect my health and my sanity, and I'm sure I'll be taking part in the usual challenges (Shadow IFFP, Japanese Literature Challenge, German Literature Month).  Will I be holding my own challenge, January in Japan, again?  Quite possibly - we'll have to see...

This New Year's Eve then, the blog will be five years old, and that seems like a very long time.  I  have to admit that I've often thought of giving it all up this year, especially with five being such a nice round number.  In all probability though I'll carry on - it's become a big part of my life, and it's nice to be part of a like-minded online community who have a passion for something I enjoy.  There's a fair chance that I'll be reviewing translated literature for many years to come :)

'Chasing the King of Hearts' by Hanna Krall (Review)

It's been a while, but I've finally got around to trying another of Peirene Press' two-hour slices of literary pleasure.  Today's offering is the first time the publisher has offered a Polish story, and while the background is a familiar one for most readers, the style is definitely a little different :)

*****
Hanna Krall's Chasing the King of Hearts (translated by Philip Boehm, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is mainly set in Poland during the last few years of the Second World War.  Izolda is a Polish Jew living in the Warsaw Ghetto, and with the writing on the wall, she decides that it's time to start thinking about escape.  On the very first page of the book, she meets fellow Jew Shayek, quickly falling in love with (then marrying) him, and this love is the catalyst for the events which follow.

If you think this sounds like another three-hankie piece of Holocaust Lit though, you'd be mistaken.  Chasing the King of Hearts is not one of those clichéd WW2 novels where the writer ratchets up the tension before playing on the reader's emotions with scenes of torture, death and betrayal.  Instead, Krall focuses on one woman and her quest to save the man she loves - the fact that there's a war going on is just a technicality...

Rather than being a traditional, seamless narrative, the book is divided into many short sections, each lasting a page or so.  This structure has the effect of eliminating dead time, whisking the reader (and Izolda) through the war years, almost without our realising how much time has passed.  Krall's laconic style also means that the horrors of the Holocaust are kept in the background, only very rarely surfacing, and there's a lot of dry humour:

"Izolda understands Lilusia's cunning, but then she takes a closer look at the handbag and sets it on the floor.  How's that?  Does the bag look Jewish there?  She tries the sofa, the stool, the chair.  Because if it does, what exactly about the bag is Jewish?"
p.21 (Peirene Press, 2013)

Even when matters do become a little more emotionally charged, the next section usually sweeps those feelings away - there's no time to dwell on the past here.

The title comes from the fortune-telling Izolda has an acquaintance do for her using a normal set of playing cards.  Shayek is the King of Hearts (Izolda, naturally is the Queen), and the chase takes place both within the deck and all across Europe, as Izolda does her best to keep tabs on her husband, hoping to alleviate his suffering and reunite with him one day.  In the process, she shows herself to be a formidable woman, brave, resourceful and inventive, someone who can always find a way to do the impossible.

Her greatest strength is her adaptability.  She's a woman who's prepared to do almost anything, crawling through sewers, smuggling contraband and marching in and out of the Ghetto, seemingly without blinking an eye.  Her brazenness is also breathtaking, able to lie through her teeth and smile when she's found out, allowing her to charm those who can be charmed and bribe those who can't.  In fact, she's a bit of a chameleon, and at times she begins to see herself as who she's pretending to be, rather than who she was:

"Her suffering is worse, because she is worse.  That's what the whole world thinks, and the whole world can't be wrong when it comes to a sense of good and bad, or rather, better and worse.
 She is worse and that's why she is in disguise.  She has a new name and a new hair colour and a new voice and laugh and a new way of carrying her handbag.  And she prefers her new self to the real thing.  So what does that mean?  That her disguised self... that her pretend self is better than her real self." (pp.55/6)

The key to the whole book though is that it is actually a romance.  From the very start, the reader is told that Izolda is madly in love with Shayek, and everything she does throughout Chasing the King of Hearts is done for him.  However, in the times she finds herself in, this attitude brings with it some moral dilemmas, for in investing so much in one man, Izolda may have to neglect other loved ones - and that neglect may have serious consequences.  Should she be devoting all her time, energy and money to helping Shayek, or would it be better to help the people around her?  It's a rather nasty dilemma to face...

There's a lot to like about the book, one that many people will enjoy.  It's an interesting, different look at a period which, having already been covered extensively, can sometimes leave novels feeling rather stale and old.  I liked it, even if I didn't really love it, and I felt that the short, fleeting sections were both the book's strength and its weakness.  While it kept the reader engaged, I felt that at times a little slipped between the cracks; I would have enjoyed it more if it had slowed down at times, just a little...

I did enjoy the way the book finished though, as we get to experience life after the war and find out what happened to Izolda and Shayek.  The last sections are poignant and force the reader to ask themselves if it was all really worth it, the sacrifices and the suffering.  While we're not sure what Izolda's answer would be, Chasing the King of Hearts is certainly worth the sacrifice of a couple of hours of your time :)

'Cocaine' by Pitigrilli (Review)

Today I'm looking at another book from new indie publisher New Vessel Press, a recent addition to the world of translated fiction.  Last time, I reviewed some contemporary Argentine literature, but this time we're looking at an Italian classic - a rather controversial one...

*****
Cocaine (translated by Eric Mosbacher, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a reissue of a novel by Pitigrilli, a writer whose work shocked staid authorities in the 1920s.  It's the biting, witty tale of Tito Arnaudi, a young man who runs off to seek fame, fortune and fun in Paris (well, where else?).

Tito is in the prime of his life, but averse to following other people's instructions, so he decides to make a living from a mixture of journalistic instincts and sheer cheek.  His first article, on the shadowy Parisian world of cocaine, makes him an instant hit and opens doors both professionally and socially.  This is his ticket to a world of pleasure, one centred on two lovers - and a lot of the white stuff...

While naughty and witty, Cocaine is not really explicit, but it's unsurprising that the novel was frowned upon by the church in Italy.  Sex and drugs and naked dancing may have been a fair reflection of the time, but it's unlikely to have amused the Vatican.  It's a fun book though, with jokes everywhere you look

Tito looked at him, puzzled.  Then he said: "You've had an unhappy love affair.  Has your mistress been deceiving you with her husband?"
p.138 (New Vessel Press, 2013)

And there are plenty more where that came from :)

In the early parts of the novel, the reader is treated to fantastic scenes of the hedonism of the time.  Forget Gatsby and his lame soirées - people really knew how to party in Paris.  The evening held by Kalantan, one of Tito's lovers, is astonishing in its open description of the way the upper classes spent their free time.  Strawberries and chloroform, butterflies flapping about helplessly, asphyxiated by the fumes of the mind-altering chemicals, naked dancing, cocaine aplenty, and guests openly injecting morphine.  While the orgiastic scenes that inevitably followed are veiled, it's still a rather powerful image.

It's the second girlfriend, Maud, that Tito really falls for though.  Initially a prim and proper Italian girl, she is ruined by the reformatory her parents send her to for her own protection.  Having disappeared from Tito's life, she reappears in Paris, a mid-grade celebrity, a high-priced 'girlfriend' and an enticing figure with a handbag-sized dog (eighty-odd years before Paris Hilton copied the style).  It's little wonder that our hero decides to pursue her.

Tito, obsessed, follows her across the seas to several continents in the hope of winning her heart.  However, Maud is a dancer who can't help feeling wanted; Tito can have her, but not exclusively.  In this impossible quest, and the globe-trotting, there are shades of a hedonistic Candide - in this, the best of all possible worlds, everything (even drug abuse) must be for the best...

Of course, a life lived at this pace has consequences, and Pitigrilli makes this abundantly clear, giving us warnings from the very start.  When Tito goes looking for cocaine for the first time, he encounters a group of female addicts, twitching and desperate for drugs:

"But the four harpies didn't calm down.  Panting, with dilated nostrils and flashing eyes, they clawed at the box of white powder, like shipwrecked persons struggling for a place in the lifeboat." (p.24)

It's a timely warning for our feckless friend...

Tito fails to heed these warnings though, and as his twin obsessions, sex and drugs, blend into one (he even starts calling Maud 'Cocaine'), his downward spiral accelerates:

"Tito's nights were restless.  In the evening he took strong doses of chloral to overcome the insomnia produced by the drug he could not give up.  The result of the incurable insomnia and the useless drug was a hallucinatory state; he spent long hours in a state of wakefulness in which he felt he was dreaming and in a state of sleep in which he felt he was awake." (p.153)

What goes up (the nose), must come down...

In the end, despite the wit and constant light touch, Cocaine is a sobering account of the dangers of drugs and sexual obsession.  Tito is quite obviously doomed to a sad ending, but you suspect that he's quite happy to trade in his twilight years for a brief moment of ecstasy.  It all makes for a thoroughly enjoyable story from a forgotten writer :)

*****
Cocaine has an added extra in the form of writer and journalist Alexander Stille's afterword, one which focuses more on the man than the story.  It's an intriguing, fifteen-page tale of a man who... well, wasn't very nice.  Fascist informer, selfish traitor, Dino Segre (Pitigrilli's real name) was a pretty nasty character all round, albeit a very interesting one.  Cocaine is a great read, but I'd definitely leave the real story until after you've finished the novel ;)

'Le Colonel Chabert' by Honoré de Balzac (Review)

When I decided to take part in the Christmas Humbook event, organised by Emma and Guy, it seemed a fairly easy thing to commit to.  Reading three books over the following year, two chosen by a fellow blogger, one by the host - no worries, right?  Except that nine months on, I had yet to try one...

Time to get cracking then, and today sees me review one of those three books, the one Emma and Guy chose for me.  Unfortunately though, even this isn't quite as straightforward as it should be.  You see, they chose a classic by Honoré de Balzac, Eugenie Grandet - but I decided to go for something else instead (I had my reasons...)

*****
Le Colonel Chabert (Colonel Chabert) is a novella which takes place in and around Paris, just after the Napoleonic wars.  The story starts with banter in a lawyer's office where some clerks are making fun of an old man waiting to see their employer.  Once they deign to talk to the man, the fun continues - until they happen to ask his name:

"Monsieur, lui dit Boucard, voulez-vous avoir la complaisance de nous donner votre nom, afin que le patron sache si...
- Chabert.
-Est-ce le colonel mort à Eylau? demanda Hulé qui n'yant encore rien dit était jaloux d'ajouter une raillerie à toutes les autres.
- Lui-même, monsieur," répondit le bonhomme avec une simplicité antique.  Et il se retira.

"Sir,"  said Boucard, "would you be so kind as to give us your name, so that our employer might know whether..."
"Chabert."
"Isn't that the colonel who died at Eylau?" asked Hulé who, not having said anything to that point, was keen to add a barb to all the others.
"The very same, sir," the old man replied with old-fashioned simplicity.  And he left.***

As surprised as the clerks are by the mysterious stranger's answer to their question, that is nothing compared to what their boss, Monsieur Derville, feels when he hears the full story.  The truth of the matter is that somehow, miraculously, the famous colonel, long thought dead in battle, has managed to survive and has returned to reclaim his life, his riches and his wife.  Now, if only his wife can be made to comply...

I decided to try Le Colonel Chabert after seeing it mentioned in some books I read this year.  It comes up a couple of times in Sebald's Austerlitz, but it actually forms a vital component of Javier Marías' most recent novel, The Infatuations, another story about secrets from beyond the grave.  In his novel, Marías poses the question as to whether a woman who has lost her husband would really want him to return from the grave after a long absence, and this question forms the whole basis of Balzac's story.

The physical description of Chabert at his first meeting with his lawyer is a telling one.  He literally looks like a corpse - and it's little wonder considering the ordeals he's gone through.  He's a man who has been buried alive, only to escape from the earth as naked as the day he was born.  It's a twisted kind of rebirth:

"Mais, avec une rage que vous devez concevoir, je me mis à travailler les cadavres qui me séparaient de la couche de terre sans doute jetée sur nous, je dis nous, comme s'il y eut eu des vivants!  J'y allais ferme, monsieur, car moi aussi!  Mais je ne sais pas aujourd'hui comment j'ai pu parvenir à percer la couverture de chair qui mettait une barrière entre la vie et moi."

"But, with a rage that you can imagine, I set to work on the cadavers which separated me from the layer of earth which had undoubtedly been thrown upon us, I say us, as if there was anyone alive down there!  I put my back into it, sir, for I was alive too!  But today I couldn't tell you how I managed to break through the covering of flesh which formed a barrier between life and me."

It's a tall tale though - who could ever believe him?

Certainly not his wife...  She has benefited financially from his death and is now married once more, with two young children at home.  Having risen in the world thanks to her new husband, she is terrified of losing him (and her station) - which is actually quite possible, as he suspects that her humble origins are beginning to hold him back.  In short, she is willing to do anything to stop the poor war hero from being recognised as a living, breathing soul.

There are also political complications to Chabert's quest to have his existence recognised.  While the colonel was a favourite of the Emperor, times have changed, and far from being welcome, his return from the grave would probably be little more than an inconvenience.  He is a throw-back to the old Napoleonic era, with its ethics and old-fashioned honour code, and the writer makes it clear that very different values rule now.  The restoration has brought about an age of commercialism, where getting ahead at any cost is more important than moral niceties.

A further problem is the financial reality of the old soldier's predicament.  To regain his position and fortune, he will need to go through the courts - but how can you prove a point in law without status or money?  In short, Chabert is a man in a void, a creature that others would rather see vanish:

"J'ai été enterré sous des morts, mais maintenant je suis enterré sous des vivants, sous des actes, sous des faits, sous la société tout entière, qui veut me faire rentrer sous terre!"

"I was buried beneath the dead, but now I am buried beneath the living, beneath files, beneath facts, beneath all of society, which would have me six feet under again!"

I challenge the reader not to feel sympathy with his plight...

Le Colonel Chabert is more like a play than a novella; its long, conversation-dominated scenes seem perfect for the stage, and with the exception of the final part, the story mostly keeps to the unities of time, place and plot (well, loosely, anyway!).  Occasionally, though, Balzac does escape into prose and waxes lyrical, particularly in describing certain aspects of the novel.  Chief among these are the spectral appearance Chabert makes at Derville's chambers, the vivid escape the colonel makes from the grave, and a detailed look at the rundown house where he lodges (a passage which brings back memories of the minutely-detailed start to Le Père Goriot).

It's not giving too much away to hint that things don't end as the reader would like them to, but Le Colonel Chabert is much more than a sad story of a poor soul betrayed by an ungrateful loved one (it's no coincidence that Derville also represented Old Goriot in the previous novel).  A horror story, then?  Yes, but as Derville himself points out, no novelistic creation could ever match up to the terrors of reality.  Poor Chabert is doomed to unhappiness from the moment he claws his way through the soil separating the land of the living from the realm of the dead:

- Les morts ont donc bien tort de revenir?

"So the dead are wrong to want to come back to life?"

Unfortunately, the answer Balzac (and Marías) would reluctantly give is yes...

*****
*** All translations into English are my own, misguided, attempts (with one kind correction, courtesy of Richard McCarthy, AKA @Barsacq)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, friends...

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

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

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

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

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

Some Ideas for German Literature Month 2013

By (very) popular demand, November sees the return of German Literature Month, Lizzy and Caroline's third annual festival of all things originally written in the German language.  As you may have guessed, I'll be participating in a major way, with all of my November posts to be dedicated to the event :)

A notable feature of this third edition is an attempt by the host(esse)s to even up the gender imbalance of the past two years.  The month has been divided up as follows in an attempt to get more people to review books by female writers:

Week 1 (1-7/11): Ladies Week

Week 2 (8-14/11): Gents Week

Week 3 (15-21/11): Ladies Week

Week 4 (22-28/11): Gents Week

Weekend (29-30/11): Read as you please

I'm not sure my reading will be a fifty-fifty split, but I have no doubt that a few female writers will be featured on the blog over the course of the month.

So what will I be reading and reviewing in November?  Well, the first port of call is my German bookshelf, where I have a few neglected works itching to be read.  I have a couple from Peter Stamm (Agnes and Wir Fliegen/We're Flying) to choose from, and there's more contemporary fiction in the form of Alois Hotschnig's Leonardos Hände (Leonardo's Hands) and Judith Hermann's collection Nichts als Gespenster (Nothing but Ghosts).  Rounding off this selection is Sebald's Austerlitz (a book I've just finished reading and reviewing).

There are also several older books up there, including Eduard von Keyserling's Wellen (Waves), one of Caroline's recommendations from a couple of years back, Robert Walser's novel Jakob von Gunten, Hans Keilson's Das Leben geht weiter (Life Goes On) and Peter Handke's Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty) - a book I've been meaning to get to for quite some time now...

Then, naturally, there are the books I've bought from The Book Depository, which are winging their way to Australia as we speak to join the rest of my collection.  I've ordered Christa Wolf's Was Bleibt (What Remains) and Thomas Bernhard's Holzfällen (The Woodcutters), both books I'm keen to get stuck into for November.  I also have one more which might just sneak in - my preordered copy of the paperback version of Anna Kim's Anatomie einer Nacht (Anatomy of a Night) is being released on the 11th of November...

The fun doesn't end there.  Thanks to my Kindle and the evil nice people at Amazon, I have a whole host of out-of-copyright classics loaded up ready to read.  To even up the gender balance, I might try something by Lena Christ or Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach.  But then, there's also Theodor Storm, Theodor Fontane, Adalbert Stifter, Gottfried Keller...

Well, there are definitely a lot of ideas amongst that lot, but there's only one thing I can promise about my choices - there's absolutely no way I'll get through all of them in one month.  Now, about December...

September 2013 Wrap-Up

September was a busy month, both for reading and reviewing, but the highlight was probably the multilingual nature of my books.  While I'm always up for a bit of translated fiction, this month some of the translating was going on in my head - and I even managed to finish a book in Spanish, not one of my better languages :)

But, as ever, the cold, hard figures...
*****
Total Books Read: 12 
Year-to-Date: 94

New: 12

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 2
Review Copies: 8

From the Library: 1

On the Kindle: 3 (2 review copies)

Novels: 7
Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 2
Plays: 1
Poetry: 1

Non-English Language: 11 (2 Spanish, 2 Italian, 2 French, Dutch, Japanese, Latvian, Norwegian, German)

In Original Language: 4 (2 German, French, Spanish)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (3/3)
Japanese Literature Challenge 7: 1 (9/1)

*****
Books reviewed in September were:

1) From the Fatherland, with Love by Ryu Murakami
2) Days in the History of Silence by Merethe Lindstrøm
3) Multiples by Adam Thirlwell (ed.)
4) Ghosts by César Aira
5) Under this Terrible Sun by Carlos Busqued
6) Open City by Teju Cole
7) The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
8) The Nihon-ryōiki by Kyōkai
9) The Foxes Come at Night by Cees Nooteboom
10) High Tide by Inga Ābele
11) Shades of the Other Shore by Jeffrey Greene
12) Ballade Nocturne by Gao Xingjian

Tony's Turkey for September is:
Carlos Busqued's Under this Terrible Sun

In fairness, this is here mainly because it just wasn't my kind of book (and I probably would have picked something else up to try if I'd read the review describing it as 'stoner noir' earlier).  Nevertheless, I'm compelled to be honest, so Busqued's book ends up on the turkey shelf...

Tony's Recommendation for September is:

Jón Kalman Stefánsson's The Sorrow of Angels

Easily the pick of the bunch for this month, a book that I'm hoping will do well in next year's IFFP.  Other highlights include Nooteboom's short-story collection, Aira's slight, but memorable, tale and Teju Cole's ode to New York.  However, there was only ever going to be one winner here :)

*****
German Literature Month has just been announced for November, so there'll be a lot of German-language reading going on around these parts in October.  Don't worry though - I've got a good few other reviews all lined up, ready to go :)

'Bariloche' by Andrés Neuman (Review)

As you may have noticed, I've read a lot of tricky books in my time (many this year alone), so why is today's book, a 150-page first novel, one of the most difficult I've ever read?  Well, there's a simple answer to that - there's a lot that's lost in translation...

*****
Bariloche is the first novel of Argentine-Spanish writer Andrés Neuman, he of Traveller of the Century fame.  It's a much shorter and simpler book than his IFFP-shortlisted work though, and is centred on the life of Demetrio Roja, a rubbish collector in Buenos Aires.  Every day, he goes to the depot where he and his work partner cruise the empty streets of the Argentine capital, removing unsightly rubbish before the rest of the city starts its day.

However, back home, we see a different side of Demetrio.  In a stark, semi-vacant apartment, he sits and occupies himself with jigsaw puzzles.  Not just any puzzle will do; they all have pictures showing the lake, forests and mountains of Bariloche, a small rural town on the other side of Argentina.  You see, Demetrio is not a native of the big city, and in his lonely apartment, he pines for the home of his youth - and a woman he once knew:

"Era lindísima y mayor que yo.  Se vestía como los hombres del lugar, escondiendo el cuerpo lo más que podía.  No vivía lejos, pero para mí ese trecho de tierra y a veces de barro era toda una ceremonia, una distancia que no podía recorrerse así nomás."
p.32 (Anagrama, 2009)

"She was very beautiful, and out of my reach.  She dressed like the local men, covering her body as best she could.  She didn't live far away, but for me this stretch of land and, at times, mud was a complete ritual, a distance which I could never cross." (my poor translation...)

As you may have guessed, Demetrio is not a very happy man...

Bariloche consists of sixty-five short chapters, several lasting less than a page, while the penultimate chapter, the longest in the book, only runs for six pages.  Initially, these scenes of urban life are merely snap-shots of Demetrio's daily routine, but as the novel progresses, we are treated to more glimpses of his life before his arrival in Buenos Aires, in particular, of a relationship he has which ends abruptly.

While the scenes in the mountains are sunny and filled with languid happiness, the chapters in the capital mostly happen in the dark, in the midst of the refuse of the big city.  There's an obvious contrast between the purity and innocence of Demetrio's youth and his life in Buenos Aires, and this contrast isn't limited to his physical surroundings - life in BA also seems to have corrupted his morals.  His young love was innocent, if forbidden:

"Nos besamos in ese momento y después no importó nada aparte de sus manos y las mías." (p.61)

"We kissed at that moment, and afterwards nothing mattered except her hands and mine."

Back in the big city, however, Demetrio's female affairs are less simple, as he is sleeping with the one woman he really should have left well alone...

The two strands, past and present, intertwine to create a fuller picture of a man whose life is going nowhere.  Trapped in memories, many of them pasted onto cardboard and carefully cut into small pieces, Demetrio is stuck in a rut he's unlikely to climb out of any time soon.  Work is simply a chore, and his love life is a dead end waiting to smother him alive.  Still, in his mind (and on his kitchen table), he'll always have Bariloche...

*****
The observant among you (i.e. those who have actually read the post carefully) will have realised by now that it wasn't the book that was difficult but the fact that I was reading it in the original Spanish.  Sadly, Traveller of the Century is, at this point, the only one of Neuman's books to have appeared in English, and having read it twice and loved it - and having caught up with the writer at the Melbourne Writers Festival -, I was keen to try another one.

How?  Well, I have studied Spanish before (two years at GCSE level while doing my A-Levels), and the similarity with French, another of my languages, helps a lot.  In essence though, it was me and my hazy memory of the language (with a little help from Google Translate) against an authentic literary text - I staggered through twelve rounds, but I got a hell of a beating ;)

If I'm being honest, it would be hard for anyone to take my review at face value as I did struggle with the book at times.  The first few days saw me read about seven pages at a time, with constant stops to look words up, and I really thought I had bitten off more than I could chew...  However, I slowly got the hang of things, and my long-term memory kicked in, allowing me to double that by the end of my two weeks of reading.  While there were still words I didn't know, I opted for fluency over complete comprehension where possible, especially if I sensed that not knowing a certain word was unlikely to affect the flow of the story.

I did get a lot out of Bariloche, especially when contrasting it with Traveller of the Century, as it allowed me to compare the two books and draw out some parallels with, perhaps seeds of, the later, longer novel.  Demetrio's illicit affair has shades of Hans' relationship with Sophie, and an old homeless man the rubbish collector befriends may well be a literary ancestor of the Organ Grinder.  The care taken when describing the streets of Buenos Aires (and the beauty of Bariloche) is also repeated in Neuman's later description of Wandernburg.  Finally, the picture of Demetrio poring over his jigsaw puzzles in a grotty bachelor pad evokes images of Hans sitting in his room at the inn, dictionary in hand, working away at his translations (which, in turn, is uncannily close to the image of Tony turning frequently from book to i-Pad in a desperate attempt to make sense of it all...).

What it lacks though, is the sparkling conversation and warmth that pervades Traveller of the Century.  One of the features of the latter book is the way in which it exudes life and laughter, with Hans and Sophie knowing full well that they won't be able to enjoy themselves forever, but giving it their best shot anyway.  In contrast, Demetrio is taciturn and isolated, a man who's lost even before he's started the game.  Mind you, it's just as well that the writer skimped on the dialogue in Bariloche; whenever the characters did start talking, I really struggled to understand a word of what they were saying...

For a native (or skilled) reader of Spanish, this is a book to be knocked off in a couple of days - it took me about two weeks ;)  Still, it was definitely worth the effort, and I did enjoy it, even if it never reached the heights of Traveller of the Century.  One thing is for sure though; with Pushkin Press' translation of Neuman's Hablar solos only about six months away, I think I'll just wait for the translation next time :)

'A Man in Love' by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Review)

Back in March, during my IFFP reading for this year, I tried the first part of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series, A Death in the Family, a book which looked at parts of the writer's life in minute, painstaking detail.  Today, we're back for part two - it's a touch lighter than the first instalment, but still very, very personal...

*****
A Man in Love (translated by Don Bartlett) starts with our friend on a summer trip with Linda, his second wife, and his three kids.  Knausgaard playing happy families?  Not exactly...

"The situation infuriated Linda, sitting at the other end of the table - I could see it in her eyes - but she bit her tongue, made no comment, waited until we were outside and on our own, then she said we should go home.  Now.  Accustomed to her moods, I said she should keep her mouth shut and refrain from making decisions like that when she was in such a foul temper.  That riled her even more of course, and that was how things stayed until we got into the car next morning to leave."
p.5 (Harvill Secker, 2013)

Three pages in, and he's at it already.  Knausi (as I like to call him) paints a detailed picture of a man who loathes family life...

Then we go back in time, witnessing the writer's arrival in Sweden, overweight and depressed.  Despite his literary success, he's not a happy man:

"All the music around me, all the literature around me, all the art around me, it should have made me happy, happy, happy.  All the beauty in the world, which should have been unbearable to behold, left me cold.  That was how it was, and that was how it had been for so long that I could no longer stand it and had decided to do something about it.  I wanted to be happy again.  It sounded stupid.  I couldn't say it to anyone, but that was how it was." (p.136)

Having walked out on his first wife, Tonje, he's decided that what he needs to kickstart his life, and his writing, is a new start in a new country.

Having escaped from his past, the world is now his oyster.  He sets himself up in an apartment in Stockholm and decides to spend his time focusing on writing and unwinding.  That is, until he catches up with Linda, a poet and dramatist he once met at a writing workshop, and falls suddenly and violently for her.  One evening, after being entranced by an Ibsen play, and by her company, he has a sudden realisation:

"After we parted company and I was trudging up the hills to my bedsit in Mariaberget I realised two things.
 The first was that I wanted to see her again as soon as possible.
 The second was that was where I had to go, to what I had seen that evening.  Nothing else was good enough, nothing else did it.  That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence.  If it took forty years, so be it, it took forty years.  But I should never lose sight of it, never forget it, that was where I was going.
 There, there." (p.184)

The trouble is that when we get what we want, it rarely seems to be how we imagined it...

In terms of plot, A Man in Love is the story of how Knausgaard fell in love with Linda, and the progress the two make from friends to lovers to married with children; of course, that plot could be written in twenty pages.  However, this is Knausgaard we're talking about, a man who (as a friend jokes) could write ten pages about going to the toilet and make it fascinating.  The book contains the usual minute detail, descriptions of absolutely everything that happens in his life.  Stories branch off into other stories, one memory leads to another.  Somehow, it all works.

On one level, it's the story of a man looking for his place in society and life.  The writer is a foreigner, a boorish, drunken Norwegian in a land of mineral-water-sipping health freaks.  In a country where everything is done by the book, and where, instead of sweets, veggies are served at kids' parties, the chaotic, confused Knausgaard feels even more adrift than he did back home.  He's made to feel low-class and provincial, and his new start threatens to turn sour.

Another view of the novel is the story it tells of the frustration of the writer, when life and absolutely everything gets in the way of what you really want to do - which is write!  He agrees to interviews he really doesn't want to do (and which often go spectacularly wrong), but it is his family life which really angers him.  He resents any time stolen away from him by his wife and kids, loathing his feeling of being a 'feminised house-husband'.  Knausgaard behaves like a 19th-Century man in a modern, equal society - one he hates.  On a side note, I've seen lots of praise and understanding for the book recently from bloggers and reviewers like myself - men, in their mid-thirties, married with small kids...

One name that gets bandied about frequently when discussion turns to Knausgaard is that of Proust, and there seem to be two opposing camps here.  The first, mainly consisting of publishers and blurb writers, is effusive in its Proustian comparisons; the second, comprising critics and grumpy bloggers, slams this as a lazy comparison.  Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle (sitting on the fence, picking out splinters).  Language-wise, there's absolutely no comparison.  Knausgaard uses fairly ordinary language, and he rarely sweeps the reader away by force of expression or beautiful Proustian imagery.  Story-wise though, they are definitely more similar.  Knausgaard's style of slowly, laboriously describing events is obviously Proustian, but there's also a sense of Proust's handling of memory, with recounts going off at tangents, and smells and images evoking long-forgotten memories.  Admittedly though, there are probably better comparisons out there - just ones I haven't encountered yet.

A Man in Love is a little different to A Death in the Family.  It seems even more internal, reflective, and self-flagellating, and there is a deeper sense of something amiss, the writer's madness bubbling to the surface.  Linda herself has a mental illness, and Knausgaard's first attempt to attract Linda's attention, an attempt which ends in a bloody, stunning mess, shows that the writer has (how can I put this tactfully...) 'issues'.  It's painful to read at times, incredibly close to the bone, and this is the genius of Knausgaard, his ability to say the unsayable, the unthinkable... I.  COULD.  NOT.  DO.  THIS. (never - not even in my head).

All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more than I did the predecessor, and I do hope that the other four books in the series get translated at some point (even if I suspect that this may be the high point of the series).  As mentioned above though, this is a book which hits very close to home for thirty-something men with kids, trying to balance writing with family duties (ahem...) - and I haven't heard much praise from women...

Anyone?