2014 Challenges

Here's how I'm faring with the challenges I've signed up for this year :)

Aussie Author Challenge - January 1st, 2014 - December 31st, 2014
- Wallaby Level (read three books by Australian writers, one male, one female, one new)
1) The Plains by Gerald Murnane


Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 Longlist
1) The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke
2) Strange Weather in Tokyo (The Briefcase) by Hiromi Kawakami
3) A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard
4) The Infatuations by Javier Marías
5) Brief Loves that Live Forever by Andeï Makine
6) The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
7) The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim
8) Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
9) The Dark Road by Ma Jian
10) The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon
11) Exposure by Sayed Kashua
12) Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
13) Rücken an Rücken (Back to Back) by Julia Franck
14) Ten by Andrej Longo
15) A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli

Japanese Literature Challenge 8 - June 1st, 2014 - January 31st, 2015
- Read a work of Japanese Literature!
1) Granta 127: Japan by Yuka Igarashi (ed.)
2) The Tilted Cup: Noh Stories by Paul Griffiths
3) The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
4) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
5) I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki (link is to 2010 review)
6) Rivers by Teru Miyamoto
7) Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
8) The Kojiki by Ō no Yasumaro
9) Manazuru by Hiromi Kawakami
10) The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue
11) Masks by Fumiko Enchi
12) Grass on the Wayside by Natsume Soseki
13) The Tale of the Heike, translated by Royall Tyler
14) The Whale that Fell in Love with a Submarine by Akiyuki Nosaka
15) The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe (link is to 2011 review)
16) N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto
17) The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

Women in Translation Month - August 2014
- Read a work in translation written by a woman!
1) Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli
2) My Son's Girlfriend by Jung Mi-kyung
3) The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
4) The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price
5) The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik
6) Spirit on the Wind (and other Stories) by O Chong-hui
7) Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones
8) Numéro Six by Véronique Olmi
9) There a Petal Silently Falls by Ch'oe Yun
10) Aller Tage Abend (The End of Days) by Jenny Erpenbeck
11) Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
12) Sidewalks by Valeria Luiselli

German Literature Month IV - November 2014
- Read works of German-language literature!
1) Agnes by Peter Stamm
2) Transit by Anna Seghers
3) The Parent Trap by Erich Kästner
4) Eine Halligfahrt (Journey to a Hallig) by Theodor Storm
5) Alte Meister (The Old Masters) by Thomas Bernhard
6) Blumenberg by Sibylle Lewitscharoff
7) Mario und der Zauberer (Mario and the Magician) by Thomas Mann
8) Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner
9) Irrungen, Wirrungen (Trials and Tribulations) by Theodor Fontane
10) Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants) by W.G. Sebald 

2014 Reading List

Click on the link to read the review :) 

131) Grass on the Wayside by Natsume Soseki
130) Masks by Fumiko Enchi
129) The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue
128) Manazuru by Hiromi Kawakami
127) The Kojiki by Ō no Yasumaro
126) Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
125) Rivers by Teru Miyamoto
124) I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki (link is to 2011 review)
123) Arpan by Park Hyoung-su
122) The Bird by O Chong-hui
121) Zone by Mathias Énard
120) The Republic of Užupis by Haïlji
119) Rain Over Madrid by Andrés Barba
118) Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa 
117) The Adventures of Shola by Bernardo Atxaga (Emily's Review)
116) Wayfarer - New Fiction by Korean Women, edited by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
115) Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants) by W.G. Sebald
114) Mujong: The Heartless by Yi Kwang-su
113) Irrungen, Wirrungen (Trials and Tribulations) by Theodor Fontane
112) Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner
111) Mario und der Zauberer (Mario and the Magician) by Thomas Mann
110) Dinner with Buffett by Park Min-gyu
109) Blumenberg by Sibylle Lewitscharoff
108) River of Fire and Other Stories by O Chong-hui
107) Alte Meister (The Old Masters) by Thomas Bernhard
106) Eine Halligfahrt (Journey to a Hallig) by Theodor Storm
105) Pavane for a Dead Princess by Park Min-gyu
104) The Parent Trap by Erich Kästner (Emily's Review)
103) Transit by Anna Seghers
102) I Refuse by Per Petterson
101) Agnes by Peter Stamm
100) Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
99) Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai
98) The Road to Sampo by Hwang Sok-yong
97) Mr. Darwin's Gardener by Kristina Carlson
96) Twentieth-Century Stories from LTI Korea 
95) Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope
94) Family Heirlooms by Zulmira Ribeiro Tavares
93) The Foundling Boy by Michel Déon
92) I Live in Bongcheon-dong by Jo Kyung-ran
91) They Were Found Wanting by Miklós Bánffy
90) Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
89) Ich nannte ihn Krawatte (I Called Him Necktie) by Milena Michiko Flašar
88) One Spoon on this Earth by Hyun Ki-young
87) The Things We Don't Do by Andrés Neuman
86) A Distant Father by Antonio Skármeta
85) Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
84) Antón Mallick Wants to Be Happy by Nicolás Casariego
83) The Plains by Gerald Murnane
82) Sidewalks by Valeria Luiselli
81) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
80) Aller Tage Abend by Jenny Erpenbeck
79) Boyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard
78) Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones
77) There a Petal Silently Falls by Ch'oe Yun
76) Numéro Six (Number Six) by Véronique Olmi
75) My Son's Girlfriend by Jung Mi-kyung
74) The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik
73) The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price
72) The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
71) The Book of Gaza by Atef Abu Saif (ed.)
70) Spirit on the Wind and Other Stories by O Chong-hui
69) Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli
68) The Mahé Circle by Georges Simenon
67) The Shadow of Arms by Hwang Sok-yong
66) Dead Stars by Álvaro Bisama
65) The Tilted Cup: Noh Stories by Paul Griffiths
64) The Book of Rio by Toni Marques and Katie Slade (eds.)
63) Paris by Marcos Giralt Torrente
62) Paradises by Iosi Havilio
61) The Beautiful Team by Garry Jenkins
60) All Played Out by Pete Davies
59) Modern Korean Fiction by Bruce Fulton and Youngmin Kwon (eds.)
58) Stingray by Kim Joo-young
57) The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
56) The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim (link is to 2013 review)
55) Black Flower by Kim Young-ha
54) Granta 127: Japan, edited by Yuka Igarashi
53) Our Twisted Hero by Yi Mun-yol
52) Tirza by Arnon Grunberg
51) The House with a Sunken Courtyard by Kim Won-il
50) Papers in the Wind by Eduardo Sacheri
49) The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (link is to 2013 review)
48) The Dwarf by Cho Se-hui 
47) I'll Be Right There by Kyung-Sook Shin
46) They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy
45) The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong
44) Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman
43) A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli
42) Running through Beijing by Xu Zechen
41) Dispute over a very Italian Piglet by Amara Lakhous
40) Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (link is to 2013 review)
39) Ten by Andrej Longo
38) Rücken an Rücken (Back to Back) by Julia Franck
37) An Appointment with his Brother and Other Stories by Yi Mun-yol
36) Where Tigers are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès
35) Lonesome You by Park Wan-suh
34) Photo Shop Murder (and Other Stories) by Kim Young-ha
33) At Least We Can Apologize by Lee Ki-ho
32) Liveforever by Andrés Caicedo
31) Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami (link is to 2009 review)
30) Nagasaki by Éric Faye
29) Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami (link is to 2009 review)
28) Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
27) Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
26) The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization and World Literature by Michael Emmerich
25) Exposure by Sayed Kashua
24) The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon
23) The Dark Road by Ma Jian
22) Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Olafsdóttir
21) Art in Nature by Tove Jansson (link is to 2013 review)
20) An Equal Music by Vikram Seth (link is to 2010 review)
19) Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki (link is to 2010 review)
18) Captain of the Steppe by Oleg Pavlov
17) Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
16) Alice by Judith Hermann (link is to 2012 review)
15) No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-jin
14) The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov
13) The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (link is to 2010 review)
12) Ekaterini by Marija Knežević
11) Romola by George Eliot
10) Calling All Heroes by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
9) Bound in Venice by Alessandro Marzo Magno
8) Talking to Ourselves by Andrés Neuman
7) A Treatise on Shelling Beans by Wiesław Myśliwski
6) The Soil by Yi Kwang-su
5) Anatomie einer Nacht (Anatomy of a Night) by Anna Kim
4) The Happy City by Elvira Navarro
3) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
2) Light and Dark by Natsume Soseki
1) A True Novel by Minae Mizumura

The 2013 Tony's Reading List Awards

Welcome one and all to the post you've all been waiting for, the culmination of a year's reading and reviewing - The Tony's Reading List Awards for 2013!  For the fifth year in a row, I'm summing up a year of literary delights, praising the good, mocking the bad, and consigning the ugly to the great remainder basket in the sky.

So, without further ado, let's get started...

*****
As always, the first prize is the Most-Read Author Award, and as I need to have read three books by the same author in the year, the shortlist is, well, pretty short...

1) César Aira (4)

2=) Jorge Luis Borges (3)

2=) Ryu Murakami (3)

Aira is a writer I first encountered this year, and he takes out the award straight away - well done, sir :)

There were a lot of writers stuck on two books (including perpetual winner Anthony Trollope), but only these three made it past that mark.  It's also worth noting that the four books I read by the winner probably only comprised 400 pages in total...

*****
Next up, it's the Most-Read Country Award - which country have I visited most in my literary travels this year?

1) Japan (26)
2) Argentina (11)
3) Germany (8)
4) France (6)

No contest this year - Japan takes the prize, hands down :)  I wouldn't have expected Argentina to be up there, but with Aira and Borges high on my reading agenda, I suppose it was inevitable.  Surprisingly, England fails to even make the list, being one of several countries on five books.

If we look at the annual statistics for English-language books versus the rest of the world, my focus on literature in translation becomes very clear.  Of the 130 books I read, only 13 were originally published in English, meaning that an amazing 117 (of which I read 22 in the original language) were originally written in a language other than English. 

That's exactly 90% - wow...

*****
The third award tonight is the one which most people enjoy - yes, it's time to dish out the drumsticks and find out who has won the Golden Turkey Award this year!  And the nominees are...

Rustic Baroque by Jiří Hájíček

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Under this Terrible Sun by Carlos Busqued

Božena by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

And the winner is... Rustic Baroque!  Why?  Well, firstly I have to apologise to Jiří Hájíček as I quite enjoyed his book.  Sadly, I felt that Gale A. Kirking's translation really let down an interesting story...

*****
But enough of the dross - it's time to get on with the big one, namely the Book of the Year Award!  As has been the case for a couple of years now, I have nominated a great read in each of my monthly wrap-ups, and these are the books that have fought their way through to my annual longlist (links are to my reviews).  It's a harsh system, but I'm a harsh man...

January - The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
February - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Russia)
March - The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker (Netherlands)
April - Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman (Australia)
May - A Heart so White by Javier Marías (Spain)
June - Stone upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski (Poland)
July - Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye (France)
August - The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Germany)
September - The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Iceland)
October - The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (Italy)
November - Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard (Austria)
December - Blinding: The Left Wing by Mircea Cărtărescu (Romania)

I'm sure you'll agree - that is a great list of books :)  Where do they come from?  Well, interestingly this year's final dozen come from twelve different countries and were written in eleven different languages (two were written in German).  Only one Anglophone book among this bunch...

And what's a shortlist without a longlist?  Nothing, that's what ;)  Here, then, are the cream of the crop for this year...

War and Peace

Seven Types of Ambiguity

A Heart so White

The Magic Mountain

The Sorrow of Angels
Blinding

At which point, the many sides of my persona fought it out behind the locked doors of my self-conscious, only emerging (bruised and bleeding...) when a winner had been chosen.  And here it is - the Tony's Reading List Book of the Year for 2013 is (highlight below to see the winner):

War and Peace

I was tempted to go for one of the newer novels, but sometimes you just have to admit that a book is a classic for a reason - and Tolstoy's epic is nothing if not a classic :)

*****
And that's it - year five on the blog is complete :)  Thanks to everyone who has read or commented on my posts this year...

...but stay tuned for January in Japan!

'The American Senator' by Anthony Trollope (Review)

With all the Trollope novels I've read, it's hard to imagine a year without a few, but 2013 had only seen one up to now (The Way We Live Now).  Well, until today, that is.  This review is looking at one of the Oxford World's Classics I won in a competition a while back, another two-volume monster from the master of the Victorian potboiler.  The difference is though that this one has an American touch...
 
*****
The American Senator starts off in a small village in England.  It's the perfect scene for a Trollope novel, with the usual ingredients of fox-hunting, strife and romance in abundance.  Into the village comes Elias Gotobed, an American senator who wants to find out all about British life (mainly so that he can ridicule it...), and Dillsborough seems as good a place as any for the job.

A second outsider is also on the way to the village though, the intriguing Lady Arabella Trefoil.  She is engaged to marry John Morton, a local landowner who works for the foreign office, and is travelling to the provinces to see her fiancé's family seat before the marriage.  Morton is a good catch, but not quite good enough for the ambitious Arabella.  Lord Rufford, a local neighbour, is richer - and so Arabella decides to set her sights higher...

It all makes for a (stereo)typical Trollope novel, with a controversy involving a court case and a poisoned fox to hang his story on, and there's even the obligatory soppy romance.  We have the perfect, ladylike heroine (Mary Masters) and her deserving gentleman (Reginald Morton) taking five-hundred-odd pages to get to their inevitable happiness in a relationship which is predictable to the extreme, Trollope by numbers.  There's also a slow and impenetrable start to the book, and it all takes a good while to get going.

These usual elements are merely the background to the main stories though.  Gotobed, an American abroad, is a creation who allows Victorian readers to see the peculiarities of their society (and there are many) through foreign eyes:

"I shall be delighted to see any institution of this great country," said Mr. Gotobed, "however much opposed it may be to my opinion either of utility or rational recreation."
p.53 (Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

The good senator won't take a backward step and leaves many a feather ruffled in his honest quest to work out exactly why Englishmen talk and act as they do.  This all culminates in the public talk he gives in London - which is rather a rather heated affair...

In truth, the novel is all about Arabella though, another of Trollope's great characters.  She's a woman who hunts her husband (one of Trollope's pet hates), and she's very good at her game.  Tempted by Rufford's riches, she nevertheless tries to keep Morton hanging, just in case things go wrong in her new affair.  It's a delicate game she plays, but she has a lot of experience...

She's also very good at it, as she should be seeing as it's her life's 'work'.  However, like any worker who's been hard at it for years, there's no room for any enjoyment in her days:

"Business to her had for many years been business, and her business had been so very hard that she had never allowed lighter things to interfere with it." (p.216)

Sadly though, Arabella isn't getting any younger, and she's sick of all the intrigues and subterfuge:

"I'll tell you what it is, mamma.  I've been at it till I'm nearly broken down.  I must settle somewhere;-or else die;-or else run away.  I can't stand this any longer, and I won't.  Talk of work,-men's work!  What man ever has to work as I do?" (p.85)

This is it then, all or nothing.  Arabella is going to get herself a man, whether he's rich and landed or not...

Trollope paints a nuanced portrait of his anti-heroine, or at least as nuanced as his Victorian morals will allow.  Yes, Arabella is bad, but not all bad.  She has doubts about her way of life, and she knows she is mistreating John Morton - indeed, several incidents in their stormy relationship show that she has retained some sense of character.  In a book padded out with the usual stock personages, the lady is easily the strongest and most well-rounded character.

Overall, The American Senator, while interesting, is not one of Trollope's best.  Like The Prime Minister, for example, it's a case of one overarching novel with several ill-fitting plots crammed together.  Gotobed, despite the scholarly claims of the introduction, never really fits into the story, even if his observations are acute at times.  I would have loved to see a shorter novel focused on him, one which fleshes him out a little more (he's a bit one dimensional at times here).  In the few pages allocated to him in this book, he gets a little lost...

Still, a Trollope novel is always a comfort, and Arabella makes it all worthwhile in the end.  Like all the best seductive 'heroines', she steals the show, and you secretly hope she gets away with it.  For all the soppy heroines and big-chinned heroes, it's nice to have someone who does exactly what she wants - and Mr. T knows that as much as we do ;)

'The Devil's Workshop' by Jáchym Topol (Review)

'Tis the season for end-of-year book lists, and while there are a fair number of really awful ones doing the rounds, I have seen a few worth perusing.  Among the books on those lists, one book which keeps cropping up is Jáchym Topol's novel The Devil's Workshop (released in the UK by Portobello Books), and as luck would have it, my library has just acquired a copy (I suspect I'm the first person to read it...).  A book which comes highly recommended then - but does it live up to the hype?

*****
The Devil's Workshop (translated by Alex Zucker) starts off with a man in a ditch, hiding from the police and running away from a city in flames (which is always an interesting way to start a novel).  Before too long, we're taken back a little to learn how he got there, ending up in the Czech town of Terezín, the site of a Nazi-era prison, the last stop before the concentration camps.

The authorities want to 'sanitise' the town, focusing the tourist industry on a small portion of Terezín, but a group of outsiders and 'death tourists' hope to keep it all as a museum.  Under the guidance of Lebo, a man born in the prison, they appeal to the outside world for help, using the narrator's computer skills to run a worldwide fundraising campaign.  Although they are initially successful, by the time Alex and Maruška arrive, the writing is on the wall for the project.  However, the two latecomers approach the narrator with an offer of similar work in their home country - and off we go to Belarus...

The Devil's Workshop is a fairly short book, but a lot happens in the space of its 160 pages.  It's a novel which draws the reader's attention to what happened in the Second World War before moving on to later atrocities; while Terezín is fairly well known (especially to anyone who has read Sebald's Austerlitz...), events that took place in Belarus are less understood.  Topol uses the structure of his book, a story in two halves, to compare and contrast the two events, creating some very clever, effective parallels.

The first half concentrates on Terezín and the 'bunk seekers', young people driven mad by their inability to understand how the Holocaust could have happened:

"Ordinary tourists strolled through Terezín like it was a medieval castle, taking snapshots, shooting videos of the dungeons and torture chambers to show the family afterwards.  The bunk seekers would never even think of such a thing.  They showed up here crazed with pain, seized by the eternal question every seeker asked:  If it happened here, can it happen again?"
p.32 (Portobello Books, 2013)

These shattered young people are only too willing to help create a Holocaust tourist industry, one underwritten by rich sympathisers, in an attempt to come to terms with the past.  Sadly though, we also get glimpses of a fascist present when the narrator witnesses the 'Patriot Guards' chasing ethnic kids through the streets of Prague (plus ça change...).

It's only when we get to Belarus that we see things in context - the second half is suddenly much darker.  Once again, we're on the run, but everything here is bigger, worse, scarier.  There are uprisings in the streets, government crack-downs, guns and knives - the people fill the enormous boulevards, filling the poor Czech narrator with fear.  The events back in Terezín now look like a provincial squabble...

It's only here that we get the true idea behind the book.  Angered by the success of memorial sites further west, Alex, Maruška and their leader, Kagan, are determined to spread the message about the massacres in Soviet-era Belarus, a Holocaust which nobody knows about.  Terezín and Auschwitz are famous - why shouldn't Khatyn join the list?  Alex reveals the plan - a museum:

"Museum, I say, looking around.  What museum?  Besides the mannequins there's nothing but crates.  Crates full of specimens.
  The museum we're building in Khatyn, Alex says.  It's going to be the most famous memorial site in the world.  The devil had his workshop here in Belarus.  The deepest graves are in Belarus.  But nobody knows about them.  That's why you're here!" (p.107)

This is no grey building filled with maps and pottery though - it's set to be a 'museum' which makes the Terezín efforts look like a kindergarten display...

The Devil's Workshop is a great, quick read, a novel which is very much action-driven, keeping the narrator (and the reader) constantly on the move.  The book is very cleverly plotted, with two parallel halves, the second being a monstrous, deformed version of the first.  The only drawback for me is that the writing is fairly simple.  It's a great story, full of thought-provoking ideas, but fairly ordinary prose.  That's a minor quibble though, and I suspect that this wouldn't be an issue for the majority of readers.

It won't be on my end-of-year list, but I did enjoy the book, and I suspect that most who read this will enjoy it too.  Given the success Holocaust-themed novels have had in recent years (e.g. Blooms of Darkness, Trieste), there's a good chance that this will be up there for the IFFP & BTBA awards next year too.  It's a twist on Holocaust literature, calling attention to other disasters, equally deserving of notice.  Of course, sadly it's also a reminder that persecution is not just a thing of the past...

'The Seamstress and the Wind' & 'The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira' by César Aira (Review)

While New Directions have published a fair few of César Aira's books in the US, he's still not really widely known here in Australia (or in the UK) - so my library doesn't have much of his work to borrow.  Recently though, I've been very lucky, managing to obtain an inter-library loan and persuade my local branch to buy one of his books.  Which is why you have a double dose of Aira delights today :)

*****
The Seamstress and the Wind (translated by Rosalie Knecht) starts with a writer in a Parisian café who wants to pen a story.  He already has the title (the title of the real book), but that's as far as he's got.  If only he can think of a story to go with it...

Eventually, he stumbles upon one from his childhood, a tale which starts with a friend's disappearance but quickly becomes ever more surreal.  In the course of a mad dash to Patagonia, the reader makes the acquaintance of a host of unhinged characters, with the addition of a wedding dress, some serious gambling and (of course) the wind...

While some dislike the term, 'magical realism' is the easiest (and most apt) way to describe what's going on here.  When you have a woman flung high into the air, only to land gently on her feet, an invisible lorry, a monster and a woman turning black from shock, you sense that we're no longer in Kansas (or even Buenos Aires).  That's without mentioning the appearance of an armadillo on wheels, racing across the dried-out flatlands of Patagonia...

It's not always easy to tease out the deeper ideas hidden beneath the crazy surface, but one theme Aira works on is memories and forgetting.  In his initial rambling monologue, the writer touches on these ideas, recalling(!) several mistaken memories from his childhood.  He remembers his mother being asleep when he went to bed, even though he's sure she was always up later than him, and his memory of being waken by birds turns out to be mistaken (it was his neighbour's car).

He also enjoys playing with contradictions, frequently starting sentences off only to turn back on himself before we reach the full stop:

"My parents were realistic people, enemies of fantasy.  They judged everything by work, their universal standard for measuring their fellow man.  Everything else hung on that criterion, which I inherited wholly and without question; I have always venerated work above all else; work is my god and my universal judge; but I never worked, because I never needed to, and my passion exempted me from working because of a bad conscience or a fear of what others might say."
p.23 (New Directions, 2011)

The reader needs to stay focused when reading this book.  Like the wind which makes its appearance late in the piece, Aira's story goes off in odd directions...

The Seamstress and the Wind is a great story that feels like it's being made up as the writer goes along - which, of course, is exactly what is happening, both in the story and in real life.  Anyone familiar with the great Aira 'method' will know that he's a writer that doesn't like to plan too far in advance :)

*****
The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (translated by Katherine Silver), the second of my library delights, is a little different from the first.  The book starts with the titular faith healer wandering the streets, and after an adventure in an ambulance (one which he undergoes unwillingly), he goes back to pondering his writings on the theory of miracle cures.  One day, he is summoned to the bedside of an ailing billionaire, and, to his own surprise, agrees to test his theories for the first time...

It's very different from others I've read by Aira, a much denser piece despite its brevity.  In fact, after the first couple of sections (44 of 80 pages), I wasn't really sure if I was enjoying it; I was missing the easy-reading flow his work usually induces.  Then the 'great' doctor goes to work, and you are swept away by the energy and audaciousness of his attempt to bend the universe to his liking.  It's a battle between belief and reason, and Aira and his doctor insist that you've got to believe...

Anyone wanting specifics about the miracle cure will be disappointed as the writer is deliberately ambiguous, which fits in very well with the slippery nature of what Aira's trying to say with his book.  In fact, it's very easy to equate Dr. Aira with the writer, even without the name:

Writing was something he couldn't do in a single block, all at once.  He had to keep doing it, if at all possible, every day in order to establish a rhythm... The rhythm of publication, so checkered due to the imponderables of the material aspects, could be regularized through the installment format, which also took care of the quantity of the product and its basic tone, that of "disclosure".
p.38 (New Directions, 2012)

Hmm - an author who writes every day and brings out regular short works... Remind you of anybody?

I may be completely wrong, but it seemed to me as if Aira was equating the struggle and mystery of producing a great work of art with the art of the miracle cure (or vice-versa).  Just as in the creation of a work of fiction, the good doctor tries to bend the universe in his own fashion; more importantly, just as is the case in writing, it can all go horribly, horribly wrong.

At the end of the piece, we find ourselves asking whether the 'doctor' is a charlatan.  More importantly, perhaps, what about his creator?  Now that's not a question most writers pose about themselves...

*****
That makes four Aira books for me over the past few months, and I'm very happy that New Directions have taken on the job of bringing Aira's *many* works into English - one 'installment' at a time.  Each of the books has had an excellent translation (Chris Andrews was responsible for both Varamo and Ghosts), and with several more translations already out there, I'm very keen to read some more.  Why not give Aira a try?  I'd definitely recommend his work.  He might turn out to be your next new favourite writer...

'Blinding' by Mircea Cărtărescu (Review)

Every so often, I read a book which almost defies reviewing, a story that goes in so many directions at once that giving an overview seems facile, childish and, quite frankly, impossible.  Today, we'll be looking at such a book, a novel which has been on many people's lips recently, one that's bound to be up there next year come the prize season for literature in translation...

I suppose I'd better give the review a go anyway, then ;)

*****
Mircea Cărtărescu's Blinding (translated by Sean Cotter, e-copy courtesy of Archipelago Books) is a wonderful, confusing, mind-stretching work, a book which draws the reader in right from its initial childhood dream sequence.  We meet a writer who spends hours gazing at Bucharest from his bedroom window, perhaps in an attempt to work through some traumatic moments in his life:

"It was a place to attempt (as I've done continuously for the last three months) to go back where no one has, to remember what no one remembers, to understand what no person can understand: who I am, what I am."
p.122 (Archipelago Books, 2013)

Later, we revisit Mircea's childhood and spend some time in his gigantic, scary apartment building - so far, so Knausgaardian.

That is until the scope widens, and we realise that this is a book which will be taking a slightly wider look at what constitutes reality - and beyond.  There's a trip back to the nineteenth century, where frightened, drug-addled villagers witness a battle between angels and demons; a section set in Bucharest during and after the Second World War, with bombs and butterflies all around; several strange tales of people entering a vast underground cavern, returning much later to the surface, scarred by their experience; oh, and a terrifying tale of quasi-voodoo magic to round off the book, fifty pages of pure madness...

The word that comes to mind when reading Blindness is 'ambitious', and in its scope and its desire to pull the reader in several directions at once, it reminds me a little of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (there's even a birthmark).  However, where Cloud Atlas is neatly arranged with its Russian-Doll structure, Blinding is a twisted, tangled maze of echoed ideas, parallels, possible red herrings and (of course) butterflies.  The strands of the novel intertwine, disappearing and reemerging later unexpectedly.  It's also written using quite complex vocabulary - and when I say complex, I mean complex (Sean Cotter must have some really good dictionaries...).

Like Cloud Atlas, Blinding is full of parallels, most of which, no doubt, I failed to pick up.  The most obvious ones are the subterranean experiences several of the characters have, wandering through the vast underground caverns which are connected with the idea of birth and life.  There are also the two priests that appear, the brave man who summons the angels in Bulgaria, and a polyreligious, voodoo-wielding counterpart in New Orleans.  When this mysterious figure starts intoning in the final pages of the book, we are surprised to hear that the magic words he chants are very familiar to us from our travels through Bucharest...

There's also the frequent mention of asymmetry, a topic the writer obviously wants to develop further:

"And yet, we exist between the past and the future like the vermiform body of a butterfly, in between its two wings.  We use one wing to fly, because we have sent our nerve filaments out to its edges, and the other is unknown, as if we were missing an eye on that side.  But how can we fly with one wing?  Prophets, Illuminati, and heretics of symmetry foresaw what we could and must become." (p.80)

This image of the asymmetrical butterfly is mirrored several times, most prominently on the ring one of the characters wears - and in Mircea's face after his illness.  Despite the deliberate construction of some of his settings, the writer frequently returns to this idea of lop-sidedness.

There's plenty of scope for this when he shows us the people in his novel.  Cărtărescu, along with the narrator, is fascinated by anatomy, of people, machines and cities.  In Blinding, everything is a living entity, and the narrator sees the way life seethes under the surface of inanimate objects.  Bucharest is an organic city, with statues having sex in the park, trams rushing down the streets like red-blood cells through veins, while the roofs of building become transparent, showing us the pulsing brains of the city.

The narrator is obviously trying to work through something with these images, and as the novel progresses, we learn more about his personal issues, health problems which influence his view of the world.  However, it's never quite as simple as all that - even something as mundane as the massage sessions he has at the hospital suddenly turn into a new link to the shadowy, universal conspiracy which permeates the book.  And when I say universal, at times it appears as if the narrator is simply trying to understand the universe and the very nature of existence:

"A purulent night wrapped every corpuscle into being, in a dark and hopeless schizophrenia.  The universe, which was once so simple and complete, obtained organs, systems and apparatuses.  Today, it's as grotesque and fascinating as a steam engine displayed on an unused track at a museum." (p.76) 

The universe as a machine, and the city as a body - at times, Cărtărescu's ideas take some following...

While the writer's mind may at times be out in the universe, another of the themes of the book is much closer to home - his mother.  There's an obsession with Maria pervading the novel, and she enters it as a protagonist in her own right in the second part, a young country girl newly arrived in the big city.  The relationship between the two, distant, but regretfully so, is a complex one, and you suspect that the female references in the writer's musings about the universe (replete with wombs and vulvae...) are somehow linked to this obsession.

In truth, though, there's a temptation to read the book as the product of someone with a touch of a God complex.  There are many hints as to Mircea's being a second coming, such as the tattoos he finds with his face prominently displayed - and his being the son of Maria/Mary, of course.  The narrator himself states early in the book that he sees people as existing only to play minor roles in his life, creations of his mind more than real people.  Then again, perhaps that's reading too much into things; in the narrator's own words:

"Maybe, in the heart of this book, there is nothing other than howling, yellow, blinding, apocalyptic howling..." (p.338)

The book finishes with a compelling, enthralling final section, a piece I had to read in one sitting despite its length and difficulty.  This last scene is breathtaking in its ambition, but it leaves everything up in the air, with the reader left stranded:

"There was nothing to understand, yet everything cried out to be understood..." (p.109)

Yes, Mircea, that pretty much sums it up ;)

Luckily, there's a fact I've been keeping from you, namely the real title of the book.  You see, today's review was of Blinding: The Left Wing, the first part of a trilogy of novels, and I'm sure the other two books (the body and the right wing...) will reveal a lot more about Cărtărescu's bizarre inner world.  Hopefully Archipelago (and Cotter) will continue with the series - I, for one, am very keen to see how the story continues.  This year, I've read around 125 books, including many classics of translated literature: Blinding is definitely up there as one of my books of the year.  Do read it :)