While browsing the library databases recently, I stumbled across a book by a writer I've been meaning to try for a while now. It was a pleasant surprise, so (of course) I put a hold on it, and it arrived in a fairly short time - which is why I have the pleasure of introducing today, for the first time on the blog, the woman the Brazilian press named Hurricane Clarice. Let's see if the nickname is an apt one...
*****
Near to the Wild Heart (translated by Alison Entrekin, published by New Directions) was Clarice Lispector's debut novel back in 1943, when she was just twenty-three years old. It's a swirling, Woolfian tale of a young woman who stands out for her inability to conform to comfortable bourgeois norms - hers is certainly a mind less ordinary.
Joana, the main protagonist of the novel, is a woman trying to work out what she wants from life. She's beautiful but cold, brilliant but unapproachable, a woman who stands out for good reasons and for bad. Eventually, she deigns to marry the handsome Otávio, even though he's not really a match for her. However, it's clear from the offset that theirs is a relationship always destined to explode.
Near to the Wild Heart is a fascinating story written in two parts. While the first looks back at Joana's childhood and introduces the novel's main players, the second focuses on the disintegration of her marriage. There's a mix of description and internal monologues, and the writer slowly develops her creation's relationships, introducing important figures, such as her childhood teacher, and gradually setting her beside other women. There's no doubting who the star of the show is, though.
The book is built around the character of Joana, a woman who, even as a child, was different enough to arouse fear in those in her vicinity:
"Even when Joana isn't in the house, I feel on edge. It sounds crazy, but it's as if she were watching me... reading my thoughts... Sometimes I'll be laughing and I stop short, cold. Soon, in my own home, where I raised my daughter, I'll have to apologize to that girl for goodness-knows-what... She's a viper. She's a cold viper, Alberto, there's no love or gratitude in her. There's no point liking her, no point doing the right thing by her. I think she's capable of killing someone..."
p.43 (New Directions, 2012)
While her aunt's words might be slightly hyperbolic, she does have a point. Joana is formed by her disturbed childhood, and the early death of her mother, then her father, contributes to her unusual attitude towards life.
The childhood Joana was a stormy character, but the finished product is as hard as ice. As a woman she is self-contained, as beautiful and unforgiving as a diamond, quite able to dispense with the need for human company or affection. She's obsessed with working out what she is and what she wants from life, hoping to get to the bottom of what 'living' actually entails. Lispector contrasts this analytical approach to the animal-like living of other characters in the novel, highlighting the conflict between just living and really existing.
The blurb describes Joana as amoral, and to some extent that's true. Quite apart from the petty offences she commits as a child, she is painted as almost inhuman, incapable of feeling what others feel, a fact she recognises herself:
"The certainty that evil is my calling, thought Joana.
What else was that feeling of contained force, ready to burst forth in violence, that longing to apply it with her eyes closed, all of it, with the rash confidence of a wild beast? Wasn't it in evil alone that you could breathe fearlessly, accepting the air and your lungs? Not even pleasure would give me as much pleasure as evil, she thought surprised. She felt a perfect animal inside her, full of contradictions, of selfishness and vitality." (p.9)
There's a feeling of superiority wrapped up in these thoughts. However, as she learns more about life, she also senses that other women, the dumb, cow-like figures she meets, have something she'll never have. Despite herself, she is forced to acknowledge their natural, unthinking power over men.
Otávio, the man she marries in an attempt to 'try' love, is a very different character. He's a dull, dutiful (to an extent) husband, unaware of who he's really marrying. In a sense, though, he gets what he deserves, as he has chosen to tie the knot in order to abdicate responsibility for his well-being, sensing the steel beneath Joana's surface and hoping that she will be strong enough for the two of them. It's a miscalculation he might live to regret...
From the start, it's inevitable that Joana will grow to resent her husband, and it's no surprise that she feels uncomfortable with her new life:
"Before him she always had her hands out and how much oh how much did she receive by surprise! By violent surprise, like a ray, of sweet surprise, like a rain of little lights... Now all of her time had been forfeited to him and she felt that the minutes that were hers had been ceded, split into tiny ice cubes that she had to swallow quickly, before they melted. And flogging herself to go at a gallop: look, because this time is freedom! look, think quickly, look, find yourself quickly, look... it's over! Now - only later, the tray of ice cubes again and there you are staring at it in fascination, watching the droplets of water already trickling." (p.98)
For a woman who is used to having complete freedom, being forced to share it, to give it up, is a painful experience, and once she realises her loss of power, it's only a matter of time before her thoughts, as always, turn into actions. Having decided that her marriage is a mistake, she calmly sets about dissolving the union.
Near to the Wild Heart, with its periods of stream-of-consciousness writing, is certainly a blistering debut work. Comparisons with Woolf and Joyce are inevitable (particularly as the title comes from a line by Joyce); however, the truth is that Lispector hadn't even tried their work at the time of writing the novel. It's something that's hard to believe when you experience Joana's internal monologue, almost an inquisition at times. Her frantic switching of thoughts, with quick sentences darting between ideas, definitely reminds the Anglophone reader of the writers named above.
That's not to say that it was a complete success. I felt that the internal monologues were a little too abstract at times, and the first half gets bogged down towards the end (I was starting to get a little restless). The second part, though, is much better, the examination of the breakdown of the marriage wonderfully undertaken. It would be hard to say that Joana is more human (I'm not sure that's possible...), but she's certainly a more rounded character than is the case towards the end of the first part.
Overall, Near to the Wild Heart is an engaging book, mesmerising in places, and an interesting introduction to a much lauded writer. I'm very keen to try more, so I'm sure I'll be back on the library databases at some point. Perhaps reading Lispector's later works will help me understand her more, taking me further towards the eye of the hurricane that is Clarice...
Recently, I was looking (as you do) for something short to fill up an evening, when I remembered a book I had hanging around electronically. A quick look on my Kindle, and I'd found a novella from Frisch & Co., digital specialists in translated fiction. The fact that it was translated by Daniel Hahn, a man who never seems to be out of the translated fiction news at the moment, also seemed to be a sign. So, it's off to Brazil we go, for a tale of marriage, old age and precious gems - none of which are exactly what they were thought to be...
*****
Zulmira Ribeiro Tavares' Family Heirlooms (e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a short novella centred on the figure of Maria Bráulia Munhoz, a judge's widow living out her remaining days in her apartment. When her nephew comes to lunch, he arrives bearing bad news as the ruby ring he was given to have assessed at the jeweller's has turned out to be made of glass...
The nephew leaves Maria to digest her disappointment at the news; however, things are not quite as they seem. You see, the old woman is not quite as surprised by the news as she might be. As she retires to her bedroom to rest and think, the reader discovers that the story of the ruby is actually a rather complex affair...
Family Heirlooms is a rather short work, almost a one-sitting book, and fairly easy to read, but there's a lot more going on under the surface than appears at first glance. The swan of the cover photo is a table ornament in Maria's apartment, and it's emblematic of the civilised calm on the surface of her life with lots of frantic paddling beneath. The novel focuses heavily on surface versus reality, whether that pertains to actions or appearances:
"With her social face once again on show, the other one, the strictly private one, recedes, as happens every morning, and is immediately forgotten by its owner. A face that, being so rarely seen by others, assumes the same modesty as her shrunken body; bringing it into the daylight, holding it up on her neck as though it were the most natural thing in the world (which in fact is precisely what it is now), displaying it to someone else, even someone with whom she is on intimate terms, such as her nephew, would seem to her an act of the most absolute and unforgivable shamelessness."
(Frisch & Co., 2014)
Even with her nearest and dearest, the idea of revealing her true self would never cross Maria's mind, and this reluctance to open up to the world is a trait which is explored in depth throughout the story.
The plot, at least what little there is of one, hangs on the story of the ring (a device which a Victorian author could probably have made a six-hundred-page novel out of...). It begins with a present from Maria's husband before their marriage and is confused by the creation of a copy for everyday use - except that before too long, nobody is quite sure which is the real and which is the fake (or, indeed, whether there were ever two rings in the first place).
In truth, though, the story of the ring is merely an opportunity for Maria to look back at her life and contemplate the rigours of an undemanding married existence. Having once thought that marriage would bring a change to her monotonous days, she discovers that life as a married woman is simply filled with different disappointments. Her husband, the judge, is not the life partner she might have wished for:
"Judge Munhoz paced back and forth in his study, back and forth, but he couldn't make up his mind whether deception or decorum had been more important in his life."
With the judge balancing both qualities, with work and his private secretary, Maria is left to find solace in her friendship with the jeweller, Marcel de Souza Armand, a relationship which is implicit and understated - and which brings us back to the jewel.
The family heirloom of the title may be the jewel, but (as Maria's maid Maria Preta explains to her visiting niece) there are far more important things in life:
"Goodness, if I've got to explain everything I know, ten years won't be enough, not even a whole lifetime! And everything about manners, about good breeding that I want to pass on to you, all of that! As Dona Chiquinha used to say, these teachings are family heirlooms too. We inherit them, they're passed down from mother and father to child."
Not that the maid is referring to the lady of the house when she thinks about manners. There's a vast difference between how the lady of the house sees herself and how she is seen by others...
The story is nicely written, and one of the strong points is the writer's observational skill, with a careful, cinematic eye for the actions of the protagonists. In addition to the paragraph on Maria's second 'face', there are many excellent quirky details, such as the comical look of the nephew when clasping his aunt's hands or the jeweller's resemblance to a portrait of Queen Victoria, an observation which forever plays on poor Maria's mind once her husband has made it.
In the end, though, it's the story of a woman and her days, and Ribeiro Tavares compares Maria's life to the history of the ruby. She suggests that in the attempt to guard something precious, Maria has, in fact, wasted both her life and the precious gem, and the still atmosphere of the apartment appears to confirm this notion. Family Heirlooms, as noted, is a fairly sedate book, but it's certainly a story which makes you think. The moral, if there is one, is that life is definitely for living, not for hiding away like a jewel you're scared of losing...
The World Cup is about to end (disappointingly) for Brazil, but with the Olympics taking place in Rio in 2016, it's not like the eyes of the world will be leaving the country for long any time soon. Realising this, Comma Press (still on a high from Hassan Blasim's IFFP victory) have taken it upon themselves to introduce Anglophone readers to the city with the big statue. How? Through literature, of course ;)
*****
The Book of Rio (edited by Toni Marques and Katie Slade, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is another of Comma Press' excellent city guides, short-story collections helping readers to familiarise themselves with foreign shores. This one contains ten short stories by Brazilian authors, each of which looks at life in Rio from a slightly different angle. From Copacabana to the favela shanty towns, there's something for everyone here (even if football is conspicuous by its absence!).
Cesar Cardoso's 'Spare Me, Copacabana' (translated by Ana Fletcher) is the first story of the collection, a monologue from a party girl, which tells of her (and Copacabana's) faded glory. The idea of women trading favours for pleasure (and more) also comes up in Patrícia Melo's 'I Love You' (tr. Daniel Hahn). This one is a short, nicely-written story in which an escort gets caught up in a domestic squabble, all the time checking on how her friends are getting on at a nightclub. The wonders of the smartphone age :)
Things get a lot more serious on the pleasure front in 'Song of Songs' by Nei Lopes (tr. Amanda Hopkinson), a story which takes the reader into the world of carnevale. Lopes introduces us to a man running one of the many carnival organisations, showing us the grit and politics behind the glamour. This is a tale about business, sex and money - and keeping it all in the family in the worst possible way...
Of course, it's not all fun down Rio way, and several stories look at those less fortunate inhabitants of the city. In Luiz Ruffato's 'Lucky was Sandra' (tr. Jethro Soutar), a girl dreams of escape from the suburbs, determined to make a go of her life. However, what goes up, must come down, and it's not long before Sandra ends up back in her old neighbourhood - whether she's better or worse off is hard to say. Another sob story is João Gilberto Noll's 'Something Urgently' (tr. Sophie Lewis), where a boy from a criminal family is old before his time, doomed to a life on the margins of society.
Crime is also evident (from a distance) in Sérgio Sant'Anna's 'Strangers' (tr. Julia Sanches). One of my favourites from this collection, the story has two strangers inspecting an apartment at the same time - and noticing some suspicious holes in the walls. This one has it all, bullets from the favelas, sex in the afternoon and the joys of an uncertain, dangerous life. A reflection on life in Rio?
Like many developing cities, Rio is changing at a rapid pace, but this brings uncertainty and danger for the workers bringing this change. Domingos Pellegrini's 'The Biggest Bridge in the World' (tr. Jon S. Vincent) details the experience of an electrician on a major project, a... well, read the title ;) It's a gig that's certainly well-paid, but money's not everything:
"Let's see some hustle, boys, let's see some hustle, because we only have three weeks. Let's see some hustle because we only have two weeks. One of the guys who worked with me, Arnold, fell asleep on his face on the seventh day, with his mouth right next to the end of a high tension cable. He left the bridge and went straight to the hospital and never came back."
'The Biggest Bridge in the World', p.27 (Comma Press, 2014)
A real bridge of sighs, this grand project shows the price of progress (and might remind readers of certain projects which were implemented for the World Cup...).
Of course, traditions are important too, especially in an impersonal modern society. While João Ximenes Braga's 'The Woman who Slept with a Horse' (tr. Zoë Perry) is thankfully free of bestiality, it does detail the struggles of an unhappy career woman looking for meaning in life:
"Andréa wanted to be everywhere, because she never wanted to be anywhere. She especially did not want to be at home. If she actually thought about it, she would realise that she didn't even want to be in her own body." (p.87)
Modern life being rubbish, Andréa attempts to spice things up by hooking up with a man involved in a native religion - but is she in over her head?
This malaise is also evident elsewhere. In Marcelo Moutinho's 'Decembers' (tr. Kimberly M. Hastings), a man sees his grandfather through different eyes at three points in time, leaving him wistful for the past he never knew. Finally, 'Places, in the Middle of Everything' by Elvira Vigna (tr. Lucy Greaves) gives us a melancholy piece to finish off with. It's a story about a woman, her lover, a lot of rain and very little hope. In fact, it's the perfect story to reflect the mood of the country after the events of the 8th of July...
The Book of Rio is a great collection, but (of course) it's a mere glimpse of what the city (and Brazilian literature in general) has to offer. My only quibble with the book is that it's a tad on the short side, with most pieces being fairly brief. Still, that's a minor concern, and the book is well worth checking out, leaving the reader with lots of names for future reference.
And if you like the sound of this kind of trip, you should definitely check out Comma Press' website. You see, while today's post has concentrated on a Brazilian metropolis, there are plenty more literary holiday destinations for the discerning reader to discover in their series of city- and country-based collections. So, where do you want to go today? ;)
It's been a long time between drinks, but today I've finally got around to reviewing another book from great indie publishers And Other Stories. It's another of their South American finds, this time from Brazil, and like Down the Rabbit Hole, it's a fairly short read. It seems even shorter because of its compulsive nature - this is one you race through in a blur...
*****
All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão (translated by Zoë Perry and Stefan Tobler, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a semi-autobiographical tale of time spent inside a mental institute. An overweight schizophrenic is locked up after trashing his parents' house, and in a confusing stream-of-consciousness monologue, we learn a little about how he's ended up there and a lot about what happens within the asylum's walls.
From the very first paragraph, the reader is shown what to expect from Souza Leão's madness:
"I swallowed a chip yesterday. I forced myself to talk about the system that surrounds me. There was an electrode on my forehead. I don't know if I swallowed the electrode with the chip. The horses were galloping. Except for the seahorse, who was swimming around in the aquarium."
(And Other Stories, 2013)
Our friend is a little bit paranoid and obsessed by the idea that he swallowed a chip (which may have developed from the cricket he swallowed when he was a child). There's a lot more to his madness than that though.
After an initial stint in solitary confinement, he wanders around the asylum accompanied by his (imaginary) friends. Baudelaire is a calm fellow, but (unfortunately) he's not always around. Rimbaud, on the other hand, can usually be relied upon to provide the writer with some company, even if he is a tad more aggressive than his fellow French poet. An interesting point here for non-French speakers - Rimbaud is pronounced in English as 'Rambo' ;)
We occasionally get to see the effect of the illness on the speaker's family, especially his mum and dad. While they seem to want the best for their son, he certainly feels a little betrayed by their decision to have him committed:
"He says I'll get out when I'm better. I move towards him and kiss him on the face. Is it the kiss of Judas? Will I betray my father in my madness? And what if two men came now and crucified me upside down. Could the cross bear the weight of this lard-arse?"
However, in rare, lucid, moments, he is able to put his delusions aside and recognise the truth, accepting that there was something very wrong with his life:
"I cried because I was thirty-seven years old and living like a teenager."
One frequent theme of All Dogs are Blue is religion, with several mentions of beliefs, of both Christian and less orthodox varieties. It's seen as something that keeps the people happy, even if it messes with their heads at times:
"Religion nowadays just fucks with people. I think they knew there were a lot of alcoholics in here. Religion isn't just the opium of the people. But it's what keeps the people happy. It's a sad thing when a nation needs religion to lean on. It's worse than a lunatic who's been cured, but who will always need the support of another person to be happy. Better to be an incurable lunatic."
In view of later events, this is an interesting viewpoint. You see, when he eventually leaves the institute, he decides to immerse himself in religion - but not as you might expect. Our lunatic decides that those who think that a bit of religion, football and music make everything alright in the world are the real crazy ones...
All Dogs are Blue, as mentioned in my introduction, is a work you race through, a real one-sitting book. It's a story which gives you a flavour of Brazil, albeit in small glimpses through the bars on the institute's windows, but it's also a slightly unsettling glimpse into the writer's own problems. It fits in very well with the rest of And Other Stories' back catalogue - edgy and ever-so-slightly bizarre.
A nice addition is an introduction by Deborah Levy (the publisher's success story of the last couple of years) in which she explores some of the book's central themes. She describes Souza Leão's blue dog as a rare breed of the more common black dog of depression, but it is also used as a link back to his 'normal' life, his childhood, before things went wrong. Sadly, the writer never got to enjoy his success - he took his life the year All Dogs are Blue was published...
While I've mostly been occupied with the IFFP longlist recently, I have had a few other works waiting to be read and reviewed. One of these is a book I was asked to review a while back, something a little different. So, how's your Portuguese?
*****
Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories is a collection which comes from the web-site of the same name. Word Awareness (run by translator Rafa Lombardino) invited writers from Brazil to submit short pieces of fiction which would be translated into English and published on the web-site. It's a project which hopes to give young Brazilian writers more exposure to an international audience - and perhaps more success too :)
The collection contains twenty-two stories, the majority of which are fairly short (some coming in at a little over a page) with only a few stretching to more than five pages. Almost all of the stories are translated by Lombardino, but for those of you who do know a little Portuguese, there's an added bonus. Just as at the site, you can also read the stories in the original version...
But what is it actually like? Well, as you can imagine in an anthology of this sort, there is a variety of moods and styles. While the majority would fall under the umbrella of literary fiction, there are a few stories which you could label as genre fiction. Kariny Aciole's 'Return to Shantra' is a fantasy tale, with a hint of erotica thrown in for good measure, while Elisabeth Maranhão's 'Glass and Porcelain in the Garden', a story about a woman uncovering her husband's affair, could (possibly!) be considered chick lit.
There are also some rather short, poetic pieces, stories which need to be reread several times to get the idea behind the words. Ludmila Barbosa is described in her blurb as a poet, so it is no surprise that her 'Notes on Dreaming' reads a little like a poem. I also enjoyed Lorena Leandro's short work 'Relationship', in which a woman's unconditional love is shown to have a rather unusual object...
A few of the stories have an aspect of Brazilian culture as their focus, and some of these were perhaps among the more successful stories in the collection. Roberto Denser's 'The Chick Who Read Clarice Lispector Too Much' is a clever story set at a bus stop, in which the dangers of being a book snob are on display for all to see. 'Eternally Lying in a Splendid Cradle' by Simone Campos, the longest story in the collection, is an intriguing look at Brazilian culture seen through the eyes of a foreigner. As for Gui Nascimento's 'I Love São Paulo', well that's just a few pages of two friends talking drug-influenced nonsense about the great city ;)
For me though, the best stories here are also fairly simple and universal ones. José Geraldo Gouvêa's 'The Girl Who Liked Listening to Stories' is a tale which will resonate with anyone who remembers discovering the beauty of words. My favourite story in the collection though is the very last one, by Paulo Carvalho. A man thinks back to the day he discovered love, a story of riding bikes down hills and finding new feelings for a girl. The title? 'Simple'...
The book is available on Amazon (in both paperback and Kindle format), but the stories are also available for browsing on the CBSS web-site. Two new stories are published each month (on the 1st and 15th), and there's a wide range of stories to explore. Anyone interested in what's coming out of Brazil (which may well become the next big thing in translated fiction) should definitely check it out :)
*****
One last thing I'd like to comment on is the translation, as it's rare that I have both the original and the translation in front of me at the same time. While my Portuguese is fairly poor (just a year of wasting time while at university...), having studied most Romance languages, I can get a feel for the original from the translation. There was a distinct difference in style between the two versions, one which came across in many of the stories I compared.
One story I'd like to focus on is Wilson Gorj's ' The Black Mulberry' ('Amora negra'), and I'll just give you one paragraph from each version:
"Deliciosa, porém pequenas. Havia, sim, uma bem grande, mas esta amora pendia na ponte de um dos galhos estendidos sobre a agua." (pp.121/2)
"They were delicious, but too small. There was a very big juicy mulberry hanging from one of the branches right above the water." (p.23)
With a bit of luck, you'll be able to see the differences in style between the two versions. The English gets across the content of the original, but I'm not sure that the rhythm and style of the Portuguese is captured, and that means that the story comes across as a little prosaic in English, where the Portuguese (to my untutored ears) seems more melodic. If it had been translated like this, would the meaning have been lost?
'Delicious, but small. There was, it's true, a very big one, but this mulberry hung from the end of one of the branches extending over the water."
The word 'delicious' was mentioned in the previous sentence, so I don't feel the need to add the pronoun 'they'. I also think that there is no need to alter the Portuguese sentence structure in the second sentence...
You can tell that I'm a frustrated translator, but I think that perhaps content wins out over style occasionally in this collection, especially in the simplification of sentences. English is less tolerant of long, rambling, comma-filled sentences than the Romance languages (except, of course, when I'm on a roll in my blog posts!), but I enjoy reading this style of writing. I hope Rafa takes this as a comment on, and not a criticism of her translation style :)
