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...
Today's book was the readalong choice back in November for German Literature Month, but (sadly) my German-language paperback copy arrived too late for me to join in. However, it's been sitting on top of a pile for a while now, catching my eye whenever I walked past, so I thought it was about time I got around to it. It's an excellent read, if a little grim - and for anyone who wants to read it without having to improve their German, I know where you can source Frisch & Co.'s English-language translation...
*****
Anna Kim's Anatomie einer Nacht (Anatomy of a Night, English version translated by Bradley Schmidt) is set on the east coast of Greenland in the small, fictional town of Amarâq, the story taking place over the course of a few hours on one summer night. Amarâq is a beautiful place, but its isolation means people often see it as the end of the world, and on this one, fateful, night, several people are about to take this description very literally.
Over the course of 300 pages, the writer introduces a whole cast of characters, moving back and forth between past and present. They are a sorry bunch, a group of people with little to live for and hard, painful stories in their past, depressed and alone in the small outpost at the end of the world. What happens next is unsurprising, yet shocking - one by one, the inhabitants start to kill themselves...
Let's be clear about this - Anatomy of a Night can make for grim reading at times. It seems as if Kim's whole purpose in introducing her characters and their history is to make the suicides even more painful for the reader than they would be anyway, death after death making the reading experience rather uncomfortable. Once you understand what is happening, you begin to wonder who will be the next to fall victim to the 'epidemic' sweeping the town.
Before reading the book, I was under the impression that the focus was on the one night, an attempt to explain why the townsfolk all chose the same night to end their lives, but this isn't really a question the writer wants to address. Instead, the novel examines the background, looking back at upbringings and traumatic events which, much later, will explain the events of the night.
One of the potential catalysts is the town itself, a dark, brooding entity which stands out as one of the novel's most prominent characters:
"Es ist, als würde die Natur, als würde die Stadt, eine andere Sprache sprechen und sich über Bilder mitteilen, für die man besondere Augen benötigt."
p.20 (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 2013)
"It's as if nature, as if the town, spoke a different language and shared images which required special eyes to see them."*** (my translation)
Amarâq is a landscape where the land and sky meet, giving the impression of a world with no horizon, and in the eery northern summer nights, a pale darkness appears to blanket the town. The combination of isolation and ubiquitous silence creates a feeling akin to claustrophobia - even the reader starts to feel trapped at the end of the world.
A large focus of the novel is the character of the Greenlanders and their indigneous beliefs. Kim, through her creations, discusses the theory of multiple souls, shamans and people who can 'read' dreams, while we also learn of historical events, such as stories of famines, food shortages - and eating people... In a harsh environment, people tend to live for the present with no thought of the future:
"Ella holt ihren Block heraus und macht eine Notiz, warum, glauben Sie, gibt es so viele Selbstmorde?, fragt sie, die Mentalität, antwortet Peder, es ist in ihrer Natur, die Grönländer leben zu sehr in der Gegenwart, und wenn die beschissen ist dann, er umfasst seinen Hals mit einer Hand, stranguliert sich andeutungsweise." (p.100)
"Ella gets her writing pad out and makes a note, why, do you think, are there so many suicides?, she asks, mentality, answers Peder, it's in their nature, the Greenlanders live too much in the present, and when the present is shitty, then, he puts his hand around his neck, pretending to strangle himself."***
This is a perhaps a partial explanation for the epidemic Amarâq suffers from.
However, Anatomy of a Night is largely the story of the effects of colonialism. With Denmark taking over the 'colony', the traditional way of life is changed forever. While the natives' lives may be improved in some ways (they're certainly financially better off and no longer in danger of dying of hunger), the people are largely caught between two worlds. This is particularly true for those Greenlanders who spend time in Denmark. In the imperial centre, they are treated like savages and yearn to return to their natural environment. However, on their return, they find that it's impossible to ever truly return home (a theme Kim actually examines in a non-fiction work in German, Invasionen des Privaten).
The move to dependence on Denmark also contributes to the creation of a welfare state of hopelessness. With regular dole payments from Copenhagen, Amarâq has become an enclave for generations of welfare recipients, with little work available. This inevitably leads to alcoholism, casual violence, stupor and vomit, and the Danes struggle to understand how their benevolence has resulted in the destruction of a way of living. Once again, with no future, it's hard to find reasons to live for the present.
Anatomy of a Night is very confusing at times. It's full of short, frequently shifting scenes, and the novel contains a vast array of main characters. In order to follow the story, it's important to keep on top of the connections between the folk of Amarâq (and there are a lot...). The book is compelling though, and excellently written, with fluid, rolling sentences.
But why does it all happen on this night? As mentioned at the start of the review, it's a question which is never really answered. The reasons why the Greenlanders are drawn to suicide, on the other hand, are made very, very clear. Of course, the real question is how to prevent it, and Kim doesn't provide us with an answer to this one. With welfare dependence, isolation, cultural attitudes and a genetic predisposition to depression, this is a community perpetually falling apart; there will always be new deaths and sorrow...
"Der Tod, bisher nur fiktiv, eine Erzählung, eine Legende, wird durch diese erste Begegnung monumental und lässt sich nicht mehr aus dem Leben rücken..." (p.69)
"Death, up to this moment merely fictional, a story, a myth, becomes, as a result of this first encounter, monumental and can no longer be separated from life..."***
The first encounter with death plants a seed which grows inside - and that all means that the nights of terror will continue...
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 :)
Today we're looking at an offering from another new translated fiction press, Frisch & Co., run entirely from Berlin. How does that work, you ask. Well, you see, it's all electronic - we're moving into a paperless era here ;) Once again, I'm delving into Spanish-language fiction - we're off to Argentina...
*****
Carlos Busqued's Under this Terrible Sun (translated by Megan McDowell, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a short, laconic and occasionally disturbing book. The story begins when Javier Cetarti, a man approaching middle age with little to show for it, gets a phone call from someone he's never met - unsurprisingly, the news the call brings is not great:
"Daniel Molina", retired petty officer of the air force and represented here by Mr. Duarte," had killed his lover and a son of hers at noon the previous day. That is, Cetarti's mother and brother"
(Frisch & Co., 2013)
Cetarti manages to get his act together and drives all day to get to the provincial town of Lapachito, where he meets the aforementioned Duarte, has his mother and brother cremated and goes along with Duarte's ruse to scam some insurance money.
On his return to Córdoba, Cetarti decides to quit his apartment and move into his brother's old place, a ramshackle house full of rubbish - and an axolotl salamander. As he settles into a life of smoking weed, eating pizza and watching the Discovery Channel, he slowly makes plans for heading off into the sunset. Little does he know though that Duarte is not who he seems - and that their fleeting meeting in Lapachito is to have far-reaching consequences...
Under this Terrible Sun is a book which starts off incredibly slowly (despite the dramatic phone call), and after a few of the many, fairly brief, chapters, I was starting to wonder if anything was going to happen. All of a sudden though, we get to see beneath the dull veneer, and it's fairly disturbing. The fact of the matter is that the air-force veteran Duarte is a nasty piece of work. Whatever you do, don't go down to the basement...
"Without untying him, he adjusted the boy until he was in a stable seated position"
This sentence appeared just as randomly and disturbingly in the book as it did in my post. It comes out of nowhere, and the reader suddenly suspects that the book is about to take a new direction.
Let's be blunt - Under this Terible Sun soon becomes a dark twisted story about some sad, nasty people. The initially affable Duarte is a criminal, sick and unforgiving, one with a penchant for model planes and vile pornography:
"There's some
pornography you don't watch to jerk off, you watch it more out of
curiosity about how far the human species will go."
Let's just say that he's not a very nice man... He is ably supported by Danielito, a big man addicted to junk food, marijuana and the Discovery Channel, one who is a side-kick to both Duarte and his own (rather strange) mother...
However, the central character of the novel, Cetarti, isn't much better. He's listless and drifting, spending his days smoking joints and avoiding anything which might lead to action. He's a man who really doesn't like to get involved - in anything:
"But getting out of
the car, talking, making himself understood, paying etc., it all seemed
like an unworkable task that broke down into an almost endless series of
muscular contractions, small positional decisions, mental operations of
word choice and response analysis that exhausted him in advance."
Danielito's father provides a connection with Cetarti, but the two men have more in common than their messy family ties. They're both losers with little going for them apart from a messy apartment, a bag of weed and an interest in TV documentaries. Sad men, with wasted lives.
A symbol for this sense of inertia is the pet Cetarti finds at his brother's house, an axolotl - a salamander which doesn't need to evolve or grow up. It lives at the bottom of its tank, stagnant, unmoving. It's a rather apt pet for the unevolved Cetarti...
Under this Terrible Sun is a short read, and interesting in parts, but it's not a book I loved. For me, it never really got going, and I was rarely sure where it was going (or why). Also, as alluded to above, it's another of those Latin American books with some very graphic scenes, which reminded me (in passing) of certain sections of Carlos Gamerro's The Islands. If you didn't like those (and those who have read Gamerro's book will know exactly what I mean), you may not like this...
*****
While the book wasn't really one for me, I'm definitely still interested in the publisher. An all-electronic press, which is a fairly new concept, has the advantage of allowing Frisch & Co. to deal with other publishers and get books out quickly. With contacts to various big European presses, they should be able to bring out a few exciting books. I'll definitely be trying another one - hopefully, I'll enjoy the next one a little more ;)
