It's time for another offering from a small publisher dealing with literature in translation, and today's book comes courtesy of Istros Books. While based in the UK, their heart is very much in the Balkans, with today's review looking at a very typical choice. It's a tale of two countries - and one woman...
*****
Marija Knežević's Ekaterini (translated by Will Firth, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is the story of a life both ordinary and extraordinary. While the tale is told by a young narrator, the undisputed star is her grandmother, Ekaterini. Born in Greece, but spending most of her adult life in Yugoslavia (then Serbia), she is a woman caught between two related, but different, worlds.
The story is structured so that we follow her life and the events of much of the twentieth century. Starting in Greece with Ekaterini's parents' courtship, the novel gradually introduces both sides of the narrator's family, merging the Greek and Serbian strands until we finish up with the birth (and life) of the grand-daughter. Despite this, we're never in any doubt that it's really Ekaterini's story.
Ekaterini is a personal tale set against the history of twentieth-century Yugoslavia, from the second world war to the Balkan conflicts. By observing the Greek woman's struggles to keep her head above water, the reader bears witness to the hardships of wartime, the greyness of the Communist era and the dangers of dealing with the secret police. As a skilled seamstress, our heroine has access to some powerful people (or their wives, anyway) - at one point, even Tito crosses the stage ;)
As much as the book is about history though, it's also about nostalgia and the difficulties of leaving your home behind. Ekaterini's marriage takes her away from Greece, and she struggles to adjust to life away from home - and, of course, the problems of a new language:
"That's why she so readily became melancholic whenever she heard Greek songs, even if she didn't understand all the words, or when she listened in on Greek students in the bus - not because their relationship problems interested her but because of the words; she longed to hear those words and their sound, their melody, as she used to say. Language is pure longing. Our first and final love, although we only discover it through its lack."
(Istros Books, 2013)
The longer she stays in Serbia, the more serious her confusion becomes. Having forgotten a lot of Greek, and never having mastered Serbian, she becomes trapped in a linguistic limbo, belonging neither here nor there...
It's not just the language she misses though - there's also the small matter of food, films and songs (Ekaterini can get very emotional about Greek music). Even smells can evoke the memories of her home country:
"She taught Lucija and Ljubica not to throw away the peels but to lay them on the top plate of the stove. The walls greedily imbibed the aroma. The beauty of the south lies also in the unforgettable. Once scented with the orange and yellow peel, the house remembered that smell forever."
The citrus fruit she brings back from her holidays helps maintain a small feeling of Greece in her small corner of Serbia...
Don't be fooled into thinking that Ekaterini is a depressing book though. The old woman eventually manages to straddle the divide between the two countries, and by the end of the book, we have a woman who radiates calm, enjoying her split personality. It's an attitude she passes on to her grand-daughter, who also manages to accept life as it is (in a way Ekaterini's daughter can't). The contrast with the insular American friend who comes to visit Greece at the end of the novel is certainly a striking one.
Ekaterini consists of short scenes, brief snapshots which the reader glimpses before moving on. In its style of skipping over sadness, it's reminiscent of another short European book I've read recently, Chasing the Queen of Hearts. In both books, the tragedy of war(s) is evident but glossed over, and the stories of hardship are crisp and factual, told with little wailing. Like its Polish counterpart, Ekaterini is also a novel where the women are very much in the spotlight - the men here mostly play supporting roles:
"We had protected that moment in its glory, uniqueness and eternal memory from the invasion of pathos which swooped down on our nomadic lives in various formations, sometimes even with the best intentions. That bond remained and was ours alone..."
This special bond between Ekaterini and her grand-daughter is perhaps what the writer wants to leave us with at the end of her story.
It's a simple story, touching at times, but while I enjoyed it, I did have some reservations. It's a touch too simple in places, and with little plot, I found myself wishing for a more complex style of writing which simply wasn't there. The prose was very plain, and sandwiched between George Eliot's Romola and Andrés Neuman's new book Talking to Ourselves (the books I read immediately before and after this one), Ekaterini didn't really come off that well. It's a book which will provide an enjoyable couple of hours - I'm just not sure that it will linger in the memory for that long.
It is a pleasant read though, one which becomes more interesting as it progresses, and as an ex-pat myself, I identify with Ekaterini and her grand-daughter in their efforts to cope with life between two cultures (well, except for the heavy smoking...). It's hard to balance life between old and new homes, and (from personal experience) I know that it's a struggle which will never go away. As they say, there's no place like home - unless, of course, you have two...
As you may have noticed, I'm always keen to try translated fiction from new sources, and today's review is of a book from a previously untried publisher. Istros Books specialises in works from South-East Europe, especially the Balkans, and my first taste of their work comes from Croatia. At first glance, it's a typical love story, a novel describing how two people find each other. However, it doesn't quite end that way...
*****
Marinko Koščec's A Handful of Sand (translated by Will Firth, e-copy from publisher) is a novel written in two alternating monologues. One is from the perspective of a man while the other tells a story from a woman's point of view. While there are no names to give you any clues, the sections are handily printed in different fonts. The man lives in Canada, the woman in Zagreb, but we sense from the start that there must be a connection between them - one we'll have to wait for.
Through these rambling monologues, we gradually learn about their lives. The two are of a similar age and grew up in a country which exploded into pieces, leaving them resident in the new (old) country of Croatia. Both have difficulties to overcome, involving a missing parent, finding love and working out what it is they want to do with their lives. Then they meet...
A Handful of Sand is an intriguing 'he says, she says' story about a relationship decades in the making, but one which may not last much beyond the initial spark. It also provides a brief insight into the last few decades of Croatian history, but don't worry - this is not another war novel. The conflict is distant, and the mentions of it are fleeting. For the writer, his characters' personal growth is far more important.
Nevertheless, it is far from being a sunny, happy book. Both of our narrators struggle through their youth, with the man in particular obsessed from an early age with the darker side of life. He describes how a friend used to talk about death:
"He could discuss death endlessly. These were actually dialogues with himself, because I had nothing to say on the topic. Death is something certain and eternal, everywhere and at all times; it's damn hard to forget that but even today I don't have anything to add. Maybe he came to me with his endless monologues because no one else took him seriously; but how can you dismiss someone when they show so much passion, when they only seem really alive when talking about death?"
p.23 (Istros Books, 2013)
He may claim that he has little to say on the subject, but it's one which is never far from the surface.
The woman is an artist (we later learn that she's become a fairly successful one too), but her life has had its own ups and downs. From the death of her mother to her struggle to gain acceptance for her work, she tries to balance her desires with the needs of her possibly crippled, possibly hypochondriac, father. She's also looking for someone to share her life, but she just can't find the right person...
Of course, from the start, the whole book is heading towards the inevitable meeting:
"You were standing next to one of the originals effectively hung on the walls, with your arms folded, supporting your chin in the palm of your hand, and with a cigarette between your fingers. All at once I was standing on a narrow sliver of ground, everything else fell into an indefinite, mute whiteness, except for that figure, seemingly just a few steps away, which stepped forth from a gracious heavenly hand and switched off the world around her." (p.168)
The two fall headlong into a passionate affair, one with sizzling chemistry. This is no fairy tale, though - the story doesn't stop at that point and make claims for happily-ever-after. The real story is what happens afterwards, a look at the consequences when two damaged people collide...
There's a lot of good writing in A Handful of Sand, and there is also some very funny, dark humour in parts. The man is a literary editor, and his description of the chaotic life of a Zagreb publisher is both insightful and amusing (the anecdote about the doomed visit of an alcoholic Finnish writer is a highlight here). The woman also has her moments, at one point making a living by pumping out bulk Mediterranean landscapes for ignorant tourists. However, on the whole, it's a dark and foreboding novel, and the last fifty pages proves those premonitions correct. The final part of the book is compelling, disturbing and slightly surreal. Even after going back and having a second look, I'm not completely sure exactly what happened - or whether it actually took place at all...
If I were to criticise the book, I'd probably say that it was a little slow at the start. It takes a long time to get to the meeting, and as we're pretty sure it's coming, the time drags a little. Also, as well as being unsettling and confusing, some scenes towards the end of the book are actually a little upsetting - consider yourself warned ;)
Overall, though, A Handful of Sand is an interesting story of how a relationship is seen differently through two sets of eyes. The moral, if there is one, is that of making time count, with several images throughout the novel of sand slipping through fingers. When you find the right person, you need to act fast - every grain counts...
