While I've covered many languages over the course of the past few years, there are so many others out there that I haven't managed to get to. Luckily, today's post sees me rectifying that situation with a language that's very close to home, both geographically (my hometown in England is not too far from the border) and biologically (with two of my grandparents born there, it really is the land of my fathers). I'm sure most of you will have worked it out by now, but let's see where Women In Translation Month is taking us today :)
*****
Angharad Price's The Life of Rebecca Jones (translated by Lloyd Jones, review copy courtesy of MacLehose Press) is a beautiful little book, an elegant look at the life of a woman who has spent her whole life in a secluded valley in North Wales, the heart of the Welsh-speaking community. Part biography, part history, the book starts with the narrator at the end of her life at the beginning of the twenty-first century, from where we follow her back to the beginning of the twentieth century to see her mother and father returning after their wedding to their home in the valley of Maesglasau. This sets the scene for Rebecca herself to appear in 1905 (and on page nineteen).
What follows is a leisurely journey through the life of the family over the next hundred years, and despite being secluded in the middle of nowhere, it's actually a rather eventful story. With brothers born into blindness, and the risk of infant mortality ever present, growing up wasn't as easy as it might have been. At times, she compares the unfolding of her life to the course of the stream running through the valley, even if she admits that there are limits to this comparison:
"Indeed a stream is not the best metaphor for life's regular flow between one dam and the next.
I have not mentioned the reservoirs. In these the emotions congregate. I approach them with hesitation. I stare into the still waters, fearing their hold on my memories. In terror I see my own history in the bottomless depths."
p.35 (MacLehose Press, 2014)
On the whole, Rebecca relates the ups and downs calmly, making a hard, bitter life sound calm and desirable. We always suspect, though, that there's something more below the surface, just waiting to be uncovered.
The Life of Rebecca Jones is a wonderful little book, and it's already considered as a Welsh-language classic, despite having been written a mere dozen years ago. The original title (O! Tyn y Gorchudd, which translates to 'O! Pull aside the Veil') is taken from a hymn written by a resident of the valley centuries ago, but the significance goes beyond its writer. There's an obvious nod towards the blind brothers, but there's also a hint that our sight is also limited, with certain things beyond our view.
While the plot, as it is, is fairly simply, the book is wonderfully descriptive. It opens our eyes to a life that seems light years away, but is, in fact very similar to that lived by our own grand-parents and great-grand-parents. The family live a life dictated by the elements, matters revolving around seasonal events such as harvest time and shearing. For those of us accustomed to supermarkets with an almost unlimited array of food, the idea of only being able to eat what's in season (and only having fresh meat for a few months of the year) is a rather alien one.
Life's hard for everyone, but it soon becomes clear that it's doubly so for women. The farmer works hard outside, but the wife's job spans a much wider area, with cooking, cleaning and child-minding added to various outdoor jobs, including bringing food to the workers. It's not a situation which would be accepted today, but Rebecca sees it as a natural consequence of the farm environment:
"At important times, such as shearing or harvest, Mother was expected to do her share of the tasks, in addition to preparing food and drink for a horde of men twice in a day. After clearing the table she'd go out to work again until sunset. Then she'd need to prepare supper for everyone and put us children to bed, after which she'd clean the tens of plates and dishes that had accumulated during the day.
My father never offered to help. It wasn't expected." (p.23)
Yes, it was still very much a man's world, as shown during one of Rebecca's rare trips to England. Visiting Oxford, she's dazzled by the beautiful college buildings - it's just a shame that, as a woman, she's not allowed to see what's inside...
With the story being a mere succession of events, there's a danger of the novel becoming pretty, but dull, but towards the end of the story, change is skilfully woven into the structure. Events move more quickly, changes become more obvious and progress rears its head - whether it's an ugly or attractive one depends on your point of view. Certainly, many changes are welcome; the coming of electricity means that light can be had at any time of day, and the invention of the washing machine turns a day's hard labour into an hour sitting chatting over a cup of tea.
However, not all change is for the better, and as helpful as these innovations are, they actually help to speed up another trend, that of the demise of the local way of life. As Rebecca sits in her ancient cottage in the twilight of her years, she sees the demographic shift sweeping across the valley, with young Welsh people moving away and the middle-class English moving in to enjoy the idyllic scenery. She also sees into the future, predicting the gradual, yet inevitable, erosion of the status of Welsh, as English becomes used in more and more places, eventually displacing the local tongue. In this way, a book about the passing of one old woman becomes representative for the decline of an ancient language and culture...
The Life of Rebecca Jones is a fascinating book and a rather personal one for the writer. Angharad Price is actually Rebecca Jones' grand-niece (and is mentioned once by name in the book), and the majority of what happens in the book is simply a factual account of her family history. However, there's a twist in the tale, and her work is an example of Sebaldian intermingling of real life and imagination, family details and black-and-white photos twisted around a liberal dose of imagination and some elegant writing.
It's this writing, above all, which makes the book, and credit must go to Lloyd Jones, a writer himself, for his excellent work. There's a successful mixture of simple prose and more descriptive writing, and the book never comes across as stilted or unnatural. I enjoyed the challenge of the Welsh words and place names scattered throughout the text, but those who might be a little more daunted by this are catered for too. There's a guide to pronunciation at the back, and you'll soon be racing through phrases like Cwm Maesglasau without missing a beat ;)
In short, this is a beautiful tale of rural life and a search for tranquillity in an ever-busier world. It's not an easy thing to seek out, a fact Rebecca acknowledges:
"From the moment of conception until the moment of death, tranquillity is within and without us. But in the tumult of life it is not easily felt. It shies away from our inflamed senses and all physical excitement; it recoils from our birth cries, from the rush of light to the eye, and from the fond indulgence of our loved ones, salty tears and sweet kisses, our earth-bound corruption and putrescence, the ghastly grunt of death...
When our senses are spent we seek tranquillity again. And as we age, our search for it becomes more passionate, though never easier." (pp.9/10)
If you're in need of some, though, you could do worse than try reading Price's (and Rebecca's) story, an island of calm in the hurried rush of life. It's definitely a read for those in search of a little tranquillity of their own :)
This year I've been lucky enough to receive lots of books for review from the wonderful MacLehose Press, many of which I've managed to get to, and some of which I... well, haven't :( The one book I repeatedly thought about trying (and never did) came highly recommended, both by those who had tried work by the author (Andreï Makine) before and those who started with this book. Well, as you may have guessed, I did finally get around to trying it, and you know, the old saying really is true - all good things come to he who waits ;)
*****
Brief Loves that Live Forever (translated by Geoffrey Strachan) is a beautiful little book which looks at love in a cold climate (Russia...), in particular the way that we tend to overlook our shorter moments of happiness. Makine, through his narrator, argues that in our quest for permanent, everlasting love, we ignore the fact that a single moment of happiness can actually provide us with a lifetime of warmth, and his book takes us through several of these moments in the narrator's life.
We begin with memories of a walk through a bleak, provincial Russian city, where the narrator accompanies an acquaintance, a chronically-ill dissident, on a stroll through the windy streets. As they stop, unexpectedly, outside a block of luxury flats, they see a beautiful, wealthy woman hurry out of an official car and into the building. As the old man stops and stares at the woman, the narrator thinks:
"With an intensity I had never before experienced, I sensed the atrocious injustice of life, or History, or perhaps God, at all events the cruelty of this world's indifference towards a man spitting out his blood into a silk handkerchief. A man who had never had the time to be in love."
p.21 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
The look on the elder man's face comes back to the narrator decades on and causes his mind to turn towards the past, and his own brief loves...
What follows are half-a-dozen episodes from the narrator's life, in chronological order, each describing a short moment of happiness from the past. From the image of a beautiful crying woman encountered in his childhood, a moment which first taught him of the existence of real women, to a platonic friendship with a young woman in a drab town; from a brief, passionate summer affair by the sea (and under a political hoarding...) to a stroll through an orchard with an old friend. Each of the moments marks an important landmark in the narrator's life, and while none of them lasted for long, all of them have made a deep impression.
It's all about now, being happy in the moment. Striving for lasting happiness is futile, and working towards a kind of utopia (as the young narrator naively does) is foolish. When he clumsily attempts to explain his views to one of his loves, she replies, bewildered:
"I don't understand. All these people you want to bring happiness to in the future. What's to stop them being happy now? Not hating other people, not being greedy, like you said. Not punching other people in the face, at any rate..." (p.83)
Carpe diem, indeed. It's a very good question, and not one I can answer in a few words. If anyone has any ideas...
What makes Brief Loves that Live Forever more than a simple tale of lost loves though is the fact that there is a parallel story running through the novel. Makine may be telling the reader about his character's lovelife, but it's about more than that - a lot more. Each of the stories is set against the backdrop of the political events of the time, giving us several snapshots of the Soviet society and regime.
In the first story, the young narrator sees the beautiful woman (a widow mourning her lost husband) after escaping from the 'cages' of a dismantled grandstand used for official ceremonies. Later, forced outside by the Soviet attitude towards illicit trysts, he shelters from a storm with his summer lover - under a giant hoarding showing the frowning face of Brezhnev. His final tale takes place in a gigantic orchard, a symbol of Communist might and planning, a mass of trees which takes four hours to walk through...
However, the regime which was meant to last forever is shown to be sluggish and unmoving, doomed to disappear. Near the beginning of the novel, the writer talks of the symbolism of propaganda:
"Yes, existential tranquillisers, meta-physical antidepressants." (p.27)
However, as shown by the brief stay in cardboard Brezhnev's shadow, it doesn't always work. The gigantic message across the roof of a factory complex, a symbol of eternal socialism, has crumbled into dust by the time the narrator returns to visit his friend, vanished into oblivion. And the apple orchard? Useless, sterile. No bee will fly five miles to pollinate a tree...
Wait - there's more... What really makes the book worth reading is the writing, a beautiful prose style wonderfully rendered into English by Strachan, which flows effortlessly along. It's simple, but elegant, a joy to read, and it all makes for a book to enjoy in pieces - slowly, if possible:
"Even more than the bittersweet interrupted continuity of our brief separation, however, what intoxicates me is the floating lightness of it, the weightlessness of a misty May morning, the softly tinted transparency of the first still pale foliage." (p.118)
It's the kind of writing I enjoy, and there's a lot more of this in the novel.
I've already seen a couple of mentions of Makine's book in the various end-of-year lists, and it's very possible that it might appear on mine (although I am having a good December...). Watch out for this one when IFFP time rolls around next year as there's a fair chance that it could make the longlist (always presuming that it's been submitted...). The moral of the story? Nothing lasts forever, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - enjoy the moments while you can...
...oh, and (of course) check your shelves for old books which you keep meaning to read ;)
A few months ago, MacLehose Press reissued some books by Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom to coincide with his eightieth birthday, and I was lucky enough to receive copies of them. At the time, I reviewed his debut novel, Rituals, but today's post looks at a far more recent work, allowing me to compare books from very different periods of the writer's life and career...
*****
The Foxes Come at Night (translated by Ina Rilke) is a short collection of eight stories, first published in Dutch in 2009. The pieces are very much thematically linked, with Nooteboom using the collection as an opportunity to examine age, memory and reflections on the past, usually from the perspective of a character remembering a lost partner or friend.
A common device used is the humble photograph, and the first story, 'Gondolas', is a good example of this. In the story, a Dutch art journalist returns to Venice to stand in the place where he took a photograph forty years earlier. Rather than lamenting the loss of a friend, the protagonist muses about how unimportant people are to the world:
"How extraordinary that things should still be the same! The water, the cormorant-shaped gondolas, the marble step on which he sat. It is just us making our exit, he thought, we leave the décor of our lives behind."
'Gondolas', p.11 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
By the end of the story, the reader is unsure as to whether the main character is here to bid his friend farewell, or to be rid of her memory...
Another story which uses a photograph to kick things off is 'Heinz', the longest story in the collection, one which sees a Dutchman reminiscing about his time living in Italy, and his friendship with the titular honorary Vice-Consul. An alcoholic businessman secluded on the Italian coast, Heinz has an aura about him, one which attracts everyone around. Sadly though, he is destined to burn out after shining brightly, and his friend studies the photograph looking for evidence of this eventual disaster in the faded picture...
While many stories focus on those who have departed, others focus more on the fate of those left behind. In 'Late September', an elderly woman on an out-of-season Spanish island waits for some afternoon delight in the arms of a (slightly-) younger local, an event which feels more like a transaction than real pleasure.
'Last Afternoon' also focuses on an elderly woman, this time one who is lost in bitter-sweet memories of her late partner. Her story revolves around amorous adventures, flowers and tortoises(!), but it is really about finally letting go of unfinished business:
"It was only now, at this mysterious moment of the cypress's shadow creeping up against the garden wall, that he was dead to her. How could you be so sure about something like that? There had in fact been three such moments, she reflected: the moment he left, that of his dying, and the present, long-drawn-out moment of beginning to forget him, of his passing into a shadow of himself, his real death."
'Last Afternoon', p.97
Once again, the living must realise that there is no point in dwelling on the actions of the long dead.
The Foxes Come at Night is the fourth of Nooteboom's works I've read, and his deceptively light touch is instantly recognisable. In fact, I'm also pretty sure that a minor character in a couple of the stories, Wintrop, is the 'hero' of his debut novel, Rituals... The stories should be depressing, but in Nooteboom's skillful hands, they are imbued with a touch of sarcasm, a subtle wink rather than a mournful sob. We are told stories of loss and grief, but the underlying message seems to be to keep our chin up :)
Most of the stories are one-sided tales of mourning the lost, but the culmination of the collection is a two-part story which has a slightly different approach. 'Paula' shares many of the features of the other stories: we have a man looking at an old photograph, remembering a lost friend, telling us about the good old days in the company of a beautiful, charismatic figure. He remembers a shared night in bed, a holiday in Africa and the last night he saw her...
...and then she gives her side of the story. You see, 'Paula II' allows Paula to have her say from beyond the grave, and her memories are slightly different to those of the living. She allows us to see the events we've just heard about from her angle, and she is actually the one who feels pity for her friend:
"Take your Zen monastery - I saw it coming miles off. Forgive me for saying this, for someone still among the living you make rather a dead impression, as though you have taken an advance on your mortality."
'Paula II', p.129
It's a chilling reminder that the living have a responsibility to keep on living - even if they would rather mourn their dead...
While I've enjoyed all the Nooteboom books I've tried, I hadn't really found one I loved until now, but The Foxes Come at Night is definitely a work I'd recommend. This is easily my favourite of the four I've read, a beautiful collection of thought-provoking stories which fit together perfectly - an example of a crafted collection of stories, rather than a selection of tales randomly bundled into a book. It's one I hope to reread soon, especially the stories 'Paula'/'Paula II', as I think they are pieces which need a second look to appreciate them fully. Perhaps Nooteboom is one of those rare writers who improve with age...
After enjoying the excellent Heaven and Hell recently, I was eager to dive into the next instalment of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's trilogy set in the wilds of Iceland. It's a bit risky sometimes, reading a sequel of a book you really liked, as the possibility of being disappointed is always at the back of your mind. Luckily then, I have very good news for those of you who liked the first book - this one is better :)
*****
The Sorrow of Angels (translated again by Philip Roughton, review copy courtesy of MacLehose Press) picks up very shortly after the end of its predecessor, with the boy settling in to his new home in the cold, isolated village. Taken in by the beautiful Geirþúður, he is beginning to enjoy a more comfortable life, his days spent helping housemaid Helga with domestic tasks and reading translations of Shakespeare to the blind sea captain, Kolbeinn - that is, when he's not flirting with the beautiful young Ragnheiður.
However, this semi-civilised existence is interrupted one day by the arrival of the local postman, an arrival which is both comical and serious at the same time:
"Helga looks down at Jens and the horses, all three nearly unrecognisable, white and icy. Why don't you come in, man? she asks, somewhat sharply. Jens looks up at her and says apologetically: To tell the truth, I'm frozen to the horse."
p.17 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
Once the burly postman has recovered from his ordeal, he decides to set off on another long trek, deputising for a sick colleague. With a long, arduous journey ahead of him, some of which will involve rowing across treacherous fjords, it is decided that Jens will need a companion this time if he is to make it back in one piece - and so the boy sets off into the wilderness once more...
From the very start, The Sorrow of Angels grabs the reader's attention and doesn't let go for the next three-hundred odd pages, sweeping them up and taking them on a guided tour of the writer's creation. The first part of the book is set in the village, and as well as meeting familiar faces and hanging around inside old haunts, the reader is introduced to a few new people as Stefánsson widens the circle of our experience. One highlight is getting to visit the local hotel and restaurant, drinking with the local intelligentsia (the schoolmaster, the watchmaker) while the local big-wigs (including Ragnheiður's father...) dine in another section.
As interesting as this is though, we soon sense that this is merely the introduction, and that the restless Jens will soon be setting out again into a hostile landscape - and if you thought the boy had problems in the first book, think again. Compared to the journey he undertakes in The Sorrow of Angels, his first trip through the mountains was a walk in the park...
The false comfort of the village gives way to the reality of life outside the small settlements people have created to protect themselves from the elements. This is Iceland in the nineteenth century, and the reality is that many people live far away from company, isolated (literally) in their sturdy cottages, buried beneath the snow for the extent of the winter. How long is the winter? Well, it's hard to say. In some places, it's difficult to know if spring ever comes at all.
When Jens and the boy stumble across these outposts of civilisation, islands of warmth in a sea of endless snow and driving winds, they become the centre of attraction, sources of news and novelty, people to talk to (often, the first company in months). In an age of instant gratification, with digital downloads and online grocery shopping, it's confronting to see people thirsty both for letters and books, and for coffee - using the last of their precious grounds to warm up the unknown visitors...
...and they certainly need warming up. Much of the novel takes place on the heaths, with Jens and the boy lugging the postbags from farm to farm, a task made more difficult by the constant snow storms and the ever-present threat of freezing to death. The titular 'sorrow' refers to snow, but while it certainly brings sorrow, at times it also entices, invites, the weary traveller to sink into its embrace. It is little wonder that the further the two wanderers get from civilisation, the greater the feeling they have of not being alone in the storm - out on the wiley, windy moors, indeed...
Bleak? Unreadable? Not at all. The Sorrow of Angels is a beautiful book, one you need to savour - a novel to read over a good few days. It's certainly one I enjoyed reading and coming back to after a break. Once again, Stefánsson's writing is wonderful (and if that's the case, it's also important to acknowledge Philip Roughton's immense contribution in bringing it into English). He has a wonderful, light touch with words, and most pages had something I was tempted to mark for inclusion in my post:
"Stars and moon vanish and soon day comes flooding in, this blue water of the sky. The delightful light that helps us navigate the world. Yet the light is not expansive, extending from the surface of the Earth only several kilometres into the sky, where the night of the universe takes over. It's most likely the same way with life, this blue lake, behind which waits the ocean of death." (p.24)
It's a beautiful idea, and one which sums up the themes of the novel.
Which isn't to say that Stefánsson isn't equally adept at changing the mood and tone, adding a wry aside for the reader's enjoyment. As mentioned in my review of Heaven and Hell, there's a touch of Saramago in his style, and the book is full of witty one-liners:
"Kjartan would curse roundly if he dared, but God is, despite all else, higher than all storms and men; he hears everything, forgets nothing and collects his dues from us on the final day for every thought, every word, every touch, every detail. It can be tedious and downright depressing to have such a God hanging over one; we'll likely exchange him as soon as something better is available." (p.188)
Or how about:
"The dead are egoists, making the living toil for them, as well as filling them with guilt for not doing so well enough." (p.287)
There are plenty more where those came from...
Alas, while Stefánsson is a master of his game, I am but a poor scribbler, out of my depth when describing books like The Sorrow of Angels, so I'll leave it there with just a few more words to help emphasise my feelings about the book. To the publisher: please submit this for next year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. To next year's IFFP panel: please shortlist this book. To the wider audience out there: please read the book - it's great :)
Last year, as some of you may remember, I was on a bit of an Icelandic kick and managed to read several great books from the small island nation. One I didn't get around to though was a book by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, a novel which several bloggers had raved about. With the sequel, The Sorrow of Angels, out now, I thought it might be time to correct this oversight - and luckily, the good people at MacLehose let me have a copy of both :)
*****
Heaven and Hell (translated by Philip Roughton) is the first in Stefánsson's trilogy about a character known only as the Boy. We begin with preparations for fishing for cod in the cold sea off the north Icelandic coast, in a team of six with his friend, Báður (a literary type who seems out of place in such a functional setting). We're in the mid-nineteenth century, but it could really be back in the seventeenth century; life seems very basic - and harsh...
After a night of waiting and preparing, the fishing crews set off into the unwelcoming waters, and disaster (inevitably) strikes. Sickened by the attitude of the other fishermen in the face of tragedy, the Boy sets off on a perilous journey back to a distant village, not caring if he survives the journey or not. There he finds that in a land that doesn't appreciate outsiders, he's not quite as alone as he thinks...
Heaven and Hell is a great story with superb writing. The first part of the book is dominated by the struggle between the fishermen and the sea. The waters are a living entity: cruel, cold, deadly and majestic. The poor sailors in their tiny 'sixereen' are at the mercy of something far greater than themselves, trusting their fate to 'an open coffin on the Polar Sea'. Just returning to shore can be considered an achievement:
"And those on shore do not passively watch the boats land but instead lend a hand, there is a law beyond man-made laws because here it is a matter of life and death, and most choose the former."
p.75 (MacLehose Press, 2011)
For those who enjoy descriptions of man versus wild, this is the real thing, and the writer creates a poetic description of the battle for life.
On land, things are little better. Near the shore, the village lies under almost perpetual snow, and the atmosphere amongst its inhabitants can be just as cold and forbidding. There is a fixed hierarchy, where the owners of the big stores have entrapped the little people in their eternal debt, and the poor villagers live on a diet of credit, subservience, gossip and infidelity. Outsiders are regarded with suspicion, and anyone a little different tends to drift into a certain circle, one centred upon the enigmatic Geirþúður. Which is where the Boy comes in...
Stefánsson has a striking style, reminiscent at times of Saramago (a saga Saramago?). His writing can be jerky, confronting and involved, with frequent rhetorical questions and addresses to the reader:
"A tidy man, that Pétur, like his brother, Guðmundur, skipper of the other boat, about ten metres between their huts but the brothers don't speak to each other, haven't done so in a good decade, no-one seems to know why." (p.16)
Another feature of the writing is superb imagery. Stefánsson has a great eye for detail, and the reader is sucked into the pictures he creates, be they in the midst of a storm or in the snug of the local pub:
"This was in the evening, a dense cloud of cigar smoke in the room, they could barely see each other, or at least until one of them came up with the idea of opening the window onto the autumn and the sky coughed when the smoke was sucked out." (pp.118/9)
The narrator of the story occasionally switches eyes, following other characters away from what we have come to see as the 'centre' of the story. When it leaves the Boy and accompanies another of the villagers or fishermen, it appears like a disembodied spirit (which, if we believe the narrative's frame, is exactly what it is...).
Heaven and Hell reminds me at times of a couple of the books I read last year. In parts, particularly in its description of the hardship of life in Iceland, it is reminiscent of Halldór Laxness' Independent People. The first section, with the focus on the importance of fishing is more akin though to a Faroese novel, Heðin Brú's The Old Man and his Sons. Like many of the Icelandic books I've read, particularly those set in the past, it also emphasises the importance of books, stories... and coffee! However, while coffee can cure all ills, literature is seen as the cause of disaster - poetry can be dangerous...
"Some poems take us to places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment and becomes beautiful, it becomes clear with regret and happiness. Some poems change the day, the night, your life. Some poems make you forget, forget the sadness, the hopelessness, you forget your waterproof, the frost comes to you, says, got you, and you're dead." (p.85)
Please take care when reading...
Heaven and Hell is a great book, but it's hard to discuss the novel without giving it all away as very little actually happens over the course of the two-hundred pages. Unlike many books, this one really feels like the first part of a trilogy, a set up of more to come. Which is not a bad thing at all - I, for one, will be diving into The Sorrow of Angels very soon...
...just as soon as I've sorted out some thicker thermals ;)
Today's post features a book I've been meaning to get to for a while now. The writer was nominated for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, and this particular work won the Goncourt Prize 2009 (although it seems to have passed the IFFP judges by...). What's more, it's a great read - which is, of course, the main thing :)
*****
Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women (translated by John Fletcher, review copy courtesy of MacLehose Press) consists of three novella-length stories, tales which are very loosely connected (blink, and you'll miss the few connecting details). Each tells of the fate of a woman either born in Africa, or with an African parent, and the stories look at the uneasy balance the women have to strike to make a success of their lives.
The centre of the first story is Norah, a successful French lawyer, who visits her father (against her better judgement) after his repeated pleas. However, the 'strong' woman has trouble preventing a return to her role of the submissive daughter when she sees her father again. Despite the success she has made of her life, her father still believes he can order her around and leave her in the dark about his real reasons for summoning her to Africa.
Norah's struggles with her father are mirrored by those in her relationship with Jakob, a rugged German freeloader she has fallen for. Her desire for order, a defence against the chaos of her early life, is in danger of being swept away by her handsome lover's charm:
"Not that there was anything that could objectively be considered dangerous in leaving the girls in Jakob's care, but she was concerned that the values of discipline, frugality and lofty morality which, it seemed to her, she had established in her little flat and which were meant to represent and adorn her own life and form the basis of Lucie's upbringing, were being demolished in her absence with cold, methodical jubilation by a man."
pp.20/1 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
Regretting her decision to answer her father's call, she wants to return to her Parisian world, but is forced to stay when she finds out exactly why she has been summoned - to help her brother, Sony...
In the second story, our strong woman is Fanta, a former teacher from Senegal, now living in France. However, the action is narrated by her husband Rudy, a most messed-up individual. In the longest of the three stories, NDiaye uses the flawed husband to speak for the wife and gives us a psychological insight into the thoughts of a mediocre nonentity:
"He hung up, downcast, exhausted and feeling stunned, as if - emerging from a long, melancholy, agonising dream - he had to adjust his consciousness to the ambient reality, a reality which for him, he thought, was frequently just an interminable, unchanging, cold nightmare; it seemed to him that he moved from one dream to another without ever finding the exit, an awakening which he modestly saw as putting in order, as organising rationally, the scattered elements of his existence." (p.108)
Poor Rudy, haunted by his failures at work, and the fear of losing his wife, is sleepwalking through his days, unable to turn his life around.
Gradually, we learn why he is the way he is, and (naturally) it all began in Africa. The seeds for the disintegration of his relationship with his wife, and the strangely unloving bond he has with his son, were sown in one incident back in Senegal; the story here is merely the culmination of the consequences set in motion by that event. This middle story is a book in its own right, a powerful novella with an open, ambiguous ending.
The third story is, in some ways, more straight-forward, but it is infinitely more harrowing. Khady, a young woman living with her dead husband's family, is kicked out after the in-laws' limited patience finally wears thin. She's taken on a journey, but she has no idea where she's going or why. She has little interest in her fate, following her guide, comfortably numb - but that only gets you so far...
It's a story of an uneducated, disadvantaged woman, one in which she struggles to adapt and learn from (bad) experiences. Through theft, deceit and worse, Khady learns - the hard way - that you can't trust anyone. It showcases the plight of women in the third world, and in many ways it's an horrific story, one in which the sympathetic reader will feel for poor Khady. However, paradoxically, it's also a story of a 'strong' woman, where Khady takes charge of, and responsibility for, her own life...
One of the main attractions of Three Strong Women is NDiaye's style, the book consisting mainly of elegant, complex, monologues. While the stories generally stand alone, there are a few themes which run through all three, one of which is a fascination with birds. In Norah's story, it's her father, perched in a flame tree like an over-sized bird; in the second story, it's a buzzard which follows Rudy around, an incarnation of his guilty conscience (and Fanta's anger); in the final story, Khady is hit by the similarity of her guide to another type of bird:
"...she could tell from the absence of vibration, from a certain stagnant quality of the air around her, that the man - shepherd or jailer or protector or secret caster of evil spells - was the only one fidgeting, pacing feverishly up and down the sandy, uneven pavement, bouncing and hopping about involuntarily in his green trainers exactly like (Khady thought) the black and white crows nearby, black crows with broad white collars, whose brother he perhaps was, subtly changed into a man in order to steal Khady." (p.236)
I'll let you decide what NDiaye is trying to say with all that...
Three Strong Women features women suffocated by the love of the men around them, be they partners, sons or fathers, and in many ways, we are left wondering whether the title is meant to be serious or mocking. The original French title was Trois femmes puissantes, which literally translated means 'three powerful women' - a title which seems even more misguided given the powerlessness of at least two of the characters.
While the title may be a little misleading, classifying the book as a novel might be even more of a struggle. In truth, it's a collection of three novellas, connected by the theme of the struggle women face in a masculine society. NDiaye leaves us in no doubt that, for all our progress, it's still very much a man's world.
Still, leaving aside the questions of the title and what kind of work it actually is, Three Strong Women is a very good book. Stu had this down as one for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist, and given that even the judges were clamouring for more works by female writers, I'm not quite sure how this missed out (I hope it was submitted...). With many more books likely to come out in English though, I'm sure that NDiaye's name will pop up on that list at some point over the next few years :)
While I've made a couple of efforts for Iris' Dutch Literature events, I can't say I've read a lot from the Netherlands. However, one writer I have tried a couple of times (with fair results) is Cees Nooteboom. I was very happy then to get home from work one day to discover a pile of books from MacLehose Press waiting for me, three of which were by Nooteboom.
A few hours later, I only had two left to read ;)
*****
Rituals (translated by Adrienne Dixon) was Nooteboom's first big success, and it's definitely a book which shows an accomplished writer. The central figure is Inni Wintrop, a man about town who floats through life, sleeping around and making money through shares and art sales. When his wife leaves him in 1963, he decides (on a whim) to hang himself - that he fails in his half-hearted suicide attempt is, as the reader will discover, strangely unsurprising.
Nooteboom then takes Inni (and the reader) ten years back in time to meet Arnold Taads, a one-eyed former Dutch downhill-skiing champion, before the story jumps to 1973, where Inni encounters Philip Taads, Arnold's son. Despite the fact that both struggle with giving meaning to life, there isn't a lot that connects the two Taadses - except that they will both take their own lives too...
Rituals, as the name suggests, is a book about the habits and routines we develop to enable us to get through our daily life. The writer, in his dry, idiosyncratic manner, shows us several ways of coping with our natural existential angst, perhaps posing a question as to which is the best. We begin with Inni, and our initial stance is that his woes are wholly due to his pointless, pleasure-seeking ways:
"If he had ever had any ambition, he would have been prepared to call himself a failure, but he had none. He regarded life as a rather odd club of which he had accidentally become a member and from which one could be expelled without reasons having to be supplied. He had already decided to leave the club if the meetings should become all too boring."
p.19 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
However, Nooteboom is to spend the rest of the novel showing us that Inni isn't the only one struggling to make sense of it all.
The two Taadses are very different people, and despite knowing Arnold for many years, Inni never even suspects the existence of Philip until they meet. However, their attempts to deal with life are fairly similar. While Arnold subjugates daily life to the artificial strictures of time, allowing nothing and no one to interrupt his minutely-detailed schedule, Philip retreats into an invented world of Japanese asceticism, his interest in the culture completely divorced from its present reality. Both believe that they can cope with life by retreating inside a bubble of their own making - both are mistaken...
Nooteboom is far from judgemental though; he is merely using his puppets to look at the different ways we while away our hours in the mortal realm. It's easy to criticise Inni and his refusal to commit to making a lasting impression on the world, but his existence of occasional hedonism and random encounters is not the worst of the choices here. Religion, whether Eastern or Western, doesn't appear to help any of the characters, and money, far from being a help just seems to make it more difficult to motivate yourself...
I loved the style of Rituals. Nooteboom has a sardonic, occasionally dark, voice, one which seems to know that everything is pointless, but enjoys smirking at the futile efforts people make to convince themselves otherwise. The sentences are very different to the elegant ones of, say, Javier Marías - they're full of jerky, confronting clauses with little flow (a very Germanic style). The writer enjoys playing with images too, such as the idea of the sacred chalice, a kind of Holy Grail theme, one which has some rather unexpectedly gruesome consequences. I also enjoyed his rather unusual view of a lunchtime spread:
"My God, how many ways there are to mess about with the corpses of animals. Smoked, boiled, roasted, in aspic, blood red, black and white checkered, fatty pink, murky white, marbled, pressed, ground, sliced. Thus death lay displayed on the blue-patterned Meissen. Not even a whole school could have eaten all that." (p.99)
I think I'll just have some toast instead ;)
Rituals, then, is an admirable book, a seemingly slight story which makes the reader think a little harder than they might have expected to. While it's easy to look down on Inni, and laugh at the odd habits of Arnold and Philip Taads, the truth is that we all have our rituals, and we're all just filling our time as best we can in an effort to make our stay on Earth worthwhile. It's a book which will make each reader reflect: how do you live your life? And (perhaps more importantly) how should you...
After reading (and loving) Maidenhair a while back, I was keen to try more of Mikhail Shishkin's work, hoping that another book would appear in English. I was pleasantly surprised then when the kind people at MacLehose (well, Quercus, actually) sent me a review copy of another of his novels, his most recent translation into English. In some ways it's a very similar book to Maidenhair - however, in others it's very different...
*****
The Light and the Dark (translated by Andrew Bromfield) is an epistolary novel (written in letters) between Sasha and Volodenka, a pair of young lovers who have been parted. As Sasha talks about everyday life and reminisces about her childhood, Volodenka writes about his experiences in the army, on the march to China to help crush the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxer Rebellion? That happened at the turn of the twentieth century - hang on a minute...
That's right. You see, unlike Australia Post (who can struggle to locate a sturdy letter box with a large number painted on it) the Russian postal service seems to be able to work in four dimensions. Sasha appears to be living in modern times, and moves further on in life as each letter goes by. On the other hand, Volodenka's side of the story takes place over a matter of hot, sticky, blood-drenched months. Is there any hope for two people separated by space and time? Well, I'm sure love will find a way ;)
Anyone expecting a story reminiscent of the Hollywood movie The Lake House is barking up the wrong tree though, and those who have already experienced Shishkin's work, in the form of Maidenhair, will have guessed that there is a lot more to The Light and The Dark than a cheesy tale of star-crossed lovers. In fact, the two writers barely acknowledge each other's letters, leading us to suspect that their missives aren't really reaching their destination after all. If we attempt to make sense of the story, it would be tempting to surmise that perhaps Sasha is pining after a lost love, a soldier who died long ago...
...but the plot, as you may already have suspected, is of little consequence here. The story is merely a canvas upon which Shishkin can sketch out his theories on time and relationships. It's a book of childhood memories and stories of the past in which the two protagonists open up about their formative years. Both Sasha and Volodenka have a lot to say about their relationships with their parents and the effect that marriage break-ups had on their childhood. However, a more prominent theme is a circular return to their parents, this time in the role of carers, later in life. For Shishkin, dealing with death is an important part of life:
"It's
very important for people when their dear ones leave them. That's a
gift too. It's the only way they can understand anything about life.
The death of the people we love, people dear to us, is a gift that can
help us understand the important reason why we are here."
p.243 (Quercus Books, 2013)
It's a lesson Sasha and Volodenka are to learn in different ways.
As much as the book talks about death though, the two main characters also grow to understand the importance of embracing life. Caught in the middle of a horrific conflict, Volodenka discovers the joy of life and a desperate wish not to die. What he is yet to realise (and what Sasha discovers over the course of the novel) is that it is your body which drags you down, pulling you closer to death:
"Do
you know what made me feel afraid the first time? When I was fourteen
or fifteen - it was a realisation that suddenly hit me: My body is
dragging me into the grave. Every day, every moment. Every time I
breathe in and breathe out.
Isn't that alone already a good enough reason to hate it?" (p.183)
But then, the body is also used to enjoy life - as we see in other parts of the book...
Just as in Maidenhair, the writer uses his characters to discuss the nature of time, refuting the idea of linear progress. One metaphor used is that of a book already written, meaning that life is little more than acting out what has already been put down in black and white. However, other people may read those lines at different times, causing those caught in the action to experience a feeling of déjà vu (no, me neither...). In any case, physical objects like coins or letters link everything together, present, future and past connected to a vanishing point in time...
I enjoyed The Light and The Dark, but I'd have to say that it's not as awe-inspiring as Maidenhair. It took me a while to get into the book, especially as the first letters seemed to make up little more than a he-said, she-said work. At one point, I found myself agreeing with Sasha:
"I'm lying here contemplating my own navel.
What a wonderful occupation!" (p.52)
While it was all well written and interesting, over the first half of the book I didn't feel too inspired to rush back after finishing a section. In a sense, the lack of a strong plot and the episodic nature of the structure meant that I was treating it more like a collection of short stories than a novel... Eventually though, The Light and The Dark did win me over, especially as the two lovers drifted further apart. The further you advance into Shishkin's deceptively-light prose, the more you understand what he is trying to do.
Genius or merely a good writer? I'm not quite convinced yet that Shishkin is the next-big-thing he's been touted as. Which is not to say that he's a one-hit wonder, quite the contrary; this is definitely a writer you'll hear more of in the future. If you haven't already, perhaps it's time to get on board the bandwagon :)
*****
P.S. For anyone interested in sampling some of Shishkin's other work, Dwight, of A Common Reader, shared some links to online stories in the course of his posts on a Shishkin podcast. In the Q&A session held at San Francisco's Center for the Art of Translation, Scott Esposito chatted to Shishkin and the American translator of Maidenhair, Marian Schwartz. Anyone interested in Shishkin's work should check out the interview - and read the stories, of course ;)
We're back to WW2 fare today, this time along Italy's Adriatic Coast. However, the book we'll be examining looks at things from a slightly different angle from usual. So, where are we exactly? Well...
*****
Trieste by Daša Drndić (translated by Ellen Elias Bursać - review copy from MacLehose Press)
What's it all about?
In 2006, Haya Tedeschi, an elderly lady, sits at home in Gorizia, near Trieste, surrounded by piles of papers and newspaper clippings. The mounds of paper scattered on the floor all have to do with the events of the war, stories of atrocities and biographies of some of the heroes and villains of the era. It may seem to be history to many people, but for Haya the war is still very real.
We then move back in time to the start of the twentieth century and are introduced to the Tedeschi family and the region around Trieste. It is a European crossroads, a city on the borders of Empires, a multilingual cultural melting pot - great for music and literature, very bad when the great European powers decide to go to war...
The writer takes us carefully through the first part of the 20th century until we reach the main focus of the novel, the Second World War. It is here that Haya meets SS officer Kurt Frank and has a secret affair. The result of the relationship is a son, Antonio Tedeschi - a boy who one day goes missing, leaving his mother with a sixty-two year wait for his return.
Trieste is a heavy book on a weighty subject. Drndić uses the novel to discuss what happened during the war in and around the title city, an area many people would know little about. We learn about the death camps in the region and the men who ran them (and what happened to them after the war...). We read about the post-war trials and how some of them were conducted in the absence of the accused, empty procedures which had no consequences. In short, we are reminded of the past, a past which the writer wants to make sure is not forgotten.
Eventually, the focus shifts to the Lebensborn project, a Nazi plan to ensure the dominance of their Aryan super race. Homes were opened all over the German Reich, where suitable women gave birth to children who were then to be brought up in a manner deemed fit for the heirs of the master race. When Himmler realised that the numbers weren't impressive enough, he decided to order the removal of suitable children born to inferior races in the region (including little Antonio Tedeschi...).
The final section of the book is devoted to Hans Traube, a man who knows that his name and upbringing is a lie, and his quest to uncover the truth. Like his birth mother, Hans has been searching through documents in the vain hope of finding his true identity, in the process finding out much more about his possible biological father than he would like to know. The Lebensborn children are doomed to live with uncertainty, hoping they might some day uncover their true origins, but also scared of what they might find:
"Then,
when I least expected it, the Past jumped out at me in a flash, Hop!
like a carcass, like some rotten corpse it draped itself around my neck,
plunged its claws into my artery and it still isn't letting go. I'd
like to shake it off, this Past, but it won't let me, it swings on me as
I walk, it lies on me while I sleep, it looks me in the eye and leers, See, I'm still with you."
p.339 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
Of course, it's not just the Lebensborn children who have to worry about the burden of the past. Drndić contrasts their fate with that of the children of the SS officers, the men and women responsible for crimes against humanity. They also struggle to live with the legacy of the past...
Trieste is minutely researched, comprising a dizzying collage of fact and fiction, stories and interviews. In its inclusion of photographs and original documentation (and even forty pages of the names of Italian holocaust victims), with a narrative frequently shoved aside in favour of a tangent, there is something almost Sebaldian in its structure. We are taken on a tour of WW2, from Aushwitz and Treblinka to Reinhard Heydrich at the Salon Kitty brothel in Berlin (for the second time in a week...), with anecdotes about concentration camp guards shooting prisoners for fun, and convoys of the doomed through Switzerland, where locals think they are helping by providing blankets and warm soup...
What comes through very clearly though is the mass slaughter, the senseless, deliberate waste of human life on a grand scale. One of the more interesting features of the novel is the occasional Q & A with both holocaust victims and their captors, giving insights into what happened - and how. As one guard says:
"When I was on a trip once, years later in Brazil, my train stopped next to a slaughterhouse. The cattle grazing in the pens trotted up to the fence and stared at our train. They were very close to my window, one jostling the other, looking at me through that fence. I thought then, This reminds me of Poland. That's how the people looked at me there: trustingly, just before they went into the... I couldn't eat tinned meat for a long time after that. Those big cows' eyes staring at me, those animals who had no idea that in no time they'd all be slaughtered...
So you didn't feel the camp inmates were people?
Cargo. They were cargo." (p.206)
Trieste is certainly an ambitious, expansive work, but if I had a criticism to make, it would be that it is a little over-ambitious at times. The main story, what little of it there is, is frequently pushed into the background, seemingly only there to serve as an excuse to write about the history. As with HHhH, the reader is left wondering what the actual focus of the work is, and whether it might have been better left as non-fiction...
Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Possibly not. It's a worthy book on an important subject, but it wanders a little (OK, a lot), and I was never quite sure what the focus was meant to be. The last section, centred on Hans Traube and his search for the truth, is excellent, and I would personally have preferred a much narrower focus on the Lebensborn project.
Will it make the shortlist?
Despite what I said above, I think it has a good chance. I don't think I'm the best judge of literature dealing with the Holocaust, and other readers seem to appreciate books like HHhH and Trieste a lot more than I do. I suspect that one of those two will make the cut, and this one is much weightier and better written.
*****
Moving on, and we're (finally) lightening the mood a little; it's time to head off to Paris for some drinking, dancing and writing in the park. Whatever you do, make sure you dress for the occasion - suit up, everyone ;)
As you may have gathered by now, I'm currently working my way through this year's IFFP longlist, but today's review is on a book which may be a chance for next time around. Elias Khoury is a Lebanese writer, one who has been longlisted for the prize before, and his latest work is an excellent tale of a search for truth in a city which has lost its way. Will this be on the judge's list next year? Let's see...
*****
White Masks (translated by Maia Tabet, review copy from MacLehose Press) starts with a body found in the streets of Beirut, covered in a pile of rubbish. Khalid Ahmad Jaber had gone missing a few days earlier, and while people turning up dead is hardly a rarity in the Lebanese capital during the civil war, Jaber's case is a little different - mainly because no-one can understand why he would have been killed.
The main voice of the novel is a journalist (a fictionalised Khoury) who decides to investigate the case by looking at it from a variety of angles, interviewing anyone who can shed light on poor Khalid's final hours. He talks to the man's distraught wife, his neighbours, the rubbish collector who found the body, a militia man who saw him briefly, his daughter... Owing to the unusual nature of Khalid's death, he begins to be praised as a martyr, despite the fact that his death had nothing to do with the ongoing conflict:
"And the poor
martyr, Khalil...I swear he's a martyr...I feel ashamed of myself...but I didn't know that he was the Khalil Ahmad Jaber who would be murdered
and whose picture would be in all the papers. I swear, had I known, I
would've taken him in and cared for him...What can we do? It was God's
will!"
p.72 (MacLehose Press, 2013)
There is no shortage of people willing to talk to the journalist about Khalid's final days. However, none of the witness are able to shed light on a rather puzzling case.
But from the very beginning, we suspect that White Masks is less about one man and more about life in Beirut as a whole. By looking at one particular crime, Khoury paints a picture of a city in constant turmoil, where the extraordinary is ordinary and life is difficult to live and easy to lose. Beirut is a city in pieces. Nothing works, and the infrastructure has broken down. Houses have been shelled, gangs roam the street, torture is an ever-present possibility... and the rubbish piles up uncollected. Throughout the novel, the writer foregrounds the smells - of the city and of Khalid. The poor man's stench is representative of a city in decay...
White Masks is divided into six statements from eye witnesses, bookended by the journalist's prologue and epilogue. However, the witnesses' stories rarely restrict themselves to the matter in hand, and they go off on elaborate tangents, touching on their experiences with Khalid before retuning to stories about their partners, their families, or perhaps just stories they have heard in the street. The perspective changes from third person to first at the drop of a hat (and back again). It's all a little unusual for the Anglophone reader.
This difference of style is enhanced by the language used. Tabet's translation is excellent, and the flavour is enhanced by the obvious Arabic slant to the writing. In addition to the Arabic exclamations (al-hamdulillah, insh'allah, mashallah) which pepper the text, the witnesses' rhetorical style is slightly alien. They address the reader directly, appeal to them, exaggerate, repeat themselves, their stories twisting and turning around in circles.
At times, the style is almost playful, linguistic gymnastics which have very little to do with what the witnesses were actually asked about. However, the light tone only serves to put the more serious moments in starker focus. When events turn darker, the effect is poignant:
"The blonde youth
reeled, like a dancer doing a jig. And even as his head came to rest on
the ground, the hair already stiff and matted with dust, his body
danced on, his feet twitching against the pavement...And then, finally,
he slept..." p.91
Khoury is wonderful at striking the right balance between rowdy, rambling stories and brief, striking moments of terror, a balance which makes the book a pleasure to read.
One more theme which perhaps deserves attention is the description of gender roles in the Lebanese (Arabic) community of the time. The men are cruel, lazy and workshy, beating and raping their wives, begging for (and stealing) money, unwilling to behave in the manner the reader would want them to. However, the women in the novel appear to admire 'manly' men and despise those men who behave like women, leading you to wonder whether the writer is condemning, condoning or merely remarking on the husbands' behaviour...
White Masks is a great read, a novel written in a wonderfully engaging style, and an excellent entry point into Arabic-language literature for those (like me) who are woefully under-read in this area. The writer is more concerned with painting a picture of Beirut than finding out who killed Khalid, but in the end, does it really matter?
"No. Even assuming the murderer was identified, and the motives of the crime were known, even if, finally, the murderer were put to death, it would not change anything. People say that putting murderers to death serves as a deterrent to others but in reality, no-one is being deterred. Murderers are executed and nothing changes." p.239
Defeatism, or a determination to move forward? You be the judge.
