Today's German Literature Month post sees us taking the bus back to Berlin in the early 1930s. It's a story of life on the streets for a gang of young men trying to get by, and it's certainly a fascinating piece. However, what's even more intriguing is the backstory of the book and the author, a man of mystery if ever there was one. If that was the good news, here's some bad news - if you want to read it (in English), I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for quite a while...
*****
Ernst Haffner's Blood Brothers (translated by Michael Hofmann, review copy courtesy of Other Press - released on the 3rd of March, 2015) begins with a group of young men in Berlin. They're part of a generation growing up after the First World War without parents, and most of them have run away from state homes for orphans - being under the age of twenty-one, they are deemed unable to fend for themselves.
Which, of course, couldn't be further from the truth - these boys are extremely resourceful. However, they're also young and careless, and their lives are spent chasing a few groschen for a bit of fun, falling prey to the temptation of helping fate a little by bending (and then breaking) the law. The heady feeling of getting one over on society is a rush the boys enjoy. However, the reader always has a feeling that it'll all end in tears...
Blood Brothers caused a minor sensation in Germany recently, and the story behind the book explains the interest. It was originally released in 1932 under the title Jugend auf der Landstraße Berlin (Youths on the Country Road to Berlin), and it was rereleased last year under the new title Blutsbrüder (Blood Brothers). Novels portraying life during the interwar period are always popular, and this one, showing life in Berlin immediately prior to the Nazi rise to power, was a big hit.
What we see perhaps helps explain the attraction of the far-right at the time as it's often a journey through a sordid underworld of Dickensian squalor:
"Each of them counts out his due, and is then permitted without further ado to seek out a place for the night. A wretched oil lamp sputters. Mould thrives on a few dirty scraps of wallpaper, and where the straw mattresses are laid out, sharp eyes might make out numerous disgusting bloodstains from squashed bedbugs."
p.65 (Other Press, 2015)
There are dingy shops as fronts for illegal businesses, 'warming halls' where the homeless are permitted to spend a few precious hours out of the cold and, as described above, the boarding houses where, for a few pfennigs, the down and out can rest with a roof over their heads.
The Blood Brothers of the title are a group of boys from all over the country, held together by Jonny, a clever schemer with big plans. When a newcomer, Willi, a friend of Ludwig (one of the gang), arrives in Berlin, we begin to be shown the choices the boys have. It may seem as if the boys have it good at times, but it's (quite literally) a choice of selling body or soul. Jonny's followers can either join in his lucrative schemes or look for other, warmer ways to earn a mark or two. It can be a hard life, but the Blood Brothers make sure they have fun, with fighting, drinking and the odd prostitute or two making their lives worth living. When money comes in, it soon flows out quickly enough, but there's always more to be found if you know where to look...
There is a serious side to the Blood Brothers, though. One of the main issues the book deals with is the importance of a support network in tough times, especially in a society with no real safety net:
"Is there another way? Work, honest to goodness work? Even if such a miracle came to pass and someone came along asking "Will you work for me?" it would be over as soon as it was asked! The papers! The official confirmation that so-and-so, born on such-and-such a date is allowed to run around freely and isn't condemned to be in a welfare home... This confirmation will break anyone's neck because it hasn't been provided. Because they aren't allowed to run around freely. They are welfare kids, liable to be locked away, even if they've done nothing wrong!" (p.145)
It's little wonder that, given the choice between living on the streets and suffering in what is little more than a prison, many choose a life of petty crime...
Of course, there are parallels with other books set around the same era. One that immediately springs to mind is Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (a much more literary version of the struggles of the poor in interwar Berlin). Another German writer who trod the same territory is Erich Maria Remarque, especially in his novel Drei Kameraden (Three Comrades). However, in many ways I'm reminded more of his most famous novel, Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). Why? Well, it has a similar theme of young men banding together in a time of crisis, but also the same flow of it all being fun until, suddenly, times turn sour...
The text is in the capable hands of renowned translator Michael Hofmann, and it's an enjoyable read with a rather idiosyncratic style. There's a strong narratorial voice which, while not intrusive, is certainly ever-present, and you can't help but be struck by some of the interesting choices the translator makes, particularly regarding vocabulary choice. There's a definite decision (in my early version, at least) to go with dated British lexis (e.g. rozzers, chum, borstals, knackered, do one (run away), spiv, flying squad) - I'll be very interested to see if those all make it into the final version ;)
Blood Brothers isn't the most demanding book, but it's definitely enjoyable, especially if you're interested in this era (and for me the interwar era is much more intriguing than the war that followed). Added interest is provided by the fact that the book was one of the many banned and burnt by the Nazis in 1933. But what about the author? Well, Haffner was actually a social worker who knew what he was talking about, and consequently fell foul of the Nazi regime. Very little is actually known of his whereabouts after the early 1940s, as he disappeared from view, presumably to meet an unfortunate end. His legacy, though is still around in this book - it's definitely something to remember him by...
I've been lucky enough to review some wonderful books from Other Press this year, so I was happy to agree to try the book reviewed in today's post, especially as it's a fairly short work. Of course, life gets in the way of the best-laid plans (as do other books...), and it spent a few months on the shelves before I finally got around to it.
Which, in a way, is great timing - it's only actually being published today :)
*****
Antonio Skármeta's A Distant Father (translated by John Cullen) is a short novella set in Contulmo, a small town in Chile. It's the home of Jacques, a twenty-one-year-old schoolteacher, whose return home from teaching college coincided with his French father's departure from the family home. Now, stuck in the dull town, alone with his mother in their small house, Jacques spends his days teaching whatever needs to be taught at the local school and his spare time translating poetry for a regional newspaper.
Desperate for a change in routine, he persuades his father's old friend Cristián to accompany him to the town of Angol, where in addition to buying a present for a student's birthday, he'll get the chance to let off steam at the local brothel. The trip turns out to be a memorable one, and not just for the reasons you'd imagine. While roaming the streets of Angol, he discovers something which will turn his small world upside down...
A Distant Father is a beautiful little book, a story you can read through in a single-sitting (I did it twice, a week apart), a work which evokes the melancholy of youth and small-town blues. In a town where everyone knows everyone else, there isn't much to do, and people tend to move away once they're old enough. With few jobs, and a train service which is threatened with closure, it's easy to agree with the comment that the world is not made for small towns.
Cristián is Jacques' link to his father, and his quiet friendship is one of the young man's few refuges from sadness. However, the silent miller has his own ways of coping:
"Cristián is an assiduous drinker of red wine, and his apron is eternally spattered with purplish stains. He always offers me a glass, which however I always decline. Drinking alcohol makes me sad."
p.18 (Other Press, 2014)
With alcohol only exacerbating his melancholy, Jacques needs other ways to escape from everyday life.
One of these escapes is language and literature. Thanks to his father, Jacques is able to speak French, and he supplements his income by translating simple poems for a regional newspaper. Hoping to fool people into thinking his trip to Angol is on business, he takes along his latest literary project:
"And so I've brought along a book by Raymond Quenau that the editor of the newspaper wants to publish in installments. Prose is easier than poetry, but I do get all caught up in the fates of the characters. Maybe that's because so little happens here. We're secondary figures, not protagonists." (pp.31/2)
Again, Jacques is struggling with life away from the bright lights, living an urban life vicariously. The book, by the way, is Zazie dans le métro, a novel about a provincial teen in the big city...
While it's a novella, A Distant Father works very much like a play. Its short chapters act as scenes, and the simple, direct prose leaves much to the imagination. There's a clever plot which is skilfully built up, with secrets involving birthday boy Augusto Gutierrez and his beautiful sisters Elena and Teresa. The clues are there if you know where to look, but I'd rather not say too much more - I don't want to spoil it for you...
In short, this is a great little book with a lot to uncover in its few pages, and while I'm reluctant to give the game away, I'll provide you with one last hint. The cover of the Other Press version has more to do with what happens than the title; the original title was Un padre de película, and the cinema entrance on the cover is a nice touch (I especially like the way the Other Press logo is used as door handles!). OK, that's more than enough from me - go and read it ;)
There aren't many rules around Tony's Reading List, but one informal guideline that has developed over the years is that it's always fair to give a writer a second chance, even if I didn't think much of the first try. It's not always easy, though, especially when you're so disappointed first time around - which is why today's post should be taken as evidence to support the rule, even when the first book was a real stinker ;)
*****
Shin Kyung-sook's I'll Be Right There (translated by Sora Kim-Russell, review copy courtesy of Other Press) is an excellent novel set in and around Seoul in the 1980s. It all begins when a middle-aged lecturer, Jung Yoon, receives a call from a former boyfriend, in which she finds out that her favourite teacher from her university days is close to death. As she gazes out of the window, with snow starting to fall slowly on the city, her mind drifts inevitably to her time as a student.
We follow Yoon back to the start of her student days, where she encounters several people who are to have a dramatic impact on her life. The first is Professor Yoon, a slightly eccentric English Literature lecturer who appears out of place in the turbulent political environment of the Eighties, a man who kindles his students' love of poetry. The second is Myungsuh, a boy who spends half of his time at the university and the other half demonstrating on the streets of the capital, and through him Yoon gets to know Miru, a young woman scarred by events of the past. Together, they have to make their way through both young adulthood and a critical time in Korean history...
Let's get this out of the way now - I loathed Please Look After Mother. However, I'll Be Right There is a far, far better book. It's a story which as well as portraying those pivotal, magical years bridging childhood and adulthood, touches on a fascinating period of Korean history, where students demonstrated on the streets, in a way unimaginable now for us in the West, in an attempt to change the hardline right-wing government.
Initially, it seems as if the wider political protests, as the writer suggests in her comments on the book, will stay in the background, but when Yoon walks home from class one day, she suddenly finds herself caught up in the troubles:
"Just then a tear gas canister exploded overhead, and a huge crowd of protesters surged into the underpass to try to avoid it. I was shoved forward with them..."
p.77 (Other Press, 2014)
What, up to this point, has been an abstract, theoretical political issue, suddenly becomes frighteningly real. Shin switches the tempo superbly, from a casual, steady walk through a quiet city to a heart-stopping, full-speed flight for survival. From this point on, even when the political side stays in the background, we know that it's there, waiting to play a role in events again.
On the whole, though, I'll Be Right There focuses on the micro, rather than the macro, and much of the story is centred on the small group of young adults, each of whom has their own issues to work through. Perhaps the most fascinating figure is Miru, shy to the point of abstraction, a woman who writes down what she eats in a journal, always wears the same skirt whatever the weather - and has unsightly scars on her hands. Despite her shyness, she builds up a close friendship with Yoon, one which helps both of them in their attempts to leave the past behind.
Strangely enough, though, this friendship threatens the blossoming relationship between Yoon and Myungsuh, as the ghosts of the past prove trickier to ignore than they had all hoped. The structure of the novel, with Yoon's narrative chapters being followed by short extracts from Myungsuh's journal, allows the reader to see the way the two can act at cross-purposes, never quite getting to where they would like to be. For every step they take towards each other, there always seem to be a few steps back, either because of the troubles or because of Miru.
One of the central themes of the novel is this lack of communication, or a surplus of miscommunication, which Myungsuh is quick to blame on society:
"A society that is violent or corrupt prohibits mutual communication. A society that fears communication is unable to solve any problem. It looks for someone to shift the responsibility to and turns even more violent." (p.158)
Sadly, each of the characters (including Dahn, Yoon's childhood friend, a man who struggles to communicate his true feelings to her) seems trapped inside their own thoughts and emotions, unable to reach out and help others - or get help themselves. This is symbolised by the constant phone calls in the middle of night, which either go unanswered or have no one on the other end...
I'll Be Right There is an excellent read, and it has the potential to do very well for Shin in the Anglosphere. Sora Kim-Russell's translation was excellent, balancing on the tricky tightrope between literality and over-westernising without toppling to one side, and Charles Montgomery (over at Korean Literature in Translation) does a great job of highlighting this in his review. It's a book which you need to keep reading, and want to get back to after you've stopped; more importantly, it's also a book which stays with you long after you've finished.
Whether this will be a welcome comparison or not, I'm not really sure, but for a J-Lit fan like myself, there are obvious parallels with another big hit in translated fiction, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. This begins with the first scene, where a middle-aged protagonist is whisked back to memories of their glory days, but there are far more similarities than that. The setting of a time of student unrest, the gloomy undertones of a depressed generation, the hours of walking through the big city - all are reminiscent of Murakami's hit.
However, I'll Be Right There is a lot more than just a copy of Norwegian Wood. Where Murakami leaves the political side in the background, having Toru avoid the university while it's going on, Shin confronts it head on, pushing her characters onto the battlefield, refusing to allow them to hide away in safety. While Yoon, Myungsuh, Miru and Dahn also seek refuge in the arts, unlike Toru their escape isn't Jazz, but literature, and mentions abound of Emily Dickinson, Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge and even Natsume Soseki. Yes, there are echoes of Murakami's Bildungsroman here, but this is most definitely Shin's own story - and it's a very good one.
It would be nice to think that this might be another big success, both for Shin and the wider translated fiction community - it certainly has the makings of a popular novel. While some (like me) might be more intrigued by the historical and social aspects, most will be pulled in by the human element, and the troubles of youth:
"We each get one life that is our own. We each in our own way struggle to get ahead, love, grieve, and lose our loved ones to death. There are no exceptions for anyone - not for me, not for the man who had called me, and not for Professor Yoon. Just one chance. That's all." (p.13)
Sadly for the characters of the novel, this idea of carpe diem more often than not gives way to fatalism. It's no coincidence that some of the most common words in the novel are 'some day'...
I really enjoyed I'll Be Right There, and I'm confident that most people will too; it's definitely one to put on your list for future reference. And as for Please Look After Mother...
...well, let's just pretend that it never happened ;)
With the 2014 FIFA World Cup a matter of weeks away, it's no surprise to find several football-themed books on the market, and I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of one recently. It's a novel which looks at football from a slightly different angle, but in the end it's just as much about friendship as about the beautiful game...
*****
Eduardo Sacheri's Papers in the Wind (translated by Mara Faye Lethem, review copy courtesy of Other Press) is set in Avellaneda, just outside Buenos Aires, and follows three friends (Mauricio, Ruso and Fernando) with a passion for life - and the local football team, Independiente. The novel starts with the three mourning the death of Fernando's brother, Mono, a former junior footballer who later became successful as a systems analyst. As they sit in a café, taking in the reality of their friend's passing, they begin to ponder the future.
Their main concern is for the future of Mono's daughter, Guadalupe, and they're right to be concerned as Mono sank all his money into buying a young football talent, one loaned out to a team in the lower divisions:
Ruso sounds excited when he adds, "That's awesome. That he plays first-string I mean. That he feels secure in his spot. For his confidence, and all that."
Bermúdez looks at him as if he's not sure he should respond.
"The thing is, kid, you have no idea just how awful his replacement is."
p.19 (Other Press, 2014)
The contract of Mario Juan Bautista Pittilanga, then, looks like US$300,000 down the drain - unless the friends can think of something fast...
While football is the topic around which the novel is constructed, the true focus of Papers in the Wind is friendship, in particular the importance of keeping in touch with childhood friends. The three main characters are very different people, and if they had met as adults, they probably wouldn't even have given each other the time of day. Fernando is a teacher on the wrong side of town while Mauricio is a lawyer with his sights on the big time (and any attractive secretaries who come his way). As for Ruso, let's just say that he's a small-business owner who really shouldn't be let anywhere near a small business...
None of that really matters, though, because the three boys grew up in the same neighbourhood, kicking a ball around in the street and watching Independiente play every weekend. These are friends who will fight for each other - as Ruso proves on a visit to Mono's uncaring specialist:
"Are you a doctor or what, you little son of a bitch? Don't you see, don't you realize that Mono is sick, asshole? That he's afraid he's gonna die? Or do you not give a shit? You didn't even look at him, asshole, you didn't even look at him! Don't you realize what he wanted to ask you? Didn't you realize, moron? What? You - you've never been afraid?" (p.165)
If the doctor hasn't had much experience of fear in the past, Ruso soon helps him to catch up in this department.
However, as most people know, modern football has a way of corrupting those who become involved in the business, and trying to sell Pittilanga to get Mono's money back is going to test the ties of our three friends:
"What I'm saying... what I'm saying is that soccer is a lie. That it's all a farce. That it's all business. The players, the managers, the journalists. Even the hooligans are on the books. All about the benjamins. They all do it for the money." (p.443)
The beautiful game has a dirty underbelly, and as Fernando, Ruso and Mauricio get drawn into the world of negotiations and bribery, they realise that it's impossible to come out with their integrity intact. A bigger problem, though, is that there's always the temptation for one of the three to start acting behind the others' backs...
Papers in the Wind is a nice, easy read, and it's a story which draws you in, a definite page-turner. The story has two alternating strands, one set in the present, and one relating the events leading up to Mono's untimely death. The flashbacks help to set the scene for the later events, also shining a light on the nature of the relationship shared by the four young men from the suburbs.
There were a couple of minor issues I had with the book. The first is to do with the strand dealing with Mono's illness, which, while initially interesting, later became far too slow, bogging down the main storyline. It's an important side to the story as it helps show the strength of the bond the men share, but towards the end it really dragged, and I was skipping through it as quickly as possible to get back to the main event.
The other issue is one which will only be shared with a minority of readers out there, namely British-English speakers with a passion for football. You see, this translation is in American English, and while that usually only poses minor concerns, the moment the book starts to mention 'soccer' in any depth, it really is a different language. Some examples I noted down are 'field' (pitch in British English), 'wall pass' (one-two), 'goal area' (penalty area), 'demoted' (relegated), 'light towers' (floodlights), 'lateral defender, left side' (left-back) and 'an off-mark shot to the goal' (a shot off-target). For people like me, that all makes for painful reading ;)
Luckily, though, Papers in the Wind is more about the people than the game, looking at how sport can have a corrupting influence once large amounts of money are on offer. As you watch the best in the world this (northern) summer, don't forget that for every Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, there's a Mario Juan Bautista Pittilanga hoping that his contract is going to be renewed at the end of the season - and a middle-man counting his dollars, who might just make it happen...
As you may have noticed, I've been rather occupied with translated fiction prizes recently, what with shadowing the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and casting occasional glances in the direction of the American Best Translated Book Award. However, it's important to remember that (as I've mentioned on several occasions) the judges for these things are far from infallible - and today's book is one which, somehow or other seems to have fallen between the cracks on both sides of the Atlantic.
Which is quite a feat, seeing as it's a very big book ;)
*****
Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès' Where Tigers are at Home (translated by Mike Mitchell, review copy courtesy of Other Press) is a big book in every sense of the word. Running to 817 pages in my beautiful hardback edition, the novel is a wonderful look at history, geography and many other sciences besides, all wrapped up in several related stories involving characters who manage to reach across time and space to have an effect on other people.
We start off with expatriate French correspondent, Eléazard von Wogau, a man living in the provinces of Brazil sending occasional reports back home about Brazilian news, most of which are simply ignored. With his geologist wife, Elaine, having left him, and his daughter, Moéma, off having fun at university, von Wogau uses his time translating a document he has been sent, a biography of the life of famed seventeenth-century Jesuit and polymath Athanasius Kircher. It's a fascinating story, and one which intrigues both von Wogau and the reader, but there's a lot more to Where the Tigers are at Home than that.
Eventually, the writer introduces several other strands to the tale: we follow Elaine von Wogau as she sets off on a perilous journey into the Brazilian interior in search of fossils; Moéma's story is played out on the beaches and in the shanty towns; Nelson, a young crippled beggar, gradually enters the story, destined to cross paths with several of the other characters; and Governor José Moreira, a corrupt politician with plans to transform the region, will eventually cast his shadow across all of the stories...
If one thing has come across from the few paragraphs I've written so far, it's that Where Tigers are at Home is a rather expansive and ambitious work. It's one where the reader is compelled to take the writer's intentions on trust, as it takes a long time for the underlying framework of the novel to become clear. With Caspar Schott's biography of his mentor Athanasius Kircher taking up a good third of the novel (these sections begin every chapter), an impatient reader may well give up before the story gets into second gear. However, the book is well worth persisting with, and each of the strands is interesting in its own right.
As mentioned, the biography takes up the bulk of the novel, and on its own it's interesting to read. It follows the (real-life) Kircher throughout his travels, as he wanders Europe in a quest for knowledge, hoping to unlock the secrets of the universe and link them all back to an all-powerful deity. While he is undoubtedly a genius, the trouble is that he is working from a false premise - and almost everything he comes up with is completely lacking in facts...
Much of the humour from this part comes from the hapless Schott, the Doctor Watson to Kircher's Sherlock, and while his master braves evil to further the church's aims, it always seems to be the assistant who has to take one for the team. A particularly memorable episode is when Caspar encounters a beautiful lady of high standing, who turns out to be more interested in worldly pleasures than in heavenly delights. Poor Caspar, trapped by events, is forced to submit to her wishes:
"Lingua mea in nobilissimae os adacta, spiculum usque ad cor illi penetravit."
p.269 (Other Press, 2013)
It's a little too racy for me to put into English here, but if you are interested in Latin porn, there's always Google Translate ;)
The whole point of Kircher's story, though, is the way it reflects on events taking place in contemporary Brazil, as the actions described in Schott's biography mirror those elsewhere in the chapters. The debauchery at the prince's house is contrasted both with an evening party at Governor Moreira's mansion and with a frenzied native ritual in the jungle. When Kircher foils a charlatan who claims to have the secrets of alchemy at his fingertips, Nelson then tells us of a girl who was tempted with sweets, only to wake up with no eyes...
The title of the book comes from Goethe's Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften), from a passage that says:
"No one can walk beneath palm trees with impunity,
and ideas are sure to change in a land where
elephants and tigers are at home."
However, as Eléazard argues with a friend, what this passage actually means is up for debate. Are we obliged to travel the world and broaden our horizons, or does becoming aware of the wider world blind us to what is going on around us? To paraphrase, is increasing globalisation a good thing? As Eléazard remarks:
"What can one say of a population that is incapable of visualizing the world in which it lives except that it's on the road to ruin for lack of landmarks, of reference points? For lack of reality... Is not the way the world has of henceforth resisting our efforts to represent it, the mischievous pleasure it takes in escaping us, a symptom of the fact that we have already lost it? To lose sight of the world, is that not to begin to be happy with its disappearance?" (p.782)
A rather telling thought in the land of the rapidly disappearing rainforests.
It's here that the Brazilian side of the story comes into its own, as several of the protagonists have their own encounters with indigenous culture, all falling victim to the lure of the exotic. Moéma's desire to atone for her privileged upbringing takes her to some rather dark places, while her lecturer, Roetgen, finds his own connection with the past on a fishing trip with some locals. It's Elaine, though, who has the most confronting encounter - in pursuing knowledge from hundreds of millions of years ago, she is brought face to face with a slightly more recent past...
At which point, I have to simply give up on analysis and recommend you to the work instead. There's far too much here to be covered in a single post, and in the end I'm reduced to offering tempting comparisons, hoping to entice you into giving Where Tigers are at Home a read. One of those would undoubtedly be David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, for while the set-up is slightly different, both books share an overarching ambition and a desire to let people know that what we think we know is not always right - and that progress isn't always a good thing. If you're the sort of person who was able to stay with Cloud Atlas, trusting that the writer was steering you in the right direction, then this might be a book for you :)
Sadly, as I said in my introduction, Where Tigers are at Home has been strangely overlooked. The Dedalus Books UK edition pretty much sank without trace, and while Other Press' US version has received more praise, it was still, inexplicably overlooked for the BTBA longlist this year. Why? Well, it's a rather off-putting beast, and I suspect that many people simply couldn't bring themselves to give it a go. A book centred on a Jesuit priest, a novel which you might struggle to lift if you haven't been eating your greens - I can see how that could be a bit of a hard sell.
However, while taking a leap of faith isn't always a good idea (and there are several examples of that in the book...), this is one time when it's definitely worth the risk. Yes, there might be tigers out there, but if you don't venture out into the literary jungle from time to time, you're never going to stumble across the gold that's buried in its midst. Deep breath, turn the page - and off you go ;)
When I first heard about today's choice, I was intrigued and very keen to get a copy. I'm always happy to find new-to-me female Japanese writers, and a nice long book based on a Victorian classic sounded like something I would enjoy, especially during January in Japan. I'm happy to report that it definitely lived up to expectations - truly, a novel that reached great heights :)
*****
Minae Mizumura's A True Novel (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, review copy courtesy of Other Press) is an 850-page reworking of the classic novel Wuthering Heights. However, it's far from being a simple rewrite, being transplanted to Japan and progressing much more languidly than Brontë's tempestuous novel.
The prologue is told by a writer called Minae, a Japanese woman who has spent large parts of her life in the United States. One day, a young Japanese man, Yusuke, approaches her, wanting to talk about a man that they've both encountered, Taro Azuma. Azuma started off in the States as a chauffeur, a protégé of Minae's father, but eventually became a wealthy businessman before disappearing from the public eye. Curious, Minae agrees to hear Yusuke's story - and it's a good one...
Burnt out by work the year before, Yusuke spent a week in the Karuizawa region, where he encountered Azuma and an elderly woman, Fumiko Tuschiya, at a small cottage. She then spent several days telling the visitor a story, one about a man, a woman, two houses and a childhood love that extends beyond the grave. For those obsessed with Victorian literature, it's a very familiar tale :)
A True Novel is a wonderful book. It's a novel which compels the reader to take the time required to enjoy it; in fact, the writer (through Fumiko) makes sure that we are very clear as to what kind of tale this is going to be:
"I'm afraid there'll be a lot of digressions"
"That's all right."
"A lot. Really a lot."
"No, it's okay."
The woman joined him on the porch and began.
p307 (Other Press, 2013)
Let me warn you now - she's most certainly not joking...
The reimagining of Wuthering Heights is a very clever idea, and for those who have read Brontë's novel, there are many instantly recognisable parallels. The Heathcliff character is the brooding Taro, a moody outsider with an incomplete education and a dubious cultural heritage. Even Minae recognises the clouds in his soul with her excellent comment:
"Why does he have to be so gloomy?' (p.57)
Yoko, the daughter of the family that helps Taro, fills the Cathy role, and she is every bit as headstrong, passionate and stubborn as her Victorian counterpart.
A True Novel is a much expanded version of Brontë's novel though, and much of that is because of Fumiko, the Nelly Dean of Mizumura's work. In many ways, she is actually the main character here, and the story she tells Yusuke concerns herself just as much as it does the two star-crossed lovers. We learn far more about her than we ever do about Nelly Dean, but there is something she has in common with the Victorian housekeeper - there is a lot more to her than meets the eye...
If A True Novel were simply a transplantation of Wuthering Heights into the Japanese countryside, then it would just be a superior form of fan-fiction, an entertaining curiosity. However, there's a lot more to the novel than the Brontë factor. One of the more interesting features of the book is its portrayal of the evolution of Japanese society after the Second World War. As Fumiko progresses from farm girl to maid to successful working woman, we are shown a society recovering from the wartime disasters. Mizumura describes the shift from post-war ruin to the economic boom, an event which showered money and Japanese ex-pats all over the world. Later, we also see the bubble burst, an event which has serious consequences for several of the protagonists.
There's also a personal dimension to this social description. In Minae's prologue (and post-script), the writer describes a woman caught between two worlds, one nostalgic for the country of her childhood. She misses Japan, the books, the language, even the smell of the earth around her childhood home. The irony is that when she returns, it's not her Japan any more; she is too Americanised, and Japan itself is unrecognisable from the country she left behind...
At the risk of outstaying my welcome, there's yet another aspect of the novel which has to be mentioned. In addition to the Wuthering Heights parallels and the autobiographical side to the story, A True Novel is also an examination of J-Lit traditions. In Japan, there is a strong culture of the 'I-Novel', a semi-autobiographical, confessional style of writing, and this is often contrasted with the imported European style of big, chunky novels told by an omniscient, impersonal narrator - in Japanese, a 'true novel'. In this book, Mizumura (along with her alter-ego Minae) plays with the two different styles. She says:
"What I set out to do was thus close to rewriting a Western novel in Japanese." (p.159)
In fact, she succeeds in combining the two forms - the prologue is an I-Novel, the rest is her attempt at a 'true novel'...
All of which simply means that it's a wonderful book, a great story with an excellent translation. However, it's actually a beautiful object too - a two-volume box set with gorgeous covers and several black-and-white photos inside, depicting some of the settings for the novel. When you consider how long this rambling review has been (and that I could have written a whole lot more), you'll realise what kind of book this is. Perhaps some readers will find it a little slow, particularly in the middle of Fumiko's extended story, but anyone schooled on Victorian blockbusters will know that there's nothing wrong with a story that takes its time :)
A True Novel is a book which will appeal to readers of both of J-Lit and V-Lit, and if you love Wuthering Heights, it has that extra appealing dimension. I'll leave you with one last quotation, this time from a scene where Yusuke (the Lockwood character...) is struggling to sleep in an unfamiliar bed:
"The night was warm, yet a chill ran through his body. A ray of clear, bright moonlight shone at a sharp angle through the doorway. In that clear light stood a girl wearing a summer kimono. With her frizzy hair flaring out around her head, she stared up at Yusuke in the top bunk, her eyes wild, her tiny fist tightly clasping a round festival fan..." (pp205/6)
It's me, it's Yoko, I've come home - I'm so cold...
My first attempt at requesting books from Netgalley, a couple of years back, ended in confusing cyber-failure, and the e-mail suggestions I've received from them on a regular basis since then have been, well, let's say 'underwhelming'. A while back though, I saw on Twitter that there was something a little different available, a novel which had won the Nordic Council Literature Prize (the Scandinavian equivalent of the Booker Prize). I clicked a few buttons, and the publishers (Other Press) were kind enough to allow me an e-copy. So how did my second Netgalley adventure end up? Let's find out...
*****
Merethe Lindstrøm's Days in the History of Silence (translated by Anne Bruce) took out Scandinavia's top literary prize in 2012. It's a fairly shortish novel, one which is written in the form of an extended monologue. Eva, a retired school teacher, lives alone in her house with her older husband, Simon. If that sounded like a strange sentence, it was deliberately so; Simon has retreated into his shell, and the silence is becoming deafening for his frustrated wife.
While she considers whether or not to fill in the application form for a nursing home, Eva thinks back over her life and particularly over the last few years. While Simon had a tough start to life as a Jew in 1940s Europe, it is a more recent event which may have triggered his withdrawal, the sacking of the couple's Latvian housekeeper, Marija. As Eva thinks back to what she might have said to change events, she begins to discover that secrets can come back to haunt you, even when there's nobody to tell them...
Days in the History of Silence has a very tense opening, when a stranger enters the house, for no good reason and leaves after a few nervous minutes. The event has no real tangible connection with the rest of the novel, and this is very typical for the book. It is full of unrelated events, occurrences which the reader will try to connect, looking for unspoken links below the surface of the page (or screen!). It's a very subtle story for the most part, Eva's monologue serving only to keep the most important matters hidden from view.
As Simon's descent into silence becomes more complete, Eva's frustration increases. Suddenly, she feels as if she is alone, trapped inside a large, empty house:
"I need to tell this to someone, how it feels, how it is so difficult to live with someone who has suddenly become silent. It is not simply the feeling that he is no longer there. It is the feeling that you are not either."
(Other Press, 2013)
Eva is understandably upset at being abandoned, emotionally, by her husband; however, it can't be said that she's entirely free from blame herself.
One of the major themes in the book is the importance of the unsaid, and in Eva's house there are plenty of topics which were never mentioned. The house invasion at the start of the book is a secret which has been kept for years, and Simon was never able to tell their three daughters about his experiences during the war. When the couple decided to let Marija go, the daughters are unable to understand why their parents would fire a woman who had become a part of the family - and Eva simply cannot bring herself to tell them. By keeping silent for all these years, Eva has created her own cocoon of silence, one she's unlikely to escape from.
One of the better aspects of the novel is the way it describes the life of the elderly (or, in Eva's case, the not-quite-elderly). Life goes on elsewhere, but for Eva and Simon it's winding down, leaving them trailing along in the distance - alone, together. At times, it seems that there are no more words simply because it's too late; the time for them has passed and gone forever.
It wasn't all good though. Eva's monologue was a little tiring at times - there was nothing really outstanding in the writing, or in her voice, to make the reader enjoy the experience of her company. The book also places a lot of weight on the reason for Marija's dismissal, dragging out the pivotal event until near the end. When it finally arrives, it feels like an anti-climax, a revelation that wasn't really worth waiting for (although it does fit in nicely with the understated nature of the novel). I get the feeling that many people will love this book, but for me it just drifted by. At times, it was just too understated for its own good...
With all the stories from the past (the intruder, the dying dog, Simon's past, Marija...), you get the impression that there's something there, something that remains tantalisingly beyond reach. I'm really not certain what it is though. One thing's for sure - Eva is afraid of what lies ahead:
"Again that thought pops up, that underneath everything, the house, the children, all the years of movement and unrest, there has been this silence. That it has simply risen to the surface, pushed up by external changes. Like a splinter of stone is forced up by the innards of the earth, by disturbances in the soil, and gradually comes to light in the spring. And that is what really frightens me. How that reminds me of something else. Is it meaninglessness?"
Perhaps the worst thing for Eva is not the upsetting events of her past. It's the realisation that this is the way it's going to be from now on - a life of silence and regrets...
