tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76497556260193207532024-03-13T06:07:21.063-04:00Lisa's Other BookshelfLisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-32451079283158636962020-02-09T17:36:00.000-05:002020-02-12T15:18:38.765-05:00Next Stop: Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station<div class="MsoNormal">
Yu Miri’s <i>Tokyo Ueno Station</i> (<i>JR Ueno-eki Koen-guchi</i>),
which I read in Morgan Giles’s translation from the Japanese, is a novel that examines absence
and presence. A first-person narrator, Kazu, tells the story of his adult life,
most of which is spent away from his wife, son, and daughter, as he works in
Tokyo as a laborer. His account is alternately harrowing and oddly soothing.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HdTdRmM5wos/XkCGO-RQEGI/AAAAAAAAB2Y/ePT_pEySQGYtaXmxEcn9WmD8iovzxkdiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/JRUenostation-platform-doors-night-march6-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HdTdRmM5wos/XkCGO-RQEGI/AAAAAAAAB2Y/ePT_pEySQGYtaXmxEcn9WmD8iovzxkdiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s200/JRUenostation-platform-doors-night-march6-2016.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yamanote Line platform 2 at Ueno Station
in Tokyo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tokyo Ueno Station </i>is neatly constructed, nesting multiple inserted voices into Kazu’s narrative. Kazu, for
example, quotes his father’s account of “the trials of our ancestors” and
offers the reported speech of museumgoers and people on the street. The novel
is temporally framed by two Olympic years for Japan, 1964 and (looking ahead)
2020, as well as births in Japan’s imperial family. Although locations play key
roles in the novel, too, pinpointing places like Fukushima and, of course, Tokyo’s
Ueno Station (with history!), the book balances concrete details with an
otherworldly sense of abstraction, an abstraction born largely of the contrast of
the absence and presence I already mentioned. Buddhism also plays a significant
role.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the plot level, <i>Tokyo Ueno Station</i> is primarily the
story of a homeless man, yes, Kazu, who lives in Ueno Park. The stories that
make up his life story feature gaping absences. These absences are physical – Kazu
works away from his family and there are deaths – but they are also mental: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>My children held little affection for me, the father they rarely
saw. And I never knew how to talk to them, either.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>We shared the same blood but I meant no more to them than a stranger.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kazu seems to feels closer to a fellow resident of Ueno Park,
Shige, who invites him into the cardboard hut he shares with his cat, Emile. Shige
offers a drink of hot sake to celebrate his son’s birthday. He, too, knows
little of his family:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He was ten when I left. I guess he has his own family now. I
might even be a grandfather.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Families, particularly sons, play a large role in <i>Tokyo
Ueno Station</i>, despite their brokenness: the novel parallels lives like Kazu’s
and Shige’s with those of the emperor, who was born in the same year as Kazu
and whose son was born on the same day as Kazu’s son. The imperial family is a
constant in Kazu’s life for reasons beyond those coincidences (this being literature,
though, there are no coincidences) because when members visit the park area, the
authorities clear the homeless encampment. Absence/presence as well as stability/rootlessness
– we’re right by the mobility of the train station – contrast again, this time through a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_House_of_Japan">monarchy</a>
that dates back many centuries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The contrasts that Yu Miri depicts are cruel, particularly set
against the backdrop of a park with beautiful cherry blossoms or the pageantry and
expenses of Olympic games or the demands of the imperial family. The book’s sense of absence/presence feels real thanks to Morgan Giles’s
translation, which read flawlessly to me. She treats this polyphonic text with care, establishing
a distinct, matter-of-fact voice for Kazu and letting him tell his own story while
incorporating the words of others. Her careful work with the text ensures that this
slender but very substantive novel builds quietly, gathering momentum and
ending (how to put it to avoid spoilers?) one-on-one with Kazu. <i>Tokyo Ueno Station</i>
is a book that I’d recommend to a very broad swath of readers for its stark and
evocative depictions of life, passing, homelessness, relationships, and
contemporary sociopolitical issues in Japan. It<i> </i>feels both very concrete
and very elusive, rather like Kazu himself, who says: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while
still being in full view of everyone.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
P.S. On February 12, 2020, Morgan Giles won the TA First Translation Prize for her translation of <i>Tokyo Ueno Station</i>. I also noticed on Giles's Twitter feed that the book will be out in the U.S., from Riverhead Books, in June of this year.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Disclaimers & Disclosures:</b> None, I bought my copy
of <i>Tokyo Ueno Station</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Photo credit for “Yamanote Line platform 2 at Ueno Station
in Tokyo”: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nesnad">Nesnad</a> via
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JRUenostation-platform-doors-night-march6-2016.jpg">Wikimedia
Commons</a>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-70576662513203675102020-01-25T16:56:00.000-05:002020-01-25T19:01:15.092-05:00I’m Back, Thanks to Melissa Harrison’s All Among the Barley<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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When I unceremoniously stopped writing posts for this blog
in mid-2014, I knew my absence was temporary. Even so, I wondered for more than
five years what would bring me back. I nearly returned a year or so ago thanks
to Virginie Despentes’s <i>Vernon Subutex 1</i>, in Frank Wynne’s grittily wonderful
translation, but time felt like too much of a problem. Time feels like (slightly) less of a
problem now, so when I started reading Melissa Harrison’s <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/all-among-the-barley-9781408898017/"><i>All Among theBarley</i></a> on New Year’s Day, I knew it was time to resurrect the blog. I
bought the novel last year on the recommendation of a helpful salesclerk at
Waterstones Piccadilly: all he really had to say was “crushing tragedy.” I do
love a good crushing tragedy (the salesclerk likely intuited that based on my
other purchases) and Harrison’s beautiful and quietly brutal coming-of-age
story set in rural England, between the world wars, does everything I like a
novel to do.
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<br /></div>
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Edie Mather, fourteen years old, tells her own story in language
dense with the flora and fauna at and around her home, Wych Farm. On the first
page of the prologue, she’s lying awake at night, “remembering the day the Hunt
ran me down in Hulver Wood,” adding in the next paragraph: </div>
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<br /></div>
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“As I walked, a white owl kept pace with me, drifting
silently at head-height on the other side of the hedge; perhaps it hoped I
would startle some blood-warm creatures from its tangled base.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nYqRCA-nWew/Xiy2_hX0eLI/AAAAAAAAB0s/IaVLF1G_F7Iami6w_tb86WWtZr-SD-UjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Corncrake2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="500" height="129" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nYqRCA-nWew/Xiy2_hX0eLI/AAAAAAAAB0s/IaVLF1G_F7Iami6w_tb86WWtZr-SD-UjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s200/Corncrake2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A landrail, a.k.a. corncrake.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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There are plenty of unsettling elements here: the apparent
insomnia, the Hunt, and the eerie owl who seems to be seeking out a
warm-blooded snack. Harrison has already established a lot: Edie is
clearly telling her story when she’s older (I’ll avoid major spoilers but will
say it turns out her narration is made many decades later) and there’s already
a very strong sense of nature, hinting at the relationships between predators
and prey. Cycles of life for humans, animals, and plants, including crops, will
be an important motif throughout <i>All Among the Barley</i>, and Harrison’s
choices can be very colorful. I wasn’t familiar with all the plants and
creatures – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragopogon_pratensis">Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon</a>
and <a href="https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/fritillary.shtml">fritillaries</a>
among them – but somehow that gave the text even more mysterious allure than
bits of witchcraft. (Maybe nature is the ultimate witchcraft? I think so.) There are also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_crake">landrail</a><span class="MsoHyperlink">s</span>, birds I wasn’t familiar with; Edie cares for one,
which is very sweet but oh, we know it won’t end well.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The same – both mysterious allure and “it won’t end well” – goes
for writer Constance FitzAllen’s presence in Elmbourne. She’s come to learn
about rural life. Connie’s appearance in the area, where she interviews the
locals, bring in an outsider who exposes differences of opinion on “whither
England?” Early in the book she declares that “soon the peasant class will all
be gone” and Edie tells Connie much later that she shouldn’t expect “old
ballads and harvest traditions; the olden days are long gone.” In many senses,
they are, though the past is complicated: in these between-the-war years, fallen soldiers are still remembered. Alongside those memories, though, is resentment toward certain outsiders. Again, I won’t reveal
much other than to say that nearby squatters provide an opportunity for Edie to
hear and discuss prejudice and anti-immigrant demagoguery.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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This, too, fits with the predator/prey motif
(unsurprisingly, the word “parasite” comes up, too), particularly since
Harrison so skillfully describes various types of communities and circles that
nest and overlap: Wych Farm, the Mather family, neighbors, the nearest town,
the country, the rest of the world. What’s particularly admirable about <i>All
Among the Barley</i> is that Harrison’s story of Edie’s maturation reflects
both her insularity – she’s a bright, dreamy child who loves reading, traces
witch marks, feels different from others, and lives in the country – as well as
her interactions with her siblings, parents, Connie (an outsider), and a rather
predatorial suitor. Most remarkable, Edie is a literary character who bears a
lot of meaning but still feels very real.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Differences are what lead to the crushing tragedy the kind man
at Waterstones mentioned, and that tragedy, at least in my reading, ripples
through nearly everything in the book, from Edie’s fate (revealed at the end of
the novel) to a way of life that is weakened and susceptible to demagoguery. Those
tragedies are accompanied by cycles based in biological nature – crops,
clutches of landrails, growing up, adolescent suitors – as well as cycles of a
historical nature. We know what the demagoguery in the book presages, less than
a decade after the book’s primary action as well as later, now. I don’t believe
<i>All Among the Barley</i> is currently available in the U.S., though hope it’s
on the way. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Disclaimers:</b> Although I bought my copy of <i>All
Among the Barley</i>, I did receive a copy of <a href="https://www.maclehosepress.com/titles/virginie-despentes/vernon-subutex-one/9780857055408/"><i>Vernon Subtex 1</i></a>, which I
mentioned briefly in this post, from MacLehose Press at a bookfair in 2018. <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374283247">Vernon is available in the
U.S. from FSG</a>. Many things about <i>Vernon </i>struck me, particularly Despentes
depiction of aging.</div>
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Photo credit: by <a class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/42846000@N04" rel="nofollow">Rachel
Davies</a> - <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flickr" title="Flickr">Flickr</a>:
<a class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/42846000@N04/3950494889" rel="nofollow">CORNCRAKE!!!</a>,
<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0">CC BY 2.0</a>,
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13819557">Link</a></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-78229725514097917642014-07-28T10:38:00.002-04:002014-07-28T10:39:23.626-04:00A Quick Run Through Running through Beijing<div class="MsoNormal">
Every now and then I read a book and want to dispense with
blogging and write something quick like, “Just read the book, you’ll enjoy it.” That’s how I feel about Xu Zechen’s <a href="http://twolinespress.com/portfolio/catalog/running-through-beijing-by-xu-zechen/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Running through Beijing</i></a>, which I read in
Eric Abrahamsen’s translation from the Chinese: the novel offers a wonderfully concise portrayal of purveyors of false identities and DVDs, all told with
gentle humor and atmospheric details that feel real and precise rather than showoffy
or gratuitous. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://twolinespress.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/running-through-beijing-294-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen" border="0" class="portfolios_post_image_thumb portfolio-image" src="http://twolinespress.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/running-through-beijing-294-web.jpg" height="320" width="200" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Running through Beijing</i>
begins when a man, Dunhuang, is released from prison into the fine grit of a
dust storm. He makes his way back to Beijing after serving three months for
selling fake IDs and has little other than his resolve to earn money so he can
set his partner, Bao Ding, who took the fall, free from a longer sentence. Soon
after arriving in the city, Dunhuang meets a DVD seller, Kuang Xia, and they
quickly fall into a romance of sorts—she’s separated (kind of) from her DVD
supplier, Kuang Shan—that gets off to an auspicious start when Dunhuang scams
the owners of a hotpot restaurant where they go to eat and drink.</div>
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On many levels, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Running
through Beijing</i> doesn’t feel particularly remarkable: it simply tells the
story of Dunhuang’s romances and business dealings, describing his trips around
town on a bicycle (which is stolen in more ways than one) and, of course,
running. What’s interesting is the texture of the novel, by which I mean more
than just the elements—the basement bunk and backyard shed Dunhuang rents as
housing, or the shadow economy and markets for various types of pirated goods—that
are obviously foreign for an American reader like me who has never been to
China. There is all that dust and blurriness, there is the feeling of “a year
of bad omens” because everyone’s in jail, and there are all the movies Dunhuang
sells and even begins to watch. Among them, of course, are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Bicycle Thief</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Run,
Lola, Run</i>. It’s no wonder Two Lines Press made a movie card to send with
the book. The <a href="http://twolinespress.com/a-dvd-playlist-for-running-through-beijing/">online
DVD playlist</a> lacks a Bollywoodesque cover so isn’t as stylish but it does
have links to video. </div>
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What appealed to me most in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Running through Beijing</i>, though, might be its most universal layer:
continuums of fake and real. Is the love real or only for convenience? What
about the friendships? The IDs are fake, and so are the DVDs, which all contain
movies that imitate life (or maybe vice versa?). Then there are the porn DVDs,
which show what, exactly? There are also loyalties, particularly Dunhuang’s for
Bao Ding, who hardly seems to care. And we have the characters’ identities, too,
the stuff not printed on official (or pirated) cards. Here’s a brief passage from
when Dunhuang passes himself off as a doctoral student in film while he’s
living in the basement. One of his roommates is a philosopher, and Dunhuang
gets nervous:</div>
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</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was all a big lie, for one thing. For another, of all
the academic subjects that hinged on the Chinese language, philosophy was the
one he respected the most. That instinctual reverence began while he was
studying at his miserable vocational school. He had no idea how you did
philosophy. It was mystery upon mystery; you couldn’t see it or touch it, and
as far as he was concerned it was no different from witchcraft or sorcery.</div>
</blockquote>
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</div>
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Finally, I thought Eric Ambrahamsen’s translation read
nicely, with crisp, clear dialogue, and that gentle humor I mentioned earlier.
Best of all, he finds nice momentum in short sentences to keep the narrative
running along, something that’s not always easy.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers:</b> I
bought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Running through Beijing</i> under
a Two Lines Press subscription plan. I published one of my first translations (a
story by Margarita Khemlin) with Two Lines a few years ago, in the <a href="http://twolinespress.com/issue-18-counterfeits/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Counterfeits</i></a> issue of their “World Writing in Translation”
series. <a href="http://twolinespress.com/two-lines-press-2014-subscription/">Two
Lines subscriptions</a>, by the way, are very affordable! </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>My trip
back to the Middle Ages begins with John L’Heureux’s art-heavy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Medici Boy</i> and then, OMG, there’s Erika
Johansen’s schlockily sociological <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Queen of the Tearling</i>, which attempts, not very successfully, to give
dystopia a medieval feel with contemporary sensibilities. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-6347355562288105322014-07-05T16:55:00.000-04:002014-07-05T16:55:32.651-04:00It’s a Mystery: Three to Keep Me Guessing<div class="MsoNormal">
Hmm, three detective novels in a row is something of a
record for me: it’s a mystery in and of itself that I pulled the books off the
shelves that way. Here’s a post with all three, to get caught up…</div>
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I’ve had a soft spot for detective Hank Palace, the narrator
of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ben H. Winters’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World of Trouble</i></b>, ever since I read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Policeman </i>(<a href="http://benhwinters.com/">previous post</a>),
the first novel in a trilogy that ends with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World
of Trouble</i>. Palace is a down-to-earth, loyal guy who continues
investigating crimes despite the fact that an asteroid is hurtling toward earth
and about to destroy everything. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World
of Trouble</i>, Palace and his ailing dog, Houdini, have come to Ohio to find
Palace’s sister, who’s disappeared. Disappearances aren’t unusual in these fictional
end days: people have been going “bucket list” for ages but Palace knows
something bigger is amiss. There are lots of plot threads to pull in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World of Trouble</i>: an attempted murder, a
search for a concrete worker, and, of course, Palace’s relationship with his
family, ethics, and impending demise. Winters finds a near-perfect balance of
humor, grieving, and realism, and he finishes the book in what I think must be the
best possible way. Yes, I laughed and I cried, and [mild spoiler] I love the
fact that Palace remains true to himself and the social compact ‘til the end.
He doesn’t even yell “Police!” near the end of the book, “because I’m not a
policeman anymore, I haven’t been for some time now.”</div>
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Commissioner Nicolas Le Floch, the investigator in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jean-François Parot’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man with the Lead Stomach</i></b>, the second book in a series,
isn’t quite as endearing or imperiled as Palace but this historical detective
novel set in 1761 France made for worthy entertainment. I admit I was more
interested in atmosphere than the mystery itself, which involves the rather
grisly murder of a courtier’s son. That murder leads to another. Of course. But
about that atmosphere: it’s a nice change of pace when there are no
fingerprints taken, the investigator travels by horse-drawn carriage, and the detective
drinks chocolate for breakfast and lots of wine with his meals, some of which
are described in detail, this being a translation from the French. (I opened
the book randomly to a page where a cook describes how to cut a rabbit for
making pâté…) There are also smells in this early passage describing
theatergoers: “There was a disconcerting contrast between their luxurious
clothes, and the foul-smelling remnants of wax, earth and horse droppings with
which they were soiled.” Michael Glencross’s translation from the French was
particularly fun to read because it had some obscure words and terms in common
with the book I was working on—this was a perfect way to see them in action in
another setting and translated from another language.</div>
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Finally, a second book that originated in French: <a href="http://joeldicker.com/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joël
Dicker</b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair</i></b>, which I read in Sam
Taylor’s translation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Vérité sur l’affaire
Harry Quebert</i>. The truth about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Truth</i> is that it’s an unholy mess, a blend of a writer coming of age (well,
in a sense, two writers coming of age), a satire of the publishing industry,
and a murder mystery, with whiffs of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peyton
Place</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lolita</i> tossed in. In
any case, Marcus (“The Magnificent”) Goldman, a blocked writer who was the
toast of New York a year or so ago, comes to the aid of his former writing
teacher, Harry Quebert, after Quebert, author of a much-praised novel, is
accused of killing a teenage girl, Nola Kellergan, back in 1975; the accusation
comes after Kellergan’s body is unearthed in Quebert’s seaside yard nearly
twenty years after her disappearance. Quebert lives in Somerset, New Hampshire,
so Goldman is dealing with all sorts of small-town relationships, oddballs, and
secrets as he interviews townspeople in his quest to free Quebert. Dicker
throws in everything from the 1998 ice storm that “paralyzed” lots of New
England to the first Obama presidential campaign to lots of seagulls in what
feel like attempts to create verisimilitude and capture a time but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Truth</i> is just too filled with
extraneous pages, clichéd dialogue, and bits and pieces of disparate genres to
come together as a full-fledged novel. Even so, damn it, the book is moderately
entertaining and I did read every page. Part of the reason was probably inordinate
curiosity after hearing Dicker and his editor from Penguin, John Siciliano,
speak at BookExpo America in late May… but I think I’m even more curious to see
how writers—not just Dicker but also Winters and Parot—adapt and adjust the
detective genre’s typical casts, aesthetics, and plot turns to fit their
interests and readers. For a very detailed account of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Truth</i>, check out The Complete Review, <a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/suisse/dickerj.htm">here</a>. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers:</b> I
received review copies of all three books, thank you to the publishers and/or
publicists: Eric Smith of Quirk Books for <a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/suisse/dickerj.htm"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World of Trouble</i></a>, which will be
officially released on July 15; <a href="http://www.mzpr.com/">Meryl Zegarek
Public Relations</a> for <a href="http://gallicbooks.com/title/man-with-the-lead-stomach-the/9781906040123/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man with the Lead Stomach</i></a>, which
was published by Gallic Books; and the nice man at the Penguin booth at BEA,
who pointed me to a finished copy of <a href="http://www.penguin.com/book/the-truth-about-the-harry-quebert-affair-by-joel-dicker/9780143126683"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>masquerading as a galley. Thank you to
all! </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next:</b> Xu
Zechen’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Running through Beijing</i>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-43571429784173401822014-05-11T19:37:00.001-04:002014-05-11T19:37:17.645-04:00Winterbach’s Elusive Moth<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I loved my sixth-grade lessons in entomology so much—How
could I not? We went out on bug-hunting expeditions and collected our insects in cigar boxes!—that
I suppose I’m predisposed to love Ingrid Winterbach’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Karolina Ferreira</i>, which I read as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.openletterbooks.org/collections/new-forthcoming/products/the-elusive-moth">The
Elusive Moth</a></i>, Iris Gouws’s and Winterbach’s translation from the
Afrikaans. </div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Elusive Moth </i>contains
lots of elements (beyond the bugs) that I always seem to enjoy. Karolina Ferreira comes
to a small town to do moth-related field work, giving us the outside observer;
she’s given a ride to an herbalist named, appropriately enough, Basil, on the
way, which adds an element of chance meetings. They proceed to watch more than
just plants and insects: they see a tryst in a cemetery and the hotel where
Karolina stays features a ladies’ bar, which features a singer, plus there’s a
snooker room where members of the local police force often hang out. All this gives
them plenty of chances to monitor the local human population at least as well as
the bugs and herbs. I’m not sure who’s more comprehensible.</div>
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It’s heat, drought, and a slow-growing sense of menace that let
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Elusive Moth</i> soar, though: there
are hints of secrets (the affair) from the very start but underlying hints of racial
tensions are a broader concern. Meanwhile, Karolina regularly dances with a “fellow”
named Kolyn who has short pants, sneakers, and hairy legs; he’s nothing like Karolona’s
new Buddhist boyfriend… Karolina and Kolyn dance together beautifully, she dips
so her hair nearly touches the floor, she experiences “a strange, impersonal
ecstasy,” and all the drinking, dancing, and game playing starts to take on a
carnival feel that reminded me of nothing so much as Dawn Powell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Night </i>(<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2011/09/no-exit-dawn-powells-dance-night.html">previous
post</a>), another book about a small town, though there’s more of a feel of escape
wishes there. </div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Elusive Moth</i> felt
sneaky and stealthy, though I knew from the start that Karolina (who’s burned
most of her possessions) would necessarily be as elusive as her moth, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hebdomophruda crenilinea</i>, which is “a
small inconspicuous moth, difficult to find, pale as a shroud.” (This
particular moth, BTW, is so elusive that it’s listed on Wikipedia but doesn’t
have its own page.) It’s the odd little things I enjoyed so much—the singer Pol,
for example, is the first to resemble an amphibian, then others do, too, and so
they drink more alcohol to warm their chilling blood. And about halfway through
the book, “Every variety of urine intermingled in the toilets” near the bar and
snooker room, so Winterbach goes on to describe the colors. Talk about fieldwork
on humans! There are also flying ants, thoughts of death and mortality, unraveling
psyches, mentions of bad haircuts, a mysterious play, and much, much more, a lovely combination that won <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettie_Viljoen">Winterbach</a> the M-Net
Book Prize and Old Mutual Literary Prize, during the 1990s, when she wrote
under the pseudonym Littie Viljoen. Gouws’s and Winterbach’s translation, which
includes a few Afrikaans words that made perfect sense to me within context,
has a nice matter-of-fact, almost reportorial, feel to it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers: </b>Thank
you to Open Letter Books, a press with whom I always enjoy discussing
literature in translation, for the review copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Elusive Moth</i>. The book won’t be released until July 2014. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Roberto Bolaño’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Distant Star</i>, which I liked very much
but don’t quite know how to describe, and then Gabriel García Márquez’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Hundred Years of Solitude</i>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-55020357062778080512014-04-27T20:53:00.001-04:002014-04-27T20:53:51.370-04:00The Banality of Evil, Yet Again: Prose’s Lovers at the Chameleon Club<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes Francine Prose’s <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Lovers-Chameleon-Club-Paris-1932-Unabridged/?isbn=9780062331847?AA=index_RecentBooks_14648"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932</i></a> feels as changeable and fickle
as its cross-dressing and border-crossing characters: despite the hours spent
reading this 400-plus-page book with multiple narrators, I’m still not quite
sure if I read a social commentary, a character sketch of a maligned woman gone
bad, a World War 2 novel, or something else. It wouldn’t be difficult to
generate a list of at least another dozen possibilities. The strength of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers</i> is that it presents a broad and fairly
engaging picture of Paris in 1932 and beyond, complete with fictional versions
of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Morris">Violette Morris</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassa%C3%AF">Brassaï</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller">Henry Miller</a>, though that
strength creates a weakness, too: the broadness left me wishing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers </i>had been a little sharper, a little more difficult, and a little
more uncomfortable. Actually, I wish it had been a lot more uncomfortable. I
seem to appreciate uncomfortable books. </div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Violette_Morris_1913_%2801%29.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="File:Violette Morris 1913 (01).jpg" data-file-height="611" data-file-width="232" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Violette_Morris_1913_%2801%29.jpg/227px-Violette_Morris_1913_%2801%29.jpg" height="320" width="120" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Violette Morris, 1913 </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prose’s letter to readers in my review copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers </i>begins by noting that the idea
for the novel came from Brassaï’s photograph <a href="http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1992.97">“Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle,
1932”</a>: the woman on the right in the photo is Violette Morris, a French
athlete, race car driver, and collaborator with Germany during World War 2. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers at the Chameleon Club</i>, Morris
morphs into Lou Villars, and Le Monocle is replaced with the Chameleon Club, a
place where men dress as women and vice versa. Villars works there and Gabor
Tsenyi, the Brassaï stand-in, frequents the place, as does his eventual patron
Lily de Rossignol, whose husband owns a motorcar company. There’s chameleon-like
behavior all around.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prose hands the narrative off to her main characters: notably,
Gabor writes letters home to his parents; we get bits of books by Lionel Maine,
the Miller stand-in; memoir material from Suzanne Dunois Tsenyi that was
supposed to be destroyed “on occasion of its author’s death” is published; and Lily
de Rossignol tells all in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Baroness by Night</i>.
There are also chapters from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Devil
Drives: The Life of Lou Villars</i>, written by a certain Nathalie Dunois, who
shares a surname with Suzanne. All these accounts combine to create what inevitably becomes a mosaic of the narrators’ varied political, social, and sexual
passions and alliances. The accounts sometimes coincide and sometimes vary but if
I were to place one character at the center of the book, it would be Lou
Villars, who transforms from merely a sad character who’s gone through family
difficulties and a disappointing romance with a lovely but treacherous dancer,
Arlette, (her partner in the fictional version of the Brassaï photo), to, as I wrote
above, a Nazi collaborator. Lou even has a star-struck dinner with Hitler in
1936, when she takes a trip to Berlin for the Olympics. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The numerous voices combine nicely, sometimes even
humorously, creating a nearly polyphonic novel. Still, I came away from the book—which
I enjoyed and which I think is structurally and thematically fairly sound—thinking
that truth truly is stranger than fiction and that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers at the Chameleon Club</i> felt a little too cautious, a feeling
I often get when I read fiction based on fact. I had a similar reaction to Laurent
Binet’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/light-reading-that-wishes-it-were.html">HHhH</a></i>,
which features Reinhard Heydrich; Heydrich gets a cameo in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers</i>, too. By contrast, Romain Slocombe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-banality-of-evil-once-more-monsieur.html">Monsieur
Le Commandant: A Wartime Confession</a></i>, another World War 2 novel I read
earlier this year, felt particularly vivid because it was so horribly uncomfortable
inside fictional the Petainist narrator’s brain. And therein, I suspect, lies my small misgiving about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers at the Chameleon
Club</i>: Lou Villars, the collaborator, is one of the lovers in the novel’s title
but the reader never quite gets to the depths (or heights) of her story because
its telling is outsourced to other characters, all with ulterior motives and information
deficits. I realize there are messages there, too—about the unknowable, about truth(s), and about memory—but
still can’t help but feel a sense of missed opportunity and a wish for
something much darker. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers: </b>I received
a review copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lovers at the Chameleon
Club</i> from publisher Harper Collins. Thank you very much! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Roberto Bolaño’s
puzzlingly pleasurable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Distant Star</i>
and Ingrid Winterbach’s ominously eerie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Elusive Moth</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Photo:</i> Public
domain<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violette_Morris_1913_%2801%29.jpg">photo</a>
(copyright has expired) of Violette Morris from Bibliothèque nationale de
France, via Wikipedia. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-27301080529651900092014-03-16T18:09:00.002-04:002014-03-16T18:09:42.367-04:00Light Reading That Wishes It Were a Little Heavier: Three Quick Takes<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s rare that I read—and actually finish—three books in a
row that don’t inspire much reflection, thought, or emotion. Either negative or
positive. The three books below are a strange bunch: they all passed the
treadmill test, meaning I spent miles plodding along a moving belt, enjoying my
reading and, thus, even my walks. For better or worse—worse, I’d guess—all
three books felt like they wanted to be, in the words of one of my college
housemates, heavy, deep, and real. Meaning serious literature. That’s probably “worse”
because all three felt a little lighter, shallower, and more artificial than
they might or should have. All three felt a little safer than they might have, too,
as if their authors didn’t develop them as much as they could have. Although I’m
doubly sorry about that because all three books <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> keep me reading, the good news is that all three books are
debuts: perhaps their authors will take more chances next time.<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Albena Stambolova’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.openletterbooks.org/products/everything-happens-as-it-does">Everything
Happens as It Does</a></i></b>, which I read in Olga Nikolova’s translation of
the Bulgarian novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tova e kakto stava</i>,
knits together events in the lives of a family or two. There’s no dialogue to
speak of and everything—life, love, death—just happens because it does, no real
questions asked. Meaning the book seems to be about fatalism, which feels a
little hypnotizing. The reader doesn’t know much about why anything happens in
this book—why Margarita suddenly has a laptop, why her twin brother Valentin
follows her, why Boris with the bees ends up a father—but not knowing why is apparently
the point. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everything Happens as It Does</i>
is told in a flat narrative voice that contributes to the hypnotizing effect of
the book and the feeling of inevitability. It couldn’t have been easy for
Nikolova to translate. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/thebookofjonah/JoshuaFeldman">The Book
of Jonah</a></i></b>, by Joshua Max Feldman, combines two plotlines: Jonah, a youngish
Manhattan lawyer, is trying to make partner at his law firm and trying to
decide which of two girlfriends to make his partner outside work; and Judith, a
youngish woman whose life has seemed nearly perfect until tragedy hits, is trying
to figure out where she fits in the world. Both are Jewish, and Feldman
includes a mystical Jewish thread in the book that inspires Jonah to reassess
his life and failings. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book of Jonah</i>
had the most promise early on, when it read most like social satire set in New
York City, post-crash, during the time of smart phones… there were some funny
scenes and lines, which made this the most enjoyable of the three books, but location changes to Amsterdam and Las Vegas felt artificial.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a class="image" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-039-44,_Heydrich-Attentat.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="thumbimage" height="140" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-039-44%2C_Heydrich-Attentat.jpg/220px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-039-44%2C_Heydrich-Attentat.jpg" width="220" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The car in which Heydrich was wounded</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Finally, there’s Laurent Binet’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/hhhh/LaurentBinet">HHhH</a></i></b>, which I read
in Sam Taylor’s smooth translation from the original French. This novel about
writing a historical novel about Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš and their mission
to assassinate Nazi official <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FReinhard_Heydrich&ei=swAmU8qpNMzokQeRwIDoBA&usg=AFQjCNH8Tlb9q8OW_K_0o8cTRC_rE_3SGw&sig2=5_RYGfA7BvqnT_eQN_h5Kw&bvm=bv.629">Reinhard
Heydrich</a> in Prague takes hemming and hawing about detail to extremes: the
narrator fusses over historical detail in ways that might inspire respect (he
wants to get things right) or annoyance (does the color of Heydrich’s car really, truly
matter when Nazism is the topic?). Despite winning a Prix Goncourt du Premier
Roman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">HHhH </i>doesn’t feel original
and shapely enough to be great fiction, and that’s largely because the balances of
objectivity-subjectivity and narrator-subject felt askew. That’s not just because
Heydrich’s doings—like forming the Einsatzgruppen—were so horrifying and the narrator’s
decisions about car color feel so trivial by comparison. All the narrator’s hemming
and hawing about familiar thoughts on truth, certainty, and writing fiction ended up padding the
book so much that it became a little dull, despite my interest in learning more
about Heydrich, Gabčík, and Kubiš. I agree with M.A. Orthofer’s Complete Review
<a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/modfr/binetl.htm">assessment</a>
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">HHhH </i>would make a good young
adult novel. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers: </b>I
received <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everything Happens as It Does</i>
from Open Letter Books and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book of
Jonah</i> from Henry Holt and Company. Thanks to both! </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>It
remains to be seen…<br />
<br />
<i><b>Photo: </b></i>Creative Commons, from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-039-44,_Heydrich-Attentat.jpg">Bundesarchiv</a>.<i><b> </b></i></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-86022682049511445312014-02-15T18:51:00.000-05:002014-02-15T18:51:02.015-05:00Lost and Found: The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra<div class="MsoNormal">
Pedro Mairal’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-missing-year-of-juan-salvatierra/">The
Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra</a></i>—which I read in Nick Caistor’s
translation of a book known in Spanish as simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salvatierra</i>—is a wonderful sliver of a novel narrated by a man who
returns to his hometown after his father’s death. He comes back to sort through
his father’s art but the skeleton of the story, which is a mystery of sorts, is
fairly (arche)typical—return to childhood places, family secrets, and so on—so it’s
Mairal’s details, atmosphere, and vivid description that keep <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salvatierra </i>intresting.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Juan Salvatierra loses the ability speak as a child then
becomes a postal worker and artist as a man, painting one huge mural a year to
depict events in his life. After Salvatierra’s death, a European museum buys
the rolls of canvas, which have been stored away in a shed and would measure a total of two
miles, unrolled. Everything’s there but one roll, the missing year of the
title: 1961, when the narrator was ten. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salvatierra</i>, art
imitates life, life imitates art, art imitates art, and art helps resurrect
lost memories. Through his art, Salvatierra also shows his sons his life before
they were born, including his own wedding, where veins—bloodlines—join and even
flow into the river. The bloodlines also flow from the past into the present, and
the river plays a key part in solving the mystery of the missing mural. It’s
not just blood and the river that flow: the whole book flows, flows, flows, through
memories and murals and old acquaintances.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Best of all, the flow of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salvatierra</i>
is a lot like the flow of Juan Salvatierra’s paintings. It feels silly to
write much about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salvatierra</i> when
this one line sums up the book’s effect so concisely:</div>
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</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
He wanted his painting to encapsulate the fluidity of a
river, of dreams, the way in which they can transform things in a completely
natural way without the change seeming absurd but entirely inevitable, as if he
were revealing the violent metamorphosis hidden within each being, thing, or
situation. </div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 71.3pt;">
Bonus link: An <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/translating-latin-america-conversation-nick-caistor#.Uv_8Bs4tSM5">interview with translator Nick Caistor</a>, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World
Literature Today</i>. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Joshua
Max Feldman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book of Jonah</i>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-18388733712188172072014-01-26T18:53:00.001-05:002014-01-26T18:53:26.088-05:00The Banality of Evil, Once More: Monsieur Le Commandant<div class="MsoNormal">
Romain Slocombe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://gallicbooks.com/title/monsieur-le-commandant/9781908313508/">Monsieur
Le Commandant: A Wartime Confession</a></i>, which I read in <a href="http://www.jessebrowner.com/">Jesse Browner</a>’s translation from the original
French, is one of the more sordid World War 2 novels I’ve read in some time. Most
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le Commandant</i> is in
letter form: Paul-Jean Husson writes one long letter, dated 4 September 1942, to Herr Sturmbannführer H.
Schöllenhammer, “Le Commandant” of the title. The letter was ostensibly found “by
the German documentary film-maker Peter Klemm among family papers abandoned in
a Leipzig rubbish dump not far from a group of buildings under demolition.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H25217%2C_Henry_Philippe_Petain_und_Adolf_Hitler.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H25217, Henry Philippe Petain und Adolf Hitler.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H25217%2C_Henry_Philippe_Petain_und_Adolf_Hitler.jpg" height="131" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Pétain and Hitler, 1940. Photo: Das Bundesarchiv, via Wikipedia</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Husson—a World War 1 hero, committed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_P%C3%A9tain">Pétain</a> follower,
and snooty anti-Semite—writes to Le Commandant to ask a favor. On behalf of
his daughter-in-law, for whom he feels [cue “sordid”] forbidden feelings… Since
much of Husson’s story is fairly predictable, I don’t think it spoils much
[that’s an alert of sorts!] to say his daughter-in-law, Ilse, is German and Jewish,
which makes Husson’s ardor all the more forbidden, thanks to his odious beliefs,
which he often illustrates using anti-Semitic clichés. Husson is such a charmer
that it came as absolutely no surprise when he said he’d cheated on his wife over the years
(I even wrote “what a jerk!” in the margin) with hundreds of women, many of whom he claims
were attracted to his stump and prosthesis. He thinks his wife “wisely chose to turn a blind
eye and not dig too deeply.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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Though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le
Commandant</i> has a plot that includes travel through occupied France and
Husson’s pursuit of Ilse while his son/her husband is at war, what interested
me most was Husson as a character and as a writer. In Husson, Slocombe creates a
thoroughly unappealing figure who writes things like, “Against my own will, my
family and my life were being ‘Judaised’. Little by little, a surreptitious leprosy
was eating away the fabric of a good French Christian family.” It’s hard to
even decide if Husson is a reliable or unreliable narrator: he’s so openly
anti-Semitic that those feelings felt true but he’s also so melodramatic and over-the-top
in his passions and, perhaps even more important, his self-expression that I
had to wonder how much of what he claimed to feel was genuine and how much he
was inventing himself as the (anti-) hero of his own story, for both himself and Le
Commandant. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le Commandant</i>
works because Browner’s translation makes all Husson’s melodrama and passion seem so surrealistically and paradoxically real. Browner’s Husson feels appropriately and consistently
wordy, pompous, and self-absorbed. It feels odd to say I thoroughly enjoyed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le Commandant</i>—the book is, of
course, uncomfortable, because of Husson’s moral code—but I couldn’t put it
down, thanks to the combination of Slocombe’s storytelling, the voice Browner creates for Husson, and my interest in French collaboration during World War 2.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers: </b>I
received an advance review copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur
Le Commandant</i> from Meryl Zegarek Public Relations. Thank you very much! The
book’s publication date is listed on the book as February 21, 2014. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Pedro
Mairal’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Missing Year of Juan
Salvatierra</i>. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-32151206980570881132014-01-12T17:41:00.000-05:002014-01-12T17:41:25.683-05:00Oh, Brother! Antrim’s The Hundred Brothers<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Donald Antrim’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Hundred Brothers</i> is almost too much fun for one book: one hundred (or
thereabouts) brothers get together for dinner in their family’s library and all
sorts of fraternal and allegorical mayhem, some of which is seemingly ritualistic and sinister,
ensues. All the brothers were sired by the same father and all were born on May
23 (hmm, Geminis, like me), though in different years. There are several sets
of twins among them. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Antrim hands narration duties to Doug, who’s also the family
genealogist, a man who says he’s into more than just family trees, meaning he’s
working on “…the deep investigation into bloodline and blood’s congenital
inheritances, particularly in connection with insane monarchs.” Doug is quick
to reassure the reader, “I’m not crazy. But I do have the blood of an insane
monarch running through my veins. We all do.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s more than enough for me to file Doug in the “unreliable
narrator” category, though it’s good of him to list what must be all the
brothers (I didn’t count) in the book’s initial pages. A few: Barry, “the good
doctor of medicine,” whose supplies Doug will steal; Sergio the “caustic
graphomaniac;” and Spencer, “the spook with known ties to the State Department.”
Things start to go terribly wrong when Maxwell, recently returned from collecting
botanical specimens in Costa Rica, has medical difficulty, necessitating
assistance from Barry the good doctor… only to be filmed by Spencer, who’s an annoyingly
intrepid documentary filmmaker for whom nothing is private. </div>
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<br /></div>
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With so many dozens of brothers, there’s a broad spectrum of
professions and fears… and the brothers do all sorts of odd and illicit things
in the stacks of the family library after they’ve eaten their pork chops: </div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Elsewhere people came and went, played card games and chess,
tended to one another’s injuries, chased the bats. These men’s lives seemed,
for the moment, untouched by far. But I did not envy them. I felt the way
humans must have felt in earlier times, at the dawn of our history, when the
world was alive with primitive dangers and life depended for preservation on
the graces and fancies of hateful gods.</div>
</blockquote>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Enter the Corn King, a sacrificial character Doug plays during
each annual dinner because, damn it, sacrifice and abasement are, according to
Doug (and probably millions of other people) the essence of family
get-togethers. The brothers have always hurt each other and now they carry
knives and hunt Doug down in the library, too, with Dobermans watching and bats
circling. What more can I say? This is my kind of book about family gatherings, ties, and rituals. I’d have loved it even if there hadn’t been bats.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Romain
Slocombe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le Commandant</i> and
Pedro Mairal’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Missing Year of Juan
Salvatierra</i>, both of which I also enjoyed. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-77263252749433058182014-01-05T17:42:00.000-05:002014-01-05T17:42:05.879-05:00Belated Happy New Year! & Favorites from 2013Happy New Year, a bit late! Thank you for your visits and may 2014 bring you lots of enjoyable reading!
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last year went by in such a rush that I was surprised to
look back on my list of 2013 blog posts and find I’d read so many fun books that it
was difficult to pick favorites. Of course that’s partly because I abandon
a lot of books I don’t like, skewing my public results, but it’s largely because publishers and publicists have
been sending me so many good books. That’s especially nice because many of them
are books I’d never hear about otherwise. The only downside is that I rarely
seem to get to all the books I buy at the bookstore and the annual library book
sale! Anyway, without further fuss, here are some favorites from 2013… </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Favorite Lost
Classics.</b> I only read a couple in 2013 but I loved them both: Pitigrilli’s 1921
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>, translated by Eric Mosbacher
(<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/11/pitigrillis-addictive-cocaine.html">previous
post</a>), and Antal Szerb’s 1937 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey
by Moonlight</i>, translated by Len Rix (<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/08/szerbs-journey-by-moonlight.html">previous
post</a>). I noted some surface similarities in my post about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>: “decadence between the World
Wars… humor, soul searching, friends who become monks, and sad endings.” I’d
recommend both. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Favorite Book Written
in English. </b>Probably J.L. Carr’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Month in the Country</i> (<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/making-up-for-lost-time-month-in.html">previous
post</a>), another between-the-wars book. This one got short shrift here because
of my summer travel; I particularly enjoyed the combination of melancholy and
humor. (That seems to be a constant…) </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Favorite Book
Translated by Someone I Know. </b>Inga Ābele’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i>, which I read in Kaija Straumanis’s translation (<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/09/inga-abeles-high-tide.html">previous
post</a>), was a stealth favorite in 2013: with its backwards chronology and
blend of characters, the book couldn’t have been easy to translate but Kaija’s English
version reads beautifully. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Overall Favorite. </b>I
think my top book for 2013 has to be Arnon Grunberg’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tirza</i>, translated by Sam Garrett: I called it “a spectacularly
compelling portrayal of a spectacularly awful personal breakdown” in my <a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/arnon-grunbergs-relentless-tirza.html">previous
post</a>. And the book has stuck with me: thanks to Grunberg’s ability to
convey both melancholy and humor (there they are again!), I can still see and
hear Jörgen Hofmeester in all his anti-glory. Though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tirza </i>was my clear favorite, I did have to stop and think about two
other books (yes, they’re also funny-and-sad), just to be sure I was sure:
Zachary Karabashliev’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">18% Gray</i>,
translated by Angela Rodel (<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/02/existential-bathroom-visits.html">previous
post</a>), and Bragi Ólafsson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Pets</i>,
translated by Janice Balfour (<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/12/minding-animals-in-olafssons-pets.html">previous
post</a>). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next.</b> Who knows what the rest of 2014 will bring, but it got off to a great start with Pedro
Mairal’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Missing Year of Juan
Salvatierra</i>, which makes me happy because it’s from a new publisher, <a href="http://newvesselpress.com/">New Vessel Press</a>, that specializes in
translations. Doubly happy because I seem to read quite a few books from
publishers that focus on translations. Two others books are waiting to be
written up: Donald Antrim’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hundred
Brothers</i>, which I also liked quite a bit, and Romain Slocombe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le Commandant</i>, another one that
gets a thumbs up.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclosures: </b><a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2010/07/hello-welcome-review-policies-and.html">The
usual</a>. Individual previous posts include individual disclosures about
books. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-54581704411138374902013-12-29T17:51:00.000-05:002013-12-29T17:52:21.006-05:00Minding the Animals in Ólafsson’s The Pets<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m writing about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bragi_%C3%93lafsson">Bragi Ólafsson</a>’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Pets</i>—which I read in Janice Balfour’s translation of the original
Icelandic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gæludýrin</i>—out of turn because
I’m pretty sure I want to include it on my list of favorite books I read in
2012. What’s not to love (for a reader like me, anyway) about a book narrated
by a guy who spends most of the novel lying under his own bed listening to
people gather in his own apartment, wonder where he is, and drink his premium
liquor?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The basic story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Pets </i>is this: Emil, a youngish guy from Reykjavik won the lottery, went to
London for some shopping (he likes music and books), and met “a hulk
of a linguist” and a lovely youngish woman on the flight home. Even as Emil is winging
his way home, Emil’s ex-friend and former petsitting colleague Havard (thought
to be institutionalized in Sweden) is drinking his way through Reykjavik and trying
to find Emil. Havard comes to Emil’s after Emil arrives home but Emil sees him
and dives under the bed before Havard crawls through the window to shut off a
tea kettle… a little later Havard starts inviting people over. Including the linguist
and the lovely youngish woman. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again: What’s not to love (again: for a reader like me,
anyway) about a wonderfully absurd situation like that? Particularly given Emil’s
sense of humor and Havard’s recklessness? Beyond the humor, what struck me most
is the hermeticness of it all: first Emil is trapped on a plane, then he’s
trapped under his own bed, stuck with other people in enclosed spaces, even if they
don’t know he’s there. Hell really can be other people. Particularly when, like
Emil, you have a view of the bathroom and can see what people are doing in
there. Here’s Emil, near the end of the book, lying under the bed, hearing
Elvis Presley (first “Suspicious Minds” then “Don’t Cry Daddy”) play on his own
stereo: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a moment I long to take part, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in</i>,
but the next moment I am really glad that I am alone, all by myself.</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was also this, about flying, toward the beginning of the
book: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
For three hours (not to mention on longer trips) one is
locked in a tight, uncomfortable space, way above any civilization, with
unpredictable people, who could drink themselves senseless or spill their food
and drink over you—and the only place of salvation is the toilet.</div>
</blockquote>
All of which is to say I loved <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Pets</i>. It’s wonderfully serious and sad fun. A bonus: the fact
that I laughed out loud many times speaks well of Janice Balfour’s translation.
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclosures: </b>I
always enjoy meeting up with <a href="http://www.openletterbooks.org/">Open Letter Books</a>; I purchased a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Pets</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Favorites
of <strike>2012</strike><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>2013. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Then the books I bumped for
this one: Donald Antrim’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hundred
Brothers</i>, which I also liked quite a bit, and Romain Slocombe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur Le Commandant</i>, another one that
gets a thumbs up. Then Pedro Mairal’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra</i>, which is off to a <s>good</s> great
start. </div>
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<![endif]--><br />Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-48050305964083578782013-12-01T16:01:00.001-05:002013-12-01T16:02:38.778-05:00Life Elsewhere: Mr. Lynch’s Holiday<div class="MsoNormal">
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Catherine O’Flynn’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr.
Lynch’s Holiday</i> is a quiet, enjoyable novel that dissects contemporary migrations and
alienation, offering up the story of Eamonn, a lonely, lost, barely employed expat
man who lives in Spain, whose father, Dermot, a retired bus driver, comes to
visit from England. It wasn’t so much the plot or backstories that mattered to me in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. Lynch’s Holiday</i>—Eamonn’s wife, for example,
left him to return to England and Dermot came to England from Ireland as a
young man—as O’Flynn’s small touches, things like Skype as replacement human
contact (some people fall asleep by the screen!) and the ghostly feel,
predatory neighbors, and stray cats of Eamonn’s underpopulated coastal Spanish town.
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O’Flynn works in, to good effect, lots of quiet and sad humor: Dermot, for
example, never got over nouvelle cuisine all those years ago, and Eamonn
ponders “El Cóndor Pasa,” specifically “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail” and
the use of panpipes, while drunk at a party. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. Lynch’s Holiday</i> is gentle, spare, and occasionally sharp—a very
decent combination—but also a bit predictable, particularly in the outcome of
Dermot’s visit and a “one year later” epilogue that usurps a perfectly good
(and, I thought, thoroughly appropriate) open-ended finish. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers: </b>I
received a review copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. Lynch’s
Holiday</i> from publisher Henry Holt, thank you very much!</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Donald
Antrim’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hundred Brothers</i>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-25719649413291284952013-11-24T19:21:00.000-05:002013-12-01T16:02:09.627-05:00Pitigrilli’s Addictive Cocaine<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mcdn01.gittigidiyor.net/3216/1945-KOKAIN-PITIGRILLI-ROMAN-INSEL-YAYINEVI__32168623_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1945 KOKAİN-PİTİGRİLLİ (ROMAN) İNSEL YAYINEVİ" border="0" class="large" height="320" id="large-photo" src="http://mcdn01.gittigidiyor.net/3216/1945-KOKAIN-PITIGRILLI-ROMAN-INSEL-YAYINEVI__32168623_0.jpg" style="max-width: 700px;" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The cover of a 1945 Turkish edition.</td></tr>
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Pitigrilli’s 1921 <a href="http://newvesselpress.com/books/cocaine/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i></a>, which I read in Eric Mosbacher’s translation from the
original Italian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaina</i> falls into a
category of novels I seem to love, books about decadence between the World Wars
that combine humor, soul searching, friends who become monks, and sad endings.
Like Antal Szerb’s 1937 <a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/08/szerbs-journey-by-moonlight.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by Moonlight</i></a>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i> also focuses on a young European
man’s (mis)adventures at home and abroad: in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>, Tito Arnaudi, who’s Italian, goes to Paris, where he gets a
job as a journalist, gets involved with multiple women, and gets a cocaine
habit. </div>
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The trajectory here is tragic—based on my reading, cocaine
habits in novels generally do result in trouble—but most of the journey is ridiculously
fun and carnivalistic, even with (or perhaps because of?) looming death. There’s
even a revolver on page 36. And an orgy in a penguin room, a lover with a
coffin, strawberries soaked in Champagne and ether, and a scandal because Tito
invents a newspaper article about an execution and the article is published even though the
execution is commuted. And there are lines like “Gambling is not the pleasure
of winning, but a feeling that you are living intensely.” Which Tito does, with
his Italian girlfriend Maud (née Maddalena) and his Armenian girlfriend
Kalantan (she of the coffin), and what must amass to kilos of cocaine. I
enjoyed Eric Mosbacher’s translation very much for its feel of another time and--perhaps even more important for the translator in me--a sense that he made lots of excellent decisions about how to handle <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>’s form, vocabulary (tepidarium, anyone?), and wonderful peculiarities.
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For more on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>:</div>
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M.A. Orthofer’s review on <a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/italia/pitigrilli.htm">The Complete
Review</a>, which concludes, “Cynical, yes, and arguably offensively amoral,
Cocaine is still grand entertainment, exceptionally well done.”</div>
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Peter Keough on <a href="http://artsfuse.org/93571/fuse-book-review-in-pitigrillis-intoxicating-cocaine-love-is-the-drug/">Artsfuse.org</a>,
with this summary at the top: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>’s
bleak and brilliant satire, lush and intoxicating prose, and sadistic
playfulness remain as fresh and caustic as they were nine decades ago.”</div>
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A version of Alexander Stille’s afterword to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>, from the <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/sep/16/from-cocaine-to-fascism/">NYRblog</a>.
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next:</b>
Catherine O’Flynn’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. Lynch’s Holiday</i>,
an interesting counterbalance to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>…
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclosures: </b>I
received a galley copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>
from my local and very independent bookstore, <a href="http://www.longfellowbooks.com/">Longfellow Books</a>, which sells books
from <a href="http://newvesselpress.com/books/cocaine/">New Vessel Press</a>,
publisher of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>. A smart move on
their part for absolutely all concerned because a) I’d looked at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i> but it didn’t strike me at all in
the store but b) it definitely struck me when I got home (!?) and c) I loved
the book and d) I’m already planning to buy a couple copies for holiday gifts. (BTW:
My purchase of a stack of books, many of which were translations, including a
copy of Pedro Mairal’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Missing Year
of Juan Salvatierra</i>, also published by New Vessel, is what spurred the
gift… This, dear people, is only one of many reasons I love my independent book
store so much. They know me as a person and a reader not as a user name,
password, and credit card history. Plus they host great events!) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-20745666397824722222013-11-03T19:00:00.000-05:002013-11-03T19:00:18.408-05:00Two Quick Words: Police and Theft<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s rare that I write about a book the week it hits the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times </i>bestseller list but here
goes… <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://jonesbo.com/">Jo Nesbø</a>’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police</i></b>, which<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>I read
in Don Bartlett’s translation of the original Norwegian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Politi</i>, is described on the title page as “A Harry Hole Novel.” Meaning
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police </i>continues a series of novels
about Harry Hole, a gruff, hard-boiled Oslo police detective. I’d be
hard-boiled, too, if so many of my co-workers were murdered: they get killed
off at such a rate in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police </i>it’s a
wonder anyone’s left by the end of the book.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police</i> is my first
Nesbø book and it left me pretty indifferent. I enjoy a good detective novel
but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police</i> felt a little too twitchy
and manic, shifting from plotline to plotline, character to character. I
realize the furtiveness felt magnified because I haven’t read any of Nesbø’s previous
novels about Harry Hole and his colleagues—always a danger with series novels—but,
sorry, I think books ought to stand alone a little better than this if they’re sold alone. When <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police </i>finally settled down and began
exploring character as the characters continued to explore a series of killings,
I enjoyed it more, though the series of plot twists is such that mentioning relevant
specifics would pretty much spoil the book for anyone intending to read it… not
that those spoilers would really come as much of a surprise. Even at its best, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police </i>still didn’t feel like much more
than a typical hard-edged detective novel that could take place just about
anywhere in the world. There was even a reference to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking Bad</i>. Shrug. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I were using food metaphors—and why not?—then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police</i> is the Starbucks coffee and institutional-tasting
chocolate cupcake I ate a couple weeks ago while traveling, you know, that standard
junky snack you can buy anywhere to satisfy a certain craving even if you know you
won’t love it. By contrast, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Peter Carey’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theft</i></b> is a tasty soufflé with a glass
of wine and a fun friend: light, laugh-inducing, and atmospherically memorable.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theft</i> is narrated by two Australian brothers,
both troubled in their own ways: Michael Boone is an artist who’s done time and
Hugh Boone is younger, larger (at 220 pounds), and living in Michael’s care
because he’s not, as they say, all there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The (new) troubles start when Michael (a.k.a. Butcher) meets
Marlene Leibovitz, who turns up at his (borrowed) house… it turns out Marlene’s
the daughter-in-law of one of Michael’s favorite painters. And then we start in
on forgery, thefts (art and even one of Hugh’s folding chairs he uses to sit on
the street), other forms of deception, trips to Tokyo and New York, murder, and
so on. What makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theft</i> so much fun
is Carey’s combination of undependable narrative voices: Michael, mostly serious
and mostly in love with the sneaky Marlene, and Hugh, quirky, perceptive about
his brother’s relationship, and often using ALL CAPS to emphasize his points. All
this fits together in a way that addresses questions of truth(iness) and its
versions, the nature of art, and, of course, all sorts of relationships, many
of them triangular. And who gets the last laugh. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers and
disclosures: </b>I received a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Police</i>
from publisher Alfred A. Knopf, thank you! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up next: </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rose Macaulay</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Towers of Trebizond</i> and <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MacDonald Harris</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Carp Castle</i>. And Pitigrilli’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cocaine</i>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-76212889608310905982013-09-15T17:00:00.000-04:002013-12-01T16:01:58.430-05:00The Devil & World War 2: Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
are lots of reasons I ordered up a copy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1chym_Topol">Jáchym Topol</a>’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Devil’s Workshop </i>as soon as I heard
about it: the book addresses historical memory and World War 2, I seem to have
an affinity for Czech absurdism and humor, I’ve visited all the novel’s main
settings (Terezín, Prague, Minsk, and Khatyn), and I was eager to read more of
Alex Zucker’s work after enjoying his translation of Patrick Ouředník’s </span><a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2012/01/more-czech-absurdity-ouredniks-case.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Case
Closed</span></i></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. Alex
translated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Devil’s Workshop </i>from
the Czech book known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chladnou zemí. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Devil’s Workshop</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is a sneakily powerful novel
narrated by an unnamed man who came into the world because his father rescued
his mother at the liberation of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_concentration_camp">concentration
camp in Terezín</a>, also known as Theresienstadt. As an adult, the narrator works
with Lebo, a man who’s everyone’s uncle: Lebo was born in the camp during the
war and makes it his mission to preserve everything related to the camp, save
the town, and make it a bigger attraction. Lebo and the narrator eventually
gather plenty of money and plenty of people in Terezín… but then things fall apart
when they become victims of their own success and are accused (among other
things) of having a commune. With orgies. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Before
too long, the narrator (carrying a thumb drive loaded with contact information for
donors) is escaping the Czech Republic, lured to Belarus by Alex and Maruška, who
are building their own war-related museum: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
museum we’re building in Khatyn, Alex says. It’s going to be the most famous
memorial site in the world. The devil had his workshop here in Belarus. The
deepest graves are in Belarus. But nobody knows about them. That’s why you’re
here! </span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">About
twenty pages later, Alex bemoans the existing “boring, old-style memorial” at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre">Khatyn</a>: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
won’t get the attention of the new Europeans. Look at the Poles and that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre">Katyn</a> of theirs! A step
ahead, again! They’re shooting a movie about it! And what about our Khatyn? Nobody’s
even heard of it.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Khatyn_-_Villages.jpg" class="decoded" height="150" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Khatyn_-_Villages.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="200" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Khatyn, Belarus</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alex’s
plans for Khatyn include oral history and authenticity in a combination I can
only describe as ghoulish. I shuddered (physically!) when I realized the plan
for the museum… it’s a logical conclusion for the novel but it’s also a logical
extension of real-life issues that generate lots of debate these days, things like
the transformation of museums into interactive experiences, monetization of human
suffering, and spectacles like </span><a href="http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bodies… The Exhibition</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I seem
to read a fair bit about historical memory and World War 2—the far more
optimistic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman </i>is
another World War 2-related book that comes to mind after a recent reading—but
the combination of dark humor, tragedy, imagination, and twists on the
realities of Belarus give <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Devil’s
Workshop</i> a particular relevance that makes me more than willing to forgive
the novel’s slightly uneven pacing and characterization. Finally, I’m happy to report that Alex Zucker
feels fully in control of his material with this book, too: I barely noticed that the
book lacks quotation marks (this is a feat), and he does a beautiful job making
choppy and colloquial language wonderfully readable. That’s very difficult,
particularly in a book like this, with its humor, remnants of war-time
suffering, and strong voices, but he sure makes it look easy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Disclaimers: </span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know Alex Zucker through the
American Literary Translators Association. I bought the book. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Up Next: </span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rose Macaulay’s quirky <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Towers of Trebizond</i>, MacDonald
Harris’s comically metaphysical <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Carp
Castle</i>, and Niccolo Ammaniti’s gritty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As
God Commands</i>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Image: </span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Part of the memorial at Khatyn, photo
by <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Veenix&action=edit&redlink=1">Veenix</a>,
via <a href="http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Khatyn_-_Villages.jpg">Wikipedia</a>,
Creative Commons. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-38988668007004586032013-09-02T15:17:00.003-04:002013-09-02T15:17:56.073-04:00Inga Ābele’s High Tide<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Inga Ābele’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i>,
which I read in Kaija Straumanis’s translation from the original Latvian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paisums</i>, is one of those complex-feeling
books with a complex-looking structure that turns out to be fairly simple at
its core. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i> is “about” (it feels particularly odd to say that about a book like this) all the
big stuff: love, death, family relationships, and societal change… and ways to
recover from—or at least deal with—all of the above.</div>
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Which isn’t to say I’m exactly sure what I read: the back
cover blurb of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i> tells me
it’s written in “more or less reverse chronological order,” which feels about
right, but the novel is so poetic and abstract in some ways (especially in the
beginning) and so up-closely brutal (at times) in telling stories from the life
of its main character, Ieva, that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High
Tide </i>left me, to borrow more metaphors from the ocean, feeling like I was
sitting on a narrow beach with waves encroaching. I do like the beach at high
tide even if low tide feels more comfortable. There’s more space. But it’s less
interesting. </div>
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Some of the waves in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High
Tide </i>are pretty big: Ieva comes of age in the late eighties, when the
Soviet Union was collapsing, and she’s a teenage mother whose husband, Andrejs,
doesn’t share her interest in books. He does, though, come to enjoy Greek
mythology in prison, preferring it to Christianity because you get to keep your
guilt. (I loved this...) That prison term, by the way, is for shooting Ieva’s boyfriend,
Aksels, dead. That’s the basic story—well, that along with Ieva’s distant
relationships with her daughter, her mother, and, to a lesser degree, her
grandmother—so you may be relieved to know Ieva does okay for herself in the
end. Which the beginning of the book. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Ābele’s structure for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High
Tide</i> means the book reads almost like a mystery: thematically, the reader
wants to find out what happened to make Ieva who she is, and the structure is mysterious, too,
because Ābele works in so many different kinds of chapters, including letters
and naked dialogue. Some chapters are closely told, others not so much, but
everything falls together to fill in events over the years. To paraphrase what
Kaija writes in a Goodreads description, the novel is divided into sections of
varying length that are assembled in a “smoothly chaotic (not unlike the tide,
hmm?) structure.” In any case, the book is thoroughly absorbing, whether showing
Andrejs’s post-prison romance, Ieva traveling to a conference, or terminal
illness. There are just enough Latvian details to keep the setting clear but
not so many that they become overbearing.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I don’t often comment at length on translations themselves
but, after endless (in a good way) conversations and articles this summer about
translation, I want to say I think Kaija’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High
Tide</i> reads beautifully—it’s smooth in all the right ways—and doesn’t
belabor local or post-Soviet details. Sometimes it’s individual words I remember about
translations… and one word that stood out for me in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide </i>was “pleather,” probably because there are several Russian
words for fake leather materials that cover apartment doors, get made into
boots, and spawn inordinate amounts of discussion about Russian-English
translation. I don’t know what the Latvian is in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i> but was happy to see Kaija just go for <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pleather">pleather</a>, a fairly
new word (1982, per the good people of Merriam-Webster) that would feel too
contemporary for lots of books but fits perfectly here and doesn’t break the
narrative voice. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers:</b> I
received a review copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i>
from Open Letter Books, thank you! <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High
Tide</i> is due out later this month. I always enjoy speaking with Open Letter, including Kaija, who is editorial director, about books and translations. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up next: </b>Jáchym
Topol’s diabolically ghoulish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Devil’s
Workshop</i>, Rose Macaulay’s quirky <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Towers of Trebizond</i>, and MacDonald Harris’s comically metaphysical (so far
anyway) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Carp Castle</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-15395621529676904942013-08-13T10:40:00.002-04:002013-08-13T10:57:29.948-04:00Szerb’s Journey by Moonlight<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</style><![endif]-->I can’t think of a better way to start writing about Antal
Szerb’s wonderfully indescribable 1937 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by Moonlight</i>, which I read in Len Rix’s translation of the
original Hungarian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Utas és Holdvilág</i>,
than to quote a bit of the book, a passage that sums up what’s ailing its main
character, Mihály, who’s thirty-six years old:
<br />
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As he spoke it all came to the surface—everything that since
his escape had lived inside him like a repressed instinct: how deeply he felt a
failure in his adult, or quasi-adult life, his marriage, his desperation to
know where he might start again, what he could expect from the future, how he
could get back to his true self. And above all, how he was tortured by
nostalgia for his youth and the friends of his youth. </div>
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I’ll comment on a few key phrases from these lines, which
appear about halfway through the novel… </div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As he spoke: </i></b>These lines describe Mihály during a night-time
talk, a confession of sorts, at a monastery near Gubbio, Italy, with an old
friend from Mihály’s youth, a Jewish man who’s converted to Catholicism and
become a monk. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His escape</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his marriage:</i></b>
Mihály came to Italy on his honeymoon but “lost” his new wife, Erzsi, during a
station stop on a train journey. Oops! Erzsi is a piece of work herself. She left
her husband to marry Mihály and she goes to Paris after Mihály’s disappearance,
where she runs into a watch-stealing (hmm) old friend of Mihály’s. Erzsi’s ex,
who’s a businessman, is so concerned about her that he sends a hilarious and
lengthy letter to the honeymooning Mihály, offering advice on Erzsi’s care and
feeding. This was one of my favorite passages in the book: items include “Make
sure she eats enough,” “Take special care over her manicurists,” “Don’t let her
get up too early,” and advice on Erzsi and PMS. The letter is signed “with affectionate greetings and true respect. Zoltán.”</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A repressed instinct:</i></b> One of Mihály’s biggest problems is that
he works in the family business and doesn’t feel comfortable about it. Many
descriptions and reviews of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by
Moonlight</i> refer to class, its expectations, and what it represses: the
description on the back of my book begins with “Anxious to please his bourgeois
father, Mihály…” Class is certainly at the root of Mihály’s angst, though the
question of class as such felt far less interesting to me than my next point…</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tortured by nostalgia for his youth and the friends of his youth:</i></b>
Nostalgia is, in my reading, what eats at Mihály most. About twenty pages
before the chunk I quoted above, Mihály told his doctor “I know what’s wrong
with me… Acute nostalgia. I want to be young again. Is there a cure for that?”
The doctor says he doesn’t know of one, then says, “Think of Faust. Don’t
hanker after youth.” Later on that same page, the doctor gives Mihály garlic to
tie around his neck; Mihály says he’s read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dracula</i>.
The doctor, by the way, is just one of several characters that functions almost like a
member of Mihály’s personal Greek chorus, people he meets or remeets in his travels.
</div>
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I found Mihály’s nostalgia most interesting because he
yearns for the romanticism, decadence (not in our modern sense of too much
cheese or chocolate sauce), and eroticism of his high school years, when he
spent lots of time skipping school, drinking alcohol and coffee, talking about
Dostoevsky, and otherwise hanging out with a group of friends led by a brother
and sister named Tamás and Éva. Their exceptionally close sibling relationship
and even Tamás’s death (romanticized), are a long-term source of jealousy for
Mihály. It all reminds me (minus the brother-sister dynamics, suicide, and a couple
other things) of a favorite Russian novella that I’m translating, Konstantin
Vaginov’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bambocciade</i>, which is also
from the 1930s. Though Vaginov’s angle is different—the nostalgia is for the
dead and the years before the Russian revolution—both writers quietly use
history, whether Italian fascism or Soviet communism, as a backdrop, and both
focus largely on youngish people who wander and aren’t quite sure how to handle
themselves in their societies. </div>
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I know that probably sounds horribly dull, sentimental, and
pedantic. To which I can only add that I enjoyed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by Moonlight</i> very, very much. Though it felt a tiny bit too
long in a few spots, it’s so human, humorous, and filled with cultural memory that I’d recommend it
to just about anyone. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers: </b><a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2010/07/hello-welcome-review-policies-and.html">The usual.</a> I’ve enjoyed speaking with Pushkin Press about books in translation. I
received a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by Moonlight </i>from
publisher Pushkin Press. Thank you very much!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Inga
Ābele’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Tide</i>, another lovely
book that’s difficult to describe. Then Jáchym Topol’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Devil’s Workshop</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-5057941374361252622013-07-28T16:26:00.000-04:002013-07-28T16:26:24.141-04:00Stories to Melt Memories: Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/author/minkapradelski">Minka
Pradelski</a>’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/author/minkapradelski">Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman</a></i>,
which I read in Philip Boehm’s colorful translation from the original German (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Und da kam Frau Kugelmann</i>), tells lots
of tales: the initial, framing, story concerns one Tsippy Silberberg, who comes
to Tel Aviv from Germany to pick up her inheritance (a fish service, of all
things), but the real story in the novel is told by one Bella Kugelman, who
barges into Tsippy’s hotel room, unannounced and uninvited, to talk about her
childhood in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C4%99dzin">Będzin, Poland</a>.
<br />
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Bed005o.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="File:Bed005o.jpg" height="120" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Bed005o.jpg" width="200" /></a>Tsippy’s story is, initially anyway, pretty light—even “lite,”
since her obsession with frozen foods sounds rather absurd—but Mrs. Kugelman barges
into Tsippy’s imagination, too, by talking on and on, first about her school
days, which include crushes, skipping class, friends, neighbors, and various adventures that
feel pretty universal. Tsippy’s parents, whom she calls “fearful, postwar
parents,” would never let her get away with so much; she has little sense of
family history other than that her father is from Katowice, near Będzin.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kugelman sometimes looks decades younger or pulls at phantom
braids when she tells her stories. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course we—and “we” includes Tsippy—know what will
happen in Poland, and Tsippy begins pushing to hear more details because she
thinks Mrs. Kugelman is making her hometown sound too perfect, too idyllic. I had
the same feeling and was glad that Mrs. Kugelman obliged by telling more
stories, including stories of miracles, stories of who survived and how…
leading to discoveries for Tsippy, who grew up in a family that appeared nearly
memory-less. Though the novel feels overly schematic to me, largely because Tsippy
and Mrs. Kugelman were a little too obvious as opposites or counterbalances, I still can’t
help but appreciate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Here Comes Mrs.
Kugelman</i> as a book about finding ways to talk about frozen memories of the everyday and the horrors, the Holocaust, that erased the everyday. Thanks to its
structure and mix of characters and stories, I think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mrs.
Kugelman</i> would be particularly good for young adult readers or others who
haven’t read a lot of fiction about the Holocaust. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
P.S. A <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/author/minkapradelski">brief interview</a> with Pradelski
on her publisher’s Web site addresses how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mrs.
Kugelman </i>came about: </div>
<br />
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What inspired you to write your first book?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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I interviewed a survivor for the Steven Spielberg Shoah
Foundation. The survivor asked me not to forget his hometown in Poland:
Bendzin.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers:</b> I
received a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Here Comes Mrs.
Kugelman</i> from the publisher, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company.
Thank you!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next:</b> Antal
Szerb’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by Moonlight</i>, which I
liked very much.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Image: </b>Old postcard
of Będzin, including the synagogue, via <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bed005o.jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_tags#United_States">public
domain</a>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-41473614849780167712013-07-06T18:39:00.002-04:002013-07-06T18:39:58.188-04:00Making Up For Lost Time: A Month in the Country & Two Others<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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This has been a strange summer for reading: lots of work,
lots of abandoned books, and lots of distraction from travel and big changes in
the weather. To get caught up on past reading, here are quick summaries of three books I’ve read (and even finished!) over
the last month or so: I enjoyed all three, albeit in very different ways,
though, hmm, I can’t help but notice that all three books are first-person
narratives with very strong voices.</div>
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My favorite of the bunch, by far, was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">J.L. Carr’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Month in the
Country</i>,</b> a lovely and lively short novel about a World War 1 veteran, Tom Birkin, who
goes to Oxgodby, Yorkshire, to restore a mural in an old country church. Of
course Birkin restores himself from the trauma of the war in the process but the
book didn’t feel predictable at all, thanks to small twists, like a hint of
madness in a lovely local lady, Birkin’s feelings about religion and faith, and
an organ-shopping expedition. I particularly enjoyed some of the descriptions
of Birkin’s work, like these lines I found when I opened the book at random: </div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It was a splendid
medieval gallery—nearest me, an almost Spanish head of the stricken Christ
caught amid the leaves of a gallows tree; further along, a golliwog devil
thrusting his grinning head between a couple trapped in the wrong bed; finally,
a plump woman holding a blue shield of lilies. It proved what every
church-crawler knows—there’s always something of surpassing interest in any
elderly building if you keep looking. </span></div>
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<br />
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I’d recommend <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Month
in the Country </i>to just about anyone. I’d recommend <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jerzy Pilch’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mighty Angel</i></b>,
which I read in Bill Johnston’s translation from the original Polish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pod Mocnym Aniołem</i> most to readers who
enjoy Eastern European novels about drinking: Pilch’s not-so-angelic narrator,
Jerzy (hmm…), tells tales of life as a rehab recidivist. He tells the tales of
(and for) others on the ward, too. No novel about drinking is complete without references
to Venedikt Yerofeev’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moscow-Petushki</i>,
a.k.a. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moscow to the End of the Line</i>,
and Pilch fits Venya in early on, on page 11, when Jerzy mentions some teetotalling
days: </div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Why on earth don’t
you drink?” my brothers sitting at the bar would ask, and they were angry, and
the ghost of Venedikt Erofeev hovered over their heads, and their volitionless
tongues spoke with his tongue, and I wrote down a few lines under his
influence, and having paid homage, I released myself from his influence.</span></div>
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<br />
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<br /></div>
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The language of Johnston’s translation, both in terms of
vocabulary and cadences, is lots of fun to read; it feels like it was fun to
translate, too. Finally, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ben H. Winters’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Countdown City</i></b>, the second book
in a planned trilogy about pre-apocalyptic America, narrated by an ex-cop living
in New Hampshire, didn’t catch me as much as the first book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Policeman</i> (<a href="http://lisasotherbooks.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-are-odds-ben-h-winterss-last.html">previous post</a>), which won an Edgar
Award earlier this year, but it still kept me turning pages, waiting for the
end of the world with Hank Palace. This time around, Palace investigates the disappearance
of Martha Milano’s husband: Martha babysat Palace and his sister when they were kids. Winters again looks, through the low-key and methodically responsible Palace,
at questions of moral duty, wondering, among other things, who has the
right to track down the missing when the end of the world is imminent. Winters
includes some nice uses of a favorite word, “rummage.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimers and
Disclosures: </b>I bought my copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Month in the Country</i>; I am collaborating on a translation that will be
published in a collection from New York Review Books, which published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Month in the Country</i>. I received a
copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mighty Angel</i> from
publisher Open Letter Books; I always enjoy talking about translations (and not
only!) with Open Letter. And I received two copies of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Countdown City</i> from Quirk Books… and gave the second copy to my local
library. Thank you to all!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next:</b> Antal
Szerb’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey by Moonlight</i>, which I’m
loving… I have so many promising-looking new releases from publishers and used
books from the library book sale that I’m not sure what will come after that…</div>
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<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-52039861119150158992013-06-12T16:06:00.000-04:002013-06-12T16:06:11.038-04:00Instructions to Self for Blogging About O’Farrell’s Instructions for a Heatwave<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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1. Begin by stating that Maggie O’Farrell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/224701/instructions-for-a-heatwave-by-maggie-ofarrell">Instructions
for a Heatwave</a> </i>is a fairly conventional novel about a family. <br />
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<br /></div>
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2. Mention that the novel begins when Robert, husband of the
slightly dotty Gretta and father of three adult children, leaves his London
home in the morning and doesn’t return.</div>
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<br /></div>
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3. Note O’Farrell’s method for revealing characters’ secrets
to the reader first, then to other characters. O’Farrell manages to make the
family secret theme work better than most authors, perhaps because her
characters aren’t particularly perfect or appealing people. And (of course) not
everybody gets along. Be sure not to reveal their secrets to blog readers even
if that makes the post bland.</div>
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<br /></div>
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4. Get over the fact that O’Farrell uses the present tense, which
isn’t your favorite… it works well here, giving a feeling of immediacy, even
intimacy.</div>
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<br /></div>
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5. Accept that, though there are some wonderful references
to nasty aspects of a heatwave in the novel (e.g. that seeming plague of aphids)
the heatwave motif will cool. Accept that, even if you are disappointed because
you were hoping for a thread of heat-related strangeness. Inform everyone that
the book is set during a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_Kingdom_heat_wave">real-life heatwave
in 1976</a>. </div>
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<br /></div>
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6. Feel the pain of Gretta and Robert’s adult
children—Aoife, Monica, and Michael Francis—as they travel together with Gretta
to find Robert. Find humor, though, in some of their interactions as old
conflicts and affections (re)surface.</div>
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<br /></div>
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7. Forgive yourself for not understanding why the novel
generally worked pretty well for you even though it was a bit slow at the beginning
and didn’t feel especially unusual or outstanding. Decide that the appeal
probably has to do with O’Farrell’s characterizations, which are sentimental
but not goopy and present intersecting sketches of characters—people—with real problems.
Remind readers that you love books about unpleasant characters who err. Appreciate
that O’Farrell has a light touch with these people, making them very human but
not letting them off too easy, either. </div>
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<br /></div>
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8. Thank publisher Alfred A. Knopf very much for sending a
review copy! And state that the book will go on sale June 18, 2013.</div>
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<br /></div>
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9. Mention current reading of J.L. Carr’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Month in the Country</i>, another book set
in England, a likely subject for a post after returning from a long week in England
itself…</div>
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<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-21419293741761889522013-06-02T18:05:00.000-04:002013-06-02T18:05:14.911-04:00Levy’s Cruel Swim Home<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Deborah Levy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming
Home</i>, a 2012 Man Booker Prize finalist, is the sort of book I enjoy: two not-especially-happy
couples on vacation/holiday in the south of France have their vacation
disrupted by a not-so-happy young woman whom they find swimming, naked, in the pool.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming
Home</i> to those legions of readers who seem predisposed to seek out fiction with
positive, happy characters and outcomes… but I seem to have a taste for Levy’s relentless
dark humor and characterizations. <br />
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The gist of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming
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in on what’s supposed to be a holiday near Nice (hmm…) for Joe and Isabel (he’s
poet and she’s a journalist who covers “countless massacres and conflicts”) and Laura
and Mitchell (London-based purveyors of “primitive Persian, Turkish and Hindu
weapons. And expensive African jewellery.”). Rounding out the ensemble are Nina
(Joe and Isabel’s profane and menarcheal daughter), Jurgen (caretaker), Madeleine
Sheridan (elderly neighbor), and Claude (nearby café guy). Other factors:
depression, weaponry, family dynamics, and desire, something that seems so obvious
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and shaking her head and hair very fast. Then there’s the line “Kitty Finch was
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next:</b> Maybe Jerzy
Pilch’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mighty Angel</i>, another
darkly humorous book… </div>
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<br /></div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-88571232071959896602013-05-26T16:11:00.003-04:002021-06-14T14:42:03.736-04:00Existential Skiing in Romania: Mihail Sebastian’s The Accident<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Sebastian">Mihail Sebastian</a>’s 1940 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Accidentul</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i>),
which I read in Stephen Henighan’s translation from the original Romanian, is a
peculiar and often absorbing book about a chance meeting that evolves into romance
and a skiing adventure. Nora, a French teacher, and Paul, an attorney, meet
after Nora falls while exiting a moving tram. Time stops, symbolically, when Nora’s
watch is smashed, and Nora sees herself as resembling the clock because she “heard
nothing of her own being.” Her knee is just scraped but her life has shifted. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i>
suffers from some serious pacing problems—I thought accounts of Paul’s previous
infatuation with an artist named Ann were both too long and too, well, boringly
typical without having a reason to be… though the image of Paul staring at
large photos of Ann on the street are (blurb word alert!) poignant—its
disparate elements manage to meld enough to form a novel that is, to borrow a phrase
from M.A. Orthofer on The Complete Review, a <a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/romania/sebastm.htm">“solid,
interesting period piece.”</a> I’m glad Canadian publisher Biblioasis brought
it out in English. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the most interesting aspects of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i> is Nora’s use of skiing to save Paul from himself. Paul’s
“himself” is, in a way, a sort of not-Paul, since he has a suicidal bent and
can be remote and self-destructively surly. Lucky for Paul, Nora’s teaching
skills extend to skiing: she spontaneously proposes spending the winter
holidays in the Carpathians, they buy him some skis, get on a train, and go. Skiing
gives Paul new perspectives on nothingness: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He tried to explain to [Nora] the sensation of nothingness
from which he had just emerged. He felt as though he were on the outer edges of
human life.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Nora tells Paul his speed is under control, Paul says,
“Under whose control? I felt like I was in a whirlpool, a chaos. I couldn’t see
anything.” On the next pages, he closes his eyes while skiing, “Only for a few
second. He felt weightless, without memory, without a past…” And a few paragraphs
later he calls skiing “a kind of bliss.” As someone who gave up on skiing
because I never felt enough control or bliss and once saw someone taken off the mountain with fatal injuries, I thought the skiing passages made
a nice metaphor for exploring risk, control, and purpose, but I’m not as optimistic
as Ann that skiing is a real cure for Paul or that, “He who has been in the
mountains is a free man.” David Auerbach’s piece for <a href="http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-accident-by-mihail-sebastian">The
Quarterly Conversation</a> includes a nice discussion of this line; Auerbach
writes that, “Paul’s guided journey through Brasov was the greatest
self-actualization that Sebastian could envision, but Sebastian couldn’t
believe in his own happy ending.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Another chance occurrence in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i> brings Paul and Ann to the mountain chalet of a young
man named Gunther Grodeck. That meeting felt particularly programmed to me,
though the Gothic element it brings to the book felt almost like (tragi?)comic relief
among some of the rather earnest skiing scenes: Gunther lives in the chalet
with a sheepdog named Faffner, a blurry portrait of his mother, and a man in a black
cape whom Gunther calls Hagen for the character in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Götterdämmerung</i>. </div>
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<br /></div>
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If I sound a little uninspired, it’s because I am: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i> is interesting and I’m glad I read it, but it feels a
little lumpy. The<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Accident </i>generated
a fair number of reviews when it was released in Henighan’s English translation.
I’ve linked to a few below; some contain interesting background on Sebastian’s
life and Romanian history. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://shenandoahliterary.org/612/413/">Shenendoah</a>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/romania/sebastm.htm">The Complete Review</a>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-accident-by-mihail-sebastian">The
Quarterly Conversation</a> -- this review discusses the plot problems in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i>, noting that Sebastian lost
part of his manuscript and had to rewrite it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/08/12/book-review-the-accident-by-mihail-sebastian/">National
Post</a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/mihail-sebastians-the-accident">Words
Without Borders</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>I have a
bit of a backlog that includes Deborah Levy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming Home </i>and Jerzy Pilch’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Mighty Angel</i>. </div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-56299969326941912292013-05-12T18:36:00.001-04:002013-05-12T18:39:55.125-04:00Fear and Loathing in Mongolia: Tea of Ulaanbaatar<br />
Christopher R. Howard’s <a href="http://catalog.sevenstories.com/products/tea-of-ulaanbaatar"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tea of Ulaanbaatar</i></a> is, hmm, a gritty account of a Peace Corps volunteer’s life
in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Writing “life and work” just doesn’t seem to fit here
because Warren, our anti-hero, doesn’t appear to spend much time at his job
teaching English: he’s too busy going to bars, spending time with his Mongolian
girlfriend, and (ab)using tsus, a red tea rumored to inspire all sorts of
madness. <br />
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Though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tea of
Ulaanbaatar </i>doesn’t quite feel fully realized, it does some
things very well. Howard succeeds nicely at showing the disaffection of Warren
and his fellow Peace Corps volunteers, most of whom seem to be engaged in
ongoing attempts to escape something or somebody, whether through travel or tea. They are a grotesque lot, led
by Samantha, the over-mascaraed and overwrought medical officer for the Peace
Corps who oversees the volunteers. And then there’s the atmosphere: urban
decay, moral decay, discos, desperation (public and private), and, of course,
crime. Oh, and Warren is phobic about germs. Very phobic. He scrubs and he’s a
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It’s more difficult to explain what didn’t quite come
together in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tea of Ulaanbaatar</i>. The
nihilism and nastiness seemed real enough but the appearance of the criminal
aspect of the book—which begins with the idea of exporting lots of tsus to the
United States—felt a bit too much like an attempt to amp up the book with action. Some elements, particularly the grotesqueness, the
hallucinations (or realities?), and Warren’s memories of a girlfriend, felt a
little too easy. Still, I have to give Howard credit for writing such a vivid
book. <i>Tea of Ulaanbaatar </i>is apparently based, to some degree, on Howard’s own experiences: according to the bio on the book, Howard “spent a few months of
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next:</b> Mihail
Sebastian’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accident</i> then Deborah
Levy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming Home</i> and Jerzy Pilch’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mighty Angel</i>. I have quite a few
books piled up, particularly after skipping last week because I grated off the
tip of my finger and couldn’t type!</div>
Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7649755626019320753.post-79920105211327211432013-04-21T19:52:00.000-04:002013-04-21T19:52:00.353-04:00Steen’s Spare, Brave Lionheart<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorvald_Steen">Thorvald
Steen</a>’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lionheart</i>, a historical
novel I read in James Anderson’s translation from the original Norwegian, is that
odd book that walks—very successfully—a fine line between mundane and (to
borrow blurb verbiage) riveting. </div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Richard_I_of_England.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="File:Richard I of England.png" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Richard_I_of_England.png" width="184" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lionheart </i>tells a
stark life story of England’s Kind Richard I, from a tender young age—when his
mother, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine">Eleanor of
Aquitaine</a>, begins preparing him for life as a Crusader—and ends with his
death from gangrene caused by a kitchen knife that lands in his shoulder because
he is too slow to duck. Though the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England">Richard the Lionheart</a>
I found on the Internet died from an arrow, I rather like Steen’s version, particularly
since Richard is wearing no chain mail and has just eaten two chicken legs before
the fatal knife throw. </div>
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Steen’s cause of death for Richard fits an almost surgical-feeling
sense of the absurd in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lionheart</i>. Steen
focuses largely on Richard’s relationships, showing Eleanor’s meddling control
(I think I wrote “Freud” somewhere in the margins), the sense Richard might have
liked to be a poet, and a bit of an obsession with his enemy, Saladin. And King
Philip II of France. And a beautiful nun. There’s action, too, with battles and
an imprisonment, but Richard comes across most of all as a conflicted man who
thinks maybe he’s destined to fight the good fight, for God.</div>
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I realize it’s dangerous to get too many of my history lessons
from fiction—and movies like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_in_Winter_%281968_film%29"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lion inWinter</i></a>, where I first met both Eleanor, reincarnated in the form of
Katharine Hepburn, and Richard, as presented by Anthony Hopkins—but books like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lionheart</i> make the fictional versions so
much fun I can’t help myself. Steen’s spare mixture of history, court and
familial conflicts, novelisticness, and dry humor might not work for you, but it
worked mysteriously well for me, and Anderson’s translation read well, too,
creating a nice example of a translated text about the distant past that’s written
in modern language. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Up Next: </b>Christopher
R. Howard’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tea of Ulaanbaatar</i> and
Charles Elton’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. Toppit</i>…</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disclaimer: </b>I
received a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lionheart</i> from <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/publisher/pu3431381_3431382.html">University
of Chicago Press, which distributes books for Seagull Books</a> in the United
States. Thank you very much! </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Image credit: </b>Portrait
of Richard I, from 1620, from BritRoyals.com, via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_I_of_England.png">Wikipedia
Commons</a>. </div>
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Lisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com0