Month: January 2016

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The Whispering Muse by Sjón tr. Victoria Cribb

Whispering MuseThe Whispering Muse by Icelandic poet, songwriter and novelist Sjón, known for his collaborations with Björk and winner of the Nordic Council Literary Prize (equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) for this novel, was the first book I chose to read for the New year.

I chose it because it’s by an Icelandic author and because it delves into the realm of myth and fable, Alberto Manguel called it:

“an extraordinary, powerful fable – a marvel.”

I loved this gem of a book, which demanded much more from the reader wanting true fulfilment, than the mere 143 pages it was written on.

It is an invitation to embark on the adventures of The Argonauts, as told by the second mate Caeneus, who while voyaging on a ship in 1949 narrates his previous adventures on the ship Argo under Captain Jason in their quest for the Golden Fleece.

“Before embarking on his tales the mate had the habit of drawing a rotten chip of wood from his pocket and holding it to his right ear like a telephone receiver. He would listen to the chip for a minute or two, closing his eyes as if asleep, while under his eyelids his pupils quivered to and fro.”

Not being familiar with the epic poem written by Apollonius of Rhodes, (Hellenistic poet, 3rd century BC) I diverged off course to familiarise myself with its plot, and some of the named characters mentioned, as the book is full of mythological literary references that make a pleasant and fulfilling divergence in its reading, not least of which we learn why Caeneus has much respect for wood, though more is revealed on its significance later.

Set in 1949 as an elderly, eccentric Icelandic man is invited by the father of one of the fans of his work on Nordic culture and fish consumption, to embark on a voyage at sea from Copenhagen to the Black Sea, he recounts his journey as he sees it, while learning about the grand voyage of Caeneus and his many transformations.

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The sources quoted on the last page provide a link to the ancient sparks that ignited the imagination of Sjón. Familiarity with The Argonauts, Medea, Hypsipyle and Metamorphoses would benefit, but the story is equally accessible with superficial knowledge of those stories.

Entertaining, intriguing, intellectually stimulating and fun, what more could one ask for from a book read on the 1st day of the new year 2016.

I scribbled more notes in the margin than I have every done before and I’m still wondering whether the old man might have had a mild dementia, as the latter part of the book has him witnessing some strange, unaccounted for events. Nothing is ever as it seems and a reader’s imagination can contribute as much to the story as one wishes.

“I was thinking: could the voice you detect in the humming of the wood be your own voice? Like the poet who obstinately believes that he is writing about the world but is in reality only telling yet another story about himself?”

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The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr

Tracy Farr’s delightful, fascinating debut novel is the fictional memoir of Dame Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, puffer of exotic substances. It was one of my Top 5 Fiction Reads of 2015.

Lena went from a background of playing traditional instruments to becoming a modern musician, being the first theremin player of the twentieth century, an intriguing instrument played through movement but without the musicians hands actually touching the instrument.

Lena Gaunt

From its opening pages where we experience Lena’s daily routine, her strong pull to the sea, The memory of music in her bones, it becomes a book that grows on you until it becomes unputdownable.

“I move my arms in wide arcs in front of me, pushing water out to the sides and back again. I can feel the stretch in my shoulders, the tendons tense and twist. Bubbles form up my arms and, trapped in the tiny pale hairs, tickling like the bead in champagne. Moving my fingers in the water effects tiny changes in the waves that effect bigger movements. Action at a distance; just like playing the theremin.”

Lena Gaunt was an only child, born in Singapore, spending a solitary childhood in the tropics before being sent “back Home” her parents called it, alone to Australia where her Uncle deposited her at a private boarding school, at four-years of age. She became closer to her bachelor Uncle Valentine than her parents, who were distant, not just physically, but emotionally and who died before any change in their relationship might manifest.

Lena played the piano, but her first true love was the cello, one of her few regrets, that in taking up the theremin, the instrument she would become most well-known for, she stopped playing the cello.

After an unsuccessful visit to her father in Malacca (Malaysia) at 18, one where he had hoped to groom her into the demure, music playing, after dinner entertainment for his friends, a night walk into the seedier parts of the town, where she stumbles across her Uncle and her father’s business partner in an opium den, has her sent back to Australia, willingly and to the beginning of a life she will create anew.

“It had taken little for me to disappoint my father, but in truth, he too had disappointed me. Father, home, family; empty words, without meaning for me.”

She is introduced to and practices cello with Madame Vita Petrova, the eccentric, vodka and coffee drinking Russian with a unique ear and skill for the cello, not found in the more conservative establishments. It is her first encounter with the artistic and musical misfits, a bohemian community with whom she is more comfortable and will become part of.

It is through Madame Petrova she hears of the Professor, the man who introduces her to the instrument, the Music’s Most Modern Instrument, she will play for the world, the theremin.

“played by the waving of hands, like conducting an orchestra. It is played without the player touching it, not with a bow, nor by blowing. It is neither wind nor string, brass nor percussion.”

The Bridge, Dorrit Black (1930)

The Bridge, Dorrit Black (1930)

In Sydney, she meets Beatrix Carmichael, a painter/artist twice her age who becomes her constant companion, a part of who she is, one who really sees her. As Beatrix paints the two sides of the Sydney Harbour Bridge coming together on her canvases, from the verandah of their home, it feels so real, and yet there is a sense of the end of an era, as the subject becomes less intriguing on completion.

“We celebrated it, this joining of the city, the coming together, and yet Trix mourned it too. Since her return from Europe, since her arrival in Sydney, she’d been painting the growing bridge in parts, separate; in fragmented shapes formed of light and colour and sun and music.”

The novel follows Lena’s long, engaging life, and each turn of events that takes her away from the familiar until finally she returns to the place that most feels like home, where she plays one last performance and will meet the young filmmaker Mo, who provokes her into completing the life story she began to record many years before.

As the filmmaker questions Lena Gaunt about her life before the performance she had just given (in her eighties), the narrative flashes back to her past, her isolated childhood, boarding school, separation from family, visits by Uncle Valentine, the piano, the cello, musical influences, her life with Beatrix, making her remember it all, even the painful memories she had hoped never to re-encounter.

It is a fascinating story, a mix of fact and fiction, one that Tracy Farr succeeds in bringing alive through the places Lena visits and lives in, the people we encounter, the music that is made, the images that are painted and the heartbreaking losses she must sustain.

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Top Reads 2015

If you’ve noticed a lack of reviews recently, please know it’s not from a lack of interest, time or reading, just a temporary technical problem, not yet resolved but should be by mid January.

So, 2015 was a bumper reading year, I surpassed my book a week ambition and actually read 65 books from 26 different countries, a third of what I read was translated from another language, something I seek out in my interest to experience literature and storytelling from within other cultures and not only by those who have access to the English language.

I will create a separate post to talk more about my impressions and attractions of reading outside the main literary cultures and the cultures and landscapes that keep drawing me back for more.

As with previous years, I’ll share my one Outstanding Read and the Top 5 Fiction and Non-Fiction reads, with a few special mentions.

Outstanding Read of 2015

Autobiography MotherThe Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid My first read of the long-established author Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua) and it moved me like no other book had since last years outstanding read, Jennifer Clement’s Prayers for the Stolen.

This is a novel about a young woman growing up without a mother, abandoned for a time by her father and looking back at her life and the thoughts, reactions she had back then, using all the senses.

It is a kind of awakening, a visceral account that is insightful and squeamish both. It was for me too, the beginning of a season of Caribbean reads that were one of the major reading highlights of the year, soon after this I read three books by Maryse Condè (Guadeloupe), Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuba, Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (Haiti) all of which were 5 star reads.

Top Fiction

Click on the title below to read the review.

1.  The Wall,  Marlen Haushofer a riveting story of one womans survival in the aftermath of a catastrophic event, with only a few animals for companions. A lost classic that was revived years after the death of the writer and one that had me spellbound until the end.

2. The Yellow Rain, Julio Llamazares set in an almost abandoned village in the Spanish Pyrenees, this is a haunting, elegiac account of one man who refused to leave and was witness to the degradation of all that man had contributed as nature reclaimed what was left. Captivating in the way it is written, you will want to slow read it, brief yet unforgettable.

3. Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia spanning three generations of women from Cuba, told from their differing perspectives, particularly the grandmother who is rooted in her country and culture, it explores separation, identity, the strong bonds of family and the weight of expectation. How these women survive their circumstances. Just brilliant and part of a great collection of literature from the region.

4. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley well it started with listening to the BBC audio broadcasts for learners of English, followed by watching a relayed broadcast of Benedict Cumberbatch in the London National Theatre adaptation, which was brilliant, to finally reading the work itself. I was a little hesitant, old classics aren’t really my thing, but I loved reading Frankenstein and couldn’t help but admire the tremendous achievement of Mary Shelley in creating it. Made all the more fabulous by having seen how it continues to inspire creative direction in the 21st century.

5. The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, Tracy Farr I didn’t read a lot of newly published works in 2015, but this one was a standout read for me, I was quickly drawn into the world of Lena Gaunt, an Australian theremin player who was born in Asia and had a few life changing experiences from her encounters there, who lived without much parental guidance or supervision, and developed her musical talents amid an eclectic group of artistic friends, had one true love and faced certain tragedy, all of which is brought to life after a recital she gave in her eighties attracted the attentions of a filmmaker. All the more interesting, for it being inspired by a true legend.

Top Non-Fiction

1. Unbowed: Autobiography of Wangari Maathai the truly inspiring story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, the work she did, the challenges overcome that gave her a top education and the will to make a real difference, particularly for the lives of women in her country. She empowered others and created enduring projects and movements for all.

2. Under the Sea-Wind, Rachel Carson first in a nature inspired trilogy about the sea and her inhabitants, brought to life in a creative narrative, as seen from the perspective of three sea creatures, part one, the edge of the sea shows the habitat from the point of view of a female sanderling bird, she names Silverbar, part two, the Gulls way, is dedicated to the open sea and navigated by Scomber, the mackerel, and finally part three, river and sea, we follow Anguilla the eel as he travels from his coastal river pool downstream towards the sea and that deep instinctual pull towards the abyss.

3. Tales of the Heart: Stories from my Childhood, Maryse Condé essays, vignettes of childhood, recommended as the place to start in reading the work of this talented and enthralling writer from Guadeloupe. Loved it and was quick to follow-up with Victoire, My Mothers Mother, a book she says is true, though sold as a novel by her publishers due to the tendency of her research subjects to rely on oral stories to pass on their history. Brilliantly told, as she delves into the unknown life of her grandmother to better know and her own mother who died when she was 14.

4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot (review to come) the background story to the global presence and utilisation of the immortal HeLa human tissue cells, that were discovered to be unique in that they never died, continued to replicate and could be used to do all manner of tests for disease and drugs and how cells respond, something of a revolution for medical science.

HeLa were the initials of the person from whom the samples were taken, as was the procedure at the time. But who was HeLa and what did she or her family have to say about these extraordinary developments thanks to the cells of one woman? Rebecca Skloot spent 10 years researching the life of Henrietta Lacks and the subject of the HeLa cells to bring this extraordinary narrative.

5. Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed these are letters from the columnist Sugar, who it turned out was Cheryl Strayed, author of the book Wild about her solo journey to trek the Pacific West trail in her twenties.

These letters are written when she is in her forties and though still young, has lived multiple lives and had more than her share of extreme and dysfunctional experiences, from which to draw her own brand of wisdom. It’s a pick up at will kind of book, but her confrontational yet compassionate style is refreshing and thought-provoking, her ability to be very clear on her opinion and advice, without being judgmental.

Special Mentions

Outstanding Debut – Our Endless Numbered Days Claire Fuller

Excellent Classic – The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim

Most Uplifting Read – Antoine Laurain’s The Red Notebook and The President’s Hat

Most Disturbing Read – Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk

Most Disappointing Read – The Waves , Virginia Woolf