Fiction

Novels, Short stories

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The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak has been an author I have followed for many years now, one of the first authors I encountered before starting to read a lot of women in translation, who came from a non English speaking culture, who wrote stories that came from a cultural understanding that was not British or American, even if that was the audience she hoped to attract.

Since those first novels, she now writes in English and no longer lives in Istanbul. Since moving to London she has become more widely known. This book was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 and the former Costa Novel Award. It is the 5th of her novels I have read. She also writes essay style non-fiction.

Review

In The Island of Missing Trees, she again takes the reader into another culture, to the island of Cyprus; a land with a long history that arrived at a point, where its humans decided to divide on their differences, here it was via origin, Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot.

You belonged to one group or the other and were not supposed to stray. Until they created this divided line, young people would do what is natural for them to do before external influences corrupt their thinking, they develop friendships, they fall in love, they take risks. They get sent away, banned, forbidden from…

Physical Separation denies Ancestral Lineage

The story begins in London, late 2010’s with Ada, a daughter, at school on the last day of term. Ada lives with her father Kostas, her mother Defne has recently passed away. They are given a holiday assignment to write an essay, asked to interview an elderly member, they will be studying migration and generational change.

Ada dropped her gaze. She had never met her relatives on either side. She knew they lived in Cyprus somewhere but that was about the extent of her knowledge. What kind of people were they? How did they spend their days? Would they recognise her if they passed her on the street or bumped into each other in the supermarket?

Ada has never visited Cyprus, her parents only ever made excuses when she asked about family, gradually she would sense that her parents marriage had not been approved by their families. That she too was not approved.

Yet for as long as she was able to, Ada had retained the hopeful belief that if any of her extended family were to spend time with her and her parents, they would forgive them for whatever it was they had not been forgiven for.

Are Trees Conscious? A Fig Gives Voice

Photo by Daniel Watson on Pexels.com

Ada’s father digs up and buries their fig tree to protect it from the harsh winter. The fig is not in its natural climate or environment and special measures are required to keep it alive. The tree is given a narrative voice in the novel. It was a sapling from the island, it came from a mother fig that grew in the middle of a tavern, where Ada’s parents used to meet. In this way, the fig is all seeing.

The fig tree is a metaphor for the uprooted, the displaced, for the migrant, for the old ways. It is a symbol for not forgetting. It represents something of the motherland for the migrant and the way it lives through the seasons demonstrates something to humans about how to be.

Arboreal-time is equivalent to story-time – and, like a story, a tree does not grow in perfectly straight lines, flawless curves or exact right angles, but bends and twists and bifurcates into fantastical shapes, throwing out branches of wonder and arcs of invention.
They are incompatible, human-time and tree-time.

After a terrible last day at school, Ada arrives home to learn that her mother’s sister is coming to visit. She rages. She will have the opportunity to address the void within her where it resides.

Half hiding in the shadows, she watched the two adults by the fig tree, drawn to the strangeness of their behaviour but equally detached from them, as if witnessing someone else’s dream.

A Third Culture Kid Awakens

The novel explores what it is to be raised in another culture, severed from one’s own, as if not knowing it is enough to disconnect, as if assimilation is a cure for forgetting one’s past, one’s lineage, one’s identity. It demonstrates the effect of that denial, that severance, the dysfunction that arrives when one is deprived of a connection to one’s roots. And how differently each person deals with grief and loss.

It returns to Cyprus and slowly reveals the story of Ada’s parents that lead up to their separation and reuniting and the impossibility of being able to live there, the sacrifice that leaving demanded of them, the consequence.

A tree is a memory keeper. Tangled beneath our roots, hidden inside our trunks, are the sinews of history, the ruins of war nobody came to win, the bones of the missing.

The story is presented from different perspectives, showing the different realities that life is lived from depending on where one had been planted, uprooted from and replanted. It is a thought provoking read that doesn’t provide answers but offers to expand the reader’s awareness of the complications humans live under when love disrespects the rigid outlook that communities adhere to.

It shows the ripple effect of staying and/or leaving and the strangeness of being the protege of that, growing up in foreign lands that they have then acclimated to, except for the deep unsettled feeling that runs through their veins.

There is a delightful twist at the end that made me remember first encountering Elif Shafak and her describing her own childhood, of the stories her grandmother would tell, the superstitions she held. Here, I thought, is that little girl’s imagination, still going strong, writing novels that go deep into the realities of the human experience but are not above allowing something of the magic and wonder of an unbound imagination to run free.

Further Reading

Interview, Guardian: Elif Shafak: I’ve Always Believed in Inherited Pain

My Reviews of Honour, Three Daughters of Eve, The Happiness of Blond People,

Elif Shafak, Author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and a champion of women’s rights and freedom of expression. Her books have been translated into fifty-five languages.

Her novels include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, The Architect’s Apprentice, Three Daughters of Eve, Honour, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, which was a finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize, and The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.

She is also the author of a memoir, Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood.

She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to ‘the renewal of the art of storytelling.’ An active political commentator, columnist, and public speaker, she lives in London. 

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Where I End by Sophie White

March is Reading Ireland month and I have been in an early spring mode since mid Feb, attending to other activities, nature excursions, writing and editing projects, reading and listening to texts while reflecting elsewhere. There is a new energy present that demands it of me and I follow it contentedly.

I did write some notes on one Irish book I have read this month. I love to participate in Cathy’s March reading month, so here it is. I will continue (intend) to read Irish literature this year, although I am making writing and editing more of a priority, so there may be fewer reviews here.

Review

This was an unusual read for me, not the kind of novel I usually choose, one I selected because I admire the Irish publisher Tramp Press, who publish Doireann Ní Griofa and Sara Baume.

Where I End might be horror, but I’m not even sure since I’ve never read that genre before. It was described by the Irish Independent as

‘a truly different Irish novel. One that entwines Irish myth, the reality of human bodies, life and death, and traditional gothic horror in a macabrely beautiful and, in the end, redemptive dance.’

The novel won the Shirley Jackson Award (2023), an award that recognises ‘outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic’, voted on by writers, critics, editors, and academics.

It depicts a short period in the life of a teenage daughter caring for a mute, incapacitated mother, who appears to have been that way since she was a baby. Her paternal grandmother, who also lives with them is about to start a job that will absent her from the house, allowing Aoileann a freedom and recklessness she has not until now experienced.

It reminded me of the experience of reading another Irish author, Jan Carson’s The Firecatchers because it depicts a character who has no faculty for empathy. But the feeling that it evoked was different, White’s character Aoileann compels the reader to want to stay with her and find out if there will be a transformation, a redemption, despite all the signs of foreboding.

The decision to end this thing comes on slowly, like light filling a room after a fathomless night. It began like this:

The opening line of the first chapter. We observe her as carer of ‘the thing’ which I ask myself, is that her mother? And when she occasionally uses that word, I realise, yes it is.

There is a question I have never asked. On the nights that we find her far from her bed, her ragged hands reaching towards nothing, the idea prods me. Is the bedthing trying to get away? Are we doing this to her?

This the mystery is seeded. Why does this young woman who daily cares for her immobile mother refer to her in such a way? What happened that this situation should have come about and why doesn’t anyone know what goes on here? Why do people look at her strangely and spit as she passes by?

In the opening pages before chapter one, she describes the three things that describe her limited world. My mother. My home. My house. A woman trapped inside a body, a small insular community living on an island, three women living in a house no one visits, except the man.

The islanders all share a similar look, the result of genetic material passed back and forth for so many generations – it has distilled into a distinct, unpleasant appearance. Móraí has it too. Me, less so as my mother is from the outside; Dad is the same as me – a little watered down because his father was also a mainlander.

It is a disturbing read that the arrival of a visitor, an artist with a young baby at first seems like an opportunity for growth and healing, but increasingly becomes another avenue of dysfunction, a creeping fear of what is in danger of happening.

It speaks to both the fear and allure of the outsider, of the extremes of dysfunction that a lack of maternal nurturing and love can bring and the desire to overcome and escape all of that.

The writing and descriptions were brilliant, moving between enticing literary prowess and elements of the macabre. Somehow this is balanced out in a way that made me both wary of what was coming but unable to stop turning the pages.

Very well portrayed, a haunting, compelling read.

Further Reading

Irish Times Interview, Sophie White, Where I End – a horror about a young woman’s attempts to find motherly love, and to get to the bottom of family secrets that made her who she is. Niamh Donnelly

Sophie White, Author

SOPHIE WHITE is a writer and podcaster from Dublin. Her first four books, Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown (Gill, 2016), Filter This (Hachette, 2019), Unfiltered (Hachette, 2020) and The Snag List (Hachette, 2022), have been bestsellers and award nominees. Her fifth book, the bestselling memoir Corpsing: My Body and Other Horror Shows (Tramp Press, 2021), was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction.

Sophie writes a weekly column ‘Nobody Tells You’ for the Sunday Independent LIFE magazine and she has been nominated for Journalist of the Year at the Irish Magazine Awards, Columnist of the Year at the Irish Newspaper Awards and for a Special Recognition Award at the Headline Mental Health Media Awards.

TV adaptations of her first two novels are in development and she is co-host of the comedy podcasts Mother of Pod and The Creep Dive. In addition to writing literary horror, Sophie has written commercial fiction titles for Hachette, such as the recent My Hot Friend.

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The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951) by Carson McCullers

I stumbled across Carson McCullers in our local French library one day, it was one of the titles on the very few shelves dedicated to books written in English. Back then, I realised my reading had exposed me to very little American fiction. I was keen to try a slim classic, even though it was a title I was unfamiliar with. The book was Reflections of a Golden Eye (1941), I remember that it was a strange, uncomfortable tale, full of dread, I knew nothing of the world it inhabited and felt incurious about that environment or its people.

I am wary of authors/books esteemed as classics, to then often encounter impenetrable language, however I came across McCullers again recently at an English book sale, this slim novella with its enticing title, which made me think of the indie cult-film Baghdad Cafe (1987) and the timeless classic soundtrack, Javetta Steele’s ‘Calling You’.

Another Sad Town Enlivened by a Café

So I read this out of curiosity and perhaps a misplaced nostalgia for another sad café, but had low expectations. It was absolutely riveting and so different to the memory of what I had read previously. I loved it!

The opening paragraph describes this lonesome, isolated town where nothing much happens and the climate is harsh. The building/house upon which the story is centred is no longer lively, boarded up and leaning to the point of almost collapse. It appears to have been half painted at one time.

On the second floor there is one window that is not boarded; sometimes in the late afternoon when the heat is at its worst a hand will slowly open the shutter and a face will look down on the town.

A Thumbnail Sketch Encapsulates All

In these first two pages, it is as if McCullers has launched a tasty morsel of bait on a fishing line. Everything that is to come is somehow referenced in these first couple of pages and it leaves the reader with an intriguing curiosity to know what has come about to have left this place and these people abandoned once again, from the liveliness we are sure to soon read about. For no café starts out being sad.

The owner of the place was Miss Amelia Evans. But the person most responsible for the success and gaiety of the place was a hunchback called Cousin Lymon. One other person had a part in the story of this café – he was the former husband of Miss Amelia, a terrible character who returned to the town after a long term in the penitentiary, caused ruin, and then went on his way again.

The characters are crafted with intriguing detail, they are each a little extraordinary in their own way and they act in unpredictable ways. Just like the residents of the town who come to Miss Amelia’s trade store, which eventually becomes a café, the reader too will wonder about the attraction and connection that exists between each of the characters. We come to know the characters by their habits and behaviours, but the thing that binds two characters together in their destinies becomes the mystery of the novella.

Miss Amelia was rich. In addition to the store she operated a still three miles back in the swamp, and ran out the best liquor in the county. She was a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man. Her hair was cut short and brushed back from the forehead, and there was about her sunburned face a tense, haggard quality. She might have been a handsome woman if, even then, she was not slightly cross-eyed. There were those who would have courted her, but Miss Amelia cared nothing for the love of men and was a solitary person. Her marriage had been unlike any other marriage ever contracted in this county – it was a strange and dangerous marriage, lasting only for ten days, that left the whole town wondering and shocked. Except for this queer marriage Miss Amelia had lived her life alone. Often she spent whole nights back in her shed in the swamp, dressed in overalls and gum-boots, silently guarding the low fire of the still.

Insights Into Humanity

In between sketching out her unique characters and narrating the arrival of the two men in her life, McCullers presents the town members often as a group, the “they” voice, the ‘group-think’.

Some eight or ten men had convened on the porch of Miss Amelia’s store. They were silent and were indeed just waiting about.They themselves did not know what they were waiting for, but it was this: in times of tension, when some great action is impending, men gather and wait in this way. And after a time there will come a moment when all together they will act in unison, not from thought or from the will of any one man, but as though their instincts had merged together so that the decision belongs to no single one of them, but to the group as a whole. At such a time, no individual hesitates.

No gesture is without meaning, no look is innocent, no moment recounted is without meaning. A stranger arrives and the café is born.

To Be Loved or Beloved

The author occasionally interjects into the narrative, setting the story line up in advance, providing so-called explanations for some of their behaviour, as if giving the reader clues to the underlying mystery of the interconnection of its three main characters. One of those explanations is on the difference between the lover and the beloved.

…these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto.

…And the curt truth is that, in a deep, secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many.

The story builds to its tense conclusion and is both compelling and contemplative all the way to the end.

It begins and ends with the one thing that never seems to change, that signifies both life and repression, the sound of first one, rising to twelve men singing, wearing black and white prison suits, working on the distant Fork Falls highway.

The music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence.

I loved imagining these larger than life characters, discovering the way they were interconnected and drawn to each other’s weakness, thereby exposing something about themselves. And figuring out the triangle of love, desire and revenge that existed between them, the inevitability of what will pass.

Author, Carson McCullers

Born Lula Carson Smith in Colombus, Carson McCullers (1917-1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes and most are set in the Deep South.

She wrote five novels, two plays, twenty short stories, more than two dozen nonfiction pieces, a book of children’s verse, a small number of poems, and an unfinished autobiography.

Carson McCullers is considered to be among the most significant American writers of the twentieth century. She is best known for her novels The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), and The Member of the Wedding (1946). At least four of her works have been made into films.

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Kusamakura (1906) by Natsume Sōseki tr. Meredith McKinney (2008)

Reading Challenge Self-Sabotage

If I’d had another Yūko Tsushima book on my shelf, I would have chosen that to read in January (for Tony’s #JanuaryInJapan + Meredith’s Japanese Literature Challenge17). I should know better than to pick just any book, especially a classic, in order to be part of the group. I don’t do that well in groups, or with literary challenges, so this was my punishment or delight. It took me two weeks to finish, not because it takes very long to read (it’s only 146 pages long) but because it brought out my disinclination to read, however it did inspire me to write and share a story.

Japanese literature translated fiction literary fiction

During the time I should have been reading it, I spent a weekend looking after two dogs, few distractions I thought, comfortable reading spaces. I sat down to read it and thought of the irony that it is a book about an artist who takes a meandering walk up a forested hillside.

I had just come back from a walk on a forested hillside. On his walk he encounters certain characters whom he observes and listens to while pondering art. My walk was over but the effect of was too present to be able to read more of the artist’s journey. I turned to the blank end pages and wrote out my walk in two parts, a story of intuitive insight, intrigue and fear.

You can read The Not So Great Escape here.

A New Month, A New Mood

A week later, I (re)turned to Kusamakura and found his walk took him in a more interesting direction, engaging him more with characters he met, a young woman confronting her past, her brother his uncertain future, their father, his latter years.

The book is by turns introspective as the artist attempts to create, he has his painting equipment with him, though it is to words and poetry he finds expression, and to understand something about beauty and form. The first night at an inn, he writes a series of short poems and in the morning discovers additions, not of his hand.

I tilt my head in puzzlement as I read, at a loss to know whether the additions are intended as imitations, corrections, elegant poetic exchanges, foolishness or mockery.

He often finds himself alone in places where he would expect there to be people. There is a sense of isolation and temporary abandonment he is disturbed by. Though he does not seek company, he seems to prefer his aloneness in the presence of others. He writes of mists and clouds and dew, of becoming the things he sees and wonders how to recreate that feeling to embody in a way that makes sense to others.

Eventually he accompanies the young woman, her brother and father on another journey, out of the hillside towards the train station, the train upon which he projects his thoughts of the changing civilisation, fast approaching modernity, the compact carriage carrying humanity stripped of their traditional freedoms, it will take this young brother towards war.

We are being dragged yet deeper into the real world, which I define as the world that
contains trains.

Context Can Elevate the Experience

For me, reading about this book afterwards, a little about the life of the author and of the context of the era, written just as Japan was opening itself to the rest of the world and the significant, irreversible change that would bring, brings another layer of understanding to the text, one that is not as easy to comprehend without that context.

In a brief piece entitled My Kusamakura, Sōseki stated that his aim had been to write a “haiku-style novel”. Previous novels, he said, were works in the manner of of the senryū, the earthier version of haiku that looks at everyday human life with a wryly humorous eye. “But it seems to me,” he wrote, “that we should also have a haiku-style novel that lives through beauty.”

The novel has been previously translated by Alan Turney with the title The Three-Cornered World, however Meredith McKinney has stayed with the Japanses title Kusamakura which literally translates as grass-pillow, a traditional literary term for travel, a kind of poetic journey.

Further Reading

Kusamakura reviewed by Tony Malone: A Grass Pillow For My Head

Article: Tony Malone on The Translations of Natsume Sōseki

Author, Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916)

Natsume Kinnosuke (Sōseki was his nom de plume) was born in 1867, the final year of the old regime, into a family of minor bureaucrats whose fortunes declined rapidly with the onset of the Meiji era. A late and unwanted child in a large family, he was adopted the following year by a childless couple, then returned nine years later, when the couple divorced, to his parents (whom he believed to be his grandparents). This loveless and lonely childhood marked him with a sense of estrangement and dislocation that haunted him through his adult years and that echoed the dislocations and questioning of identity that were hallmarks of the Meiji-era Japan.

Considered the foremost novelist of this era, he was one of Japan’s most influential modern writers. He wrote 14 novels, as wall as haiku, poems, academic papers on literary theory, essays, and autobiographical sketches. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. 

Major themes in Sōseki’s works include ordinary people fighting against economic hardship, the conflict between duty and desire, loyalty and group mentality versus freedom and individuality, personal isolation and estrangement, the rapid industrialization of Japan and its social consequences, contempt of Japan’s aping of Western culture, and a pessimistic view of human nature. 

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Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist 2024

The NZ Book Awards longlist comes out so early in the year, I am often late catching up with it. There are longlists for fiction, poetry, general nonfiction and illustrated nonfiction, a total of 44 titles. The complete list can be viewed here.

2023 was a great reading year for New Zealand fiction, and author Catherine Chidgey who won last year’s fiction award for her novel The Axeman’s Carnival, is again nominated this year for her latest Pet. Both her novels were longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2024, a unique position to be in. This year’s longlist features eight novels and two short story collections.

From the list below, I have read three novels, though only reviewed Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. I enjoyed both Lioness and Pet, and may reread them to review later, as I read them during the summer months, when books tend to be devoured and not thought too deeply about.

It’s good to see two short story collections nominated that address topical themes and the intergalactic indie hit about alienation that entertains and makes its readers consider what that feels like.

The links in the titles will take you to the Goodreads descriptions of the novels. I have created or copied short blurbs to give you an idea of what they’re each about.

The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction longlist

A Better Place by Stephen Daisley [WWII visceral novel] – a novel about brothers at war, empathy and the aftermath. Aged 19 in 1939, Roy and his twin brother Tony enlist in the NZ Infantry Brigade. They fight in Crete where Tony dies. Burdened by the loss of his brother, Roy continues to Africa and Europe.

Audition by Pip Adam [Science Fiction/Dystopia] – a novel, part science fiction, part social realism that asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much room – about how we imagine new forms of justice, and how we transcend the bodies and selves we are given.

Backwaters by Emma Ling Sidnam [family history/belonging] – debut novel by award-winning New Zealand poet about a 4th generation New Zealander struggling with a sense of identity and belonging.

Laura is tired of being asked where she’s really from. Her family has lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for four generations, and she’s ambivalent at best about her Chinese heritage. But when she’s asked to write about the Chinese New Zealander experience for a work project, Laura finds herself drawn to the diary of her great-great-grandfather Ken, a market gardener in the early years of the British colony.

Bird Life by Anna Smaill [literary fiction/magical realism] – A lyrical and ambitious exploration of madness and what it is like to experience the world differently. Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them.

In Ueno Park, Tokyo, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another’s lives. Two women deal with individual traumas, form an unlikely friendship, helping each other see a different possible world.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton [Eco Mystery/Thriller(y)] – an eco-thriller of sorts that considers intentions, actions, and consequences, an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival. Featuring green activists, politician farmer and his wife, a tech billionaire and the lone wolf investigative journalist with a past.

Lioness by Emily Perkins (Literary Fiction/Blended Family, Second Wife Drama) – a novel of a woman’s self doubt and shifting place in second families and relationships.

Trevor and Therese are a power couple living in the capital city, he is a developer and she runs a chain of fashion boutiques. That’s the exterior. At home, there is his adult family (issues) to contend with and her uncertain place in a scenario that is rapidly shifting when his deals come under scrutiny and his children make increasing demands. Increasingly, she finds refuge elsewhere, inviting another kind of risk into her precarious existence.

Pet by Catherine Chidgey [Coming of Age/School Drama/Literary Fiction] – Set in New Zealand in 1984 and 2014, traversing themes of misplaced trust, bullying, racism and misogyny, a chilling novel that explores the consequences of age old complacency and silence.

Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine’s sense that something isn’t quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.

Ruin and Other Stories by Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu) [Short Stories on Being A Woman/Friendship/Relationships/Power] – Moving between contemporary New Zealand and London, a debut short story collection that explores power and its contortions, powerlessness and its depravities, and the ends to which we will go to claim back agency.

Women and girls walk a perilously thin line between ruin and redemption in these stories as they try—with varying degrees of success—to outmanouver the violence that threatens to define their lives.

There’s the physical violence of men against their bodies—and sometimes the violence they exact in revenge. While doubts about a romantic partner, an abandonment by a sister, the fallout of a parent’s porgnography addiction, the betrayal of a friend, even the desire to touch a stranger’s fur-like body are subtler aggressions that pack their own kinds of punches.

Signs of Life by Amy Head [short stories/earthquake/post recovery] – A ‘lest we forget’ collection.

Christchurch, post earthquakes, the earth is still settling. Containers line the damaged streets, inhabitants waver – like their city – suspended between disaster and recovery. Tony, very much alive, is declared dead, Gerald misreads one too many situations in his community patrol, and boomer Carla tries online dating. At the epicentre of these taut, magnetic stories is 20-something Flick who, just as she is finding her feet, faces a violent disruption – this time in human form – while her mostly-ex gets set to marry. Keenly observed, deftly humorous, Signs of Life turns on the smallest of details to show how we carry on.

Turncoat by Tīhema Baker (Raukawa te Au ki te Tonga, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) (Science Fiction/Literary Political Satire/Indie smash-hit!) – a futuristic novel about an idealistic human, that explores the effect of being colonised and serves as a commentary on the experiences of Māori public servants while inviting Pākehā to imagine that experience.

Daniel is a young, idealistic Human determined to make a difference for his people. He lives in a distant future in which Earth has been colonised by aliens. His mission: infiltrate the Alien government called the Hierarch and push for it to honour the infamous Covenant of Wellington, the founding agreement between the Hierarch and Humans.

With compassion and insight, Turncoat explores the trauma of Māori public servants and the deeply conflicted role they are expected to fill within the machinery of government. From casual racism to co-governance, Treaty settlements to tino rangatiratanga, Turncoat is a timely critique of the Aotearoa zeitgeist, holding a mirror up to Pākehā New Zealanders and asking: “What if it happened to you?”

Shortlist Annoucement

The 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlist will be announced on 6 March, 2024.

The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction will be judged by reading advocate and former bookseller Juliet Blyth (convenor); writer, reviewer and literary festival curator Kiran Dass; and fiction writer Anthony Lapwood (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Pākehā). They will be joined in deciding the ultimate winner from their shortlist of four by an international judge.

The winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction will receive $65,000.

A Year of Reading New Zealand Literature

In 2024, Lisa at ANZLitLovers and Theresa at TheresaSmithWrites will celebrate the rich literary heritage of Antipodean writing by joining forces to spend a year discovering New Zealand fiction. 

Reading from their TBR and whatever else comes their way, they’ll be posting reviews on their blogs and sharing via social media using the hashtag #AYearofNZLit

Follow them or join in if you’re interested in reading Kiwi fiction!

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Valentino (1957) by Natalia Ginzburg tr. Avril Bardoni (Italian), Intro by Alexander Chee

The more I read of the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, the more I am hooked.

Valentino leads the reader along, thinking you are reading a straight forward story, until you arrive at the point of realising that your reactions are judgements and the book holds up a mirror to our own conditioning. And that is how it feels reading it in 2024. I can’t even imagine the storm it likely raised when published in 1957.

Little Sense or Sensibility

novella Italy parody fiction gender conditioning

Valentino is a short novella narrated by Caterina, who is training to become a teacher. She lives with her father, a retired schoolteacher, her mother, who used to give piano lessons and her brother, Valentino who does very little, but whose medicine studies and equipment cost a lot.

we had to help my sister who was married to a commercial traveller and had three children and a pitifully inadequate income, and we also had to support my student brother who my father believed was destined to become a man of consequence. There was little enough reason to believe this, but he believed it all the same and had done ever since Valentino was a small boy and perhaps found it difficult to break the habit.

Valentino spends his time playing with a kitten, making toys out of scraps of material, dressing up and admiring himself. A string of engagements to teenagers raise false hopes and always end the same way – broken. So when he announces he will be married within the month, naturally the family expect the pattern to continue.

What a Wife Can Be or Not to Be

So when he turned up with his new fiancée we were amazed to the point of speechlessness. She was quite unlike anything we had ever imagined.

We learn of all the family members reactions to this new fiancée, with the exception of the father.

he was about to launch into a long speech about what was the main consideration but my mother interrupted him. My mother always interrupted his speeches, leaving him choking on a half-finished sentence, puffing with frustration.

A Man of Consequence, The Weight of Expectation

Photo by W R on Pexels.com

Valentino is oblivious to the reactions and judgements of his family and continues to act and communicate as he always has, holding nothing back, expecting everyone to be happy for him.

Is he fearless? A truth teller who doesn’t hide things or worry about what others think of him? Is he a narcissist? He is a wonderful character because he is like the mystery at the centre of the story. Who don’t quite know who he is because he isn’t acting as everyone including the reader might expect him to.

His father lost for words, does not understand that what he is witnessing is the incarnation of his desire, his son is indeed becoming a man of consequence, just not in the way he had expected.

Valentino is captivated by his wife, by her look, her intelligence, her culture. She showers him in gifts, he has upended social convention, insulted the patriarchy and all who prop it up.

My father said he would go to have a talk with Valentino’s fiancée, but my mother was opposed to this, partly because my father had a weak heart and was supposed to avoid any excitement, partly because she thought his arguments would be completely ineffectual. My father never said anything sensible; perhaps what he meant to say was sensible enough, but he never managed to express what he meant, getting bogged down in empty words, digressions and childhood memories, stumbling and gesticulating. So at home he was never allowed to finish what he was saying because we were all too impatient, and he would hark back wistfully to his teaching days when he could talk as much as he wanted and nobody humiliated him.

Out of Place

Once they are married, it is his family that feels out of place, ill at ease. Valentino is easily able to be among his wife’s friends and family as well as his own. He does not feel undeserving or unworthy of their company or his newfound social status. Neither is he aware of the dilemmas facing his family.

It is best not to share too much of the storyline, but to discover it yourself, because every page is a wonderful discovery, of thought provoking insights into the human condition and the reaction of those around us when one defies convention and how they too can be displaced when set down inside an unfamiliar environment.

When Caterina finishes her diploma and gets a job, we observe how Maddalena’s offer to house and feed her, though on the surface seems attractive, acts to disempower her, denying her independence and supporting a selfish desire. Through the unconventional marriage, we see the ridiculousness of gender conditioning all the more clearly.

I thought it was absolutely brilliant, the way Ginzburg has created these two characters, upending societal norms and inverting typical behaviours.

Highly recommended.

Author, Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) was born in Palermo, Sicily. She wrote dozens of essays, plays, short stories and novels, including Voices in the Evening, All Our Yesterdays and Family Lexicon, for which she was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize in 1963.

Her work explored family relationships, politics and philosophy during and after the Fascist years, World War II. Modest and intensely reserved, Ginzburg never shied away from the traumas of history, whether writing about the Turin of her childhood, the Abruzzi countryside or contemporary Rome—approaching those traumas indirectly, through the mundane details and catastrophes of personal life.

She was involved in political activism throughout her life and served in the Italian parliament between 1983 to 1987. Animated by a profound sense of justice, she engaged with passion in various humanitarian issues, such as the lowering of the price of bread, support for Palestinian children, legal assistance for rape victims and reform of adoption laws. 

She died in Rome in 1991 at the age of seventy-five.

Further Reading

My review of Ginzburg’s memoir, Family Lexicon (1963)

My review of Ginzburg’s debut novel The Dry Heart (1947)

Interview with Alexander Chee: On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino by Sander Pleij, 6 May 2023

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Dublin Literary Award Longlist Announced

The Dublin Literary Award has announced a longlist of 70 books nominated by 80 libraries from 35 countries around the world.

Celebrating excellence in world literature and now in its 29th year, this award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English, worth €100,000 to the winner.

The list features 16 debut novelists and 31 novels in translation representing 14 languages including Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Turkish. New  Zealand author Catherine Chidgey has been nominated for two novels. 

The shortlist will be revealed on 26th March 2024 and the winner will be announced on 23rd May 2024.

The nominated novels will be available for readers to borrow from Dublin City Libraries and from public libraries around Ireland, and some can be borrowed as eBooks and eAudiobooks on the free Borrowbox app, available to all public library users.

I have read Pet, Birnam Wood, Soldier Sailor, Old God’s Time and Demon Copperhead.

Irish Book Awards 2023 motherhood literary fiction
literary fiction Irish
Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver
eco thriller tech billionaire New Zealand

The Longlist

1000 coils of fear by Olivia Wenzel (Germany) tr. Priscilla Layne – A multilayered and rhythmic debut novel about her life as a Black German woman living in Berlin and New York during the chaos of the 2016 U.S. presidential election from playwright Olivia Wenzel.

A History of the Island by Eugene Vodolazkin (Russia) tr. Lisa C. Hayden – Internationally acclaimed novelist and scholar of medieval literature, Eugene Vodolazkin returns with a satirical parable about European and Russian history, the myth of progress, and the futility of war.

A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (Canada) – An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada’s most daring literary talents. An unnamed narrator abandons grad school and returns to northern Alberta in search of answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness. What ensues is a series of conversations amounting to an autobiography of his hometown. 

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo (Germany) tr. Jon Cho-Polizzi – In a small village in what will become Ghana, Ada gives birth to a baby who does not live. As she grieves for her child, Portuguese traders arrive in the village, an event that will bear terrible repercussions for Ada and her kin. Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematician Ada Lovelace; Ada, a prisoner forced into prostitution in a concentration camp; and Ada, a pregnant Ghanaian woman who arrives in Berlin in 2019 for a fresh start. Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women. This debut from Sharon Dodua Otoo paints an astonishing picture of femininity and resilience with deep empathy and infinite imagination.

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain (France) tr. by Louise Rogers Lalaurie & Megan Jones – Part swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and part modern-day love story set in the heart of Paris, An Astronomer in Love is an enchanting tale of adventure, destiny and the power of love. 

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (New Zealand) – A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops where no one will notice. An enigmatic billionaire also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? Can they trust each other? A propulsive literary thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is a brilliantly constructed tale of intentions, actions, consequences and survival.

Breakwater by Marijke Schermer (Netherlands) tr.(Dutch) Liz Waters – A woman who seems to have it all is unable to tell her husband of her violent secret past, which threatens to tear their family apart. “A secret between a husband and a wife threatens their existence in Marijke Schermer’s novel Breakwater. Breakwater is a concise, cutting story about trauma, post-traumatic stress, and misdirected love.”

Canción by Eduardo Halfon (Guatemala) tr. (Spanish) Lisa Dillman & Daniel Hahn – In Canción, Eduardo Halfon’s eponymous wanderer is invited to a Lebanese writers’ conference in Japan, where he reflects on his Jewish grandfather’s multifaceted identity. To understand more about the day in January 1967 when his grandfather was abducted by Guatemalan guerillas, Halfon searches his childhood memories. Soon, chance encounters around the world lead to more clues about his grandfather’s captors, including a butcher nicknamed “Canción” (or song). As a brutal and complex history emerges against the backdrop of the Guatemalan Civil War, Halfon finds echoes in the stories of a woman he meets in Japan whose grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (US) – Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own. In packed arenas, live-streamed by millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar & Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?

Crimson Spring by Navtej Sarna (India) – On 13 April 1919, around 25,000 unarmed Indians had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Many were listening to speakers denouncing the Rowlatt Act, while others were there to relax. In the evening, a detachment of soldiers led by Brigadier General R. E. H. Dyer entered the Bagh and open fired without warning. Several hundred perished and several hundred more were injured. Navtej Sarna brings the horror of the atrocity to life through the eyes of nine characters -Indians and Britons, ordinary people and powerful officials, the innocent and the guilty. Set against India’s epic freedom struggle, the book is a powerful, unsettling meditation on the costs of colonialism.

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (Brazil) tr.(Brazilian Portuguese) Johnny Lorenz – Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.

Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil’s poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.

Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (Canada) tr. Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (French) – An intimate portrait of growing up having been assigned the wrong sex at birth. Set against the windswept countryside of the remote Charlevoix region north of Montreal, an autobiographical novel immortalizes her early years as an alienated boy trapped in a world of small-town values. In the midst of her parents’ dissolving marriage, Boulianne-Tremblay traverses complex adolescent years of self-discovery and first loves, to harrowing episodes that fuel the growing realization that she must transition and give birth to her new self if she is to continue living at all. One of the first novels of its kind to appear in Quebec.

Day’s End by Garry Disher (Australia) – Hirsch’s rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day’s end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. Today he’s driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They’re checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don’t quite add up. A call comes in: a roadside fire. Nothing much—a suitcase soaked in diesel and set alight. Two noteworthy facts emerge. Janne knows more than Hirsch about forensic evidence. And the body in the suitcase is not her son’s.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (US) – Demon’s story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer. For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents. In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty and addiction are as natural as the grass grows. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day.

Falling Hour by Geoffrey Morrison (Canada) – It’s a hot summer day, and Hugh Dalgarno, a 31-year-old clerical worker, thinks his brain is broken. Over the course of several hours in an uncannily depopulated public park, he will traverse the baroque landscape of his own thoughts: the theology of nosiness, the beauty of the arbutus tree, the theory of quantum immortality, Louis Riel’s letter to an Irish newspaper, the baleful influence of Calvinism on the Scottish working class, the sea, and, ultimately, thinking itself and how it may be represented in writing. A meandering sojourn, as if the history-haunted landscapes of Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn were shrunk down to a mere 85 acres.

Feast by Emily O’Grady (Australia) – Alison is an actress who no longer acts, Patrick a musician past his prime. The eccentric couple live an isolated existence in Scotland until Patrick’s teenage daughter Neve, flees Australia to spend a year abroad with her father, and the stepmother she barely knows.

On the weekend of Neve’s eighteenth birthday, her father insists on a special feast to mark her coming of age. Despite Neve’s objections, her mother Shannon arrives in Scotland to join the celebrations. What none of them know is that Shannon has arrived with a hidden agenda that has the potential to shatter the delicate façade of the loving, if dysfunctional, family.

Hades by Aisha Zaidal (Malaysia) – In 2012, sixteen-year-old troublemaker Kei and his mother move into a decaying low-cost flat from the slums at the edge of town, right next to Maryam, a young mother, and her three-year-old son Ishak. Shunned by society, Kei and Maryam develop an unspoken bond, which starts to fray as the ghosts of their pasts circle in. Both wonder if they can free themselves of the men who made them the abominations everyone considers them to be, and of the despair creeping in around them.

Haven by Emma Donoghue (Ireland) – In 7th-century Ireland, a scholar/priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks – young Trian & old Cormac – he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. With only faith to guide them and drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find a steep, bare island, inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean? What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (US) –

The four Padavano girls bring loving chaos to their neighbourhood. William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy. When he meets Julia Padavano, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family: Sylvie, the dreamer; Cecelia, the artist; and Emeline patiently taking care of them all. But when darkness from William’s past begins to block the light of his future, a catastrophic rift leaves the family inhabiting two sides of a fault line. Can they find their way back to each other? Can love make a broken family whole?

Hollow Bamboo: A Novel by William Ping (Canada) – The hilarious and heart-breaking story of two William Pings in Newfoundland—the lost millennial and the grandfather he knows nothing about. Based on a true story, Hollow Bamboo recounts with humour and sympathy the often-brutal struggles, and occasional successes, faced by some of the first Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland. Drawing on elements of magical realism, auto fiction and satire, as well as deep historical research, Hollow Bamboo is a fresh and original portrayal of our past and our present, and the debut of an extraordinary new author.

Human Nature by Serge Joncour (France) tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie – When his three sisters escape to the city Alexander is left to run the family farm. Though reluctant, he commits himself to honouring the traditional methods that prioritise the welfare of his cattle, and produce the highest quality meat. But the world around him is changing. The insatiable appetites of supermarkets and fast food chains demand that standards must be sacrificed for speed. As Alexandre struggles to balance his principles and his livelihood, he is drawn to the beautiful Constanze, part of a group of environmental activists keen to draw him into their cause. Farmers uses ammonium nitrate and so do eco-terrorists…

Identitti by Mithu Sanyal (Germany) tr. Alta L. Price – Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a doctoral student who blogs about race with the help of Hindu goddess Kali, is in awe of Saraswati, her superstar postcolonial and race studies professor. But Nivedita’s life and sense of self are upturned when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Hours before she learns the truth Nivedita praises her tutor in a radio interview, which calls into question her own reputation and ignites an angry backlash among her peers and online community. A darkly comedic tour de force, Identitti showcases the outsized power of social media in the current debates around identity politics and the power of claiming your own voice.

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (US) – In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated by what their younger son calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.” Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and sly commentary, Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and white supremacy.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Australia) – In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost. Desperate to ignore it all—to avoid the future rushing towards him—Ned dreams of open water. As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle (US) – Adelaide Henry carries an enormous locked steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide disappear. It’s 1915 and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret has killed her parents, forcing her to flee California for a new life in Montana. Dragging the trunk with her, she becomes one of the “lone women,” accepting the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s kept locked away might be the key to her survival.

Memorial, 29 June by Tine Høeg (Denmark) tr. Misha Hoekstra – Celebrated for her signature insight and precision, Tine Høeg returns with a wry, haunting, and riotously funny novel about how loss is bound up with the urge to create. Asta is invited to a memorial. It’s been ten years since her university friend August died. The invitation disrupts everything – the novel she is working on, her friendship with Mai and her two-year-old son – reanimating longings, doubts, and the ghosts of parties past. Moving between Asta’s past and present, Memorial, 29 June is a novel about who we really are, and who we thought we would become.

Monsters Like Us by Ulrike Almut Sandig (Germany) tr. Karen Leeder – the story of old friends Ruth and Viktor in the last days of Communist East Germany. Inseparable since kindergarten, forced to go their different ways to escape their difficult childhood: Ruth into music and the life of a professional musician; Viktor into violence and a neo-Nazi gang. A story of families, a story of abuse, a story about the search for redemption and the ways it takes shape over generations. More than anything, it is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and who we want to be.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor (Ireland) – September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. An Irish priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world’s smallest state, a neutral country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy. But Hauptmann’s net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. Based on an extraordinary true story, My Father’s House is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction.

My Men by Victoria Kielland (Norway) tr. Damion Searls – Based on the true story of Norwegian maid turned Midwestern farmwife Belle Gunness, the first female serial killer in American history, My Men is the radically empathetic and disquieting portrait of a woman capable of ecstatic love and gruesome cruelty. Among thousands of other Norwegian immigrants seeking freedom, Brynhild Størset emigrated to the American Upper Midwest in the late nineteenth century, changing her name and her life. As Bella, later Belle Gunness, she came in search of fortune and faith but, most of all, love. In pursuit of her American Dream, Kielland’s Belle grows increasingly alienated, ruthless, and perversely compelling.

Now I Am Here by Chidi Ibere (UK) – About to make his last stand, a soldier facing certain death at enemy hands, writes home to his love to explain how he ended up there. The Officer in the story has no name nor is his nation specified. While out walking, he stumbles upon officers enjoying a military barbecue and is persuaded to join them. He enjoys the comradeship of the event, is quickly seduced by the smart, tailored military uniform he is fitted with, by the power bestowed upon it and the respect commanded by it. From there, this gentle man is gradually transformed into a war criminal, committing acts he wouldn’t have thought himself capable.

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Ireland) – Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home in Dalkey, overlooking the sea. His peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother who asks for his help. And what of Tom’s wife, June, and their two children? A beautiful, haunting novel about what we live through, what we live with, and what will survive of us.

Open Heart by Elvira Lindo(Spain) tr. Adrian Nathan West – This intimate family novel that follows the rise and fall of a great love is also a moving tribute to the generation that struggled to survive in Spain after the Civil War. In Open Heart, Elvira Lindo tells the story of her parents—the story of an excessive love, passionate and unstable, forged through countless fights and reconciliations, which had a profound effect on their entire family.

Orgy by Gábor Zoltán (Hungary) tr. Thomas Sneddon – A nightmarish recounting of events from the final phase of the Holocaust in Hungary. In late 1944 and early 1945 Budapest was consigned to the rule of the fascist organization known as the Arrow Cross. They sought out individuals not only of Jewish descent but anyone they viewed as liberals, “English sympathizers” or “humanists.” One such man is the novel’s main character, the thirty-year-old factory owner, Renner. He is a successful, fearless man: the Arrow Cross have plenty of reasons to kill him. But instead of a swift execution, they torture and humiliate him even longer than usual, subsequently forcing him to assist them.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (US) – Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned. Bird receives a letter containing a cryptic drawing, and he’s entered a quest to find her. His journey will take him to the folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to NYC, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina) tr. Megan McDowell (Spanish) – Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,” says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”

Pet by Catherine Chidgey (New Zealand) – Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine’s sense that something isn’t quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (Australia) – In a small town in northern Australia dominated by a haze cloud, a crazed visionary sees donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in the dance of moths and butterflies. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. Praiseworthy is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Properties of thirst : a novel by Marianne Wiggins (US) – “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is where he and his wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it where Rocky has mourned Lou since her death. When the government decides to build an internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen. Complicating matters is the fact that the Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.

Querelle of Roberval: A Syndical Fiction by Kevin Lambert (Canada) tr. Donald Winkler (French) – As a millworkers’ strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions escalate between the workers—but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. As the dispute hardens and both sides refuse to yield, the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent. A tribute to Jean Genet’s antihero, and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (UK) – Rachel is searching for her children. For Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. These are the five who were sold to other plantations; the faces she cannot forget. It is 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children. With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana, then on to Trinidad, up the dangerous river and to the open sea. Only once she knows their stories can she rest. Only then can she finally find home…

Rombo by Esther Kinsky (Germany) tr. Caroline Schmidt – In May and September 1976, two earthquakes ripped through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population. About a thousand people died under the rubble, tens of thousands were left without shelter, and many ended up leaving their homes in Friuli forever. In Rombo, Esther Kinsky’s sublime new novel, seven inhabitants of a remote mountain village talk about their lives, which have been deeply impacted by the earthquake that has left marks they are slowly learning to name. From the shared experience of fear and loss, the threads of individual memory soon unravel and become haunting and moving narratives of a deep trauma.

Schmutz by Felicia Berliner (US) – In this witty, provocative, and “compulsively readable coming-of-age story” (Cosmopolitan), a young Hasidic woman on a quest to get married fears she will never find a groom because of her secret addiction to porn. Like the other women in her ultra-Orthodox community, Raizl expects to find a husband through arranged marriage. But Raizl has a secret. With a hidden computer to help her complete her college degree, she falls down the slippery slope of online pornography. As Raizl dives deeper into the world of porn at night, her daytime life begins to unravel. Raizl must balance her growing understanding of her sexuality with the expectations of the family she loves.

Small Mercies by Denis Lehane (US) – In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched – asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.

Solider Sailor by Claire Kilroy (Ireland) – In her wildly acclaimed novel, her first in over a decade, Claire Kilroy creates an unforgettable heroine whose fierce love for her young son clashes with the seismic change to her own identity. As her marriage strains, and she struggles with questions of autonomy, creativity and the passing of time, an old friend makes a welcome return ­– but can he really offer a lifeline to the woman she used to be?

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu (Romania) tr. Sean Cotter – Based on Cărtărescu’s own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. Grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life. Combining fiction, autobiography and history, Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art within the Communist present.

Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius (Sweden) tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles – Nine-year-old Elsa lives just north of the Arctic Circle. She and her family are Sámi, Scandinavia’s indigenous people, and make their living herding reindeer. One morning, Elsa witnesses a man brutally killing her reindeer calf. She recognises the man but refuses to tell anyone – least of all the Swedish police force – about what she saw. A decade later, Elsa finds herself the target of the man she first encountered all those years ago, and something inside of her finally breaks. The guilt, fear and anger she’s been carrying since childhood come crashing over her like an avalanche, and will lead Elsa to a final catastrophic confrontation.

Stone and Shadow by Burhan Sönmez (Turkey) tr. Alexander Dawe – In the city of Mardin, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop, but even there, life, with all its sorrows, joys, injustices, and gifts, draws him in unexpected directions.

Take What You Need by Idra Novey (US) – Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind. Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, the novel explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, zeroing in on the joys and difficulties of family with great verve.

The Ascent by Stefan Hertmans (Netherlands) tr. David McKay (Dutch) – In 1979, Stefan Hertmans fell in love with a beautiful old house in Ghent in Belgium, which he lovingly rescued from decay. Now, years later, he learns that a bust of Hitler once sat on the mantelpiece, and a war criminal relaxed in its rooms with his family. This shocking discovery sends Hertmans off to the archives and to interview next of kin, to uncover the secrets of the house and expose the atrocities this man committed. A story of war, family, and fate, Hertmans masterfully brings history to life, as he appears in the novel as a trusted guide, and imagines individual lives to tell the greater European story.

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (New Zealand) – Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now.

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier (France) tr. Daniel Levin Becker – Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife’s 40th birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence. Told in rhythmic, propulsive prose that weaves seamlessly from one consciousness to the next, a deft unravelling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves, a gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present, written by a major contemporary French writer.

The Chinese Groove by Kathryn Ma (US) – Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province, heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome. Shelley is dismayed to find that his “rich uncle” is his unemployed second cousin and that the guest room he’d envisioned is but a scratchy sofa. Even worse, the loving family he hoped would embrace him is in shambles, shattered by a senseless tragedy that has cleaved the family in two. Ever the optimist, Shelley concocts a plan to resuscitate his American dream by insinuating himself into the family.

The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill (US) – In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

The Drinker of Horizons by Mia Couto (Mozambique) tr. David Brookshaw (Portuguese) – the epic love story between a young Mozambican woman named Imani and the Portuguese sergeant Germano de Melo to its moving close. We resume where The Sword and the Spear concluded: While Germano is left behind in Africa, serving with the Portuguese military, Imani has been enlisted to act as the interpreter to the imprisoned emperor of Gaza, Ngungunyane, on the long voyage to Lisbon. For the emperor and his seven wives, it will be a journey of no return. Imani’s own return will come only after a decade-long odyssey through the Portuguese empire at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Exhibition by Miodrag Kajtez (Serbia) tr. Nikola M. Kajtez – Izlozba (original title of The Exhibition published in 2015 and awarded the National Award Laza Kostić for the book of the year) is an explicit story about the morphology of death. The characters seem to be as if from the other side of life. On the other hand, the very text of the novel is addictively fun, especially for literary connoisseurs, the humor, although unobtrusive, is often hilarious.

The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford (South Africa) – Cora carries secrets her daughter can’t know. Freya is frightened by what her mother leaves unsaid. Angel will only bury the past if it means putting her abusers into the ground.
One act of violence sets the three women on a collision course, each desperate to find the truth. In a nail-biting thriller set between the scorched red soil of South Africa, the pitiless snowfields of Canada and the chilly lochsides of western Scotland, each woman must contend with the spectres of male violence, sexual abuse and the choices we each make to keep our souls.

The Fire by Daniela Krien (Germany) tr. Jamie Bulloch – With plans adrift after a fire burns down their rented holiday cabin, Rahel and Peter find themselves on an isolated farm where Rahel spent many a happy childhood summer. Suddenly, after years of navigating careers, demanding children and the monotony of the daily routine, they find themselves unable to escape each other’s company. With three weeks stretching ahead, they must come to an understanding on whether they have a future together. What happens when love grows older and passion has faded? When what divides us is greater than what brought us together? And how easy is it to ask the fundamental questions about our relationships?

The Ghetto Within by Santiago H. Amigorena (Argentina/France) tr. Frank Wynne – The Ghetto Within re-imagines the life of its author’s Jewish grandfather whose guilt provokes an enduring silence to span generations. 1928. Vicente Rosenberg is a European émigré starting a new life in Buenos Aires. Despite success, Vicente still misses his mother, who stayed behind in Poland. For years, she writes him. Yet, as unnerving rumors mount from abroad, her letters become increasingly sporadic, and Vicente begins to construct the reality of a tragedy that already occurred. Then, one day, the letters cease. Racked with guilt, Vicente lapses into a longstanding silence. With his new novel, Amigorena finds the language to retrieve his voice from the oblivion of familial trauma.

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng (Singapore) – On a quiet moonlit night, Ah Boon, young and terrified, takes his first trip out to sea in his father’s fishing boat – a rite of passage for the boys of the kampong. As the air hums and the wind howls, a mysterious, impossible island materialises in the darkness; an island that Ah Boon soon learns only he has the ability to find. But this is only the beginning of the story, and as Ah Boon grows up, alongside Siok Mei, the spirited girl he has fallen in love with, he finds himself caught in the tragic sweep of Singapore’s history.

The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton (UK) – In the golden city of Amsterdam, in 1705, Thea Brandt is turning eighteen, and she is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms. At the city’s theatre, Walter, the love of her life, awaits her, but at home in the house on the Herengracht, all is not well – her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, and the Brandt family are selling their furniture in order to eat. On Thea’s birthday, also the day that her mother Marin died, the secrets from the past begin to overwhelm the present.

The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta (Finland) tr.Emmi Itäranta – Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own. Part space-age epistolary, part eco-thriller, and a love story between two individuals from very different worlds.

The Orphans of Amsterdam by Elle Van Rijn (Netherlands) tr. Jai van Essen – Amsterdam, 1941. My hands are so shaky I’m fumbling. Where to hide? I pull open the dresser, throw aside the blankets, put the baby in and push the drawer shut, just as the nursery door swings open. The German officer marches into the room, yelling over the crying downstairs: ‘You! Grab all the children – now!’ Based on the heart-wrenching true story of an ordinary young woman who risked everything to save countless children from the Nazis, this gripping read is perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones and The Nightingale.

The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr (Canada) – It’s 1929, and Baxter is considered lucky, as a Black man, to have a job as a porter on a train that crisscrosses the continent. He has to smile and nod for the white passengers when they call him ‘George.’ He’s obsessed with teeth, and saving up tips for dentistry school.

On this trip, the passengers are unruly, especially when the train is stranded for days – their secrets leak out, blurring with Baxter’s sleep-deprivation hallucinations. When he finds an illicit postcard of two men, Baxter’s longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with it or his memories of a certain Porter Instructor.

The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel (Brazil) tr. Bruna Dantas Lobata (Portuguese) – A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over 50 years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cícero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo has been unable to read. Exploring Brazil’s little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society’s margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect all our relationships.

The World and All That It Holds by Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia/US) – “The World and All That It Holds would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God–or Aleksandar Hemon. . . From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love.” —RON CHARLES, The Washington Post. The World and All That It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding (US) – inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor but nevertheless protected from the hostility on the mainland. During the summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance. (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) This Other Eden is an exceptional novel. It is lyrically expressed historical fiction which is “a tribute to community and human dignity.” (Rachel Seiffert, The Guardian)

Thistlefoot by Genna Rose Nethercott (US) – The Yaga siblings have been estranged since childhood. Then they learn that they are to receive an inheritance: a sentient house on chicken legs. Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas’ ancestral home outside Kyiv—but the sinister Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past. As the Yagas embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family’s traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide—erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik (Norway) tr. Martin Aitken – A woman is in a deep and real, but relatively new relationship with a man from Milan. She has moved there, they have married, and they are close in every way. Then he is diagnosed with cancer. It’s serious, but they try to go about their lives as best they can. But when the doctor tells the woman that her husband has less than a year to live – without telling the husband – death comes between them. She knows it’s coming, but he doesn’t – and he doesn’t seem to want to know. An incredibly beautiful and harrowing novel, filled with tenderness and grief, love and loneliness.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (US) – This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It’s not a romance, but it is about love. When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one morning he is catapulted straight back to childhood, and the hours they spent immersed in video games. Their spark reignited, together they get to work: making their own games to delight and challenge players. It’s the 90s, and anything is possible. Their collaborations make them superstars.What comes next is a tale of friendship and rivalry, fame and creativity, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones. And, above all, of our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

When We Were Fireflies by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) – When brooding artist, Yarima Lalo, encounters a moving train for the first time, two serendipitous events occur. First, it triggers memories of past lives in which he was twice murdered—once on a train. He also meets Aziza, a woman with a complicated past of her own, who becomes key to helping him understand what he is experiencing. With a third death in his current life imminent, together they go hunting for remnants of his past lives. Will they find evidence that he is losing his mind or the people who once loved or loathed him?

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Reading Intentions 2024

Photo Ylanite Koppens @ Pexels.com

I’m not really into reading goals and rarely participate in challenges that might oblige me to stick with a fixed plan.

A mood reader, I like being able to change my mind about what is going to be picked next. So often, the book I’m reading points the way forward to the next one, or a conversation leads me to recall another book I have on the shelf already.

That said, there are certain intentions I have, and I thought I would list them this year, to give a little direction or framework to the year. As always, things can change, they probably will and if so I will welcome that!

1. Read one book a week

While the number doesn’t really matter, it exists so that that at any one time I can see if I’m keeping with my intention or lagging behind. This reading challenge is on Goodreads, which is where I dump my first impressions as I read or makes notes while reading, or not.

Some may think that reading 50-60 books in a year is a lot; it is about the equivalent of reading 50 pages a day, which is around half an hour to an hour each day. The trick is to read a little every day. I mostly read at night, in the TV watching hour(s) and just before sleep.

2. Reading Ireland Month, March 2024

Last year I read 18 Irish books and I could easily do the same this year, the main focus being Reading Ireland Month in March over at Cathy’s 746Books.

In addition to books from this pile I own here, Cathy has just posted Irish Novels to look out for in 2024 and Irish Short Story Collections + Nonfiction to Look Out for in 2024.

There are few books here I am interested in, notably, from author’s I’ve read and enjoyed; Jan Carson’s Quickly, While They Still Have Horses (short stories) plus collections from Mary Costello and Lucy Caldwell; in fiction, Nuala O’Connor’s Seaborne, Siobhan Gleeson’s Hagstone, Caiolinn Hughe’s The Alternatives. There’s likely to be more temptations I’m sure!

3. Read More Latin American Fiction

Thanks to a subscription with Charco Press, I will be receiving nine books throughout 2024, as they are published.

2023 was a stellar year of reading books from this region, I enjoyed them all, in particular A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina) tr. Frances Riddle, Two Sherpas by Sebastian Martinez Daniell (Argentina) tr. Jennifer Croft and The Delivery by Margarita Garcia Robayo (Colombia) tr. Megan McDowell.

The 2024 Fiction Bundle includes these titles, so many of which I am excited to read:

4. Read More Annie Ernaux, In French

In 2023, I read Annie Ernaux’s Nobel Prize lecture, I Will Write to Avenge My Race (2022), Simple Passion (1991), and Shame (1997).

In 2024, I hope to read her masterpiece The Years (2008) in English and these three titles in French, L’occupation (2002), (The Possession), Une femme (1987), (A Woman’s Story) and “Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit” (1997), (I Remain in Darkness).

I live in France, but tend to read French titles in English, in order to encourage readers to pick them up, however all these titles are available in English anyway and reading in French is a great way to increase vocabulary and exercise the brain!

5. Observe the Awards

Each year, there are certain awards, I like to follow, though they rarely influence what I am going to read. If anything, I’m more likely to find something that might interest me on the longlists, but I do enjoy watching the process of these so very subjective gatherings and all the literary chatter they evoke.

The awards I’ll be looking our for in 2024 are, the New Zealand Book Awards, The Irish Book Awards, The Dublin Literary Prize, The International Booker, The Booker and The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

I also like to see who makes the Dylan Thomas Prize longlist, an award for young writers, aged 39 and under, as it is can be a predictor of authors to watch out for in the future. The author Okwiri Oduour (Kenya), who wrote Things They Lost, my One Super Outstanding Read of 2023, was longlisted for this prize and another favourite author Sara Baume (Ireland/UK) was shortlisted.

6. Read More Women in Translation

I love to read around the world. In 2023, I read books from 23 countries and a third of them were in translation. I particularly like to support women authors in translation, due to the challenge this group has in being picked up by publishers and seen.

There is a wealth of great literature to discover here and it is heartening to see classics by the likes of Alba de Céspedes (Italy) coming to print in English for the first time, since being published in the 1950’s.

In 2024, I hope to read more of her work, more by Natalia Ginzburg (Italy), plenty via Charco Press and certainly more that I have yet to decide on. Women in Translation month #WITMonth is in August, which isn’t a great reading month for me, as it’s peak season work wise, so I’ll be reading it all year round, but following closely in August for recommendations.

7. Écrire Marseille: 15 grands auteurs célèbrent la cité phocéenne

Jean Claude Izzo Alexandre Dumas Gustave Flaubert Albert Cohen Simone de Beauvoir

Marseille is a wonderful city, only 25 minutes from where I live. I came across this title in a local bookstore, a compilation of extracts from various French works that mention or celebrate the city of Marseille in some way.

Having had a glimpse inside, I won’t be exactly reviewing the titles or extracts, but I will allow each text to inspire me to write something, using them as a kind of springboard to discover whatever it is to be found by studying the text. That is likely to include a few visits to this complex, unique city herself.

The opening quote is from The Trilogy Fabio Mentale, of which I have read the first in the series, Jean-Claude Izzo’s Total Khéops (1995) (Total Chaos):

“Marseille n’est pas une ville pour les touristes. Il n’y a rien à voir. Sa beauté ne se photographie pas. Elle se partage. Ici, il faut prendre parti. Se passionner. Être pour, être contre. Être, violemment. Alors seulement ce qui est à voir se donne à voir.”

“Marseilles isn’t a city for tourists. There’s nothing to see. Its beauty can’t be photographed. It can only be shared. It’s a place where you have to take sides. Be passionate. Be for, be against. Be, violently. Only then what is to be seen, shows itself.” 

The 15 authors included in the anthology are:

Arrivées à Marseille: Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), Albert Cohen (1895-1981), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

Regards sur la ville: Paul Valéry (1871-1945), Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974), Albert Camus (1913-1916), René Frégni (né en 1947), Rebecca Lighieri (née en 1966), Alain Damasio (né en 1969)

Quelques quartiers de la cité phocéenne: Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Albert Londres (1884-1932), Louis Brauquier (1900-1976), Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000), Maylis de Kerangal (née en 1967)

8. Read What I Like, When I Like

Photo by Julia Kuzenkov on Pexels.com

Have intentions, not obligations. No need to review or finish a book, just follow what lights me up.

Reading and playing around on this blog is total freedom and enjoyment, never a chore, just a fun place to hang out and create content that are like the conversations I am unable to have, because I would never wish to impose all this on anyone.

But thank you to those willing to read and comment, who follow along anyway, that is like the icing on the cake, a gift that is much valued and appreciated and which often contributes to what I might read next.

* * * * * * * * *

Do you have any reading intentions for 2024? Let me know in the comments below.

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The Last Train from Paris (2023) by Juliet Greenwood

Women of Courage, WWII

Juliet Greenwood writes immersive historical fiction, often set in Wales or Cornwall around World War II and always featuring women protagonists, who rise to the challenge in difficult times. Her books are a tribute to those women, often unseen, who keep the world turning, even in the most terrible of times.

I have been following Juliet’s progress and reading her books since she wrote Eden’s Garden and I have also read and reviewed We That are Left and The Ferryman’s Daughter.

The Last Train from Paris is set in the period just before and during World War II, moving from Paris, to London to Cornwall and was inspired in part by stories that Juliet’s mother told her about this period.

It’s a story I’ve been longing to write, ever since I was a little girl and my Mum first told me about studying French near Paris on the day war broke out in 1939. I couldn’t imagine then what it must have been liketo have been a 17-year-old English girl, on her own, catching the train to Calais through a country preparing for war and, like Nora, finding herself on a ferry in the middle of the Channel, being stalked by a German submarine. It’s a story that’s haunted me, especially since we found the letters Mum exchanged with my Dad in London, and the scribbled note she sent him when she finally arrived in Dover.

Past Circumstances, Present Lives

WWII Historical Fiction Cornwall Paris 1939

1964: Iris is visiting her mother in St Mabon’s Cove, Cornwall, an escape from her life in London. She has been having nightmares of feeling trapped. Her mother has given her a box. She has also been looking at the objects in it that relate to her past. It is awakening something that has become more insistent. She knows she was adopted and that these items have something to do with her original family.

Over the course of the weekend, she will ask her mother questions and begin to learn about the past. And encounter a strange reporter is snooping around the village asking questions, a caller her mother wishes to ignore.

Studying in Paris, 1939

The historical narrative centres around two young women characters in 1939; Nora lives in London, where she has worked as a dish washer in a kitchen since she was sixteen. Sabine, a freelance journalist works in a boulangerie (bakery) in Paris, living with her husband Emil, also a journalist, who is focused on writing the novel that is going to change their lives.

The two women meet when Sabine gives a talk in London, after spending a month gaining work experience at the London Evening Standard newspaper. They maintain contact, writing each letters regularly.

Nora, frustrated with the lack of opportunity in her job, comes up with the idea of going to Paris to do a chef training course at Madame Godeaux’s Cuisine Française, seeing no chance of promotion in her current employment.

The Risk of Relying on the Family Business

Juliet Greenwood historical fiction Paris 19
Photo Pixabay @ Pexels.com

Sabine and Emil’s lives are a little precarious due to their reliance on Emil’s brother Albert to subsidise their rent and pending war has contributed to the family boot business suffering. When bad news arrives, Emil, as the second son, is summoned to return to Colmar, to take over from his brother.

When Nora arrives in Paris, she is disappointed to learn that Sabine has already left for Colmar, but she settles into her course and meets other girls, amid a growing wariness of the safety of the city. When one of the girls Heidi tells her the real reason she is in Paris, Nora begins to understand the danger that is not far away.

The novel follows the twin time periods, the present day 1964 where Iris hearing from her mother stories of the past that will lead towards her understanding her identity and circumstances that lead to where she is now and the crossing of paths of two women in the past whose connection resulted in lives being forever changed.

As the story gathers pace, secrets are revealed, dangers confronted and choices made in desperation have long term effects.

There are so many twists and turns in the story, it’s one that you won’t want to put down once started, bt to share any more would be to spoil the joy of discovering and the detective work we begin to do as readers, trying to puzzle out the missing pieces of the jigsaw of these three women’s lives.

A riveting and immersive read, that reminds us just how precarious life is, how stability can be shattered from one day to the next, yet offers hope in its demonstration of the acts of kindness some will make to help others, to make each other safe.

N.B. Thanks you to the author Juliet Greenwood, for providing me a copy of the book to read and review.

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Greek Lessons by Han Kang (Korea) tr. Deborah Smith + Emily Yae Won

The first book I read by Han Kang was Human Acts and it remains my favourite, a deeply affecting novel. Her novel The Vegetarian won the Booker International Prize 2016 and she has written another book translated into English, that I have not read The White Book (a lyrical, disquieting exploration of personal grief, written through the prism of the color white).

Of Language and Loss

Korean literature women in translation

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, as day by day he is losing his sight.

The novel goes back in time, slowly uncovering their stories, occasionally revisiting the present, when they are in class, until finally near the end, there is a scene where they properly interact.

Greek Lessons was enjoyable, but it took me a while to figure out which characters (unnamed) were controlling the narrative at any one time, and that didn’t really become clear until quite a way into the book, when the Korean man who teaches Greek and who had lived in Germany for some time, began to interact with the mature woman student in his class, due to a minor accident and his need for help.

Yearning for the Unattainable

Both these characters are dealing with issues, the woman has just lost custody of her 6 year old child, due to an imbalance in power and wealth between the two parents. She was mute as a child and had a special relationship with language, which has lead to her unique desire to learn to read and write in Greek. She dwells in silence, sits and stares, or pounds the streets at night, walking off the frustration she is unable to express with words.

The Greek teacher is slowly losing his sight, a condition inherited from his father. He is aware that he needs to prepare himself for a future without sight.

He recalls a lost, unrequited love and the mistakes he made. His narrative is addressed to this woman who he knew from a young age. There are letters that recount his memories, as well as the discomfort of living in another culture and his desire to return to Korea without his parents. It took me a while to realise this was a different woman.

Ultimately I was a little disappointed, because it lacked the emotive drive that I had encountered before from Han Kang. There were flashes of it, but about halfway, I lost interest and stopped reading for a while. I am glad I persevered as I enjoyed the last 30% when the characters finally have a more intimate encounter and are brought out of themselves, but I was hoping for more, much earlier on.

Reading Print Improves Comprehension

Photo: Perfecto Capucine @ Pexels.com

I did wonder too if it might have been better for me to read the printed version, when the narrator is unclear, I can flick back and forth and take notes in a way that isn’t as easily done reading an ebook.

This perspective is supported by a recent study from the University of Valencia that found print reading could boost skills by six to eight times more than digital reading. I tend to agree that digital reading habits do not pay off nearly as much as print reading.

I picked it up now after reading that it was one of Tony’s Top 10 Reads of 2023 at Tony’s Reading List. He reads a ton of Japanese and Korean fiction, so this is a highly regarded accolade from him. I would recommend reading his review here for a more succinct account of the book. I see he read a library print version.

He finds echoes of The Vegetarian ‘with a protagonist turning her back on the world, unable to conform’ and ‘the poetic nature of The White Book, often slowing the reader down so they can reflect on what’s being said’ describing the reading experience as:

a slow-burning tale of wounded souls.  Poignant and evocative, Greek Lessons has the writer making us feel her creations’ sadness, their every ache. 

In a review for The Guardian, 11 Apr 2023, Em Strang acknowledged that the book wasn’t about characters or plot, so asked what was driving the craft, identifying a courageous risk the writer took.

One answer is that it’s language itself, and the dissolution of language, which is why in parts the narrative seems to almost dissolve.

If you’re interested in reading Greek Lessons, I do recommend reading the print version.

Author, Han Kang

Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. A recipient of the Yi Sang Literary Award, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Prize for Literature, she is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize; Human Acts; and The White Book.

Further Reading

The Guardian Article: Greek Lessons by Han Kang review – loss forges an intimate connection by Em Strang, 11 Apr, 2023

The Guardian Article: Reading print improves comprehension far more than looking at digital text, say researchers by Ella Creamer, 15 Dec 2023

N.B. This book was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley.