June 1, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

Cold Enough for Snow is a 96 page literary fiction novella set in Japan, that can be read in an afternoon.

Mother Daughter Relationships

literary fiction set in Japan Australian literature It is an intricate, observant story told by a daughter who has arranged to take her mother on holiday to Japan. She recounts their days and interactions and tries to anticipate what her mother might like, knowing that the intersection of their common interests is negligible.

Mother and daughter have been raised in different countries and cultures, additionally the mother was not raised in the same country as her parents, so both have grown up migrants, knowing little about what came before, except that it has influenced the way they would have been raised.

Do We Ever Really Know Our Mother?

There is a void, a vacuity, a kind of absence of understanding that is very present, in terms of the way the daughter tries to feel her way towards guessing what her mother might like, what to propose to her. The mother doesn’t have set ideas or desires regarding what they might do, she is like a stranger, a visitor to the holiday, not exhibiting the same kind of intentionality that the daughter possesses.

Earlier in the year, I had asked her to come with me on a trip to Japan. We did not live in the same city anymore, and had never been away together as adults, but I was beginning to feel it was important, for reasons I could not yet name. At first, she had been reluctant, but I had pushed, and eventually she had agreed, not in so many words, but by protesting slightly less, or hesitating over the phone when I asked her, and by those acts alone, I knew that she was finally signalling that she would come. I had chosen Japan because I had been there before, and although my mother had not, I thought she might be more at ease exploring another part of Asia. And perhaps I felt this would put us on equal footing in some way, to both be made strangers.

Photo by Tomu0e on Pexels.com

It was autumn and though pretty, there had been adverse weather warnings.

The daughter describes the minutiae of their every movement, of taking trains, changing platforms, the places they visit, the flora and fauna, occasionally flashing back to memories to when she travelled with her husband Laurie; wishing that the same excitement of discovery she’d had with him might be present with her mother.

She also recalls how difficult her younger sister was, growing up. Now a mother herself, she is dealing with difficult behaviours that have passed through to her own child, little understanding why she had been so troubled.

Ask Me No Questions, I Tell You No Lies

She tries to engage her mother in conversation, they talk; the daughter asks questions, the mother answers.

I thought about how vaguely familiar this scene was to me, especially with the smells of the restaurant around me, but strangely so, because it was not my childhood, but my mother’s childhood that I was thinking of, and from another country at that. And yet there was something about the subtropical feel, the smell of the steam and the tea and the rain…

It was strange at once to be so familiar and yet so separated. I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The daughter has had a particular education that influences the way she observes things, she wants to share that with her mother, she tries, mostly her mother smiles when she shares these perspectives, but it is impossible to tell if she agrees.

Whenever I’d asked her what she’d like to visit in Japan, she’d often said she would be happy with anything. The only question she’d asked once was whether, in winter, it was cold enough for snow, which she had never seen.

Existential Beliefs and Nothingness

One day the daughter desires to visit a church, reportedly a beautiful building designed by a famous architect, in a suburb near Osaka. Though she knew her mother did not believe in that religion, visiting that place was supposed to be a profound experience, it provoked and exchange between the two.

I asked my mother what she believed about the soul and she thought for a moment. Then, looking not at me but at the hard, white light before us, she said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting. When she was growing up, she said that she had never thought of herself in isolation, but rather as inextricably linked to others. Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner. But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain. The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached a state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere.

The novella presents these two women and the things they do, snippets of their one sided conversations, their attempt to bond, to find a connection. They are transparent, one thing they have in common is the inability to pretend, there is no falseness, they are a product of those environments they’ve grown up trying to fit into, familiar yet unfamiliar, known, yet unknown, compelled by life’s circumstance to remain an enigma to each other.

It was an interesting read, that palpable desire to connect, the deep chasm between them, born of something outside their control, yet the human need to try and persevere, to find a way through anyway.

Jessica Au, Author

Jessica Au is a writer, editor and bookseller based in Melbourne, Australia.

Cold Enough for Snow won the inaugural Novel Prize in 2022, run by Giramondo, New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions, and is set to be published in eighteen countries. Au won both the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Literature and Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction for Cold Enough for Snow.

“Migration is probably the one through line of my family. My grandfather migrated from China to Malaysia, my mother migrated from Malaysia to Australia. So, that’s three generations of migration. When I was younger, I would take my mother’s language and refer to Malaysia as “home”. Where I was living, where I was born, was never “home”. Even after living in Australia for so many years, that idea of home being elsewhere is constant and present. I don’t have a sense of belonging anywhere.” Jessica Au, interview, Bomb Magazine

May 25, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Dublin Literary Award Winner 2023

The wonderful Dublin Literary Award 2023 has announced their winner and I am pleased to learn it is one I have not only read, but it was one of my Top Fiction Reads of 2022.

The Dublin Literary Award is unique in that it’s books are nominated by libraries from cities around the world. This year 84 libraries from 31 countries across Africa, Europe, Asia, the US, Canada, South America, Australia, and New Zealand made their nominations, the judges selected a shortlist of six novels and tonight they have awarded the prize to

Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated by Jo Heinrich (read my review here) :

Peirene Press German Literature Women in Translation

German literature in translation Chiropodist

The 2023 Judging Panel, led by Professor Chris Morash of Trinity College Dublin, including Gabriel Gbadamosi, Marie Hermet, Sarah Moss, Arunava Sinha and Doireann Ní Ghríofa (author of my One Outstanding Read of 2020), commented:

“Every so often, you come across a novel whose simple, direct honesty knocks you sideways. There is an unaffected humility and generosity about Katja Oskamp’s Marzhan, Mon Amour that speaks to the value of community and to the dignity of ordinary lives. ‘The love I have inside me has turned to liquid,’ concludes the novel’s narrator, ‘and now runs into the most unlikely places’. To read Marzhan, Mon Amour in Jo Heinrich’s translation from the German is to feel Katja Oskamp’s all-encompassing embrace of her world.”

Marzhan Mon Amour is a memoir-ish novel, collective history and a character study of a group of people living in and around a multi-storied communist-era plattenbau prefab apartment building in the working class quarter of Marzahn, East Berlin, told through the eyes and ears of a woman facing her middle years.

“The middle years, when you’re neither young nor old, are fuzzy years. You can no longer see the shore you started from, but you can’t yet get a clear enough view of the shore you’re heading for. You spend these years thrashing about in the middle of a big lake, out of breath, flagging from the tedium of swimming. You pause, at a loss, and turn around in circles, again and again. Fear sets in, the fear of sinking halfway, without a sound, without a cause.”

The narrator is a 45 year old woman (referred to in some articles as the author herself), whose partner is ill, requiring her to abandon her career as a writer and take up something else. She retrains as a chiropodist and joins Tiffy who offers beauty treatments and massage and Flocke who does nails, in a salon at the foot of an eighteen storey building.

If the opening paragraph quoted above, sounds melancholy, know that it represents a turning point.

Marzahn, Mon Amour is a tender reflection on life’s progression and our ability to forge connections in the unlikeliest of places under the the most unassuming circumstances.

I highly recommend you read it! A wonderful, life-affirming, inspirational read.

May 23, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

International Booker Prize Winner 2023

The winner of the International Booker Prize 2023 has been announced tonight in London.
Here are the six books on the shortlist, that were under consideration for the prize.

International Booker Prize shortlist 2023

The winner is the Bulgarian novel Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov translated by Angela Rodel.

Blurb

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2023

A ‘clinic for the past’ offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.

An unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents, and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape the horrors of modern life – a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.

Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov’s reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, and a major voice in international literature.

Judges’ Verdict

Here’s what the judges had to say about the winning novel:

‘Our winner, Time Shelter, is a brilliant novel, full of irony and melancholy. It is a profound work that deals with a very contemporary question: What happens to us when our memories disappear? Georgi Gospodinov succeeds marvellously in dealing with both individual and collective destinies and it is this complex balance between the intimate and the universal that convinced and touched us.

‘In scenes that are burlesque as well as heartbreaking, he questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative. But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented, and nostalgia is a poison. It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the West and the communist world.

‘It is a novel that invites reflection and vigilance as much as it moves us, because the language – sensitive and precise – manages to capture, in a Proustian vein, the extreme fragility of the past. And it mixes, in its very form, a great modernity with references to the major texts of European literature, notably through the character of Gaustine, an emanation from a world on the verge of extinction.

‘The translator, Angela Rodel, has succeeded brilliantly in rendering this style and language, rich in references and deeply free.

‘The past is only ever a story that is told. And not all storytellers have the talent of Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel.’

Time Shelter wasn’t on my radar, but I may have to consider it now.

I have read and really enjoyed Still Born by Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel and I am currently reading Whale by South-Korean author Cheon Myeong-kwan and I’m planning to read Boulder by Catalan author Eva Baltasar.

Have you read any from the shortlist? Any thoughts on Time Shelter?

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia tr. Zoë Perry

Charco Press Brazilian Literature novella Brazilian author, Ana Paula Maia’s Of Cattle and Men, was an interesting and confronting story that in parts was hyper realistic in a visceral way, and fable-like in other ways. It is the fourth book I’ve read this year from the Charco Press Bundle 2023.

Set in a place where there is a one-man owned slaughter-house, not far away a hamburger processing plant, the author creates a small world that concerns men and their relationship to meat and their relationship to the beings who provide it.

Two enclosures, one for cattle and one for men, standing side by side. Sometimes the smell is familiar. Only the voices on one side and the mooing on the other distinguish the men from the ruminants.

Humanity has been able to consume meat in part because they are separated from the process of how to turn something sentient into something edible.

Man’s Need for Ritual

Here, we meet Edgar Wilson, stun operator, who has ritualised his occupation and believes that it has an effect on the animal.

Edgar picks up the mallet. The steer comes up close to him. Edgar looks into the animal’s eyes and caresses its forehead. The cow stomps one hoof, wags its tail and snorts. Edgar shushes the animal and its movements slow. There is something about this shushing that makes the cattle drowsy, it establishes a mutual trust. An intimate connection. With his thumb smeared in lime, Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross between the ruminant’s eyes and takes two steps back. This is his ritual as a stun operator.

He has a dark history and holds little compassion for men who are carelessly cruel. It brings out his own.

Milo decides to keep quiet. He knows Edgar Wilson’s loyalty, his methods, and he knows that Zeca really was useless. No one had reported him missing, and if anybody came looking for the boy, he would simply say he never showed up for work again. That he doesn’t know where he’s gone off to. Just as no one questions death in the slaughterhouse, the death of Zeca, whose rational faculties were on par with the ruminants, would surely be ignored. Senhor Milo knows cattlemen, he’s cut from the same cloth. No one goes unpunished. They’re men of cattle and blood.

Recently the animals waiting in the holding area have become unsettled and strange, unexplained happenings have been occurring. The men stay up into the night to investigate and try to find the suspected predator that is disturbing the animals and worse.

How Language Eviscerates and/or Exposes

I thought this novella was quite incredible and it evoked all kinds of memories and thoughts, that may not be like many other readers.

Firstly, the realism of the slaughter house. Although this novel concerns what seems like a small scale operation, the attention to detail in its execution and the evocation of all the senses in that environment immediately reminded me of memories I would rather forget.

When I was a university student, one summer I needed to find a job allied to the agricultural industry. I wrote to a family friend who was a ‘stock agent’ asking if he knew of an opportunity. He suggested a “freezing works” (an interesting choice of name used in New Zealand and Australia to describe a slaughterhouse at which animal carcasses are frozen for export) and so I began my summer working in this enterprise’s pay office, transferring data from daily timesheets into a ledger that would eventually be input into a computer to generate their pay. Far from the action, except that one of my roles was to go and collect those time sheets from the different departments. And that is where and how, I witnessed, with every one of my senses, everything.

Benevolent Bovines and Other Sentient Beings

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Secondly, the question of what an animal intuits and feels. Being raised on a 1,600 acre sheep and cattle farm, I can acknowledge that as humans, we are conditioned to accept certain realities and often made to participate in them, until the age of free will. Within childhood, in my case, we occasionally had access to a ‘farm animal’ as a pet – the relationship building that can occur between the human and the animal is undeniable, but equally, not every human will allow that relationship to occur.

Our pet lambs (after the annual school pet day) were put back into the flock; my pet calf, I rescued from one fate (slaughter), to have her destined for another (to become the ‘house cow’), providing daily milk to the family; she could therefore keep her offspring for six months. There was on occasion, an attempt to ‘mother’ one newborn (orphan) onto another, an act that could result in the false mother killing the strange newborn, despite it being dressed in the skin of her own dead lamb.

There is indeed a knowing.

For a few moments, Edgar Wilson yields to the late afternoon sun that has not yet fully set, but that is rushing headlong into a moonless, starless night. He knows how to listen in silence, even when others are just sighing or snorting. Life in the country has made him like the ruminants, and being a cattleman, he is able to strike a perfect balance between the fears of irrational beings and the abominable reverie of those who dominate them. He sinks two fingers into the paint can and marks the foreheads of the four cornered cows.

In Of Cattle and Men, Ana Paula Maia shows man’s inhumanity to man and his denial that an other meat-producing species might have awareness, consciousness or feeling. So the men are confused by what is occurring and they look only towards what they know, that which man is capable of; therefore they suspect other men, each other. They disbelieve what is in front of them, what they see.

Because what if those animals had agency?

Certainly not my usual kind of read, but I read this novella in one sitting, intrigued by the premise and captivated by the writing. Brilliantly portrayed, evocative of place and confronting to humanity’s blindness, I’d definitely read more by Ana Paula Maia.

Ana Paula Maia, Author

Ana Paula Maia (Brazil, 1977) is an author and scriptwriter and has published several novels, including O habitante das falhas subterráneas (2003), De gados e homens (2013), and the trilogy A saga dos brudos, comprising Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos (2009), O trabalho sujo dos outros (2009) and Carvão animal (2011). Her novel A guerra dos bastardos (2007) won praise in Germany as among the best foreign detective fiction.

As a scriptwriter she has worked on a wide range of projects for television, cinema and theatre. She won the São Paulo de Literatura Prize for Best Novel of the Year two years in a row: in 2018 for her novel Assim na Terra como embaixo da Terra, and in 2019 for Enterre Seus Mortos.

May 19, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Grand: Becoming My Mother’s Daughter by Noelle McCarthy

A thought provoking memoir that won the Best First Book in the General Nonfiction category of the New Zealand Book Awards 2023, ‘Grand’ is a reference to the good old Irish vernacular, a bit like the way others use the word ‘fine’, when it covers a multitude of sins, lies, omissions – a word that sums up an aspect of societal tendency, used to avoid expressing what is actually occurring.

Grand, tells the story of Noelle McCarthy’s growing up in Hollymount, County Cork and the highs and lows of being around a mother, who had already lost two children before she was born and was herself never comforted by her own mother. Seeking to self-regulate through the effect of alcohol, Grand demonstrates numerous effects of having been raised under those circumstances and how a multi-faceted generational trauma passes down.

McCarthy finishes university and after a chance encounter with a New Zealander in a cafe where she worked, decides to travel to New Zealand and finds herself propelled into a media career after a stint in student radio, then becoming a sought after broadcaster and interviewer.

Though it does wonders for her freelance prospects and professional reputation, the lifestyle also pushes her deeper into addictive tendencies, denial and dysfunctional relationships, until the day arrives when she knows she has to change.

She doesn’t hold back from sharing the increasingly ugly detail of late nights, memory lapses and destructive episodes. She notices her inability to schedule morning appointments, in anticipation of planned hangovers and realises it is not normal.

I do not know, at this point, how the people I work with are able to ignore the general air of chaos that surrounds me.

There is a moment in a conversation with an experienced friend, while contemplating whether or not to attend meetings, she is confronted with a moment of choice.

I ask her: ‘What will happen if I go back to the meetings, but I’m not really an addict or an alcoholic?

She shrugs her narrow shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I guess you go for a while, and then stop because you don’t need to be there? Not that big a deal really.’

A pause. ‘ And what if I am an alcoholic, and I don’t go? What will happen then?’

She moves her spoon to one side, picks up a pair of chopsticks delicately. ‘It will get worse. Addiction is progressive.’

The feeling better part after having given up alcohol takes some time to manifest and is beautifully described in one scene by simple observations through the window of a bus. As the vehicle picks up speed, she is filled with “a fierce, clean joy that comes out of nowhere”. She is nearly 31 years old and her life is beginning anew.

The bushes that line the road are full of passionfruit vines and spiky, colourful bird-of-paradise flowers. I watch the kids in their school uniforms chugging Cokes, women at the bus stop, just normal workers going about their business, and I don’t hate them the way I used to. I am just a person among people, no better and no worse. I am nearly six months sober.

The memoir tracks her path to sobriety and to a coming to terms with who her mother is and was, and to her own ‘becoming a mother’.

Photo by Doug Brown on Pexels.com

It’s interesting that subtitle, because to me she doesn’t “become” her mother’s daughter, if anything that is who and what she is fated to be, without healing or recognition of the generational trauma that lead to her addiction. What she does “become” is’ a mother to her own daughter’, the one role where there is an opportunity to heal from the past and choose to do things differently, to learn how to self regulate her own distorted central nervous system, in order to nurture her daughter in a way that will mitigate what they have all inherited.

It is a compelling read, a deeply honest and vulnerable account of a women in self-imposed exile, trying to live differently, dealing with her own inner demons and having a kind of love/hate relationship with her mother.

The thing that really stood out to me, something that isn’t exactly written, but that is understood, was that Noelle McCarthy was the first child, her mother was able to keep. Though she struggles as a mother, Caroline kept that daughter and loved her fiercely, so this daughter, though she has to deal with the effects of her mother’s alcoholism, she has not inherited the complex-PTSD that babies who were not ‘kept‘ are cruelly gifted with. Ironically, it appears that the mother suffered this neglect, it being suspected that her own mother, most likely suffering from post natal depression, never or rarely held her own daughter.

I want to tell her then, about the study I read about baby monkeys. The ones that don’t get touched and cuddled as much, don’t grow as well, physically or mentally.

Though the relationships are a challenge to navigate, there is a sense of knowing, a sense of belonging to both that family, those siblings and the place she grew up, that leaves the reader appreciating the importance these things contribute to the wholeness of a life.

A compelling memoir and an important contribution to literature that captures the chaos, pain and steps towards healing from alcoholism and addiction.

Noelle McCarthy, Author

Noelle McCarthy is an award-winning writer and radio broadcaster. Her story ‘Buck Rabbit’ won the Short Memoir section of the Fish Publishing International Writing competition in 2020 and this memoir Grand won the Best First Book General Nonfiction Award at the NZ Book Awards 2023.

Since 2017, she and John Daniell have been making critically acclaimed podcasts as Bird of Paradise Productions. She has written columns, reviews, first-person essays and features for a wide range of media in New Zealand including Metro, The NZ Herald and Newsroom. In Ireland, she’s provided commentary for radio and written for The Irish Times, The Independent and The Irish Examiner.

She lives in the New Zealand countryside with her husband and their daughter, and she misses Irish chocolate.

Grand Becoming my mother's daughter

May 17, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

New Zealand Book Awards 2023 winners #theockhams

Back in February I posted on the long longlist of 44 books in four categories for the New Zealand Book Awards 2023, also known as “the ockhams”. The shortlist whittled that down to 16 titles and now we have a set of winners in each of those four categories and a handful of ‘Best First Book’ prizes.

Fiction Prize

No surprise that the winning novel that has captivated not just the nation (winning The People’s Choice), but also the twitterverse, narrated by Tama the magpie, @TamaMagpie, Catherine Chidgey’s The Axeman’s Carnival won the $64,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

I’m very much looking forward to reading this, and hoping that since Europa Editions UK published her excellent novel Remote Sympathy in 2021, it won’t be long before we see this novel available in Europe and the rest of the English reading world.

Catherine Chidgey Tama the magpie

Chidgey’s masterful writing explores the diversifying of rural life, the predicament of childlessness, the ageing champ, and domestic violence. She provides a perspicacious take on the invidious nature of social media and a refreshingly complex demonstration of feminist principle.

“The unforgettable Tama – taken in and raised by Marnie on the Te Waipounamu high country farm she shares with champion axeman husband Rob – constantly entertains with his take on the foibles and dramas of his human companions. Catherine Chidgey’s writing is masterful, and the underlying sense of dread as the story unfolds is shot through with humour and humanity.

“The Axeman’s Carnival is unique: poetic, profound and a powerfully compelling read from start to finish.”

Poetry Prize

I was particularly intrigued by acclaimed Māori poet and scholar, Alice Te Punga Somerville’s poetry collection, Always Italicise, How To Write While Colonised and was pleased to see it win this category.

‘Always italicise foreign words’, a friend of the poet was cautioned. Alice Te Punga Somerville does exactly that. With humour and rage, regret and compassion, she ponders ‘how to write while colonised’ – penning poetry in English as a Māori writer; tracing connections between Aotearoa, New Zealand and the greater Pacific region, Indigenous and colonial worlds; reflecting on being the only Māori person in a workplace; and how – and why – to do the mahi anyway.

Alice Te Punga Somerville Always Italicise

“Readers are challenged but crucially invited in to accept that challenge and reach a new understanding of what it is to be a Māori woman scholar, mother and wife in 2022 encountering and navigating uncomfortable and hostile spaces.

“Always Italicise stood out amongst a very strong field for its finely crafted, poetically fluent and witty explorations of racism, colonisation, class, language and relationships. It’s a fine collection, establishing and marking a new place to stand.”

General Non-Fiction & Illustrated Non-Fiction

Broadcaster, music critic and author Nick Bollinger won the Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction for Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Drawing on archival research and rich personal narratives, Nick Bollinger has written a compelling account of an epoch-making period, linking international trends to the local context in a purposeful-yet-playful way.

“A joy to read and to hold, Jumping Sundays is a fantastic example of scholarship, creativity and craft.”

Historian and lawyer Ned Fletcher won the General Non-Fiction Award for his work, The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi, shedding new light on New Zealand’s founding document’s implications, contributing fresh thinking to what remains a very live conversation for those that call Aotearoa New Zealand home. The treaty was made between the British Crown and about 540 Māori rangatira (chiefs) on February 6, 1840.

Best First Books

Home Theatre by Anthony Lapwood, a collection of interlinked short stories won the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction; Khadro Mohamed’s We’re All Made of Lightning takes the reader to distant lands, Egypt and Somalia, in heightened sensory language as she grieves for her homeland, winner of the Jessie MacKay Prize for Poetry; the Judith Binney Illustrated non-fiction, first book award went to Christall Lowe’s Kai ,which offers whānau stories and recipes that provide wider insight into te ao Māori, creating a homage to food that is grounded in tradition yet modern, the new Edmonds!

Finally, the E.H. McCormick Prize for General Non-fiction and the book I am currently reading, went to Noelle McCarthy for Grand, Becoming My Mother’s Daughter. This book was running neck-a-neck with The Axeman’s Carnival for The People’s Choice, up until the last few days, when Chidgey’s book surged ahead.

An exquisite debut, it masterfully weaves together the threads of Noelle McCarthy’s life, and her relationship with her mother, in a memoir that connects with truths that unite us all. Poignant and poetic language renders scenes with honesty and colour. Intimate, but highly accessible, the fragility and turbulence of the mother-daughter relationship is at times brutally detailed. Despite this, Grand is an uplifting memoir, delicate and self-aware, and a credit to McCarthy’s generosity and literary deftness.

NZ Book Awards

A Special Mention

Non fiction NZ art assessment 50 years as an artist One that didn’t win, but that was Number 4 in The People’s Choice and one I have heard a lot about and sighted on a recent visit to London, is Robin White: Something Is Happening Here.

Described as more than an exhibition turned art book. It features stunning reproductions, historical essays and the insights of two dozen contributors that do justice to the institution that is Robin White. As iconic screenprints flow seamlessly into large format barkcloth, White’s border-crossing practice is temporally divided with the savvy use of typographic spreads. Space, too, is given to the voices of her Kiribati, Fijian and Tongan co-collaborators.

More recently in her life, collaboration with others has become important, a way of working in the space between cultures, enriching and liberating from the confines of self.

Strikingly elegant yet comprehensive, excellence is what’s happening here.

Check out Robin White’s Artist Profile here.

May 17, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

River Spirit by Leila Aboulela

I have now read three novels by Leila Aboulela and enjoyed them all, her historical fiction has taken me into parts of history that I’ve known nothing about and she brings a fresh, unique perspective, thanks to her cross-cultural life experience, at the intersection of being a Muslim woman of Sudanese origin living in Scotland.

I was very much looking forward to this latest novel as she returns within it to her country of origin and tells us a story that begins in a village and moves to the city of Khartoum, Sudan, intertwining the crossover histories of two occupying Empires against a uprising local population, at the very place where two grand rivers meet.

Grandiose Empires and A False Prophet

River Spirit is a unique work of historical fiction set in 1890’s Sudan, at a turning point in the country’s history, as its population began to mount a challenge against the ruling Ottoman Empire, only the people were not united, due to the opposition leadership coming from a self-proclaimed “Mahdi” – a religious figure that many Muslims believe will appear at the end of time to spread justice and peace.

The appearance of ‘the Mahdi’ or ‘the false Mahdi’ created a division in the population and provided a gateway for the British to further a desire to expand their own Empire, under the guise of ousting this false prophet. However for a brief period, this charismatic leader would unite many who had felt repressed by their circumstances, inspiring them to oust their foreign occupiers by whatever means necessary, even if it also set them against their own brothers and kinsmen.

Orphans, A Merchant, A Promise

Against this background, Leila Aboulela tells the story of orphan siblings, Akuany and Bol, and their young merchant friend Yaseen, a friend of their father; their parents were killed in a slave raid on the village, the merchant made a promise to protect these two youngsters, forever connecting them to his life.

The story is told through multiple perspectives, mostly in the third person perspective, from Akuany (who becomes enslaved to both an Ottoman officer and a Scottish painter at various points and is renamed Zamzam) and Yaseen’s point of view, as well as one of the fighters of the Mahdi, Musa.

Leila Aboulela Sudan 1890s historical fiction The change in perspective and the lack of a first person narrative keeps the characters at a slight distance to the reader as we follow the trials of Zamzam’s life and her dedication to being a part of Yaseen’s life. Like other readers, I wished at times that the story was told in the first person from her point of view, but the story is too important to be limited to one perspective.

So the reader is taken on a journey through the shifting viewpoints of all parties implicated and affected by the approaching conflict, those of fervent belief, the skeptical, outsiders with ulterior motives, and the innocent, the women and children trying to live ordinary family lives amid the power struggles of patriarchal dominance and colonial selfishness.

Yaseen decides to become a scholar, a decision that changes his life and opportunities; he meets the Mahdi and is unconvinced, an opinion that will become dangerous and have repercussions for him and his family.

As the revolutionary Mahdi leader grew in popularity and his followers in confidence, Sudan began to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule and everyone was forced to choose a side, whether for personal, political or religious reasons. The (religious) confusion created by the implication of accepting this new leader ,became a strategic opportunity for British colonial interests to gain access to natural resources and secure control of the Nile ahead of other European interests was well as protecting their interests in Egypt. The real threat for both the Ottoman and British Empires, was the potential for the creation of a new independent power, one that came from within Sudan. That, clearly, they were likely to undermine.

What has changed is that this is now a massive rebellion against a major power. The fake Mahdi has coalesced the nation’s sense of injustice.

Two Rivers Entwine, the Nile

River Spirit The Nile Leila Aboulela Sudan Once Akuany and her brother leave the family village, most of the story takes place in Khartoum, a city that is at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, two major rivers that join to become the Nile proper, the longest river in the world, that continues on through Egypt to the Mediterranean.

The river is part of Akuany’s story, part of her being and a symbol of her twin selves, one free, one enslaved, of twin occupying forces, the Ottoman and British Empires, of the many aspects in the story where twin forces clash, mix and become something new. It represents her devotion to her brother and to the merchant Yaseen, to a focus that drives her forward through the changing circumstances of her life. The two rivers arrive from different sources in a city that is full of many coming from elsewhere, where agendas often clash and local people get caught on the crossfire of inevitable conflict.

She was not one of them, but she was like them. She was also one of the lowly rising, one of the poor benefiting, one of the featherweight children of this land, thrust up by this shake-up, loosened and made free to stand up and grab what was there on offer, what she had always wanted.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the story, was the focus of the story coming from characters within the population, that we witness things from within, through the eyes of both a simple, loyal but marginalised, servant girl and through a young educated man, both of whom are from Sudan. They are living in turbulent times and are witness to the effect various powerful influences have on their city and in the case of ZamZam the effect on her person, treated as an object of ownership.

Cycles of Conflict, Khartoum Today

The novel was published on March 7th, 2023, a mere month before two Generals again plunged Sudan into armed conflict with devastating consequences for civilians and civilian infrastructure, especially in Khartoum and Darfur. At least 676 people have been killed and 5,576 injured, since the fighting began. (14 May, UN source)

Over 936,000 people have been newly displaced by the conflict since 15 April, including about 736,200 people displaced internally since the conflict began, and about 200,000 people who have crossed into neighbouring countries, including at least 450,000 children who have been forced to flee their homes.

“Fanatics can never draw out the good in people. They will go to war I predict. They will raise armies, invade, and pillage because it is only aggression that will keep their cause alive. Fighting an enemy is always easier than governing human complexity.”

Leila Aboulela, Author

Leila Aboulela is a fiction writer, essayist, and playwright of Sudanese origin. Born in Cairo, she grew up in Khartoum and moved in her mid-twenties to Aberdeen, Scotland. Her work has received critical recognition and a high profile for its depiction of the interior lives of Muslim women and its distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality.

She is the author of six novels: River Spirit (2023), Bird Summons (), Minaret (2005), The Translator (1999), a Muslim retelling of Jane Eyre, it was a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies (2015) and Lyrics Alley (2010), Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Leila Aboulela was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and her latest story collection, Elsewhere, Home (2018) won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award.

Her work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was long-listed three times for the Orange Prize, (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction).

“We need to hear the stories of Africa’s encounter with Europe from Africans themselves. Mainstream colonial history has been viewed and written through the lens of Europe. This is insufficient for us in these contemporary times and as Africans we need to write our own history. ” Leila Aboulela, interview with Brittle Paper.

May 9, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Pod by Laline Paull

I jumped at the chance to read Pod, after having read The Bees and been bowled over by the Mayan inspired beehive world the author created. I was excited to see what Pod might offer and delighted to see it shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. (The winner to be announced on Wed 14 June, 2023)

Laline Paull is fast becoming an afficianado of fiction set in the natural world.

An Immersive Oceanic World

Ea dolphin narrator animal Women's Prize Fiction Though not an easy read, Pod is a work of inspired literary genius. A cetacean epic, it is a fictional account of dolphin tribe rivalry and a coming-of-age of story of one of the pod, created from real knowledge of environmental science and marine biology. Clearly, a lot of background research and animal behavioural understanding underpins the narrative.

Laline Paull explains in an afterword how the novel was partly inspired following an excursion swimming with wild dolphins.

I learned that this big, noisy pod first appeared in this area after an oil spill up the coast forced them to move on. On arrival in this bay, they deposed the small resident pod of spinner dolphins, who left and were not seen again.

Set in the ocean, from within pods of dolphins, we view an underwater world, peopled by different species as their environment changes, how this affects their habits and behaviours towards others species.

Whales and dolphins are citizens of their world (the ocean), and Pod gives them voice, and readers a view, from within their ecosystem that humans have compromised. Referring to them collectively as people at first seems strange and then it feels appropriate.

Animals Like Humans Like Animals

Sometimes those behaviours mimic dysfunctional aspects of human societal behaviour, such as those brought about by a system of domination, the use of fear, violence and subjugation to keep the female species in line, making examples of the weak and young, banishing the old.

At the same time, their signals become confused by the changing conditions of the ocean, the noise from large ships, pollution, mutations, a general warming and the presence of a large contaminated patch full of micro-plastics.

It grew by the day, by the motion of each tide, yet it remained an inert drifting thing, a negative sea within the ocean. It gathered its great amorphous body piece by piece of plastic, and it made peculiar sounds as it crushed and released, spreading out on the surface, and down to the depths.

Photo by Daniel Torobekov on Pexels.com

The story follows the lives of a young female spinner dolphin Ea, of the Longi tribe; another named Google who has been bred in captivity by a military handler, now alone and lost in the ocean he knows nothing of; a pod of bottle-nose dolphins, the Tursiops tribe lead by dominant, aggressive males who have harems.

There are also a few other fish species characters that provide lighter entertainment value, including an informative, commensal Remora that sticks to the dolphins and can infiltrate their thoughts.

To spin like everyone else was the key to fitting in, and if she could only hear the music of the ocean like everyone else, she too would be able to tune in and do it.

The Longi have been forced out of their homewater by an invasion of the cruel barbaric Tursiops tribe. After a tragedy, Ea leaves her pod and is abducted by a group of exiled male Tursiops.

With Google now roaming the ocean alone, it is only a matter of time before there will be an encounter, leading to the novel’s denouement.

When the sharks saw him, with his wounds and his peculiar energy like no other dolphin they had ever encountered, they left him alone. He was not prey, and when one sub-adult tiger shark became too curious, Google remembered the game of tag, and butted back harder than the juvenile had touched him. That was all it took, one contact and and another part of Google’s instinctive mind opened up. Shark.

Belonging, Finding Home, Community

Photo by Daniel Torobekov on Pexels.com

It’s an ambitious concept and at times difficult to read, due to the treatment inflicted and the dire presence of man, acting in a way that yields little respect for the environment these creatures live and spawn within.

Ultimately, it explores aspects of belonging to a species, how they control from inside and treat outsiders and the rebel within.

Their homewater was no more, powerful devils were ripping the ocean apart and their screaming was killing pods of pilots, of humpbacks, of dolphins.

It is appropriate to mourn the losses, who really knows what it must be like to be a marine animal living in an environment that has been so compromised by a species that lives on land, that continually exploits, pollutes and disregards the fragile biosphere within which they dwell.

Death was everywhere, people were fleeing, the ocean was either full of refugees or terrifyingly empty.

Natural World Fiction

As a work of fiction, this was far outside what I normally read and as such it is hard to describe in those terms. The dolphin characters were interesting as they tried to understand their own inner signals and navigate their increasingly confused environment and community. Reading about dolphins as a society is quite confronting, when we learn that they are far from the playful characters we have been lead to believe.

The unfamiliarity of some of the other species made it a challenge to visualise some of the characters, it was necessary for me to look up some of these fish species, testing the limits of my imagination. It was just not possible to substitute Dory and Nemo for Wrasse, Fugu and Remora!

Pod is quite a ride, a thought provoking, confronting read that makes no apologies for the dark, realistic world it inhabits.

Laline Paull, Author

Laline Paull was born in England. Her parents were first-generation Indian immigrants. She studied English at Oxford University, screenwriting in Los Angeles, and theatre in London.

She has had two plays performed at the Royal National Theatre, where she is currently adapting her first novel, The Bees. Her second novel The Ice, was set in the Arctic. She is a member of BAFTA and the Writers’ Guild of America. She lives in the English countryside with her family.

“I loved finding out about different dolphin cultural expressions, which made me think: They’re just like us. They’re tribal. They like different foods, different dances; they make love or coercively mate, have political alliances, get into great big amorous raves—it was wonderful to discover these things through the strict unemotional lens of science. Then run away and make a wild story of it.” Laline Paull, interview, Orion Magazine

May 8, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel tr. Rosalind Harvey

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023, Still Born is the fourth novel by Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel, and one that stood out for me to read. It was a book that once I turned the very first page, I was unable to put it down. A fiercely compelling narrative around a highly emotional subject, told in a neutral linguistic style that demands attention.

To Be or Not to Be

The story covers a short period in the lives of two independent and career-driven women, Laura and Alina, friends who have initially declared they do not wish to have children.

My friends, for instance, could be divided into two groups of equal size: those who considered relinquishing their freedom and sacrificing themselves for the sake of the species, and those who were prepared to accept the disgrace heaped on them by society and family as long as they could preserve their autonomy. Each one justified their position with arguments of substance. Naturally, I got along better with the second group, which included Alina.

Mexican literature Later, Laura, to ensure pregnancy doesn’t occur accidentally, takes the drastic measure of having her tubes tied, forever removing that risk.

It’s not that kids annoy me altogether. I might even find it entertaining watching them play in the park or tearing each other apart over some toy in the sandpit. They are living examples of how we would be as humans if the rules of etiquette and civility did not exist.

Alina changes her mind, now in a committed relationship, she becomes pregnant.

What follows each of these decisions is not what either woman expects.

Of Fledglings and Changelings

Photo by Kati Tuomaala on Pexels.com

Laura finds herself increasingly involved with the care and in the company of her depressed neighbour’s son, surprised by the awakening of a protective and nurturing aspect.

Alina is given all kinds of dire expectations from medical specialists who pronounce on her unborn baby, a genetic condition they say will not allow it to live. This causes her and her partner great distress, without reckoning on the will of a tiny life-form that desires against all prediction and preparation otherwise – to exist.

There is a word to describe someone who loses their spouse, and a word for children who are left without parents. There is no word, however, for a parent who loses their child.

The descriptions of the medical encounters are delivered in such a black and white, scientific manner, that we feel profoundly that which is unspoken; the confusion and emotional turmoil of two people who should be feeling ecstatic, being crushed by words delivered as if they were already true. Devastation. Probabilities delivered as facts. In hindsight, lies.

The style of language employed by the writer, in mimicry to the attitudes of the medical staff is neutral, impersonal. Presented as objective, it avoids any personal opinion or emotion. Doctors. Highly trained in precise linguistic delivery, the reader experiences acutely how inhumane it is.

The narrative is so straightforwardly delivered and was so familiar to something I have experienced first-hand, that it felt like I was reading nonfiction. I am sure that any woman who has spent weeks in a post-natal ward will read this and feel a similar sense of deja-vu. I am sure there must be a personal experience(s) wrapped behind this text somewhere.

Brood Parasites

La hija unica Mexican literary fiction Meanwhile, outside Laura’s apartment a pair of pigeons with two eggs in their nest (a refuge she tried to destroy without success), appear to have been subject to a brood parasite.

Brood parasitic birds such as the cuckoo, lay their eggs in the nests of others, sparing themselves the inconvenience of rearing their own young.

Alina too brings in a young woman as a nanny to help with the needs of her newborn daughter, a woman whose role at times usurps the natural mother, giving rise to both appreciation and resentment.

It is a story of the complexity of birthing and raising offspring and the unconventionality that certain circumstances bring about, that can potentially create hybrid parenting situations, where one steps in for the other. It also highlights the little explored experience of a pregnancy that doesn’t follow expected patterns, that delivers an anomaly, something few imagine or are ever prepared for.

Maternal Instinct & Survival

Choosing Laura as the narrator of the story, one who is often at a distance from the more turbulent and harrowing events that Alina is going through, is another way that the author softens the impact of her experience. We are not close enough to be brought down by it and the urgency of her own situation, from which she is also one step removed, keeps the reader from dwelling too long on any on situation. It is like the maternal, survival instinct. The mother keeps busy and active to avoid the slippery slopes of sadness or despair.

I found this novel stunning, shocking, brilliant and in many ways familiar. It was a riveting read, a visceral encounter of all that surrounds the decision or not to become a mother, a carer and how the most insistent of intentions can mould, evolve and change according to our nature and circumstances.

Highly Recommended.

Guadalupe Nettel, Author

Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico and grew up ‘between Mexico and France’.

She is the author of the international award-winning novels The Body Where I Was Born (2011), After the Winter (2014, Herralde Novel Prize) and Still Born (2020). She has also written three collections of short stories. Nettel’s work has been translated into more than 15 languages and has appeared in publications such as Granta, the White Review, El País, the New York Times, La Repubblica and La Stampa. She currently lives in Mexico City.

Rosalind Harvey is a literary translator and educator from Bristol, now based in Coventry in the West Midlands, UK.

‘Many demands weigh on mothers. They are always compared to an unattainable stereotype, one that has made women feel inadequate. Not to mention those who decide to remain childless, who are rarely represented in literature up to now. To me, Still Born is a novel which affirms female choices and which challenges patriarchal ideas of motherhood and maternal instinct.

‘I would like this novel to help readers realise that human diversity – especially that of children with neurological conditions and women of all kinds – is always beautiful and interesting and that there is no reason to fear or reject it.’ Guadalupe Nettel

May 6, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Remains by Margo Glantz tr. Ellen Jones

How to describe this incredible literary masterpiece. A lyrical elegy of tempo rubato.

A Symphony of Reluctant Grief

Translated Allen Jones Mexican Jewish literature A divorced woman, Nora Garcia (a cellist), returns for her deceased ex-husband Juan’s, (a pianist and composer) funeral; back to a Mexican village from her past, through the art and music they played and navigated together.

A lyrical and rhythmic form of elegy that, rather than speak about the person who has passed, we experience something of a past version of that person; they are almost present, seen through the distorted lens of a reluctant, grieving ex. We can almost hear his continuous and relentless explanations to his often-time audience of one.

It felt like listening to a symphony in words, as like with music, thoughts and conversations repeat with slight changes over time.

Revelatory thoughts of the woman who knew a man best, observing the body, imagining the isolation and neglect of a heart, that brought this death about. The incantation going into detail of the functions and dysfunctions of the heart, both as the pump that irrigates the body and the metaphor for feelings of love and neglect.

The heart has impulses that reason doesn’t know.

A Different Kind of Garden Party

El rastro Margot Glantz The novel is set in the present, on the afternoon that the body is displayed in the coffin in a room, and our narrator is a guest like many others, who aren’t sure to whom, they ought to offer condolences. She overhears snippets of conversations, adding to the cacophony of her own reflections.

Its not like death goes around whispering in our ear, though, does it? It just arrives, suddenly, when we least expect it. Silence falls and I move away – he’s right, I think, death doesn’t whisper in our ear, it just arrives, alone, without warning us in advance. I don’t care how simple dying or anything else is for that matter, even if it was that simplicity that made his heart explode, made it shatter into pieces (mine too), yes, life, the absurd wound that is life, yes, it’s true, the heart is only a muscle that irrigates the body, keeping it alive, a muscle that one day fails us.

Bach, Beethoven, Gould & Open Heart Surgery

Photo by Gimmeges on Pexels.com

Scenes and topics of conversation from the past circulate through her mind as she observes all around her. Much of it is about music, about their preferences, their differences told through how revered pianists played the music of Bach, Beethoven and more.

In her grief, she writes intense descriptions of a person talking to her, observing visual elements, lips moving, facial gestures, drifting off and away, out of her own body, hearing nothing of the tedious chatter. Her thoughts range from music, pianists, the genius castrati voices of eighteenth century Italian opera, to the intricacies and origins of open-heart surgery.

Grief arrives unbidden, tears overflow, the intellect refuses it, reprimands her, convinces her she doesn’t care. The body does not comply. She recalls evenings spent listening to great pianists, their heated arguments, wondering if it was due to their diametrically opposed ways of seeing the world.

Though I don’t profess to know too much about the world of classical music or the work of all the names mentioned – the way Glantz takes the reader on a voyage through these subjects, venturing into them in depth, returning again in brief, then jumping into subjects of the heart – was compelling to read, in a mesmerising way.

Her reassessing of her relationship, observing the many people come to farewell the man she doesn’t know whether she loved or despised, while in the throe of grief, bewilderment and loss, showing us how lives intersect and continue to have a presence in the mind of another, long after separation.

“Life is an absurd wound: I think I deserve to be given condolences.”

Margo Glantz, Author (1930- )

Margo Glantz fused Yiddish literature, Mexican culture, and French tradition to create experimental new works of literature.

Margot Glantz Author Mexican A prolific essayist, she is best known for her 1987 autobiography Las genealogías (The Family Tree), which blended her experiences of growing up Jewish in Catholic Mexico with her parents’ immigrant experiences. She also wrote fiction and nonfiction that shed new light on the seventeenth-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Among her many honors, she won the Magda Donato Prize for Las genealogías and received a Rockefeller Grant (1996) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1998).

Glantz demonstrates tremendous versatility as an individual and as a writer in the creative ways in which she blends her multiple cultural, religious and literary affinities. She unabashedly resists classification or categorisation of any kind and therefore identifies herself neither as a Jewish writer nor as a composer of personal narrative, nor as a Sor Juanista, the term used to refer to those scholars who devote themselves to the study of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Belonging to no single one of these groups or schools of thought, she is an enigmatic amalgam of all of them. Glantz’s multiplicity is what makes her unique, and failure to recognize any component of her being would diminish her diversity.

Despite being one of the most iconic figures in Latin American literature, her work is little known in English. Charco Press now bring her work to a new audience with this excellent translation by Ellen Jones.

The Remains was longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2023.

Mother Daughter Relationships

Do We Ever Really Know Our Mother?

Ask Me No Questions, I Tell You No Lies

Existential Beliefs and Nothingness

Further Reading:

Jessica Au, Author

Blurb

Judges’ Verdict

Further Reading

Man’s Need for Ritual

How Language Eviscerates and/or Exposes

Benevolent Bovines and Other Sentient Beings

Ana Paula Maia, Author

Noelle McCarthy, Author

Fiction Prize

Poetry Prize

General Non-Fiction & Illustrated Non-Fiction

Best First Books

A Special Mention

Grandiose Empires and A False Prophet

Orphans, A Merchant, A Promise

Two Rivers Entwine, the Nile

Cycles of Conflict, Khartoum Today

Further Reading

Leila Aboulela, Author

An Immersive Oceanic World

Animals Like Humans Like Animals

Belonging, Finding Home, Community

Natural World Fiction

Further Reading

Laline Paull, Author

To Be or Not to Be

Of Fledglings and Changelings

Brood Parasites

Maternal Instinct & Survival

Guadalupe Nettel, Author

A Symphony of Reluctant Grief

A Different Kind of Garden Party

Bach, Beethoven, Gould & Open Heart Surgery

Margo Glantz, Author (1930- )