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Couver Un Astre by Sophie Fontanel

How to even translate the meaning of this title. Couver means to cover, but that is insufficient to describe what Sophie Fontanel means when she writes ‘Couver un astre’.

While trying to understand the greater meaning, I came across a description that put it like a hen sitting on her eggs, protecting them, brooding, incubating.

A curious way to describe a large balloon don’t you agree? I would have to to read on and find out.

A Ball, A Ballon or An Olympic Cauldron

A large helium balloon floats up into the sky in Paris during the Olympic Games

She was referring to the large twenty-two metre diameter helium-filled balloon that the French designer Mathieu Lehanneur created for the Paris Olympics in July/August 2024. And more specifically, the attachment, adoration and psychological effect this ‘Boule’ had on her and much of the local population, as it sat in the Jardin des Tuileries and every evening rose up skywards and settled there like a full moon, then during the day descended.

It began to gather an almost cult-like following, crowds standing in the street or sitting at their apartment windows, waiting for the moment when the balloon would rise.

With a Huff and a Puff, and an I’m Out of Here

In her slim, contemplative non-fiction work, Sophie Fontanel described her cynicism at the arrival of the Olympic Games into Paris, all the unwanted infrastructure, inconvenience, people and disturbance. So much was she affronted, she left the city the opening ceremony week and went off to a Greek Island with her friends, while another friend, with quite the opposite attitude, quit Bretagne and came to Paris for a month specifically to witness and be a part of the historical moment.

She owns up to exaggerating her anticipated frustrations, but what she isn’t prepared for on her return, is the effect of a giant balloon, seen from the window of her apartment, a balloon that draws crowds as it rises every evening and descends every morning, quietly elevating the ‘joie de vivre’ of those who witness it.

Come Closer, Stand Still, Behold

The book is written during that summer, in sections relating to proximity of observation.

It begins with a series of 8 black and white photos over 4 pages that show the rise and descent of the magnificent creation, followed by:

A Prologue
De loin (From afar)
De près (Up Close)
De plus près (Closer)
De tout près (Up Very Close)
An Epilogue, by Mathieu Lehanneur

There is her contemplation and wonder of it, occasional conversations, both with friends and strangers, various encounters, concluding with that of the inventor/designer himself, who interacts on her social media post and asks his own contemplative question. A kind of invitation to respond, that manifests into an actual invitation to do what he suggests, to get closer and observe from yet another perspective, the magic of this phenomena.

《Et si vous veniez la voir de près? Histoire d’avoir un autre point de vue…》

What was this hypnotic effect of a lustrous balloon that made us not wish to turn away, that made those walking the rue ravioli lift their gaze. Some filmed it …

“Et puis, ils cessaient de le faire. Ce n’est pas que cela ne rendait pas, c’était que rien ne valait l’admiration simple.
De temps en temps, seuls les yeux compte.”
《Eh, c’est à nous, tout ça?》

And then they stopped. Not because it didn’t capture it, it was that nothing beats simple admiration. Sometimes only the eyes can appreciate.

《Hey, this is ours, all this?》

The magic of a gift of a balloon offered to the people. The incomprehension of the gift.

Sharing the Experience, An Invitation

Photo by Mathias Reding on Pexels.com

The author posted a few photos and messages on her Instagram account, having observed the balloon from her window. One day a message appears inviting her to come closer. Intrigued she does and so another wonderful aspect of the book, how sharing reflections and observing beauty and wonder can create connection and community.

I bought this as a gift for a couple of my French friends, who had been somewhat ambivalent about the then approaching season of the Olympics, who were pleasantly surprised by their own reaction when it did finally arrive and in many ways brought out the best in people.

It is a testament to the idea that magic can arrive through creativity and community, that the presence of a balloon can lift spirits, as most children know and many adults have forgotten.

I adored this little book and highly recommend it if you took any pleasure in the summer of 2024 Paris and wished to remember the good feeling it brought about in many.

For the moment it is published in French, hopefully it will get picked up and translated into English.

Sophie Fontanel, Author

Sophie Fontanel is an author and essayist living in Paris. She has been an editor at Elle France for more than a decade. She has written 18 books in the French language.

Mathieu Lehanneur, Designer

“This absolutely unique Cauldron represents all the spirit I wanted to give to the Olympic and Paralympic objects. Light, magical and unifying, it will be a beacon in the night and a sun within reach during the day. The fire that burns in it will be made of light and water, like a cool oasis in the heart of summer. I created the Torch, the Relay cauldron and the Olympic Cauldron as three chapters in the same story. The Cauldron is the epilogue and the ultimate symbol of that story. Light, magical and unifying…” ML

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Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami tr. by Sam Bett & David Boyd

I haven’t read much Japanese literature so when I saw Mieko Kawakami’s novel Breasts and Eggs at a booksale I picked it up, recalling it had caused much interest among readers at the time of its translation into English. It caused a significant reaction in Japan when originally published, a bestseller spurned by traditionalists.

It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIME’s Best 10 Books of 2020 and established the author as something of a feminist icon, exploring the inner lives of women through the ages.

A Woman’s Lot

Japanese literature in translation women navigating life work motherhood societal expectations and desire

Breasts and Eggs is set in two time periods eight years apart and centres around 30 year old woman Natsuko, a writer living in Tokyo and those two themes, Breasts and Eggs; or Appearance and Mothering.

I’m still in the same apartment with the slanted, peeling walls and the same overbearing afternoon sun, surviving off the same minimum wage job, working full time for not a whole lot more than 100,000 yen a month, and still writing and writing, with no idea whether it’s ever going to get me anywhere. My life was like a dusty shelf in an old book store, where every volume was exactly where it had been for ages, the only discernable change being that my body has aged another ten years.

Silence Speaks Volumes

In the first part of the book her sister Makiko comes to visit with her 12 year old daughter Midoriko, who has stopped speaking to her mother. She writes her responses, we read her perspective through a few journal entries, which has become the place where she has conversations she is missing elsewhere.

Unspoken Job Requirements

Makiko is an ageing hostess whose occupation demands certain expectations of looks and she has become obsessed with breast augmentation surgery to the neglect of all else. It has been the topic of conversation with her sister for the last three months. Natsuko realises she doesn’t want her advice, just a sounding board. Their mother died when the girls were teenagers from breast cancer.

…after all these years, at thirty-nine, she still works at a bar five nights a week, living pretty much the same life as our mum. Another single mother, working herself to death.

While her sister goes for a consultation Natsuko spends time with her niece and ponders women’s bodies, pains, expectations, grievances, self-judgments, societal judgments, obsessions. During the visit, the three women confront their issues, desires and frustrations, building to resolution.

When Time Is Running Out and All is On the Table

In Part Two, eight years have passed and now it is Natsuko who arrives at an age of obsession, only her focus is on eggs, or the desire to have a child and the dilemma of not being in a relationship when the age of becoming eggless is in sight.

A Making Children Medical Procedure

She begins to research alternative ways of conceiving, finding ways to learn more and to meet people she might be able to discuss her desire. In doing so she discovers there is more to the subject than just a woman’s desire, there are moral considerations she hasn’t considered, that might affect her decision.

“Neither the medical community, not the parents who undergo this type of treatment, have adequately considered how the children – and this is about the children – will eventually see themselves,” Aizawa said, in summary. “As for donors, most of them haven’t given much thought to these issues, either. For them, it’s something akin to giving blood. Legal reform has a long, long way to go, but recent attention to the child’s right to know had led more and more hospitals to suspend treatment entirely…”

The Child Who Grows Up Not Knowing Shares As an Adult

Her interest leads her to new connections that increase the depth of her understanding and options available to her. By the time she makes her decision, she will be significantly more informed and understand the situation from multiple perspectives.

I thought about what I had said, but couldn’t explain what I meant. What made me want to know this person? What did I think it meant to have me as a mother? Who, or what, exactly, was I expecting? I knew I wasn’t making any sense, but I was doing all I could to string the words together and convey that meeting this person, whoever they may wind up being, was absolutely crucial to me.

It is an interesting, thought-provoking look at the lives of women trying to find fulfillment while navigating the challenges of single motherhood, health, womanhood, reproductive rights and familial relationships in non-nuclear families.

Further Reading

Article: Mieko Kawakami’s books: a complete guide, Naomi Frisby on literary sensation Mieko Kawakami Nov 2024

Guardian Interview: Mieko Kawakami: ‘Women are no longer content to shut up’ David McNeil, 18 Aug 2020

“I try to write from the child’s perspective – how they see the world,” says Kawakami. “Coming to the realisation that you’re alive is such a shock. One day, we’re thrown into life with no warning. And at some point, every one of us will die. It’s very hard to comprehend.”

Author, Mieko Kawakami

Born in Osaka, Japan Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006 and in 2007 published her first novella My Ego, My Teeth, And the World. Heaven, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Known for their poetic qualities, their insights into the female body and their preoccupation with ethics and the modern society, her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Her most recent novel that has been translated into English is All the Lovers in the Night.

Kawakami’s literary awards include the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.

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heart, be at peace by Donal Ryan

It has been 10 years since The Spinning Heart (my review), and in this small town in rural Ireland, County Tipperary, not a lot seems to have changed, or maybe it has. Previously it was economic collapse, lack of employment, toxic masculinity and how the actions of one man affected a community.

In Donal Ryan’s heart, be at peace we meet many of the cast from the past, another 21 voices some years further on, with a new set of troubles affecting the community.

Some are faring rather well financially, but not everyone is happy about the activities they are involved in and their loved ones who might be affected. Suspicion, mistrust, grief, regret prevail and all manner of connections have been formed and remade.

Births, Deaths and Estrangements

One of the most intriguing characters that I could have happily read a novel on and one of the few characters that does stand out was Lily, described as a witch by training and a whore by inclination, estranged from her son, then made up over her granddaughter Millicent who turns up at her door one day.

Having the gift of insight, she can see her granddaughter will find little solace with the boy she’s seeing. When she asks her granny for a spell to bind him always to her for fear of losing him, she knows there will be trouble ahead.

I explained to her again that the spells weren’t real magic, that the power of them was already inside the people who wanted them, the spells just allowed them the use of it, that the magic was in their faith that the magic would work and she screamed at me then, That’s what I want, Granny, that’s what I want, to have faith that he’ll always love me, that he’ll never leave me. I can’t bear the thought of losing him, of some other bitch touching him. He’s MINE, Granny, he’s mine.

A Chorus of Voices

The way the novel is written with short chapters from multiple character viewpoints, we can only discern what happens next to some of those we meet along the way, as we imagine the implications of all that is revealed. It is a novel that might be better understood after multiple readings, as it takes some work to connect and reconnect the different voices. It’s a kind of fly-on-the-wall polyphonic chorus.

In a way, the novel reading experience is like being in the presence of a community but not really knowing them, observing for a while reveals some connections but not others.

Some men can lie with such ease that they quickly begin to believe themselves, and so in a way their lies become truth and their sin is expunged.

21 voices a community in Tipperary follow up to The Spinning Heart

I have a few of Donal Ryan’s novels and I do recall having a little difficulty with his Booker longlisted debut mentioned above, and then absolutely loving All We Shall Know (reviewed here), then not being impressed at all by Strange Flowers. So a bit hit and miss for me, but one I’ll keep reading as he seems to have his finger on the pulse of contemporary community issues.

I enjoyed heart, be at peace and its themes, but it is a novel that is unlikely to stay with me due to the vast cast of character voices that too often became indiscernable for me.

Author, Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan is an award winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary where this latest novel is set. His work has been published in over twenty languages to critical acclaim.

heart, be at peace won Novel of the Year and the Overall Grand Prize of Book of the Year at the An Irish Book Awards in 2024, described by the Irish Times an “absorbing, emphatic story of a community in trouble”

Maria Dickenson, Chair of the Judging Panel, said:

“Heart, Be at Peace was the unanimous choice of the judges from among the fantastic array of titles shortlisted this year. Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society. Weaving twenty one voices together, Ryan portrays the passions, frailties and sorrows of one Irish town with compassion and clarity. Heart, Be at Peace is a masterful achievement and we congratulate Donal warmly on winning this award.”

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Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See

A Girl Born into an Elite Family

15th century China, a girl from an elite family, follows in her grandmother's tradition, as a Doctor of Women's ailments.

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See is historical fiction set in 15th century China.

The story begins in 1469, the fifth year of the Chenghua Emperor’s Reign, when the main protagonist Tan Yunxian, is eight years old.

From the opening passages we see how she is being indoctrinated for the role ahead of her, as her mother who all refer to as Respectful Lady, an honorary title of rank, questions her on the rules she must know by heart.

“You are a little girl, so you are still in milk days. When you turn fifteen, you will enter hair-pinning days. The way we style your hair will announce to the world that you are ready for marriage.

She smiles at me. “Tell me Daughter, what comes next?”

The Year of the Metal Snake

Photo by Zlau.cz on Pexels.com

The story unfolds around two characters of the same age, born under the same sign, in the year of the Metal Snake. Each of the twelve zodiac signs is paired with one of the five elements of Chinese Medicine and in the case of these two girls, it is the Metal snake.

Out of interest, we will enter the Year of the Wood Snake this January 29, 2025.

Of different classes, they are friends as children, one training to become a midwife, like her mother, the other to become a noble, cloistered wife and a doctor like her grandmother.

Respectful Lady asks me to repeat the rules we’ve covered.

“When walking, don’t turn my head,” I recite without protest. “When talking, don’t open my mouth wide. When standing, don’t rustle my skirts. When happy, don’t rejoice with loud laughter. When angry, never raise my voice. I will bury all desire to venture beyond the inner chambers. Those rooms are for women alone.”

The story follows their lives and the precarious events of navigating life under the rule of a mother in law, the intrigues of concubines, the ambitions of those seeking power and the risks of those who stand in their way.

I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the different cases of disharmony and disequilibrium Lady Tan attended to, making her diagnoses according to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, a subject I find endlessly interesting.

A Woman Doctor in 15th Century China

historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China

Lady Tan was inspired by Tan Yunxian, a woman doctor in the Ming Dynasty, who at the age of fifty, was the first to write a book of medical cases about women’s maladies and treatments, an incredible feat given the era in which she lived. Many of the cases in her book have been used by the author, creating fictional lives around the information gleaned from that record.

If you enjoy historical fiction about the lives of women in centuries past, especially those that defy the norms and live remarkable lives, you’ll likely enjoy this. And if like me, you have an interest in traditional medicine philosophies and treatments, then this is a wonderfully insightful and interesting read.

Author, Lisa See

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, The Island of Sea Women (my review here), The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (my review here), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls, China Dolls, and Dreams of Joy. She is known for her deeply researched, lyrical stories about Chinese characters and cultures.

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is not only a captivating story of women helping women, but it is also a triumphant re-imagining of a woman who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable and inspirational today.

She is also the author of On Gold Mountain, which tells the story of her Chinese American family’s settlement in Los Angeles. 

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Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain

A friend gave me this book to read recently and I brought it with me on holiday intending to read it on the plane, which didn’t happen. It is indeed an ideal holiday read, Rose Tremain being one of those reliable authors so adept at storytelling, at drawing you in to a character’s perspective, imagining their predicament.

When we first meet Marianne, it is the 1950’s, she is fifteen, the only child of regular middle class parents from a semi-rural district in southern England and in her prime for falling helplessly in love with the boy who is paying her attention, Simon Hurst. They are both coming to the end of their schooling years, he with great expectations, she with few.

When I was fifteen, I told my mother that I was in love with a boy called Simon Hurst and she said to me, ‘Nobody falls in love at your age, Marianne. What they get are “crushes” on people. You’ve just manufactured a little crush on Simon.’

When Simon fails to meet the expectations of him, his life plan changes and this will impact Marianne. Her parents dismiss her feelings and put it down to a schoolgirl crush, she describes it as being in the Love Asylum. Unable to let go of her ideas about a life with Simon, she flounders for a while, will eventually move on, but the pattern of unrequited love is never far away from her experience.

Photo by Miquel R. Calafell @ Pexels.com

At school studying Romeo and Juliet, she relates to the Juliet character and wishes for a character like Nurse in her life, one who understands what Romeo and Juliet are doing and how they feel, one kinder than her mother who could hold her and soothe her erratic emotions.

I imagined her listening attentively while I confessed to her that my head was so burdened by my obsession with Simon that I was afraid of becoming a total imbecile. And she would stroke my hair and reassure me that this was a perfectly normal state for young people to be in, that we were all inevitably headed for a stay in the Love Asylum, but that in time the spell would be overcome and normal life would resume.

It is an absorbing story of turning points in people’s lives, the different people they meet, how that can change their trajectory, including the presence of those absent and the illusions harboured of lives not lived, not meant to be lived. It is also a thought provoking depiction of the relationships between generations and the expectations of those coming-of-age in the 1960’s England.

Absolutely and Forever was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024.

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Booker Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2024

Today the Booker Prize Judges shared their shortlist of six novels, narrowed down from the 13 novels in the longlist from an original list of 156 novels.

The panel is chaired this year by artist and author Edmund de Waal, joined by award-winning novelist Sara Collins; Fiction Editor of the Guardian, Justine Jordan; world-renowned writer and professor Yiyun Li; and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.  

The Shortlist of Six books below includes five women and authors from five countries including the first Dutch author to be shortlisted, the first Australian in 10 years. Below the description is a brief comment from the judges and the reason they think reader’s will love that book:

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Netherlands) – An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes – and the legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest tragedies.

Set in the Netherlands after the war, a quietly devastating novel of obsession and secrets, in which a relationship between two women in a perfectly ordered Dutch household becomes a story of the Holocaust.

We loved how atmospheric this book is. The austerity of these years is powerfully evoked, the particularity of where each teaspoon and coffee cup belongs is beautifully calibrated. But we adored the dynamic of the relationship between Isabel and Eva, the way they inhabit this charged space, always aware of each other and their bodies. 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey (UK) – Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

This brief yet miraculously expansive novel, set aboard the International Space Station is inflused with such awe and reverence that it reads like an act of worship.

This novel is superbly crafted and lyrically stunning. Sentence after sentence is charged with the kind of revelatory excitement that in a lesser book would be eked out of plot alone.   

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (US) – A woman is caught in the crossfire between the past and the future in this part-spy novel, part-profound treatise on human history.

A thought-provoking novel of ideas, wrapped up in a page-turning spy thriller. Kushner’s prose is juicy, her narrator jaunty, her world-building lush.

Novels that investigate what it is to be human can veer into the sentimental; this one is utterly flinty and hard-nosed. And yet, there’s mystery at its core – both the mystery of human origins and of individual identity. ‘What is it people encounter in their stark and solitary 4am self? What is inside them?’ As with the caves that play such a key part in the book, Kushner taps into something profound.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Australia) – The past comes knocking in this fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and female friendship.

Set in a claustrophobic religious retreat in rural Australia, this is a fierce and philosophical interrogation of history, memory, nature and human existence.

Contemporary issues – climate change and a global pandemic – can sometimes appear as flat concepts or stale ideas in fiction, but Stone Yard Devotional is able to make both topics locally and vividly felt as haunting human stories.  

James by Percival Everett (US) – A profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

A powerful, genre-defying, revisionist exploration of slavery, the indomitable resilience of the human spirit and the pursuit of freedom. It subverts all expectations.

While the book deals with the horrors of slavery, it also examines universal themes of identity, freedom and justice. Everett challenges us to question, and reflect on, the nature of morality, the corrupting influence of power and the indomitable resilience of the human spirit.  

Held by Anne Michaels (Canada) – In a narrative that spans four generations from 1917, moments of connection and consequence ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds.

A lyrical kaleidoscope of a novel created from the scattered images and memories of four generations of a family. Few books could sustain a pitch of poetic intensity.

We loved the quietness of this book: we surrendered to it. The large themes are of the instability of the past and memory, but it works on a cellular level due to the astonishing beauty of the details. Whether it is the mistakes that are knitted into a sweater so that a drowned sailor can be identified, or the rituals of making homecoming pancakes, or what it feels like to be scrutinised as you are painted, the novel makes us pause. 

The Verdict

So I’m surprised and disappointed not to see My Friends by Hisham Matar on the list, I thought it was excellent; it is great to see Percival Everett’s masterpiece James there, I loved it. I have read Orbital and it was okay, though I felt quite detached from it and the characters, while reading.

Of the others, I’m curious enough to read an extract from Stoneyard Devotional, and Held, though the Anne Michaels might be a bit much for me if its anything like her much earlier Fugitive Pieces. I’m not sure about Creation Lake, it’s giving me Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton vibes, so likely not for me. And now I have these two previous Booker Prize winning novels to read, thanks to a lucky book haul at the Vide Grenier in Ansouis Village yesterday.

So what do you think of the shortlist? Any recommendations? Disappointments?

Read An Extract

If you want to check out some of the first chapter of any of these books, you can read an extract here.

The Booker Winner

The announcement of the winner of the Booker Prize 2024 will take place at a ceremony and dinner held at Old Billingsgate in London on Tuesday, 12 November. 

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Ansouis Village Annual Book Sale

Yesterday (Sunday) was the annual ‘vide grenier‘ (garage sale) in the medieval village of Ansouis in the South Luberon area of the region Vaucluse. It’s a village I drive through at least once or twice a week for work. It’s a nice place to stop for a while.

The village has a population of around 1,000 people and is dominated by the fortress like Château d’Ansouis, sitting on a rocky perch overlooking the village and valley all around.

Every year the local French library has a few tables, where they sell second hand books, in both English and French.

It’s my favourite book sale, because it’s set up in this beautiful location, there’s easy parking and it’s always on a sunny day in mid September. If you arrive early, you are guaranteed to be rewarded.

I like to cull the bookshelves every year and donate to this market, and then try not to buy back too many. However this year I arrived just as another woman was depositing her donation and I saw those two Booker Prize winning novels that I haven’t read yet, Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

And then there were more…

In addition to the other impulsive purchases you can see in the image above, I found Northern Irish author Jan Carson’s The Raptures, a signed copy of Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends, Japanese author Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs translated from Japanese and more. Oops. 12 books later…

Often these are books I have seen reviewed and I’m interested in, but not enough to rush out and purchase a copy, however they are the kind of books I would borrow from a library, so I guess this is like an annual library visit. Isn’t it?

I had heard about the Cazalet Chronicles Quintet by British author Elizabeth Jane Howard and couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I saw all four of them sitting in a box waiting to be claimed. Anyone keen for a buddy read?

There are lots of other things that people are selling, old china and glass, cutlery, clothes, old linens, the contents of workshops, old music albums – brocante. A treasure trove of things we don’t need, but definitely fun to look at.

The only other thing I look out for are old postcards, like these of Marseille’s Le Palais Longchamp, the Route de la Corniche and Le Parc Borely, all of which I found in Ansouis a couple of years ago. And all places I connect with and have fond memories of.

Even though they have already been used and written on (many many years ago), I like to give them a second life, sending them as bookmarks, to friends who also know and remember these places.

I didn’t find any today, well, there were some very small but beautiful old black and white photos of Berlin, but I didn’t connect with them in the same way as I do with the southern French locations.

Have you read the Cazalet Chronicles or any others from this haul that you recommend?

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Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes tr. Jill Foulston

Stunning.

I thought The Forbidden Notebook which I read in 2023 was excellent, but this novel is in a category of its own. This is probably the title in 2024 I was looking forward to the most and it exceeded my expectations.

Originally published in Italian in 1949 as Dalla parte de lei, this captivating new English translation by Jill Foulston was published by Pushkin Press in 2024.

Women’s Partisan Struggle in 1930’s -1940’s Italy

Alba de Céspedes (1911-1997) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban novelist, poet and screenwriter who worked as a journalist throughout the 1930’s while also taking an active part in the Italian partisan struggle and was twice jailed for her anti-fascist activities.

After the fall of fascism – Rome, considered the heart of fascism under Mussolini, was liberated in June 1944 and many felt the country had lost its basic values after 20 years of fascist government – Alba de Céspedes founded a literary journal called Mercurio, publishing many great names of Italian literature and politics, as well as Katherine Mansfield, Jean-Paul Satre, Ernest Hemingway.

Due to a lack of funding it would close in 1948, and in its final issue she published an essay by Natalia Ginzburg entitled ‘On Woman’, alongside a letter she was inspired to write in response to it. Certainly, she would have been working on the novel Her Side of The Story, at the time this essay (discussed below), was published.

Women Writing From the ‘Well’

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Ginzburg had written of an affliction unique to women – at a time when they were often confined to the home and not considered equal under the law – that she described as “a continuous falling down a deep dark well“, a terrible melancholy typical of feminine disposition that likely originated from the age-long tradition of subjection and subjugation.

In her open letter, de Céspedes confesses that she also writes from the ‘well’ Ginzburg theorises. Despite that, de Céspedes believed women’s freedom consisted of being able to go down those emotional and psychological wells, which were for her a strength, rather than a curse. ‘Every time we fall down a well’, de Céspedes wrote, ‘we descend to the deepest roots of our being human; when we come back to the surface, we carry such experiences with us that enable us to understand everything men never will — since they never fall into any well’.

In the same issue of Mercurio, de Céspedes published La donna magistrato’ (‘The Woman Magistrate’), an essay by Maria Bassino, one of the most important criminal defense lawyers at the time, addressing women’s rights to become magistrates. In her letter to Ginzburg, de Céspedes explained that those two essays were published together to denounce the injustice done to women when they were tried by magistrates who cannot understand women’s reasons to ‘kill, steal, and commit other humiliating actions’; referring to men who never experienced the depth of wells.

If we are not sure of the depth and character of the mid twentieth century well, then by the time we finish reading Her Side of The Story, we most certainly have a greater understanding of it.

The Review: Her Side of the Story

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An expansive coming of age tale of love and resistance, this feminist, social novel explores a young woman’s attempt to break free from society’s expectations and live life on her own terms. Amid great storytelling, it is a fearless condemnation of patriarchy and rejection of fascist ideals in a society on the cusp of witnessing social change for women.

Alessandra grows up in a bustling apartment block in 1930’s Rome with a shared courtyard, where everyone knows everyone, spending most of her time alone in the apartment in the care of Sista, while her father is at his office and her mother is out teaching piano lessons. She adores her quiet, delicate mother, who keeps to herself and treats her daughter like a friend, while despising a father she believes doesn’t deserve an elegant, cultured woman like her mother.

The women felt at ease in the courtyard, with the familiarity that unites people in a boarding school or a prison. That sort of confidence, however, sprang not so much from living under a common roof as from shared knowledge of the harsh lives they lived: though unaware of it, they felt bound by an affectionate tolerance born of difficulty, deprivation, and habit. Away from the male gaze, they were able to demonstrate who they really were, with no need to play out some tedious farce.

Alessandra looks back and recounts her childhood, adolescence and marriage, describing her experience of them all, her inner world view and how it was shaped by what she observed happening around her, everything she thought and how she responded to it all.

Though she spends much time alone, she rarely keeps her thoughts to herself, allowing the deepest parts of herself to be exposed, challenging what she does not agree with, determined to take charge of her life and live it according to her own desire, against convention.

A Rare and Faultless Admiration of Mother

The first section is focused on the mother-daughter relationship, on Alessandra’s blind faith in everything her mother is and does, including her obsession with the Pierce family, their friendship with Lydia and her daughter Fulvia upstairs and sessions with the medium Ottavia who visits the apartment block on Fridays. Invited to play at a private concert with the Pierce son Hervey joining on violin, the celebratory event witnessed by her husband, becomes a turning point.

The depictions of life in the apartments, the details of the women’s lives, the absent husbands, the affairs, the way daughter’s follow mother’s examples, the witnessing of each other’s lives, the door porter who sees and knows all, the desire for privacy and impossibility of it are all brilliantly depicted. Alessandra’s mother is a romantic with dignity, she is not interested in an affair, but is vulnerable to kind attention.

After a near expulsion from school for hitting a boy for his psychological cruelty towards another girl, she confesses what happened to her mother and worries about her father’s response.

“We can’t tell him everything. Men don’t understand these things Sandi. They don’t weigh every word or gesture; they look for concrete facts. And women are always in the wrong when they come up against concrete facts. It’s not their fault. We’re on two different planets; and each one rotates on its own axis – inevitably. There are a few brief encounters – seconds, perhaps – after which each person returns to shut him- or herself away in solitude.”

Alessandra spends a lot of time reflecting, examining the depths of her thoughts, actions and observations and how they may have come about. From her parents certainly, but she recognises something restless in herself, that seeks retribution.

I could reproach her for having subjected me to that climate of perpetual exaltation, which, above all, made me completely devoted to the myth of the Great Love and thus unintentionally led to the painful situation I find myself in today. I could reproach her, perhaps, if she hadn’t already paid for her ambitions. And now that I am forced to write about her and look into the most intimate and dramatic moments of our life together, it’s not really to accuse her of having made me what I am but to explain those of my actions which would otherwise be clear only to me.

Allesandra, sono io, I am Alessandra

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It is Sandi’s story but it is also the story of many ordinary lives of girls and women, growing up in discordant families, with the weight of expectations, the allure and (false) promise of love, the desire to be educated, to participate in something greater than ‘the home‘, to be heard, respected and taken seriously.

“…Alba de Céspedes intended to act as the defender of women. Like Flaubert, she could say of her protagonist: Alessandra, sono io, I am Alessandra.

Rural Idealism Enforced by The Matriarch

In the second section, Alessandra is sent to live on a farm with her paternal grandmother Nonna, a grand matriarch of a traditional, religious family who surround her with examples of duties expected of her and demonstrate how they will act to facilitate them. She enjoys the natural environment and complies to a certain point, but insists on her right to further her studies, rejecting the suggestion of a well aligned matrimony.

Though this section was originally cut from the first English translation (1952) of the novel, it is restored here. The rural setting represents tradition and a connection to the land, the roots of family, hard work and lineage. Mussolini’s regime focused on rural regions to uphold goals of self-sufficiency, free Italy from “the slavery of foreign bread” and control the agricultural sector. Propaganda praised this lifestyle, much of it targeted at women and upheld by women. Nonna exemplifies and encourages the virtues of sacrifice for the greater good and giving up one’s selfish desires.

Bewildered, I observed these grave, taciturn people who had been strangers to me a few hours before, but who now embraced me within a mechanism so robust I sensed it could easily overwhelm a person.

War breaks out, she returns to Rome, to her studies, to employment, to living again with her father and meeting Francesco, the man she would truly love and believe she could have a different kind of life with. And it might be said that that is where her troubles really begin.

Love, Marriage, War – the struggle

There is so much that could be said about Alessandra’s wartime and matrimonial experience, that is better left for the reader to discover.

There is no stone left unturned in her dissection of the relationship she has with the older anti-fascist Professor, a charismatic man with a sense of justice who stands up for his beliefs, the only man she will ever truly love and her attempts to talk to him about the things that unsettle her, that she feels could be easily resolved, if only he took the time to listen. Once married, he is barely aware of or able to respond to her feelings, while she continues to try to make him understand, slowly unravelling in her persistent attempt.

The most misleading virtue of marriage is the ease with which one forgets, in the morning, everything that happened the night before. Encouraged by the clear colour of the sun’s first rays and the energy and rhythm of everyday gestures, I was always the first to turn back towards Francesco.

The novel tracks the attempt to rise above expectation and the subsequent decline into acceptance, focusing on the effect of this repression, the mental deterioration of generations of women for whom the burden of that ordinary life, of a woman’s limited lot, and the inaccessibility of how (here) she imagines it might have been, become too much to bear. She wants the reader to understand this very well, effectively making you live it alongside her.

Intense, compelling and set against that backdrop of wartime Rome and Italy coming out of a long repressed fascist era, I found it utterly riveting. Her Side of the Story is a powerful, intimate and insightful exploration of the female psyche, of the desire to be, and do, more than meet long outdated representations of women in families, society and relationships. Unputdownable, one of the best of 2024 for sure. Fans of Natalia Ginzburg and Elena Ferrante will likely enjoy this. Expect to feel unsettled.

There’s No Turning Back

Delighted to learn that her debut novel There’s No Turning Back translated by Ann Goldstein will be published in February 2025.

Highly Recommended.

Further Reading

Natalia Ginzburg’s essay ‘Discorso sulle donne’ ‘On Women’ translated by Nicoletta Asciuto, The Fortnightly Review

Jacqui’s Review at JaquiWine’s Journal, April 2024

Chicago Review of Books: The Prescience of Alba De Céspedes’s “Her Side of The Story” by Margarita Diaz November 24, 2023

Author, Alba de Céspedes

Feminism Journal writing Womens Rights Italian Literature

Alba de Céspedes (1911-97) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban novelist, poet and screenwriter.

The granddaughter of the first President of Cuba, de Céspedes was raised in Rome. Married at 15 and a mother by 16, she began her writing career after her divorce at the age of 20. She worked as a journalist throughout the 1930s while also taking an active part in the Italian partisan struggle, and was twice jailed for her anti-fascist activities. After the fall of fascism, she founded the literary journal Mercurio and went on to become one of Italy’s most successful and most widely translated authors.

After the war, she accompanied her husband, a diplomat to the United States and the Soviet Union. She would later move to Paris, where she would publish her last two books in French and where she spent the rest of her life. She died in 1997.

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The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel

In the last two weeks of August, I was on holiday in St-Cyr-sur-Mer and during this time there was a lot of swapping of books. This is one of two works of historical fiction I read.

1940s couple walking arm in arm towards stairs flanked by pillars, green foliage surrounds

I started with this one out of interest because it was set in the Champagne region of France, which I had visited in October 2023.

It was interesting to imagine this story set during the lead up to World War II, perhaps not surprising to learn that the area was occupied for four long years and equally understanding that many of the vintners were able to keep their best vintages hidden in the array of underground tunnels behind false walls.

The Winemaker’s Wife is a dual narrative historical fiction novel, set in the champagne town of Rians, France, in 1940 and in 2018 New York City, Paris and Rians.

The plot concerns the unravelling of a family mystery, with secrets, lies, cover-ups, betrayals, and goings on in the network of tunnels beneath the chateau champagne house, Maison Chauveau.

1940 Champagne Region of Rians, France

Inès has just married Michel, the owner of the champagne house, when the Germans invade. She has tried to make herself useful, but doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression. Assisting them are Céline and Theo Laurent, the chef de cave.

Céline was quiet and serious, always tromping around with a frown on her face, while Inès did her best to look on the bright side.

When Inès has had enough, she visits her friend Edith and her husband Edouard at the Brasserie Moulin, but it’s not always safe there and in her naivete, she makes a fatal mistake that is going to affect all of them.

The two couples try to continue to run the winemaking business but the invaders have a taste for more than just champagne. Despite the danger surrounding them, they seem to be inviting trouble, when they make things even more riskier for themselves. And that doesn’t include resistance activities which are even more reason to not bring attention to themselves.

New York to Paris, A Grandmother in her Centennial Year

Meanwhile, in 2019 New York, elusive 99 year old French grandmother Edith turns up unannounced to take her niece Liv on a trip to Paris and Rians and is hiding the reason for going there.

As she gets closer to understanding why they are there, it seems all roads lead to Maison Chauveau and there might even be a love interest for the recently heart broken young woman.

I have to say I questioned the grandmother’s motives given her age. It seemed strange to me that she had waited until her 99th year before taking such a trip, as good as admitting she had intended to take her secrets to the grave. I did not trust her – and with good reason, it turns out.

Imagined History versus Real History

Though it was often difficult for me to believe in the characters and the narrative, having just read the true historical account of Marie Madeleine Fourcade in Madame Fourcade’s Secret War by Lynne Olson, I would recommend The Winemaker’s Wife as a light holiday read for those who enjoy historical fiction, champagne and visiting France.

Extra pics from a stroll down Avenue de Chapagne, where there are many champagne houses like the one above and a visit to the underground champagne storage tunnels of Möet & Chandon in Épernay, October 2023. They’re incredible and worth a visit, an underground labyrinth.

Read more about Champagne Hillsides, Houses, and Cellars here.

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The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez is part of the Charco Bundle 2024 Untranslated series. Most of the Charco books are works of Latin American origin translated into English.

Julia Alvarez was born in New York City, the second of four daughters. Moving back to the Dominican Republic shortly after her birth, her family were forced to flee ten years later due to her father’s involvement in an underground movement to overthrow the oppressive dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who maintained control of the country for 31 years.

Reading The Cemetery of Untold Stories very quickly pulled me in and gave me the feeling I would often encounter when reading works by other woman writers from the Caribbean, like Maryse Condé’s Victoire: My Mother’s Mother, Simone Schwartz-Bart‘s The Bridge of Beyond, Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban.

There is something unique to their storytelling that expands beyond our known reality, that embraces the imagination, allowing it a glimpse of another dimension of perceiving that is good hearted, that exists to open minds, bring awareness and healing.

We know we are going there, because the opening chapter entitled Let’s go to Alfa Calenda is a version of that place.

Half the time Papi didn’t even know where he was. What was the harm in pretending? We’re going to Alfa Calenda, they told him as they packed up his belongings, put the house on the market, and boarded the Jet Blue flight to JFK. Just the mention of that fantasy place he’d invented with his mother seemed to soothe him. His personal Shrangri -la-la land, his daughters had dubbed it.

Alma is a writer at a turning point in her life/career. She and her three sisters live in the US and their lives have converged after the recent deaths of both parents in short succession. When their father dies, they discover that he owned many small properties in the Dominican Republic. Unable to find a fair way to apportion them, they decide to draw lots (a mediator’s suggestion), Alma draws the first lot and chooses a wasteland near a dump, on the outskirts of a barrio, then withdraws from the selection process. Closing in on her own latter years, she decides to return to her native land and bury her unfinished stories.

Should Alma follow in her parents’ footsteps, she’d be much better off in her native land. Even if it wasn’t first rate in terms of social services, that world had been her first world: her senses, her body’s rhythms, her psyche were all steeped in it. The weather, the smells, the sound of Spanish, gestures understood without explanation. Life was also cheaper there.

Alma is going to put her stories to rest, stories she has abandoned, failed to bring to life. This new development has given her a project, crazy as it sounds to her sisters. She needs a collaborator and remembers her friend Brava, she won’t judge her new ambition.

Like her art, Brava’s personality was larger than life, a fireball throwing off sparks. None of the anguished and torturous revisions and self-doubts that beseiged Alma.

They will build a cemetery for characters of Alma’s untold stories, a gallery to Brava’s art.

Alma is a curiosity to the residents of the barrio, all kinds of rumours circulate when the bulldozers arrive.

A sign goes up on the wall at the main gate. EL CEMENTERIO DE LOS CUENTOS NUNCA CONTADOS. A cemetery for untold stories. The only way to enter is to speak into a small black box at the front gate. Cuéntame, a woman’s soft voice requests. Tell me a story. Only then does the door open, or not.

Photo M. van Duijnen Pexels.com

As she builds her cemetery and buries her boxes of manuscripts, different members of the community enter her life through their own stories and the neglected buried characters begin to reveal more about theirs, defying the author and rewriting their fates. Her helpers don’t always follow her instructions.

Alma pulls Brava aside. What’s going on?

El Baron is the boss of cemeteries, Brava explains. The deity who allows passage between the worlds. The first tomb always belongs to him.

The stories reveal themselves, as do the characters who enter the cemetery, looping in on themselves and making what might have been judged, better understood. It asks the question of whose stories get to be told by who, to whom and which stories are better buried.

It is also about listening, imagining, seeing differently, knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet. It is a quiet celebration of stories, storytelling and the inspiration behind characters who might not always have had a voice.

Did these things really happen?

That isn’t the point, Pepito explains. These stories are about real passions in people’s hearts. They tell of all that is possible.

Julia Alvarez is a long accomplished author and while clearly this is a work of fiction, it often made me wonder about aspects of her own life, as it felt as if it dipped in and out of the familiar, (a successful Dominican Republican writer in the latter years of her career) while carrying a warning about a writer’s obsession to complete the unfinished.

I loved this novel and I am very happy to have encountered Alvarez for the first time, knowing there is a promising backlist to explore. It is always a pleasure to discover another of those unique voices with connections to that Caribbean storytelling culture that I so adore. Incredibly, though her 7th novel, it is her first to be published in the UK. It feels wrong to be starting at the end, but it also is a novel that begs to be reread, to be even more deeply understood.

Have you read any of Julia Alvarez’s works? If so, tell us your favourite in the comments below.

Further Reading

New York Times Review: A Novelist Comes Home to Bury Her Words, and Brings Them Back to Life, by Luis Alberto Urrea, April 2024

Interview: Following the screening of Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined, by Mikaela Lefrak, 6 Sept 2024

Documentary: American Masters (PBS) Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined (Premiere 17 Sept, 2024)

Author, Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez has written many bestselling novels including: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) (considered her masterpiece), ¡Yo! (1997), In the Name of Salomé (2000), and Afterlife. She has also written collections of poems, three works of non-fiction, and numerous books for young readers. The Cemetery of Untold Stories is her most recent novel. She is currently assembling “Visitations,” a collection of poems, to be published in 2025.

The immigrant experience and bicultural identity is the subject of much of Alvarez’s fiction and poetry. Her awards and recognitions include the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards for her books for young readers, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.

Filmed in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic, Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined features extensive interviews with Alvarez, her family, and her literary contemporaries.

“Eventually, storied and unstoried join in mystery. Nothing holds anyone together except imagination.”