Tag: book review

#InternationalBooker2023: Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov (tr. Reuben Woolley)

17th April 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’ve read Andrey Kurkov twice before, and have come to expect his novels to be larger than life, slightly to one side of reality. Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is no exception. It begins with a group of hippies who meet at a certain cemetery in Lviv each year on the anniversary of Hendrix’s death, because his hand is said to be buried there. This time (2011), a former KGB officer joins the group, and teams up with one of the hippies to investigate some mysterious local phenomena. 

We also meet a cab driver whose particular speciality is driving in a way that helps dislodge his passengers’ kidney stones. He’s in love with a girl who is allergic to money but works in a bureau du change… Yes, that sounds like a Kurkov novel to me. 

Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv was originally published in 2012, and reading it now, it does feel a bit like something from a more light-hearted time. Nevertheless, it’s enjoyable to spend time with these characters and see their world – which, after all, is just what I’d expect from Kurkov. 

Published by MacLehose Press.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2023: While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer (tr. Katy Derbyshire)

14th April 2023 / / 1 Comment

While We Were Dreaming was Clemens Meyer’s debut novel, published in German in 2007. A review quoted on the back cover describes it as “a book like a fist”, and that force is apparent in the reading. This novel doesn’t let go.

Daniel and his friends are young teenagers in Leipzig when the Berlin Wall falls. The country reconfigures around them, but for the boys, life goes on in pretty much the same way: a carousel of violence, drinking, sex and skirmishes with the police, leading to spells inside.

The novel chronicles a time of dreams for its young characters, but those dreams don’t necessarily come true. As Daniel reflects:

Every day the memories dance in my head and I torment myself asking why it all turned out the way it did. Sure, we had a whole lot of fun back then, but still there was a kind of lostness in us, in everything we did, a feeling I can’t explain.

Translation from German by Katy Derbyshire

While We Were Dreaming is structured out of chronological order, which has the effect of underlining how hard it is for Meyer’s characters to escape their situation, because there isn’t a clear sense of forward progression. Nonetheless, there are moments of hope, amid the book’s constant swirl.

Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2023: Boulder by Eva Baltasar (tr. Julia Sanches)

11th April 2023 / / 1 Comment

Another new language for the International Booker: this is the first nominee translated from Catalan. It’s short and intense, which are both things I like. Baltasar’s narrator is an itinerant cook. She’s not one for settling down, and pours her energy into her work.

Things change when she finds on a merchant ship and meets Samsa, a geologist who nicknames her Boulder. Samsa gets a job in Iceland and the pair’s relationship moves beyond the physical. But Samsa is looking for the kind of orderly life which is ultimately anathema to the narrator. Then Samsa announces that she wants to have a baby, subsequently giving birth to Tinna. At each stage, Boulder finds herself considering what she really wants and how to relate to Samsa (and Tinna).

Baltasar’s novel is dense with imagery, which brings you close to the narrator:

My hands are knives, basting brushes, squeezers. I use them to manipulate food and also plunge them inside my head, where they braise the desire that occupies and perishes me. Desire cannot be killed, it can only be fermented and rocked to sleep. I cook to save myself. I cook ceaselessly. Tinna’s laughter mixes like foam into peaks of sugar and egg whites. She plays hide-and-seek and shrieks with excitement when Samsa pretends that she can’t find her and calls me over. Her voice trickles along the kitchen living-room floors, like a vinegar that can bleach me and break me up.

Translation from Catalan by Julia Sanches

Boulder finds her way in time, though it may not be quite where she anticipated. To be with her on the journey is quite something.

Published by And Other Stories.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2023: The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier (tr. Daniel Levin Becker)

30th March 2023 / / 1 Comment

Well, this turned out to be quite a page-turner. From one angle, that’s not so surprising, as there’s plenty of suspense in the set-up. In rural France, artist Christine has been receiving threatening letters. Her neighbour Patrice is getting ready to celebrate his wife Marion’s fortieth birthday. But some mysterious figures are watching, waiting to intrude on the party. 

In other ways, The Birthday Party might seem the opposite of a page-turner, because it’s slowly paced and densely written. For example, here is Patrice trying not to contemplate that Marion may be unhappy in their relationship:

…he doesn’t think to himself that his wife goes out of her way to come home late, as though trying to avoid the moment where it’s the three of them together, no, he pushes away this thought that sometimes tries to force its way past the barrier he’s built up against it, a fraction of a second every night, sometimes more than a second, a few seconds, then, when the thought gets loose and spreads across his mind, but each time he rejects this bad, this acid idea that would have Marion go out of her way to come home as late as possible, no, that’s not true…

translation from french by daniel levin becker

I love the rhythm of this writing, a fine translation. Mauvignier’s prose combines this constant flow of interiority with sudden interruptions of action, and this technique is what makes the novel so propulsive for me. There are secrets and turns throughout, right up to the end – and we’re kept so close to the characters, too. 

Book published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2023: Pyre by Perumal Murugan (tr. Aniruddhan Vasudevan)

28th March 2023 / / 1 Comment

Now I’m moving on to the first novel translated from Tamil to receive an International Booker nod. The last book of Perumal Murugan’s that I read was the fable-like The Story of a Goat. Pyre takes more of a realist tone, yet still has heightened aspects of its own. 

The novel begins with a couple, Saroja and Kumaresan, getting off the bus:

Beyond the tamarind trees that lined the road, all they could see were vast expanses of arid land. There were no houses anywhere in sight. With each searing gust of wind, the white summer heat spread over everything as if white saris had been flung across the sky. There was not a soul on the road. Even the birds were silent. Just an action dryness, singed by the heat, hung in the air. Saroja hesitated to venture into that inhospitable space.

translation from tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan

Straight away, we have a vivid sense of place, and the feeling that all is not going to be well. Saroja and Kumaresan met and fell in love in her home town, where Kumaresan had gone for work. Now married, they have come to live in his village. The problem is, they are of different castes. 

Whenever anyone asks about Saroja’s caste, Kumaresan tries to deflect attention by saying she’s of the same caste as him and everyone else in the village. But this is not enough: questions and gossip persist, and haunt the narrative. Murugan never actually specifies whether Saroja is of a higher or lower caste, which is one of the little touches that, for me, contributes to a heightened atmosphere. Murugan builds up the tension over where this will go, to a striking ending. 

Book published by Pushkin Press.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2023: Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth (tr. Charlotte Barslund)

23rd March 2023 / / 2 Comments

My next stop on this year’s International Booker journey is Norway, where we meet Johanna. She’s estranged from her family, having left behind them and their plans for her legal career, to make a life as an artist in the US. They didn’t invite her to her father’s funeral, and she didn’t think of going. Now on the verge of sixty, Johanna has returned to Oslo after almost thirty years, for a retrospective of her work. 

Johanna’s thoughts frequently turn to her remaining family: her mother and her sister Ruth. She’s tried calling them, with no answer. Johanna doesn’t even know if her mother is alive, and speculates intensely over what life might be like for her now, what she might be thinking:

Perhaps Mum gets upset merely on hearing my name and so everyone around her avoids saying it. Perhaps Mum feels uneasy every time she hears the name even if it’s just some random Johanna, a skier or a newsreader, the name is mentioned and Mum shudders, Mum is lucky that not many people are called Johanna. Perhaps Mum has succeeded in suppressing unpleasant thoughts about me in her everyday life – she has years of practice – that but then it pops up in a random interviewee on the television whose name is Johanna…

translation from norwegian by Charlotte barslund

That repetition, the rhythm of the translation, all underline Johanna’s level of preoccupation. She has found out her mother’s address, and towards the start of the novel I wanted to say to her: just go there and make contact – whatever has happened, it’s surely better to face it than stay in this cycle of speculation.

Well, that was before Johanna started lurking in her car outside her mother’s home. She finds out that her mother is indeed alive, but doesn’t stop wondering about her. Then, without ever changing the essential tone of the narration, Hjorth transforms our perception of Johanna from a somewhat sympathetic character to one who really isn’t. We start to see why Johanna’s family might want nothing to do with her. 

As a character study, I found Is Mother Dead powerful stuff. It’s also an examination of familial relations at a high pitch. Hjorth’s novel has set the standard for the rest of the International Booker longlist, as far as I’m concerned. 

Book published by Verso Books.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2023: The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé (tr. Richard Philcox)

21st March 2023 / / 1 Comment

At 86, Guadeloupe-born Maryse Condé is the oldest author ever to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize. She says The Gospel According to the New World will be her last book, though it’s my first time reading her. I did wonder whether I was missing out somewhat in terms of not knowing about the themes and concerns across her work that led to this point, but I enjoyed my time with this book nonetheless. 

Condé’s protagonist is Pascal, who is born in Martinique to a woman named Maya. Burdened by dreams that say her son will change the world, Maya abandons him at Easter, leaving him at the home of a couple who own a nursery (for plants) called the Garden of Eden. 

Pascal’s life is then a parody of the gospels. He heads off in search of his origins , with rumours following him that he might be a new son of God. There are disciples, not-so-miraculous miracles, even a strange figure who might be an angel. 

With everything he sees going on, Pascal begins to wonder: if he is to be a messiah, what is he “expected to do with this world streaked with bomb attacks and scarred with violence?” Then again, maybe the mantle of saviour doesn’t suit him anyway. Pascal’s story is told in a storyteller’s voice, the translation capturing that sense of truth in imagination. 

Published by World Editions.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2023 International Booker Prize.

Dylan Thomas Prize: Losing the Plot by Derek Owusu

14th March 2023 / / 0 Comments

Today I’m joining the blog tour for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, which is awarded to writers in English who are aged under forty. This post looks at one of the longlisted titles, Losing the Plot, the second novel by Derek Owusu. 

Losing the Plot is inspired by the journey of Owusu’s mother from Ghana to the UK. We get a sense of the impetus for this book from its epilogue, in which the narrator Kwesi conducts a “factless interview” with his mother – factless because she’s reluctant to answer his questions about her life in any sort of detail. 

This means that Kwesi has to stretch his imagination in writing about his mother, leading to an account that’s fragmented and impressionistic, shifting between prose and poetry. Through this, there is a keen sense of the displacement felt by Kwesi’s mother. For instance:

She lifts her head, towel for tresses, watches as snakes of steam dance and fight to rise and fall, 

condensing, dripping, drops dying and spreading, 

reminding her tears cling to the face to live a little longer. 

She brushes her teeth out of time with her reflection, 

watches suds touch the porcelain prefering the scrub and ease of a chewing stick.

One striking aspect of Losing the Plot is its use of marginal notes. The mother’s account includes words and phrases in Twi, which come with their own sidenotes. Rather than provide a direct translation, Kwesi uses these notes to give his own observations. For example, one note begins like this:

Honestly, certain insults can’t even be translated and put into context that makes sense, you just have to feel the vim of the insult and know it’s devastating and it’s all gonna end with a scrap. Bro, I know this because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. She’s bare small so I didn’t even clock she can fight. 

So, it seems the sidenotes are there not so much to open a door for the reader, as to help Kwesi bring himself closer to the story he’s trying to tell. In reading Losing the Plot, we are confronted by the limits of what we can and can’t know about another person’s life. It also becomes clear that there is an urgent reason for this story to be told, and together these help give Owusu’s novel its power. 

Book published by Canongate. The shortlist for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize will be announced on 23 March, with the winner to follow on 11 May.

Holland House Books: Singapore by Eva Aldea

7th March 2023 / / 1 Comment

The (unnamed) narrator of Eva Aldea’s debut novel admires her greyhounds while they’re chasing after squirrels:

…it is the flutter of a furry tail above the grass that sets them off, from still to leaping in no time at all, paws thundering like hooves on the ground – she loves that sound, feels it in her chest through her own feet. She loves the sight of their bodies in flight, the double suspension rotary gallop, only sighthounds and cheetahs hunt by this fastest and most explosive of gaits, where the body is in touch with the ground only a quarter of the time. The rest is spent flying.

In this opening scene, one of the dogs has got lucky, and the woman has to put the squirrel out of its misery. This is a gruesome little episode that doesn’t fit neatly into the woman’s life as a university lecturer. It sets the tone for a novel that explores what darkness might lurk beneath the everyday. 

In the main part of the novel, the woman’s banker husband has moved them from London to Singapore. At first, it seems as though life there will be idyllic, but the shortcomings soon become apparent. It’s too hot even for the dogs to enjoy their walks, and the narrator is disconcerted by the distorting effects of globalisation (such as coffee grown nearby, sent halfway across the world to be packaged, then back to Singapore). 

The woman essentially ends up as an affluent expat housewife, which is tedious and puts her high up in a hierarchy where she doesn’t want to be. These frustrations lead her to give free rein to her darkest thoughts, and it’s written in a way that blurs the line between reality and imagination. This is what makes Singapore such a striking debut. 

Published by Holland House Books.

Republic of Consciousness Prize 2023: The Last One by Fatima Daas (tr. Lara Vergnaud)

16th February 2023 / / 0 Comments

Who is Fatima Daas? Both a pseudonym and the main character of this novel. Fatima-of-the-novel is the ‘last one’ in her family, the only one born in France rather than Algeria, the third daughter her parents may not even have wanted.

I started with that question because the whole book represents Fatima’s reckoning with her self, the different parts of her identity. All of the chapters bar one begin with a declaration of her name and go on to depict an aspect of her experience, in writing that often echoes the rhythms of a prayer:

My name is Fatima.

I seek stability. 

Because it’s hard to always be on the outside looking in, looking at people, never with them, your life passing you by, everything passing you by.

Translation from french by lara vergnaud

Within the pages of this book, we see Fatima as a daughter who feels she doesn’t belong in her mother’s kitchen; as a people-watcher on the train from the suburbs into Paris; as someone who lives with asthma. She’s a lesbian and a Muslim, and is searching for a way to reconcile the two. She enjoys the experience of visiting her family in Algeria, but still ultimately feels like a tourist. 

All these different aspects of Fatima’s life jostle together in The Last One. By the end, there’s a sense that she is on the way to working things through and finding a place for herself. 

Published by HopeRoad.

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