Adventures in reading
I have a short review up at European Literature Network of Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė’s Breathing into Marble. It’s a dark family drama, and the first title published by Noir Press, which specialises in contemporary Lithuanian fiction. I won’t say much more, except that the book is warmly recommended.
Book details
Breathing into Marble (2006) by Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė, tr. Marija Marcinkute (2016), Noir Press, 192 pages, paperback (review copy)
I haven’t been posting links to my external reviews lately, so here’s a round-up of the most recent four: all books that are worth your time.
The Winterlings by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade (tr. Samuel Rutter). Twenty-five years after being evacuated to England, two sisters return to the Galician parish of their childhood. The place is otherworldly to them, but they also have a glamour of their own – and so mystery encroaches on the reader from all sides. Reviewed for European Literature Network.
Beast by Paul Kingsnorth. Second part of the thematic trilogy that began with The Wake. This volume is set in the present day, and focuses on an Englishman in search of his place in the landscape. A strange creature haunts the corner of his eye, and his language grows more primal as he heads further into hallucination. Reviewed for Shiny New Books.
The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome by Serge Brussolo (tr. Edward Gauvin). A tantalising slice of weirdness set in a reality where art is retrieved from the depths of dreams. One man believes that the dream realm has its own objective existence – and he’ll risk his very self to prove it. Reviewed for Strange Horizons.
The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler (tr. Charlotte Collins). A new novel in English from the author of A Whole Life. The tale of a young man who becomes a tobacconist’s apprentice in 1930s Vienna and strikes up a friendship with Sigmund Freud. Love begins to stir, just as the shadow of the Nazis grows. Reviewed for European Literature Network.
I’ve reviewed a Serbian novel for Euro Lit Network this month: Jovanka Živanović’s Fragile Travelers, translated by Jovanka Kalaba and published by Dalkey Archive. It is the story of a man who disappears from the real world and finds himself lost in the dreams of a woman he knows. There’s an interesting mix of twisting sentences, absurd imagery, and a sense of the characters’ disconnection from the world. Find out more by reading my review.
Book details (publisher link)
Fragile Travelers (2008) by Jovanka Živanović, tr. Jovanka Kalaba (2016), Dalkey Archive Press paperback
I have a new review up at the European Literature Network this month: Andrey Kurkov’s The Bickford Fuse (translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk). It’s a journey through an absurd, askew version of the USSR under Khrushchev. We follow a shipwrecked sailor as he wanders the land through a series of strange encounters, all the while trailing the safety fuse with which he could blow it all up.
I enjoyed The Bickford Fuse, and the way it creates its own little world. Read my review to find out more.
Book details (Foyles affiliate link)
The Bickford Fuse (2009) by Andrey Kurkov, tr. Boris Dralyuk (2016), MacLehose Press paperback
This week, I made my debut as a reviewer for the European Literature Network website. The book I’m reviewing is Maylis de Kerangal’s second novel to appear in English, Mend the Living (translated from the French by Jessica Moore; the US market has a different translation, Sam Taylor’s The Heart).
I could tell you that Mend the Living is the story of a heart transplant, and that would be true; but it wouldn’t prepare you for the extraordinary, kaleidoscopic sentences:
What it is, Simon Limbeau’s heart, this human heart, from the moment of birth when its cadence accelerated while other hearts outside were accelerating too, hailing the event, no one really knows; what it is, this heart, what has made it leap, swell, sicken, waltz light as a feather or weigh heavy as a stone, what has stunned it, what has made it melt – love; what it is, Simon Limbeau’s heart, what it has filtered, recorded, archived, black box of a twenty-year-old body – only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo it, could show the joy that dilates and the sorrow that constricts…
Already in this opening fragment, the line between the medical and emotional meanings of the human heart is being blurred, and so Mend the Living continues. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find this novel in contention for the Man Booker International Prize; read my review to find out why.
Now read on…
Stu has a good review of Mend the Living at Winstonsdad’s Blog; and there’s an interesting conversation between de Kerangal and Moore over at BOMB Magazine.
Book details (Foyles affiliate link)
Mend the Living (2014) by Maylis de Kerangal, tr. Jessica Moore (2016), MacLehose Press paperback
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