Two Months of Reading – April & May 2023

I somehow missed posting about my April reading mostly due to lack of time as we were busy getting ready for our holiday to the Czech Republic. Now since it’s the end of May, it made sense to combine my reading of both months in one post and I’m glad to have read some excellent books. Italy was a dominant theme as four of the eight books are set in the country during and after the Second World War. Four are translated works of literature (written by women) – two Italian, one Catalan, and one Turkish. All eight books are great, but if I had to pick favourites, it would be Céspedes and Ginzburg.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the eight books…You can read the detailed reviews on the first six by clicking on the title links.

THE STONE ANGEL by Margaret Laurence

Set in the fictional region of Manawaka modeled on the province of Manitoba where Margaret Laurence grew up, The Stone Angel is a brilliant, poignant tale of loss, heartbreak, and old age with a fiery, unforgettable female character at its core.

We meet Hagar Shipley, the protagonist and narrator of this Canadian classic, who when the book opens is an old woman in her nineties staying with her eldest son Marvin and his wife Doris, who are in their sixties. Even at that age, Hagar still has her wits about her, and yet there are unmistakable signs that her health is failing, a fact that she is too proud to acknowledge. With the burden of caregiving proving to be quite onerous at least for Doris, they outline plans of shifting Hagar to an old age home where she can receive all the care she needs and it is this intention that ultimately unsettles Hagar. She rebels, both outwardly and inwardly, and makes one last attempt to fight for her independence, relying on her resourcefulness that has helped her move forward in a life that has only doled out disappointments, many of them a direct consequence of Hagar’s stubbornness. Enmeshed with Hagar’s present and attempts to cope with old age are flashbacks and reflections on her past that are often triggered by certain objects or episodes in the current moment – her tumultuous marriage to Brampton Shipley and her complicated relationship with both her sons Marvin and John.

A beautifully observed, haunting tale about a deeply flawed woman, The Stone Angel is a novel I’m glad to have read.

BOULDER by Eva Baltasar (tr. Julia Sanches)

As hot as molten lava erupting from a volcano, Boulder is a tightly compressed, intense novella of love, sex, motherhood, and freedom; a book that derives its strength from the originality of its prose and the unconventionality of its protagonist.

Boulder, a cook on a merchant ship and our narrator meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist, at an inn during one of the ship’s regular stops fuelling a desire that is sharp and intense.  A serious relationship ensues although the two women could not have been more different. Samsa is social, successful, earning well, and even the one making major decisions, while Boulder for whom her passion is the driving force, seems okay to just tag along. But then Samsa expresses her wish to have a child that knocks Boulder off-kilter. Samsa is determined to be a mother; she’s past forty and doesn’t want to miss the chance of motherhood. Boulder could not have been more uninterested but is unable to find the courage to express her true feelings.

What makes Boulder so striking is the language – strange, smoldering, feral, and sensual – as it captures the range of thoughts and emotions that rage within our narrator trying to adapt to a slew of significant changes unfolding around her.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS by Natalia Ginzburg (tr. Angus Davidson)

Set in a smaller town in Italy before and during the Second World War, Natalia Ginzburg’s All Our Yesterdays is simply wonderful; a big-hearted, bustling novel of family, friendships, politics, and war pitted against a backdrop of immense turbulence, and narrated in a style that captures Ginzburg’s customary dry wit.

Essentially a family saga, the book is divided into two sections. In Part One, Ginzburg focuses her gaze on an ensemble cast – two families living in a smaller town in Northern Italy. Much of the story is told from Anna’s perspective although this is not a first-person account. Shy and reserved in nature, Anna’s very young age and reticent demeanour mean that she is hardly noticed in the house, but she notices various aspects of her family the significance of which she does not always comprehend. In Part Two, many of the characters who had a minor presence in the first part become central to the story, while the central figures in Part One get pushed to the periphery although never entirely forgotten. Thus, the spotlight shifts to the considerably older Cenzo Rena (who marries Anna) and he becomes the axis around which much of the plot of Part Two revolves. 

Ginzburg seamlessly places these family dynamics against a wider political backdrop – Fascism, the approaching rumblings of World War Two with the big question of the mode of Italy’s participation, and later on the horrors of the Holocaust. But what is truly astonishing about All Our Yesterdays is the sheer range of humanity on display – each of the characters is beautifully etched, they are endearing in different ways despite their flaws and foibles. 

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes (tr. Ann Goldstein)  

There’s a scene in Forbidden Notebook where Valeria Cossatti, our protagonist and the narrator is having lunch with her glamorous friend Clara at her place, a penthouse apartment in Rome. Divorced from her husband, Clara is now an independent woman and a successful filmmaker, but by then Valeria’s position has become much more complex. Her outward façade continues to be that of a traditional woman confined to the role of a homemaker and catering to the needs of her husband and two children, but inwardly Valeria has begun to seethe and resist these conventional norms she is expected to adhere to. Clara believes that Valeria has been lucky to achieve all that she wanted by marrying, but by then Valeria and the reader know the reality to be entirely different – Valeria has been experiencing a deep sense of disillusionment, a feeling she is unable to share with Clara.

It is this intense conflict, growing resistance, and the dual nature of her thoughts and emotions that forms the essence of Alba de Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook – a rich, multilayered novel of domestic dissatisfaction and awakening seen through the prism of a woman’s private diary. Set in 1950s Rome, not only does the book boldly challenge the validity of restrictive, orthodox roles thrust upon women, and the heartaches of motherhood, but it also dwells on writing as a powerful tool for a woman to find her voice and be heard when those closest to her fail to do so.

Billed as a feminist classic, Forbidden Notebook is a masterclass of insight and imagination, brilliant in the way it provides a window into a woman’s interior life, an internal struggle that oscillates between the desire to discover her true self and also keep it hidden. 

COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD by Tezer Özlü (tr. Maureen Freely) 

Cold Nights of Childhood is an unflinching portrayal of a woman’s quest for independence, freedom, sex and love, as well as her struggles with mental illness told in a writing style that is cinematic and impressionistic without conforming to the rigid structures of conventional storytelling.

At barely 70 pages and set between 1950 and 1970, the novella is divided into four chapters and begins with a flavour of our narrator’s childhood and school years in the Turkish town of Fatih. Later, we move on to the time our narrator spends in Istanbul and Ankara, and abroad in Europe’s great capital cities (Berlin and Paris). We learn of her string of lovers, her unsuccessful marriages, and above all her incarceration in mental asylums. This predominantly forms the essence of the book, and yet the narrative is not as linear as it seems. Moody, evocative, teeming with rich visuals and a palpable Jean Rhys vibe, Cold Nights of Childhood is a beautifully penned novella that I’m glad to have discovered. 

THE FEAST by Margaret Kennedy

With its combination of wit, social commentary and mystery, The Feast by Margaret Kennedy is a terrific novel; an excellent upstairs-downstairs drama and comedy set in Cornwall post the Second World War featuring a seaside hotel in danger of being buried, an eccentric ensemble cast with hidden secrets, and the high voltage interactions and tensions between them.

We first learn in the prologue that the Pendizack Manor Hotel lies buried in a mound of rubble after a huge mass of cliff collapses on it. Seven guests perish, one of whom is Dick Siddal, the owner of the hotel, while the others survive. At that point, the identities of the casualties as well as the survivors are not revealed to the reader, and that in essence forms the mystery element of the plot. After the prologue, the reader is then taken back to a week earlier, from whereon the book charts the arrival of the guests at the hotel, its other inhabitants, as well as the chain of events leading up to the tragedy in question.

Displaying a sharp, astute vision, Kennedy’s writing is top-notch as she weaves in elements of a social satire and morality fable with those of a thriller. Her gimlet-eyed gaze on the foibles and failures of her finely etched characters make both the endearing as well as the horrible ones pretty memorable. 

ITALIAN WAR DIARIES: A CHILL IN THE AIR & WAR IN VAL D’ORCIA by Iris Origo 

Set during the Second World War and seen from Italy’s perspective, both A Chill in the Air and War in Val d’Orcia are Iris Origo’s real-time war diaries covering the periods 1939-1940 and 1943-1944 respectively, a record of daily life in her adopted country in conflict. Iris was Anglo-American married to an Italian, and much before the war the couple bought and revived a derelict stretch of the Val d’Orcia valley in Tuscany and created an estate. At the height of the war, and at great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters, and refugees. While A Chill in the Air captures the mood of the Italian people just before Italy entered into the war reluctantly siding with Germany, War in Val D’Orcia records a slew of events at the height of the war.  Both published diaries are first-hand accounts of the complexity of Italy’s position, the politics prevailing at the time, and the difficulty of going about daily life. These are books filled with a mix of facts, anecdotes, and her astute observations on the extraordinary scenes unfolding around her. I read these thanks to Kim’s #NYRBWomen23 reading project, and plan to put up a detailed post soon. For the time being though I’ll say that these books were brilliant, particularly War in Val d’Orcia.

That’s it for April and May. I plan to begin June with Rattlebone by Maxine Clair and I’ll be joining in for the #NYRBWomen23 read-along of Love’s Work by Gillian Rose. Other than that I haven’t decided anything yet and will pick up books depending on what catches my fancy at the time.

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A Month of Reading – March 2023

March was a slow reading month for me, it started off well but I barely read much in the last couple of weeks due to various distracting factors. So just four books, but they were great, so I really can’t complain. I continued to participate in Kim’s #NYRBWomen23 reading project, and also made a contribution to Cathy’s ‘Reading Ireland Month 2023’.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the four books…You can read the detailed reviews on the first three by clicking on the title links.

THE SPRINGS OF AFFECTION: STORIES OF DUBLIN by Maeve Brennan

Maeve Brennan’s The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin is a superb collection filled with stunningly crafted stories of unhappy marriages and slices of Dublin life. The book is divided into three sections, and the first section is possibly more cheery of the lot, mostly comprising autobiographical sketches of Brennan’s childhood in Dublin on Ranelagh Road.

The next two sections focus on the Derdon and Bagot families respectively and are some of the finest stories she has written. The Derdon stories are savage and heartbreaking in their depiction of an unhappy marriage; these are six exquisitely crafted stories of loneliness, bitterness, and misunderstandings, encompassing more than forty years of Hubert and Rose Derdon’s married life. Each story unflinchingly examines the nuances of their relationship from different angles and perspectives, always focusing on the growing alienation and resentment between the couple. In terms of tone, the Bagot set of stories is not as fierce as the Derdon bunch but are still beautifully rendered sketches of an unhappy marriage. The highlight of the collection is the last story which also lends the collection its name – an astute, razor-sharp character study, unlike the relative gentleness of the previous Bagot stories.

The stories in The Springs of Affection are quietly devastating, but they are thrilling to read because of the sheer depth of their themes, Brennan’s psychological acuity and exquisite writing.

CRAMPTON HODNET by Barbara Pym  

Set in North Oxford, Crampton Hodnet is a delightful comedy of manners with its full arsenal of vicars, curates, spinsters and tea parties – elements so characteristic of Pym’s magical world.

The book opens in Miss Doggett’s elaborately decorated Victorian drawing room where she’s hosting an afternoon tea party for the young Oxford students, some of them have been regulars, others invited for the first time. Assisting her is her companion, Miss Morrow, a spinster reasonably young but generally viewed (by Miss Doggett at least) to be past her prime or in other words, a generally accepted “marriageable” age. We are also introduced to Miss Doggett’s nephew Francis Cleveland, a respected professor of English Literature at one of the Oxford colleges, his easy-going wife Margaret, and their daughter Anthea who has fallen deeply in love with Simon Beddoes, an ambitious young man hoping to make it big in politics. Things in this sleepy Oxford town begin to hot up with the arrival of a young curate Mr Latimer who possibly becomes interested in Miss Morrow, and the entry of the idealistic and intelligent student Barbara Bird with whom Francis embarks on an affair.

Crampton Hodnet might come across as a light-hearted novel and in many ways it is, but it is also filled with some universal truths about people and relationships and Pym as usual has a marvellous, subtle flair for comedy.

IN A LONELY PLACE by Dorothy B. Hughes

The first time I read In A Lonely Place was almost a decade ago and I remember being so impressed then. It’s a terrific novel – a great combination of mood and atmosphere laced with Hughes’ brilliant, hard-edged, nourish-style writing and a fascinating protagonist (Dix Steele) whose actions are as shadowy and black as the fog that envelops and obscures the city of Los Angeles in the night. I also loved the portrayal of the two women, Laurel and Sylvia; personality-wise, like ‘fire and ice’ respectively.

Violence, paranoia, the banality of evil, and the emptiness of post-war life are some of the themes that form the essence of In a Lonely Place; it’s an intense, suspenseful tale, superbly crafted in the way it is told through a killer’s perspective.

DEATH AT LA FENICE by Donna Leon

Death at La Fenice is the first book in Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series set in Venice, and I liked it so much that I plan to read more.

The novel opens during a concert performance at Venice’s famed opera hall La Fenice where Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor is found dead in his dressing room from cyanide poisoning between the second and third acts. Wellauer was a well-known and deeply respected figure in the music circles and his death mounts the pressure on the Venetian police to find the murderer. Suspects are plenty, chief among them being Wellauer’s third wife who was beckoned to her husband’s dressing room for a brief chat which ultimately never took place; Wellauer was also seen arguing with a couple of performers from the orchestra he was conducting. One of them is a famous singer rumoured to be in a relationship with a rich American woman settled in Venice.

As Brunetti digs deeper, Wellauer’s unsavoury past begins to unfold (“As a musician, he was as close to perfection as a man could come. It was worth putting up with the man to be able to work with the musician”) – he was possibly a Nazi sympathizer as well as a homophobic with a penchant for blackmail and interfering into the lives of his colleagues and family. And Brunetti realises that finding his killer in the present is to unlock the key to Wellauer’s past.  

In the midst of all this, we get a bit more color on Guido Brunetti and his wife Paola who comes from a rich, aristocratic family, and an easy relationship despite the differences in their backgrounds.

“For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: ‘I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.’ Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong.“

For the most part, Guido hates attending social gatherings at his in-laws’ palatial Venetian home, but they have unmatched connections, and during one point in the case when it seems to be heading nowhere, Guido attends one such soiree to get a flavour of the social circles that Wellauer himself possibly frequented.

But Venice with all her allure and mystery is as much a character in the book as the rest; the novel is drenched with a vivid sense of place and Leon effectively captures its two sides – the dirty politics of this canal city, and its magic that draws in so many visitors like moths to a candle flame. Here’s Venice at night when it is empty of day trippers:

“But these were the hours when, for Brunetti, the city became most beautiful, just as they were the same hours when he, Venetian to the bone, could sense some of her past glory. The darkness of the night hid the moss that crept up the steps of the palazzo lining the Grand Canal, obscured the cracks in the walls of churches, and covered the patches of plaster missing from the facades of public buildings. Like many women of a certain age, the city needed the help of deceptive light to recapture her vanished beauty. A boat that, during the day was making a delivery of soap powder or cabbages, at night became a numinous form, floating toward some mysterious destination. The fogs that were common in these winter days could transform people and objects, even turn longhaired teenagers, hanging around a street corner and sharing a cigarette, into mysterious phantoms from the past.“

That’s it for March. In March I had started reading All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg and The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, both of which have spilled over to April so they will be featured in my April reading post. Also on the agenda are the two Iris Origo diaries – A Chill in the Air and War in Val d’Orcia as part of the “NYRBWomen23” readalong.

A Month of Reading – February 2023

February was another excellent reading month in terms of quality if not quantity; mostly a mix of translated lit (from Germany, Chile & Argentina) and 20^th century women’s literature. I continued to participate in the #NYRBWomen23 reading project, and also made a couple of contributions to #ReadIndies.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the five books…You can read the detailed reviews on each one by clicking on the title links.

GRAND HOTEL by Vicki Baum (tr. from German by Basil Creighton)

Grand Hotel is a resounding triumph, in which by focusing the spotlight on five core characters from varied walks of life brought together by fate, Baum dwells on their internal dramas as well as their interactions; these are tragic, haunting characters grappling with their inner demons and insecurities while also wrestling with some of the bigger existential questions. The novel sizzles with a vivid sense of place (1920s Berlin) and the language is wonderfully tonal and visual. Also, Baum has a striking way with words that captures the essence of her characters in a few sentences. I read this for #NYRBWomen23 and it was great.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE by Nona Fernández (tr. from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer)

Using the motif of the 1950s popular science fiction/fantasy show The Twilight Zone, Fernández delves into the unimaginable spaces of horror, violence and murkiness of the cruel Pinochet regime where beatings, torture and unexplained disappearances disturbingly became a part of the fabric of everyday life.

In March 1984, Andres Morales, a government security services agent, labeled by our narrator as “the man who tortured people” walks into the offices of the “Cauce” magazine and offers his testimony in exchange for safe passage outside the country. After years of imposing torture tactics on Pinochet’s detractors – members of the Communist party, resistance movements, and left-leaning individuals -something inside Morales snaps (“That night I started to dream of rats. Of dark rooms and rats”). Possibly aghast at the monstrosity of the crimes committed, Morales wishes to confess and in the process hopes to be absolved of those horrific acts.

Much of the book highlights crucial moral questions at play, and the fate of the man who tortured people is central to it – Should he be absolved of his crimes because he had a change of heart and now wants to do right? It’s a powerful, unforgettable book about loss, repression and rebellion where the premise of the TV show is used to brilliant effect – an exploration of that dark dimension where strangeness and terror rule the roost, and is often unfathomable.

TWO THOUSAND MILLION MAN-POWER by Gertrude Trevelyan

Two Thousand Million Man-Power is a brilliant, psychologically astute tale of a marriage with its trials and tribulations, the indignity of unemployment, the wretchedness of poverty…in a seamless blend of the personal with the global.

The book centres on the relationship and subsequent marriage of Robert Thomas, a scientist at a cosmetics firm and Katherine Bott, a teacher at a council school; both idealists who believe in progress and prosperity. As they marry, they enjoy a brief period of comfortable suburban living only to be followed by crippling poverty when Robert loses his job. Interwoven with Robert and Katherine’s lives and peppered throughout the novel are snippets of headlines depicting both national and international events; encompassing a period from the early 1920s to a couple of years before the advent of the Second World War; Robert and Katherine’s relationship is placed in a wider context of astonishing technological advancements but also disturbing political developments. 

It’s this placing of the personal against a broader economic and political landscape that makes the novel unique and remarkable.

TWO SHERPAS by Sebastián Martínez Daniell (tr. from Spanish by Jennifer Croft)

In the beginning, two Sherpas peer over the edge of a precipice staring at the depths below where a British climber lies sprawled among the rocks. Almost near the top of Mount Everest, the silence around them is intense, punctuated by the noise of the gushing wind (“If the deafening noise of the wind raveling over the ridges of the Himalayas can be considered silence”). Wishing to emulate the feat of many others before him, the Englishman had aimed to ascend the summit but that ambition now is clearly in disarray. Assisting him in the climb are two Sherpas, one a young man, the other much older, but with this sudden accident, the Sherpas are in a quandary on how to best respond.

Thus, in a span of barely ten to fifteen minutes and using this particular moment as a central story arc, the novel brilliantly spins in different directions in a vortex of themes and ideas that encompass the mystery of the majestic Mount Everest, its significance in the history of imperialist Britain, the ambition of explorers to ascend its summit, attitudes of foreigners towards the Sherpa community to Shakespeare, Julius Caesar and Rome. This is a brilliant, vividly imagined, richly layered novel that gives the reader much to ponder and think about.

YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN by Dorothy Baker

Young Man with a Horn has been inspired by the “music of Bix Beiderbecke”, an influential jazz soloist and composer in the 1920s, although the life and music trajectory of its protagonist Rick Martin has not been modeled on Bix’s life. The prologue at the start of the novel gives the reader a fair idea of Rick Martin’s short but dramatic career as a jazz musician – his gradual ascent in the world of music to become the golden boy of jazz only to culminate in a string of disappointments, heavy drinking and death.

Rick is an orphan but from the very beginning he displays talent and flair for music, although with not much opportunity to harness that passion largely because of his circumstances. Once employed at Gandy’s Pool Hall, he meets Smoke Jordan, a black aspiring drummer and a tentative employee and the two immediately slide into an easy friendship fuelled by their passion for jazz. At its very core, Young Man with a Horn is an exploration of music, male friendship, ambition, obsession and transcending racial boundaries. Some of the racial terms used in the book might be hard to digest for modern readers (I did find quite a few of them jarring), but I was reluctant to judge Baker by today’s sensibilities given that the book was published in 1938. The novel is not always perfect, but Baker’s rendering of the jazz world – practice sessions, recordings, the kinship between musicians – and her beautiful portrayal of male friendship alone make it well worth reading. This was the second book I read for #NYRBWomen23.

That’s it for February. In March so far, I’ve read Death at La Fenice, the first of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series set in Venice followed by Dorothy B. Hughes’ In A Lonely Place and Barbara Pym’s Crampton Hodnet – all three were excellent. I’m also reading The Springs of Affection by Maeve Brennan and All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg, so it’s shaping up to be another terrific month.

A Month of Reading – January 2023

Well, 2023 has begun on a fabulous note, I read some stellar books this month; a mix of translated lit (from Iceland, Japan & Mexico), a collection of short stories, a contemporary novella, and a surreal feminist tale. I also enjoyed contributing to various reading challenges and readalongs, notably #NYRBWomen23, #JanuaryInJapan & #Japaneselitchallenge16, #NordicFINDS23 and A Year With William Trevor.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the six books…You can read the detailed reviews on each one by clicking on the title links.

THE ENGLISH UNDERSTAND WOOL by Helen DeWitt

In The English Understand Wool, our protagonist is Marguerite; a 17-year old young woman raised in Marrakech, her mother (Maman) has French roots, while the father is English. The phrase “mauvais ton” (loosely translated as ‘bad taste’) features regularly in Maman’s parlance who has strong opinions on the subject. Maman comes across as a conceited woman with superior standards, and she leaves no stone unturned in ensuring that the daughter becomes a connoisseur herself; a way of fine living that Marguerite perfects to the tee because she has known no other. And then quite out of the blue, a crucial piece of information is revealed carrying massive weight that throws a different light on Marguerite’s current circumstances. 

The English Understand Wool, then, is a wonderfully rendered tale brimming with all the hallmarks of DeWitt’s acerbic, deadpan prose. Right from the very beginning, her sardonic wit is on display whether she is commenting on the ludicrousness of Maman’s exacting ideals or poking fun at the way the publishing industry operates. It’s a very cleverly told tale of dubious morals where appearances can be deceptive; a highly original story that has only fuelled my appetite for more of Helen DeWitt’s work.

THE HEARING TRUMPET by Leonora Carrington

If you thought a story centred on a 92-year old protagonist was bound to be dull and depressing, think again. Leonora’s Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet is a delicious romp, a stunning feat of the imagination and an iconoclastic book if you will that refuses to be pigeonholed into convenient definitions and genres; and in Marian Leatherby, the nonagenarian in this superbly off-kilter tale, Carrington has created an unconventional heroine who is charming, feisty and memorable.

The book begins in a quiet, residential neighbourhood on the outskirts of an unnamed Mexican city where Marian Leatherby, our narrator, resides with her son Galahad, his wife Muriel and their 25-year old unmarried son Robert. Marian is not welcome in the house and with the aid of a hearing trumpet gifted to her by her charming loquacious friend Carmella, Marian’s learns of her family’s plot to park her in an old age home.

The old-age home is unlike anything she had imagined, and Marian soon begins to settle in, gets introduced to her fellow residents, finds herself entangled in various adventures and is caught up in the fascinating life of an abbess. The Hearing Trumpet could be considered an extension of Carrington’s identity as Surrealist artist; the novel is a unique montage of styles and genres that resist the laws of conventional narration to brilliant effect. Just superb!

AFTER RAIN by William Trevor

Tender and exquisite, After Rain is a finely chiseled collection of twelve stories that is truly a joy to savour.  The first, ‘The Piano Tuner’s Wives’, is an achingly poignant, richly layered and sensitively written story about the passage of time on two marriages – two women married to the same man at different points in his life and the bitterness that engulfs the second wife who is unable to emerge from the shadow of the first; while ‘A Friendship’ is a fine, beautifully rendered tale of female friendship, marriage and an extra marital affair that threatens to ruin both. ‘Child’s Play’ is a subtle story of the breakdown of a marriage and its repercussions seen through the eyes of the children involved; the titular story ‘After Rain’ is a beautiful, melancholic tale of lost love and finding the strength to heal and carry on. 

Trevor focuses his unflinching lens on parents and children, friends and lovers, widows, husbands and wives as much as he does on petty thieves and confidence tricksters capturing their innermost turmoil beautifully.

SALKA VALKA by Haldór Laxness (tr. from Icelandic by Philip Roughton)

Salka Valka is a wondrous, 552-paged, ambitious novel; an immersive, brilliant, often harrowing tale of a beleaguered fishing community and the indomitable spirit of a woman who prides on her independence and strives to improve their lot.

In the opening pages of Salka Valka, a coastal steamer stops at the port of a small, remote fishing village called Oseyri. Nobody can envisage a life here, but on that cold, bleak winter’s night two figures emerge from the steamer – a woman called Sigurlina and her 11-year old daughter Salvor (Salka Valka). Sigurlina and Salka Valka have made this journey from the North, certain circumstances having driven them away, and while Reykjavik seems to be their final destination, Sigurlina, reduced to a state of penury, cannot afford the cost of the trip further. Oseyri, then, becomes her destination for the time being, she hopes to find a job that will help her make enough money to embark on the journey south. However, fate as we shall see has other plans…

Salka Valka is divided into four sections, each section comprising two parts – the first section focuses on Salka’s time in Oseyri as a teenager, and the second section fast forwards to several years when she is a young woman, independent with her own house and a share in a fishing boat. One of the core themes that the novel addresses is the ugly side of abject poverty and the struggles of the working class, and the second half particularly becomes more political as the debate between capitalism and Bolshevism reaches fever pitch. Epic in scope and ahead of its times, Salka Valka, then, is a simmering cauldron of various delectable ingredients – a coming-of-age tale, a statement on world politics, a strange beguiling love story, and an unforgettable female lead.

THE WAITING YEARS by Fumiko Enchi (tr. from Japanese by John Bester)

Set at the beginning of the Meiji era, The Waiting Years is a beautifully written, poignant tale of womanhood and forced subservience; a nuanced portrayal of a dysfunctional family dictated by the whims of a wayward man.

Tomo, our protagonist, is married to Yukitomo Shirakawa, a publicly respected man holding a position very high up in the government ranks. In the very first chapter, she is sent to Tokyo to find a respectable young girl who will become her husband’s mistress, a terrible and heartbreaking task she is compelled to carry out. As far as themes go, The Waiting Years, then, is an acutely observed portrait of a marriage and a dysfunctional family, the heartrending sense of entrapment felt by its women who don’t have much agency, which is probably representative of Japanese society at that time. Enchi beautifully captures the internal turmoil that rages not just within Tomo but also within Suga, Yukitomo’s mistress. The subject matter might be bleak, but it’s a powerful book with unforgettable characters whose fates will forever be impinged on my mind. 

PEDRO PÁRAMO by Juan Rulfo (tr. from Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden)

Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo is a hypnotic, fever dream of a novel of death, ghosts, visions, violence, and vengeance. In the opening pages, Juan Preciado makes a promise to his dying mother that he will make the journey to Comala to visit his father, Pedro Páramo, a man he has never met before. Complying with her dying wish (“Make him pay, Son, for all those years he put us out of his mind”), Preciado sets off for Comala (“you can see Comala, turning the earth white, and lighting it at night”); a town that both he and the reader soon realise is haunted by the dead.

Pedro Páramo is a novella about dashed hopes, twisted love and boundless tragedy, the fates of its characters inextricably linked to the senseless actions of a mercurial, brutal man. There’s a trancelike, hallucinatory quality to the storytelling that flits between past and present; it’s a book suffused with rich imagery that lends it much power.

That’s it for January. I have begun my February reading with Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel for #NYRBWomen23 as well as Nona Fernández’s The Twilight Zone for #ReadIndies and they have been terrific so far.

A Month of Reading – December 2022

In a year that was full of wonderful reads, December also turned out to be a good month. On the 14^th of this month, I released My Best Books of 2022 list, a mix of 20^th century literature, translated lit, contemporary fiction, novellas, short stories, a memoir and a biography; books that truly enthralled me.

In December, I read five books – a combination of translated literature, Indian fiction, crime, short stories and volume 11 of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage.  My favourite was the Hjorth by a mile, a novel that also found a place on my year end list.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the five books…

WILL AND TESTAMENT by Vigdis Hjorth (tr. from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund)  

Vigdis Hjorth’s Will and Testament is a powerful, gripping, masterfully constructed novel about family feuds, abuse, trauma and a woman’s fight to be believed and her story acknowledged, where Hjorth cleverly uses the set-up of an inheritance dispute to examine the deeper fissures that run in a dysfunctional family.

The novel opens with the news that Bergjlot’s dad died five months ago, a development that only exacerbates the ongoing property dispute between the four children and the mother. Bergjlot initially chooses to stay out of this clash and the modern reader will immediately discern the reason for this – she was abused by her father as a child and the scars from that incident made it easier for Bergjlot to completely sever ties with her family for more than 20 years in order to maintain her sanity. At its core, Will and Testament, is about a victim of abuse fighting back to be heard, about the legacy of abuse that can run down generations, how it can irreparably damage relationships. The prose has a feverish quality that is compelling, the characters are brilliantly drawn and overall this is really a superb novel.

KILLING HAPPINESS by Friedrich Ani (tr. from German by Alexander Booth)

Friedrich Ani’s Killing Happiness is a dark, wintry, melancholic but beautifully written crime novel. Lennard Grabbe, Stephan and Tania’s 11-year old son, is found brutally murdered in a forest one cold December day after being missing for a month. This devastating news is delivered to them by Jakob Franck, now retired from the police force but not entirely out of it – he still performs the difficult duty of conveying news of death to the victim’s loved ones.

Her son’s tragic demise sees Tania spiraling into a depression, while Stephan is left to run their café. Holed up in her son’s room for most part of the day, communication between husband and wife is pretty much non-existent; cracks in their marriage leave no room for the couple to find solace in each other in their grief. For some reason though, Tania remains closer to her brother Maximilian, a shaky mysterious relationship the nature of which Jakob Franck and even Stephan can’t quite fathom.

Meanwhile, the case completely consumes Franck; a crime seemingly difficult to solve given the lack of clues and reliable witness statements (“Franck knew from innumerable question sessions that memories consisted of fissures, ellipses, misperceptions, loose sensory connections”). Heavy rain and thunderstorms on the day Lennard disappeared pretty much obliterates the chances of finding critical forensic evidence, and Franck is desperately seeking that crucial piece of information, or what he calls the ‘fossil’ (“that very material or immaterial link that placed the act’s past in an unassailable connection to the crime’s present and held the genome of the truth to solving the case”).

While Killing Happiness has all the traits of a crime novel, it is also very much a novel of marriage and family, the dark secrets that lurk within and how a hidden past can drive a wedge into already fragile relationships.

Franck is also an interesting character, effortlessly donning the dual roles of investigator and confidante. He assiduously and patiently chips away at the evidence before him, revisiting the crime scene innumerable times, probing witnesses to remember better, while his gentle, quiet personality compels Lennard’s family members to talk to him in a way one would to a therapist.

Published by Seagull Books, this is a novel I very much enjoyed and I plan to read Ani’s other work released earlier, The Nameless Day.

A SURPRISE FOR CHRISTMAS & OTHER SEASONAL MYSTERIES edited by Martin Edwards

This turned out to be an excellent Christmassy read in December; a terrific compilation of golden age crime stories and my first ‘British Library Crime Classics’ read.

The stories are mostly set around Christmas, and while Christmas itself might not be a dominant theme, quite a few are atmospheric, capturing the starkness of the wintry season. In GK Chesterton’s ‘The Hole in the Wall’, a country house fancy dress party in the depths of winter goes awry when the host mysteriously disappears; while Ngaio Marsh’s ‘Death on the Air’ is an excellent story of a dysfunctional family ruled by a tyrant with “a clever murder device and a cleverly hidden murderer.”

‘Person or Things Unknown’ by Carter Dickson is a historical mystery set in the Restoration period during Charles II’s reign centred on a love triangle gone wrong; ‘Dead’s Man’s Hand’ is an atmospheric, intense story where guilt is examined to brilliant effect; Cyril Hare’s ‘A Surprise for Christmas’ (lending the collection its name) is also wonderful where an old homicide gets unexpectedly discovered in a cosy domestic setting. A postman is killed in Margery Allingham’s ‘On Christmas Day in the Morning’ that combines the gloominess of winter with the warmth of the festive spirit in a surprise ending.

Medieval masked balls, notorious gangs, pantomime, ghosts among other things feature in these stories as do love affairs, fractured families and broken relationships. A collection comprising 12 stories, I have given a flavour of only a few but overall I thought this was a lovely collection well worth reading.

SOJOURN by Amit Chaudhuri 

Sojourn was my first foray into Amit Chaudhuri’s work; I enjoyed this novella but didn’t quite know what to make of it. Our narrator/protagonist is unnamed, a middle aged Indian writer, who has been offered a short stint as a visiting Boll professor in a Berlin university where he is required to give weekly lectures.

Once ensconced in a flat in his new surroundings, he meets the Bangladeshi poet Faqrul, an exile in Berlin, who takes our narrator under his wing, helping him navigate everyday living in the city. Our narrator ponders about the Japanese writer Oe in the bathroom, aimlessly wanders around the city – Brandenburg Gate, Jewish Museum et al – thinking about the history of Berlin and its present status, dines in restaurants with acquaintances, and so on. Faqrul then disappears as fast as he had made an appearance, and our narrator later gets entangled in a tentative relationship with Birgit, until a feeling of disorientation completely engulfs him in the final pages.

Throughout this novella, there’s a sense that our narrator is lost and maybe trying to find himself, akin to Berlin’s identity which also seems in flux; a unified city very different in the present but one that has not entirely shaken off the remnants of its past.  The prose is elegant, pared to the bone, not a word wasted and an aura of uncertainty and rootlessness pervades the novel, the sense of being in no-man’s land  further heightened by the fleeting nature of things and the impermanence of connections. Like I mentioned, I am not entirely sure of having grasped the essence of this novella and yet it was laced with the sort of suspense that made it fascinating.

CLEAR HORIZON (PILGRIMAGE 4) by Dorothy Richardson

Clear Horizon is the eleventh installment in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage cycle of novels, after Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, The Tunnel, Interim, Deadlock, Revolving Lights, The Trap, Oberland and Dawn’s Left Hand.  

In Clear Horizon, Amabel continues to be a dominant presence, and a telegram from Michael Shatov sends Miriam reminiscing on their friendship and his marriage proposal which Miriam rejects, but in this book she considers introducing Shatov to Amabel. There’s also a sense that Miriam could be pregnant post her one night stand with Hugo Wilson in Dawn’s Left Hand, but then realises that not to be the case. That’s the first very long chapter and the second chapter entirely consists of a lengthy conversation between Miriam and Hugo Wilson, where Amabel is partly present at the beginning. This meeting only confirms Miriam’s opinion of how different her views are from Hugo’s who continues to be annoying and patronising. It’s then that Miriam decides that the end of her relationship with Hypo is now final.

It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps much of his talk was to be explained by the fact that he had never known that rapture. Had always been shut in and still, in spite of his apparent freedom, was enclosed and enmeshed? If this fact were flung at him, he would freely admit it, with an air of tragic hilarity, while overtly denying it, with a conspiratorial smile to emphasize his relatively large liberties, in order to use the admission as a point of departure for fresh insistence upon their neglected opportunities, while, hovering high above the useless to and fro, would hang the question, sometimes accepted by Amabel and sometimes wistfully denied, as to whether men, however fitted up with incomes and latchkeys and mobility, can ever know freedom-unless they are tramps.

Meanwhile, Richardson’s descriptive powers continue to enthrall as can be seen in the following passage…

And again, demanding no price for truant contemplation, the heavenly morning received her. Turning, in the fullness of her recently restored freedom, towards the light as towards the contemplative gaze of a lover, she felt its silent stream flood her untenanted being and looked up, and recovered, in swift sequence, and with a more smiting intensity than when she had first come upon them, the earlier gifts of this interrupted spring: the dense little battalions, along the park’s green alley, between tall leafless trees, of new, cold crocus-cups, glossy with living varnish, golden-yellow, transparent mauve, pure frosty white, white with satiny purple stripings; the upper rim of each petal so sharp that it seemed to be cutting for itself a place in the dense, chill air; each flower a little upright figure and a song, proclaiming winter’s end. Then tree-buds in the square seen suddenly, glistening, through softly showering rain. Then the green haze of small leaves: each leaf translucent in the morning and, at night, under the London lamplight, an opaque, exciting, viridian artificiality. And it was with power borrowed from this early light, and from the chance of stillness as perfect as its own, that these memories were smiting through her.

Just as The Tunnel marked Miriam’s entry into London as an independent woman with a career as a dental assistant to Dr Hancock, so does Clear Horizon mark the end of this period of Miriam’s life, a period that encompassed a decade. Having now read 11 of the 13 volumes of Pilgrimage, Miriam’s journey has certainly been interesting although I must say that to me the first six volumes (including Deadlock) were the best. I’m not yet sure whether I’ll continue with the remaining two volumes, we shall see.

That’s it for December. 2022 has been wonderfully rich in terms of reading and I hope that streak continues in 2023 too!