Two Months of Reading – March & April 2024

March and April were hectic months for me – I travelled to Kashmir with family and was also quite busy setting up our new home and getting it ready to shift soon.  As a result, my reading and blogging have been a bit patchy – in between bouts of reading consistently, there were days when I didn’t read a single page. But I did read some stellar books during these two months. Of these, two were part of Kim’s #NYRBWomen24 reading project and they were very good, while the rest were a mix of translated literature, short stories, and 20^th-century literature written by women.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the nine books…You can read the detailed reviews on the first eight by clicking on the title links, with a review on the Moore to follow soon.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF KATZUO NAKAMATSU by Augusto Higa Oshiro (Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue)

Laden with poetic despair and immersed in a sea of swirling sentences, Augusto Higa Oshiro’s The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is an elusive, enigmatic, and intense tale of death, madness, isolation, and identity; a brilliant walking novel drenched in dreamlike vibes as it evocatively captures the pulse of Lima, its myriad sights and sounds, making it a deeply haunting reading experience.

We meet Katzuo Nakamatsu on the very first page standing on a pebbled path one August evening mesmerised by the magnificence of the sakura blossoms. If this conveys an aura of peace and tranquility, then it proves short-lived, because Katzuo is immediately gripped by an unnamable anguish, “the weight of consciousness, unseeing affliction.”

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is replete with an array of sights, sounds, and rich imagery lending the novel a very tonal and visual quality that only enhances its strange beauty. The lyrical, labyrinthine, looping sentences not only convey the complex pathways of Katzuo’s disturbed mind but also the contours of the city on his walking jaunts – a place of contrasts alternating between sumptuous gardens, hypnotic beaches, quiet affluent neighbourhoods on one side, and the squalid, forbidden corners depicting degradation and filth on the other.

A CRACK IN THE WALL by Claudia Piñeiro (Translated from Spanish by Miranda France)

I love how Claudia Piñeiro employs the framework of crime to explore relationships and social issues, and in this aspect, A Crack in the Wall is no different; it’s another excellent tale of cowardice, ruthless ambition, moral ambiguity, deception, and precarious relationships.

The novel opens with an image of our protagonist Pablo Simó, sitting at his desk “drawing the outline of a building that will never exist.” Pablo works as an architect in the offices of Borla and Associates, a firm engaged in construction and real estate. Borla, a greedy, ambitious man willing to cut corners, is at the helm of things ably helped by his secretary Marta Horvat (with whom he’s having an affair), a beautiful woman Pablo secretly desires. Pablo has worked for Borla for more than a decade but there’s a sense that both Marta and Borla don’t treat him as an equal, and Pablo seems to have resignedly accepted this. The monotony of his days is not lost on Pablo until a stranger walks into their offices one evening deeply disturbing their fragile sense of calm, and evoking deeply hidden memories of a crime committed in the past. In this novel, Piñeiro’s superb storytelling skills are on full display as she artfully combines the finer elements of plot development with astute character portraits that make for an utterly riveting narrative.

QUARTET IN AUTUMN by Barbara Pym

Quartet in Autumn was Barbara Pym’s penultimate novel published before her death and in terms of tone and subject matter, it’s a different book because of its haunting, sorrowful quality quite unlike her earlier works which displayed her masterful comic flourishes to full effect. And yet it is a lovely, restrained, poignant novel on the heartaches of growing old, deepening loneliness, the sense of emptiness felt post retirement, and unconventional friendships. 

We first meet Edwin, Norman, Letty, and Marcia working in a nondescript London office where they are placed in a common room. The nature of their work seems nebulous, we aren’t exactly sure what they do, maybe they are clerks? But this vagueness is deliberate and gives a flavour of the heightened loneliness of these characters particularly when the spectre of retirement begins to flash before them as they are gripped with a feeling of life passing by and a gnawing sense of emptiness. The comedy we are so used to in earlier Pym novels is muted though not absent, and despite its melancholic mood, the ending can be construed as hopeful. I loved it!

A DARK CORNER by Celia Dale  

Based on the one Celia Dale novel I’ve read so far (the superb A Helping Hand), I knew that Errol Winston is headed for doom from the opening pages when he lands up one evening on the doorstep of the Didcots, a white, elderly couple. It’s raining cats and dogs, and Errol seems soaked to the skin while also coughing badly. Mrs Didcot, shuffling to the door peers at the paper he thrusts at her, which contains an advertisement for a room on rent. It appears that Errol has made a mistake, and has arrived at the wrong address, there’s certainly no room to let at the Didcots. Errol prepares to leave, but Mrs Didcot takes pity on him, particularly concerned with his hacking cough, and invites him inside to warm himself by the fire, while Mrs Didcot prepares a pot of tea. Deeply exhausted, Errol settles on a chair and falls asleep, and it is during this time that her husband, Arthur Didcot walks in.

In A Dark Corner then, we find ourselves in classic Celia Dale territory, where we are given a glimpse of pure evil that lurks beneath an outward façade of respectability. The overarching premise is pretty similar to A Helping Hand – a couple taking in a lodger in an act of altruism which they believe sets them on high moral ground in the perception of society; how can their kindness be questioned?

KÄSEBIER TAKES BERLIN by Gabriele Tergit (Translated from German by Sophie Duvernoy)

Set in 1920s Berlin, Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin, is a lively, zesty satire of the excesses of the period highlighting the power of the press, the transitory nature of the latest news and fads, overhyped personalities, consumerism, and the inevitable downfall fuelled by the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. A novel bursting with a slew of characters, it is difficult really to focus on any one, but the essence of the plot is essentially this:

In the newsroom of Berliner Rundschau, on what has been a slow news week, editor-in-chief Georg Miermann pushes one of his key reporters, a sarcastic man, Emil Gohlisch to publish his article on an upcoming folksy singer. Gohlisch initially haws and hums, but eventually gets his story on Käsebier printed as front page news. Soon, another noted journalist but struggling poet Otto Lambeck writes his piece on a Käsebier show and the breadth of his talent in a rival newspaper, Berliner Tageszaitung, and in the blink of an eye, Käsebier becomes a raging sensation.

In a pace that’s intensely frenetic, Tergit captures the pulse of the period brilliantly in her prose – light and airy, comic and satirical, but also dark and profound. The novel particularly becomes absorbing in the second half when the focus narrows down to certain plot points and is not all over the place.

NOT A RIVER by Selva Almada (Translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott)

Set in a rural region of Argentina, Selva Almada’s Not a River is a brilliant, spare novella about male friendship, trauma, encroaching boundaries, unexpressed guilt, grief, and violence. There’s a cinematic feel to the opening pages as we are presented with the image of Enero Rey standing on the boat in the vast river, poised with a gun. He is not alone, accompanying him is his good friend El Negro and a young kid called Tilo.

The three have come to this island on a camping trip, to spend quality time together, for some much-needed male bonding. Tilo’s father, Eusebio, also a good friend of Enero and El Negro died many years ago, drowned in that very river. On this particular fishing expedition, the three are in pursuit of a large, beautiful sting ray; Enero, dazed by the wine and heat, fires more bullets than is necessary to bring it in. Their activities attract the attention of the island inhabitants – first, a coterie of boys to be followed by a mysterious man called Aguirre, who seems offended by the presence of the three and the manner in which they catch the ray. The sense of tension between the men is immediately palpable, glints of latent menace that fill Enero, El Negro, and Tilo with a sense of foreboding.

Written in a spare, lean style, and impressive in the way it manages to pack the weight of its themes into these slim pages, Not a River is another excellent work by Selva Almada, although The Wind That Lays Waste and Dead Girls remain my favourites. 

LAST WORDS FROM MONTMARTRE by Qiu Miaojin (Translated from Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich)

Last Words from Montmartre begins on an ominous note signaling the author’s intention to commit suicide, evident not only from the title but also from this epigraph – “For dead little Bunny and Myself, soon dead.” Deeply confessional and an intense, lyrical book about betrayal, heartbreak, passion, breakdown, and death, the novel is structured as a series of letters and diary entries addressed by the unnamed narrator to various lovers, friends, and family members, offering an intimate glimpse into the protagonist’s inner world. Based on the subject matter alone, it is not always an easy read, but the fierce tone and richness of the writing make it pretty compelling.

Qiu Miaojin mysteriously committed suicide after writing Last Words from Montmartre but before its publication fueling discussions about the ‘autobiographical” nature of the novel. This ambiguity is further heightened by these cryptic words at the beginning of the novel – “If this book should be published, readers can begin anywhere. The only connection between the chapters is the time frame in which they were written.” Don’t be fooled by the length – though short, this isn’t a novel that can be breezed through but rather like wine is meant to be sipped slowly and savoured. A book I’m very glad to have read and would recommend!

ONE AFTERNOON by Siân James  

One afternoon, our protagonist, Anna accidentally bumps into Charlie, a theatre actor who sweeps her off her feet and the two embark on a whirlwind affair. Anna, we soon learn, is a young widow with three daughters married to Giles who was a Director of the very theatre company which employs Charles and was considerably senior to her. Her daughters, delightfully, welcome this new man in their mother’s life, and while Anna is at first enchanted by his company, soon some insecurities and pangs of jealousy begin to filter in. To make matters complicated, Anna will soon learn of secrets in her deceased husband’s past, of which she had nary a clue, but will change her perception of her marriage and the man she married; factors that will also influence how she views her current relationship with Charlie, and another stodgy man with a tragic air about him who has also taken a fancy to her. This is an intelligent, lovely novel about romantic love, marriage, new relationships, fresh beginnings and finding your feet, and challenging conventional social mores, and the easy, loving relationship between Anna and her three daughters is so beautifully conveyed. The highlight of the book for me was the voice – there’s a charming openness to Anna’s personality as she narrates her story with such refreshing candour. Here’s a quote from the book that I posted on social media…

“However, Giles worked until he’d got everything exactly as he wanted it, including all the furniture. By this time I realise what a marvellous job he did; I’ve never wanted to alter a thing, not even a picture or ornament.

When all the work was finished, he completely lost interest in the house. I could tell that he was surprised by this, but with my vast childhood experience of playing house, I wasn’t at all. The joy was always in planning the rooms, arranging the furniture, finding the right boxes for table and chairs, searching out the kettle, the teapot and the ubiquitous jam jars. Once that was done, the game was deadly dull.”

EASTMOUTH AND OTHER STORIES by Alison Moore   

I loved these atmospheric, moody, beautifully written stories. Moore has a flair for unsettling her readers like she did in her superb novels Missing and Death and the Seaside. Again, I plan to put up a review of this collection soon, but here’s a quote from one of her stories called “Seabound” that I posted on Instagram…

“’I’ve spent my whole life here,’ said May.’ All my memories are here. All my things are here.’ She felt at home, in that house on the cliff edge against which the sea beat. Daisy phoned every few days to see how she was, and May said she was fine.

Except sometimes she was troubled in the night. All alone in the big bed that had once belonged to her parents, May dreamt she stood in the shallows at the edge of the sea, which sucked the sand from beneath her feet. She went deeper. Vast and cold, the sea climbed her bare legs. It was rough, but she stood her ground. Sometimes, when she woke from these dreams, the sea was so loud it could have been right there in her room.”

That’s it for March and April. In May, I’ve been reading Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot as part of #NYRBWomen24 which is excellent so far, the combination of art and memoir is too irresistible and compelling. Plus, I’m also enjoying Lars Gustafsson’s A Tiler’s Afternoon which has a haunting, dreamlike quality to it.  

Not a River – Selva Almada (tr. Annie McDermott)

I’d read two books by Selva Almada before embarking on Not A River – The Wind That Lays Waste and Dead Girls – both excellent (the latter featured in my Best Books of 2020 list), and both published by Charco Press. Not a River, shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize, is the third in a loose trilogy that began with The Wind That Lays Waste, the second being The Brickmakers, which I’ve yet to read.

Set in a rural region of Argentina, Selva Almada’s Not a River is a brilliant, spare novella about male friendship, trauma, encroaching boundaries, unexpressed guilt, grief, and violence.

There’s a cinematic feel to the opening pages as we are presented with the image of Enero Rey standing on the boat in the vast river, poised with a gun. He is not alone, accompanying him is his good friend El Negro and a young kid called Tilo.

Enero Rey, standing firm on the boat, stocky and beardless, swollen-bellied, legs astride, stares hard at the surface of the river and waits, revolver in hand. Tilo, the kid, aboard the same boat, leans back, the rod butt at his hip, turning the reel handle, tugging the line: a glittering thread in the waning sun. El Negro, fifty-something like Enero, alongside the boat, water up to his balls, leans back as well, red-faced from the sun and hard work, rod bent as he winds in and lets out the line. The spool spinning and his breath a kind of wheeze. The river pancake flat.

The three have come to this island on a camping trip, to spend quality time together, for some much-needed male bonding. Tilo’s father, Eusebio, also a good friend of Enero and El Negro died many years ago, drowned in that very river.

On this particular fishing expedition, the three are in pursuit of a large, beautiful sting ray; Enero, dazed by the wine and heat, fires more bullets than is necessary to bring it in. Their activities attract the attention of the island inhabitants – first, a coterie of boys to be followed by a mysterious man called Aguirre, who seems offended by the presence of the three and the manner in which they catch the ray. The sense of tension between the men is immediately palpable, glints of latent menace that fill Enero, El Negro, and Tilo with a sense of foreboding.

It wasn’t a ray. It was that ray. A beautiful creature stretched out in the mud at the bottom, she’d have shone white like a bride in the lightless depths. Flat on the riverbed or gliding in her tulle, magnolia from the water, searching for food, chasing transparent larvae, skeletal roots. The hooks buried in her sides, the tug-of-war all afternoon till she can’t fight any more. The gunshots. 

Alternating with this thread are flashbacks to the past that dwell on the camaraderie between Enero, Eusebio, and El Negro, as boys and then as men. Enero, particularly, is haunted by disturbing dreams of the Drowner, a mythical presence, the harbinger of death on the water. A dream that torments him first in his youth, prompting the trio to take a trip to meet Eusebio’s godfather, a healer, has now returned to disturb his peace of mind in the present on this particular fishing trip.

Intertwined with their storyline, is that of Siomara, Aguirre’s sister, and her two teenage daughters Mariela and Lucy. Siomara’s backstory tells of a woman obsessed with fire and setting things alight, once almost destroying her own home. The bare bones of Siomara’s background reveal a legacy of violence embedded in the relationships between men and women, whether filial or marital. Having been subjected to physical abuse by her father and ditched by her husband, Siomara despairs a similar fate befalling her girls but knows she’s powerless to do anything about it.

Sometimes she thinks the fire talks to her. Not like a person does, not with words. But there’s something in the crackle, the soft sound of the flames, as if she could almost hear the air burning away, yes, something, right there, that speaks to her alone. Even if it doesn’t use human words, Siomara knows it’s calling her. Saying: come on, you know you want to. Just like all the men she fell for, just like the father of her daughters, just like so many others. She answered those calls every time. Why not? Who doesn’t like a bit of attention? And every time, in the end, she’d climbed out of a window as if the building was going up in flames.

Meanwhile, the girls tempt Tilo, Enero, and El Negro at a soda shop one sultry afternoon, inviting them to a dance later in the evening, an event that could be the precursor for something ominous.

The cover of this Charco edition depicts innumerable small tributaries of a river branching out, a representation of the various narrative strands of this tale that flow in across time and space and culminate on that island and river – the spot where Eusebio drowned in the past, where Enero, El Negro, and Tilo feel the pull of an indefinable danger, their fates loosely linked to their fragile encounters with the island locals.

The themes of masculinity, gender violence, guilt, and grief run through this unsettling novella tormenting its characters in the past and present. Enero and El Negro haven’t entirely gotten over Eusebio’s death, the guilt buried deep within; and Siomara’s steadily wasting away body reveals her inability to come to terms with the tragedy that has engulfed her (“One day, the fire inside her will show her the truth. And then all that fire will come out”). There’s a sense of boundaries being encroached, both physical and psychological, and those who have done so in the past have either got their comeuppance with those in the present likely to face a similar fate.

Written in a spare, lean style, Not a River shimmers with mood and atmosphere – the disconcerting silence of the river, the sinister forests surrounding it, the metal-roofed thinly patched houses scorched by the blazing sun, the torpor that descends upon the characters fuelled by heat and fumes of wine. The prose feels skeletal yet poetic with all the linguistic embellishments peeled off, and the dialogues are stripped of speech marks too heightening the novella’s overall effect of economy and mesmerizing starkness. Impressive in the way it manages to pack the weight of its themes into these slim pages, Not a River, then, is another excellent work by Selva Almada, although The Wind That Lays Waste and Dead Girls remain my favourites. 

A Crack in the Wall – Claudia Piñeiro (tr. Miranda France)

Claudia Piñeiro is an author I discovered thanks to Charco Press. I loved Elena Knows, a novel that featured on my Best Books of 2021 list, and sparked my interest in reading more of her work. A Little Luck, also published by Charco last year, is excellent too although not on the same footing as Elena Knows. But more importantly, I was keen to explore her backlist, a slew of titles published by the wonderful Bitter Lemon Press (I had read and loved A Quiet Place by Seichõ Matsumoto previously). I decided to begin with A Crack in the Wall.

I love how Claudia Piñeiro employs the framework of crime to explore relationships and social issues, and in this aspect, A Crack in the Wall is no different; it’s another excellent tale of cowardice, ruthless ambition, moral ambiguity, deception, and precarious relationships.

The novel opens with an image of our protagonist Pablo Simó, sitting at his desk “drawing the outline of a building that will never exist.” Pablo works as an architect in the offices of Borla and Associates, a firm engaged in construction and real estate. Borla, a greedy, ambitious man willing to cut corners, is at the helm of things ably helped by his secretary Marta Horvat (with whom he’s having an affair), a beautiful woman Pablo secretly desires.

For Pablo, his blueprint of the eleven-story tower on which he assiduously works has become a symbol of freedom and much longed-for escape, a dream more than reality given that he’s now forty-five and no longer in a space that allows for drastic changes or uprootedness. Even his fantasies about Marta keep playing in his mind like a broken record; Marta barely registers his presence, and the sparse conversations they do have are mostly one-sided where Marta airs her criticisms.

Pablo has worked for Borla for more than a decade but there’s a sense that both Marta and Borla don’t treat him as an equal, and Pablo seems to have resignedly accepted this. The monotony of his days is not lost on Pablo until a stranger walks into their offices one evening deeply disturbing their fragile sense of calm. It starts like a day as any other – Pablo furtively works on his dream tower sketches while also tending to the demands of potential buyers, and Marta is at the latest construction site supervising the progress of work. As evening descends upon them, Pablo gets ready to pack up his belongings in an orderly manner, take the metro, grab the same coffee at the same bar near to where he resides, and finally home to his wife Laura and daughter Francisca. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until that young woman dressed in a t-shirt and jeans materialises out of the blue, inquiring about a certain Nelson Jara.

Pablo, Borla, and Marta are completely taken aback and Borla manages to fend her off. But this new development is disconcerting because the three know very well that Nelson Jara is dead (revealed in chapter one and not a spoiler), buried under the parking lot of the building that houses the offices of Borla and Associates.

From this point on, the timelines diverge – flashbacks that dwell on Nelson Jara, and the events that lead to his burial below the foundations of the building that alternate with the present where we are given a glimpse of Pablo Simo’s unremarkable life, centred around work and family life, two areas central to his existence but where he is neither valued nor respected.

During his first meeting with Jara, not only is Pablo struck by Jara’s strange, ugly shoes but also by his bag which bulges with a stream of papers, the majority of them proofs of the grievance that Borla’s construction is causing him. It turns out that Jara’s residence is located right next to the Borla construction site, and he complains of work having begun without complying with the requisite procedure and guidelines. He then comes around to the crux of his problem – the utter disregard by Borla’s firm for following protocols has started affecting the structural integrity of the building in which Jara resides leading to the appearance of a crack in the wall of his flat (lending the novel its name), that has only grown bigger. Borla’s response to addressing the problem is the same as the ones offered to earlier similar kinds of complaints, but it is not a solution that Jara is happy with, forcing Pablo to wonder what Jara really wants. 

Meanwhile, in the present, the woman who turns up unexpectedly at the Borla premises is called Leonor but just what her connection to Jara is confounds the three of them. By all accounts, it seemed that Jara was a loner with nary a close friend or relative, in fact, nobody questioned his disappearance for the past three years, so why is Leonor looking for him all of a sudden? In subsequent chapters, Pablo bumps into Leonor again, she seems to suspiciously live within the vicinity, and very soon the two are having coffee, and Pablo is smitten. When Leonor requests Pablo to help her with a course project that involves photographing Pablo’s favourite buildings in Buenos Aires, the threads holding together Pablo’s already disintegrating life begin to unravel.

“No, come on, I’m not that naive. I know that he’s not whiter than white. But who is? Look around you, the people that you know. Did they get everything fair and square? That architect you work for, the investors who fund his projects, your neighbours, the guy you’re selling your next apartment to – was all their money made above board? And what about the people we see on TV? Or the politicians? Even you, yourself: have you never in your life done something a bit shady? Why should other people get away with it and not us? Those are the rules of the game and we weren’t the ones who invented them.”

Interwoven with this storyline is that of Pablo’s claustrophobic life back home. His wife Laura’s never-ending complaints about their teenaged daughter Francisca turning wild – parties, boys, and general acts of rebellion – have become like background music that Pablo has become used to, although their lackluster conversations do sometimes intensify into quarrels. Pablo secretly believes Francisca’s behaviour is a normal part of growing up but barely challenges his wife who firmly believes that parenting is a process that does not accommodate differences in opinions.

Francisca living the whole life stretching ahead of her with the same person. He thinks of that and it scares him, and he asks himself if that really would be a mark of determination – a whole life spent with the same person or simply of a kind of resignation. Because life is long, and getting longer, and love is so difficult to recognize in the midst of all the fireworks and glowing embers.

As the novel progresses, the past begins to catch up with Pablo’s present, the crime buried deep in the recesses of his mind resurfaces with a force that he can’t quite quell. But this digging up of the past reveals aspects of the crime and the true persona of Jara hitherto unknown, and events unfold in such a way that Pablo is pushed up against a wall forcing him to make a series of unconventional decisions.  

He’s about to go, but before he does he corrects himself on a previous point. He says that in a way she did have something to do with the decision they made – at least on his side – because she showed him that it is possible to do what you want without all the planets falling out of the sky.

Pablo Simo’s character is brilliantly realised – a compelling portrayal of a middle aged man defined by his soul crushing habits that leave no room for anything out of the ordinary till the moment Leonor shows up. Throughout his life, Pablo’s lack of assertiveness heavily influences his acquaintances, colleagues, and family’s perception of him. His unvarying routines give the impression of a man unwilling or too defeated to welcome change, and even his metro commute, a longer route than travelling by bus, throw another angle of light on his personality most likely representing his inward desire to remain unnoticed. His architectural ambitions have also faded with the passage of time – his vision of building affordable homes for the people of Buenos Aires in which he once envisaged the persona of prospective inhabitants has gradually been tainted with the city’s rapid urban development fueling the meteoric rise in demand for homes and along with it unchecked greed as the wanton craving for profits obliterates the nobility of the cause.

His manner of dealing with Jara is particularly cowardly and oblique because rather than address the issue head-on, he tries to avoid Jara. Pablo will go on to pay a heavy price for this cowardice; his mettle is severely tested on that fateful night of the crime when he is confronted with a seemingly impossible choice in those crucial moments but lacks the moral courage to do the right thing and eventually settles for a compromise that has been the trademark of his existence so far.  As he begins to ponder about Jara, Pablo is troubled by how similar they both are – vermin is the term he uses – he is probably cut from the same cloth as Jara but deceives himself into believing that he is part of Borla’s world.

A Crack in the Wall, then, explores an array of themes such as the implications of cowardice, the perils of an unfulfilling marriage molded by habits, the withering consequences of greed and recklessness, corruption, uneasy compromise, and moral ambiguity. The title is a play on the literal and the metaphorical; the crack represents not just the actual dent on the wall of Jara’s apartment, but also the fissure that begins to manifest in Pablo’s personality and steadily overwhelms him as it grows wider causing a dramatic shift in his views.  Piñeiro is also brilliant at depicting the harsh makeup of the construction and real estate landscape of Buenos Aires where a severe shortage of space has led to the demolition of existing structures and paved the way for characterless high-rises. We see her superb storytelling skills on full display as she artfully combines the finer elements of plot development with astute character portraits that makes for an utterly riveting narrative. In a nutshell, A Crack in the Wall is another superb offering from Piñeiro as it hurtles towards an unexpected and delicious finale that’s surely the icing on the cake. Highly recommended!

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu – Augusto Higa Oshiro (tr. Jennifer Shyue)

Having read some wonderful books from Archipelago in the past such as Jacques Poulin’s Autumn Rounds, Ida Jessen’s A Change of Time, Hanne Ørstavik’s Love, and Tarjei Vesaas’ The Birds among others, the time felt ripe to read another title from their catalogue by an author completely new to me. Augusto Higa Oshiro was born to immigrants from Okinawa, Japan, and raised in Lima, Peru, and something of this dual identity is reflected in the novel’s central character.

He closed his eyes, in difficult moments his rationality couldn’t do much for him, as instinctive as this rescue device was, it too could turn into a fish bone in the throat, and every thought, every interpretation of his life, sank him further into defeat, into the closing off of paths, into vapid nothingness.

Laden with poetic despair and immersed in a sea of swirling sentences, Augusto Higa Oshiro’s The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is an elusive, enigmatic, and intense tale of death, madness, isolation, and identity; a brilliant walking novel drenched in dreamlike vibes as it evocatively captures the pulse of Lima, its myriad sights and sounds, making it a deeply haunting reading experience.

We meet Katzuo Nakamatsu on the very first page standing on a pebbled path one August evening mesmerised by the magnificence of the sakura blossoms (“The branches of the small trees, which were scattered around the park and laden with rosy flowers, glowed in the leaden light, filling him with a private joy and, he believed, a secret spirituality”).  If this conveys an aura of peace and tranquility, then it proves short-lived, because Katzuo is immediately gripped by an unnamable anguish, “the weight of consciousness, unseeing affliction.”

In the eternity of the instant, in a manner of speaking, the green of the afternoon flickered out, the park’s babbling was erased, as if the world had taken flight, the pebbled paths disappeared, no serene gardens, or laughing families, or murmuring young couples, or ponds full of fish: the only thing in the air now was the sakura tree, its branches and luminous flowers. And in that fragment of afternoon, from that imperturbable beauty, Nakamatsu noticed, sprang a death drive, a vicious feeling, like the sakura were transmitting extinction, a shattering, destruction. Facing this unusual, abnormal reflex, Katzuo managed to close his eyes, as if invaded by exhaustion, it all seemed like a dreadful illusion, abhorrent, and without knowing why he began to tremble, sweating, pallid, shaken to the core, unable to dislodge that feeling of death.

The sight of a festive procession marching down the street with a crew displaying painted faces akin to rag dolls only accentuates Katzuo’s sense of doom and disgust, and sparks a wandering frenzy as he traverses the various neighbourhoods of Lima drinking in their character to calm his clamorous mind.

As the novel progresses, and amid this swirl of dread and fear that waxes and wanes, glimpses of Katzuo’s personality and circumstances emerge. In the present, he is a university professor having embarked on a project to write about the afflicted poet Martín Adán (“a spiritual brother, a twin consciousness in the storm, yes, a man raving at the margins, walled off from the world, majestic and destitute”). We also glean information on Katzuo’s deceased wife Keiko, their life together of which she was the driving force, his siblings and their families, as well as his enterprising, unyielding ancestors, particularly the mysterious Etsuko Untén, his father Zentaró’s best friend, a man whose extraordinary influence over Katzuo will dominate the later pages of this novella.

Katzuo, himself, cuts a solitary figure, a loner with a friend or two (including the one who lends Katzuo his gun), adrift after the death of his wife, who was also his anchor despite their contrasting personalities (“She was an unabashed fighter, a realist, courteous, and then there was Katzuo, the thinker, intellectual, vacillating between the nisei world of his origins and the criollo world, like he belonged to nobody”). His sense of isolation is complete even in the company of his siblings who have all settled well in Lima, integrated into its society with thriving businesses, income, and the comfort of family life. Choosing not to mirror their lives and deliberately veering from the path they’ve taken, Katzuo becomes something of an outsider even to his family let alone his adopted country (“he had always been disposed to austerity, the rigor of ideas and the search for a voice of his own”), a puzzling character they humour out of a sense of duty that forms the crux of Asian culture.

The occasions when he saw them were few, a wedding, wake, an unavoidable celebration, since Katzuo visited nobody, this was his lot, university professor on a meager state salary. The poor relative, unhappy widower, childless, Katzuo lived in a working-class neighborhood in a house inherited from their parents; he felt embarrassment, shame. 

One day, on learning that he has been unceremoniously shuttled into retirement, this drastic development comes as a shock, heightening Katzuo’s sense of bewilderment, as he begins toying with the idea of death and suicide.

…he didn’t know how to process the news, it seemed like a joke, retirement, he said or thought, in any case nobody heard him, nor did they see him standing there, unscathed, uncomprehending, with a wounded air and a piece of paper in his hand. Perhaps he silently wept, or muttered curses, either way, Nakamatsu closed his eyes, and felt that his body was being consumed by a flush, an icy fire in his belly. Then everything dissolved into darkness, suffocating circles pricking his head, an increasingly confused haze, warped voices, violent colors, unusual sounds emerging from dreamlike depths. 

As Katzuo’s mental landscape spirals out of control (“I have ghosts inside my head”), the novel’s geographic points also shift reflecting his troubled, unraveling mind, and from the majestic vistas of sakura blossoms and the immense splendour of the winter sea, we find ourselves transported to the seamier side of this Peruvian city. The figures of Etsuko Untén and Martín Adán, his ancestor and his research subject respectively, also blend into one another as Katzuo begins to identify with the indomitable spirit and appearance of the former and the physical traits and mannerisms of the latter.

He had discerned that he was to transform himself and dress like Etsuko Untén, that unbridled friend of his father’s, to look the way Untén looked in the photos he kept in the files. And at the same time, this was a means of expressing his recognition of the beloved Martín Adán, and becoming exactly like him, taking on the same reactions, the same gestures, the same gait, the same spirit of estrangement.

Emulating Untén and Adán, and donning a hat and cane with tortoiseshell glasses on his nose, Katzuo begins to traverse the seedy underbelly of Lima – a battery of dive bars, brothels, and other sordid establishments, crime-infested pockets riddled with drug addicts, prostitutes, and unsavoury characters – outwardly showcasing a defiant demeanor, almost as if he is inviting death and violence. Whether this is a deliberate act of self-destruction, or a bizarre calling for salvation or both is hard to tell, but it seems like Katzuo is trying to grasp the essence of his Japanese-Peruvian identity.

And yet, despite all the relentless noise and an all-pervading sense of emptiness and turmoil, Katzuo experiences pockets of tranquility, moments that seem like an oasis of calm and wonder that spring out of nowhere. Quite likely auditory hallucinations, these episodes begin one day in his apartment as he hears birdsong coming from the bedroom, “a concert of chirps and trills emerging bountiful from a recessed grove, with its greenery, flowers, shrubs, and open fields.” A respite then or is this another symptom of his fragile mental state?

Katzuo didn’t make a commotion, he understood that the happening was a result of chance, a fault in the ceiling, a joke or irregularity, in any case, like he was in a bubble, he walked around in his living room, the bedroom, grinding his teeth, hands behind his back, in the kitchen, the taste of virgin earth in his mouth and feral scents on the brain. What at first had been ecstasy and astonishment gradually turned into uncertainty, maybe his mind was playing tricks on him, maybe he was going insane, wasn’t reality itself often incoherent and even absurd? 

As the novella unfolds and Katzuo’s feverish nightly odysseys gain pace, remnants of a troubled past and family history begin to emerge from the depths of his consciousness, particularly evolving around Untén, whose aura has left a deep impression on Katzuo fueling his desire to embody him in his quest towards a mystifying form of enlightenment. Themes of the difficulties of immigration and integration come to the fore, disturbingly entwined with the horrific legacy of Japan’s role in the Second World War and the sense of misplaced patriotism imbued in its people, Untén primarily being one of them.

The sense of isolation that Katzuo experiences in his adopted country has its roots in his family history. His father and Untén and their band of people are poor immigrants who settle in Lima but can never assimilate into the fabric of Peruvian society, outcasts perennially ridiculed, jeered, and looked upon suspiciously by the locals. Displaying a peculiar brand of stoicism, these Japanese men soldier on undaunted and undefeated in spirit, developing thick skins impervious to insults and repeated humiliations. Japan’s imperialist ambitions and colonial mindset during the War only alienate Untén’s clan further, although Untén himself remains steadfast in his misguided belief of Japan’s victory.

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is replete with an array of sights, sounds, and rich imagery lending the novel a very tonal and visual quality that only enhances its strange beauty. Midway, we see a shift in authorial control – it remains a third-person narrative but it’s like the author has passed on the baton to a new character introduced to take Katzuo’s story forward. The lyrical, labyrinthine, looping sentences not only convey the complex pathways of Katzuo’s disturbed mind but also the contours of the city on his walking jaunts – a place of contrasts alternating between sumptuous gardens, hypnotic beaches, quiet affluent neighbourhoods on one side, and the squalid, forbidden corners depicting degradation and filth on the other.

In a nutshell then, with its themes of alienation and gradual mental disintegration, The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is a bleak but beautiful novella made compelling by the poetry of its language for which kudos must surely be given to translator Jennifer Shyue.

Mothers & Daughters in Literature: Eight Excellent Books

One of my favourite themes in literature is mother-daughter relationships, all the more if they are complex or difficult. I’m currently reading May Sinclair’s Mary Olivier: A Life for #NYRBWomen24, which has been a wonderful read so far, particularly exploring the complicated relationship between Mary and her deeply religious mother, and it got me thinking of some of the other books I’d recently read and loved on this theme.

So without further ado, here are the eight books. You can read the detailed reviews on each by clicking on the title links…

A JEST OF GOD by Margaret Laurence

Set in the little, fictional prairie town of Manawaka, Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God is a wonderfully intense and haunting novel, an incredible character portrait of a shy, socially awkward schoolteacher capturing her solitary life, her life-altering affair and the ensuing crisis thereafter.

Our protagonist is Rachel Cameron, a 34-year-old single woman living with her ailing, overbearing mother in the Canadian town of Manawaka. As the years pile on, and the prospect of finding a man and bearing children appears increasingly dim, she feels trapped in her role as a daughter, a sister, and a teacher, unable to break free from the expectations placed upon her by others. Enter Nick Kazlik, a university professor one year older than her, and very soon Rachel finds herself entangled in a passionate affair, one that will affect her deeply and possibly set her on a path of self-discovery. 

A Jest of God explores the themes of loneliness and fear, sexuality and desire, faith and religion, the courage to break away from conventional societal mores essentially those forced upon women, and the small-mindedness of a conservative small town where nobody’s business goes unnoticed providing rich fodder for gossip and judgment. It’s about the complex ties between mothers and daughters, and between siblings, and also between friends and lovers. But, it’s also about the unfathomable tricks of Fate (lending the novel its name), particularly on a woman whose greatest fear is being made to look like a fool.

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes (Translated from Italian by 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. 

DADDY’S GONE A-HUNTING by Penelope Mortimer

Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting is a brilliant, superbly crafted tale of a challenging marriage, abortion, and the difficulties of a mother-daughter relationship told in Mortimer’s customary haunting, absorbing style.

We are introduced to Ruth Whiting, a bored housewife who lives with her well-to-do dentist husband Rex, a bully, in the posh neighbourhood called the Common. Ruth dotes on her children – her eldest daughter Angela and the boys, Julian and Mike. But they are growing up and have reached that age where they have lives of their own – the boys away at boarding school and Angela, an undergraduate at Oxford. In the holidays, when her children come down, Ruth’s home is filled with chatter, activities and noise, but for the better part of the year, the hours lie empty and the monotonous days stretch endlessly before Ruth.

When Angela, who is unmarried, becomes pregnant, she confides in Ruth expecting the latter to help her. The gamut of conflicting emotions felt by mother and daughter and how they deal with this tough situation forms the backbone of this novel.

COLD ENOUGH FOR SNOW by Jessica Au

Cold Enough for Snow is a haunting, beautifully sculpted novella of the mysteries of relationships and memories, familial bonds, finding connections, and life’s simple pleasures. The novel opens with a woman and her mother embarking on a short trip together to Japan, a journey and destination that promises the opportunity for both to bond and connect. But we get a sense from the outset that mother and daughter are not always on the same page.

What’s interesting about this novella is the nature of the relationship between the two women, which remains elusive despite the hazy impression that they get along well. The book is largely from the daughter’s point of view and so the mother’s reminisces and flashbacks are told to us from the daughter’s perspective lending it an air of unreliability or conveying the idea that the mother’s experiences are filtered through the daughter’s eyes so that it fits her narrative.

There’s an elusive, enigmatic feel to the novella, of things left unsaid that might mean more than what’s been stated, a sense that things lie outside our grasp, that full knowledge is always on the fringes, on the periphery of our vision. To me Cold Enough for Snow was like a balm – the quiet, hallucinatory prose style and range of sensory images were very soothing and I could easily lose myself in the dreamy world that Au created.

ELENA KNOWS by Claudia Piñeiro (Translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle)

Elena Knows is a forceful, thought-provoking, unconventional crime novel where Claudia Piñeiro effectively explores a range of social concerns such as illness, caregiving, crippling bureaucracy and a woman’s choice regarding her body. Elena, a woman in her sixties, suffers from Parkinson’s, a progressively devastating illness, characterized by loss of control over everyday movements. However, the real burden weighing heavy on her soul is the sudden, recent death of her daughter Rita who was mysteriously and inexplicably found hanging from the bell tower in the local church. The police classify her death as suicide, but Elena is convinced it is murder.

What makes Elena Knows so compelling is the richness of themes explored, a gamut of hard-hitting social issues. First of all, the book is an unflinching portrayal of a debilitating disease and the loss of dignity that it involves. Other themes explored are the challenges of being a caregiver and abortion. It’s a brilliant novel and the fact that the author manages to address these issues without being preachy or sentimental only enhances the book’s power.

MY PHANTOMS by Gwendoline Riley

My Phantoms is a brilliant, engrossing tale that explores the complexity of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. Our narrator is Bridget Grant and through her eyes, we gradually begin to see a fully formed picture of her narcissistic father Lee and her emotionally detached mother Helen – parents who have continued to haunt Bridget’s psyche. The relationship with the mother forms the focal point of the novel, she is independent living in her own home, but portrayed as an insecure woman on many fronts and unable to really open up. However, we view the mother from Bridget’s eyes, and even if she is not someone you warm up to, Bridget is not always the ideal daughter either and comes across as cruel and deeply unsympathetic in certain situations.

Riley’s prose is biting and as sharp as a scalpel, but also suffused with tender moments. The primary characters are finely etched and the dialogues between them are superb, they feel very real. In My Phantoms, then, she explores the tricky terrain of fractured familial bonds with much aplomb.

IZA’S BALLAD by Magda Szabó (Translated from Hungarian by George Szirtes)

On the death of her husband Vince, Ettie goes to live with her daughter Iza in her flat in Budapest. Ettie is ecstatic at first, she looks forward to spending quality time with her beloved daughter, but alas things unfold quite differently. The first days of adjustment in the big, bustling city of Budapest are particularly hard for Ettie who has spent most of her time in a village taking comfort in its familiarity and sense of community. Pest frightens her, and with Iza too immersed in her career and social life, Ettie’s sense of isolation only heightens.

One of the biggest strengths of the novel is Szabó’s superb characterization. Ettie and Iza are such brilliantly etched, fully realised characters, and Szabó particularly excels in showing how their diametrically opposite personas and outlook set the stage for heartache and tragedy. The two are as unalike as chalk and cheese. Ettie is warm, Iza is frozen. For Ettie the past is an anchor, while Iza is forward-thinking, her gaze settled on the future. Ettie craves companionship, Iza wants to be alone. Iza’s Ballad, then, is a piercing, unflinching examination of a complicated mother-daughter relationship, a striking depiction of two women who are poles apart. 

THE MIRADOR: DREAMED MEMORIES OF IRÈNE NÉMIROVSKY BY HER DAUGHTER by Élisabeth Gille (Translated from French by Marina Harss) 

The Mirador is no ordinary biography. The byline below the title reads “Dreamed Memories of Irène Némirovsky by her Daughter” which is to say Gille has breathed life into her mother by giving her a voice and thus positioned this as a memoir. What we read, therefore, is a first-person narrative giving the impression that it is Irène herself who is speaking directly to us.

The Mirador comprises two sections – the first is Némirovsky’s imagined memoir penned in 1929 covering her childhood in Russia and Paris amid sweeping changes and a rapidly evolving political landscape; while the somber and hauntingly sad second section fast forwards to 1942, days before her arrest at a time when she was living in precarious circumstances with her husband and two young daughters in a small French village, isolated with a deep sense of foreboding with regards the future.

Élisabeth Gille traverses the zenith and nadir of her mother’s glittering but cruelly short life; The Mirador is not only a brilliant, immersive, and deeply humane account of Irène Némirovsky’s life lived in tumultuous Russia and France, but also a window into her legacy and fame as a writer par excellence.

And that’s it! I had fun compiling this post, and watch this space for more such themed pieces in the future. Happy reading!