March 18, 2024

Mailbox Monday: Oh, the joy of the International Booker Prize!

Every time the longlist for the International Booker Prize is released, my reading pleasure is exponentially increased. Some years, it is better than others to be sure, but this year looks most promising. 

Here are a few of the works I have already acquired, sent to me by the most gracious publishers:


Not A River by Selve Almada, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott, was sent to me from Graywolf Press in Minnesota. 

          It’s not a river, it’s this river.

A hot, motionless afternoon. Energy and El Negro are fishing with Tilo, their dead friend’s teenage son. After hours of struggling with a hooked stingray, Enero aims his revolver into the water and shoots it. They hang the ray’s enormous corpse from a tree at their campsite and let it go to rot, drawing the attention of some local islanders and igniting a long-simmering fury toward outsiders and their carelessness. It’s only the two sister - teenage nieces of one of the locals, Aguirre - with their hair black as cowbird feathers and giving offa scent of green grass, who are curious about the trio and invite them to dance. But the girls are not quite as they seem. As night approaches and tensions arise, Enero and El Negro return to the charged memories of their friend who years ago drowned in the same river.

As uneasy and saturated as a prophetic dream, Not a River is another extraordinary novel by Selva Almada about masculinity, guilt, and irrepressible desire, written in a style that is spare and timeless.



What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey, was sent to me by Scribe.

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them?

This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.

In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.


The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson, was sent to me by HarperCollins.

An intoxicating novel in the vein of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, about a woman in the throes of a fever remembering the important people in her past, her memories laid bare in vivid detail as her body temperature rises.

A woman lies bedridden from a high fever. Suddenly she is struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the woman’s own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget.

There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a painful secret.

The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human. 

Don’t these look fabulous?! I hardly know where to begin, for each of the titles in the International Booker Prize longlist give me a glimpse into a world that is not my own, while expanding my understanding of those who inhabit it with me.

Find other Mailbox Monday posts here.

 

March 17, 2024

Enchanted With Blogger Once Again


I wonder what it is that keeps drawing me back to Blogger. Perhaps it is nostalgia, using the platform with which I began my blog in 2006. But, it isn’t as if we can go back to those days. The early days of blogging were nothing short of miraculous: acquiring a voice, finding other bibliophiles with whom I could  the love of literature, embarking upon works far beyond my regular fare. (It wasn’t until I began blogging that I truly found translated literature.)

Perhaps it is longing for a fresh “beginning.” The Japanese have April start planners, when I always think the year begins in September. I know, for most of you it begins in January, but it has always begun with the start of the school year for me. Since I began blogging in the Spring, eighteen years ago, it seems an appropriate season to revisit my first foray.

Readers who first found me on Blogger had to visit me several years later on Wordpress, as I switched my domain to that platform. And now, Wordpress disappoints me as much as Blogger did then. They have retired most of their old themes, they use JetPack, and it all feels terribly cold. 

My Wordpress friends still have Dolce Bellezza linked to my Wordpress blog. But, I like it here. It has none of my previous work; I’d deleted all my reviews here years ago. That’s like a clean closet…no mothballs here. Only a clean, white page, and a fresh start. 

Sounds like Spring to me. 

November 3, 2023

I think the last time we spoke was in May…


Herrick Lake

Well, it has been a long time since I turned this thing on. I think I said I was going to be here at Blogger, and then I went back to Wordpress, and now here I am again.

Wordpress took away all the themes I like and replaced them with templates for professional businesses. I never thought I’d say a platform from Google was cozier, but here we are.

It has been a long Summer. My husband was very, very sick. He lost over 30 pounds, and we have seen cardiologists, pulmonologists, internists, and finally gastroenterologists. It seems he has some gastro thing which is making it difficult for him to eat, so our world has turned around. Going out to eat has never been more appealing to me…

My father has been quite ill with his heart, too, and he faces a cardio version on Wednesday. “Just one push of a button,” said the doctor, “and your heart returns to its normal rhythm.” It's so simple for a professional to say.


But, I have been walking every Monday and Friday with my mother, and these days have been absolutely glorious. They make my heart sing, as I absorb the “wind and sunshine.” Don’t you love this fabulous phrase? I heard it once from a man who was telling how bonsai trees should look like they’ve been outside in the wind and sunshine.

I’ve been reading, too, but not so much. Mostly, I’m looking to get back in the groove, as it is November and with that, I know we embark on German Literature Month as well as Novellas in November. We’ll see what I can uncover from my shelves to fit these categories. And, while I’m at it, I may as well complete the list of Twenty Books of Summer, for which, in fact, I did read.

Also, I am spending way too much time playing Word Wars on my iPad. Who knew that using one’s vocabulary could be such a fun tool? 

May 13, 2023

“We came to Manderley in early May…”

 


I had not realized how closely the trees grew together here, their roots stretching across the path like tendrils ready to trip one…there is no sense or beauty in this undergrowth. That tangle of shrubs there should be cut down to bring light to the path. It was dark, much too dark. That naked eucalyptus tree stifled by brambles looked like the bleached limb of a skeleton, and there was a black earthy stream running beneath it, choked with the muddied rains of years, trickling silently to the beach below. (p. 155) 

It has not been apparent to me before, how much the flora contributed to the sense of menace Daphne du Maurier creates so exquisitely. This is the best part about rereading a favorite novel, and reading it again: the atmosphere never gets old.

At every turn, Rebecca is lifted up. Admired. Adored. Almost idolized. Mrs. Danvers, of course, keeps Rebeca’s rooms in the west wing in perfect order, as if Rebecca might come back at any moment. Her apricot nightdress, creased from when she last wore it, is in its case; the costly china ornaments are freshly dusted each day, and flowers adorn every surface.

The new Mrs. de Winter is taken by her sister-in-law, Beatrice, to visit Gran. At first, their meeting is quite pleasant, with water-cress sandwiches, freshly cut, laid before the old woman. Then, Gran’s memory clouds. “I want Rebecca!” she says. “Where is Rebecca? Why did not Maxim come and bring Rebecca?” They quickly leave her to the nurse, both deeply embarrassed.

One of the greatest horrors in the novel is the fancy dress ball. Lady Crowan suggested it should be hosted at Manderley once again this year, and as it was practically forced down their throats, Maxim agreed. When Mrs. Danvers slyly suggests a painting of Catherine de Winter for the Mrs. de Winter to copy, the new bride promises her husband the “surprise of his life.” She doesn’t realize how true this will be, for she dresses exactly as Rebecca did at the last fancy dress ball. Mrs. Danvers knew. Mrs. Danvers manipulated the whole charade.

What does she care if Maxim is wounded by her deed? “What do I care for his suffering?” she said, he’s never cared about mine. How do you think I’ve liked it, seeing you sit in her place, walk in her footsteps, touch the things that were hers?…She’s still mistress here, even if she is dead. She’s the real Mrs. de Winter, not you. It’s you that’s the shadow and the ghost.” (p. 246)

All along, we’re led to believe that Rebecca is the one who is loved. Rebecca is the one with the power. That Maxim paces the floor in grief over the loss of his wife.

I shall not spoil the ending. I shall not uncover what du Maurier has carefully built up. But, every time I read it, I am astonished anew. When critics have said Daphne du Maurier is the master of suspense they weren’t kidding, and everyone else pales in comparison. Just as we think the new Mrs. de Winter pales next to Rebecca.

Thanks to Heavenali for hosting Daphne du Maurier reading week. Every year it gives me a chance to enjoy her work all over again.


May 2, 2023

Twenty Books of Summer: The First Ten

 


I so eagerly left a comment to participate in Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer, I hadn’t yet compiled my list! So, here it is (the first ten, anyway):

  1. Suicide Museum by Ariel Dorfman (published September 5, 2023)
  2. Service by Sarah Gilmartin (published May 4, 2023)
  3. I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore (published June 20, 2023)
  4. Foster by Claire Keegan
  5. Forbidden  Notebook by Alba de Cespedes
  6. Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto
  7. Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong (published June 12, 2023)
  8. Watership Down by Richard Adams (reread)
  9. The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsujo 
  10. The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon (published June 20, 2023)
(Several of this titles are Advanced Reader Copies which I have been sent to review. In those cases, I have added the publication date above.)



















Tina, Mafia Soldier by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli (translated from the Italian by Robin Pickering-Iazzi) “On this island, fear is lasting and tenacious.”



 

Tina replied, anger flaring, “And what am I like? Exactly like everybody. A normal person. Like everyone else. That’s how I want to be. Normal.” p. 209

How can anyone who has seen her father shot in the face, when she was just eight years old, be normal? The life of a family whose father was in the mafia is anything but normal, especially for Tina who determines to be tougher than ever imagined. 

She takes his weapons (a twelve gauge hunting rifle with sawed-off barrels and a nine-caliber Beretta with a thirteen round magazine) from the drawer where they were carefully wrapped, and sticks the handgun down the back of her shirt, just like her father did. “From now on, she promised herself, “no one can call me Cettina again.” Her aim, now, is for revenge.

Tina isn’t like everyone else…Tina is a unique figure, with a strong, complex personality. What’s more, she’s internalized the image of herself that the mafia offered. So part of her is an act, and part is her real will to break out of the pack, to prevail, to affirm herself at any cost. A vicious circle has been triggered. And now it’s impossible for her to back down. 

We learn about Tina through the eyes of the narrator, who relentlessly pursues Tina through the pages of the novel. We are introduced to her sister, Saveria, and her brother, Francesco; her grandmother and friend, Giovanna. Little by little, Tina becomes known, for she has an almost obsessive hold on the narrator’s life: her imagination and her time. 

For what other reason would I be here digging into a story that’s so desperately Sicilian? For what else if not for this unutterable fantasy, for this perverse, romantic obstinacy of mine to consider myself in a land of exile wherever I am? A heartfelt myth that only the “exiled” can recognize, unknown to the “Sicilians of Sicily” as the captain says. For those who escaped the diaspora, belonging is a given, not a choice. 

Tina, Mafia Soldier is about a girl who has turned into a mafiosa. It is about the narrator who boldly pursues her. But, it also encompasses a Sicily I will never know. One that contains “small-time murders and monumental crimes - on this island that is open to every invasion and closed around its secret pain.” 

Tina has learned this truth: that I alone can take my life in my hands. I alone.

May 1, 2023

Mailbox Monday: Some lovely Acquisitions

There have been several books I’ve purchased lately, from Javier Marias’ Tomas Nevinson to Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren. But, a few which have come to my mailbox from publishers are these:


Killingly is a novel by Katherine Beutner, which comes to me from SoHo Press. “Edmund White Award-winning author Katherine Beutner crafts a real-life unsolved mystery into an immersive, unforgettable work of literary crime fiction - a beautifully drawn historical portrait of queerness, family trauma, and the risks faced by women who dared to pursue unconventional paths at the end of the 19th century.”


Alien Worlds is the latest coloring book by Kerry Rosanes. “From the internationally bestselling artist Kerby Rosanes, this essential coloring book includes ninety-six double-sided pages of pure imagination and is the latest entry in Kerby’s astounding Worlds series.”


Mater 2-10 is another work by Hwang Sok-yong. “International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story—an epic tale that threads together a century of Korean history.” I am eager to read this, as I thoroughly enjoyed the last book of his I read, entitled At Dusk.

So, from the 19th century, to coloring an imaginative world, to finding out more about Korea, I look forward to what each of these books will bring. Do any of them especially appeal to you?

Find more books which have come to the mailboxes of fellow bibliophiles at Mailbox Monday.


April 30, 2023

Sunday Salon: Fresh Beginnings






“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” -Leo Tolstoy


I’ve been longing for the past lately. Days when I wrote in my journal with a Bic and a spiral, instead of a fountain pen and Traveler’s Factory Notebook imported from Japan. Days when I began with the Blogger platform, and I discussed things more than books. I’ve been missing simplicity. And, you.

So I wonder, is it too annoying to revert my blog to Blogger? Without importing seventeen years of posts? That would be a fresh beginning, for sure.

Meanwhile, International Booker Prize 2023 Shadow Jury, of which I am a part, has been reading and discussing the long list for this year. While several of my fellow jurists felt that this year’s list was less superior than previous year’s, there were many for which we will advocate when we forge our own list for May 2. I, personally, am a great fan of While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer, translated by Katy Derbyshire. I was also deeply struck by the power of Boulder by Eva Balthasar, translated by Julia Sanches, and the imagination of Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated by Chi-Yong Kim.

The redbud tree (pictured above) is in my parents’ front yard. It is a glorious specimen of the Spring trees which still linger in their glory in this part of Illinois. I relish their beauty before Illinois weather turns into the likes of Hell’s front porch.

So, I will link to Readerbuzz’ Sunday Salon and come around to visit you, as I used to do. 



April 15, 2023

Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches International Booker Prize 2023

 



Baltasar’s writing is lyrical. While finding no point at which I could identify with the narrator, neither could I put this novel down. The images, the emotions, the lifestyles are so intimately portrayed I felt myself living with these women: the narrator, her lover, Samsa, and even the baby, Tinna.

Samsa gives her lover the nickname Boulder, and I wonder why. She is not a rock on which to depend. She is adventurous, and untethered, a cook who travels on boats and finds it hard to settle in one place. When Samsa buys a house, her lover has this reaction:

Sometimes I think she doesn’t quite get me. Quaint little houses like hers eat away at you, bit by bit. They bore deep into you and strike the most delicate nerve. By the time you notice it’s too late. You’ve already been killed by the kind of devastating energy that can only come from pain.

p. 25

But, Boulder does come to live in the little yellow house with Samsa, adjusting the best she can while she spends the days in her food truck, cooking empanadas, serving coffee. She reluctantly agrees with Samsa’s desire to become a mother, although it is not a desire of her own.

I’m not into kids. I find them annoying. They’re unpredictable variables that come crashing into my coastal shelf with the gale force of their natural madness. They’re craggy, out of control, scattered. They’re drawn to me the same way cats zero in on people who are allergic to them.

p. 26

They smoke, seemingly endlessly, they are intimate, they forge a life together from which Samsa desires more: a child of her own. And so Boulder gives in, and here I find the most ironic line in the whole book:

I have the sense I am buying her a kid and that the approach I’ve taken is deceitful.

p. 41

You think?! That’s exactly what you are doing: buying a child for artificial insemination, an entirely unnatural procedure which would seem more than a little deceitful to me, too.

But, I will cast my judgment aside, and give another quote which is the only portion of the book for which my heart also burned:

The baby has fetal macrosomia. If only you could set fire to every word that evokes an illness…I age all at once. I’ve just learned that a child’s diagnosis can kill you too.

p. 63

Boulder is a most fascinating look at parenting, motherhood, relationships. It is not up to me to agree with it. It isup to me to attest to its power.

April 13, 2023

While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer, translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire International Booker Prize 2023

 

Mark and Walter. Pitbull. But, mostly Danny and Rico. These are the mates who grow up in Leipzig, Germany, after the Zone. We see them as Pioneers; we see them as young men. But, we always see them as rebellious and daring, stubborn and wounded.

Their fathers drink, or beat them, or both. Their mothers cry, with their heads lowered on the kitchen table. Their teachers admonish, but never make any difference in these boys’ lives.

While We Were Dreaming takes us back and forth, from their ages of eleven to eighteen, never quickly revealing why they are suddenly locked up or at a funeral. We keep reading to find out who has died. Who has been burned in a stolen car driven too fast. Whose father threw his beloved dog out the window where it died in the street.

I would have thought it would be too troubling to keep on reading, but I was mesmerized. Just as I experienced while reading The Birthday Party, I could not tear myself away from the intensity of what was happening. Nor did I want to. 

While We Were Dreaming is definitely in my top three for winning the International Booker Prize 2023.

March 30, 2023

The Gospel According to The New World by Maryse Conde, translated from the French by her husband, Richard Philcox International Booker Prize 2023

 

This will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me: if I had not committed to reading the International Booker Prize 2023 long list, I wouldn’t have read more than 50 pages of The Gospel According to the New World.

Condé does a marvelous job of giving us the Caribbean in the cadence of a skilled storyteller. But, she does an abysmal job in creating a Christ figure who is independent from the one I’ve read about in the Bible. Why does His story need to be rewritten?

She draws parallels between Jesus Christ, and her lead character, Pascal (Easter), as if they both comprised the essence of the New Testament. Pascal is born of a Spaniard, who has disappeared from the cruise ship in which he bed Pascal’s mother, Maya…she leaves the baby in a shed between the hooves of a donkey for warmth. 

Many other “parallels” between Jesus and Pascal occur, such as finding twelve fishermen, multiplying the braided loaves, turning the Rialto into a den of thieves, raising Lazare from the dead…

Yet, there is also a strong representation of today’s issues. Condé addresses prejudice, wealth, and gender in her novel, for who could leave those alone in 2023? 

An unknown visitor arrives for Pascal’s christening. He brings a flower, in an earthen vase, that Pascal’s mother had never seen before. “This flower’s name is Tete Negresse,” the new arrival explained. “It is designed to erase the Song of Solomon from our memory. You recall those shocking words, I am Black but I am beautiful. These words must never be pronounced again.” (p. 32)

The bride in the Song of Solomon has no case for Black or White; the girl laments that she has been darkened by the sun, mistreated by her brothers:

Dark am I, yet lovely,
daughters of Jerusalem,
dark like the tents of Kedar,
like the tent curtains of Solomon.
Do not stare at me because I am dark,
because I am darkened by the sun.
My mother’s sons were angry with me
and made me take care of the vineyards;
my own vineyard I had to neglect

Song of Solomon 1:5-6 (NIV)

I never took this passage to mean anything racial, or prejudicial; more than anything, it points to the cruelty of her siblings, as well as her hard work under the sun.

Then there is the statement against the middle class, as if it is despicable. “He (Pascal) argued that he was going to be twenty and was perfectly capable of deciding his future on his own. Moreover, they knew full well that he had never liked the bourgeois milieu they had forced him to accept, particularly its arrogance and selfish indifference towards everything that didn’t concern it directly.” (p. 44)

Shall we take care about whom we lump together? Not all poor are lazy. Not all middle class are indifferent to others. Not all rich are unlawful…

I found myself becoming more troubled with each page that I read. My interpretation is that Maryse Condé speaks with great irreverence about God’s Son, in whom I believe with all my heart. Quite possibly this is a book which many will enjoy, but for me, I could not accept the scornful way she seemed to mock the Word made flesh in her characterization of Pascal. The Gospel According to the New World is not for me, and it will be near the bottom of my list for the International Booker Prize this year.

Find a review from my fellow Shadow Panel Jurist, David, here.