That was the monththat was October 2021

1. The last children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada
2. Kafka’s Prague by Jiri Kolar
3. The lying life of adults by Elena Ferrante
4. Too loud a solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
5. Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka
6. Beard’s Roman Woman by Anthony Burgess
7. Special needs by Lada Vuckic

The Journey this month –

Well, I started with a sci-fi novel set in Tokyo where people aren’t living long except those that are already old as the world they live in has shrunk. Then an art book that saw Kafka quotes tied with the crumbled photos of Prague a wonderful mix of art and writing. Then a coming of age book that ses a young girl discovers her Aunt and a family she hadn’t known was there. Then a man spends his time-saving texts as he crushes them for his job. Then a train trip on the Bullet train has a load of assassins on the train as we see the story unfold and the connections between their assignments.  Then a thinly veiled Anthony Burgess lives in Rome and as he falls in love and is haunted by his past. Then a mute boy tells his story and how he views the world . The journey this month saw us visit five countries no new publishers

Book of the month

I loved all ther books but I am a huge fan of Burgess this isn’t his best work but in a lot of ways is autobiographical as a lot of events and even the life of the main character matched a lot of Anthony Burgess own life story timeline in the east a loss of his first wife living in Rome writing scripts.  and until this reissue came out unavailable and the first as it was intended with the photos taken at the time but not printed in color at the time it came out.

Non book events

We saw the Knife Angel in chesterfield this month which given events this month with the death of an MP stabbed to death whilst it was in chesterfield a touching work when you see it made up of hand in knives. We had time in peaks middle of the month but last week or so I have had a shock with illness in the family hopefully it isn’t as bad as it seemed a week ago.

The month ahead

For me, November has and will always be in my mind be German Lit month I have three books read ready I hope to get them and a couple more reviewed this month. I also have a couple of review books to get too. I hoped to get to 100 books reviewed I am 23 short so may make it. What are your plans for next month?

Special needs by Lada Vukić

Special needs by Lada Vukić

Croatian fiction

Original title – Specijalna potreba

Translator – Christina Pribichevich- Zoric

Source – review copy

I looked forward to this as it had a child with a disability as its main character as I  feel there aren’t enough narratives with people with disablities and when I read Emil the lead character was an elective mute,  although his view of the world around him to me would put him on the autistic spectrum. many years ago I worked with a man similar to Emil a mute he has a great sense of humour and reading this reminded me of him and he like Emil maybe had great hearing as he loved music. This is the first book by Lada to be translated into English. She published short stories around the web and in magazines and won a number of prizes for her work this book her debut novel won a prize as the best-unpublished work in 2016.

My name is Emil and I’m ten years old. The same as the number of fingers I have when I count them one by one, hiding my hand under my school desk and counting. I don’t know what will happen when I reach eleven. I don’t mean fingers. I mean eleven years of age. How will I count then? The teachersays that fingers have nothing to do with counting. Yopu think with your head, not with your fingers. But that’s the only way I know how to count, I do know how to describe the number eleven, though. It’s two ones stnding next to each other. Like two of Emil’s drooping hjeads. Like most of my low scores in assestments.

The opening and Emil says who he can only get to rten becasue of his fingers.

Emil and his mother  Marina. live together in a small flat in an unnamed city.  He is mute and also has bad legs which mean he has to wear special shoes. All this and the fact all he is able to do in school is count to ten on his fingers. This seems to be trapped by his lack of speech but we view his world which sees him hearing all around him which means he knows what his teachers really think of him as they struggle with fitting him into the class. A touch event is when he hears his teacher has a baby but is yet unaware of her baby. He also has problems connecting with the other kids at the school who just don’t want to get to know him. This leaves him vulnerable to others in a way as he just wants to fit in.  so when someone does show interest in him a local boy that is also a drug dealer he only uses him because he is mute and seems to hear better than others. The other main relationship in the book is mother and son which also sees his uncle put his point of view forward. I love his internal voice it seems to capture someone like Emil so well that unique view of the world of autistic people that filters so much out. add to that a blind professor we have a story that is

You’re so silent, so let me tell you this as well: most people walk through the world unaware of what ies behind the visible and tangibile. I know that, given your incredible hearing, you realize this yourself. You see, these things re like sheet music. In order to know what they say, you have to decipher them. Use the right key. In music we use the treble clef and the bass clef. You don’t read the notes in one key the same way you do another, The rules are dfifferent. And it’s the ame with the world. It lies here before us like a sheet of paoper with a hiddeen melody on it, but not everyone is capable of decipheroing it

Emil’s view is unfiltered ut also he hasn’t ;earnt how to hear yet really.

This is a glimpse into Emil’s world that reminds me of two books that were big hits years ago. They also had special needs children as the narrator. the curious incident in the night which has a similar feel to how Emil looks at the world the fact that emotions and sometimes how the world links together get missed. The other is extremely loud and incredibly close which also like this had a character that had a talent like Emil with his hearing. But this works better having worked with a mute I saw how Emil felt and how others react to the lack of speech some of the events of the book to me right back. I also like his relationship with his mother which also seemed so well drawn. If you like both of those books and books like to kill a mockingbird this is a book that has a glimpse into a world of being mute and how people react to that and sometimes abuse it. Have you a favorite book about someone with a disability?

Barter Books part one Me wandering and the shopAs

I have been back a couple of weeks now and Have decided to do two posts of my visit to Barter books. A shop that I saw open when I lived twenty-plus years ago in Alnwick.Set in the old train station the shop has expanded over the years from what was a small shop in just the front part of the station which is the time I was there it has different colored stamps for the price of the books I have a lot of books that have these. This place was the start of me as a reader and traveler in reading as I took chances of writers from around the world and beat writers.

I’m sat by the entrance and what initially was the room the shop was in I am a few pounds heavier than those days.

In the years since I have been the shop is now much more thanks to the finding of the keep calm and carry on sign which they found a few years ago. The shop now is also a cafe and much more. So we set off I wandered the stacks and Amanda took some great pics of the shop for me as I looked for some great books (Yes mostly translations !! )

I mainly looked through the hardback and paperback fiction but there is a huge selecetion of evrything else here if you want a book that is hard to get it may be here !!

I’m sure you’d all find some books here I didn’t have a drink as I want to go to the small cafe just by my old flat two doors down from there. I will include two more images from our holiday first the statue near our hotel in the small village near by Newbiggin by the sea. The couple there is two the one her and a smaller copy on the front itself we hope to go back and see it at sunset like in the picture !!

Then we loved this image of beach huts at Blyth

I shall post one day next week the books I brought on the day ! Have you been here or do you have a bookshop you owe to sparking your love of reading ?

 

 

Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess

Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess

English Fiction

Source – Personal copy

I haven’t talked about how Anthony Burgess is one of my all-time favorite writers, so when I looked at the list of books for club 1976.  was happy when I saw this book which I had brought when it came out two years ago as part of the University of Manchester Irwell edition of some of Burgess works that had fallen out of print or as in the case of Puma was part of another novel that Burgess had wanted to publish as a separate work. Anyway, this book was one of the books from Burgess that had fallen out of print this new edition is the first to include the pictures that David Robinson had taken around Rome to highlight the text supernatural parts of the book the original edition had them but in black and white not like color here. The book also has a number of Autobiographical elements that parallel Burgess’s own life.

She died in an English March. He should known, those quiet years in Londin when he was earning their living as a writer of scripts for radio, television and cinem, what her trouble was. He had even written a television play in which one of his characters, a writer of scripts for radio, television and cinema, died of cirrhosis. From those years in Brunei on, when he had woirked for Radio Brunei, it never seemed to him that either of them drank excessively. In the tropics, surely you sweated all that gin out before it got anywhere near the liver.

His own wife died due to Alcoholism they had both lived in Brunei as well.

The book opens with the main character in the book Ronald Beard as we see him with his wife dying. When his wife finally passes away, he decides to head and pursue a job as a screenwriter in Hollywood as he has been hired by a studio exec to write a Musical based on the time Shelley and Lord Byron spent in Geneva. A time that changed both the writers forever as they see a big Hollywood star playing Bryon he heads to Rome as he tries to wor on the musical he is drinking but soon after he arrives in Rome he falls for a woman this is maybe like the drinking a way of avoiding the grief but his wife is still there as we see he is haunted by her as he tries to get on with his new life bu the past keeps creeping in did she die?  As he thinks of there past and figures from his past in the far east crop up. So why did he run off to Rome. Then mix in the atmospheric pictures from Robinson which lifts Beard’s journey of the page.

In Geneva Mary and Percy and his limping lordship(come in perhaps on that Limp) looked up at the statue of John calvin. “The monster that created a monster,” said Byron, handsomely bitter,”A clockwork toy called Predestinate man, wound up by god and arribitrarlly set by him on a path leading to salvation or preditio. No choice is the matter, no freedom in the scheme. How I hate Jack calvin and how I hate  John Knox. i was brought up, ye ken, changing to stage scotch, “on the pestilential puritanism of that woman loather ”

His work on the musical he was sent to work on

 

Now, this has large chunks of Burgess world he loved Rome Which like Dublin he was more drawn to as a capital city than London. He was a catholic so felt closer to these two cities. Like his character Beard Burgess had lost his wife, he also married an Italian woman.  Then there is a shared history in Brunei where Burgess had also worked he also did write a screenplay for Tv about Shelley and Lord Byron that is included in the appendix to the book the book has these elements but Beard isn’t Burgess he used his life as a setting and biography for the story. There is a supernatural element to the book I was reminded at times of the scenes from Don’t look know where we see the image of the lost child in the canal in Venice here we see Beard’s wife there in the background the pictures conjure up the feeling of loss and mystery. The book of its time a world has now gone screenwriters writing musicals about Byron for a Hollywood studio now !! if only lol. If like me you are a huge Burgess fan this is one to read if you like Rome it is partly set there and lots of pictures around Rome. Have you a favorite book from Burgess I have reviewed four other books by him which include two other books from the Irwell series of books. A little late for club 1976

Winstons score – A for me I loved it but I love his writing so much this had lots of his life story in it !

Bullet Train By Kotaro Isaka

Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka

Japanese crime fiction

Original title – Maria Bītoru (Maria Beetle) (マリアビートル)

Translator – Sam Malissa

Source – Personal copy

I don’t buy many crime novels but when I  this book caught my eye and I saw it was set on the Bullet train.  Which is on my bucket list of things to try at some point I just love the speed and whole look of the trains . Plus I have a soft spot for crime books set on Trains. This Kotaro won a prize for his debut novel and a lot of his subsequent novels have been shortlisted for Naoki Prize is a sister prize to the Akutagawa prize both run by the same people it highlights rising stars of Japanese fiction. This book has been translated into a number of languages and has seen it been made into an Ensemble film that will star Brad Pitt.

Tokyo station is packed. It’s been a while since Yuichi Kimura was here last, so he isn’t sure if it’s always this crowded. He’d believe it if someone told him therewas a special event going on. The throngs of people coming and going press in him, reminding him of a tv show he and Watura had watched togeth the one about penguins, all jammed in tight together. At least the penguins have an excuse, thinks Kimura. it’s freezing where they live.

Kimura thinks of his son and is on the train to get his killer !!

The book follows a bullet train journey from Tokyo to Morika that has seen the train leave Tokyo with a number of assains onboard train the first is a young man  Satoshi a young man that seems from the outside just like a normal teen and that is his beauty as he really is a deadly assassin and he is being tracked by the Kimura whose young son was caught up in his last job so he has come to kill the young assassin then we have the Nanao or Lady bird another assassin that has had a run of bad luck then we have two assains just known as Tangerine and Lemon, they spend a lot of the trip discussing Thomas the Tank engine which made me laugh. They all have various jobs to do some of them have the cash that is in a case to recover their revenge to sort other a target to kill. But as the journey moves and they move through the train we see that a lot of what has happened and brought this many assains together is interconnect as what has happened to get them as the action unwinds,  so we see in to the past events of them and why they are there and present of each person as we head to the end. The action is shown in each chapter as to where they are on the train or in over in other cases events off the train.  Who will survive the journey and who will complete the jobs they have been sent to do!

“Who’s Edward ?”

“One of thomas the tank Engine’s friends. Engine numer two”. Lemon launches automatically into the character description he’d memorised. ” A very friendly engine, kind to everyone. He once helped push Gordon up a hill and another time saved trevor from almost being scrapped. Everyone on the island of odor knows they can count on Edward”

“wow did youlearn all that by Heart?”

“If Thomas was on the college entrance exams. I’d have got into Tokyo U! “with that lemon walks on, exiting car number four.

I loved this little bit of Thomas the tank engine elsewhere they talk about under siege2  film set on a train as well .

I like this I am as many of you know not a huge crime fiction reader but over the last few years I am liking more crime novels from Japan now this has a nod towards being a film I felt it was one of those novels you could see would be a great film there is a nod to the classic train crime novel but what he has done here is throw in a lot of plots and twists and some unique characters. At times it is maybe a bit daft but I liked the silly chatting about Thomas the Tank engine and things like that the two characters Tangerine and Lemon are very Tarantino to me I was reminded of the round the table discussions in reservoir dog and also the names remind of Mr brown etc from that film with the two just called after some fruit. Are there other fruit assassins out there like an apple and pear somewhere etc. Dark with comic parts as the characters interact with each other and we find out what has brought them all to be on this train at the same time. If Agathe Christie had written a yakuza novel set on a train,  then given it Tarantino to make into a film this would be the novel of that film. Have you a favorite Japanese crime Novel ?

Winstons score – B a steady crime novel that has a cinematic sense to it.

Too loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

Czech fiction

Original title – Příliš hlučná samota

Translator – Michael Henry Heim

Source – personal copy

I was looking at the list of books that were published in 1976. There is a Wiki list of books also one on Good reads I read both. There is a few books that caught my eye that I had on my shelves this was one of those books I have reviewed two books by the late great Czech writer Hrabal. As I said in my post last week for his fellow Czech writer Jiri Kollar Bohumil Hrabal was a member of an underground writing group early on in his writing career. know for his visual style that mix the beautiful and the cruel in the world around him. This is a perfect example of that style. We enter the world of Hanta a man that has done the same job for 35 years something he keeps telling us. what Job?

For thirty five yers I’ve been in wastepaper, and it’s my love story. For thirty-five years I’ve been compacting waterpaper and books, smearing myself woth letters until I’ve come to look like my enclyclopedias- and a good three tons of them. I’ve compacted pover the years. I am a jug filled with wter both magic and plain: I have only lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me. My education has been unwitting I can’t quite tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books, but that’s how I’ve stayed attuned to myself and the world around me for the past thrity five years.

The opening lines t the book and Hanta tells us what his world is like

We are described the world by Hanta we enter his mind a jumble of words and images. There is a man who has spent his life working with wastepaper where he crud=sh the waste paper as he does he sometimes sucks as he says wonderful sentences from those works as he has over time become one with the printed world a man that from what he describes has few friends, a slight connection family, Then young gypsy girls that he pays to visit him. Even when he goes away he takes his press but we are not sure if this is just in his mind or in reality the lines blur at times.  As the young girls hang around him his room toppling with books he has saved and this is the way we view his world poetic lines but over time Hanta wonders what is him and what is the books he has read crushed and absorbed, All this in the crumbling Prague. As he works at his Hyrolauic press crush books art whatever is put there for him to destroy.A man living a simple life but one that has given him a huge amount of knowledge and insight as he amassed his secret book collection,

Wandering through the streets of Prague on the way back to my cellar, I switched on my x-ray eyesand peered down through transparent pavements into the sewers to find rodent general staffs mapping out operations for rodent troops, generals barking orders into their walkie talkies about which front to put pressure on, but I just kepy walking, listening to the crunch of sharp little rats” teethunder my shoes andthinking of the melancholy of  a world eternally under construction, and when I looked up through my tears I noticed omething I had never noticed something I had noticed before, namely, that the facades, the fronts of all the buildings, public and residential- and I could see them all the way up to the drainpipeds – were a reflection of everything Hegel and Goethe had dreamed of and aspired to, the greece in us, the beautiful Hellenic model and goal.

A poetic pasage as we follow Hanta’s mind as he wanders the streets as he jumps from here to there.

I have an opinion about this book and This is a man near the end of something I have felt this is the third time I have read the book and Hanta maybe is Hrabal in part he was in later life when he wrote this work as he had been ill in bed and had for the first time not drunk for a while he was a celebrated drinker there is a strong feeling of a man at the end of something Hanta is also a metaphor for all those banned works that happened after the end of the Prague spring this book has been filmed twice, the second film I supported by sharing a post for the fundraising site for the film to be made. Hrabal is a writer that is rich in his prose style when to reads his prose the images and texture are so unique. Especially when translated here by Henry Heim. Have you a favorite read from Hrabal ?

Winstons score — B a perfect little novella

 

 

 

 

Nobel winner 2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah

It is that time of year again when the Nobel literature prize is announced it just has and this year’s winner is Abdulrazak Gurnah a writer that is not known to me so he is  a leftfield choice I have just ordered two of his books I see that Lisa has read him at Anzlitlovers  .  He has been on the booker list twice in 1994 and 2001. If you have read him what would you recommend ?

The Lying LIfe of Adults by Elena Ferrante

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Italian Fiction

Original tilte – La vita bugiarda degli adulti

Translator – Ann Goldstein

Source – copy for blog tour

 

I don’t often sign up for a blog tour but when approached to do one for the Cheltenham Literary festival it was always going to be a yes as the theme is reading the world which is something I always do here. But then I had no idea what the book was till it arrived at the house. So when the latest book by Elena Ferrante dropped on the doorstep of Wintonsdad towers.  I was in two minds as I hadn’t been bowled over by her. As in the past, I had read the first and last book in the Neapolitan series. I was also one to avoid hype and the time the first book came out My Brillant friend was everywhere in the blogosphere so I left reviewing it. There is still the question of who Ferrant is I love that even after all this success she or he or they has stayed hidden from the limelight in a way it has attracted me more to them as a writer as it shows they are in it for the writing. And  I am always willing to try again with a writer I hadn’t got on with a second chance and this time it was the right choice it is a standalone novel set in the Naples of the 90s and follows three teen years of Giovanna’s life. A coming-of-age novel.

Two years before leaving home my father sid to my morther that I was ver ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents new,y married, had brought at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri, in Rione Alto. Eveything – the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a frigid February, those words – remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing,nothing of my own, nothing that has really begn or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knotm and nobody, not even the one who at the moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption

The opening lines told in retrospective by Giovanna years after the event.

The book starts with the 13-year-old Giovanna hearing at the crack of a door her father says she was Ugly and becoming more like his sister Vittoria. This is the first thing she has heard of a family. Her parent’s successful couple life up the hill in Naples in a middle-class area. She loves and has her father as her idol so when she hears this it sets her on a path to first find out why her father compared her to the auntie she knew nothing about and after much persuasion, she is allowed to meet her aunt and this leads to the discovery of her parent’s origins a working-class neighborhood and a family of aunts and uncles that she never knew existed and the Aunt at once enthralled and vibrant draws the young girl in and shows her the working class place her family was from. But then she sees her in the way her father does over time. Add to this her parents start to unravel over this time and drift apart. Giovanna also blossoms over this time and discovers boys. Add to that the truth behind a family Heirloom this is a glimpse into three years that will change her life forever.

I learned to lie to my parents more and more. At first I didn’t tell real lies, but since I wasn’t strong enough to oppose their always well-ordered world, I pretended to accept it while at the same time I cut out for myself a narrow path that I could abandon in a hurry if they merely darkened. I behaved like that especilly with my father, even though his every word had in my eyes a dazzling authority, and it was exhausting and painful to try ti deceive him.

fter she meets Vittoria she has to start telling lies to her parents as she is drawn into a new world.

It is fair to say this impressed me more than the other two books by Ferrante I have read. I have always been a fan of Bildungsroman works those important teen years are the years that we become the adults we can be and here we have so many threads it makes the story more than that. First is why did her father call her Ugly like Vittoria and was that the right term to use. Why did the parents hide this other family this is all about Class and how they tried to escape their past and class moving to San Giacomo when they married a middle-class place far removed from the home. Add to this a girl discovering herself as all this goes on it and also falling in love for the first time as her family falls apart. Then there is the other character to this book the city Naples as in her other books this is a story of a city of class and the city about how people move on. A story that isn’t just a Naples story but it is told so well by Ferrante her love for her home city of Naples that always leaps of the page. Has it converted me to Ferrante well I will try some of her other stand-alone works? What are your thoughts about Ferrante?  Do you read the world?

Winstons score –  A – a brilliant coming-of-age novel with family secrets at its heart!

 

Kafka’s Prague by Jiří Kolář

Kafka’s Prague by Jiří Kolář

Czech art/literature non fiction

Original title – Kafka’s  Praha

Translator – Ryan Scott

Source – review copy

Jiří Kolář is one of those people that had many strings to his bow as a person, poet, writer visual artist, and political activist. He was a founder member of th Skupina 42 group of writers and artists that included the great Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. He did many jobs over his life early on in the communist regime he was arrested and imprisoned for one of his manuscripts he later when the Prague spring happened was a member of a group of artists that meet regularly in the Cafe Slavia this included from Czech Leader Vaclav Havel but when the regime change he went to live in exile and this is where this work was originally published by the exile publishing house Index in Germany.  the book is in two sections the first called responses is a sort of interview about Kolar and his beliefs the second is a collection of Kafka quotes and visual art in the form of crumbled photos to go with each quote of famous views in Prague.

I wrote a musical score named for Baudelaire ` because the majority of sound poets, didn’t know how to express themselves other than as cabaret artists. Only a few of them managed to surpass the Dadaist, such that almost all of their magnetic tape has seemed to me merely a recording of their own recital, or more precisely, of a recital of their “products From the outset Mallarme in mind. Perhapsin him lay the starting oint and solution: to make poetry through music – to write a musical scroe for a recital – recitation of a single word ! obviously I canot deny the influnece of specific music, especially several americans and others in the age of contemporary musical experimentation, the image suddely wanted to be read anew and moreover, heard. Most musical compositions require esembles and a conductor to interpret them – I was working with this objective in mind.

He writer music poems art so talented her is one of his responses .

The first part of the book is a series of vignettes about art, writers, and the world. Then the world of art and science is questioned, with questions such as does art expand our knowledge, digressions like did einstein go to this exhibition. The view of Poets like Baudelaire with a piece about hypocrisy and a piece called the “Hypocrite reader- fellowman – my twin” Meditation and art. Too his own art how it used be surrealism and then changed after the war and over time his world view changed he became Avant garde. Baudelaire crops up he was disappointed with the sound poets so he chose to write music about the poet. Then the second part of the book he takes a number of images of Prague that he has used a technique called crumplage that he made new images out of the old buildings of Prague along the side of these new images he uses a quote from Kafka most of which are perfect companions to the images.

It is not that you are buried in a mine and the masses of stone separte you, a weak individual, from the world and its light, but instead you are outside and want to penetrate to the person who has been buried and are powerless against the stonesm and the world and its light make you even more powerless

Postumous writings and Fragments Kafka

14  crumplage from Kolar.

This is something leftfield for mand the blog. e but I love that Kolar was a figure at the heart of the group of writers in the early 40s and then in the Prague spring than was a strong voice of resistance in his years of Exile so this is a work from an important figure in modern Czech history as ever with twisted spoon it s wonderfully presented the crumplage prints tie so well with the bilingual Kafka quotes on each page symmetry to them in his choice of the pairing of quote and art. This is partly an insight into Kolar’s mind and the world around him the first part sees him looking at art and himself as a sort of interview without questions vignettes insightful and questioning without questions. Then we have his art the art that he pastes after destroying the images to create something new and this may be a way to provoke a feeling of unease and oddness in the images. A collection unable to be seen in Czechslovakia at the time it came out. A homage to the hometown and its best-known writer Kafka a man that they used in the letters at the time a figure that spurred them on when in Prison. A powerful insight into art and the artist view of the world

Winstons score – B thought-provoking and with insightful art and quotes.

 

 

The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada

The last children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Kentoshi (献灯使)

Translator – Margaret Mitsutani

Source – Personel copy

I popped into the Waterstones in Morpeth on Holidfay and brought two books this was one of the two books I brought. Yoko Tawada has been on my radar  since her book Memoirs of a Polar bear was on the radar for the Booker international prize although she has had a lot of books translated over the years she has written in both German and Japanese and has won prizes in both countries.. Known for her connection between words and reality and also how language works she was asked to work on her germna translations which has lead to her comparing the two languages and cultures and even writing in German. This was originally written in Japanese and is the latest of her books to be tranalsted into English.

Every morning, Ypshiro rented a dog from the rent a dog place on the corner to run along the riverbank for about half an hour. Wehn the water level was low, the river looked like silver ribbons that stretched out much further than you’d expect. Long ago, this sort of purposeless running had been referred to as jogging, but with foreign words falling out of use now called loping down, an expression that had started out as a joke meaning “if you lope your blood pressure goes down” but everybody called it that these dats. And kids mumei’s age would never have dreamt that adding just an e in front of it the word lope could cunjure up visions of a young woman climbing down a ladder in the middle of the night to run away with her lover.

Running is a rare thing in this new world !

The last children focus on a greatr Grandfather a man over a hundred as most of those that are still alive at this time Yoshiro is living on the very edge of a no empty Tokyo where the centre is now a no go area and disaster zone. even running is rare as shown early on when the old man hires a dog to walk as the children struggle to do even this now. All this is after a huge catastrophe whoch has wiped out most of the humans and lead to wide spread pollution so those youngster living are growing up with huge problems with  the world changed this sees the areas countries closing themselves off as they tried to deal with the unnamed problems that were caused by the catastrophe this means that his grandson Mumei is growing with out the esential vitamins and minerals that we all need to grow things like Calicum  are in short supply so they are growing up with problems like poor teeeth  and bones so grow crooked and this has leads to people like Yoshiro to become a underground emissary to help the kids out. where they sneak out children on ships as the Japan they live in has gon back to the feudal state of isolation they try to get the kids to other places to find out what is causing the issues..will Yopshiro get his great grandosn out or will he end up worse off ?

On his front doorsteo, Yoshiro unrolled the paper. He hadn’t paid much attention to the newspaper as a young man, but ever since this mediahad been revivied after its disappearence, reading it carefully all the way through had become a daily ritual. As he let his eyes fly low over the poltics section, words such as regulation, standard, adaptation, policy, investigation, and caution stuck out like ttalks in a flattened field. actually reading this section was like slogging through a swamp. He musn’t spend his mornings this way; first, he had to get to Mumei off to school. The word school still carried a faint whiff of hope

School isn’t what it was as the kids die so young.

I loved this tale as given the world we have seen in the last year or two how quckly the world can change around us. what Tawada does so wellnhere is use the hostroy of Japan the isolate era the 200 plus years of the Edo peroid which saw Japan cut itself of from the world. The storyline of supplies running out remind of how we would deal with this and films like soylent green and how the world would have do what happen here and keep supplies for them selves. The other side to this story is the connection between the young and the old and the way Yoshiro regrets the waythe world has change as he relives his youth and how the children are unable to do what he did in his youth. A glinmpse into a world of children growing up with grave issues is told with a tender touches as we see a world flip as the old carry on living and the young are dying. A kafka view of a pandemic and the aftrermath where the world becomes a series of small boxes and if you are in the wrong box your fate is sealed !! Have you read any book by her ?

Winstons score – +A one of my favourite read this year !