February 2024 what did I read and do

1. About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler 
2. Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson
3. The Rainbow by Yasunari Kawabata
4. Erasure by Percival Everett
5. What You Need From The Night by Laurent Petitmangin
6. Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki
7. A little luck by Claudia Piñerio 

I started with a Swiss book about an uncle who is looked after by his relatives. Then we have an epic prose poem about the Sai people through a few people. We trace the history of this indigenous tribe through the 20th century. Two half-sisters discover they may have a half-brother as they live with their father. Then we have a writer who becomes a star, writing a book in a ghetto style, and how he copes with his newfound fame, which is now the film American Fiction. Then, a father is shocked when his son is drawn into the right wing in North Eastern France; then we have three summers as we follow three sisters in Greece in the inter-war years. Then a woman returns after twenty years to return to her old life and discover what happened to those she had left behind. So i read books from  7 different countries from seven publishers. Not a bad month

Book of the month

I chose About Uncle. I loved this and it remind me of what i have loved about Peirene. Then they got the right book that hit the spot, and this was one of those short books about an uncle, a veteran who has mishaps like trying to escape down the toilet. This book has humour and sadness, family love and hate in equal measure.

Neon book events

I covered a bit this month. I have brought some records. The most recent is another from the Tom Waits reissues, his Blue Valentine, still in his jazz-style era, had always been a favourite and was the first album I got on tape when I was younger in my twenties. TV-wise, we are in the middle of watching The Jury, which shows two juries viewing the same murder trial taken from an actual case and seeing how each tackles their verdicts. Again, I have been mining YouTube for old TV or movies. I am currently watching the early 70s series Doom, an environmental show about a government agency tackling things that are affecting the environment.

Next month

I am finishing the latest BorasChung as I write this I may finish it this evening or tomorrow then I will move on the Mathias Enard’s The annual banquet of the Gravediggers Guild. Then I have Out of Earth on my tbr . These three have all been mentioned as potential Booker international books, and I am yet again doing the Shadow Jury this year, which is our 12th year. Well, for the original few, it is hard to believe the shadow jury  itself will be turning into a teen next time. So after March 11 it will be the books I haven’t read from the longlist which is handy as I  have a few days off just after it is announced. I intend to do my own guess list soon and hope cover a few more hopefuls in the time beofre it is announced.

A little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro

A little luck by Claudia Piñeiro

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Una suerte pequeña”

Translator – Frances Riddle

I’ve held a few books back so over the next week or so I can do a few books I think may be on the Bookkr international longlist whether they have been from a writer that has been on the list before like this book or they just struck me as a book that may make the list I will then near the longlist announcement do my own pick of the books I feel may make the longlist. Before I take uo shadow jury duty yet again it is such an annual thing now I look forward to it. I am amazed at how much it has grown since the old IFFP prize days and how much more notice is taken of books in translation these last couple of years. Any way we have a writer here who, in the last few years since she moved publishers, is viewed differently. I always considered her a crime writer, but she is so much more about family loss, guilt, secrets, and so much more. I hope it gets longlisted, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see another from Charco make the longlist.

The Garlik Institute, the school I work for, is prestigious and well-known not only in Boston but across the United States and Latin America. This prestige is based, above all, on the fact that students who graduate from our school can get into the best universities in the United States and Europe without much difficulty. It has one of the highest rates of acceptance to Ivy League colleges. This is thanks to the method Robert developed to prepare his students for success in college, a method that made him famous in the world of education. There was a time in which every single week he was giving a conference to explain his method to different schools around the country – his country, the United States. And for years, Robert, who was the director of the Garlik Institute until the illness kept him from getting out of bed, arranged educational cooperation agreements so that other schools, in other parts of the world,

Robert took her under his wing but in a way he also gave her the chance to return years later

The book follows Mary Lohan from Boston to take up a post-teaching in Argentina. But as the book progresses, We gather she has used this chance to go back into her past when she wasn’t Mary but Maria and had a husband and a different life. So, as she settles into her old neighbourhood with a mission in mind, she sees faces from her past. This book is about her and how she ended up in Boston. She meets Robert, and they talk books and writers but also, in doing so, about the hidden guilt in some of these writers, and this is what she has returned for she escaped catching the first plane out of the place and was lucky the first person she met was Robert and rebuilt a life. But there was something important she had left behind those twenty years earlier, and now she is returning for it. What happens when one’s past and present crash into one another ?

The barrier arm was down. She stopped, behind two other cars. The alarm bell rang out through the afternoon silence. The red lights below the railway crossing sign blinked off and on. The lowered arm, the alarm bell, and the red lights all indicated that a train was coming. But there was no train. Two, five, eight minutes and still no train in sight. In the back seat, the kids were singing a song they’d learned earlier that afternoon in school. ‘Incy Wincy spider went up the water spout. The children had been singing for so long that she’d tuned them out and their song did not disrupt the exterior silence of the afternoon.

The incy wincy spider crops up as a motif in the book

 

I am teasing here a lot. I think this book needs a little head back, and I am usually a big gossip and will let go of important bits, so I’ve tried to hold back here . Instead, like Elena knows, Piñeiro is the mistress of letting a story flow, but she also, like a good Burlesque dancer, reveals just enough to pique your interest in the story. It is also a classic return to an old-life tale. This is something many people imagine doing, but doing it like Mary/Maria has is hard, and the scars of the past leak into the present so much. This is why I feel it may make the longlist: it is just how well-paced it is, and sometimes a good-paced book that draws you in can be a refreshing change from something that can sometimes fry your brain. This is one for readers who like books from the likes of Highsmith or even a fellow Argentine writer like ELoy Martinez, his books can be well-paced.

Winston Score – B solid page turner from a writer I’d love to read more from,

 

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

 

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Greek Fiction

Original title – Τα Ψάθινα Καπέλα [Ta psathina kapela] (1946)

Translator – Karen Van Dyk

Source – Personal copy

I’ve been a fan of the books that Penguin has been reissuing or doing new translations of great European writers. I haven’t reviewed many books from Greece, so it is a treat to review another Margarita, born in 1919; she studied law and grew up in Athens; one wonders if this book came from her own summers as the place is the countryside near Athens. I picked this up last year, and when I saw it reviewed by Sherds tube, I moved it up the TBR. Im love coming of age works I also like books set in rural areas. Palces where the world is maybe slower and different to the cities. I also love tales of siblings. This is the tale of three sisters throughout three summers.

I lie down on the couch on my stomach. She comes over and puts her hand on my forehead. I wish she would smother me in her breasts, like when I was a baby and she was still nursing me. If she knows I’m not sick why does she ask? If she really wanted to know what was wrong I might tell her. She is about to ask – her voice gets warmer, sweeter – but she draws back. There’s always a certain trepidation between us. We can’t give away secrets that we don’t have.

‘The sun must have got to you,’ she concludes.

Too bad, Mother… And I would have told you so many things about the Land of the Houyhnhms and about Mavroukos’s grave and about the things I can see from the top of the walnut tree.

‘Rodia,’ she calls. ‘A lemonade for Katerina?

the sisters and there mother!

A few years ago this had been everywhere on blogs. It captures those inter-war summers of the twenties. You feel there is maybe some of her own life. There are three sisters. Maria is the oldest and, like many older siblings, has a bold nature; thus, as she came first, she will always try to be first at everything, if that makes sense. Well, it does in my head. Infanta is maybe a typical middle sibling unknown, quite one of those people there, but we don’t fully know them. Then there is the younger sister, Katerina. She is like many a young child let to shine by others her garden reflects her full of flowers, I loved the way we get the sisters they are typical but leap of the page as characters. SHe also ca[tures the greek countryside, It drew me back to the Gerald Durrell books also set aroundthis time the countryside is drawn well. The sister her tales of the Aunt who was raped, and the other is tales of their Polish grandmother, especially. Katerina is drawn to her family tales. The girls move into womanhood during the three summers as they talk about growing love and boys. Al this as well as the simmering feeling of their mother’s lack of having a life at times adds to a book that has growing up but also in the kids the mother maybe can see her past and as the girls fall in love and marriages and children are on the horizon will it be different for the sisters. Three Summers is a tale of those inter-war years when, in some ways, the world was brighter than ever, and chance and change were just on the horizon for them.

I remember one day when Maria, Infanta, and I were looking out the window, we saw a car pull up in front of the clinic and a young couple get out – the girl didn’t look any older than Maria.

‘It won’t hurt at all, you’ll see,’ the guy was telling the girl, and she was smiling, though her forehead was covered in sweat. A few hours later the same car came and picked them up. He helped her in. Her eyes had a deep sadness about them, and her hand seemed to want to touch her belly, to check it, but she kept pulling it away, ashamed. ‘Must be an abortion, Maria said, letting out such a screech you’d have thought they’d taken her insides out

Nicely observed how the sisters live in the world

I loved this book. It is full of the feeling of warm summers where the world is carefree, but still, shit happens. Family members have been raped things happened to our parents and grandparents and the world around them. In the books, the grece she writes about is gone. The summers they spent are gone . It also has a classic love triangle with the youngest daughter and her love for a sea captain and an astronomer, David Simmers. I hope to take this if I go on holiday to Greece soon and spend a warm summer evening drifting away in the three summers in this book drift over me as we see the three girls become women. Sat on a chair in the sun I hope I will do it one day and then review it again. Have you read this book? Do you have any other books from Greece I should read?

Winston score – A three summers, three sisters, and a world long gone as we see them fall in and out of love and grow.

A post about things I’ve been up to.

I’ve been so busy recently and haven’t read as much as usual. Some of this is as I found out the other day when I went for my first eye test in a while (about ten years). It shocked me how bad my eyes were, so I went from no glasses to varifocals in one step anyway. They are due later this week, and maybe that explains why I have been reading less and less the last few months. So I decided to just not read anything till the new glasses come. I read a lot of work in the course of the job, reading from records, emails, etc. So I thought I do a quick thing been up to recently. First, we had Valentines. I was working, but we had a lovely meal on the following day of cheddar tart followed by triple-cooked chips, various green veg, prosciutto-wrapped chicken and then melted-in-the-middle puddings.

We also visited the record fair the other weekend I like a chap that has new vinyl at ten pound each. SOo i got a few.

So I got Wilco’s cover album. This was an uncut CD from many years ago that came out last year on vinyl. I had the CD as I have been subscribing to Uncut for the last 25 years. Then I got The Road with most of Nick Cave’s Albums on both CD and vinyl, apart from his soundtracks, which is next on my list to get off from him; he has done some great films. I watched the film A few years ago of The Road, but I’d love to read the book and watch the film at some point. I have been watching a few more films this year. I am trying to track them on Letterboxd. I have not been watching as much world cinema. I think this may be connected to the glasses I need, meaning I have been straining to read subtitles and part of it. I think my level of concentration is a little lower than it was a few years ago. I’m not sure how Letterbox fully works, but like Storygraph, which I am now also on, it is a move away from Amazon tracking my data; I still have GoodReads and IMDb, which I have tracked films I watched years ago. I am in the middle of diving into older films on youtube or series.Bulman is one I am watching a detective series I remember from the 80s. I also been in a rabbit hole of airplane hijack films from the years. I find there is so much on youtube from the 70s and 80s that just isn’t out there or just isn’t shown these days.

I also had a couple of my book subscriptions arrive. I had a pierene and tilted axis for a couple years and have now added Charco and Fum d stampa. I should signed up earlier but struggled to be able to afford it years ago.Anyway, that is about it. I will be back soon when I have my new glasses as it is creeping up to Booker International time. I will make a list of books I think will be on it and will be on the shadow jury again.

 

What you need from the night by Lauren Petitmangin

What You Need From The Night by Laurent Petitmangin

French fiction

Original title –Ce qu‘il faut de nuit

Translator – Shaun Whiteside

Source – Personal copy

I brought this in York on our trip just before Christmas. I felt there is always a french novel that I hadn’t know of on the booker longlist. But I also liked the fact it was a father bringing up his sons after the death of the mother. This is a subject not often tackled in Fiction. I hadn’t heard of Laurent Petitmangin or this book it had won several prizes in France when it came out. The writer came from a family of rail workers in the East of France. I would imagine it is in the Metz area, where the book itself is set in the 54th department  of France. near Lens and Metz (I’m sure Eric Cantona had played for one of them back in the day )

FOR WEEKS WE were invited to Jacky’s and to other people’s houses too. Wed never had so many invitations in the three years of illness, or even before. It was nice, but it made me feel sorry for la moman. She hadn’t been able to take advantage of any of that, of those endless drinks and snacks that led so nicely into a good meal.

We got pretty drunk quite quickly so that we didn’t have to talk, or else so that the flood of words came more easily. The most important was to break that awkward moment that would inevitably come. Feeling obliged to talk about la moman in a lower voice so that the kids carried on playing and didn’t listen.

The weeks after his wife died they are hel;ped by all those around them

When a father loses his wife to Cancer he promises her he will do his best with the kids as they grow up. Of the two sons, Gilou is the younger son. After the loss of his mother, he becomes a studious young man after his mother dies. It is almost as though he throws himself into his studies to deal with his grief. This is not really discussed in the book; it is just my observation of the book. Then there is the older son, Fus, who was actually doing just as well as his brother when their mother passed. But unlike his brother, he goes the other way and starts slipping. But on top of this, he is close with his father and brother, both staunch socialists. So when he comes home wearing Lazio’s symbolic scarves of the Ultras. He is drawn by the feeling of brother he gets from these new friends. This sets father and son on a head course. The book’s backbone is the love between them and the football the father uses for them to bond when the mother dies. But it also shows how easily someone can get caught by the seemingly charming right-wingers he falls in with.

‘What’s that, Fus, your scarf?’ Gillou asked him.

‘No, fatso, that’s not a scarf, it’s a bandana.

I took a look at the bandana myself and I was puzzled.

‘Fus, what’s that cross on there?’

‘Dad, I don’t know anything about it, it’s just a bandana that a mate lent me.

‘Fus, if you don’t know then I’m going to tell you, it’s a Celtic cross! A Celtic cross! My God, Fus, are you wearing fascist gear these days?’

When he sees his brother wearing a Ultras symbol in the form of a bandana

I’m pleased I read this I hadn’t seen it talked about much. But it is my sort of book I like books around family buit this has a little bit of football thrown in. Also, growing up and being tempted by those dark charmers we all meet when we are younger, whether into drugs, drinking, or her, in this case, being right-wing, anything to form a sense of comradeship. I think of the film This is England, where we see a young man drawn down the same path by another charmer in the form of Combo or even a French take on the same story where we see the young Quin Quin drawn to be right-wing in part of the series. The unnamed father had done his best, but it shows what happens when political extremes appear, and they all have to deal with the fallout from this and its effect on the whole family. I am pleased I picked it up as I hadn’t seen it mentioned. I just liked the description when I read it: Waterstones York, where they had it up as maybe a staff pick. Anyway, a book that can be read in the evening lingers with you after you finish it! Have you heard of this book ?

Winston score – B solid novella around grief moving on political extremes and family at the heart of it

Erasure by Percival Everett

Erasure by Percival Everett

American Fiction

Source – Library book

I feel I was bound to read Percival Everett at some point in the next year, his new novel due out later this year. James, a retelling of the Huck Finn story from the point of view of Jim, the slave they meet along the way was on my radar like most of his recent books. There are few US writers these days that really grab my attention but his books over the last few years have been ones I have noticed and felt I would read at some point. So when I watched the trailer for American Fiction it made me want to watch that film I had seen it was taken from this book I just had to try it as it seemed a book I would love a look at being a black writer but also what sort of writer publishers may want at a specific time. I was reminded of the song about certain styles and ways the black community is viewed that Spearhead brought out many years ago.

Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison is a writer of dense, obscure fiction.

His latest effort has been rejected by publishers for having little to do with the ‘black experience.’ After a series of personal and professional tragedies, Monk sets out to write a novel loosely inspired by Richard Wright’s Native Son and certain commercial novels of black misery.

Monk has his agent send the manuscript, titled My Pafology (later changed to Fuck), around to editors under a pseudonym. Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly), his pastiche-cum-parody (reproduced within the text) is a runaway commercial and critical success. My Pafology is broken up into numbered chapters, the titles of which are spelled phonetically, and traces, in parallel to Erasure, the life of a young black man living in America. However, it deals more explicitly with the violence and turbulence of life in the ghetto, rendered in highly stylized vernacular and dialect.

Monk struggles with his latest book

Erasure is the story of a successful writer, but his books have stopped selling. He is one of those heavy writers with a serious intellect. His books are the sort that gets 5-star reviews in the TLS and then sells ten books. We know the type of writer they are, the sort I have loved. Thelonious Elliot, or Monk as he is better known, has been trying to get his latest book off the ground but to no avail. When he ended up seeing a writer with her Debut novel We Liv in Da Ghetto, I was taken aback by the style of the book she read to firstly The Wire but then to those Seventies blaxploitation films. But this book is a bestseller and lauded as much as Monk Books were. SO he just as a joke really writes a book My pafology about a gangster. As a joke, he submits it under the name Stagg R. Leigh. This is, of course, a nod to the folk song Stagger Lee or Stackolee as it has been called over the years. He is then shocked and dumbfounded at what to do when the book and film rights are sold for thousands simultaneously. What is Monk to do?

Mama look at me and Tardreece and she call us ‘human slough.’ That how it all start up. ‘Human slough,’ she say, ‘You lil’ muthafuckas ain’t nuffin but human slough.’ I looks at her and I’m wonderin what

“slough’ means and I don’t like the look on her face and so I get up from the chair I been sittin in and I walk across the kitchen and grab a big knife from the counter. She say, ‘And what you gone do wif that, human slough?” And I stab Mama. I put the knife in her stomach and pull it out red and she look at me like to say why you stab me? And I stab Mama again. Blood be all on the floor and on the table, drip drip drippin down her legs and my baby sister starts screamin and I says,

‘Why you be screamin, Baby Girl?’

The opening chapter when he writes as Stagg R Leigh

This is a fun book. It was a little different from the trailer, but it is an insightful look at the day-to-day struggles of a writer. it is a satire on the absurd nature of books and publishing. I remember not long after the first book came out from Steig Larsson, it was like every agent and publisher sent people to Nordic countries to sign up for the next Larsson. So when Monk writes his Gangster-inspired novel in the middle of a wave of books like that, it is sold regardless of him as a writer not being Stagg R Leigh. But it shows how fashion rather than style and content can now rule what we read where celebrities write novels or do they (I am pushed to talk about them as I haven’t or will never have an inkling to read a celeb novel, sorry). This is the reason I read books in translation. We get books from countries where this sort of style, fashion, whatever the fuck is popular this week movement is happening, most of which to me seem to involve people holding up piles of books on photos(I mean people that do this every day )  these days anyway personal winge over. This is a sharp satire about publishing and the struggles of writing and being a writer in the modern age of ever-changing Publishing Fashions. If anything, I look forward to reading his other books at some stage. Have you read Percival Everett?

Winston;s Score – A I will be reading him again which to try next ?

 

The Rainbow By Yasunari Kawabata

The Rainbow By Yasunari Kawabata

Japanese literature

Original title- 虹いくたび (Niji ikutabi)

Translated by Haydn Trowell

Source -personal copy

In January, I read far more Japanese novels than I could review. This is a new translation from the Nobel prize-winning writer Yasunari Kawabata. He was the first writer from Japan to win the Nobel prize. He was given the prize for his narrative mastery, and his great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind. Is what the Nobel committee said about him as a writer. I have only reviewed one other book by him, and that was Snow Country. So when I saw this new translation of one of his works coming out from Penguin, I made sure I got a copy when I saw one. The tale of the two sisters in this book, having the same father and different mothers in postwar Japan, appealed to me.

Momoko hesitated, afraid of accidentally revealing the secret behind her new hairstyle. With her sister at home, it had become suddenly difficult for her to leave for her rendezvous.

Her emotions getting the better of her, Momoko’s voice turned brash. “Asako. Now that you’re back from Kyoto, there’s something you want to ask Father, isn’t there?” she asked, turning around. “I know. There’s no need to hide it.

It was a lie, wasn’t it, when you said you were going to see a newly married friend?”

“It wasn’t a lie.”

“Oh? So it wasn’t a lie. You went to see your friend, but that wasn’t your main reason for going, was it?”

Asako hung her head.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Momoko paused, softening her tone. “And did you find this younger sister of ours in Kyoto?” Asako stared back, taken by surprise.

The two sisters and the mention of the third out there

The book focuses on the two half-sisters living with the widow’s father. Momoko had lost her mother to suicide, and her m, mother never married after her father got her pregnant. Then n her half-sister Asako had lost her to illness. So, the pair both ended up with the architect’s father. But when Asako gathers from her father, there may even be a third sister, the daughter of a Gheisa in Koyto. In a way, the three of them are reflections of the world they are in post-war Japan. The struggles with Tradition and the future are creeping in as the traditional buildings are overshadowed by the modern city. The quest for this third sister in a way is the thread that runs through this book. The book captures the same world we see in OZus films. In some ways, the sisters could be from a film by the master himself. The two sister clash as Momoko has a boyfriend in many ways she is the most modern and this is a story of family secrets and sibling relationships.Also, how the world they have all known is moving on so quickly.

Since the end of the war, countless villas in the resort town of Atami—the properties of former princes, of former nobles, and of former industrialists—had been transformed into inns and hotels.

The Camellia House was one such villa, having belonged to a former prince who had held the honorary title of Fleet Admiral.

Asako’s father, Mizuhara Tsuneo, pointed out the window of the car as they passed by the entrance. “Do you see those two villas? They don’t really look like inns, do they? That one belonged to a prince, and the one over there belonged to a marquis. The marquis was descended from royalty, but I heard he was wounded during the war. His leg, you see.

Now they say he’s been sentenced to forced labor as a war criminal.”

The world ios changing as the villas change and become other things

I was a fan of Snow Country, and I connected with this book as well. I am a massive fan of post-war novels, wherever they may be, but especially in Japan, which in many ways saw the most significant shift in its world. This is from the same time as Tokyo’s story is set in a way. In fact, the way they all talk is similar to Momoko, who, in a way, reminds me of the son in Tokyo story caught up in the fast-moving modern world as the others are all trailing behind her and all lament the world they have seen gone more. In a way we see how Kawabata feared how quick his country was moving on this was serialised in 1950/52 a year before Tokyo story but his fear is the same as in the fear of the traditional Japan that the younger sister seems so far away from. I like his sparse still, and the world he described that is now gone, you feel. Have you read his books? Where would you go next in his book?

Winston’s score – +B Solid look at post-war Japan through two sisters and their father.

Ædnan an Epic by Linnea Axelsson

Ædnan an Epic by Linea Axelsson

Swedish fiction.

Translated by Saskia Vogel

Source – Review copy

I am on the list of books coming out this year. This was one of the ones that really caught my eye. An epic novel set in Sweden around the Sami community appealed to me as there aren’t enough books in translation from indigenous writers. So I was pleased when pushkin sent me a review copy, Linea Axelsson was born in the north of Sweden around the area, the book is set. She studied art history at university and then moved to Stockholm. This is her debut novel and focuses on the last century in a Sami community following three generations and their struggles in an ever-changing Sweden. This book won the August prize when it came out.

Through the Rosta River Valley from Lake Adjávárddojáurrit. Past the rivers

Tamok and Dapmoteatnu, 1913

(BER-JONÁ)

My brother and I

Aslat

we sang nothing

we no longer sang forth the earth and the memories

–

Vessels of song formed by the voice

When words were not enough for the lives we lived

They had trudged through hate

They had waded in sorrow

The birth of the twins in 1913 a harsh world they are born into

The title of the novel means the land , the ground the Earth. This is an epic verse novel. that felt like you were sitting by a campfire as a family recounting that history over the century. the book is the history of two families over three generations from 1900 until nearly modern day. The book opens with a young couple heading to the winter feeding grounds as they are expecting twin boys. Aslat and Nila, but when Nila, the smaller twin, is found to be too weak to be of use and his brother suffers an injury. add to this the fact they have Norwegians have closed the border, meaning families and couples are separated. And it is a hard life. We meet the twin’s father and when he is a much older man and living in a Swedish city in Projus. The family is now part of the indigenous studies by the Swedish government at the time. At this point, the narrative switches to the other family, neighbours Off. Ristin, and we follow Lise’s story. so we get the next generations to take on being indigenous as their natural  grazing band is being looked at and may be taken over to build a dam and a hydroelectric plant. This is in the 70s. The book just goes on after this, but I will leave you to discover the end of the book.

The little needlecase

made of reindeer horn that she had on her belt that one time

The seaplane made

an emergency landing in the fells and she was there

and had to mend a tear in the wing with sinew thread

You didn’t usually have the needlecase on you Mama

But that time you did

–

You who always said that you were sure I’d marry a Swede

I loved a lot of the little details thrown in like the little needle case here.

Ever since Lisa has done her indigenous reading weeks, it has made me more conscious of writers from indigenous backgrounds. what really grab me to know about this book, I was the style of writing a three verse with no punctuation in short bursts of three lines. Something almost hypnotic times about reading it. Have you really got the feel of an Icelandic epic or those great verse poems? It’s almost as though the World she wrote about has lost it anyway is it is this is it testament to the struggles of the Sami People in the 20th century; it is also a description of how hard the nomadic life can be when we follow the life of the twins in a harsher world, and where life is a struggle day to day.She also little snippets of everyday life from the way they live or what they carry, those little things that set them apart but mean so much in their nomadic world. One of the reasons I wanted to get to this book was I felt it would be a strong contender for the Man Booker International Prize, and it is always handy to get those 500-page novels out of the way before the long list is announced. I found, but to be fair, this book is nearer half the size in pages as it is all told in three lines and that means about fifty to sixty words on each page. So if you like sparse yet powerful family histories and growing up in an indigenous background, this is a book for you. Have you read this book?

Winston score A I gave this book an A as it already feels like it could be one of my books for the year

A day in Sheffield

Amanda and I had planned to have a day out this weekend, but with  Snow and heavy rain forecast for Thursday and Friday, I decided to take a trip to Sheffield today; a few weeks ago, we headed to the edge of Sheffield and a few miles up the road I saw there was park and ride we passed near one of the Tram stations, as I hate driving in the centre of Sheffield we decided we head today. We did and headed into the heart of Sheffield. Even though we live nearby, this last year or two, we haven’t gone a lot to Sheffield. we arrived and headed to our first place. We passed this statue to the woman that worked in the steel mills in the war, iI hadn’t seen this before.we saw the ducks seemed to have made a home near the city hall which was sad see John lewis that was opposite it was empty , we used like a wander around there always something out of the ordinary to buy in there.

 

So i looked for a fantastic coffee shop, I am a fan of quirky coffee shops and found steam yard on Division Street, I should know that is where all the vintage stores are and also several good shops for clothes I had bought a long while ago any way we had a snack and coffee. in this coffee shop with coffee roasted by local roastery Caravan roasters. I got some beans to try at home from them.

I had the lemon meringue Cronut, I liked this although it wasn’t great for my diet. Amanda had a pan au chocolate. The coffee was nice. Also the atmosphere was great in the cafe.  So we headed to the moor area as Amanda wanted some items from there. As we headed towards there I found this excellent spray art on a gate to a Chinese restaurant. that caught my eye.

I just liked it. Amanda had got all her p=bits, so I headed to Waterstones with the idea of three books but eventually brought four, as the Sheffield store has a much larger selection than the shop in Chesterfield, so it gave me a chance to think of the Booker International is drawing nearer. So i got two contenders, two books had been on my radar and then one by a writer I had read a number of years ago that had a new translation out. Then a book from a writer that has been on my radar for the last decade at least and I decided it was time I brought a book from them.

First of is from a local publisher in Sheffield And other stories , a publisher I have been sent books from and have met them over the years. The book is Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright she has been on my radar for a number of years and this is her latest about a small aboriginal community is meant to be her best book.I like the new covers from other stories. They are direct and unusual. I will get her other books I think if I like this one.

This is a book I hadn’t seen about or mentioned, but I had read another book by Rolf Rathmann that Seagull books i  had brought and reviewed a number of years ago Fire Doesn’t burn. So this book sent near the ned of world war two told through a young girl eyes appealed as I liked the other book from him I read.

Now, this was the first of two I got because the booker is A Little Luck by Claudia Pinero, I had seen this a few times since it came out, and I had to see a second-hand copy, but I loved Elena knows by the same writer we read it when it was longlist for the booker. This book follows a woman returning to the scene of a shocking accident in Buenos Aires twenty years earlier that has brought a woman involved she and no one will know who she is as she is different than twenty years ago. Even her eyes are a different colour. I am intruged by this one and also how Charco have reposition Pinero as a writer.

This is the second book by Booker winner Lucas Rijneveld, set in a rural part of the Netherlands, and it follows the events around a farmer’s daughter and the local vet events that tear the local community apart. Lucas had written the booker international prize-winning The Discomfort of Evening. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of that book I enjoyed it enough to read this also I do like the cover art for this book. I could have got more books but held back.So we then had some lunch at the German Kebab shop and then headed home on the Tram a nice little trip and know we know how easy it is to get to Sheffield this way we may be going again sometime soon. I will find another coffee shop ? tips welcome . Have you read any of the writers or the books themselves ?

About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler

About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler

Swiss Fiction

Original title – D’oncle

Translator – Jordan Stump

Source – Subscription

I have been remiss on Peirene books the last couple of years I had reviewed virtually every one in their first few years. But over the last few years, I haven’t gotten to their books, even though I am now a subscriber to their books. It isn’t that their recent books haven’t appealed. They always do. They usually come and recently have drifted down the TBR. But this when it arrived intrigued me. It won the Swiss literature prize but it was the description of the book being something different. I was reminded of that Early peirene, especially the mention of a seaside town as that was in the first year’s books. It also reminds me of why I love books in translation sometimes, which is absurd. Odd little books like this are subtle and, in many ways, have little happening. I feel this is the sort of book that would struggle to get put out here.

Uncle’s house is in a little hamlet looking onto the ocean, and it’s a white house with pale blue shutters lashed by the salty wind from the bay, a house whose walls are being eaten away by the ivy we used to pull down every summer as a family activity, knowing there was no point, knowing the ivy would be back the next year, covering the walls with shadows and indelible stars, and of course we should have dealt with it earlier, should have kept an eye on that destructive greenery’s growth, but in those days we were only holidaymakers, transients, part-tim-ers, and we couldn’t expect Uncle to see to that job, because Uncle likes ivy, he thinks it makes the house look like a haunted house,

The uncles house by the sea where they look after him.

We hear from the nice Uncle. Mainly, she explains the world they live in but also how they got there along the way. We open with the said uncle trying to escape down the toilet. He is an injured veteran. He is a shut-in in barring his occasional visits on a moped to the local bar. He is also a drinker, hoarder and injured using crutches also. Whenever he gets away from his family, he causes trouble. This is the tale of the family, the history of how the grandparents, then their own mother, all over time came to look after her uncle, and now she and her brother are stuck in this house with this drunk veteran. He is a terror, but there is also a sense of love and duty in how she talks about him at times; he is absurd as a character larger than life, and in the predicaments, he gets himself a little mad at times. I loved this. It is one of those books poetic about the hardness of supporting a person who has spent most of their life as a shut-in and how, in a way, that had made his niece and nephew the same as they had to be there even before they became his carers.

Ever since their father died my mother and Uncle have remembered him with a sort of reverence, and they made a kind of funerary scarecrow that’s supposed to be him, and what it is is a bolster pillow dressed in a kaftan and a sailor’s cap that presides over the attic, and actually I suspect it was my uncle who initiated the project of the paternal effigy, because the handyman spirit was passed down from father to son, along with a fondness for practical jokes, and I’m not sure Uncle is capable of changing a lightbulb but I know he likes doing little repairs and renovations, for example he regularly restuffs the armchairs with newspaper, or when the sole of his old tennis shoe starts to come away he sticks it back on with super glue.

I loved this full of love and also questioning him at the same time.

I think this has a film written all other it is one of those quirky French films that is comic, absurd, and sad all at the same time. I imagine Bruno Dumonth tackling this with his love of quirky characters. Uncle has a little of what I loved about the characters in Father Ted. He is like a French father, Jack. How they describe him escaping or going on the moped reminds me of some of the storylines in Father Jack, that sort of rural absurd nature of life sometimes. This is a book about Family but also how if one person in that family falls or, like an uncle in this case, has maybe some sort of PTSD characteristics in his life and world, the habits may point to that. I think this reminded me of what I loved in the early Peirene. Have you a favourite book from Peirene.

Winstons score – A a quirky tale of a shut in uncle and his family that care for him and his mad world