French Windows by Antoine Laurain

French Windows bt Antoine Laurain

French fiction

Original title – Dangereusement douce

Translator – Louise rogers Lalaurie

Source – review copy

I have reviewed seven of the nine books that have come out so far from Antoine Laurain. He is the same age as me. I think that is why I connect with his fiction so well as a reader, as his points of reference are always things I remember. He is a light read. I chose today because I always read a book by him at the weekend. He is a weekend read. In fact, a warm day and an afternoon like this is the perfect time to get lost in one of his books. He mixes writing styles; this has nods toward Hitchcock’s rear window but other things as we meet a photograph that took a picture of a murder and now can’t take any more pictures.

‘You’ve spoken about your professional life, but not your private life.’ It’s a question I hesitate to ask, but it’s a necessary question all the same. Some patients develop an urgent case of verbal diarrhoea when they hear these words. But not here, not now.

All she says in reply is:

“Yes.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I ask. But her answer is a reassuring silence. I’m not sure I’m in the best frame of mind for a string of childhood stories, each more sordid than the last.

In truth, analysis is quite boring. Every now and then a patient will stand out from the crowd – gifted, intelligent, succinct in their answers – you can spot them straightaway.

Her frst visit to Dr Faber

Nathalia Guitry is a successful photographer. She lives in an apartment building with five floors, and whilst taking pictures, she sees a murder. This leads her to the door of Dr. Faber for therapy. When he suggests a way to get her mojo for photography back. Why does she not write about her fellow residents? This may explain what happened with the photograph, so we see Nathalia as she returns with a picture of all her fellow residents. Start with the actor come YouTube star. This captures a social infuser well in describing how they became a YouTube star. I loved a part later on a former resident that is in FIFE IN scotland as we see Nathalia paint the life o those around her or does she this is a great question is this the truth is she a reliable narrator? Who is the Japanese woman, and why does she only come home a couple of weeks a year to her apartment? Who is the killer?

‘Hi. Yes, I know where this is — it’s the Lady’s Tower in Elie, Scotland. I punched the name into my search engine straightaway and found more pictures of my tower, together with an explanation of its curious name. I’ll tell you about that later.

Now I’m passing by a tall mill on the edge of Saint Monans, a fishing village with a harbour, and a church that overlooks the sea. I pause to buy a small bottle of water – walking in the wind makes you thirsty. In front of the church, the cemetery’s dishevelled tombstones look as if they’ve been here since the dawn of time. I check my GPS; I’m on the right trail, I’m almost there. Keep to the coast path all the way along. I find a route right beside the water, before climbing up to the heathland once again. The sea is quite rough. I am showered with spray.

I remember walking between Elie and St Monans with my grandfater thirty odd years ago loved this part of the book.

I said I am a fan of his books. This is a great book as it mixes style, part therapy, middle-aged person on the edge, part mystery, then adds the scenes in Scotland as an aside. It is easy to mention books about buildings set in France. Perec jumps to mind, or the Jacobian Building, another around a building with interesting characters. With the murder she saw in the building, it is easy to see the Rear window as an influence, except he has flipped the story as the murder is at the start. But for me, the biggest influence may be Murders in the Building, the Disney comedy-drama that has been running for a few series. It has a murder like this and also quirky people living in the building a nod towards it with social media stars in both stories he has taken all this added a trip to FAife I loved this section talk about Elie where my gran and Aunt used to live. He is great at grabbing a reader for a few hours of wit and capturing Parisian life. Have you ever read any books from him? Do you have a go-to weekend easy-read writer ?

Winston score – A another slice of Laurain wit and Paris as we discover a murder or do we

 

15 Years of reading the world winstonsdad is 15

Well, the blog itself told me a couple of days ago that it has been going on for 15 years. Amazing. This started just as I found other bloggers on Twitter, and my reading had grown over the few years before that. I started with a challenge of reading 52 over the first year of the blog well, which has now grown to 130 countries. I now tend to trickle through new countries a few a year I will get to every country in the world at some point I hope but for me it is about the breadth of books read so I want to read everything basically. Sadly, many blogs I love have gone over the years. I have carried on. I have reviewed, on average 92 books a year over the last 15 years not bad stats. Of them, 1200 are books in translation . I have written 2330 posts over the last 15 years. I have started the shadow jury, which I love doing. The hashtag #Translationthurs I started. With Richard, Spanish Lit Month has since become Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month. I wish I could make a little money from this blog as I feel the time and effort I have spent in the last fifteen years be nice to see a little reward for that. I love interacting with other bloggers. I’m always open to ideas I feel I do struggle to comment but I always try to catch up from time to time. I have loved the experiences and people I have met over the years of the blog. Her is to the next 15 years !! As you follow me as I read books from around the world.

The Hairdresser’s son by Gerbrand Bakker

The Hairdresser’s son by Gerbrand Bakker

Dutch fiction

Original title – De Kapperzoon

Translator – David Colmer

It is always nice to read books from a writer you loved and read some years ago and rediscover. One such writer is Gerband Bakker I had read his first two books to be translated into English The twin which won the IFFP I was there when he won and did briefly meet him. He also kindly answered a few questions some years ago. So when I was given a chance to read his latest book. I love his life. He is a gardener and skating instructor in the winter and a writer, and also a cycling fan. Have you read the earlier books when they came out. He touches on similar themes in this book.

Igor is swimming. Or rather, swimming’s not the right word.

He doesn’t have a clue about breaststroke or crawl, by the looks of it nobody’s ever been able to teach him how to swim. He’s moving through the warm, shallow water. He’s sloping forward and seems to keep realising how much easier walking was before he got in the pool. His bends his legs, forgets to close his mouth, and gulps chlorinated water. He splutters and burps. Every now and then he shouts something. The woman in the bright-orange swimming costume shouts back at him. Igor! Don’t shout!’ The other woman, the one in the floral costume, hushes him and says,

‘Close your mouth, Igor. If you go under water, you have to close your mouth.’ The two women make sure nobody drowns.

He swims most days doing laps , reminded me to get back into swimming as I did reguarley go a couple years ago.

The book is about a father-and-son relationship that never happened. Simon grew up without his father, but he then strangely followed his father into being a hairdresser. But when one of his customers, a writer he seems to have connected beyond a customer to Simon, but he is very interested in Simon’s life, is this how Gerbrand here this story? , takes a real interest in the story of his father, Cornelis, who, when told of Simon coming, ran off and happened to be on a flight to Tenerife that crashed. I feel Simon’s point of life is similar to mine. You are in your forties. Everything is set in your routine, life, and daily activities his daily swim and the connection with his posts of famous swimmers. . But what happens when he tries to find out something about Cornelis and then sees his name isn’t on the memorial to those who died in the crash. He had been told his father’s body had never been found; this ends up reading Simon to the island after getting stonewalled by his mum. and grandmother about the past. Is there more to the events in the past? What will he find when he goes there?

Jan lights a cigarette. The smoke blows into Simon’s face. He stands up and starts reading the names on the metal plates. Is that zinc? Bronze? He reads them all and has already shuffled around the corner before he realises he’s reading from A to Z.

A moment later he sees that another name has been added. At the end of the row of names, around another corner, a plate has been screwed onto the stone plinth: OF THE VICTIMS NOT BURIED HERE, THE FOLLOWING NAMES HAVE BEEN ADDED AT THE REQUEST OF THE NEXT OF KIN. Then he looks at his grandfather.

When he finds his fathers name isn’t on the memorial to those who dided in the crash !

This is a book that twists slowly. We meet a man in mid-life who is settled and, on the whole, maybe in a little depressed state. His life is an everyday normal routine. The writer’s questions are the spark that changes the book’s direction. It makes Simon want to question his own past, and when the answers from his only family aren’t there or just don’t seem right, he questions what happened and wonders more about his father. It is about that gap in his life. What would have happened had the father been there? Why did he run? He wants the answer but also to unravel the past in the present. Add to that the writer. I  do wonder if it is a story. Gerband himself  has heard himself at hairdressers. I remember the place I went to as a young man. A hairdresser had been there for years and would talk about his life with customers, but most had been coming for years. I do wonder if that is the kernel Gerbrandf spun the story out of this revelation from someone. He deals so well with secrets the past and how people deal with that Bakker. He is a wonderfully paced writer as we follow Simon on his journey. Have you read any of his books?

Winston’s score—A. Who was Cornelis, and why did he run? Will Simon discover who his father really was and what happened? This is a great book about missing fathers and the past.

Out of Mind by J Bernlef

Out of Mind by J Bernlef

Dutch fiction

Original title – Hersenschimmen

Translator Adrienne Dixon

Source – Personal copy

Am I the only person that has a list of books you have seen on the list that you know are out of print, so you want to keep an eye out for them. This is the case with this book, well, a couple of books of the same list, and that was a list of the ten best Dutch novels that came out that was the NRC Best Dutch novels, of which this was the fourth best novel of a public vote. The list also had The Evening by Gerald Reve, a book I have read several times and just didn’t connect with it that wasn’t translated when the list came out. This was bt was out of print. So this won the m find book of the Year when it came out. Bernlef was a name taken by the writer Hendrik Jan Marsman. Bernlef was a blind 8th-century poet who started off as a poet writing novels later in his career, and this was very well received when it came out as it deals with dementia from an elderly couple as one of them slowly loses them self to dementia.

Philip scratches his ginger chin-strap beard, apologizes that there is no hot coffee left, and then asks how I liked The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene.

The question takes me aback. I am not attuned to it. It also seems as if I only half understand it. Like an incomplete sentence. You can guess at the rest, but there are more possibilities.

‘Haven’t got round to it yet, I say, and in order to please him I select another book by the same author from one of the shelves. Our Man in Havana.

‘I saw the movie once,’ I explain, ‘with Alec Guinness! He nods but I can tell from his face that he doesn’t know the movie. I pay. He accompanies me to the door and holds it open for me.

The Greene early on in the book Maartens remembers more

The book follows a Dutch couple that escaped the nazis and settled in Glouster, Mass., where they escaped when the Nazis took over. Maarten was a quiet man and a secretary in an NGO. He lives with his wife Vera. As the books open, he seems fluid, talking about the book he is reading by Graham Greene. This is a recurring thread in the book is Greene novels and films.  We see this quiet man as his mind starts to fail and how Vera copes with this as it is just simple things like bringing in the firewood, something he has done for years. He is in his mid-seventies, and those small things creep in, but as I say, the recurring talk around Graham Green each time, he remembers less and less about him and the book. This is being in the face of the storm as a man loses himself and how it affects his relationship with his wife.

Philip sends his regards to you – Philip, the bookseller, says the man, putting a notebook into his inside pocket.

‘Oh, him. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

“You went there only the other day. You bought Our Man in Havana from him. A very good Graham Greene. Made into a movie as well. Who played the main part again?’ I shrug my shoulders. Then Vera whispers a name. ‘Alec Guinness.’ Damn, she’s right. This fellow does look like Alec Guinness. Let’s hope he didn’t hear her, because it may not be much of a compliment. Same jowls and broad rims to his ears. I have to make an effort not to start chuckling.

Later on the same book and he remembers less about it and hos language is less !

I wondered how I would like this, as I had mixed feelings about The Evenings, another great Dutch novel. But no this is a book I think should be better known it captures a man as his mind falls apart so well. I was reminded of two works I have seen or read in the last decade that deal with this. The first was the memoir of the art critic  Tom Lubbock, which I read several years ago and was so touched by it but never reviewed it probably as I felt I couldn’t do a fragile, beautiful book like that justice. Bernlef has caught in the same way here how some lose words and memories as the day-to-day events slip bit by bit as the person loses themselves. The other is the film The Father, in which Anthony Hopkins plays a father struggling with dementia and how his world constantly seems different as his mind adjusts to the gentle loss of memories and place and time. Both of them showed, like this novella does, how one can fall apart and what we slowly fall off us as people. This is a hard-hitting little book that slowly moves like dementia does as we follow Maartens as he is struck down by dementia. Have you a favourite book dealing with Dementia?

Do you have a list of books you have seen on list of best books from places , times or just in the paper ?

Spanish Portuguese lit month the 2024 Edition

 

JULY 2024 

Well, I hadn’t intended to do a Spanish Portuguese lit month this year. I started it with Richard of the much-missed blog Caravana de recuerdos .We started it as Spanish lit month in 2010 on and off, a few years after it was expanded to include literature translated from Portuguese.So when Jacqui asked if I was I took a few seconds and a look at the TBR and said yes it would be great to do it again this July. I know it is short notice, and I am thinking of two things: review a book from Charco Press as they have brought out so many great books translated from Spanish and Portuguese from around Latin America. Then, the last week of July, I would love people to review a book by the Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes.

Here is the list of his books from Wiki; most of them have been translated to English. His name is often on the list of potential Nobel winners. He looks at the heart of his country’s history and dark past, warts and all.

• Memória de Elefante (1979). Elephant’s Memory
• Os Cus de Judas (1979). Translated by Elizabeth Lowe as South of Nowhere (1983); and later by Margaret Jull Costa as The Land at the End of the World (2011).
• Conhecimento do Inferno (1980). Knowledge of Hell, trans. Clifford E. Landers (2008).
• Explicação dos Pássaros (1981). An Explanation of the Birds, trans. Richard Zenith (1991).
• Fado Alexandrino (1983). Fado Alexandrino, trans. Gregory Rabassa (1990).
• Auto dos Danados (1985). Act of the Damned, trans. Richard Zenith (1993).
• As Naus (1988). The Return of the Caravels, trans. Gregory Rabassa (2003).
• Tratado das Paixões da Alma (1990). Treatise on the Passions of the Heart, first section translated by Richard Zenith (1994).
• A Ordem Natural das Coisas (1992). The Natural Order of Things, trans. Richard Zenith (2001).
• A Morte de Carlos Gardel (1994). The Death of Carlos Gardel
• O Manual dos Inquisidores (1996). The Inquisitors’ Manual, trans. Richard Zenith (2004).
• O Esplendor de Portugal (1997). The Splendor of Portugal, trans. Rhett McNeil (2011).
• Exortação aos Crocodilos (1999). Warning to the Crocodiles, trans. Karen Sotelino (2021).
• Não Entres Tão Depressa Nessa Noite Escura (2000). Don’t Enter That Dark Night So Fast
• Que Farei Quando Tudo Arde? (2001). What Can I Do When Everything’s on Fire?, trans. Gregory Rabassa (2008).
• Boa Tarde às Coisas Aqui em Baixo (2003). Good Evening to the Things From Here Below
• Eu Hei-de Amar uma Pedra (2004). I Shall Love a Stone
• Ontem Não te vi em Babilónia (2006). Didn’t See You in Babylon Yesterday
• O Meu Nome é Legião (2007). My Name Is Legion
• O Arquipélago da Insónia (2008). Archipelago of Insomnia
• Que Cavalos São Aqueles Que Fazem Sombra no Mar? (2009). What Horses Are Those That Make Shade On The Sea?
• Sôbolos Rios Que Vão (2010). By the Rivers of Babylon, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (2023).
• Comissão das Lágrimas (2011). Commission of Tears, trans. Elizabeth Lowe (2024).
• Não é Meia-Noite quem quer (2012).
• Caminha Como Numa Casa em Chamas (2014).
• Da Natureza dos Deuses (2015).
• Para Aquela que Está Sentada no Escuro à Minha Espera (2016).
• Até Que as Pedras Se Tornem Mais Leves Que a Água (2016). Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water, trans. Jeffe Love (2019).

I have reviewed three of his novels and have several others on my TBR . I will try to review another book from Portugal to take my total of reviews from there to 10, which seems poor. I look forward to seeing what books from around the world everyone reads I have done a few images for the month the one at the top and the two below.

Edited in Prisma app with Watercolor

Edited in Prisma app with Watercolor

Engagement by Ciler Ilhan

Engagement by Ciler Ilhan

Turkish short stories

Original title – Nişan Evi

Translator – Kenneth Dakan

Source – Review copy

I had promised to review this the other day when I reviewed another book set in the same area of Turkey. That is the southeast part of Turkey, which is mainly Kurdish, and this looks at the village life there. This book deals with an actual event, and that is the massacre that occurred in a village, The Bilge village massacre. This is the second book I reviewed by the Turkish / Dutch writer Ciler Ilhan. The earlier book Exile was also published by Istros, and it hit me hard when I read it as it follows those hours in a village that all that live there call Our village.

Maral had forgotten all about the eau de cologne even though her mother had reminded her two days previously: You can’t hold out a bottle of warm cologne for guests. It’s bought beforehand, kept in the fridge and splashed cold onto cupped palms.’ What a bad start to the day! Surely no good will come of it.

And so, it fell on Halil to get the scent, since Maral and her favorite aunt, never-married Nasibe (in this place, an unmarried woman is an old maid, a spinster or stuck-at-home-so let us say, instead, that Maral and her favorite aunt, the Spinster Nasibe were supposed to go door-to-door to invite guests over for the evening. Maral had her work cut out for her. You see, Nasibe only has one good arm; the left one was stunted and useless. The village had more than its fair share of crazies and cripples. City people came once to do research:

If you people keep marrying each other, a woman in thick-rimmed glasses said, ‘nothing will ever change.’

The opening and the hunt for some Cologne

I had called this a set of short stories, but it may be more of an interlinking novel with the stories following various people in the village as they go through their everyday lives. That evening, Leyle is sent to find some cologne; she is a bride-to-be heading to the next town after her sister Maral had forgotten the eau de cologne a couple of days earlier as they prepare for the forthcoming wedding. Meanwhile, Maral is tasked with reminding all those in the village of the engagement ceremony due to happen that evening. But we have a feeling as the day goes on. Then we have the other town and a history of feuds and actual marriages between the two villages. This latest marriage may have been the final straw, so as the day goes on, the feeling you get as you view what is happening through these short stories and other characters appear Halil is a survivor, having had a close call with death as a kid, will he get through tonight ?. The book turns up the dark feeling, and the story is told bit by bit the history of these villages in a world where one wrong move can lead to dire consequences of death when those that live in these villages have guns!

When Osman popped up like a poisonous mushroom that morning, Halil pursed his full lips. He was peeved.

‘Good morning, he said. ‘Where are you gentlemen off to?’ Hollow-cheeked Osman roared with laughter. As did the guy next to him. The pair of them, in matching pinstripe trousers, mafia-style, were simultaneously bent double and slapping their knees. Halil’s face clouded over. He took a step toward jug-eared Osman and plucked up the courage to grab him by the shoulders, give him a friendly shake and ask what was so funny; but he missed. The guy’s shoulders were like the rest of him, a constantly moving target.

What are you doing here, shithead?’ someone said, and it was Osman again. He lifted his eyebrow, all thoughtful like, when Halil explained about the cologne, and added, ‘Get whatever damn thing you need and then get the hell back to your village.

Other Village was bigger than Our Village, and drier.

The other village her is a sense of the tension and under lying hatred there

I said the image of the book I read last week of dead bodies in a river. This tale is of those villages themselves and why it is so hard for Turkey to control a place where there is such a history of blood feuds and where the villages are isolated from the world they live in is because But the power of this book is it alludes to the event all the way through. It darkens as it goes on. It leads you to the event, but in a folk tale-like way, we see those 16 hours before this engagement party as the bride-to-be hunts cologne, part of the tradition her sister and others plan to go for that evening. Still, as we do, we see what has led to this evening and the constant talk of how their village is our village. It simmers and captures a world where feuds have lasted down family lines over the decades and even centuries. I said I thought she had a powerful voice in my review of Exiles 9 years ago, which still rings true. This writer captures events, feelings, and horror so well in her short stories, and this builds as it goes on. Have you read her or have a favourite Turkish writer?

Eastbound by Maylis De Kerangal

Eastbound by Maylis De Keranngal

French fiction

Orignal title – Tangente ver L’est

Translator Jessica Moore

Source – Personal copy

This was a buy from Alnwick when I went to Barter Books. It had been on my radar since coming out. It is published in the UK by Les Fugitives, but in the US, one of my all-time favourite publishers brought it out, Archipelago Books. But her other books in the UK have been published by Maclehose Press, and I have reviewed two of them and read her short story collection. Maylis De Keranagal is a writer who is great at moments, people and how they interact. What drew me to this it was around a Russian soldier defecting and a French woman with her own story.

Aliocha locks himself in the first toilet cubicle that’s free, washes the blood from his face with plenty of water, examines the marks, makes himself a compress by tearing a length of toilet paper from the huge roll attached to the wall and soaks it in ice-cold water before pressing it to his red profile, his swollen nose. And then, ignoring the insults shouted by people waiting outside, their kicks against the door, he takes his time checking the mirror to make sure his face is slowly regaining its colour and volume.

But his bruises mark him out now as a victim, he knows it, and once he’s out of the toilet he seeks out the shadows, the darkness, and reaches his train carriage by slinking along the walls.

As he tries to find a way out of his military service in the train.

The story follows the Trans Siberian Express as it heads across Russia. On board is a young man, Aliocha, barely out of his teens, who is a conscript with his fellow conscripts on this train to spend time in the military in some far-flung hinterland in Siberia. He has tried to get out of it every way he can.So he is trying to find a way to escape of the train and hopefully find freedom. AS he initially hides in a toilet, he sees a woman unlike any he has seen before. This French woman has an air different to anyone else that he has seen. So he follows her and as he feels the fact he could be found he goes in her compartment and gets her to change her clothes so he can seem different she initially is hesitant but lets this young man and as the train g=cross the land we see Helene’s tale and that like Aliocha is on the run from her own problems a love affair with a man called Anton, the passionate affair started in Paris but as time goes on it has gone wrong hence she is escaping on the train as well. This is a tale of two lost souls, each with a reason to want to be as far away from their own lives as possible, colliding on this train.

THE DOORS slide open behind him. Someone has come into the compartment.

Aliocha turns: the woman who got on in Krasnoyarsk, the foreigner, it’s her. In one hand she holds a glass encased in silver mesh, and in the other, a lit cigarette. She stands in profile at a side window; she, too, is rummaging around in the night, the night that never closes completely here, but stays ambiguous, charged with an electric luminosity that always makes you think day is about to break. Aliocha observes her surrepti-tiously, swivelling his eyes in their sockets without moving his body: she’s smoking, very calm, her face faintly shining. He’s never seen women like her, awake at this time of night and alone on trains transporting troops, women in men’s shirts and big boots, not in Moscow;

Helene catches his eye she is so different than other on the Train

I had heard Mookse’s podcast about Hotel novels. I think this is maybe the next subject they may do about books set in a place as a train journey is such a great setting for a novel as it is always a cross-section of people, and this is so much the case here. How else would a young 20-year Russian conscript want to run away ever meet an attractive middle-aged French woman herself also wanting to escape an event in her life? The parallel in the stories is something she has touched on in other books,. The moment is a turning point in the book Mend the Living and the tale of two people connected by a single heart. This has a turning point of a disaster, whether it is death or her trying to escape her world. Then there is the pace of the book. It has that feeling of the train, and when you are on a long trip on a train, but the near you get to the end, the faster the world seems to go, and this is the case here. We find out the two of them stories and when they meet and he hides the book moves on from that point like an intercity 125 on course as the two of them are  Eastbound on the Trans Siberian Express, but maybe both wanting to be Westbound will the find Aliocha and will Helene escape the boredom of her life with Anton back to the city she loves Paris. Have you read any of her books?

Winstons score – +A a great novella from one of the leading French writers

Elly by Maike Wetzel

Elly by Maike Wetzel

German fiction

Original title –  Elly

Translator – Lyn Marven

Source – Library

I saw this at the library on a recent visit and thought it was the perfect size for an evening read I still love the idea of a book being like a movie you can sit and read in a couple of hours. It was on a list of the best books in translation to read from the Guardian. It was also on the list for the Dagger Prize for books in Translation. Maike Wetzel studied in the UK and is also a screenwriter and novelist. She also had a short story collection translated into English. This novella caught my eye as it seems like it may have a twist around a child going missing and the outcome of this on the family.

The doctor hooks me up to the drip and puts me on the list for an operation. He wants to remove my appendix. My mother says again: Your colleague already took it out. The doctor prods my rigid belly. My mother stops fighting. She gives my name, our health insurance details. She called me Almut because of the north.

Because of the stiff breeze on the island of Sylt, where she has never been; because of the tall blond boy that she never kissed, because she doesn’t like tall blonds; because of the seagulls, whose cries make her melan-choly; and because of the seaweed and the salt which no longer cling to her legs: now it’s dark stretchy jeans with all their poisonous dyes instead. I’m also called Almut because it contains the German for courage, Mut, and my mother believed the name would give me

I just picked this as I had my appendix out as a kid

The book follows the effect on the family when the 11-year-old daughter, Elly, disappears. She was cycling home from a judo class. This follows when the daughter disappears. The family is gripped by grief and follows the police investigation. We see how Judith and Hamid Elly’s parents cope with this and how her older sister Ines struggles with the loss of her younger sister. So, after four long years, hope appears lost,, as time goes on, the hope of finding her alive drifts, and the hole that is left is still there, but the family, including her sister, move on with their lives. But then, after four years, Elly reappears, and the family is back whole again. However, as the family starts to heal, there are doubts about this girl who has returned as their daughter. Ines questions her about things they did as kids. Her grandmother has even bigger doubts. How has she come back? Is she Elly or ?

 

My sister disappears on a slightly overcast afternoon in June. I imagine how it happens. I see Elly wheeling her bike out of the garage. Her outline is clear and sharp, the background out of focus. She fixes her sports bag to the luggage rack. In it is her judo suit with the green belt. My sister is younger than me. I am thirteen at the time, she is just eleven. We live in a small town. Elly’s club meets in a sports hall in the nearest big town. She cycles there on her own across the fields. The wind sweeps through the wheat. From above, it looks like waves on water. Elly stands on the motorway bridge and looks down at the field. The wind ruffles her dark, almost black hair.

Ines talking About her sister disappering

This book is a wonderful mix of literary fiction and thriller in the way it is paced. The action slowly unwinds in the history of Elly disappearing, and its effect is told from all the family points of view, but the action turns around when the girl returns who is meant to be Elly. The book is an up-and-down ride. I was reminded of the early Peirene books that had the same quality as they did, and that is cinematic books that, like this book, take you as a reader on a journey. You can see that Maike is a screenwriter. This has the feel of a book that could easily be made into a film. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this being made into a film at some point I hope it does so I could watch it. It has a turning point of Elly returning and the doubts about her make this turn from a sad story of a lost daughter to something else. Do you have a favourite evening book, one you read in an evening like watching a great film? Do you like literary novels that have a feel of a thriller in the pace you can read them at?

Winstons score- A

A book strike me as perfect to be made into a film

A Terrace in Rome by Pascal Quingard

A Terrace in Rome by Pascal Quingard

French fiction

Original title – Terrasse à Rome

Translator – Douglas Penick and Charle Ré

Source – Personal copy

We all have a list of writers we want to get to well. Pascal Quingard has been on my list of writers to read for a couple of years now . I’m not sure where I first heard about this book. It was probably Twitter somewhere. But the fragmented nature of this book, when I heard about it, appealed, and the fact it was about an engraver as we had some acid etch engravings at my father’s house. Quingard has won several prizes won the Prix Goncourt, which in many ways is like the French Booker or is it the other way around? The Goncourt has been going longer. He has written many books, and sadly, they seemed to have never quite been taken in English as a writer. I’m not sure if it is their style of writing or if his books are all different? This is my first but not my last I will say that.

A few days later, one morning in August 1639, a most beautiful day, Nanni wakes him up. Meaume doesn’t believe his eyes. She is there, in his garret. The girl he loves has returned. She is leaning over him. She is tapping his shoulder. He is naked. She does not lust after his naked-ness. On the contrary, she throws a shirt on his belly. She whispers in a low voice, an urgent voice: “Listen to me.

Listen to me.”

She turns around as if someone were following her.

Her face is that of a frightened woman. Her eyes sparkle with anguish. Her face is flushed, gentle, drawn, emaciat-ed, serious. She has dark circles under her eyes. Her long hair is tied back simply under her gray cap. She is wearing a gray dress with a white ruff. She is more beautiful than ever. She bends toward him.

She tells him to go or he may die

This is the life story of an engraver called Geoffrey Meaume. He is learning his trade in Bruge when he falls for the daughter of the goldsmith, her slim waist, hands, and heavy breasts. They meet and fall for one another, but she has a fiance. This is early on in the book, and when the fiance catches up with Meaume, he throws acid in the young man’s face, causing him to be disfigured for the rest of his life. This seems to be the end of it till the young woman appears and tells him that her fiance isn’t happy that he was fined for what he did to Meaume. But this has not simmered, and he now wants Meaume dead. So the young engraver goes on the run and ends up first in Mainz Germany. As he moves the engraving, he draws go from Erotic to religious A man scared for life pours his life into his art but also the memories and glances of women as he goes through his life is a sort of torment life in small chapters as this man has very little joy apart from that one time that ends in is face being burnt off by acid.

He runs, he ran. Left Mainz. He stayed three weeks on his own without putting his nose outside the door of an inn on the other bank of the Rhine where he had taken lodgings in a sort of stable with six other men. Three weeks of dry sobs, his body lying in the hay and its heavy smell. Then he left that world, crossed Wurtemberg, the Swiss cantons, the Alps, the Vatican States, Rome, Naples. He went to hide his face for two years, staying in Ravello above the little village, in a cliff on the Gulf of Salerno. Finally it was Rome in 1643, the Aventine Hill, the terrace with the covered porch, the nocturnal engravings, the scandalous collection of 165o, the erotic cards on which he dreamed of love. The engravings were marked with the sign of the shop, the Black Maltese Cross on the Via Giulia.

He eventually ends up in Rome hence the title .

This is a look at a torment soul a man that was young and brilliant at his art attractive to this young woman and all this end with the acid attack it is a survivor story but the torement from having such a scar and how his disfigured face will effect the rest of his life. As a man broken by that one event and how this can lead to a dark life of repressed desire , sex, and wanting in the man. I loved the fragmented nature of the books they are like etchings from his life a sort of literary version of Gin Lane. This is a tale of a man’s downfall in a way like the famous etching by Hogarth. It reminds you how etchings are the photo magazines of their day capturing events beauties like early in the book or scenes of religious imagery. I have found a writer I want to read lots more from Qingard. It is always a joy to discover a writer with a style I like the fragmented nature of this book as we look at the vignettes of this guy’s life like a pile of old Polaroids telling a story over time in the changes we don’t see at first but in photos and here in the vignettes, we see how his life move on. WHat is your favourite book by this writer?

Winston’s score – A , A new voice for this reviewer to read .

 

May’s reading Journal

1. The observable universe by Heather McCalden
2. Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon 
3. White Nights by Urszula Hineek
4. And the stones cry out by Clara Dupont-Monod 
5. Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró
6. Clara reads Proust by Stephane Carlier 
7. Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro 
8. The book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes
9. What is Mine by Jose Henrique Bortoluci
10. Two for the road by Roddy Doyle 
11. The book of all love by Agustin Fernandez Mallo 
12. January by Sara Gallardo
13. Birthday by César Aira 
14. The following Story by Cees Nootebom
15. The Wounded age by Ferit Edgu

I had wanted to do a book a day in May, but I didn’t; this challenge pushed me to 15 reviews this month and made me see I could fit more reviews in here and there. We started with a memoir about a daughter’s quest to connect her loss of her parents to Aids, and her mother’s love of crime drama and computer viruses make up this memoir in vignettes. Then, a man opens a dog home on the orders of his ex-father-in-law in Venezuela. Then we are in Rual Poland with a series of interconnecting stories. Then we have a sister coping with a disabled sibling. Then, a woman seeks justice for a sexual attack. We move to Paris, and a woman discovers Proust as a writer.Then, we have a female captain who lets her saviour swim in the sea, and the book takes a strange turn. In the letters over twenty years, Emma Reyes recounts her poor childhood. Then we have a son recalling the conversations and life of his truck-driving father in the later part of the 20th century as Brazil changed and had a dictatorship rule. Then a pair of dubliners discuss the days news over a pint  Then a trio of stories in Mallo’s new novel. A young woman next in Argentina struggles to hide a pregnancy and how she became pregnant. Then, a man turns fifty as he sits and writes. A man then awakes in Lisbon and falls asleep in Amsterdam. Is he alive? Finally, a pair of novellas see Turks heading to the Kurdish part of Turkey and having their eyes open. I covered 13 countries this month. One new publisher is MTO, publisher of the White Nights.

Book of the month

This was a hard choice, so many great books this month, but the one scene in this book where the narrator of the first book has a dream of an old man fishing and fishing up dead bodies of women and children in his net is a haunting image.

Non book things this month

After Record Store Day, I only picked a couple of records up. This was one of them: Beth Gibbons’s new album. I have loved her voice since she was in Portishead many years ago, and she has done a few collaborations since then, but this is her first new work in a long time. On the TV front, we watched last night a light thriller about oil getting infected with a virus and the chaos that would follow that. The series The responder we have started watching the series The Veil but haven’t finished yet.

The month ahead

I am currently reading the first Hungarian book from Istros Books, and I will then move on to a mix of review books and books I have brought or borrowed from the library. I will also be reviewing the latest Arab lit quarterly, which is around Gaza and has several writings from inside Gaza.

How was your month ?