The book of all loves by Agustin Fernández Mallo

The book of all loves by  Agustin Fernandez Mall

Spanish fiction

Original title – El libro de todos los amores,

Translator – Thomas Bunstead

Source – subscription

I took out a small subscription to Fitzcarradlo as I had fallen behind with their books over recent years. They bring out a lot more than they first did. I ewas pleased this was one of the books from them I was snet as I have been a huge fan of Mallo’s Nocilla trilogy . He is a writer who likes to play with what a novel is and test the bounds of fiction. So his latest book to be translated into English is about love, but as ever, it is also about the world ending simultaneously. Only Mallo could work both these ideas into a novel. Maybe we have a future Nobel winner from the Nobel stable of Fitzcarraldo are gathering.

It is animals, not us, who live in the prison-house of language, because they are not able to leave and stand outside it and think about it. This is only because it is impossible for them to access the ideas that surround words.A dog never crosses a road, because it does not know what a road is. This, among other things, is why dogs get run over. It isn’t that the dog fails to look both ways before crossing, it’s that it does not possess the idea of a road.Its gaze is another gaze, its crossing is another crossing.Hence the fact that an animal cannot give or receive love either. It’s not that it doesn’t love, it’s that its love is other.

(Language love)

One of the love aphorisms

 

The book has several different streams to it. There is a series of aphorisms around love, such as independence, parcel, and language love, to name a few, as it runs through the book. Maybe love is all that is left, one wonders, as maybe that connects to the other story around something called the great Blackout, an apocalyptic event on earth with a single couple left. This is where we get the third stream of the husband of the couple and an earlier visit to Venice he had made. This is a mix of thoughts about love and what makes love. A past love of a place and visit to Venice, an Alexa machine while there all have the traits of Mallo’s other works, he likes recurrent themes like love, tech, and place and adds to that a couple surviving the end of the world you have a book that breaks the bounds of what fiction is. A book that need to be read to be captured fully

VENICE (1)

Month of June, first foor of a palazzo whose foundations stand below the waterline of Venice’s Misericordia Canal. There is a room, and a high window with views across the domes of St Mark’s Basilica and across a sea that will shift in colour throughout the day. There is also a woman – a writer — who, were she to look up, would be able to see all of this, but keeps her eyes down instead, tapping at the keys of a typewriter. Her typing produces slight movements in a small snow globe containing a miniature version of Venice to her right on the desk, raising a layer of snow up inside the globe, where it swirls before falling across the plastic city, and the writer goes on typing, and on, while outside, in the real Venice, the Venice of tourists and water and stone, the June humidity ushers in an early summer storm. Now, as the sequence she is working on grows in intensity, the table turns quivering fingerboard and the snow rises in the globe, and again it rises, once more hitting the tiny glass vault and falling on empty palazzos and waterless canals. The books and papers strewn across the desk, all of them on one single subject – love – receive these blows without so much as a flinch. Inside the globe, a snowflake has just landed on St Mark’s Square,

A long passage and the first remembering a trip by the husband to Venice

Mallo is a physicist I am always drawn to C P Snow and what he said about the two cultures of Humanties and Sccience he himself crossed these two cultures as he was a fellow scientist come writer. But what Malo has done is not only cross the lines between the two cultures, he has dragged the theory of Snow and thrown it in a blender by adding Calvino, Twitter, modern tech and scientific mind, also throwing in a touch of post-end of the worldness in for good measure and produced a book that only some like him could.I feel he is breaking the barriers of what fiction its and making us as readers work through this myriad of versions of love as we also witness the aftermath of the great blackout whilst also trying to remember a distant holiday with a few unusual things happening it like a waking dream of a wim wenders film it is like what he tried to do in Until the end of the world capture so much in such a small space. Have you read Mallo?

Winston score – A may be the first of next year Booker international books ?

 

The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes

The book of Emma Reyesa memoir in correspondence by Emma Reyes

Columbian Memoir

Original title – Memorias por correspondencia

Translator – Daniel Alarćon

Source – personal copy

Well, I will now review a couple of Latin American memoirs. This is the first from the Columbian artist Emma Reyes, who was known as the godmother of Latin American art. Her art ranges from simple child like sketches to vibrant painting. One of her fans was her fellow Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who had encouraged he to write down her life story. She struggled to put down her thoughts until she happened upon the letter form, and hence, the letter she wrote over a few decades described her early years. She had a hard childhood, and when she grew up, she became a citizen of the world and mixed with leading artists and writers of the time. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in particular, The book has 23 letters that give an insight into what happened til she escaped a convent at 19 and started her life.

The house we lived in consisted of just one very small room with no windows, and a door that faced the street. This room was located on Carrera Sép-tima in a working-class neighborhood in Bogotá called San Cristóbal. The tram passed directly in front of our house and stopped a few meters ahead at a beer factory called Leona Pura and Leona Oscura.

In that room lived my sister, Helena, another child whose name I didn’t know whom we called Piojo, and a woman I remember only as an enormous tangle of black hair; it covered her completely, and when it was down I’d scream with fright and hide under the bed.

The house she was born into as a child with her older sister

It is easy to say Reyes had one of the toughest childhoods with her older sister. She was born in a room with no windows in a working-class area. Her mother was troubled, and they had a tough childhood. Emma’s earliest memories are of emptying the family bedpan on the garbage heap in the morning. She and her sister follow their mother around various rooms in Bogota and are looked after by various community members who take care of the girls. They also try to avoid being seen when left alone by their mother. But all this ends when she leaves them at the gate of a convent for an orphans where her and her sister 6 and 7 at the time spend the rest of their childhood a tough Christians upbringing as they are viewed as being born in sin. They live with a variety of nuns, from the strict to an aged Italian nun with poor Spanish, but all are hard on the sister as she seeks to use her mind to escape the world she finds herself in. Parts of this feel like a nod to Marquez at times. A hard few years in the convent where all they earn is by attending masses for this and that; I loved the list of how many they had attended.

My dear Germán:

There were no girls in that convent. It was a convent where they made nuns. There were some very young ones, but they were all novitiates, and we weren’t allowed to be with them. We weren’t allowed beyond the first courtyard, where the entrance and the visitors’ rooms were. Next to the entrance were two rooms, one where the doorkeeper slept, a very old, pigeon-toed lady who talked to herself all day; in the second room, full of furniture and packages, they arranged a bed for the two of us, because Helena didn’t want me to sleep alone. In the doorkeeper’s room was a large table, where food was left for us whenever the nuns brought food for the doorkeeper.

When they were left at the convent door

I brought this up after seeing it had made some end-of-year list a few years ago, and the quote from Diana Athill she said, “No other book I’ve read has left me so deeply involved with the author” This is so true, I think hitting on the letter as the form to tell her story draws you in as a reader the little snippets love the years the letters are from thirty years she wrote them from mainly Paris you sense how she must have tried to remember every detail, but she also captured the childlike feeling of being in these horrific situations living hand to mouth with her mother., then the brutality of the convent life. I think this should be better known. It is a wonderful insight into poverty, sisters , a mother that abandons you and the horrific nature of growing up in a covenant. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – B solid memoir of the early years of one of the leading Latin American artists of the 20th century.

Clara reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier

Clara reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier

French fiction

Original title – Clara lit Proust

Translator – Polly Mackintosh

Source – Personal copy

I’ve long been a fan of Gallic books, but it has been a break since I reviewed one of them. But yesterday I was in Sheffield we had gone for a morning out, and I happened on this that hadn’t long come out from them it jumped out as the next few weeks I’m after relatively short books to try and get some more reviews done .it was a reminder to me that I still have to get past swans way in Proust myself but like a lot of projects i needed to get a move on with  this is the tale of a hairdresser discovering a copy of swans way and finding a connection in the modern day to Proust. Stephane has spent time abroad working for the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. He spent a decade in the US. This is his eighth novel but the first to be translated into English.

That same evening, Clara will pick the book up and put it in the bookcase in the corridor, on the same shelf as L’Appel de l’ange and La Fille de papier by Guillaume Musso, Ma médecine naturelle by Dr Fabrice Visson, Glacé by Bernard Minier, I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovidby Zlaran Ibrahimovie, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (a gift from Anais, Clara’s childhood friend), The 30 Most Beautiful Hiking Routes in Burgundy (a gift from her father), Trois baisers by Katherine Pancol, Bélier: Daily Horoscopes, the 2011,2013, 2015, 2016 and 2018 editions, as well as a dozen Akira Toriyama mangas, which JB loves. The book will stay there for precisely five months, twenty-nine days, two hours and forty-seven minutes.

The other books she has brought back the cindy Coiffeur

Clara describes the clientele at the quiet hair salon she works, those that come in regularly and how they like their hair on of them decide out of the blue to go Blonde.  Then he colleagues within the hair salon like her tan mad boss . The daily to and fro of a small hair salon in France, she has over time found several books, so when she finds a copy of Swannn’s Way left behind in the salon, she thinks nothing of it till she then falls into Proust world as she is drawn in more than any of the other books she has read over the years. There is a list of the books she has taken from the salon, a footballer biography, horoscopes in books, and a couple from the best-selling French writer Guillaume Musso. But this book captures her with that lightbulb moment when you move from the occasional reader to a fan of books and literature that we all have. So much so that she decided to attend a festival and read the piece of Proust that she loved on the street.

It began with the thought that Nolwenn’s mannerisms were similar to those of Françoise from In Search of Lost Time. Then it was Madame Habib who seemed like a character from the book, with her fits of snobbery, her physical and verbal tics, and her mournful, frog-like eyes. Clara eventually realised that the book is so vast and encompasses so many topics that it is virtually impossible not to see the world through its lens while you are reading it. Even the smallest things become Proustian. A cluster of wisteria, the violet colour of its flowers against its green leaves.Dust suspended in a shaft of light in an otherwise dark room. And Annick, her mother, who always turns her head slightly and half opens her mouth when she is photographed, as if there is someone calling her at the exact same moment. That is Proustian, truly Proustian.

She compares those around her with the porust characters later on

I have loved This sort of book from Gallic Books over the years. They do these great fun reads, light and perfect for a summer evening, and can be read in a couple of hours. It also reminds all of us readers why we love books and reading that moment we all have when we connect with a writer. I’m sure being in France and knowing where he talks about Helps with cracking  Proust a writer. I have read Swann’s way several times but not got into him as much as Clara does here. That is what this is about the power of books to inspire people and how, even over a hundred years later, you can still connect with Proust. I like the little description of the shop and how she fell in with Swann and his story. Have you a favourite book about someone getting inspired by reading?

Winston score -A: This is what Gallic does best. This type of French lit is very French fun, inspiring and like a palate cleanser.

Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

Why did you come back every summer by Belén López Peiró

Argentine fiction

0riginal title – Por Que Volvías Cada Verano

Translator Maureen Shaughnessy

Source – Personal copyStrange, we had our annual chat on the shadow jury today about the booker international longlist books. I hadn’t noticed this was on the list of books eligible for this year’s prize. We had discussed the undercurrent theme of most of the books being auto =fiction, so when I read this yesterday, I was struck by why this piece of autofiction, although a short book is powerful it deals with an incident in the writer’s own life when she visits her uncle and he sexual assault her for several summers. When Belen had a happy childhood until the summers, she visited her uncles in her early teens. Her mother was a journalist, and she followed suit. In her early twenties, she decided to confront the past and go to the police to make a complaint about her uncle. This is a fictional version of the following events. How did the family react to what she had said?

My mother had gone to work that morning. She almost always took the bus at noon, but that day the magazine offices were closing early and my brother was at work. So I was alone, lying in my single bed in my room with pink walls, wearing the summer pyjamas my godmother had given me for my fifteenth birthday: a pair of turquoise shorts that hung low on my hips and a black tank top printed with dancing butterflies on the chest.

He walked into the apartment with a smile on his face, still wearing his uniform. I had forgotten what it was like to have to untie his boots. He set his gun down on top of the dining room cabinet, up high where it was almost out of view, and went to my brother’s room to get undressed. He wanted a quick shower before heading out on the road. I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

He comes to the house when she is young.

The book is made up of a ix of legal documents that follow the path she made through the justice system. Her uncle was a high-ranking police officer, which made it hard for her to come forward. The book opens with ther complaint to the police about his attacks over those summers to her when he put his fingers in her. She told the story as it happened, and then we had detailed reactions and nameless statements from those around BELEN about what happened. Then, we see all those involved give statements about the legal system. we get the disbelief that follows her opening up about what her uncles did over that summer and how she fights for Justice. This is one woman’s journey for justice and the truth to come out,

Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Juan. l’s a real

pleasure to meet you, you re much taller in person. Your mum told me a little bit about what happened. You’re really brave, you know that? That son of a bitch is going to jail. How could he go and screw up your life like this?

Just look at you, you’re a wreck. Don’t worry, he’s going to pay.

Come here, sit down. Tell me more about it. How did it start? Your mum told me that you were thirteen, but we’re better off saying you were eleven. That’s how things go with the law. See, you have to exaggerate a little.

To all effects, it’s the same, right? What difference does it make? One year more, one year less? He raped you either way. Ah, no. That’s right, he didn’t rape you. Then, why are you here? What was your name? Oh, right. It was almost rape. Close, but no cigar. Bloody hell. We would have been better off. This way, our case is screwed. Judges are more sympathetic to rape victims, the younger the better. With just some fingers or groping, I doubt they’ll give him more than probation. But, oh well, we’ll get something.

Meeting one of her legal team early on in the book

It is hard not to lump this in with the #METOO movement. Nut, for me, this has more power studies show how little women actually follow through rape or sexual abuse cases. This is a powerful tale of one woman’s search for justice. I am shocked this passed the judge by as it is a powerful novella it has a lot of white space in it so it is shorter than the 160 pages it takes up the patchwork nature of the book and builds up layer on a layer as everyone has say and she tells how her uncle slips his fingers in her regularly every summer when she went to live with her aunt and uncle in law in her aunts home. Tjhis capture the aftermath of accusing a family member. The courage that one act takes but then follows it through so she gets the justice she deserves. Have you read this book? Is it a powerful piece of autofiction that missed the longlist this year? I love how Charco is bringing these strong female voices out there. Have you read this book or another book maybe inspired by the #METOO movement

Winston score – A powerful personal story of one woman’s journey for justice against her uncle

 

Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon

Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon

Venezuelan  fiction

Original title – Simpatía

Translator Noel Hermandez Gonzales and Daniel Hahn

Source = personal copy

I move on to another from the Booker international longlist. I have a couple more after this to review over the month. This was one of the books from this year’s longlist that I knew very little about although I do have a copy of Bogota 39, which had Rodrigo in it is a long while since I read that book, but it is always great to see another writer from that list of the best Latin American writers under 39 that came out in 2007 he was one of two writers from Venezuela that made the list. The book deals with a time when all the people with money and talent were leaving the country. This is the story of one who was left behind when his wife left him. We see Ulise’s Kan world.

Only now did he register the book that was directly in his line of vision. Its thick white spine stood out among the dark blue row of other volumes. He took it out and looked closely at the cover. He climbed off the chair, sat down, and read the title again: Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim. He checked the index and found the title that Martín had mentioned: All the Dogs of My Life. He knew enough English to understand the title at least. Perhaps Nadine could read it. He took the book with him, returned to the bathroom, and stored it away on a shelf under the sink. He came out again and headed for the bedroom. Nadine and Martin turned to see him come in, then went on talking.

One of the little Easter eggs early on in the book welll I felt they were easter eggs

This was when there was a drain of those who could leave Venezuela during the Maduro government. Ulise’s wife has decided to escape the struggling country. So when his father-in-law dies, Ulises is shocked when he is challenged by his father-in-law in the will to get HIS mansion, Los Argonauts and to have it up and running as. Dogs home with a set amount of time. This is a tale of those left behind, and when all the owners have left, there are a lot of stray dogs out there for him to rehome at the dog home with a couple the General had chosen alongside Ulises to set up the foundation for the dogs home. If he doesn’t complete the task within a set time, he will lose it all, including his own flat to his ex-wife and be homeless himself. But he is helped by the fact his father-in-law was high up in the army, so he sets out on his quest to find and rehome the strays and left behind dogs from the exodus of Venezuela.

General Ayala left specific instructions on where to set up: the clinic; the food, cleaning, and medical storage facilities; the administrative and accounting offices; Jesús and Mariela’s permanent bedroom; and many details more. Despite all this, the description of the project still did not account for all the available space at Los Argonautas. The one thing General Ayala didn’t leave a single word about was the garden. Should they install the dog kennels inside the house or in the garden? If the garden, they would need to build a roof. Should they use all the land or just part of it? And what would happen to Sonny, Fredo, and Michael if they used the whole garden?

His will set out what he wanted them to do!

This is a book that I wanted to love, but it maybe has a lot of ideas and maybe should been longer or less thrown into it . I loved the nod to the Ulysess myth with the name, a modern-day quest to save the dogs. It’s about family ties how. Even though his daughter and his son-in-law have split, he is still more connected to his son-in-law, who stayed, than his own daughter, who fled the country so which gives Ulises a chance to have a better life and gives use to the mansion after his death. This is about the system that caused so many to flee. That is the problem. It is a very heartfelt book, but I felt he just wanted to do so much in the book it maybe fell short due to that. I loved using dogs as what was left behind when everyone went. There are also a few that, if they were in a film, would be easter eggs like Bovilar Dog, books about dogs from famous writers we meet along the way. i hope to try another book by him at some point as there was a few bits of this I liked it just needed something a little not quite sure what but thats just a feeling I had. Have you read this or ay other books from Venezula?

Winston’s score is B. It just needs to be a little less or a little longer, but I loved some bits of it.

 

 

 

Some recent buys

A break from all things booker today. I’ll do a round-up of some books I got on two recent days out. First, as many of you know, My Mum’s ashes are spread in Macclesfield, and as it was recently Mother’s Day here in the UK, I went to take some flowers, and we had a couple of hours in Macclesfield. They have a small Waterstones. I always get a nature book from there as my mum loved Nature, and this time, I chose another from the Little Toller classic series.

This was an earlier work from the Children writer Michael Morpurgo about a farm he ran in the countryside for Farms for city kids at his farm in North Devon. I was torn between this and another in the series. I hope it will be there next time I go back. There is also a OXFAM small again but it has not often had any good books but this time I hit a nice selection of books.

First up the title of this book Kafka was the rage a memoir written by a former leading book critic for the New York Times book critic about his time in Greenwich Village when it was there hip place to be,

One that has been on my radar for a few years is the first part of four of Dorothy Richardson’s Modernist masterpieces, the Pilgrimage. I will watch over time for the other three parts of this series. dealing with the life of Miriam Henderson

Next up is another on the series of short story collection from Oxford university press this collection is set in Barcelona compiled by Peter Bush who also translated them all they range from Cervantes through Josep Pla and Juan Marse to Quim Monzo as one of the modern writers involved in this vibrant city. I have other books from this series.

Ever since I had seen this had come out from And other stories in a new edition, I was reminded I wanted to read more from Hines, best well-known for Kes, and the script for Threads, which I recently watched a terrifylng look at how a nuclear war would end up shocking as it was set in Sheffield. So I was pleased to see this old film tie on of the Gamekeeper on the shelf.

Amanda and I also had a nice day in Sheffield where they have a large waterstonmes. BNut as I had literally three days earlier brought most of the booker longlist as I need most lof the books I limited myself to three books from there this time.

First off was Butter by Asako Yuzuki. I have seen this posted a lot. It has a very eye-catching cover, a story of a female serial killer who cooked  for and then killed her men. She is interviewed by another woman as the two talk. The woman is interviewing and starts to see the world like the serial killer, an interesting-sounding book. I need a few new Japanese books as I read a lot of the ones I had at the start of the year

Then, another from Japan, a woman pretends to be pregnant for nine months. How will she get away with it and why? I liked the sound of this, and it has been on a lot of other blogs, so I wait and it will be reviewed next January, I think. A little forward planning from me. I also love the cover of this book.

Then this was the main book I had gone for as I am a huge fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have reviewed six other books from him at the time of the blog. I was excited when I heard that his last novel had survived. He wanted it bin, but his sons kept a copy, and we have this story of a faithful wife who goes away on holiday every August and has an affair whilst she is on Holiday. It is strange as he mostly had male lead characters in his books. But illicit love is something he always tackled in his books.

What new or second hand has hit your shelves recently. Are you looking forward to the Marquez as well? It is a writer’s last book he wanted to be destroyed. Was it worth saving just to have it ?

What I’D Rather not think about by Jente Posthuma

What I’d rather not think about by Jente Posthuma

Dutch fiction

Original title  Wear Ik Liver aniet aan denk

Translator Sarah Timmer Harvey

Source – personal copy

When the Booker International longlist came out I looked at the books, most I had a vague awareness of . But I read the small blurb on each and then set out on which order I’d read the longlist in part of this was decided by the arrival of the books on the longlist. This was one that I felt I’d get on with I love works told in Vignettes for they can work like a patchwork slowly building the picture of the book as a whole. Jente Posthuma’s first novel People Without Charisma was well-received and was up for several prizes in Holland when it came out. This is her second novel and deals with twins and the aftermath of when the older twin kills himself from his sister’s point of view.

MY Brother called himself one and Me two because he had been born forty-five minutes earlier than I was on a sweltering day in August. He treated me like his little sister, was longer and heavier than me at birth, and had taken up almost all the space in my mother’s belly. I’d been stuck behind him with my left leg thrown over my shoulder, or so the story goes. This was why it took a little extra time for me to emerge. Our actual due date had been a month later but my brother had gone ahead, and I wasn’t about to be left behind.

The fact that we weren’t identical was something I’d long considered a handicap, a consequence of our premature birth, even once I understood the difference between identical and fraternal twins. We could have grown even closer in that ninth month.

The names they used no identical but so close.

As many of you may know my own wife had to deal with the loss of a sibling to suicide it is one of the most heartbreaking things that can happen to a family and this is what ai had hoped to find here. But in a way I not sure if number two as we come to know her as the younger of the twins by some 45 minutes. There is a nod in a way here too the Twin Towers she says he was taller than me and always on the side like the Twin Towers. I felt this is written just after her brother has gone it jumps from their childhood, the discovery of each other sexuality. During those early relationships then her brother settles with a man and has a pair of dogs or as he calls them three and four. Things aren’t what they seem and in her brother’s case there always seems to be that dark spectre over his life. She maybe shows this at times with a lack of emotion I felt but that is maybe from my own personal experience of someone dealing for years with this grief.

The first sweater I bought with my own money was nice and warm and made of Icelandic wool. It wasn’t as soft as some of the sweaters I’d buy once I started working at the vintage shop, when one of my bedroom walls would gradually disappear behind a mountain of wool. I hung shelves from the floor to the ceiling and filled them with piles of sweaters, which, just like my father’s biscuit tins, were sorted according to colour. By my twenty-seventh birthday, I owned 142 sweaters, and it was high time I saw a therapist. What will you do with them all, my friends would say.It’s a collection, I’d tell them. I didn’t have any pets, so I stroked my sweaters whenever I had nothing else to do.

Two has her own issues as you see here.

I said I like vignettes as a style of telling stories and it does work here . I felt sometimes the fact it wasn’t from a real-life experience showed. There is a certain way of remembering and thinking of that event and then not happening the way when you are left after a suicide you always question the reasons motivation and what you as a sibling could have done differently. For me that is what was missing here maybe it is meant be just after he has died two thinking before the full horror or of the tidal wave of grief hits the sibling. I felt it had captured some of this but was maybe not realistic enough for me as someone who has been up in the night after night with my own darling wife as she had nightmares and questions about her own brother’s death. [art of the reason I read this early on is I wanted it to be read and gone as a book if that made sense well it does to me as the reader. Have you a subject you’d prefer not to read books around? or something that has effect your life and you find is never quite captured, right in fiction ?

Winstons score – B Well written but I just quite didn’t get it as a subject for me

The end of August by Yu Muri

The end of August by Yu Muri

Korean fiction

Orignal title -『8月の果て』

Translator – Morgan Giles

Source – Personal copy

I said there was tweo books I held back my review of till near the Booker international coming out well this is the other book. I hadn’t got Tokyo Uneo station, I have since brought it; this came out between my last subscription and when I started my new subscription to Tilted Axis so I am rather late to Yu Muri as a writer and this is a book that had appeared on several lists of books to watch out for when it came out. For me I was going read this as it has a generational story. It also uses a piece of Actual history as a starting point for the story. Also I have an admiration for any one able to run long distances. TYu Muri is a writer who is often called the Asian Salman Rushdie as he books poke and prod at the dark piece of Japan’s history like it do here and also their savage years in Korea.

In-hale ex-hale the muscles in my legs can’t hold up 110 kilos of body weight anymore juddering and trembling with each step in-hale exhale each minor bump and dent in the asphalt reverberates in my knees in-hale ex-hale the road isn’t even both sides are tilted in-hale ex-hale if I don’t run in the middle the balance of my left and right knees will in-hale ex-hale ow! there are some seams in the asphalt in-hale ex-hale if don’t pay attention I’ll fall in-hale ex-hale ow! another seam in-hale ex-hale seams in the asphalt are something you only more or less notice when you’re riding in a speeding taxi but in-hale ex-hale in-hale ex-hale can’t hear the pacemaker’s whistle anymore in-hale ex-hale there’s just the road stretching ahead like anger in-hale ex-hale in-hale ex-hale in-hale ex-hale

I love how Morgan has translated these sections of running it has a real rhythm to it

The book spans the 20th Century from the 1930s when Japan occupied Korea and then til modern-day Korea, like the writer herself, a Korean who lives in Japan and now writes in Japanese. The book focuses on two long-distance runners (well marathon runners, I know we have those ultra runners) first is Lee Woo-Cheol as he is trying to make the Olympics squad. This was the golden era of Japanese running, and this Korean is trying to make the squad even though he is Korean. Now nearer the present we have his granddaughter she is also a runner but the drifts when running and we see the years in between and the family’s particular the plight of Korean women that became comfort women for Japanese troops.A fate that befell the neighbour of Lee and his brother during the war.  For me I loved how the act of running is still captures and flows even in translation with the act of running the breathing is captured in out but also the feel of how to run.and when a mind drifts from one place to another as we are doing sport that internal dialogue is caught well.

In-hale ex-hale in-hale ex-hale my brother will be born soon in-hale ex-hale Eomoni had a dream where she was eaten by a tiger, so she says it’ll be a boy and Abeoji had a dream where Eomoni was wearing a silk chima jeogori, so he says it’s definite in-hale ex-hale in-hale ex-hale it’s been tough since Eomoni got pregnant Halmoni and the ladies nearby keep going on about how in-hale ex-hale if she steps over a fire she’ll give the baby boils if she steps over a hedge a thief will be born if she pushes firewood into the stove with her foot the baby will cry at night if she eats a frog the baby will have six fingers and so on in-hale ex-hale in-hale

Again the sound of running is here in the 1920’s

I flew through this book in a way firstly it is a Stunning translation from Morgan Giles. She seems to have captured the act of running and the pace of the runner and their thought so well and how it must have felt in the original language. I was remind at times of The rider where the rider in that has his mind wander.  there a stream of consciousness of how the mind drifts when you are running. Yu Muri also tackles the dark history between her homeland and where she lives now the horrors of being a comfort woman in the war but also sports and how that can be used to oppress people. This is a nod to the great Korean Hero Kitei Son he was the runner that won Gold in the Berlin Olympics was running for Japan at the time. But was Korean. It is hard to describe this at times as part of it are just a Mind drifting as they run but there is a constant feeling of the past and present connecting as this happen thinking of her Grandfather. Have you read this or her other book Tokyo Ueno Station?

Winstons score A as I said yesterday this is one of two books I had held back as my two favourites for the Booker international longlist.

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,

 

That was the month that was Jan 24

1. What you are looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
2. May the Tigris grieve for you by Emilienne Malfatto
3. The Cake tree in The Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka 
4. The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
5. Masks by Fumiko Enchi
6. Not a River by Selva Almada
7. Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop
8. Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada
9. A childhood by Jona Oberski

I managed 9 reviews this month. I added 5 books to January in Japan. I start with a book about a magic librarian that helps people find the exact book when needed. Then I saw a girl in Iraq who is facing her own death after losing her fiance, meaning she will be a single mother. Harrowing story. Then we have a collection of short stories on the last day of world war to in Japan I loved the tale of the lonesome whale falling for a submarine. A factory worker questions his job and what they are all doing in a mysterious factory a nod to the mega factories that the writer had worked in. Then, in a Japanese classic, a woman has two suitors and a manipulative stepmother. Next, we head to Argentina and a story of three fishermen on an earlier trip and a death on that earlier trip; then a plant collector finds plants but also an enigmatic chief daughter he falls in love with so much that his last words are her name Miram. Then a woman goes on a road trip to Nagasaki and has an affair with a younger man with Scars. Then lastly, a man recalls being a child in the middle of the Holocaust in Amsterdam and in the prison camps a book that captures a child in all the horror.

Book of the month

Such a hard month. I like every book I read this month. In fact, since finishing this book, which was my book of the month, I have taken a few days to find a new read. I loved how he captured the voice of child amongst all these horrors and kept it feeling real. I was pleased to have reviewed nine books this month. I had that post-new-year slump happen in the last two weeks of January. But I think it is passing. Does anyone else has that feeling of doing great those first few weeks of the new year, and then you hit a wall? Well, I have it most years. It is usually this time or early in February.

Non-book events

I held back on buying too many records. A couple is coming up. I would like a couple of Robert Forester reissues for the next two albums to be rereleased, which I have my eye on. then there is the vast Waterboys box set 1985 around the album This is the Sea expanded out to 6 cd worth of material from the time this is just as they found what Mike Scott called the big music sound. I love their early stuff, so pleased I’m will get to hear all these songs and the different versions of them. I may have to leave that as it is a little out of my reach at the moment, but I will hope to get it at some point. Amanda and I have nearly finished The Crown. We have 5 episodes left to watch. Then, I think we will move on to Master of the Air. We enjoyed a couple of films, particularly Edie, starring Shelia Hancock as a pensioner determined to conquer a mountain in the highlands. She makes friends with a young man as she attempts to reach the summit. I also found a great book vlogger, Shreds Tube, worth checking out. He is a very well-spoken vlogger and has some interesting books and some great scenery in his videos. I

Next month

Mookse is hosting a read-along of Savage Detectives starting on Feb 10th. I had read this just before I started blogging so I am ready for a reread. I am reading and listening to it at the same time. There is a schedule on their substack. I have a number of books awaiting review. I had promised myself to keep on top of reading and reviewing simultaneously, but over the years, I ran off reading and not reviewing everything I had read. Other than that the usual mix of old and new. I have to try to get my century of translation slowly moving.I’m in the middle of the first book for it and will order the second book in due course.  I hope get over this slight slump of not getting down to anything I been pick this and that book up for more than a week b ut not getting overly gripped by any of them I hope to find that one book to kick start me again. It is hard after a run of such great books this month.

 

What are your plans for February?