Winstonsdad annual Guesses at the BOOKER INTERNATIONAL LONGLIST 2024 edition

Its that time of year when all us bloggers that love books in translation look into our Crystal ball well in my case what I have read in the whole 9 of the 12 books I have picked will be ones I have read  and 3 are books that I hope to read.

I start with The end of August by Yu Muri the tales of a century of Japanese Korean history told through a pair of marathon runners grandfather and granddaughter in Morgan Giles stunning Tranlstion. This is one of the two I really hope make the longlist.

Star 111 by Lutz Seiler Translator Tess Lewis is the other book I have longed to see on the longlist. It is set during the Berlin War and partly based on the writer’s own life at the time and also his parents’ life at the time, as he stayed in the East and they headed west.

Next up are two choices from Machlehose Press. First is Vengance is Mine by Marie NDiaye. is bout a middle-aged lawyer who is hired by someone she used to know to try a case, and as she does, the past becomes clearer. Translated by Jordan Stump Then we have Wound by Oksana Vasyakina. It is the tale of a daughter taking her mother’s ashes back to her mother’s village in Siberia. As she is doing so, she looks back on her life. It is one of the first openly lesbian novels in Russian. Translated by Eliner Alter

Next and Epic prose novel from Sweden Ǎdnan by Linnea Axelsson Translator Saskia Vogel is the tale of two Sami Famlies through the 20th century shows how there world has changed. Also be a great to see and indigenous writer on the longlist.It has the feel of a epic told in verse could be told around the campfire.

Off to Italy its been a while since an Italian book has been on the longlist and I loved this novelisation of a true life event The city of the Living by Nicola Lagioia translatror Ann Goldstein pulled apart the events that lead to the death of Luca Varni was killed by two men similar age to him in a planned murder that looks at the darker side of masculinity and being male in Modern Italy.

I love to support small presses, and one of my favourites in the last couple of years is Three Times Rebel Press. They have been bringing out thought-provoking books for the last couple of years. The Dear Ones by Berta Davila. This is a powerful little novel about motherhood and struggling with motherhood when you have a child but then have an abortion. Translated by Jacob Rogers

The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr translator Lara Vergnaud this is part road novel part look at being an African writer in France also use a real novel that was accused of plagrism and has also just come out as a starting point when a writer reads the imagined novel that was withdrawn and goes on the hunt for the writer. I hope this makes the longlist ine I really connected with as a reader.

About uncle by Rebecca Gisler  Translator Jordan Stump. This has been my favourite Peirene for a long while and follows a family looking after an odd war veteran and his odd habits about family and what happens when one member need all the other to look after him.

Now my three I haven’t read with a quick explanation why

The annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild by Mathias Enard translator Frank Wynne

Just about to start this hard say why I haven’t got to it as it is translated by one of my favourite translators Frank Wynne and Enard ois a writer I love to read.

Anomaly by Andrej Niokladis Translator Will Firth  Lets hope this is out from Peirene a new publisher for his works he is a writer I have long championed and have met he has also done a piece for this blog. He is one of the best writers from Central Europe at the moment

Lasstly is a Nobel winner The children of the dead by Elfriede Jelinek Translator Gitta Honegger is meant to be her greatest book I have read a couple by her so am looking forward to this one.

Girl A Novel by Camille Laurens

Girl a novel by Camille Laurens

French fiction

Original title – Fille

Translator – Adriana Hunter

Source – Review Copy

I’m late to the review of this just it was one of those books that you have to let sink into you as it was a powerful insight into growing up female in a male-dominated world. Camille Laurens is a member of the Academy Goncourt she was involved in a scandal last year around her husband getting voted on the longlist and a review she had published of another book on the list in Le Monde (I love these little snippets about writers it makes them seem real, Plus it is hard when you partner is in the same world as you and this situation happens). Camille is a prize-winner writer winning the Prix femina and has been on a number of prize Juries over the years she has had a number of books translated into English this is the first book by her I have read.

You’re a girl. It’s not a tragedy either, you see. You are slant-eyed but we’re not in China. Were not in India. In India the words “it’s a girl”  are now banned. Saying “it’s a girl” before the baby is born is punishable by three years in prison and a fine of 6,000 rupees: people are no longer allowed to ask for or carry out scans to identify the baby’s sex and then have an abortion because too many girls are vanishing; so many have been nipped in the bud that there are whole villages of single men. So many girls have been liquidated, they never use the words “sister” or”wife.” Before scans were invented girls were killed at birth. If you’d been born in India or China, you might be dead. In Rouen
everything’s fine. You’re loved in spite of it

As I said the world still has many Laurence’s in it

The book focus on a childhood in the 60s we meet Laurence she is the second daughter her family is a typical family of the time her father works as a doctor and her mother is a housewife. This is really the back bok=ne of the book the time it is set and what we see is Laurence taking apart her childhood. He wanted a son and heir. so When Laurence is born, that really sets the tone for her childhood in many ways the feeling of always being a second-class person to her father’s disregard for the siblings. The fathers constant undermining and view of the world  This is a slice of a provincial world and views you often look back on news footage of these days(I love the bcc archive YouTube channel little snippets of stories over the years) and think was that the world and this is a birds-eye view of growing up female in a male world. The second half of the book is a flip to the first as we see the daughter become a mother to her own Daughter Alice and can she change the way she was brought up it is a picture of a dotting mother trying to avoid what befell her as a child but it is also shown how times and attitudes had changed in the intervening years. The adult Laurence has scars of her childhood and certain events in her life show that.

My father takes my sister and me to see it one after the other, never together. If the boat should capsize or suddenly deflate, even with our water wings on we could drown, and he wouldn’t be able to save both of us, he’d have to choose. Now that’s a father who thinks of everything, even death. Perhaps he’s thinking of Gaelle: girls do that, they die. Perhaps if one of the two of us had been a
boy, he’d have taken us both in the boat. A boy’s good and strong, a boy can always cope. But more tellingly, I think to myself, if one of us were a boy, he wouldn’t hesitate if the boat went down, he’d know who to save.

This one passage hit me hard sad but true

This is a powerful work of feminist writing it takes apart a childhood when you were the sex that wasn’t wanted there is a universal nature to that yes our attitudes in the west have changed and moved on maybe not far enough but books like this show how far along the road we are but also are a reminder of what still has to change how many Laurence are there still around the world. Its hard not to feel there is still;l far to come as is shown when Laurence’s education and just the sheer disadvantage of being female what is shocking is this is only 60 years ago and seems a distant land for me I am a couple of decades younger, but this world felt alien to even then. She works the narrative well with all three perspectives at the time the first second and third person of this life is a woman’s life a look at those subtle obstacles that often are created whether it be sex, race or sexual orientation there is always those that tried and try to sublet unsettled people. It took me a while to review this as it just has to sink in it made me angry and sad at times and for me that is what we as readers read for those journeys those narratives other than our own to be female in a small French provincial time is something I Never could be but this book brought me into her life. Have you read any other books from Camille Laurens /

Winstons score – A – look behind the curtain at going up the wrong sex and disadvantaged due to that and how it effect her own motherhood.

One in me I never loved by Carla Guelfenbein

One In me I never loved by Carla Guelfenbein

Chilean fiction

Original title – La estación de las mujeres,

Translator – Neil Davidson

Source – Review copy

One of the things many years ago that annoyed me at the time is when you discovered a writer you had enjoyed and then find they hadn’t anything else translated this is something that over the time I have been blogging happens a little less so it was great to get through the port another book from the Chilean writer the third to be translated and it is the second I will be covering here I loved her first book to be translated to English which came out in 2011 The rest in Silence. I did read the other book that was translated but never got round to reviewing the book In the distance with you although I did enjoy that as well so when this arrived I knew it would be one I like she is another of those great female latin American writers she has worked as the fashion editor and also the art director of Elie in Chile she has won a number of prizes and the title of this novel was The woman’s station in Spanish I prefer that to the English title myself.

My body unlike his, is expanding and collapsing alittle more each day, creasing, wilting, falling in on itself in weary rolls. Sometimes I hardly regonize it as mine

Someone else’s body is a place for your mind to go

Today is my fifty-sixth birthday. It’s ninein the morning and I’m sittingon a bench carved with Jenny Holzers texts. Phrases of hers gone onto t-shirts, golf balls, caps, mugs, and even comdoms. The bench is oin the public garden opposite the gates of Barnard college, where dozens of shameless butteflies flit in and out withkirts up to their crotch and backpacks of their shoulders. I watch them.

She mentions the comdom on the first page with her husband.

I love novels that are composed of vignettes or short stories and this is what we have here an interlinking collection of stories that take place in two-time frames in the present we have the story of a woman Margarita who is turning 57 that period in our lives where you are looking forward to your retirement and such. But her life is spun out of control by a number of events first her husband a teacher is having an affair but also the concierge in her building a young woman called anna has disappeared but was reading a book about how we can all disappear in America what has happened to Anna. Then an older friend ask her to help find someone that many years ago helped change the course of her life. Then we have a second thread around the poet Gabriela  Mistral and the letters she wrote in the late forties to her love Doris Dana add to this we discover that her young lover had a fling with another woman near her own age. An image far different from the one that was portrayed of Mistral all this is packed into a short novel and uses a number of styles part epistolary part spoken and part detective at times.

It is half past eleven one moning in this year of 1948. Light through the unopened letter is, Doris Dana can almost see it sinking into the counterpane of her unmade bed. Her head rings with the fish sellers unending whistling and the clatter of his cart on the cobbles. And woth the knife grinder’s howls “BRiiing out your kniiiiiives and scissoooors! she knows him. His name is Sid, and boasts of being the finest knife grinder in New york. She covers her ears with her hands then presses her fingertipsto her tired forehead. It is the third letter from Gabriela in five days. Or the fourth? she does not need to open it to know the words are bitter

I loved the lost nature of this opening to Doris’s story especially the word counterpane as someone i looked after used it all the time !

I loved the patchwork nature of this book it isn’t really about the plot more about glimpses into the private lives of a number of women over two different eras. That is why I prefer the Spanish title have we caught them at a point in their lives almost like being at the station where are we going there are many options and that is what is here piece of lives some answers, not all of them it is one of those books that leave you after you have read it filling in the gaps making you own conclusions and for me, this for some people is annoying it is like those films that don’t end with all the threads fastened in neat bows and that is because life isn’t neat and tidy it is about life and love lovers cheating husbands cheating people disappearing find someone once lost so many threads this is something I like in her other books and that is she is a writer that is able to squeeze so much into her writing it is intense and like one of those finger food collections where we have little versions of things that have the taste and feel of the bigger versions of what they are meant to be this is a micro view of these life just little bits small moments of Margarita life also what is happening round her then also the lovers in the late 1940s and a betrayal. Have you read any books by Carla Guelfenbein ? or another female writer from Chile ?

Winstons score – B a novella  with a yearning to be that Epic “honey I want be a big novel !! “

Geography of an Adultery by Agnes Riva

Geography of an Adultery by Agnes Riva
French fiction
Original title – Géographie d’un adultère
Translator – John Cullen
Source – review copy

I always like discovering new french writers I have reviewed so many french books over the time of the blog. It averages out at an average of about ten books a year from France This debut novel was on the Prix Goncourt first novel list a list that had has winners such as Kamel Daouad and Laurent Binet both of which I have featured on the blog. The book came out in France in 2918. Agnes Riva lives in the Suburbs of Paris this is where she drew her inspiration for this novel. in the Urban landscape, she sees. The book was just published by another press many thanks to them for sending me a copy to review.

The interior of Paul’s car s[ace rtather limited in volume and distributed with a certain stringency. The design of the four egonomic seats is so precise that squeezing a fifth person into the back would be pratically impossible. The front seats are seperated by a short armrest half their hieghts, it contains no storage console and provides no place to put such small objects as sunglasses of CDs

WIth its leather seatsm aluminum door sills, and stainless steel pedals, the vehicles’s passenger expresses its owners intention to posses a car that offers all available comfort abd luxury,but in miniature, and for the price of an entry level model

Paul smell pervades the space

The opening chatper and it is about the small car luxury but small and maybe that says sometjing longer term abiut Paul ?

The book follows a selection of sites where a couple is having an adulterous affair. The book has a tone that is almost scientific observance a very detached observation of the events detached of the emotions it just shows the events So we meet Ema and Paul as they start an affair that happened when they meet through their jobs on an industrial tribunal which they are both on and start an affair they both have partners and Children so their clandestine meetings take part out of sight as much as possible each chapter is one of these locations Starting with Ema looking as they meet early on in Pauls car describe the car and what it is like grabbing a quick liaison in a car. Then a corner out of sight in a house a chapel as they snatch the quick pieces of passion but there see,s to be two views on this affair as we view it in those small snapshots of the meeting not seeing the event outside the meeting as we don’t see the other side of the affair the home life isn’t shown just the meetings and details of each corner and place they sneak a moment a collection of moments.

The corner they retreat to is located between the sink and the reffrigerator. On one side, along the back wall, a storage cabinet. On the other, the sin and a work counter. Above this space, a stretched fabric forms a decorative false ceiling, in which leads to a bel shaped metal oven hood. Behind the gas stove, a window with two sliding casements overlooks the garden and , on one side, the veranda of the house next door.

Narrow though it is, this space proves in the end to be better suited to quenching their thirst for physical union than inside of Paul’s car, where they move stiffly and clumsily

There second liasion isn’t much more comfortable as they find a corner in Ema’s hpouse out of site of the neighbours.

This is a novella and is written in a wonderful detached style as we get what are Polaroid-like glimpses of an affair I would love pictures to accompany the book that is just me I love the way she has described her observing the Urban landscapes around her home in the Suburbs how to avoid the preying eye is at the heart of an affair and that is what is shown here also the different way the couple view the events Paul is just after the sex really after that initial attraction you always feel Ema wants more maybe the intimacy isn’t what lead her to the affair or is this just me reading to much into the events I do this sometimes anyway this hasn’t a lot of passion or even sex etc it is more about the clandestine nature of the events that unfold it is just a collection of secret meeting places and the meeting and maybe in the description the events then become an anti-climax at times. This is a great debut novel that has a slightly new take on the novel dealing with Adulterous affairs. Have you a favourite adultery novel ?

Winstons score – B is a solid debut novel well translated by John Cullen he has really caught the detached emotionless nature of the book shines through.

Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun

Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun

Korean fiction

Original title – 레몬)

Translator – Janet Hong

Source – review copy

I now head to South Korea and a collection of interlinking short stories from the Korean writer Kwon Yeo-Son. She has won a number of Literary prizes in Korea and is known for her style that shows the cracks in Everyday life it says on her Korean Wiki pages with an honest and unstoppable voice. This book was initially a short story. she has published ten books and this is her first work to be translated into English. The book follows what is called “The high school Beauty murder” that happened in 2002 as the World Cup was happening in Korea it is a good way of framing the timeframe of the events as the world cup unfolding helps form a time line of the events.

I imagine what happened inside the police interrogation room so many years ago. By imagine, I don’t mean invent. But it’s not like i was actually there, so I don’t know what else to call it. I picture the scene from that day, based on what he told me and some other clues , my own experience and conclussion. It’s not just this scene I imagine. For over sixteen years. i’ve pondered, prodded and worked every detail embroiled in the case known as “THe High school Beauty Murder” – to the point I often fool myself into thinking I’d personally witnessed the circumstances now stamped on my minds eye.

The opening lines of the first chapter of the book as Han Manu is at the police station but in hidsight his view of events maybe isn’t the same as then!

The book opens with the integration of Han Manu he was on his scooter when he saw Kim Hae On and is one of the two main suspects of the killing of the teen Beauty queen. He is getting interviewed but never charged and as the threads and suspects all run cold the case is dead we then move back and forward in time as we view the three points of view that make up the collection of eight short stories. As we see what happens and has happened since the murder. It is more about the ripples from that event and the two main narrators are the sister of the victim Do- on she is stuck after her sister’s death and eventually takes steps to look like her sister more and we see that her sister boyfriend who had an Albi but maybe is more involved in the death as he was the other person apart from Manu that spent the last evening in his SUV that he was driving kim around in the evening before she was found murdered. The other narrative is kim’s classmate Sanghui now her narrative gives another angle on the events during and after the Murder.

I asked myself; Did I want to go back to that time, too? When I’d been so wld about Joyce that I’d written my poem ” Betty Byrne, maker of Lemon Platt?” if we could actually go back to that time would I ? I didn’t know . But I still remember  the first lines of that poen

Today again I burned the platt

nothing ever goes right for you, Betty Byrne

The connection to Joyce is here about Da On and Eonni chat about her poetry

The book is told in A Joycean style  well a little. As the book it isn’t about finding who killed Kim at the time.  it has dark elements also a lot about the class system in Korea. The difference in how the two suspects are viewed is the rich Shin thew boyfriend and the poor delivery boy that is suspected more even though he says Kim wouldn’t look at him. Kim was rich but it is more a look at the aftermath of the killing of High School Beauty Murder.  There is a part where James Joyce is discussed there is a stream of conciseness style I also felt it had a fragmented nature to it like little clues to what had happened and what had happened since almost like a puzzle and we the readers, we can fill the gaps as we want. It looks at the aftermath of death on a family members Murder like Suicide is such a life-changing event for those living behind it effects last forever. I enjoyed this book it is an interesting look at murder that isn’t really a crime novel in the sense of a dective novel more a series of reflections and glimpse of what happened on that night. As it says the facts and what happen to the people on that day can blur and had.

Winstons score – -A near-perfect look at the aftermath of a murder from three perspectives.

Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza

 

Meeting in Positiano by Goliarda Sapienza

Italian fiction

Original title – Appuntamento a Positano

Translator – Brian Robert Moore

Source – review copy

I move to Italy and a book by Goliarda Sapienza a piece of auto-fiction set on the Amalfi coast. Sapienza starts her life in a small Italian town before moving to Rome to study at the academy of dramatic arts. She then had a successful career as an actress as firstly in Pirandello plays then as a film star, which is how she meets the main character in this book as they were scouting locations for a film. She then concentrated in her later life on her writing she had a number of works published her life but what is considered her masterpiece the art of Joy was published after she died as at the time it was written the female character was considered to unrestrained in her life.

Everyone was held spellbound as she walked down the strps to the dock where a skiff waited for her to push out to sea. Or when upon her return, at no later than one o’clock. Nocola – the son of Lucibello, called the monkey, the oldest and most audacious ex-fishermen in Positano, who like the rest of them had switched to renting beach umbrella and lungersx – helped her down from the boat, and with admiring eyes followed her steps on the carpet of wooden planks which made a snug living room of the ancient , rocky bay.

Every time, Nicola was left breathless by that “Thank You” barely whispered from two harmoniously shaped lips, perhaps too full to be perfect. The teenage boy couldn’t help but stareuntil she went out of view, slightly hurrying up the large steps through the feverish and bustling crowd, the men all in trunks, the women ion their beach outfits, too colorful to bear the contrast with her sober sarong o her trouser pants.

The opening shows the power this mystrious women “the princess ” whart caused her sorrow .

The book starts in late 1940 when Goliarda scouting for a filming location take her to the small town of Positano and the princess a woman of mystery to all those that live in the town Goliarda connected with this older woman and what started in a friendship that lasts over thirty years and what we have here is the story of these two women growing closer over the years as the story of Erica life from her family that had been nobles hence the people of Positano calling her the Princess. A sorrowful life of love in various forms from a lover that she never had  Ricardo she wants him to love her but he never did so she then fell into a marriage with Leopoldo a connection of her father that turns out to be a controlling man that stifles Erica. What we have is a sketch of a life that is weighted down with regrets and mistakes all set against the beauty of the Amalfi coast and also the changes in post-war Italy.

The next morning, obeying her enticing command as if it had come from a goddess- and trying at the same time to laugh at my childin=sh side always straved of fairy tales – I push open the heavy, dark curtains and then the light muslin drapes tinted gold by the sunruse. The french doors of crisp glass open onto a terrace completely covered in red flowers that have fallen from a bougainvillea. My bar feet slide happily on the terra-cotta floor. I’ll stop wearing shoe, too, I think with conviction , even if it’ll make me come accross as a real positanese snob like her .

Her  freiend had a real air about her another suimmer spent in positano

This is another of that rediscovered writer that we have seen a lot in recent years from Natalie Ginzburg, Tove Ditlevsen strong female writers that deserve a wider audience, and here is another on that vein. I want to read Art of Joy when it came out as it sounds like a great read so when I was offered this I decide to try this out and I was right this is a simple story of a friendship. of a woman that had a life so different from the writer of the book but also as the story of her life unfolds The Princess grows close to this modern woman Erica that is what is so great and real in this is how different the two women are it is a story of two women who if not for chance would have never met but then they form a thirty-year bond. Maybe if you missing a certain Italian writer here is a book that could fill the Ferrante gap a sun drench tale of two women from different worlds. A great rediscovery from an interesting writer that sadly died over twenty years ago.

Winstons score – -A  The tale of two women is tounching.

Agnes by Peter Stamm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agnes by Peter Stamm

Swiss fiction

Original title – Agnes

Translator – Michael Hofmann

Source – review copy

I have reviewed Peter Stamm three times before on the blog over the years. so when I got the chance to review his debut novel I jumped at the chance as he is a writer whose works I had enjoyed his other books. Agnes had come out in the UK but was never brought out in the US so it gave me a chance to go back twenty years this book came out in 98 in Germany and 2000 in English for the first time. He has written several novels but was a journalist iuntially and has written radio plays as well.

I was back in the library early the next morning, and even though I was waiting for Agnes, I had no trouble concentrating on my work. I knew she would come, and that we would talk anc smoke and drink coffee together. In my head our relationship was already much further advanced than it was in reality. I was already wondering abouther, beginning to have my doubts, though we hadn’t even been out together.

I was working well, reading and making notes, When Agnes arrived, around noon and she nodded to me, Once again, she put her foam rubber cushion down on a chair near me, spread out her things as she had done yesterday, picked up a book and started reading

The beginning of the relationship as they keep meeting in the library sharing coffee and a smoke,

 

An older writer he is unnamed is asked by his younger girlfriend Agnes a cellist studying physics and free spirit in her own way to write a story about her. Our narrator is in Chicago to write about luxury trains. He does what Agnes wants and writes about their relationship He does that but as they are happy and the everyday life of these two. The way they meet and fell in love but this doesn’t lead to the most interesting story about their relationship. As they work together on the story. But, when she tells him she is expecting a baby the narrative changes as he is older and doesn’t want a child he tells her that he doesn’t want the child this is a turning point in their relationship. but also in the story, he is writing about there relationship changes as he starts in that narrative to try and control the younger woman by making her into what he wants her to be as the two worlds the story and real life start to come intertwined as the relationship cracks apart.

We celebrated Christmas Eve together. It was some time since I’d shown Agnes what I’d written. Now I printed out the story on white paper and put it in a folder with a dedication.

“I haven’t got an ending yet,” I said,”But as soon as I do.Ill have the whole thing boiund into a little book for you ”

Agnes had knitted me a sweater

“God knows,I had enough wool, she said.

“Black wool”

“No I had it dyed. Light blue doesn’t really suit you.”I didn’t say anything. We were sitiing on the sofa, with a little christmas tree in front of us that Agnes had decorated with only candles.

Later on the feeling between the two has changed in the story.

As ever Stamm is a master of describing how relationships work but hew also is great at getting that moment when the relationships change the turning point so to speak that unseen event at the start of the narrative that initally seems like the perfect relationship even thou there is an age difference. This sees the writer trying to idealize Agnes later in the book. This is maybe free in style than his later books it is like he is trying a different way of writing in this book it is looser than his other books. But worth reading I alwaylike to try and see how a writer has grown this isn’t as cut and cleaned as say seven years but is still an interesting insight into the dynamics of relationships and also about writing about a relationship which when it is good can seem very boring. Have you read this book?

 

All Happy families by Hervé Le Tellier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Happy families by Hervé Le Tellier

french memoir

Original title  – Toutes les familles  heureuses

Translator – Adriana Hunter

Source – review copy

I loved the years recently and it reminds me I hadn’t had chance to get to this book that had come out a couple of months ago by another well known French writer Herve Le Tellier is also a member of the OULIPO group. A mathematician by training he became a journalist and editor. He has written a number of books including winning a prize for a comic novel. when he put a book out that he had supposedly translated from Portuguese called Me and Mitterand about a series of letters in a spoof novel by Jamie Montestrela but was Le Tellier himself.

Marafan syndrome is a disorder of the connective tissue. It affects about one person in every five thouseand. The gene whose mutation produces the condition is on chromosome 15, and the mutation can have nearly a thousand variants. Symptons of the syndrome include aortal aneurism, pronouced nearsightedness and unusual bone growt,Sufferers are often very tall with long thin fingers,

The britsh actor Peter Mayhew, famlus for playing the hairy wookie Chewbacca in the star wars movies has the syndrome.Some claim that Abraham Lincoln did too. But that is of no concern to us here

He then mentions Rahmaniov and how he had it.

This is another clever little french memoir. It is a series of vignettes about the writer’s life growing up in his family growing up. He explains early on the book that the time was right his father and stepfather both dead and his mother in the latter stages of Alzheimers he starts to think back at his own youth not as he saw it as unhappy but more a childhood that when looked back on maybe wasn’t the happiest his parents split when he was very young and he grew up with his mother and stepfather guy. Guy is from an old French family and distant to the young boy He was drawn into his world of books as a kid. He also spent a lot of time with his grandparents another tale about them, every weekend. One of the things I most connect with was his chapter about Rachmaninov’s concerto no. 2 which leads to a digression about the condition Marfan syndrome which for me is something I heard mention a lot in my teens as it was thought I had it as I am tall have long fingers and a few other signs I haven’t but to know that is why he was such a great pianist was news to me.

 “My sister’s a whore ” my mother took to saying when the flood barrier of decorium gave way to age and dementia, and she stopped feigning affection.

This whore was also my god mother. My mother admitted she’d never lover her, perhaps precisely because Raphaelle was so loveable.

It was to this first daughter that my grandfather had so genrously bequeathed his name. A happy boistrous girl, she ramined his favourtie. Raphaelle was only eighteen months older than Marceline but numbers are deceptive.There was nearly a decade between them my aunt was a woman at thirteen, my mother not untilshe was twenty.

The aunt and what his mother called her .

 

This is an honest look back at a childhood that wasn’t the happiest but he does it with great humor remember events. All families are like his when we look at it this is a modern family before its time. Where divorce has happened not so common as is shown when they want to change Herve name I remember changing my own name as a child for a couple of years.  I grew up in a stepfamily my stepfather is well may I said an odd chap so I could relate to his tales of his life this is a wonderful set of vignettes that showed his family carbuncles and all his sister father all are compelling reading like his auntie or as his mother called her in the chapter My sister a whore who had a parade line  of men. All told in a witty style that made me want to read his spoof work I mentioned in the first section of this review. Have you read any of Le Tellier fiction ?

Any means necessary by Jenny Rogneby

 

 

Any means necessary by Jenny Rogneby

Swedish crime fiction

Original title – Alla medel tillåtna

Translator – Agnes Broome

Source – review copy

I don’t often take crime novels but something in Jenny’s bio grabbed me I like a writer that has maybe trodden the same path as there characters so when I saw that was she had studied criminology and worked as an investigator in Stockholm the same as Leona the lead character. Now if that wasn’t enough she was in a Swedish pop group cosmo4 that in there time was an opening act for Michael Jackson. She was also adopted as a baby from Ethiopia. This book is the second in a series but I had no feeling that I had to read the first book in the series to read this it managed to stand alone.

He adjusted the heavy belt strapped around his hips, relieving the pressure from the steel cylinders that made the waistband of her trousers chafe against his skin. The wire connecting them to the detonator shifted outside of his right trouser leg. He grabbed the trigger. Squeezed it hard. His hand was damp. Sweat? He didn’t know,

The only thing was the mission.

His final mission

One push of a button and everything would be over

The opening lines as the bomber does the unthinkable and blows himself up.

The book opens when a man blows himself up outside the parliament building in Stockholm. Now he managed to survive this bombing. Now he is facing Leona as she tries to find out if this man is just a loner or part of a wider plan of terrorism. This is the main story but we also have a side story of Leona own life she is in a piece she has family problems but even more than that she owes a lot of money to a gangsterArmand and he is breathing down her neck to get all his money back as soon as possible. Now Leona is a clever officer and streetwise she start to give training to other criminals to avoid getting caught but this is merely her way of finding a group of criminals to pull a heist she has in mind to finally get the monkey off her back. Meanwhile, she is still under pressure from her new boss at work that is pushing her to find out what the man called Fred in the hospital was doing. She walks a tightrope leading to explosive ends!

It was Monday morning and I had forced myself to go to the hospital. I had to wrap this up, This was going to be my last interview with Fred Sjostrom. After that I wouldn’t have to deal with the sterile walls, the hospital smell, the tubes and the machines.

Fred had claimed he wanted to tell me everything, but I wasn’t about spend hoursdragging information out of him. He had been given plenty of chances already

I had to setr a camera so that I would finally be able to show Alexander , once and for all, that my sitting in his room, listening to the threee words an hour he deigned to squeeze out, was indefensible waste of taxpayers money.

Fred talks but it takes time and also shows how long a case can take to put together.

Well as I said Jenny had been a police investigator so the inner workings of Leona as she works to find out what happened. Now the other side  Of Leona as the character the mastermind behind getting a group of criminals to do a heist I feel is maybe using character she had met during her years in Stockholm and using them in small parts here. Leona is maybe a classic anti-hero you want to dislike her for what she does but find it hard as in some ways she has her heart in the right place. The book maybe follows on from what happened in Stockholm in 2010 where there was a suicide bomber blew outside the Norwegian broadcast building in Stockholm which was the first Islamic attack in the Nordic countries so we aren’t sure if it is that or a local lone wolf and then we have her other life that shows even police officers have lives outside of their job. Leona has money problems I think this is a carry on from events in the first book but also maybe has the most out of the box idea in her heist idea. A crime tale with two great storylines and an interesting lead character imagine if Morse or Holmes had turned to crime to fund the drink and drug habits they may have been the same in fact I’m sure Holmes mused that he would have been the best criminal had he gone down that path and Leona is the same her savvy and knowledge means she stays steps ahead.

The other woman by Therese Bohman

As I said in yesterdays covers post, I have read a couple of great books from Sweden by female writers this year, this being one of them the other being Wilful disregard by Lena Anderson which I reviewed earlier in the year. It was because I enjoyed wilful diregaerd so much I choose to review this from Other press.Also two great books from world editions from sweden as well it has been a great year for Swedish fiction on the blog .

The other woman is a take on being the other woman like it says on the cover. This is story of the affair told from the female perspective , we see this affair start and how it slowly grows through her eyes. The two main characters work in a hospital , she is a general dogsbody in the kitchen and he is a doctor , she finds out his name  Carl Malmberg and also that he is married  . He captures her eye one day and then they begin to spiral near each eventually coming together in a bang. The affair begins as they meet in secret, but is it all she hoped are dreams and reality the same

Occasionally I have wondered what it would be like to have an affair with one of them. particularly the tall handsome consultant who comes in for lunch all too rarely. I have thought about where we would meet, imagined him at home with me, even if the idea of him in my tiny apartment among my things is an unlikely scenario.I picture him sitting on my sofa, we are drinking a glass of wine , chatting. Perhaps we are discussing literature, which turns out to be a shared passion.

She daydreams of meeting Carl after seeing him where she works .

It is easy to see this as a standard love affair, which has been covered many times in fiction from The end of affair one my favourite Greene novels , through books like Lady Chatterley’s lover, which for me is like this book accept the roles are flipped the male is the one in the role of authority and the narrator is the lowest of the low in this world they live in. Also wilful diregard saw a may to december romance which this novel  is as well.What makes this stand up is the narrator’s voice and the overall world we are drawn into where even in a modern setting Class and social standing still there like in Lawrence’s day.

We get out of the car, he locks it, and we dash through the rain to the apartment block and , inside, over to my door. He stands behind me as I open up, I can feel his eyes on my back. I have rarely felt more present in the moment, I register everything – the grain of the wooden door frames, his scent, the key sticking slightly in the lock before it turns – while at the same time I am acting entirely on instinct .

The dream now is real he does come to her apartment .

For me the main character the unnamed narrator of the book is more than we first see , yes she works in the kitchen .But this woman is one that reads important books ,  she talks about the books she readsones like, notes from underground , Death in Venice and even the huge Magic Mountain she describes how on a course she sees everyone around her reading what she call banal books compared to her. She is a woman wanting to be more than a partner in bed, which it turns out is what she has become.We see a ugly duckling  wanting to be a swan in the world can see do it ?

He is a perfectly ordinary lover too. After I have asked him if he wants to come back to my place, and we have stood outside my door drunkenly searching for topics of conversation to fill the time between both of us thinking that we want to kiss each other and actually doing so, and we have kissed our way through the hallway and into bed, he makes love to me in a way that is kind of functional .

No books to discuss and no fireworks with Carl really .

Add to this a confident of the narrator called Alex , whom she starts to tell about the affair but is this Alex all they seem ? Then there is also the senses that Bohman does so well to ignite through her prose which in Marlaine Delargy translation come through so well. Also the sense of a detached style I have found a lot the last few years in Nordic fiction we almost look into this world of class, love, social standings like a voyeur feeling part of it but not able to touch it .Carl maybe see her as an object in a way even in the way he picks something for her to wear at one point. But for the narrator there is a whole other story and this affair is maybe just the start of her real life .This is Therese Bohman second novel to be translated to English I will be seeking out her first Drowned to read.

Have you a favourite female writer from Sweden ?

Swedish fiction

Translator – Marlaine Delargy

Source – review copy .