Stunning. I thought The Forbidden Notebook was excellent, but this is in a category of its own.
Alessandra looks back at her childhood, adolescence andStunning. I thought The Forbidden Notebook was excellent, but this is in a category of its own.
Alessandra looks back at her childhood, adolescence and marriage and describes her experience of them all, her inner world view, how it was shaped, by what she observed happening around her, everything she thought and how she responded.
It's her story but it's also the many ordinary lives of girls and women, growing up in discordant families, the weight of expectations, the allure and (false) promise of love, the desire to be educated, to participate in something greater than 'the home', to be heard, respected, taken seriously.
It tracks the decline, effect and mental deterioration of generations of women for whom the burden of that ordinary life, of a woman's limited lot, and how she imagines it could be, become too much to bear.
Intense, compelling and set against the backdrop of growing up in a series of community apartments in Rome in the 1940's. Utterly riveting....more
Neither memoir or autobiography, it is a unique compilation of memory, experiences, judgments, of political, cultural, personal and collective statemeNeither memoir or autobiography, it is a unique compilation of memory, experiences, judgments, of political, cultural, personal and collective statements and images that represent a woman living through those years.
It is bookended by descriptions of things seen that are likely never to be seen again. It gets your attention from these opening lines.
All the images will disappear:
the woman who squatted to urinate in broad daylight, behind the shack that served coffee at the edge of the ruins in Yvetot, after the war, who stood, skirts lifted, to pull up her underwear and then returned to the café
the tearful face of Alida Valli as she danced with Georges Wilson in the film The Long Absence
There is no call for literary devices or beautification of language or hiding the crude, raw human elements that some may grimace at.
When Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, she gave a speech entitled I Will Write to Avenge My People in which she described deciding on and finding her writing voice, that it would not be like that used by the esteemed writers she taught her students.
What came to me spontaneously was the clamour of a language which conveyed anger and derision, even crudeness; a language of excess, insurgent, often used by the humiliated and offended as their only response to the memory of others’ contempt, of shame and shame at feeling shame.
Raised by shopkeepers/cafe owners, she considered herself a class-defector through her education alongside the sons and daughters of bourgeoise families. She would find a way through the language she used to address that betrayal, to elude the gaze of the culturally privileged reader.
I adopted a neutral, objective kind of writing, ‘flat’ in the sense that it contained neither metaphors nor signs of emotion. The violence was no longer displayed; it came from the facts themselves and not the writing. Finding the words that contain both reality and the sensation provided by reality would become, and remain to this day, my ongoing concern in writing, no matter what the subject.
For Ernaux, class mobility is a violent, brutal process and she sees it as her duty to at least attempt, via her authorship, to make amends to those she remembers, has left behind and to not hide from her own perspective, actions, behaviours.
Knowing that The Years was considered her masterpiece, I decided to read some of her earlier short works, to engage with her style and thus appreciate this work all the more and that has certainly been the case. I began with the book she wrote of her father La Place (A Man’s Place), then of childhood Shame, and an affair Simple Passion. I do think it is a good idea to read some of these shorter works before taking on The Years.
In effect The Years is an attempt to collate and offer a faithful account of an entire generation, as it was viewed by one woman and the collective that she was part of. The narrative therefore is written from the perspective of ‘she‘ and ‘we‘, there is no ‘I‘. It is an observation of the times passing and the inclinations of people, for better or worse.
She would like to assemble these multiple images of herself, separate and discordant, thread them together with the story of her existence, starting with her birth during World War II up until the present day. Therefore, an existence that is singular but also merged with the movements of a generation.
We read and witness the impact of school, religion, the media, politics on a generation, alongside the cultural influences, the strikes, the films, the advertising, the village gossip and children’s cruelty.
Public or private, school was a place where immutable knowledge was imparted in silence and order, with respect for hierarchy and absolute submission, that is, to wear a smock, line up at the sound of the bell, stand when the headmistress or Mother Superior (but not a teaching assistant) entered the room, to equip oneself with regulation notebooks, pens and pencils, refrain from talking back when observations were made and from wearing trousers in the winter without a skirt over the top. Only teachers were allowed to ask questions. If we did not understand a word or explanation, the fault was ours. We were proud, as of a privilege, to be bound by strict rules and confinement. The uniform required of private institutions was visible proof of their perfection.
While some aspects will be universal, it is by its nature a collective and singular memory of a life in France. That will interest some and not others, but as someone who lives in France today, it is interesting to read of the familiar and also the references to the particular, the cultural, the influences.
Between what happens in the world and what happens to her, there is no point of convergence. They are two parallel series: one abstract, all information no sooner received than forgotten, the other all static shots.
Because it is clearly written over the many, many years, it comes across as being always in the now, as if she is time travelling into the various versions of the self over the years, looking and noting down the visual memories, remembering and accessing the perspective of the time they were in.
So her book’s form can only emerge from her complete immersion in the images from her memory in order to identify, with relative certainty, the specific signs of the times, the years to which the images belong, gradually linking them to others; to try to hear the words people spoke, what they said about events and things, skim it off the mass of floating speech, that hub bub that tirelessly ferries the wordings and rewordings of what we are and what we must be, think, believe, fear, and hope. All that the world had pressed upon her and her contemporaries she will reuse to reconstitute a common time, the one that made its way through the years of the distant past and glided all the way to the present. By retrieving the memory of collective memory in an individual memory, she will capture the lived dimension of History.
I found it an absolutely compelling read, filling in a lot of gaps and knowledge regarding French history that I happily encounter in this kind of format.
Highly recommended if you are interested in French cultural and personal history from a unique literary perspective....more
Time of the Flies has it all. A slow burning mystery, a complicated mother daughter relationship, a developing friendship between women who are more uTime of the Flies has it all. A slow burning mystery, a complicated mother daughter relationship, a developing friendship between women who are more used to not trusting anyone, a dilemma that might be an opportunity or it may be a trap.
The Collective Voice and Medea
Then there is a collective voice of feminist disharmony that enters the narrative every few chapters to opinionate on what just happened, if there is an issue that women might have an opinion on. It's never a consensus, it illustrates the difficulty of any collective voice that doesn't resonate together, and demonstrates the aspects being considered on a topic. And each chapter begins with a quote from Medea by Eurides.
Female Friendship and Fumigations
Inés, the mother of Laura ( a role she is trying now to deny) has been released from prison 15 years after killing her husband's lover. She has set up a pest fumigation and private investigation business with fellow friend and ex inmate Manca. FFF (fumigations, females and flies) a business run by women for women.
The two friends and business partners work separately but they consult each other when a case requires it, although Inés knows more about autopsies, fingerprints, and criminal profiles than Manca does about cockroaches.
On Flies
Inés sees a fly. In her eye. It comes and goes, it is a part of her. The doctor has checked it out and explained it away, but for her, it is significant. She understands the brain's suppression mechanism that will make it disappear. Flies ascend in the narrative, they have a champion in Inés and we will even come across numerous literary references to them, some that hold them more in esteem than others. (...) (...) The novel has its central mystery that is slowly unravelled, while it explores the complexity of the mother daughter relationship, the effect of abandonment and absence and the promise that a new generation can bring to old wounds. (...) (...) (...) So, Those Ellipsis's
Though it was a slow read for me, it really got me in its grip and there was so much to consider beyond the mystery, like the collective voice, which makes the reader consider issues from different points of view and then there are the ellipsis's. They are usually present when there is dialogue, so they make the reader consider why they are there. Are parts of the dialogue unimportant? Are they an invitation to the reader to imagine what was said in between? Whatever the intention of the author, the effect is to awaken the reader to their presence and make you think about the why.
By the time I finished this, I absolutely loved it, for everything. For it's central storytelling, its reflective invitation, the literary references, the collective voice and its ability to keep me entertained and interested and intrigued....more
A 16 year old girl in a predicament, not of her own making discovers she is pregnant, but not by the young man she dreams of. This short novella followA 16 year old girl in a predicament, not of her own making discovers she is pregnant, but not by the young man she dreams of. This short novella follows her panic, her attempt to find resolution without support, her symptoms and her confession. She lives in rural Argentina, a conservative catholic environment, an unruly place for a young girl. What will happen to her in this place that reveres the cloth and judges and shames girls regardless of their innocence?...more
When I sing, Mountains Dance is set near a village high in the Pyrenees. It is a lyrical, mind-expanding work, littered with references to the folklorWhen I sing, Mountains Dance is set near a village high in the Pyrenees. It is a lyrical, mind-expanding work, littered with references to the folklore and history of Catalonia that brings alive, and gives voice to, every aspect of life within its unique biosphere. When Lightning Strikes The first chapter is entitled Lightning and I cannot be sure that it is lightning that speaks; perhaps it is the many facets of the storm that narrates. However, it is lightning that wreaks devastation and change on the community that we will then slowly be introduced to, over the following chapters.
After our arrival all was stillness and pressure, and we forced the thin air down to bedrock, then let loose the first thunderclap. Bang! A reprieve. And the coiled snails shuddered in their secluded homes, godless and without a prayer, knowing that if they didn’t drown, they would emerge redeemed to breathe the dampness in. And then we poured water out in colossal drops like coins onto the earth and the grass and the stones, and the mighty thunderclap resounded inside the chest cavity of every beast.
Navigating Loss, Celebrating Survival A man named Domènec, a husband and father of two children, is outside when the storm breaks. , he carries a small load of black chanterelles (Trumpet of Death) he has foraged; as he rescues a calf whose tail is caught in a jumble of wires, lightning strikes. He saves one life, nature takes his, in an instant.
And when it was clear we were done, the birds hopped out onto branches and sang the song of survivors, their little stomachs filled with mosquitoes, yet bristling and furious with us. They had little to complain about, as we hadn’t even hailed, we’d rained just enough to kill a man and a handful of snails. We’d barely knocked down any nests and hadn’t flooded a single field.
Ghosts of the Past Acting on the Present Four women witnessed the event, approach him, then leave, gathering the abandoned mushrooms; women who made unguents, elixirs and other wicked things witches toil at.
The death of the man sets off a catalyst of consequences for those left behind, his grieving wife, his newborn son, neighbours.
I don’t know what hurts more: thinking only of the good memories and giving in to the piercing longing that never lets up, that intoxicates the soul, or bathing in the stream of thought that lead me to sad memories, the dark and cloudy ones that choke my heart and leave me feeling even more orphaned at the thought that my husband was not that all the angel I held him up to be.
Their voices are presented individually, then as the narrative moves along, the interconnectedness of this polyphonic world becomes apparent.
A Polyphonic Narrative Irene Solà channels the unique voices of every living (or previously living) being: the lightning bolts, roe deer, mountains, the ghosts of civil war, the widow Sió and later her grown children, Hilari and Mia, as well as Mia’s lovers, with their long-buried secrets and their hidden pain.
The construction is non-linear, the voices fragmentary; the threads of the story rise through the pages, like those black chanterelles from the damp forest floor.
When tragedy strikes the family a second time, the sister is forced to face lifes struggles and joys alone. A chorus of voices bears witness to all that passes; the savage beauty of the natural environment demonstrates aloneness as a state of human mind and not a reality.
Narrative Threads, Seeds, Spores, Growth and Healing Sometimes the text reads like a story and other times like a hallucinatory dream, with a hidden message. Something of a puzzle, the various parts that make up this ecosystem, this community, the human and non-human. It is like imagining that the mountain and the trees do bear witness to all and if they could share what they have witnessed, it would be something like this.
It requires slow reading and perseverance, as it takes a little while for the voices to become apparent and for the reader to accept that human voices are not given the right to dominate the narrative. We are able to see and comprehend the wider picture if we have the patience to persevere.
Highly Recommended travel companion if visiting Catalonia, or interested in other perspectives....more
This novel was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. I decided to read it because I did the quiz on their website which asked about 15 oThis novel was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. I decided to read it because I did the quiz on their website which asked about 15 or so questions and then told you which book to read. Undiscovered was my result.
Gabriela Wiener is a Peruvian poet, journalist, writer who has lived in Spain for the last 20 years and her books to date (none of which I have read) seem to about body politics. This novel is about a search to unravel and understand her identity as a Peruvian woman now living in Spain, who has ties to both the coloniser and the colonised.
I was very intrigued to read this book for a few reasons, of course because it is written by a woman in translation, so that already interests me, because it is coming from outside the mainstream cultures that traditionally dominate publishing and also because of the interest in identity, in the influence of ancestry, of family mysteries uncovered.
Gabriela is both fascinated and repelled by a 'maybe ancestor' Charles Wiener, who was an Austrian Jew that immigrated to France and was a teacher in a German lycée. He converted to Catholicism and desired French nationality. He published an essay on the "communist empire" of the Incas;
a reign based on social equality and therefore, per his thesis, antithetical to freedom. In his writing he defended the delirious hypotheses that Louis XIV had been inspired by the Incas when he said "L'état, c'est moi."
that would result in the French government agreeing to send him on an expedition to South American in 1876. The studies he conducted and specimens collected would eventually be displayed in a large scale exhibit at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878.
On his return to France he became naturalised, retired from exploration and became a diplomat. In the less than two years he was in Peru, he fathered a child, the author's great-grandfather Carlos Wiener Rodriguez, born in May 1877, when Wiener was already in Bolivia.
In Undiscovered Gabiela explores the writings of her ancestor and has conflicting feelings about him, as she has conflicting feelings about herself, and about her father. Much of the book takes place while is on a return trip to Lima for her father's funeral. He had a second life, one she tries to make sense of by meeting his mistress and asking her mother personal questions.
But really she is interrogating those outside of her to understand something within her. She is of a different generation and even within that she lives an unconventional life. Is she how she is because that is how she is, or is there something of the past that runs through her veins which makes it harder to be anything other than that? Even in her unconventionality, she continues to cross her own boundaries and disappoint herself. She seeks to understand why.
On an existential quest tracing a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial exploitation, she considers the effect on her own struggles with desire, love and race in a polyamorous relationship. At the same time uncovering physical traces of her ancestor and searching for the small boy Juan, he did bring back to France with him.
I was totally captivated by this narrative from start to finish. Each sentence and paragraph so carefully constructed, I often went back and reread them, because they often articulated something that asked to be considered.
I had read a few reviews that criticised the attention she gave to herself, but I didn't feel as if this was done without context. It is a work of autofiction and the author puts herself as much under the spotlight as her ancestor, she is self aware and critical of her own behaviours, she exposes them and puts them on public display to be judged.
Towards the end she seeks help or healing and her solution is to join a group called 'Decolonizing My Desire'. She reaches out to a researcher for help about the ancestor, but finds that invalidating. Ultimately it is her imagination and poetry that perhaps provides her with answers, the blank page that she is capable of filling, the stories she is able to create, the endings she can provide herself. She controls the narrative, no one else does....more
What a novel, good-hearted, open, vulnerable read. I'm not sure whether what I read was fictional or not, because muchRead for #WIT month in Aug 2024.
What a novel, good-hearted, open, vulnerable read. I'm not sure whether what I read was fictional or not, because much of what is described in the 'letters to a close friend' coincides with elements in the author bio inside the front cover of the book and the main character is Vel.
It is about a return to a place and finding a new purpose, along with the motivation to pursue it and taking others with you - and a correspondence that bears witness and though we don't see the replies, we can tell that they encourage and support both the idea and the human pursuing it.
I don't know if I mentioned this specifically, perhaps not in a letter, though maybe when we met up before I left to come and live here here for good, but part of what pushed me to make this radical life change was the need to feel that my existence had meaning, that I was spending each day doing something I cared about and could feel proud of at the end of my life. And that's just what I found in being Seño Velia, the woman who has meetings with people about books, who tries to motivate children to love reading and books as much as she does, and who supports the teachers.
The letters span 3 years from May 2015 and they track a significant change in Vel's life as she decides to return to Choco (to the Afro-Colombian community she was raised in) to start a new venture to bring reading, literacy and a love of books to it. They also exhibit the growth and expansion of her writing, the letter is her safe harbour and she tests it by taking her writing to another level, stretching into a more personal yet contained arena.
Tomorrow I start a diploma in reading promotion, and with it my project, Motete. We've chosen three areas of Quibdo where I'll start running the workshops.
She is taking a risk starting a new venture, but believes in it and is surrounded by extended family and connections, which facilitate her ability to reach out even further into the community and invite everyone in, to be part of or benefit from her shared love of reading.
And so this project is coming together. This basket, this Motete, is filling up. The slogan for my project is 'Contenidos que tejen' - contents that weave - and every day I like it more. Every day I realise that these contents are weaving fulfillment and happiness within me...
The thing is, motetes have been used to carry food for the body: plaintains, bushmeat, fish. Our is to fill them with food for the soul: art, culture, books. And just as motetes are woven by hand, I thought these new contents would also form a fabric: the fabric of society, of community, the fabric of souls.
Her unnamed friend that she writes to is someone she hasn't known long, he occupies a space between the familiar and the unfamiliar that she claims as a freedom to express herself, to be vulnerable and open, someone who has mentored and shown her how to get funding, the range of things she can write to him of span a wide spectrum.
We never see the replies but the continuation of her own correspondence displays her life, her dealing with health problems, the double bind of her wounding and love, of being raised by doting grandparents, while having complicated relationships with a teenage mother unable to mother her and an emotionally absent father. Her later sadness and depression, helped through therapy, tears and conversations, to ways of coping and healing. Her optimism for her venture, and the community connections she creates keep her going.
I grew a lot. I learned. But most of all I tried to weave a new way of relating to my father that hurt as little as possible.
One of the themes is the sea, the absence of sea, the way the river meets the sea and her relationship to it. She yearns for it when it has been absent for some time, just as she yearns for the letter writer and the relief that comes in the act of writing to him. She describes herself in her current role as being like the sea at that place where it meets the river.
I'm like the Pacific Ocean, pressing at the river with its tides to make it flow the other way, or lapping at the land when its waters rise, when it feels like gaining inches of new ground. You need strong motivation to stick to this way of life, which isn't exactly a fight against the world, but rather the certainty of forging your own path.
I loved this slender book, it's project and generosity, its intimate sharing and platform for expanding and learning and having the courage to venture into new areas. It made me think of an exquisite title I'd forgotten about, Leslie Marmon Silko's slim book of correspondence The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright.
That correspondence was written when Silko was 31 years old and Wright 51. They had planned to meet in the Spring of 1980, mentioned in letters of Oct/Nov of the previous year, not knowing he would be gone before then.
They discuss her novel, his poetry, language, his travels, her adventures with animals, their speaking engagements, their mutual challenges and experiences as university professors, and soon began to share more personal feelings, as she acknowledged the tough time she was having and he shared his own experience, expressing empathy.
Velia Vidal dedicates her book:
To my recipient, simply for being there.
and when I read about her own projects in society, her love of the sea and shared readings and efforts to help move children and young adults out of poverty, it is all the more inspirational to read these letters, understanding the difference a letter can make, to see someone take a risk and pursue something that will help others from her community, while fulfilling her own dreams and aspirations....more
As Claire Lavery so aptly put, responding to a tweet I wrote while reading this book
Let the quiet become loud Let the quietened have a voice
BrilliantlyAs Claire Lavery so aptly put, responding to a tweet I wrote while reading this book
Let the quiet become loud Let the quietened have a voice
Brilliantly conceived, thoughtfully and concisely constructed. A stunning, justice-seeking work that delivers just that, in its own way. The cacophony of voices, how what is left quiet, resounds so loudly. The power of what is left unsaid. We know. We hear. We see. We understand. We believe. Utterly compelling. Unsupported, it navigates the path of demonstration in undermining a victim, how protection of self(s) from outside gaze, hangs a victim out to dry.
This does what justice fails to do for victims of sexual abuse. It lets the story and the people surrounding it speak for themselves and show just how much more abuse and neglect a young woman is likely to receive when seeking justice, reparation, for the taking of an other version of her life, one she will never get back.
Inspired and yet so very tragic. Highly Recommended....more
I read the opening line and let it tell me as much as possible about the story I am about to read.
"Enero Ray, standing firm on the boat, stocky and be
I read the opening line and let it tell me as much as possible about the story I am about to read.
"Enero Ray, standing firm on the boat, stocky and beardless, swollen-bellied, legs astride, stares hard at the surface of the river and waits, revolver in hand."
It's a Charco Press title, so I also have the wonderful abstract image of the cover, which never fails to contribute to the understanding of what the book has to say. It shows twin rivers, fed by tributaries, running red.
It is clear that there is going to be blood, death and violence - and more than one episode. Just as the water of the smaller channels has no choice but to flow into the main river, so too the intent of a man standing firm, staring hard awaiting his prey. But who/what else will the river claim?
I really enjoyed Selva Almada'sThe Wind that Lays Waste and was looking forward to this one, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024.
Not a River tells a story, not in a linear way, but in a circular fashion, beginning with two men and a boy on a fishing trip, circling back to a previous trip when there were three of them, slowly revealing the memory that is acting on both men and what happened to their friend.
The second main tributary/narrative follows Siomara and her two daughters Lucy and Mariela. The girls are entering womanhood, the mother is becoming more protective.
Siomara was in one of those phases she sometimes went through, when she was grouchier than usual. Saying no to everything and dealing out punishments and bans for no reason. All because she could see how the two girls were growing, how little by little they were slipping away, how sooner or later they were going to leave her as well.
She lights fires as a way to deal with her emotions, since she was a girl. She's lighting them a lot lately.
Sometimes she thinks the fire talks to her. Not like a person does, not with words. But there's something in the crackle, the soft sound of the flames, as if she could almost hear the air burning away, yes, something, right there, that speaks to her alone... Come on, you know you want to. It says.
Again the story turns on itself, something has happened here too, sometimes the mother is living in the past, the present too much for her to accept. The girls hear about a dance and plan to go.
Lucy wants to be a hairdresser. She wants to give other woman those moments of peace her mother seems to feel when she is doing her hair.
As we read, we do not know if we are reading the present or the past, we accept each past of the story's mosaic, until all the pieces have been laid.
The narrative moves back and forth like the tide, river crossings to the mainland, people in the community are connected and affected by events that occur at the river. Paths cross, intertwine. It is necessary to let go of needing to know whether we are in the past or the present. If certain events happened before or after others.
A summer like this one. Twenty years back, a summer like this one. The same island or the next one along or the one after that. In the memory it's all just the island, with no name or exact coordinates.
The longer the men stay in the forest, the more uneasy they feel about what they have done, what has happened in the past and about how unwelcome they are made to feel, inhabiting this place that carries a menacing vibe. They have been invited to a dance, they decide to leave their campsite and go.
Enero has a disturbing dream, twice.
Eusubio looked at him and thought for a moment. We need to go see my godfather. He knows about this stuff. He said.
The other two boys are nervous about going to see the healer, but they go anyway.
Mariela also has a dream, she tells her sister Lucy about it.
And what happened in the dream? I don't know, like I say I just had a kind of flashback. It was weird, there were lights and sirens.
There is a sense of the repetitive cycles of the generations, girls hide from their families, they grow up to become a mother who can't help but try and prevent their child from repeating the same mistakes. It never works.
She pretends not to hear. Still just about strong enough to resist. But for how much longer. One day, she knows she will answer the fires's call.
In less than 100 pages, the novella depicts many elements of a broken community, broken families, their efforts to try and bond, heal, escape, punish, revel and cope with the aftermath of it all.
The characters in my novel, men and women who live on what the river can provide, are a reflection of what the neo-liberalism of the 1990s has done to Argentina: impoverishing it, condemning a significant part of its citizens to poverty and marginalization.
A Respectable Occupation is a short nonfiction narrative about becoming a writer and the necessity of reading. I came across this book in a photo on aA Respectable Occupation is a short nonfiction narrative about becoming a writer and the necessity of reading. I came across this book in a photo on author Kerri ní Dochartaigh's Substack g l i m m e r s where she talks about her books of the year for 2023. She is the q u e e n of referencing reading creative nonfiction by writers. Her 2nd memoir Cacophony of Bone is full of literary references to enticing contemporary works of narrative nonfiction.
Julia Kerninon had a unique upbringing in many ways, not least because she lived in multiple countries, Canada, England, France but also it is as if she were raised to become a writer, more of an expectation than a desire, so she pursues it in the same way many others might pursue a career that has been held in high esteem by their parents. Only writing isn't like law, medicine or business.
I had an incredibly heavy electric typewriter my mother had lent me, and she had glued little labels with lowercase letters onto the keys because I found capitals confusing, and I wrote lots of stories about talking animals with my friend Pete.
She recalls a kind of bohemian childhood and the first six years where she was an only child and how her world tilted when they became 4 not 3.
An identical monument of books had saved her as well, thirty years earlier, from a hopeless childhood, and so she spread her secret before me, she explained what she loved most in the world, in a gesture that was also a potlatch, an immeasurably generous offering, which I might be expected to return one day with an even greater gift.
Her mother had been born in a small fishing village, the eldest of four, the only girl, she had learned Russian at ten in boarding school and read everything she could lay her hands on.
If I lost a manuscript and went crazy with panic, she would just shrug with no compassion at all and explain that in any case I would have to throw away or lose lots of books before writing a single good one. The best thing that can happen to you is a house fire.
At sixteen she had found a community of 'old poets' who met in an old biscuit factory in her hometown, a second education, after a house full of books. At twenty when she was reading and taking too much notice of Gertrude Stein's ill-conceived advice: If you don't work hard when you are twenty, no one will love you when you are thirty, she confronted her father and told him she wanted to take a gap year from her university studies.
I thought that to be a writer, I had to train like an athlete, like a dancer, until it didn't hurt anymore, until I didn't ask myself any more questions. I wanted to possess that skill.
She takes herself off to Budapest for a year. Her life becomes a cycle of working hard, playing hard, then taking herself off somewhere for a year or six months to write. She becomes a waitress in the summers, so she can write throughout the winter. She decides that to be poor is acceptable if she can be free instead and that she would learn to live alone, to be alone, to work alone, during those productive times of her life.
Though she figures out how to live like this herself, she attributes to advice given to her by a much loved man:
the main thing is to have free time - you'll obviously work out how to earn a crust somehow - but free time is something you'll always have to scavenge, he told me earnestly.
It's a wonderful little book, a digression of sorts, a reminder that the writing life comes in many shapes and forms, that the sharing of the various experiences can also provide inspiration to those who are on that path and that the pursuit of the occupation can also be a subject that people like reading about.
I write books because it's good discipline, because I like sentences and I like putting things in order in a Word document. I like counting the words every night and I like finishing what I start.
A short introduction by Lauren Elkin is equally compelling, another writer whose book Art Monsters : Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art was in the photograph in Kerri Ni Dochartigh's end of year essay. I will leave you with one final quote from Juia Kerninon, one that applies as equally to reading as it does to writing.
I've been striding through literature like a field, where my footsteps flatten the grass for a moment, just long enough to see the path I've taken and the immensity of what is yet to be discovered.
After just finishing Domenico Starnone's The House on Via Gemito featuring a domineering father, it felt appropriate to read another Italian author NaAfter just finishing Domenico Starnone's The House on Via Gemito featuring a domineering father, it felt appropriate to read another Italian author Natalia Ginzburg and her fictional account of a domineering mother.
However, this parent might even be considered timid compared to Starnone's Federico. While she is over invested in the lives of her two daughter's, they do seem to pursue their own desires in spite of her interference.
Fed up with life in a small town she moves to the suburb of a city to be closer to her sisters and daughter and demands that he second daughter and her husband move with her. We learn that she disapproves of the husband and is still distraught over the one that got away - a young man her daughter met on holiday - not realising that her own behaviour might have had something to do with it.
There were days when my mother was almost as bored in town as she had been in Dronero. She already knew the central shopping district like the back of her hand, having walked the length and breadth of it looking for suitable premises, small but attractive, for her art gallery; but the rents were all extremely high and, besides; another problem was beginning to occur to her, that of finding painters willing to show in her gallery. She knew nobody.
Finding it more lonely and isolating than she imagined, she is happy when she meets Pricilla (call me Scilla), a woman who (eventually) listens to her dreams and desires and seems in tune with them and even willing to partner with her on her project to open an art gallery.
My mother was now anxious to talk about her gallery project but was unable to get a word in edgeways because Signora Fontana never stopped chattering for an instant.
In her dogged pursuit of ambition, and desperate desire for a true friend, she overlooks important signs that perhaps all is not as it should be and naively keeps her plans to herself, avoiding criticism or advice from any of her family members that might have lead her to question her association - though probably not.
It is no coincidence that Ginzburg names her character Scilla, that name immediately conjured up for me the creature lurking in the sea, enticing ships onto the rocks. She is adept at luring men into a perilous and rocky waterway, thus as I read, every person that Scilla was connected to, became for me, a potential villain or obstacle in her path, some perhaps by accident, others by design.
Ultimately she will be confronted with her own poor judgement, both those she put her trust in that she should not have and those who she neglected and would be there for her in her downfall.
This novella is often read with the excellent Valentino which I read earlier in the year and loved. Sagittarius is a little more predictable, where Valentino is exceptional and probably my favourite of the two, but I highly recommend them both and look forward to reading more Ginzburg this year....more
Valentino leads the reader along, thinking you are reading a straight forward story, until you arrive at the point of realising that your reactions arValentino leads the reader along, thinking you are reading a straight forward story, until you arrive at the point of realising that your reactions are judgements and the book holds up a mirror to our own conditioning. And that is how it feels reading it in 2024. I can’t even imagine the storm it likely raised when published in 1957.
Little Sense or Sensibility Valentino is a short novella narrated by Caterina, who is training to become a teacher. She lives with her father, a retired schoolteacher, her mother, who used to give piano lessons and her brother, Valentino who does very little, but whose medicine studies and equipment cost a lot.
we had to help my sister who was married to a commercial traveller and had three children and a pitifully inadequate income, and we also had to support my student brother who my father believed was destined to become a man of consequence. There was little enough reason to believe this, but he believed it all the same and had done ever since Valentino was a small boy and perhaps found it difficult to break the habit.
Valentino spends his time playing with a kitten, making toys out of scraps of material, dressing up and admiring himself. A string of engagements to teenagers raise false hopes and always end the same way – broken. So when he announces he will be married within the month, naturally the family expect the pattern to continue.
What a Wife Can Be or Not to Be
So when he turned up with his new fiancée we were amazed to the point of speechlessness. She was quite unlike anything we had ever imagined.
We learn of all the family members reactions to this new fiancée, with the exception of the father.
he was about to launch into a long speech about what was the main consideration but my mother interrupted him. My mother always interrupted his speeches, leaving him choking on a half-finished sentence, puffing with frustration.
A Man of Consequence, The Weight of Expectation Valentino is oblivious to the reactions and judgements of his family and continues to act and communicate as he always has, holding nothing back, expecting everyone to be happy for him.
Is he fearless? A truth teller who doesn’t hide things or worry about what others think of him? Is he a narcissist? He is a wonderful character because he is like the mystery at the centre of the story. Who don’t quite know who he is because he isn’t acting as everyone including the reader might expect him to.
His father lost for words, does not understand that what he is witnessing is the incarnation of his desire, his son is indeed becoming a man of consequence, just not in the way he had expected.
Valentino is captivated by his wife, by her look, her intelligence, her culture. She showers him in gifts, he has upended social convention, insulted the patriarchy and all who prop it up.
My father said he would go to have a talk with Valentino’s fiancée, but my mother was opposed to this, partly because my father had a weak heart and was supposed to avoid any excitement, partly because she thought his arguments would be completely ineffectual. My father never said anything sensible; perhaps what he meant to say was sensible enough, but he never managed to express what he meant, getting bogged down in empty words, digressions and childhood memories, stumbling and gesticulating. So at home he was never allowed to finish what he was saying because we were all too impatient, and he would hark back wistfully to his teaching days when he could talk as much as he wanted and nobody humiliated him.
Out of Place Once they are married, it is his family that feels out of place, ill at ease. Valentino is easily able to be among his wife’s friends and family as well as his own. He does not feel undeserving or unworthy of their company or his newfound social status. Neither is he aware of the dilemmas facing his family.
It is best not to share too much of the storyline, but to discover it yourself, because every page is a wonderful discovery, of thought provoking insights into the human condition and the reaction of those around us when one defies convention and how they too can be displaced when set down inside an unfamiliar environment.
When Caterina finishes her diploma and gets a job, we observe how Maddalena’s offer to house and feed her, though on the surface seems attractive, acts to disempower her, denying her independence and supporting a selfish desire. Through the unconventional marriage, we see the ridiculousness of gender conditioning all the more clearly.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant, the way Ginzburg has created these two characters, upending societal norms and inverting typical behaviours.
Described as where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet, these short stories by Bolivian author Giovanna Rivero are not my usual fare, but thDescribed as where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet, these short stories by Bolivian author Giovanna Rivero are not my usual fare, but this book was part of my Charco subscription and it's August,#WIT month, so I decided to read them and see what the boundaries of the Gothic really means.
There are six stories and the first few were tales of macabre revenge that made me remember reading Yoko Ogawa's excellent collection Revenge. Overall an interesting, dark collection that brings out a quiet consideration in each of the protagonists as they grapple with their challenging situations and must either make a decision or give in to one made by an other.
blessed are the meek
a young woman violated, everyone around her seems to be denying the gravity of it, the family moves away, until the opportunity arrives to bury their grief, literally...
fish, turtle, vulture
a man survives 100 days at sea, his young companion not. Now he is meeting the mother of that young boy, she feeds him tortillas...atoning for his loss, he will atone for hers
it looks human when it rains
a Japanese widow in Bolivia teaches origami to women prisoners in a jail, is curious about these so-called murderers, until she teaches them how to make a snake - and sees something terrifying. Her own past comes back to haunt her, a young woman lodger helps her in the garden, things that were buried resurface in her mind, in her life.
Socorro
"Those boy's aren't your husbands" says a deranged Aunt in the opening lines. A woman, her husband and twin boys visit her mother and Aunt. She is an expert in mental health but being around her Aunt unsettles her in ways that her professional self finds hard to deal with. The moments of lucidity among the madness, reach in to her own hidden aspect and threaten to overwhelm her.
Donkey Skin
Two children orphaned overnight are sent to live with their French Aunt in Winnipeg, Canada. When they get to 17 they plan an escape, and their world gets turned upside down again.
Kindred Deer Intelligent but struggling financially students sign up for medical trials that promise to cover their debts, but at what price. They ignore the corpse of a dead animal outside their window, leaving it longer than they should to address. Like the strange mark on his back that shouldn't be there, have they left that too late as well, will he pay with his life? ...more
Daughters Beyond Command is a wide ranging chronicle of 1970’s France, seen through the eyes of the Malivieri Catholic family with three daughters, liDaughters Beyond Command is a wide ranging chronicle of 1970’s France, seen through the eyes of the Malivieri Catholic family with three daughters, living in an apartment in Aix-en-Provence. It traverses issues of family, feminism, worker’s rights, class, animal rights, amid the rapid transformation of society in the 1970’s France.
While the story follows the changing lives and events, in particular of the daughters and the mother (we don’t learn too much about Bruno, the father), it also demonstrates the shifts in society and of generations that occur through the way these daughters seek their independence. It contrasts with the way their mother harbours secrets and makes other complicit when she does share what she would prefer to hide.
Regardless of their ages or circumstances, the country and the world is changing and attitudes and behaviours are shifting and everyone is forced to reckon with the changes as they impact them in different ways, raising consciousnesses and often unable to maintain previous ways of being .
Sabine, the eldest wants to work in theatre and acting and will do everything she can to pursue that dream in Paris. Fiercely independent, she has developed an irritation around comfort and conformity.
She watched as Maria set the table under Michelle’s authority. She looked at the framed photographs of her cousins who had not yet come home.Happy times on horseback, in cars, on boats. It was like a huge advertising campaign. It filled her with rage. There had to be something behind this publicity for the life she was being shown, both here and at home, in the silver frames of photographs, or poor people’s kitchens, behind the slogans like Moulinex Sets a Woman Free, the injunctions to promote progress, comfort, and the frenzied pursuit of happiness, luxury, and family life, there was something else. Which could be neither bought nor sold.
The second sister Hélène has been seduced by the trappings and comfort of this sophisticated Parisian family. Sabine can’t understand why she chooses to spend so much time with them, a family that lives in a way beyond anything they have ever experienced. Hélène spends most of her holidays with the family who don’t have daughters; the Uncle who has taken a particular interest in her. That regular proximity changes some of her habits, including the way she speaks.
It was a betrayal of the Malivieri clan, and Sabine was astonished that her sister could flaunt her bonds of dependence so naturally.
Hélène will also leave home early and pursue an education Paris, supported by her Uncle. She is less outspoken but equally passionate, affected by moral question around the protection and rights of animals. The student riots of May ’68 had an impact on the nation and caused both fear and admiration in these adults trying to figure out how to parent their daughters, growing up surrounded by influences they could not control.
As the lives of the daughters changes, so too does the outside world. Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi found the movement Choisir la cause des femmes (Choose the Cause of Women) in 1971 to decriminalise abortion in France, riot police storm the Lip watch factory that had been occupied by workers for three months, forcibly removing them; there is talk and images of the horrors of Vietnam, of the desire for freedom, respect for the proletariat, and the lyrics of the Bob Dylan song The Times Are A Changin’, the death of the President Georges Pompidou.
Sabine told her his name was Bob Dylan and that his song said, more or less, that the world was changing, you had to keep your eyes open,and the parents had better watch out, their sons and their daughters were beyond their command. It was a political song.
As time passes and events happen the sisters find a way to strengthen their bond despite their differences, separating from each other and then coming together in solidarity, while their parents seem stuck in time. Agnes, the mother is unable to stop changes happening to her, which will bring about a crisis, one the two older girls question but are again met with silence.
While the novel isn’t necessarily about resolving any of the issues presented, it encapsulates the impact of changing times on the various members of the family in a way that I found interesting, having lived in France for around 19 years, but not during the era mentioned. So much of the landscape was familiar, and some of the references, but many were not.
I appreciated the story for the depiction of what it might have been like to be part of an ordinary family growing up in this town in the 1970’s and learning about the significant events that challenged and affected people’s thinking, seen from the perspective of inside France. It is these changes in the background of the family lives and the adept writing that maintains the narrative pace.
It might be set in the 1970’s but it feels as relevant today in many respects as it did for that era of change....more
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