|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
181
| 
| 1324075015
| 9781324075011
| 1324075015
| 3.40
| 299
| unknown
| Apr 02, 2024
|
liked it
|
Economics is life, life is economics. But no more, at least not in this instance. Opie’s range is daunting: he - he? - begins the discussion on sequen
Economics is life, life is economics. But no more, at least not in this instance. Opie’s range is daunting: he - he? - begins the discussion on sequentiality with references ranging from Spenser's Amoretti and Sidney's Astrophil and Stella to Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond. - How does arrangement confer meaning? Can one leave the different strands that constitute a story or a novel seemingly unknit and hope - trust - readers to bring them together into meaning? - Why not knit them for the reader? But Ayush deletes the question. Shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize, the judge's citation, from Xiaolu Guo, reading: "A truly ambitious and compelling fiction from an author at the height of his powers. Choice lays out three narratives exploring 21st-century ethical and political dilemmas. The novel is not only intellectually impressive, it is also immensely moving, and shot through with heart-breaking moments." Choice consists of three separate stories, except the second and third are foreshadowed in the first. The first section tells the story of Ayush who works in a publisher, and is father, with his partner Luke, to two children, born from Luke and a surrogate mother. Luke is an economist and in a better paid job than Ayush, who struggles to juggle domestic care, his distate for the increased commercialisation of even literary fiction and the tokenistic nods to diversity, and an OCD-like obsession with confronting the waste of modern-day living. Ayush becomes particularly excited about a collection of highly-varied short stories by 'M.N. Opie', an anonymous and highly publicity shy (including refusing to reveal details of gender, race or biography). The latter trait, a contrast to Ferrante's self-branding, inevitably means the collection, when published, sinks without trace. This section contains much to please the literary fiction fan, particularly one, such as myself, who is no fan of the increasingly sales driven / celebrity culture, as well as many nod-along literary references: Time. He had once read a memorable line in a review of a Per Petterson novel: ‘The only true problem of the realist novel is time.' After the instinctive reaction, not entirely frivolous, 'Of that other realist thing called life, too, my friend', he had returned frequently to that sentence, so dense with meaning, in his mind. He now thinks that so much of the frequent articulations of impatience and boredom with plot and plotting by writers is nothing more than an inability to know what to do with time, its representation, the modelling of its passage in 200 or 350 or 600 pages. These writers, all enthralled by the self, are hectically caught up in signalling the breaking of new ground when, in reality, they are just trying to dress up their limitations as cool, daring, new, adventurous. Neatly that quote, or rather precis, is from a 2014 review of I Refuse by one Neel Mukherjee! This self-promotion though I think is done rather tongue-in-cheek, and perhaps there is irony to in the easy takedowns of modern publishing. When asked for writers who might provide a blurb M.N. Opie comes back with invented tributes from the late Roth, Baldwin and Morrison (although WG Sebald's generosity did seem to extend many years after his tragic passing) and Mukherjee, or his publicist, has garnered something of a who's who of celebrity literary endorsements. There is also a writer in the second part who plays down his two Booker shortlisting (one wonder if Mukherjee was counting on this work as his second). Mukherjee's own acknowledgements also namecheck some star names, most notably Coetzee, whose discursive, philosophical fiction is acknowledged by Ayush, and implicitly Mukherjee as an inspiration. Luke, representing his dismal money-driven science, and Ayush, who increasingly rejects modern capitalist consumerism, debate their respective positions, often using their respective approaches to parenting and the values they teach their young children, as a proxy war. This is a novel that rather tells the reader how to read it - most notably parts II and III, which as mentioned have been foreshadowed in part I. Part II is essentially one of M.N. Opie's stories (although adapted from a story Mukherjee submitted for the anthology and Ayush kindly interprets it for us beforehand: There is a long story about a young Eng. Lit. academic named Emily - an early modernist, no less - in a London university who is in a car accident returning home from a dinner party one night. The driver of the car is not who the app says he is. A combination of inertia, procrastination, and maybe even an inchoate strategy only half-known to herself sends Emily's life in an unpredictable direction. Everything about the story is unexpected and it is not the plot. It is the inner voice of the protagonist, the representation of her world of work and her mind. Even this is not the most salient thing about it. Ayush tried, and repeatedly failed, to put his finger on the elusive soul of the story. Plot-wise, it seemed simple enough, but the more he thought about the underlying moral questions that propelled it, the more complex and troubling it became. In fact, entirely unwritten in the story was its chief meaning: how no escape was offered by making what one thought was the correct moral choice. The story itself contains another moral dilemma in that Emily decides to write the story of the Uber driver, Salim a former Eritrean soldier seeking asylum in the UK, only for her friend, the aforementioned double-Booker shortlisted writer, to question if it is really her story to tell. But cleverly, in reality Salim's story (at least that on his path to the UK - the Uber-driving part is, I think, entirely invented) is based on a real-life testimony of a refugee from Eritrea that Mukherjee was commissioned to tell, on his behalf, in the Comma Press anthology Refugee Tales II: Volume II as the author explained in a 2017 interview whose transcript can be found here. And Part III of the novel follows an exchange between Ayush and what, at first, seems the one economist with whom he has some sympathy, a developmental economist working on a project in India where they measure the benefit of giving those from the most deprived backgrounds a cow. Ritika takes him through a recently conducted experiment in which random women in randomly selected villages in a district in West Bengal were each given a cow to improve their lot. It was a stupendous success: consumption - the metric used by economists to measure well-being among the ultra poor - went up and continued to hold up at the raised level two years after the asset transfer. Ayush absorbs all this thirstily. It must be nice to work in a field in which success is evident, tangible, in which measurable good can be done in the world. He feels at once enthused and slightly deflated. "Wow' is all he can say, like a callow teenager. 'And it was a success with all the women you gave cows to?' he asks. Ritika narrows her eyes and looks at him in a pointed way. Why do you ask that?' She stumbles a little in getting the words out. No reason. Just like that, as we would say when we were children.' Ritika looks down at her glass. She peers into it as she says, 'No, not all the women. But over 99 per cent of them.' What happened to the tiny fraction that was not a success?' Something has just begun to take shape in his mind. Part III - told by Ayush? - is the tale of one of the less than 1% - although here the question of whose story this is to tell rears its head again, and I found it hard to argue with, or improve on, Anil Menon's critique in The Hindu: The story is told with sincerity and finesse, but it still felt like a performance in the orchards of the unreal. This is the “shown” version of the “told” complaints of Ayush about the perils of “economics thinking”. The story appears to empathise with Sabita and her family, but it presents villagers not as villagers but as villagers-seen-by-urban writers. It’s not a matter of appropriation — a concept that has no place in literary criticism, in my view — but rather, the inability to find a voice that works for the story. I ended with somewhat mixed feeling on the book. I think it deserves its place on the Goldsmiths list and the insights into literary culture, albeit preaching to the converted I particularly enjoyed. But the literary links between the three stories are relatively heavy-handed, as is the the thematic link of the economic issues with capitalism which each is rather reverse-engineered to make. 3.5 stars, rounded down for now. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 03, 2024
|
Oct 05, 2024
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
182
| 
| 1399814257
| 9781399814256
| 1399814257
| 4.40
| 10
| unknown
| Jun 20, 2024
|
it was amazing
|
Portrait #2 Tops of heads In this portrait, there is an actual portrait. It is the portrait I that appeared in the lift in the section of the building t Portrait #2 Tops of heads In this portrait, there is an actual portrait. It is the portrait I that appeared in the lift in the section of the building the almost daughter lived in, the week before the strange time began with Oksana, the new and wild girl at her school, and all the things that were hidden under other things. It was with her father that the almost daughter first saw the portrait in the lift. There was no immediate logical connection to Oksana. Shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize, judge Abigail Shinn's verdict on Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking reads: "Composed as a series of portraits, some fragmentary, all multi-faceted and allusory, Smith’s novel is a hallucinatory window into what it means to excavate the past in a world committed to its erasure. The novel, which the author has said she wroteto think about silences, almostness, poetry, distortions of history, more, is told in 77 short chapters, or portraits, the first of which opens, setting the scene: Portrait #1 The haunted This is the portrait of who she used to be. She was a daughter - or rather she was almost a daughter because that was just the way things were - and she had always known what kind of cursed place she lived in, to a lesser or greater extent at different times. She knew broadly, for instance, that her own mother's grandmother had been sent to the region from a better, cleaner city, in the west of the country and years ago. This was where the story ended: this great-grandmother was dead now and had always been dead, thick in the layers of mothers and past things. She had always been dead but did have something to do with the other woman who lived alone and had no family to visit her on weekends, so that the almost daughter's family came instead. This is specific as the novel gets in terms of setting. But the reader will naturally, including from the author's biography ('grew up in Japan, Russia and elsewhere') and powerful social media feed think of the legacies of the former Soviet Union in modern day Russia. And later in the novel there are passing references to an event similar to the invasion of Ukraine and to another similar to the 2012 Pussy Riot trials. And towards the novel's end some chapters have titles written in Russian (Google Lens rather helpful here) which draw on the poetry of Anna Akhmatova ('И если зажмут мой измученный рот' is from Реквием (Requiem), a line translated by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward as 'and if a gag should blind my tortured mouth') and Marina Tsvetaeva (e.g. a line from Дом). Untranslated poems by both also form an afterword. The allegorical approach - rather reminsent of two of the finest novels of the last 7 years, Milkman, and Study for Obedience - continues with the novel told primarily from two close third-person narrative perspectives: - that of a teenage girl, 'the almost daughter'; and - and portraits of the elderly woman referred to above, known in her sections as 'the woman with the cave inside her', and who thinks of 'the almost daughter' when she visits as 'the lazy ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the atrocious ghost'. These latter begin in a somewhat hazy, confused style, representing perhaps both the age of the woman but also the repressed memories: The only thing to do back inside is to find the papers that will make her feel better. They will make her feel calm, or soft, and on the ground again, for a little while at least and are the only things that do this. Not just papers - what are they? Letters. And a photograph. The photograph of the face that wil make her feel safer. They are somewhere. She keeps them hidden, just in case, even if she is not sure in case of what. She hides them well every time. She puts them back. She hides them from the woman and the lazy children except that once or maybe twice she did not hide them but she held them out and screamed things. They are hidden but now they are too well hidden. If she could remember where it was she hid them she would have them in her hands this moment. But as the novel progresses, her memory and her connection with the almost daughter's family become more concrete. The 'almost daughter' lives with her brother, who watches online porn, but warns her against what he sees as immoral behaviour, and is becoming involved with a form of martial arts club that is evolving to something close to a youth militia; her relatively passive father; and her mother who does online language exchanges with an English woman from Bristol, through which the almost daughter, and the reader, learn of her view on the events described below. From early on, the almost daughter acknowledges there is a hidden side to their town - why were people 'sent to the region from a better, cleaner city' (as per above) years ago, and what did once stand where now there is a sportsfield where they compete with neighbouring towns: She inevitably heard what the students from other regions said about the fields, in between their own phases of only cheering and shouting. They were the ones who said the word haunted, and sometimes said labour and detained and the other words. They were the ones who pointed to the blunt rows of what had indeed unmistakeably been barracks, before they boarded their buses and left again. So of course the almost daughter had guessed, though equally naturally, she already knew. Clearly, everybody else knew as well, because why would she - just one boring, almost-person - be special in her guessing or knowing? And yet no one really asks any more, until the events that trigger the plot of the novel, which unfolds over two short months, and in particular two groups of visitors to her school: - one are people from a modelling agency, or rather 'not exactly people from the modelling agency', which leads the almost daughter, and her friends Valya and Elda into a rather murky area of posing for photographs for men who claim this will be a fast-ticket to becoming an international supermodel. The coming-of-age element of this story captures well how the three girls are both aware of the risks involved (the almost daughter's brother is quick to tell them they will end up as Whores or a best Escorts) and yet at the same time hoping, with some justification, that this may be their own chance to escape their lives. And in this world the almost daughter explores her sexuality with one of her brother's martial-arts training friends. - the other is a 'a man with the broken briefcase' who comes to drum up support for a project to restore a memorial to the history of the area, and to build a museum, a project opposed by the nationalistic authorities although not prohibited ('...yet' as more pessimistic supporters comment). The most enthusiastic student as the school is Oksana, a girl with purple tinted hair, expelled from her previous school (the reason for which leads to much schoolyard speculation) and as the almost daughter gets involved in this project, she also tentatively sees another side to her sexuality. And as this second strand progresses, the almost daughter, and the reader, increasingly learn more of the grim reality of the town's past. This leads her to leading two parallel lives, both of which she largely conceals from her family: A person could be in the split versions of herself, doing things that were right in their versions and the pieces of her did not have to meet. And her inner conflict is symbolised in the art she makes in the privacy of her room, from a combination of use bottle tops and plastic necklace beads. One place where the two split versions do meet, in space if not at the same time, is at the Palace of Creativity and Youth, a rundown former facility [NB the books' title is taken from a mistranslation when the almost daughter's mother tries to explain the name - which has itself been misprinted as The Palace of Creativity and Entertainment in a government brochure - to her English friend]. The meetings of the memorial project team take place, secretly, in a basement of the disused building, while Valya, Elda and the almost daughter do their supermodel fitness training on some run-down outdoor gym equipment at the site. In passing, I'll note that the asymmetric training machines, their oval arrangement and the elliptical cross-trainer do seem a neat nod to the nature of the prose. And perhaps inevitably, and as each split version becomes both more dangerous in itself, but also coincide and become in conflict, the almost daughter has to make a choice, although Smith's story is certainly not one that follows a predictable path, and she leaves us with a poignant ending. A wonderful novel - unsettling, intriguing and powerfully moving.. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 05, 2024
|
Oct 06, 2024
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
180
| 
| 1857884280
| 9781857884289
| 1857884280
| 3.98
| 81
| May 14, 2003
| Sep 25, 2014
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 03, 2024
|
not set
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
179
| 
| 1628973900
| 9781628973907
| 1628973900
| 3.90
| 6,707
| 2014
| 2023
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Sep 28, 2024
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
95
| 
| 1914990234
| 9781914990236
| 1914990234
| 3.74
| 109
| 2021
| Jul 18, 2024
|
liked it
|
"I always keep some prescription forms handy. I fill them out here, over a shot of vodka. It's quite haphazard the way I prescribe psychopharmaceutica
"I always keep some prescription forms handy. I fill them out here, over a shot of vodka. It's quite haphazard the way I prescribe psychopharmaceuticals, quite an exciting lottery. When will which suit whom? Who'll be the lucky winner of what? One vodka, one prescription. And if Brigi will pull me a pint even after last orders, then I'll use any leftover ones for a public reading," he said, leaning across to his fellow practitioner, who remained silent and kept looking round to check that no one was eavesdropping on them. Later, during the trial, his fellow practitioner told the court that he simply hadn't believed the stuff Dr Feleslegi had said about prescriptions. Among the Ruins (2024) is David Short's translation of Medzi ruinami (2021) by Slovakian writer Balla (a penname) and published by jantar Books - see below. This is a rather unique reading experience, a blend of a very black sense of humour with a world view that is at face value nihilistic, but actually tempered with empathy. The novel is told in a fragmentary style and revolves around two main characters, a psychiatrist Felešlegi and his (possible) patient Mrs Vargová. I say possible patient as the latter seems to largely write to the former than visit him, and doesn't seem to receive replies, her letters revealing both an almost delusional attachment to the old pre-Communist Slovakia and a worrying level of racism, although the reader's distaste for her words is tempered by the level of abuse from her father and husband that her words reveal. And as for Felešlegi, he seems more concerned with alcohol than his patients, who he treats with contempt, and has a disturbing attraction to suicide as the solution to life's ills: "The work of a psychiatrist is dreadful. I can't be mates with everyone, and some have to be packed off to the madhouse. Ultimately mostly those who are my mates. It's not possible for everybody to be normal. People are threatened with mental illnesses, but especially by the fact that normality may be pronounced at any time to be deviant. It's a thankless job. Even the patients are ungrateful. A psychiatrist is at one and the same time a ship's captain and the pirate who has attacked it. Another such pirate is our brain. Liable to sink us at any moment. I see this day after day. Small wonder that people spit at psychiatrists," he said by way of guidance to a certain young woman, a new colleague. He went on to add that his favourite patients were those with suicidal tendencies: they only create problems while they're alive, and working with them is successful when finally they're no longer a bother to themselves, or to him. A meta-fictional touch is added by Felešlegi himself writing stories (those we are reading?) in almost indecipherable handwriting which he has transcribed - or in practice interpreted and extrapolated - by a team of university students: The stories and their re-workings continued to grow in number. But what for? His "But what for?" was initially copied out by the nine female undergraduates and one male undergraduate without alteration, but then they tried to mangle and amend the unmangleable and unamendable sense of this triple of words. Feleslegi took "But what for?" to be the only real issue. The one issue in which all was at stake. Except that, finally, the girl students and the one boy simply deleted it. They were not to blame: it had been demanded of them by the publisher of the book's English translation, which was in preparation, and then he told them also to delete all references to deletion because it seemed to him, as an expert on the British book market, that a text carrying such a question and on top of that a reference to its having been deleted would be too demanding for the English reading public. With writing that hopped all over the place like little kids. Feleslegi occasionally got close to making a point. I suspect not a book to everyone's taste - and it should probably come with a trigger warning for its not entirely sensitive exploration of mental health - but very striking. 3.5 stars The publisher Jantar is an independent publisher of European Literary Fiction and Poetry based in London and has been praised widely for its choice of texts, artwork, editorial rigour and use of very rare and sometimes unique fonts in all its books. Founded in 2011 by Michael Tate and a group of his friends, Jantar’s guiding principle was to select, publish and make accessible previously inaccessible works of Central European Literary Fiction through translations into English… texts ‘trapped in amber’. This, to some, whimsical endeavour found further expression in the publication of Kytice, a bi-lingual version of the 19th century collection of poems written by the Czech folklorist and poet Karel Jaromír Erben. Though the original poems written in the Czech language will not be familiar to English-language readers, themes and rhythms featured in those poems are well-known to music lovers as they provided the inspiration for Antonín Dvořák’s tone poems The Water-sprite, The Golden Spinning-wheel, The Spectre’s Bride, The Noon-day Witch and The Wild Dove. First published in 2013, Kytice remains Jantar’s best-selling book, a fact that continues to delight and confound all connected with our company. An expanded edition including some of Erben’s larger poetry fragments is planned for our tenth anniversary in 2021. In 2017, Jantar widened its mission to publish fiction and poetry exploring notions of ‘difference’ and the borders of European language and culture. Since then, Jantar has become better-known for being a fierce advocate of wider contemporary European Literary Fiction ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 29, 2024
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
Sep 21, 2024
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
36
| 
| 1915693136
| 9781915693136
| 1915693136
| 3.95
| 308
| May 2024
| May 23, 2024
|
really liked it
|
“I never thought I’d have a child with the town drunk, that’s all. I’m sorry, but that’s how people will look at it. I never saw myself that way. I’m
“I never thought I’d have a child with the town drunk, that’s all. I’m sorry, but that’s how people will look at it. I never saw myself that way. I’m ashamed. It’s humiliating.” A brick crashed through the window. It had a note attached. Dominic untied the note and read it. “It says: I want my theodolite back,” he read. They looked through the broken window and saw the former Clerk of Maps walking back down the driveway, holding a bottle of brandy by the neck. “Looks like we have a new town drunk,” he said. Ghost Mountain is the 3rd novel by after Leonard and Hungry Paul and Panenka, all three publishe by the wonderful Bluemoose Books. It opens, strikingly, with the sudden appearance of a mountain: It was, in the ordinary sense of the word, a mountain. Emerging from the surrounding unfamous landscape, it was higher than all around it, though not very high. Limpet-shaped, its crest was bare and rounded, like a knee. It faced in all directions without preference, as mountains do. It obstructed both light and wind, but so too did it bring out their personalities. Light, accommodating and peaceful, addressed the mountain with shade and contrast, whereas wind, which is never the same twice, often became exercised by it. From one aspect there appeared to be two hollows, sitting like sunken sockets about halfway up its slope. A third hollow lay between but below the first two, creating what looked like a haunted expression, though the mountain did not, strictly speaking, ever express itself. When the time came to give it a name, it would be called Ghost Mountain because of those hollows. To say that the mountain was this or that. To ascribe it physical or metaphysical characteristics. To describe it in a way that separated it from everything that was not it – these are all habits of the human mind, and so, it could justifiably be said that all and any such remarks described the describer more than Ghost Mountain. Ghost Mountain had no mind. It did not describe itself. It had no self or self-view. Ghost Mountain was Ghost Mountain. All we know is that it appeared yesterday. But this isn't a geological tale, rather Ghost Mountain's appearance is the catalyst for a shake-up in the lives of various people in the local community, including: - a 50 year old single woman who discovers the mountain while walking her dog (who tragically chokes on a tennis ball) - the Acting Clerk of Maps who initially sees this as the validation of his campaign to finally make use of his theolidite (but in practice, whose life unravels): Surely the definitive record of any pre-existing mountain would be held by the Clerk of Maps at the ordnance survey office. The Clerk of Maps tried not to smile as he listened to the police. He couldn’t help them, he said, and then clarified that he wanted to help them but was unable to do so. He was leaning back in his chair with his fingers interlocked and his thumbs circling each other. “Why not?” they asked. “Well…” The pause was so important. It was the culmination of his career frustrations and his stilted initiative and his stunted professional conscientiousness and his unheeded warnings. “…the local maps don’t show elevation,” he said. - the town drunk (but, he's keen to emphasise, not an alcholic: “I enjoy getting drunk and being drunk, but I’m not addicted.”) who likes to throw bricks through people's windows with meaningful messages - the overseas landowner of the land on which the mountain has appeared, who has only recently discovered from the executrix of his estranged father's will that he has inherited the land, and is trying to work out whether this means he is rich, or is a liability; - the town butcher, something of a one-man advice service for the local community as they wait in line to be served, clutching the disconcertingly blood-stained tickets he hands out to manage payments in a Foyles-like system. - and Ocho and his wife Ruth, who react differently to the phenomenon, he cynical (he spreads seemingly self-fulfilling rumours that the death of the dog was the work of Satanists), her quasi-religious in her devotion to the mountain, their sex-life ("hee-haw") disrupted as a result, a in-joke from how his father taught him the facts of life after his mother discovered him pleasuring himself At the open farm, his father leaned his elbows on the fence at the donkey sanctuary. He had a philosophical look in his eyes. “Donkey milk is much better than cow milk. Much higher in goodness and lower in fat. It is the most like human breast milk.” He turned to Ocho. “Do you know what I mean?” Ocho, who didn’t know, said “Yes.” They waited there for quite some time. Ocho asked if he could pull some of the long grass outside the enclosure and feed it to the donkeys through the fence but his father said, “Not yet.” In time, one of the stallions mounted one of the Jennies and brayed in climax. “You see?” said his father, mysteriously. “Hee-Haw.” Ocho nodded. “Hee-Haw.” His father said it was OK to feed the long grass to the donkey now. As the above indicates there is a lot of Hession's whimsical humour in the set-up, but this is a rather darker novel than Leonard and Hungry Paul (and for me, benefits from it), with many of the characters forced to confront the reality of their lives, and more than a few deaths (starting with the tennis-ball choked/Satanically slaughtered dog - indeed one feels Hession might be having some gentle fun with the Richard Osman type genre). And as the novel progresses, we see the impact of Ghost Mountain on the lives of the next generation, a young man and woman both born as a result of the events, and whose lives are intertwined, perhaps more so than they realise. And the mountain simply remains, indifferent: And Ghost Mountain was Ghost Mountain. Another impressive novel from Hession and Bluemoose. The publisher Bluemoose Books is an award winning independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories. Stories are transformative and as publishers we delight in finding great new talent. We don’t have the heft of a London publishing house with the millions of pounds to promote our writers but we do manage through innovative marketing to get our books into high street bookstores and reviewed in the national press. If you’re looking for orange headed celebrity books, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. But if you want brilliant stories that have travelled from Hebden Bridge, across the border into Lancashire, down to London across to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and into the United States, Australia, India, Colombia and Greenland, Iceland and Bosnia Herzagovina then Bluemoose is the publisher for you. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 28, 2024
|
Sep 28, 2024
|
Sep 21, 2024
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
130
| 
| 1911284991
| 9781911284994
| B0CZPLRYMQ
| 4.00
| 7
| unknown
| Sep 12, 2024
|
liked it
|
We all thought the same way back then: when we go into the rain forest and become guerrillas, we’ll be fuelled by revolutionary fervour. Who cares wha
We all thought the same way back then: when we go into the rain forest and become guerrillas, we’ll be fuelled by revolutionary fervour. Who cares what we’ll eat or how we’ll get food? How is that even a problem? Truly. Looking back now, I realise how many questions actually revolved around eating. Delicious Hunger is the translation by Jeremy Tiang of a 2017 collection 可口的饥饿 by Hai Fan, and is published by Tilted Axis Press (see below). The 11 stories are all set in the jungle on the Malayan-Thai border region during the insurgents of the Malayan Communist Party. The insurgency lasted from 1968 to 1989, although its origins lay before that in the guerrilla army that fought for Malayan independence from the British Empire (1948-1960) and even the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army from WW2. The author himself, originally from Singapore (which, from references in the story he may have fled after the 1963 anti-communist security Operation Coldstore) was one such guerrila, rooting these stories in the authentic details of life in the jungle, and there is a wonderful illustrated glossary at the novel's end which explains, verbally and visually, some of the items which were key to their survival and are featured in the stories. [image] For a novel with the protagonists are idealists, the stories are refreshingly undidactic. The emphasis is on the sacrifices that the guerrilas undergo - the army use mines designed to cripple rather than kill so as to slow down the comrades of the large numbers left with the loss of limbs - the strong sense of comradery, the challenges of survival but also the pleasures of the terrain and nature - which are beautifully described - and yes the search for but pleasure taken in food (who knew how tasty food is when fried in elephant fat?). Wind blew from the hills, carrying tiny rain drops like stars, brushing across her face, playing with her hair, steeped in the invigorating fragrance of wild mint and worm wood. The crops, bathed by this storm, brimmed with irrepressible life. Banana leaves spread themselves wide, vibrant and green, shedding crystalline droplets with each jolt of wind. Shouldering her hoe, Donghua walked over to where she’d been working earlier, stepping on soil she’d just loosened, feeling a sort of skin-close tenderness. Her eyes, dull for so long, were regaining a faint glimmer of delight at the labour. The campaign ended in 1989 with the signing of the Peace Agreement of Hat Yai with both the Thai and Malay government, as Wikipedia notes rather drily: "When the Communist bloc in Europe collapsed in the late 1980s, the MCP had accepted the fact that they did not have any chance to form a communist government in Malaya. Malaysia by that time was one of the newly developed nations in Asia. Malaysia's economy was strong and the majority of Malaysia's citizens refused to accept communist ideology." And several of the later stories, perhaps the most poignant, concern the aftermath of peace, with the guerrilas setting into specially eatablished communities and also re-establishing contact with their families and indeed the families of comrades lost in battle. Just a few months ago, they’d still been guerrillas in grass-green, a single entity blending into the rain forest. You were issued the uniform as soon as you joined up, and the colour hadn’t changed for more than ten years—for decades, in fact. Be cause it was compulsory, no one had ever questioned it, and every one was used to it. Now they still wore uniform trousers as they built the vil lage, but their top halves were a rain bow of colours. As soon as they met their families, they changed to civvies. And fittingly given the collection's overall theme, one celebration revolves around the disinterring of hidden food supplies for one last feast together. Rather straightforward in purely literary terms - hence the 3.5* rating - but a fascinating new voice and setting and very much in line with the mission of the press. The publisher Tilted Axis Press is an independent publisher of contemporary literature by the Global Majority, translated into or written in a variety of Englishes. Founded in 2015, our practice is an ongoing exploration into alternatives - to the hierarchisation of certain languages and forms of translation, and the monoculture of globalisation. EDITORIAL VISION: TRANSLATING WATERS Tilted Axis Press publishes six to nine books a year. We focus on contemporary translated fiction and also publish poetry and non-fiction. Translating Waters is an editorial vision shaped by the migration of people, language, and ideas. From 2024, conceptual and literal bodies of water will be the framework of our titles. Beginning with the Pacific Seas, our list also covers the Indian Ocean as well as the Black Atlantic and the Black Pacific. Our publishing practice foregrounds the complex movement of language, stories, and imaginations. Often fugitive and always trailblazing, our authors and translators challenge how we read, what we think, and how we view the world. COMMUNITY: AFRO-ASIA / SOUTH-SOUTH SOLIDARITIES Building and nourishing community is part of our publishing practice. Inspired by the Afro-Asia Writers’ Association, literary collectives, and grassroots organisations, we seek collaborative and interdisciplinary projects that expand what constitutes the literary and build on existing solidarities across the globe. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 08, 2024
|
Sep 09, 2024
|
Sep 07, 2024
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
28
| 
| 1909585580
| 9781909585584
| 1909585580
| 4.00
| 1
| unknown
| Nov 05, 2024
|
really liked it
|
Dogs. There aren’t any: no one keeps them as pets and strays have been rounded up and shot. A problem of public hygiene, Lee says, which the governmen
Dogs. There aren’t any: no one keeps them as pets and strays have been rounded up and shot. A problem of public hygiene, Lee says, which the government has taken care of: now, no dogs, no disease. What about rats? I asked. Don’t stray dogs have a hygiene benefit, keeping down the rats? Also no rats, Lee said. But I keep seeing dogs out of the corner of my eye, at the edge of vision – today, trotting on the other side of the street, then scarpering around a corner. Yesterday, a dog with only three legs was skulking in the loading bay of a supermarket, where the food that’s gone off is dumped in skips. Their movement is whip-sharp. Even if it’s just the movement that catches my eye and by the time I’ve adjusted focus it’s too late, that dog was there. Officially there is also no hunger. Charles Boyle, runs the small independent publisher CB Editions, joint winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize. For his Overcoat, published under the pseudonym Jack Robinson, and for his contribution to literature generally, the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize jury gave Charles Boyle a special ‘The William Gass award for metafiction and for being the best person in publishing, like ever’: Charles's rather bemused, take here (http://sonofabook.blogspot.com/2018/0...). Invisible Dogs is his latest book, in the form of a travel diary by one of two British authors on a rather lengthy cultural trip to a unnamed/ficticious foreign country, where they follow a strictly controlled itinerary under the aid (and control?) of a local translator, Lee. There are shades of the books like Karinthy's Metropole in the sense of bewilderment in a foreign country - e.g. the mysterious claim of the authotarian state that they are no dogs in the city despite evidence to the contrary - and as the novel progresses the state starts to collapse around them. But much of what they see and do is banal - lots of inspections of various infrastructure projects replete with armfuls of impressive production statistics. In a postscript Boyle remarks that he studied various travel diaries: Most of the travel diaries I've been reading are those of white, male, European writers venturing into countries beyond their ken; most of them date from that period in the recent past - but it already feels almost medieval - when Western writers were seen as influencers and deployed overseas as soft power. The diaries were written up in notebooks on the road or late at night in hotel rooms, and not for publication - that came later, with introductions and footnotes by editors who often struggled with the authors' handwriting. And more than the hand-writing: in their introduction to the first volume of Einstein's travel diaries the editors acknowledge that Einstein 'advocated an "enlightened" form of colonialism, and did not always accept the basic humanity of the local populaces. and he refers particularly to Patrick Wright's Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao's China of a British delegation to China in 2014, where the author reflects on how the visiting party see Mao's nascent Communist republic through the lens of their own experience, such that tbe book is 'far more about post-war Britain and its inherited perspectives that it is about the reality of China.' Similarly here our narrator's experience colours his perceptions: Even Mike, who knows his baseball from his football, his chess from his beach volleyball, was baffled. The match we were taken to see at the national stadium was more football than cricket but sometimes the players used their hands and this was OK and sometimes there were two balls on the pitch at the same time. Lee's explanations were an extension of the game itself, prolonging our incomprehension. We had to deduce the rules from the stops and starts, what was cheered and what booed, but each time we thought we'd got a hold on what was good play the referee blew his whistle. I have no idea which team won. Maybe the rules are there to be bent, and players are applauded according to how elegantly or outrageously they do this. Maybe taking our cue for understanding from games we already know is not what we need to be doing. Maybe the point of the game is not to win but something else. Even the invisible dogs have a domestic counterpoint: I told the journalist that in my country it's not dogs but beggars that are invisible. Or as good as - they are street furniture, and we don't see them. Unless they have dogs with them, in which case we do see them. Another impressive work from one of the UK's finest authors. Bibliography Under the penname Jack Robinson: [image] Recessional (2009) - my review [image] Days and Nights In W12 (2011) - my review [image] by the same author (2017) - my review [image] An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B. (2017)- my review [image] Robinson (2017) - my review [image] Blush (2018) with Natalia Zagórska-Thomas - my review [image] Good Morning, Mr Crusoe (2019) - my review Boyle has also published under the pseudonym Jennie Walker: [image] 24 For 3 - my review And under his own name: [image] The Other Jack - my review [image] 99 Interruptions - my review [image] The Simplon Road with Ann Pearson- my review [image] Farthings: CB editions in 113 bites- my review [image] Invisible Dogs In addition to various books of poetry ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 17, 2024
|
Sep 20, 2024
|
Sep 06, 2024
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
59
| 
| 1739104722
| 9781739104726
| 1739104722
| 3.53
| 382
| unknown
| Apr 16, 2024
|
really liked it
|
Deidre sat up, blinked, aware now of the brightness of the room. It caught at her throat, clasped her there, a sudden desperation at this light, this
Deidre sat up, blinked, aware now of the brightness of the room. It caught at her throat, clasped her there, a sudden desperation at this light, this bright and horrifying light. The room had shrunk, the depths and shadows had gone, everything small now, smaller than it ought to be. A place of tired excess. All these things she had kept, had demanded to keep, because of what they meant to her; furniture her father had made, decorations from the old house, and all of them, these things she had said she could not live without, stained where she grabbed at them to grip her way around the room, and now this brightness, so that the stains glared, showing her what she already knew herself to be: a thing of need and desperation. Crooked Seeds is by Karen Jennings, who previous novel, An Island was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. As with that work, it is published by the small independent press Holland House Books, founded in 2012. And following her Booker longlisting Jennings founded The Island Prize, run by Holland House, curated with the primary aim of helping African writers break into the UK publishing scene. I first encountered the press via Kate Armstrong's brilliant The Storyteller which was longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize. We focus on literary fiction and non-fiction, ranging from Nathalie Abi-Ezzi’s Paper Sparrows, set in Lebanon, to Emma Darwin’s This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin, taking in Lili, the story of a Holocaust survivor, The Storyteller, an extraordinary novel about mental illness, Pax, a dual-narrative novel based on Rubens’ diplomatic visit to London, and An Island, an intense study of home and refugees. We also dabble in poetry, such as the wonderful illustrated poem ‘Greta and the Labrador’ and the beautiful bi-lingual Café By Wren’s St James-In-The-Fields, Lunchtime, by Anna Blasiak, with photographs by her partner, Lisa Kalloo. Jennings has stated that Crooked Seeds is the third in a series of novels, an “earth collection” with Upturned Earth and An Island, exploring “the connections to the land and what is buried and hidden. You can see how people are considering whose land it is.” And whereas The Island is set in an abstact setting, this, like Upturned Earth, is set in South Africa, specifically Cape Town, but a bleak but plausible near-future version in around 2029 (from references to the narrator's age in 1994 and now), where load-shedding is a daily occurrence, The Post Office is bankrupt, Table Mountain is ravaged by frequent wild fires, and there are extreme water shortgages. Nothing else to see in the dawn other than rooftops starting to appear slowly, a series of them, going back and back into the grey light, each straddling something dark and stillborn—the empty rooms of empty homes. So many people had left. Yet even in the ones that were inhabited, there was only darkness. Everyone was here now, in this queue. There was no other life. Crooked Seeds takes it's title from from the poem “Soonest Mended” by John Ashbery, particularly the closing lines, which form the novel's epigraph, but the opening line “Barely tolerated, living on the margin” is very much how Deidre, from whose perpsective most of the novel is written, would see herself. The novel sets out its stall, and Deidre's character, in the opening paragraph: She woke with the thirst already upon her, still in her clothes, cold from having slept on top of the covers. Two days, three, since she had last changed; the smell of her overcast with sweat, fried food, cigarettes. Underwear’s stink strong enough that it reached her even before she moved to squat over an old plastic mixing bowl that lived beside the bed. She steadied her weight on the bed frame with one hand, the other holding on to the seat of a wooden chair that creaked as she lowered herself. She didn’t have to put the light on, knew by the burn and smell that the urine was dark, dark as cough syrup, as sickness. Aged 53, Deidre lives on her own in somewhat self-inflicted squalor. She lost one of her legs in an accident (whose details emerge as the novel progresses) in 1994, in the run-up to the first truly democratic elections. She has never warn a prosthetic, claiming it felt strange whne she tried one, but, cynically, it's hard for the reader not to think she enjoys the benefits of her disability being visible: "Come on, help me out. Look at me, I’m a fucking cripple.” a typical refrain as she jumps queues, demands favours from acquaintances and strangers alike, and bums cigarettes and drinks. Deidre lives alone. Her father has passed away; Deidre's mother Trudy, who suffered from mental illness after Deidre's accident and the disappearance of Deidre's brother Ross, is in a nearby nursing home although Deidre relies on her neighbour Miriam to visit and care for Trudy; and Deidre's adopted daughter Monica now lives in the UK. Other chapters put us in the confused mind of Trudy, who imagines Ross is visiting her, a son from both her own memories and Deidre's who very much came first in her affections, and who she regarded as rather more successful ("A genius. That’s what he was, a real genius ... A mind like his is special. It gets bored easily. It isn’t motivated by this nonsense they teach at school.") than all evidence would suggest is warranted. Trudy's own brother Rossouw, after whom Ross was named, seems to be equally delusionally fated in the family and Deidre delights in pointing out: “Ja. The thing is, he was like the family god, the perfect specimen and everything. I don’t know, that side of the family has always been crazy about their sons. So, after high school he’s doing his compulsory service and he’s all set to go off and fight in the Border War, and the family’s already calling him a hero and he’s saving the country, just him on his own. I mean, that’s the shit my mom always told us, me and Ross, because he was named after him, right, this hero who gave his life for the country and was killed by some scum up there.” “Jesus.” Deidre came out of the bathroom. “Ja, but the thing is that none of it was even true. My dad told me that Rossouw never even made it to the war. He’d fucked some woman somewhere and got gonorrhea from her, and he was scared shitless about it and what his mom would say, so he drank a bottle of pills and choked to death on his own vomit.” And Ross's own story proves to be rather worse (view spoiler)[in his late teens, he was helping make bombs for a white-supramacist terrorist group who planned to disrupt the '94 elections: it was one of those bombs accidentally exploding that cost Deidre her leg (hide spoiler)], and when the former family home, appropriated by the Government, is being refurbished, some horrific discoveries suggest Ross's past may be even worse than Deidre suspected. However, the novel's plot feels less central to its success than the memorable awful character of Deidre, this her neighbour Miriam tries to discuss the forthcoming elections, only for Deidre to reveal she has never voted (and at the same reach for the implicit claim of reverse racism that underlies her self-pity): “Listen, it’s different for you. You’re Coloured so voting actually means something to you and your people because you were kept from it for all those years. So for you voting is like really meaningful, it has an actual reason.” “I can’t believe what you’re saying. Can you even hear yourself? Voting isn’t just for Coloureds or Blacks. It has a reason for everyone.” She shrugged, pushing out her lower lip. “I just never saw the point for me. The government doesn’t care about me, so why waste my time on it?” “Seriously?” The car swerved a little, but Miriam righted it at once, kept her eyes on the road. “You fucking live off a fucking disability grant. You don’t think that involves the government caring about you?” “Just relax, you’re getting too upset. I don’t vote, I never have, that’s all there is to it. Isn’t that my choice?” Miriam shook her head, chewed the insides of her cheeks. “You know what, Deidre, you’re really something else. Every time I think I’ve seen the worst of you, you come out with something even more terrible." And yet Jennings success is to show us, admist what seems to be unadulerated terribleness and blackly comic self-absorption, the little girl, the daughter as well as the mother, inside of Deidre: She hung up the phone, returned it to her bag, then looked up at the burning mountain, the scarred face of it, slopes of black and ruin, the great smoldering expanse parched and heaving. If only the rain would come, just a little bit of rain, to wet the soil, feed the seeds, so that something might grow again. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 08, 2024
|
Sep 08, 2024
|
Aug 30, 2024
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
4
| 
| 0593977300
| 9780593977309
| 0593977300
| 3.88
| 25
| Mar 04, 2025
| Mar 04, 2025
|
it was amazing
|
'We're open to everyone,' Indiya agrees. That said, the Universalists are a noticeably homogeneous group: young, middle class and white. 'This lifesty
'We're open to everyone,' Indiya agrees. That said, the Universalists are a noticeably homogeneous group: young, middle class and white. 'This lifestyle takes a leap of faith,' she explains. Intentional living requires a step away from the 'activism myopia' that can ('Understandably!' she stresses) afflict marginalised groups. Natasha Brown’s Assembly was a brilliant debut and one of the finest novels of 2021, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Her sophomore novel, Universality, due out in 2025, is also destined to be a contender for major prizes. While it ostensibly is more conventional stylistically, in its impact it is even more challenging to the literary and political status quo. It’s a novel about the power of words and stories – the stories we tell about others, the stories we tell ourselves and want to be told about us – and about privilege and about diversity, and the assumption that it’s others who benefit from both. The first quarter of the novel is (in the novel’s fictional world), an extended magazine article, originally published in June 2021, a New Journalism style investigative piece entitled “A Fool’s Gold”, based on an odd incident during lockdown when an illegal rave ended with one person being rendered unconscious, struck by a 400 ounce gold bar (current bullion price, close to £800,000). As the article’s author explains: Unravelling the events leading to this strange and unsettling night is well worth the trouble; a modern parable lies beneath, exposing the fraying fabric of British society, worn thin by late capitalism's relentless abrasion. The missing gold bar is a connecting node between an amoral banker, an iconoclastic columnist and a radical anarchist movement. The novel then moves on to the author of the piece, Hannah, a previously struggling journalist, who is hosting a dinner party with her friends to celebrate the news that the story is being turned into a TV story, although a fictionalised version with details changed to make it even more resonant (e.g. a key character becomes black) The truth, more often than not, benefited from the techniques of fiction. Every hack knew that. Although as we learn how Hannah came to write the article, we realise this adage applies as much to her original piece. The next section takes us to the story of the aforementioned “amoral banker”, Richard, original owner of the gold bar, whose life, to him entirely unfairly, has been ruined by the story. And the final section is an interview at a leading Literature Festival of the “iconoclastic columnist” Lenny Leonard who by contrast, is a beneficiary, parlaying her notoriety into a new career as a crusader against woke capitalism and a move from the right-wing press to the Observer [as she mentions more than once, appearing alongside ‘Cohen’, an intriguing reference]. During that interview she explains her modus operandi and that of the paper, including quotes such as We tell you want you want to hear, while convincing you that it’s the truth, told as close to objectively as possible and Your readers come away believing they are aggrieved on someone else’s behalf. And this is where the novel’s power lies. Whereas Assembly gave us the single narrator’s searing perspective on everything she saw around her (including, to an extent, checking her own privilege as an Oxbridge-educator city worker), here, with the multiple perspectives, everyone sees themselves, and those like them, as the victim. And the reader’s sympathy is then naturally drawn to those with who they identify – for me, far from being amoral, that would be banker Richard, at least for his professional (if not personal) life. I found myself nodding along with his lament when even an attempt, in GQ Magazine, to tell his side of the story turns into a hatchet job: Richard couldn't quite understand what it was about him that rankled these people so much. Hadn't he simply done what he was supposed to do? He'd taken the eleven-plus, made it into the grammar school, and simply followed that life path to its inevitable conclusion. He didn't hurt anyone, he didn't exploit anyone. He tried, as much as was possible, to work hard and fair. After the crash, he'd moved into regulatory risk ... working to prevent another crisis. And, as the divisional head, he'd ensured that there were women in senior roles, along with a broadly diverse management team. Indeed, he now had a network of colleagues who credited him as a friend and a mentor. He was proud of that legacy. His was not the monoculture of commoditised socialism, with its vague, moralistic promise to end discrimination. He was actually doing his part by hiring qualified candidates and giving them the same chance at success that he himself had received. All these 'writers' did, as far as Richard could tell, was spread gossip for fun and profit, stoking outrage and discontent without actually fixing anything. Inspiring stuff, at least to this reader. But that’s because as a white male (ex) banker from a working-class background, that’s not dissimilar to the story I tell myself as well – or indeed, of course, the story that Lou in Assembly told himself. And at the novel’s other end, are the “radical anarchists”who, as per my opening quote, have moved, in their view, beyond the ‘activism myopia’ of more marginalised groups, to an oddly exclusive worldview for self-proclaimed Universalists. So perhaps it is Lenny who is actually the one character who is most self-aware If anything, I’m a misanthrope. An equal-opportunity hater. Or is she the least self-aware character of all? A novel which will provoke some fascinating and challenging discussions next year, and another brilliant novel from an author who, rightly, was named as one of the 2023 class of Granta Best of Young British Novelists, part of the 'A Fool’s Gold' piece featuring in the magazine. A resounding 5 stars. Thanks to the author, via my twin, aka Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer, for the ARC. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 21, 2024
|
Aug 22, 2024
|
Aug 21, 2024
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
72
| 
| 1912620294
| 9781912620296
| B0CKGDVB9Z
| 3.93
| 83
| unknown
| Feb 01, 2024
|
really liked it
|
’Everyone. I would like to introduce our new resident.’ The woman-in-purple sits up in her chair, checks her hair. It is thinning, her roots re-growing ’Everyone. I would like to introduce our new resident.’ The woman-in-purple sits up in her chair, checks her hair. It is thinning, her roots re-growing. She is cooing and fluttering in anticipation of a new man. Another figure steps into focus beside boss-woman. It cannot be described as a man. Or a woman. The figure does not appear to conform to either gender. It is wearing one of those hats—floral, full-brimmed—like Jim’s mother used to wear to weddings. It is wearing pearlescent earrings. It is wearing lipstick. Crimson. It is wearing stubble upon its chin. And a ghastly confection of clothing, masculine and feminine. It is called John. ‘Joan, please.’ Its voice is sibilant. Its wrist is limp. Boss-woman laughs canned laughter at the correction, like she’s in some old sitcom. The woman-in-purple shrinks back in her chair, like she’s in a horror. ‘This is Eileen.’ Boss-woman works in a clockwise direction. ‘And that is Mary, knitting.’ The woman-in-dressing-gown is openly staring; her needles have ceased clicking. ‘Anya, in the corner.’ She points to where the woman-who-never-speaks sits, toes knotted like tree roots in the foot spa beneath her. ‘Jim, over there.’ He uses his book for cover. ‘And Harold, here.’ The other man—Nigerian or Jamaican—sucks his teeth loudly, deliberately. One Last Song by Nathan Evans is published by Inkandescent: INKANDESCENT is a publishing venture by Justin David and Nathan Evans with a commitment to ideas, subjects and voices underrepresented by mainstream publishing, we hope to discover and celebrate original, diverse and transgressive literature and art, to challenge the status quo. The publisher bills it as a romantic comedy about grey liberation - which sets the scene nicely for a story that is both conventional and yet subversive. Joan is an elderly gentlemen, a theatre designer and a veteran of the struggle for gay liberation, flamboyant in his dress sense, his manner and proclamation of his sexuality. But when he has one accident too many (falling asleep smoking a joint leads to a fire), he is sent by the council to a care home, where his arrival, as per the scene above, disrupts the cosy order of the residents. The person who takes most against him initially is Jim, not because (unlike some others) he disapproves of Joan’s homosexuality but rather because of the challenge to his own identity and indeed his sense of decorum. Jim is, or was (but he thinks he still is) a civil engineer, a one-man-man having lived for many year with his companion Dickie: When he had found himself in this—he will not use the word home —in this place, he found certain assumptions had been made about him. He had not seen occasion to challenge them. Assumptions had often been made about his ‘wife’ at home. His mother had gone to her grave believing Dickie lodged in the spare room. Of course, close friends had known. The narrations alternates between the first person of Joan and the close third person of Jim, which works neatly to represent the different filtering in the way in which they engage with the world. The tone of the novel is beautifully judged, gently comic with touch of the tragic, engaging the reader’s emotion, as well as their sense of humour, without descending too far into pathos, and the blurbs from figures ranging from Stephen Fry to Joelle Taylor, author of Night Alphabet, the UK’s best literary novel of 2024 speak to the wide audience to which this will appeal. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 19, 2024
|
Aug 20, 2024
|
Aug 18, 2024
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
178
| 
| 3.72
| 1,796
| 2006
| 2006
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Aug 18, 2024
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
177
| 
| 1915829135
| 9781915829139
| 1915829135
| 3.64
| 97
| 2018
| Nov 08, 2024
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
104
| 
| 1915829127
| 9781915829122
| 1915829127
| 3.39
| 31
| 2013
| Sep 13, 2024
|
liked it
|
"I missed you," I said, and you answered, "Me too." The exchange took less than a second, and to me that moment was the definition of happiness. Right "I missed you," I said, and you answered, "Me too." The exchange took less than a second, and to me that moment was the definition of happiness. Right now, even if I answer your "I love you" right away, it takes seventeen minutes and forty-four seconds for my response to reach you, and it takes another seventeen minutes and forty-four seconds for your response to come to me. Do you know what I find the most stifling about this distance? It's the frustration that comes from not knowing what is happening within that brief period of time between my talking to you and you responding to me. “보고 싶었어” 하고 내가 너에게 말했을 때, “나도” 하고 네가 나에게 대답해주기까지 단 1초도 걸리지 않았던 그 순간을, 나는 행복이라고 기억해. 사랑한다는 너의 말에 단 한 순간도 망설임 없이 대답해도 너에게 닿는 데 17분 44초가 걸리고 그 말에 대한 너의 대답이 돌아오는 데 또다시 17분 44초가 더 걸리는 지금의 이 거리를 두고 내가 가장 숨 막히는 게 뭔지 아니? 그건 대답이 돌아오기 전까지의 그 긴 시간 동안 우리 사이에 무슨 일이 일어나고 있는지 알 수 없다는 갑갑함이야. The Proposal is Stella Kim's translation of 청혼 by 배명훈. This is the third of the novelist's works to appear in English after Tower translated by Sang Ryu from the original 타워 and Launch Something translated by Stella Kim from the original 빙글빙글 우주군. All three are published by the wonderful small indy Honford Star: "Honford Star is committed to bridging literary worlds, celebrating the richness of East Asian literature. Our goal is to respect the authenticity and diversity of these narratives, bringing them to a global audience through collaborative partnerships with skilled translators, artists, and designers." And as with all Honford Star books, it is beautifully produced, here with design and cover art by Jisu Choi. The Korean original novel dates back to 2013 but this was comprehensively revised for re-publication in 2024 and using the same art work, as per the Kyobo Books page. '작가는 이번 개정 작업을 통해 거의 모든 문장을 다시 쓰는 정도로 조탁하고 묘사와 표현을 시대감각에 발맞추어 수정했다' - translation 'The author has revised nearly every sentence in this edition, refining the writing and updating the descriptions and expressions to reflect contemporary sensibilities.' The Korean word 청혼 is used specifically in the context of marriage, and this is, as the UK publisher bills it, a 'space opera romance' in the form of letters from a senior space-born officer in the Allied Orbital Forces to his girlfriend, earth-born and back on earth. Although the novel's emphasis is more on the conflict in which he is involved - this is more a space opera in the grand tradition than a space romance. The narrator, and the Earth's combined space fleet, are stationed in the solar system, 17m44s light minutes from earth - which would put that between Mars and Jupiter - and involved in active combat with a mysterious space force which keeps appearing and disappearing, presumed alien but whose ships and weapons are oddly similar, if a few years more advanced, to those of the human forces. And a combat that seemed to have been mysteriously forecast in a book of Prophecies written 25 years earlier and which led to the building of a massive space fleet in preparation for the attack: It was no ordinary feat to decide to build such a colossal fleet in the quiet outer space without any sign of threat. The initiative was even more impressive than the decision itself. Had the plan failed, everyone would’ve lost their jobs—some, their lives. They couldn’t have done it without considerable conviction. Sure, there was Prophecies, but that only predicted events of the next decade, and nothing about the following thirty years was right. Where in that iffy book could they have possibly gained such confidence? What could have fueled the madness of squeezing out such an astronomical sum to be spent on building an unprecedented and unparalleled fleet? For twenty-five years at that. And there is strong tension between both the space-born and the 'Earthians', not just their inability to easily function in each other's environments but also the resulting impact on their belief systems. And, related to that, between the Allied Orbital Forces, led by General De Nada (a code name, referring to him largely commanding the emptiness of outer space) and the Inspection Force sent from earth to investigate rumours of a rebellion, led in turn by General Liddell (who take his nom-de-guerre from the early-mid 20th century military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart, into which our protagonist is caught up. To his surprise when our narrator visits General Liddell's quarters he finds he has on his bookshelves three 'holy books': The first was the Bible featuring Jesus Christ- the belief of Earthians in the fundamental human feature of being able to distinguish between up and down. The next was Prophecies— the manifestation of the doubts that the land that humanity had been grounded in might not be as firm as we think; the prophecy of an the encounter with beings from somewhere beyond the universe, the ensuing war, and the culmination of these events being the emergence of an enigmatic celestial body known as the Temple of Doom, which would serve as a channel connecting this side of the universe to the world beyond; the declaration that the interdimen-sional portal would not only pour out extraterrestrial beings but gradually shift into Earth's orbit, eventually swallowing Earth whole and spitting it back out the other end. The holy book that stuck out, however, was the third one. It was the book that the UES was consulting in an effort to respond to all possible threats. Do you know what that book was? It was a guide on fleet tactics and strategies, penned by General De Nada. While there is a decisive development in the battle, this isn't a book that wraps things up neatly, and indeed it's closer to a novella in length. The reader is left to speculate on who the 'aliens' are for example (view spoiler)[actual aliens travelling through a portal as pure the prophecy; rebel humans possibly from a time a few years in the future; or is the whole thing a set-up to justify the vast military-industrial expense? (hide spoiler)], and it's a novel that seems to set itself up for a sequel, although I'm not aware one was published. My review of Tower concluded: "A lot of fun to read, yet containing some important and well-thought through messages about power dynamics in modern states and communities. In SF terms this tends much more to the allegorical than the 'wholly coherent world-building' end, which to me is a positive," and while there are similarities here (in particular about how different communities should understand each other) this tilted more to the pure space-opera for my personal taste. I'd rank the novels 'Tower' -'The Proposal'-'Launch Something!' in descending order of my preference. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 15, 2024
|
Sep 15, 2024
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
176
| 
| 1916806023
| 9781916806023
| 1916806023
| 4.58
| 8,950
| Feb 14, 2022
| Oct 22, 2024
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
149
| 
| 1916806007
| 9781916806009
| 1916806007
| unknown
| 2.07
| 14
| Jan 01, 2003
| Sep 17, 2024
|
it was ok
|
He prowls alongside me, without a glance, without a word, without a sound. He doesn't say a thing. He has no intention of saying anything, or he would
He prowls alongside me, without a glance, without a word, without a sound. He doesn't say a thing. He has no intention of saying anything, or he would have done so by now. He's on the right, I'm on the left; an invisible wall hangs between us. What more could there be to say now? You're no help, you're a fucking burden to me, Dad. You could have helped me, but you didn't. You didn't tell me Karl was dying. But you know everything. You knew and you didn't tell me. This is how you punish me for never wanting to see you again. It's easy for a spy like you, obtaining information and deliberately withholding it, as soon as you're deprived of something. But I'm not your go-between, Dad, you have to get it into your head: you're not my commanding officer. Marzahn, mon amour (2022), translated by Jo Heinrich from Katja Oskamp's 2019 original was winner of the prestiguous 2023 Dublin Literary Award, and shortlised for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize. Half Swimmer is a 2024 translation also by Heinrich of Oskamp's debut novel Halbschwimmer from 2003. This is the first person story of Tanja, a young woman growing up in East Germany, the tale of her life either side of the fall of the Berlin Wall, told in vignettes over the years. These centre on the relationship with her father, a military intelligence officer, her first love affair with an actor 20 years her senior, and her marriage to a conductor. I wasn't the biggest fan of Marzahn, mon amour, due to the literary simplicity of the stories, but I could appreciate the way the stories, told to a chiropodist, cohered to give a fascinating picture of a community, and the charm with which they were told. This book has a rather narrower perspective, and lacks the charm - and, much as I'd like to say otherwise - was disappointing. 2.5 stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 22, 2024
|
Sep 22, 2024
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||
10
| 
| 3.85
| 2,627
| 1936
| 1940
|
it was amazing
|
“Behold thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." Meek! That was a word Benedikt could understand. He c “Behold thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." Meek! That was a word Benedikt could understand. He could understand how the Son of God could be meek and riding upon the foal of an ass, for of all things living and dead nothing is too small for service, and there is nothing that is not consecrated through service. Even the Son of God. And only through service. The Good Shepherd is Kenneth C Kaufman's 1940 translation of the 1936 novel Aðventa (Advent in English) by Gunnar Gunnarsson, an author considered a number of times for the Nobel Prize and who the Nobel Committee debated jointly awarding the 1955 prize that was given to fellow Icelandic author Halldor Laxness. I came to the novel via the Beyond the Zero podcast with Jón Kalman Stefánsson who cited the book as one of the best Icelandic novels of the last century, a key influnce on his brilliant Heaven and Hell trilogy, and, he, suspects similarly influential on Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. The novel (or perhaps novella) opens: When a holy season approaches men make ready for it, each after his own manner and kind. There are many ways. Benedikt too had a way all his own; and this was his way: At the beginning of the Christmas season, that is when the weather permitted, if possible on the first Sunday of Advent, he would pack food, changes of socks and several pairs of new leather shoes in a knapsack, and with these a small oil stove with a can of kerosene and a small flask of spirits. Then he would take the way to the mountains, the desolate mountains of Iceland, where at this season of the year nothing was to be found but birds of prey, hard and cruel as winter itself, foxes, and a few scattered sheep, lost and wandering about. And it was for the sake of these very sheep that he went forth, animals which had not been found at the regular autumn in-gathering. They must not be allowed to perish up there from hunger and cold merely because none would take the trouble or the risk to seek them out and bring them home. They too were living creatures of God and he felt a kind of responsibility for them. His aim then was simple enough-to find them and bring them safe and sound under shelter before the great festival should spread its benediction over the earth, and bring peace and satisfaction in the hearts of men who have done their best. Benedikt was always alone on this Advent Journey of his - that is, no man went with him. To be sure he had his dog along and his bell-wether. The dog he had at this time was called Leo, and as Benedikt put it, he earned his name, for truly he was a Pope among dogs. The wether was named Gnarly; that was because he was so tough. These three had been inseparable on these expeditions for a number of years now, and they had gradually come to know one another with that deep-seated knowledge perhaps to be found only among animals of such divergent kinds that no shade of their own ego or own blood or own wishes or desires could come between them to confuse or darken it. Benedikt is 54 and this is his 27th year going out at advent, in the harsh winter weather, to seek the lost sheep - and we learn that all of his sheep are actually accounted for, it is the strays of others he is seeking to rescue. As he sets out with his trusted companions Gnarly and Leo, who as the quote implies he regards as every bit his equal in the 'trinity' that constitutes the team, he meditates not on the coming of Christ, but rather his passion, and on Matthew 21, verse 5 in particular, itself a quote of course from Zechariah 9:9. And a Matthew 5 like service is key to Benedikt's ethos, one that is somewhat taken advantage of by those he encounters on his way to the mountains who have him help them with various other tasks (e.g. rounded up some stray horses), with the effect that by the time he is able to start his real mission he is delayed by a week versus his normal schedule, meaning exposure to worse weather and diminshing food supplies for the trio. There's something of a resigned inevitability to the laconic way he accepts, if not his fate, certainly the heightened risk (John 10:11 giving rise to the epigraph and the English title), although there are latent hints of something more troubled in his past: He had been in anguish - but this was long ago and this anguish too lay buried in the mountains. Nowadays all was peaceful in him and about him. Peaceful and quiet like the mountain. And give the Icelandic mountains are the source of the harshest weather conditions (he estimates it to hit -30 - Farenheit or Celsius isn't specified but is actually little different) and volcanic eruptions, the last sentence there is doubled-edged. But there is also hope - others he encounters try hard to help and the combination of the ram, man and dog has a powerful survival instinct, so that the reader is never sure what ending to expect (or fear). A beautifully written book, and one that stands alongside Keegan's Small Things Like These (as Benedikt stands alongside Bill Furlong) as a perfect Christmas novel. One of the illustrations by Masha Simkovitch: [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 29, 2024
|
Aug 29, 2024
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
142
| 
| 1913175626
| 9781913175627
| 1913175626
| 3.58
| 24
| unknown
| May 28, 2024
|
liked it
|
‘People find it difficult.’ ‘What?’ ‘The falling apart. To witness it.’ Like Water Like Sea is the second novel by Olumide Popoola after her debut When W ‘People find it difficult.’ ‘What?’ ‘The falling apart. To witness it.’ Like Water Like Sea is the second novel by Olumide Popoola after her debut When We Speak of Nothing. It is published by Cassava Republic: Cassava Republic Press was founded in Abuja, Nigeria, 2006 with the aim of bringing high quality fiction and non-fiction for adults and children alike to a global audience. We have offices in Abuja and London. The novel opens: 1. The Swimmer Looking up from underneath, it made the sun blurry. The water swishing against my face, a thin layer, not enough to enter my nostrils. I was looking for her. I wanted to know what it was like, to be drowning, losing your breathing to suffocation. Of course, I didn’t last. I didn’t have enough drive to do it, didn’t have enough reasons. You would have to be invested in the idea, digging deep for this to be your final answer. Nothing like that was on my mind. I wasn’t feeling despair. Not in that way. It is hard to take your own life. I think it is against your own body. Such an effort, incredible. I knew that before I jumped into the River Lea with my clothes on. You had to orchestrate the whole thing and pay attention to the variables. The only thing I had done was leave Mum’s after the not-so-unusual but still weird morning. For some reason I went straight to Hackney thinking, let’s see this thing, drowning. Mum was stable as we both called it but on the unstable side of that. She had been rummaging through a big cardboard box packed tight with clothes. I thought she was looking for something that belonged to Johari. It was ten years this year. The first person narrator here, Nia, is in her late twenties. Ten years earlier her sister, Mia, Johari had drowned herself in the River Lea, tormented by an early diagnosis of the onset of cyclothymia, their mother SuSu having suffered with bipolar disorder from just after Johari's conception and a traumatic trip she took with her husband, Ben, to Gaza. Explaining the novel in an interview in The Republic, a Nigerian cultural journal, Popooll commented: ‘I felt it was important to write about disruptive and sometimes public manic or psychotic episodes, both to raise awareness and to question why we claim to hold space but are not prepared to accept what falling apart entails.’ The novel as read/printed, has three sections - All Water Goes Somewhere, Like Water Like Sea and Everything Makes Mud, Even The Dirt, the first two around 100 pages and the last, which presents endings (see below) around 30. And within the first two parts there are three intertwined strands: The Swimmer - narrated by Nia, and which takes us through her life over the next 10+ years, not always with clear time markers, the narration jumping forward but also containing her retrospective analysis of things that have happened, including her relationships with two women, Temi, who she is dating as the novel opens and Alicia, a statistician. Alicia's Colombian mother died when she was a child and her Irish father moved the family to Dublin, but Alicia eventually returns to the country to work, and when Nia visits her there When Alicia moves to Columbia, she realises Alicia can truly be at home in a way she and Nia can't in London, despite Nia's strong and abiding love for the city: I felt the same when I visited Kenya and hung out with relatives. When everywhere I looked, bodies like mine were the norm. I decompressed, physically. I could feel the edges and curves, the corners of myself, which made me feel awkward sometimes and as if I was entirely new to my own being. It freed me too, that I was able to breathe into myself and to leave my own shape hanging, which meant letting go of the tension of entering a world where the way I moved was always already explaining, or defying, where I negotiated the normality of hostility, where your body, and your mind, meaning mine, were, was, never neutral. The Dancers - set when Johari and Nia were teenagers, and which begins with an encounter between Johari and a new boy in the area Melvin, who she persuades to join her in performing their own freely interpreted dance outside of a dance studio. Johari and Melvin form a strong bond, and Nia here is more the seldom-mentioned younger sister in the background, but we learn from The Swimmers that Melvin and Nia dated, even before Johari's death, and became strong friends, and occassional lovers, thereafter. Melvin we learn also has a trauma of his own, a twin sister who died at birth, something which leaves him feeling incomplete. The Climber - the sections that appear least frequently, but told from SuSu's perspective, and which gives some of the backstory that would be less clear to Nia, including the reason for her interest in Gaza, and the plight of the Palestinians, which is motivated by learning of the early 20th century Uganda Scheme which a friend, also of Kenyan origin, points out could have left Kenyans in a similar plight. In All Water Goes Somewhere Nia is, if not exactly rescued (since as she explains she was simply experimenting) certainly helped by two joggers, Rahul and Crystal, who find her in the river and she forms a strong bond with them, including a rather failed threesome attempt, but the Like Water Like Sea section opens with a house-warming party for their new flat where it becomes clear that Rahul, in particular, has little sympathy for what happened to her, and sees himself as something of a saviour. As Be, a guest she meets at the party, and who becomes another close friend with whom Nia has a particularly complex relationship tells her: ‘People find it difficult.’ ‘What?’ ‘The falling apart. To witness it.’ I nodded. ‘You could talk to Rahul, find out why he’s so angry with you.’ ‘I’ve tried.’ ‘You can try again.’ ‘I could.’ I could tell him what had mattered that weekend. It would hurt him because it had nothing to do with him. All that had happened between us after the water was good sex and spare time. Then over the months, a bond had formed. Perhaps he needed me to need him. And that witnessing of someone falling apart, particularly someone who might normally be there for you, is key to Nia's relationship with her mother, and the challenge with navigating her own life. The last section, Everything Makes Mud, Even The Dirt, written in the conditional tense, presents three hypothetical, if not endings more what might have happened next, looking ahead to Nia's 50th birthday, with chapters called “This,” “or this,” or “Probably, most likely, this.” Like everyone, we had to learn about the cracking open. How to allow it, the falling apart, the catching each other. To be caught you had to let go. I didn’t know whether we failed her. I didn’t know. I liked to think she was still swimming. Just like us. Just like we all were. I would have to acknowledge slightly mixed views on this. The characters' tangled lives and fluid relationships mirror the complexities of life (although this sort of novel where one needs to keep track of who is who is not really for me, and for example I struggled to share Nia's outrage at the events of the party that opened the second section). And an exploration of living with someone with bipolar disorder is a welcome addition to the literary spectrum. Against that the 'The Dancers' strand didn't really work for me, the Melvin character not really developed, and I'd have liked, by contrast, to see more of 'The Climber' and an exploration of SuSu, who is more often aluded to than seen on the page. 3.5 stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 24, 2024
|
Aug 25, 2024
|
Aug 16, 2024
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
79
| 
| 9881478243
| 9789881478245
| B01ED2THL8
| 4.00
| 1
| unknown
| Apr 15, 2016
|
really liked it
|
The 30th edition of the Asia Literary Review focused on Korean literary fiction (and some poetry) of and about the under 40 generation. It includes a
The 30th edition of the Asia Literary Review focused on Korean literary fiction (and some poetry) of and about the under 40 generation. It includes a fascinating essay by Deborah Smith (who has recently won the International Booker Prize for her translation of The Vegetarian by 한강) which was also featured in the South Morning China Post. I came to this rather late - my copy was given to me in person in August 2024 by the managing editor of the review Philip Kim and it is fascinating to see how some of the authors have gone on to a higher profile in English - notably the first four featured. The included fiction is My Uncle Bruce Lee by 천명관 (Cheon Myeong-kwan), translated by Susanna Soojung Lim. The author's debut novel, 고래 was later translated as Whale by Chi-Young Kim and shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize, and won the Shadow Jury Prize from a group of bloggers and reviewers, of which I was one. An extract from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child by 김 애란 (Kim Ae-ran), translated by Chi-Young Kim, who went on to translate the whole novel which was published as My Brilliant Life An extract from ButterFlyBook by 김사과 (Kim Sagwa or literally Apple Kim), translated by Sunny Jeong - again the whole novel was ultimately to be published as b, Book, and Me Speeding Past by 한유주 (Han Yujoo), translated by Janet Hong. The author's debut novel 불가능한 동화 was translated by Janet Hong as The Impossible Fairy Tale, and published by Deborah Smith's Tilted Axis Press, the translation winning the TA First Translation Prize from the Society of Authors and the LTI Korea Translation Award. Deborah Smith reminds us in her piece of the key influence of Thomas Bernhard on 한유주's writing. Snowman by 서유미 (Seo Yoo-mi), translated by Soyoung Kim, a wonderful sketched piece about the pressures of salaryman lifestyle, with the narrator under pressure to come to the office despite a once-in-a-generation snow storm. Wang's Whole-Chicken Stew by 김이설 (Kim Yi-seol), translated by Eun Kyung DuBois and Nathan A. DuBois, where a young mother finds herself taking a demeaning job while her husband studies for the civil service exam. An extract from Seven Cat's Eyes by 최제훈 (Choi Jae-hoon), translated by Yoonna Cho, a clever murder-mystery novel with an online group of netizens interested in serial-killer mysteriously gathered in one place. Children in the Air by 김성중 (Kim Seong Joong), translated by Stella Kim, a dystopian tale of a boy and girl who appear to be the last survivor's on the planet after an event which makes everyone disappear, and all of the buildings start to rise into the air. Wonderboy by 김연수 (Kim Yeonsu), translated by Sora Kim-Russell, set in 1984 and featuring 백남준's Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, and which has a 15yo boy hailed as something of a hero after his father foils, at the cost of his own life, a North Korean spy (except that's not what the boy remembers). In addition there is poetry (although one piece is closer to fiction) by 김경주 (Kim Kyung-ju) translated by Jake Levine and 김민정 (Min-jeong Kim), translated by Won-Chung Kim. An excellent collection - every piece strong. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 14, 2024
|
Aug 15, 2024
|
Aug 14, 2024
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
92
| 
| 1529949351
| 9781529949353
| 3.34
| 65
| May 29, 2015
| Oct 17, 2024
|
liked it
|
The type of woman who wants to get married at least once. According to the gallery woman, that was the category I fell under. So, this was the world w
The type of woman who wants to get married at least once. According to the gallery woman, that was the category I fell under. So, this was the world we lived in, one where even spouses could be rented. W&L charged NM members a high annual subscription and a matrimonial fee and, in return, offered them a selection of spouses. It was like the spouses were luxury personal items like a Dior perfume or a Birkin bag. 한번쯤 결혼해보고 싶은 여자. 그녀는 내가 그 범주에 속한다고 했다. 이제는 배우자도 임대하는 세상이 됐구나. 고액의 연회비와 혼인성사자금을 지불하는 회원들에게, 이런 아내는 어떠신가요? 하고 내미는 기호품이 된 기분이었다. The Trunk (2024) is the English translation by the collective The KoLab of the 2015 novel 트렁크 by 김려령 (Kim Ryeo-ryeong), with a Netflix series based on the original due shortly. The story behind the English translation is a fascinating one, prepared by a group of students in Australian universities as a colloborative exercise, rather than commissioned for publication. Those students led by Dr. Adam Zulawnik, at the University of Melbourne, and Yonjae Paik of the Australian National Univerisity, were Yoon-kyung Joo, Violet Reeves, Kiah Greenwood, Sunny Kandula, Cheyenne Lim, Keith Wong, Daniel Gage-Brown, Sneha Karri, Mimi Lee, Vienna Harkness, Injee Nam, Jamie Lim-Young, and Aditi Dubey (the latter of whom contributes an afterword). I first came across the translation-in-progress via the website of the leading reviewer of Korean fiction in translation, Tony Malone, who reviewed on his blog and fed back on the first version of the translation, and whose contribution to the eventual publication of the novel is acknowledged by both Zulawnik and Paik in their respective afterwords. It's a great initiative and hopefully not the last such one we will see. The novel is narrated by Inji (인지), 29 years old and in her sixth year working as a FW (Field Wife) for NM (New Marriage) a elite, secretive division of the matchmaking company W&L (Wedding and Life) [the novel neatly skewering the corporate obsession with acronyms]. New Marriage takes matchmaking to a different level by providing temporary (typically 1 year) wives for clients who prefer to take a less conventional approach to matrimony, the marriage dissolved at the end of the contract with no need for a messy divorce. Although as Inji's typically frank reaction when she is first approached to work in the division suggests, there is a potentially seedy side to the transaction: Contract spouses—what on earth? I remember thinking. FWs were just escorts, but with insurance and a high salary. This was institutionalized prostitution. Fuck, why have I been picked for this? Is that the sort of impression I gave her? I even considered reaching out to a journalist friend of mine to say that I had discovered a juicy story. If the story got some attention, I could maybe even get a gig out of it. “Breaking news! A dark secret hidden under the promise of love! Matchmaking company revealed to be escort service!” The UK blurb bills this as a 'feminist thriller' and, as with other reviewers, I have to say that it isn't that at all - it's more of a 'misogamistic melodrama', questioning the traditional institution of marriage (while pointing out the flaws of this rather radical alternative). And it's a topic which is key to South Korea's demographic crisis, with birth outside of wedlock (I use the old fashioned term deliberately given the context) is much lower than in most developed countries - e.g. from NPR, "Korea saw 2.5% of births outside marriage in 2020; the U.S., by comparison, recorded 40.5%." The thriller label is particularly odd in that there isn't really one central driving plot strand, but rather several, most of which aren't really resolved: - Inji's own developing thoughts as to whether she wants to stay working as a Field Wife, as she also navigates office politics; - a co-field wife who has fallen pregnant during her marriage and wants to keep the child, even though her client husband doesn't; - the unusual request of her latest 'the husband' (she doesn't refer to her clients by name in her own thoughts) that they renew the contract for another year; - 'the husband's' rather secretive career as a music producer, working anonymously with an unnamed famous musician; - 'Granny', Inji's neighbour, who is having a late-life fling with a toyboy, who seems to primarily use her to buy good from his pyramid marketing schemes; - someone who Inji's friend introduces to her for a blind-date who turns into something of an obsessive stalker, not taking no for an answer and showering her with unrequested gifts of home made ddeok. And when the company have to intervene, this is turn leads to a story suggesting corruption and modern slavery within New Marriage which perhaps is the strand that the 'thriller' label is hinting at but actually feels rather incidental to the novel; - Inji's relationship with her best friend from school days, and their memories of their mutual friend who died at their coming-of-age party; - her relationship with her mother, including hints of a romantic relationship her mother vetoed as Inji's paramour was bisexual ("Well, I actually prefer it coming in the other way" is Inji's retort when her mother says his acts with other men are unnatural). Many of these explore, in a very unsentimental fashion, various aspects of sexuality, relationships and marriage, and working culture, although others (e.g. the music story) appear to be pure distractions. But perhaps the novel is oddly better for that - the messiness of the plot, and the lack of straightforward morals of the story reflecting the complexities and non-binary subtleties of modern-life. And this is a welcome anecdote, for my taste, to the trend of twee 'healing magical coffee-scented laundromat which sells books' genre that seem to have dominated Korean literature in translation in the last 12 months. 3.5 stars ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 18, 2024
|
Aug 19, 2024
|
Aug 12, 2024
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
181
|
| 3.40
|
liked it
|
Oct 05, 2024
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
|||||
182
|
| 4.40
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 06, 2024
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
|||||
180
|
| 3.98
|
not set
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
||||||
179
|
| 3.90
|
not set
|
Sep 28, 2024
|
||||||
95
|
| 3.74
|
liked it
|
Oct 02, 2024
|
Sep 21, 2024
|
|||||
36
|
| 3.95
|
really liked it
|
Sep 28, 2024
|
Sep 21, 2024
|
|||||
130
|
| 4.00
|
liked it
|
Sep 09, 2024
|
Sep 07, 2024
|
|||||
28
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Sep 20, 2024
|
Sep 06, 2024
|
|||||
59
|
| 3.53
|
really liked it
|
Sep 08, 2024
|
Aug 30, 2024
|
|||||
4
|
| 3.88
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 22, 2024
|
Aug 21, 2024
|
|||||
72
|
| 3.93
|
really liked it
|
Aug 20, 2024
|
Aug 18, 2024
|
|||||
178
|
| 3.72
|
not set
|
Aug 18, 2024
|
||||||
177
|
| 3.64
|
not set
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
||||||
104
|
| 3.39
|
liked it
|
Sep 15, 2024
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
|||||
176
|
| 4.58
|
not set
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
||||||
149
|
| 2.07
|
it was ok
|
Sep 22, 2024
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
|||||
10
|
| 3.85
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 29, 2024
|
Aug 17, 2024
|
|||||
142
|
| 3.58
|
liked it
|
Aug 25, 2024
|
Aug 16, 2024
|
|||||
79
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Aug 15, 2024
|
Aug 14, 2024
|
|||||
92
|
| 3.34
|
liked it
|
Aug 19, 2024
|
Aug 12, 2024
|
Loading...
