Today we have our third and final Peirene Press readathon discussion post, of the 'Small Epic: Unravelling Secrets' series, which is made up of The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg, The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul and Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe (for reviews, see the links at the bottom of the page.)
For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which have not been
translated into English prior to now. Peirene novellas are organised into groups of three because of thematic and
other similarities, the idea being that they inform and
comment on each other.
Here are mine and Sam's thoughts on the series:
L: Hi Sam, how are you? Have you enjoyed the 'Small Epics: Unravelling Secrets' series? Did you have a particular favourite?
S: Before we started the readalong, this was the series I was most anticipating and it hasn't disappointed. Although I enjoyed all three, The Brothers was my favourite. I loved the gothic, wintery setting and the atmosphere that crept into the story. It was the book that most transported me to another time and place (Finland) and the author kept me guessing with all the family secrets and twists and turns. As I love historical fiction, it probably isn't a surprise that I enjoyed this one so much!
L: That's fab; for me, my favourite is a tie between The Brothers and The Murder of Halland - I loved them both! I agree with your thoughts on the beautiful atmosphere and unexpected plot line of The Brothers; I found it so completely immersive and evocative, and so wide in scope and meaning. Just thinking about it now, I feel chilly, and I can picture the enormous, war-like horse! I loved The Murder of Halland for different reasons: it really got under my skin. I loved the narration, the nature and complex ambiguity of the story and the way in which Bess, the main character, was allowed to be irrational, passive and downright exhausted for a lot of the story. It seemed to me to be a very enlightened and honest account of grief and it still crosses my mind often.
L: Do you think these three books deserve the title of 'Small Epics'?
S: The Brothers and Sea of Ink were unquestionably epic, but The Murder of Halland doesn't seem as grand initially. But it is epic in terms of the journey the central character takes emotionally after the murder of her husband.
L: Yeah, I came to a similar conclusion: the fact that after reading The Murder of Halland I feel I have a better understanding of the experience of grief definitely pushes it into 'epic' territory, as that's quite a thing to achieve! It easy to see, with the scope of the novellas, and the way the specific stories speak of the world in general terms, why The Brothers and Sea of Ink come under the 'Small Epic' title. It's perhaps particularly clever, in fact, that the books are grouped in this to make us actually this about what an 'epic' really is.
L: Considering that they are linked as a thematic trio, did you see any similarities between them, or any common themes? Any differences, also?
S: Tricky question! The settings and time periods are all very different. Sea of Ink and The Murder of Halland are both about individuals in difficult circumstances (political upheaval in China and a murder investigation) whereas The Brothers is more about how a family unit reacts to a difficult circumstance (war). But then The Murder of Halland and The Brothers are linked as they are concerned with family relationships and what family means to us.
L: That's true. I think another strong similarity is that they are all concerned with the true finding of self: The Brothers have to alter what they believe to be the truths about their lives radically, and Bess in Halland finds that she really didn't know her partner or her ex-husband at all, whilst getting to know her estranged daughter, who is a huge part of her self. And in Sea of Ink, Bada Shanren has a great number of different incarnations; so much so that he keeps changing his name! That exploration of truth, secrets and humanity felt like a common theme to me. As for differences....I can only think of superficial ones.
L: Seeing as this is our final discussion post, how do the first three books, from Female Voices, appear in the context of the other six? And Male Dilemma? Do you see any similarities throughout all nine?
S: I've really enjoyed the readathon. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the first book in each series (Beside the Sea for 'Female Voices', Next World Novella for 'Male Dilemma' and The Brothers for 'Small Epics') the most, although I can't think of a logical reason for this! Aside from top quality writing, all the novellas deal mainly with the human condition and put you inside the head of a range of distinctive characters. I'm glad that I've read them all, especially some that I would never have picked up without the readalong.
L: That's so funny! I'd say my favourites have been The Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, Stone in a Landslide, The Brothers and The Murder of Halland, so no particular patterns there :) Agreed on the huge mix of wildly interesting characters, and kudos to Peirene for placing so many unsympathetic and challenging ones in there too. Cheesy I know, but having read them all, I'll read everything they publish from now on as I trust them to pick good books for me!
It's been interesting in this last week to re-read Sea of Ink in the context of the other books, and in the right order, as I started with that one back in September. Now, I can see that Bada Shanren, whilst being Chinese, historical and based upon a real painter, has a huge amount in common with the most modern European literary creations, which I suppose is a reminder of the fact that people and what it means to be human rarely change.
The reviews in our Peirene Press Readathon series:
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine)
¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Peirene Discussion Post #1 - Female Voices: Inner Realities
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig (mine) ¦ Sam's
Peirene Discussion Post #2 - Male Dilemmas: Quests for Intimacy
The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Today we have The Murder of Halland, the final book in Peirene Press' 'Small Epics: Unravelling Secrets' trio and the eighth book in mine and Sam from Tiny Library's full Peirene Press Readathon, in which we read all of their novellas published to date (...although maybe I have a copy of the as-yet unreleased The Mussel Feast as well, who knows?:) Peirene
Press, for those who don't know, is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which, for some reason or other, have not been
translated into English before now.
The Murder of Halland is the story of Bess, a Danish woman living in a small town, attempting to cope with the aftermath of the murder of her partner Halland, who is shot with a hunting rifle one morning upon leaving the house to go to work. Her first personal narration allows the reader into her mind, through a door left shockingly wide open, and to also observe the peripheral activities of both the police's murder investigation and also the unknown figures with a sometimes-suspect link to Halland who start appearing out of the woodwork.
I found this book to be an absorbing, bewildering, touching read, which almost made me late for work one morning as I couldn't put it down. The writing is sparse and leaves wide lacunas for the reader to fill - this is an intuitively written book for the intuitive reader. There is no spoon-feeding, let's say! Pia Juul is a wildly successful exponent of the subtle skill of saying vs. not saying, and her written is totally immersive: I had the creepy sensation I few times of feeling that I was Bess, which was bizarre, frankly, and alienating beyond the page. She really got under my skin.
I thought the portrayal of the relationships in the book was excellent too, and very affecting, particularly with regards to Abby, Bess' estranged daughter, who is to Bess, after not seeing her for a decade
...the most beautiful creature I had ever seen...
and also Brandt, her neighbour. The people who stumble into her life looking for Halland or wanting something from him are skilfully drawn, some of them barely appearing on the page, and they were all useful, fleshed out and not a look or word is wasted. There's his 'niece' Pernille who is heavily pregnant; Funder, the detective; Troels, Bess' ex-husband. Each have a place in the structure and subversion of what is a re-imagined murder mystery, within which Bess is also naturally a suspect. Everything in this book feels necessary - I can think of no better way to describe it - which means you don't get bogged down in back stories or extraneous detail, which I loved; Juul seems to credit the reader with enough intelligence to presume some things and to infer others for themselves. Also, she's not afraid to let a question mark hang, which I loved.
On an emotional level, my perception of the experience of extreme grief has altered, and I found that this disorientating book rang absolutely true. I was touched by Bess' grief-stricken irrationality - she gets drunk and embarrasses herself, she yells at people and shouts down the phone - and appreciated the fact that Juul wrote her as a person, not a paragon or the archetypal grieving woman. I also enjoyed the subtle unveiling of the facts, leading to the obscure but likely conclusion.
A disarming and unforgettable read.
The other reviews in our Peirene Press Readathon series:
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine)
¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Peirene Discussion Post #1 - Female Voices: Inner Realities
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig (mine) ¦ Sam's
Peirene Discussion Post #2 - Male Dilemmas: Quests for Intimacy
The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul (Sam's)
Title: The Murder of Halland
Author: Pia Juul, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
Date: Original 2009, translation 2012
Format: Paperback, 167 pages, and I was sent it by Peirene Press for review as part of this readathon series.
Happy new year everyone! I hope you all had a nice restful break and are looking forward to what 2013 will bring. I am, for sure, although my first day back at work, which was today, has left me sleepy and yearning for Christmas again...
Anyhoo, back to the ol' routine, and regular readers will know that for the last eight Thursdays this has meant a post on mine and Sam's epic Peirene Press Readathon, and today is no exception! During this readathon we are reading all nine (actually now ten) books published by Peirene Press to date, plus reviewing the three-book-series, into which the books are arranged, as a whole every fourth week. Today's book is The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg, which is the first book in the 'Small Epic' series.
This novella focuses on one house in the wilds of Finland in 1809, shortly after the end of Swedish-Russian conflict over territory in Finland in which the two brothers of the title, Erik and Henrik, fought on different sides. Now Henrik, who fought for enemy Russia is back at the house, where Erik, his wife Anna, their mother, the Old Mistress, their cousin Mauri, a maid and a farmhand reside and, as you might imagine, tensions simmer and boil over, secrets are revealed, grudges are honoured and it is very,very isolated, snowy and cold. The family initially reminded me of the Vangars of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, all hateful and alienated on their snowy island, although that feeling softened as the story progressed and actually by the end I felt for all of them, even the most unsympathetic.
I found this book to be majestic, elegant and regal in its calm examination of the effects of living so far from others, where few it seems really want to be, and the impact that familial relationships and hierarchies can have, when forged in childhood and adolescence, on the rest of your life. The Helsingin Sanomat quote on the back of the book says that
The comparison to Shakespeare might seem grandiose, but it's justified...
and I totally agree. This book, constructed around multi-voice, intimate first-person narratives, sweeps most impressively from the smallest, most personally illustrative detail, such as
I have barely caught the crunch of the snow and I know who is coming. Henrik treads heavily and unhurriedly, as is his wont, grinding his feet into the earth. The brothers are so different. Erik walks fast, with light steps; he is always in a hurry, here then gone...
to sweeping statements about timeless events on the world stage that sent shivers down my spine:
Nor did I understand that wars are being waged all the time, that lines of men marching with their muskets are merely the visible culmination of constant power struggles, and that actual warfare takes places in salons lit by oil lamps in which liveried flunkies pour expensive champagne into crystal glasses, and wasp-waisted women wave their ivory fans languidly, and gentlemen sitting amidst thick cigar smoke - heirs of noblemen knighted by Gustav I of Sweden, or offspring of the Grand Dukes of Novgorod, owners of tens of thousands of souls - realize that they suddenly hanker after a ninth city palace or a sackful of diamonds, or that their lives have simply become too monotonous...
Isn't that gorgeous and horrifying, in equal measure? The first quote is actually the first paragraph of the whole book and when I opened that page and began reading yesterday, I immediately felt in the safest of hands.
Three things struck me as particularly impressive about this novella: one, that the individual character monologues are so delicately and tunefully rendered, marking real individuals whose joint experience spans Finnish society at that moment in time; two, that the plot is genuinely surprising - I had no road map for it, and I had no idea of the end of the book until literally the final word had been read - and three, how atmospheric it is. I went to Finland to visit the home of my lovely friend Sini for a few days in 2009, and the sheer scale of distances between places and the loneliness of the homes really rang true with my memories of it, as well as the fact that households are set up as self-contained fortresses of sustainment and endurance through the wild seasons and the bitter cold. I read this book in a few hours yesterday afternoon, first in a cafe then snuggled on the sofa wrapped in slippers and blanket, and at no point in that would I have been surprised to look up from the page and see miles and miles of quiet Finnish forest and snow. It's just so vivid.
So, a wonderful book that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. It felt to me like a proper grown-up book, with epic themes and the calm yet passionate authority of the timeless horse who tops and tails the book with a snorting, rueful peace. A Small Epic indeed.
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine)
¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Peirene Discussion Post #1 - Female Voices: Inner Realities
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig (mine) ¦ Sam's
Peirene Discussion Post #2 - Male Dilemmas: Quests for Intimacy
The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg (Sam's)
Title: The Brothers
Author: Asko Sahlberg, translated from the Finnish by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah
Date: Original 2010, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 122 pages, and I was sent it by Peirene Press for review as part of this readathon series.
It's Sam's turn to host our Peirene Press Readathon discussion post for the 'Male Voices: Quest for Intimacy' series this month, so follow this link to find our discussion of Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki, Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen and Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig. Reviews for the next book in the series, The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg, will appear on both our blogs on Thursday 3rd January 2013!
So, I'm not going to do a 2012 round-up post because, frankly, my head is already too full of icing and holly, but I will happily direct you to a guest post I did on These Little Words last month about my favourite book of 2012.
Also, you should check out, if you've not done so already, Homespun Threads, an e-anthology that features a childrens' story of mine, just in time for Christmas, which is available through both Amazon and Smashwords. There's also a short story of mine featured in Issue #19 of The Bicycle Review, published just a few days ago, which is hopefully worth a read, even though it's not at all Christmassy, lol.
Well, I hope you all have a lovely break, whatever you're doing and whatever you're celebrating, and I'll see you back here in 2013!
So, here we are at post no. 7 of mine and Sam's full and wonderful Peirene Press Readathon, throughout which we are reading all the Peirene books published to date and interspersing them with discussion posts every fourth week, grouped as they are in thematic series of three. For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which have not been
translated into English prior to now.
Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig, a highly-acclaimed Austrian writer, is something of an anomaly in the Peirene Press series, being a collection of nine short stories rather than a novella. The stories themselves have a surreal, Kafka-esque feeling of disquiet about them, being opaque and confusing like dreams with enough of a grounding in reality to make them enormously affecting. Thematically, we have voyeurism, alienation, loss of identity and great lashings of that insidious feeling of looking at a scene or hearing a story and feeling somewhere low down in your gut that all is not fine. Narratively, we have a man obsessed with his neighbours, a man who wakes up and doesn't know who he is, recounted town scenes that bely a recent tragedy, a frighteningly realised encounter between insects, and a man, in the final story, whose identity seems to alter and shuffle like an ace through a pack of cards.
In short, I loved them. Nothing pleases me more than left-field, open-ended fiction that leaves me wistful and worried for the characters' future and leaves me with few reassurances. I mean, doesn't that sound like life? Or maybe I spent too long studying East Asian cinema, lol. But I found these bizarre and alarming stories utterly refreshing, and at times, grotesquely hilarious. This quote is from Then a Door Opens and Swings Shut, where a man comes face-to-face with a woman and the dolls she keeps, one of whom looks just like him:
My name is Karl, I said, but the woman didn't answer. I didn't know how to handle the situation or how to deal with my new friend - a friend I was obviously starting to accept.
He's not a bad kid, she said. Peculiar, yes, but you already knew that and, let's face it, you're all he's got. And he's been waiting ever since you abandoned him. That's when he came to me. He can't talk to you about it, at least not yet. But things will work out now you've finally come back. And now I'll leave the two of you alone, she said, and stood up and left the room.
That is the doll they're talking about, FYI. One thing that really struck me about this short story collection is how easy it is to read: one might presume that high literature will be a slower read than the lighter stuff, but this I swallowed down very easily indeed. It was a delight, in fact.
Otherwise, I have little to say, most likely because with a collection of stories it is harder to pinpoint and single out trends and details, so my sum thoughts are that this book is brilliant, undoubtedly my favourite of the 'Male Dilemma: Quests for Intimacy' series, and that this would be the perfect intelligent, unsettling read to while an hour away with over a big coffee. And it's quietly terrifying, so I'll get back to you about the nightmares.
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine)
¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Title: Maybe This Time
Author: Alois Hotschnig, translated from the Austrian German by Tess Lewis
Date: Original 2006, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 107 pages, and I was sent it by Peirene Press for review as part of this readathon series.
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen is the fifth book in the epic Peirene Press Readathon that Sam and I are in the midst of, where we read all nine of the Peirene Press books currently published, and then discuss them thematically in threes. This book is the second in the 'Male Dilemma: Quests for Intimacy' series. For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which have not been
translated into English prior to now.
Tomorrow Pamplona is about Danny, a Dutch boxer who we find stood hitch-hiking on the side of the motorway, soaked to the skin, who is picked up by Robert, who is on his way to Pamplona to participate in the famed annual bull run there. Eventually he invites Danny to travel all the way with him, which Danny accepts, and it is interesting to note the contrast in circumstances between Robert, a family man who runs with the bulls annually to alleviate some of the boredom and responsibility of family life, and Danny, who is running from a bad circumstance, the actual details of which only become clear as the book progresses. One has too much order, one has too much chaos, and neither know how to deal with it. Let's just say, it became clear to me early on why this book was part of a series exploring male dilemma and intimacy issues.
I found Robert and Danny both to be interesting characters, increasingly so as the book progresses; I wasn't immediately grabbed by the first few pages. Danny is the central figure and through chronologically-arranged flashbacks we find out what lead to the horrific incident that has left him on the run, as he explores them on the course of the drive from the Netherlands to Pamplona inside his own head. You'd think the bull run would be the actual climax of this book, but it's not: the key moments come as they make decisions about the future and how to face it, or not, as the case may be.
This book made me sad for men. The pervading message of it, as communicated to me, is that literally staring down a bull or patting a crocodile is easier than having an honest conversation with a woman you're in love with. I can't even imagine being that emotionally inarticulate. Obviously, not all men are like this (thank god), but the men in this book were not unfamiliar to me, and I'm sure they wouldn't be to any reader. Anyway, male judgements aside, this book is macho through and through, in theme and character and tense, unromantic language, and the women in it are either distant wives, deceitful girlfriends or waitresses to be ogled at; they seem to have little idea, the pair of them, how to really cross this great gender divide to where real intimacy lies. Robert, the family man, even describes the birth of his children as an awe-inspiring but ultimately alienating experience:
Do you know what the problem is with childbirth? You can't do a bloody thing. As a man, you can be there with her, but there's sod all you can actually do...
...So you just stand there looking. Well, that's what I did. I didn't have a clue what to do...I kept on saying: You can do it, you can do it. Until finally she just screamed at me to shut up. With the second one, I just sat by the bed and kept my mouth shut...All that time you're just sitting there. And you know what? You'd rather be facing the bulls.
I mean, I can't even imagine.
As you may be beginning to guess, the tone of this book owes rather a large debt to a certain Mr. Hemingway, with the bulls and the machismo and lots of talk of blood pumping and staring down the barrels of things, which, rather pleasingly, is something van Mersbergen readily acknowledges:
He shows them a framed photograph that's screwed to the wall.
This is Esteban Domeño.
It's a portrait of a man with a dark moustache. He's wearing a black jacket and a hat.
Esteban, the man repeats. He sniffs. They even took his name from him.
What do you mean?
His name. Esteban Domeño. An American wrote a book about the fiesta. He's described Esteban's death, but in the book he was called Vicente...Everyone goes to the bull running and they all know the name of Vicente Girones...
I enjoyed this contextual reference to The Sun Also Rises, which felt delightfully meta, and I enjoyed this book as a whole, especially as it progressed.
My only bug-bear would be that the dialogue is not demarcated in any way, as there are no speech marks or anything, but this is not the only book guilty of that. I'd also have appreciated it if the language had been a bit less sparse - although an excellent imitation, I didn't hear a deep echoing sadness between the words, as I did when I read The Old Man and the Sea the other day - but it was a good fit for the topic and themes of the book, and added to the deliberate intensity of the experience.
I look forward to the third book in the present series, Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig (FYI, I can't see that title without playing the Cabaret song in my head) and also the discussion post about the Male Dilemma series, which Sam will be hosting the Thursday after next.
Other readathon reviews:
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine)
¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine)
¦ (Sam's)
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (Sam's)
Title: Tomorrow Pamplona
Author: Jan van Mersbergen, translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson
Date: Original 2007, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 189 pages, and I was sent it by Peirene Press for review as part of this readathon series.
Today we are looking at book no. 4 in the Peirene Press series, Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki, which is the first of the 'Male Dilemma: Quests for Intimacy' series and post no. 5 of mine and Sam's epic Peirene Press Readathon; post no. 4 was a discussion post covering the 3 books of the 'Female Voices: Inner Realities' series.
For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which have not been
translated into English prior to now. Peirene novellas are organised into groups of three because of thematic and
other similarities, the idea being that they inform and
comment on each other.
Next World Novella is about Hinrich Schepp, an ageing university Sinologist, and his wife Doro, who he finds dead at her desk at the very beginning of the book, having died in the act of editing some of his writing. He doesn't call an ambulance - clearly the moment for that has passed - and is surprised to find that she had been editing a forgotten fiction manuscript of his that he'd deemed to be a failure, so he'd never shown it to his wife. The story progresses therefore with her dead in the room beside him whilst he reads her comments on his semi-autobiographical manuscript and realises that in many ways both his wife and marriage were really not as they seemed. The story works as a story within a story, as excerpts of Hinrich's manuscript are inserted into the narrative so the reader can draw their own conclusions about Hinrich's rather pathetic mid-life crisis, whilst also reading Doro's increasingly harsh and damning comments upon it, which reveal that she knew much more of what was going on than Hinrich suspected.
Never have a read a book where a dead character holds the story in such a choke-hold, or has so much to contribute: though dead, Doro is presented as a fascinating, beautiful, aristocratic woman who feared being alone in death so much that she married Hinrich, a promising but ultimately mediocre academic, abandoning her own burgeoning academic career in favour of raising their children and editing his papers. It is made clear that their channels of communication dwindled over the course of their marriage to the extent that Hinrich, re-enamoured with life after mid-aged laser eye surgery, spends his night drinking and mooning over a waitress without realising the effect that this is having on both his marriage or his wife. The fact that Doro is lying dead, first at the desk, then rearranged on the chaise longue, whilst he realises this lends a macabre, slightly comical air to the story, although I felt full-on nauseated when a fly crawls out of her nostril, and I could happily live my life without reading about the details of livor and rigor mortis ever again, thank you very much.
I enjoyed the tone of this book - it is wry, ironic and slightly mystical - and thought a lot was added by the Chinese elements that quietly illuminate parts of the story. The Sinology department described tallies closely with my memory of four years studying in an East Asian Studies department, so there was an extra smile for me there too. The set-up was also very original, decaying bodies and all, and the book moved along at a good rate, with some great twists and turns. The characterisation is also great: Hinrich is utterly pathetic next to Doro's vengeful, circling anger, and both are very well-drawn.
I wasn't so sure about the motif of the lake that one must cross when one dies though, based on Arnold Böcklin's painting Isle of the Dead and presented as Doro's feared vision of the afterlife and also one of her main motivations for companionship: I found it hard to believe that she'd marry a man like Hinrich Schepp just for the peace of mind that they'd wait for each other in death, so neither one would have to cross the lake, where one experiences a second death, alone. I thought as an academic she'd been more inquiring about her fears, rather than coming to one slightly out-there conclusion. Also, I wasn't keen on the big twist at the end; I found it undermined the main elements of the story in an unnecessary and, frankly, slightly bewildering way, which also felt a bit dated.
So, this is a good read with an unusual and well-thought-out set-up and tone, but for me the novella was let down by several of the plot points. Never will I allow flower stems to go fusty in a vase again though, that's for sure!
Previous Peirene post readathon links:
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Sam's)
Title: Next World Novella
Author: Matthias Politycki, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
Date: Original version 2009, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 138 pages and I was sent it by Peirene Press as part of this readathon series.
Today's post is of a different kind: Sam and I are continuing our epic Peirene readathon but rather than reviewing the next in the series, we are going to discuss the three books that have just been, which comprise the 'Female Voice' series; these are Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi, Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal and Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (see the bottom of the page for our review links).
For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which have not been
translated into English prior to now. Peirene novellas are organised into groups of three because of thematic and
other similarities, the idea being that they inform and
comment on each other.
L: Hi Sam, how are you? Let's start by reiterating our favourites and why that is...
S: So, although I enjoyed all three, my favourite was Beyond the Sea. I think books touch us the most when there is something we can relate to and I've met many mothers a bit like the mother from the story, who are well meaning but finding it hard to cope with life. I often deal as a teacher with the children of parents like this - children who never have the correct school uniform, turn up late for school, don't read with their parents etc. so I found it really powerful to read from the mother's point of view. I think I can guess your favourite, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman? And I'm guessing your reasons are similar to mine?
L: Yep, you're right, and yes, my reasons are very similar - empathy and personal experience! I won't go into it again as I talked at length about it in my actual review post, but, like the protagonist, I have been somewhat abandoned in a foreign country, knowing very few people and not speaking the language, whilst my husband has been off at war, and so every word of Margarethe's story rang a small, sad, nostalgic bell within my mind, and I understand the way in which she is fooling herself, and why. I also really enjoyed all three, and although I preferred Beside the Sea to Stone in a Landslide upon immediate reading, it's actually Stone in a Landslide that's stayed with me and that I remember most fondly, so I suppose that would be my second favourite!
It's interesting though, although perhaps not wholly surprising, to note that that our favourites were the ones that tallied most with our own personal experience; do you think that would be so much the case if these were male voices/characters, rather than female?
S: I'm hoping I will have the same connection with the male characters in the next series of books. Many of the female voices focused on motherhood, which I have no experience of, but I could still relate to the characters. I don't know if I will find the male voices as powerful as the female ones, but I'm hoping to see something of the universal human experience in them.
L: Mmm, I agree. Looking at it objectively, if the writing is of the highest quality, the universal human experience element you talk of should allow us to bond as closely with the male voices as the female, but I think we'd both acknowledge that this is not always the case when reading cross-gender, and also that the actual content and narrative of the novellas will also play a big part in that. Good writing and characterisation that central to making a reader bond to a character though, and I don't doubt we'll have that!
Looking at these three books as a group, how representative do you think these stories are of women (!) and of stories written by and about women as a whole?
S: I don't think any series of three books could represent women! Also, the three women were all in extreme circumstances (mental health difficulties and war), which makes them not representative of women in thankfully more ordinary situations. But there were a lot of themes that will resonate with women and humanity as a whole - love, loss, tragedy etc. I think it would have been nice to have one female voice that wasn't about being a mother (Conxa's story was the closest to this), as often women are reduced to mothers and there is so much more to us than that. Would you agree?
L: Definitely. Women get put into so many simplified roles, be it the shopaholic airhead, the put-upon mothers, the icy, career-driven, ball-breaking older woman who will eventually admit that they regret 'not giving love a chance!' or, finally, grandmothers who are either bitter and reproachful, or rosy-cheeked cake-making martyrs who are slightly forgotten at the hub of the home and ask nothing for themselves. Men don't get characterised like this, I don't think. But, saying that, these are not simple, stereotypical women - far from it - and their presentation in these novellas is both impeccable and sympathetic,and I suppose that's better criteria for selecting a novella for publication than thinking 'I must have a female voice in her twenties, I must have one in her forties, and I must have one that's single.'
However, it is family that defines all three of these women, and it is largely the absence of husbands and fathers that cause them their troubles...but then the majority of women do marry and have children and I suppose for many their most vivid experience comes from instants or upsets in romantic or familial love...maybe we could request that an upcoming trio be an addendum to this, following independent, non-maternal female characters? I personally am a bit disheartened, on reflection, that all three stories talk about women in relation to their husbands and children; I bet that the next three protagonists are not presented as strongly in relation to their children and wives.
Anyway, to happier topics: did you have a favourite, or a least favourite, scene or passage from the three?
S: A scene that really affected me was the scene in Beyond the Sea where the mother arrives at the seaside resort with high expectations only to be greeted with a rainy, dark, grotty town and a grimy hotel. We've all experienced that let down feeling when something isn't what you expected. What was your favourite scene?
L: Although I found it deeply upsetting, I would have to pick the closing scenes of Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, as I was quite overwhelmed by the power of the Bach music crescendo juxtaposed so skilfully against the emotional climax of the book. Sad times! I also adored all the descriptions of Conxa in the fields, and also the scene in which she first dances with Jaume. I found these scenes so very vivid.
Considering that these novellas are linked as a thematic trio, did you see any marked similarities between them, or any issues on which they all had something to say? Any differences, also? Why do think that is?
S: One theme I identified was women under pressure, and the resilience we can show under difficult circumstances. The narrators of all three books also had a distinct, clear voice, something that you don't see in all novels. I'm hoping the male voices in the next series will be just as developed and powerful. Did you spot any common issues?
L: The main one for me was the overwhelming impact that men, or the absence of them, had on these women's lives, and how often they felt and were powerless to change their circumstances, bound by relationships or to a particular place in a way that the men didn't seem to be. The father runs off so the mother can't in Beside the Sea, Jaume travels, learns and fights whilst Conxa must live at home with one family member or another, and Margarethe must wait for the inevitable event of her baby's birth, and she must cope with that, no matter the truths that on some level she already knows. Resilience too, I absolutely agree, in such awful situations. Not to get too lit studies for a second, but the trio really put me in mind of Virginia Woolf's famous quote
This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an unimportant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room
because another common theme is that these women are often circling wildly within their own heads, drowning often in feeling, but their perils are reactive, not active. Two of the three are literally in the midst of war, but theirs is the social history, not an account of the battlefield. Not that these books have not been marvellously well-reviewed of course, lol.
As a final thought, which of these three would you recommend to your mother/a parent? Your sister (congrats on your nephew!)? A colleague? Someone you're not close to? And why?
S: As my sister has only been a mother for a week, I wouldn't want to scare her with Beyond the Sea! I think my Mum would enjoy Stone in a Landslide as it's more of a retrospective on a whole life and that would appeal to her. To be honest, all three are well written so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to others.
L: Good call about your sister! I think Stone in a Landslide for my mother too, as it's the most classical structure and narrative; Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman to a colleague or a close friend as I'll look so clever, considering the radical one-sentence structure, and also many of my friends have similar experiences as me to draw on, and I think Beside the Sea for someone I'm not close to as it's such a strong story, with such a horrifying resolution, that it might give us something to talk about.
Come back next Thursday for our thoughts on the first of the next trio, 'Male Dilemma', which is Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki.
Review links:
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is the third book in mine and Sam at Tiny Library's exciting, illuminating and expansive Peirene Press readathon, in which we are reading all nine of the Peirene Press novellas published to date. For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house
which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative
European novellas which have not been
translated into English before now.
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is the third of three in the Peirene series 'Female Voices' - the other two are Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi and Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal - and as you can probably see, it is the first and only book of the three actually written by a man, and also the first published in German, in 2006.
The story centres on a young German woman who is stranded in Rome in January 1943, having travelled there from her parents' village to meet her young husband who is stationed there having been sent back from Russia 'lightly wounded' to preach in the German-adopted Lutheran church on Via Sicilia in Rome, the Germans and Italians of course being WWII allies at this point. She is heavily pregnant and alone in the city but is well-looked after by German nuns in a sort of hospital cum boarding house, so for her this is a oddly comfortable yet nightmarish time, her husband serving in Africa and her about to have her first child.
Walk, young lady, walk if you want to walk, the child will like it if you walk (p9)
says her doctor, so through the course of this novella we follow her as she walks through the Eternal City from her boarding house to the aforementioned church on Via Sicilia, which is holding a Bach concert at four 'clock on a sunny afternoon. It is a picturesque and timeless journey through some of Rome's most beautiful vistas and alleyways, so the scenery of Rome is described evocatively and idiosyncratically to us, woven tightly within her taut, meandering thoughts, reminiscences and dreams. Hers is a fascinating mind: it is so ordinary and typical, you could say, but from a modern perspective it is fascinating as she lets us in on all the influences that would have invaded and coloured the average German mind by 1943. As one might imagine, they are not straightforward.
The experience of reading this book is particularly special because of one unique structural quirk: the entire novella, all 125 pages, is written in one epically long sentence that uses commas and paragraph indents liberally, but only has one, final, full stop. The effect is...unsettling, frantic and compelling, and it means it is very difficult to leave her as firstly she is always straight into the next thing, and secondly because there are no page or chapter breaks. She talks and talks and then we leave her forever, listening to Bach, sat in a pew. It is amazing but Delius pulls it off. I can't even imagine what a nightmare it must have been for Jamie Bulloch to translate.
and she tiptoed across the terracotta tiles in her hallway, it was still siesta time, back into her room which she shared with another German woman, whose fiancé had been interned in Australia and who, although almost thirty years old, was known as "the girl" and who worked in the kitchen and helped serve meals, Ilse was still lying on her bed, reading after her siesta,
while she, the younger woman, put on black lace-up shoes, fetched her dark-blue coat from the wardrobe, cast an eye over her bed that had been made and the table that had been tidied and found everything in order, said See you at supper!, shut the door, and walked past the bathroom towards the lift and the main staircase... (p10)
So, my thoughts. I almost have too many. This book is AMAZING. I read it in what seemed like a moment but was actually a few hours. This girl...my heart broke into tiny little pieces, and by the end I was sobbing as I knew what was happening and I couldn't stop it and there is no pausing for breath; and then it's over. This book turns on a sentence, a sentence of epic, weighty proportion, and I felt it approaching and when it did I could barely bear to read it, but what can you do? I actually hugged the book (I know) for quite a while after closing it, and was almost despondent with sadness for the main character until at least the following day (but still now, really, writing this.)
I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but to explain my review I perhaps need to open the door a little more and say that I loved this girl because I understood her. And this is because...my own husband got sent off to Iraq just after we'd married and been sent to Germany to live by the British Army, right at the moment when winter began to close in and the nights got very, very long. Now, it wasn't anything like as bad as in this book, but then I was still only learning the very basics of German at that point and didn't really know that many people, so can vouch for the truth of this girl's forging of an artificial and lonely routine for herself to shield her mind from the worst of the worry of a husband at war.
I mean, you can only stay in bed and cry for so long before you have to do something, but you don't know anyone or the place you're living, so the small things you do know - for instance, the concerts at church on Via Sicilia - get put up on a pedestal of wild importance and become entrenched in your experience of a time and a place. Then, once you've established a routines of sorts, the completing of that routine becomes a comfort to you and almost a talisman for your husband's safety...and so you can spiral, if you're not careful. All is fine now lol, but, suffice to say, I felt every word she said. On a very personal note, it reminded me once again how liberating and devastating it is when a unknown writer accurately details shades of your own experience, and how important and life-affirming it is that they do.
So, read this book. It's my undoubtedly my favourite Peirene book so far, and that is impressive.
Other reviews in the Peirene Press Readathon series:
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Title: Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman
Author: Friedrich Christian Delius, translation from the German by Jamie Bulloch
Series: Female Voices
Date: Original 2006, translation 2010
Format: Paperback, 125 pages, and this is actually a copy I bought long before this readathon was even thought of, namely for the title because all my friends are having babies and if I have a question about life I, you know, read... :)
