Peirene Press Readathon, No. 2: 'Stone in a Landslide' by Maria Barbal

Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal is the second book in the wonderful Peirene Press Readathon that I am doing with Sam from Tiny Library; starting last week, we are reading our way through the nine Peirene Press novellas currently published as well as stopping every three books to discuss the thematic trio's themes and differences. 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.

So, after last week's journey on the French coast in Beside the Sea, Stone in a Landslide is a Catalan tale from the Spanish Pyrenees, published originally in Catalan - the national language of Andorra and a co-official language in parts of Spain, such as Catalonia and the Balearics - in 1985. It is the story of Conxa, a Pyrenean woman born around the turn of the 20th century, whose life in the Pyrenees in punctuated by work, marriage, child-rearing and, most importantly, the Spanish Civil War, after which it changes irrevocably.

Conxa is a stoical, hard-working woman, raised on the land and to swallow down hardship, who feels the effects of time's passing and random will over every part of her life, which by turns is joyous, brightened by work and family, and horribly, crushingly sad. She is born in a village called Ermita but, as her parents have more children than they can feed, is sent off to work on the farm of her Aunt Tia in the village, Palleres, where she makes her long-time home. As readers, we experience her very personal viewpoints on work, of her falling in love, of raising her children, of caring for relatives and being part of a community, as well as getting swept up quite blindly in the Spanish Civil War and then her feeling life's slow and inevitable decline. A lesser character might become boastful when things are good or despondent when things are sad, but Conxa is a stoic and a pragmatist,  and her lack of formal education means that this novella is written in language that is solid and clear, with little unnecessary flair, that feels tied to the land and the region.

She does what I am not capable of doing. I feel like a stone after a landslide. If someone or something stirs it, I'll come tumbling down with the others. If nothing comes near, I'll be here, still, for days and days...' (p89)

She sees the world change but does not resent it for doing so, whilst also becoming increasingly objective about her family and the world around her; by the final sentence (which I am not going to give away here), she seems to have let go of her grasp and desire for a world which has taken so much, and left her with so little.

I knew he was dead and I would never have him again at my side, because war is an evil that drags itself over the earth and leaves it sown with vipers and fire and knives with points upright. And I was barefoot with my children, and I had nothing apart from still being alive. (p95)

Stone in a Landslide's Conxa reminded me of Pelagia, a character from Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which is one of my all-time favourite novels, in the way that she revels in a world she knows and falls in love in, only for war and death to rip her life to shreds and for her to grow old and lose touch as the world moves ceaselessly on without her. There is also the same feeling of children - or in Pelagia's case, the children she raises as her children - growing apart from their mother and how this change is confusing and saddening, as also how grandchildren can be both the revival of past members of a generation and also alien beings, raised in a completely different world.

I didn't find this book as immediately engaging as Beside the Sea, perhaps because the pace is much slower and the voice is less frantic, but this is an important, vividly drawn book about life, love, loss and growing old, as well as a comment on the changing relationship that people have with regions, community and with the land.

Other reviews in the Peirene Press Readathon series:

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (Sam's)

Title:  Stone in a Landslide
Author: Maria Barbal, translation from the Catalan by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell
Series: Female Voices
Date: Original 1985, translation 2010
Format: Paperback, 126 pages, and I was sent it, along with the rest in the series, by Peirene Press, to review as I wished. 





Peirene Press Readathon No. 1: 'Beside the Sea' by Veronique Olmi

I've been keeping a little secret on this blog for the last few weeks and it thrills me to announce now to you all - with gleeful literary excitement - that:

Sam from Tiny Library and I are doing an epic Peirene readathon, starting today, in which we will read every novella published by the wonderful Peirene Press in the order that they were published - which means nine reviews, plus three thematic discussion posts where we look back over the previous three books (all will become clear as we go), so twelve weeks in all - so if you are a Peirene fan, check back here every Thursday.

As you might remember from a few posts back, I reviewed the recently published Peirene novella 'Sea of Ink' by Richard Weihe and also talked about a wonderful Peirene event back in September, which is where Meike (the publisher) and I first came up with the idea for a readathon extraordinaire, where we, rather innovatively, start from the beginning and read through to the end, lol. 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.

So, to the first book! Let me tell you, we have started with a bang. ' Beside the Sea' by Veronique Olmi is a haunting, shocking story, translated from the French, of a mother who is coming apart at the edges, ironically endangering the lives of her two sons, Stan and Kevin, far more than the dangers she sees and is desperate to keep them from in the outside world. We meet them at the beginning of the story catching a bus to the French coast as, quite momentously, they were going to see the sea (p9).

There are early indications that all is not well, as the mother seems exasperated and ill-equipped to deal with the demands of her two sons, and says odd things like

...it felt really strange driving away from the city, leaving it for this unknown place, specially as it wasn't the holidays and that's what the boys were thinking, I know they did. We'd never been away for a holiday, never left the city, and suddenly life was new, my stomach was in knots, I was thirsty the whole time and everything was irritating, but I did my best, yes really my best, so the kids didn't notice anything. I wanted us to set off totally believing in it. (p10)

It soon becomes clear that this is a final holiday, and that once they've seen the sea the action she wants to take, to protect them from the cruel and frightening world, can be taken. Her inner monologue is frantic and repetitive, radiant with anxiety, and Olmi cleverly uses very few full stops, mimicking breathless, obsessive speech. Immediately you are plunged into the world of this woman on the edge, seeing both the world and her sons through her sad eyes, and realising the depth to which she worries that one is not fit for the other. I read this novella in one sitting and the experience was like falling down a rabbit hole into a frightening, lost mind where you are desperate for someone to intervene but you fear that they never will...I'd actually recommend reading it in one go - a short novella at 111 pages, it took me around 90 minutes - as I think it allowed me to fully experience the immersive qualities of the writing and the tremendously well-executed tension building and narrative arc. FYI though, the end is quite chilling, so I would not recommend reading it in the house on your own on Hallowe'en, lol.

This novella also bravely provides a chillingly full portrait of how some mothers are more of a threat to their children than the actual dangers they perceive in the outside world. Social workers and psychiatrists are mentioned, which for me made the situation more terrifying: although questions have clearly been raised, these children are still fully under their mother's care, without intervention or help. The portrayal of the two boys reminded me of kids I went to school with, who were always late, dirty or tired, and never had gym kit, or would get caught stealing from teachers' bags and then get treated in an oddly lenient manner. The elder son in this story has clearly bonded with his school teacher, Marie-Helene, and is keen to progress and read and learn, but the fact that the teacher asks pertinent questions of his mother actually seems to push the son further from help as she is so offended, which as Sam says in her review, is a terrifying thought for both teachers and children alike.

I applaud Olmi for exploring such an extreme picture of the darker aspects of motherhood, as inconvenient and shocking as they might be, as the news tells us everyday of the terrible things that happen right under people's noses, but rarely do we hear the full story or receive any insight into the lead-up of what happened. I suppose it's also important to realise, for those who are mothers and for those who aren't, that despite a myriad of state and welfare structures being in place in this country when you have children, for the main part it's just you at home, alone, with your kids, and that that can be a very difficult, stressful and oppressive thing. Bravo to Peirene for starting their Female Voice series on such a gutsy and thought-provoking subject.

Moving away from the subject matter, I felt the characterisation of this book was excellent - it would not have the power it does if it wasn't - although, rather oddly, I kept getting her two sons muddled up, forgetting which was the elder, although that's probably just me being tired, and this tiny confusion had no real impact on the story. The voice, the voice of the narrator, is the kind of voice I imagine Creative Writing lecturers dream of finding amongst students - clear, passionate and real, and utterly absorbing. The only small language or translation issue I had was that the narrator kept referring to her younger son as the littl'un, which is most likely the perfect translation of whatever French phrase was used but I found that whenever I came across it it whipped me out of France and dumped me in the heart of South Yorkshire, rather funnily (as I said, just a small thing.)

Overall, this is a strong Peirene lead and an intelligent, brave and haunting book. I am so excited for the rest of the series and know that this novella, Olmi's first, will stay with me for a very long time.

Title: 'Beside the Sea'
Author: Veronique Olmi, translation from the French by Adriana Hunter
Series: Female Voices
Date: Original 2001, translation 2010
Format: Paperback, 111 pages, and I was sent it, along with the rest in the series, by Peirene Press, to review as I wished.








'A Suitable Boy' Readathon, the Final Post

Well, it's finished! And on time too, which is a bit of a shock based on my behind-time participation in this readathon, lol. FYI, there are some spoilers in this final post.

This book has left me fairly gobsmacked since the moment I opened it nearly three months ago with its consistency, its heart and its raft of characters who feel like long-time friends, and having now reached the end, I feel like I've discovered one of the books of my lifetime. Like, this book now lives under my skin, in my heart, in my own writing, like 'Anna Karenina' or 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' or any of my other long-time faves.

Obviously, Lata's choice of husband was a disappointment - how could it not be? As Malati and Sam have both pointed out, Lata rejected gold and silver in favour of bronze, and Haresh is...I don't know. I believe Lata will be happy because she's strong and she knows why she's chosen him but at the same time, what a waste. I can't believe she won't be bored with him, but I suppose her expectations of marriage are different to mine, silly Western girl that I am! So much more was required of her and her choice, and I do respect her for facing that head-on. 

Throughout this book I've felt that Vikram Seth has been reminding me that life isn't fair and that things don't always work out as you want...but still I kept turning the pages leading up to the wedding thinking 'When will Kabir do something? Where is he?!', forgetting for a time that this book is not resident in modern film parlance but rather 1950s India, which of course is a whole other kettle of fish. Lata is now as old as my grandmother - of course, this is what Seth's upcoming 'A Suitable Girl' is about - and this is a lesson again that times then were perhaps not as selfish and individualistic as they are now. I worry for Lata and I suppose I'm proud of her too. By the way, tell me that she and this book are not real and I'll all but eat your hand.

As with all great books, it's left me humbled, moved and feeling like maybe I don't know much about anything at all, which is often a very liberating thing to feel.

Otherwise, the religious tensions were both shocking and wholly predictable, which gives me little faith that things won't always be the same in that respect. Actually, some of the most powerful aspects of the book speak of non-change in both characters and society: Meenakshi's infidelity remaining secret, intermarriage remaining difficult, people struggling against inequalities of opportunity, PR and class.  Also, Firoz and Maan remaining friends even after the stabbing, Saeeda Bai losing out because of her profession, religious and intense familial tensions inevitably ripping the friendship of Mahesh Kapoor and the Nawab Sahib apart - plus ca change! I think I will need days and weeks to fully comprehend all the lessons I have learned.

I shouldn't need to recommend this book to you here, as if you've faced the spoilers you've probably already read it, and if not, hopefully the statement that it's one of the books of my lifetime is recommendation enough. Every second spent with this book was a nourishing feast and I am already beside myself with excitement that 'A Suitable Girl' is hopefully out next year.

My thanks, by the way, to the other readathon participants; read what they think here:

Tiny Library
JoV's Book Pyramid

Also, here are my previous books about this readathon: No. 1,   No. 2,   and No. 3.

Title: 'A Suitable Boy'

Author: Vikram Seth

Publisher: Phoenix House

Date: 1993

Format: Hardback, 1349 pages, and my copy is a library book.







New Arrivals

I've been a bit naughty these last few weeks: I kinda promised that I would read the unread books I have before buying any others and would go to the library if there was anything I was desperate to get my hands on before then....

...obviously, fail - duh - so an In My Mailbox-type post seemed totes appropes.

First, I went to a day of Charleston's 'Small Wonder' short story festival, which was fabulous, and attended a talk called 'Dark Corners' with Sarah Hall and Elif Shafak. From that I came away with this,The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. She was actually there talking about her most recent book, Honour, but I'd heard her talk about this one on The Book Show previously and quite fancied approaching her work a little more chronologically.

'Discover the forty rules of love...
Ella Rubenstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love.

So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabiz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.

It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored...'

Then, after attending Messages from Angela Carter which featured a fabulous reading of her classic 'The Tiger's Bride' which you can listen to by clicking on the link, we went to What Are You Looking At? with Will Gompertz, which was hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, I bought the accompanying book.

According to the blurb, by reading What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye you will learn:

'Conceptual art isn't actually rubbish

Picasso is a genius (but Cezanne might be better)

Pollock is no drip

Cubism has no cubes

A urinal changed the course of art

And why your five-year-old really couldn't do it.'

Excited about this.


Then, this week, charity shop! Who can resist at £1.99...?

 

A modern classic. I think the copy I read before must have been a library book as I don't have it, but I re-watched the film the other night - Scarlett Johansson still blows my mind - and then bumped into this copy, so it seemed like fate.





 
Everything I've heard about Megan Abbott has been unanimously wonderful, so I'm itching to get into this, and then maybe search out Dare Me, her most recent one, which featured on The Million's Most Anticipated Listearlier this year.





 


I bought Vikram Seth's  An Equal Music because I will be absolutely bereft when A Suitable Boy ends. *sob* I hope this is just as rich, moving and epic.





 

The purchasing of  Daughter of the River: An Autobiography by Hong Ying proves yet again that Asia has a huge pull on my imagination, and that comparing something to 'Wild Swans' is the best way to get me to buy anything at all :) 





'Lizard' by Banana Yoshimoto

'Lizard' by Banana Yoshimoto was a spur-of-the-moment buy due to its slim volume and flashy neon cover, and I read it in a single evening in a cafe. It's six short stories, plus two afterwords, published in the original Japanese in 1993 and translated into English in 1995.

Out of the six stories - 'Newlywed', 'Lizard', 'Helix', 'Dreaming of Kimchee', 'Blood and Water' and 'A Strange Tale from Down by the River' - 'Newlywed' was my favourite. In it, a tramp turns into a beautiful woman next to a drunk male newlywed on the train late at night, after the man shows him the kindness of not moving away from him when he sits down; a little like a depressing, grown-up version of the beginning of Disney's 'The Beauty and the Beast'. They, the man and the beautiful woman/tramp, talk about why he might not want to go home and why he might: his wife has so quickly spun such a perfect web of domesticity that he is unnerved and a little repulsed by it, as well as being in awe of her and grateful. He finds her slightly unknowable and bemusing, and he finds her a little intimidating too, I think.

Thankfully, he chooses his wife over the other ever-present routes that the beautiful woman/tramp represents - as the tramp says to him, he could just not get off the train - by going home to her even though she is freaking him out; I felt really bad for the wife, as she really hasn't done anything wrong. This story was neat, compelling and sober, I thought, and kinda spot-on about the adjustments and anxieties that accompany settling down, domesticity and marriage.

The other stories were good, covering a lot of the same themes. 'Lizard' also deals with the past and violence, 'A Strange Tale from Down by the River' talks about the changes that accompany motherhood. The others....have kinda merged into one in my head. 

Yoshimoto tells these stories in a sparse, slightly trippy way that resembles a lot of other modern Japanese fiction, and utilises a lot of the features both of it and modern representations of Japanese life: as in, she stays on the surface of characters, rendering them rather unknowable, close individuals and even lovers are completely alienated from one another, and memory and family are dangerous, confusing things. Unfortunately, I experienced very little emotional engagement, which is why the stories probably now escape me. Also, apart from the emotional and psychological revelations, very little happens.

This were nice stories, and I'd pick up a book of hers again, but ultimately I found them a little shallow and forgettable.

Title: Lizard
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Date: 1995
Format: Paperback, 180 pages, and I bought it.

  





'A Suitable Boy' Readathon, No. 3

I am a horrible readathon participant - this check-in is now two weeks late and I am still roughly 200 pages behind. Bad blogger, hand slap. 

I have no original excuses really: I've been really busy and the size of this book means it's impossible to read it whilst travelling or to carry around with you, ready for a spare moment. Maybe they should feature it in the adverts for e-readers, or maybe I should have manned up about 400 pages ago and bought it to read on my iPad. There's something though about the inconvenient weight of it that fits that weight and depth of the story that I like, so despite these issues, I plan to slog merrily on with my library-loaned hardback copy til the end :)

Anyway, I am currently on page 829, and there will be spoilers in this readathon update. 

So, this book is long but incredibly satisfying, and I am still enjoying every page. The focus on this middle section has been on the court case surrounding the Zamindari Act, which hopes to remove vast land ownership from landowners and give it to their tenants, and the human face of this, which is represented by Rasheed, Maan Kapoor's Urdu teacher whose father is a landowner in a tiny village called Debaria, out in the sticks. Maan, who is the son of Mahesh Kapoor, the Home Minister and lover of musician/courtesan Saeeda Bai, is a character I am now beginning to see the point of: previously he has been chasing his family strife to no particular narrative end, but now it is clear that his relationship with Rasheed and Saeeda Bai is crucial to the Zamindari narrative of the book. He's deeply flawed still but changing, and I've enjoyed the time spent with both him, Rasheed and Rasheed's family over the last 300 or so pages. As Sam says in her readathon update, the Zamindari resolution is a little anti-climatic when it finally comes, but the characters seem to feel this also, so maybe Seth is making a comment on the nature of both the hype and resolution of great social change.

Still though, the Mehras, the Kapoor and the Chatterjis interest me most, and I enjoy the personal relationships between them. In fact, I find most of them wholly charming, and look forward to finding our how all their predicaments resolve as I move into the final third of the book. I don't like Haresh Khanna, Lata's most likely marriageable prospect at present, though, despite how keen Mrs Mehra is on him. I agree mostly with Lata: he's flashy and distracted, and who would want to marry someone who is openly in love with someone else, even if the object of his affection is Sikh rather than Hindu, which means their love can never be fulfilled? I hope for better for Lata than that. It is interesting though how caste can be discussed in relation to Haresh - he is Khatri, which means he is a suitable prospect for Lata, but he isn't afraid to deal with the stinky and disgusting leather preparation processes of his shoe-making business, which, being traditionally lower caste/untouchable tasks, freaks everyone out. He seems a bit of an anomaly, and I'm not sure if that's because he's a bit progressive in some ways, or if he's a little nebulous in himself, and a little immature. I like Kabir, the unsuitable boy we met in the first third, more and more though, which is a very good bit of subversion on Seth's part.

There have been some horrible parts too though: there is an instance of child abuse that I found so chilling that I had to put the book down for a day or two as it made me nauseous and cold. Also, the tragedy at Pul Mela was just awful, as was the death at the student protest, which I've just passed (apologies for my vagueness, but I don't want to give everything away. Those who've read it will know exactly what I mean), but the result of this is that this book presents a very realist portrait of the highs and lows of a society over time. Also, the Pul Mela tragedy shakes the faith of the spiritually-minded Dipanker Chatterji, and I've very keen to see what this means for his character development.

Seth's writing is still gorgeous and so accessible yet illustrative, and so consistent thus far over 800 pages, that my mind slightly boggles. He is a great writer. I found this passage, for instance, stunning:

'It was not unpleasant to be ploughing at this time of day. It was cool, and walking ankle-deep in cool water and mud behind a pair of well-trained and obedient bullocks (Kachheru had trained this pair himself) felt fine. He rarely needed to use his stick; unlike many peasants, he did not enjoy using it at all. The pair responded to his repertory of calls, moving anti-clockwise in intersecting circuits around the field, as close to the edge as possible, drawing the plough slowly behind them. Kachheru continued to sing to himself, interrupting his bhajan with 'wo! wo!' or 'taka taka' or other commands, and then picked up the tune not from where he left off but from where he would have been had he never stopped singing. After the whole of the first field was covered in furrows - a field twice as large as the one he farmed for himself - he was sweating with exertion. The sun had now risen about fifteen degrees in the sky, and it was becoming warm. He let the bullocks rest, and went around the untouched corners of the field, digging up the earth with his spade.'

I find Seth's way of writing, completely immersive: for the length of this paragraph, I'm tilling a field with Kachheru behind some well-behaved bullocks. I know how early it is, I know how warm I am at different times, and I am in India in the 1950s. This feeling I get from large sections of this book is like the one you get after eating a hearty, satisfying meal that you know is doing you good.

So, I like it a lot, and I'm excited for the remaining 500 (!) pages. :)

Here's what the other readathon participants say:

Sam at Tiny Library
JoV's Book Pyramid
 

Title: 'A Suitable Boy'

Author: Vikram Seth

Publisher: Phoenix House

Date: 1993

Format: Hardback, 1349 pages, and my copy is a library book.







My New Column: 'Small Island Culture' on Side B

Further to my good news the other day, I am now happy to say that I have more: yesterday saw the publication of my first article for Side B Magazine's online site! 

The column is called 'Small Island Culture', appearing every second Thursday for the foreseeable, covering arts and culture in the UK, my own creative process and comparative pieces comparing and contrasting creative life and practice both in the UK and the US, and the UK and elsewhere. It's gonna be a hoot :)

I'd be thrilled if you'd click through - my first piece could do with some comments...