NOW LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKED INTERNATIONAL FOLLOWING ITS SHORTLISTING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
Charco Press is a newly established NOW LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKED INTERNATIONAL FOLLOWING ITS SHORTLISTING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
Charco Press is a newly established small UK publisher which “focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world”
Ariana Harwicz was born in Argentina and Lives in France. She studied screenwriting and drama in Argentina, and earned a first degree in Performing Arts from the University of Paris VII as well as a Master’s degree in comparative literature from the Sorbonne.
“Die My Love” was published in 2012 as “Matate, amor” and has been jointly and wonderfully translated by Sarah Moses and Caroline Orloff (joint founder of Charco Press).
On a recent interview on Jackie Law's excellent neverimitate blog the author explained in answer to a question about her background:
I always say that I was born when I wrote Die, My Love. Before then, I was alive, in the same way that everybody is alive, yet for me that is not really being alive. I had recently had a baby, I had moved to live in the countryside next to a forest. I would watch the thunderstorms, I would go horse-riding, but that was not life for me. And then I wrote Die, My Love, immersed in that desperation between death and desire. Die, My Love comes from that. I wasn’t aware I was writing a novel. I was not a writer, rather, I was saving myself, slowly lifting my head out of the swamp with each line.I always say that I was born when I wrote Die, My Love. Before then, I was alive, in the same way that everybody is alive, yet for me that is not really being alive. I had recently had a baby, I had moved to live in the countryside next to a forest. I would watch the thunderstorms, I would go horse-riding, but that was not life for me. And then I wrote Die, My Love, immersed in that desperation between death and desire. Die, My Love comes from that. I wasn’t aware I was writing a novel. I was not a writer, rather, I was saving myself, slowly lifting my head out of the swamp with each line.
The book itself is therefore strongly autobiographical. The opening paragraph immediately sets the scene and the tone for the rest of the book, narrated by the mother of a small child.
I lay back in the grass among fallen trees and the sun on my palm felt like a knife I could use to bleed myself dry with one swift cut to the jugular. Behind me, against the backdrop of a house somewhere between dilapidated and homely, I could hear the voices of my son and my husband. …. How could a weak, perverse woman like me, someone who dreams of a knife in her hand, be the mother and wife of those two individuals? What was I going to do
The narrator we quickly realise seems to be suffering from Post Partum Depression,
I’ve been needing the loo since lunch but it’s impossible to do anything other than be a mother. Enough already with the crying. He cries and cries and cries. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m a mother, full stop. And I regret it, but I can’t even say that .... Mummy was happy before the baby came. Now Mummy gets up each day wanting to run away from the baby while he just cries harder and harder. I need the loo, but his interminable clucking and grousing makes it impossible.
Or perhaps more strictly peripartum depression, since it's clear her symptoms were already severe and causing concern among her in-laws at the Christmas just before the birth.
The advice I was given by that young social worker who came to our house when my mother-in-law called, alarmed: ‘If your child cries so much that you feel like you can’t go on and you’re about to lose control, get out of there. Leave the child with someone else and find a place where you can regain composure and calm. If you’re alone and there’s no one to leave him with, go somewhere else anyway. Leave the child in a safe place and take a few steps back.’ ........ But I’m thinking about pacing up and down with the baby in my arms, hour after hour of tedious choreography, from the exhaustion to screaming, screaming to exhaustion. And I think about how a child is a wild animal, about another person carrying your heart forever
The narrator is a foreigner, from a City background, well educated and with a taste for classical music, all of which causes her to be openly scornful of her country dwelling, closely knit in-laws and their decent lives and conventional tastes, which she sees as beyond mundane.
If I could lynch my whole family to be alone for one minute with Glenn Gould, I’d do it.
Later on I saw [my father in law] him sitting at his desk, going over last month’s supermarket receipts. He read the price of each product and then checked the total with a calculator. By the time he’d finished recording the sums in his log of monthly expenses, the desk lamp was no longer giving off enough light. We ate dinner, all of us together again, and I can still remember the tired, backlit image of an average man who thinks he’s exceptional. After that, he cleaned his dentures and went to bed. And this is a day lived? This is a human being living a day of his life?
On rainy days in the city, people consume films, plays, restaurant meals. Out in the country they tell each other stories, thinking they can fight off the boredom that way
Here we are, one more family going out to watch the sunset. As though we had no idea that the sun came up and went down again. I mean, seriously, it does this every day
Even their concern for her, only increases her rage at their predictability – she resents the well-meaning advice of her mother in law, and says of her husband: My better half had been listening in from behind the door – yes, the playwright of my life is that mediocre.
What also came across to me was how the very act of motherhood, has fallen shorts of her hopes and expectations for it. Of her son she remarks
I hope the first word my son says is a beautiful one ... And if it isn’t, I’d rather he didn’t speak at all. I want him to say magnolia, to say compassion, not Mum or Dad, not water. I want him to say dalliance.
Me, a woman who didn’t want to register her son. Who wanted a son with no record, no identity. A stateless son, with no date of birth or last name or social status. A wandering son. A son born not in a delivery room but in the darkest corner of the woods. A son who’s not silenced with dummies but rocked to sleep by animal cries
In practice though the opposite occurs and the claustrophobia she feels from the interference of her neighbours and from the assumption of her in-laws that she will adapt to become part of their family, is only magnified as the existence of the child, in their eyes, legitimises the active intervention of nurses, social workers and locals and the advice of her family. This only drives her to further extremes of behaviour:
When my husband goes away in the middle of summer I leave a plastic doll on the back seat of the car and wait for the alarmed neighbours and state employees to come running. I love watching them react like the good citizens they are, like heroes who want to smash the window and save the little one from suffocating. It’s fun to see the fire engine arrive in the village, its siren sounding. Morons, all of them.
One senses also that the reality of the countryside has also fallen short of her own fantasies of it – or perhaps more accurately that the banality of life there does not match her own more dramatic, and artistically and sexually charged views of the growth, reproduction and decay at the heart of nature.
And then I saw the air saturated with invisible sexual tension. Rembrandt. The acorns fell and fell and fell so lazily, so heavily between the treetops and the earth that they seemed to be asleep in the air. To be cutting the air with golden rays. Caravaggio. That spell, that somnolence that comes over you as you watch leaves twirl once, twice, a third time before reaching the ground. One leaf falls, then another and another. An atmosphere that leaves you open-mouthed, that turns your saliva into fresh water. Farewell to mould and darkness. The death of summer turned the woods into silence and sighs
And, once a writer and it seems literature student, she is bought up with a jolt listening to a radio critic discussing literature in words she has not heard for years, and contrasting it with the banality of her own life.
I wonder what I’d make of this very woodland, this rustic setting, the half-built house, the man nailing down planks of wood, if a critic said my writing dealt with ‘the interconnectivity of human existence
The narrator is frustrated at her partner's apparent low libido; however it's clear a large part of that is caused by his fears over her mental state and that the narrator herself is perhaps more interested in being sexually provocative and explicit in her speech than in sex itself.
I like thinking about sex, not having it. I was always good at the theory and a failure at the practical bit, that’s why I don’t know how to drive even though I’ve learnt the traffic laws by heart.
The second part of this quote again gets to some of the heart of the breech between the narrator and her in-laws; her husband convinced that if she simply put some practical effort into learning to drive and so gained some increased freedom and mobility that in itself would go a long way to improving her mood, she railing at his inability to understand her much deeper frustrations and furies.
In the neverimitate interview, Ariana Harwicz calls the book not just a novel, but also a mournful poem, a song, a sonata by Schubert or Rachmaninov mixed with ‘Stronger than me’ by Amy Winehouse - Winehouse's debut single and one described at the time in a Guardian review as a "bold assault on New Man and his values".
Her views on sex however, do not prevent her from fantasising about a married neighbour (to the extent she starts imagining him fantasising about her), and then it seems (albeit with the instability and unreliability of our narrator distinguishing fact from fantasy can be as hard for us as it seems to be for her) having a brief affair with him, which later disintegrates into stalking on her side and into the climax of the book.
Finally one element of this book is that none of the family characters are named (although three of the neighbours and a bit at a party are). This is not done in a way to draw attention (as occurs in books where only one character is not named, or where characters are labelled as Mr. A etc.) but is a clear part of the book – with characters simply described as my son, my husband, my father-in-law etc.
The implication of this to me, is that identity (particularly within the family which the narrator has joined) is defined by status and role – something that others seem contended to embrace but which the narrator pushed back against, rejecting the traditional concepts of mother or wife.
I was recently able to discuss this aspect with the co-translator of the book (also co-owner of Charco Press). Incidentally it is a great advantage of small presses that you can directly engage with them. Her views:
None of the main characters in Ariana’s three novels have names. And this is due to several reasons, I think. On one hand, they tend to be antisocial, a-social rather, they are pariahs. They are not protected by legality. They are on the margins, and not just in terms of their class –although that too- but mostly in philosophical terms. Secondly, their namelessness has to do with the theatrical dimension of her prose. They are mere characters, pawns of the story, theatre elements. They are characters that respond to roles, not to names, because they are not people, they have not been born per se. Thus, they respond to mother, husband, father-in-law, lover, and not to names. Through this, Ariana shows the artificiality of the roles imposed by society (like Becket does with these characters ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’), the artificiality that lies inherently in every love relationship, in every family relationship, and so forth. Finally, it is also an aesthetic choice. This is part of her aesthetics, of her style, something that defines her prose.
I found the book a compelling portrait of peripartum depression, the first clinical diagnosis of which I found seemed a great summary of the narrators situation Peripartum depression should be distinguished from the baby blues, which is characterized by short duration, mild symptoms, and minimal impact on functioning. Women with peripartum depression should be evaluated for bipolar disorder, postpartum psychosis, and suicidal risk.
It also summarises our concern as readers, that a book which starts with such violent imagery can only end in harm for the narrator, her husband, her baby or perhaps all of them and so the menace which lays at the heart of this book as the narrator’s mental state disintegrates and her family “gradually succumbs to the radiation of infidelity.
Overall a vivid, powerful and disturbing read.
My thanks to Charco Press for a review copy....more
NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
This book is published by a small UK publisher, Dostoyevsky Wannabe who “publish and exhibit iNOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
This book is published by a small UK publisher, Dostoyevsky Wannabe who “publish and exhibit independent/experimental/underground things”
Given this aim it is far from a coincidence that Isabel Waidner is the ex-bassist of the indie, experimental group “Klang” – who struggled at times with matching their underground philosophy with the attention they gained from their lead singer being Donna Matthews of Elastica.
The author is now a research fellow in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton, London, where she invites inquiries from prospective research students in “areas of innovative fiction, avant-garde writing, and creative writing at the intersections with cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, body studies, subjectivity and independent publishing.”
These research themes are key to the motivation behind this novel – even more so on the realisation that this novel was in fact an integral part of Waidner’s PhD Thesis.
The reading of this was crucial to cementing and amplifying my (admittedly still limited) understanding of this hugely experimental book.
Attempting to put that understanding in my own words, I believe that Waidner’s key idea is to link two areas: conceptual art (something which she feels has only had limited cross over into literature) and post-identity gender fluidity – this leads to her concept of trans-literature.
Further a key element of the book is its rejection of the traditional novelistic structure featuring a main character, other key characters, minor characters and then passive objects with which they interact. I believe that Waidner implicitly equates this rigid and hierarchical structure with a traditional patriarchal, gender-rigid society.
In this book by contrast the dominant character is a fluid concept – and just as an hierarchy starts to form (often to the relief of the reader, who finally starts to be able to identify the book with conventional concepts of plot and character and feels they are returning to something they know), Waidner very deliberately overturns this hierarchy and introduces a new main character, including in many cases what initially seemed inanimate objects – often based around patterns or illustrations on clothing (clothing often described in detail, and all it seems based on items that Waidner or her friends have worn).
Another way of saying this is that just as we start to find some solid ground Waidner pulls the rug from under our feet – a cliché but one I have chosen deliberately as a key example of this idea (and one Waidner explains at length in her thesis) is when a pattern on a carpet suddenly emerges as the main protagonist of the book, only for just when the reader is starting to accept this, for the polyester-style material of the carpet to take over from the pattern as the protagonist.
Other thematic elements of the book which stood out to me on my initial read (and before reading the thesis) were: the clear use of Google as a tool to take an idea and extend in a kind of free-association exploration of an initial concept and a search for links or word plays that can be incorporated to alter the course of the novel or to facilitate the introduction of new protagonists; the slightly odd narrative which at times can read like a rather literal translation from German (an idea crystallised by the occassional insertion of German sentences). To my interest, both of these elements (which I may have regarded as criticisms) are dwelt on and examined in the thesis.
The actual style and plot (to the extent such reactionary concepts even have any validity in this ultra-progressive, post-everything novel) is best captured in my view by simply giving links to a number of websites that have published excerpts from the novel (others are embedded and conceptualised in the author’s PhD thesis).
And this perhaps gets to the heart of my only possible challenge to this book – accessibility. I suspect for many readers, these excerpts are not going to encourage further engagement with this book. And I believe that this matters as I know that the author feels strongly that the literary mainstream urgently needs to move towards what are currently perceived as the margins (including opening up to more working class and gender queer voices)
One of the few mainstream authors that Waidner admires is Ali Smith, and in fact Smith’s partner Sarah Wood provides the photography for this book. However Smith has made a breakthrough into the literary mainstream. I was critical of elements of her latest book "Autumn", which I felt owed more to the absurdity of Harry Hill than cutting edge literature, but its clear from Goodreads reviews that its exactly those passages that have drawn many others into the book, giving them an entry point with which to engage with the more radical and experimental themes.
I suspect if Waidner wishes to really challenge the mainstream with her ideas, then she may need to think about this concept of allowing an entry point into her work.
However once engaged I found this a hugely fascinating novel.
My thanks to Dostoyevsky Wannabe for a review copy....more
Winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for which I was a judge) and listed in the Guardian as my Book of the Year for 2017.
https://www.theguaWinner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for which I was a judge) and listed in the Guardian as my Book of the Year for 2017.
And now winner of the James Tait novel prize- Britain's longest running literary prize to go with its newest in the RoC.
This book is published by the UK small publisher Influx Press which “publish stories from the margins of culture, specific geographical spaces and sites of resistance that remain under explored in mainstream literature.”
Eley Williams herself is one of the fiction editors of the literary webzine 3AM and a visiting lecturer and tutor (in Creative Writing and Children’s literature among other areas) at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Her research interests include experimental fiction, lexicography (i.e. compiling dictionaries) and onomasiology (a new term to me, Definition: the branch of linguistics that deals with concepts and the terms that represent them, in particular contrasting terms for similar concepts, as in a thesaurus).
It is clear that her interests have inspired her writing in this vibrant book of short stories, which features two definitions from Johnson’s dictionary as an epigraph (including one of “Attribute”) and then features copious word play, and explorations of language and of the meanings of words.
Another key theme of the book is the contrast between unspoken thoughts and spoken words; almost all of the stories are internal dialogues, often that cover a few moments while the protagonist thinks of something that has just happened or is about to occur.
Stories include:
Alphabet – about a lady suffering from Aphasia (Definition: inability or impaired ability to understand or produce speech, as a result of brain damage) and the subsequent deterioration of her relationship;
Swatch – a boy hiding in a cupboard at a party and who is obsessed with the colour of his and other’s eyes, colours he describes using shades he knows from his painter’s father’s work;
Attrib. - a Foley (Definition:of or pertaining to motion-picture sound effects produced manually) engineer hears everyday objects speaking to him as she goes about her work, trying to produce a sound effect for Michelangelo's "Creation of Eve" as she plays with a spare rib from a takeaway - all a reflection on as Eley Williams herself puts it Genesis and genesis;
Smote – a woman agonises in an art and word fuelled stream of consciousness over whether to kiss her partner as they view a painting together;
B's - the writer muses on the Birds and the Bees as her lover awakes;
Alight at the Next – the protagonist deciding whether they should invite their companion home, is delayed at their tube stop by a man getting off the train before they can alight;
Concision – about the ending of a phone call;
And back Again – the protagonist fantasies about demonstrating their love by acting out the lyrics of “I’d do Anything”;
Fears and Confessions of An Ortolan Chef – a relationship breaks down as the chef describes the practice of preparing and eating Ortolan (Definition:a small Eurasian songbird that was formerly eaten as a delicacy, the male having an olive-green head and yellow throat );
Synasthete: Would like to Meet – a sufferer from an extreme form of Synasthesia (Definition:the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body) reflects on a date;
Bulk – a natural historian joins a crowd examining the carcass of a dead whale;
Platform – the protagonist looks back on a photo, literally the parting shot of a relationship, and notices a commuter’s toupee being blown into someone else’s face;
Spins – in which the protagonist muses on Spiders and related topics while reflecting on the last word they spoke as their partner stormed out after a row.
Overall a fascinating, enjoyable and hugely stimulating exploration.
As well as Williams' beautiful wordplay she has a fantastic turn of phrase: I loved Stendhal Syndroming at the thought of you by this painting and my lips anywhere near yours and all that I am you have made italic from Smote or the closing line of Bs all of this is a half-asleep thought of a euphemism of a metaphor of a ghost of the word for the sight of you opening any eye and saying "Good morning".
My preferred literary form has traditionally been the novel – and when I first started the book I found it the literary equivalent of fast food – each story seemed more like a brief experiment, not really carried through with any commitment or lasting satisfaction
However by the time I had finished I compared it in my mind more to a tasting menu (Definition:A style of restaurant dining in which guests receive a series of small, intricate dishes made using special techniques or with unusual ingredient).
I can only urge you to taste the intricate, special and unusual language in this book.
NOW DESERVEDLY THE WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE TO FOLLOW ITS SHORTLISING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE (for which I was a judge)
GaNOW DESERVEDLY THE WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE TO FOLLOW ITS SHORTLISING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE (for which I was a judge)
Galley Beggar Press is a small publisher responsible which aims to produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature and which declares an aim to publish books that are hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose – a description which has been taken as the criteria for the Republic Of Consciousness prize.
Its most striking success to date has been in being prepared to publish Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing which had taken 9 years to find a publisher and of course went on to win the Bailey’s Prize.
“We That Are Young” is a debut novel by Preti Taneja a human rights advocate and literary academic. Between 2014-16 she held a Post Doc position at Queen Mary, University of London and Warwick University, working on Shakespeare performances in relation to human rights abuses and in humanitarian situations
This novel flows directly from her joint interests – and is explicitly a re-telling of King Lear set in India in the early 2010’s against a background of the 2011-12 anti-corruption protests (which form very much more of the foreground in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness).
Galley Beggar Press’s co-founder has commented much like our author Eimear McBride – when Preti’s novel was first submitted to us, it came with a history of ecstatic rejections from editors, who almost universally felt that her writing was extraordinary but too ‘tricksy’ to be a commercial success.
The book’s title is taken from the closing speech in King Lear (attributed to Albany or to Edgar in the two key versions of the play):
The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most. We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
In the author’s words While writing We That Are Young I worked in New Delhi and Kashmir, and spoke to many people from different castes, class backgrounds and religions about the feverish times they felt they were living in. The title of my book comes from the end of Shakespeare's play, and evokes the power of the fact that India is the world's youngest and fastest growing democracy
The key protagonists in the book (and their King Lear counterparts) are:
Devraj Bapuji (King Lear), billionaire owner of the eponymous Devraj Conglomerate and his daughters: the eldest Gargu (Goneril) married to the stolid Surenda (Albany); the more flighty and fashionable Radha (Regan) married to the more ambituous Bubu (Cornwall); the youngest Sita (Cordelia) an environmentally aware Cambridge student.
Devraj’s right hand man Ranjit Singh (Gloucester), his gay heir Jeet (Edgar) and his illegitimate son Jivan (Edmund).
The book opens with Jivan returning from imposed exile in America after the death of his mother (Devraj’s singer mistress) and reacquainting himself with his childhood friends Gargu and Radha, at the same time as a returning party arranged for Sita at her graduation. At a lunch on the Day of Jivan’s return, Devraj announces he is splitting the company between his daughters, only for Sita’s refusal to pay homege to him leading to him renouncing her inheritance; Jivan meanwhile sows seeds of mistrust between his father and brother – all of this of course a character by character re-enactment of the basic plot of “King Lear” and which is also followed by King-Lear echoing discord between Devraj and his Head of Security Kritik (Kent) and then a wedge between Devraj and his daughters due to the behaviour of Devraj’s hundreds (Lear’s retinue of a hundred servants) a hand selected cadre of high fliers.
The book is written in five lengthy, third party point of view sections – concentrating in turn on the viewpoints of Jivan, Gargi, Radha, Jeet and Sita. The length of these sections and the use of a continuous present tense (as well as the liberal interspersing of only partially translated Hindi in the book) can at times make this an exhausting as well as an exhilarating read. I was at times reminded of the "assault on the senses" that many Westerners use to describe their first visit to India.
One of the interesting choices in the novel is to open with sympathetic accounts of the actions and motivations of those – Jivan, Gargi and Radha – whose King Lear equivalents – Edmund, Goneril and Regan are effectively unambiguously villians. The effect of this as others have pointed out in their reviews, is to give a novel which while clearly borrowing heavily from King Lear, also gives back some added perspective to that play, particularly around the motivations of the full group of protagonists.
The sections are intercut with some first party ramblings from Devraj – who early on speculates:
Now the most winning stories always have the same cast of characters in one form or another. There is a set of twins, or double beings, a trainee architect, a father, an uncle, a brother, a desirable sister with no self-control, and of course incestuous love. There is always a narrator: an old-man in a pickle factory, sitting on his chutpoy reading Dickens in the English language, framed by a picture of the Taj Mahal. The settings are new worlds, the language tricksy. Pah. Making up words and full of doubt. What is the value of such stories? Expensive papers and lies. My story is a simple one, come closer if you can. The language you understand it in is not the one I am speaking. It contains elements of truth, the genius of ancients, and some more modern influences. It is priceless and therefore free for all
The references to “most winning stories” seems to directly reference the writing of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy (both of whom feature pickle factories in their most famous novels) while also implicitly acknowledging the way in which much of modern Indian literary writing draws heavily both on the style of Dickens and implicitly on the implausible plots of Shakespeare; and the same could be said to be true for Indian TV
Jivan used to watch these hokey Indian serials on Star Plus TV, sitting with Ma in the afternoons when he got in from school. She loved them all: the family dramas with cardboard villains and handsome heroes, non-stop cases of mistaken identity, masters for servants, good girls for bad. Brothers disguised as each other, lovingly beating sisters, wives and mothers-in-law fighting over sons. In the end the good would get rich and the bad were punished. The lovers would be united with parental blessing, kneeling for hands to be raised over their heads in benediction, the parents would kneel and beg their children to bless them right back. It was always happily-ever-after-the-end.
There are two very distinct literary choices that the author makes in this book – both of which struck me as slightly false on a first read, but as thoroughly justified on a second.
The first is referenced above – the frequent use of many half-translated (or untranslated) not just Hindi words, but full sentences. Initially this is to convey the explicit disorientation that the Americanised Devraj first experiences on his return to His homeland, as he struggles to recall his childhood Hindi, but it is continued throughout the book. I understand from interviews with the author that her aim was to convey something of the reality of the world for her and many of her friends – living in Hindi speaking households in English speaking countries, and therefore simultaneously inhabiting both linguistic worlds. Even further than this though is an acknowledgment of the way in which both languages have inspired and fed the other over time. As Devraj notes when addressing the reader:
My story is a simple one … the language you understand it is not the one I am speaking. It contains elements of truth, the genius of ancients, and some more modern influences. It is priceless and therefore free for all
The second was the choice to follow not just the main plot, but often the dialogue of King Lear, and more specifically to choose to convey some of the more dramatic parts of the original plot (the putting in the stocks of Lear’s messenger, the apocalyptic storm) and those that are just odd (the gouging of Gloucester's eyes, the Dover cliffs bluffed suicide scene) literally and not in a more imaginative and figurative sense. However again I now appreciate that this choice is in many ways fundamental to the author’s very conception of this novel – her realisation that concepts and events which render King Lear strange to a modern Western reader (the extreme patriarchy; the use of Lear's fortune as what is effectively dowry; the fundamental conflict of ambition, family and state; unchecked state violence and civil conflict; extremes of class/caste; the abuse of domestic servants) can be understood in a modern context when transplanted across the world.
Just as King Lear examines the violence that flowed from Lear's partriarchy and his forced and ill-thought through division of his Kingdom between his two daughters, so We That Are Young could be said to examine the effects of British colonialism and the long lasting impacts of the violence and division that flowed from Partition.
Overall a vibrant and wonderful novel.
My thanks to Galley Beggar Press for the ARC....more
NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
The book is published by Les Fugitives, a small publisher “dedicated to publishing short worksNOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
The book is published by Les Fugitives, a small publisher “dedicated to publishing short works by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English”.
“L’autoportrait bleu” was originally published in 2009 and was Noémi Lefebvre’s debut novel.
The book is effectively an inner monologue / stream of consciousness of the narrator, sitting next to her sister on a flight from Berlin, reflecting on her interactions in Berlin with a world-class pianist and composer.
The title of the book is taken from a painting (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/arnold-...) by the composer, music theorist and painter Arnold Schoenberg, inventor of the influential twelve-tone technique which was at the heart of a movement in modern music which (as I understand it) prioritised musical theory, cerebral experimentation and the experience and input of the composer; as opposed to traditional tonal classical music which prioritises the enjoyment and emotional engagement of the listener (by use of familiar and comforting musical devices and a hierarchy of major and minor themes).
The book is in subject matter partly an examination of Schonberg’s life, music and painting – with the composer/pianist significantly affected by viewing the Blue Self Portrait.
However it also draws on his musical techniques for its meta-structure – with a series of repeating but equally prominent themes or tones: desinvolutre/ “not-caring”; crossing and uncrossing of legs; the lowing of a cow separated from its calf; encounters in cafes; the contrasts between the characters of the narrator and her sister despite their identical education; the notion of collective happiness; American cultural influences; languages – even in the original French the book features German and American phrases; talking too much and its relationship with a missing tooth; her sisters obsession with flying; the pianist’s usual companion (“accompaniment”); her parachutist ex -boyfriend).
As a result therefore this book could, in the same way as Schonberg’s music, perhaps be accused of elevating literary experimentation over the engagement of the reader.
The book I can most easily compare this to is A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing with its attempt to reproduce thoughts via a first person stream of consciousness, its literary innovation and also its reflections on male dominance. The latter theme is of course much more explicit in Eimear McBride's book, but is still strong here (the narrator agonising over having dominated the conversation with the composer, her sister reflecting on the invention of the air brake).
Interestingly the most considered review I have read of this book is by McBride in the Guardian.
If this book lacks the linguistic virtuosity of McBride's lyrical reinvention of English (I don't know if that is true in the original book but phrases like "not my cuppa" jarred here); almost all books would fall short of that standard.
Overall this is an admirable book. It is also beautifully translated and I appreciated the insights from Sophie Lewis in her translator's note.
NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
The short story book is published by Little Island Press who specialise in innovative, intelleNOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
The short story book is published by Little Island Press who specialise in innovative, intellectually ambitious writing.
This debut collection is certainly innovative and ambitious – Hayden writes with at times an almost Kafkaesque sense of the absurd and also with the ability to deliver pointed insights: a remark, for example, in the opening story “Egress” which brilliantly encapsulates the world of high finance.
The workers were returning, holding tall white tubes of coffee. They would join those who had stayed all night working on refractory problems, moving in minutely close or stepping back to a global distance to review risk or loss, to find resolutions that would cause money to leap free from wherever it was trapped: in bodies, components, minds or ore; in ideas, longings, irritations, bare possibilities. Everyone labouring to add more to the much
Many of the stories can at first read seem disorienting lacking an obvious and familiar anchor around which to base one's comprehension and on a first read I preferred the stories where I felt that I understood Hayden’s theme or concept for the story, although often even these stories veer off into a surreal ending.
However on a second read and also aided by this interview in the Irish Times I understood and then was able to fully appreciate the intent behind the technique.
Hayden describes this process of defamiliarisation as a “peeling back”, a way to make the stories stronger both as stand-alone texts, and as a complete collection.
“When I took that specificity away, I ended up with something that became much, much more interesting, more uncanny, and more generalisable to people’s experiences of different kinds of discomfort,” he says.
“Taking the specifics out, the recognisable accents and language, for me anyway it made it more interesting, it made it stronger, it made it possible to develop the theme of the story more strongly .....
“When I read through a story, if I find anything that sounds overfamiliar, unintentionally, then I’ll rewrite it,” Hayden says. “I’ll take it out because it weakens the lines."
Hayden is particularly strong when in the world of books, reading and imagination - which is perhaps not surprising given his wide range of experience in this field (publisher, reviewer, editor, bookseller).
“Memory House” is almost Borgesian – taking the concept of the Memory palace technique literally as a way to explore remembering.
“Reading” playfully explores the idea that “When you die you revive in the world of the last book you were reading before your demise”
Hayden also writes with humour, in “How to Read a Picture Book” a man in a squirrel costume educates children on various aspects of picture books, including
Sometimes when Mommy or Daddy are very tired, they’ll stumble over the words. Say them in the wrong order. Miss a page or two. Fall asleep drooling so that you have to shake them awake and, if you’re lucky, they’ll start over from where they left off and, if not, they’ll say: “Look Max. I have to make supper and clean the kitchen and write a report for work. So I can’t go on reading. Sorry
Or in “Play” is a lecture on the concept of play.
Paradoxically Pichard stresses the essentially embodied nature of play. On investigation this turns out to mean nothing more than that one needs a body in order to be able to play. It is the kind of dressed –up statement of the obvious that is represented as an intellectual breakthrough but is, in fact, a banal utterance with no analytical power whatsoever
In “The Auctioneer”, the Auctioneer talks of his indifference to the physical objects he auctions and his opinion that being intimately involved with things that are more permanent than one’s self is a lowering experience and that he prefers The alternatives – flowers, food, wine, music – we have them, enjoy them and when they go we are still here remembering.
Brilliantly (and perhaps I say that because his views reflect my own view on reading) he applies the same concept to books
Books might well be the worst of the household ephemera: dry husks that, slab by slab rise in great, whispering walls, entombing their owners. The essence of the book is another thing entirely, not the words as such but what lies beneath the words, that is what can set you free. That is why libraries are so important, as long as one does not linger too long in them. If I have to buy a book I give it away immediately after I’ve finished reading
I will not be looking to give this book away as I will enjoy reading back over the stories, to distil more of their essence.
Ultimately this is a book of stories which brilliantly work on at least two levels - at a macro level as great and entertaining short stories in their own right, and at a micro level in the intricacy of the sentences crafted to make up each story.
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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