- Sub-Bill Bryson travel book full of banal “who knew?” observations on Japanese society
- Logan Paul levels of offensiveness (how doAn uneasy mix of:
- Sub-Bill Bryson travel book full of banal “who knew?” observations on Japanese society
- Logan Paul levels of offensiveness (how does almost exactly the same crass approach to exactly the same sensitive topic, get a YouTube star publically shamed and dropped by sponsors and a novel MBI shortlisted?
I guess the answer is “bought to you by the same jury that shortlisted a book which made fun of the severely handicapped”
- A very sub David Lodge academic farce
- An excessive as well as excessively signalled use of the “perhaps this is all just a dream/imagination” plot device; a device where even a single, subtle use could be accused of unoriginality
- A pine-centred discovery (as opposed to pine-scented disinfectant) of the role of nature as a cure for stress
- An examination of Japanese poetry
The real problem the book faces is that the only real excuse for the some of the crassness in the first two elements, is that, as signalled by the third element it is mean to be a satire - admittedly a very badly written satire (both for the obviousness of its targets and the lack of amusement in its approach) – but still a satire, with the German academic, not Japanese society or suicidal men, the target.
However the more serious turn the book takes as the latter two aspects take precedence (and even feature occasional outbreaks of actually quite good lyrical writing) sits extremely uneasily with, and even cast doubts on, the satirical intentions.
Another disappointing addition to a very underwhelming MBI shortlist....more
I read this book due to its inclusion on the 2019 Man Booker International Shortlist - a list I have found distinctly underwhelming (particularly whenI read this book due to its inclusion on the 2019 Man Booker International Shortlist - a list I have found distinctly underwhelming (particularly when its seems a common view from those who follow translated fiction prizes more closely, that the shortlist this year was much the best pick of a weaker longlist).
Paul has already written an extremely comprehensive review of the book here - which gives much of the historical context to the novel as well as explaining its structure.
I read the book in a single sitting, which I think should work to the book's benefit - as it makes it much easier to follow the two main assassinations, to spot the links between them, to be able to pick up the various witnesses and alleged incidents around the Uribe Uribe assassination, and to immerse oneself in the world of conspiracy theories.
In practice it was not an experience I particularly enjoyed - I do not find conspiracy theories appealing and too much of the first part of the book took place in them, and the lengthy section of the novel which effectively ends up as a fairly ordinarily written reproduction of a historical account of the supposed truth around the Uribe Uribe murders was simply tedious.
While there may be lots to like in this novel - the decision to include this section has cost it 4 stars in my view....more
I enjoy historical non-fiction so I did find plenty of interest in this part personal memoir/ part collective- autobiographical reflection on French sI enjoy historical non-fiction so I did find plenty of interest in this part personal memoir/ part collective- autobiographical reflection on French society and history from 1941-2006, which I came to via its Man Booker Prize International longlisting – the jury there deciding that if the main prize jury can count comics as novels, then they can count non-fiction as fiction.
Interestingly one of the recurrent themes of the author’s reflections are on her lifelong ambition to write a novel – for example
“the idea has come to her to write a “kind of woman’s destiny”, set between 1940 and 1985. It would be something like Maupassant’s “A Life” and convey the passage of time inside and outside of herself, in History, a “total novel” that would end with her dispossession of people and things”
Had she but of known the MBI jury were not fussed at the fiction/non-fiction distinction, I feel the author could have been spared years of agony.
This is clearly a book which is aimed at French readers, for whom the extensive cultural observations will make more or less sense depending on their age and interests – for an English reader much of it is obscure and, particularly where there were paragraphs of lists, I simply found myself skipping through large chunks with only at best cursory interest.
And this is not helped by the very odd footnotes. The translator has chosen to provide 29 brief footnotes (when either nil or 100+ or indeed a full appendix would have made more sense) – and I was puzzled by the choices made.
For example why in the sentence: “The table buzzed with peacefully disparate and mocking remarks, about the barbouzes, Mauriac and his stifled cluck of a laugh, the tics of Malraux” is only “barbouzes” footnoted – I can Google that just (if not more) easily than the two names.
This seems to reach a nadir with the decision, among copious untranslated French to footnote the French part of: “Kids requested fruit-flavoured Evain Water (‘l’Evian fruit, c’est plus muscle’)” with the translation as “Fruit flavoured Evain water makes you stronger”, whereas “Comme un arbre dans la Ville” on the same page is completely unfootnoted despite the first having both rather heavy explanatory context and words which are fairly easy to translate even for someone with zero French. In fact I cannot conceive of a reader who could translate the second but not the first.
Only to be exceeded when I was similarly baffled at one of the very limited English translator footnotes being given over to a translation from Spanish (“Giants and Cabzeudos”) which would presumably be just as required by a French reader?
Now I have to be honest the above criticisms are potentially unfair:
There is lots to like in this innovative piece of autofiction, particularly: the way the personal is turned into a collective, the clever way that pictures are used to capture and then anchor the passing of time and the mirroring of physical changes in inner and societal changes; the way political events form a backdrop and media/consumer changes form more of the foreground – reflecting the reality of most people’s actual experiences – so a form of socio-economic rather than political/economic history.
Many of the cultural references were either very interesting to me (for example the constant references to both World Wars from earlier generations, the view of 1968 as a lost opportunity or betrayal), personally familiar (Tour de France references), generally familiar to most English readers (much of French politics) or clear enough that I could grasp the social essence that was being described (and quickly draw an English analogy).
The footnotes while not perfect are useful while not being intrusive.
But the book completely forfeited my good will and sympathy with a shameful joke on the first page – whose inclusion I find entirely unjustifiable and which has cost the book its rating....more
Now deserved winner of the Man Booker International Prize.
She began to realise that there was no way she could be Khalid’s other half, once upon a
Now deserved winner of the Man Booker International Prize.
She began to realise that there was no way she could be Khalid’s other half, once upon a time sundered but which (he assured her) he had now found. This was because Khalid, on his own, took on the likeness of a celestial sphere complete unto itself, orbiting only along its already defined path.
It is published by the Ross-shire based small publishers Sandstone press who “are an independent publisher with an international outlook, producing inspiring books by innovative authors”.
Last year, one of their publications, Rebecca Ley’s compelling and quietly beautiful debut novel “Sweet Fruit, Sour Land” won the Guardian Not The Booker prize, for which I was one of the judges.
This book is written by the Omanian based author and academic Jokha Alharthi (with a PhD from Edinburgh, now an Assistant professor in Muscat) and translated by Marilyn Booth, a Professor in the Department of Oriental Studies at Oxford.
The translator has furnished a helpful Translator’s Note – albeit one that serves more as a useful introduction to the book and to the historical canvas against which it is set, than as a note on the translation challenges faced and choices made.
The Translator’s note has a comment from the critic Munir ‘Utaybah which I think captures much of the “carefully evoked historical canvas” on which the author has painted her novel: “A complete world of social relations, practices and customary usages is collapsing ….. It is a precarious edge between one era and another, the border between the world of masters and that of slaves, between the worlds of the human beings and of supernatural jinn .…. between genuine love and imagined love, between the society’s idea of person and a person’s sense of self”
I would also strongly recommend this very detailed review by Paul
Overall I found this an enjoyable novel - both sets of narratives are non-conventional and roam across characters and across time.
Abdallah’s sections are stream of consciousness like thoughts, as he suffers from a headache (and insomnia) on a flight to Germany and roams across key incidents in his life – in the same short chapters sometimes conflating: his marriage to Mayaa (which did not match his romantic ideals); recent confrontations with their children - particularly their daughter London; his own childhood uncertainties and insecurities about the absence of his mother (who died in never explained circumstances when he was still a baby); the harsh treatment he received at the hands of his slave-trader father; and his relationship with his father’s slave and concubine Zafira.
The omniscient third party narrator sections are in distinct chapters, which will internally consistent, move from chapter to chapter across different point-of-view characters (albeit sometimes with less of a single P.O.V.) – including Mayaa, her two sisters, her father (and his affair with a Bedouin woman shortly after the birth of Mayya and Abdallah’s first daughter London), the marriage of Mayya's sister Asma to a returning emigrant's Son. Overall the chapters move linearly in time - albeit in many cases painting a back story, or less conventionally, moving forwards in time to comment on the character's future. Late chapters in particular go back in time to hint at the events leading to Abdallah's mother's death, and then forward to the unhappy marriages of Mayya's daughter London and of Mayy's youngest sister Khawla.
Both in my view are very effective at evoking the world that Munir ‘Utaybah describes
Abdallah’s sections by compressing and conflating the figurative journey that Omani society has taken over many years – a journey that, compared to the West, was accelerated into a few generations into a single, literal journey.
The third party sections move between characters who are comfortable in accepting their society imposed role (or at least feel disorientated when those roles are taken away – even if they are, literally, subservient ones), to characters who are desperate to embrace the new world (although often burnt by their first touch).
Overall – recommended both for its insights into a different culture and on literary merit and my favourite to win the Man Booker International Prize.
The moon moves between high and low, between the sublime and the filth of creation. Of all the celestial bodies, the moon is closest to the matters of this lower world"
Now shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
I am hoping this is not the book cited for her Nobel Prize win.
Why is it that old
Now shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
I am hoping this is not the book cited for her Nobel Prize win.
Why is it that old women … women of your age are so concerned about animals? Aren’t there any people left to take care of?
I could sense his disgust as he ... cast negative judgement on my taste
This book is a noir style mystery novel written by the author of the Man Booker International winning Flights – and at first the clear mystery that the reader is faced with is how the author of such a complex, lengthy, erudite and Sebaldesque book can for their next book produce a short, sub-Nesbo genre book. perhaps only followed by the sub-mystery of its own MBI longlisting.
The author solves the mystery in this Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...) where her explanation is disarming, involving a two-book deal and a handy fashion for detective stories – although I was a little disappointed to be an unwilling and unwitting victim.
I do not normally read much crime fiction – and the inclusion of “Snap” on the Booker list did not encourage me in that direction. However as part of reading the shortlist for the Guardian 2018 Not The Booker prize I recently read Dark Pines by Will Dean – a Nordic-noir crime book (by a UK author living in Sweden).
And I was very struck by the similarities between the two books: set in an isolated and wooded part of the country; a main character with a number of quirks; an isolated hamlet with a cast of eccentrics; the area dominated by a male hunting fraternity, who it is increasingly clear have links to all of the main players in the area including business men and the police; a shadowy brothel; a series of grisly murders with an underlying link – and all of men associated with the hunting establishment; an eventual motive fuelled by a twisted sense of justice not recognised by the conventional legal system.
Even though (or should that be because) “Dark Pines” was pure Genre fiction – I found it far more enjoyable and much better written.
My views on the writing of this book were not aided by things such as a Middle Eastern doctor called Ali who cannot speak great Polish and says “I’ll soon see what’s wailing you”; or a trite series of observations on male drivers of large cars and what they might be compensating for. These could be assigned to the quirky narrator - but I feel that the author identifies with her character.
And my key issue with this book was that I could not empathise with the main character at all – I found myself identifying more with those around her, which given my negative views on hunting, is really quite a feat on the author’s behalf.
I think there were two main reasons for this: the character’s preference for animals over humans and her obsession with astrology: the first made me found the book at best morally ambiguous; the second lead to me frequently skipping chunks of text.
The author calls her books like “Flights” constellation novels – to quote from the Guardian article just as the ancients looked at stars in the sky and found ways to group them and then to relate them to the shapes of creatures or figures, so what she calls her “constellation novels” throw stories, essays and sketches into orbit, allowing the reader’s imagination to form them into meaningful shapes.
I hope that the author sticks to constellations as a way of shaping novels structure rather than content in the future.
Rating rounded up due to the author's general (although far from uniform) excellence in "Flights"....more
Now shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.
And Other Stories is a small UK publisher which “publishes some of the best in contemporaNow shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.
And Other Stories is a small UK publisher which “publishes some of the best in contemporary writing, including many translations” and aims “to push people’s reading limits and help them discover authors of adventurous and inspiring writing”. They are set up as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company and operate on a subscriber model – with subscribers (of which they now have around 1000 in 40 countries) committing in advance to enable the publication of future books. This was the first book to which I subscribed – and it is always pleasing to feel one has contributed, in a very small way, to facilitating a work of art.
Famously and admirably, And Other Stories were the only publisher to respond to Kamilia Shamsie (subsequent winner of the 2018 Women’s Prize)’s 2016 challenge to only publish books by women in 2018.
This debut novel, first published as La Resta in 2014 has been translated by Sophie Hughes.
The book starts in Santiago Chile, sometime near to the present day – and features three children of left wing militants (Felipe, Iquela and Paloma).
The limited plot of the novel features the half-German Paloma returning to Chile after many years of exile with her Chilean mothers body (having decided it would be appropriate for her to be buried in her homeland). Iquela is asked by her mother (and old aquaintance of the deceased), to meet Paloma at the airport – but when the latter discovers that a volcanic ash cloud has lead to the flight with her mother’s body being diverted to Argentina, the two together with Felipe (who shares an apartment with his childhood friend and companion Iquela) set off on a road trip in a hearse to recover the body.
An early chapter, set on the day of the 1988 national plebiscite (which ended the Pinochet dictatorship and restored democracy) shows the tension between Paloma’s and Iquela’s father, as the ex-militants come to terms with their past actions and their consequences for the orphaned Felipe.
The story is told in first person chapters which alternate between Felipe and Iquela. Felipe’s chapters are largely internal and figurative – haunted, literally, by the many dead of the post Allende years, he engages in a bizarre mathematical quest to count down the death toll through the dead he encounters – fixated always on the remainder. At one stage he also counts down the ages of the dead he observes towards his own age, and the chapters themselves are numbered in decreasing order. Iquela’s chapters are more conventional narrative – but with a stylistic tick where her inner thoughts are augmented by parenthical asides, the chapters themselves sharing a () title.
Further the book relies heavily on imagery – the ash cloud (based on real life Chilean volcanic eruptions which grounded flights) ends up blanketing Chile in dust – a clear metaphor for the mourning and death that still lingers from the Pinochet years (although as an aside I was surprised the ash stopped at the border given the desaparecidos).
The remainder image is also important – the children themselves suffering from the generational remainder of the traumas and hard choices of their parents; Iquela’s mother as the only remaining member of those parents who did not either die (of natural or unnatural causes) or take exile.
I found other parts of the book harder to understand – and in particular felt that the book weakened considerably in Argentina, particularly after a cancer drug induced trip, albeit bought back on track when Felipe finally comes face to face with the multitude of exiled dead of Chile.
Overall an interesting book – if not one that I felt I was fully able to appreciate. I think the book would have benefited from a translator’s note, as well as a foreword/afterword for the non-Chilean reader....more
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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