9353057604
9789353057602
B0842T8XTS
3.92
45,901
Aug 04, 2022
Feb 10, 2020
it was amazing
The Beta Version of 2022 Booker Prize winner “Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” (which was published in the UK in August 2022 by Sort of Books – a small i
The Beta Version of 2022 Booker Prize winner “Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” (which was published in the UK in August 2022 by Sort of Books – a small independent publisher founded by the co-founders of the Rough Guide Travel Series (husband and wife team – Mark Ellingham and Natania Jansz – a fellow Sri Lankan)
This version was originally published in India in February 2020 by Penguin India as “Chats with the Dead” (note a publication 6 months earlier would have made “Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” Booker ineligible were it counted as the same book).
And returning to my Beta-analogy, Natania, in particular, acted as the Beta-tester refining the book for more general release – finding and identifying a number of bugs and more particularly making a large number of suggestions for final improvements which in turn very much laid the foundations for its Booker success (as the author has acknowledged in a number of interviews).
Across a number of interviews the author has explained the difference between the two books – what is very clear is that while the initial motivation was to make the book more accessible for an International audience by clarifying some of the Buddhist mythology and Sri Lankan politics, the end results (aided by the process taking place over 2 years of lockdown) was much more around making the novel a more tightly edited, better paced book – for example by making the murder mystery a little more central and not lost among the equally important political thriller, afterlife satire/ghost story and love triangle.
My original aim with this book was to place Chats side by side with Seven Moons and systematically identify the differences between the two – but in practice it proved a little too time consuming, but a few observations:
- Consistent with what the author has said about the developing focus I could see only limited evidence of changes made to either political or mythological references. And parts of the book which a Seven Moons reader might think were added there for Western Readers – most specifically the Abbreviations section “letter to Andy” are taken straight from Chats
- Instead the largest changes are in moving around the order of sections (although with the sections largely unchanged). This seemed most noticeable in two places: First Moon where the initial session in the Afterlife in Seven Moons is much longer than in Chats (which shifts quickly to the Box Under The Bed and then returns); Fifth-Seventh Moons where the order seems moved around a lot between the days
- Chats has one early section I found that it seemed to me is completely missing from Seven Moons – where Kottu/Balal/Drivermaali feed the dead bodies to the panthers (this is only alluded to in Seven Moons). Later reading interviews I found this quote which confirmed my view “There’s a gruesome scene right at the beginning of Chats With the Dead, where bodies are being fed to cats and that is a scene straight out of nightmares, and we just thought, you know it’s going to turn off readers, and there’s enough violence anyway so maybe we should take it out.”
- Some slightly odd (possibly censorial?) changes to references: for example a comment “Coming back to life form this is as likely as Israelies leaving Palestine” was removed. Also the designation and name of the boxes of photos is altered – in particularly in Chats “Queens” refers to the pictures of men (and not the CNTR photos). And when Jaki (influenced in her dreams by Maali) realises the negatives are stored in two Kings and Queen linked albums the reference to “His Hand in Mine by Elvis and Hot Space by Queen” as “terrible albums by great artists” is instead “terrible albums couched in gatefold sleeves”
. Seven Moons rather oddly appears to have several BBC references removed. In Chats the BBC are mentioned in the Abbrevations alongside the UN as “a**eholes to work with” and further Sudworth works (at least notionally) for the BBC and not for AP. Another comment in Chats asks “Are they for the British Consultate. Or the BBC. Or MI6”
- The rather strange reference to “None of them knew that your Nikon used rolls of thirty-six and not thirty-two. Which meant you got to keep four photos from each reel, and cut out the negatives, and they never knew otherwise” in Seven Moons which Neil (a professional photographer points out in his review makes little or no sense) seems to have been added as it was missing in Chats
- And finally Maali’s imaginary gravestone has 1990 as his death date in Seven Moons and 1989 in Chats which is interesting to me as having written the first review of Seven Moons and then reading other reviews as they came in I noted with interest that no one seemed quite clear if the book was set in 1989 or 1990 ...more
This version was originally published in India in February 2020 by Penguin India as “Chats with the Dead” (note a publication 6 months earlier would have made “Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” Booker ineligible were it counted as the same book).
And returning to my Beta-analogy, Natania, in particular, acted as the Beta-tester refining the book for more general release – finding and identifying a number of bugs and more particularly making a large number of suggestions for final improvements which in turn very much laid the foundations for its Booker success (as the author has acknowledged in a number of interviews).
Across a number of interviews the author has explained the difference between the two books – what is very clear is that while the initial motivation was to make the book more accessible for an International audience by clarifying some of the Buddhist mythology and Sri Lankan politics, the end results (aided by the process taking place over 2 years of lockdown) was much more around making the novel a more tightly edited, better paced book – for example by making the murder mystery a little more central and not lost among the equally important political thriller, afterlife satire/ghost story and love triangle.
My original aim with this book was to place Chats side by side with Seven Moons and systematically identify the differences between the two – but in practice it proved a little too time consuming, but a few observations:
- Consistent with what the author has said about the developing focus I could see only limited evidence of changes made to either political or mythological references. And parts of the book which a Seven Moons reader might think were added there for Western Readers – most specifically the Abbreviations section “letter to Andy” are taken straight from Chats
- Instead the largest changes are in moving around the order of sections (although with the sections largely unchanged). This seemed most noticeable in two places: First Moon where the initial session in the Afterlife in Seven Moons is much longer than in Chats (which shifts quickly to the Box Under The Bed and then returns); Fifth-Seventh Moons where the order seems moved around a lot between the days
- Chats has one early section I found that it seemed to me is completely missing from Seven Moons – where Kottu/Balal/Drivermaali feed the dead bodies to the panthers (this is only alluded to in Seven Moons). Later reading interviews I found this quote which confirmed my view “There’s a gruesome scene right at the beginning of Chats With the Dead, where bodies are being fed to cats and that is a scene straight out of nightmares, and we just thought, you know it’s going to turn off readers, and there’s enough violence anyway so maybe we should take it out.”
- Some slightly odd (possibly censorial?) changes to references: for example a comment “Coming back to life form this is as likely as Israelies leaving Palestine” was removed. Also the designation and name of the boxes of photos is altered – in particularly in Chats “Queens” refers to the pictures of men (and not the CNTR photos). And when Jaki (influenced in her dreams by Maali) realises the negatives are stored in two Kings and Queen linked albums the reference to “His Hand in Mine by Elvis and Hot Space by Queen” as “terrible albums by great artists” is instead “terrible albums couched in gatefold sleeves”
. Seven Moons rather oddly appears to have several BBC references removed. In Chats the BBC are mentioned in the Abbrevations alongside the UN as “a**eholes to work with” and further Sudworth works (at least notionally) for the BBC and not for AP. Another comment in Chats asks “Are they for the British Consultate. Or the BBC. Or MI6”
- The rather strange reference to “None of them knew that your Nikon used rolls of thirty-six and not thirty-two. Which meant you got to keep four photos from each reel, and cut out the negatives, and they never knew otherwise” in Seven Moons which Neil (a professional photographer points out in his review makes little or no sense) seems to have been added as it was missing in Chats
- And finally Maali’s imaginary gravestone has 1990 as his death date in Seven Moons and 1989 in Chats which is interesting to me as having written the first review of Seven Moons and then reading other reviews as they came in I noted with interest that no one seemed quite clear if the book was set in 1989 or 1990 ...more
Notes are private!
0
1
Dec 13, 2022
Dec 14, 2022
Dec 14, 2022
Kindle Edition
1912697564
9781912697564
1912697564
3.24
17
unknown
Oct 2022
liked it
An interesting if for me uneven collection of three, very different novellas, perhaps only (as the blurb implies) linked by the idea of exploring the
An interesting if for me uneven collection of three, very different novellas, perhaps only (as the blurb implies) linked by the idea of exploring the past.
The first story – “Our Glad” was my favourite. Over nearly 70 pages written in a gentle and slightly old-fashioned style it unfolds both the story of a family (possibly a part autobiographical one) and some 150 years of Northern British history. The set up is of a nephew paying regular visits to his ageing Aunt – the Aunt telling stories from the family history (some so well known the nephew can tell them, some more revelatory), and the nephew giving some colour from internet researches. What is most moving about the story is the detailed picture it gives of everyday life only a few generations ago – including the War and particularly the late-era of workhouses. If I had a reservation here it is that non-fictional equivalent – for example based on collected verbal or written recollections (of which I have read some ones covering similar periods for my home country of Norfolk) are more genuine and effective.
The second story of around 40 pages was from the opening quite a contrast in tone (also old fashioned but rather formal/distant) and in content – as dealing with a historic event (the fall of the 1871 Paris Commune) through a modern lockdown lens. The main character is a Polish researcher living in Paris – after an impassioned defence of her strong views on the horrors of the atrocities committed by the French army on the surrendering Commune members – particularly the women – she leaves her online discussion groups and then befriends some refugees who restore her determination to continue her researches.
The titular third story is over 100 pages but was largely lost on me in both comprehension and enjoyment due to my complete lack of familiarity with or interest in its subject – Frederich Hölderlin, a poet in the German Romantic movement. ...more
The first story – “Our Glad” was my favourite. Over nearly 70 pages written in a gentle and slightly old-fashioned style it unfolds both the story of a family (possibly a part autobiographical one) and some 150 years of Northern British history. The set up is of a nephew paying regular visits to his ageing Aunt – the Aunt telling stories from the family history (some so well known the nephew can tell them, some more revelatory), and the nephew giving some colour from internet researches. What is most moving about the story is the detailed picture it gives of everyday life only a few generations ago – including the War and particularly the late-era of workhouses. If I had a reservation here it is that non-fictional equivalent – for example based on collected verbal or written recollections (of which I have read some ones covering similar periods for my home country of Norfolk) are more genuine and effective.
The second story of around 40 pages was from the opening quite a contrast in tone (also old fashioned but rather formal/distant) and in content – as dealing with a historic event (the fall of the 1871 Paris Commune) through a modern lockdown lens. The main character is a Polish researcher living in Paris – after an impassioned defence of her strong views on the horrors of the atrocities committed by the French army on the surrendering Commune members – particularly the women – she leaves her online discussion groups and then befriends some refugees who restore her determination to continue her researches.
The titular third story is over 100 pages but was largely lost on me in both comprehension and enjoyment due to my complete lack of familiarity with or interest in its subject – Frederich Hölderlin, a poet in the German Romantic movement. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 14, 2022
Dec 14, 2022
Paperback
1913430103
9781913430108
1913430103
3.74
19
unknown
Jul 2022
liked it
This book – which like much small press literary fiction rather blends the ideas of fiction and non-fiction, as well as essays and novels - is written
This book – which like much small press literary fiction rather blends the ideas of fiction and non-fiction, as well as essays and novels - is written by an artist, writer and until recently academic researcher into Freudian Analysis and research
Freud is an ever present influence on the book – firstly in providing much of the material around which the book is written (he and particularly his daughter Anna are key recurring characters) and secondly in consciously following his ideas of free association/train travel with a series of 256 one page chapters which (other than some concluding editing) were written five days a week for almost a year – each over 50 minutes (to mimic I think the analysis time in an hour session).
The title is from French alphabet primers – with the idea of a sequence of words or illustrations starting with the same letter. Here – the key is A – and in particular an effective sorority of women whose names begin with A (and even more ideally are variations on Anne).
So we start with Anna Freud (to avoid I assume paternalism second names are reduced to a letter – so in fact Anna F), but we also have at different times: Anna O (patient of Josef Breuer on whom ie developed the talking cure); Anna P(avolva) – the ballerina; Arachne and Ariande (from Greek mythology); Ariana R(eines) – the modern American poet; Anne S(erre) – the author; Annie E(rnaux) – Nobel Laureate; Anna K(avan) – British novelist and short story writer; Anne W(iazemsky) – actress and Robert Bresson muse; Ananda D(evi) – author of Eve Out Of Her Ruins; and even Ali S(mith) whose Seasonal Quarter provides a song for the last chapter (and whose partner Sarah Wood seems to have been a key encouragement for the novel).
A quick aside here – there is a lot of thematic overlap (if almost no character recurrence) with the Booker shortlisted “After Sappho” – but this book probably also has a little of the same issue of being rather lighter on intersectionality than it is on diversity (and in largely the same way).
Returning to this book - recurring themes include: storytelling and weaving; male patriarchal dominance (if not even abuse) – including and particularly in father-daughter, Uncle-niece or master-maid relationships – these are followed not just through historical characters but also through fictional works.
The writing is I think a lot easier to follow when you have some familiarity with the subjects – as the condensed daily format and deliberately neutral tone does not give much space for exposition (not assisted by the lack of patriarchal surnames so that even Googling takes some time). So for example – my familiarity with Anne S(erre)’s “The Governess” and even more so the plots and nuances of ballets such as “Giselle” and “The Nutcracker” and (slightly oddly) my knowledge of “The Sandman” less from Metallica and more from “Coppelia” meant that I really enjoyed the sections of the book dealing with these whereas many other chapters rather lost me and my rating reflects my ability to only really appreciate some of the novel.
One final comment – one of my issues with genre fiction is how books, even when trying to be different seem unable to shed certain genre conventions/constraints – for example Fantasy novels always have to be in a series of at least 3; Detective novels to stretch coincidence too far by having the main character a magnet for crimes. And this Sebaldian genre novel can also not escape the constrains with the obligatory black and white photos and with even a compulsory Suffolk Coast reference (with Anna Freud’s time in Walberswick). ...more
Freud is an ever present influence on the book – firstly in providing much of the material around which the book is written (he and particularly his daughter Anna are key recurring characters) and secondly in consciously following his ideas of free association/train travel with a series of 256 one page chapters which (other than some concluding editing) were written five days a week for almost a year – each over 50 minutes (to mimic I think the analysis time in an hour session).
The title is from French alphabet primers – with the idea of a sequence of words or illustrations starting with the same letter. Here – the key is A – and in particular an effective sorority of women whose names begin with A (and even more ideally are variations on Anne).
So we start with Anna Freud (to avoid I assume paternalism second names are reduced to a letter – so in fact Anna F), but we also have at different times: Anna O (patient of Josef Breuer on whom ie developed the talking cure); Anna P(avolva) – the ballerina; Arachne and Ariande (from Greek mythology); Ariana R(eines) – the modern American poet; Anne S(erre) – the author; Annie E(rnaux) – Nobel Laureate; Anna K(avan) – British novelist and short story writer; Anne W(iazemsky) – actress and Robert Bresson muse; Ananda D(evi) – author of Eve Out Of Her Ruins; and even Ali S(mith) whose Seasonal Quarter provides a song for the last chapter (and whose partner Sarah Wood seems to have been a key encouragement for the novel).
A quick aside here – there is a lot of thematic overlap (if almost no character recurrence) with the Booker shortlisted “After Sappho” – but this book probably also has a little of the same issue of being rather lighter on intersectionality than it is on diversity (and in largely the same way).
Returning to this book - recurring themes include: storytelling and weaving; male patriarchal dominance (if not even abuse) – including and particularly in father-daughter, Uncle-niece or master-maid relationships – these are followed not just through historical characters but also through fictional works.
The writing is I think a lot easier to follow when you have some familiarity with the subjects – as the condensed daily format and deliberately neutral tone does not give much space for exposition (not assisted by the lack of patriarchal surnames so that even Googling takes some time). So for example – my familiarity with Anne S(erre)’s “The Governess” and even more so the plots and nuances of ballets such as “Giselle” and “The Nutcracker” and (slightly oddly) my knowledge of “The Sandman” less from Metallica and more from “Coppelia” meant that I really enjoyed the sections of the book dealing with these whereas many other chapters rather lost me and my rating reflects my ability to only really appreciate some of the novel.
One final comment – one of my issues with genre fiction is how books, even when trying to be different seem unable to shed certain genre conventions/constraints – for example Fantasy novels always have to be in a series of at least 3; Detective novels to stretch coincidence too far by having the main character a magnet for crimes. And this Sebaldian genre novel can also not escape the constrains with the obligatory black and white photos and with even a compulsory Suffolk Coast reference (with Anna Freud’s time in Walberswick). ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 11, 2022
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 12, 2022
Paperback
9786046929512
3.59
599
Jan 01, 2005
2009
liked it
Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is the first English language translation of the works of the author (who under her Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is the first English language translation of the works of the author (who under her pen name of Thuận has written twelve novels). The author lives in Paris, but writes in her birth language of Vietnamese and also translates novels from French to Vietnamese (as well as editing the Vietnamese to French translations of her own novels) .
It is published by Deborah Smith’s small press “Tilted Axis” and translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý; and kudos to both for the inclusion of a detailed Translator’s Note. This is included at the end of the story buy my recommendation would be to read it before the novel, and equally (and as Neil says in his review) to read this interview (also before reading the novel) - https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
The narrator of the novel was born in Vietnam but now lives in Paris – where she teaches (alongside some passive-aggressively pedantic colleagues) in the suburbs some three mile round commute from Belleville where she lives (and which is home to Paris’ second Quartier Chinois/Chinatown but which also contains, and was first settled by, ethnic Vietnamese refugees). The ostensible set up (although one largely ignored for most of the book) is that travelling with her high school son Vinh, their train is delayed for two hours by a suspect package, and during those two hours we are privy to her roaming internal thoughts/stream of consciousness.
Gradually we piece together than when herself at high school in Hanoi the narrator formed a bond with a classmate – Thuy – who was of Chinese heritage. At the time the Chinese/Vietnamese war conflict between the two Communist counties lead to most of those of Chinese descent to leave the area – but Thuy and his family stayed with Thuy regarded somewhere between suspicious and to-be-ostracised (including by the narrator’s very Sinophobic family who chose to pretend her friendship with him is not happening). She wins a prestigious scholarship to Leningrad but on her return gets back together with Thuy, marries him, and after 11 months Vinh is born, with one month later Thuy leaving her and moving to the Chinatown in Saigon. Soon after she and her son emigrate to France. On the plane over she meets a Vietnam-phile, backpacking Frenchman who stays in regular touch and who her parents (who now see the West rather than Russia as the future) hope one day she will marry. Vinh, fired up by the Anti-US feelings of the Gulf War is focused far more on his Chinese heritage.
The narrator herself is also a writer and two excerpts from a draft novel are included in the book (as the only break to the otherwise black text) and due to their (for the narrator) auto-fictional nature do add a meta nature to the book.
So far so intriguing and enjoyable.
However, like the narrator I also have a train commute – and I normally am secretly pleased if the train is delayed as I can read more of my novel. But I think it is telling that I read this book over a few interrupted journeys but found myself turning to news or Goodreads say rather than using the extra time to read the book.
So, what were my issues?
Well as the Translator’s note makes clear the novel is “teeming with in-jokes, gossip, urban myths, anecdotes on yesterday's communism, juicy bits from contemporary tabloids, names and places and foods and facts pulled from four countries, three languages and two decades, all dropped in without explanation, some of which are recognisable only to those who have lived through that particular time in that particular place (so an insider as an immigrant in France as well).” – which to me makes large parts of the book almost impossible for at least this English reader to properly appreciate (not helped by the theoretically more familiar cultural reference included – the novels of Marguerite Duras – are also unknown to me).
And none of this distancing is assisted by the frequent flights to absurdity – including in the inserted narrator’s novel - and the often-detailed recollections of dreams (dreams in novels are almost always a no-no in my view, and I am not sure the narrator’s ability to recall dreams from the past really makes sense). This was probably a bigger issue – the in-jokes etc simply went over my head, the flights into absurdity lead to me flicking ahead in the novel to see when some form of order would be restored (which is never a good sign of a book I am enjoying) – and on a number of occasions I decided to not even return to the absurd parts and skip several pages instead (which is an even worse one)
The very consciously repetitive prose style of the novel is certainly distinctive and an interesting change from English language stream of consciousness novels which seem to struggle to move on from their Joycean/Woolfian heritage.
The author in the interview says: “I think my novels’ rhythms should attack the reader, confront them, suck them in. And when I’m feeling out the rhythm, I like to think of myself as trying to compose a piece of music. Also, I wanted to find words that are concise and clear, with no hidden meanings, few adjectives, and generally without many embellishments. I use short sentences, one following another, utilizing space so the words may gain more strength. And then I would repeat—like small waves that come in every now and again, disappearing into the rock and sand. That’s how I approached writing Chinatown. The cadence, for the most part, is created by repetition—of a word group, a sentence, or even a whole passage. It could also be an action, a saying, a name.”
But I have to say that this seems to include both an attacking/confronting metaphor with a lapping wave simile which seems to mix two ideas, none of which really reflected my own experience which was more of something jarring which I felt did not really work in English – for example take some of these excerpts from a detailed passage relating to the narrator’s return from Russia as her friends speculate if she will get back together with Thuy and a journalist talks about a boyfriend she had hoped would wait while she was away and which I think is pretty representative of the novel (numbers often being a key part of the repetition) but “punch him five punches”?
So overall a very interesting novel but not one I can say I really enjoyed reading – so perhaps 4* for the concept, 2* for my experience and 3* overall. ...more
This book is the first English language translation of the works of the author (who under her Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is the first English language translation of the works of the author (who under her pen name of Thuận has written twelve novels). The author lives in Paris, but writes in her birth language of Vietnamese and also translates novels from French to Vietnamese (as well as editing the Vietnamese to French translations of her own novels) .
It is published by Deborah Smith’s small press “Tilted Axis” and translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý; and kudos to both for the inclusion of a detailed Translator’s Note. This is included at the end of the story buy my recommendation would be to read it before the novel, and equally (and as Neil says in his review) to read this interview (also before reading the novel) - https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
The narrator of the novel was born in Vietnam but now lives in Paris – where she teaches (alongside some passive-aggressively pedantic colleagues) in the suburbs some three mile round commute from Belleville where she lives (and which is home to Paris’ second Quartier Chinois/Chinatown but which also contains, and was first settled by, ethnic Vietnamese refugees). The ostensible set up (although one largely ignored for most of the book) is that travelling with her high school son Vinh, their train is delayed for two hours by a suspect package, and during those two hours we are privy to her roaming internal thoughts/stream of consciousness.
Gradually we piece together than when herself at high school in Hanoi the narrator formed a bond with a classmate – Thuy – who was of Chinese heritage. At the time the Chinese/Vietnamese war conflict between the two Communist counties lead to most of those of Chinese descent to leave the area – but Thuy and his family stayed with Thuy regarded somewhere between suspicious and to-be-ostracised (including by the narrator’s very Sinophobic family who chose to pretend her friendship with him is not happening). She wins a prestigious scholarship to Leningrad but on her return gets back together with Thuy, marries him, and after 11 months Vinh is born, with one month later Thuy leaving her and moving to the Chinatown in Saigon. Soon after she and her son emigrate to France. On the plane over she meets a Vietnam-phile, backpacking Frenchman who stays in regular touch and who her parents (who now see the West rather than Russia as the future) hope one day she will marry. Vinh, fired up by the Anti-US feelings of the Gulf War is focused far more on his Chinese heritage.
The narrator herself is also a writer and two excerpts from a draft novel are included in the book (as the only break to the otherwise black text) and due to their (for the narrator) auto-fictional nature do add a meta nature to the book.
So far so intriguing and enjoyable.
However, like the narrator I also have a train commute – and I normally am secretly pleased if the train is delayed as I can read more of my novel. But I think it is telling that I read this book over a few interrupted journeys but found myself turning to news or Goodreads say rather than using the extra time to read the book.
So, what were my issues?
Well as the Translator’s note makes clear the novel is “teeming with in-jokes, gossip, urban myths, anecdotes on yesterday's communism, juicy bits from contemporary tabloids, names and places and foods and facts pulled from four countries, three languages and two decades, all dropped in without explanation, some of which are recognisable only to those who have lived through that particular time in that particular place (so an insider as an immigrant in France as well).” – which to me makes large parts of the book almost impossible for at least this English reader to properly appreciate (not helped by the theoretically more familiar cultural reference included – the novels of Marguerite Duras – are also unknown to me).
And none of this distancing is assisted by the frequent flights to absurdity – including in the inserted narrator’s novel - and the often-detailed recollections of dreams (dreams in novels are almost always a no-no in my view, and I am not sure the narrator’s ability to recall dreams from the past really makes sense). This was probably a bigger issue – the in-jokes etc simply went over my head, the flights into absurdity lead to me flicking ahead in the novel to see when some form of order would be restored (which is never a good sign of a book I am enjoying) – and on a number of occasions I decided to not even return to the absurd parts and skip several pages instead (which is an even worse one)
The very consciously repetitive prose style of the novel is certainly distinctive and an interesting change from English language stream of consciousness novels which seem to struggle to move on from their Joycean/Woolfian heritage.
The author in the interview says: “I think my novels’ rhythms should attack the reader, confront them, suck them in. And when I’m feeling out the rhythm, I like to think of myself as trying to compose a piece of music. Also, I wanted to find words that are concise and clear, with no hidden meanings, few adjectives, and generally without many embellishments. I use short sentences, one following another, utilizing space so the words may gain more strength. And then I would repeat—like small waves that come in every now and again, disappearing into the rock and sand. That’s how I approached writing Chinatown. The cadence, for the most part, is created by repetition—of a word group, a sentence, or even a whole passage. It could also be an action, a saying, a name.”
But I have to say that this seems to include both an attacking/confronting metaphor with a lapping wave simile which seems to mix two ideas, none of which really reflected my own experience which was more of something jarring which I felt did not really work in English – for example take some of these excerpts from a detailed passage relating to the narrator’s return from Russia as her friends speculate if she will get back together with Thuy and a journalist talks about a boyfriend she had hoped would wait while she was away and which I think is pretty representative of the novel (numbers often being a key part of the repetition) but “punch him five punches”?
I wanted to take the pram to his place, throw it at his door, and punch him five punches in the face, for the five years I wasted my youth in waiting. My mum warned me before I left for the USSR. She told me that five is a fateful number. Her first beau couldn’t wait for five years either. He went to fight in the South, and took up with a young army guide at some point. He left the army and came back to the village with two sons, the baby in his arms, the toddler standing by. My mum jumped on him and punched him five punches in the face, then broke down crying inconsolably. The uncomprehending boys also cried; they deafened the village. The whole village came to see what was happening. On the sixth day the boys fell asleep, and my mum stopped crying and left the village. She warned me, but I didn’t heed her warning. She also told me that if I wanted to defeat the fateful number five, I must come back in the fourth year and get engaged ………… All night long I dreamed that I jumped on Thụy and punched him five punches in the face, over and over. Somehow I ended up punching the journalist girl. She shrieked in laughter.
So overall a very interesting novel but not one I can say I really enjoyed reading – so perhaps 4* for the concept, 2* for my experience and 3* overall. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 06, 2022
Dec 11, 2022
Dec 11, 2022
Paperback
1909585467
9781909585461
1909585467
3.67
9
unknown
Jun 2022
really liked it
You have to follow the vectors, follow where the words dry and riderless lead. I also see now what you mean by the 'special interests and their ten
You have to follow the vectors, follow where the words dry and riderless lead. I also see now what you mean by the 'special interests and their tendency to loom large, freezing out everything else. Here is the jumper I have put on backwards, here is the shopping list I left at home, lacking all importance. And here is the Bach fugue I am playing silently on the table-top, here is the gleaming eye of a cat on a fence I have had to stop and study: you have to follow where the fugue subject leads, leap into the well of the cat's eye, there is in that moment nothing else. The train is not free to leave the tracks and randomly cross the terrain. Is this determinism then. No, it is freely chosen. There is no terrain, only the track. And is there movement, really, have I not always been there, been here. De Selby [my note – from Flann O’Brien’s “The Third Policeman] would travel by entering a wardrobe and thinking of his destination, then emerge to a sense of uncomprehending rage on not finding himself there. But it works, I have done it. I cross the mountain landscape and notice a church and, entering, find a stained-glass window and passing through it find myself in a mountain landscape where I notice a church and, entering, find a stained-glass window, not this again, I am moving from one side of the glass to the other, turning madly on the spot, what figure of speech am I looking for now. These are not symptoms; these are figures of speech. So what are you suggesting I do, doctor. I call you doctor, but you are also the addressee, the reader, moving forwards and back through the text at your leisure. In this sense you are, have become, as much me as I am. Thank you for reading. How do you feel it's going? Now turn the page.
This is the first novel by David Wheatley – an Irish poet and critic who now teaches as a Professor in the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen – and poetry, Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture feature heavily in this auto fictional book.
I have read a number of novels by poets and many have a fragmentary almost spiky language reflecting the author’s more familiar milieu: here if anything I found the language for the most part rather slow, with unwinding passages (see my opening quote) in an almost consciously old-fashioned register – starting with the opening sentences “The more difficult it becomes to deny the failure of my years abroad, the more my thoughts return to the memory of a mountain village on a reservoir in the region of my youth. I say 'my long years abroad', though I write from there now and hardly think of it as abroad anymore; it is simply where I happen to be. But this too is a part of my failure, for reasons that will become apparent.” . I was surprised to realise the author was only in his early 50s as this felt at time like a book written by someone already well into middle-age, but in say the 1980s – some of this though I think is a very deliberate nod to “modernist” forebears such as Beckett and other Irish poets and authors as well as Sebald (with a passage on the crumbling East Coast of England, a slightly clumsy “Rings of Saturn” link).
The fragmentary poetry influence I think comes in more strongly in the book’s meta-structure: which is told over some 101 chapters each around 1.5 pages long (other than one 3 page poem) – making the book much more like a poetry collection than an entirely coherent novel.
And returning to Sebald, rather than the now beyond cliched out of focus black and white photographs, we have instead a book about the vivid contrast of light and dark – beginning with the opening chapter of the novel when the author looks back on an influential visit to a nearby church in his youth as he contemplates a modern stained glass window:
I have stated that I am not religious, but find my response to the window crystallising into a standoff between light and dark. It is a dull autumn day, and amid so much encircling gloom I have discovered a window of light. It seems crucially important, therefore, and for this moment at least possible, that I pass through the window to whatever lies beyond. And so I do, imaginatively at least. The effects of this resolution have continued to unfold down well beyond that moment, while also leading me to the failure recorded in my opening sentence. How this came about will form the burden of the notes that follow. .
Two chapters later similar ideas of light, reflection, transition and so on return rather beautifully (and for me incredibly evocatively) in an image (from the narrator’s student days at Trinity) of Dublin pubs, with the pub doors as “portals into concealed realities” with the “transformative powers of the pub [as] less about drinking than access to a new physical realm, a space of light and dark, as when a glass of beer is raised to a gaslamp in a windowless back room, and held aloft momentarily before consumption”
And quickly in the following chapters we find two artistic inspirations for the novel’s structure – one from classical music: “Yet even as I travel the sound world of a Bach prelude or fugue I double back, find windows opening within windows. Stretto is a fugue technique where the melody - the subject - is repeated in another voice” - and one from language “Years later, I am reading a volume on rhetorical tropes and encounter one called, I believe, metalepsis. It involves the passage from one narrative frame to another, as when a film begins with a page from a book, showing the words spoken by the narrator, with an illustration of for instance a house or some skaters on a lake, before the illustration comes to life and we enter into its world.”
In other chapters we have train stations and passing trains and a mirror seen through window seen on a daily commute; a clever image of a window covered in lace curtains – standing for the way in which the narrator on moving to English suburbia suddenly realises windows there are for keeping people’s view away rather than letting it in
For the first part of the book, I felt I therefore had a handle on the ideas and the way in which each fragmentary chapter was looking to explore these similar ideas.
And while some of the references were lost on me but I enjoyed how the author seemed to mix different mediums (drawing on all the parts of the school at which he teaches) and culture from highbrow to popular/mid brow to low brow. So for example we have: Irish poets and novelists; various classical and post-classical musicians and musical techniques; the Russian art-house/science fiction film “Solaris”; Matisse’s paintings within paintings; the voyages to and back from other worlds of Mr Benn; the Mr Men and the world of Mr Right and Mr Wrong;; The 1982-83 Cup Winners Cup Final; Terry and June; ready-brek commercials (at times the book can seem like a 1970-80 nostalgia show).
But then as the book continued, and particular as the focus shifted more towards the narrator’s journeys and travels I felt that a number of the chapters matched the drifting of the narrator and seemed to move away from the central theme and/or seem more like one-off experimentations with style or content: to use the Stretto example it felt like we mixing a tightly planned piece of classical music variation with some free form jazz.
Overall – and it seems an odd comment for a book which is effectively 150 pages long, this really needed to be a much shorter book. I think editing it down to say half the entries – those which are more clearly related to the overall theme – could have produced an excellent novella (in the style of Luis Sagasti or more to the point Jack Robinson the Psuedonym of Charles Boyle who as CB Editions was the publisher of this novel) – rather than this too inconsistent collection.
3.5*
No plans have been made for the disposal of my papers, or the retrieval of this report from aged laptop or print-outs stuffed down the back of a filing cabinet. As I have written about the village and life here, there is I suspect a subcurrent of distance, assuming as I have worked that I am talking to a reader far from here and now, and whose remoteness will form our paradoxical point of connection. I even imagine them as the final portal through whom this tale might pass, onwards, outwards and free of its author at last. But I see now I am more likely to be turned back on myself in a posthumous silence, my papers neglected, dispersed, destroyed. So perhaps it is best to proceed on that assumption, that the portal may be less portal than frame, and what it frames less a way through than a fated dead-end. Sacrilegious thought. One elegant solution to the pain of this realisation would be to have my papers buried with me, for perusal at my leisure. I write in the present tense. In which tense are your reading me? Your doing so at all means which of the above-sketched outcomes, I wonder. Reach out a hand. What do you touch? Whose face is that in the dark? How close are the walls? Don't answer that. Or not yet. Now turn the page...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 03, 2022
Dec 04, 2022
Dec 04, 2022
Paperback
1910422894
9781910422892
1910422894
3.58
154
Mar 24, 2022
Mar 24, 2022
it was ok
Polynesian and Polyphonic.
Pauline Appropriation.
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.
I have tried this novel twice and bot Polynesian and Polyphonic.
Pauline Appropriation.
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.
I have tried this novel twice and both times it did not really work for me, I think for a variety of reasons:
Firstly a lack of interest in art history in general and a lack of knowledge of Paul Gauguin in particular – I had a similar issue with Daisy Lafarge’s “Paul”.
Secondly the writing style which seemed lyrical but to the point of native cliché. And related I struggled with how I was meant to view the authenticity of a book which centres on voicing a backgrounded Tahitian, but which is written by a Brunei-born, London-raised, UEA-taught, Scottish living writer with a 100+ year later anti-colonial-filter.
So let me do my own Pauline appropriation and direct you to Paul’s more informative review of this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more
Pauline Appropriation.
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.
I have tried this novel twice and bot Polynesian and Polyphonic.
Pauline Appropriation.
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.
I have tried this novel twice and both times it did not really work for me, I think for a variety of reasons:
Firstly a lack of interest in art history in general and a lack of knowledge of Paul Gauguin in particular – I had a similar issue with Daisy Lafarge’s “Paul”.
Secondly the writing style which seemed lyrical but to the point of native cliché. And related I struggled with how I was meant to view the authenticity of a book which centres on voicing a backgrounded Tahitian, but which is written by a Brunei-born, London-raised, UEA-taught, Scottish living writer with a 100+ year later anti-colonial-filter.
So let me do my own Pauline appropriation and direct you to Paul’s more informative review of this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 02, 2022
Dec 02, 2022
Dec 02, 2022
Hardcover
2882506503
9782882506504
2882506503
3.85
4,319
Aug 20, 2020
Aug 20, 2020
liked it
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This rather slight (and for me too insubstantial to be really memorable) autofictional but psuedonym-published novella is translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud and published by a small press Hope Road Publishing.
It is told over 200 sparsely populated pages in short but almost rhythmical and deliberately prayer-echoing sentences.
At the heart of the novel is a series of conflicts the narrator experiences: between being bought up as a Muslim and her lesbianism; between her the traditional inherited religious practices of her family and and her own more active, exploratory and questioning faith; with her patriarchal and domineering father; with her mother’s expectations of a daughter; with teachers; with her chronically persistent asthma; with her teachers while a troubled adolescent trying to find her identity; with her lovers – particularly an older lover Nina; with fellow RER commuters; with her Algerian-based relatives.
My name is FatimaLonglisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Fatima Daas.
I was an accidental pregnancy, born by caesarean.
I share a nam
My name is Fatima
Fatima Daas.
I was an accidental pregnancy, born by caesarean.
I share a name with a symbolic figure in Islam.
A name that must be honoured.
A name that mustn't be soiled.
This rather slight (and for me too insubstantial to be really memorable) autofictional but psuedonym-published novella is translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud and published by a small press Hope Road Publishing.
It is told over 200 sparsely populated pages in short but almost rhythmical and deliberately prayer-echoing sentences.
At the heart of the novel is a series of conflicts the narrator experiences: between being bought up as a Muslim and her lesbianism; between her the traditional inherited religious practices of her family and and her own more active, exploratory and questioning faith; with her patriarchal and domineering father; with her mother’s expectations of a daughter; with teachers; with her chronically persistent asthma; with her teachers while a troubled adolescent trying to find her identity; with her lovers – particularly an older lover Nina; with fellow RER commuters; with her Algerian-based relatives.
My name is Fatima Daas....more
I’m Muslim, therefore I’m afraid:
That God doesn’t love me.
That He doesn’t love me the way I love Him.
That He’ll abandon me.
Of not being the person I’m “supposed” to be.
Of questioning what God has commanded me to do. Of being left to my own devices.
Of waking up in the middle of the night, terrified.
Notes are private!
1
Dec 02, 2022
Dec 02, 2022
Dec 02, 2022
Paperback
183837602X
9781838376024
183837602X
3.33
6
unknown
Apr 28, 2022
liked it
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is journalling as a novel, which is interesting for me as I use journalling to record my novel reading.
Journalling is of course very much an in-thing currently – mainly for the ability it gives to move away from typing on phones and screens to a more old fashioned recording of information which can be simultaneously more thoughtful (due to the time it takes to write) and more immediate (due to the inability to cut/paste/edit).
The journal itself is often a lined (or my preference - dotted) A5 pad, with a soft black leather type cover (or my preference - hard and coloured cover), a marker ribbon (and also my preference an elastic band fastener) – I would particularly recommend the Leuchtturm1917, but it seems the author went with the opposite choices.
The writing implements are normally some form of multi-coloured felt tips. I prefer the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner range – the author’s rather lower budget option does not assist in the ease of reading of the journal despite the author’s sensible use of BLOCK CAPITALS for her handwriting.
The different colours are used for different aspects.
For me (for example)
Black – Net Galley ARCs
Navy Blue – Republic of Consciousness Prize
Dark Green – Women’s Prize
Magenta – Desmond Elliott Prize
Cyan – Orwell Prize
Brown – Booker Prize
Lime Green – Goldsmith’s Prize
For the author (for example)
Red: Quotes
Purple: Dreams
Light blue: Expenses
Dark blue: Income
Green: Projects
Brown: Poems, songs, conversations
Black: Reality – What I see and want to talk about
In terms of content I have to say that the opening part of the Blurb of this book undervalues its seriousness: the references to meatballs, stuck mice and cheesy snacks, basmati rice and organic underwear imply this is to journalling as Patricia Lockwood is to Twitter. All those ephemeral and entertaining references do occur, but they are scattered instances among text which is actually far more concerned with much more complex/weighty topics.
These include for example “infamous transformation of the school system under the Bologna Process”; the author's own artistic studies and work; Marxist like sociological reflections on late-capitalism and particularly the way in which society is structured around work and about preserving power structures (this is the main part of the book and a little too involved for me but it does cover the role of the kefala system for migrant workers in the Middle East and has a pretty accurate prediction – 5 years before now as the journal covers October 2017-February 2018 – of some of the performative hypocrisy that would accompany Western liberal reaction to the 2022 World Cup); the German and Czech rental and housing systems; and (perhaps the most interesting part for me) her struggles with what she has called “the deafening ringing of the myth of biological clock “ (and the various fertility treatments and appointments she and her boyfriend Marek attend).
All of this though most noticeably is produced by a literal rendering of the pages of her journal – as is best seen on the author’s own website (https://www.evadurovec.info/2017/12/2...) – in what is a fascinating piece of publishing experimentation but it has to be said unfortunately difficult to read. There is perhaps it may be worth reflecting a reason why for several centuries while manuscripts were written by hand, books have been published typeset. The author herself has said the journal was not originally designed for mass publishing.
I would also say that my own lack of engagement with the rather heavy content meant that the considerable efforts needed to engage with the form in which they were rendered felt not always rewarded.
Adding to this my final comment on journalling is that like dreams, other people’s journals are in my view really not that interesting – having recently joined Instagram I do not intend to start posting my colourful Books Read pages there as like dreams they are for personal reflection. Other people’s journals which describe their dreams run the risk of being doubly uninteresting.
But this is a bold and literally vibrant publication and I would say check out the link above and see if it is one that may appeal to you. ...more
IS IT A NORM THAT WE HAVE TO WRITE EVERYTHING DIGITALLY ANOTHER PROBLEM I HAVE, I DON’T WANTLonglisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
IS IT A NORM THAT WE HAVE TO WRITE EVERYTHING DIGITALLY ANOTHER PROBLEM I HAVE, I DON’T WANT THAT THIS MASTERARBEIT WILL COME OUT FROM THIS COMPUTER. WRITING SOMETHING INTO THE COMPUTER IS SOMETHING ELSE THAN WRITING IT ON PAPER. IT COULD BE TWO DIFFERENT WORKS. I THINK DIFFERENTLY WHEN WRITING WITH PEN, WHEN I NEED TO FORM IDEA, WHOLE PAGE FIRST. POSSIBILITY TO DELETE SOMETHING WILL LEAVE TRACES. I CANNOT MOVE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS HERE AND THERE. MY EYES SEES PAPER, TABLE, PENCILS, CORRECTOR, BOOKS, WALL, VIEW FROM WINDOW, MAREK. I AM USING FIBER MARKER PEN FROM LIDL, THEY ARE FOR 1.49 EUR FOR SET WITH 10 COLORS.
This book is journalling as a novel, which is interesting for me as I use journalling to record my novel reading.
Journalling is of course very much an in-thing currently – mainly for the ability it gives to move away from typing on phones and screens to a more old fashioned recording of information which can be simultaneously more thoughtful (due to the time it takes to write) and more immediate (due to the inability to cut/paste/edit).
The journal itself is often a lined (or my preference - dotted) A5 pad, with a soft black leather type cover (or my preference - hard and coloured cover), a marker ribbon (and also my preference an elastic band fastener) – I would particularly recommend the Leuchtturm1917, but it seems the author went with the opposite choices.
The writing implements are normally some form of multi-coloured felt tips. I prefer the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner range – the author’s rather lower budget option does not assist in the ease of reading of the journal despite the author’s sensible use of BLOCK CAPITALS for her handwriting.
The different colours are used for different aspects.
For me (for example)
Black – Net Galley ARCs
Navy Blue – Republic of Consciousness Prize
Dark Green – Women’s Prize
Magenta – Desmond Elliott Prize
Cyan – Orwell Prize
Brown – Booker Prize
Lime Green – Goldsmith’s Prize
For the author (for example)
Red: Quotes
Purple: Dreams
Light blue: Expenses
Dark blue: Income
Green: Projects
Brown: Poems, songs, conversations
Black: Reality – What I see and want to talk about
In terms of content I have to say that the opening part of the Blurb of this book undervalues its seriousness: the references to meatballs, stuck mice and cheesy snacks, basmati rice and organic underwear imply this is to journalling as Patricia Lockwood is to Twitter. All those ephemeral and entertaining references do occur, but they are scattered instances among text which is actually far more concerned with much more complex/weighty topics.
These include for example “infamous transformation of the school system under the Bologna Process”; the author's own artistic studies and work; Marxist like sociological reflections on late-capitalism and particularly the way in which society is structured around work and about preserving power structures (this is the main part of the book and a little too involved for me but it does cover the role of the kefala system for migrant workers in the Middle East and has a pretty accurate prediction – 5 years before now as the journal covers October 2017-February 2018 – of some of the performative hypocrisy that would accompany Western liberal reaction to the 2022 World Cup); the German and Czech rental and housing systems; and (perhaps the most interesting part for me) her struggles with what she has called “the deafening ringing of the myth of biological clock “ (and the various fertility treatments and appointments she and her boyfriend Marek attend).
All of this though most noticeably is produced by a literal rendering of the pages of her journal – as is best seen on the author’s own website (https://www.evadurovec.info/2017/12/2...) – in what is a fascinating piece of publishing experimentation but it has to be said unfortunately difficult to read. There is perhaps it may be worth reflecting a reason why for several centuries while manuscripts were written by hand, books have been published typeset. The author herself has said the journal was not originally designed for mass publishing.
I would also say that my own lack of engagement with the rather heavy content meant that the considerable efforts needed to engage with the form in which they were rendered felt not always rewarded.
Adding to this my final comment on journalling is that like dreams, other people’s journals are in my view really not that interesting – having recently joined Instagram I do not intend to start posting my colourful Books Read pages there as like dreams they are for personal reflection. Other people’s journals which describe their dreams run the risk of being doubly uninteresting.
But this is a bold and literally vibrant publication and I would say check out the link above and see if it is one that may appeal to you. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 30, 2022
Nov 30, 2022
Dec 01, 2022
Paperback
1838020063
9781838020064
1838020063
3.72
25
unknown
Jun 28, 2022
really liked it
Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
An intriguing novel which starts as a post apocalyptical version of Magnus Mills meets Museum Memoir (via Susanna Clark), takes a short story detour down a Joycean junction before ending in a more dystopian denouement.
The publisher is Tenement Press “an occasional publisher of experimental; esoteric; accidental; and interdisciplinary literatures [which] … with an eye on actively ignoring the borderline between creative, critical, poetic and political practices” and that last part of their mission fits well with this debut novel from the author, a London based writer and poet interested in areas such as “collaboration, curation, asemic writing, sound poetry, concrete poetry, and performance”.
And while this is in form a fairly conventional novella, in substance it has more of the borderline/experimental blend that both publisher and writer favour – and the author’s interest in curation is particularly pertinent.
Even more pertinent is the author’s 7 years (2007 to 2014) working at the British Museum as a visitor host (which role mainly consisted of directing visitors to the toilet and absolutely not being trained about the exhibits) – a time that was formative to his own literary and artistic development (as he used the considerable down time to explore literature and the museum) but also to this book which is to a large extent a literary examination of the very role of museums and curation but even more fundamentally of the nature of what the reality of objects (the very common question to museum employees “is this real or a fake/replica” being particularly key).
The novel begins with a cataclysmic society altering event which either follows or precipitates a period of armed conflict in which our first party narrator was involved. As part of the rebuild of the City in which the narrator lives a museum has been built on the site and along the lines of its pre-holocaust predecessor (this museum is very clearly the British Museum) to which visitors come in search it seems of some kind of connection with their past, a search which often drives them to physical interactions with the ancient exhibits (this level of obsessive touching of precious exhibits being among many satirical elements from the author’s own museum experiences). The narrator’s role as a guard seems to largely consist of protecting the exhibits – albeit much of the wider aspects of the role (and the other members of the museum hierarchy) is unclear to us and largely it seems to him.
The first part of the novel is part description of the Kafkaesque workings of the staff (with heavy Magnus Mills overtones) and part exploration of the museum’s complex physical form of halls, passageways, vaults and statues (reminiscent in its part prison like overtones of Piranesi and “Piranesi”).
A brief interlude is based on the White Review Short Story shortlisted entry which was the genesis of the novella (https://www.thewhitereview.org/poetry...) – which starts as a misspelt diary of a museum worker (perhaps one who disappears in the first part) before venturing into Ulysses-style language.
The third party of the novel then returns to the first party narrator but with more of a concentration on some of the museum exhibits (including a section on alchemy and another on phantasmagorical depictions of the seven deadly sins) before descending into some bizarre scenes as the museum staff put into action plans for its destruction.
Overall a distinctively atmospheric book which more provokes ideas and questions than it does provide any real coherence or answers.
As the rebuilding began, all scores settled, so it's said that our cutting off of taste hasShortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
As the rebuilding began, all scores settled, so it's said that our cutting off of taste has some part in what is lost, but that this is necessary. For the manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively were not there to hold onto when things took place.
Acknowledged by all who live is that there is a plan to this, in earth's experience, but that we are quite mere in it. The best we can do is do our best to put objects in houses. Then look at them. Then remember. Then see ourselves in it all.
Culture begins in the history we rebuild.
History begins in the Museum rebuilt.
An intriguing novel which starts as a post apocalyptical version of Magnus Mills meets Museum Memoir (via Susanna Clark), takes a short story detour down a Joycean junction before ending in a more dystopian denouement.
The publisher is Tenement Press “an occasional publisher of experimental; esoteric; accidental; and interdisciplinary literatures [which] … with an eye on actively ignoring the borderline between creative, critical, poetic and political practices” and that last part of their mission fits well with this debut novel from the author, a London based writer and poet interested in areas such as “collaboration, curation, asemic writing, sound poetry, concrete poetry, and performance”.
And while this is in form a fairly conventional novella, in substance it has more of the borderline/experimental blend that both publisher and writer favour – and the author’s interest in curation is particularly pertinent.
Even more pertinent is the author’s 7 years (2007 to 2014) working at the British Museum as a visitor host (which role mainly consisted of directing visitors to the toilet and absolutely not being trained about the exhibits) – a time that was formative to his own literary and artistic development (as he used the considerable down time to explore literature and the museum) but also to this book which is to a large extent a literary examination of the very role of museums and curation but even more fundamentally of the nature of what the reality of objects (the very common question to museum employees “is this real or a fake/replica” being particularly key).
The novel begins with a cataclysmic society altering event which either follows or precipitates a period of armed conflict in which our first party narrator was involved. As part of the rebuild of the City in which the narrator lives a museum has been built on the site and along the lines of its pre-holocaust predecessor (this museum is very clearly the British Museum) to which visitors come in search it seems of some kind of connection with their past, a search which often drives them to physical interactions with the ancient exhibits (this level of obsessive touching of precious exhibits being among many satirical elements from the author’s own museum experiences). The narrator’s role as a guard seems to largely consist of protecting the exhibits – albeit much of the wider aspects of the role (and the other members of the museum hierarchy) is unclear to us and largely it seems to him.
The first part of the novel is part description of the Kafkaesque workings of the staff (with heavy Magnus Mills overtones) and part exploration of the museum’s complex physical form of halls, passageways, vaults and statues (reminiscent in its part prison like overtones of Piranesi and “Piranesi”).
A brief interlude is based on the White Review Short Story shortlisted entry which was the genesis of the novella (https://www.thewhitereview.org/poetry...) – which starts as a misspelt diary of a museum worker (perhaps one who disappears in the first part) before venturing into Ulysses-style language.
The third party of the novel then returns to the first party narrator but with more of a concentration on some of the museum exhibits (including a section on alchemy and another on phantasmagorical depictions of the seven deadly sins) before descending into some bizarre scenes as the museum staff put into action plans for its destruction.
Overall a distinctively atmospheric book which more provokes ideas and questions than it does provide any real coherence or answers.
At the beginning, I've been told people like him were sought out, given fat payments. Those who could remember the objects, and partial fragments of the catalogue, from the old Museum. They were then, once in, teased and tortured into a pool of facts and memories that could be trusted. And when that appeared too lean, others were sought. Others who hadn't been so badly harmed, who could help recreate a history culture, to explicitly connect those two things. To bring back to life the unforeseen, unknown, unintelligible, almost unthinkable, into a massive throbbing establishment. One so amazing to witness that no visitor could get to asking whether it was genuine. The pasts reanimated before they were forever forgotten. Thought up by these obviously important people, who in their renovations, after a time, when the eye became lax, allowed new interpretations of their history....more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 28, 2022
Nov 29, 2022
Nov 29, 2022
Paperback
1739823613
9781739823610
1739823613
4.06
1,500
Feb 03, 2021
Jul 14, 2022
really liked it
This had always been hunting country, a land of men descended from men who came from other men who had been born here from time immemorial. No one
This had always been hunting country, a land of men descended from men who came from other men who had been born here from time immemorial. No one knew who had laid the first stone. A thousand legends were told, and these found their way into children's fables and the afternoon chatter of women's sewing circles, but none were compelling enough to last. For me it had always been a poor man's land.
This novel is one of the first published by a new Dundee based small press 3 Times Rebel who “translate female authors who write in minority languages …. Only women. Only minority languages. This is our choice” and who take their name from an excellent quote by a Catalan poet (Maria-Merce Marçal)
I am grateful to fate for three gifts: to have been born a woman, from the working class and an oppressed nation. And the turbid azure of being three times a rebel.
It was originally written in Catalan by author Núria Bendicho whose world-weary writing is inspired by among others William Faulkner (she has said “I had found my natural interests: poverty, illness, exploitation, the condition of women, the question of evil.”) and is in its maturity in contrast to her age (born in 1995). It was translated (in a way which to me reads very naturally in English-English other than a double use of the, to me obscure if correct, term Passel) by the mother-daughter translation team of Martha Tennant and Muraxa Relano.
The set-up of the novel is a family living in a farm in the Catalan countryside (some way outside a village which itself is remote) – the time of the novel is not specified (and there is a sense of timelessness about it) but I imagined it as the turn of the last Century. The central family consists of Father Juame, Mother Anna and five children ranging from 30 something to 15 (Tomas, Pere, Jon, Maria and the physically handicapped Boy) and Maria’s illegitimate child Marieta and other key protagonists are the Priest, the local mayor’s daughter Anna, Dolors who runs the local whorehouse and her idiot Son Esteve.
At the book’s opening Boy describes the death of Jon – who after having left home without explanation for 3 years, returns only to be shot in the back. The family arrange a hasty and bodged burial with the Priest and Esteve in attendance and the murder uncovers further secrets at the heart of the family and community including incest, sexual abuse, domestic violence and another murder (whose aftermath is well known to the community and lead to Juame and Anna’s marriage).
As Pere says later “though I wanted to believe [the murdered] could have be an outsider, the family's clumsy attempts to cover it up quickly and move on, no questions asked, only served to corroborate the fact that they, too, had been deceiving themselves their whole lives. The evil I’d struggled to contain, to keep from spilling out into the world, was worse than I thought.”
These revelations (and the truth behind Jon’s death) emerge over 12 intense chapters told by the characters listed above (including Jon after his death) and a final chapter by a carer who looks after the murderer later in their life in a sordid Barcelona care home.
3.5* rounded up – if too uniformly dark in both tone and content for my tastes this is an impressive piece of writing.
That's when I realised it was all a game of chess. A game with too many checkmates for one board, and maybe too many pawns, with an enraged queen aiming to topple a king that fate had already forgiven and probably sent to purgatory....more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 27, 2022
Nov 28, 2022
Nov 28, 2022
Paperback
9781624621864
4.32
250
unknown
Nov 09, 2021
did not like it
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Notes are private!
1
Nov 27, 2022
Nov 27, 2022
Nov 27, 2022
Paperback
3.60
5
unknown
Jan 2022
it was ok
This book is published by the boutique publisher Half Pint Press – run “out of a back bedroom” in South London by Tim Hopkins – who correctly describe
This book is published by the boutique publisher Half Pint Press – run “out of a back bedroom” in South London by Tim Hopkins – who correctly describes himself as a book artist.
Previous publications have for example included “The Sea’s Better Plans” by Eley Williams (2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize winner for “Attrib.”) – six poems printed on a Mobius strip inside a flip top jar.
This is their first novel, some 5 years or so after their founding, but the idea of the book was one of the original projects which lay behind the conception of the press (as the author is friends with the publisher and wrote the book more than 25 years ago only to fail to find a publisher prepared to take on the concept).
The production of it is (as would be expected) excellent – three glossy style A4 books (making up a French tricolour) in a cycling-themed sleeve – and with the first and third volumes presented with each page as a single snapshot of life (the choice of phrase by me is deliberate as the first party narrator is a photographer, albeit one without a camera) presented in the form of a calligram.
The effect is on one level distinctive, but I think for anyone with young children (or young enough to remember their own primary school days) is simply reads like a collection of “shape poems” albeit with little attempt to accept an Oulipian constraint to size the lines of the poem within the constraints of the shape, as the text is normally just blocks of prose with right/left justification and hyphens used as needed.
Actually, using the word shape poems or calligrams is not quite accurate as more often than not the shape (which reflects something of the text – be it the Eiffel Tower, a cat, the Tour de France Mountains jersey, a wine bottle, a candelabra etc etc) defines the negative space on the page with the text filling the rest. Again, while a little different the main effect is to make the text slightly harder to read given the sometimes quite wide mid-line breaks on a page size which is already much larger than a normal novel.
My personal issue though was with the text itself which is really quite a simple if not rather cliched story and very much not of the type I would normally read.
The narrator (an indie band photographer) has fled London after a relationship breakdown, without his camera. The first part is a combination of a cycle ride in France and then a spell living in a derelict cottage in the Normandy countryside – this is far from say Graham Robb or even Tim Moore standards (and with too many dreams and an ill-advised foray into excretion). The second seems him joining some indie-bands touring France – and is an again a combination of two rather cliched genres – Paris travel book (With some very predictable observations on how Paris differs from London) and then a very tame version of the band tour diary. And the third section I found the weakest of all as the narrator (who seems to regress in age to a teenager) becomes obsessed with a disinterested French girl he met briefly in the second section – and by the end I was scanning the text more than reading it.
So overall a book which I felt was very distinctive in form and very much not so in substance.
My rating reflects my own reading enjoyment but this is a beautiful production by a very special small press. ...more
Previous publications have for example included “The Sea’s Better Plans” by Eley Williams (2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize winner for “Attrib.”) – six poems printed on a Mobius strip inside a flip top jar.
This is their first novel, some 5 years or so after their founding, but the idea of the book was one of the original projects which lay behind the conception of the press (as the author is friends with the publisher and wrote the book more than 25 years ago only to fail to find a publisher prepared to take on the concept).
The production of it is (as would be expected) excellent – three glossy style A4 books (making up a French tricolour) in a cycling-themed sleeve – and with the first and third volumes presented with each page as a single snapshot of life (the choice of phrase by me is deliberate as the first party narrator is a photographer, albeit one without a camera) presented in the form of a calligram.
The effect is on one level distinctive, but I think for anyone with young children (or young enough to remember their own primary school days) is simply reads like a collection of “shape poems” albeit with little attempt to accept an Oulipian constraint to size the lines of the poem within the constraints of the shape, as the text is normally just blocks of prose with right/left justification and hyphens used as needed.
Actually, using the word shape poems or calligrams is not quite accurate as more often than not the shape (which reflects something of the text – be it the Eiffel Tower, a cat, the Tour de France Mountains jersey, a wine bottle, a candelabra etc etc) defines the negative space on the page with the text filling the rest. Again, while a little different the main effect is to make the text slightly harder to read given the sometimes quite wide mid-line breaks on a page size which is already much larger than a normal novel.
My personal issue though was with the text itself which is really quite a simple if not rather cliched story and very much not of the type I would normally read.
The narrator (an indie band photographer) has fled London after a relationship breakdown, without his camera. The first part is a combination of a cycle ride in France and then a spell living in a derelict cottage in the Normandy countryside – this is far from say Graham Robb or even Tim Moore standards (and with too many dreams and an ill-advised foray into excretion). The second seems him joining some indie-bands touring France – and is an again a combination of two rather cliched genres – Paris travel book (With some very predictable observations on how Paris differs from London) and then a very tame version of the band tour diary. And the third section I found the weakest of all as the narrator (who seems to regress in age to a teenager) becomes obsessed with a disinterested French girl he met briefly in the second section – and by the end I was scanning the text more than reading it.
So overall a book which I felt was very distinctive in form and very much not so in substance.
My rating reflects my own reading enjoyment but this is a beautiful production by a very special small press. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 26, 2022
Nov 27, 2022
Nov 27, 2022
Paperback
1911585843
9781911585848
1911585843
3.14
2,744
Mar 01, 2022
Mar 03, 2022
it was ok
Winner of the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize
A debut novel which more than hints at an outstanding writing talent. The author’s ability to switch seamlessly from one intense stream of consciousness to another mid flow is particularly strong; similarly, she manages to blend the worlds of reality, dreams, oral stories and a TV show the characters watch in a way when the barriers between them prove porous in both directions.
But the talent is sadly misdirected in this case into an attempt to endow a rather hackneyed/cliched post-apocalyptical tale (the world has almost ended and a small band of survivors live on the outskirts of what we know as a major City from our world – in this case Prague – no really how original) with sub-Moshfegh grotesquerie (together with apparently obligatory fat-shaming and ableism) in an attempt to provoke but which in me raised more like boredom.
The blurb of the book pretty well describes the entire set up and most of the plot – and just to be sure the author has the rather odd Thomas Aquinas character (*) tell the story again 5 pages before the end – and end which was surprisingly hopeful by the book’s standards and did go some way to redeem the preceding 200 page slog I felt.
(*) his game-show inclusion was an intriguing idea – both to add a bizarre and comic twist and to give a meta-commentary on one of the key aspects of the book: what survives of morality in an entirely reshaped world – but one which she I felt failed to really know how to develop) ...more
The necessity of this perpetual forgetting, the hiding of the past beneath the successive layersWinner of the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The necessity of this perpetual forgetting, the hiding of the past beneath the successive layers of the unchanging present, drained him, though the light that burned away memory and desire helped too, helped him forget his memories of the old world in service of hers, the faint hope that humanity could live on slowly dying within him when he looked into the empty eyes of every wailing infant that emerged from his sister's uterus. In the nights when he was able to avoid her company, he was bold enough to think about the university, and the same agony overcame him. The abandoned citadels of his dreams; an old library in the mountains through whose limitless corridors he was sure he'd once walked--where had these things gone? The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who it could not be argued otherwise lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their ask incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meagre existence in a world more inhospitable than ever simply because "nature hatech emptiness." And meanwhile the city loomed behind them like a great stone disgrace, and the silent forest slunk into their dreams and rooted away at their minds.
A debut novel which more than hints at an outstanding writing talent. The author’s ability to switch seamlessly from one intense stream of consciousness to another mid flow is particularly strong; similarly, she manages to blend the worlds of reality, dreams, oral stories and a TV show the characters watch in a way when the barriers between them prove porous in both directions.
But the talent is sadly misdirected in this case into an attempt to endow a rather hackneyed/cliched post-apocalyptical tale (the world has almost ended and a small band of survivors live on the outskirts of what we know as a major City from our world – in this case Prague – no really how original) with sub-Moshfegh grotesquerie (together with apparently obligatory fat-shaming and ableism) in an attempt to provoke but which in me raised more like boredom.
The blurb of the book pretty well describes the entire set up and most of the plot – and just to be sure the author has the rather odd Thomas Aquinas character (*) tell the story again 5 pages before the end – and end which was surprisingly hopeful by the book’s standards and did go some way to redeem the preceding 200 page slog I felt.
(*) his game-show inclusion was an intriguing idea – both to add a bizarre and comic twist and to give a meta-commentary on one of the key aspects of the book: what survives of morality in an entirely reshaped world – but one which she I felt failed to really know how to develop) ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 22, 2022
Nov 23, 2022
Nov 23, 2022
Paperback
1739751507
9781739751500
1739751507
3.85
125
unknown
May 17, 2022
really liked it
This novel was originally published in Italian as "Nel mare c'è la sete" by Erica Mou (the stage name of an Italian singer/songwriter – this her debut
This novel was originally published in Italian as "Nel mare c'è la sete" by Erica Mou (the stage name of an Italian singer/songwriter – this her debut novel).
Its English translation is the first publication by the new UK small press - Héloïse Press which “champions world-wide female talent ….. [giving] voice to emerging and well-established female writers from home and abroad. With a focus on intimate, visceral and powerful narratives, Héloïse Press brings together women’s issues and literary sophistication.”
So kudos to the press (whose elegantly presented novels seem to me to nicely match their aim) for not just including the translator (Clarissa Botsford)’s name on the front cover (as all but the most stubborn small presses do that) but for going further and not just including but leading with a detailed translators note.
This one is particularly useful – as Clarissa Botsford explains in detail both the biggest challenges of the translation (in particular the compound/double meaning words which are not just crucial to the narrator’s worldview but to the very structure of the novel) and the collaborative process she and the author went through to deal with this - in many cases changing elements of the novel completely – a process she calls trans-creation.
The novel itself I found good but perhaps a little more underwhelming – a slightly quirky variation on some familiar literary themes (childhood tragedy and how it reverberates on relationships later in life).
The narrator is the 32 year old Maria who lives in her hometown of Bari, Italy with her partner Nicola (an airline pilot) and an imaginary dog whose existence (or lack thereof) perhaps speaks to the biggest tension between Nicola and Maria – his desire for marriage and increasingly a child, a level of permanency and commitment which Maria struggles with to face and which gives the story its rather inevitable narrative tension over 24 hours as Maria faces a Doctor’s appointment and a decision.
Maria runs a small business – Be Present – which offers boutique present sourcing services for her clients – an idea she took from Ruth an American with whom she briefly lived in England for an intense 12 week period.
The 24 hours are particularly resonant for Maria as it is the 25th anniversary of when her younger sister Summer died in a childhood accident for which Maria has always blamed herself and which drove a seemingly permanent wedge between her and her father.
Over those hours through Maria’s thoughts we learn of the wider emotional gaps between her and her mother/father and her and Nicola, so much of it relating to the different ways each of them has dealt with grief – and we are also introduced to a wider list of well crafted side-characters (particularly some of Maria’s customers)
A strong opening publication by the Press – 3.5 stars. ...more
Its English translation is the first publication by the new UK small press - Héloïse Press which “champions world-wide female talent ….. [giving] voice to emerging and well-established female writers from home and abroad. With a focus on intimate, visceral and powerful narratives, Héloïse Press brings together women’s issues and literary sophistication.”
So kudos to the press (whose elegantly presented novels seem to me to nicely match their aim) for not just including the translator (Clarissa Botsford)’s name on the front cover (as all but the most stubborn small presses do that) but for going further and not just including but leading with a detailed translators note.
This one is particularly useful – as Clarissa Botsford explains in detail both the biggest challenges of the translation (in particular the compound/double meaning words which are not just crucial to the narrator’s worldview but to the very structure of the novel) and the collaborative process she and the author went through to deal with this - in many cases changing elements of the novel completely – a process she calls trans-creation.
Every chapter has a postscript: a title word and a short poem. The 'title word' is related to the content, message or significance of the section, while the short poem is related to the meaning of one or both parts of the word. In some instances, we changed the word, in others we changed the poem and rewrote it from scratch to match the word, in others again we were inspired to change both, in Mou's words, 'improving on the original. "This word has been left behind compared to the others we've already worked on,' she would say. And off we would go, brainstorming and throwing things in the air.
The novel itself I found good but perhaps a little more underwhelming – a slightly quirky variation on some familiar literary themes (childhood tragedy and how it reverberates on relationships later in life).
The narrator is the 32 year old Maria who lives in her hometown of Bari, Italy with her partner Nicola (an airline pilot) and an imaginary dog whose existence (or lack thereof) perhaps speaks to the biggest tension between Nicola and Maria – his desire for marriage and increasingly a child, a level of permanency and commitment which Maria struggles with to face and which gives the story its rather inevitable narrative tension over 24 hours as Maria faces a Doctor’s appointment and a decision.
Maria runs a small business – Be Present – which offers boutique present sourcing services for her clients – an idea she took from Ruth an American with whom she briefly lived in England for an intense 12 week period.
The 24 hours are particularly resonant for Maria as it is the 25th anniversary of when her younger sister Summer died in a childhood accident for which Maria has always blamed herself and which drove a seemingly permanent wedge between her and her father.
Over those hours through Maria’s thoughts we learn of the wider emotional gaps between her and her mother/father and her and Nicola, so much of it relating to the different ways each of them has dealt with grief – and we are also introduced to a wider list of well crafted side-characters (particularly some of Maria’s customers)
A strong opening publication by the Press – 3.5 stars. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 21, 2022
Nov 21, 2022
Nov 21, 2022
Paperback
9788702296426
B09RK5X37Y
4.26
450
Sep 23, 2020
Aug 17, 2021
really liked it
I am Ada
Fruit of the short marriage between
Annabella Milbanke & Lord Byron
An odd coupling of
mathematics & poetry
Moderation & extravagance
Discipline
I am Ada
Fruit of the short marriage between
Annabella Milbanke & Lord Byron
An odd coupling of
mathematics & poetry
Moderation & extravagance
Discipline & desire
Science & romanticism
This 2020 experimental and hybrid novel (in turn part of a wider art project - https://www.bloom.ooo/explore/flora-d...) was translated from the Danish original by Jennifer Russell and published in the UK by Lolli Editions.
What I think is most interesting about this novel is that it draws heavily on some fairly familiar threads and materials) at least in the rarified world of innovative fiction ideas and techniques) while weaving them together into an innovative literary text
And what is most challenging about writing a review of it is deciding whether to try and avoid words about weaving and as you can see I have already thrown in the towel (admittedly one hand crafted in a loom) and decided to embrace it instead in line with I think the intentions of the author who in a 2021 interview about her previous novel talked about this one by saying:
This metaphor of weaving is newer to me because I started working with textiles after I wrote Marble, but it’s similar to the way I would talk about the network and braiding text. Weaving of course has some of the same qualities, by being two systems of threads interlaced. In Marble we have Anne-Marie Carl Nielsen and Marble, and in Thread Ripper we have a contemporary weaver and Ada Lovelace, each pair of figures is interwoven in a way.
Etymologically, textile and text both stem from texere, it has the same root. It is important to say that weaving is older than text; we were weaving before writing was invented. When writing was invented, people would think of it like word-weaving. It makes a lot of sense to me to think of a text as a woven structure, it takes strands from many places, yarn is dyed in many places and colours, and can form a pattern or a motif. There can be a rhythm or repetition, something that comes again and again, often in new ways.
With Thread Ripper I designed the book so that on the left side is one strand and on the right side is a different one. So, you read one strand and then the other, you alternate back and forth. The reader is the one who is weaving together these two strands; in a way the book functions just like a loom. We are going to have it in the same way in the English book, because it’s so integrated in the reading of it. Although it does make it look like a strange novel on the page, it makes sense when you read it.”
The novel in my view borrows from (of reproduces) a number of common ideas: novels about other art forms which use those art forms to influence the writer’s approach to writing; novels which are part of a wider art project and where that art project explicitly interacts with the novel (Olga Ravn’s International Booker shortlisted “The Employees” also published by Lolli Editions being one example); and most of all the (rather I think too frequent now) Wiki entries as novel genre (think say Louis Sagasti and large chunks of the 2021 International Booker longlist).
And the (also perhaps a little too common) Sebaldian influence seems very clear - not just in the mix of historical fact and historical non-fact (I think that’s the best way to describe Sebald’s deliberately ambiguous relationship with biography) and the inevitable black and white photos - but even in the choice of early anecdote with the featuring of silkworms. Interestingly it’s the second Sebald inspired novel I have read this year which seemed to go out if it’s way to draw not just on similar techniques but similar subjects - Paul Stanbridge’s “My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is” featuring the North Sea and walking around East Anglia before culminating in a visit to Sebald’s grave. I am not quite sure what to think of this - it can feel like authors are so influenced by Sebald (consciously or subconsciously) that they have to use his materials as a starting point for their own departure.
Returning to the novel there are two main strands written on the left-and right-hand sides of each page in matching series of chapters.
Each is influenced by the author’s real life commission to train a machine-learning neural network algorithm on floral pictures so ax to produce its own machine generated imagery which she will then programme a digital loom to weave.
The right-hand side is where most of the influences above come in. Starting with the story of Penelope and her suitor-choice deferring daily weaving and nightly unweaving (note that the contrast of order/entropy and unravelling runs through the both sides of the novel) we proceed by I have to say fairly familiar ground and some already heavily traced linkages to silkworms, Jacquard punch cards, Luddites (and the link with Byron) to Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and then Ada Lovelace.
Initially, as my comments might imply, I was underwhelmed by the predictable path of this section but then I felt the story takes off as the project interacts with the story and grows in originality (with anecdotes less familiar to me as we get closer to the present day) but more importantly imagination (with the novel very much entering the welcome territory of fiction).
Firstly, the author (fictionally) programmes another machine learning algorithm which uses the published writings and reported speech of Ada Lovelace to write new autobiographical material in her voice. Later the author fantasises that the “original computer bug” (the moth reported famously by Grace Hopper - the moth itself a link back to silkworms and weaving, Hopper seen as in the lineage of Lovelace) comes back to life and perpetuates via social media and satellite chains.
The left-hand side is much more like fragmentary prose poetry as the narrator contemplates her work, her current childlessness, her relationship with her partner William (to whom many of the verses are addressed) and the natural world. I must admit I found this part less convincing - at times I could see and appreciate the links to the overall themes as well as the interaction with the text immediately to the right of it but then in other parts this insight seemed to elude me and I was not even clear that it was present other than in a very holistic sense of theme (for example dealing with the processes of linkage and decay as I alluded to earlier).
I have to say that around 50 % of the way through the book I felt I had decided the mystery - the author would reveal the conceit that large chunks of this part had been written by an AI poetry generator - alas this ingenious theory proved wrong and I had to face that the opposite might be the case - that it was actually my own comfort in the world of mathematical abstraction and logic that inhibits my ability to appreciate melodramatic verse or as the AI Ada completed the opening quote to my review (talking of the way her mother’s mathematical training distanced her from appreciation of her father’s field of fame) - “Algebra kept me away from sentimental poetry”
Overall though the mix of Ada’s parents produced an astonishing child and the mix of the two similar elements (a quasi-mathematical /IT exploration and some image filled poetry) has given us this memorable novel. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 19, 2022
Nov 20, 2022
Nov 20, 2022
Paperback
3.32
22,655
May 01, 2022
May 05, 2022
it was amazing
1/16 in my Women’s Prize 2023 rankings. My Bookstagram brief review and GR/book themed photo here:
https://instagram.com/p/CrYeo2Topvd/
Longlisted for 1/16 in my Women’s Prize 2023 rankings. My Bookstagram brief review and GR/book themed photo here:
https://instagram.com/p/CrYeo2Topvd/
Longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize, 2023 Jhalak Prize and 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Foyles Book of the Year 2022
Oyler meets Rooney meets Lockwood but wrapped in a searing examination of white privilege and how it interacts with the worlds of art (including literature) in a social media age.
This book, published by the small press Rough Trade Books (associated with the record company of the same name) featured in the 2022 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney and Gail Honeyman among many others). This year’s list also had Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Emilie Pine, Moses McKenzie, Jo Browning Wroe, Louise Kennedy (all of whose books I enjoyed to varying extents) but this may be the strongest on the list (albeit the list I think had a literally spectacular miss in omitting Maddie Mortimer and her Golden Reviewer Book of the Year “Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies”).
The book is narrated in a series of short but intensely interior chapters (with headings sometimes drawn from social media memes or the work of conceptual artists) by the narrator – a 30 ish year old, second generation immigrant, non-white woman ostensibly living in South London with her long suffering (but by her view inadequate) boyfriend, working in various freelance roles in the arts world but who equally could be said to occupy the millennial world of social media – particularly Instagram.
The book opens with her stating “I stalk a woman on the Internet who is sleeping with the same man I am” and these two characters who quickly become “The woman I am obsessed with” and “the man I want to be with” dominate her thoughts and mental energies.
The second of these is a famous artist, of who the narrator was a fan and who she successfully engineered into a relationship which has now metamorphosised into a very asymmetrical if not to say manipulative relationship as she is desperate to be with him and he keeps her at a safe distance (even stopping sleeping with her) while carrying on with his marriage and at least two other affairs.
One of these is of course with “the woman I am obsessed with” a white American Instagram influencer with a large following seemingly by virtue of her proximity to fame, her father’s reputation and, of course, her white skin.
Many of the chapters rove across the narrators relationship with the “man” over time and the ways in which he has manipulated her, and her obsession with the “woman” and her Instagram-perfect life of organic and market food, designer furniture and clothing (including her own promotion of brands) and six-figure advance for her upcoming book – all of which contrast with the narrator’s failure to even convince a bank she has a steady enough income to justify a mortgage.
Mixed in with this is often searing social commentary – on male/female power dynamics but particularly scathing attacks on the world of white privilege. My view on these sections was contradictory. In most cases I found them by far the strongest of the book (one section in particular “there’s no business like” in itself made the book a must-read and both my opening and closing quotes are taken from it) but I did also think they sometimes slightly jarred with the remainder of the book not thematically (the author cleverly links the idea of imbalanced power structures across social media fan-dom/followers, colonialism and racism and male-female relationships) but stylistically - at times they felt like non-fictional essays by the author inserted under the auspices of her narrator’s thoughts (albeit a very analytical and aware narrator).
And further, I sometimes struggled with how to reconcile the narrator’s very awareness of these systemic and in-built/hard to counter power imbalances with her voluntary decision to subject herself to an unnecessary power imbalance by pursuing and then clinging to a relationship with a clearly unfeeling and unworthy of her man (particularly while at the same time betraying her own boyfriend). And this leads to another issue I had with the book – which reminded me of my similar views on Rooney’s “Conversation With Friends” – there really are no likeable characters in this book.
Nevertheless this was a memorable read as well as a challenging one – particularly in thinking if as a white man I really even have the right to opine on the book or render my heart-felt opinion that I hope to see it featuring on literary prize lists or whether I am merely tokenising.
https://instagram.com/p/CrYeo2Topvd/
Longlisted for 1/16 in my Women’s Prize 2023 rankings. My Bookstagram brief review and GR/book themed photo here:
https://instagram.com/p/CrYeo2Topvd/
Longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize, 2023 Jhalak Prize and 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Foyles Book of the Year 2022
We [second generation immigrants] make sculptures, direct films, write plays, novels, memoirs and poems about not having a home, of trying to find a home, of being between two types of home, what is home, of how we all feel ugly.of the mixed relationships we enter with white people, losing our language from a culture we had a tenuous hold of in the first place, we tell the story of being acted upon, we speak from the position of the victim.
For an algorithm not built by us, for a platform not designed for us to attract a cultural system which excludes us, do we commit further harm by performing our Otherness--by Othering ourselves for likes, for reshares and approval, to gain a following, to build a fanbase? What are the effects of this alienation, do we even care? Is the need for fervent fans a deeper expression of the fear of being anonymous because we know in an uproar there is protection. We do not want to disappear inside a nameless mass if Something Bad Were To Happen. If we remain part of the masses, we know we will suffer the double injustice of institutional neglect by the police or the justice system compounded by the original crime- like with our murder (Stephen Lawrence, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry but also too many others) or a history-making miscarriage of justice (the Post Office scandal), the threat of deportation from the Home Office (the Windrush scandal) or stripped citizenship (Shamima Begum) for making a terrible mistake when you were a child. Are the cravings for a fanbase an expression of how politically powerless we really feel? Or is it something else entirely? Though we insist we are Socialist and Marxist in our ideals, is social media and our pursuit for fame within this structure not the purest expression of individualistic, Thatcherite neocolonial politics where we transform into scripted individual brands, launching ourselves like start-up companies while masquerading as being 'in service to our 'communities'.
Oyler meets Rooney meets Lockwood but wrapped in a searing examination of white privilege and how it interacts with the worlds of art (including literature) in a social media age.
This book, published by the small press Rough Trade Books (associated with the record company of the same name) featured in the 2022 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney and Gail Honeyman among many others). This year’s list also had Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Emilie Pine, Moses McKenzie, Jo Browning Wroe, Louise Kennedy (all of whose books I enjoyed to varying extents) but this may be the strongest on the list (albeit the list I think had a literally spectacular miss in omitting Maddie Mortimer and her Golden Reviewer Book of the Year “Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies”).
The book is narrated in a series of short but intensely interior chapters (with headings sometimes drawn from social media memes or the work of conceptual artists) by the narrator – a 30 ish year old, second generation immigrant, non-white woman ostensibly living in South London with her long suffering (but by her view inadequate) boyfriend, working in various freelance roles in the arts world but who equally could be said to occupy the millennial world of social media – particularly Instagram.
The book opens with her stating “I stalk a woman on the Internet who is sleeping with the same man I am” and these two characters who quickly become “The woman I am obsessed with” and “the man I want to be with” dominate her thoughts and mental energies.
The second of these is a famous artist, of who the narrator was a fan and who she successfully engineered into a relationship which has now metamorphosised into a very asymmetrical if not to say manipulative relationship as she is desperate to be with him and he keeps her at a safe distance (even stopping sleeping with her) while carrying on with his marriage and at least two other affairs.
One of these is of course with “the woman I am obsessed with” a white American Instagram influencer with a large following seemingly by virtue of her proximity to fame, her father’s reputation and, of course, her white skin.
Many of the chapters rove across the narrators relationship with the “man” over time and the ways in which he has manipulated her, and her obsession with the “woman” and her Instagram-perfect life of organic and market food, designer furniture and clothing (including her own promotion of brands) and six-figure advance for her upcoming book – all of which contrast with the narrator’s failure to even convince a bank she has a steady enough income to justify a mortgage.
Mixed in with this is often searing social commentary – on male/female power dynamics but particularly scathing attacks on the world of white privilege. My view on these sections was contradictory. In most cases I found them by far the strongest of the book (one section in particular “there’s no business like” in itself made the book a must-read and both my opening and closing quotes are taken from it) but I did also think they sometimes slightly jarred with the remainder of the book not thematically (the author cleverly links the idea of imbalanced power structures across social media fan-dom/followers, colonialism and racism and male-female relationships) but stylistically - at times they felt like non-fictional essays by the author inserted under the auspices of her narrator’s thoughts (albeit a very analytical and aware narrator).
And further, I sometimes struggled with how to reconcile the narrator’s very awareness of these systemic and in-built/hard to counter power imbalances with her voluntary decision to subject herself to an unnecessary power imbalance by pursuing and then clinging to a relationship with a clearly unfeeling and unworthy of her man (particularly while at the same time betraying her own boyfriend). And this leads to another issue I had with the book – which reminded me of my similar views on Rooney’s “Conversation With Friends” – there really are no likeable characters in this book.
Nevertheless this was a memorable read as well as a challenging one – particularly in thinking if as a white man I really even have the right to opine on the book or render my heart-felt opinion that I hope to see it featuring on literary prize lists or whether I am merely tokenising.
The easiest route to build a following is to penetrate culture and the fastest way to do this is to tell them the story they want to hear -the one about our assimilation to whiteness or the abhorrence, or failure of this assimilation so white people with the keys to the castle can gasp and shake their heads and say, I never knew it was this bad, it's insert year| for God's sake, and then will lower the drawbridge to let us in? We know succumbing to this will secure us the status we seek. It is how we can have a 'name', we can sit on the panels and talk about diversity, come up with earnest solutions inside historic buildings in front of a rapt echo-chambered public which will never amount to anything except feeling good about ourselves for how terrible we feel at the state of the world, it becomes the workshops we run, the books we write when we yell, we know what Britain really is and you don't, buy my book to find out the Truth. A fanbase is how we will get the advances, how we secure the invitations to prestigious awards, headline one of the smaller tents at the bigger literary festivals or one day maybe we will even get to cosplay at being a gatekeeper by becoming one of the judges of a well-regarded prize. We think explaining ourselves or justifying our existence isn't too heavy a price to pay to gain entry through those gilded gates where liberal artsy white people will tokenise us as a symbol of their ideological progress - they can think they are so exotic for being into your work, aren't they so edgy, so underground or else most likely they will tip-toe around us, deferential but still exclusionary, it's not such a high price for admittance to the cultural establishment, we reason....more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 19, 2022
1916218628
9781916218628
1916218628
4.02
182
2013
Aug 2022
liked it
I have no idea how many days I spent in this corn-feld. I no longer count the days; just grateful to have survived one day and moved on to the next
I have no idea how many days I spent in this corn-feld. I no longer count the days; just grateful to have survived one day and moved on to the next. It wasn't just an unseasonal rain that caught me off guard, it was also an unseasonal situation. Sadly, this is not only my fate but also the nation's-living day to day. I imagined the nation being robbed of her harvest by unseasonal rain; an unseasonal ideology forcing a crown of thorns on her head; being ruled by an unseasonal leader. Hasn't this nation stood amongst the greatest on earth?-now it is less than the least. Like me, Her people have been dehumanized and joined the realm of dogs: carried along by the whim of the flood. As a twig once fallen into a torrent has no direction of its own, so are the people of this nation. However, we are not to give up.
This book was originally published in 2013, written in Amharic by the bestselling Ethiopian author Yismake Worku and was then translated by the Addis Ababa born, Birmingham University based contemporary literary translator Bethlehem Attfield, crowdfunded (including by my twin brother) on Unbound and published in their usual high quality production style by the “microbrewery for books” Henningham Press.
It is told in the form of a relatively simple fable. The first party narrator – Didimis Dore successful businessman but also son of Selassie-era researcher into ancient magic and inheritor of some secret scrolls, has accidentally turned himself into a (feral) dog in the South of the country and now has to travel back to Addis Ababa to get back his wife and children and find the scrolls which may allow him to reverse the spell. While travelling he resolves to use his lower status to listen in on private conversations about the political situation.
The book then becomes a mix of different elements of, at least for me as a reader, fairly variable success:
The tale of Didimis’s adaption to life as a dog – this was I felt the weakest element at times more like a children’s book (with a odd side-track into bestality) and unfortunately dominates the opening 70 pages (or first third) of the book.
Something of a travellogue through Southern Ethiopia as in each town we learn something of the local legends, history of the town and how it features in older poems or modern songs – this was interesting and raises the middle third or so of the novel (albeit I felt more detail may have been better here).
A revenge story in the final third when Didimis finally returns to Addis Ababa to find his wife has betrayed him with his deadly enemy – which is clearly signalled as a part analogy for Ethiopia’s shift from Soviet to US support.
Overheard conversations on the political situation in Ethiopia in 2012 around the unexpected death of Meles Zenawi (Prime Minister since 1995 having been President from 1991-1995) in Belgium – these I felt were at times rather clumsily executed with overheard speech for example “As this prime minister has not been a guerilla fighter like many of the others in the ruling party I had hoped he would not be as aggressive. Although I didn't expect he would bring about a genuine change, at least I hoped he would be less about lip-service and more about actual development. I had also hoped that he would please the public by releasing political prisoners.”
Some for me more successful (albeit in some cases such rather heavy handed) allegorical political commentary including (as per the opening quote to my review) the meta-conceit of the novel
A longer term perspective on how Ethiopia’s situation contrasts to its history both in the 19th-20th Centuries “once a symbol of independence and the pride of fellow black people”, further back to the Aksumite empire and even to the Kingdom of Kush and its legendary biblical links including around the Ark of the Covenant.
This latter in particular I found the most interesting element of the novel – for example the way in which the world of magic developed via the line of Cain to Kush only to be later supressed both in New Testament and colonial times and it links to also the most interesting theme of the novel – about the power of words.
Words should not be used inappropriately. One has to be discerning about when and how, or if it is wise to use them at all. Words can change men into dogs but they can also restore their humanity. Words can bring about good things, but they can also take them away. Words can simply extinguish the light, but they can also illuminate darkness. They can enrich people's lives, or they can impoverish them. My tongue and lips will be preserved from uttering inappropriate words. I know the power of words from first-hand experience. Words have changed me into a dog, but they have also restored me again, to become human.
Overall I had a mixed experience on reading this novel – and felt the relative mix of the different elements was out of line with my personal appreciation of them. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 19, 2022
Nov 19, 2022
Paperback
1838490469
9781838490461
1838490469
3.40
328
Aug 25, 2011
Jul 07, 2022
really liked it
I listened to their stories composed of choppy, cut-off, expectorated sentences. They memorized them and regurgitated them in front of the computer
I listened to their stories composed of choppy, cut-off, expectorated sentences. They memorized them and regurgitated them in front of the computer screen. Human rights do not mean the right to escape poverty. In any case, you didn't have the right to utter the word poverty. You needed a more noble reason, one that would justify political asylum. Neither poverty nor avenging nature that had devastated their land could justify their exile, their mad hope for survival. No law allowed them to enter here in this European country if they didn't have political, or even religious reasons, if they didn't demonstrate the serious consequences of persecution. So they had to hide, forget, unlearn the truth and invent another one: the tales of migrating peoples; with broken wings, filthy, stinking feathers; with dreams as sad as the rags on their backs.
This book was originally published in 2011 by Shimona Sinha, born in West Bengal but naturalised in France having moved there in 2001 (aged 28) and who writes in French (with which she says she has a better literary relationship). In France she worked as first a teacher and then an interpreter within the asylum system and it is that experience on which she draws to write the novel (with a Bengali born first person narrator doing the same job) – with the novel ultimately costing her that job as OFPRA (the French immigration authority) not appreciating her critique of all aspects of the system (including the asylum seekers and those who aid them).
It is translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan and was published by the ever excellent Les Fugitives in 2022.
The original book shared a title with Baudelaire’s provocative 1869 prose poem “Assommons les pauvres” (http://baudelairepoems.blogspot.com/2...) which as in the link provided is commonly translated as “Let’s beat up the poor” – and which features the poet beating a beggar seemingly to provoke a reaction. An LRB article by Christopher Prendergast says of the poem (which others have seen as related to Marx’s class struggle)
In many ways, the poem is deeply resistant to interpretation, and is meant to be. The surface of demonic hysteria and sadomasochism is a pokerfaced mask, concealing a range of provocative ironies. Against the background of the spectacular collapse of ideologies of well-meaning benevolence in the insurrections of 1848, Baudelaire’s poem probes all the weak points of the philanthropic: the egoism in altruism (‘I am such a nice person’); the bad faith of charitable giving as alibi, letting people off the hook of finding real solutions to inequality; the malicious thought that a relation of equality established through the exchange of violence is preferable to the humiliating servitude of supplicant beggardom, the smile, the deference, the politeness, without which the needy rarely accede to the status of deserving.
And a similar idea informs the book – which is effectively told by the narrator looking back on her time sitting in on asylum interviews and court cases (typically with Bangladeshis) as she herself faces an interview and potential charge having struck an asylum seeker (who follows her on the Metro while she is on the way to a potential date with a female colleague) with a wine bottle.
Life is a monologue. Even when you think you're making conversation, only a stroke of luck allows two monologues to intersect; perhaps taken by sur-prise, they halt in front of each other. In the offices questions and answers intersected but remained isolated. The men stuck to their monologues. The women officers shot question arrows almost automatically, lethargically and without a target. A few rudimentary questions later, the tension would rise among us. The tension sometimes rose so high that, long after having completed an interview, everything trembled deep inside me, throbbed like the engine of an idling car
The same rage that drove this response drives the book as she despairs at (among other things): the North/South divide in climate change – particularly how the excesses of the West have exacerbated catastrophic flooding in Bangladesh – something made worse by the history of colonialism; the unfeeling nature of the asylum system and particularly the way in which it forces those seeking asylum (and the lawyers who help them) to distort or even invent stories of persecutions which tick the right boxes (for example religious or political persecution); her often tricky relationship with those parties as they rail at her both for translating to them the questions of the immigration officers and for, in their eyes, failing to translate their responses in a convincing enough fashion or not correcting their errors; the people traffickers and the way in which they exploit the asylum seekers both before and after transporting them; the way in which the seekers (used to a patriarchal society) reject her superior status in France.
I found this overall a powerfully effective book.
It is at times unbearably intense and of course deliberately ambiguous and provocative like the eponymous poem. However it is also one struck through with imagery and particularly strong when describing the contrast between the different areas of Paris for example (With I have to say the RER description functioning in an almost Proustian way for me to convey the outkirts of the City)
The offices where the raggedy petitioners came to plead their cases, dragging their feet, holding babies, but usually alone, were located in barren areas, beyond the city limits. Where the wind picked up. The wind picked up and died down and picked up again. Dust flew and spun around. The battlefield flared up. The sound of the RER, its corroded screeching, steel against steel, its crisscrossing rails stretching into the horizon, to even more barren zones, the sun bursting onto the tracks, factories rising up against the white sky.
Or this clever contrast
Coming out of the metro, at an intersection, I was lost. No landmark. Around the square there were shabby reproductions of the same cheap and hideous merchandise. …… . The entire neighborhood was an open-air bazaar, an open garbage bin …. The merchants had spread out their wares everywhere, overflowing onto the sidewalks, into the middle of the street, as if the many shops around the square weren't enough. Clothing, bags, suitcases, shoes, and a pile of shapeless objects ….. It was a ghetto. Another country. The one I had managed to leave behind. It was impossible to believe there was still a luminous city not very far from here. The metro had brought me to the end of the tunnel at the edge of the world into this land of rubbish overrun by outcast jellyfish ………………… . If I could have, I would have turned around, taken the first metro and returned to my own neighborhood, where the smell of good baguettes blended with that of yellowed books placed in boxes in front of shop windows. There on the streets dogs walk with their owners, the café owner jokes with the couple of daily customers, brown-and-green cast-iron tables and chairs lean on the slope of the sidewalk, red-and-white checkered tablecloths flutter in the breeze. I simply wanted to erase my character from this ghetto cartoon.
Highly recommended. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 17, 2022
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 18, 2022
Paperback
1910312916
9781910312919
1910312916
3.66
106
Apr 21, 2022
Apr 21, 2022
really liked it
Shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize.
This debut short story collection (which the author has described as “unmarketable”) was published by the e Shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize.
This debut short story collection (which the author has described as “unmarketable”) was published by the ever-excellent Influx Press – publishers of among others Eley Williams brilliant “Atrib.” winner of both the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for which I was a judge) and James Tait Black Memorial Prize (the first short story collection to win one of Britain’s very oldest literary prizes) and Percival Everett’s wonderful Booker shortlisted “The Trees”.
There are 27 parts to the collection – spread over around 220 pages. The title story “Polluted Sex” was published by 3AM here (https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/pollu...) and I think gives a good sense of the author’s more conventional writing while being perhaps more rounded than some of the other stories and certainly at nearly 30 pages 2-3 times the length of the next longest story.
These other longer stories (“Blue” “Purple with Mottled Black”, “Hot Rocks”, “Before Him”, “These Young Things”, “Let Ashore”, “How I”, “Let Ashore”) are relatively conventional in form but distinctive in style/protagonist/subject matter - drawing on the same ground as the title story. Typically, they feature young female often bisexual narrators, and explicit about their bodies (with for example menstruation and sex featuring repeatedly), often written in lively Irish vernacular. Another common theme is possessive boyfriends – which fits with a wider theme of possessiveness over female bodies and which is best captured in “First Person Possessive” which (in the words of the blurb) two ungendered characters contest the same female body. I found some of these stories among the weakest, unless like the title story they also drew on a wider strand – in that case one of the two female protagonists’ reaction to the Omagh bombing and the insensitive if not provocative probing of her English boyfriend into that reaction in front of her friends and family.
“Mammy Mary Says” was a favourite for me – and feels like the late childhood/early teenage years of some of the protagonists of the other conventional stories while I saw “Squiggly A Crack” (about a new Mum) as a follow up for some of the protagonists (a kind of Before and After to the collected main stories); while “Molly & Jack at the Seaside” seems like a “Peter and Jane” rewrite of one of those stories.
Some of the other stories are very short – in one case “Formalism” a single word, in two others (“Diktat/Dictate I and II”) a phonemic word and an image.
Others rely on typographical innovation “Winona the Wicked Wanton Woman” is a fable (around man’s mistreatment of the natural world and suspicion of female sexuality – both aided by organised religion) illustrated with doodles; “ABCB AABCCB // Untitled Children’s Song” a Frere Jacques/London Bridge is falling down mash up about the Magdalene Laundries (subject of course of another Booker shortlisted book this year – “Small Things Like These”); “Axis” is a graphical representation of the first line of the short prose poem “Pivot”.
Some rely on literary references – “Hills Like Hemingway” transposes Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” to an Ireland to UK Ferry while maintaining the implicit abortion discussion of the original and while also mixing in Yeats poetry.
Others draw on Irish Catholicism liturgy – including (interestingly) the opening “Penitential Acts” which proceeds from the confession – and the closing “Churching” which movingly deals with a late miscarriage.
And some – for example the futuristic (I think) “Perfect Flick”, the performance-art “Interlude Belles-Lettres” or the very short “Pinna”, “Phonology”, “Joni Mitchell Nudes” were rather lost on me.
This interview is particularly helpful on the author’s background (her and what she was trying to achieve (https://www.writing.ie/interviews/on-...) – some excerpts (my editing) ……..
Overall an intriguing, slightly uneven but never less than raw, corporeal, immediate and humourous, debut short story collection. ...more
This debut short story collection (which the author has described as “unmarketable”) was published by the e Shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize.
This debut short story collection (which the author has described as “unmarketable”) was published by the ever-excellent Influx Press – publishers of among others Eley Williams brilliant “Atrib.” winner of both the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for which I was a judge) and James Tait Black Memorial Prize (the first short story collection to win one of Britain’s very oldest literary prizes) and Percival Everett’s wonderful Booker shortlisted “The Trees”.
There are 27 parts to the collection – spread over around 220 pages. The title story “Polluted Sex” was published by 3AM here (https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/pollu...) and I think gives a good sense of the author’s more conventional writing while being perhaps more rounded than some of the other stories and certainly at nearly 30 pages 2-3 times the length of the next longest story.
These other longer stories (“Blue” “Purple with Mottled Black”, “Hot Rocks”, “Before Him”, “These Young Things”, “Let Ashore”, “How I”, “Let Ashore”) are relatively conventional in form but distinctive in style/protagonist/subject matter - drawing on the same ground as the title story. Typically, they feature young female often bisexual narrators, and explicit about their bodies (with for example menstruation and sex featuring repeatedly), often written in lively Irish vernacular. Another common theme is possessive boyfriends – which fits with a wider theme of possessiveness over female bodies and which is best captured in “First Person Possessive” which (in the words of the blurb) two ungendered characters contest the same female body. I found some of these stories among the weakest, unless like the title story they also drew on a wider strand – in that case one of the two female protagonists’ reaction to the Omagh bombing and the insensitive if not provocative probing of her English boyfriend into that reaction in front of her friends and family.
“Mammy Mary Says” was a favourite for me – and feels like the late childhood/early teenage years of some of the protagonists of the other conventional stories while I saw “Squiggly A Crack” (about a new Mum) as a follow up for some of the protagonists (a kind of Before and After to the collected main stories); while “Molly & Jack at the Seaside” seems like a “Peter and Jane” rewrite of one of those stories.
Some of the other stories are very short – in one case “Formalism” a single word, in two others (“Diktat/Dictate I and II”) a phonemic word and an image.
Others rely on typographical innovation “Winona the Wicked Wanton Woman” is a fable (around man’s mistreatment of the natural world and suspicion of female sexuality – both aided by organised religion) illustrated with doodles; “ABCB AABCCB // Untitled Children’s Song” a Frere Jacques/London Bridge is falling down mash up about the Magdalene Laundries (subject of course of another Booker shortlisted book this year – “Small Things Like These”); “Axis” is a graphical representation of the first line of the short prose poem “Pivot”.
Some rely on literary references – “Hills Like Hemingway” transposes Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” to an Ireland to UK Ferry while maintaining the implicit abortion discussion of the original and while also mixing in Yeats poetry.
Others draw on Irish Catholicism liturgy – including (interestingly) the opening “Penitential Acts” which proceeds from the confession – and the closing “Churching” which movingly deals with a late miscarriage.
And some – for example the futuristic (I think) “Perfect Flick”, the performance-art “Interlude Belles-Lettres” or the very short “Pinna”, “Phonology”, “Joni Mitchell Nudes” were rather lost on me.
This interview is particularly helpful on the author’s background (her and what she was trying to achieve (https://www.writing.ie/interviews/on-...) – some excerpts (my editing) ……..
I purposefully wrote Polluted Sex on bodies, particularly female and queer bodies; because we write with our bodies – unusual animals. I try to depict intimacies of the body in portraying bodies, bodily exposure, nakedness and bodily function ….. @While writing Polluted Sex when people have asked me what I’m writing about I’ve said: “riding”. They usually laugh and say: “writing …?” I responded: “No, riding. It’s called Polluted Sex.” ………….
Over the years, due to disability—I have Systemic Lupus Erythematosus—I am no longer able to type for any length of time without joint and nerve pain and agonising hand cramping and stiffness. …………..
Being forced by my body to stop handwriting, then typing. To stop writing altogether. I took this disagreement with my body badly. I was furious. Furious. Furious. Furious. I may be hampered. I may write forever in obscurity. I have long since made my peace with that. One thing, I will not be, though, is beaten. I will not be beaten. If I was to be forced to write in speech via dictation and voice recording then transcription; all work had to lend itself to performance, to voice. My stories were now essentially hybrid texts. ………………
My work does not exist to be just like someone else’s. My work does not exist to be representational of heteronormative ableist black and white binaries in thinking. Low resolution. Analogue. Prosaic …
I consider text a vehicle for the body
Overall an intriguing, slightly uneven but never less than raw, corporeal, immediate and humourous, debut short story collection. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 16, 2022
Nov 17, 2022
Nov 17, 2022
Paperback
3.78
285
2021
Oct 12, 2021
it was ok
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is published by the admirable Cassava Republic Press – originally founded in Nigeria and now based in Nigeria and London and whose mission is ”to change the way we all think about African writing. We think that contemporary African prose should be rooted in African experience in all its diversity, whether set in filthy-yet-sexy megacities such as Lagos or Kinshasa, in little-known communities outside of Bahia, in the recent past or indeed the near future.”
This is the author’s third novel – part way through reading it I was struck by it being very much the type of novel that I expect to find on the Women’s Prize longlist and so was intrigued to find that her previous novel was indeed Women’s Prize longlisted.
Unfortunately, though it was reminding me at that stage of the type of book which typically features towards the bottom of my longlist rankings – and that was my overall view on the book: an uneasy mix of genre (initially a very slow moving family drama, then heading into Fifty Shades territory), neither of which is one that really appeals to me and the combination even less so.
The main character is Mojisola – a Nigerian who moved to Cape Town in South Africa with her academic husband Titus (a serial philanderer). They have one daughter – Yinka – now in her early twenties who moved out from home to Johannesburg and largely broke off contact with her parents largely over her mother’s refusal to confront her father’s infidelity. The book opens with Mojisola arriving at her daughter’s lodgings – some time after she has been contacted by the police to say that Yinka (who she was aware had always suffered with a form of depression, just as she herself has struggled with mental health) has committed suicide – news that drove Mojisola mad with grief.
There she meets with Yinka’s former landlord (and she soon finds out part time cannabis supplier) Zelda and decides to rent Yinka’s flat and try to piece together her daughter’s life in Johannesburg and what led to her death. At the extreme this leads to her taking up Yinka’s profile on a dating site which over time she realises has a fetish-element as she tries to trace some of Yinka’s artwork. At the same time Mojisola looks back on her life – her upbringing by her now deceased religious mother (and the role played by her mother’s sister – her Aunt – in her life, a role which has a deeper significance she realises late on in her Aunt’s life), her marriage and her relationship with her daughter.
A journal of Yinka that a friend hands over, and one that Titus (from who she has been estranged since Yinka moved out) is told to keep by a grief counsellor both feature in the latter part of the book and while partly helping her understand more of both their lives, perhaps functions more to help her understand more of her own.
Overall this is definitely an interesting examination of Grief – one that started very conventionally before taking a weird turn, an Unusual definitely but for me unsuccessful combination.
When the day of Yinka’s birth arrived, Mojisola had experienced a miserable 41 weeks. She’dLonglisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
When the day of Yinka’s birth arrived, Mojisola had experienced a miserable 41 weeks. She’d imagined she’d be relieved to bear down, to surrender to the ripping of her tender passage but just when the midwife ordered that she push, Mojisola, with every intention to do as commanded (at this dark point in the process of birth no other action would be logical), discovered a resistance within her bones that seemed not of this world. Something stronger than her was at work. ‘Push, now!’ the midwife repeated, a touch of panic in her voice. She repeated it three times, louder and louder, until Mojisola once more mastered her bones. Holding her new sticky child, she’d felt ashamed for having possessed this will (greater than her will to mother) to resist, to fight and hold the child in limbo, rather than push it out into motion. And yet it was undeniable. Lying there, the nurse screeching, ‘Push,’ on the sidelines, Mojisola had had brief seconds of hope and ecstasy. She would experience the very same, but in reverse, many years later when she heard of the death of her child, but in that moment on the birthing bed, Mojisola fantasised that she somehow had the ability to reverse time. The fantasy that the child would go unborn, that she could reverse the irreversible and return to a simple existence that had gradually, over the many weeks disappeared.
This book is published by the admirable Cassava Republic Press – originally founded in Nigeria and now based in Nigeria and London and whose mission is ”to change the way we all think about African writing. We think that contemporary African prose should be rooted in African experience in all its diversity, whether set in filthy-yet-sexy megacities such as Lagos or Kinshasa, in little-known communities outside of Bahia, in the recent past or indeed the near future.”
This is the author’s third novel – part way through reading it I was struck by it being very much the type of novel that I expect to find on the Women’s Prize longlist and so was intrigued to find that her previous novel was indeed Women’s Prize longlisted.
Unfortunately, though it was reminding me at that stage of the type of book which typically features towards the bottom of my longlist rankings – and that was my overall view on the book: an uneasy mix of genre (initially a very slow moving family drama, then heading into Fifty Shades territory), neither of which is one that really appeals to me and the combination even less so.
The main character is Mojisola – a Nigerian who moved to Cape Town in South Africa with her academic husband Titus (a serial philanderer). They have one daughter – Yinka – now in her early twenties who moved out from home to Johannesburg and largely broke off contact with her parents largely over her mother’s refusal to confront her father’s infidelity. The book opens with Mojisola arriving at her daughter’s lodgings – some time after she has been contacted by the police to say that Yinka (who she was aware had always suffered with a form of depression, just as she herself has struggled with mental health) has committed suicide – news that drove Mojisola mad with grief.
There she meets with Yinka’s former landlord (and she soon finds out part time cannabis supplier) Zelda and decides to rent Yinka’s flat and try to piece together her daughter’s life in Johannesburg and what led to her death. At the extreme this leads to her taking up Yinka’s profile on a dating site which over time she realises has a fetish-element as she tries to trace some of Yinka’s artwork. At the same time Mojisola looks back on her life – her upbringing by her now deceased religious mother (and the role played by her mother’s sister – her Aunt – in her life, a role which has a deeper significance she realises late on in her Aunt’s life), her marriage and her relationship with her daughter.
A journal of Yinka that a friend hands over, and one that Titus (from who she has been estranged since Yinka moved out) is told to keep by a grief counsellor both feature in the latter part of the book and while partly helping her understand more of both their lives, perhaps functions more to help her understand more of her own.
Overall this is definitely an interesting examination of Grief – one that started very conventionally before taking a weird turn, an Unusual definitely but for me unsuccessful combination.
It has taken Mojisola decades to learn the fault lines in her own thinking. She was not at all on the outskirts of humanity. In her loneliness, lack of confidence, fears and terrors, she was right in the centre, along with everyone else. She had seen wrongly; or it had been a trick of light. Her mother’s fragility and devotion to a God she hoped would save her, save them both; Auntie Modupe’s regrets and earnest but clumsy attempts to repair. Even the mothers at Yinka’s school, impeccably made-up. Mojisola now imagines the make-up, the heels, as part of a suit of armour. Ferociously slender. And even as we lose (such is the design of war), we fight. That’s what she’d been seeing all along, seeing and not knowing what it was she’d been looking at. Not perfection, not people who never faltered, but rather the opposite. And so now, finally, she can include herself. Now she walks in the streets as if she built them with her own hands. Now she stares into faces as if mirrors; she sees herself, her fragility, her ugliness and wonder. She sees her shame and her courage, her capacity for failure but also for magic....more
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Nov 15, 2022
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