The Dilemmas of Working Women by Fumio Yamamoto translated by Brian Bergstrom

Forget all those women ending up doing nothing with their lives by purpose that we encounter so often in the English-speaking literature. The Year - only one! - of rest and relaxation. The women giving up their career, mothering, shopping and the fancy man without a plan in sight. Japanese women did it in books many years before - Sayaka Murata is one of the many examples that come to my mind right now. They are freely having tantrums in convenience stores, avoid men, are spending the life in their home without doing anything at all. And this is perfectly anti-system fine. 

I had those thoughts while reading the brilliantly disturbing short stories finally published in English by Fumio Yamamoto, translated by Brian Bergstrom (whose end note helps the reader more than in one respects). First and foremost, have a look at the cover! I can look at it for hours and always finding new ways to create stories based on the character. It relates perfectly the feeling builds up inside of you while reading the five short stories from the collection.

Each of the women exist within their own realm. Men and in general the masculine breed - either partners, fathers, children - is there to create trouble, discomfort, to unsettle. Although they gravitate within the traditional social and economic system, they tend to operate following their own anti-capitalist gravitation rules: no jobs, loafing around, ´unfit for society´. 

They may also try to cool down their volcanic anger when returning back home from family assignments, before the night shift to make ends meet and watch their husband cooling down on the sofa with a beer in the front of the TV. 

Women are always the main characters, also when they may not be the direct storyteller. It is less about ´voice´ than about ´presence´, although absent from the existence as such.

It´s a literary delightful and subversive read as it may make you think: why not turning the alternative into mainstream?

Rating: 4 stars

Random Things Tours: Little Addictions by Catherine Gray

We all have our own little addictions: the chewing gum, that small online game we play to ´kill time´, playing with our hair, that special brand of chocolate or just the jelly. Do we need this? Are we aware why do we follow such habits? Can we live without it? Each habit can be built within one month, and un-learning some of them it´s possible. But as long as we don´t understand the root of those addictions, we cannot advance; we just keep repeating the same pattern, with a different content. Or addiction.

Little Addictions by bestselling author Catherine Gray is doing exactly this: trying to understand the cause and eventually the remedy. Gray is both the author and the subject of the stories, as she is trying to examine her own addictions, their roots and the comfort they bring with. Most importantly, it shows some examples about how one can be free. Free of all those pleasant sins. (I really loved the book, but I must confess I am not ready myself to part ways with my beloved morning cardamom coffee).

I´ve found the book informative, reflective as well as written with humour and understanding. If you are looking to change something in your daily life this year, this book may give you some inspiration. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Rachel Random Resources: The Heart-Shaped Box by Lucy Kaufman

 

I had the chance to talk about Lucy Kaufman more than once, and her novella Don´t Forget the Crazy was a shocking surprise. Hence, my interest in continuing with her other writings - whose covers do also deserve a mention. 

Her latest, the first from The Carousel of Curiosities series, The Heart-Shaped Box maintains the same tensed psychological ambiance with characters moving at the border between sanity and insanity. 

Set in the Victorian Sussex, it starts as a Romantic relationship, with Smith overwhelming Constance with presents, but the bows and lids do lead to unfathomable obsession games. The novella may be relatively short - a bit over 50 pages - but it is perfectly created to surprise, shock and keep the reader glued to the story. A psychological dark story that is worth every single second spent reading it without a break.

If you are looking for a bit different love tale, incredibly well told, this novella is a recommended read. It will stay with you for a very long time. Hopefully, there are more installments from The Carousel Series as I really cannot wait to get entranced into the next works by Lucy Kaufman.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Rachel Random Resources: Faking the Grade at Glenbriar High by Margaret Amatt

 

Who says love is easy to find, but as long as we remain open for it, it may arise from the most unexpected places. 

The characters from Faking the Grade at Glenbriar High by Margaret Amatt, an author I´ve reviewed on my blog few months ago, is built into impossible relationships. Clara is in love with someone who just gets married with someone else. Sam is a single dad with a very complex and complicated family story. All of them are working at the same school, interacting with each other but their stories may intertwin differently. When Clara accepted to ´fake date´ Sam for the one who stole your heart wedding, it didn´t sound romantic at all. But love may find its way to the most distant hearts.

I got convinced - although hardly - about the story between the two. The author gives space to both characters to grow and build their interest, while explaining their circumstances and challenges. It is not an easygoing story and this pledges in the advantage of the story that sounds relatable.

I liked how it gives love a chance, but not to any price. I also liked the local ambiance, particularly among teachers. It also raises so many important questions regarding adult dating, especially when children and second families are involved.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

La vie sans fards by Maryse Condé

I am very much into memoirs these days, and nonfiction in general, but I love when I am getting my eyes on a literary memoir. Maryse Condé is an author I will definitely discover more of it in the next months, in addition to what I´ve already read about.

La vie sans fards - A life without Make-up, the plain translation from French, but the book was published in English under the title What is Africa to me? - is a late memoir of her wandering around the world, particularly within the African continent, looking for love and personal meaning. 

The account is literally without any embellishments: during her frequent moves from one country to another: France to Guinea, to London, to Senegal, to Ghana. From one trip to another, she may carry some or all or none of her four kids. There are affairs, abuse, dictatorships, a failed marriage, friendships. A life unfolding that may lead her to who she became. She is learning new languages, new wordings, ultimately turning into a writer.

The natural way to share her story is an important testimony of the times she went through, the people she met, recent history, especially political, in many of the countries she experienced.  Personally I´ve found shocking the ways in which her children experienced her decisions, being left behind to various acquaintances or friends, or being abusively kept away from her due to the moods of some of her lovers. But this belongs to her becoming as well.

The book starts when she mets her longtime husband and translator, the Englishman Richard Philcox who will stay on her side until her death in 2024, at 90. 

Books like this helps to understand the inspiration for her books, that she started to publish from her 40s. It will help me to a better view of her works that I hope to be able to add to my reading list soon.

Rating: 4.5

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

There are infinite ways to cope with the grief of losing a beloved one. The more memoirs and testimonies are written, the wider the outreach of the experience. Sooner or later we are all hit by grief - the incoming death we are trying to be ´prepared for´ or the shock of being confronted with the death of a loved one. Even people who crossed our paths at a certain time and never heard about in a long time, except that are now death are missed.

As I was reading the memoir of Pulitzer-Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days, about the sudden death of journalist and historian, Pulitzer-Prize winner Tony Horwitz, I was informed about the death of someone whom I knew, a kind lady fighting with an unusual sickness for over 30 years, who ceased for years to wish of being alive. I took a break from my book and remembered her kind and sad eyes, and the moments when me and my family had the chance to talk, always shortly due to her talking impediment. Indeed, life means change, and death belongs to it.

On Memorial Day in 2019, Tony Horwitz died suddenly of a cardiac event. He was on the tour promoting his latest book, in Washington DC. His wife, as him, previously a journalist now a fiction writer, was at their home, in Martha´s Vineyard. The shock and grief followed her for years. Three years after, on the Flinders Island in Tasmania, the Australia-born author is looking for peace.

Both of them, successful international journalists, dispatched in conflict areas around the world, they founded their peace before, on Martha´s Vineyard. Flinders was Brooks´ wish of a refuge many years before. Now, she is there to reckon with her dreams, memories of Tony and the struggle of past 36 months. 

Memorial Days may be similar - and Brooks herself assumed the comparison - with Didion´s The Year of Magical Thinking. The same shock and hardship, the same realiance on words - Brooks will be able to finish soon Horse, that Tony encouraged her to write, a bestseller. But each is, naturally different, because each person DNA prepares us to react differently.

We are alive as long as we are remembered, and Tony´s memory is kept alive through this warm memoir, that also encompasses the many challenges of widowhood - should she really fire the accountant, as Tony wrote on a post-it note recovered after his death? how to manage the late husband´s portfolio of investments etc. There are practical questions that may intersect with the mourning time, and anyone who suddenly lost a family member went through it - administrative issues, account disclosure, insurance requests.

At certain extents, I wished this book takes longer. Brooks storytelling - even when she is writing non fiction - is talking to the reader and I would want to continue this experience exploring more of her books - including Horse. But books, like mourning time, need to have an ending.

Rating: 5 stars

Random Things Tours: The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

Women searching for the truth. Women trying to forget the truth. Women trying to hide the terrible bounds of inter-generational drama. Women writing about all of this.

The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams is following this literary pathway. Without pathos but also avoiding the sugar coat the drama, to make it acceptable, to normalize it.

Tati, a 14-year old poetry lover, is imperative about finding the truth about her father. As she is starting her journey of revealing the disparate fragments of family history, she may stumble upon family secrets well hidden, that may help her nevertheless to start revealing her own story. The story is placed in the mid-1990s, but goes far to the beginning of the 20th century.

The short description of the book topic may look nothing but average, but the writing and the honest voice of the characters do make a significant difference in this case. The dialogue of different women, living in different time and geographical circumstances is as important as the slowly reveal of the layers after layers of trauma. 

Although there are many similar books on similar topics published in the last decades, I would rather avoid drawing comparisons. Therefore, I fully immersed into the story and allowed it to take it over any other topics and approaches, no matter how similar. I may confess that I needed some time off once the book was finished, as it really loaded my mind with so many traumatic realities that are hard but impossible to ignore while and after reading this book.

A recommended read for the Black History Month, but that deserves open debate and consideration all round the year.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own