Orenda Books Blog Tour: Catherine by Essie Fox

 

I am generally very careful with the retold novels I chose to read, as I always prefer original versions. But  two trustworthy sources - an author that I´ve discovered one year ago and really appreciated, Essie Fox, and an edition house that cannot be wrong, Orenda Books - changed my mind.

Essie Fox´s latest, Catherine, is a retelling of the iconic Wuthering Heights, a novel I´ve read in my teenage years. I also watched the movie - the 1939 version -, that at the time left me a stronger impression.

Catherine has however a different spin and perspective. The ambiance is eerie, very visual and with strong correspondences with the events related in the story. The storyteller is Catherine herself, who 18 years after her death, she is returning to the places of her ultimate love. Many of the landscape descriptions may stay with me for a very long time.

Personally, I´ve found the relationships between characters emotionally deep, facing a strength going beyond life and death. Similarly with the blind irrationality of nature, humans themselves seem to be possessed by passions beyond their own power and understanding.

The book is very well written and for someone who never read Wuthering Heights it may sound as a standalone, original writing as well. In the end, what really matters, is the story, no matter how often and the angle it is written. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Imminent Risk by S. Lee Manning

The fourth in the Kolya Petrov series - to whom it was elegantly added Alex Feinstein, his partner and wife to be - Imminent Risk by award-winning author S. Lee Manning takes the reader to a risky ride in the underworld of ´conspiracy nuts´.

I´ve previously reviewed books by this author and I was never disappointed due to the perfect mix of action, political relevance and spy spicy stories. The same literary recipe was followed in this latest book published by Misbehavin´ Press as well. The book can be read as a stand alone, but I definitely recommend to continue with the other installments in the series, especially if you love action-packed page turning books.

Kolya Petrov and his talented attorney fiancé Alex are in the middle of the rehearsal for their wedding. But as Alex is requested by an old childhood friend to help her with a conflict with the social services, she agrees to take a break and assist her. But what looked as a mundane child protection case escalated to a plot that threatens to literally explode Manhattan, minutiously prepared by a disillusioned deluted ex-CIA obsessed by aliens and Jews taking over the country. The nuts are as dangerous as nukes falling in the wrong hands.

Kolya, working for a secret governmental office, is always ready for action, quietly fighting his PTSD following dangerous missions he was involved before, but Alex is by far the complex character in the book. Her past experiences taught her how to react in an extremely adverse environment, but meanwhile she is also intensively reflecting about her relationship questioning sometimes the readiness of constantly being at risk and exposed. These details balance the other important trains of thought about extreme domestic violence and the twisted minds of the conspirationists - for sure inspired by real life characters.

Imminent Risk is very intense, well written and plotted, keeping the reader in a ceaseless suspense. A perfect addition for a weekend read.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the author in exchange for an honest review

 

Orenda Books Blog Tour: Sharks by Simone Bucholz translated by Rachel Ward

I love to discover my favorite cities through literary lenses. Given Germany´s strong local crime writing tradition I am very often rewarded to crime stories set in the many places I´ve left a piece of my heart.

Hamburg-based multi-awarded crime bestseller author Simone Buchholz bring her city of choice into the English-speaking realm. Beatles played here too, of course, but crime stories sound better for me.

Sharks, her latest translated into English by Rachel Ward, is published the 26th of February by Orenda Books, who published other Buchholz translations I had the opportunity to present on my blog. This is the third book featuring the public prosecutor Chastity Riley, but can be easily read as a stand alone (although the other two are heartly recommended). It is a relatively short book, but well written and with detailed information about those places in Hamburg that you need to be an insider to know them, particularly the bars and clubs in the Reeperbahn (´gloomy pubs, grey streets´).

Riley, who is dangerously ill, coughing blood, over exhausted and dealing with relationship crisis, is tasked with the investigation of the murder of an estranged ex-GI family - described as ´hard core conservatives´) living in a compound hunted by greedy real estate ´sharks´. Her very diverse team (´We´re all a pile of glorious bastards. And I like us´) is fast, they are completing each other very well, enjoying the exercise of having to solve the riddle. 

Sharks is not necessarily a highly eventful novel, but well written and admirably translated, with a very clear plot. The characters of the book are by far the most interesting, including Riley whose inner dialogues doubling her conversations are very entertaining.

Clearly, the next time will be visiting Hamburg will see the city with completely different eyes. Sharks seems to have been cut a short sequency from the everyday life in the Wilhelmsburg borrough that ends at the author´s will. But we, the readers, may be curious to come back soon, hence the excitement of waiting for the next installment in the series.

Rating: 4 stars

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

CLASSICAL READS: So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas

My CLASSICAL READS project took me this time a bit farther away: in Senegal. So Long a Letter by French writing Senegalese author Mariama Bâ (translated from the original French version Une si longue lettre by Modupé Bodé-Thomas) was on my reading list for a very long time. As my interest with this project is not only to cover less known ´classical´ - in my own timeline decision until mid-1990s - reads, but also less read world literature, I loved the chance of spending some time with this book.

This book is ´classical´ in its level of literary achievement for the Senegalese literature. It was published in 1979, and it is the only book Bâ - a teacher, Minister of Health, a feminist - published during her lifetime. The book received the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, an annual prize awarded between 1980 and 2009. 

The book is relatively short - read it within few hours - and is written as a letter that Ramatoulaye - whose name is revealed long towards the end of the story, and when uttered by a man - sent to her childhood friend Aissatou. Ramatoulaye is sharing her struggle and survival after being indirectly faced with the announcement that her husband of 30 years and 12 children took a second wife. The second wife, the same age with the older daughter, in the company of whom he met her, was a victim of her circumstances and the desire of her mother to achieve a social status.

The letter starts with the announcement with the sudden death of her husband, as she details the funeral and the mourning ceremonies. The compassionate tone of the beginning is progressively growing into the anger and frustration of the betrayal she experienced. Abandoned, not divorced, she remained faithful to the love of her youth. Offered to be taken as a second wife herself, by a man who used to be in love with her, she refused. The recipient of her lettr, Aissatou refused radically the same option, ending up as a diplomat and educated free woman.

The book is written very insightfully, with delicate observations about social change and the new wave of ideas, from anthropological observations to city planning, social change in Senegal or religious and sexual education for girls.  

Bâ writes with confidence, as someone aware that she has something to say may be. The translation itself mediates the knowledge for the non-French reader.

I am very grateful for having the time and opportunity to read this book. It shows how women realities may be generated individually, nevertheless are so similar in the ways they affect women worldwide.

CLASSICAL READS: Death in Venice/Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann

My next installment of CLASSICAL READS is a book I wanted to read for a very long time: Death in Venice/Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann. Mann was an author I admired in my late teenage years and I´ve read most of his books. I loved The Buddenbrooks as I used, and still have, a weakness for books with a social and sociological background. Until now though, I´ve read everything in various translations, therefore my latest ´classical´ was not only a literary challenge, but also a linguistic novelty.

Der Tod in Venedig is a novella that can be easily read within two hours or so. However, I wanted to spend a bit of more time with the text, therefore it took me few days until I was happy with my understanding of the text and ideas.

Let´s talk language though: I´ve seen reviews by native speakers complaining that it is empty and sophisticated on purpose. It could be, but let´s do not ignore that this book was published in 1912. Nowadays, we write and read today in shorter and plain sentences. At the time, literature was a priviledge of the few, therefore it appealed to a very specific category of readers. Unfortunately today, the long and complex sentences in German are rather reserved for highly bureaucratic texts. Inside jokes put aside, if you are reading Proust - another important name on my CLASSICAL READS list - the style, vocabulary and sentence structure is far from the register used in TikTok book reviews. Those were the days.

Back to the novella now: Set in Venice during the 1911 cholera epidemic - that Mann himself experienced while visiting there - it follows Gustav von Aschenbach, a fictional famous author in his 50s, visiting on Island Lido. His stay turns progressively into a deadly obsession as he sees the perfectly beautiful 14-year old Tadzio, who is visiting with his Polish family. The young man is the perfect projection of the ideal of beauty as per Plato´s Phaidros. 

The ambiance and the various locations are described in the smallest details, literally transporting the reader in the 1900s Venice. There are both visual and atmospheric, reflecting at certain extent the emotional troubles Aschenbach is himself going through.

Echoing another novella by Mann, Tonio Kröger - where the main character is progressively acknowledging his status as an artist - Death in Venice is clearly discussing ideas about the role of the artists, as well as his hidden aspirations and aims. Physical beauty therefore is stirring passions, although there are good reasons to compare the novella with Lolita, the gay version, despite the attraction being in Mann´s case purely platonic. I´ve seen some critics mentioning Mann´s homosexual tendencies, but need to read more about it maybe.

There is also a movie inspired by the book by Visconti I haven´t watched yet. 

I have mixed feelings about this novella: reading it was definitely a welcomed linguistic challenge, but from the point of view of the topic as such, not too much. The Buddenbrooks remain my favorite Mann´s work. 

On the other hand, I will hopefully be able soon to read and review soon some relevant critique and biographical books about Thomas Mann that may bring more personal details into picture.

CLASSICAL READS: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

At the end of the last year, I´ve proudly announced my new reading project: CLASSICAL READS. It is a project in the making for many years, but half-way abandoned due to the lack of time and the many reading temptations I am giving up to during my day. 

My post was supposed to push my commitment and determine me to follow a plan. Which partially happened, as I set up a list and read some books from the list, but still unable to spend enough time reviewing it lately.

But now I am happily breaking the ice and posting my first - hopefully not the last - post from my round the year affair with classical reads.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short - less than 50 pages - novella published in 1892 in The New England Magazine. A bit over ten years later, the author will explain why she wrote the story, largely but not completely inspired by her own story. 

The protagonist of the novella, a woman, writes about her life during a ´retreat´ in a summer home aimed at restoring her mental health. The first person account describes her struggle with the lack of intellectual stimulation, while being forced largely to limit her daily schedule to home-based activities as per the doctor´s advice. And the under-stimulated brain will find her remedy in a Gothic fantasma of women hiding under the decayed wallpaper in her bedroom. 

The world the character belongs to - as the author herself - is a world with strict gender roles and with ´diagnosis´ that are far from following a scientific pathway. Instead, doctors are trying to maintain the social and gender-based distinctions, which was a generic tendency in women´s mental health until few decades ago.

The book raises issues relevant until today and the discussion is always interesting for several aspects. 

From the literary point of view, the episodes of the wallpaper ghosts are the best in terms of the visual effects of the descriptions. I was able to see the shadows and the aparitions from behind the wallpaper in the front of my eyes, hence my reading and re-reading of those passages more than once.

It was a short yet thoughtful read I am glad I had the chance to read it. It just opened up my interest to advance through my classical reads and happily share it on the blog as well. 

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