German audio-book: Die Fotografin by Petra Durst-Benning

For this year, I wished myself to read more German books and be more friendly to audio-books. What about having 2 for 1?

Die Fotografin by Petra Durst-Benning is a perfect companion when you are looking for a good story in German language. Read by the actress Svenja Pages, it is the story of the photographer Mimi Reventlow on her way to become successful in Berlin and back in her home in the South, to set up a prosperous tipography business.

The action takes place at the beginning of the last century, before the WWI, and it features women that are about to take control of their lives and successfully manage their local businesses, independent and not necessarily and desperately looking to marry. The novel presents life in Germany under the impact of industrialisation and the ways in which this process affected the everyday life. 

Mimi is one of the best portrayed characters and together with the other strong women introduced in the book, balances the men characters which are unreliable, prone to sudden changes of mind and sentimentally unstable. 

Interestingly, it also offers insights about photography, as a new crfeative way replacing the classical painting and other old style visual arts and representations. The facts and observations are put into the right historical perspective which makes the book authentic and the story a good choice for a relaxing afternoon.

This is only one of the book in a series of three, but when I will have more time and my TBR list will diminish, I will be curious to follow the further adventures of Mimi Reventlow and the other strong women from the South of Germany (mostly), where the author is originally from.

Rating: 3 stars

How Walking also Saved my Life

I am barely involved in any kind of sport activities. I do have 2 bikes, but rarely use them, I don´t go to zumba classes and I am restless enough to realize that yoga is not a fit for me. I used to practice Judo and martial arts long ago but only because my mother and brother insisted. I cannot swim. I tried to play tennis one long summer but more than one trainer acknowledged my mother that I am completely unfit for such a sport. I find jogging boring and although I love competitions, I have no intention to prepare for any marathon. My life is fast forward enough to cut any enthusiasm for a self-imposed running diet.

But there is some physical activity which I always enjoyed: walking with its mountain-related activity of hiking. As a child I used to walk as often as possible and while living in Switzerland I crossed hills and mountains almost on my own during the long summer retreats in the countryside. I kept hiking and even learned how to defend myself in case a bear - or two - may want to visit my tent. 

I love the city life, with its cultural attractions and the sight of houses, but every week, no matter how cold or hot or rainy, I put aside one hour of my life for hiking. In addition to the usual at least 10,000 steps the day spent walking. There, in the middle of the nature, I can leave my busy self, abandon my phone and social media attractions of all kinds, even refuse to read for at least one hour. Instead, I offer myself the pleasure of walking out of time, observe nature, recollect my thoughts, breath deep and abandon any negative thoughts or anger. For me, those steps are meditation and prayer and medicine. It makes me physically tired which is my guarantee for a good night sleep. I can survive my sleep deprivation one full week, with my mind always busy to learn or to think about something or sometimes someone. But once the week, I need that every muscle of my body are screaming hard for a 10-hour rest. No valium can do better.

As for walking, this is my one and only way to connect with a city. Newly landed in a new place, this is through walking that I discover my environment, I observe the houses and the people, their way of walking and how they talk with each other.

In Praise of Walking by Shane O´Mara confirms that I am doing - finally - something good for my health. Forget all the heavy smoking days and inadequate eating - to call it right, eating disorders - and lack of sleep and stress. Walking bring the right balance into my life. It build the bridge between body and mind, it creates meaning and can even help creativity and productivity. And this is scientifically proved.

In addition to acquiring healthy habits and improving my eating routines in the last decade of life in Germany, walking helped me to overcome my high level of activity and brought a bit of balance into my everyday chaos. 

The healthy benefits of walking, as outlined in the book, may not be always direct, but it influences the brain plasticity and the immunity, among others. It creates that resilience that one needs when you have to overcome difficult personal moments. In addition to therapy and medical support, it relieves at least part of the heavy burden of depression and anxiety too. 

And this is how walking saved my life recently. A couple of months ago, chronically sick and stuck to a hospital bed with unclear chances of surviving, I was able to come back to life and to a decent human look in just a couple of weeks - less than two months - also due to the mental muscles created during my walking sprees. I wanted so much to be back in the woods, to see the lakes and to hear the birds again, that only thinking about it for a couple of minutes was enough to take me out of my hospital bed, with the help of the medical personnel and, surprinsingly fast, on my own. Since last March, I am happily back to my active lifestyle, and I can again do my weekly walking routine.

Despite the considerable amount of scientific data, used to prove various benefits of walking, In Praise of Walking is not a complicated high-end academic read and I personally expected more than repeating the same conclusion - walking is good - in different contexts. But I want to give praise when it´s due and, indeed, walking is good. At least in my case, it saved my life.

Rating: 3 stars

´Then the Fish Swallowed Him´

´There was no God in Evin´.

Life under despotism cannot be free of political meaning. The refusal itself of being part of a political establishment or to be involved into political processes - such as elections - is political because it is an open statement against the participation to the life decided by the political decision makers of the anti-democratic system. You are just a small fish that anyone can swallow...

Yunus Turabi, the main character of the American debut novel by Amir Ahmadi Arian Then the Fish Swallowed Him, is an apolitical bus driver. At 44, he has 25 years of career, driving the citizens of Tehran around the city. At the invitation of a colleague, he accepts to take part to the discussion group of the Bus Drivers Union, where Western authors sympathetic with the fate of the working class were discovered. 

As an accidental participant to the citywide bus strike, he is arrested and under pressure, including 20 days of solitary confinment, he is condemned to 4 years of prison in the prison of Evin, known for its high concentration of political prisoners. 

Yunus is a perfect victim of the randomness of despotism, search for human empaty and connection even with your interogator which in this case is playing both the good and the bad boy. A lonely character, the apolitical bus driver is set in a middle of a nest of spies - the usual CIA, Mossad, George Soros (you meant George Sorel, will ask innocently Yunus, when his interrogator is dictating him whom to include as perpetrators of chaos in his confession) and other foreign agents, probably the Saudis - that brought money in the suitcases and used people like him against ´our people´.  A people colonized not by foreign powers, but by their own people, their rulers.

The mechanisms of terror and manipulation in Iran is common to all dictatorships. Apolitical victims are the favorite targets of such games when the scape goats pay with heavy years of prison in order to maintain an official narrative. What is terrible in Then the Fish Swallowed Him is the persistent destruction of the human network. Friends and neighbours are turned into ´sources´ for the oppressive regimes. Saving your skin may involve accepting to record on camera testimonies incriminating friends and even relatives for the imaginary crimes a despotic regime needs desperately in order to survive.

May be that the perpetrators are so infatuated with their job that they may ignore completely the evil work they are doing. After Yunus was beaten, sent to solitary confinment for 20 days and abused psychologically, his interogator - that once in a while have to take a break from the room as he needs to answer the calls of his children and wife - asks him ´What are your thoughts about your stay here?´.  

Amir Ahmadi Arian worked as a journalist in Iran and based his book on his journalistic experience as well as stories from people he knows that went through similar encounters. 

The book is not for the faint of heart and one needs to understand the everyday realities in a dictatorship from a more complex perspective than the usual simplistic black vs. white approach. The change of roles and the fluidity of the system of values - in opposition with what the political decision-makers want you (from outside and inside) want you to believe - is not only hard to understand, but hard to accept. The realities are as complex as the human nature. Dictatorships - the religious ones including - pervert the human nature therefore there is no clear line between good and evil, victims and perpetrators. 

I wish I am living in a world where there is no source of inspiration for such book.

I had access to the audio version. 

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Women Talking by Miriam Toews

How can you properly describe - including for the sake of a precise police investigation - when you are missing the proper terms for an authentic account? In such situations, unpriviledged social and religious/cultural groups - at the intersection of which women found often - are twice the victims, of the perpetrators and of their precarious background.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews, built as a dialogue between women victims of sexual abuse is based on rough facts. Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia girls and women will wake up with bruses on their body. Initially, they attributed the incidets to ghosts and demons, but the truth was that men from the colony used repeatedly anaesthesic against the women in order to rape them.

Among the women portrayed in the book belonging to the community of Molotschna, the incidents are called ´the mysterious night time disturbances´. The rapists are gently called ´the unwelcomed visitors´. The dialogue in general has a predominant religious content based on the everyday practice and belief of the Mennonites.

The dialogue that takes place is recorded in writing by August, a male member of the community with a family story of dissent against the strict Mennonite rules, but who returned to teach in the local schools. The women are illiterate but their awakening and acknowledging of their situation and the facts is taking place progressively and every stage of the revelation is marked by outbursts against their weakness. ´Should the women avenge the harm perpetrated against them? Or should they instead forgive the men and by doing so be allowed to enter the gates of heaven?´ 

On the other hand, the men narrative is acknowledging the attacks either as a ´punishment from God, that God was punishing the women for their sins´ or by denying it completely and labelling it as the result of ´wild female imagination´. Mennonite are a religious group that rejects any violence, however they don´t have any second thoughts when it comes to slapping a woman.

The fate of the women from Molotschna is in fact the fate of women forced to follow the life narrative imposed by men, although under a religious argument.  The women are just the recipients of the religious interpretation as they are not allowed to think by themselves. By ´allowed´ it means also that they are not offered basic education and access to sources of knowledge other than those controlled by men. 

Unfortunatelly, this is what happenes to women everywhere in strict religious communities - no matter the denomination. Willingly, they are forced to submit and follow and refuse to acknowledge abuses outside the community. When this happened, the victims are under double pressure: on one side, it is the trauma they deal with silently, on the other the community - including other women - accusing them of disturbing the group coherence. They are expected to keep silent and eventually, to leave the perpetrators continue their abusive behavior.

In Women Talking, the brave women having enough of being told their story, decide to leave.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Short Stories Book Review: Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap

After my first beautiful encounter with a book by a Thai author at the beginning of this year - Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad - I had the chance this weekend to discover another voice belonging to this literary realm: Rattawut Lapcharoensap. Thailand is well known to the outside world through travel books and stories, but books about real people and everyday life there is a rare encounter. As I visited Thailand, I had a hard time finding reliable resources about this country, except news and information written in a holidays-oriented tone. Tourism has a big share of the Thai economy but there is more than Pad Thai and island hoping to this country and unfortunately I did not have any access to it while on the road there. My only connection to the people living there was through the guide we got for a couple of days and the welcoming hotels and restaurants personnel. Which was not at all a real connection and even after including a rich agenda of cultural sightseeings and experiences, at the end of my stays, I was very far from an authentic grasp of the everyday life in Thailand.

The short stories gathered in Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap do reveal emotions, failures, experiences and everyday struggles of individuals living in Thailand.

Lapcharoensap was born in Chicago and was raised in Bangkok, and currently is teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in NYC. For Sightseeing he received the Asian American Literary Award. With a critical way both towards the Thai customs and corruption as well as the pleasure-seeking tourists - ´Thailand was only a paradise for fools and farangs, for criminals and foreigners...´ - , he brings to life unique characters caughts into the net of their life´s own limits. There is cruelty - like in the story of the Cockfighter - and absurd in this everyday life - like the father whow as killed by a crate a toys that fell on him, confusion and aggressive intolerance - as in Priscilla the Cambodian where poor Thai put on fire a refugee compound. Animals - like Clint Eastwood, the pig featured in Farangs or the fighting cocks of the Cockfighter - are more than the pet companions we are used with, but do play an existential role in the humans´ life errands.

Compared to the novel, the art of the short story is to evoke unique stories in a short amount of words and for a limited amount of time. A good collection of short stories fills the reader with life stories, through genuine encounters with characters and their stories. At a symbolic extent, it replicates everyday life, when rather than a great coherent novel, we deal with episodes featuring fragments of life. In Sightseeing, snapshots of life are coming to life part of a human mosaique of universal stories stuck in geography. But very often, when there is a lot of pressure, beauty ensued. 

Now I am probably more prepared intellectually to see Thailand through different eyes than ten years ago.

Rating: 4 stars

´No Friend but the Mountains´

´Wandering homeless/Starvation/Battling against the waves/Almost drowning´.

Trying to escape prison in his homeland Iran, Kurdish journalist and cultural activist Behrouz Boochani arrives to Indonesia, his last destination before embarking on a risky boat journey for reaching the shores of Australia. His second attempt is successful but once caught by the Australian border police he is transferred to Manus Island, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, in Papua New Guinea where Boochani lives as an inmate between 2013 and 2017 when the center was dismantled. 

No Friend but the Mountains is based on single messages that were tapped out in Persian and further translated by the Sydney-based Iranian philosopher and translator Omid Tofighian. The book won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier´s Prize for Nonfiction and will be turned into a movie in 2021. Boochani authored several articles in the international media and was invited to talk via WhatsApp to conferences around the globe on topics related to resistance and immigration. This July, he was finally granted visa and refugee status in New Zealand.

I´ve heard about the prison systems created by Australia for the people applying for immigration status but I was not aware of the extent and cruely of it. Thinking about people that in most cases escaped torture and prison in their home country, crossed the Ocean in very dangerous conditions to be throwned in prison and humiliated only because they want a better and safer life is another example of how cruel and inconsiderate humans can be to one another. The fact that Australia, a democratic country, allows that, it´s even sadder.

´I have always despiswed waiting. Waiting is a mechanism of torture used in the dungeon of time. I am a captive in the cluthes of some overbearing power´. But there, on the cruel island, there is nothing to do. Inmates are kept for weeks that turn into months that turn into years. In their metal cages, surveilled by Australian officers and local law enforcers, they are reduced to bodies in waiting. The legal help comes late, the communication is limited, there is nothing happening that can give hope for a better change. Hope is also an excruciating feeling but waiting without hope means also deep torture. ´In can do nothing else but accept the reality. And the reality in this day is that they have determined to exile me to Manus Island, exile me nice and peacefully, somewhere out in the middle of the ocean´.

´During this period in prison, there is nothing to occupy our time. We are just thrown into a cage and made to wear ridiculous loose-fitting clothes. It´s even prohibited to play cards´. 

I´ve listened recently to a TED speech by Boochani where he says that literature and writing is a form of resistance. His memoir No Friend but the Mountains is a resistance manifesto. How can one survive under pressure whose aims is to reduce one person to the dare physical needs? Through the strength of the spirit. People thrown in communist prisons, in concentration camps, in immigration camps, in solitary confinement resisted through the strength of their spirit. Sickness and loneliness and human disappointment can be survived also when the spirit is stronger. When you don´t believe in the refuge of your spirit and your words you are dead before your execution term.

Every line of No Friend but the Mountains is a story of resilience. ´I have reached a good understanding of this situation: the only people who can overcome and survive all the suffering inflicted by the prison are those who exercise creativity. That is, those who can trace the outlines of hope using the melodic humming and visions from beyond the prison fences and the beehives we live in´. 

His daily careful observation of the daily routines and the human characters and their interactions bring his closer to the reason of his departure from Iran. His condition as member of the oppressed Kurdish minority, his identity and his cultural roots. The author´s positioning towards the world, his spiritual escape secrets and his hopes are the results of his upbringing, of his educated freedom that grew up wild with one single friend: The Mountains.

No Friend but the Mountains will be listed probably among one of the most important books of the 21st century. It seems that humans cannot advance too much their conditions of oppressing other humans. Only the resilient human spirit can find every time creative ways to survive.

Rating: 5 stars

´One Tuesday, My Mother Decided to Become German`

 

I am too honest and vain and I confess that I really loved the cover of this book before even starting to read it. I am in love with Persian prints and using them as a background of the German eagle looks like a good visual association for the title: ´One Tuesday, My Mother Decided to Become German´. A story perfectly relatable for me, as it reminds me of part of an observation that I younger member of my family repeated at length in the last decade of my life spent in Germany: Yeah, one day - was not a Tuesday, I´m sure - you decided to move to Germany and turn us into Germans. As it will be so easy...

This cynical-comical novel written in German by the Iranian-born Fahimeh Farsaie, currently a journalist and author based in Cologne - relates to many of us, parents, who decided to move in a new country and get used with a new identity. The honorable mother of an Iranian family exiled after the revolution in Germany, decides to give up the Iranian citizenship and start the process of becoming German, For her, it means more than going through the bureaucratic process and the basic language tests. She really want to be one of ´them´ and her journey does not take place without creating various conflicts with her husband - a proud Iranian communist -, the rest of the family in Iran, and own children, both of them more or less involved with non-Iranian friends.

Although I´ve enjoyed must of the book - that I´ve read in the original German version -, I´ve found some stories a bit too general and lacking the local context - for instance, what about the mother´s local network, did she have any friends here, what was she interested in when she was not trying to become a German?

As a story of immigration, this book adds a small layer to the relatively limited bibliography written by non-born German residents. Hopefully I will find soon other contemporary books on this topic. 

Rating: 2.5 stars

Book Review: Stasi 77 by David Young

I am not always in the mood for a Cold War thriller and even less to feel excited about it. This kind of genre was so much used and abused - for more or less ´soft diplomacy´ reasons - that I can´t refrain from trying to consider the hidden, non-literary reasons that prompted a certain representation or plot. Therefore, the pleasure of reading the thriller is diminished and I feel cheated. Especially the pattern using good vs. evil confrontations bores me to tears. Don´t try to sell me a certain version of an oversimplified reality because it doesn´t work.

Stasi 77 by David Young offers a complex story, with a taste of authenticity as based on the infinite intricacies of historical layers of German history. A young police officer in the communist Berlin, Katrin Müller, is requested to investigate some strange - apparently ritualistic - crimes occuring in the People´s Republic, but soon her inquiries are halted by direct order of the representatives of the communist German secret police, Stasi. What dark histories do they want to cover, at any price? And what is the history behind the crimes? What actually connects the victims?

In parallel with the searches for finding the criminal(s), a diary-like testimony about a massacre of a group of prisoners in the last days of the war, at a barn close to the locations of the crimes, put things into a larger perspective. Because some of the perpetrators are top Stasi officials enjoying the immunity of their position and the power of doing what they consider necessary to clean their traces. Traces that lead to a common denominator of an overwhelming amount of citizens of both Germanies: the Nazi past.

The novel uses smartly the historical contexts for creating a story which makes sense and is captivating. As Stasi 77 is part of a series centered on the cases handled by Karin Müller, I´ve felt more than once that I miss some information from previous installments, which I usually don´t appreciate but in this case it just made me curious to delve a bit more into the other adventures from the Cold. 

Rating: 4 stars

Beautiful Poetry Weekend

I promised myself to read more poetry this year and compared to the previous years I am doing well. I am still lacking the proper sensibility to understand and focus on poetry but I am working hard to improve my situation. At least, I have a lot of poetry books saved that hopefully will help me expand my knowledge beyond the Eluard and Apollinaire and Rimbaud and Verlaine and some Bialik of my late teen years.

Fortunately

In Fortunately, the poetry of Nava EtShalom reveals the hidden secret of life and objects while living under the permanent pressure of the inevitable sense of the ending. The religious references - ´we´re living in the waiting room´ - punctuate the balance of nature and add a different dimension to the complexity of the exploration. The poems - my favorite from the collection is Earthquake - are organised as part of a larger story which reveals to the reader one verse after another.

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

Bilingual Anthology of Argentinian Poetry by Daniel Samoilovich

Long upon a time, I was in love with the Latin American literature and history and Argentina was by far one of my favorites (still haven´t given up the hope to visit this part of the world and especially Argentina). Until then, I decided to update a bit not only my knowledge about the Argentinian literature, but also the language, and this bilingual volume edited by Daniel Samoilovich was an excellent choice. I´ve read it slowly, pen on paper for some words that are different from Spanish, enjoying fully not only the linguistic immersion but also the diversity of voices and topics.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

I wanted to like Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas, a book that I decided to add on my TBR following various reviews in the media and among my Goodreads network. The topic sounded interested and the writing was not bad at all, particularly for a debut novel. However, from many points of view, various threads of the story simply did not get together well and the ending was disappointing enough to confirm my opinion about the book. Not a positive opinion, but given the quality of the writing, it makes me hope that maybe the next novel by Elisabeth Thomas will do much better than her first.

´What was Catherine, exactly? Let´s say, a community of minds. A crucible of experimental, reformist liberal arts study. Research-and-development institute for the most radical new materials sciences. A postsecondary scholl more selective than any Ivy League, and so terrifically endowed that tuition was free to any student lucky enough to be accepted. A tiny, pioneering, fanatically private place that by some miracle of chemistry produced some of the world´s best minds: prize winning authors, artists and inventors, diplomats, senators, Supreme Court justices, two presidents of the United States. A school and an estate: a complex confection of architecture and design, a house - a magnificent house - miles off the highway, in black woods, behind a long iron gate´.

The story is told by Ines, a rebelious girl whose past is haunted by an incident not clearly explained. She, like the other residents is supposed to go through a 3-year long isolation program, when the connection with her previous life, with her past, is completely cut. Ines does not have anyone to relate to anyway though - why, it is also not clear.

There is also a ´scientific´ plasm story, which is the mysterious connection between various incidents and whose abuse was apparently revealed in a report that did not produce any legal consequences for the schol. Experiments with plasma are done regularly on the students, some of them in high-secrecy in the laboratory. ´Plasm was not a substance; it was the beginning of substance. The fabric connecting all things and all people. The language that created me, the chandelier, the floorboards, the light´. However, too many explanations about it are not given and we are left to imagine - maybe way too much - how exactly it operates and what is the aim of those experiments - besides the fervour of the experiments themselves.

The curricula of the school is introduced as very eclectic, however, the students seem completely amorphous, without any intellectual oomph supposed by such an exposure to a mix of ideas. Their reaction is the same either it has to do with the multiplication table or some obscure art theories.

As for Ines, she has a potential of an unforgettable strong character - with all her flaws and lack of qualities. Her sexual encounters are mentioned, but as in the case of the intellectual exposure, they are just added stories for the sake of the novel development only, but it does not create any serious twists from the literary point of view.

Catherine House was a nice try but it haven´t impressed me at all. Which is fine for me, as it helps to think about those books and literary encounters that really resonate with my intellectual, particularly reading, standards.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Why Doing Nothing?

I personally refuse to acquiesce to books authored by public intellectuals or artists that are screaming from the top of their lungs that they want to fight capitalism, replace it completely, eventually. Especially when the authors themselves are the happy beneficiary of a stipendium made possible by the capitalist order - because it involves money and capital and certain productivity synergies that creates a surplus of money which is used to give it to artists to write or create. Note to myself and my readers: I am convinced capitalism can be challenged and there is a lot to be done to reduce the disbalances and inequalities, but I prefer a clear outline and a coherent system of thought.

From the global point of an anti-capitalistic stance, How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell is a weak chain. It is not an articulated critique, but rather a collection of observations that at the limit can be easily branded as self-help suggestions, only that they are glued a dramatic intellectual label.

However, at the micro-level, there are many good advices to take into consideration, especially if you are living under permanent working pressure - but there is not too much to be done, as long as you have mortgages to pay and children to feed and you need money for your hobbies and books, among others. A detox retreat may not be the right solution to the everyday stress, although I think that it is always something to learn from, including from the monstrousity of the capitalism. The industrial revolution and its aftermath created new thinking and life patterns and habits and the ecosystem suffers. We can learn to listen to the language of nature instead, we can try to connect with our communities and neighbourhoods, we can just stop time and ignore our phones and devices and...do nothing. 

Silence is not necessarily the absence of something but could be read as an interlude to a different kind of connection with ourselves, the nature and other humans. The anxiety of productivity and the ´attention economy´ are a heavy burden but learning to stop and say ´no´ is an alternative. But not everyone can have this luxury and most of us will just continue to be part of this world, with its non-essential stress and hussle.

I´ve listened to the audio version of the book.

Rating: 3 stars

´The True Story of a Husband´s Ultimate Betrayal´

Sometimes life is weirder than fiction. Mary Turner Thomson ´met´ Will Jordan on an online dating site. She, a single mother of one, he an attractive American. She fell in love with him, got married, and had two children together. Happily ever after, isn´t it?

Well, there are some little details missing: For instance, that Mr. Jordan insisted that he is a CIA agent with secret missions in Israel and Palestinian territories and he even was a life witness of the confrontations betweeen the Israeli Army and the Palestinians in Jenin (no offense, but the author took too much as truth what the leftist UK media said about the conflict, particularly The Guardian, but this is another part of the story). Mr. Jordan disappears for long periods of time, even after they married. Then, he started to ask money, a lot of it, until his wife sold her house and her life insurance and ended up living with her mom. ´Every week, there was a new emergency, another need for more money´. 

Until, it comes the moment of truth, a very painful one. For instance, Mary Turner Thomson will discover that he has another family with many children. Initially, he told her that this is part of an arrangement of the agency. In fact, he fathered many other children in the UK and US. He was no CIA agent, but a con artist that took advantage of Mary and other women. He also had a couple of prison experiences part of his CV and a conviction of paedophilia. What exactly happened with the money was not sure, as it was also unclear his mental health situation, but in the end, he will be put on trial and sent to spend some years in prison.

Hurt, Mary Turner Thomson is trying to figure out not only the entire network of women that were Jordan´s victims - and there were many of them, both in the UK and US - but also how was it possible to happen to her. How was it possible to be so blind for six years and not see the truth, ending up heartbroken and bankrupt? She, an educated woman with a successful career and professional experience behind, with a close knitted family and a simple daily life, was conned for years by a man she was in love with.

For such a long time, he succeeded to build a very convincing story that excused - in Mary´s eyes, at least - his erratic behavior. ´It was like living with Superman: how could you complain about him not turning up to dinner when he was holding up a collapsing bridge and saving lives?´. 

In a way, it was a story hard not to believe because why someone will lie at such an extent? Mary Turner Thomson was unlucky enough to deal with such a pathological case, but for the sake of her children, she was strong enough to grow out of this den of lies and live her life in dignity. The book - which can be also read as a warning to women at a crossroad in their sentimental life - is a testimony of her recovery.

Rating: 3 stars

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

Short Story in Translation: Table for One by Yun Ko Eun

´She leads an active and enthusiastic solo life. And this solo life all started with a course to learn to eat alone´.

After Kim Yiyoung and Han Kang, Yun Ko Eun is my newest discovery. Table for One is inspired by a new phenomenon among the young Korean - especially women - the lifestyle of going alone to eat, drink, to movies or trips. According to the 2015 local census, South Korea has over 5 million single people, mostly in their mid-30s. Single by choice or just unable to make place in their life for a relationship for many reasons - psychological or due to the workload - they continue to live in a society whose emphasis is on family and togetherness. A society that seems to be in denial of the reality of their new generation. Going out on your own continue to be a shame and Table for One deals with the anxieties of young women - ´For a woman to come alone at 7.00 pm, it is sort of change´ - and men of enjoying their lives, no matter what. ´People eating alone worry more about stares from others than they do about menu options´.

Therefore, they need to learn how to get the best of this lifestyle and end their self-isolation of eating and drinking at home and not doing anything really social. A course about how to eat alone is teaching the participants - in exchange of a greasy fee - not only to make the right choice of food without bothering what other people think, but also to enjoy the food in a musical-like rhythm. Keep your eyes in your plate and try to connect the inner music of your plate, with bonus a short conversation with the waiter, and your evening is done. A successful evening. After all, eating with someone requires so much preparation of the topics to discuss, outfits etc.

I really enjoyed the reading - in translation, by Lizzie Buehler who also translated The Disaster Tourist by the same author that I am looking forward to get to know in the next weeks: the short sentences do create a perfect description of an intense inner-emotional scenery, although there is not too much action happening - except moving the plates and enjoying the various foods. I cannot vauch for the different Korean dishes as I have a limited familiarity with this cuisine.

I personally have mixed feelings about the topic as such. Long time ago I considered eating alone as a sign of social and personal failure but once my world opened up and I reorganized my priorities I am very much at ease eating alone and doing many activities on my own too - including when I am not single. To be honest, I really enjoy being on my own, with a good book and having a full tasting of my food, without being under the pressure of having a conversation. Professionally, I often have to eat on my own for various food reviews and writing assignments. On the other hand, nothing compares with sharing food with friends. Food is also a social experiment and I can´t imagine fully enjoying a meal made in my beloved Middle East enjoyed alone. I also don´t believe that we, humans, we are meant to live and be alone and enjoying being single is not an option that I consider. 

Sociologically, but also as a literary topic, Table for One by Yun Ko Eun is an interesting read about a culture I have a limited knowledge about, but with literary voices that impress me every time I get in contact with.

Rating: 4 stars

Kafka: Letter to the Father

What happens when your beloved family members know that you are blogging? They send you once in a while recommendations - where to travel, what to write about, what to read and what not, what to write and what not about, for different reasons. Also, you can receive questions of the kind: What are you not writing about...for instance, classical authors instead of all those debut novels or new titles or chicklit or and or...But they are part of my - steady and stubborn - audience, so answering the requests of my readers is a matter of online survival. 

What exactly can I do for them now? I´ve read most of the classical books and authors long before starting blogging. I am not always in the mood for that kind of authors that were part of the bibliography of my beloved relatives. Difficult bookish times. However, as I decided to dedicate my summer months to a lot of foreign language writing and reading, after a serious scrutiny of my messy book shelves, I´ve found what I was looking for. A book I wanted to read for a long time: Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka, in the Italian translation Lettera al Padre - by Claudio Groff).

No pun intended: there are my relatives on my father side which are very active in following my professional steps, by my father - of blessed memory - died when I was too little to remember him. My stepfather had no influence in my upbringing and reading blogs, in English especially, is not part of his lavish retirement plan.

I´ve found the translation excellent with an extraordinary attention to convene subtle emotional details that can be easily lost when switching from languages so different as structures and . The terrible torment the 36 years old Kafka is going through when writing this letter is a tensed testimony of a failed parent-son relationship. 

At the time when Kafka wrote this letter, dr. Freud was elaborating his classification of mental disorders including narcissism among them. Freud´s writings about the psychological mechanisms of the relationships between father and son were also probably well-known to Kafka at the time of the letter - end of 1919.

The father will not have the chance to discuss or apologize or to reconsider his relationship with Franz, but the letter addressed to him remains available for many strained relationship between fathers and sons. Many of them, at least.

The beginning reminds of a discussion the two of them had before, when the father asked his son what he is afraid of him. This fear is constant and mentioned more than once in the letter. Time for Kafka to mention the real everyday conflict between one of them. It starts from the son´s lingering to emulate his father but ending up being the opposite of him and especially of his expectations of him. Kafka is craving for the attention of his father, but every time he is reminded he is a failure. A weighty oppression - which is emotional therefore harder to cope with - which comes from the judgemental and narrow-minded attitude of the father. A hurtful emotional behavior that, among others, explains Kafka´s failures in finding a wife or to take over the family business, managed in a dictatorial way by his father. Indeed, his father allowed him to do whatever he wanted, but the free choice is a curse for his son because of the extremely critical evaluation of the father. Manipulative, emotionally limited, unable to properly listen and communicate with his son and family, he is the victim of his own upbringing as well. His mother is compensating with ´infinite kindness´ the dry and emotionally abusive character of the father, but Kafka wanted desperatelly to please his father an no one else.

Also in terms of Jewish education, their relationship is problematic. A son is learning from his father the main Jewish obligations in terms of praying and everyday practice but in this case, the communication is missing or is distorted again, with the father unable to understand the emotional needs of his son. 

The relationships between father and sons do have a deep psychological complexity, similarly with that between mothers and daughters. No matter how outdated Freud is nowadays, his basic observations about those binomial relationships do operate in very strange ways, especially if not nurtured by understanding and love, emotional availability on both sides, especially parents´. Kafka´s Letter to the Father is a sad meditation about how the missing love of a parent can affect one child´s emotional and personal development. Physical abuse is indeed a serious threat to a child development but so is the emotional one. In both cases professional support to overcome such threats to an everyday life normality are more than recommended. Taking the rightful distance and even leaving completely behind the source of abuse, with or without a letter is what such narcissists deserve. 

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

´I had a thing for Brazilian girls

Yeah?

Used to love Brazilian porn

Oh my god!´

In Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler, a young British-Brazilian woman recounts her random memories of her split identity. Compared to books exploring a double identity, this book does not stand apart from the philosophical/theoretical point of view - as usual, there is always the question of belonging to two worlds without being fully accepted as a member in none of them - but it acknowledges about identities rarely spoken about: Latin Americans, particularly Brazilians, living in Europe. Most specifically, it has to do with the children of mixed couples, when one of the parent is of foreign origin.

The unnamer storyteller - whose story resonates with the author´s herself, who is British-Brazilian, growing up in South London etc. - is a young woman who is exploring her identity while writing, being heartbroken and trying to use her knowledge in working in an area close to home - she is requested to use her linguistic knowledge for a documentary about beauty surgery in Brazil.

Her grandparents visiting from Brazil do face the local customs, the food and the sales on Boxing Day and the cold weather. Her brain may be exhausted from time to time for talking a foreign language, the Brazilian Portuguese that remains a foreign language, no matter her chosen identity - which is, anyway, a process that grows in different, unprogrammed directions, like a hectic tree.

Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2019, Stubborn Archivist is an interesting debut novel, especially from the point of view of the writing techniques. Being out of the classical storytelling may give freedom to the writer sometimes, a freedom of the mind that can be equated with that beautiful dance on the beach from the end of the novel.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Mystery at the academia, metoo and a lot of secrets: Reputation by Sara Shepard

A massive hacking exposing 40,000 personal and professional email successfully targeted Aldrich University. All the dirty secrets are out in the open and from employees and students to donors, everyone is curious to read what other´s were doing or saying, and what episodes from their lives are now public. Greg, a successful surgeon, married with Kit, the daughter of the university dean is found murdered in his kitchen by his ebriated wife. Is she the killer? After all, she had more than one reason to do it, as an illicit affair with a Lolita is the gossip of everyone from the campus and well beyond. This nightmare took Kit completely by surprise, just arriving from a business trip where she met a handsome mysterious guy who, in fact was the husband of one of her coworkers. Maybe it was just too much for her: ´I just burried my second husband, a murder happened in my house, the whole world knows that my dead husband had an affair, and a man I made out with is married to my coworker. Am I really going to keep it together?´

But it´s hard to keep it together for everyone in this book. The crime put into motion a roller coaster of guilts, secret affairs and betrayal, untold secrets and trauma. No one is exempt and every single adult character in the story has some terrible guilt to carry on. Everyone is at a certain point suspect of something, if not of Greg´s murder directly. Dirty laundy appears where you expect less and the cracks are hidden everywhere, even in the most perfect looking relationships. 

Although there were some moments when I felt trapped in a never ending soap opera, with con artists and secret sexual habits, I´ve found the intrigue very well built and challenging for the reader. It is a very interesting story construction which only weakens in the very end. Personally, I´ve found the end too mild for what one was expecting after so many details and hints for a potential killer, but it´s not less relevant. The reference to the #Metoo movement is relevant for the context the events are taking place, as were the recent investigations regarding the problematic academic admissions and promotions in some high-end institutions in the USA.

Reputation by Sara Shepard is a tensed yet entertaining reading, with an unexpected end and some nicely crafted intrigue. A good companion as a summer or weekend bookish recommendation.

Rating: 3 stars

Beautiful Graphic Novel: The Zolas by Méliane Marcaggi and Alice Chemama

The Zolas by Méliane Marcaggi - text - and Alice Chemama - beautiful illustrations - made it for a perfectly loveable hour of reading and food for the eyes for several literary and intellectual reasons. 

First, the painted-like illustrations of this graphic novel are a full feast for the eyes. The choice of pastel colours and the minutiae of every installment are worth a prize. Second, for the quality of the writing reducing Zola´s long and adventurous life - both as a human and as a writer - to a couple of lines while keeping the essential of the story. A story that includes his wife, Alexandrine, as a full character. With a life that inspired some of his characters in the Rougon-Macquart series, Alexandrine was a simple woman, without education, but a supporter of his works and furtrher on, of his intense social and political engagement - particularly during the notorious Dreyfus Affair after he authored J´accuse denouncing the lack of evidences in accusing Alfred Dreyfus, a general in the French Army of Jewish origin, of espionage. Zola had a more or less secret life as well, which involved two children fathered with Jeanne Rozerot, his misstress. To her he dedicated the last volume of Rougon-Macquart, Le Docteur Pascal, a fact that no matter how open his relationship with his wife become, was for sure not an easy burden for his wife. After all, she was the one who was on his side during all those years of writing, during which he turned from a poor copywriter for Hachette into a successful writer. 

In the end, after Zola´s accidental death, the two women are portrayed together in the book as partners involved in raising Rozerot´s children, but the truth as it was is probably different, at least for coming to terms with the reality of this double life.

Personally, this book took me back to my teenage years, when I had the chance to read Zola in the original French. Zola took his inspiration as journalists do - or used to before the Google searches - going out on the streets, checking the pulse of the markets and observing people on the move. The realism of his books that were often prohibited by the Ministry of Interior were due to their rough description of the life as it was during the intense process of industrialism that involved changes of fortune and a challenge to the personal relationship and everyday life psychology. From the mundane, the journalist was extracting facts and further describing in the news reports. The writer was able to create stories out of nothing that were rooted in the reality, but whose characters were imaginary.

Besides Balzac, Zola was the original inspiration for my writing - although I haven´t returned to those writings ever since - and even as a graphic novel, While following the texts and illustrations of this book, I welcomed the thoughts and questions, old and new, about my intellectual roots.

Rating: 5 stars

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

Memoir Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhonda Janzen

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhonda Janzen is a book I wanted for such a long time to read, based both on the topic and on friends´ recommendation. 

I am usually interested in stories of people that left the religious fold - although interesting too, but less popular for the edition houses tastes are also those stories of those that decided to become religious. In the last years I had the chance to read a couple of insightful Jewish memoirs labelled ´off the derech´ /´off the path´, my favorite so far being Leah Vincent´s Cut me Loose, both in terms of writing, authenticity and dramatism. And, to be against the fashion, I held a very separate opinion about Unorthodox, which I think it is very overrated, especially in Germany, for non-literary reasons.

Belonging to a different fold, Educated by Tara Westover is another good example of good and insightful writing by someone who left behind a religious community in order to join the most generous community of spirit. 

Rhonda Janzen is the daugher of a Mennonite church leader, part of a big family that followed the Ukrainian branch of this religious group. Compared to the Amish - both groups are Anabaptists and use an old German/Prussian dialect for the everyday communication - they allow more technical devices and - what is most important - they go to college. Janzen´s parents travel often in very far away parts of the world and most of her siblings do have college degree. She, though, she decided a little different path, where religion do have rather a philosophical place than is part of a daily practice. 

Once she turned 43, a flow of events overwhelmed her bookish existence: her 15-year marriage ended with her bipolar husband running away with a guy he met on gay.com called Bob. She went through a serious car accident. Her health was not doing well at all. 

After 25 years, she returns home to her parents to look for inner peace, answers to her life questions and a good borscht - the Mennonites brought something good from Ukraine after all. She never broke up completely with her family and she maintained a good communication with her parents and some of her siblings. An academic, Rhonda Janzen´s path was more against the securities of the religious minds and was more interested in a different kind of daily life. Her life, as it was at that very specific moment, was what she expected? Why did she failed in her personal life ? Why her husband left her for a man named Bob?

Without hate and drama, she is able to connect the dots that she abandoned once she started to make her own path. She is returning in a family that loves her and in a community who is not judging her. On both sides, a respectful curiosity about the other part´s lifestyle and life choices maintains a conversation that from a chapter to another covers food - especially those foods to not give your child to school, dating, depression, infidelities and betrayal. 

She tells her story with so much irony and humour - the old Mennonite lady writing cat detective stories that matched her with her 17 years old younger nephew was delightful - that I could not resist not listening the story until the end hour after hour - I had the audiobook version of the book. In addition to the story, I was delighted to learn a lot about a religious group I had only basic information about. 

This year may have been a complete failure by now in terms of achieving my personal and professional plans, but at least I´ve finished Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Time to celebrate, no matter what.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Not my kind of hacking story: Breaking and Entering by Jeremy N.Smith

I love a good hacking story, because our life depends so much nowadays on computers that it´s inevitable not to deal at least once in a while with it. Either we buy online or we use email for work or for personal communication or we just use the Internet, the e-crimes and their perpetrator are always there. Understaing their way of thinking and their techniques may be sometimes a matter of personal survival therefore either for someone with a basic Internet knowledge - not me - especially nonfiction books about hackers and their lives are useful.

Breaking and Entering by Jeremy N. Smith is based on the true story of ´Alien´ a woman hacker that from her very early years at MIT was selected to be part of a very selective group of gifted students involved in various forms of hacking. ´Alien´ was not her real name, but was inspired by her admission essay where she was describing how she was kidnapped by aliens. She wanted to be first an aerospace engineer but her plans changed and the book is aimed to trace her history while describing what does it mean to be a woman in such a male-dominated industry. 

Nowadays, she is working as a consultant in the field of Internet security.

Good premises but not an impressive results. The book - which I had in audio format - tells a lot about the character´s adventures in sex and drugs and drinking. Too much college romance, in a story that was supposed for an adult, serious audience, maybe curious like me to learn a little bit more about how hacking operates and how does it feel to be a woman in such a world where supposedly what that matter is the intelligence to be virtually against the system, any system.

This book is an example of a good story, lazily told and I was very disappointed about the experience.

Rating: 2 stars