Book Review: Biloxi by Mary Miller

 

With a high attention for mundane, Mary Miller´s Biloxi is the first person story as told by Louis McDonald: 63-year old, recently retired as he was expecting to inherit a ´fortune´ following the death of his father, divorced, after his 37-year wife left him. ´(...) I was afraid of women . I had been afraid of them my whole life´. It looked like women left him often but, Louis - his full name will be shared with us when 50 pages into the book - does not overthink. He may consider the thinking about the past as part of a simple narrative about himself. Those observations are just statements not leading to tremendous philosophical outcomes.

While waiting to clarify the situation of his heritage, he is given a dog from a man he randomly met. He fantasises about the men´s wife to end up in her house later in a couple of days, only to find out that her husband actually took gave away her dog. But there is no love story and even if the woman will make a stop in Louis´ house, there is no vengeful man hunting him. She even will leave him the dog, after she just ran away, not before taking away his blender and his favorite watch. In the end, the expected inheritance is a meagre sum that will not help him live comfortably. A mess, but this either is not experienced as a dramatic massive life failure. Louis will enjoy his life further, having a beer or two, a burger. 

Although he was longing for connection, confessed that ´choices overwhelmed me´. ´I´d felt good when there was nothing on my plate even though I´d spent most of the time lonely and bored, wishing I had something to do´. 

Set in the small Mississipi-city of Biloxi (but such characters can be found everywhere, in America or abroad), with 45,000 inhabitants only, the story has its own pace and voice and although I am usually not into this kind of average, simple lives - in books and real life - I dearly enjoyed Biloxi and even found a bit of empathy for the characters. After all, world is made mostly by average lives and characters and books help me to discover them and accept their uniqueness too.

Rating: 4 stars

´Wuhan Diary. Dispatches from a Quarantined City´

 

While listening to Wuhan Diary. Dispatches from a Quarantined City by the prolific Chinese author writing under the penname of Fang Fang - I had access to the book in the audiobook format, translated by Michael Kahn-Ackermann and read by Heidi Jürgens - I realized through how many changes the world went through in just two years. Not only at a personal level, but the society as a whole, in its national variants, had to adapt to the new limitations and challenges raised by the virus. 

All this started in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, with a over 11 million people. I bet that before the pandemics, 90% of the rest of the planet never heard about it, although it is a very dynamic and industry-oriented city. 

The Wuhan Diary is a day-by-day account of the first days of the pandemics. Fang Fang observes and shares the changes her family, neighbours, acquaintances and in general, people from Wuhan went through. Some died, some survived, some were caught into the net of conspiracy theories. Interesting for me was to follow up the political involvement not only in setting the restrictions, but also in dealing with the information policies, mainly censoring generously the online sources of information. Fang Fang herself mentions in the book how she was often the target of left extremists and how her blog posts disappeared in the abyss of the Chinese-censored Internet. A reminder what is the everyday life of writers and journalists in dictatorships. 

In a simple style yet careful to cover all the details of the newly everyday life reality, Fang Fang mentions how the new solidarity networks were created and the sadness of hearing regularly news about people dying in droves. 

In the newly Covid literature, the Wuhan Diary offers first hand information from the very epicenter of the pandemic. A testimony with a journalistic value that adds on to the new literary witnessing of the new times we are living.

Rating: 3 stars

My October Movie Selection

Time passt fast and we are two months shorts from the end of 2021. It´s just a number, after all, and not necessarily relevant when you are grateful for every second of your life. And when you add movies to your days - or weeks, there are new doors of the mind and the souls opening up in the front of you. 

Compared with September, I dedicated much more time watching movies this months, and I am happy to bring to you a fine selection of my October Movie Selection.

OSS117: Cairo, Nest of Spies directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Based on the popular series created in the 1950-1960s, at the very beginning of the Cold War, by Jean Bruce, OSS117 is the French - more joyous, 99% more womanizer and...utterly ignorant - version of James Bond. In the 2006 movie co-written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius he is on a mission to break into a Nazi network operating post-war (based on true facts) in Egypt. It is a hilarious parody made around a spy who is drinking for ´the colonial empire´ and follows Nazis training in pyramids. A relaxed movie for Cold War history buffs, that I watched on MUBI. 

Hail Satan? directed by Penny Lane

Also on MUBI, the documentary Hail Satan? directed by the award-winner of Our Nixon, Penny Lane (her real name, not the song), is an interesting approach of alternative religious groups. The Satanic Temple is a marginal movement who aimes at a revolutionary status claiming independence and activism against the religious priviledges. For someone interested in marginal groups and religious movements it is an interesting journey but there is a lot of critical thinking that may be kept in mind when dealing with its concepts and philosophy.

Short Film: Summer Vacation directed by Sharon Maymon and Tal Grant

A short Israeli film, also available on MUBI, Summer Vacation directed by Sharon Maymon and Tal Grant outlines a funny yet tragical love triangle set during the hot Israeli summers. Should I say that I miss the vibe and the real hot Middle Eastern sun? The perfect hiding for a story of old secrets, well hidden secrets. But alas, it´s a small country and world so why not being honest with each other and, especially with us?

Marmoulak (Lizard) by Kamal Tabrizi

I wanted to watch this movie for ever, but couldn´t find any good English translation therefore I had to wait more while intensively searching for a satisfactory available version. In the end it happened but I felt that the translation was not good enough but watched it, nevertheless. 

Lizard (Marmoulak) directed by Kamal Tabrizi is a comedy - comedies are rare in the Iranian cinema, I dare to mention - with a very direct take to the religious establishment. The film was forbidden for a while, as the Marmoulak - the prisoner who escaped disguised as a mullah that enjoyed greatly the priviledges of wearing a turban, with no other credential needed, was not the character that the religious people in power wanted to see. They have probably their own reasons to be afraid of their own image in the mirror.

Neurasthenia (Noorastani) directed by Omid Tootoonchi

Neurasthenia (Noorastani) directed by Omid Tootoonchi is by far my favorite movie of the month. It features a topic very dear to me, mental health. The main character, the 25-year old Shahriar (excellently played by Poolad Mokhtari) is experiencing chronic depression due to social failure and family problems. It is a very rough movie but important, especially given the tabu surrouding the mental health, including among young people. The timeline construction of the movie adds on to the overall tension, with the movie flowing mostly as a therapy session, a dialogue of Shahriar with himself and the world around him.

Kabullywood directed by Louis Meunier (2019)

Staying in the area, but in even more dramatic situation, Kabullywood directed by Louis Meunier is the story of a group of young friends struggling to bring back to life an old cinema in the capital city of Afghanistan, Kabul. After the Talibans first came, they did not allow public screenings, as well as balloons or kites. With the Talibans taking again over the country, one can only imagine what hardships are going through all those simple people who want to have a normal life, watch movies, go out. Especially women hit hardly by the remains of the patriarchal society with men in charge of their bodies and lives and talibans on the street limiting their social life. 

The film is unfolding as a documentary but equally offers a story of its own while telling an unique story of friendship, betrayal and perseverance against political adversities. 

L´Affaire Farewell directed by Christian Carion

I bet I´ve seen this movie before, but maybe I am getting old and it was because I was familiar with the story but anyway, I´ve watched it (presumably again) and did not dislike it at all.

Based on a true story, it is a Cold War story with cynical spies and a world split in two but in fact made of many many small interests. Sergei Grigoriev (played by Emir Kusturica) is a disillusioned KGB spy who loves champagne and French poetry who sold to the West, via the employee of a French company, the network of KGB operatives on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In real life, the revelations were among the most important the Western powers got access to, and most probably speed up the fall of the Soviet Union - where Gorbatchev was becoming more and more powerful by the day.

Due to its closeness to facts that took place in the recent history, Russia did not allow the filming to take place within its territory and did not allowed Nikita Mikhalkov (which I am almost sure would have not been interested anyway, as he shares hardcore nationalistic views anyway) to play the role of the spy, hence Kusturica´s presence. 

The movie is not only well played, but has some interesting hints that may please anyone curious to figure out all the many stories and way many more struggles of the Cold War underworld.

Un Divan à Tunis directed by Manele Labidi

Ending the film month with a hilarious story by Manele Labidi: Un Divan à Tunis (Arab Blues). Selma, 35 years old, played by the very talented Golshifteh Farahani returns to her homecountry of Tunisia to open a psychoanalisis practice. Caught in her net of insecurities, she is fighting against the society preconceptions about: unmarried women, women living alone, women with a profession, psychologists and everything that can be reduced to conspirations and sometimes the work of Mossad. Freud, whom she carries from Paris back home, may be taken for a Muslim Brother (from the Brotherhood) and regarded with suspicion. 

It is a lot to laugh about in this movie, but also to think about such as the longing for coming come from the exile and being courageous to take the risk of leaving the safe and predictable environment for a more rewarding a challenging project.

It is all for now, but my list for November is already set. Only need to find out more time to watch and write about it.

Book Review: Lemon by Kwon Yeo-sun (translated by Janet Hong)

 

Like Elena Knows, but in a much creative and different way, Lemon (translated from Korean into English by Janet Hong) is at the first sight a mystery novel but in fact the label is misleading as the novel is much more than that. Can we eventually try to avoid labels and start by appreciating a book for what it is, a story?

I was lucky enough to have access to the book in audiobook format, excellently narrated by Greta Jung, Jaine Ye and Greg Chun. The alternate voices given to the different characters in the book are an inspired audio setting, appropriate for the non-written variant of the novel.

Almost two decades after the death of Hae-on a beautiful high school student, there is still no official culprit. After she was found dead, the investigators were not able to decide who killed her and why. Was it the delivery boy on whose scooter Hae-on, wearing a beautiful lemon-colored dress, was seen last. Or wasn´t? There are different angles added to the story, from different people who knew her, her sister, friends and classmates and people affected indirectly by her death. Through the different testimonies the complexities of the South Korean society and culture are outlined, and there are many interesting details I was not aware of before. The focus is moved from one topic to another, from different society facts and habits - excessive plastic surgery, the hierarchy within the Christian denominations and their impact on social stratification etc. The big story and the various micro-stories are not always coming along together but however it is an innovative game of voices, as genuine human stories which add an universal value to the story, beyond any labels and literary expectations. 

A special note to the cover which is out of this world, in terms of combination of colours and the lettering design.

Here you can watch a short interviw in Korean (with English translation) with Kwon Yeo-sun where she explains how ´lives of people are what matter most to me´, but also shares her love of liquor and remembers how she used to post on Facebook (sorry, ´Meta´) after a few drinks.

Rating: 3 stars

Ghosts Haunting Us

 

Out of the books chosen for the Deutscher Buchpreis this year, Die Nicht Sterben - Those not dying - by the Romanian-born, Swiss-based author Dana Grigorcea was a promise for me. Written in German it had the potential - according to various reviews I´ve read - to bring interesting topics made in Romania to a German audience, in a literary way. As it promised a serious drop of contemporaneity, I was more than happy to start reading it.

But the reading haven´t been smoothly, although I did my best to finish it and the writing captivated me until the very end.

Good parts: It is well written and there is a story built carefully and with attention to literary details. A young painter is returning to B., a village in Transylvania and is confronted with the new realities of a country in transition. An easy topic that can be used in so many creative way. However, Transylvania, a beautiful part of Romania, with a beautiful nature and architecture, and a multi-cultural environment and nice recipes and beautiful flowers and many many more is very well known in the German-speaking realm, and not only for the ´Dracula´, a purely fictional character, often and wrongly associated with a Romanian prince, Vlad the Impaler who got the name for a serious reason. Portrayed in the chronicles of the time as intransigent with his enemies, going so far as impaling his enemies at stakes in the ground (hence the name). 

In addition to the story of the Impaler, there is not only a castle, supposedly hunted (probably by those who stole the furniture many years ago and brought it to their modest living rooms) which is used for various Halloween-related events, but there were also some local Romanian post-comunist politicians who rhetorically made appeal to the Vlad for a symbolic support in ´cleaning´ the country from ´enemies´ (a long and flexible list that I prefer not to detail right now). Through an alchemical literary process, there are ghosts added to the story - les revenants/moroi - the dead people who are coming back from the grave for different reasons. 

Die nicht sterben plays - although in a decent, educated way - this game of spookiness. The more the card was played, the more distant from the story I become. Until I got completely lost. 

This happened a couple of weeks distance after I´ve read another book by a Romanian author, writing in French, set this time in the Eastern part of the country, in Moldova, where ghosts were plenty and people were coming out of graves either by themselves or as someone digged into their grave.

Is this what the European publishers are looking for? Ghosts stories from Romania with vampires and bats and, obviously, Vlad the Impaler (who reigned 5 centuries ago, just sayin´)? 

It reminded me as a couple of years after the fall of communism, movies and books in the original Romanian language were overwhelmed by political references, with characters cursing with a sensual pleasure, no matter what. 

It was like people forgot to fall in and out of love, make friends or take their children to school. According to this description, everyone was entangled in political disputes in a vocabulary reduced to heavy curses - indeed, Romanian curses are an example of creative vodoo thinking but believe me, not everyone use it as the main vocabulary.

Now, it looks like the setting of a Walking Dead scenery. 

The world from Die nicht sterben is a world between worlds and the burlesque and grotesque do well to the fiction, but at least Transylvania that I used to know and love is vampire-free and dead people do not came back haunting from the cemeteries. 

All being said, I am working hard to prepare in the next days more reviews of the books selected for the longer list of Deutsche Bucherpreis. Feeling like an owl those days but far from being a ghost. And I promise to not give up until will find some great Romanian contemporary authors as well...

Rating: 2.5 stars

Random Things Tours: Shadow Pursuit by Alistair Birch

 

The changes the world went through during the last decade particularly in terms of terrorism threats and ways created to counter it tremendous sources of inspiration for the everyday thriller and suspense writers. It is so much that can be innovated in this respect, but there are also limits, particularly when it comes to approach a very simple question: indeed, we are under terrorist threat, and the threats are everywhere, what can we do fight it, in the most credible way from the literary point of view. Of course, terrorism should be fought with all means and authors must clearly state it in their books, but should be all thriller books an average repetition of the same message under the same circumstances?

Shadow Pursuit by Alistair Birch, recently launched by Dark Edge Press, has a realistic and most probably, credible scenario where the law enforcement agencies are trying to prevent a massive terror attack, and ultimately, a criminal ring operating nationally, but their results are not necessarily either black or white. As in real life, there are no clear winners and losers, especially when it comes to countering terrorism and no matter how hard one´s (both individuals and institutions) may try, people keen to make bad to other people will always be around. 

Therefore, although there is a lot of suspense and I hardly resisted from turning the pages fast, very fast, in order to see what happens at the end of the chapter, the events from Shadow Pursuit are far from being dramatic. It is the routine work of the law enforcement agencies from everywhere, doing their work, mourning their people or saving the people. Eva Merriman, a junior detective followed by some funny kind of luck, is the most profiled character whose mission to fight terrorists was assigned to her against her will. Like in the case of the book action, the women characters are normal, not trying to play any WonderWomen role, though invested by their mission. In other words, they do their jobs.

The story is very complex and made up of different building blocks reflecting different points of views and angles of the story. The tension builds up very smartly and remains until the very end of the book.

Shadow Pursuit is an intense, well organised and realistic book. It is an unexpected thriller with an innovative story line and a lot of thoughts the reader may have left with afterwards.

Rating: 4 stars

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

Memoir Review: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

´Save your tears when your mother dies´.

I never been in a H Mart (a supermarket selling Korean food) and I bet my mother haven´t been either, but I´ve cried and cried while listening to Crying in H Mart - in the audiobook format, read by Korean-American author and musician Michelle Zauner. Mothers should never be allowed to die. My mother, or your mother or my enemy´s mother. 

´I miss how many people in H Mart miss their family´.

Crying in H Mart is Zauner´s coming at term with the death of her mother, when she was 25. No matter how old or how young you are, being deprived by your mother´s presence, although all those disagreements and fights, is hard to live with. My mother, of blessed memory, died over 10 years ago but either I or my siblings ever come to terms with it. My stepfather is still using her phone number and every time I call him, I shiver when realizing it is not she who would answer the phone.

Zauner´s language for reading her Korean heritage is food. By cooking - learning to mostly - the dishes she used to share with her mother, she is connecting with her past, the past she shared with her mother. The food is the centerpiece of the world, altogether with beauty forming the identity bond. Cooking is deconstructing the love she took it for granted, without trying to hard to understand the love she shared with her own mother. Later, after the passing of her mother, through photographs and family memories, it is her mother, as an individual who is becoming more real than before. She had a life of her own and hobbies and loved to be pretty. 

Zauner offers a glimpse into fragments of the everyday life of the Korean community living in the US, with its religiosity and food habits and adjustments (mostly on women´s side) to their American children and husbands. Born in Seoul, her Korean language never developped and she calls herself ´barely literate´ but there is something about the words she grew up with which made her be part of the Korean cultural realm. There are those words that one cannot really explain or translate to anyone. Those words one grew up with will stay with us, no matter how much we will assume we forgot them.

The memoir is witnessing her own transformation and the process at the end of which she built her own feeling of belonging. Still, her mother will never abandon her. She will always be present in her life. Mothers will never leave us. And yes, I may be crying again.

Rating: 5 stars

Land of the Free

 

Set in a village in the Eastern part of Romania, the multi-awarded Terre des affrachis by French-based Romanian author Liliana Lazar is set before and after the fall of Communism, in an ambiance of mystery under state surveillance and post-dictatorship lawlessness.

Although I prefer my good novels magic-free, the way in which the supernatural is added to this story is an intrinsic part of it, not an add-on to make it more hippy and attractive (although I still don´t fancy of how so many authors from Central and Eastern Europe do use this ´magic´ trope to get international recognition; I hope I am terribly wrong).

Situated near a forest, surrounding a lake called Lion´s Den (Fosse aux Lions) - and later on in the story there is also a Daniel -, the village of Slobozia is shocked by a terrible crime committed: a woman is strangled and all the roads take it to the modest house of Luca family. Victor, the eldest teenage son is carrying with him an overwhelming animal-like power stronger than him. He is longing for love and affection from women and when he is refused, he reacts violently. Going into hiding, he is recruited by a local priest to hand copy manuscripts with religious content, forbidden by the communist regime. 20 years after, Victor Luca is still hiding in his house attic, but times had changes and he is striking back, killing random people in the forest that he´s throwing in the lake. Until the end of the novel, which happens at the beginning of the democratic reign in Romania, he is still free, roaming around free, after a short career as a successful writer, afraid of his own criminal emotional outbursts.

Liliana Lazar knitted a story of its own, set in a complex political landscape. As usual, such realms, particularly dictatorships, create equally complex human characters, particularly a constellation of difficult human choices. To betray for saving your skin? Accept of being part of an illegal network for avoiding being delivered to the authorities? There is an ambiguity of the moral values and choices the characters in the story are facing. 

What I´ve found sometimes a bit challenging was the timeline which seems often unfit for the amount of events assigned to the story. Yes, I´ve understood that there is is a time of the magic, but still, you need to create events to make the story realistic. The village of Slobozia looks like a world in itself, lost to the outside world, if not for some major incidents. Its everyday world turns around the religious time, administered by the church, which is forbidden by the communists and inflitrated by representatives of the secret police. Those circumstances alone are rich enough to generate encounters and additional story lines, but the author rather preferred a simple take, which made me think more than once: what if...the story would have been more challenging and less controlled by the author, with its own autonomy?

There is also a slight inadvertence - at least for me - in the story: one of the characters, an aggressive secret police investigator, is called Tarkan, which is a name I bet is not Romanian. 

The world of Terre des affranchis is unusual, marginal yet alert when marginals - like Victor or Daniel, himself a criminal on the loose - are trepassing. Overall, it is a story and liking or not how it is told is a matter of taste after all.

Rating: 3 stars

French Voyages from Alma-Ata to Ashgabat

 

Not so long time ago, when there was no pandemic, I used to travel round the clock and the globe, with the aim - as any serious traveller those days, of seeing all the countries in the world at least once. Now, after spending the longest time in my life - literally - without leaving my town - of Berlin, Germany - I still hope that this aim will be reached one day. High on that list - called the bucket list - the former communist/Soviet countries, particularly those included in the so called ´Central Asia´. Therefore, until I am fit and safe to be back on the road again, I nurture my travel lust with books set in those places I wish to visit or travel books based there.

Published in 2003, the account of the French historian and poet Bernard Chambaz Petit Voyage d´Alma-Ata à Achkhabad - read in the original French language - travels from Kazakhstan to Tadjikistan, Kyrkyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and even the small republic 1,8 million-inhabitant republic of Karakalpastan (small but they have an university, a soccer club and according to Chambaz´s even a big museum). The travels were made at the end of the 1990s, when Lonely Planet guides were the main reference and not Google, and travellers were more free to just explore their environment without following in a hurry the ´must see´ listicles. 

The statues of Lenin, as well as the golden covered ones of Marx and Engels, are still everywhere, there are media references about Putin - not yet the tsar - and the dictators with their strange tastes in public architecture are everywhere. Chambaz rather observes his environment, - for instance, the Tashkent subway is not like the one in NYC, is more ´clean and fresh´ - meets various writers and officials of French institutions and diplomats, moves on to the next country. It is not like he does not have an eye for things or that he doesn´t like what he sees but he is just too busy to exchange money or find the best cab - or transportation mean - until his next destination in order to bury us in details about the places and the people. 

For someone who´ve heard about those countries for the first time, reading this book may make them curious to search more about and even travel there one day. However, those who are expecting some interesting stories and local experiences, it´s not really too inspiring. Even the food references, one of the easiest way to go to the soul of a culture, are rather sparse - water melons in Uzbekistan, so nice, but still, there is no real connection made through those experiences and so goes to book on and on for a bit short of 200 pages.

Rating: 2 stars

Rachel´s Random Resources: Animalympics by Josie Dom illustrated by Sarah Lou

 

While humans were busy watching and competing in the Tokyo Olympics, animals had their own gathering - Animalympics. For days and weeks, they got together, put up their fancy costumes and showed off their skills. They even had some extra competitions, like the birds of paradise dancing in the front of an over-the-moon audience. What a lovely lot, they are. And because they had a lot of fun, they decided that they better get together again in two years. It´s much better than to follow the humans´ patterns. By the way, with no humans around, they had much much more fun, in the same way children do, when their parents are not around. For those who haven´t win yet, there is a special day at the end when they compete again. Everyone is winning, anyway, while competing and having a lot of fun playing together are the most important activities. 

                                                Author Josie Dom, source: provided as part of the blog tour

Animalympics by Josie Dom illustrated by Sarah Lou is the place where all those activities are taking place. Written in verse, with a touch of fun, it has beautiful illustrations that are a double win, especially for the short-attention span of a 6 yo (as usual, in those cases, my son is the judge of my children books assignment, and he was more than delighted and very focused and interested to follow the story, step-by-step). 

The book is a good read for preschool and first grade children, with English as mother tongue or just preparing for their English classes as a second language. The vocabulary is rich, particularly when it comes to the animals taking part to the Animalympics. On the learning side, it makes competition - mostly, everything that has to do with school is all about it - fun and pleasant, especially when big humans are not around.

The illustrations - all those blues...- are not only inspiring, but make the story even more surprising and helps children to project all those detailed activities the words are talking about.

A recommended read for both children, educators and parents looking to introduce their children to the Olympics´ spirit, but in a very different, alternative way.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual my own (or my son´s, to be fair)

Book Review: Heaven by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett&David Boyd)

´Not paradise, it´s Heaven´. 

I was not very impressed by Breasts and Eggs, and the Ms Ice Sandwich was just fine. However, Heaven by Mieko Kawakami - co-translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd - that I had access to as audiobook read by Scott Keiji Takeda is by far a masterpiece in its own genre. 

Set in the 1990s, the novel is mostly about two teenagers - boy and girl - being permanently bullied. Told by the boy, the story is finelly recording all the fine emotions and changes that will slowly eventually challenge the destiny that was accepted by the two. Accepted partially because it seems they do not think about changing a destiny that mostly left them without choices.

The easy read of the book is about a novel of coming of age, of two characters observed within a limited amount of time during which their lives will dramatically change: from their mindset to the relationship to themselves - both their thoughts and their body. The two of them do have strong voices and their story is unique in its cruelty, although it resonates with all the bullied teenagers in this world. The society context is therefore less relevant and it´s vaguely assigned a national identity - except that the characters do have Japanese name - but the situation can be easily translated into no matter which national context.

However, there is also a different level of reading this book which is largely philosophical and with strong nitzschean accents. It´s that feeling of ´what doesn´t kill you make you stronger´ and the meaning of weakness revealed during the phlegmatic exchange between the victim and one of the perpetrator. What it is really outstanding is that there is exactly this kind of revelation about survival of the fittest and everyday cruelty that may be revealed at this age. There is nothing false in the voice of each of the two, although they are talking about very serious topics. Their conclusions are of the kind one may reach when teenage and bullied - respectively a bully.

In the painful revelation of the truth, the existential truth, art may play the role of a Dionysian transfiguration. That picture of heaven letting itself being read by the viewer, as a radical act of reinterpretation of reality. 

The book has a relatively simple structure, but clear and leaving enough space to the story to unfold and to the characters to tell their story. Brevity and concision are very important features of Heaven, by far one of the most important books of Kawakami to date - at least in my humble reader´s opinion.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Random Things Tours: The Prince of the Skies by Antonio Iturbe (translated by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites)

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry will be remembered in the history of literature as the writer of The Little Prince, but what else do we know about him? The Prince of the Skies by the bestseller Spanish author Antonio Iturbe, translated from Spanish by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites offers a different perspective into his life, both from the personal and professional point of view.

´But I´m not a celebrity, I´m a pilot´.

Indeed, Saint-Exupéry was a pilot, first and foremost. His aristocratic family - the ´de´ from his name was genuine and he spent his childhood in a castle - discouraged such endeavours, but his love for the freedom allowed by the skies was stronger than anything. Even stronger than love. At the time when he started his training, at the beginning of the 20th century, being a pilot was not as fancy as it turned to be just a couple of decades later, when royalties like the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, the Shah of Iran or the King of Jordan added piloting among their regular passions. 

The historical reconstruction of the life of Saint-Exupéry touches upon other famous French pilots, like Mermoz, who also died in mission. It is the life of pilots and their unique life encounters who are very beautifully presented in this book. ´Mermoz feels powerful. He and the plane vibrate in unison as they were one and the some. His euphoria is extraordinary: He shouts, he laughs, he shievers´. I am very passionate about everything airplanes and especially pilots, but I rarely have the chance to read a book where pilots do exist as unique characters, sharing their love and passion. Being a pilot, is more than a job, it is a vocation, like that of a writer´s. 

The writing flows beautifully and is catchy. The characters are giving a voice and assigned a personality, that may be or not fully correspond to the real historical characters. However, the real characters themselves lost their ´reality´ through times, as they remain in the memory as reflections of others, subjective projections of subjective interpretations of person and literary works. 

I may be over careful with such literary renditions, but at least the episodes of pilot lives do sound inspiring enough to make the reading entincing. Maybe it will encourage more pilot stories and novels, one of the most under represented category in the literary realm nowadays.

In 1944, Saint-Exupéry´s airplane never returned to the base at Bastia, Corsica. His body will never be found. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

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

Book Tour: Love and Other Sins by Emilia Ares

 

Set in contemporary everyday life LA (not just the pretty Beverly Hills), Love and Other Sins, the debut novel by film and TV actress Emilia Ares is intelligent and adventurous. It has as well the same amount of emotions as touching upon sensitive issues such as child abuse and various mentions of miscarriage, anger management and suicidal thoughts. Although such topics are rarely addressed in YA novels it does on mean that they don´t exist. In fact, as far as I remember from my own young adolescent life, such issues are very much presents into the everyday life of a young person - particularly suicidal thoughts - but adults rarely accept to acknowledge it. Such a courageous take makes the book even more appealing in its realistic approach to everyday young life.

In a very organised world, Mina and Oliver would never meet. Each would have follow up their own paths, in their own worlds. Particularly Mina, a very academically focused young lady, whose main interests are predominantly about school grades and academic achievements. But life, real life, is less about our plans and more about our capacity of being able to adapt and even embrace difference into our life: different people, different destinies, a turn of luck. 

Although Oliver is interesting and intelligent, but despite the young age, he has a heavy and complicated destiny he is carrying with him, deep hidden into his heart. As a child abuse survivor, he needs a new identity and a new life to start and life, as usual, is not always generous with him. However, he struggles to get back his life and on his way, he meets Mina whose growing up fond of him.

The story construction seems to be sometimes too much focused on the relationship between the two. On one hand, it allows a good profile of both of them, but on the other hand, it neglects some of the other characters as well as the course of action. I´ve enjoyed the intelligent conversations though as well as the ways in which the relationship between the two, even at the very beginning it seemed very impossible. But love is often about impossible things, isn´t it?

Love and Other Sins is a book recommended to young adult readers, but also to their educators and psychologists interested in new takes of very common encounters for this age. Personally, I am very glad that there are new and new takes on such important issues affecting young adults, storified in such a very new and empathic way.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the published in exchange for an honest review but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Book Review: Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur)

 

2021 is the year that restored my belief in short stories. However, although I´ve read a couple of good collections and do still have some volumes that I hope to go through until the end of the year, it will take a very very long time until I will find a book to compete with Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (translated from Korean by Anton Hur), published by Honford Star, an edition house dedicated to promoting East Asian authors on the English-speaking market.

´What the bloody hell are you´ the woman demanded.

´I call myself the head´, the head replied.

If someone will be curious enough to find out what exactly is so extraordinary about this collection of short story, I cannot give a classical, textbook-like answer. I´ve read it last afternoon and night, completely immersed and uninterested to hear, see and think about anything else but the stories. For someone who is super active - with a accent on super - this was a high achievement. But the truth is that I haven´t read something like this in a very long time.

I hate labels, of any kind, particularly in literature, but some books, many of them, invite you to label them. Not the Cursed Bunny. Not at all. There are fragments of children stories, magic realism, black magic - ´Never make a cursed fetish for personal reasons. Never use a handmade object in a personal curse. There are reasons for these unwritten rules´ - horror, even a science fiction (that vaguely reminded me of Love Death+Robots). Just like a surrealist painting - plus some Dali, plus some Dadaism - it pushed the limits of imagination. It shocks and confronts your fears, greediness and secret violent dreams. It takes you with two strong hands out of your comfy couch and threw you in the vortex of worlds and after worlds.

Writing can bring so much magic - black or bloody red or with sparkles and gold - to the brain.

Rating: 5 stars

Random Things Tours: Cold As Hell by Lilja Sigurðardóttir

 

The pandemic and some extra unexpected health issues upsided down and delayed for at least 2 years my courageous travel plans around the world. On my top list of places to visit at least once - which is, honestly, the whole world - Iceland secured a very high place, also because I am very curious of hearing the language in the local environment. Until I will feel safe enough to be on the road again - hopefully soon - I am doing an intensive mind travel.

Cold As Hell by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, translated for Orenda Books by Quentin Bates, do have, indeed, many travel inspiring references about Iceland - the people, the food, the manners and, what interests me a lot, the pristine nature. For the language curious, it starts with a list of Icelanding words and their pronunciation. 

But there is more to this book that those ambiance details - otherwise I would happily recommend either a travel guide or an Icelandic language class. Namely, the story itself.

Estranged sisters Áróra and Ísafold have a long story of misunderstanding and conflict. Until their mother noticed the disappearance of Ísafold, a couple of weeks ago, Áróra a skillful private financial investigator, she would not have noticed that something really happened to her sister. After all, before, every time after she had a violent conflict with her boyfriend, she asked her help. This time, it seems that she just disappeared and back in Iceland, she is trying to figure out what really happened. 

But Cold As Hell is not your average crime novel. There are many bad or damaged people around, the action is mostly unfolding fast and brutally, neighbours behaving strangely, very strangely. Áróra even has some time for a bit of romance, ended up in a very lucrative-investigative way, and a flirt - maybe the only part of the story which for me looked a bit unconvincing - with an (ex)uncle. In additional to the search for Ísafold, there are intertwined thoughts about home and what does it mean to have parents belonging to two different cultures. Personally, I would have love to understand Ísafold - her motives, her personality - a bit more, as the main - and strongest voice is Áróra´s. 

But in the end, there are no winners and losers, not even enough corpses. However, there are enough open ways where the reader is left completely alone, to decide, suspect and further expect. It looks like the reader was offered a lot of cards, but the way in which those should be mixed and combined and turned into a win are left to the reader him/herself. 

It´s an unusual yet intelligent challenge and a reminder that ´noir´ can be written in so many (good and very good) ways. 

Rating: 4 stars

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

Book Review: Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (translated by Frances Riddle)

 

I made a terrible mistake for at least half of my reading of Elena Knows (Elena Sabe, in the original Spanish) by the multi-awarded Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle: I desperately look for a mystery/thriller red thread. So desperately that I was about to give up the moment when I figured out that, in fact, the book has a completely different spin. However, as I continued to read the book, I realized that just opening your mind to a book, without counting on any genre-related label may be a much better way to appreciate a story. 

Rita is dead. She was found hanging from the church belfry. Her mother, Elena, does not believe the official version of a suicide. Rita always avoided the church on a rainy day and when she died, it was raining. Although coping with an advanced form of Parkinson´s, Elena decided to go to Buenos Aires to meet someone that may know why Rita is dead. Maybe that person is the perpetrator of the crime herself.

´Elena knows that her daughter was murdered. She doesn´t know who did it or why. She can´t figure out the motive. She can´t see it´.

The journey - the storyline and the reading - takes a couple of hours only, but the slow pace is intense because builds up: expectations, mystery, body weights. A confrontations of bodies: Rita´s stiff body being taken down from the church belfry vs. Elena´s body controled by ´Herself´, her illness. The lonely lives of two women, out of which only one, the most fragile is left. Bodies controlled by society, men´s desires, the church and their priests. Bodies that are expected to give birth and be mothers when men are just disappearing. Bodies shaped more by society than by the freedom of desire.

The writing - and subsequently, the translation - is excellent. Elena has a well defined voice and the dramatic references to her body´s decline are deeply emotional. But actually, it is less about Elena, but about Rita and how we react faced with the physical impairment of those we love. Sometimes, the cruelty of life is stronger than the power keeping us alive.

Rating: 3.5 stars 

Book Review: On Animals by Susan Orlean

I never been a pet person. My parents weren´t either - for too many reasons to explain right now - and although they never harmed an animal, they never allowed us to have pets. Not that we - me and my brother - didn´t insist - be it only for the pleasure of annoying my stepfather who was organically opposed of sharing his living realm with any kind of four-leg creature. But the answer was always a clear and loud ´no´. Even when I dared to bring up a small dog, hoping that will stay under my bed and take care of my room when I was to school, without figuring out that he may need a place for a toilet and also he may bark, both occurences diqualifying him automatically from receiving a resident permit in our house; the very moment when my stepfather stepped into the house, he started to bark violently, which left me with only 5 minutes to clean all the way up. After that, I never tried to bring any pet in the house, and when I was living on my own, I was too busy to take the responsibility of someone else.

Alas, an adult myself right now, I inherited the same opposition - although in a more gentle way - towards forcing pets to be my companions. Once in a while, I hear requests for acquiring a cat, or a dog or even a hamster that most probably will be left unanswered. Unless one day I will inherit a farm and will decide to leave my urban lifestyle behind and dedicate my time and energy to animals, not pets.

In fact, although the pets were absent from our upbringing, we had animals. We had hens and roosters - therefore, fresh eggs in the morning - and also a cat and a dog which had to fulfill some very specific functions in the household: catch a mouse, respectively guard the household safe from intruders. On my mother side, we often heard about stories about how fond my maternal grandfather was of horses, that even saved his life, and until today, horseback riding remains one of my favorite sports. 

On Animals - which I had access to in audiobook format, narrated by the author herself - Susan Orlean is developing a topic that she previously approached in other books of her - in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, for instance - about the intersection between human and animal´s lives. A relationship that is going both ways, while maintaining the animal´s autonomy, without degrading them to a companionship level. 

The personal experience plays a role in shaping the richness of an experience. After all, how many of us had a boyfriend bringing a lion to pet for Valentine´s? Or a husband - the same person, a couple of years after - wanting to offer a donkey as a birthday gift? 

A couple of years ago, the international media reported about at least one country in the Middle East who launched a massive campaign of arresting squirrels, pigeons and dolphins and some eagles. who were suspected of being spies on behalf of a foreign power. On a more serious and documented note, Orlean is reporting about Tennessee mules - not the drink - dispatched to Afghanistan in order to help the mujahideens to carry on their supplies needed to fight the Soviet military. 

Animals are everywhere. They may have invisible lives, as the cats in Manhattan or work as municipal workers in LA, as the goats who are operating as living mawn lowers. There are the working animals of Fez - mostly donkeys or Orlean´s own collection at her farm in Hudson Valley, of guineafowls - like Prince Charles and Camilla - and chicken and rabbits. Or the oxes transporting oil. Not to forget about the business of dead animals, taxidermy highlighting a different side - dark, still - of the relationship between we and animals, dead animals, to be precise.

On Animals is a reminder of how intertwined our lives are with animals. Even when we don´t own any pets. But animals not only sustain us - with meat and milk and eggs - but as responsible partners in the ecosystems but also as part of a larger nature-written story. The story are not only unique, interesting and well documented, but also remind us about the complexities of life and at what extent we still depend, at various extends of their existence. Not only for companionship. 

 Rating: 4.5 stars

Book Review: Unsettled by Reem Faruqi

 

As a child and young adult whose most early life meant being dislocated - geographically and spiritually - from a place to another, with parents fully unaware of the impact of the semi-nomadic lifestyle to their children - as themselves haven´t know any other stable way of living, I am instantly attracted by books dealing with representation of the unrooting. 

How one should deal with being removed regularly from his or her own familiar school environment? What happen when one has to enter worlds dramatically different of their own in terms of religious practice, curricula, language? Happily, nowadays we have social media and WhatsApp and it is easily to keep in touch with relatives and friends from all over the world, but still there is a deep trauma to leave behind your fragile human network moving in a place where not only no one wants to deal with you, but you become an easy target for bullying.

13 yo Nurah - from noor, light in Arabic - has to leave behind her friends and leave Karachi, Pakistan for moving to America with her parents. Inspired by Reem Faruqi´s own experience, Unsettled is a poetic story of growing up by the force of events. In her new country and home, she lost her voice. She is becoming mute and invisible. She is afraid to speak up, to be herself. Her learned English does not help, her mother is having her own grown-up problems and she is mostly left to herself. A herself that she cannot recognize any more. There is the grammar of separation and heartbreaking that matters right now. It is a new language she learns without even saying its words.

Faruqi succeeded to create a very distinguished poignant voice which is appropriate both for the age and the topics. It is a common issue particular to those whose roots were violently cut. To those new comers who has to adapt, but got lost on the way.

Unsettled is a short and lyrical account that both immigrant children and their parents should read. It helps, on one hand, to learn how to deal with the new environment and, on the other hand, possibly helping parents to acknowledge the difficulties their children are dealing with.

Rating: 4 stars

Random Things Tours: The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen (translated by David Hackston)

 

If spontaneously asked what I know about Finnish literature, I will modestly have two simple answers: The Mumins and Mika Waltari whose The Egyptian was a summer long topic of discussion with a bookish friend of mine who was fascinated by this author (me, partially, but I was in my first university year and was less patient with literature, being more interested in nonfiction, political theories and philosophy). But there is definitely much more on this, and only the lack of translations should be the reason why Finnland is so under represented in the literary realm nowadays. Plus, you don´t only hear about books translated from Finnish, but there are rare mentions about writers and styles and not even children books by Finnish authors.

The truth is that Finnish does not sound so far away from home for me, but only my laziness does. As a once fluent speaker of Hungarian that, again, only my laziness limited over years my vocabulary to just a couple of very basic words, it would have been a great start for learning the language. Yes, I am aware that the two languages are different, but as part of the Finno-Ugric family, there are at least some patterns and words that may be similar, enough to encourage me to abandon my procrastination and gain a new language - a new life, as they say - that may help me discover this neglected European literature. 

But there is a Gd of lazy language learners who made possible the meeting between original books and translators. This match made in the bookish Heaven, for me, was David Hackston (who also translated, among others, My Cat Yugoslavia) whose translation of The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen published by Orenda Books brought to my attention an author and a book, but what a book, which stands out of all the boxes. You know, those wonder boxes opening up by slightly touching the bottom, hard enough to generate a pressure for opening up the lid at the most unexpected moment in time. A pop-up rabbit box. 

´I resigned because I couldn´t stand watching my workplace turn into a playground. Then I inherited one´.

Henri Koskinen is a passionate mathematician working at an insurance company. As he does not want to comply with the happy hippy attitude of his boss - ´I cannot be part of a team whose highest ambition is going on a sushi-making weekend´ -, he is offered no other option but to leave. But that´s all for the good, as the same day, he found out that he inherited an amusemenet park, YouMeFun, left by his brother who unexpectedly died. But with the fun comes the responsibility as his estranged brother left behind impressive debts that he should pay it with no delay otherwise...it´s not sure what exactly will happen, but be ready for the worse.

If you still haven´t start laughing, maybe you need more tickle but actually those events are taking place at the very beginning of the story. What will follow is one episode after another of amazement, merriment, corpses in the fridge, some local Finnish mafia guys with a basic vocabulary of Italian for Mafia professionals. There is also a cat called Schopenhauer, a giant rabbit places at the entrance to the park, which may hide something as well, and Laura Helanto, which adds a bit of love to this crazy story.

A story which has tons of humour and many thriller twists and also romance. Isn´t it lovely to not be capable of labelling a book in a way or another? And if the book is not enough, there will be a motion picture soon, starring Steve Carell. 

Besides the hilarious situations and humorous yet very smart twists of what otherwise is a very serious thriller, the fast pace, whose details seems to be mathematically crafted, creates spectacular visual effects. While reading it, at a very fast pace because was very curious to know what happens next and then next and then next, I had the feeling that every single installment of the story has its place and its logic and everything closes up elegantly until the end. After all the Merry-Go-Round and Rollercoasting, the ending may sound a bit too relaxed and very unexpected, at least for me, but it makes sense and it has its place in the logic of the story unfolding. 

As for the characters, Henri Koskinen is my favorite, not only because he is a mathematician - I have a weakness for mathematicians, I may confess publicly - but also because he seems so real and complex and with a mind of his own. The other characters in the book are also lively and interesting and there is a good balance and diversity of personalities in the book. 

Hopefully, I will read soon another one of Tuomainen´s books, but first and foremost, can´t wait to watch The Rabbit Factor, the movie.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Rachel´s Random Resources: The Dance of the Snow Tractors

 

Children love snow. The child in you will always love snow, no matter how scared of and opposed to the cold and the dirt and the dampness you will turn into as the time passes. It´s the fascination with the snowflakes raining down from the sky, or with the white powder covering everthing you discover with excitement one morning. Children will rarely ask about the natural causes of the snow, will just enjoy the phenomenon as much as possible. A winter without snow is a sad winter for the children and a missed opportunity of enjoying one of the most beautiful natural phenomena.

Designed for preschool children - 3 to 5 years - The Dance of the Snow Tractors by Siena, illustrated by the Canadian computer artist Shannon Wilvers offers a different take on winter. The focus is on Siena, a girl living in Canada, named after the Italian city, watching in excitement the snow tractors dancing around while removing the snow. I haven´t figured out about the visual strength of the image. But it is described in such a simple yet outstanding way that one can only wait for the next summer and a good amount of snow in order to be sure that there will be enough snow tractors for a proper dance.

The book is a good choice for both parents and educators and it can create a lot of opportunities for further discussions - about snow, tractors, dancing; there are no limits for the imagination. The language is simple while based on the basic vocabulary of a preschool child. I was not necessarily impressed by the illustrations but nevertheless it appeals to the visual habits of a child at this age. 

Very often, we forget how does it feel to be in a state of wondering. Having chidlren often does not help because we may be busy, as parents, to support our little ones emotionally and financially. Reading such books to them though may be helpful to bring us back in time and revive those unique feelings. Feelings bringing back those precious childhood memories.

Rating: 3.5 stars

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

´Can´t and Won´t´+Varieties of Disturbance

´I´m so tired of your vivid imagination, let someone else enjoy it. That´s how I´m feeling these days, maybe it will pass´.

Lydia Davis is not writing short stories. Lydia Davis does not re-invent the language or words or suggests new narratives. She is simply reshaping the writing. She brings out words polishing the prose and compressing the meanings. Her choice of words is direct, easy and throughout. You have nothing more nothing less of what is supposed to be said. One has to go very far away to come back with such a refined writing technique.

Can´t and Won´t is a collection of short, micro-flash-like prose with a poetic trance. Winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, she is a French translator as well, who re-published translations from Flaubert and Proust. I would love so much to get into some of her translations, eventually in a bilingual variant. Who would say translators can´t and won´t be creators of wor(l)ds?

Rating: 4.5 stars

Update: 10.01.2022

My second encounter with Lydia Davis: Varieties of Disturbance. There is so much to say about her freedom of writing about literally everything, as much as she wants to, without bothering of what one may say about it. By the very original decision of writing, putting words on paper, Davis brings to life the everyday banality. 

There can be disparate thoughts or isolate events, or the way in which we may look to our baby. The words are feeling the void of the silence. The form or the genre is not important, but the creative process is transparent. One can see how and what exactly happens when an everyday episode is brought to life literally. It is assigned a title and published into a collection, therefore the words do receive a special status. 

It does not matter the subject, there is the ways in which the author is turning the sentences and words into a short, sometimes as short as one sentence long story, which matter. The sentence can be very long or very short, the title may apply to the content or not, at a certain extent directing and a bit manipulating the reader into believing that something literally is about to happen.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

 

´Her co-workers could publish books about Bitcoin and Middle Eastern conflicts and black holes, but most of them couldn´t understand why it was so important to have a more diverse publishing house´.

Based on the presentations I´ve read, The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris was ticking all the right boxes: featuring the publishing industry and the non-literary critera governing sometimes the choices of editors; its lack of non-white diversity; the competition between women, black women particularly; even the focus on hair as a significant identity marker was appealing. And, indeed, the book do have separate developments or intertwin but it´s so hard to catch so many fish. 

Nella is an editorial assistant at Wagner Books, owned by a certain Richard Wagner. She is the only Black girl in the office, until Hazel, an enthusiastic and self-aware Black woman is hired. The two of them seem to make a great team, until they don´t. And Nella starts receiving threatening anonymous messages encouraging her to leave the publishing company. Wagner Books has though in its decade-long history another Black girl story, of a female author that created a humongous scandal in the 1980s.

The timeline goes back and forth, from 1980 to the 2020s, and usually such a dynamic enriches the story. Until, it doesn´t and one feels stuck in different time capsules. The action enfolds slowly until it is suddenly cut to switch to another timeline until the next switch. 

Nella and Hazel, for their identity references, do complete each other, but as humans, their features are often simplified and their personalities are incomplete. Like in the case of the big story itself, their personalities are made up of so many dots that may never connect together in the end.

Although I am mostly attracted to fast literary paces, I am capable to appreciate a good slow story, but in this case, I may openly confess that my patience was quite often put on trial. Still, I was about to give up many times and only my stubborness was the reason why I did not give up. 

However, although I enjoyed the writing, I was not convinced by the architecture of the story and the characters´ dynamics. Which leaves a lot of alternatives to other possible books on those topics.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Book Review: Arène by Négar Djavadi

 

Disoriental by the Iranian-born Négar Djavadi was one of the revelations of the last year. Tracing the story of a family who left Iran for escaping political persecutions, it describes so accurately the overwhelming conflicts of being a stranger in a world that will always consider you an outsider, with no physical country where you can savely return.

Therefore, I was over the moon to read her latest novel, Arène which I´ve read in the original French language. Arène - arenna, in English - is a place of fight, the gladiator´s rig, where the spectators are encouraging the fighters clapping loudly their hands, stamping their feet and screaming loud in support of one competitor or another. In the book, it refers to a small borrough in the Eastern part of Paris, where immigrants live. 

There is a fictional arena where the events are taking place, using the real places as a pretexte, while they are taking shape as characters and encounters created by the author and her only.

A teenager is found death and while while a policewoman who discovered it is mistreating the corpse she is filmed by a teenager girl. As expected, the short movie becomes viral and leads to unrest. On the other side of the screen, there is Benjamin Grosmann, himself a product of the ´banlieue´ but with more luck, who is leading a Netflix-alike company. And who happens to be stolen his handy, among other small events happening to him around the day, when he is not too busy to follow religiously his probiotic fitness lifestyle and training habits.

The facts are exposed in a channel-like unfolding, with a strong cinematic visual power. Djavadi´s experience behind the camera provided an extensive experience and inspiration. This is the way in which things are supposed to happen in our world. This is how our world goes wild: in short installments - like tweets or Instagram stories; the essential compressed in few words and minutes. There is no time for nuances, there is the rough original move which counts, and the moment before and the moment after but nothing more. No perspective, no second thoughts. There is not too much time. This is the city beat, Paris, but that Paris which is never included in the list of ´10 things to do´.

Visually, there are also the blank spaces on the page who are telling something. Something about why there are no words left. That blank when you cannot think further. When there is too much going on around you and in your head. The world of too many tweets and Fake news that one cannot control because, among others, also forgot how to double check. There is no time left, remember.

With so much emphasis on the story development, the characters themselves are lost. They don´t think too much, they don´t express themselves outside the arena of the social media. We may even forget about them caught in the middle of the daily storm. But me, I would have like to see them reacting somehow. 

Arène is a great novel of our times. A time when a short Tweet can change the world. Or at least lives. I wish there will be a movie made out of it. Not Netflix series, though.

Rating: 4.5 stars