The Subtle Art...

I´ve read The Subtle Art of Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson long time ago, when I was trying to understand how far one can go in terms of positivity. I am a very optimistic nature, positive, maybe too positive and naive, but I also appreciate the gift of negative experiences. In the sense that I am grateful for every moments of my life, while accepting the transformative power of negative experiences.

Manson´s book pledges for taking responsibility and assuming the risks of the non-positive experiences. Our strength in taking the advantage of a relatively adverse situation is what should prevail in the end, the lessons learned while owning the problems and mistakes. 

It´s impossible to be ´positive´ all the time. To make believe that if you think good, all will be good denies a fundamental law of nature, which involves loss and precarity and death. It´s like the myth of eternal beauty and youth. Of course, a bit of plastic surgery does not hurt but getting old is also normal and part of the way things are - ok, except you are Cher, her mother and Madonna. But embracing life, getting angry - without being violent - experiencing sadness and strong emotions is what makes us alive. Positivity cannot be maintained as a permanent emotion. It´s fine to feel bad and sad and also say ´no´ to what everyone else say ´yes´.

This book is easy to read - or to listen as an audiobook - but stays with the reader for the directness of the ideas expressed. It makes some good points that may help us to figure out how important is to acknowledge our emotions and feelings, take risks and, indeed, accept and even embrace failure. No mantra will solve your real time problems and without direct involvement and engagement, your relationships will not move forward just by themselves. 

Rating: 4 stars

Random Things Tours: The Maid by Nita Prose

´You´re not a freak. You´re just an old soul. And that´s something to be proud of´.

It was really hard to take my leave of The Maid, the (very) much praised debut novel by Nita Prose. Of course, the main reason I wanted to read and eventually review this book was because of its inclusion into the mystery novel category, not necessarily for the highly appreciative reviews all around the web and back. 

My conclusion: All good things said about this book are very much deserved as the story stands fully to the hype: it delivers a crime story one rarely happens to read those days. As a crime fiction lover, I do read lots and lots of novels, set into our current times or back in times, by debut authors or veterans of the genre. However, not few of them seem to be just in a hurry to follow a certain (successful) writing recipe, in order to deliver the crime and get the culprits and everything is mostly focused on the action and the actual search/investigation/mystery-solving.

This is not the case with The Maid though, although it is built around a mystery plot. The story is elaborated in an out-of-time manner, that does not seem to take into acount any limitations. It´s like you, as a reader, you have all the time in the world to go through all the details of the story, particularly the personality and particularities of the participants. It is like the author created a very elaborated spreadsheet covering all the activities and characters, aiming to do not leave anything uncovered and keeping the track of all the moves, life details, ambiance descriptions etc. surrounding the circumstances of the crime. 

The result of this acribic effort: a complex story was born, which may take you out of your couch on a journey to figure out why Mr Black - ´The Mr. Black´, ´a famous impresario, a magnat, a tycoon´ was killed in his suite at the luxurious 5-star hotel Regency Grand. Who did it? Our companion is Molly, a 25-year old maid who talks like a 70+-year old spinster. She has an old soul, we´ve been told, as per the description of her late beloved granma with whom she grew up, who is her permanent companion throught everyday life. 

I may say that Molly Gray - the storyteller, and accidental detective - is not for everyone. She lives in a world of her own, her way of talking may sound like, again, a spinster´s, and her blind devotion to her maid work is hilarious. ´Once I´m dressed for my workday, I feel more confident, like I know what to say and to do - at least, most of the time. And once I take off my uniform at the end of the day, I feel naked, unprotected, undone´. Efficient, hard worker, discrete but with a good eye for details. Any kind of details, either a change of mood of some of the clients and co-workers, or the chaged details in the room. Oh, and she loves Columbo too, as she used to watch them together with her granny.

Actually, I can see Molly very well. The author feed us, the readers, with all the requested details in order to figure her out as a human being, not as a puppet who is alive only when the authors wants it to. It can exist well beyond our imagination, in the pages of the book. And this is the case with the other characters in the book as well. For me, it sounds like a highly respectful attitude towards the readers. As a reader, I feel cherished and appreciated, feeling I am about to receive the best possible story, the result of the author´s hard work built with the highest attention to narrative details. It is a story that stands alone, as a movie that you will remember for the clarity of the details, the conversations, the characters. Or all at once. 

The search for the culprit, as seen by Molly, is more than a race-against-the clock. It is a process allowing everyone - both characters and readers - to understand the circumstances of the events and the characters that do bring them to life. During the search, doors and windows are opening up, allowing the reader to trepass into a world created by the author herself, that we, as readers, are invited to observe and understand. Maybe get our own version of the crime solving as well. 

I am by principle skeptical about much praised debut novels. After all, how one can be that good from the first try? It takes time and experience and many failures to write a good, very good book. However, The Maid is up to the expectations and, personally, made me nostalgic for classical books where the author is free to write as much he or she wants to, about his or her topic of choice. It is not like the book should be written for the charts, but it looks like the book grew organically and had to be written because no one wrote it before. In just a few words, my literary verdict: The Maid is a stellar debut for all the good reasons.

Now, can I get back to Molly and her Regency Grand world, please....?

PS: Also, the cover is an elegant rendition of the book and deserves a bit of appreciation as well.

Rating: 5 stars

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

´Es ist immer so schön mit dir´

 

I hate to write about books I didn´t like/despised. Not because I believe all books I read should be insightful, beautiful and worth further recommending. But because books I don´t like steal my time. Time of my life.

Es ist immer so schön mit dir - my translation: It is always beautiful being with you - by musician and writer Heinz Strunk, longlisted for Deutscher Buchpreis 2021 is well written. This is the main reason why I kept reading it, although I figured out from the first quarter of the book that there is nothing I may eventually love about it. Not even like it.

The book though: An unnamed storyteller, man, going through a midlife crisis, is leaving his longtime girlfriend for obsessively pursuing a third hand actress taking mostly hostess assignments. Himself - the unnamed storyteller - is a failure as well: a former musician, now he owns a studio where he sets up and edits various musical setups. 

At first, two failures together may be fine, happily ever after and the story ends. But no, far from it. Their relationship evolves, she apparently has a serious eating disorder, was also victim of sexual assault, he likes her, she is getting more and more banana. They are two adults, but behave like two adults, unable to figure out their sexual life and emotional limitations and anything, in general. The relationship is becoming more and more psychotic, he sleeps with his ex-girlfriend, then she disappear again; they break up, or rather she is ghosting him shortly after he asked her hand. Suddenly he is going through a new crisis, going every Wednesday to Sunday evening out, with a lot of booze and one night stands. And she reappears again.

It´s exhausting, indeed, and you not even read some of their dialogues. And it does not make any sense, in general, except that they are living the best of their looser life and we are supposed to be part of their story. 

With all due respect to the honorable jurors of the Deutsche Buchpreis 2021, I bet there are much much better books in German around. As for me, I promise to explore more titles in German in the coming days and weeks. The list is ready and it looks much much better than ´Es ist immer so schön mit dir´. Versprochen.

Rating: 2 stars

  

Random Things Tours: Deception by Helen Forbes

 

Lily Anderson is living a lie, but how much from this lie she accepted to build herself? How much of this could have been stopped long before, if she would have had made the right step towards giving up the bad habits? But if so, we would not have had this book, isn´t it?

Deception by Helen Forbes has a bunch of bad and very bad characters. If everyone is good there is no sense to write a crime fiction novel, isn´t it? Based in Edinburgh, it leads to the underground of both humans and cities, as far as until Poland. 

Although from outside one may say that Lily Anderson has it all, her deep web of lies not only is about to destroy everything, but it risks to take with it everyone she loves, including her son. Sam, her homeless friend, is also in a high risk situation as he is also literally hunted by a scrupleless policeman. 

The book includes a big range of characters which are not all clearly developed and defined. However, Lily is by far the most complex character, faced with her weaknesses and will to go beyond her past mistakes - at last! In her carelessness, she is taking risks, including by going out of her comfort zone, both in terms of the people she will meet and the situations she has to face. 

The story is reflected through the various points of view of the main characters and this technique allows an in-depth vision of their intentions and their interpretation of the story. Most of the characters do have in common a very bad anger management and a visceral temptation to solve most - if not all - of the problems they are faced with in a very aggressive manner. Maybe they are not my favorite cast, but interesting nevertheless.

Deception is an interesting book to read, for both the situations created and the reactions of the people who created them. It reveals the dark side of us, as humans, which is sometimes only one choice away.

Helen Forbes is a lawyer by day and an award-winning crime writer, living in the Scottish Highlands. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

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

Homesick, a Memoir by Jennifer Croft

More than the existential meeting between humans, I am very curious people and languages match. How do we fall in love not only with words, but with foreign words belonging to foreign worlds, that we are not connected through memories hanging up in the family tree? Me: I have a childhood fantasy of learning Mandarin (far from achieving it); or I love the sophisticated French-sounding but larger than French richness of meanings of the Persian language (very sloppy, as for now, unfortunately).

Jennifer Croft is a multi-awarded translator from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentinian Spanish (I am so glad that there are literate remarks about how rich the different versions of Spanish are). Homesick is more valuable than a translation though, as it shares a life story about real people, although in a translated version re-enacting actual memories. 

´When we were kids I used to wish we could be octopuses, so we would not need words´.

Croft´s memoir is illustrated by photographic memories that do open ideatic pathways without expressing though. There is more left untold, about her life journey, sisterhood, leaving the physical home homesick for the worlds of words. Foreign words turned into home. 

Croft is a translator that takes autorship to a new level. Translation is autorship too. She launched a campaign #TranslatorsontheCover. That´s where the translators should be. Translators can write books too. Sometimes in more than one mother tongue. 

One day, I need to read more about the intellectual history of translations. Or someone should write it. Maybe/hopefully a translator.

Rating: 5 stars

Random Things Tours: Below Torrential Hill by Jonathan Koven

´In his throat, there was a scream waiting to be purged´.

In the small town of Torrential Hill, there are strange things going on. ´The night Tristen´s mother first heard the voices in the kitchen sink, a comet blazed in the sky´. As a story of coming-of-age - but more than that, Below Torrential Hill, winner of Electric Eclectic Novella Prize is a book about grief, mothers and sons, sons and absent fathers, sons growing up during difficult personal times. 

The words end and start in prose stanza, while the characters are wandering smoothly from the real world to the world of dreams and far beyond. The words are embracing both objects - the kitchen is ´immeasurably quiet´ - and humans - ´she became difficult´. There is as much life in the dark forest as in the sad story of Tristen mother. 

My biggest regret: I wish the magic of the story equally continues throughout the story, and not only stops once in a while to just reappear a couple of lines later.  

Novella is as difficult to write as a short story. Maybe even more difficult. A short story is expectedly short therefore the economy of the narrative encompasses a limited slice of time. There are awkward silences - as between Tristen and Lave - hopeful love - as between Tristen and Ava - and unlimited love - as between Tristen and his mother. Love, grief, distrust, trust, death, those simple life stories written over and over again. 

Language is the strongest point of Below Torrential Hill. It is the language who redefines over and over again the story. Through words life changes, we see beyond the appearances and realities are translated into realistic imaginary worlds. 

The cover reflects with acuity the intellectual alertness of the text.

Rating: 4 stars

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

Random Things Tours: Emergency Drill by Chris Blackwater

 

Shortlisted for 2020 CWA Debut Dagger Award, Emergency Drill by Chris Blackwater starts slowly, in a kind of mathematically-controlled pace. You may need to wait a bit, until figuring out what you are supposed to worry about. 

Danny Verity - what I name to give to a character, anyway - a Junior offshore medic, starts his job assignment on Cuillin Alpha Oil platform during strage times. The satelite system was damaged and the platform is isolated for a while from the rest of the world. There are some technical shortcomings taking place as well. Some of his colleagues are becoming nervous, some very nervous. Suddenly Verity looks like the only one that can figure out what it is all about.

Although the race sounds against the clock, the story has its own inner pace, too slow, in my opinion. However, I appreciated the systematic, engineering-like way in which Danny is putting facts and suspicions together in order to reach a satisfactory solution. Before it is not too late and all of them are supposed to get lost for ever on the North Atlantic shores.

Another plot line which I would have expected more elaborated regards the interaction between the characters. They are under special, emergency circumstances and some of them, if not all of them just met to work together, and I was expecting a more compley dynamic between them. 

The end is good though, and I only partially expected it. As the story is exclusively taking place under the pressure of time and in a very limited and precisely located environment it does have a strong mystery fragrance of whodunnit. 

However, Emergency Drill is an exciting read, especially if you are looking for a crime novel set in a very special setting. Thus, one may have a lot of expectations from a novel situation, but nevertheless appreciate what was done out of the story and follow breathless the entincing plot.

Rating: 3 stars

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

The Last Syrian

´Nous sommes tous les enfants de cette planète malade´.

Recently naturalized French citizen, Omar Youssef Souleimane escaped Syria and refugiated to France. In his debut novel Le dernier Syrien - The last Syrian, he traces the hopeful beginnings of the movement that aimed to topple the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. 

There were so many hopes and expectations, maybe connecting with similar upraising from other countries like Egypt, Lybia or Tunisia. In none, democracy really succeeded, but the cruelty and brutality of the opression in Syria is equal to none. Over ten years after and millions of refugees later, in Syria rules the same Bashar from the al-Assad family that, with strong exterior help, turned the country in a heap of rubble. 

There is so much to analyse and discuss about the geopolitical intricacies that turned Syria in an inhabitable country except for al-Assad and his proxies, but Le dernier Syrien is not a political book. Sensually, Souleimane writes about a hopeful gang of friends, hoping in change, and ending up in the lowest betrayal; about the pleasure of the flesh and the kindness of neighbours - or their betrayal.

On the backdrop of the religious divides and dramatic reshuffle of political pawns, the young or less young people of Deraa, Aleppo or Damascus long for love, and especially freedom. Souleimane´s story is passionate and violent, expressed by the purity of the first kiss raped by the inhumanity of the prison torture. It shows how humans can destroy other humans only for the sake of saving their skin. (After so many years, I still cannot get out of my mind The Skin by Curzio Malaparte). 

It´s a story of broken destinies and unfulfilled promises. Hopefully the day is near when the young people of the Middle East will write their own happy stories. The trauma left by dictators and blood thirsty religious maniacs will remain as part of the collective psyche for a long time though. 

Rating: 3 stars

Random Things Tours: A Year in the Life - Adventures in British Subcultures by Lucy Leonelli

 

Long before all this virus-related story happened, I used to be a travel writer. I love travel and I always did and this two year hiatus uprooted me from the flow of life. Travel, for me, is life, it gives me strength and inspiration and helps me to meet directly people and cultures. Over 50% of what I am - the good and very good part of it - is because of my travels. How else can one open his or her mind and enter mindset and worlds if not through travel? The educated travel, the social tourism, Lucy Leonelli is self-proclaiming as a representative thereof. 

A Year in the Life. Adventures in British Subcultures is an A to Z live dictionary of people, their hobbies and habits. From London to Essex and Leicestershire, Leonelli is curiously taking notes about other people lives. She goes to a Goth Weekend and gets to know eccentric hippies, dog races or UFOlogists. There are some Kabbalah Center people too, which I politely will never take seriously, either in the UK, Berlin or Los Angeles. It´s a big hoax, if you ask me. 

This book is mostly countering any stereotypes one may associate with British (sub)cultures. No Beatles, no afternoon tea, no Queen, no Jane Austen or Brontë ...There is hunting, but there is hard to avoid this noble habit, as it is more than a hobby, it nurtures economy in some part of the country and cannot simply dismissed.  But this is the kind of account someone will get when knows a country beyond the glossy magazines. It is the direct interaction and acquaintance with the daily life of a place and its very real blood-and-flesh people. The dialogues between the author and its larger than life characters are one of the strongest part of the book, sharing both genuine humour and serious conversations.

A Year in the Life is animated and brings to life characters that talk and behave British but at the same time can be seen all over the world - especially the UFO-lovers I dare to say; maybe some Goths too. It encourages you, as a reader to indulge your curiosity and open up towards the most possible diverse people in the world, no matter their passport. Being a ´social tourist´ pays off.  

Rating: 3 stars

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

´Nos Richesses´

 

At the bookstore ´Les Vraies Richesses´ Max-Pol Fouchet, Camus, St. Exupéry and many more do come together either to discuss their works or just to plan the next literary launch. Inspired by the name of a work by Jean Giono - about a rural world about to disappear - the bookstore is writing an alternative history of the intellectual Algeria no one really bothered to explore.

Inspired partly by real stories - there is actually a bookstore with this name in Alger and some of the characters mentioned in the book, including Charlot, the creator of the project, back at the beginning of the 20th century - partly by the author´s own imagination, this book takes place on the backdrop of a world on the move: the WWII, the struggle for independence, the bloody conflict with France. 

The third novel by the Paris-based Algerian writer Kaouther Adimi, this book brings Algeria on the forefront of the literary discussion, but also is a testimony of the fascination of books, even on those who may not love reading. Ryad, the young man who is back to Alger trying to help clean up following the closure of the bookstore, or Abdallah, the last guardian of the bookstore and even Charlot himself, are far from being really bookish. But they do acknowledge the importance of ideas while being mesmerized by the fascination of living in the vicinity of them.

The book alternates between various timelines, not all necessarily equal in terms of content, but trying to put together a narrative covering over a century. Too much happened during those times, and in my opinion, the part related to WWII is the best represented, otherwise it is much left unsaid.

There are many details that the reader unfamiliar with the local Algerian history may want to further explore, but there is also a lot left for the fiction story as such. Nos Richesses is important for giving a literary voice to Algerian authors and Algeria in general, bringing the country and its historical and intellectual context on the literary map, in a time when diversity of literary voices is the most efficient soft diplomacy tool.

Rating: 3 stars

Random Things Tours: Turkish Delight by Barry Faulkner

 

As much as I love Turkish delight, I equally love a book with a plot revealing bad guys and illegal operations. The very innocent, sweet title is a trap, as it does not have anything to do with what Turkish Delight by Barry Faulkner is all about. 

The book starts relatively innocently, given the further extension of the plot. A woman requests Ben Nevis, private eye in London, to kill her husband. A couple of days later, it is the husband requesting the same Nevis to kill the wife. They are not aware of each other´s plans - after all, the woman has already been widowed twice and the circumstances of the disappearance of her late companions aren´t clear at all. But this is just the first layer. 

What follows is an effort to trace a global network of illegal arms trade set in Cyprus, leading as far as the Revolutionary Guards in Iran and their proxis in Yemen, the Houthis, among others. 

The story enfolds in a military-like alert pace. For someone not fully acknowledged with the political circumstances of the region, it may look very difficult to catch up at first. Maybe better one starts by reading the latest news, at least, from the region. But even with a limited knowledge in this respect, it is clear from the beginning. There is no moral doubt about it. 

Turkish delight is the recommended to anyone with interests in alert stories based in the Middle East. There may be nothing new to reveal - and maybe a bit stereotypical and predictable in the approach - in terms of angles and representation, but it keeps the reader very interested in the many spectacular twists. I see this book better as a movie than as a book, as the characters are very well portrayed and one can easily project them in a certain visual setting.

This first encounter with Faulkner´s writing made me curious to try more of his international thrillers. I am sure I will not get disappointed.

Rating: 3.5 stars

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

Book Review: Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho transl. by Margaret Jull Costa

 

The women in Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judith de Carvalho - translated from Portuguese into English by Margaret Jull Costa - are monomanically obsessed by men. They can live without them, but rarely without thinking about them in the most mind intrusive ways.

For ten years Dora, which we are lately shared that she is now in her late 30s, mourned her husband. A man without ambitions, lacking anything special. ´Duarte-who-has no-vocation- for - engineering - but but what did Duarte have a vocation for?´ Left with a 7 years old daughter and no money, she had to luck to find a well paid job that will allow her to pay for the daughter education and a decent life for herself. She keps mourning. The husband of her mother-in-law, Ana, is tied to bed. Ana´s sister is hysterically living in her mind over and over again her only relationship, long time ago, with a man who left her. And there is the storyteller, Manuela, a woman whose man left her for Dora´s young daughter. Duarte himself wanted to leave Dora for another woman, shortly before he died. 

What for me was even heavier than all this emptiness of betrayal is the weight of age. The perception of women as having a very very limited availability. After their 30s, they feel like objects, reanimated sometimes, only for a very short time. Society, themselves, other women, may easily consider their age as the main reason of the end of them. 

Maria Judite de Carvalho is considered one of Portugal´s most popular authors, but Empty Wardrobes is her first translation from Portuguese. She lived between 1921 and 1998 and the novel was written in 1966 therefore it may explain the exhausting outline of age as it belonged to a mindset typical for those times. 

The author gives voice to all those perception. Strong women voices, in their passive acceptance of their volatile destiny. I may confess that after reading the book, I felt that there is nothing really to appreciate in the book, and I did not have any empathy for any of the characters. However, a couple of hours later I ended up in a more considerate tone for the construction of the story - the harmony between the multiplicity of voice and the progressive build up of the story. And I even figured up those women, young widows or broken hearted women mourning their solitude. 

While liking a book or not is a pure matter of taste, the literary brain may leave space to the full appreciation of an excellent writing. I could have read in the original Portuguese but was hurrying up too much to read the English translation. Maybe my next book by Maria Judite de Carvalho will be in original.

Rating: 3 stars

What Women Want

 

What women from Chile - the country where Isabel Allende started her writing career, as a journalist for the feminist publication Paula - want is what women from all over the world are fighting for: to stop being victim of violence, to be allowed equal pay, ownership of their own bodies, to be free.

The collection of autobiographical articles that I´ve had access to in audiobook format - read by German actress Barbara Auer - Was wir Frauen wollen (What we, women want) translated from Spanish by Svenja Becker - has a documentary value as for the history of feminist movements, particularly in South America. 

Allende evokes the Chile of the 1960s, whose consideration for women rights was ´lightyears´ from the mindset in the rest of the ´Western´ world. She retraces her own awakening and how she started not only to be aware of the topics she eventually will write about, but also to believe in. Her militantism will lead to her blacklisting during the dictatorship of general Pinochet, and she left the country, but those topics are well reflected and developed in her fiction. 

It is the situation of women globally better since then? Not necessarily and not as long as we, women we are not aware of what we really want. Women as mother, daughter, beings getting old, carrying on a physical body, fighting for their right to reproduce or not. Everyday life stories told by one of the greatest storytellers of our time.

Although Was wir Frauen wollen may not say too many new things about what does it mean being a woman, it has a value of testimony for a specific episode of South American history, but also outlines a personal acccount of the history of Chile. After all, Chile was the first country in South America to elect a woman as president, in the person of the current UN Commissioner for Human Rights since 2018, Michelle Bachelet - a woman with an interesting life story as well. 

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg

It may happen that you are unfairly over critical with the fiction work of a writer. You turn the characters on all faces, analyse the context and the narrative, evaluate the angles and the writing strategy. May be disgusted by the characters and some aspects of the plot. Or both. You leave a disappointed review, sharing with the rest of the reading world what you expected from the author and how his/her potential was wasted. You hope for the best. A next time, but the next time your crawling is even bloodier and you end up with no expectations. Better for cutting short your disappointment.

But then, there is a memoir. A candid account the author personally chose to share with the rest of the world. A chronicle of disappointment, searching for home, love, happiness, you know, all those things that we, all, we are longing for. What can the critical reader do in this case? Share the disappointment that the childhood was not traumatic enough to inspire heartbreaking novels with a psychoanalitical fragrance? Or that was loveable than the character in an Austin´s novel?

When it comes to a memoir, the focus is all on the writing. Someone who writes generally bad, cannot hide behind metaphors in a memoir. Someone who is lying and faking will be easily disclosed as a layer and imposter when writing a memoir. A memoir is the end or the beginning of a literary career. 

I love reading memoirs of both known and less known authors. Because it helps to be more empathic with one´s fiction, with one´s person, it brings the author from the smiling pictures from the book promotion tours into flesh and blood and tears. 

I loved Jami Attenberg memoir too. I have been maybe too critical of her books, I did not relate - fully or partially - with some of her characters. There are a couple of books by her that would love to read. But I Came All This Way to Meet You is very different and extremely good too. But as I had access to the book in audiobook format, my book reached me differently. The good kind of differently. The memoir is read by Xe Sands and it gives the exact voice that I was expecting to hear. Isn´t Jami Attenberg who is actually reading? I haven´t heard her voice, but I will be very disappointed to find out that it is not Xe Sands´ voice. Better to never try it.

One of the things I´ve realized again when reading the book is that the fact that I may not relate so much with some of her characters - and partially with episodes shared in the memoir - is that the growing-up, coming-of-age in America is what makes it less relatable to other non-American people. There is a certain life journey, including job hopping and the all round the country trips and the NYC life that you have to experience it yourself in order to understand its vanity and wastness. 

But there are things - many more of us - that relate as all, all those looking for a certain meaning in the day and the past. There are the snapshots of a search for ownership: of her work, creativity, a home of the mind and of the soul. About learning about people and how to be in the world. About getting to learn other people, making friendships, female friendships and looking for the accomplishment in the moment. About her own ´Me Too´ episode, long before the movement was a trending keyword on social media.

What may be confusing, especially when you follow the book in the audio format, is the intertwined flow of memory, which is how memory usually works, not like a chain of events from 0 onwards. We need to learn how to live with our haunting memory bits and a memoir is the account of a writer trying to make her way through this constant assault of the past. 

After a decade and half of life in NYC, Jami Attenberg is currently living in New Orleans, my favorite non-American American city in the world. I Came All This Way to Meet You is the book I´m intensively recommending these days to both writing and non-writing friends for its honesty and humour and genuine kindness for the lived moment.

Rating: 4 stars

Random Things Tours: The Postmistress of Paris by Meg Waite Clayton

I have my own answer to the question of why there are in the last decade so many articulated historical fiction books - in English, but not only - set during WWII? Why now, and not during the times when there were eventually many more witnesses of the events? My interpretation is that the distance from those times allows a better overview of the perspective, but at the same time, the historical archives and testimonies open up to both researchers and fiction writers, a multiplicity of resources and points of view.

The Postmistress of Paris, the latest by the bestseller author Meg Waite Clayton, largely confirms my assumption. Set in the early days of the occupied Paris, it features of story of Resistance and resilience against the Evil taking control of the country and its citizens. The main characters are inspired by the American heiress Mary Jayne Gold and Varian Fry who were part of a discrete network based in France that helped Jewish artists and intellectuals to escape to America.

The historical context and circumstances are highly complex but the author approaches it with the highest concern both for creative fiction and historical accuracy. Such a successful meeting between two different truths would have not be possible without a multiplicity of sources and references of all kinds. The two sides of the story operate in sync and balance each other without fully taking control of the story. For a historian in love with literature, it is more than satisfactory.

The Postmistress of Paris is dense, and eventuful and full of suspense, but raises as well questions about human solidarity and common struggle against evil. We, the readers from the future, we may know the tragical ending of some situations, but discovering the episodes of genuine humanity and generosity in the darkest hour of history is a balm for the soul. Facts may have been different in reality, but at least there is a recognition of the many shades of humanity in between. 

For the lover of good historical fiction, this book is a generous and intelligent gift.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Book Review: The Weaker Sex by Frances M. Thompson

´We need more allies, not enemies´.

Actually, the weaker sex is not so weak any more. In literature and in real life too. 

I haven´t read anything by Frances M. Thompson that disappointed me. She is not only a beautiful and talented writer but each of her books to explore not only new universal human feelings - like love, loneliness, longing, maternity and love again - but are becoming more and more complex in terms of structure and character development. So far, The Weaker Sex is her best ever, because it looks like she offered herself, finally, the freedom of following up characters and imagining complex encounters and settings. I love short stories and creatively playing with literary limitations, but a novel requires a completely different level and category of writing skills.

´Because we women have been raised to see sex as shameful, and so what do we think about a woman who sells sex?´

I will try to not delve too much into the details of the story, still trying to outline its character and touch. In The Weaker Sex, that from a certain point of view can be considered a suspenseful thriller, women are in charge. Maybe some were victims once, but they are not waiting for someone, men for instance, to fight for them. They can revenge themselves. 

M. - short for Madam - created a trust-based society of women that are ready to make pay those who hurt them. Sometimes using the cover of sex workers, they are creating circumstances or learning about future targets. Set in London, it reveals the secret world of double names and forgotten identities. There is a touch of unspoken mystery about where it will lead to and many suspenseful twists keeping the reader fully connected to the narrative. 

The writer is in full control of the story and is admirably playing with different situations out of which unexpected conclusions and encounters follow. The intertwined timelines of the past and ´now´ to operate at a point-counterpoint pace that takes the story to a new level, while discretely revealing details that may determine the new course of action.

As for the characters, they are not only relatable, but also strong in the way in which they conceal their strengths. In The Weaker Sex, women are more than a pleasant literary pleasant emotional, in love, being brought out of love. They can do anything they want, from arts to getting a diploma and creating successful businesses and streams of income to killing in the cold blood usually attributed to men.

I am so glad that Frances M. Thompson wrote this book. And she should keep writing more such beautiful novels. Writing is a gift that should not be kept for oneself only. 

Rating: 5 stars

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

Random Things Tours: Wahala by Nikki May

 

In Nigerian Pidgin, Wahala is a word used to express worry, distress or problems. There are a lot of trouble the characters of the book with the same title by the British-Nigerian Nikki May are going through. There is the trouble which is the work of love. The trouble that you´re in when you did something that no one expected you to do. Like betraying your best friends. Or disappointing them.

Wahala is considered already one of the must-read books of the year and already received noteworthy mentions and accolades from both readers, editors and authors. Maybe soon it will be turned into a movie - hopefully. But what I really loved about this book build around young female friendship is the genuine authenticity of the characters. They are more than creations of a literary minds, they are relatable. You can see them, in Northern London or Lagos or NYC or anywhere where people like them live and fall in love and dream about the future.

More than the literary format and style - which are refined and worth more than a random mention - there is the fresh breath of finally reading about people that you may know or you may meet one day. Those girls - Ronke, Simi, Boo - do talk and think and expect what people of their generation do. Plus, they are also at ease with themselves and their mixed cultural background and at least sometimes, they do have a very open unapologetic way of being. Talking of my generation...

Wahala will stay with me for a long time. I love that I had the chance to read it, especially because I like the women in this book. I like that this is a book about women who allow themselves to be more than it is expected from them to be. I love their autonomy and freedom, but also their mistakes. 

A special mention for the delicious Nigerian food mentioned in the book. (In a couple of days, a great chef and food writer based in London will share soon here, on my blog, more details about the tasty Nigerian food).

Nikki May

Wahala is worth all the buzz - and a bit more - from the last weeks. It does not only because of the great writing and complexities of the story and the characters, but because it has a strong voice, a multiple women´s voice entitled to tell their own story. This may really trouble the blad waters of literary realm insisting to assign to multicultural women the same old role. It looks like the changes are coming faster than one - me - expected. Wahala!

I can only hope to read more and more such books this year and the years to come. 

Rating: 5 stars

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

In the Margins by Elena Ferrante transl. by Ann Goldstein

´(...) I myself, as a girl, wished to avoid as far as possible writing by women: I felt I had different ambitions´.

Relatively late in joining the global ranks of Elena Ferrante readers, I am still in the discovery stage. There are many new approaches and takes that I discover, some of them still trying to decipher. Although reading one author´s books and the critics and other reviews is useful in understanding it, the author´s nonfiction articles and books, eventually about the writing process, are very important as well. 

In the Margins, to be published soon by Europa editions, translated from Italian into English by Ann Goldstein offered for me the needed guidance for a fairer understanding of her readers. The book is relatively short public interventions planned to be held before the pandemic reassigned everything to the virtual realm. The topics featured, many expressed from an intimate personal angle are On the Pleasure of Reading and Writing.

The articles are though more than general guidelines about why we, bookish people - both readers and writing - do love books. Rather, it explains why she is writing, and how she was able to find her voice, as a woman. ´Since I was a girl I´ve loved wriring novels of love and betrayal, dangerous investigations, horrific discoveries, corrupted youth, miserable lives that have a stroke of luck´. But her gender defined the expectations of the readers: mostly, to avoid being too emotional, too woman-oriented, shortly, to be herself. Hence, she took a leap of faith in herself and wrote as a woman. Not necessarily for women only, but gave to women a voice, a woman´s voice.

Entering this mindset takes time to be accepted therefore now I feel sorry for being so harsh with Troubling Love. Indeed, there may have been aspects related to the story that did not appeal to me, but I´ve largely underrated the originality in terms of writing technique. 

But her literary journey was more than the search for a voice. It involved also searching for the words, for that alchemic formula which turns words into emotions and stories. It has to do with the strength of the writer struggling to render a mundane, small object, like her mother´s aquamarine stone, into a very different story layer, each time told differently. ´(...) writing is seizing everything that has already been written and gradually learning to spend that enormous fortune´.

Although I was actually expecting the volume to include many more articles by Ferrante, In the Margins is a good introduction to her books. Now, I can continue my literary explorations of her works with a completely different mindset. 

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher by the opinions as, as usual, my own

Random Things Tours: Silver Pebbles by Hansjörg Schneider translated by Mike Mitchell

´Like little silver pebbles (...) like shining drops of water´.

Set sometime in the 1990s, Silver Pebbles by Hansjörg Schneider is at least as eventful as the Basel Killings (translated into English by the same Mike Mitchell) but has a more human-oriented take. Featuring the same inspector Peter Hunkeler, it follows the journey of some precious dirty diamonds, from the drug cartels to the dirt of Basel sewerage system. 

The story brings into the forefront simple people, with simple lives, with simple life aims - like dreaming of a good life - caught in the net of greediness. The diamonds that were supposed to be paid for some drug deals ended up in the pockets of a humble sewerage worker of Turkish origin. For a couple of days, he dreamt about returning back to his home country where he had a family and children, as a rich man. His Basel girlfriend tried and even succeeded to stop him from keeping the poisonous pebbles, not before going through some exceptional episodes and facing extraordinary life threats. But when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose, isn´t it?

I´ve found fascinating the illustration of the impact of global threads to the everyday life and souls, reflecting the take on the simple life, on the backdrop of globalisation.

Written as a classical crime novel, with a relatively predictable plot and sharing indirect meditations about life and human nature, the story is built as a game of chess. At least in the first part of the story, when it seems like most of the characters are fully devoted to find - or keep - the diamonds, no matter the price. This pace is, in my opinion, lost in the last part, and the pace is relatively slowing down. However, there are twists that keep your heart pounding until the very end of the story, which is unexpected, but follows the same human-focused story line.

As relatively familiar with Switzerland, less with Basel though, the book portrays an authentic ambiance for that period of time, particularly from the point of view of the increased ethnic diversity, the result of the immigration, that had a certain impact on the conservative local mindsets - without necessarily leading to a further positive perception of foreigners though.

If you are looking to read something insightful, smart and well written this weekend, Silver Pebbles is a perfect choice. For me, after my second Peter Hunkeler crime story, I know that Hansjörg Schneider is the author to look for when in need for some intelligent crime novel.

Rating: 4 stars

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

Random Things Tours: Bitter Flowers by Gunnar Staalesen translated by Don Bartlett

 

For the first time ever, I deeply regret for not speaking or reading Norwegian. Far from me from saying that Don Bartlett´s translation of the Bitter Flowers, recently published by Orenda Books, showed me the limits of books read in other language that the one they were written. Rather the opposite, as Bartlett skillfully introduced authors like Jo Nesbø, Lars Saabye Christensen, Kjell Ola Dahl and, in this case, Gunnar Staalesen, to the English-reading audiences. However, while reading Bitter Flowers by Staalesen, the unique construction of the sentence - essentialized, simple yet rhythmed, eventful and displaying an emotional thread - made me very interested in acknowledging the mental framework of this language. Even in the perfect translation, I was missing the intimate feeling of the language those sentences were written. But my linguistic curiosities are maybe for another post and in any case, I don´t make a secret that I wish I have enough time and no pressures at all, in order to spend as much time as possible learning languages. Any languages. As many of them as possible.

Back to the book though. Bitter Flowers is part of the series featuring detective Varg Veum. I haven´t read any other books (those interested can check the long list of published titles from the series by Orenda Books), but the introduction to the context and disparate fragments of previous stories fit together perfectly well and understanding both the character and the story is rather unproblematic. In this book, he is about to cover at the same time three relatively disparate crimes, at least one of them: ´Who had killed Tor Aslaksun? And why had Lisbeth Finslo disappeared? Did it have any connection with Camilla Farang´s disappearance 8 years before?´.

While on a flirt with Lisbeth, Veum witnesses a corpse in the swimming pool of a house he was supposed to guard. Meanwhile, Lisbeth disappears suddenly after seeing the corpse first, and she is found only a couple of days later, murdered. Isolated crimes? But there is much more than that to the story, mainly the connections between the main characters that are revealed little by little, and the further connection with the parents of the girl who disappear without a trace eight years ago, the little Camilla Farang. 

The picturesque Bergen, where most of the book action takes place, the place of residence of the author as well, may be a small place, but there is something else going on for at least a decade as well: the apparition of a new oil aristocracy, which does not mind using their newly discovered resources not only for a better economic standing, but for neglecting the environment as well, and for acquiring their protection against the law as well.

The slow pace of the story allows to gather the most important details, building up the tension in the way in which one strokes one brush on the canvas, and then another, and then another one; until the painting is ready. One needs to wait until the end for understanding the whole context, and the final verdict. The author brings together, as a skilled puppeteer, all the story lines and characters. This book requires your full attention and energy, and once starting it, it is hard to abandon it as one may think that during the break between reading important details will get lost.

By chosing to write Bitter Flowers as a first person account, Staalesen makes the story personal and therefore the account even more dramatic. After all, there is a direct testimony of facts that the main character experienced himself, hence the existential tensions he is going through while searching for the culprits.

I personally appreciated the story details regarding the environmental issues and aspects pertaining to the new economic realities in the Norway of the time. Thus, the story looks more rooted in an everyday reality, although the rest of the context is purely fictional.

For all the small and big details, Bitter Flowers was a surprising read, which makes me even more curious not only to have a look at the Norwegian language basics, but also to read more Nordic Noir in the next months, especially from Norway.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Literature from Kyrgyzstan: Jamila by Chinghiz Aitmatov

 

I disagree with Louis Aragon that Jamila, the debut novel of the Kyrgyz author Jamila is the ´most beautiful love story in the world literature´. There are certainly, many elements of the story, set during the WWII, in the 1940s, that may be considered beautiful, but the story in itself is rather a literary account of love, among many others.

The story teller is Seit, nowadays an artist, once a young man coming-of-age. His brother, Jamila´s husband, is on the front. A marriage without love that Jamila will abandon as she ran away with Daniyar, the man she deeply fell in love with. Seit is collecting the story from the maze of his memory, from the standpoint of a child, which explains the tender, delicate tone of the story. He is observing with pure children eyes the relationship between the two, observing feelings and reaction between the two he is not still able to translate into the socially codified language.

The novel was published in Russian in 1958 and made famous in translation into French by the above mentioned Aragon, familiar with the Russian/Soviet literature, not only through his wife, the Russian-born Elsa Triolet. The story was very popular in the former communist Germany, being included on the list of the compulsory school readings.

I am relatively familiar with the literature produced during the Soviet times, but Jamila is different as it is more focused on creating a story than displaying a social reality, that game of contrasts of ´before´ and ´after´ the creation of the Soviet Union and the dynamics of the social relations. However, there are some noticeable social shifts: the traditional family relationships are manifested in the relationship between Jamila and her mother-in-law, the interactions between people in the village and even their way of life. It will take some time to completely uproot the old ways, and after the war this was done particularly through the transfer of population which mixed and changed the ethnic distribution in the various republics incorporated into the giant Soviet Union.

After the local and international success with Jamila, Aitmatov had a further bright literary career, complimented by seamless political achievements. He was an adviser to Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, the last USSR ambassador in Luxemburg and after the independence of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek´s diplomatic representative to the EU, NATO and Benelux, among others.

I had access to Jamila in the audiobook version, based on a translation from Russian into German by Gisela Drohla. 

I would love to have more time to come back to some old Soviet-based authors and explore different angles and identities. Lacking any clear schedule in this respect and without adequate Russian language skills to read in the original language, I can only rely to some random discoveries at my local libraries, remnants of the GDR´s bibliographies or some enthusiastic translations into French by unabated socialist authors, like Aragon. As for now, I am glad to add to my virtual collection of literary travels an author from Kyrgyzstan. 

Random Things Tours: The Family by Naomi Krupitsky

 

Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo are introduced as two young ladies belonging to middle class Italian families living in NYC. They do have dreams and enjoy spending time together playing or doing their homeworks. However, there is something different about them. Both of them, but especially Sofia. 

´Sofia has just started to notice that people are afraid of her father´. Then, Antonia´s father disappears without a trace and without his body being found. 

Actually, they are not your average immigrant Italian family working hard the American dream in NYC. They are heiresses of The Family, another way to refer to the Italian Mafia in the US.

The brilliant debut novel by Naomi Krupitsky this book fascinated me by the very strong opening which matches perfectly the end. From the very beginning, we are warned that terrible things are about to happen and although there is not a crescendo and the events do take different turns, it ends in an equally dramatic suspenseful note. This match was a favorite part of the story for me.

The story timelines takes the reader from 1928 until shortly after the end of the WWII. An intese period of time, both for the history of NYC as for the rest of the world. Although not directly affected by the world, America is reminded of the horrible things happening on the other side of the Ocean through the stories of Jewish immigrants who escaped to freedom. Among them, the young Saul, initially hired by Sofia´s father, ending up as her husband - but only on his father-in-law terms, which included getting baptized and taking his family name. 

Sofia and Antonia are naively living their lives unaware of the intimate details of their family businesses. Antonia´s father disappear but she will be taken care over. They dream of escape, are interested in men, and even may fall for some. But their coming-of-age is progressively taking place once they are becoming aware of their families, particularly the cruel and deadly part of the business. ´(...) sometimes Sofia, you just have to do things you don´t to do´, explains her father. She may be curious to really understand what he meant by that and getting involved in the very lucrative projects of The Family. Will it help her to see better what are in fact the risks encountered by her husband?

Sofia is the strongest character in the book, not only because she dares to face the destiny her father assigned to her, but because she is ready to do it ´the old way´, as men belonging to´The Family´ may do. The dynamic between the two friends are lost a couple of times during the story, without being clearly explained how and why, and Sofia is offered more space to develop and express her personality. In those moments, as well as when Saul´s betrayal is exposed, the story changes the focus from the characters to The Family. Sometimes, one wants to know more about the characters when the events are unfolding or follow the events that are on the second plan leaving more space to the characters. 

The slow pace may allow a variety of interests to unfold, at their own rhythm. In addition to sharing features of a historical novel, The Family is also a powerful drama of strong characters and violent encounters of destinies. It is an unforgettable debut novel that explores this historical period of time from a new perspective, slicing a piece of reality which is rarely featured in the contemporary literature. Besides the historical context though, there are characters and their stories which matter, adding fictional layers to the pure facts. 

I am really glad I´ve discovered this author and her first book and I am looking forward to Krupitsky´s next novel.

Rating: 4 stars

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

Beautiful Country. A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood by Qian Julie Wang

´Our kitchen had more coackroaches than food´.

Qian Julie Wang´s parents were professors in China. They left for a country which translates as ´beautiful country´ - which reminded me automatically of the ´goldene medina´ of the Jewish immigrants leaving Europe for a better future - to experience sheer poverty and hunger for at least five years. Living as undocumented immigrants, they were constantly living in fear from being caught by the authorities and eventually deported. 

Beautiful Country. A Memoir of Undocumented Childhood is Wang´s testimony, as experienced through the eyes of a young girl, of a struggle that seemed without end. From the language to the simple visual perception of the other, to being dismissed in school by the white teacher simply because they could not believe that she can write that essay. 

Everything in the new country was dangerous. When there were not the cops, there were the white men obsessed by Asian women or the predator following her in the subway. There were the children in the classroom or the risk of being caught doing something that may get them out of the country. Like getting sick. 

What is exceptional in this memoir - written by Wang, since 2016, an US naturalized citizen and a successful litigation lawyer, while commutting on her iPhone - is the lack of anger while looking back to those times. Yes, it was a lot of hunger, and her parents went estranged and they were leaving in peculiar conditions, but she got used with it. She did not know how other people, white people, are living. What she is actually missing from her childhood. She had books and the public libraries were her salvation. Withough books, maybe, her life account would have been much bitter. In addition to being an immigrant story, Beautiful Country is implicitly a praise to how important public libraries and their books in the small lives of children from immigrant, undocumented children, hungry for learning and hunting for new worlds. 

But in the end, it is not the ´beautiful country´ that offered a permanent shelter. Her mother, in my opinion, the strongest and inspiring character in her life story, dared to find a legal solution to resettle to Canada in order to start a much more decent professional life.  

Wang´s story - which I had access to as audiobook format read by the author herself - ends when she and her mother are arriving to Canada, being welcomed by smiling cops that are welcoming them in the country. I would be curious to read the rest of her story, which led her to being founder of the group Jews of Color and her Jewish journey which are not mentioned in this part of her life account, although the book was actually launched the last Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year).

I am not sure if all the hungry undocumented children in America will have the chance of sharing their story or will end up as partner in a law firm. Such testimonies though do teach us, those going to sleep with a full belly to be not only grateful for our hot meals and full fridge, but to learn to be humble and maybe try doing something to make those lives a bit better.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

 

The Lions of Fith Avenue by bestseller author Fiona Davis is a multi-generational family story set around the love of books and libraries. At 80 years distance, the characters, predominantly women, do connect through an apparent mystery regarding rare books disappearing from New York Public Library. 

It starts in 1913, with Laura Lyons, married with the library intendant, living with her two children, Pearl and Harry in an apartment within the library. What can be better than that? Her husband is working his novel, whila Laura has her own professional ambitions, dreaming to be a journalist. However, although she seems to be gifted and her curiosity lead her to writing some good pieces of articles, she is prevented from acquiring a degree at Columbia, because she dared to express her own opinions in her graduation paper. Meanwhile, some precious books disappear from the library and her husband is the main suspect.

80 years later, Pearl´s daughter, Sadie Donovan, is working at the same library, preparing an exhibition where she intends to include personal details about her grandmother she never met. Strangely, rare books are disappearing from the libray, some of them during her watch and it looks like she is under scrutiny as well.

What exactly happens and how cursed her family history is to repeat again eight decades later?

The idea of mixing a historical fiction with a little bit of mystery, on the backgrop of one of the world´s prestigious libraries was very appealing to me. I like all of them and although I am not a great consumer of historical fiction, I wanted to read this book. There are so many interesting elements of both narrative construction and character building, I was at a certain extent disappointed for a couple of reasons.

For instance, although the 1913- timeframe is very documented and detailed, with a considerate attention to characters and their development, I´ve found the ´contemporary´ episodes rather superficial, lacking consistency both from the point of view of the timeline as of the interior dynamic. Sadie Donovan, for instance, a 40 something librarian, looks completely imature and childish and her lifestory is reduced to her failures - particularly clumsiness around men and divorcee. Her mother, Pearl, although shortly a charactr in this second story line, is a sad grumpy old woman, lacking empaty, but at the same time also disconnected from the main story. Besides her being the daughter of the famous feminist writer Laura Lyons and being mentioned in the original story, there is no clear connection thread between the two characters.

In the original story - my favorite, not less - there are a couple of inadequacies, particularly when it comes to the doctors´ pledge for vaccines - typhoid vaccine. We may keep in mind that although this vaccine was in use since the end of the 19th century, it could not be offered en masse and the observations of the doctor while Laura was at the hospital with her son, Harry, suffering of typhoid, that as many should be vaccinated because it is an important scientific discovery, and there are no reason to be afraid of it, sounds rather as a Corona-vaxx story.

However, the eventful construction of the story, with unexpected turns and a surprising mystery solution, make the reading pleasant, the kind of pleasant that you may need when you are waiting in line for your test or while commuting. 

The story it is based on some true facts: indeed, there used to be an apartment within the New York Public Library, and a similar theft of rare books took place in the 1990s at Columbia University´s Butler. 

At the end of the book, there is a consistent guide aimed at book clubs, with questions and various details about the characters and the story and the main angles that can be followed during the discussions.

The Lions of Fifth Avenue is a useful book for the (extremely) critical historical fiction reader, but do shares some significant insights and values, among which, how hard is always for women to be acquired freedom, particularly when they dream to be as involved in changing the society as men.

Rating: 3 stars

Annie Ernaux The Years/Les Années

 

It took me more than a lifetime to finally find an author encompassing in such a perfectly fit way the meeting between the individual and history. Not in a dramatic form, not as the curse of history, not as a heroic encounter. Just your everyday individual immersed into the waves of time. 

Annie Ernaux, in her personal chronicle of The Years/Les Années epitomizes everything I was ever looking for, and even a bit more. The time is melting into words, is reconfigurated into personal encounters and is displayed as a documentary movie of one personal life experience. Covering the long timeline between 1940 - her date of birth - until 2006 - it is more than an ´objective´ - whatever this enormous empty word may mean - historical account of how fast everything changed and how tremendous those changes are. Instead, it is a very personal look at the time, by one woman who went through all this. 

Both as a historian and political scientist, but equally a literature lover, I often ask myself about how one can reify the historical time into a personal story. More or less, we - humans with no historical trace - are affected by the big historical trends. Our perception and our lives are shaped by those decisions. We are rarely aware of - as most of us do not have the luxury of time to think about it, but just living everything by default, caught in the merry-go-round of our daily simple lives. But, for instance, the situation of the health system affects our life - including by shortening it or saving us; the society and legal views on abortion and contraception do affect our personal sexual choices; countries at war do shape our experience of trauma and define our individual personalities.

The perfect pace that creates a poetic life collage, a palimpsest of fact and life fragments, it is all there, in Ernaux´s book. From the desire to be happy inspired by The Beatles to the end of the Cold War and even the death of Fernand Braudel. I cannot describe my happiness reading the book and then listening the audiobook format of this book. It made my thoughts much clearer and my literary ideas even more doable. French language come to my rescue, again...

Born in a family with a working-class background, she has a degree in modern literature and taught for a while in high school. One of the founder of Seven Stories Press her books - that I want to read them all, at least once - do have a personal/memoir touch. Writing about one self in the world is a radical writing act.

I will need more and more time to chew all the literary inspiration of this one and only book. After a very long pause, I finally discovered a new author to inspire me in the most highly existential way.

Rating: 5 stars