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The Bachelor of Arts by R.K. Narayan – The 1937 Club
The Bachelor of Arts by R.K. Narayan. (1937) French title: Le licencié es lettres.
I’m happy to participate to the #1937Club hosted by Karen and Simon, especially since I get to share about The Bachelor of Arts by R.K. Narayan, a writer I discovered thanks to Vishy.
I’ve already read Swami and Friends and The Dark Room and my omnibus edition also includes The English Teacher. These novellas are set in the fictionnal town of Malgudi.
The Bachelor of Arts is a novella featuring Chandran, in the crucial years in one’s early twenties, when graduation is almost there and it’s time to find a profession and start one’s adult life.
In the first part of the book, Chandran is 22 and he’s in his last year at Albert College, soon graduating in History and Literature. He lives the usual life of students at that time except that there aren’t any girls around and that his professors are all British teaching to Indian students. The atmosphere of this first part reminding me of Kingsley Amis.
After cramming hard in the last months of the school year, he graduates but doesn’t have defined plans for his future. We see him fall in love, literally at first sight and getting all worked up about a girl he can’t talk to because it would be inappropriate. We see him struggle with heartbreak and eventually figuring out what job he’ll do. He lacks a bit of confidence.
Narayan is a very sensitive writer, nice to his characters and gently poking fun at them. He probably put a bit of himself in Chandran and we see a young man who lives between the culture of his very traditional Hindu family and the British culture he is taught at school. He’s torn between the respect he feels for his beloved parents and his yearning to break free from what he considers stifling traditions.
His parents are loving and understanding but they are also attached to the social rules of their community. They don’t want to stand out and Chandran bows to their wishes, not because they pressure him but out of love for them.
And me? I discovered the marriage traditions in his kind of family and I was flabbergasted. Sure, I expected the cast compatibility part and I wasn’t too surprised that the two young people couldn’t have much contact. What I didn’t expect were the rules about the matchmaker, who makes the moves and when and also the check of the compatibility of the future spouse through their horoscopes
When a girl is ready for marriage her horoscope will be sent in ten directions, and then different persons will see her and approve or disapprove, or they might be disapproved by the girl itself; and after all only one will marry her.
If the horoscopes don’t match, there’s no marriage. Wow. Imagine Mrs Bennett in this context.
Narayan doesn’t judge these traditions, he doesn’t rebel against them but he shows what they do to a young man like Chandran and what they mean for the Indian girls of his milieu and in this part of India.
As always with great literature, Narayan writes a novella that transcends the cultural specificities of Malgudi and the fact that we’re in the 1930s. He pictures a young man who struggles to find his path in life, who mourns the end of his childhood and of his carefree student days to become an adult and lead an adult’s life.
Very highly recommended.
There are other billets about books written or published in 1937 on the blog:
- Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner,
- Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
- Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb.
Many thanks to Karen and Simon for hosting The Club again. It’s really a great idea and now, I’m going to read all the posts about 1937 books that are waiting for my attention in my inbox.
Clean Slate #2 : catching up on books read in 2023.
- Marzhan, Mon amour by Katja Oskamp (2021) French title: Marzahn, mon amour.
- The Sound of Keychains by Philippe Claudel (2002) Original French title: Le Bruit des trousseaux.
- Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire (1763) Original French title: Traité sur la Tolérance.
I still have four books read in 2023 and without their billet.
So today, I’ll catch up and write about Marzhan, Mon amour by Katja Oskamp, The Sound of Keychains by Philippe Claudel and Treatise on Toleration by Voltaire. I’ve read the Oskamp in the English translation by Jo Heinrich, the others were in French.
The three of them are non-fiction to me, even if Marzhan, mon amour is tagged as literary fiction.
Marzahn, Mon amour is set in a prefab housing estates neighborhood in former East Berlin. The author decided to train as a chiropodist and is hired as such in a salon in Marzahn. She explains her choice:
In early 2015 you took your usual trip to Marzahn for the full works, and you told Tiffy about your novella being turned down, about your daughter going to England for a year and about the cancer therapies prolonging the life of your partner, which had brought you both low. Tiffy did the right thing: she listened, said little, always lent an ear. While she was kneading your back with firm hands, you said, through the hole in the massage table where your face was resting, that something had to change, that you couldn’t bear listening to yourself moaning any longer. You looked through the hole at Tiffy’s feet as she said, ‘Come and be a chiropodist here with me.’ She gave you the name of the school in Charlottenburg. At home, online, you saw the next course was starting in ten days. You talked it over with your partner and you signed up.
Each chapter of the book is about a fun fact of the neighborhood and the portrait of a client. We go from one quirky character to the other, learning about their lives, their habits at the salon, the author’s work with her boss Tiffy and her colleague Flocke. They bring wellbeing to their customers, they are part of the neighborhood and enjoy being there.
It’s hard to shift preconceptions about the prefab housing estates in eastern Berlin. They say Marzahn is a concrete wasteland, but in reality it is exceptionally green. There are wide streets, ample parking spaces, good pavements and dropped kerbs at crossings.
It’s a lovely book, as the author is protective of the people she describes and wants to show the good side of this neighborhood. It doesn’t mean that she looks at everything through rose-colored glasses. Some of her customers are mean or haughty. Some have hard lives. She gives them a voice, a little space in forever. I always enjoy books that give a bit of visibility to the silent masses than make most of the population of this Earth.
For a full review of the book, check out Claire’s here.
The second book I wanted to share with you today is The Sound of Keychains by Philippe Claudel.
It’s a succession of vignettes, of stolen moments and thoughts about his time as a literature teacher in prison in the 1990s.
It lasted more than ten years and I felt like he had to write about the overwhelming emotions that his frequent visits to prison brought. It was hard on him but he never complains as he’s well aware that if it was hard on him, it was harder on the inmates.
He’s very humble about his experience, never plays the hero but tries to make us understand how unsettling spending time in prison was.
| Le regard des gens qui apprenaient que j’allais en prison. Surprise, étonnement, compassion. « Vous êtes bien courageux d’aller là-bas ! » Il n’y avait rien à répondre à cela. Le regard me désignait comme quelqu’un d’étrange, et presque, oui, presque, quelqu’un d’étranger. J’étais celui qui chaque semaine allait dans un autre monde. Je pensais alors au regard qui se pose sur celui qui dis « Je sors de prison. » Si moi, déjà, j’étais l’étranger, lui, qui était-il pour eux ? | The pointed look that people gave me when they learnt I went to prison. Surprise, astonishment, empathy. “You’re very brave to go there!” There was no response to that. The look pinned me as someone stranger, almost, yes, almost a stranger. I was the one who went to another world each week. I thought about the look on someone who says “I’m an ex-convict.” If I was a stranger to them, what was he? (my clumsy translation. Claudel’s style isn’t easy to translate.) |
He doesn’t pretend to know how it feels to be a prisoner because, as he says, he went home at the end of the day and he never spent a night.
It’s still a very moving account of the atmosphere, the system and the people who are in prison or work there. He doesn’t sugarcoat what he sees but also shares rare moments with inmates and through his words, give them back their humanity that the institution tends to erase.
I think that the prison he mentions is the now-closed maison d’arrêt Charles III in Nancy.
Then, at the end of December, I went back to basics and read Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire. It was written in 1763, just after Voltaire got involved in the Jean Calas affair.
Jean Calas was wrongly accused of killing his own son, he was condemned and executed. Voltaire got involved to have the sentenced annulled, guessing that Calas was a victim of anti-protestant fanaticism.
Treatise on Tolerance advocates freedom of conscience and is a violent charge against the Catholic church. Chapter after chapter, he demonstrates the intolerance of the Catholic church, that the clergy has a long bloody history. He argues that freedom of conscience was normal in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, that the intolerance didn’t come from the Bible but from its interpretation by the Catholic church, and this, since the early days.
He shows that intolerance only brings violence and misery and never improves anything. It irks me that he has to state the obvious.
Lots of academics have commented this Treatise on Toleration and they’re better than me at analyzing Voltaire’s messagge. I’ll give you my impressions as twenty-first century reader: Voltaire is still relevant. Like all great writers, you might say. His arguments could be transposed in today’s world. And his plea to let everyone pray whatever god they want as long as they don’t bother their fellow citizen and undermine the country’s peace remains relevant.
Sometimes, it’s good to go back to the basics and remind ourselves on which principles our western societies were founded. Highly recommended.
At the beginning of this billet, I mentioned four books to write about and you’ve read about three of them. The fourth book is the somptuous Fools Crow by James Welch and it deserves its own billet.
The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson – a perfect Christmas Eve story.
The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson. (1936) French title: Le Berger de l’Avent. Translated by Gérard Lemarquois and Maria S. Gunnarsdóttir.
Christmas Eve sounds a great day for a billet about The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson.
Gunner Gunnarsson (1889-1975) was an Icelandic novelist. He went to university in Copenhagen, became a Danish speaker and wrote his books in Danish. They were first translated into Icelandic by Laxness and later by Gunnarsson himself. I read a French translation from the Icelandic, I wonder why they didn’t translate it from the Danish, after all it’s the original text. Oh well…
Benedikt is a shepherd and every first Sunday of the Advent, he goes to the mountains to chase lost sheep and bring them back to the village before Christmas. He’s fifty-four and this year is a kind of anniversary since it’s his twenty-seventh trip.
Benedikt was always alone on this Advent Journey of his – that is, no man went with him. To be sure he had his dog along and his bell-wether. The dog he had at this time was called Leo, and as Benedikt put it, he earned his name, for truly he was a Pope among dogs. The wether was named Gnarly; that was because he was so tough.
These three had been inseparable on these expeditions for a number of years now, and they had gradually come to know one another with that deep-seated knowledge perhaps to be found only among animas of such divergent kinds that no share of their own ego or own blood or own wishes or desires could come between them to confuse or darken it. Translation by Kenneth C. Kaufman
In French, the wether is named Roc because he’s as sturdy as a rock.
Gunnarsson describes Benedikt’s journey. His first stop is at the Botn farm, where Pétur and his wife Sigridur wait for him with a hot meal and fresh hay for Gnarly. Everything is as usual until Benedikt feels compelled to help another shepherd find his wandering sheep and the weather turns to blizzard. Benedikt doesn’t give up and goes to the mountain anyway.
The Good Shepherd is a mix between adventure and meditation. Gunnarsson describes Benedikt’s hike, the dangers of the weather, the heavy plodding in the snow covered tracks, the cold, the disorientation in this white and blinding universe. We fear for his life and yet we remain calm because we’re in Benedikt’s mind and he’s peaceful. He’s not afraid. He knows he might die but he concentrates on the task at end : find the sheep, bring them back, find the shelter on time, rest and start again.
He can count on the people who live in the mountains. They take care of their own and
I don’t think there is a biblical message in The Good Shepherd. It’s the story of a man who knows his place in the world, is happy doing his duty, bonds with men and animals as they are part of his life and is respectful of the majestic wilderness around him.
For readers who celebrate Christmas, I wish you a wonderful Christmas Eve and a Merry Christmas.
For English-speaking readers, you can find this book online here as it’s part of the Forgotten Books catalog.
The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge – creepy #NovNov23 & #ReadingBeryl23
The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge (1973) French title: La couturière. Translated by Françoise Cartano.
In English, The Dressmaker is a novella as it’s less than 200 pages long. My copy in French has 294 pages. Hmm. I’ll stick to the original and consider that it qualifies for Novellas in November on top of being my participation to Annabel’s Reading Beryl 2023 week.
The Dressmaker is my third Bainbridge after An Awfully Big Adventure and The Bottle Factory Outing and I know of her books only through blogging as I’ve never seen them in a French bookstore. I bought used copies or books in English.
The Dressmaker is set in Liverpool in 1944 and American soldiers are stationed in town. On Bingley Road, Nellie lives in her parents’ house with her sister Margo and her seventeen-years old niece Rita. Jack, the third Bingley Road sibling lives above his butcher shop and when his wife died, Rita came to live with her aunts.
Nellie is a competent dressmaker and her current job is to sew Valerie Mander’s dress for her engagement party. Valerie is engaged to GI Chuck and Rita envies her future blissful life in rich America. When Rita meets Ira at Valerie’s, she thinks she’s in love and is ready to a lot of compromise to pursue a relationship with him.
The atmosphere of the book is creepy on several levels. Nellie is stuck into the past and celebrates an unhealthy cult to her dead mother. She longs to meet her again in heaven and worships her mother’s furniture and belongings. Poor Rita must have been raised in a mausoleum.
Nellie refuses to acknowledge that times have changed and would gladly live under Queen Victoria. She despises her sister’s wish for male companionship and ten years ago ensured that she broke up with the man she was dating when he proposed. Now Nellie has decided that Ira won’t do.
The relationships in this family are toxic. Nellie rules the house as her mother probably used to. Jack is Rita’s father and she calls him “Uncle Jack”, he’s under Nellie’s influence and let go of his parental duties. Nellie and Margo took over.
Margo is a shameless flirt and she could be one of those ridiculous middle-aged persons who think they are still attractive when they’re not. She’s herself and oozes a je-ne-sais-quoi that appeals to the opposite sex, like Brenda in The Bottle Factory Outing. Margo works in a factory, something Nellie finds degrading and bad for her sister’s manners. Margo is more in tune with her time.
Rita is immature and lives in her own head. She loves the idea of Ira more than Ira himself. She doesn’t ask him any question about his life back home and she’s unable to answer simple questions about the man she’s dating such as where he comes from, what is profession is or what his parents do for a living. She intends to marry him and yet has no interest in him beyond the ticket to America he can provide. She’s not even ruthless, she deludes herself into thinking that she wants him when all she wants is his nationality. Like Freda in The Bottle Factory Outing, she wants a man to better herself in life.
The Dressmaker is an excellent picture of Liverpool in 1944, the people’s reactions to the American soldiers stationed in their town, the daily life difficulties and how the war moved the lines between men and women, with women working in factories.
However I felt uncomfortable during the whole story as Bainbridge builds a sense of foreboding. The whole thing can’t end well. I thought it was a lot like The Bottle Factory Outing. I’m not fond of the atmosphere of her books. She captures the daily lives of her characters very well but they all have something off and disquieting. There’s this feeling of domination, of sexual tension and abuse. Nellie is a dominating creep, Margo sounded better except for her disconcerting flirting choices, Jack is a wimp and Rita grew up among these disfunctioning adults and is a mix of cunning and naiveté.
The whole picture is chilling and while I’m aware that Bainbridge is an excellent writer, I don’t enjoy her books very much.
Three novellas with war as a background – Uhlman, Zweig and Rigoni Stern #NovNov23
- Reunion by Fred Uhlman (1971) French title: L’ami retrouvé. Translated by Léo Lack
- Chess by Stefan Zweig (1942) French title: Le joueur d’échecs. Translated by Jacqueline des Gouttes
- Story of Tönle by Mario Rigoni Stern. (1978) French title: Histoire de Tönle. Translated by Laura Brignon
November is German Lit Month and Novellas in November #NovNov. I managed to combine the two events with Fred Uhlman, a German who wrote Reunion in English after he emigrated to UK and the classic Chess by Stefan Zweig.
I received Story of Tönle by Mario Rigoni Stern through my Kube subscription and although it’s an Italian book, it goes well with the others as it is linked to Austria.
Fred Uhlman (1901-1985) was born in a Jewish middle-class family in Stuttgart and left Germany in 1933 after Hitler took power. He wrote Reunion in 1971 when he was 70, which explains the nostalgic tone of the book when he describes his hometown and Wurtemberg.
Hans Schwarz was a student at the Karl Alexander Gymnasium in Stuttgart in 1932 when a new student joined their class. Uhlman starts with a powerful paragraph, that sets the tone of the novel.
He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again. More than a quarter of a century has passed since then, more than nine thousand days, desultory and tedious, hollow with the sense of effort or work without hope – days and years, many of them as dead as dry leaves on a dead tree.
I can remember the day and the hour when I first set eyes on this boy who was to be the source of my greatest happiness and of my greatest despair.
“He” is Graf Konrad von Hohenfels, an aristocrat, an adolescent who comes from a totally different background from Hans. And they become best friends until History comes in their way.
In a mere 120 pages, Uhlman manages to combine the story of a life-changing friendship, the implacable march of History and an ode to his hometown as he describes the beauties of Wurtemberg.
Hans and Konrad don’t run in the same circles. Their improbable friendship is based on shared interests and matching tempers. Hans looks up to Konrad who comes from a family with a prestigious past. It’s a strong bond and Hans says he was ready to die for his friend.
There’s a Proust feeling in this book and it is explicit when Hans mentions the Duchesse de Guermantes. Indeed, In Search of Lost Time pictures Swann, a Jew and close friends with the Guermantes until the Dreyfus affair. Proust’s narrator is as dazzled by aristocratic clout as Hans. In chapter 12, another reminder of Proust’s narrator: Hans tells an adecdote. His mother, all dressed up for ball, comes to kiss him goodnight before going out. It upsets Hans deeply and it reminded me of the beginning of Swann’s Way.
It could have been a Bildungsroman. But we’re in 1932 and the Nazi infiltrate the German society and reach the classrooms of their gymnasium. Families are split, teachers bring Nazi views in class, students start bullying Hans. In a few pages, we see a peaceful microcosm caught up by external evil forces. Propaganda turns people’s heads and in the blink of an eye, Hans turns from anonymous student to pariah. People change rapidly and we ought to remember that.
My friend’s daughter read it in school a few weeks ago and I’m glad her teacher picked it for their class as it is a literary gem and a good book to discuss. It is also a perfect companion book to Address Unknown by K. Kressman Taylor.
After Uhlman, I read Chess by Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), written during WWII. It also refers to Nazi persecutions albeit in an oblique manner. (Is that a chess-like literary move?)
We’re on a liner between New York and Buenos Aires. The narrator spots Mirko Czentovic, the world’s chess champion. He and a few fellow passengers challenge him to a game of chess.
During the game, another passenger, Doctor B. arrives, gives them pointers, and helps them win. Then Mr. B explains to the narrator how he became knowledgeable in chess when he was kept by the Gestapo in Vienna. Before the novella circles back to present time, Zweig leaves enough room to B to describe the mental torture he endured in detention.
Chess is Zweig’s last book, it was published in 1943 after he committed suicide in exile. I didn’t enjoy it as much as his other books I’ve read, probably because lots of chess references were lost on me since I don’t play the game.
After Chess, I moved to Story of Tönle by Mario Rigoni Stern (1921-2008). He’s an Italian writer, a WWII veteran and born in Asagio, in North East Italy, near the Austrian border. His work is laced with autobiographical elements.
Tönle was born in the 1850s on the Asagio plateau. He’s a shepherd who smuggles goods from Austria through the mountains. One day, he gets caught, injures a gendarme, and has to hide away.
For years, Tönle crosses the Austrian border and works somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian empire. He comes back to his village during the winters, brings money, hides in his home, spends time with his family and leaves again in the spring. It lasts until the king has a newborn and decides of an amnesty. (I guess it was in 1904). Tönle resumes his life as a mountain shepherd.
The news of the beginning of WWI reach the village and the reality of war catches up with the villagers. They are at the Austrian border and severe battles happened in the area such as the Battle of Asagio.
Tönle is a man of his time and of his birthplace. He was a soldier in the Austrian Landwehr and then in the Italian Alpini after the independence of Italy (1870). He was also born in the vast Austro-Hungarian empire and borders meant nothing. He was free to work in Vienna or Prague if he wanted to. Tönle speaks a local dialect with German roots. He also speaks German, Italian and Czech. It comes with the territory, people who live close to borders often speak several languages and cross borders in their daily lives. Until his death, Tönle remains a free spirit, an obstinate shepherd without borders, in love with his village, his house and his mountains.
Story of Tönle is only 120 pages long and like Reunion or Chess, it describes how History impacts common people. It was interesting to read about WWI in Italy. It is also a beautiful ode to Asagio and this mountain region. Rigoni Stern was an avid hiker, he was in the Alpini himself and loved his region. His novella sings the beauty of the mountains and pictures a lost world, the peasant and mountaineer way-of life of the turning of the 20th century. It reminded me of Ramuz.
It also reminds us that borders are political decisions that impact the people who change of countries according to the time but to an extend keep their identity and traditions. The Eastern border of France means exactly that: being German or French (Alsace & Moselle), belonging to Italy or France (Nice/Savoie) For Tönle, borders mean nothing but constraints. Until the end, he’ll play them and acts as if they don’t matter. Highly recommended.
Story of Tönle is close to Austria with its Asagio cultural background and this is why it belongs to this German Lit Month post.
Incidentally, the writers of these three novellas were born 20 years apart: Zweig in 1881, Uhlman in 1901 and Rigoni Stern in 1921.
From light to unbearable darkness, from Voltaire to obscurantism. – Cossery, Zeller and Rahimi
- Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery (1955) Original French title : Mendiants et orgueilleux
- The Fascination of Evil by Florian Zeller (2004) Original French title: La Fascination du pire.
- The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (2008) Original French title: Syngué sabour. La pierre de patience.
Serendipity brought these three books on my To-Be-Reviewed pile at the same time. I read Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery as part of my Sister-In-Law readalong. I picked The Fascination of Evil by Florian Zeller and The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi for Novellas in November. After the Cossery, I read the Zeller because it’s been on the TBR for ages and I wanted to clear it from the pile. I read the Rahimi after Lisa’s strong reaction to it when I published my pile of books for #NovNov23.
And I see a link between these books, a sickening progression from a free society to intolerance dominated countries.
Albert Cossery (1913-2008) was an Egyptian-French writer. Born in Cairo, he lived most of his adult life in Paris, wrote in French but all his novels are set in Egypt or in an imaginary country of the Middle-East. (A bit like L’Autre by Andrée Chedid, who was also born in Egypt) For readers who have read Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi, Cossery was also part of Charlot’s roster. He knew a lot of the literary crowd back in the day and the foreword of Proud Beggars is by Roger Grenier, one Gary’s closest friends.
Proud Beggars takes us to Cairo in the 1950s. Gohar, a former university teacher has decided to leave his world behind. He doesn’t want to take part in the bourgeois society he comes from. He rejects their way-of-thinking, their attachment to property and their hypocrisy. He lives in a dirt-poor neighborhood in Cairo, does a bit of accounting for a madam and is addicted to hashish.
His days revolve around the café des Miroirs, where he holds court and meets with his acquaintances. He’s a sort of legend, seen as a wise man. There’s Yéghen, an ugly man who sells hashish, El Kordi, a foolish young civil servant in love with a tuberculosis-stricken prostitute, Set Amira, the madam he works for and later in the book, Nour El Dine, a police officer.
Gohar does his best to cut himself off of every material need, sleeps on old newspapers, and eats when he can. But he’s addicted to hashish and his need will lead him to murder Naïla, a girl in Set Amira’s brothel, blinded by her gold bracelets and wanting to steal them to buy drugs. Sordid. (This “blinded by the sun moment” sounds lot like Meursault in L’Etranger, no?)
So, Gohar failed to live untethered, despite his efforts.
Nour El Dine is on the case and he still believes in his job, not sparing his time and energy to discover who murdered Naïla, even if she’s only a prostitute. Nour El Dine is a homosexual and he’s struggling to reconcile his true self with his job. He has affairs in grim places in Cairo because he’s always worried that someone will recognize him. His enquiry will bring him to Gohar’s circle and their discussions will challenge him and his vision of the world.
Roger Grenier writes in the foreword that Proud Beggars was an oddity when it was published. It promoted the idea of chosen destitution when France was vibrating with economic growth and the need to rebuild the country after the war.
Proud Beggars is also an extraordinary description of the popular neighborhoods in Cairo. It’s really worth reading for the sake of the feel of the town, for the colorful description of Gohar’s crowd, their optimism and their pride. It will appeal to Mahfouz’s fans. Gohar, El Kordi, Yéghen and Nour El Dine walk around a lot and Cossery takes us to a journey among the poorest people of the city.
And let me tell you one thing, religion is not the center of their world. Sure, women are not as free as men, like in books by Naguib Mahfouz but there is no feeling of political and religious oppression, only restrictions due to customs. Gohar is a universalist, someone who loves his freedom of thinking and of being. He has Voltaire as a cultural heritage, on top of his Egyptian background. He’s still a child of the Enlightenment.
This is far from the atmosphere of Cairo in The Fascination for Evil by Florian Zeller. It was published in 2004, so, after 9/11 and a decade before the terrible terrorist attacks in France. I was annoyed with this book. The set up is the kind of French novel I don’t care much about and that only France seems to father.
Two writers are invited to a literary festival in Cairo, the narrator and a francophone Swiss writer Martin Millet. The narrator has a real fondness for Egypt and is open-minded. The Swiss writer is obsessed with sex, with finding hookers or getting laid with a local and all the pyramids and the literary talks of the world could not derail him of that track. A wonderful person, this Martin.
The French embassy in Cairo babysits our two writers and one of the embassy team members says right away that there is no way to find girls the way Martin suggests. They still embark on an embarrassing night on the town looking for booze and ladies. That annoyed me a lot. All this masculine entitlement to sex and its stale smell of white colonialism. It creeped me out.
The second part of the novella is set in Paris, in the aftermath of a book by Martin Millet and the narrator (and the author) discuss the growing place of radical Islam in Europe and the issue of the compatibility of Islam with democratic values. That part was interesting especially knowing what happened afterwards: the Arab Spring in 2010, the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice in 2015 and 2016. Zeller keeps the discussion open and level-headed. He’s not Houellebecq with his stinking views. He’s more analytic and questioning the attitude of the French intelligentsia.
This obsession with sex and the discussion about sex in Muslim countries make me ill-at-ease, as if the sexual liberty or lack of in these countries explained everything. As if this topic overran anything else and were the crux and the root cause of all the power of radical Islamism.
I felt ill-at-ease too when I read Veiled Hookers Will Never Go to Heaven! by Chahdortt Djavann, a novel that deals with the constant sexual assault on women in Iran and the hypocrisy of the chastity belt imposed by the regime. It’s as if sexual freedom was the mother of all freedoms and as if it were women’s main concern and combat. No doubt, being safe from sexual assault is a priority, that’s a given.
But crude language and sex is also the angle Atiq Rahimi chose in The Patience Stone. Reading it, I understand why mild-mannered Lisa was so outraged. (Her review is here.)
We’re in a country at war, probably Afghanistan. A woman is stuck in her home with her children and her unresponsive husband who was injured at war. He seems to be in a coma and she takes care of him. For once, he’s at her mercy and she starts telling her life of humiliations.
Good premises for a book. Except that the author ruins this perfect opportunity to champion the cause of Afghan women by dwelling too much on sex.
Fair enough, the control over women’s bodies is the most appalling part of the Taliban regime. Sex is a tool of domination and our narrator reveals that her life revolves around sex: she must be a virgin at her wedding day, neighbors spy on her, she must get pregnant or might be repudiated and she’s under her in-laws’ rule.
This woman was subjected to terrible humiliations and her story is awful. However, the way she tells it does not sit right with me. She never says she longed to go to school, to be free to ride a bike or whatever innocent or futile things are forbidden to women in these countries, to go out on her own and speak freely. Simple things women in these countries must long for. She never mentions what her dreams were before her parents married her off to a man who wasn’t even there on their wedding day.
I can’t pinpoint precisely what bothers me but I can’t help thinking that only a man could write something like that. The woman’s voice is powerful, and sometimes I thought of Marguerite Duras and especially of Hiroshima mon amour. It’s a bit staged like a theatre play or a film. (It was made into a film, btw.) It feels fake, maybe that’s the issue. And see the cover of the book: it features the husband, and not the woman who narrates the story!
All these books have writers who don’t live in the country featuring in their books, either because they emigrated or because they were traveling. There’s nothing wrong about that but it’s good to keep it in mind.
These three books all talk about prostitution and the society of their time. Religious restrictions seem to strengthen as the years go on. Cossery reminds us that Egypt used to have a more secular society than now. The contrast between the atmosphere in Cossery’s Cairo and the wartime in Kaboul show that Islam isn’t the root of the problem, it’s what people make of it when they exploit religion to highjack political power in a country.
Novellas in November :Three Chinese novellas. #NovNov23
The list of novellas I chose for Novellas in November include three Chinese ones and I decided to do a group post.
- Children of the Bitter River by Fang Fang (1987) French title: Une vue splendide. Translated by Dany Filion.
- Treasury Map by Mo Yan (2004) French title: La carte au trésor. Translated by Antoine Ferragne.
- My Life by Lao She (circa 1936) French title: Histoire de ma vie. Group translation.
Unfortunately, the Fang Fang is out of print in English and I don’t think that the Mo Yan has been translated into English at all. The Lao She is available in ebook.
Let’s start with Children of the Bitter River by Fang Fang. She’s a writer from Wuhan, you know, were COVID started.
The narrator of this novella is Brother Number Eight, the youngest child of a poor working-class family in Wuhan. He died in infancy and was buried outside their home. His ghost witnessed the lives of his family members.
The siblings have numbers or nicknames. We have Big Brother, Brother Number Two, Brother Number Three, Brother Number Four, Brother Number Five and his twin Brother Number Six, Brother Number Seven and two girls, Big Perfume and Little Perfume.
The family lives in a shabby cabin by the railroad tracks and the walls shake each time a train goes by. The father loves to fight, beats up his wife and drinks. The mother is a flirt and under her husband’s spell. Both parents aren’t strong and loving caretakers for their children.
Brother Number Eight narrates the story of his family, focusing on the rise of Brother Number Seven, now a big shot in the area. He was beaten up by his father and nearly died of his injuries, had to sleep under the bed. Brother Number Eight explains how he escaped.
We hear of the destinies of the other siblings too and their different stories also browse through the history of China from the 1930s to the early 1980s. The tone of the narration is deceptively sweet and naïve. Brother Number Eight talks like a child and narrates the worst horrors in a candid tone. He doesn’t know anything else and relates events in a matter-of-fact tone that becomes funny but remain poignant.
Very highly recommended.
Treasury Map by Mo Yan is totally different and as weird as its French cover.
It’s set in Beijing, in the early 2000s, even if it’s not clearly said.
The unnamed narrator stumbles upon Make an old schoolmate from the countryside. Make forces the narrator to take him to lunch. He just threatens to couch surf at his apartment for an indefinite period of time. The narrator thinks he’d rather feed him now than introduce him to his wife.
They end up in a ravioli joint held by an old couple. The whole novella happens in this restaurant, from the crazy interactions with the owners to Make’s verbal logorrhea over their lunch. Make talks all the time, telling incredible stories about his life and everything is totally invented.
It’s fun because it’s bonkers but I found it tiring after a while.
The last novella is My Life, an older book by Lao She. It was written circa 1936 according to the book description on Amazon.
An old man reflects on his life. He lives in a hutong, the poor neighborhoods in Pekin. (Not Beijing yet!) He has little education and started out as an apprentice in paper crafts. What’s that? It’s a long-gone art related to Chinese traditions, like this one for funerals:
One of the traditions was to make a paper mock-up that looked like a backward-facing cart as soon as the person breathed his last. Most people don’t know about this tradition anymore. Then, on the third day after the death, the family would typically request a bunch of paper goods to burn to honor the dead. These include paper horses and carts, paper fairies, paper flags and paper flowers.
Fascinated stuff. The narrator tells us about his later career as a police officer, how boring it could be and how little money he made. He barely managed to support his family.
He lived through troubled times in China and he refers to the political changes and upheavals the country went through, like the end of the Empire. I enjoyed this novella for the journey into the past that it brings us. The narrator describes popular neighborhoods in Pekin and their way of living. He takes us to a world that no longer exists.
My Life tells the major changes that poor Chinese people experienced from the end of the 19th century to the 1930s. Then Children of the Bitter River shows what happened from the 1930s to the early 1980s. And Treasury Map is after all these changes and Make’s improbable tales and exploits make a link between today’s China and its folk traditions.
It’s Bookworm Month at Book Around the Corner
In the northern hemisphere, autumn has arrived. It’s getting cold, it’s raining and we’ve switched to winter time last weekend. Blankets are back on the sofa, we’ve burnt a few logs in the woodstove and now central heating is on. In other words, it’s perfect time to cozy up at home and read.
Lucky bookworm me, November is a busy month in the book blogosphere. Several events take place this month and there are ways to combine them. Fun times buried in books and interacting with the lovely online book lover community.
First, Cathy and Rebecca invite us to read Novellas in November and leave links here. There are prompts that I won’t be able to join, I’ll stick to reading novels that have less than 200 pages.
I’ve already scoured my shelves and prepared a pile of novellas to choose from. It’s here, if you want to check it out. I know I won’t read them all but I’ve already read seven. #NovNov23
Meanwhile, Lizzy hosts the 13th season of German Lit Month. We are invited to read books originally written in German and books written by German native speakers but in another language.
I’m going to combine German Lit Month with Novellas in November and read Chess by Stefan Zweig and Reunion by Fred Uhlman. I’d love to read The Adventures of Ruben Jablonski by Edgar Hilsenrath but I don’t think I’ll have the time.
Annabel announced Reading Beryl 2023 earlier in the year to read and review books by Beryl Bainbridge. I don’t know if it’s still on. Anyway, it spurred me into reading The Dressmaker that had been sitting on the shelf for a solid decade.
The funny thing is that my French copy has 294 pages while the original in English is 152 pages long. I say that only the original length matters and that it qualifies for Novellas in November.
Marcie at Buried in Print hosts Margaret Atwood Reading Month.
I’ve never read Margaret Atwood and I don’t know why but I find her daunting. I have The Handmaid’s Tale on the shelf but I won’t have time to read it. Unfortunately.
Marcie is a great fan, so check out what she’s up to. #MARM.
Meanwhile, Liz, Frances, Heather, Rebekah and Lisa have set up NonFiction November.
That’s a challenge for me because I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. The prompt for this week is Celebrate you year of non-fiction where we share the most striking non-fiction book of our reading year.
I’ll do it here and urge you to read Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, the book that inspired Scorsese. The TBR includes a short memoir by Philippe Claudel, Le bruit des trousseaux. (The Noise of Keys.) It’s about his experience with visiting prisons. I may get to it this month.
On top of these events, I’ll be reading Deacon King Kong by James McBride with my Book Club and Midwinter by Fiona Melrose with S, my other reading buddy.
For me, November and December are a final rush to read books from the TBR, stay away from bookstores and ensure that my TBR at the end of the year counts less books than on January 1st. It was touch-and-go a couple a months back, I’m on a better track now. This festival of blogging events will help me out. So, It’s definitely Bookworm Month at Book Around the Corner!
What about you? Will you participate to any of these events? Are there other ones I missed?
#NovNov: November in Novellas, I’m in!
Many thanks to Cathy and Rebecca who are organizing November in Novellas once again.
While I won’t have time to do the suggested prompts, I dug into the TBR to pick the novellas there. I won’t be able to read them all but I’ll start with the oldest ones on the TBR and so on.
Here’s my list and we’ll see how many of them I manage to read.
Sorry but some of them aren’t available in English. I’m happy that there are nine different countries represented in my list, it’ll make for good armchair traveling as I plan on staying put until Christmas.
What about you? Have you read any of the books on my list and will you join November in Novellas?
PS : The list as a spreadsheet, if you want to track down some of them in English. Several of the books that aren’t translated into English have been translated into other languages. (Italian, German…)
| Book title in English | Book title in French | Author | Country | Year | # pages (print) |
| Not available in English | Le Messie du Darfour | Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin | Sudan | 2016 | 204 |
| Not available in English | Tenir jusqu’à l’aube | Carole Fives | France | 2018 | 176 |
| In Love | In Love | Alfred Hayes | UK | 1953 | 169 |
| At Dusk | Au soleil couchant | Sok-yong Hwang | Korea | 2015 | 206 |
| Doruntine | Qui a ramené Doruntine ? | Ismail Kadaré | Albany | 1979 | 173 |
| My Life | Histoire de ma vie | Lao She | China | ?? | 116 |
| The Patience Stone | Syngué Sabour | Atiq Rahimi | France | 2008 | 138 |
| Not available in English | La Citadelle des Neiges | Mathieu Ricard | France | 2005 | 114 |
| The Story of Tönle | Histoire de Tönle | Mario Rigoni Stern | Italy | 1978 | 128 |
| Not available in English | Azami | Aki Shimazaki | Canada | 2014 | 130 |
| Reunion | L’ami retrouvé | Fred Uhlman | UK | 1971 | 121 |
| Not available in English | Blizzard | Marie Vingtras | France | 2021 | 190 |
| The Barracks Thief | Un voleur parmi nous | Tobias Wolff | USA | 1984 | 105 |
| The Fascination of Evil | La fascination du pire | Florent Zeller | France | 2004 | 156 |
1969, 2019, 2023: Three French novels.
- The Other by Andrée Chedid (1969) Original French title: L’Autre.
- The Night Eaters by Marie Charrel (2023) Original French title: Les Mangeurs de nuit.
- Gratitude by Delphine de Vigan. (2019) Original French title: Les gratitudes.
We had picked The Other by Andrée Chedid for our Book Club read in June and I’m slightly late with my billet, as usual. Andrée Chedid (1920-2011) was an Egyptian-French poetess and novelist of Lebanese descent. Like Albert Cossery, she wrote in French.
The Other is a novella where an old man, Simm catches a glimpse of a young man at the window of the Hôtel Splendide. A few minutes later, an earthquake strikes the village and the house and buildings collapse. Simm knows that the young man who caught his attention is somewhere in the ruins of the hotel.
The rescue teams arrive, do their work and the young man is missing. According to Simm. He’s the only one who’s seen him and who cares. This young man is a foreigner, a Western guy in this Egyptian village. Simm will not leave the premises of the seism until he knows where the young man is.
People think that Simm is crazy, putting himself at risk for someone he doesn’t even know.
Until Simm finds him stuck under a building. A rescue team assesses the situation and concludes that it will take a few days to get to the young man. Simm will stay with him, talk to him, tell him stories to nurture the young man’s hope and keep him alive.
The Other is beautifully written and mixes prose, poetry and artistic layout for the printed text. I’m not sure I understood all the messages that Andrée Chedid tried to convey. Simm reaches out to this young man and his gesture is purely gratuitous. He doesn’t want to be a hero or famous, he doesn’t want the young man’s gratitude. He just wants to do what feels right and it is enough.
In The Other, Simm treats the young man as his own, even if he’s a foreigner. How we welcome and treat foreigners and strangers is also a main topic in Les Mangeurs de nuit by Marie Charrel. Set in British Columbia, her novel covers several periods in time and goes back and forth between the characters and the timeline.
In the late 1920s, Aika is a picture bride: she leaves Kyoto to get married to Kuma, a Japanese who has emigrated to Canada. Her hopes are shattered when she realizes that Kuma is much older than her and that she’ll have to live in the woods, at a woodcutters’ camp. The couple has a daughter, Hannah.
We’re now in the 1930s and the hatred against the Japanese community grows until it reaches its peak during WWII. Hannah, her family and friends are sent to Greenwood, a camp for Japanese living in Canada.
We follow Hannah and the Japanese community’s story along with Jack’s. He’s a creekwalker; his job consists in walking in the woods and counting salmons in rivers to report their number to the administration. The goal is to establish fishing quotas to protect the environment.
Jack never knew his mother but was raised by his father Robert, a white man, and his second wife Ellen, a native Canadian of the Gitga’at tribe. Mark is their son, Jack’s half-brother and the boys were tight until Mark was sent to a boarding school for Indigenous people. He was never the same when he came back and eventually enrolled in the army. He was killed in the Pacific during WWII.
Jack is a solitary man who would like to break through the wall of grief Ellen erected around her after Mark’s death. Jack refuels in the woods, walking with his dogs, observing nature around him and living in an isolated cabin in the woods.
Until he finds Hannah badly injured after a bear attacked her and he’s sure it was by the white bear of the Gitga’at myth. She’s of Japanese descent but to him, she’s only a human who needs help until she can be on her own again and someone who is now marked by the bear.
Kuma told Japanese folks tale to Hannah and Jack listened to Ellen’s stories. Both grew up thinking stories and myths are important.
Les Mangeurs de nuit is well-written but what is it with all these books with short chapters that go back and forth in time? Is it me or it’s like nobody writes stories in chronological order anymore? And these short chapters sound like a creative-writing program’s mantra: a chapter a day makes the writer OK.
So, sometimes I was lost and I felt that the author wanted to tackle too many topics at the same time: the Gitga’at culture and myths and its link to the wilderness, the prejudice against the Japanese and their awful treatment by British Columbia during WWII and the discrimination against Indigenous people and the scandal of the residential system that broke Mark. The book got excellent reviews, my reservations are all mine.
But it is definitely a book about acceptance and generosity and we need them in this world.
Ellen raised Jack as her own. Hannah built a strong relationship with other Japanese women, including former prostitutes. She and Jack bond despite their differences. Jack welcomes her into his home and nurses her. He doesn’t expect gratitude. Like Simm in The Other, he just acts and helps another human in need.
This inherent generosity is also what pushed Mishka into taking care of little Marie, her neighbor’s daughter. They are the main characters of Gratitude by Delphine de Vigan.
Marie’s mother wasn’t able to raise her and Mishka, who had no children of her own, naturally watched and fed and clothed Marie. The little girl needed stability, and Mishka was there for her. She didn’t expect gratitude either but Maris feels thankful. She’s a well-adjusted adult and she knows that Mishka’s steady presence was instrumental to her growing up.
Now Mishka is old, her mind is slipping away from her and she lives in a nursing home. It’s Marie’s turn to take care of her with the help of the medical staff at the home. One of them is Jérôme, a speech therapist who tries to retain Mishka’s ability to speak. After learning about her past during WWII, he will help her settle an important matter. Mishka has gratitude to express and she wants it done before she dies.
Like in The Other or Les Mangeurs de nuit, Gratitude is about human bonding. Helping each other. Choosing oneself a family if the blood one is defective. Sticking together and doing what is right. Celebrating the beauty of human relationships.
Gratitude is also about old age and how people we love may slip away. Marie has to accept that Mishka will die soon. It’s also a heartfelt and accurate description of how our Western societies treat old people and baby them in nursing homes. Except for Jérôme, who loves working in nursing homes and is respectful of his elderly patients:
| Quand je les rencontre pour la première fois, c’est toujours la même image que je cherche, celle de l’Avant. Derrière leur regard flou, leurs gestes incertains, leur silhouette courbée ou pliée en deux, comme on tenterait de deviner sous un dessin au vilain feutre une esquisse originelle, je cherche le jeune homme ou la jeune femme qu’ils ont été. Je les observe et je me dis : elle aussi, lui aussi a aimé, crié, joui, plongé, couru à en perdre haleine, monté des escaliers quatre à quatre, dansé toute la nuit. Elle aussi, lui aussi a pris des trains, des métros, marché dans la campagne, la montagne, bu du vin, fait la grasse matinée, discuté à bâtons rompus. Cela m’émeut, de penser à ça. | When I see them for the first time, I always look for the same image, the one of Before. Behind their vacant gaze, their shaky moves, their crooked body, I look for the young man or the young woman they used to be, like discerning the original drawing under a bad one. I look at them closely and I think: he or she too has loved, yelled, come, dived, run until gasping for breath, leapt up the stairs and danced all night long. She also hopped on trains and metros, hiked in the country or in the mountains. She also drank wine, slept in and talked all night. Thinking about this moves me deeply. |
Delphine de Vigan writes simply and her voice rings true. She expresses what common people feel and think without any literary artifice or device. It’s heartfelt and her characters are plausible. She’s my kind of writer.
Go past appearances and see the human before seeing a foreigner and a stranger, a Japanese emigrant, an Indian or an old lady: this is what these three books have in common.
Simm, Jack, Ellen, Hannah, Mishka, Jérôme and Marie look at someone who needs help and provide help without expecting anything in return. Gratitude isn’t earned or accounted for, it’s given freely.
These three writers seem to tell us that bonding with others outside of mandatory family blood ties is the salt of life. Stating the obvious? Maybe. But reminders to focus on what makes us alike instead of stressing on our differences are never a waste of time. To me, it’s more a promotion of a fulfilling vision of life.
Clean Slate #1 : Catching up with billets before 20 Books of Summer starts.
As often, I read quicker than I write billets. It’s arithmetic. While I love to read after a work day, I can’t stand to open a computer again after the said work day and thus write billets only on weekends. Since there are more working days than weekend days and since I’m sometimes away on weekends, it’s easy to compute that my blogging is always running after the train of my reading.
This month, I’ve decided to cut my losses and write a sum-up post to clean my billet bill and start fresh on June 1st for the 20 Books of Summer challenge.
So, let’s have a tour of the not-reviewed books. It’s not in the order I read them.
First, Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy. (1970) The English translation from the Hungarian is by George Szirtes and the French one entitled Epépé is by Judith and Pierre Karinthy.
I suppose it’s dystopian fiction laced with Queneau and Perec tendencies.
Budai is a well-known linguist who is on his way to a convention in Helsinki. Somewhere along the way he hops on the wrong flight, conks out and arrives in an unknown city. Disoriented, he’s shuffled to a hotel in a country whose language he doesn’t understand. We follow his attempts at finding out where he is, how to communicate with others and find a way to go home. He’s in a metropole that looks like a western city. Very crowded with flows of people going from one place to the other, busy people who never stop to help him.
I’m not sure what Karinthy Junior wanted to say with this book. Denounce the absurd and inhumane life in big metropoles? Tell us something about language? Show us that even the best equipped linguist is at loss if he doesn’t have a Rosetta Stone?
It was fun at the beginning and then I was bored. I finished it thinking “OK, so what?” I’m probably not academic enough to have a coherent analysis of that kind of book. Have you read it? I’d love to discuss it.
The irony here is that Karinthy is Hungarian and speaks a language that is undecipherable for non-speakers. Let’s say you’re French and visit Hungary. If signs are not translated into English or with a pictogram, you wouldn’t be able to find the loo in the airport. That’s how different Hungarian is from French. Maybe Metropole is also a way to point this out.
Among the not-reviewed books are two abandoned books, one from my Kube subscription and the other from my Book Club list. I like to write my thoughts about abandoned books too as it’s good to understand why one couldn’t finish a book.
I received The Fire Starters by Jan Carson (2019) in my Kube subscription. The French title is Les lanceurs de feu and it’s translated by Dominique Goy-Blanquet. To be honest, it’s not a book I would have picked by myself in a bookstore.
The Fire Starters is set in Northern Ireland after the Troubles and features two fathers, Sammy Agnew and Jonathan Murray. The first one sees a bone-deep tendency to violence in his son and wishes he knew what to do. The second one is raising his baby girl on his own and doesn’t want her to look like her mother and hurt other people. The two fathers have something in common, even if they don’t come from the same political sides.
While I was ok with the plot thread involving Sammy Agnew, I couldn’t stand the one with Jonathan Murray and its magic realism elements. I really don’t like books with magic realism, ghosts, sirens and what nots. It put me off the book.
So, we’ll say that the book is good and I’m not the right reader for it. For an interesting and positive review, check out Lisa’s post.
The other book I abandoned was An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. (2018) and according to the blurb, I should have liked this one.
Celestial and Roy are African-American and newlyweds who live in Atlanta. Roy is sentenced to twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit. How do they overcome this?
I probably would have enjoyed it if I hadn’t read If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin. It’s disheartening that Tayari Jones can write the same kind of story in contemporary America, that’s for sure. But after reading Baldwin, a book on the same topic pales in comparison and I wasn’t involved in Roy and Celestial’s story the same way I was in Fonny and Tish’s.
A missed opportunity, I suppose but Karen at Booker Talk wasn’t blown away either.
Amidst this reading slump, I turned to a book about book lovers, that’s usually a safe place to go. Well, not this time.
The bookseller of Selinunte by Roberto Vecchioni (2004) French title: Le Libraire de Sélinonte, translated by Gérard-Julien Salvy
Selinunte is an Ancient Greek city in Sicily. It’s a beautiful place to visit as there are ruins of Greek temples in a beautiful place by the sea. So nowadays, it’s a dead city.
In the book, it’s an inhabited town where a strange bookseller wants people to connect with books. He opens his store at night and reads books aloud. He’s rapidly ostracized by the population. The only one who falls into the cauldron of the libraire’s book magic potion is Nicolino. He sneaks out of his bed every night to listen to books, hidden away from the libraire.
Then the libraire is assaulted and all the population of Selinunte loses the ability to speak. Only Nicolino retains the old words and the ability to speak properly.
We’re back to my issue with supernatural elements or magic realism or whatever the name they have. Or perhaps I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to let myself be caught up by the story. It felt stilted and had this I-want-to-deliver-a-message vibe that put a glass wall between the book and me.
To finish on a positive note, two collections of short-stories I really recommend.
Dog Run Moon by Callan Wink. (2016) French title: Courir au clair de lune avec un chien volé. Translated by Michel Lederer.
Dog Run Moon is a collection of ten short stories by writer and fly-fishing guide Callan Wink. Imagine that you live in Montana, take people fly-fishing and one of your clients is Jim Harrison. Lucky you, right?
Dog Run Moon is full of stories set in Montana and Wyoming, where nature has a front seat in people’s lives and with characters who are a bit bruised and battered.
The stories involve various types of characters who reflect on their lives, find themselves in a difficult situation, make life-changing decisions on impulse. There’s always a dark angle in these stories, with people who live a bit on the edges.
There is definitely something of Jim Harrison in Callan Wink’s writing, that’s for sure. Good for us readers who love Jim Harrison but a tall order for Callan Wink.
The other collection of short stories is…
Dry Rain by Pete Fromm (1997) French title: Chinook. Translated by Marc Amfreville.
There’s almost ten years between the publication of Dog Run Moon (2016) and Dry Rain by Pete Fromm. The collections are equally good but Pete Fromm’s characters are more average people than Wink’s. It makes it easier to relate.
Most of the sixteen stories are first person narratives by a white man. All pictures the narrator and their families at a landmark of their lives. It’s not a visible landmark like a wedding or the birth of a child. It’s in an internal landmark, an event that can be an anecdote but left a mark on the narrator’s tree of life.
It’s the remembrance of the fear that a father experienced when he lost his son in a corn maze. It’s a chance meeting with a girl that will push the narrator to think about his past. It’s the moment the narrator must acknowledge that his marriage is sinking. You see the drift. Small and big moments that become either a turning point or rearrange someone’s inner pieces.
Pete Fromm writes about us, small people with our average lives and there’s never any contempt. He has affection for people, their little quirks, their flaws and their hard-working lives. He doesn’t imply that they are losers because they didn’t go to university or never left their hometown. (Cf And Their Children After Them by Nicolas Mathieu). This is why I love Fromm’s stories and of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s a skilled writer.
He’s an author I’d love to meet. There aren’t many of them like that but I’m tracking down the Gallmeister newsletters to see if they set up a tour for him in France. He’s probably one of those writers who sell a lot more books in France than in their own country, so we have a chance he’ll come and meet his readers.
Meanwhile, we have his books and I highly recommend these two collections of short stories.
And… Mission accomplished! I’m all caught up with my billets before June starts!
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan – stunning
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2020) French title: Ce genre de petites choses. Translated by Jacqueline Odin.
I owe Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan to my KUBE libraire. I didn’t like Foster that much when I read it and never tried another book by Claire Keegan after. I would have been missing out.
Small Things Like These is set in New Ross, Ireland, in the weeks before Christmas. It’s a busy time for Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man. He runs his company while his wife Eileen runs the house and takes care of their five children. His days are long as he delivers coal supplies to his clients before the holidays.
Among Bill’s clients is the local Magdalene Asylum. The Magdalen Asylums were convents where “fallen” girls were sent and worked for their keep as laundresses. In Ireland, they lasted from 1765 to 1998 according to Wikipedia and were run by the Catholic Church with the approval of the Irish government. They were workhouses with terrible living conditions.
One day, Bill finds a girl hidden in the convent’s coal shed who asks him about her baby. He’s deeply moved and can’t turn a blind eye to this young woman’s predicament. Indeed, Bill’s mother was a single mum, a perfect candidate for the Magdalene system.
Furlong had come from nothing. Less than nothing, some might say. His mother, at the age of sixteen, had fallen pregnant while working as a domestic for Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside of town. When his mother’s trouble became known, and her people made it clear that they’d have no more to do with her, Mrs Wilson, instead of giving his mother her walking papers, told her she should stay on, and keep her work. On the morning Furlong was born, it was Mrs Wilson who had his mother taken into hospital, and had them brought home. It was the first of April, 1946, and some said the boy would turn out to be a fool.
Bill’s and his mother’s life wouldn’t have turned out so well without Mrs Wilson. He knows he could have ended in the system. For Bill, it’s time to give back. For Eileen, it’s better not to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. The Sisters at the convent are powerful and it’s better not to cross them.
Small Things Like These is a tour de force. In only 117 pages in French (less in English), Claire Forster manages to write a fully-formed story about a family, a man’s childhood and these terrible Magdalena asylums.
In a few pages, her characters, the town and the laundry business come to life. I imagined very well working-class Bill, his wife, their children, their home. They work hard to have a decent life and raise their children. They don’t want to stir trouble or be in the hot topic of the town’s conversations. They have a good life and are successful, in a sense that they improved themselves.
Bill is thankful for Mrs Wilson and as an adult, admires what she did for his mum and for him. He knows that having his mum in her home must have made people talk and yet Mrs Wilson did it anyway. He’s thankful for the small things, the little gestures and her rebellious act of keeping this girl and her son in her home.
Through the scenes at the convent, Eileen’s remarks and people’s reactions, we understand that the convent is a place of power. In helping this girl, Bill takes a risk and he knows it but he must to it. For her, for himself and for Mrs Wilson.
The contrast between Bill and the Sisters is striking. They are supposed to be the professional Christians, the experts in generosity and compassion. Yet, they set up a hard, unfair and inhuman system for these poor girls. One can argue that the Irish government and the Catholic Church hierarchy were the actual culprits. Indeed, they are responsible for the material living conditions, for not setting up proper education and for treating these girls as inmates. But each local convent is responsible for its sisters’s behaviour towards these girls. Being nice doesn’t come with a budget or with State allowances. Bill reminds us of the basis of Christianism.
Small Things Like These is an homage to all the quiet people who do the right thing, who help others and don’t make a fuss about it. It’s an ode to the rebels of the quotidian and to daily generosity. People who refuse to look the other way and take action.
Very, very highly recommended.
Thanks, Camille for sending me Small Things Like These in my KUBE package!
Other reviews:
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson – raw sensitivity
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson (2018) Original French title: “Arrête avec tes mensonges” English translation by Molly Ringwald.
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson is an autobiographical novel about his first teenage grand love, Thomas Andrieu, the one that structured his being for the future, whether he wanted it or not. This remained a secret until Philippe meets Lucas, Thomas’s son. Lie With Me tells Philippe and Thomas’s love story, makes it real and alive on paper.
We’re in 1984, in Barbezieux, rural France and Philippe is 17. He’s a senior in high school, in Terminale C., the Maths and Physics major, considered as the elite student track. He has a quiet family life. He knows he’s gay, he’s not open about his sexual orientation but he’s at peace with himself.
Philippe has a major crush on Thomas, who is in Terminale D. They don’t run in the same circles, they don’t talk to each other and Thomas is handsome and always surrounded by girls. In other words, Thomas doesn’t seem to be into boys.
Philippe lives with his unrequited crush until Thomas makes a move.
Their relationship is incandescent, it ignites from nothing and burns high but must remain a secret. Thomas imposes it, Philippe abides by it. They meet in hidden places until they use Philippe’s room when his parents are at work. They don’t talk much at the beginning but open up to each other. Thomas knows from the start that their relationship has an expiry date. Philippe doesn’t.
Thomas is a farmer’s only son. He feels tied up to the land, destined to take over the farm. He’s a good student too but he nixes his rights at a higher education. He feels that he needs to stay and he won’t change his mind. At least, that’s what Philippe perceives. Thomas hasn’t come to terms with his homosexuality. He can’t.
When high school graduation happens and they are separated for the holidays, Thomas knows he will remain in Spain with his mother’s family while Philippe expects him to come home and is crushed by the pain he feels when he understands he won’t see Thomas anymore.
| A la rentrée de septembre, je quitte Barbezieux. Je deviens pensionnaire au lycée Michel-de-Montaigne à Bordeaux. J’intègre une prépa HEC. Je débute une nouvelle vie. Celle qu’on a choisie pour moi, je me plie à l’ambition qu’on nourrit pour moi, j’emprunte la voie qu’on m’a tracée. Je rentre dans le rang. J’efface Thomas Andrieu. | At the beginning of September, I leave Barbezieux. I go to college at the Lycée Michel-de-Montaigne in Bordeaux, working toward a graduate degree in business. I begin a new life, the one that was chosen for me, bowing to the hope and ambition that have been placed in me. I erase Thomas Andrieu. (*) |
Besson describe their doomed love story with a perfect mix of openness and reserve. He looks at his younger self with the lucidity and indulgence of the adult. He writes about young love and raw desire the way Marguerite Duras writes about it in The Lover. Hidden love, impossible love and no feelings put into words. Feelings are told with their bodies. Besson blends immodest lovemaking and modest sensitivity and connects his reader with the pure beauty of his first love and the devastation it left in his soul when it ended.
Besson perfectly gives back the early 1980s in France. The Jean-Jacques Goldman posters on the walls in Philippe’s room. The clothes. The atmosphere at the high school and at home. His father is a primary school teacher, which gives Philippe the status of the teacher’s son and academic success is important at home. School is a social ladder.
Although I’m several years younger than Besson, we still have some things in common. A shared love for Veiller tard by Jean-Jacques Goldman. Same school track in high school and after. Same kind of family background. I bet he knows the scent of the spirit duplicator that all teachers used at home at that time. Ask about it to any teacher’s child born in the 1960s-1970s and they’ll know.
These years are the end of innocence, before AIDS. When I was Philippe’s age in the book, the AIDS epidemic was a major topic. The only good thing about AIDS is that it put homosexuality in the open. In the early 1990s, it gave us Philadelphia and showed a couple of gay men living normal lives and not Cages aux Folles lives. In France, we were reading To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Hervé Guibert and watching Les Nuits fauves by Cyril Collard. 10/18 published The San Francisco Chronicles by Armistead Maupin. Philippe Djian had gay characters in Maudit Manège. Both were huge successes.
But before AIDS became a hot topic, during Philippe and Thomas’s years, no one talked about homosexuality. After reading this book, I wonder who were the Philippe and Thomas in my school. Statistically, they exist and I’m sorry that they had to hide.
The English title of Besson’s novella has a double meaning: “tell lies with me” and “lie with me in bed” and both meanings are relevant. The French title is Arrête avec tes mensonges, which means Stop with your lies. Besson’s mother used to tell him that when he was inventing stories about the people around him. But it’s also addressed to Thomas who wouldn’t stop lying to others and to himself.
Thomas didn’t have the tools to become his authentic self. It’s a personal thing and a class thing. In the paragraph quoted before, the little sentence J’intègre une prépa HEC packs a lot for a French reader or at least for me. It emphasizes the difference between Philippe and Thomas. Philippe will leave home to go to prep school, then will move out of the region to go to a business school and move up the social ladder. Thomas feels that he needs to take over his parents’ farm, not out of love for farming but out of duty. There’s nothing more tying-to one-place than farming.
Lie With Me is a heart-wrenching story of doomed young love and of two men who suffered all their lives about it. One never recovered of being abandoned and not knowing whether he was loved, the other never overcoming his fear of people’s reactions to his sexual orientation.
To me, this novella goes with The Lover by Marguerite Duras and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
The Lover was published in 1984, the very same year Philippe and Thomas relationship happened. Like Lie With Me, it’s an autobiographical novella about a hidden love between teenage Marguerite Duras and a rich Chinese man. It’s about raw desire, the inexplicable force of attraction that draws to each other two people from very different backgrounds and who brave social conventions to be together.
The Lover has a detached narrator/author, a girl who puts up mental barriers and doesn’t want to voice her love for this Chinese man because it’s taboo, because it’s doomed and because the idea of its ending hurts too much.
In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer condemns himself to live someone else’s life because he knows his limits. He won’t change and he’s not strong enough to live through the social and family disgrace that will come with marrying Ellen Olenska. Thomas reminded me of Newland: he knows his limits too and he’s the one who makes the difficult decision.
It is a truly beautiful novella, made into an excellent film by Olivier Peyon even if the storytelling varies from the book. Besson worked on the screenplay, so, he approves of the changes. Guillaume De Tonquédec plays an incredible Philippe Besson. He looks like him it’s confusing.
I read the book and watched the film the day after. Even if the film is good, nothing compares to literature when it comes to conveying subtle details about people’s souls.
Many thanks to Kim who took the time to find the English translation of the paragraph quoted before. I wondered how the translator had fared with the “prépa HEC” phrase. She remembered to look for it when she was at the library and you’ve got to love the international book community for having an Australian in Perth checking out a paragraph for another reader in France. Book lovers rock! Kim’s review is here , have a look at it.
Jacqui also reviewed it here.
Other billets about books by Philippe Besson:
Crazy me, I’ll do 20 Books of Summer again #20booksofsummer22
I’m crazy busy and yet, I plan on doing 20 Books of Summer again.
Cathy from 746Books is the mastermind behind this event. I could pick only 10 or 15 books but I wanted to have 20 books to choose from and then we’ll see how it goes.
I already have the books from my ongoing readalongs with my Book Club, my sister-in-law, my Proust Centenary event and my non-fiction challenge. That makes seven books.
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (USA)
- Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Pineiro (Argentina)
- The Survivors by Jane Harper (Australia)
- Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer (South Africa)
- Fall Out by Paul Thomas (New Zealand)
- Days of Reading by Marcel Proust (France)
- Proust by Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
In August, I’ll be travelling to the USA, going through Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. I’ve already read The Line That Held Us by David Joy and Country Dark by Chris Offutt. I love to read books about the place I’m visiting, so I’ll be reading:
- Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (Louisiana)
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (North Carolina)
- Serena by Ron Rash (North Carolina)
- Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash (North Carolina)
- All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (Southern Region)
- A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (Appalachians)
- The Cut by George Pelecanos (Washington DC)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Southern Region)
That’s eight more books and some of them rather long. I also wanted to do Liz’s Larry McMurtry 2022 readalong as I’ve had Lonesome Dove on the shelf for a while. That’s two chunky books in a beautiful Gallmeister edition.
And then I’ve selected four novellas, to help me reach the 20 books with one-sitting reads:
- Lie With Me by Philippe Besson (France)
- A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi (Algeria)
- The Miracles of Life by Stefan Zweig (Austria)
- Adios Madrid by Pablo Ignacio Taibo II (Cuba)
I’m not sure I’ll make it but who doesn’t love a little challenge? I’m happy with my choices, a mix of countries, of crime, literary and non-fiction and of short and long books.
Have you read any of the books I picked? If yes, what shall I expect?
If you’re taking part to 20 Books of Summer too, leave the link to your post in the comment section, I love discovering what you’ll be up to.
The Man With the Dove by Romain Gary (Fosco Sinibaldi) – a 1958 satire of the U.N.
The Man With The Dove by Romain Gary (Fosco Sinibaldi) – 1958/1984. Original French title: L’homme à la colombe.
It’s not easy to write a billet about The Man With The Dove by Romain Gary. I tried to pull a Murakami this morning, went for a run and hoped it’d clear my head and help me write a tentative billet about this farce. It didn’t work so you’ll have make do with this billet.
First, a bit of context. Romain Gary first published The Man With The Dove in 1958 and under a penname, Fosco Sinibaldi. At the time, Gary was a diplomat and was a member of the French delegation in the UN in New York. He wasn’t allowed to publish such a book under his real name and you’ll soon understand why. A new version was published in 1984 after his death and under his real name. It’s the version that I have.
If you’ve never read Romain Gary, you need to know a bit about his literary universe and his references. He fought with de Gaulle during WWII, he was an early resistant. He’s a humanist and a promoter of French moto, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. He believes in it and it is etched in his soul. He saw firsthand what communism meant as a diplomat in Bulgaria. He’s fond of the comedia del arte and loves the Marx Brothers. He uses humor as a weapon to take the pin out of mentally explosive situations. He has a wicked sense of humor and he’s the epitome of the saying “Many a true word is said in jest”.
Now that you’re aware of this, the book.
The Man With The Dove is set inside the building of the UN in New York. The tone of the book is set from the first pages. The UN is organized in such a way that it seems to take care of problems but does everything not to solve them and drag them as long as they can. That’s how the top management acts. And as always, Romain Gary thinks out of the box and points out:
| A l’autre bout des longs couloirs qui unissaient le bâtiment de l’Assemblée à l’immense tour rectangulaire du Secrétariat, trois mille cinq cents fonctionnaires de toutes les races, couleurs et croyances, continuaient à résoudre tranquillement, jour et nuit, pour leur propre compte, tous les problèmes d’amitié entre les peuples, de coexistence pacifique et de coopération internationale dont leurs chefs débattaient en vain depuis plus de dix ans, dans les salles de conférences et les réunions de l’Assemblée. | At the other end of the long hallways that connected the building of the Assembly to the huge square tower of the Secretary, three thousand and five hundred civil servants of all races, colors and beliefs quietly kept solving, night and day, on their own account, all the problems of friendship between nations, of peaceful coexistence and international cooperation that their bosses had been debating upon in vain since more than ten years in conference rooms and Assembly meetings. |
The introduction of the book is clear: the UN works on its own, goes through the motions of taking care of international issues but does whatever it takes not to solve them. It is a theatre where the American-Russian relationship is staged and choregraphed, where everything is done to avoid any kind of escalation. It’s a comedy and the hustle and bustle is more about communication than a real attempt at efficiency.
The novella opens on a scene among the top management of the UN. The Secretary-General Traquenard (Trap) and two trustworthy members of his team, Bagtir, known for his calm and Praiseworthy, known for his prudence have a crisis meeting.
Traquenard and his men have a new problem: the building seems to have a new unofficial tenant. A man with a dove occupies a room in the building, one that is not on the map and he was seen wandering in the hallways, presenting his dove to secretaries and other staff members. They want to track him down. This mysterious character with the dove is Johnnie Coeur, supported by other outsiders of the building, a Hopi chief, three illegal gamblers who are there for the diplomatic immunity granted by the international zone of the building and a shoeshine-man. Johnnie is in search of a grand scam.
| Le sourcil froncé, il rêvait de commettre, lui aussi, quelque immense escroquerie morale, quelque abus de confiance prodigieux, pour se venger de ses illusions perdues et pour montrer qu’il était complètement guéri de ses errements idéalistes. | With his brow furrowed, he dreamt of committing some sort of huge moral scam, a phenomenal breach of trust that would avenge his lost illusions and would show to the world that he was totally healed of any idealistic wanderings. |
And light bulb! Johnnie will simulate a hunger strike. With a little help from his friends, he’ll pull it off so well that things won’t turn out the way he thought.
The Man With The Dove was written in 1958, rather at the beginning of Gary’s literary career. It announces the themes of The Ski Bum and the ferocious tone of The Dance of Gengis Cohn. It reflects Gary’s disenchantment with the power of diplomats and international institutions.
| Et oui, que veux-tu, c’est une chose qui arrive fréquemment aux Nations Unies. Les choses les plus concrètes deviennent ici des abstractions—le pain, la paix, la fraternité, les droits de la personne humaine—les choses les plus solides se volatilisent et deviennent des mots, de l’air, une tournure de style—on en parle, on en parle et à la fin, tout cela devient une abstraction, on peut passer la main à travers, il n’y a plus rien. | What can I say? It’s something that happens frequently in the UN. The most concrete things become abstractions here –food, peace, fraternity, human rights—the most solid things vanish into thin air and become words, a breeze, a turn of phrase. People talk about them, again and again and in the end, all this becomes abstract, you can stick your hand through it, there’s nothing anymore. |
Now you see why he couldn’t claim this book as his own when he was a diplomat. He spoke several languages, and was fluent in French, English and Russian. I can’t imagine what kind of conversations he overheard in the hallways and in meetings, with people unaware that he could understand them.
The Man With The Dove is a farce that rings true. It’s even prophetic. We saw the inefficiency of the UN peacekeeping forces during the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The UN is powerless against Putin and doesn’t help Ukraine now.
In 1958, thirteen years after the UN was founded, Gary’s analysis was that it was a cynical farce and he decided to take it at face value and actually wrote one.
Book Around the Corner 