Dancing Mad God

I finished nine books in March, five as part of my monthly topic — SF/F. Half by women/POC, just two German, and on Portuguese. A quiet month, but several are still in-progress!

• The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas — Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, tr. Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
• The Tombs of Atuan — Ursula K. Le Guin
• Não Fossem as Sílabas do Sábado — Mariana Salomão Carrara
• A Buyer’s Market — Anthony Powell
• Monde vor der Landung — Clemens J. Setz
• Das Einhörnchen, das rückwärts leben wollte — Walter Moers
• Absolution — Jeff Vandermeer
• The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4 — Mahvesh (ed.)
• The Autistic Brain — Temple Grandin and Richard Panek

One of the distractions from my planned topic was the first Portuguese in Translation book club work, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. I’d read the old translation (Epitaph of a Small Winner), but I got a lot more from it this time — I’m not sure how much because of the translation itself, but the translator’s notes and introduction were enlightening on the satirical aspects. Normally we talk to the author and translator in the meetings; this time the author was unfortunately not available, but Thomson-DeVeaux made up for it.

Another distraction was A Buyer’s Market, part two of A Dance to the Music of Time. I didn’t like it as much as the first book — the snobbery and racism got a bit wearing — but it is interesting to see the characters beginning to develop.

The third non-project book was my highlight of the month: Não Fossem as Sílabas do Sábado. I chose it almost at random, but I was blown away: it starts with a crisis brilliantly positioned on the edge between tragedy and farce, then traces the consequences over the subsequent decade. The author uses the long sentences which seem to be characteristic of Portuguese particularly well, shaping them to reflect the disorder in the narrator’s life.

My non-fiction book for the month was The Autistic Brain, which spans the divide between popular science and self-help guide reasonably well. The audiobook format made some of the scientific descriptions a little wearing, and the focus on more extreme cases of autism restricted the practical application of much of these sections, but the later sections are considerably broader (often going beyond autism itself).

The Tombs of Atuan is one of the reasons I’d chose the SF/F topic: not for this book in particular, but because I wanted to read more of Le Guin. The second Earthsea book, it follows on from the first only indirectly, which I appreciated as some more subtle world-building. There’s an afterword by Le Guin with some interesting comments on the gender roles, which are still rather of its time.

There were also a couple of book I’d started earlier which this was a good opportunity to finish. Absolution is the fourth book in the Southern Reach trilogy, slotting in as a not quite necessary, but still fascinating prequel. The earlier sections in particular would make more sense on a second reading, so a re-read of all four is on the cards. Full marks also for the design of the book, especially the house centipedes.

One book which I really took too long over is Monde vor der Landung, which I’d been listening to in small chunks since last year. It’s only quasi-SF, being fiction about pseudoscience, gradually darkening in tone as Germany progresses from the 20 to the 30s and early 40s. I became much more involved with the story as it went on, and the destination came into sight.

Lastly, two books of short stories. Das Einhörnchen, das rückwärts leben wollte is another wonderfully-produced book, with a tactile cover and excellent illustrations in the typical Moers style. These stories work particularly well for the reader who’s already read the other Zamonien books (there are non-critical, but fun references), but would also be a good introduction for someone starting to explore the continent.

Finally, The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4 covers an admirable geographic range. One or two of the stories are astonishingly bad, most good, and some excellent (shouts to Vajra Chandrasekera, who I already knew, and Haralambi Markov, who’s a new discovery).

Next month is International Booker month, so I’ll hopefully read the three longlisted novels I possess, plus some by other authors who’ve been short/longlisted over the years. I’m also back on Barthes, though I’m not going to be finishing Das Neutrum next month….

I finished 11 books in February, 8 as part of my Nordic reading month. Only 5 by women/POC, because of the two Jon Fosses (maybe I can count him as one); three in German, one in Portuguese.

• Fair Play — Tove Jansson, tr. Thomas Teal
• Macbeth — William Shakespeare, ed. A. R. Braunmuller
• As doenças do Brasil — valter hugo mãe
• The Details — Ia Genberg
• Nordic Visions — Margret Helgadottir (ed.), tr. various
• Kirio — Anne Weber
• Ich ist ein anderer: Heptalogie III – V — Jon Fosse, tr. Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
• Trilogie — Jon Fosse, tr. Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
• Fruit of Knowledge — Liv Strömquist, tr. Melissa Bowers
• A Doll’s House and Other Plays — Henrik Ibsen, tr. Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik
• The Fish Can Sing — Halldór Laxness, tr. Magnus Magnusson

Starting in the north, Nordic Visions was a great survey, including speculative fiction writers from across the region. The highlight for me was The Wings that Slice the Sky by Emmi Itäranta, a feminist retelling of the Kalevala stories (“Sometimes a woman has no choice but to turn into an enormous bird of prey”). I remembered just enough to enhance the experience, then spent some time with Sibelius while in the mood.

Fair Play sits somewhere betwen being a novel and a collection of stories, being made up of episodes in the lives of Jonna and Mari, a couple who strongly resemble Tove Jansson and her partner. It’s lightly written, and though Ali Smith’s probably right in saying that there are hidden depths, I didn’t personally find it went beyond being entertaining.

West to Sweden and The Details, which is similarly simple in some ways — it’s written in an oral style, and there are,

people filing in and out of my face in no particular order. No ‘beginning’, and no ‘end’, no chronology, only each and every moment and what transpires therein.

Here it does build into something impressive however, as the narrator details four of her significant relationships, with a brilliant twist in the last chapter.

Staying in Sweden, and Fruit of Knowledge is fantastic: a non-fiction graphic novel (as it were), taking us on a tour of the female genitals throughout history. It’s educational and hilarious and terrifying in roughly equal measure, which makes it a pretty good book.

West to Norway, and the two main reasons for my choice of monthly topic: A Doll’s House and Other Plays includes An Enemy of the People, which I wanted to read as theatre homework. It’s the only one of the plays which I’d read before, though only this time did I realise how problematic Stockmann is. Reading the four plays together was a good introduction to the common themes that preoccupied Ibsen.

The other spur for the theme was wanting to read more Fosse, though I only managed two of the three I’d planned. Ich ist ein anderer: Heptalogie III – V is the second part of the Septology as it appears in audiobook format, though it’s not clear if the third part is ever going to appear. I do hope so, as the German narrator is fantastic. The writing style is always on the verge of the absurd, but von Pufendorf carries it off wonderfully. The story is essentially the same as in the first part, though we find out a little more about Asle’s past, but the atmosphere inside his head is the main attraction.

Trilogie was surprisingly different, with plot twists keeping the reader off balance. Like Aliss at the Fire, although it’s short, it has an epic feel to it, and the tripartite structure works very well.

Finally, one long-standing feature of my TBR list, and representing Iceland, The Fish Can Sing, surprisingly translated by Magnus Magnusson. I’d expected something completely different (craggy poverty, heroic suffering); what I got was ludic absurdity reminiscent of Flann O’Brien.

he had no other news to offer than that it was splendid weather for mice that day; and when that was agreed, he would hasten to add, “Yes, and it’s no worse for eagles”.

I can swear on oath that while I was growing up I never heard the word “happiness” except on the lips of a crazy woman who lodged in the mid-loft with us for a time and who is not mentioned again in this book….

The comedy brilliantly offsets some moving passages about the grandmother in particular:

I was almost grown up before it ever occurred to me, quite accidentally one day, that she might perhaps have a life story like other people. What I have to tell about her here is really how little I knew about her….

… it was not until after I was fully grown that I noticed her sufficiently to feel that I really saw her. Suddenly one day I simply felt that she was probably closer to me than anyone else in the world, even though I knew less about her than anyone else and despite the fact that she had been in her grave for some time by then.

My other German book of the month was Kirio; I didn’t like it as much as Weber’s other work, but considering how good her other stuff is, that’s still well worth reading. The main feature here is the style, with a mysterious narrator calling in other witnesses to take over the story at different points, and larding her general chattiness with English phrases for no very obvious reason.

Also stylistically interestinng is As doenças do Brasil, where valter hugo mãe take the bold step of presenting the early years of the Brazilian colony through the eyes of native villagers. As he explains in his afterword, he’s aiming for poetic effect rather than attempting anthropological accuracy, and in this he definitely succeeds. The language is Portuguese, but not as we know it, with unexplained assumptions and terms which the reader is left on their own to figure out, sci-fi style.

Lastly, there’s not much that needs to be said about Macbeth (technically a re-read, because we did it in school). I read it to go along with the continuing Oxford webinar series, which had a great discussion with Gregory Doran.

Next month is SF/F, ridiculously broad, but it allows me to cover a few books which have been knocking insistently on the door….

I finished ten books this month — eight by POC/women, five for my month’s project of South Asian writing, and three in German. No Portuguese this time, but I’m well into a good one.

• Kinder der Befreiung — Marion Kraft (ed.)
• Unser Deutschlandmärchen — Dinçer Güçyeter
• The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste Speculative Fiction. — R. T. Samuel, Rakesh K., Rashmi R.D. (ed.)
• The Saint of Bright Doors — Vajra Chandrasekera
• Eating Sugar, Telling Lies — Kuzhali Manickavel
• Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But… — Gogu Shyamala, tr. various
• Tom Jones — Henry Fielding
• Victory City — Salman Rushdie
• Tintenherz — Cornelia Funke
• A Question of Upbringing — Anthony Powell

Starting with the South Asians, the main trigger was The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste Speculative Fiction, which I’d sponsored as a kickstarter and was happy to see appear in my inbox at the start of the month. It’s a wonderfully mixed bag: normally when one says that, it’s a criticism (and yes, the quality was variable, and not everything was my bag of tea), but the variety here is very much a feature. There are translations from many Indian languages as well as stories written in English, which helps to ensure the wide range of experiences represented despite the rather niche-seeming title. Melonhead by Nabi H Ali, and Pruning Neurons (Esther Larisa David) were two of my highlights.

Also appearing in the Blaft book was Gogu Shyamala, but I liked the stories in Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But… much more. The structure takes some getting used to, resembling oral storytelling rather than the more obviously crafted “short story” one is used to, but they are a fascinating look at a very alien culture. It often felt like science fiction, where the strangeness of the characters’ thinking is part of the appeal. The pleasing bafflement was also an effect of the translations including many untranslated Telugu words, which are explained at the back of the book in a glossary (not easily accessible on kindle), but I was happy to let wash over me. (I do have a problem with the very formal register used for some of the translations, but let’s not be picky.)

The other main spur for the topic was The Saint of Bright Doors, which I’d already bought and had been reading about for quite a while. It’s an extraordinary book — Chandrasekera takes the plot on some big swings, the ever-expanding prison camp and the big twist near the end being particularly effective. Like all the best fantasy/magic realism, the weirdness is always a way of writing about the real world and possible real worlds too; this is what a book should be.

Chandrasekera put me on to Kuzhali Manickavel in his acknowledgments, so another thing to thank him for. Eating Sugar, Telling Lies is a short story, but it leaves enough unexplained (and that’s quite a lot) to give the impression of something much more substantial. Again the surreal is rooted in economic and social injustices which give bite to the satire.

Last instalment for my South Asian trip was Victory City, and it was OK. As in all the post Satanic Verses novels I’ve read, the characters are very cartoonish; that’s not necessarily a problem — cartoons can be fantastic — but it does limit the scope for depth of character and ambivalence. It’s all quite enjoyable, but reading it alongside the Chandrasekera highlighted the gulf between the two in terms of ambition and energy.

January was the end of one stage of the ongoing Kate Briggsathon, in which we read Tom Jones. It was interestingly different from what I’d expected: the essayistic introductions to each book were mostly interesting as well as readable (when he wasn’t being mock heroic), and the plot itself was much tighter than I’d expected (I’d envisaged a series of unrelated picaresque adventures, but everything was quite tightly focused on the central love story). A good example of the long form with only a very slightly saggy middle.

This month was also the start of another group read, of A Dance to the Music of Time. I wasn’t sure whether I’d continue, but I liked A Question of Upbringing enough that I think I will, though the discussions clash slightly with the Shakespeare webinars I also plan to do. The poshness of it was grating at times, especially in the narrator’s (or author’s?) attitude to Widmerpoole and Quiggan, but as with Proust I found it less of a problem than I’d expected. The process of Jenkins looking back at his younger self and watching himself dimly understand things was fascinating.

Turning to the German books, I started Kinder der Befreiung quite a while ago, and finally got round to finishing it before I had to return it to the library. I liked it a lot more than that sounds — the life writing sections were very interesting on life in post-war Germany, and often inspirational on how the German-Americans on both sides of the Atlantic got by. The academic parts were never too dense. I still haven’t read Farbe bekennen, which I’ve been circling round for a long time, but soon….

Unser Deutschlandmärchen is a novel about the experiences of Germany’s most obvious minority group, the Turkish Gastarbeiter and their families. It’s very similar to Vatermal (Necati Öziri), which I also read recently, distinguished mainly by the poetry/song sections which I didn’t really appreciate (probably because I listened to the audiobook, and I’d need to spend more time reading them to process them properly).

Finally, Tintenherz is one of those classic German children’s books I need to catch up on (though this particular one post-dates my youth anyway). The bibliophilia (reminiscent of Walter Moers) is right down my alley, and though the book is far too long (almost 20 hours for an audiobook which isn’t really packed with incident), it picks up well towards the end. I don’t have an urgent need to read the sequels yet, though.

February is Nordic month, partly in the hope that there will be some proper winter to accompany the books, and also to make some progress with my Jon Fosse backlog. Lots of alcoholic spiritual darkness to come.

I finished approximately eleven books this month (counting a series of standalone stories as one): seven by women/POC, and seven also as part of project sacre bleu, my exploration of French literature.

• Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach — Nnedi Okorafor, Falling Bodies — Rebecca Roanhorse; The Long Game — Ann Leckie; Void — Veronica Roth
• A Girl’s Story — Annie Ernaux, tr. Alison L. Strayer
• How to Live Together — Roland Barthes, tr. Kate Briggs
• The Black Incal — Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius, tr. Justin Kelly
• The Long Form — Kate Briggs
• Antichristie — Mithu Sanyal
• Ahnen — Anne Weber
• Contos de Lima Barreto — Lima Barreto
• Schnell, dein Leben — Sylvie Schenk
• Life A User’s Manual — Georges Perec, tr. David Bellos
• Returning to Reims — Didier Eribon, tr. Michael Lucey

Starting with those stories, I was inspired by reading the Scalzi story last month to continue with four more in the series (all by women). The Okorafor confirmed my judgment that I don’t need to read more of her, which is a plus, while the other three were all at least enjoyable. Void was the standout for me, combining an interesting premise (non-instant interstellar travel) with a satisfying murder mystery.

Other non-French books included Antichristie (Deutscher Buchpreis nominated and by the splendid Mithu Sanyal, both good recommendations), which was an absolute hoot. Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and the dead queen Elizabeth all play substantial roles, but at its core this is a book about the Indian independence movement and the role in it of Vinayak Savarkar (new to me). It’s a bit overlong, with a few too many time travel gags, but generally great fun as well as educational.

My short stories and Portuguese book for the month were the Contos de Lima Barreto, which I found rather hard-going. Linguistically they were I think a bit antiquated — good for my vocabulary at least, if I ever come across the words again — and in terms of the content also quite dated. They’re satires of a particular period in Brazilian history which I didn’t find particularly grabbed me from my perspective today.

The Long Form was one of two re-reads, this time as part of the group read of Briggs and Barthes. Reading it along with the other book was a great experience, really bringing out the way that Briggs explores the ideas in Barthes and uses them to devlelop the story.

The first French book, then, and one of the main reasons for the month’s topic, was How to Live Together. Slightly off-puttingly at first, Barthes doesn’t organise his material as part of an argument, instead presenting each topic in alphabetical order. The advantage of this is that the readers can fill in the blanks themselves, and I did find myself thinking about his ideas not just while reading the Briggs novel, but with the other books this month as well.

The other reason for the monthly topic was that I was going to two plays adapted from French memoirs. The first, A Girl’s Story, was the second re-read, and I loved it just as much the second time. Ernaux looks at her past self with just the right balance of empathy and estrangement to present a convincing portrait of “the girl of ’58”.

She is an outsider, as in the novel by Camus that she reads in October, galumphing, moist and sticky amidst the pink-smocked girls, their well-bred innocence and unsullied sexes.

But what is the point of writing if not to unearth things, or even just one thing that cannot be reduced to any kind of psychological or sociological explanation and is not the result of a preconceived idea or demonstration but a narrative: something that emerges from the creases when a story is unfolded and can help us understand — endure — events that occur and the things that we do?

It is the absence of meaning in what one lives, at the moment one lives it, which multiplies the possibilities of writing.

Returning to Reims is a fascinating counterpoint to the Ernaux: Eribon is from a similar region of northern France, working class, but with the added complication (for the time and place) of being gay. The hook for the book is his return to the region after his father’s death, out of which he tells his own story of leaving his class and embracing his sexuality, seen through the lens of Bordieu’s and Foucault’s ideas. The intellectual discussions are illuminating, and added several books to my TBR list!

There is a way in which my daily life is now haunted by Alzheimer’s — a ghost arriving from the past in order to frighten me by showing me what is still to come. In this way, my father remains present in my existence. It seems a strange way indeed for someone who has died to survive within the brain — the very place in which the threat is located — of one of his sons.

Selection within the educational system often happens by a process of self-elimination, and that self-elimination is treated as if it were freely chosen: extended studies are for other kinds of people, for “people of means,” and it just happens that those people turn out to be the ones who like going to school.

People know that things are different elsewhere, but that elsewhere seems part of a far off and inaccessible universe. So much so that people feel neither excluded from nor deprived of all sorts of things because they have no access to what, in those far off social realms, constitutes a self-evident norm.

Even the very word “inequality” seems to me to be a euphemism that papers over the reality of the situation, the naked violence of exploitation. A worker’s body, as it ages, reveals to anyone who looks at it the truth about the existence of classes.

An interest in art is something that is learned. I learned it…. An interest in artistic and literary objects always ends up contributing, whether or not it happens consciously, to a way of defining yourself as having more self-worth.

This observation of Sartre’s from his book on Genet was key for me: “What is important is not what people make of us but what we ourselves make of what they have made of us.”

I’ve had a copy of Life A User’s Manual for perhaps 30 years now, and finally got round to reading it. It turned out to be the perfect time, as it went particularly well with the Barthes. Like the Zola novel “Pot Luck” which Barthes discusses, the book is set in a Parisian apartment building, with chapters set in each room in turn telling the stories of the occupants and their relationships. It toys with the reader’s patience at times (there are many, many descriptions of the furniture and pictures in the various rooms), but it juxtaposes these with plenty of fun stories. The central thread draws the book together in a satisfying way.

Graphic novel (ish — part 1 of 6) was The Black Incal; also French-ish, (written by a Chilean, but drawn by the French Mœbius). While reading, I realised that it’s basically The Fifth Element (not a bad thing), which turns out to have been the basis of a legal saga.

Finally, another good pair, this time of French-German/German-French authors. Ahnen is an exploration by Anne Weber of her great-grandfather’s, and to a lesser extent other ancestor’s lives. In a recurring theme for this month, there’s a blend of story and ideas which she carries off well, though I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as her fiction.

Schnell, dein Leben is intriguing: written in the second person, present tense, it certainly involves the reader very directly (enhanced, not entirely advisedly, by the style of the audiobook’s narration). The story itself is based heavily on various coincidences, but its exploration of recent history is timely.

Next month is basically Palestine (building on #ReadPalestineWeek), though I may divert into Arabic/Middle East more generally if it all gets too much. Also starting the group read of Tom Jones, and I may finish volume 1 of Der Zauberberg in the anniversary year….

I finished a relatively modest nine books this month, including one standalone short story, but six of those were for my Black History Month reading topic, another two by women, and three in German, one in Portuguese (which I read twice!).

• O avesso da pele — Jeferson Tenório
• Secret Lives and Other Stories — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
• Driftglass — Samuel R. Delany
• Iowa — Stefanie Sargnagel
• Mist, die versteht mich ja! — Florence Brokowski-Shekete
• Die schönste Version — Ruth-Maria Thomas
• Red Dust Road — Jackie Kay
• Slow Time Between the Stars — John Scalzi
• Under Our Skin — Joaquim Arena

Starting with that one: I finished O avesso da pele at the beginning of the month after a long pause, then listened to the audiobook to get a better idea of the whole. It’s an odd book, written in the second person addressing the narrator’s recently-murdered father. The narrator himself is strangely sketchy (clearly to put the focus on the father, but he’s not completely transparent), while the father’s tale is an effective balance of personal and political (though as it makes clear, everything is political). The core of the book is the chapter detailing the father’s experiences of being targeted by the police, which is Bolañoesque in its remorselessness.

The last book I read is also originally in Portuguese, and oddly has almost the same title: Under Our Skin (Debaixo da Nossa Pele). Even more focused on race, this is a non-fiction account of the family and wider history of the Cape Verdean writer on the one hand, coupled chapter by chapter with his search for traces of the former slave population in southern Portugal. The historical sections were often eye-opening (notably the former slave who went on to gain a doctorate in the Netherlands for a work defending slavery), while the travelogue sections are evocative of a dying society. The use of racist terms in the text, again clearly intentional, is something I want to find out more about in the Portuguese in Translation discussion next month!

Staying in Africa, Secret Lives and Other Stories is an early collection from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, with all that one might expect — the stories are powerful, but simplistic in comparison with his later work.

Red Dust Road and Mist, die versteht mich ja! are an intriguing pair of memoirs: Jackie Kay was born in Scotland to a Nigerian father and Highland mother, and immediately adopted, while Florence Brokowski-Shekete was born to Nigerian parents in Germany (and so was Nigerian), but was brought up by a foster mother and only adopted as an adult. Kay’s book focuses on her tracing of her birth parents and discovery of the Nigerian side of her family, whereas Brokowski-Shekete concentrates on her childhood in small town Germany and brief, unhappy stay in Nigeria.

Race is less explicitly a topic in Driftglass (a re-read, but from so long ago that much of it seemed new); these are again quite early stories, and variable in quality, but the 60s visions of the future are entertaining. Points also for use of “coolth”.

A mini-project this month was catching up with some of the Deutsche Buchpreis long- and shortlisted books: Iowa was great fun, in a somewhat terrifying way; Sargnagel’s ironic persona is possibly the only sane way to deal with the weirdness of a liberal arts college surrounded by darkest rural Iowa, and she plays the role perfectly:

Ich respektiere Religiosität. Allerdings respektiere ich sie auf dieselbe Art, auf die ich kleinkinder respektiere, wenn sie mir in der Sandkiste einen „Kuchen“ anbieten. Ich schaue anerkennend, agiere so, als würde ihre Fantasie auch in meine Realitaet Eingang finden, und lächle wohlwollend von oben herab.

The footnotes from her travelling companion Christiane Rösinger add another ironic layer to the whole thing.

I accidentally found a great Cottbus writer on the longlist: Die schönste Version takes place in an unnamed town which is suspiciously similar to these parts. Starting with an incident of domestic violence, Thomas leads the reader forwards and backwards to show the effects and the causes (spoiler: the causes are all of German society). At the centre is a sympathetic portrait of the realistically imperfect main character, whose personality comes through brilliantly in the narrative voice. Speaking of voice, the audiobook is excellently performed by Lili Zahavi.

Lastly, a tidger: Slow Time Between the Stars is one of a series of standalone short stories, which covers millions of years in a very modest number of pages. That’s pretty much the point of the story, and this is a great way to experience drifting at high speed in interstellar space.

Next stop is France, in the company of Barthes, Ernaux, probably Perec….

I finished reading ten books this month — just four for my usual diversity goal of women/POC, but eight for my monthly reading topic (LGBT+), three in German, and two (2) in Portuguese.

• Kleinstadtnovelle — Ronald M. Schernikau
• Das Geständnis der Löwin — Mia Couto, tr. Karin von Schweder-Schreiner
• The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House — Audre Lord
• Night Side of the River — Jeanette Winterson
• Um milhão de finais felizes — Vitor Martins
• The Death of Vivek Oji — Akwaeke Emezi
• Der bewegte Mann | Pretty Baby — Ralf König
• Shuggie Bain — Douglas Stuart
• Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai — Gonçalo M. Tavares
• The Female Man — Joanna Russ

Starting with the LGBT books, Kleinstadtnovelle was fascinating. In one respect predictable — the theme of parochial intolerance is exactly what one might expect from the title — the form is initially startling; a stream of consciousness, modernist experience of a gay teenager’s life, with Brechtian kleinschreibung (appropriate for an author who was one of the last emigrants from West to East Germany).

The other German book was my graphic novel of the month, Der bewegte Mann | Pretty Baby. It’s an absolute hoot! The book is a two-parter, telling the story of a (mostly) hetero guy who gets mixed up with a (mostly) gay group, and König takes every opportunity to take the mickey out of both sides. It was also splendid for my knowledge of (80s gay) German slang.

Possibly the best thing about The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House is the title; not that there’s anything wrong with the book, but it is a fantastic title which perfectly summarises a large part of the message. This is a short collection of texts (mostly speeches) by Lorde, and the oral context allows her great rhetorical opportunities, which she’s happy to take:

There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.

There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.

The Female Man is of a similar time, and is as explicit in its engagement with 70s feminism, but this time in the context of a sci-fi romp. Russ has great fun with the narrator as a character in the book, and the constant shifts in voice and narrative style create a sometimes bewildering, but highly enjoyable patchwork:

SOMEBODY ASIDES ME IS GONNA RUE THIS HERE PARTICULAR DAY.

‘I know,’ said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning-machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father’s mannerisms

The Death of Vivek Oji takes place in a very different setting: (small-town?) Nigeria, where a group of young, closeted LGBT people forms around the title character. L G B and T threads all feature in the story, which, set alongside the central investigation of Vivek’s mother, show the importance of not making assumptions.

Shuggie Bain takes place in another now-remote place: the outskirts of Glasgow under the onslaught of Thatcherism. The grimness of the setting and the events is often hard to take, but the central section’s portrayal of Shuggie’s alcoholic mother is very powerful. The social attitudes are also a useful reminder that despite current political horrors, there has been substantial progress in the last few decades.

Night Side of the River does not generally focus on sexuality, though one could draw a parallel with binary distinctions in terms of reality/the paranormal. The paranormal aspect of the stories I had no problem with, but Winterson’s own experiences of the paranormal are interspersed with them, which I found highly irritating (simultaneously credulous and wishy-washy).

The first Portuguese book also fits into the project: Um milhão de finais felizes is the second book I’ve read by Vitor Martins, and it’s very similar to the first. In this case, the protagonist is a teen aspiring-writer with a dysfunctional and homophobic family background. The plot is low jeopardy, mostly just ambling along in the amusing company of him and his friends, which was a pleasant way to spend some time.

The other Portuguese book, Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai is very enigmatic and suggestive: details are deliberately omitted, and there isn’t any conventional plot development. Once one is aware of that and provided one accepts is, there’s a lot to enjoy here: the protagonists meet interesting characters and discuss philosophical ideas in what I imagine is a higher-class Paolo Coelho-manner.

Finally, a re-read, also from the Lusophone world: I enjoyed Das Geständnis der Löwin much more than I had the first time. Now that I had some idea what was going on, I could see much better the relationships between the characters and different aspects of the plot, and the incorporation of Mozambican cultural ideas (helped also by the discussion which the Portuguese in Translation club held with the author and English translator).

Honourable mention also to two LGBT books I didn’t finish in time: On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong, and of course Der Zauberberg.

Next month is Black History Month (UK/Ireland edition), which I’ll be celebrating with mostly German (Afro-Deutsch) history and other literature.

A productive month (not much work!) — 13 books finished, all but two by women/POC, 8 for #WITMonth, 5 in German, one re-read in Portuguese, 2 books of poetry, and one graphic novel.

• Frauen, die die Kunst revolutioniert haben — Valentina Grande and Eva Rossetti, tr. Britta Köhler
• Quinze dias — Vitor Martins
• Against Healing — ed. and tr. Emily Jungmin Moon
• Lichtverhältnisse — Helga Königsdorf
• Ich bedaure nichts und Alles schmeckt nach Abschied — Brigitte Reimann
• Alle Toten fliegen hoch: Wann wird es endlich wieder so, wie es nie war — Joachim Meyerhoff
• The Long Form — Kate Briggs
• The Sun-fish — Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
• Vertical Motion — Can Xue, tr. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping
• Mild Vertigo — Mieko Kanai, tr. Polly Barton
• The Years — Annie Ernaux, tr. Alison L. Strayer
• Wednesday’s Child — Yiyun Li
• DAVE — Raphaela Edelbauer

Starting with the women who were actually in translation, Vertical Motion was a bit of a disappointment. I was very hopeful based on what I’d heard about her, and the title story is a banger, very Kafkaesque in taking an absurd premise, then developing it rigorously. Unfortunately many of the other stories read more like dream sequences, with no internal logic. As so often with Chinese literature, the translation is poor (neither of the translators seems to be primarily either a writer themselves or a translator by profession), especially with dialogue:

“Your absurd argument boggles my mind!”

“What can I do? To be precise, all I’m doing is grumbling about the status quo.”

Against Healing was much more successful: it’s a short (3 poems each from 9 authors) survey of modern Korean women’s poetry. “Body poetry” is a big theme, for example in the great first poem, In Order not to Rot after Death.

I also very much enjoyed the third book fom Asia, Mild Vertigo. Subtly brilliant, this book takes us into the mind of a woman trying to cope with the tedium of being a Tokyo housewife. Inconsequential conversations and manic regurgitaitons create a brilliantly unsettling effect.

The Years is untypical Ernaux, short, but epic. Instead of focusing on one event, she uses her whole life to show French society and the development of its ideas over the course of the post-war period. The book is full of ironic jabs, often at herself (“she”):

“she copies down sentences that tell one how to live, which have the undeniable weight of truth because they come from books”

“On Saturdays, girls in white veils lined up to be married, giving birth six months later to robust ‘premature’ babies.”

“It was normal for goods to arrive from all over the world and freely circulate, while men and women were turned away at the borders. To cross them, some had themselves locked into trucks, inert merchandise, and died asphyxiated when the driver forgot them in a Dover parking lot under the June sun.”

Translated from Italian into German, Frauen, die die Kunst revolutioniert haben is an interesting partner to Against Healing with its body art. Stretching the term “graphic novel”, it’s an illuminating short read and sent me off to find more about each of the artists: Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Ana Mendieta, and the very spiky www.guerrillagirls.com .

Three untranslated WIT (still count, going by the odd-sounding, but fair enough “official rules”): first two from East Germany. Lichtverhältnisse is a diverse collection of stories, ranging from absurdist humour (East Germans causing uproar in heaven) to the elegaic (e.g. the splendid final story, Der Rummelplatz). Ich bedaure nichts und Alles schmeckt nach Abschied dates from slightly earlier, being Reimann’s diaries from the central period of her life (mid to late 60s), as she became a literary star while working in a power plant and living in a council house. She’s infuriating, but wonderfully passionate about love, politics, and books.

Lastly, DAVE is an inconsistent, but enjoyable scifi romp. As a dystopia centred on the development of AI, it’s obviously timely, though the info-dumps are often wearing, and some passages are, as with Can Xue, perilously close to dream sequences. In the end though, it more or less makes sense, and by that stage the reader is ready to understand the beginning. As for why the book is called DAVE, I had to ask the internet for that one.

One more German book, Alle Toten fliegen hoch: Wann wird es endlich wieder so, wie es nie war is the second part of Joachim Meyerhoff’s autofictional series. As with the first volume, most of the book consists of amusing anecdotes about his childhood (living in the grounds of a psychiatric institution led by his father). The latter chapters become increasingly dark, however, with several crises unsparingly, but movingly told.

The Portuguese book of the month was again a re-read, partly as an audiobook: Quinze dias. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the narration, but that’s a minor issue.

I read two books which I describe as WIT-adjacent: The Long Form is not in translation, but Briggs is a woman translator (or “lady translator”, as she ironically has it in her other book, This Little Art). This is an outstanding novel about motherhood, living together, keeping going, and … the novel. A real novel of ideas, it comes with a bibliography worth reading in itself, and which added several more books to my TBR pile. Wednesday’s Child is by Yiyun Li, a Chinese-American who could hardly be more different from Can Xue: the stories reminded me of Alice Munro, with their focus on small-town life and motherhood. Li returns repeatedly to themes from her own life (most obviously Chinese immigration to the US, and suicide), which is hard to dissociate from the work itself.

Finally, the second poetry book (second successive from Ireland): The Sun-fish was, I must admit, often beyond me. The more accessible poems were often beautiful (In the Desert), and there were enough lines and phrases to keep me going, but I’ll need to try it again later.

Next month’s theme is LGBTQ (etc.): I’m already making some more progress with Der Zauberberg, but it won’t be finished….

I finished ten books in July, eight as part of my project for the month — Ireland — five by women/POC, three in German, one in Portuguese.

• Small Things Like These — Claire Keegan
• Irisches Tagebuch — Heinrich Böll
• Collected Stories — Bernard MacLaverty
• The View From Here — Sara Berkeley
• Old God’s Time — Sebastian Barry
• A palavra que resta — Stênio Gardel
• Reichlich spät — Claire Keegan, tr. Hans-Christian Oeser
• The Long Game — Aoife Moore
• The Magician — Colm Tóibín
• Empusion — Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Lothar Quinkenstein and Lisa Palmes

Starting with Ireland, The Long Game is an account of Sinn Fein’s journey from an adjunct of the IRA in the early 70s to being in or near government on both sides of the border. There’s an inevitably large cast, which can be wearying at times, but overall it’s a very readable introduction to the party — Moore makes it clear how weird it can be from her introductory note on sources onwards. The central, contrasting figures of Adams and McGuiness are fascinating.

The Magician is the second Colm Tóibín I’ve read (after Brooklyn), and I still can’t say I’m a fan of his rather flat style. I also thought he doesn’t have a real solution to the problem of a novel about a real-life person, where the story necessarily follows more or less random events. The portrait of Mann as a well-meaning but generally terrible paterfamilias is psychologically convincing, but again the inconvenient facts (in this case the large number of children, who I found hard to keep track of, never mind differentiate) gets in the way.

Old God’s Time is a complete contrast: Barry’s style is spectacular, and he’s not afraid of turning it on even at emotional high-points:

The style meshes well with the story, as the reader is left to deduce what the reality is below the surface brilliance. Some aspects (the Chekhovian gun!) were rather heavy-handed, but that’s a minor niggle.

I’ve been reading Bernard MacLaverty’s Collected Stories for a while, and finished them at just the right time. A lot of the stories have similar themes — childhood and small-mindedness in particular — so I wouldn’t want to read too many together. Throughout, though, there are wonderful descriptions:

“her mouth slightly smiling, yet not smiling — the way a mouth is after smiling.”

“After the bright sunlight it was gloomy inside. It smelt of old and cat.”

“the sneeze as the automatic doors opened and closed.”

The View From Here was another hit — a collection of poetry by an Irish adopted-American, spanning both countries. It struck a perfect balance for me between the comprehensible and the thought-provokingly opaque:

“fierce-eyed, animal soft”

“our shadows crouch like insects and although the screens tell us all trains will be on time it’s hard to be alive.”

Part of the Irish theme turned out to be a mini-Claire-Keegan-fest: I’d been expecting to love Small Things Like These, but I was underwhelmed — perhaps I expected too much. As a few others have mentioned, there’s a Christmas Carol feeling to the portrayal of the family in particular, which I found hard to take. I much preferred the story which I read in translation, Reichlich spät (So Late in the Day), which has a well-judged balance of comedy and horror as we get to know the protagonist.

The last Irish-themed book, Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch, was not quite what I expected: rather than a diary, it’s a collection of sketches based on his experiences, which he then compiled into book form. Again there’s a delicate balance, in this case between realistic descriptions of the poverty which was still widespread at the time (the 1950s), and an appreciation of the humour and warmth of the population, which only occasionally veer into sentimentality. A tramp paying a chip shop-owner twenty shillings to cover the excessive helping of vinegar another customer had appropriated was a particular highlight, combining both elements beautifully.

One last semi-accidental link: Empusion continues the Thomas Mann theme, referencing/parodying Der Zauberberg in a tale of tuberculosis, sexism, and the paranormal. It’s very weird, and I need to think more about it, but it’s well worth a read, and the twist at the end is very much of the zeitgeist!

Lastly, A palavra que resta is another one I’ll need to come back to, in this case mainly for linguistic reasons. It’s written largely in a stream of consciousness style, in northeast-Brazilian dialect, which did not make things any easier. With the help of a great discussion at the Portuguese in Translation book club I understood enough to enjoy the book, and picked up some interesting new vocabulary. There’s also a big thematic overlap with the Tokarczuk….

August, as usual, is Women in Translation month, though there are some others I need to fit in too. I have a long shortlist.