Ten books finished this month, six by women and four in German, so on target so far!
- Hurricane Season — Fernanda Melchor tr. Sophie Hughes
- Annette, Ein Heldinnen-Epos — Anne Weber
- The Testaments — Margaret Atwood
- Automaton — Berit Glanz
- Revolving Lights — Dorothy M. Richardson
- Wenn es dunkel wird — Peter Stamm
- Die Birnen von Ribbeck — Friedrich Christian Delius
- If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things — Jon McGregor
- Emergency — Daisy Hildyard
- The Affirmation — Christopher Priest
Starting with two Fitzcarraldi, Emergency is another of the “novel which reads like a memoir” genre which is so popular these days (and which I do like). Set in a village which, as Hildyard says, is neither rural nor industrial — a hodgepodge of dowdy houses, agribusiness, and an occasionally-worked quarry — this is an anti-pastoral novel of cruelties and occasionally kindnesses (the children tease a disabled woman, who feeds a three-footed deer cake). Ecological links are supplemented, if not superseded, by the economic and polluting links of globalisation, while the narrator buys processed bread in the supermarket: “There was nothing alive inside this building, except humans. That was why it was safe.”
Hurricane Season is set in a somewhat equivalent location in Mexico, between country and town, and is utterly remorseless — chapters cycle between different characters’ viewpoints, but the pages-long sentences, brilliantly translated by Hughes, present a consistently dark story, centred on the murder of a witch. More important than the plot, however, is the depiction of a society in breakdown, utterly bleak, but thrilling to read.
Annette, Ein Heldinnen-Epos also takes a non-traditional form. It tells the story of Anne Beaumanoir, who worked first for the Resistance during the Second World War, then for the FLN in the Algerian struggle for independence. The “heroic epic” of the title is reflected in the printed layout:
Ein Jahr verstreicht, und sie ist immer noch blutjung.
Gehts vielleicht auch ein bisschen schneller mit dem
Erwachsenwerden? Wie lange soll das alles noch
auf diese öde, für ihren Geschmack viel zu
tatenlose Weise weitergehen? Halbherzig
fängt sie in Rennes ein Studium an, und zwar
der Medizin, während sie ganzherzig von einem
Schicksal träumt, von Opfern und von Heldentaten.
Listening to the audiobook, however, the effect is lost, and the text sounds effectively like standard, if eloquent, prose. More relevant is the claim Weber makes for Beaumanoir’s heroism: a woman whose activities were largely message-carrying and, later, the practice of medicine, her moral heroism in following her conscience is impressive.
I finally caught up with the debut novel of Jon McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. It’s in yet another non-traditional form, with a fragmentary narrative shifting rapidly between different unnamed characters. Their frequent interactions keep the story unified, and the non-naming is much more than a fancy: it keeps the reader from pre-judging the characters on the basis of, particularly, ethnicity. The often marvellous prose (“his head startles round to look at me”) again makes creative use of line breaks, often breaking after each sentence :
And so today I’m back on the telephone.
I’m listening to my mother talking, and I’m waiting for the right moment to interrupt.
I know that I have to tell her, I know that I will be able to tell her if I use the right words at the right moment.
Two pillars of feminist writing next: this month’s instalment of Pilgrimage was Revolving Lights. It’s dominated by Miriam’s developing relationship with Hypo Wilson (=H. G. Wells, although Wells is mysteriously referred to by his own name on occasion). Their conversations are a particularly fruitful source of juicily outrageous opinions, but there’s much else to enjoy in this volume:
most people were ready to answer questions, showing by their angry defence of their opinions that they were aware, and afraid, of other ways of looking at things.
Foreigners, except perhaps Germans, answer [a request for directions] differently. Obsequiously; or with a studied politeness that turns the occasion into an opportunity for the display of manners; or indifferently, with a cynical suggestion that they know what you are like, and that you will be the same when you reach your destination. They are themselves, without any fulness or wonder. English people are always waiting to be different, to be fully themselves. Strangers, to them, are gods and angels.
She, with no resources at all, had dropped to easy irresponsible labour to avoid being shaped and branded, to keep her untouched strength free for a wider contemplation than he would have approved, a delight in everything in turn, a plebeian dilettantism, aware and defensive of the exclusive things, but unable to restrict herself to them, unconsciously from the beginning resisting the drawing of lines and setting up of oppositions?
But being her own solitary companion would not go on forever. It would bring in the end, somewhere about middle age, the state that people called madness…. Perhaps the lunatic asylums were full of people who had refused to join up? There were happy people in them?
You’ve no idea how British you are. A mass of British prejudice and intelligent obstinacy. I shall put you in a book.
had felt that they regarded her not with the adoration or half-pitying dislike she had had from women in the past, but as a woman, though only as a weird sort of female who needed teaching.
The tappings of her feet on the beloved pavement were blows struck hilariously on the shoulder of a friend. To keep her voice from breaking forth she sang aloud in her mind, a soaring song unlimited by sound.
“I suggest we have tea,” bellowed Michael softly
Alma neighed gently and with little gurgles of laughter put her hands about her and gently shook her.
People who care only for form think themselves superior. Then there is something wrong with them.
Their marriage was a success without being an exception to the rule that all marriages are failures, as he said.
Countries without foreigners are doomed.
The joy of being with him, the thing that made it worth while to flatter by seeming to agree was more than half the sense of triumphing over other women.
I enjoyed The Testaments rather more than I’d expected: while the plot is slightly ropey, the characterisation of the women of Gilead is impressive. The star turn is Aunt Lydia, largely rehabilitated and spitefully enjoyable company.
Then two (sort of) science fiction novels: The Affirmation is one of Christopher Priest’s best: an early (I think the first) work set in the world of the Dream Archipelago, it tells the story of one central character and two worlds, exploring typically Priestian ideas of reality and identity. It’s perhaps more didactic than his later work in the way it does this, but the narrative is still compelling. Automaton is determinedly contemporary, showing the world of the precariat who make ends meet moderating social media posts and performing online piecework for pennies. The story of how they form personal connections despite their situation is engaging, though the earlier chapters showing the tediousness of their lives perhaps necessarily drag a bit.
Lastly, two new German-language discoveries for me. Wenn es dunkel wird is a collection of stories by the Swiss writer Peter Stamm, very well narrated in the audiobook format and often witty. A favourite was Dietrichs Knie, in which a man intercepts flirtatious emails between his partner and a colleague, and proceeds on a Cyranovian trajectory. Die Birnen von Ribbeck, riffing on a poem by Theodor Fontane, is a short but pointed monologue commenting on the descent of West Germans onto the East after Die Wende. The oral style suited the audiobook format perfectly.