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….