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….