I’m flagging a bit with my Novella a Day challenge, but I’m telling myself there’s only a few more days to go. I’m still really enjoying it, but my post-covid brain is struggling. This meant when I sat down to read Closely Observed Trains, I thought for ages that it wasn’t working for me due to my rubbish concentration levels. Then suddenly it clicked, and as a result it broke my heart.
“The dive-bombers were disrupting communications to such an extent that the morning trains ran at noon, the noon trains in the evening, and the evening trains during the night, so that now and then it might happen that an afternoon train came in punctual to the minute, according to the timetable, but only because it was the morning passenger train running four hours late.”
This slightly surreal comedic tone continues throughout the novel as we learn about Miloš’ colleagues: lascivious dispatcher Hubička and pigeon-loving station master Lánksý. There is a lot of silliness – Hubička is caught up in a daft sex scandal, Lánksý can be pompous and ridiculous.
But there is a serious side too. Miloš is returning to work after cutting his wrists. There is a lot of animal suffering and at first I was baffled as to why, before realising it was a way of introducing violence and victimhood to a novel about war which doesn’t include warfare.
As Miloš and his colleagues continue their ordinary lives, the troop trains trundle past to the Eastern front.
“This year the Germans had lost control of the airspace over our little town. When I rode along the footpath to the fuselage of the aircraft the snow was glittering on the level fields, and in every crystal of snow there seemed to be an infinitely tiny second hand ticking, the snow crackled so in the brilliant sunlight, shimmering in many colours.”
Closely Observed Trains presents a narrator with a distinct young voice: vulnerable, inexperienced, sceptical and funny. It finely balances unreality and humour alongside humanity and pathos. It’s deeply serious but written lightly, showing how bravery and heroism can exist in the unlikeliest places.
It could be my aforementioned foggy covid brain, but as I was writing this post I started to feel a bit teary by the end. This really was the most affecting novella.
After getting off to a pretty good start with my Women in Translation Month reading, I stalled badly with my final post. Although I read these two novels during August, writing about them in time for WIT Month 2021 (hosted by Meytal at Biblio) proved an insurmountable task. I still hope one day to get my blogging back on track but clearly August 2021 was not where this miracle was going to occur!
So here we are in September and I’m revisting two authors I’ve enjoyed in the past. When I decided to write on them initially I didn’t consider any connected themes, but there are some: ideas of home, otherness, what it means to live among a community, unlikely friendships, coming to terms with aging.
Firstly, Miracle on Cherry Hill by Sun-Mi Hwang (2019, trans. Chi-Young Kim 2019). I enjoyed the simplicity of The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly and found it very moving, so I was looking forward to this. I also thought – rightly – that it shouldn’t be too traumatic, given I’m a delicate flower at the moment. Like The Hen… this is a quick read with no great surprises, but that’s not a criticism, as it still offers a rich story with fully realised characters.
Miracle on Cherry Hill sees successful business leader Kang Dae-su move back to his childhood home town having been diagnosed with a brain tumour (named Sir Lump). He plans to hole up in a huge, fenced-off house, away from any company to see out his days.
“Cherry Hill was an outdated name. New apartment buildings had uprooted nearly every last cherry tree around it, like insects gnawing through greenery. Only one old original house remained in this neighbourhood, near the bus stop, because the woods surrounded it and the owner was stubborn. He also owned all the land surrounding the house, At least, that’s what they said – nobody had ever laid eyes on the owner.”
Things don’t go quite according to Kang’s plan. For a start, the townspeople have used his property while he has been absent. The children play hide-and-seek in the grounds, an elderly woman with dementia grows vegetables, her granddaughter Yuri exercises her puppy and collects hens eggs.
“How dare Sir Lump pity him? He heard something coasting along with the wind, something like humming. Kang remained on his back. If he concerned himself with every singing animal or person who was evidently trespassing on his property the tumour would swell and burst from sheer irritation.”
Despite Kang’s irritation, a series of comic events demonstrate it’s better to share his garden for continued use by the town. What’s more, he even invites people in, recognising troubled youngster Sanghun would benefit from being employed to mow his lawns.
As Kang begrudgingly becomes involved in the life of the town and the people who live there, he becomes reconciled to his past, and the pain from childhood he has been holding onto begins to heal.
“Each of these new discoveries left him with a refreshing sensation, as if a cold drop of water was falling into the depths of his heart. These feelings had to be carefully swallowed down.”
Miracle on Cherry Hill is a sweet tale, but not sentimental as it tackles some difficult issues. It’s fabulistic but also recognisably real. It’s poignant and playful, and as someone who loves a redemption story I found it charming.
Secondly, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009 trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones 2018) which was a highly anticipated read for me, having loved Flights. For some reason I didn’t count that read on my Around the World in 80 Books Reading Challenge, so Drive Your Plow… has formed my Poland visit.
This is a very different reading experience to Flights, which was fragmentary and mixed different genres. In contrast, Drive Your Plow… is more linear and plot-driven. However, it is still a complex novel that resists easy categorisation. I really loved it.
Janina Duszejko is a middle-aged woman with mysterious ailments, who hates her name and lives alone in a remote part of Poland:
“All you can see on the map is a road and a few houses. It’s always windy here, as waves of air come pouring across the mountains from west to east from the Czech Republic. In winter the wind becomes violent and shrill, howling in the chimneys. In summer it scatters amongst the leaves and rustles – it’s never quiet here.”
This harsh and isolated landscape suits Janina, as she is viewed as eccentric and regards people warily. When she engages in company, it is in her own way:
“What a lack of imagination it is to have official first names and surnames. No one ever remembers them, they’re so divorced from the Person, and so banal they don’t remind us of them at all…That’s why I try my best never to use first names or surnames, but prefer epithets that come to mind of their own accord the first time I see the Person.”
Janina is a fan of Blake and this is reflected not only in the title of he novel and the epigraphs, but also her Fondness for Capitalising for Emphasis, which I thought a nice touch and added to the sense of her unique voice.
At the start of the novel, Janina is disturbed by her neighbour Oddball, who asks her to come with him to check on another neighbour, Big Foot. He is dead, having choked on a bone. Janina doesn’t grieve for him as he was part of the local hunting club, and she much prefers animals to humans. Sadly her “Little Girls” – her two dogs – have disappeared.
As other members of the hunting club die – all local powerful men, all seemingly pretty unpleasant – Janina shares her theory with the police that animals are taking their revenge for the cruelties enacted upon them. This theory is supported by her astrological studies, and is completely ignored by the authorities:
“Once we have reached a certain age, it’s hard to be reconciled to the fact that people are always going to be impatient with us.”
The mystery of the deaths of the men isn’t the heart of the novel though. Although the blurb on mine describes it as ‘an existential thriller’ I wouldn’t even go that far. For me the driving force of the story is the character of Janina and how she exposes attitudes to women, to aging; the power of the patriarchy, of money; and the disregard of anyone who is inconvenient to conventional society. She does this simply by existing and narrating how people respond to her.
I should warn readers here that the novel does describe cruelty to animals. Because Janina is appalled by it, the scenes are never dwelt on, but they are important to the story. This can make it a tough read but that is precisely the point – to question the horrors of how animals are treated. Drive Your Plow… was adapted into a film called Spoor in 2017 and I was going to end with the trailer, but even then there are some pretty grim scenes so I opted not to.
Drive Your Plow… raises important, complex themes through the voice of a truly memorable narrator. There is a dry humour running through the novel, but it also doesn’t pull its punches. The landscape is beautifully evoked and the characterisation compassionate. It will stay with me for a long time.
“As I gazed at the black and white landscape of the Plateau, I realised that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.”
Hello bookish blogosphere! I’ve been away for what feels like a long time. June and July were a big pile of pants and I needed a step back from things. I want to say thank you to the lovely bloggers who contacted me to ask if I was OK, when I really wasn’t. Your kindness genuinely meant a lot.
I’ve only just started reading again after about six long weeks of being unable to digest a single written word. Some very strange things have happened to my reading; I couldn’t deal with fiction for a while so I finally got round to reading some of the biographies that have languished in my TBR for aeons. Then having got back to fiction I’ve started with a subject about as far from my usual fare as its possible to be: serial killers. Except neither novel is really about serial killers…
Firstly, My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (2017). This made quite a splash when it came out and I remember large, eye-catching posters on the tube, back when commuting was a thing. It’s a quick read and it was that reason that made me pick up this debut, thinking it was a good way to try and get back into reading.
My logic worked well, and I whizzed through this tale of a murderous sibling, narrated by Korede, a young successful nurse whose talent for cleaning comes in handy when helping her sister Ayoola cover up her deeds.
The novel starts in media res as Ayoola contacts Korede to ask for help having killed her third boyfriend in self-defence. Ayoola is completely oblivious to the seriousness of her crimes and seems to feel no remorse. Although Korede loyally helps her, she is beginning to have doubts as to the nature of Ayoola’s self-defence.
“ ‘Do you not realise the gravity of what you have done? Are you enjoying this?’ I grab a tissue and hand it to her, then take some for myself.
Her eyes go dark and she begins to twirl her dreadlocks.
‘These days you look at me like I’m a monster.’ Her voice is so low, I can barely hear her.
‘I don’t think you’re – ‘
‘This is victim shaming you know.’”
The novel isn’t graphic and the details of the killings are not dwelt on – thankfully, if you’re as squeamish as me. Instead what Braithwaite explores is a complex relationship between sisters and the impact of patriarchal systems on young women. It’s set in Nigeria but the themes certainly resonated with me as a UK reader.
Korede and Ayoola grew up with a violent father and it his weapon that Ayoola uses:
“ ‘The knife is important to me Korede. It is all I have left of him.’
Perhaps if it were someone else at the receiving end of this show of sentimentality, her words would hold some weight. But she cannot fool me.”
No-one questions Ayoola because she is beautiful, no-one pays attention to Korede because she is average looking. Both women suffer under a society that commodifies women, even though Korede is successful in her career as a nurse and Ayoola is a talented clothes designer.
A doctor where Korede works, Tade, seems to be decent but even he follows the predictable path of not noticing what Korede can offer and falling for Ayoola’s looks, projecting his fantasies onto her.
“ ‘She is beautiful and perfect. I never wanted to be with someone this much.’
I rub my forehead with my fingers. He fails to point out the fact that she laughs at the silliest things and never holds a grudge. He doesn’t mention how quick she is to cheat at games or that she can hemstitch a skirt without looking at her fingers. He doesn’t know her best features or her…darkest secrets. And he doesn’t seem to care.”
Ayoola dating Tade adds tension to the narrative – will she try to kill him? Will Korede try to save the man she has feelings for? Who will succeed?
Sometimes satire can leave a bitter taste, but MSTSK avoids this with it’s dry humour and lack of preachiness. It doesn’t attempt crass psychology as to why both women are as they are, it simply presents their lives and upbringing and leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. This light touch means it raises serious issues about contemporary society without losing sight of characters or plot. An impressive debut.
Secondly, Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu (2008, trans. Marina Sofia 2020) which was sent to me by the lovely Marina Sofia who blogs over at Finding Time to Write. She has translated this novel under Corylus Books, the publishing house which she has founded with three others.
MSTSK used a serial killer to satirise patriarchal systems, and Sword uses it in a similar way to satirise political systems. Set in Romania, it forms another stop on my Around the World in 80 Books Reading Challenge, hosted by Hard Book Habit who sadly don’t seem to be blogging any more.
Someone is killing Roma people in Bucharest using the titular weapon. There is no apparent motive – except presumably a racist one – and the murders have a competence to them which means the police investigation has very little to go on. This isn’t a police procedural though, and very little of the story is given over to the murders themselves (again, thankfully…) aside from the first. Instead Teodorescu uses the murders to explore the power systems in place in Romania and how this exposes the weaknesses and motivations of those within.
If that sounds dry, it really isn’t. The story whips along and the portrayals of power players feel authentic (Teodorescu is a political analyst). Early on, the petty concerns of Istrate, Head of Comms and Press Relations at the Presidential Office, demonstrate the disregard that the deaths receive. He only likes the social side and travel associated with his job, and the President hates him and so has set up another press office.
“He was briefly tempted to write a report complaining about the lack of professionalism in his team. Instead of getting reports about major problems, the international situation, global crises that could destabilise the Balkan region, an in-depth political analysis, he had to put up with silly homicide stories! He gave up reading the press summary, but resolved to complain about it the next time he met the President.”
The government is concerned, but only in trying to balance appealing to those who might welcome vigilante justice represented by Sword (as the press have nicknamed the killer) because he only kills criminals, and how it will look internationally that they haven’t caught him. The advice given to the Minister of the Interior suggests how to manage the situation in a pre-election year:
“A few heads rolling at all levels in the police force should demonstrate the government is taking things seriously. Admittedly, it also demonstrates how incompetent the police are, but no-one worries about that too much.”
Despite such machinations, the murders continue to rack up and tensions in the country between various groups escalate. The context of Romania finding its place in international capitalist systems after the fall of communism is evoked well but it doesn’t take much imagination – if any – to see parallels across different political systems. I felt this could just as easily be Westminster. There’s something depressingly universal about someone with integrity being forced aside for political expediency:
“ ‘It’s not anger. It’s profound sadness. Because you’ve proven to me yet again that it’s not good enough to be qualified, professional, well-intentioned and to work your socks off… it still won’t get you the respect you deserve.’”
Sword is incisive and uncompromising in its portrayal of corruption and the powerless victims of such systems, but its not depressing. Instead I found it a compelling read and I’d definitely be interested to read more by this author.
Writing this post was difficult as I’m so out of practice, but to end it’s business as usual with an obvious late twentieth century pop choice 😀
A Horse Walks into a Bar – David Grossman (2014, trans. Jessica Cohen 2016) 198 pages
A Horse Walks Into a Bar is a novel about a comedian, but the fact that it won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize (there’s an interesting interview with translator Jessica Cohen on the Asymptote blog) is an indication that it has serious things to say. Its takes place in Israel and so it also forms my last stop this novella month on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge, hosted by Hard Book Habit.
Dovaleh Greenstein is a stand-up comic known as Dovaleh G, and the novel follows his set in a Netanya comedy club over two hours, from the point of view of his childhood friend Avishai Lazar, now a retired district court judge in his late 50s who barely remembers Dovaleh.
“From the minute he got on stage he’s been seeking my eyes. But I can’t look straight at him. I dislike the air in here. I dislike the air he breathes.”
Dovaleh G is not a pleasant man. He berates the audience, he insults their town, he has the style of stand-up that mixes old-fashioned jokes with barely concealed aggression.
“I swear to God, standing before you tonight is the first man in history to get post-partum depression. Five times! Actually four, ‘cause two of them were twins. Actually five, if you count the bout of depression after my birth.”
He’s offensive and at various points audience members walk out. They complain he is not giving them what they paid for – a night of laughs. Instead, Dovaleh recounts his childhood memories: living with his mother who was traumatised from the camps, and his father who beat him. He walked on his hands to escape neighbourhood bullies.
Onstage, he verges on being a bully himself. Someone else is in the audience who remembers him as a child: Azulai, a small woman and spirit medium, to whom he is absolutely brutal. Yet his most vehement aggression is reserved for himself:
“Somehow, on the phone, there was something attractive about his offer, and I can’t deny that he does have his moments on stage, too. When he hit himself, there was something there, I’m not sure what, some sort of alluring abyss that opened up. And the guy is no idiot. He never was”
Grossman captures brilliantly that tension that can exist in stand-up where the audience don’t feel entirely safe, and don’t exactly know where their laughter is coming from. He also exploits fully that a lot of comedy is born out of pain. Dovaleh G is not likable, but throughout the course of the novella he does become understandable, and it is possible to feel compassion for him.
The audience (and readers) become witnesses for Dovaleh G; to his life, his trauma and his anger. What humour there is, is very, very dark. There was a riff on Dr Mengele that actually made me wince – I’m not sure I’ve winced at a book before.
A Horse Walks into a Bar is a devastating read but not a destructive one. At the end I felt there was some hope, which given Grossman is a highly political writer has wider significance than the life of Dovaleh G and Avishai Lazar. I’ve not discussed the politics of the novella because I felt I didn’t know enough about Israel and Palestine to do it justice, but if you know about this in more depth then I’m sure A Horse Walks Into a Bar will have an extra resonance for you.
“How, in such a short time, did he manage to turn the audience, even me to some extent, into household members of his soul?
Madonna in a Fur Coat – Sabahattin Ali (1943, trans. Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe 2016) 168 pages
Madonna in a Fur Coat is set mainly in Berlin, but is bookended by scenes in Ankara, so I’m counting it as another stop on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge, hosted by Hard Book Habit (who unfortunately don’t seem to be blogging any more). It feels a bit of a cheat to count it as Turkey but I’m so behind on the challenge that I’m taking a few liberties!
Continuing yesterday’s theme of an elegy for a young love affair, Madonna in a Fur Coat tells the romance of a Turkish man with a visual artist in 1920s Berlin. The novel begins in 1930s Ankara, where the narrator visits his unremarkable colleague at home, and is struck by the disregard his family show him.
“It seemed impossible that a man like Raif Efendi – what sort of man that might be, I had no idea, but I was sure he was not as he seemed – that a man like this would shrink away from those closest to him.”
He feels there must be more to his quiet colleague, who is fluent in German, than meets the eye.
“Why, when we are reluctant even to describe a wedge of cheese we are seeing for the first time, do we draw our final conclusions from our first encounters with people, and happily dismiss them?”
Raif knows he may die and so he asks the narrator to destroy a notebook, which of course the narrator reads. It was written ten years after the events it documents and describes how, as a young man, Raif stayed in Berlin to learn soap manufacturing, a career he is far from committed to. One day, visiting a gallery, he becomes mesmerised by a portrait of a woman in the titular garment:
“All I can say is that she wore a strange, formidable, haughty and almost wild expression, one that I had never seen before on a woman. But while that face was utterly new to me, I couldn’t help but feel I had seen her many times before.”
He visits daily to stare at the picture, and eventually meets Maria Puder, the woman who painted the self-portrait. They begin an intense, but largely platonic relationship. Raif is inexperienced and shy:
“If I ever met a woman I found attractive, my first thought was to run away.”
While Maria is determined and self-reliant:
“This all ends the moment you want something from me.”
My tolerance for young, earnest love affairs is pretty minimal, being old and sceptical myself 😀 Yet I was able to follow the relationship between Raif and Maria with interest because I wanted to see how it was that Raif ended up ill, poor and disregarded back in Ankara; and because Maria is a well-drawn woman rather than bland love object:
“I was only too aware that I still knew next to nothing about her. My judgements were formed of my own dreams and illusions. At the same time, I was absolutely sure they would not deceive me.”
Madonna in a Fur Coat is a sad tale of lives half-lived, of ill-advised restraint and missed opportunities. I didn’t find it depressing, but it’s certainly a melancholic and mournful read.
Kim from Reading Matters reviewed this novella back in January, you can read her excellent review here.
La Blanche is set largely in Casablanca, and so forms another stop on my much-neglected Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge, hosted by Hard Book Habit who sadly don’t seem to be blogging any more but it’s a great challenge so do join in if you can!
La Blanche is narrated by a young woman whose grandfather was murdered in their home in 1992. Along with her mother she flees Morocco to France, but following a painful break-up of a relationship finds herself heading back to the land of her birth.
“It rained heavily in the night. Torrential summer rain. I didn’t sleep a wink. Perhaps partly too, because I’m anxious about going back to Morocco. It’s as though I’d been bracketing off my childhood for years. Once I’d arrived in France I’d never thought about my childhood in Casablanca again. I’d left it all over there, apart from a little scrap of white paper, folded in four, that I always keep with me.”
The narrative moves back and forth across time, building a picture of her privileged childhood in Casablanca, the violence that shattered it, and the psychological fall-out from a disintegrating romantic relationship as an adult. This is handled expertly and is never confusing, blending together with ease to create a fully realised portrait of this young woman’s life.
The language is taut and every word placed carefully – hence this novella only comes in at 80 pages – but the story is in no way underwritten. Hamisultane has a startling and inventive way of writing, such as here, when the narrator awakes to realise her lover has left:
“It’s morning. The bed is empty. Light is flowing across the room. I close the shutters because I’m afraid it might flow straight though my body.”
It’s so impressive that La Blanche was a debut novel. The time shifts, language and characterisation are handled so deftly making for a satisfying and evocative read.
“My grandfather wakes me.
It is dawn.
He’s taking me out with him.
‘As quick as you can,’ he says to me. ‘While we can still see the morning dew beading the blooms on the rose bushes.’”
I’ve recently been watching Kathy Burke’s All Woman on Channel 4 and absolutely loved it, partly for Kathy’s habit of greeting any nonsense like vaginal steaming/vajazzling etc with an incredulous ‘Faaaaaaack off!’ but mainly because she is so warm, funny and non-judgemental. I highly recommend it, not only for women although she is a brilliant female role model:
“’The thing with me is that I’m quite arrogant. I’ve got faith in my own talent and I always have. And if anyone turned around and said to me, ‘You’re never going to work again’, I used to say, ‘I will’.”
Here’s another quote from Kathy which I enjoyed, included here especially for confirmed Darcy adorer Fiction Fan:
“‘Who wants to get up at five every morning? I did four days on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and by the end of it, I was bored. I thought, ‘I’m over this now. Let’s go home. I’ve met Colin Firth, and he’s lovely. Now, where are the sandwiches?’”
I tried to find a copyright-free picture of Kathy to include but of course there aren’t any, so in honour of her TTSS experience, here are some copyright-free sandwiches instead:
This post is rapidly in danger of becoming Reasons I Love Kathy Burke and thus rivalling War and Peace for brevity. On with books! In honour of the programme I have chosen two novels around the theme of women’s rights and female friendship.
Firstly, a book I probably wouldn’t have picked up if it wasn’t for the recommendations from so many bloggers I trust, Old Baggage by Lissa Evans (2018). Mattie Simpkin was a militant suffragette, but now its 1928 and she’s looking for something to channel all that energy into.
“She couldn’t remember a time when her path hadn’t been lined with startled faces; they were her reassurance that progress was being made.”
So Mattie decides to startle her well-to-do neighbours in Hampstead by setting up a club on the Heath for girls: to learn fitness, politics, history and self-defence, amongst anything else Mattie thinks will be useful for the modern woman.
Mattie is hugely likable but her drive means she can be a bit oblivious to those around her. Her sweet friend Florrie, known as The Flea, lives with her in Mattie’s house in Hampstead, utterly devoted. Mattie relies on her to keep the domestic side of things running smoothly, without realising that The Flea has feelings for her, until a repugnant Mosley-loving acquaintance, Jacqueline Simpkin, points it out to her. It is the fractious relationship with Jacqueline that leads to one of the pivotal moments of the novel, where Mattie’s group is pitted against the Hitler Youth-lite that Jaqueline is involved with.
“The battle is not yet over; ever day brings fresh skirmishes.”
Unfortunately Mattie makes a huge mistake in a matter moments, which has significant ramifications. Mattie has to reassess her understanding of some of the people she knows, and herself. This takes place without ever being worthy or moralistic. The situation evolves in such a way that I felt desperately sorry for Mattie, even though she was entirely in the wrong.
The historical detail is beautifully observed and presented almost incidentally. There is no nostalgia here: The Flea has worked as hard as Mattie for women’s suffrage, but doesn’t get the vote until the end of the novel, when women’s voting rights became equal to men’s (all over the age of 21). Until that point, only Mattie voted because she was over 30 and owned property. The victory of the suffragettes was, for 10 years, a middle-class victory.
For all the period detail, the central questions of the book remain relevant: what do you do when the thing that galvanized you no longer exists? How do you decide where meaning lies, and what if lies in difficult to reach places?
“ ‘We were a battering ram,’ Mattie was wont to say. ‘Together we broke down the door.’ But beyond that splintered door had been a dozen more doors and, scattered by their momentum, some women had tried one and some another, and some had given up and turned away, and it seemed to The Flea that all that unity and passion, all that wild energy, had dissipated. And she herself and her ilk, trudging soberly behind, had somehow ended up the vanguard…”
Old Baggage has a wonderful central character in flawed, individualistic Mattie and plenty to say without ever being heavy handed. The plot pulls you along and the ending is really moving without being sentimental. A treat.
Secondly, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988) which is set in Zimbabwe, and so forms another stop on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge, hosted by Hard Book Habit. I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of this, as since reading it I’ve discovered it’s considered a modern classic and was voted into the top 12 for Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. It’s a powerful tale of postcolonial female experience, written beautifully and certainly deserving of its classic status.
The tale is narrated by Tambudzai, known as Tambu, who is unflinching in what she tells us, opening with “I was not sorry when my brother died.” The reasons for this lack of remorse are personal – her brother was arrogant and unpleasant; and societal – his death opens up opportunities to Tambu that she was denied as long as there was a male child older than her.
“I was quite sure at the time that Nhamo knew as well as I did that the things he had said were not reasonable, but in the years that have passed since then I have met so many men who consider themselves responsible adults and therefore ought to know better, who still subscribe to the fundamental principles of my brother’s budding elitism, that to be fair to him I must concede he was sincere in his bigotry.”
Ouch!
The opportunity Tambu has is to leave her rural home and be educated alongside her cousin Nyasha at the convent school her uncle and aunt run. This side of her family could not be more different to Tambu’s mother and father; they have travelled, are educated and her cousins have forgotten essential parts of their Zimbabwean childhood:
“I had not expected my cousins to have changed, certainly not so radically, simply because they had been away for a while. Besides, Shona was our language. What did people mean when they forgot it?”
Tambu and Nyasha still forge a deep bond despite the differences that have opened up between them, but Tambu sees the price her cousin pays for her international upbringing.
“I missed the bold, ebullient companion who had gone to England but not returned from there. Yet each time she came I could see that she had grown a little duller and dimmer, the expression in her eyes a little more complex, and though she were directing more and more of her energy inwards to commune with herself about the issues she alone had seen.”
As Tambu settles into city life and her schooling she begins to understand more not only about herself but her country, and there are some wonderfully pithy observations about colonialism:
“They had given up their comforts and security of their own homes to come and lighten our darkness. It was a big sacrifice that the missionaries made. It was a sacrifice that made us grateful to them, a sacrifice that made them superior not only to us but to those other Whites as well who were here for adventure and to help themselves to our emeralds…With the self-satisfied dignity that came naturally to white people in those days, they accepted this improving disguise.”
But really Dangarembga’s focus is human relationships, and how the patriarchy impacts on the most intimate of these. Her uncle, Babamukuru, enjoys enormous status at home and at work. Her aunt, Maiguru, is highly educated and capable, but only ever a second-class citizen. Their daughter Nyasha struggles with these constraints and her behaviour is loud and rebellious, and emphatically punished:
“Babamukuru condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn’t depend on poverty on lack of education or on tradition. It didn’t depend on any of the things I thought it had depended on. Men took it everywhere with them.”
Ultimately though, Nervous Conditions is a hopeful novel. Tambu is resilient and this is her coming of age story: with who she is, fitting in with neither family easily; with her desires for education and independence; and with her country. I started this with the opening lines of the novel, and I’ll end it with the beautifully constrained, considered final words:
“Quietly, unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story. It was a long process for me, that process of expansion.”
To end, Kathy as part of Lananeeneenoonoo with French & Saunders and Bananarama, for Comic Relief in 1989. Beatles fans may want to look away now:
Unfortunately, I think I might be a bit too old for this novella. My twenties were a lot of fun and a lot of stress; I have colleagues in their twenties and I enjoy their company but I’ve absolutely no desire to recapture or relive that time. So Crimson’s tales of five Greenlandic twentysomethings getting drunk, sleeping around, falling in and out of love and desperately trying to work out who they are held my attention, but didn’t really engage me beyond that.
Each section focuses on a different character. Fia is repulsed by her boyfriend’s penis and dumps him, but it is only when she sees Sara that she admits she is attracted to women.
“ ‘It’s over’ were my final words.
Then, just like that, I was free.
But the word ‘free’ didn’t bring with it ‘relief’.”
Instead Fia finds herself in the bewildering situation of living temporarily with her brother’s best friend, and trying to manage her feelings for Sara, who has a partner.
Inuk is Fia’s brother. He feels stifled by his home and flees to Denmark after his affair with a famous married man is exposed:
“Greenland is not my home. I feel sorry for Greenlanders. I’m ashamed of being a Greenlander. But I’m a Greenlander. I can’t laugh with Danes.
[…]
I’m terribly homesick but I don’t know what sort of home I’m longing for.”
Arnaq is Inuk’s best friend and Fia’s flatmate. She’s relentlessly social and struggling:
“My chapped lips are the colour of red wine, My hair is still partying. My makeup is smeared all over my face and I have huge bags under my eyes. My body is trying so hard to stay alive that I can’t concentrate on my polluted mind. I drink what’s left of the Coke, lie down on my bed and take out my mobile to check the time.”
Ivik is Sara’s partner and struggling with gender identity. Their story includes graphics of phone screens, showing how the drama of young lives is often played out by technology. But this prosaic language exists alongside the poetic as Ivik works out what they need:
“The sun brightens my eyes, which have only seen the world in black for a long, long time. I can smell the previously frozen earth melting. The warm breeze sounds like a song.”
Finally Sara, partner of Ivik and lust-object of Fia, tells her tale and brings the stories together. Sections of her narrative end with meaningless hashtags which was really annoying, e.g. #dontgotogether or #1#2. If the hashtags had been witty or expanding the perpsective this could have worked better.
Sara, who until this point has been somewhat idealised through the eyes of others, is shown to have her own problems, with feelings of dirtiness and unworthiness. Her sister has just had a baby and Sara notices the obsession with gender that this involves. It’s also a very modern birth announcement via Facebook, where Sara stalks Fia:
“She finally changed her profile picture. I’m unable to see all her photos because we’re not friends on Facebook, so I gaze at her new profile picture for quite a while. I catch myself smiling. I hover over ‘Add friend’ for a long time. No, if she was really interested, she would have sent a friend request. I log off. Go to Google. Google knows everything.”
I only write about books I recommend and it’s undoubtedly great to hear a young Greenlandic voice. Korneliussen was only 24 when she wrote this and she translated it herself into Danish. The writing sometimes seemed to me naïve and bit clunky, but as I said, I’m probably not the target audience for this novella. I’m grateful to Virago for giving English-speaking readers this opportunity to hear her, even if the subject matter bored me slightly. I’d definitely still be interested to see what Korneliussen writes in future.
To end, the title comes from the Joan Jett classic which means a lot to Fia and Sara:
This was a really challenging read, and though an astounding work, I was grateful for the novella length as it was tough to take.
Sadeq Hedayat was an Iranian writer and is considered an innovative titan of Persian literature; he’s a best-selling author in his home country. This novel was initially banned on publication, and according to Wiki there is still censorship of his work (I’ve not linked to the Wiki page because much to my horror there’s a picture of his dead body on it). Sadly, he died by suicide, and The Blind Owl certainly feels authentic in its portrayal of someone losing all sense of reality and suffering mental ill health. I’m giving this post a trigger warning for some pretty disturbing imagery in the third quote, although I’ve not picked the worst in the novella, I wanted to give a true sense of it.
“Will anyone ever penetrate the secret of this disease which transcends ordinary experience, this reverberation of the shadow of the mind, which manifests itself in a state of coma like that between death and resurrection, when one is neither asleep nor awake?”
The unnamed narrator earns his living by painting pen cases. He may or may not have killed someone:
“How could I have resisted it, I, an artist, shut up in a room with a dead body? The thought aroused in me a particular sensation of delight.”
It’s a disorienting narrative. It’s not clear what is true or false: the events described could be entirely in the man’s head and what The Blind Owl describes is him lying on his bed, thinking/hallucinating. It’s a stream of extremely disturbed consciousness. Images and events recur and shift slightly, adding to a sense of disorientation and being witness to someone’s spiralling thoughts.
“A sensation which had long been familiar to me was this: that I was slowly decomposing while I yet lived. My heart had always been at odds not only with my body but with my mind, and there was absolutely no compatibility between them. I had always been in a state of decomposition and gradual disintegration. At time I conceived thought which I myself felt to be inconceivable.”
The narrator has no compassion for humanity and this is what adds to making The Blind Owl such a tough read. He is misanthropic, and so the coldly related details of violence, dead bodies and decomposition are truly horrifying.
I don’t want to put people off reading The Blind Owl because it is truly a brilliant piece of writing, but definitely one for when you’re strong enough to take it, with a comforting escapist read lined up for afterwards.
“Am I a being separate and apart from the rest of creation? I do not know. But when I looked in the mirror a moment ago I did not recognise myself.”
August is Women in Translation month, hosted by Meytal at Biblibio. Do head over to her blog to read more about WITMonth and join in!
This week I’m looking at two authors who are titans of literature: Marguerite Yourcenar and the one-woman powerhouse that is Nawal El Saadawi.
Firstly, Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (1951, trans. Grace Frick 1954). Yourcenar worked on this novel on and off for over 20 years and spent around 3 years writing it as her main focus. It is a letter from the Emperor Hadrian to his successor Marcus Aurelius when he knows time is limited. It is not a dry recounting of Yourcenar’s extensive research though, or a cringe-making attempt to dramatise historical events: “so I said to the Roman Senate, as we sat in the Roman Forum: I’m going to build a wall to keep out those pesky Scots who refuse to be subdued under the yoke of Roman Imperialism. And Scotland’s going to pay for it.”
Instead, Yourcenar uses historical events as a frame for an extended consideration of life and death. Hadrian is about as likable as the leader of a huge oppressive military force can be; he is focussed on peace wherever possible, and interested in the arts and philosophy. At the same time, he is politically astute:
“A prince lacks the latitude afforded to the philosopher in this respect: he cannot allow himself to be different on too many points at a time; and the gods know that my points of difference were already too numerous, though I flattered myself that many were invisible.”
His humility is believable, and I think Yourcenar’s master stroke is having Hadrian know he is facing an imminent death. Staring into the void, even a Roman emperor is bound to question what impact he has had, and whether he was a force for good. Reflecting on his role as leader of imperialist suppression is a bleak business:
“It mattered little to me that the accord obtained was external, imposed from without and perhaps temporary; I knew that good like bad becomes routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself. Since hatred, stupidity, and delirium have lasting effects, I saw no reason why good will, clarity of mind and just practice would not have their effects too.”
But Hadrian-the-man comes across just as clearly as Hadrian-the-politician. His grief at the death of his young lover Antinous is never maudlin or indulgent, yet the overwhelming grief that Hadrian clearly felt (he established a cult in Antinous’ name) is very moving.
“This simple man possesses a virtue which I had thought little about up to this time, even when I happened to practice it, namely, kindness.”
Memoirs of Hadrian is only 247 pages in my edition but it took me much longer to read than a novel of that length normally would. This is not because the prose didn’t flow: Hadrian’s voice is crystal-clear and the narrative is easy to follow, being mainly chronological with some deviations. It is however, a densely written book with so much to consider. Hadrian doesn’t waste a word: he’s a dying man, and an erudite, philosophical one. He’s got a lot to say and I had to think hard about most of it.
“Death can become an object of blind ardour, of a hunger like that of love”
[…]
“the time of impatience has passed; at the point where I now am, despair would be in as bad taste as hope itself. I have ceased to hurry my death.”
If you ever want absolute confirmation that you are an under-achiever who is wasting their life, go and check out Nawal El Saadawi’s wiki entry. The first paragraph alone is enough to inspire deep feelings utter inadequacy 😀
I always find it hard to write about collections of short stories, but I thought She Has No place in Paradise worked well. El Saadawi has an excellent understanding of the form and each story felt complete in itself, yet still contributed to the collection overall painting a picture of late twentieth-century Egyptian society.
Some of the stories captured the determinedly everyday. In Thirst, a young servant girl running errands lusts after a cool drink from a kiosk:
“The tarmac of the street beneath her feet had softened from the intensity of the sun’s heat. It burned her like a piece of molten iron and made her hop here and there, bumping and colliding, unconsciously, like a small moth against the sides of a burning lamp. She could have made for the shade at the side of the street and sat for a time on the damp earth, but her shopping basket hung on her arm and her right hand clutched at a tattered fifty piastre note.”
It’s a simple tale conveying just a few moments in time, but El Saadawi is able to address big issues: the position of women, the class system, economics, how and where freedom of choice is exercised, how we weigh up choices when we have very little to lose. None of this is heavily executed; El Saadawi trusts the reader to draw wider conclusions than just the immediate situation.
“She had a salty taste in her mouth, as bitter as aloes, acrid and burning. She searched for some saliva with which to wet her salty lips, but the tip of her tongue burned without finding a drop. And Hamida stood in front of her, her lips surrounding the ice-cold bottle, each cell of her body absorbing the drink.”
Other stories are more ostensibly political, like the man being tortured to reveal the location of a printing press in But He Was No Mule.
“The press turns in your head, the lead letters chatter together like teeth and the word is born. It is only a word nothing but a word, yet the point at which all things begin, the point at which his life began and stretched throughout the years until this moment which he was now living. A long thread beginning at a point and stretching up to that gelatinous minute point around which his self was wrapped, enclosed and protected like a foetus in its mother’s womb.”
By having the victim in a state of near-delirium El Saadawi avoids having to present gory, gratuitous violence, but still manages to convey the brutality of the situation and the oppression taking place.
El Saadawi manages to maintain a light touch in addressing huge themes throughout the tales. The titular story treats the position of women in society and how religion is used as a means of control with a degree of humour, but it is humour with bite: a devout woman realises that her devotion to entering paradise is to enter somewhere which does not benefit her.
She Has No Place in Paradise is a masterclass in making the personal political and in doing so simply, without being didactic or losing sight of the story. Hugely impressive, much like Nawal El Saadawi herself.
To end, I was tempted to finish with Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall in honour of Hadrian, but frankly the video creeps me out. So here’s something much more pleasant: Donia Massoud, born in Alexandria, spent three years travelling all around Egypt collecting folk songs. She then toured with her band playing traditional instruments. Here she is performing in Spain:
madame bibi lophile recommends 