New home

For all the latest reviews and news you now need to go to

https://messybooker.wordpress.com/

I have updates on my journey through Arno Schmidt's magnus opus "Bottom's Dream", reviews of recent translated releases and so much more.

This site will not be updated with my latest reviews.

I'm moving house - Messenger's Booker moves to a new location

In the Southern Hemisphere it is springtime, and tradition (or my wife) dictates that spring is a time to clean. I could come up with a handful of corny quotes like “When you let go you create space for better things in your life”, or “it is flooded water that makes mud; it is clean water that washes away the mud” but really I’m not a Pinterest board, nor a place to misquote or misattribute motivational statements, so why bother?

But it is a time to clean.

People have been on my case for a few years now about moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress, their promptings being purely for personal reasons, for example it is easier to comment at WordPress. Given I’m not personally fussed either way, so long as people can still access my thoughts if they are that way inclined, a change is in order.

Messenger’s Booker is moving to WordPress.

After five years (plus) of being here at Blogger I will no longer be posting new material here, the site will remain, as an archive of the prior five years, but all new content will now be published at https://messybooker.wordpress.com/

I’ve imported all of my blog posts from here (excluding this post) and from today onwards the latest reviews, award news and my humble opinions will now be found at https://messybooker.wordpress.com/ Noting that any embedded links on the new site will actually bring up the article on the old site – a small price to pay for being in a more user friendly format.

I would like to thank the dedicated followers I have here, those anonymous visitors who have made this site a success, those returning readers who have encouraged me to continue to publish random opinions, at times conflicting opinions, ridiculous muddles through incomprehensible novels or those who just stopped by to plagiarise something I’ve written for your own homework. As the site owner the statistics on individual posts are very useful in understanding what is popular, what is currently being studied (the spikes!!!) and what is pretty much ignored (Australian poetry). None of those data driven inputs will force me to change my approach nor my reading habits. I will continue to read Australian poetry and occasionally write about it here, whether people read what I think or not, it’s my blog and I can do what I want. Anyways, thanks for stopping by over the last five years, where I’ve moved from a couple of hundred visits per month to many many thousands, it has been a wonderful journey here, a journey that will continue at WordPress.

Bookmark the new site https://messybooker.wordpress.com/

I’ll see you at the new venue, I’m hoping to put up a review of a few recently completed poetry collections, a look at some of my highlights from Robert Bolaño’s last work, the 900 page “2666” and a post about my thoughts on the first 50 pages of the behemoth that is Arno Schmidt’s “Bottom’s Dream”.

Reading seven books and not a single blog post

Since Women In Translation month, August, I have read primarily English language books. Four Jean Rhys novels, “Quartet”, “After Leaving Mr Mackenzie”, “Voyage in the Dark” and “Good Morning, Midnight”, these with the full intention of participating in Reading Rhys Week, hosted by Jacqui of Jacqui Wine’s blog  and Eric at the Lonesome Reader. 

I’ve also read Tracy K. Smith’s debut poetry collection, “The Body’s Question”, J.D. Wright’s harrowing last poetry collection “Shallcross” published soon after her sudden death, and to finish off the USA connection I read “Omensetter’s Luck” by William H. Gass a work from 1966 but identified by David Foster Wallace in the late 90's as one of his “five direly underappreciated U.S Novels >1960”.

So why no reviews? No posts?

I could list numerous reasons, I have started a new job, that has kept me very busy, but I’ve always been busy. I don’t have a lot to add to the debate on these books not anything you can't find in other places. The personal nature of the poetry collections sometimes makes sharing thoughts a little trite. I may even get to writing about these collections some other time as I will revisit them. I’ve been watching discussions on other forums about the 2016 Man Booker longlist descend into name calling and personal attacks when others disagree with a point of view. In the past not one of these reasons would have stopped me putting forward my point of view, although a lot of the notes I have taken on these books look more like a lesson plan (for example the common themes) than an interesting contribution.

Add to these factors the niggling thought that for some time, I have wanted to tackle a number of larger books, have the freedom to not write a blog post as I immerse myself in a 900-page work like Roberto Bolaño’s “2666” or slowly working my way through the massive 2.2-million-word tome that is Arno Schmidt’s “Bottom’s Dream”. Doing that would mean a break from blog posting, or at least intermittent posts either about my progress or about the shorter works I read along the way (for example I’ve been reading a number of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories as they are referenced in Schmidt’s work), or dabbling in a few poetry collections on the train trip to work.

All up it is not simply procrastination.

However, as I finally put a halt to the English language reading of the last three weeks and opened Roberto Bolaño’s “2666” on the weekend, starting my journey to find Benno von Archimboldi, this is what I read on page 17, I think it perfectly sums up my dilemma, I’m sure it’s not the first time somebody has said this, “last word goes to Bolaño”:

In 1995 they met at a panel discussion on contemporary German literature held in Amsterdam, a discussion within the framework of a larger discussion that was taking place in the same building (although in separate lecture halls), encompassing French, English, and Italian literature.

It goes without saying that most of the attendees of these curious discussions gravitated towards the hall where contemporary English literature was being discussed, next door to the German literature hall and separated from it by a wall that was clearly not made of stone, as walls used to be, but of fragile bricks covered with a thin layer of plaster, so that the shouts, howls, and especially the applause sparked by English literature could be heard in the German literature room as if the two talks or dialogues were one, or as if the Germans were being mocked, when not drowned out, by the English, not to mention by the massive audience attending the English (or Anglo-Indian) discussion, notably larger than the sparse and earnest audience attending the German discussion. Which in the final analysis was a good thing, because it's common knowledge that a conversation involving only a few people, with everyone listening to everyone else and taking time to think and not shouting, tends to be more productive or at least more relaxed than a mass conversation, which runs the permanent risk of becoming a rally, or, because of the necessary brevity of the speeches, a series of slogans that fade as soon as they're put into words.

Say Bye To Reason and Hi To Everything - Various complied by Andrew Durbin

New York based magazine and art book publisher Capricious was initially founded as a fine art photography magazine in 2004 by Swedish photographer Sophie Mörner. Now renowned for their feminist and queer art books, with titles like Girls Like Us and Randy, the collection of photographs of Los Angeles sex workers from the 1990’s by Eve Fowler titled Hustler and Matt Keegan’s box of art objects , ==. Capricious approached author Andrew Durbin (Mature Themes in 2014 and next year Blonde Summer both published by Nightboat Books) and asked him to edit a book of his choice with the stipulation that it be “literary”. Andrew Durbin invited five female writers, Dodie Bellamy, Cecilia Corrigan, Amy De’Ath, Lynne Tillman and Jackie Want to each contribute a short book of new or previously uncollected material.

2012 Guggenheim fellowship recipient, artist Nayland Blake was approached to provide the cover and packaging artwork. When Andrew Durbin was perusing archived drawings by Nayland Blake he came across the furiously quacking ducks with the text Say bye to reason and hi to everything – this artwork became the box cover artwork and the overall project title.

Five short chapbooks, five different genres, poetry, memoir, criticism, dramatic monologue and personal journal are the resultant collection.

First up Jackie Wang’s “Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb” a personal journal/poetry collection recalling her dreams The medium Wang used was Twitter, placing the restriction of the number of characters in play as well as the immediacy of her output and an unknown audience adds a layer of complexity to the poems. Her simply revealing to the world her inner demons, and the immediacy of her posting the poetic tweets as soon as she wakes up, starting the tweet “stanzas” (loose definition here) with the phrase “In the/my dream”. This demarking of her poems, where as a twitter follower you will know where one poem starts and ends, is also a demarcation of her dream life and reality.

On the box of cardboard letters there is a list of suggested phrases. None of them have to do with Halloween.

The letters have melted together, making my task infinitely more onerous.

The cardboard letters were also supposed to be perforated but weren’t.

It’s hard to assemble even a simple work, materially.

I have accidentally torn the letters of the word I wanted to make and feel defeated about language.

An extremely personal revelation covering a raft of subjects, sexual, artistic, desire, detachable slug like penises, female lesbian desire, lust, book creation, brothers who are under arrest, no subject is taboo here, and in a format that is very readable and enjoyable this is a great introduction to Jackie Wang’s work. Check out more via her twitter handle @LoneberryWang or her blog at http://loneberry.tumblr.com/  How can I not like a collection that includes the following quote?

I revolt: I no longer want to be a person. Clarice Lispector

Dodie Bellamy’s collection, “More Important Than The Object”, covers a raft of personal art viewing, and working history through eleven reflections presented as “memoir”. With titles such as “Permanent Collection”, which explores the nuances, feelings, emotions when entering an art space;

When I visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art I am both an outsider without status and an artist in my own right, with a peculiar variety of privilege. Being a writer, I’m not central to the Bay Area art scene, but I bisect with it in overlapping circles. If you know any curators, the first thing that you’ll realize is that in private they love to act out, to throw off the formal constraints of writing copy for catalogues and signage, or whatever they call those informative blocks of text that hand on the gallery walls, from which the first person is forbidden. In private they take enormous pleasure in disclosing, in writing the forbidden, getting all personal and critical and gossipy, throwing around the first person with abandon. Get them alone and they’re eager to extricate themselves from the official discourse of the museum, to show the human side of the process, all the insecurities and resentments and near catastrophes. They expose their feelings about their jobs, and how at times when rushing around the museum they’re stopped in their tracks by the wonder of a piece of art.

And Bellamy’s past as a 16-year-old art student and her copy of /Vision In Motion” is explored, along with photography, imagery, capitalist consumerism, in the memoir “Moholy-Nagy”;

In our culture of ahistorical surfaces and angles of gaze, we all know better than to go around searching for transcendence, yet I suspect that most of us still long for it, that being human, we’re hardwired for such longings.

“Cream” by Cecilia Corrigan is a stream of consciousness style teenage anecdote/monologue about the beauty industry;

Sometimes I have to look at the internet and see what kind of horrible thing has happened now.

Things don’t seem to be working out very well for most people in the world and there’s so much disaster and tragedy and so many products you’re supposed to put on your skin or not, depending, and lists, and no one knows the answers to any of it.

A monologue that flows from Stanley Kubrick to Shelly Winters to Jean Genet to Abdallah the tight rope walker, the common link their make up.

It’s sad how most men don’t get to use lotions, except for the mysterious “aftershave.”

It’s like they don’t have any secrets.

Eight short poems make up the chapbook “ON MY LOVE FOR Gender Abolition” by Amy De’Ath

Every feminist man thinks he is a good friend.
He wouldn’t hit a woman, nor rape her. Nor kill her,
but maybe he would writer something to pause the brain, a
Heraclitean litany or regular love song. Save her a song in the spirit
of universalism that she would comprehend –
All my abstract labour is on the mountain top. So fuck unto yourself.

Highly politically charged poetry, covering Maxism, feminism, sexuality, this is another personal revelation.

Lynne Tillman’s “In These Intemperate Times: 9 Frieze Columns” we have the critical essay. Seven short pieces that explore the ordinary, where the writer actually explains is a mischaracterisation, maybe the mediocre “Being mediocre requires an effort not to be ordinary, then failing.” She explains the bulk of “ordinary people”, getting sucked into watching reality television, where she generally reaches for the remote, this time the thoughts, whilst watching The Voice, she stays tuned, “If she can do it, I can”

On The Voice she sang for an audience of millions. How at ease, I thought, she looks onstage, which achievement – ease – is meant itself to be a modern-day miracle. The girl started to sing and imitated what hundreds of pop singers have modelled on tv since before her birth. There was no sense, to my eye, of her wanting to make something her own, just to do what everyone else did as well as she could. She had the moves down, handling the mic, doing the familiar gestures, and could add the usual trill and vibrato here and there. The voice was a sweet, unmemorable voice, a voice like so many voices. I didn’t watch to the end, the outcome seemed clear, and she won a day or so later.

Factual in feeling, at times disjointed, the flow or connection at times felt a little tenuous. Containing a large number of great themes that could be explored in more detail. The political, the entity known as a nation is explored in “Fighting Talk” or language in “Seriously?”;

I’m not a cynic. I prefer irony, which depends on the ability to hold contradictory ideas, which probably springs from ambivalence. People confuse and conflate irony with insincerity and dishonesty; they believe an ironist isn’t serious. But saying the opposite of what is meant allows for at least two meanings to fly. Irony couples and uncouples statements, while revealing the hidden agendas of language and its conventions. Still, defending irony is self-defeating and oxymoronic. To mount an attack on anti-ironists would deny me the pleasure of pointing without being pointed. Earnestness does have its place. (President Obama’s new press secretary is names Earnest.) But to be earnest treads the line of righteousness and, worse, self-righteousness. It is often said of an earnest speaker that he or she means well. ‘Meaning well’ implies the speaker has used platitudes. Irony refuses platitudes, and hopes to undo them.

Overall this is a very tight collection of varied works that all address the common theme of identity, a nicely presented collection that gives you a taste of all the writer’s works without having to invest in a full length work. An enjoyable visit into the minds of the margins in the USA.

For more details about the collection and the contributors visit the publisher Capricious’ website here http://www.becapricious.com/say-hi-t/

Minute-Operas - Frédéric Forte (Translated by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom & Jean-Jacques Poucel)

First up from the American Literary Translators Association, 2016 National Translation Awards longlist for Poetry (geez that’s a mouthful), is Minute-Operas by Frédéric Forte (Translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom & Jean-Jacques Poucel).

Stepping into Frédéric Forte's work is like stepping into a vast sparse gallery space, open space around you, take time to ponder what your eye has been drawn towards. Broken into two sections, “Phase one – January – October 2001” and “Phase two – February – December 2002”. Each section containing 55 “poems” or creations.

Each poem is “Staged” on the page, where a “simple vertical line of 3 inches (I measured the line thinking it would more likely to be in centimetres, but inches it was, I wonder if this is part of the translation or a US audience too?) separates, what Forte calls the stage and the wings”. Typographically the word creations then perform on this stage created on each page. It is probably best to cite an example.

This example showing the passing of time, the polar opposites of marking off weeks but stating that during a “poem’s construction you never count your days”, ageing and creation (in the wings) whilst the seconds pass on the stage. Complexity all on a single page. To quote the ‘Preface” from “The End of Oulipo? An attempt to exhaust a movement” by Lauren Elkin and Scott Esosito;

The concept of potential literature is founded on a paradoxical principle: that through the use of a formal constraint the writer’s creative energy is liberated. The work which results may be “complete” in itself, but it will gesture at all the other work that could potentially be generated using that constraint.

The poem I have used as an example doesn’t actually fall into the Oulipian section of Frédéric Forte’s work, which in fact comes in phase two, but the concept of the paradox and liberation are stunningly obvious.

This is a collection that forces you to pause, as if in an art gallery, to observe, linger, absorb, reflect before moving on, each poem an artwork in its own right, a creation that can work on numerous levels, artistically, literary, poetically, theatrically or even structurally.

Phase two’s poems come with a “Detailed index of fixed forms” where the poem uses existing poetic forms, either traditional or invented by the Oulipo. Another example for you;

Here the detailed index explains that the poem is a “Quintina. Level-5 quenina. In (central pillar of a house [the title of the poem]) the permutation operates on punctuation marks.” Permutations boundless in this example, I‘ll leave it for you to ponder.

This book is not only a feat of typographical wonder, to even contemplate the translation that would have been required, is a feat in itself. For example, the oulipo ‘heterogram’ “invented by Georges Perec. The letters chosen by the poet (the ten most frequently used in the French alphabet, plus one) cannot be used again before the whole series is completed. In the poem ‘(whistle statue II)’ the letters “SILENTBAROU” go through various iterations as words (eg. Silent Bar: our tale is….) eleven times until they end with the words “burial stone”. How on earth did this originally appear in French and how did the translator make it coherent in English? I’m still astounded, initially upon reading the poem, again when taking my notes, and now when attempting to explain it.

The cover of the book tells us that the content of the poems “also constitute, in their cryptic way, a journal of the poet’s life during the period of composition (2001-2002): his love life, the loss of his father…” unfortunately this depth was something that was personally lost in the translation. Whilst the word games, and cryptic style was extremely impressive, the content, as a cohesive whole, seemed to fall by the wayside.

Phase two of the book containing fifty-five word games for you to explore slowly, wonder upon, stretch your limits, refer to the index and back to the poem, research, ponder. An absolute marvel of potential literature. The first fifty-five poems more structured within the space confines, created by the poet, or simply the limits of the page, but still wonderfully rich and detailed in their construction.

A collection that I think would not be out of place in an art gallery. Illuminating and one I will revisit often, if simply just to be stunned at the creation involved.

In a nut shell this is a book I can't adequately review, here’s what others have said….if that helps…

“A book as intriguing (by its staging of typographic variations) as it is invigorating (in its micro-narratives).” —Emmanuel Laugier, Le Matricule des Anges n°67 (octobre 2005)

“Extraordinary inventiveness…funny, original, brilliant” —Jean-Michel Espitallier, Caisse à Outils: Un panorama de la poésie française aujourd’hui (Pocket, 2006)

“positively acrobatic, even balletic” – ALTA Blog

How about you buy a copy and see for yourself? I can guarantee literary lovers, Oulipo readers and poetry aficionados will not be disappointed.

American Literary Translators Association National Translation Awards 2016

In early August the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced the longlists for the 2016 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. Winning translators will receive a $2,500 cash prize, with the winners being announced at the ALTA’s annual conference in October 2016. The five-title shortlists for each category will be “announced in September”. I do intend to read and review a number of the titles that have made the longlists, unfortunately some titles are no longer available or given they come from small independent presses the distribution is limited and the postage costs to Australia are prohibitive, whilst I love to read some of the titles, I really cannot justify spending $50+ on a single book!!!

Here are the Longlists (in alphabetical order by title)

2016 NTA Longlist in Poetry:

Blackbirds in September: Selected Shorter Poems

By Jürgen Becker (Germany)

Translated from the German by Okla Elliott

(Black Lawrence Press)

I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky

By Arseny Tarkovsky

Translated from the Russian by Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev

(The Cleveland State University Poetry Center)

Minute-Operas

By Frédéric Forte (France)

Translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom, Jean-Jacques Poucel

(Burning Deck)

Rilke Shake

By Angélica Freitas (Brazil)

Translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan

(Phoneme Media)

Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal

By Charles Baudelaire (France)

Translated from the French by Jan Owen

(Arc Publications)

The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems

By Natalia Toledo (Mexico)

Translated from the Isthmus Zapotec and Spanish by Clare Sullivan

(Phoneme Media)

The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa

By Chika Sagawa (Japan)

Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu

(Canarium Books)

The Country of Planks

By Raúl Zurita (Chile)

Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky

(Action Books)

This Blue Novel

By Valerie Mejer Caso (Mexico)

Translated from the Spanish by Michelle Gil-Montero

(Action Books)

White Blight

By Athena Farrokhzad (Sweden)

Translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida

(Argos Books)

2016 NTA Longlist in Prose:

Adventures in Immediate Irreality

By Max Blecher

Translated from the Romanian by Michael Henry Heim

(New Directions)

Leg over Leg

By Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (Lebanon)

Translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies

(Library of Arabic Literature/NYU Press)

Lovers on All Saints’ Day

By Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Translated from the Spanish by Ann Maclean

(Riverhead Books)

Stammered Songbook: A Mother’s Book of Hours

By Erwin Mortier (Belgium)

Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent

(Pushkin Press)

The Blizzard

By Vladimir Sorokin (Russia)

Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector

By Clarice Lispector (Brazil)

Translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson

(New Directions)

The Hotel Years

By Joseph Roth

Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

(New Directions)

The Meursault Investigation

By Kamel Daoud (Algeria)

Translated from the French by John Cullen

(Other Press)

The Physics of Sorrow

By Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria)

Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel

(Open Letter Books)

The Story of My Teeth

By Valeria Luiselli (Mexico)

Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney

(Coffee House Press)

Tristano Dies: A Life

By Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)

Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris

(Archipelago Books)

I will be back tomorrow with a review of “Minute-Operas” by Frédéric Forte – a member of the Oulipo!!!

The Rest Is Silence - Carla Guelfenbein (translated by Katherine Silver)

Truth rises up from the depths and alters the orderly surface of things.

Last year I planned a full six week holiday/visit to Central America, taking in places such as Mexico and Guatemala and once my work situation changed and the bill came in, the passports were put back on mothballs and a local holiday to Kangaroo Island replaced my ambitious plans. Somehow that planning must have left a seed in my subconscious as I have been reading books from the region all year, twenty-one of the seventy-five posts I have made this year have been  from Central or south America, 28% shows a distinct leaning!!! I still have fifteen or twenty unread books on my “to be read” piles from the region so more will be forthcoming before the end of the year I am sure, there’s even a chance I’ll manage to fit one or two more in before the end of “Women In Translation Month” too.

Back to Chile for my latest read, a work nowhere near as experimental or as challenging as Diamela Eltit’s “Custody of the Eyes”  (translated by Helen Lane & Ronald Christ), more your very readable, approachable style like the last couple of works I have read from Mexico. As with “Ten Women” by Marcela Serrano (translated by Beth Fowler) which was told in ten different voices, or “Umami” by Laia Jufresa (translated by Sophie Hughes) with five narrators, “The Rest Is Silence” is narrated in three difference voices.

The novel opens with the innocent child voice of Tommy, who has been excluded from the other children’s games and is hiding under a table at a Wedding, listening, and in fact recording, adult conversations. By doing so Tommy accidentally learns that his mother did not die from an aneurysm, but rather committed suicide:

If Mama killed herself, it’s because she didn’t love me. I hold my breath and count: Ten, nine, eight, seven…I’m sure I can go back, back to before I hid under this table…six, five…the elephant would say anything to impress her friends…four, three, two…My head is spinning and I feel a thousand stabs in my belly, as if a propeller were turning round and round inside my guts. I can’t stand it anymore. I make a dash for it. I slip and fall. I bang my knees and my hands.

I’ve come to the very end of the garden, where it plunges down into the sea. The light in the sky is white. My cousins are playing ball at the top of the hill, the highest point in the garden. I sit down on the grass. I hug my knees and bury my head in my lap. I stink. I don’t know exactly when my guts exploded. Now I’m really in trouble.

Sometimes I know what it feels like to be unhappy, to wait for night-time so I can hide under the sheets, close my eyes, and escape forever to Kájef’s barge. Is that how Mama felt?

We then immediately move to the female voice of Alma, Tommy’s step mother, slowly the history of this family comes into focus. Finally the voice of Juan, Tommy’s father and Alma’s husband, takes the stage, and the grief over his first wife’s, Solidad’s, death, his young child’s heart condition and his relationship with his current wife become the dominant themes.

This is a story of a fractured family, with one character obsessed by his child’s failing heart, another about “love” and her relationship with her mother, her husband and her own child and step child and the other character wondering why everybody is so uneasy and where is his mum?

The innocent, but honest, voice of the child Tommy not only acts as a nice counterbalance to the two adult voices, who do not communicate directly with each other, but it also raises the tension in the novel. With Tommy talking to his imaginary friend or the maid Yerfa, or reviewing his illicit tape recordings, you know that the crescendo is slowly building, an explosive conclusion is a foregone conclusion.

The day’s first light is blue. The gate is open, and the outside light is on. IT wasn’t a dream. Alma came home with another man. I want to edit out that whole scene, like she does with her movies. Erase it from my memory. But when something new and important gets into my head, there’s no way to get it out of there. No matter how hard I try to forget, there are little monsters who keep reminding me it’s still there. Not long ago, I explained it to Alma and she told me that the little monsters are called your conscience. I asked her if they ever go away and she said they don’t, but we learn to live and just pretend we don’t see them. I wanted to know why I can’t do that and Alma told me that maybe I was one of those very few people who, instead of closing their eyes, confront the monsters and fight against them until they defeat them. That’s why I’ve been thinking that if I can discover ten things about Mama, everything will become clear. Why ten? Because God gave us ten commandments to live by, because we have ten fingers, because ten billion kilometres are one light year, because Yerfa says I should count to ten before I say or do anything that I might later regret.

As each voice reveals a little more of their history, and their experiences, the layers are slowly peeled back and your pre-conceived ideas are put to the test, they are simply illusions, the truth of this family is more complex than you initially thought. As the unsaid, the “silences” referred to in the title, accumulate, you can see the rift that is slowly breaking this family apart.

There are a few events that happen, especially how Tommy discovers his roots, which, to me, are too coincidental, or contrived, however these don’t detract from the overall theme, tension, or plot of the work.

As the opening quote, I chose here, says…”truth rises up from the depths and alters the orderly surface of things”…here we have three truths conveyed by three different voices, their individual truths different to the truths of the others. Confusing? It is not so when you read the book.

A pleasant read, not a challenging work by any means, and one that addresses the themes of family bonds, love, generational influence, addressing the truth and grief. Another fine addition to Women In Translation Month, one for people who are yet to dabble in such books to possibly try as a starter.

By the way Kangaroo Island is stunning, if you want remote, pristine, forests, walks along beaches, then this is a place to visit. It wasn’t my dream Central American trip, that can wait, I’ve been there through my reading choices for months now. 

Ten Women - Marcela Serrano (translated by Beth Fowler)

Throughout my literary journey, which has lasted publicly for five years here on my blog, I have explored a number of literary styles. And my journey for the last two months has been solely based on literature originally published in Spanish and from Central or South America. I’m still in the region, this time returning to the written word from Chile, and Marcela Serrano’s “Ten Women”.

In a nutshell this book is made up of monologues of nine women who have been brought to a venue in a mini-bus specifically to address the audience of the other women present. They are all patients of Natasha, their therapist has arranged the meeting for them to talk about their lives in an open forum.

If you are after a well-crafted novel that follows a plot, then straight off the bat here, you are not going to like this one iota. And although it is probably a decent criticism of this work, that there is no plot, it does not mean that it is unreadable, poorly crafted, or even unworthy of your reading pleasure. In fact this book is highly addictive, has many layers, is moving in so many ways, and addresses numerous political, social and environmental issues specific to Chile as well as being a strong feminist mouthpiece.

From the opening, the introduction of sorts, as the women gather, aged between nineteen and seventy-five, we know that this is going to become a raw expose;

Beneath the black vest or pink blouse, wasn’t each woman endowing herself with resolve, gathering courage for the day ahead?? Their appearances today are certainly honest, there’s no interference from jobs, offices, or formalities that might pigeonhole them; the way they have come today is the way they truly are.

A few of the voices to give you a feel for what is in store here…opening is Francisca, fortysomething, successful in real estate, less so in her life in general and even less so in her relationship with her mother. Or the assured voice of Simona, well read, who comes from a privileged background, who meditates, and based on Buddhist teachings, lives in the present moment. Or Mané;

My name is Mané and I’m just as you see me. I was always the prettiest. I’m five foot eight and a half, which is tall for this country, and I weigh a hundred and thirty pounds. Even today, in spite of my age, I still keep an eye on my weight, although I’m the only one to see my body. I turned seventy-five a couple of months ago. There was barely a celebration.

I used to be gorgeous. It’s a shame I have to say it in the past tense. No one says “I am gorgeous” and even less “I will be gorgeous.” Well, that’s all I’ve got: the past. Sunset Boulevard, a movie from the fifties, reminds me of my life. That must be why I find it so moving. Starring, Gloria Swanson, it’s based on the life of Norma Desmond, a great Hollywood silent-movie actress who starred in dozens of movies, a true diva who had the world at her feet. By the time she’d aged, she wanted to return to acting and seduction but everyone had abandoned her. All the directors and producers who once sang her praises turned their backs on her. She was no use to them anymore, but this was something she refused to accept. They didn’t even answer her phone calls. She was rotting, alone and abandoned. Like me.

The personal shame of ageing, such a moving and honest voice, brilliantly captured by a writer who herself could only have been in her late fifties (at most) when she wrote this. Each of the characters have such assured voices, even if their tales are, in many cases, horrific, the characters are happy in their own skin. Throughout the pervading feeling is that Natasha, as a therapist, must be extremely successful in her work.

Natasha said that only by telling her could I take control of this story. That’s what I am doing today. In order to recover, every survivor needs to be able to take charge of her memories. We need others for that. Today I’m burdening you as witnesses. The load is heavy.

I’m worn out.

We have the brutal story of a Palestinian, Layla, exiled in Chile and her return to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, her subsequent memories, or Luisa from the country who only loved one man, a man who was taken away, at three-thirty in the morning, still in his pyjamas, a few months after the 11 September 1973 Military coup. Or the tale of a young teenage lesbian coming to terms with her sexuality, and a popular television presenter who cannot sleep without medication or face who she really is.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a gripping work, the honest, true voices of the women who are undergoing therapy, for numerous reasons, haunt you from the first page until the last. A realistic picture of life under the paternalistic rule of Pinochet, a view from so many angles. The presentation of nine monologues adds to the non-fiction meta-fiction style, even if the stories are in fact fiction, they appear almost interview like and therefore the realism of the situation rings true. The final “woman” character being Natasha, the therapist herself, her tale told by her lifelong assistant, and to me this section almost seems tacked on, a nice tidy way of rounding out the stories, how can we have the therapist calling all these women here without an explanation? Nine monologues, one third person story to round it out. A really flat way to end what would otherwise be a fine work.

There are also a few typos and the Americanisation of simple things (like Mané’s height and weight in the example above) is quite frustrating given Chile has been on the metric system since 1848 (in fact it is compulsory!). But these are just small idiosyncrasies that every 40 or fifty pages or so detract from the overall work.

All in all, this is another decent inclusion on the “Women In Translation Month” listings, another interesting work from Chile, and I still have a number of works from there on my “to be read” piles, don’t worry I will be back!!

Umami - Laia Jufresa (translated by Sophie Hughes)

Three in a row of Mexican women’s writing, with today’s review being the recently released “Umami” by Laia Jufresa (some places have this slated for release next month, however I purchased my copy a few months ago and it has been with me since June!!) I came across the work ‘umami’ a few years ago when my eldest child came home from primary school and explained that there are five basic flavours, sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (discovered by the Japanese), the novel also gives a description;

“Umami is one of the five basic flavours our taste buds can identify. The others, the ones we all know, are sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Then there’s umami, more or less new to us in the West. We’re talking a century or so. It’s a Japanese word. It means delicious.”

But this is not a novel about food. The “umami” here is the name of one house in a collection of five, all named by the landlord Alfonso, an expert in flavour (or more precisely pre-Hispanic diets). These five homes are in an urban environment and from the opening page you know that you are in for a desolate tale:

The three of us looked out of the sliding door to the yard where the picnic table lives. Once upon a time it was folding and portable. The benches on either side slot underneath like the retracting feet of a turtle, and the whole thing transformed into a neat aluminium travel case. Not anymore. It’s probably still fold up, but no one seems keen on picnics these days. Around the table there’s just gray cement (dirty gray), and a row of flowerpots full of dry soil, the remains of some bushes, a broken bucket. It’s a colorless, urban yard, If you spot something green, it’s moss you’re looking at; something red and it’ll be rust.

The future holds no picnics, it is bare, it is urban. But one of our voices, the young Ana wants to start a garden, she is breaking out of the desolation that has befallen these people and she is planning a future.

The book is broken into three sections each containing five chapters, five different voices, the chapters move backwards through the years. 2004 is the voice of a young girl, the older sister of Luz who drowned a number of years ago, 2003 the story of Marina, an unstable adult girl who suffers an eating disorder, 2002 the voice of Alfonso, the anthropologist who studies pre-Hispanic diets, and husband of the recently deceased Noelia, 2001 the immature voice of Luz who drowns in that year and the year 2000 another young girl, Pina.

The five voices live in five different houses named after the five basic flavours,

Bitter House: Marina

Sour House: Pina and her dad, Beto.

Salty House: Linda Walker and Víctor Pérez.

Sweet House: The Pérez-Walker Academy of Music.

Umami House: Alfonso Semitiel…and The Girls.

With wonderfully rich characters and distinctive voices, the culture exploration is also prominent, for example the study of amaranth, the Aztec rituals and how the Spanish wiped out the main grain source, amaranth, creating the now held misbelief that corn was the primary source of grain in Mexico is raised.

Again, although it may appear so with eating disorders, professors of diets, houses names after flavours, this is not merely a novel about food. This is a book that works on many other levels, exploring loss, motherhood, maternal love, and innocence. As well as the allegory of tending a garden, the meticulous work and the slow involvement of others in the “community”, showing the voices who are coming to terms with loss and moving towards a brighter future.

Just like umami, reading this book became a craving, you need a satisfying fill of this group of ordinary humans all coming to terms with ordinariness, death, loneliness, admiration, self-awareness, innocence. With characters that are believable, and small revelations that are peppered throughout the five distinct voices all become similar in their needs. Whilst Marina with her eating disorder believes that she is isolated and alone, Ana looks up to her for her individuality, her determination and her unique fashion style. Whilst Alfonso is living in the past, and the memories of his life with the recently deceased Noelina, Marina lives in the now, the immediate, no past, no future.

Whilst personally I found the voice of Alfonso the most enjoyable to read, that may be because he is the only male voice in the novel, all five voices are distinct, uniquely different and address, from a range of angles, maternal love and loss.

A book that must have been challenging to translate, given the different tone, nuances, styles and ages of all the voices, and as per her wonderful work with Ivan Repila’s “The Boy Who Stole Attila’s Horse”, Sophie Hughes has brought to life a seamless work in English. I am looking forward to reading her recently translated “Affections” by Rodrigo Hasbun.

A sparkling work that I am sure would reveal even more secrets on a second reading, one that combines all the flavours of the palate, which rounds out nicely and leaves you with a feeling of loss, something “to remember, not to keep”.

Natural Histories - Guadalupe Nettel (translated by J.T. Lichenstein)

I have been involved in Women In Translation Month since its inception three years ago and each year I plan ahead my potential reading titles for the month, this year electing to stay with the Spanish language translations and primarily from Central or South American nations. After Diamela Eltit’s difficult experimental work from Chile and the feminist short stories of Inés Arredondo from Mexico I thought a further stay in Mexico would be beneficial and over the course of this week I will look at the short stories from Guadalupe Nettel and a recent novel by Laia Jufresa, both Mexican writers receiving a lot of current press, before finally ending the week by heading back to Chile and the approachable novel “Ten Women” by Marcela Serrano. All of these works a lot more “commercial” than the books I generally read and review here.

“Natural Histories” is a collection of five short stories, described on the back cover as unfolding “in fragile worlds, where animal behaviours parallel the ways in which human beings interact”. Or in other words each of the stories feature a protagonist and an animal theme, fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, fungi and snakes are the five themes that exist and interact alongside the narrative.

The collection opens with “The Marriage of the Red Fish” where the actions of a couple, expecting the birth of their first child, mirror the activity of the fighting fish they have recently been given and have moved into a large tank, the action drifts along like the fish themselves;

We first placed the fish on a small corner table in the living room where the afternoon sun fell. We thought they cheered up the room, which faced the patio behind our building, with the quick movements of their fins and tails. I don’t know how many hours I must have spent watching them. A month earlier I had requested maternity leave from the law office where I worked to prepare for the birth of my daughter. It wouldn’t be forever, and it wasn’t uncommon, but still it troubled me. I didn’t know what to do at home. The too-many empty hours filled me with questions about my future.

Meanwhile the couple’s behaviour starts to become territorial, they start antagonising each other;

I always kept an eye on them whenever I was home, as if with that look, severe and exact, an imminent confrontation could be averted. I of course felt solidarity with her. I could feel her fear and her anxiety at being cornered, feel her need to hide. Fish are perhaps the only domestic animals that don’t make noise. But they taught me that screams can be silent. Vincent adopted an ostensibly more neutral position, betrayed nonetheless by the humorous comments he dropped now and again: “What’s wrong with the female? Is she against reproduction?” or “Keep calm, brother, even if you’re getting impatient. Remember that laws today are made by and for women.”

Although the longest story in the collection, this is a simple story of family antagonism and breakdown, an ordinary tale that you know is not going to end well, if it is to follow the lives of fighting fish put into the same tank!!! A story that is unsettling, because as a reader you understand the fate of the narrator before the inevitable happens.

“War in the Trash Cans” is a tale of an unwelcomed niece living a façade of the suburban “American” style dream, set to the backdrop of invading cockroaches.

“Felina”, follows the more traditional domestic animal and the cycle of a cat’s pregnancy;

The ties between animals and human beings can be as complex as those that bind us people. There are some who maintain bonds of reluctant cordiality with their pets. They feed them, they take them for walks if need be, but rarely do they speak to them other than to scold or “educate” them. In contrast, there are others who make of their turtles their closest confidants. Every night they lean in towards their tanks and tell them about what happened to them at work, the confrontation they put off with their boss, their doubts, and their hopes for love. Among domestic animals dogs get particularly good press. It is even said that they are man’s best friend because of their loyalty and nobility, words that often signify nothing more than a tolerance for abuse and abandonment.

“Fungus”, as the title implies, is a story of parasites, bodily growths and love, “my fungus wants one thing only: to see you again.” there is attraction but also rejection, “eradicating a fungus can be as complicated as ending an unwanted relationship.”

The collection ends with “The Snake from Beijing”, where a married man, a famous playwright, who although French was adopted when he was two years old. After returning to China for a theatre production of one of his works, he returns home a changed man.  He secludes himself in a pagoda and buys a pet venomous snake.

This collection is very straight forward in the metaphoric and allegorical telling of the stories and very approachable and is written in a readable candid style, unlike some works I have recently read, there is no complex layer upon layer of deciphering to be done – for example, if a snake is shedding its skin, the human character is also being reborn. It was refreshing to read a short collection of stories that didn’t require an in-depth knowledge of the political landscape, so a decent work for readers wanting to dip their toes into the world of translated literature without becoming overawed.

Does it make me want to leap on the “to be read pile” and grab her latest novel “The Body Where I Was Born”? Not really, although I will probably get to it before the end of the month, a longlist candidate for this year’s “Best Translated Book Award” means it was on the pile for a number of reasons (not just Women In Translation Month).

Olga Tokarczuk - Women In Translation

As regular visitors to this blog would know, I have supported and been involved in “Women In Translation Month”, since its establishment three years ago. An absolutely brilliant initiative started  by Meytal Radzinski (or @Biblibio or Twitter) and you can read a whole lot more about it at her blog, this year’s details at the 2016 Women In Translation Month page here.

Last year I had a look at a number of women writers who are celebrated in their home Nations but their works are yet to make their way into English, I ran a number of occasional posts titled “Women (Not) In Translation”. This year I may highlight a few of these again, however my occasional posts, whilst I am finishing up a novel written by a woman, or putting the finishing touches on a new review, are going to lean towards highlighting a few works that are available on the internet.

When spreading your wings and trying new books by writers you have not read before can sometimes be a disaster waiting to happen, while your searches of favourite blogs or reviewers may point you towards something that appears interesting, there is always the risk that the style of writing is just not your thing. Something that may assist is reading a short story or two by the writer in question before investing your money and effort in a full blown novel.

One writer I have really enjoyed reading about as well as reading her works Olga Tokarczuk from Poland. Her novel “Primeval and Other Times” (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) I reviewed in December last year soon after she won the Polish Nike Prize for her latest book “The Books of Jakub”.

Tokarczuk was born in Sulechów Poland in 1962, a recipient of all of Poland’s top literary awards, she “is one of the most critically acclaimed authors of her generation”. Holding a psychology degree from the University of Warsaw, she initially practiced as a therapist and “often cites C.G. Jung as an inspiration for her work, in which mythmaking has become a hallmark.” (Quotes from Twisted Spoon Press website, publisher of “Primeval and Other Times”).

Whilst generally a literary award from Poland wouldn’t generate headlines, the 2015 Nike Prize did as Tokarczuk soon afterwards began receiving death threats and was subjected to abuse, after she questioned Poland’s “record on tolerance”. (See The Scotsman)

“The Books of Jakub” runs to over 900 pages, is “a great journey through seven borders, five languages and three major religions, not counting the small ones”, and is currently being translated into English, however my current understanding is that there is still no English language publisher. I am eagerly awaiting news of a publisher as I will probably be one of the first readers in the queue to purchase a copy once it is released.

If you are interested in an excerpt from the novel, translated as “The Books of Jacob” by Jennifer Croft, eight pages were published by the Massachusetts Review and are available here 

Bomb Magazine has published an excerpt from Olga Tokarczuk’s 2008 Nike Award winning book  “Runners”(again translated by Jennifer Croft) here 

In June this year Bomb Magazine also published another Jennifer Croft translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s, the short story “Late Saturday to Early Sunday” 

Interviews, translated into English, with Tokarczuk can be found here:

Interview One

Interview Two

Interview Three

A few tastes of her work for you to check out in case you’re interested in exploring her work further. Two of her novels are available in English, both translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, “Primeval and Other Times” (published by Twisted Spoon Press) and “House of Day, House of Night” (published by Northwestern University Press as part of their “Writings from an Unbound Europe” collection).

Underground River and Other Stories - Inés Arredondo (translated by Cynthia Steele)

I’ve been in central and South American (not physically but with my reading choices) for about six weeks now and I am going to continue the theme for quite a bit longer, with a wonderful pile of originally written in Spanish titles, all by women writers, sitting awaiting my attention.

When I read the collection of Mexican short stories, “Sun, Stone, and Shadows” (edited by Jorge F. Hernández)  I mentioned the Inés Arredondo short story “The Shunammite” (translated by Alberto Manguel) and given the impact her story had in eleven pages, I wanted to hunt down more of her work. Inés Arredondo (1928-1989) published only three line volumes of stories and at present the availability of her work in English is minimal. The University of Nebraska Press edition of “Underground River and Other Stories” that I managed to source was published in 1996.

The collection opens with an “Introduction” by the translator, Cynthia Steele, and if you don’t want to have the themes revealed, some of the plotlines revealed, I would suggest you skip this and revisit it after you have enjoyed the stories. Here Steele tells us;

Arredondo resisted being called a woman writer, since she believed that this label relegated women artists to a ghetto, to a second-class status with critics and readers. “I don’t want to be the best woman writer in Mexico,” she said in an interview, “I want to be one of the best Mexican writers.” At the same time, her short stories focus obsessively on female subjectivity (along with other marginal beings, adolescents of both genders and gay men) within the context of a perverse Gothic “family romance” set in provincial Sinaloa at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Revolution has not yet happened, or else it has passed through without disturbing centuries-old power relations.

The “Introduction” is followed by a “Foreword” by Elena Poniatowska;

She was troubled by the problems of purity, pride, mercy, and love. Her central themes are reflected in her characters’ solitude, in the importance that she confers on the couple, and in her dissection of the human souls; these are what make her works unique.

This collection opens with the same story that appears in “Sun, Stone, and Shadows”, “The Shunammite” (this translated by Cynthia Steele, although I must admit I thought I was re-reading the story I had already read a few months ago, so the versions must be very similar indeed). A check of the opening lines shows:

"The summer had been a fiery furnace. The last summer of my youth." (Alberto Manguel translation).

"The was a blistering summer. The last of my youth." (Cynthia Steele translation).

Having said that, on a second reading the themes are much more poignant, the lechery and the biting tale of patriarchal society and the role of single women in such is captured perfectly, no wonder Poniatowska says “The Shunammite” is one of the most celebrated short stories in Mexican literature. I think this is the second reading, not the different translation, however I did seem to enjoy the story more the second time around. 

What keeps him going is lust…

The story “Marianna” tells the tale of a young girl in school who, during class, draws clumsily as though a pre-schooler. As she gets older she comes to school with make-up, and of course is punished, becomes sexually active and is the centre of all of the fellow school girl’s rumours. Becoming defiant to her family, her teachers and their superiors, this only leads to ruin. There are no happy endings for these fallen women in Arredondo’s stories.

The more stories we read the more we learn of humbled people, those who do not understand their dire situations, there are no tidy, neat endings, awkwardness prevails. In “The Sign” we have a person who is drawn to visit a church and is then asked by the Sexton if he can kiss his feet, or the two paragraph story “New Year’s Eve” where rawness, loneliness and compassion are profoundly portrayed, depth you can sometimes not find in works that run to 100’s of pages.

In Cynthia Steele’s “Introduction” she says “her opening are so memorable” and every single story sucks you in within a mere few sentences, a few examples:

I have led a solitary life for many years, a woman alone in this immense house, a cruel and exquisite life. That’s the story I want to tell: about the cruelty and exquisiteness of a rural life.

When I saw him brush her cheek with the whip, I knew what I had to do.

Great lovers don’t have children.

“Nocturnal Butterflies” is a story of procuring virgins for the master of the house to sleep with, “five hundred pesos in gold for your virginity. One night for two hours.” Or the story “The Mirrors” where we have a mother relaying the tale of her son’s exploits with sisters, one of whom is mentally impaired, she justifies her behaviour.

A collection full of predators, sexually and morally, these stories are a wonderful representation of Central American female writing. Dark, disturbing, but at the same time revelatory the sense of time, country, mores and the plight of the defenceless or innocent, in their pursuit of happiness is served up to you raw. As one of Arrendondo’s protagonists says;

I have a destiny, but it isn’t mine. I have to live my life according to other people’s destinies.

And to finish the collection we have “Shadow in the Shadows”; our protagonist opens up to us “When I turned fifteen Ermilo Parades was forty-seven.” A rich man Ermilo Parades tells us of the ppower of money “It can buy other people’s humiliation”. An outstanding story to conclude a wonderful collection.

Custody of the Eyes - Diamela Eltit (translated by Helen Lane & Ronald Christ)

There is a scholarly body of work that explores Daimela Eltit’s work, and I feel humbled, and a little under pressure, when attempting to add anything to revelations about her writing.

I have seen her work classified as “experimental fiction” in a number of places, “risk taking”, even “highly experimental”, so how do you review such writing? Let’s start with an excerpt from “Custody of the Eyes” (translated by Helen Lane & Ronald Christ);

Mama and I are always together in the house. We love each other sometimes in tremendous harmony. Harmony. I look at Mama to relieve my hunger. Mama’s tom-tom heart wants to write some crappy pages (a piece of arm, breast, a tooth, my shoulder/ I can’t stop myself now, I can’t hold back/ fingernail, shoulder, it’s really consistent/ my hand, my finger/ it doesn’t hurt me/it hasn’t hurt me for years/ it’s not true that it hurts/ a throb in the eyelid). She only thinks it, doesn’t write it. Mama and I are together in the house in every sense. I exist only in a pile of papers.

This is taken from the opening section of the book, “BAAAM”, narrated by a child who is holed up in a tiny room with his mother. The second section, “Dusk to Dawn”, is a collection of letters, written by the child’s mother to the father of the unnamed child, this makes up the substantial part of the book. The final section, “BRRRR”, is again narrated by the child,

As a reader you only see one side of the letter writing, although you get a sense of response and time movement as the “issues” being addressed or defended cumulate. The child’s school expulsion, wild horselaugh, and play are early subjects along with the bitter cold and the search for food. As the isolation deepens, the homeless who freeze on the doorstep, the constant surveillance (from the father letter writer, the neighbours, the mother-in-law) becomes clearer;

The real conflict we face rests with the neighbors and their conglomeration of intolerances. Now, thanks to them, the city I travel through, in a few hours and out of necessity, seems to me an unreal space, a place open onto the operatic, the theatrical. A Remnant of such proportions that I can predict its imminent liberation into anarchy. This upheaval is wholly attributable to the neighbors. They try to establish laws whose origin nobody knows for sure, though it’s obvious they contrive this attack solely to increase the goods accumulating in their houses. But I caution you with express clarity that these laws are debated in the midst of indescribable conformity and allude to such abuses that I can’t tell whether or not they occur only in their minds. I feel that the neighbors want to perform a theater piece in which the role of enemy is awarded to those citizens who don’t submit to the extreme rigidity of their statutes.

A highly political work, full of metaphor and symbolism, referring to the political situation under the dictatorship of Pinochet. Sheltering the homeless is considered a crime, collusion with the proletariat a sin, the homeless [are] a threat to civil order, [they] “destroy the order respectable people have taken to build up.” The eyes, surveillance (not only featured in the title) are constantly reappearing;

Ah, listen: in the streets they’ve set up the government for the section forbidden to the people. My neighbor goes through the forbidden section of the streets and, at this very moment, I observe him from my window. He approaches, limping in the midst of this relative darkness. The darkness that envelopes him seems only to outline the marked shape of his deformity. My neighbor observes the movement on the streets stealthily, hidden, as if he had seen more than his eyes can resist. Then he withdraws and closes his eyes for a long time.

As pointed out in numerous other reviews and studies, Diamela Eltit’s works are not only political but also feminist, exploring the role of the mother in a patriarchal society, the Chilean military patriarchy and the mother being the core of social advancement, development.

But your intention has been to deprive me of all that’s mine, leaving your orders deposited in my blind brain.

There is nothing secret about my passing through the city. I go and come according to material necessities essential to caring for your son.

You tell me that I’ve placed myself outside the law and what you don’t tell me is that you’ve placed me within reach of your law. You say, as well, that after the unacceptable incidents I have been involved in, your son and I are already talking the filthy language of the streets and the neighbors have reached the conclusion that we waste the whole day and night.

The placement of the child’s narration at the end of the novel shows his advancement, taking the role of “carer”, the passing of the baton from the mother to the child, and with no spoilers, you’ll have to read this yourself to see if they defeat the bitter cold.

The work touches on so many subjects, experimental of course commenting on the art of writing, or maybe the futility of such;

Only writing can endure, since voices and their sounds, inevitably, empty into silence and can be easily stilled, misinterpreted, omitted, forgotten. I write you now solely to forestall the shame that some day could lead me into shielding myself with silence.

In an interview with Bomb Magazine in 2001 Diamela Eltit spoke of “space” in her works, this novel exploring restricted space, a small room, and the freedom of the streets, even if just searching for food,

I find it aesthetically and politically stimulating to work, think, and exist mentally in spaces that are, in a manner of speaking, not “officialized” by the dominant culture. Of course I am thinking of movable places that shift, mutate, and revert back to themselves. In general, official culture softens artistic production and creates a domesticated subject, a sensible literature, and a well-mannered intellectual who functions successfully and comfortably—but whose success is necessarily anodyne—within the dominant system of the moment. In my case, there is a kind of “un-positioning” that is not really part of a deliberate program but which comes about little by little; it is a torsion or distortion that impedes the literature that I frequent from becoming normalized or centralized.

A very interesting and enlightening interview that will give you a feel for Diamela Eltit’s work. More here http://bombmagazine.org/article/2376/diamela-eltit

A challenging work, one where the language slowly seeps into you, the repetitive prose poetry style that is bursting with metaphor and imagery, you slowly become “in custody” yourself, locked into the world where the matriarchy is responsible for your survival. Difficult? Yes. But another revelation from Chile, and a book that works on so many levels, one that will surely haunt me for a while to come.

The Hazards - Sarah Holland-Batt - 2016 WA Premier's Literary Award (Poetry)

Onto the last of the shortlist for the 2016 Western Australian Premier’s Literary Awards for poetry and the University of Queensland Press’ “The Hazards” by Sarah Holland-Batt.

Sarah Holland-Batt is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Queensland University of Technology and her first collection “Aria” (UQP, 2008), won a number of literary awards, including the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, the artsACT Judith Wright Prize, and the FAW Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Queensland Premier’s Judith Wright Calanthe Award. However as I’ve pointed out in the comments for another post, prior awards and recognition mean nothing when it comes to reading and assessing a writer’s latest works, let’s hope judges aren’t swayed by “form”.

This collection is made up of fifty-five poems broken into four sections, a rich collection using descriptive and lyric language touching on the themes of decay, violence and death. Poems that are so earthy you feel you are down in the steaming mulch on a humid day, looking above to the ferns.

Through observations of art, more specifically paintings, and frequently using an ekphrastic style (as self-described in the “notes”; an ‘ekphrastic’ poem a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. – Taken from the Poetry Foundation website.) Poems early in the collection reflecting upon British settlement, convicts, Aboriginals with spears, through to describing the landscape, the flora (less fauna) in the poem. In “An Illustrated History of Settlement” describing Emanuel Phillips Fox’s “The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770” (1902), I personally had the image of this artwork coming immediately to mind and the painting was not referenced in the poem itself, as an iconic painting there was no need for the specific reference, the imagery so vivid, you knew the reference;

On a far headland, two black men
stand warily, one holding up
a toothpick spear
as if to puncture the clouds’ drapery.

The first section rooted in Australian themes, flora and histories. The poem “Desert Pea” bringing the expanse of the desert firmly to mind, simply through the construction, the spaces matching the endless horizons, the silence in between the lines, the splash of red from the flower and the massive night skies all brought home in a short revelation:

Desert Pea

Like the pursuit of fire
a wind stirs the rocks,

summons into hear
a kind of cardinal calm.

This is the violence
of distance.

No end, no horizon.
Only desert floor,

henges of red
and the absolute artifice of sky.

I cannot stand
the certain world:

rock grass and thistle,
animal thirst

invading my eye.
Give me the night, the stars

streaming past me
huge and soundless.

Give me the silence
of the mind.

The rich descriptive language often creating mind pictures and even sounds, for example a vulture becomes a “Shaman of transfiguration,/high priest of the day’s death march,/he is the afterlife of all things:/child, star, pig, the small circumscribed lives/ of the apes and fleas.” And when the vulture eats the flesh, a surgeons language is used, gristle, gizzards and scalpels “cut and claw”.

Section II of the collection are all poems in homage to animals, vulture, toucan, capuchin, macaw, eel, parrot, green ant, cat, possum, muttonbird, and crab. Section III visits art and great artists, travel through Europe. Another ekphrastic poem being “Reclining Nude” reflecting and illuminating the controversial painting by Lucien Freud “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping”, a painting that once held the record for the highest priced work of art by a living artist (purchased by Roman Abramovich for £17.2 million (US$33.6 million) in May 2008), it depicts the nude portrait of a Job Centre worker Sue Tilley, at the time of the painting she weighed 127 kilograms.

Section IV ends with reflections of a worldly style, places inhabited, love, partners, all must “have us in the end”, and America. A collection that although worldly, point out the “hazards” that exist in the everyday, animals that are endangered, environments that are disappearing, innocent times that no longer exist, failed loves…

We have so little time left. We should love. (from “Ensign”)

A very rich collection, like the hummus in the forest at the feet of all the trees that appear, this is rich in styles, language, imagery and experience. For mine the most assured and timeless collection of poems on the shortlist. A collection that will stand the test of time, personally a work I will be hoping takes out the main gong, although all works on the shortlist are fine works and any of them taking home the main prize would not surprise. Although “The Hazards” maybe my favourite I’m not going to get grumpy if any of the other four works win.

When I return to the blog, it will be Women In Translation Month, a month long celebration that I participate in each year, where the only books I will review will be in translation and written by a woman. I have every intention of staying firmly with the Spanish language for the whole month, with fourteen books sitting on my “to be read” pile written by women. My first review will come from Chile (yes I’m returning), stay tuned for a review of an experimental fiction work.