Category Archives: Fiction

Niccolò Ammaniti: I am not scared (2004) aka Io non ho paura (2001) An Italian Novel of Crime, Adventure and Coming of Age

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One relentlessly hot summer, six children explore the scorched wheat-fields that enclose their tiny Italian village. When the gang find a dilapidated farmhouse, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano makes a discovery so momentous he dare not tell a soul. It is a secret that will force Michele to question everything and everyone around him.

Someone has offered me a gift and this person is called Niccolò Ammaniti. The gift consists of a trip to the distant land of childhood memories, of hot summers long gone. No words will be able to convey how much I liked this novel, however I am conscious that it is also a very personal experience. It has a lot to do with my cultural background (my mother was Italian) and similar childhood experiences (apart from the crime element). This novel is pure magic. A magic that I have only encountered in Italian novels so far. It’s a magic that comes from the almost cinematographic power of descriptions. This is a novel I didn’t read, I saw and experienced it. It is sensuous and descriptive like not many. And gripping. Imagine what a combination. And touching as well. (I really have to hold myself back or I will get this year’s prize for cheesiest book review.) And did I mention melancholic? Italian novels tend to be very melancholic, with bitter-sweet undertones, there is always a mix of tears and laughter. I laughed quite a few times when reading Io non ho paura.

I am not scared evokes a scorching hot summer, in the little Italian village of Aqua Traverse. The heat is suffocating, the air has acquired a density that feels like cotton, the heat feels dangerous and relentless. All around the village oceans of yellow wheat extend and in the far distance are rolling hills and little mountains. Michele, his little sister and their friends play outside all day long, they venture into places that are yet unknown, populated by ghosts and ogres, witches and demons, all fruit of their imagination. Childhood politics, with their petty punishment and ostracizing of the weakest are rendered masterly. One day the children explore an abandoned ruinous house and Michele discovers a little boy in a dug out. He won’t tell anyone what he has found, keeps it to himself. Michele learns later that the child is held hostage until his mother will comply and pay a huge ransom. Things are not exactly what they seem in peaceful Aqua Traverse and more than one illusion will be lost at the end of this summer.

Michele, the narrator, is a boy of 9, or rather, the grown up Michele, looking back on his childhood self, is the narrator. This is one of the most beautiful narrative voices I have come upon in a long time. Naïve, perceptive, and precocious at the same time.

The descriptions of an typical Italian village, Italian family life in the 70ies is spot on.

Some of the most wonderful passages are descriptions of moments Michele spends in utter solitude. At night he cannot sleep, the heat is too intense, he stands at the open window, looks out into the full moon night. Everybody is asleep, he seems to be the only one on earth, he hears the sound of little owls and crickets in the windless night…

There is another wonderful instance in which he imagines himself dead and how he would enjoy to attend his own funeral. I always used to think such thoughts as a child and these solitary moments are also very familiar. Enchanting moments of blissful loneliness.

Michele is a highly imaginative child, everything around him is full of mysteries but there are also discoveries that are sobering like when they climb a mountain that they had suspected to be full of magic and it is quite ordinary close-by.

Ammaniti, an author of the so-called letteratura pulp movement, influenced by Tarantion’s Pulp Fiction, is an astonishingly original writer. He mixes genres like the adventure and horror story with crime and elements of the coming of age story. He combines all sorts of elements from popular and sophisticated culture alike. He mentions an Italian pop song like Parole at the same time as La Traviata.

What I liked best are the masterful descriptions of the landscape and the weather.

I haven’t read anything in Italian lately, another reason why  this was a particular pleasure for me. I think it is one of the most melodious languages and being my mother’s native language it brings back childhood memories…

Other Italian authors I love are Bassani, Tabucchi and Pavese. Which are the ones you would recommend?

Io Non Ho Paura (Stile Libero)

Jennie Walker: 24 for 3 (2008) A Novel by Poet Charles Boyle

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24 for 3

Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman’s attention is torn between her husband’s insistence on explaining the rules of cricket, her lover’s preference for mystery, and the worrying disappearance of her sixteen-year-old stepson. By Tuesday night the outcome of the match will become clear – but whatever happens, the lives of the players will be changed forever. 24 for 3 is a funny and moving story about love, family, and whether or not one should always play by the rules.

24 for 3 is the first novel by poet Charles Boyle, written under the pen-name Jennie Walker. It is a very short novel, rather a novella. Crispy, clean prose, undoubtedly the work of a poet. Wonderful language. It’s a tricky little book as well. Tricky in many ways. Tricky because it didn’t find a publisher at first and Boyle published it himself and founded at the same time his own publishing house CB Editions. After he published it, he got a contract from Bloomsbury that’s why we can now read it in a brand-new outfit.

But it is tricky in many other ways. And quirky. You think it is a very small little book and that you can just gulp it down but you are wrong. This little treasure forces you to slow down and pay attention. Once it has made sure that you are focused it will enchant you completely. On barely more than 130 pages we get to read a linear novel, that can be read as such but, when paying really close attention, we realize what an ingenious composition it has. It consists of paragraphs which, in a lot of cases, can be read individually and work as poems, hint fiction and observations. Marvellous. Cricket serves as the backdrop on which a family history unfolds, a very rich tapestry of unusual relationships and non-traditional family life. And adultery. The narrator lives together with her husband, Alan, her step-son Selwyn and the former au-pair Agnieszka who has been staying with them for almost ten years. The woman who tells the story is drawn between her husband and her lover, a loss-adjuster. Surprsingly as this may seem, they are not at the heart of her emotional life. This place is occupied by her love for her step-son who disappears during the beginning of the five-day cricket test match. He ran off to stay with her lover.

The story is profound but I particularly apprecaited the style and would like to give you a few examples:

His face is lined; he looks older than Alan although in fact is younger. He has lived in cities and survived on little sleep. (s. 73)

Or this one that reads like a poem:

“What are you thinking about?”

“Love”

“In general, or in particular?”

“In particular. You?”

“Ants. Oh, and hanging, shooting, poison.”

“Are you asking me to choose?” (s. 49)

Towards the end there are two pages which consist of 8 paragraphs that all begin with the words “We used to play…” and are allusions to lost joy, childhood, change, futility and memories.

And here is the narrator thinking about her two men and the choice she will be forced to make:

Me, I am married to a caring, conscientious man who rearranges cookery books by the light of the moon, and I rush away into the arms of a man who wears yellow Wellington boots and whose job – and possibly whose life too, if  I cared to investigate further – reeks of doom, disaster, things gone awry.

Since this is a multilayered novel, allusions abound. I am sure many readers will understand these:

“Is that okay?”

It appears to be so. Indeed, Selwyn is safe, Agnieszka has not been raped, no rash crime of passion has been committed, no one has thrown him- or herself under the train. But it is not okay. (s.105)

There are many more great passages and sentences, as a matter of fact, one is tempted to quote the whole book. And then there is cricket. For those who like the game this will add additional charm, for those who don’t care about it, it’s another symbolical subtext to explore.

Apart from being a poet, an editor and a novelist Charles Boyle is also blogging at Son of a Book.

I came across 24 for 3 while browsing the site of the Swiss editor Unionsverlag who is dedicated to publish a very exquisite choice of translated books. I had to order the English original right away.

What English (or other) editors, apart from Peirene Press, do you know who publish only translated books?

Fünf Tage. Ein Spiel is the German title, its literal translation would be “Five days. One game”.

Fünf Tage. Ein Spiel

Elizabeth Taylor: Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1971)

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On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unexpected friendship with Ludo, a handsome young writer, and learns that even the old can fall in love …

I am not that easily moved but Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont moved me a lot. What a touching story. Elizabeth Taylor is really a wonderful writer. Her style is so exquisite. I am really annoyed with myself as I read it much too fast. This should be savoured sentence by sentence. I think I will have to re-read it. I loved the style of Blaming too but I didn’t care for the characters. I found them so unkind. This is quite different. Mrs Palfrey is really a darling. But the other characters, even the embittered ones, are still endearing. They are all very eccentric and put up a front. They know exactly that the Claremont, that has seen better days, much like they have, will be their last chance at a little bit of freedom. After the Claremont comes the hospital and ultimately death. Their boredom and the way they try to grasp every little bit of excitement is described so well.

I don’t think hotels like this still exist and if so the people who live there must maybe even be richer than those described. The elderly women and the only old man at the Claremont are very well off. And lonely. No one visits them, they have become a burden to their families.

When Mrs Palfrey falls in the streets and handsome Ludo, an aspiring writer, kindly comes to her rescue she takes the opportunity and asks him to be a  stand-in for her own grandson who doesn’t visit her.

The other people at the hotel envy her immediately and she becomes quite a success thanks to Ludo. Their relationship is very special and Mrs Palfrey even develops a little crush. Ludo uses her as the model for his novel that he calls after something Mrs Palfrey said: “We aren’t allowed to die here”. He does have a bit of a bad conscience to exploit her like this but he does like her too and enjoys spending time with her. She is nothing like his own mother who couldn’t care less about him.

The novel is full of bon mots that are like little pearls on a necklace. Some are used by the narrator, some by the protagonists. Some are pretty, many are funny, like this one, uttered by Ludo during his first dinner with Mrs Palfrey: “I have never enjoyed myself more with my clothes on”. Here is what the narrator says about Mrs Palfrey: “She would have made a distinguished-looking man, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag.” This may sound unkind but Elizabeth Taylor isn’t unkind, she really likes her characters, their crankiness and eccentricities.

I truly enjoyed this novel, it’s sad, funny, bitter-sweet and beautiful. And thought-provoking. After all, none of us is spared old age, let alone the grim reaper. And some of us may have old parents or grandparents. Maybe we really should visit more often.

I would like to watch the movie and attached the trailer for you.

Has anyone seen it? Joan Plowright is a wonderful actress and seems perfect in this role.

Jennifer Johnston: The Gingerbread Woman (2000) A Novel by One of Ireland’s Finest Writers

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On a rainy afternoon on Killiney Hill a young man walking, without his overcoat, happens upon a woman gazing out over Dublin bay, standing perilously close to the edge. From their testy encounter develops a remarkable friendship which will enable each to face afresh their very different, damaged pasts, and to look, however tentatively, towards the future.

Jennifer Johnston’s book The Gingerbread Woman is easily one of the best books I have read this year. I enjoyed every word of it.  Johnston, although said to be one of the finest Irish writers, wasn’t known to me before I read about her on Danielle‘s and Kim’s blog. I believe they both mentioned other novels. I felt like starting with this one as I liked the description on the cover.

35 year-old Clara recovers from an operation and a broken heart while Laurence tries to come to terms with his grief. He has recently lost his wife and his little daughter. Clara and Laurence meet on a walk and later bump into each other again in a pub. Clara notices how lonely and sad Laurence is and asks him to stay at her house instead of the hotel. The dog Pansy is especially grateful as she had to sleep in the car. The story of these two wounded people is told in alternating points of view. Clara, who works for newspapers and teaches Irish literature at small universities, tries to write a novel. During the course of the book she writes parts of the novel that reveal her tragic love story. Laurence reveals his story in telling it to the people in the novel and in flashbacks. Clara’s mother and her doctor are interesting characters as well. The relationships she has with both of them, as with everybody actually, are far from the ordinary. She is quite an original character and I was surprised that her tragic love story was so banal. The reader guesses what is wrong with her lover right away but clever and hardheaded Clara is tragically clueless. (Hard to imagine but I have seen this sort of story happen many times –  as said, it is quite banal – and, believe me, no amount of good advice did beware the women from a painful disappointment).

Clara is very weak and ill, post-operative as she says. We wonder all through the book what health problem she had, even more so when the doctor mentions that the operation is linked to a sexual encounter. Big question mark on my side.

What is really special about this book is the feeling of immediacy. Clara is a character who doesn’t spare anyone. She always seems to say the truth. The conversations with her are deep and meaningful. If people were really talking like this, if they were this real,  how wonderful this would be.

Johnston is known for tackling Irish issues. This book is no exception. I found it interesting to read an inside point of view. We all have our opinions of Ireland, the IRA, the North and the South but probably we all know shit. We don’t know how deep the rift is between the two parts of this divided country.

Jennifer Johnston is truly an outstanding writer and I will certainly read many more of her books. I already have How Many Miles to Babylon, Two Moons and Fool’s Sanctuary on my TBR pile.

Jennifer Johnston has written some 15 novels. Which ones did you read or are you planning to read?

Arnaldur Indriðason: Silence of the Grave (Reykjavík Murder Mysteries 2) aka Grafarþögn (2001) An Icelandic Mystery

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Silence Of The Grave (Reykjavik Murder Mysteries 2)

Building work in an expanding Reykjavík uncovers a shallow grave. Years before, this part of the city was all open hills, and Erlendur and his team hope this is a typical Icelandic missing person scenario; perhaps someone once lost in the snow, who has lain peacefully buried for decades. Things are never that simple. Whilst Erlendur struggles to hold together the crumbling fragments of his own family, his case unearths many other tales of family pain. The hills have more than one tragic story to tell: tales of failed relationships and heartbreak; of anger, domestic violence and fear; of family loyalty and family shame. Few people are still alive who can tell the story, but even secrets taken to the grave cannot remain hidden forever.

Silence of the Grave is the second of Indriðason’s successful mysteries. When reviewing Sjón the other day I had forgotten that I had the German edition (Todeshauch) of this book somewhere. Very much in the mood to read more Icelandic literature I picked it up and was hooked right away. I wouldn’t compare it to Mankell though (as it is usually done in Germany), they don’t have a lot in common apart from two disillusioned inspectors and being disillusioned is all the two inspectors have in common. Mankell’s books are much more psychological. Indriðason is bleaker, drearier. You’d better put a coat on should you read this as it is chilly, very chilly. Picture one of the Absolute Vodka adds. Right, that’s how cold it is. In every sense. We tend to forget that Iceland is not only about beautiful landscapes but there is the city of Reykjavík in which the people have pretty much the same problems as anywhere else. Delinquency, drugs, child abuse, domestic violence. And all this in a climatically challenged setting of excessively long winter nights and never ending summer days.

The novel starts in April and already it is getting dark after 9 p.m. and the days start in the wee hours of the morning.

Inspector Erlendur is divorced. He has two children he rarely sees. One is a junky, lying in a coma all through the novel,  the other is completely estranged from him. His ex-wife hates him. This is important as his personal story gets as much attention as the crime that is to be solved. Both stories are interwoven with a third story line that takes place during WWII. This third story is one of the worst stories of domestic violence I have ever read.  We know that this is somehow tied to the crime that has to be solved. It is also interesting to read about Iceland during WWII.

In the beginning of the novel it is not a 100% clear if there really has been a crime. Children find some human bones on a construction site. Archeologists have to dig them out with painstaking slowness. It takes the whole book until we know who is buried. What is discovered is very surprising. There are as many differnet possibilities with regard to the victims as with regard to the murderers.

I am not always happy when authors jump back and forth in time and mix many story lines but Indriðason did a good job. He also did a good job at describing Iceland and its harsh winters. The moment you leave Reykjavík you are at the mercy of nature. Many people get lost in winter during storms and die a white death. A handy cover-up for many a crime, as we are told.

Silence of the Grave was very different from any other crime novel I have read so far. No comparing it to Mankell (more psychlogical), Larsson (more elaborate) or Nesbø (bad!), please. I liked reading it, kept on guessing and wondering who, where, why, when but I am not sure I am sufficiently interested in Erlendur and his life to read another one in this series soon.

I am always fascinated how different covers look in other countries. The one I have is the blue hardback one. I think it does the book more justice than the English and the German paperbacks.

Roger Martin du Gard: Confidence africaine aka African Secret (1931)

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Confidence africaine

Roger Martin du Gard, one of the less famous French Nobel prize laureates is mostly known for his huge eight-part novel cycle Les Thibault, the story of a family from the turn of the century until the end of WWI. Almost all of his efforts have gone into this immense work. Apparently it was Tolstoi’s War and Peace that triggered his writing. I was always interested in du Gard but I didn’t dare diving into that ocean called Les Thibault. I am sure this is wrong as its most prominent features  are the wide range of human relationships and the graphic realism of the sickbed and death scenes which would fascinate me. And I would be especially interested in the seventh volume, L’Eté 1914 (“Summer 1914”), that contains the dramatic description of Europe’s nations being swept into war.

Roger Martin du Gard  wrote a few lesser known books one of which is Confidence africaine, a short piece of fiction of barely 80 pages. It is short but wonderfully accomplished. The narrator, called du Gard, visits a friend’s son in a sanatorium. In the sanatorium he meets the Italian Leonardo who visits his nephew Michele. Leonardo and his family live in North Africa. They own a library. Some months later du Gard visits him when travelling in Northern Africa and stays at their house. Leonardo lives with his sister and her husband under the same roof. When du Gard’s stay ends both men take a ship and set over to France. During a long, warm and enchanted night, Leonardo tells du Gard the secret of his incestuous relationship with his sister. This is told as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It is neither analyzed, nor rationalized, just told. It seems though as some of the sad developments that took place in their lives are considered by Leonard to be related to the incest.

I was wondering if du Gard, who was a friend of André Gide and also homosexual, meant to question what we tend to call deviant sexuality. I don’t know that much more about his biography to be sure. The topic of homosexuality and  sexuality in general, temptation, religion etc. is recurring in his books. Many of the protagonists in his novels have issues with the Roman Catholic faith. This novella could be seen as a variation on that theme.

The scene on the boat is extremely well written, and the whole novella is masterful but I can’t say I liked it. I found the story too odd. It is one of the novels the protagonists of Katherine Pancol’s novel rave about (see my post) and it is generally much liked in France.

What I know for sure is that I am still extremely tempted to read Les Thibault.

Elizabeth Taylor: Blaming (1976)

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When Amy’s husband dies on holiday in Istanbul, she is supported by the kindly but rather slovenly Martha, a young American novelist who lives in London. Upon their return to England, Amy is ungratefully reluctant to maintain their friendship, but the skeins of their existence seem inextricably linked as grief gives way to resilience and again to tragedy. Reversals of fortune and a compelling cast of characters, including Ernie, ex-sailor turned housekeeper, and Amy’s wonderfully precocious granddaughters, add spice to a novel that delights even as it unveils the most uncomfortable human emotions.

Blaming was my first Elizabeth Taylor novel. I read a recommendation on amazon a few months back and was very interested to read it. It is Elizabeth Taylor’s last novel. She wrote it while she was dying of cancer and it was published posthumously. This got me thinking quite a bit. To think that someone who knows his own death is approaching rapidly would write such a depressing novel makes me very sad. From a stylistic point of view this is a fascinating book. She is an accomplished writer and I truly admire her art. Her descriptions of places, actions and people ring true. There is an episode in which Martha and Amy are having dinner. Amy waits for Martha to eat but she keeps on talking and puts her fork down again and again. Such an exasperating habit that I have watched many times in people. The world Elizabeth Taylor creates is a very desolate one. There is hardly any person in this book that likes any of the others. Amy is by far the worst. She seems very judgmental of people and most of the time she doesn’t even register them. Her grief is intense but more because she has lost comfort and company than because she seems to miss her husband. I got the impression that she uses everybody and found her very boring. Towards the end she seems to develop a certain consciousness of her failings. Hence the blaming. But she is not the only one who fails. They all fail each other one way or the other.

Elizabeth Taylor ‘s daughter wrote an afterword in which she said she liked this and other novels because of the sense of humour. Especially also in the depiction of the granddaughters. Now that is something that eludes me. I did not think it was funny in any way. Those two girls, especially Isobel, are the most obnoxious fictional children I have ever come across. Unfortunately they seem very realistic.

I don’t necessarily mind reading something sad but this seems such a restrained world and apart from the American Martha and the factotum Ernie, they are  uninteresting people.

Since I often read as a writer and not only as a reader I would probably read another one of her books some day.

Just a quote to illustrate why:

Back along the suburban streets with the admired privet hedges, the houses with their bowed and bayed windows, the skeleton laburnums which in spring would give such pleasure. Gardens were all in darkness now, but television lit up rooms, or shadows passed behind drawn curtains. Sometimes light sprang up in bedrooms.

Any suggestions for another of her novels? Did I pick the dreariest one?