Category Archives: Literature

Susan Hill: Strange Meeting (1971) Literature and War Readalong January

Posted in Books, British Books, Fiction, Literature, Readalong by

 

John Hilliard, a young subaltern returning to the Western Front after a brief period of sick leave back in England, finds his battalion tragically altered. His commanding officer finds escape in alcohol, there is a new adjutant and even Hilliard’s batman has been killed. But there is David Barton. As yet untouched and unsullied by war, radiating charm and common sense, forever writing long letters to his family. Theirs is a strange meeting and a strange relationship: the coming together of opposites in the summer lull before the inevitable storm.

Strange Meeting, is set in the English countryside and the trenches in France, at the beginning of WWI. The book is divided into three parts. The first is written from John Hilliard’s point of view, the second mostly from David Barton’s and the third could be called the combined one. At the heart of the story is the juxtaposition of two very different themes; the intense and emotionally intimate friendship between John Hilliard and David Barton on the one hand, and the horrors of WWI on the other. The following quotes taken from page 158 illustrate this perfectly well:

“But they (the Germans) must know we are up to something.”

“Oh yes, though that fact is never obvious to High Command, whose faith in the Element of Surprise in the attack is really very touching and quite unshakeable.”

And a few lines later:

“Has it always been like that? Has it always been so easy for you to love people? To get on with them, to bring them out, say the right things at the right time? Have you always made friends as you’ve done out here?”

Whoever is familiar with novels or movies on wars knows that one of these two will die. It is the aim of books and movies on war to show an individual, to pick one person out of an anonymous number and to tell his story. As horrible as it is for us to know that in some offensives – especially in the early WWI ones – far over 100 000 young men were killed in less than an afternoon and millions died senselessly during the course of this war, we still need to be told an individual’s story and not only a huge number, to be touched emotionally. From the beginning of the novel until its end, the shadow of death hangs over these two young people and this is what makes it so touching. We know, one of them is doomed. It’s like a Greek tragedy.

Hilliard and Barton meet in France, during the first summer of WWI, in a bombed out village, away from the trenches and the front line. Hillard has just returned from a short sick leave to England. He is shocked to find his company reduced to a fraction. His commanding officer is drinking and seems to have lost his faith completely.

We lost three quarters of the Battalion in a day and a half. Getting on for two dozen officers. Mayor Gadney, young Parkinson, Ward – all the best. Half of them went because we didn’t get an order telling us the second push was cancelled. They just went on. You were well out of it. I’m glad you were out of it.

But Hilliard’s stay in England was horrible too. He couldn’t sleep, had no one to talk too. He showed signs of  shell-shock, only not enough to not return. The mindless cheerfulness of the people around him who had no idea what it was like to be in the trenches was unbearable. They did neither realize how useless the losses were, nor how futile the missions. The newspapers only gave a purified version and people everywhere were convinced, the war would be over by Christmas. Hilliard was suffering from this feeling of isolation and haunted by the images and smells that were stuck in his mind. He found the smell of roses revolting, the sweetness reminded him of the smell of dead bodies. He would have liked to talk to his sister, the only person from his family he felt close to, but finds her estranged. She is about to get married and he doesn’t approve of her choice until he realizes, there is really no one else left, most other young men are dying in France.

When he returns to France and finds out that most of the men of his company are dead, he also hears that there is a new guy that he will share his quarters with.  They don’t meet directly at first, instead we follow Hilliard into the room that they will share and discover Barton through his things.

The lettering (on the valise) was upright and plain and clear, done in black ink. The leather of the valise still shone, the buckles were not yet tarnished. There was a tortoise-shell backed hairbrush and comb and a slab of chocolat Meunier. A copy of The Turn of the Screw and of the complete works by Thomas Browne, and one of the Psalms, bound in navy morocco. Hilliard reached out a hand towards it, hesitated, drew his hands back.

This passage tells us such a lot in a few words. The new guy is still untarnished, naive, it seems he has prepared himself for a summer camp. Hilliard resents this at first but when he finally meets Barton and gets to know him, he understands that Barton would always have packed the same things, no matter where he would have gone. His belongings mirror his being and how he always tries to see the sunny side of things and make the best of it. Hilliard has never met anyone like Barton. He is cheerful, easygoing, open, direct and very communicative. Even though he is reluctant at first, Hilliard is swiped away by Barton’s exuberance. For the first time in his life he starts to open up to another person and speaks about himself and his feelings.

Part II is mostly told from Barton’s point of view and consists in large parts of letters home to his family. Barton writers the longest letters Hilliard has ever seen. This strikes him as his family sends expensive parcels but short, polite and distant notes.

The two friends are not at the front yet, Barton will still have to find out what life in the trenches is like but he already sees someone killed and feels responsible for the man’s death.

There is something all the men hate about this place. Now, I can sense it myself. Something old and bad and dead, a smell a feeling you get as you walk across the street. It is not simply the bodies lying all about us, and the fact that the guns are firing, it is something else, something…

Part III is set in the trenches and we see a considerably changed and disillusioned Barton who has been sent on a reconnaissance mission on which he has seen people get killed. They know by now that High Command prepares for a big offensive. Since most of these are high in losses their morale is low. Being the new guy,  Barton is sent on several reconnaissance missions without Hilliard who goes almost crazy when he imagines Barton might get hurt or killed. When the offensive finally begins the two friends are separated in the chaos and one of them dies.

Strange Meeting does an incredible job at rendering what it was like to be in France in the summer of 1914. It captures the difference between the relative luxury encountered by the companies who wait off the front line and the ugliness and ordeal of the trenches. Susan Hill describes all the details that we can also find in history books, memoirs and letters. She describes various elements that were typical for WWI, the futility and high losses of the offensives, the chaotic and bad planning, the underestimation of the situation and possible duration of the war. The trenches are rendered accurately. Once they are there we read about the constant shelling, the noise, the rats, the mud, the dirt, the stink, the wetness and the cold.

As accurately as she renders the dreary trenches and the sadness and futility of it all, it is not surprising to read the following in her afterword:

Yet I have not told the whole truth, for although I have accounted for my obsession with the First World War, I am still sometimes troubled by thoughts of those two young men of whom I became so very fond while I was writing about them and who stand for thousands upon thousands of others, so full of youth, strength and bright promise, who were slaughtered in a war perhaps more futile and meaningless than any other in history. I wrote the novel in memory of them and in tribute to them. But I hope it is not thought of only as a novel whose “subject is the war and the pity of war”, for, more than anything else it is about human love.

Srange Meeting is indeed a novel about friendship, much more than about the war. The war serves as a backdrop and an explanation for this very intimate exchange. In civilian life, men were not this close, opening up would have taken much longer. Strange Meeting excels in rendering the intensity of the feelings of two people for one another and the tragedy of their fate. As strange as this may seem, although the description of their feelings for each other can only be called love and Barton does also tell Hilliard that he loves him, I never had the feeling they were gay. Apparently Susan Hill has been asked if Hilliard and Barton did have a physical relationship and she denied this. As said this never occurred to me either. It is really about emotional love. It is sad that we immediately have to think that there must be some sexual attraction involved as soon as two people have very strong feelings for each other.

I read somewhere that it wasn’t possible to say if Strange Meeting had been written by a man or a woman. I would contradict this. I think we can feel that it was  written by a woman. This is mostly due to Barton’s narrative voice and the nature of their conversations. They constantly ask each other how they feel, speak out everything, clarify, share their emotions.

I think Strange Meeting is  a beautiful novel about a unique and fateful meeting that took place during one of the darkest moments of European history.

What did you think?

Other reviews:

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric)

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

*****

Strange Meeting was the first book in the Literature and War Readalong. The next one will be Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon. Discussion starts on Friday February 25, 2011 .

Edith Wharton: Madame de Treymes (1907) Novella with Parisian Setting

Posted in American Literature, Books, Fiction, Literature, Novella by

Madame de Treymes (Penguin 60s)

Set in Paris, Wharton’s 1907 novel explores the theme she and Henry James so often examined; the conflict between American innocence and corrupt Europe.

Even a short novel like Madame de Treymes (just 80 pages long) shows you what a masterful writer Edith Wharton was. This is the oldest of her novels that I have read so far. It came out after her enormous success The House of Mirth (1917) which I want to read very soon as well. The Age of Innocence (1920) and Ethan Frome (1911), both books that I have read, are later ones. Another one that I have found in my hopelessly overstuffed book shelves is Summer (1917).

Madame de Treymes has a Parisian setting which always appeals to me, as sentimental as this may be. It is a cruel little book and a very surprising one. All in all there is not a lot of description of the city itself, the novel rather offers an analysis of the society. It is interesting to see how Americans perceived the Parisian society and the differences in their respective values.

John Durham knew Mme de Malrive when she was still called Fanny Frisbee. Once a lively young American woman, she has become but a mere shadow of herself. She married into the Faubourg St Germain society, meaning Parisian upper-class. Stuffy, traditional and very unwelcoming to outsiders. She lives separated from her husband as he has cheated on her. She would like a divorce but is afraid to lose her son and doesn’t want to move him from Paris. Durham always liked Fanny and intends to marry her and, if needed, stay with her in Paris.

The only person Fanny trusts is Mme de Treymes, her sister-in-law, who disapproves as much of her brother as Fanny herself. Durham turns to her for help and what follows is a tragedy of manners, if I may say so.

This little story, as beautifully written as it is, made feel quite chilly. I am surprised to see that the Parisian upper-classes (to which I never belonged but am fairly familiar with) haven’t changed that much.

The differences between the American and the Parisian way of life is nowhere to be seen so well as when Durham and his sister visit Fanny at her house. The house, a rundown old mansion in a poky street, causes the follow exclamation from his sister:

“Well, if this is all she got by marrying a Marquis”.

Wealth meets status and it is funny to see how those down-to-earth rich Americans are absolutely not impressed with the shabby elegance they encounter. On the other hand, they were not aware of the power of ancestry and heritage which reignes in the society into which Fanny has married.

Durham felt, as he observed them, that he had never before known what “society” meant; nor understood that, in an organized and inherited system, it exists full-fledged where two or three of is members assembled.

But Wharton doesn’t only dissect the French society she also lays bare the lack of culture of some of the Americans.

To Mrs Durham, with her gentle tourist’s view of the European continent, as a vast museum in which the human multitudes simply furnished the element of costume, the Boykins seemed abysmally instructed, and darkly expert in forbidden things (…)

As the title indicates, Mme de Treymes is the central figure, the most complex character, much more than you can deduce from this post. She is also married to the wrong man and lives a scandalous life, having a  lover, yet she would never even think about leaving her husband. This would be too open a rebellion against the society of which she is a much more integral part than Durham and Fanny realize.

Mme de Treymes is a wonderful example of what an adept writer can achieve even in such a short form as the novella.

The topic of the American in Paris is interesting and would certainly be worth exploring further. Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and many more come to mind who wrote about it.

I think that to this day Paris is the city Americans are mostly likely to visit if they have to make a choice. At least that is what I have been told lately by different Americans. Maybe we could call this the “mythical Europe”.

Should you like to read another review of one of Edith Wharton’s books, Guy Savage just reviewed The Old Maid which rekindled my interest in Wharton that had unfortunately been dormant for a while. As soon as I get a chance I will continue with Summer and The House of Mirth. She is such a wonderful writer and one of a few where I could imagine reading everything she has written.

Which is your favourite Edith Wharton novel? I remember I liked The Age of Innocence a great deal.

Takashi Atoda: The Square Persimmon and Other Stories (1991) Magical Japanese Short Stories

Posted in Books, Fiction, Literature, Short Story by

The Square Persimmon and Other Stories is an introduction to one of Japan’s most popular and versatile writers of fiction. In these eleven stories, Takashi Atoda examines universal themes – first love, lost love, change, fate – thriugh unmistakably Japanese eyes. The dreamlike quality of some stories invites the reader to draw his own conclusions in the denouement. Yet, in each one, Atoda brings to bear his precise style and his own unique vision, by turns mysterious, romantic, darkly humourus, and even bizarre.

I found this truly magical short story collection thanks to Novroz’ review of the book. She made it sound so appealing, I absolutely had to read it. I couldn’t agree with her more, The Square Persimmon is a wonderful short story collection, enchanting, haunting and mysterious… Very, very special.

I have never reviewed a short story collection and it is a bit hard. Summarize the individual stories? Summarize the whole book? Short stories are often so much richer than novels, to do them justice isn’t an easy task. To describe these is even more difficult as they are so mysterious. To try to capture their essence is almost like describing scent.

I think the most intense reading experience is one that connects you to your own soul, that triggers something in you and lingers. Atoda’s stories even made me dream at night. I almost entered an altered state of consciousness while reading them. He managed to touch the part in me where memories lie buried and dreams have their origin. This doesn’t happen very often. They made me remember things I thought I had forgotten and sort of intensified everything. The best parts of his stories are like those rare dreams that we dream during our lifetime, in which we want to stay forever. The mood, the atmosphere and the feelings will stay with us for a long time.

Apart from two of the stories, they are all very Japanese. They describe Japanese customs, food, places, philosophy, esthetics, sensitivity, and history.  One recurring element is the use of flashbacks. The people in these stories encounter something that makes them remember someone or a place that is long gone, maybe dead. Another wonderful element is the description of the seasons. The cherry blossoms in spring, the leaves in autumn. They are meant to remind us of our perishability. The description of beauty’s utter fragility is another element. Each story has additionally a twist and a mostly surprising ending.

The stories are all melancholic and often sad. The protagonists look back on something that has passed. At the present moment none of the characters is really happy, they look back on lost happiness. Nevertheless the interactions that take place in the present are touching and intense, the people in the stories reveal themselves to those they talk to.

To give you an example I will just pick two of my favourite stories.

In Paper Doll a man walks by a house in which he used to live as a child. It’s a beautifully elegant house. He had completely forgotten about this house, his childhood and a special friend – a girl – he had when he was a little boy. His life is not a particularly happy one. Like many of the characters in the stories he isn’t well off, struggles to make a living, doesn’t have a lot of joy. After he has discovered the house, he walks by daily and remembers more and more of those days long gone. His memories are like a treasure, they transform his dull days and fill him with an intense joy and happiness.

The Honey Flower also evokes a memory. A man remembers a summer he spent in the country during the war in 1944. The horrors of war are masterfully blended with the memory of the little boy and his little beautiful girlfriend. The children met in secret to drink nectar out of giant white blossoms that grow on a tree.

Atoda has written 40 short story collections. The Square Persimmon is meant as an introduction to his work. The stories have been chosen by his translator. The aim was to show what a versatile writer he is. His writing is extremely varied, at times lyrical or melancholic, absurd or full of black humor. In her foreword his translator, Millicent M. Horton, mentions the Proustian quality of some of his stories. This is high praise but I would say it is more than deserved.

Literature and War Readalong January 28 2011: Strange Meeting by Susan Hill

Posted in Books, Literature, Novel, Poetry, Readalong by

The end of the month will arrive sooner than we think and I just wanted to remind you that I am going to post on the first book in the Literature and War Readalong, Susan Hill’s Strange Meeting on January 28. I hope some of you have read it and will participate in the discussion and maybe post as well. It’s a short novel of barely 200 pages. The novel tells the story of two very different men who meet during WWI. The first four novels of this read along are all dedicated to WWI. The only one that is slightly longer (300 pages), is the April choice, Carol Ann Lee’s The Winter of the World.

To get you in the mood for Strange Meeting, here’ s a quote taken from Susan Hill’s website

My great uncle Sidney was killed on his 18th birthday at the Battle of the Somme and his photograph in uniform was on the dresser in my grandmother’s house so as a young child I always asked about him. The Great War began to haunt me from then and my interest became an obsession after I heard Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral. I knew I would have to write a novel about it but first I read everything I could – memoirs, biographies, history, letters. I wrote the novel in 6 weeks, at home in Warwickshire, and in my rented house in Aldeburgh, where I tramped across the marshes in the rain and mud and saw the ghosts of dead soldiers rising up in front of me.

But having finished it, my interest in the First World War was exorcised and it has never returned.

Another quote that seems important in the context is the poem Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen which Susan Hill certainly had in mind.

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, –
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
‘Strange friend,’ I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’
‘None,’ said that other, ‘save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now…’

I will try from now on and post a quick note on all the books of the readalong during the first weeks of each month.

Jenn Ashworth: A Kind of Intimacy (2009) A Very Noir Character Study

Posted in Books, British Books, Fiction, Literature, Novel by

Annie is morbidly obese, lonely and hopeful. She narrates her own increasingly bizarre attempts to ingratiate herself with her new neighbours, learn from past mistakes and achieve a “”certain kind of intimacy”” with the boy next door. Though Annie struggles to repress a murky history of violence, secrets and sexual mishaps her past is never too far behind her, finally shattering her denial in a compelling and bloody climax. A quirky and darkly comic debut – giving readers a glimpse of a clumsy young woman who has too much in common with the rest of us to be written off as a monster.

I discovered A Kind of Intimacy thanks to a review on Danielle’s blog. It was also among her top 12 of 2010 and it was also one of the favourite reads of Guy Savage who also reviewed it.

I already jokingly “said” to Danielle in a comment that her top 2010 might become my top 2011 and,  yes, this book is certainly a candidate as it is astonishingly good. Very dark, absolutely fascinating, engrossing, and very well executed. While starting it I had forgotten Jenn Ashworth was compared to Ruth Rendell but the association immediately occurred to me as well.

A Kind of Intimacy is told by the main protagonist, obese, deluded Annie herself. She is what you call an unreliable narrator. The reader feels that something is wrong from the beginning, too many hints and little details tear apart the picture of perfection that Annie wants to draw for our and her own sake. These interfering details, as I would call them, make this a creepy read. Uncanny and creepy. It is not so much that we judge Annie as that we wish to never meet someone like her as she seems capable of doing really harmful things.

At the beginning of the novel Annie moves into a new neighbourhood. One of the first people she meets is Neil who has a natural capacity for being kind, which proves to be fatal in this relationship, as Annie doesn’t see things the way they are but the way she wants them to be. Unknown of Neil or anyone else, she is convinced, he is her soul-mate and the only thing that needs doing is getting rid of Lucy, his skinny and pretty girlfriend.

What starts like a comedy soon develops into something much darker. Bits and pieces of Annie’s past are revealed slowly. A miserable childhood, an odd marriage, a baby girl who seems to have disappeared and some really dodgy things Annie does to try to get “A Kind of Intimacy” despite her being revoltingly obese. The further you read the more you will hope to never meet anyone like Annie.

As deluded and extreme as she may seem, Annie is a character I am all too familiar with which added another dimension to my reading. However odd this may seem, I have met more than one Annie in my life. They were not always as dangerous and they were always male… Call me Neil… It’s really scary what some people can interpret into your tiniest actions.

I read somewhere that Jenn Ashworth was criticized for chosing an obese woman as her protagonist… I see Annie as a distortion, a caricature and as such the obesity did work for me. Unlike one critic I read, I did feel sorry for Annie. All through the web of lies and deceptions we catch glimpses of a very lonely and hurt soul.

Jenn Ashworth is a gifted writer. If you have ever tried to write yourself you will know that voice and point of view are always very challenging. Annie’s voice does sound so right. There is not one wrong note in this symphony of lies and self-deception. A Kind of Intimacy is one of the best character studies I have ever read. Fascinating, creepy and compulsively readable. I am sure this book will appeal to readers of crime and general fiction alike.

Just one aside, Jenn Ashworth won a prize for Best Blog Content in 2008. Here is the link to her site.

Urs Widmer: My Mother’s Lover (2011) aka Der Geliebte der Mutter (2000) One of the Finest Swiss Authors Finally Translated

Posted in Books, Fiction, Literature, Novel, Swiss Literature by

It’s Switzerland in the 1920s when the two lovers first meet. She is young, beautiful, and rich. In contrast, he can barely support himself and is interested only in music. By the end of their lives, he is a famous conductor and the richest man in the country, but she is penniless. And most important of all, no one knows of her love for him; it is a secret he took to his grave. Here begins Urs Widmer’s novel “My Mother’s Lover”. Based on a real-life affair, “My Mother’s Lover” is the story of a lifelong and unspoken love for a man – recorded by the woman’s son, who begins this novel on the day his mother’s lover dies. Set against the backdrop of the Depression and World War II, it is a story of sacrifice and betrayal, passionate devotion and inevitable suffering. Yet in Widmer’s hands, it is always entertaining and surprisingly comic – a unique kind of fairy tale.

Urs Widmer is one of the finest Swiss authors of German language. He has been compared to Frisch and Dürrenmatt but that isn’t doing him any justice. I personally like him more. His novellas and novels are always very nostalgic, melancholic and bitter-sweet. There is beauty and sadness in equal doses. Recently I looked which of his works has been translated and couldn’t believe that until now there wasn’t any English translation available. Seems as if his novel Der Geliebte der Mutter aka My Mother’s Lover is the first of his books that has been translated into English. It will be out in June. That is incredibly good news. This really is an author to discover and My Mother’s Lover is a good starting point as it is one of the best novels of German language of the last decade. It is rich, it is dense, it is colourful and as powerful as a slap in the face.

My Mother’s Lover is told in first person peripheral, a point of view I like a lot. Some of the best works of literature have made use of it (Le Grand Meaulnes, The Great Gatsby… ). It is a very poetical point of view. In this novel, it is the son who tells his mother’s story. A story that spans over eighty years and begins just before the Black Thursday 1929, when Clara, the mother, is some 20 years old. Widmer tells the story of a life and a century with all the joy, sadness, madness and tragedy there was in both.

Clara is the daughter of an Italian whose great grand-father was of African descent. Her father left his Northern Italian hometown to live in Switzerland, Zürich, where Clara is born. The mother died young and Clara grew up with her father enjoying a life of ease and wealth. They loved going to concerts and that is how she met Edwin, the man who should become the love of her life and one of the most famous conductors of all time.

The Black Thursday 1929 kills her father and ruins her. She starts to work for Edwin and his orchestra and leads a life of joyful bohemianism. Together with Edwin and the orchestra they travel to Paris, sit in restaurants and bars and discuss all night long. She becomes Edwin’s lover.

The descriptions of the cities in the novel are among the best parts. Clara travels to pre-war Frankfurt that was a city full of charm and narrow medieval streets. Clara also travels to Italy where her relatives life on a vineyard, producing some of the best Italian wine. She even sees Mussolini.

Clara gets pregnant and contrary to what she expects Edwin wants her to get rid of the child. She doesn’t realize that this is the end of the affair. Edwin marries the rich daughter of an industrialist and – we never really understand why – Clara gets married to the narrator’s father who stays somewhat non existent throughout the book.

The first part of the book spans maybe 5 years, the second part almost sixty. What is told from now on is the descent of a fragile woman with a great appetite for life and a passionate love for music. She is robbed of the life she loves and the man she desires. The juxtaposition of Clara’s life and the outbreak of the second world war is incredibly masterful. We see Clara like a figure on a stage and the history of the second world war like a moving canvas in the back. Clara plants vegetables, Hitler invades Poland, Clara cooks marmalade, Hitler drives the British into the sea at Dunkirk… It is breathtaking. And so is Clara’s story. After leading a normal life at first and having a child, the narrator, all of a sudden, she slowly goes mad. She who always fantasized a lot invents a dozen ways of killing herself. Of course she thinks of taking the child with her. After a breakdown, she ends in the asylum where she stays for a long time. Although she leaves the asylum again, she returns to it all through her life until her violent death.

Apart from being the story of a life, a century, it is also an homage to classical music and art in general. You will discover many names of musicians you know and maybe a few new ones.

Widmer takes barely 140 condensed pages to tell this century long story. It has a staccato rhythm. Phrases vary considerably in length. Fragments alternate with parataxis and longer phrases with subordinate clauses. That doesn’t make for smooth reading. At least not in German. Another writer would have told this story in 300-500 pages but he would never have made you feel as if you had jumped from a cliff at the end of it. And still, and this is Widmer’s most prominent feature as a storyteller, you know you have witnessed beauty. There is always something tragic about beauty… It doesn’t last, does it? Beauty has to be captured in art. And that’s what Widmer excels at.

Best and Worst Books 2010

Posted in Books, Fiction, Literature, Nonfiction, Novel, Short Story by

After debating with myself for at least one week, whether or not I should do a Best of 2010, I finally gave in. Since I only started blogging in August many books are not reviewed here. Unfortunately some haven’t or will never be translated either. I did also add the worst books of this year. Not very nice, I know…

Most engrossing reads

These were the books where I never checked how many pages were left because I had finished them before even getting the chance to do so.

Francesc Miralles Amor en minúscula. Please find here his Spanish website. This writer needs to be translated!

Ulli Olvedi Über den Rand der Welt. Olvedi is a German Buddhist, teacher of Qi Gong and novelist.

M.C. Beaton Death of a Witch. Cozy crime in a Scottish setting with cat.

Ayelet Waldman Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. She has a style that just swipes you away and all her themes are so interesting.

Elizabeth Lupton Sister. Great thriller.

Ruth Rendell A Judgment in Stone. Fascinating psychological study of a criminal mind.

Most beautiful

You want to live in the world created by a beautiful book, jump right into it and stay there.

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus, where have you been all my life?

Rosamond Lehmann Dusty Answer. I love Rosamond Lehmann. This moved me and it is beautiful and thanks to this book I started blogging because it made me discover A Work in Progress and….

Elizabeth Taylor Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Just perfect.

Niccolò Ammaniti I am not scared. Childhood memories, intense pictures, such a beautiful, beautiful book.

Meg Rosoff What I Was. This has a truly dreamlike quality. Something very, very special.

Most fascinating

Books that were different, thought-provoking, engaging, not easy but worthwhile.

Sheri S. Tepper The Gate to Women’s Country. That’s what I call original. Feminist SciFi.

Audrey Nyffenegger Her Fearful Symmetry. The setting (Highgate Cemetery), the topic (ghosts), the writing. Marvelous.

Sjón The Blue Fox. Fairytale, historical, poetical.

John O’Hara Appointment in Samarra. This is a must read for aspiring writers. His writing teaches you a lot.

Most interesting

Occasionnaly you want to learn something when you read a novel. These two teach you something, are entertaining and really surprisingly good reads.

Lisa Genova Still Alice. What if you had early onset Alzheimer’s? Who would you be without your memory, without your intellectual faculties and how would others react?

Allegra Goodman Intuition. Did you ever wonder what scientists do in a lab, how researchers live? Intuition tells you this and a lot more. She kept me interested in a topic I am normally not interested in. Plus the style is limpid.

Most accomplished

This is the category of the stylists. Two of the books mentioned have been written by poets.

Jennie Walker 24 for 3. The work of a poet. I hardly found a book in which more parts were quotable than in this one.

Gerard Donovan Julius Winsome. Beautifully crafted. Sad and touching story. If you ever really loved an animal you know what he is talking about…

Jennifer Johnston The Gingerbread Woman. How to survive a tragedy? Told in compelling prose.

Andrew Sean Greer The Story of a Marriage. Puzzling, nice construction, short and efficient.

Most touching

Books that speak to you, your soul or something you experienced. In these cases everything spoke to me.

Susan Breen The Fiction Class. A teacher of creative writing, a difficult mother, a possible love story.

Maria Nurowska Jenseits ist der Tod. Death of a mother and how to bury her. Raw emotions. Incredible. I read the German translation of this book. The original is Polish.

Best Short Story

Lauren Groff Blythe (from her collection Delicate Edible Birds). If someone took the pieces of Anne Sexton’s life and wrote a short story about it, that is what would come out.

Would I have wanted to be the author?

I always ask myself this question. Occasionally I say yes.

These are this years’ choices:

Francesc Miralles Amor en minúscula

Maria Nurowska Jenseits ist der Tod

Niccolò Ammaniti I am not scared

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (why be modest?)

Non Fiction

Deepak Chopra’s The Book of Secrets. Chopra is famous but I don’t necessarily like his books. This one was different. It is one of the best introductions to Hinduism and the different yogas you can find. It combines theory with exercises. A truly great book and recommended by Ken Wilber whom I admire loads.

Paul Leyhausen Cat Behaviour: Predatory and Social Behaviour of Domestic and Wild Cats. One of the most interesting books on cats.

Georg Diez Der Tod meiner Mutter. Unfortunately this hasn’t been translated. It is an outstanding memoir about the death of a mother, the love of a son and saying goodbye.

Steven Pressfield The War of Art. You want to write or be otherwise creative? Why don’t you? Procrastination. Pressfield’s book is like dynamite…

Isabel Gillies Happens Everyday. Also a memoir. The style is simple not very engaging but I enjoyed it a lot. It is the story of the end of a marriage. But that is not the engrossing part, the engrossing part was the description of Oberlin College. Campus life in the States, something we do not have here.

The worst reads this year

Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture. I hate this type of coincidence and Maggie O’Farrells’ The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox tells a similar story only in a more appealing way.

Jo Nesbos The Snowman. Did he want to kill me through boredom? He almost achieved. Predictable and boring.

Alice Sebold The Lovely Bones. This is a bit difficult. Why did I not like it? I just didn’t. Period.

Maria Nurowska