Tag Archives: Fiction

Some Thoughts on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

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This isn’t a proper review of Atwood’s famous novel but some of my impressions and reactions to it and a brief summary. Since the US election, the sales of books like 1984 and the Handmaid’s Tale have risen. While I had read the former, I hadn’t read Margaret Atwood’s novel. In many ways it wasn’t what I expected at all. It’s interesting, complex, and clever but I don’t think it’s a book I’ll read again. There are amazing observations, long quotable passages, but as a whole, I found it dull. Even so, reading it infuriated me, which certainly proves that it’s a powerful book. Interestingly though, the element that triggered this response is an element that I haven’t seen mentioned in any of the reviews I’ve come across but it’s something that is essential to totalitarian and oppressive societies. The aspect I’m referring to is the instrumentalising of the oppressed. No matter what toxic system/government/injustice, it is hardly ever maintained without the help of the oppressed. This complicity of the oppressed is something that infuriates me in real life so much that I couldn’t overlook it. The fact that people don’t mention it, shows how astute Atwood’s depictions were. Just like in real life, it’s something so upsetting that it’s like a blind spot.

What is The Handmaid’s Tale about?  The book is set in a near future, in the state of Gilead, formerly known as United States of America. A series of ecological disasters and war have led to its people being mostly sterile. After a coup, a totalitarian group of fanatic Christians has taken power. Women are divided into groups. Those married to government officials, those who breed for those who can’t have children and those who are used in other ways – sent to the colonies where they will discard toxic waste, or those used to make the system work, instruct the breeding women.

Offred, the narrator, is one of the Handmaid’s, destined to breed. At the time when the story is set, this whole system is new, so women like Offred are the first of their kind. What makes their fate particularly harrowing is that they knew a “before”. They used to live normal lives that were pretty much the same lives we still live today. That life ends when their bank accounts are closed and all their money and belongings go to their husbands. Those who’ve had children are then ripped from their families and assigned to rich couples who can’t have children.

Offred describes her life in minute details. They don’t have any freedom at all. They are all dressed the same and basically not allowed to do or say anything, unless it’s according to the new laws. Public executions are a means to make everyone obedient. But there’s an underground movement and, as it seems Offred met one of the women of this movement.

I’ll stop the summary here because if you’ve not read it you might enjoy finding out, how this story is told. It’s structure is one of the best things and the only element that contains a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark and depressing tale.

Obviously, reading about a world in which women are owned by men and have no freedom whatsoever, is scary and infuriating but that’s nothing compared to the fact that women are in charge of the “training” of the handmaids. The way in which Atwood portrays how this system is regulated and reinforced is so clever.

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.

The quote shows that some women accept the explanations given by the government. They also accept to be the instrument of the government. In some instances because they believe that women are, in many ways better off than before, but also because becoming executors, helps them to escape either death or being worked to death in one of the toxic landfills.

Why is it that victims enforce the system that exploits them? Fear and self-preservation are some of the reasons, but there’s also something far more toxic – they have internalized the system.

The Handmaid’s Tale is bleak but there’s a glimmer of hope, as I mentioned before. While some of the oppressed help keep up the system, there are many who plot an uprising.

Before ending this post, I’d like to mention one other aspect that I found chilling. One reason why women were so easily disempowered was because pre-Gilead society didn’t use cash but only credit cards. That way it was easy to stop the women’s access and transfer their money to their husband’s account and to disempower them completely. They didn’t even have enough cash to buy a ticket to somewhere else and escape. I found this chilling because I know a great many people who say that we are moving away from cash and to the exclusive use of cards/online banking etc.

When The Handmaid’s Tale was published, readers thought that Atwood depicted a Muslim society. Maybe she did. I think we shouldn’t read it like that. We should read it as a portrayal of the belief system and the functioning of a totalitarian government. Thinking that she wrote about a Muslim society is something we cannot afford. It can happen in other societies as well.

Now on to something different. Look at those covers! And I haven’t even posted all of those I found. Mine is the one on the far left. It’s not my favourite. The one I’m most familiar with is the second to the left, the one I like the most is the fifth from the left but I actually find the first and the last to do the book more justice. Do you have a favourite?

Kristina Carlson: Mr Darwin’s Gardener (2009)

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Mr Darwin's Gardener

Mr Darwin’s Gardener is a novella by Finnish author Kristina Carlson. In her native Finland, she’s a popular children’s book author but has also written three highly acclaimed books for adults, one of which is Mr Darwin’s Gardener.

The blurb calls this novel “A postmodern Victorian novel about faith, knowledge and our inner needs.” The main character is Thomas Davis, Darwin’s gardener. A loner and widower whose faith and trust in life are tested. Not only has he lost his wife but his children are sickly. Since he shuns religion, he can’t even find solace in the church. When the book begins he’s not sure life is still worth living. This sounds conventional enough but the way this novella is presented is anything but. The “story” is told by multiple narrators. The effect is that of a chorus. Kristina Carlson dips in and out of various POVs, often switching from first to third within a paragraph. I could have gotten used to that if the 1st and the 3rd POV had been that of the same person, but very often, that wasn’t the case. The transitions were blurred most of the time and since there were so many characters it was confusing at times. It would have helped, if there had been a change in voice and tone, but Kristina Carlson used the same voice and tone throughout the novel. The way the narrators spoke about faith and destiny, was the only way to distinguish one person from another.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed large parts of the book, because of the descriptions. This book contains some of the most exquisite and precise nature descriptions I’ve come across. And they do serve a purpose. This is a novel about faith, and about a very specific point in time. Darwin’s books challenges the Bible, contradicting it, questioning it. What did a person have when the person lost his/her faith?— nature. Those detailed descriptions reminded me of some very detailed religious paintings. A believer would find much solace in their minutiae. And so, Thomas Davis finds solace in contemplating nature, following its change through the seasons. Its never-ending cycle is a consolation.

Here’s a quote to illustrate her writing

A shadow flits across one of the dark windowpanes of Down House and Thomas is startled. He straightens up, shoves his hands into his pockets and stools to the back gate. Herbs and cabbages grow in a bed where Mr Darwin once cultivated yellow toadflax. The villagers thought it was a mere weed, and of course dahlias and asters are more beautiful, though the nature of beauty is mysterious. By the footpath grow hazel, alders, elms, birches, hornbeam, privet, dogwood and holm oak. Mr Darwin had them planted decades ago. Thomas turns and wanders across the meadow. When the heels of his boots sink into wet earth, the smell of mould wafts out of the long flattened grass.

 

A book about faith, religion, destiny, bigotry and hope, with accurate and gorgeous nature descriptions. Not a breezy book by any means, but one that’s exquisitely crafted.

This is book five of my 20 under 200 project.

Eugenio Fuentes: The Depths of the Forest – El interior del bosque (1999)

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El Interior del Bosque

In a guardian article on best crime fiction in English translation Ann Cleeves mentioned Eugenio Fuentes’ novel The Depths of the Forest – El interior del bosque. Since Stu‘s and Richard‘s Spanish Literature Month was upcoming and I’ve never read a Spanish crime novel before, I thought it would be an excellent choice.

The book starts chillingly with the POV of the first victim. Gloria, a beautiful painter, is hiking alone in Paternóster, a remote nature reserve, in Spain. She feels dread but since she’s all alone, there doesn’t seem to be any reason. A few minutes later she’s murdered brutally. This isn’t a spoiler. Her murder is revealed on the bokk cover and happens in the first few pages. The next POV is quite unusual. A rat finds Gloria’s body. The following paragraphs are written from the point of view of a group of young boys who torture scorpions and discover Gloria’s body. The POV switches again, this time we are in the head of Richard Cupido, the PI hired by Marcos, Gloria’s fiancé. Marcos is sure that the Guardia Civil, the local police, are not going to investigate thoroughly and hopes Cupido will find the murderer.

Most of the story is written from Cupido’s perspective but many chapters are told from the point of view of the many suspects. When a second woman is murdered there are even more suspects. In spite of these many different perspectives, the book didn’t feel disjointed.

Most of the men who came in contact with Gloria fell in love with her. And it seems that she had affairs with most of them. Was it a crime of passion? Or has it something to do with an ongoing lawsuit? El Paternóster used to belong to a rich widow who has been fighting to get it back for years. Did she take drastic measures to discourage the public from visiting?

Cupido turns in circles for a long time. He gathers information but it’s leading nowhere. And he becomes obsessed with Gloria himself.

Having finished the novel, I’m facing a huge dilemma. I want to be fair to a novel, which is clearly on the literary side of the crime spectrum, and would most certainly delight many readers, but at the same time I have to admit that this wasn’t for me. Not because it wasn’t good but because it contained a recurring scene of an act of cruelty against an animal (a deer) that made me sick. I skipped most of the parts but still read too much for my own liking. It wasn’t a gratuitous scene but nevertheless, I wonder why an author chooses to include scenes like this. I think this is too bad because if those scenes hadn’t been included I would have liked this book. I thought that all the aspects about nature and how people value it in different ways was thought-provoking and topical. From the nature theme we’re lead to think about human nature. Clearly, the cruelty is part of these explorations. Cupido is a complex character and most of the other character studies were quite fascinating too. The way Fuentes captured this nature reserve and its remoteness, was very well done. Fascinating and eerie at the same time. And I really wanted to find out who killed those women. But overall the novel was too pessimistic for my own liking. While I agree that humans are the most cruel animals in this world, I don’t want to read about it in this way. Or Nnot if illustrating this point includes scenes with cruelty against animals. If this doesn’t bother you and you like your crime novels unusual, literary and very bleak – don’t miss this.

This is my first contribution to Spanish Literature Month hosted by Stu and Richard.

The Depths of the Forest

 

Angela Carter: American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993)

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American Ghosts

I’m sure we all read because we like a good story but aren’t we equally keen on writing which ignites our imagination? Writing that connects us with our subconscious, our emotions and dreams? Angela Carter knows how to tell a story but more than that, she inspires. She makes us think, explore, dream, fantasize, question. Sometimes it’s not even important to understand every aspect of her short fiction but just to read one of her wonderful sentences, discover one of her splendid images is enough.

The short story collection American Ghosts and Old World Wonders is such a treasure trunk. It’s full of retellings, deconstruction, parodies, reimagining of old myths, fables and fairy tales. It wasn’t always a breezy read. I had to hunt for a few academic papers in order to fully understand the one or the other of the pieces in this book. Like in all of her collections, there were a few stories that stood out and I’ve even found a new favourite.

In this collection Angela Carter mixes myths and elements of the American Dream and/or of America as the land of dreams, the country of  one of the biggest movie industries, the country of serial killers and westerns, of endless possibilities, and juxtaposes these elements with stories from the old world – fairy tales and history. The result is stunning.

The book is divided in two parts. I’d call the first the “American” part and the second the “Old World” part.

Part I

Lizzie’s Tiger is the second Lizzie Borden story she wrote. It shows us a young fearless Lizzie who discovers the magical world of a circus and a tiger who’s living in it. It’s as much an allusion to Blake’s famous poem as it is an imagination of a time when Lizzie was still small and had options to become someone else.

John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is a pretty tongue-in-cheek and cheeky piece. What if the film director John Ford made British playwright John Ford’s drama ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore into a movie? Well – read her story and you’ll find out what that would be like.

Gun for the Devil is another Western type story set near the Mexican border. Johnny get’s a gun and frees a girl. Sort of. The story contains an allusion to the movie Johnny Got His Gun.

The Merchant of Shadows is my favourite story in the book and has become one of my all-time favourites. A story of decay, exuberance, mystery, set in a decadent Hollywood setting, reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard (one of my favourite movies btw). A young academic comes to interview the widow of the famous film director von Mannheim (he seems inspired by von Sternheim). His widow was once a femme fatale but now she’s in a wheelchair, living with her sister who looks like a cowboy.

Here are is a sample of this deliciously lush and weird story, which contains a lot of Angela Carter’s magic, including metafiction, allusions, cultural references and a lot more:

A flight of rough-cut stone steps led up to a pool surrounded by clumps of sweet-smelling weeds; I recognised lavender. A tree or two dropped late summer leaves on scummy water and, when I saw that pool, I couldn’t help it, I started to shiver; I’ll tell you why in a minute. That untended pool, in which a pair of dark glasses with one cracked lense rested on an emerald carpet of algae, along with an empty gin bottle.

On the terrace a couple of rusty, white-enamelled chairs, a lopsided table. Then, fringed  by a clump of cryptomeria, the house von Mannheim caused to be erected for his bride.

That house made the Bauhaus look baroque. An austere cube of pure glass, it exhibited the geometry of transparency at its most severe. Yet, just at that moment, it took all the red light of the setting sun into itself and flashed like a ruby slipper. I knew the wall of the vast glittering lounge gaped open to admit me, and only me, but I thought, well, if nobody has any objections, I’ll just stick around on the terrace for a while, keep well away from that glass box that looks like nothing so much as the coffin for a classical modernist Snow White; let the lady come out to me.

No sound but the deep, distant bass of the sea; a gull or two; pines, hushing one another.

So I waited. And waited. And I found myself wondering just what it was the scent of jasmine reminded me of, in order to take my mind off what I knew damn well the swimming pool reminded me off – Sunset Boulevard, of course. And I knew damn well, of course I knew, that this was indeed the very pool in which my man Hank Mann succumbed back in 1940, so very long ago, when not even I nor my blessed mother, yet, was around to so much as piss upon the floor.

I waited until I found myself growing impatient. How does one invoke the Spirit of Cinema? Burn a little offering of popcorn and old fan magazines? Offer a libation of Jeyes’ Fluid mixed with Kia Ora orange?

This passage shows something else that strikes me every time when I read Angela Carter – how she is at the same time irreverent and full of admiration for her themes.

I liked the stories in part II a little less.

The Ghost Ships – A Chritsmas Story, I didn’t really get it but it had a few great moments. This opening for example:

‘Twas the night before Christmas. Silent night, holy night. The snow lay deep and crisp and even. Etc. etc. etc.; let these familiar words conjure up the traditional anticipatory magic of Christmas Eve, and then – forget it.

Then In Pantoland – a parody of the way fairy tales have become a pure commodity, robbed of their deeper meaning and sometimes violent aspects due to the way Disney has used them.

Ashputtle or The Mother’s Ghost contains three ways to deconstruct Ashputtle. Very different from Disnye’s Cinderalla.

Alice in Prague or The Curious Room is an homage to a Czech filmmaker. It combines Dr Dee and Alice in Wonderland. Edward Kelly is called Ned Kelly. I didn’t really understand what this figure of Australian history got to do in this text. I really love this passage:

Night was. Widow Night, an old woman in mourning, with big, black wings, came beating against the window; they kept her out with lamps and candles.

Impressions: The Wrightmans Magdalene is the reimagining of the story of Mary Magdalene. It references two artists’ representation: Georges de La Tour’s Mary Magdalene and Donatello’s Mary Magdalene. One a painting, the other a sculpture.

This collection was a wild ride, at times challenging, but mostly really captivating and enchanting.

This is the second review for Angela Carter week, co-hosted with Delia (Postcards from Asia).

PLEASE ADD YOUR OWN REVIEWS TO THE MR LINKY HERE

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Chris Beckett: Dark Eden (2012)

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DARK_EDEN

Chris Beckett’s novel Dark Eden was last year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award winner, which usually guarantees that a book is at the more literary end of the Sci-Fi spectrum. For once I can understand why a novel received an award. Dark Eden is nothing if not a tour de force. It’s as original as it is philosophical; in its themes as much as in its execution. Reading it wasn’t only a brainy experience, it was quite visceral as well. Beckett’s world felt so realistic, the everyday life of the people is described in all its strangeness and boring repetition, that I felt sucked in.

As a linguist and cultural anthropologist, I found the civilisation Beckett created extremely fascinating and thought-provoking. What would happen if a part of our high culture, a tiny fragment of our civilisation – two people to be precise – were abandoned on an alien planet, with nothing but their clothes, some paraphernalia and nothing else? This is what happens to Thommy and Angela, the ancestor’s of the people we meet in Dark Eden. The world they encounter is strange and dark. Light and warmth come from the lantern trees. Food abounds at first. The two humans can eat fruit and hunt the strange six-limbed animals of Dark Eden. Angela and Thommy procreate and once the story begins, the population of Dark Eden has risen to 532 people. Food is scarce by now. The perpetual darkness is hard on them. They have not ventured further because their creation myth traps them. After 160 years, or wombtimes as they call it, they are still waiting for a “veekle” from Earth to return and bring them back to their planet of origin. A planet that sounds like paradise to them. A planet where there is “lecky trickity” and daylight coming from a giant star.

Cultural anthropology studies – among other things – the development of civilisations from hunter-gatherers to (nomadic) herders to agriculturalists and more advanced civilisation. In Dark Eden this evolution is reversed at first and then starts to move through the aforementioned stages. The descendants of Angela and Thommy are hunter-gatherers, on the verge of becoming herders. And they have an oral tradition again; writing and schools have been abandoned a long time ago. Many of the words are written phonetically to illustrate that. “Rayed Yo”, “Veekle”, “Secret Ree”, “Wind Oh”. The sentence structure is simple and words like “very” don’t exist but instead of them, the narrators repeat words. “Very sad” becomes “sad sad” or even “sad sad sad”. I thought this was ingenious but – in all honesty – it got a bit on my nerves as well.

As we all know, a story needs conflict and the conflict arises in the form of a “newhair”. John Redlantern is only 20, but he questions the traditions who keep them trapped in this one place, waiting forever for an air ship that never comes. He dares the unspeakable. He challenges the elders and is finally cast out. What the elders didn’t expect – he’s struck a chord with many. Staying in one place means that food is getting scarcer and people are afraid of starving. When he leaves, a group of newhairs joins him.

John’s frustration has a lot to do with survival but is about something else als well. John’s suggestion to leave their dwelling place has something to do with leaving behind the past. Everything they do or think revolves around a distant time and place. They hope to be saved and brought back one day. They re-enact the story of Thommy and Angela again and again and, while waiting to be saved, they don’t really enjoy life or live freely.

What false hope can do to people is only one thought-provoking element, which is part of a profound analysis of meangless rituals and religion.

The structure of the novel is interesting as well. It has two main first person narrators and at least six minor narrators. That breaks up the monotony and gives Beckett the opportunity to show more than one view of the same story. The multiplicity of stories is another important theme in the book:

There are lots of different stories branching away all the time from every single thing that happens. As soon as a moment has gone, different versions of it start to be remembered and told about. And some of them carry on, and some die out, and you can’t know in advance which version will last and which won’t.

Dark Eden  describes a world in which sexuality is lived freely, in which nobody has ever murdered anyone and in which even the crippled and disfigured are treated like everyone else. But it’s not a peaceful society. Hatred and aggression simmer under the surface and can only be contained as long as absolutely nothing in the daily or yearly routine is changed. Once John questions tradition and sets in motion change, violence erupts.

The end is well done and logical. Pretty much what I had expected but that wasn’t disappointing. However, closing the book was a relief. The world Dark Eden describes is a wondrous place, filled with abundant vegetation and a strange and haunting fauna, but it’s bathed in perpetual darkness, and very suffocating.

Dark Eden is a novel that touches on many different topics – religion, family, tradition, overpopulation, hope, creation myths, languages etc. –  it’s philosophical and anthropological in scope and certainly testifies that Sci-Fi can still contribute a fresh and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition and our culture.

Thanks to Broadway Books for the review copy.

“The term literay fiction has been invented to torment people like me” – John Updike

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I can only speak for myself but I feel pretty much the same as Updike and mostly agree with the full quote below which is taken from an interview with Lev Grossman in Time magazine in 2006 (you can find the whole interview here)

I think America is an increasingly book-free country. In the world of my boyhood, there were books everywhere. Your piano teacher had books, and there were lending libraries everywhere–your department store had a lending library. Books are still bought, and you see them being read in airplanes, but it’s a last resort, isn’t it? And the category of “literary fiction” has sprung up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody wanted to read them, terrific, the more the merrier. But now, no, I’m a genre writer of a sort. I write literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit. I was hoping to talk to America, like Walt Whitman, you know? Address it and describe it to itself.

I have seen quite a few debates circling around the questions about the end of literature and/or what “literature and literary fiction” means. Is it so-called literary fiction that is about to end? The modernist novel? Surely nobody can say that story telling will end? And what is literary fiction anyway? Isn’t that an absurd expression? For me, being a French/German native speaker the term “literary fiction” is an oddity. In French and German it is much more pragmatic. Literature is pretty much the same as what English-speaking people call literary fiction. If you want to be precise you can add “demanding”, “challenging” or “sophisticated”  or to describe the opposite “entertainment”. Or you can add a school or movement like “nouveau roman” which already excludes “genre”. But that seems to be a continental European perception.

Lately I came across a term I found even more absurd “literary genre”.  It was used for books like Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. In German we would call that “gehobene Unterhaltungsliteratur” , meaning sophisticated entertainment literature. It’s a term used to tell the interlocutor that you’re not exactly reading trash, but nothing too demanding either.

In his extremely interesting book Writing 21st Century Fiction (I’ll need to review that some day), literary agent and writer Donal Maass argues that “literary genre” is the thing of the moment. I’d say it’s nothing new, it’s just another word for bestseller or mainstream fiction. Because being slightly more literary than the average genre novel, without being crime/fantasy or romance,  but accessible and well constructed, has always been the recipe for bestsellers.

In any case, literature is still alive and kicking, whether genre or literary. What seems to be dying is the patience of the reader, hence the popularity of so-called “readable” fiction, which means a lot of different things like simple sentences, short paragraphs, many chapters etc. Probably one of the many legacies of TV and other newer media that can be asborbed quickly. It’s no surprise that a lot of the current bestellers have been written by MFA graduates. They are well-constructed, have a stronger emphasis on metaphors and similes and take the short attention span of the reader into consideration.

Do you agree with Updike? Do you think literature is dying? And what about the terms literary fiction and literary genre?

My cat, as you can see,  couldn’t care less. Maybe he has a point.

Best Books 2012

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Last year I had a hard time to narrow down the choices and ended up with a very long list. This year it was far easier. All in all it wasn’t such a great reading year. Still, there were 13 novels and 2 non-fiction books I found outstanding.

I added the links to my posts and a quote from my reviews.

Charlotte Wood – The Submerged Cathedral

Australian author Charlotte Wood’s lyrical novel The Submerged Cathedral caught me unawares. Reading it felt at times like daydreaming. It has a hypnotic and very gentle quality that isn’t easy to put into words. It is highly symbolical and complex but still down to earth. The voice and choice of themes are so unusual, I’m really glad I discovered it on Kim’s blog last year (here).

Virginia Woolf – The Voyage Out

Reading The Voyage Out makes me realize once more what I like the most about her writing. Yes, the style, especially in the later novels, is fantastic, with its flow of interior monologue, the way she uses time and how she describes the passing of time. But there is something else that stayed with me forever since the day I have read Mrs Dalloway. Her writing has an exhilarating quality, an effervescent intensity of feeling that made me think of a German expression which I adore: “Champagner Wetter” or “Champagne weather”. Champagne weather is used to describe a very fresh but sunny spring morning on which the air is still cool, nature has returned to life, the first tentative, tiny leaves appear, the first blossoms can be seen. It’s already a bit warm in the sun but still chilly in the shade. It’s like drinking the first glass out of a freshly opened, nicely cooled Champagne bottle. It bubbles and goes to your head. Virginia Woolf’s novels are full of scenes conveying the mood of champagne weather.

Robin McKinley – Chalice

What I loved so much about this book is the atmosphere. Sweet and floating, like the scent of beeswax candles. The descriptions are beautiful and following Marisol’s journey has something enchanting and almost hypnotic. The world building is exquisite. I was there in Willowsland the whole time. And Marisol is such a great character, so real. She is very insecure and has to find her way in a hostile environment but her strength and her love for her home guide her. I liked how she lived, on her own, outside of the Great House or the village, only with her bees whom she treats like pets.

Antonio Tabucchi – The Edge of the Horizon

I liked it because it’s a very melancholic story and the descriptions are wonderful. Instead of taking a trip to Lisbon it was like taking a trip to one of those typical old Italian towns with the narrow and steep alleys. The book has many descriptions of quiet moments like this one towards the end:

“When the night began to fall, he turned on the radio without turning on the light. He was smoking in the dark while looking out of the window and observing the lights in the harbor. He let time slip away. He enjoyed listening to the radio in the dark, it gave him a feeling of distance.”

Helen Dunmore – Zennor in Darkness

Dunmore conveys the soft light of the Cornish coast, the beauty of the lovely landscape, the slow pace of life. This softness is mirrored in the way she changes the point of views, blurring the edges, softening the transitions, so that it feels as if one person’s consciousness and interior monologue, was flowing gently into that of another character. Reading it made me dreamy and I felt as if I was watching a water-color come to life. I read this book very slowly. I could have finished it in a few evenings but I put it aside frequently to make it last.

Amor Towles – The Rules of Civility

This is the reason why I always look forward to new releases because ever so often you discover a new book and simply enjoy it to the extent of wanting to start all over again after finishing it. This doesn’t always have to be a book that will enter the literary canon, it can just be a novel that makes you spend a few extremely entertaining hours. Like a well-made movie.

Charles Dickens – Great Expectations

Great Expectations offered everything I expected from Dickens and so much more. The only thing I could criticize is that it was predictable and that there were a lot of coincidences which didn’t seem all that realistic but who cares. There is so much in this novel to like that I can easily forget its flaws. The characters were, as was to be expected, quirky and over-the top, much more caricatures than portraits, but drawn which such a wonderful imagination that I loved each one of them.

Sylvia Toswnsend Warner – Lolly Willowes

I’m glad I discovered this wonderful novel. It has freshness and vivacity, is clever and witty and the descriptions are detailed and atmospheric, the portraits of the society and the people are true to life and Lolly is a very endearing character, an illustration of the importance of “a room of one’s own” and the right of women to live an independent life, even outside of society and without a man. It’s certainly one of the rare novels in which a being considered to be a useless burden on society shows that she doesn’t need society in order to live a truly happy and  fulfilled life.

Guy de Maupassant – Bel Ami

After having read Bel-Ami, I think that he might very well be one of the best writers in any genre. It’s one of the most perfect books I’ve ever read. I couldn’t name one single flaw. As much as I like Balzac there is always this and that, minor things, sure, but still, some imperfections. Not with Maupassant. What also surprised me is that this book could have been written nowadays. The society has changed, the world has changed but the way he writes about love, sex, power, money, careers… It’s outspoken and modern.

Louise Penny – Still Life

If I could I would move to Three Pines, the small fictional village, located a few hours from Montreal, in rural Québec. It’s a small village that sounds as if it was a place where time stands still and reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. Old cottages face a small village center and are surrounded by old trees and lush gardens. The place is very green and picturesque, the descriptions of it atmospheric and full of tiny details of the season. It’s the end of autumn, dead leaves are falling, it rains and the temperature is slowly dropping. A storm will come and soon it will be winter. Before the crime is solved, snow will begin to fall and a lot of the investigation will have taken place in front of a cozy fire.

Jetta Carleton – Clair de Lune

I absolutely loved this book. I tried to slow down while reading but it was pointless, I just rushed through the pages and when I turned the last one I was quite sad. It contains such a lot of intense scenes and the most uplifting ending since I’ve read Nada last year. Since the largest part of the book is set in spring, there are a lot of wonderful outdoor scenes in which the three friends walk in the streets, stand in the rain or just stroll through the fog. There is a breathlessness and joy of life in these pages that is exhilarating. It renders the enthusiasm of young people for whom everything is a discovery, be it literature, art, music, love or friendship. At the same time there is the anxiety about war and the knowledge that the freedom and carefreeness they experience is going to end.

Carrie Ryan – The Forest of Hands and Teeth

I never felt like reading a zombie novel before and if it hadn’t been for Sarah’s intriguing review I wouldn’t have tried this book but I’m glad I did. It has a very special and haunting atmosphere, very captivating and oddly enthralling. The word zombies, is never used, by the way, but it’s clear from the descriptions. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is part I of a trilogy. I won’t rush to read part II and III right now but I feel like reading them some day.

Edda Ziegler – Forbidden – Ostracized – Banned

Edda Ziegler’s fantastic book on German women writers under National Socialism Verboten – Verfemt – Vertrieben (Forbidden – Ostracized – Banned) was easily my favourite read this year. I hope that some English language editor will buy the rights to this book and have it translated. It’s an introduction to the most prominent German women writers under National Socialism, a detailed historical account of the times and an analysis of publishing history.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

I didn” get a chance to review this yet but if you are looking for a truly original genre blend – memoir + book on writing, this may be the book for you. Or if you are one of those who keep on saying “I would write if I only had the time” – this may be for you as well. An inspiring, motivating and really lovely book on writing and the life of a writer.