Women In Translation Month: a review and overview

So it has been a full month of reading and reviewing and adding books to the reading list, and celebrating the wonderful books we've all discovered written by women, in translation.

It's also been full of talking about the dearth of women in translation overall when looking at translation rates. Meytal Radzinski, the founder of WIT Month, has once again shared a series of posts looking at the stats around women in translation (spoiler: they haven't budged from that 30% average!) and calling for more action from publishers and on the part of readers to request more women to be translated.

What are my own numbers this month? Well, 23 books reviewed, 3 more books finished but not yet reviewed (more if you count the Moomintroll series I have nearly completed!), and 3 books on the go presently. And more staggeringly, I have added over 90 new titles to my TBR on Goodreads!  But everyone's reviews under the #WITMonth and #womenintranslation tags on twitter were irresistible. There's also the 2 WIT Month displays and 3 booklists I created at my library, and the 57 books that were checked out from those resources -- and only 3 of those by me ;)

I've really enjoyed the focus on women in translation this month -- while we shouldn't limit our WIT reading to a niche month, I feel that the increased focus and group energy around a reading challenge like this jumpstarts a lot of people (see: goodreads tbr!)  As Meytal says, it would be wonderful to see the WIT Month activities become more mainstream next year, with more publishers, reviewers, and people "in the biz" taking notice and supporting the effort.

From all the wonderful books I've read and reviewed this month, these have been my favourites:

The Green Chamber / Martine Desjardins

Disoriental / Négar Djavadi

Baba Dunja's Last Love / Alina Bronsky

Go Went Gone / Jenny Erpenbeck

Suzanne / Anais Barbeau-Lavalette

Brazen / Pénélope Bagieu


And I've just finished Sofi Oksanen's Norma, which I'll be reviewing soon & is one I'd put on this favourites list as well!


Looking forward to next August and the next big push, but I do want to encourage everyone to keep reading WIT, keep asking publishers and librarians for more WIT, and keep sharing your finds all year long. Happy Reading!

Translation Thursday: Currently Reading

It's Translation Thursday! Each Thursday this month I'm going to share the translation I'm currently reading plus a few more on my reading list. Here's today's list:

Currently Reading:

Norma by Sofi Oksanen

(received from Anansi International)

Want to Read:

Compartment No 6 by Rosa Liksom

(as reviewed at The Bookbinder's Daughter)

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

(as reviewed at Things Mean a Lot)

The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo

(as reviewed at The Boston Bibliophile)

Baba Dunja's Last Love

Baba Dunja's Last Love / Alina Bronsky; translated from the German by Tim Mohr.
New York: Europa Editions, c2016.
192 p.

I loved this book! I loved the physicality of it -- the size, the cover, even the font. And I really enjoyed the story.

Baba Dunja is a babushka who was displaced from her original village by the Chernobyl disaster. But she, and a few other aged residents, have decided that living in city apartments is for the birds, and have returned to their homes in Tchernowo. 

Alongside Baba Dunja, there's her neighbour Marja, a former beauty; Petrow, generally ill and obsessed with finding any reading material possible; Lenotschka who spends most of her time quietly knitting; the nearly 100 yr old Sidorow who proposes to Baba Dunja and then to Marja; the Gavrilow couple who keep to themselves; and we can't forget the ghosts who keep Baba Dunja company, who include her ex-husband. 

But into the remote and isolated stasis that they've managed to achieve in their restored community comes a stranger -- a middle aged man and a little girl. When Baba Dunja investigates, thinking that it's a terrible thing to bring a child to this radioactive town, things go badly wrong. Everyone in the village is implicated in the following events, and as Baba Dunja once again takes leadership, she becomes an international cause. 

The book is light, charming despite its serious underpinnings, and really engages with the idea of home. Baba Dunja has family in Germany - her daughter and granddaughter are there, and she revels in their letters. But she wants to stay home in Tchernowo until the end. I felt that the concept of this book was heavily influenced by the real life "Babushkas of Chernobyl", a group of Ukrainian women who returned to their ancestral homes after the disaster, unable to thrive away from the land.

But in the blurb for the book, it says that Tchernowo is a Ukrainian village - from some clues in the text I think it's more likely that it is on the Belarussian side of things. Just a minor quibble in a really enjoyable read however. I'm going to be reading more of Alina Bronsky in future. 

The Nakano Thrift Shop

The Nakano Thrift Shop / Hiromi Kawakami; translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell
Farmington Hills, Michigan :, Thorndike Press, 2018, c2016.
347 p.

I read this book in large print, as that was the edition in my library. I rather like its cover!

And I was very glad to finally have access to this book, which I've wanted to read since it was first translated. It's the story of four people; Hitomi & Takeo,two employees of the Nakano Thrift Shop; the owner Mr. Nakano, and the owner's sister, Masayo.

Hitomi, the main character, is in her 20s and is rather directionless. She takes a job in the Nakano Thrift Shop, and gets to know both Mr. Nakano and Takeo, around her age and a quiet person who helps with pickups. 

The story weaves their lives together, alongside the varied objects that show up in the shop -- each chapter is named for a specific item in the thrift shop, and we learn the object's story as well as how it interacts with the lives of our four characters. 

It was a light read, easy to skim, even though there are a few dark moments in the stories we are told. Takeo and Hitomi begin a sort-of relationship, although Takeo has issues he needs to deal with and can't quite give Hitomi the relationship she's looking for.

Mr. Nakano, meanwhile, is quite a ladies man, with a wife and numerous mistresses. He is open about his sex life with Hitomi and Takeo, and even gives Hitomi an erotic manuscript written by his mistress for her to read. Okay, talk about sexual harassment in the workplace! Even though he isn't interested in Hitomi in a sexual way, I still thought that this was a bit over the top, and certainly wouldn't be found in a contemporary North American novel, at least not in this innocuous way. 

Masayo, his sister, is an artist and has her own relationships, though she's never married. She and Hitomi hit it off and begin to share parts of their lives. 

All of the characters are at some kind of change point in their lives, but they are also a bit frozen in their current situations. Near the end everything changes and the storyline leaps forward a year or two, at which point we meet the characters again in their new arrangements. 

Many other people have reviewed this title and given it in-depth and considered discussion. If you'd like to delve into a deeper examination of the themes and variations in the story you can check out some of the many reviews already out there -- I didn't take a lot of extra time to untangle the many threads of the story or wonder about the whys and wherefores. I read this in an afternoon, and enjoyed it -- but found that it didn't engage me in a serious way, or a way that made me really think about it deeply. And perhaps that was just the mood of the moment, reading it on a lazy summer afternoon!

So I'd say read it for a light and interesting story, for some fascinating characters and a great setting, especially if you like Japanese literature and a youthful sensibility.  It makes me want to pick up more of her work. 

Slow Emergencies

Slow Emergencies / Nancy Huston; translated from the French by Nancy Huston.
Toronto: Macarthur & Co., 1996, c1994.
237 p.

Nancy Huston was born in Calgary but has lived in Paris since 1973. She writes most of her novels in French and then translates them herself into English, or vice versa. What a skill to have!

This small novel examines the life of a family in New England: professor Derek, dancer/choreographer Lin Lhomond, and their two children Angela and Marina.

It describes the joy and pleasure of the marriage, both the physical and emotional enjoyment of one another that Derek and Lin share. And it also reveals the reality of birth and life with first one infant, then two.

The heart of the book is Lin's desire to dance, and her utter commitment to the movement of the body. It's when she's dancing that she feels like she is most herself, and her growing domesticity and the fear that having children brings with it alarms her.

When she is offered a job directing a dance company in Mexico the year that her children are 3 and 6, she takes it. And never goes back.

Derek is left to manage a life alone with his children, though he isn't alone for long. He remarries, while Lin continues travelling, dancing, and creating.

The book looks at the effects of this decision on both of them, as well as both of their children. Angela, more sanguine since birth, manages to keep moving forward with her life though she might have some commitment issues. Marina, problematic since infancy, continues to hold on to her difficult relationship with life and search out pain and suffering in any way she can.

But the various interactions reveal a life lived despite everything, for each of them. What I really loved about this story was its refusal to blame or judge Lin for her choices. In the end, she feels that it was worth it, that her artistic fulfillment and life as a dancer was the right call for her. And I understand that completely. She's not a 'bad mother', she's a mother and a person who needed something else from her life. And her children are people who have to make their own choices as well, as individuals.

There's a lot more to this book despite its brevity. Lin's best friend Rachel plays a big role, Rachel's former lover Sean Farrell (a coworker of Derek's) is key to the story, Lin's family of origin and her mother's own story affect the outcome too. Like Lin's dancing, this story is about movement, the moving target of a 'perfect' life, the continual shifting of family configurations and emotional connections.

The structure of the book is quite reflective of this as well - it jumps years, it tells its story in brief glimpses of specific moments, and it relies on Lin's dreams to illuminate part of the emotional content of the narrative. Thankfully, this is done skillfully and meaningfully, not as an "it was all a dream" trope.

It's refreshing to read something so unwilling to bend to the cult of domesticity and motherhood as a saintly calling. It feels like each of the characters is doing what they have to do, and making a life around it. While I found parts of it tough going (Marina is a troubled presence throughout) I respected Houston's narrative choices and found that this was a rewarding read.



Other reviews of Nancy Huston's books that I've read

The Green Chamber

The Green Chamber / Martine Desjardins; translated from the French by Fred A. Reed & David Homel.
Vancover: Talonbooks, 2018.
208 p.

I was eager to read this new translation of Martine Desjardins -- I have read all of her books so far, which have all been translated by the same team and published by Talonbooks. 

The Green Chamber is a little different from her earlier works. It's much less seriously gothic, more Addams family. And it is darkly hilarious from the first page, when you realize that the narrator of the story is the rambling, ramshackle house itself.

The story moves between 1913 and 1963, revealing the lives of three generations in a Quebec family that made their fortune in the first generation, hold on to it in the second, and finally lose it in the third.

But none of it is what you'd expect from a story of wealth across the generations. The characters are all peculiar, with strange names (ie: the three spinster sisters Morula, Blastula, & Gastrula) and have disturbing personal habits -- whether extreme hoarding, obsessive cleanliness or compulsive thrift.

It's dry, archly funny, and bizarre in the very best way. From the backstabbing between siblings in the first generation to the repudiation of greed in the last, these characters are either hand rubbing villians or innocents, with one character who is a little of both (but then she's not family).Vincent (Vingt-cent) and Penny Sterling are the youngest generation, and together they are going to overthrow the past and escape from the constraints of wealth, greed, and hoarding. While the house prefers that they might use that wealth to fix it up a little, it's also very understanding. Commentary by the house on what is going on inside of it, with people who rarely leave, is one of the most entertaining aspects of this tale. Wacky disasters, losses, manoueverings, desires and family secrets all come together to create a dramatic denouement that is foreshadowed from the opening pages.

This family who has made a literal religion out of money faces disillusionment when their god of mammon is revealed as having feet of clay. And the house is left hoping for a restored life when the last remnants of this family finally depart; maybe someone new will take it on.

The style of this story makes it a quick read. It's funny, dark, and original, and the translation captures all the essential Quebec flavour of the setting, an alternate kind of Westmount/Outremont neighbourhood. I can see this as an indie film; it reads like a blend between Wes Anderson and the Triplets of Belleville. Pure entertainment, and I enjoyed this read immensely. I recommend all of her books, and would love to see her read more widely.

********************************************************

My reviews of Desjardins' other novels:

Fairy Ring

Maleficium

All That Glitters

Covenant of Salt

Umami

Umami / Laia Jufresa; translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
Oneworld Publications, 2016, c2015.
276 p.

Mexico City: a mews, four families, five voices. Umami takes its name from the courtyard with five houses clustered around it. Alfonso, owner and professor, named it Umami when he bought it, being a food specialist and all. 

But the term also highlights the five voices telling the story - a mix of all the flavours to be found in life. 

We hear from three young characters: Ana, 12 yrs old, her friend Pina, and Ana's young sister Luz whose death colours the entire narrative. And there are additional chapters from Alfonso, who is also grieving for his recently deceased wife, and Marina, a young woman who's just moved in to one of the houses and has her own struggles. 

All of these stories wrap around one another; the propinquity of the homes and the characters mean they are all telling sides of the same story -- with additional personal details. 

It's a wonderful concept, and the story is overall absorbing and full of description of life, from gardens and dirt to music to colour and beyond. But some voices were stronger than others, for me. Ana's narration is clear and straightforward; her sister Luz's chapters are less successful, partly because reading a five year old's thoughts and 'cute' language mishaps isn't appealing to me at all. Also I felt terribly anxious all the time while reading Luz's story, afraid I was about to stumble upon the scene of her drowning. (spoiler: it's not described). 

My favourite voice was Alfonso's -- his experience, his overwhelming grief and how he managed it, his study of amaranth and food history -- all of this combined with his style to engage me in his story most strongly. But I am sure a favourite character will be different for everyone who reads this.

I thought it was a fresh, intriguing book, one which I haven't read before. But there are flaws. And unfortunately, the biggest flaw was the ending. The book is going along strongly, it's building up the tension and the detail, and then the end kind of peters out weakly, like the air going out of a balloon. 

I'm not sure why Jufresa made this choice, but as a reader I felt there was no climax, no resolution that a reader would hope for. I was disappointed in the ending and felt like there was something missing. I'm not 100% enthusiastic about this book because of that.

For the characters and the setting, and the writing (even if the British translation choices showed at times), this is worth reading. Plus the cover of this edition is just gorgeous. But, a little more story with an actual conclusion would make this a more satisfying read. 

The Unit

The Unit / Ninni Holmqvist; translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy
New York: Other Press, c2008.
268 p.

I've finally got around to reading this dystopian novel that has been on my reading list for years now. Both #WITMonth & my trend toward dystopian reading this year have finally pushed me to pick it up.

It's a dark vision of a quite plausible future. Sweden has decided that women over fifty and men over sixty who are childless and not working in a protected (caring) job of some kind are dispensable. At this age, they are to be moved in to a Unit. They are provided with an apartment, fine meals, entertainment and activities -- overall a pretty good setup. 

The catch, and of course there is one, is that they are living guinea pigs from this point on, to be used in medical trials and for organ donation, until their Final Donation. 

Dorrit Weger is checked in to the Unit one spring day, and after a period of adjustment starts to find the routine quite standard. Even kind of reassuring in some ways. Luckily for her she starts off in some straightforward exercise-based studies that have no side effects, so things seem okay. 

But then the tests she's involved in get more invasive, and at the same time, for the first time in her life she falls in love. It's this, the falling in love, the realization that the two of them could have met in passing in their earlier lives and thus stayed out in the world as a productive couple - but too late now - all this is too much. Dorrit begins to realize that life is precious and living this way in the Unit becomes unbearable. 

It's a slow burn, this story. Seeing Dorrit realize that the cotton batting world of the Unit hides the vitality of real life; that love is a strong incentive to keep living. That ageism and a procreation based valuation of human life is wrong despite its societal acceptance in her world (though there are resisters). Her decision in the final pages is unpredictable and unexpected, and not exactly what I was hoping for, but so realistic and well told. 

This book is a solid read, I really couldn't put it down until I found out what was going to happen to Dorrit, but also to all the other middle aged and wonderful women that Holmqvist creates in this book. It was amazing to see all these different people in the book - sadly most of the 'dispensable' people in this society seem to be artists and creatives, without children or socially valued jobs. There is a lot underneath the surface in this novel, and a lot to talk about in Holmqvist's vision of a future that only values certain people. It was a moving, emotional story that I can't believe I took this long to read. 

Translation Thursday: Currently Reading

It's Translation Thursday! Each Thursday this month I'm going to share the translation I'm currently reading plus a few more on my reading list. Here's today's list:

Currently Reading:

Baba Dunja's Last Love by Alina Bronsky

(as reviewed at Lizzy's Literary Life)

Want to Read:

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko
(as reviewed at BookSlut)

The House With the Stained Glass Window by Zanna Sloniowska

(as reviewed by Winstonsdad)

The Odessans by Irina Ratushinskaya

(as reviewed at The Bookbag)

Girls of Riyadh

My copy has this gorgeous cover,
 which is raised shiny dots in real life
 and is so satisfying to the touch. 

Girls of Riyadh / Rajaa Alsanea; translated from the Arabic by Rajaa Alsanea & Marilyn Booth.
New York: Penguin, 2007, c2005.
304 p. 

This was an unusual read - told in the form of emails sent out to a mailing list, purporting to be the story of four Saudi Arabian women told by another young woman with a modern flair for narrative, it's most famous for opening up the private lives of contemporary Saudi girls and young women and thus being banned in Saudi Arabia itself upon publication.

The book centres on the lives of four women: Gamreh, Lamees, Michelle, and Sadeem.

Each of them struggles differently with the conflict between living with modern desires and living within a traditional society with its resultant expectations and social mores. From wanting to become a doctor, or a career woman, or just to be happily married instead of betrayed and divorced, each woman has to manage her desires and efforts in light of the limitations set by societal norms. 

Despite the concept, and some of the more depressing things that the characters face, there is a very light tone to the book overall. The writer character archly speaks to her audience (the readers of her email newsletter) at the start of each episode, and keeps an ironic distance from much of the narrative. I've seen this slightingly referred to as Arabic Chick Lit - but I don't see a problem with that. Not everything has to be deep and serious all the time. Chick Lit is often concerned with both worldly success and romance, and those issues are both key to this story. The romance might be told a little differently than Western audiences expect, since there are specific ways in which men and women can interact in this segment of wealthy Saudi families. (yes, it's definitely a wealthy circle, with lots of global travel and money to spend for most of the girls - though not all). 

Each of the characters illustrates a different kind of life experience, and reveals the daily lives of these often bored Saudi girls. Perhaps the feeling that Alsanea was spilling secrets is why it was so scandalous by reputation when it first came out. I didn't find it scandalous at all from my perspective; nothing racy or shocking to be found here, but honesty about a woman's life seems to be able to upset a lot of people. 

I thought the format was an interesting choice - again, a reinforcement of the modernity of the fictional audience's lives, reading email installments each week. The only issue is that when the emails finally came to a close, not all the storylines were satisfactorily concluded, at least not for me. It's hard to create a powerful conclusion when there are four storylines going concurrently and none of them are at a crisis point any more.

But as a glimpse into a different kind of life, that of Riyadh's Bright Young Things, it was illuminating. Some of the characters' choices were a bit baffling at first glance, but in the English translation at least, there seemed to be enough background information added about Arabic culture to allow the reader to begin to understand these women. While I have no idea if this level of explanatory prose was in the original, obviously, it did help in the comprehension if not the flow of the story. 

I was surprised by which characters I grew most attached to, and which ones I hoped better things for. While it felt like a light read in process, I'm surprised by how much I've thought about it afterward. 

No & Me

No & Me / Delphine de Vigan; translated from the French by George Miller.
Toronto : Doubleday Canada, c2010
246 p.

Lou, the narrator of this novel, is a precocious 13 year old who has jumped two grades in school and while brilliant, is also a bit socially awkward. She reminds me quite a bit of Paloma from The Elegance of the Hedgehog in her slightly stilted genius-talk.

Lou also has a family that is falling apart after her baby sister died suddenly; her mother can't seem to recover from this tragedy, and her father works hard to keep the family together.

A class assignment comes up one day that she hasn't given much thought to, a presentation that she has to prepare on a social topic; in the heat of the moment she declares she is going to explore the lives of teenage homeless girls, via interviews and research. No-one seems to worry about her doing this at all, and the project is green-lighted.

Lou then begins a conversation with No, a girl at the train station who is clearly living on the streets. She slowly gains her confidence and interviews her for the school project.

However, she's now feeling like she should help No out in more ways than just buying her coffee and food while interviewing her. She comes up with the wild idea that No should move in with her family - and to her surprise, her parents agree.

Lou's friend from school helps her manage her relationship with No. Lucas is another misfit but this time a super cool one - a young man who's been held back two grades. They connect because they are both in the wrong setting, but the resultant age gap makes me uncomfortable, particularly in the last pages of the novel. Why does there need to be a romantic link between these two? It's not sweet, it's kind of creepy, actually. Maybe in France it doesn't read as creepily.

Anyway, the story explores what it's like to live on the streets, especially as a young woman, and the life history that led No to take her chances out on her own. It delves into the psychological effects that living this way has on No, and the addictions and choices she makes to survive in the moment, which don't always lead to successful life choices in the long run. 

It's a rather sad and hopeless story, though, with no happy ending. There are glimpses of improvements for some of the characters, and an unlikely happy ending for others. I think that this is a cultural difference; I feel that if this book was American everything would work out perfectly and they'd all be happy, successful and wealthy by the end. But this story is more realistic, sadder, and points out the fact that many social ills don't have an easy, individual solution. The problem is wider and more pervasive, and needs more than one teenager trying to help, although that small step made some changes in one person's life. 

This book could easily be suggested to a teen reader, though it also appeals to an adult market. There is darkness in it, but not total despair. And there is so much to discuss when you're done. It's a complicated story with no pat answers to the questions that Lou raises, though the style is more in the vein of YA literature in the way it skims over some of the darker aspects of the issues raised. Still, a good story worth exploring. 

Am I Disturbing You?

Am I Disturbing You? / Anne Hébert; translated from the French by Sheila Fischman.
Toronto: House of Anansi, 1999, c1998.
104 p.

This little novella by French Canadian author Anne Hébert has been on my shelf for ages! I finally took it down to read it, and it was a quick read, though with its own sense of deep back story.

Edouard and Stéphane are two young friends living in Paris who one day come across a young woman crying as she sits on the edge of a fountain. They kindly go over to check on her, and she finally tells them that her name is Delphine, she's from Quebec, and she's pregnant & homeless. 

Delphine is a bit strung out; she can't stop talking - as Edouard says, words just dribble out of her mouth, she keeps talking even if nobody is listening. Stéphane becomes especially attached to her, and over the next couple of months she becomes a regular fixture in their lives, appearing and disappearing, and telling them about her married lover Patrick Chemin. He's married to a wealthy French woman, and Delphine has followed him to Paris to make him acknowledge her and her baby; she is convinced he will leave his wealthy wife for her. 

As readers, we think we know where this is going, and we are partly right. But Hébert surprises us in the development of the story - at least she surprised me. 

In the book's opening pages, Edouard tells us that Delphine has appeared at his door in the middle of the night with her catchphrase, "Am I disturbing you?" But without waiting for an answer she crawls into bed with him and mumbles away until, Edouard says, he leans over to clear her long black hair off her face and her breathing changes: she dies in his bed. 

That's not a spoiler, by the way - it's on page 4. Edouard then goes back over their history with Delphine trying to figure out how and why sh let her into his very orderly life. Her story, her presence, brings back his own troubled and lonely childhood. In the last few pages of the book we return to the scene in Edouard's room, with the police and ambulance there. Edouard is still feeling shocked and numb; but the last few lines throw his whole account into question. Is he a reliable narrator? I had to reread both the opening and closing again, but I still can't decide what I think. It's a slight, depressing story, but it's also finely crafted and quite ambiguous. Hébert is strong at portraying a character in just a few lines, and so each of these three leads, as well as the various side players, seem real and rounded. But motives are more mysterious. 

This story, though short, is atmospheric, redolent with the sense of a hot Parisian summer, with the exhaustion of Delphine's wandering through the hot streets looking for her lover. The converging storylines are finely drawn, and there is an awful lot in this brief narrative to think about. Though not my favourite of Hébert's works that I've read thus far, it is a story that sticks in the mind, that still has me pondering what *really* happened, and why. It's dream-like and perhaps that it why it stays in your thoughts, with its various images appearing randomly in your memory. Definitely worth exploring this one. 

Nirliit

Nirliit / Juliana Léveillé-Trudel; translated from the French by Anita Anand.
Montreal: Esplanade, c2018.
145 p.

This unusual read is written by a Quebecoise woman who works summers in the Nunavik area of Northern Quebec. She has created a novel in two parts; the first is the narrator speaking to her lost friend Eva, who was murdered during the year the narrator was back down south. In the second she speaks to Eva's son Elijah as he makes his way as a young man without a mother.

The narrator flies north (and south again) like the geese, nirliit. She includes a list of vocabulary at the beginning of the book, and many of these Inuttitut words are sprinkled throughout the text, giving it a stronger sense of place. 

It's a serious novel, with the narrator highlighting both the beauty of the isolated tundra and the social problems found in Salluit. The Inuit struggle to live meaningful lives in the face of addictions, racism and domestic violence, all realities arising from the lifestyle that they've been forced into through government decisions around resettlement and resource extraction in the past. But their resilience and perseverance is also noted, and the desire for education as a way out. 

Focusing in on Eva's life and the repercussions of her murder personalizes the narrative, rather than just being a set of generalizations. Her life, family and friendships resonate throughout the book, continuing on into the ways her son manages once she is gone, with his own relationships and children appearing. Characters are complicated and individual, making their own decisions independently; they are not caricatures. 

The story is based in the author's experiences, and so is told from an outsider's perspective. She acknowledges the problems she sees all around her, but in a compassionate way, in a style that seems to also acknowledge her own part in the situation as a Southerner and Canadian. It has an overtone of recognition and apology, while clearly revealing her deep love for the land and the community, her friend Eva in particular. 

It was not what I expected, but was a beautifully written and powerful exploration of the realities of life in the North for many isolated communities. I appreciated that she spoke from her own perspective and did not try to speak for the Inuit - this is her own story of life in Salluit as an outsider. 

A really different read, sombre and yet with glimpses of light. I think it's important for Canadians in particular to see and understand the lives that our governments have so strongly affected. 


Read an interview with the author at Quebec Reads to learn more about the inspiration behind this book. 

Les Belles Images by Beauvoir

Les Belles Images / Simone de Beauvoir; translated by Patrick O'Brien
Fontana, 1973, c1966.
154 p.

I picked this one up in a thrift store -- I mean, just LOOK at that 70s cover! Yikes!

But I hadn't read a novel by Simone de Beauvoir before -- somehow it hadn't really registered that she was also a novelist. This brief story about a woman who is working with images as an advertiser, and is also having a bit of an existential crisis about her own self-image, was worth reading. Despite this cover...

Laurence is married to Jean-Charles, and has two young daughters, Catherine and Louise. She works in a successful ad agency, she belongs to the wealthier class, and has a young lover on the side. All very French. She's also aware that the "Belles Images" that she works with serve to hide an empty, existential hollowness at the core of life.

"Belles Images" also references the place of women in this mid-60s French world. Laurence is assumed to have her job because of her husband; her mother Dominique is obsessed with feeling young and vital, having left Laurence's father for someone more rich and exciting. Catherine is getting to an age where she is starting to ask those existential questions like "why are people alive?" Laurence knows that to squelch those thoughts and send Catherine to a psychiatrist will just train her into the role of woman that Laurence herself is struggling with.

Jean-Charles can't see the problem and thinks it will be easier just to conform and get along with the way the world is going, though this progress that he sees leaves out the progress of women and gender equality, focusing only on the economic progress he experiences. Laurence sees the social lies that enable people to continue living in their bubbles, the role of advertising and media in keeping people anesthetized against the social unrest in America and in former French colonies that they see on the television screen, only to be replaced with commercials a minute later. All of this leads her to try to synthesize her experiences, to recover from the fissures in her understanding of life. But in the end, she only hopes that her children will have the chance that she glimpses might be possible for women, though "it's too late for her". The themes of this 1966 book are scarily still present; the role of women in public and private life still fraught with difficulty and struggle. After 50 years I'd have hoped that we'd move past some of Laurence's identified issues, but instead we've gone backwards in many ways. 

This was a really interesting read. The content, as noted, is still relevant - Laurence is a great character, always questioning and trying to find a way to live authentically. The style is also appealing. It's an existentialist novel with an actual readable plot, and the flowing style moves from first person to third person seamlessly, following Laurence's actions and thoughts equally. It feels natural once you adapt to it. It's a short novel with a lot to think about. I'm glad I discovered it. 

Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse / Pénélope Bagieu; translated from the French by Alexis Siegel
New York : First Second, 2015.
124 p.

I enjoyed Brazen, Penelope Bagieu's graphic novel biography collection, so much that I quickly picked up another of her books from my library as well. 

It's the story of Zoe, unhappy in her life as a product model, enduring sexism on the job and a disgustingly sexist, boorish boyfriend. While wandering around Paris she encounters a reclusive author when she spies him in his window and asks to use his bathroom. Her youthful and uneducated mien inspire him, and when she throws off her job and boyfriend, she goes back & is taken in by Thomas Rocher, a best-selling and famous author she does not recognize at all - one of her charms for him. 

However, she is quickly bored and annoyed when he will never leave the house for any reason, and then his ex-wife Agathe, also his editor, starts hanging around once more, now that he has a new novel on the go, thanks to Zoe's inspiration.

Zoe begins to read, and to read, and to read. She educates herself and slowly she and Agathe come to a detente, mostly over their shared annoyance with Thomas. Then Zoe discovers the big secret -- Thomas Rocher "died" a few years ago, and the posthumous novels that his editor brings out are bigger hits than ever thanks to that. 

What to do? Especially since Thomas is starting to ignore her and treat her poorly... Zoe must make a choice, and with some surprise support from Agathe she makes her move.

But you'll have to read it yourself for the twist, and the way in which Zoe decides to reclaim a life for herself. The writing in this brief story is wry and amusing, and the characterizations are not complex but they are fun. Bagieu plays with literary cliches and truisms, and has fun with it. I enjoyed the surprise ending - well, it was a surprise to me - and laughed a lot at the skewering of literary pretensions and the interplay of the characters. I also enjoyed the style of the art; it is bright and expressive and fits the storyline well. 

If you are in need of a fun, light read, which is both very French and very much set in literary circles, this one is a great choice. 

Translation Thursday: Currently Reading

It's Translation Thursday! Each Thursday this month I'm going to share the translation I'm currently reading plus a few more on my reading list. Here's today's list:

Currently Reading:

Umami by Laia Jufresa 

(as reviewed at Tony's Reading List)

Want to Read:

Before, by Carmen Boullosa

(as reviewed at Bookishly Witty)

Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World by Sabina Berman

(as reviewed by As the Crowe Flies & Reads)

Her Mother's Mother's Mother & her Daughters by Maria Jose Silveira

(as reviewed by Cecilia Weddell)

This House is Mine

This House Is Mine / Dorte Hansen; translated from the German by Anne-Marie Stokes
New York :, St. Martin's Press,, 2016
325 p.

Hildegard von Kamcke arrives at the Altland house of Ida Eckhoff alongside her 5 year old daughter Vera, displaced from East Prussia in 1945. They are taken in, begrudgingly, and given a small room and sparse food in return for work on the farm.

Ida's coldness doesn't drive Hildegard away; rather as she adjusts, she becomes more and more attached to this house. After Ida's son Karl returns from WWII a broken man, Hildegard ends up marrying him, and the house indeed then becomes her own.  

The book follows Hildegard and Vera as they make a home in this setting; but only Vera sticks. Hildegard finds a better offer from a rich man with a villa, and leaves with him - but without Vera, who is then cared for by her stepfather Karl. Vera's never fully accepted by the neighbourhood, always with a taint of 'outsider' despite her commitment to this place, despite the fact that she grew up there. She's too different, too independent. 

But when Karl, old and ill with PTSD, needs her, Vera cares for him in the old rambling house that is falling down around them. But into the picture comes her niece Anne and her son Leo, looking for refuge when Anne's relationship fails. They move to the country because of course rural life is purer and more healing, and develop a new relationship with the cold and emotionally distant Vera. Family heals all wounds! No, seriously, while it does sound a bit like a Hallmark movie, there is more darkness and toughness in this one. Hansen notes, "Vera Eckhoff didn’t know much about her niece, but she knew a refugee when she saw one."

I actually enjoyed the sense of hope and healing that Hansen allowed to arise in the relationship between these two women. While I can be a cynical reader at times, I appreciated that this book was not fully despairing despite its beginnings in war, suicide, trauma, and family dissolution. The power of place and belonging comes through here; while families can break apart, they can also reform themselves into something new. And the very specific place of the house was a powerful central theme, and vital to the creation of belonging. The house had a motto carved on its front: 

“This hoose is mine ain and yet no mine ain, he that follows will caw it his.”

The only constant is change, and this book illuminates that perfectly. The theme of refugees and identities in Germany right now is pretty topical, and Hansen explores the long history of such movement within Germany to give another perspective on alienation and belonging. This was a bestseller in Germany, and its readability, strong story, and additional wry humour might explain why. Recommended. 

Go, Went, Gone

Go, Went, Gone / Jenny Erpenbeck; translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
New York: New Directions Books, 2017.
286 p.

After finishing a string of novels that all seemed concerned in some way or another about women and procreation and all that comes of that, it was refreshing to read this current novel by Jenny Erpenbeck.

Not only does it not focus on procreation, it mostly looks at men and migration.

This story takes on the plight of refugees and migrants in Germany, centred in the experiences of Richard, a recently retired Professor of Classics. He is very privileged indeed, at the top of the heap - an educated white man in his own country with lots to live on and a sense of a solid life with pretty small first world problems to concern himself with. 

But then he comes across a demonstration on Alexanderplatz - African migrants staging a hunger strike, trying to bring attention to their hopeless situation. 

As Richard gets drawn in to the lives of this set of refugees once he volunteers to teach German at a temporary residence, he learns more and more about the impossible situation they are in. Bureaucracy means that they can't work in Germany without having papers, but not being able to work means they can't get papers. Various things like that reappear again and again - if they've landed in Italy they have to claim residence there, but can't unless other conditions are met which can't be met. It's painful to read the frustration and the stalled hopes of these refugees & migrants (almost entirely men in this book). Their back histories are slowly revealed as they trust Richard more and his desire to help expands. And not all interactions he has are glowing with joy; Erpenbeck is no Pollyanna. While some of Richard's friends think he is ridiculous, others start to understand more about what is happening, thanks to his newly awakened awareness. 

This book takes on very timely themes of migration, our sense of identity, belonging, and entitlement, and the responsibility of us all to recognize our common humanity. Erpenbeck writes with intensity and with moral complexity; while it's a timely topic with political currency, this story is a story, not a screed. It's not a political pamphlet at all, rather, a deep and compassionate exploration of people and relationships, and the human connection we owe to one another. It was a thought-provoking and important read. 

Roy's Garden in the Wind

Garden in the Wind / Gabrielle Roy; translated from the French by Alan Brown
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2004, c1977.
175 p.

This collection of stories really hit me. It's made up of these four titles:

A Tramp At The Door
Where Will You Go, Sam Lee Wong?
Hoodoo Valley
Garden in the Wind

Out of the four, only the first comes from Roy's own lived experience of being a Western Canadian Francophone. The other three take on different experiences - Chinese immigrants to small prairie towns, Doukhobours, and Ukrainian immigrants, respectively.

You'd think this wouldn't work - that there's no way she could enter into these very different lives. And there are problems, both in the way she refers to her characters (ie: Sam Lee Wong is "a Chinese") or the places (ie: it's always 'the Ukraine', not 'Ukraine') But I'm not sure whether much of this comes mostly from the fact that they were written in the 70s, because Roy's extreme empathy does illuminate much of the other storytelling. It's not perfect, by any means, but particularly in the title story I think she captures something essential. 

The first story, A Tramp at the Door, follows the fortunes of a tramp who appears at the Trudeau family farm one day, and worms his way in by claiming he's a long lost cousin from Quebec. He tells stories of the homesick father's extended family, feeding the longing for family news that the isolated French settlers in Western Canada feel for their Quebec roots in all of Roy's work. He stays for a long time, working as a handyman, but then moves on and as the reader suspected, tries this on again with other French families. How the family reacts to this falsity is the true heart of the story, I think, and the conclusion is as bittersweet as expected from this author.

The middle two stories are well crafted, in Roy's quiet style. She represents the size and isolation of prairie towns/settlements very well, and in both of these stories the place of the outsider is often always as the outsider, one who can never break the code and really understand the place they've landed in. They are precise, sad and nostalgic. These stories are also a little uncomfortable for the modern reader, though, as the issues of race or culture and appropriation/representation are much more in the forefront now.

That said, the final and title story, Garden in the Wind, is beautiful, believable, and heart-breaking. The main character is a Ukrainian woman who still lives on her Saskatchewan farm many years after settling there. 

Her children are grown and off to their respective adult lives in other prairie cities, and they are infrequent visitors, embarrassed by their old world parents. Stepan, her husband, is often drunk and often difficult. They haven't spoken to one another in years. Marta's reminiscence is the heart of the story, and as she speaks she shares that she is seriously ill. But why go to a doctor? Why have tests and have to make a fuss of the end of her life? Instead she releases her hold on life, in a way, and stops working and fretting, instead enjoying her flowers that she nurses in the dry and windy yard. She wishes that the stand of poplars beside the house was once again beautiful as it was when it was new and not overrun with broken down machinery and junk. 

Somehow Stepan senses that there is something in the wind, and cleans the yard, tries to keep her flowers going, and ends up feeding her when she settles into bed. All this is so emotionally resonant and so real. I really believed that Marta was a Ukrainian immigrant - she sounds like the people in my own family history, as do all the permutations of her family history and her past. Roy captures the internal life of characters so different from herself, in the smallest and most personal ways.

This story left me emotionally wrung out. It's full of pathos but not sentimentality; Marta is clear eyed and practical, and yet loves the world so much. This story alone is worth reading this book, I feel. 

It's probably clear that I'm really in tune with Gabrielle Roy's themes and her very particular style. If you also love this kind of nostalgic exploration of the past, of small histories passing out of memory, of beautifully wrought, quotable prose, you might like to try her stories out as well.

Roy's Enchanted Summer

Enchanted Summer / Gabrielle Roy; translated from the French by Joyce Marshall.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2004, c1976.
125 p.

I first began reading this little tale of a summer in the Quebec countryside ages ago, in an old hardcover edition I'd found somewhere. Then I got to page 80 and realized that the book had a misprint -- the signature repeated itself and then jumped to the next, so I could reread the beginning and skip over most of the middle if I wanted! Well, of course I didn't, so I laid it down, and only began reading it again recently when I came across this little New Canadian Library (no.155) edition, with two collected short works included. 

I am generally a fan of most everything Gabrielle Roy has written. There are some works that are stronger and some that are not quite as strong but still charming and enjoyable to read. This is one of the latter for me.

It is made up of short pieces describing a rather idyllic summer she spends in the rural countryside of the Charlevoix region of Quebec. The narrator introduces us to her friends, to the locals, to visitors and to family - not to mention a heavy rotation of pets, wild animals, bugs and birds. It's a style of impressionistic writing that makes me think of the nature writers of the 70s overall, a kind of sun-washed, floral, almost naive style. Though Roy never backs away from the realities of life and death and much in between. 

We begin with the two friends encountering a bullfrog on an evening walk, in a humorous moment, which turns to pathos by the end when the bullfrog is gone - in all likelihood eaten - by the next summer. An elderly aunt comes to visit and a big production is made to get her down to the river one last time, the great St Lawrence River of her childhood; and as it turns out it's the last time she ever sees it. The book also includes a flashback to the memory of a teaching post in Manitoba when as Roy leads the school children to the home of a dead classmate to say goodbye. It's considered natural though tragic. There is a sense of the sublime in these essays - how the world in its own rhythms towers over our small lives. But there is also some humour, much charm in her descriptions of crows, cats and more, and an almost overwhelming nostalgia - one of the signatures of her style. 

I am glad I persevered and found a readable edition of this book - it's the perfect book to read when your own summer vacation is much more urban and truncated than this lengthy rural idyll. The weekend feels much longer when you spend it in Roy's company. 

Disoriental

Disoriental / Negar Djavadi; translated from the French by Tina A. Kover
New York, N.Y. : Europa Editions, 2018
338 p.

This is one of the best books I've read this year. And since I have been recommending it to everyone I know, I thought I'd better share my thoughts here as well. 

The narrator is Kimia Sadr, who fled Iran at age 10 with her family due to her parents' political outspokenness and opposition to the Islamic regime. The family ends up in France; why, when, and how we only find out slowly, as Kimia tells the story in retrospect, flipping between present and past at will.

As the book opens, Kimia is waiting alone in a fertility clinic waiting room for the results of her recent visits. As she waits, she shares her thoughts - about her fertility doctor, about the process she's taken to get there, and then suddenly back to her great-grandfather in the province of Mazandaran, and to the birth of her grandmother, Nour. These beginnings are almost folkloric, with the harem and their superstitions around Nour's birth and the very elaborate, beautiful setting. This family background keeps getting fleshed out, all the way to the births and then marriage of Kimia's parents.

These family stories keep flashing back and forth during the first part of the book. The rapidity with which Kimia switches streams reflects the way memories work, and sounds so much like someone just telling family stories, the way they get interrupted or redirected by a comment, or how the teller just starts going off on a tangent. 

In the second part of the book, it shifts a little more from the Sadr family history in Iran to their recent past in France. We learn more about Kimia herself, and what the defining moments of her nuclear family history really are. There's a sense of the narrative almost getting to a point that you're expecting then backing off - and when you protest, the narrator saying, yes, yes, I'm getting to that, and continuing on. It's a fairly long book but read so quickly for me. The family stories are rich with atmosphere and history, told in a captivating style. And Kimia herself is an opinionated, sarcastic, honest and complex storyteller. 

There are themes of identity - national and personal, of being true to one's self and beliefs, of politics and its effect on daily life, and all sorts of other elements that come together in this story of a strong woman who survives a turbulent youth and ends up happy. There is a real exploration of what it means to be family, to be relations, siblings, parent & child.  It was thoroughly entertaining, illuminating, and educational in all the best ways. It's a very adult book, in the sense that it never takes the easy way out, and is comfortable in its own messy complexity. 

Definitely a top read of the year. Go find it!

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly / Sun-Mi Hwang; translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim
New York: Penguin, 2013, c2000.
134 p.

This little fable, prettily illustrated by Nomoco, is a very quick read that seems straightforward on first view.

A laying hen, having named herself Sprout, finds a kind of freedom after surviving a cull of non-productive hens. She's outside of the coop, in the farmyard, as she's always dreamed.

But the other animals - the rooster, hen and flock of ducks, alongside the guard dog, don't seem to want her there. She tries and tries to fit in, hovering at the edges of the farmyard society and taking the scraps of what's left. Until finally she realizes that this just isn't enough. She follows a wild duck from the barnyard out into the fields and there gains her heart's desire -- to hatch a chick.

Unfortunately the chick is from an abandoned duck egg, and Sprout must raise this duckling on her own, with only her own love for it to guide her. 

All the metaphors of sacrificial motherhood as the highest calling are found here. Sprout protects Baby from the stalking of the wild Weasel and the mockery of the farmyard society which she briefly tries to return to. She gives up everything, she's hypervigilant, she subsumes her own brief life and hopes of freedom in her care for Baby. She raises him, allows him to strike out on his own with a flock of mallards who appear on the lake and finds the apotheosis of her sacrifice when he flies south with these ducks of his own kind.

I'm sure there are many parallels to the acceptance of multiracial norms in Korea that I'm missing - perhaps a social bias about adoption - and certainly an attitude of maternal sainthood. While this book has been compared to animal stories as varied as Charlotte's Web to Animal Farm, I don't think there is a bigger message here other than that maternal relationship as the whole of life's meaning. 

It's a very short book, an easy read, with a definite fable-like tone. I do feel like I'm not grasping the full implications of her metaphors and references, perhaps because of my lack of familiarity with the social structure she's reflecting, and perhaps because the glorification of motherhood is not a theme I connect with at all. If anyone has read this and has another take on it, please share! 

It's still a charming book for the characterizations of all the different animals, and the realization that 'enemies' like the Weasel and Sprout herself have personhood in common (again, this comes via the maternal theme). Sprout's desire for freedom and her unquenchable independence did save the story from becoming only a maudlin paean to maternity. It's a lovely physical object as well, and the illustrations add an extra touch. Despite my reservations about elements of the theme, it's worth exploring.