#WITMonth Roundup

 

And that's a wrap for this year's Women in Translation Month! I hadn't intended to read nad review so much this year, but got carried away with the excitement again. I also found another batch of titles to add to my TBR thanks to reviews and publisher's highlights as well.

The most unusual language I read from this year was Farsi, while the most common was Ukrainian, or Ukrainian writers writing in Russian, and then French. I love reading all these different books and seeing reviews out there highlighting things I might have missed in my reading of a book. 

Women in translation matter all year round, of course, and it's important to keep reading them. I have a few titles that I've finished and will post my reviews shortly, carrying this over into September. And do take a look at the Women in Translation website, to find out more about this project, why it's done and why it matters, and what you can do to both read along and encourage more books by women to be translated. 

I still have a large number of translations on my shelves to read, including some big ones that I had wanted to get to this month but didn't. So I made a reading stack of translations that I'm going to try to focus on to the end of the year. Now we'll see how it goes!

In the Dark of the Night

 

In the Dark of the Night / Dniprova Chayka &Lyubov Yanovska
trans. from the Ukrainian by Roma Franko
Saskatoon, SK: Language Lanterns, c1998.
465 p.

Finishing off #WITMonth 2022 with another volume in the Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature series by Language Lanterns. I really liked this one - it focuses on two writers, Dniprova Chayka (a pseudonym which means Seagull of the Dnipro), and Lyubov Yanovska. You can read a brief bio of each at the Language Lanterns website. 

The book is split about 30/70 between the two, with Chayka telling short stories of a more ethnographic bent, while Yanovska mixes the contemporary fashion for ethnographic storytelling with an emerging focus on psychological stories. I found both writers really interesting; they were both new to me. There are some stories here that focus on the miseries of rural Ukrainians at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, but there was also a heightened focus on style, and on stories of artists and intelligentsia. I also found quite a bit of wry humour, especially in Yanovska's stories. Her style was intriguing and fresh, with asides to the reader, a story from 1909 that starts out in second person, and a 1911 tale about an alien coming to observe earthlings over the Easter weekend which is told in reportage fashion. Much of her work felt very modern and amused me with its black humour and stylistic technique. 

An example of the clever writing that I appreciated was found in the title story, by Yanovska: 

And perhaps everything would have happened as he thought it would, and perhaps everything would have come to pass as foretold by the cards, if only and if... in a word, if everything had not, unfortunately, turned out completely differently.

I especially enjoyed reading Yanovska's stories, with her urban and arts-focused characters, many of whom were painfully self-observant. Her approach to her characters was compelling and entertaining while also being descriptive in an 'ethnographic' way. The collection was balanced, with a variety of fantastical and realistic stories shared.

There are also some fine metaphors and observations that I marked down from both writers. There is a  focus in many of these stories on artists and artistic longings that remain unmet, and I found those very relatable and touching. My favourite story by Chayka was "The Shadow of Uncreated Creations", about a woman who holds artistic gatherings for young writers and painters and the like. One older woman there, who the younger people scorn for her coldness, is revealed to be an exquisitely sensitive artist, who sings powerfully but is always disappointed in how she falls short of her ideals. Highlighting the experience and disappointments of middle age alongside the judgements and expectations of youthful artistic hopefuls was really effective and moving. 

This is the second volume in this six volume series (I only have one left to read) and so far it's the lightest, or perhaps the most straightforwardly entertaining one. While there is plenty of despair, drama, and tragedy included, there are also lighter moments and livelier stories included. I really enjoyed this one! 

The Florios of Sicily

 

The Florios of Sicily / Stefania Auci
trans. from the Italian by Katharine Gregor
NY: Harper Via, 2020, c2019
304 p.

This Italian family saga was a bestseller in Italy, and it's definitely a dramatic and entertaining read. It follows the Florios as they move to Sicily, run a spice and import business, grow their business despite many obstacles, face family tragedies and political issues -- basically climb their way up across a couple of generations from peasants to wealthy business owners with societal caché.

I enjoyed the structure of the book, which helped the reader along; each section is named after a product that expands the Florio business, and begins with a note of the specific dates this portion is set in, and a brief intro outlining the social and political state of Sicily at that moment. There was a lot of movement between French and Neapolitan rulers, independence and constitutions and the like at this time, so these historical notes (which read dramatically) were useful. 

The heart of the book is the Florios themselves, though; the original brothers Paolo and Ignazio, Paolo's wife Guiseppina and their child Vincenzo. The family grows in wealth and influence as the years go by, but also find that they can't overcome their beginnings as "labourers" in the eyes of longtime Palermo businessmen. Also, Vincenzo in particular becomes obsessed with joining the nobility but never quite succeeds in marrying up. He'll have to leave that to his own son Ignazio. 

The story is told in a straightforward manner, no stylistic flourishes. It's a historical novel and so focuses on building up the characters and the setting -- and 19th C. Palermo comes to vibrant life in this book. I didn't realize when I started this that the Florios were a real family that Auci is trying to illuminate in this novel, which was probably a good thing as I usually don't like novels with real people as characters. But because I knew absolutely nothing about them or this setting, it didn't bother me here. I felt that she was respectful to all the characters, even the ones that are not the nicest people. 

I also enjoyed seeing the Florio empire grow; from spices to silks, sulfur to ships, lace, bark and more there is info on each commodity and why it was important to Sicily, all told in a natural way as part of the story. It was a bit soap opera-ish in its ups and downs, but not in a bad way -- it was an entertaining read. There were some really compelling characters who she made into true individuals (my favourite was Vincenzo's wife Guilia). The writing wasn't the feature of the book, but it was also well done in that it didn't interrupt the story, you didn't even really notice it - there were no clunky bits. The translator's note about working with a book that was using a lot of 19th C. Italian dialect was fascinating too; Italian hasn't changed as much as English has in the last couple of hundred years, so she had some decisions to make about how to translate it. I appreciated that the publisher put that note in; it made me look back at the book a little differently. 

Overall, this was a different read from many I've picked up this month, and I really enjoyed this visit to the merchant cities of Sicily.  

Three Summers

 

Three Summers / Margarita Liberaki
trans. from the Greek by Karen Van Dyck
NY: NYRB, 2019, c1946.
264 p.

This Greek classic is a slow and dreamy read. It features three sisters, Maria, Infanta, and Katerina. The story is mostly told from the viewpoint of Katerina, the youngest, and it ranges across three summers (obviously). The book's structure follows that, split into three sections that really only highlight the summer months; the winter is dealt with in a few sentences. 

These three spend much of their time drowsing in meadows, talking about their futures, and falling in love. As the summers progress, they also grow apart a little as their focus changes to different things. The main question of the book is, however, what they are to do with themselves and their energy. They all seem a little different in personality; Maria is sexually adventurous and has a strong desire for physical intimacy and children, Infanta is reserved and has a tendency toward aceticism (unfortunately egged on by her bitter maiden aunt), while Katerina is boisterous and uncontained, full of big emotion and ambition. 

Over the course of this book they observe neighbours and family, finding out secrets while also being mystified by other personalities. They watch how varied people's foibles and quirks shape their relationships. They have plenty of their own quirks as well, and each of the sisters chooses a path distinct from one another. Maria settles down in the first section, Infanta has a romantic entanglement in the second, and Katerina chooses her path in the third. The end is a little abrupt but we can see that Katerina has broken the hazy dream that has enveloped their lives (and this story) so far, and has changed her destiny with her stubborn willfulness. It's not the character flaw that her mother always told her it was; it's her path forward. 

It was an engrossing read, full of beautiful writing, imagery, landscape, characterizations and overlaid with a sense of nostalgia. I liked the structure, but I did feel confused at times at the passage of time in this story. Which summer was it again? And how old are these sisters exactly? Other than that, however, I found this an easy read, a perfect one for summer nights. 

Some Maintenance Required

 

Some Maintenance Required / Marie-Renée Lavoie
Toronto: Anansi, 2022, c2018.
272 p.

I greatly enjoyed Lavoie's two books about a "boring wife" in the past, so when this one arrived in my library recently I snapped it up. It's a standalone, and less slapstick than the previous series. But while it's a more serious look at work, coming of age, and family dynamics, it also has its share of humour. 

It's 1993 and Laurie is at that age where she has to decide what to do with her life. She's attending college but also working , first at a bakery, then a restaurant (her job interview there is quite amusing), and a bingo hall. Her mother works as a parking lot attendant and has made her tiny booth homey. Her father is a mechanic and she visits him at his shop, where she disapproves of the sexist calendars hung up, and where she meets a young man from the rich part of town and a romance slowly begins, giving Laurie a glimpse of a different kind of life.

Laurie also looks after her young neighbour, a scraggly, neglected child who really needs the stable influence of Laurie's family. While her mother is the backbone of the family there comes a point when she is the one needing "some maintenance". The story shows how everyone needs support in life, and how challenges arise that can be met with the help of others. Despite this, nothing feels sappy or sentimental here, it's rough, emotional taxing at times, but ultimately hopeful. 

I enjoyed the sarcasm and some of the set pieces in this story; they made me laugh but also touched me. And I don't think I've read anything lately that engages with work in the way that this book does. The characters spend a lot of their time at work, as people do, and that work defines them and shapes their experiences. I recognized some aspects of Laurie's jobs in the restaurant business from my own few years working in a deli, at about the same stage of life as she's in - it feels unusual to have jobs be a part of a novel in this way. So often a character just floats along and does stuff that isn't affected by income or job schedules. This book feels very life-like in its everyday acceptance that work  - and the finding of work - is a major part of life. I love that it also highlighted how work experiences can also be hilarious at times. 

But the characters are the key here, and this family was the heart of the book. Everything flowed from the relationships between all three of them. I really liked this one, and look forward to more by Lavoie.

Manikanetish

Manikanetish / Naomi Fontaine
trans. from the French by 
TO: Arachnide, c2021.
153 p.

This is a small story about Yammie, an Innu woman who left her community on Quebec's North Shore, and has now returned as a teacher. She has a classroom full of rather disaffected students; they see no future for themselves and are not engaged in learning the French language that she is responsible for teaching. 

This small story moves between Yammie's own experiences both in her childhood and with her current French boyfriend still living in Quebec City and getting impatient with her decision to teach Up North, away from him. That's rolled into the lives of these students that she is beginning to care for, in regard to both their schooling and the issues in their lives. 

Yammie decides that her class will put on a French play, to liven things up and give them a different way to approach French and learning in general. This seems to spark something and the class, even some of the most antagonistic boys, get into it and want to be involved. It brings out new characteristics in some of the students, even while it's not enough to change to fates of others. 

In some ways, this brief and bittersweet book reminds me of Gabrielle Roy and her novels and stories about young teachers in one-room schoolrooms across the prairies. It has the same sense of a young teacher feeling their way with students not too much younger than they are, and becoming a part of the students lives in unexpected ways. The language is also laden with that odd sense of nostalgia that can be found in Roy's writing; in this novel Yammie is telling her story in the present tense, but it feels like she's looking back at it and drawing out the poignancy of her time at the school. 

It's an unusual book, sharing the daily life of a community that isn't represented a lot, and it is told by an author who is a member of the Innu nation. It's one that is worth reading, to get a perspective on a life and a community that can be overlooked in Canadian literature. 

 

Translation Thursday

 It's Translation Thursday! Each Thursday this month I have been sharing the translation I'm currently reading plus a few more on my reading list. This week is a bit different, as I'm sharing a whole bunch of potential reads. 

Each year in August I make a #WIT display in my library, and pull many of the books by women in translation in our collection. For a small library, we have a lot to offer. I've read many of them, but still have to read many more!

Here is what the display looked like this year, a few days after being set up and many books already being checked out :)

Inseparable

Inseperable / Simone de Beauvoir
trans. from the French by Sandra Smith
NY: Echo, c2021
208 p.

This is a book first written in 1954, but left in Simone de Beauvoir's papers until it was published in 2021. It is a semi-autobiographical story about Simone de Beauvoir (Sylvie) and her 'inseparable' friend, Elisabeth ‘Zaza‘ Lacoin (Andrée).

Sylvie is telling the story; she is from a poorer, smaller French family, but her best friend Andrée comes from a large, traditional French family, heavily Catholic and very focused on social expectations. The narrative covers the time between their first meeting at nine years old, into adolescence, and the differing expectations on them as they grow older, until it stops short in 1929. 

These two friends fight against the expectations for women at that time and place; but Sylvie is much freer to do so; Andrée is bound up in her large family, never left alone and forced to hide her thoughts and feelings in order to meet her mother's demands and learn the social milieu she's expected to continue living in forever. It's tortuous. And as they get older, Andrée's mother also tries to wedge some distance between the two girls, as the more liberal Sylvie is not considered a good influence (or a useful connection, for that matter). Andrée's burgeoning relationship with the boy next door is also crushed out, since he is half-Jewish and thus not suitable in her family's eyes. 

It's a small book, told in dreamy French, with a feeling of the hazy past hanging over a lot of it. It's based on a real friendship that de Beauvoir had, and you can feel how much this relationship haunted her, how much she needed to write it out. It gives a solid sense of what it was like to live in this milieu, the social rules that constricted any personal choices, and the weight of family in shaping a life. It is a snapshot, but one that stays with you for a long time. 

The Lost Manuscript

The Lost Manuscript / Cathy Bonidan
NY: St. Martins, 2021, c2019.
274 p.

This is a title that I heard of thanks to WIT Month in a previous year. I thought it sounded charming, and it's in epistolary format, which is something I really love. So I found it via my library and gave it a go. 

Unfortunately, I wanted to like it much more than I ended up doing. It is told in a series of letters back and forth between a widening group of writers. Anna-Lise Briard finds an old manuscript in a hotel side table, and reads it; it touches her so much she tries to find out who left it there, and then trace that line back to who might have written it. 

Letters fly back and forth across France and into England as people are introduced to each other through their connection to the manuscript. Anne-Lise seems like a nosy person with a lot of time on her hands, despite working for a publisher full-time. Her actions drive the story, though, and without her busybody interventions there would be no book ;) 

Anyhow, I liked the idea, and some of the letters were amusing - the differing tones in letters between new acquaintances and old friends was nicely done. The epistolary format was used effectively, with the different ways in which people write to one another used appropriately to develop the story. 

There was a romantic arc between Anna-Lise's friend Maggy and an English character, but it was kind of ho-hum -- and that was my problem with this book in the end. I did find the plot to be a little weak and overly sentimental. By the end I didn't really care who wrote the manuscript or why, and felt like it was very unlikely to have changed the life of everyone who had ever laid eyes on it. So if you're in the mood for something really light with loads of sentiment this might hit the spot, but it just didn't gel for me at this moment. 

A Single Rose

A Single Rose / Muriel Barbery
trans. from the French by Alison Anderson
NY: Europa Editions, 2021.
148 p.

Muriel Barbery shot to fame with her novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which had hints in it of Barbery's fascination with Japan. But this book goes all out into that fascination.

It features Rose, a French woman, just turned 40, who is summoned to Kyoto when her father dies; she has never met her father, a Japanese art dealer. But he wanted her to be there for the reading of his will. 

She arrives in Kyoto, where she stays in her father's house and is waited on by a Japanese housekeeper and a chauffeur, and is toured around Kyoto to various temples and restaurants in the week leading up to the will reading. Her tour guide is Paul, a Belgian widower who has lived in Kyoto for 20 years and worked as her father's assistant. You can see where this is going from a mile away. 

Most of the book is about Rose's experiences of transcendence and self-discovery through her many trips to temples and their gardens. She's a botanist so should be enthused by flowers but she's hard to like; she's as prickly as her name, and never really becomes much more engaging. I found her obstinate behaviour quite child-like, more suited to a 20-something than a supposed 40 year old woman. And in response to many things -- her sudden attraction to Paul, her feelings of being abandoned/neglected by her father and her mother alike, etc -- she gets truculent, angry, or decides to get drunk. 

I found her really whiny and her sudden reversal at the end a bit too convenient. The ending itself is a bit of an anticlimax; the book is more interested in the twisty, poetic use of language (slightly purple at times) than plot. I liked parts of it (and certainly would love to go to Kyoto) but found it slightly too mystical for my tastes, and did feel that the Western person in esoteric Japan narrative was a bit cliche. I'm not actually sure what I really feel about this one yet! Maybe I'll have to think about it for a few more days to get a handle on my reading experience. 

The Old Woman with the Knife

The Old Woman With the Knife / Gu Byeong-Mo
trans. from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim
Toronto, Ontario : Hanover Square Press, 2022, c2013.
280 p.

When do you know it's time to retire, if your day job has been working as a stealth assassin for many years? Do you take advantage of your increased invisibility as an aging woman or do you call it quits and relax at home with your dog? 

This is the question that plagues Hornclaw, who worries that she's losing her edge. For example, her reflexes are slightly slower. And there is the fact that she's letting an emotional attachment to a stray dog develop; she's getting soft, even if she does name it Deadweight. But she figures she'll do one or two more jobs then think about a change. Unfortunately, there's a young and cocky new employee at her agency that seems to have it out for her, and she just can't back down. 

The story of these two, and how and why the antipathy between them exists, makes up the book. But we only get it in bits, between a lot of action -- her weak point is a doctor who saved her from an injury once, and this doctor's family gets caught up in the vendetta against her. Will this emotional attachment be the end of Hornclaw's career or will her experience prevail? 

I found this a quick and entertaining read. Despite the characters all being ruthless contract killers, and the inclusion of quite a bit of violence (not too gory), it feels like a lighter read. But aside from the action and dark humour, there is an undercurrent of thoughtfulness. Questions of aging, identity, power, women's roles and what society thinks women owe the world, and human connection all rise up. It's a great combo, and made this a memorable read - I'm still thinking about it and trying to decide what I think of the ending. Hornclaw is a cantankerous old woman and a remorseless killer, but she's still a compelling character that I couldn't help feeling compassion for. 

I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to dip their toes into translated fiction but reads mostly genre; it moves along and has strong plot as well as a couple of strong characters to draw you in, in addition to the intriguing setting. 

Life Ceremony

Life Ceremony / Sayaka Murata
trans. from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori
NY: Grove, 2022.
256 p.

If you've read Murata before, you'll be ready for the weirdness of these stories. If you haven't encountered her before, well, get ready. Because these are strange ones! 

It's her first collection of short stories in English, and these 12 stories cover a range of situations, although all are imbued with her boundary-crossing sensibility. They approach social norms at a slant, turning them upside down and wondering why they exist and what for. Sometimes that can be uncomfortable to read, particularly in the title story (at least for me). 

I found the story that was most memorable to me was "A First Rate Material", in which engaged couple Nana and Naoki hold differing opinions on the use of human bodily materials to make household items (ie: Nana's human hair sweater or the many bone tables etc.) Nana thinks it's a wonderful memorial; Naoki is completely weirded out by it. 

The title story is creepy and nauseating, but you can definitely see her style and themes there. If you don't mind a bit of icky reading, you'll get through it. The other stories look at life in different ways as well, and there is a lot to think about after reading these. I found the collection a little uneven, with some of the stories very short and vignette-like, while others are longer and more cohesive. But if you are interested in weird stories that shake up social norms, this is the collection for you. 

Tokyo Ueno Station

 

Tokyo Ueno Station / Yu Miri
trans. from the Japanese by Morgan Giles
NY: Riverhead, 2021, c2014.
192 p.

Another short and thoughtful book for today's WIT Month read. This is a quiet and damning look at the treatment of homeless people in Japan. 

Kazu was born in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, and he traces his life until the time that he ends up living in a makeshift tent, in a park near Tokyo Ueno Station. He worked as a labourer in Tokyo, only seeing his family intermittently -- his wife lives with his parents, and they have two children, although he has barely seen them. He's too busy earning a pittance to send home. 

His son dies suddenly in his early twenties, though, and that seems to be an extension of what he considers his life of bad luck. This moment shifts the trajectory for him, and his life begins to head downward. Eventually he retires, to rediscover his wife whom he barely knows; they get along alright and he's starting to relax when she suddenly dies as well. And when his daughter moves home to take care of him, he feels that it's too much, that he's a burden and his daughter shouldn't also be weighed down by his misfortune. 

So he leaves, and becomes a homeless person, one who can't leave his encampment even after his death. His ghost travels the park, telling his story in retrospect, and sharing the stories of the others who also live there. All this in a compact narrative that holds a sympathetic and bittersweet tone. There is no cloying sentimentality, but then again there isn't really any redemption or positivity either. It's a straight-ahead trajectory of a life that was difficult and led to a conclusion that feels sadly inevitable. The style is plain and there's no attempt to gloss over the sadness of this life. It's a meaningful and sober story, one to read when you are ready for this kind of serious look at homelessness. 

Translation Thursday

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. Today I'm looking at novels featuring siblings.  

Currently Reading:

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki
trans. from the Greek by Karen Van Dyck

Want To Read: 

Will and Testament / Vigdis Hjorth
trans. from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund

Because Venus Crossed and Alpine Violet on the Day
That I Was Born / Mona Hovring
trans. from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson & Rachel Rankin

Daughters Beyond Command / Véronique Olmi
trans. from the French by Alison Anderson

The Employees

The Employees / Olga Ravn
trans. from the Danish by Martin Aitken
TO: Book*hug, 2022, c2018
150 p.

Olga Ravn is a Danish poet, and this novel does have a rather poetic form. It's told in a series of reports from employees of the Six Thousand Ship, engaged in space exploration near a new planet called New Discovery. 

Each employee has a slightly different viewpoint on what they are doing there, and each report is a complaint or record of experience, told to a team of investigators. Why are they there? Because there is some labour unrest and the Company wants to find out what is going wrong. 

The ship is staffed partially with humans and partially with humanoids. But the existential question of who is human and who is made is growing. And with it the questions of who has value, and what being human means. This arises in the face of productivity as the prime value; humanoids are made to work and only work. But when the crew takes on strange new organic forms from New Discovery, they start to change the balance of work and existence on the Six Thousand ship. 

The investigators are anonymous, we only hear from the varied employees. Some wish to only be more productive, asking if there was a glitch in the last update: "if so, I want to be rebooted." And some are more practical, like the cleaner: "You might say it's a small world, but not if you had to clean it." 

As they share their reports, the story grows, until the labour uprising moves into violence. And then the Company decides to cut its losses; it's willing to lose an entire ship and the investigative team rather than deal with any existential questions of employee rights. But what is going to happen to this crew? Read and find out. 

This is a brief book, but a shocking and powerful one in its brevity and its 'futuristic' setting -- which doesn't feel too unfeasible, really. It brings up some valuable questions for readers now, like the value of life if you aren't being productive, and what being human means aside from work. Vital questions that have certainly been in focus for many during the past few years. Definitely a timely and intriguing read here. 

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

 

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree / Shokoofeh Azar
trans. from the Farsi by ?
NY: Europa, 2020, c2017.
256 p.

This read is one I've been meaning to get to for a while. It's the story of Iran through decades of governmental change and repression, from the 1979 Iranian revolution to recent years. 

But it's also the story of one family and their tragic encounters with politics and religion in this totalitarian state. Reviews note that this book is told in a magical realism style, influenced by Persian storytelling traditions and newer writers like Marquez. This can be a good thing if you like it, and a stumbling block to the story if you don't.

I fall somewhere in between. While I generally like imaginative styles I don't think I was in the right mood for it here. I read the whole book carefully; I appreciated the family stories and the way they are bookish and cultured in the face of fanaticism. I found quite a lot to enjoy. But the endless interlinked, nested stories and the constant flights of fancy tired me out a little.  

Nevertheless, this is an interesting read. Full of tragedy and awful events, it still has a lyrical style and approach to it all. It ties together ancient Iranian history (a group of Zoroastrian ghosts in their Razan home, for example) with modern, and shows it as a constant line. That was really effective and gives the sense of Iran as an ancient place that is only currently suffering from the dictatorship in power now. 

The story is narrated by 13 year old Bahar, who we soon learn is a ghost. She was murdered in a revolutionary attack on her father's house and his musical instruments. As someone in the world of the dead, she has a kind of omniscience that the others don't. And she can tell the stories of her older brother Sohrab, arrested and executed; the story of her mother who leaves home to wander for many years, her sister Beeta who is changed into a mermaid, and her father, who leaves the tragic surroundings of the home in rural Razan where they'd moved to avoid political unrest in order to return to Tehran when his family has scattered. 

Their stories are unlikely, infused with djinns, mermaids, spirits, and other mystical creatures and events. There are side characters who appear after their stories are told; and those who reappear in the village, broken loose from the Iranian past by becoming a modern, violent, absolutist soldier. 

This book certainly gives a strong feel for the Iranian social climate, and the way oppression kills the imagination as much as it does actual lives. It feels like this book is a reclamation of that wild imagination that is the heritage of Iranians. I liked it but I don't know enough about Iranian history (or legends) to tell what is real and what is imagined, so it was a harder reading experience for me in that way. 

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

 

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down / Zdena Salivarová
trans. from the Czech by Jan Drábek
Toronto: LarkWood Books, c1976.
165 p.

I found this little book a while ago in a second hand bookstore. It's the story of a young woman in Communist Czechoslovakia, and her doomed love affair with a Latvian basketball player. But it's also more than that; it reveals the daily grind of life for her family and how those who 'go along' with the new Communist regime no matter what they think do well, while those who don't (like her father) don't end up so well. 

The author, along with her spouse, the writer Josef Skvorecky, emigrated from Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet Invasion. They ended up in Toronto, where they started a publishing company, sharing the works of dissident Czech writers ie: Kundera, Klima, Vaclev Havel among others. They were also both writers, and this novel was first published in Czech and won awards, then was translated and published in English by a division of their company, 68 Publications. 

So the political situation in Czechoslovakia was a strong part of this writer's consciousness, and it shows in this book. It follows one family, through the eyes of Vera, a young woman who wanted to go to university but didn't have the right connections. Her uncle has managed to find her a job at a tv studio instead, where she ends up helping with coverage at a basketball tournament. There are teams from all over the Eastern Bloc, and she literally bumps into Janis, a tall Latvian player, in the halls. That's kismet for them, and they begin a desperate affair that only lasts a week or so, until he has to return to Latvia, which was at that time in the USSR. They both know it's unlikely they'll see each other again, but she attempts to get permission to go to Latvia, to everyone's astonishment -- people don't ask to go TO the USSR. However, all her wrangling leads nowhere, since just as she's about to succeed in her quest, she gets a letter from an anonymous Latvian acquaintance of Janis' telling her not to write to him anymore, he won't be receiving her letters any longer. That's the basic plot but there's so much more to the story. The details of political maneuvering shaping every part of daily life, of lack and scarcity, of lost opportunity, of desperation, of the recent political past in her Grandmother and Father's activities, of how all people are equal but some are more equal than others...it shows in the intimate story of one young woman's life. 

And it's a timely read in light of Russia's current behaviour; this shows that even in the 60s it was the same thing. The characters despise Russians, they mock the basketball teams from USSR countries, and nobody wants to let Russians in to clubs -- no matter if they are actually Russians or from a country controlled by Russia. Vera's Grandmother is an old Social Democrat, and she has no use for the new regime. She shares an article she wrote for an underground newspaper with Vera at one point: 

She handed me a yellowed mimeographed paper with the title "Will We Always Look On In Silence?". She wrote about how we passively witness genocide. "Killing off whole nations can not possibly be in the best interest of a workers' revolution. And just because certain nations don't want to give up their territory to those who claim it in the name of some highly doubtful class justice doesn't make it so. ... How come Russian imperialism suddenly develops a taste for the blood of workers and especially farmers and educated people in the Baltic? Isn't this a clear example of Russian imperialist designs? Don't they want to acquire new territory suitable for the invasion of countries in the West?

Lots to think about in this brief novel. From how women are always affected most harshly in these regimes to wider political discussions, to the very granular effect on one young woman's life and future. A small but mighty read. 

Dog Park by Oksanen

Dog Park / Sofi Oksanen
trans. from the Finnish by Owen F Witesman
TO: Anansi International, 2021, c2019
352 p.

This is a dark and twisty tale of international surrogacy and egg donor agencies; it's a call back to Oksanen's earlier novel Norma which I read a few years ago, and the presence in that novel of baby farms and Ukrainian women being used for both their hair and their reproductive abilities. However, unlike Norma, this novel doesn't have any magical quirkiness to it. Rather, it's very grounded in the depressing, desperate lives of young women in Eastern Ukraine, specifically the Donbas region. 

Our main character Olenka meets someone she knows in a dog park in Helsinki. She's startled because she thought she'd escaped her previous life in Eastern Ukraine but here is someone who could bring it all down. Daria was a former protégé of Olenka's at the agency she worked at, before it all came crashing to a halt. 

The story then goes backward into Olenka's story; her childhood in Tallinn and her family's move to her father's hometown of Snizhne in the Donbas when she was a young teen. They move in with his mother in this depressed area; her father has grand plans of profiting from the Wild West atmosphere which followed the breakdown of the Soviet Union. He has a local partner (who happens to be Daria's father) and together they are going to take over some of the mines in the area and become rich. Of course this doesn't happen, with tragedy coming instead. 

Olenka then tries to go West and become a model so that she can send money home but that also falters. When she has to return to Snizhne she is desperate for work, and that's when her life as a successful coordinator at a donor clinic begins. Everything seems to be going well; she is good at her job, finds girls who are willing to become egg donors, knows how to scrub their backgrounds to give a shining bio to each, has new ideas for expansion and is eager to progress. But after a couple of her ideas don't turn out too well, she has to come up with something better, and then the opportunity to provide a donor to one of the richest, most well-connected gangster families in the area pops up. This brings her a chance for glory, as well as a very unexpected romance. But all the time, her past is waiting to explode into this shining future. 

How and why does she end up fleeing to Finland? And why is Daria there too? The book is twisty and keeps us guessing, although the reader starts to see the outlines before they are all revealed. I found the parts when Olenka was active more interesting than the parts in Helsinki where she's reflecting back and trying to confess the facts to a distant "you" (her lost lover) -- it slowed down the pace of the story a bit, even though the reason she's so focused on "you" makes sense in the end. I thought that this book approached an unusual subject and was unflinching in exposing the kind of poverty, instability and lack of opportunity that dogged women's lives both under the USSR and in the first years of capitalism. Things don't change in an instant; these women's lives were still difficult and limited, and the novel shows how that was easily manipulated by those with the desire for money and power. It is a dark read but also one that caught me. 

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

 

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex / Oksana Zabuzhko
trans. from the Ukrainian by Halyna Hryn
Amazon Crossing, 2011, c1996.
168 p.

I'm very glad that Halyna Hryn has taken on the job of translating Zabuzhko's works; otherwise they'd be inaccessible, since I haven't seen any of them translated by anyone else. I read Zabuzhko's short story collection Your Ad Could Go Here last year, and now I'm tackling her classic, a book that was published in 1996 when Ukrainian independence was still fresh, and whichbecame a bestseller for a decade. Many of the translated versions use the same cover as the original because, I mean, it's perfect. 

This novel is told from the perspective of a Ukrainian writer who is in the States as a visiting professor in Slavic Studies. She begins a relationship with a Ukrainian artist, someone who is familiar with her culture and her language (language is a big issue here; a symbol of home and stubborness in the face of Soviet oppression, of identity and the future). However, despite the link to home, there are flaws in their relationship; he doesn't give her the physical satisfaction she's wanting, in fact he can be quite violent. And their emotional relationship becomes fractured and manipulative the longer they go on. She's quite settled in the US, while he prefers to travel back to Ukraine often, so their expectations of social conventions around relationships diverge as well.

Zabuzhko's style is a breathless, hurtling one with long sentences full of numerous subclauses and various thoughts crammed in. I enjoy this style especially in this book, it seems to fit the confessional tone of the narrative well. She is frank and open about her sexual life, something that was not common when this book was written; it's a perspective that was missing from Ukrainian literature but her feminist approach meant she opened up these themes for Ukrainian women writers. She also ties the examination of abusive relationships to the national questions of Ukrainian identity and its struggle under an abusive neighbour. The narrator is able to be a staunch Ukrainian, grounded in her Ukrainian identity and the value she places on the language and history, while still recognizing the flaws of misogyny and patriarchy in that culture. 

Anyhow, as to plot, the story itself is a readable, confessional story of a bad relationship that can't be saved no matter how hard she tries (and predictably, it is mostly just the female character who is trying to fix things). There is a sentence about 3/4 of the way through that provides the turning point; it's a dream that our main character has had:

"he was slowly walking away, back toward her...walking along a narrow plank heading down somewhere, where -- she couldn't tell... and matter-of-factly the realization came in her sleep: he won't be saved, nope, he won't."

At that point there seems to be a decision, no matter how small, to move forward, to reclaim a sense of self and identity outside this relationship. The book is fiction, although there is some discussion of just how fictional it is, and how much is drawn directly from Zabuzhko's life. It has a strong voice, and it's a passionate monologue about language, national identity, feminist values, and the flaws of the culture that she is nevertheless deeply committed to. It's discursive, ranging all over the place and switching between first, second and third person (in the way that we do when we are thinking or talking grandly about life). I love her style and her rants are angry, sharp and pointed. The plot is a bit of a romantic cliché but it's used as much as a metaphor as a reality, which makes sense in the end. If you like her style, you've got to read this one - a real Ukrainian modern classic that has been called "“the most influential Ukrainian book for the 15 years of independence” (ie: since 1991). I feel like the translation captures the edgy tone of the book even if it doesn't feel as shocking as it might have when first published. Definitely worth a look. 

A Russian Story by Kononenko

 

A Russian Story / Eugenia Kononenko
trans. from the Ukrainian by Patrick John Corness
London: Glagoslav, 2013.
124 p.

Despite the title, this is a very Ukrainian story; it investigates the life of an average man whose life seems to take on the outlines of the classic Pushkin story, Eugene Onegin. 

But more than that simple idea, Eugene Samarsky's situation highlights the place of a man in Ukraine during the end of the Soviet Union and the beginnings of independent Ukraine. He reflects that social change -- and how hard it is for older generations to change in step with the rapid shifts in society. 

As a young man, Eugene starts to hang around with a group who proudly reclaim Ukrainian as their language, and who are involved with restoring Ukrainian culture (both visual and literary) in their circles. The narrative comments on the use of Ukrainian and the different shades of meaning in how and why they speak it; there is also discussion of how Russian culture has overwhelmed the sense of identity for many Ukrainian citizens. Eugene's mother is a teacher of Russian literature and loves it; she even named him after Eugene Onegin. And his great uncle is one of those country fellows of Russian literature; living in a manor in a small village in Eastern Ukraine, he has no direct heirs, so invites Eugene to come and stay. 

Since Eugene has just left his wife and child and is at loose ends (not wanting to return to his parents' home, where they are equally uninterested in having their adult son live with them) so he agrees to this invitation.

His uncle dies shortly after his arrival, and Eugene takes possession of the house, and develops a routine. However, his plans to write in solitude are rather disrupted by the villagers. They are accustomed to dropping in on his uncle as they wish, just coming right in and delivering milk, produce, etc. and settling in for a chat. Eugene begins to be drawn into the village life, including a family with two young and pretty daughters; he also befriends the local doctor. But fate intervenes, and in a struggle over the elder daughter one night after drinking, Eugene knocks down the doctor and believes he's killed him. The younger daughter whisks him to the train station, from whence he flees to America -- fortunately he's just been offered a writing position there. But is a Russian story inevitable?

Much of the book takes place in America, much later on, with chapters filling in Eugene's backstory. The opening is memorable, with Eugene and his American professor wife picnicking on a hill with Eugene's ex-wife, her new French partner, and their son. The most awkward difficulty of this picnic isn't the relationships - they all get along fine - but which language to speak. Between them they have varied combinations of  French, English, Ukrainian and Russian, but the only common ground for all is Russian. This is another highlight of the way language doesn't define national identity for any of them. 

I really enjoyed the style of this one, and the reflections on language, the stories that shape culture, and the way in which Russian monoculture overshadows so much of what they all do, no matter if they're in Kyiv or middle America. I thought it was a clever story with references to literary tropes and characters gently blended in. I'm sure that reading it in the original would have been an even more evocative experience as the references would be clearer to a local reader. Still, I thought it examined a lot of intriguing themes that make the reader think, and the ending was pretty great. The last page makes the whole story pay off. I liked this one a lot. 

Translation Thursday!

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. Today I'm reading some Japanese literature. 

Currently Reading:

Tokyo Ueno Station / Yu Miri;
translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles

Want to Read:

There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job / Kikuko Tsumura; 
trans. from the Japanese by Polly Barton

Life Ceremony / Sayaka Murata;
trans. from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Dead-End Memories / Banana Yoshimoto;
trans. from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda

The Lost Button

The Lost Button / Irene Rozdobudko
trans. from the Ukrainian by Michael Naydan & Olha Tytarenko
London: Glagoslav, 2012.
182.

Another novel that starts out in the Carpathians, this is a contemporary melodrama by a Ukrainian mystery writer that melds psychology, crossed lovers and a mystery. 

Film maker Denys is with other young artists at a Carpathian resort in the 1970s when he comes across Liza, an older woman who has made a splash in a recent movie. She's distant and much more worldly than he is, but they end up spending a night together, which sparks his obsession with her which will continue for many years. Liza, meanwhile, forgets about him and is more concerned about furthering her stalling career and caring for her young daughter Lika. 

Denys is an annoying character who I didn't much like right off the bat. Added to that, the opening at the resort is a bit slow and takes effort to engage with. Once the second section starts, with Liza as the focus, I found the pace picked up and the story flowed more easily. And when the entanglements of Denys and Liza's life start growing, the mystery and the interest grow as well. 

Will Denys be obsessed with Liza forever? Or will his new wife gain his full focus? Will she put up with him or not? (I know my answer...) There is a lot psychological melodrama about oddball characters in this story -- all 3 of the main characters are slightly obsessed with something, and they're all mixed up. The story ranges across Ukraine and into Europe and the US, and the characters are involved with the media during the waning Soviet years and into independent Ukraine, which adds its own flavour to their actions and perceptions. 

I felt that it tried to dig into both personal relationships and the broader social context of conditions of women's lives. An American character near the end is quite blunt about wondering why a woman would want to stay with a Ukrainian husband, with the social expectations on her, when she could be with said American instead. It points out how life can turn on the smallest detail, like a lost button; and that looking back is a mug's game, rather, you should be focusing on what you have now. 

But in the end, it really read like a telenovela (like the ones that one of the characters seems to be watching in one scene) and in fact, this story has been made into a tv movie in Ukraine. If you are looking for a genre read set in Ukraine which is modern and focused on more of a contemporary setting, this might be a good pick. 

Hardly Ever Otherwise

Hardly Ever Otherwise / Maria Matios
trans. from the Ukrainian by Yuri Tkacz
London: Glagoslav, 2012, c2007.
178 p.

Now on to some Ukrainian novels! This is one I read in ebook format thanks to Glagoslav Publications. I'm sharing this one today as it follows on from the last two short story collections I've just shared; it's an historical novel set in the Carpathian Mountains of Western Ukraine, and has some of the same themes as a few of the stories I've just read. 

It follows the family story of the Cheviuks and the village they live in. Told in three sections, the first follows the brothers of the family and the relationships they have with one another and with others in the village. There is jealousy, resentment, and a tragedy at the heart of it. In the second section, we see this tragedy from other eyes, those of other villagers involved, and learn more about the hidden motivations of others. And in the third section it all comes together. 

The story delves into the social mores of the time -- the primary position of men, and how women are just property and are often treated very badly, which everyone just expects and deals with. It also takes place just prior to WWI, when this region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and that timing has a lot to do with the events of this narrative. 

This is a depressing story; nobody really comes out well, and there are some fractured relationships that are very sad to read about. But as a historical novel, it captures a time and a setting very well. It describes Hutsul life and traditions, and gives a good sense of what day to day life might have looked like at that moment, especially for women. With of course a good dollop of romantic historical storytelling.

Maria Matios has written a number of novels based in the Carpathian area, where she's from, and won some awards for them as well. I found that the style reminded me of those earlier writers from nearly a century ago (referenced in my last two postts), and captured those events in the same way. So she definitely has the historical style down. I'm always interested in these kind of books, although I'm also looking for more contemporary stories too. But read right after some actual historical short stories, I found this a dramatic and yet realistic look at one family in their particular setting. 

For A Crust of Bread

For A Crust of Bread / ed. by Sonia Morris; 
trans. from the Ukrainian by Roma Franko
Toronto: Language Lanterns, c1998.

This is the last volume of the Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature series from Language Lanterns. As they say, "In this volume, seven of the authors from volumes I through IV explore the intersect between marriage and social values in the class society of the day.".

Two of those authors are Lesya Ukrainka and Hrytsko Hryhorenko, who I talked about in yesterday's review. The others are Olena Pchilka, Nataliya Kobrynska, Lyubov Yanovska, Olha Kobylianska, and Yevheniya Yaroshynska. As always, you can find biographical information on each at the publisher's website. 

The focus of this collection is marriage and all its repercussions in women's lives. The publisher notes that not all of the stories are equal in their literary merit but that they've been included because of the spotlight they shine on this theme. I found that this collection was very readable and I was engaged by each of the stories. Whether they were lighter tales of flirtation and unexpected love or very sad, depressing ones of tragedy or missed chances, each one had something to recommend it. 

I found the title story, by Nataliya Kobrynska, especially memorable -- the characters are so distinct and terrible that the trajectory of this story seems unavoidable. Fortunes rise and fall, and the bitterness and selfishness of the various players is both understandable and unfortunate. This one really looks at the relationships between women, in reference to their marital and economic status, and what it does to female interactions (no sisterhood found here!) This story had the feel of a French novel in a way, and the main characters do travel to Europe from their Western Ukrainian setting. 

But each story was illuminating in its own way. This was a really good read, with lots to learn and consider in it. I appreciate this series and now only have a couple more left to encounter. 

From Heart to Heart

 

From Heart to Heart : Selected prose fiction by Hrytsko Hryhorenko and Lesya Ukrainka 
ed. by Sonia Morris; trans. from the Ukrainian by Roma Franko
Toronto: Language Lanterns, c1998.
471 p.

This is volume 4 of the Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature series, a series "devoted to English translations of selected literary works of Ukrainian women authors from 1850 to the present day." (ie: late 1990s).

I've read and reviewed two of the other volumes of this 6 volume set in the past (Warm the Children, O Sun and The Spirit of the Times). This volume is my favourite so far, perhaps because rather than featuring 6 or 8 authors, it deep dives into only two, giving more time to really engage with them. 

Hryhorenko and Ukrainka (both pseudonyms) were sisters-in-law and both very focused on early 20th century women's rights and equality. Lesya Ukrainka is Ukraine's best known early female writer, kind of a legend, and I already like her work. So it was great to see more of it here (some is featured in other volumes in the series also). You can find out more about them by reading the biographical notes that are available at the publisher's website as well as in the book itself. They faced some serious setbacks in their lives but kept on writing and working. 

The stories vary in this collection. It starts out with Hryhorenko's work, which (according to the bio) was often called depressing and too realistic. She focuses a lot on women's lives in rural and more traditional settings, which is rather depressing, it's true. But she was trying to point out realities and help to bring awareness to the state of life at the moment. Some of the stories are more like character sketches, and not all are dark -- she has a sharp sense of irony that I appreciated. 

Ukrainka's work included here are mainly shorter works, and many reveal class lines with the struggles of poverty stricken women juxtaposed with rich lives (and the unwillingness of the rich to help out, plus ça change). Her stories don't always focus on the history of Ukraine, and they don't look at rural life or the past as much as Hryhorenko does. She has a lighter touch even when pointing out societal woes. I admire her style and enjoy reading her work, so this volume was a real treat. 

Language Lanterns has been an early source of translations of Ukrainian women, often the only place to find some of these authors in English translation. I appreciate their work here, and the translations have all been done by Roma Franko, who does an excellent job translating each writer to sound natural and distinctive in English, while still incorporating Ukrainian names for things that gives that authentic flavour to the stories. When you don't even notice the translation, it's been done extremely well. 

I recommend this series highly if you want to explore some historical writing from Ukraine. 

Lucky Breaks

 

Lucky Breaks / Yevgenia Belorusets
trans. from the Russian by Eugene Ostashevsky
NY: New Directions, c2022.
112 p.

This is the latest and most well known Ukrainian book of this year -- it's a collection of short stories, some nearly vignettes, that follow the lives of the women of Eastern Ukraine -- the Donbas area, specifically, an area that has been under Russian occupation since 2014. 

Belorusets is a photojournalist who lives between Kyiv and Berlin, and this book includes some of her photographs of daily life in the Donbas. You can see some of these photos on the publisher's page for this book.  They illustrate the life that goes on even under war and occupation, but the stories stand alone without needing to refer to the images. 

The stories all look at ways in which women face the everyday under these circumstances. Many flee to other parts of Ukraine, Kyiv in particular, but they end up having to take any work they can find; professors become office cleaning ladies, and so forth. Women in feminine occupations like cosmetologists or florists struggle and disappear, as noted by a dispassionate narrator. The stories expand on life under occupation but don't necessarily grapple directly with it. One story has the narrator's sister approaching soldiers, but most don't speak directly to the day to day wartime realities as much as to the effects on self-awareness, the sense of identity, and the imagination itself. 

They are brief, unsettling and powerful stories. This collection was fascinating, and definitely worth picking up if you are interested in learning more about the Eastern regions of Ukraine. Many of the translations from Ukrainian and Russian are from the Western regions, as those areas have had longer connections to European literary circles, so it's great to see this one added to those available in English. It's sharp, contemporary, and very timely. 

The only drawback to this book, for me, was that it was published in a miniscule typeface, so hard to read. I've been recommending the ebook version for my library users to make it easier on the eyes. But other than that physical issue, I'd recommend this one to all.