To Name Those Lost by Rohan Wilson

Paperback, 240 pages Expected publication: February 7th 2017 by Europa Editions Orig Title To Name Those Lost ISBN13: 9781609453497

Australian novelist Rohan Wilson came roaring out of the starting block with his first novel, The Roving Party , published in 2011 in Australia, and in 2014 by Soho Press for the U.S. market. That first novel described the hunt for aboriginals still residing in Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost island state. In the 19th Century, white European settlers began to capture and eliminate to extinction the native black aborigines in Tasmania, calling this period The Black War. The Roving Party reimagines this period using real historical figures and accounts. The book was shortlisted or won several national and regional awards.

The main character in Wilson’s second novel, Thomas Toosey, was once a member of one of those roving bands, though what he learned in service was that blacks were residents there first, and that a knife is a powerful inducement. Toosey remembers his own family with longing, even though his wife sold his alcoholic self down the river for a few quid more than ten years previously. Living rough in Deloraine after leaving the convict town of Port Arthur, he learns via desperate letter from his son William that his wife has died.

The journey to Launceston and the search for his son, who has been living on the street since the death of his mother, reads like a fever dream: very visual, very sweaty, very terrifying. We are aghast to find Toosey has stolen banknotes from his friend Flynn, and caused a terrible accident to befall Flynn's daughter. Toosey had been looking for enough cash to start a new life away from Tasmania with his son.

Wilson’s special skill is making history come alive; he sets his personal drama within the context of an 1874 railroad protest in Launceston. He makes it epic: characters struggle with life or death, right or wrong, him or me, now or never, as though they ever had any agency and they were not just playthings for the gods. There are so many watchers and witnesses in this novel, they take on the character of a chorus in a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean meme, able to shift the action minutely. Street urchins, hobos and tramps, hotel workers, cops—many folks are watching this personal struggle play out: Thomas Toosey seeking son William, trailed by revenge-seeking Flynn, in the middle of a city gone berserk.

The opening lines of this novel are visual enough to describe a film, or a manga comic.

"Her head hit the floorboard, bounced, and a fog of ash billowed, thrown so by the motion of her spade."

This is William’s mother falling down near-dead from a standing position while sweeping the grate. Her son, William, races in shortly after with a growler of stolen brewery beer to give her, only to discover he needs a doctor instead. Racing away to find a doctor, William is waylaid by a cop who wants to put the twelve-year-old away for the brewery theft.

Right here, right at the start of this novel, we can feel the tension Wilson sets up for us between a grisly realism and an absurd, immovable, buffoonish cop whose comic deafness derails the child’s plans and kills the mother. The rest of the book follows from this cruel dichotomy: absurd life, spectacular death, and the struggle between them. It almost seems if anyone stopped to think for just a second about what they were struggling for, the fight would go out of them, a legitimate philosophical stance and an accurate way to observe the human condition.

"History is the art by which we lead our lives."

Once again Wilson has taken a historical moment in Tasmania, looked deeply into its components, and the whole thing bursts into life—into flame, as it were. We reimagine convict life in Port Arthur, the muddy streets of Deloraine, the bustle and insincerity of worldly Launceston…and real moral conundrum. Wilson has one of the ‘orphans’ stand in the shadows, observing the action, knowing more about motivations and outcomes than the combatants engaged in life or death struggle. That orphan can change everything. Will she?

"There is as much ruin comes from love as virtue…Do not follow that fool into his hole. He wanted more for you. You need to want more for yourself."

Wilson won another award for this novel, the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. Definitely worthy of attention, his work is big: it encompasses large, important themes, and at the same time, is completely unique.



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The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels #2) by Elena Ferrante

When we get to the end of the second book in Ferrante’s quartet of novels, we think we see the genesis of that quartet: a twenty-day writing exercise that took the angst out of university graduation for Elena Greco, also called Lenù. Although I struggled through this volume, listening to the voices of teens talking about their confusion and noting their lack of confidence while they strode boldly ahead, all was forgiven in the last one hundred pages.

The girls are now women, having earned a few hard-won truths they will use to the end of their days. The first lessons last longest. Lina and Lenù, the names barely distinguishable when heard, have discovered that in early 1960’s Italy, it is still a man’s world. Lina is unafraid and almost preternaturally resistant to control. She is curious, and furious. She is still the one we look to when we want to know what comes next. Her refusal to take what’s coming to her makes everyone, paradoxically, jealous of her.

Lenù is soft and bosomy and tries very hard to rustle up indignation about world peace, about Lina taking a lover (Lenù's lover), about her prospects after university. She wants to feel things as deeply and as ardently as Lina. When she sees Lina again at the end of this novel, we can tell she knows she will never reach those depths. And perhaps it is just as well. One must have the whole package if one is to survive those depths: a fierce, innovative intelligence and an unrelenting determination to survive on one’s own terms.

Put in the context of world literature, this series is developing into something remarkable. The voices of women in a man’s world are so seldom heard without interference or distortion. While that may not be true today, it was certainly true in 1960’s Italy, and to have even a glimpse behind the veil is something precious. But this is fiction, you protest. Ah, nobody could make a world so complete, so filled with recognizable motivations, were it not at least close to a kind of universal truth.

Besides that, there is the style of the work: it is so accessible, so female, so filled with things men would never say, never contemplate saying. We all grew up reading the writing of men, so we can consider ourselves experts. This work is different. It dwells on minutiae. The aspects of characters are raked over, head to foot, for what they reveal about that character’s state of mind and intention. The story slows while we contemplate their dilemmas, and like women everywhere, put ourselves in their place. It is a kind of soap opera, but the very best kind. It is the kind that teaches us something about how the world works and how other have dealt with circumstances we might encounter.

But it may be the language that is the most remarkable thing of all. Throughout the novel we hear Lenù talking about dialect versus Italian, implying that there are things that can be said in Italian that can not be conveyed in dialect. Well, it seems that there is also a kind of alchemy here that relates to the language Ferrante uses that gives us direct access to the hearts and minds of two women on the cusp of adulthood. Other people have tried to do this, but Ferrante has succeeded beyond the borders of her own country, beyond her generation, beyond her sex. When Elena says she went to Lina at the end of the novel to "show her what she had lost and what I had won," we wait for it…wait for the penny to drop…

"[Lina] was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was as full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other very so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other."

Ferrante deserves the attention she has had from this series of novels. It is world-class literature that deserves a place in the pantheon. I am looking forward to Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.

For those following this series, or those put off by the covers, please note there is a debate raging in literary circles about just this topic: The Atlantic magazine contributor Emily Harnett wrote a piece explaining the publisher's point in deciding on the covers as they are.


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Hav by Jan Morris

Morris, most everyone knows, is one of the premier travel writers of the 20th Century. She went everywhere, and wrote with such interest and erudition about the places she visited that one reads her works simply because she writes better than anyone else. One publisher gave her the opportunity to write fiction, and Morris created an invented place, Hav, to which many folks immediately wanted to book a flight.

This novel is composed of two parts: in Last Letters from Hav Morris describes for us her first glimpse of the Protectorate of Hav, its residents, flora, fauna, religions, and origins. In Hav of the Myrmidons written twenty years later, Morris returns to a much-changed Protectorate. In the Epilogue to the combined novel called simply Hav published by nyrb, Morris tells us that the allegories of old Hav have been transmuted from a place of “overlapping ancient cultures but with familiar signposts based in history” to allegories of “civic prodigies…hitherto inconceivable and themselves all but fictional still.”

Hav is an international protectorate near the Black Sea and on the Mediterranean. Every major nation had its representatives there, ensconced in (formerly) grand buildings that carried a storied history. When Morris visited in the 1980’s, Hav was rundown and a tiny bit disreputable, but the glamour of earlier days still shone through.

Morris shares her first impressions upon her arrival at night (monotonous and cold, stark and forbidding) and those again modified by clear morning light (bright, colorful, polyglot). She stays several months, buys an automobile, and travels by ferry to outlying islands. She meets the important citizens and legal representatives of countries occupying national concessions in Hav and witnesses the major celebrations—the coming of the snow raspberries and the Roof Race. Her visits to The Iron Dog, and The House of the Chinese Master (“the most astonishing aesthetic experience Hav can offer”) are accompanied by marvelously detailed descriptions composed of wonder and awe.

The novel is just a travel memoir, a very good one with historical references and informative notes about where to find the best food, until Morris comes to her discussion of the British Concession and its history in the province. Morris seems to become much more pointed in her references when she describes the British consul, his wife, and English interests in establishing a base in Hav. Morris includes notes General C.J. Napier wrote to his wife about Hav: “A dreadful hole—worse than Sind!” and “Oh what a foretaste of hell this is.” The British always kept some distance from true involvement in the life of Hav (they “loathed the Protectorate”), created buildings that looked quite like those created in India for their comfort, and were reputed to house only spies in their offices.

We learn that celebrities and leaders from many countries visited Hav in its heyday. Morris’ description of Nijinsky’s visit is particularly poignant, but Hitler and Wagner (at different times, naturally), George Sand and Chopin, Kim Philby, and the shadowy Sir Edmund Backhouse, scholarly sinologist and baronet, were all said to have stayed there at some time or another.

An escarpment just to the north of Hav was home to a cave-dwelling tribe of troglodytes who never settled in the city proper but who form “a still living bridge between the city and its remotest origins.” Their language has a fragile connection with the Celtic, but is still incomprehensible to everyone outside their group. It is said when they first saw the peninsula upon which Hav now sits, surrounded by blue sea, they called the place “Summer,” or hav in the surviving Celtic language of the West.

The underlying political structure of Hav was a shambles of competing interests and insufficiently expansionist beliefs which added to the rich confusion of organic growth in the labyrinthine city. Hav was likewise a rich stew of religions, all in stages of isolation from their original tenets. One mysterious group called Cathars of Hav was composed of secret members of the community and whose ceremonies and meetings involve robes and chants in underground locations. The Cathars are said to trace their history to the Crusades and their beliefs to Manicheanism, or the dualistic cosmology between the forces of good and evil, darkness and light. This group alone gives Morris pause in her ramblings about the city, but she does not spend much capital thinking about them before she is advised by the British Consul to leave the city in haste.

Morris ends Last Letters from Hav on a note of uncertainty, with low-flying war planes streaking over the city. Morris sees warships on the near horizon as she pauses on an overlook near where she will abandon her vehicle and catch a train away from Hav.

Morris uses the word “maze” to describe Hav more than once, leading us to think she meant, among other things, to suggest “a-maze…ing” Hav. In 2005 Morris was invited to revisit Hav. Her later map of the city looks completely different from the earlier one, with many of the wonderful places she described razed. Now the Myrmidon Tower dominates the landscape: “a virtuoso display of unashamed, unrestricted, technologically unexampled vulgarity” upon which is emblazoned the state emblem of the Republic, the letter ‘M’ flashing in sequential colors of red, yellow, green and blue and overlaid against an Achillean helmet outlined in gold. When Morris ascends the Tower, she discovers the nearby newly constructed Lazaretto! Resort (“the name is written with an exclamation mark because we believe you will find it a truly exclamatory experience”) is, in fact, built like a maze when viewed from above. The suites are named for places once a part of the old Hav before the Intervention in 1985.

As luck would have it, the first people Morris interacts with in the New Hav are a “very English middle-aged couple” whose advice “don’t experiment too much with the local stuff” seems designed to remind Morris however things have changed, much has stayed the same. But then: “The thing is one feels so safe here. The security’s really marvelous, it’s all so clean and friendly, and well, everything we’re used to really.” And that turns out to be the most frightening and curious thing.

The troglydytes who originally named Hav are no longer living in whitewashed caves on the escarpment but have been moved to barracks near the airport where the menfolk work on airport construction. While many Morris spoke with seemed pleased with the central heating and the comfortable living, one man pointed out that they were experiments of “ethnic engineering,” given a few certainties in exchange for their unique though hardscrabble culture.

Morris must leave after only six days this time, while she was forced to leave after six months on her first visit. Things have changed quite a lot and the menace is palpable. People are afraid to speak openly for a very tight grip by the Cathars of Hav hear all and see all.

This science fiction reminds us what a woman of the world Ms. Morris is, for she has caught the national character of each resident group in Hav quite clearly. But it is her certainty that events and locales have really lost their historical basis and point of origin is one that stays with us long after we put her book down. The world is renewing itself, and has become strange to even one so practiced in the art of travel.

”The great ‘M’! ‘M’ for what? ‘M’ really for Myrmidon, or ‘M’ for Mammon? For Mohammed the Prophet? For Mani the Manichaean? ‘M’ for McDonald’s, or Monsanto, or Microsoft? ‘M’ for Melchik? ‘M’ for Minoan? ‘M’ for Maze?...’M’ for Me?”

Again from the Epilogue, Morris says “A whole world…has come into being since I wrote Last Letters from Hav. New states have emerged, and new kinds of cities suddenly erupted.” The world is a new thing in this century, and history doesn’t always provide a signpost. Morris, the great traveler, is perplexed and uneasy.


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My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Lila and Elena, two childhood friends in a neighborhood of 1950s Naples, both wear the moniker “my brilliant friend,” but there is no question which of the two Ferrante meant. Elena continues her schooling through high school in this first installment of the trilogy of novels Ferrante has written about the two, while Lila, incandescent Lila, is held back from further schooling by her family claiming they cannot afford it. We ache for her.

Ferrante captures the uncertainty and confusion of youth through the voice and perspective of Elena. But what we really want is what everyone wants—the thoughts and voice of Lila. We can’t get enough of her, even when we only see her from a distance. We long to know what she thinks. We know, just like Elena does, that Elena is only a conduit, pretty and clever, but a poor substitute for the real thing. If we could only get to Lila, all will become clear. Lila radiates something like unfiltered truth, understanding, knowledge. Her opinions are the ones that matter. But even then, we wonder if we would be accepted into her inner circle. Elena is our conduit.

Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels feel especially real when describing the resentments and jockeying for influence among the boys seeking favors of Elena and Lila, and the confusions these two radiate when considering the options left open to them in a culture not known to value contributions from the female sex beyond housekeeping and baby-making. We yearn to know, too, the thoughts and desires of the parents of Lila and Elena—to know if they are being fairly portrayed by Elena or if there is something more going on which she does not have the understanding yet to relate.

By the end of this, Book I of L’amica genial, we get the uncomfortable feeling that we are on the edge of something unknown, that life will play out for these two much like it does for us: we grasp in the dark for something we cannot see, and hope that it will bring what we imagine, not knowing if the direction is the right one. This marvelous recreation of two lives in a poor neighborhood of Naples a long time ago draws us in completely and involves in in a way that only great literature can.


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The Woman with the Bouquet by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt

This classic collection of stories by Schmitt are so reminiscent of great short story writers of the past, e.g., du Maupassant, Poe, Bierce, that one irresistibly turns to see when this collection was published. Originally called La rêveuse d'Ostende and published in 2007, the stories have the feel of institutions already, for they highlight human motivations and peculiarities no matter what the period of time.

A favorite story, “Perfect Crime,” so completely captures a person’s frustration with their spouse and their ill-thought-out revenge, that one feels this cautionary tale is as sure to stay in one’s memory as long any life lesson personally learned in far more painful fashion.

“The Dreamer from Ostend” was the longest in the collection and felt positively Victorian in its shocking eroticism and the measured revelation of long-buried secrets tightly guarded. It reminds one of the stimulative power of a long, slow strip tease.

The corrupting influences of fiction are addressed in “Trashy Reading,” and one who has ever shivered in fear on a dark and windy night can attest to the force of imagination in keeping us alert and prepared just in case…

Our imagination is also under the microscope in the title story, for when presented with a conundrum we readers will bring to bear our experiences and fears and our deepest emotions in solving the mystery. Schmitt thus shows us how writing the story is only half the show, while reading it--with the attendant imaginative constructions--is at least as important. It is the author acknowledging us readers with a bow that makes us lower our eyes in embarrassment and delight. Kudos right back, Schmitt! This classic collection of stories is sure to delight many.


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Europa Challenge Blog Giveaway

The Europa Challenge Blog: Giveaway! Everything Happens Today, by Jesse Brown...: Europa Editions is offering a finished copy of Everything Happens Today , by Jesse Browner, coming out in October. The giveaway will be open until September 28, 2011 and is open to readers in the United States and Canada. Click on the hyperlink above to enter.

Author Jesse Browner's website has a short description of the book, along with blurbs from reviewers. Europa Editions has also posted a listing of Browner's book with a description. At Europa Editions' website you may access all their title listings, and add to your TBR list.

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Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

Whatever else we can say about James Hamilton-Paterson, he is a very funny man. If you ever found yourself in the Italian countryside gazing at the villa next door and wondering who lives there and who, for gosh sakes, is coptering in and out, after reading this novel, you may very well decide you don’t really want to know. It may be entangling, and may, after all, be the end of all you hold dear.

Gerald Samper, British biographer to the rich and famous, buys an old villa in need of repair in Tuscany’s Apuan Alps region. He is told, as is his nearby neighbor, that the owner of the nearby villa is rarely in residence so his quest for privacy and solitude is guaranteed. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, the resident of the villa he can see from his own is none other than a well-to-do refugee from a Soviet republic, with all her entangling connections.

Samper likes cooking, and we are treated to recipes inspired by the abundant local produce, but dreamt up entirely within the convoluted confines of Samper’s own twisted mind: Mussels in Chocolate, say, or Baked Pears in Gorgonzola with Cinnamon Cream, Lampreys in Sherry, Alien Pie, which features smoked cat mixed with baby beets, nasturtium leaves, pureed prunes, and green bacon...or my personal favorite, Tuna Stuffed with Prunes in Marmite Butter. But Samper deprecates (with good reason) the specialties his neighbor offers him, delicacies delivered direct from the former Soviet republic of Voynovia. As described by Samper:

”…brightly colored voynovian objects that were delicate to the same extent that traffic cones are. There were awesome pellets like miniature doughnuts wrapped in candied angelica leaf and injected with chili sauce. Others looked like testicles set in dough. I gathered these were pigeon’s eggs and couldn’t catch her name for them although the phrase that came to me immediately was Christ on a Tricycle. Spearmint eggs?”

But this book is not about cooking, despite the title. It is about living the good life in Tuscany among other artists—writers, musicians, filmmakers, realtors--magicians of all stripes. And what of Fernet Branca? It is a digestif concocted in Italy that, given as a gift to the new arrivals of Le Roccie, is purchased a second time to return the courtesy, and becomes a central feature of the misunderstandings among the residents and visitors there. It is described in Wikipedia as having the flavor of “black-licorice-flavored Listerine."


This book counts towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. The Europa Challenge Blog: Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson


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French Leave by Anna Gavalda

It is no surprise that this novel became a bestseller in France, as it captures a moment like a bird in flight—that sunny moment of refusing to acknowledge the weight of cares and celebrating the silly, the mad, and the wild. We are led in this madcap adventure by the irrepressibly sassy Garance, who travels from Paris by car with her brother and his wife to a relative’s wedding. Travelling wearing her thong because her skirt was too tight or slathering depilatory cream on her legs in the car (“Where else can I do it?”), Garance narrates, giving us a view of her family and their lives.

‘French leave’ is a phrase meaning to take one’s leave suddenly, with no warning and without permission. And that is what a family trio does almost immediately after arriving at the wedding in Podunk-on-Indre. Suddenly deciding what they really wanted to do was to visit their brother in Tours, the siblings jump back in their car and race away to spend the day with each other, taking time to remember, laugh, love, and celebrate their bonds. Left behind were boring family obligations, spouses, painful responsibilities and what they enjoyed was joyous, rare, and life-sustaining.

Something really must be said about novels that actually celebrate the ties between siblings. How rare it is. This paean to family life caused me to wonder about the parents: what had they done (or not done) to make the children so loving to one another? Sure, the kids are different from one another. Older sister Lola is careful and cautious, while younger sister Garance is completely at ease with seeing how much she can get away with. But the two somehow feel as though they are enriched—nay--can’t live without each other’s influence. Simon and Vincent are likewise different as chalk and cheese, but the freedoms of one nutures the other. There is admiration, support, generosity, and a depth of sincerity displayed that is usually reserved for best friends.

This slim novel is just a weekend slice of life—but what a slice it is! This novel should be required reading for twenty-somethings on the cusp of discovering the "latter years" and those others who need the fizz put back in their drinks. Wonderful light summer fare.

This book counts towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. The Europa Challenge Blog: French Leave by Anna Gavalda



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The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam

How can a book be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time? In Jane Gardam’s hands, this epistolary novel never takes a pot-shot at anyone (without good cause), but becomes increasingly specific, focusing especially on how women of a certain age manage their falling-apart lives. All kinds of lives are looked at: those who left; those who stayed; those who worked; those who did not. There is a distressing yet comforting sense of being a victim at a disaster, being looked after by those very same women of a certain age, all of whom have seen your life and others far worse—their own, perhaps—and who are willing to wrap their experience and compassion about one like a newly-sewn quilt, beautiful and awesome, and sometimes painful to behold.

Why painful? Because of all the work, mistakes, choices, energy that goes into making a quilt. Sometimes it’s a success, sometimes it isn’t. But sometimes we won’t know this until it is done. This book is also like a quilt, in that set pieces are created, and we laugh with jollity at the cleverness of the creation. When, finally, the time comes to stitch the pieces together, the whole suddenly becomes something else altogether and we stand mute at the meaning and magnificence of what Gardam has managed to do.

Our narrator, Eliza Peabody, begins to write letters to Joan, the woman living down the street. Eliza does not know Joan very well, but has come to have opinions about her, and feels it quite within her area of expertise to offer advice on her marriage, on her state of wellness, on her husband. She begins broadly, with two paragraphs one February, signing it Eliza (Peabody) and progresses, with increasing familiarity, through “Your sincere friend,” and “Your affectionate friend,” to “E,” and finally, dropping the signature altogether. The letters become much longer and more intimate. Joan, meanwhile, leaves the country and never responds to Eliza over the years of the correspondence.

What we learn about Eliza, then, is all there is. She is generous, thankfully, for it is her perceptions that guide us through the lives of her neighbors, her husband’s infidelities, her own housekeeping failures. She makes us laugh, cry, and beg for mercy. She makes me realize that Jane Gardam should be a household name and celebrated widely throughout the world. She is a national treasure.

This book counts towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. The Europa Challenge: The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam


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Europa Madness

Nowadays I stop at every Borders Bookstore I pass, just to see if there is something there I need. I never come away empty-handed. I went in to a smallish store today on the off-chance they'd have something I was specifically looking for but no...what they did have was a selection of Europa Editions that were not on my to-read list, but which, when I perused them, look like "my kind of book." I really have no extra cash at the moment, but thought, in the spirit of looking for enlightenment, I really should take them home. And so...I did. Watch this space for reviews forthwith.

These books, when read, will count towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. Check out the Europa reading list and challenge blog and join us! The Europa Challenge Blog: Europa Madness


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The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

Snippy, snarky, and wholly original, the voice of Rosalinda Achmetowna will stay with you long after you close this book. First published in German in 2010, this Booker-nominated bestseller explodes with personality, wit, and the wisdom of an older woman. Not that Rosie thinks of herself as old.

Life in Russia was never easy, but Rosalinda thought her daughter, Sulfia, made life especially hard for herself. In the time-honored way of mothers everywhere, she hectored, berated, cursed, and finally resorted to direct intervention in her attempts to get her daughter gainfully wed. And it’s a good thing, too, since Sulfia had a child—a lovely child—who was soon to become central to the trio’s “escape to the West.”

It is rare to encounter a voice so fresh with biting insights and yet so laughingly tender at the same time. Always on the lookout for the main chance, our heroine finds myriad ways to game the system while she holds on, white-knuckled, to the gains she feels she deserves. It is hard not to feel regret when we close the book at last, for she is a woman with the carapace of a beetle, but an interior soft as unalloyed gold. “People liked it when someone tugged at their heartstrings. I couldn’t understand why,” Rosalinda tells us. But I think Alina Bronsky understands it.

Classic Rosalinda:

”I noticed that by German standards, I was a fairly young woman. It was as if I had stopped aging. Of course, I hadn’t forgotten my real age. In Russia I knew I was young but that other women my age no longer were. Here I realized that the women my age really were young, even if they looked worse than me.

Even some women much older than me were still young. I stared at the first real old lady I saw—one with violet-colored hair—after she passed me on her bicycle. I took a picture of the second one. The third time I saw an older woman on a bike, it made me think. Then I bought myself a secondhand bicycle from a newspaper ad.”

This book counts towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. The Europa Challenge Blog: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

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The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam

Stories, short and quick and with adult emotions, is what we find in this marvelous collection published 2008 by Europa. Gardam has a laser-eye and can have a razor-tongue, but she knows what humans are and what makes a story.

In “The Fledgling," we are introduced to that self-conscious teen ready to leave the nest, and the mixed emotions of parent and child are recognizable and painful and funny at the same time. In “Dangers” we encounter a story reminiscent of the UK’s BBC radio show My Word, where segments often feature a funny and circuitous word etomology. “Waiting for a Stranger” may be my favorite of all, as an uncertain hostess waits for an overseas guest to arrive at her remote farm cottage. There had been only a day to prepare--it was a sudden request from her minister and her guest is a black African bishop. She is a farm wife and mother, and she’d never seen a black man in the flesh before, just on the telly. There is something terribly poignant about the care for a stranger.

In ”The Virgin of Bruges,” Gardam displays her trademark dry wit:

But even if she had not wanted me I would have gone to her. Frédérique is unlike me. She is a mother, wife of a farmer, beautiful, resourceful, practical, intellectual. I am a small, short man.

"Pangbourne" is a story of cherishing another being, sharing their space, and their life, with no expectation of any return. And Gardam breaks our hearts with “The Latter Days of Mr. Jones,” the story of an elderly man, alone and never married, accused of hateful crimes against children. Each story illuminates corners of the human psyche and doesn’t bore us with too much of anything—explanations or asides, regrets or remarks. Just short stories that remain long in one’s memory.


This book counts towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. The Europa Challenge Blog: The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam



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Europa Meme

Okay folks, I have decided to enter the Europa Challenge, arranged by Marie at Boston Bibliophile. I, like many others accepting this challenge, am in love with the classy covers and feel of Europa paperbacks and love the idea of Europa's publishing raison d'etre: international literature by writers published in English. This is my favorite type of reading material of all. I have been guilty of lusting after books I can't afford simply because the covers are so luscious, especially the ones looking like woodcuts. I've read some books on the list but look forward to many more. According to Marie, the rules are as follows:

◦Bold the books you've read (you can link to reviews on your blog if you want),
◦Italicize the ones you own but haven't read,
◦Underline the ones you'd like to buy.

Europa Editions-From 1 to 100

1. Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment
2. James Hamilton-Paterson, Cooking with Fernet Branca
3. Benjamin Tammuz, Minotaur
4. Wolf Erlbruch, The Big Question
5. Jean-Claude Izzo, Total Chaos
6. Massimo Carlotto, The Goodbye Kiss
7. Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square
8. Sélim Nassib, I Loved You for Your Voice
9. Edna Mazya, Love Burns
10. Chad Taylor, Departure Lounge
11. Ioanna Karystiani, The Jasmine Isle
12. Matthew F. Jones, Boot Tracks
13. Wolf-Belli, The Butterfly Workshop
14. Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Dog Day
15. Jane Gardam, Old Filth
16. Carlo Lucarelli , Carte Blanche
17. Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love
18. Jean-Claude Izzo, Chourmo
19. Massimo Carlotto, Death's Dark Abyss
20. James Hamilton-Paterson, Amazing Disgrace
21. Stefano Benni, Margherita Dolce Vita
22. Wolf Erlbruch, The Miracle of the Bears
23. Alfred Hayes, The Girl on the Via Flaminia
24. Sélim Nassib, The Palestinian Lover
25. Christa Wolf, One Day a Year. 1960-2000
26. Massimo Carlotto, The Fugitive
27. Gene Kerrigan, The Midnight Choir
28. Altan, Here Comes Timpa
29. Carlo Lucarelli, The Damned Season
30. Peter Kocan, Fresh Fields
31. Jean-Claude Izzo, Solea
32. Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Prime Time Suspect
33. Altan, Timpa goes to the Sea
34. Alessandro Piperno, The Worst Intentions
35. Edwin M. Yoder Jr., Lions at Lamb House.
36. Jean-Claude Izzo, The Lost Sailors
37. Jane Gardam, The Queen of the Tambourine
38. Michele Zackheim, Broken Colors
39. Steve Erickson, Zeroville
40. Altan, Fairy Tale Timpa
41. Carmine Abate, Between Two Seas
42. Katharina Hacker, The Have-Nots
43. Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter
44. Gene Kerrigan, Little Criminals
45. Stefano Benni, Timeskipper
46. Peter Kocan, The Treatment & The Cure
47. Carlo Lucarelli, Via delle Oche
48. Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Death Rites
49. Gail Jones, Sorry
50. Jane Gardam, The People On Privilege Hill
51. Roma Tearne, Mosquito
52. Helmut Krausser, Eros
53. Jean-Claude Izzo, A Sun for the Dying
54. Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
55. Amara Lakhous, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
56. James Hamilton- Paterson, Rancid Pansies
57. Francisco Coloane, Tierra del Fuego
58. Amélie Nothomb, Tokyo Fiancée
59. Joel Stone, The Jerusalem File
60. Domenico Starnone, First Execution
61. Shashi Deshpande, The Dark Holds No Terrors
62. Salwa Al Neimi, The Proof of the Honey
63. James Hamilton-Paterson, Seven-Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds
64. Alberto Angela, A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome
65. Giancarlo De Cataldo, The Father and the Foreigner
66. Roma Tearne , Bone China
67. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, The Most Beautiful Book in the World. Eight Novellas
68. Muriel Barbery, Gourmet Rhapsody
69. Valeria Parrella, For Grace Received
70. Lia Levi, The Jewish Husband
71. Boualem Sansal, The German Mujahid
72. Massimo Carlotto & Marco Videtta, Poisonville
73. Romano Bilenchi, The Chill
74. Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat
75. Helmut Dubiel, Deep In the Brain.
76. Ioanna Karystiani, Swell
77. Valerio Massimo Manfredi, The Ides of March
78. Daniele Mastrogiacomo, Days of Fear
79. Alina Bronsky, Broken Glass Park
80. Linda Ferri, Cecilia
81. Caryl Férey, Zulu
82. Jenn Ashworth, A Kind of Intimacy
83. Leïla Marouane, The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris
84. Lorcan Roche, The Companion
85. Carmine Abate, The Homecoming Party
86. Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore
87. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, The Woman with the Bouquet
88. Massimo Carlotto, Bandit Love
89. Fay Weldon, Chalcot Crescent
90. Rebecca Connell, The Art of Losing
91. Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room
92. Amélie Nothomb, Hygiene and the Assassin
93. Jane Gardam, God on the Rocks
94. James Scudamore, Heliopolis
95. Yishai Sarid, Limassol
96. Milena Agus, From the Land of the Moon
97. Luis Sepúlveda, The Shadow of What We Were
98. Anne Wiazemsky, My Berlin Child
99. Kazimierz Brandys, Rondo
100. Alina Bronsky, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Since I know underlining means interest and best intentions, and this list can be modified with the stroke of a keyboard, I'm going to leave it at that for the moment. Six months is six months, after all. I am actually interested in pursuing the Europa Connoisseur designation, which means reading all of the 100 books on the list, but that's a longer story. We'll see. Anyone else interested in joining me on this?




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Summer Reads from Three Bloggers

Porter Square Books

-- a BOTNS Boston event --

When: June 3, 2011
Where: Cambridge, MA
Porter Square Books

[Courtesy of http://portersquarebooks.com/]

Three bloggers shared their best recommendations for summer reads with us:

• Melanie Yarbrough of The Things They Read
• Marie Cloutier of BostonBibliophile
• Ann Kingman of Books on the Nightstand

Melanie writes, but also blogs. Though she usually reads and writes fiction, Melanie recommended two nonfiction memoirs for summer reads:

1. A Widow's Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates
   
   
   
   
   
2. 
   Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason by Anne Roiphe

Marie buys books at bookstores like rest of us, scanning shelves and tables for something to catch her eye. Summer Reads for her are big, enveloping books that bring you somewhere new. Melanie recommended three books and you can see what she says about her choices here:

1. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Heliopolis by James Scudamore

Ann Kingman has found her calling as a podcaster. When she starts telling of her summer reads, her voice becomes slow and honeyed. One settles back for storytime, and when she says, "I just couldn't put it down," we know we must see these books:

1. Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. The Snowman by Jo Nesbø
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
   
   
   
   
   

Finally, some listeners at the gathering wanted to make their recommendations for summer reads:

• Anything by Bill Bryson on audio;
• Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
• Three Seconds by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström, translated by Kari Dickson. I reviewed this book last month.
• Tibet Underground 1939(?) by Jinzo Nomoto, or maybe it was Japanese Agent in Tibet by Hisao Kimura. He wasn't sure, but it sounded great!
• My recommendation is a brand-new (comes out August 1, 2011) genre-smashing, wildly good stand-alone Reginald Hill called The Woodcutter. Put it on your lists so you don't forget--you'll love it!

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Old Filth by Jane Gardam

One of the best uses of flashback that I can remember. Immensely wise, this is the bittersweet story of an old man's life. Gradually Gardam reveals the successes and failures of Eddie Feathers, his astonishing luck and balance amid life's rough seas. We come to respect his judgement, appreciate his wit, and thank him for his humanity. We love him for forgiving the infidelities of his wife, and for his embrace of his arch nemesis. We miss him at the end. One of the great characters of British literature today.

We first see eighty-year-old Feathers in retirement in Dorset, England after a long career at the bar in Hong Kong. Careful reasoning on illustrious cases earns him a reputation at home and abroad and he is known to all by the sobriquet "Old Filth" (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong), a term usually reserved for a group of people. His mind drifts back over chapters in his life that formed and directed him, and we see him reason, and change. A remarkable performance which should earn Jane Gardam well-deserved respect and a large audience.

Interview with Gardam: The Elegant Variation.