One of my reviews has been translated and printed in a newspaper's literary supplement section.

Last week, I wrote a review of Serbian writer Zoran Živković's 1998 novella, The Writer.  Živković liked it so much that he asked if I wouldn't mind if it were translated and submitted to the literary supplement section of the Belgrade newspaper Politika.  I said sure, that would be great.  Late last night, Živković sent me this:

Although I have had other essays of mine translated into Portuguese, this is the first time that I have ever had one republished in a newspaper, much less a leading daily.  Just thought I'd share this very cool news with everyone.  And yes, I can understand bits and pieces of the translation. 

Luis Leante, Mira si yo te querré

Desde el barracón que hacía las veces de calabozo, el cabo Santiago San Román llevaba todo el día observando un movimiento anormal de tropas.  Cuatro metros de anchos por seis de largo, un colchón sobre un somier con cuatro patas, una mesa, una silla, una letrina muy sucia y un grifo.

     Querida Montse:  pronto hará un año que no sé nada de ti. 

Había tardado casi una hora en decidirse a escribir la primera frase y ahora le parecía afectada, poco natural.  El sonido de los aviones que tomaban tierra en el aeródromo de El Aaiún lo devolvió a la realidad.  Miró la cuartilla y ni siquiera reconoció su propia letra.  Desde la ventana del barracón no alcanzaba a ver más que la zona de seguridad de la pista y una parte del hangar.  Lo único que distinguía con claridad eran las cocheras y los Land-Rover entrando y saliendo sin parar, camiones cargados de lejías novatos y coches oficiales en un extraño ir y venir.  Por primera vez en siete días no le habían traído la comida, ni le habían abierto la puerta a media tarde para que pudiera estirar las piernas en uno de los extremos de la pista del aeródromo.  Llevaba una semana sin cruzar apenas palabra con nadie, comiendo un chusco duro y una sopa sosa, sin apartar la vista de la puerta ni de la ventana, esperando a que vinieran en cualquier momento para montarlo en una aeronave y sacarlo de África para siempre.  Le habían asegurado, en tono amenazador, que sería cuestión de un día o dos, y que luego tendría toda la vida para añorar se Sáhara. (pp. 23-24)

Tales involving lovers separated by time and space by all rights should be trite and clichéd affairs.  How many ways can a writer express "true love" without it becoming hackneyed and devoid of anything resembling originality?  Yet every now and then, there emerges a writer who manages to rework this age-old formula just enough to create something that is both familiar and yet differs in some key ways from the norm.

This is certainly the case in Luis Leante's 2007 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel, Mira si yo te querré (See if I Will Love You).  It is a tale of two young lovers, one fated to become a Barcelona doctor, the other a soldier in Spain's foreign legion during the last years of General Franco's regime in the mid-1970s.  Yet Mira si yo te querré is more than just a love story.  It is as much a tale of Spain's ill-fated retreat from its Western Sahara colony in 1975 and the invasion and annexation of this nascent country by Morocco.

The story shifts back and forth between the two lovers, Montse Cambra and Santiago San Román, from their initial relationship in the early 1970s (leading to Montse becoming pregnant) and Santiago's embarking for the Western Sahara to Montse's discovery, nearly three decades later, that Santiago did not die in the fighting there, as she had long presumed, but may have somehow survived and had stayed in the region after the Moroccan invasion.  Leante shifts back and forth in narrative time, building up Montse and Santiago's original relationship in order to ratchet up the tension leading to her arrival in the occupied region.  Questions are raised about how each has or might have changed over the years, all over a backdrop whose own recent, tortured past serves as a counter to any possible tendency toward treacliness. 

Leante does a very good job in establishing setting and narrative flow.  Things move smoothly from event to event, never feeling forced or underdeveloped.  The characterizations, however, are a bit more uneven, perhaps due to Santiago's necessary lengthy absences from the "present" PoVs in order to further Montse's character arc.  The concluding scenes, however, more than make up for this relative character underdevelopment, as they serve to reinforce not only what had been developed earlier between the two characters, but also to tie in the Western Sahara conflict with the characters' lives.  The result is an entertaining love story that contains more depth than usual for lost lover narratives.

Xavier Velasco, Diablo Guardián

No lo puedo creer.  La última ve que hice esto tenía un sacerdote enfrente.  Y tenía una maleta llenísima de dólares, lista para salvarme del Infierno.  ¿Sabes, Diablo Guardián?  Te sobra cola para sacerdote, y aun así tendría que mentirte para que me absolvieras.  Tú, que eres un tramposo, ¿nunca sentiste como que se te agotaban las reservas de patrañas?  Ya sé que me detestas por decirte mentiras, y más por esconderte las verdades.  Por eso ahora me toca contarte la verdad.  Enterita, ¿me entiendes?  Escríbela, revuélvela, llénala de calumnias, hazle lo que tú quieras.  No es más que la verdad, y verdades ya ves que siempre sobran.  Señorita Violetta, ¿podría usted contarnos qué tanto hay de verdad en su cochina vida de mentiras?  ¿Qué hay de cierto en la witch disfrazada de bitch, come on sugar darling let me scratch your itch?  Puta madre, qué horror, no quiero confesarme. (p. 11)

Tales of prodigals, men and women alike, appeal to us not only because some of us reader sympathize with their lack of restraint and their giving in to total hedonism, but also because for some readers, seeing such characters get their comeuppance serves as a justification by proxy of their own decisions to refrain from any indulging of the senses.  The story of the "pretty woman," the hooker with the heart of gold, has been told in many guises, but what about a tale of a girl who descends, through spendthrift actions, from the upper middle-class to prostitution and yet who does not see herself as a victim in any real shape or form whatsoever? 

It is this latter premise that makes Xavier Velasco's 2003 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel, Diablo Guardián, such an intriguing story.  It traces the life of a fifteen year-old girl, who now goes by the pseudonym of Violetta, from the time she stole $100,000 from her parents (who in turn had embezzled that money from fraudulent Red Cross transactions) to her flight to New York and her subsequent blowing of that money over the course of lavish parties and blow until she turns to hotel "encounters" in order to maintain even a semblance of her party life.  Accompanying her in her descent into hedonistic excess is a frustrated, egotistical writer known as "Pig," who watches, somewhat helplessly, as he finds himself following along with this girl with whom he has developed some feelings.  All the while, there is this vague sense of a metaphorical Mephistopheles, a guardian devil of sorts, guiding and sheltering Violetta.

If this premise alone does not sound enticing, Velasco manages to imbue the narrative with an almost effortless vibrancy.  Although it is difficult to claim that Velasco is an accomplished stylist (if anything, the prose has a roughness to it that somehow manages to fit the story being told), the narrative certainly has a casualness to it that dovetails nicely with the tale of excess and (mostly) unrepentant attitude toward misfortunes.  The characters of Violetta and Pig are well-rendered and their plights feel real and not overly contrived.

However, there are a few weaknesses.  At times, the narrative gets bogged down in detailing the minutiae of Violetta's extravagant lifestyle.  This in turn led to a loss of narrative impact for much of the novel's middle portions.  The final scenes, however, manage to recapture much of the novel's earlier energy.  Although the conclusion is a bit surprising in some regards, for the most part it ties together the narrative nicely.  Diablo Guardián might not be a technically perfect novel, but even despite its warts and all, it is one of the more original and powerfully told stories to win the Premio Alfaguara. 

Final nine 2014 releases reviewed

Although there were times that I wasn't for sure if I would be able to do it, I've finally managed to write something about each of the 165 books listed on this 2014 releases post.  Although these will be barely 100-150 words in comparison to the 750-1200 word reviews I typically write, I believe they will represent in full my reactions to these works.  Now onto the capsule reviews, presented in a rough chronological release order, starting with  August (1), September (1), then October (3), November (3), and December (1):

 Lydie Salvayre, Pas pleurer (winner of the 2014 Prix Goncourt)

This was the last 2014 release that I read.  Pas pleurer by all rights should not have succeeded as well as it did, as it combines two vastly different narratives, a personal account of a daughter putting into print what her mother experienced during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 along with a third-person description of French writer/politician George Bernanos' evolution of thought regarding the conflict.  Salvayre does an outstanding job in mixing the two together, as scenes described by the mother dovetail nicely into the horrors that Bernanos experiences when he visits Majorca soon after Franco's forces have taken control of the island.  The prose is exquisite and the characterizations are very well done.  This is a fairly original way of melding a slight fictionalization of a family history with a psychological portrait of a famous writer and his crisis of thought as he comes to see Franco, whose side he initially championed, for a sort of monster.  Well deserving of the literary accolades it has already received, including France's most prestigious literary prize.

Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

This was my first introduction to Bennett's work, but I highly doubt it will be my last.  Although it took awhile for the narrative to move into high gear, considering the amount of time Bennett devoted to establishing the backdrop for this secondary world fantasy, by novel's end, there was an interesting mystery plot that had unfolded better than I had anticipated.  The sometimes uneven narrative developments of the first half were smoothed out by later revelations, making for a surprisingly enjoyable conclusion.  I am curious to see where Bennett goes from here, as there are enough positive elements (in particular, the purposeful avoidance of anything that might be construed as an analogue for Western European medieval mores or culture) in this novel to allow me to forgive the author for the unevenness of the opening chapters.

Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters

The Boy Who Drew Monsters is one of the best literary horror novels that I have read in quite some time.  Featuring a ten year-old boy with high-functioning autism who steadily withdraws from the outside "real" world in order to create disturbingly creative monsters that appear to populate the local environs as the novel progresses, the novel strikes a near-perfect balance between creating psychological tension (just how real are these monsters?) and fantastical effect.  Donohue is a superb writer and each element feels carefully crafted to achieve the maximum narrative effect.  The concluding chapter is perhaps one of the more profound and chilling plot twists that I've read in a while.   The Boy Who Drew Monsters is the sort of novel that I could gift to people who rarely read either horror or literary fiction, as there are enough strong elements of both to facilitate a quicker, more complete understanding of just what Donohue manages to accomplish here with aplomb.

Nuruddin Farah, Hiding in Plain Slight

Farah has long been rumored as a potential Nobel Prize candidate and there are certainly some weighty themes explored in his latest novel:  dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack; internal struggle of a young female professional/ex-pat Somali who suddenly finds herself dealing with her dead brother's adolescent children; confronting "difficult" relatives; homosexuality in East African societies; and balancing career against personal desires.  Each of these could make for an intriguing novel and for the most part, Farah manages to juggle these themes while making it seem as though it were effortless.  Yet there are times where the prose or dialogue fails to capture the potential full power of certain scenes, thus reducing the novel at times to a display of restraint at the expense of explosive yet vital narrative and character development.  Hiding in Plain Sight is far from a poor effort, yet its occasional failure to go beyond the constraints of the characters and scene situations make it feel as though Farah pulled a few of his punches.

David Nicholls, Us (longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize)

This is the story of a slowly failing marriage, seen mostly through the perspective of the husband.  There are no sudden downturns or bitter conflicts.  Instead, what Nicholls presents is a gentle descent into estrangement, as personal differences, long buried under the bonds of common interests and affection, slowly rise to the top.  At first, it is not apparent that Nicholls is indeed describing a failing marriage, as it feels more like any of the usual marriages after a long period of familiarity.  It is only in the latter half of the novel that these long-simmering disputes begin bubbling over.  Us is a smartly constructed novel, utilizing its dozens of short chapters detailing individual scenes to great effect.  The prose, while not sparkling, is certainly fitting for the narrative and the characterizations, warts and all, are well-developed.  It is not the "sexiest" of narratives, yet it is one that achieves virtually all of its objectives.

Denis Johnson, The Laughing Monsters

Like a Resident Evil zombie that has been plugged several times and yet somehow still manages to rise again, colonialism is undead and not so well in Johnson's latest novel.  Following three ex-pat characters as they travel across the African continent, The Laughing Monsters contains some brilliant lines.  Yet despite Johnson's talents as a prose writer, The Laughing Monsters does not feel as substantive as many of his earlier works.  Perhaps it is the problematic subject matter (it is hard to tell a story of European-descended people in Africa without there being some sort of exoticism on display, it seems) or perhaps it is simply that the narrative as a whole is just not as developed as it could have been.  Regardless of what the primary cause might be, The Laughing Monsters is a mild disappointment, as readers of his previous works likely will expect great things and anything less, such as this good but flawed novel, will be a letdown.

Ron Rash, Something Rich and Strange

This is a collection of thirty-four of Rash's best stories, mostly taken from previous collections.  These tales, mostly set in rural Southern Appalachia, focus on the lives of drifters, addicts, and those who seem adrift from the mainstream of contemporary American live.  Rash's characters feel like people I've known most of my life; they are that true to Southern life.  His stories vary in style and theme, yet there is a common focus on the lives that these characters have chosen (or in some cases, had chosen for them after a bender or tweaking experience).  It is hard to pick out a singular story, as there were so many that I enjoyed.  Something Rich and Strange serves as an excellent primer to the works of one of the best Southern writers telling tales today.

Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones

This collection of twenty stories touches upon violence and how that shapes and reshapes American culture.  Theroux particularly seems interested in exploring conceptualizations of beauty and how increasingly outdated views of what constitutes "masculinity" may be the impetus for acts of desperation, if not outright violence toward self or others.  He is a very talented writer and his characters are vividly drawn.  Some of the tales might be unsettling to read, but I suspect that is precisely the point, to make the reader react strongly to the questions he is exploring within his tales.  Although some stories are slighter in content or are not as well-polished as others, on the whole Mr. Bones is another fine effort from one of the more well-known American short story writers of the past half-century.

S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh (translated by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck)

This translation of a 1949 Israeli novella that deals with the clearing of a Palestinian village in the immediate aftermath of the 1948-1949 war that created the state of Israel is perhaps one of the more harrowing stories that I've read this year.  The narrative follows the lives of a handful of young Israelis sent to a hilltop to await orders.  They want action, violent action even.  Yet what transpires against a vividly-described backdrop, is one of the more heartwrenching scenes written in the past century.  The language itself serves to illustrate the dualities of Israeli-Jewish identity and how the very experiences of the Holocaust are turned upon their heads as the exiles become the exilers, the eternally dispossessed dispossess villagers who had lived on that historical land for millennia.  The US English publication is long overdue, as this should have been part of the decades-old dialogue over the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Final four foreign language 2014 releases reviewed

I have reviewed more current foreign language works this year (17; not counting pre-2014 releases) than I have in any previous year.  These works, published in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, have included some nominees and winners for major literary awards (Premio Alfaguara, Premio Strega, Prix Médicis).  In the next few days, I'll list my favorites for the year.  But for now, here are capsule reviews of the final four 2014 releases that I read in French, Spanish, and Portuguese:

Christine Montalbetti, Plus rien que les vagues et le vent (longlisted for the 2014 Prix Médicis)

In her latest novel, Montalbetti continues exploring facets of American life that she conducted in earlier novels such as Western.  Here, the setting is the West Coast and as the title suggests (Nothing More than the Waves and Wind), the locale plays a substantial role in shaping the narrative.  Montalbetti's prose is evocative and the narrative sustains a steady flow throughout. While the characters at times take a backseat to the scenes in which they operate, for the most part the characterizations are well-realized as well.  Plus rien que les vagues et le vent was one of the longlisted titles that I had hopes for selection for the finalist round of the Prix Médicis and it certainly is one of the better French-language novels that I have read this year.

Valérie Zenatti, Jacob, Jacob (finalist for the 2014 Prix Médicis)

Set in French Algeria during World War II, Jacob, Jacob is the story of an Algerian Jew, Constantine, who is called to fight for his country in advance of the 1944 invasion of Provence.  It is a short, sharp tale of an innocent who will be forced to confront the terrible realities of a war in which ideologies play a role in shaping an understanding just what the stakes are.  Zenatti does an outstanding job in establishing her characters and the effects that the war will have on them.  Her prose is exquisite, eloquent without ever descending into maudlin melodrama.  The plot flows smoothly from beginning to end, with no longeurs.  Jacob, Jacob was one of my favorite non-English-language reads this year.   Hopefully, there will be an English translation of this excellent work in the years to come.

Fábio Fernandes and Romeu Martins (eds.), Vaporpunk:  Novos documentos de uma pitoresca época steampunk

This second volume in the Brazilian steampunk anthology series Vaporpunk contains nine stories that explore various elements of Brazilian and world cultures in relation to the notion of replacing current technological developments with those derived from an alternate, steam-based technology.  I enjoyed the majority of these stories, finding them to be inventive looks at our own contemporary societies and how certain historical developments shape our understandings of the world around us.  My only quibble about this otherwise very good anthology is that it's shorter than I expected, with only nine (albeit for the most part good) tales.  Despite this, this second volume manages to sustain the energy and momentum established in the first volume.

Mariano Villarreal (ed.), Terra Nova 3

This third installment in the Spanish SF anthology series perhaps may be the best in a series that has already garnered some of Spain's most prestigious SF awards.  Like the previous two volumes, Terra Nova 3 mixes in Spanish originals with translations.  This time, however, instead of the foreign stories being from Anglophone countries, there is a direct translation from Chinese to Spanish of a story by Cixin Liu, which happens to be one of the strongest stories in an anthology full of interesting takes on SF issues.  At nearly 350 pages on my iPad, Terra Nova 3 is one of the larger foreign language anthologies I've read this year and it is among the best.  My only complaint is that there could have been even more Spanish-language originals, as I am curious about SF being produced in Hispanophone countries, but this is a minor complaint in what was otherwise a very enjoyable anthology.

Leopoldo Brizuela, Una misma noche

Si me hubieran llamado a declarar, pienso.  Pero eso es imposible.  Quizá, por eso, escribo.


Declararía, por ejemplo, que en la noche del sábado al domingo 30 de marzo de 2010 llegué a casa entre las tres y tres y media de la madrugada:  el último ómnibus de Retiro a La Plata sale a la una, pero una muchedumbre volvía de no sé qué recital, y viajamos apretados, de pie la mayoría, avanzando a paso de hombre por la autopista y el campo.

Urgida por mi tardanza, la perra se me echó encima tan pronto abrí la puerta.  Pero yo aún me demoré en comprobar que en mi ausencia no había pasado nada – mi madre dormía bien, a sus ochenta y nueve años, en su casa de la planta baja, con una respiración regular –, y solo entonces volví a buscar la perra, le puse la cadena y la saqué a la vereda.

Como siempre que voy cerca, eché llave a una sola de las tres cerraduras que mi padre, poco antes de morir, instaló en la puerta del garaje:  el miedo a ser robados, secuestrados, muertos, esa seguridad que llaman, curiosamente, inseguridad, ya empezaba a cernirse, como una noche detrás de la noche. (p. 13)

Like most of its neighbors in the 1970s, Argentina went through a period of socio-political upheaval that led to a right-wing military coup.  The "Dirty War" of 1976-1983 led to tens of thousands of disappearances, mysterious robberies, assaults, murders, and other acts of violence.  Often neighbors would witness atrocities, only to be forced to remain silent lest what they saw would be visited in turn upon them.  It is, nearly forty years later, still a controversial topic within Argentina and there are many groups clamoring even today for justice to be served for those who inflicted such violence upon its citizens.

In Leopoldo Brizuela's 2012 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel Una misma noche (On a Similar Night might be an appropriate translation), he explores the issues of fear-driven forgetfulness and subconscious complicity in acts of state atrocity.  Through the eyes of his narrator, a writer named Leonardo Bazán, Brizuela jumps back and forth through two time periods, 1976-1977 and 2010, to probe at just how people could look at a horrific event and manage to rationalize it away from their conscious thoughts.  It is an interesting narrative approach, albeit one fraught with flaws.

The chapters, labeled by letters in the Spanish alphabet, alternate between these time periods.  Bazán at first tries to adopt a more "clinical" approach toward narrating the similarities between the house invasion he and his parents witnessed in 1976 and a 2010 elaborate robbery (which includes, interestingly enough, a member of the local police) in that very name house.  What are the connections between the two?, Bazán begins to ask himself.  Then, as memories are triggered by this 2010 invasion, the question shifts more toward that of what was he hiding from himself all along?

The narrative depends upon the reader's willingness to consider and reconsider details that Bazán raises as he shifts back and forth from memory (some of which seems to be unreliable, as he recalls in different lights the exact same events he discussed in a prior chapter) and "present" reflection.  At times, the split between the past/present becomes a bit too dizzying, as there are occasionally no narrative bridges between these temporal shifts of thought.  This in turn risks missing out on important information or clues into what happened in the original 1976 home invasion and how Bazán's family dealt with its aftermath.

In addition, some of the principal characters, including the Jewish family, the Kupermans, are not as fleshed out as much as they perhaps should have been.  These relatively sketchy characters on occasion detract from the narrative's potential impact as there is not enough information provided about them to enable the reader to form solid connections.  This is a shame, as at times Brizuela's prose, particular when Bazán is contemplating the connections between the events, is sharp and the narrative flow on these occasions is fluid and devoid of the false steps that plague other parts of the story.  This unevenness in the characterizations and plot development dampens the enjoyment that might have been derived from reading Una misma noche.  It is not by any stretch a particularly "bad" novel, just merely a flawed one, one of the weaker Premio Alfaguara winners in the sixteen years since the award was resumed.

Santiago Roncagliolo, Abril rojo/Red April

Con fecha miércoles 8 de marzo de 2000, en circunstancias en que transitaba por las inmediaciones de su domicilio en la localidad de Quinua, Justino Mayta Carazo (31) encontró un cadáver.

Según ha manifestado ante las autoridades competentes, el declarante llevaba tres días en el carnaval del referido asentamiento, donde había participado en el baile del pueblo.  Debido a esa contingencia, afirma no recordar dónde se hallaba la noche anterior ni niguna de las dos precedentes, en las que refirió haber libado grandes cantidades de bebidas espirituosas.  Esa versión no ha podido ser ratificada por ninguno de las 1.576 vecinos del pueblo, que dan fe de haberse encontrado asimismo en el referido estado etílico durante las anteriores 72 horas con ocasión de dicha festividad. (p. 13)

Police procedurals, or "whodunnits," are a very popular literary genre.  If crafted well, each scene, each character interaction builds toward something greater until the final revelations are made and the case is closed.  But what if this murder/mystery tale were wedded to political turmoil and terrorism?  What if coercion and covert sympathy for the offenders were to play a major role in blocking a case from being solved?

Santiago Roncagliolo in his 2006 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel Abril rojo (available in English translation as Red April) manages to create a near-perfect melding of these elements.  Set in an isolated, mountainous region of Peru between March 9 and May 3, 2000, Abril rojo is the tale of a state prosecutor, Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, who is trying to solve a series of murders in his hometown of Ayacucho.  What Chacaltana discovers, however, is that the local people may or may not be complicit in harboring some of the remnants of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla/terrorist group that had terrorized much of Peru, especially the more Quechua-speaking areas of the mountains, during the 1980s and 1990s.

Roncagliolo develops the action carefully, utilizing several investigative interviews conducted by Chacaltana to provide context for what is transpiring in Ayacucho.  In these scenes, the citizens interviewed reveal only small fragments of information, leaving Chacaltana impeded in his search for justice for the growing number of people dying in the region, most especially during the weeks leading up to Holy Week in late April.  Furthermore, his efforts seem to be leading to more murders, as those who do agree to divulge information appear to be targets for the murderers.

However, there are some interesting twists to what might seem to be a standard tale of nefarious bandits terrorizing the locals.  Roncagliolo also presents a very realistic portrait of the senderistas through some of the testimony provided in Chacaltana's interviews.  This composite portrait, derived from actual court cases according to the author, provides valuable insight into the reasons behind the senderistas becoming dedicated to overthrowing the national government, as well as providing a glimpse into the appeal the Sendero Luminoso had for even the more privileged members of Peruvian society.  It is this sense of veracity within this procedural tale that makes each plot development in Abril rojo feel so vital.

Roncagliolo's writing is sharp throughout the novel.  There is a gradually building narrative tension that rarely suffers from longeurs.  The characters are well-developed and even though some might at first glance appear to be stock characterizations, there is a level of depth to them that often does not appear in murder/mystery stories.  Although the conclusion is slightly weaker than the middle portions of the novel, it provides enough detail and narrative power to make this novel one of the more enjoyable police procedurals that I've read in either Spanish or English in quite some time.  Abril rojo is one of my favorite Premio Alfaguara-winning novels and this re-read after an initial read almost eight years ago confirmed my original high opinion of this novel.

Tomás Eloy Martínez, El vuelo de la Reina

A eso de las once, como toas las noches, Camargo abre las cortinas de su cuarto en la calle Reconquista, dispone el sillón a un metro de distancia de la ventana para que la penumbra lo proteja, y espera a que la mujer entre en su ángulo de mira.  A veces la ve cruzar como una ráfaga por la ventana de enfrente y desaparecer en el baño o en la cocina.  Lo que a ella más le gusta, sin embargo, es detenerse ante el espejo del dormitorio y desvestirse con suprema lentitud.  Camargo puede contemplarla entonces a su gusto.  Muchos años atrás, en un teatro de variedades de Osaka, vio a una bailarina japonesa despojarse del quimono de ceremonia hasta quedar desnuda por completo.  La mujer de enfrente tiene la misma altiva elegancia de la japonesa y repite las mismas poses de fingido asombro, pero sus movimientos son aún más sensuales.  Inclina la cabeza como si se le hubiera perdido algún recuerdo y, luego de pasarse la punta de los dedos por debajo de los pechos, los lame con delicadeza.  Para no perder ningún detalle, Camargo la observa a través de un telescopio Bushnell de sesenta y siete centímetros que está montado sobre un trípode. (p. 11)

There is a relatively new cliché that obsession is more than a perfume by Calvin Klein.  Yet there is something beguiling, alluring even, about displays of obsession that draws people's attentions.  Perhaps it is our own half-understood realization that we all have our things or people that become our objects of fixation and desire.  Seeing it in others can be revolting as well, as though we are witnesses simultaneously something quasi-criminal and a too-clear reflection of our own most shameful lusts.  Yet, sometimes, we observe, perhaps behind some metaphorical curtains or bushes the obsessed soul in action.  We might feel helpless to resist, but there it lies, waiting for us to see how this obsession will unfold.  Sometimes, it'll be fortuitous, with the obsession transformed into reciprocal love.  Other times (and these can be the most delectable for us, loathe as many of us may be to admit it), the obsession crashes into disaster.

In Argentine writer Tomás Eloy Martínez's 2002 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel El vuelo de la reina (The Flight of the Queen), the reader encounters a disturbing sort of obsession straight from the opening paragraph.  Camargo, the head of Buenos Aires' most influential newspaper, is spying upon a
young woman, a reporter named Reina.  It is not a Romeo espying a Juliet; it is a predator stalking its prey.  Camargo is double Reina's age and furthermore, he has all sorts of power over her:  his ability to block or accelerate her career advancement; his knowledge of an extramarital affair that she had; and his awareness of how precarious her position is in a society that has a double standard when it comes to issues of sex and morality.

It would be too easy to view Camargo as the villian, as after all, he has very few, if any, redeeming personal qualities and his lusts for power and dominance are not exactly heroic.  Yet Eloy Martínez, by having us see events through Camargo's thoughts and actions, forces the reader to confront these detestable qualities head-on.  Camargo is so blinded by his obsession with Reina that he justifies all sorts of nefarious actions in such a fashion that at times it is hard not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for him, controlled as he is by his desires.  But it is in a few scenes with Reina, leading up to the denouement, that we see the full extent of his power plays and the deleterious effects this has on the young woman.  Here is where Camargo's self-delusions and machinations are laid bare and the reader is confronted with the insidious nature of Camargo's actions.  Eloy Martínez manages to execute this so well that when the novel concludes, the reader is left with two wavering images of Camargo, each seeming to elide into the other, with the dissonance serving to illustrate how Camargo's self-image differs from the reader's.

Eloy Martínez's prose is excellent throughout the narrative, and he manages to shape through carefully crafted passages, nuanced portraits of the principal characters.  While Camargo's obsessed, mostly-malevolent character can be distasteful, especially when he is the primary character, Eloy Martínez manages to make other character perspectives feel dynamic and true to life.  Although there are a few moments where the narrative slows down overmuch, for the most part, Eloy Martínez's slow ratcheting up of the narrative tension adds greatly to the story.  While the conclusion might be a little "soft" for some readers, it too fits in with the themes of power and desire that Eloy Martínez explores to great depth here.  El vuelo de la reina is a very good novel, one of Eloy Martínez's best, and it certainly was deserving of its selection as a Premio Alfaguara-winning novel.

Elena Poniatowska, La piel del cielo

 – Mamá, ¿allá atrás se acaba el mundo?

– No, no se acaba.

– Demuéstramelo.

– Te voy a llevar más lejos de lo que se ve a simple vista.

Lorenzo miraba el horizonte enrojecido al atardecer mientras escuchaba a su madre.  Florencia era su cómplice, su amiga, se entendían con sólo mirarse.  Por eso la madre se doblegó a la urgencia en la voz de su hijo y al día siguiente, su pequeño de la mano, compró un pasaje y medio de vagón de la mano, compró un pasaje y medio de vagón de segunda para Cuautla en la estación de San Lázaro. (p. 9)

Some of civilization's greatest thinkers began their paths to discoveries by asking simple questions in life.  There is something of a child's wonder at what lies beyond the horizon, discovering whether or not there is truly an "end" to the earth, or if, as is stated by the mother above, that such a child can and will be transported to a place beyond current sight, a locale where perhaps conceptualizations of reality can merge with those of a child's flights of fantasy.  Such stories, both real and fictitious alike, can move readers who witness the development of that curious child into an inventor or trailblazer.

In Elena Poniatowska's 2001 Premio Alfaguara-winning La piel del cielo (a possible translation being The Sky's Skin or The Skin of Heaven), she traces the life of such a singular child, Lorenzo de Tena, from his impoverished youth through his struggles to arrive at where he seemed destined to be, an astronomer.  It is not the end point that fascinates as much it is the difficult journey that Lorenzo has to make.  The son of an out-of-wedlock relationship between a distant, wealthy businessman father and a determined, intelligent, yet impoverished mother, Lorenzo has to fight and scrape in order to follow his ambitions.  His humble social origins are repeatedly thrust into his face, as he has to battle in order to make it through into college.  He is for a time associated with Mexican Communists during his youth (the middle decades of the 20th century) before he changes course and becomes an astronomer.

Poniatowska goes to great pains to make sure that Lorenzo's narrative arc is not clichéd.  While he has difficulties in achieving his ambitions, some of the issues arise from his own sometimes prickly personality.  His demeanor and social attitudes can at times be offputting, but this is almost certainly intentional, as Poniatowska seems to be tracing the machismo roots of certain attitudes that Mexican scientists had during the mid-20th century.  Lorenzo's flaws, as much as his achievements, are a large part of what makes La piel del cielo such a fascinating character study.  It is difficult to make genius into something relateable, yet for the most part Poniatowska manages to pull this off and make it seem almost effortless.

Yet there are times where the story flags a bit, particularly in the middle sections of the novel.  Here Lorenzo's struggle does not feel as vital, nor is there a strong enough narrative "hook" to overcome this fall in the action.  However, this fall in narrative power only occurs for a few chapters in this book, as the beginning and concluding chapters are much stronger.  Likewise, Lorenzo's character, as mentioned above, can be polarizing in how he views the world and its people, but even at his least likeable moments, his strength of character shines through.  Poniatowska's prose is subtle in its depictions of character interactions and with only a few mild hiccups along the way, the narrative flows smoothly from beginning to end.  La piel del cielo ultimately is an interesting look at how genius can triumph over adversity without ever resorting to alienating the genius's personality from that of the surrounding environs.  It is a fascinating character/society portrait, one that is deserving of the literary prize bestowed upon it.

2014 Premio Ignotus winners announced

Missed seeing this yesterday, but over the weekend, the 2014 Premio Ignotus (Spain's most prestigious SF/F awards) winners were announced.  Here are the winners:

Cuento extranjero: El hombre que acabó con la historia. Documental de Ken Liu.
Cuento: El aeropuerto del fin del mundo de Tamara Romero.
Sitio web: Cuentos para Algernon y La Tercera Fundación.
Antología: Terra Nova 2 de Mariano Villarreal y Luis Pestarini.
Revista: Scifiworld.
Producto audiovisual: @verdhugos
Artículo: la ciencia ficción española de Mariano Villarreal.
Libro de ensayo: La 100cia ficción de Rescepto de Sergio Mars.
Ilustración: Memoria de Tinieblas de Eduardo Vaquerizo.
Novela extranjera: Embassytown de China Mièville.
Novela: Memoria de Tinieblas de Eduardo Vaquerizo.
Novela corta: Detective de Rodolfo Martínez.
Premio Domingo Santos: Juan Ángel Laguna Edroso.
Premio Gabriel: Antoni Garcés.


Perhaps I'll do a better job next year in keeping track of the nominees, as I do occasionally like to read non-Anglophone SF/F.

Four literary awards-nominated novels reviewed

Below are four mini-reviews of books that were either longlisted or shortlisted for the 2014 Premio Strega (Italian) or 2014 Prix Médicis (French).  Due to time constraints, these will be one paragraph summary reviews.  Most, if not all, of these would likely have at least some appeal to English-reading audiences if translated into English:

Donatella di Pietrantonio, Bella Mia (2014 Premio Strega-longlisted title; Italian)

Bella Mia is set in the aftermath of the devastating April 2009 L'Aquila earthquake in central Italy.  Catherine, the protagonist, has survived while her twin sister dies.  Burdened with having to care for her sister's teenage son, Mark, the novel follows the difficult choices Catherine and her new fosterling have to make in clearing the detritus of their own pre-earthquake lives in order to build something new.  di Pietrantonio manages to craft a story that is at once familiar in its contours and yet somehow new and refreshing in its presentation.  While it was not a favorite of mine from the Premio Strega longlist, it certainly was an enjoyable novel to read.

Véronique Bizot, Âme qui vive (2014 Prix Médicis finalist; French)

Out of the eight titles that I read that were either longlisted and/or shortlisted for the 2014 Prix Médicis, I had the most difficulty grasping was was transpiring in Bizot's Âme qui vive.  Although it is only novella length, Bizot has constructed an intricate tale of four men (the narrator being now a mute), yet beyond the sometimes ornate prose stylings, it is her choice of throwing the reader in media res that makes it difficult to follow what is transpiring.  While the language barrier (I read French at an intermediate level now) might have something to do with it, it still seems that there are several narrative obstructions that lie between the reader and making sense of what otherwise seemed to be a moving story.

Pierre Demarty, En face (2014 Prix Médicis, longlisted title; French)

En face was an interesting story, precisely because its protagonist, Jean Nochez, truly is a non-entity:  no scandalous past, odd quirks, or dark secrets that beset him.  It is his seemingly sudden decision to rent a new apartment away from those with whom he has shared a fairly banal existence most of his adult life that provides the impetus for a story that somehow manages to make what would seem to be poor material for a gripping narrative into a story that kept my attention throughout its 156 e-print pages.  It was one of my favorite 2014 Prix Médicis-nominated books and while it did not advance to the finalist stage, it certainly was a book that that I thought was among the finer French-language works I read this year.

Nathalie Kuperman, La loi sauvage (2014 Prix Médicis, longlisted title; French)

La loi sauvage (The Savage Law) begins with a phrase ("Votre fille, c'est une catastrophe."; "Your daughter, she is a disaster.") that compels a mother to descend into a semantical hell of sorts in which all sorts of expressions, past and present, bubble up to the surface of her thoughts as she reexamines just how things have come to this point.  La loi sauvage was one of the more enjoyable works nominated for the 2014 Prix Médicis and like En face, while it was not chosen as a finalist for the award, it too was one of the more enjoyable French-language works published this year.  Kuperman's prose is exquisite and her characterizations are spot-on.  Simply put, this is a novel that I'll revisit in the years to come.

David Soares and André Coelho, Sepulturas dos Pais

For the past four years now, I have championed Portuguese writer David Soares as one of the most talented writers in the Lusophone literary/SF/horror worlds who has not yet been translated into English.  His novels demonstrate an author who is comfortable with switching between genres, as his prose is rich and yet not overly florid, filled with intriguing characters, many of whom seem to be unaware of how close they are to symbolic precipices.  I have reviewed two of his works, the historical/magical The Gospel of the Hanged and the graphic novel Palms for the Squirrel, and while each differs significantly in format, genre, and presentation, each are fascinating, slightly unsettling works that capture the reader's attention.

With his latest graphic novel, Sepulturas dos Pais (The Fathers' Sepulchres is a fairly literal translation; Tombs of the Fathers is another), Soares and illustrator André Coelho have created another memorable story.  Although it is relatively short at roughly 60 pages, Sepulturas dos Pais tells a story of loss and imagination, of love and despair, all of which shift and shimmer on the sands of an unnamed shore.  The story begins with a middle-aged man, Borges, telling to a then-unknown audience his story, beginning with his childhood, when his father dies and is, by custom, buried at sea (the women of the village are buried in the sands).  He speaks of "moving sands" among the sea dunes and of the legends surrounding them, legends that the reader quickly comes to realize are real, or at least in the mind of Borges.

We see Borges' first encounter with these "moving sands" after he traces an image on the shore after fleeing his house after seeing his widowed mother with another man.  Sex, both fully consentual and coerced, is a dominant element in this tale and through the women that Borges encounters, we see variations on this.  Soares does an excellent job in tying sexual desire and actions, positive and negative alike, to Borges' "moving sands."  Often the scenes, thanks to Coelho's vividly-drawn illustrations, are graphic, as the reader is forced to confront those fine lines between full consent and coercion, that are too frequently crossed in relationships, particularly between a woman who seeks love and discovers that young men's lust confounds affection, despising it while simultaneously taking affection's physical manifestations for selfish uses.  Janeiro, a young woman who Borges encounters on the shore after a particular nocturnal tryst with two young men who humiliate her with their sexual acts upon her, comes to be a center of the story.  It is her relationship with Borges, in stark contrast to that with the two young men, that forms the core of the story, providing a concrete parallel to the legends Borges narrates after the fact regarding the burial places of men and women.

The story unfolds at a rapid but never hurried pace, yet both author and illustrator manage to make it feel as though a great deal is transpiring in those scenes.  The "moving sands" move through these encounters between Borges and Janeiro, creating imaginative backdrops that underscore the emotional and physical attachments taking place.  Yet there is a tragedy waiting to unfold and both Soares and Coelho manage to capture it eloquently in both prose and image.  By the time I read the final panel, I felt a brief sort of aching commiseration, as the things lost served to remind me of the things gained over the course of this beautifully tragic story.  Sepulturas dos Pais is another strong tale by a very talented writer.

Antoine Volodine, Terminus radieux (Radiant Terminus)

– Suite à une tentative de rekoulakisation, dit Hannko Vogoulian, il y a longtemps.  Nous, on était pas nées.  C'était avant que le kolkhoze soit rebaptise «Terminus radieux».  Si les Organes étaient pas intervenus, c'était à coup sûr le retour du capitalisme et de toutes les saloperies qui vont avec.  Ça a fonctionné deux ou trois ans comme centre de rééducation.  Ensuite, Solovieï est devenu président et ça a fermé.

Myriam Oumarik enchaîna.

– Pendant l'accident, on l'a rouvert, dit-elle.  On avait besoin d'un local pour entasser les irradiés en attendant que l'entrepôt de la Mémé Oudgoul soit opérationnel.

– On en trouvait dans tous les coins, des irradiés, compléta Hannko Vogoulian.  Fallait bien qu'on les emmagasine quelque part.

Le jacassage des deux filles r´´sonnait dans la salle d'eau.  Il donnait le tournis à Kronauer qui n'avait pas besoin de cette avalanche de paroles pour se sentir mal. (p. 80 Bluefire Reader PDF e-format)

I have read five of the eight 2014 Prix Médicis finalists for Best Novel.  Of the five, Antoine Volodine's Terminus radieux (Radiant Terminus is a possible English translation) is perhaps simultaneously the most fascinating and most frustrating to read and think about.  Although my French reading comprehension has grown considerably since taking an online French course this summer, this novel served to remind me that no matter how much of the grammar and vocabulary that I understand (well over 75% without adding another 10-15% for words understood in context), that there are some novels written in other languages that will tax the abilities of non-native readers much more than what might be presumed by the writing style or vocabulary employed.

Mind you, this is not a criticism of Volodine's work; if anything, it is a testimony to how this novel requires extra effort from all readers, regardless of fluency level, in order to wring the utmost amount of understanding from it.  While there were times where my not-yet-fully-fluent reading comprehension failed me, I could sense that there was something strange, magical even, transpiring in this story set some years after a nuclear apocalypse following the end of the Second Soviet Union.  Terminus radieux is the story of people after a fall, of dreamers and escapees, all doomed, who wander in a toxic Siberian landscape in which the living and the dead commingle, where there is a sort of communion with the supernatural, where the irreal and real collide and a strange brew of elements emerges from these interactions.

Volodine's tale contains a plethora of references to recent political and cultural developments, all tweaked in order to fit into what the author (who, I should add, seems to have as many authorial pseudonyms as the late Fernando Pessoa, some of which write stories that are referenced in the writings of other pseudonyms of his) has elsewhere called a "post-exoticism" style of literature that seeks to make even the mundane into something weird and unsettling.  Being unfamiliar (for the moment, that is) with his other writings, I felt at times out at sea, out of my depth as a reader, as I could sense there were some textual interplays occurring in the murky depths of certain passages that due to a combination of unfamiliarity with both writer and the language left me clueless as to certain things that were taking place.

Yet perversely, this actually made me think higher of this tale.  Certainly from what I did understand, Volodine has an excellently twisted sense of black humor and his fantastical elements, many of which seem to be connected to economic and political concerns, make for a rich, provocative tale of adaptation in a dearth of life-sustaining environs.  It is, as I noted above, not an "easy" tale to parse, but from what I did grasp, it is the sort of fiction that if it were translated into English, for example, could find a small yet very appreciative audience, particularly among those who enjoy both post-apocalyptic literature and savagely funny satires of current socio-political issues.  While I may have been partially defeated from understanding Terminus radieux this time due to my relative limitations in reading French, it certainly will be a book that I will revisit as I continue to work on strengthening my understanding of this lovely language.  Volodine too shall be an author whose works I'll also explore again in the future, as it seems he may be just the sort of writer that I'd enjoy reading in both translation and in the original French.

Claudie Hunzinger, La langue des oiseaux (The Language of Birds)

Je ne sais pas ce qui s'est dit.  Je sais seulement que ce fut mon tour.  La question était:  Est-ce que les livres nous regardent?  Je savais que les tableaux, eux, oui, les tableaux que nous voyons nous voient du fond de leur éclat lointain – même quand ils sont proches.  Mais pas les livres.  Je ne me suis jamais sentie regardée par Robert Walser, Franz Kafka, Roberto Bolaño, ni par Li Bai, Du Fu ou Emily D.  Les livres n'ont pas d'yeux.  Ils sont aveugles.  Ils ne nous jugent pas du fond d'une tombe comme si nous étions Caïn; ils ne nous observent pas du haut d'un plafond telles des caméras de surveillance.  Au contraire, ils nous montrent leur dos, tournés ailleurs, vers le secret.  Nos lumières ne les attirent pas, ils émettent la leur, radioactive, qui éclaire jusqu'au mal dont nous sommes pétris et que nous leur avons confié.  Ils sont profonds.  Des puits.  Ils sont l'asile de nos douleurs, de nos blessures.  De nos pires folies.  De nos déraisons.  De nos voix les plus sombres.  Les livres n'ont pas d'yeux, ils ont des voix.  Il arrive que ces voix sortent de leur bouche d'ombre, nous parlent, oui, et ça, je l'expérimentais sans cesse.  Souvent les livres me parlent, et parfois d'une voix argentine, d'une légèreté enfantine, comme exhalée d'un caveau.  Mais de tout cela je n'ai rien pu dire, j'ai seulement répondu non, les livres ne nous regardent pas; et je répétais, n'arrivant plus à passer à autre chose, j'en étais ridicule, c'était impressionnant, je répétais non, les livres ne nous regardent pas, tout en me sentant expédiée en pleine catastrophe, ailleurs, butée, serrée, bloquée, dans mon blouson magique, lequel avait sans doute pour moi d'autres impénétrables desseins.  Et ensuite je suis restée muette comme une attardée mentale.  Jusqu'à la fin. (p. 19, iPad iBooks e-edition)

In Claudie Hunzinger's 2014 Prix Medicis-longlisted novel, La langue des oiseaux (The Language of Birds in English), language, that of literature and of life, of nature and humanity, plays a central role in the narrative.  It is the medium through which we express ourselves, giving voice to those myriad emotions and thoughts that daily flow through, out, and over us.  Language is also meditation, through which we manage to filter our experiences, leaving us with manageable impressions.  In La langue des oiseaux, these elements, particularly in regard to literature and the understanding of other cultures and languages, are explored to great effect.

The plot is relatively simple:  a writer, Zsa Zsa, crushed by several literary rejections, decides on one autumn day to flee Paris with only a few books and other belongings.  She goes to live in a secluded wooded area, a hermitage almost, where she reflects on the literature of her life and her triumphs and failures so far.  Yet Zsa Zsa is not completely cut off from civilization; she has internet access and she stumbles across a Japanese immigrant, Sayo, who runs an online boutique of sorts, selling boys' clothes for women.  Their exchanges spark a reaction from Zsa Zsa, leading her to delve further into the "language of birds," that secret idiom through which so many mysteries withheld from more mundane tongues are at least partially revealed.  It is here, in these musings on language and thought, that Hunzinger's narrative is at its strongest.

Well-read readers will recognize several writers who influence Zsa Zsa (and presumably, Hunzinger, since this does have some autobiographical elements, if I understand this tale correctly).  Of particular account is the American poet Emily Dickinson, to whom Zsa Zsa refers several times over the course of the story.  There certainly are traces of her and other writers (including those described above in the excerpted quote) in the narrative, particularly in the way Zsa Zsa views the surrounding nature and its denizens.  Hunzinger, however, does not dwell over long on these reminisces; Zsa Zsa is not a mouthpiece for literary appreciation.  Instead, these literary allusions serve to deepen the tale, making it more than just a chance encounter along the road of solitude.  There is an universal quality to Zsa Zsa's meditations and her later friendship with Sayo.  In their talks about language and meaning, several comments are made that easily could take place between people that we all know.  Like those rare mythological heroes and heroines who can understand the languages of birds and wildlife, we too find ourselves learning new "languages" everyday in order to comprehend better the word around us.

Hunzinger's prose is evocative, as the above quote reveals.  It freely moves between allusion and direct discourse, usually with a good balance between the two.  Voices and shadows.  Books possessing not eyes, but instead voices.  The narrative structure by itself is not terribly inventive, but the way that Hunzinger describes Zsa Zsa and her worldview, how she interacts with Sayo, those enrich the story greatly, adding enough layers for there to be the sense of something profound unfolding, yet not so much that the story feels bogged down by the weight of its own artifices.  La langue des oiseaux is a charming tale that manages to say more in less than 200 print pages than what most "deep" novels manage to express in 400.  Curious to see tomorrow if it'll make the Prix Medicis shortlist.  It certainly is a powerful novel that hopefully will be translated into English in the near future.

Angélica Gorodischer, Palito de naranjo

Para empezar, a las mujeres encarceladas nadie las visita nunca.  A los varones sí, siempre.  Siempre la mujer o la madre, y hasta la hija, pero eso es más raro, va los jueves a las dos de la tarde con paquetes de comida y de ropa, a veces con revistas, a veces con un ejemplar de la Biblia.  Eso es maravilloso, no solo porque una ve una cara conocida y porque siente que a alguien le importa que ella esté en donde está, sino porque la visita significa que el tiempo existe.  Es maravilloso porque entre una visita y otra se escanden las horas, los minutos, los meses.  Si no hay visitas el tiempo es un largo, larguísimo intervalo blanquecino entre dos paréntesis, la vida que se va olvidando y la esperanza que va desapareciendo, convirtiéndose en otra cosa, en algo algodonoso y turbio que reclama que una lo vea y lo toque, y una sabe que no hay que rendirse a la tentación de hacerlo porque si lo hace, si toca eso, nunca va a encontrar no digo consuelo, nunca va a encontrar ni la más mínima tranquilidad, ni el más insignificante jirón de sueño.  Pero si alguien llega de visita, si viene este martes o este jueves y una puede imaginar que va a venir el próximo también, entonces el tiempo existe:  hay horas, hay días, hay espera.  El varón encarelado tiene otro horizonte a la vista y en ese horizonte está escrito «cuando yo salga ella va a estar esperándome».  A una mujer nunca la va a estar esperando alguien.  Y ella lo sabe.  Sabe que el afuera va a ser una prolongación del adentro.  Es posible que piense «aquello era preferible a esto».  Y para seguir, la mujer que está en la cárcel no encuentra nunca alguien con quien hablar.  Y no me refiero a conversaciones ni a confidencias.  Me refiero a palabras que van de una persona a otra.  ¿Ha pensado usted alguna vez que cada palabra que se pronuncia es como un morral o un zurrón que contiene carne y sangre y hueso, historia, intenciones y horror, sobre todo horror?  ¿Ese horror que es el precio que una paga por imaginar lo que de un momento al otra le va a suceder?  ¿Se ha dado cuenta de que las palabras lo traen, al horror, digo; de que las palabras no son solo sonidos ni una letra detrás de la otra sino que cada una contiene un mundo? (p. 29, iPad iBooks e-edition)

Argentine writer Angélica Gorodischer has had several genre careers within her lengthy writing life.  From a SF writer in the 1970s to a fantasy writer in the 1980s to a contemporary fiction writer who focuses on feminism and society for the past two decades, her works, diverse as they are, have a few things in common:  PoV characters who probe deeply into their societies' fault lines and prose that makes these examinations feel not just important, but vital for understanding our own selves and our own places in societies that may or may not be conducive for the lives that we wish to live.  In her just-released novel, Palito de naranjo (Orange Stick in English), Gorodischer utilizes a singular character, Féry, to tell of not just the burdens that the dispossessed experience today, but also the joys that they might experience on the other side of suffering.

Palito de naranjo is dialogue-heavy; almost the entire novel is devoted to the conversations that the aged Féry, who has experienced privation and incarceration, relates to an interviewer.  The stories that Féry has embedded within her comments on her rough life (the lengthy quote above is about the different prison lives that men and women experience; Féry notes the numerous visits that male prisoners receive weekly from female relatives and compares that to the near-non-existent visitors for female prisoners) are fascinating.  Characters appear in one place, living solely through Féry's ability to make them seem alive even when they are present only for a singular moment or sentence before giving way to another.  As Féry talks, the contours of her life comes into greater focus.  The cumulative effect is to present, similar to a finely-detailed mosaic, a life that is fascinating for its experiences and its insights into modern life.

The prose here is nearly pitch-perfect.  A dialogue-heavy novel can be tricky, as the author risks loses the reader's attention can wander if there are not breaks in the conversation and it can become easy to confound which speaker is talking at any given moment.  Yet Gorodischer manages to make this into a vivid character sketch, as Féry's detailed accounts of her life and the people she has come to know works well within the strictures of dialogue description of these others.  As Féry talks, she begins to describe situations and people that are notable despite never speaking of their own accord.  We come to understand Féry more through her descriptions of these fellow travelers than we might have if these characters were presented through direct interactions with Féry in flashback sequences.

There is no single concrete plot here, instead it is through Féry's numerous recollections of her past that we come to see that it is her life, her time as a prostitute and an inmate, that is the plot arc we are following.  We see her at critical points in her life, sometimes in a bitter lamentation over the social inequalities that women experience in all facets of their lives, other times in her reminisces of others in her life, and the crises that she describes (and has largely overcome in her path toward some measure of contentment, if not full happiness) feel real because of the way they are related to us.  There are no lulls to the tale; Féry slowly yet steadily builds toward a solid, moving conclusion.  Palito de naranjo may differ significantly in form and purpose than say Kalpa Imperal or Bajo las jubeas en flor, but it is no less of a significant work than these two older works of Gorodischer's.  Highly recommended for those who are fans of her earlier fictions.

Marco Magini, Come fossi solo (As I was Alone)

Vorrei non dovermi ancora una volta svegliare in mia compagnia.

Mi alzo e mi faccio la barba.

Sono passate le undici e anche stamani non ho salutato i bambini prima che andassero all'asilo.  Mi gira la testa, avanzo incerto verso il bagno che ha un odore chimico di lavanda.

Christine.

Ha affogato nel deodorante l'odore di vomito di ieri sera.  Potesse, darebbe una spruzzatina anche sul resto della nostra vita.  Più la vedo e più mi fa schifo.  Le canzoncine della buonanotte cantate ai bambini, il sup aggiungere caro, tesoro, alla fine di ogni frase, fanno sembrare tutto ancora più sfacciatamente patetico.

Mi gira la testa.  Mi siedo sulla tazza per pisciare in modo da non perdere di nuovo l'equilibrio.  Lo spazzolino, il dopobarba, la crema per il viso:  ogni singolo oggetto si trova esattamente dove si è sempre trovato e dove sempre si troverà.  Mi tiro su:  è solo l'immagine riflessa nello specchio a essere fuori posto in questo cazzo di bagno. (p. 9, iPad iBooks e-edition)

Wars are unsettling mass actions of violence.  They rend, they tear, they shred previously held social conventions.  Neighbors who might differ on how they say a hello or how they worship a divinity suddenly might find themselves taking up arms against each other, trying to annihilate each other in the name of some ideology or religion (or at least that's what they tell each other; the ultimate truth might be more ghastly than these convenient excuses).  Civil wars are perhaps the most odious, because there is really no excuse about other polities threatening them; the violence comes from within and even families might be divided against each other.

Atrocities are the hallmark of war.  They are perhaps its apotheosis.  Massacres and rapes, plundering and pillaging, each of these is a sign and symptom of war's disgusting trail of violence.  It is easy to make the excuse, if one were present, that s/he were powerless to stop it, helpless in the wake of destructive frenzy unleashed upon a populace.  The Endlösung, My Lai, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, Rwanda, Gaza – each of these have had some try to whitewash what has happened, claiming that if an event occurred (therefore trying to remove the indelible violence of hatred's reality), then it was something structural, something that those present could step away from and pretend that it wasn't they themselves, but those others who perpetuated it.  Do not blame them, for they were helpless, these "witnesses" of carnage claim.  We, after all, are not our brothers' (and sisters') keepers.

One particularly sobering example of this denial in the face of genocidal frenzy is Srebenica, where in July 1995, during the height of the Yugoslav wars, an entire Bosniak village of 8-10,000 men and boys was massacred while the UN observers failed to ensure their safety.  It was the worst atrocity of those wars and yet hardly anyone was ever convicted for their roles in this genocide.  Despite the relative silence of the subsequent two decades, Srebenica is a testimony to how people lose their voices when it comes to standing up or even questioning what drives peoples to "cleanse" their regions of others.  In his 2014 Premio Strega-longlisted novel, Come fossi solo (As I was Alone is a possible English translation), Marco Magini explores this issue of silence and almost-involuntary compliance with genocide.  He utilizes three characters, two of whom were present at the time of the massacre, to examine closely the antecedents for the massacre and how its aftermath affected two of the characters. 

Dirk is a Dutch soldier present as part of the UN peacekeeping mission.  He struggles to deal with the situation, trying to piece together how it all fell apart there in July 1995.   Dražen is a soldier of mixed ancestry who joins the Bosnian Serb militia and despite his own ambivalence, he is an active participant in the massacre.  Romeo is a Spanish judge who hears  Dražen's case at The Hague years later and he has to weigh the largely circumstantial evidence against him with other events that took place.  In each of the three men, the complex issues of responsibility and helplessness are examined in great detail.  Magini does an excellent job in developing internal tension in each of his three PoV characters, and by alternating between each of them (Dirk, Romeo, and Dražen in that order), we experience what was seen, what was judged, and why it may have been enacted in the first place.

However, this does not lead to settled conclusions.  Rather, the fuzziness surrounding individual understandings of this atrocity creates a growing sense of unease, as things turn out to be not as simple as one might presume.  Why did Dražen participate in the slaughter?  Not even he himself truly understands.  Magini is very careful to leave doubt open, not to exculpate anyone, but rather to force the reader to consider the true blindness of war rage and how it consumes even its enablers.

The prose for the most part is sharp and penetrating.  Magini often utilizes olfactory descriptors, such as the description of vomit's "deodorant," in order to convey the sickness of the situation.  This leads to a very concrete sort of prose, one that wastes little time in establishing the setting and the character viewpoints.  While there were a few occasions where more exposition could have been employed in order to make the impact even greater, on the whole Come fossi solo was a very good novel that I had hoped would have made the Premio Strega shortlist.  Hopefully there will be an English translation in the near future, as this debut novel appears to herald a new literary talent.

Elisa Ruotolo, Ovunque, proteggici

Lo chiamavano Blacmàn e immediatamente tutti capivano chi fosse.  Prima ancora del nome o di una fama qualsiasi, veniva quell'aspetto da zingaro quale in fondo era, da prestigiatore da quattro soldi:  un uomo con mani grandi abbastanza solo per suonartele, ma non per prendere la vita come si deve.  Blacmàn era lui senza possibilità d'errore, e avrebbe messo quasi paura se non fosse stato anche il tipo ridicolo che sapevo io:  per i suoi centimetri scarsi quanto quelli d'un ragazzo senza sviluppo, i vestiti attillati e a strisce di colore buoni a dare impaccio piú che allegria, i baffi a manubrio tenuti lisci e rigidi come quelli d'un sovrano senza terra, e i capelli a cespuglio, uguali al pelo degli animali che in calore se lo caricano di lappole nei giardini.  Ridicolo, come forse tutti avevano il diritto di credere tranne io, anche se piú di tutti lo pensavo cosí, vergognandomi d'averne preso il sangue e le ossa.

Blacmàn era mio padre.  E da quando ho cominciato a capire, non ho fatto altro che cercare prove e controprove di un'orfanezza, prima nei centimetri che mettevo, poi nella moralità di mia madre. (p. 12, iPad iBooks e-edition)

Italian writer Elisa Ruotolo's 2014 Premio Strega-longlisted title, Ovunque, proteggici (Everywhere, Protect is the translated title), is on its surface a family history/mystery.  Set in the aftermath of World War II, the novel details the search of an man, Lorenzo, for clues into his family's past, especially for his father, who disappeared one day.  While this plot device is rather familiar to readers, Ruotolo does add other elements to it to make it an interesting, worthwhile read.

One strength of Ovunque, proteggici is its ability to take interesting characters and to weave them in and out of the main plot in order to create a fascinating backdrop.  The Girosa family for five generations have striven to make their way in a world that seems to be set against them.  As Lorenzo explores his family's past in order to understand why his father Blacmàn disappeared during World War II, we begin to see how his ancestors' pasts have shaped his life.  From a grandfather who went to America to try to ply a trade and to send remittances home to his father becoming a jester of sorts and his mother a runaway, Lorenzo's family is full of characters who have failed and then started anew, with each permutation of failure and meager success adding to the tale.

With so many fascinating characters, Ruotolo easily could have overwhelmed the plot with flashbacks and backstories.  Yet for the most part, these interesting characters enrich the plot, making Lorenzo's investigation into his father's past more than just another bog standard missing father/family history procedural.  By the time the novel concluded, it felt as though Ruotolo had achieved two seemingly divergent things at once:  an intimate novel that also manages to contain universal appeal to those who did not grow up under the oppressive weight of family history.

Although my Italian is a bit rudimentary, I did find Ruotolo's prose to be relatively easy to follow.  Lorenzo's first-person account of his investigations is concise, never feeling too distant or grandiose for the narrative.  This results in a narrative that flowed smoothly, telling a fascinating story without ever seeming to get in the way of the unfolding tale.  Ovunque, proteggici is a novel that I will likely revisit in years to come, as I am curious to see what else might be revealed on a re-read, as it seems there are depths to it that I failed to explore on my initial read.