Novella November: ‘Reunion’ by Fred Uhlman ****

I have been meaning to read Fred Uhlman’s work for ages, but as with so many things, I hadn’t got around to doing so. It was a ‘currently reading’ status update on my Goodreads feed that prompted me to seek one of Uhlman’s books out. I felt that Reunion, the title which he is best known for, was a great choice to begin with.

Reunion is incredibly short; the Vintage edition which I read comes in at just 74 pages. It includes an introduction by the translator of the English edition, Jean d’Ormesson, and a short afterword by author Rachel Seiffert. D’Ormesson begins his introduction as follows: ‘I remember as if it were yesterday my first encounter, some twenty years ago, with this small volume, brought to my attention by a friend.’ He goes on to write of the ‘literary perfection’ of Reunion. Sadly, he does give quite a lot of the plot away of this very short book.

Reunion begins on a grey afternoon in the German city of Stuttgart, in 1932. Here, a classroom at a prestigious boy’s school is ‘stirred by the arrival of a newcomer’, Konradin von Hohenfels, the son of a Count. Our narrator, a middle-class pupil named Hans Schwarz, is ‘intrigued by the aristocratic new boy’. After some time, the pair embark on ‘a friendship of the greatest kind, of shared interests and long conversations, of hikes in the German hills and growing up together.’ The intense friendship between Hans and Konradin is set against the tumultuous backdrop of 1930s Germany, and the rise of Nazism.

Reunion opens: ‘He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again.’ Hans goes on: ‘I can remember the day and the hour when I first set eyes on this boy who was to be the source of my greatest happiness and of my greatest despair.’ When Konradin is introduced to the class, Hans comments: ‘… our eyes were concentrated on the Newcomer. He stood motionless and composed, without any sign of nervousness or shyness. Somehow he looked older than us and more mature, and it was difficult to believe he was just another new boy.’

We soon learn that before Konradin’s arrival, Hans was friendless. He comments that there was no single boy in his class whom he ‘believed could live up to my romantic ideal of friendship, not one whom I really admired, for whom I would be willing to die and who could have understood my demand for complete trust, loyalty and self-sacrifice.’ Hans is, of course, a Romantic, yearning for meaningful relationships with those around him, and dreaming of a career as a great poet. This can be seen particularly when he describes elements of his early friendship with Konradin. He narrates: ‘I can’t remember much of what Konradin said to me that day or what I said to him. All I know is that we walked up and down for an hour, like two young lovers, still nervous, still afraid of each other…’.

The novella is a Bildungsroman, centered around the friendship, of course, but also the political situation which eventually engulfs Hans. The building of their relationship has been well balanced, and religion, and the rise of Nazism, are well handled. Whilst both are ever-present threats in the story, they do not overshadow the more personal details in Hans’ life. As things begin to change around him, Hans recounts: ‘From outside our magic circle came rumours of political unrest, but the storm-centre was far away – in Berlin, whence clashes were reported between Nazis and Communists. Stuttgart seemed to be as quiet and reasonable as ever.’

There is an element of idolatry here; Hans goes out of his way to please Konradin, and there are moments as the narrative goes on where their friendship feels fraught with inequality and contradictions. The influence of Konradin’s parents, particularly his incredibly vocal anti-Semitic mother, has an impact upon him, of course, and his behaviour and disloyalty feels very disappointing. The novella is so vivid that we can feel Hans’ disappointment and hurt on every page. Uhlman’s prose builds such a realistic picture of Hans, and of his surroundings, that once I’d finished reading, I felt like I’d been with the narrator for a very long time.

Reunion was written in 1960, and although the author biography preceding it stresses that it is ‘not an autobiographical book’, it ‘contains autobiographical elements’. These are specifically about the academic element of the book, the school, teachers, and pupils. They have been based upon the oldest and most famous grammar school in Württemberg, which Uhlman attended. There is also an element of autobiography which can be found in the main character, Hans; he is the son of Jewish parents, and is sent away before the Second World War begins. Uhlman himself, a practicing barrister and an anti-Nazi, was of Jewish descent. He fled Germany for Paris in 1933, before moving to London in 1936, and establishing a career as a painter.

Reunion is an expansive novella, which seems to contain far more than one would expect in such a short story. It evokes so much, despite its brevity, and presents a friendship between two very different boys, which was fated to fail from the outset. Both the story and the translation have been excellently handled, and I very much look forward to picking of another of Uhlman’s books at some point in future.

Novella November: ‘Winter in Sokcho’ by Elisa Shua Dusapin ****

Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho was a highly anticipated read for me. Its young author was raised in Paris, Seoul, and Switzerland, and chose to set her first novella – just 154 pages of rather large writing – in South Korea. It was subsequently awarded with the Prix Robert Walser, which celebrates first novels, and the Prix Régine-Deforges. Originally written in French, Winter in Sokcho has been quite brilliantly translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, a prize-winning translator.

Sokcho is a popular summer destination, located on the coast of South Korea. North Korea is just sixty kilometres away, and the beach in Sokcho is ‘scarred’ with electric barbed wire fencing. Despite its draw in warmer weather, in the winter, Sokcho is a very different place, bleak, and largely devoid of tourists.

Here, one January, a young French-Korean woman, a recent graduate, is working as a receptionist in a guesthouse. One evening, ‘an unexpected guest arrives: a French graphic novelist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.’ The pair form what becomes an ‘uneasy’ relationship, and the receptionist eventually accepts an invitation to discover the “authentic” Korea with him. The relationship between the two is strained, and sometimes awkward, but they share intimate fragments of themselves.

The story is narrated throughout by our unnamed receptionist. She has a sense of being somewhat lost; although she studied for her degree in a large city, she has returned to Sokcho, where she grew up and where her mother lives, as she does not quite know in which direction she wants her life to go. In Sokcho, where there are few opportunities, she is regarded as an oddity, as something almost of an outsider, due to her parentage: ‘My French origins were still a source of gossip even though it was twenty-three years since my father had seduced my mother and then vanished without a trace.’

She meets the mysterious visitor, Yan Kerrand, very early on, recalling that when he entered the guesthouse, ‘He put his suitcase down at my feet and pulled off his hat. Western face. Dark eyes. Hair combed to one side. He looked straight through me, without seeing me.’ Later, when Dusapin describes the process of his drawing, she captures movement with such skill: ‘He finished the background in pencil and took up his pen to give her eyes. The woman sat up. Straight-backed. Hair swept back. The chin awaiting a mouth. Kerrand’s breath came faster and faster, in time with the strokes of his pen, until a set of white teeth exploded into laughter on the page.’

There is a lot of attention to detail here, and a focus on the most intimate of bodily processes; when our narrator stays overnight with her mother, for instance, and finds that she cannot sleep due to her mother’s snoring, she says: ‘I counted the drops of saliva leaking out one by one from her parted lips and onto my skin.’ Dusapin also focuses a spotlight on the troubling trend of plastic surgery in South Korea, through the lens of the narrator’s boyfriend, Jun-oh. Just before he travels to a modelling agency in Seoul for an interview, the following happens: ‘He stood up, checked himself out in the mirror, said he didn’t think they’d expect him to have surgery, but if they did, he was prepared to have his nose, chin and eyes done… Clinics were offering deals, by the way, I should look into it, he’d bring me some brochures for facial surgery… Everyone had things they could improve, he said.’

Winter in Sokcho is described as ‘a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation’. I found it to be all of these things, and more. There is a melancholy, a tension which suffuses every page. I particularly admired the way in which Dusapin does not glorify or romanticise the town in any way; she shows it in all of its wretchedness and poverty. The image portrayed of this area of South Korea is stark; it is gritty rather than pretty, and filled to the brim with ‘cardboard boxes, plastic waste, blue metal sheets. No urban sprawl.’ Our narrator, when asked what living in Sokcho is like, thinks the following: ‘He’d never understand what Sokcho was like. You had to be born here, live through the winters. The smells, the octopus. The isolation.’

Dusapin’s descriptions are almost palpable, and she considers the senses throughout; the sights, the smells, and the sounds in equal measure. I found some of her imagery rather haunting; for instance, ‘On the beach, snow was melting on the sand in a sheet of sunlight. I thought I saw the outline of a man hunched over in a wool coat, like a willow in the wind. / There was no one there.’ There is an almost otherworldly feel to Winter in Sokcho at times, despite it being grounded in the realism of a rundown town in winter.

Winter in Sokcho is an excellent, and sometimes sharp novella, which I found highly revealing. I admired so much about it, from the author’s turns of phrase, to the way in which Abbas Higgins retained so many of the cultural markers in her translation. This is a very strong and memorable work of fiction, and I cannot wait until more of Dusapin’s work is available in English.

Novella November: Three Novellas in Translation

Whilst reading as many novellas as I could get my hands on for this Novella November celebration, I came across a few titles which were fine, but which I didn’t want to write a full review of. Rather than leave my thoughts solely in my notebook, I wanted to group together three books in translation. These might end up being just what you’re looking for in your reading life, and I do hope that you find something of interest here.

The Tiger and the Acrobat by Susanna Tamaro; translated from the Italian by Nicoleugenia Prezzavento and Vicki Satlow

The Tiger and the Acrobat is one of those animal-focused fables, which have enjoyed popularity in recent years, and have been translated into many languages. In the vein of the Korean The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-mi Hwang, and the Japanese The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, I liked this well enough, but found parts of it rather repetitive and overdone.

The focus of this story is named Little Tiger. As a cub, in the region between the taiga and the Arctic tundra, she lives with her protective mother and playful brother. From the first, Little Tiger is highly philosophical, and wants nothing more than to ‘discover her own place’ within the world. This comes when her mother decides the cubs are old enough to fend for themselves, and sets off alone. Little Tiger tries to follow her, but cannot find her trail; instead, she starts to head east. She befriends a couple of humans along the way, who allow her to live with them, or help her to escape.

The Tiger and the Acrobat was rather mawkish in places, and I must say that I really disliked the way in which Little Tiger could communicate with humans. I didn’t think this was necessary, and it really added an element to the story which I was unable to suspend my disbelief for. The story is undoubtedly easy to read, with its very short chapters and rather simplistic prose, but I’m not sure that I got much from it overall. The plot is sometimes contradictory, and a little inconsistent, and it does feel a little too obvious most of the time.

The Little French Recipe Book by Jacky Durand; translated from the French by Sarah Robertson

I love France, and have really missed being able to travel there regularly over the last couple of years. Whenever I visit my local library, or – more rarely – find myself in a bookshop, I always find myself drawn to titles either set in France, or originally written in French. This led to me picking up Liberation journalist Jacky Durand’s debut, The Little French Recipe Book. And, for me, something which is just as good as French books? French food.

Our protagonist here is Julien. For thirty years, he was wondered why his mother abruptly walked out on him, leaving him with his standoffish chef father. In the present day, in the east of France, his father is dying from advanced cancer, and has been in hospital for six months. He passes away early in the narrative, which then shifts to Julien’s childhood and teenage years.

I liked the way in which so much of Durand’s writing was focused upon food, and I found his descriptions quite evocative, and hunger-inducing. The characters, though, were rather flat on the whole, and I found Julien wholly unlikeable. The book was not overly compelling in my opinion, and the mystery element – the notebook which his father filled with recipes, and which Julien so coveted – was rather disappointing in its denouement. This isn’t a bad novella by any means, and I would recommend it if you too are interested in culinary delights, but I’m not sure I’d seek out any of Durand’s books in future.

The Doll by Ismail Kadare; translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson

Ismail Kadare’s The Doll feels, in part, like a work of autobiography rather than fiction. The main character in the book has the same name as the author, and the story itself is rooted in Kadare’s Albanian homeland, in the Gjirokastër region, and later in the capital, Tirana. Subtitled ‘A Portrait of My Mother’, The Doll focuses mainly upon the narrator’s rather fascinating, and tiny, mother.

I enjoyed some of the writing here, particularly those sentences which tried to describe the enigma of the mother. Kadare writes, for instance, ‘Lightness. The wooden stairs of the house, usually so sensitive, never creaked under her feet. Like her steps, everything about her was light – her clothes, her speech, her sighs.’ He later describes her ‘fragility’ as something akin to ‘paper or plaster of Paris’. Another area of interest for me here was the inclusion of so many Albanian customs, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading about.

The Kadare of the story is open about his relationship with his mother, and the effects which they have upon one another. Whilst I found The Doll relatively interesting on the whole, I did feel as though the storyline began to wane somewhat at around the halfway mark. I did not know in which direction the story would go, but it did not really keep me guessing, and I can’t say that I was blown away by it. I would like to read more of Kadare’s books in future, but I must say that I didn’t like this anywhere near as much as Broken April, which I read back in 2018. I would, however, recommend this short volume if you’re looking for something a little different to read, which is steeped in another culture.

‘Inlands’ by Elin Willows ****

Translated from the Swedish by Duncan J. Lewis

I have such a deep interest in all things Scandinavian, and try to ensure that I read as many Scandi books as I can get my hands on. I was intrigued by Elin Willows’ Inlands as soon as I spotted its striking pastel cover, and ended up ordering myself a copy online. The novel was first published in Sweden in 2018, and translated into English by Duncan J. Lewis in 2019. The lovely edition which I read was published by Nordisk Books, a relatively new, and immensely exciting, publishing house, which was founded in 2016.

Inlands centres on a young, unnamed woman, who moves from bustling Stockholm to Sweden’s ‘inlands’, to a small village in the far north to live where her boyfriend comes from. Of her choice, she comments: ‘In both places, there’s equal surprise. Not over the fact that I want to live with him, but that I’m the one moving to him. Everyone wonders why we don’t do it the other way around. Why he doesn’t move to me. The people I’m moving away from don’t know where I’m going. No one has been here. Where I’m moving to, they’re also surprised. Why am I leaving that which I’m leaving, for this?’

Her boyfriend, also unnamed, drives down to Stockholm to pick her up, but as soon as they arrive in the north of the country, both are aware that their relationship has irrevocably ended. Rather than return to the place which she knows so well, she makes the decision to stay, reasoning that her plan was to live in the village anyway. She quickly finds a job in a large grocery store, and even after she has been there for a year or two, is constantly aware – and is made aware – that she is an outsider. Regardless, she finds a kind of peace in the area, something which was missing from her city life: ‘I stay in the village. There’s no anxiety here. No one I need to be anxious about. I’ve got myself. I avoid a lot of emotions by being here.’

There are mundane moments throughout, many of which revolve around the narrator’s work and home life. She does not do that much; she spends whole stretches of days indoors, eating poorly, and wearing jogging bottoms. Willows has balanced this with real poignancy though; for instance, when she tells us: ‘I see the Northern Lights for the first time one evening when I’ve just started to get used to the loneliness.’

Inlands is incredibly readable, and its translation has been expertly handled. The novel is comprised of short chapters, and a relatively fragmented narrative, something which I very much enjoy in contemporary fiction. It will not be for everyone, but I loved the way in which the story slotted together over time.

The narrator’s voice is expansive, earnest, and sometimes raw. Inlands is a character study, essentially, which displays the innermost thoughts and impacts of a changed, and changing, life, when our narrator is transplanted by a city to a very quiet new place a thousand kilometres away. I admired the way in which Willows discusses, at points throughout, the dislocation of self which her protagonist feels: ‘The world seems so disconnected from my life now. My two lives, completely separated, connected only by the fact that I live in both of them. I think about my old life in a large city as a vacuum that I can still go into, but when I’m there, my current life becomes strange and unreachable.’ There is so much to consider here, and I felt almost bereft when I reached the end of this beautifully melancholy book; it was one which I did not want to put down, and was so absorbed by.

Two Novellas in Translation

I have decided to group together two novels in translation which I have read of late. They are quite different, but I thoroughly enjoyed both. I would highly recommend them if you’re looking for something relatively quick to get through, but which will linger in the mind for a long while afterwards.

Gratitude by Delphine de Vigan (translated from the French by George Miller) ****

On the face of it, Gratitude seems short, and relatively straightforward. The centre of the novel is Michka Seld, a woman who is getting older, and beginning to need help. At first, we see her in her own apartment, but as she begins to lose her speech, and cannot cope as well independently, she is moved into a home. Here, as is often the case, she begins to deteriorate rapidly. We meet two characters who circle around her – Marie, who lived in the same apartment block as Michka when she was a child, and Jerôme, the speech therapist who works with her every week.

I have read all of Delphine de Vigan’s books currently available in English translation, and have been impressed by each of them. She is an author who always surprises me with her clarity, and her understanding of the human psyche. Her characters are realistic, as are their interactions; her novels feel almost like one is watching a scene unfold in a film, so clear are they. Michka has a credible and believable backstory, which unfolded perfectly, and added another level of heartbreak into Gratitude.

The translation by George Miller is faultless, and many of the sentences ooze with beauty and anguish. Michka relates: ‘… I had a dream and all the words were there… Everything was as simple as it used to be and it was so joyful, so nice, you know. It makes me so tired, always hunting, hunting, hunting. It’s exhausting. It’s draining.’ Throughout, de Vigan balances sensitivity and understanding, and the different perspectives which she has used work effectively. Despite the brevity of the book, de Vigan tackles a lot of important issues, many of which really made me stop to consider. Gratitude is really moving, and although it can easily be read in a single setting, its characters and ideas are sure to stay with you for weeks afterwards.

The Faces by Tove Ditlevsen (translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally)

I read Tove Ditlevsen’s earliest volumes of memoir, Childhood and Youth back in 2013, and am so pleased to see that they have recently been reissued – along with Dependency, the last in the trilogy – by Penguin. They have also, quite wonderfully, published Ditlevsen’s novella, The Faces, which has been translated from its original Danish by Tiina Nunnally.

The subject matter of Faces is troubling, dealing as it does with a mother of three who is spiralling into insanity. Lise, a children’s book author, becomes ‘increasingly haunted by disembodied faces and voices’ as the novella moves forward, and is moved into an institution; here, her symptoms become worse, and the narrative is often more difficult to read. Books of this kind, in general, fascinate me, particularly as I have studied literary depictions of ‘hysteria’ and madness at length. The blurring between the real and imagined is so clever, and the hallucinations which Lise suffers are startling. Ditlevsen writes with care about Lise’s belief that she is sane, and that everyone around her is afflicted with madness.

Faces is beguiling, with a wonderful writing style that immediately appealed to me. As befits content of this kind, Ditlevsen’s writing is strange and unsettling, almost ethereal. The translation has been handled wonderfully, and there is an excellent fluidity to the whole. We are really given a feel for Lise’s tumultuous thoughts, and her struggle to exist. Faces is a sharp novella, highly visceral in what it reveals, and exquisitely searching in its quest to reveal its unsettled protagonist.

‘Maman, What Are We Called Now?’ by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar *****

Persephone Books are a real treat for me. I love that moment when I open one of their beautiful dove grey covers for the first time, and always take a moment to admire the undoubtedly beautiful endpapers, before embarking on a story which I’m always certain I will enjoy. I was lucky enough to be able to reserve a copy of Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar’s Maman, What Are We Called Now? from my local library, as it’s a copy I’ve had difficulty picking up elsewhere.

Maman, What Are We Called Now? collects together a short journal and articles written by Paris resident, Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar, during the Second World War, and directly afterwards. First published in its original French in 1957, and in English in this translation by Francine Yorke in 2015, the book is the 115th title on the Persephone list. It also includes a long, and highly informative preface written by biographer Caroline Moorehead, in which she provides a lot of information about both their families, and their backgrounds. I really appreciated both the specific context, and the personal details which she gives; they certainly add to the whole.

Mesnil-Amar’s original journal was written between July and August 1944, and begun on the day she learnt that her husband was missing. Moorehead contextualises this well, commenting: ‘In the last frenzied weeks of the German occupation of Paris her husband André had disappeared. She wanted to record her thoughts, her fears, her desperate hopes, her memories, along with a description of Paris itself… When she abandoned her diary, five weeks later, Paris was free and André, miraculously, was alive.’

Both Jacqueline and André were Jewish, but were ‘totally assimilated’, seeing themselves as French citizens first, and Jewish second. André joined the Jewish resistance, which had begun in Warsaw in 1942. After being tricked by the Gestapo, he was sent to Auschwitz on the last deportation train, on the 17th of August 1944. Astonishingly, he managed to escape from the moving train, and walked the 50 kilometres back to Paris. After being reunited with his wife and young daughter Sylvie, he and Jacqueline helped to set up a vital network of information for deported Jews, helping them to locate their families after the Holocaust.

Throughout Mesnil-Amar’s heartrending journal, the reader is made party to her extreme anxiety, uncertainty, and grief. On the 25th of July, just a week after André’s disappearance, Mesnil-Amar writes: ‘I was straining to hear the slightest sound, longing for the familiar rapid footsteps outside the door, bur they never came. A thousand times I thought I’d heard one of the sounds that are so much a part of the man I love – the jangle of his keys, the click of the door handle, his little smoker’s cough, the rustle of a newspaper – and the sound of his cheerful voice calling out his pet name for me from the other end of the flat. But nothing. Complete silence. Always the same all-enveloping silence we endured after the others were arrested.’ On the same day, she writes of the clash of information which she has been given by others: ‘Everything just adds to the confusion and the horror, it’s all black and shadowy… I will sell my rings, I will sell my soul, I will sell my life, but I can’t believe even that would be enough.’

Throughout the journal portion of Maman, What Are We Called Now?, Mesnil-Amar lays her panic and vulnerability bare. She writes briefly of members of her family, all of whom are in hiding across the city. She writes, sometimes at length, of the incredibly brave and selfless people around her, and how they have provided herself and Sylvie with help, and with hope. She addresses sections of her journal directly to André, and these are fervent and sincere.

Something which she comes to realise is the disconnect which her husband’s disappearance creates. On the 26th of July, Mesnil-Amar reflects: ‘This endless walk took me through every part of Paris, so many different cities, each one a part of me, my avenues, my streets, the loveliest and the ugliest, the oldest and the newest, and I walked with my eyes half-closed, all of a sudden a stranger in my own city, separated from it by my grief and yet forever bound to it.’ She questions her faith, wondering whether she does believe in God: ‘Not every day, alas. And especially not every night… I no longer know who or what to hold on to, what god, what human face, which of the values that used to give meaning to my life.’

Under the rather lovely pen name of Delphine, Jacqueline contributed articles, theatre reviews, and ‘light-hearted sketches of society life’ to various magazines. After the war, the tone and topics of her writing, unsurprisingly, shifted. Moorehead notes that in these later articles, ‘the light-hearted Delphine of the pre-war years had been replaced by a more serious, sadder figure.’ One can notice a shift in tone even between the journal and the articles written afterwards; there is a gaping sadness, and a despair which is almost palpable. Both her prose and the translation are fluid and beautiful, and throughout, Jacqueline is astute and highly observant of everything around her. She questions herself relentlessly about why people were resigned to standing by and watching, as the whole of Europe was decimated, and much of its Jewish population was murdered before their very eyes.

I always feel incredibly grateful when I come to read a diary, particularly one as illuminating as Mesnil-Amar’s. For me, they provide, by far, the best insight into the author’s present. They record details which may otherwise be lost to the annals of history, or perhaps might not be picked up by future historians. Maman, What Are We Called Now? – something which Mesnil-Amar’s daughter asked her, picking up as she did on the grip of Nazi Germany, and the deportation of friends – is such an important document, and one which is an absolute privilege to read.

‘Grey Souls’ by Philippe Claudel ****

French author Philippe Claudel’s Grey Souls had been languishing on one of my many to-read lists for years before I thought to check my local library for a copy.  The novel won the Prix Renaudot in France, and has been praised variously as having a ‘heart-gripping, melancholic beauty’ (Independent), and using ‘magnificent’ language (Le Parisien).  First published in 2003, Grey Souls, which is the opening volume in a loosely-connected war trilogy, has been translated into English by Hoyt Rogers.

Grey Souls is set in northern France, a region which I personally know very well, in December 1917.  The small town of ‘V’, in which the entirety of the novel takes place, is close to the Front.  Here, towards the end of the First World War, ‘any lingering sense of normality is destroyed with the discovery of a strangled ten-year-old girl in the freezing canal.’  A deserter from the army is conveniently convicted of her murder, and is subsequently executed.  Years later, however, ‘struggling with the tragedies and demons of his own past, the narrator is still trying to make sense of these events.’

The opening of Grey Souls sets up the unnamed narrator’s quest immediately: ‘It’s very difficult to find the beginning.  So much time has gone by that words will never bring back – and the faces too, the smiles, the wounds.  Even so, I must try.  I have to cut open the belly of the mystery and stick my hands deep inside, even if none of that will change a thing.’  He tells us that he once worked as a policeman, and is now retired.

At the outset, the narrator describes the moment at which the child’s body was found: ‘Lying on the ground, a ten-year-old’s body seems even smaller, especially when it’s saturated with winter water…  She looked like a fairy-tale princess with her eyelids blanched and lips turned blue, her hair entangled with the grass, withered brown by morning frosts.  Her little hands had clutched at emptiness.’  This is just one example of how rich and effective Claudel’s descriptions are.  Another which struck me is the description of the nearby battle, which the town of ‘V’ is shielded by: ‘By the grace of the hill we managed to dodge it, despite the smells and noises it threw our way…  The war mounted its stylish performances behind the hill, on the other side, in a world that wasn’t even ours – in other words, nowhere.  We refused to be its audience.  We made of the war the stuff of legend, and so we were able to live with it.’

The narrative in Grey Souls moves quickly, pivoting from one year to another at will.  We learn, by turns, of the rather cynical narrator’s past, as well as that of his father.  The mystery element of the novel is also tied in, and returned to time and again.  ‘All this must seem a muddle, back and forth in time,’ the narrator explains, ‘but in fact it’s the very image of my life, made of nothing but jagged bits and pieces, impossible to stick back together.’  There is rather a cold, odd aspect to the narration, which culminates in paragraphs such as the following: ‘Words were never easy for me.  I hardly used them when I was still alive.  If I write as if I’m a dead man, or a matter of fact, that is true, true as true can be.  For a long time I’ve felt like one, just keeping up a pretence of living for a while longer.  I’m serving a suspended sentence, you might say.’

Grey Souls is a slim novel, but it is filled to the brim with intrigue and atmosphere.  The prose is absorbing, and the pace works well.  At its core, this is a mystery novel, but in reality, it feels like much more than that.  A lot of sadness and emotion is packed into Grey Souls, and the plotting adds intrigue to the story.  Claudel hints at occurrences throughout, but we only learn about them in their entirety much later.  This is a very good novel indeed, and I will certainly continue with the rest of the series at some point.

‘The Mystery of Henri Pick’ by David Foenkinos ****

I read French author David Foenkinos’ engaging novella, Charlotte, several years ago, and whilst I intended to pick up more of his work in the interim, I somehow never got around to doing so.  The Mystery of Henri Pick, freshly translated into English, sounded like an interesting literary romp, and the fact that it is part of a new ‘Walter Presents’ series at Pushkin Press intrigued me further.

In the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library becomes home to a myriad of manuscripts, all of which were rejected for publication.  It is based on an idea of Richard Brautigan’s, and is a ‘French version of the library of rejects’ which appears in one of his novels.  This library came to fruition in Foenkinos’ novel through the character of Gourvec, whom we meet at the beginning of the story.  It is difficult not to warm to him immediately: ‘According to him, it was not a question of liking or not liking to read, but of finding the book which was meant for you…  For this purpose, he had developed a method that might appear almost paranormal: he would examine each reader’s physical appearance in order to work out which author they needed.’

When Gourvec began to collect rejected manuscripts, he found his idea a popular one: ‘Many people made the journey.  Writers came from all over France to rid themselves of the fruits of their failure.  It was a sort of literary pilgrimage.’  His single stipulation was that the manuscripts had to be delivered in person, and only then would they be added to the growing collection on the shelves at the back of the library.

Protagonist Delphine Despero, who works at a publishing house in Paris, chooses to spend her holiday in the small Breton town.  She is thrilled to discover a story which she loves in said library, and decides to ready it for publication.  The Last Hours of a Love Affair has purportedly been written by a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon, named Henri Pick.  The book, of course, becomes a sensation.  The delighted audience, however, soon wonders how such a man could have written such a magnificent book, and suspect a hoax.  In steps journalist Jean-Michel Rouche, who is determined to investigate the mystery.

Some of the other manuscripts housed in the library sound fascinating, and were they real, they would be added straight onto my to-read list.  These include a ‘cookery book compiling every meal eaten in Dostoevsky’s novels’.  An erotic guide to raw fish, entitled Masturbation and Sushi, not so much.

There is a lot of depth here, particularly with regard to the relationships between characters, and to the keeping of secrets.  Foenkinos gives rather thorough backstories to each of these characters, and these are just as detailed as those in the present day.  Even in translation, The Mystery of Henri Pick feels stylistically very French, and has the same delightful feel to it as novels by Muriel Barbery, and A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé.  It is not as quirky as some French novels which I have read of late, but it is thoroughly engrossing from beginning to end, and every element within it has been so well handled.  The translation feels seamless.

The Mystery of Henri Pick, which was first published in its original French in 2016, and in English in 2020, is a novel well worth picking up.  It has humour and tenderness in abundance, and muses constantly about the power which books have in our lives.  Foenkinos makes use of short chapters and sections to follow different characters, all of whom eventually intersect.  The author is sensitive and understanding of his cast, all of whom are going through different things, some of which are tumultuous.  The Mystery of Henri Pick is easy to read, and highly memorable; I, for one, am still thinking about it weeks after finishing the book.

One From the Archive: ‘Kamchatka’ by Marcelo Figueras ****

First published in 2018.

Marcelo Figueras’ Kamchatka, which is set in Argentina, was the final South American book of my Around the World in 80 Books challenge.  Kamchatka, which has been translated from its original Spanish by Frank Wynne, is a coming of age story which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Kamchatka was a novel which I have never seen reviewed on blogs or Goodreads, and was so intrigued by the storyline that I did not consider any other books set in Argentina for my challenge.  It seems to have slipped beneath the radar somewhat.  Regardless, there are many positive reviews which adorn the paperback copy of the novel.  In her review in The Times, for instance, Kate Saunders says that ‘Figueras writes with power and insight about the ways in which a child uses imagination to make sense of a terrifying and baffling reality.’  The Financial Times call it ‘brilliantly observed’ and ‘heartbreaking’.

Kamchatka follows ten-year-old Harry, whose name is a false one he has to adopt after his family are forced to flee, calling himself after Harry Houdini, an obsession of his.  Harry, whose world is made up of make-believe and superheroes, lives in Buenos Aires during the 1976 coup d’etat.  His father leaves the family – Harry, his mother, and his younger brother, who calls himself Simon – at a petrol station on the outskirts of the city: ‘He kissed me, his stubble scratching my cheek, then climbed into the Citroen.  The car moved off along the undulating ribbon of road, a green bubble bobbing into view with every hill, getting smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see it any more.  I stood there for a long while, my game of Risk tucked under my arm.  Until my abuelo, my grandpa, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Let’s go home.”‘

Figueras uses short chapters to tell Harry’s story, and this structure works well.  We are given a myriad of memories, which are not ordered chronologically, but which help to build a full picture, both of our protagonist and the conditions in which he is living under.

Kamchatka is often profound, particularly in those instances where Figueras discusses our growth as people in the most beautiful and thoughtful ways: ‘Who I have been, who I am, who I will be are all in continual conversation, each influencing the other.  That my past and my present together determine my future sounds like a fundamental truth, but I suspect that my future joins forces with the present to do the same thing to my past.’  Figueras also talks at length about childhood, and the way in which young people view what is around them, and what they are familiar with, as the entire world: ‘When you’re a kid, the world can be bounded in a nutshell.  In geographical terms, a child’s universe is a space that comprises home, school and – possibly – the neighbourhood where your cousins or your grandparents live.  In my case, the universe sat comfortably within a small area of Flores that ran from the junction of Bayoca and Arellaneda (my house), to the Plaza Flores (my school).’

Figueras has a wonderful way of being able to interpret different occurrences, particularly with regard to the political unrest in Argentina, through a child’s eyes: ‘When the coup d’etat came, in 1976, a few days before school started, I knew straight away that things were going to get ugly.  The new president had a peaked cap and a huge moustache; you could tel from his face that he was a bad guy.’  Kamchatka is a rich and thought-provoking novel, which offers an interesting and fully-developed perspective on one of the most defining periods of recent history in Argentina.

Purchase from The Book Depository

‘The Five Wonders of the Danube’ by Zoran Živković

To all those of you who are well versed in translated fiction, Zoran Živković might be a familiar name, as he is one of the most translated and acclaimed contemporary Serbian authors. If you have never heard his name or read any of his works before (let’s not really talk about all the underrepresented non-English speaking authors now…), let me talk to you about one of his books that was my personal introduction to his oeuvre, and which also made it to the list of my Most Memorable Books of 2019.

Translated into English by Alice Copple-Tošić and published by Cadmus Press, The Five Wonders of Danube consists of five chapters, each one taking place in or around a different bridge of the Danube river.

Although each story has a different set of characters and appears separate from all the others, they all very cleverly come together at the end. All five stories have surreal and often absurd elements that make Živković’s prose so interesting and unique. Apart from an academic, the author is also an art enthusiast, something which is apparent in all of the stories.

For example, in the first story, titled ‘First Wonder: Black Bridge, Regensburg’, an enormous painting mysteriously and unexplainably appears on the Black Bridge, causing a big uproar since the passersby and the police alike are trying to solve the mystery of how it got hung up there without anyone noticing a thing. In ‘Second Wonder: Yellow Bridge, Vienna’, the longest story of the bunch, five unconnected people are going their own ways on the bridge, when they happen to stop short on their tracks at exactly the same time. Two artistic homeless people are the stars of the ‘Third Wonder: Red Bridge, Bratislava’, my personal favourite of the stories. One of them is an avid Dostoyevski reader and an aspiring writer himself, while the other one adeptly carves figures out of wood, when the fire of their inspiration turns into an actual fire that engulfs their minimal belongings.

In ‘Fourth Wonder: White Bridge, Budapest’, a famous composer looks back on the incidents that have led him to write his most acclaimed masterpieces, and very shockingly realises that death eerily plays a big part in his creative process (not in the way that you might think, though). Lastly, the ‘Fifth Wonder: Blue Bridge, Novi Sad’, is perhaps the strangest and most surreal out of all the stories, but it ties some loose ends together and sort of makes a full circle back to the first story.

While Živković might deal with some rather heavy themes such as suicide, homelessness and death, his writing style is infused with such wit and clever humour that it becomes a fun and whimsical reading experience that truly makes the reader ponder.

The surreal elements might sometimes get a bit overwhelming for those who are not very familiar with reading such stories steeped in the absurd, as many things do not make much sense until later on in the book. What I personally loved was how the bridges turned into a (sometimes metaphorical) portal of some sort, where things (the painting in the first story) and even people (the characters in the second story) are transported almost magically. Unexplained and absurd things take place on those bridges, turning Danube and its banks into a liminal space of wonder where everything is possible although eerily unexplainable.

My first contact with Živković’s work was definitely a very pleasant one and I’m very much looking forward to experiencing more of his works. In my opinion, The Five Wonders of Danube is a great introduction to his whimsical writing, and I do hope more people get to discover the magic quality of his pen.

Have you read any books by Zoran Živković before? If yes, what did you think of them and which one is your favourite? Feel free to share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below 🙂

A copy of this book was very kindly provided to me by the publisher, Cadmus Press.