Affections – Rodrigo Hasbún trans. Sophie Hughes

I’ve just spent a tense couple of days with this book.  Tension is definitely the overriding emotion I take from this compact family saga.  I’m not very good with any sort of familial stress – I don’t cope too well with it, so the tensions between the three sisters in this story and the strain between each of them and their father as well as the mounting political hostility in revolutionary Bolivia, put me on edge.

Hasbún’s fictional account of the Ertl family’s experiences in La Paz, Bolivia isn’t a rip-roaring adventure tale, although they are not a straightforward family by any means, instead he tells their less than ordinary story with an understated air of something falling apart until it’s beyond repair.  German Hans Ertl was a explorer and legendary cameraman, famed for filming Nazi propaganda with Leni Riefenstahl.  He fled Germany after the war.  This book starts shortly after his wife and daughters join him in South America in the early 1950s.  Hasbún chronicles their individual stories and a basic history of revolution in Bolivia through a series of commentaries and accounts told by various characters in and around the family.  As the book progresses it is clear that eldest daughter Monika’s radicalisation and involvement in the Marxist guerrilla movement still just about intact and operating in difficult conditions post Che Guevara’s capture, torture and murder, is central to the story and ultimately the fate of the family.  Monika’s experiences when accompanying her father on a filming expedition in the jungle and her failed marriage into an old German mining family, part of the rising Bolivian expat elite, drive her underground and earns her the title of “Che Guevara’s avenger.”

This is fiction short on factual explanations of the Ertl family’s back story.  There is also no information relating to South American politics or the reasons for the rise in post-war Marxist revolutions and guerrilla skirmishes in countries like Bolivia.  Hasbún does not expand on Cuban and Russian involvement in funding and training radicals, nor does he elaborate on the CIA bankrolling hit squads and far reaching spy networks to stamp out any sign of communism in South America.  I had to do my own background reading to fill in some gaps.  If you like your fiction complete with every factual detail ticked off, you may find this book frustrating.  It’s not Hasbún’s intention to give us a history lesson.  What his narrative suggests and the structure of this novel alludes to is a family never quite unified and now in free-fall.  The eventual geographic dislocation of the Ertl family members and the gaping differences in their values mirrors the national political turmoil and divisions amongst Bolivia’s people.

This is a book about being an outsider; an outsider in your birth country, an outsider in your adopted country and an outsider in your own family.   What Hasbún does so brilliantly is expose how the family members are never quite accepted in their chosen employment or choice of home and cause. On page 13 alone there are two sentences demonstrating two types of isolation:

“La Paz wasn’t so bad, but it was chaotic and we would never stop being outsiders, people from another world: an old, cold world.”

“With her recurring panic attacks she had somehow managed to wangle it so that everything revolved around her even more than before, and Trixi and I had to resign ourselves to being minor characters, a bit like Mama in relation to Papa.”

Hasbún deftly highlights the extremes of values and morals in one family unit by drawing the readers attention to Monika’s actions as antithesis to her father’s notoriety as they act in polar opposite political systems.  There are also flashes of violence and gore, nothing too extreme and often mentioned in passing, just to remind us how tough, dangerous and perilous it is to fight for your cause.  And we don’t only witness conflict on a macro level, Hasbrún also shows us internal strife.  Monika is only one of several conflicted characters; showing utter disdain for her father and what he stands for while idolising him and desperate for his approval.  In such a short narrative he’s invaded our consciousness with all of this information.  Clever.

If you are interested in stories about how our actions affect the lives of others and how those actions can ripple through time or stories about how family members can have opposing values despite having the same experiences or fiction based on fact where not every detail is set out for you so you can investigate further at your leisure, then I absolutely recommend this book to you.  It’s an elegantly put together family chronicle and beautifully translated.  I found it fascinating and a pleasure to read, despite the family tensions putting me on edge.

 

Tony has tipped this book for The Man International Booker Prize long list

Stu is currently doing a Pushkin Press fortnight – check out his blog for loads of great translated fiction

Grant has reviewed this book too

So has Jacqui

A Whole Life – Robert Seethaler trans. Charlotte Collins

With a title like A Whole Life you’d be forgiven for expecting a much longer book.  It’s the economy of Seethaler’s prose that allows him to fit so much into so few pages (149), and what a beautifully quiet story it is.  Reminiscent in sentiment and pace of that ever popular Williams classic Stoner and comparable in content and tone to Train Dreams by Denis Johnson with a similar seam of sadness weaving through the prose, this is a restrained and unpretentious piece of fiction.

Forest and mountain man Andreas Egger’s life is the one we follow through this miniature epic.  Starting with his attempt to rescue an almost dead local goatherd, Seethaler returns to reveal the beginning and then the rest of Egger’s life with such a deftness and lightness of touch that you almost don’t realise you are reading, it feels as though the story is being orally related, like an old friend is acquainting you with the relatively uneventful tale of a mountain dwelling loner.  And here’s the thing with this book; other than a devastating avalanche and a period of internment in Russia during the war nothing much else of earth shattering consequence happens.  Yet the landscape descriptions and mountain village life portrayed in these pages draws the reader in more than many blockbusting tomes can.

There is also something slightly mystical and ethereal about parts of this book, particularly near the end, which made me think deeply about what it must be like to be old, alone and sometimes confused, how it would be very likely and understandable to start hearing and seeing ghosts from your past.

After living through Egger’s life with him, his choice of retirement abode is unsurprising if a little unorthodox, but absolutely the right place for him to spend his remaining days.  His ending befits his life, and for this I was grateful to Seethaler for not writing Egger an overly dramatic or morose demise; it is a quiet understated end just as he had lived his life.

A Whole Life is beautifully written, beautifully translated by Charlotte Collins and beautifully packaged by Picador (swoon at that cover), I absolutely loved it and I’d like to think you will too.

 

 

(I think that’s 11 sentences – need to get a grip!)

 

My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante trans. Ann Goldstein

The one thing you can often expect from Bildungsroman is little plot and that’s ok if the characters’ journeys are captivating enough to keep your attention from start to finish.  I’m generally a fan of this genre (although I have a secret dislike for Catcher in the Rye – there, I’ve said it!), I’m a patient enough reader not to be troubled by the lack of “action” and I’m very happy witnessing characters develop, grow and learn about themselves.  My Brilliant Friend, the first installment in Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, introduces us to Elena and Lila, friends from an early age, this book charts the ebb and flow of their connection as the girls endure the hardships of post-war Italy and how the social norms in their small community shape their lives and choices – all narrated by Elena.

The thing Ferrante excels at is the detailed and spot-on depiction of the intensity of women’s relationships; mother-daughter and girlfriends.  Elena’s voice in this book, which ends when the girls are 16, was very reminiscent for me of that love/hate emotion and natural competitiveness that springs from close friendship during formative teen years; the realisation that your friend is brighter than you, more beautiful than you, expresses herself better, is more confident around boys, is all-round more popular and it pricks that oddest of mixed feelings, jealousy and admiration.  It either spurs you on to be better or leads you to detest your friend.  Elena feels all of these things towards Lila and sometimes we get a glimpse that Lila also feels jealous of Elena’s good fortune at being able to continue her education when Lila can’t.

Ferrante is not afraid of confronting ugly human behaviour and presenting it with shocking honesty.  The complacent violence towards women and girls in this book is treated with accepted normality as is Elena’s first and unsolicited sexual experience at the hands of the father of a boy in her year at school, but perhaps more shocking to readers could be how Elena feels about and reflects on this episode.

Mostly though, this book is about two girls finding their way in life, making the best choices available to them from very few options in a neighbourhood governed by hierarchy, violence and tradition.

“Was it possible that only our neighbourhood was filled with conflicts and violence, while the rest of the city was radiant, benevolent?”

 

 

 

 

Beatlebone – Kevin Barry

Warning: I’m going over my 10 sentence limit with this one!

Kevin Barry’s fictionalised account of John Lennon’s visit to the island he owned in the Irish sea is a work of aural loveliness.  Yes, I did just say “aural” because this piece of writing is an audiological symphony of sounds – music, harmony, silence, screaming, ranting, nature’s melody and the racket in one’s head.  My sensory experience of this book has been very different to other reads. My memory of it is of noise and silence.  Near the start, the Lennon of the book is told to “listen – really listen to fuck’n everything around you”.  It feels like an instruction to the reader as well as the character.  What Lennon really wants to do is to “scream his fucking lungs out” – what I did was open my ears.

This re-imagining of John Lennon’s search for the words and melody to his next piece of work clips along at a pace due to Barry’s lilting poetic style (I either heard the words in my head in a gorgeous Irish twang or the nasally soft scouse Lennon was known for).  This retreat is also supposed to help Lennon to “at last be over himself” and for him to “be that fucking lonely I’ll want to fucking die”.  Although there is a plot, plot is not what this book is about.  It is more an exploration of a myriad emotions, not least abandonment, self loathing and doubt, but set against the bewitchingly described picturesque west of Ireland land- and seascapes Barry so mesmerisingly evokes with his well chosen and clearly much thought through words, the book becomes less of a depressing rant and more a cathartic journey.

Barry also messes with form and structure in this work; it is either set out in volumes with little punctuation or like a script with character “lines”.  Then, just when you think you know where you are, Barry inserts himself into the narrative, taking over several pages to explain his own journey of research to write this book.  It’s a brave move to slot a reportage section into fiction that is rumbling along quite nicely and has the reader in their reading stride.  Somehow it worked for me – I wasn’t put off by it at all, in fact I was struck by the similarities between Barry’s (or the unnamed writer’s) search for answers and his mental state, and the Lennon of the fiction.

I loved this book for lots of reasons, all of which I could ramble on about (music nerds will enjoy spotting Beatles lyrics slotted into the narrative), mainly though I was bowled over by the perfectly chosen turns of phrase which deftly describe a situation, a scene, a character, a sound or a view and quite honestly the hilarious chapter in the pub which turns into some Godawful trip is worth reading the book for on its own.

 

 

 

The Go-Between – LP Hartley

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Last year I read a book called The White Goddess: An Encounter.  A memoir by Simon Gough, nephew of Robert Graves, about his experiences in Majorca in his late teens.  When I started reading The Go-Between, it felt very familiar.  There are many similarities between the books, including inexperience and youth, broken trust and the loss of innocence during the heat of summer.

Leo Colston is in his 60s sometime in the 1950s.  He finds a box of things in his attic.  The bits and pieces in the box bring forth a memory of a summer spent at the house of an upper class school friend in Norfolk.  The memories crash over him like waves as he tries to purge himself of this sad episode of his youth.  Leo is an outsider at his school, overlooked by most until his black magic tricks coincidentally come good and increase his popularity overnight.  He suddenly has confidence in himself and confidence in his mystic qualities.  Although it means leaving his mother for most of the summer, Leo accepts an invitation to spend time at his school friend’s house during the holidays.  Leo is wholly unprepared for his visit to Brandham Hall in the summer of 1900.  There is a heat wave and he only has heavy winter clothing with him, he comes from a different class, he is not used to spending time with so many people and he obviously stands out.

At Brandham Leo meets his friend’s older sister Marian who is expected to marry Viscount Winlove, the local aristocrat recently home from the Boer war, but disfigured after a horrific war wound.  Both are kind to Leo and Marian understands his embarrassment, recognising his discomfort in his inappropriate clothes.  She takes him to Norwich to shop for new ones.  He instantly feels like he fits in wearing his new outfits, he is no longer the outsider.  He idolises Marian, just like Simon idolises Margot in The White Goddess.  When his friend falls ill and can’t play out, Leo explores the area.  He becomes friendly with local farmer Ted Burgess who he once saw swimming in the local river.  Ted entrusts Leo with notes to give to Marian telling him they are about business.  He becomes their messenger.  They call him their postman.  Subconsciously, Leo knows the notes are not about business, but he continues to deliver the letters because he trusts Marian.  He is at the cusp of puberty, his exploration of the local countryside mirrors his need to explore his feelings about growing up.  He likes Ted, but knows he is in a different class to Marian, he is fascinated by his masculinity and confidence and as a boy without a father Ted becomes a source of information.  He comes to admire Ted to such an extent that when the Brandham guests play cricket against the villagers, Leo is torn between wanting the house guests to win and wanting Ted to score the winning runs for his team.

The Go-Between is a beautifully written work of secrecy, deception, underhandedness and the typical British stiff upper lip.  It is richly descriptive and vivid.  Hartley evokes the heat and colours of the countryside until you feel you are walking with Leo through the dells of Brandham sweating in the summer heat.  Leo is a snob, but he is also a boy who knows no better and is looking for answers from those older and wiser than him.  They let him down during his summer in Norfolk; he puts his trust in them and they deceive him.  It is an episode that effects the course of his life.  I felt for Leo as he languished in that limbo between child and adult; too young to fully comprehend what is going on but old enough to know something is up.  There are some lovely passages and wonderful lines that say so much more than the few words that make them.  I loved The Go-Between for its depth and the layers of meaning, for Leo’s innocence and Marian and Ted’s lack of innocence and the brazenness of their relationship.  This would be a fabulous novel for a holiday and perfect to read in the sultry heat of summer.

The White Goddess: An Encounter – Simon Gough

About two years after finishing university, once Mr FH and I had proper jobs that paid enough to get us off the bread line, we did something we’d never done before and have not done since; we went on a package holiday.  To Majorca.  It was one of those pot luck affairs, “assign on arrival” I think they call it, basically we didn’t know where we were staying.  Luckily for us the reps on the coach from Palma airport didn’t ask us to alight at Magaluf.  Despite still being in our 20’s we could see it wasn’t for us.   Further around the coast was our final destination.  A resort called Peguera, which to my memory was particularly favoured by German tourists, and the local eateries definitely pandered to their palates; Bratwurst, Sauerkraut and even Eisbein (pigs trotters – I kid you not) were on the menus at the restaurants on the strip.  We had a cute little ground floor apartment with a patio and spent a lovely week tearing around the island in a hired Peugeot 106 trying to avoid being maimed on the winding Majorcan roads frequented by crazy locals.  One of our excursions was to Deya, a tiny coastal village on the west side of the island.  We wanted to visit the place where poet and writer Robert Graves lived and worked for most of his life, he is also buried there, as is his wife.  There is no denying, it is a beautiful hamlet in an idyllic setting which undoubtedly provided a sanctuary for him to write.  But my abiding memory is that Deya was crawling with tourists, like us.  The locals were unfriendly, not without reason I guess and it was altogether slightly disappointing.  I think I built up my expectations and hoped to feel some of the mysticism and poetic magic that is supposed to surround the place, and I just didn’t.  We had a very nice menu del dia before taking our lives into our hands again, en route to some other hamlet.  I know what you are thinking…you are wondering where this is leading.   Here it comes.

I thought of this holiday while reading The White Goddess: An Encounter by Simon Gough, the grand-nephew of Robert Graves, who incidentally was educated right here in my local town at the big scary private school on the hill.  In the author’s own words from his forward, this book is:

..a fragment of autobiography written in narrative form in order to breathe new lfe into a remarkable story which occured over fifty years ago..

So, neither completely fact, nor completely fiction, more of a mash-up of the two and it really is remarkable.  At the beginning we meet Simon in 1989, he is an antiquarian book dealer in his 40’s mulling over a life-threatening illness and the prospect of returning to Majorca for the first time in over 25 years.

…The past was not to be trifled with..My past had haunted me for so long that if I didn’t attempt to return to it now – lay bare the ruins which had become the foundations of the rest of my life, I’d not only have denied its existence, but denied my own…

That passage gives you a flavour of the way this book is written; in a slightly melodramatic tone.  Don’t let that put you off because Gough has a gift for description and although sometimes a bit long-winded and on occasion, laboured, his writing is wonderfully lyrical and almost mesmerising.

The story revolves around Simon’s visits to Graves’ house in Majorca when he was 10 and 17/18.  On his first visit he is with his highly strung and newly divorced mother.  At the Graves’ household he finds the freedom to roam, releasing him from the stifling grip of his mother and the stuffy English school he attends back home.  The lifestyle in Deya is bohemian, the larger-than-life Graves is surrounded by family and other admiring artists. Simon feels safe and at home and soon makes great friends with his Grand-Uncle.

When he returns aged 17 there is a new member of the inner circle.  24 year old Margot is Robert’s muse.  He believes she is the reincarnation of an ancient goddess.  The muse was very important to Robert’s work and although not his first, Margot seemed to have a profound affect on his writing.  Margot and Robert’s first meeting is described as causing the following reaction:

…his hair stood on end and he felt as though he were having a heart attack or a stroke or something because shards of words…and fragments of poems he’d already written in the future…started to flash through his brain like missiles.  He said that his head was full of chaos, as if he’d broken through to a new universe.. 

Margot is beautiful, distant, indifferent and almost exotic.  Simon is in awe of her as though she really were the mythical creature she is supposed to be, he feels an overwhelming magnetic attraction to her and Margot is somehow drawn to Simon, trusts him, befriends him and finds an ally in him, which of course is his undoing.

The story shifts to Madrid, where Margot goes for a rest from Robert and Simon to study.  Simon’s loyalties are torn between the two, he has promised Robert to look after Margot, yet Margot makes him promise not to tell Robert her address, she refuses to write to him and Simon knows how this must be affecting Robert’s writing.  Madrid is where things go horribly wrong and Simon eventually realises his part in the final betrayal.

This book feels like catharsis fiction (or Auto-bi-fantasy, as the author calls it), as though Simon Gough needs to get it all off his chest, every last detail.  And there is a lot of detail and minute description in The White Goddess.  Having said that, it is captivating and touches on themes of loyalty, family and personal freedom.  Gough builds the tension effectively, to the point where I was gritting my teeth and muttering at Simon, wondering why he couldn’t see what was going on.  I knew things couldn’t end well, because quite early on I had that feeling of foreboding.  The way Gough describes his teenage self, so passionate and infatuated, self-centred and blind with love is true to the maniacal fever that comes over you as a teenager, desperately in love for the first time.

Readers who pop by frequently will know how much I love a bit of landscape in literature, and there is plenty in The White Goddess with descriptions of the winding roads I mentioned earlier, vertigo inducing precipitous cliffs, gorgeous beaches and barren, dusty countryside.  You can almost feel the sultry warmth, taste the dust and see the heat shimmer. This is a long book at 650 pages, but worth the time it takes to read and I would encourage you to give it a go.  I don’t recall what I read on that holiday in Majorca, but this would have been perfect.

I was sent this book by the publisher, Galley Beggar Press and I owe them a bit of an apology for my tardiness seeing as I received it back in September.  I read it quite quickly and sat down on several occasions to write but couldn’t.  I’ve needed some time to digest it!  Sorry Sam!  Galley Beggar is a new independent publishing house, with only this and one other book in their catalogue.  Their newest book My Elvis Blackout by Simon Crump has had great reviews in the last week.  Check them out here: Galley Beggar Press

This book is now off to Literary Taste, who lives in Madrid and I’m sure will appreciate it.

Summer Reading

It has taken me over a week to write this post…it’s caused me a bit of grief if I’m honest.  A few weeks ago a friend asked me for some holiday reading recommendations.  Pressure indeed. Holidays are so precious and often it is the only time some of my friends get uninterrupted reading time – to get this wrong, might be disastrous.  This post first started as a long list of books I thought would be great for various destinations, all designed to get you into atmosphere of the place.  The list was getting longer and I kept thinking of more I could add.  Pointless.  When someone asks for a recommendation they want 2 or 3 options to choose from.  Once I get started though I can’t stop – I just keep thinking of other books that I would love people to read.

I’ve now decided to change strategy and instead of recommending a long list of fab books, I’ll tell you about the books I plan to read between now and when the little Fictionhabits go back to school in September.  Maybe some of you can join me in reading a couple of these titles and we can compare notes after the summer.

First up is The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus.  I bought this a few weeks ago at the recommendation of the author himself.  I was scrolling through Twitter one evening when someone I follow retweeted this from Leo.  Dangerous indeed, especially after a couple of glasses of wine!  I did a quick search of blogs I respect and before I knew what I’d done, the book was in my basket at the big river.   It is a story within a story, using a unique narrative style following a writer promoting his book – or is it?  It gets some fabulous reviews, often referred to as “refreshing”.  My only concern is that a lot of reviews also use the word “postmodern” to describe it – a word destined to put me off, but I am willing to ignore this description and give it a go.  I bought it for £3.99, by the way, which I think is pretty reasonable!

This week sees the centenary of the birth of novelist Elizabeth Taylor.  She is generally regarded as one of the most under-rated writers of the last century.  She wrote about everyday life, apparently able to brilliantly capture the nuances of unremarkable events.  I have never read any of her work, but have read so much about her in the last months, that I feel I can’t put it off any longer and need to get hold of one of her books.  I am going to check my local second-hand bookshop first, failing that my big river basket will probably contain A Game of Hide and Seek.  Radio 4 have been doing their bit to celebrate Elizabeth Taylor, with some short stories and Sunday’s Bookclub episode dedicated to Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.  Click on the links to listen (only available for a short time and to UK listeners – sorry!).

Anne Tyler is another writer I’ve read a lot about but not attempted any of her books.  She has written 19 books, the most recent published this year.  I picked up Ladder of Years, written in 1995, at my local second-hand book shop.  I vaguely remembered having read something about it somewhere.  It gets mixed reviews, so I’m not sure it is regarded as her best work, my hope is, those readers who were dissatisfied didn’t quite get it rather than really disliked it.  The story sounds quite interesting; a woman on a beach holiday, dressed only in a bathing suit, walks away from her family and just keeps walking.  I hope to get a flavour of Anne Tyler’s writing from this book as there are plenty of her other works adorning the shelves of my local town’s charity shops.

I recently won a little competition run by Penguin English Library and my prize was to choose one of their lovely reissues of classic works.  The cover art on all the books in this series, is beautiful.  I  chose The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe.  I selected it because Poe is often cited as a writer and poet who influenced other writers.  This is a lovely little  book with several of his grisly tales.  It is exactly suited to holiday reading.

Other books I intend to read this summer are The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.  These are both book club books.  Now all I need to decide is which of these books I take with me on our annual 2 weeks under canvas in France! (…and not a 50 Shades in sight).

Half Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan

I am lucky to belong to a bookclub made up of bright, intelligent, well-informed friends.  We often have what I think are erudite conversations about the books we read.   We all have our differing opinions and points of view and none of us is shy of saying what we think.  I am grateful after every meeting for learning things about our books that I may never have noticed on my own.  After catching up with each other and talking about holidays, birthdays, children, jobs and generally putting our worlds to right, we recently had the most fabulous discussion about the Orange Prize shortlisted Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan.  It’s not surprising really, as it is a remarkable book with a unique subject by a writer showing real promise with her second book.

The tale switches between Paris and Berlin during the early years of World War 2 and Berlin and Poland in 1992.  The story is one of friendship, betrayal, guilt and memory all relating to a group of young jazz musicians coping with the rise of fascism in 1930’s Berlin.  As Hitler’s power took hold, jazz was banned and it invariably moved underground.

“…Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It wasn’t a music, it wasn’t a fad. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame – we just can’t help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines..”

The story focuses particularly on 3 of the musicians, Sid Griffiths, Chip Jones and Hieronymous Falk (Hiero).  These three are particularly peculiar in late 30’s Berlin, as they are black; Sid and Chip are American, Hiero is German.

“..He was a Mischling, a half-breed, but so dark no soul ever like to guess his mama a white Rheinlander.  Hell, his skin glistened like pure oil.  But he German-born, sure.  And if his face wasn’t of the Fatherland, just bout everything else bout him rooted him there right good..”

After a run-in with the authorities, Sid, Hiero and Chip escape to Paris, where, after many weeks of waiting and trying to keep the music alive, the Nazis occupy France and something very dreadful occurs to split the trio.   In 1992, Sid, who is the narrator, tries to make sense of the whole episode and how it has affected his life and those around him.

I’ve really tried hard with the above description not to give away too much of the plot.  It is difficult not to write more, but what would be the point of ruining it for you!

We discussed the plot in detail and were all agreed that it made for interesting reading, certainly providing a different perspective on the war years. We talked about how it wasn’t generally known that black Germans were persecuted, but this wasn’t such a surprise for me.  I started reading the book while in Berlin, and persuaded Mr Fictionhabit to check out some of the landmarks and streets mentioned in the book, luckily all very close to our hotel.  But while we were there we also went to Gedaenkstaette Deutscher Widerstand (Memorial to German Resistance).  This, by the way, is an excellent museum.  Free and with a brilliant English audiotour.  What I found interesting was the extent of German resistance to the Third Reich, but I have to admit my dismay at learning about those sections of society abused by the Nazis but largely forgotten by history.  There were so many persecuted minority groups working against the regime – if they had pooled their resources they may have been able to achieve something.   These groups included, communists, homosexuals, Romany gypsys, Christians, members of the labour movement and youth groups.  There was even a mention for Herr & Frau Hampel who were the inspiration for Alone in Berlin.  Generally speaking, however, the main premise of the book isn’t well known and therefore makes interesting reading.  Edugyan, must have done significant research for this book and it has paid off, as it feels so real.

As you will have noticed from the extracts above, the book is written in Jazz vernacular.  Some of my bookclub friends were a bit worried about this ahead of reading the book, but we all agreed, it wasn’t too difficult to get to grips with.  We also recently read On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  While discussing that book we talked about the tempo of the narrative echoing freestyle jazz (yes, really, we did!).  We had a very similar discussion about Half Blood Blues.  The book has periods of high energy and periods of lull and becomes a bit dense where nothing much happens.  One of my very clever bookclub friends pointed out that maybe the vernacular and the changes in tempo were deliberate, to mirror the mood of jazz music, which speeds up, then mellows, builds to a crescendo, lulls, has staccato and fluid moments side by side.  This comment inspired another friend to mention that there were at least 3 heart-breaking moments in the book (honestly, tear-inducing), and the narrative seems to build to these points, mirroring different movements in a piece of music.  Once this was all mentioned, I could see and understand it.  Oh, to be so clever!

We also discussed how unlikable the main character was, how reprehensible and unforgivable some of his behaviour was.  I was one of those who felt very little sympathy with this character during his younger years.  But I was made to re-think when someone pointed out that his behaviour was very characteristic of most young men.  Desperate to find their place in the group, yearning for influence, showing off in front of women and people in powerful positions, not supporting each other for fear of losing face or position in the group, constantly competing against each other and never discussing their hopes and fears.  This revelation went some way to explain the behaviour although not to excuse it.  We were by now completely staggered by Edugyan’s skill at writing so proficiently about male relationships.

Half Blood Blues is by no means a fully polished book.  There are details which we were all dissatisfied with, these included issues of historical and geographical accuracy and a weaker ending than we’d anticipated. We were however all impressed and agreed that Edugyan shows real promise as a writer.

One of our members rebelled against Half Blood Blues and instead read the Orange Prize winner, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.  She spoke about it with such affection and admiration that a few of us have been persuaded to give it a go over the summer.  It is possible that we may soon lose this member of our bookgroup as she makes a life changing move to the Isle of Skye (although bookclub by Skype has been talked of!) and it will be sad to see her go.  I console myself with the knowledge that I bonded with her and my other bookclubbers initially over books but over the 8 years we have been meeting to discuss books, we have become more than just bookclub buddies.  I am proud to call these astute, knowledgeable and articulate women, my friends.

The Wall Jumper – Peter Schneider trans. Leigh Hafrey

Next weekend Mr Fictionhabit and I are heading to Berlin for our special birthday treat and thanks to Englishman in Berlin we have lots of tips of what to do while we are there. Unfortunately, I haven’t done as much reading prep as I’d have liked, but I did read The Wall Jumper by Peter Schneider, a book set before the fall of the wall.

Berlin has long been a historically significant city, even now years after the fall of the wall it remains geo-politically important, albeit in a different sense than when this book was set.  Between 1988-90 I was studying  for my German A Level.  It couldn’t have been a more exciting time to follow the political and social development of that nation.  I remember being incredibly moved and emotional watching the events unfold during the autumn of 1989, culminating in that night in November when thousands of East Germans flowed through the crossing points into West Berlin to be greeted with hugs and cheers from their West German neighbours.  Of course the story didn’t end there, as the following year saw “die Wiedervereinigung”/reunification and the start of tearing down the social walls built up over the 28 years of a divided Germany.

Memories of these years were brought to the fore recently.  My parents are moving house and despite having had several clear-outs over the years, the most recent revealing a box of letters I had saved, cheerfully bound with different ribbon for each friend, they still have a few items belonging to me.  A large manila envelope landed on my doormat the other week containing some of my A Level work and exam preparation.  My mum thought I might like to keep it, bless her.  The essay is entitled “Deutschland – Eine neue Supermacht?” (Germany – A new superpower?) and I clearly used an article written in the Sunday Telegraph on 12 Nov 1989 to help me.  I got an A- and my teacher, David Ladd wrote at the bottom “I hope you can repeat this – if necessary – in an exam” a comment revealing he suspected me of having some help with the essay from German relatives!  I went on to get an A in my A level so feel slightly vindicated!  With my memory piqued I decided to pick up Peter Schneider’s book to take me right back to that time.

The Wall Jumper is a short novel at under 150 pages, but a fascinating insight into a nation divided and a useful observation of Wall anecdotes for generations familiar with the Berlin Wall as historical fact rather than the manifestation of the cold war itself.   It is certainly an absorbing lesson on what it must have been like to be German and living in Berlin during this time.  Schneider describes the collective German thinking during the initial years of the Wall:

…Once the initial panic died, the massive structure faded increasingly to a metaphor in the West German consciousness.  What on the far side meant an end to freedom of movement, on the near side came to symbolise a detested social order.  The view East shrank to a view of the border complex and finally to a group-therapy absorption with the self: for Germans in the West the Wall became a mirror that told them day by day, who was the fairest one of all.  Whether there was life beyond the death strip soon mattered only to pigeons and cats…

 

Although it is a novel, The Wall Jumper reads like a journalistic report, but it is this reportage style bound closely with the interesting cast of characters and deftness of anecdotal description, clearly based on personal experiences, that makes this book so easy and lovely to read.  The narrator, based in West Berlin, is gathering Wall stories from friends and family on both sides of the Wall.  Schneider uses a quirky and amusing device to link all the stories and characters; every time he collects a story, he re-tells it to the next person he meets, Schneider finishes each of these sections with:

(Character) listens carefully, thinks a while, orders a second round of vodka and beer, and then asks, without wasting another word: “Do you know the story about…”

 

The stories the narrator collects are primarily about people who defy the Wall and continue to move freely from one side to the other.  These stories are interesting in themselves as they are not the same stories most of us have heard about the Wall.  But chiefly this book is about what it means to be German.  There are a couple of incredibly perceptive passages near the end of the book that seem to capture the essence of this question.

…If I respond to queries about my nationality by saying without hesitation that I’m German, I am clearly opting not for a state, but for a people that no longer has a state identity.  At the same time, however, I assert that my national identity does not depend on either of the German states.  The same thing applies to the expression: “I come from Germany.” Either it has no meaning, or I am speaking of a country that appears on no political map.  By Germany I am referring neither to the DDR (German Democratic Republic) nor to the BRD (Federal Republic of Germany) but to a country which exists only in my memory or my imagination.  If I were asked where it lies, I could only locate it in its history and in the language I speak…

 

and when referring to the constant comparisons between East and West and which is better he says:

…I only know that we will fail in our attempt to cure the madness of one state by referring to the madness of another…

 

Certainly a piece of wisdom which can be applied to any spat between nations.

Undoubtedly, this is a fascinating commentary on life in Berlin before 1989, but it is also a beautifully written piece of prose and a real pleasure to read.  Credit must go to the translation by Leigh Hafrey, too often I’ve read books with iffy translation, but he’s done a great job with Peter Schneider’s text.

I’m going to finish this post with the most poignant sentence in the book:

…It will take longer to tear down the Wall in our heads than any wrecking company will need for the Wall we can see…

 

 

 

 

PS If you are interested in finding out what life is like in Berlin today, please check out Englishman in Berlin

Reading prep for Berlin

Mr Fiction Habit and I are celebrating special birthdays this year and as a gift and treat to ourselves we are heading to Berlin for a long weekend on our own (i.e. ohne Kinder) in May.  In preparation for this trip I have been scouring the big river site for books to inspire me ahead of our visit to the culturally blended, historically significant centre of Europe .  This city has so much history and hopefully, some Berlin-related literature will get me even more excited than I already am.

I have been to Berlin once before.  I was young, still a small girl.  The wall still dominated the city and the cold war was very much in full swing.   When I was younger I spent many years living in Germany, with my family and as a student.  I haven’t lived there for some time but continue to visit regularly.  I speak German fairly fluently and sometimes even force myself to read a novel in German, just to stop from getting too rusty.  I am in a bit of a vicious circle when it comes to reading in German; I don’t read enough, because I am too slow and I am too slow because I don’t read enough!!

There are a couple of “Berlin” books I already have under my belt:

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood is a semi autobiographical series of linked short stories relating to his time in Berlin during the inter-war years.  A strange time in Germany’s history.  The stories describe the decadence and lasciviousness of Berlin’s underbelly against the backdrop of Hitler’s rise to power.   There is an underlying feeling of loneliness to this book as the characters struggle to come to terms with how the country’s politics affects their lives.

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada was one of the hit books of a couple of years ago.  It tells the heroic but sad story of an elderly couple who stand up to the Nazi regime in a quiet rebellion of postcard drops after their only son is killed during the war.  It is an incredibly moving tale of what grief can do to you.

During my research of other books I could read in preparation for my trip, I mostly came across stories set during the war or spy stories relating to Berlin’s time cut off from the rest of West Germany.  I haven’t really come across much about contemporary Berlin.  I also haven’t found much by German writers, which is a bit sad.  I am happy to read non-fiction aswell.

The few I have found and am considering buying are:

• The Wall Jumper by Peter Schneider (I am thinking of reading the German version of this as it is quite short)
• Stasiland by Anna Funder
• The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor
• Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr
• Russian Disco by Wladimar Kaminer

If anyone has any experience of these books and could recommend a couple, that would be great – or maybe you have some better ideas?