Robbe-grillet Reading La Jalousie on French Radio

That was the month that was Feburary 2022

28 Feb 2022

in #bookaday, winston speaks, winstons books Tags: 2022, BOOKS THAT Divers ME, musings

1. Geography of an Adultery by Agnes Riva
2. The Terminate of Boil bt Edouard Louis
3. Jealousy past Alain Robbe-Grillet
4. The Voice imatator by Thomas Bernhard
5. Marzhan ,mon Amour past Katja Oskamp
6. 1 in Me I never Loved by Carla GuelfenBein
7. Necropolis by Boris Pahor

I am on as well sixteen books reviewed on the blog which is just under my target of 100 reviews for the yr I have currently read 26 book this twelvemonth so am on target to read over a 100 books. I started my reading this calendar month in France with iii french novels ii about aultery 1 existent and told with a sparce use of emotions a more than clinical nature to the affair in Riva's Geography of an Adultery. Then in Jealousy we saw what could accept been imagined affair in Robbe-Grillet novel that sees a married man glimpse on his wife and fill in the gaps. Then my other french book saw a hard childhood described from a son that is different to his family. Then nosotros take Thomas Bernhard his flash fiction culled from news headlines remind me of ALexander Kluge somewhat, Then In Berlin we meet a podiatrist a writer retrains and sees a community through there feet. And so a divorce and an affair from two different eras are told in One I never loved. Then we concluded the month with a powerful description of south[lovenian writer Boris Pahor and his time in c=diverse concentration camps every bit a prisoner then as a  medical orderly.My reading has slowed this month every bit it normally does I always race through books in the new year and then hit the wall. I take written a lot more words than this time concluding year as my reviews are slowly growing. How has your calendar month been ?

Book of the month-

Necropolis is a powerful telling of the horrors of the Holocaust from the perspective of being a slovene and the various camps he went to during the state of war. As I said information technology is a volume everyone should read.

Non book event this month

Information technology has been a very serenity month for me I am off work at the moment  then have been at home a lot we have had our usual walk in the peaks and trips to Bakewell and boondocks for coffees. I have listen to a lot of comfort music generally shoegazing which is a genre I love and bands like the cure and REM the sort of musical equivalent of comfort reading there is something reassuring in these bands besides I drift away with the likes of Slowdive and My bloody valentine. I  also went for comfort boob tube things similar new tricks also been indulging in youtube videos I similar volume tube simply also vanlife, cottage cadre, productivity and  pen and stationary vlogs it is a rabbit hole that I hadn't watch a lot til this terminal few months. Do you have comfort music ?

Adjacent month-

Well it is Man booker  longlist time in March. I have read a few books  I recall may be there that I have to review still every bit I usually do in the weeks before. As we have 10 days to wait and see what will make this years list it is ever a highlight of my yr the longlist coming out and seeing what the Judges have chosen there is so many books out there it will be a difficult call to chose just 12 or thirteen books from the choice that is out in that location  I imagine. I am doing the shadow Jury  again. Which I will be doing again this year it is e'er a highlight for me equally a reader and last twelvemonth the take chances to chat with everyone on line was astonishing. As  for  the  weblog Til the list is out it volition be a mix of what I am reading  at moment and what \I take read including Grey bees past Andrei Kurkov which has been on my tbr since I was sent it last year and now seems the correct time to read it I am too in the eye of The morning star I too would love to get a couple of Arab books in this month as information technology has been a while since I have reviewed whatsoever. I had tried to finish reading multiple books simply I needed to read grey bees so made an exemption. from the tenth it volition exist what e'er I oasis't read of the longlist and tin get when the listing is released I know in recent years there take been books not bachelor when the list comes out which is abrasive especially when I can't go them. I hope to review a few more books this month. What are your plans for next month ?

Necropolis by Boris Pahor

25 Feb 2022

by winstonsdad in Slovenia Tags: 2021, BOOKS THAT DEFINED ME, dalkey archive, eastern european

Necropolis by Boris Pahor

Slovenian Memoir

Original title –Nekropola

Translator – Michael Biggins

Source – personal re-create

We all take books that sit on our shelves for years and this is ane such book I had brought it bout 2 or 3 years later on it came out and then about 8 or 9 years ago intending to read it I had seen a review and it looked but equally we all do it got stacked and then forgotten well not forgotten it had been in my line of sight in my reading room as it a Dalkey Archive book and their department is nearest my chair and then maybe when I was flicking through the tv guide I tend to prefer to record and lookout man things these days every bit so much that is on is but pants it was late final month when it was Holocaust memorial day or near information technology I saw a plan and saw Pahor proper name and was reminded I had intended to read this as he has written about information technology and isn't Jews he is also from Trieste in Italy as he was an Italian Slovene. Anyway, I watched the show which if you alive in the Uk should withal be on Iplayer The man who saw too much. It saw Alan Yentob visiting Boris who is the oldest surviving Holocaust survivor he was in his mid-twenties when he finish up in the cap after the fall of Italy when the German took over they sent him to a smaller campsite the book came nearly from his return to the camp at Natzweiler-Struthof ane the smaller camps.

The shadows of the dead are far away. But maybe they approach when darkness covers the mountain and the terraces are buried under the snow, for there are no tourist then. When the shadows come, they practise south they used to; they lay the dying down on their snowy biers, then stand in formation, not waitingfor a man in boots to count them. In total silence they asses and wieght the meassages that drift towards them from the noisy earth of the living

There is so many horrific pasages like this that prink to life the unliveable events in the camps.

As he heads to the Camp he is sent back and the book is him recalling all the events that happened in the 13 months he was in the camps. There is ever an issue or some stroke of luck or is it luck that happens that meant certain people managed to alive to tell the story. This for Boris, it is the fact that equally he says Slovenians accept a real knack for languages he spoke his own and Italian only likewise a number of other languages when this is discovered past a Norweigian doctor at the camp he is given the job of Medical orderly as he does this information technology means overtime he goes from camp to camp every bit he observes the horrors of what the concentrations camps had from the piles of clogs to the disease dysentery described in such detail information technology will make your skin pitter-patter every bit he tried to assistance those he could simply in nigh cases information technology was hopeless.

On a subsequently morning tthe Dachau parade grounds are an enourmous garbage dump, with endless shovels heaving paper, wet rags, broken clogs, and filthy striped bundles onto it out of washrooms windows, among the mattresses that comprehend the big field are unwrapped paper bandages, worn wooden spoons, and a pocketknife fashioned in prehistoric times, Mattress with wet stains empry, defective the forms that fabricated the identations in them.Mattresses with naked bodies. Bodies with wounds.

I'll stop there equally the rerst of this passage is so horrorfic.

I won't say much more every bit it is a book I would love others to read as he is still alive at 106 is a real attestation to the will of a homo, I was reminded of a human I looked afterwards that was in his mid-80s and had long outlived what others had expected him to alive. What I liked about this is that information technology is one of those accounts we haven't heard much about that is of the smaller nationalities that the nazis persecuted. In fact, he had fought in the Italian regular army in which he was conscripted earlier in the war. He does capture here the real horror of the camps things like that bodies existence brought to the ovens then horrific equally much as you don't want to read always say you take to read to remember then events like this won't happen but equally events in recent days show 1 human will or fright can have a real effect. One of the recurring images in the wooden clogs they wear is the way they over time seem to abound bigger as they shrink in weight but also the piles of those taken of the expressionless. Besides the striped uniforms they wear.  His voice needs to sit alongside the likes Leivi or Appelfeld or Rachjamn as all survivors of the military camp he is one of the last. I was and so fortunate to take met  Aharon Appelfeld years ago just shook his paw. when he won the erstwhile IFFp prize and heard him speak a real honour and ane of the moments I won't forget.  I likewise visited our UK Holocaust memorial Museum which is in Nottinghamshire a small but poignant place they take survivors come and talk it is a place worth visiting and remembering the horrors. Take you read this book or another book well-nigh the Holocaust from the survivors I think those are the ones we should read every bit they show the horror equally they lived it which no i else can quite capture likewise.

Winstons score as I always say I won't score a volume like this just say read information technology !!! books like this demand to be part of every reader's journeying.

Ane in me I never loved by Carla Guelfenbein

23 Feb 2022

by winstonsdad in chile Tags: 2022, latin american fiction, other printing

One In me I never loved past Carla Guelfenbein

Chilean fiction

Original title – La estación de las mujeres,

Translator – Neil Davidson

Source – Review copy

Ane of the things many years ago that bellyaching me at the time is when you discovered a writer you had enjoyed and so find they hadn't anything else translated this is something that over the time I have been blogging happens a trivial less and so it was bang-up to get through the port another book from the Chilean writer the 3rd to be translated and it is the 2d I will be covering here I loved her starting time volume to exist translated to English which came out in 2011 The residue in Silence. I did read the other book that was translated but never got round to reviewing the book In the altitude with you lot although I did enjoy that every bit well so when this arrived I knew it would be one I like she is another of those not bad female latin American writers she has worked every bit the fashion editor and besides the art managing director of Elie in Chile she has won a number of prizes and the championship of this novel was The adult female's station in Spanish I prefer that to the English title myself.

My trunk unlike his, is expanding and collapsing alittle more each day, creasing, wilting, falling in on itself in weary rolls. Sometimes I hardly regonize information technology as mine

Someone else's trunk is a place for your heed to become

Today is my l-sixth birthday. Information technology's ninein the morn and I'yard sittingon a bench carved with Jenny Holzers texts. Phrases of hers gone onto t-shirts, golf balls, caps, mugs, and even comdoms. The bench is oin the public garden opposite the gates of Barnard college, where dozens of shameless butteflies flit in and out withkirts upwards to their crotch and backpacks of their shoulders. I watch them.

She mentions the comdom on the beginning page with her husband.

I love novels that are composed of vignettes or short stories and this is what nosotros accept here an interlinking collection of stories that take place in two-fourth dimension frames in the present nosotros have the story of a adult female Margarita who is turning 57 that catamenia in our lives where you are looking forward to your retirement and such. Only her life is spun out of control by a number of events offset her married man a instructor is having an matter but as well the concierge in her building a young woman chosen anna has disappeared simply was reading a book about how we tin all disappear in America what has happened to Anna. Then an older friend ask her to aid notice someone that many years ago helped change the course of her life. So nosotros have a second thread effectually the poet Gabriela  Mistral and the messages she wrote in the late forties to her love Doris Dana add to this we notice that her young lover had a fling with another woman near her own historic period. An paradigm far dissimilar from the i that was portrayed of Mistral all this is packed into a brusque novel and uses a number of styles role epistolary office spoken and part detective at times.

It is half past xi 1 moning in this year of 1948. Lite through the unopened letter is, Doris Dana can almost see it sinking into the counterpane of her unmade bed. Her head rings with the fish sellers unending whistling and the clatter of his cart on the cobbles. And woth the knife grinder's howls "BRiiing out your kniiiiiives and scissoooors! she knows him. His name is Sid, and boasts of being the finest knife grinder in New york. She covers her ears with her hands then presses her fingertipsto her tired forehead. It is the 3rd letter from Gabriela in five days. Or the fourth? she does non need to open up it to know the words are bitter

I loved the lost nature of this opening to Doris's story especially the word counterpane as someone i looked later used it all the time !

I loved the patchwork nature of this book information technology isn't really most the plot more than near glimpses into the private lives of a number of women over 2 unlike eras. That is why I prefer the Spanish title have we caught them at a point in their lives almost similar being at the station where are we going there are many options and that is what is here slice of lives some answers, not all of them it is ane of those books that leave you afterwards you have read information technology filling in the gaps making you own conclusions and for me, this for some people is annoying it is similar those films that don't finish with all the threads attached in neat bows and that is because life isn't neat and tidy it is well-nigh life and beloved lovers adulterous husbands cheating people disappearing find someone once lost so many threads this is something I like in her other books and that is she is a writer that is able to squeeze and then much into her writing it is intense and like 1 of those finger food collections where we accept little versions of things that accept the taste and feel of the bigger versions of what they are meant to be this is a micro view of these life just little $.25 small moments of Margarita life also what is happening round her then likewise the lovers in the late 1940s and a betrayal. Have you read any books by Carla Guelfenbein ? or another female author from Chile ?

Winstons score – B a novella  with a yearning to be that Ballsy "dear I want exist a big novel !! "

Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp

21 Feb 2022

by winstonsdad in germany Tags: 2022, german lit, peirene press

Marzahn, Monday Amour past Katja Oskamp

German fiction

Original title – Marzahn, mon amour: Geschichten einer Fußpflegerin

Translator – Jo Heinrich

Source – review re-create

I have been a fan of Peirene press since they started and take reviewed virtually of their books of the fourth dimension of blog which is near time they have been bringing out books they bring out their books out every year around a theme and here is the first book in this year's series a book that was chosen for Berlins i book where the city all read a book at the same time I love that idea. Whatsoever way Katja Oskamp is from the same area of Due east Berlin and was well received with her first work the Halbeschwimmer a collection of brusk stories that dealt with the falling of Due east Germany from the view of a teen swimmer. This book is the start since she trained herself as a podiatrist a task she has been doing for the last seven years. This volume besides follows a middle-anile writer in what is called in the intro of the volume those invisible fizzy years when you are too far from the shore you started and information technology is out of sight and is non nigh enough to the finish shore of life. I love that description as someone caught in the fuzzy time myself.

Frau Guse parks her walking frame and hangs her jacket on the coat stand up, animate heavily. She waddles into the chiropodist'due south room with her shopping bag and sits down on the chiropody chair. I help her take off her shoes and socks and roll upwards her trouser legs. Together nosotros lower her feet into the footbath I've prepared, I pluck two gloves frk their box and slip them on, turning to frau Guse who mentions as she does at this bespeak every time, that she has had breat cancer, I nod and say every bit I do at this signal every time, that her her performance was almost seven years ago and that the tablets she'south had to take e'er since have terrible side effects, such as shortness of breath and diarrohoea.

One of her first clients Frau Guse.

The book is a series of vignettes of the clients our newly qualified Podiatrist meets when she retrains equally ane as she is struggling to make ends meet as a author so when she starts working she meets the locals of Marzahn a run-down part of Berlin equally it is described in one of the German reviews outside the ringbahn the central office of Berlin. Starting with an elderly lady Frau Guse a survivor of Breast cancer as she rubs the dead pare of her feet she sighs a colourful woman in loose clothes hiding her missing breast I love the detail she observes in the people whose anxiety she works on. One that really struck me equally she says the is those that feel that Marzahn has many former Gdr bigwigs or Sed officials but it isn't except for 1 of her clients the cold Herr Pietsch equally she described him equally a dye in the wool party member he has a sort of detached manner with her that is in contrast to most of the other clients in the volume. I'm merely mentioned three of the clients every bit it volition leave loads for yous like me the reader to observe the last is Gerlinde every bit she says the area of Marzahn has many refugees and she is one from Prussia that fled to Berlin near the stop of the second world state of war often in her plastic shoes how with her family unit fled on a ship called the Lappland back in the day. but never got that far when the ship didnt't get besides far and they stop up on a refugee train and cease up in Berlin.

Herr pietsch, taking off his shoes and socks, stares out of the window. By at present I know the routine: he is always wary at first , merely to drastically overstep the marking later. I curve downwardly, push the footbath into identify and await up into his protruding eyes – ii bulging orbs. Herr pietsch speaks with a Thuringian- Saxon accent, a footling indistinctly as he's  on his thiurd set of teeth: "There are certainly a few things I'g not happy with, but I"yard getting past. I'm on peak of life "

One of her clients every bit she bserves is an old party Blazon!!

Every bit you can see I loved this there is a warm center to these little vignettes and to the characters she meets someone'southward pes mayhap tell as much as a  hands practice virtually our lives. what comes across is that fifty-fifty in the nearly down and out areas like Marzahn every bit information technology is observed by one of the characters it is built on a former sewage farm site. The graphic symbol with her job occupies the same infinite as the Barber or the barman someone that people tend to open up to maybe a little more than than they would in over situations small talk but over time as in these vignettes it sometimes grows and yep like frau use who seems to take a script of her life or maybe this is also a sign of her having dementia as she often recounts the same story over and again. This is a piece of those that are oft passed as I described in a review years ago the flotsam and jetsam of the world those that can't escape where they are or maybe just have always been there I was also reminded of the Character that was played past Curt Bois Homer an elderly poet in the film Wings of want or in its German language title Der Himmel uber Berlin some other glimpse behind the net defunction and high rise of Berlin. Characters who like Homer is looking for a fashion home to their past this is the case in a lot of these vignettes the past weights heavy in their tales at times it ? if you are a fan of interlinking stories or stories about everyday folk this will appeal. Have you read this collection ?

Winstonsdads score – +A A bang-up drove of vignettes well-nigh the locals of a loftier rising rundown surface area of Berlin.

The Phonation Imitator by Thomas Bernhard

16 Feb 2022

by winstonsdad in Republic of austria, thomas Bernhard week 2022 Tags: 2022, german language lit, Thomas Bernhard

The Voice Imator by Thomas Bernhard

Austrian fiction

Original championship – Der Stimmenimitator

Translator – Kennerth J Northcott

Source – personal copy

I am a niggling late start this week Bernhard week sad anyhow information technology is the 2nd time I accept done a calendar week dedicated to the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard. I am a fan of his piece of work he has a style I like his characters always seem to be at odds with the society they are in and he has a very caustic fashion of looking at the earth around him till now all the books I have reviewed on the blog accept been novels or novellas nine of his books I accept reviewed I also accept a piece from the concluding Bernhard week by the writer Andrej Nikolaidis he wrote for this web log well-nigh his love of the author and his importance to his journeying as a writer. And so welcome to the 3rd Bernhard week well allow'due south say fortnight this calendar week and adjacent week. Have y'all a favourite book by him? I now get on to his drove of microfiction

A man from Ausburg was comitted to the Ausburg lunatic assylum merely because, throughout his life he had claimed at every possible opportunity that Goethe'south last words were mehr nicht ( no more than) tather than mehr licht (more light) , something that in the long run and as fourth dimension went on, is said to have frayed the fretfulness of those with whom he came in contact that hey banded together to get this ausburger , so unhappily obsessed with his claimm comitted to a lunatic assylum. It is reported that vi doctors refused to commit him to a lunatic asylum but that the 7th immediately arranged to accept him committed. This doctor was, as I learned from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, decorated with the Goethe badge of the metropolis of Frankfurt for his efforts.

The story the Claim about a man that refused to change his mind of Goethes concluding words!!

This is a collection of 104 stories or more snippets none is more a single page most are but a few lines he has taken headlines tales he has heard and turned them into 104 stories in that location is a number of recurring themes in the stories such as Madness, bad luck, death and suicides these characters all have a lilliputian touch on of what you expect from Bernhard he has touched on Madness in Wittigensteins Nephew which was set in an asylum which a number of these stories are one had a real tongue in cheek comic plough a man sent to asylum only after a number of doctors had refused to the last doctor said aye what was up with him every bit he refused to acknowledge that his version of what were the last words of Goethe was no more (Mehr Nicht) equally opposed to the given which is more light (Mere Licht). And so an orchestra plays and the audience claps encore later encore only to be told they had played to the Deafened schoolhouse. The expiry of a woodcutter reminds me of the championship of i of his other books. A man that was Tito's double these tales he took from all over the place and range from comic to lamentable to profound to surreal.

A and so- called Bedroom Music asscociation famous for playing but ancient music on original tnstruments and for having simply Rossini, frescobaldi, Vivaldi, and Pergolesi in its repertoire was playing in an onetime castle in the Atterseeand had its greatest success since it was founded. The applause continued intil the Chamber Music Association did not accept a single encore left on its program to play. It was not until the next twenty-four hour period that the Musicians were told that they had been playing in an institute for expiry mutes.

The story The near successful concert an orcestra plays a number of encores and so are told the truth.

I had wanted to attempt a few of the other things he had written and then choose this for this year I will adjacent year be doing either the poetry collections of his plays. This drove reminds me way-wise of things Kluge does in his writing where he uses snippets of this and that to build a whole and this is what happens here as the stories unfold themes grow like the books by Luis Sagasti his two books have underlying themes and his style of storytelling is very short like these. a author that jumps to my heed a couple of times in some of the stories was Saki yes Saki at that place is a similar experience Saki had a great mode of beingness quick caustic and comic at the same time something Bernhard pulls of so well here. Information technology shows he must have worried about his own sanity at times it crops up a lot in these stories as people end up in what would be on a ward like the ward I work on just not for LD patients. As over the years I have read so many books by him you can see in his work he walks that fine line of low and stress it is about as thou for Bernhard his writing was an outlet he had very bad health for well-nigh of his life. I enjoyed these collections as information technology was more accessible than his novels and has a petty flake of what is in all his books. Take you read this or any other of his plays or verse?

Winstons score – A – every bit much as I loved this in some manner it is dated in the terms used and besides some of the stories are close to the bone these days only they were written in a different era and most of them are bang-up nonetheless.

I'm going back to ane book at a time

15 Feb 2022

by winstonsdad in thoughts Tags: 2022, i love reading

The electric current state of my TBR pile, when nosotros got to the new year's day I decided I try and read multiple books I have read two books when I have a very long book to read over the years .but more often than not read ane book at a time if under 500 pages I tin read 200 to 300 pages a day when I'm non working.I  accept a job that means I have four days off a week and when information technology isn't very stressful which it has been these last few months I am actually off work at the moment. I had tried after watching a number of youtube videos on how to read more than I think equally readers we all like to try and read a chip more than only for me, it isn't a new system like multiple books reading the problem is I have read 21 books this year I have had a number of books on the go and yes I read 21 books but most of them I read in a single or couple of sittings I started i then put information technology to side then I beginning another and I'm non getting back to the get-go books I was listening to the feeling bookish podcast(a new discovery that I am loving ) and they were talking about falling into reading rabbit holes and I am as a reader like this although I bound from identify to place in my reading I often have a thin thread between books in my caput anyway and tin can as I said in my recent library loot post easily get sidetracked past sparkly new books and new plans.  then after 46 days I am going back to normal and simply reading one book at a time as I have indicated I am in pursuit of beingness more efficient not just on here just outside blogging I am at present weekly planning and working on the shopping lists and menus all this for many is a given but for me a very disorganised person a side issue of Dyspraxia every bit my power at times to become my thoughts beyond in a coherent fashion fifty-fifty when I talk this happens some times. but over the years I have constitute this so much easier as I have blogged the words come much easier than they used to be something I experience much easier doing and hence the word count on my post is climbing year after year. One advantage I have is a wonderful photograph memory for places and events I can recall small details from family events and places nosotros take been. Anyhow, at that place I go on a sidetrack again the problem wasn't helped by reading multiple books no actually improve time planning I started to use an app called Forest which means I avoid using the telephone and just read the screen tin can be a existent lark at times so this ways you set up a time and don't touch on you phone for that fourth dimension. The adjacent motility on the do listing is planning more time to blog which I struggle to keep to I need to find a arrangement to exist more than organized with posting but it volition come I take books to review and now I am back to merely ane book at a time except reading the books of Jacob along side what I am read for side by side week or two. I will be dorsum tomorrow and later in the week with two books for Thomas Bernhard calendar week I have read Extinction and the voice imitator. Which of course I enjoyed it reminds me how much I loved Bernhard. what is your reading regime and what is your blogging authorities? I'm e'er interested in other readers tips and other bloggers ideas I dear finding youtube videos about productivity and other book bloggers something I am only getting into vlogs I'yard certain I have said this earlier merely the productivity ones I have watched although mainly around studying I take learnt about better reading time direction  anyway I'll become now

Stu's library loot

12 February 2022

by winstonsdad in #bookaday, stu'southward library trips Tags: 2022, library books

I returned the 2 books I had read from the library and I had a expect on the online catalogue at what may be on the Booker longlist that I didn't ain and was on the shelves at my local co-operative which is the main 1 in town I found 2 books and so when I was there three other books grabbed my middle. Anyway let'due south go through my loot this time I may get to these I may not but I am getting better at renewing books I must take funded a couple of booker list worth of books over the years in fines but with my productivity bulldoze for 2022 in full swing, I need something at the moment as a sidetrack and books are that a way to release some stress.

Beginning up is a volume the first in a trilogy from the Finnish writer Antti Tuomainen his first series and had been brought to be fabricated into a film from Amazon information technology follows the life of a straight-laced Henri Koskinen his job every bit a mathematician is calculated insurance and this seems to go over to his ain life so when life throws him a curveball of ending up losing his task and when his brother dies he gets an chance park which he meets Laura and finds love and this is something he can't work out.I must admit I was in honey with the cover of this a while ago every bit Karen from the publisher had retweeted information technology and its reviews a lot when it came out.

This was i of the two books I went for as I had seen information technology on a list another blogger had done of potential booker longlist books and it is one I had seen when it came out just the cover I remember seeing information technology around Twitter. The volume follows a woman that sees an Okapi in her dreams equally a foretelling of a death in the village she lives in every bit y'all all know I am a sucker for books set in villages as they tend to be their own micro-world alongside life and death.I also want to find some new german writers to read in the futurity the ones I beloved have all died and I practise accept a couple I like notwithstanding every bit I said yesterday I read more than french fiction than I do German fiction.

I had the first book from him sent to me and never got to it and then also like the sound of his second volume this is the problem with me sometimes equally a reader I am a magpie I similar the side by side sparkly thing and what happens when you are in the middle of an affair and that moment happens when you lot accomplish the bespeak of trust and open upwards and unload secrets to the other person and then a few days later you carve up. This is what has happened to Pietro and at present Teresa knows something most his past I may finally read a book by him. Starnone may be Ferrante'south husband his wife is one of the names near the tiptop of the list of writers who could be Elena Ferrante.

Then I happened to just see this virtually the Leky on the shelf information technology was ane of the European writer series that penguin had been bringing out the last few years I had reviewed a couple of the titles. I knew this was a volume I will exist reading every bit I can finish information technology in an afternoon it follows an onetime woman that wakes one day finds an one-time fox fur scarf and this seems to spur her into a new playful invented give-and-take information technology all sounds a bit odd and maybe captures those moments when we haven't a lot and brand the best and invent the world around us. Have anyone read whatever others in the serial they could betoken me too ?

I had been fugitive knausgaard after getting through all vi of the My struggle series it isn't that I don't similar him as a writer it is the opposite I actually enjoy his writing. I just wanted a interruption but when I read up on this that follows a group of nine different characters in ii towns as a huge star appears in the sky but equally is usual with him it is all in the detail of those lives he looks into. I had brought i of his flavour's books that he brought out after my struggle serial. I am intending to get all four before reading them and so I volition probably read this as I am at present wanting to know more and I hope it is on the booker which is a bonus if it does as it is a 600-page novel. Has anyone read this book ?

Any other booker tips welcome and what have you brought back from any recent trips to the Library ?

Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet

11 Feb 2022

by winstonsdad in french republic Tags: 2022, alma classics, french lit, Noveau roman

Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet

French fiction

Original title – La Jalousie

Translator -Richard Howard

When I noted the other week that I was only 19 books abroad from 150 french books read I had a look back over all the books I had read from France over the years and looked at my shelves and thought I need a piddling more depth to the selection is mostly mod writers so I exercise have a lot of french books as they now are my go-to state to read from when I started the blog information technology would be German language fiction merely these days it is very much French literature merely as I say more than modernistic french literature. So I determine the adjacent few french books will accept a few older books and hither we go with a book from the post-war era of French Literature. When we got a group of writers that were grouped together as the roman Noveau the new novel  Grillet and other writers like  Claude Simon (I have my eye on a new edition of his work from The Flanders road I take reviewed him and also a book from Nathalie Surraute. Robbe Grillet wrote a weekly column about his view of the modern novel. He was both a writer and also a filmmaker. This is his best-known novel I have already reviewed A project of a Revolution in New York which was written a number of years after this book. Anyway, I accept watched a few of his films in the concurrently and likewise read a bit near him and this book has a lot of common threads that appear in Grillet's works.

Franck is here agaun for dinner, smiling, talkative, amiable. Christiane has not come up with him this fourth dimension; she has stayed dwelling house with the child , who is running a slight fever. It is not unusal, these fays, for the hubby to come without her similar this, because of the child, because of christiane's own ailments – for her health has difficulty adapting itself to this hot, humid climate – and too because of her domestic  problems, her difficulties managing her numerous and poorl organized servants.

There is an undercurrent of this short passage I felt !!

The book is the first-person narrative of a jealous husband as he is viewing his wife whom we only e'er know as A in the volume and her interaction with their neighbor Franck with his wife sometimes other times just Franck. We watch as the narrator glimpses on through the blinds. The championship in french has a duel meaning equally Jaluise is likewise the French name for Venitian blinds that the jealous husband is observing the action simply this itself means that his clarification of the events is limited to our narrator'south vision of the consequence and is from the viewpoint that he feels his wife A is having this affair with Franck this honey triangle is the heart of the book as we detect that activity or well the events information technology is set in a Banana plantation and this is the time that the French Empire was like the British Empire was starting to fall apart and then one imagines that there is a sense of that the heat also volition add to the tension of the events happening I was reminded at times of the restored scenes of Apocalypse Now where we follow the evening in the old plantation. There is a experience of what is missed in the narrative also he like in his films jumps from fourth dimension to fourth dimension from one event to another event. This is a classic slice of what the New novel as a concept was meant to do and that is to rip up the novel as a norm away from the novel to the bare mechanics of what the work is!

They expect at each other without adding another word.Franck widens his smiles, which wrinkles upwards the corners of his eyes. He opens his mouth as if he were going to say something, be he doesn't say annihilation. A …'s features, from a point 3 quarters of the style behind her, reveal nothing.

After several minutes- or serveral seconds – both are however in the same postition. Franck's face, as well as his whole body, is virtually petrified. He is wearing shorts and a short sleeved khaki shirtm whose shoulder straps and buttoned pockets accept a vaguely war machine expect. Over hus crude cotton fiber knee socks he wears lawn tennis shoes coated with a thick layer of white shoe polish, cracked at the places where the canvas bends with the human foot.

The mechanic of the meet here as well the reference to Military lok remind me of Apocalypse now

I said the mechanics equally the bones of this volume and it is true that he was trained as an Engineer and at that place is a sense of that type of mind at work I was reminded of my own male parent's mind and the way he views the earth which is very much how does it piece of work? That is the heart of what he has done hither it is like a hotrod of a novel it has been taken apart and rebuilt yous can see its influence on other works after this the way the narrated glimpses into this world of his married woman and his neighbours isn't far removed from Jeffrey viewing frank through the slanted wardrobe door. Even the name is similar Franck and Frank! The glimpse of activeness even has a nod towards Hitchcock which came out before this book information technology is all nearly the angle the view we get the glimpses of the action it is shots of the events we are asked to think about what the events are nosotros add the emotions and maybe fifty-fifty fill the gaps! in the volume. And so it is piece of cake to see why this is considered an important work of mail service-war fiction as it is part of a canon of writers that wanted to milkshake up the novel afterwards the state of war in France and Nabahkov called it the best novel about Love since Proust mayhap the all-time nearly the despair of honey. Have you lot read any books or seen the films of Robbe- Grillet.

Winstons score – A wait at what 1 homo views or doesn't?

The end of Eddy by Édouard Louis

08 February 2022

by winstonsdad in french republic Tags: 2022, BOOKS THAT Defined ME, french lit, NEW VOICES, personal connectedness to books, vintage

The End of Boil past Édouard Louis

French Auto-Fiction

Original title – En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule

Translator – Michael Lucey

Source – Personal copy

Any of you that have followed this blog for any amount of fourth dimension will know I am wary of what I would call the "It Book ". Ane of those books that seem to be everywhere when they come up out and here is such a book from the current star of French Literature  Edouard Louis a boyfriend that grew up in a small boondocks in Northern France in the Picardy region. In a working-class family in a working-course boondocks. His father had an accident and was unable to piece of work making their lives fifty-fifty harder having to live off government handouts. Anyway, he has written a number of books near his life using that great French tradition of Autofiction then Edouard becomes Eddy Bellegueile from The small-scale French town of Hallencourt which is also Edouard Louis hometown.

The Kicks to my tum knovcked the wind out of me and I couldn't cath my breath. I opened my mouth as wide as I could to allow in some oxygen. I expanded my chest, , but the air wouldn't go in, as if without warning my lungs had filed upwards with some dense kind of sap, with lead. They felt then heavy all of a sudden. My body was shaking, as if it had a listen of its ain, equally if I had no control over it. The fashion an agening torso that is freeing itself from the mind, or is existence abandoned past information technology, pass up to obey it. A body becoming a brunt.

A descriptioin of an attack to him at school.

I was drawn to read this book when I saw it on holiday last year and read the Blurb. I am a fan of Autofiction, although I am not gay I was a skinny backwards kid soft-spoken and into high-sounding things and had a stepfather that made my life hell and then I knew that this story is one I would really connect with. We meet Eddy a immature boy that is subject to Bullying he has always been out of sync with his family he is merely ane of those boys that like me at that age stands out. He besides has a double-concluded problem with school and domicile life equally beingness hard. From the Bullies that deed him in school a peculiarly fell attack in the school corridor reminded me of some of the bullying, I had schoolhouse I endured at schoolhouse. And so at domicile his begetter lack of accepting his son. We meet Eddy's life the poverty and the homophobia of the boondocks are shown it is a identify out of time with other places similar many small towns and villages this place isn't every bit forward equally it should be. Will he go far through?

(Nosotros would go there once a month, information technology was true, to collect the boxes of food they gave out to the poorest families. The volunteers grew to recognise me and, when nosotros arrived, they would sideslip me a few actress chocolate bars beyond our allotted share. There's our footling Eddy, how's he doing ? and my parents would tell anyone, no one, that we go to the food bank, that'southward a clandestine that stays in the family. They didn't realise thart I'd already understood, without being told, how shameful this was, and that nada would take fabricated me tell anyone virtually information technology. )

The family really struggle with money and have toi go to a food bank such a common occurance these days for so many.

Only what sets this apart is how evenly he tells the story it is written with an eye that hasn't painted the world with a biased brush no this is a view of someone in the eye of the tempest observing the storm. The poverty, the bullying, the racism and the homophobia are all written with the sense that they can't assistance their views and having grown up in a similar environment with the Bullying and a hard father in my stepfather luckily we weren't equally poor as Boil to add together to his woes. But this book is the first footstep in books like this that show the horror of being in the middle of a storm you can't cease the storm only crossbar downwards and dauntless it then tell others about it when you make it to the other side a survivor of the events and that is what this is a person that got through those events and struggles when many others didn't and and so it is a powerful work. I regret leaving information technology so long to read this book in fact the same affair has happened today with another volume. Have you ever left a volume because of Hype or exercise y'all call back information technology may not be a book for you? Do you dear connecting with books on a personal level, for me this is what reading is connections inspirations and discoveries an endless journeying we should all be on?

Winstons score – +A – A tough childhood told without prejudice even though they suffered information technology so much.

Geography of an Adultery by Agnes Riva

03 February 2022

by winstonsdad in france Tags: 2022, french lit, other press, prix goncourt

Geography of an Infidelity by Agnes Riva
French fiction
Original title – Géographie d'united nations adultère
Translator – John Cullen
Source – review copy

I always like discovering new french writers I have reviewed so many french books over the time of the blog. It averages out at an average of about ten books a twelvemonth from France This debut novel was on the Prix Goncourt starting time novel list a list that had has winners such as Kamel Daouad and Laurent Binet both of which I have featured on the weblog. The volume came out in France in 2918. Agnes Riva lives in the Suburbs of Paris this is where she drew her inspiration for this novel. in the Urban landscape, she sees. The book was merely published by another press many thanks to them for sending me a copy to review.

The interior of Paul'southward machine south[ace rtather limited in volume and distributed with a certain stringency. The design of the iv egonomic seats is and then precise that squeezing a fifth person into the back would be pratically impossible. The front seats are seperated by a brusk armrest half their hieghts, information technology contains no storage console and provides no place to put such small objects equally sunglasses of CDs

WIth its leather seatsm aluminum door sills, and stainless steel pedals, the vehicles's rider expresses its owners intention to posses a car that offers all available comfort abd luxury,but in miniature, and for the price of an entry level model

Paul aroma pervades the space

The opening chatper and it is about the small machine luxury but small and perchance that says sometjing longer term abiut Paul ?

The volume follows a option of sites where a couple is having an adulterous affair. The volume has a tone that is almost scientific observance a very detached observation of the events discrete of the emotions information technology just shows the events So we run across Ema and Paul equally they kickoff an matter that happened when they meet through their jobs on an industrial tribunal which they are both on and kickoff an affair they both have partners and Children so their clandestine meetings take office out of sight as much as possible each chapter is 1 of these locations Starting with Ema looking every bit they meet early on on in Pauls car describe the car and what it is similar grabbing a quick liaison in a car. So a corner out of sight in a house a chapel as they snatch the quick pieces of passion simply there see,s to be two views on this affair as we view information technology in those small-scale snapshots of the meeting not seeing the event outside the meeting equally we don't see the other side of the matter the home life isn't shown just the meetings and details of each corner and identify they sneak a moment a drove of moments.

The corner they retreat to is located between the sink and the reffrigerator. On ane side, along the back wall, a storage cabinet. On the other, the sin and a work counter. Above this infinite, a stretched fabric forms a decorative faux ceiling, in which leads to a bel shaped metal oven hood. Behind the gas stove, a window with two sliding casements overlooks the garden and , on one side, the veranda of the house adjacent door.

Narrow though it is, this space proves in the end to be better suited to quenching their thirst for concrete union than within of Paul's machine, where they move stiffly and awfully

There second liasion isn't much more than comfortable as they find a corner in Ema's hpouse out of site of the neighbours.

This is a novella and is written in a wonderful detached mode as we get what are Polaroid-like glimpses of an thing I would love pictures to back-trail the volume that is just me I love the manner she has described her observing the Urban landscapes around her home in the Suburbs how to avoid the preying eye is at the centre of an matter and that is what is shown here also the different way the couple view the events Paul is but after the sexual activity really later on that initial attraction you lot always experience Ema wants more maybe the intimacy isn't what lead her to the affair or is this just me reading to much into the events I do this sometimes anyway this hasn't a lot of passion or fifty-fifty sexual practice etc it is more virtually the clandestine nature of the events that unfold it is just a collection of secret meeting places and the meeting and maybe in the description the events then become an anti-climax at times. This is a bully debut novel that has a slightly new take on the novel dealing with Adulterous affairs. Have you lot a favourite adultery novel ?

Winstons score – B is a solid debut novel well translated by John Cullen he has actually caught the detached emotionless nature of the book shines through.

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