A Novel Bookstore

I have a confession to make. I rarely love any of the books I'm assigned to review for Library Journal. I expect that's partly due to the nature of the books they send me. It seems like my niche is literary fiction in translation with an emphasis on Scandinavian and German-language authors. I don't get light, fluffy, fun reads, I get hard-core literary stuff that is sometimes hard to get through. That's not to say that the books aren't accomplished, just that reading them often feels more like work than pleasure.

Earlier this week a novel I reviewed for Library Journal and really enjoyed was published.

A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé

Heiress Francesca and bookseller Ivan don't expect to make a profit when they open a bookstore in Paris that sells nothing but the best fiction. The store's unexpected success produces a powerful backlash: outcry from pundits, negative ad campaigns, targeted competition, and threats that escalate to physical violence. When members of the store's secret inventory selection committee are attacked, barely escaping with their lives, it becomes imperative for the owners to find out who is behind the intimidation.

With A Novel Bookstore, French novelist Cossé gives readers a truly literary thriller. Eminently readable, A Novel Bookstore is a love letter to the novel (literature junkies will find within its pages a seemingly endless supply of book suggestions) and a profound exploration of human nature.

On a side note, I love what translator Alison Andersen [by the way, she was the translator of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (see post)] did with the novel's title. In French the title is "Au bon roman" ([place] of good novels), while the English title drops the good modifier, it plays very successfully on the double meaning of the word novel.

See full review at Library Journal.

Broken Glass Park

A review that appears in the latest issue of Library Journal...

Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky

This debut novel, which was nominated for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, reveals a strong voice that's simultaneously biting and accessible.
Its narrator, precocious 17-year-old Sacha, lives in a housing project in Berlin populated by Russian immigrants. She's at the top of the class in her exclusive private school and has two goals in life: to kill her stepfather and to write a book about her mother tentatively titled "The Story of an Idiotic, Redheaded Woman Who Would Still Be Alive if Only She Had Listened to Her Smart, Oldest Daughter." This modern coming-of-age story follows Sacha as she interacts with the characters that populate her world and ventures further afield.

It is unfortunate that Bronsky's depiction of the immigrant community veers into stereotype because, as an émigré herself, she is uniquely situated to critique her fellow travelers. Additionally, while translator Mohr's prose is pitch-perfect, the way his notes are inserted in the text distracts from the flow of the narrative.

Broken Glass Park is the kind of book one expects to see on high school reading lists. It faces difficult issues head-on and its edginess will appeal to teens.

Handke's Don Juan

I reviewed this book in November, but waited until it's on sale to share it with you.

Don Juan: His Own Version by Peter Handke

Austrian Handke's latest to be translated into English is narrated not by Don Juan as its title would suggest, but by a lonely French innkeeper into whose garden the protagonist tumbles one day. The innkeeper becomes Don Juan's confidant and during his stay Don Juan recounts his previous week's adventures. Over the course of that "womanweek" Don Juan travels as far as Damascus and Norway encountering a new woman each day. At first Don Juan is like a mythological character. The narrator describes him as a veritable St. Francis, nourished by sorrow (he was orphaned by the loss of his only child), with the ability to magic rare and wonderful foodstuffs. The narrator's impression of Don Juan, however, changes after the week of storytelling has concluded. Whatever was awe-inspiring seems to dissipate and Don Juan becomes just a regular man with irritating quirks.

Don't come to Don Juan expecting tales of excitement and seduction or detailed accounts of the lothario's encounters or you'll be disappointed. The novel is literary and philosophical rather than sensational.

Read the official review at Library Journal...

System of Vienna

A book I reviewed for Library Journal this fall is in stores today.

The System of Vienna: From Heaven Street to Earth Mound Square by Gert Jonke

In Austria, Jonke's award-winning work has a reputation for being extremely difficult; outside, he is still virtually unknown.

The System of Vienna is both a collection of short stories (originally and disparately published in 1970 and 1980) and an inventive autobiographical novel. The first-person narrator details his travels on the streetcars of Vienna and through life, starting with his blue-skinned birth and ending with a stony love scene, and belatedly explaining the book's subtitle. Translator Vincent Kling's attentiveness to Jonke's use of language—long, intentionally confused sentences, repetition, and fantastically superlative compound words like darkgreenblackcreepingplantalgaemurky (a descriptor for canal water)—helps retain the book's balance as well as its complexity.

This slim volume is not an easy read, and, while Kling's afterword does make it a bit more accessible, readers who aren't into experimental fiction may want to skip it.

See review in Library Journal...

God's Mercy

God's Mercy by Kerstin Ekman

In March 1916, Hillevi Klarin, a young midwife from Uppsala, takes a post in the forbidding wilderness of northern Sweden. Hopeful and naive, Hillevi is unprepared for the life she finds there: the ignorance, poverty, and superstition, the unforgiving elements, and the wide expanses of white. After struggling through disappointment and bewilderment, she settles down and finds a place in the community. One unspeakable thing, however, keeps her from feeling completely at home. This is primarily Hillevi's story. But it's narrated by her foster daughter, the enigmatic Risten, who is part Sámi and known as the girl who was stolen by an eagle.

As Risten interweaves Hillevi's story with her own and that of teenage runaway Elis, a broader narrative emerges, concerned with both the far-reaching consequences of a single event and the us-them dichotomy in all its forms. The result is an atmospheric first novel, set in the same area as Eckman's successful thriller Blackwater.

God's Mercy isthe first in the Wolfskin trilogy.

Read the full review at Library Journal...

Some literary fiction in translation

A couple reviews in Library Journal this month...

Kahn & Engelmann by Hans Eichner

Published to critical and commercial success in Europe ten years ago, this debut from prominent Canadian Germanist Eichner is now offered as the third title in the "Biblioasis International Translation" series. Narrated by Peter Engelmann, a middle-aged veterinarian working in Haifa, this work is at once the story of a family and a memorial to Viennese Jews. The narrative, the stream-of-consciousness recollections of a man caught between the need to remember and the desire to forget, opens in both 1980 and 1880 and chronicles the Kahn family's move from rural Hungary to Vienna, the narrator's 1938 flight to Belgium and eventual settlement in Israel, and all the family drama in between. The result is a moving book full of humor and humanity.


The Possession by Annie Ernaux

Ernaux's latest book to be translated into English is the story of an all-consuming jealousy, a self-portrait whose spare 64 pages sketch the life cycle of a possession. A woman has left a man "as much out of boredom as from an inability to give up [her] freedom." (9) The relationship may have been forgettable, but the narrator finds the idea of the man being with another woman unbearable, and her life is soon eclipsed by an obsession with that nameless, faceless woman. Occupation, the title of the original French edition, more clearly elucidates this state with its double entendre: the narrator is both engaged and possessed. While actively cultivating the obsession, the narrator is also very much concerned with chronicling it; this work is as much about the act of writing the novella as it is about the six months it recounts.

Three Musketeers

Three Musketeers by Marcelo Birmajer
translated from the Spanish by Sharon Wood

Despite his fear of becoming his newspaper's token Jewish affairs correspondent, apathetic reporter Javier Mossen is strong-armed into interviewing expatriate Elias Traúm, who is visiting from Israel for the first time in 20 years. When Traúm is kidnapped from the Buenos Aires airport before Mossen's eyes, the unwanted assignment takes on a whole new meaning. Mossen becomes invested in both ensuring Traúm's safety and the story Traúm has to tell. Darkly comic and unapologetic, the novel subtly explores the political reality of Argentina's past and what it means to be a good Jew. Narrated by the sex-obsessed Mossen, this is the tale of Traúm's short visit to Argentina and the legacy of his role as one of the tres mosqueteiros, a group of precocious young radicals, two of whom joined the Montoneros during the Dirty War. It is also the story of Mossen's struggle to reclaim control of his life.

I was particularly taken by this passage:
"Nobody knows who he is, and as such the best thing is to proceed cautiously through life and not get our hopes up too much. Maybe paradise is simply the place where we will be handed a leaflet telling us clearly who we are, what we wanted and why we couldn't have it" (4).

Read the full review in Library Journal or at Barnes & Noble (click on "editorial reviews").

On a Day like This

Here's a peek at a review that appeared in Library Journal this month.

On a Day Like This by Peter Stamm

Swiss author Peter Stamm's latest novel describes a few months in the life of Andreas, a secondary school teacher and confirmed bachelor. This glimpse at one man's midlife crisis is a mediation on what it means to be lonely. Sitting in a doctor's office awaiting the results of a biopsy, Andreas has an epiphany. Dissatisfied with the banality of his life, he decides to quit his job, sell his apartment, end his romantic affairs, and leave Paris for good. He heads to his childhood home in Switzerland and an ill-fated reunion with his first love. Andreas's completely unrealistic self-perception (illustrated with subtle irony by his language-teaching materials) makes up for his being far from sympathetic as a protagonist. Stamm's narrative is both insightful and dreamy, his fluid prose rendered adeptly by award-winning translator Michael Hofmann. And while the novel's ending is unexpected (and, some might argue, inappropriate), it is not unwelcome.

See the full review at Library Journal (temporarily) or Barnes and Noble under "editorial reviews" (it should be there shortly).

Honey Tongues

Here's a peek at a review that appeared in Library Journal this month. It should have appeared earlier, but the book got lost in the mail the first time around.

Honey Tongues by Helene Uri

As the twenty-fifth anniversary of their sewing circle-turned-supper club nears, journalist Tamara, translator Sara, teacher Eva, and homemaker Liss plan a trip to Copenhagen to celebrate. Helene Uri's second novel (published in Norway in 2002) is a glimpse into the lives of these four urban women in the six months leading up to that fateful trip. Between meal preparation and gossip, readers learn that there is much more to these women than meets the eye.

Uri (a former university professor whose first novel, De Beste Blant Oss, turned a critical eye to Norwegian academe) gets into the minds of her characters, highlighting all that is spiteful, deceitful, and naïve about them, eventually revealing the secrets, lies, and codependencies that have kept them together for all these years. The result is a novel both compelling and horrifying. Kari Dickson's adept translation eases the navigation of the complex psychological landscapes.

Read the review at Library Journal or Barnes and Noble under "editorial reviews".

The Last Cavalier

Here's a peek at a review that appeared in Library Journal this month. It should have appeared earlier, but the book got lost in the mail and the review got lost in cyberspace.

Dumas's final novel, The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon, was discovered by scholar Claude Schopp around 1990. It was originally published in installments from January to November 1869 in Le Moniteur Universel, a French newspaper in publication between 1789 and 1901. Set in the Age of Napoleon, the novel is historically situated between The Companions of Jehu (which actually begins the story of The Last Cavalier's protagonist) and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Its protagonist is Hector, the young Comte de Sainte-Hermine, who must abandon the woman he loves to avenge the deaths of his father and older brothers for the Royalist cause. Following Hector from France to Burma, the story is vintage Dumas. Though it is incomplete (the scene in progress is completed by Schopp), there is enough adventure and intrigue to satisfy the most demanding reader. In addition, this translation includes an informative essay by Schopp on the history and discovery of the lost novel as well as an appendix containing the first three chapters of another episode.

Read the review at Library Journal or Barnes and Noble under "editorial reviews".

The Chess Machine

Penguin is publishing a really wonderful piece of historical fiction this month, The Chess Machine by Robert Löhr. My review appeared in the May 1 edition of Library Journal.

Journalist Robert Löhr takes the inspiration for his debut novel from one of the most successful hoaxes of all time: the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton created by Austro-Hungarian Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1770. Although the book is well-researched, Löhr's story focuses on the Turk's early years, of which very little is known. He weaves a fictional back-story for the Turk's relatively well-documented later life. The novel is peopled with historical personages like von Kempelen and Empress Marie Theresia as well as completely fictitious characters like the Turk's first operator, dwarf Tibor, Kempelen's assistant Jakob, a Jewish lothario, courtesan-turned-domestic-spy Elise, and the ill-fated Baroness Jesenák, all of whom are well-executed and sympathetic. Löhr's vision of 18th century Europe seems authentic and the inclusion of a murder-and-revenge plot gives the story a satisfying momentum. Translated by award-winning translator Anthea Bell, this novel is highly recommended for readers of historical fiction.

Greed

My review of Greed by Elfride Jelinek (translated from the German by Martin Chalmers) appeared in the May 1 edition of Library Journal.

Jelinek's latest novel (published in German four years before she won the Nobel prize) is one that will appeal to her fans and most likely infuriate her detractors as well as casual readers previously unfamiliar with her writing.

Set in southern Austria, Greed tells the story of a country policeman with a mania for property acquisition and an appetite for rough sex that leads to the murder of a 16-year-old girl. The storyline, however, is not the important element of this novel. Its driving force is Jelinek's inimitable style of commentary on relationships between men and women, the struggles of the writer and of aging, the state of the environment, and Jelinek's love-hate relationship with her native Austria, among other things. The stream-of-consciousness musings of the novel's unidentifiable female narrator may drive some readers to distraction, with their repetition, lack of plot progression, and often incomprehensible wordplays. Like her or not, this "extraordinary linguistic zeal" is why Jelinek is a Nobel laureate.

Read the proper review at Library Journal...

Melancholy

1. Ill-temper, sullenness, brooding, anger. [...]
3. a. Sadness, dejection, esp. of a pensive nature; gloominess; pensiveness or introspection; an inclination or tendency to this. Also: perturbation (obs.). [...]
4. Sullenness, anger, or sadness personified. [...]
5. A short literary composition (usually poetical) of a sad or mournful character. (Oxford English Dictionary)


Melancholy by Jon Fosse
trans. by Grethe Kvernes and Damion Searls

This latest installment from Dalkey Archive Press' Scandinavian Literature series lives up to its name. The novel is nothing if not melancholic. Moody and episodic, Melancholy showcases the author's understanding of human psyche and its flaws. Because of its unique structure--divided into three chapters, each shorter than the last--the novel will be best appreciated if it can be read all in one sitting. While the book's final chapter takes place in the recent past, the majority of the novel is set in the mid-1850s and focuses on Norwegian artist Lars Hertervig. The author's use of the stream-of-consciousness style in this section allows readers an inside look deep within the mind of the neurotic and deeply troubled protagonist. Known primarily as a playwright (and favorably compared to Ibsen), Jon Fosse has produced over thirty literary works in the past twenty years. First published in Norway in 1995, Melancholy is Fosse's first novel to be translated into English.

My review appears in the latest edition of Library Journal.

While I was gone...

I only managed to read one book: Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

I got to meet up with relayer krin511. She's an archivist too!
Since krin is Miss August for the Bookaholics exchange group, I gave her this wishlist book: Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather by Jincy Willett

My review for I'll Steal You Away by Niccolò Ammaniti appeared in Library Journal. (You can read most of my review: here)
ETA: ok, it may not actually be in print yet. I thought it was supposed to appear in the first August issue, but it's not appearing on the website and the library's copy hasn't arrived yet so I can't double-check.

My review for Sanctifed Blues by Mable John and David Ritz was posted on FrontStreetReviews.com.
Love the cover art! (click on the image for a more detailed look)

No books arrived in the mail :(