Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe

Ah, the last novella in mine and Lyndsey's (from Tolstoy is my Cat) Peirene Press readalong.  And it's a good one too.  Sea of Ink tells the life of Bada Shanren, born into the Chinese royal family in 1626, shortly before the dynasty is destroyed by rivals.  Abandoning his life as a Prince, Bada becomes a nomad painter, wandering between different towns and roles.  Disillusioned with humanity, his paintings focus on nature and become more simplistic over time.  Sea of Ink tells the story of both his life and the development of his art.

Despite not being a big fan of art, I really enjoyed Sea of Ink.  I liked how Weihe took us right into the mind of Bada Shanren as he painted and made the physical process of painting such a large part of the story.  Bada Shanren's quest to capture nature with a single brushstroke had a sense of poetic beauty about it, and I loved that the paintings were included in the book alongside the relevant chapters.

Sea of Ink is a tranquil book.  Although Bada Shanren faces some difficult life events throughout it's pages, the whole story is calm and quiet, which I appreciated.  Sometimes we all rush around, ignoring the world around us, and this novella works as an antidote to that.  It reminded me to take a moment to really see what is around me.  Sea of Ink is about perseverance and living your life in your own way;

"...besides the old role models you also have your own: yourself.  You can not hang on to the beards of the ancients.  You must try to be your own life and not the death of another."

The only issue I had with the book was that it didn't seem to flow as smoothly as some of the other translations from the series.  And the sacrifice for the calm, tranquil qualities in the story was some degree of disconnect from the main character.  I never felt Bada Shanren's losses heavily as Weihe keeps him at a distance from the reader.  The story was about more than the character, and I was OK with that.  

I'm glad we finished the Peirene Press novellas on a high note!  There'll be one more discussion post next Thursday and then it's all over.  I'll miss opening the cover of a new novella every Sunday evening...

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Published: 2012

Score: 4 out of 5

The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul

The Murder of Halland is novella eight out of the nine that Lyndsay from Tolstoy is my Cat and I are reading as part of our Peirene Press readathon, and part of the Small Epics series.  Bess is a writer living in a small, tight-knit community with her partner Halland.  One morning she is woken by the sound of a gunshot and soon receives the news that Halland has been murdered.  The police start to investigate whilst Bess starts to grieve.  Throughout the process, Bess starts to see her neighbours, friends and family in a different light, and faces up the consequences of the decisions she has made throughout her life.

I should start this review by confessing that I'm not a fan of crime/detective fiction.  I've read a few popular crime books and some Sherlock Holmes, but I just can't get into it.  I know I'm supposed to solve the puzzle of who committed the crime but that's not how I like to read.  Sure enough, whilst reading The Murder of Halland, I didn't spend any time trying to work out who murdered Halland and consequently later events were a surprise to me.  The crime aspect of the book was well written but didn't appeal to this particular reader.  I also can't judge how much it 'dismantles the rules of an entire genre' (quote from the back cover), as I'm not familiar enough with the genre to tell.

Luckily, The Murder of Halland is much more than crime-by-numbers, it's also about grief and coming to terms with the loss of a loved one.  Many of the sections dealing with this rang very true to my own experiences.  There's one chapter in the book where Bess is supposed to go to a library to give a talk (she's a writer) and checking her emails, she finds a confirmation.  In the space of a few short sentences she goes from almost flippancy ("should I create an auto-reply saying my husband had been murdered?") to despair;

"What had I written?  I didn't want to think about work.  Perhaps I would never want to think about writing again.  That belonged to the past and it didn't matter any longer."

Grief has been like that for me too; a roller-coaster of emotions and the constant worry of whether you are grieving properly or not, whether people will judge you for smiling or for leaving the house.  I think Juul's writing will relate to the experience of most people ("If normal everyday life had resumed, the washing needed attention.") and I connected well with Bess.

So a bit of a mixed bag.  The crime sections didn't appeal but the writing was simple and heart-felt, honest about the grieving process.  If you are a crime fan, you'll enjoy this book.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Published: 2012

Score: 3.5 out of 5

The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg

The Brothers is the sixth book out of a total of nine that Lyndsay from Tolstoy is my Cat and I are reading as part of a read-along of novellas published by Peirene Press.  We've completed the Female Voices and Male Dilemmas series; The Brothers is the first in the series entitled Small Epics.  I've been looking forward to this series all along as I love epic fiction, although I'm more used to it in chunkster rather than novella form!

The Brothers is about Henrik and Erik, Finnish brothers in 1809 who fought on opposing sides of the war between Sweden and Russia, that made Finland a part of the Russian Empire.  Although they share blood, there has long been conflict between them, and when Henrik finally returns home, it's to a broken house full of people that hide secrets of their own.  In the wintery wilderness, Henrik and Erik must face up to each other and the revelations that are to come.

I enjoyed The Brothers, mainly for the atmosphere.  I read this novella in one go on New Year's Day, snuggled up in a blanket with the heating turned up.  So it was wonderful to read about the icy Finnish winter, the rugged Farmhand, the distant wife and the frozen rivers.  On the back cover, it states that The Brothers is a 'Shakespearean drama from icy Finland' and the atmosphere reminded me a cross between Hamlet and a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  I wanted to dive right into this book, the setting was that vivid.

Despite the historical elements, The Brothers is mainly a story about what can happen to people when they live in isolation from larger communities.  Some of the drama and secrets centre around Erik's wife, Anna, but in a way that's inevitable as she's the only woman we read about existing in the community of what seems to be only two houses.  When you live so shut off, boundaries between relationships blur and people have to take on multiple roles in your life.  That said, I didn't guess the big reveal near the end (although there are plenty of smaller reveals along the way) and I loved that Sahlberg was able to surprise me.

Although I very much enjoyed this book, there was a distance from the characters that stopped me loving it. I don't mind less than perfect characters, so the flaws of Henrik didn't concern me, but it was written in a style that reflected the cold, icy Finnish winter.  Whilst I admired the writing, this technique also stopped me from connecting with any of the characters properly, and it was this that made me only like the book, rather than love it.  It is a wonderfully written book though, and well worth reading for the atmosphere alone.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Published: 2011

Score: 4 out of 5

Peirene Discussion Post #2: Male Voices

    

Lyndsey from Tolstoy is my Cat and I are now two-thirds of the way through our epic Peirene Press novella read-along.  The last three titles we have read Next World Novella, Tomorrow Pamplona and Maybe This Time (see below for links to our reviews) have been part of a series entitled Male Voices, and focus on  the quest for intimacy from a male perspective.  Here are some thoughts of ours on the novellas:

1. Have you enjoyed the series? Did you have a particular favourite?  Why?

Lyndsay: I have enjoyed the series, although it hasn't left me swooning like the 'Female Voices' series did, most likely because the female ones were much more like the books I normally gravitate towards and enjoy. The 'Male Voice' series has been wildly illuminating for me for that exact reason though and I think, despite my slightly reduced emotional reaction to the series, that these are fabulous books that stand up on a world-class level and deserve a wide, wide readership.

My favourite, as the regular readers of my blog will know, was 'Maybe This Time' by Alois Hotschnig, which is a novella-length collection of nine short stories that is the final book in the three-book series. I love surrealist, slightly bizarre literary fiction that plays with perception, technique and narrative, as well as featuring some truly 'unique' characters, and these short stories fulfilled that wonderfully - I found them funny and disturbing and utterly refreshing! I also love open-ended, ambiguous structures and endings as I think they are one of the ways to best mimic the uncertainties of life in fiction. 

Sam: My emotional reaction was less too, although I think that was perhaps the intention in 'Tomorrow Pamplona', as the author wrote in a style that reminded me of Hemingway.  As usual, we haven't agreed on our favourites - I have to admit that 'Maybe This Time' didn't do much for me as I'm not a fan of surrealism.  I loved 'Next World Novella' as it's about an everyday topic, the death of intimacy in a marriage.  I found I was most emotionally engaged with the sadness in this story.

2. We both loved the Female Voices series - do the Male Voices novellas compare?

Lyndsay: In terms of quality, writing and intuition, most certainly - it's reassuring to know, when you don't know the individual authors, that any Peirene book you pick up will be of the same glowing standard. I think it was important that there was a slight change in focus from the 'Female Voices' series, as of course you can have too much of a good thing and too much immersive inner reality could drive you mad after a while, and it's important that we as readers see the other side of the female/male coin. It did impressed me that the men were no more together and at ease with reality than the woman in the previous series though :)

How about you? What did you think?

Sam: I agree that the quality was up to the same high standard.  Even though 'Maybe This Time' didn't work for me, the quality of the writing was obvious to see.  I liked the diversity of this series, it seemed to me like the three titles were more different from each other than the three titles in the Female Voices series.  I am of course very much looking forward to the Small Epics series, as epics are something I love to read.

3. Have you found it harder to connect to the main characters this time around as the focus was on men?

Lyndsay: Yes, in a way, but I think that was due to the nature of the characters and the story rather than because I'm female and these books are about men: the women we read about in the first series were emotionally articulate and reasonably garrulous, so we knew them quickly, whereas part of the point of these male characters is that they don't know themselves in the same way, and cannot communicate their feelings to those around them, the reader included. So a greater emotional distance is a given, I think.

That said, I saw them just as clearly as characters because quiet, struggling men who can't say what they mean are everywhere you look, particularly in our parents' generation, I think. Never did they feel to me like characters I couldn't get a handle on, so the desired connection was there for me throughout in that regard. These are not men to take to your heart, however, as of course many of them are wildly unsympathetic - I'm thinking of Next World Novella's Hinrich, Danny in Tomorrow Pamplona and most of the characters in Maybe This Time, particularly - which is never a problem for me as it seems to be for some, but it is perhaps a given that your fictional relationship with a character will be different when you'd largely go out of your way to avoid them in real life.

Sam: I do think that 'quiet, struggling' is a stereotype for men and the male voices were different to the female.  As a society we expect women to be more emotionally articulate, so the women in the first three novellas were.  I would have liked to read about a man who shared emotions in the same way and especially wanted to know more about Danny from 'Tomorrow Pamplona'.

4. The series is about the quest for intimacy the male characters face.  In which novella did you see this struggle most clearly and why?

Lyndsay: Oo, good question. Of the three books, I see Next World Novella as the exception on this account, as I think Hinrich lost interest in connecting with his wife but could have improved this if his attention hadn't been elsewhere, whereas Danny in Tomorrow Pamplona and the characters in Maybe This Time (apologies for lumping them together) seem completely unable to either build face-to-face adaptive relationships, or to express emotion through words off their tongue than through their body and or with their hands.

Danny's struggle affected me most in this regard I think, as I don't see how the book could have ended in any other way; I really don't think he possessed the necessary social skills to act in any other fashion. Running seems natural to him, and punching, and even staring down a bull, but to conjure an ending where he attains real emotional intimacy with either Ragna or Robert would require character aspects that I just don't see as feasible. So, he is a prisoner within his 'Quest for Intimacy' in my eyes, and most likely can never escape that. And, as I said in my review, that made me really sad for both him and also the millions of men who are their own worst enemies in this regard.

Sam: I felt for Danny too, especially as I'm not convinced his version of events was accurate - I wanted him to stay and 'face the music', so to speak.

Thanks for the interesting discussion, Lyndsay!

After Christmas, we will be reading and reviewing the three Peirene novellas in the 'Small Epics' series, The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg, The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul and Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe.

Links to our reviews:

Next World Novella:Lyndsay's, Mine

Tomorrow Pamplona:Lyndsay's, Mine

Maybe This Time: Lyndsay's, Mine

Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig

Maybe This Time is the third volume in the Peirene Press series Male Voices (I have also read and reviewed Next World Novella and Tomorrow Pamplona).  It's different from the other volumes as it's actually a collection of nine short stories, tied together around the themes of alienation, voyeurism and loss of identity.  Characters wake up as completely different people, meet sinister dolls that look identical to them, become obsessed with watching neighbours and waste their lives waiting for a relative to turn up.  There's a surreal under-tone to all of the stories and they aim to unsettle.

Although I enjoyed the writing in Maybe This Time and respect the imagination of the author, ultimately this book just wasn't for me.  Whilst I like unsettling and creepy, gothic style tales, I struggle with surreal works of fiction.  I don't enjoy the surreal elements of Alice in Wonderland, let alone the works of authors like Kafka and Hotschnig.  I think what bothered me in this particular collection was not the surrealism itself, but the way the characters responded to it.  In one short story, the main character is invited into an old lady's house only to find that she collects dolls, one of which has his name and looks exactly like him, even down to the clothes he is wearing.  I think a normal reaction to this would be to leave and never return but Karl just doesn't come across as shocked enough, and this is consistent across the collection.

I think Maybe This Time would be enjoyable for readers who enjoy the surreal.  As I said, the writing is good and Hotschnig tackles some important themes (identity, alienation).  I'm just not the right reader for it.  I suppose in a set of nine books, I'm bound to find one that doesn't work for me.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
First published in English: 2011
Score: 2.5 out of 5

Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki

Next World Novella is the first book in the Peirene series on Male Dilemmas: The Quest for Intimacy (I have previously reviewed all of the novellas in the Female Voices series; Beside the Sea, Stone in a Landslide and Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman). Hinrich Schepp is an ageing academic in a seemingly happy relationship with wife Doro. He enters their apartment to find her editing one of his manuscripts, a regular occurence.  But things aren't as they always are - Doro has passed away and the manuscript she was editing was Hinrich's long abandoned attempt at a fiction novel.  Using the disguise of story, Hinrich has revealed much about the past and he is shocked by Doro's alterations as they show she knows more than he ever realised.  Sitting down next to her corpse to read, Hinrich has to face up to his past and the disintegration of his superficially happy marriage.

I really enjoyed Next World Novella, more than I expected to.  I loved the wry voice of the author, the black humour and the macabre tone that pervaded the whole book.  There are many details of death included, giving the novella a gothic feel that appealed to me.  Politycki is clever in that he guides you to judge and poke fun at Hinrich but at the same time you can't help but feel sorry for him.  One moment you're judging him for fantasising about attractive waitresses within a few minutes of discovering his wife's corpse and the next you want to stop him from embarrassing himself with his clumsy attempts at an extramarital affair that have you cringing.

Hinrich traces the decline of his marriage to an operation he had to improve his vision; "It was terrible to see the world in such detail, so sharply outlined, all of a sudden!  It dazzled him with a confusingly large number of details". In a sense, this is a metaphor for the whole story.  Hinrich and Doro's marriage looks happy if you only look at it quickly, or not thoroughly.  As soon as you start to dig deeper, the misery becomes apparent.  The majority of the novel is narrated from Hinrich's point of view and it's black comedy at it's best but doesn't elicit too much emotion.  However, the final part is Doro's editorial opinion on the manuscript and this is the heart of the novel.  I had been reading along, poking fun at Hinrich whilst secretly pitying him and I simply wasn't expecting the emotional punch of Doro's words.  It's easy to forget the impact that one person's actions can have on another.  Including Doro's voice at the end made the novella cohesive and more powerful than Hinrich's narration alone could have been.

Putting aside the death and descriptions of the decay of Doro's corpse, Next World Novella will ring true for a lot of readers.  It's easy to ignore slow but serious decline in our personal relationships and it's often only when you look back that you realise how far things have gone.  Hinrich and Doro never found the relationships they were hoping for and both suffered with a lonlieness that must be very common.  The mix of this serious theme and the hints of comedy really worked for me.  It's one of my favourite Peirene novellas so far and will be hard to beat.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
Edition: Peirene Press, 2011
Score: 4.5 out of 5

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is the third and final book in the Peirene Press series entitled Female Voices.  It's an unusually structured book that takes the reader into the mind of Margarethe, a twenty-one year old German woman living in Rome in 1943, who is walking from the boarding house where she lives to a Bach concert being held at the church on Via Sicilia.  Having followed her husband to Rome only to see him shipped off to Africa to help the war effort, Margarethe is alone and eight months pregnant.  She speaks little Italian and is both mystified by and scared of Rome, the city of their Italian allies.  As we follow Margarethe on her walk, we get an insight into her thought processes and get to see World War Two through a new lens.

I liked this book.  I found the structure difficult at first; the book is basically one long sentence with no full stops or page breaks and this was challenging for me.  I didn't know when to put the book down and the lack of punctuation made the novella feel longer than it was.  The pace was also fairly slow towards the beginning and these two factors combined made reading heavy going initially.  But as soon as I settled into the book and saw it for what it was, a character driven novel, I started to enjoy it.  The pace is slow but this allows the character to get really under your skin and this is how Portrait of the Mother is effective.

I had mixed feelings about the main character, Margarethe.  She was expertly written and I'm in awe at how the male author managed to get so into the mind of a young, pregnant woman. On the one hand I couldn't help but empathise with her situation, alone and unsure in a foreign city, struggling to keep her composure.  I admired how she constantly battled to remain positive, to appreciate all she had rather than give in to fear, because I don't know if I could do the same.  You can't help but feel sorry for her when you read about her wishing that her husband's leg wound would worsen so he could have treatment at a Roman hospital and they could be reunited.  But at the same time, I found her very naive.  To protect herself she has drawn a shell around herself and tries not to think of politics and the war.  Although she never articulates it fully, her views from her time in the Hitler Youth contradict with her religious views and she has severe doubts about the directions Hitler is taking.  But she does nothing, she has completely detached herself;

"Even in Germany she had not read the papers, it was better not to know too much, not to say too much, not to ask too much, as one always heard bad news soon enough."

There must have been many people like Margarethe but this side of her made me have very mixed feelings towards her.  I suspect this is what Delius intended and that this is part of what makes the book so effective, but it challenges you as a reader.  To empathise and not at the same time.  After finishing this book, I'm still not quite sure what I think about the main character.

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is the Peirene book that I've found the hardest going so far, mainly because of the structure.  It's without a doubt beautifully written and thought-provoking but I don't know if I would describe reading it as an enjoyable experience.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
First Published in the UK: 2010
First Published in Germany: 2006
Score: 3 out of 5

Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal

Stone in a Landslide is the second book in the Peirene Press series 'Female Voices' and is set in Spain before and during the Civil War.  Conxa is only thirteen when she is sent to a neighbouring mountain village to work for her aunt and uncle.  Life is hard in the way it has been for generations; men and women work long hours in the fields for little reward, the chores are endless and it's a struggle to get by. Conxa's days of work are brightened when she meets Jaume and they marry young.  But Jaume is an idealist captivated by democratic ideas and becomes a prominent local voice in the revolution. When this fledgling revolution is brutally crushed, Conxa has to face the inevitable consequences and the devastating effect on her life.

I enjoyed Stone in a Landslide mainly for the wonderful narrative voice of Conxa.  She's born into a hard life where being pragmatic and hard-working are skills prized above all, but she has a dreamy, romantic soul that can't be squashed.  She finds old dresses in the attic and puts them on, dreaming of a brighter future.  She loves pretty things.  She dawdles in the fields watching the sky.  She loves Jaume because he "puts new colours into her mundane world".  She really values happiness and is always seeking it for herself and her loved ones, prioritising feelings over politics at every turn.  It's hard not to like a character like this and even though Conxa is extremely naive about what is happening around her, I adored her.

I didn't know much about the Spanish Civil War before reading this book and it only filled in a few of my gaps.  Although it's set in a particular time and place (Spain in the early twentieth century), the story is more about the effects of war and political suppression on individual families; so in a sense, which war it is doesn't matter.  The feelings and consequences described are universal.  I was expecting the book to be more hard-hitting than it was in the final sections - I felt for Conxa but she became so detached that it was hard to really understand what it would have been like to be in her shoes.  I thought the effects of war could have been portrayed more powerfully than they were.  I wanted the book to upset me but it didn't.

Whilst I liked this book, I felt like I was reading it at a distance, never emotionally engaged with the story.  I could see Conxa was devastated, but I wasn't devastated with her, which prevented the book from having a strong impact.  It was expertly written, sensitively translated and taught me about a different period of history, but ultimately I needed more emotional engagement to properly enjoy it.

Source: From the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

First Published: 2010

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi

Over the coming months, you'll see lots of reviews of books published by Peirene Press, a publishing house based here in the UK that specialises in translations of short books that have received accolades in other European countries.  Lyndsey from Tolstoy is my Cat and I are completing a readalong of sorts, for which we will be reading and reviewing nine Peirene books from three collections;  female voices, male dilemmas and small epics.  Although I have received these books from the publisher in exchange for a review, all the views expressed are my honest opinion.

On with the first book!  Beside the Sea was originally published in France and is the story of an unnamed mother struggling to cope with life.  She has two young sons but is slowly slipping further into the grasp of mental illness.  She can't organise herself to get her boys to school on time, often sleeps through the day, is unable to budget her benefit money to provide food and other essentials, is consumed with paranoia and can spend hours staring into space, doing nothing at all.  Social services, health visitors and psychiatrists are involved but the mother isn't feeling any better.  She decides to use all the money she has left for one last trip to the seaside with her boys, to make sandcastles and visit a funfair.  But the weather is bad, the town is muddy and the shopkeepers aren't pleased with her selection of small change.  She wants to keep her boys safe, but at what cost?

Beside the Sea is an incredibly powerful book.  I finished it a few days ago and still the events of the story are running through my mind.  The ending itself is rather predictable but that doesn't take away from the emotional punch you get as you read the last sections.  Beside the Sea was especially powerful for me as I am a primary school teacher who teaches in inner London and I've met many parents that are at least partly like the mother in the story, completely unable to cope with life for whatever reason.  In one passage, the mother is discussing her son's teacher, Marie-Helene, and it was eerily familiar;

"she's always asking questions, Why hasn't he got his plimsolls for gym?  What time does he go to bed because he's falling asleep in lessons?" p28

I've had that exact conversation many times and that's probably the reason why I engaged with this book so much. Be it mental illness or their own backgrounds, there are so many mothers like Olmi's out there and I was blown away by how well Olmi got under the skin of her character, by how well she exposed her thought processes.  Even though as a reader you can see the consequences on her two children, especially the oldest, Stan, who is trying to mother his own mother, you can't help but feel sorry for the unnamed narrator.  People are trying to help her but no one is addressing the root cause of her problems, that she can't cope with herself, let alone two children;

"I couldn't spend a full day on my feet, doing this and that, being friendly, polite and happy, no, I wouldn't make it through a whole day with my eyes open." p60

As I was reading the book, I kept thinking 'what could have prevented the ending from happening?'  I'm willing to bet the mother would have already had the whole gamut of help from social services, including parenting classes and counselling and everything they could offer, and with no prior history of harm, her children were probably considered to be at low risk.  How many parents like her are truly out there?  If you've had inadequate parenting how you can truly parent well yourself?  What can we do to help? Why do people look the other way from these kinds of social issues? Beside the Sea is a powerful book that raises more questions than it answers and I'm glad that I took the time to read it.

Source: From Peirene, in exchange for an honest review.
First Published: 2001, France
My Edition: 2010
Score: 5 out of 5