“You have to know a full story before you can get a feeling about a thing, and you can never judge anyone.” (Donal Ryan, Heart Be at Peace)

/ madamebibilophile / 14 Comments

Donal Ryan is one of my favourite contemporary writers so I’m delighted to be squeezing this post in on the final day of Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books.

It’s been seven years since I read his polyphonic debut, The Spinning Heart, so I came to the follow up, Heart, Be At Peace, with only a hazy recollection of the characters and plot. Like its predecessor, Heart, Be At Peace has twenty-one chapters, each narrated by a different inhabitant of a County Tipperary town.

While the first novel considered the fallout of the economic crash on a cross-section of the town, Heart, Be at Peace looks at how illegal drugs and associated money, violence and desperation impact so many.

Both books are centred on, and begin with, Bobby Mahon. He is struggling, and there is a sense of it only being a matter of time before he either explodes or implodes:

“There’s this thing that happens me now nearly every day. It feels like a stab of something in my middle, not pain exactly, just a kind of force that takes the air out of me so that I have to stop what I’m doing for a few seconds until it passes. It only comes on me when I let my thoughts drift.”

This is the uniting thread that pulls the various narratives together. Gradually a picture builds of Bobby becoming more and more enraged at the audacity shown by the shameless drug dealers. Despite the different narrators and their varying concerns, bubbling in the background is Bobby and his Achilles’ heel, observed by older man Jim:

“Bobby Mahon Is one of these rare men who measures himself against the well-being of the people around him.”

I was glad to see Lily the witch/sex worker return, this time worrying about her granddaughter Millicent who is caught up with abusive dealer Augie Penrose. It’s not just Lily who has a sixth sense though – I thought this had more supernatural beliefs and encounters than its predecessor, but maybe my memory is failing!

Although this novel included one chapter narrated by a ghost, if you’re not keen on the supernatural in books, rest assured there are many grounding elements. Lily herself observes “belief itself is a kind of magic.”

While later in the novel Brian realises: “I always work off impressions, and my impressions, it turns out, are mostly shite.”

There’s a lot of sadness in Heart, Be at Peace as is to be expected given the themes, but Ryan leaves it to the reader to piece some events together and draw their own conclusions, which stops it being sanctimonious or sentimental. A reported death is truly sad, and to the reader seems suspicious, but is accepted as a heart attack by the characters.

There’s also the endurance of Pokey Burke, instrumental in the in local desolation caused by the building crash and now finding ways to make money off the poorest people again. His is a cynical presence but an entirely believable one.

There is resilience too. Rory, one of Bobby’s young workers, is madly in love and expecting his first child:

“all things tend towards chaos. I close my eyes against the mad torrent of panic. This is okay, I think. This is life, this is life, this is how it’s meant to be.”

And also humour. A standout voice for me was Trevor, self-aggrandizing and clinically delusional but with an interesting turn of phrase:

“the bus stopped and he was gone, and I was left to writhe beneath the gaze of some kind of a working-class Medusa.”

And there is kindness, experienced by Vasya, an immigrant camping on land at the edge of town. His observation suggests Bobby may not be wrong in seeing himself inextricably bound to his community:

“I was reminded of how small this world is, how closed-in this country is, like a bowl containing berries that you can pick up and swirl so that each berry touches another berry in the space of an instant.”

By the end I felt there was a possibility Ryan may revisit this town and the people again. I hope so.

“The first words of every story tasted fresh.” (Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break)

/ madamebibilophile / 26 Comments

I read Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty when it came out in 1997 – nearly 30 years ago! I really loved it and although generally with books I remember themes, atmosphere and how I felt reading it, I rarely remember specifics such as characters or plot. With Grace Notes I can still remember some of the exquisite sentences, so it is a mystery to me why I have only just returned to this writer. Thank goodness for Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books giving me a push!

Midwinter Break (2017) follows Gerry and Stella, a long-term couple now in late middle-age, as they spend a short city break in Amsterdam. Without explicitly stating their situation, but rather presenting it for the reader to observe, MacLaverty conveys their shared history, love and sense of humour.

“I suppose we’re lucky to have each other to ignore.”

They are entirely used to each other’s presence as a constant, both used to considering the other as much from habit as from affection.

“He had to cross the main road rumbling with traffic and reached out to take Stella by the hand before realising she wasn’t with him.”

Yet over the space of the weekend, tensions from deep-rooted differences and past trauma will come to the fore. Stella is undergoing an existential crisis:

“There are important questions to be answered. How can we best live our lives? How can we live good lives?”

She is a lifelong Catholic, while Gerry is an atheist. There is a sense that this need not be an insurmountable difference, except Gerry is dismissive of her beliefs and his drinking is becoming problematic. He foolishly believes his various deceptions go unnoticed by his wife. She has given up trying to get him to understand what religion gives her:

“Prayer was summoned intensity, held there in the head and in the heart. Something good, something spiritual. Articulated, spoken inwardly, wished to the point of aching.”

As they visit tourist destinations such as the Rijksmuseum (where a long description of the old woman reading portraits sounded very much like my avatar picture!) they talk, bicker, laugh, eat, drink. It is a testament to MacLaverty’s excellent characterisation and subtle evocation of their relationship that these surface behaviours exist alongside deeper crises without lessening their seriousness.

He portrays this couple with such a light touch, so although the reader feels they have reached a point of no return in their marriage, where after this mini-break nothing will be the same, it never feels melodramatic.

Similarly, MacLaverty crafts passages of such precise beauty, yet Midwinter Break never feels overwritten.

“Gerry’s hands lay in his lap and his eye was drawn to the window. The end of the daylight striking the glass obliquely created a glittering, grisaille effect. Like ground glass, a layer of dust activated by almost horizontal light transformed the window into Waterford crystal. No expense spared for the Irish pubs of Amsterdam.”

I thought that was just stunning: perfectly evoking an everyday scene so clearly, so poetically, and then undermining it with the gentle comedy of the prosaic final line.

Another description I found so tenderly observant was Gerry meeting his son for the first time:

“You are mine and I will love you till the day I die. He kissed his fingertips and conveyed the kiss to the baby’s face slowly, as if it could be spilled on the way down.”

Midwinter Break is just shy of 250 pages yet it captures the big questions of life alongside finely observed evocations of the everyday. I thought it was entirely wonderful.

The adaptation of the novel is in cinemas now and I’m going to see it on Sunday. Given the two leads, I have high hopes…

Reading Ireland Month: Two novellas by Clare O’Dea

/ madamebibilophile / 18 Comments

I’m late joining Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books which is such a shame as I really enjoy this event every year. But I’m hoping to squeeze a few reads in before the end of the month and so far I’ve manged two novellas by a new-to-me author.

Voting Day by Clare O’Dea (2022), is published by indie Fairlight Books. The author is originally from Dublin but has been living in Switzerland for more than two decades. The novella explores the failure of women’s suffrage in the referendum of 1959; Swiss women didn’t get the vote until 1971.

We start the day of the referendum with Vreni, exhausted wife of a farmer, who believes:

“The system worked well and women didn’t know enough about politics.”

She is travelling to Bern, for surgery on her prolapsed womb. I really felt for her when she reflected:

“Rest was the word that jumped out at her when he explained the ins and outs. She was giddy about the prospect of rest. She would be looked after, two weeks in hospital and one week in the convalescent home.”

Meanwhile, her daughter Margrit is one of the first generation of young single women to work independently in the city, encountering misogynistic assumptions from male colleagues about what this means for her sexual availability:

“They did not profess their profound respect for you before beginning a campaign of casual touching that seemed to reflect special understanding between you […] nor were they handsome and cultured, these dangerous men. They hid their claws until it was too late.”

On her admission to hospital, Vreni catches the eye of the cleaner Esther, who is from the Yenish traveller community. She has suffered under the racist policies of social services:

“Somebody somewhere decided that our little home was too full and too free. They took three of us away and left the younger ones. They wanted to see children in straight lines with clean dresses and plaited hair.”

Esther subsequently struggled as a single mother:

“I had to solve my problem during Ruedi’s naps before the money ran out. When he fell asleep in my arms after a feed, I would gently place him in the playpen where he would be safe if he woke. And I would run, run from one end of the town to the other, looking for solutions.”

And we realise that Ruedi is Vreni’s foster child. The situation is so heart-rending, Vreni unintentionally exacerbating Esther and Ruedi’s pain. Pivotal is Beatrice, Esther’s boss and the only one of the four protagonists truly concerned with the referendum.

“She thought she had braced herself for this, but hope would always wriggle in, that treacherous friend.”

Voting Day effectively demonstrates the way women’s rights are circumscribed in society by both formal and informal systems of power. It does so without losing sight of its characters and conveys so much of their individual stories in an incredibly short space. I found it highly readable, whizzing through it to an end that was reassuring without being entirely unrealistic.

“Can you be content and heartbroken in the same bed on the same night? It seems you can.”

In Before the Leaves Fall (2025, also Fairlight Books) O’Dea revisits Ruedi and Margrit, now both in old age. There are some lovely echoes throughout, such as the opening scenes of rösti, Vreni’s homemade expertise contrasting with Ruedi’s ‘slimy’ shop-bought version.

Margrit is in a care home, spiky and determined to avoid the enforced social niceties at all costs:

“Better this than the nonsense Nadja was peddling, yoga and meditation. Margrit had been caught in a talk about mindfulness the other day because her legs were acting up, and she hadn’t been able to leave the dayroom quickly enough. You had to be vigilant in this place.”

Ruedi is retired, widowed and now working for Depart, an assisted dying organisation. This is the decision Margrit has taken, reluctant to live through another winter (hence the title) and struggling with her significantly reduced mobility and lack of independence. Ruedi is her assigned volunteer, to ensure she is comfortable with her decision. He mustn’t become emotionally involved.

“She was not only escaping. She was also reaching for something. Not freedom necessarily, not oblivion, but the feeling of putting herself first. She wanted to own herself once and for all, regardless of what the others – her husband, had children, the experts, even the people in this home – might think or want.”

But of course, once they realise who one another are, feelings are quick to grow. Margrit was a beacon of kindness and compassion in Ruedi’s difficult childhood.

“Margrit, a person who finally looked at him and saw something worth kindling. Margrit Sutter with the lovely wavy hair and smart clothes, the girl who smiled and played Ludo with him and told stories of Bern.”

He now becomes one of the few she allows beyond her tough carapace, as they remember the old days and learn who one another became. Both are disappointed in the relationships they have with their children and grandchildren. Both are grieving their spouses, particularly Ruedi who had a happy marriage.

“‘I grew old.’

‘It happens to the best of us.’ She smiled for the first time since he had met her.”

O’Dea is very good at writing children – sweet Ruedi in Voting Day and now his grandson Florian, perhaps less likeable but entirely believable.

Before the Leaves Fall follows the developing friendship between Margrit and Ruedi, as they both reflect on seemingly uneventful lives and how well these have been lived, as well as what living there is left to do. It’s deeply moving in its portrayal of how we hurt the ones we love and how insurmountable gaps in communication can seem.

As different relationships grow and develop through Before the Leaves Fall, they are evoked with compassion but without sentimentality.

Both novellas tackle Big Issues but without any didacticism. The interest is not in what should or shouldn’t be happening, but in what does happen and how this affects ordinary people.

“The bottle of grief was never empty. Always another sip to take, and another sip after that. You got used to the taste.”

To end, how I first learnt of women’s suffrage, dubbed into the language of the characters of these books:

The Murder Pool – Stella Blómkvist (transl. Quentin Bates) Blog Tour

/ madamebibilophile / 12 Comments

TW: mentions sexual assault, paedophilia, violent crime

Today I’m taking part in a blog tour for Corylus Books, an indie publisher with a focus on translated crime fiction. The Murder Pool (2019, transl. Quentin Bates 2025) is the fourth Stella Blómkvist mystery I’ve read as part of Corylus’ blog tours and it’s my favourite so far.

Here is the summary from Corylus Books:

“Sometimes murder runs in the family. Or does it? When a well-known artist is found in Snorri’s Pool with an axe buried deep in his chest, Stella Blómkvist is immediately thrown in at the deep end, brought in to defend the apparently harmless young man the police have in their sights as the killer.

The man’s mother had spent time prison, convicted of the killing of a personal trainer, despite her protestations of innocence. Stella can’t help being drawn into both the cold case and this fresh murder, with a trail of guilt that stretches half-way around the world.

As if she doesn’t have enough to keep her busy, Stella’s pursuing a political high-flyer suspected of being a serial rapist, and defending a senior police officer on corruption charges that have all the  hallmarks of a vendetta.

But the toughest challenges Stella faces are among her own loved ones…”

The opening scene has Stella objectifying a client who approaches her with details of a sexual assault, and I found myself wondering if I’d reached the end of the road with this lawyer. But I’m glad I persevered because in fact this installment saw her at her most well-rounded; humanity to the fore as much as her tough doggedness in pursuing the truth for her clients.

The Murder Pool is pacy, nicely convoluted without being utterly confusing, and with plenty of commentary on Icelandic society which never felt heavy-handed. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Stella’s long-term girlfriend Rannveig is working on a documentary about miscarriages of justice, and asks for her opinion on one woman in particular, Hjördís, who was accused of running her lover over in her car, causing life-changing injuries. Having served her time, Hjördís is protesting her innocence. Stella isn’t sure either way…

Later that night, to try and walk off insomnia, Stella wanders down to Snorri’s Pool which is where, as the blurb tells us, she discovers a famous artist “obviously stone dead. And not of his own volition.”  

It turns out the chief suspect is Hjördís’ son, and he’s adamant he didn’t do it. He becomes Stella’s client and her investigation leads her into the very murky waters of political and police corruption, drug smuggling, serial sexual assaults, and money laundering.

(I want to flag that the details of two rapes are given in the novel. It isn’t remotely gratuitous but could be very triggering for some readers.)

“That’s why they went so far as to arrest a high-ranking police officer, considering personal favours and loyalties have long been commonplace between top officials. Anything else would be madness.”

Characters from previous novels reappear (including my favourite, news blogger Máki), some of them much to Stella’s chagrin, which was fun:

“A cunning devil with a voice is smooth as silk and a polished manner, but with razor teeth.”

Also fun is Stella being employed by deputy police commissioner Vígbergur Antonsson, arrested on charges of corruption without knowing explicitly what he is accused of. Stella’s tussle within, due to her distrust of police, and without as she tears into the prosecution, was hugely entertaining.

Grounded as it is in modern institutions and with the financial collapse still looming large (Antonsson’s stores of cash are used to accuse him of bribes, but he points out he doesn’t trust the banks), it all felt very believable and of course, not unique to Iceland at all.

The Murder Pool whips along at great pace while still allowing for all the threads to be fully explored. It also manages to treat issues such a rape, paedophilia and sex tourism with the seriousness they deserve without losing sight of the demands of a thriller. The exposure of the corruption woven throughout society is effective and pointed.

I thought this was the most sophisticated of the Blómkvist novels so far, without compromising any of what makes this such a popular series. Stella goes from strength to strength!

“Bravery and cunning are a good mix, and a recipe for success.”

Here are the stops from the rest of the tour, so do check out how other bloggers got on with The Murder Pool:

“At seventy-one dawn still found her undaunted, if not always undamaged.” (Colette, My Mother’s House)

/ madamebibilophile / 18 Comments

Although I mentioned in my previous post that I rarely write about memoir, here is another post on the same genre, as I thought it would be perfect for Mother’s Day (today in the UK). A short while ago I picked up a little hardback which had Colette’s meditations on her mother in one volume, My Mother’s House and Sido (1922/1929 transl. 1953 Una Vincenzo Troubridge and Enid MacLeod/Enid MacLeod).

Image from here

Colette clearly adores her mother and admits in the preface the limitation of what she is attempting in these volumes:

“I am not at all sure that I have put the finishing touches to these portraits of her; nor am I at all sure that I have discovered all that she has bequeathed to me. I have come late to this task. But where could I find a better one to form my last?”

My Mother’s House is a series of vignettes which have an energetic immediacy, while Sido perhaps has more of a sense of the older Colette looking back, split into Sido (her mother) The Captain (her father) and The Savages (her siblings).

Colette is the youngest child of her mother’s second marriage, born to parents who adore one another. My Mother’s House is formed through a series of brief chapters, intensely readable, as Colette evokes the late nineteenth-century Burgundy landscape of her childhood beautifully, with a love of the natural world she inherited from her mother Sido.

“I shall never be able to conjure up the splendour that adorns, in my memory, the ruddy festoons of an autumn vine borne down by its own weight and clinging despairingly to some branch of the fir-trees. And the massive lilacs, whose compact flowers — blue in the shade and purple in the sunshine — withered so soon, stifled by their own exuberance.”

Sido is shown as a woman intricately bound with her surroundings, tending her garden with love and knowledge.

“She was already out of sight, but her voice still reached us, a brisk, soprano voice full of inflections that trembled at the slightest emotion and proclaimed, to all and sundry, news of delicate plants, of graftings, of rain and blossomings, like the voice of a hidden bird that foretells the weather.”

She is also a hard worker, running her house and rearing her children.

“Why did no one ever model or paint or carve that hand of Sido’s, tanned and wrinkled early by household tasks, gardening, cold water and the sun, with its long, finely tapering fingers and its beautiful, convex, oval nails?”

There’s nothing saccharine in Colette’s fond reminiscences, and Sido emerges as a feisty, determined character. There’s a very funny chapter on her run in with the locate curé where it’s not totally clear who has emerged victorious (Sido is a non-believer) and I also enjoyed how she dealt with the upset which the precocious Colette experiences by reading beyond her years:

“There’s nothing so terrible as all that in the birth of a child, nothing terrible at all. It’s much more beautiful in real life. The suffering is so quickly forgotten, you’ll see! The proof that all women forget is that it is only men—and what business was it of Zola’s anyway?—who write stories about it.”

Colette’s father is also written about with love, particularly in The Captain section of Sido:

“And he would fasten on his chosen one that extraordinary, challenging, grey-blue gaze of his, which revealed his secrets to no one, though sometimes admitting that such secrets existed.”

These two volumes are just gorgeous: gentle, loving, funny, real. Colette’s parents are portrayed as strong individual characters, brought together by a deep and enduring love, raising a family in circumstances that are not always easy.

My favourite aspect of Colette’s writing is always her evocation of the natural world and there is so much to savour here. However, I’ll end with this mention of how Colette the writer started to emerge, under the sceptical eye of Sido:

“Beautiful books that I used to read, beautiful books that I left unread, warm covering of the walls of my home, variegated tapestry whose hidden design rejoiced my initiated eyes. It was from them I learned, long before the age for love, that love is complicated, tyrannical and even burdensome, since my mother grudged me the prominence they gave it.”

To end, a track from the CD I bought my mother for today (yes a CD, she is 82 and while she embraces much of modern technology streaming music would not go down well 😀 ):

“Everything amazes me when I go back to the past.” (Banine, Days in the Caucasus)

/ madamebibilophile / 23 Comments

“We all know families who are poor but ‘respectable’. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not ‘respectable’ at all.”

I don’t often write about memoir on the blog, but Days in the Caucasus by Banine (1945, transl. Anne Thompson-Ahmadova 2019) was just irresistible. Detailing her childhood in Baku, capital city of Azerbaijan, it is the next stop in my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge, and my final read for this month’s #ReadIndies, hosted by Kaggsy.

Banine’s style is energetic, direct and engaging. Although chronological, she doesn’t attempt to capture a full picture of her life, but rather a patchwork of people, places and events. It reads like a novel, and this description of her relationship to inanimate objects as a very small child gives an indication of the writer who would emerge:

“But not many people understood it, and when Fräulein Anna caught me in conversation with a tree or bench, she would take exception and threaten me with punishment. ‘What for?’ I would ask in surprise. Adults’ blindness towards my world seemed to me a fundamental injustice.”

Her family were farmers who made a lot of money unexpectedly in oil. This has caused tension as her father and his brother have disagreed about how the inherited wealth has subsequently been distributed:

 “[Uncle Suleyman] let his wife live with us, on the sole condition that she had the occasional row with my father.”

Banine has never known it to be different, and her imperious grandmother rules over their privilege with a rod of iron:

“Like Louis XIV she found it practical to spend much of her time on a commode, a jug for ablutions within reach. Sitting regally on this throne, she received her supplicants, including men.”

“She was highly suspicious of any country outside of circumference of fifty kilometres. Once past the fifty-kilometre mark they were all equally far away—France, Crimea, America or Batumi.”

However, the world will soon impose on their way of life. Banine lives through the Russian Revolution and the invasion of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. As a teenager, she is torn between her Islamic upbringing and Communism, specifically, falling in love with a Bolshevik while the family arrange her marriage to a man she despises.

“I didn’t know that a long, hard war and a long, hard revolution would one day open up to me the land of my most cherished dreams. No, I knew none of this then. I was preparing for a very different life that I thought I already knew.”

Her cousin Gulnar is more rebellious and unashamed of her considerable drives, announcing to her much more innocent cousin:

“It can’t be as much fun to write a novel as to live one.”

The politics don’t detract from Banine’s love of family and love of her land though. I enjoyed this description of female-only hammam parties:

“The dense steam went to their heads like wine. Between washing their hair and depilating their thighs, they would on occasion be bold enough to arrange a marriage, which only increased the prestige and renown of the hammam parties.”

And her uncle’s whimsical home:

“The house had an inner courtyard for elephants (who never did take up residence) and a roof where jasmine could grow (but never did).”

Eventually though, the family have to decide whether to stay or go as they will not be able to continue the lives they are used to under Russian occupation:

“Uncle Suleyman had, therefore, decided to ‘escape’. This heroic verb pleased him greatly: he conjugated it with sensual delight, repeated it with satisfaction all day long, artfully using it to impress his audience.”

Days in the Caucasus captures a time of great upheaval and change, both personally and politically for the young Banine. War, Turkish occupation, British occupation, establishment of the ADR, then Russian occupation. But even for those of us that haven’t lived through such immense events, she remains recognisable and relatable as she struggles find her place in her family, her culture and society.

Banine is such an endearing narrator too: unsentimental, loving, and funny. I’m looking forward to catching up with her in her second memoir Parisian Days, also published by Pushkin.

“Who can tell the importance of dreaming? And of reading!”

“The simpler the words, the more significant their meaning.” (Narine Abgaryan, Three Apples Fell From the Sky)

/ madamebibilophile / 16 Comments

After The Glass Pearls I needed a comfort read, and so I turned to Three Apples Fell From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan (2014, transl. Lisa C Hayden 2020). I had originally picked it up for my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge as it is by an Armenian author and set in a small village in that country, but happily it also works for #ReadIndies hosted by Kaggsy all this month, as it is published by Oneworld.

The story opens with Anatolia Sevoyants, a lifelong resident of the remote clifftop village of Maran, experiencing significant post-menopausal bleeding and deciding her time is up.

“She had decided to die with her dignity and tranquillity intact, in peace and quiet, within the walls of the home where she’d lived her difficult, futile life.”

So rather than see her neighbour and friend Yasaman who is something of a naturopath and healer, Anatolia takes to her bed.

We are alongside as she lays reminiscing about her life. My favourite of these (unsurprisingly) is how Anatolia beautified the library, caring for books, plants, birds and the building in her own unique way:

“After assessing the intolerable heartlessness and arrogance in his treatment of his heroines, she classified Count Tolstoy with other petty tyrants and despots, and stored his fat tomes out of sight to make herself feel better.”

Although Three Apples… is a gentle tale, it is not without violence. Anatolia had an extremely violent and abusive husband, and some animals are treated badly at times, which I skipped.

But this all occurs towards the first third of the book, and soon it settles into its tale of Anatolia’s unexpected recovery and even more unexpected life events, amongst the fellow older inhabitants of the  village and the drama and domesticity of their lives.

“The village was meekly living out its last years as if condemned, Anatolia along with it.”

There is a fairytale quality to the story as the village is entirely cutoff, the residents grow older with no new generation, white peacocks make an appearance, and this pastoral world is touched at moments by magical realism.

But any magical occurrences or whimsy is tempered by what the villagers have to face; mudslides, war and famine. These are evocatively described and devastating. The stoicism of the villagers is never undermined by a sense that these events are not very real in their destruction.

“And that was how she aged, slowly and steadily, alone but contented, surrounded by ghosts dear to her heart.”

Three Apples… expertly balances fabulism with a grounded reality. Lives are tough, but also filled with love and friendship. Among despair is the surprise of new hope.

It’s also worth mentioning that part of the resilience is food, prepared with love for friends, family and neighbours. There were so many delicious dishes described in this novel! It’s definitely not one to read when you’re hungry – it had me googling ‘local Armenian restaurants’ 😀

“That’s probably how things are supposed to be because that’s just the way it is.”

“Every night he tried himself and every night he acquitted himself.” (Emeric Pressburger, The Glass Pearls)

/ madamebibilophile / 25 Comments

Well, it’s only February but I already think that I’ve read one of the most extraordinary books of my year: The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger (1966).  Most pleasingly, it was a twofer for reading events this month, #ReadIndies hosted by Kaggsy as it is published by Faber as one of their Faber Editions series; and Hungarian Literature Month hosted by Winston’s Dad as Emeric Pressburger was born in Miskolc, Hungary.

Pressburger studied in Prague, moving to Weimar-era Berlin and then escaping the Nazis by moving first to Paris then London. It was there he met Michael Powell, and the powerhouse filmmaking duo was formed. I’m a big fan of Powell and Pressburger films, and it was this that led me to read The Glass Pearls (and a nice chat with the bookseller who is also a P&P fan.) But it absolutely stands on its own terms, not simply as curio for cinephiles.

At the start of the novel, Karl Braun is moving into a lodging house in Pimlico, unloading a few items from a piano tuner’s van. His neighbours are curious, but mild-mannered Karl soon fits in. His fellow lodgers, Strohmayer who always has a deal on the go, and Kolm, a concert-loving chemist, are also European émigrés who escaped Hitler’s regime and assume Braun is the same. But the reader soon knows something the characters don’t: Braun is a Nazi escaping justice from the trials.

“I have lived for twenty years according to self-imposed rules; it wasn’t easy and I’m not going to change my ways now. I denied myself everything I used to enjoy most.”

Pressburger’s mother died at Auschwitz, as did many members of his extended family. In this astonishing novel he writes from the point of view of a Nazi doctor who carried out atrocities at Wittau concentration camp.  It is so brilliantly done. The third-person narrative means it is presented as this is the man, this is what he did and how he now lives, which means as a reader you can stick with it where a first-person narrative would be too much to ask. But in writing from Braun’s point of view, it is also made personal, and you are asked to spend time alongside someone who has repeatedly taken unforgivable actions, for which he feels no remorse.

Braun frequently has nightmares about pursuit and capture, and justifies himself at imagined trials thusly:

“He would never do anything to serve only his own purpose unless it served the common purpose as well. He would go to any length to help others, disregarding his own interest. He loved his work; he was a good family man; adored his wife and child; he was religious, prayed to God and respected his laws. He was a romantic and romantics were the salt of this earth.”

And in this way Pressburger consistently shows us the man, his complete and utter delusion, his cruelty and vanity, and also makes him recognisable.

Braun leads an ordinary life in post-war London. He has a love interest who he takes to concerts in a sedate courtship; he has to navigate his workplace politics; he chats to his fellow lodgers. No-one knows he is Dr Otto Reitmüller.

“He made enough money for his needs, he even had a little in the bank. He enjoyed a good book, a good play, a good concert, a good talk. What else does a man want from life?”

We know one thing he wants: his wife and child back, killed in Hamburg bombings. Braun wasn’t with them, called back to camp to continue his horrors, which are portrayed clearly, sickeningly, but not sensationally.

Braun isn’t pretending to be cultured, or bereaved. He is both those things and an unrepentant torturer. It is powerful portrait that demands responsibility from those who enact war crimes, but also from those who witness, to acknowledge how it could happen again when the people who did it were ordinary – friends and neighbours.

His paranoia steadily grows as the newspapers report on the trials, the deadlines are extended, and a fellow fugitive urges him to get the money they stashed in Swiss bank account and join ‘the Brotherhood’ to live out their days in Argentina.

“He knew he could never have stuck it out in prison. His strong sense of justice would have reared up against petty persecutions by his warders.”

Braun becomes more fearful and restless. Two men seem to be watching him, the tension mounts, and while I didn’t want him to escape, The Glass Pearls absolutely worked on the level of a thriller where you are speeding through it to know the outcome.

“One had to be careful about the deductive powers of a fertile brain. Once trained for critical examination and to present the fullest picture of possible dangers to its master, the brain tended to overdo things were not watched too closely.”

It felt Hitchcockian in many ways, but a reversal of the innocent man pursued by shady forces.

“Suddenly he knew that all he was yearning for was peace.”

There’s a very interesting Afterword in this edition from filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, who is also Pressburger’s grandson. He movingly describes Pressburger’s survivors guilt and how when he developed dementia, he had delusions of being chased by Nazis. Astonishingly, he also says:

“Emeric went so far as to imbue the Braun character with certain traits of his own; such that, to some degree, Braun is a self-portrait.”

To end, a trailer for a delightful Powell and Pressburger film that is slightly less well-known than some of their big hitters. I’m not the biggest fan of romance but it would take a heart of stone to resist the charm of I Know Where I’m Going!

“It’s not a brandy sour if it doesn’t make you bitter.” (Constantia Soteriou, Brandy Sour)

/ madamebibilophile / 20 Comments

I first heard about Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou (2022, transl. Lina Protopara 2024) on Winston’s Dad’s blog – I thought quite recently but I can see it was August 2024! I get there eventually…

This is a contribution to the marvellous #ReadIndies event hosted by Kaggsy, and it also means Cyprus is the next stop on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge (3 stops to go!)

Brandy Sour published by Foundry Editions, an independent publisher focussed on Mediterranean authors who are new to Anglophone readers.  I love their styling, where their (French flap!) covers are “designed to capture the visual heritage of the Mediterranean”. This one is based on a third century BCE Hellenic vessel.

This short novella builds the stories of a cast of characters around two central constructs: their relationship to the Ledra Palace Hotel, and the drinks they have (with one colourful exception – I was relieved the chapter’s titular fluid was not imbibed!) The 22 vignettes work brilliantly, as Soteriou charts the history of Cyprus in the latter part of the twentieth century with the lightest of touches.

It begins with the bartender who takes the recipe for the titular drink to the new hotel, having first made it for King Farouk of Egypt:

“It’s a Cypriot drink, with ingredients from our island, that you serve in a tall glass after you sugar its rim, a drink full of cognac and lemonade that seems and tastes innocent but is not. It’s a drink worthy of kings who want to deceive people, a drink that isn’t what it seems to be, that looks like iced tea and that you can drink publicly without anyone knowing what it contains. It’s a drink full of secrets — that’s why it was made here.”

We meet the staff of the hotel and the guests, as it offers luxury and glamour through the 1950s and 1960s, from colonialism to independence. But as we know from ‘The Guerilla Fighter’ and his VSOP brandy straight from the bottle, discontent is brewing.

When the coup occurs ‘The Turk’ can no longer move freely past the hotel and the street vendor for his salted yogurt drink:

“The last time he attempts to walk past the big hotel, they stop him and tell him he needs to go back. He needs to find another way to work, another way to get his ayran; or maybe he needs to stop drinking it altogether—or find another place to buy it from. In a matter of days, everything will change.”

The upheaval of the war is evoked dramatically but not sensationally, through the individuals. The hotel is the site of a terrible battle, and the chapter ‘Water: The Mother’ demonstrates this with direct, effective simplicity.

The hotel ends up in the UN buffer zone, housing officials and falling to ruin.

But Soteriou also weaves in the flora of Cyprus, showing the natural beauty of the island. There is the lavender tea beloved of the architect of the hotel; jasmine tea drunk by ‘The Poet’ guest; elderflower used by ‘The Fiancee’ who bathes her eyes after her betrothed – and dreams of a wedding in the hotel – are snatched during the coup. The two mayors of the split city of Nicosia try and find common ground over spearmint tea, an old lady reminisces about Seville orange liqueur which she made and sold as a young woman.

My favourite of these was the melancholy ‘Doorman’ and his rosebud tea.

“You can have your rose tea hot or iced, you can have it in the winter and in the summer too, and it’s also good for your stomach, it helps digest the indigestible. It’s a little sweet and a little spicy – it reminds you of the village and of your mother.”

He sneaks the hundred petal Cypriot damask rose into the English rose garden in the grounds and plants it there. Later the garden is razed to build a pool, bar and tennis courts. He manages to save a few roses, but the infusion is bitter.

In just 104 pages I thought Brandy Sour was a brilliant achievement. Ambitious but never weighed down by its ambition; exploring seismic events without losing sight of the human cost; both sad and funny and always intensely readable. It consistently demonstrates the importance of small rituals shared by ordinary people as moments of resistance and resilience.  

And now my TBR will spiral as I explore Foundry Editions further… 😀

“I am capable of whim only within order” (Colette, The Evening Star)

/ madamebibilophile / 18 Comments

Happy Colette’s birthday! I love her writing, and so I somewhat erratically try and post on her birthday. This year I decided it was a perfect impetus to finally get to her memoir The Evening Star (1946 transl. Peter Owen 1973) which has been languishing in the TBR for too long…

Image from here

This memoir was written when Colette was in her seventies and experiencing significantly reduced mobility, due to arthritis. She remains sanguine:

“If we are to be shaped by misfortune, it’s as well to accept it. We do well to adapt misfortune to our requirements and even to our convenience. This is a mode of exploitation to which the young and robust are ill-suited, and I can well understand the difficulty of making them appreciate, for instance, that near-immobility is a gift.”

She is at home in the Palais-Royal:

“When I am alone, my apartment relaxes. It stretches itself and cracks its old joints. In fine dry weather it contracts, retracts, becomes immaterial, the daylight shows under all its doors, between its every hinge and joint. It invites the wind from outside and entrusts my papers to it, they go skimming off to the other end of the room. I shan’t unwind my cocoon of bed clothes for their sake. Greedy for air, I am a coward when it comes to cold.”

Her humour remains undimmed, such as after a long, poetic contemplation on pink in nature, she concludes:

“Enough of this blandness. I could enjoy a pickled herring.”

And I also enjoyed this reflection on her process:

“On the strength of those writers who do make notes, I had made notes on a sheet of paper, and lost the paper. So I bought a notebook, American style, and lost the notebook, after which I felt free, forgetful, and willing to answer for my forgetfulness.“

Written in 1946, Colette considers her home and city in the immediate aftermath of Nazi occupation:

“In its urbane, sly, stubborn fashion, the Palais-Royal began its resistance and prepared to sustain it. What resistance, what war can I speak about other than those I have witnessed?”

(Colette’s husband was Jewish and had been taken by the Gestapo, but subsequently released. He remained in a degree of hiding with the help of her Palais-Royal neighbours).

“All that offered itself insidiously, or made use of violence, Paris rejected equally. Let us caress with a happy hand it’s still-open wounds, it’s upset pillars, it subsided pavements: its wounds apart, it emerges from all this intact.”

Memories ebb and flow, and Colette reflects this in her writing. This is not an ordered – either chronologically or thematically – memoir. It is more a series of reflections and reminiscences, the past and present layered upon each other. There were times when I lost the thread of exactly what she was saying but just let her hypnotic prose wash over me. This felt an appropriate way to experience her memories and a clever way for Colette to align the reader with her experience as she reflects and writes from her bed.

I find some of Colette’s views problematic but these passages are short-lived. My favourite part of Colette’s writing is always how she captures her love of nature, and even from within her Parisian apartment she engages with the natural world. (Her husband occasionally intervenes in the narrative and is referred to as “my best friend”):

“My best friend, how can you think that I might have been bored? Why, the sky alone is distraction enough.”

There’s plenty here I haven’t mentioned and Colette’s discussion of friends and colleagues would also be of interest to anyone who enjoys early twentieth century French literature. It’s a short work, just over 140 pages in my edition, but such a joy to spend time with Colette.

I’ll leave you with this short quote, helpful for those of us in the Northern hemisphere currently enduring a January at least 84 days long…

“What should I wait for, if not the spring?”