I’ve had mixed views about Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels in the past. I was baffled by ‘Never Let Me Go’ but enjoyed it, I was even more baffled by ‘The Unconsoled‘ and enjoyed it much less. I liked ‘When We Were Orphans’ but thought it wasn’t quite as good as ‘The Remains of the Day’ which I think is a modern classic. My initial thoughts on his latest novel ‘The Buried Giant’ definitely lean more towards bafflement than enjoyment.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Five Books I’ve Read Recently
I normally write a post about books I have read but haven’t reviewed at the end of the year but I may start doing review round-ups a bit more frequently so I don’t fall too far behind. Here are my thoughts about five books I’ve read in the past three months or so:
Dubbed as a “Facebook thriller”, Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach tells the story of socially awkward Leila, who is approached by Adrian Dervish to impersonate Tess Williams online to create the illusion that Tess is still alive after she has committed suicide. It’s not uncommon for me to have mixed feelings about a book but I usually have some idea of whether I either liked it or disliked it overall. However, the reason I didn’t review ‘Kiss Me First’ around the time I read it back in March was because I genuinely had no idea how I felt about it. The concept was cleverly manipulated but I still felt the implausible elements of the story generally outweighed the plausible ones, particularly the pretence of keeping Tess “alive” online. Either way, it would certainly be an interesting novel to discuss in a book group. Continue reading
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Hay Festival: Helen Macdonald and Tracey Thorn
On Saturday, my final day at the Hay Festival, I went to see Helen Macdonald deliver the Samuel Johnson Prize lecture at the Tata tent about ‘H is for Hawk‘ which has won both the Costa Book of the Year and Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction awards. ‘H is for Hawk’ was one of my favourite non-fiction books of 2014 and was the first memoir to win the Samuel Johnson Prize since its launch in 1999. The book comprises of three strands: Macdonald’s experiences of grief following the death of her father in 2007, her attempt to train a goshawk called Mabel and a biography of T. H. White. Her lecture focused on the former two aspects rather than T. H. White’s story. You can watch a clip of the event here where Macdonald describes meeting Mabel for the first time.
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Hay Festival: Alexander McCall Smith and Jenny Erpenbeck
On Tuesday evening at the Hay Festival, I went to see Alexander McCall Smith in conversation with S. J. Parris at the Tata tent.
McCall Smith recently won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction for his novel ‘Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party’. As well as being a literary prize for one of the more neglected genres of fiction, it is notable for its unusual reward. Rather than money, the winner receives a jeroboam of champagne, the 52 novels by P. G. Wodehouse and a Gloucester Old Spot pig named after the winning novel. The event began with McCall Smith being presented with the champagne and 1 of the 52 Wodehouse novels having met the pig earlier in the day (you can watch the meeting here).
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Hay Festival: Jessie Burton and Jon Ronson
I went to two events during my second day at the Hay Festival on Monday. First up in the morning was Jessie Burton in conversation with Georgina Godwin about her novel ‘The Miniaturist’ in the Tata tent. The event was the last day of the official tour to promote her novel which was on of the biggest debuts of 2014. As Godwin noted in her introduction, the book “went viral in an analogue way” becoming a word-of-mouth bestseller and has since been published in 34 countries.
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Hay Festival: Man Booker International Prize and Jo Caulfield
This week, I am very excited to be at the Hay Festival in Wales attending various events, browsing lots of bookshops and maybe purchasing one or two books…
The first event I attended on Sunday evening was the Man Booker International Prize winner László Krasznahorkai in conversation with Dame Marina Warner, the Chair of the Prize’s panel, on the Oxfam Moot stage. Since its launch in 2005, the Man Booker International Prize has been awarded every two years to any living author writing fiction in English or whose work is widely translated into English. Unlike its sister prize the Man Booker Prize, it is awarded in recognition of the author’s whole body of work rather than a particular novel.
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The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett
Widely touted as “Sliding Doors meets One Day”, ‘The Versions of Us’ by Laura Barnett tells the story of Eva Edelstein and Jim Taylor who meet as undergraduates at Cambridge University in the late 1950s. Eva is injured in a cycling accident after swerving to avoid a dog and from this point onwards, there are three versions of their story. In one version, Eva and Jim start a relationship. In another version, Eva barely acknowledges Jim and marries her current boyfriend, David. In another version, Eva discovers she has fallen pregnant and cuts Jim out of her life to marry David. Continue reading
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The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer
One of the most anticipated debut novels of the year, ‘The Girl in the Red Coat’ by Kate Hamer tells the story of Carmel Wakeford, an eight-year-old girl who goes missing after becoming separated from her mother, Beth, at a local storytelling festival in Norfolk. She is abducted by a man who says he is her estranged grandfather and believes Carmel has a special gift. He tells her that her mother is dead and he takes her to start a new life in the United States as a faith healer travelling to various evangelical churches. Meanwhile, Beth is struggling to come to terms with her disappearance and is doing everything she can to find her daughter. Continue reading
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The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, ‘The End of Days’ by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky tells the story of the various possible lives of one woman during the twentieth century. The book is split into five stories. In the first part, we learn that a baby has suffocated in a cot in a small Galician town. In the second part, we learn what might have happened had the baby lived as a teenager in Vienna shortly after the First World War. The third part sees her as a communist in Moscow, the fourth part follows her as a celebrated writer in Berlin and finally, as an elderly lady aged in her nineties living in a care home.
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Zone by Mathias Énard
‘Zone’ by Mathias Énard and translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell tells the story of Francis Mirkovic, a Franco-Croat intelligence officer who is travelling by train from Milan to Rome after missing his plane. He will be delivering a briefcase containing a dossier about war crimes across various parts of the “zone” where he worked – the region around the Mediterranean Sea spanning across Spain, Lebanon, Cairo and Croatia – which he plans to sell to the highest bidder thus ending his career as an agent. During the journey, Francis reflects on his twenty-year career, his future, his family, his relationships with Marianne, Stéphanie and Sashka, his fellow passengers on the train and much more. Continue reading
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Stoner by John Williams
As noted by The Millions, “There are things that are famous for being famous, such as the Kardashians, and then there are things that are famous for not being famous, such as John Williams’s Stoner”. This week marks the fiftieth anniversary since ‘Stoner’ was first published but the almost forgotten novel has only become well-known in the last couple of years some two decades after the author’s death and ten years after being reissued. Somewhat ironically, it is revealed in the first paragraph that the main character, William Stoner, is also quickly forgotten by his students and colleagues after his death in 1956. Originally a student of agriculture entering the University of Missouri as a freshman in 1910, he later switches to literature and becomes an academic and professor. Continue reading
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World Book Night: Top 10 Books for Reluctant Readers
Thousands of volunteers and institutions will be getting involved with World Book Night tomorrow and giving away around 250,000 special editions of 20 different books to people in their communities. While World Book Day celebrates reading specifically for children, World Book Night was established in 2011 as an alternative celebration for adults. 35% of the population in the UK never read for pleasure and World Book Night is about reaching as many people as possible who don’t regularly read, particularly in prisons, hospitals, care homes and homeless shelters. As well as improving literacy and employability, reading has profound positive effects including social interaction through participating in book groups, as well as general well-being and happiness.
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How to be both by Ali Smith
Now that the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been released, I am taking a break from reading and reviewing translated fiction for a while. ‘How to be both’ by Ali Smith has been shortlisted for just about every major literary award in recent months including the Man Booker Prize, the Folio Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Costa Book Awards as well as winning the Goldsmiths Prize and the more I have heard about it in recent months, the more I have wanted to read it. One half is set in fifteenth century Italy and tells the story of al fresco Renaissance artist Franceshco del Cossa. The other half is set in modern Britain and tells the story of a sixteen-year-old girl called George whose mother has recently died. Continue reading
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The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist 2015
The official shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced this week:
- The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
- In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomás González translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne
- F by Daniel Kehlmann translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway
- By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar
- While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
We can also reveal our shadow jury shortlist:
- The Ravens by Tomas Bannerhed translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death
- The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
- Bloodlines by Marcello Fois translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella
- The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
- Zone by Mathias Énard translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell
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Boyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett, ‘Boyhood Island’ is the third instalment of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ambitious six-book cycle of autobiographical novels known as ‘My Struggle’. Having explored some of Knausgaard’s later childhood in ‘A Death in the Family‘, the second volume ‘A Man in Love‘ jumped forward in time to concentrate on his experiences of fatherhood. As you may guess from the title, ‘Boyhood Island’ jumps back in time again to Knausgaard’s childhood. Continue reading
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While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier and The Last Lover by Can Xue
‘While the Gods Were Sleeping’ by Erwin Mortier and translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent tells the story of Helena Demont, a very elderly woman approaching her hundredth birthday who is reflecting on her experiences as a young woman living in Belgium at the start of the First World War. The story explores Helena’s relationships with her French mother, Belgian father, brother Edgard and her British husband Matthew with whom she has a daughter. Continue reading
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By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
‘By Night the Mountain Burns’ by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is the first novel by an author from Equatorial Guinea to be longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It is also only the second book from the country ever to be translated into English and recounts the narrator’s childhood memories of living on the small remote island of Annobón in the South Atlantic Ocean where the inhabitants deal with various crises including a bush fire and a cholera epidemic. Continue reading
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Bloodlines by Marcello Fois
‘Bloodlines’ by Marcello Fois and translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella tells the story of the Chironi family during the early twentieth century in Sardinia. Michele Angelo Chironi, a blacksmith and Mercede Lai are both orphans who marry seven months after they first meet at a church in 1889. While the early years of their marriage are happy ones, their lives are plagued with misfortune after the turn of the century. Continue reading
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The Giraffe’s Neck by Judith Schalansky
Longlisted for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, ‘The Giraffe’s Neck’ by Judith Schalansky and translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside tells the story of Inge Lohmark, a biology teacher approaching the end of her career at a high school in a former East German country backwater. She has a firm belief in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution yet, somewhat ironically, she is highly resistant to adapting to change in her own life.
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The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee
‘The Investigation’ by Jung-Myung Lee and translated by Chi-Young Kim is only the second book translated from Korean into English to ever be longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in its twenty-five year history. Set in Japan during the Second World War, it tells the story of Watanabe, a literature student and guard at Fukouka prison which holds anti-Japanese Korean rebels, intellectuals and dissidents. Watanabe is attempting to find the criminal behind the brutal murder of the much-loathed prison censor and war hero, Sugiyama. However, he is unconvinced by an early confession from one of the most notorious inmates and after taking over the role of prison censor himself, his investigation starts to unravel a very different side to Sugiyama. Continue reading
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