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oss sarah moss has been on a bit of a roll recently with short and highly topical novels she s mastered a neat trick of books that are very rewarding as narratives in their own right but that also have deeper contemporary resonances ghost wall deals in issues of resurgent nationalism summerwater speaks to brexit and xenophobia the fell explores our recent collective experience of lockdown kate is in her 40s with a teenage son and going stir crazy one night she decides to go out for a run on the local fells it s a breach of lockdown rules and if she s caught there s potentially serious fines while out she slips falls and needs rescuing it s a brilliant scenario we get her perspective her son s wondering whether to call for help as it gets later and later her next door neighbour and a volunteer rescue worker it s tense kate will die if she s not found in time but more than that it captures something elusive about a time that already seems to be being almost wilfully forgotten that sense of everyday dread eroded trust but also of the extraordinary efforts some made to keep others safe i loved ghost wall liked summerwater though i remember it very clearly which speaks well of it here i think moss is on top form and if you can bear to revisit 2020 i d strongly recommend this northanger abbey jane austen i adored this it s easily the funniest book i ve read in a while it s a satire on the gothic novel featuring catherine who being a young woman of no particular distinction is an unlikely heroine the novel largely consists of her staying a while in bath visiting a country house with a very welcoming family and taking some carriage rides out with a young man who is perhaps fonder of himself than he is of her what makes it so fun because everything is written in the most portentous and dramatic style but then nothing much really happens the author s voice will warn that catherine little knows what dire consequence may soon befall her then next chapter she s fine because actually nothing has happened what is the dark secret of northanger abbey there isn t one it s a perfectly pleasant place it s probably fair that this isn t mentioned in the same breath as emma or p p but it s still masses of fun also it s quite short i m not sure it s best as first austen but it s certainly not just one for completists territory of light yuko tsushima translated by geraldine harcourt a young mother moves into a top floor apartment with her toddler daughter she s separated from the father and making a new life the apartment has massive windows and is flooded with light hence the title this is one of those novels where in a sense not much happens the woman struggles to adapt to being a single parent has to juggle work and childcare suffers from isolation and perhaps depression that s life though sometimes isn t it it s a situation as worthy of exploring as any other most importantly though it s beautifully superbly written this is a clear candidate for my end of year list jacqui wrote about it here and captures it well very very highly recommended the hunter richard stark slight change of style and pace this is the first of the parker novels there s over twenty of them parker is a career criminal left for dead by one of his crew he wants his money and he wants revenge and he doesn t care that the guy who betrayed him is now a somebody in the the outfit what follows is a brutal and propulsive thriller parker is essentially an animal amoral and savage he takes what he wants and god help anyone who gets in his way it s very much a man s world women aren t treated well or given much agency then again anybody who s not a criminal is basically an extra i wouldn t call it literature but it s great pulp as you d expect given richard stark is really donald e westlake shards of earth adrian tchaikovsky space opera i can t recall why i picked this up next but i enjoyed it it s over 500 pages and the first of a trilogy which is a bit daunting but tchaikovsky is very good at big screen sf in the far future much of human space including earth itself has been destroyed by massive planetary sized alien craft of unknown origin the war ended leaving a shattered humanity but is the enemy now returning of course they are or there wouldn t be a trilogy if this is the sort of thing you like then you will definitely like this if you re sf curious this probably isn t the place to start hotel joanna walsh this is an interesting one on its surface it s a book about hotels mostly high end ones in fact it s more a mix of memoir and reflection about the narrator s failing failed marriage the book consists of vignettes postcards even featuring at times freud and his patient dora and other famous hotel guests if you were to read any of it as an excerpt it might be amusing collectively it becomes terribly sad what is home after a major break up whatever it may become in future in the immediate aftermath you re in a non place surrounded by seemingly familiar objects robbed of comfort suspicion friedrich dürrenmatt translated by joel agee there are two inspector barlach novels and i was something of an outlier in not enjoying the first which i found contrived no such concerns with the second inspector barlach discovers evidence that a prominent doctor may in fact be a nazi war criminal and determines to bring him to justice he does this by the arguably imprudent tactic of submitting himself to the doctor s care as a patient in his clinic what could go wrong i ll leave you to find that out for yourself if you ve not already read it as with the first novel but for me much more successfully it becomes an examination of moral choice and of moral purpose versus nihilism it s also a very tense read as barlach becomes perilously aware quite how vulnerable a position he s put himself in and that s it i ll try not to leave it too long before writing up may 7 comments filed under uncategorized 26 april 2023 7 34 am march roundup in just before the end of april my 2023 goal of reading longer books continues which means that while i read a fair bit in march there s not that many titles to talk about it is satisfying though to have engaged with some really lengthy works and it makes a change from my usual reading and my fondness for novellas and short novels so without further ado anna karenina leo tolstoy translated by rosamund bartlett i had mixed views on war and peace you re not really supposed to say that but it s true it was rich epic but also had lengthy non fiction sections where tolstoy shared his ideas on historical theory which sometimes robbed it of momentum no such concerns with anna karenina this is an extraordinary and rewarding work packed with complex and fascinating characters bartlett s translation is lively and i highly recommend it she avoids smoothing tolstoy s prose where the original was jarring or repetitive it was an intentional technique on his part often tidied by translators lispector has had the same issue seriously this is superb yes it s a classic of russian literature which can be a bit daunting but the pages flew by money back guarantee if you don t like it thanks to guy whose post here made me pick up this translation intimacies lucy caldwell lucy caldwell is a fairly recent discovery for me she s a northern irish writer and an absolute master of the short story form apparently her recent novel is pretty good too this collection is about parenthood motherhood really and it s exceptional i don t have kids and barring surprising advances in science it s pretty unlikely i ll ever be a mother even so the sheer quality of the writing the emotional intelligence and the ability to see the drama of the everyday meant that i absolutely loved this further info in jacqui s review here our share of night mariana enriquez translated by megan mcdowell i loved both of mariana enriquez short story collections but even so like many i was taken aback when she went from short stories to a 700 page behemoth enriquez is still using horror to explore argentina s past but on a larger scale a cult dedicated to an entity known as the darkness lives in extraordinary wealth and privilege sacrificing children and perpetrating horrors to maintain their position the darkness devours its sacrifices who literally disappear into it never to be seen again what could that be referencing the story opens following a medium juan a large and handsome man and a skilled sorcerer the cult depend on him as he can summon the darkness which is key to their rituals they believe that they can use the darkness to achieve immortality by passing their consciousnesses on to children s bodies and they plan either to transfer juan s into his son gaspar s body or to make gaspar into their pawn in juan s place gaspar later becomes a character in his own right as we see him grow up and the slow battle between the cult and juan over gaspar s future unfold i enjoyed this but then i enjoy horror here i think the horror elements are more to the fore than the social and historical aspects the metaphors are clear enough but on this scale you re spending more time in the actual situation of the characters than what it reflects in argentinian history oddly most reviews i ve seen have taken it as read that the immortality thing works that s not in the novel though juan is concerned it might but there s no clear evidence it will just that his son will be harmed as the cult tries for him the darkness is a mad god if it s even an entity at all forever hungry and he believes the prophetic messages the cult think they receive from it are just self delusion it makes for a more ambiguous book and perhaps a better one since the cult s real motive is more plainly perpetuating their own power as is probably apparent by now it s a hard one to sum up i enjoyed it which is good at over 700 pages but i m not sure it actually needed all that space or quite what the point of it all was i ll definitely read more enriquez but i hope she goes a bit smaller scale next time final caution this very much is horror it involves scenes that are genuinely difficult to read including the torture and maiming of children the passages of real world historical barbarism are no better than the cult s magic fuelled psychopathy which of course is intentional if you do decide to try this one be prepared for some strong content and that s my march reading few books but rewarding ones terms and conditions apply cash refunds may be replaced with unsatisfying apologies at blogger s discretion 5 comments filed under uncategorized 31 march 2023 5 22 pm january february update this is my year of reading longer books and so far that s going ok i ve gone back to proust who i hadn t read since 2018 i ve also gone back to tolstoy and i ve just finished maria enriquez rather huge our share of night that does mean there ll likelier be fewer books in each of these updates but hopefully some very good books emma jane austen i mean what is there to say firstly i suppose that it really is very very good it s tremendously well written remains very readable and is often pretty funny too mr wodehouse s utter solipsism is particularly hilarious anyway highly recommended i know it s not exactly original to recommend austen s emma but there s a reason this remains so popular the last days of new paris china miéville china miéville is an immensely talented writer of what for want of a better term i ll call literary fantasy though i think he d just say fantasy miéville avoids tired post tolkien pastiche instead embracing the freedom that use of the fantastic can bring here we re in a world where the second world war has continued after 1945 something strange happened in paris giving life to figures and symbols from surrealist art and creating a nightmare city where surviving nazi forces battle impossible beings the novel follows a french resistance fighter as he wearily continues his small part of the war while working with one such creature the elegant corpse as shown on the cover art if you ve any knowledge of surrealism it s a lot of fun and honestly it is if you don t too plus there s an appendix which explains the many references don t let the fantasy label put you off here this is a clever novel which deserves a wider readership the captive marcel proust translated by scott moncrieff and kilmartin gosh this gets dark i had no idea in this volume the narrator effectively imprisons his girlfriend albertine in his apartment obsessively tracking her movements and interrogating her friends and driver out of an obsessive jealousy he is manipulative and controlling more focused on preventing albertine having any life than having one of his own emma at bookaround describes this here as claustrophobic and it s absolutely the right word it s a very difficult read as you re absolutely immersed page after page after page in what is frankly a sick mind emma is great on how this works in the french which is fascinating it s the language of property and of domination not of love the irony and again emma touches on this is that in imprisoning albertine he imprisons himself too life as her jailer is too all consuming to allow time for anything much else he disappears from society because to take part in it would mean stopping his ceaseless observation of albertine as ever i love proust as a writer but this is one of those where the quality of the writing if anything makes it even harder to read i suspect most readers don t get this far or i d expect more discussion of quite how extraordinarily challenging this volume is tokyo express seichō matsumoto translated by jesse kirkwood after the proust i needed some light relief this is a lovely penguin imprint of a classic japanese murder mystery it s actually one that could only take place in japan in fact because the entire plot hangs on the intricacies of the japanese rail system and whether or not a suspect s alibi stands up or if somehow they could have used the rail network to cross the country in time to commit the crime once in japan i was on a platform where a train was 30 seconds late people got restive checked their watches looked concerned in the uk i think we still define within 15 minutes as being on time it s fair to say this novel s plot wouldn t work in britain it s fun well written and absolutely classic golden age crime stuff stu did a nice write up of it here if you ve any liking for the genre you ll like this also did i mention it s a lovely imprint penguin have done matsumoto proud italian ways tim parks continuing with the trains theme this is a non fiction book by novelist and academic tim parks in which he explores the culture of his native italy through its railway system it sounds dry but is actually often very funny and if you ve spent any decent length of time in italy you ll recognise a lot that he discusses parks has written several books about italy for me this was one of his best perfect if you have an itali...