I'm getting close to my goal of reading fourteen Europa Editions books by the end of 2011 for the Europa Challenge. In November I read another short story collection by Eric-Emannuel Schmitt, The Most Beautiful Book in the World. I read Concerto to the Memory of an Angel earlier this year.
Schmitt's stories are full of grumpy people who serve as foils for the grateful human beings who bring his themes to fruition. And I think his theme in The Most Beautiful Book In the World is that what we humans spend an awful lot of time yearning for what we actually already have. If we'd quit complaining and look around, we'd see it. Miserable people aren't very mindful, but in Schmitt's hands they are generally entertaining.
My favorite stories in this collection include: "The Intruder," which is just heartbreaking; "The Barefoot Princess," ditto; "Odette Toulemonde," which the author adapted from his film of the same name; "The Forgery," which kept me guessing; and the title story, about a gift women in a gulag make for their daughters.
Schmitt endears and amuses, his characters stumble and fumble and delude themselves but nearly every tale includes redemption or realization as well. A few stories aren't about people who are miserable out of habit or character but really have an illness or other trauma. Even those are hopeful. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to another Schmitt collection in my "to read" pile: The Woman With the Bouquet.
Another Europa editions book I read in November was Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Nothomb. This is a quirky short novel about a Belgian girl who becomes engaged to a Japanese boy while living in Tokyo. It touches on the oddities (to Westerners) of Japanese culture, the formalities and rules which dictate social and even family life there, and the strangeness of being an ex-pat.
The girl, also named Amelie, enjoys the boy's attentions and his romantic, almost chivalrous delight in her, but doesn't really want to get married. In the middle of a lot of romantic wooing, the book veers into a touch of magical realism in two separate mountain scenes. I won't spoil it but I will say I found it slightly confusing and wasn't always clear on why Amelie was miserable.
She's not a loveable protagonist but in this case, that didn't ruin the book for me. Because she's young and somewhat impetuous, I could believe the story; one thing that confused me is that while this is fiction, the main character not only shares the author's name, but also bits of her biography. Both are Belgian but born in Japan, and at the end of the book Amelie flies to Japan for a book tour for what was Amelie Nothomb's first novel.
So is this autobiography, fiction, or some hybrid thereof? Does it matter? It kind of did to me -- somehow it would be different if a real person had the experiences Amelie did. On the other hand, I had heard the ending would surprise and it didn't. To me it seemed that Amelie did exactly what the book had been leading her to do.
So, I enjoyed this strange little novel on the whole, but was left wondering what I'd just read. Except that this book was about someone who was miserable being happy in the conventional boy-meets-girl-they-fall-in-love sense. But ends up happy all the same. Got it?
I'd been waiting for French Leave by Anna Gavalda, also from Europa Editions, to be available on interlibrary loan. This was a quick read, sweet and funny and True, in that Gavalda really captured soemthing of the essence of being human. It's the story of adult siblings who play hooky from a family wedding and visit their brother who wasn't able to attend.
They spend the day and night remembering together (and I love how they don't all remember childhood the same way, which is one of those little details that rings so true to life), hanging out, being silly, leaving their relationships, work, and responsibilities behind. I really enjoyed this book about letting the cares of the world go and being a family.
The family dynamics, the tensions and dramas, are finely rendered. It's a touching read. It's pitch perfect -- I could picture Garance, the sibling who tells the story, as she spoke, young, a little bit wild and flip, messy but pretty. Carine, the sister-in-law, is a classic I'm-not-happy-unless-I'm-miserable type who badgers everyone around her. And, there is a loveable stray mutt who plays a role in the story -- making a furry friend is always a good way to leave your troubles behind.
I'm now reading the Gerald Samper books by James Hamilton-Paterson (all three are from Europa). I read Cooking With Fernet Branca last weekend and laughed aloud. I'm about halfway through Amazing Disgrace and am wondering exactly where our hapless hero is going to end up next.
Gerald Samper is a British ex-pat author of sports biographies. He lives on a hill in Tuscany where he creates foul sounding gourmet dishes he is inordinately proud of, and sings opera (again a point of great pride) very badly. He is forever grousing about his Voynovian neighbor Marta, who turns out to be a composer who parodies his yowling, and complaining heartily about the narcissistic, vapid subjects of his biographies.
Samper loves himself and loves to complain, and he's the perfect male lead for these farces. In the first book, he blames Marta for making him drink Fernet Branca, a strong Italian liqueur, but in her chapters, she blames him. Their back and forth, including a wacky scene in which Samper nails himself to the fence he is trying to build between their properties, and their parallel struggles with their creative work and the crazy people they have to deal with are hilarious.
The minor characters in Cooking With Fernet Branca include a great Italian film director who seems a little loopy, his sports car driving son, a fast-talking realtor, Marta's Voynovian family members, including a brother who lands an attack helicopter on her hillside, and the leader of a "boy band" who visits Samper and turns out to believe in UFO's. Hamilton-Paterson is that perfect combination: avery good writer who also does comedy well, and I am really enjoying these books.
So, I'm up to eleven Europa books in 2011. I hope to hit Amante by New Year's Eve! Two of those will be The Lady With the Bouquet (Eric-Emmanual Schmitt) and Rancid Pansies (James Hamilton-Paterson), which I have already checked out from the library. Fellow fans, what should I read as my final 2011 Europa challenge book?
