Marie C. reviews ELEVEN DAYS by Stav Sherez

Eleven Days, by Stav Sherez. Published 2014 by Europa Editions. Crime Fiction/Mystery.

When it comes to series, I rarely read past volume one. It's not that I'm anti-series; I just usually don't get hooked enough to continue, and in the case of crime fiction, I'd rather sample lots of series than delve too deeply into one. It's a way for me to get to know a little about a lot of authors and stories, so that I can recommend books approrpriately to my customers and friends.

Eleven Days is book two of British writer Stav Sherez's Carrigan/Miller series, so you can tell right away I'm a fan. The first book in the series, A Dark Redemption, was a favorite of mine in 2013, one of the best books I read that year of any genre and Eleven Days is a worthy successor. After finishing the second installment, I'm confident this series has a bright, dark future.

Set again in London and featuring his detectives Jack Carrigan and Geneva Miller, we start out with ten dead nuns and one other dead person in a London convent. Police find their charred bodies after fire tears through the building and little by little clues emerge.  The nuns have connections to bad guys in South America and Eastern Europe- lots of people who'd like to see them dead, for different reasons.  Several of the bodies bear the marks of torture. Financial records point towards work in South America and ties to the leftist liberation theology movement. The nuns also had run-ins with Albanian drug lords and sex traffickers next door. And the church itself is not being particularly cooperative with our investigators. We also see more developments in Carrigan and Miller's ongoing rapport and hints that there are serious problems in Miller's personal life as well as Carrigan's. We see them pursuing different tracks of the investigation and coming to conflict with each other over theories and execution, so to speak.

Just like A Dark Redemption, Eleven Days is a great page-turner. It's grisly and gory and delves into not one but two troubling aspects of modern geopolitics, as well as the more prosaic, and tragic,  story of a girl who thought she could make a difference in the world. There's enough here for three books, and Sherez weaves it all together into a cohesive and absorbing tale. I like that we got some hints about Miller's troubles, and I hope to read more about that lousy ex of hers in a future installment. I'm also glad that there doesn't seem to be any romance in the offing for Carrigan and Miller, at least in the short term. Romance plots are a distraction from the far more interesting questions of how to simply get along with other troubled human beings.

Anyway as you can tell I enjoyed Eleven Days quite a bit. I'm definitely hooked as far as following the rest of the books, however many Sherez has planned. I'm still kicking myself a little for waiting for the US release and not buying it when I was in London last year. Oh well. My next trip to London will be in September 2015 and if he's got a new one out by then I won't be waiting!

Tomorrow I'll have an interview with Sherez on my blog, www.bostonbibliophile.com.

This is my 12th book for the 2014 Europa Challenge.

I received my copy of Eleven Days for review from Europa Editions.

Marie C. Reviews RED JOAN by Jennie Rooney

Red Joan, by Jennie Rooney. Published 2014 by Europa Editions. Literary fiction; historical fiction.

Red Joan is an excellent novel based on the true story of an octogenarian British woman who was revealed to be the KGB's oldest living British operative. Of course what everyone wanted to know was, why? In the case of real life, the woman was a die-hard Communist true believer, but Jennie Rooney has decided to make her heroine an entirely different person and has crafted from this rich premise a tense and absorbing tale about love and what it means to be loyal.

Rooney alternates the narratives between the past and present, the present being when elderly Joan is brought in for questioning after the sudden death of a fellow spy. She is living a quiet life in England and her son, a successful lawyer, rushes to her aid. He doesn't believe that she could be guilty of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets but as her story unwinds she gradually lets down her guard. Then it's just a matter of why.

Set starting just prior to the outbreak of World War 2, Joan is not a true believer, but rather an ordinary lower-middle-class girl making her way at Cambridge. She encounters Sonya, a glamorous Russian who takes the mousy Joan under her wing and introduces Joan to her cousin Leo, a magnetic young man with whom Joan becomes infatuated. They become lovers. Leo is a committed Communist and Joan accompanies him to rallies and meetings, and while the philosophy behind Communism is not unappealing to her, she is largely apolitical. What she believes in is Leo, at least until she learns she can't. When war breaks out she is offered the opportunity to work in a lab doing nuclear research. The man who runs this lab is married but in love with Joan; she returns his feelings but is torn. At this point Leo, Sonya and their associate William step up pressure on Joan to spy for them. Eventually she accepts.

Meanwhile in the later timeline, Joan slowly buckles to the pressure to tell what she knows, and has to explain herself to Nick.

I really loved this book. The last few chapters are tense page-turners as Joan's activities lead to consequences she doesn't expect and she has to work her way out of a very tight spot indeed.  Joan is an interesting character, an ordinary woman caught up in events and just trying to keep her head above water for much of the book. Then, when the waves crash too high, she has to pick a side. Rooney doesn't exactly convince us that Joan was right, but that what she did made sense for her at the time she did it, for the reasons she did it. Nick is the skeptical reader's stand-in and doesn't understand her, but Rooney shows us the past is another country. The story is more about relationships than politics,  the triumph of real love and the power of love to save ourselves, and others.

The readers I would have in mind for Red Joan like literary fiction, British war stories and a good love story, too. For me it was a winner.

This is the 10th book I've read for this year's Europa Challenge.

Marie C. Reviews TAKE THIS MAN by Alice Zeniter

Take This Man, by Alice Zeniter. Published 2010 by Europa Editions.

Sometimes I think Europa ought to take a handful of its titles- just a handful- and try pitching them to a Young-Adult or New-Adult audience because I bet some titles would work well for that demographic, and they may never get to those readers because they are shelved and marketed as adult literary fiction. Since the distinction is often one of marketing and not merit, and since YA is used to distinguish many fine novels by audience, books often miss appreciative readers because of where they are shelved. Recently Europa readjusted its strategies with respect to its mysteries, grouping them into a World Noir line, and I wonder if it would be worth their while doing something similar with a select group of titles for teen and twentysomething readers.

And yes I think Take This Man would be an excellent candidate for just such a move. Set in modern day France, it tells the story of a couple, if you can call them that, Alice and Mad, French twentysomethings about to get married. They have been best friends since forever- they've always known each other and they love each other dearly- as friends. But Mad is from Mali and not a French citizen, and he is about to be deported, at least for years and possibly for the forseeable future. In a last-ditch effort to stay in France and get on the path to legal residency or citizenship (I am unclear on this point) Mad asks Alice to marry him. Alice loves him and considers herself a "child of socialism," a Mitterand-era-raised liberal and biracial child of a Caucasian French mother and Algerian father. She understands racism, despises the conservative trends in French political and social culture and jumps at the opportunity to do something concrete.

Alice's voice is what makes this book so distinctive. Author Zeniter writes Alice as energetic, vibrant and full of life; her sentences run on, she goes back and forth in time with anecdotes, relates all kinds of details and stories. Sometimes she seems very immature; she refers to her parents as "Mommydaddy" and most of her time seems occupied with social life. The move to marry Mad can come across as ill-considered and impulsive, the act of a child. But she also expresses a lot of angst, concern and real trepidation over the consequences of the decision for her and her friend even if she spends a lot of time congratulating herself too. She comes back time and again to the panic over losing Mad, his anxiety over having to leave France, and how this is something she has to do, like she's trying hard to convince herself and the world this is the right decision.

I enjoyed the book because I liked Alice and cared about what happened to her. The style of writing with its run-ons and associations and endless anecdotes about parties and friends and teenage life was not really my cup of tea but I liked the social message and politics and the guts it takes to really put yourself on the line for what you believe in. It has a certain lightness about it if you will even given the serious subject matter and one disturbing incident of racial harrassment suffered by Alice and her parents when Alice was little. It's a neat look at modern French life and the energy and verve of the writing is more than enough to get you through.

This is my ninth book for the 2014 Europa Challenge.

I did not receive this book for review.

Marie C. Reviews The Palestinian Lover by Selim Nassib

The Palestinian Lover, by Selim Nassib. Published 2007 by Europa Editions.

The Palestinian Lover is a book that keeps me thinking about it long after I closed the final pages. First, there's that title. To what, or whom, does it refer? The book is about a fictional love affair between Golda Meir and an Arab businessman named Albert Pharaon. So maybe it refers to Albert, Golda's Palestinian lover. Or maybe it refers to Golda; the French title is L'Amante Palestinese, amante being the feminine form of the word, and another English translator chose A Lover in Palestine as the title.

Certainly the book is about a woman who loves the land called Palestine, who has come from Europe and America to make a new home there, and for whom a man like Albert represents both the ultimate forbidden fruit and the single thing from which she cannot turn. There's a second woman, too, a Palestinian woman with whom Albert has a relationship after his affair with Golda ends. The book covers time from the early 1930s through 1948 and ranges from a kibbutz to the city but rests largely in the minds of its characters.

Certainly identity and it malleability, the way we put it on like clothes and wear it into the world, is a central theme of the book. Other themes include individual versus group identity, adherence to convention and the power of passion to challenge our ideas about ourselves. The Palestinian Lover also figures as an example of Europa Editions' mission to bring important Arabic literature to Europe and America. Unfortunately it's out of print now but I hope that readers interested in the Middle East and Israel will keep an eye out for this fascinating and important novel.

It's my third for the 2014 Europa Challenge.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Marie C. reviews In the Orchard, The Swallows, by Peter Hobbs

In the Orchard, The Swallows, by Peter Hobbs. Published 2014 by Europa Editions.

In the Orchard, The Swallows, is a slim, lyrical book that can be read in a sitting or two, about a young man released from a Pakistani prison after more than a decade. Now, the boy he was gone, and the man he could have been ceased to exist, he must figure out who he is and how he will survive, not just day to day but how to make a life when everything about himself has been shattered, reformed and remade.

Peter Hobbs writes the book as a series of letters to Saba, the girl he knew and the inadvertent cause of his imprisonment. The two were infatuated with each other as teens though separated by custom and class. Her father has the boy arrested and sent away, and the boy stays in prison for years, becoming a man. Then one day, just like that, he's released and dumped by the side of the road. He makes his way back home and a kindly neighbor takes him in and takes care of him, until he's ready to begin taking care of himself.

He has a long way to go, and Hobbs makes no bones about the abuse he's suffered and the difficulty of his recovery in both physical and psychological terms. But there's hope, and there's a future, even if he doesn't quite know what that future will hold. I would recommend In the Orchard for readers of Atiq Rahimi and Khaled Hosseini. It's a little gem.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Europa Editions.

Marie C. Reviews A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez

A Dark Redemption, by Stav Sherez. Published 2013 by Europa Editions.

Well, this one's definitely going to end up on my best list this year.

A Dark Redemption is a gripping, gritty and violent mystery set in contemporary London involving an African warlord, the phenomenon of child soldiers and a secret in the past of Detective Jack Carrigan, one of two investigators assigned to the case of Grace Okele, a Ugandan student found dead and mutilated in her London flat. His partner, Geneva Miller, has been assigned to him as a kind of spy, to keep an eye on his work and report back to her superior. Their relationship forms of the core of the story, which takes Carrigan back to his student days, a tragic vacation to Uganda with his friends Ben and David, and more deaths.

Ben and Jack have kept in touch over the years, though their friendship strains under the weight of their shared trauma and the fact that Ben is married to the love of Jack's life, Olivia. Their idyllic family life contrasts with Carrigan's self-imposed solitude. Why do detectives always have to be bitter single men? Actually they don't; in the book I'm reading now, Summertime All the Cats Are Bored, the detective is married with two kids. But I digress. Carrigan is a more typical example of the slightly misanthropic bitter loner. He doesn't trust Miller and he shouldn't, but she warms to Carrigan and they have a very Mulder and Scully vibe which I liked.

That aside, it's a great book. It's very suspenseful, full of twists and turns, and offers a satisfying ending. Carrigan isn't perfect; he makes a couple of bonehead moves like not telling Ben when pictures of Ben's kids show up to indicate they're being stalked but you shouldn't worry too much about that. I loved how the issue of the child soldiers added urgency and tragedy to the story; I like it when crime writers bring up social issues and problems and weave them into their page-turning plots. It makes the books more than just light entertainments; I learn something, too.

Anyway I loved this book. The next book in the Carrigan/Miller series, Eleven Days, is out in the UK now and will be out here next year, but I'm not going to wait. When I go to London this fall I'm going to be sure to pick it up right away, and I strongly recommend crime readers pick up A Dark Redemption as soon as possible!

This is my 12th book for the 2013 Europa Challenge.

Marie C. reviews The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. Published 2006 by Europa Editions.

A woman finds one day that her husband is leaving her. She's 38; they have two young children and a dog. The other woman is a 20-something the couple has known for years. At first, Olga, the scorned wife, thinks her husband might be having a passing spell of some sort. But soon enough it's apparent that it's permanent, that she's alone.

The book follows her descent into temporary madness, during which her life as well as those of her children is at risk. She sinks into a kind of sexual and physical morass, a loss of dignity from which one would think would be impossible to recover. The language is raw and unadorned, and I've heard that the original Italian is even rougher than the English translation. Olga's desperation and pain and anger and fright is hard to look at and hard to look away from. Early on, she confronts her husband, who wishes she wouldn't be so dramatic, so difficult:

Speak like what? I don't give a shit about prissiness. You wounded me, you are destroying me, and I'm supposed to speak like a good, well-brought-up wife?...With these eyes I see everything you do together, I see it a hundred thousand times, I see it night and day, eyes open and eyes closed! However, in order not to disturb the gentleman, not to disturb his children, I'm supposed to use clean language, I'm supposed to be refined...

This kind of thing works well in novels because it's cathartic for the reader, but of course in reality she'd be locked up for some of the things she does and says. It's not a revenge fantasy- she takes it all out on herself and the kids which are like extensions of herself, and the poor dog, a symbol of the whole family- but it's still violent, psychically and psychologically.  Nevertheless it's an incredible book that would certainly stimulate a lot of conversation and thinking about what it means to be a woman, a wife, a mother. Olga is tough on her kids; she's not a sentimental mother and she's in the throes of a major upset, as are they. The whole family is in chaos. She hits bottom, but then she comes back up enough to see the daylight and a way out.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this but in a way it was like reading a particularly gritty crime novel, one that you can't put down even when it's ripping you apart. Maybe we need a new category for Ferrante's books, domestic thrillers. Or something. She's got a new book coming out from Europa in the fall- watch for it, and read this in the meantime.

This is my 11th book for the 2012 Europa Challenge.

Marie reviews BANDIT LOVE by Massimo Carlotto

Bandit Love, by Massimo Carlotto. Published 2010 by Europa Editions.

The thing I really enjoy about Massimo Carlotto's novels, or at least about the four that I've read, is that they're all really different from each other in style and tone, but they all retain the distinctive Carlotto attitude and cynicism. Case in point: Bandit Love, which I understand is the fifth in his "Alligator" series about ex-con/private investigator Marco Buratti, is refreshing and different from the other books of his I've read, but you can still tell it's a Carlotto, full of both the verve and the bitterness I've come to expect, and every bit as much trashy fun as his other books.

The story concerns the kidnapping of the girlfriend of one of the Alligator's buddies; Sylvie is a beautiful dancer who is snatched off the street in retaliation for- what exactly? Finding out what's behind Sylvie's kidnapping and finding her takes up about the half of the book. Once Buratti and company have penetrated the Serbian/Kosovar narco-ring that took Sylvie, they have to clean up the aftermath, and that's when the real fun begins.

Typical of Carlotto's books, we have corruption, drugs, sex, violence and money. Atypically, we have a hero/good guy who's actually a good guy, albeit one willing to use deadly force. In the other Carlottos I've read, either the hero is a messed up antihero as bad as his opponents (Death's Dark Abyss) or a gleeful psychopath you love to hate (The Goodbye Kiss) or just kind of a no-account you don't care about one way or the other (Poisonville). I liked Buratti's blasé attitude, wisecracking and loyalty, and I liked his buddies too. Basically all they want is to do the right thing, protect themselves and those they care about. Also typically we have women taking the brunt of the abuse but we also have a femme fatale who manages to elude capture and justice, and whose fate appears to be the subject of the subsequent book, which I believe is not translated yet.

I had fun reading Bandit Love. It's not my favorite Carlotto (that would be The Goodbye Kiss) but it was a fun, entertaining and page-turning noir from one of my favorite practitioners of the genre.  If you read crime fiction, you really, really need to add him to your pile. And Europa Editions, if you're reading, please bring me more Massimo, pronto. I only have one left and I'm going to need more soon.

This is the 10th book I've read for the 2012 Europa Challenge.

Marie C. Reviews LOVERS by Daniel Arsand

Lovers, by Daniel Arsand. Published 2012 by Europa Editions.

A hypnotic, erotic story about the love affair between a French aristocrat and a young farmer he plucks from obscurity, Lovers is a little gem. Balthazar and Sébastien meet the day Balthazar is thrown from a horse and Sébastien saves his life with medicinal herbs. Sébastien Faure is a sensitive farmer's son who becomes aware of his homosexual attractions when he stumbles up on two men making love. Balthazar de Créon is an aristocrat who finds a purpose in Sébastien as well as a love he can't deny.

The two are besotted with each other and Sébastien soon moves into Balthazar's chateau to learn healing arts; but Sébastien decides he wants to be a painter instead, and Balthazar, who scorns his position and refuses to go to Versailles to attend to the king, finds himself dogged by ugly rumors and is brought to trial and condemned to death. When Balthazar's story ends, Sébastien takes to the road but finds that some things aren't so easily let go of.

Lovers is like a prose poem about passion and a love that defines the lives of two men. It's a quick read but one that will leave you entranced and enchanted.

It's my 9th book for the 2012 Europa Challenge.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from the galley room at the bookstore where I work.

Marie C. Reviews PURE by Andrew Miller

Pure, by Andrew Miller. Published 2012 by Europa Editions.

Pure is the kind of book that reminds me why I love Europa books. First of all, it was probably the most anticipated Europa of the year so far for me; I'd been hearing about it from their publicity department for months and couldn't wait to get a hold of it. It's an award winner (Costa, 2011, for Best Novel and Best Book), it's about France, and it has that cool cover.

And, as it turns out, it's pretty awesome. Set in pre-Revolutionary Paris, It's the story of Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an engineer from Normandy who comes to the big city to oversee a large and challenging project- dismembering a cemetery, les Innocents, in the heart of the city. He gets the assignment from a powerful minister at Versailles and knows this project will make or break his career. In Paris he finds lodging with the Monnards, a local bourgeois family, befriends the church's organist Armand, and sets about his tasks. First thing's first though, and he needs some new threads- his father's musty old suit just won't do- so he and Armand head to a tailor who fits him out with a pistachio-green silk number whose color adorns the book's cover. Miller uses Barratte's clothes as a motif throughout the book to show Baratte's mood and feelings about what he's doing. The pistachio suit represents his optimism and his hick enthusiasm at taking on Paris; when he visits his family back in the sticks though, he changes:

On Christmas Eve, they go to mass at Bellême.  They put on their best things, compliment each other, though Jean-Baptiste is not wearing his pistachio suit, having, at the last moment in Paris, not quite the nerve to face his family in Monsieur Charvet's [the tailor] vision of the future. He had considered, briefly, going back to the place des Victoires and seeing if his old suit was still there (his mother has already asked after it), but let himself be unnerved by the anticipation of Charvet's scorn, the unvoiced judgement that the young engineer was one of those timorous creatures who leap forward one day only to scurry back the next. Instead, he has on a suit borrowed from Monsieur Monnard, something pigeon-colored and respectable., the sort of costume that might be worn to the annual Guild Cutlers dinner. It fits him well; better perhaps than he would have wished it to.

He never really goes back to the pistachio after all. But he continues his work, his year in Paris, as one trouble after another befalls himself and the project. He recruits miners from Bellême to carry out the work but exhuming the cemetery is the least of his challenges. There is resistance to the project, and pressure from above, and problems big and small get in his way. There are deaths, and scandal, and tragedy, and love.

Miller writes in a crisp, straightforward style that is laced with a wry humor and gentle sadness. Baratte changes slowly but believably; something is passing away, some part of himself as well as some part of Paris. There are larger rumblings of discontent as well; this is the time just before the fall of the French monarchy after all. But Miller is unconcerned with the upper echelons of French society and takes as his subject the very lowest, physically and politically- the dead and those tasked with their removal.  He finds the beauty and the humanity in those living and dying on the margins of Parisian society- the workers, the prostitutes and the bones and bodies of the dead.

I thoroughly enjoyed this beautifully crafted and fascinating book. It should be in the summer tote of every reader of literary fiction, especially but not exclusively those with a particular interest in France. Miller's storytelling will keep those pages moving and his characters will keep your emotions engaged. It's a fresh and original story told with verve and compassion.

It's my 8th Challenge book of 2012.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Europa Editions.

The Woman with the Bouquet by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt

This classic collection of stories by Schmitt are so reminiscent of great short story writers of the past, e.g., du Maupassant, Poe, Bierce, that one irresistibly turns to see when it was published. Originally called La rêveuse d'Ostende and published in 2007, the stories have the feel of institutions already, for they highlight human motivations and peculiarities no matter what the period of time.

A favorite story, “Perfect Crime,” so completely captures a person’s frustration with their spouse and their ill-thought-out revenge, that one feels this cautionary tale is as sure to stay in one’s memory as long any life lesson personally learned in far more painful fashion.

“The Dreamer from Ostend” was the longest in the collection and felt positively Victorian in its shocking eroticism and the measured revelation of long-buried secrets tightly guarded. It reminds one of the stimulative power of a long, slow strip tease.

The corrupting influences of fiction are addressed in “Trashy Reading,” and one who has ever shivered in fear on a dark and windy night can attest to the force of imagination in keeping us alert and prepared just in case…

Our imagination is also under the microscope in the title story, for when presented with a conundrum we readers will bring to bear our experiences and fears and our deepest emotions in solving the mystery. Schmitt thus shows us how writing the story is only half the show, while reading it--with the attendant imaginative constructions--is at least as important. It is the author acknowledging us readers with a bow that makes us lower our eyes in embarrassment and delight. Kudos right back, Schmitt! This classic collection of stories is sure to delight many.


Paperback, 224 pages. Published August 31st 2010 by Europa Editions Translated from the French by Alison Anderson.(Originally published 2007 by Éditions Albin Michel ISBN 9782226181 original title La rêveuse d'Ostende)

This book counts towards the 2012 Europa Challenge. The Bowed Bookshelf: The Woman with the Bouquet by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Marie C. Reviews Limassol by Yishai Sarid

Limassol by Yishai Sarid. Published by Europa Editions 2010.
 
Limassol is a noir unlike many you've read or will read. It tells the story of an unnamed Mossad agent involved in an operation to snare a terrorist connected to a once-famous writer named Daphna. The agent, a troubled interrogator with a fizzling marriage, presents himself to Daphna as a writing student, but she knows something is up. To get to the terrorist, the agent must get to know Hani, Daphna's close friend and the terrorist's father. Daphna asks for the agent's help with Hani, who is dying, and with her son Yotam, wasting away from drug addiction and in trouble with some thugs. The agent agrees to help. Meanwhile, the man, whose marriage is falling apart due to the stress of his job, finds himself drawn more and more to Daphna and sympathizing with Hani in ways he hadn't expected. But he has to do his job. Or does he?

This is not the easiest book to get into. The tone is dry and matter of fact, almost distant, yet sticks very closely to the agent's thoughts and point of view. It's almost as though he's alienated from himself, from his own feelings. He's doing difficult, dangerous work interrogating prisoners, and it doesn't always go well; in fact, everything he does seems to go wrong more than anything else. At the same time he's treading water at home, trying to connect to his wife and son who are ebbing away from him. Then, there's Daphna, and Hani, and even Yotam, to whom the agent feels drawn and in whose lives he quickly becomes deeply involved.

That said, I still really enjoyed Limassol and would recommend it. I say it was hard to get into but I was halfway through before I knew it, and totally committed to seeing how this story ended. And author Sarid asks some difficult questions about the Israel-Palestine relationship/conflict. He presents a pretty bleak picture of how different peoples' lives have been affected and sometimes ruined by the stress inherent in their society, but he does offer a little hope for our unnamed hero. Limassol isn't the kind of book that will having you madly flipping pages, but it's one you'll want to finish once you start.

It's been nominated for a 2012 Impac Award.

This is my seventh book for the 2012 Challenge. Next month I'm reading mostly books from Italy, which means I'll have lots of choices from Europa! I haven't decided which one's next though!

Marie C. Reviews Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous

Divorce Islamic Style, by Amara Lakhous. Published 2012 by Europa Editions.

If you're a fan of Amara Lakhous from Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, you have to read Divorce Islamic Style. If you like post-9/11 novels that make you think, you have to read Divorce Islamic Style. If you like post-9/11 novels that make you laugh, you have to read Divorce Islamic Style. If you like- well, hopefully you get the message :-)

Divorce Islamic Style is a satire about contemporary Italian life, immigration, post-9/11 anxiety, Muslim life and the status of women and more. The narrative alternates between two characters- Issa, or Christian, a Sicilian who speaks perfect Arabic who's gone undercover in an immigrant neighborhood as a Tunisian. He's trying to ferret out a terrorist cell for his handlers, shady men who keep secrets of their own. Then, we get to know the extremely charismatic and funny Safia, or Sofia as she is sometimes known, an Egyptian woman with a double life. Christian/Issa's adventures are alternately funny, scary, weird and surreal, but it's really Safia who carried the book for me. She's married to Said, and she wants out; she just doesn't love him, and she wants a life of her own. And now that she's living in Rome she sees no reason why she shouldn't have it.

As it happens, she and her husband are on the verge of a final divorce; as she explains it, a Muslim couple has to say "I divorce you" three times for a divorce to be final. Said has already said it twice; once more and she's free. In the mean time, she keeps crossing paths with Christian/Issa and the two become infatuated with each other.

The title of the book is obviously a takeoff on the 1961 comedy "Divorce Italian Style," starring Marcello Mastroianni, and Safia finds Christian/Issa so handsome that she refers to him privately as "the Arab Marcello," but their romance might not have the brightest future. I have to say though that this is one of the funnest books I've read so far this year and I positively adored Safia. She's tough and thoughtful and smart, as well as sort of naive and funny and sweet too. I liked Christian but I was always waiting for the story to get back around to Safia. Amara Lakhous is turning into one of my favorite Europa authors and the book is really one of those that will make you laugh and make you think, and keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next. What more can you ask?

This is my sixth book for the 2012 Europa Challenge. Next up I'm reading Limassol by Yishai Sarid, just nominated for a 2012 Impac Award.


FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Europa Editions.

Marie C. Reviews The Goodbye Kiss by Massimo Carlotto

The Goodbye Kiss, by Massimo Carlotto. Published 2006 by Europa Editions.

One thing you can say about the crime novels of Massimo Carlotto is that as dark and as violent as they are, they will make you feel better about your life, because nothing that's ever happened to me holds a candle to an ordinary day in the life of Mr. Carlotto's protagonists.

In The Goodbye Kiss we meet gleeful psychopath Giorgio Pellegrini, a career criminal who prances from one trainwreck to the next but always comes off without a scratch. The one-time revolutionary is back on the scene in Italy after some time in Central America and stint in prison and all he wants is respectability. To get it, he's willing and able to indulge in all manner of bloody, violent, nasty shenanigans. But the thing is, he's a lot of fun. Hilarious. I might be tempted to call him an unreliable narrator but the fact is he's scrupulously honest with the reader about who he is and what's he about, even when he's lying his pants off to everyone else.

Most of the book is taken up with a big heist he's planning, which he hopes will net him a hefty payday and bankroll his new "respectable" life. The only hitch is, he can't leave any witnesses. Along the way he plots with a veritable rogues' gallery of accomplices, amuses himself with various women who aren't always amused with him, and generally acts nice right up to the point where the bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up. It sounds grim, but it's a riot. And having just read Cooking with Fernet Branca I had to laugh when a bottle of the stuff turned up in this book under very different and for one character, highly unfortunate circumstances.

Which brings me to the only thing that doesn't make me laugh about Giorgio, and about Carlotto's books more generally- the way Carlotto's female characters are routinely degraded and tortured. I suppose one could say he's being all Stieg Larssonish about it, showing us the horrors perpetrated on women in order to expose them. So we get ample helpings of rape, prostitution, and other manner of violations against just about every woman in this and Carlotto's other books (at least the three I've read). But unlike Larsson, Carlotto's brutality isn't presented as fantasy porn. And the truth is, as badly as his women fare, they're no worse off than the men.

So, I really enjoyed The Goodbye Kiss. Giorgio is appalling- a horror of a human being. But Carlotto creates such a charismatic bad boy that his adventures are just a roller coaster good time. Turn off your inner feminist and come along for the ride!

This is my fifth book for the 2012 Europa Challenge.

Marie reviews THE NUN by Simonetta Agnello Hornby

The Nun is a book that I really hope historical-fiction readers will flock to buy. Set in nineteenth century Italy during the unification period, it's the story of teenage Agata, the bookish daughter of a noble family fallen on hard times. She's the second-to-last daughter; her family is out of money but she is in love with Giacomo, a neighbor who loves her back but whose family wants him to marry a wealthy girl with a dowry. Agata's mother is desperate to marry her off but when no agreement can be made with Giacomo's family and Agata resists an arranged marriage with a much-older man, the only option left is to put an unwilling Agata into a convent.

And this it seems was not an unusual fate for Italian girls of her station for several centuries. Two years ago I read a solid, if lighter, novel called Sacred Hearts, by Sarah Dunant, also about a young girl secreted to a nunnery against her will while she harbored a passion for a man her family didn't want her to be with. The Nun covers a lot of the same ground but with more of a literary bent. Dunant's heroine is wholly opposed to the cloistered life; Agata is conflicted. She tries to make a life for herself "on the inside," learning baking and apothecary skills, trying to make friends and allies among the many relatives she finds in the convent world. But far from being bastions of piety, the convents are rife with luxury, gossip, bullying and secrets, and when she finds herself on the other side of powerful priests, her hope of escape wastes away. Agata has her own secret: a longstanding friendship with an English man who sends her books and who may even offer more- love, salvation, and escape.

I thought The Nun was a really terrific read and deserves to make its way into the hands of historical fiction fans as well as readers interested in Italy. The research that must have gone into the book is very impressive. I loved all the colorful detail Hornby includes about convent life, Italian religious celebrations and the politics of the time. But most of all I love the complexity of the characters, especially Agata, who has so much to work out while all customs, politics and social changes stream around her. I love that she's not simplistic or single-minded; I love that she really struggles with herself. Sometimes she finds contentment in ritual, routine and a preordained life; sometimes she rebels and works hard to find a way out. You'll have to read the book to find out her ultimate fate, but I really hope you do!

This is my 3rd Europa for 2012. I'm reading Cooking with Fernet Branca now.

I received this book for review from Europa Editions.

Stacia Reviews Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

 

After you've read too many lovely, wish-you-were-here travel memoirs & foodie books, James Hamilton-Paterson’s Cooking with Fernet Branca is the amusing & biting antidote. I thoroughly enjoyed this parody & it had me literally laughing out loud at times. (Yes, even reading at Starbucks, I was snickering & snorting to myself….)

Two foreigners, Gerald & Marta, have bought neighboring houses in Italy, each hoping for a beautiful location that's peaceful. Gerald wants to concentrate on his career (ghostwriter of athlete autobiographies) & his (heinous) cooking; Marta wants to concentrate on her career as a composer (working on a movie soundtrack for a famous Italian director). Both are rather put out to discover each other, since having a neighbor leads to all kinds of interruptions, misread intentions, noise, etc.... Of course, neither wants interruptions yet can’t help (repeatedly) checking out what the neighbor is doing, leading them to become entwined in each other’s lives.

Here's a fun quote from early in the book after Gerald went to dinner at neighbor Marta's house:

"Things are looking good. Two days have now gone by since our dinner and nary a squeak out of Marta. I'm counting this as a culinary triumph: the ingenious use of food as an offensive weapon. Garlic ice cream with Fernet Branca may lack subtlety but it is highly effective and I feel that by giving you the recipe I have placed a pacifist's version of Clint Eastwood's famous .44 Magnum in your hands. "Make my evening, Marta," I might have said. And to my amazement she did, taking not one but three massive helpings. If I were a good neighbour I would have dropped in on her by now to make sure she is still alive. But I'm not, so I haven't."

P.S. Don't read this book while eating... for two reasons.
1) You may choke on your food from laughing.
2) The included 'recipes' are revolting. Remember that Gerald believes in food as an offensive weapon. LOL

Stacia Reviews THE NUN by Simonetta Agnello Hornby

The Nun by Simonetta Agnello Hornby

Well, just a few chapters into The Nun, I was reminded of one of perks of historical fiction: finding out new facts about different times & places (& sometimes things that are still true). The book opens in Messina in 1839 during the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. After poking around a bit, I found out this annual religious procession still takes place in Messina; there are various photos & videos posted online. The machine used in the procession is a huge, pyramid shaped creation that includes rotating parts depicting the sun, moon, and various angels. During the time of The Nun, apparently real infants were used to portray the angels -- seven or eight hours in the hot sun, rotating high above street level....Of course, these days, infants are no longer used and statues are in place instead. This is just one of the neat history tidbits I've picked up from this book. If you are interested, here are a few links that show what I'm referencing:

http://www.thoughts.com/backpackernews/la-vara-festival-in-messina-sicily (photos)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9bBBgeZ65o&feature=related (video)

Do you find yourself researching things (photos, maps, videos,...) when reading historical fiction? If so, this lovely novel will be a delight for you with its meticulously-researched historical details. The book moves at a languid, meditative pace (completely in keeping with the ideas of nuns & monastic orders). Each piece of the story is like a shard of colored glass – a beautiful, intricate detail (of life in a convent, of life in an Italian town in the mid-1800s, of life in Italy during times of turmoil) that meshes & unfolds with other pieces to create a kaleidoscopic view of a small window in history. I think the setting & the period details are the stars of the story. Recommended for lovers of historical fiction.

Marie C. Reviews THE GIRL IN THE POLKA-DOT DRESS by Beryl Bainbridge

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress, by Beryl Bainbridge. Published 2011 by Europa Editions.

Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later- I read a Europa I didn't like.

At first I thought I was just going to DNF The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress, celebrated British author Beryl Bainbridge's posthumously published novel about two strangers on a road trip to California just before the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The first time I tried to read it, I found it dull and confusing. Bainbridge tells the story with less than the minimum exposition; heavy on dialogue and internal monologue, we don't know much about why an American widower Washington Harold and an English girl named Rose are looking for one Mr. Wheeler. Little by little, we find out some, but I was still left with more questions than answers.

So I put it down for a while and picked it up again, determined not to be defeated. And I wasn't, at least in the sense that I finished it. I still don't understand much about what happened.  I wonder if this minimalist style is typical of Bainbridge's writing; this is the first novel of hers I've read. Whatever else you can say though, it's definitely not for me.

I did enjoy some things about the book. I liked the gentle accumulation of detail and her strange relationship with Harold. I liked the contradictions that often occurred between what one of the characters says and what he or she is thinking. And their rambling adventures and the people they meet along the way have a darkly comic picaresque quality that is kind of fun. On the whole though, not really one for me. Maybe you'll have better luck!

This is my second Europa of 2012. I'll probably read The Nun next.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Europa Editions.

Stacia Reviews Four Europas!

I want to welcome new Challenge participant Stacia; she doesn't have a Google account so I'll be posting her reviews here on her behalf. She's got four to start off with- wow! Welcome, Stacia!

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut:

I finished In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut. Wow. The book centers on a fictional character, yet Galgut refers to him as both 'he' and 'I' at various points in the text, making it feel like it's really not fiction at all, but rather autobiographical. It also makes you feel close to the main character, then very far away, & back again. Galgut doesn't use traditional punctuation (quotes, question marks), but it fits perfectly w/ the flow of his narrative.

The prose seems simple enough, telling 3 separate stories of a South African backpacker's travels in the world & the people he encounters/is with/drifts away from on these trips. He's an astute observer of humans, himself especially, & has a fine touch at conveying the myriad emotions of travel, meeting others (some good, some bad), the loneliness, the musings of someone traveling alone w/ no specific schedule or destination in mind. Overall, there is a melancholy tone to the book, yet it's riveting, simple, and straight-forward at the same time.

I love to travel, though I've never really done backpacking per se. Reading this book makes me wish American culture in general embraced this idea more (which seems so prevalent in many European countries & various other countries as well). It's not just a journey to a place, it's a journey through oneself.

Zeroville by Steve Erickson:

I loved, loved this surreal, funny, unsettling, unique musing on movies, good vs. evil, the nature of man vs. God, dreams vs. reality,.... This book has a few of the funniest, most absurd (in a good way) scenes that I've read in a long time. And, it's a perfect read in the run-up to the Oscars.

Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky:

Alina Bronsky does a superb job with writing in a teen's point of view. Sascha (the main character) is tough, tender, smart, acid, & painfully realistic. Her story is both heartbreaking & funny as it blows by you at a breakneck pace. (However, there is one point where the pacing changed somewhat & it threw me to the point that I flipped back a couple of pages, thinking I had somehow skipped a page or two....) An unflinching look at an immigrant life lived on the fringe, surviving violent circumstances, moving forward (sometimes backward) in spite of it all....

Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb:

Pretentious repartee. I realize that was a main point of it, the irony of it, but it does not necessarily lead to an enjoyable read, imo. Meh.

Marie C. Reviews MOFFIE by Andre Carl van der Merwe

Moffie, by André Carl van der Merwe. Published 2011 by Europa Editions.

It's been kind of a while since I read a book that blew me away like Moffie did. It's a searing, heartrending story about a young white South African man called up for national service and hiding the fact that he's gay.

The kind of opposition that the main character and narrator, Nicholas, faces, is almost a little difficult to understand in the liberal bubble I live in. His father is a hyper-masculine chauvinist. His mother is more sensitive but cowers behind her husband. His father pressures him relentlessly to be conventional and successful, beats him when he steps out of line, ridicules him endlessly. Being nonathletic or artistic is bad enough; if Nicholas were unsuccessful his father says he would pass him by on the street. But if Nicholas were gay, a "moffie" in South African slang, his father says it would be "the end." Nicholas doesn't even want to know what his father means by that. The army is the solution, according to his father, the thing that will make a man out of his unsatisfactory son.

When Nicholas enters the army he enters an environment even more ruthless and punishing than his home. But it's in the army that Nicholas meets gay friends, falls in love, and comes to believe in himself. He encounters unspeakable brutality, scarring tragedy and horrors beyond his imagination, but he also learns about loyalty, friendship and bonds that will last a lifetime. He also learns how to use his religious faith to get him through the trials of army life and how to move forward with pride and confidence.

Moffie is the kind of book that tears you to shreds only to piece you back together. A longish book that reads like lightning,  it's not perfect; the tone can be a little overwrought at times, and there are a couple of unlikely coincidences that are poetic in their way but maybe unrealistic. That's okay. The narrative alternates between Nicholas' army time and his childhood, showing how he became the man he is, and ends on a dual note of horror and hope. An intense, demanding book, Moffie should be required reading not just for LGBT-interested readers but for anyone. If you're doing an LGBT- or African-literature challenge this year, I urge you to add Moffie to your reading list.  I think it may have replaced Broken Glass Park as my favorite Europa and it will certainly show up in my top reads of 2012. What a book!

It's my first read of 2012 for the Challenge!