A World of Possibilities

http://www.ideachampions.com

I could have been the woolly Einstein, the genius keening at the stars,

the earthly power to devour all kind allegiance, unbound art.

Nefarious phases of the moon I could have harnessed, could have dazzled,

wowed, created spellbound trust.

Showed how to handle disruption and monsters, wild and unruly,

tamed with my mind.

 

I should have been the mad scientist, harbouring a supportive spouse in my shade.

Parented remotely, aloof with all answers, but no time to wonder, observe or listen.

 

And when knives have fallen, when chips have been laid,

asunder we surrender and wonder anew:

where power was parcelled, where prospects cut off.

Real Viennese Crime Fiction

This is not really a book review, more of a declaration of love for its setting, and it fits into my Global Reading Challenge, the meme launched by the incomparable Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise.

Ah, Vienna!  City of my heart – no matter how many places I live in, this is the place that feels closest to home, perhaps because I spent most of my childhood there.  Yet it’s not just gold-tinged nostalgia.  I will forever be regarded as an outsider there: no matter how fond how I am of Grinzing and the wooded hills extending beyond it, no matter how familiar I am with every element of the Viennese cuisine, no matter how easily I slip into the lazy lengthened vowels of the Viennese accent.

Viennese Souvenirs

Yet still I thrill to the slightest mention of the city, and I cannot resist any novel that is set there.  Yet somehow, until recently, crime fiction set in Vienna seems to have been written largely by foreign authors. The obvious one to mention is Graham Greene’s ‘The Third Man’.  Both the book and the film are excellent at conveying the disquieting atmosphere of a city on the very border of the Cold War. Frank Tallis has series of novels featuring a psychonalytical detective in early 20th century Vienna, but I found it a bit too rich, like a Sachertorte.  J. Sydney Jones also addresses the same period in Austrian history, introducing real-life literary celebrities, musicians and artists such as Gustav Klimt and Gustav Mahler with his Viennese Mysteries series.

However, in recent years, there has been a surge of native crime writers telling us of their love/hate relationship with their capital city.  [Because you aren't a real Viennese until you learn to complain about the city and its inhabitants.] Some of them rather obviously cater for the tourist market, much like the Mozartkugeln confectionery.  Some of them are intended for the domestic market (which includes Germany and Switzerland, of course).  None of them have been translated into English yet, as far as I am aware, but I will keep my eyes open for Wolf Haas (many of his books have been filmed for Austrian TV),  Edith Kneifl’s evocations of the Prater fun fair, Andreas Pittler’s novels set in the tumultuous 1930s, Marcus Rafaelsberger who changed his name to Marc Elsberg and now lives in Hamburg, and Alfred Komarek’s melancholy detective Polt, who lives just outside Vienna amidst beautiful vineyards.

But every now and then you find the genuine thing: a book that conveys all of the contradictory atmosphere of this city, everything that charms and frustrates you about it. This author is Stefan Slupetzky and his crime series is about Poldi Wallisch, a.k.a the Lemming for his tendency to engage in self-destructive behaviour.

The book I read, ‘Lemmings Zorn’ (Lemming’s Rage) is the fourth in the series, but I don’t think this is a series you need to read in chronological order.  Not surprisingly, it’s about rage and frustration, about average people trying to make a life for themselves in the city of endless construction sites, unapproachable neighbours and high noise levels. It is also about powerlessness and revenge, about shame and shamelessness.

It starts out as a humorous family saga. It’s a lovely May Day holiday and the streets of Vienna are empty, save for Lemming and his heavily pregnant life partner, Klara. Suddenly, Klara’s waters break, the ambulance fails to arrive and panic sets in.  Until the couple are saved by a stranger, Angela, who helps them with the birth, names the baby and becomes a family friend.  A few months later, however, on Christmas Eve, Lemming has to leave the baby with Angela for a few hours.  When he goes to pick up his son, he makes a gruesome discovery which changes their lives forever.

Macabre humour mixed with slapstick, surrealist dream sequences, philosophical asides and tongue-in-cheek observations, this is a crime novel unlike any other you have read.  I absolutely loved it and laughed out loud throughout.  Whether it would appeal to anyone who doesn’t know Vienna or the black humour of its inhabitants, we won’t know until it’s been translated into English. I do hope someone hurries up and does just that!

Related articles

• Set-jetting in Vienna (brandsandfilms.com)
• Viennese Weekend (memoirsofawayfarer.wordpress.com)
• In Love With Vienna: “Vienna Is Weird, But I Like It” – Salvatore Viviano (thenewcontemporary.com)

Review: Dead Cold by Louise Penny

‘Dead… what?’ you may well ask, because outside the UK this book was published as ‘A Fatal Grace’.  Somehow, this title was not deemed suitable for the British, but the original title was nowhere to be seen, so I spent quite a bit of time on Goodreads and other sites to find out which book I had just finished reading.  Don’t you love it when that happens?

This is my incursion into Canada for the Global Reading Challenge, that wonderful meme hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise.  And a very frosty, atmospheric journey it was too, set around Christmas in the sleepy village of Three Pines in Quebec.  This is the second book in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series and I picked it at random, simply because it was the only one available at my local library. It is perhaps not the strongest in the series, but I enjoyed the atmosphere and the characters so much that I have already ordered a couple more from abroad.

Every now and then you come across a crime series that has a fully developed world of its own, its own language and in-jokes, the interplay of characters, which you only gradually penetrate, book by book.  It is a pleasure to sink into such a complete and satisfying landscape, and I feel about this series much the same as I felt about Lindsey Davis’s ‘Falco’ series set in Ancient Rome. It’s like meeting an old friend.

Yet, at the same time, this is cosy fiction with an unsettling undercurrent, not just an escapist read. Gamache is a complex, thoughtful, sensitive detective, who never once falls into cliché.  The village seems idyllic, but is of course filled with quirky characters, many of them artists and writers who have dropped out of the big city rat-race.  I especially enjoyed big-hearted and insecure Clara, straight-talking poet Ruth and gay couple Olivier and Gabri.  Yet one member of this peaceful community is responsible for the death of CC de Poitiers, a pretentious, unlikeable woman with a murky past, a ruthless streak and an obsession to become the next big lifestyle guru.  Death by electrocution, no less, while watching a curling game.  And what is the connection with the death of a homeless person back in Montreal?

The plot is not the main thing here, however. It’s all about the wintry atmosphere, the humorous descriptions of curling and the bulky attire inevitably linked to the Canadian climate. I also enjoyed the sly observations about the ‘others’, in this case the Anglos with their contained emotions, never quite saying what they mean. (The author herself is just such an Anglo, it should be noted, but she steps seamlessly into the shoes of the French-speaking community in Quebec.)

Related articles

• Dead Cold (A Fatal Grace), Louise Penny (sylviemheroux.wordpress.com)
• Serial Crime – with Character (wordwenches.typepad.com)

Mal- Entendu (Take Two)

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, the prompt tonight is ‘Anecdote’.  So I decided to rewrite an older poem of mine, which very much arose from a personal anecdote. (P.S. I am now expanding my boulangerie vocabulary and sometimes get handed the right bread.)

‘A few months’, they told me,

‘Immersion is good.’

Just jump in the pool, fully clothed,

then swim, swim some more, swim for your life,

always almost, but never quite there.

 

Haunted by failure, aware of the dangers,

I navigate, anxious, between the extremes.

All blandness in word choice,

I crawl through the accents raining in all directions

submerged in hot water when phone brings rapid riposte.

 

My jokes are more plodding,

some meaning eludes me.

I paddle along even when I am lost.

 

Distracted by how I pronounce the word ‘pain‘,

the baker hands me the wrong kind of bread.

I think I’ll stick to baguette in the future.

Pinched

Two thumb toes curled, eight subalterns squished

retreat in shoes too tight, rules too rigid.

Brain we mangle, stunt all words

to grape in odd clusters ’round harboured thoughts.

 

Don’t frighten the horses!

 

Heart stripped to stumps and cords,

lumpen mass, still beating,

confined to a love no longer felt,

a marriage of minds no longer true.

 

 

Memorable Moments from Lyon Crime Festival

Did you know that 70% of crime fiction editors in France are women?  That is just one of the surprising facts that I found out at the Quais du Polar in Lyon this last weekend.

What I also found there: a great intimacy between readers and writers, a fun-filled atmosphere, resilience to stand in the queue despite the rain and cold, and plenty of memorable quotes and valuable nuggets of information such as:

1) The Festival in Figures: 4 days, 70 authors, 35 panel discussions, 5 live recordings of radio programmes, 5 literary prizes (less to do with money, more to do with prestige and a spike in sales), 10 films introduced by authors, 10 theatre performances and an estimated 60,000 visitors.

Claude Mesplède was the President of the Readers’ Jury and the true beating heart of the Festival.  Passionate about crime fiction since the age of 10, he has edited anthologies of crime fiction, written the definitive Dictionary of Crime Literature and been instrumental in setting up the Toulouse Crime Festival.

2) The Urban Panel: The urban landscape as a scene of desolation, poverty and deprivation, with petty crime and trivial, sensationalised news items. This is crime fiction at its grittiest, providing rich social commentary. Young writers Rachid Santaki and Jérémie Guez write about the Parisian ghettos from personal experience, Petros Markaris mourns the amnesia and almost casual descent into violence and indifference of Athens, John Burdett shows a side of Bangkok that the Thai Tourist Board would undoubtedly not approve of.  It is left to Swiss writer Joël Dicker to round it off with a critique of the American media reporting on crimes in his runaway success of a debut novel ‘The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair’. (Oddly enough, Dicker has become a bit of a media buzz himself – however, in the picture I took of the panel he is not visible, so you cannot judge for yourselves if he is indeed as good-looking and boyish looking as he is hyped to be).

3) Quotes about writing, sources of inspiration and the joys of being read:

It’s not about faith or inspiration, it’s about work. (David Khara)

I never wanted to write anything else but crime fiction. Writing a story that grips people, with strong characters, seems to me such an art and an achievement. (Sylvie Granotier)

When a community and a society is starting to lose its conscience, perhaps a writer has a duty to act as the collective memory. (Petros Markaris)

Petros Markaris

The banality of evil is what makes crime fiction so interesting.  We are always surprised to find a killer in our midst, which is why we always say ‘Who could have imagined X doing such a thing?’ But we never know people well enough to see what lurks beneath the surface. We seldom dare to look deep enough within ourselves even. (Joël Dicker)

I started out with crime fiction because it was something I liked reading and I thought I might be able to do it. But I didn’t think I would stay with it for so long. That’s because it is a genre that also allows you to say something true about men and women, and about the society in which we live. (P.D. James)

Amateurs wait for inspiration, the rest of us go to work.  You can’t be in it just for the money – I don’t chase the money (although it’s nice when I get it), but the readers’ hearts. However, Dickens, Shakespeare, Dumas all wrote for money.  The idea that a writer has to be   lofty and above commerce is a very modern one.  All I want to do is entertain.  If a reader takes my book to bed with them for 15 minutes and is still reading it at 5 in the morning, I have more than accomplished my mission. (Harlan Coben)

Diniz Galhos

Us younger French writers feel more like global citizens: we can write about America, about Japan, about anywhere in the world. A good story remains a good story, no matter where it is located. (Diniz Galhos)

The authors of obscure literary fiction who say ‘You have readers, but I have my dignity’ are kidding themselves if they think that their notion of success is any different from my notion of success.  Everyone wants more readers. (Jeff Abbott)

Elsa Marpeau

90% of present-day French crime writers have been influenced by American fiction, especially Elmore Leonard.  I am not sure that all those traditional differences between Anglo-Saxon and French literature still apply. (Elsa Marpeau)

Only bad writers think they are good, all others are insecure.  Your book is never quite what you want it to be. That’s what motivates you to write the next one. (Harlan Coben)

But above all, I found ornate, sumptuous and unusual locations, just right to celebrate literary delights!

Hotel de Ville, Lyon

Main Hall

And here is my book haul from the festival.  I really made an effort to restrain myself.

If Only

Unusually for me, a poem that rhymes, for the Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. Even more unusually, this is composed on the road, in a hotel room, while travelling on business. Finding words for poetry when you are in business mode is like digging for truffles with an ancient, half-blind pig with a severe head-cold.

If you gather heather daily,

pluck one out for me.

Lay it softly on my dreamscape,

let its scent swoop me free.

 

If you walk the coastal pathway,

battle on its up,

harness west wind, chill the longing,

whirl the storms in a cup.

 

If you stop too soon, too often,

doubts creep in, seduce.

So race pulses, flash the radars,

cut down, cut out, reduce.

A Few Pictures from Lyon

I’m afraid I don’t have time to do a proper write-up of Lyon today, as I am about to ‘leave on a jet plane’. But here are a few pictures to whet your appetite below. And there’s a brief report I wrote over on the Crime Fiction Lover website, with even more pictures.

My footbridge to criminal delights

Prize-Giving Ceremony

Main Festival Location

Lyon, Lyon, here I come!

Starting today, Lyon is hosting the Quais du Polar festival, celebrating crime fiction. Last year’s visitors’ numbers were 45 000 and this year, I am delighted to say, I will be amongst them.  You can see the full programme here (in French) and my summary of the event here.  But for now, I am looking forward to spending Easter with my family and with thousands of crime fiction fanatics like myself in one of the loveliest (and gastronomically most renowned) cities in France.  Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Happy Easter and Happy Passover for all who are celebrating this now.

Birth of a Class Clown

After all that, he’d forgotten the frigging marbles at home!  He knew there’d be a price to pay for that at break-time.  Two weeks at this school had been enough to teach him that no one, not even Jacques with the kind eyes and shy smile, no one got away unharmed when they promised something to Noah… and failed to deliver.

There was only one way out of it.  Miss break-time.  Fake an illness.  Would it work?  Would the teacher grasp enough of his stuttering French?

The teacher finally looked up, just before his arm went to sleep.  He hadn’t wanted to speak up.

‘Yes?’

‘Je peux sortir?  J’ai mal au…’ What was the word for it again?  Never mind, he’d say it with a French accent. ‘Au… tummeee.’

‘Je peux sortir, Madame,’ the teacher corrected him sternly.

‘Madame… tummee.’ He didn’t know what possessed him to repeat the word.  Perhaps he thought it would inspire some sense of urgency.  Instead, laughter rose like waves on a dried and sunken beach.  Some of it was abandoned, hysterical.  The teacher’s frown deepened.  Some of it was derision, as usual, at his lack of language skills, but for once he could live with that.

Of course he wasn’t allowed out.  Not then, not later.  But that day he discovered his weapon of choice: disarming through laughter.

 

Related articles

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• Living with Children: Class clown reverts to being nerd (triblive.com)
• Global Perspectives: Understanding Global Discipline Techniques (moderndaychris.wordpress.com)