I read these books such a long time ago (July, August and September). Initially, I wanted to spend time writing a detailed review for each one: each one of them deserves it. But the more time passes, the more I risk not being able to write anything about them anymore. So here are some jumbled and brief impressions of each one.
Tove Jansson: The True Deceiver (transl. Thomas Teal)
This was a book I read for Women in Translation Month in August. Jansson is one of my favourite authors and this story of two women circling each other like bloodhounds in a snowy Northern village does not disappoint. It reminded me of another Scandinavian book I read recently, Gøhril Gabrielsen’s The Looking Glass Sisters. The style is spare, sombre, almost transparent in its simplicity – yet with so many hidden layers. Nothing is quite what it seems and there is no one we can fully believe, but are the characters also deceiving themselves, as well as each other? At first I was firmly on Anna’s side – the artist who likes to think well of everybody and stay a little aloof from things happening in the village – but I found myself sympathising more with the ‘intruder’ Katri by the end. There are no easy allegiances or answers to be had in this book.
Max Blecher: Scarred Hearts (transl. Henry Howard)
A book that sucks you in, rather like the sanatorium sucking in its patients. A real Hotel California: you can never leave, or at least not without profound scars. The story is deceptively simple: a young man with spinal tuberculosis enters a sanatorium somewhere on the French coast, and discovers that he and his fellow patients have to make the most of their short lives, while bits and pieces of their body (and their full-body cast) fall off. This is not for the squeamish or hypocritical: description of love-making attempts in full-body casts, anyone? Or the dirt and grime that can seep into your cast when you get it wet? It is a real burst of candour and poignancy, a pulsating, urgent love of life, from a character (and an author) doomed to die. Such a modern feel to this one: Blecher does not shy away from the good, the bad, the ugly, the things we would rather not acknowledge. I now want to read it in the original Romanian, because although the translation is quite poetic, I feel there is a rhythm to the prose which I am missing in English.
Christos Tsiolkas: Barracuda
A very different style here, much more deliberate about shocking and forcing issues out into the open (as opposed to the more veiled, allusive style of the other two authors). Danny the would-be swimming champion is a self-absorbed, obsessive hero with a huge chip on his shoulder about class, money and ethnic origin. But he is typical perhaps of a teenager, and even of his generation, so it becomes forgivable, if a little annoying at times. But the main question of the book is: is it possible to be ‘a good man’ and what exactly does it mean nowadays? Danny’s journey of self-discovery and redemption, of coming to terms with his own background, is ambitious and poignant, if a little overlong.
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