crime fiction – findingtimetowrite

#20Books of Summer: Getting Ahead of Myself

A variation on the recent trend of dark houses with one lit window: dark manor house with a few lit windows.

I was so eager to get started on the #20Books of Summer challenge (or rather, so afraid I might not get a chance to complete it), that I embarked upon reading some from my list in May, with the idea of reviewing them as soon as June starts. There is another reason for this: I am packing up my books and also planning to donate to charity those that I don’t plan on rereading, all before the end of July or so. So here are some I read earlier, all crime novels.

Book 1: The Inheritance by Trisha Sakhlecha

A family full of secrets and resentments gather on an island resort with little access to Wifi and with all the staff given time off: I’m sure I’ve read dozens of these in the past few years (or rather, heard about hundreds and read a few). What makes this one slightly different from the norm is that it’s about an Indian family with the younger generation all opting for English partners, so we have a bit of cultural argy-bargy. There’s also a clever sleight of hand about the murder victim – who appears very late in the book. But I am rather tired of wealthy folks behaving badly…

A quick and fun read, perfect for the beach or public transport. To be donated (even though it’s signed)

Book 2: The Pursued by C.S. Forester

This book has an interesting history. C.S. Forester is best known for his Hornblower series of naval adventures, but back in 1935, while he was commissioned to write a film script in California, he started missing foggy old London and ventured to write this domestic noir. However, the manuscript was laid aside and assumed to be lost, except it was found at auction 60 years later and finally published in 2011.

It has a very Patricia Highsmith or Celia Fremlin feel to it, with questionable morality, growing anxiety, a mixture of claustrophobia and bad choices. Except of course Highsmith or Fremlin were writing twenty years later.

Although there is a dead body within the first few pages, most of the book is a build-up to a murder, so, in spite of the title and the author’s reputation for adventure yarns, I wouldn’t call this one a whodunit or action thriller. Instead, it’s more of a character study: the rather meek and indecisive wife, the mother who thinks she knows what’s best for everyone, the sly brute of a husband and his shy, inexperienced underling. Quite a lot of exposition and explanation, but often done in a witty way. Here, for example, is the husband’s idea of an ideal Sunday:

Ted had an expression by which he described the ideal existence. He called it ‘the life of a lord’. This particular Sunday seemed to be approximating closely to it. The first essential was a complete absence of anything to do, no work to do, no odd jobs. There must also be absent the urge to do anything… Nothing to do, and all day to do it in, up to the evening. Breakfast in bed, and a long lie in… Idleness so complete that he was not be lured into breaking it by going out for a drink. A good dinner – that was another essential ingredient in the life of a lord. Then further idleness, lasting just s long that it was on the very point of beginning to pall. Not so that it really did pall, but so that one had the additional pleasure of knowing that it might and forestalling it, the desire for a drink coming at the exact identical moment when further doing nothing might become tedious.

In the meantime, of course, his wife is cleaning, cooking, taking care of the children… and perhaps harbouring sinister thoughts.

Despite its rather abrupt ending, I quite enjoyed this book (and felt terribly sorry for the children). Nevertheless, I’m unlikely to reread it, so it will be donated.

Book 3: Plenty Under the Counter by Kathleen Hewitt

This book, originally published in 1943, was reissued not by the British Library Classic Crime series, as you might expect, but by the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics. You can therefore imagine that it’s not just a satisfying mystery story, but also an intriguing and detailed description of London during the days of the Blitz, complete with boarding houses, transit centres for children who have yet to be evacuated from London, rationing and black market and an amateur detective, David Heron, an RAF pilot who has just come out of hospital after being shot down over the Channel.

There is a gung-ho, breezy attitude about the characters in the book which I was not quite expecting, but perhaps was believed to be necessary for keeping up morale at a time when the outcome of the war was by no means certain. Or perhaps that is the author’s natural style. The book is also full of the witty banter kind of dialogue that we often saw in films and plays from the 1930s, especially when it comes to flirting.

There’s also a casual kind of humour against foreigners (especially Germans) which was probably reflective of the wider society at the time. Yet the author manages to temper it with some self-deprecating humour. Here are David and Tess (his paramour) discussing possible suspects in the murder of a man flung over the wall at the back of his boarding house:

‘In the second floor front there’s a German doctor with a square black beard.’

‘Need we look further? He sounds like a ready-made slayer.’

‘Does he? I thought this country was entertaining only the non-killers, but maybe I’m just ignorant.’

‘A German with a black beard would be highly proper as a villain. And if he had a guttural voice he would be positively chic.’

‘Being only a simple airman I wouldn’t know what was chick when it comes to killing. But Hauptmann certainly deserves to swing.’

Tess’s eyebrows went up in puzzlement. David explained: ‘Because he will use the bathroom on my floor an dhe leaves a nasty rim round the bath. A crime meriting capital punishment.’

Tess was suddenly serious. ‘I say David, all this cracking at Jerry hasn’t made you thoroughly callous, has it?’

David considered the idea. ‘I suppose it has, in a way. Funny, a pal of mine remarked only this morning that he thought so. But naturally when I’m after a Messerschmitt I’m out to kill. Just that. To crash the swine, kite and all. The more Jerries in it the better. But I wasn’t exactly serious about Hauptmann and the rim round the bath, you know.’

Yet the ending of the book is quite sad, and full of compassion for those living under the strains of war. Although I don’t think it is likely that I will read the book again, I’ll probably keep it as an account of Britain during some dark times (not at all the glorification of war that some ‘patriots’ would like to transmit).

February 2025 Summary

I’d forgotten just how short the month of February is, so I don’t think I’ll have a chance to read or write any more reviews for #FrenchFebruary. Nor have I done as much of #ReadIndies as I’d have liked. I think with just two days of the month left, I’d better do my wrap-up post now.

You might be forgive for thinking that this was more of a Korean month than a French one, because I read two books by Korean authors and one about Koreans in Japan written by a Korean American, while I only read two French books, one very contemporary which attracted me with its title and one by an old favourite of mine.

Nine out of the twelve books I read were in translation (or other languages) – well, technically eight, but I’ll get to that in a minute – and one book was a collection of essays about translation. So I suppose I walk the talk with what I said in my previous post.

As far as #ReadIndies goes, I’ve not read quite as many as I hoped that fit into that category, although Violent Phenomena (Tilted Axis), The Empusium (Fitzcarraldo), Son (Orenda Books) and Yi Sang (Wave Books in the US) should be included there. I also wrote a post about our own lesser-known Corylus titles.

So that’s as far as it goes for reading challenges. As far as quality goes, I was impressed by Han Kang, Antoine de Sainte-Exupery, Yi Sang’s poetry and prose, The Empusium and Sun City. I’m afraid I abandoned Mario Levrero’s The Luminous Novel. Although I found the initial pages on procrastination and writer’s block quite amusing, it just went on and on for too long; besides, displayed some of the macho elements of Latin cultures that I find troublesome. Here are some brief thoughts on the other books that I didn’t review:

Ilija Trojanow: The Lamentations of Zeno, transl. Philip Boehm (source: randomly picked up from a ‘Reduced’ shelf outside Bookmarks bookshop in London) The author is of Bulgarian origin but left the country as a child with his parents and grew up largely in Kenya, Germany and later India. This has been touted as an ecological novel, but there is a lot of midlife crisis angst going on, as Zeno Hintermeier, a scientist fascinated by glaciers, is working as a sort of guide/lecturer for rich passengers on a cruise ship touring Antarctica. Upset by the indifference of most people to climate change and the death of glaciers, he decides to act in a manner designed to shock them out of complacency. His actions are gradually revealed in a sort of freerange style at the end of each chapter, which is trying harder than warranted to sound impressionistic and experimental. However, some passages are quite witty, dripping with sarcasm, for example, Zeno giving one of his lectures aboard the ship:

Anyone who claims bever to have mixed up Arctic and Antarctic is a boldfaced liar, but there a mnemonic device that can come to your aid, actually two devices, a bear and a penguin… Of course, if polar bears become extinct, the name ‘Arctic’ will no longer apply and we’ll need something else, I’m happy to take suggestions beginning today and for the rest of our journey. But have no fear, even if the Arctic should cease to exist (something all of you sitting in this room will live to see if you keep taking your blood thinners and beta blockers – I don’t speak this last thought aloud), the Antarctic will remain as an antipode for as long as humans inhabit the Earth.

Johana Gustawsson & Thomas Enger: Son, Orenda, 2025 – this one is coming out later this year, but Karen Sullivan from Orenda was kind enough to send me a digital ARC after we chatted about it at Newcastle Noir. That’s where I heard the two authors, one French, one Norwegian, both of whom I really like individually, discuss how they co-wrote this book in a tongue that is not native to either of them but the only one they have in common (English). It sounded like a fascinating though challenging process and the book promises to be the first in a series (so they must have enjoyed the process or else be true masochists). It’s a tightly written police procedural with a good dose of body language psychology (I’m a bit of a sceptic about that, as I think people can game it just as much as psychometric tests), all taking place in a fairly small community on the outskirts of Oslo. Read it in two big gulps, because it’s hard to put down once you get started. Also, rather harrowing for parents, be warned!

Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, edited by Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang – Needless to say, I loved this one, seeing many familiar names as authors. Some of the essays refer to specific texts and draw some conclusions based on that, which is a bit more difficult to relate to if you don’t know those texts, but I made so many notes on the more generic essays (and could relate so well to them), some of which I’d heard of or read in earlier versions before, such as Anton Hur’s Mythical English Reader or Mona Kareem’s Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations, or Khariani Barokka’s Right to Access, Right of Refusal and Madhu Kaza’s Not a Good Fit. A book I will certainly be going back to and quoting over and over again.

Louise Penny: A World of Curiosities – the 18th Gamache and Three Pines novel, and perhaps it is trying to cram too much in – the moment when Gamache first met Beauvoir, an abused pair of siblings and their later fate, murders in two timelines, the return of an arch-nemesis of Gamache, the mass shooting of women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989 and I suppose the concepts of forgiving, forgetting or getting revenge. I think Penny has upped the stakes so much in some of her previous books, that it is getting really difficult to top that, and it shows in her more recent ones. Yet it’s the atmosphere of Three Pines that I keep returning for, the quirky characters that have become family, the loving descriptions of village life in all seasons.

Lee Min Jin: Pachinko – I know a lot of people loved this one, and I wanted to compare it to The End of August, which covers part of the same period and topics. This one is clearly far fewer literary pretentions, and is far more of a rollicking family saga, with lots of sex, suffering, hard work and complicated relationships. A full cast of characters, some of whom disappear quite suddenly, as the book tends to skip a few years from chapter to chapter, particularly in the second half. It was a quick and easy read, despite its 536 pages, but did feel a bit like a predigested way of presenting a chapter of history that few people in the Western world might know. On the whole, I think I prefer the more challenging book by Yu Miri, although that too has its flaws.

Still, six memorable books out of the twelve I read this month is a good proportion. Next month I’ll be spending mostly with the International Booker longlist, which has just been announced. Sourcing the books will be my first challenge, as, aside from the expense of buying them (libraries are not likely to have them, as none of them are big names), the last thing I need right now is yet more books on my shelves, just as I’ve started packing away my library. Furthermore, some of them have not been published in the UK yet, so I’m not sure how we’re supposed to get hold of them. I’ve only read two from the list: Solenoid (while I feel some national pride about it, it’s not necessarily my favourite book of the past couple of years, nor ‘Cărtărescu’s best, but we’ll take whatever we can get) and Hunchback, which is certainly not one of Japan’s most important novels of the 21st century. So a lot to catch up on!

#ReadIndies: Some Corylus Books Recommendations

I think @lizzysiddal and @kaggsy59 have such a fabulous initiative to make February a #ReadIndies month, since small indie publishers are always struggling to make their titles more visible in such an overcrowded publishing space, where big marketing budgets seem to determine what most people see and buy.

In her welcome post to #ReadIndies, Kaggsy points out just how difficult it has become to determine who is still an indie publisher and who is merely a small cog in a bigger publisher’s machinery. A good place to start to identify small UK publishers is the Indie Press Network, of which I’m proud to say that Corylus Books are an active member, alongside over 60 other tiny but passionate publishers.

I originally thought that I might write a post about my favourite Corylus titles, but just like a mother cannot say that she has favourites among her children (although everyone knows that sometimes it is obviously the case that she has a favourite), so I cannot choose between my book babies. However, I can recommend a few titles that I feel deserve greater attention but have hitherto failed to have a major impact, probably because they are trying to do something different than what most crime fiction readers expect.

Bogdan Teodorescu: Sword, transl. Marina Sofia

This is the book that persuaded me to start a publishing venture with two friends. I saw the author speaking about it at Quais du Polar in Lyon (it was translated into French and did quite well over there) and immediately knew I wanted to translate it. It’s more of a dark political satire than a crime novel, since there is no real resolution, but it shows remarkably well how politicians and the mass media manipulate public opinion for their own purposes. It also shows the inferiority complexes of some smaller countries, as they try to improve their international image.

Jerome Leroy: Little Rebel, transl. Graham Roberts

I have to admit that when I started editing the translation of this novella, I kept trying to ‘correct’ things, because it is written in a very mannered, knowing style, quite unique and utterly mocking. Then I finally got it. The author is very highly regarded in France, particularly for his chilling portrayals of the rise of the far right, and this book is highly political but also full of black humour. Coming out at a time when France was shaken by terrorist attacks, it was probably a hard sell even in France, but it is so worth reading.

Antonia Lassa: Skin Deep, transl. Jacky Collins

There is a dreamy, haunting atmosphere about this novella, set in off-season Biarritz and the side-streets of Paris. It may well remind you of a certain Georges Franju film of the 1960s, or the beautiful photos of elegant people on the streets of Paris of Robert Doisneau, but it also features an unusual love story that still feels quite taboo and appeals for more tolerance when viewing people and their relationships.

Elsa Drucaroff: Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case, transl. Slava Faybysh

It should be clear by now that my personal preference is for politically-tinged crime fiction. This one has the rapid beats of an action thriller, but has a very real moral dilemma at its heart, all the more heartbreaking because it is based on real people and real situations during Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s. Would you be able to sacrifice your family for the sake of your political beliefs – and what happens when you start losing faith a little in those around you who ostensibly espouse the same political beliefs?

Last but not least, I need to mention our latest release, which just came out on the 1st of February in paperback. I had such great fun imagining and translating 1960s Berlin in Charlotte Printz’s Nightingale & Co, but beneath the cosy surface, I find the book reminds us that physical and mental walls are by no means a distant memory, and that we need to constantly fight against them.

Longest Month of Reading Summary

January always feels endless, although this year it was somewhat livelier with visits from my sons and some socialising. But the thing that makes it bearable above all is reading – and I did just that, a record number of 18 books, although quite a few of them were very short.

BOOKS

But it’s quality not quantity that counts – and usually my obsession with #JanuaryinJapan – now extended over three months and renamed Japanese Literature Challenge, hosted by the lovely Dolce Bellezza – means that I spend time with some favourite writers or try out new Japanese authors. I ended up reading 11 Japanese books, and reviewing all but one of them, a new record for me.

Although I was slightly disgusted by Hunchback and Snakes and Earrings (both a little too graphic for my taste), I did quite like Astral Season, Beastly Season, which I reviewed alongside the other two. Hotel Lucky Seven and Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon were quick, fun reads, and provided a refreshing contrast to the darkness and loneliness of Tokyo Decadence by one of my old favourites Murakami Ryu. Another favourite I returned to, also in the form of short stories, was Mishima – and, together with the short stories of Kono Taeko – these reaffirmed my love of the (slightly more twisted) modern classics of Japanese literature. I also tackled a chunkster that I’d bought as soon as it came out but kept putting off because of its length, Yu Miri’s story of a Korean family under Japanese occupation, written in Japanese but with so many Korean words and cultural references. I reread Mizubayashi Akira’s memoir about learning French – although I forgot that I’d read it about 10 years ago in France, and this is the one that I haven’t reviewed. Last but by no means least, I became acquainted with the author Abe Kazushige, and I definitely want to read more by him.

Reading The End of August and seeing an exhibition about Korean literature (more about that below) inspired me to read three Korean books – or Korean American in one case – all portraying the life of women in South Korea, which does not seem to be a happy lot. Watching the documentary K-Family Affairs also strengthened that perception. I’ll review the three of them together very soon.

The remaining four books were all welcome distractions, largely crime fiction:

Blues Cafe: a thriller set in contemporary Bucharest, co-written by two authors I’ve worked with before, Teo Matei and Bo Hrib.

Harriet Tyce: A Lesson in Cruelty – a thriller but also a sharp commentary about the prison system and rehabilitation

Jenny Morris: An Ethical Guide to Murder – a surprisingly philosophical book about moral choices – what would you do if you could reduce or prolong someone’s life? Who are you to decide who is ‘worthy’ of living?

Jenny Mustard: Okay Days – started to read this at the library where I was taking refuge from house viewings, thought it might help me to understand my sons’ generation (although the protagonists are a bit older than them). But hesitant, awkward love stories are not quite my thing.

FILMS

It’s been an amazing month of films, half of which I watched with family and friends. And, unlike many of the previous months, it has been a month of proper films rather than TV series.

Of these, I enjoyed rewatching Run Lola Run most, rated How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days lowest (romcoms, with very few exceptions, are not for me), was just as unmoved by Eyes Wide Shut as I’d been the first time round, thought The New Year That Never Came was a fairly good way to introduce my sons to my life before the 1989 fall of Ceausescu, was depressed by Taipei Story, enjoyed the nostalgia of Tokyo Pop and Us and Them, was absorbed by The Parades and A Real Pain (although the latter also made me squirm in discomfort), and found K-Family Affairs (a documentary about parents and children and what happens to revolutionary ideals when confronted with ‘real’ life and the pragmatism of raising a family) the most thought-provoking. Mai was my first Vietnamese film (probably), and it was a bit chaotic, but the two leads were very cute and charming. I loved the cinematography of Dune: Part Two, although the political intrigue is starting to weary me (given the political intrigues going on around the world). And of course Brief Encounter and Witness for the Prosecution are classics for a reason, although the people I watched them with (the nth time for me, the first time for them) were not as impressed.

OTHER EVENTS

The house has been on the market this month so I’ve had a steady stream of viewings (although no proper offers yet), which means I’ve tried to get out of the house as much as possible, to allow the estate agents to do their ‘spiel’.

My birthday present for my older son was Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells. because I still remember the exhilaration from watching it for the first time nearly 30 years ago (with his dad, who was less enthusiastic than my son was now).

I attended a lecture based around the literature exhibition at the Korean Cultural Centre in London, in which Prof. Grace Koh from SOAS tried to defend against the accusation that Korean literature is so depressing. I also attended the LRB livestream of Anne Carson: Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind, where she talked (beautifully, poetically and extremely movingly) about living and writing with Parkinson’s disease – and also about boxing, because she is also a very funny writer.

I was also delighted to attend the Foreign Affairs Theatre Translation showcase at the small but fine Jermyn Street Theatre. I’d applied to be a mentee on this eight-month programme of working on a translated play and then seeing it performed by professional actors, but sadly did not get accepted. However, seeing the breadth of the translations and plays being performed, I can understand why my proposal was rejected.

PLANS FOR FEBRUARY

I’ve already selected some books for French February, but more Japanese and Korean books keep sneaking in (although I should be culling books, not buying any more). I also really want to read Tokarczuk’s The Empusium at last – I always save her books for when I want a mental boost, as I enjoy them so much. Very much looking forward to participating in the Read Indies initiative hosted by @kaggsy59 and @lizzysiddal – I may even write a blog post mentioning my favourites from the Corylus Books catalogue (although, like a mother, I do not have favourites, I love them all!).

I’ll also be watching a bunch of Japanese films, including two Kurosawas I’ve never seen on the big screen before, and some contemporary ones – thank you to Jacqui for alerting me to the Japan Foundation touring programme at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

February will also be a month of preparing for the mental, physical and emotional assault of March, which not only promises to be busy with London Book Fair, the Alternative Book Fair and the Assembly of Literary Translators, but also hopefully some progress regarding the move to Berlin (I have left some days free for a trip to Berlin to go flat-hunting).

#WITMonth: Claudia Piñeiro – Time of the Flies

Claudia Piñeiro: Time of the Flies, transl. Frances Riddle, Charco Press, 2024.

I no longer need to emphasise how much of a Claudia Piñeiro fan I am, as I’ve mentioned it on other occasions. I particularly like the way she takes common crime fiction tropes and turns them on their heads, allowing for a far broader social commentary, without ever becoming preachy or boring. It’s something I aspire to do in my crime fiction – but I have a long, long way to go still.

Time of the Flies is the longest novel by this author that I’ve read to date – and is in fact a sequel of sorts to the novella All Yours (published a long time ago in translation, in 2005, by Bitter Lemon Press). That novella (which I haven’t read) tells the story of Inés Pereyra, a self-satisfied wife and mother, who becomes obsessed with her husband’s infidelity and finally snaps. This novel opens 15-16 years later, when Inés has been released from prison for murdering her husband’s lover. She is now a reformed character, less chatty, more frozen, and she has started a business with another former inmate Manca, an agency called FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies, dedicated to pest control and private investigation.

Life on the straight and narrow was never going to be easy, especially when a client suddenly asks for a deadly dose of pesticide (and for Inés’s expertise), ostensibly to kill her own husband’s lover. Inés is tempted by the money – and she also has unresolved business with her daughter Laura – but something about the client and her nefarious purposes doesn’t quite add up. And so the novel becomes something between a thriller and a romp, interspersed with comments from an Ancient Greek drama type choir, except the voices are not unified, but constantly disagreeing or debating.

Inés is a bitch, she never took care of Laura, only pretended to. Like mother like daughter. I don’t think either one of them is a bitch. I love my kids and I enjoy them, but I still ask myself every day what my life might’ve been like without them. I don’t ask myself that question because I don’t dare to consider the answer. In my case, I make a mental list of all the things I would’ve been able to do if I hadn’t had kids. Would you have actually done those things though? That’s counterfactual. It’s absurd and misleading, you’re just blaming them for your failure. Who said I was a failure? Your face says it all. Let’s keep it cordial, please.

Funny though these comments often are, they also underline the crimes committed against women – both the small ones (being judgmental, stereotyping women, demanding too much of them, double standards) as well as bigger ones such as violence, rape, mental abuse. Angry women such as Medea are mentioned, and a roster of feminist writers are quoted, but it always comes back to flies – of various shapes and sizes, each with their own characteristic. Flies, that are some of the most despised creatures on earth, yet Inés refuses to kill them. Instead, she has studied them during her time in prison and gives us a potted history of each type of fly and our relationship with them. But not before she suffers through an agonising story about the death of a fly by Marguerite Duras. (This made me laugh out loud).

The French author described how she sat on the floor and watched as a poor fly died. And then she had the revelation that when a fly dies, it dies (wow)… And she describes the fly as ‘polite’ even though it ’causes cholera and the plague’. A fly causes cholera and the plague? Really? She spent over fifteen minutes watching a creature die and the fly is the bad guy!

This novel is experimental enough to displease those who prefer more standard crime fiction fare, and possibly too page-turning and full of melodramatic flourishes to please fans of literary fiction. However, I found the streak of cruelty beneath the fun quite compelling, and enjoyed this stylistic mash-up.

Reading Summary for July and Plans for August

It’s not been a hugely productive reading month, but there have been some compensations: attending Harrogate Crime Writing Festival for the first time, plus seeing two films in the cinema (Fallen Angels by Wong Kar Wai and Simple comme Sylvain by Quebecois director Monia Chokri, both very good on loneliness and different worlds clashing).

Nine books in total, of which only two in translation, so a bit of a change of pace for me. In the end, I only got to read and review two books for Spanish and Portuguese Literature Month – and one of those, Packing My Library, was a bit of a stretch for that category. The first book, Elena Knows, did fit perfectly into that category and was every bit as good as I expected – and I’ll probably read the latest Claudia Piñeiro for #WomeninTranslationMonth in August.

I also continued reading for my personal projects: Melissa Febos and Amina Cain for my (possible) memoir, and Esther Yi and Rin Usami for my ‘idol’ project, for lack of a better name (it’s not really about an idol, but it is about obsession with celebrities). I haven’t reviewed Rin Usami’s book yet, but may do so next month.

I also read three crime novels to coincide with my trip to Harrogate, although I’d acquired them at Capital Crime last month. Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox reminded me a little of Isaka Kōtarō’s work (Bullet Train, The Mantis), with a con man as its main protagonist who gets entangled in an even bigger con; it is memorable for its fast pace and unreliable, eccentric characters, but doesn’t feel quite as clever as True Crime Story. I really enjoyed Jo Callaghan’s first book in the series featuring a human detective with an AI partner, and this second in the series builds on their fragile, often frustrating relationship with a good dose of humour and tenderness, but just sliding into the implausible every now and then. The final book The Switch by Lily Sansom is not so much a traditional crime novel or psychological thriller to my mind, as an attempt to take the playful switching of roles in lovers’ trysts in Italian operas or The Marriage of Figaro to a more realistic and sinister conclusion. A fun, easy read, perfect for the holidays.

August will be all about Women in Translation, and also continuing to pursue my own research interests. Here’s a little pile of books I’ve got ready for the challenge. As you can see, they are all written by women, whether in English or in translation or in other languages. The languages I’ll be reading from are Catalan, Romanian, Spanish (Argentina), German. I’ll probably find a Japanese or a French book too at some point. But I do tend to be busier when my boys are around, especially since we’ll also have guests this coming month, so we’ll see how much I actually manage to read.

Recent Literary Travels to Poland, Japan and Hong Kong

I haven’t been reading that much lately, or at least not for fun. The book selections have also been somewhat random, so I cannot really find a connection between these three recent reads, other than that they are all set somewhere far away from the UK and its current election shenanigans.

Kristina Perez: The Many Lies of Veronica Hawkins, Constable, 2024

I heard Kristina Perez speak on a panel at Capital Crime, but even before I heard about her journalistic careers and previous writing in other genres, I was attracted to this book, as I invariably am to any accounts of expats behaving badly. (Maybe it’s because I struggled to identify with that label myself, but could also sympathise with many of the challenges faced by expat wives in particular.)

This book is a slick commercial thriller, about Martina, a journalist who feels she married above her status (into a rich NY family) and now joins her husband in Hong Kong as a trailing spouse. Feeling rather lost and resentful, she is grateful when she meets the glamorous, extremely wealthy Veronica, the last of a British colonial dynasty, and is taken under her wing. But although Veronica seems benevolent, others are warning Martina off getting too close to her. Yet it is Veronica who goes overboard and drowns during a party on a yacht. Was it an accident, suicide or murder? Martina writes a book about her friendship with Veronica and tries to find out what happened.

The story itself is reasonably intriguing and well-paced, although we do have some clunky clichéed characters and situations, as well as a tiresome amount of brand labels name-dropping to capture the glamour and wealth of that society. There are all the ‘surprise twists’ and unreliable narrators that thriller readers have come to expect.

Hong Kong skyline by night, from Wikipedia.

But there were two things I did love about this book and which kept me reading till the end. The book is very good at capturing the complexities of a friendship formed between women later in life with a power imbalance at its heart. And the second was the obvious love of the Hong Kong setting, the almost nostalgic descriptions of a city that is rapidly changing. As the author herself says in the end note to the book: ‘The Hong Kong I recognised was vanishing before my eyes. Nostalgia, perhaps, but also something more urgent propelled me to write the city I had experienced, the city I loved and which had given me so much, on to the page. There are places that seep into your bones…’

Jennifer Croft: The Extinction of Irena Rey, Scribe, 2024.

I was eager to read this book ever since I first heard about it being work in progress. I’ve long followed and admired Jennifer Croft as a translator (an activist translator, as well, campaigning for #NametheTranslator on book covers). She has written a memoir/novel/autofiction book called Homesick and translates from both Spanish and Polish.

This book is a tongue-in-cheek description of a famous, potentially Nobel Prize winning author’s translators (Croft has translated Olga Tokarczuk) congregating in the primeval forests of Poland to work on the translation of her latest secret project. However, when they get there, the author disappears and the frictions between translators escalate. What makes the book even more interesting is that it is supposedly a book written about the event in Polish by the Spanish language translator, and translated into English from Polish by the English language translator, both of whom were present during the events. Their mutual grudge makes for hilarious footnotes, but there are also more serious points made about narrator and translator reliability.

The book starts off very strongly, and I love its wittiness and literary allusions, but it loses its way in the forest about halfway through, taking a bit of a wild, thrillery and somewhat unnecessary turn. This might have been designed (by either the author or the publisher) to make it appeal to a broader audience of horror or crime fiction fans. Personally, I could have spent forever with the discussions of whether translators should ‘adapt’ for their target audience, or the problem of linguistic identities, but I realise that might make for a very narrow readership (of translators or linguistics professors).

Is mother tongue still in any way a valid category. The implication is that we are born into a certain language the way we’re born into a body. But even our bodies can be modified, and families move into new linguistic territories, and some families fall apart. Our colleague Chloe Diop’s mother is Polish, but does that make Polish Chloe’s mother tongue? Is she not fluent in French, the language in which she has lived most of her life – almost all of her life outside her home? I suppose I support this author’s implied suggestion that fluency and belonging are more complex than was once thought, although I do not support writing bizarre books in garbled versions of languages you don’t speak half as well as you assume you do.

I also loved the almost throwaway lines that prick literary pretentiousness like an overinflated balloon: ‘The Bucharest Review was an achingly hip website without a print magazine that consisted of 70 percent white space, 25 percent prose in Akzidenz-Grotesk by authors without vowels in their names…’

Kenkō: Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), transl. Donald Keene. Columbia University Press, 1967.

I reread this classic of Japanese literature, a collection of essays and thoughts written by a Japanese monk in 1330-1333. This is a prime example of what the Japanese call ‘zuihitsu’ literature, i.e. ‘free pen’ or ‘follow the brush’ – random jotting down of thoughts, observations, reflections, occasional nature writing, responding to the world around them etc. One might almost call it the social media of the day, except that these writings were usually private, at least during the author’s lifetime.

Some of the musings captured are just a couple of lines, others are longer, some refer to political personalities of the day, while others refer to Buddhist philosophy. Just like Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book and Montaigne’s Essays, this classic, clear and occasionally ever so slightly old-fashioned translation by Donald Keene (which suits the original very well) is one to dip in and out of, rather than read quickly. Some of the political allusions and court gossip are entirely obscure nowadays, and Kenkō often comes across as a judgemental snob, but there are beautiful passages about the impermanence of life that have become hugely influential in defining the Japanese aesthetic. I found myself often nodding or sighing in agreement and have got post-its on nearly every other page.

If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

How delightful it would be to converse intimately with someone of the same mind, sharing with them the pleasures of uninhibited conversation on the amusing and foolish things of this world, but such friends are hard to find. If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

Things which seem in poor taste: too many personal effects cluttering up the place where one is sitting; too many brushes in an ink box, too many Buddhas in a family temple, too many stones and plants in a garden, too many children in a house, too many words on meeting someone, too many meritorious deeds recorded in a petition. Things which are not offensive, no matter how numerous: books in a book cart, rubbish in a rubbish heap.

A 17th century visual representation of Kenkō by Kaiho Yusetsu, from the Suntory Museum of Art

I leave you with a somewhat lengthier quote which had me wincing in recognition, about people not focusing on what is important in life:

When people are young they are concerned about the projects they foresee lying ahead of them in the distant future – establishing themselves in different professions and carrying out some great undertaking, mastering an art, acquiring learning – but they think of their lives as stretching out indefinitely, and idly allow themselves to be constantly distracted by things… They pass months and days in this manner, succeeding in none of their plans, and so they grow old. In the end, they neither become proficient in their profession, nor do they gain the eminence they anticipated. However they regret it, they cannot roll back the years, but decline more and more rapidly, like a wheel rolling downhill. In view of the above, we must carefully compare in our minds all the different things in life we might hope to make our principal work… this decided, we should renounce our other interests and devote ourselves to that one thing only. Many projects present themselves in the course of a day or even an hour… If we remain attached to them all, and are reluctant to give up any, we will not accomplish a single thing.

OUCH!

#1937Club: Two Golden Age Crime Novels

The 1930s were of course the hey-day of the so-called Golden Age crime novels, and both of the authors below were prolific during this period, so little wonder that I managed to find a book each of them published that year.

Ngaio Marsh: Vintage Murder

This is the fifth novel to feature Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn, but the first to be set in the author’s home country of New Zealand. Alleyn is on a prolonged holiday in that country, recovering from surgery. On the train he meets a British theatre company currently touring New Zealand. Although he tries to keep his identity as a policeman a secret, he gets tangentially involved when there is a case of theft on the train and the impresario/director Alfred Meyer of the company claims someone nearly pushed him off the train.

Once they arrive at their destination, he not only gets to see the acting troupe perform but is also invited to the birthday party of the charismatic leading lady Carolyn Dacres, who also happens to be the wife of the director. Meyer has planned an elaborate contraption with a magnum champagne bottle descending from the ceiling. However, in spite of numerous successful rehearsals beforehand, the champagne bottle falls down on Meyer and kills him. So the good inspector has to step up and help his NZ colleagues to solve the murder.

Marsh was passionate about theatre and had personal experience of touring companies as an actress in her youth, so she fills this book with a lot of technical theatrical terms, as well as all the ‘types’ of actors you might find in a professional company: the bitter older comedian, the young ingenue who’s there largely because of nepotism, the motherly character actress, and even the hangers-on. While some of the characters feel a little thin, and the discussions of the props and balancing of the weights a bit too detailed, this is very much in keeping with the writing of the time (think Dorothy Sayers and bell-ringing, Agatha Christie and poisons) – and perhaps with readers’ patience and expectations of a crime novel, rather than the present-day obligatory corpse on the first page (or at the very least the first chapter).

While the puzzle is quite intricate, and there are added psychological complications with a leading man who is in love with the beautiful Carolyn – and Alleyn too succumbing to her charms, what I found particularly interesting was the introduction of Maori elements to the story. There is a Maori doctor (educated in Britain) who plays a significant part, and a Maori fertility pendant that is given to Carolyn as a present. There are some openly racist remarks from certain characters in the book, and we are supposed to feel indignant about those, no doubt. However, even Alleyn musing about cultural differences can skirt dangerously closely to ‘noble but dangerous savages’ territory:

His fingers encountered the box that held the tiki. He took the squat little monster out.

‘This is the right setting for you, only you should hang on a flaxen cord against a thick brown skin like Te Pokiha’s. No voluptuous whiteness for you, under black lace, against a jolting heart… Sweaty dark breasts for you, dark fingers, dark savages in a heavy green forest. You’ve seen a thing or two in your day. Last night was not your first taste of blood, I’ll be bound.’

Nevertheless, Doctor Te Pokiha makes some very interesting and far more nuanced observations about colonialism, which must have been quite forward-thinking at the time:

The pakeha [white man] has altered everything, of course. We have been unable to survive the fierce white light of his civilisation. In trying to follow his example we have forgotten many of our own customs and have been unable wisely to assimilate his… Most of my people are well content, but I see the passing of old things with a kind of nostalgia. The pakeha give their children Maori christian names because they sound pretty. They call their ships and their houses by Maori names. It is perhaps a charming compliment, but to me it seems a little strange. We have become a side-show in a tourist bureau – our dances – our art – everything.

Another interesting element is the weight of the year 1936 (when the action takes place). There are some troubling clouds on the horizon, after all Hitler and Mussolini were already in power, and the Spanish Civil War had started. Although Europe must have felt remote to New Zealanders, the memories of the First World War are not too far away:

‘What do you think, Mr Alleyn? If there’s another war will the young chaps come at it, same as we did, thinking it’s great? Some party! And get the same jolt? What do you reckon?’

Agatha Christie: Dumb Witness

There is far less political and social topicality in Christie’s novel published that same year: this is mostly a family drama about inheritance, extravagance, domestic rivalries and guilt. I’m not entirely sure to what extent the title is ironic: it refers to the dog Bob, who is witness to a possible murder but cannot talk. I’m not sure to what extent ‘dumb’ was also used to mean ‘stupid’ at the time in Britain. Certainly, the Americans opted for a different title that same year: Poirot Loses a Client (although this might have more to do with selling it as a Poirot novel). Aside from the problematic title, reviews at the time concluded that ‘it’s not Mrs Christie’s best’ but still above average. I have to agree with that – it’s not particularly memorable, but a fun read.

Wealthy spinster Emily Arundell writes to Hercule Poirot in the firm belief she’s been the victim of an attempted murder after falling down the stairs in her house. By the time Poirot actually receives the letter, however, she has indeed died, apparently of natural causes. The only problem is that her nephew and nieces, who expected to be her heirs, have been thwarted, as she left her fortune to her lady’s companion, Minnie Lawson. Is that an indication that the second attempt at murder was successful and that she was pointing the finger of suspicion at her family? Or is Minnie a far more scheming and devious creature than she appears at first sight?

Poirot feels guilty that he was unable to prevent her death, so he sets off to investigate, initially pretending to be a possible buyer for Emily’s house in the countryside. He proves to be willing to deceive people in his attempt to discover what’s going on, which shocks the strait-laced Hastings. However, I did enjoy the interaction between them in this book, it feels like they are growing to be more serious partners, rather than Hastings being the ‘dumb’ foil for Poirot’s brilliance. And the interactions with the dog are utterly delightful – Christie clearly loved her dogs, and it’s in fact a portrait of her own dog, Peter, on the cover ‘who disclaims any connection with the events of the tale’.

#InternationalBooker: Three from the Longlist

Sourcing the longlisted books can be an expensive and difficult business, as my local library only has a couple of them, but I have had a chance to read three of the books since the longlist was announced on Monday 11th March, so am hopefully on track to read most of them before the shortlist in April. However, the reviews will be quite short, because I will provide a more in-depth review of the shortlisted titles.

Andrey Kurkov: The Silver Bone, transl. Boris Dralyuk, Collins.

This was the only one of the longlist that I already had downloaded on my Kindle, not because I predicted that it would be longlisted, but because I like crime fiction generally, have been a Kurkov fan since Death and the Penguin, saw him speak a couple of months ago and heard about his struggles to get back into writing fiction when his country is at war.

It’s set in Kyiv in 1919 and is about a very confusing and painful period in Ukrainian and Russian history, in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. There are many details about hunger, violence, ideological contradictions, rapid changes which reminded me of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Moscow Diaries from the same period. But there is also a fantasy element to it, a cut-off ear stuffed in a drawer which can eavesdrop on people, that could have come straight from Bulgakov or Gogol – probably a deliberate choice, since both of those writers have strong Ukrainian links, although they wrote in Russian, just like Kurkov himself.

The two contrasting covers to the book probably show the lack of certainty as to what this book is exactly. The dark cover seems to indicate a noir novel, but it is too slow-paced to satisfy crime fiction aficionados, too full of historical details and descriptions, with a forgettable whodunit element that I really didn’t care about solving. However, as an insight into a particular time and place, it is fascinating – yes, quite anti-Russian, as some reviewers have pointed out, but there are some decent Russian characters there too. There are also satirical strands to it – or rather absurd and grotesque elements, to fit in with an absurd and grotesque period of history – but overall it does not strike me as a humorous or cosy crime book in any way other than the fantasy element of the hidden ear, which is why the white cover feels a bit off. Personally, I’d have preferred a cover featuring a historical image of Kyiv during that period, but publishers probably feared that might make it look too much like non-fiction.

Although it’s competently written and well translated, I’m a bit puzzled why this one made the longlist. There isn’t a single paragraph there that makes me think ‘This is so beautifully written, I want to share it with the whole world’ – maybe it is a sort of recognition of Kurkov’s body of work and because it feels relevant to the present day? It is not one of his strongest or most imaginative novels in terms of literary prizes, but I will certainly continue to read this series as a crime fiction fan.

Ia Grenberg: The Details, transl. Kira Josefsson, Wildfire.

This book, as the cover indicates, is made up of four vignettes, four portraits of important people in the narrator’s life, in non-chronological order, with the narrator looking back on her youthful escapades from a vantage point of twenty-plus years.

Through the descriptions of these people and the relationship they forge with the narrator, we of course get a better understanding of the narrator herself. We are all shaped by the people we come into contact with, or at least the ones we have most loved or hated or been obsessed by. The other way in which we get to know the narrator is through the shared books – the ones that she and her friends/lovers discuss or love or hate.

It’s a quiet, short book, easily read one sitting, with several passages about a procrastinating writer where I smiled in rueful recognition, as well as general ruminations about the world which gradually reveal things about the narrator – in some cases subtly, in other cases more obviously. The author’s approach is captured best in a quote about one of the briefest and most mysterious episodes in her life, the section entitled Alejandro:

…what he told me, the information he shared with me, I carefully committed to memory with a view to recounting it to Sally and others who might ask, and perhaps also for the benefit of future me, but the information was just the container and not by any stretch the details that woke me up the next morning, heart thumping…

It’s these details that the author tries to capture, the unspoken, the gesture, just what it is that makes our heart beat faster when we see a person, or forgive them or abandon them. It’s a perfectly nice novella, with flashes of wit and lyricism, but once again I was slightly puzzled about its inclusion in the longlist. I’ve read many books that were equally as good that would have been eligible for the prize. I’ve also read some Romanian books that were on par with this, but which are not getting translated…

Jenny Erpenbeck: Kairos, transl. Michael Hofmann, Granta.

A love story set during the cusp of transformation in East Berlin in the late 1980s – this was always going to be catnip for me, so I thought I could not be entirely objective about it. And I’m probably not, for I love a blend of the personal and political, and have always felt close to Erpenbeck’s own experience.

I loved all the descriptions of life in the city before and after the collapse of the Wall, and this went a long way toward quashing my reservations about the love story. The masochistic and punitive aspects of the love affair made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I had to remind myself repeatedly that the love story itself – between the authoritarian, gaslighting, egocentric older man and the naive, often passive younger woman – is a metaphor for those of us living under Communism.

Once again, the main protagonist, Katharina, is remembering the past from a safe distance, but there is a final twist which makes her question all her memories – and makes us rethink all that we believe we know about their story.

Of the three I’ve read so far, Kairos is the one that I hope to see on the shortlist, and that I want to analyse in more detail, from the title itself, with its ‘seize the moment, but make sure it’s the right moment’ kind of guarded urgency, to the double disillusionment of both the love affair and the social order (socialism AND capitalism). This is no Ostalgie, but a clever and affecting look at how major historical changes affect two different generations.

Iberian October: The Two Javiers

There are two Spanish writers, both called Javier, whom I really enjoy reading, so no wonder that I decided to start with them for my self-imposed Spanish and Portuguese-language themed month of October.

Javier Cercas: Even the Darkest Night (Terra Alta 1), transl. Anne McLean, Maclehose Press, 2021.

I’ve appreciated Javier Cercas’ brand of ‘historically-tinged’ fiction since I first met him at Quais du Polar in Lyon and read him translated into French, and later a couple of his books translated into English. What do I mean by ‘historically-tinged’? He examines the impact of the Spanish Civil War and the many years of the Franco regime upon the present-day. He has done extensive research on that period, and his novels often blend fact and fiction, with perhaps the best-known one being Soldiers of Salamis.

So I was intrigued to hear that he had embarked upon a series of crime fiction novels set in Terra Alta, a sparsely-populated landlocked district in the south of the region of Catalonia in Spain. Even the Darkest Night is the first in a trilogy set in this region, featuring Melchor Marin, a young cop sent to this region from Barcelona to protect his identity after he foiled a terrorist attack. I suspected that there might be a historical component to the crime (and there is a bit), but it appears that Cercas is more concerned with showing us the less glamorous, more poverty-stricken regions of his country.

‘This is an inhospitable, very poor land. It always has been. A land people passed through and the only ones who stayed were the ones with no other choice, the ones with nowhere else to go. A land of losers. Nobody loves this region, that’s the truth, and the proof is that they only ever remember us in order to bomb us. What are we known for outside the region? For the Battle of the Ebro, the most ferocious battle that’s ever been waged in this country…’

Melchor has a troubled past and problems with anger management. The son of a Barcelona prostitute, he ended up in prison, where he was reformed after reading Les Miserables. He managed to get his slate wiped clean and join the police force upon his release from prison, and has been obsessed with finding his mother’s killer ever since. Over the past four years, he seems to have laid roots in Terra Alta, has married the local librarian and dotes on their daughter Cosette. When he gets called to investigate the grisly murder of the wealthy businessman Adell and his wife and maid in their country home, he feels that the investigation into their deaths is not quite adding up. Sure enough, it soon peters out for lack of proper evidence.

There is nothing new about cops with secrets and problematic pasts, but a crime writer would have drip-fed tiny bits of back story here and there, only as much as was necessary for driving the plot forwards and giving us an insight into the main character. You can tell that Cercas is not really a crime writer, however, as he seems to spend a considerable portion of the book in lengthy flashbacks, and the investigation becomes almost secondary. Nor are there any real clues for the reader about the true motives for the initial crimes, plus we encounter a rather unnecessary death which shocked me.

All in all, not the most satisfying book by this author whom I highly respect. I will probably read the next in the trilogy, though, if only to see if he has mastered the crime writing conventions a little better.

The book has already been given a more elegant but bland Penguin Modern Classics treatment.

Javier Marias: All Souls, transl. Margaret Jull Costa, Harvill Press, 1999.

This also feels like a less typical effort by this author – perhaps the least complicated and most accessible of his novels, a good entry point to his work.

It is an often very funny depiction of the pretentiousness and pettiness of Oxford collegiate life, seen through the eyes of a young Spanish lecturer on a two-year visiting fellowship. During his stay he becomes the lover of Clare Bayes, an attractive academic married to a far duller, more senior academic. He also becomes protégé of two enigmatic old scholars (and possibly spies), Cromer-Blake and Toby Rylands, who later reappear in a more sinister capacity in the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy.

I have always been fond of Marias’ astute observations of individuals and social groups, and this book seems to have even more wickedly funny passages (the description of dinner at the High Table is hilarious) than usual – and perhaps less of the deeply troubling issues that make an appearance in his other works.

For the inhabitants of Oxford are not in the world and when they do sally forth into the world (to London, for example) that in itself is enough to have them gasping for air; their ears buzz, they lose their sense of balance, they stumble and have to come scurrying back to the town that makes their existence possible, that contains them, where they do not even exist in time.

In Oxford the only thing anyone is truly interested in is money, followed some way behind by information, which can always be useful as a means of acquiring money…Giving information about something is, moreover, the only way of not having to give out information about oneself… The more one knows and tells about other people, the greater one’s dispensation to not reveal anything about oneself. Consequently the whole of Oxford is fully and continuously engaged in concealing and suppressing itself whilst at the same time trying to winkle out as much information as possible about other people, and from here comes the tradition – true – and the myth – also true – of the high quality, great efficiency and virtuosity of the dons and teachers of Oxford and Cambridge when it comes to the dirtier work involved in spying… Oxonians have sharper ears, Cantabrigians fewer scruples.

Nevertheless, it is almost certainly not the way the Daily Mail blurb on the cover describes it: ‘probably the wittiest novels set in British academia since David Lodge’s Changing Places’, because Marias has never been interested purely in satire or a love story. His books are always about the slippery nature of memory, about how people constantly rewrite themselves into their own lives and the lives of others, about that longing for something indefinable yet more than what we have. It is also about displacement, about never quite fitting in, which I think Marias himself experienced (too ‘British’ for the Spanish, too Spanish for the English-speaking world). Here is an example of that wistfulness, in what Toby Rylands tells the narrator at some point:

I’ve always kept on learning. But that ignorance is still so vast that even today, at seventy, leading this quiet life, I still cherish the hope of being able to embrace everything and experience everything, the unknown and the known, yes, even things I’ve known before. There’s as intense a longing for the known as there is for the unknown because one just can’t accept that certain things won’t repeat themselves.

It is rather poignant that the author himself died at the age of seventy, no doubt harbouring a very similar sentiment.

A very enjoyable entry in my Marias reading, and I’m almost tempted to sneak in another one by him before the end of October, although I only have thick ones left to read and don’t want to carry them with me to Romania next week.