Dear Deborah, Your novel Hot Milk (2016) has a physical quality that stung me like a blistering sunburn. Long after the last page had been turned, the heat could still be felt under the skin, like it usually happens at the end of a day spent under strong sun. The novel revolves around 25-year-old anthropologist…
Women in Translation Month 2017
Hello, lovely readers! Meytal over at the Biblibio blog is hosting the Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth) in August. The event aims to encourage readers, reviewers, publishers, and translators to explore more books written by female writers in translation. Here you can find a FAQ on the event. And here Meytal compiled a list of books. My list for WITMonth will overlap with some…
The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime
Dear Fumiko, Your novel Masks, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter (女面, Onnamen, 1958) reminded me of an intricate structure one is made to peel off, layer by layer, only to find out later that the layers only made more visible the core that they were to be hiding – they were, after all, the very things…
Fumiko Enchi
Fumiko Enchi (円地 文子 Enchi Fumiko, pen-name of Fumiko Ueda, 2 October 1905 – 12 November 1986) was a Japanese writer. She was taught English, French and Chinese literature through private tutors at home. From 1918 to 1922, she attended the girl’s middle school of Japan Women’s University, but later abandoned her studies due to poor health. She died of heart attack in 1986. Books Novels Kaze…
If you know about yourself, presumably you know about at least one other person
Dear Mary, Your novel The Charioteer (1953) is crossed over by what it seems to be a tense string, a rein held so tightly by opposing forces that we feel it is about to break. Drawing us into an atmosphere of war, blackouts, raids, transient relationships, urgent loves and forced secrecy – in short, an…
Mary Renault
Mary Renault (born Eileen Mary Challans, 4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983) was an English writer. Renault received an undergraduate degree in English from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1928. She then trained as a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where she met her lifelong partner, the nurse Julie Mullard. Renault worked as a nurse until…
one mass of water stampeding down its course
“Ferry Crossing It was this same river, though further upstream, that swallowed you whole last spring. Summer sun has made it lean again, and it does not look so violent as I remember. That day was all motion. one mass of water stampeding down its course ripping at each bank crashing rocks on branches on…
Rebecca Balcarcel
Rebecca Balcarcel is an American poet. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She teaches at Tarrant County College. Her essays and poems have appeared in various literary journals, including North American Review, Third Coast, South Dakota Reivew, 5AM, Oklahoma Review. You can find out more about her books…
That loud music of the wild geese
Dear Ethel, Your novella Hetty Dorval (1947), about a childhood affection that gradually turns into a confrontation of good and evil, had a puzzling effect on me. It is a ‘tale of two readings’, as two confluent rivers, colliding. The story opens in the 1930s, when the mysterious Hetty Dorval moves to Lytton, a small…
Ethel Wilson
Ethel Davis Wilson (née Bryant. January 20, 1888 – December 22, 1980) was a Canadian writer. Born in South Africa, she moved to England in 1890 after the death of her mother, and soon after, in 1898, she was taken to Canada, after the death of her father, to live with her maternal grandmother. She received a teacher’s…
Japanese Literature Challenge 11
Hello, lovely readers, Japanese Literature Challenge is hosted by Dolce Bellezza since 2006. The event traditionally runs from June through January, and there is only one requirement: to read at least one work of Japanese literature in this six month period. Here you can find a suggested reading list. After failing badly to complete my challenge last year –…
On sad days no one talks of birds
“On sad days no one talks of birds – by Filipa Leal On sad days no one talks of birds We ring up friends and they are out and then on the street we ask for a light as if asking for a brand new heart. On sad days it’s winter and we walk in…
