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Dear Yan Ge, Your Strange Beasts of China (2020, tr. Jeremy Tiang. Original: 异兽志, 2006) reads like a collection of entries from a bestiary: the city of…… Read more “It takes destiny for a human to tame a beast”
Category: Scarlet Letters
You created me in the abyss of nonexistence
Dear Carmen, The Book of Anna (2020, tr. Samantha Schnee. Original: El libro de Ana, 2016) takes off a couple of years after Tolstoy had left us…… Read more “You created me in the abyss of nonexistence”
Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning
Dear Tove, In Childhood (2019, tr. Tiina Nunnally. Original: Barndom, 1967), your portrait of the artist as a working-class girl is no rosy picture. Born in an…… Read more “Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning”
What fun she would have as a ghost
Dear Elspeth, Who can resist an awkward, introverted misfit with a wild imagination and a tragic fate? Janet, your protagonist in O Caledonia (1991), is a girl…… Read more “What fun she would have as a ghost”
And the flower is still up on the hillside
Dear Marita, As The Purple Flower (1928) opens, we are told that we are in “The Middle-of-Things-as-They-are”, in an unusual setting: “Might be here, there or anywhere—or…… Read more “And the flower is still up on the hillside”
I felt that laughter could be the dawn of a word
Dear Sara, The short stories and vignettes in your Land of Smoke (2018, tr. Jessica Sequeira. Original: El país del humo, 1977) walk us through the mist…… Read more “I felt that laughter could be the dawn of a word”
At least we learned that war is madness
Dear Fumiko, Everyone is drifting in your Floating Clouds (2006, tr. Lane Dunlop. Original: 浮雲, 1951). When the novel opens, WWII has ended and Yukiko is returning…… Read more “At least we learned that war is madness”
Madness has turned to logic
Dear Gine, In Zero (2018, tr. Rosie Hedger. Original: Null, 2013), we follow a middle-class Norwegian girl from age ten to twenty-one, as she comes full circle…… Read more “Madness has turned to logic”
My mother never held my hand
Dear Violette, At one point in Asphyxia (2020, tr. Derek Coltman. Original: L’Asphyxie, 1946), the unnamed narrator is standing on the sidewalk, peeking through a window at…… Read more “My mother never held my hand”
Even after her head was struck off she behaved so beautifully
Hi, folks! This is post 3 of Deal me In. For more about this project & my previous posts on it, go here: Reading Plans | Weeks 1 | 2 | 3…… Read more “Even after her head was struck off she behaved so beautifully”
This restless craving for sun and love and motion
Hi, folks! This is post 2 of Deal me In. For more about this project & my previous posts on it, go here: Reading Plans | Weeks 1 | 2 (you…… Read more “This restless craving for sun and love and motion”
A trail of books: on Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (‘The Sucessor’, 1934) and the plagiarism charges against Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938)
The other Rebecca A Sucessora (1934, ‘The Successor’) opens with a couple returning from their honeymoon trip. The first chapter unravels through an extended scene that feels…… Read more “A trail of books: on Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (‘The Sucessor’, 1934) and the plagiarism charges against Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938)”
Her heart is this red apple
Dear Irina, When Isolde (2019, tr. Bryan Karetnyk and Irina Steinberg. Original: Изольда, 1929) opens, it’s summer, sometime in the wild 1920’s, and we are in Biarritz.…… Read more “Her heart is this red apple”
Her perversities were as essential a part of her work as her inspirations,
Hi, folks, This is post 1 of Deal me In. For more about this project & my previous posts on it, go here: Reading Plans | Weeks…… Read more “Her perversities were as essential a part of her work as her inspirations,”
The music of life and living
Dear Dorothy, We are forever exiles of our childhoods, but sometimes the smallest details can bring us back to our neverland. It takes one song, a slant…… Read more “The music of life and living”
Such shifting winds in life
Dear Ida, A Change of Time (2019, tr. Martin Aitken. Original: En ny tid, 2015) is the record of a woman’s passage through grief. Told through diary entries…… Read more “Such shifting winds in life”
A kind of door in oneself through which it was necessary to pass
Dear Mary, The Friendly Young Ladies (1944. Published in the USA as The Middle Mist, 1945) is at its best when walking the tight rope of double…… Read more “A kind of door in oneself through which it was necessary to pass”
Happiness is so elusive it may as well be supernatural
Dear Marie-Helene, Much of the disturbing, off-kilter sense of humour in Parakeet: A Novel (2020) comes from a finely-drawn contrast between the strong sense of reality in…… Read more “Happiness is so elusive it may as well be supernatural”
