Oscar for Best International Feature Film 2024 Of course the movie is much smarter, as it only shows the mansion of commandant Rudolf Höß from the insiOscar for Best International Feature Film 2024 Of course the movie is much smarter, as it only shows the mansion of commandant Rudolf Höß from the inside, with Auschwitz concentration camp existing in sounds and sights that intrude on the cynic idyll from behind the garden walls - a set-up that underlines the brutality of the Nazi regime and the schizophrenic psychological divide inside the minds of the perpetrators. Amis, on the other hand, has a tendency to turn atrocities into spectacle. Mostly set inside Auschwitz, he gives us three alternating narrators: Officer Angelus "Golo" Thomsen (note the references to Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus, the angel of history, as well as to historian Golo Mann), Höß' stand-in Paul Doll, the commandant of Auschwitz, and Szmul Zacharias, leader of a Jewish Sonderkommando, so a group of prisoners forced to aid with the disposal of corpses before being killed themselves.
The plot is rather implausible: Golo, SS fuckboy and nephew of Hitler's close buddy Martin Bormann, falls in love with commandant Doll's wife Hannah - God knows why, she is just as much of a caricature as everyone else in this novel. They hardly ever meet, they never have sex, she mainly uses Golo in order to try to find out what happened to her former Communist lover, but hey, somehow this love is supposed to reform Golo, because: reasons. Meanwhile, Paul Doll is an alcoholic, women-hating loser who nonchalantly stands at the ramp when trains arrive, and he is rendered as a full-on satire of Nazi masculinity, which: Good idea. Szmul, who by all estimation should be the most interesting character, hardly gets any pages, and they remain obscure: A missed opportunity.
What makes this novel borderline unreadable for a German speaker is the use of German words that Amis sprinkles in, apparently for the vibes. They are often the opposite of idiomatic which leads to a comic effect that is probably not intended, at other times the grammar is plain wrong - Amis simply doesn't have command of the German language (and no editor who saves him from himself), so he achieves no aesthetic goals whatsoever, it's just added gibberish (a "Kat Zet"? A man looking at a woman's "Geschlechtsorgan"? No, just no).
Amis' German publisher, Hanser, refused to publish "Zone of Interest", and I suspect the reason to be that in Germany, the silly love story about an SS Officer at Auschwitz reformed by his love for the mostly a-moral wife of one of the worst war criminals in history, told with lots of added detail about people being tortured and murdered, is seen as distasteful. Why? Because it IS distasteful. Which is why the movie has gotten rid of it altogether, instead focusing on the Höß family.
Now Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 This is not for me, but I can see how it is an original, innovative and lyrically crafted meditation on the bNow Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 This is not for me, but I can see how it is an original, innovative and lyrically crafted meditation on the beauty of earth, and how it could all be lost. Harvey takes the perspectives of four astronauts and two cosmonauts who are looking down from a space shuttle in which they orbit our planet sixteeen times over the span of 24 hours. Don't bother to ask for a plot, there is none (I share the sentiment that plot is overrated, btw). The sentences are moody and ruminative, describing and pondering oceans and land masses while adding extensive philosophical musings. There are also some backstories for the individual space travelers, but they do not meaningfully contribute to the overall artistic vision.
The focus here is the view on earth from above, the ideas and sentiments that emerge due to this new perspective and that are captured by both the characters and the omniscient narrator who adds poetic, spiritual layers. "Orbital" is meandering, meditative, and has some moral undertones hammering home the obvious, so it's everything I don't want my literature to be. But Harvey herself refers to it as a "space pastoral", so for what it aims to be, it's very well done, never pretentious, and it offers some beautiful sentences with a strong atmospheric quality (see what I did there? ;-)). So you do you, Samantha Harvey, I respect your artistic decisions....more
Listen, I'm usually all into experimental literature and unusual aesthetic decisions, but this, this is traditional storytelling at its very best, an Listen, I'm usually all into experimental literature and unusual aesthetic decisions, but this, this is traditional storytelling at its very best, an absorbing, sweeping epic about race, class, and sex spanning the last ca. 75 years in the UK, and I just could not put it down. Hollinghurst tells the life story of David Win, born in 1948, whom we first meet as a fourteen-year-old boarder at Bampton school where he is on a scholarship sponsored by the wealthy Hadlow family, known to be avid supporters of the arts. David, who never met his father, is half Burmese and gay, growing up with a single mother who works as a seamstress and causes even more scandal by sharing her life with a woman. He goes on to attend Oxford and then becomes an actor, all through his life having to fight not only racism, but, as a gay man, also homophobia. While David is making his way in the arts, Giles Hadlow, the son of the Hadlow family who is just three months younger than him, makes it big as a Tory MP, a Minister and then a Brexiteer: While David pushes forward, he is the force that pushes backwards.
It is masterful how Hollinghurst manages to convey how David is shaped by the people he meets and his experiences throughout his life, not only his own family and the Hadlows, but also his friends and colleagues. People and instances re-appear thoughout the text, showing David's growth and changing political circumstances - in the background, this is also a story about British politics, especially British racism, from colonialism (David's mother worked for Major General Hubert Rance in Burma, which became independent the year of our protagonist's birth) to social movements and experimental theater (where David is involved) that aimed to overcome everyday racism and professional limitations of non-white artists up to xenophobia-driven Brexit and, finally, the rise of anti-Asian hate crime during COVID. It's of course also a story about a young man growing into his sexuality and experiencing changing societal attitudes towards queer people.
All these themes are carried by the life-like, touching rendering of David, a flawed, deeply human individual chasing happiness. Throughout the text, Hollinghurst adds theater references to numerous plays and the roles David plays, and these references go way beyond pointing towards the struggles of an actor who can't pass as white in the world of British theater: They are interwoven with the story, and good luck to the people writing theses about the complex net of meaning behind this composition (there are also circular references, like the fact that Hollinghurst himself translated Racine's "Bajazet", in which David performs). Additionally, there are hints to other artworks, most notably Burmese fashion, paintings like "The Messenger, a Tragic Gesture", music like "On an Overgrown Path" (which contains the movement "Our Evenings") and poetry like "Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves" (which contains the lines "Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.").
The title also points to actual evenings in the novel, time David spends with people that are important to him. The whole story is told in such a psychologically plausible and nuanced way (the dependency of the arts on the people they criticize! the brutality of love! complex family dynamics! etc.), plus there is a turn at the end that I can't give away which is rather brilliant. I am in awe of this achievement and am now eagerly waiting for Hollinghurst to extend his collection of literary prizes....more
Keanu making his fanboy dreams come true: He got one of his favorite authors, sci-fi veteran China Miéville, to write out his ideas for a novel versioKeanu making his fanboy dreams come true: He got one of his favorite authors, sci-fi veteran China Miéville, to write out his ideas for a novel version of the BRZRKR comic series (of course currently in development for Netflix, starring Mr. Reeves himself). The main, Keanu-looking character is Unute, a 80,000-year-old man unable to die because he was born out of blue lightning (don't ask). His wounds heal themselves, and when his body is harmed beyond repair, he just hetches from a new egg, somewhere in the world (because, sure). But as life is given value by death, Unute longs for the potential to die, and he wants to achieve his goal by cooperating with a military operation doing research on him to craft the perfect soldier: An undying, super-humanly strong fighting machine (hello, toxic masculinity). And oh, Unute is also referred to as B, because he tends to go berserk à la Hulk, but ultra-violent AND cute, because: Keanu.
Sooooo, I will not pretend that I know anything about the well-regarded works of Miéville, about his ideas around "weird fiction" (fyi: Unute is haunted by an undying pig that holds a grudge against him, e.g.) or sci-fi in general. I also won't pretend that I will not be streaming the hell out of every new Keanu movie, because: Keanu. But: This is a kind of literature I struggle with, because all the supernatural stuff just bores me - take this with a grain of salt, I also hate Dune, super hero movies, and video games.
What I appreciate though is that Miéville has not taken the easy route, but aimed for a complex composition, starting out with a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke and then constantly jumping back to Unute's adventures in different time frames - these are partly even rendered in the second person singular, and they feature the likes of Freud and Marx. There are also very dark clues to themes in Reeves' life: The whole thing seems to be set in Lebanon (where Keanu was born), Unute only has stillborn children (as happened to Keanu and his girlfriend, who later tragically died herself), and death and grief play a major role, appearing as structuring forces in life. Also, the cults that worship Unute and the pig seem like parodies of the celebrity experience, as well as religion. There is a philosophical level here, but amped up with lots of genre-typical (I suppose) quirks. The whole plot seems rather convoluted to me, but then again, I'm aware that I've raved about much more complicated experimental novels in the past, and that this is just not my genre.
I'm certainly not the expert to rate this, but I found it interesting to tackle the ideas in here, even if overall, I struggled to get through. If you want to hear from Keanu himself, check out his interview with the fantastic Stephen Colbert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz8J6...
Now Nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize 2024 Rachel Cusk doing Rachel Cusk things: In "Parade", she once more focuses on the female experience in societNow Nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize 2024 Rachel Cusk doing Rachel Cusk things: In "Parade", she once more focuses on the female experience in society and particularly the art world, and while she started her experimental journey by introducing the annihilated female perspective (meaning a type of narration that only reflects the narrator through the voice of others), she now just blows apart the idea of a coherent narrative altogether, somewhat miraculously proving that we never needed it anyway. And if you now think, well, postmodern fiction doesn't rely on plot anyway, you're correct, but Cusk gets rid of a concise plot AND of characters: Don't even try to make sense of the cast here, these people are shapeshifters, especially the ghost-like, genderfluid artist G, a collective of people that haunts the pages.
Split in four interconnected parts, the individual sections also remain somewhat enclosed, while within the parts, narrative arcs are entangled, jumping without warning between paragraphs like a cut-up operation (so in case you belong to the tribe who start whining when an author does not use quotation marks because you claim that's super confusing, don't even bother with Cusk). Sure, it's possible to google the hints (I love this puzzle-like aspect of Cusk's work!) and identify iterations of G, like Georg Baselitz (who painted upside-down images), Louise Bourgeois (who created gigantic spiders), Norman Lewis (the Black artist who painted a cathedral), Éric Rohmer (a Nouvelle Vague director with a pseudonym) etc. pp. But while this is great fun, they all serve as means to craft a philosophical novel about female creation, female representation and the types of fragile bonds that connect humans. Apparently, Cusk has also added some personal experience, per usual (e.g., she was really assaulted on the streets of Paris). Discussing this novel is all about reading into the intellectually charged descriptions contained in the vignettes that the author presents us with.
It also means to marvel at the fact that Cusk seems to become more and more artistically radical, a master non-storyteller that has no fucks to give about convention, and she can afford this because she is in full control of her prose: Nothing about this text should work, yet it does work perfectly. More power to that woman, who seeems to ponder the shapeshifter in all of us: It's no coincidence that in the end, the first-person narration suddenly changes into "we".
Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 Waidner pays homage (kind of) to the two great German-speaking Franz (Franzen? Franze?): Franz Kafka und soccer legWinner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 Waidner pays homage (kind of) to the two great German-speaking Franz (Franzen? Franze?): Franz Kafka und soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer. They both feature in this hilarious novel about state violence against queer people and othering due to gender, race, class, sexuality. Our protagonist is 37-year-old Sterling Beckenbauer who is not only a nonbinary immigrant, but also, of course, the kid of Franz Beckenbauer who, as we all know, was a famous gay soccer player who died from AIDS. Sterling and their friend Chachki Smok run a Patreon-funded anti-theater program, and performance art plays an important role throughout the text, starting with the cataclysmic event that sets the plot in motion:
Sterling gets attacked in public, the whole scuffle is described like a bullfight and is only broken up when an Iraqi-born referee named Rodney shows up. Later a man on a horse confronts the attackers: he looks like the subject of Robert H. Colescott’s painting "The End of the Trail" and is named Elesin Colescott (the painting is a remix of James Earl Fraser’s sculpture "End of the Trail", which is depicted on the Beach Boys' cover art for "Surf's Up" - the Beach Boys re-appear again and again in the novel). Later, Sterling is approached by officials during a soccer match and told she has to go on trial for the attack (hello, The Trial, where an innocent man is randomly accused of an unspecified crime). Now, naturally, Sterling, Chachki and Elesin take an UFO to search for sex-worker Elesin...
Yes, this is surreal and innovative, and it employs methods that de-familiarize and thus de-automatize our everyday use of language in order to ponder violence against gender non-conforming people. The strong, clear political message is issued in a boundary-pushing, creative way, and the outrageous fictional turns are intertwined with a montage of real issues and people, e.g. the story of Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay soccer play who killed himself, or the story of sex worker and activist Thierry Schaffhauser. There are references to Hieronymus Bosch and other paintings, the performances by Sterling and Chachki are inspired by real performance art troupes, their outfits by real designers, real soccer teams and games are remixed, etc.
This novel is A LOT, but I admire its inventiveness and daring approach to political writing.
Also, shout-out to Ann Cotton, the German translator who works with so-called Polish gendering in her translation Vielleicht ging es immer darum, dass wir Feuer spucken, meaning that the letters needed to represent all genders are added to the word ending in random order (German grammar does not allow to literally translate "they", because the pronoun is identical with "she", thus failing to represent the gender-neutral meaning of the singular "they"). Her innovative approach to gender-sensitive language earned Cotton the Internationaler Literaturpreis for this translation.
For a Kunzru, this is more on the accessible side, but I love how this can be read in context with The Map and the Territory, which is my favorite MicFor a Kunzru, this is more on the accessible side, but I love how this can be read in context with The Map and the Territory, which is my favorite Michel Houellebecq: "Blue Ruin" is told by Jason "Jay" Gates, a Black British performance artist who was once a rising star in the London scene, but now lives in his car and delivers food in the Corona-stricken USA. One day, he brings supplies to a rather remote mansion, where his ex Alice opens the door - and he collapses. Twenty years ago, his best friend, Manchester-born painter Rob, and British-Vietnamese Alice betrayed him when they left together. Now they are married, and gulilt-ridden Alice wants to secretly help destitute Jay to get his health and life back on track...
The main theme here is the nature of art in its full scope: As object, as practice, as ideology, as a capitalist endeavor, as social and romantic capital. Rob and Jay represent different attitudes towards art, both flawed and strained in the relation between ideal and market demands. Both have failed Alice, just in different ways, and Alice, the woman who has all her life been busy trying to organize mundane aspects the male "geniuses" don't want to deal with, has failed herself. Or didn't they all to a degree fail themselves? On a larger scale, the story works as a metaphor for the common experience of growing up and being damaged by circumstance, as well as the weight of making the decision of what compromises to make, and then to live with them.
Especially Jay as the performance artist is a great character to study how attitudes can define success or failure in a way that is immeasurable by money, because we are all performing our experiences, and the frame decides how to judge them (see The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life). I will not give away the twist in his story arc, let me just say it's brilliant and has to do with Albert Dadas. Rob, on the other hand, struggles with questions of authenticity and authorship, not only when it comes to trends and inspiration, but also regarding literal ownership: The title-giving "Blue Ruin" is a painting he started that was then taken away by his former boss FDP (Famous Dead Painter, now literally dead) who then proceeded to create a pastiche, painting over some parts - and his theft rendered the painting more marketable only because of his name. The painting shows tourists in orange vests leaving a cruise ship, and entering a decayed, flooded city, with parts of the ruins being composed of everyday capitalist objects like bottles - go figure.
The art world setting of the story is enhanced by the young-ish, eccentric collector who also stays on the property with his Black girlfriend, Nicole. He, in turn, is only there because an even bigger art mogul allows him to stay. Questions of money, gender and race also play a significant role in the many flashbacks that illuminate the backstory. The pressure is heightened by the panic around Covid and the general feeling that the world spins out of control, with themes like prepping, paranoia, and the murder of George Floyd.
I am a great fan of how Kunzru always layers his themes and reflects them in vignettes, history, references, or objects. In "Blue Ruin", there is a whole array of (fictional) art pieces that can be discussed in relation to the main story about three estranged friends and their love triangle, and the whole thing reads like a thriller. A wonderful, smart book that I greatly enjoyed.
Now a Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction 2024 It's hard to categorize this text, and that's where the intrigue lies: Sure, it's a kindNow a Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction 2024 It's hard to categorize this text, and that's where the intrigue lies: Sure, it's a kind of a memoir depicting the 13 months following the knife attack in Chautauqua, New York, in August 2022, but it's also an intense psychological self-portrait and, as the sub-title suggests, a meditation on survival techniques against all despair. Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was issued in 1989, he was stabbed 33 years later - how insane is it to have your life that you have dedicated to telling people stories constantly invaded by life-threatening idiocy so absurd it's almost impossible to grasp that it's even real?
And Rushdie's imagined conversation with his attacker is very clear regarding the social status and intellectual capacity of the guy - and here's a left-field connection for you, because I'm pretty sure Rushdie has never heard the biggest hit of German punk rock heroes Die Ärzte, an anti-fascist smasher that describes a young isolated man with low self-esteem who gets radicalized - and the chorus culminates in the chant "oh-oh-oh Arschloch!", which is exactly how Rushie calls his attacker, whom he imagines to be just like the dude in the Ärzte song, throughout his book: A. (okay, it could stand for assassin, but I'm pretty sure it's asshole).
Rushdie juxtaposes horrifying depictions of his injuries, time in the hospital and inner turmoil with tales about what got him through: His family and friends, and also public solidarity. In a way, this is also a written monument of survival, crafted by a guy extremists want to kill so he will finally shut up. But he won't. And while he's afraid he might now be "the guy who got stabbed", this also won't be true: Rushdie is the world-renowned storyteller who has written books so powerful that they terrify fundamentalists into trying to stop him from telling more stories. They should be terrified of all the people who read Rushdie's works and stand with him, because we are too many to defeat.
Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 An excellent debut by Effie Black: The act referenced in the title is suicide, and protagonist JessicNominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 An excellent debut by Effie Black: The act referenced in the title is suicide, and protagonist Jessica Miller is a scientist researching why people end their lives - her work is based on the assumption that the decision to unalive oneself can be morally right. As the text unfolds, we learn how she came to draw this questionable conclusion, and how her scientific studies might be in sync with or contradict her personal experience. The construction of the story is very smart, as the whole thing is told in anecdotal flashbacks interspersed with short vignettes that, as soon becomes clear, depict a funeral - but who is going to die as the novel progresses? I, for once, was successfully mislead and made the wrong assumptions.
And that is an important point of text: How we can all err regarding the people close to us, how we can miss clues or misinterpret statements and events - until we find them dead. Narrator Jessica grew up in an abusive household, she ponders how trauma changes biology and how the people inflicting trauma can indefinitely burden others. Not only do we learn about her parents and siblings, no, she also tells the stories of friends and acquaintances, with suicide being a recurring theme. And then, there is her love story with Jamie, which is smartly employed to juxtapose the decision to end one's life with the decision to create life.
Black tackles many controversial topics as she shows Jessica, the natural scientist, trying to apply biological research while pondering moral questions, emotional states, and ultimately even (sexual) identity. Also, I particularly enjoyed the book club scene: While the novel discussed is never mentioned by name, it's clearly A Little Life, a highly controversial text (that I happen to love) which shows extreme trauma with queer protagonists and also discusses suicide in a very provocative way - in Black's rendition, the discussion partly reads like a parody of the public outrage that came down on author Hanya Yanagihara.
Unfortunately, "In Defence of the Act" needs a little time to pick up speed, and the ending is cheapened by a highly conventional trope that wouldn't have been necessary or could have been played slightly differently, in a more unconventional way more befitting to Jessica.
But all in all, this was intriguing, captivating, and very smart. Well done, Women's Prize....more
The premise of this novel is brilliant: "Penance" tells the story of three girls who murder their 16-year-old classmate Joan by torturing her and thenThe premise of this novel is brilliant: "Penance" tells the story of three girls who murder their 16-year-old classmate Joan by torturing her and then setting her on fire, but the whole thing is presented as a highly controversial book by a shady (and thus: unreliable) journalist named Alec Z. Carelli who unscrupulously exploits the true crime trend for his financial gain, ethics be damned. What the text aims to do is to illuminate how true crime appeals to the lowest urges in consumers of topical media like podcasts, message boards, fanfic communities, but also classical print, audiovisual and digital media. Clark wants to write about all of us by vividly dissecting the gruesome details of a (fictional) murder case and the darkest corners of human minds - a worthwhile endeavor. I also applaud her for taking an experimental road by incorporating styles of different media and various forms of communication, all presented as the final product of the narrator's messed-up reporting.
But alas, the novel is just way, way too long: Readers easily get what Clark is going for here, what her message will be and that the details (who of the three girls did what exactly) basically do not matter for the impact of the story. Also, there is no definitive why, which makes sense as the author seems heavily influenced by the psychology of and public fascination with school shooters, especially Columbine (check out Cullen's nonfiction account Columbine, it's excellent). What would render the text successful as an aesthetically forward piece is the integration of its text forms and perspectives to a stringent whole which flows somewhat smoothly. And this is my biggest critique: The centrifugal forces of the material rip the book apart, and the pieces keep meandering off, forcing me to come along, away from the central story line.
Clark has structured the novel in five parts: The introductory epigraph, then the stories of Angelica, Violet, and Dolly who become murderers, then a section about another girl who was initially incorrectly suspected to be one of the perpetrators, and at last the aftermath, focusing again on the narrator. And as this is criticizing true crime, the victim, Joan, plays a rather insignificant role in the depiction of her own death: It's the "monsters" that generate clicks (need an antidote? here you go: Notes on an Execution). There is a lot in here from internet boards, and podcast excerpts, and media coverage, and interviews the narrator conducts, and reconstructions he writes that are clearly their own form of fiction. Everything happens on the day before Brexit in a struggling (and fictional) coastal town in North Yorkshire, but the political climate plays a minor role: It's more about social dynamics in school, about family backgrounds, and the strife for recognition as experienced by teenagers.
While I especially appreciated how Clarke presented unregulated areas of the internet where serial killers and violence in general are sources for fanfiction and rabbit holes offer unstable minds plenty of opportunities to lose grip on reality, I have to admit that during the first half of this long novel, I really struggled to keep my interest. There is not enough narrative discipline, and there is too much material for what the plot and the message would merit. Eliza Clark still remains a fascinating talent and I'm curiously awaiting her next effort....more
A very impressive debut about the female strife for agency: In a twist on The Vegetarian, we meet a protagonist who longs to adhere to societal standaA very impressive debut about the female strife for agency: In a twist on The Vegetarian, we meet a protagonist who longs to adhere to societal standards, until she can't keep up the facade anymore. Still haunted by her childhood nickname, Piglet, an unusually tall woman with glasses, is about to marry Kit, a well-off man from a higher social class. They move into a house, they entertain guestes, Piglet is well-regarded as an assistant-editor for cook books. Her life is Insta-appropriate, and Piglet is acceptable as a woman: The man has greater means and higher standing, she is successful, but not too successful, she is about to become someone's wife, as her father expects. In her quest to be enough, Piglet has everything under control - and then she doesn't.
Only days before their marriage ceremony, Kit confesses that he betrayed her - and we never learn what exactly happened, because it doesn't matter. Kit's behavior is a mere catalyst that lays bare that Piglet has been betraying herself all along by not questioning her desires and by not putting her emotions into action - instead, she aimed to keep up appearances to avoid shame, a shame that society bestows upon women who defy expectations in order to do whatever the hell they want: These women are not called passionate (like men in these situations), they are called egotistical, shrill and bitchy. Piglet does not want to be the bitch, she wants to be the good girl, but the price she is paying is getting higher and higher...
As a coping mechanism, Piglet resorts to over-eating. Eating disorders do not only run in her family, but these behaviors are often a way to exert control over the body when agency is denied in other areas. And here, Hazell does something very smart: She employs luscious, vivid, detailed descriptions of food, which tempt readers to overlook that Piglet is at the same time destroying herself: The over-indulgence in what appears to be the only available form of pleasure is self-harm. This is the disturbing core of the story: Piglet has internalized toxic expectations, and to rebel, she harms herself. Her real desires, which she seems almost unable to express, are compromised by what she is told she should desire. And of course, female desire laid bare leads to shame, hence the nickname.
Class mobility plays a large role here, but the story underlines how what is expected from Piglet is the same in her working class family and Kit's upper class environment: Misogyny does not discriminate. And I loved how Hazell introduces female solidarity as a possible way out (an aspect that real-world feminism struggles to put into action): It's Piglet's pregnant friend who tells her that she deserves better, that she is not forced to play the game, and that there should be no shame in claiming her wants. What propels the story forward is the question whether Piglet will be able to stand up for herself, which, under the circumstances, would be no small feat.
Hazell's writing is delicious (haha, sorry) and I enjoyed the subtle nuances of the story that do an excellent job in depicting a concept we need to talk about more: Toxic feminity, the internalization of harmful expectations that leads to decisions and actions that uphold the patriarchy. At the same time, the novel offers an intriguing plot and is just fun to read. Let's see whether it will get some nominations for literary prizes, as it should....more
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why postmodern literature is so much fun: Gray basically tells a feminist story about how some mad men stitch up thAnd this, ladies and gentlemen, is why postmodern literature is so much fun: Gray basically tells a feminist story about how some mad men stitch up their sick idea of a perfect female, and this Frankensteinian creation - the body of a beautiful grown woman, the brain of an infant - emanciaptes herself by claiming desires that are reserved for men: Bella Baxter wants sex, power, and independence, and she just goes for it. Oh, the horror!! :-) Changing perspectives, text forms and time frames all serve the same purpose, namely to show how men attempt to put Bella in a box, to own her narrative and her body, but she is an escape artist and always one step ahead.
A pastiche of Victorian literature, the starting point (and all that follows will in later twists be called into question) is that one scary-looking Dr. Godwin Baxter a.k.a. God saves the unborn baby of a woman who drowned herself, implants the fetal brain into her head and resurrects the corpse, so he can raise an obedient bride. Needless to say, this won't work, because Bella becomes a curious student of life, trapped in a grown-up body before being deformed by internalized societal expectations for women. Chaos ensues, feat. world travels, sexual escapades, political discussions about class war and colonialism, becoming a nurse / vet / doctor, more sexual escapades, marriages, accidental identity theft, driving men into insanity, more sexual escapades... you get the idea.
What remains throughout all iterations is that Bella Baxter is a strong woman with ambitions her time didn't want to allow for - but Bella doesn't wait to be granted permission, and that's the monstrousness that's at the comedic heart of the text. Male projection, the male gaze and the mores of the time become the hilarious basis for narrative twists. Gray masterfully shifts between the emulation of Victorian writing and the build-up of Bella's own voice which she has to grow into, as reflected on the page. Apart from the obvious Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, we get funny references to Faust, First Part (in which a scientist becomes a pawn in a game between God and the devil without realizing it), Pygmalion gone wrong and a Bildungsroman.
The strength of the novel is how it illuminates versions of female monstrousness as taught by mysogyny, and the attempts of men to form women into what they want them to be. It's not like the men in this book are the real monsters (like in "Frankenstein", where the monster is actually the victim), no, it's way worse: The men are pathetic, they have nothing to offer when compared to witty, brave Bella, so they try to tame her power - and fail. These men are clowns, and Bella is the director of this postmodern circus.
Metcalfe's debut is a tribute to The Vegetarian, and her non-conformist unnamed protagonist is reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh's transgressive women. Metcalfe's debut is a tribute to The Vegetarian, and her non-conformist unnamed protagonist is reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh's transgressive women. This main character, who decides to opt out of society, becomes a bodybuilder and internet star who showcases nothing but very slow poses, transforming into a human plant (hence the title). The narrative trick: She is only shown from the outside, depicted in the three parts of the novel by her ex-lover, her mother and an ex-friend, all three of whom have developed a different kind of obsession with her.
Metcalfe shows how self-care can border on narcissism, and how loneliness and depression can be glamorized when they pose (see what I did there? :-)) as self-sufficiency, which on the internet can lead to a following of similarly alienated people. Postmodern speed and complexity are juxtaposed with slowness and simplicity, so ideas that are valued by the mindfulness movement, but which, at least in this story, aren't the solution either.
While the text suffers from some flaws, especially the transparent construction of the plot, it's also an absorbing and smart read and blossoms in its ambivalence.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Okay, so let's celebrate our tolerance for ambiguity: This ambitious sci-fi story is a possible Booker winner, it'Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Okay, so let's celebrate our tolerance for ambiguity: This ambitious sci-fi story is a possible Booker winner, it's very well crafted - and I didn't enjoy it one bit. I applaud MacInnes for writing an eco novel that shows how human beings are part of a larger, mysterious, and beautiful natural system, it's one of the few Booker entries that at least somehow relate to current political issues. In the world depicted, climate change has accelerated. Enter our protagonist, marine biologist Leigh: Growing up in Rotterdam with a violent father who despaired over his job keeping the rising tides at bay, adult Leigh first joins a mission that researches a vent apparently three times deeper than the Mariana Trench - Leigh specializes in the research of unicellar algae, one of the oldest sources of life. Then, Leigh is recruited to join a secret space mission that aims to find out about mysterious irregularities - the algae are supposed to provide food and be part of the intended research.
So yes, you need to have a propensity for slow-moving, description-heavy, 500 page tomes that dive into the intricacies of marine biology and space travel and extrapolate the status quo to possible future developments in these fields. I really tried, but the fact that I didn't care about any of the characters (especially the space crew hardly gets any proper character development) made it even harder to plough through page after page of elegiac evocations of scenes and atmosphere. It's not that it's badly done, in fact MacInnes achieves exactly what he aims to do, it's just that this kind of writing does nothing for me: Endless mundane occurrences on ships and in space, intricate, lengthy scene-setting, conversations about the how's and why's of detailed scientific endeavors... that's a no from me.
We have recurring motifs like immersion, distance, and connection, we have light and darkness, the unreliable human apparatus for perception and understanding, it's very well thought out. I also liked the constant idea that in nature, time exists horizontally, so the beginning of life is still happening in various senses. The title of the novel alone underlines the author's cleverness: Leigh ascends from diving, she ascends to the sky, there's an idea of religious/spiritual wonder, and the spacecraft is supposed to come down on Ascension Island. In the final part, we hear the perspective of Leigh's sister Helena (IMHO, the most interesting character, so needless to say she hardly features) who questions natural scientist Leigh on many levels.
But I was bored out of my mind: The broad descriptions and the slow pacing, the even temperament of the whole text just drove me nuts. So all in all, I'm not surprised (and not even mad) if this wins the Booker, but I can't get behind this novel, purely for reasons of subjective taste....more
Now Unsurprisingly Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 It's always a dangerous game when the Booker Now Unsurprisingly Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 It's always a dangerous game when the Booker dismisses all strong contenders and instead presents a list composed of left-field entries, especially when they add young, promising authors who are not quite at the Booker level yet, but will then inadvertently be judged by Booker standards - to their own detriment. "Western Lane" is a decent book, but Booker material this is not (unlike The New Life, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Biography of X and all the other literary hits that went without a nod). Maroo tells the story of 11-year-old Gopi, whose mother has recently died. Now her father is alone, trying to take care of his three daugthers and pondering whether Gopi, the youngest, should go live with his childless brother and his wife instead.
Apart from the topic of grief, which is subtly rendered in Gopi's precise and often seemingly mundane observations, we learn about the bond between father and daughter through sport, in this case squash, which he wants the kids to take up in order to keep them occupied: While her sisters are not particularly dedicated or interested, Gopi and her dad do not only communicate through squash, spending time together on the court, their movement and alertness during the game is also connected to present physicality as opposed to the ephemeral process of grieving.
As Gopi develops a crush on Ged, the talented 13-year-old son of an employee at the title-giving sports establishment Western Lane just outside London, the element of race enters the narrative, because Gopi is British-Indian and her relationship to the white boy is seemingly deemed problematic by some, just like the the friendship her father strikes with Ged's mother. The migration background also plays a role when Gopi ponders the language barrier between her late mother and the siblings, as English was not her first language, but Gujarati. Silence is a major theme throughout the book, as are cultural differences and how Gopi's generation can deal with them.
So all in all, this quiet, shortish text offers many good ideas and is an interesting investigation into the nature of grief, but it is oh-so-slow and the set-up is very transparent and thus not particularly elegant, and sometimes even formulaic. I'm afraid this story is overall a little forgettable, but I feel like Maroo is very talented and could soon come up with a banger - this ain't it though, and the judges didn't do her any favors by nominating her now.
Also, I hate squash. On to the next.
EDIT: Of course this got nominated for the Women's Prize, a prize that generally celebrates highly accessible literature that is not big on ambivalence on the plot level or experimental designs on the aesthetic level. ...more
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 While I'm starting to get a hunch that this is an overall tragically a-political longlist with a weird focus on gLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2023 While I'm starting to get a hunch that this is an overall tragically a-political longlist with a weird focus on grief, dead mothers and child protagonists, I also have to say that highlighting this gem by nominating it is well justified: In the novel, narrator Marianne tells her life story, from losing her mother at only 8 years old to becoming a mother herself. The book is a variation on the medieval poem "Pearl", in which the lyrical I grieves the loss of his precious white pearl, apparently symbolizing his daughter (or wife?), and dreams of a river, deeming the far side of the bank to be paradise: He sees a girl there wearing a dress full of white pearls and, believing her to be his pearl, aims to cross the river - then wakes up.
In Hughes' (a Welsh poet) debut novel, we have a grieving child whose mother left the family home after giving birth to her younger brother and disappeared, her footprints lastly being found at the river bank nearby. The story slowly reveals what pearl the mother might have been looking for, and what prompted her behavior. Hughes does an excellent job rendering the nature of grief not only in adjectives, but in strong imagery and whole plot points employed to illustrate Marianne's emotions as a child (extra credit for the great haunted house scenes, loved it). While to work with medieval poetry can easily aquire a pretentious vibe, the metaphors are affecting and effective, even the really over-used river to the afterlife gets a pass from me. Jesus, all the chapters start with folk rhymes, which I would 100% hate when done by a lesser talent than Hughes.
The strong sense of place is inspired by the author's own surroundings in Cheshire, and the stories of both the mother and Marianne as well as the experiences they share are rooted in the experiences of the author and her own mother - the result feels precise and authentic, but still refrains from the confessional feel that a lot of recent literature displays. While grown up Marianne studies art and remixes "Pearl" in her work, the author did her PhD in Creative Writing while trying to transpose the medieval poem (you can learn more about the writing process from Siân Hughes herself here, but watch out: major spoilers).
Good choice, Booker judges (I still feel like the composition of the list as a whole is bonkers)....more
Okay, now this is experimental and scary! Alison Rumfitt tells the story of Alice, Ila, and Hannah, three friends whose lives are forever transformed Okay, now this is experimental and scary! Alison Rumfitt tells the story of Alice, Ila, and Hannah, three friends whose lives are forever transformed by the experiences they make in an old, haunted house. Its name: Albion, which is an ancient name for Great Britain. So what we get is a story about the phsyical and mainly psychological damage a societal majority can impose on minorities, in this case a trans woman who is also haunted by queer-icon-turned-hatemonger Morrissey (Alice), a PoC with Israeali and Pakistani roots whom Albion has turned into a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, so a TERF (Ila), and Hannah, who disappears inside Albion.
The intricate story presents plot points that are extremely on-the-nose social criticism, but the horror rendition and the tension between the characters make the novel a real page turner. Much has been said how the book is rooted in classic horror, particularly The Haunting of Hill House, but I was mainly reminded of House of Leaves, a great experimental feat in which the house looks like a constant structure from the outside, but shapeshifts on the inside, messing with people who get disoriented and lost, while all looks swell as long as you don't step into the building. Rumfitt plays with similar ideas, and while in texts like The Fall of the House of Usher, the disintegrating house represents the disintegrating mental state of its inhabitants, Albion seems to disintegrate the minds of those who step into it, corrupting them through ideologies of fear and hate, two feelings that re-inforce each other. The hate becomes so strong, it turns into self-hatred (extra points for the extremely well done inclusion of digital self-harm).
Back to the plot level: The three women, outsiders for different reasons, break into (!) Albion to spend the night. Afterwards (and what exactly happened is the contested question that moves the plot), both the trans woman and the TERF are convinced that the other one abused them, while the third women just disappeared. Go figure. Now this is a smart metaphorical manner to illustrate anti-trans debates - and the novel is full of those details and ideas. A powerful, scary, and also angry atmosphere permeates the text, and while the whole thing feels like a textual explosion, in the end, it comes together quite nicely.
This is daring, interesting political literature, I want more of these books....more
This debut is a novel about the sugar baby phenomenon, but with a twist: A young Black woman with a religious immigrant mother drops out of school, woThis debut is a novel about the sugar baby phenomenon, but with a twist: A young Black woman with a religious immigrant mother drops out of school, works as a cleaner and accidentally befriends a rich clique of models / sugar babies (a.k.a. prostitutes who sell the idea that they are not actually sex workers) - so while her new friends have other opportunities and a safety net to fall back on, our first-person narrator Agnes Green is walking a very thin line when she joins the trade. The starting idea that Agnes is a Pygmalion-like experiment that one of her new friends conducts in order to test out here seduction theories that she intends to market as a book is dropped rather quickly though, and the whole thing becomes a jumbled mess.
I was hoping for a fresh, socially conscious text about racism, classism, and sex work, but alas, it is overwhelmed with familiar tropes: Of course Agnes is sexually traumatized before she picks up sex work, of course she is brought up in a hyper-moral context, and of course she loses herself in the glitz and glam of, ähem, sleeping with married lawyers who buy her Gucci bags *sigh*.
I easily see why women with few opportunities who live in precarious situations turn to sex work, and that marginalized women are particularly vulnerable when it comes to sexual exploitation, what I don't buy are the fully implausible decisions Agnes makes, and they suddenly become more and more implausible and life-threateningly dangerous. The text is steeped in moral assumptions that are used in an attempt to shock and awe, and much like the on-the-nose named Agnes (the story of St. Agnes is even told in the text), the character is minimized in the victim narrative, which is then confusingly mixed with porn. At the same time, the text does sometimes show an awareness that sex work is an actual job, and that Agnes could have chosen another occupation - she wanted the fast money and the lifestyle, and that's her prerogative: Her body, her choice. But qua logic of the text, she is not allowed to just feel that way, there must be explanations for this (trauma, poverty, you name it) - which renders this novel rather moralistic, nevermind the porn elements.
All in all, Agnes is an inconsistent character, and the text is not stringent enough: E.g., Agnes' aspiration to be an artist conveniently shows up when the question arises whether she wants to do something else, because she must be an artist at heart, she cannot just be a sex worker, apparently, in order for readers to relate to her. Luster this is not. Plus: I have trouble taking a novel seriously in which a young German guy is named "Hans" (GREAT job a) doing your research about German names and b) fighting clichés).
Nuts: The new A.L. Kennedy is published in translation first - because the novel is too strong a moral critique of current day England? Scottish writeNuts: The new A.L. Kennedy is published in translation first - because the novel is too strong a moral critique of current day England? Scottish writer Kennedy is known to be a fierce political activist, and this book also qualifies as activism, but fear not: This is not a pamphlet, it's actual literature, based on an unexpected classic. Oh yes, the story is a riff on Rumpelstilzchen, illustrating that when evil forces haunt the world, their power can only be banned when we know their names and say them out loud - which is, unfortunately, sometimes quite hard to do. Relating to that concept, the title states that we can all be saved by remaining compassionate and merciful while calling out the numerous stiltskins that try to destroy our communities (here: The UK).
Our narrator and protagonist Anna is a primary school teacher, mother to a son and partner to a man who quarantines elsewhere due to Covid. While she tries tries to keep in contact with her students via zoom, Anna writes a diary that also deals with her past as part of a leftist theater collective that staged activist performances (hello, parts of the climate activist scene today). Another member, Buster, turned out to be an undercover cop of the London police, he had to face trial and threw the whole collective under the bus (this character is actually based on a real undercover cop that infiltrated leftist activist groups, Mark Kennedy). Now, Buster has left a script about his life at Anna's door, in which he also details his exploits as a vigilante contract killer. Is he a stiltskin? Is he what a person can turn into when they lose faith in society and the justice system and try to fix the problem themselves? The primary school teacher and the killer, both trying to rectify the system, are complex mirror images, and that's what makes the novel so intriguing.
While the book starts extremely sinister and is quite hard to get into, it becomes a pageturner when the chapters start alternating between Anna's diary and Buster's script, slowly revealing both of their traumas and motivations, while finally, through all the darkness, evolving into a text about resilience. The empathetic character development and intense imagery where every detail is telling a story of its own is extremely well done. Kennedy knows how to deliver a moral, political tale without suggesting that easy solutions are just out there waiting for us to be applied, and she branches out into all kinds of newsworthy developments from Thatcher to the Iraq war over Brexit to Covid and the failing school system.
A novel to dissect and discuss. Someone needs to publish the original English-language version....more
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