kjuliff’s up and down year of reading 2023

I got of to a roaring start in 2023 and til May was logging my reads in the 75 book challenge group. But since my readers’ block I’ve decided to post here as I’ve been unable to immerse myself into a novel for six weeks.

I have the following books waiting - eithe not started or in slow progres. I normally read only one novel at a time.
Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood
Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter
Benjamin Black’s The Lock-up
Penelope Lively’s Consequences
Plus others - I am going to try Birnam Wood after hearing Catton’s interview at the Hay Festival. It’s a god interview, giving he motivation for writing the novel, and the effect the Adern government (NZ) had on it. Unexpected. A different image of NZ than what we ar used to, and the disadvantages of having a Prime Minister with the Ministry of Tourism as her portfolio.
The interview can be heard in the TLS podcast here -
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tls-podcast/id868068396
For my pre June books click HERE

I’m reading Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier for the first time, though of course I’ve sen the movie.

So far I’m impressed with how well Hitchcock transformed the novel; I can almost se the novel unfold in my mind.
And yes it’s a bit soupy and ful of stereotypes, but les Mils and Bonish than I had re judge de it. Hopefully it will get me over my readers’ block.

Still plodding through Rebecca. I’m starting to find Rebeca’s humility a tad annoying. And Maxim - he’s a Darcy-ish creature without the spark.

But I’m still enjoying it. I’m reminded of a friend I’ve lost touch with, who wrote a Mils and Boon book and got it published. I asked her about how it felt writing it and she said it was comparatively easy. Tall dark brooding English gentleman misunderstood as being proud. Sharp-witted young woman a class below him on the English class system. Yes, Pride and Prejudice with a pinch of humor. Made a fortune but it was a one-of. She couldn’t repeat it.

I suspect AI will take over the writing of such clichéd stories. But back to Rebeca. Are there any othe formula-driven books that have become virtual classics?

>3 kjuliff: I haven't read Rebecca though I think I have a copy floating around here somewhere...

>4 labfs39: it’s a good read. I’d seen the film a few times, and was impressed at how well Hitchcock adapted the book. I’d put off reading it as I thought it sounded a bit too Mills and Boon-ish, but it’s well written, though the stereotypes of the silent brooding wealthy man and the ingenue are a bit over the top in this century. You have to suspend any feminist beliefs while reading.

Just finished What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall. A crime novel as is obvious from the title; there are so many crime novels set in woods.

It’s well-written, full of the expected twists and turns. I think there are a few holes in the story, but it gets so convoluted towards the last third that it’s a bit hard to work back in the story-line to be sure.

I read the audio and it’s well-narrated; an easy read and I think now my reading block is cured. My rating - 3.5

I ended up not finishing any of the books I listed in my first message in this thread, though I will come back to Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter. I liked Time Shelter but needed a more standard narrative style to keep me focused. As for Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, I’m a little turned off activists right now, though in the past I’ve been one. Not liking current methods.

I’m now reading and enjoying Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger. In the last decade I’ve been put of reading books about infirm and dying women going over their past lives. But I liked the sound of Clara and the way Lively uses her memories to “document” Clara’s history of the world. I liked Clara, her unconventional ways and acerbic wit.

The novel is in a way, a history of world though it ends in the late twentieth century. I can’t help wondering what Clara’s take would be of the twentieth century. Somewhat like mine I expect. 4 stars

Like you, I've been struggling with a reading slump. Not exactly sure what's going on, but I only read three books in June, and all three were practically novellas. Finding a strong plot also helps me at times like this.

I’m so looking forward to reading Claire Keegan’s new collection of short stories, named after one of the short stories So Late in the Day which is to be published in November this year.

I just finished listening the short story So Late in the Day, read by the author herself in the New Yorker Fiction podcast (July 1 2023).

The story was chosen to be read by George Saunders but he backed out because he couldn’t say the C word that occurs twice late in the story.

I was blown away by So Late in the Day - it’s character development and unfolding, its understanding of and definition of misogyny. Its cleverness, the reader not knowing where it is going till the end, when you are drawn back to re-reading earlier passages, which are subtle yet now obvious give-always. The depiction on a certain type of Irishmen, so like Australian men - a culture I am so familiar with.

It’s worth listening to the podcast as a large chunk is a conversation between presenter Deborah Treisman and George Saunders.

Two of my favorite writers one reading, the other discussing, in the one podcast.

I just finished reading Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. It’s a bit of a depressing read to put it mildly, but how I came to read it is perhaps the most interesting part of my journey to this book.
I’d just finished Claire Keegan’s short story So Late in the Day which I wrote about above >9 kjuliff: ; and was interested in an encounter between the MC and an overweight woman on a bus. It’s an important part of the short story as it builds up on the MC’s misogamy. The woman happens to be reading a book (not relevant to the story itself). The title is mentioned so I just had to look it up. It was Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked into Walls. So I immediately borrowed it. I’m a fan of Doyle’s. Plus a review on LT mentions it is a favorite of J. K.Rowlings.

So we have two good writers leading me to Doyle’s book. But wait. There’s a third.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, George Saunders was unable to read So Late in the Day aloud because of the two uses of the ‘C’ word. (I can’t say it either). Definitely Saunders would have a problem with The Woman Who Walked Into Doors.

As for the book itself - I had a problem with the domestic violent parts. They seemed to take up the latter third of the book. Though I can see why it was chosen for the woman on the bus in Keegan’s short story.

>9 kjuliff: I have already bought Keegan's latest ahead of publication. Since reading Antarctica I've chased down all her books to date. Finishing now the collection from 2007/8 Walk the Blue Fields. Will come back and read your reviews when I finish :-)

>11 avaland: sadly I haven’t yet reviewed So Late in the Day or Antarctica. Íve been very unwell these past months …On a brighter note, I just discovered David Mean. I’m really just discovering American writers. I listened to a short story of his “Two Ruminations on a Homeless Brother” on a New Yorker podcast and was blown away. I immediately bought his Instructions for a Funeral collection. I love his meandering ways of crossing through hinged thoughts and imaginings, an his ability to convey humor in a situation that is inherently tragic.

There’s an interesting discussion on his homeless brother story in the New Yorker Fiction podcast - the source of my discovering this amazing writer. Worth a listen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-new-yorker-fiction/id256945396?i=10006...

Can’t wait for Jenny Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos to come out in audio.
There’s a discussion on this book with Erpenbeck on BBC’s podcast “Books and Authors” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/books-and-authors/id331296649?i=1000618252...
I’m also interested to get hold of a recently translated work by GDR writer Brigitte Reimann’s newly translated novel Siblings, which is also discussed in this podcast.

I will have to get back to Time Shelter now that it’s shortlisted for the Booker AND Fatelessness has broken my readers’s block. But I’m really interested in getting Standing Heavy when it eventually comes out in audio.

I was really enjoying Time Shelter till I was interrupted due to illness halfway through. All I can remember is that the writing was truly beautiful and the ideas fascinating.

Yay for a broken reader's block! Fatelessness is different, isn't it? I hit a slow spot in Time Shelter but overall I too found it interesting with strong writing.

>15 labfs39: Fatelessness is certainly different. I will probably read the reviews when I’ve finished to see if anyone else sees the novel as French existentialist as I do, so far.

Started Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry. Shortlisted for the Booker irs so far a little hard to get into, which is often the case with stream of consciousness novels in audio.

Usually I like to re-read excellently crafted pieces, but though possible it’s not the same with audio.

I think I’ll be able to stick with this novel and that Fatelessness really has broken my readers’ block.

Review of Fatelessness
The Crux of it: I am Here
1942 - a French orderly gives out sugar cubes to French children every day in the Buchenwald concentration camp hospital. The main character György a Hungarian teenager, notices that the French speakers get two, while he only ever gets one. To György this behavior illustrates the advantage of learning a second.language.

This is typical György who is sent first to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald where he endures the horrors of the camps as we know them. He analyses events by rationalizing them in a matter of fact way, sans morality or resentment, his only emotion coming midway in the book when he starts to experience “irritability” and even then, never moral outrage.

The story is autobiographical and was written years after Kertész‘s imprisonment, when he was on the cusp of forgetting. Hence the many details of inmates’ facial structures and camp hierarchy uniforms. He’s putting it alll out there, in plain and simple terms; making it hard for the modern reader to understand the eerie detachment.

The story is told in chronological order, with the young boy unaware of what lies ahead as he passes from one horror to the next. Each event is told using backshadowing, with György taking and justifying each horror step by step without the knowledge of the modern reader. This of course is how the inmates experienced the ordeal, and reading it in this way has the efffect of making the experience more real. We are centered in György‘s life. But we can never fully accept the detachment shown in the justifications, the peak and most horrific being when Köves seems to “understand” the crematoria of Auschwitz,

I became used to György’s way of using reason to justify what happens to him without ethical considerations. But the question remains why? Is it that it’s a story told by a teenager? Or that the writer lacks Faith and is, being a non-practicing Jew, an outcast amongst outcasts? Or is it for effect? Or has the concept of morality been beaten out of him?

I prefer to think it’s an older person’s way of trying to remember what has of necessity been repressed. The writer is trying to remember, step by step, the events of his imprisonment, along with how he managed to cope with those events,as a young male thrust into the horror of the Holocaust without any adult experience or faith to guide him. Thus as with the sugar cube episode recounted in a matter-of-fact way, without rancor or moral overtone, I started to see into Kertész’s memory.

So excited to come across Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos available on Audible. I now have two good books in my currently reading list, though I’m finding Old God’s Time a bit hard to concentrate on.

>18 kjuliff: I enjoyed your review, Kate, and your final take away. I hadn't thought about the novel in terms of where the author was in his life and memories. I found the tenor so unnerving. I remember one part where he's on work detail outside and commenting on what a beautiful day it is. The juxtaposition of the details of grass and butterflies or whatever and his emaciated beaten self are almost incomprehensible. I wondered if the protagonist were simple. In the end I think of it as along the lines of Life is Beautiful, an attempt to break out of the stereotypical Holocaust survivor story in a way that emphasizes the horror by not acknowledging it head on.

>20 labfs39: I need to read more of the writer’s life. Apparently he went from the horror of the camps to persecution under Stalin. Apparently the book is autobiographical. I didn’t want to put to much of this in my review as it could spoil the mystery of the detachment and the unnerving juxtaposition of the horror and the observations of examples of beauty of nature in the camps.

I’m wondering what Dan will make of it.

I just finished Fatelessness last night. Like you, it broke a block and i got deeply into it. But, goodness, what to make of it? I enjoyed your review and I’m admiring that you had some good coherent stuff to say. I maybe need a few days before I can attach words.

>20 labfs39: I’m taking a moment to process the idea of “the stereotypical Holocaust survivor story”. I had the same thought too, and found it strange in my head. Certainly this is different than Night, or Maus or If This Is a Man, or Shindler’s List (or, what else have i read?) but also a variation of them.

>22 dchaikin: By stereotypical, I didn't mean anything denigrating. But many of the memoirs and novels I've read follow a similar trajectory (ignorance, growing awareness, too late to emigrate, round-up, ghetto, camps, liberation). Everyone's experience is individual and important, but the basic outline is similar for many. Also most express moral indignation, horror, anger, and great sadness. Rarely have I read a survivor memoir/novel that instead was so detached and so morally ambiguous. Maybe Scheisshaus luck : surviving the unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora by Pierre Berg (a gentile) or I'm No Hero: Journeys of a Holocaust Survivor by Henry Friedman. Fatelessness challenges my preconceptions and made me highly uncomfortable as a reader.

>23 labfs39: I have a purely logical side that thinks “stereotypical” is the right word. That it might better to rephrase without the negative implication of that word, but while maintaining the same meaning. Anyway, my less logical side can’t help feeling it’s an odd perspective.

I think Kertész’s work does fit in this general Holocaust-survivor-tale feel, but also tries to have its own unique take. I don’t think he breaks free from that trend. But he’s doing a lot more than just telling an experience, and this does come through.

Did it challenge my preconceptions? Hmm. There were things I learned, and also things new that I didn’t understand. But I’m not sure it did anything like truly challenging my preconceptions. Once i figured out the books direction (after the bus), it all seemed very laid out to me what would happen next. The only thing was how would this mind respond. I found myself more into the mc’s response than the actual external stuff. That, I think, might be part of the art of the book. We get the canvas, but we aren’t even shocked by it. We’re just really focused in on our narrator. Or i was, anyway.

>23 labfs39: >24 dchaikin:
I think my take on Fatelessness was partly influenced by reading a little of Kertész’s life after liberation from the camp, and the fact that he apparently wrote it when he was on the cusp of forgetting. This had the effect of softening my understanding of the detachment. I read about Kertész when I was about 2/3 through the book and didn’t go very far into researching his life as I could see it influencing my attitude to book as I wanted to read it unencumbered..

The book wasn’t published till the 1970s but my understanding is that he didn’t write anything at all about the camps till 1955.

I think it worth noting that Kertész was only 14 when he was interned and that perhaps he’s more concerned with his inner feeling than documenting his physical experiences.

Right now my mind is full of old God’s Time which I only just finished, so I can’t dissect my own views on Fatelessness, though I do have some more thoughts after reading Dan and Lisa’s views.

>23 labfs39: >24 dchaikin:
Came across this that sheds some light -
“ Fatelessness is written in a peculiar ironic-sarcastic tone that differentiates it from common Holocaust representations. The experience of the concentration camps has remained a central topic for Kertész in his subsequent works. Without questioning the singularity of the Holocaust, Kertész considers the postwar communist dictatorship in Hungary to be a “continuation” of the Nazi horrors. Having experienced several dictatorships, Kertész uses his oeuvre to find responses for the position of the individual within totalitarian systems and generally in the face of history.”
https://literariness.org/2022/10/11/analysis-of-imre-kerteszs-fatelessness/

>26 kjuliff: it’s a great summary. Still, all of me wants to nuance the idea of “ironic/sarcastic”, which is entirely accurate, but just seems to also be a little off the mark. It’s not simply ironic, the tone is actually dead serious. It just leaves the reader a little unsure what to rest our thoughts against as we work them out.

I agree that “ironic” is a little off as the writing is as you say “dead serious”. Perhaps this this irony/detachment could be a result of it being written by a man remembering his 14 year old self and trying I think to be accurate. He was about to hit puberty when he was sent to Auschwitz- - remember the scene with the girl in his neighborhood. So the memories are really those of a child written by a mature man - I only just discovered Fatelessness was written between 1969 and 1973.

I tried to do a mental trick of imagining how I would write about a traumatic incident that lasted some days when I was about to enter puberty; to see if I would write about it as if I was the girl of 13, and if that would be different than if I wrote about it now. I only imagined two sentences for each period and they were entirely different. Without doubt I saw the same events differently.

Another idea hit me. The writer is Hungarian and there may be feelings that cannot be accurately translated into English. There may be subtleties we have missed. But perhaps I am over-thinking here.

>28 kjuliff: probably there are subtleties we can’t catch in English, but I suspect (and hope) the general tone is right. There is definitely irony, heavy. But it’s mainly between the lines. Our narrator never acknowledges this.

Yes, I never got the irony. I suppose, had I been looking for it …

I am now reading Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos which I’m glued to. Part is set during and shortly after the unification of Germany from the point of view of a young women who grew up in the GDR. And in between this and Fatelessness I read Old God’s Time which blew me away.

So my readers’s block seems to be well and truly over.

>30 kjuliff: my readers’s block seems to be well and truly over

Yay! That's great news. I too seem to be settling back into my reading groove. Perhaps because fall is on it's way?

On Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos
Like NY times reviewer Dwight Garner, I am going to have to read it a second time.
Best explained in the reviews’ s words.

“Kairos” left me with an itch I needed to scratch, after the absolved and the condemned begin to flow west though the Brandenburg Gate, after all certainties are shattered. About German history, we read, “Whose job is it to go down into the underworld and tell the dead that they died for nothing?” .

Yes it’s about it East Germany, WW2, love, jealousy, totalitarianism and so much more.

Read it and cry.

For Claire Keegan readers, Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day has recently been released in audio. It came out in the New Yorker February 2022 - both the short story narrated by Keegan along with other relevant info. It well worth both a read and listening. Plus as it’s on the New Yorker Fiction podcast, it’s free - bother the narration and the information that comes along with it.

Almost finished A Separation by Katy Kitamura. The narrator’s tone is quite eerie and I’m not sure if it’s meant that way, to make the novel appear mysterious, or if it’s Kitamura’s style of writing. Every movement and feeling of the characters is described minutely and it can take 30 minutes of listening time for a character to walk from one room to the next.

There is a Sisyphus quality to the book and I’m a bit worried about how it will end.

>32 kjuliff: I loved Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone. I hadn't heard about Kairos, so I'm excited to read it.

>35 japaul22: I will be interested in what you think of Kairos. It’s unlike. Her earlier novels of which I’ve all that have been translated. I loved Go, Went, Gone too. I think that was the first book of hers that I read and then, as is my way when I find. A new writer that I like, I read all of her other works.

A Book of Nuance

A Separation by Katy Kitamura
Media: Audio
I managed to listen to the end of this extremely well written novel, but I have to say, at times it was like watching paint dry, a beautiful paint nevertheless.

It’s a story of a married couples separation and it takes place on a beautiful Greek island. Every characters is described minutely - their facial characteristics, their moods, their in-the-moment actions, imagined thoughts, the opposite of those imagined thoughts, their imagined future actions, their imagined motives nuanced to a literature nanosecond. All from the point of view if the wife, the narrator.

There is a mystery that kept me reading, but it was really the quality of the writing that saw me through to the end.

Honestly, it took me 10 minutes of listening time round about chapter 13, for one of the characters to walk from one room to the next.

Still it was a good read. The audio narrator’s voice had a softly eerie quality, but it was I think in her imagined spirit of the novel.

If you are into reading newspaper reviews, ignore The NY Times on this one. The Guardian’s is more on point.
Overall a good read.

>37 kjuliff: I will have to look into this book. I had read Intimacies last year and I had mixed reaction to that book.

Your statement about the mystery keeping you reading is what I always say when I am asked about what I read. Unfortunately, a mystery usually means crime to most people.

I find that even if a book is very good overall, there has to be a mystery to keep me going.

>38 JoeB1934: well there is certainly a mystery in A Separation and The NY Times reviewer headlined it as a mystery novel. But it’s more about the separation of the marriage and the people involved. It really is well-written, but with every thought described in minute detail and the long passages of stream of consciousness, it’s a long read.

But the mystery does keep the interest and I found the writing to be exquisite.

Plowing Through a Dreamlike Landscape

Reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. As NY Times’ reviewer Sloane Crosley put it, it is a “weird and fablelike mystery.

I think it must be good, but I’m plowing through it. Will write more if I ever finish this dreamily narrated novel.

>40 kjuliff: I read the book last year and had to struggle along but, in the end learned a lot about that society.

>37 kjuliff: “it was like watching paint dry, a beautiful paint nevertheless.” - great description. 🙂

>37 kjuliff:"Honestly, it took me 10 minutes of listening time round about chapter 13, for one of the characters to walk from one room to the next."

So of interest to fans of Henry James, then. :)

Seriously, though, your description makes A Separation sound intriguing indeed.

>43 rocketjk: Nope, though I get why you say this re the detail and state of mind meanderings. It’s hard to explain the style. It is an intriguing book. Once I got into not expecting anything to happen in real time I became to enjoy the book

Here is a quote from a Kate Clanchy (Guardian) review. I’m trying to both mystify and to tempt you.

“{the} alienation is very much of the literary moment. As the narrator wanders musingly around the portent-stuffed resort, you sometimes wonder if she is a pastiche of Lydia Davis taking a nasty holiday in a Deborah Levy novel.”

>44 kjuliff: "Nope . . . "

Well, I'm relieved, then, as I've never enjoyed reading James' novels. And, yes, you've intrigued me.

A Novel in Search of a Genre

Just finished Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and I’m so stunned that I will need some days to review it. As of right now, I’m with thorold

“ Probably not a book you will want to read if you have venison in your freezer, but very enjoyable - in a slightly disturbing way - for the rest of us. Lots of unexpected little bits of observation.”

One can’t really say much more.

Drifting back into my reader’s block. I tried The Troubled Man I think you need to read Henning Markell’s earlier Wallander novels in order for it to make much sense.

I also am unfamiliar with Swedish, and reading it in audio I couldn’t easily work out which characters belonged to which names.

Some of the character’s names sounded very similar. With print one wouldn’t have this problem.

But re books that have the same detective throw out, I’ve never gone for them. I dont know why, but I always find them annoying.

So now I’m in need of a good psychological mystery - suggestions welcome.

>47 kjuliff: I have read many Henning Markell's and I didn't have any issues like you mentioned. My main focus on him was his Alzheimers and the relationship with his daughter.

>48 JoeB1934: yes I can see as you’ve read more of Henning Markell’s novels you’d have more of an idea of Wallender and his daughter coming in to A Troubled Man. I liked the writing and might try an earlier novel.

>47 kjuliff: I haven't read any of these but they are ranked highly in my system. No guarantees for you!!

Little Secrets Jennifer Hillier
The Night She Disappeared Lisa Jewell
Exiles Jane Harper
The Golden Couple Greer Hendricks
Rock Paper Scissors Alice Feeney
Juliet Anne Fortier
We Spread Iain Reid
The Grave Tattoo Val McDermid
What Happened to the Bennetts Lisa Scottoline
Elizabeth is missing Emma Healey
Turn of Mind Alice LaPlante
Italian Shoes Henning Mankell
Red Road Denise Mina

>50 JoeB1934: Thanks. It is an interesting list.
I’d forgotten I’d read Henning Markell’s Italian Shoes which I really enjoyed. I remember now looking for more Mankell books but at the time I was avoiding crime stories. Didn’t he write another similar novel after Italian Shoes?

I checked out Italian Shoes in my LT library and see that I read it in May this year! And gave it 4 stars. I remember it made a big impression on me at the time. So embarrassing to have forgotten.

>51 kjuliff: I only read his crime books. Don't feel bad about memory issues. I have great problems with that also.

Love and Betrayal, NYC to Ischia

The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
Media: Audio
Rating: 4
While waiting for a number of books to come off hold at the NYPL (Manhattan ) I borrowed The Singer’s Gun. Not expecting a great deal as I had believed Station Eleven and her later novels were what she was known for, and therefore were her best. Sometimes I think I’m guided too much by reviewers.

The Singer’s Gun is part crime, part love story. But the theme behind the well-executed plot is deception.

It is a deep look at the people behind the forging of documents enabling immigrants to stay in countries illegally. But what starts as a relatively harmless forgery enterprise run from an Italian family business, turns to the horror of human trafficking.

We see the conflicts of family loyalty and marital deception. We get to know the main characters, the criminals - their lives and loves, their whys and ways. The villains are humanized.

The writing is crisp and the reader, Morgan Hallett, manages to make you forget someone else is reading. It’s all book, no obvious performance. A female, Hallett simply “reads” male conversations instead of trying to sound masculine.

Overall a good read. Recommended.

The Singer’s Gun put me in the mood for a thriller so I chose a fictional detective book (outside of my preferred genres), Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell. I liked his Italian Shoes but haven’t read any of his crime novels.

I don’t really get the popularity of detective crime novels. I’m never interested in the same character popping up time and time again. They are usually flawed middle-aged white men whose wives have left them. Let’s see how Markell’s Wallander turns out.

Clueless in Sweden

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
Media: Audio
Rating: 3

As I posted in >54 kjuliff:, I was in need of a Henning Mankell detective story. I’m not a fan of the detective crime genre, but having enjoyed Markell’s Italian Shoes I thought to branch out, and hopefully be able to read his The Troubled Man which I’d discarded, finding it difficult to keep track of Detective Wallender, his loves, his family and his cohorts.

It a fairly typical plot - brutal murders that prove difficult to solve with a cast of supporting characters. Sidelines are cameos of Wallender’s loves, the troubles of his mates, his fear of getting overweight - the usual concerns of middle-aged middle-income maless in the West.

Theres a contemporary slant, concerning illegal immigration and the problems it brings to western countries. Though the mass migration of this century is nothing like the small level experienced in the late eighties; the book was published in 1991.

I spent most of the book imagining its “foreigners” to be black or Hispanic - Somalis or Venezuelans - when’s in fact “foreign”, the last word of one of the victims, referred to Eastern Europeans ..

This introduction of 1980s refugees in the novel tends to date it rather than give it an historical or modern vibe. You just can’t win with the rate and pace of 21st century socio-political change. Austen had it easy.

I found the build-up to be rather slow. There’s a sub-plot about the murder of an immigrant, but it fails to generate enough interest, occurring around the middle of the book, when Wallender is having his personal crises.

Around the two-thirds mark, Detective Wallender comes into his own, and the search for the killers gains momentum.

I enjoyed the book well enough. It was a medium to light read. I was turned off by Wallender as I found him to be a bit of a misogynist. His cringe-worthy attempt to seduce the beautiful and highly intelligent state prosecutor was a turn-off. The other characters were farming folks. There’s lots of mud and horses and run-down farms. Sort of an Ireland without the humor.

I like your title Clueless in Sweden

I am not confident that my reading list will appeal to your needs, but I have just posted the top 43 books I have found to be Most Memorable to me for 2023.

You can scan the list at

https://www.librarything.com/topic/353845#n8236848

>57 JoeB1934: Thanks, I’ve read quite a few in your list. Notice you listed The Remains of Day. Ishiguro is one of my favorite authors.

I really wanted to read Booker longlisted Prophet Song but it’s not available in audio. I am not familiar with Paul Lynch’s novels, so looked him up and decided to try his The Black Snow. I’m about 20% in and so excited to have discovered yet another brilliant Irish writer. What is it about the Irish?

>59 kjuliff: They’re fookin’ brilliant 😀

Sorrow in Ireland


The Black Snow by Paul Lynch
Media: Audio
Rating: 4.5
I am so glad I chose to read The Black Snow when I was unable to get Paul Lynch’s longlisted Prophet Song.

The Black Snow has everything a good Irish novelcan be expected. Good story-telling , lyrical writing, stories of struggle, small-town suspicion, tenderness and rugged beauty.

A young couple Barnabas and Escra with son Billy , very much in love, emigrate to Ireland from New York. Yes, that’s right, they wanted to go back to their roots in Carnarvan, to use their money saved from Bañabas’s work on the skyscrapers of New York, to build a farm.

They become relatively successful, but are resented by the locals, partly for their comparative wealth, but also as they are seen as foreigners though the couple were born in Ireland.

When their cow-barn burns down, killing all the cattle and one of the locals, their hope of a good life begins its downward path. Suspicion lies everywhere and Barnabas is intent, against all odds, on rebuilding the barn, using old stones from the “famine cottages” and unintentionally doing everything to further isolate the family from the community.

As misery months on misery we know things will not end well.

All the good things of village life get tainted as Barnabas chops down a 2,000 oak tree, pushes his sick horse to haul stones, and takes offense when offered help by friendly neighbors. He’s oblivious to the effect of his pillaging of the stones of the famine cottages (deserted during the potato famine of the mid 1900s), which are regarded as part of the towns history, as almost holy relics.

Nature itself seems to be offended, and there is a magnificent blurring of human, animal and environmental existence in Lynch’s lyrical writing.

I was transfixed by this novel, completely immersed. Spellbound,

Highly recommended.

High in New York

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Medís: Audio
Rating: 5

The novel is set in New York in the seventies, and is centered on August 7 1974 when at 1,350 feet above ground in the South Tower high above the streets of New York, a man walked the 131 feet between the Twin Towers with no net.. There’s references to a lot of 70s stuff, to Nixon and PDP 11’s!!! PDP 11s - at first the name rang a bell but I couldn’t remember what it was. Then it came to me - they were an early family of computers and though I had never worked on one, we’d been shown one at Deakin University in Australia when I first embarked on my study of computer science.

Beautifully constructed, Let the Great World Spin should particularly interest anyone interested in the culture of the seventies, particularly that of NYC. And also for those who remember fondly the days when the Twin Towers dominated the NYC skyline, no matter where they were on that blue spring day of 11th September 2001.

>62 kjuliff: I’ve read two books by McCann and rated them both 5. Don’t know why I haven’t read more. Need to do that.

Palestine in Israel

Apeirogon by Colum McCann
Media: Audio
Rating: 5
I’m about halfway through Apeirogon by Colum McCann and am posting about it before finishing because I don’t think I’ll be able to review it. It’s just so good, so complex, so nuanced, and as it turned out, so timely in terms of me reading it,now. I just don’t have words.

Like it’s title it is infinitely faceted, as is any explanation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Instead of attempting to review Apeirogon I point to an excellent review from one of our members - Alan.M which you can read HERE

>64 kjuliff: Wow, this sounds amazing. A definite book bullet for me. How's the audio? Would you recommend it or the book form?

>63 dianeham: I haven't read anything by him, Diane. Sounds like I need to rectify that.

>65 labfs39: I haven’t seen the book form but the narrator does a great job. If you like audio generally I’d go for audio on this one.

>66 kjuliff: I added it to my audible wishlist.

>67 labfs39: just finished Apeirogon. I’d borrowed it before last weekend and started reading it the day before the Hamas arrack on Israeli civilians. The attack and the aftermath dominating to news cycle this week (and no doubt beyond) made the book even more intense and relevant.

Still hold the same opinion as I expressed >64 kjuliff:

>68 kjuliff: I'm currently listening to Horse for my book club, but then I'll start this one. Thanks

When I can’t get hold of the Booker book, I look at a new (for me) writer’s other works.

So I’m now starting to read Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s Stay With Me A world away from The Secret Scripture which I just finished but have to give some thought before reviewing.

Insanity in Ireland

The Secret Scriptures
By Sebastian Barry
Médula:auto
Rating 3.5
I enjoyed this book but rated it below my normal rating for such a well-written novel. The reason being is that I got sick of the plot.

It’s set in Ireland from the nineteen twenties till the early 21st century, so that the background is one of factional fighting - the days of the IRA and the Garda etc. The religious conflict impacts the life of a young woman, the MC Roseanne who ends up in a mental hospital for around 70 years.

My interest was held by figuring out the mystery behind the MC’s unjust incarceration; we are given clues from characters’ alternating diary. entries. One set being Roseanne’s which she keeps hidden under a loose floorboard in her room, the other her most recent psychiatrist early this century. Both Roseanne and the psychiatrist are examining what actually happened pre-incarceration as well as commenting on life in general.

I kept interest because I wanted to find out why Roseanne had been interned. The characters and past events held clues and were interesting. But not enough to hold my attention.

I found the ending was rather trite, verging on “Holleyward”.

I have to give credit to the narrator Wanda McCaddon. It’s always difficult for aa woman to read a whole chapter in a man’s voice, but McCaddon does it well, residing it straight without trying to copy the male timbre. Of course it helped that the psychiatrist does not have an Irish accent, and the chapters are interleaved between the psychiatrist’s English and Roseanne’s Irish brogue.