Glorious Exploits (2024) by Ferdia Lennon

 Book Review

Glorious Exploits (2024)

by Ferdia Lennon

  Glorious Exploits was an Audiobook I checked out from the library (narrated by the author!) after I saw a couple of positive reviews and read the logline, "Athenian prisoners of war perform greek drama in Syracuse quarry pit."  Like Sparrow by James Hyne, Glorious Exploits is an attempt to tell a story shaped by contemporary literary fiction in a historic time period, here ancient Greece, (Well, Sicily anyway.) in Sparrow, it was ancient Rome.  It's a slight variation on the other recent trend in this area- retelling ancient myths from a new perspective, usually that of a female character.  Here, the narrator is a Syracusan citizen- proud but poor, who is just hanging out after the defeat of the invading Athenian army at the hands of the locals.  Instead of killing, ransoming or selling the Athenians into slavery, the Syracusans decide to dump the Athenians in a pit and slowly starve them to death.

   Lampo, the narrator, and Gelon are determined to carry this off for reasons that remain opaque but are somehow related to the death of Gelon's son at some point. Their fellow Syracusans reactions range from supportive to violent, and that generates much of the plot outside of the "We're putting on a show" bits.  I found Lampo engaging and quite enjoyed the voice of author Ferdia Lennon- it was like listening to a cheeky brit tell a compelling story about ancient Greece.  Glorious Exploits certainly was not "historical fiction" in the genre sense- there is talk or war, but only in the recent past, and there is some adventuring but it is limited to a late, third-act trip to the northern tip of Sicily.  It really was a refreshing change from the vast majority of literary fiction and I actually enjoyed the listening experience, often not true for literary fiction.

A New Name: Septology VI - VII (2021) by Jon Fosse

 Book Review

A New Name: Septology VI- VII (2021)

by Jon Fosse

   Great, great idea for an Audiobook since the whole series- I think- is a single sentence.  The hypnotic/mesmeric quality really comes through and I positively raced through this last, seven hour installment.   Having listened to all seven volumes I would support readers who say that it is really just a single, long book.  Although Fosse uses flashbacks, all seven books essentially detail a week or so in the life (maybe as short as three days?) of Norwegian painter Asle.  Asle is old, living alone on the southwest coast of Norway.  He is lost in his memories, even as he deals with the alcohol related hospitalization of his neighbor and only friend, Asleik.  In the flashback segments, much of his musings revolve around another Asle, also a painter, and also an alcoholic.  Narrator Asle is a non-drinker and Catholic convert and he talks about both those subjects:  Alcohol and religions, over and over again. 

    Besides telling this parallel story of the other Asle- or is he another Asle? a reader may well be asking themselves by the end of the Septology,  narrator Asle narrates his bildungsroman- which basically involves being recognized as a talented painter while still in primary school and then the work it takes to get narrator Asle to his current, long-term position as a nationally recognized painter.   So all seven books of the Septology construct this single, coherent narrative about narrator Asle and other Asle, with enough indeterminacy to raise the question in the mind of the reader whether they aren't one and the same, with narrator Asle using other Asle to segment out the more traumatic circumstances of his adult life- including the abandonment of his infant son and wife while still a student.

  I actually Googled that question- whether the "other Asle" is real or not, and I'll stand by my interpretation- I think narrator Asle has carved off this other Asle to handle his more personally painful memories/regrets and then constructed this master persona- narrator Asle. 

  That is it for me and 2023 Nobel Prize Winner Jon Fosse- no way I am going to be looking to read more books by him.  I don't have any other Nobel winners in mind at the moment, I just scrolled through the past two decades of winners and didn't see anyone who jumped out.  Maybe just wait for this years winner?

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs(2022) by Sidik Fofana

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs(2022)

by Sidik Fofana

Harlem, New York

New York: 45/105

Harlem: 11/14

    This book is a linked collection of short-stories- somewhere between a short story collection and a novel.  It's a format that has gained popularity in recent years, and the idea behind this book- chronicling the lives of the mostly young inhabitants of a rent controlled, Harlem area apartment building, is well adapted to the linked-short-story format.  I imagine that Fofana was seeking realism in his depiction of young lives in contemporary Harlem, so it should be viewed as a compliment that I found myself impatient with the decision making process for many of these characters- proof that I was identifying with them and putting myself in their position for the duration of this book.

   This 1,001 Novels sponsored sweep through northern New York City- the Bronx and Harlem- has brought into focus certain things that I already believed- first, that any kind of measurable progress involves satisfying Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  The lowest/most necessary level of the pyramid is physiological: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing and reproduction, and it's not surprising that many of the characters in novels set in this part of the country struggle daily with exactly those issues.   The dynamic of New York city apartment life- a world where landlords/owners are either looking to evict current tenants so they can upgrade their units OR where they are not looking to evict current tenants because they don't want to put any money into the building and just cash the rent checks- is a continuing, unresolved, ongoing crisis for thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?) existing at the lower levels of the socio-economic ladder.

   At the same time there is little benefit derived from the joys of NYC life- these characters are literally not going anywhere the subway can't take them.  It suggests to me that the Government should intervene to upgrade the lives of those who can't fulfill the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy- at the very least, no one should be going hungry, which happens frequently in the pages of books set in this part of America.  

   

The Silver Bone (2024) by Andrey Kurkov

 Book Review

The Silver Bone (2024)

by Andrey Kurkov

   The Silver Bone, by Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov, didn't make the 2024 Booker International shortlist, but it did make the longlist. I checked the Audiobook out of the library because it looked fun- a detective novel set in Bolshevik era Kiev?  Certainly it was more fun than the rest of the books on the Booker International 2024 longlist put together, which are mostly a sad, troubled bunch of narratives.   You could call The Silver Bone "The Accidental Detective" because Samson Kolecheko, the detective-protagonist of this book (and many to come) only finds himself a detective after he files a police report and is complimented on his ability to write.   Trained as an electrical engineer, Samson finds himself orphaned in Chapter one after a rampaging Cossack murders his father in the street.

  Samson retreats to his family apartment- spacious or "bourgeois" in the lingo of the time and is immediately invaded by two Russian soldiers who are billeted in his Dad's study.  This gets the ball rolling, and what follows is a good time with Samson running all over revolutionary Kiev trying to solve a murder and the mystery of a silver femur bone.   The Audiobook was narrated by someone using a Ukrainian accented English which is an Audiobook pet peeve of mine.  Audiobook accents are for different variations of written ENGLISH.  If a work written in another language is translated into English the narrator should either have No accent, or like everything else in a work of translated fiction, translated into the appropriate English language variation.

  Here, for example, everyone is speaking Ukrainian but Samson is a university graduate, while other characters are uneducated/working class Bolsheviks. It would make sense to give Samson a BBC accent and the working class characters cockney accents.  Or, keeping with the time period of the novel, Samson could have had some kind of trans-atlantic accent and the working class characters the accent of an early 20th century Brooklyn factory worker.   Giving all the characters Ukrainian accented English is dumb.  

The Street (1946) by Ann Petry

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Street (1946)

by Ann Petry

Harlem, New York City

New York: 44/105

Harlem: 10/14

    The Street was a very rough but very powerful Audiobook- 13 hours, I think?  I really need a break from Audiobooks dealing with the day-to-day life in Harlem during the mid 20th century because man, this book was rough.  The Street is, I guess, a minor classic- it made this list, and it also made the recent Atlantic Monthly Great American Novel list (136 titles).  Considering it was published in 1946- not a great decade for fiction because of, well, you know, there is also an argument that this could be on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.   As a 1/14 in the Harlem chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America it is a solid top 5 pick- maybe a top 3.   Petry combines work-a-day realism with episodes that evoke both surrealism and expressionism.

   Lutie Johnson is the character at the center of The Street- in the present of the novel she is a single mother, separated but not divorced from her cheating husband and living in a gritty Harlem apartment on 116th street. The Street is very much the kind of book I thought I would be getting all the time on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list:  A minor/forgotten canon level classic that exposes me to a place a time with which I was previously unfamiliar.   Petry doesn't shy away from the grittier side of life- the rapey super in Johnson's apartment building is stopped just short of rape on more than one occasion, and Petry gives us a look inside his head- a harrowing look- I might add.  

   The Street was very good- a top 3 for Harlem, I think.  Probably a top ten for all of New York?  Certainly a top 15.

2024 International Booker Prize: Shortlist

 2024 International Booker Prize: Shortlist

Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott

Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae

What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann

The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson

   Congratulations to the authors, translators and publishers who made the 2024 International Booker Shortlist.   I've read three of these books so far- What I'd rather Not Think About, Crooked Plow and The Details.  Of those three I'd say The Details is my front runner.  I've got Mater 2-10 and Kairos on my Kindle ready to go.  I don't believe Not A River is out in the US yet.

Cool World(1959) by Warren Miller

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Cool World (1959)

by Warren Miller

Harlem, New York City

New York: 43/105

Harlem: 9/14

  A finalist for the National Book Award in 1960, The Cool World is a literary-world rarity: A book about African American teens written by a middle aged white guy.  Hard to say what editor Susan Straight was thinking when she included The Cool World in her Harlem section- it's a book that has been largely forgotten- an author who has been largely forgotten.   I feel like Straight must have read The Cool World when she was growing up.   Straight has done a solid job covering 50's New York and the youth culture that partially emerged from that time and place.   Like many of the books set in Harlem, The Cool World is filled with characters who spend the entire book complaining about their circumstances.  

  There isn't much escape in these pages, just characters struggling, struggling, struggling to make it through.  Miller's picture of gang life in the 1950's is (relatively) benign, sure, the gang keeps an underage prostitute cooped up in their clubhouse to bang for a buck fifty, but the hardest drugs are reefer cigarettes, and the protagonist, Duke's(leader of the Crocadiles(sp)) most sacred wish is getting his hands on a working gun.  How quaint!

Crooked Plow (2020) by Itamar Viera Junior

 Book Review

Crooked Plow (2020)

by Itamar Viera Junior

   Last 2024 Booker International Prize longlist review before the shortlist is announced tomorrow, April 9th.  Crooked Plow is another title that made it into translation out of Brazil on the strength of a domestic prize win.  It's a work of realist historical fiction about the lives of of the freed slaves Brazil after 1888.  These people, who were often of mixed African/Indian decent were simply waved off the land where they had been enslaved and told to go elsewhere, with the result that many, such as the family in this book, simply walked for a couple days and took of residence as tenant farmer at a similar plantation. 

  The plight of the peasant farmer isn't exactly a new subject in Brazilian literature but my understanding is that this particular culture- that of freed slaves who remained on rural plantations, isn't covered- in most Brazilian lit the African descended Brazilians are city dwellers and not part of a socio-economic mono-culture like the people in this book.

   I really enjoyed Crooked Plow if only as a relief from the parade of nervous, young auto-fictionists that have so far dominated my reading of the 2024 International Booker longlist.  Shortlist comes tomorrow!!!

   

The Details (2023) by Ia Grenberg

 Book Review

The Details (2023)

by Ia Grenberg

Translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson

  I have to say that I've come to believe that Scandinavian auto-fiction exists as an exercise of privilege.  How secure must ones place within society be to the point where you can write openly about the most intimate of your private moments and family secrets without the risk of alienating the world around you. I do find it compelling- the literary equivalent of TMZ clips online or 80's talk shows where freaks bared their nasty souls to a studio audience. 

  The interesting angle in The Details is that Swedish author Ia Grenberg does not talk about herself so much as her relationships, starting off with three sexual/romantic partners and ending with her Mom.   I feel like the last six books I've read from Scandinavia feature mentally ill women, often as the narrator or primary protagonist.  Here, at least, the narrator is the sane one.  Grenberg makes the case, obliquely, to be sure, that the mental health challenges of ones own parents manifest themselves in ones own romantic explorations.  It's not a revolutionary take, but I blazed through The Details- partially because the Audiobook is only four hours long but also because I found The Details fascinating.   This could be a shortlister/winner- seems like Grenberg might be poised for a leap onto the international literary stage.