The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith

Be prepared to get sucked into this new thriller from Keigo Higashino. While he’s already a big name in Japan, this is his first book translated into English. It’s best called a police procedural rather than just a crime novel, because every little detail Higashino includes has a point in the story. What’s most unique is as soon as you begin, the murder of a man occurs, and you know exactly who did it. Straight up, it’s right there, demanding you pay attention!

The mystery of the novel comes into play as the crime is investigated by the police force as well as two academics, one a physicist and the other a mathematician, both former competitors who are eager to prove their superiority to each other as well as the police detectives that they look down upon. Nothing plays out as ordinary, although the characters can be considered regular people. Rather than an all-seeing Hercule Poirot type of solution, the novel is instead about observation of facts and the interpretation of the tiniest details. Because of the amount of intricate details, sometimes the narrative slows down. In fact, at a few points, you may even be distracted and feel as if you are balancing your checkbook. Yet that’s the trick Higasino plays: the monotonous details are the most revealing and ultimately solve the crime.

In addition to the mystery, the author builds credible characters, and makes their motives always remain a bit unclear. At times, while knowing ‘whodunit’, I still found myself questioning what I already knew, and wondering how much I assumed.  Seeing a snapshot of the life of middle-class Japan, with its emphasis on decorum, routine, and reputation, makes a cryptic setting for the murder and its repercussions.

Two factors bear mentioning: one, despite the complexity, the pace of the novel is subtle and quiet. This isn’t an episode of CSI; there are no car chases or explosions. An intellectual challenge for the reader, it’s as quiet as a crossword puzzle and much more complicated. Additionally, despite the initial murder (it was a bad guy, after all), there is no gore or expletives. None of the skin-crawling vulgarity or horrific crime scenes that some crime novels rely on appear in this story.  To be honest, this is a classy crime novel, and I hope more of the series is translated into English, soon.

Special thanks to Minotaur for the Advanced Review Copy.

Wave of Terror by Theodore Odrach, historical fiction

Translated from the Ukrainian by Erma Odrach

Talk about a timely book! This novel is based on Theodore Odrach’s own life when Stalin’s Red Army came in to power in Belarus. Given that Belarus is very much in the news this week, with the controversy over recent elections and the beating and deportation of several journalists, it seems that a glimpse at its history is appropriate.

I know of several people who have read Wave of Terror recently, and all were moved by it because of how revealing the novel is about resilience, fear, and courage. Briefly, it deals with the experiences of a school teacher in the rural region of the Pinsk marshes-one who finds himself trying to walk the tightrope of pleasing the new regime without losing his moral balance. He is an endearing character, much like Ivan in Vasily Grossman’s Everything Flows. However, while the Grossman novel features Ivan looking back on his experiences, in this we see Kulik and what he is thinking as he experiences the significant events that turn the small region upside down, yet again. As an educated man, he is a threat to the Stalinist leaders, who give him simple advice to follow:

“I know you’re a historian with a degree…which is not to your credit. To put it simply, you have an education from a bourgeois institution where you were taught not only by non-socialist professors but also by pretentious, self-serving priests. You were educated in a hostile and unproductive environment. Take my advice and study the five volumes of Soviet history. Become a master of Marxist methodology…Give added attention to the Communist Manifesto, and learn how the capitalist classes of all nations will be overthrown and eliminated by a worldwide working-class revolution.”


The pressure to succumb to the indoctrination is great; if he doesn’t conform he will be shipped away to Siberia. Anyone can endanger him, as just the simplest lie about him from a student or associate will be enough to remove him, because the regime rewards those who inform. With a starving community and hostility around, every word he speaks endangers him, and yet “even silence could bring disaster”. The story of how he moves through this virtual minefield is both surprising and inspiring.

Odrach's passport photo

What is especially revealing about the novel’s voice is its coverage of the subject of languages. Having read a few Stalin-era books lately, I hadn’t quite caught on to how language itself is a tool of indoctrination. In Kulik’s rural village, the villagers normally spoke Ukrainian. Having been previously invaded by Poland however, they had been impelled to only speak Polish before reverting back to Ukrainian. Then the regime change insisted that they all speak Belorussian, but made clear it was a stepping stone to the entire area speaking Russian. Without access to their native tongue, the people had much of their culture stripped away, long before the Red Army came in and further eliminated cultural distinctions. Germany eventually occupied Belarus as well, which adds yet another linguistic layer to their history.

The language issue is significant because even now in Belarus, as its citizens are divided because those who wish to retain the Belorussian language and cultural identity (in order to prevent further “Russification” of their region) are outnumbered by those who wish to embrace the Russian language for simplification and economic benefit.  The loss of one’s native language means the loss of unique phrases, idioms, and subtle historical details. The poet Valzhyna Mort is one writer who is fighting for the language, which she describes in parts of her book Factory of Tears.

Wave of Terror also answered a question that had been gnawing at me. Why did the people let the Red Army take over? Why didn’t they resist more? In the narrative, a key element made a great impact on me: the people were hungry and without basic necessities. In this state of desperation, any change was embraced, even if it meant turning on lifelong friends or family, and even if the promised changes never materialized. Stalin’s leaders offered food to hungry people, and although they didn’t get much, they were easily manipulated. It’s the same sort of manipulation that Hitler used to great effect, as well as the Roman Caesars who were able to draw crowds to the gladiator fights with the promise of food. Without the essentials of daily life, oppression can easily take root, because the ordinary person has so little to lose.

Lastly, despite all the fear and suffering endured, it was interesting to read of what doesn’t change. Old married couples still fought and young people still sought romance. People still danced and enjoyed a drink and found pleasure in the simplest of foods. Perhaps this was the key to survival-maintaining their humanity and dignity when others lost their own. 

Special thanks to Erma Odrach for the Review Copy.

The Blindness of the Heart, Julia Franck

Translated from the German by Anthea Bell

Winner of the German Book Prize

Most novels that explore the events of the Holocaust focus on the ‘Before’ and ‘After’-showing the events chronologically and the resulting impact. However, The Blindness of the Heart takes a reverse approach and begins by revealing a disturbing ‘After’: a young woman abandons her young son at a train station and disappears. We see how they’ve lived in horror for months, but his abandonment is still shocking. Then the author, Julia Franck, takes us back in time to the early years of this young woman, and the events that lead up to a lost little boy, confused, hungry and alone.

The mother is Helene, and her family is dysfunctional and damaged long before the Holocaust begins. Her identity as a person is in question before her identity as a Jew becomes relevant. As a nurse she helps care for her ailing father while trying to deal with her mentally ill mother. She thinks she finds a future, but nearly everything she is close to is taken away. She finds a way out of the impending doom by marrying a German who helps her with false papers that identify her as Anna, a German citizen, but their marriage yields nothing but the child. She raises him alone while working long hours in the hospital, assisting German doctors in the maternity ward, as well as in the forced sterilization of some female patients. Her son, Peter, is often left alone while she works, and while they remain together it’s clear she’s drifted away long before she leaves him literally.

The book is incredibly painful. A few times I put it down just to get away from the grief. The author makes a tremendous gamble by having her lead character do something that appears unforgiveable right off the bat. She is counting on the reader to ponder the back story and conditions of the woman’s life and see if her decision made sense. She shows how emotionally abandoned Helene had been, and the ugliness that fills her life. The problem is, despite Helene’s previous suffering, it’s very difficult to get over the impact of the first few pages of the book. The result is a tension that carries through the book and makes the narrative so compelling.

One factor I found fascinating was the details of the nurses and their struggles in Germany. The endless shifts, multiple duties, and repellent activities in their wards were well detailed, and a part of Nazi history that I wasn’t aware of. The fact that Helene works with new mothers is a link emotionally with her own insane mother and her own flawed nurturing. What motherhood means is an underlying theme, and the title makes you consider what kind of love is blind.

Additionally, Franck creates an unforgettably tense scene in which the hungry mother and son go mushroom hunting, and find themselves in flight to escape hunters that are not after animal prey. As she runs frantically, she appears to be hallucinating as she considers her escape route, Peter’s whereabouts, and the various ingredients for different recipes to cook, all spinning through her head at once. Her actions in the forest foreshadow what is to come.

In a few places I found Helene/Anna’s character to be incredibly cold. I understand that under her circumstances, self-preservation required her to withdraw emotionally. And very few aspects of her life were really under her control. Yet there was an element of simple kindness she seemed to lack, or perhaps, it was all used up.  In any case, the glimpse we get of Peter's future shows how the cycle of pain is completed.

Special thanks to Martin Wilson of Grove/Atlantic for the Review Copy.

The Rest is Jungle by Mario Benedetti

Translated from the Spanish by Harry Morales

Mario Benedetti is from Uruguay and the short stories within this collection are mostly set in the cities and villages of the South American nation.  It would be incredibly cliche to say that these short stories feel tall, but they do.  Some are only a few pages long, but the lingering effect is one of sighing acknowledgement that yes, this is how it is.

For, while diverse in characters and settings, Benedetti captures all the nuances of families and friendships, and the mind games that play on even after one participant is dead.  Not all are depressing, some actually made me laugh outright.  But it's an incredibly complicated study of human nature (a psychologist would probably love to evaluate this book and name all the symptoms) that never gets dull and is never predictable.  Pay attention to the clues, just when you think someone may laugh they instead deliver a fatal blow.  Benedetti doesn't do much foreshadowing (there's hardly time in a short story) so surprises occur.  His writing is so subtle too, that after a particularly traumatic event takes place, he simply continues with the story and lets you reel from the implications instead of spelling them all out.  He credits the reader with the intelligence and savvy to foresee what may happen, and doesn't prescribe it.  This lingering sense of wonder will have you returning to the plot later, in your head, as you continue to grasp what went unsaid.

"The Sweethearts" is one of the most perplexing of the stories.  A young girl is orphaned when her embezzling father commits suicide.  An outcast in the city, one family opens its doors to her, and she becomes friends with the family's son.  Almost thirty years pass in their friendship, and what you may expect to happen never occurs.  Instead, you see how a common bond of dysfunction creates a strange world that neither escape from, nor appear to want to.  Benedetti is especially observant when he notes how the community treats the innocent child:  "that duality was that the good families were always ready to smile..." at her, but at the end of the day "this fulfilled their quota of Christian pity, while at the same time allowing them to conserve their energy for that hour when they closed all the doors of all their houses, separating her from all...and making her feel that she was somewhat tainted."

"The Rage Has Ended" was poignant and subtle, told from the voice of a loyal dog who is the only witness to its owners adultery.  What the dog senses, and what it does, makes a tangible character in the play of secrets and lies.  And while the dog knows loyalty, he doesn't understand revenge. 

"Completely Absent-Minded" is one of the more amusing stories, of a man who flees his country for political reasons.  He travels the world, not caring much about where he is going, completely lost in the thrill of the journey.  "He liked people, but he didn't bond...."  and "He got along well with children and dogs".  Benedetti takes pains to describe the details that matter to the traveller, and more importantly, the ones that don't.  The man mixes up nations and rivers and continents, shiftlessly journeying on. Along with him the reader also becomes disoriented as to his place in the world, and the strangely appropriate ending is still somewhat devastating.

Especially nuanced are the stories told of fathers and sons.  Both wishing to appear to be more than they are, to impress the other.  The dynamics are the same no matter how wealthy or poor, good or wicked, or even how tragically bored some of them may be. 

The collection contains about 35 stories and some of them are expressed in an enjambment that is nearly poetic.  On one page a quote from Benedetti sums up the book beautifully: "We are a small nook of America which has neither oil, nor Indians, nor minerals, nor volcanoes, nor even an army dedicated to coups.  We are a small country of short stories."

Special thanks to Host Publications for the Review Copy.

The Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson

Translated from the German by Iva Jarosy

“One cannot cut the lines of experience out of one’s face, like the rotten bits in an apple; one has to carry them about in one’s face and know that one carries them; one sees them, as in a mirror, every day when one washes oneself, and one cannot cut them out, they belong there.”


“He had swore to her…that this was how it had all happened, as though he had first to mist the mirror slightly with his breath before he could dare to look into it. […] What can a man do but breathe at the mirror and look gently at his misted image?”

Mirrors are a repeating motif in Hans Keilson’s novel, The Death of the Adversary. Written during WWII, this novel has been republished this year. The Los Angeles Times wrote enthusiastically “It's as if, one morning, we were to learn that not only had Anne Frank survived the secret annex but was also still among us.” (Sept 26, 2010*) Mirrors generally symbolize self-reflection and contemplation, and are fittingly used to describe the inner questions that plague a young man as he realizes that Hitler’s influence was inevitably going to change his life. First, he hears his parents whisper and worry, and tries to decipher the codes they seemed to be speaking in. Next he finds himself an outcast in the neighborhood as the other children begin to avoid him. His mother takes the well-intentioned step of intervening on his behalf, trying to convince the children that they are all alike and should play together. His humiliation is complete, and never fully leaves him. Thus, he begins focusing on his “adversary”.

“…enemies will never die out in this world. They are recruited from former friends.”


The next salvo comes from a close friend who reveals he supports Hitler’s agenda. He explains to the unnamed protagonist that it is simply a matter of balance: just as elks need wolves to control their species and balance their habitat, so too, Germany is balancing itself. For the greater good, he implies. Their friendship quickly dissolves. The young man now explains the details of his experience, from strained friendships to watching his parents change to going into hiding.
Certainly, this novel has a more mature voice than Anne Frank’s diary. The protagonist is more somber and definitely more pessimistic. I didn’t find that the story gave any exceptionally new revelations about the time period, but it does provide a new perspective to describe the experience. One brief passage about the change in his parent’s attitude reveals a surprising aspect of human nature under trial: his father who bitterly lamented the rise of Hitler’s power becomes almost giddy with excitement when the horror begins, while his religious mother, who started out optimistic, begins to withdraw into depression and anxiety.

One thing that is especially fascinating is that Keilson never actually defines his adversary as Hitler. He uses the term “B” to represent him, although it’s clear of whom he speaks: a man with an evil plan and the power to implement it. Yet, at times “B” is also portrayed as an intangible force, a concept of evil bigger than the Holocaust. The ambiguity gives the reader pause to consider what defines evil and apply the revelations experienced to virtually anyone suffering oppression. Incidently, I was curious if by using the initial rather than the name, Keilson is attempting to lessen the power of Hitler’s name, giving it less fame. For example, notorious killers today are well known by name: Ted Bundy, Lee Harvey Oswald, or John Wayne Gacey. After a period of time when their horrific deeds are forgotten, they become simply a pop culture reference. By not using Hitler’s name, it could be that in some small way, Keilson doesn’t want to give him any further notoriety.

Special thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the Review Copy.

For details on Keilson’s life experiences as well as details about both of his newly rereleased titles, see the link below.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-hans-keilson-20100926,0,2360516.story

The Ambassador by Bragi Olafsson (literary fiction)

Translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith

It’s tough being a poet. First, there’s the whole stereotype of the cerebral, tortured artist who offers the world little but obscure verses. Then your Dad starts doing the passive-aggressive thing and slights your work whenever he can. Your son calls your career a ‘hobbyhorse’. You get no respect.

This is the world for Sturla Jon, a sucessful poet from Iceland. He’s tough, sarcastic, and is finding it hard to even respect himself anymore. He still writes poetry, but since he’s hit fifty, he wants to do something more. Novels, maybe. He’s dissatisfied with most of his life, and it’s starting to show:

“In Sturla’s opinion, there is an irony to this that results from a deception the poet himself perpetrates: when it comes down to it, his value is only ever evident from the price tag on the book…”

And to make one big step away from the starving artist that he imagines typical poets to be, he goes out and buys a top-notch overcoat, high style and big money. He’s old-fashioned, and decides the cell phone pocket will be perfect for his cigarettes. That one detail shows a great deal about him: he isn’t fitting in with the times.

“One moment Sturla feels there is depth and purpose to his writing but the next…he, the poet, starts to think that he can’t see anything in the production of poetry but emptiness and the surface emotion that still lifes offer: more or less beautiful textures, at best, things better suited to being the subject of a watercolor on the wall of a room.”

So with this new overcoat, and an invitation to a poetry festival in Lithuania, he makes a new plan. He’s going to move towards an experimental form of literature, and 'review' the events of the festival before it even happens. His cynical and disparaging review reflects all the clichés of poetry, and poetry festivals in general. Bad food, terrible lodging, and worse, pretentious poets who take themselves far too seriously than he thinks they deserve. His caustic review makes him feel fresh and innovative, and he leaves for Lithuania with low expectations.

However, despite the fact he condemns the poet’s lifestyle as often as possible, it’s revealing that he still wants to go. Why not just skip it? This is one of the complicating facets to Sturla: he’s not really sure what he wants to be, and at his age, it’s hard to change. His life is full of contradictions: he wins money (that he doesn't need) at a slot machine when he’s just killing time, and his aging father gets more attention from the ladies than he does. While he works part-time as a building superintendent (possibly the diametric opposite of a poet), he likes to hint to people that he’s a published poet. Who is the real Sturla?

Only in Lithuania does Sturla even begin to understand just how he fits in, and his exploits there are terrifying, frantic, and sometimes slapstick. He realizes that his “predicted” review is not only wrong, but almost criminally so. 

Lest this sound too serious, keep in mind that Sturla is possibly one of the funniest characters I’ve run across. He’s snarky and witty, and throughout the narrative there is a remarkable amount of humor as he pokes fun at himself, his family, and most of all, the literary world. The author, Bragi Olafsson, writes Sturla as the least expected poetic figure: needy yet badass, sensitive but acerbic, and always unpredictable.

The book in whole is more comedic than serious. Yet it also gives a unique glimpse into the world of literature and translation, cultural disparities, and historical influences that define a geographic location. I loved the little things that make Sturla a real person: the way he’s annoyed by his Dad’s constant calls on the new cell phone he finally gets, his simple desire to just get a cup of decent coffee, and the way he mentally rehearses little remarks to himself to get them right.  Additionally, Olafsson hints at the need for poetry and literature as a means of dealing with the contradictions and complexities we all face. 

Special thanks to Chad Post of Open Letter Books (University of Rochester)

for the Advance Review Copy.

This title released yesterday, October 12, 2010.

The Homecoming Party by Carmine Abate

Translated from the Italian by Antony Shuggar

Caution: Do not read while hungry. Heavy emphasis on Italian food delicacies will leave you a bit weak.

The Homecoming Party tells the story of a father and son, and their close relationship despite geographic distance. It tells of the childhood of Marco, a boy who grows up mostly in the care of his mother and grandmother because lack of work required his father to travel to France. This leaves him as the man of the house essentially, although his older half-sister and baby sister ignore him. His father’s infrequent visits are the focus of his life; he spends most of his year awaiting them. His days are filled with school, exploring the rural region with his dog, and playing soccer with his friends.

While they live in Italy, they are ethnically an Albanian village that still speaks the Arbereshe language. It’s from this home region that his father must journey to France, accepting horrifying work conditions just to be able to send money home. He remains faithful to his family, and the distance tears at him. It’s in his absence that his oldest daughter starts to behave strangely, and begins distancing herself from the family.

The story begins with the father returning to the yearly Christmas bonfire in the small village. He’s happy to be home, and generous with food and gifts for the villagers. However, as father and son sit to observe the flames, they discuss the peculiar events of his sister, and flashbacks occur that explain the closer connection between father and son.

This fairly simple story packs an unexpected punch. First, it reminds you of similar people who have to travel to distant lands for work and basic sustenance, and the danger it puts the family in. It also reminds you that danger can be present anywhere, and not just found on a distant shore. Lastly, the power of language, even the difference between a dialect and a language, is revealed in some of the complexities that occur: a battle between the old world and modernization leaves little place for variance.

The plot is strong, as it backtracks through events, and the alternating voices reveal more than just what the child or the father may have understood on their own. A few times, however, I had to back up a several pages to figure out who was speaking, and also get back on track with the timeline of events.  Since the father and son are the focus, very little was drawn out about the women in the family and what influenced them: I wish that had been expanded on a bit more as I think it would have helped explain some of the issues. The descriptions of the scenery, and the simple details of family life and delicious food create a lovely backdrop for the moral issues in play.

Special thanks to Europa Editions for the Review Copy.

Birds for a Demolition, Manoel de Barros

Translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey

“Poetry is to flap without wings.”

Birds for a Demolition is a compilation of a variety of poetry styles by Manoel de Barros, with some arranged more formally in stanzas and others appearing as short proverbs. A repeating topic is his early life in Brazil, in a region called the Pantanal. His small town and his childhood home next to a river clearly holds significance. He talks about the river often, and even uses the word as a verb at times. His voice is both somber and humorous, and when he gets a bit nostalgic, he reveals both.

In Invented Memoir II, he writes of his birthday as a boy, when his mother had no gift to give him. So she gave him a river.

…The same river that had always passed behind our house.
I liked the gift more than if it had been candy from the peddler.
My brother pouted, he liked the river as well.
Our mother promised him he’d get a tree for his birthday.
A tree covered in birds.
I heard this promise and thought it was fine.
The birds would spend the day on the banks of my river.
At night, they’d sleep in my brother’s tree.
My brother teased that his present got flowers in September.
And a river doesn’t get flowers!
I told him a tree doesn’t get piranhas.
What united us was swimming naked in the river with the herons.
In this regard, our life was a caress.

Apparently, the river was something he held on to, both as a personal touchstone and a poetic motif.  While the poetry within this covers almost 50 years of his work, the focus remains much the same. Vines, lizards, adobe buildings, trees, and even ants are woven into more serious topics.

In Ants,

I didn’t need to read Saint Paul, Saint Augustine,
Saint Jerome, or Thomas of Aquinas,
Not even Saint Francis of Assisi---
To arrive at God.
Ants showed him to me.

(I have a doctorate in ants).

In just these six lines he does two things: reveals his inferred truth regarding life and creation, yet throws in a twist of humor with his doctorate remark. This pattern of mixing the serious with the blithe makes the collection much more vibrant and appealing. He does this in short proverbs in “The Book of Nothing”:

There are many serious ways to say nothing, but only poetry is true.


My dawn is going to open at dusk.


To have more certainty I have to know more imperfections.


I wanted to be read by stones.


Words hide me without much care.


Wherever I am not, words find me.


There are histories so true that at times it seems they are invented.


I want the word that fits in the beak of a small bird.

Note that the proverb style he uses above uses large breaks of space (caesuras or caesurae??) to give you time to stop and reflect rather than move quickly through the verses. 

Lastly, he applies a paragraph form to some self-deprecating words of explanation in a section called "Desiring to Be":  "I write an archaic Manoel-esque idiolect (Idiolect is the dialect idiots use to speak to the walls and with the flies.)  I need to upset meanings.  Purposelessness is healthier than solemnity.  (To cleanse a certain solemnity from words, I use manure.)...The cerebral touches in my writing are just a precaution to avoid succumbing to the temptation to make myself less foolish than others.  I am highly regarded for my foolishness.  Of this I deliver certainty."

Special thanks to Cynthia Lamb of Carnegie Mellon University Press
 for this Advance Review Copy. 

This title releases today, September 30, 2010.

Beside the Sea, Veronique Olmi

Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter

It's difficult to decide what subgenre this literary fiction title would fall under.  In some ways, it's a crime novel, with the crime heavily foreshadowed from the beginning.  But, more likely, it would be a psychological thriller, one that has you holding your breath from the suspense and completely terrified by what you know is going to happen.  In either case, this book has an emotional pull that can't be resisted, even though you may wish to step away from it at times.

The story is of a troubled woman, a young mother with deep mental issues, who decides to take her two sons on their first trip from their city home to the sea.  Right from the beginning, this mother also indicates it would be their last trip as well.  They arrive to a dark and dismal seaside town, where the sea is far from lovely and the streets are filled with oblivious and often harsh strangers, with no idea of the horror that is unfolding.

In some ways the book appears to be working backwards from the inevitable crime that appears at the end, simply because each detail succeeds in predicting the event.  It's hard to explain how this forward-backward motion is accomplished, but it works to create intense suspense.  Maybe set a timer to remind yourself to breathe occasionally.

While this mother is clearly insane, there are moments when she appears almost sympathetic.  She details the efforts of social workers to instruct her on how to better 'mother' her children, and she resists their advice.  Since it's written in the first person, we get a glimpse at just how irrational she is.  She attributes ill motives to her children, strangers, and even the weather and the sea.  She seems to have no practical skills or common sense:  she finances their trip with a can of coins that turns out to be just a few dollars, although she imagined it to be a windfall. 

"I definitely was disorientated in this place, everything was always behind me and I didn't know it, everything was there, and I just kept turning, turning round and round while everything waited for me."


Her problem, likely some form of bipolar disorder, is presented by her almost constant need for sleep, and her vision is sometimes affected when anything remotely complex appears in her life (such as climbing the stairs to the hotel room).  It's heartbreaking to read of her young sons, hungry and silent, waiting for her to waken, while they sit in their cold and dark hotel room.  The oldest son, Stan, is an especially intuitive child, and there is a sense that he may know what is unfolding.

This would probably be considered a novella, but it's impact is not minimized by its size.  As a character study of the mother, it is flawless in describing an inner struggle with sanity in a world that appears insane on its own. 

Special thanks to Mieke Ziervogel of Peirene Press, London for the Review Copy.

To Mervas, Elisabeth Rynell

Translated from the Swedish by Victoria Hagglbom

“There is a quality of precision in life, an incorruptible order that cannot be made relative. Life is relentless the same way death is. Everyone has a place in their own story with a myriad of threads running forward and backward, upward and downward, like a web. If you want to cut yourself loose, you have to cut yourself off from who you are. You can’t just switch your life for another. The details of your existence may be unbearable, but they are nevertheless wrapped up neatly and connected to each other like the threads of the web.”

Marta has been living in such a web for years, since childhood. She grew up in an unimaginably difficult home, with a father that not only abused their mother (leading to her death) but also put Marta in the unenviable position of being his “helper”. His abuse was particularly horrific: he didn’t beat Marta, as long as she didn’t interfere and try and aid her mother. What child can evaluate such a position and decide what is best? Her only tactic, to cope with the fear and her sense of disloyalty was to withdraw within herself. She became the type of woman who is completely alone, even when surrounded by others.

Her upbringing made her unable to form a normal relationship with her boyfriend , Kosti, leading him to leave her, as her neediness pushed him away. The novel begins with her alone, in the years after her only child has died. The child, whom she named Sebastian but referred to usually as ‘the boy’, had severe birth defects and she had nurtured him, alone, for years. The narrative begins with her getting a letter from Kosti, telling her that he is now in a small town in northern Sweden called “Mervas”. Her isolation has put her in a place with very little human contact, and the letter impels her to finally seek the outside world. She contemplates the idea of going to see him at Mervas.

The rest of the book is her journey: both the physical journey of locating and travelling to Mervas as well as the emotional journey of making a new life. She’s constantly second guessing herself, and reliving horrific memories of her mother’s abuse. She’s not even sure she wants to see Kosti again…so much of her life has been restricted that she has atrophied, both physically and emotionally. Throughout her journey, details of her son’s tragic death emerge, and we see how it’s nearly unimaginable that she can move on into any “normal” life.

Regarding the surprise of his letter, she says “the few words he’d written were alive inside me…they’d reminded me of my life and the fact that I was still living it, that I was supposed to live it. I’d forgotten that. I’d stayed away from that truth. And a person can actually hide inside her own life, hide from life itself within the minutiae and everyday chores, hide from herself inside herself.”

As she travels to Mervas, she’s confronted with the fear of the unknown as well as an honest fear of herself. “My thoughts moved around in the room like anxious shadow animals, sniffing and listening. I almost thought I could see them flickering over the walls. Herds of fear ran down the slopes as if they were being hunted, being egged on by the thoughts and visions spinning in my head. The terror seemed to hatch in new places all the time, one vision after another appearing in long, painful sequences.”

To Mervas is the story of her journey, one that doesn’t arrive at any simple or easy conclusion. Much of the latter half of the book is ambiguous, and the reader can arrive at more than one conclusion about Marta. The value of this story, however, is clear: people are flawed, damaged, and searching. Even without consciousness, they are searching for a way out and redemption. How Marta coped with so many situations that were beyond her control is a fascinating glimpse of the resilience of the human spirit.

Special thanks to Jill Schoolman of Archipelago Books for the Review Copy.

Blue Has No South, Alex Epstein

Translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay

I can't decide if these are short stories, lyric essays, or poems.  In any case, Epstein has compiled little moments of mystery and romance, history and humor, into this slim volume from Clockroot Books.  There are no dramatic flares, and no heartbreaking losses.  Instead, the situations and events he describes in these short pieces are simple, personal, and honest.  There is emotion, but the quiet kind endured by quiet people, an emotion that reads far more realistic than some authors can describe effectively.

In "Memory Card":

"In the winter they buy a digital camera as a surprise for the grandchildren, but they don't know how to connect it to the computer they bought the year before....the old couple takes pictures of each other.  In March the woman dies in her sleep.  Her husband finds the instruction manual that came with the camera and reads about pixels, about digital zoom, and jpeg and avi files, and other strange, miraculous concepts.  In May he finishes the instruction manual, and removes from the camera the 1-gigabyte memory card.  He places it in his deceased wife's jewelry box and closes the lid."  The picture he has created in so few words reveals the enthusiasm of this couple to share with their grandchildren, the shock of death, and the quiet picture of a man diligently trying to figure out how to save her face.  That he doesn't wish to share this "memory card" illuminates how deep his feelings are.  I could easily picture him in a chair, trying to decipher the jargon and afraid of messing something up and losing the photos forever.  Epstein puts all that into a deceptively simple little paragraph.

In "Another Way Out", he tells another picturesque story.
"A king once imprisoned a poet in a cellar and demanded he find the most beautiful word in the world.  This legend has infinite endings.  In one, the poet dreamed he carved the word on the cellar's ceiling. When he awoke, he didn't remember it-only that it was written in the font now called FrankRuehl.*  In another, the poet doesn't discover (even in a dream) a hint of the word.  All he manages, completely by accident, is to invent the game of chess."  It has a fairy tale quality, dungeon and all, but the revelation of finding the most complicated game, the game of kings, in a search for beauty, is somehow exactly right.

Alex Epstein breathes life into a variety of topics in this collection:  cosmonauts, lost cell phones, dreams, and an escaped elephant heading to another zoo in search of lost love.  They are quirky and youthful but lack the sarcasm and edginess that sometimes settles into modern verse.

Special thanks to Hilary Plum of Clockroot Books for the Advance Reading Copy.

*FrankRuehl font is the ubiquitous Hebrew font style. There are many fonts that belong to this style, and all are based on an early 20th-century design by Raphael Frank.   Interesting to note that this font, as well as the popular Arial font, are both representative of Hebrew origins in printing.
(From http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=237)

Klausen, Andreas Maier

Translated from the German by Kenneth J. Northcott

“everything now becomes a sign of something.”

This would be a great subheading on the “Welcome to Klausen” village signpost. For within this small community, gossip and rumors, fueled by suspicion, make every event somehow significant. The fictional novel Klausen by Andreas Maier is based on many of the facts of this city, located in Northern Italy in the Bolzano-Bozen region, where the last thing the residents want is to be considered Italian. They prefer their South Tyrolean heritage, and their language of Austrian is the proof of their difference from Italy. The region is, in fact, an autonomous province, and one that is constantly at odds with their Italian neighbors. The region is a blip on the Autobahn A22, a place occasionally visited by tourists but usually left to its own devices.

In this novel, Maier focuses on the interactions of the residents, some long-time citizens and others who are new to the region and ready to develop parts of it. The shopkeepers keep tabs on everyone, and little goes on that doesn’t generate talk. The novel begins with one such event. Josef Gasser returns to Klausen from somewhere else. No one is sure where, or why, or what he is up to. His sister Kati is a much discussed topic in the small town, as she escaped and became a television star. But Gasser is less notable, and his behavior immediately strikes the townsfolk as odd. He doesn’t seem to want to engage with anyone, and he has no interest in old friends or even his mother. They label him an ‘industrious no-good’.

“…public opinion began to regard Gasser in a very critical light, because it was striking that he had said nothing about any of the issues that had been talked about and had expressed absolutely no opinion. This was not only seen as arrogant and presumptuous…, but it was also considered worrisome and even dangerous.”

Shortly after his arrival, other visitors begin talking about the noise from the Autobahn bridge nearby, with some opposed to its noise and others oblivious to it. Both sides begin a campaign of speculating and questioning the motives of everyone else. Soon an effort is made to actually verify just how big a problem the noise is, and the townspeople begin a free-for-all of dispute over the project. After some grossly exaggerated violence occurs, the town is now rabid with assumptions. Gasser becomes a prime suspect in an event that no one can even define.

Maier takes what could appear to be a wearisome premise into an amusing, if not hilarious, direction with his excelling talent at writing dialogue. He captures the heart of the people revealed in their seemingly idle chatter. He notices how tones change when people become suspicious. In one case a jacket is ‘misplaced’, with suspicion it becomes ‘abandoned’. A new meaning that alters everything. And it’s not just Gasser that is the victim of the gossip: an architect, Italians (in general), Moroccan squatters residing in an abandoned castle, even an aging poet become suspects.

In one particularly ironic instance, the mob latches on to the idea of three Pakistani workmen who live in the town as being responsible for an altercation. That the men weren’t present makes them all the more suspicious. A crowd gathered in a basement bar discusses them, and begins relating stories about them. At that unfortunate moment, one of the Pakistani men happens into the bar for a drink. Immediately he knows something is up, and as they begin to question him, he sees where they are going with their questions. When he resists answering where he was on the night in question, he is considered guilty. When he provides an alibi, he appears even guiltier for having one. He begins to fear for his safety because the crowd is looking for someone to blame, preferably an outsider. And thus the basis of the Klaussner’s resentment is revealed: they want no part of the outside. An “outside” world that to them is driven right to their doorstep by the Autobahn; a world inhabited by Italians, Albanians, Moroccans, and people different from them.

When I began reading this, I was slightly off track because of the blurb on the back of the book that mentioned a “crime scene”. I started reading in a linear direction, blinders on; intent on getting to what I thought was the point, the alleged crime scene. But about a third of the way I realized the story, crime scene or not, is in the dialogue. The eavesdropping on people so convinced in their own rightness that they abandon logic, and the gossip that spins out of control because no one is invested in finding the truth. At this point I restarted the novel, and it really helped me to grasp the humor that is dryly incorporated into the text. The novel is not for everyone, as for one thing, it’s basically one book length paragraph.

Maier also sprinkles truisms throughout the story that make give you pause: “Politicians look for problems to struggle against solely because they are looking for voters, and the best way to appeal to a voter is through the problem that he has, or thinks he has (or that the politician persuades him he has), and that this was all a disgusting process that never brought anything to people but great duplicity.”  The author demonstrates a clear observation of human nature, and how many will grasp at a ridiculous inaccuracy rather than a plain truth.

Special thanks to Chad Post of Open Letter for the Review copy.