Contemporary Reads: Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy's Complaint (1697) is a novel by Philip Roth. It is largely a rather candid sex-ridden monologue by Alexandre Portnoy. His Jewish upbringing in 1940s New Jersey, his highschool years and his failed relationships with shikses including The Monkey (a Southern illiterate girl called Mary Jane) are all part of the narrative. The climax is Portnoy's visit to Israel where he becomes impotent. Sex features abundantly and explictly. This novel is both funny and poignant.

Contemporary Reads: So Many Ways to Begin

So Many Ways to Begin (2006) is the second novel by Jon McGregor. It is a book about the lives of ordinary people expanding nearly a century although not always told following a strict chronological order. Its main characters are a family and the story is simple enough: David is the adopted son of Dorothy, he is a museum curator; he is married to Eleanor, who comes from a hard-knock working class family from Aberdeen; they have a daughter called Kate.
When he accidentally finds out that he is not Dorothy's child, David will try to find his Irish birth mother. He will never succeed. The fact that Eleanor is bound to depression will lead him to have a brief affair with one of his co-workers at the museum, Anna. All these are perhaps banal dramas which are completely plausible and possibly quite familiar to readers. What McGregor does through his slightly fragmented narrative and his subtle characterisation is to observe the ordinariness of life, as it were, as a way of celebrating the beauty of love, family, home. It is a delightful novel.

Untranslated Lit: Ficciones

Ficciones (1944) is a superb collection of short-stories by Jorge Luis Borges. I would personally highlight Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote; La Muerte y la brújula; and El Sur.

Contemporary Reads: The Ghost Road

The Ghost Road (1995) completes the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. Perhaps more introspective than its predecessors, this novel sees Prior's return to the front in France. We thus get a present tense account of the horrors of war for the first time in the trilogy. His (bi)sexuality is also very explicitly explored. We also get a look into River's work in Melanesia before the war. A very poignant and interesting book, the best one out of a remarkable trilogy.

The other books in the trilogy are: Regeneration and The Eye in the Door.

Untranslated Lit: Je Voudrais Que Quelqu'un M'attende Quelque Part (I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere)

Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part (1999) is a collection of short-stories by French writer Anna Gavalda. 12 short-stories set in modern day France, episodes in the ordinary lives of ordinary people told in the first person singular. The language is also everyday French but also blunt and even crude sometimes.

I am not the biggest fan of short-stories but, as a French student, I have greatly enjoyed most of the stories on this collection.

Rereadings: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1985) was Jeanette Winterson's first novel. I have just finished reading it for the second time (I read it the first time as a student). It is such an original powerful book. The story (at least in part autobiographical) was a very daring one to tell at the time of its publication: the novel is about an adopted girl being raised in Lancashire by a self-righteous born-again Christian mother. Its structure is not any less daring as it is original: without being told in strictly chronological order, the story is not hard to follow. The reader (or at least I did) will get a sense of the "madness" Jeanette, for that is the narrator/protagonist's name, was brought up in and also how she will finally be able to find her way out of it. Precisely, in the last chapters there is a parallel fary tale-like narrative that works to help the reader understand the protagonist's progress.

Other novels I have read by the same author: The Passion and Sexy the Cherry.

Contemporary Reads: Fair Play

Fair Play (1989) is a novel by Finnish author Tove Jansson. Although she is better known internationally as a children's writer and illustrator thanks to her creation The Moomins, there has been some recent interest on her adult fiction after the publication of the English translations of The Summer Book and a collection of her best short-stories The Winter Book. Personally, my introduction to Jansson's fiction has been through Fair Play. A novella made out of vignettes depicting the lives of two elderly friends Mari and Jonna. The narrative is simple and straightforward and nothing much seems to happen: trips abroad, stays on an island, life on their Helsinki apartments, visits from friends, ... What I got from this book is a minimalist description of true friendship. The confidences, shared memories, little conflicts, etc.

The novel is subtle but it reaches where a lot of more complicated books fail to reach. It's true, it's honest and I love it.

Contemporary Reads: The Road

The Road (2006) is a superb novel by Cormac McCarthy. After some unnamed cataclysm, a man and his son walk on the road trying to stay alive. The world is a desolate, dusty and ashen place, gray and rainy.

This is a very sad, brilliantly written and ultimately hopeful book.