Great classics: Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina (1877) is a novel by Leo Tolstoy. What can I say about a book that has been hailed as the best novel ever written? Let's start with the obvious. It is a very big book set in 19th century Russian with lots of characters. It is, therefore, quite a daunting book. You will need time and patience to tackle reading it but you will be rewarded every step of the way. You probably expect (like I did) a novel about an unfaithful wife who runs away from a cold husband leaving her beloved child behind. While you will find that, you will also find that Tolstoy pays great attention to other characters and story lines that are in no way secondary to the story of Anna Karenina. In fact, after her suicide, the novel continues for a few hundred pages and does not lose any of its interest. In fact, the other protagonist of the book is for me its best character, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin. But this novel is not so much about any individual characters as much as they are beautiful characterised by Tolstoy but about Russia as a changing nation. The leitmotiv of the moving train is very important in that respect, for instance: from children playing with a toy train at the beginning of the book through Anna's death by throwing herself in front of a real one. The train can be seen as an obvious symbol of material progress of Westernisation of Russia.

I know that I have not said anything new about the book and I have not mentioned many important aspects of it. I will just finish by saying this: do read it, it is a book that will stay with you.

Modern Classics: The Trial

The Trial (1925) is a novel by Czech writer Franz Kafka. Like most works by Kafka, it was published posthumously. The novel was unfinished by the author and could only be published after been edited by Max Brod. It tells the story of how bank worker, Josef K., is accused of an unnamed crime and is finally excecuted while considering himself innocent. The Trial chronicals the year between his arrest and his excecusion. The meaning intended by Kafka is not clear at all but I have read this novel as a satire of bureaucracy. Its long paragraphs make it quite a suffocating read, as it were, and this goes very well with his descriptions of airless courtrooms and the nightmarish sense of doom and madness that prevail throughout the book.

Untranslated Lit: La Tía Julia y el Escribidor (Aunt Julia & the Scriptwriter)

La tía Julia y el escribidor (1977) is a novel by the celebrated Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. The main narrative is about the love affair between the protagonist, Mario Vargas, and a Bolivian friend of the family, Aunt Julia. Mario is only 18, he works at a local radio station in Lima scripting the hourly news bulletins. He is also a halfhearted law student but he dreams of becoming a literary writer. Aunt Julia is a divorcee in her mid 30s. This central part of the novel is somehow autobiographical. Apart from the love affair, there is the famous Bolivian writer of radio soap operas, Pedro Camacho, who in spite of working almost non-stop on his writing, strikes a friendship with Mario.
This main narrative is interrupted by chapters which loosely connected plots could well be lifted from Pedro Camacho's soaps but, actually, are a great show of Vargas Llosa's skills as a short-story writer. This is a novel full of humour but also passion and intrigue, as any good soap opera.

All the books I have read this year

So far I have read the following books in 2007:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Master by Colm Toíbín
The Light of Day by Graham Swift
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Story of the Night by Colm Toíbín
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Jude The Obscure by Thomas Harding
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
White Noise by Don Delillo
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
The Child In Time by Ian McEwan
Où es-tu? by Marc Levy
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
In Between the Sheets by Ian McEwan
The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks
Everyman by Philip Roth
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
La Prochaine Fois by Marc Levy
The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
El Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
Stupeur et Tremblements by Amélie Nothomb
Regeneration by Pat Barker
The Sea by John Banville
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Fair Play by Tove Jansson
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Je Voudrais que Quelqu'un M'attende Quelque Part by Anna Gavalda
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
L'Amant de la Chine du Nord by Marguerite Duras
Historia Universal de la Infamia by Jorge Luis Borges
Corazón Tan Blanco by Javier Marias


53 books in 3 different languages.

Untranslated Lit: Corazón Tan Blanco (A Heart So White)

Corazón Tan Blanco (1992) is a novel by Javier Marías. It is a mesmerising book which starts with the suicide of a woman in the past. The reason for the suicide will be revealed in the penultimate chapter. The narrator, Juan, has just got married to Luisa and has thus started mourning for his abstract future: "And now what?" His father, Ranz, was married twice before marrying Juan's mother Juana. His second wife, Teresa, was Juana's sister and the woman whose death is described on the first chapter. The reader never finds out about the first wife until the reason for Teresa's death is revealed.
This is one of the best novels I have read recently and has whetted my appetite for more of the writer's books. Years ago I read the excellent Todas las Almas (All Souls) and I think it is high time I got reacquainted.

Untranslated Lit: Historia Universal de la Infamia

Historia Universal de la Infamia (1935) is a collection of short-stories by Jorge Luis Borges. The settings range for North to South America, from Persia to the Far East. This is a book about men, adventures in exotic locations, things that could have had happened in history but most probably only did in Borges' rich imagination. This book is probably easier to read than The Aleph or Ficciones, nontheless it is just as imaginative and literary worthy.

Untranslated Lit: L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (The North China Lover)

L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (1991) is a novel by Marguerite Duras. It is a retelling of her early Goncourt winning novel L'Amant (The Lover). Back in later 1920s French Indochina, a 15 year old girl and a Chinese man in his 30s have an intense love affair. She is the daughter of a poor French teacher and he a rich heir with a European education and a future in banking. She has never loved anyone other than her younger brother Paulo, whom their mother and Thahn try to protect from their opium-addicted older brother. The Chinese man is enganged to be married to a wealthy Chinese girl.
The lack of characterisation (most of the characters are not even given a name) does not make this novel any less beautiful and sad. Duras draws for her own life and her experiences of colonial life (like the girl in the novel she was born and raised in Indochina herself and seems to have had a Chinese lover when she was 15 herself). The impossible love affair ends when the child goes back to France by boat. Years later, now settled in Paris, she receives a telephone call from the Chinese man who tells her that he never stopped loving her.
Subtletly narrated and sometimes structured as a film script - L'Amant was indeed turned into a movie but Duras did not approve of it and this second version of the novel is most probably a reaction to it - this book is of a rare beauty and, despite its subject matter, utterly unsentimental.

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.

Contemporary Reads: The Emperor's Children

The Emperor's Children (2006) is Claire Messud's latest novel. It is a wonderful comedy of manners set largely in New York city in the months leading up to 9/11 . The book has been hailed by critics from both sides of the Atlantic. To read the review published on the New York Times click here.

Contemporary Reads: The Eye in the Door

The Eye in the Door (1993) is the second novel on Pat Barker's trilogy about the Great War. The story this time centres around one of Dr River's patients, Prior, and Charles Manning. Apart from themes of class and anti-war sentiment that were already tackled by her previous novel, Barker also deals with persecution and prejudice.

The Eye in the Door is perhaps a richer novel than Regeneration and I am sure it can be as enjoyable read on its own as as part of the trilogy.

Contemporary Reads: The Sea

The Sea (2005) is the Man Booker Prize winning novel by John Banville. Its fragmented narrative follows the return of art historian Max Morden to the seaside house where he used to spent his childhood holidays. The different fragments are mostly made up by his memories of different periods of his life: his wife's cancer diagnosis and death; his relationship with his daughter, Claire; his tragic childhood memories. This novel is concerned with grief but also with memory that, unreliable as it sometimes is, still has a profound effect on the present.

Some readers might consider this book difficult to read as it is not really plot driven. What seduced me was its poetic language, its essayistic qualities and how the fragmented narrative is really at the service of the story.

Other books I have read by the same author: The Book of Evidence.

Contemporary Reads: Regeneration

Regeneration (1991) is a novel by Pat Barker. It fictionalises the real-life encounter between army psychologist W.H.R. Rivers and Siegfried Sassoon. Other real life characters, notably poet Wilfred Owen, are part of the narrative.

Pacifism, class, psychology, anthropology or the effect of the Great War on ordinary people are all elements of this important novel.

This novel is the first of the Regeneration Trilogy together with The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road.

Untranslated Lit: Stupeur et Tremblements (Fear and Trembling)

Stupeur et Tremblements (1999) is a novel by Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb. It narrates the year a Belgian girl spent working for a Japanese firm in Tokyo before returning to Europe to become a writer. During that year, faux pas after faux pas, our heroine was subjected to several humiliations at work. Having been employed as an accountant she is finally demoted to guarding the toilets or being 'Madame Pipi' as she puts it.

This novel is partly biographical and her witty observations on modern-day Japan are hilarious when they are not tragic.

Although I have read it in the original French, the novel has been published in English in the UK and I certainly recommend it.