Eva
This book about a clumsy and neurotic 40 year old Swiss woman - winner of the Austrian book prize - was a bit of a struggle for me. At first the humour made me chuckle, but as the book is a lot chunkier than it should be, I soon got rather annoyed at the chaos magnet woman and her endless quirky thoughts. But by the end - with the end finally in sight - i made peace with it, and then enjoyed the anticipated wholesome messy-family reunion.
What I did enjoy about this book, is how it made me want to listen to the songs it mentioned.
Un exercice de lecture française. Je l'ai lu deux pages à la fois, tous les jours au petit déjeuner, avec le dictionnaire. J'aime beaucoup Houellebecq, ce libre se sent encore plus aboutie et plus mature.
A concise tale based on reality. I appreciated Hackl's tight narration and quite enjoyed the story, but ultimately more from a historical-knowledge perspective than as a literary experience.
Berest raconte l'histoire de ses ancetres et en meme temps l'histoire d'antisemitism en Europe de 20eme siecle. De pogroms en Russia qui fait fuir ses grand-grand-grand-parents a l'invasion de la France par l'Allemagne nazie jusqu'a des commentaires discriminatoires entre enfants de l'ecole de sa fille. Toutes emballe dans un mystere centre sur une carte postale, quel Berest et sa mere on decide de resoudre.
Quelle histoire! Et quelle facon interessante de le presenter. La narration est en part etapes de l'enquete de Berest, et en partie des histoires semi-fictionelles sur ses ancetres. Dans la seconde moitie du livre, les parties fictionelles semblent prendre le dessus, et le livre perd un peu de cet equilibire passionnant que j'aimais bien plus tot.
Started listening to this, and also quite liked the narration, but was then put off by the large jumps in time between the individual stories. Probably in the mood for something more linear, so I'll stop this now.
Another one for my women-in-finance(male-dominated-workplaces) series, and it's doing a good job. Bonus point for sticking out by being set in the 80ies. I also appreciated how even though the misogynist/feminist angle was present it wasn't given top billing. The protagonist rather floats through this world of money and markets, while figuring out her life. Lightweight and fun, entertaining.
A la fin du 19ieme siecle les puissances europeennes se partagent l'Afrique. Un jeune geometre est envoye pour tracer la frontiere nord du Congo. En souffrant de multiples maladies locales, il est fascine par la nature sauvage et violente et les personnages colores qu'il rencontre. Alors que son expedition monte lentement le fleuve Congo, la nature violente du lieu et la violence des colonisateurs envers la population locale s'imposent a son esprit. Tous les personnages dont le chemin a conduit en Afrique, semblent fuir les obsessions de l'esprit, du coeur ou de la chair. Alors que les habitants se battent pour leur liberte face a la repression, les envahisseurs fous tentent de trouver leur propre liberation dans la pratique chinoise du tatouage et de l'art de la decoupe humaine. Un roman grotesque et magique comme un reve fievreux!
About an exuberant little girl that sometimes loves and feels so much, that she can't help but bite and destroy. A brave little girl that goes to battle against a field of nettles without caring about being wounded. A daydreaming little girl that befriends trees and cold mossy rocks and lonely chickens. A stubborn little girl that is haunted by dark shadows yet is brave enough to never back down. A short-tempered little girl that constantly argues with her mother, yet secretly craves nothing more than her mother's cheek against hers. An imaginative little girl that is so good at inventing fantasy world, that her little brother lives in a world of tigers. A precocious little girl that wants nothing more than to stay in her cocoon of a childhood longer, yet slowly grows to realize that change is inevitable.
A super immersive, delicate and quite funny look at childhood in a Mountain village in the 1920s in Austria. Another wonderful novel by Marlen Haushofer. Little Meta is quite something.
The book opens with the statement that nearly 1 out of every 5 women on this planet lives in China. That's a staggering number. A potentially powerful one. While Hong Fincher does a lot of thorough reporting on the repressive patriarchy that currently rules over Chinese women in society, law and economy, strangely this book left me with more hope for a revolution in China than any of the other writings I've encountered so far.
Feminism is always at the forefront of democratic revolutions. And Chinese women are slowly getting more empowered. Despite all the cruel tactics the government employs against them.
Gender equality originally was one of the selling points at the founding of the Communist Party. Yet since then the government has slowly returned to more conservative family stereotypes. As in all authoritarian regimes. Women need better exam results than men to enter certain universities. Government sponsored campaigns shame single “leftover” women into marriage. From 1990 to 2010 Chinese women's income relative to men fell from 77.5% to 67.3%!! Yet feministic activists also slowly gain small victories. Since (only) 2015 China has a law against domestic violence.
Empowering women, the best weapon against authoritarian regimes! Still a long way to go, but there's a glimmer of hope.
This little book is subtitled “A Manifesto”, and it contains 2 speeches-made-into-essays that Beard gave in 2014 (The Public Voice of Women) and 2017 (Women in Power). Drawing on examples from Greek and Roman mythology (Beard is a classicist) she elegantly and concisely demonstrates how women's voices have continuously been oppressed and ridiculed. How the notion of power is inherently male and how women breaking into positions of power have to adopt maleness. Ending on the manifesto part, Beard calls for a redefinition of power itself.
This is a very quick and excellent read, and and at the end you're left wishing she had added on another essay with an outline for a path on how to get past these still existing culturally indoctrinated prejudices.
After decades of being shunned, psychedelics have slowly made their way back into official medical trials. Researchers are now repeating experiments, that already back in the 50ies+60ies showed the positive effect of psychedelics for people dealing with addiction, depression and death anxieties. Hadn't it been for Leary, the whole field probably wouldn't have been illegitimized and tabooed. In a need for rebranding, the field now reorients itself in the direction of “psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy”. It's not about the wild-hallucinatory-color-trip, it's about the long-lasting effects on your brain that a temporary loosening of your ego-structures can have.
When our default mode network becomes too rigid, it shows itself in too heavily ego-focused behavior. If we're backwards-focused this results in depression, if future-focused it represents in anxiety. Neuroimaging of the effects of psychedelics (and heavy meditation) on the brain shows decreased activity in the region that represents the default mode network. It's a state of hyper mindfulness, that allows for more connections across all areas of the brain, which is not unsimilar to the entropy-rich brains of young children. It's a window of mental flexibility, neuroplasticity, that allows for a “reboot”, a rewriting of too rigid mental models.
I found the historical and political section of the book slightly too long, but I really enjoyed all the insights into the neuroscience, the current medical trials, and especially Pollan's own trip experiences. He does a good job of describing all the fears and concerns an outsider would have, planning and undergoing a first trip.
Civil war, guerrillas, kidnappings, violence, outages in Columbia in the 1990s as seen through the eyes of 2 young girls of different standings. Chula, who is nine, lives in a gated community together with her sister and mother (and a generally absent father). Petrona, who is thirteen, lives in the slums and is her large family's only provider. When Petrona comes to work as a maid for Chula's family, the young girl is fascinated by her. A bond of secrets ensues that soon becomes dangerous.
Intertwined with their personal tragedies we follow along with Pablo Escobar's terror on Columbia, his flight and capture. Which was informative, what frightening times.
The book holds two coming-of-age stories, and starts out as decent storytelling, and then towards the end becomes quite haunting with its conclusions. Experiencing the causes and effects of trauma through Chula's eyes, without having the external explanatory perspective on it, was very touching. Sometimes the girl's thoughts and observations felt a bit too wise for her age, but it definitely made for good reading.
A story of three neighboring families, how they are tangled up in each other and how a tragedy has lasting repercussions. First I was really confused about who belongs to which family, then I wasn't that into the magical realism aspect of the novel, and ultimately I got a bit fed up with how these characters treated each other. Not nearly as good as [b:Abigail 43452825 Abigail Magda Szabó https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579715045l/43452825.SY75.jpg 1845425] or [b:The Door 497499 The Door Magda Szabó https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175252169l/497499.SY75.jpg 485644]. Still, somewhere in the middle, I was engaged.
Wonderful. This novel is so many things at once - dystopian horror, office satire, immigration story - that you'd think don't go together, but Ling Ma does it perfectly. Another 2018 novel that intriguingly mixes quirkiness and (magical) realism into social commentary. It fits right in next to [b: My Year of Rest and Relaxation 36203391 My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1513259517s/36203391.jpg 55508660] and [b: The Pisces 32871394 The Pisces Melissa Broder https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500926737s/32871394.jpg 53479347].
“If we were trapped in a body, then we would do bodily things.”
On Ada's birth the gates are left open, and evil spirits - Ọgbanje - flow in. From early on the Ada is many, a mass of brothersisters, children of Ala, the goddess of earth, who shield her and split her to protect her from her own memories. But only when she encounters strong physical trauma, the many crystallise and a personality emerges that learns to take possession of Ada's body. The new self is aggressive yet protective, loves Ada, but also sets out to violently damage her and those she loves.
A spiritual and dark take on split personality disorder, that I liked more than I originally thought I would. I especially loved the ambiguous push-and-pull dynamics of how the spirits simultaneously want to protect and harm Ada, how Ada asks for their help but also wants them gone. Trigger warnings, there are many turbulent and painful images of them going wild within and with her body.
About a friendship in the Italian mountains. About how big or small one's life is meant to be. And about silent fathers and all the stories they don't share. And destinies. About solitary men and the women they hurt in the process. About the seasons and how they never change. And about the river and the lake and the mountain changing. And about finding one's calling in all the mountains, or just the one.
A quiet, yet not too quiet story. I really liked this one. I really like stories of mountains it seems. There could have been a little bit more. Give Berio and Bruno more time to feel more epic.
4.5 rounded up
Recently rereleased, this 1956 relic paints a melancholy picture of after-war Austria. An old decaying castle stands in as metaphor for the formerly grand Habsburg empire. The once-expensive interior crumbles from water damage, the ceiling is falling in, the parcs are overrun by wild and damp nature. The owners don't have the funds to renovate, yet a young literature hotshot in love with the heiress wants to transform the castle into a centre for culture. A love story and drama ensues, while the wish for renewal fights against the natural process of decay.
High on nature and ghosts of the past, the novel spirits you away into a foggy and cold forrest, a swamp land with leaking boats and moss-covered stone sculptures. The participants play dress-up with the decomposing garments of the past and the modern wear of the future. Nothing quite fits. Yet while the moss covers all, the stone underneath still remains.
Ce roman raconte le destin de trois femmes dans la societe polygame, musulmane, et profondement patriarcale au Cameroun. Le conseil standard pour les femmes qui sont discourages a se eduquer, qui sont forcees de se marier, et qui sont maltraites - est patience (munyal). Patience, n'agissez pas, n'elevez pas la voix, ne raisonnez pas. Acceptez votre destin en silence. Pendant que ta famille regarde sans t'aider pendant que tu es maltraite.
Les deux jeunes femmes essaient a agir contre cette system, sans succes. Mais l'histoire de l'autre femme montre comment un tel systeme positionne automatiquement les femmes les unes contre les austres. Si le systeme est tout ce que nous connaissons, nous vivons le systeme.
Et si des realities et des possibilities alternatives entrent dans notre conscience sous la forme d'emissions de television occidentales, ces chaines de television seront interdites.
Pour ma lecture en francais je evidemment choisis des ecrivains francophones, la plupart de temps. L'exception ici c'est la nouvelle roman d'evricain italian Paolo Cognetti, qui a arrive dans la traduction francaise avant la version anglaise.
La sujet de Cognetti est encore la vie de montagnards. Ceux pour qui la vie montagnard est la seule chose ils connaissent, et ceux pour qui la montagne est l'appel de l'aventure. L'ecriture est tres beaux dans ses vingnettes qui decrire la simplicite et la durete de la vie la-haut.
Et il nous introduit aussi a des regardes tres poetiques sur la montagne, que montand un montagne c'est la meme chose que voyageant vers le pol nord. Le paysage subit le meme changement.
If a creative mind seeks inspiration, it's always fruitful to look into the past and find inspiring personalities who stand out due to their tenacious execution of their vision. Kankimäki finds her heroines in a series of 19th and early 20th century Africa/World travelers (Karen Blixen, Isabella Bird, Ida Pfeiffer, Mary Kingsley, Alexandra David-Neel, Nellie Bly) and a few Italian Renaissance painters (Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi). We get biographical portraits about these women, interspersed with the author's own travels following into their footpaths.
All these women are fascinating, and the book starts out strong with a long focus on Karen Blixen (part of this destroyed my overall romantic vision of Blixen that obviously came from the Sydney Pollack movie). But after a while the other women start to blend into each other, as their experiences feel too similar (even if admirable). And then it becomes more about the author herself than about her ‘night women', as she struggles to write this exact book.
This book definitely could have been shorter, or divided into two parts (the travelers, the artists). It's always sad if a book that starts out great drags towards the finishing line. Nevertheless, I loved learning about all these women. 3.5
There's an Austrian genre, and now this book fits in perfectly with [b:Ein ganzes Leben 22550484 Ein ganzes Leben Robert Seethaler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406198884l/22550484.SY75.jpg 42007512], [b:Verschüttete Milch 44560918 Verschüttete Milch Barbara Frischmuth https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553170486l/44560918.SY75.jpg 69156847], and [b:Himmel, der nirgendwo endet 586855 Himmel, der nirgendwo endet Marlen Haushofer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1176052585l/586855.SY75.jpg 573690]. I cried tears when she returned to the village. More insecurity than stoicism in this one though.
Abstract and colorful. I feel I potentially missed out on the meta-level by reading this in French.
I really enjoyed this novel from a Dagestani writer about the clash of modern-day and tradition in the dusty landscape of rural Dagestan. Djinns are exorcised and curses cast at wedding banquets, while in the presence of smart phones and office jobs waiting back for you in Moscow. We follow along through the eyes of the two protagonists who have escaped their home village, and only indulge and participate in all the customs for their family's sake.
There seem to be multiple layers to how one can read and interpret this story. There is the levity of the marriage plot, the meeting of the maybe-lovers, the amusing bickering and meddling parents, the hilarious old customs. But at the same time there are the misogynistic views of most of the young rural men, the quite scary threat of the stalker, and so many stories devaluing women.
And then there's the political and the religious, the constant rumor mill, the encroaching fundamentalism, the dueling mosques, the corrupt politicians. There's defamations and murders, and everyone's supposed to pick a side. Tied into this, with a hint of magical realism, is the mysticism of Sufism and the Islamic figure of Khidr.
All in all this novel feels carefully crafted, with hints sprinkled throughout.
Yes, the ending felt abrupt. But, I also don't know what else would have been a fitting ending for this story.
A strawberry blonde beauty in a leather suit kidnaps a priest, takes him away in her sidecar motorcycle, ties him to a tree on a secluded meadow and over the course of a few days proceeds to tell him her life story which includes the confession of the seven murders of her seven ex-lovers. Oh, and she's called Magdalena. While the murders teeter from justified to revenge-fueled, we - and the priest - learn to love Magdalena. She's escaping suffocation - by family, provinciality, Austria - and rides her motorcycle all across Europe on the search for adventure and connection. While her relationships start out fulfilling, they all quickly take a turn, with her lovers exhibiting different shortcomings that are variations of men's expectation for women to be domestic and demure.
Not as pulp as that description might make it appear, but rather a covertly mischievous tale, occasionally wordy yet never boring, with very entertaining biting takedowns of Catholicism and the patriarchy.
Hard not to visualize Magdalena as Marianne Faithfull in The Girl on a Motorcycle.
I am not quite sure what to make of this. A granddaughter rediscovers her long-lost grandmother, spends two weeks with her that are full of leisure, gardening and semi-philosophical discussions, and in the process finds herself reinvigorated with a new joy for life. Seems all perfectly fine, and the grandma is indeed a great character, with her successful weed business, her sexuality and general teasing nature. But there were lots of character and plot moments that felt too flimsy and were neither quirky (the random door labelled ‘centre of the universe'?) nor substantial in their message of mindfulness. Maybe the solution would have been to make the story longer and fill it with more strange characters and moments, because the few it had (the count, crawling on his knees) were quite fun.