2023 Tournament of Books Shortlist This debut novel by professional violinist Slocumb comes packaged as a mystery about a stolen Stradivarius, but at t2023 Tournament of Books Shortlist This debut novel by professional violinist Slocumb comes packaged as a mystery about a stolen Stradivarius, but at the core, it's a coming-of-age tale about a young Black men who struggles to make it in the world of classical music, where performers are expected to be white. Protagonist Ray inherits a fiddle from his grandmother, practices religiously, and soon becomes known as a prodigy. When the instrument is inspected for restoration, it turns out it's a 10 million dollar Strad with a dark backstory that slowly reveals itself as the story progresses. While Ray aims to partake in a prestigious music competition, his family tries to convince him to sell the fiddle and make all of them rich, while a white family claims ownership as well. Then, the violin gets stolen...
In a way, this is a motivational and inspirational text about a resilient, talented, and determined young Black man standing up against his non-supportive family, greed, racism in the world of classical music, and the dark forces of history that once again try to perpetuate injustice: Ray demands agency, and then he employs it to rectify his situation. It's also a celebration of music as a universal language that ultimately can't be turned into a weapon to exclude, but encompasses everyone. And sure, this is not the most literary text ever written, but it's captivating, intelligent, and fun, and the fact that a real musician illustrates the scene gives it depth and vividness.
A compelling read, rendered by a writer who knows what he's talking about. While in the English-speaking world, mere coming-of-age novels tend to automatically be qualified as a Bildungsroman, this actually is one: Ray gradually learns how to exist in the flawed world around him, as his own person....more
There are a lot of weak points in this book, but the novel is captivating for its audacity: Our narrator is a female hebephile with the telling name CThere are a lot of weak points in this book, but the novel is captivating for its audacity: Our narrator is a female hebephile with the telling name Celeste Price, a 26-year-old middle school English teacher who rapes teenage boys without remorse. Celeste is an exceptionally beautiful hypersexual manipulative predator, and the way she is written turns her into a cipher: Nutting is not interested in investigating a psychological disorder, she is performing a test with literary and societal tropes related to sex. In the main narrative thread, Celeste grooms and rapes 14-year-old Jack, and all events play into the widespread "sexy teacher" fantasy that often glorifies statutory rape. When she starts a second sexual relationship with a minor who can't consent, things escalate further.
The obvious comparison here is of course Lolita, told by a male hebephile, but while Humbert Humbert tries to manipulate readers with rationalizations and beautiful, enchanting language, Celeste Price, wife of a policeman from a wealthy family, acknowledges the criminal nature of her behavior and fears to be found out, but has no moral inhibitions and openly admits that she wants sexual satisfaction and power: She dreams of forever being remembered as the first sexual partner, an idea commonly connected to the male virginity fetish. The language is plain, drastic, and explicit, without any ambivalence, compassion or moments of moral doubt. Celeste is a sociopath not unlike Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but while Patrick haunts physical perfection and status, Celeste uses physical perfection and her teacher status as tools to solicit sex.
The character of Celeste Price is inspired by a woman the author went to high school with: Debra Lafave, a former English teacher in Tampa and convicted sex offender (weirdly also the ex-girlfriend of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter). The novel follows Lafave's criminal case concerning the main points. There were also rumors that Harmony Korine would turn "Tampa" into a movie, but unfortunately, the project has apparently been dropped.
So all in all, this is a stomach-turning, relentless piece of literature intentionally devoid of lyrical beauty and as such a fascinating experiment in the field of transgressive writing....more
In the Ottessa Moshfegh tradition of severely messed-up female protagonists, Beagin gives us 45-year-old Greta, a former pharm tech with a recently brIn the Ottessa Moshfegh tradition of severely messed-up female protagonists, Beagin gives us 45-year-old Greta, a former pharm tech with a recently broken engagement whose current job it is to transcribe the sessions of a sex coach - and we're not talking about a serious therapist here: Om is, as the name suggests, a New Age amateur who is still consulted by lots of folk, thus granting Greta access to numerous potentially compromising secrets of the people living around her in Hudson, New York. Listening to a series of recordings, Greta is increasingly fascinated by Om's new patient Flavia, whom she privately calls "Big Swiss" (as Flavia is a tall Swiss woman), a 28-year-old married gynecologist who never had an orgasm. When the two meet at the dog park and Greta recognizes Flavia's voice, the women start an affair - but of course, Flavia can't know that Greta is aware of all of her trauma due to her being the one transcribing Om's sessions...
The women at the center of the text are both hanging on by a thread due to past trauma they haven't overcome: Flavia was severely assaulted by a man, and Greta has repressed memories relating to her mother's suicide that occurred when she was only 13 years old. Their relationship is doomed for several reasons, and what propels the story forward is the question when the women will reach the point at which they will finally be unable to escape their demons. The witty dialogue (quite a few chapters mainly consist of transcribed therapy sessions) and quirky characters take away from the heavy subject matter and give the text a light-hearted feel that was probably the main reason for the novel being turned into an HBO series that is supposed to premier this year.
Still, the fact that the serious themes are often released with a copious amount of gallows humor does not render the text harmless: Flavia and Greta suffer, and while we learn about Flavia's past very early on, the details of Greta's backstory are only revealed at the very end. The fact that she decides to live in a decrepit old Dutch house with her roommate Sabine is a clear gothic hint at her inner world though: Her mind is crumbling, she lives devoid of comfort. The women mirror each other in certain respects and take different roles, the ghosts they haunt start to appear inside and outside their minds.
I have to admit though that the ending felt slightly anticlimactic, and it came too abruptly. Sure, some metaphors are heavy-handed (a shard of glass in a foot? come on), some twists appear far-fetched. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the smart writing, the fast one-liners, the overall concept, as well as the unusual female characters....more
This utterly absorbing pseudo-autofictional variation on Less Than Zero with thriller and un-true crime elements as well as an abundance of sex scenesThis utterly absorbing pseudo-autofictional variation on Less Than Zero with thriller and un-true crime elements as well as an abundance of sex scenes reads like an over-the-top historical novel about the 80's - it's an eccentric pageturner and great, smart fun! Our protagonist and narrator is one Bret Ellis, a man who penned bestsellers like, you know, American Psycho. The fictional Ellis looks back at the year 1981 and the events that made him who he is: We learn about a psychopathic killer called the Trawler and an over-the-top cult who haunt Los Angeles, and they come for 17-year-old Bret and his friends who are seniors at the elite Buckley School - needless to say, real-life Ellis also graduated from Buckley.
In the novel, we meet the classic protagonists of every American high school drama: The simple-minded jock (Thom) and his prom queen girlfriend (Susan) - Bret is in love with both of them -, the spoiled rich friend of said prom queen (Debbie) who is Bret's girlfriend, the joint-smoking outsider (Matt) with whom Bret has sex, plus the hot mysterious guy (Ryan) with whom Bret also has sex (it's 1981, and people are not supposed to know about Bret being gay due to the stigmatization). The whole thing has a dark, sinister air: Most of the characters seem to know that they are playing roles, that this life of riches and parties is a charade, and of course there are tons of drugs, alcohol and sex to numb the pain. Enter Robert, the hot new guy (another stock high school drama character): Bret mistrusts him and, based on some possible hints, sets out on the quest to prove that he is indeed the Trawler, so a serial-killing maniac, all the while writing on a little novel called, you guessed it, Less Than Zero, about a bunch of disaffected high schoolers (ha! And did I mention that LTZ protagonist Clay has a poster of Elvis Costello on his wall, much like fictional Bret?).
With the arrival of enigmatic Robert and the sudden death of Bret's secret lover Matt, heightened paranoia begins to disrupt the relations between the characters: Inspired by Susan's dispassionate demeanor ("numbness as ecstasy"), Bret has long started to build up a wall of alienation, but now this gets fueled by his fear of the Trawler and his investigations into Robert's intentions - Bret becomes, as he says, "the tangible participant". He takes more and more drugs and becomes more and more unreliable - the fact that he is an aspiring writer known for his wild imagination also doesn't make him more trustworthy (this is a particularly wicked variation on the Künstlerroman). Another major factor dulling his perceptions is his constant teenage horniness: Even Robert might be terrifying, but he also turns him on. The novel is full of detailed sex scenes, as well as gruesome crime scene portrayals.
To the sound of 80's music, watching classic 80's films and wearing hip popper clothes from the decade, Bret and his friends seem determined to fit in the general Hollywood panorama, to hold on to appearances that give them safety, which, as every Ellis novel tells us, is an ultimately futile endeavor. What makes "The Shards" so unbelievably fun is how self-conscious, how meta the text is: Ellis invents his own origin myth, he claims to tell us why he took on his persona and how he garnered his reputation by serving us a tale of un-true crime that treats the 80's as a historical decade - which, of course, they are, but it's just so sovereign how Ellis laughs about the datedness of what first made him zeitgeisty. The American Empire of the 80's, it's long gone, and this author knows it.
Ellis remains a writer who refuses to be fully explained, to be placed and categorized - and he proves it with a novel that remixes his former work while turning the idea of autobiographical explanations into a travesty (see also Kracht's Eurotrash and Greene's Travels with My Aunt). Ellis indulges in shifting the portrayal of his fictional "Bret" character into someone untrustworthy and glamorously sinister, and I'm all here for the drama and the cheeky role play. With 700+ pages, this text could still be longer, because it is so enjoyable and, much like a series, opens a narrative space that invites readers to linger. I'd love to see this as a movie or a series - although a true-to-the-novel rendition would clearly be R-rated! :-)
(Side note: Swiss Ellis fan and German-language literary superstar Christian Kracht recently published a novel about an author called Christian Kracht that also refers to his own debut novel, Faserland, and that also mocks the idea of an explanatory, autobiographical origin story - and Kracht's novel is called Eurotrash, a term mentioned six times in Ellis' American Psycho! WEIRD, and I love this crossover.)...more
Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Memoir & Autobiography 2022 This memoir by „iCarly“ star McCurdy made a huge splash in the US and was pusWinner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Memoir & Autobiography 2022 This memoir by „iCarly“ star McCurdy made a huge splash in the US and was pushed by the likes of Drew Barrymore, so people who know a thing or two about child abuse, neglect, and the trauma of a Hollywood childhood. McCurdy tells the story of her manipulative, overbearing, aggressive mother and how she pushed young Jennette to become what she couldn’t achieve to be: a famous actress. When the author turned 21, her mother, the person she spent her life pacifying and trying to make happy, died from cancer, and McCurdy found herself wondering who she herself actually is (except a self-hating alcoholic with an ED) and what she wants from life.
To me, the disturbing factor of the book is mainly rooted in the fact that all of these stories from/about Nickelodeon/Disney child actors sound so similar, and still keep repeating themselves – this doesn’t mean that McCurdy’s story isn’t important or valid though. It’s a solidly written, interesting book that has proven to be helpful for other survivors of the system it describes.
Probably best consumed in the audio book version, read by the author....more
Wrapped up in a murder mystery at a prestigious New England boarding school, Makkai's new novel revolves around the topic of femicide while at the samWrapped up in a murder mystery at a prestigious New England boarding school, Makkai's new novel revolves around the topic of femicide while at the same time questioning standards of wokeness and tackling cancel culture - and I really enjoyed how she plays with classic genre writing (think The Secret History) and current phenomena to ponder social justice. Our protagonist is 40-ish podcaster Bodie Kane who lives next door to her husband: The couple has separated, but they are still good friends with occasional benefits and raise two young children together (how zeitgeisty do you want your main character to be? YES.). When Bodie takes up a temporary teaching job at Granby, the elite boarding school in New Hamsphire she herself attended, she once again gets wrapped up in the murder case concerning her late roommate, beautiful (and white, and rich) Thalia Keith, who was killed in 1995.
When Bodie and the students who attend her class dive into the investigation of Thalia's murder in order to produce a podcast on the matter, they become more and more convinced that the man who has already spent over 20 years in prison for the deed is innocent - the Black athletics coach was simply the one who best fit the desired narrative. It becomes clear that the person who is repeatedly directly addressed in the novel - the whole text reads like a long letter to him - is a prime suspect who has never been investigated: The music teacher. What did the students back then know, and why didn't they speak up, helping the man who went to jail and pointing out the factors that seemed dubious? What role did the social climate play, what responsibility do they carry individually?
Questions of changing awareness, but also agency and responsibility are underlined by the second plotline that alternates with the first one: Bodie's husband Jerome, an artist, gets canceled on twitter because years ago, when he was in his thirties, he had a consensual relationship with a 21-year-old employee of the gallery he was working with, which also leads to Bodie being attacked online. Will Bodie and Jerome lose everything over a legal relationship that went sour a long time ago?
When the apparently contrasting plotlines start to merge, the story becomes a real pageturner: Suddenly, Bodie and her investigative team have the possibility to use the online community that chased Jerome to chase the man they deem guilty...
Makkai uses her story to ponder framing, narratives, and preconceptions - what better place to illuminate the repercussions of how stories are crafted than in literary fiction? Young Bodie was an outsider at Granby who has lived through trauma and didn't have the status and habitus of the other students - Makkai shows the social dynamics at play, between classes and genders. The same goes for the discussion about Jerome, the husband - here, Makkai asks uncomfortable questions about the instrumentalization of victim narratives in order to gain status and attention. The whole thing is intercut with scenes from the film class Bodie also teaches at Granby, where students learn how to see and interpret images while considering the power of montage (I also had to watch all the films mentioned in college and got flashbacks! :-)). Talking about montage, Makkai has also inserted several references to real-life femicides, raising awareness on how they are perceived and what that means.
So sure, Makkai has once more written a novel that is unreasonably long for what it has to say, but she has also once more written a text that tackles highly relevant topics in a clever way, challenging our preconceptions and underlining the complexity of the real world - plus it's super entertaining. The protagonist, Bodie, is an imperfect, messy, complicated woman, and that's the kind of female character I want to meet on the page (please note how she is not at all defined by her role as a mother). This book will be quite the challenge for people longing for literature that tells them what to think, and what's not to love about that? Certainly, the title "I Have Some Questions For You" does refer to the suspect who is directly addressed in the text, but it is also printed on the cover which is directed towards: The readers.
If this becomes a bestseller and wins some prizes, I'm all here for it.
Winner of the National Book Award 2022 No no no, Tess Gunty is NOT the new David Foster Wallace, and the whole comparison makes no sense, and why do thWinner of the National Book Award 2022 No no no, Tess Gunty is NOT the new David Foster Wallace, and the whole comparison makes no sense, and why do the ads even claim that, and why does a young female writer have to be compared to a dead male one if she decides to write over-the-top fiction, as if she needs to have her whole operation legitimized by some dead dude? (I love DFW, but please, make the nonsense stop). The title-giving "Rabbit Hutch" is a crumbling housing complex in Vacca Vale, a fictional town in Indiana. The Rust Belt dwellings inhabit the typical problems one expects, like poverty, unemployment, and a general air of resignation. As the text jumps from one inhabitant to the next, we learn how different tenants live in these surroundings, while the shadowy equivalent of a protagonist is 18-year-old Blandine, a young woman who, in sentence numero uno, exits her body - you're asking what that even means? This questions drives the story.
So Gunty certainly has a heart for the American Midwest (much like your humble reviewer, a Minnesota aficionada) and intends to investigate how people deal with gentrification, alienation, and the decline of traditional industries (here, the car company is called Zorn, which, fyi, is the German word for wrath / rage). While books that revolve around the topics mentioned usually operate with social realism and heavy moral implications, this text focuses on playfulness and boldly experiments with aesthetic choices, throwing all kinds of narrative ideas and images at us - I highly respect the drive and daring nature between Gunty's writing. She works with different text forms and uses the isolation between the characters as a stylistic means, and it all builds up to one gigantic extravaganza of over-construction.
She also offers some diverse and quirky characters, but for me, the assemblage of various destinies did not quite come together, and I wasn't invested in any of them. POVs change between multiple characters, overwriting is never far away, and the whole thing relentlessly attacks readers with ... all kinds of stuff (which, again, is at the same time rather admirable).
So all in all, I do not feel like this is a bad book, it's just not for me: Too meandering, too broadly scoped for my taste. It's frequently charming, but intentionally rambling everything-but-the-kitchen-sink writing, and I can't deal with it. I've first read the book some months ago, and frankly, I have already forgotten the vast majority of the plot....more
Now Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 *aaargh* Joint Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2023 with the equally simplistic Trust A twist on David CopNow Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 *aaargh* Joint Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2023 with the equally simplistic Trust A twist on David Copperfield, focusing on an Appalachian boy whose life is overshadowed by the opioid epidemic? That sounds like a fantastic idea. And Kingsolver does a great job crafting Demon Copperhead's voice, making the resourceful boy (and later young man) sound witty, empathetic, and engaging, infusing his whole vibe with some The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course we're also dealing with an important topic, and Kingsolver is here to give the overlooked and left-behind a voice - but this is where the problem starts.
I am not at all saying that a successful, famous writer is generally unable to convey what it means to be a person like destitute Demon in the rural South, it just doesn't work very well in this particular text, and the reason can be found in the plot itself: While Kingsolver has a lot of empathy for her characters and is obviously very upset about the societal situation - this book is rooted in her impetus for change -, everything that happens to Demon is already present in the readers' preconceived notions of socially unstable, "backwards" Appalachia: Teenage single mom with substance abuse issues who dies? Check. Mean step-dad? Check. Abuse in the foster system? Check. Demon gets addicted to opioids? Check.
Sure, the language is often evocative due to the strong narrator Demon, but at the end of the day, Kingsolver activates stereotypes that already exist in the readers' repertoire, and then adds some social commentary (capitalism is bad; rural communities deserve respect; the Sackler family is trash, etc.), so we all can feel like we are standing on the correct side, that we who are reading this are the good ones. This unchallenging outrage activism, no matter how well-intentioned, has a tendency to be patronizing and to serve as a narcissistic tool of moral self-assurance. It's, to put it bluntly, intellectually lazy, and it certainly does not help to show people from Appalachia in a new, more nuanced light - on the contrary: It only tells us what we already believe to be true.
I, for once, want literature to challenge my beliefs, especially regarding communities I am not familiar with, so groups of people that only exist as reflections in my head to begin with (I am German, but I think Appalachia is a region that is unfamiliar to many Americans as well). When a novel relies so heavily on widespread notions and then adds clichéd narrative devices (of course Demon, in the most classic of all classic Bildungsroman motifs, is also an artist; and there is the tragic twist; and a football coach; and the good-hearted grandmother, ... *argh*), it becomes rather annoying, especially because this novel is way, way, way too long. Boy, it is long. It's insane. It just goes on. And on. And then it goes on. And finally, the ending is pure kitsch.
So I guess this has solid chances to get Booker-nominated as the Oprah book club crowd-pleaser with the socially relevant message that outstays its welcome and is of dubious literary merit. If so, I'm glad that I can already cross it off my list. Demon as a character is great though....more
Now Nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel 2023 Hokeah tells the story of Indigenous Ever Geimausaddle from his childhood up to his thirNow Nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel 2023 Hokeah tells the story of Indigenous Ever Geimausaddle from his childhood up to his thirties - and he does so by letting eleven of his family members narrate one chapter each, thus evoking both the motif of the quilt (blankets that are also used as storytelling devices through their designs) and the round dance. Only in the last chapter do we hear from Ever himself. Over the whole novel lingers the question whether Ever is cursed due to a traumatic event that occurred in his childhood: Corrupt police rob his family and beat up his father so bad that he becomes permanently disabled. Ever tries to overcome intergenerational trauma that includes this event, but expands beyond it.
Now to be honest, my first impulse was to be very skeptical here: Tommy Orange's There There, which I LOVE, uses a similar polyphonic narration to illustrate the destiny of various indigenous people living in Oakland, with one of them being the alter ego of Orange (who is half Cheyenne and Arapaho, half white). But Hokeah has a different focus: Like himself, Ever is of Cherokee, Kiowa and Mexican descent, and he uses this heritage to ponder inter-tribal relations as well as the situation of Mexicans and people with Mexican roots in the US. In the bio on his website, Hokeah stresses that he sees himself as a regionalist Native American writer particularly interested in two tribally specific communities: Tahlequah and Lawton, Oklahoma, where his novel is set, and where his own family resides.
So there might be some autofictional aspects in this story full of vivid characters that exemplify problems like drug and alcohol abuse, racism, historical injustice, and poverty, but also the potential of familial solidarity, love and perseverance. Ever and many characters aim to carry on their ancestors' legacy, but while leaving theitr trauma behind. While Ever searches for a home for himself and his family, all other narrators frame him after their ideas (which they must, it's their perspective) - but what is Ever's idea of home? This question moves the story forward, as well as the looming curse that readers wish him to evade.
A fascinating round dance of a story - I'm very curious what Hokeah will write next....more
Loneliness and sadness pervade the pages of this novel about beauty and cruelty, as exemplified by the friendship between Allison, a model, and VeroniLoneliness and sadness pervade the pages of this novel about beauty and cruelty, as exemplified by the friendship between Allison, a model, and Veronica, an older, less attractive women who dies of AIDS at a time when the illness was hardly understood. The story is crafted as a look back by Allison, now in her late 40's and working as a cleaning woman. What disturbed me most is how the 80's model and party scene is depicted as utterly depressing, a place and time where young people drift through New York and LA, and everything is void - and, surprisingly, boring (and this is probably not what the text is trying to convey).
Allison's parents, the melancholic father who flees into music and her cheating mother, are wonderfully rendered, but Allison herself quickly bothered me as a person about whom I had to learn quite a bit that didn't captivate me: I wanted to learn more about Veronica, so for me, the book picked up in the last third, when she comes into a clearer focus. The women meet at an ad agency, where Veronica is a proof reader. And she is a complex female character: Not young, not beautiful, not cool, not successful, frequently degraded by her surroudnings - but in love with bisexual Duncan, who dies of AIDS. Then, Veronica gets the diagnosis and is abandoned by almost everyone she knows.
It is only then when Allison steps up to help her, and she struggles with complicated feelings towards Veronica. This is the interesting story here, not all the oh-so-shocking sex scenes, the unsurprising depiction of the 80's modeling world as predatory, or the minor characters that remain pale and forgettable. The pacing is off, and the cut-up style montage technique that is supposed to mirror random thoughts flashing through Allison's mind does not work: The effect is not intensity, but distraction. Hey, Gaitskill: Stop throwing random bits of info at me, I want to hear about Allison and Veronica, not some randos Allison dates and then doesn't date, and a sister who does stuff I've already forgotten (I just finished the book).
I want to hear more stories about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, including female perspectives, and I want to read more stories about non-conforming women and women who do not fulfill societal standards. But this ain't it, unfortunately. ...more
This smart and hilarious short novel tells the story of two frenemies who, as art critics, try to replace life by art while denying the communicative This smart and hilarious short novel tells the story of two frenemies who, as art critics, try to replace life by art while denying the communicative and social nature of creative human expression. The unnamed narrator befriends his companion-turned-opponent Schmidt at Oxford, where the two re-discover the title-giving painting "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss" in a textbook – from then on, both dedicate their lives to studying this early Renaissance artwork and promoting it as the most important painting ever conceived. The narrative is interspersed with the life story of the artist who produced the image, German Count Hugo Beckenbauer, who was not only a fake count, but also a sex-addicted maniac who went on to die from syphilis.
To a German, this character is particularly funny, as everyone around here knows that Beckenbauer is of course not a fake count, but a fake Kaiser: "Der Kaiser" is the widely popular nickname of soccer icon Franz Beckenbauer. Also, Count Hugo spends a considerable amount of time stumbling through Düsseldorf, a city that is inextricably linked to Joseph Beuys who believed in the power of human creativity and thus claimed that everyone could be an artist.
Schmidt, on the other hand, spends his waking hours gatekeeping art and defending that only experts are allowed to judge it – when the narrator speaks out against this distinction fetish, it causes a rift between the two that builds up to a feud which extends to the "disciples" of both critics, fueling a quasi-religious crusade about true art and "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss" in particular. To Schmidt, an Austrian who likes to indulge in Thomas Bernhard-style rants, all art created after Cézanne's death in 1906 is trash, and he and the narrator loose themselves in their delusions of grandeur so much so that they wreck all their human relationships over their obsession with Count Hugo and his so-called masterpiece.
While the narrator claims that their publications on the painting are widely read and praised, still convinced of the rationality of their obsession, the reader realizes that these art critics, as Franz Kafka famously put it, stared long enough into the abyss – and now the abyss stares back into them (not only Schmidt dies of a lung condition, Bernhard (sarcoidosis), Kafka (tuberculosis) and Beuys (heart failure due to the inflammation of lung tissue) did as well). Those two are intellectual fanatics, constantly pondering the meaning of the "holy donkey" depicted by Beckenbauer as well as the apocalypse and its significance for "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss". The prison-like character of their ruminations are mirrored by Haber’s fantastic use of circular phrases and how he conveys the real nature of the men’s dedication while it also remains clear that the narrator does not realize his mental disposition.
This novel is a hilarious satire on the perversion of art as a pure means of distinction, as a way not to interact with, but turn away from the world, as everything Beuys wanted to (and did) shatter. I frequently thought of Clemens J. Setz and his text Kayfabe und Literatur. Rede zur Literatur, in which he, another Austrian, rants against writers who "develop their style as if it was their character", authors who have no interest in acknowledging the social nature of storytelling. Mark Haber is with Setz and Beuys, and the way he makes his case is unbelievably smart and entertaining....more
I love the unsettling, uncanny atmosphere of this wonderfully disturbing feminist novel about grief: Song Yan is haunted by her past dream of becomingI love the unsettling, uncanny atmosphere of this wonderfully disturbing feminist novel about grief: Song Yan is haunted by her past dream of becoming a concert painist, which she traded for becoming a wife - music was her home, now she hopes her husband will be just that. But when her mother-in-law moves in, Song Yan gradually discovers that she never really knew her husband, that he carries traumas and secrets (including an ex-wife and a kid, while he refuses to have a child with Song Yan). While the marriage becomes more and more precarious, Song Yan mysteriously receives a letter from her father's favorite concert pianist who was presumed death, and she starts to play again. And then there are the deliveries with different mushrooms that appear at her door, as well as a talking orange mushroom that manifests in her dreams...
While I struggled with her debut Braised Pork, I really enjoyed how An Yu amps up the weird in this deeply humane novel that relates each plot development to freaking fungi: They seduce the mother-in-law to spill secrets, they help Song Yan ponder her identity, and they suddenly grow in apartments, letting the line between reality and hallucination oscillate. There is a The Vegetarian feminist vibe involved, as Song Yan tries (and partly really wants to be) the traditional Chinese wife she is expected to evolve into, but the music at the core of her identity is a ghost she cannot shake, she cannot replace it as a partner in this symbiosis.
I was intrigued how complex the plot is crafted, how the imagery is open to different readings, and that Song Yan is not simply a victim of society, but a messy individual that often makes the reader wonder how intimately she knows (and can know) the inner workings of her soul, and that of the people around her. The enigmatic star painist that re-appears is searching for the sound of being alive, and composer and mushroom enthusiast John Cage is invoked, who famously knew about the sonic resonance of silence (see: John Cage: A Mycological Foray / Silence: Lectures and Writings). Alas, what can the silences of the characters in the novel reveal about their grief, about the absences and ghosts they wrestle with?
Interestingly, Icelandic artist Björk has recently released a "mushroom album" (her words), Fossora, which is, of course, great. The album also deals with grief, in this case the passing of her mother. Nevertheless, she explains that her "fungus period has been fun and bubbly" and stresses the connection to the soil and the unruly nature of wildly growing, various fungi - also an interesting foil to read An Yu's novel, and see the fungi as creative, resistant forces of hope.
An exciting novel, that should get some award recognition for its daring, weird nature and its sovereign refusal to neatly answer all questions it asks....more
Set in an alternative version of the US, narrator Charlotte Marie (C. M.) Lucca takes us along for the ride as she researches the mysterious past of hSet in an alternative version of the US, narrator Charlotte Marie (C. M.) Lucca takes us along for the ride as she researches the mysterious past of her late wife, ploymath art sensation X. It all begins when another author dares to publish a celebrated biography of X that enrages her widow, as she feels it doesn't do X justice, so the book we read starts as a revenge project intended to set the record straight - but then, Lucca's extended research becomes a dark journey into the reality of emotional abuse and dependency. Is X, the artist known for her plethora of personas and literary/ film/ music/ visual art projects, a genius that riffs on the postmodern fragmentation of ourselves, always developing and moving forward by transforming into different manifestations, or is she a fame-hungry, manipulative, ruthless narcissist?
Lucca, we learn, left her husband for X and gave up her successful career as a journalist to become a full-time wife, while eccentric X set the rules: She was the adored, wild child artist, and her wife gave up her agency. With Lucca, we dive into X's many secrets, starting with the fact that she was born in the Southern Territory, which in the narrated world are the Southern US states that left the union after WW II and became a dictatorial theocracy before being invaded by the North in 1996, the year X died (the parallels to German history - wall, secret police and all - are pointed out repeatedly in the text). As a young woman, X managed to flee the strictly policed Southern Territory, an almost impossible feat, and after that took on various identities in almost all art spheres to evade her own trauma and the agents trying to kill her.
We learn about X writing songs with David Bowie, discussing books with Kathy Acker (and becoming not one, but several bestselling authors), making it as a folk legend, succeeding in the fields of photography and visual installations, traveling through the US and Europe and impacting (and manipulating) people everywhere, before it becomes public that she is indeed just one person - which cements her fame. We learn about X's marriages and friends, and there are references to real life people, events and art pieces en masse.
And while these shenanigans are glamorous and the art is amplified by the political background, we also get drawn into the debate about the ethical production of art: X's eccentricities can be read as authenticity - or as her being an utterly terrible person, whom Lucca was unfortunate enough to love. X's control over Lucca's life extends beyond the grave, it's a form of dependency and obsession with a cruel person that emotionally abused her (and not only her). The realizations that come as a product of Lucca's research alter her sense of self: "It was the ongoing death of a story, dozens of second deaths, the death of all those delicate stories I lived in with her."
Sure, nothing about this novel reads as particularly plausible (who would marry a person they know virtually nothing about and then proceed to just never ask basic question?), but it's not supposed to be realistic - rather, it's a game that plays with fiction and nonfiction as well as with the question what we can know about a person and, as an extension, about ourselves. The text offers tons of mock sources, photographs and other images, and it's cleverly done. What has to be said though is that the book is way, way too long, which sometimes lessens its impact, and the alternative political background takes center stage for a part of the novel, but then almost disappears as a theme. Some other interesting ideas, for instance the dominance of female artists post-WW II, are mentioned, but aren't properly worked through.
Still, I remain intrigued by Catherine Lacey's output, by her ambition to craft daring, innovative stories, by her beautiful prose, and by her complex characters - it's just great fun to read and to discuss....more
Confession: Most of this novel tells a very predictable story that remixes current cultural discussions, from Kim Kardashian's manufactured body to stConfession: Most of this novel tells a very predictable story that remixes current cultural discussions, from Kim Kardashian's manufactured body to structural abuse à la Harvey Weinstein on to female enablers like Ghislaine Maxwell, but there is a very, very interesting discussion about female empowerment wrapped up in this, and I was intrigued. In the first storyline, 19-year-old narrator and protagonist Anna Wrey emancipates herself from her old-school feminist mother and dives into neo-feminism: She wants to become Insta-famous, and she is willing to manipulate her looks accordingly, because, you know, her body, her choice. As she is naive and attention-hungry, she gets trapped by a ruthless manager/pimp. After ca. 25%, an alternating storyline sets in, in which 35-year-old Anna, who left her Insta-life behind and is now a worker at Sephora, tries to undo her surgeries and instead aims to look like a woman her age: This procedure is the title-giving, life-threatening Aesthetica. If my math is correct, this part of the story takes place in 2033, so to envision a procedure like that might be prophetic.
The silly young woman desperate for likes is not all that interesting, the point here is that Rowbottom questions whether some renditions of so-called female empowerment aren't just re-packaged capitalist ads, rooted in misogyny - and what it means if women decide to take part in this game. And it's not that her novel isn't sex positive: There is a scene in which she shows Anna wanting to join a sex party, and wanting to join a threesome - this is here exploring her sexuality, being held back by her (male!) manager. But more and more, Anna plays into a sexualization that is imposed on her, trying to look the Insta-model part, giving up on her agency - and mostly, she decides to do that. Welcome to the heart of a messy discussion that needs to be had.
The complexity is enhanced by juxtaposing Anna with her old-school feminist mother, a woman she first looks down upon because, as Anna figures, she does not understand that it is fun to play the role social media expects a woman to play if she wants to be successful: Fame, money, parties are waiting as a prize. Turns out: It's not that fun. And then there's Anna's friend Leah who has moved to Australia, and who as a runner struggles with her body image in different ways. Social media, the societal gaze and dysphoria are major themes here.
So I read the book almost in one sitting, because it's a page turner and intelligently conceived - on an aesthteic level (haha, see what I did there?! sorry), it might not be super-innovative, but it is certainly well written with a trance-like atmosphere that smartly mirrors the many, many drugs consumed, and it should get some attention from the Women's Prize and the Tournament of Books....more
Well, guess what Alice/Alicia discusses with her therapist in the upcoming Stella Maris? That's right: Chemist August Kekulé and the relation between Well, guess what Alice/Alicia discusses with her therapist in the upcoming Stella Maris? That's right: Chemist August Kekulé and the relation between language and the unconscious - which is also the topic of McCarthy's 2017 essay "The Kekulé Problem". I'll get to the bottom of your novel, Cormac, just you wait! :-)
Quotes: - "the unconscious is a machine for operating an animal." - "The unconscious is a biological operative and language is not." - " the actual process of thinking—in any discipline—is largely an unconscious affair. (...) The truth is that there is a process here to which we have no access." - "How the unconscious goes about its work is not so much poorly understood as not understood at all."
Part 1: The Passenger Cormac McCarthy, America's finest author of postmodern westerns, switches gears and gives us a kafkaesk pageturner about a salvagPart 1: The Passenger Cormac McCarthy, America's finest author of postmodern westerns, switches gears and gives us a kafkaesk pageturner about a salvage diver named Bobby Western (A+ for literary trolling, love it). But make no mistake: This novel still ponders American myth, the 89-year-old author creatively twists his classic themes into a novel that feels fresh and only familiar if you look closer at what McCarthy does. Let's try to disentangle the intricate plot: Bobby and his colleagues dive for a sunken airplane, but find one body and the black box missing. Suddenly, agents start chasing Bobby, rumaging his apartment and questioning him, one of his colleagues mysteriously dies in Venezuela, the government strips Bobby of his financial means and voids his passport, citing tax issues. Yes, folks: Plotline A is Kafka's The Trial, McCarthy style.
Meanwhile, we learn that Bobby was in love with his schizophrenic sister Alice/Alicia (both names exist in the novel, adding to the general feeling of destabilization) who killed herself, and that he is still grieving her. In intersections, we meet Alice/Alicia - and her hallucinations, worn out vaudeville and minstrel characters she has philosphical conversations with. At least that is we as readers think, until Bobby meets one of them in real life... or is it a dream? a coma? The whole novel is one big oscillation, a mirage.
And, as promised, we have smart twists on American myth: Bobby inherits gold and has to dig for it in his grandmother's basement (the poor man's goldrush); he gets into oil - at least at an oil rig (hello, No Country for Old Men); he takes trips that complement his inner journey , but not only to the West (frontier pushing/On the Road), but in all directions, even becoming a race car driver in Europe at some point; aaaand - you've been waiting for it, you get it! - this is my fellow Catholic McCarthy, so we ponder one of the original sins of America, which in this case is not the genocide the country was build on (Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West), but the atom bomb: Bobby's father worked with Oppenheimer, and Bobby is haunted by intergenerational guilt.
The novel heavily relies on dialogue, it is almost an oral history of everyday America and its relationship with American history: We get many, many scenes in bars and other closed quarters where Bobby talks about all kinds of things, from love to John F. Kennedy, with friends and acquaintances, including a transwoman - McCarthy is usually not a writer that incorporates many female perspectives, this is his first work that, with Alice/Alicia, even has a female protagonist. The many dialogues mirror the theme of reflection and inward travel, but also allow the author to touch upon all kinds of additional subjects. Between that, we get many slower ruminations and highly complex scientific explanations: Not only was Bobby's father a physicist, Bobby also studied physics at Caltech, and his late sister was a math genius.
The time- and plotlines are fragmented and readers have to play close attention to stay on top of this ambitious work. As the plot progresses, Bobby gets further and further reduced, turning more and more inward. While most of McCarthy's other novels (just look at the border trilogy) describe nature as both beautiful and relentless, we now get powerful, luminous descriptions of the underwater world, a world that is also scary, cold, and deadly. This protagonist does not venture West, he ventures into the deep.
Sure, there is too much going on here, and the scientific details that now juxtapose the religious motif are excessively intricate, but you know what? This is a masterfully crafted, intelligent, ambitious pageturner, and I loved reading it (although what unsettled me is how McCarthy, as mentioned: 89, employed the passenger motif: There is A LOT of nonchalance here when it comes to passing over to the realm of the dead). On to the sibling novel that focuses on Alice/Alicia, Stella Maris.
Part 2: Stella Maris Wow wow wow wow - I think my head just exploded. Short recap: In The Passenger, we heard the story of Bobby Western, salvage diver, physics expert, former race car driver, and grieving brother who is still in love with his beautiful sister who killed herself (my review). This very sister is the protagonist of Stella Maris, the book's title being the name of the psychiatric facility she admitted herself to, now for the second time. The whole text is made up of seven (hello, religious motif) sessions with her therapist Dr. Cohen, rendered in pure dialogue, McCarthy style, so no superfluous adornment like "he said, she said" or excessive punctuation. And here's the kicker: The text is set in 1972, and she tells Cohen that Bobby, who is afraid of depths (!), was in a coma after a car accident, that he was brain dead and the doctors wanted her to agree to stop life-support. What that means for the parts of The Passenger that take place up to 10 years after the sister's suicide? You decide.
While in "The Passenger", the sister is alternately called Alice and Alicia, we now learn that she changed her name from Alice to Alicia, which plays into the core theme: Alice/Alicia is desperate because, not unlike Faust, she wants to make the sense of the world, but can't; but while Faust, also a scholar, strives for God-like knowledge and thus ultimately power, Alice/Alicia searches for meaning: What are we? And why are we here? There are no answers, just anger, and then, desperation and suffering: "The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy." (Meanwhile the devil in Faust: "For all that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly; 'Twere better nothing would begin." - Alice/Alicia agrees and wishes to have never existed in the first place). These ideas permeate McCarthy's work as a whole.
"Stella Maris" is thus a work that consists mainly of philosophical ponderings and to a degree, it reads like McCarthy talking to himself about his worldview. As in "The Passenger", the natural sciences play a major role: Pages and pages confront the reader with higher physics and mathematics, with (mainly German) philosophy, with questions of intergenerational guilt and American history (the siblings' parents were both involved in the Manhattan Project), with destiny and determination.
Alice/Alicia is a math prodigy who worked at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques with Alexander Grothendieck. With Dr. Cohen, she talks about (and this is not a full list): Ludwig Wittgenstein, G.K. Chesterton, George Berkeley (especially An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision), Immanuel Kant, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Willard Van Orman Quine, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Kurt Gödel (especially mathematical platonism), Emmy Noether, Ernest Lawrence, Jean Piaget, Johann Sebastian Bach, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, David Hawkins, Oswald Spengler, Gregory Chaitin, T.D. Lee, David Bohm, John Dillinger, Rosemary Kennedy, August Kekulé, Charles Chihara, etc.pp.
In relation to the classic trope of "what does craziness even mean?", Alice/Alicia and her therapist grapple with the very concept of reality and what constitutes it: Alice/Alicia dismisses language (which she deems a parasite in the biological system and an epidemic), ponders philosphy and religion (she is Jewish), of course science, but also music - due to her synesthesia, she melts those systems into each other. In context with (heavenly) rules that structure reality, there is the incest motif: Alice/Alicia does not care about the taboo and wants to have sex with her brother. Understandably, Dr. Cohen is rather unsettled by his patient, and there are recurring lines in their dialogue: "I don't know whether you're serious." - "I know.". Alice/Alicia despises people who want to repair her, she just wants to talk.
Ultimately, Alice/Alicia, a devotee of solipsism, assumes that all problems are spiritual in nature. Dreams play a major role in her life, and here's the key one (I say): In the dream, Alice/Alicia looks through a peephole into a world where guards protect a door, and she knows there is something terrible behind that door, and that human longing for connection only serves to evade that presence: She calls this presence "Archatron" (Archatron does ritual sacrifices in Cities of the Plain, much like "Kid" is not only the name of one of her hallucinations, but also a protagonist in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West ). Life is fear and suffering, just read, you know, everything by Cormac McCarthy.
I'm firmly convinced that "The Passenger" and especially "Stella Maris" will keep literary scientist on their toes for many, many years to come, as there is so much going on there, and the books stand on the shoulders of everything McCarthy has written before....more
Winner of the American Book Award Nominated for the Pulitzer as well as the Booker Prize This is the fictional memoir of Moroccan Mustafa Zamori, slaveWinner of the American Book Award Nominated for the Pulitzer as well as the Booker Prize This is the fictional memoir of Moroccan Mustafa Zamori, slave name "Estebanico", who had to join his Spanish master Andrés Dorantes de Carranza on the 16th century Narváez expedition, a colonial tour of murder, torture, and exploitation that was only survived by four of the original ca. 600 members, Mustafa and his enslaver being two of them - needless to say, the white men told their stories about being the first non-Native people to see the Mississippi River, and to cross the Gulf of Mexico and Texas as respected "explorers", while Mustafa became more the object than the subject of myths and folktales, a projection surface. Lalami is now trying to give him a voice.
In the first half of the novel, chapters alternate between the expedition and flashbacks describing Mustafa's life until that point, then the story progresses in a straightforward manner. While Lalami does a great job illustrating Mustafa's absurd situation - an enslaved Black man from Africa as a member of a colonial endeavor in South America -, it's the parts about his past that are really captivating, and the details of the expedition start to blur and feel repetitive.
Aesthetically, the novel draws from Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, written by the leader of the actual expedition, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Arabic traditions, and it's generally fun to read, although the pacing is frequently off, which, together with the excessive length, tested my patience.
All in all, a decent adventure novel which challenges classic narratives about the Narváez expedition....more
This quirky wild west adventure novel shines with the voice of its narrator, Eli Sisters. He and his hard-drinking, efficiently brutal brother CharlieThis quirky wild west adventure novel shines with the voice of its narrator, Eli Sisters. He and his hard-drinking, efficiently brutal brother Charlie are the henchman of the enigmatic Commodore, who sends them on a manhunt to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, an inventor drawn to the California Gold Rush. But not only do the brothers slowly find out the Commodore's real motives for wanting Warm dead, no, what makes the book fun is that these two picaresque assassins are constantly bickering, getting stuck in slapstick situations, and living through misadventures, which is balanced out with excessive brutality, hints at childhood trauma, and, right as the tables seem to turn, a tragic twist.
One might certainly state that this book underlines the violence of the early (settler) American West, but that's not why you pick it up - that's what masterpieces like Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West are for. This book thrives on the dynamics between the title-giving brothers, both deeply scarred by childhood experiences and the unrelenting, lawless life at the frontier, a social context to which they contribute. While Eli ponders taking up another business, Charlie feels like there is nothing else to do for them, that they are cursed by their history, and he tries to block out his feelings with drink and women. But make no mistake: Both of them are professional hit-man on a killing spree. That readers like them and root for their redemption is due to deWitt's literary skill.
I also watched the movie version by Jacques Audiard, and while it doesn't channel the original text's unique voice, I enjoyed it greatly, because the dynamics between Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix), Eli (John C. Reilly), Warm (Riz Ahmed), and Morris, the Commodore's private detective who only shows up late in the novel (Jake Gyllenhaal), are great. It's a fun western spectacle with amazing actors.
So believe the hype, The Sisters Brothers is a wonderful, fun novel. ...more
Freddy Pelu is back! The reveal at the end of part one was that we hear the adventures of the mildly successful author Arthur Less through the eyes ofFreddy Pelu is back! The reveal at the end of part one was that we hear the adventures of the mildly successful author Arthur Less through the eyes of his funny, warm-hearted boyfriend Freddy, and it's also him who narrates part two, making the star of the show once again the satiric, humorous tone of the text. In this second installment, Arthur's ex-lover dies, and the estate charges him ten years of rent as he and Freddy have lived in the late lover's mansion for free. Once again, Arthur embarks on a journey, this time to collect the money within a month so he and Freddy don't get into financial trouble.
This is no social realist writing, it's more like The Odyssey starring Don Quixote: It features readings, a bizarre prize committee, various animals, a magazine job writing the profile of sci-fi author HHH Mandern, a traveling theatre company, Arthur's German father etc. pp. It's funny, often smart (this prize committee is hilarious), but sometimes a little cutesy, and - you certainly can't blame Greer for this - it lacks the novelty effect of part one, which was a surprising Künstlerroman about a middle-aged gay man with an identity crisis, so a theme that is usually covered by white, straight guys.
On a more subtle level, this second installment ponders what Arthur, a white artsy guy from the coast, knows about his country. These issues are more hinted at than explored, but they are well developed when it comes to his relationship with Freddy, our narrator with Mexican heritage. The road trip through the nation is one of the most American literary motifs imaginable (hello, On the Road and every single book about pushing the frontier), but the heavy ponderings on the state of the union frequently clash with the romcom character and the text loses its balance.
Still, Greer is just a wonderful, empathetic writer, and this novel is intelligent entertainment. Nevertheless, I'd like to read something completely different by this author in his next effort....more
In 12 interconnected essays, Fitzgerald tells a story about masculinity in postmodern America - his story. Born a Catholic to parents who were both maIn 12 interconnected essays, Fitzgerald tells a story about masculinity in postmodern America - his story. Born a Catholic to parents who were both married to other people, the author peels back layer after layer of his life by centering on different aspects of his identity in every chapter: From body image issues to male teenage violence, from becoming a sex-positive porn actor to working at a biker bar, from mental and physical abuse to intergenerational trauma, from the search for meaning as an American in a foreign country to right-wing male role models, from drinking to driving to messy relationships. It's captivating how Fitzgerald relates to writers like Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski, but without embracing their toxic traits; and I also greatly enjoyed his passionate defense of the ability to grow: Staying true to yourself doesn't mean staying the same, and it also doesn't mean covering up your mistakes.
This reads like a very honest text that reflects male behaviors not by looking at others and pointing out how they display toxic masculinity; Fitzgerald is much braver: He ponders his masculinity, where he went wrong, how he made things right, and where he is still struggling. The text breathes secondary orality, it's as if Fitzgerald is conveying the story at night, at a bar, over a beer, in a laconic, but also serious tone. I listened to the audio book, and it's great fun while also being insightful - an important feat in a time in which a tendency arises that seems to maintain that gender equality needs not moral, but moralistic texts.
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