Perumal Murugan's The Story of a Goat: A Review

Perumal Murugan, The Story of a Goat (Londres: Pushkin Press, 2018 [2016]). 183 pages. Translated from the Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman.

“The birth of an ordinary creature never leaves a trace, does it?” Well, it does, actually: for an old couple of the farming poor in India who have survived in a small, arid village in the south, the arrival of a puny black baby goat becomes an unforgettable event.

They name the kid Poonachi, and the ginormous man who leaves the goat behind in their care assures them Poonachi, a female, is truly a miracle. Despite their scarce resources, the old couple take the creature in and do their best to feed her.

The country depicted by Murugan has a government that is incredibly inquisitive about what animals people have. Strict controls take place and tough questions are asked if the animal’s provenance cannot be ascertained. At home, Poonachi is ostracised by most other goats and cannot feed on the nanny-goat’s milk. The old woman, however, ensures the little black goat will grow.

Murugan writes about the life of a goat while deftly constructing a more than entertaining allegory for the human condition. Through Poonachi’s story and point of view, we are ‘treated’ to the many misadventures, cruelties and sad events that mark a female animal’s life in a poor area. While Murugan is apparently focusing us on the hardships of people and the worries and humiliation the absurdly strict rules of the government of the country can inflict on the vulnerable, on another level the book works as a profoundly bitter denunciation.

Perumal Murugan: Another author to pay close attention to. Photograph by  Augustus Binu.

Poonachi’s survival as a baby goat just serves her on a plate for more brutality and disappointment: Murugan’s narrative includes scenes of castration, rape, erotic love and then frustrated romance. More than a sad fable, The Story of a Goat comes across as a seriously inventive reflection on existence, injustice and the human ability to withstand misfortune. Murugan subtly warns the reader against complacency in a world where ultraright-wing tumult and violence against women seem to go hand in hand. N. Kalyan Raman’s translation occasionally sounds brilliantly foreign yet neat. A nice little surprise of a book!

Laurent Binet's Civilisations: A Review

Laurence Binet, Civilisations (London: Harvill Secker, 2021). 310 pages. Translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

I have no doubt it must be lost of fun to write fictional History while being fully aware that your reader is not to demand any verisimilitude of what you write. Art for art’s sake, I guess. Binet’s Civilisations is one such work: it’s offhand in its fun, bold in its ingenuity but invariably overambitious in its purpose and meaning.

The premise is simple: instead of the various European powers conquering the continents across the Atlantic, it is the Incas (and subsequently the Aztecs) who sail across the waters eastwards and reach Lisbon in the wake of a dreadful tsunami. Atahualpa, their king, is undefeatable in his thirst for some sort of black drink monks seem to be very good at producing; vanquishing the Spanish emperor is way too easy. The road to Europe lays expedite thereafter.

But centuries before, the Vikings had reached the north with Erik the Red’s daughter as their leader. Her descendants eventually make their way to Panama, only to be stopped by the Darién Gap (the present-day irony of this is magnificent, one must admit!).

The second part of the book takes us with Columbus in his first voyage of discovery. Unlike what actually happened, Columbus does not make it back to Spain, fails miserably in his attempts to convert the locals to what the Incas will later call the weird cult of the “nailed god”. The Spanish Court gives up on the extremely expensive adventure of crossing the ocean and loses its interest in western lands.

A couple of decades later, having been defeated by his brother, Atahualpa the Incan emperor is escaping Peru in Columbus’s ships and heads eastward. Thanks to endless supplies of gold, the emperor succeeds in conquering the lands and the minds of Castilians, Italians, Frenchs and Germans. His trick to unite the continent five centuries before actual History occurred? He does away with feudal taxation and the property of land, decrees religious freedom all over the place (the only mandatory rule is to adore the Sun) and develops the land with a view to eradicate hunger and poverty.

Atahualpa. Would he have really achieved so much in so little time?

But suddenly, another enemy from the West appears: the Aztecs arrive in England and decide to conquer France with their army (led by Cuauhtémoc). Paris is quickly taken, and a huge pyramid is bult near the Louvre, which will become the venue for their favourite pastime: human sacrifice. With the supply chains of gold interrupted, Atahualpa reacts and brings back taxation to fund the war effort. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Nonsensical? Maybe, but it’s good fun to read. The somewhat unexpected coda of the book brings Cervantes, El Greco and Montaigne together in the Frenchman’s castle. Their interaction prophesies modernity in all its expressions and raises the stakes even further by taking the painter and the Spanish novelist to Mexico in search of a better life.

The text was splendidly rendered by Sam Taylor into English, yet one glaring syntactic error kept nagging (quite likely the result of a overzealous proof-reader?) This is found on page 175 of the public library copy I read: “He [Atahualpa] distributed Golden Fleeces, a highly prized distinction that cost him nothing and possessed the advantage of binding him to whomever received it.” My italics.

Publicado en castellano por Seix Barral (traducido por Adolfo García Ortega). Publicat en català per Edicions de 1984 (traduït per Mia Tarradas).

Pola Oloixarac's Dark Constellations: A Review

Pola Oloixarac, Dark Constellations (New York: Soho Press, 2019). 202 pages. Translated by Roy Kesey.

Remember Donald Rumsfeld’s words to the press twenty years ago, in 2002? ‘[…] as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.’ These latter ones are the scary ones, I guess. The Incas contemplated dark constellations in the night skies, where the dark spaces (the unknowns) were the object of interest rather than the bright, visible known points, the stars.

Argentine Pola Oloixarac weaves three stories into an unusual, weird and at times a little clumsy volume. The first part is set in the late 19^th century: explorer Niklas Bruun ventures into caves on some Atlantic island. While in search for some hallucinogenic stuff that would allegedly erase whatever it is that separates one species from others, he and his group become the more-than-willing prisoners of a tribe whose women profusely engage in sexual intercourse with the visitors.

The second part has an enough promising start – it is truly hilarious and Oloixarac proves she does have the skill. An Argentine student travels to Brazil and gets pregnant. Her son is Cassio, who will become a notorious hacker and will eventually be hired by a big corporation with less than clearly defined aims and purposes. Governments and corporations seem engaged in a race to discover the way they would be able to capture our DNA either by means of real samples or using strange, ever-present instruments that resemble facial-recognition devices called Bionoses. Everyone, be careful where you fart! Your DNA might be collected and used against your will.

The final part brings in Piera, an Argentine biologist. It is set in just a couple of years’ time. She teams up with Cassio in an obscure plot to develop viruses and plant them across the whole world via the web.

The author seems to focus strongly on big issues, no doubt: where are we heading as Humanity? And what might be the consequences of blending the human and the technological in the context of a world where all of our data has fast become merchandise for sale? Scary, yes. The unknown unknowns!

Whatever might be uniting the goal of Bruun’s travels and Cassio and Piera’s heavily marijuana-induced plans to, well, do something that I found mind-boggling and pretty obscure, I may have missed. If Dark Constellations is intended to terrify us about where evolution is taking us, perhaps a little less vagueness and darkness would help. Lots of references to computer developments and popular culture of the 90s and later do not help us much to follow the scanty plot the book offers.

Laurent Binet's HHhH: A Review

 

Laurent Binet, HHhH (London: Vintage, 2012). [unpaged] Translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

Reinhard Heydrich, who could have been strategically nurtured to become Hitler’s successor, was killed after an attack on his car in Prague in 1942. His nickname among the Czech people was ‘the Butcher of Prague’. It would seem obvious he had few friends among them. Was his assassination an event that entirely changed the course of WWII and therefore History? Perhaps it was.

Heydrich. (Photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann - Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

Speculating with what might have been seems pointless, does it not? Still, many believe the perpetrators of the attack should be praised for ridding the world of such a cruel, evil person. And I would tend to wholeheartedly agree. After all, he was one of the brains behind the so-called Final Solution. The fateful day in the streets of Prague is the subject of Laurent Binet’s novel, which won him a big literary prize in France, the Goncourt.

Binet, however, does not want to write a historical novel. Obviously, he does not want to write history either. He’s no historian. He thinks that the invention of facts or characters in a novel about a true event is nothing short of a crime: fabricating evidence, more or less. I bet he dislikes books such as Wolf Hall or Bring up the Bodies so much that he would refuse to read them point blank! Oh well: his loss.

Being such an astonishing story of bravery and self-sacrifice, the plot (i.e., the conspiracy to kill the monstrous Heydrich) should be narrated with tantalizing detail. Except that Binet does not have any verifiable new data he could use with absolute certainty. His struggle is with the limitations of the novel as a genre. HHhH, Binet decides, has to tell a story-within-a-story: the author’s obsession with how to approach and tell a story about true events for which verified information is scant or non-existent. Moreover, instead of numbering the pages, the publisher numbers the parts (you can hardly call them chapters, can you?).

The Mercedes (possibly this very car, but who knows? And who cares?). Photograph by FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) 

The heroes’ names were Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. They were trained in England and parachuted over Czech land. The resistance helped them prepare the assassination, which funnily enough almost failed at the last moment: Gabčík’s gun got stuck and stopped working, and therefore plan B was quickly activated. It was Kubiš who threw a hand grenade into Heydrich’s Mercedes. The infections caused by the wounds killed Heydrich about a week later. Mission accomplished?

Yes, but the Nazi retaliation was brutal, as could have been predicted. Lidice, a village near Prague, was completely destroyed. Their inhabitants were either murdered or sent to a concentration camp, where most of them eventually died. The Czech heroes hid, together with five other members of the resistance, in a Prague church. Betrayed by one of their own, they were found and attacked. They lasted many hours and drove the German soldiers and their commanders spare. None of them were captured alive.

The Lidice Memorial reminds us all of what kind of bestiality the Nazis were capable of.

The biggest objection I have in regard to this book is Binet’s obsession with his own obsessiveness. It constantly gets in the way of the story itself. That may be fanciful and fun to begin with, yes. But Binet overuses the device. His authorial presence is more than an attendance: it can become a burden! I did not think this book is as accomplished as The 7^th Function of Language, but I’m looking forward to reading his new publication, Civilizations.

Hoping to read you soon again, Laurent. Photograph by G. Garitan. 

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's The Discomfort of Evening: A Review

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening (London: Faber & Faber, 2020 [2018]). 282 pages. Translated into English by Michele Hutchison.

Fundamentalism is but another deadly disease, and despite science and what appears to be human progress over the centuries, it is quite clear that the virus of zealotry and fanaticism continues to spread everywhere. Even in a village of the Netherlands, where ten-year-old Jas Mulder lives with her parents and three siblings, two males (Matthies, the eldest, and Obbe) and one sister, Hanna. The Mulders own a dairy farm, they’re actually poor and struggle to make a profit.

Two days before Christmas, Matthies puts in his skates and goes to the other side of the frozen lake that separates their farm from the village. He has an accident, falling through the ice and drowning. What until then had been a less than pleasant existence becomes quite a hell for Jas and Hanna. Life quickly degrades as the parents lose themselves in their grief and neglect the children, who are basically left to fend for themselves in their daily struggle. Hanna dreams of leaving the place for good. Jas thinks her mum is hiding a group of Jews in the basement. Obbe is a sadistic torturer of animals and at night compulsively strikes his forehead against the bedframe. What hope can there be for them?

Ice Skater by Axel Ender

The story is told by Jas, who is extremely observant and descriptive where smells, textures and shapes are concerned. Filth is omnipresent: the manure from the cows, the cheese they make, the dirty undies and pyjamas as Jas continually pees in her sleep. To make matters worse, she starts suffering from constipation, an issue her father attempts to sort out by inserting a piece of soap up her anus. In the meantime, her mother decides it is best not to eat anything at all.

Jas begins her story by telling the reader that she has stopped taking her coat off. After Matthies’ death, her sorrow is immense, for he treated her with a kindness and affection no other male in the family seems capable of. However, she is shocked into fear when told by her parents not to say his name.

But of course, there is the Church on Sundays. In her narrative, Jas repeatedly quotes passages from the Bible. Her parents are insanely devout, to the extent that their religion has somehow been transformed into a punitive code. Everything is seen as sinful, and the children’s numerous sins must be punished with brutality, of course. They probably wonder, in the wake of the loss of their eldest son, how come there is no sign of grace from the Saviour?

Gloomy, grim and dark. Not a happy place. A church in the Netherlands.

But then comes the plague, too, in the form of foot-and-mouth disease. Every single cow and calf will be put down; the Mulders have now lost what little they had. Both parents have seriously lost their marbles, and threats to leave the farm and abandon the family are voiced but never carried out.

This is more than a novel on people’s inability to express their grief. Rijneveld constructs a plausible narrator who is innocent in her brutality yet enchantingly ironic in her explorations of adolescent sexuality and the imaginative load she bears in her desperate attempts to escape sadness, neglect and self-blame. You may read the views of other reviewers who appear to recoil at the scatological episodes involving excrements, sperm, blood or even tools being stuck in inappropriate bodily orifices. Some readers, I daresay, need to grow up a bit and test the world out there. Imagination never bites.

A good book, a great story and a new author from whom we should expect more in the near future. Michele Hutchison’s English translation, The Discomfort of Evening, received the Booker International Prize in 2020.

Laurent Binet's The 7th Function of Language: A Review

Laurent Binet. The 7th Function of Language (Londres: Harvill Secker, 2017). 390 pages. Translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

Should I say I was lucky to study and read Roland Barthes at university? I believe so. I remember enjoying his Mythologies and wondering about what other product-signs we should be demythologising and deconstructing, yet at the time, most nights I would go out and I sort of ended up being interested in, well, different things.

Sort of a myth himself now, isn't he? Young Roland Barthes, Photograph by Fragolaleone

Barthes died in an accident in the streets of Paris. He was knocked down by a laundry van in late February 1980, and passed away a month later. I certainly found his work inspirational, and we could well ask ourselves what, were he still alive, he would be making of contemporary signs such as the bitten-off apple of the software and hardware giant or the M-shaped arches of the multinational you-want-fries-with-your-burger? company that has been clogging the arteries of millions of people all over the world for years.

Binet takes the fact of Barthes’ accident and makes it into a fictional murder. But why would a semiotician be murdered? Because he had with him the only copy of a text authored by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson. Allegedly, this text would identify the seventh function of language, which would be a magical performative function giving its possessor the power to make people do things. Something every politician might kill for, of course.

In a parody of detective novels, thrillers and similar, Binet constructs a big metafictional joke. The policeman in charge of the investigation into Barthes’ death, Bayard, starts by interviewing Foucault about semiotics and semiology. He understands fuck-all, obviously, so he tries to read Barthes and others, which angers him even more, and so he will seek the aid of a lecturer on semiotics: enter Simon Herzog, who impresses Bayard by revealing his background and most of his personality traits by simply looking at him and his clothes.

What happens next (and the above is just the beginning of this bizarre, hilarious and crazy fiction) is a long story. The unlikely duo are partnered in the pursuit of the mysterious document in a journey that takes them from Paris to Bologna, where they witness political vendettas, are allowed entrance to a secret Logos Club in which orators and debaters engage in rhetorical duels, with the loser getting a finger chopped off when defeated, and miraculously escape the bombing of the railway station.

They next travel to a big conference at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY. Their stay is punctuated by various strange episodes, amongst them the death of Jacques Derrida, savagely killed by dogs while a girl named Cordelia was giving him a blowjob.

No, Derrida did not die here. Binet chooses to kill him at Cornell, but only in fiction. Photograph by Laurenvhs.

The final part takes them to Venice. More Logos Club challenges, more chopped fingers (and other body parts, too!) street skirmishes and kidnappings. Outlandish events and conversations are too numerous to recap; characters come and go without rhyme or reason. And after winning his oratorial challenge at the Club, Simon is made to pay a huge price.

With The 7^th Function of Language, Binet enjoys himself a lot, and if you are game to take a refreshingly quick dip into the theory of semiotics, linguistics and metafiction, this is a novel that will make you laugh out loud. The list of real people Binet makes irreverent use of is inexhaustible: from Umberto Eco to Julia Kristeva, from Michel Foucault to Noam Chomsky, from Bjorn Borg to Vitas Gerulaitis. Presidents such as Giscard d’Estaing and Mitterrand, prime ministers such as Laurent Fabius, and a noticeably young Afro-American politician named Barack Obama.

There is comedy, there is Hollywood-style action, car chases, sex, hot steamy baths where old men and young gigolos meet. There are also puns, play on words and names, a constant game played between fact and fiction in which Binet deliberately shows his hand by using the first person, a bold interference in the narrative that not always pays dividends.

The volcano crater of Pozzuoli near Naples is where Simon exacts his revenge. What a scenic spot to finish the novel! Photograph by I. Shevtsov.

The 7^th Function of Language is a delicious parody, yet to me it felt more like fanciful, delightfully absurd and exhilarating entertainment than a thriller. The plot is far more sophisticated than any bestseller might ever dream of; yet underlying the playful, the profane, and the mocking the novel does offer aplenty there is also a deeply felt homage to the sciences of language and a clever invention from historical materials. And I’d bet my little finger that Barthes would have given Binet his tick of approval.

Xavier Bosch's Nosaltres dos: A Review

Xavier Bosch, Nosaltres dos (Barcelona: Columna, 2017). 566 pages.

What to make of the many people we meet throughout our lifetime? Some stay close for years, even decades; others remain close for shorter periods of time, while others simply vanish as quickly as they became part of your inner circle, albeit briefly. Yet as you approach the twilight years, it should be a good idea to look back (not in anger, though) and assess.

But the question remains: is it really that good an idea? Who knows? This is a matter which is probably easier to deal with in fiction than in real life, don’t you think?

‘The two of us’: the title alludes to are Kim and Laura, who meet at university when they have to complete a joint assignment on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is the 1980s, but theirs is a friendship that grows through the months and years, and grows stronger, too.

“In the late afternoon sun, the lake was a millpond. A bluish calm mirror reflecting every reddish hue of the day that was hiding behind the mountains. Slowly, the night was shadowing the road to Mieres, the Estunes, the Rocacorba summit or Xicu Cabanyes’ Forest of Erotic Sculptures. Perhaps Kim would have liked to see the gigantic cocks at Can Ginebreda? But it was getting dark, and without any daylight the temperature at the Russian fishing house was coming down severely. Laura noticed she was getting a split lip. A while before Kim had wrapped around his neck, as if not meaning to, the blue scarf Laura had taken off so she could zip her leather jacket. But neither of them was in a hurry. Due to the last bits of light, where the water became darker, they thought they could glimpse drops of mercury.” (p. 57, my translation) Photograph by JosepBC.

Kim is the third son of a Barcelona hotel owner, something of an upper-middle class dynasty, the Rafels. His life has been more or less decided for him: complete a degree, join the management team at the hotel and enjoy the perks of belonging to the wealthy. Laura is from Banyoles, her family is not as well-off as Kim’s, but what she lacks in privilege she makes up for with her efforts, intelligence and perseverance.

The Russian-looking fishing house on Lake Banyoles. Photograph by Enfo.

One way or another, life always hits us with heavy blows. In Kim’s case, he wakes up hungover on the day he was supposed to accompany Alex, his eldest brother, to Ibiza in the family boat. Roger, son number two, takes his place. On the way to the island, the boat rams into a half-submerged shipping container. They both perish.

After graduating, Kim and Laura find their own ways. Laura meets a much older English academic, falls for his charm and chooses the peace he irradiates. She goes to live with him England. Soon she specialises in conference interpreting and builds a reputation. After three years or so, she receives a big bunch of flowers from Eric, a much younger man, the manager of a rock band, who has offered her a full-time position. Not much later, she moves in with him.

During those years, Kim has remained in Barcelona, has married Miriam. He still has his fun, plays tennis with his mates and drives his sports car around. He has stayed in touch with Laura via email or the occasional phone call. When she finds out Eric has AIDS and realises she’s been living through a daily Russian roulette with him and the band, she asks Kim for help. The two friends meet in London. Laura decides to return to Barcelona, but Miriam notices there could be something other than friendship. Eventually, and thanks to some not completely explained intervention from Kim, Laura is offered a job in Australia.

“Lakes give cities some respite. The peace of the Serpentine was being shattered only by the clatter of cutlery and trays, the polite rustle of those who were queuing while waiting for the second course – hot stew, grilled steak or some fish unbeknownst to Kim – and the feeble voice of the tanned cashier. No sooner had the rain stopped than two young men from the cleaning services company, easily identifiable because of their green overalls, started drying up the stone benches and tables. Sun-seeking people, both tourists and locals, came out to drink their coffees by the water. The ducks quacked incessantly, perhaps disoriented by the sudden change in the weather. Kim threw away the umbrella, which had already served its purpose, grabbed the apple pie his sweet-toothed father liked so much and, grabbing his suitcase with his other hand went outside to eat it. To take in the cool November air and wait for Laura. Whatever the problem she might have, he was very much looking forward to seeing her. Whatever it was that was the matter with her, and he was hoping it was nothing too serious, he was kind of anxious to meet her again… He felt someone standing behind him was grabbing him by the shoulder.” (p. 297) The Serpentine at Hyde Park. Photograph by Tristan Surtel. 

The story then jumps back to 2016, where the book starts with the party to celebrate that Kim turns 50. Laura has been invited, too. She flies all the way back for the occasion. Kim and Miriam are already divorced. What will happen when the two friends see each other again, after so many years?

Nosaltres dos mostly entertains. There is nothing more to the story than the personal: Bosch does not contextualise the plot or his characters in terms of socio-political issues. If anything, it is just the hotel business and its ups and downs before and after Barcelona becoming the host city for the Olympic Games in 1992. And that’s about it. The language is informal, the plot has few uncalled-for twists and the gross interference from the Rome-based side of the Rafels family adds some mystery and spice to what is, largely speaking, a romance.

In my view, Bosch relies on adopting Kim’s narrative point of view much too heavily. While there may be some depth to his character, this is not the case with Laura. Her side of the story hardly ever comes across as fully convincing.

While this is a piece of fiction, there is however one factual error that I found quite amusing, given that I have lived in Canberra for over a decade. There has never been a Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Canberra. As a matter of fact, UC no longer  hosts a School of Languages. The Spanish Language Department, for which I was a tutor for one rather forgettable year, was wrecked by its inept managers and other scandalous matters, which are absolutely irrelevant here.

A novel about friendship, love and the passage of time. They say time heals all wounds, and I completely disagree. The proverb is hardly accurate. It is however true that time does not kill off true friendships. Ever.

Vicent Usó's Les veus i la boira: A Review

Vicent Usó, Les veus i la boira (Alzira: Bromera, 2015). 352 pages.

The group of islets known as Les Columbretes between the eastern Valencian coast and the Balearic Islands, together with the beachside town of Peníscola, are the two main settings for this enticing novel by Vicent Usó. The title [The Voices and the Mist] is not only a veiled reference to the novel’s structure but also to the way dreadful stories of treason and murder are often hidden behind the mists of time, with only human voices being able, sooner or later, to bring them back to us in the present.

Panoramic view of the Columbretes. Photograph by JavierValencia2005.

Young journalist Mateu Sequeral, comes across a family mystery going back to the decades after the Spanish Civil War. In 1972 his father, Bernat Sequeral, found to his astonishment that the coffin where he had always thought contained his mother’s remains was empty. How was this possible? Who had been lying to him for so many years?

Unheeding many warnings and even threats, Mateu continues to investigate. There are many more secrets just waiting to be upturned like stones, the ugly faces of meanness, hatred and crime revealed. The journalist compiles a wide range of  testimonies, some of them as interviews, others as unsent or indeed mailed letters, yet also manuscripts and newspaper clippings. The mix is at times dizzying and mystifying, as Usó chooses to intermingle them without apparently any rhyme or reason. But a reason there is indeed.

"Have you heard about the legendary treasure? Every sailor and fisherman would talk about it in those days. There were those who would joke about it, but some did take it very seriously and believed it and even dreamt of finding it. Corball was one of the latter. When he was ashore he would scrutinise the maps of the island and would look up in ancient books and talk to all sorts of people. He always carried a folder replete with papers and, as soon as he was able, he would jump in a rowboat and started exploring the many caves he could find. It didn't matter to him whether they were on the big island or Ferrera islet or Foradada. He even went to Carallot and explored it. He had explored all of those caves. Each and every one of them. But he never found anything at all." (p. 124, my translation).
The Lighthouse on Illa Grossa. Photograph by JavierValencia2005.

Usó has created a jigsaw puzzle with many details and information. This might be somewhat demanding for a less discerning reader, but as the novel keeps piling up detail upon detail and anecdote upon anecdote, the plot keeps you intrigued, wanting to know more and, particularly, why.

What at first sight might look like a maze is not. Usó worked on this novel for close to ten years; the order in which every chapter and fragment has been set is clearly deliberate. Every step of the way, even when it takes you back to the 1930s and the dark days of the Civil War and the disgraceful attack on the POUM (so aptly narrated by Orwell in Homage to Catalonia), is moving you forward, towards an ending, even though not a one hundred percent closed one.

Another captivating aspect of the book lies in the wealth of voices it displays. Usó endows each of his characters with regional or local idioms and sayings. The many dialects and idiolects of the Catalan language are on show, and the reader is thankful for it. The only objection that could be raised has to do with the newspaper clippings, which despite being from the Francoist era, are written in Catalan. This certainly weakens the verisimilitude of the story: no newspaper in 1962 would have been allowed to be published in Catalan. Some progress has been made, no doubt, since then.

Les veus i la boira includes some hair-raising episodes, like the summary executions carried out by the Falangists when they entered Peníscola, or the ghastly reprisals against family members of their enemies.

"... when Franco's troops broke the Republican lines and reached the seaside, the rebellious army units entered Peníscola accompanied by Falangist squads, their eyes burning with hatred. Among them was Jaume Sequeral. The first thing they did was gather all of us who had shown support, as they said, for defending the Republic. They put us all in the municipal jail, and a few days later they tried us all. All of us together. The charges were simply based on the kind of rhetoric full of platitudes: in their view, it had been us who were seditious, traitors, criminals. We were to blame for all the calamities in the world. They did not need evidence or testimonies. A simple report that nobody would bother to verify was enough, if their sources suited them. We were not allowed to defend ourselves.What use would it have been? From the very first moment it became clear to me they did not seek justice but revenge. An exemplary punishment that would make everybody aware of what the new rules were: complete submission to their absolute power. The sort of power that has always been there." (p. 114, my translation). A view of Peníscola: photograph by Gordito1869.

The stakes are high when a novelist risks so much by adopting a multi-voice approach to the storytelling. Yet with Usó, it is a win-win scenario. Not only does the narrative progress at a very reasonable pace, keeping the reader engrossed in the story; the constant shift between dialects, idiolects and points of view makes for a vibrant and entertaining novel. The characters come alive through their peculiar idioms and sayings. For example, Colauet, the old seaman who reminisces about his love for teenager Caterina Montaner while recounting the tobacco smuggling operations in the archipelago.

This is a good, aptly told and competently constructed story, a rare find. Given its many linguistic nuances and the various dialectal varieties it offers, it is definitely a great challenge for a potential translation into any language, too. Quite commendable.

Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova's Els països del tallamar: A Review

Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova, Els països del tallamar (Palma: Documenta Balear, 2013). 323 pages.

Pa, as my father-in-law was known to my children, was born in Fairfield, in the western suburbs of Sydney, four years before the second world war started. Fairfield is, coincidentally, the place where Joan-Carles Martí, the author of this book inspired in very real events, ended up in the early 1970s, in the company of his immigrant family. They spent barely five years in Australia, but it was long enough to leave an indelible mark in young Martí.

Fairfield Station in south western Sydney. Many Spanish-speaking migrants lived there and pronounced the name of the suburb as "Far-field". Photograph by J Bar.

Els països del tallamar, which could arguably translate as The countries overseas, is not your average novel about migration, even though one of its main subjects is migration. To begin with, there is no first-person narrator, which would be expected for a narrative on the migration experience. There is of course an omniscient narrator, but the story follows the whims and travels of the character in possession of a black-and-red opal. This is Gabre, whose mission is to render an account of the lives of three generations, between the end of the 19^th century and the first decade of the one we’re currently in.

One of the strangest things about this book is the choice of names for all the family members. They’re all birds: there’s the parents, Baldrigot (the Great Shearwater) and Calàndria (the Lark), and Gabre’s siblings, Coloma Alba (the White Dove), Damisela Grua (the Damsel Crane), Aguiló Auri (the Golden Eaglet) and Gavina Vori (the Ivory Seagull). Maybe Martí wished to disguise the names of his relatives, or perhaps it is mere artifice, but the strategy feels a little forced, somewhat contrived. Although the overall effect may have been engineered, it does not harm the narrative at all. As I said, it feels somewhat odd.

The other big issue in Els països del tallamar is, perhaps surprisingly, language. Language defines us inasmuch as it is the result of asking ourselves the eternally existential question, “Who am I?”. There is a twofold insight into language in the novel. On the one hand, the Martí family was the upshot of a migratory mix within Spain in the late 19^th century; the  descendants are part of the big post-war migration to Europe. Baldrigot and Calàndria move to Marseille, the Occitanian part of southern France. So we have an unmistakable linguistic connection, as the historical links between Occitan and Catalan are evident.

But on the other hand Martí wants to direct our attention to the fact of language as the tool the migrant needs to truly master in order to survive wherever he/she goes. Unless you communicate, you will not succeed. This, presumably, is the author’s experience: Martí is a reputable translator and interpreter, and has made his living through the ability to use languages, in plural. Like yours truly. Here’s a poignant paragraph on the migrant experience, in his case a fifth generation migrant: “For the migrant, the future takes ages to come. Quite often, it never comes, even though at the end of the day everything comes and goes. Time does not exist because we can fly over a continuous line where there is neither past nor present nor future. Only when it becomes far too late does every generation realise they haven’t achieved everything they could have achieved: that’s their fate. All things considered, the children of migrants are often, at birth, sentenced to becoming migrants again, just like their parents, their grandparents and great-grandparents. That steep road of return to the mythical country they have so often heard about at home begins the moment their parents leave. Going back is a much crueller migration. The children of their parents’ longing never quite knows where they belong. Nowhere do the natives ever quite consider them their own or their equals, and even those who leave for a few years return as hybrids, scarred by the fire of longed for lands.” (p. 46, my translation) The notion that the return to the place of origin can be “a much crueller migration” is at once interesting and troubling, and it should be further explored. Consider the case of the numerous young men and women who have been expelled back to their parents’ countries from the USA, sometimes without any basic knowledge of the language.

“The immigrants were astonished to see a military camp, copied from a photograph taken during a war that had occurred a generation before. No one had in any way imagined anything like this. In fact, many had mixed up ‘Hostel’ with the word ‘Hotel’. Given its semicircular shape, made from corrugated iron sheets, the Nissen Hut had been designed during the First World War so it would divert bursts of shrapnel and bombs, and for that very reason it was the perfect shelter close to the battlefield.” (p. 242, my translation). Un exemple reconvertit de Barraca Nissen a Leeton (NSW). Fotografia de Bidgee.

But back to Marseille. The couple have four children, and after a few years in France the opportunity to go to Australia is there for them to take. From London they fly the kangaroo route (as it was known in those days because of the many refuel stops that were needed before reaching Australia). They are placed in a migrant hostel and face the usual difficulties and hardships migrants faced in those days. How things have changed in the 21^st century!

While the years in Marseille make up most of the first two parts of the novel, their five years in Sydney constitute the most remarkable part. In the second, Martí imagines the possible lives the characters may have lived in ancient times across the globe. Personally, I do not believe in reincarnation or previous lives or stuff like that, and so this section is, in my opinion, gratuitous and makes what is a good story needlessly longer.

In Fairfield, the family go through the migrant experience of the 1970s. They are taken to the migrant hostels where the most basic needs are taken care of, but that’s about it. While the parents and the eldest son take jobs wherever they may happen to be offered, the children go to school and have to learn English from scratch. Their lives are shaped by the Great Return Plan to the Promised Land of origin, in their case Elx, the big industrial city south of Alacant.

Torrades amb mantega i Vegemite. L'esmorzar australià més popular. A la majoria dels emigrants no els agrada gens. Fotografia de Tristanb.

There would be an irreparable loss after their return to Elx, the death of Coloma Alba. Those who are free from such grief and sadness can count themselves lucky indeed. Els països del tallamar is an extremely valuable contribution to the account of migration from Franco’s Spain to other lands and places. It would have benefitted from a stricter editor’s hand, in my view. The question remains: will there be any narratives from the current generation of Catalan-language youth who have been forced to migrate? Let’s hope so.

Pep Puig's La vida sense la Sara Amat: A Review

Pep Puig, La vida sense la Sara Amat (Barcelona: Proa, 2016). 295 pages.

Josep is 12 years old, and he’s been spending the long summer holidays at his grandparents’ house in a Catalan village called Ullastrell. It’s early September 1981; he and his gang of friends (la colla) are playing hide-and-seek at night time when one of them, Sara, 13, suddenly disappears. Where has she gone? What has happened? Has she been abducted? Or is she fleeing home?

Ullastrell: it's s big small world. Photo by Pere López. 

A search party is quickly organised, with no success. In the meantime, Josep has gone back to his room, where he discovers Sara, who is neither pretty nor ugly. In fact, Josep fancies Sara a fair bit, and when she asks him to keep mum about her whereabouts, he easily acquiesces.

The house is a big one, the typical two-floor building with long corridors and a shop at the front. Josep’s grandfather died a couple of years before, so his widow appreciates her grandson’s company. What follows is a tender love story and a literary game between reality and fiction. Quite incredibly, Sara gets to stay at Josep’s room for longer than a week. He gets her three meals a day, she gets to use the bathroom and even the shower every now and then; she hides beneath the big bed whenever visitors approach.

The first edition of War and Peace.

So what does she do with her time when Josep is not in the room? She reads Tolstoy’s War and Peace. We learn that Sara is thought of as ‘a little weird’ by most villagers. In fact, she’s a gifted and talented teenager, who should have been sent to a first-rate school by her parents. Nonconformist and a little rebellious, she hates the village and wants to leave and decide for herself what her life will be like.

“Of all of us, Sara was the only one who was different. The rest of us were all alike, except for her, who was different. Already as a little child. I daresay Sara’s difference essentially lay in her intelligence, not so much her rebellious instinct. I mean, if she was rebellious, it was precisely because she was far more intelligent than all of us. It must have been very hard for her to adapt to a village full of idiots, I mean; and even though I was not from the village, I count myself as one of them. And the older she got, the worst it became. She kept coming out to play with us, but it was almost against her will, as if by the force of habit of so many years doing so, but you could already see that one day she would stop coming and would leave us alone for good. At least, I did; and I particularly see it now, remembering her when she was nearing her thirteen years of age, sitting on the green wooden bench under the mulberry tree, sullenly looking towards the far end of the street, as if she were already pondering the way to flee.And it was certainly what she was doing: pondering the way to become a fugitive from the village.” (p. 15-16, my translation)

La vida sense la Sara Amat [Life without Sara Amat] is an assured and sensitive narrative on the challenges and fears any teenager encounters. Told by an adult Josep with an autobiographical technique, the story makes the young kid face the issues that appear while growing up and reaching maturity. Puig succeeds in inviting the reader to understand which are the contradictory aspects of the adult world that completely puzzle and baffle young Josep: love and sexuality, of course, but also hypocrisy, loyalty and secrecy.

Leaving aside its minor issues of plausibility, Pep Puig achieves a rare sensitivity in this novel: young Josep is a timid boy, hesitant and apprehensive about the trials life will bring him to, yet the adult narrator (how dissimilar he can be from the author is probably a tricky question) creates a deftly balanced story. Just as Josep discovers something about himself by staring at his reflection in the mirror, La vida sense la Sara Amat is an invitation for the reader to doublecheck their firmest notions about fiction and memory. Let’s play hide-and-seek once again.

La vida sense la Sara Amat was awarded the Sant Jordi Prize for fiction in 2015. The first twenty-odd pages are available for download here.

[Added on 15 Feb 2020] The novel has been made into a movie. Here's the trailer: