“Educated" by Tara Westhoff - review (sort of)

 “Educated“ by Tara Westover:

This is the autobiographical story of the author who grew up in a restrictive, dysfunctional survivalists mormon family in the mountains of Idaho, isolated from mainstream society and finally succeeded to break with her family on her quest for knowledge.

Although I admire the author for successfully “making it" in the end and do understand the need and will to share her story, I did not like the book and stopped reading it after one third through the book. 

Although the writing is good, her emotionally detached, objectified perception and descriptions also, I just could not see why I should follow a life through hardship and suffering (and empathize with it) when the message of the book is clear right from the start: Education is the key to the world. 

Since I already know that, the book was not for me. I have read too many “misery lit“ and don’t need more of that at the moment. It made for an interesting, lively discussion, though at my bookclub and I am sure for a lot of people the book will provide entertainment and, not least, encouragement.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“A Year of Marvellous Ways" by Sarah Winman - review

 “A Year of Marvellous Ways” by Sarah Winman:

It is 1947, Marvellous Ways, an 89-year-old woman, who lives alone on the bank of a Cornish creek by the sea, waits for something to arrive because “the image is still incomplete“. And arrive it does, in form of a young man, Francis Drake, recently returned from the war trenches of France. He was on a mission to deliver a last letter to the father of a dying soldier who made him promise to deliver it personally. Somewhere on this mission he got lost and washed up by Marvellous’ caravan. Drake is very much in need of healing and Marvellous, in her age-old wisdom, is the person who can just do that. She takes him in and coaxes him back to life, rejuvenates him with her stories, teaching him how to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, teaches him to be able to marvel again at life. 

Slowly she reveals glimpses of her life, told in beautiful, poetic, magical prose and we also get to know some of Drake’s history. And as the stories unfold they begin a strange, marvellous life of their own which is part reality, part magical realism, part fairy tale, part enchanted past. It is a gentle twist, though of the knob of reality, a gentle kind of magic and I enjoyed the beautiful prose and its slowly weaving and wafting together a remarkable warm, human story of loss, of hardship, of love, life, nature. and hope. The mingling, the mix, of the literal and the metaphorical is quite rewarding if one is willing (as one should when reading literature) to suspend disbelief. It makes a rich textured, atmospheric read, a beautiful poetic tale.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“A Month in the Country" by J. L. Carr - review

 

“A Month in the County“ by J. L. Carr:

This book caught my eye and attention with its cover. I had just finished The Offing by Benjamin Myers (published 2019) with a very similar cover, depicting a rural picturesque countryside and I was hooked. Later I learned that it was published in 1980, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the Guardian fiction prize,  was made into a film and is considered a small masterpiece. 

The cover proved to be not the only parallel. 

In both books a war has just ended (World War One in A Month in the Country,  World War Two in The Offing).

In both books the main character sets out on a journey to the countryside of England. 

In both books the country life, the landscape, the resplendent golden summer, nature, the local people, all set in motion a turn of states, a revelatory or healing process after which life for the narrator will not be the same again.  

Both books touch on great themes of literature: life, death, love, art and loss. 

Both books at times read like an elegy to an England now gone, an ode to nature. 

Both books are quiet, undramatic, contemplative, often lyrical. 

Tom Birkin, a World War I veteran, arrives in the village of Oxgodby in Yorkshire where he had been offered the job of restoring a medieval mural, recently discovered in the local church. Tom suffers not only from the physical and mental wounds the war dealt him, he must also come to terms with his recently broken marriage. Tom is very much in need of healing. 

In the village he meets another war veteran, Moon, an archaeologist in search of a lost grave. Tom resides in the bell tower of the church while Moon lives in a tented pit in the field. Both men are marked by war and bitter experiences of sex, but where Tom is right from the start welcomed by the villagers, Moon does not get the same treatment. 

The days move on, summer proceeds and finally comes to an end, both men finish the task they were asked to do, Moon finding the lost grave and its surprising content and Tom successfully restoring the lost mural.

But Tom realizes that his soul, too has been given a restorative touch, a healing has set in and he leaves this place, always later thinking gratefully of it as the point from where his life began to leave the atrocities of war behind and took on a hopeful, optimistic view on life.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“The Offing" by Benjamin Myers - review

 “The Offing“ by Benjamin Myers:

In this quiet touching lyrical tale, set in rural England just after Second World War has ended, a man looks back at a single summer and remembers the life-changing unusual friendship he found then. 

16-year-old Robert Appleyard, in an act of “escapology and rebellion”, leaves his Durham village in the north in search for any work that isn’t coal mining and sets out on a journey that takes him to the east coast where, in an old cottage living alone with her dog Butler, he encounters Dulcie Piper, a woman three times his age. Soon an unlikely symbiotic relationship evolves between the two. He tends to the house and garden, she provides food, shelter and intellectual nourishment.  

Dulcie is an imposing, many-faceted character, foul-mouthed and eloquent, aesthetically inclined, a worldly and sophisticated woman with a past, a woman who embodies fearless independence and strong will, all of which she freely shares with the boy and encourages him on his way to find his calling and his true self. 

The cottage is situated at the coast, at a place called The Offing, which is “the distant stretch of sea where sky and water merge”, a perfect place for the transition of a boy into a young man and Myers enticingly portraits in lyrical, almost baroque and old-fashioned prose, the lucid coastal landscape, the lights, the sounds, the fauna and the flora. Almost on every page we find endearing little gems of descriptive words, such as “The fish were still held close to my face. I looked into the ruined mirrors of their pupils and saw the deep green and magnesium striped pattern of their lean but muscular flanks, their bellies the colour of molten lead.”

The total of the book emanates a slight melancholic warmth which is really a sensual pleasure compared to so many books out lately who eschew emotionally tinted language (i. e. Rachel Cusk) and strive to be “cool”.  

Dulcie plays mentor to Robert’s poetic talent, tells of her lost companion who was also a poet and played a very important part in her life. She coaxes him gently to recognise his dormant talents and to choose a life for and believe in himself, regardless of family tradition.

This is a warm, positive, optimistic book for dreamers or those who once had a dream, for swimmers against the current, for worshippers of nature, of life, for distrusters of authority, for believers in the Good and lastly for all those who still believe in the transcendent power of art and love. It is a reminder that “permanence is an impossibility and that everything is in flux”. 

“After all, there are only a few things worth fighting for: freedom and all that it brings with it. Poetry, perhaps, and a good glass of wine. A nice meal. Nature. Love, if you’re lucky.“

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Dictation" and “Antiquities“ by Cynthia Ozick - review

 “Dictation“ by Cynthia Ozick:

In this “delightful“ little short story, one of four which make up this book that seems to concern itself with the lost worlds evoked by languages, we follow the female secretaries of Henry James and Joseph Conrad, Theodora Bosanquet and Lilian Hallowes, as they engineer a cunning little literary conspiracy to save themselves their own little mark of immortality in their masters' work.

When the two authors, who where indeed friends for a while and exchanged ideas, meet on a fine day in 1910 in Henry James’ club in London, the two secretaries by chance meet, too and set in motion their plan.

In convincingly evoking the epoch of Henry James, in mannerism, dictation and language, Ozick paints an amusing little sketch of a bygone world.

“Antiquities“ by Cynthia Ozick:

This is the latest book by Cynthia Ozick and maybe I should have read some of her earlier work first. As it is, here I wonder, after reading this short novel and enjoying the style, what have I really gained from it. 

A grumpy old widower, formerly working in the law trade, well respected member of society and heir of a distinguished wealthy family, now lives retired, in a senior’s residence, the same building which, in his youth, he lived in as a young boarding school member.  He spends his days in writing his memoirs and so the book takes us on a journey between the present and the past. 

It’s all very well written, the prose is immaculate, the characters are finely sketched, it is even humorous and amusing to follow the story up until the end and the tale sometimes takes on a fable quality. Yet, it left me quite unfazed at the end.

The fault lies not in the novel then but in me, who read all too many novels before this one which all  deal with the specific hothouse atmosphere a boarding school quite naturally provides and provokes. There is a certain, indistinct law of how things might, should and are evolving in such a setting. There is friendship, comradeship, there are the one or two outsiders who have to endure the scorn and cruel injustices of the rest, there is one intimate and emotionally confusing encounter with a fellow pupil and then everything turns into adulthood, is quickly forgotten and only later, at the end of life, resurfaces as dear innocent memories. 

Well, very well done, but alas, to me, of no great surprise and consequence.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

Short story “Signs and Symbols" by Vladimir Nabokov - review

 “Signs and Symbols" by Vladimir Nabokov:

Whatever one thinks of Nabokov, the man can write. He is a master of his art and a good example of it is the short story “Signs and Symbols”, first published in the New Yorker in May 15, 1948. It is a truly remarkable short story and I strongly recommend to read it. It is a short story, indeed and will only take 10 to 15 minutes of your time, but they are worth it.

This haunting little tale, more a sketch than a story, is being propelled by the feeling of threat in an otherwise normal-seeming situation and follows an elderly immigrant couple in New York who plan to visit their son on his birthday. This son has been hospitalized for years now in a sanitorium, as he suffers from a mental disorder in which he reads everything about the world around him referring to him in code, a code he must decipher. And as we follow his mind we also begin to suspect that everything in this story, every fine little detail might be imbued with hidden meaning, everything in life might be just “signs and symbols”.

The couple returns home after the visit, resolving, albeit with mixed feelings to bring back home their son the next day. The story nears its end, there is a mysterious phone call, repeatedly, with dreadful news to the couple and we are left to guess and fill out the masterly left out blanks. Within a few pages Nabokov was able to compose a huge drama and hold us in its grip. 

As it was originally published in The New Yorker: 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/symbols-and-signs

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Alice Knott" by Blake Butler - review

 “Alice Knott” by Blake Butler:

In a shockingly blasphemous scene, at least blasphemous so to connoisseurs of art, the novel sets the tone for what is to come. What is to come is not clear, yet but it is ominously unfriendly and seems to threaten the very foundations of what we came to understand as art - and thus life and moral. 

Alice Knott, a woman, very rich, very old, very peculiar, finds herself the victim of a theft and in the focus of suspicion of being behind this deed that culminated in the destruction of works of art she possessed, works of singularity and irreplaceability. 

More disconcerting to Alice than being a suspect or being robbed, though was the thing, an object, that the intruders left behind in the space which once was occupied by a Robert Rauschenberg painting, a piece titled White Painting, a blank white canvas that followed concept over form, reminding of the “continuous non-presence of the possibility of nothingness“. 

The object left behind was a mirror. Unforgettable the moment when Alice approaches the object, at first finding it hard to distinguish it as a different object, it being of the same size as the stolen canvas and the surrounding walls being of the same white as the former painting. Then she stood directly in front of it and saw her own reflection as her portrait in a white field. These strong images got me hooked and I kept reading on, intrigued by art’s semantics. 

The big one question which arises is of course: WHY?

From now on we slowly get to see glimpses of who Alice is and was and it is a disturbing sight we see. Alice is haunted by childhood demons, by a father who mysteriously and inexplicably vanished one day, only to be replaced by a person who claims to be her father, a look-alike twin brother who, as an inmate in death row escaped his fate for unknown reasons, a mother who resists all questions and references to her vanished husband. In short: she is haunted by a family she deeply distrusts. 

The mind into which we are forced to plunge is a strange, distorted, traumatized and tortured one. A phantasmagoric nightmare, a kaleidoscopical dream state, not easy to confront. More and more one is reminded of another famous Alice, the one who went down the rabbit hole. 

Soon we learn of the downfall of the family, how Alice was left, after the death of her parents, with a heritage of immense wealth.  Her ominous twin vanished soon after. 

Things begin to change over night, rooms appear, corridors open up. We are yet not certain if this is real or imagination. 

The prose, when it describes the mental state of Alice, is a mostly cool descriptive voice in a differentiated, sophisticated language which sometimes, quite surreptitiously, brings to mind the dictation of Henry James.

Then more art all over the world is vandalised and destroyed. Reality, memory and  imagination begin to shift and mingle until we are no longer certain of what Alice sees is the blackness of her mind, the TV screen on the wall or reality. 

The novel slowly begins to feel like a dystopian science fiction story or a metaphor for doomsday. 

And then, after reading exactly half of the book, all of a sudden I lost interest. I no longer wanted to wander around in such a strange mind without at least a glimpse or an idea of where this tale could be leading. I admit, my patience was exhausted and although I found the prose a good one, it couldn’t catch my attention any longer. Not for the length of yet another book half.  I grew tired of having to guess what was really going on, what is really happening. 

And by now I don’t even care anymore. 

This is one of the very rare occurrences where a book started out wonderfully promising and sadly ended up in indifference. Although it was in many parts an intelligent construct and an intriguing read, in the end (or rather: In the middle) it failed to be the book for me. Strangely, too I remember the description of the Rauschenberg canvas, somehow its possible reading now extending to this book: “a continuous non-presence of the possibility of nothingness“. 

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“The Italian Teacher" by Tom Rachman - review

 “The Italian Teacher“ by Tom Rachman:

What follows if one allows ethics to undermine aesthetics? 

Does great art justifies monstrous selfishness?

Are artists people who deserve to have a different set of rules than the rest of us?

Is the suffering of family, lovers, children to be accepted as inevitable and excused by the, supposedly far greater value of art and do they not have the right to their own life?

Do other people’s opinions have anything to do with the value of our art? 

Do they have anything to do with the value of our selves?

The hypocrisies of the art world, questions about ambition, value and the nature of art, the age-old question of how monetary value correlates with artistic worth and above all the love of a son for his genius artist father, his struggle for love and affection, the heavy weight of obligation, duty, responsibility and loyalty: All these themes are masterfully spread out and examined in this rich, emotionally touching, sad, warm and surprisingly inventive novel. 

 

The narrative tracks the lifelong relationship between Pinch and his father, the great 20th-century artist Bear Bavinsky, a tremendous narcissist with tremendous charm, as he tries to unburden himself from his father’s overwhelming crushing ego and to reframe his own life. 

Great artists often come with big egos, they suck up the air and all energy in a room and from all those who surround them if given the chance. Living in the shadow of greatness is not an easy task. It can have dramatic and irreversible effects on a person’s growth. Which is exactly what happens to Pinch Bavinsky, the son.

Always eager to gain his father’s admiration and support the son tries to become an artist himself, starts learning the trade, follows the sparse hints and offered lessons his father gave him only to learn later that Father does not consider him artist material. Crushed he resolves to become an art historian to be of later service to his father’s fame. 

Meanwhile Pinch grows up, makes friends, has mostly discouraging affairs and finally falls seriously in love with a girl and just when it seems he has found fulfillment and happiness Bear, the father sabotages this relationship and subsequently the life of Pinch declines and he winds up as a teacher of Italian at a language school in London. 

Here Pinch as well as the narrative have reached a point where it is almost too sad to want to follow any longer. And exactly then the story picks up on a different momentum and leads to a finale that is both wonderfully ironic and profoundly touching. 

Over the years the balance of power between Pinch and his father begins to shift and in a rebellious act of defiance Pinch hatches a surprising scenario, ironic and touching, which will both secure his father’s legacy and at the same time save Pinch his own mark in the art world. This brilliant finale I found very uplifting and it left me smiling.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel - review

 “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel:

The collapse of civilization, a dystopian world, a possible future. It has been thought of in many variations before. I nevertheless liked this one because it focuses, over the course of 20 years, on the fate of a few handful of people, bound inextricably together by their relation to a dying actor and a futuristic graphic novel. Arthur’s death at 51, taking place on stage in a production of King Lear, sets in motion a fast-paced narrative. From this moment on we follow the lives of everyone closely related to him or only marginally involved in the production. Now the virus hits. 

The novel tells of a pandemic which erases almost all of mankind from the surface of this world and forces the few survivors to come to terms with the loss of civilization as we know it, with all its wondrous, marvelous achievements like the internet, electricity, air planes or mobile phones. Now survivalism is asked for and adaption to a perilous life to make it to the next day. The greatest, most dangerous enemy is, one is not surprised, man himself, the neighbour, a wanderer, a stranger.

The prose is good, the story full of suspense, the pace is quick and many surprises pop up. 

The end, although dystopian, offers a shimmer of hope that, although all has been lost mankind might still have a future. 

A good tale, entertaining and thoughtfully worked out, that never gets boring and always has a focus on life, relations, existence and the importance of art. I liked it. 

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro - review

 “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro:

Right from the beginning: I did not like the book.

How does it feel to be not-quite human and to see and experience the world all around you? 

Is science able to transcend death?

Is it morally justifiable to substitute one consciousness, one life, by harvesting and using another consciousness?

All these are very good thoughts and concepts worthy to explore, ideas to engage in. Alas, Ishiguro doesn’t seem to be able to generate out of this fascinating material a good, enjoyable while rewarding book. 

Klara is a robot, an AF, an artificial friend which wealthy parents buy for their kids as a companion. These kids are, one learns over the course of the book, genetically enhanced children and this genetical engineering sometimes comes with disastrous side effects which can result in the death of these kids. In the family into which Klara is being bought there is a mother and her daughter for whom Klara is supposed to be the companion. The daughter is weak and ill and is believed to be dying soon. The family already lost another daughter in the past and the mother, thinking that she will not be able to endure and survive another loss, contrives a plan to substitute her daughter, once the daughter has died, with a look-alike robot body and the mind of Klara who is endowed with extraordinary empathetic and mimic abilities. There is a similarity with Ishiguro’s earlier novel “Never Let It Go“ where children are raised in an institution for the sole purpose of being harvested for their organs.

Klara, the robot tells, in a voice mix of intelligence and naivety, of how she experiences her surroundings and so forces us to interpret her impressions and deduct from them what is going on. A nice proper technique and it works -  for a while. At first entertaining, engaging and suspensive it soon outlives its momentum and becomes utterly boring and frustrating. It becomes clear that behind the clever technique there is just: Very Little. And this is not enough. This is a small, pretty tale which would have been much better at home within a short story than a novel. Because that is what it feels like, a nice little idea, blown up to a novel’s dimension. 

There should be emotions involved. There are indeed emotions involved. But one does not feel them. One is being told of them, one is being made to think one should have them, but one does not feel them. This might be due to Klara having no real interiority, of being still a machine in the end, one cannot relate to her and this shuts the door to feeling. Questions of moral, parental love, empathy, loyalty, the value of a mind, of all these one reads, but does not really feel them. All is lost in a fog of childish tale that pretends to be profounder then it really is. And it doesn’t help but confuses and raises a feeling of disbelieve that Klara, being a solar-powered machine without real feeling, just being able to register and analyse emotions, all of a sudden is supposed to have a sort of innate religious feeling which results in worshipping the Sun, her source of life. 

The ideas for this book were definitively good ones. The physical manifestation turned out moderately meager. I was disappointed.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood - review

 “Cat’s Eye” by Margaret Atwood:

This is Atwood’s refreshingly honest while slightly accusing, slightly misogynistic version of a “Künstlerroman”, the Life of the Artist as a Young Woman who, right from the start, is constantly observed, questioned, criticized and judged.  

Elaine, a woman painter, returns to her hometown Toronto for a retrospective of her art and starts reminiscing in vivid detail and extraordinary observance, her life, her childhood and her friendship with “best friend” and cruel torturer Cordelia. 

Everything and everyone in this narrative is rendered in great detail of sight, sound, taste and smell: a symphony of sensual evocation. Emotion is made comprehensible through the physical world. And a lot of the physical world is associated with pain. Fear and horror are inextricably intertwined in everyday experience. The timeline is set mostly in the past and occasionally interspersed by the present. 

The girl Elaine has to endure betrayal and cruel childhood games of power, subservience and dominance. In a surreal, almost magical event she frees herself from her tormentors and starts to live an emancipated life, has an affair, gets married and divorced, becomes a painter, becomes a mother, struggles with her identity, struggles with the constant judgement women in society have to endure and emerges out of this process all the stronger. In the final pages she rises above the ties that bound her, not necessarily happier, but more in accord with and more accepting of herself, all the while Cordelia never ceases to pop up in her mind.

This is an emotional book, half of the story is told from the child Elaine’s perspective. All the relevant persons we meet through the eyes of Elaine: her parents, her brother who met a tragical death, her school-friends, her teachers. 

Cat’s Eye ends on a peaceful, forgiving note. While Elaine walks through her exhibition, she assembles structure and meaning out of the shards and shreds of her life and ties loose ends. Cat’s Eye is not only a reminiscent look on youth but also a meditation on ageing and the way relations with people, places and the past are changing.

Atwood unrelentingly tugs at (not quite lifts) the false, lying veil of feminist benevolence and womanly support which is really claw-and-tooth disguised as friendship. “Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women“ is one astounding lesson Elaine learns, another is that “men don’t have intentions, they are like the weather, they have no mind“.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Aus einer Kindheit“ - poem

Das Dunkeln war wie Reichtum in dem Raume, darin der Knabe, sehr verheimlicht, saß.
Und als die Mutter eintrat wie im Traume, erzitterte im stillen Schrank ein Glas. from "Aus einer Kindheit", Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Outline, Transit, Kudos“ by Rachel Cusk - review

 

“Outline“ by Rachel Cusk:

In this first instalment of the trilogy the narrator, a woman writer who flies to Athens to teach a writing course, listens to the people she meets, starting with her neighbouring passenger on the plane, all of whom together weave a tapestry out of numerous little narratives. They talk about their lives, ambitions, desires, failures, their perceptions and their daily lives. Slowly out of these seemingly random narratives themes begin to emerge of loss, of family, of difficult relationships, of how we see or willingly not-see ourselves, of creativity, of life. Written in a fluent, talkative, easy but endearing prose the book is a delight to read and reminds us that in everyone’s life small and big dramas are constantly played out. I loved reading it. 

“Transit“ by Rachel Cusk:

Second instalment of the trilogy. After her divorce the narrator and her two sons struggle to set foot in London and make a new living. As in “Outline", the first installment, she meets many people who all tell her their stories  and slowly weave a tapestry of renewal, of transition, of suffering, of power and vulnerability, of our longing to simultaneously want to flee from and live our lives. The weary and difficult process of reconstructing  and rebuilding the newly acquired house in London is a permanent reminder that nothing is fixed, all is in flux and in transition. I liked it as much as the first book. 

“Kudos” by Rachel Cusk:

The third instalment of the trilogy.

We follow the narrator on a route of visiting, speaking at or being interviewed at literary events in a Europe in transition, the Brexit well underway.  More than the previous books this one is about reading and writing, the world of books and the inevitably accompanying business to sell them. And it raises questions of truth and representation. As in the other books the narrator meets countless people who all have interesting stories to tell. In the end the book makes, or seems to make, a statement on the age-old relationship between men and women, concluding in a strong, dramatic if unsettling image. I found this book the most intellectually interesting of the trilogy. All three are definitely a grand achievement. 

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“Second Place" by Rachel Cusk - review

 “Second Place” by Rachel Cusk:

A woman, interested in art, invites a painter whom she always admired to visit and live in the solitary other house on her premises, the Second Place, situated in a beautiful landscape on a remote coastal marsh region where she lives together with her husband. She hopes that the painter’s artistic vision will somehow alter her life.

Her expectations clash with reality and she is forced to question her perception of her own life, her womanhood, her motherhood and her tender fragile relationships. 

Her trust in art as a transformative power or even a revelatory description of the ineffability of life suffers serious blows and she comes to understand that nothing exists except what one creates for oneself, meaning that one has to say goodbye to dreams. Life is a struggle and not a dance.

Despite these nihilistic realizations the book provides an interesting set, a good warm read and insightful philosophical pondering. 

I admit being slightly disappointed by the limited access one is offered to the painter‘s frame of mind, especially in his artistic approach towards the landscape he’s been put in, for that was what sparked my interest in the book in the first place. But then it’s not my book and not my story and the towering, all encompassing, perspective of the narrative is not his but that of the woman.

 #robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

“The Infatuations” by Javier Marias - review

 

“The Infatuations” by Javier Marias:

What a great book, what a wonderful novel, what an extraordinary story! 

The book starts with the depiction of a seemingly cruel and senseless murder.

What follows is a first-person narrative, an excursion on death, life, existence and meaning, an irresistible maelstrom of language and thought of such eloquence and profound philosophical weight which I have seldom come across lately. 

Almost every aspect of living, loving, dying, existing, is covered and looked at from different angles. The book is not a light read, far from it. Sometimes it is quite oppressing, the overall nihilistic undertone makes it hard to find joy in just simply reading. But joy obviously is not the novel’s intention. It is an existential, moralistic tale and that alone is incongruent with joy. But there is joy to be found in the revelations the book might provoke.  

And then, when you least expect it, about half-way through, there’s a twist and it turns into a murder mystery … dramatic! All of a sudden there arises a threat of imminent danger to the narrator who is the woman who used to see the murdered man and his wife every morning in the same café, the woman who became friends later, after the deed, with the wife of and a lover to the murdered man’s best friend. Now the novel gains momentum, turns more psychological and touches on questions of conscience, morality, justice and what truth really is and if there ever is only one truth. 

A very good book!

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

Literature - some thoughts

 

Literature. For some a mild detergent to wash off the smut and dirt of everyday life and then bask and roll in the clean sheets of imagined, exciting worlds of stories and tales of others, to help smooth the leisure times and liberate from the daily grind, the dreary jobs, the tasks, duties and obligations.

Literature. One of the great art forms mankind evolved out of the simple need to tell a tale. There is such an abundance of tales to be found, of main themes, their variations and the variations of variations, boundless reiterations who never seem to tire. Almost everyday a new invented tale joins the cosmos of already existing ones and is hungrily welcomed to satisfy the innate curiosity and the need for ever and ever new tales.

Literature. The main nourishment seems to be failure and the joy in its description. Failure in honesty, in self-awareness, in cognition, in recognition of others, failure in kindness or judgement. Morbid acts of cruelty, of murder, of greed, of stupidity, of hubris or misunderstanding are played out and gleefully consumed. 

Literature. It thrives on the weakness, the feebleness, the easily corrupted human mind. It thrives on the banality of reality and what we make of it. Without us there would not be literature and without literature mankind would be so much poorer.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

New novels read since May, 18th 2021

 

New (and older) novels I read since May,18th this year:

“The Apartment” by Teddy Wayne:

At first promising but then soon developing into a lengthy uninteresting - straight guy falls unexpectedly in love with another straight guy, gets rejected, seeks revenge, looses all - type of tale. Boring. Predictable. Constructed. Lifeless. 

“The Folded Leaf“ by William Maxwell:

I expected more, but still, it was a nice story about a friendship between two unlike, very different young men. A coming of age tale, written in 1945, a moving portrait of adolescence at these times. Maybe a bit outdated now but still there were some, if too few, touching passages of tenderness. Not a bad book. 

“The Lemur“ by Benjamin Black:

A good short novel, I read it in half a day, by one of my favourite authors. My first book of John Banville writing as Benjamin Black. I have to say that I liked “Snow“ better but “The Lemur”still was an interesting story in good prose. Short and maybe sometimes too quick in its revelations and plot twists but that is not necessarily a bad thing. So, yes, I enjoyed it. 

“The Insult” by Rupert Thomson:

Very soon into the story I discovered that I didn’t like it. While at first the plot seemed interesting - man gets shot, looses eyesight but miraculously still can see at night and thus fools all around him - it turned out a slightly boring, American-Existential-lone-wolf kind of story. I also didn’t like the writing, the prose. Not refined enough. 1/3rd through I had to lay it aside. 

“At Night All Blood is Black” by David Diop:

Winner of the International  Booker Prize 2021. 

A very unusual first person tale of an African soldier fighting for France in the trenches of First World War, a dark novel which starts with gruesome depictions of avenging slaughter of enemy soldiers who have killed his best friend. After the killings memory sets in of childhood, first love and friendship, mixed with African lore, witchcraft and superstition, and leads to a strange reconciling transformation which might be madness. A simple yet precise, profound, very touching and sensual prose that mesmerises up until the end. Short but powerful, I really liked it.

“Winter” by Ali Smith:

As in “Autumn” this book sparkles with wit, insight, little stories galore. There is friendship, family, relationships, art, philosophy and above all, the absurdity of life and how, despite all its madness we still can go on cherishing it. I liked this one, too. 

“On Chesil Beach“ by Ian McEwan:

What a surprise! What a wonderful, rich novel.

I have read quite a few of Ian McEwan’s books, prominent about them “The Atonement“. Then, in favour of other interesting writers I kind of lost contact, out of sight, out of mind.

And now this, to me, truly remarkable and unexpected gem of a book.

The story, a study in human behaviour, a portrait of two young lovers who get married at the end of the 1950s to then spend their honeymoon in a hotel at Chesil Beach, UK. And all goes spectacularly wrong. Although they truly love each other they know nothing about love and while he is driven by love and desire to consummate their marriage, she discovers that it is not for her, she finds everything about it utterly revolting.

I have rarely (or never) read such an insightful, tender yet accurate rendering of both her and his inner mind’s workings, their feelings, their psychological woes. And as if that would not be enough, the book also paints a picture of those then times and means of life. Very English, very touching. Beautiful prose. Another masterpiece, a tale of how a simple gesture, made or not made, can alter irreversibly two lives. Might be my best book of the year.

“Nutshell“ by Ian McEwan: 

Since my (re)discovery of Ian McEwan and “On Chesil Beach” this is the second book by him I’ve read now. And again I marvelled at the complexity, the interesting “stage setting“ of an old tale (Hamlet), told and altered, in accordance to modern times. An unborn child tells the story of how his mother and her lover (the evil uncle) plan to murder his father. With intelligent, philosophical eye and mind and with a great knowledge of history and English poetry it paints a portrait of the world outside of its motherly cocoon. The book is many things, it is pastoral, it is comical, it is a crime story, it is even tragical. Sometimes voyeuristically erotic, then moralistic or politicised or just funny. The prose is best McEwan, the plot gripping. Another masterpiece, highly recommendable. 

“Machines Like Me” by Ian McEwan: 

And another masterpiece by McEwan. I am deeply impressed. 

In a timeline, very near to ours but quite different in some aspects, not only does he tell, with usual intelligence and beautiful prose, a most interesting plot, but raises questions regarding moral, ethics, humanity, free will, society, the value of life and consciousness, be it natural or artificial. 

He constructs a love triangle in very rare form, that between 2 humans and an AI and all the complications that are bound to arise there off. 

And he pays homage to Alan Turing, mistreated great mathematician, kindly erecting a memorial, giving a grand scientific mind a second chance on life, fulfillment, appreciation and love that England, in reality, had denied him cruelly ungrateful. 

The book to me was greatly rewarding, both in intellectual and emotional input. I loved reading it and think it a great achievement. Book 3 so far of rediscovered McEwan and no disappointment. 

“Solar” by Ian McEwan: 

Number 4 so far of my dive into recently (re)discovered Ian McEwan. After “On Chesil Beach”, “Nutshell” and “Machines Like Me”, whom I all very much liked, now “Solar”. I also liked Solar, but on another scale. The topic, mainly Environment and Clean Energy, the science, as always with McEwan unobstrusively educational incorporated into the text, is interesting but not as much to me, I shamefully admit, as drama in relationship or philosophical pondering the future of humanity or the evaluation of AI consciousness. 

Furthermore the main character is this time, unlike the other characters in the former books, a very unlikable one: A fat, greedy, selfish Nobel Laureate physicist whose fifth marriage is crumbling and who tries to invigorate his career by stealing from an assistant’s work. 

The plot is still gripping, the crime a clever one and all is still infused with the dry black humour McEwan is so very apt at. So, all in all still a recommendable witty read, I just happened to like the other novels more. 

“Amsterdam” by Ian McEwan: 

Right from the beginning a promising read. Where in “Solar” the playfield was the science of environmental care and clean energy, in “Machines Like Me” Artificial Intelligence, in “On Chesil Beach” the personal drama of love doomed to fail in the face of incongruous desires and irrevocable decisions, this time in “Amsterdam“ McEwan has chosen as playfield the world of music. A basic knowledge of specific terminology and history of art music is helpful in appreciating some of the text but not mandatory, for the novel shines with biographies and characters which are step-off-the-page convincing. 

The livelong friendship of composer Clive Linley and editor Vernon Halliday is put to a hard test when, after attending the funeral of Molly, their former lover from a time when they all where young, their thoughts turn to morbidity, existence, life’s cruelties and death’s inevitability and they, not wanting an undeserved end like hers, agree on a mutual death pact. 

Very good McEwan, in the league of Nutshell, Machines Like Me, Atonement or On Chesil Beach. Loved reading it!

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry