How are things going?

A snippet from The Fire Engine that Disappeared by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö:

     On the Monday after Ascension Day, Martin Beck called up Malmö and asked how things were going.
     Hammar was standing 6 feet away from him and had just said: "Call up Malmö and ask how things are going."
     He regretted asking the moment he heard Månsson's voice, for suddenly he remembered the innumerable times over the years when he himself had been the recipient of the same idiotic question. From people in more senior Positions. From the press. From his wife. From foolish colleagues. From inquisitive acquaintances. How are things going?
     Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and said:
     "Hi. How are things going?"

The Fire Engine that Disappeared is the fifth installment in the Martin Beck series which, I'm finding, gets better and better with each book. I quote the foregoing passage because it exemplifies the tone of the whole series and that—as much as the riveting plots, the intriguing cast of characters, and the penetrating glimpses into 1960s and 70s Swedish society—is what has me so thoroughly captivated by these books.

Penelope Fitzgerald's Human Voices

I fear that Penelope Fitzgerald and I are not meant for one another. Human Voices was highly recommended by friends whose opinions I trust and whose tastes I often share. It's set in WWII London, where I've chosen to spend a good deal of my reading time lately. And it's about the BBC, an institution for which I have a great fondness. It ought to have been perfect for me, but, alas, it was not.

There was something about the style that Fitzgerald employed in the novel that scattered my attention. I didn't dislike reading it, but nothing made a sufficient impression to stick with me after I closed the book—not the characters or the setting or the various incidents that studded the narrative. If I made the mistake of putting it down without marking my place, I was lost as, even minutes later, I couldn't remember which bit I'd already read and which I hadn't.

My inability to distinguish between the characters was a particular problem. The senior staffers were generally referred to not by their names but by acronyms of their job titles: the RPD and the DPP, and I kept forgetting what jobs the acronyms denoted and which man held which job. (I've just gone back and looked them up—the RPD is the Director of the Department of Recorded Programmes, and the DPP is the Director of Programme Planning.) The junior staffers (RPAs—assistants to the RPD), were more often referred to by their names (Lise, Vi, Teddy, Willie, and so on) but, even so, I had trouble telling some of them apart. I'm sure that this was quite deliberate—the senior men being so completely identified with their jobs that they scarcely needed names, and the junior staffers being viewed as largely interchangeable by the senior men. In the abstract, this seems to me very clever, but the ultimate effect was that the novel slid past me without leaving much of an impression, either positive or negative.

As I noted above though, other readers have responded very differently, and I can't help but think that this is a case not of a flawed book or of a flawed reader but of a mismatch between reader and book. So those of you who loved Human Voices, please offer up a counterpoint to my view with a comment below or, if you've written about the book elsewhere, with a link to your post/review. And I'd be grateful too if fans of Fitzgerald's work more broadly could tell me if you see this book as representative of her style as a whole, or if there are others of her books that you would recommend I try despite not having been much taken with this one.

Library Loot 7: Still Under the Influence

        

This week's haul has me once again following up on recommendations from fellow bloggers as well as pals from goodreads and Maud-L.

Lenz by Georg Büchner (translated by Richard Sieburth): Litlove wrote an eloquent post about this one recently that sparked my interest. Here's a bit of the cover copy description: "Lenz, Georg Büchner's visionary exploration of an 18th-century playwright's descent into madness, has been called the inception of European modernist prose. Elias Canetti considered this short novella to be one of the seminal reading experiences of his entire life, and writers as various as Paul Celan, Christa Wolff and Peter Schneider have paid homage to it in their works. Published posthumously in 1839, Lenz is a taut case study of three weeks in the life of a schizophrenic, perhaps the first third-person text ever to be written from the 'inside' of insanity." And the lovely archipelago books edition that I've borrowed has the German text on one side and the English translation on the facing page in the style of some poetry translations, and it includes some of the source material from which Büchner worked. I fully expect that I'll soon be buying myself a copy to keep.

Tell Me: 30 Stories by Mary Robinson: A guest post at Maud Newton by Carrie Spell prompted me to seek out some of Robinson's work. I put three of her books on hold, and this collection of her short stories was the first to arrive. From the back cover: "These stories—sharp, cool, and astringently funny—confirm Mary Robinson's place as one of our most original writers and led Richard Yates to comment, 'Robinson writes like an avenging angel, and I think she may be a genius.'"

Havana Red by Leonardo Padura (translated by Peter Bush): You may have noticed that my crime fiction reading has had a decidedly Scandinavian flavour of late. When I came across a mention of Padura's Havana quartet on PBS's Spotlight on World Mysteries, I thought perhaps it was time for a change of climate. From the back cover: "The first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. A body is found in a Havana park. A young transvestite dressed in a beautiful red evening dress, strangled. The victim had fled his family, finding refuge with Marqués, a forgotten man in his own country, an author and theatre director once condemned by his government for being a 'heretical homosexual,' living alone surrounded only by books, his house in ruins. In the baking heat of the Havana summer Conde moves through a Cuban reality where nothing is what it seems, a dark, fascinating world of men and women born in the Revolution who live without dreaming of exile and seek their identity in the midst of disaster."

The Ark by Margot Benary-Isbert (translated by Clara and Richard Winston): This is a YA novel that tells the tale of a family struggling to get by in post-WWII Germany. My friend Melody recommended it highly on goodreads, particularly to fans of the Betsy-Tacy series.

The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane by William Holtz: This one came to my attention via goodreads as well, this time courtesy of Melissa, another Maud-L pal. Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and, according to this biography, had a fraught relationship with her mother, and also a substantial role in the shaping of her mother’s books. I've been curious about Lane ever since reading somewhere that the character Mrs. Main-Whittaker in Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy and the Great World is based on her, and now seems like a fine time to learn more about her.

Exchange by Paul Magrs: I spotted this one on Melanie's latest library loot list. After clicking through to the publisher's description, I felt that I must read the book immediately: "Following the death of his parents, 16-year-old Simon moves into his grandparents' claustrophobic bungalow, which quickly becomes a refuge from his bullying peers. United by their voracious appetite for books, Simon and his grandmother stumble across the Great Big Book Exchange—a bookshop with a difference. There they meet impulsive, gothic Kelly and her boss, Terrance—and the friendships forged in the Great Big Book Exchange result in startling and unsettling consequences for all of them."

I seem to be doing awfully well here with recommendations from friends whose names begin with "M." Dial "M" for books?

New Short Fiction to Celebrate

Just a quick heads up for those who live in or near Vancouver. Tonight (Saturday, May 30th), two of my favourite writers (and favourite people!), Stuart Ross and Alexandra Leggat, are launching new collections of short fiction at Café Montmartre (4362 Main Street, Vancouver, at 7 pm).

Stuart's book, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, first sent out into the world at its Toronto launch on April 1st, has been racking up sales and laudatory reviews ever since. In Now Magazine, Susan Cole writes: "Ross doesn't waste a word, and the impact is often breathtaking. He knows how to extend a metaphor so that even the most absurd or hallucinatory episodes – and there are many of these – convey deep meaning." In the Vancouver Sun, M.A.C. Farrant writes: "A writer with an original sensibility, he's got a gazillion curious, funny and disturbing things to say about our lives and our world. Read this book – you'll see." And in The Walrus, Mark Medley sums it up thus: "His fiction is often bold, sometimes infuriating, and always rewarding."

For Alexandra's book, Animal, tonight marks not just the Vancouver launch but the launch proper, so as of yet I can't point you to any reviews. But, judging by her previous work, and having had the pleasure of hearing her read a few of the stories from the new book while it was in progress, I have no doubt that it will be brilliant. Read the title story, "Animal," online here and see for yourself.

Of course, for those of us who are nowhere near Vancouver, though we can't celebrate tonight with the authors, we still have access to the best part, the books! Why not mark the final weekend of Short Story Month by ordering yourself a copy of each?

Maj Sjöwall Interview

After nattering on at length about Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's excellent Martin Beck novels in recent posts (here and here), I would be remiss not to provide you with a link to a recent interview of Sjöwall in the Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt:

Back then, Ms. Sjöwall writes by email from Sweden, "Swedish crime-writers wrote Agatha Christie-like books and seldom had policemen as main characters. Crime novels were considered pulp-literature in those days. Intellectuals rarely admitted to reading those kinds of books. We wanted to contribute to improving the linguistic quality, and to changing the way media treated that type of literature." The couple were writing entertainment, "but our intention was also to describe and criticize certain changes in our society and the politics of that decade."

For the rest, click here.

(Thanks to Maxine at Petrona for the link.)

The New Betsy-Tacy Covers

If you're a regular reader of this blog, it will be apparent to you from my frequent references to them that I am a devoted fan of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books. I read and reread them countless times as a child and, along with only a handful of other childhood favourites, I have carried them with me into my adult life, continuing to reread them at regular intervals. The series begins with Betsy's fifth birthday in Minnesota circa 1897 and, in ten volumes, documents her childhood and high school years, her early struggles to establish herself as a writer, her solo trip into the Great World (Germany, Italy, France, and England), and finally her wedding and the early years of her married life. The books become steadily more sophisticated in style and content as Betsy matures, thereby continuing to appeal to young readers as they grow up alongside Betsy and her friends.

I love the whole series, but I am particularly partial to the high school books and beyond. So I am extremely happy that these books, which have fallen out of print in recent years, are to be reissued by HarperCollins this fall. And I was positively giddy to learn today, upon following a link to a preview of the new covers at the Betsy-Tacy Society website, that the new editions will feature some of the same Vera Neville artwork that appeared on the covers of the original hardback editions that I borrowed from the library as a child. There have been at least two reissues of the entire series in the intervening years—in the mid-1990s and again in 2000—and while on both occasions I was very pleased that the books were available once again, the less said about their cover art the better. I understand the quest for a modern look to appeal to contemporary readers. But I've always thought that the Vera Neville illustrations have an enduring charm which would appeal to contemporary girls as well as to nostalgic adult readers like me. And, it seems that this time around someone at HarperCollins agrees with me! I love the new covers (reproduced above). Betsy and the Great World is my very favourite of the ten books in the series, and I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see that Vera Neville drawing of a windblown Betsy on the deck of the S.S. Columbic en route to Europe back on the cover of a book. (For an earlier post of mine about Betsy and the Great World, headed by a reproduction of the original cover, click here.)

If you take a close look at the new covers above, you will note that each of the three volumes contains two novels, which seems to me a clever way to get readers hooked on the series. And each volume includes a foreword penned by a famous fan of the Betsy-Tacy books: Laura Lippman, Meg Cabot, and Anna Quindlen respectively. (I'm in good company in my fandom, am I not?)

I hope that the new covers will catch the eyes of many new readers when the books appear on bookstore shelves this fall. If you're already a fan of the series, this will be an excellent opportunity to revisit it. And if you haven't yet encountered it, do give the books a try. Of course, you may forget all about them between now and their release date. But, fear not, I will remind you again closer to the time!

The Zone of Freedom

Susan Sontag on literature as freedom:

To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life, that is, the zone of freedom.

Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

From Susan Sontag, "Literature Is Freedom" in At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches (2007).

Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days

Book of a Thousand Days is another fairy tale brought vividly to life by Shannon Hale. At the centre of the story is Dashti, a mucker girl from the Steppes, who finds her way into the city and takes a vow to serve as lady's maid to Lady Saren just in time to be confined alongside her in a tower for seven years—punishment for Saren's refusal to obey her father's order to marry the brutal Lord Khasar, ruler of a neighbouring realm. The lady in the tower is, of course, a fairy tale standard. But there's nothing conventional about telling the story from the point of view of the lady's maid, a character who gets only a passing reference in the Grimms' tale that first sparked Hale's imagination. And the rich universe that Hale creates as a setting for that fragmentary tale—partly inspired by her reading on medieval Mongolia, and partly her own creation—feels wholly fresh and original.

I won't say any more about the plot than I already have, as I don't want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Dashti proves herself in a myriad of unexpected ways over the course of the book and, in so doing, earns a place among my very favourite strong and resourceful heroines of contemporary children's and YA fiction (alongside the likes of Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching). I will tell you also that, much as I was enjoying the story, midway through I felt considerable unease, as I couldn't figure out how Hale could possibly end it in a way that would be both emotionally satisfying and true to the universe that she had created. Yet she did, and so I loved the book from beginning to end.

With this one, as with Shannon Hale's first novel The Goose Girl, rather than reading the book, I listened to the audio version produced by Full Cast Audio, and I must heap praise upon them again here. It's an unabridged reading, not an adapted dramatization. But the reading is performed using different actors to voice the narrator and the other characters in dialogue which avoids any confusion while listening and heightens the drama of tale. This made for a very enjoyable listening experience. So I highly recommend not just the book, but also the Full Cast Audio version of it.

Library Loot 6: Under the Influence of Fellow Bloggers

    
    
  


Nearly all of this week's selections were prompted by posts from fellow bloggers. Click on the names of the blogs or bloggers below to link to the posts that piqued my interest in each of these tantalizing books.

Borkmann’s Point and The Return by Håkan Nesser: These are the second and third books in Nesser's Inspector Van Veeteren series (my library doesn't yet have copies of the first, Mind's Eye, which was translated into English more recently than the others). Recent posts at Crime Scraps, Detectives Beyond Borders, and Djs Krimiblog quickly shifted Nesser from the "I'd like to read him someday," into the "I must read him now" category for me.

Blind Justice and Murder in Grub Street by Bruce Alexander: These are the first two books in a mystery series featuring a pair of sleuths, one a fictionalized version of historical figure Sir John Fielding (an 18th Century judge credited as co-founder of London's first police force and, incidentally, also half-brother of novelist Henry Fielding), and the other, Jeremy Proctor, a thirteen-year-old orphan newly arrived in the city and working as a typesetter's assistant on Grub Street. Julie's compelling posts about both (here and here) prompted me to seek them out.

Greenery Street by Denis Mackail: Danielle's post about this one made it sound like a quality comfort read, not necessarily similar in content or style to the likes of Enchanted April and Miss Buncle's Book, but perhaps generating the same sort of reading experience. And the fact that Persephone Books has recently reprinted it adds to the weight of Danielle's recommendation.

A Start in Life by Anita Brookner: This is Brookner’s first novel. I've not read any of her books and, honestly, haven't felt any compulsion to do so. But Mark Thwaite's recent post about his regard for her work made me rethink that.

The Odd Women by George Gissing: From the back cover description: "Five odd women—women without husbands—are the subject of this powerful novel, set in Victorian London, by a writer whose perceptions about people, particularly women, would be remarkable in any age and are extraordinary in the 1890s." It was a recent post by Dorothy that piqued my interest in this one.

Unseen by Mari Jungstedt and Lewi's Journey by Per Olov Enquist: Two very different books by very different authors. The former is the first in a mystery series set on the Swedish island of Gotland, the latter a historical novel by one of Sweden's foremost writers of literary fiction. What they have in common is that they're both translated by Tiina Nunnally and they were both recommended by Reg in response to my recent post seeking suggestions of novels which would expand my acquaintance with Swedish literature (and who better to get such recommendations from than the translator of some of my favourite Swedish writers including Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson?).

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih: Maud Newton’s appreciation of this Sudanese novel highlighted its status as one of the few classics of Arabic literature readily available in English translation and sent me racing out for a copy.

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley: I've been making a few forays into the realm of graphic novels of late, and Nymeth's post about this one made it sound irresistible.

And finally, a couple that I came up with all on my own: A Concise History of Sweden by Neil Kent (more background for my upcoming trip to Sweden), and Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg (a debut crime novel by a well-known Canadian lawyer which is said to bring vividly to life the sights and sounds of Toronto, my current home).

It's a tribute to the glories of my local libraries, is it not, that I have all of these books in hand so soon after resolving to read them? (That's the Toronto Public Library, with occasional side trips to the York University Library, in case you’re wondering.) I love the library.

The Enduring Influence of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

In my post last week about Roseanna, the first in the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, I quoted from Henning Mankell's introduction to the new edition and remarked on some parallels between Martin Beck and Mankell's Kurt Wallander. Now that I'm into the second in the series, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, I'm entertaining myself by pursuing another link between the respective oeuvres of these crime fiction greats. In The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Beck leaves his familiar Stockholm stomping grounds to search for a Swedish journalist who has disappeared in Budapest. The search has him wandering about Eastern Europe, caught up in international intrigue at the height of the cold war. Those familiar with Mankell's work may remember that the second book in the Wallander series, The Dogs of Riga, has a similar international dimension. The novel opens with the discovery of two murder victims who have washed up on the beaches of Wallander's hometown of Ystad, Sweden. The victims are traced to the Baltic state of Latvia, and when Wallander travels there to continue his investigation, he finds himself unwittingly entangled in the violent political turmoil then flowing from the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

I've been thinking as well about Stieg Larsson's ambitious plan for a ten-book series beginning with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, sadly cut short at three books by his premature death, and wondering if he took some inspiration from his fellow journalists turned crime writers, Sjöwall and Wahlöö, who began their Beck novels with an overarching plan for a ten book series already in mind. A count of ten is a superficial link, of course, but Larsson can certainly be regarded as an heir to Sjöwall and Wahlöö in his use of the crime fiction genre as a vehicle for a sophisticated exploration of the social issues confronting Swedish society.

It's not necessary to engage in such speculation to chart the enduring influence of Sjöwall and Wahlöö however, as many contemporary authors have publicly expressed their admiration for the Martin Beck novels and written of the impact that reading them has had on their own writing and on crime fiction more broadly. One need look no further than the introductions to the new Vintage Crime/Black Lizard reprints for this. I already noted that Henning Mankell wrote the introduction to Roseanna. For the second installment, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Val McDermid does the honours. In her introduction, she identifies a number of elements that have become standard in police procedurals but that felt almost revolutionary when Sjöwall and Wahlöö originated them. This is the bit that particularly stood out for me:

The police procedural was home to a singular hero. There was no room to share the limelight. The books of Sjöwall and Wahlöö are different. Although they are generally referred to as the Martin Beck novels, they're not really about an individual. They're ensemble pieces. […] [Beck] is part of a team, each member of which is a fully realized character. His strengths and weaknesses are balanced by those of his colleagues. He relies on them as they rely on him. This is a world where ideas are kicked around, where no individual has the monopoly on shafts of brilliant insight. Nor are the repetitive tedious tasks carried out offstage by minor minions. Both action and routine are shared between Beck and his underlings. Friendships and enmities are equally tested in the course of the ten books, and everyone is portrayed as an individual who has virtues and vices in distinct measure.

And what comes next? The introductions to the reprints of books three and four, The Man on the Balcony and The Laughing Policeman, are provided by Jo Nesbø and Jonathan Franzen respectively. And for books five and six, The Fire Engine that Disappeared and Murder at the Savoy, due out in early June, it will be Colin Dexter and Arne Dahl. I can't wait to see who the publishers have got lined up for the rest. The main draw is the books themselves of course, but these introductions definitely add an extra layer of interest for me.