Author Archives: Melissa Beck

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About Melissa Beck

My reading choices are rather eclectic. I enjoy reading a wide range of books especially classics, literature in translation, history, philosophy, travel writing and poetry. I especially like to support small, literary presses.
February 17, 2016 · 7:43 am

Review: Epitaph for a Working Man by Erhard von Büren

I received a review copy of this book from the translator, Helen Wallimann.  The book was published in the original German in 1990 in Switzerland and this English version was released in 2015.  I invite you to read my review and scroll down to the end of the post to win your own copy of Epitaph for a Working Man.

My Review:
EpitaphHaller resides in a nursing home in Switzerland where he still participates in a very full and active life.  He visits the local pub, he continues doing some work as a stone mason and he entertains his roommates with his quick, sarcastic wit.  This book is the story of the last year of his life as told by his only child, his son.

When the story begins, Haller’s son, who is never given a name, is picking up his father’s belongings from the nursing home at which he had resided for the last twelve years of his life.  His father’s only earthly possessions are contained in two small boxes.  His son slowly begins to recount his father’s illness which began as an odd mole on his back that at first only caused him some minor discomfort.  We guess from the description of this growth that Haller has melanoma and as the story progresses this diagnosis is confirmed.

Haller has to make three trips a week to the hospital in order to undergo radiotherapy treatments for his back.  At first the prognosis seems quite good and the doctor is optimistic that the treatments will take care of the growth on the old man’s back.  Haller’s son meets him at the hospital for all of his father’s appointments and waits for him while he receives his treatments.  Haller and his wife divorced when their child was very young so Haller and his son have never been very close.  It is Haller’s illness and his time at the hospital that bring the father and son together into a closer relationship and connection.

Haller’s son has lost his job as a typesetter and has been living on unemployment for many months now.  He has lost his sense of purpose and his only task during that day is that of “house husband.”  He makes meals for his wife, picks up around the house and does laundry while his wife is at work all day.  He takes the news that his wife is having an affair with her boss in a rather emotionally detached way.  He wonders where they meet to have their trysts and he also wonders if he should leave her.  He doesn’t seem to be all that upset about this development in their marriage so we are left to speculate if he wasn’t all that emotionally attached to the relationship in the first place, or if he is just numb with shock and depression.

The last few days of his life, which are very painful for Haller, are related to us in some detail.  Haller’s son never shares with his father when the cancer reaches his organs.  He struggles with his decision not to be honest with his father about his diagnosis.  He also struggles with how to make his father the most comfortable in his final days.  The strength of this story lies in its subtle commentary on how we struggle as human beings to deal with our final days.  Helen’s translation beautifully renders the heartwarming relationship between father and son into English for us.

About the Author and Translator:
Erhard von Büren was born near Solothurn, Switzerland, in 1940. After a PhD in Psychology and German philology from Zurich University (Zur Bedeutung der Psychologie im Werk Robert Musils. Atlantis, Zürich) and study stays in France he worked as a teacher in advanced teacher training. He lives in Solothurn, Switzerland.     He has had three novels published in Switzerland: Abdankung. Ein Bericht (Zytglogge Verlag, Bern 1989), Wespenzeit (Rotpunktverlag, Zürich 2000), Ein langer blauer Montag (verlag die brotsuppe, Biel/Bienne 2013).     Erhard von Büren has won various literary awards including the Canton of Solothurn Prize for Literature in 2007.     Homepage: http://www.erhard-von-bueren.ch

Helen Wallimann was born in 1941 and grew up in Cheltenham. She received her MA from Edinburgh University in 1963.She has worked in publishing in Munich, Paris and London. From 1973 to 2001 she was a teacher of French and English at the Kantonsschule Solothurn.  Her literary translations in book form include Legends from the Swiss Alps. MCCM Creations, Hong Kong 2009 (translated from German); Leung Ping-kwan, The Visible and the Invisible. Poems. MCCM Creations, Hong Kong 2012 (translated from Chinese).

Giveaway:
The translator put together a fun little multiple choice quiz about Switzerland for my readers.  Whoever gets the most answers correct will win a paperback copy of the book.  If there is a tie I will randomly choose a winner.  The quiz will be open until Friday, Feb. 19th.  This giveaway is open internationally.  Good luck!

 

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February 15, 2016 · 11:26 am

Review: William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

My Review:
William EnglishmanI was not surprised to find out the author composed this novel in a tent on the front lines of World War I.  The novel is a gruesome, starkly honest portrayal of the horrors of war.  The author, however, draws the readers in at first with a light and satirical description of its gentle, naïve and optimistic main characters, William and Griselda.

When the story begins, William is twenty-six years old and still lives with his mother.  He has an extremely ordered and monotonous life working at a clerk’s office and handing over most of his weekly paycheck to his mother.  He doesn’t seem to have any genuine affection for his parent and when she suddenly dies he realizes that he never really loved her.  Her death means freedom for him; not only does he now have financial freedom since she left him a sizeable inheritance but he also has the freedom to make his own decisions about the course his life will take.

William asks some advice from one of his fellow clerks about what he should do with his time and money and it is through this interaction with Farraday that William becomes involved with political and social reform.  William leaves the tedious office where he has worked for many years and embarks on full-time career as a social activist who writes about, protests and goes to meetings about the suffragette movement, pacifism, and other socialist topics.

It is at these meetings that William meets Griselda, a feisty suffragette who shares the same ideals as William.  The tone in the book that describes these two is one of gentle parody as William and Griselda appear to fight for mostly vague causes.  They believe all government is evil and any attempt of a government to raise a military and train it is simply “playing” at warfare.  They love to go to meetings and hand out pamphlets and consider themselves strong and tough for fighting against social injustices.  They see themselves as the perfect couple and their courtship and devotion to each other is a sweet love story.

When William and Griselda take their honeymoon in the remote mountains of the Belgian Ardennes, they are uneasy with the slow-paced, quiet life of the village in which they are staying. But they settle in for a few weeks and enjoy each other’s company.  It is on the very last day of their vacation that things take a horrible and tragic turn for the worst.  They encounter a regiment of invading German soldiers who treat them brutally and inhumanely.  I have to say that the violence in this book shocked me and Hamilton does not gloss over or sugarcoat the atrocities of war.

William, the once naïve and optimistic Englishman who lived in his happy little bubble of bliss, now becomes the disillusioned and distraught victim of real warfare.  It is not a game or a joke when men are being blown apart and people’s lives are destroyed by gunfire and bombs.  I don’t want to give away the plot and the fate of William and Griselda.  But I will say that William’s story comes full circle and in the end his life becomes equally as monotonous and numb as it was when we first meet him living under the thumb of his mother.  What starts out as an amusing story about two naïve lovebirds becomes a harsh commentary on the gory realities of warfare.

I encourage anyone who enjoys World War I historical fiction to pick up this book.  Thanks to Persephone Press for reissuing another brilliant book from an important 20th century female author.

About the Author:
C HamiltonCicely Mary Hamilton (born Hammill), was an English author and co-founder of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League.

She is best remembered for her plays which often included feminist themes. Hamilton’s World War I novel “William – An Englishman” was reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999.

She was a friend of EM Delafield and was portrayed as Emma Hay in “A Provincial Lady Goes Further.”

 

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February 12, 2016 · 10:31 am

Review: The Voronezh Notebooks by Osip Mandelstam

My Review:
MandelstamThis edition of Mandelstam’s Voronezh Notebooks, recently published by the New York Review of Books, is a collection eighty nine verses the Russian poet wrote while he was exiled to the city of Voronezh.  During the early 1930’s Mandelstam wrote and published poetry that mocked and criticized Stalin and so it is no surprise that he was arrested and sent into exile.  During part of his exile he was allowed to live in Voronezh which was a bit more civilized as far as Russian exiles were concerned.  He was lucky that his wife Nadezhda was allowed to go with him and if it were not for her then much of his poetry would have been lost to us.

The first notebook contains poetry written between April and July of 1935.  All of the poems are numbered as well as dated.  In this first series of poems we understand that Mandelstam is relieved to be in Voronezh although he by no means feels at home in this city.  He lives is a crowded boarding house that he describes as a “coffin” in the first poem.  He and his wife have no privacy and they hear every movement and sound of their neighbors.  In the third poem he begs Voronezh to have mercy on him and “restore” him but throughout these poems we get the sense that he feels hemmed in, claustrophobic and hopeless.

The second Notebook beings in December of 1936 and goes through February of 1937.  The imagery of winter that one encounters in these poems are particularly striking.  He describes this season as a “postponed present” because the length of its extent is always uncertain.  Poem #37 is one of my favorites from this collection; he admires the goldfinch who “curses the sticks and perches of his prison.”  He admires this  bird who makes so much noise and is “disobedient.”

The final notebook is written between March and May of 1937.  As I have already hinted at through his writing of winter and the goldfinch, Mandelstam’s lines abound with images of nature and the forest.  In the introduction to this volume, Andrew Davis, the translator, tells us that Mandelstam composed these verses in his head while he was walking.  He seems to have done a great deal of exploring his natural surroundings and appreciated, even for a few hours, the illusion of freedom which they provided.  But Mandelstam realizes that his stay in Voronezh is not his own choice and he is still a captive of a fascist regime.  In Poem #72, for example, he writes of the night sky and the stars which he is fighting against as they hem him in and suffocate him; although the sky appears limitless, he is stuck under the sky that only encompasses this city.    In Poems #76 he declares, “I am ready to roam where the sky is greater.”

Finally, in his introduction to the collection Davis points out that the Notebooks were saved through the extraordinary efforts of his wife who, even after his death, saved pieces of them in teapots and other small places hidden around her apartment.  Each day she would practice memorizing them and Davis explains that “she made it her life’s work to preserve her husband’s poetry.”  Because of her act of devotion and bravery this seemed to me like a fitting collection to review as we celebrate and acknowledge those we love on this upcoming Valentine’s Day.

 

About the Author:
OsipOsip Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin’s government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife Nadezhda. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to a camp in Siberia. He died that year at a transit camp.

The translator has written a wonderful article about the difficulties of translating Mandelstam’s poems from Russian to English that I encourage everyone to read: https://psa.fcny.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/own_words/Osip_Mandelstam/

 

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February 9, 2016 · 2:56 pm

Review: Willful Disregard by Lena Andersson

I received an Advanced Review Copy of this title from Other Press.  The original book was published in Swedish in 2013 and this English version has been translated by Sarah Death.

My Review:
Willful DisregardOne of my favorite poems from the Roman elegiac poet Catullus is his shortest, which contains two very powerful and vivid lines:

“Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.”

(I hate and I love.  Perhaps you may ask why I do this?  I don’t know,  but I feel that it is so and I am tortured)  -Catullus, poem 85

At the time of composing this poem Catullus had been in the throws of an illicit affair with a woman twenty years his senior.  In the beginning the affair is intense and all-consuming; but the woman slowly grows tired of poor Catullus and the agony he experiences as a result of what turns out to be a one-sided love affair is aptly expressed in this poem.  When love is not reciprocal, and expectations are higher for one person and not the other, feelings of torment and torture are the result.

Lena Andersson, in her latest novel, also employs a brevity of powerful words to express a woman’s disappointment and torment when an affair becomes one-sided.  When the book opens, the  main character, Ester, is a strong, independent, hardworking, artistic woman who has a successful career writing articles for art magazines and journals.  She is hired to give a lecture about one of Sweden’s most prominent modern artists, Hugo Rask; what ensues is a year’s worth of frustration, torment and false hope for this woman who was once strong and independent.  Even as she researches Hugo to give her lecture he becomes a larger than life, heroic artist and her interest in him borders on obsession.  When she meets Hugo in person she is immediately attracted to him and wants to be around him all of the time.  She breaks up with her live-in boyfriend, a kind man named Per, because she wants nothing more than to have a relationship with Hugo.

Ester begins her tentative interactions with Hugo through dinners and long conversations.  There is an interesting subtext that is cleverly at work in the novel as well since many of Ester and Hugo’s conversations deal with fascism, totalitarianism, freedom and independence.  The exact details of the conversations are not always given since the book mainly deals with Ester’s inner dialogue.  Ester tells us that the conversations with Hugo are erotic and emotionally charged and she fully expects that they will become lovers.  She appears desperate to be in the full throws of a relationship with this artist whom she idolizes and she becomes very impatient when the relationship does not advance as quickly as she expects.

The author’s foreshadowing in this book is brilliant.  At the beginning, when Ester begins to talk about Hugo and her interactions with him she oftentimes describes them as causing her torment and pain, much like the torture that Catullus feels in the above mentioned poem.  There are quite a few things that neither we, the readers, nor Ester know about Hugo.  He mysteriously disappears every other weekend to another city in Sweden.  Ester assumes that he might have a relationship with another woman with whom he is spending so much time on the weekends, but she doesn’t really know.  And she never asks him directly!  Hugo also puts her off from showing her his apartment and only ever meets her at his work studio.  Ester chalks all of this up to Hugo’s mysterious nature as an artist, but the astute reader understands that this secretive nature of his doesn’t bode well for their relationship or any chance of them having a future together.

When Ester and Hugo finally end up in bed her feelings intensify and she becomes even more obsessed with the progression of their relationship.  She analyses and over analyzes every text message and e-mail from him.  She waits impatiently for him to return her phone calls.  She can’t stand it when days go by without seeing him.  I found myself wanting to scream at her while reading, “He’s not worth it.”  “Run the other way and never look back before this ridiculous farce of a relationship destroys you!”  Her friends, which she describes as the “girlfriend chorus” do give her this wise advice but she cannot tear herself away from the emotional attachment she feels towards Hugo.  We are left wondering page after page when poor Ester will finally come to her senses and regain her independence and free herself from these destructive feelings.

This author truly has a gift for philosophical writing; the description of hope and the negative effects in has on the lover at the very end of the book are nothing short of brilliant.  Andersson compares hope to a parasite that” has to be starved to death if it is not to beguile and dazzle its host.  Hope can only be killed by the brutality of clarity.  Hope is cruel because it binds and entraps.”

I always tell my students that it is no wonder that hope was in Pandora’s box of evils.  If you have ever been in the throws of love and have been tortured by hope because of a futile love then you should read this book.

About the Author:
L AnderssonLena Andersson (born 18 April 1970 in Stockholm) is a Swedish author and journalist. She won the August Prize in 2013 for the novel Wilful Disregard . In the same year, the same book, won her the Literature Prize given by the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

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February 6, 2016 · 6:25 pm

Review: Winter by Christopher Nicholson

I received an advanced review copy of this book from the publisher, Europa Editions.

My Review:
WinterI always thought it was sad that the Roman Stoic philosopher Cicero, in his moral treatise De Senectute (On Old Age), argues that not only do old men not engage in the pleasures of a lover any longer, but they are actually relieved to be free from such sensations.  Seneca, in one of his Stoic epistles, agrees with Cicero’s sentiment by telling Lucilius that it is a relief to have tired out one’s appetites and be done with such things.

Christopher Nicholson, in his fictional autobiography about the last few years of Thomas Hardy’s life, greatly disagrees with Cicero and Seneca’s views on old age.  Nicholson gives us an example, through the life of this famous author, of an old man enjoying love and fantasizing about pleasure even though such enjoyments are not necessarily attainable.  The focus of the book is the winter of Hardy’s eighty-fourth year when he decides to become involved in an amateur production of Tess.  He has resisted turning what is his most famous novel into a staged production, but when he meets Gertrude Bulger, a local townswoman, he believes she is the only one that can do his heroine justice.

Hardy lives a very quiet life in the small town of Wessex where he was born.  He doesn’t go out and socialize very much, so it is truly remarkable when he agrees to become involved with the local theater company to stage this production of Tess.  He develops a heart-warming relationship with the lead actress, whom he affectionately refers to as “Gertie.”  He enjoys having her over for tea and talking to her about books, philosophy and life in general.  He realizes that, even though he is in the winter of his life, he still has strong feelings of love and desire for this twenty-eight year-old woman.  She inspires him to write love poems again and he produces over twenty such poems in the course of a few months.

The imagery and backdrop of winter is appropriate for Hardy’s reflections on what he feels could be the last few months, weeks or days of his life.  The cold and ice and bleak landscape reflect what he feels is going on in the natural progression of his life.  He, however, is not sad or bitter about this .  And when he has the opportunity to interact with Gertie he embraces the opportunity and does not deny himself feelings of love, pleasure and desire just become of his advanced age.  One of the sweetest moments of the book is when he finds one a piece of her hair and tucks it into one of the books in his library as a keepsake.

The other forceful character in the book is Hardy’s wife who is about forty years his junior.  Although Florence is much younger than her husband she acts like she is the octogenarian in the relationship.  She is obsessed with her health, paranoid, whiny and jealous.  When she sees that Thomas has developed feelings for Gertie she is relentless in her nagging at him and does everything she can to make sure that they do not see each other again.  I understand that Hardy could be a quiet, brooding, stubborn man and was not the easiest person to live with.  But Florence’s constant obsession about her health and the perceived wrongdoings against her made it difficult to have any sympathy for her.

The reader should be warned that the ending is not necessary a happy one.  There is, however,  a larger message in the book to be found which is that Cicero and Seneca did not quite have the correct perceptions on old age.  Human beings have the capacity to experience love, desire and pleasure right up until our final days.  Cicero and Seneca most definitely would have judged Hardy to be a bad Stoic.

About the Author:
C NicholsonChristopher Nicholson was born in London in 1956 and brought up in Surrey. He was educated at Tonbridge School in Kent, and read English at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. After university he worked in Cornwall for a charity encouraging community development. He then became a radio scriptwriter and producer, and made many documentaries and features mainly for the BBC World Service in London. He was married to the artist Catharine Nicholson, who died in 2011. He has two children, a son and a daughter. For the past twenty-five years he has lived in the countryside on the border between Wiltshire and Dorset.

 

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