Usually when I read a novel described as “controversial,” I find myself seeing both sides of the controversy and writing about both sides when I write a review. With this novel, however, I was so exhilarated at the author’s bold originality, his ability to juggle his characters’ vibrant and creative inner lives while also examining the depressing circumstances under which they lived, the sweeping historical scope which includes the entire twentieth century, and his total control of language with all its potential to amaze with its images and ideas, that this review will be, I hope, a celebration of one of the best and most innovative books I have read in a long time. Ulrich, the Bulgarian main character, is almost a hundred years old as the novel opens. Blind, impoverished (after all the failed economic experiments of the various governments in Bulgaria), and alone, he spends his days looking out a window from which he cannot see. His inner world, however, is lively and filled with events, real and imagined. What follows, is an extraordinary novel, however, controversial in its structure, which I found riveting. One of my favorites for the year.
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Written in 1933, and newly translated into English, Kornel Esti is Dezso Kosztolanyi’s last book, a unique combination of wild romp, thoughtful contemplation of life’s mysteries, and dark commentary on life’s ironic twists. Dezso Kosztolanyi (1885 – 1936), a Hungarian poet, fiction writer, and journalist, creates a narrator who is also a writer, telling us from the outset that the narrator, now forty, had not seen his oldest friend Kornel Esti, also a writer, for ten years. Now, however, the narrator has decided to contact him. Born on March 29, 1885, the same day and time as both the narrator and author, Kornel Esti also looks just like the narrator and is clearly his alterego, now down on his luck. What follows is a series of eighteen episodes, which may or may not be metafictional, ranging from Kornel Esti’s first day of school, in 1891, through a symbolic tram ride at the end of the novel, a brief chapter in which the author’s entire philosophy is summed up through Esti’s late-in-life experiences on an overcrowded tram. In between are moments of high comedy, poignant drama, and shocking cruelty, all reflecting aspects of Esti’s life, either real or imagined, and all contributing to the broad panorama of human existence.
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The emotional intensity of the ancient hatreds and violence between Turks and Kurds, the origins of which may not even be clear to the participants, is vividly illuminated by this novel by Yasar Kemal, a Turk with Kurdish origins. Set in the 20th century, a fact made clear only because cars and tractors are mentioned once or twice, this novel feels as if it could have been set almost any time over the past 2000 years. Kurds, Armenians, Yedizis, Turkomans, and even Bedouins inhabit the area between Turkey and Iraq, just after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Time here is not linear, nor is the novel itself, spiraling instead through generations, forced exilings, attempts to settle down, unconscionable atrocities, and rises and falls in fortune.
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While no one will ever say that this novel by McCabe is anything but dark, he has a much broader than usual canvas here, delving into the life of an entire community located on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. McCabe himself grew up (and still lives) in Clones, a town also on the border, and his vibrant descriptions of Cullymore in this novel obviously owe much to life as he has known it in Clones. An odd novel in some ways, Stray Sod Country chooses not to focus on a single main character, instead giving portraits of many people from the community as they deal with changes in society from 1958, when Laika the Russian space dog captured the imaginations of the townsfolk, through the turbulent 1970s, and up to the present. An early comic episode establishes the feeling of menace which permeates the book, affecting virtually every character, some of whom find their bodies taken over momentarily by a malevolent outside force which impels them to say and do things that they would never do on their own. Who the spirit is is not quite clear at the beginning, but he appears to be The Fetch, a kind of devil who, along with Nobodaddy (from William Blake), has played a role in community folklore and history whenever evil has occurred.
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Setting her novel in Cagliari, Sardinia, author Milena Agus creates a story which spans three generations, focusing on women from two families who are joined through marriage. An unnamed contemporary speaker feels particularly connected with her paternal grandmother, and as the speaker pieces together this woman’s life from what she herself recalls and from family lore, she creates a woman who not only searches earnestly for love but is absolutely determined to experience it in all its splendor, believing that it is “the principal thing in life.” The novel deals beautifully with primal events and universal themes—the need to belong, the importance of ties to a community, the yearning for true love, the vagaries of chance or fate, and the importance of memories. As the generations move forward from World War II to the present, each character must protect his/her memories against change in order to preserve a sense of selfhood. It is only the speaker who has the liberty to tinker with the past and/or the truth. Passion, in all its many forms, rules the lives of the characters here—and affects the reader, too.
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