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Alejandro Zambra–MY DOCUMENTS

Apr 13th, 2015 by

Note: Author Alejandro Zambra was WINNER of Chile’s National Critics’ Prize for his novella, Bonsai, in 2006.

“It’s nighttime, it’s always nighttime when the text comes to an end. I re-read, rephrase sentences, specify names. I try to remember better: more, and better. I cut and paste, change and enlarge the font, play with line spacing. I think about closing this file and leaving it forever in the My Documents folder. But I’m going to publish it, I want to, even though it’s not finished, even though it’s impossible to finish it.”—the author, in his story “My Documents.”

Described as “the greatest writer of Chile’s younger generation,” author Alejandro Zambra has created eleven stories so firmly grounded in reality and filled with carefully chosen detail that they seem to be from his own life, though it is impossible to know for sure without hearing more from the author himself.  Likewise, we cannot know how much may be inspired by his own life but altered for the purpose of improving the story, or how much may be created from whole cloth for the purpose of recreating a period in history or illustrating a theme. Ultimately, this collection of stories vibrantly recreates an unusual childhood from the perspective of a child, while also revealing the speaker’s early adulthood and his lack of confidence in his own maturity.  In several stories, the author conveys the feelings at the heart of parent-child relationships, from the points of view of both; political revolution and trauma lurk in the background throughout all the stories.  As he wrestles with his stories and how to present the personal and community values of Chile during this period in the late twentieth century, the author also contributes much to our understanding of the art of writing itself.  Ultimately, these intense, compressed, clear, and unpretentious stories breathe with quiet life, focused on reality as a simple, if sometimes heart-breaking, concept.

The long opening story, “My Documents,” clearly establishes the time, place, characters, and atmosphere by introducing the main character at age four or five, when, in 1980, he sees a computer for the first time, an enormous machine used by his father, quite different from the electric typewriter of his father’s secretary, or the black Olivetti on which his mother does her typing work, transcribing songs, stories, and poems written by his grandmother.  The speaker learns how to type his name but prefers using the keyboard to imitate drumrolls instead, remembering the drum major in the marching band at his school, before veering off into a discussion of his Catholic education, the music of Simon and Garfunkel, and the local competitions in kite-flying and the tricks used to win.  By 1986, the speaker tells us, he has lied to become an altar boy, a task he honors for over a year while convinced he is going to die because he has been taking Communion “illegally.”

Margaret Thatcher was a friend of Augusto Pinochet during his whole career, selling him weapons and providing supplies for Chile during the Falklands War in 1982. Richard Nixon was also a supporter of Pinochet.

This extended story continues with speaker’s first “adult” discovery in 1986 when, at age eleven, he learns of Augusto Pinochet’s human rights abuses of citizens who were arrested, tortured, murdered, or disappeared.  These crimes are described peripherally, with occasional additional references throughout the book, during Pinochet’s dictatorship from 1973 – 1990, and up to 1998 while he was still Commander in Chief of the army. In college by 1994, the speaker is on his own by 1997, and by 1999, he has bought his first computer, an immense Olidata. In 2013, when he is in his late thirties, this chapter ends.   The author announces that he has now completed this book, and as he ponders the idea of simply closing his My Documents file, he determines to publish it instead, announcing that “My father was a computer, my mother a typewriter.  I was a blank page, and now I am a book.”

Famed Chilean goalie Condor Rojas was a hero to the speaker and Camilo, until he participated in a hoax during a championship game against Brazil in 1989 . See photo credits for more information.

The story “Camilo” follows a similar pattern to that of the first story, “My Documents,” in that it begins when the speaker is very young and ends decades later.  The speaker is nine when Camilo shows up at their gate and explains that he is the speaker’s father’s godson.  With an interest in rock bands, rather than soccer, which the speaker and his father watch every week, Camilo and the speaker have little in common, but Camilo is a gregarious teenage friend who soon becomes “a benevolent and protective presence.”  In return the speaker and his father take Camilo to soccer games, which the speaker’s father and Camilo’s father had played together.  Gradually, we learn that Camilo is helping the young speaker with his problems with obsessive compulsive disorder. Eventually, the boys attend the Chile-Brazil playoffs leading to the World Cup in 1990, rooting wildly for Condor Rojas, Chile’s goalie, the speaker’s favorite player because his own father plays that position on a local team.  A devastating scandal which arises regarding Rojas, is discussed further, with photos, in the link given in the footnotes here. Camilo later goes to France to reconnect with his father, and, twenty-two years later, the speaker meets with Camilo’s father in Amsterdam.  Moving and thoughtful, the story carries a message about time and chance which will resonate with all readers.

While he is trying to give up smoking, the speaker must deal with migraines. He finds Oliver Sachs's book, Migraine, especially helpful.

Subsequent stories deal with the fact that most of us are alone most of the time. “True or False,” concerns a divorced man whose son visits every two weeks.  The boy considers his father’s house to be the “false house” and his mother’s house to be the “true house.” Knowing this, the father gets a cat to make the house feel more like home, but when the cat later has kittens, a problem arises, and leads to a surprise conclusion.  “I Smoked Very Well,” one of my favorites, is about a writer who decides to give up smoking and discovers that it affects the whole writing process, the reading process, and the general socializing that provides inspiration for his work.  “Family Life” and “Thank You” deal with situations in which women become victims who have too little control over their destinies, which are controlled by men, sometimes because the women allow it.  “Artist’s Rendition,” another story about writing, deals with a reality which becomes fiction while the fiction becomes reality.

In "The Most Chilean Man in the World," the main character goes to Leuven, Belgium, where he contemplates this bizarre fountain in which a stylized figure tries to find the formula for happiness in a book.

Six of these stories, told from the first person point of view, and five from the third person, are grouped to suggest that the first person stories really are about the author’s own life while the third person stories are about life as Zambra would interpret it if he were the main character.  His first person narrators speak intimately, as if the author is addressing his reader directly, while the third person, more distanced, expands the author’s themes, ideas, and images beyond the realm of his own life into the wider world.  In this way, he creates a kind of déjà vu for the reader by filling his narrative with small details his characters remember because of their personal importance at a particular place and time, and most readers will immediately recognize the parallels from their own lives in the small images which forever stick in their own minds and bring back major events.  This extraordinary and profound collection makes writing look easy.   If you love good writing with an unusual series of unpretentious voices and a surprising amount of humor and irony, don’t miss this.

ALSO by Alejandro Zambra:  THE PRIVATE LIVES OF TREES

A special note of congratulations to translator Megan McDowell, who was also the translator for THE PRIVATE LIVES OF TREES.  Translating a book in which the author has been particularly careful in his own word choice requires enormous care from the translator to convey the same feelings and images.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.vice.com

Margaret Thatcher was a friend of Augusto Pinochet  during his whole career, selling him weapons and providing supplies for Chile during the Falklands War in 1982. He was arrested in England on a warrant from Spain for human rights abuses in 1998 and spent 1 1/2 years in prison in the UK. After his release he was under house arrest in Chile for the rest of his life.  He died in 2006.  The US under Richard Nixon was also a supporter of Pinochet.  Photo from:  http://www.ibtimes.com/

The story of the hoax perpetrated by Condor Rojas during a championship game against Brazil in 1989, may be found here:  http://colgadosporelfutbol.com/la-mayor-farsa-de-la-historia-del-futbol/. The photo posted here is from http://www.fotolog.com

Migraine by Oliver Sachs was helpful to the speaker when he was dealing with migraines during his efforts to give up smoking in “I Smoked Very Well.”   See http://en.wikipedia.org/

When Rodrigo in “The Most Chilean Man in the World” goes to Leuven, Belgium, in pursuit of a woman, he spends time looking at this bizarre little fountain which shows a stylized boy/man reading a book in which he is hoping to gain the secret of happiness.  Photo from https://lenzu.wordpress.com

ARC: from McSweeney’s

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Chile, Coming-of-age, Historical, Literary, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Jo Nesbo–BLOOD ON SNOW

Apr 12th, 2015 by

“To sum up…I’m no good at driving slowly, I’m way too soft, I fall in love far too easily, I lose my head when I get angry, and I’m bad at math…So what on earth can a man like Daniel Hoffmann use someone like me for? The answer is – as you might have worked out already – as a fixer.  I don’t have to drive, and I mostly kill the sort of men who deserve it, and the numbers aren’t exactly hard to keep track of.”—Olav Johansen

Thirteen is certainly not an unlucky number for Norwegian author Jo Nesbo, whose thirteenth crime novel has just been released in English.  Winner of countless prizes, including the prestigious Glass Key Award, the Edgar Award, and Norway’s Peer Gynt Prize, Nesbo has written ten novels in the Harry Hole series, and three stand-alone novels, Headhunters, The Son, and now Blood on Snow, a novel quite different in length, focus, and tone from all that have gone before.  Readers who admire Nesbo for his ability to write in a variety of thriller subgenres from horror (The Snowman) to an historical about Norway’s Nazi past and neo-Nazi present (The Redbreast) – have come to expect complex, multi-layered plots punctuated by action scenes of almost unimaginable violence.  This short novel about a hired killer introduces a newer style, however – leaner, cleaner, and more introspective, with wonderful ironic humor new for readers of Nesbo.

Though the novel certainly has its excitements, much of the novel capitalizes on the ironies which exist between the thinking of Olav Johansen, the young, dyslexic main character, and his actions as a “fixer.”  It is through Olav’s running commentary that the reader understands the narrative, and one cannot miss the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the author who is controlling this character. The opening sentences are classic:  With a lyricism uncommon to Nesbo, we learn that “the snow was dancing like cotton wool in the light of the street lamps. Aimlessly, unable to decide whether it wanted to fall up or down, just letting itself be driven…”  As the wind and snow swirl and the romantic language continues, Nesbo suddenly announces that the wind “got fed up and dumped its dance partner beside the wall,” preparing us for the dark punch line:  “And there the dry, windswept snow was settling around the shoes of the man I had just shot in the chest and neck.”

Bygdoy Alle, where Daniel Hoffmann lives. Olav Johansen rents an apartment on the opposite side of the street, so he can spy on Corinna, Hoffmann’s wife.

Immediately after this surprise, however, the speaker, exhibiting some of the characteristics of a person with Attention Deficit Disorder, begins chatting about the character of snow crystals and their contrast with crystals of blood which are the deep red of “a king’s robe, all purple and lined with ermine.” He does not ponder about the murder itself  –  in fact, thinks nothing of it.  Instead, he describes the Norwegian folk tales his mother used to read to him, suggesting “that’s probably why she named me for a king.”  In fewer than two hundred words, Nesbo had me in the palm of his hand, enjoying (and smirking) at the ironies involving Olav Johansen as I sped into the rest of the novel.

Photo of the medieval Old Aker Church and its cemetery by Noel Lobo. Maria, the deaf girl Olav has always loved, goes to visit family graves there.

Nesbo takes full advantage of the smaller scope of this novel, and while he does not develop complete characters in the two hundred, wide-margined pages of this book, his focus on the characters’ inner worlds is far greater than one finds in his longer, action-based, multi-layered thrillers.  Olav, for example, has set limits on what he can and will do for Daniel Hoffmann, the high-level operator for whom he works.  He can’t drive a getaway car because he can’t drive inconspicuously.  He can’t be used in robberies because he knows that bank employees who experience a robbery often end up with psychological problems, and he was upset by the effects on an old man at whom he’d pointed a gun.  He can’t work with drugs because his mother was an addict and he himself thinks he could become one.  He can’t work with prostitutes because he falls in love so easily. That leaves “the obvious” – working as a fixer.  Despite the murders Olav commits, they are almost always of people who do evil things – Olav believes he has a good heart, and the reader can’t help but agree.

Bislett Stadium, behind which Olav meets two accomplices before his final murder assignment.

When Olav receives his biggest assignment from Hoffmann – to murder Hoffmann’s wife Corina, who has been having an affair, he rents an apartment on Bygdoy Alle, across from Hoffmann’s place and spies on Corina. When he sees her admit a man to the apartment, he is shocked to see the man hit her, semi-strangle her, and then tear off her dress before sexually attacking her, and he then remembers, strangely, an image he saw in a book when he was a boy – of three hyenas attacking their prey.  Before long Olav is madly in love with Corina, but when Olav discovers the identity of Corina’s lover, he realizes that he himself is in big trouble.

When Olav was very ill as a child, his mother took out Les Miserables from the library, “the concise edition,” with the original illustrations by Emile Bayard. The illustration used for all the programs for the modern musical also used this original.

As the complexities of plot increase, Olav also becomes more complex, and he soon tells about his family background and his childhood reading experiences, however difficult reading has been for him.  Soon he and Corina are dreaming of Paris because he has told her the story of Les Miserables and she is infatuated with Cosette and Marius.  Olav is not happy with Victor Hugo’s depiction of Jean Valjean, with whom he personally identifies, so he simply changes Valjean’s story when he tells it to Corina.  The twists and reversals which occur at the conclusion of the novel, while a “convenient” way to end it, bring to mind some of the great, ironic stories of H.H. Monroe, writing as Saki.

I have always enjoyed the novels of Jo Nesbo, and though I have been repulsed by some of the violence inherent in many of them, I have also admired Nesbo’s ability to go in his own direction, wherever his stories take him.  I admire his ability to write and write and write and never “tell the same story twice,” or get bogged down.  Here the prolific Nesbo explores new directions, suggesting more literary approaches and more ironic humor for some future novels, and I am excited about these possibilities for the future. This is a real change of focus and pace here, one which will appeal to those who think it is time for such a change and those who may be wearying of the graphic violence in his earlier work.

Also by Jo Nesbo:  Harry Hole series:   THE BAT (1997),      COCKROACHES (1998),      THE REDBREAST (2000),      NEMESIS (2002),      THE DEVIL’S STAR (2003),      THE REDEEMER (2005).      THE SNOWMAN (2007), HEADHUNTERS (2008),     THE LEOPARD (2009),      PHANTOM (2011),     POLICE (2013) ,     THE SON (2014),    THE THIRST (2017) ,     KNIFE (2019)     Olav Johansen series:  MIDNIGHT SUN (2016)

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.zimbio.com/

Bygdoy Alle may be found on http://www.skyscrapercity.com/

The medieval Old Aker Church and its cemetery, by Noel Lobo, are from https://www.pinterest.com

Bislett Stadium, where Olav met with two accomplices before staging his final murder assignment, appears on http://www.info-stades.fr/

This original illustration for Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, by Emile Bayard, was also used for the modern musical programs.  This was the cover for the copy of this book read by Olaf as a child.  http://en.wikipedia.org

BLOOD ON SNOW
REVIEW. Photos, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Nordic Noir, Norway, Psychological study
Written by: Jo Nesbo
Published by: Knopf; 1st edition (April 7, 2015)
Date Published: 04/07/2015
ISBN: 978-0385354196
Available in: Ebook Paperback Hardcover

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Nordic Noir, Norway, Psychological study | No Comments »

Chantel Acevedo–THE DISTANT MARVELS

Apr 8th, 2015 by

Author Chantel Acevedo has been WINNER of the Doris Bakwin Award and WINNER of the Latino International Book Award for two previous novels.

“I was a lector…a cigar factory reader…I’d read for hours entertaining [the workers] as they rolled tobacco.  Shakespeare was a favorite in the tabaquerias…They [also] liked Dumas…They loved The Count of Monte Cristo….Sometimes, however, I would only pretend to read to the cigar rollers.  There I would sit, high in my lector’s chair, five feet over their heads…Then I’d pretend to read from [a book], but what I was really doing was telling my own stories, true stories, about my life.”—Maria Sirena

It is 1963, as the novel opens, and the devastating Hurricane Flora, “bigger than all of Cuba,” is now lashing the island, having already caused devastation throughout Haiti, where it killed five thousand people.  Main character Maria Sirena, age eighty-two, has been forcibly evacuated from her small seaside house by Ofelia, a young revolutionary soldier, who takes her and seven other women to safety on the top floor of Casa Diego Velazquez, the sixteenth century home, now a museum, of the first governor of Cuba. For a couple of days, Maria Sirena rides out the storm with Ofelia and the other women, keeping her companions occupied with stories from her own life and the lives of her parents and grandparents as they lived through Cuba’s various wars for independence from the late nineteenth century to 1963.   She has much experience as a story-teller, having been for many years a lector, a reader hired by a cigar factory to read stories to the workers so that they would not become bored as they hand-made cigars.

Author Chantel Acevedo, a second-generation Cuban American, keeps her focus on the lives of “ordinary” people like Maria Sirena and her fellow guests of the Casa – hardworking folks, often poor, who have struggled all their lives – showing how they have survived and what they have had to do to live.  It is through this personal focus, rather than any detailed historical focus, that three-quarters of a century of modern Cuban revolutionary history emerges for the reader. Born aboard the Thalia in 1881, when her parents were sailing back to Cuba from Boston, after attending a meeting with the exiled leaders of Cuba’s revolutionary movement, Maria Sirena always seemed destined for involvement in revolutionary activities.  Just before the moment of her birth aboard the ship, her father, Agustin, a man with “inherited rage,” confronted the Spanish captain of the ship, and demanded the captain take down the Spanish flag and raise the flag of Cuba’s revolutionary movement so that his child could be born free.  A pistol “thrust under the captain’s jaw” was persuasive.  Later aboard the same ship, omens appear to the baby’s mother, Iluminada Alonso (Lulu), who is convinced that she sees the “dark, wet head of a lady” as that lady is emerging in the wake of the ship.   The lady is claiming Lulu’s baby for herself.  Since Lulu is unsure what kind of deity she is dealing with, Lulu names her child Maria Sirena.

The sinking of the battle ship USS Maine was a rallying point at the beginning of the Spanish-American War in 1898.

The novel develops in kaleidoscopic fashion, with small colorful episodes from various time periods appearing seemingly at random and mixing with other episodes and events from other periods to broaden the reader’s picture of the characters and their lives.  Maria Sirena and the women staying at the Casa Velazquez are one layer of story-telling which remains constant throughout the novel, but within their stories, other layers emerge.  Maria Sirena’s next door neighbor Ada, for example, tells of watching the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898, at the beginning of the Spanish-American War, though Maria Sirena’s own memories of the period are quite different.  She herself, just seventeen, had been nursing her baby son Mayito at that climactic moment, which inspires different memories for her. Maria Sirena, we learn, also has a past connection to Casa Velazquez, since her father spent time there as a child when his own mother, Inconsolada, was a governess to the children there.  As Maria Sirena enters Casa Velazquez for protection from the storm, she hears chanting in a foreign language.  She is not surprised that no one else hears it: she knows that the chanting was not her memory but her father’s.

This painting of Jose Marti, poet and hero of the revolution in 1898, is by Rene Mederos.

Later we learn more about Agustin, Maria Sirena’s father, and his imprisonment during the revolutionary period in the late nineteenth century; about Lulu’s connection with Antonio Maceo and famed poet Jose Marti, heroes of the first Cuban revolution; and eventually, more about Maria Sirena, her loves, her life, and, not incidentally, her connection to revolution.  Throughout, she wants the best for her family and always does what she thinks is right, but she is young and often naive when it counts, and her opportunities have been limited.  The arrival of the American investors at the end of the Spanish-American War exacerbates her problems, and her innocent actions, in response, pain her for the rest of her days.  As Maria Sirena tells her own story, it becomes a personal confession, as she says much more than she has ever admitted even to close friends, and the presence of Mireya, who was once a special friend, but who now, mysteriously, has nothing good to say to her at the Casa, adds to her discomfort.   All these story lines overlap and often intersect unexpectedly, providing the reader with a growing portrait of the characters first, and then, connected to those, Cuban history on an epic scale.

A top floor bedroom at the Casa Velazquez, where Maria Sirena and eight others stayed during Hurricane Flora in 1963.

As I reflect back on this novel, I am stunned that the author has been able to include so much within a novel of fewer than three hundred pages.  Her impressionism, her ability to convey so much of the atmosphere within a country for three-quarters of a century of history, her sensitivity to the personal nature of each individual memory as it is revealed by someone who has lived and felt and suffered, and her appreciation of the grandeur of life – on the monumental scale which individuals so seldom appreciate – make this novel unusual and very special.  The chronology of the personal stories, regardless of the actual time period in which they occurred, keeps the narrative tension high, and the interest in the characters at their peak.  The novel, filled with exciting and multilayered action, offers insights into a country which remains full of mysteries to the present day.

The lector at a cigar factory sat or stood in the elevated box in the top right of this photo. Lectors kept the workers from becoming bored by their repetitious tasks. Maria Serena often read Shakespeare and Dumas and took great delight in "reading" her own stories to the workers.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from Auburn University where the author is an Associate Professor.  http://www.cla.auburn.edu

The sinking of the USS Maine, a rallying point for the Spanish-American War, is by an unknown artist:  http://www.savemabel.com/

Poet and revolutionary hero Jose Marti is depicted here by Rene Mederos.  Marti died in battle in 1895.  http://connuestraamerica.blogspot.com

This bedroom on the top floor of the Casa Velazquez may have been a model for the room where Maria Sirena and eight others stayed during Hurricane Flora in 1963.  http://www.youlinmagazine.com

Maria Sirena was a lector, a reader in a cigar factory, hired to keep the workers from becoming bored by their repetitive jobs.  She often read Shakespeare and Dumas, and had great fun “reading” her own work:  http://etc.usf.edu/ The lector stood or sat in the elevated box in the top right of the photo here.

ARC:  Europa Editions



Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, Cuba, Epic Novel, Historical, Literary, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Horacio Castellanos Moya–THE DREAM OF MY RETURN

Apr 3rd, 2015 by

“Finally I was going to [carry] out an act that would consolidate my masculinity on many different levels; as if by liquidating the person who had dared offend me in the gravest possible way, I would be fulfilling a manifest destiny that would give me access to a different level of consciousness and personal realization, because from then on I would have a more rigorous understanding of life…I would never forget that everyone must pay what they owe.”–Erasmo Aragon

In a novel which defies genre, author Horacio Castellanos Moya takes paranoia to new and often darkly humorous heights as Erasmo Aragon, a Salvadoran journalist who has been living in exile in Mexico, tries to fulfill his dream of returning to El Salvador, now that that country is beginning to seem less dangerous after its many coups.   The author’s real-life experience gives verisimilitude to Erasmo’s story, and his sense of perspective regarding his own life allows him to depict the excesses of his narrator’s chronic over-analyzing and unproductive dithering with a kind of humor rare for a novel about revolutions and revolutionaries.  Castellanos Moya himself lived through many events similar to those affecting this narrator. Born in Honduras, he traveled with his parents to El Salvador as a baby and lived there during his teen years and for many years after that as an investigative journalist.  His first novel, known in English as Senselessness, became a controversial success for its unvarnished depiction of the genocide of Mayan Indians by an unnamed country (which appears to be Guatemala), and when the author’s mother received an anonymous death threat aimed at him, the author went into self-imposed exile in Mexico for ten years.  He later came to the United States and lived and taught at the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, a residence for exiled authors who cannot return home.

Author photo by Heather Mull.

Erasmo Aragon, like the author, is a journalist living in exile in Mexico so that his compatriots “will not carve him up.”  Unmarried, he has been living with a woman named Eva and their little daughter Evita for several years, but he is now looking forward to returning “home” and taking part in a journalism project, now that the Salvadoran government and its rebels are negotiating, and lasting peace appears to be a possibility.  His common-law wife and daughter will remain behind in Mexico, not for idealistic reasons on Erasmo’s part, but because Eva has slept with another man, an actor, and he is outraged and bitter.  Though he himself has not even come close to being faithful to Eva, he is nevertheless infuriated by her unfaithfulness, despite her profuse apologies and her professed faithfulness since that time, something he refuses to believe.  His anxieties have made him a victim of hypochondria, among other psychological illnesses, a man almost paralyzed by his fears.  His past, detailed here, certainly has not been without its traumas, and he believes that every individual, as he grows up, lives through all the different eras of evolution on a greatly reduced scale.   When Erasmo  goes to a doctor for his chronic “liver problems,” the doctor tells him he does not have liver problems.  He has Irritable Bowel Syndrome instead, probably left over from the “evolutionary change” in which cave men (and modern-day infants, as they live through one of the earliest stages of evolution) learn not to foul the place where they themselves live, an anxiety-making learning experience – and the first big hint of the dark humor and irony hidden within the novel.

Jose Napoleon Duarte, almost certainly elected President of El Salvador in 1972, if the count had been accurate, became President in 1984. Erasmo Aragon's father was murdered just before the election.

Don Chente Alvarado, a retired physician, also suggests acupuncture, and though Erasmo is afraid of needles and says acupuncture hurts, he eventually admits, after acupuncture, to having gained an awareness of his body which he has not had for a long time.  Don Chente also tries hypnosis on him, putting him “under” for two hours for each of the times Erasmo has treatment, though Don Chente refuses to tell him what he has said.  With much stress and an overactive imagination, Erasmo imagines “crimes” which he fears he may have confessed to Don Chente, and these lead to even more anxiety.  When the doctor has to leave the country for El Salvador, Erasmo begins to recall some early, previously forgotten experiences with this own parents and, importantly, his father’s death – shot in the back while leaving an AA meeting.  When he then receives a phone call with no voice, he decides that it is from his girlfriend’s lover, and he concludes that there is only one way in which he can “consolidate his masculinity.”  He contacts an acquaintance named “Mr. Rabbit,” so that they can decide when and where to permanently end the annoyance of Antolin, his girlfriend’s lover and his own nemesis.

Erasmo and The Rabbit meet at the National Auditorium during a play starring Antolin, the man with whom Eva was unfaithful, to decide his future.

Perhaps because of the author’s own experiences, the depiction of Erasmo Aragon’s high anxiety and his imagined conclusions about his health and his life ring true for the reader, who quickly becomes involved in the psychological “action.”  As Erasmo is thinking about the past and the political activities of some of the friends and family with whom he is still involved, the reader, too, begins to imagine all the ways in which Erasmo may be being “set up” for disaster by these “friends.”  Soon the reader becomes as preoccupied with Erasmo’s problems as he is, worrying about his decisions and his plans to return to El Salvador.  Some of what he says or imagines as true is open to question, but soon everyone Erasmo knows has become for him a suspect, or an informer, or a collaborator with the CIA, or a Communist, or an enemy out for revenge.  As the old saying goes, however, “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean everyone is not out to get you.”   As complications and danger develop, the novel races to its conclusion, a wickedly sardonic eventuality which makes complete sense but comes as a huge surprise.

Of the four novels by Castellanos Moya which have been translated into English, this is the lightest, and though it has serious ideas, it is also the funniest and most seductively involving. Translator Katherine Silver, who keeps the stream-of-consciousness style running nonstop in colloquial English, also makes the details so lively that the story is both compelling and full of fun.  Castellanos Moya, a favorite of mine, is an author who, over the years, has had much to say about human rights, political crimes, repression, dictatorships, and executions.  At the same time, he realizes that there is a limit to how much horror a reader can process at one time, and he often uses his sense of irony and dark humor, strategically employed, to highlight his themes and plots in new ways, making them palatable and far more memorable for their irony.  A short novel with a big impact for the reader.

ALSO by Castellanos Moya:  SENSELESSNESS,       TYRANT MEMORY, THE SHE-DEVIL IN THE MIRROR

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Heather Mull appears on http://www.pghcitypaper.com

President Duarte, exiled after the election of 1972, which most observers believe he won,  is shown on http://en.wikipedia.org/ from [1] Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANEFO), 1945-1989 bekijk toegang 2.24.01.05 Bestanddeelnummer 934-1054.

The National Auditorium is where Erasmo Aragon and The Rabbit met to see a show called Life is a Dream, starring Antolin, lover of Eva, mother of the speaker’s child.  http://www.escunited.com/

ARC:  New Directions

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, El Salvador, Experimental, Historical, Honduras, Literary, Mexico, Psychological study, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Benjamin Black–THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE

Mar 31st, 2015 by

“I liked the idea of the outdoors.  I mean I liked the thought of it being there: the trees, the grass, the birds in the bushes, all that.  I even liked looking at it, sometimes, from the highway, say, through a car windshield.  What I didn’t much care for was being out in it, unprotected.”—Philip Marlowe

It is no secret that “Benjamin Black,” author of nine noir crime novels, is the pen name of highly esteemed Irish author John Banville, author of sixteen literary novels and winner of more than twenty of the writing world’s most prestigious prizes, including the Man Booker Prize for The Sea.  In these literary novels, Banville works as an artist, producing thoughtful and beautifully articulated novels at the rate of about one every two years.  As Benjamin Black, Banville has written an additional eight noir crime thrillers, seven of them starring a pathologist named Quirke, and in these novels he is seen as a craftsman, rather than an artist, a recognition of the distinction between the genres and the fact that his crime novels are produced at a much faster speed, approximately one a year. The Black-Eyed Blonde, his ninth noir mystery, is his first novel written from the point of view of Philip Marlowe, the popular hard-boiled detective featured in six novels and a series of short stories by one of the earliest noir novelists, Raymond Chandler, between 1939 and 1958.  Hard-drinking and often down-on-his luck, detective Philip Marlowe is shown as a loner who says what he thinks, a man with few friends and no long-term love in his life.

As The Black-Eyed Blonde opens, Marlowe is looking out the window of his office, near the corner of Cahuenga and Hollywood.  In straight-forward and smart prose he notes that “it was one of those Tuesday afternoons in summer when you wonder if the earth has stopped revolving.  The telephone on my desk had the air of something that knows it’s being watched.”  A beautifully dressed young woman with long legs is waiting for the light to change so that she can cross the street.  “She looked to the left and right and left again – she must have been so good when she was a little girl – then crossed the sunlit street, treading gracefully on her own shadow.”  In few words, Black creates a mood and a setting through the offbeat observations of the speaker, Philip Marlowe, who promptly adds a twist so that the reader does not misunderstand his mood:  “So far it had been a lean season,” a comment which he follows with a list of his latest dull and unrewarding cases.

Raymond Chandler (1888 – 1959)

All this changes when the sound of high heels on the wooden floor in his waiting room “gets something going” in him.  “I was about to call to her to come in, using my special deep-toned, you-can-trust-me-I’m-a-detective voice, when she came in anyway, without knocking.”  Further description of her appearance and her gestures, create a black-and-white-movie scene, and few readers will be able to resist filling in the picture of this “black-eyed-blonde” with a favorite actress from the period. However “pulpy” Black’s writing may be, in keeping with that of Chandler, it certainly ranks with the best of pulpy, involving the reader and immediately setting up Marlowe’s newest adventure without using obvious clichés.  The “black-eyed blonde” is a Mrs. Clare Cavendish, who wants Marlowe to find Nico Peterson, a movie agent, who disappeared mysteriously two months ago.

The elegant Gillette Swanson House, now demolished, might have been a model for the house where Clare Cavendish lives.

As the novel develops, Marlowe becomes better acquainted with Clare Cavendish, the daughter of Dorothea Langriche, an Irish woman who made a fortune by developing a line of rose-scented perfumes. Upon visiting the elegant family mansion where Clare Cavendish lives, Marlowe also meets Clare’s brother Rett and Clare’s husband Richard Cavendish, and his horses, all of whom also appear to live there.  Their interrelationships and their self-satisfaction confirm for Marlowe the enormous gap between their lifestyles and his own.  When Clare, upon further questioning, tells Marlowe that she not only saw Peterson a week ago but that she was present when he died, Marlowe realizes that something is really wrong with this story.

It is easy to imagine Marlowe meeting Clare’s mother here at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Photo ca. 1940.

Marlowe uses his contacts with a few of the police to find out more information, going to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office to view scenes of Peterson’s death, then meets with a friendly cop to discuss the case.  He is concerned because everyone seems to know he is working on the case, and he suspects he is being watched.  He is uncomfortable when he learns that Clare knows the woman he had hoped to marry, and equally uncomfortable when Clare’s mother calls him to meet her at the “Ritz-Beverly Hotel.” The Cahuilla Club, to which everyone in Clare’s social set seems to belong, has a checkered collection of wealthy patrons and managers, he discovers.  Not only does everyone there seem to know everyone else, but those in charge seem able to control the outcomes of virtually every disagreement in ways which benefit themselves, doing whatever is necessary to get what they want.

A body in shocking condition is discovered at the Encino Reservoir.

At the halfway point, the novel changes from being a lightweight period mystery, however well written and however much fun, to noticeably darker fare.  The first love scene in the novel suddenly changes without warning when Marlowe learns that a body has been discovered at the Encino Reservoir. The condition of the body, someone Marlowe knows, is shockingly bloody, indicating a terrible beating involving the breaking of bones in the face before the throat was slit.  Again, overlaps occur among the different subplots, involving the question of Peterson and whether he is alive or dead. Before long, Marlowe himself is in danger, and he does not know why.  When he is very nearly killed, he and a police friend begin to investigate drug running, the family backgrounds of people Marlowe thought he knew, the suicide of a suspect, and still more deaths.  The dark twist at the end of the novel may surprise even sophisticated fans of noir.

The art deco LA County Coroner’s Office in Boyle Heights.

As “pulp fiction” goes, this is probably among the best, though it is a long way from John Banville’s literary work.  Still, critics and most fans of Raymond Chandler have celebrated the closeness of Black’s version of Marlowe to that of the original.  From the brand of cigarettes that Marlowe smokes to the continuation of the on-going story of Marlowe as he was shown in the last of the Chandler novels, Black’s depiction of the characters and period are praised for their accuracy and similarity to Chandler’s work.  Though the novel’s cold aloofness may put off some readers, it is consistent with the novel’s theme:  “People get hurt unless they keep a sharp lookout.”

ALSO by Benjamin Black:  A DEATH IN SUMMER (Quirke),    VENGEANCE (Quirke),    CHRISTINE FALLS (Quirke),     THE SILVER SWAN (Quirke),      EVEN THE DEAD (Quirke)

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://www.rte.ie

Raymond Chandler’s photo appears on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

The Gillette Swanson House, now demolished, resembles the description of the house where Clare Cavendish and family are living. http://skyscraperpage.com/

The entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel, ca. 1940, has not change much.  This is probably the model for the “Ritz-Beverly Hotel” here. http://www.martinturnbull.com

A body in shocking condition is found at the Encino Reservoir:  http://www.encinonc.org/

The art deco County Coroner’s Office in Boyle Heights is seen here:  http://en.wikipedia.org

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, US Regional | No Comments »

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