Thursday, 22 August 2019

Wednesday, 14 August 2019

Happy blog birthday!


Happy First Blog Birthday! 


Study for "The Birthday Party" by Thomas Cooper Gotch
(Falmouth Art Gallery, via Art UK)

Thursday, 25 July 2019

Velvet Underground: "The Warlow Experiment" by Alix Nathan



Velvet Underground

"The Warlow Experiment" by Alix Nathan

A book review

A reward of £50 a year for life is offered to any man who will undertake to live for 7 years underground without seeing a human face: to let his toe and fingernails grow during the whole of his confinement, together with his beard. Commodious apartments are provided with cold bath, chamber organ, as many books as the occupier shall desire.  Provisions will be served from Mr Powyss’s table. Every convenience desired will be provided

Herbert Powyss, Moreham House, Herefordshire, January 1793.

Sunday, 30 June 2019

Land of the Disappeared: A review of The Therapist by Nial Giacomelli


The Therapist by Nial Giacomelli

A book review

Despite its virulence, little is known about the disease.  They say that it attacks the brain and spinal column. That victims suffer encephalitis-like reactions. Lethargy, confusion and changes in personality are all common.  The media report cases of grandiose delusions and memory loss.  Some hear voices, other see impossible realities.  All eventually disappear.

Wednesday, 26 June 2019

Nazi Apocalypse: Joseph Roth's essays "On the End of the World"



Joseph Roth: On the End of the World

A book review


What use are my words against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the clueless diplomats, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?


In sad resignation

Your Joseph Roth

Friday, 7 June 2019

First Love: Atlantic Winds by William Prendiville


First Love

A review of William Prendiville's Atlantic Winds

Judging by the quality of this debut novella and Omar Sabbagh’s Minutes from the Miracle City (which I reviewed earlier on this blog), the second wave of “Fairlight Moderns” from Fairlight Books promises to be something to really look forward to.     

Monday, 27 May 2019

Theseus

Henry Fuseli: Ariadne Watching the Struggle of Theseus with the Minotaur (1815-1820)

Theseus

A dusk filled nether-land I roam,

torch brandished high against the gloom,

a length of cord to lead me back
outside the Earth's infernal womb.

I dread the moment when I'll meet
the creature that I've come to seek.
Half-man, half-beast
A hideous sight -
ruler of this realm of night.

I lift lead-heavy limbs.
When will it end, this constant downward trudge?
Have I been here for hours or days?
Time itself loses its way
in the shadows of this maze.

My guiding flame is smothered by the fetid air,
puts up a valiant fight
then flickers weakly,
starts to die
in fits of
choking
smoke.

In the feeble light
of embers still aglow,
a dark mysterious lake no man has seen before
appears. 
Throat scorched, lips parched, 
I drag myself towards its edge
to slake my thirst.

I face the water's surface, 
still as glass.
There,
staring back at me,
smiling heinously 
the Minotaur I see.


Master of the Campana: Theseus in the Labyrinth (1515-1520)

Friday, 24 May 2019

Of History and Histories... Turning for Home by Barney Norris




Of History and Histories…
Turning for Home by Barney Norris
A book review

“The Vanishing Hours”, the latest novel by novelist and playwright Barney Norris, is out on the Doubleday in July.  In anticipation of publication date, I am posting my review of Norris’s “Turning for Home” which I had read and greatly enjoyed back in 2017.  

Saturday, 20 April 2019

Last Woman Standing: "I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman



I Who Have Never Known Men 

by Jacqueline Harpman 

(translated by Ros Schwartz)

A book review

I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all…

Thursday, 18 April 2019

Holy Week, Unholy Murders: Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo




Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

A book review 

How best to express the horrors of a bloody civil war whose memory is still painful?  How can one probe into wounds which are still open and smarting? An answer might be provided by literature in general, and genre literature in particular.  One could cite as an example Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series, haunted by the memories of the Spanish Civil War.  Zafon’s bestselling novels have shown that how the Gothic, so often dismissed as ‘mere’ entertainment, can successfully engage with and comment on troublesome recent history.

Peruvian writer and journalist Santiago Roncagliolo did something similar with his crime thriller Red April (Abril Rojo), originally published in Spanish in 2006 and subsequently in an English rendition by veteran translator Edith Grossman (it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2011).    

The civil war which acts as a backdrop to the events in this book is the armed conflict in Roncagliolo’s native country between the Government, the Communist Party (also known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.  The conflict started in 1980 and has been largely dormant since 2000, albeit with occasional resurgences of violence.

The plot unfolds around the period of the presidential elections before Holy Week in the year 2000.  In the context of this campaign, the Government is keen to make a statement that communist insurgents have been defeated. However, during Carnival in the town of Ayacucho, a gruesome murder raises suspicions that Sendero Luminoso might once again be rearing its head. Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar investigates the matter and prepares a convoluted report which conveniently makes no mention of terrorism.  And, possibly for this very reason, when this murder is followed by others, all bearing the stamp of a deranged serial killer or ritual murderer, the authorities assign the case to none other than Chacaltana.  He is hardly the ideal detective but, in the eyes of his seniors, appears to be an official who can be easily manipulated.

As evidenced by the style of the legal reports spread throughout the text, Chacaltana is well-versed in the letter of the law which he tries to follow with pedantic conscientiousness, but this hardly equips him for the complexities of life and for the intricacies of the tense political climate of his country.  Abandoned by his wife and obsessed with the memory of his long-dead mother, the Prosecutor is often naïve and ingenuous, reminding me of Umberto Eco’s claim that “real literature is about losers”.  Perhaps for this very reason, the novel’s protagonist brought to my mind failed journalist Colonna in Eco’s own Numero Zero or, to cite another Italian novel, Paolo Laurana in Sciascia’s A Ciascuno il Suo, hapless figures who end up embroiled in matters beyond their ken. Over the course of the novel, Chacaltana starts to wise up, and this change is not all to the good.  Indeed, some unsavoury aspects of his character come to the fore and contributed to some of my dissatisfaction with what is an otherwise engrossing book.

As a crime novel, Red April is thrilling and intriguing.  Much of its dark feel is given by the elements it borrows from the horror – and particularly the folk horror – genre.  Indeed, we start to realise that the serial killer is borrowing imagery both from Christian traditions linked to Holy Week and from pagan Andean myths and rituals.  An underlying theme of the novel, is the friction between Andean/pre-Colombian culture (as represented by the Quechua-speaking “natives”) and the subsequent Christian traditions imported by the Spanish-speaking settlers.   It is suggested that underneath the veneer of Christian ritual, the old rites have never died out.  The language/culture barrier becomes a symbol of this perennial conflict, which seems to fuel present-day violence.  As one of the characters puts it:

Ayacucho is a strange place.  The seat of the Wari culture was here, and then the Chanka people, who never allowed themselves to be subjugated by the Incas.  And later were the indigenous uprisings because Ayacucho was the half-way point between Cuzco, the Inca capital, and Lima, the Spaniards’ capital.  And independence in Quinia. And Sendero.  This place is condemned to be bathed in blood and fire forever.   

Some readers have been put off by the very graphic murders. To be honest, however, an act of senseless sexual violence towards the end disturbed me much more than the admittedly gruesome crime scene descriptions.   Plot-wise, the solution to the “whodunit” is rather too convenient – I believe that this is a novel which is best enjoyed by soaking up its dark atmosphere tempered by a streak of black humour.

PaperbackAtlantic Cult Classics273 pages

Published 2018 by Atlantic Books (first published 2002)








Being a fan of Jan Garbarek, the references to the Quechua culture could not but remind me of the great saxophonist’s collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble and their recording of Quechua Song.  It seems ironic however to represent this native culture through a piece European jazz, particularly in the light of the themes of Roncagliolo’s novel.  So here’s what is hopefully a more “authentic” rendition of the Quechua song “Munasqetay”.



One of the traditional instruments of Peru is the charango, a guitar-like instrument which is a descendant of the vihuela a mano imported by the Spanish conquistadores.  Its use in Peruvian folk music epitomises the sometimes uncomfortable but always intriguing mix between native and “European” elements.  Here’s Jamie Guardia, one of the Peru's foremost singers and players of the charango in a song named, appropriately, Adios Pueblo de Ayacucho.






Gabriela Lena Frank is an American classical pianist and composer whose mother is a Peruvian of Chinese descent.  Some of her works celebrate her Peruvian family heritage.  Apu – Tone Poem for Orchestra, commissioned by the Carnegie Hall, is inspired by Andean mythology.  The apu is one of the spirits which keep a watchful eye on travellers passing through highland roads.



As it happened, I read this book in March/April, the months in which the novel is set, and this helped me to get into the atmosphere of the book.  Indeed, although I live on the opposite side of the world, I could feel an affinity to the descriptions of the Holy Week pageantry and, particularly, the crowded processions with the statues showing Passion scenes.  And so I’d like to end with a funeral march such as are typically heard in Mediterranean countries – and more specifically, Malta – during this time of year.  The march is accompanied by shots of local processions, not far removed from what is portrayed in Roncagliolo’s novel.



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