Five go on a Finnish Adventure... "Secret Passages in a Hillside Town" by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Five go on a Finnish Adventure : Book review of "Secret Passages in a Hillside Town" by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (translated by Lola Rogers) 

A few years back I had read Jääskeläinen’s "The Rabbit Back Literature Society". That novel had been compared to “Twin Peaks meeting the Brothers Grimm” and was a dark and cryptic work which hovered rather awkwardly between outright supernatural fiction and magical realism. I had found this ‘ambivalence’ ultimately disappointing, but the novel was intriguing enough to make me want to sample the author’s latest offering, recently translated into English by Lola Rogers.

In its initial chapters, this novel seemed quite different from its predecessor, apart from its small-town setting and “bookish” background. Indeed, it starts off as a gentle, if quirky, tale of mid-life romance. Olli Suominen, the head of a publishing company based in Jyväskylä, is going through a crisis. Book sales are not what they used to be and, as far as family-life is concerned, he seems to be growing distant from his wife and young son. Through Facebook, he gets in touch with Greta Kara, an old flame who has since become the bestselling author of an influential self-help guide to “living a cinematic life”. He somehow convinces her to issue her next book – a ‘magical’ travelogue about Jyväskylä – through his publishing house. This promises to boost Olli’s business, and amorous, prospects.

But Olli’s Facebook exchanges with Greta also rekindle memories of another group of childhood acquaintances – the three Blomroos siblings and their cousin Karri. Together with Timi, Olli’s dog, they formed a Finnish equivalent of the Famous Five. In true Enid Blyton fashion, they spent their summer holidays together, shared long, glorious, sunny days on riverside picnics and solved mysteries along the way. Typically, they also explored secret passages. And here things start to get weird, because unlike the relatively workaday secret passages in Blyton’s novels, the Toulura tunnels seem to warp reality and cause time to go completely off-kilter. Unsurprisingly, Olli’s memories of the secret passages are vague and confused, but we eventually learn that they were the theatre for shocking happenings experienced by Greta and the Tourula Five.

Whether you will enjoy the novel from this point forward will depend on how crazy you like your fiction to be. In my case, I generally prefer novels which follow an internal logic, however strange their premise. And to be honest, it was sometimes difficult to understand where this book was going . But it still hooked me to the last chapter. Or chapters, given that the novel rather puzzlingly presents us with an alternative ending – probably a nod to “alternate movie endings” which are sometimes available on certain movie DVDs.

So, how should we interpret Secret Passages? Should we take it at face value as a work of supernatural fiction? Or is this actually realist fiction, using elements of fantasy to give us a glimpse of the workings of Olli’s mind? Is the book a satire on modern life which, thanks to social media, seems to be all about living a “cinematic life” worth sharing with the world at large? Or is this an adult parody of Enid Blyton mysteries, particularly the underlying gender politics simmering below their surface? Perhaps it’s all of this, but it makes for a wild and crazy ride.

Paperback, 416 pages

Publication Date: December 12th 2017 by Pushkin Press 

(Pre)history of violence : Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
A book review

Silvie and her parents join an archaeology professor and three of his students on a field trip to Northumberland. The trip is an experiment in "experiential archaeology" in the sense that its participants try to recreate and re-enact the living conditions of the Iron Age tribes which inhabited these remote areas. The professor's intentions are innocent enough, at least at the outset - a mixture of academic curiosity and a "Boys' Own" thirst for adventure which he seems to share with his students. Silvie's father, on the other hand, has darker motives. We soon learn that he has supremacist fantasies about "Ancient Britons", whom he considers a pure, home-grown race, untainted by foreign influences. He idolises their way of life which, albeit nasty, brutish and short, is for him a test of manly mettle. And he has a morbid fascination with the Bog People, Iron Age victims of human sacrifice.

At first the group dynamics make the novel feel like an episode of "Celebrity Survivors" as we sense the increasing friction between the disparate characters. However, things decidedly take a turn for the sinister when the men decide to build a "ghost wall" - a wooden barricade topped by animal skulls which the ancients apparently used as a means of psychological warfare against invading hordes. 

Ghost Wall is a slender novella which packs a punch. The narrative element is tautly controlled. There's a constant sense of dread, of violence simmering beneath the surface. These leads to a terrifying climax, in which the novel skirts the folk horror genre to chilling effect.

More importantly, however, the work is a timely indictment of patriarchal and racist prejudices which, though distinct, often fuel each other. It also seems to suggest that even monsters have redeeming features which endear them to their own victims, whilst seemingly innocent persons can commit grave acts when they give in to atavistic instincts. Perhaps what make this novel so disturbing is that these horrors are all too real.

Perchance to dream... Sandra Newman's "The Heavens"

The Heavens by Sandra Newman

A review

Whittling down the plot of “The Heavens” to its bare bones makes it sound incomprehensible, if not downright silly.  However, I’ll try to do it justice with as few spoilers as possible.

The novel’s “present” is set in New York around the year 2000.  Except it’s not the city as we know it, but one which is different in subtle yet significant ways.  A female, environmentalist President has been elected, it’s “the first year with no war at all” and there’s a general sense of utopian optimism.  In other words, all’s right with the world.

It’s certainly all right with Ben’s world.  He’s just fallen in love with Kate and can’t believe his luck.  Kate is smart and beautiful.  She’s exotic, describing herself as Hungarian-Turkish-Persian, three romantic, impractical strains, three peoples who had thrown away their empires.  She moves within a glamorous set of friends who welcome Ben into their fold.   

Soon, Ben learns that Kate has a strange recurring dream in which she visits an alternative reality.  As her relationship with Ben gets stronger, the dream also becomes more defined and we realise that, in her sleep, she is travelling to late 16^th century England, and experiencing it as (the historical) Emilia Lanier.  Lanier was a poet and musician, mistress to the cousin of Elizabeth I, and wife of court musician Alfonso Lanier.  Emilia is also sometimes touted as the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets.    

On each return to the “present”, Kate notices that the world has changed from the way she left it, and often for the worse – this sets her on a mission to change the past, in the hope of creating a better future.  But the second part of the novel also presents us with a radically – and tragically – different possibility, namely that this whole time-travel thing is all in Kate’s mind, even though the novel’s post-apocalyptic ending leaves it up to us to figure out what is really happening between the book’s pages.

This is a quirky novel with an appropriately quirky set of characters.  Ben and Kate/Emilia are the protagonists, but Kate’s set of friends provide an eccentric supporting cast, adroitly reflected in the court circles frequented by Emilia.  It might not be a perfect comparison, but “The Heavens” reminded me somewhat of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas – firstly in the idea of different eras impinging on each other but, more importantly, in its mixture of genres.  “The Heavens” is part romance, part historical fiction/alternative history, part science-fiction, part fantasy/speculative fiction with a touch of magical realism.  On one level, it can also be read as an expression of millennial angst – there’s an important scene which recreates the 9/11 attacks, making it the third novel I’ve read in the past few months which in some way or another references a defining event of recent history.   (Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation and R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries)

There’s similar variety in the style – which shifts from realistic narration to poetic description, from tragedy to comedy and back to something-in-between.

If it’s eclectic in its influences and style, “The Heavens” is equally varied in the subjects it addresses.  Now whilst I don’t mind genre-hopping one bit and actually love a novel which breaks barriers between genres, the boring part in me still tries to find an “anchoring” theme, subject or message.  In this regard, “The Heavens” is more like a colourful butterfly which flits impulsively from one theme to the next.  The novel could be an ideal book club choice as it provides plenty of discussion material.  Just a few of the questions raised:

·        How does the past affect the present?

·        Does history repeat itself?

·        Is the idea that we can affect the future merely an illusion?

·        On a larger scale, can politics really change the world for the better?

·        Is there a place for utopia and ideals?

·        Can art...music...literature... change the world?

·        Can love change the world?

·        What does it mean to be happy and can one be happy when the world’s in a bad state?

·        What does it mean to live with mental health problems or with a person with (possibly) mental health issues?

They’re not easy questions and the novel does not provide easy answers, which might be frustrating for some readers and quite the contrary for others.  What’s more impressive is that these themes are addressed (or, at least, raised) in a novel which often displays a light, playful touch.

Expected publication

February 12th 2019 by Grove Press

May 2nd, 2019 by Granta Books

Grove Atlantic edition cover

***

The historical Emilia Lanier was born in a family of Italian musicians who served the Tudor court.  She married into another famous family of court musicians, the Laniers.  Of these, Nicholas Lanier, is by far the best-known, having been the first Master of the King’s Music.

Music plays an important part in the 16th/17th Century segments of the novel.  Viol consorts where a regular entertainment in the Tudor and Stuart courts.   Here’s a viol consort performance of Fancy for six Viols by Orlando Gibbons (1583 – 1625)

 

One of intriguing aspects of “The Heavens” is the way in which it brings together two disparate eras – an imaginary 21st century New York, and late16th century England.  For a musical equivalent, I suggest John Harle’s settings of Shakespeare.  Harle’s keening saxophone and the raucously expressive voice of Elvis Costello give them a contemporary feel but the pieces still nail the particularly English feeling of “melancholy (melancholia)

 

https://open.spotify.com/track/7sEnK1QdbZfuI0hZ8bBFyj?si=mv-uDd9gS5eUor9RN5WCuA

 

It’s interesting to compare Harle’s style to  a setting of Shakespeare’s poem “O Mistress Mine” by Thomas Morley (1557-1602), a contemporary of the Bard of Avon.

 

To end, here’s a link to an interesting and insightful blogpost about musical literacy in Shakespeare’s time:

 

https://blog.oup.com/2016/08/musical-literacy-shakespeare-england/#__prclt=A6Ds5eEl

 

Happy birthday, Arvo Pärt!

September 11th marks the birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, born in Paide, Estonia in 1935.  To mark the occasion here's a small tribute to the composer, including a review of a study of his "Tabula Rasa" and my recollections of meeting him at the European premiere of  "Greater Antiphons".  But first, a happy birthday song in his style:

***

Book review  "Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa"  

Each of the volumes in the Oxford Keynotes series is dedicated to a particular musical work or album from the fields of classical, jazz or popular music and is accompanied by a dedicated website which provides multimedia materials, including audio clips. In this particular book, Kevin C. Karnes explores Tabula Rasa, one of Arvo Pärt’s iconic works. A double concerto for two violins, prepared piano and strings, this was amongst the first compositions which Pärt wrote in his distinctive tintinnabuli style or ‘method’. Karnes’s explanation of how tintinnabuli works is admirably lucid, and I will not even attempt to put it into my own words. To get a feel of its sound (short of reading the book) I suggest listening to Für Alina (amongst the earliest of his tintinnabuli pieces) or to Tabula Rasa itself. Here's a live performance:

and here's a link to the cult 1984 ECM album which launched the label’s “New Series” and brought the piece (and its composer) to the attention of a wider public. 

Concise as it is, this monograph casts its web wide. Indeed, only one of the book’s five chapters is dedicated specifically to a “theoretical” analysis of Tabula Rasa. Before tackling the work head on, Karnes delves into the cultural context in which this concerto, and by extension, Pärt’s tintinnabuli approach, were first conceived. This involves an examination both of Pärt’s earlier compositions and of the Soviet musical world in which he worked. The volume ends with a chapter on the reception of Tabula Rasa outside the “Soviet” bloc and Pärt’s own emigration to the West. 

Along the way, Karnes provides several insights which will likely challenge lazy assumptions about Pärt and his music. Pärt’s development of tintinnabuli or, as he prefers to describe it, his ‘discovery’ of it, is often portrayed as a sort of Damascene conversion which led the composer to abandon his serialist, avant-garde past. Karnes however presents us with a “hermeneutic of continuity” (to borrow a theological term), teasing out several parallels between Pärt’s earlier and later pieces. Thus, whilst it might not be immediately evident to the listener, the composer’s tintinnabuli pieces often follow a strict mathematical process, making them not unlike the serialist works of his youth. Moreover, an interest in early music and forms, and a penchant for ‘polystylism’ could be felt even in pieces pre-dating Pärt’s tintinnabuli phase.

Karnes also convincingly shows that despite his distinctive mode of expression, Pärt is very much one of a piece with the post-war avant-garde: the mathematical formulae remind one of serialism, the “process” aspect of tintinnabuli is not far removed from the experiments of Steve Reich (although both composers were working independently) and the importance Pärt gives to silence is reminiscent of the musical philosophy of John Cage, whom Pärt often references in interviews.

There are other surprising discoveries in store. Influenced by the “marketing” people, many listeners tend to classify Pärt as a “holy minimalist”, lumping him with other (very different) composers such as John Tavener and Henryk Gorecki. So it might be surprising to discover that the earliest “Western” listeners, as yet lacking such preconceived references and easy categorizations, found in Tabula Rasa echoes of “Far Eastern music” and compared this strange, new, static music to “the effects of highly skilled pop groups such as Pink Floyd”.

Karnes does not eschew technical analysis and yet his style remains remarkably accessible throughout, making this an absorbing book for general readers as well. The text is enriched not only by the multimedia element, but also by illustrations and references (some of them difficult to find) and copious footnotes. In other words, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in Arvo Pärt and tintinnabuli.

***

Postscript : The day I met Arvo Pärt

Pärt has been a musical idol for me ever since a hazy summer afternoon in the early nineties when I caught a recorded broadcast of “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten” on Rai Radio 3 (played, incidentally, at half the speed and lower pitch because of a technical mishap). In July 2016, the composer was invited to Malta to attend a concert of his music presented by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Malta Arts Festival. The highlight was to be the European premiere of Greater Antiphons, the orchestral arrangement of his choral piece Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen. It had only been performed once before – by Gustavo Dudamel at the helm of the LA Phil. It was, to a Pärt fan, a historic occasion which I couldn’t let pass. I dragged along my good friend Nick. To be honest, he is more into jazz and rock but is, like me, an ECM groupie. And a good sport. Concealed in an inner pocket of my jacket was a Naxos recording of Pärt’s Passio, held close as a talisman, in the vague hope that I could get the composer to sign it.

Aesthetically, the golden Baroque splendour of a packed St John’s Co-Cathedral seemed miles away from Pärt’s pared-down style, just as the heat of the Mediterranean summer was hardly redolent of ‘Estonian cool’. Yet, when the descending scales and tolling bell of Cantus cascaded like a sigh over the audience, it seemed as if we were being propelled beyond time and space. I had listened to recordings of the piece tens of times, but hearing it live in those sacred surroundings felt like discovering it anew. The hushed atmosphere was temporarily torn asunder by the sound of a "festa" band marching outside, to the consternation of musicians and organisers. It was a facepalm moment. What must the composer be thinking? I later heard through the grapevine that Pärt was quite amused by it all. A touch of Ives?

When the concert ended, I lagged behind hopefully. Would Pärt be spirited away for after-concert canapés? Would I get a glimpse of him? Yes, as it turned out. There was the Great Composer, in the middle of the aisle, smilingly signing programme after proferred programme. I smugly pulled out my Passio CD, handed my camera-smartphone to my long-suffering concert buddy (who promptly placed himself in a strategic position), and joined the queue.

As I got nearer to Pärt, I couldn’t help feeling that the image of the benign man who stood before me seemed quite incongruous with that of the ‘prophet’ propagated by magazines and CD adverts. He was wearing a rather flamboyant, open-necked shirt with a surreal print (little blue birds, if my memory serves me right). “What’s your name?” Pärt asked a little boy who was being egged on by his mother. “Saviour”, the boy replied. “Ah, Saviour...”, the composer sagely nodded, “Saviour, like Our Lord Jesus Christ...” I couldn't tell whether he was in earnest or whether this was his idea of humour. Or both. 

It was my turn then. My recollection becomes hazy, but Nick’s photos show me grinning sheepishly as Pärt scrawls his signature on the CD cover. It’s on the shelf in front of me right now.

Arvo Pärt in bird-patterned shirt

Hamid Ismailov's The Dead Lake

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov
(translated by Andrew Bromfield)

Book review

Whilst on a train journey across Kazakhstan, the narrator meets Yerzhan, a twenty-seven year old itinerant peddler and virtuoso violinist who, strangely, has the looks and build of a boy of twelve years. After overcoming his initial diffidence, Yerzhan starts to recount the tale of his childhood. He recalls growing up in a two-family settlement on a lonely, remote railway outpost in the Kazakh steppes, close to a top-secret “Zone” where Soviet nuclear experiments were carried out. He tells of his precocious musical talents on the dombra [lute-like folk instrument] and the violin, and his equally precocious love for his neighbour Aisulu. Chillingly, he recalls a fateful day when, during a school outing to the “Zone”, he waded into a radioactive lake to impress his classmates. Did the poisonous waters stunt his growth or was some other-worldly spell cast on him?

I suppose Hamid Ismailov’s novella might be regarded as a work of “magical realism”. I would prefer to describe it as a modern-day fable or myth. For what is mythology, if not an attempt to describe and explain the world through stories and symbols? In this case, Ismailov conjures up images of terrible beauty, by means of which he evokes daily life in the Kazakh steppes at the height of the Cold War. Andrew Bromfield's sensitive translation from the original Russian retains a poetic feel to it, as if the prose were permeated with the strains of Yerzhan’s dombra.

A haunting coming-of-age novel about a boy who does not come of age, this is my favourite amongst the Peirene Press publications I have had the pleasure to read.

***

In case you were wondering what a dombra is, here are two clips of Kazakh music featuring the instrument

Prequel, tribute, pastiche : "Dracul" by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker

"Dracul" by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker

Prequel, tribute, pastiche 

Past Presence: a review of Miloš Urban's "The Seven Churches"

Past Presence: a review of Miloš Urban's 

"The Seven Churches- a Gothic novel of Prague"

Discharged from the Police after a botched job, K. is unexpectedly asked to rejoin the force and given a very specific assignment – that of accompanying and protecting Matthias Gmünd, an eccentric aristocrat who intends to restore the Gothic churches of Prague to their original glory. At first, K is in his element – after all, he is himself a failed historian obsessed with the Middle Ages and suspicious of the contemporary world. But his visits to Prague’s historic churches are increasingly accompanied by terrifying fits in which K has mysterious visions of the past. More worryingly, a serial killer is on the loose, seemingly targeting anybody who dares defy the sacred sites of the town.

Pieta' on Charles Bridge

Miloš Urban’s atmospheric 1999 Gothic novel The Seven Churches was a bestseller in Spain and the Czech Republic and has been translated into twelve languages. Hats off, then, to Peter Owen Publishers for securing the publication of Robert Russell’s English translation. Indeed, I am rather surprised that it has not enjoyed the runaway success obtained by other, less-deserving novels. 

Urban has been compared to Umberto Eco but, frankly, that is the type of lazy analogy which nowadays tends to be applied to any literary thriller associated with the Middle Ages. The novel is reminiscent of Eco in its erudition and in its author’s evident love for literature and cultural history. However, the novel has supernatural undercurrents which are not particularly typical of the Italian author. The Seven Churches reminds me rather of Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor. There is a resemblance in the subject-matter (a serial killer obsessed with historical churches) and a similar concern with psycho-geography – the quasi-mystical idea that buildings can carry “memories” of ages past. In the novel we roam through a Prague in which the Middle Ages unexpectedly reassert themselves, in which chasms open up in the road swallowing cars into medieval crypts; in which unicorns appear on dissecting tables and buxom beauties wear chastity belts; in which centuries-old secret societies live on, hidden from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.

At one point, K. is drawn into a literary discussion about Gothic novels – he tends to prefer supernatural Gothic to the rational strand of the genre in which all puzzling occurrences are tidily explained at the end. In Urban’s book, there seems to be a struggle between the two types of Gothic. Some mysteries are solved – other questions remain tantalizingly unanswered. In fact, the novel just gets weirder with each chapter. The ambiguous ending is somewhat unsatisfying from a narrative point of view. However, one cannot help feeling that it fits this haunting, uncanny novel like a glove.

A sunnier view of Prague