Destination Books

Women in Translation Month: Book Recommendations

August 02, 2020

If you've signed up to my mailing list you'll already know from the latest newsletter that August is my favourite month; all the best things that have happened to me have happened in August. But there's even more reason to love August: it's Women in Translation month!

Book blogger Meytal Radzinski started the initiative in 2014 and you can find tons of reading suggestions and a manifesto for the initiative on the Women in Translation Month Twitter account.

But before you head over to the WIT, here are some of the translated books I've recently read and reviewed for Destination Books by women authors.

Grove, Esther Kinsky

Trans. by Caroline Schmidt

Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020

Fiction | Independent publishing

I'm sure many of us will be using Women in Translation Month as an excuse to add to our gorgeous Fitzcarraldo Editions collections as they offer so many great translated texts. I recently read and reviewed Grove for Destination Books subscribers.* It's an impressionistic, detailed, philosophical novel with vignettes that read like landscape paintings, set in wintry Italy and touching on bereavement, grief and memory. I recommend reading it when you have time to focus rather than dipping in and out. Subscribers can access the review through the link in your latest email from Destination Books. If you're new around here you can sign up and get instant access here.

Buy Grove by Esther Kinsky

Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin
Trans. by Megan McDowell
Oneworld, 2020

Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin's latest novel is as eerie as you'd expect if you've read Mouthful of Birds: Scwheblin's short story collection. Little Eyes is about pet-like robots called kentukis which are the latest trend, fitted with cameras and purchased by households across the globe. Kentukis are controlled by anonymous and silent 'dwellers' meaning you never know who's watching. With dystopian/speculative vibes, the novel switches between several characters and their various experiences of this new technology: some of which are positive and heartwarming, others are disturbing. I loved this novel and you can read my full review here.

Buy Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

The Yogini, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
Trans. by Arunava Sinha
Titled Axis Press, 2019

Titled Axis has translated a few of Bengali author Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay's many novels and I've added them all to my reading list after reading The Yogini which stands out as one of my favourite reads in 2020 so far. It's an ambigous, fun but layered novel about an interesting female protagonist who is being stalked by a 'hermit' man who she thinks is a manifestation of her fate. Find out more about this great little novel in my full review here.

Buy a copy of The Yogini here.

What are you reading for Women in Translation month? Let me know in the comments below.

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Fiction

Book Review: Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes

July 11, 2020

Scabby Queen, Kirstin Innes

4th Estate | Publication date: 23 July 2020

Fiction

Scabby Queen is an expansive, distinctly Scottish, political novel which skilfully shifts through time, perspectives and landscapes (including the Scottish Highlands, Glasgow and London) and covers issues of race, class, sexism, mental health and recent political events including the Scottish independence referendum and Brexit. Providing narrative thread is our complex protagonist: once-famous musician and political activist Clio Campbell.

The novel’s namesake is a card game in which cards are paired off and passed around until the person left holding the Queen of Spades or the ‘Scabby Queen’ is deemed the loser. Similarly, Clio is passed around from narrator to narrator, as author Kirstin Innes builds up a picture of Clio’s life through the perspectives of some of Clio’s close and not-so-close acquaintances. We never hear from Clio herself, and the portrait we get is complicated by the fact that each narrator has a different interpretation of her. Some narrators think of Clio as strong, influential, and selfless, whilst others portray her as chaotic, mentally unstable, and manipulative. This oscillation between Clio’s strength and vulnerability, and an awareness that each narrator centres their own interests, issues and biases and may therefore be unreliable, means that the reader is never able to make a conclusive judgement about Clio. These narrative devices create an interesting reading experience.

There are intriguing subplots: Clio’s time spent living in a squat with an undercover cop (unbeknownst until years later); the breakdown of her relationship with her mother; her short-lived marriage and miscarriages. Each subplot is disclosed to us in pieces as the narration moves back and forth through time as well as perspective. This shifting approach might sound overwhelming but Innes executes it well.

Clio’s life is rooted in activism and she takes up various different causes which cause rifts in her friendships throughout the years, as her friends turn away from the activist life in order to settle down, have families or find inner peace. The tension between political activism and individual need is highly relevant. None of the characters seem to have struck the right balance and the novel raises questions about who has the privilege to opt-out of the fight.

The novel touches on some key political questions but it’s characterisation and storytelling techniques were more impactful for me than the politics. I enjoyed the complexity of the shifting perspectives and the fact that we didn’t hear from the protagonist, and the novel is impressively far-reaching.

One final thought; it was only thanks to having a Scottish partner that I knew most of the Scottish slang. If you’re not familiar with Scottish vernacular, keep Google at hand when reading Scabby Queen.

3/5

Thank you to 4th Estate, William Collins and Netgalley for the ARC.

You can pre-order Scabby Queen here

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Fiction

Book Review: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

June 12, 2020

I wasn't blown away. I'd expected to be blown away; the title of this short novel is gripping, original, full of promise, the book was all over my Instagram feed and just look at the book cover, (there's a familiar lesson there somewhere...) but the book fell short of my expectations.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite was an enjoyable, easy read that touched on some interesting themes including familial relationships, beauty and privilege, crime, the cycle of violence and the justice, cultural and patriarchal systems at play in Nigeria. It's the story of Korede and her beautiful, younger sister, Ayoola, who kills her boyfriends and relies on Korede to help cover up the murders.

If you watch or read a lot of forensically and psychologically deep crime dramas, you are probably excited by the title of this book, but dampen your expectations: this is not a crime thriller; it's far more about the sisters and their relationship than it is about the crimes.

It took 50 pages for me to be semi-gripped by My Sister, the Serial Killer, when the first significant obstacle arises for our protagonist when Ayoola, the serial-killing sister, meets and is attracted to Korede's love interest. Suddenly, I could see where the story might go, and the plot was then enough to keep me reading.

Aside from the plot, I didn't particularly enjoy the book. As a reader who likes literary writing, beautiful language and meaningful cultural commentary, My Sister, the Serial Killer doesn't make it out on top. This book made me question whether I like first-person narratives, as Korede's perspective grated on me almost as much as did the first-person narrative in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: a book I enthusiastically cast aside after 50 pages. Too much is said in this first-person narrative; Korede states feelings or thoughts that the reader would already have picked up on. This makes her emotions seem mechanical, performed, rather than deep and relatable.

Skilful writing leaves things unsaid at the right time, it's in those gaps that the reader applies common human experience, emotion or even plain knowledge of what's gone before in the text (Braithwaite sometimes states things, through Korede, that the reader already knows). Reading between the lines is what engages readers with texts because this makes the reader needed. When everything is stated and nothing hinted at, the result is a disappointing distance between reader and text.

The book feels like a first draft, written to figure out the plot, secondary characters and dialogue: aspects which are successful. Another version would be more intentional with language and metaphor, more effective with its themes and would create a more interesting Korede. This version would live up to the killer title.

Some reviewers have argued a strong sense of place. The story is set in Lagos and whilst we do get some interesting details attesting to that fact - Nigerian gestures, dress and speaking styles are littered throughout the book - the sense of place is not as strong as other books set in Lagos such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ayòbámi Adébáyò's works, whose novels are about Lagos as much as they are about plot. I fell in love with Adichie's and Adébáyò's Lagos and learned so much from their novels about cultures different to my own, but it was equally powerful for Braithwaite to scatter Nigerian references through the book without positioning it within any political contexts or grounding it too heavily in place just because it is a non-Western setting! We absolutely shouldn't rely on fiction authors to teach us about places and cultures we don't know well; that learning is on us. I think it is powerful to have casual representation of places, people and cultures that haven't previously been represented in publishing; these representations are normalised through this casualness.

However, it is interesting to think about how the novel's very setting - Lagos - enables the plot. In a world saturated with forensically-savvy crime dramas, it seems kind of crazy that the sisters get away with covering up so many murders, but My Sister, the Serial Killer is a comment on corrupt and poorly-funded policing systems beyond the Western context we're familiar with from TV. Part of me wanted this theme to be explored more deeply, but it was right for the book to only provide a light touch on its many themes as the fun and quirky plot is what this book is really about.

In summary, My Sister, the Serial Killer is worth a read and is suitably enjoyable.

3/5

Buy book here

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Fiction

Book Review: Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

May 10, 2020

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Fiction

Book Review: The Yogini by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay

May 06, 2020

0 Comments

Fiction

Book Review: Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan

May 04, 2020

Man Tiger, Eka Kurniawan

Trans. by Labodalih Sembiring

Verso Books, 2015

In translation | Fiction | Independent publishing

*content warning: sexual assault, violence, abuse*

I almost didn’t finish Man Tiger. It was painful to read and hugely disappointing compared to the exciting blurb and the promise of supernatural elements which remain unfulfilled.

Set in a small Indonesian village, Man Tiger opens with the murder of a local man who’s killed when a teenage boy – Margio – bites through the veins in his neck. The description of the murder is excitingly gruesome and visceral and the crime genre and generic ‘who dunnit’ structure are inverted as the perpetrator is revealed at the outset. We learn that Margio has the spirit of a tiger inside him and his motivations for the murder remain unclear, providing intrigue. Kurniawan then takes us backwards, exposing a set of social circumstances and events, including the poverty and domestic violence suffered by Margio's family, that lead to the murder. The opening of the book suggests innovation and is conceptually promising but the execution is unsatisfactory and at times infuriating.

Man Tiger, from Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan, adopts a writing style that nods to folktale and oral storytelling traditions, composed of omniscient narration and limited dialogue. Publication of different storytelling traditions is important but the folklore tone is overused in Man Tiger and it leaves no space for character depth and makes for monotonous reading. Characters and events are archetypal and clichéd to the point that the book's ending and final revelation about Margio's motivation to murder are totally expected, leaving nothing to propel the reading forward.

As a feminist, this was painful to read. Whilst I acknowledge that my reading is from a Western standpoint - and that there are social, cultural and religious differences between my standpoint and the social positioning of these characters - women, female sexuality, violence against women and rape are approached without sensitivity or nuance.

As Kurniawan plunges deeper into backstory, the novel becomes the story of Margio's mother - Nuraeni - who enters into an arranged marriage at a young age and is victim to domestic abuse and rape. Nuraeni is conciliated in ways that are enraging. We are told that she happily becomes an unpaid housemaid for her wealthy neighbours because it means less time spent at home and at risk of abuse. The trauma of her marital rape is miraculously assuaged when she is taken as a lover by her neighbour, despite the fact that his pursuit of her is also problematic. She experiences an unwavering happiness when she becomes pregnant by her neighbour, even in the face of severe beatings from her husband whilst she is pregnant. The complexities of her experience, emotions and desires are neglected.

Worse than the events that are inflicted on the novel's central female character is the language used to describe women's sexuality and bodies. There is an insistence on symbolising young women's virtue by their 'unripe' breasts; a woman's beauty and body are portrayed as her most important qualities, and they even trump her rape trauma: Nuraeni's 'beautiful calves' are foregrounded in the description of her rape and her new lover notices that she 'had preserved her body despite everything'. Of course, the complexities of translation are at play here, but I assume the English word choices express Kurniawan’s intended tone on these topics.

All agency and power is afforded to the male characters in this novel, and whilst this is probably intended as a reflection of patriarchal cultures, the novel could have challenged patriarchal power by showcasing some of women’s power, or it could have at least made male power less omnipotent: Nuraeni's male lover even has the power to restore her youth and make her breasts firmer with his touch!

Man Tiger has received high praise and was longlisted for the Booker International Prize 2016, possibly due to controlled use of literary devices, its scattered representations of Indonesian culture - which could have been explored more - and its representation of social issues such as domestic violence, poverty, class difference and the effects of colonialism. However, the novel fails to challenge these issues or provide radical political comment and because it was too difficult to get past the misogyny and monotony I cannot provide the same praise.

Finally, if, like me, you are drawn to this novel by the supernatural elements and the concept of a tiger’s spirit inhabiting the protagonist, you will be disappointed. The tiger makes an appearance only once, and whilst the exploration of spirituality and tradition being passed through generations was interesting, the concept is abandoned as the novel turns its attention to family drama.