Thoughts on Europe from Iceland to Italy, plus a novel by a Roma author

Iceland – “The Fish can Sing” by Halldór Laxness (Score 7.0)

This book is not a novel, despite what it says on the cover. It is a series of chapters, each telling a different story, linked by the main character being a young boy (at the start), growing to be a youth by the end. Álfgrímur was brought up by an old couple living near Reykjavik on Iceland.

I found the first few chapters interesting enough as we looked at the world through the wondering eyes of a young child. However, the stories became more and more tedious. The total absence of any real characterisation meant that I could not feel for any of the characters, not even for Álfgrímur. I skimmed most of the last half of the book, and found about twenty pages which I could read.

I scored this book at 5.5.


Norway – “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson (Score 8.5)

I loved this book. The hero, Trond, is 15 in 1948 when he spends a summer in the country with his father. Later in the book he is an older man of 67, living in an isolated part of Norway. Trond, at 15, has a friend called Jon whom he met when he is away with his father on the land which he has bought. There is a tragedy when Jon, who has gone shooting hares, leaves his gun lying about when he is supposed to be looking after his younger brothers. One of the brothers starts to pay with it and kills the other brother.

Later we see Trond and his father helping the local landowner with the hay harvest. The description of this, in the 1940s, and the preparations to make certain that the hay will dry properly, is fascinating. The passage where Trond describes his first experience in watching a lynx is wonderful. No one believes him since they seem to be rare in those parts.

The war intrudes into the idyll which the young Trond inhabits. The Germans occupy Norway, arriving through neutral Sweden. A detachment of young men, little more than boys, is posted to the village. The locals cultivate them, putting them at their ease and lulling them so that they are not aware of what is going on. Trond’s father becomes a courier for the resistance. He chats to the guards, offers them cigarettes, smokes with them so that they get used to him walking up the road with his sack. He carries mail and papers to go to Sweden.

A neighbour’s wife is also involved. She brings someone who has to escape to Sweden, and takes him in a boat. His fear leads him to make considerable noise in the boat, drawing the attention of one of the infrequent German patrols. Trond’s father activates the already laid explosive charge and blows up the bridge. The boat reaches the other side of the river, but the refugee is killed. The woman and Trond’s father escape to Sweden. Strangely, there seem to be no repercussions against the villagers.

As we approach the end of the book, the adult Trond’s daughter Ellen visits him. She has sought him out, with great difficulty. It is an emotional reunion, written beautifully.

We go back in time again. Young Trond is on a three day riding expedition with his father. The description is wonderful. You see what Trond sees riding through the woods, and you can almost feel the movement as the horse changes pace.

After Trond took the decisive action which led to breaking the log-jam, the strengthening of the bond between father and son is almost palpable. We move forward again to a time when Trond’s father has been away for a considerable period. A letter arrives. It says that he will not be coming back from Sweden. There is an authorisation for Trond’s mother to go to a bank in Sweden and collect the money which was made from the timber floated down the river to Sweden. The description of the train journey is clarity itself. There isn’t much money, and it must be spent in Sweden under the currency laws prevailing at the time.

Trond’s mother buys him a suit.

The 15 year old Trond grew up that day. He made a decision which led ultimately to the 67 year old man we have met in this book. Any other decision at that crucial moment would have taken him on an entirely different, and not so good, direction through life, and he would have become a different person from the one we know. Please read this book. I think you will love it as much as I did.

I scored the book at 8.5, exactly on the group average.


Sweden – “Hanna’s Daughters” by Marianne Fredriksson Score (8.25)

I loved this book. I don’t usually go for multi-generation family stories, but this one is very different. All of the people seem real, so real that I would have thought it biographical had the author not affirmed strongly that it is not. To me this demonstrates the strength of her writing.

It is the story of Hanna (grandmother), Johanna (mother), and Anna (daughter), their lives and the lives of their individual families. The times range from the 1860s to the present, the place from an isolated part of Sweden in the borderland with Norway, to modern major cities. We learn a lot about the history of Sweden and its relationships with the neighbouring countries. There was a famine in the 1880s, with mass death from starvation, and displacement of people. Many children died young at that time anyway, from disease caused by lack of hygiene (from lack of education and knowledge of the causes of disease).

Hanna is brutally raped by an older cousin, Rickard, who flees her father’s shotgun vengeance and, as we find out later, joins the army. Hanna was only twelve years old, and had only just become sexually mature (in body). The rape made her pregnant, and she later gave birth to a boy whom she raised with love, while suffering from the usual stigma of cruel neighbours that a victim of rape must have been guilty in some way. Years later she married John Broman, a miller who had recently moved into the area. John accepted the boy with as much love as Anna had for him. The family of Hanna, Johanna and Anna started from this marriage. Rickard returns to the area, swaggering in his smart army uniform.

We read that, while there, he went hunting and died in a shooting accident which I hoped wasn’t. I won’t spoil your possible enjoyment of this story by telling you more. Let it suffice to say that all the group members enjoyed it, scoring it at 8.25, and putting it into our top ten as book 98 of our fictional trip round the world. I scored it at 8.5.


Finland – “The Howling Miller” by Arto Paasilinna (Score 7.0)

Kunnari Huttonen, a miller, arrives in the area sometime after the wars in Russia and takes over a sawmill, much to the amazement of the locals. He had a mill in Southern Finland, but it had burned down, killing his wife. He sets the mill to work over a period of time. There was a bad episode one spring when the millrace dam is damaged and river water pours through, bringing ice piling down against the mill and threatening to destroy it. Kunnari fought manfully, alone, to save the mill and repair the damage, with an audience made up of most of the locals, none of whom helped.

Sanelma Käyrämö, a beautiful horticultural adviser, arrives one day and sweeps into Kunnari’s life to set up a vegetable garden. Is this the arrival of the love interest in the story? Kunnari completed the mill repairs after setting up the vegetable garden. He was now ready to grind flour for the local farmers. He was ready for Sanelma’s next visit. Because Kunnari has a habit of going into the woods and howling like a wolf, making all the local dogs howl all night, he is put into a mental hospital as a madman. To me he seems no more mad than the doctor who arbitrarily committed him, or the doctor who “treats” him when he is inside. Kunnari seems to me to be a Trickster figure from World folklore, like Till Eulenspiegel, Coyote, or Brer Rabbit who all get into scrapes but always manage to extricate themselves, so I was not too concerned when he was put into, as he named it “the loony bin” – how very non-PC.

Kunnari escapes from the hospital with the help of another inmate who faked madness to escape being drafted., and made his way back to the mill. The local policeman, Portimo, comes to see him after receiving a phone call from the shopkeeper, Tervola. Tervola had refused to sell Kunnari any food even though he hadn’t eaten for three days. The policeman and Sanelma suggested that should go into exile into the woods for at least the Autumn, so he does. Sanelma brings him food from Portimo’s wife.

Poor Kunnari can get no peace. He has made himself a good solid camp after having had his encampment destroyed when one of the villager’s followed Sanelma when she was taking food to Kunnari. A fisherman discovered the new camp and reported it to the chief of police. We find that the villagers’ wives are sympathetic to Kunnari, and blame their husbands when Kunnari starts howling after the husbands have destroyed the latest camp and stolen his possessions. Is this an indication for the future? The villagers are rogues and crooks. When Kunnari goes to the bank he signs for his savings, albeit at the point of a gun. The banker later tells the police chief that Kunnari robbed the bank “but his savings should cover the amount”, and says nothing about the signed receipt.

Kunnari goes into the wilds again, where he is helped by Sanelma providing some food, Piitisjärvi the postman, and constable Portimo who has always been his friend. However, after a massive manhunt involving the army he is tricked by the Governor and the police chief, neither of whom had any intentions of living up to the deal they made with Kunnari. This story has been one of basic inhumanity to someone whose only crime was to be different, and eccentric. Kunnari and Portimo are handcuffed together, with Portimo being given instructions to deliver Kunnari back to the “hospital”, with a note from the doctor saying that he is to be treated like a dangerous madman.

They go off in the train, but never reach the hospital. Portimo’s Spitz runs off into the woods. There is a happy ending of sorts when the Spitz and a large male wolf begin a campaign of revenge against the main persecutors of Kunnari. None of them are harmed, but they all suffer in some way, even if only to be made look ridiculous. Had the essence of Kunnari and Portimo entered, in some way, into the animals. Was this, after all, a Trickster tale, or was Kunnari a shape-shifter? I enjoyed it, cheering Kunnari all the way as the underwolf. I scored it at 7.5.


Estonia – The Czar’s Madman – Jaan Kross (Score 7.0)

I liked this book at first, and thought it was a good story, though not one of beautiful prose. It tells us something about life in Estonia in the period after the Napoleonic wars, at a time when Estonia had been taken over by the ever-expanding Russian Empire under the land-hungry Czars and the peasants had been turned into serfs (more or less slaves). However the book grew tedious for me as I continued. At 350 pages, I think it could have been improved as a read by shedding 100 pages.

The conceit that this book derives from a manuscript found, more or less, by accident, is one which was old at the time of publication in 1978. Even the afterword didn’t seem to me to support that possibility, or convince me that it isn’t pure fiction. The poem by Heine, quoted on page 182 with the English translation on page 351, has a strange translation for the first verse. The second line reads “though the world from cliff to coast”, a phrase which appears nowhere in Heine’s original. I can only think that the translator used poetic licence to make the poem scan, and to maintain the rhyme. Traduttore, traditore. (I don’t mean to insult the translator by that). I scored this book at 6.0.


Latvia – Red Weather – Pauls Toutonghi (Score 6.25)

This book is the story of the coming of age of a young boy, Yuri Balodis, the son of Latvian immigrants to the USA. His parents suffered under communism in Latvia, his father having three fingers cut off when taken unto custody by the communists. We don’t know why. Yuri falls for a young socialist, Hannah. One night, after an unpleasant incident between Yuri’s father and Hannah’s father, Yuri’s father “borrows” a fast car, a Corvette, from the dealership where he works as a night cleaner, and takes Yuri for a very fast drive. This is clearly an attempt at bonding. Yuri’s father has a lucky escape, being drunk, when he passes a stationary police car at a speed well beyond the limit. He slows down to the limit as the police car gets on his tail, six feet behind, and trails him to the county line before peeling off.

Yuri is re-united with Hannah when they are in the same class at high school(age 16), and they start to skip gym together. We watch with Yuri and his parents as they follow on TV the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the break-up of the Soviet Empire. I well remember my emotions when I watched the Wall come down. I sat with tears streaming down my face. In connection with Yuri’s car crash I found it difficult to accept that even a hormonally supercharged 16 year old would be stupid enough to indulge in some heavy kissing at 50 mph, with no hand on the steering wheel. Some how or other everything turns out well and there is a happy ending. We even see the American justice system in a good light, instead of what we are usually fed, although we can only guess that Yuri got probation rather than a prison sentence.

I even laughed out loud at the Russian joke near the end. I would like to quote it here without the author’s permission, but in homage to his father whom I feel is the model for Yuri’s father. “A Soviet citizen walks into his local post office. He is clearly angry. “These new stamps of Stalin are completely defective,” he says.” They do not stick to the envelopes.” The clerk looks at him and replies: “Comrade, the problem is obvious. You are spitting on the wrong side.” It reminds me of the time the UK post office published a set of stamps honouring Henry VIII, king of England. The Herald published my letter complaining that the Post Office expected Scots to lick the back side of the man who launched “The Rough Wooing of Scotland”. Check it on the internet if you don’t get the reference. The average score we gave the book was 6.25, though I scored it at 7.0.


Lithuania – Stalemate – Icchokas Meras (Score 6.8)

Having read the reviews I was really looking forward to reading this book. It purports to tell the story of a chess game, in the ghetto of Vilna in Lithuania, during the Second World War. The game is between the local Nazi commandant, Schoger, and a young Jewish chess prodigy, Isaac. At stake are the lives of all the Jewish children in the ghetto, or Isaac himself, depending on whether Schoger or Isaac wins.

The game itself takes place in short bursts between more lengthy episodes telling stories of what is going on in the ghetto. You would think that a premise like this, in a place like that, in the context of the Nazi so-called “Final Solution” would have suffused the book with incredible tension and fear. Not so. To me it is mundane and plodding. We really learn nothing of what must have been the day to day horrors and hardships of life in the ghetto.

There are dreadful occurrences, but the only one which really moved me was when three fighters rescued the new born child, a girl, of a non-Jewish couple living outside the ghetto. They had been hanged, together with the young Jewish girl they had taken in, when someone betrayed them. The baby was taken to a young mother, in the ghetto, whose child had died at birth. She did not want to feed the infant, but the fighters held the baby to her breast and, after a time, she accepted it and suckled it lovingly. On the whole I was rather glad the book was only 160 pages long. I scored the book at 5.0, the group average was 6.8 because half of us liked the book so much that each of them scored it at 8.0. The differences made for some interesting discussion.


Denmark – An Altered Light – Jens Christian Grøndahl (Score 5.91)

This is the beautiful story of a woman, and how an antique cello went home; it is a story of endings and beginnings, of loss and redemption. We see a woman walking through a wood. It is well described, and we can picture it with its anemones (telling us the season) and ancient trees. It is right beside a town, which does not yet intrude. We enter the woman’s house. She sees that her husbands car isn’t there.

The story starts in the present tense, with its sense of immediacy, away from the feeling of predestination which the past tense would bring. The woman is Irene Beckman, and her husband is Martin. He seems (Irene thinks) to be having an affair. We move into the unchanging past and learn about Irene’s early life, how she met Martin, and met him again after several years. The young Irene is now destined to become the woman we met in the first paragraph. That cannot be changed.

Back in the present Irene is sitting on a bench in Nikolai Square. She sees a Greenlander sleeping on a nearby bench. How does she know he is a Greenlander? Is it the empty bottle in his arms? Is this a Danish slang word for a drunk, or is it racial stereotyping? Irene is a divorce lawyer. A flash of memory when she is talking to a potential customer, a woman, tells us that she had an affair with the woman’s husband ten years earlier. This is the first book we have read from more than a hundred countries in which affairs have featured. What does this tell us? We know that affairs are the key element in classics like Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. Can it be that translation, relatively rare into English when compared to other languages (Grøndahl was translated into a dozen other languages before he was put into English) is very expensive? Or can it be that the Anglophone world is more parochial, because bigger, and has less interest in foreign literature?

There are graphic passages, such as on page 71 where “a magnolia blossom presses a petal against a window pane, like a child’s nose”. I think Martin is a coward. He waits till there is a family reunion with Peter, their son, Sandra, Peter’s wife, and the grandchildren Emil and Amelie, as well as Martin’s and Irene’s daughter Josephine. Then he tells them he wants to live with another woman. Josephine changes from laughter to floods of tears in an instant. Peter loses his temper and calls his father a name I can’t repeat here. Sandra runs to comfort the children who have been frightened by Josephine’s tears and Peter’s outburst. Martin is in the process of breaking a family in pieces. Iren’s mother is dying. Partway through the book, from her hospital bed, she gives Irene a parcel, with instructions not to open it until after her death.

Irene feels compelled to open it before that and finds old jotters (exercise books) which her mother wrote when she was young. Irene finds that the man she thought was her father probably is not. Her real father is probably her putative father’s best friend Samuel, a Jewish cello player who left Denmark, under Nazi occupation, with his parents for the relative security of neutral Sweden. Irene’s mother seems certain that Samuel is the father, but quickly married his best friend and allowed him to think that the baby was his own daughter. The ripples from the boulder which Martin hurled into the family sea continue to radiate outwards and, as they fetch up on the shores of other lives they change direction, reflecting and refracting away from that shore as if it was another, smaller, boulder. Irene’s comments from the foot of page 185 to the end of the chapter resonate with me. She was born during the war. I was born just after it, so we are about the same generation.

I believe, with her, we should protect children from the great dangers, but allow them to experience the little dangers> We must allow them falls and scraped knees. We must teach them manners, and how to use a knife and fork properly. I had to be rescued from trees when I climbed beyond my ability. I fell from trees. I had loving, caring parents, not neglectful ones, but I was never prohibited from climbing trees. I was allowed to test myself, and to make my own decision on when to stop doing it. I felt intensely for Irene during her search for her blood father, and really wanted her to find him. This is one of the main powers of good writing. It can make you empathise with an imaginary person as if he or she is real. I like to think that transfers to my approach to real live people. I scored this book at 8.5.


Netherlands – The Twin – Gerbrand Bakker (Score 7.6)

Drizzle is nothing more than mist with pretentions. This is a quotation which struck me from this book. It’s the story of a Dutch farmer, Helmer, a reluctant farmer, leading what seems to be a fairly normal life. He is the survivor of twins, his younger brother having been drowned in a car accident. Helmer is haunted by memories of his brother who, although he was the younger was to inherit the farm. Helmer did not want it, having set his mind on a career. Nothing happens, but it happens beautifully, and stealthily, with a dreamlike quality until we realise, for example, that Helmer is in Denmark.

His old and infirm father lives with him, and the book opens with him moving the old man upstairs to a more isolated bedroom where he will be out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Helmer detests his father, and it shows. This probably results from being forced to take over the farm and abandon his dreams of a career. Helmer was not strong enough to say “No” to his father. Now he has the chance, and does it frequently when his father needs something. On the other hand, he showed unusual kindness when he raised his father’s new bed so that the old man could look out of the window.

A young woman, Ada, with two sons Teun and Ronald, has the adjacent farm. He seems to develop a feeling for her. We wonder for a while if they will get together. A hooded crow, which sits in the ash tree outside the father’s bedroom window, plays a large part in the story by simply being there. What is it? Is it a portent of death? Is it one of Odin’s crows which the legend tells us circles the earth to bring him back news. He is one god who is not all-seeing. Helmer takes a notion to move to Denmark because one of his father’s ex-farmhands did that some years ago. I didn’t see homosexuality in the eventual relationship between Helmer and Jaap, the ex-farmhand, when they met up again, though the women in the book group all did. I simply saw it as intense male bonding. I enjoyed the book. It is well written and translated, and sets the scene well in the watery North Holland landscape. I scored this book at 7.5.


Belgium – The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus (Score 4.75)

We meet young Louis in what he calls an “Institute”, run by nuns. This is clearly not an orphanage because his father comes to visit and his mother is alive. We soon find out that it is a boarding school where the teachers are nuns. Louis and his three friends have copies of “Forbidden Books” on the Vatican Index. We don’t yet know the year, or Louis’ age, but we do know that the king is the Leopold we read so much about in the African leg of our round the world reading trip. That Leopold treated the Belgian colonies as his own personal estates, badly mistreating and massacring the tribespeople, and raping the colonies of their wealth for his own personal gain.

We learn, in a gentle way, of the linguistic and religious divides in Belgium. At the funeral of a young child, a gold coin is put between the lips of the dead boy. Despite this being a catholic funeral, the obol is still paid to the ferryman. By page 30 we have learned that it is the late 1940s since we read of “the troubles in Czechoslovakia” and of the “saints who defend Span against the forces of international communism”. I presume that means the heroes of the International Brigade and the Spanish Left who fought to release Spain from the grip of the fascist dictator, Franco. The fascists have won in Spain. The year is 1938.Young Louis tells is his theory of how babies are made and born. I’m glad I wasn’t made that way.

When Louis joins the local Flemish equivalent of the Hitler Youth, he becomes a mean-spirited and obnoxious brat, relying on the fear factor of the uniform’s association with the Nazis to push people around. Most of the young men are being taken to Germany to work. Are they really, as they think, going for good wages or is it the slave labour we have learned about during our lives? There is no cohesion and little continuity in this book. Time passes, but it might as well not. It leaves me wondering what happened to the “Gallant Little Belgium” which we heard so much about when I was growing up in the early 50s, just after the war.

It seems from this book that huge numbers of Belgians sympathised with the Nazi aim of creating a Great German Europe. Certainly there is discussion about “our boys” fighting the Russians in the cold and misery of the Eastern Front. There are also complaints about the Belgian managers in the repair shops letting down the “German” war effort. I need to find a book on Belgian history. I persevered to about page 400 of 600, but could go no further. All in all I found it one of the most tedious books I have tackled, and the first I have failed to finish in over fifty five years of intensive reading. I scored this book at 2.0.


France – Jean de Florette – Marcel Pagnol (Score 8.17)

This book opens in the village of Les Bastides Blanches on the foothills of the Massif de l’Etoile, some distance from Marseille. The scene is set by a description of the village, and key inhabitants, which allows us to have a picture in our minds as we read the book. We very quickly see how life in this area goes on. A newcomer to the valley starts poaching, even stealing from the traps of the local poachers. Pique-Bouffigue, one of the locals, accosts the newcomer, Siméon, and is badly beaten for his pains. He plots his revenge, sets a trap, and kills Siméon using an antique rifle.

Ugolin tells his uncle “The Papet” of his proposal to grow carnations, but the problem is they need plenty of water. Papet knows of land which has been left to lie unproductive for years, where there is a spring. The land is owned by Pique-Bouffigue, who refuses to sell it to them.

Next thing we are at Pique-Bouffigue’s funeral. He has been killed by Ugolin, we think, but it is not clear whether it is an accident. Ugolin and Papet start to plan how they might get the land for Ugolin to have the water. They plug the spring and hide all traces of it, and of the end of the pipe which leads it to the flat vallons where the carnations are to be grown. The heir to the land is Jean Cadoret, a hunchback, who must surely become the eponymous Jean de Florette, since his mother was Florette.

Ugolin goes back and forth to the farm, until one day he hears people arriving with a large cart. It is Jean de Florette and his family. Ugolin decides to help them for the chance of finding out their plans, so moves their furniture in with Jean and his muleteer. As the story progresses we find that Ugolin feels he is in a difficult position. He has become, in his eyes, a friend of Jean, but still wants him to fail so that he can freely buy the land, open the spring and start growing carnations. We watch Jean, his wife Aimee and young daughter Manon, struggle against the fiercest drought experienced in the region for many years. There is a brief respite when there is eventually a downpour which revives the plants and the grass to feed the rabbits Jean is breeding. Then the drought starts again.

Will it all end in tears for Jean, Aimee and Manon?

We carry on, reading about Jean’s pleasures and pains and plans. We read about Ugolin’s pleasures and pains and plans. I could tell you more, but it would spoil the story for you, though it wouldn’t spoil the pleasure of reading it. After I finished reading, I watched the film again. I was struck by how close it is to the book, although it misses out a few scenes. All in all, I loved the book, and I will be reading the sequel very shortly. I scored this book at 8.5.


Spain – The accordionist’s son – Bernardo Atxaga (Score 7.33)

The narrator is Joseba. The accordionist’s son is eight year old David. The story opens in a classroom on the first day of term, in the Basque village of Obaba (see also the author’s book “Obabakoak). The children are all eight or nine years old. It is September 1957.

In the next paragraph David is dead. It is 42 years later, and we are at his funeral in Three Rivers, California. Afterwards Mary Ann, David’s widow, tells Joseba that David wrote a book about life in Obaba. Three copies were prepared, one for his children Liz and Sarah, one for the people who helped to publish it, and one for the library in Obaba. It is written in Basque. Mary Ann asks Joseba to take the copy to the library in Obaba. Joseba agrees, and says he will contact her as soon as he has read the book.

Later, Joseba tells her that he would like to write a book based on David’s story. She agrees, and the book we are reading is the result.

We immediately see in this book the great love that the Basque people have for their homeland and their ancient language. Another book which I have read, “The Basque history of the world” by Mark Kurlansky, discusses the up-to-date studies which suggest that the Basques may be the descendants of Cro-Magnon man who lived in the area some 40,000 years ago. They seem to have the same physical characteristics.

Basques have the highest concentration of blood group “O” in the world, more than 50%, with even higher levels in more isolated areas. They also have the highest incidence in the world of the Rh Rhesus factor (negative), in common with other areas known to have been occupied by Cro-Magnon such as the Atlas Mountains and the Canary Islands. It is fascinating to think that their language may have come down from that ancient period.

Incidentally, Kurlansky also says that Corsicans, Cretans, Irish and Scots also have an unusually high incidence of blood type “O”. It is known that at least some of the peoples who made the journey to Ireland and Scotland after the last Ice Age had survived that trauma in what archaeologists and anthropologists call the “Basque Refuge”. That is not to say that Irish and Scots are descended from the Basque rootstock, but that there could have been some intermarriage throughout the thousands of years of cold.

We learn more about Basque history along with David (in Joseba’s version). He is 15 years old when his uncle Juan talks to him. Just before that he had learned that several innocent people had been shot in Obaba during the civil war. It must have been a dreadful shock for David to learn that his father, Angel, may have been a fascist collaborator in the civil war, and a murderer.

David was expelled from school for not clyping on Martin, who had been the perpetrator of an event in which he passed to David something he had not expected. David got the blame, and Martin kept quiet. I think Martin is going to be a bad one.

At page 191 we leave the first person narrative of David’s story, and go to the third person to hear about Don Pedro, the American (so called because he had been in the New World for years, and had recently returned. He had been picked up for execution by the Falangists, along with another eight people against whom some people had grudges and were taking this opportunity to get rid of people who had offended them in some way. His “fault” is that he was a Republican in a region now ruled over by strict right wing Monarchists. He reaches Juan’s house and, together, they escape to France.

We see, all the way through the book, that David is a more caring, considerate and responsible type of person than most of the others of his age group in Obaba.

David’s friend, Lubis, who worked with David’s uncle Juan’s horses, was picked up by the Guardia Civil, tortured, murdered, and thrown into a deep pool in the river to make it look like a drowning. His “crime” was that he was on the fringes of one of the early Basque liberation groups.

When we return to the present in the story, Joseba visits David at the ranch. David’s daughters don’t want to know. Liz tells her father “Shut up! Don’t speak Basque to me!”, despite having loved to learn Basque words when she was younger. She seems to have got into a strop. She doesn’t want to be seen by her friends as being different, and what could be more different than having a father from a small far away land which her friends have never heard of, and where they speak a strange language.

Towards the end we learn something about David’s and Joseba’s time together in the struggle for Basque self-determination. There is a lot of humour, such as the incident with Toshiro. He is a Japanese naval engineer there to help fit the propeller on a large new ship. He distributed thousands of leaflets for them to the shipyard workers by switching on a ship’s propeller, blew the leaflets high in the air and showered them over the workers. Despite being beaten up by the Guardia Civil he persuaded them that he had been fooled by a woman who had told him they were advertisements for a fiesta. He claimed he was always being fooled by women.

There are three “confessions” at the end, versions by each of the participants in a particular event. These give further insight into what has been happening.

All in all, this story had the elusive “Wow!” factor for me. I scored it at 9.0.

As an addendum to the above, my interpretation of a section in “The Basque History of the World” by Mark Kurlansky, is that the person Kurlansky mentions in that book as Joseba Erazu Garmendia, who wrote under the pseudonym Bernardo Atxaga to protect his identity, may well be the Joseba in the book. That poses the questions “How (auto)biographical is the book? And, does it matter?


Portugal – All the names – Jose Saramago (Score 7.75)

The author is clearly of a literary bent, and assumes that his readers are to. That may still be the case in Portugal, but I suspect it is not so in the UK. On page 7 he refers to Ariadne’s thread. Few people in the UK these days have any education in the classics, or read them, so only those few are likely to follow the reference to Theseus and the Minotaur. I’m only ten pages into the book and already I feel that it may be difficult to write much of a coherent review.

The protagonist seems likely to be Señor Jose, a clerk who works in the office and the archives of the Central Register of births and deaths in a, so far unnamed, place; we don’t know whether it is a city, a town, or a village. A city seems likely because of the description of the archives.

Señor Jose lives in the only remaining house which abuts the Register building, and has a door straight into the building itself. However, Jose has been instructed that this door has to remain permanently locked, and cannot be used to access the archives, though he still has a key.

This door will become pivotal to the plot. He decides to use it to find out the details of the lives of 100 famous people. Then one night he returns home from the archives to discover that he has also taken the card of an extra, unknown person, a woman of 36 years, stuck to the back of a famous person. We begin to see the start of an obsession.

I only noticed the unusual punctuation when I got to the section (from page 45) in which Jose is talking to the old lady at the address he has for the woman of 36 years. I went back to the beginning to follow this up.

I was struck by two things. Saramago uses very long sentences, built up of subordinate clauses one after the other. The second thing is that I had completely missed (due to the ease of reading and the flow of the story) the fact that the conversation which Jose had with the old lady discussed above, was the same.

In dialogue, Saramago separates his sentences by commas, not by the usual full stops. If this is intended to reflect the rhythm of speech, and to help dialogue flow smoothly it certainly worked in my case.

We follow Señor Jose in his search for the “extra” person, though a series of episodes which, in themselves, might not seem impossible for the average man but, for someone of his timid nature seem almost impossible. Nevertheless he carries them out, more or less successfully.

I found that following these escapades was compulsive, and it was difficult to put the book down for a while to get on with the rest of my life. It frequently became a matter of “just a few more pages”, and frequently “a few more” again.

I was surprised by the ending. After a lot of thought I scored the book at 8.5, and went straight into his “Cain” for another healthy dose of Saramago.


Switzerland – Night train to Lisbon – Pascal Mercier (Score 7.07)

“Night train to Lisbon” was the July 2012 selection by the Round the World Book Group in Edinburgh. It has a similar, but not identical, concept to that of José Saramago’s “All the names” which, coincidentally the group read in June. Saramago’s protagonist traces the life of an unknown woman in Portugal. Mercier’s hero travels from Switzerland to Portugal to trace the life of a doctor from a well-off family.

Much as I like Saramago’s work in general, and “All the names” in particular, I feel that Pascal Mercier wins hands down on this one. I felt for Gregorius much more in his trials and tribulations than I did for Saramago’s Senhor José This is the first book I have read by him, but I will seek out others.

Raimundo Gregorius (Mundus) is a divorcee, and a teacher in the Gymnasium in Berne. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

During the opening paragraphs Mundus seems to have prevented a young woman from committing suicide by jumping off the bridge which he is crossing on his way to work, in the pouring rain. He drops his briefcase and his class’s exercise books spill out. In the confusion of picking them up the woman writes something on his forehead. He later finds that it is a phone number. She speaks Portuguese to him. He doesn’t understand.

After they part we quickly learn that this man is a language genius. While browsing in a second-hand bookshop he comes across a book written in Portuguese. For reasons which are made clear later he decides to buy it. The bookshop owner gives it to him as a gift – it didn’t cost him very much anyway, he says. If “Night train” was a Victorian Gothic we might expect the book given to Mundus to be cursed in some way.

Mundus buys a Portuguese language course, along with the accompanying records. He listens to the introductory record three times and, with the aid of the word list and their meanings (given at the back of the book) produces a perfect translation in his own language of a rather complex passage. This is given on page 24 of my Atlantic Books version of “Night train”.

Mundus, almost on a whim, decides to go to Lisbon to track down the author of the book he was given free The author was Amadeu Inacio de Almeida Prado.

I won’t detail the searches carried out by Mundus, the people he meets, or the stories he hears on his search. That could spoil the book for you. Just be aware that there are several unexpected twists and turns.

I found this a stimulating and challenging book, even if I did find the sections of Prado’s writings which are quoted by Mundus to be complex, erudite and difficult to understand in places. Persevere with them, though.

I scored this book at 9.5/10.


Italy – The Leopard – Tomasi di Lampedusa (Score 7.67)

The descriptions of place and time as we start this book are very detailed. They set the scene well, and we can picture it perfectly.

The genteel “poverty” in which prince Fabrizio and his family live is beautifully illustrated on page 10 by the mended lace table-cloth and the mixture of crockery in use, “mere survivors of many a scullion’s massacre and originated from many a service”. As I used to hear in my childhood – these people have money because they won’t spend it. I am aware that is very much an exaggeration.

The prince’s barely controlled anger at the late arrival of his son for dinner demonstrates the iron grip of an aristocratic father of the time over his family and those who depend on him. I wonder if this was typical of all levels of society in Sicily (and elsewhere) in the mid to late 19th century.

On page 12 we meet the “medlar”. These mottled brown, rotting, fruit are about one inch in diameter and are horrible looking. However, bring yourself to eat one and you will find one of the most delicious things you have ever tasted. I first met them one dinner in the middle of Rome while staying with my uncle and aunt, taken from an ancient tree in the garden of their rented apartment.

We begin to see hints of the political situation with the lights of the fires of the “rebels” camped in the hills round Palermo, talk of an invasion by the troops, presumably those of Victor Emmanuel, king of Piedmont, and by Fabrizio’s nephew Tancredi going off to join the rebels, or the freedom fighters. Of course, from the perspective offered to us from 150 years of history, we know what is going to happen. This doesn’t, however, detract from the growing tension.

On page 31 I wondered whether the author had inserted an omen of some kind in the disappearance of the family crest from the crystal glass one it was drained of wine.

On page 32 the prince received rent in kind from two of his tenants. Among it are four cacciocavallo cheeses. Despite his poor opinion of this cheese I found it rather tasty when we visited Sicily and the south of Italy. The name comes from its shape which is two balls joined by a cord, like two panniers hanging over a horse’s back.

From something he says to his son, Paolo, (when the latter speaks disparagingly about Tancredi having gone to join the rebels) we gather that the prince is sympathetic to their cause.

Prince Fabrizio receives a copy of a newspaper with a report that Garibaldi has landed at Marsala with eight hundred men. If we didn’t have the benefit of our crystal ball, we might think from the prince’s reaction that he was living in a fool’s paradise. The intrusion of discussion on page 73 of the anachronism of Superjets and planes pottering between Palermo and Naples strikes an incredibly jarring note not at all in keeping with how the story has developed and been reported up to this point. There is another anachronism on page 82 when Fabrizio talks about Freud, from the text meaning “a Freudian slip”. It would have been better if these two points had been edited out, or paraphrased in some way. For me, they destroyed the “suspension of disbelief” of immersing myself in the period and the events of the Risorgimento.

On page 99, during the discussion with the prince on the possible future marriage between Tancredi and Don Calogero’s daughter, Don Calogero shows either his complete lack of culture (seen from the prince’s viewpoint) or his total disdain for the prince (seen from Don Calogero’s viewpoint) when he totally mutilates the names of the architects and artists of the staircase and frescos, respectively, in Tancredi’s villa.

The prince, in turn, hides the disdain of the old noble families for the coarse, ignorant man who is Don Calogero and, by doing so, shows his courtesy to such a person. At the same time he has totally ignored, or been unaware of, the fact that somewhere in everyone’s ancestry is the coarse ignorant man or woman who first put a family on the road to “nobility” or “culture”.

Things must have been very different in 19th century Sicily for Tancredi (who had been at war) and Angelica to be considered as wayward children when the y were wandering about the older unused parts of the palace, especially the flagellant’s room and those which looked like something dreamed up by Casanova. That whole diversion added absolutely nothing to the narrative, especially “’How silly of you, children, to get so dusty’ would smile Don Fabrizio”.

I almost felt the same about “Father Pirrone pays a visit”. It seems to have been added to pad out the story, but at least it has the merits of describing peasant life and the machinations involved in solving potentially lethal problems.

The Second World War intrudes on page 171 with a bomb dropped by the US Air Force destroying Palazzo Panteleone and its ceiling frescoes above the room in which the grand ball takes place.

The death of the prince, surrounded by his family, is calm and peaceful. As far as we are told, he has lived a good life and has tried to harm no-one. With all the textual problems which I have discussed above I really couldn’t score the book at more than 7.0 despite the fact that I enjoyed the basic story.


Europe General – Represented by the Roma – Stone Cradle – Louise Doughty (Score 7.91)

The first part of this book, covering the period 1875-1895 is the story of the early years of Clementina, a young woman of the Roma in England. She is the mother of Lijah whom we met in the prologue, burying her. She gave birth to him in a church graveyard, on a recumbent tombstone, the “Stone Cradle” of the title.

We very soon learn how the Roma are looked down on, and treated like dirt by, the locals whom the Roma call the “Gorjer”. In their use that word is as pejorative toward the locals as the word “Gipsy” is towards the Roma. Clementina is called “Lemmy” by her family.

The Gorjer seem to want to take the Roma children into “care” to educate them, and to bring them into the mainstream no matter the effect on the children, the Roma and their culture. We have seen this elsewhere on our tour, in the United States (First Nation children) and Australia (aboriginals). A similar thing happened in Scotland at the time when Gaelic speaking children were forced into mainstream education, and punished when they spoke Gaelic. This also happened to Scots speaking children when they used Scottish words instead of Standard English.

When Lemmy’s mother is put in for a month’s hard labour we get an idea of how anyone who gets caught up in that system is treated, not just Roma. This sentence, imposed because her husband’s hawker’s license has expired, leads to serious problems for the family.

The second section, 1877-1901, follows the life of Rose, a town girl (and hence a “Gorjer”), who later marries Lijah. She was born to an unmarried mother, the father being the married owner of the local grocer’s shop, with a grown-up family. He refuses to recognise either Rose or her mother.

Rose’s mother marries a farmer called Childers who is clearly more interested in having a legal bed-mate and a skivvy than a wife. When her mother dies, Rose being twelve, she is expected to take on the skivvying role, but luckily not the bed-mate one. Later, it becomes clear that Childers’ son Horace, has designs in that direction. Rose is eighteen.

She has already met, and taken a fancy to, Lijah. They elope and marry. Eventually, with three children and Lijah’s mother whom they have inherited, they lose their home and move in with a band of Roma.

We move back to Clementina, from 1895 to 1914. This starts with Clementina going to live with Lijah and Rose, and it interesting to see the same things from her point of view as we have already seen from Rose’s.

We follow Lemmy as the family moves on, leaving the Roma group, and settling down again in another village. This section ends with Lijah and their nineteen-year-old son Daniel enlisting to fight in the Great War (WWI). With the benefit of nearly one hundred years of hindsight, we wonder if this was a good move. We also know that there would have been no difference if they hadn’t volunteered. They would have been drafted into the army for the trip to Hell in any case.

We return to Rose’s story, 1914-1929. When Rose received the inevitable telegram from the War Office telling her that Daniel was missing in action, presumed dead, I felt her sorrow intensely. It reminded me of the stories that my Grandmother (a youngster of ten when the war started) told me of when that happened to the women who lived beside her. Her family was very lucky. Only one of the boys was big enough to lie about his age by three years. He was recognised and sent home. My Great-grandfather died before the war started.

Rose died, telling us her story right to the end, and we return to Lemmy (1929 to 1949).

We see Lemmy thinking back to her early years and learn that she was brutally raped, twice in succession, in a horrible way by a member of the Roma group with which they are travelling. She is young. They leave the group and we never see the monster again, and can only hope that somehow he suffered horrendously for that crime. The baby is Lijah, and we again see his birth on the Stone Cradle in the churchyard.

The final short section brings us full circle as the extended family (less Bartholemew who disappeared shortly after his return from the war and Fenella who was killed by a hit and run driver) with children, husbands, wives and friends gather to bury Lijah.

There are some horrible things in this book, and some beautiful things. Life is hard for everyone in the story, even those who are a bit better off. I scored it at 7.5.