Vengeance is Mine by Marie Ndiaye
My first book of 2024 was actually published in 2023 (in a translation by Jordan Stump) but as it has already been unfairly neglected by the International Booker Prize this year, I felt could not ignore it. Marie Ndiaye’s Vengeance is Mine is perhaps her best novel yet, as disquieting as what has gone before but more focused. It begins when Gilles Principaux walks into the office of Maitre (an honorific title of a lawyer) Susane, our narrator, requesting that she represent his wife, Marlynne, who is awaiting trial after killing their three young children. Susane is certain she recognises Principaux from a childhood visit to his home where her mother worked – a glimpse into middleclass life that has motivated her own elevation. What happened during that visit is never entirely clear, but it unlocks a subtle exploration of class which also encompasses Susane’s relationship with her (illegal) immigrant housekeeper, Sharon. Children also feature heavily: the three murdered children, her own childhood memory, the children of her housekeeper and her ex-boyfriend (and only friend). Can we really look after them? It is a novel with more questions than answers which is exactly why it is so wonderful.
The Singularity by Balsam Karam
The Singularity by Balsam Karam (translated by Saskia Vogel) tells the story of two women who lose a child: in one case the child is an adult, in the other an unborn baby. Both women are refugees, but their stories are very different – the novel suggesting that this difference is largely one of luck and circumstance. The women only coincide briefly at the moment of the first woman’s suicide while the other is pregnant. If the novel only told both their stories it would be enough but in the section titled ‘The Singularity’, the two stories merge into one in an example of experimental form both enhancing the reading experience and the understanding of the reader. At one point the pregnant woman, who will lose her baby, says, “I come from a tradition of loss,” (she also reflects on a lost childhood friend when her family leave her home country) a statement that is perhaps central to the refugee experience which this novel reflects so powerfully.
Verdigris by Michele Mari
In Verdigris (translated by Brian Robert Moore) Michelin, a thirteen-year-old boy, befriends the elderly gardener, Felice, at his grandfather’s house. Michelin is a lonely child who lives largely in his imagination, but the relationship is one of genuine affection, with the added intrigue of Felice’s erratic and incomplete memories via which the boy attempts to reconstruct the history of the house. The novel is set in 1969 and this journey into the past will take us back to the Second World War amid Felice’s claims that the bodies of SS soldier are to be found on the property. On one level, then, it is a detective story, but the detective work takes place in the unreliable memories of the gardener. The unusual relationship is enhanced by the translator’s brave decision to render Felice’s dialect using an English equivalent, contrasting with Michelin’s rather literary speech. A delight from beginning to end, it is also a meditation on memory – both at the level of the individual and the nation.
Un Amor by Sara Mesa
Un Amor marks the first appearance of Sara Mesa in the UK, though it is the fifth of her books to be translated into English (by Katie Whittemore). Her novels often present morally ambiguous situations which force the reader to question their initial estimation of characters, and Un Amor is no exception. Nat is a woman who has left her job in the city (under uncertain circumstances) to live in the country – not in bucolic rural England, of course, but unforgiving, arid Spain – in a rundown shack which she rents from an unfriendly and unreliable landlord. When she asks an older neighbour, Andreas, to fix the roof, he asks if she will sleep with him in return. And so begins a relationship which never quite develops in the way we might assume. Nat’s character is deliberately difficult to pin down and seems likely to prompt differing reactions for different readers, making this the ideal book for discussion.
Hungry for What by Maria Bastaros
Without doubt my favourite short story collection of the year comes from another Spanish writer, Maria Bastaros (translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn). In the title story ‘hungry’ is taken quite literally as a woman labels her sandwich ‘do not take’ at work only to find herself following the instruction until the sandwich begins to blossom into an unusual form of plant life. Elsewhere, ‘hungry’ applies to characters’ desires and dreams which often turn out to be dangerous: for example, a birthday wish in one story culminates in a mother’s kidnap; in another, a father’s desire for promotion has consequences for his daughters. Over the course of thirteen stories, Bastaros demonstrates that there is little dividing line between our dreams and our nightmares. Hopefully her novel, Historia de España contada a las niñas (History of Spain Told to Girls) will soon follow this collection into English.
The Brass Age by Slobodan Snajder
Slobodan Snajder is a Croatian writer perhaps best know s a dramatist. However, his 2015 novel The Brass Age, has won numerous awards and is now available in English thanks to distinguished translator Celia Hawkesworth. It begins in 1759 with Georg Kempf’s departure from Germany to the fringes of the Hapsburg Empire and ends with the formation of Yugoslavia, but it is largely about the Second World War in eastern Europe. When the original Kempf’s descendant (also George) is conscripted into the German army he gets as far as Poland before an order to take part in a firing squad sees him desert to join the Polish resistance. Numerous adventures follow, all the while accompanied by the commentary of his as yet unborn son. A monumental novel, which deserved far more attention than it got when it was published earlier his year, about individual lives caught in the tides of history.
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