death – findingtimetowrite

Diving into Japanese TV rom-com series

While waiting for Ripley to appear on Netflix, I thought I needed a break from grim news and the International Booker longlist (often on bleak topics), so I thought I’d dive into something very untypical for me: a light-hearted rom-com series. I was initially planning on finding something Korean, but memories of my trip to Japan were too powerful, and I finally opted for a Japanese comedy set in a hospital (even more unusual for me, as I was never a fan of hospital dramas), based on a comedy manga (hence, full of over-the-top acting), An Incurable Case of Love (in Japanese Koi wa Tsuzuku yo Doko made mo – Love Lasts Forever). The series was rather silly and reinforcing a lot of gender stereotypes, but I was rather taken with the main male actor, Satō Takeru.

Can you see why I might have quite liked Satō Takeru’s appearance?

So I turned to another TV series where he’s the lead, First Love, and did something even more uncharacteristic: I binge-watched it. And then searched for more, and found Why Didn’t I Tell You a Million Times? (in Japanese – 100 Mankai Ie-ba Yokatta), which I also binge-watched.

So now I am steeped in contemporary Japanese language, culture, music and escapism, and could see some common themes emerging, although each of these series is quite different.

Even a comedy is sad and death is always nearby

The hospital drama was the most purely comedic of the lot, but even there, you had emergencies, moments of despair and death of patients or loved ones. Some of it was tear-jerker fodder for the storyline, of course, but then there was the moving scene when the hospital staff handle the dead patient, and still tell him what they are going to do (‘we will now take off your top’, ‘we will now wash your torso’ etc.), just as if he were still alive. The amount of respect shown to patients (and the level of staffing and care in hospitals) was mind-blowing, but that probably wasn’t realistic.

The young couple in First Love, reunited by their common passion for planes and dreaming of getting out of their small hometown in Hokkaido

First Love switches between different time frames, as high-school sweethearts find each other many years later, after they have each led very different, smaller lives than what they’d initially dreamt about together. But it’s not a straightforward romance, because the woman had actually lost her memory in an accident and therefore doesn’t recognise him as her first love. I’ve been told that memory loss is a very common trope in romances, but since this is not my usual fare, it felt fresh enough to me.

The contrast between the joyful, sparky teenagers and the middle-aged people who’ve lost their oomph and learnt to cope with disappointments and loneliness was very touching, and there were moments of interaction between mother and son (in the present-day) and mother and daughter (in the past), which were very well-observed, and meant that even the side characters had depth and their own stories of failure and disappointments. There were also links to historical events (such as the war in Afghanistan or the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, or Covid in 2020), and descriptions of working-class lives and the ‘Lost Generation’ of job hunters as Japanese economy took a downturn, which grounded the story, rather than making it all wishful thinking.

The penultimate episode ends on a bittersweet but realistic note, with the lovers parting as they realise that the past cannot be recaptured, and perhaps the original intention was for the story to end there. But then in the final episode, we get the Disney happy ending, which felt a little like pandering for the audience. But, as someone said on Reddit ‘we don’t watch romances for realism, we watch it to escape from our daily lives’ – I suppose it’s only human to want a good outcome for those people who’d been through so much!

Why Didn’t I Tell You a Million Times? (shortened from here on to WDITY) also has a common supernatural trope (so I’m told, but have yet to discover myself): a loved one who dies but his spirit is still around. I can only remember Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and Truly, Madly, Deeply with Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman – and certainly this story combines both themes (trying to solve a murder and for the survivor to learn to move on). But it is also about regrets – for all the words that were unspoken, all the things that they didn’t get to do together, the years wasted – and the pain of watching someone rebuilding their life without you, even though you know it’s the best thing to do.

Although the ghostly special effects were a bit cringeworthy and the police drama side of it somewhat predictable, the chemistry between the three leads (the dead lover, the surviving girlfriend and the police officer who’s the only one who can see the ghost) makes for some very good comedic moments. But, as is often the case in Japanese fiction or films, there is a sense of wistfulness and an ending that is unsentimental, satisfying but sad.

Gender Stereotypes and Wishful Thinking

As far as appearances go, the girlfriends tend to be cute (kawaii in Japanese) rather than beautiful, with quite a few of them exuding manic pixie girl energy, while the men have that slender, graceful, slightly androgynous beauty that the Japanese call ikemen. However, when it comes to personalities, the men are often very ‘verklempt’ (as the Germans might say) – unable to express their emotions, or expressing them in rather macho, bullying ways, while the girls have to do all the emotional labour. The men are often mysterious, hiding troubled pasts, seldom smile, keep a stiff upper lip, which of course makes the inevitable admission of their feelings and succumbing to passion all the more precious.

Ikemen balance their good looks, fashionable clothes and masculine desire to protect their girlfriends with so-called feminine qualities such as patience, sensitivity and tenderness. They also want whatever is best for their partner, even if they have to sacrifice themselves at times, encouraging her to study abroad or try a new job. This is where wish fulfilment might come in, unless Japanese men have changed dramatically since the 1990s when I was more involved with studying Japanese society.

Poster for WDITY, with the policeman representing a slightly less ikemen appearance (notice the stubble)

There is also quite an obsession with marriage in these TV series, which perhaps reflects society norms that remain strong, even though there are a few new series that try to subvert that (I am currently watching yet another one about dating in your 30s which seems to question whether marriage is of any benefit to women). However, there is a recognition that marriage does not equal a happy ever after, and stories of divorce and single mothers appear far more frequently than they did in Yuko Tsushima’s time (Territory of Light would not be as revolutionary in Japanese culture now as it was back in the 1970s).

The topic that comes up again and again in these series, whether addressed directly or indirectly, is loneliness. Which is indeed a huge problem in Japanese society – there are an estimated 1.5 million (out of a population of 122 million) hikikomori, recluses who’ve withdrawn from society and barely leave their houses. With society expectations, working hours and pressures still so high, many in the younger generation are refusing to settle down, while others simply disappear – Japan has one of the highest rates of suicides and deliberate disappearances in the world (there are even professional handbooks or companies who can help you drop out of your life). Even before the pandemic, 55% of Japanese reported feeling lonely. The maid and butler cafés, the hostess and host bars that are on nearly every street corner in large Japanese cities are not so much about sex, as about having someone pour out your drink and ask you about your day, making you feel slightly less lonely for a couple of hours.

And that’s exactly what these TV series do as well. The main characters are initially self-sufficient but lonely, they feel something is missing from their lives, but in the end, once they’ve worked on themselves and are strong in themselves, they find companionship and love. They give all those lonely people hope – and perhaps a blueprint for being in a viable relationship: be more resilient and independent (if you’re a girl), be more sensitive and empathetic (if you’re a boy).

Travelling and Language Learning

For someone like me, who used to speak Japanese fluently but has forgotten most of it, these series are an excellent way of refreshing my language skills. I’ve watched anime series with my sons before, but the vocabulary there is more limited, while these show ontemporary language and social interactions that you might encounter in real-life.

I love noticing cultural nuances that don’t always come through in translation. For example, the main character, the nurse in An Incurable Case of Love, continues addressing the doctor as ‘sensei’ even after they get together as a couple.

She looks about 14 in this scene, but she’s actually supposed to be 22 and he’s 33 in the series. Still, not quite the equal partnership I’d have liked.

The men tend to refer to their girlfriends as ‘ore no kanojo’ (my she), while the women use a more varied vocabulary such as kareshi, koibito, boifurendo, which all signify lover. To say ‘I love you’, they generally use ‘suki’ or ‘daisuki’, which is also used for like/fancy (you can use it for food or music or hobbies too). Which makes the scene in WDITY all the more powerful, when he finally repeats ‘aishiteru’ – which is the proper, formal way to say it.

With the exception of First Love, which seems to have had more budget thrown at it, and therefore features a diversity of backdrops, including lots of snowy scenes in Hokkaido and Iceland, these series are largely sitcoms, so feature a small set of interiors – their apartments (they always seem to live in separate flats if they’re unmarried, even if they’ve been together for a while) or houses, which seem to be less cramped than in real life; their offices or business premises; a local restaurant or bar. Yet we also get street shots of the cities where the events take place: lots of images of the Tokyo Skytree Tower and a bit of Osaka and Kagoshima for An Incurable Case of Love, Sapporo (and rural areas of north Hokkaido) in First Love, Yokohama in WDITY. Now all I need is to find a series set in Kyoto and Fukuoka, and my vicarious travelling will be complete! But I suspect those two locations tend to be used more for historical dramas, which are not quite as useful for boosting my Japanese vocabulary.

Food and Music

One of the rules of Japanese TV series is that in each episode there will be at least one instance of people sitting down to eat together, saying ‘Itadakimasu’ and then making a really strange face with their mouth full, after which they burst out (with tears of joy in their eyes): ‘Oishii!’ or ‘Umai!’ – meaning ‘delicious’. Food is very important in Japan, and people cooking for each other is a declaration of love. (In the TV series I saw, the men were just as good if not better at cooking than the women, so at least a bit of equality there.)

However, I was slightly disappointed that there weren’t more complicated recipes on offer: omuraisu (rice omelette), or hamburger steak (without a bun), or ramen or spaghetti Napolitan (with sausage and bacon in ketchup – only in Japan, the Italians would disown this) seem to be the popular dishes, and they are mostly inspired by Western cuisine.

An added bonus has been listening to the soundtracks and songs on these series. First Love is actually based on two songs by a hugely popular Japanese artist Utada Hikaru (one from the 1990s called First Love and one released 20 years later called Hatsukoi – which also means First Love).

This reminded me of all the J pop I used to listen to back when I was studying Japanese in the 1990s – and they’re still as upbeat and poppy as ever in An Incurable Case of Love. There’s more of a mix of English and Japanese rock and R&B in First Love, while WDITY has a more suitably haunting piano-based soundtrack.

If you’ve made this far in this very long blog post, congratulations!

In spite of my attempts to make this look like a research project, the truth is, it’s simply been great fun reliving my youth (but with more access to digital media about Japan than I had back then). Like all of my passing fads, this too will fade into oblivion after a while, and so it should, as spending 4-5 hours every evening in front of the TV is not the best use of my time or conducive to good health. Besides, it makes my cat Kasper (who usually sleeps on my lap while I’m watching TV) then want to get up to shenanigans at midnight, because he hasn’t played enough.

However, it has given me an idea for a story… and no, it’s not going to be a rom-com, even if it starts out as one!

Novellas in November: 3 from Eastern Europe

While reading a longer book for German Lit Month, I’ve also managed to read three novella-length books from East European countries: Moldova, Romania and Russia. Only the Russian one has been translated into English.

Not the Romanian language version, but I really liked this Catalan cover

Tatiana Țîbuleac: Vara în care mama a avut ochii verzi (The Summer When Mum Had Green Eyes), 2017

Aleksy and his mother are immigrants living in a deprived area of Haringey in London. The family used to be composed of his father, his mother and his baby sister Mika, but we soon find out that Mika’s tragic death has torn the family apart. The mother sank initially into a deep depression , locking herself in a room and refusing to speak to the rest of the family; the father left to live with his new Polish girlfriend, the grandmother tried to help but couldn’t quite shake her own frustrations and disappointments. Meanwhile, Aleksy has grown up into a teenager who seems to be suffering from a (never-named) mental health condition, for which he sees a psychologist (whom he doesn’t take very seriously). He should be taking medication (but sometimes stops doing so), and he hates his mother. He also feels deeply ashamed of her.

At the start of the book Aleksy describes his 39-year-old mother as ‘small and fat, stupid and ugly’ and then goes in hateful, resentful detail about her physical ugliness over the first few chapters, which I have to admit was hard to read as a mother. Her only redeeming feature seems to be her beautiful green eyes, although ‘it feels like a mistake to waste those eyes on such a doughy face’.

If I could’ve, I would’ve changed her for any other mother in the world in an instant. Even a drunk, even one that would beat me daily. Because it would’ve been just me to bear the drinking and the beating, while everyone else could see her ugliness and her mermaid’s tail hairstyle.
My own translation

Aleksy was planning to travel to Amsterdam in the summer with his two best mates from school, smoke lots of pot and lose his virginity, but his mother asks him to spend some time with her in an old house in the north of France instead. She bribes him with the promise that she will get him a car, even though he is too young to have a driving licence yet. The property in France is run-down, damp and strange, in a very rural area, and at first the teenager behaves in typical teenage fashion, hating everything about it and about the village. Then he finds out why his mother insisted they should spend the summer together: she has terminal cancer.

The author is too subtle to make this either a tearjerker or a soppy story of reconciliation, but it contains elements of both. The narrator has two voices: the obnoxious, angry, self-absorbed teenage voice, who doesn’t quite understand his mother and often fails to connect with her; and the voice of the grown-up, who remembers that summer fourteen years later, with considerable regret and from the position of someone who has since encountered many setbacks and losses, but has also known love. The style reflects this contrast as well, veering from slang-filled vernacular to the truly lyrical. A truly remarkably, deeply moving book.

This debut novella from Moldova is not available in English, but it has been translated into German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Polish, Serbian, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, so if you can read any of those languages, you might be able to find it and can tell me what you think. I would love to translate it for a UK or US publisher, or else her second novel The Glass Garden, which won the EU Prize for Literature in 2019. Incidentally, am still awaiting confirmation of the results for the local elections in Moldova that took place yesterday: the country is at a crossroads, with pro-Europeans slugging it out with those loyal to Russia.

Radu Țuculescu: Crima de pe podul Garibaldi (The Crime on the Garibaldi Bridge), 2022.

This edition of the book is just over 200 pages (207), but it is in quite large print and lots of white space in the page layout (which makes it very easy on the eye), so I think in actual fact it is the equivalent of about 180 pages. It is ostensibly a crime novel, but the author is a polymath (playwright, theatre director, journalist, translator as well as a literary novelist) and this is both a strength and a weakness in the case of this book. The advantage is that it is about more than the investigation into a murder and attempts to incorporate voices and viewpoints from other times and other parts of society. The weakness is that it’s not a terribly exciting police procedural and the solution is a bit out of the blue.

A woman is found drowned under the Garibaldi Bridge in the city of Cluj in the north of Romania, and DI Martin Breda and his colleague (and lover) Maraia are tasked with identifying her and determining whether it was a suicide, an accident or murder. While I enjoyed the descriptions of the city (which is one of the most up-and-coming ones in Romania at the moment, and which I’ve sadly never visited), and there were some interesting insights into daily life under Communism (in flashbacks), I think the book suffers a little from meandering between genres, never quite making up its mind what it is – and the style didn’t feel to me of sufficient literary merit to warrant such meandering. It hurts my heart to say that, because I know Țuculescu is considered a pretty major writer of his generation, but perhaps crime fiction is not quite his thing. And he seems to suffer from that all-too-common failing of Romanian male authors in describing female characters: full of exotic mystery, sensuality, but also deviousness.

Vladimir Sorokin: Day of the Oprichnik, transl. Jamey Gambrell, 2011.

Speaking of the male gaze, this book by Sorokin is full of women as sex objects, subordinates, possessions to be violated, pawns in a nasty game of power. But then it is written from the point of view of Komiaga, an oprichnik, part of the Kremlin’s inner circle of henchmen, in a fierce satire set in an alternative future Russia.

It is 2028 and the Communists have been vanquished, the Tsar has been restored, and Holy Russia has been revived into a traditionalist, nationalist, ultra-Christian empire, who has allied itself with China (not without some mistrust) and built a wall between themselves and degenerate Europe, gleefully switching off their gas supply whenever they feel like it. Although they make use of all the latest modern devices, they have Russified the names (Mercedov instead of Mercedes, mobilov instead of mobile phone), and wear kaftans and sarafans in a nod to 19th century peasant clothing.

We follow a typical day in Komiaga’s life, ranging from the banal censorship of a show, bribing and blackmailing various partners, business trips to run errands for the Tsar, finalising a trade deal with the Chinese, receiving a new ambassador, not to mention the brutal killing of a dissenter, the gang-rape of his wife and burning down of his property. Then there are the ridiculous Strong Men bonding sessions fuelled by saunas, nakedness and drugs (although officially even smoking is frowned upon). The irony is scathing, because of course the oprichniks despise America and Westerners for being weak, full of obscenities, bad behaviour and cyberpunks. But there is a degree of state tolerance towards certain types of drugs in Russia itself:

This decree permitted the general use of coke, angel dust, and weed forevermore. For these substances cause the state no harm, they do but help citizens in their labor and leisure. One may purchase several grams of coke in any apothecary for the standard government price: two and a half rubles. Every apothecary is equipped with counters where a workingman may come in the morning or at his midday break and have a snort, in order to return, energized, to work for the good of the Russian state. They sell syringes with invigorating angel dust, and cigarettes with relaxing weed. True, weed is sold only after five o’clock.

Although some scenes in the book are brutal – and I think the author is doing this deliberately, to show us in unflinching detail just how brutal these regimes can be, regardless of which particular ideology they espouse, almost as an afterthought – there are also many laugh-out-loud moments, such as the group censorship of a new play about cutting off the gas supply at the Western Wall, which contains fart jokes. It reminded me of similar farcical scenes of censorship that I witnessed in Romanian in the late 1980s. Above all, the author achieves a real tour de force with the memorable voice of the entirely un-self-aware narrator and his endlessly self-justifying, pontificating discourse.

Sorokin wrote this book in 2006 and readers have said he seemed remarkably prescient about Putin and the nostalgia of the Russian Empire. In fact, Sorokin is clear-eyed that a majority of Russians have throughout history worshipped ‘strong, manly leaders’, and that if they are bedazzled for long enough, a small group of people will deploy extreme strong-arm tactics to keep a huge population under check and themselves in power (and wealth and privilege).

Maybe not a hundred [years], but I’ll live awhile longer. We’ll live… and we’ll let others live as well. A passionate, heroic, government life. Important. We have to serve the great ideal. We must live to spite the bastards, to rejoice in Russia… As long as oprichniks are alive, Russia will be alive. And thank God.

A Great Loss

Twenty-five years ago I went to Germany for fieldwork during my Ph.D. I was based in a small university town Marburg, and very soon I discovered there were two other Romanian girls studying there. One of them became a very good friend: we were both passionate about literature (both German and English) and were both in very new, very long-distance relationships that we weren’t entirely sure about. I had concerns about my boyfriend’s character, while she was more concerned about the age difference (she was three years older than him). We both ended up marrying our sweethearts: my fears were well founded, hers not at all.

Csaba was Romanian of Hungarian origin. He ended up embarking on business studies in Marburg himself, so as to be with my friend, although he spoke hardly any German at the time. He had been an elite athlete previously and we would go running in the woods together, and he also introduced me to Tai Chi. He was full of energy and humour, utterly devoted to my friend, sending her tapes with his voice whispering sweet nothings in her ear whenever they were apart.

They returned to Romania after their studies, had children about the same time as I did. I could think of no better people to ask to be godparents to my second son, even though I knew we were going to be hundreds of miles away.

Whenever we went to Romania, we visited them and our boys became good friends, despite the mix of five languages and cultures that they were experiencing between them.

Their older son graduated from secondary school this year, just like mine did, and planned to study medicine. They were justifiably proud of him, and trying to decide if he should study in Romania or Germany.

Early this morning, my friend sent me a message that Csaba died of Covid. It is hard to believe that a man like this, the heart and soul of every party, but also the most thoughtful and loving husband, father, godfather and friend, could just be snuffed out like that. All the adventures and visits and joint ventures we had planned… All the advice and serenity that his sons will never get a chance to experience… All the love and support that my friend is now left without…

I have no words. Other than: make the most of your life and your friendships.

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
Anne Brontë

#13Novembre2015: You Will Not Have My Hate

This is Remembrance Sunday and for me that means remembering both those who died in battle, but also those who died as civilians in a war which is no longer confined to professional soldiers or geographically limited battlefields.

You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris (transl. Sam Taylor) is a perfect way to commemorate the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015. Antoine’s wife Hélène had gone to the Bataclan concert that evening, while he stayed at home to babysit their 17 month old baby, Melvil. A day or so later, Antoine wrote a moving open letter on Facebook addressed to his wife’s killers, which quickly became viral.

This very slender volume builds on that open letter. It is a collection of diary entries and reflections, a poignant story of life after loss, of learning to cope in the face of tragedy, and refusing to be cowed or to descend to the level of hatred and vengeance.

Not many people understand how I can so quickly get over the circumstances in which Hélène was killed. People ask me if I’ve forgotten or forgiven. I forgive nothing, I forget nothing… of course, having a culprit, someone to take the brunt of your anger, is an open door, a chance to temporarily escape your suffering. And the more odious the crime, the more ideal the culprit, the more legitimate your hatred. You think about him in order not to think about yourself. You hate him in order not to hate what’s left of your life.

There are so many poignant little details about grief here. Losing oneself in the routine of feeding and bathing a child, so as not to have to think. The home-cooked baby meals prepared by the mothers at Melvil’s nursery, which he never eats, because he was used to supermarket meals. Learning to cut his son’s fingernails for the first time. Resenting the meter reader because he represents life going on. Choosing the clothes for his wife’s funeral. It is unadorned, heartfelt and full of love, and it made me weep.

Watching from a distance, you always have the impression that the person who survives a disaster is a hero. I know I am not. I was struck by the hand of fate, that’s all. It did not ask me what I thought first. It didn’t try to find out if I was ready. It came to take Hélène, and it forced me to wake up without her. Since then, I have been lost: I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know how to get there.

There is no egocentric posturing here, it’s a simple account of grief and learning to live, while fearing the possibility of forgetting. We don’t find out anything about their jobs or politics. All we hear about is their love for each other, for music and for their child. A story stripped to its bare bones and all the more beautiful for it.

As for why he wrote the book:

It will not heal me. No one can be healed of death. All they can do is tame it. Death is a wild animal, sharp-fanged. I am just trying to build a cage to keep it locked in. It is there, beside me, drooling as it waits to devour me. The bars of the cage that protect me are made of paper. When I turn off the computer, the beast is released.

Perfect Summer Read: Shining Sea by Anne Korkeakivi

Michael Gannon is a doctor and a war hero, happily married and father of four (another on the way). One sunny day in 1962, just before Easter, while repainting the house, he has a heart attack and dies. This book is the story of his family after his death, but it’s also a condensed version of American history, covering a significant chunk of time (1962 to 2015), births and deaths, marriages and divorces, wars and grief. We travel with the protagonists from Southern California to Arizona, to Woodstock, to Massachusetts and New York, as well as London and Scotland.

We hear mostly from Michael’s widow, Barbara, and from the sensitive youngest son, Francis, who is just nine when his father dies, but it feels like we get to know and understand other family members as well: older daughter Patty Ann, who marries early, and whose oldest son Kenny becomes his grandmother’s pet; Mike Jr. who becomes a doctor like his father; Luke and Sissy, who leave home far too soon and never come back.

It’s an ambitious project, with many voices, so it has the potential to get very messy. Anne Korkeakivi, however, navigates this with elegance and impeccable prose. I really admire writers who can telescope several years’ worth of events but then also linger on a revealing detail. The chapters are not very long, and usually skip a few years, as well as switching between Barbara’s and Francis’ POV. There is a more lengthy part in the middle of the book, set in 1984 in the Inner Hebrides, where Francis meets and joins a group of friends preparing to sail across the Irish Sea on a mission of conciliation between Catholics and Protestants – with some tragic consequences.

This is a character-driven family story (and none of the characters are intimidatingly perfect, they all feel very realistic), composed of a series of vignettes of key moments in their lives. The sea runs through it as a theme, sometimes beautiful, sometimes agitated, now friend, now foe. Barbara deliberately banishes the sea from her life when she remarries and moves to the desert of Arizona. The tragic moments are sometimes on-screen, sometimes off, but we always see the long-term effects of grief and how family relationships can be impacted. We the readers gain a little extra understanding of events and people as the years pass, as do some of the characters. Yet the author also demonstrates that sometimes even the most well-meaning and loving family members can misunderstand and challenge each other, hold different political beliefs and personal values, which often drives them apart and only sometimes brings them back together.

I loved it above all for the precise, lyrical language; the dusting of poetry contained in the writing. Here, for example, is the passage describing Michael’s death:

A cool breeze. Then calm. He is not sure where he is. He is no longer walking along a body-strewn road in the Philippines He is no longer passing through winter, autumn, one season after another. He lays his whole body down flat; the breezer rushes over him. The ground beneath him feels soft and mossy. Rain begins to fall, and it is tender, warm, it is the sound of his sister’s voice… It is Barbara. Her bright eyes… her way of clasping her hands together when laughing.

He is home. He is home.

You’ve heard me say this many times: family sagas are not my ‘thing’. And yet I would recommend this: a striking portrait of an American half-century and a family which manages to be both average and remarkable at the same time. I also have Anne’s first book An Unexpected Guest, whose main character has been compared with Mrs. Dalloway, so I look forward to picking that up and losing myself in her subtle brand of writing again quite soon.

Young, lovely and local: Sophie Divry and Michelle Bailat-Jones

You may think it’s shallow to judge books by the author pictures. Yes, it is, and, luckily for most authors (myself included), I don’t. Until I come across two women writers who seem to have talent, looks and youth all on their side. Furthermore, they each live about an hour’s drive away from me. Let’s hope that there’s something in the local water – to improve my talent too, as age and beauty are beyond repair…

Sophie Divry: Quand le diable sortit de la salle de bain (When the Devil Came Out of the Bathroom)

Sophie Divry has caught the imagination of the English-speaking reading public too, with a translation of her first book ‘The Library of Unrequited Love’. That was a charming story of a lovelorn librarian and her passion for books and the arts more generally.

This is her fourth novel, as yet untranslated in English, and the story seems to be more anchored in present-day reality. And a drab reality it is too: we hear of the trials and tribulations of an educated young jobseeker (also called Sophie) in Lyon, who is trying to write a book and make ends meet by doing little odd jobs which pay late, and then cause her unemployment benefit to be stopped temporarily. Meanwhile, she tries to make the right (i.e. filling) choices in the supermarket when all she has left is 17.70 euros, sends off job applications, fills in forms, goes to the jobcentre, sells off her toaster and her books, fends off cold callers and tries to reason with bureaucrats.

Of course, this being Divry, the realism is tempered with some surreal touches. Sophie has conversations with Lorchus, her personal demon and the devil of the title, who tries to encourage her to steal or become a drug dealer or attack someone to rob them.

You need to make a choice, my dear. You’re either on the side of the winners, always emerging victorious, or else on the side of bacteria, crying over every bill and moulding away a little every day. Rethink your values. Free yourself. Honesty, sharing, sobriety – that’s all chicken poop. Are you going to listen to your Mum all your life? [my translation]

Meanwhile, her large family in the south of France are less than helpful (not that she wants to confide in them about her troubles), nor is her friend Hector, who is obsessed with the pursuit of the unattainable Belinda. Nothing much happens really: we just follow Sophie’s daily life, her anxieties, her frequently very funny rants about contemporary French society and its failings.

There is a faint glimmer of Virginie Despentes in Divry, not just because of the similarities in subject matter. Divry has less realism and more of a touch of Russian fantasy (I was thinking of Bulgakov throughout). I liked the way the characters intervened, demanded to play a bigger part, how the devil draws provocative pictures in the book, how she tries to get her revenge on him and her friend Hector. There is a tongue-in-cheek postmodern satire here which is rather delightful.

However, I found the writing style annoying at times: too much of an essay or a personal rant. The long enumerations – of how her family talks, what they eat, the men she doesn’t like, the list of anxieties in the supermarket – can be an amusing device and very effective the first time it is used, but when it’s constantly repeated throughout the book, it becomes just a lazy technique. The end was very abrupt and unsatisfactory as well, and the bonus material at the end did nothing to remedy that. However, there was something about the mix of candid depiction of poverty and rampant imagination which did appeal to me. I will be reading more of this author (I still haven’t read her first book, and have heard good things about La condition pavillonaire), and I am sure she will get better and better.

Michelle Bailat-Jones: Fog Island Mountain

One writer who already seems at the height of her powers is Michelle. Disclosure moment here: I know Michelle personally, and that usually puts me in a bit of a quandary. Will I lose a friend if I don’t ‘love’ the book? How can I be honest about a book for other future readers without offending a friend by not giving them five stars? And if I gush, will people think I am biased and disregard my review?

Well, all I can say is that this debut novel made me cry. It did help that I was in Japan in a typhoon at the time – and the story is set in Japan just before and during a great storm. But it’s a moving and beautifully-written story no matter where or when you read it.

South African expat Alec has been living in a small town in the fog-shrouded mountains on the southernmost tip of Kyūshū for several decades. He is diagnosed with terminal cancer and this is in fact the story of how each member of his family – and he himself – cope with the news. Alec’s devoted Japanese wife Kanae is normally ‘a woman who keeps her promises’, but she has an unexpectedly visceral and panicked reaction to her husband’s illness. He ‘is going to leave her behind’, she repeats to herself, and her rage and denial make her run away and behave in uncharacteristic ways, which she later regrets. Some readers complain that Kanae is thoroughly selfish and unlikeable, but grief strikes each one of us in such extreme ways. Only people with no compassion or imagination can condemn her (even though I feel very sorry for Alec).

Then Alec sneaks out of the hospital and everyone fears the worst: that he has gone off to commit suicide. With a tropical storm ready to hit the island, Kanae and Alec mount a desperate search for each other, scanning their memories and searching out their favourite spots, all the places that have hidden meaning for them, always just narrowly missing each other. Along the way, they remember their great love, a love from which their children have sometimes felt excluded, and find the inner strength – individually and as a couple – to cope with the diagnosis and its inevitable outcome.

…he knows this frightened face of hers, the one she wore when her children got hurt, when Megumi announced she was pregnant and alone… and yes, he remembers this same face, too, for their period of courting when it would sneak into their more serious conversations, when it surprised them both in a moment of happiness, and he is nodding at her now, able to look at her again, because forever is such a terrifying thing, but they have already managed one forever and they have done just fine with it.

Readers who do not like the use of the present tense or long sentences, with many subordinate clauses, will struggle perhaps at the outset of this book. But if you treat it as a prose-poem and savour each skilfully constructed phrase, you have to admire how the length and rhythm of the sentence acts both as an accelerator and a brake at different times in the narrative. I was particularly attracted by the additional POV, the neutral observer if you like, who comments on the events with the ease and perspective of an ominiscient narrator (but in a less annoyingly knowing way). This is a neighbour, Kitauchi-san, who seems to have a special relationship with animals, rescuing trapped and wounded creatures in the wild. She has a symbiotic relationship with a fox, which brings to mind not only the ‘taming of the fox’ in The Little Prince but also the ‘kitsune’ or fox spirits of Japanese legends. In Japan foxes often take on female forms and prove themselves to be wise and faithful guardians of their chosen families, although there is also a more malevolent association with evil spirits too. This ambiguity of animal symbolism, together with the fog and menacing storm, serves the story well and creates the perfect backdrop for much emotional drama.

You may argue that the subject matter has been done before, but that’s not the point. It would be far too easy to resort to big emotional fanfare and melodrama with this kind of story, but the author manages to contain it all with the precision of Japanese painting or a tea ceremony, in which each restrained gesture stands in for so much more. Yet I defy anyone not to have tears in their eyes as they read that last scene in the book. I won’t quote from it, as it needs to be read in its entirety for the full effect to trickle through you. Just stunning!

Poetry Review: Jacqueline Saphra – The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions

Jacqueline Saphra packs a lot into this slender debut collection of poetry (published in 2011). Deceptively domestic and personal, the poems take on a life of their own, dance with absurdity and shimmering wit, and leave an aftertaste of profound inquietude.There are three strands to the work, and they are neatly divided into Parts I, II and III in the volume.

The first describes a fairly typical British childhood in the late 1960s – early 1970s, with plenty of humorous detail: memories of the moon landing, watching news clips about the Vietnam War, half-forgotten family history from the East European shtetls, giggly gossip about sunbathing in the nude with a classmate, struggling to come to grips with the decimal system.

The precocious observations of a child are tinged with a grown-up’s wry remembrance of childhood fears and mistakes. Some are poignant (Target Practice), some nearly surreal and full of wistfulness (about her incompatible parents), while others are just funny and fiery.

The Art of Diplomacy

At three I learned to listen, not to chat.

At eight I counselled friends and sorted spats.

By twelve I was a bloody diplomat.

At forty I began to smell a rat

at last. I said to hell with that.

Hand me that baseball bat.

The second strand is about love and lust, the battle of the sexes and the pang of breaking up. The start of a relationship and these poems are sensuous, sexy, drunk on love, beguiling and ready to be fooled again:

so come on, loosen me

with daquiris, your mouth

against my ear and tell me again

that you and I are composed

of the same elements, that

there’s a sea inside me,

and you, too, are salt and water.

I’ll make up the rest.

But most of the poems in this section are about disappointment and animosity betwen the sexes. Small acts of daily warfare in a couple, as well as more dramatic acts of betrayal. In ‘Penelope’ (a poem inspired by Cavafy’s wonderful poem ‘Ithaka’), Odysseus’ wife hurls the loom against the wall in an act of rebellion and leaves Ithaka to search for her errant husband but realises, upon finding him, that he is no longer her destiny. The poetic imagination hits the wall of prosaic negligence in ‘After a Long Sleep’. Women’s subservience and desire to please are mocked and ultimately undermined in ‘Last Harvest’. This is a poet unafraid to voice righteous anger, confusion, pain – in a way which is all too often described as ‘feminine’, but is in fact universal. A jilted lover muses about her successor:

If she had the eye she would touch my mind, she would read

my scrawls, she would balk at my famished word, circling.

But she doesn’t have the eye. I have the eye and I have the greed

and she has my red wrap and she has caught you inside it.

The third part is about death and making peace with one’s loved ones. I suspect this is at least partly autobiographical, as the poet describes a mother who was once thin and glamorous, fun, but was abandoned for a newer, more demanding sylph-like model and never quite recovered from the shock. Over the years she seeks refuge in a string of boyfriends, which the now grown poet is disposed to think of more kindly at several decades’ removal.

I met these men sometimes. They weren’t unkind.

We’d nod, then part like co-conspirators

in some veiled plot to save her from the truth.

Now a mother herself, the poet shifts between the past and the present, the joys of breastfeeding, the almost overnight transformation from baby to adolescent, the anxiety about one’s child obtaining the driving licence. Her own experience of motherhood has both strengthened and softened her, has made her more understanding and forgiving of her mother. The poem about her mother’s last moments ‘Last Call’ is incredibly poignant: full of tenderness and the guilt of not being there.

The last you knew, you heard her swear

she loved you more than I: who knows?

Perhaps that’s fair enough: it was Death,

not I, who said a prayer,

who dropped the final silence in your ear,

your dark head cradled in her lap, not mine,

her bloodied fingers in your hair.

This is poetry of the interstices – simple, clear words, with so much breathing space between them that the readers can fill in with their own experiences, emotions, unformed words. If this is the poetry of ‘domestic preoccupations’ and ‘everyday life’, then give me more of it, for it touches us all!

Errant Fathers, Stupid Women

I came across an article on the internet recently which made me very angry. The author was talking about how it’s the women’s fault if they are left holding the baby, that maybe fathers didn’t want them from the start. The tenor of the work can be summarised as follows:

Don’t come to complain to me about how harsh your life is. It’s self-inflicted: you wanted children, so deal with it. I do not blame errant fathers at all. Especially my errant father. He never wanted children.

This was written in response to that, as well as to the fact that many of my friends have divorced in recent years because of ‘errant husbands’, and is linked to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night. It’s also an exercise in the use of myths in poetry, which was my latest module for the poetry course I am doing.

Maria Callas as Medea. indafondazione.org

Don’t expect us to be grateful, Medea.

Nobody asked for your sacrifice.

Jason would have coped fine without the scattering of body parts.

That’s when he should have realized you’re mental,

only thinking of yourself

under the disguise of undying love.

No wonder he found somebody new,

more easy-going,

without the grandiloquent gestures.

He needed rest after his journey, bless him,

and all you can offer is barbaric revenge…

Agamemnon returned from Troy a hero,

having left me to struggle for so many years

alone yet not free

mourning the daughter he’d sacrificed for his mission, his ego.

It’s all about ego in the end, you see.

His spoils of war in the shape of a nubile wench:

his embarrassed smile barely veiling

the testosterone pride of middle-aged conquest.

‘You’d grown a little stale.

I’d forgotten how to let fun into my life.’

Was I really the only one to see the feet sodden with clay

on this former giant of a man?

How did he turn my children against me,

using absence to tenderise their flesh so willing

to choose his account over mine?

In all discarded, bitter women

there’s a Jocasta lying in wait:

jewellery poised to maim errant fathers,

secretly rooting for the son to take over,

unable to bear mistaken loss.

Confession about Betty

When I first moved to London, I was shocked at the state of student accommodation (at least for my college). However, I was very lucky to find a spacious room with a bay window in the beautiful neighbourhood of Golders Green. I lived in the house with my landlady Betty, who was then in her 70s, but whose love of life, humour and vivacity placed her somewhere in her 20s, very close to my age.

Betty told me so much about her life, her family, about being Jewish, about war-time in Britain. We shared a deep love for films and music, for literature and for laughter. She gave me so much companionship that I never felt lonely in a big city and foreign country for a minute, even though I was going through some personal turmoil at the time. She gave me so much and all she asked in return was that I keep my non-kosher food on a separate shelf in the fridge from hers.

I only lived in her house for 8 months or so, before I set off to do my fieldwork abroad, but we remained friends. I introduced her to my future husband, then to my children. I kept moving around and kept inviting her to my new homes, but she was getting more and more reluctant to travel. We kept in touch sporadically via phone and birthday cards or Christmas and Hannukah. She was not on email, of course, and I gradually lost the habit of letter-writing. Fortunately, I did go to visit her in 2011, just before relocating to France.

This weekend I received a small card in response to the Christmas/Hannukah card that I had sent to Betty in December. It was from her sister, Sybil, to say that Betty had died peacefully in her house in Golders Green in the summer.

I find myself writing through tears. Tears of sorrow for the loss of one of life’s great originals. But also tears of guilt that I have been so bad at keeping in touch, that it took me so many months to find out about the death of a friend. Ah, yes, the usual excuses apply – the distance, the busy-ness, the cost of international phone calls – all those easy little white lies that slither off our tongue like maggots.

But when it comes down to it, there is nothing more important than your friends, than the people you love. Make time for them. Because some day it might be too late.

Bless you, Betty, and thank you. It has been such a privilege to know you. RIP.

The D Word

He comes in cloaks of sweeping darkness,

just when and where we cannot know,

a friendless face, plaintive aside,

unseeing eyes and lips unsmiled.

But I digress…

He reckons the skill will maim or kill.

He reckons he knows to avoid the throes.

He reckons and calculates, measures and frowns.

Silent charades, we most ruefully hand over:

beauty and incubus both.

He pimps up the memories with medals or stories.

He offers horizons and vistas long spent.

Abhor him! Fall not for his honeyed deception!

The mould is still soft, all possibilities there,

you can deflect those pinpricks, each perfect phrase dissecting.

You know he’s not playing fair.

when all that remains

is cracked shell

and waste.