Review: Der Mantel der Erde ist heiß und teilweise geschmolzen von Nina Bußmann

Nelly, eine Seismologin, verschwindet in der Karibik. Beim Rundflug mit einer Propellermaschine, den sie mit einem Freund unternimmt, verschwindet das Flugzeug plötzlich vom Radar. Das Wetter war gut, die Maschine war vollgetankt, ein Absturz erscheint unwahrscheinlich. Als nach einigen Monaten Trümmerteile geborgen werden, scheint der Beweis gefunden zu sein. Doch von den beiden Passagieren fehlt jede Spur. Verfolgt wird die Suche nicht nur von Nellys Partner, der in der weiteren Handlung keine große mehr spielt, sondern vor allem auch von ihrer langjährigen Freundin, die namenlos bleibt und aus deren Sicht die Geschichte erzählt wird. Als diese der verschwunden Nelly in die Karibik nachreist, begibt sie sich nicht nur auf die Suche nach Antworten bezüglich des Absturzes, sondern auch nach der Antwort auf die Frage, wer Nelly eigentlich war. Durch Erinnerungen, Gespräche mit Bekannten, gefundene Dokumente und Vermutungen versucht sie ein ‚objektives’ Bild von Nelly zu schaffen. Gefärbt ist diese vermeintliche Objektivität jedoch durch die Erinnerung der jeweiligen Personen auf die sie sich bezieht – Nellys Kollegen auf einem Forschungsschiff, ihre Mitbewohnerinnen in der Karibik, ihre Affären und Partner.

Der Roman ist atmosphärisch sehr stimmig. Ob Studentenwohnheime in Deutschland, Forschungsschiffe auf hoher See oder Wohngemeinschaften in der Karibik, ich befand mich gefühlt sofort an den Orten, die Nina Bußmann beschreibt. Die Freundschaft der beiden Frauen wird als eher unterkühlt, kalkuliert und von Missverständnissen geprägt beschrieben. Keine der beiden kann die andere ‚richtig’ wahrnehmen. Beide lebten in ihrer eigenen Blase, gefangen nicht nur an ihrem jeweiligen Ort, sondern auch in ihren Gedanken.

Die beiden Frauen zeigen außerdem Anzeichen mentaler Instabilität, sie sind beeinflusst von Depressionen, Ängsten, Antriebslosigkeit oder selbstzerstörerischem Verhalten. Vielleicht sind es genau diese Ängste die es den beiden unmöglich macht, auf die jeweils andere empathisch zu reagieren. Denn beide isolieren sich, können nicht aus ihren eigenen Zwängen ausbrechen. Die Reise der Freundin ist somit sowohl als ein Versuch der Flucht aus ihren realen und mentalen Zwängen, als auch als Schritt in die beklemmende Situation Nellys zu verstehen, in der sie sich kurz vor ihrem Tod, der im Buch auch als möglicher Freitod dargestellt wird, befand. Die Verschmelzung der beiden Frauen an Nellys letztem Ort führt gleichzeitig zu einer Art Auflösung der klar umrandeten Identität der Freundin. Als Nellys Freundin in die Karibik reist, zieht sie nicht nur in Nellys altes Zimmer, sie befreundet auch ihre Mitbewohner, besucht dieselben Orte, es ist fast so, als versuchte sie Nellys Leben zu leben. Immer tiefer dringt sie in Nellys Vergangenheit ein und konfrontiert sich mit ihren Emotionen. Sie imaginiert Ordnung und Klarheit im Ende Nellys, doch möglicherweise konstruiert sie damit nur ein gedankliches Gegenstück zu ihrem persönlichen Chaos:

“Im Moment des Aufpralls, vor dem Genickbruch, bevor die Wellen über ihnen zusammenschlagen, heißt es, zieht den Sterbenden ihr Leben vor den Augen vorbei. In aller Ruhe, wie im Film. Das ganze echte Leben: auf einmal eine lückenlose Linie, alle Tage, nicht die Alpträume, nur die Tage, in schönen kadrierten Bildern. Das ganze Flickwerk, sie hat es selbst so genannt, das Nellys Leben gewesen sein sollte, endlich in eine Reihenfolge gebracht.”

Das Buch ging mir anfangs sehr nahe, die mentalen Gefängnisse in denen sich beide Frauen offensichtlich befinden löste bei mir eine sehr große Beklemmung aus. Ich konnte zwar die Rastlosigkeit der beiden Charaktere nachempfinden, je mehr sie sich jedoch in der Karibik (oder in ihren Vorstellungen) verloren umso mehr löste sich für mich die Struktur des Buches auf. Dies mag einerseits ein Stilmittel der Autorin sein, andererseits war es so schwieriger, der Geschichte zu folgen und den Sinn des Ganzen zu verstehen. Die emotionale Nähe, die ich anfangs für Nelly und ihre Freundin empfunden rückte mehr und mehr in den Hintergrund. Vielleicht war dies jedoch genau das Gefühl, dass die beiden Freundinnen füreinander empfanden. Die Erinnerung an eine Nähe, welche sich jetzt im Chaos aufzulösen scheint?

Review: Dietland by Sarai Walker

Dietland is a progressive, angry book about a feminist guerrilla group called “Jennifer”. Their plan is to change the sexist society we live in by taking pretty drastic measures. Rapists are being thrown off overpasses or out of airplanes. They want the public to wake up.

The novel however starts off at a very different place. It begins with 29-year-old Plum Kettle, a fat and lonely woman who works as a ghost-writer for a teen magazine. She spends her days in her friend’s café or at Waist Watcher [sic!] meetings, eating unappetizing and little meals while shopping for her soon to be thin self. She weighs 300 pounds but is scheduled for gastric bypass surgery so that she can begin the (thin) life she has always dreamed of. Dinner parties, dating, making friends, everything is postponed to her imaginary future as her thinner self. But things are about to change when she is being followed and recruited by “Jennifer”. Little by little she gets drawn into a different world and she ends up on quite a different quest to self-love. The women she encounters confront her with her ideas of beauty and perfection. They shatter the world she used to live in.

But the novel is not only focused on Plum, it’s also a very dark portrayal of today’s society. Half way through the book, the story switches from Plum to “Jennifer” and through her/their eyes we see a world that is shockingly hostile, sexist and violent. At this point the novel takes a completely different course: Gang raped teenagers are being avenged, media moguls are being kidnapped and stark naked men are replacing the infamous page 3 models.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard you look, the description of Plum’s and Jennifer’s world does not read as a satire. The instances of everyday sexism and misogyny that are being described are not at all unrealistic. What I was reading was not a description of a dystopian world but ultimately the world you live in as a women. “Jennifer’s” reactions however, the violence, the anger and bloodshed is depicted as over top and absurd. It can be interpreted as a contrast to the powerlessness that most women feel.

Sarai Walker radically questions society’s double standards and obsessions with beauty and thinness. Plum, the book’s main character, realizes that there is a freedom in not caring about the judgement of others:

“We’re different in a way that everyone can see. We can’t hide it or fake it. We’ll never fit society’s idea for how women should look and behave, but why is that a tragedy? We’re free to live how we want. It’s liberating if you choose to see it that way.”

Throughout the novel Plum radically transforms herself. Her struggle with self-love, looks (and weight) and the expectations to be perfect are, what Dietland really focuses on. Yes it is also about a feminist terrorist group, but it is mainly about how the mere existence of such a group affects the women who come in contact with them. In that way Dietland is a call to arms:

“The police and the “justice” system don’t take violence against women and girls seriously. If you’ve been assaulted or harassed, take the law into your own hands. Form vigilante groups with other girls. Sign up for self-defense classes, but don’t just use the skills defensively. Go on the offensive!”

The novel has a lot of different influences, ranging from Foucault to Fight Club. Women in the novel are exercising extreme control over themselves and their bodies; they have created strict regiments to fit a social norm, which was only created to keep them down in the first place. When Plum breaks free, starts to eat, enjoy her life and be herself, she sheds this self-imposed regimen of rules and deprivation:

“[…] Dietland, which meant control, constriction—paralysis, even—but above all it meant obedience. I was tired of being obedient.”

As it mocks the less violent and certainly less angry chic lit that preceded it, Dietland transcends the genre itself. It will also be turned in to a TV show by no other than the genius Marti Noxon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV show that was also well known for it’s feminist and empowering approach.

Also, here’s a little snippet from npr about Sarai Walker and Dietland including an article she wrote for the New York Times. And finally the blog post that made me aware of Walker and her book.

Review: The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin

 

Many years ago, Anatoly Sukhanov made a choice. He abandoned his life as an underground artist for money and security. Now, he is being hunted by the ghosts of his past.

When we meet Anatoly Sukhanov in his Russia of the 1980’s, it is a wintery world, filled with memories. He is leading a warm and fuzzy life, has money and a family. But everything changes when he is confronted with an artist that used to be his best friend 20 years ago. Suddenly he is forced to challenge the reasoning behind the choices he has made all over again.

In the beginning Sukhanov states that he doesn’t remember much of his past. He keeps a few isolated memories and therefore creates a curated version of his life that has almost no connection to reality. But through the encounter with his friend from the past, memories keep suddenly overwhelming him. Memories from his childhood, memories from his time as a poor and rebellious artist:

“[…] this stray little thought released in him some echo of the past, a solitary trembling note whose sound rose higher and higher in his chest, awakening inarticulate longings and, inseparable from them, a piercing, unfamiliar sorrow.”

He feels overwhelmed by these memories and is unable to save himself from the emotions that come with each new recovered memory. Oftentimes the memories are triggered by places and the reader is transported to a different time in the life of Sukhanov without much warning. The memories, characters, places and emotions create an eerie and claustrophobic mixture, where sometimes it is not clear what is real and what is not. Could some of the people he encounters be himself at different times in his life?

What I thought was done rather brilliantly in this book was the way that Grushin did not paint a black and white picture of Sukhanov. In many ways his character is quite flawed, he is a proud and opportunistic man where we get to meet him, but nonetheless Grushin got me to really care for him. Also she never simplifies the choices that Sukhanov has and had to make. His struggles are real and valid. When she gives reasoning for his decision to turn down life as an artist, they do not seem like choices that were done without thought behind them. In a lot of ways the reasons Sukhanov gave, made me care more about the character and not less:

“…the only life worth living was a life without humiliation, a free life, a safe life – and the only sure way to avoid having one’s wings clipped was to grow no wings at all.”

Obviously art is an important part of the book. The characters talk about it, they judge it, they create it and different artists are mentioned again and again to show the characters’ changing relationships to art throughout their life. Dali and Chagall play the most important roles here. Grushin also describes how art was perceived in Russia at various times in the last century. To me this opened up a new view on the connection between the artist and the environment that he lives in:

“Our days flowed into nights, our nights were endless and every single windbag who talked about Russia, God and art was a brother, every artist a genius, every painting a miracle – and the world did not know us yet, but we were together, we were brilliant, we were destined to light up the skies […].”

What impressed me most about this novel is the way Grushin writes. Her descriptions are almost like the script for a film, she creates a very detailed (and this in no way meant in a bad way) picture of where the characters are at any given time. The opening of the book is one of the strongest I have read this year. Her writing, clear and precise at the beginning, follows the inner life of her main character. When he finds himself in a swirl of memories, the writing also becomes more surreal. It jumps between timelines without warning and gets experimental where you don’t expect it to be.

The novel is like a painting. The longer you look at it and think about it, the more ways of reading it you can find. On the surface it is a novel about a man and his choices, but it is so much more. It is also a meditation on art and why we create it, what it is that we strife for and how much we are willing to sacrifice for it:

“But you were also wrong, because in spite of all the injustices and horrors and stupidity, beauty always survives and there will never be a higher mission than by adding more beauty to it, by making one single person cry like a child at the age of fifty three.”

Quote: The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin

“I was afraid. Not so much of prison or poverty or even unhappiness, though I thought about all that – we all did … But mostly, I was afraid of failure. I was so terrified that my reality would not measure up to my dreams, that I would never quite fulfil my promise.”

Review: Xiaolu Guo – I am China

I actually finished this novel at the end of last year, so quite a long while ago. Back then, this book blog did not exist yet and I also didn’t take down notes for a review like I do now. But I recently came across a video of a talk the author gave and hearing her speak about her work and the politics and history of her country made me want to write a belated review of the novel I am China. I have thought about it often since I have finished it and Xiaolu Guo also introduced me to other great authors like Eileen Chang.

The novel is set both in China and in the West (England and USA). The young translator Iona is asked to translate the love letters and diary extracts of a young Chinese couple. The rebellious and political punk musician Jian and his girlfriend Mu, the poet, have exchanged letters for over 20 years. The letters depict tumultuous times, both for the couple and the country they come from. But now Jian is being held in an asylum centre:

“Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet…”

Xiaolu Guo shows snapshots of the Jasmine revolution, the Chinese punk scene, police riots and the realities of being exiled. While Jian is being held in a detention centre in Dover and Mu travels further and further away from him, both in pursuit of her own creative and political identity, Iona has only little time left to reunite the two lovers.

The style of the book is very creative. Diary entries, letters and flash backs are woven together to create a very personal story of the three main characters. Through telling the story this way, Guo is able to not only show where the different characters are coming from but also how they react to each other’s realities. When Iona the translator is confronted with Jian’s experiences of being held as an asylum seeker in Dover, she subsequently questions her own life and her experiences:

 “If you spend enough time reading someone else’s thoughts, after a while their thoughts infect you. You grasp on yourself becomes tenuous. Or you begin to see that you never were the essential you in the first place […]”

The issues that this novel deals with are oftentimes very bleak. Political exile, coming to terms with your identity and how this is connected to your nationality, revolution and responsibility are just some of the things these characters have to deal with.

 “Revolution happens when the water in which the citizens swim is frozen. The ice breaks and shatters and the fish are cast out onto the dry land, gasping for air.”

Guo herself has made quite a few of the experiences that the characters go through in the novel. She moved to England and was also confronted with having visa issues. Jian’s time in England therefore seems all the more real.

Guo also has had to come to terms with a new language, one in which she would start writing and by doing so redefine herself as a writer. The characters in her book reflect her struggle with political, national and artistic identity. They are stand-ins for different points on a spectrum. Where Jian wants to stay and fight and change the society that he grew up in, Mu is looking for a universal truth and therefore something bigger than the political struggle she encounters. Both are valid points but only one will turn out to be the slightly easier to endure.

Another interesting aspect was the entanglement of beat poetry, punk music and Chinese culture and history. Guo manages to tell a heart breaking love story, give insight into Chinese history and question an artist’s role in shaping politics:

“Now the artist must deal with politics. That’s why art is always a political thing. […] Art is the politics of perpetual revolution. Art is the purest revolution, and so the purest political form there is.”

The novel definitely touched me on many levels and even after all this time, I still think about it from time to time. Sometimes a novel doesn’t let you go that easily.

Quote: Xiaolu Guo – I am China

“Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet…“

Review: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

In this novel Arundhati Roy takes the reader all the way back to the 1960s, where a dark event in the state of Kerala in South India changed the lives of the twins Rahel and Esthappen. Having recently returned home after their mothers divorce, the twins find themselves having to settle into a new environment. Soon old conflicts within the family erupt again, affecting not only their mother Ammu but also Rahel and Esthappen.

The God of Small Things is a very clever novel about love, envy, fear and hatred. It is a story of a family as much as it is a story of a country:

“He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit and ancestors whispering inside.”

The novel reveals its story not in chronological order but through jumping back and forth, not only between the different characters but also between the 1960s and 1990s.

We see the family before “the terror” and we see what has become of them years later. Roy reveals the repercussions of what has happened early in the novel, showing its aftermath before explaining what caused it. To me this technique heightened the emotionality und immediacy of the story, as I felt that something horrible was always just a page away and the innocence of the characters always seemed threatened. This feeling of dread continues throughout the whole novel and it is only on the last few pages that the reader can piece together the whole puzzle. It was surprising that Roy left the last key piece, which allows the reader an entry point to the full scope of emotions, to be revealed only at the very end. Despite her overuse of metaphors and sometimes too flowery language, Roy left a few things to the imagination of the reader, which I liked. She let all characters speak without judgement or preference.

The themes of this novel, like sexual assault, extreme violence, graphic descriptions of abuse and incest, are sometimes difficult to think about and to be with as a reader. To me the characters that were going through these ordeals were also representing struggles on a much larger scale. The story of people who are in love but are not allowed to be also came across as a social comment on the society in which this novel is set. As close as she sometimes stays with the characters, she also ventures out into both contemporary Indian society and historic events. I liked this two-sidedness. It seemed both emotionally involved and analytically detached:

“’We’re prisoners of war, Chacko said. ‘Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed on ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter.’”

Even though the novel deals with so many important issues, I personally did not feel as involved with the story as I imagined I would. I was shocked by the violence and saddened by the loss, but in the end I still felt quite removed from the characters. The emotions I felt were more dutiful than honest. The essence of the characters was not easily accessible but hidden behind a highly structured plot and the calculated use of language. Despite the authors’ efforts, I felt there was something missing. Everything was too perfect, too thought through and too polished.

Quote: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

“The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.”

Review: Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

When Cassandra Edwards, the gay heroine of this 1962 novel, returns to her bohemian family home, a lot of things turn out differently than both Cassandra and the reader might have expected.

The novel opens with a spotlight on Cassandra, who is currently writing a thesis on French female writers at her Berkeley apartment, which until recently she used to share with her twin sister Judith. They shared not only their apartment, their piano and their carefully collected antique furniture but also their life. Over years they had carefully constructed an identity, in which both of them were only half a person, could only be a whole if they were together. But now that Judith has moved away and is about to get married, this identity and life that Cassandra needs so desperately to function is being threatened.

The reader immediately gets a sense of the smart but erratic, lonely and nerve-wrecked Cassandra as she travels home to sabotage her sisters wedding. As she arrives on the farm, set in the foothills of the Sierra, everyone in the family has a part to play. Often quirky, sometimes comical, the interactions follow the well-rehearsed behaviour that the Edwards family has constructed over time. But this façade of interaction is only a thin veil, which covers a much darker truth. Cassandra hides behind a shower curtain, spies on her sister and lies to her grandmother. She also hides her true feelings about the wedding and her new life without her sister. This pain, felt only in secret, will lead to disastrous consequences. Through the possibility of losing Judith, Cassandra has to redefine her whole identity as well. She has to reset the goals in her life. While once plans and decisions were made together, she now has to come to terms with what she herself really wants in life. And this means facing the reality of wanting different things than Judith does:

“Same thing everywhere I’d looked. Large amounts of safety; very few risks. Let nothing endanger the proper the proper marriage, the fashionable career, the non-irritating thesis that says nothing new and nothing true.”

During the course of the novel Baker brilliantly shifts the perspective of one sister to the other to give the reader not only a deeper understanding of the situation but also the unique view of how both of the sisters perceive their bond and relationship. Where Cassandra perceives herself as part of a whole and has not found a way to live without her sister, Judith the emotionally stronger and much more mature of the two, understands that were they to stay together, their union would lead to their destrucion.

To me, reading this novel felt like watching a classic movie. Baker followed the characters, mostly in real time, through their emotional struggles without censoring their experience down to a few selected flashes. Sometimes however Bakers slow paced style requires some patience from the reader. Also the way Baker hinted at Cassandra’s sexuality reminded me of mid-century Hollywood movies. You sometimes had to read between the lines. But even though Cassandra’s sexuality was not as openly discussed as I imagined from the text on the jacket, it is nonetheless a book that features a lot of strong women characters.

I enjoyed reading this book and must say that certain scenes stayed with me long after I had finished it. I appreciated that she allowed the reader to make their own interpretations of the emotional states of the sisters by giving them both very distinct voices.

Quote: Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

“With men I feel like a bird in the clutch of a cat, terrified, caught in a nightmare of confinement, wanting nothing but to get free and take a shower. “Birds don’t take showers,” Jude said, and I had to give her instances of birdbaths and lawn sprays and sprinkling systems and fountains in parks, before I could get to what I had to tell her, which was nothing so simple as the cat-and-bird relationship, even without the shower, because I’m not afraid of women; they don’t terrify me slightly. Up to a point they fascinate me, and I said so.”