Colombian Idyll

Sometimes it takes a while. Respected Colombian writer Tomás González published his first novel, In the Beginning Was the Sea, over thirty years ago, but it has only recently been translated into English. Like many first novels it is autobiographical, but it does not seem like the early attempt of a young writer.

Elena and J. are a young couple who have left their life as intellectual dilettantes in Medellín for a life of simplicity and sustainable agriculture on the coast of Colombia. Or at least that is their idealized vision. It's the 70's, and their hippy naivete allows them to believe that they are perfectly suited for this endeavor. But their backgrounds of urban privilege have left them totally unable to deal with real life. They alienate the locals, their farming attempts fail, and the omniscient narrator discloses early in the novel that J. will not survive. Their disintegration is uncomfortable to watch, but I couldn't look away.

The story is based on the real life tragedy of González's older brother.  But their is no trace of filial empathy in the narrative. The prose is spare and straightforward but powerful, whether describing the beauty of surroundings or the poignant intricacies of a marriage breaking down. I hope this translation will allow González to gain greater literary attention.

Too Big to Blog

My New Year's resolution...blog! No, I didn't stop reading. I just stopped writing about it. The books stacked up but the words just rattled around in my head. The start of my troubles was probably when I tackled Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire – all 911 pages of it. By the end I was exhausted and overwhelmed. How to get down on paper (figuratively) my thoughts on this sprawling, complicated story? The setting is New York of the 1970's. The city is approaching bankruptcy, drug addiction is rampant, punk rock and the rad art scene are emerging, the rich are getting richer by making their own rules. Hallberg puts a character in every one of these camps - young, old, black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor. They are all fleshed out human beings, complicated and compelling. The center of the story is the murder of a a young NYU student in Central Park on New Year's Eve, but in Dickensian fashion Hallberg weaves interconnected subplots, flashbacks and flashforwards, coffee-stained reporters notes and teenage zines into a staggering story that climaxes with the July 13, 1977 New York City blackout.

The characters belong to such different social strata that it seems each of their stories is separate strand, and yet by the end they are all braided together in ways that I didn't see coming, but didn't feel forced or artificial. This is Hallberg's first novel. I can't wait to see what comes next.

Good Grief, Eileen

Have you ever read a book that you couldn't put down but you couldn't recommend? I kind of feel that way about Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. It's not that I felt it was a waste of time (to obtain that miserable feeling, read “The Girl on the Train”). Maybe it's closer to the way I felt about “Gone Girl” – these people are all despicable but I can't stop reading. But Eileen isn't despicable, just depressing.

Eileen Dunlop, 23 year old resident of a small coastal Massachusetts town she calls X-ville, is planning to escape from it all – her alcoholic father, her dead-end job at a correctional facility for adolescent boys, her marginal existence – for a new life in New York. And since she narrates from a remove of fifty years, we know she made it. We even know as she begins the story – a week before Christmas – that by Christmas Day she will be gone. And I was certainly rooting for her. But as she piled on detail after detail about her life – her father's abusive insults, her disgust with her own body, her sad workplace crush on a prison guard– I couldn't imagine how she would gain the strength to succeed.  Every time I thought her self-esteem couldn't get any lower, it did.

But then the glamorous and mysterious Rebecca comes to work at the facility, and forms an instant bond with Eileen. Eileen sees her as an escape route, and in an unexpected and shocking way she is. But by that time I was exhausted. Did I really need to endure that much misery to get to a semi-happy ending?

I have to admire Moshfegh’s ability to make a character and story so compelling that I couldn't stop reading. And amazingly I did come to care about what happened to Eileen – as opposed to that stupid girl on the train. But be warned – it's the most disturbing Christmas story you'll ever read.

Best Friends

II resisted as long as I could. I had read about Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, much admired by literary critics and other writers, but I'm always wary of translations, and did I really want to commit to reading all four? But I was intrigued by that fact that in this day when authors seem forced to relentlessly promote their works, the mysterious “Elena Ferrante” (her pen name) has managed to keep her identity a secret and do only the bare minimum of interviews (written only).

I've now finished the first – My Brilliant Friend, and am halfway through the second – The Story of a New Name, and there's no stopping me. The books follow the lives of two childhood friends, Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo, beginning in postwar Naples, where there is little escape from grinding poverty and limited opportunity. Both girls are bright and ambitious, and they imagine exciting lives for themselves. Although Lila is the stronger, the more imaginative and determined of the two, her parents refuse to educate her past elementary school, so it is Elena, her “brilliant friend” who continues her education, while Lila marries young and seems locked into the life she had hoped to escape. And maybe she ultimately does?? I'm only on book two.

I wonder if part of the reason that Ferrante wants her privacy is that her works seems so autobiographical. Elena and Lila are such vivid characters, with a friendship and a rivalry that is fierce and complex, and all the neighbors (and there a lot of them – the index of characters at the beginning of the book is extremely helpful) are rendered so sharply that they are completely convincing. Was Ferrante taking notes all through her childhood? That's how it feels.

Elena and Lila are strong women, and they are angry, sometimes at each other, often at the world. I have to find out how it all ends.