4 books to read this summer
July 23, 2015
Back to the retro-future: Kevin Barry's "City of Bohane"
This book is set in 2053, in the wild retro-future city of Bohane, somewhere beyond the big no man's land along a river in the western part of Ireland. Clan chief Logan Hartnett witnesses its decline when his old enemy Gant Broderick returns to the city.
It's an antirealist novel, writes Kevin Barry in the epilogue. The inspirations he also quotes transpire throughout his work: Authors like Anthony Burgess, Cormac McCarthy, and James Joyce, Limerick and Cork accents, HBO television series, films and comics. If you are not into this kind of pop culture, this book is probably not for you. I found Barry's linguistic creativity incredibly entertaining.
Recommended by Sabine Peschel: Kevin Barry, "City of Bohane," Graywolf Press.
New York's underworld in the 1950's: Sara Gran's "Dope"
Sara Gran's "Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead" made me addicted to Claire DeWitt's adventures - modestly described by the author as one of the world's best detectives. So I was probably one of the first people to buy her "Bohemian Highway" mystery when it came out - and it made me happy.
Now I'm still eagerly waiting for the next criminal cases of this unconventional, crazy detective. I hope to find some consolation in Sara Gran's earlier work "Dope" during the holidays. The novel introduces Josephine, a petty criminal, who tries her luck as a private detective in 1950 in New York. I'm already looking forward to pleasurable hours of reading in a deck chair.
* Recommended by Klaudia Prevenzanos: Sara Gran, "Dope," Penguin Publishing Group.
Interweaving stories: Carl Nixon's "The Virgin & the Whale"
This book tells the story of a strange family while intertwining a series of other fairy tales. Opening in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2008, it takes us back to where it all began in 1919: A nurse, Elizabeth Whitman, is waiting in vain for her husband to come back from the First World War.
The story could summarized quickly - yet it is one which should rather be read. In his third novel, this young author from New Zealand skillfully intervenes as an elusive narrator. He plays with flashbacks and flash-forwards, commenting on the events and even sometimes directly addressing the reader, which makes his book pleasantly confusing. Never clumsy nor irritating, these literary devices turn the book into a multilayered, fascinating read.
* Recommended by Sabine Peschel: Carl Nixon, "The Virgin & the Whale," Random House NZ.
Searching for the truth: Tan Twan Eng's "The Garden of Evening Mists"
This novel by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng is set during the last years of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia. The book tells the story of the Chinese-Malaysian judge Teoh, traumatized by her young adult years spent imprisoned in a Japanese labor camp during World War II. After the end of the war, a former court gardener of the Emperor trains her in the highly philosophical Japanese art of gardening.
Although the book deals with guilt and aesthetics, mystery and recollection, silence and repression, it remains a surprisingly light read, thanks to the clever structure of the novel and the personal narrative style. It offers a captivating literary history lesson about the conflict-ridden colonial and ethnic heritage of Asia. "The Garden of Evening Mist" was awarded the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, a prestigious award for the best novel by an Asian writer.
* Recommended by Sabine Peschel: Tan Twan Eng, "The Garden of Evening Mist," Weinstein Books.