Heatwave by Victor Jestin, translated by Sam Taylor - Review

I picked this book up in Waterstones a few weeks back, because I was intrigued by the premise of it. I started it at the end of January, and it just took me a couple of days to read because it's not very long, it's a novella really. I don't often read books in translation but every now and then I do, and I always really enjoy them when I do. I did feel like here there were a few phrases that seemed to have been translated a little oddly, but mostly I liked it.

The book is set in France, in Landes in south west France, on the type of campsite where I spent an awful lot of my formative years so could imagine perfectly. While the book is obviously set in pretty much present day, which is obvious due to the use of mobile phones/camera phones, it has a feeling that it could be set basically any time from the 1970s until now. It's got a real timeless feeling, like you might be at the campsite forever, every summer, for the rest of your life. 

So, the story. Leonard is a shy seventeen year old, plagued by body insecurities and the fact that he can't seem to talk to girls. He is on holiday with his parents, his fifteen year old brother, and his younger sister. Oh and their dog, Bubble. At the beginning of the novel Leo watches as Oscar, a popular boy, strangles himself to death on the ropes of a swing. Leo doesn't try to help, and doesn't then raise the alarm when Oscar has died. He then decides to bury Oscar's body in a sand dune on the beach. It's late, and all the parties have finished, so no one sees him do it. Leo goes to bed, ready for his family's last day at the camp.

On the Saturday, Leo feels immediately guilty over Oscar, feels Oscar's body calling to him, and feels awful throughout the day. He talks to two girls, one of whom was kind of having a thing with Oscar. He speaks to Oscar's mum, who is not at first alarmed by Oscar's disappearance, but who reports him missing later on. The book is set over twenty four hours and I really liked it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos - Review

 

This was our March choice for my book club. I'm not sure who chose it, but I was a bit apprehensive about the book but ended up really enjoying it. It is a bizarre book though! I think most people will like it but I bet there's a couple in my book club who don't!

So this book is a translation of the original French, so of course there may be some things that aren't exactly as the author intended, but I quite like that. It's also a very meta book, it self-references several times. It's also very tongue in cheek, which I liked. The narration is a little odd too, at several points there are footnotes in the book where the narrator becomes completely omniscient and tells the reader something that will happen later. I don't often read books like this, but I don't mind it. 

The book is set in Brittany, near Dinan, which is somewhere I've been so I could imagine it perfectly which I liked. There is a library in a town called Crozon, and the librarian there has set up a library for writers' discarded manuscripts. Based on something American author Richard Brautigan really did, the librarian, Gourvec, has set up a place for authors to drop off their unpublished manuscripts. His only rule is that they must be dropped off in person. Courvec dies, and his assistant, who I think is called Marion, takes over the library.

Meanwhile, an author called Frederic has written an underwhelming book and is feeling despondent about it. His girlfriend Delphine is an editor for a publishing house; she is who published him. He is determined to write a better novel. He accompanies Delphine to Brittany, where she is from. Her parents mention Gourvec's library, so Frederic and Delphine head across. 

There they find a manuscript that they think is brilliant. It has the name Henri Pick on it. Some digging finds that he is dead, and that he was the owner of a pizzeria in town, which he owned with his wife Madeleine. Delphine wants to publish the book, so they visit Madeleine to ask her permission. 

Madeleine is surprised that her husband wrote a book, as she never saw him read anything and spent most of her time with him. She agrees that he could have written in the early mornings. She and her daughter Josephine, owner of a lingerie shop in Rennes, decide that the book can be published. 

It is, and both women appear on TV and in newspapers to talk about the book. The book is a huge success and the library grows extensively as more and more people visit it. But some people wonder whether Henri could have written such a masterpiece at all. A journalist called Rouche heads to Brittany to investigate. He is in the middle of breaking up with his girlfriend, which is an interesting plot point but ultimately not relevant to the story. That's NOT the only plot point like that, but I liked it!

It took me a day or two to get into the book but once I did I really liked it. It's boggling and it changes direction a lot, which I also liked. I would recommend it for sure, and I'm giving it four out of five. 

Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky - Review

This book was the October choice for my book club, so I bought it on eBay for a few quid. As I've read the book, I've offered it to people in my book club so someone can borrow it. We often do that with books so that not everyone has to buy it, and I guess it cuts down on unnecessary purchasing of books. I'll be putting it in the post to Jane tomorrow!

Margaret chose this book; she often chooses small books that I end up loving, like Mother's Day by Graham Swift which I thought was brilliant. I have read Nemirovsky before, I read Suite Francaise about ten years ago and really liked it. So I was really looking forward to this one. If you don't know Nemirovsky, she was a Russian Jew who fled Russia after the revolution and settled in France, but never got citizenship. She converted to Roman Catholicism, although may have done that to try to escape the Nazis, but was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where she was killed. She left behind several notebooks which contained beginnings of books, or notes and outlines, of which Fire in the Blood was one. It was published in 2007.

It's set in rural France, in the years leading up to World War II. It's set in the same village as Suite Francaise, actually, which I liked and found familiar. Sylvestre, also known as Silvio, is an old man, living in a small cabin in the forest, having sold off most of his family land in years gone by. He has some family - his cousin, Helene, and her husband Francois. They have a good, companionable marriage. Their daughter, Colette, is about to be married, to Jean. She worships her parents' relationship and wants the same for herself, but she and Jean are somewhat unmatched.

Helene's stepsister Cecile had an adopted daughter, Brigitte, who is married to a man many years older than her, who is dying. She had an unhappy childhood and married M. Declos to try to escape that. She is having an affair with a man called Marc.

As relationships unravel and time goes on, lots of secrets from the past come back, upsetting Silvio's measured life and changing everything about each character. I liked Silvio and felt quite sympathetic towards him. The depiction of French rural life, where everyone knows everyone's business and that of all their families, is brilliant. I liked how Silvio was an outsider while also being trapped in the milieu.

There are parts of this book that are really short, chapters cut off, time skips of a year or more, and I guess there's no way in knowing whether that's because Nemirovsky didn't get chance to complete the book, or whether she intended it that way. I liked it, I liked how the narrative galloped in such a way, but I do wonder how Nemirovsky would have felt over the book as a whole in its form now.

I can't wait to find out what everyone in my book club thought of it too. I really liked it and am giving it four out of five.

Akin by Emma Donoghue - Review

Thank you so much to Pan Macmillan for granting me access to read this book. I wasn't aware that Emma had a new book out, but when I noticed it on Netgalley I knew I wanted to read it! I loved Room, which I read years ago, and last year I read The Wonder by her. This book is a contemporary novel which she's apparently gone back to after a few historical novels, and I was intrigued by the premise.

Noah is an old man living in New York. He is about to turn eighty, and for his birthday he's using some money left by his younger sister to visit the place he was born - Nice, in France. His wife Joan is dead, his sister Fernande is dead, and even her husband and son have now gone too. Noah is pretty much alone in the world.

His nephew, Victor, left behind a son, Michael. Noah gets a phone call two days before he is due to travel to France to say that Michael's maternal grandmother has died and Michael has no one else to care for him. Noah is the closest suitable relative. Noah has never met Michael thanks to family estrangement, but soon the two are off together to the south of France.

Noah was born in Nice just before the outbreak of World War Two. His grandfather, Pere Sonne, was a famous photographer, and his mother, Margot, stayed behind in France to work with him. She sent Noah off to New York to join his father Marc, and stayed in France until her father died. Fernande was born there some time after.

In clearing out Fernande's possessions, Noah finds an envelope of photographs, and, with Michael's help, begins to track down what Margot did during the war.

Meanwhile Michael is a typical eleven year old. He is obsessed with his phone and his Air Jordan trainers, and he is clearly grieving for his grandmother and disquieted by the disruption in his life. He is surly and rude towards Noah, and completely unimpressed by any part of Nice.

The book touches on a lot of themes around family, around grief, around kind of blooming where you're planted. I loved Noah's look into his mother's background, I thought he was a great character and I wanted to know more about Margot's war, too. I would love to read more books about occupied France (one of my favourite books of all time, Five Quarters of the Orange, is set in the Loire in WWII) and I'd love to read more, so please recommend them if you have any!

I liked Michael, he was for me a very realistic eleven year old and I liked how he forced Noah to examine his privilege (mostly in regards to money) simply by living in a poorer part of New York.

I did find something a bit odd - Noah's nephew, Victor, is supposed to have been only around twenty six when he died, but Noah's younger sister - Victor's mother - is supposed to have died quite recently, aged around seventy. Which would make her over forty-five when she had her first and only child? I found that baffling and it really bugged me! I did also find that I kept confusing the names Noah and Michael, for some reason they scanned as really similar to me and it was frustrating at times.

I loved the setting - I love France and I could imagine myself in Nice on the Promenade des Anglais alongside Noah and Michael.

Akin will be published on 3rd October. I was provided with a free e-copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated. All thoughts and opinions are my own.