‘A river passing through a landscape catches the world and gives it back redoubled: a shifting, glinting world more mysterious than the one we customarily inhabit.’
On a midsummer morning, Olivia Laing set off on a journey that took her along the River Ouse from source to sea. The Ouse, the river where Virginia Woolf drowned herself, is a place Laing is attached to and like Woolf, Laing is fascinated by the alluring yet deadly element of water. Laing knows very well that place is not one-dimensional; various moments in time are superimposed in a landscape, so that place is haunted by stories from the past, and ghostly figures tread and re-tread the place beneath the surface of the present. This is why ‘To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface’ is a mixture of travel book, nature writing, memoir, biography, and history. Laing minutely records the paths she takes and the landscape (she has a particularly keen eye for the flora) while reflecting on herself and recalling her memories; but she also narrates a myriad stories that are connected to the River Ouse and its surrounding landscape, ranging from Mansell’s discovery of the iguanodon to Kenneth Grahame’s biography. Her digressive curiosity reminded me very much of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. Perhaps some may be frustrated by so many tangents, but I personally love this very allusive kind of writing. So while Laing physically traverses space, her mind (and To the River’s narrative) moves through time, too. Woolf is a significant and recurrent ghostly presence in To the River and I thoroughly enjoyed Laing’s reflection on her life and work. All this is delivered in an elegant and often quotable writing. This was a pleasure to read not just because I love Sebaldian, hybrid texts, but also because of Laing’s gentle, compelling, and sensitive (especially towards the environment) personality that comes through.
This is one of those haunted and haunting books.
Buy this book from Book Depository by clicking here (affiliate).
‘The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.’ - Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
‘Memory is a funny business. Sometimes, moving through water, I feel I’m washed of all thoughts, all desires: content to luxuriate like a starfish, rocking on my own pulse, sensate to no more than the wavering light as it sinks through space to reach my eyes. I might as well have never been born; I’m not sure I know even my name. And then, on other days, the opposite occurs. There have been times when, sunk in a river or a chalky sea, I have felt the past rise up upon me like a wave. The water has loosened something; has dissolved what once was dry; weighted as if with lead, it filters now through my own veins. The present is obliterated, but what the eye sees, what the ear hears, it is not possible to share.’ -Olivia Laing, To the River
Who’s excited for autumn? I am! Autumn reminds me of books with a melancholic mood, books that capture the transience of life and the fast approaching death of winter. Here are some books that would make perfect 🍂 autumn 🍂 reads! Instead of writing a description of each book, I decided to give you a taste of what the prose is like by quoting from the book. I hope you I inspire you to pick up a few of these books!
1. Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
‘We might call this confused, hazy state melancholy, or perhaps we should call it by its Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity; veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a tea kettle has been spouting steam on winter’s day.’
2. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
‘There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.’
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
‘No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.’
4. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
‘In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.’
5. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
‘I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.’
6. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
‘I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart.’
What are some of your favourite autumnal reads? Let me know!
‘Maybe, in the end, all that mattered of these two days without respite was the transplanting of the story from one head to the other, like a healthy organ that my mother had given up to me out of affection.’ — Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love
Book Review | Memories of Low Tide by Chantal Thomas
‘Day after day she abandoned herself to the lake water and I to the amniotic fluid, I inhabited her rhythm. We floated, together.’
In French, the words for mother and sea — mère and mer — are homonyms. The figure of the mother and the sea are likewise inextricable in Memories of Low Tide by Chantal Thomas, a memoir which depicts the strong bond that her late mother Jackie had with the sea and that recounts Chantal’s own idyllic childhood spent on the shore of Arcachon Bay, near Bordeaux. True to its name, a series of chronologically ordered memories are unfolded, starting from before Chantal is born. Because this memoir is not about Chantal herself as much as it is a photo album, as it were, of her mother. From a young age, Jackie is drawn to water and the sense of freedom that it gives her. She’s destined to be sportswoman, but she finds herself married with a baby, Chantal, to take care of. Still, she convinces her husband to relocate to Arcachon Bay, where she spends hours, days, seasons swimming with grace and precision, as if she were one with the sea, a perennial 'summertime child'.
Chantal inherits her mother’s passion. And this is not just evident through her recollections of her childhood games at the seaside. Her love for the sea is present in the simple yet graceful nature of the memoir’s prose and the lyricism as well as sensory detail with which she evokes the sea. Her early impressions of the sea eventually give way to reflections on her mother. In fact, ‘Memories’ touches upon many themes relating to womanhood, mothering, and female sexuality as Chantal matures and gradually understands her mother’s thessalophilia as well as her mental health. The metamorphic nature of the sea speaks to her femininity and her inability to abide by the pinning down of masculinist society. As Chantal stresses, the sea is not just a backdrop to human life, but also a way of living.
Ultimately, Memories of Low Tide is a beautiful expression of love conveyed in waves of memory, where the sea is both a physical presence and a metaphor for the amniotic fluid that connects mother to daughter.
This book was gifted to me by Pushkin Press in exchange for an honest review.
Did you know that August is #WomeninTranslation Month? Well, if you didn’t, now you do! Here are some brilliant women writers in translation that you should check out sooner rather than later.
1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (Italian)
This is the first novel of the Neapolitan Novels, a quartet that I’ll never stop recommending to everyone. It depicts the story of a friendship between two Neapolitan girls that eventually grow into such complex, fascinating women.
2. A Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux (French)
Annie Ernaux writes autofiction (a blend of autobiography and fiction) at its finest. This tiny novella depicts a passionate love affair between a heterosexual couple from the woman's perspective in a very raw and striking prose.
3. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (French)
Françoise Sagan writes the dreamiest novellas set in the sun-drenched shores of the French Riviera. I highly recommend her to those who have also read and enjoyed Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk.
4. Memories of Low Tide by Chantal Thomas (French)
This is a poetic memoir that weaves together memories of childhood, a mother-daughter relationship, and their bond with the sea. It will strike a chord with anyone who is interested in mothering and female sexuality.
‘I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.’ -Francoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
“Time moves along, without constraints—no matter how hard one may attempt to pause, to alter, to rewrite it. Quite simply, there is nothing to stop it, nothing at all.” -Christine Mangan, Tangerine
From the greatest sea voyage of all time to mischief in Algiers, this is what I read this month.
1. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Four diverse Edwardian women rent an Italian castle and spend a magical month on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. This novel is a delightful read that has beautiful and humorous moments in equal measure. Think along the lines of E. M. Forster’s figure of the ‘Englishwoman Abroad’ but written by a female writer. Going South for the English means shedding the trappings of northern society and allowing the passions and vivacity of the South to work upon them and open them to life. The enchanting effect of the South on people of a Northern constitution is a well-known trope but it is interesting to note the warmth which this cliché is dealt with in the hands of a female writer. I highly recommend this to those who’ve enjoyed Forster’s A Room with a View.
2. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Every once in a (long) while, one comes across a novel like Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment. Its prose delivers such an intensity of raw feeling, that the words seem to burn on the page. This novel is about a 38-year-old woman, Olga, who is abandoned by her husband and left to take care of their children, Gianni and Ilaria, and their dog Otto. Told in the first person, this novel takes you into the darkest depths of Olga’s despair. Ferrante’s female characters are unarguably my favourite in literature — they know they live in a world that is kinder to men than it is for women and they’re haunted by past women and their pain, be they mothers or female figures in their childhood. This book is subtly about a woman living with the shadow of another woman from her childhood, who was also abandoned and had a tragic fate. Ferrante’s writing style is flawless, as always, and some sentences beg to be marked in the margin. One of the best books I’ve read this year so far! If you’ve read and enjoyed the Neapolitan Novels, you’ll also love this one.
3. Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud
I read Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud in a day -- it’s a quick, consumable read. This is a memoir, thinly disguised as a novel, about a mother in search of an adventure, who takes her two daughters to Morocco. The novel is narrated from the point of view of the youngest daughter and it is about living hand to mouth with a single mother in a foreign place. I quite liked its depiction of childhood and the diverse Moroccan people they encounter, with their eccentricities and their kindnesses. The mother is probably the character I liked the least — she can be quite problematic. It’s not a must read, in my opinion, but it’s still a sweet memoir-like novel that recreates the beauty and challenges of childhood.
4. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
The Neapolitan Quartet is brilliant but Elena Ferrante’s shorter fiction is something else. Imagine the raw emotion, the psychological characterisation, the violence, and the magnetic voice of the narrator of the Neapolitan Novels distilled in under 200 pages, rather than spread across four books. That’s Ferrante’s short fiction. ‘The Lost Daughter’ is a perfect book for those who’d like a ‘beach read’ that is intellectually engaging, a book set in summer on the shores of the Mediterranean that can be read in a day or even a sitting. The narrator, Leda, is a scholar of English in her late forties, who is drawn to a 23-year-old mother and her young daughter playing with a doll at the beach. She is driven to do an explicable thing that takes her to depths of her past and her relationship with her daughters and her mother. Out of all of Ferrante’s characters that I’ve encountered so far, Leda is by far the most enigmatic and the novella at times almost reads like a character-study because Ferrante creates such a psychologically complex woman. I found the ending a bit rushed but I think this is the first Ferrante that really made me want to reread it as soon as I finished it. There is just so much to unpack, so many complex thoughts about being a mother and being a daughter and the bond between the two that deserve to be revisited.
5. The Odyssey by Homer
The Odyssey needs no introduction. This was my first Ancient Greek epic and it was just what I expected. Some parts towards the beginning and the end dragged a bit, but Odysseus’s narration of his travels in the Mediterranean were very quick to get through because they’re such iconic tales and entertaining, too (although the misogyny was irritating). Robert Fagles’s verse translation, published by Penguin Classics, is a great translation in my opinion, but at some point I’d like to check out Emily Wilson’s new translation too. Overall, I’m glad I finally got around to reading this and it inspired to pick up more epics, which I could read alongside other novels. I’m now particularly interested in reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s The Aeneid.
6. The Mischief by Assia Djebar
Assia Djebar is an Algerian writer that I don’t hear about often. Her debut novella The Mischief (originally La Soif) was published in 1957, just three years after Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and the influence of Sagan on Djebar’s debut novella is palpable. Coming-of-age, body consciousness, sexuality, passion, and death converge on the Southern Mediterranean seascape in The Mischief just as they do in Bonjour Tristesse, with the added themes of the Paris-Algiers binary and race. Nadia, the narrator, is practically the North African equivalent of Sagan’s Cécile -- a carefree and indolent young woman discovering herself and her sexuality, and creating tragic mischief. Although Djebar drew heavily from Sagan, her debut is still wonderfully executed and distinct enough, plot-wise, to be worth reading in its own right. I was specifically astounded by how unlikeable Nadia is, and yet, how masterful of Djebar to still give her an alluring voice that compels the reader to read more. In fact, I read this in a sitting. I’ll definitely read more of Djebar in the future, although her later work seems very different.
7. Tangerine by Christine Mangan
Remember that familiar phrase in book reviews that goes along the lines of ‘the setting is almost a character in itself’? Well, Christine Mangan’s Tangerine truly earns it. This novel is set in 1950s Morocco, Tangerine evokes the mysterious and alluring atmosphere of Tangier. A psychological thriller unfolds in this city’s heat spell: Alice, who was swept away to Tangier by her husband John, one day finds Lucy on her doorstep, a friend of hers she had completely cut ties with. Their past is slowly unfolded through flashbacks and meanwhile, things start taking an ominous turn in Tangier. What I love about this book is that the setting is present in every page; it’s what, I feel, makes this novel so immersive. The chapters alternate between Lucy’s and Alice’s point of view, and the foreignness of Tangier serves to bring out their respective characters. Towards the end (I won’t spoil anything), I was particularly intrigued by how Tangier becomes almost a presence within the characters rather than an exterior space. Since Tangerine, received mixed reviews, I did not have high expectations for this novel, but the setting almost made me completely disregard the predictability of the plot -- although, there were a few good surprises -- and the wordiness of some descriptions of actions -- although the writing style generally flows and is a pleasure to read. Since Mangan provides both the main characters’ perspectives, the reader is always one step ahead of the characters and know what they’re about to face. I guess this puts emphasis on the psychology of the character rather than the unfolding of the plot, which I think works but I can see why some readers demanded more from the plot of a ‘psychological thriller’. The nuance is in characterisation and setting, rather than in plot. I think this was a great debut novel with a gripping opening and a satisfying ending, particularly for someone who is interested in relations between setting and character, rather than plot, although I consumed the plot too!
FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE MONTH: The Days of Abandonment and The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
Thank you for reading this July wrap-up! By clicking on the titles of the novels I mentioned above, you will be redirected to my Book Depository affiliate link for each novel, enabling you to also read the blurb.
“I confess that I am often lost in all the dimensions of time, that the past sometimes feels nearer than the present and I often fear the future has already happened.” -Deborah Levy, Hot Milk
“Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.” -Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment
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