In which I discuss recent reading which deserves particular attention: two novels, spanning an African immigrant’s contemporary experience in London and a trio of English sisters’ experience of the interwar years, and a graphic memoir spanning a young boy’s experiences in Syria, France and Libya.
In Harare North (2009), Brian Chikwava’s experience of a Zimbabwean immigrant’s experience of London, England is complex, simultaneously monotonous and heightened. On one hand, he is ducking the authorities and looking to disappear temporarily, while he earns enough to buy himself safety back home, so there is a relentless tension, seeking and maintaining off-the-books work and satisfying the needs of various interested parties. On the other hand, there are swaths of time in which he is engaged with the banal activities of survival, housing and meals and changing relationships. Much of his experience is grim and hard, but his sharp intelligence keeps the reader engaged in his struggle, alternately wincing and grinning. “I sleep in my clothes and shoes because I have make big vow never to allow any intruder to set they eyes on me without my clothes on. If you is taken by surprise, once your enemy see you in them shabby underpants, the humiliation is big; you is two times set back and is fighting from position of big disadvantage.”
Mary Hocking’s Good Daughters (1984) is the first in the trilogy about the Fairley sisters (Louise, Alice and Claire), which I am reading this winter with Danielle. It opens in 1933, with the statement that growing up between the wars, under the shadow of the swastika, one was not always aware of that shadow. The novels considers a variety of ways in which people feel out of step, with the times and with one another. One man’s “present had never been other people’s present”; one woman’s horizons weren’t not limited, “just different from those of other people”. One married couple exists “as though two wrong bits of film had been joined together”. And a woman is “saddened by the inability to life to match itself to the grandeur of her needs”. An astute observer, Mary Hocking allows readers to peer into many characters’ lives and, even when lonely and isolated, one is comforted by tea and toast, currant buns and treacle puddings, shawls and cup-cakes.
Riad Sattouf’s L’arabe du future/The Arabe of the Future (2014) considers the artist’s early childhood, years spent in France and Libya and Syria. The colour palette is bold, with a single colour tinting the panels for chunks of pages, just as Riad moves from starkly different environments over the years. The boy’s experiences are sometimes visceral and other times philosophical; sometimes he gets pounded by his cousins and sometimes he admires various birds and savours mulberries. Most of the panels include both context above and dialogue below, which keeps readers informed and engaged. And the sensory detail provided, whether the nostalgia which the adults in his life attach to specific foods or landscapes, or the smell of relatives’ clothing, invites readers to participate in the story beyond the page and panel. Like Marcelino Truong, Marjane Satrapi and Lorina Mapa, Riad Sattouf pulls readers into his childhood, which he continues to explore in another three volumes: I’ll definitely read on!
I’m impressed with your determination to read some books in French. I think it would feel too slow going for me. For now i’ll stick with school notices and emails. 🙂
That’s exactly it: it’s not impossible, it’s just sooo slooow. I haven’t done the math to compare, but reading 20 pages in a graphic novel seems like a major commitment! At least I’m not always reading middle-grade stuff anymore. It was hard to keep motivated when the big events were getting braces and getting detention.
That’s quite a bold title, The Arab of the Future, to describe a book about the artist’s own childhood. Is it a kind of ironic comment on the way he’s seen in France, or is there some other meaning behind it? As for recent recommendations, I just read a Norwegian novel called Paradise Rot, about a young college student who experiences a sexual awakening and simultaneously seems to be kind of merging with her roommate and with her apartment. It’s very strange but I’d recommend it.
Isn’t it?! I came across his name in an older issue of Lire, and the title grabbed my attention straight off. (Well, also because it’s easy to translate, and my French language skills aren’t stellar!) His father has some very strong opinions about identity and national pride. The narrator is still quite young in this volume, so it’s hard to get a completely clear picture of all this, but I would say that his father intends it seriously but that the author intends it ironically in the larger context of his coming-of-age and growing understanding and maturity (which presumably is better understood after one has read all four volumes).
Thank you for the reading rec. I’m intrigued. And you probably already know that I’m going to say I’m on the hold list (probably a month’s wait – unless it’s so strange that other readers return their copies before they are due)!
Recent recommended reads? Just finished Olivia Laing’s To The River and it was mega! 😀
Oooooh, good to know. That’s one I’ve had in mind, but just loosely, so it’s good to have a more serious reason to pursue it. Have you read Sergei Dovlatov? Maybe that’s an obvious question, like asking whether you has read Dostoyevsky? But I only recently “discovered” him, browsing in the Ds.
Yes, just the one – but I would like to read more!
https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/emotional-baggage/
Thanks so much for the link! And I’m glad it’s not a silly question. I’ve only read The Zone (one of the three from the same press and also relatively short, about 190 pages, and also a hybrid of non-fiction and fiction). If you enjoyed The Suitcase that much, I have a feeling you’ll enjoy the others just as much (and The Zone is not as grim as one might think, not that you are scared off by bleak subject matter). It’s also interesting that so many commenters on your 2016 post have enjoyed so many of his other books, clearly a writer to explore in detail.