contemporary interlude: Song for an Approaching Storm, by Peter Fröberg Idling

9781782270614
Pushkin Press, 2015
(originally published 2012 as Sång till den storm som ska komma)
translated by Peter Graves
328 pp

paperback

I don't actually remember why I bought this novel but I'm certainly happy  that I did. It is a book that reminds me why I love small presses like Pushkin --  they don't have to take a mass-market approach and so have the space and flexibility to publish some excellent fiction. And when I say excellent, I mean it - considering that this is the author's debut novel, he's done a great job here. For people like myself, who are always on the lookout for intelligent historical fiction that rises above much of what's available on the mass market these days,   Song for an Approaching Storm is perfect -- it's intelligent, interweaves real historical events, and captures only a tiny, but extremely important slice of time on the world stage. 

 The novel transports the reader to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, just prior to, during and after the country' first election in 1955.  It is an uneasy time; it hasn't been too long since Cambodia became an independent nation and political tensions are at an all-time high. The novel is related from three different points of view: first, from Saloth Sar, who will later go on to become the notorious Pol Pot ; Cambodia's deputy prime minister Sam Sary  takes the second part, while the woman who intersects both of their lives, Somaly (based on the real-life Soeung Son Maly)   gets the final say.  While I'm not going to go into this book in any great detail, I think the way Idling structured this novel was brilliant, affording more of a three-dimensional approach from three very different people.  Each helps to underline the issues that existed in this recently-independent nation -- for example, Sar's narrative opens onto a clandestine meeting with a small circle of fellow Communists who are stuck between party rhetoric and actual practice.  Each of the three points of view have to do with the future -- as Sary notes, 

"After having been fixated on the past -- the golden age, injustices and so on -- the nation is now suddenly ready to turn and face what is to come." 

For all three of these people, "what is to come" is of paramount importance, both personally and in the context of a Cambodia free of its former masters.

The writing is absolutely beautiful, and the book is very easy to read &  understand. Even if you know absolutely nothing about Cambodia's history, there's no way you can fail to pick up the nuances of this tumultuous period of time since the author makes things very clear. On my part, reading Song for An Approaching Storm led me to Philip Short's so-far most excellent Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, in which he uncovers the idealist Saloth Sar and slowly but thoroughly maps his eventual change as he becomes the genocidal  Pol Pot.  I'm not saying this will happen to everyone, but, well, I'm kind of a nerd so I was interested enough to buy a copy.

All I can say is that Song for An Approaching Storm is a most excellent novel, but honestly, it's probably not one of those books that's going to find its way to the general public. I can certainly recommend it to readers of serious historical fiction and to people who may be interested in the topic; I think it's one of the most intelligent novels I've read in a very long time.  To reuse the cliché, I simply couldn't put it down. 

contemporary reading: Wolf Winter, by Cecilia Ekbäck

9781602862524
Weinstein Books
370 pp
(hardcover)

The further I got into Wolf Winter the more I realized that  in many ways this book has the same sort of feel as  Hannah Kent's outstanding Burial Rites.  The most obvious parallel between the two is found in how people managed to live in remote areas and survive in unforgiving conditions. They are also both historical novels, and there is a murder in both as well.  But Wolf Winter is no repeat of Burial Rites -- it is definitely very different.

 Set in Swedish Lapland in 1717, the story, which is related through three different points of view,  centers on a  family from the Finnish coast that for personal reasons, trades homesteads with an uncle and settles on the isolated mountain of Blackåsen in Sweden. There are other homesteads on the mountain, but the people in this family -- Paavo Ranta, his wife Maija and their two daughters Frederika and Dorotea -- have their work cut out for them in order to survive, especially in the midst of a "wolf winter,"

"...the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal...Mortal and alone." 

 Arriving at Blackåsen near midsummer, fourteen year-old Frederika and her six-year-old sister Dorotea are  tasked right away with taking the family's goats out to graze.  Climbing the hill, Frederika stumbles upon a man's dead body. Her mother Maija knows that the man must "belong somewhere" among the handful of other settlers on the mountain, and eventually comes across someone who knew him. Seeking out the others, she learns that the dead man is Eriksson, and after one look at him, one settler comes to the somewhat cryptic conclusion that "The mountain took him." Maija can tell that he did not die from injuries from either wolves or bears -- she realizes that this was human agency at work.  Word filters down from the mountain to bishop of the parish, who orders the local priest to find out what happened and report back to him; later he will also have to deal with a suicide/murder.  What becomes abundantly clear is that Blackåsen is a place full of secrets -- including the whereabouts of two children and an entire family who had earlier disappeared.  However,  finding the answers to these mysteries will have to take second place behind the matter of survival during this incredibly severe winter, which in this family's case is made worse by the fact that Paavo has gone back to the coast to find work when the need arises, leaving Maija and her daughters to fend for themselves.  As the author notes in an interview that accompanies this edition of the book (a perk from Indiespensable), a 'wolf winter' has another meaning --

"...it's also the expression we use to describe the period in a human being's life that is the worst period, after an illness, or during an illness or upon the loss of somebody you love. Or something that confirms your mortality and makes you feel at the end of the day that we are alone." 

Maija has no choice -- she must survive and she must ensure the survival of her daughters as well. As she will discover, despite what ever else is happening around them, and despite her fear, she has no choice but to go on.  As time goes on, she faces an overwhelming number of  difficulties, not all due to the storm.

Aside from Maija's struggle to keep her family alive in this bleak and isolated environment, the historical  aspects of this book kept me reading, especially those pertaining to religion. For example, by law,  anyone not already a Christian has been required to become one under an edict of enforced Christianization --  in this case, the Lapp (Sami) people (pictured above), are now forbidden by law to consult with their spirits via their shaman. It is a law that they ignore among themselves; they have long come to their shaman who intercedes on their behalf with the spirits to guarantee safe crossing.  Blackåsen is a sacred and magical space for one such group, and even Frederika is beginning to discover that the mountain is a living thing that is trying to communicate with her.

Wolf Winter immerses the reader into the time period right away.  The sense of place that is evoked through this author's writing is beyond excellent.  The mystery behind Eriksson's death is a good one, as is the mystery behind the metaphorical wall of silence that isolates Maija and leaves her outside of the circle of  fellow homesteaders on Blackåsen. For  me the very best parts of this book were found in the  real-world situations (the mix of the family's survival, politics, religion, the effects on the people of the ongoing war); the magical realism/supernatural elements were also well incorporated to a point before they started to become just plain distracting from the rest of the real-world story.  In my opinion, Wolf Winter without all of the supernatural stuff would have made for a much better novel, but in making the choice to settle the family on Blackåsen, I can understand why so much of it was used here.

For me, Wolf Winter is a liked it, didn't love it kind of novel -- it's something I probably wouldn't have chosen on my own and I probably wouldn't have even considered reading it except for the fact that it was an Indiespensable selection.  It seems like another book designed to catch as many readers as possible, incorporating the 14-year old girl who hears and sees things the others don't, the murder mystery, the supernatural, etc.  ... I even saw it listed as "Nordic Noir" somewhere. Reading past all of that, the book is a good historical fiction novel and I'd recommend it as such.

*The Book About Blanche and Marie, by Per Olov Enquist

9781585678884
The Overlook Press, 2006
originally published as Boken om Blanche och Marie, 2004
translated by Tiina Nunnally
softcover

"I think if we put all of our loves together, I mean my loves and Marie's, then an image of life itself would emerge, in the spaces in between."

The Marie in this book, a blend of historical fact and outright fiction, is Marie Skłodowska Curie, a scientist who, with her husband Pierre, discovered the elements polonium and radium, and  twice won the Nobel Prize.  Blanche refers to Blanche Wittman, who came to be Marie's assistant, after having  spent a number of years in Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris  for her "hysteria," in the care of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot.  Blanche's "cure" was based on the rather odd belief at the time in stimulating/manipulating  women's ovaries and other lady parts.  Blanche was Charcot's favorite "performer," and the cover of this novel is a piece of a famous painting by André Brouillet that shows Blanche during one of her public "treatments." 

As the novel opens, Blanche, described as a "sort of torso, though with a head,"  having undergone several amputations due to her work with radioactivity, is dead, having "died happy."  She noted this fact in one of her three notebooks, colored black, red and yellow, collectively realized as the Book of Questions.  The main question Blanche seeks to understand in her writings is that of the nature of love -- her writings were meant to be a solace to "poor Marie," who, some time after losing her husband Pierre in an accident, started up an affair with Paul Langevin, a scientist-friend of the Curies. He was five years younger and married; eventually the truth came out and a huge scandal ensued that not only ruined her reputation but almost cost her the second Nobel.  Blanche notes that her own experiences will provide Marie with "the courage to face life," and will also save her from "the inner frostbite and scientific rigor that were about to kill her and her sanity."  As the author notes regarding Blanche,

"In the Book of Questions she wants to tell her story, to summarize and compare her experiences, partially from the hysteria experiments at Salpêtrière Hospital, partially from the physical chemistry ones under the guidance of Madame Curie, in order to create in this manner a healing portrait of the nature of love, which she compared to the nature of radium radiation and hysteria."

 Blanche has lost most of two legs and an arm, and her Book of Questions is written with the remaining hand that also helps her move about in the wooden box in which she spends most of her remaining days.  The two women are both damaged and have suffered for science and for their passions.  Inside the Book of Questions is Blanche's reflections on her past, including her time at  Salpêtrière and her examination of her somewhat strange relationship with Charcot;  her contemplation of Marie's problematic romance is also part of  her investigation.  As it turns out, the question cannot be answered, since according to Blanche, "love is not something a person can understand;"  it is ultimately the investigation itself that becomes all encompassing and in a sense, life sustaining for Blanche up until the moment of her death. 

But wait -- there's more. While the title of this book might lead you to believe that what you're about to read is  a novel of historical fiction about two women, one famous, one virtually unknown,  as  you delve more deeply you come across names and events that make you realize that in and around the stories of Blanche and Marie is a cleverly-designed work about the birth of the modern world. The new century makes its entry “with blood, with confusion, with reason, ... in an attempt to step into the dark future of humanity, " only to lose its "self assurance, its optimism about progress, its arrogance..." in 1914 with the advent of World War I.  As the author explores the timeless human forces of  love and death, healing and destroying, reason and irrationality, the little blue light of radium looms in the background as a symbol.  Marie's search for understanding the power behind this element might well be viewed as an allegory of her quest to try to understand the power behind love --  both of which contain the forces of destruction and curing alike -- a sort of double-edged sword, if you will. 

 I know I've way oversimplified things, and I didn't mention several things I've marked in my notes: the continuous imagery of amputation -- of things, of memories, of people;   the relationship of science to art;   the author's story of the two-headed Pasqual Pinon whose other head was named Maria and its relevance to the overall story,  and most especially the question of why people are continually drawn to forces that have the power to maim or kill. Frankly, this book could be an entire semester's worth of study on its own so there's no real way to encapsulate everything I've read here.

 From a casual reader's perspective, The Book About Blanche and Marie is  rather difficult reading at times; but in spite of having to go back slowly through several sections, I actually ended up liking this novel.  It is also my introduction to this author's work, and it  took some time to get used to his style where he tends to step into his work with his own personal interjections about his characters, or with seemingly  strange observations that feel out of place at first, but which come to make sense later.  The repetition that exists in this novel has a purpose but until I got the hang of reading it, I'll admit I was a bit confused. If  you need to have a cut-and-dried sort of historical fiction that goes from point A to point B, you will not find it here. It's what I call a "quirky" sort of read, and I spent a lot more time on it than I had intended.  While a number of people absolutely loved this book, for me it was a beyond-good, not-quite-great novel.

fiction from Sweden