Nona's Room, by Cristina Fernández Cubas

9780720619539
Peter Owen Publishers, 2017
originally published as La habitación de Nona, 2015
translated by Kathryn Phillips-Miles and Simon Deefholts
159 pp

paperback

"It’s as if she’s not seeing the same thing as everyone else”
                    --- "Interior With Figure" 

First, let me say thank you to the publishers who sent me this book, and especially to Maya, who had to put up with my loss of the e-copy she sent and then sent another one.   Actually, I lost it a second time because I forgot to save it before turning off my ipad, but as I was too humiliated to ask her for a third download, I bought a print copy. 

On now to Nona's Room, which is part of the "Spanish Spring" offerings of a collection called the Peter Owen World Series.  The blurb about these books reads as follows:

"Journey with us to explore outstanding contemporary literature translated into English for the first time. Read a single book in each season -- which will focus on a different country or region every time ...Read the world -- three books at a time ... 3 works of literature in 2 seasons each year from 1 country each season." 

I'm in, as it looks like this is going to be a great series; there is more info about these books here at Peter Owen's website.

Nona's Room puts together six short stories narrated by women, and it isn't long into the first story that I realized I had something unique in my hands.  The publisher's description of this collection labels these tales as "Gothic and uncanny stories," but I think a better way to describe them is to say that they're off-kilter, taking the reader right away into a strange sort of universe where he/she will have no idea what to expect at any moment.  That impression was cemented  in the first story, "Nona's Room," a tale of two sisters that is utterly mind blowing once the author turns a certain corner in the telling.  Then another surprise, with "Chatting With Old Ladies," which starts out with a woman trapped in a desperate situation who, as it turns out,  hasn't even begun to understand the meaning of either "trapped" or "desperate." This one reads like a mix of horror story and fairy tale, and I heard myself actually gasp at the ending of this one. By this time on  full alert, I moved on to what I consider to be the best story in this book, "Interior With Figure," in which a writer visiting an art museum stops to listen to a group of children giving their own interpretations of a particular painting, finding one little girl's thoughts beyond disturbing. However, it's this child, not the painting itself, that captures the writer's imagination...

by Adriano Cecioni, Interior With A Figure

"The End of Barbro" brings three sisters together to reflect on their past, while "A Fresh Start" finds a woman wanting to start all over discovering that "the present has slipped into her past;"  "A Few Days with the "Wahyes-Wahno" follows two children as they visit their aunt and uncle while their father is ill; the idyllic retreat will become something they will remember for the rest of their lives. "..a sad happiness or a happy sadness," only the reader can judge. 

The quotation with which I began this post really says it all -- "It’s as if she’s not seeing the same thing as everyone else," since it seems to me that Ms. Cubas has this rather eerie way of looking at things through a set of lenses that focus on the spaces between reflections and illusion, past and present; but most of all between borders and boundaries that we as readers don't get to see very often. It's not an easy read, and it does take a lot of active thought, but the patient reader will be highly rewarded.  And I have to say that as I turned the last page, I had to go sit and focus on more mundane things to shake off my sense of being left totally off balance.  When a book can provoke a reaction like that, it's one well worth reading. 

fiction from Spain

Island Fog, by John Vanderslice

9781935084419
Lavender Ink
288 p

paperback 

[fyi: this is not one of the books I've pegged in my search for the great American novel this year, but it's definitely one I won't forget.]

I'm going to do something I never do here which is to start with what others have said about this book.  I've seen reviews where people have stated that this collection of short stories reminds them of the writings of Poe, Conan-Doyle, Steinbeck, Hitchcock(?), Faulkner, Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson, none of which I found to be the case. The author, John Vanderslice, has a unique voice of his own, something that becomes evident while reading the first story.  I don't often read short stories except for in dark fiction/horror (which I think is the perfect vehicle for that genre), but when I do, if I can't get past the opener, I put the book down & think about maybe coming back to it sometime in the future.  That didn't happen here. And with only a few bumpy spots along the way, the strong start to this collection was reinforced by the terrific writing that continued over the course of the book.  It's a book that still haunts me after having finished it. 

There are eleven stories in this book that are united by the virtue of being set on the island of Nantucket, where  history moves from 1795 to the present. Another binding element is that the main characters in each and every story come to some sort of personal and yet disturbing revelations that leave the reader feeling just a bit off kilter afterwards, and this tone establishes itself in the first story and doesn't let up for a moment. It's also a book that is tinged with more than hints of sadness and despair.    I won't go into each and every story, but the first tale, "Guilty Look," sets that tone in a  tale about an investigation into a bank robbery, one  based on a true event (btw, don't click that link until after you've read the story),  and one that should end up leaving you with hackles raised on your neck as you realize exactly what's happening here.  My personal  favorite is "Taste,"  the story of an ex-whaling ship captain who, when faced with death on the high seas, has done what many a sailor has done in his place. Think Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea  or Owen Chase's firsthand account called The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex,  and you get the drift. Years later in 1846,  he still hasn't gotten over the incident, suffering from the equivalent of PTSD for years  and leaving his emotional trauma to manifest itself in a very bizarre, horrific and ultimately heartbreaking way. 

Five of these stories are definitely more historical in nature:  "Guilty Look" deals with a real robbery but it also incorporates the irony of the slow-building Quaker domination over all aspects of society; "King Philip's War" relives the clashes between Native Americans and white settlers in its own way; "On Cherry Street" and "Taste" center around Nantucket's whaling industry, and  "How Long Will You Tarry" raises the ugly specter of racism. The others have a more personal, less-historical flavor but are as well written as the first group of stories, although my favorites were most definitely among the first five. All of these stories manage to get into the heads of the characters -- and it is never pretty. Who would have thought that an island where the beautiful people go for pleasure would hide so much darkness? 

I'm become very leery at taking on works from a press I've never heard of, but in this case it was a gamble won. More than anything,  I loved the disturbing tone of these tales that often (especially in the last story, "Island Fog") move into the realm of the strange; the historical aspect of  this collection also appealed to me in a big way. It's definitely a book that will stay with me for a very long while. 

  

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I read this for and would like to thank TLC book tours,  and my thanks to the author for my copy. 

I'm the first of many readers, so if you'd care to follow this book as it makes the rounds, click here for  the schedule.