quick link: 12 Who Don't Agree: The battle for freedom in Putin's Russia, by Valery Panyushkin

9781609450106
Europa Editions, 2011
originally published as 12 nesolasnych,  2008
translated by Marian Schwartz
259 pp

Well, this was an oops. I didn't realize until I bought this book that it was nonfiction, but as it turns out, I started reading and couldn't put it down.  The subtitle for this book says it all.  The author features 11 people (with himself as #12) whose courage and determination for change led to a movement against the increasingly repressive measures of the Russian government. In this time of global spring, including our own Occupy Wall Street Movement, the book is extremely relevant.  Considering the politics involved, it was an intense read.  You can find my thinking about this book here.  Highly recommended.

You Deserve Nothing, by Alexander Maksik

9781609450489
Europa Editions/Tonga Books, 2011
320 pp.

"You do. The thing. Anyway."...You do the thing anyway. Yes. Yes. You do it in spite of fear. You do the thing anyway. No matter what. Because you have to. Because you know it's right. Because you believe in it. Because by not doing it you're betraying yourself."

I don't know why, but the last few books I've chosen to read have been on the dark side of reading; you know, those kinds of novels you definitely do not want to read while you're in a funk or while you're having a case of the blues or whatever (with apologies to Will Silver for that last word).  You Deserve Nothing is no exception -- it's a novel that long after you've finished reading will stay on your mind as you replay it in your head.  And to me, that is what makes a book good and rise well above the ordinary.  It is, unbelievably, Alexander Maksik's first novel, and if this is only his opening shot into the book-reading world, I can't wait for his second. 

You Deserve Nothing is a character-driven story,  told through multiple perspectives, centering around  one man, Will Silver.  Will is a 33-year old English teacher at the International Foreign School in Paris. He teaches a senior seminar in English -- a popular class where he introduces the students to existentialism in literature.  He believes that literature is "irrelevant" unless the questions which arise from it also have some impact on the reader's lives.  This point of view doesn't always sit well with the head  of the school, who feels that Silver's only job is to guide the students through literature and help them to understand it, without any challenges to their individual beliefs.  But Silver's seminar students, for the most part, love him. He's  that rare breed of teacher who lets his students know that their thoughts matter as much as those of the writers of the material he gives them.  Will finds it "the truest, rarest, sweetest thing" when the students are actively making connections and listening to each other, when there's a palpable enthusiasm among the students over what they're doing in that class, and when "they're all there together."   But at the same time, for Will, this coming alive is as he notes, all he has, and believes erroneously that  it's all that the students have as well.  Not all of Silver's students are so enchanted with him; one of his students, Ariel calls him a fake, knowing full well what's going on with him outside of class; and Colin, another member of the class,  senses something, but gives him a chance until the cracks start to show in Will's teachings.  Will battles with the strain between his public and private lives throughout the novel.

The other voices belong to  Gilad, one of Silver's seminar students, and Marie, a student at the IFS.   Gilad is the son of an American diplomat and lives a chaotic life, moving from place to place.  His father and mother live behind a facade  -- once the dinner parties are over, Gilad's father absuses his wife.  Gilad  looks up to Will in a hero-worshipping sort of way, and takes the lessons he learns about  from Will seriously, using them as a path toward his own self awareness.  Gilad sees Will as a champion for  living one's beliefs and acting accordingly, as "righteousness in a sea of ugliness"  but all too soon this will change as Gilad witnesses Will's failure to act at a crucial moment.

Marie is the beautiful daughter of wealthy parents; she avoids talking to her mother because her mother sees in her only disappointment -- she's not French enough, she doesn't dress right, and her mom leaves pictures cut out from fashion magazines on Marie's bed to make her point.  Although Marie is a student at IFS, Silver isn't one of her teachers, and Marie is highly sexually attracted to him and soon begins a relationship with him -- a clandestine one, or so Will believes. Her view of Will changes as  she watches Will lapse into inertia and become a "phantom," little by little, making all the right noises during a crisis, but ultimately slipping away in the long run.

You Deserve Nothing is an amazing book. The characters are realistically portrayed; the author  is equally able to capture the intensity of  a 33 year-old man in the midst of his own existential crisis and the pettiness  of a jealous, teenaged girl.  I'm always amazed when a male author  can write a woman's character so well; to capture the inner essence of a teenage girl in the throes of her first love must have been more difficult but he pulls it off.   Then there's the  sense of place that  is so well evoked that the streets of Paris come alive. For some Paris is a magical place, the city of light as it were; for others its streets are cold and unfeeling.

If life is the sum of all the choices a person makes,  there is also a divide between the decisions one makes and the courage to act on them, and this theme is well  emphasized throughout the novel, as is its concomitant  consideration of betrayal -- to one's self or to others.   You Deserve Nothing is a highly-intelligent work, sifting through these ideas as they apply to each of the main characters and to those in the world in which they all live.  What could have been just a mundane story is elevated to a level where the reader is left with several questions and a great deal of food for thought long after the last page is turned.   I most highly recommend this book; it's one of the most thought-provoking and intelligent novels I've read in a very long while. Simply put, it's amazing.

This review is cross posted at the Europa Challenge Blog.

fiction from the U.S. 

Hangover Square, by Patrick Hamilton

9781933372068

Europa Editions, 2009
334 pp
originally published 1941

Hangover Square is only one of a long list of novels by Patrick Hamilton.  Hamilton also wrote three plays, two of which were turned into movies and may be a bit familiar:  Rope, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1948, and Gas Light, brought to the screen by George Cukor in 1944.  I've never read anything by Hamilton in the past, but after reading Hangover Square, that will not be the case in the future.  It was, in a word, amazing, and I can't remember reading anything even remotely similar.   The book examines one man's  tenuous hold on reality that is threatened by obsession, alcohol and illness.  It reads a bit on the noir side and would be equally good for readers who like that genre and  readers of literary fiction.

Opening Christmas of 1938, continuing on through 1939, the scene is Earl's Court, a small neighborhood on the seamier side of London. A small hotel room in Earl's Court is home to George Harvey Bone, the main character is this story.  Since his schooldays, George has had what he calls his "dead moods," where all of a sudden everything changes from normal to where "there was only himself -- his dreary, numbed, dead self."  George suffers from schizophrenia, and lately gets a "click" in his head when he's about to change. He goes into a state where it's like being at a movie where the soundtrack is missing, where people move about and do their thing but he's unaware of them. In this mode that he is surprisingly the most rational, a different George Harvey Bone, whose thoughts are clear as day.  He has trouble remembering what he was doing beforehand,  and he doesn't remember his actions or thoughts during these  dead moods when he comes out of them.  However, his main focus while in this state is trying to remember that there's something to be done -- and that is to kill Netta. 

George has an overpowering yet unrequited sexual obsession with the beautiful Netta --  she gets him to the point where "he could hardly breathe or think, in which he was choked by the mist of his sensous anguish."  She, on the other hand, uses him shamelessly when she needs money, or for other self-serving purposes.  For her, George is repellent; he's a pest, the butt of her set's cruel jokes, but he buys the booze and buys her dinner.   Time after time George tries to stay away from her, but he always comes back, even after realizing the truth about Netta, and even after a low and devastating blow during a trip to Brighton that would have sent a normal man packing.  He literally cannot help himself, even though his infatuation brings him only pain, loneliness and severe depression.

When he's not in a dead mood, George is  quiet, polite and sensitive, finds solace in a white cat and David Copperfield.  Netta and her friends  out  in the bars and pubs of  Earl's Court, where life is generally based on daily rounds of excessive drinking:

"When you met in the morning, all you talked about was last night -- how "blind"' you were, how "blind" Mickey was, my God you bet he had a hangover. ("Taking a little stroll round Hangover Square" -- that was Mickey's crack.)...And when you had a lot more to drink you felt fine again, and went crashing round to lunch upstairs at the Black Hart (the table by the fire) where you ragged the pale waiter and called attention to yourselves."

 George also drinks  heavily, although he's not pleased with himself and even notes that it's likely at the bottom of much of his unhappiness.  He  does the rounds of the pubs to be with Netta and drinks to mask his loneliness and pain of the hopelessness of the situation.   It's during these bouts of drinking when Netta and her friend Peter discuss their admiration of Hitler and Facism and their view of Chamberlain as a hero, views shared by many during this time period.    While wasting their days drinking,  rambling on about politics and denying the possibility of another war, George in his dead-mood time disagrees -- realizing that they had "turned their ignominious desires into beliefs."

But it's only during these dead moods  that he can cope with his obsession and make plans to escape it.  He picks up the thread of killing Netta each time, and imagines himself doing the deed and going off to Maidenhead, site of an earlier, happier time in his life.  George is not normally prone to violence, and his dead-mood episodes allows him to imagine things he would never otherwise consider.   There is no question that at some point George's divided self is going to overcome him, and  as the blurb on the cover notes, "one part of George must win out over the other, but which will it be?"  Sadly, this is but a  bare-bones outline; to give away any more would be to wreck it for others.

Hangover Square is an amazing book. While an easy book to read, it was a bit personally disquieting, not so much because of the ending but because I was so divided in my sympathies at the end.  It's one of those stories that makes you question your thinking, and I believe that the author had to have done this on purpose.  Once in a while you read one of those rare books where you're emotionally floored at the end; this is one of those.  There is absolutely nothing feel good or happy between the covers of this book, yet I was totally compelled to read it in one sitting -- it's that good.   George Harvey Bone and Netta will keep you turning pages, but in and among that story there is also a look at  social class, the interwar generation and their misguided ideologies, and the utter waste of productive, good lives as a period of peace is about to explode into a dark time of war.   I highly recommend this novel -- but don't read it while you're depressed.  It's one of my favorite reads for 2011.

posted also at the Europa Challenge Blog. 

my first post in the Europa Challenge

I've just posted my first review on the Europa Challenge Blog.  My inaugural entry is Total Chaos, by Jean-Claude Izzo, a novel of neo-noir crime fiction.  If you're interested, you can click the link and go on over. My focus throughout the challenge will be crime fiction since it's my favorite genre, although there are multiple participants who are reading every genre represented via Europa Editions -- in short, something for everyone. 

My review is also cross-posted at the crime portion of this reading journal.  If you like crime fiction and haven't been there, please go take a look. It's mostly my thoughts on various translated novels, especially from Scandinavia, but there are other countries represented as well.

Anyway, the first hurdle has been crossed, and my next entry will be Izzo's second novel in the series, Chourmo.

The Europa Challenge -- Like I need to add another one!

I received an email a few days ago that this challenge was going on, and realized that "hey! I have tons of books from Europa Editions!" and decided to give it a go.

There is a special blog just for the challenge, and there you will see that the blog (and the challenge) were started by "two friends and fans of the publisher Europa Editions, Marie and Liberty. Marie is a librarian and book blogger at Boston Bibliophile.com; Liberty is a bookseller and book-lover. Neither Liberty nor Marie is employed by Europa and the blog is a fan project and not formally affiliated with Europa Editions, which has nonetheless graciously provided us with a list of their books and the use of their logo."

As if I need to involve myself in another challenge, but what the heck. I'll be posting my reviews here or at the Crime Segments (because many of my Europa books are crime fiction) and providing a cross-link over at the challenge blog site.  If you aren't familiar with Europa Editions, you can click here for their main website.  They offer quality literature from all over the world and I've long been a huge fan (and studious collector) of their books.