Mouroir
Mouroir
by Breyten Breytenbach
250 pages
Literary Fiction
Archipelago Books (April 1, 2009)
Breyten Breytenbach is not a man who stays away from causing a wave or making a ripple. But he seems more likely to be driven toward throwing himself into the water as a cannon ball to get things rolling. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa. While attending University of Cape Town he became a committed opponent to apartheid. When he was just under twenty he moved to France. When he went to South Africa for a visit he was captured and imprisoned for 7 years under the Terrorism Act, that is when he wrote The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist. Currently he divides his time between the US, Europe and Africa and is a professor of the graduate level creative writing at New York University. He is a poet, writer, painter and activist, he is known as "South Africa's most important poet of the sixties".
After reading Moriour I can see why he and his writing was important during that time. A time when race issues were flaming and life in South Africa was disjointed and hard. He does not write inside a neat box making sure that his readers understand every nuance and intonation. He concentrates on the message, but not wrapping it up pretty or even simply. Several times throughout the reading I would read a page and wonder what happened. I figured out soon that I was not meant to understand everything, just to gloat on the beauty of the richness in his plump words. If you enjoy artistic writing, poetic prose and an author who writes with a voice full of wisdom then for you Mouroir is a must read. You too will become captivated in its dream-like scenes and sequences, which will surround you even after the book is placed back on the shelf happily read.
I will leave you with a quote:
"For a long time the unfinished story haunted me. I wanted to be able to complete it because I was keen to fit it in with the other writings, get my characters in perspective, fill my notebook so as to be able to hand it in. One doesn't get any younger. The flesh starts riding you bareback, drags you down towards the sods" (p. 237)
(quote from Advanced Reading Copy, final book my contain changes and a different page listing)
Orbis Terrarum Challenge: 2009 South African Author
The Vanishing Moon
Title: The Vanishing Moon
Author: Joseph Coulson
Pages: 330
Yearly Count: 42
(5 for july blowout)
I know that a book is extremely well written when I have no interest in the subject matter prior to picking up the book, but as soon as I read the first page the author grips me. The Vanishing Moon is a novel of individuals and their effects on each other. The choices that are made cause all of those close by to suffer or enjoy depending on the choice. I loved this book. The writing is superb. Joseph Coulson puts together words to make sentences that poor the feeling onto the pages so that the reader can slurp it all up. Coulson is incredible, this is his first novel, and I am a true believer!
The Vanishing Moon is about one family, the Tollmans, and those they come in contact with over three generations. Spanning from the time of the Depression and World War to the times of hippies and the Vietnam War. Stephen, the middle brother is the main protagonist. So much happens in this book, and I'd hate to give anything away, but know this: life does not take it easy on the Tollmans, but their resiliency should astonish anyone. This is a story of suffering, pride, family ties (and the lack of them), love, love lost and most of all personal battles and their effects on their family.
The character development is the major punch in this one, and that is how it should be (according to me).Each person is defined and described, so that the reader truly feels completely connected. It really amazed me that Coulson really told a story, a well developed, deep tale that, I believe, will not be overlooked. Anyone can write about what I am interested in, and since I already care I am motivated to read it. But to introduce me to something that I didn't know I cared about until Coulson wrote it, that shows talent. This book was meant to be a classic, really it is that good. The Vanishing Moon, by Joseph Coulson comes with my highest recommendation. I loved it.
Dreams and Stones
Title: Dreams and Stones
Author: Magdalena Tulli
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Pages: 110
Yearly Count: 27
Architecture, dreams, life, lines and asphalt is where Magdalena Tulli takes the readers of Dreams and Stones. Along for the ride of a city, where the stones of reality will fall, but only the dreams survive. Life will always be imperfect, but dreams they can be what you make of them.
Magdalena Tulli could take the most hideously boring subject and write beautiful sentences. I adore her writing, it is deep, intense and ambiguous. She dares to go places that her readers may not be able to follow, yet she fear not as she takes them there. Dreams and Stones is a balance between the mystical dream world and the harsh reality of life. Life is too real, dreams are too far gone. I could drool over this book, there are certain key sentences which I will share, that might as well be screaming "I CAN'T BELIEVE NO ONE HAS WRITTEN ME YET!!!!", but she does, and does it with ease and a tenderness that willingly ushers the reader into a new place.
In saying all that, I can come clean and say that a lot of her writing was very deep for me, or just too hard for me to grasp. I love strange and weird and unsettling, however I am not fully able to comprehend what was hard for me about this book. Tulli's writing is incredible, yet many times I just had no idea where she had taken me and what she was writing about. I felt as though it were poetry in form of prose, which would make sense because so much of poetry is how it speaks to the individual, therefore making poetry on the hard-to-understand side sometimes. Throughout the book I was rocked out of my seat with her writing, others I was only holding on by a molecule. It could be that it was too philosophical for me, I am not sure.
The writing, it is heaven though, here are two quotes from the book:
Eventually the day came when the sofas were chopped up for firewood; a stray shell released the letters from their drawers. Paper turned to ashes, windowpanes shattered, door frames and tiled stoves were smashed to pieces. But this too failed to stop the pain. For pain does not belong to those who experience it but rather they belong to it (p. 71).
But their brightness always arises from darkness and their beauty from horror. The tangle of dreams, untouched by pruning shears, fills the whole world; it can even be said that it is the world and that the inhabitants of the city - along with their houses, their beds, their blankets, their recollections and their unanswerable questions- are only necessary for the dreams to be dreamed.
Only for dreams to be dreamed? What about maintaining order in the world? What about polishing floors, making repairs? Surely the reason why people sleep at night is to gather strength for the labors of the day? (p. 78).
If you have read this book, leave a comment with the link to your review...I'd love to link to it!
Sarajevo Marlboro
Title: Sarajevo Marlboro
Author: Miljenko Jergovic
Publisher: Archipelago books
Pages: 195
Yearly Count: 22
I like books about all different countries, but books about countries during wartime many times either are filled with all the gore and no character development and the rest are obviously written by either someone who is trying to protect the reader from any wartime reality, or he/she has no idea of the devastation of a war-zone.
Sarajevo Marlboro however is one of those that I believe has the perfect amount of character development, and the author allows the characters to analyze the wartime situation with truth and real feelings. To be honest I don't know a lot about the situation in Sarajevo in the mid 90's, and I don't know much about it now, but I felt that I got a glimpse of accurate social history through Sarajevo Marlboro.
Miljenko Jergovic creates 29 short stories during the time of war (Serbs, Croats and Muslims). The humans, real citizens, they were the focus, humanity was centre stage and war was exploding all around them as they lived on, or did not. I was captivated because I admired their strength, determination and perseverance. It is through them Jergovic depicts the scene and the gruesome tale of war. Weather you believe in war, or don't it is happening currently and has been going on all over for generations and generations. This for me was the human side, the side that often lies hidden under death tolls and arguments as to if there really should be a war or not. The portrayal of humanity, from so many different perspectives is demonstrated in Sarajevo Marlboro. Since the author chose to jump from this life to that, and this family to that you feel like you are allowed in, and become part of them for the time when Jergovic is telling their story, they engulf you, you care about them you fear for them, you grieve for them, and you hope for a better future for those who have now become your friends.
For me personally the way Jergovic chose to write these stories made the book, if he would have tried to encapsulate the entire picture of devastation in one shot, or the horror of war in just one image there would have been no way that a person who had not been there would be able to tolerate reading the gruesomeness of the truth. Because he chose to drop the reader in on 29 different families, 29 different situations, and 29 different glimpses of the war it felt broken up enough to allow the terror to enter in bit by bit. All the stories together form a whole, they are a complete and gruesome picture of war, but in the eyes of the people there is also so much hope, and life that it is somehow made more bearable. I saw their determination to live, and dreams of a different future.
Here is a little excerpt from the inside cover about the author Miljenko Jergovic:
"Croatian by birth, Jergovic spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war. A dazzling storyteller, he brings a profoundly human, razor-sharp understanding of the fate of the city's young Muslims, Croats, Serbs with a subterranean humor and profoundly personal vision. Their offbeat lives and daily dramas in the foreground, the killing zone in the background."
I loved this book, and can't wait to get another one of Miljenko Jergovic's titles in my hands. I am captivated by his writing style and the heart that is is obvious that he has for his people.
Moving Parts
Title: Moving Parts
Author: Magdalena Tulli
Publisher: archipelago books
Pages: 133
Finished Reading: 13th, April, 2008
Yearly Count:16
Moving Parts is an incredible, truly insightful novel in which the narrator looses control of his story. What? Yes! He becomes a character and cannot get out of the view of the reader. This is not a book to breeze though, it is jam packed full of brilliant quotes and stunning writing. The concept of this novel, and the storyline are completely unlike anything that I have read before. The depth in language use and parts of speech was over my head many times, but a lover of grammar would fall in love with the way words such as "predicate" and "parts of speech" are woven into regular everyday language, which the author does with ease.
While reading the word choice and use of certain phrases I could not help but to feel that I was missing out, that it was incredibly vast and I was only drinking from the surface. If you are a person who loves to think, who loves incredible well-thought deep quotes and an intense knowledge of language captivates you, this is your book. Read it and you will love it. It will speak to you and drive you to a deeper understanding about the other books that you love to read. It will guide you through the feelings characters suffer in being written about, and those that narrators must endure in order to tell their story (even if they don't want to), it will help you know more about the concept of a novel, in which all is created...but by whom? Who is in charge of these books that we read, who leads the reader? How would it be if things were not the way they should be in a novel, if the characters did not follow what the narrator asked of them, if past and future were slowly blurred and confusion was the key theme of the story? Read Moving Parts by Magdalena Tulli and you will surely be submersed in this fictional chaos of writing and will be taken to a deeper understanding of our current idea: a fictional novel, in which nothing really exists, except in our minds, our desires and on the paper.
Quotes from Moving Parts:
"All he can do, and that only to a certain degree, is to govern grammatical forms, an essential element, especially as open space, of their own accord taking on the forms of the future tense, without any obligations" (p.26).
"The parts, always the same ones, wait like traps into which new characters will continue to fall, irrespective of their own wishes, promises, and misgivings" (p. 62).
"They even tried to joke about this process, but their jokes were not entirely successful; they were not funny enough for them to convince themselves that they were sagely beyond the reach of grammar. And so in the end, exhausted by the anticipation of leaving and by visions of an uncertain future, they changed the subject, returning to a certain betrayal, because betrayal was at least something they were capable of understanding" (p. 95).
" Hardly anything is possible any longer. And no truth will appear until the secure forms of the past tense impose order" (p. 132).
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