An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector, translated by Stefan Tobler

3/5 stars

What's it about? Lóri, a reclusive teacher, undergoes a transformation to embrace life and love under the tutelage of philosophy professor Ulisses. An introspective, romantic awakening.

How’d I find it? I recently went to Portugal and have been amassing works originally written in Portuguese to keep the vacation going. This book was a recent pick by Catherine Lacey’s Irregular Book Club.

Who will enjoy this book? If you enjoyed the feel of The Lover by Marguerite Duras or the 2009 film An Education, you might like this one.

What stood out? This being my first taste of Lispector’s work, I admit that I struggled to spend so many pages in the company of tedious Lóri. She may be on a journey to find joy, but this reader was rooting for her to shed some gender binaries. Why are we listening to Ulisses? That said, the writing is outstanding, and I understand why people worship at the altar of Lispector. I shall try another!

Which line made me feel something? “The heart must present itself alone to the Nothing and alone beat out in silence its palpitations in the shadows. You can only sense your own heart in your ears. When it presents itself completely naked, it’s not even communication, it’s submission. For we were only made for the little silence, not for the silence of the stars.”

Dayspring by Anthony Oliveira

3/5 stars

What's it about? In this hybrid work of poetry, memoir, and gospel, Oliveira proffers a biblical retelling from the perspective of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Let me tell you: Jesus is horny.

How’d I find it? The staff recommendations shelf at Powell’s strikes again!

Who will enjoy this book? Those who relished On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong will appreciate Dayspring’s sensuality and Oliveira’s way with language.

What stood out? Dayspring is an ambitious book, inventing its form as it spools out in fragments of existing texts, Bible verse, poems, and prose. The story follows no clear chronology, but that matters little—Dayspring deals in mysteries greater than time. Oliveira explores faith, fate, and identity in a gritty love story haunted by intolerance and violence. Our speaker moons over a charming and unabashedly queer Jesus character (whose dialogue is printed in a commanding red), knowing that his inevitable death makes a future impossible. The many sex scenes read real, though phrases like “god’s seed” and “your liquid communion” veer into corny territory. Oliveira includes no references to explain the many allusions to history, mythology, religion, and pop culture that pepper his pages. You get it or you don’t.

Which line made me feel something? “I know how horrible it is to have history notice you out of the corner of its eye”

Last Day by Domenica Ruta

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I like an end of the world yarn, and Last Day seemed to fit the bill. I borrowed a copy from Multnomah County Library.

Why not 3 or more stars? A large cast of characters and rituals populate Ruta’s novel centered on the last Last Day, a global holiday on May 27th in which everyone celebrates the world possibly ending. Like an anthology film à la New Year’s Eve or Love Actually, this sweetly earnest story is stitched together with suspiciously convenient links between characters. And there are multiple shamrock tattoos.

Erasure by Percival Everett

4/5 stars

What's it about? Semi-successful writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison angrily scrawls a parody of publishing’s taste for bestsellers simmered in racial stereotype—then watches in horror as his literary career starts to bloom. Meanwhile, family emergencies call him home to Washington, DC to tend to his aging mother.

How’d I find it? I rewatched American Fiction and wanted to read the source material.

Who will enjoy this book? If you like Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, give Erasure a try.

What stood out? Erasure is smart and satisfying, and keeps the reader chuckling as Everett tackles heavy subjects. Intercut into the story are snippets of Monk’s creative process: morsels of writing, lists, criticism. Everett walks the line between absurdity and profundity like it’s easy.

Which line made me feel something? Monk on his hobby: “But the wood, the feel of it, the smell of it, the weight of it. It was so much more real than words. The wood was so simple. Dammit, a table was a table was a table.”

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

3/5 stars

What's it about? The erratic and brilliant Cassandra Edwards abandons her thesis at Berkeley to sabotage her twin sister’s surprise wedding, but Cassie’s unhappiness soon overpowers the homecoming. A coming-of-age novel about self-acceptance and family.

How’d I find it? I can’t miss the opportunity to stock up when New York Review Books has a sale.

Who will enjoy this book? Baker renders in minute detail the family ranch, the detached father with a glass of brandy glued to his hand, and the prim grandmother who just wants a proper wedding. Her insular domestic world recalls Anne Tyler.

What stood out? The book is broken into three parts, a middle section from sister Judith’s perspective sandwiched between two excursions through Cassie’s glorious mind. Cassie is an annihilating force, unable to admit her own desires and move forward in life. I enjoyed wallowing in her delusion, improved as they are by the character’s wit and curiosity.

Which line made me feel something? The twins drink far too much their first night back together: “Morning’s a side effect. I can’t acknowledge it until it scalds my eyeballs.”

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Michael Glenny

5/5 stars

What's it about? The devil and his entourage descend on Moscow and wreak havoc. Margarita becomes entangled in Satan’s doings in order to save her beloved master, who’s devoted his life to writing a book about Pontius Pilate. Bulgakov pokes at the elitists of 1920s Russia in a satire that delivers a very good time.

How’d I find it? A long ago boyfriend once encouraged me to read this book, and I carried this copy around with me for at least ten years before finally cracking the cover. And I’m so glad I did.

Who will enjoy this book? If you appreciate Kundera or Kafka, you’ll want to give this a try.

What stood out? The Master and Margarita is ripe with absurdity and humor; I particularly enjoyed the nude vampire performing chores and Satan’s ball, not least because Margarita leans fully into her new witchiness. The chapters on Pontius Pilate and the execution of Jesus contain spellbinding writing that will linger with the reader and get one on Margarita’s side all the more.

Which line made me feel something? I laughed out loud at this exclamation of Margarita’s, which loses its strangeness in later translations: “Hurray for the cream!” It’s up to you to read that chapter and enjoy it just as much.

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken

5/5 stars

What's it about? An undead woman processes her losses, both physical (her body is literally falling apart) and otherwise, in an apocalyptic reality. A beautiful elegy to existence as we know it.

How’d I find it? My favorite bookfluencer turned me on to this read.

Who will enjoy this book? For my fellow lovers of zombie lore, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over will scratch the itch.

What stood out? An existential zombie book that clocks in at a mere 120 pages? Count me in. De Marcken’s small masterpiece swings for the big questions—what is existence and why does it matter?—while probing the minor mysteries, like our species’ obsession with naming. You know you’re in for something special when the book starts off with this energy: “I lost my left arm today.”

Which line made me feel something? “Things in rows and ranks are mournful. Trees planted to pulp. Soldiers or their gravestones. Multiplicity and order reveal sameness and variation. The limitations of our individuality. That we can be felled.”

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? The reliable East City Bookshop recommended McConagy’s first novel Migrations, a book I devoured in record time, so I am always excited to see this Australian author’s name on a new cover.

Why not 3 or more stars? How I wanted to love Wild Dark Shore. I find mesmerizing the powerful and complicated women of McConagy’s novels, as well as the sensuality of her writing. The scaffolding simply shows too much in this one, and the unconvincing shifts in voice, chapter breaks, and melodramatic schlock (“it doesn’t matter where I end and she begins”) kept my eyes rolling.

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky

4/5 stars

What's it about? A patch of land beside a lake in the Brandenburg hills outside Berlin hosts human encounters over the course of a century. A book about time, brutality, and the geologic strata of history.

How’d I find it? The book club at Lost Avenue Books picked Visitation for its most recent discussion. Next up: Loop by Brenda Lozano, translated by Annie McDermott.

Who will enjoy this book? Reading Visitation recalls watching Zone of Interest for the first time. If you enjoyed Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, pick this one up.

What stood out? The title suits this book perfectly, as the Holocaust haunts the property where Visitation takes place. Erpenbeck embeds the relative mundanity of human concerns within the grander scope of geologic time, an effect that neuters the book’s horror. Chapters in legalese, items in a home described with their prices, dizzying repetitions of family trees—devices that unsettle and send a shudder through the reader. It’s uncomfortable yet exhilarating.

Which line made me feel something? From “The Visitor,” the chapter I most enjoyed: “She wonders whether the sentences go out looking for people to utter them or whether it’s just the opposite and the sentences simply wait for someone to come along and make use of them, and at the same time she wonders if she really doesn’t have anything better to do than wonder about such things…”

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm

4/5 stars

What's it about? I don’t quite know how to describe Malina: a love story, a rallying cry against fascism and patriarchy, a collage, an excavation of language’s limitations. Or, a writer loves Malina, her live-in partner, and Ivan, a chance encounter that became an affair, and navigates the discontent created by history and violent men. It’s an exhilarating ride.

How’d I find it? This was the most recent book club pick at the excellently curated Lost Avenue Books. Given my answer to the last question, you can imagine the lively discussion.

Who will enjoy this book? If you dug Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, you’ll want to read this.

What stood out? I admit, I was not won over by the first section of the novel, “Happy with Ivan,” in which the narrator moons over a younger man who lives a few doors down. The section part, “The Third Man,” changed my mind, launching a sequence of delirious dreams about the narrator’s father intercut with conversations with Malina. These pages are brutal, overwhelming, and intense, and Malina morphs into a threat, a malevolent presence. Bachmann evokes deportation, incest, war, rape, and sexism in raw, surreal ways. I couldn’t put it down.

Which line made me feel something? In a section formatted as a local paper’s interview with the writer: “I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression.”