Mariapia Veladiano - A Life Apart

This is an elegant and quite engaging short first novel about a physically 'tainted' young girl who is attempting to come to terms with her apparently extreme ugliness and the secret history behind her mother's chronic depression. Some of this book is very well-written and while overall ultimately it feels a little slight, it has some beautifully observed moments that reminded me of incidents related to people with mental illness in my own life that rang absolutely true. A promising debut and a recipient of many awards in its native Italy that reads well in translation I enjoyed this, if not immensely, then at least a fair amount.

Here is a review from The Irish Times that led me to the work and here is a link to the publishing house MacLehose press

Donal Ryan - 'The Spinning Heart'

Having recently been nominated for the Booker Prize, 'The Spinning Heart' has garnered a lot of praise of late and deservedly so. The fact that the book was initially rejected by 50 publishers is surprising in the extreme - I was hooked right from page 1.

The story is set in small-town, rural Ireland and each chapter is told solely from the point of view of one of the town's inhabitants. The story that pieces itself together over the course of the book is massively compelling and puts paid to any fears that this is just some literary parlour trick.

In its mere 150 pages there exists here a brilliantly described, bittersweet universe and an angry polemic against the greed that has brought most of Europe to its knees. There is much more going on than just raw invective however - Ryan's ear for ribald, naturalistic speech is magnificent and frequently hilarious. On reading it I was instantly reminded of some of the more colourful and somewhat tragic characters of my youth growing up in small-town North Cork and at times I was not sure whether to laugh or cry in response to some of the stories contained within. The interior dialogues are at once both hilarious and gorgeously poetic. There is also hope I would say in its pages as well as deep, deep sorrow.

If an established writer had written this it may well have been acclaimed as a masterpiece, but the fact that it is a first novel is staggering. I look forward massively to reading more from Ryan in the future and would hugely recommend this to all readers.

Here is an interview with the author.

Karen Black RIP

 

I was saddened to hear Karen Black passed away a few days ago (obituary here). She worked with amany of the finest directors of the American 'New Wave' and was usually an odd but particular presence in any film I have seen her in at least. She is probably most famous for her part in 'Five Easy Pieces' opposite Jack Nicholson and was somewhat typecast as a troubled, dumb blonde in her heyday. I remember as a teenager first seeing her and being at once sympathetic to her vulnerabilities, and lazy eye, but also being weirdly repulsed by her for some reason. She certainly made a lasting impression anyhow and this weekend I decided to give one of her films a watch, 'Night of the Locust' from John Schlesinger, 1975, and my what a film it is. It must be one of the darkest representations of Hollywood ever made, almost Jodorowskian at times, like a proto 'Mulholland Dr.' and full of Freudian undertones relative to 'Civilization and its Discontents'. I have never seen anything quite like it - I hugely recommend it to lovers of the surreal and bizarre and Karen Black - fare thee well.

"Another Sky" & "À Perdre la Raison"

Watched these two films recently and both share a common theme of sorts - a spiritual search for personal peace in Morocco by 2 young European women in the throes of an emotional crisis. 'Another Sky' is a 1954 British film written and directed by the Hollywood-blacklisted Gavin Lambert and it's a supremely accomplished film on the emerging sexuality of a young British woman arriving in Morocco to work as a companion to a wealthy English expat woman. During the course of the film, which is gorgeously shot by Walter Lassaly, the young girl falls in love with an itinerant musician and must make a decision whether to abandon her comfortable known existence or to embrace life in the dusty Moroccan wilderness. It's a fascinating piece of mature film-making for its time and is hugely deserving of a wider audience I'd say.

'À Perdre la Raison', clumsily entitled 'Our Children' for the English release, is a masterful French film from 2012 by Joachim Lafosse that is based on a true story about a young woman who marries a Moroccan man with a secret whose life is intricately linked with a wealthy French benefactor. As they raise a family their living situation eventually becomes problematic and the chronically depressed woman finds herself yearning for Morocco and a simpler life. Unfortunately she cannot escape her life in Europe and is finally driven to extreme measures by her mental condition. The performances are all brilliant and Émilie Dequenne in particular is spellbinding. 

In both films the clash between the European and North African cultures is dealt with in an ambiguous, unhistrionic way and both films, although massively different in tone and style, have a lot to offer. Both I would recommend very highly indeed.