If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), 278 pages.

This labyrinthine postmodern novel is an experience, and an experience that is difficult to describe. It follows you, the reader, as you go to a book store and pick up a copy of Italo Calvino's new book, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, getting invested in the story only to realize that the story cuts off abruptly, and also isn't that book at all. The book continues to follow you, the reader, as he (who is still you) tries desperately to hunt down the end of the book as again and again every lead turns out to be yet another book you will never see the end to, in a twisting narrative of love, censorship, translation, and storytelling. 

It is nice sometimes to read a book that really feels like it requires all of my attention. This book is definitely a piece of art, juggling pronouns and realities with a slight-of-hand that feels fluid and puzzling, always inviting the reader (you the real reader, not the reader you) into deeper consideration of the nature of books, and perhaps also self. And if all of this is very confusing, so is the book! This is my second Italo Calvino novel, and both gave me a similar feeling to looking at a really good painting at a museum. They also both took me months to read despite being relatively short books. I would highly recommend this book, especially for anyone craving a challenge, but don't go into it expecting a fun and easy read. 

I also want to take a second to give major props to William Weaver. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to translate a book playing with language this precisely, all in addition to mastering 10 different voices for 10 different incomplete books. Truly a staggeringly impressive work of translation. 

Break Room

Break Room by Miye Lee, translated by Sandy Joosun Lee, 160 pages

Eight random strangers have been sequestered in a generic office building, and forced to share a break room for a reality TV competition show. Why? All eight were nominated by their real-life coworkers because of some annoying thing they do in their company break rooms, whether it's leaving dirty dishes all over the place, using the ice cube trays to make soda ice cubes, stinking the place up with odorous food, or something else. The eight must figure out which of them is the mole, planted by the production company, but as they try to investigate their colleagues, they each discover unsettling things about each other, and themselves.

This was a quick and quirky book, and I'm honestly not sure what I thought of it. I wasn't sure what to expect though, so I guess it met those nonexistent expectations? I was horrified by some of the things they found themselves doing, almost as much as I was by the things that got them sent to the show in the first place. Give it a read if you find yourself with a couple hours to spare — that's all the time it will take.

The Ex-Boyfriend's Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee

The Ex-Boyfriend's Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee by Saki Kawashiro, 304 pages

When a romantic getaway turns into Momoko getting dumped by her longtime boyfriend, she gets drunk and passes out in a mostly empty 24-hour cafe. When she wakes up, the proprietor and one of his regular customers, a Buddhist monk-in-training, listen to her woes and give her the chance to cook her ex's favorite chicken curry dish in an attempt at closure. When the meal turns out to be better than most of the food currently on offer in the cafe, the trio decides to form the titular committee, giving patrons the chance to exorcise their relationship demons while letting go of the meals that tied them to their exes.

This type of cozy food-based loosely-connected story is pretty popular in the Japanese literature that's making its way to the U.S. (see: The Kamogawa Food Detectives, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, etc), and this one seems to be a bit more of a cohesive overarching story than many of those. That said, there are some moments that pulled me out of the story, actions or statements that were so abrupt that it almost felt like I was trying to read a prose version of an anime (yes, I mean the movies, not manga) — I could almost picture the fast animation of Momoko crying out an exhortation and flinging her arms dramatically. However, it is an intriguing entry into this subgenre, and the included recipes made me hungry.

Apple and Knife

 Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha (trans. Stephen J. Epstein), 199 pages.

This Indonesian collection of horror short stories draws on European fairy tales, Indonesian folklore, and general horrifying experiences of existing as a woman into a very modern feeling book. Unfortunately, none of the stories managed to stir in me the type of emotion I would hope for in horror, nor do any of them particularly stick in my memory. 

While this collection didn't really work for me, it did remind me quite a lot of Mariana Enriquez's Things We Lost in the Fire, another collection of horror stories in translation. I think that people who enjoyed that book might very well enjoy this one as well. 

Around the World in 80 Books

 

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch 412 pp.

Created as a kind of antidote to the Covid lockdown, the chair of Harvard's Comparative Literature Department evokes the travels of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by selecting 80 books by a wide variety of authors. The books have settings that roughly follow Fogg's itinerary. Damrosch also pairs books with similar themes, settings, or authors. I read 13 of the 80, some for pleasure, others as school assignments. A couple have been summer Big Book Challenge titles including last summer's Tale of Genji and this summer's Things Fall Apart. While most of the titles can be classified as "great literature", I was excited to find a Donna Leon title from one of my favorite series in the list. While I don't expect to read the entire list, there are a number that are already in my TBR books and I will be adding a few of Damrosch's suggested titles. If you can get past the often dry, professorial tone to the book, it's an interesting read. The audiobook was read by the author.

Our Share of Night

 Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, 736 pages.

The Order has been worshiping The Darkness for centuries, making terrible offerings of torture and murder to further their own power and fortunes. Juan Peterson is their most recent unwilling prophet, called a medium, who serves as an avatar for the power during their terrible rituals. But Juan has a son, and while The Order is determined that Gaspar will be his heir, Juan is even more determined that his son will have nothing to do with the ghosts and dark rituals. 

It is hard to summarize the plot of this book because it is sprawling and non-continuous. The book is divided into five parts, most with a different protagonist or protagonists. Four of the five take place in Argentina, and one in England, and the sections move back and forth in time. I found this division to be one of the weaker parts of the book. I found this novel shockingly lacking in momentum, which is a major problem for a book this large. Part of the problem was the leisurely pace of the plot, where very often nothing in particular is happening, and part of the problem is that every time the story starts to build any momentum it is often interrupted for something totally unrelated. It probably also doesn't help that, with the way the book is ordered, generally the audience knows much more about everything than any of the characters, so there are very few mysteries to resolve. I personally found that Enriquez's very good prose and the interesting elements of horror placed during the military dictatorship in Argentina unfortunately weren't enough to make up for the weak plot and characters. It feels like this book might be really good for someone, but I can't quite figure out enough of what it's goals were to figure out if it met any of them.