THE PIANO TEACHER – Elfriede Jelinek

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.

Country: Austria
Title: The Piano Teacher
Author: Elfriede Jelinek
Language: German
Translator: Joachim Neugroschel
Publisher: Rowholt Verlag GmbH (1983), English translation by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1988)

What on earth did I just read?  The Piano Teacher is one of the more disturbing novels I’ve cracked the spine of.  The blurb indicates “the dark passions roiling under her subdued exterior explode in a release of perversity, violence, and degradation.”  – That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Umph.

Erika is a 38-year-old piano teacher who was supposed to be a famous pianist but didn’t exactly live up to her mother’s unrealistic expectations.  She teaches at the Vienne Conservatory (where the author attended having had similar expectations placed on her), and lives entirely under mother’s control. While she has a room in which she keeps her items, it doesn’t even have a bed – she continues to share a bed with her mother. She secretly watches peep shows and softcore porn, but she feels nothing when watching them.  She also feels nothing when she cuts herself, including cutting her genitals.

One of her students becomes a bit obsessed with her. He wants at times to possess her and other times to have her teach him how to be a good lover. (He doesn’t know Erika has limited experience.) The book indicates he is 17, but it also indicates only ten years separate them. Personally, I’d rather imagine them closer in age.

He assaults her.  She assaults him.  Her mother assaults her. He assaults her mother. She assaults her mother.  It’s a violent book of misplaced emotions and lust – Erika is a bit Norman Bates.

The second half of the novel either went entirely off the rails or the translator didn’t know how best to translate it. More than likely, it’s both. The student’s seven inch “small” “love organ” is also referred to as “his asparagus,” and he is referred to as a “venomous love-dwarf.”

Y’all. I can’t.

TONIGHT, I BURN – Katherine J. Adams

Katharine J. Adams’s debut novel, Tonight, I Burn, (Orbit – expected 7 Nov 2023) echoes with legends, fairytales and folklore that came before.  While I heard Hades and Persephone and Beauty and the Beast the most; I wouldn’t call this a retelling of either. Adams is a reader first, and it shows beautifully in her writing.  This was a very impressive debut, and I hope the spark carries to the second in the series, Tonight, I Bleed.

Penny is a thorn witch, third in line the throne.  While she remembers what life was like before the Warden, she’s spent more time under his control after he destroys all that was colorful and beautiful than out of it.  Her grandmother is under the Warden’s control.  Her father has become one of the Warden’s Gilded – a process that strips a person of their soul and binds them to the Warden’s command.  Her mother is just trying to keep her three daughters out of trouble and alive.

The Warden needs the thorn witches, Penny included, for they can walk the veil between life and Death – using their magic to weave his immortality.  Each night, a witch burns at the pyre and walks in Death.  If all goes well, the witch can cross back over the veil and return home to burn another night, but each walk into Death takes a bit of their soul.  Just before Penny is to have her first walk, her sister doesn’t return.  Penny will risk everything and break every rule to save her, and Penny walks into Death alone and in secret.  There, she makes a deal with a beautiful and dangerous man who awakes confusing feelings in her.

As she seeks to honor the deal that saved her sister but risked her soul, a rebellion is brewing – and Penny, with her rare obsidian crystal, is in the thick of it.  The Warden wants her as a pet because her talents exceed those of the average thorn witch.  The Resistance wants her because her dark crystal magic can forge the spell that can change their lives forever.

The romance is a bit clunky, but it takes backseat to parallel high stakes – the Resistance and the deal to save her sister – which I prefer.  Some aspects, particularly those involving Penny’s father, are rushed, but I imagine there will be more flesh to those bones in the second book of the series.  Overall, this debut far exceeded my expectations.

Read this book.

*A huge thanks to the publisher for gifting me this early copy!

NIGHT WATCH- Jayne Anne Phillips

“Her mother had named her the name he’d taken – her given name a version of her surname.  She was a hint, a riddle, a remembrance.”

Longlisted for the 2023 National Book Awards, Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch (Knopf 2023) is a powerful historical novel that echoes with Faulkner but with a feminine energy that hums throughout the pages. Set during and just after the Civil War, the novel beautifully and painfully captures what war did not just to the men who fought it, but to the women left behind.

Twelve-year-old ConaLee has watched her mother become a shell of the woman who’d raised her.  She no longer speaks, no longer reads, and no longer plays with her daughter.  Not only that, she also does not care for the children she continues to birth, and it is ConaLee’s responsibility to care for the little boy called Chap and the twins who are never named.

A man came to their cabin after the war, insisting everyone call him Papa and making himself at home.  It’s not his first time at the cabin, but ConaLee was shielded from his first trip.  Over and over and over again, he pushes ConaLee’s mother, a woman once called Eliza, further inside herself as he uses and abuses her body.  He’s forbidden them from speaking with Dearbhla, the woman who’d raised both ConaLee’s mother and father, and there’s only so much her conjuring can do to save them after he gets his hooks in.  But Dearbhla doesn’t give up, and Papa is “convinced” to take ConaLee and her mother to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia.  By the time ConaLee realizes the permanency of the situation, the other children have been given away.  The man called Papa instructs her that she is the caregiver of “Miss Janet”, and she becomes Nurse Eliza Connolly. He tells her then that he is not her father.  Mother and daughter attempt to rediscover their lives while under the protection of the Asylum, and ConaLee struggles to come to terms with the children she’d left behind that her mother doesn’t remember.

But the Asylum isn’t just a safe haven for ConaLee and her mother; her real father also calls it home.  As the novel unfolds, the reader learns the truth of who ConaLee’s father is, why he and Eliza fled with Dearbhla, and what happened to him during the war.

Night Watch is a novel of wreckage and resilience.  And while some things that are lost can never be reclaimed, ConaLee, her mother, and her father, all learn how to move forward despite the painful scars that mar their bodies, minds, and souls.

Read this book.                

 

*Thank you to the publisher for sending me not one but two finished copies. One will be added to my collection of favorites and the other will be sent out this week for another reader to enjoy.*

THE UNMAKING OF JUNE FARROW – Adrienne Young

I love magical realism.  I do not love time travel.  Admittedly, I should have looked into Adrienne Young’s The Unmaking of June Farrow (Delacorte Press 2023) beyond the magical realism and North Carolina setting BEFORE selecting it for my BOTM box, but I did not.  This novel has overwhelmingly positive reviews so take this for what it’s worth.

Despite being well-written, The Unmaking of June Farrow was painful to get through – namely because I felt deceived.  I wanted small-town North Carolina, magical realism, maybe a familiar or two, some sweet romance, etc.  Instead, I got a convoluted curse/magic system that makes no sense, a horse that could have had a larger role if Young had leaned into a bit more, and a couple of lukewarm romances or wannabe romances.  Oh. And a big part of the plot is told through memories of a time traveler traveling from a time before the time the “before her” traveled before.  Yeah.  I said what I said.

There could have been more tension between 2023 June and 1951 June – in particular between Mason and Eamon – but it’s all just blech.

 This one is a no.

I still ranked it high because I think this is a me issue – this just isn’t something I should have read.

THE STAR OF ALGIERS – Aziz Chouaki

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.

Country: Algeria
Title: The Star of Algiers
Author: Aziz Chouaki
Language: French
Translator: Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman
Publisher: Graywolf Press (2005), éditions Balland (2002)

Aziz Chouaki fled Algeria in 1991 due to the civil unrest and the placement of the author on an assassination list.  He died in France in 2019. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to recognize that Chouaki painted himself in the contours of singer Moussa Massy in The Star of Algiers; only Massy’s path is remarkably different as he was not able to escape.

Massy wants to be the Algerian Michael Jackson. He lives in a three-room apartment with thirteen other family members. His father doesn’t support his endeavors as a musician, one of his brothers is leaning into the fundamental Islamic group (FIS), one of his brothers is non-verbal autistic who enjoys mystery novels and cigarettes. He has to keep his relationship with his girlfriend a secret because he is in no position to get married.  He spends his waking hours performing or trying to avoid the Islamic brothers.

As the fundamental and progressive Islamic groups clash, Massy is struggling to make it as a musician.  He has a dream, and even though his world is going to shit around him, he’s going to chase it. He starts making a name for himself as the political situation worsens.  But a child born on April first and growing up in a country in turmoil was never going to shine bright for long; his musical career ends and he finds himself in a deep depression.  Those who can are escaping Algeria and encouraging him to do the same.  He tries, but hope is fleeting.  And when one dream dies, the star can die with it or set fire to the sky with a rage.

Set just before the “Black Decade,” which resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 Algerians, The Star of Algiers is a heartbreaking account of a boy with a dream who becomes the man hellbent on snatching stars from the sky.

STARTER VILLAIN – John Scalzi

Sometimes you buy a book strictly because of its cover.  This is one of those times.   Admittedly the cover should have an orange and white kitty on it, and this annoys me, but how fun is this?  I’ve never read John Scalzi before, but his brand of quirky SF is exactly the kind of candy book I need in rotation.  Starter Villain (TOR 2023) is just fun – from the beginning until the end.  Not only is it hilarious and ridiculous in all the best ways, it’s also extremely well-written. Scalzi also seems to recognize the limitations of his readers, or at least my limitations, and this short book is the absolute perfect length.

Our hero (or villain) is Charlie, a laid-off journalist who is recently divorced and trying to make ends meet by substitute teaching.  He lives with his cat, but his housing situation isn’t ideal.  (No issues with the cat. He adores that cat.) The novel opens with him learning his estranged and filthy rich uncle has died. Charlie makes note of it, but that’s it; he didn’t know his uncle and doesn’t really mourn.  Charlie heads to the bank to apply for a loan so he can purchase a local pub; owning McDougal’s is his singular dream.  While licking his wounds from a less than productive meeting at the bank, Charlie is approached by a young woman who had worked for his uncle.  She makes him a proposition – if he goes and stands at the funeral and meets the mourners, he’ll get a nifty little sum.  Not nearly as much as his uncle’s estate is worth and not enough to buy the pub, but a decent amount just for pretending to mourn a dead guy he doesn’t really remember.

Charlie quickly comes to realize his uncle was not just a parking garage mogul; Uncle Jake was a powerful and dangerous supervillain with a powerful and dangerous supervillain island lair, complete with talking spy cats and a unionized dolphin pod. And of course, every dangerous and powerful supervillain has a list of dangerous and powerful supervillain enemies, and since Charlie stood for his uncle at the funeral, they’ve set their sights on the presumed heir to Jake’s empire.

Starter Villain is an extremely quick read that is a lot of fun – in part because I think most millennials would respond to the news that their estranged uncle was a super villain and their housecat is a spy much the same as Charlie.

Read this book.

GHOSTS OF HARVARD – Francesca Serritella

“They were ghosts, after all, and happy endings don’t haunt anyone.”

Francesca Serritella’s Ghosts of Harvard (Random House 2020) is a rather ambitious work that suffers from trying to do too much.  There’s a lot of good things, but the ghost story, mental health awareness, and political thriller don’t always mesh that nicely in the novel – all three areas, which could have been strong backbones for the novel, suffer from sacrificing to the others.

Cadence Arthur’s brother, a brilliant student at Harvard, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and dies by suicide on campus.  He was a research assistant for a prominent (and beautiful) professor whose work was top secret and protected by the Department of Defense.  He continued to work with her as his illness, in particular the paranoia, worsened. Months later, Cadence, still cloaked in grief and guilt, enrolls as a freshman at Harvard – intent on finding what pushed her brother over the edge – figuratively and possibly literally. She begins hearing voices and begins to question her own sanity.

The ghost stories are my favorite – clearly Cady is chasing the ghost of her brother, but while doing so, she encounters the ghosts of a Harvard slave and two students.  All three help her, and she attempts to help them. She falls in love with one, but that isn’t fully explored and seems more of a plot device to make her relationship with another character a bit more palatable. 

In addition to these ghosts that protect, guide, and even do her homework for her, Cady is attempting to decode the notebook left by her brother.  Growing up, they’d created their own code and her brother would leave her missions to complete in the code.  She sees this as her final mission.  But is the mission born of his paranoia or was he really on to something that put him at risk?  The ghosts pretty much disappear when the political thriller takes over.  It reads with a madness that, if intentional, was genius – I just wish it had been more genre-blurring than genre-jumping.

It’s an interesting read, but it was just okay for me.  I really wanted to like it more than I did; there was so much potential with the ghost of the Harvard slave.

THE RIVER WE REMEMBER – William Kent Krueger

“Charlie Bauer doesn’t intend to leave this life filled with rancor or regret or plagued by the demons of if only. She intends to lie down in peace. 

And so, she sips her whiskey and reads her books and every once in a great while allows herself the pleasure of a cigar, and she awaits without fear her own passing, when she will be lowered into the soil of Black Earth County and laid to rest forever beside the moonlit, milk-white flow of the Alabaster, a river she remembers fondly as an old friend.”

William Kent Krueger’s The River We Remember (Atria 2023) flows like the river on which it is set; at times it is gentle and soft, while also being unpredictable and raging.  Like the river, the novel is brimming with life, death, and secrets – and it may prove one of my favorite mysteries.

On Memorial Day in 1958, while much of Jewel, Minnesota is at a parade to remember and honor those lost to war, the body of Jimmy Quinn is found in the Alabaster.  The catfish have made a snack of him, but it’s not difficult to determine the cause of death was a shot gun blast to the gut.  Suicide?  Accident?  Murder?

Powerful and wealthy, Quinn wasn’t a kind man.  There are many who’d love to see him dead. Sheriff Brody Dern would prefer it not be a murder.  But why?  Why does he wipe away evidence?  And why is everyone so quick to blame Noah Bluestone, a Native American war veteran who’d returned to Jewel with his beautiful Japanese wife after twenty years of military service? And why won’t Noah or his wife answer any questions related to Quinn?

The town drips with secrets – some are meaningless, but others would destroy lives.  While the novel centers on Quinn’s murder and the investigation surrounding Noah Bluestone, Krueger gives us some memorable characters who are all just a little bruised from the cards they’ve been dealt.  (Some carry the scars from the war on their bodies, others in their minds. Some have escaped abuse, and some are still hiding their bruises. Some have a hidden past as a sex worker. Some are having affairs. Some are lying. Some are stealing. Some are plotting. Some are suicidal. Some are alcoholics.)  My favorite is likely Charlie, a retired attorney who has spent her life in a male dominated field.  When Noah is arrested, she is appointed as his counsel – against his wishes.  Charlie, along with the retired sheriff, set out to prove Noah’s innocence despite his refusal to discuss what happened.

The novel reminded me a bit of Beartown and The Bee Sting – especially in the scenes with Scott and Del – and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Despite Kruegar having published over 20 novels, The River We Remember is my first read of his.  While I enjoy a good mystery, I don’t read them often.  I may have to change that.

Read this book.

WILDWOOD MAGIC – Willa Reece

“Here be witches and wayward girls grown into lonely women spooked by the wind.”

I recently finished Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour, and for me, it just fell short. Imagine my surprise when I opened Willa Reece’s Wildwood Magic (Redhook 2023 – thanks to the publisher for the finished copy!) and found myself faced with an apple orchard, a cult where reading is not allowed, a dangerous and abusive man, and The Scarlet Letter.  It’s as if Hoffman and Reece were given the same writing prompt, and in my opinion, Reece did the better job.

Rachel is raised by the strict Sisters after her mother died, and her entire world is controlled and dictated by religion.  As a teenager, she breaks free for one night – walking away from the revival tent and finding herself in an apple orchard.  She’s cared for and fed, and in the morning the sheriff comes to take her back.  Years later, she’s married to the preacher.  A man with a terrifying bloodlust – unlike Dimmesdale, he strikes his wife, not himself, relishing in the blood left on his gold wedding ring and on the cover of his Bible.  When she finds out she’s pregnant, she fakes her death and runs away – back to the orchard that had nourished her heart, soul and body so many years before.

In order to keep her baby safe, a baby she names “Pearl,” she knows she cannot keep her.  The child is placed with a loving woman within the community that will embrace Rachel, if only she lets it.  But she’s afraid, and she hides away until she can’t hide any longer; the revival has come to Morgan Gap, hellbent on weeding out the “wayward women” and the witches, and at its head is Rachel’s husband.  She has to stop being afraid and trust herself and others to save her daughter and the town.

The Hawthorne touches are perfect. The animal familiars are a pure delight.  (A snake, an owl, a weasel, bees, a bobcat, a goat… I want a familiar.)  Rachel’s talents being stitching and stirring, traditionally very domestic and motherly tasks, do not go unnoticed.  The love story with the tinker – *chef’s kiss. The flashbacks to Siobhan, who brought the apple seeds with her from Ireland, and in particular, the dreams of her and the beekeeper, are sticky and bittersweet.

Wildwood Magic is the best kind of magic.

Read this book.

THE TEACHER OF CHEOPS – Albert Salvadó

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.

Country: Andorra
Title: The Teacher of Cheops
Author: Albert Salvadó
Language: Catalan
Translator: Marc Brian Duckett
Publisher: Indie Published (2012)

The tiny country of Andorra has thus far proved the most difficult to find a selection of fictional works translated into English.  Nearly every other reader also seeking to read a book from every country has settled on The Teacher of Cheops because it’s all that is available – and it’s not even set in Andorra.

Salvadó was a very prolific Andorran author who wrote across many genres, but his favorite was historical fiction.  The Teacher of Cheops was originally published in Catalan in the mid to late 1990s and translated to English in 2012 and self-published. I believe it is his only work to date that has been translated into English.  It is set in Egypt during the Fourth Dynasty and details the construction of the pyramids while focusing on Sedum, a man born a slave who eventually becomes the teacher of the man who will become the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty. 

The novel is chock full of political drama and the consequences of crossing of the Pharaoh are pretty brutal – the nipples of women are literally chopped off such that they cannot nurse their children. People seem to be losing body parts on the regular and some are burned alive.  And folks love their poison.  “Tell Cersi. I want her to know it was me,” indeed.

I did not care for the depiction of women, especially of young women, in this novel.  The novel opens with the rape of a 13-year-old slave, but it is presented as a welcomed event – almost a pity fuck – because she is “so disfigured” no one would ever want to have sex with her.  Another young woman is forced to marry the Pharaoh and, unable to sexually perform, he rapes her with his fingers until she bleeds. Another young woman, I believe she is 15, is presented as a voluptuous temptress who seduces the Pharaoh.  Another young slave is presented as nothing more than a sexual being for anyone and everyone to take part in – and she lives for the services she provides and is well known for what she can do with her tongue.  I get that young women in nearly all cultures were expected to carry children as soon as they started their menstrual cycles; however, it’s not so much their age as how they’re described – which was a choice.  Perhaps things were last in translation – especially with the sex scenes.

Either way, it’s worth a read – I guess.  If you know of a book written by someone from Andorra and set in Andorra, please let me know.