[exhibeKed]

Has everyone already heard of Julia Franck, or are you all as ignorant as I am? I had never heard of her until yesterday, when I read a rave review of her latest book, which was originally published in German as Die Mittagsfrau, winning the German Book Prize.

The writer and critic Allan Massie, who isn't usually prodigal with his praise, says "Historical sweep and vivid, living characters make this a great novel". It deals with Germany in the two world wars. Says Massie:

"A brief summary cannot do justice to the penetrating imagination of this book, to the author's certainty of tone and to the wealth of significant detail she provides. No doubt much research has gone to its making, but the research has been thoroughly absorbed and is never obtrusive; instead, it is illuminated and brought to life by the vividness of the author's imaginative sympathy. She offers a panorama of a society stumbling blindfold to disaster ... The narrative is gripping, the atmosphere densely oppressive. The tone has the authority which comes only when people, feelings, thoughts, scenes and actions have been so thoroughly imagined that you can't conceive of events turning out otherwise than they are presented ..."

One thing I like about Allan Massie's reviews in the "Scotsman" is that he always pays tribute to the English translator when reviewing a foreign work of fiction he has enjoyed. In this case he concludes:

"German critics have praised the quality of the prose, and I would think this a very difficult novel for the translator, Anthea Bell, to render into English. She has done it admirably, retaining the feel (one supposes) of the original while presenting it in natural and flexible English."

Harry

[Butiqueso]

I don't like the writer nor the book. Started to read it last year and couldn't make myself finish it. Funny that you should post on it, because I have just taken it out from the library again, determined to reread and finish it. German reviewers were not all completely happy about it either Julia Franck - Die Mittagsfrau, and those that think the prose is mediocre have it right, I think. It's mostly serviceable and sometimes very bad. But, I will reread it one of these days. Who knows.

[insightmike]

Funny that you should post on it, because I have just taken it out from the library again, determined to reread and finish it.

Funny indeed, because I bought it yesterday. Won't get round to reading it for a while as I have a few others higher up the list, but I enjoyed the bits I sampled by dipping in and out at random places.

[bypeTeenehalT]

I'd never heard of her either, maybe I'd heard the name and paid no attention to it.

Massie versus Mirabell. I'm intrigued at Mirabell's response: he doesn't like the book or the author, but he's just borrowed it again from the library. As Mirabell is an arbiter of taste, it is laudable that he is so open-minded as to read it again, if only to prove that she is a middling writer, which he already thinks.

What I would like to know from Mirabell (or his other online self) is what is it that makes him vacillate between ignoring the author and re-reading her? Peer pressure? And a few more specifics as to what it is that Mirabell and other German critics dislike would be handy, e.g. bad style ("mediocre prose"), dreary subject matter, the wrong political take on things, the exploitation of Ossie-Wessie status (pace Erpenbeck).

[Butiqueso]

I'd never heard of her either, maybe I'd heard the name and paid no attention to it.

Massie versus Mirabell. I'm intrigued at Mirabell's response: he doesn't like the book or the author, but he's just borrowed it again from the library. As Mirabell is an arbiter of taste, it is laudable that he is so open-minded as to read it again, if only to prove that she is a middling writer, which he already thinks.

What I would like to know from Mirabell (or his other online self) is what is it that makes him vacillate between ignoring the author and re-reading her? Peer pressure? And a few more specifics as to what it is that Mirabell and other German critics dislike would be handy, e.g. bad style ("mediocre prose"), dreary subject matter, the wrong political take on things, the exploitation of Ossie-Wessie status (pace Erpenbeck).

I linked an overview of German reviews above.

and I will reread it because as I said I did not finish it the first time around.

[exhibeKed]

I linked an overview of German reviews above.

and I will reread it because as I said I did not finish it the first time around.

Dare I suggest that a skilful English translator may have turned a sow's ear into a silk purse here, and achieved something that improves on the original? The very best translations of the past have often been considerable literary achievements in their own right. But of course a non-German may be blind to defects or superficialities in the original text of this particular book. I often enjoy a novel set in Italy or France or some other country I know superficially, but if it's set in Scotland - especially if written by a non-Scot - I may see things that don't quite ring true.

The Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod won great praise for his Scottish-based novel "No Great Mischief", but I decided not to read it after a critic in one of our newspapers pointed out that the author rather implausibly has his hero coming across a Gaelic-speaking peasant community in mainland Scotland in the here and now, which is a solecism of the first order. Sounds like he stumbled across "Brigadoon". I couldn't suspend disbelief long enough to plough through that book.

Harry

[Gaxiciverfere]

The Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod won great praise for his Scottish-based novel "No Great Mischief", but I decided not to read it after a critic in one of our newspapers pointed out that the author rather implausibly has his hero coming across a Gaelic-speaking peasant community in mainland Scotland in the here and now, which is a solecism of the first order. Sounds like he stumbled across "Brigadoon". I couldn't suspend disbelief long enough to plough through that book.

Harry

You mean there aren't any Gaelic-speaking communities left in Scotland in our day and age? I am shocked, because I've always heard different. They said that, particularly in the North-West, you can still find areas and communities that, for the most part, speak Scottish Gaelic on a daily basis.

Be that as it may, however, I would never dissuade ANYONE from reading Alistair MacLeod, who is a truly wonderful if unproductive writer. Check out his collection of short stories, Island (1968-1999) and see what I mean. MacLeod has a way with (and a fascination for) words, English words; his sentences, however, have a particularly Celtic lilt to it, which you can expect from modern Irish-Scotch writers and poets, but coming from a Canadian, this seemed both surprising and unexpectedly delightful.

I'm tempted to start a thread...

[insightmike]

You mean there aren't any Gaelic-speaking communities left in Scotland in our day and age? I am shocked, because I've always heard different.

Yes, there are. Mostly out on the western islands and up north. But the clue was in "a Gaelic-speaking peasant community in mainland Scotland in the here and now". Peasants is just daft, what with evolving into the working class, and Gaelic is very much a fringe language, so there's unlikely to be such a community slap bang in the middle of Scotland.

[Gaxiciverfere]

Yes, there are. Mostly out on the western islands and up north. But the clue was in "a Gaelic-speaking peasant community in mainland Scotland in the here and now". Peasants is just daft, what with evolving into the working class, and Gaelic is very much a fringe language, so there's unlikely to be such a community slap bang in the middle of Scotland.

OK, now I see...

Although I haven't read the book yet (I kind of wanted to read it before doing a thread on him), I do know this: it is broken up in two parts, one is about 18th-century Scottish expatriates to Canada (particularly to Cape Breton Island) and the other is about the descendants of those expatriates revisiting their ancestral lands centuries later. Maybe Harry was looking at the other part, the one where there actually WERE peasants in Scotland? I don't know...

[exhibeKed]

I don't have the book here to refer to, but my recollection from reviews is that the hero or narrator comes to Scotland to revisit the land of his ancestors and finds Gaelic-speaking crofters still living in whatever part of the Highlands his people came from. Nowadays you are more likely to find English dropouts from Yorkshire or the Home Counties (i.e. Greater London area) trying to live The Good Life (shorthand used in the UK for trying to live in an ecologically sound way, taken from the title of a popular BBC TV comedy series of yesteryear about a middle-class couple trying to be self-sufficient in suburbia).

Gaelic is not yet dead, but it's on a life-support machine, with an infinitesimally small percentage of Scots speaking it, tho' successive political r?gimes in Edinburgh have thrown a lot of money at it in a bid to ingratiate themselves with the Gaelic lobby. Even in its heartland of the Western Isles, you can happily get by without it.

In Ireland, I don't think Gaelic is too widely spoken either, but it hangs on in the fringes like Donegal and Galway, and I think I'm right in saying that it's still taught in school as a compulsory subject and that teachers and civil servants have to pass a Gaelic exam. to get a job (let me have both barrels if I'm wrong).

Harry

[Lidawka]

It's possible to get a fulltime Gaelic education in North Lanarkshire. There are pockets of Gaelic speakers throughout the region. Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and Wishaw apparently.

But to return the thread to Julia ... here's my review.

Following in the steps of the Prix Goncourt and the Booker, the German Book Prize was established in 2005 to promote contemporary German literature around the world. There have been 4 winners to date: 2 male, 2 female. Interestingly the two titles by female authors have been translated into English. The inaugural winner, Arno Geiger?s Es geht uns gut (We?re doing fine) has yet to be translated and, I suspect, it will be a while before the 2008 winner, Uwe Tellkamp?s 1000 pager Der Turm (The Tower) appears on British shelves. I, therefore, made a start on this prizelist with Julia Franck?s 2007 winning The Blind Side of the Heart. Why? Because it?s set in Berlin and my plane will be touching down there next Saturday!

The first point to note is that the English title The Blind Side of the Heart bears no resemblance to the German, Die Mittagsfrau(Lady Midday). I?m glad of that because the passing reference to Lady Midday, a figure from Slavic mythology, is slightly baffling. The Blind Side of the Heart, on the other hand, is a recurring thematic refrain in a novel that concerns itself with those who have cut themselves off emotionally. None more so than Helene, who in the tumultuous days following World War 2, flees Berlin with her 7-year old son, only to abandon him on a railway station platform.

Such is the shocking conclusion of the prologue. The concern of the main body of the novel is the explanation of why and the success of the novel depends on whether Franck manages to turn Helene from the mother from hell into an understandable and sympathetic personage.

For the defence:

a) this pattern of emotional abandonment is one which Helene has experienced more than once in her life. Her own mother, her first fiance, her second husband. Abandonment that is sometimes cold and calculated, sometimes circumstantial ? always damaging to Helene?s self-esteem. At one point Helene says: ?something like me isn?t supposed to exist at all?.

b) the timeframe. Helene is unfortunate to live through both world wars. Defeated not only by the opposing armies but, particularly the second time around, by her own side. There?s hidden Jewish blood in her veins. Fortunately she finds a champion in Wilhelm, a Nazi, though one who is willing to take chances for the woman he loves until the wedding night throws up something completely unexpected and, thereafter, the downward spiral spirals ever downward ?..

c) details in the epilogue which show prove that the mother?s heart isn?t quite so blind as at first appears.

For the prosecution:

a) should a child bear the blame for the circumstances of his conception?

b) should a mother ever inflict such emotional wounds on her offspring, even when she believes her actions are for the best?

c) details in the epilogue which show the length of the mother?s abandonment.

All of which points to deferring your final judgment until you?ve read the epilogue which, if you can believe this, is even more shocking than the prologue. Don?t, however, skip the middle section. Though not as intense as its frame (and, therefore, sometimes rambling), it nevertheless contains the drama of World War I, the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazis and the defeat of World War II. The primary focus being on the effect on the individual and the family. Yet the metaphorical level is ever present. The experiences of Helene and her family are also the traumas of Germany in the first half of the 20th century. Read it and weep.

[bypeTeenehalT]

Mirabell: now I see. But I didn't spot "My Blog" and "My Library Thing". I was looking out for your Japanese-style pseudonym.

And as for Scotland, there was a programme on the BBC about devolution less than an hour ago. But the word "Gaelic" wasn't mentioned once.

To return with Lizzy to the actual topic of this thread, prizes may be indicative but don't absolutely assure quality. There are so many prizes around nowadays.

Changing titles appears to be the prerogative of bossy publishers. My publishers have made small changes to the original title of the last two books I translated. But I approved (the author was dead, so couldn't comment). When the title is totally different, it either means there is an untranslatable pun or similar, or that some person in marketing at the publishing house wanted a more "snappy" (even if totally irrelevant) title.

I'll now look at Lizzy's and Mirabell's takes on this novel and judge accordingly.