I wouldn’t have expected to read one short novel/novella featuring time travel, let alone two, both translations, published within a week of each other in the UK. But here they are: the first, a light comedy from a French author, in which time travel is central to the plot; the second, a dark but not bleak reflection on childhood, in which a metaphorical time travel brings redemption.
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Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain translated by Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce
When, in 2017, three residents of a Parisian apartment building, plus an Airbnb guest from Milwaukee, share a bottle of Beaujolais, they’re taken back to the year of its vintage, 1954. They have a bit of fun in the city, two of them learn something about their ancestors, and all learn something about how to live, while trying to find their way home to the present. Not my usual tipple – and not as entertaining as the author’s previous novel translated into English, Smoking Kills – but if you have a few hours spare travelling to Paris, the whimsy might put you in the mood. As that wasn’t my situation when I plucked it from the shelf, its charm eluded me. Thanks to Gallic Press for my advance proof copy. For a more entertaining novel involving time travel, see my review of Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar.
You Would Have Missed Me by Birgit Vanderbeke translated by Jamie Bulloch
The unnamed narrator is sorely disappointed not to get a cat for her seventh birthday. Her mother claims pets are banned from the estate where they live, but the little girl knows that isn’t true. If only that wasn’t the biggest lie of her young life.
It’s almost surreal when her mother sings the birthday greetings, We’re so happy you were born, as every day her parents find proof of her badness and don’t hesitate to let her know. Her father keeps his fists in his pockets as long as he can, but the doctor she’s taken to for a cure for thumb-sucking suspects non-accidental injury. This being the 1960s it’s only medically followed up.
Along with the lie that theirs is a loving family, and a step up the ladder from the immigrants from Italy and the like, is that West Germany is the Promised Land. For our young narrator life was much better in the East with her extended family, or in the refugee camp where a ménage a trois her mother disapproved of went some way towards compensating for maternal neglect. In the East, Grandma cooked proper meals and baked, while in the West her mother serves tasteless dumplings in white sauce or a revolting-sounding milk soup. When her birthday cake makes her thirsty, she’s denied a drink as she had one that morning.
Her birthday might fail to deliver a cat, or the much more vital parental care, but a gift from her ‘Auntie’ and ‘Uncles’ from the refugee camp gives her the idea that might save her life. The Time Machine might be a more suitable book for older children, but it provides the fantasy that she can travel forward through time and return with the voice of her older self. I’m not sure how much the author expects us to take her voice hearing at face value, but for children who hear voices it often provides a protective function, as it does here.
The blurb, focusing on ordinary disappointments and the transition from East to West, undersells what to me is a pitch-perfect account of what it’s like to be a child with no-one to help her translate her experience into words, because those whose primary purpose is to do so have a vested interest in concealing the truth. As psychologically astute on the veil draped around child mistreatment as the writings of Alice Miller, You Would Have Missed Me is set to be one of this year’s favourites. Although I think I prefer the German title Ich freue mich, dass ich geboren bin which translates as I'm happy I was born. Thanks to Peirene Press for my advance reading copy.
There’s an unhappy seven-year-old in my second novel, Underneath, about a man who seeks to resolve a relationship crisis by keeping a woman captive in a cellar. I’m reading from one of his sections in this video:
It’s almost surreal when her mother sings the birthday greetings, We’re so happy you were born, as every day her parents find proof of her badness and don’t hesitate to let her know. Her father keeps his fists in his pockets as long as he can, but the doctor she’s taken to for a cure for thumb-sucking suspects non-accidental injury. This being the 1960s it’s only medically followed up.
Along with the lie that theirs is a loving family, and a step up the ladder from the immigrants from Italy and the like, is that West Germany is the Promised Land. For our young narrator life was much better in the East with her extended family, or in the refugee camp where a ménage a trois her mother disapproved of went some way towards compensating for maternal neglect. In the East, Grandma cooked proper meals and baked, while in the West her mother serves tasteless dumplings in white sauce or a revolting-sounding milk soup. When her birthday cake makes her thirsty, she’s denied a drink as she had one that morning.
Her birthday might fail to deliver a cat, or the much more vital parental care, but a gift from her ‘Auntie’ and ‘Uncles’ from the refugee camp gives her the idea that might save her life. The Time Machine might be a more suitable book for older children, but it provides the fantasy that she can travel forward through time and return with the voice of her older self. I’m not sure how much the author expects us to take her voice hearing at face value, but for children who hear voices it often provides a protective function, as it does here.
The blurb, focusing on ordinary disappointments and the transition from East to West, undersells what to me is a pitch-perfect account of what it’s like to be a child with no-one to help her translate her experience into words, because those whose primary purpose is to do so have a vested interest in concealing the truth. As psychologically astute on the veil draped around child mistreatment as the writings of Alice Miller, You Would Have Missed Me is set to be one of this year’s favourites. Although I think I prefer the German title Ich freue mich, dass ich geboren bin which translates as I'm happy I was born. Thanks to Peirene Press for my advance reading copy.
There’s an unhappy seven-year-old in my second novel, Underneath, about a man who seeks to resolve a relationship crisis by keeping a woman captive in a cellar. I’m reading from one of his sections in this video:
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