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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Two more women in translation: Strike Your Heart & Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

6/9/2018

5 Comments

 
Women in Translation month was barely over when I picked up these two novels that should help me beat the last twelve months’ total of seven in the coming year. The first French, the second Polish, both focus on women living their lives somewhat apart from their peers. Diana because, growing up without maternal affection, she fills her emptiness with work. Olga, on the other hand, is more outwardly eccentric, and her beef is not with a mother, but with men.

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Strike Your Heart by Amélie Nothomb translated by Alison Anderson

In 1971, aged nineteen, Marie feels on the threshold of a wonderful life. Turning heads with her energy and beauty, the envy she evokes in her peers fills her with joy. But early marriage and motherhood were never part of her plan.
 
Having slept through pregnancy, the birth of her daughter feels like an affront. When friends and family admire the baby, Marie feels envy rather than pride. What a relief to leave Diane the care of her parents and begin work as an accountant in her husband’s pharmacy.
 
But this is Diane’s story: a child deprived of maternal affection not because that mother is
depressed but because she’s so narcissistic she envies her own daughter. Fortunately, her maternal grandparents (and, later, the parents of a friend) can compensate to a certain extent (p26):
 
Above all, Mamie looked at her and spoke to her. With Mamie she didn’t only exist in the morning in the evening. She existed non-stop, and this was thrilling.
 
A classic
wounded healer, Diane resolves to become a doctor, and not just any doctor, but a cardiologist, a doctor of the heart. At university, she befriends Olivia, an assistant professor around her mother's age. Eager to please, Diane helps the older woman work towards university tenure and, when the relationship begins to smack of exploitation, masks her disappointment with overwork.
 
Given that the envious mother-figure is a fairytale archetype, I’m curious how infrequently it crops up in my reading.
First Love and Magnetism address envy as one aspect of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship (and I have half-baked ideas for a novel of my own on the theme, as well as my short story “Reflecting Queenie”, based on the story of Snow White, which will appear in my forthcoming short story collection, Becoming Someone.) Strike Your Heart explores the dark consequences of such an attack on a girl’s developing identity, alongside the potential for redemption. (My recently published short story “With a Small Bomb in Her Chest” illustrates the potential violence of such an attack.)
 
Diane’s story unfolds with a fairytale-style straightforwardness verging on bluntness, with emotions named rather than implied, which seems more characteristic of French novels than English. While I found Diane’s repetition compulsion credible, I was sceptical of a two-year-old’s grasp of her mother’s limitations. But this might be due to my own envy. Thanks to Europa editions for my review copy.

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones

For a loner and nature lover, Janina Duszejko’s home in a tiny hamlet near the Polish border with the Czech Republic seems idyllic. Yet this is hunting territory and Duszejko (who rejects her own first name, so I will also) believes animals have as much right to life as humans, if not more. So she often finds herself in tears, or raging at men in green camouflage, or trying to persuade the police to investigate the Murder of a Deer. (The capitalisation of some nouns is one of the novel’s less endearing quirks.)
 
In addition, winters on the high plateau can be cruel, with most of her neighbours returning to the city as the air begins to chill. As one of only three remaining, Duszejko checks on the empty properties and puts in a few hours teaching English at the village school, a hair-raising icy drive away. She rarely speaks to the men in the other two occupied houses, and now one of them, fortunately the most menacing, is dead.
 
As other mysterious deaths follow, Duszejko tries to persuade the police the Animals are asserting their revenge. She’s dismissed as a mad woman, especially as she demands the deceased’s dates of birth in order to calculate their Horoscopes.
 
Duszejko is a deliciously eccentric character, an older woman who refuses to toe the line. Olga Tokarczuk portrays her with compassion and humour, balancing her absurdities with her ethical stance. While the reader can’t condone how far her beliefs take her, many would share her revulsion at killing animals for sport.
 
While none of her few friends share her passion for Astrology, she has a strong bond with a younger man, a former pupil, through their fondness for the poetry of William Blake. It's
from his work that the book takes its title, so the American spelling (which I’ve encountered in other translated European novels from British publishers) of plough was particularly surprising.
 
Author of several novels, short story collections and essays, Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights, is Poland’s most widely translated female novelist. Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ English translation of Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead came to me courtesy of British publishers, Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
5 Comments
Norah Colvin link
9/9/2018 08:11:14 am

I'm not sure about Strike Your Heart but Drive Your Plow sounds interesting, Anne. Since I'm looking for a new audiobook, I had hoped it might be available, but isn't.
It's interesting you mention the spelling of 'plough'. I notice it is spelt the English way in the cover image at the top of your post and the American way in the title. Is that what they call an 'each-way bet'?

Reply
Annecdotist
9/9/2018 08:19:50 am

That's fascinating re the spelling -- hadn't noticed as it's PLOW on my physical copy. I'm going to switch the image. Thanks.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
12/9/2018 06:59:12 am

:)

Charli Mills
11/9/2018 02:23:14 am

Translations make interesting reads, and good to see women authors among the works. The character of Duszejko reminds me of an older woman I knew in Montana who used to wear a t-shirt that read, "The more I get to know men, the more I like my dog." You are doing well on your goals -- looks like you might need to up your reading challenges for 2019!

Reply
Annecdotist
11/9/2018 12:16:04 pm

Ha, that's a great quote for a T-shirt. I'm sure this character would have appreciated it, if the weather was ever warm enough to go without a thick coat!

Reply



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