I’d been meaning to pick up a copy of Keith Ridgway’s A Shock for a while now and today I did.
Here’s US publisher New Directions’ blurb:
Formed as a rondel of interlocking stories with a clutch of more or less loosely connected repeating characters, it’s at once deracinated yet potent with place, druggy yet frighteningly shot through with reality. His people appear, disappear, and reappear. They’re on the fringes of London, clinging to sanity or solvency or a story by their fingernails, consumed by emotions and anxieties in fuzzily understood situations. A deft, high-wire act, full of imprecise yet sharp dialog as well as witchy sleights of hand reminiscent of Muriel Spark, A Shock delivers a knockout punch of an ending.
Perhaps Ridgway’s most breathtaking quality is his scintillating stealthiness: you can never quite put your finger on how he casts his spell—he delivers the shock of a master jewel thief (already far-off and scot-free) stealing your watch: when at some point you look down at your wrist, all you see is that in more than one way you don’t know what time it is …
The Wasteland, 2007 by Jia Aili (b. 1979)
Book Worm, 1980 by Abigail Rorer (b. 1949)
Chaos XXIX by Michael Palmer (b. 1942)
Sleeping Courier, 1986 by Odd Nerdrum (b. 1944)
Set in Place by Wes Magyar
Sea of September, 1983 by Julio Larraz (b. 1944)
Webster Groves, 1943 by Chiura Obata (1885-1975)
September, 1979 by Alex Colville (1920-2013)
Vile Vivisectors, 1925 by James Ensor (1860-1949)
A copy of by Vasily Grossman’s 1943 novel The People Immortal arrived at Biblioklept World Headquarters. It’s a new translation by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler, available next month from NYRB.
(It’s also a reminder to pick up the copy of Grossman’s massive novel Life and Fate that’s been staring me down for years).
NYRB’s blurb:
Vasily Grossman wrote three novels about the Second World War, each offering a distinct take on what a war novel can be, and each extraordinary. A common set of characters links Stalingrad and Life and Fate, but Stalingrad is not only a moving and exciting story of desperate defense and the turning tide of war, but also a monumental memorial for the countless war dead. Life and Fate, by contrast, is a work of moral and political philosophy as well as a novel, and the deep question it explores is whether or not it is possible to behave ethically in the face of overwhelming violence. The People Immortal is something else entirely. Set during the catastrophic first months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, this is the tale of an army battalion dispatched to slow the advancing enemy at any cost, with encirclement and annihilation its promised end. A rousing story of resistance, The People Immortal is the novel as weapon in hand.
Prego, 2020 by Eduardo Berliner (b. 1978)
Nieces, 2020 by Zoey Frank (b. 1987)
Biblioklept 