The Ice Cream Man

Katri Lipson
The Ice Cream Man

AmazonCrossing, 2014

Before us is a fine example of European metaliterature which playing with the themes of human identity and WWII.

The book begins with the shooting of the film in the postwar years in the Czech Republic, where a man and a woman during the German occupation are fleeing the country, but their train is canceled because of the explosion on the bridge, and they are forced to stay in a small village (on the outskirts of a city).

An unnamed actress plays Esther Vorszda and an actor Martin Jelinek plays her husband, Thomas Vorszda. In fact, Esther and Thomas are not the husband and wife to each other, they were forced to create their new identities to not draw attention by the Nazis. They made up their new biographies, and who these two are actually remains unknown.

The shooting happens on location, besides an unnamed actress and Martin a very limited number of actors and movie crew participates in the filmong, including the owner of the house, who gave a pair of fugitives a roof, and a one-legged man who appears closer to the film ending.

In the second part, the author presents us with the film’s plot, which is, perhaps, not a film, but a real story that happened. Thomas and Esther, the people hiding behind these names, come by taxi to the train station, where from they have to take the train and leave. The train is canceled, Thomas decides to stay and wait, the taxi driver is sent back, and Thomas and Esther drag their large suitcases on themselves. Thomas negotiates with a widow, Madame Nemcova, to stay with her for a month.

While the English-language authors chew the last bones of war stories and suck the remaining tissue while looking for suitable candidates for their war melodramas, European writers set themselves more sophisticated and complex tasks, seeking first of all new approaches to the form, not the content.

A Finland native, Lipson tries to destroy all canons of war melodrama as weel as family saga stretching from World War II. The plot of the film that is laid in the basis of the book is fairly standard, even on the contrary, devoid of frills. Two fugitive hiding from persecution live in a widow’s house, then the man disappears (in another meta-layer there is a hint of the reason for his disappearance - he did not run away, but went for the forged documents, and was killed), and the woman is left alone, then becomes the wife out hopelessness to a decent man, whom she doesn’t love.
Thу story is very touching, and if it is only that, a touching, simple sketch of the past. On this layer, let’s call it a narrative layer, Lipson puts two more. The first chapter makes it clear to us that behind the masks of Esther and Thomas the actors are hiding, we assume it. We watch their play, know that it seems to be unreal, the director makes it grim. This layer is adjacent to another, pseudo-actor-ish: Thomas and Esther behind the masks are the real people who have to become actors, to reluctant fictional husband and wife. The price of an error will not be a verbal abuse of the director, but death. Accordingly, never knowing for sure what is in front of us, just a movie or reality, we see how these actors play two strangers who play two people who are close to each other, husband and wife.

A reader accustomed to easy, straight narrive may not like such complexness. What's next is a little easier, though again you need to keep in mind that the events may be real, but it may be some rehearsal to a shooting. Lipson extremely quickly replaces generations, time from post-war changes to post-Soviet, and then gets to the present day. Jan’s plot line sheds some light (actually only obscures which is the same thing) on Esther’s past. Lipson again throws us between layers: Jan could be Esther’s son, and could be the son of the actress who played Esther.

In any case, it does not matter when the film moves to our days, where the final major focus is on the granddaughter of Esther Gunilla, a strange creature either going crazy, or by inheritance becoming an actress.

Our memory casts doubt on the past, it is what Lipson wants to say. Something hiding inside us is transmitted from generation to generation. And yet there is a gap between generations, judging by the structure of The Ice Cream Man. The book is as if glued together from two different novels, and the final cut is a little bit rough. Two parts - the life of Esther and the life of Jan and his daughter - have only a few points of intersection. The thread of the past is lost somewhere in the middle. Both parts are original and charming, they do not have enough sequence between them.

The novel is beautifully translated into English, its prose is elegant and devoid of Britanisms which often spoil the historical novels. Lipson surprises with her book and her courage in fighting cliches.

Ghostwritten

Isabel Wolff
Ghostwritten

Harper UK, 2014

In the prologue, we learn the background of one of the two main characters of the novel. In 1987, at the English resort Polvarth a young mother has a nice time with her two children, nine-year-old Evie and five-year-old Ted. While the woman flirts with her boyfriend, kids are left to themselves. Brother and sister wander along the beach, catching crabs, climbing over the rocks. When the bell rings for the tea, calling travelers, Evie deliberately ignores the bell and her mother’s callings. The girl continues to walk off the beach, but what happens next, we do not know and can only guess that something happened with a little Ted.

Evie is now 34, and she now calls himself Jennie, a diminutive of Genevieve. Jennie has grown up and became a ghostwriter. She writes books for others, and she likes it. Jennie outlines the specialization of her work on the wedding of her girlfriend. Jennie herself is not married, but has been living with his partner Rick, a primary school teacher. Joining their relationship Jennie and Rick do not hurry to become husband and wife and not too sure about their future together. The problem is that Jennie does not want to have children. This is a key controversy that leads to the fact that the partners are not sure whether they will be together in the near future.

A business proposal from one of the guests from the girlfriend’s wedding gives Jennie a chance to think about the future and to rest from each other. A guest, an elderly man, has an old mother, Klara, who is 80 years old. This woman would like to write a memoir, but she does not know how to approach this. Jennie’s occupation is just perfect for Klara. The son hires Jennie, and she agrees to come to Polvarth to stay at Klara’s for 10 days, to record an interviews with Klara, to read and look through her archive of photographs, to interview friends and relatives. Although return to Polvarth will be painful for Jennie, she wants to overcome her fears.

Ghostwritten is surprisingly well-written fiction that someone may mistakenly call chicklit. If we label chicklit such novel like this, how we should label tens of thousands of other mediocre novels? Isabel Wolff has talent for storytelling and a style attentive to details.

What sets Wolff apart other writers about women is the ability to cut off the excess. Bonding between the interviews with Klara is written competently and accurately. If the characters eat, then we are not tireв with descriptions of all meals. If Jennie should interview, the author proceeds directly to the interview, cutting stylistic garbage as the heroine went to the cottage of his client, as she set up the recorder and so on. Jennie's storyline is not too long, and someone might be disappointed by the fact that Jennie’s secret is revealed after two-thirds of the book. This reduces the emotional intensity, even if we will have another secret in the finale.

We have to admit that the two storylines of the novel is not quite equal to the density of detail, but this was to be expected. What can be compared with the years of life in a concentration camp? Not much really. Nevertheless, Jennie and Klara are intriguing leads, although there had been a tragic childhood for Klara, her further life seems like a safe ride without problems.

Life of prisoners in Java Wolff studied hard, at least there no obvious blunders in the story of Klara. Jennie’s story raises only one question, namely in the publishing area. Wolff subtly avoids publishing details about Klara’s memoirs. For whom did Jennie write Klara’s book? Wil it be self published by the old lady? Or she found the publisher? The author does not give the answers, in the finale only to mention that the book has already been published.

And yet Ghostwritten has distant relationship with commercial literature. The story of each heroine of the novel is interesting in itself, and yet Wolff is satisfied with that and calculates her story. She brings these stories into one. By some coincidence, Klara and Jennie have a similar tragedy from the past. Wolff just needs this resonance between the two heroines, as if she is afraid that it would not be enough, that the reader won’t feel these stories by themselves. But the reader doesn’t need this artificiality in the whole story.

Isabel Wolff writes smoothly, sometimes elegant, above average. The entire novel is written very smoothly, without failures. And it just happened so that the strongest part of the novel is its prologue. Ten pages of some unearthly beauty. And the rest of the novel is trying to reach out to this prologue, but fails. Wolff set too high bar for herself in the prologue. It would have passed for a brilliant short story. Still, it’s a good novel. But only good, not great.

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See

Scribner, 2014

The structure of the novel is that the main events take place in August 1944 in France, and the background of major events begins in 1934. The author alternates between the two characters and the two countries, Germany and France.

In 1934, Marie-Laure, six-year-old girl, lives with her father in Paris. He works as a locksmith and in a museum in Paris. By the beginning of the novel the girl has completely lost her eyesight and now relies entirely on sound, smell and touch. Growing up at the museum, Marie-Laure knows almost all exhibits, guide’s stories, as well as the legend associated with the most valuable item in the museum - hidden in the vault the diamond size of an egg with, which, according to legend, has a curse. The father of the little girl masters castles and houses in miniature. On these models the girl learns to distinguish objects by touch, and later to walk unaided. Using a cane, Marie-Laure can safely move into a familiar space. The girl does not go to school (at that time, apparently, there was no school for children with disabilities), but her father every year gives her books for the blind. Marie-Laure learns to read and absorb with gusto "Around the World in 80 Days", " 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", and later a volume of Darwin.

In 1934 the second book hero Werner Pfennig was seven. He and his sister Jutta are orphans living in the child's home in the small German town. Werner since childhood manifested a talent for fixing mechanical objects, especially radios. Being eight-years-old he could with his eyes closed assemble and disassemble the radio. Gradually, word of his talent spread around, and the neighbors began to bring their receivers to Werner for repaire. With his sister in the evenings he listened to a French wave, where a man read fairy tales. Thanks to their teacher Frau Elena, the brother and sister learned French and could listen to the radio.

All the boys from the orphanage are expected to become miners, once they reach 15. But Werner shows his talent, receives a letter of recommendation from the local man, passes the entrance exams to elite school, where young talented men are trained for the Third Reich. Werner successfully passes the exams and goes to an elite school, promising to write to his sister. Jutta is worried about her brother, realizing the danger of the Nazis that came to power. But Werner does not care about the war, he just wants to go to university in Berlin and study Physics.

Anthony Doerr has written what seems to be quite realistic book, but it reads as something fantastic, something out of Jules Verne, whose books coincidentally the heroine of the novel reads. The story itself is full of adventures, mysterious artifacts, references to fairy tales, incredible coincidences and bright and pure love. War according to Doerr has nothing to do with the reality of war, this is romantic world, fantasy of sorts. But if the writer is a romantic, it does not make him worse than others. The war has given a premise to thousands of stories, and romantic ones have the same right to exist as a purely realistic.

Two heroes of Doerr’s book are on opposite sides, one potentially on the side of evil, the other on the side of good. It is hard, however, not to sympathize them both, if the author is equally fond of his characters. Werner is not guilty, that he was born in Germany and grew up without parents. It's not his fault that he was born with the talent and wanted to develop his talent. He just wanted to go to university, wanted to do things he loveв to do, wanted his sister to be proud of him. He was not a soldier (Marie-Laure later remember that Werner’s hands were even smaller than her hands), he was a young talented boy. “What the war did to dreamers” – Jutta’s words in the finale of the novel, meaming war killed people like him, are in many ways a reflection of the whole work.

Doerr runs slightly ahead with the chapters of August 1944, but the intrigue definitely is saved until the very end. The finale can break any heart made of stone, and even epilogue’s chapters does not seem superfluous.

This charming story is lightly smeared by stylistic flaws. Doerr uses abrupt, short sentences, especially in the beginning of the book, which are contrary to the atmosphere of the novel. These sentences express banalities devoid of individuality and often present only stylistic beauty. Once the author extends a sentence, the novel begins to move faster. Doerr has a vivid style and the use of obvious epithets only hurts the style.

All the Light We Cannot See is an undoubted success, and only the blind won’t see the author’s talent.

In Paradise

Peter Matthiessen
In Paradise

Riverhead, 2014

The novel tells the story of a weekly pilgrimage, when in 1996, at Auschwitz 140 people gathered to meditate, pray and remember the victims of the concentration camp. Among those who are stationed in the barracks where they SS officers once lived are priests and children of Nazis, relatives of dead Jews and elderly camp survivors, researchers and scientists. One of the pilgrims is the protagonist, 55-year-old academician, American scientist Clements Olin studying poetry of victims of concentration camps and composing poetry collections. Although Olin has devoted much of his life to studying the Holocaust, he can not say he has any special knowledge. You can not be an expert on the subject, if you personally weren’t at a concentration camp as an inmate.

Olin convinces himself that he came to Auschwitz to gather material for a book, but this is only a formal reason. The protagonist himself is not sure who he is and what he wants from his pilgrimage. Not sure and the rest of group. Every day they are gathering to pray, inspect dilapidated buildings, railroad tracks, ovens and gas chambers, talk about themselves and their stories, which led to the retreat.

The participants discuss a variety of topics, from religion and patriotism to Jews and Nazism. Every day some new topic is raised that leads to bitter disputes and discussions, considering how different the audience gathered at the camp site is.

In Paradise is an uncomfortable novel. It’s uncomfortable for everyone, the reader, and the heroes of the novel. Holocaust requires sensitivity. Holocaust does not recognize the hypocrisy, but tearful and compassionate feelings are also irrelevant. When faced with such a monstrous crime against humanity, you are inevitably lost, so literally you can not understand who you are.

Olin’s personality is revealed in the novel not immediately: the first few chapters Matthiessen presents us the main character as an outsider, a stranger. The mystery of personality is one of the main themes of the book. Every pilgrim in the novel reveals oneself thus as he wants. Everyone has prepared beforehand the reason for his pilgrimage, but the reason is most often contrived. The pilgrims either do not know or do not want to know the true reason.

Discomfort is a basic feeling the book causes in the first half. Minor characters one after another raise important issues related to the war and the Holocaust, and these themes in any other society or any other place would never have been touched, they are so painful and uncomfortable. But at the ruins of Auschwitz pilgrims have nowhere to go, and they came to pay tribute to the victims, and to understand something that worries and haunts them. Reading a novel, you feel yourself like one of the pilgrims who hear other people's speeches, noting courage of ones and hypocrisy of others. And along with Olin you can only agree that without being a direct participant in the tragedy, you do not have the right to an opinion and can’t add anything new.

The first half is full of suspense and verbal sparring but as the second half of the novel begins, it is like a completely separate thing, much weaker than the first. Matthiessen is as if exhausted by the main theme and went on less significant ones. The protagonist suddenly switches from a concentration camp to love affairs, which puts reader in another awkward position. Matthiessen sort of moves the place of the death of millions of innocent people in the area of the love affairs. The hero rational core ( and author’s) is gone somewhere, rationality giving way to feelings.
But it is still possible to forgive the author: lone hero could still feel a craving to another person in such tragic place. Difficult to explain the change of course in the final third of the novel. The author reserves the Holocaust behind, switching on the theme of the Catholic Church. Suddenly priests, insider’s intrigies and topic of pedophilia come to the first row. This turn of events is at least strange.

The final Olin speech before pilgrims also could be questioned. The speech is too staged and puzzling. Olin again loses his rationality, muttering something about "Polish Jews." And though his origins Olin found only here in Poland, this can not be that in 50 years he never thought of his mother. Hard to imagine that such a reasonable man had no idea about his Jewishness, when everything pointed to this.

I’m again feeling uncomfortable: how good first half of the novel was, you’re at discomort to critisize it, but otherwise it is impossible. Verdict: read the first half, skip the second.

The Apartment

Greg Baxter
The Apartment

Penguin, 2012

The unnamed narrator, a 40-something years old American, comes to unnamed European city. The narrator was born and lived in a hot city in the desert and now wants to live in a cold city. All events of the book take place in a single day in December before Christmas. European city is not named and it is a combination of several European capitals. There are a zoo, street cars and buses, there is a subway and markets selling hot wine and sausages, on the streets people are playing musical instruments.

The narrator lives in a hotel, where he remains in a state of anonymity. He had already spent several weeks in the city, walking aimlessly through the streets, visiting museums and galleries, buying newspapers, which he still can not read.

The narrator is doing nothing, but he does not need to worry about money. He is a veteran of the Iraq war in Iraq and made there a fortune. He served two terms, first as a Marine on a submarine, and then he returned as a reservist and worked in intelligence. Knowing the war in all its ways, the narrator sets up a business in Iraq, providing the Iraqi police with computer networks and a tracking devices.

«I was making so much money that it didn’t matter. I worked with various private military companies, engineering firms, the Iraqi police, and the US government. I made a thousand dollars an hour for a period of about four weeks, taking vast amounts of information across multiple systems and organizing them onto a database I built for the Army. The way I estimated my fees for the Army—I worked for the Army more than anybody else—was to dream up a figure that seemed unreal and add a zero. The Army didn’t trust you if your fees weren’t preposterous. I didn’t spend anything. When I wasn’t working, I sat in my room and smoked cigarettes, and I listened to the city.»

Now he is rich and can afford anything. He buys the most expensive winter boots, which turned out to be military boots, but this is not immediately noticeable.

The narrator meets a 25 -year-old girl named Saskia at a museum. She works as an economist, loves to party and is the only friend of the narrator. Between them there is no hint of a romantic relationship. They just know each other and live the moment without planning their future life.

Together with Saskia they will go to restaurants and shops, meet Saskia’s friends and actually search for apartment.

A blurb to the story could well be condensed to that one sentence. The novel features transparency and outward simplicity of the plot, although simplicity is deceptive, as in this case. Baxter slides on the "now", allowing himself to describe the most unnecessary things and actions. The narrator can describe a long walk to the bus stop, airing rooms, brewing tea, thus we better learn the inner world of the protagonist, his unwillingness to plan his life longer than a day.

With almost emotionless voice the unnamed narrator describes what he sees, but digresses, thinking on art or history. The veteran of this novel is not a simpleton, a gruff and fighter, he does not fit into this stereotype. He's smart, sensitive, observant. He cleverly hides his invisible scars, received in Iraq. The protagonist can suddenly interrupt the narrative and recall torture and violence he’s seen in Iraq. He is kind of conscience of America, he’s in fever on his own land. In Europe, he becomes invisible, a ghost that no one knows and who does not want to know anyone. Rapprochement with people bring memories of the war.

Baxter in one flashback scene leads the narrator to the lawn of a neighbor in the United States. Neighbor is also a former military man, who made money during the war. On the advice of a neighbor, our protagonist acts. The government is ready to invest any money into the war, and the contractor can ask a big price, the bigger the better. The narrator makes the state pay him for his services the big price. In this scene, it’s clearly revealed the absurdity and the pragmatism of any military action.

Baxter’s prose obviously is not everyone. He writes paragraphs on dozens of pages, avoids dialogues, can jump from one subject to another unexpectedly. Baxter purposely avoids invented story within the novel. Search for an apartment – isn’t it an everyday story? The Apartment is essentially plotless novel, but I can not say that nothing happens.

Brilliant prose.