In my last post I may have unintentionally misled some of you in regards to the identity of the publisher playing host to me at the moment.  Although Virago and Persephone Books are an imprint and publisher, respectively, that I would love to work for and where most of you thought my placement is, I am actually at Random House HQ in Pimlico.  Vintage Books and Vintage Classics are imprints mentioned frequently on Paperback Reader because -as with Virago and Persephone- my preference when it comes to literature is backlist as opposed to frontlist titles especially classics or neglected classics.  I am working in the CCV division, which encompasses the literary imprints of Jonathan Cape, The Bodley Head, Yellow Jersey, Square Peg, Harvill Secker, Chatto & Windus, Vintage, Vintage Classics and Pimlico.  Working on nine imprints of prize-winning books and authors (and the potential Booker prize-winning C by Tom McCarthy) during one of the busiest times of year -with the upcoming Cheltenham Literary Festival and the publication of the high-profile titles for sale in the lead up to Christmas in full swing- is exciting and enriching.

My first week has flown by in a buzz of activity with every task and day varied, highly-pressured and  insightful.  A wealth of experience is being had and also fun.  I love to be busy and thrive on it and there is so much to see, learn and do in CCV with never a dull moment.  Yes, there are tasks that could be considered mundane and administrative in nature -photocopying and mailing out- but I am truly loving all of the different aspects of the publicity department; I have also designed fliers, made up showcards for book events, sent author mail, sought and compiled reviews, drafted party invite lists, planned other parties and events, data entry and I also putting my book blogging and digital experience to good use.

Of course I love being surrounded by the books and some of my favourite authors’ work -Rushdie, García Márquez, Morrison, Coetzee, Murakami are all published there- but publishing is a business and although a passion for the product is tantamount an understanding of how publishing works is an essential requirement for working in the industry.  My brief time so far in Random House is providing me with that crucial insight.

I will, however, share some of the bookish joys here on my site.  On Thursday I had a lunch consisting of several recipes from Nigella Lawson’s new cookbook, Kitchen; the RH canteen cooked up a storm to celebrate the premiere of Nigella Kitchen premiering that night on BBC2.  I can testify that the Pappardelle with Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese and the Panzanella (bread salad) are both completely and utterly delectable.

Lunch on Friday was spent with my mentor, Lisa, who kindly offered me anything on her Vintage Classics shelves after we discussed our shared love for classics; a spare five minutes later that afternoon and some exercise of restraint on my part resulted in the conservative pile above.

I’ve been wanting to read Yukio Mishima for some time but Simon of Savidge Reads convinced me to start with The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, which I thought back to when perusing some Mishima books on the shelves.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that it was the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks this year, which meant that I had to read it; Lisa gave me the fiftieth-anniversary edition (click on the title link to see the cover) and I plan on reading it next.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood was my first Atwood novel and remains a favourite.  Vintage Classics are reissuing it with a striking new red and white cover for its twenty-fifth anniversary (click on the title link to see the cover), The Handmaid’s Tale is as pertinent in its dystopian vision of the subjugation of women as it was when first published.  My copy of the book is one I loaned and never received back so I could not resist owning it again especially with its new jacket design, which I love.

Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is the favourite book of one of my closest friends, consequently one that has been on my wishlist for some time.  I couldn’t resist taking a copy of this when I saw it especially as I was meeting the same friend for dinner that night (she is currently based in the US so it was great to see her); we discussed the Soviet novel a little over dinner and she then told me that it took her a month to read, which she had neglected to mention before.

Speaking of Russian literature, Lisa gave me an amazingly beautiful hardback edition of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, a new translation -the first since the 1958 original- to celebrate Harvill Secker’s Centennial (the bookbag I brought the books home in also commemorates the imprint’s landmark).  I read Doctor Zhivago years ago for a Slavonic literature course at university and would love to reread it one day especially in this lovely snowflake copy and its new translation.

Coincidentally I am at present reading a Vintage Classics book -as you can see on the right-hand side of the post- for the Riverside Readers.  The lovely Polly of Novel Insights chose On the Beach by Nevil Shute as this month’s book; I am particularly thankful to her as I was supposed to read this for a Writing the Disaster module at uni several years ago and didn’t.

I hope to be able to share more books with you next week.  In the meantime feel free to ask me any questions you may have about my placement or Random House in general.

One of my very first reviews on Paperback Reader was of First Love by Ivan Turgenev and soon after I was gifted the complete Penguin Great Loves boxset.  When the Classics Circuit announced a tour of Imperial Russian literature, I was given the opportunity to read further about Russian love from the collection by opting for A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov.

I have read Chekhov’s plays in the past and some of his short stories here and there; one of the stories, “The House with the Mezzanine” I read last year in the anthology, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer also appears in this brief collection.  Consisting of only five short stories -all about love- A Russian Affair is a bite-size taster of Chekhov’s mastery of the short story form.  As a classic Russian writer, Chekhov can intimidate but he is surprisingly accessible and I am a great fan of his style; in the fashion of my favourite short story writer, Katherine Mansfield, Chekhov’s short stories are perfect little pieces of art.

Reading “The House With the Mezzanine” a second time in this volume was enriching; the first time it didn’t make a strong impression on me but rereading it I realised how powerful an evocation of first love it was.  An artist’s story, narrated in the first-person with hindsight, he recalls visits with two sisters seven years previously; he quarrelled continually with outspoken Lida whilst shy Zhenya was compliant and admiring of both her older sister and the artist.  Like the first story “About Love”, it is not about unrequited love but about love that is not acted upon, that haunts in its intensity and regret.  These first two stories struck me as being reminiscent of Turgenev’s First Love and wondered how much Chekhov was influenced by his successor; I also checked to see whether they perhaps had the same translator, but they did not share similarities in that technical way but more fundamentally in tone.

Also in included in this collection is one of Chekhov’s more famous short stories, “The Lady with the Dog”, which is the adulterous Russian affair to which the title alludes; this story moves from young love explored in the earlier stories to the more difficult, all-consuming love.

A Russian Affair provides an insight into Chekhov’s writing style, is easy to read and makes for romantic reading with emotional depth.  With only five stories, it is a mere sample of what Chekhov has to offer, but it is enjoyable glimpse of his work that draws you in with its exploration of the emotional complexities of love.

Since starting to blog I have begun to pay closer attention to translation; not simply reading more books in translation (although that too) but the quality of the translation and its bearing on my enjoyment of the book.  Pre-blogging,  the translation itself was not something I considered and, until now, it remained on the periphery of my response to the book.  Elif Şafak has changed that.

I read The Bastard of Istanbul a couple of summers ago and it was the perfect summer read (for me); a sprawling family saga with secrets, intrigue and an opening scene where a nineteen year old unmarried woman walks into a doctor’s surgery demanding an abortion, had hooked from beginning to end.  Ever since, I have been eager to read another novel by Elif Shafak and The Flea Palace appealed.  What I didn’t realise was that The Bastard of Istanbul was Shafak’s first novel written in English whereas The Flea Palace was written in Turkish (Bit Palas) a few years earlier and translated into English.  Is my disparate enjoyments of the two books simply due to translation? I can surmise that it is but I can’t be entirely sure.  In my haste to read the book  (and a long waiting time for it to become available in the library) I neglected to realise that the novel was out-of-print because Penguin are issuing it later this summer; whether it is a different translation or whether it has been re-written by Shafak herself, I can’t tell you but what I do know is that the Penguin edition will undoubtedly be of a higher quality than the Marion Boyars published edition I read. Translated from the Turkish by Müge Göçek, the translation itself was dry and also American English (garbage, emergency room, etc. all jarred with me);  it was published by  the same publisher in both the US and UK -presumably the same edition- explaining the language but there were so many typos that I began to look out for them, hence affecting my enjoyment.

The Flea Palace was nominated for the Independent Foreign Prize in 2005 and has been critically well-received but I really struggled to finish the book; (I ultimately did but it was time-consuming). I would be interested in comparing the forthcoming Penguin edition of the book as I am fascinated whether translation and stylistics are the root causes of my struggles with this book.  On paper, this is a book that I should have loved -an author I had previously really enjoyed; a dilapidated block of flats (apartments) inhabited by ten different families and individuals with a central intrigue; an interesting story-within-a-story structure with each chapter narrated by different inhabitants of Bonbon palace- but, ultimately, I was bored and thought the narrative dragged.  The Bonbon palace flats are numbered from one to ten, as is the list of characters, with chapters headed “Flat Three” or Flat Ten” etc; there is a quirky cast of inhabitants including Hairdressers Cemal and Celal; Me (the primary narrator); The Blue Mistress; Hygiene Tijen and Su; Madam Auntie but some engaged me more than others and Me (a drunken divorced Professor who calls his ex-wife “the C*unt”, minus the asterix) initially exceedingly irritated me before becoming more sympathetic.

The premise of The Flea Palace is that Bonbon palace has become infested with bugs, bugs appearing in each chapter/flat in different ways and forms; the infestation is blamed on the accumulating rubbish (garbage, as it is frequently referred to in the translation) dump surrounding the building.  However, there is also a pervasive stench coming from the building itself, a central mystery that is the focus of most of the characters and one that is revealed towards the end of the novel, and also a case of missing bags of rubbish.  The novel opens with Injustice Pureturk, who owns a pest removal business, before moving back in the narrative to give some historical context of how the flats came to be (a Russian emigre built them for his dying wife).  Creatively the novel is impressive in its scope and style but I found it very dry, even turgid, and the ending let me down but that is more of a personal concern; the ending was ambitious and tied in well with the structure but not to my satisfaction and I also predicted the mystery reveal so that did not sustain my attention.  I have written extensively about the translation because my instincts tell me that I would not have found this novel dry if it wasn’t for the translation, based on my experience of Shafak’s later novel; I advise anyone attracted to the novel to hold off to the Penguin edition, in the hope that it is a different translation.

I shrugged.  It doesn’t make any difference anymore if I open or close the windows.  With the weather warming up every passing day the garbage smell gets worse.  If exposed to this maladour on the street, one walks faster, if in the car, one rolls the windows up.  However, if the house you live in, the morning you wake up into, the night you sleep through, the walls, the windows, the doors and every direction you turn to stinks, then you are trapped.  There is no way of stepping outside the yoke of smell.

I am extending a warm welcome to the Classics Circuit tour today who are bringing us Émile Zola in spring.  I opted to read Thérèse Raquin, one of Zola’s earlier novels, based on a couple of favourable reviews I read last year, most notably this one, which prompted me to purchase a copy.  Published in 1867, originally in serial format, the novel is a pyschological study of Thérèse and Laurent, her lover, in the aftermath of their murder of Thérèse’s husband. Camille.  In many ways I was reminded of the brilliantly-realised short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, which pre-dates Thérèse Raquin by more than two decades and that explores the psychology of a murderer’s guilt.

Thérèse and Laurent, her husband’s friend, enter into a sordid affair and in the throes of their passion, suggest murdering Camille; this act, they think, would serve as a solution to their lust and avarice but, ultimately, serves only to destroy them.  The novel’s original serialised structure heightens the suspense and drama, creating mini-endings and/or cliff-hangers in the close of most chapters but it is not a sensational read but a gritty, life-like one.  Zola was at the head of the literary school of Naturalism and Thérèse Raquin is a realistic exploration of the underbelly of human nature, in a realistic -and lower-class- setting.

Zola wrote that in Thérèse Raquin he was studying temperaments as opposed to characters and I think that he succeeded; the characterisation was mainly through the heightening and deepening of emotions, exploring why and how the characters acted on and coped with their emotions, as opposed to fully-fledging them out.  Thérèse, the eponymous anti-heroine, was exceedingly passive to begin with, or at least was pretending towards passivity, and then became increasingly self-serving and irrational; none of the characters were likeable but they were realistic in their sheer unpleasantness.  I found the contrast between the sensual yet sordid affair at the beginning with the stripped away loathsomeness of the lovers at the end very effective (demonstrated with the two quotes used below); however I wasn’t as immersed in the events as I had hoped that I would be, finding it dragged out in some parts.

The translation by Andrew Rothwell was immensely readable and I will read further Zola in the future, beginning with The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames).

From the beginning, the lovers felt their affair to be something necessary, inevitable, and utterly natural.  At their first meeting they spoke familiarly and kissed without any blushing or embarrassment, as if their intimacy had already been going for a number of years.  They were quite calm and at ease in their new situation, and they lived completely without shame.

For more than a year Thérèse and Laurent had borne lightly the chain that bound their limbs to each other with equanimity.  In the period of numbness that had come after the acute crisis of the murder, in the feelings of repugnance and the need for peace and forgetfulness which had then followed, these two prisoners had been able to imagine themselves free, no longer linked together by an iron bond.  The chain had hung slack on the ground whilst they rested, and they had fallen into a contented stupor and looked around for love elsewhere, trying to lead a sensible and balanced existence.  But the day came when, driven by events, they began once more to exchange words of passion, and the chain snapped taut again, giving them such a jolt that they realized they were now attached to each other for ever,

Till now my thoughts were all of love; but it was soon replaced by rage. Who do you think is trying to ruin my reputation with the woman I adore? What fiend in woman’s shape is evil enough to weave such an abominable plot? You know her, it’s your friend and relative, Madame de Volanges. You cannot imagine the tissue of horrors that obnoxious old hag has written about me. It is she and she alone who has been disturbing my angel’s peace of mind; it’s her views and her pernicious advice that are forcing me to leave; in a word, it is she who has victimized me. Oh, there’s no doubt about it, her daughter has got to be seduced; no, that’s not enough. That woman must be smashed and since the old trout is too long in the tooth to be attacked directly, she must be made to suffer through someone she loves.

You may be a trifle annoyed at what I’m asking you to do but isn’t it a very small return for all the trouble I’ve been taking over your affairs? Didn’t I restore you to the judge’s when, through your own stupidity, you’d been forced to leave her? And then wasn’t it me who placed into your hands ways and means to settle your score with that mischievous old bigot Madame de Volanges? You’re always moaning about the time you waste looking round for exciting things to do. Now you have a couple under your very nose. Love or hatred, take your pick; they’re both sleeping under the same roof and you can live a double life, fondling with one hand and stabbing in the back with the other…

Thoughts from other Riverside Readers:

Farmlanebooks

Novel Insights

Reading Matters

Savidge Reads