July Reads
Relationships; platonic, romantic and the ones we have with ourselves + criticising the ending of The Safekeep & The Booker Prize longlist
The books of July all circled around relationships; the ones we have romantically, platonically and with ourselves. Many explored how relationships, of any kind, are one of the most significant aspects of our existence - that the relationships we have with each other can be both magical and deplorable. Two novels interrogated our relationship to complicity when it comes to violence against others, which feels fitting considering the increasingly harrowing news that has been circulating about Gaza.
It feels futile to discuss the importance of our relationships with one another when there is a genocide taking place. What is happening is on my mind every day, and I am sure it is on yours too. The emotional landscapes of these novels called for consideration on how we interact with each other - something I want to scream about until my throat bleeds to those who have the power to change what is happening in Gaza. There is no tidy way to end this introduction, so let’s get on with the books.
To see the translated reads from July on Martha’s Map, including authors from France, Brazil, Greece and Argentina, click here.
For those who are new, buy, borrow, bust is my recommendation key: Buy = I loved this book and highly recommend it. Borrow = I liked this book and think it is worth a read. Bust = I wouldn’t recommend this book from my reading experience.
‘Friends and Lovers’ by Nolwenn Le Blevennec
Three young mothers, and friends, decide to go on a holiday to Tunisia to engineer a break for themselves from their exhausting lives in Paris. Desperate for freedom, they pack their bags, leave their families and don’t look back; ‘This trip to Tunisia signalled the return of the egos that had been dissolved in motherhood. The return of the higher self, to the detriment of the family. The sin of pride, of individualism’.1 They create new memories, celebrate, complain about their lives and unlock a dormant individuality. In a break from their responsibilities, Tunisia is perhaps best described as a hedonist retreat.
This trio is anchored by our protagonist, Armelle. Rim is her childhood best friend, Anna is her best friend from work. Rim and Anna met through Armelle, who is the matriarch of this trio. This dynamic is important to remember; one friendship is more architecturally strong and less forgiving, the other less formative but driven by less ego.
Three years after the success of Tunisia, the women reunite for another holiday, in a lighthouse off the coast of Brittany. In a desperate effort to recreate the ease of the last holiday, the women fail to notice that time has opened a chasm between them. Their camaraderie is eroding, long-held power dynamics begin to shift and a betrayal emerges when it is revealed that one of them is writing a film, inspired by their friendship. Friends and Lovers is narrated to us by Armelle as she pieces together where it all went wrong. She is recounting the timeline of friendships from her bed, where she is mourning spending Rim’s birthday apart from her for the first time since they became friends.
‘Intimacy between women is profound. What happens, once we become friends, is that we invite each other into our internal machinery. We introject each other. On the stage of an average day, I seem alone: I talk, I eat, I work, I flirt [...] but in the wings, many people are happily heard at work with money wrenches’ 2
Friends and Lovers explores the all-consuming beautiful intensity of female friendships. Le Blevennec meditates that, for better or for worse, the familiarity that exists between women has no limit, and this intimacy can be both powerful and dangerous. Women are socialised from a young age to put immense time and effort into their friendships, to create emotionally intimate worlds with their peers that are unique. Female friendships can erupt with a complex intensity that is hard to fathom, and they can expire in the same way. Empires are built, full of nuances that cannot be seen by anyone else that only make sense to them.
Friends and Lovers meditates on how friendships become complicated with the passing of time. How do phases of life for women (adolescence, pregnancy, motherhood) change the landscape of friendship?
Armelle, Rim and Anna are friends and lovers, as the title suggests, because to know someone as intimately as they do is to love them deeply. It is as though they have imprinted on each other. Thus, a breakup with a friend is as devastating, if not more so, than with a romantic partner. While there always exists the possibility that a romantic relationship might end, friends are formed under the pretence that they will exist forever, irrespective of change. But love can turn to envy and the weight of what has gone unsaid for years begins to erode the structural integrity of the group. Le Blevennec explores that a shift in perspective can impact friendships and the casualties of this can be the relationships we thought would last a lifetime.
Le Blevennec’s exploration of the love between Armelle, Rim and Anna is earnest and tender, acknowledging how pivotal and profound it can be. It is so familiar to read about falling in love with a friend, and the immense pain of losing one. The prose is poetic and sharp, tracing the bonds of female friendship with a fine-tooth-comb. There is no formative memory, or event, left unturned by Le Blevennec, each moment of significance is shared with us. The time-jumping narrative was refreshingly constructed, interrogating multiple versions of ‘the truth’, the boundaries of friendship and how much it can withstand. Often, these boundaries are unknown until they are crossed, and then there is no going back; several tiny betrayals accumulate to undo a lifetime of familiarity.
Friends and Lovers quietly unpicks every moment Armelle, Rim and Anna’s intertwining threads start to untangle, each time annoyance starts to eclipse love. It is quietly intimate in its exploration of love between women. I can’t recall having read a book that interrogates female friendship in such an accurate way - I loved reading about the power of platonic love. It is, so often, much more beautiful than romantic love. I would recommend this and call it a buy! I would recommend this to any woman and anyone who thinks friendship breakups are more devastating than romantic breakups (they are).
‘Necessary Fiction’ by Eloghosa Osunde
Necessary Fiction is a panoramic look at queer life in Lagos, Nigeria, as Osunde’s twelve characters seek out romantic and self love. In doing so, many forfeit relationships with their birth family in an effort to seek a chosen family for the foundation of their exploration of self. The characters grapple with identity, religion and desire in their pursuit of expression and creating art. In creating their own world, exclusively orbiting each other, Osunde’s characters explore the power of found family and the pricelessness of having the safety to truly express yourself. If this sounds like a confusing premise for a novel, that's because it is. In this exploration of expression and love, a lack of plot paired with overwrought prose creates a novel that is untidy and laboured.
Necessary Fiction is not too dissimilar for Osunde’s debut Vagabonds; a novel that I described as ‘stilted’ and ‘plotless’ - a book that I admired in theory, but while reading found hard to connect with. I hoped for a different outcome this time, but alas I once more found myself struggling. Osunde treats each of their characters with such compassion, arguably to the detriment of the plot. Necessary Fiction lacks any form of trajectory, with a ‘plot’ being more rooted in a nebulous exploration of self discovery. There is almost no coherence in Osunde’s portrayal of their characters. Instead, we are pulled in and out of a character's stream of consciousness, being made privy to how they feel before and after events, rather than being able to witness those events ourselves.
Thus, Necessary Fiction becomes this almost sterile portrayal of identity exploration, where the challenges of maintaining relationships, or figuring out who you are, are never explored. Instead, we witness erratic snapshots of how characters feel, paced as if Osunde intentionally desires to disrupt the readers ability to view these events, or characters, with any linearity. They run us down one narrative thread, only to pull us back and never let us see the resolution. There is a growing paper trail in this newsletter about how much I dislike nebulous narratives and every time I try again, I am unsurprised that I cannot be swayed.
I admire Osunde’s writing and how they explore themes of identity and chosen family. There is some profound exploration within Necessary Fiction about what it means to feel safe enough to express yourself - whether that is in the country you live or having the right people in your space. Necessary Fiction contains this push and pull between birth and chosen family, the pain of the former not understanding you for who you are. I loved Osunde’s approach of not villainising any family members who were cruel, instead exploring how their own pain resulted in their behaviour. This nuance about the complexity of familial relationships when it comes to identity was evocative when I could catch glimpses of it. But like an apparition, these moments faded just as quickly as they appeared.
Necessary Fiction is almost entirely devoid of conflict, which when you’re exploring the complexities of human existence, feels absurd. How can a novel that is so rooted in traumatic events, and the landscape of relationships, manage to portray a world absent of tension? With the tension points we do see almost entirely glossed over. Necessary Fiction appears to suggest that all birth families are full of contention, all chosen families are full of ease.
and I spoke about how surreal this novel is (she loved it, I did not), and she suggested how this novel is idealised; an opportunity for Osunde to write a world they would like to see exist. I’m referencing our voice notes because hearing her talk about how she interpreted the novel helped me appreciate it in a different light. To quote Tembe; ‘this book has a deep sense of justice for these specific cast of characters’ and ‘the lack of friction created the opportunity for compelling meditations’ which I agreed with. I can acknowledge the benefit of the lack of friction and the freedom that exists within creating a world that looks like ours on the surface, but is entirely removed from reality. Queer lives are often discussed in their limitations (legal, political, social) so it is significant that Osunde created a world where they barely encounter any resistance to their desires.I came into this narrative looking for realism, and I was disappointed, because there is none. I value realism in the novels I read, and while the intensity of this ‘realism’ can vary, I often want the books to interrogate the social issues we see in this world. Necessary Fiction does this on paper, it interrogates a variety of difficulties of queer existence, but in such an idealised way that it didn’t work for me.
Despite all that I did not like about Necessary Fiction, I appreciated being able to witness a novel that falls outside of a conventional narrative, that encompasses attempting to tell a story in an entirely new way. I equally admired and resented Osunde’s approach. I wouldn’t want anyone to read this novel because of me, so I will be calling it a bust. But if you do like the sound of it and are interested in a different reflection, I would recommend Tembe’s piece!
‘On Earth As It Is Beneath’ by Ana Paula Maia
In a remote corner of Brazil, on land where enslaved people were once tortured, lies a penal colony built by the state. Situated in the wilderness, it is somewhere inmates go to be rehabilitated after committing violent crimes - but they never leave. Decades after its conception, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are being called to wind down. However, after being trapped with these dangerous men for decades, the warden has other ideas. On the night of every full-moon, he selects a handful of inmates to set free - but they are only free if they can escape him - and his rifle. Every man meticulously tries to plan their escape, unbeknownst to them if their ending will come from a familiar face or the dangers that lie beyond the prison walls.
‘He’d never heard of the colony before, maybe because no one who was sent there ever got out to tell the tale’3
On Earth As It Is Beneath is the prequel to Maia’s previous novella, Of Cattle And Men. I remember feeling enamoured with her exploration of violence and masculinity, and this novella is no less enthralling. On Earth As It Is Beneath is a short, tense story about the history of incarceration and its systematic devaluation of human life. It explores the intersection between masculinity, the patriarchy and our relationship to violence. Maia viscerally and succinctly meditates on society's relationship to witnessing violence and how doing so makes us complicit in it.
The warden, driven to murderous madness by the prison, articulates how dehumanising the entirety of the incarceration system is for everyone; the prisoners, the staff and wider society. Maia suggests the role of incarceration cheapens all our existence, creating a society built off complicit violence. Maia articulates on how we keep burying our dead on top of each other by situating this colony on land where enslaved people were once tortured, exemplifying how cyclical this violence is.
On Earth As It Is Beneath is frantic with adrenaline as we witness these men get hunted like animals, extending a comment on how we treat all living beings on this planet. In Of Cattle and Men, Maia suggests that our dehumanisation of animals stems from our relationships to each other; that we dehumanise each other through the systems we live under, which are innately violent. Animals are slaughtered for food, human beings are slaughtered for retribution.
‘In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more blood-thirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely blood-thirsty… Now we do think bloodshed is abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, with more energy than ever’ - Fyodor Dostoyevsky in ‘Notes From Underground’ 4
On Earth As It Is Beneath is a poignant tale about the consequences for our sociopolitical actions, or, inactions. Maia implies that no violence, or crime, can be hidden for long. She holds up a mirror to us all to witness the horrifying realities of our humanity that lie in broad daylight. This novella is thought provoking about what it means to have a relationship with violence. Whether partaking in it, witnessing it in real life or on screens - how does the way we consume, and characterise it, shape our lives and contribute to the cycle of violence that the systems of society ensure we partake in.
I wouldn’t dare comment any further about the details of this punchy novella because they are better left unsaid. All I will say is this - read On Earth As It Is Beneath before Of Cattle And Men to enjoy the trajectory of the story to its fullest. While occasionally On Earth As It Is Beneath explains a little too explicitly what is happening on the page, this does not take away from the resounding brilliance of the novella. I wholeheartedly recommend this and call it a buy! It is in essence all I love in a novel; translated, written by a woman and comments on the sociopolitical issues of our world.
‘Three Summers’ by Margarita Liberaki
Set in the countryside near Athens just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Three Summers is the tale of sisters Maria, Infanta and Katerina, across three consecutive summers. Three Summers is a quiet tale about the unique thrill of summers as a young girl, full of desire and contemplation about what the future might hold, and how they might get there.
‘Youth, a summer evening and darkness are a dangerous mix’ 5
Katerina, the youngest, is our protagonist. She carefully watches the behaviour of her sisters to evaluate how she might act when the time comes for her. The girl's parents are divorced, and while they live with their mother, Maria, the eldest, seems to be the guiding light in Katerina’s life. Maria is ambitious, flirtatious and only has her eye on one thing; boys. In the first summer we watch her desire for marriage play out as she tries to choose between her head and heart. Infanta is more reserved, much less interested in boys. Instead, she is obsessed with her horse. Katerina watches Maria embrace the romanticised image of womanhood, and Infanta reject it. She is left somewhere in the middle, and is unsure which sister she should follow. It seemingly does not occur to Katerina that she does not have to follow either of them.
First published in 1946, Three Summers is a novel that would have been truly revolutionary for women at the time. While quiet in its exploration, Three Summers traverses the complexity of womanhood, meditating on the conflict between desire and societal expectation. With their parents divorce, the sisters have a more modern perspective on romantic relationships for the time. It is perhaps their divorce that leads to Maria’s obsession, and Infanta’s rejection, of marriage. Katerina is not quite sure what she likes, and is given the space by Liberaki to contemplate on who she might be outside of who those around her expect her to be.
The plot is less driven by action, instead about witnessing the trajectory of their adolescence. Three Summers breaks conventionality, challenging what tradition is and where the physical, and emotional, home is. The novel starts slow, and a sharpness does not emerge until half way through, where conversations about what women should, or shouldn’t do, emerge. This discussion is triggered by Maria’s detest for ‘dissatisfied women’. Katerina interjects, curiously asking if there are ‘women rebelling on the inside?’. Maria’s husband is confused, what could a woman be rebelling against? Katerina confirms; ‘rebelling against their womanly fate’ who perhaps ‘have a desire for something else’. This interchange exemplifies the challenge Liberaki is making towards gendered roles in domestic and social spheres, offering Maria and Katerina two contrasting opportunities to consider the agency women have over their future.
Maria’s detest reveals more about herself than she could have anticipated, and we can only assume that she is a dissatisfied woman. Katerina’s childlike curiosity and questioning of women's gender roles reveals the extent at which she has considered her ‘womanly fate’, as it were, and whether she can reject it. This scene at the dinner table is one of the strongest scenes of the novel, reinforcing to the reader explicitly that this is a novel about the nuance of womanhood, the conflict between societal expectation and personal ambition. Liberaki explores the various shades of women’s existence, querying what agency is available for women to pick their destiny themselves.
Three Summers is a novel of women with secrets about who they are, what they do and what they want. It extrapolates on the patriarchal limits placed on them in the twentieth-century and the expectations that girls begin to think about when they are just children. This novel is languid and quite saccharine, and it is not entirely gripping, but the undercurrents of the trappings of domesticity were intriguing. Perhaps what most powerfully contextualises this novel is in the introduction by Polly Samson; ‘In Greece, all women would not have the right to vote for six years after Three Summers was published [...] and its earliest readers would have been through a terrible famine’. With a total lack of agency, it is unsurprising that Three Women captured audiences in the way that it did - it held the dream of determining their future, and the luxury of choice.
This novel kept me mostly engaged and while it wasn’t exactly rigorous to read, I enjoyed it enough! I would call this a borrow and recommend it to any readers who want a gentle, but interesting enough, characteristically summer read.
‘The Safekeep’ by Yael van der Wouden
Note: I have a lot to say about this book, I know so many people have read it and I want to discuss it - so this is literally full of spoilers. It is barely a review and more a critical analysis. Proceed with caution if you want to read the book one day.
The year is 1961 in The Netherlands, fifteen-years after the Second World War. Isabel lives in her late mothers country home, the one she partially grew up in. Her brothers, Louis and Hendrik, both moved out years ago and when their mother died, she stayed there - alone. Through her isolation, Isabel created a strict rhythm of life, one full of predictability; there is nothing that happens that she has not considered. Her relationship with Hendrik is strong, the one with Louis less so. He is a formidable womaniser and her and Henridk are exasperated by the constant string of women they meet. Eva, Louis’ latest acquisition, is no different from the rest; Isabel despises her. But when Louis goes away on business, Eva requests to stay with Isabel, threatening the order Isabel has so meticulously created over the years. Isabel is exasperated with desperation and, well, lust.
I thought I had this novel all figured out. The Safekeep has all the tropes of a romance novel - two enemies to lovers, trapped in a house together, yearning for a forbidden lust for each other. Any reader can see this coming from a mile off - Isabel's desperation for discipline is evidently a fastidious attempt to control something she cannot express. Their infatuation is up against the limits of patriarchal society; Eva will have to return to Louis, Isabel should pursue the man who continually asks her on dates. Eva and Isabel can only achieve social and financial security through men, not each other. This forbidden lovers tension trope is so predictable that I took my eye off the ball, I was certain I knew how this would end. I started to get a bit bored of all the yearning because the reveal is that Eva and Isabel are lovers, right?
My arrogance was stopped in its tracks on the last page of part two - a hidden history of the house is revealed that neither we, nor Isabel, could see. Van der Wouden manoeuvres the reader from a position of certainty to ignorance, a shared ignorance with Isabel. It is revealed that Isabel’s home is actually Eva’s, and Eva’s family was forcibly removed during the war because they were Jewish. For the past twenty years, Isabel has been sleeping in Eva’s bed, eating off her plates and tending to her garden. The house reverberates with the horrors of the holocaust, historical heft and the politics of possession. Isabel's neurotic intensity is overtaken by her lust for Eva, and she fails to notice that Eva is smuggling out her family's possessions, piece by piece.
The atrocities and opportunism that occurred under the German occupation of The Netherlands are laid painfully bare through the final third of the novel. Unable to obtain any justice, Eva takes matters into her own hands to claim what is rightfully hers. The Safekeep crafts a queer love story that is pulsating with the wounds of displacement, unbeknownst to Isabel. This eruption in the plot is rightfully aggressive, van der Wouden firmly confronts us with the horrors of a genocide, which sucks every thrill the reader might have felt about their lust, away. Isabel’s family possessed Eva’s home, Eva returned twenty years later and possessed Isabel.
My desire to discuss this novel in detail is driven by wanting to discuss the ending. Isabel is the oppressor in this novel, despite her lack of understanding of her role in that, and Eva is the villainised ‘other’. Isabel rectifies the situation in the way she seems fit; taking possession of the house from her brother and offering Eva to come and live there with her, as her lover. A significant portion of my admiration for The Safekeep changed when I saw how neatly it ended. After van der Wouden forces the reader to witness the ethical ambiguity and politicisation of their relationship, she manages to find a way to end with a happily (and lusty) ever after. This strays from the discussion Eva’s point-of-view brings to the novel, which is the uncomfortable reality of humanity's capacity to other, and inflict immense cruelty, on certain ethnic groups.
The Safekeep moves from predictable romantic tropes to a commentary about one of the most famous genocides in history. The novel shifts from neatly digestible to messy, uncomfortable. Which begs the question of how, or perhaps more precisely why, did van der Wouden write such a saccharine and tidy ending which forgives, and moves on, so swiftly.
Maris Kreizman wrote last year about ‘The Holocaust Beach Reads’ - how fiction that handles the holocaust continually transmutes one of the greatest atrocities in human history so the story is digestible. Thus, does The Safekeep become like every other digestible Holocaust Beach Read? After placing the holocaust in the centre of the story, van der Wouden returns to the tropes of the genre and romanticises Eva and Isabel’s relationship, flattening the tragedy of the holocaust - which had only happened fifteen years prior.
It is fascinating that after Eva’s account of being displaced with no legal standing, van der Wouden continues to write her as such. Yes, she is living in the house with Isabel, but Isabel still owns it. Eva continues to have no legal agency or rights as to where she lives or what she owns. Isabel is not ‘sharing’ the house - the oppressors still own property that isn’t rightfully theirs. Van der Wouden humanises Isabel, absolving her to an extent, asking; what is she supposed to do - it’s not her fault? Ownership remains in Isabel’s family, but she has extended an olive branch, and Eva is expected to feel immense gratitude for being allowed back into a home that is hers. Van der Wouden retreats back to romanticising their dynamic, and veiled in romantic tones, The Safekeep ends with lines akin to ‘If you are mine then I am yours’ - language which is still rooted in possession. This lack of resolution means in its final few pages, nothing has changed and the limits of the genre suffocate the story from being a much stronger novel (
discusses the limits of the genre here).Perhaps there is space, in another universe, to turn a blind eye to The Safekeep’s lack of interrogation on occupation. An ending that makes oppressors feel comfortable, and entertains the power of love instead, is enough - where it is permissible for us not to interrogate the roles we knowing, or unknowingly, play in the oppression of others in the name of love. But we are not in another universe. We live in the one where a genocide is taking place against Palestinians in Gaza. It is impossible to read The Safekeep without considering the contemporary connections. While the discussion of Gaza is outside the scope of this novel, the lack of resolution for Eva, the exploration of collective, wilful forgetting and a lack of any concrete amends feel so inherently connected to what is happening in Gaza, and so many other groups.
To read The Safekeep, which explores oppression and possession during a genocide, alongside witnessing another, is unsettling. I wished for more in the ending of this novel, although it might be unfair to do so. It is entirely plausible that Isabel may have never acknowledged her role as oppressor if she did not fall in love with Eva. So, The Safekeep begs the question, at what point does history become so diluted that we can absolve ourselves of the oppression of others? We have to wonder why van der Wouden doesn’t come down harder on Isabel’s role in the story, and how it suggests the politics of oppression can be forgiven in less than a couple decades? That awareness of its existence is enough, rather than interrogating the responsibility we all have to each other in recognising our role in this world - we are not free until we are all free. Isabel’s lasting possession of the home but believing it is the right thing to do, the best way to handle the situation, speaks volumes.
This novel is brilliantly engaging - I loved van der Wouden’s prose, would recommend it and call it a buy, while still wanting to discuss its limits. The Safekeep is a work of fiction, yet it is rooted in a historical reality that is so horrendous, its limits in its discussion about occupation are perhaps more glaringly obvious than its strengths.
‘False Calm’ by María Sonia Cristoff
Born in Trelew, Patagonia, Cristoff knows first hand the isolation that is present in the region, but she wanted to locate it to its extremes. In search of understanding how isolation manifests in the region, Cristoff journeys through Patagonia, chronicling the ghost towns that were left behind by the oil boom in the 1990s. False Calm is the evidence of her return and the conversations she had with the people she met. She visits coastal hamlets, hamlets in the Andean foothills, towns where there are more animals than people. They hold stories of socio-economic isolation - with unemployment rates sky rocketing, housewives abandoned, soaring rates of suicide, increasingly unreliable public transport and communities where the nearest hospital, or doctor, are days away.
In directly challenging the romanticised image that Patagonia is so famous for, Cristoff interrogates how these communities have been so drastically cut off from the outside world and the effect this has on their day-to-day lives. I have been anticipating this release for a while, eager to understand more about how Patagonia is not the romanticised region that the travel discourse says it is. In just one search about the region, the results are about ‘how to get the most out of your holiday’ and why it is the ‘perfect couples destination’.6 After my interview with Ariel Saramandi, where we discussed how Mauritius is frequently only understood through the lens of tourism, I was unsurprised to discover that Patagonia has a similar issue. Even after clicking through five pages of search-engine results, I could not find any information about the societal challenges the region is facing today. False Calm was published in 2005, so it is not a stretch of the imagination to assume the situation might have gotten worse.
This isolation, while deeply physical, is also psychological. Cristoff meets people whose life has a timelessness to it, but not in a romantic way. There is barely any technology, with one town all consistently watching the same TV channel because no one can afford individual cable. Daughters are traded for goats in desolate areas where it is not unusual to find children suffering from psychological and sexual abuse. These areas are hard to access by any sort of authority, and people don’t talk - their world is so removed from ours, they operate differently. Cristoff takes the ‘limitless horizon of the travel brochure’ and demonstrates just how limitless it is, with no support or escape for the women and children who live there.
False Calm is quietly devastating throughout, but perhaps what is most impactful is Cristoff’s reporting on the rising number of suicides in a local school. Situated at the end of the line of a rail track, because money ran out, children are feeling hopless. There is this real suffocating sense of feeling trapped, especially within young people, throughout these accounts.
‘Around here, people disappear a lot. One day they leave their house, and they never come back. For no reason, with no warning. One day, they simply never show up again. They’re not fed up with anyone, there’s not anything they want to run away from [...] There is nowhere to go back to, so they don’t. They leave, disappear.’ 7
False Calm reminded me of a film I watched earlier in the year, Gaucho, Gaucho, that explored cowboys' desperate attempts to preserve their traditional way of life. The film is beautifully shot, and I enjoyed it a lot, but since reading False Calm I am struck with my own reflections on how romanticised Gaucho, Gaucho appeared, at times, to me - communities who value family, traditions and are unbound to any sign of modernity. Yet there was no narrative there, just snapshots of people living their life. This is the form False Calm takes, less journalistic rigor, more quiet portraits, allowing the reader to witness another life. The irony that exists, for areas like Patagonia to have been colonised, mined of valuable resources and then left destitute, only for future western traveler’s to romanticise the isolation of the region, is absurd.
I anticipated more substantial factual and historical analysis within False Calm, about how the region changed from colonisation, to the oil boom, and bust. I felt a sense of inadequateness that this information was not to be found in this novel, I finished it feeling very hungry for more. I value both approaches, of portraits of everyday lives and the historical/statistical insight, but my expectations got the better of me with False Calm. I expected something different, so I wasn’t entirely satisfied. I finished wanting more information on the indigenous and native lives in Patagonia, information that seems to be implausibly hard to find online. Nevertheless, I enjoyed how False Calm contributed to what I have been thinking about since reading Portrait of an Island on Fire, which is the Westerner’s relationship to travelling, tourism and over romanticising places that are in need of help. I would call False Calm a borrow!
And that concludes my July Reads! My favourite read of the month was ‘On Earth As It Is Beneath’.
August, as many of you will know, is Women in Translation Month. I will be trying my best to read as many women in translation novels as I can! Starting with ‘Strangers I Know’ by Claudia Durastanti, a novel that has been sitting on my shelf for longer than I am willing to admit.
I will be sharing a newsletter in a week (ish) about the best books I have read in the last year which are translated and written by women.
In the mean time, you can get some recommendations I did for WITM last year;
And the year before;
End Notes
☞ In book news, The Booker Prize has released their 2025 longlist!
From the list, I am intrigued by:
The South by Tash Aw - I have a copy of this on my shelf - I will try and read it soon.
Flesh by David Szalay - I have been intending to read this ever since
’s endorsed it.Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga - again, I have a copy of this and will prioritise to read soon.
I still haven’t read James from last year - I said I was waiting for the paperback to arrive. The paperback is now officially in my hands, so I will read it before the year ends.
Let me know your thoughts:
☀︎ What have you read and enjoyed in July? Any recommendations for me?
☆ Have you read any of these books? Would you like to?
❊ Do you have any recommendations for me based off the themes of this month?
✿ Have you read anything from the Booker Longlist? What intrigues you? Tell me!
✍︎ If you’ve read The Safekeep, I implore you to let me know what you thought of the ending! Do you disagree with me? The floor is yours.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
See you soon for all things Women in Translation,
Until then,
Happy Reading! Love Martha
Share this with that friend who is always looking for books to read! It will make you look cool and well read.
Catch up on what you might have missed:
July was so heavy on content (3 newsletters from me!) and I am sorry for that - they all fell at the same time - thank you for letting me take up more space in your inbox last month than I usually do. <3
I shared my first sponsored review - which was something new! Check it out if you missed it.
My interview with Ariel Saramandi about Portrait of an Island on Fire, a book I read in April and didn’t review because I said an interview was forthcoming. Well, here it is ^
What I was reading in July 2024: (this was a good month. I still think about Enter Ghost literally all the time)
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p.49 in Friends and Lovers
p.64 in Friends and Lovers
p.26 in ‘On Earth As It Is Beneath’
on p.99 in ‘Of Cattle And Men’
p.35 in Three Summers
Doesn’t this final title feel like a joke? No disrespect to the people who write travel articles, but they are mostly slop. And have awful grammar.
p.252 in False Calm
*** Spoiler Warning: do not read my comment if you intend to read The Safekeep!!! ***
I completely agree with you about the ending of The Safekeep. I was really swept up in the romance of the story while I read it... and am convinced that the two of them ending up together after the reveal would be completely impossible. I think that Eva was an extremely well-written character and I thought it was so disrespectful and humiliating to have her agree to stay and in that house she would not own. I thought that she showed a lot of self-respect and willingness to work through the trauma inflicted on her family.... and I can imagine her, by falling in love, seeing the intensity of her rage dissipate. But I can't imagine her staying in that environment. I am starting to repeat myself ... but I thought that the editorial team should have pushed against that ending and helped van der Woulden come up with an equally uncomfortable ending that would feel more attuned to that character.
I really enjoyed reading your thoughtful review of the Safekeep and the False Calm. I haven’t heard much about Patagonia and I feel like I learned something today.
I was excited for the Booker Prize long list this week. I’ve read Audition and wasn’t surprised to see it on the list. I’m also half through Endling. Both books make for some of the most interesting and unforgettable reads. Kind of like what the Mobius book is doing. I’m still mulling over which other ones I want to read from the long list. I’ve had The Flashlight on my radar for a while, added The Land in Winter and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny to my TBR. I’m also intrigued by The Misinterpration.
While on the topic of the Booker, I’m also currently reading and loving Heart Lamp. Very much worth the International Booker award. Although I was not prepared how hard and heartbreaking some (most) of the stories are. I’m looking forward to your upcoming post.