Find Finn

Found it!

I went looking for my rather ancient, and quite small, copy of Huckleberry Finn. It wasn’t there. OK, I thought, it was old. I was given it as a school prize in 1968.

But then the little grey cells kicked in. I thought that I have more than one place for books. And I consider Huck Finn to be a children’s book. So I’d have put it with children’s books, not with adult fiction. Dead simple. And there it was.

I have been reading about Percival Everett who has written a retelling – James – seen through Jim’s eyes. It sounds like the kind of thing I’d like to read. I think so, anyway. But 1968 was a long time ago, and I had already read the book when it was presented to me, in English. Presumably because I had been studious and did well at English. Still looked daunting, and it was only my second book in English, after the Ladybird book I bought two years earlier.

Because I did know the story, I was never tempted to try it in a foreign language. It’s just been sitting there for 55 years. It looks it, too, with its yellowing pages and brown spots.

I’m guessing it was chosen as a sequel to the likelier Tom Sawyer – which I’d also read – and as one of very few books available in English, for children, in the local bookshop. The price is still there, in pencil. Five kronor 40 öre.

Having come across more than one reference to Huck recently, I’ve felt guilty because I can only remember snatches of the plot. And I know it’s [been] considered very important in the US. Percival Everett is the same age as me. But it seems he only read an abridged version as a child, followed by the full book in his teens.

Perhaps I don’t need to feel any shame over my lack of recall. My copy of Huck is 370 pages, so I hope it’s not abridged. I think I might reread it. Then James.

Chairing it

When in Gothenburg in 2005, at our first event ever, we were both quite pleased that Son got a question in, quite early. I think it was to Toby Litt, and the young questioner obviously had the advantage of language. Didn’t necessarily have to be a good question, although I’m sure it was excellent.

Cough.

At the latest London Book Fair a couple of weeks ago, he finally got to sit in the chair’s chair. It was still down to language. The translators have their own stuff, and there was some last minute shuffling of who did what to whom.

And I didn’t even know until this photo appeared on social media. As always, the names on the sign behind them don’t match who’s sitting there, but I believe that they are Michele Hutchison, Paul Russell Garrett and Rosalind Harvey. I am reasonably certain that the one on the left is Ian Giles. He’s always been good at talking. I shall assume that here it was good talking.

(Photo by Lauren Fletcher-Harris)

Return to my roots

I loved Brinn mig en sol, by Christoffer Carlsson. If you recall, he’s the crime writer from my past, only thirty years after me. This is his second novel set in our shared home town, and it is so much better for that, rather than a great crime novel set anywhere else. Or do I think so because I can see just about every place where there is a dead body, where they work(ed), and I know the two police stations involved, and so on and so forth? I got to walk around somewhere familiar, with people behaving in a way I would expect them to behave.

(I gather there is already a translation into English; Blaze Me a Sun. I agree with one UK online reviewer that it comes across as very American. The US readers seem to have loved the book.)

The narrator is a person very much like Christoffer who, having moved back home, starts digging into what happened the night the prime minister was murdered, when there was also a murder in the woods outside Halmstad. Why does he do this?

Police officer Sven Jörgensson ends up dedicating the rest of his life to solving the several deaths, and his son Vidar trains to be a policeman too, and he also continues to dig. It takes well over thirty years to find the answer.

It feels very true to real life Sweden/Halmstad. I would have enjoyed the plot and the characters anywhere, but it’s the fact that they brought me ‘home’ that is so special. There is not enough fiction set in my past world, but until I read Christoffer’s first Halmstad novel I didn’t know how much I needed them. The title is a quote from a poem by Elsa Grave, who even features in the book. Just a page, but it rings true, because I also have Elsa knowledge.

As people say about momentous dates, I remember precisely what I was doing on March 1st 1986. I woke up with a migraine. And many years before that, I picked bilberries at the scene of the crime.

The Three Graces

This, the latest novel by Amanda Craig, has been sheer pleasure. About three 80-year-old women in Italy, The Three Graces is the first book by Amanda I’ve read. I don’t expect it to be the last, especially now that I know that she recycles her characters, and I can find some of her people in past books.

Just this thing of finding three older women is such an unusual occurrence. I’m not quite 80 yet, but I share so much with them. Not their money, nor their grandchildren, but thoughts about life. Although it begins when middle aged Enzo shoots someone, and this continues to worry and puzzle him. His opinions on foreigners and migrants are not the best, nor is he alone in how he thinks of people who are not from Tuscany.

Ruth’s grandson Olly is getting married, and with his intended bride vlogging all the wedding preparations, the whole world is watching. Children and grandchildren descend on Santorno. It – sort of – builds up to a Mamma Mia moment. You can see what must happen, but not necessarily how.

There are dogs. One of our ladies still has a husband, whom she’d quite like to kill off. Refugees are flowing into Italy, and there is no avoiding the effects of Covid or the war in Ukraine. Both are well done; for the characters as well as for us, but not too much.

Happy and sad, this is both an amusing tale, as well as offering up many pertinent thoughts on life in general, and especially on growing old, while not being too gracious about it. Amanda is doing that thing I approve of, which is to write about what you know. In this case there is Africa, Italy, Hampstead. You feel you are in good hands.

A Song for Summer

Let’s get romantic!

I don’t often say this, but it is Valentine’s Day after all.

Wasn’t altogether sure about reviewing [one of] Eva Ibbotson’s adult romantic novels, because what can you say? Do we know at the outset that the couple will end up happily ever after? Well, I’m not telling you.

This is another of Eva’s stories set in Austria, and Britain, before and during WWII, but written in the 1990s. She does it so well, knowing her Austria, and her London among the better educated. Except here we have Ellen who prefers to cook and grow a garden. Her mother and her aunts are horrified. When she could have a proper education!

The reader will be happy when Ellen sets off to work in a school in Austria, where she will work her magic on pupils and adults alike, and she does much cleaning and cooking. There is a man, of course. There are several, but one special one, even if they sometimes have to fight over who gets Ellen.

It’s a lovely period piece, if somewhat rosy. Except, the war does make itself known and it has effects, and I especially resented the death of Xxxx. And Ellen is terribly dutiful and will do what seems best, and isn’t necessarily what she herself wants, or the reader.

I loved it.

Christmas reading

This turned up today. It will be just perfect for some Christmas reading; even pre-Christmas if I ignore the chores. And with a book like this, who wouldn’t?

The Secret of Helmersbruk Manor, A Christmas Mystery by Eva Frantz, and translated by A A Prime, with illustrations by Elin Sandström. Eva is a Swedish-speaking Finn, while Elin is Swedish. The cover is gorgeous, and I can’t wait to not do any boring work.

I may well tell you more at a later point.

Partners in Crime

We had tea together in Daughter’s flat on Saturday afternoon, the whole family. It was nice, and quite rare that all of us were in the room at the same time. The Resident IT Consultant was there to lift boxes – of books – for the umpteenth time. We were in post-decorator mode. I was there, I think, to provide moral support. Or something. Daughter was there to enjoy being back after some enforced staying with the old people while paint was wielded. And Son was only there on a laptop screen, as he was mid-event with his fellow translators and some crime writers and academics. But he was sort of there.

It was the Scottish Society for Northern Studies’ half day conference of Partners in Crime. It’s the kind of thing that can threaten to be worthy but boring if you’re unlucky. We weren’t though. It was pretty good throughout the afternoon, including the tea (which we had to provide ourselves).

We missed a few minutes here and there, as we drove from A to B, dealt with a grocery delivery, and generally carried furniture around. But I caught Son in his introduction, followed by more introduction from Alan Macniven, head of Scandinavian Studies in Edinburgh, followed in turn by Dr Joe Kennedy, who seems to have taken over the running of the Gothenburg students’ classes at Sussex. Very appropriately he had to leave to deal with childcare.

Then there was Lorna Hill on women in crime fiction. Before she finished she was joined by Lin Anderson, who had been expecting a green room, but who ended up ‘on stage’ so to speak. She in turn was joined by Arne Dahl and their chair Jacky Collins, who were also a little startled to find there was no privacy, so we could hear everything! But it was nice to listen to these authors discussing their writing, and I will now forever think of bad weather, or good weather, or any other weather, as characters in their books. And I didn’t know that so many small aeroplanes from the Nordic countries crash in the Cairngorms…

After we learned to exercise care in the non-existent green room it was time for Prof. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen to talk. Daughter and I puzzled over his accent to the extent that we didn’t hear all he had to say. Sorry. The last session of the day gave us three Scottish-based translators of Scandinavian crime fiction, Anne Bruce, Kari Dickson and Ian Giles discussing their work with Duncan Beattie. And I/we might have heard it ‘all’ before, but it was actually both fun and interesting. Swedes spend too much time in the staffroom talking about coffee, and sometimes a dead author is best. The Norwegians are dropping their funny letters to sell better abroad. You know, ø and the like.

And as we’d already ‘had our tea’, we didn’t join people in the Magnusson Arms for an informal chat afterwards. I’m sure it was good.

Hold Your Nose and… Translate?

You can end up having to translate ‘terrible tosh’ but that’s all right. You might even like terrible tosh. And if not, someone is bound to want it and to pay you for your efforts.

I attended a Zoom event today where four translators talked about the worst they get to work with. And why they do it. ‘Think of the money, think of the money, think of the money.’ (That’s my boy!)

As part of the Advanced Scandinavian Translation Workshop 2023, Sophie Lewis talked to Charlotte Barslund, Ian Giles and Atar Hadari about bad books. There are a surprising number of them around. And you need to be able to sniff out the ones you really don’t want to read, let alone translate, before it’s too late and you have agreed and have a contract, and you need not to vomit when things get really bad.

Because I seem to know more translators than the average witch, I do hear things. But I would never tell. Some books are dreadful. Some authors are oblivious to the [lack of] quality of their book. When it comes to translations into English, which ‘everyone’ speaks, they often know that their version of English is better than that of the paid professional.

If it’s really awful you might translate faster. Just to get to the end. Some of them divide up a bad task into more manageable chunks. They usually don’t mind putting their names to even the terrible tosh, but Ian did say he’d rather not have had his name displayed on the front cover of one book. Charlotte mentioned a back catalogue translation where a bad word we would not use today occurred, and asked the author if they wanted to change it. They did. Atar read a poem he translated a long time ago, by a poet long dead (apart from this they did not name or shame anyone at all).

All the translators reckoned that they tend to improve the books they work on, especially the ones that ought to have been better edited in the original. It reflects badly on them if they help publish something that is even worse than it needs to be.

This left me very grateful that when I read a book I don’t like, I can always stop. Translators can’t. And won’t. They have mortgages to pay.

Battling the elements

It rained – a lot – and the Son shone. We were going to Edinburgh, for the Portobello Book Festival, because Son was appearing in an event, Crime Fiction in Translation. Along with three colleagues, admittedly, but it was a first. I think, anyway…

But we live in Scotland where things go wrong with public transport when you want to go places. It rained. Much rain. In their wisdom ScotRail cancelled most of the trains and ran fewer of the ones on ‘our’ line. We decided not to go. And then the Resident IT Consultant wanted to be brave and to represent the family in Portobello, so went for the ten o’clock train which eventually left just before eleven and arrived at its destination a little after when the next one again was due.

I gather it was a good event, and I would expect no less from either Son or Portobello. Participating were Siân Reynolds, Ian Giles, Vineet Lal and Tim Gutteridge, chaired by Duncan Beattie. The room looked very nice too. The Resident IT Consultant felt it was interesting to learn how translators work.

Afterwards he was treated to a third of a slice of cheesecake, before battling his way back home, very slightly faster than in the morning.

Meanwhile Daughter and I stayed dry and did some chores before sitting down with Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather on dvd. We reckoned we’re close enough to Christmas for it to be OK. It was a real treat to see Terry’s cameo, selling a horse.

Might watch again.

Remembering 11th September

Today I thought we would think back to that other 11th September. The one we don’t mention as much, because there was another one 28 years later. Today it’s been fifty years since the coup in Chile in 1973, killing not just President Allende, but many Chileans and others who had taken refuge in what was a democratic and just country.

I didn’t know much about Chile before Allende came to power, and then after the coup it became ‘my’ cause for protest. I was the right age, and I was learning Spanish at school, and before long that came in useful when the wave of refugees arrived.

Being of an age when it seemed important to keep up with current books I made sure to read Pablo Neruda who had been awarded the Nobel prize two years earlier, and who died soon after the coup, apparently poisoned by the junta. I may have been on the young side for his biography. I found it easier to understand the lyrics of Víctor Jara, the singer and songwriter who was murdered in the stadium. Violeta Parra who wrote and performed songs earlier still was also important. There was much music coming from Chile at the time, and luckily many af the artists were abroad on September 11th, so were able to continue sharing their music with us.

And then, after I touched on this as CultureWitch ten years ago, Chile has been brought closer to the Bookwitch family than I could ever have imagined. For astronomers it’s the place to go to for telescope time, and Daughter travelled there three times, and we learned about killer spiders, guanacos, llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas, not to mention snow during the emergency grade two in August. And there is Rosetta Girl, her Chilean astronomer friend who is now back living there. She visited once, before Covid took over the world and our movements.

But as I said, when I was seventeen I couldn’t have imagined anything like it.