At the beginning of this year I took up a reading challenge set by the ACT library. The challenge was to read through the list below by the end of 2019. Here are the books I read, all but one finished.
A genre you’ve never read before: Coeurs barbelés by Claudine Jacques (fiction based on the modern history of New Caledonia, currently translating it)
Something that makes you laugh: La Baleine de Jonas by Claude Aveline (humorous twist on the story of Jonah and the whale, in French)
Has a one-word title: Castaway by Robert Macklin (a new version of a true story. Yes the truth can have many versions.)
Features time travel or time slip: Maya by Jostein Gaarder (not bad, but a good translation)
Written under a pseudonym: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (took me 52 years to read this after first seeing the film)
That celebrates diversity: The Adventurous Princess and Other Feminist Fairy Tales by Erin-Claire Barrow (lovely book of fairy tales by my illustrator)
Set in an imaginary or alternate world: Esme’s Wish by Elizabeth Foster (good book, first of three so I don’t know how the story ends)
Crime (non-)fiction: The Tatooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris (incredible story stumbled upon by the author. I added the -non to fiction here.)
Features food: The Land Before Avocado by Richard Glover (very good nostalgic review of Australian ways in the 60s and 70s)
Something you can read in a day: The Golden Cockerel by Alexander Pushkin (beautifully illustrated Russian story)
Has a green cover: Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (totally excellent book my father gave me as a child but which I never read till now)
An eBook or eAudiobook: The Birth of Bran by James Stephens (a funny Irish tale illustrated by Arthur Rackham)
Set in Africa : Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith (one of a collection about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency set in Botswana)
A gothic story: Princesse d’Italie by Jean Lorrain (dark story about a Salomé play, in French)
Something you want to re-read: The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (great story set in 19th-century Dorset)
Something you regret not having read yet: The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay (I don’t regret it any more)
Recommended by family or friend: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (I know now why it was recommended)
Epistolary (letter or diary format): It was snowing butterflies by Charles Darwin (not bad but not my thing)
Recommended by [pop-up] library staff: Ripening Seed by Colette (excellent descriptions but surprisingly for a female author the boy has more fun)
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There are many more books I’ve read this year in categories not included in the ACT Library challenge. My favourite this year, not mentioned above, was A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey.
Albert Facey reaffirmed my own fortunate life. Not fortunate in the fortune sense, but in the blessed sense.
A couple of months ago I engaged a promoter in California to find reviewers for my latest translated book, Stories to Read by Candlelight. He works at this by requesting my Twitter password and using my account to send out multiple requests to bookish Twitter users. I’m not convinced this was a good idea. A couple of reviewers accused me of spamming (though of course it was him acting as me) and in the end Twitter blocked me and I had to beg for two days to get them to let me back in.
Despite this, he managed to find several reviewers who are keen to read my book, but whether they all do remains to be seen. A few good reviews have been posted so far on Goodreads.
The promoter then asked me if I’d be interested in a little reviewing myself. I agreed, and he offered me an Australian novel for older children. Never having reviewed a book before, I had to read up on the correct process for saying what I liked and didn’t like. Here it is: my first ever book review.
Esme’s Wish is the first novel in a series by Elizabeth Foster, published by Odyssey Books in 2017. It was written for older children or young teenagers. The protagonist is a 15-year-old girl who has two friends about the same age. The book’s focus is the fantasy world that Esme slips into after her father’s second marriage, and since it does not deal too much with the emotional dramas that can accompany a new family arrangement, including a mean stepmother, I see it as more suitable for pre-teens.
I liked the focus on individual Gifts, reminding young readers that we each have one, but for some of us it takes a lot of living to discover it. While the Gifts in Aeolia are magical – various inhabitants breathe under water, walk on top of it, cast songspells, are not burnt by fire – the inference is that every human has a gift. As a teenager I would have liked to be told this. Another truth in Esme’s Wish is that we don’t know everything about our parents’ past lives and it might be painful to go searching. But I also liked knowing that Esme’s friends, Daniel and Lillian, supported her when she was searching for her mother.
For young readers, the many references to Greek mythology are a great introduction to the epics and the terms that have become part of Western language and culture. Also valuable to dwell on is the Pearl of Esperance that represents all those temptations we encounter, things that are sweet and hard to resist but do us harm in the end. It represents addictions, or even promises that we will get what we want if we just do this one forbidden thing. Esme’s Wish reminded me of Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis in which some children escape reality through a painting, and there are ships and water and dragons in it, too. These are my kinds of story.
I really enjoyed the first half of the book that included Esme’s earthly family and her thoughts in Italics as she (and I) tried to understand the turn of events. In the second more fantastical half, the pace increased but the obstacles were quickly overcome and I was no longer guessing. I was keen to come to a resolution of Esme’s problem with her new family and how they would react to her discovery. However, I’ve just learnt that many novels are now published in series form, and it’s normal to leave things open at the end of the first one. I expect all will be revealed in the next book or books.
My favourite line is: ‘Just goes to show that you shouldn’t worry too much about whatever Gift you get. It might be the best thing that ever happens to you.’
Thank you to Elizabeth Foster for sending me a copy of Esme’s Wish.
On the unpredictable path of life I’ve ended up translating French literature from different hemispheres and different centuries. I’ve written about authors from 19th-century France who’ve taken my fancy with their fairy tales and fantasies, and now I want my readers to become acquainted with an author from 21st-century New Caledonia, Claudine Jacques.
My first encounter with Claudine’s writing was at university. I very much enjoyed studying the social problems laid out in her stories and was surprised to find numerous similarities between the histories of Australia and New Caledonia. Her writing is compelling and keeps me turning pages till the last. My favourite is Cœurs barbelés, part fiction, part history, based on the painful experiences of white Caledonians and the indigenous Kanak people trying to live harmoniously on an island.
I’ve enjoyed translating a few of her short stories into English and have been fortunate to have them published: ‘Life Sentence’, ‘The Mask’, ‘Guardian of Legends’, and three that are available online for free, ‘The Blue Cross’, ‘Other People’s Land’, and one set in Vanuatu, ‘Bitter Secrets’ .
Claudine Jacques
Born in Belfort, France, Claudine moved to New Caledonia as a sixteen-year-old with her parents and has since made it her own country. Until 1994 she ran a vocational training centre, but once she had discovered the world of books, she established a publishing company and now devotes herself almost exclusively to writing. In 1997 Claudine and other authors founded the Association des Écrivains de la Nouvelle Calédonie (New Caledonian Society of Authors).
The bush and island life have profoundly inspired Claudine’s work. Her home in the bushland of this Pacific island, on a cattle station in Bouraké, has allowed her to become immersed in the heart of the country and to know it as an insider. Claudine’s novels and short stories are concerned with all “Caledonians”: those of the main island, Grande Terre, those of the smaller Loyalty Islands, the Caledonians of European origin, the Kanak, the Wallisians, the Vietnamese and Indonesians who are all part of the New Caledonian population. Her stories reveal a part of the Pacific that is modern and multicultural, a country in transition.
This is rich, sensual writing that moves readers with its power of suggestion. Knowing that Claudine’s stories are based on her island’s history, they will keep you turning pages. I personally found myself searching for light at the end of some dark tunnels. You’ll find it, as I did, at the end.
It’s what authors have to do. Get reviews. I’ve tried it for my previous two books and only ever managed to get one solitary review in spite of asking bloggers around the world.
Now since the release of Stories to Read by Candlelight, I’ve been offered advice from my publisher, Michelle Lovi at Odyssey Books, and her public relations man in California, Henry Roi, who has magically rustled up numerous reviewers to read my book and write their reflections on Amazon and Goodreads. Henry has me using Twitter daily though I’ve hardly touched it before. I’m doing my best to show potential readers what makes my little translation worth reading by adding ‘tweet’-sized quotations from each of the eight stories.
While the Twittersphere is not a place I enjoy, I can see the benefits for a time like this in a new book’s life. All but one of Henry’s reviewers have said yes, and today I received my first review. A good one. Phew.
Illustration by Erin-Claire Barrow for ‘Monsieur d’Avonancourt’ by Jean Lorrain
Shelley Nolan posted her kind words on Amazon and Goodreads and, in reduced form, on Twitter. Here it is in full:
‘This is my first time reading a translated work and I was hooked from the opening introduction. It has a wonderful sense of nostalgia as it tells of stories from the author’s childhood, some of them eerie and disturbing, others whimsical or cautionary. I loved the parts where Jean Lorrain explained each story and how it affected him as a small boy and could clearly picture him watching on as his family’s seamstress regaled them with fantastical tales that made him shiver. Stories that would resonate with him long into adulthood.
I also loved the glimpses it gave into provincial life in France so many years ago, and the roles the servants played in the lives of their employers. This helped to bring the stories to life, painting vivid pictures as I read each one and transporting me back in time. As a translated work, it was a seamless read that was packed with charm and otherworldly beings, creating a delightful collection that was a perfect way to spend a few hours.’
Illustration by Erin-Claire Barrow for ‘Useless Virtue’ by Jean Lorrain
Shelley’s review would certainly tempt me to read this book! It’s interesting to see what leaps off the pages for others who read Lorrain’s words. He was a very perceptive turn-of-the-century man who observed, and never forgot, quirky behaviours.
As the translator of someone else’s ideas, I’ve read and written the text of this book – Lorrain’s French and my English – hundreds of times over the past six years or so, and while I’ve never stopped liking it, I’ve never known what other readers have thought despite the original being 120 years old, for there are no reviews of the French original (that I’ve found) and before now no English translation has been published of the whole collection.
I think I’m looking forward to reading any other reviews that turn up…
Odyssey Books has just published my translation of Contes pour lire à la chandelle – Stories to Read by Candlelight by Jean Lorrain, and today I received ten copies of a very well produced, postcard-sized book. As yet it’s available on Amazon only to pre-order, but will actually be available from next week, 16th September.
The eight stories were written in the 1890s by the French author Jean Lorrain. About six years ago I completed my translation of them (the first one in English according to my research) and began submitting it to publishers. At last I can announce that the little collection is available in English, and as a bonus it’s illustrated with surprising silhouette images by the talented artist, Erin-Claire Barrow. The cover design is by Simon Critchell.
And now, an excerpt, for a little of Jean Lorrain’s whimsy:
Illustration by Erin-Claire Barrow
Princess Mandosiane was six hundred years old. For six centuries she had lived embroidered onto velvet, her face and hands painted on silk. She was dressed all in pearls, her gorget rippling with heavy beading, and her gown was woven with threads of argentite and arabesques of the finest gold […] For a long time she had figured in processions and royal celebrations. She would be brought out and hoisted up on a banner staff, and the dazzle of her jewels would bring joy to great ladies and commoners […] Then the era of processions passed, thrones were abolished, kings disappeared, civilisation marched on, and the princess of pearls and painted silk now remained confined in the shadow and silence of the cathedral.
Please let me know if you read the stories and especially if you review them. May they give you as much pleasure as they did me when I pulled the original book from the library shelves of forgotten French literature.
From time to time a fairy ring grows beneath my Spruce fir tree. At the moment it’s not a whole circle but more of a semi-circular meandering of mushrooms across the lawn. It’s been growing for about a week and must be following a long root of this tall tree.
On Sunday I noticed one particular mushroom coming up in the nearby garden about five metres from the beginning of the line. It’s like a pop-up house for little people, and evokes Faerie, that land of enchantments and enchanted beings.
Mushroom, Sunday
It’s expanding as it ages, yet the leaf-litter roof is still in place.
Mushroom, Tuesday
The small shelter over the mushroom makes it easy to understand why children could believe there are tiny fairy-folk residing within.
But recently I learnt that not only children have believed in fairies! Writers of Faerie in the 19th century (about 90% of whom were men) expressed a fearful respect for the little winged women, often passing a mention in their tales that fairy love was fatal to men. Male authors were wary of a fairy for she could transform or disguise herself. Small as she was, she could be mistaken for an insect or a bird, she could even become invisible, and, most dangerously, she could turn herself into a real woman. But the rule was that no man could love her and live.
I’ve read a lot of French fairy tales and have found it to be true. In Théodore de Banville’s story “La Chiffonnière”, for example, a fairy becomes an old ragpicker who is almost trampled by horses, but a kind-hearted poet picks her up where she falls, and in his arms she is rejuvenated, now young and beautiful. Though she wants to give him her love as a reward for saving her life, she knows it would kill him. Instead she offers him the finest cigar in the world, and four wishes.
Fairy rings are also things to beware of, to tread carefully around and not through. Men who entered the ring often disappeared and those who were tempted needed to be rescued. It seems the ancient curse has exhausted its power, for I’ve often stepped into mushroom rings in my lawn but have never disappeared…
‘Plucked from the Fairy Circle’, T. H. Thomas, from Wirt Sikes, ‘British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions’
While I know these fairies are not really magical, I also know that, in my garden, suddenly emerging fungi certainly are.
I stumbled on a reading challenge by my local ACT library this week, and at first I dismissed it as I do with challenges generally. But the list of categories looked manageable for what remains of 2019 and the thought occurred to me that I could tick them off, no worries. It came to me a few days after I found a new library in the small Australian Catholic University around the corner from me that has a very welcoming wall at the entrance. Here it is. Zoom in (click and click again) to read students’ stick-it notes…
Here I picked up a book I’d always avoided for no good reason, The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay, an early Australian classic, which fits one of the categories of the challenge, ‘Something you regret not having read yet’.
And then this morning, I cast my eye quickly over the pop-up library outside a local café. Zoom in to see what sort of books Canberrans read…
There on the shelf was a book that someone once highly recommended, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I’ve brought it home, except now I remember having read it, but it fits another challenge category, ‘Something you want to re-read’.
That’s two. But I have a third book that fits the category ‘Set in an imaginary world’: Contes féeriques (Faeric Tales) by Théodore de Banville. The title page is illustrated by Georges Rochegrosse, his stepson. Note the age spots, it’s an old one. Zoom in to see the fairies floating around the amorous couple…
Banville wittily gives it the subtitle ‘Scenes from Life’, but every tale revolves around the intervention of a fairy, magician or other supernatural figure! I recently had a translated story published that comes from this collection, ‘The Lydian’ which you can read for free if you click the link, and if you click here you can read more about it. But I haven’t yet read every story in the book, so it’s going on my challenge list.
That’s three, and only seventeen more to find to tick off everything on the challenge list. It should take my reading to the end of this year:
I was searching the internet this week for any mention of a translated book I’m waiting for. It’s my own translation, not yet published. The publisher, Michelle Lovi at Odyssey Books, has been working on it, so I wondered if she’d mentioned it somewhere online. Hooray! My search produced a result: I found a cover on Booktopia, and a chance to pre-order the whole book. The link is here.
Here’s a preview of the cover:
The stories are from Jean Lorrain’s small collection, Contes pour lire à la chandelle, first published in 1897 though most of them had appeared in illustrated journals in the previous ten years. A few of these 19th-century illustrations can be seen in my blog posts here, here and here.
The new book will also be illustrated. The silhouette images on the cover give a clue to what will be inside, but they’re not yet ready. You can imagine how eager I am to see how they look!
Back in 2016 I had a translated story published by The Cossack Review. I’ve just learnt that this journal exists no more, it has gone the way of a good percentage of literary journals. The story is ‘Joseph Olenin’s Coat’ by Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, a quirky tale about a lonely man in an isolated wintry part of Ukraine, who loses a coat, finds one, and falls in love with it.
‘Le Manteau de Joseph Olénine’ in ‘Les Lettres et les arts’, 1st July 1886, first page, illustration by M. Saint-Elme Gautier
It was originally published in 1886 in an illustrated journal, ‘Les Lettres et les arts’. Who wouldn’t want to read a story with a decorative border round the opening paragraph such as this one by Saint-Elme Gautier? (Click the image to see the detail.) There were several illustrations throughout the story but the best one is ‘Contemplation’ by M.H. Gray showing the poor man gazing at the woman’s coat he’d accidentally acquired and wondering what its owner looked like, felt like…
‘Contemplation’ by M.H. Gray
My translation was published in a print journal and, fortunately, I have a copy of it. It was also available online for a time, but has now disappeared. The editor, Christine Gosnay, had asked me some questions for an interview, and those questions and answers are still there, albeit in a basic format without the styling of the original web site. It would be a good idea, I think, to re-post the interview here.
Patricia Worth: Contributor Interview
May 28, 2016
TCR: What are you reading now?
Patricia Worth: Tales of Hans Christian Andersen translated by Naomi Lewis. And All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
TCR: How and where did you find out about de Vogüé’s work?
Patricia Worth: A library at the Australian National University has a collection of old French literature that hasn’t been borrowed for decades. Here I found a small dusty book of short stories by Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé (whom I’d never heard of), and chose it simply for the title ‘Nouvelles orientales’, a title invented by a publisher. Expecting Orientalism and hot Middle Eastern settings, I found instead stories set mostly in wintry Russia and Ukraine. They are nonetheless fascinating. Several had originally been published in de Vogüé’s collection, ‘Les Coeurs russes’ (Russian Hearts), and a few were translated in 1895 as ‘Russian Portraits’, a translation which did not include “Joseph Olenin’s Coat’.
TCR: Do you plan to translate any of his other stories?
Patricia Worth: I have translated all the stories in ‘Nouvelles orientales’.
TCR: How long did it take you to translate “Joseph Olenin’s Coat’?
Patricia Worth: As I translated the whole book of ten stories, it’s hard to say how long it took me for each one. But, in general, a rough translation of a short story takes me a few days, and then I polish it for a few months, researching details, asking experts for help and getting people to read it and comment.
TCR: Can you describe your process for taking somewhat antiquated work from one language to another, especially with respect to diction and tone?
Patricia Worth: De Vogüé was strongly influenced by Russian authors like Turgenev, and as a literary translator I have long admired Constance Garnett’s translations of Turgenev’s short stories, so I looked to her example when working on de Vogüé’s stories. For Garnett, less is more. She generally writes with fewer syllables and fewer words than other translators. In Turgenev’s “The Tryst’, for example, Garnett writes “the hue of an over-ripe grape’, where a modern translator writes “which resembles the colour of overripe grapes’; or “Not one bird could be heard’, against “There was not a single bird to be heard’. When I consider the readability of my work, hers is the brevity I come back to.
It’s also good to read modern English authors who have created a sense of another time, like Joan Lindsay and her ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’, published in 1967 but set in 1900, or J. L. Carr, ‘A Month in the Country’, published in 1980 but set in the years after the Great War. These two have also taught me much about making every word count.
Of great help, too, are readers of my drafts who are familiar with older texts. For “Joseph Olenin’s Coat’ a French friend pointed out the subtle words that alert a native speaker to the spirit in the coat that enters Joseph’s life and obsesses him against his will, and to the superior tone used by the Countess when addressing Joseph. A local writer and translator of Proust who reads most of my work also offered corrections and suggestions to take my diction back in time (for example skating, not ice-skating).
When I find myself stuck in today’s English, help is available by entering a French phrase into a search engine which can trigger old pieces where the words are used in other contexts. The search might even produce helpful French translations of English classics by, say, Dickens or H.G. Wells, and then I look for the phrase in the original, and use a variation of it. There are also a number of French and French-English dictionaries from the 1700s and 1800s freely available online; these are invaluable for learning the former meaning of a word. Of course, I read, read, read nineteenth-century English literature, the Brontë sisters and Thomas Hardy among many others.
TCR: Who has had the biggest influence on you as a writer?
Patricia Worth: For translation, I’ve been influenced by the various translators of Hugo’s Les Misérables as well as Constance Garnett’s translations of Russian literature. For writing in general, I find Charlotte and Anne Brontë’s novels compelling, and hold them as my standard. I was also influenced by my father, a volunteer soldier, who wrote poetry in Egypt in 1941.
TCR: What authors do you re-read?
Patricia Worth: The Brontës.
TCR: What is your next writing project?
Patricia Worth: I’m presently translating a book of French fairy tales.
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PS: I’m surprised to read that I was translating the fairy tales when I responded to this interview. Those fairy tales, Stories to Read by Candlelight, are presently on the production line and should be appearing some time before June this year. I’d forgotten how long I’d been working on them.
Never would I have translated Jean Lorrain if I knew then what I know now.
But that’s the beauty of reading a good book. The reader’s relationship is with the book and the story it tells, not its author.
There’s much I could write about Jean Lorrain that would turn you away from all his work. But as a translator, I choose the writing, not the writer. After I’d read his little collection, Contes pour lire à la chandelle (Stories to Read by Candlelight), certain pieces stayed with me and compelled me to read them again. Before I knew a thing about Lorrain, I was touched by the sympathy he expressed for some of the underdogs of his society, like the odd old woman in ‘Madame Gorgibus’ and the trapped beauty in ‘Princess Mandosiane’.
Gil Blas cover, 1st May 1903, illustration for Madame Gorgibus
A brief bio: Jean Lorrain was born Paul Duval in 1855 and died of decadence in 1906 at the age of 51. He was the only child of a family of wealthy ship-owners. In 1882 he decided to become a writer, disappointing his father who suggested he take on an alias to avoid bringing shame on the family, thus Jean Lorrain was invented. He was a much-published journalist, poet, novelist, and sharp-tongued critic of his decadent peers, despite belonging to their circle.
While his work was well-known in his lifetime, much of it has been forgotten and will probably remain forgotten. But the stories I’ve selected to translate are worth resurrecting for their exquisite prose, particularly some that are in a category entitled ‘Tales for Sick Children’, that are quirky but not decadent like his novels. Their expression is nostalgic and aesthetic, typical of Belle Époque symbolists who rebelled against modern technology and yearned for a return of medieval days and characters in flamboyant gowns and armour.
His tales of knights and princesses, ghostly girls and frightful animated crockery are as masterfully worded as our favourite mythical adventures. What really clinched it for me were the illustrations accompanying several versions in issues of La Revue illustrée and Gil Blas, like the one above. Many of Lorrain’s stories were beautifully illustrated in the art nouveau of the era, not only in journals but also in deliciously decorated books. See this website for some excellent images from his books.
Here’s a taste of the writing that led me to translate it. To set the scene: Princess Mandosiane is embroidered onto a banner once used in grand processions and now stored in the crypt of a cathedral. A mouse tempts her with freedom:
Now, she lent her ear to the counsel of the red mouse, an insidious little mouse, fast as lightning, persistent and wilful, who had haunted her for years.
“Why stubbornly remain a captive, armour‑plated in all these pearls and embroidery holding you so tightly? Yours is not a life, you have never lived, not even during the times when you sparkled on those fine days of proclamations and pealing bells, cheered on by euphoric crowds, and now, you see, your life is oblivion, it is death. If you like, with my sharp teeth I could undo one by one the stitches of silk and gold cord that have held you in place for six hundred years, motionless in this lustrous velvet which, just between us, has lost its brilliance. It will perhaps hurt a little, especially when I unpick the stitches close to your heart, but I’ll begin with the long contours, those of your hands and your face, and already you will be able to stretch and move, and you will see how good it is to breathe and to live!’
Several of my translations of his stories have been published in journals in recent years, but soon the whole collection, “Stories to Read by Candlelight”, will be available. It’s presently being prepared for publication by Odyssey Books, a small Australian publisher.
