Books I Read January 17th, 2021

Been thinking lately about all the many blessings life has bestowed, and the responsibilities implicit in that good fortune. Read the following books.

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya – Engaging, surreal short horror in modern Russia, somewhere between Gogol and...I don't know, a modern horror writer with a literary bent. This has not been my best review.

Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln by Gluckel von Hameln – The recollections of a 17th century Jewess trying to survive economic disaster, political instability, worthless husbands, useless children, and the omnipresent opposition of the Goy. A blessing on for our Saras and our Rachels, our dark-haired Rebeccas and fierce-eyed Miriams! Of such has the tribe survived our exile.

Oreo by Fran Ross – A peculiar and evocative retelling of the Theseus myth, with the protagonist a bi-racial superwoman investigating the Hebrew half of her lineage in New York City. Reminiscent of Ishmael Reed in its reconfiguring of Occidental (or in this case Semitic) narrative and thematic constructs, and line to line the writing is a great joy, strange and funny. Good stuff.

Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon – A collection of items appearing in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906 by the author, an influential figure in the Parisian literary and artistic scene of the early 20th century, all having to do with some form of crime or general sin. I thought it was kind of funny and a quick read, but I'm a weird dude so what do I know.

That Time of Year Marie Ndiaye – A Parisian extends his summer holidays a day too long, loses his family in a nightmarish vision of a French provincial town. This sub-genre of European paranoid fiction is usually not to my taste but this is excellent, creepy and discomfiting, a tight little nightmare that starts easy but lands with deceptive strength. Definitely returning to this author.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl – Didn't you ever wonder, hey, what if at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when they were flying in their elevtator or whatever, Wonka and Charlie's family went into space to fight aliens or something? No? Well, too fucking bad then. This project of re-reading Roald Dahl has turned out to be a complete waste of my time. He's a lazy anti-Semite and nothing he wrote holds up at all.