Welcome to October’s Riveting Reviews.
Whether it’s through trepidation about what lies ahead of us, or because of the long and extended end of summer here in the UK, this month it seems that some of us at ELNet are feeling retrospective.
We’re looking back at Simenon, with new translations from a great friend and member of the Network, Ros Schwartz. Max Easterman enthuses about Betty – one of Simenon’s non-Maigret romans durs; while Barry Forshaw delights in a new collection of short stories, which includes some previously untranslated pieces.
Dymphna Flynn take us back to 1970s Rome with her review of Gianfranco Calligarich’s Last Summer in the City, while ELNet staffer Alice Banks is in the Seville of the 1990s with Elisa Victoria’s Oldladyvoice.
Another team member, Anna Blasiak, takes on a graphic reportage novel about the horrors experienced by migrant workers in the GDR, and we go further back – to the Netherlands of WWII – with Lizzy Siddal’s thunderously positive review of a new Willem Frederik Hermans translation.
Anneesa Higgins keeps us very up-to-date, however, with her piece about the Algerian immigrant experience in France, written in contemporary street language, while Paul Burke focuses on Sara Stridsberg’s powerful and relevant Antarctica of Love. I round off this month’s reviews with an almost timeless graphic short story by Jaap Robben and Paul Faasen.
Read and enjoy these reviews, and if they move you to buy the books, please do so via our Bookshop.org page – https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/elnet – where, each month, we make all the books we review available to purchase, earning a few pennies in the process.
Next month, look out for our Romanian Reviews special.
—West Camel