'Paradises' by Iosi Havilio (Review)

Over the last couple of years, I've discovered many great books and writers, mainly in translation, but it's always nice to return to old favourites.  However, in some cases, these discoveries have quickly become old favourites, with sequels appearing within a decent space of time.  Good examples of this are Jon Kalman Stefansson with his Icelandic sagas, Karl Ove Knausgaard and his very public midlife crisis and (of course) Elena Ferrante's bitter, twisted and compelling tales of two women in Naples :)

Let's see if today's post, my first for this year's Spanish Lit Month, can add another name to that worthy list...

*****
Iosi Havilio's Open Door was a novel I enjoyed a few years back, and Paradises (translated by Beth Fowler, e-copy courtesy of And Other Stories) is a follow-up book, featuring the same protagonist.  It picks up several years after the events of the first book, with our nameless heroine still living on the old farm in the country.  However, right from the start, Paradises shows us that things will be a little different this time around - her partner, Jaime, has just been killed in a hit-and-run incident, and our friend decides that it's time to head back to the big bad city.

However, things are a little different this time around.  First, she lands a job at a zoo, mainly thanks to Iris, a Romanian migrant who lives at the same lodging house.  Then, Eloisa, her oversexed friend from the country, manages to track her down.  Oh, there's one other thing - did I forget to mention her four-year-old son, Simon?

While the story and setting are different from those of Open Door, the style is very much the same.  It's just as detached, just as world weary - and just as lacking in sentiment:

"In this new Jaime, the final Jaime, who I'll only see this once, in addition to his stillness, the smell of alcohol or formaldehyde, I'm not sure, I suddenly discover an oddity that bears little relation to death.  Instead of his lips being sealed, as was his habit, somewhere between resignation and embarrassment, I catch sight of a small opening at the right-hand corner of his mouth, a sarcastic, sly smile, as if death had caught Jaime mocking something."
(And Other Stories, 2013)

We don't waste too much time grieving poor Jaime.  Instead, his departure merely marks the start of a new stage in his widow's life.

She moves on, then, just as she arrived, without leaving a trace, and with all contacts left behind.  Simon is one addition to her baggage, but he too is quiet and unassuming, not a boy to overcomplicate her life.  However, for the first time in years, she has to find a job, entering the world of work once more.  From the country to the city, you might think it's back to reality - the truth is that none of it seems real...

In fact, Paradises is pervaded by a dreamlike, grotesque quality at times, and when she moves into an old tower block, it's almost like a journey into a twisted fairy tale.  Not that you'd find much like this in a kids' book:

"But the thing that keeps me from sleep more than anything, adding to the insomnia of recent days, is not the noise from the street or the music or conversations, but those strange murmurs produced in the bowels of the building and which at times I think might be in my head.  Metallic sounds, wind-like, flushes, hums, sputters, like the secretions of a decomposing organism."

What awaits her there does remind the reader of certain of Grimm's Tales, though.  There's Tosca, the gigantic, cancer-ridden, morphine-addict matriarch of the building, watching over the goings on with the help of her mentally handicapped son.  Together, they sit at the top of a society of drug dealers, drag queens and other assorted human jettsam in a squat with unreliable power and water...

It's inevitable that Eloisa, the most memorable character from the first novel, crashes back into the life of the main character.  The younger woman is as mad as ever, but slightly different in this new environment, and this actually sums Paradises up nicely - it's very similar to Open Door, yet very different at the same time (if that makes sense...).  While the older woman is happy to see Eloisa again, she's never quite sure whether to go along with her stunts or cut her off.  There's some excellent interplay here, and for readers who remember the first book, the sexual tension between the two is skilfully drawn out.

Havilio's style is simple, but hypnotic.  While the plot is quite ordinary, the author's handling of it makes it seem as if it's happening a world away.  It can all seem hidden behind a veil of fog - you see, the main character just isn't quite on our wavelength:

"Simon has taken advantage of those seconds of distraction to escape from my sight.  He's hiding or being hidden by the landscape.  One of the two is using the other.  I'm not going to shout, I wouldn't know how.  I wait, to see if he appears, surely he'll appear, but he doesn't appear.  I stand up and walk without alarm, accommodating my flip-flops between the holes and the stones."

She seems incapable of strong emotions, no matter what life throws at her, and her inability to really get upset adds to the dreamlike feel of the novel.

While I'm not quite sure Havilio is up with the writers I mentioned at the start of the post, Paradises is very enjoyable and well written with a good translation (one with a noticeably British-English feel).  In truth, it's not really about the story, it's all about the 'vibe' - it's a mellow book, with occasional (deliberate) jarring tones of swearing and drugs, just enough to keep the reader on their toes.  Enough of my thoughts though - I'll leave the last words to our anonymous friend, words which sum up her style perfectly:

"I offer no opinion, nor do I contradict her.  I prefer to let things follow their natural course, then I'll see."

And that pretty much sums her (and the book) up ;)

An Illusion of Freedom

You may remember that during German Literature Month I reviewed Clemens Meyer's collection of short stories, All the Lights, published by And Other Stories, and while I enjoyed it, didn't really find it my kind of book.  However, the other book from the same publishers, the book I had actually asked to be sent, had to wait until late December, pushed down the queue by a whole host of German-language books and a certain Japanese novel you may have heard of...

Argentinian writer Iosi Havilio's Open Door (translated by Beth Fowler), the book I asked to review, is much more my kind of novel.  Set in Buenos Aires and a small country town not far from the Argentinian capital, it explores a year in the life of a person whose partner disappears one day, leaving them to start afresh in a small town.  They somehow stumble into a relationship with a taciturn macho farmer, spending long days doing housework, taking siestas and researching the history of Open Door, a local low-security mental asylum.  Gradually though, attention wanders from the farmer to a teenage girl, a young lady who makes no secret of her attraction to our narrator...

At which point you're probably noticing something unusual in the way this post is unfolding, namely the fact that I haven't actually given you much information about the central character, someone who narrates the story and keeps a lot close to their chest.  We never learn their name, and in fact it takes a long time for their gender to be explicitly revealed (even then, I had some serious doubts for a while!).  Although the disappearance, and possible suicide, of their girlfriend Aída is the catalyst for the events of the story, there is a sense that things are awry well before this.

It is probably no coincidence that when our friend drifts into the arms of the rugged Jaime, it is in the vicinity of Open Door.  After discovering an old book on the 'colony', written in French, a fascination with its workings and history arises, an interest which is more than just a hobby to occupy the time spent waiting for the man of the house to return from work.  In fact, as the novel progresses, the line between the colony and the nearby town blurs and disappears, leaving us to wonder whether there is any difference - and where we actually are...

Havilio's style virtually encourages us to indulge in such speculation, the lack of detail hinting that the truth lies somewhere below the surface, and the book our friend discovers, relating the history of the colony, could just as well be telling us about her life.  In fact, the distinction between the town and the colony seems relatively unimportant, and if you take it a step further, Havilio is suggesting that we are all, in some way, living in our own little colonies.  In the book it says:

"No walls restrict the horizon, nothing to limit the illusion of absolute liberty." p.133

While it is meant to describe the freedom of the patients at Open Door, it may actually be hinting at the illusion most people outside it have of being able to lead free lives...

The relationship the narrator develops with the young Eloísa is also slightly unsettling, seeming as it does to just drift into being, from nowhere (a pattern which many of the events in Open Door follow).  An almost violently-sexual affair develops, with the (presumably) older woman fascinated by the misbehaving teenager - who frequently shows that perhaps she would not be out of place at the colony.  However, it is Eloísa, unable to understand what our friend is doing living with an old man, who says:

"It's madness.  If I didn't know you better I'd say you were wrong in the head." p.185

It's hard not to think that she is on the right track with this comment...

As much as the reader speculates though, the reality is that this is a book which defies interpretation, giving enough up to intrigue us, but nowhere near enough to allow answers to be found.  At times, it all feels a little Kafkaesque, but where the Czech writer's characters charge around in a desperate attempt to find out what on earth is going on, Havilio's creations leave the heavy thinking to the reader, preferring to drink, fornicate and enjoy their siestas while we are wondering what to make of it all.  Is it a story of post-traumatic stress?  Is it an allegory for some aspect of modern life?  Are we meant to suspect that we are all actually living inside an asylum?

Don't ask me (I never claimed to know!).  Read it for yourself, and you might find out - then again, you might not.  In any case, whether you succeed in unravelling the truth or not, you'll certainly have an interesting time :)