The good news is the event is on!

The not so good is that some do not know that German Literature Month has a new home. Over on my second blog – Lizzy’s Literary Life (Volume Two).

There you’ll find the announcement post, my not-so-shortlist on interpreting this year’s prompts, and the twelve posts I’ve challenged myself to write this year!

Pop over now, click the follow button, so as not to miss a single thing!

As I hinted at the beginning of the year, this site is full. I have two options. I can a) retire gracefully or b) grow old disgracefully. Anyone who knows me in IRL knows within 5 minutes that option a) is about as likely as my ever completing the TBR. So, as I still have lots to read and more to say, I’ve launched Lizzy’s Literary Life (Volume Two), which you can find (and subscribe to if so minded) at https://www.lizzysiddal2.wordpress.com.

For the last post of Volume One let me share some stats.

1st post was published on 15/01/2007, which means this notebook contains 15 years, 1 month and 1 week’s worth of ??? (Complete the sentence as you will. Be nice, now.)

In that time I’ve read ca. 1500 books and written 1665 posts which averages at 2 posts per week. Word count? Not a clue. Do I regret not having written a book instead? Well, I don’t have a book in me, so that’s a no.

Most popular posts? I’ve no need to look because my review of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox has featured in the top 2 most viewed posts each year since 2008. Occasionally Esme is knocked off the top spot by Goethe’s poem about Gingko Biloba, which I published in 2013.

Which brings me to my greatest pleasure – German Literature. I’m enormously proud of German Literature Month, which I’ve co-hosted with Caroline for 11 years. I’m delighted that #ReadIndies, which I’ve co-hosted with Karen for the past two years is so popular. (Long may both events continue.)

Has the blogosphere influenced my reading? In 2007 87% of my reading was anglophone. In 2021 only 35%. So many worlds have opened up in the last 15 years, and that’s down to you lovely lot. Thank you fellow readers, not forgetting the translators for making that possible.

And finally, because I’m curious and have been meaning to ask:

1. Looking at my TBR I see a multitude of titles which have been recommended by fellow bloggers. Just wondering if you’ve ever acquired something on my recommendation? More importantly, did you enjoy it?
2. Will I see you on the other side, so to speak? I do hope so.

P.S This blog will remain online and open for comments.

Not too shabby a stack for 6 weeks reading, is it? Well 8 weeks actually – I started a little early.

17 books from 16 different Indie publishers, 15 of which I reviewed. I hit most of the specific reading prompts I set for myself. They also included an unplanned theme read – 5 books mostly set in Berlin. Let’s take a closer look at those reading prompts and how they influenced my choices.

• #NordicFINDs Iceland (1)

• Thomas Bernard Week (2)

• From new-to-me publishers (3) Clochoderick Press (Observance), Handheld Press (Adrift In The Middle Kingdom **), Renard Press (The Female Soldier)

• From publishers I didn’t feature last year (10) Blue Moose Books (Panenka), Canongate (The Discovery of Slowness), Comma Press (The Book of Reykjavik), Eye and Lightning (Sour Grapes), Fitzcarraldo Editions (The Undercurrents*), Oneworld (The Grey Men *), Polygon (Hex), Salt (Death and The Seaside), Seagull Books (Goethe Dies and Viktor Halfwit) World Editions (Summer Brother **)

• From my Q1 2022 Great Anticipations (2)

• From the Vondel Prize shortlist (3)

• Set in a country that didn’t feature in my last year’s reading. (0) (1 if you count the fantasy land of Lampie. )

• Finally, anything that takes my fancy! (4) From publishers featuring for a second time on Lizzy’s ReadIndies: Daunt Books (The Architects*), Faber and Faber (The Stasi Poetry Circle *), Peirene Press (Marzahn, Mon Amour *), Pushkin Press (Lampie **)

• From my Q1 2022 Great Anticipations (2)

Key: Books marked * The spontaneous Berlin City read / Books marked ** From The Vondel Prize Shortlist

Book of the Event: That is a tough call. The non-fiction book that read like fiction (The Stasi Poetry Circle), the one that made me laugh out loud (Sour Grapes), the children’s fantasy I literally couldn’t put down (Lampie), or the heart-warming one that I originally had no intentions of reading (Marzahn, Mon Amour)? Eenie,meenie miney mo …

So that was my contribution. What did over 30 of you, including my co-host Karen, get up to? You were busy … The official event index is now available here. (Do let me know if I’ve missed anything.)

Before you head over there though, take a bow and listen to that well-earned applause. You’ve earned it. I’m sure all 80+ Indie Publishers featured this year appreciate your efforts.

For the final day of the extended Read Indies 2022, I decided to segue into Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 books. What to choose? I was prompted by the blurb on the novella I reviewed yesterday. It was written by Ronan Hession, known for his warm-hearted novels, and, with the world in its current state, I thought I’ll have me some of that!

The Panenka is a type of penalty kick, first employed by the Czech player, after whom it is named, to win the 1976 European Championships. In the novel Joseph, a mid-fielder for Seneca FC, decides to use the technique at a similarly high stakes moment. If he scores, his team avoids relegation. If he loses, the opponents win the championship. The fact that he perceives his resultant nickname, Panenka, as an ignominy tells you how things went. This moment of shame isn’t one he can forget and it’s not just a football match he loses.

Blaming himself not only for the loss of the match, but also the resulting downward slide of the team and the town, he retreats into himself, alienating his wife and estranging himself from his daughter. He becomes a loner, socialising only superficially with the blokes in the bar. 25 years later his second chance arrives, when his daughter, now separated from her husband, moves in with her young son. Will Panenka be able to open up at last?

If only life were that simple! When Panenka learns that his debilitating headaches (nicknamed the Iron Mask) are sinister at the same time as his daughter begins to talk about moving away, he determines to keep silent. This continued distancing is likely to enrage his daughter, but then, and here is the delightful irony, she’s not entirely open with others in her own life … patterns repeating. A further final(?) opportunity to establish a meaningful relationship crosses Panenka’s path when he impetuously goes for a haircut. The hairdresser is nursing her own hurts, but the two damaged people recognise each other and a tentative approchement begins.

This is an empathetic tale of ordinary people failing to communicate, making mistakes, and coming to terms with the consequences before being able to move on. For some the process takes longer than others. There is a pervading sense of melancholy, for there are no magic wands, and flawed humans are great at creating their own dramas. Yet with good will and sincere hearts, endings can be better than fragile beginnings or muddled middles. There’s no need to descend into hopelessness … just yet.

Bluemoose Books is a small independent based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, which punches way above its weight in terms of the books it publishes. Benjamin Myer’s novels have won a whole raft of awards with The Gallows Pole winning the 2018 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. And who hasn’t heard of Ronan Hession’s runaway word-of-mouth debut, Leonard and Hungry Paul?

Translated from German by Jo Heinrich

Following Wednesday’s visit to a C19th mansion on the Landwehr Canal, we are now travelling eastwards, 14 stops on the M6 tram, to the district of Marzahn, one of the GDR’s massive Plattenbau estates, built in 1977. An area with an infamous reputation: after the fall of the Wall it became associated with neo-nazis, and in 2008 Nicolas Kulisch warned “foreigners should not even to go there”. Resi, the protagonist of Anke Stelling’s Higher Ground, was distraught at the the thought of moving to this concrete jungle, full of drug addicts and social deprivation. Yet the title of Oskamp’s work signals very different feelings …

Marzahn, Mon Amour is autofiction, as it is based on Oskamp’s mostly positive experiences as a chiropodist practising in a salon based in Marzahn. Having reached middle-age, the nest empty, her other half ill, her writing disappearing into the mid-list, her self becoming invisible, Oskamp retrained, and began to practice her new profession two days a week. This is her story of reconnecting with others (writing after all is such a solitary profession), of being able to give something of value to people in need (those with bad feet will understand), and of finding new friendships (with her boss and her colleague).

Yet while the chiropodist is central to each chapter, she is not centre-stage. That spot is reserved for her clients, each raised high on the treatment chair, each paying €22 for each session. While these people are not on the lowest rungs of the social ladder, they are not privileged. Many have had lives, full of hard, physical toil, and that is reflected in the state of their feet. Some have lost husbands, wives and are lonely. Not all are sympathetic characters – Herr Pietsch, the former SED-party man and Frau Noll who abuses her frail elderly mother, by locking her in her flat so that she does not go awandering. Herr Hübner turns up, having made no effort at all to make himself presentable, totally unashamed about not having worked in his life. He is accompanied by two women, who are presumed to be his wife and daughter … until they check out at 3:30 on the dot. They are his social workers.

Nothing escapes the chiropodist’s observant eye, especially not individual coping strategies. The clients who have dolled themselves up for the appointment. Frau Janusch with her hair dyed pink … so as not to become invisible. Frau Frenzel has Amy, a pampered pooch, substituting for a partner. The chiropodist is not there to judge; she is there to offer a service: to listen, to chat, to indulge in repartee, and to provide much needed relief to the owners of these poor feet. Some of which are in a really sorry state. It’s not surprising that almost everyone apologies for the state of their feet at their first appointment …

There is a lot of detail about the treatments, which is why, footphobe that I am, I never had any intention of reading this. That all changed when I discovered that Peirene Press (unfailing arbiters of quality) were going to publish the English translation. I made a good decision, because all that foot care infuses a sense of intimacy, of respect, of value into these lives on an estate where the individual can easily become anonymous and abandoned. I don’t think Katja Oskamp is trying to rehabilitate the reputation of estate. She doesn’t even sugarcoat it, acknowledging the darkness that exists through the suicide of the Russian woman – incidentally the only unnamed character in the book, a signifier of the intense isolation of the character. But Marzahn, Mon Amour resists being overtaken by that darkness by focusing instead on the positives of connecting with the community and respecting the elderly, who have spent most of their adulthood on the estate. And the one benefitting most from these connections? The chiropodist herself, who unexpectedly gains an improved sense of self and purpose from the attention she gives to others. Mid-life crisis over and out.

Peirene Press was founded in 2008 by Meike Ziervogel, with the goal of bringing award-winning European novellas to a UK audience. The company is now directed by Stella Sabin and James Tookey, who took over in June 2021. Marzahn, Mon Amour, the third release under their directorship, is a warm-hearted gem.

A few years ago I read Rory Maclean’s Berlin, Imagine A City, in which 500 years of history is recounted through portraits of 24 key individuals Utterly marvellous. Read it if you can. I’m now making the same recommendation for Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents, published today by Fitzcarraldo Editions, which covers some of the same ground, but in a completely different way.

As for the timeline Bell’s book has a narrower focus, and it isn’t just history. Historical content is interwoven with her personal experience of living in Berlin. It starts when she and her husband buy a flat in a C19th Gründerzeit mansion on the Landwehr Canal, a house which keeps springing leaks, in the same way as their relationship. When her husband moves out, Bell is left with her two sons in a flat that is too big for her. She has a lot to reflect upon, including the city which has now replaced New York as her home. The flat and the view from her window become intriguing starting points for her Berlin marrative.

She starts by researching the family which built the house, and the those that follow thereafter. She tracks down the woman that owned the flat before her. She widens her radius, telling stories not only of the canal and the railways (and their importance to the development of the city), but also of the authors who lived round and about. My favourite pages put the novels of Theodor Fontane into their social context: my beloved Effi Briest, and Cécile, the novel I tried reading in Fontane’s habitual haunt the Café Josty in Potsdamer Platz. (Well, I was in the completely wrong place to get a feel of that novel, which is probably why I DNF’ed it. I know where I’m going for my next attempt.)

Bell’s literary thread is continued throughout with strong emphasis on female writing and experiences: the novels of Vicki Baum, Gabriele Tergit, Irmgard Keun, Anonymous in Berlin. As you can imagine, I was in my element here.

New-to-me were the histories and architectural ideas associated with the infrastructure and the buildings that Bell can see from the window. Talk about a room with a view! To be honest I would have loved a photograph, but I understand that’s way too personal. Instead I enjoyed traversing the series of maps of Berlin included in the book, and hitting google images far more than I should have.

Contemporary Berlin gets its fair share of attention with Bell describing her trips to the various research libraries. The research itself is fascinating. Surprising (to me) is the antipathy towards the architecture of post-Wall Berlin. Apropos those corporate high-rises on Potsdamer Platz, which I found breathtaking, Bell records disparaging views from her friend, Ian White: “The horrible architectural “triumph” of corporate towers so spitefully angled they seem to slice your body in two every time you pass them by. So much for reunification.”

Yes, I can see why someone would think like that.

Bell also quotes Florian Reuter, a Sinologist from the Humboldt’s Department of African and Asian Studies on the ‘failure’ of Potsdamer Platz. “the architectonic ensemble at Potsdamer Platz ignores the existence of the Landswehr Canal with its Qi or atmospheric potential and influence”. Hmmm, I’m not an advocate of Feng Shui, and this leads me to the thread that I could have lived without. The fixing of the water problems in Bell’s house. Altogether too otherworldly for me.

Nevertheless, The Undercurrents is a fascinating addition to the pantheon of literature about Berlin. In the writing of which Bell has disproved Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s hypothesis that it is impossible to write about Berlin until you have left it.

You now know why I needed an extension to ReadIndies 2022. A book about Germany, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, who unknowingly gave birth to #ReadIndies Month (growing as it did from Fitzcarraldo Fortnight.) #ReadIndies just had to stretch to accommodate it! Happy publication day!

Read Karen’s review here.

Ok, so it took another twelve months for me to read it, but ReadIndies 2022 was the perfect opportunity or was it? I can find no trace of the Paisley-based publisher, Clochoderick Press online. No website, no mention on the Publishing Scotland website, no entries at Companies House. The Scottish Poetry Library couldn’t tell me more than I already knew. Which is nothing. If I wasn’t holding the book, with its own bona fide ISBN (9781912345052) in my hand right now, I’d think I was hallucinating.

There is a badge of sorts on the back which states “Funded by Paisley 2021 for UK City of Culture”. This leads me to the hypothesis that Clochoderick Press was set up by Renfrewshire Council to promote local talent during their year of culture. If so, they were well organised, with all the Clochoderick Press books that I can find being published in 2018/2019. Nothing, not even any events, thereafter. If there’s anyone out there in the know, please get in touch. I hate unsolved mysteries.

And now back to the poetry. There are 39 in this collection. Most in English, some in Scots. Even after a year, I recognised the poems that went pulled on my heartstrings: the poem of a pregnant mother

and the poems of a daughter to her beloved father, which end the collection with heartbreak at the inevitable loss of him. In between poems with history at their core; the Irish potato famine, martyrdom of the saints, an angry poem about Brexit. This portrait of Murphy’s home town, Paisley gives you a good idea of her vivid style: the reality of the contemporary down-at-heel place, reclaiming stature and reputation through its cultural past. Not to be written off this hallowed ground.

There are also poems inspired by artworks, plays, television. I’ll leave with the most powerful poem in the collection, which is a response to Picasso’s Guernica, and, unfortunately, an ongoing experience for far too many in the world right now.

Dan Rhodes has a grudge. A publisher of his previous novels (a Scottish Indie no less) didn’t pay him as they should have. It’s no secret. He tells the full story of that and his ongoing battles to receive his due here. He remains bitter and angry, and incorporates the experience into his latest novel, Sour Grapes. While he’s at it, why not lampoon the entire publishing industry? It’s a wonder he found a publisher. But Scott Pack, who rescued his previous novel The Professor Who Got Stuck In The Snow, from self-publishing hell, signed this one up to be published by Lightning Books, then promptly left the company and publishing in general!

No reflection on the book, I’m sure, which is very, very funny. Sarcastic and sardonic in places, and packing a few low punches. (Don’t ask about the slug on the front cover.) Talk about escapism in a time of need ….

A new literary festival has been founded in quintessential English villages, collectively known as The Bottoms. Ticket sales are surprisingly good, particularly for celebrity authors. The moderators, however, are not that experienced. Cue the Salman Rushdie event, during which the poor author can’t get a word in edgeways, and the audience ask the most ridiculous questions in the few minutes at the end of the event. Alexander Armstrong, J K Rowling and others make not altogether flattering appearances under their own name. The author who steals this particular show (i.e the novel), however, is one Wilberforce Selfram (a satirised Will Self) who has swallowed a thesaurus and refuses to speak in words of less than than 5 syllables. He has also walked, sorry, perambulated from London, sleeping under open skies, with leaves for blankets, eating whatever nature provides. He is following advice from the Beoffrey Papers, a slim ream of writings from the thirteenth century, recently ploughed up in a field in Kent.

Lyffte th’ logge and fynde beneethe foode fytte forr a kyng.

The festival organiser, Mrs Angelica Bruschini, has recently moved to the area. Finding it too sleepy for her liking, she sets about injecting some culture. When she is approached with funding for a new literary festival, she grabs the opportunity with both hands. Not giving two thoughts as to why the company The Literary Festival People, would be so keen and so generous. Yes, there are nefarious dealings going on in the background. In addition, Mrs Bruschini has secrets of her own, as does Wilberforce Selfram.

Rhodes certainly lays it on thick, taking swipes at everything: publishing celebrities, nepotism, exploitation of workers within the industry, millenials, Gen Z influencers, cancel culture, literary hoaxes, identity politics, environmental issues, conspiracy theories. He also takes the mickey out of himself, analysing in meta commentaries the similarities between Sour Grapes and The Professor Who Got Stuck In The Snow. Not that these similarities bothered me one bit.

Throw in some computer hacking and you have a link to a rather unexpected and tender love story. Ah, bless.

Sour Grapes is not perfect; the lack of distance between Rhodes and the subject of his ire makes it a little heavy-handed in places (The Brotherhood of Death publishing cult, or instance), but it is quite an amusing ride. Written in the evenings, following Rhodes’s shifts as a key-worker, it’s the first novel I read that was written during the pandemic. I’ll bet I’ll not read another novel written in the same timeframe like it.

Lightning Books is the fiction imprint of Eye Books, a small, independent publisher founded in 1996. On their website they state “As a small publisher we are able to make decisions quickly, and not by committee. We are small and nimble enough to take risks.” They may have taken one with Sour Grapes. I have a feeling it will pay off.

It’s 1591 and Geillis Duncan sits alone in a cold, dark cell deep beneath Edinburgh. She is awaiting her execution, scheduled for the morrow. There is no chance of reprieve; she has been convicted of witchcraft. However Geillis will not die without some comfort. A girl named Iris, travels from 2021 through what Fagan calls the Null and Ether and materialises in Geillis’s cell. The two will spend the night talking about their lives … and the contemporary reader will discover that when it comes to misogyny and control not much has changed in the intervening decades. Says Iris:

I would like to reassure you that five hundred years from now the fine line of misogyny no longer elongates from uncomfortable to fatal, yet I cannot.

Teenage Geillis Duncan was a victim of the North Berwick Witch Trials. James VI of Scotland (soon to be James I of England and Ireland) was deeply fearful of witchcraft and ignited panics among the population, resulting in hundreds being tortured and killed. Women put to death because of their use of herbal medicine, skilful midwives for their knowledge of how to save mother and child. Knowledge is power, and the menfolk had to see to the sidelining of those with such knowledge. There is some of that in Hex, but Fagan also shows that the charge of witchcraft was one easily brought, when ulterior motives, such as trying to get access to an inheritance, came into play. Geillis, a poor maidservant, finds herself caught up in a plot to undo a wealthy and independent woman …

Neither is this abuse the first Geillis has suffered. Every man that she has worked for, every man that has imprisoned her has sexually violated her. As for the unsuccessful interrogation scene and the torture inflicted on Geillis to extract a confession – well, Fagan doesn’t wrap her readership in cotton wool. Be prepared.

With Fagan’s interest in the supernatural (her previous novel, Luckenbooth, was apparently steeped in it, which is why I passed it by), this novella was a natural fit for her. She does approach the supernatural element – actually, the whole conceit of Iris’s visit – ambiguously. It’s not quite certain whether Iris’s visit is real. Could it be a dream? Is Iris a familiar? Some reviewers see this as magic-realism. The ending suggests occult influences to me.

Hex is the second novella in Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, in which contemporary Scottish novelists retell dark stories from Scotland’s past. This one sent chills right through my bones.

Where were we? Ah yes – at the storming of the Stasi Headquarters in Berlin in January 1990. In an almost seamless transition, Ralph Hope’s book starts with the storming of the regional Stasi offices in Dresden. Across the road from which, a KGB officer on his first foreign posting, was waiting for a call authorising the use of a nearby tank regiment to intervene. The officer’s name? Vladimir Putin. That call never came.

The Stasi was officially disbanded on 30 June 1990, leaving 100,000 East German spies redundant. What was Germany to do with them? The KGB were sent home and communist parties outlawed in other countries, freed from the communist yoke during the implosion of the USSR. German reunification meant concessions. The GDR-ruling SED (German Social Unity Party) was first renamed PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), and then in 2007 merged with the western left-wing party, Die Alternative, to form Die Linke (The Left). Yet to ensure transparency, the Stasi archive was opened. Anyone who wanted could access their file, and discover which unofficial collaborator snitched on them. Sometimes it was better not knowing, and, interestingly only 3 million of the 17 million former GDR-citizens have done so. On the other hand, the systematic decomposition (Zersetzung) of lives by Stasi persecution, be it through execution, torture, forced removal of children and other methods, has resulted in only 182 charges, 87 convictions and 1 prison sentence. It’s hard to argue against Hope’s point that Germany has been conciliatory towards ex-Stasi, who are entitled to a state pension, because their employment with the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit is recognised. (Whereas their victims who were not allowed to work in the GDR are penalised further with reduced pensions.)

These grey men, particularly those formerly of higher rank, were and remain resourceful. EU privacy law now works in the favour of those who wish to fade into the background. A list of 91,000 Stasi officers exists, but cannot be published. Those who have been charged with offences have successfully argued that what they were doing was not unlawful in the GDR.

Yet some prominent members of the Stasi are well known and were / have been assimilated. Alexander Schalck-Golodkoski (deceased), head of the GDR Commercial Coordination Unit, responsible for bringing foreign currency into the country, who after the change (Die Wende), lived a quiet life in Bavaria, and had access to more money than he should have; Stasi Captain Matthias Warning is currently CEO of Russian pipeline company Nord Stream. There are others …

So far, so good. Or not. Hope’s book takes a thoroughly chilling turn in the final third, when he approaches topics such as the harassment of tour guides (and Stasi victims) by ex-Stasi at the GDR Memorial Hohenschönhausen in Berlin, and ongoing attempts at historical revisionism. Some reviews suggest that Hope, an ex-FBI agent is biased at best, paranoid at worst. I’m not going to call it, for the dangers of not learning from history are all too apparent to me, given that mindsets wishing to turn the clock back have this week once more brought war to Europe.

One final thought: I found Hope’s comparison of cancel culture and doxxing with the Stasi’s Zersetzung (systematic psychological decomposition of the individual) not at all far-fetched.

Oneworld was founded in 1986 by husband and wife team Juliet Mabey and Novin Doostdar as an independent publishing house focusing on stimulating non-fiction. They have now also developed a fiction list showcasing “intelligent, challenging, and distinctive novels that sit at the intersection of the literary and the commercial: emotionally engaging stories with strong narratives and distinctive voices.” Such as Will Dean’s Tuva Moodyson mysteries . Oneworld now publishes about 100 titles per year.