Barcelona Shadows - Marc Pastor

Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem

Marc Pastor works as a CSI in Barcelona as well as writing, this is his first book to be published in English and is a belting price of gothic horror. Set mostly in the slums and back streets of Barcelona in 1911 it recreates a nightmarish world of over crowded, stinking buildings, grinding poverty, prostitution, crime, violence, and any number of other horrors.

The city is uneasy, the streets feel volatile, and to many people have seen to many unpleasant things to be anything other than damaged by the experience - morals are a little lax. Even so rumours that the children of prostitutes are disappearing into the hands of some monster are troubling the detective Moises Corvo. When he starts to investigate it gets even more troubling, his bosses aren't keen for him to look into the matter - the disappearances aren't being reported and there are more pressing matters at hand, and then when Corvo pokes his nose into some of the more upmarket brothels and casinos there are very clear warnings to drop it. Warnings it's dangerous to ignore.

Meanwhile Corvo isn't the only one investigating, our narrator is Death, who takes an understandably unemotional view of the whole situation, but who also has enough curiosity to untangle the story for us as Corvo tries to find his monster.

The discovery of a body drained of blood gives rise to rumours that a vampire may be stalking the streets, and the discovery of another body, decapitated and robbed from a grave doesn't make it any easier for the police to piece together what's going on. Death leads us to Enriqueta Marti who is leading the oddest of double lives. She has been a prostitute, a herbalist, a procuress, she turns up in the mist unexpected places, and she's stealing children for truly unspeakable purposes.

It wasn't until I finished 'Barcelona Shadows' that I realised it might be based on actual events. A couple of minutes research online reveal the whole story of the 'Vampire of Barcelona', so basically spoilers for the book - finding out at the end how much was true certainly added a layer of horror to the whole narrative. Facts about Enriqueta are hazy, the remains of her victims don't truly reveal her motivations, which gives Pastor plenty of room to weave fiction with history.

He opts for the blackest of humour and a straight up horror story, which is a definite strength of the book. Sometimes we need monsters, or at least the explanation that there are monsters out there because the idea that people can do these things is to much to really accept. Pastor's Enriqueta with her claw like hands, mesmeric presence, and the sense of disquiet that she arouses in people isn't quite human, turning her into something a bit more mythical (and not unlike the witch from Hansel and Gretel or even Baba Yaga) doesn't diminish the horror of what she did but maybe it makes it easier to assimilate.

Either way this is a terrific book. Very dark, never gratuitous in it's details, and clever enough to lay out social injustice and then leave the reader to draw their own conclusions - there is more than one sort of monster here. It's very much a story for lengthening nights and a cosy sofa, it will probably also make you check that your door is locked.

The Rabbit Back Literature Society - Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

Translated by Lola M. Rogers.

When 'The Rabbit Back Literature Society' landed on my doorstep I had no idea who had sent it, the mystery was only cleared up a week or two later when I realised that Salt and Pushkin Press share a publicist. Initially I thought it looked mildly interesting, based entirely on enjoying the 2 Finnish novellas that Peirene have published (The Brothers and Mr Darwin's Gardener) and thought no more about it, but after a brief email exchange with Tabitha (the publicist) I promised I would actually read it (and soon - she's very persuasive).

I'm glad she gave me a bit of a push because after a slowish start I was utterly absorbed by 'The Rabbit Back Literature Society' which was something of a departure from anything I remember reading over the last few years. I'll start with the things I didn't like so much about this book - which are superficial - the first is the book cover and title. Before I read it both seemed to me to suggest something altogether cosier then the book turned out to be. Now I have read it both make sense but I would still prefer something that captured a little bit more of the weirdness inside. Second is that this translation is full of Americanisms which is fair enough when the translator lives in Seattle but is oddly distracting for me in a book which I want to feel totally European (by which I probably mean British, but I notice the use of 'parking lot' or 'block' in a way that I wouldn't 'car park' or 'street').

The book opens with a description of Ella Milana ("a pair of beautifully curving lips and a pair of defective ovaries") she is a substitute teacher, a literature graduate, and an aspiring author. Her latest job is in her home town of Rabbit Back, which is also the home town of Laura White, a beloved children's author, and her Rabbit Back literature society; a group of 9 more or less successful authors who Laura White hand picked as children to be groomed for success. Meanwhile Ella Milana's father is showing signs of dementia, he's given up running, which had been a passion, in favour of observing his garden where he keeps getting mysteriously injured. He says it's because the gnomes don't like him seeing them. He dies and Laura White invites Ella Milana to be the 10th member of her society, a party is thrown to celebrate but half way through, and half way down the stairs Laura White disappears in a flurry of snow. Oh, and the contents of books keeps changing...

For Ella Milana it's all a bit much, personally it was where the book really started to get its hooks into me. There are so many questions at this point; what's happening with the books, who and what is Laura White, why has she picked Ella Milana, were the gnomes real, and most crucially - what will happen next?

Without giving to many spoilers Ella Milana learns that she's not the first 10th member of the society, that nobody seems to be very clear about what happened to that first 10th member, and that her disappearance might not be the strangest thing about Laura White. She also learns about The Game, a method that Laura White devised for her students to plunder each other's experience to put in their own work. Ella Milana decides to use the game to get answers, but it also means giving answers. Participators have to spill, they're not allowed to tell a story, instead they have to tell what the listener accepts as the truth, and can only stop when they do accept it as truth - no matter how personal or painful the experience might be. As they're allowed to use force when they deem it necessary physical pain is on the cards too.

What becomes clear is that the truth as recounted this way is still subjective, it's always filtered through the memory and perception of the teller, never quite frees itself from story or myth making. It also emerges that Laura White's methods weren't always particularly wholesome; her pupils may have grown up to be successful but they're also quite badly damaged, the question for Ella Milana is are they damaged enough to have committed a murder. As a mystery novel it's absolutely bloody brilliant with a conclusion that's horrifying for entirely unexpected reasons, but it's not just a thriller. There is also an element of magic realism; fairy tales in the Grimm sense.

The changing books, dogs behaving oddly, those gnomes (also elves, sprites, nymphs, phantoms and nixies), and Laura White herself all hint at another world but in such a way that the reader can dismiss it as some combination of dream, superstition, and imagination or accept it as they see fit. Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen offers a guide to unlocking his intentions here which I haven't followed (yet) because for now I prefer to mull over my own take on his writing, but at some point it would be interesting to read the passages he highlights to see if they clear anything up (I suspect maybe not, but  as it's the ambiguity of the book that I particularly liked, that's okay).

Pretty much everything happens through late autumn into winter, it all ends in spring. It's very much a story of long, dark, cold nights where everything is obscured by snow, made unreliable by ice, and the forest is a dangerous place to go. As for the forest, it feels like very old stories have crept out of it to make their mark on this novel - which I find very exciting indeed, so once again a big thank you to Tabitha for persuading me to read it so promptly.

Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig - translated by Anthea Bell

I'm slowly overcoming my prejudices about translated fiction - the most powerful being that it's in some way inauthentic reading something filtered through a translator - and predictably finding a whole world of excitement. The purchase of 'Beware of Pity' was inspired by a combination of seeing 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' (excellent) and visiting the Kibworth Bookshop. It seems rude to enter an independent bookshop (especially a good one) and not buy something to support it in some way. Despite being the approximate size of a small cupboard (I only exaggerate a bit) they had a far better selection of Zweig than my local Waterstones (which is also on the bijou side). Had the film not been so good the book would probably have sat about unread for - well it could have been years - but as it is I'm delighted I got that push to get on with it.

This copy opens with a quote from later in the book - "There are two kinds of pity, One, the weak-minded, sentimental sort, is really just the heart's impatience to rid itself as quickly as possible of the painful experience of being moved by another person's suffering. It is not a case of real sympathy, of feeling with the sufferer, but a way of defending yourself against someone else's pain. The other kind, the only one that counts, is unsentimental but creative. It knows its own mind, and is determined to stand by the suffering too, to the last of its strength and even beyond."  which pretty much sums up what it's about. It's set in the summer of 1914 and Zweig adds a short note for the English reader about the nature of the Austro-Hungarian army and an officers life within it, they were very much a separate caste educated from the very beginning to think of themselves in a certain way and with their own moral code.

This is the story of one captain Hoffmiller - a highly decorated war hero who shares his tale with our 'author' over dinner one night. As a young lieutenant stationed in a country garrison town he manages to get himself invited to dinner and a dance in the local castle. He makes a terrible faux pas when he asks the daughter of the house to dance, not realising she's lame - she promptly has hysterics and the poor young man runs away. To make amends he sends flowers the next day and from that point an intense friendship with the household springs up. For Hoffmiller who is well aware that he's an ordinary sort of man there are the twin attractions of being made much of for the first time, and in return feeling that in bestowing his time and pity on Edith and her father he's giving them something they value.

Pity in fact carries him away to the point of indiscretion, after a conversation with Edith's doctor he promises her father, and in turn he promises Edith that a cure is just around the corner. It isn't, but through that conversation that he can only half remember he inextricably binds himself to the family, the knot is tied even tighter when he begs the doctor not to reveal the truth but to allow Edith to hope that she can be cured. Inevitably Edith falls in love with Hoffmiller, and when he realise it, it horrifies him that the object of his pity could physically desire him but he doesn't have the strength to be honest. Torn between fear of being mocked by his brother officers and chaffing at the responsibility he's taken on for the Kekesfalva's  Hoffmiller ends up in a hell of a mess.

As Zweig makes clear pity is a dangerous emotion for all involved, it breeds resentment in relationships. Hoffmiller is manipulated into giving more than he's willing too and at the same time has to face his own, understandable, cowardice. For Edith who wants love pity is a wholly unacceptable substitute, but in turn one that she's prepared to manipulate to try and get what she wants. Disaster is inevitable. It's a brilliant book, pinning down something fundamentally true - it really is a masterpiece and I'm so glad I've read it.