Read 5 of 2023. Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

Learning to Talk is a book that marvels, that makes you infer, come up with connections of your own to Mantel’s memoir. “Giving Up the Ghost”, and finally makes you marvel at how she connected these stories to moments from her childhood, to give us an experience like no other.

The stories in this collection are raw, precise, part memoir, part imagination, and all wonderful with sentences that flow and words that fit seamlessly. This book is about teenagers and children who are odd with their families, neighbours, the school, and the world at large. Each story laced with curiosity, cleverness, and different ways of seeing the world.

Mantel through these stories allows the reader to glimpse into her world and life growing up and yet ensures that there is some distance that is always maintained between how much she wants the reader to know and how much she does not.

Each story is about when a child’s life shifts – what moments define it – when a pet dies, when the child is lost and finds itself eventually, a teenager’s realization about what love is and how adults work in the world, and about how daughters come to view their mothers over a period. Mantel doesn’t let go of any emotion – of each sentence being in the place it must.  

And in all this there are times when she draws on history to tell these stories and that’s when each one comes alive with even more exuberance and nuance. There is attention to detail, there is attention to every heartache, melancholy, and the political and personal mingle in all the specifics of time and place.

Learning to Talk is a delightful read that will stay with me for years to come. I may not recall every story but that will then be the perfect time to reread this collection.

Read 4 of 2023. Bliss Montage : Stories by Ling Ma

I hadn’t read “Severance” but then I decided to read this collection of short stories and will most certainly go and read her novel. The stories in this collection are surreal, funny, satirical, and extremely confident, though not all of them, but they do the job of making the reader think, feel, and be surprised as well with every turn of the page.

We meet Chinese American women trying so hard, processing their dislocation, their loneliness and how to make sense of the world they are thrown into. In “G” two friends want to relive their youth by going all-out into the night. “Office Hours”, “Peking Duck”, and “Tomorrow” are laced with an equal amount of humour and empathy. “Peking Duck” will make you relook at ethics and what it means to be moral – and more than anything about how narratives change, and so do narrators.

“Los Angeles” and “Yeti Lovemaking” were my favourite stories from the lot. They are peculiar, wry, and stuns you into thinking about other worlds. Her stories stay with you – with their jagged edges and imperfect threads. They exist for that reason alone – to make you see how these characters navigate life and the world at large, unpredictable in their ways, and often quite hilarious.

INTRODUCING THE 2023 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE SHADOW PANEL!

It is that time of the year again! We read the longlist, the shortlist, and announce our winner. We, the shadow judge panel (yet again this year – the 9 of us, with one new addition), to read and decide our winner from the books chosen by the judges, led by Leila Slimani for the International Booker 2023.

Meet us now! The ones who read and read and read some more – we decide, we debate, we mull, and we bring you as the shadow panel, our winner of the International Booker Prize 2023, closer to the date of the win.

Tony Malone (Twitter: @tony_malone) is an occasional ESL teacher and full-time reader who has been publishing his half-baked thoughts on literature in translation at the Tony’s Reading List blog for just over fourteen years now. One unexpected consequence of all this reading in translation has been the crafting of a few translations of his own, with English versions of works by classic German writers such as Eduard von Keyserling and Ricarda Huch appearing at his site. As always, he’s looking forward to seeing what the judges have selected, and then rolling his eyes at them…

Meredith Smith (@bellezzamjs) has been writing about books at her site, Dolce Bellezza, since 2006. Now that she has retired from teaching, she has much more time to devote to her passion of reading translated literature. She has hosted the Japanese Literature Challenge for sixteen years and been a member of the Shadow Jury for nine. It is her great joy to read and discuss books from around the world with both the panel and fellow readers.

David Hebblethwaite (@David_Heb) is a reader and reviewer originally from Yorkshire, UK. He started reading translated fiction seriously a few years ago, and now couldn’t imagine a bookish life without it. He writes about books at David’s Book World, and is also on Goodreads, and Instagram @davidsworldofbooks. This is his tenth year on the Shadow Jury, and it has become a highlight of his reading year. There are always interesting books to read, and illuminating discussions to be had.

Oisin Harris (@literaryty), based in Canterbury in the UK, reviews books at the Literaryty blog. He earned an English degree from Sussex University and an MA in Publishing from Kingston University. He is a librarian at the University of Kent and a co-editor and contributor for The Publishing Post’s Books in Translation Team, as well as the creator of the Translator Spotlight series where prominent translators are interviewed to demystify the craft of translation. His work on Women in Translation was published in the 2020 research eBook of the Institute for Translation and Interpreting, entitled Translating Women: Activism in Action (edited by Olga Castro and Helen Vassallo).

Frances Evangelista (@nonsuchbook) works as an educator in Washington DC. She elected a career in teaching because she assumed it would provide her with lots of reading time. This was an incorrect assumption. However, she loves her work and still manages to read widely, remember the years she blogged about books fondly, chat up books on Twitter, and participate in lots of great shared reading experiences. This is her fifth year as a shadow panelist for the International Booker Prize.

Vivek Tejuja (@vivekisms) is a book blogger and reviewer from India, based in Mumbai. He loves to read books in Indian languages and translated editions of languages around the world (well, essentially world fiction, if that’s a thing). He is Culture Editor at Verve Magazine and blogs at The Hungry Reader. He is also the author of So Now You Know, a memoir of growing up gay in Mumbai in the 90s, published by Harper Collins India. His second book, Strange Bedfellows is out in September 2023, by Harper Collins India.

Areeb Ahmad (@Broke_Bookworm) currently works in the social and development sector. He moonlights as Books Editor at Inklette and Editor-at-Large for India at Asymptote. Although he is an eclectic bookworm, he swears by all things SFF. He goes out of his way to consume queer literatures, experimental writing, translated books, and contemporary poetry collections. You can find him either desperately hunting for book deals to supplement his overflowing TBR pile or trying to figure out the best angle for his next #bookstagram photo as he scrambles to write reviews. He impulsively began book blogging in 2019 and hasn’t looked back since.

Paul Fulcher (@fulcherpaul) is a Wimbledon, UK based fan of translated fiction, who is active on Goodreads, where he contributes to a MBI readers’ group.  He is a Trustee of the Republic of Consciousness Foundation, which runs the Republic of Consciousness Prize (@prizeRofC), which rewards innovative fiction, including in translation, from small independent presses. His reviews can be found on his Goodreads page.

Jeremy Koenig (@KoenigRMHS) is a high school English teacher outside Washington DC.  Over the years, he’s become a fierce champion of translated literature and small presses, both making up the bulk of his Best of the Year lists.  His reading life has been greatly enriched by the other members of this shadow panel, to whom he’s deeply grateful. He’s also a current student of Norwegian who aspires to reading Jon Fosse’s work in the original (“på Norsk”). This is his first year as a shadow panelist.

So this is us, and we cannot wait for the longlist to be announced on the 14th of March to start reading!