Introducing Pushkin Press Classics – plus a giveaway!

Something a little different from me today. Those lovely people at Pushkin Press – an independent publisher with a long history of reissuing timeless classics from some of the most revered writers across the globe – have sent me a few books from their freshly redesigned Pushkin Press Classics range. Aren’t they beautiful?

They’ve also very generously offered to send one of my UK-based followers a complimentary copy of one Classic of their choice from those listed below. To enter the giveaway draw, just leave a comment on this blog post, including a note of your chosen Classic, by the end of Wednesday 9^th August. This giveaway is open to UK-based participants only. However, to ensure my international followers don’t miss out on a chance to win something, I will send a copy to another reader anywhere in the world. So, there are two prizes up for grabs, including one for worldwide entries!

The first tranche of books in this very stylish Classics range will be published today, Thursday 3^rd August, with more additions planned throughout the remainder of this year. So, to whet your appetite for these marvellous books – and to help you choose a Classic for the giveaway – there’s some more info about each title below.

I’ve already read five of these beauties – The Evenings, Journey by Moonlight, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, Binocular Vision and Beware of Pity – and I thoroughly enjoyed them all. In each case, there’s a link to my own review of the book (where available) or one from a trusted fellow reviewer. Just click on the links to access the more detailed posts.

The Evenings by Gerard Reve (tr. Sam Garrett)

“Twenty-three-year-old Frits – office worker, daydreamer, teller of inappropriate jokes – finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy rabbit.

This is the story of ten evenings in Frits’s life at the end of December, as he drinks, smokes, sees friends, aimlessly wanders the gloomy city streets and tries to make sense of the minutes, hours and days that stretch before him.” Publisher’s description.

The Evenings is an excellent novel, by turns savage, hilarious, poignant and biting. Who knew that a narrative about the mundanities of everyday life, the interminable passing of time, and our endeavours to idle away the hours could be so darkly comic and oddly touching? (My full review is here.)

Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb (tr. Len Rix)

“Mihály and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Italy. Mihály has recently joined the respectable family firm in Budapest, but as his gaze passes over the mysterious back alleys of Venice, memories of his bohemian past reawaken his old desire to wander. When bride and groom become separated at a provincial train station, Mihály embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome, where he must reckon with both his past and his future. In this intoxicating and satirical masterpiece, Szerb takes us deep into the conflicting desires of marriage and shows how adulthood can reverberate endlessly with the ache of youth.” Publisher’s description.

I read this novel pre-blog and adored it — a wonderfully nostalgic, romantic read with enough wit and intelligence to keep the reader engaged! (Max’s review is here.)

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov (tr. Bryan Karetnyk)

“A man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his killing of a soldier, long ago – from the victim’s point of view. It’s a story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man. So begins the strange quest for its elusive writer: ‘Alexander Wolf’. A singular classic, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf is a psychological thriller and existential inquiry into guilt and redemption, coincidence and fate, love and death.” Publisher’s description.

Another pre-blog read for me, this is a very clever exploration of mortality, war and human existence. Highly recommended! (Grant’s review is here.)

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

“The collected stories of an award-winning, modern classic American writer who has been compared to Alice Munro, John Updike – and even Anton Chekhov. Tenderly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captured life on the page like no one else. Across a stunning array of scenes – an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, an elderly couple’s decision to shoplift, an old woman’s deathbed confession of her mother’s affair – Edith Pearlman crafts a timeless and unique sensibility, shot through with wit, lucidity and compassion.” Publisher’s description.

Pearlman’s prose is superb; she writes with great insight into the human condition, and her work feels rich with meaning. (My full review is here.)

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (tr. Hilda Rosner)

“An inspirational classic from Nobel Prize-winner Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha is a beautiful tale of self-discovery. Dissatisfied with the ways of life he has experienced, Siddhartha, the handsome son of a Brahmin, leaves his family and his friend, Govinda, in search of a higher state of being. Having experienced the myriad forms of existence, from immense wealth and luxury to the pleasures of sensual and paternal love, Siddhartha finally settles down beside a river, where a humble ferryman teaches him his most valuable lesson yet.” Publisher’s description. (Kaggsy’s review is here.)

Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami (tr. Stephen Snyder)

“Two babies are left in a Tokyo station coin locker and survive against the odds, but their lives are forever tainted by this inauspicious start. Raised amidst the outcasts and misfits of Toxitown, they carve out vastly different paths: one as a bisexual rock star on a desperate search for his mother, the other as an athlete consumed by revenge against the woman who left him behind. When their twisted journeys start to intertwine, this savage and stunning story plunges headlong into a surrealistic whirl of violence.” Publisher’s description. (Tony’s review is here.)

Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig (tr. Anthea Bell)

“In 1913, young second lieutenant Hofmiller discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance – so begins a series of visits, motivated by pity, which relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope. Zweig’s unforgettable novel is a devastating depiction of the betrayal of both honour and love, amid the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” Publisher’s description.

A rich, thoroughly absorbing novel about moral and ethical choices, the consequences of our actions, and the trouble that sheer weakness can cause – perhaps even more than brutality or wickedness. (My full review is here.)

The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man by Franz Kafka (tr. Alexander Starritt)

“No one has captured the modern experience, its wild dreams, strange joys, its neuroses and boredom, better than Franz Kafka. His vision, with its absurdity and twisted humour, has lost none of its force or relevance today. This essential collection, translated and selected by Alexander Starritt, casts fresh light on Kafka’s genius. These unforgettable pieces reflect the brilliance at the core of Franz Kafka, arguably most fully expressed within his short stories. Together they showcase a writer of unmatched imaginative depth, capable of expressing the most profound reality with a wry smile.” Publisher’s description. (Guy’s review is here.)

So, a little reminder…to enter the giveaway draw, just leave a comment on this blog post, including a note of your chosen Classic, by the end of Wednesday 9^th August. (Please state whether you live inside or outside the UK, as there are two prizes up for grabs!)

Good luck!

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman (review)

Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories is a collection of short stories by the American author Edith Pearlman. I can’t recall exactly when I first heard of this writer, but it was a year or so after her collection won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction (an American literary award) in 2011. Pearlman’s career in writing spans four decades and over 250 of her short stories have been published in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and online publications. I’ve often seen her described as one of literature’s best-kept secrets or undiscovered greats, but I’m so glad to have found her through this excellent collection of stories, published in the UK by Pushkin Press.

Binocular Vision contains a total of 34 stories, 13 of which are new to this collection. Many of the stories are set in the fictional suburb of Godolphin, Boston, but others take us to Central America, wartime London and Europe. We meet a young girl separated from her parents, lost in an unfamiliar place; a former US army officer returned from the Second World War, only to find himself battling against cancer; the owners of a second-hand toy shop, a couple who have experienced great sadness in their past – so many individuals, too many to mention here.

Pearlman’s characters are distinctive, finely-sketched and utterly believable. She has a sharp eye for detail in her descriptions of people, settings and mood. In Settlers, the opening chapter alone gives us the sense that its lead character, Peter, is somewhat solitary and forlorn:

One early Sunday morning Peter Loy stood waiting for the bus downtown. It was October and the wind was strong enough to ruffle the curbside litter and to make Peter’s coat flap about his knees, open and closed, open and closed. He wouldn’t have been sorry if the wind had removed the coat altogether, like a disapproving valet. It had been a mistake, this long glen-plaid garment with a capelet, suitable for some theatrical undergraduate, not for an ex-schoolteacher of sixty-odd years. He had thought that with his height and thinness and longish hair he’d look like Sherlock Holmes when wearing it. Instead he looked like a dowager. (pg. 40, Pushkin Press) 

How skilfully Pearlman captures a scene in just a few sentences. In Home Schooling, two eleven year-olds observe a group of four girls who have just whirled into a pizza parlour:

They swept to the counter to order their pizzas. We studied their various backs (erect, round-shouldered, slim, bisected by a braid) and their various stances (jumpy, slouching, queenly, hands in back pockets) and their noses as they turned their profiles this way and that, and their languor or purpose as they visited the jukebox or ladies’ room, and their ease as they more or less assembled at their table, one always getting up for something, where are the napkins anyway, talking, laughing, heads together, heads apart, elbows gliding on the table. The girl with glasses – I was pretty sure her name was Jennifer, so many girls were Jennifers – sat in a way that was familiar to me, her right knee bent outward so that her right foot could rest on the chair, her left thigh keeping the foot in place like a brick weighing down a Christmas pudding. This position caused a deep satisfying cramp; I knew that pain. (pg. 234) 

Binocular Vision is a wonderful collection of beautifully-crafted, diverse stories, each one like a finely polished gem honed to perfection. Pearlman’s prose is superb; she writes with great compassion and insight into the human condition, and her work feels rich with meaning. Many of her narratives are quietly powerful, but with real emotional heft, too. I often found myself taking a little gasp or intake of breath while reading the collection. For example, in one of the early stories, a man is visiting the home of a couple he has recently met: 

Photographs lined the passageway from kitchen to bathroom. Snapshots, really, but blown up and matted in ivory and framed in sliver as if they were meant to hang in a gallery. All were of the same child – blond, light-eyed. At two she was solemn, in a draperied room, sharing a chair with a rag doll. At four she was solemn against the sea; this time the doll was a naked rubber baby. At six she smiled, clutching Raggedy Ann. At eight the girl with her Barbie stood straight as a stick in front of a constructed pond – could it have been the one at Luxembourg Garden? Slatted chairs, smoking pensioners, and a toy boat siling off to the right.

No further pictures.

He found himself unable to swallow. (pg. 107)

And yet there is rage, too. In Elder Jinks, a couple, Gustave and Grace, meet late in life and marry a few months later. On returning early from a business trip, Gustave discovers a different side of Grace’s character, one that disgusts him, and she leaves:

And surely he had been deranged to marry a woman because of her alluring eyes. He’d mistaken a frolicsome manner for lasting charm. She was merely frivolous, and the minute she was left unsupervised…He stomped into the living room. That rose-coloured garment in progress now shared its chair with a wine bottle, good vineyard, good year…empty. He’d like to rip the knitting out. The yarn would remain whorled; he’d wind it loosely into one big whorl. When she came back she’d find a replica of Faraday’s induction coil, pink. (pgs. 381-382)

The final story in the collection, Self-Reliance, is exceptional, and it contains one of the most astonishingly vivid and haunting passages I’ve ever read, anywhere. The protagonist is a retired gastroenterologist who has recently purchased a house by the water in New Hampshire. The woman’s daughter worries about her mother living on her own in the middle of nowhere, but to say anything else would spoil the narrative. In her excellent introduction to this collection, Ann Pratchett writes of giving two public readings of Self-Reliance – one at a literary event for the launch of a Best American Short Stories anthology and the other at a public library. One both occasions Pratchett brought the house down with Edith Pearlman’s Self-Reliance. Pratchett writes of this story:

Every word in every sentence was indispensable, every observation subtle and complex. The rhythm of the language carried the reader forward as much as the plot. Every time I thought I had mastered all of the nuances, the story offered up another part of itself to me, something quiet and undemanding that had been standing back and waiting for me to find it. (Introduction by Ann Pratchett)

If you haven’t already discovered Edith Pearlman, I hope I’ve managed to convince you to give her a try. Binocular Vision is a real treat, a collection I can see myself revisiting during the coming months.

Binocular Vision is published in the UK by Pushkin Press. Source: personal copy.