3 for #WITMonth2025 and #20BooksofSummer2025 nos 16-18

It’s now a tradition to read books by Women in Translation each August (see my earlier post about it here). I’ve read 4 this month already – 1 will be reviewed for Shiny New Books, the other three are reviewed below – 2 hits and 1 meh, in three different languages from three different indie publishers. Let’s get the meh one out of the way first shall we?…

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell

Well, I’m sorry, despite the praise heaped on Schweblin’s 2017 International Booker Prize shortlisted novel, I found it tedious and repetitive in the extreme, and one of the main themes of industrial poisoning of animals and people is rather distasteful.

A woman lies in a hospital bed – she’s dying with hours to live – and the boy sitting beside her, David, who isn’t her son, is prompting her to recall events from before she was hospitalised. He’s determined to unlock her memory, to release the trauma that is killing her – and let her die in peace. But Amanda is fevered, and her mind is reeling in confusion – she thinks she’s full of worms, but can’t see them. We soon learn that David may not be David any longer – he drank the poisoned water like the dogs and horses and got ill. His mother Carla took him to the village witch to cast it out. But she does this by melding his soul… Carla can’t cope!

I’m not going to say much more. There were moments of brilliance in the writing, but I forgot to mark them. The rest of the time it was WTF? Hard to keep track of what was happening – not least because you never knew whether it was real or fever talking, and I didn’t understand David’s motivation. Did it ever reach a conclusion? I’m not sure – I think I’d lost the will to comprehend by then. Mercifully – it is a short book. Have you read it – if yes, how did you get on? (I see the latest edition has a ‘Now a Netflix film’ sticker – and you can watch it here – I lasted 2 mins )

Source: Own copy. Oneworld paperback, 151 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link

Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien, translated by Jamie Bulloch

Now this was more like it. Krien’s novel from 2021, translated from the German by the ever-dependable Bulloch, was a breath of fresh air. It comprises a story cycle, each of the five sections for five different women narrators. The five sections are cleverly linked together in each case by a secondary character in the preceding story becoming the narrator in the next and so on, so there is some close correlation between them, meaning we often hear two sides, at least in part, of a part of the story.

The setting is modern Leipzig, which was behind the Berlin Wall when our five narrators were teenagers, and the reunification of Germany has meant that these women had to get used to the idea of having choice in their lives! Through her five protagonists, Krien explores modern love, motherhood, friendship, wifedom, and all the women have different careers and experiences.

We begin with Iris, who went through the trauma of the death of her daughter. Not surprisingly, her marriage suffered, and they divorced.

Johanna’s death had been a watershed. But as time passed she began to attribute the failure of their relationship to other, earlier events, going further and further back until there was no more back.

Now though, she is happy. She and Wenzel found each other. Her best friend and confidante, Judith, never liked Ludger… Judith is a GP and obsessive horse-rider spending as much time as she can with her horse. Not having time for relationships , she uses dating app, using her expertise to work out all the truth from exaggeration and lies in profiles. She does agree to make time to read the manuscript of one of her patients, Brida, whose life revolves around shared parenting of her children with Götz, wishes she were still with him, even though he has a new partner. She had been Götz’s secret lover until he broke up with Malika, a musicologist. Malika had read Brida’s novels little knowing, and identifying with her protagonists. She’d hope to have a baby with Götz, but it didn’t happen, she still yearns for a child. Her sister Jorinde offers a possible solution – she’s pregnant by her lover – Malika could bring up the child – the sisters come up with an alternative solution, which doesn’t make Jorinde’s husband Torben happy at all!

The way Krien links the stories together is masterful – the main links are obvious, but there are many smaller subtle ones that bring everything together beautifully. For each of the five, she blends their personal back stories into the text, so we get a full portrait of each woman’s life as they explore relationships in the now reunified country. Each woman’s voice was distinctive – particularly Judith’s, she’s the straight-talking one. It was hugely enjoyable, and I will be looking out for her subsequent novel The Fire, with its equally arresting front cover, also translated by Jamie Bulloch. Highly recommended.

Susan really enjoyed this novel – see her review here.

Source: Review copy from ages ago – a belated thank you! Maclehose Press, 288 pages. BUY in pbk at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.

The Pear Field by Nana Ektimishvili, translated by Elizabeth Heighway

The first Georgian novel I’ve read, and the third new Eastern European country in my 2025 reading! The first paragraph sets the scene:

On the outskirts of Tbilisi, where most of the streets have no names and where whole neighbourhoods consist of nothing but Soviet high-rises grouped into blocks, grouped in turn into microdistricts, lies Kerch Street. […] ad at the very end of the street, the Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Children or, as the locals call it, the School for Idiots.

Despite the school’s title, most of the children there are orphans or abandoned by their families to the state. Our narrator is Lela, who is just eighteen. Having finished her education at the school, she now lives there and helps the hard-pressed staff to keep things calm! Having a natural leadership of the children, she’s the one who’s able to get them out of the attic with a huge hole in the side of the wall when the younger kids had gone to bounce on the old bed springs there. Dali is theoretically the school’s ‘Head of Discipline’ with unruly red-dyed hair which sticks out like a halo – ‘with the suffering she goes through chasing these children all day, she could be the school’s patron martyr-saint.’

Lela has a to-do list with two items on it, before she feels she can leave to make her way in the world. Firstly, she must make sure that nine-year-old Irakli finds an adoptive family, he was abandoned by his mother. Secondly, she must kill Vano, the deputy head, her old history teacher. At first, we don’t know what happened to make Lela want to kill Vano, but we can assume, and later in the novel we’ll discover the truth.

Meanwhile, she looks after Irakli, who is always desperate to speak to his mother. Lela persuades a neighbour to let him use their phone, not realising his mother is now in Greece – the call charges rack up – and his mother fills him with her lies about how she’ll come for him soon. When an American couple arrive wanting to adopt a child, Lela persuades the head to put Irakli in the line-up despite him being older than they really wanted – but they fall for his good looks and big eyes – and start the long process to adopt him. Lela, who as we know, is very persuasive, finds another neighbour to teach him a little English including many swear words! I won’t expound further on how that goes.

Fascinatingly, we get a glimpse of the local scene when the school is used as the venue – having the largest rooms – for local weddings. The children all help out, and are rewarded with their own table at the feast – a rare treat for these kids who otherwise have a hard life. While most of the staff seem to be supportive of the children, even while run off their feet, there is this shadow of abuse that hangs over Lela, a darkness at the novella’s heart. Ekvtimishvili’s writing, as told by Lela, is unsentimental and highlights her protagonist’s survival instinct, while offering a snapsnot of life in another culture.

Read also: Stu’s and Susan’s reviews.

Source: Own copy. Peirene paperback original, 163 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link