Tag: literary fiction

#BlogTour #BookReview Real Life by Adeline Dieudonné @WorldEdBooks

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Real Life by Adeline Dieudonné, translated from the French by Roland Glasser. Real Life was published in paperback on 13th February 2020. Thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to participate and to World Editions for my proof copy. You can find out what I thought about Real Life below.

Dieudonné_RealLifeAbout the Book

At home there are four rooms: one for her, one for her brother, one for her parents … and one for the carcasses. The father is a big game hunter, a powerful predator; the mother is submissive to her violent husband’s demands. The young narrator spends the days with her brother, Sam, playing in the shells of cars dumped for scrap and listening out for the chimes of the ice-cream truck, until a brutal accident shatters their world.

The uncompromising pen of Adeline Dieudonné wields flashes of brilliance as she brings her characters to life in a world that is both dark and sensual. This breathtaking debut is a sharp and funny coming-of-age tale in which reality and illusion collide.

Format: Paperback (320 pages)          Publisher: World Editions
Publication date: 13 February 2020 Genre: Literary fiction, literature in translation

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My Review

At one point in the book, the unnamed narrator attempts to reassure her younger brother, Sam, scared by tales of what lurks in the woods beyond their house, by saying “Stories exist to contain everything that frightens us. That way we can be sure those things won’t happen in real life.”

If only that were so. In fact, the real life she and Sam experience is the stuff of nightmares. A violent, tyrannical father who gets his kicks from killing animals and displaying them as trophies in his carcass room (described as ‘a Noah’s Ark of the dead’). A mother who has been so cowed into passivity by their father’s physical and psychological abuse that her daughter dismissively compares her to an amoeba. The scenes of the family’s tense meal times powerfully communicate the sense that violence can erupt at any moment. “Life was a big soup in a mixer where you had to try and avoid being shredded by the blades.”

When the children witness a dreadful freak accident, the trauma causes our narrator to believe that an evil presence has taken up residence within her brother. Feeling a responsibility to save him, she comes up with a plan that involves channelling her obvious intelligence and hunger for learning into the study of physics.

Our narrator also becomes convinced her life is not the one she was intended to lead, that she is in the “flawed offshoot” of a life that should have taken a different direction, and that still can. This conviction, combined with a growing awareness of her own sexuality, leads her into risky behaviour that will have dramatic consequences.

Described as ‘A Lord of the Flies for the #MeToo generation’, I won’t say Real Life makes comfortable reading but it contains some striking imagery and is a powerful, unflinching depiction of a young girl’s attempt to thrive despite her dysfunctional family. I found her determination to save her brother a flash of light in an otherwise dark story.

In three words: Dark, intense, compelling

Try something similar: Welcome to America by Linda Boström Knausgård

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Adeline Dieudonne Author PicAbout the Author

Adeline Dieudonné was born in 1982 and lives in Brussels. A playwright and short-story writer, her first novella, Amarula, was awarded the Grand Prix of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. Two further booklets were published by Editions Lamiroy in 2017: Seule dans le noir and Bonobo Moussaka.

Real Life was recently awarded the prestigious Prix du Roman FNAC, the Prix Rossel, the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, and the Prix Filigrane, a French prize for a work of high literary quality with wide appeal. Dieudonné also performs as a stand-up comedian.

About the Translator

Roland Glasser is an award-winning translator of French literature, based in London.

Real Life BT Poster

#BookReview Artefacts And Other Stories by Rebecca Burns

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ArtefactsAbout the Book

That dandelion. A flash of stubborn yellow in a dark box of space. It had promised sunshine but had tasted sour.

Artefacts. A dandelion. A mayfly. A family, bereft. Items and mementos of a life, lived hard and with love, or long, empty, bitter.

In these sharply drawn and unflinching short stories, Rebecca Burns unpicks the connection between the lives we live and what we leave behind.

Format: ebook (154 pages)                         Publisher: Odyssey Books
Publication date: 30th September 2017 Genre: Short stories, literary fiction

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My Review

All the stories in the book are well-crafted but, as is often the case with short story collections, some engaged me more than others.

For example, ‘On This Day’ is the unsettling story of a man’s response to the anniversary of past events. In the title story, ‘Artefacts’, a woman senses the emotions of others, even complete strangers. And in ‘The Bread Princess’, bonnets worn over the years by young women taking part in a local custom give insights into social changes.

I also really enjoyed ‘The Last Game – August 1914’ in which a match by the local cricket team, depleted by these who have already joined up, is full of allusions to war. So the cricket pitch becomes the ‘arena of conflict’, the captain swings his bat like a weapon, each man in the team knows his place and his role and, assessing the opposition, the father of one of the players remarks, “This should be over quickly.”

However, the standout story for me was ‘The Greatcoat’ in which a young man returning from the war has conflicting feelings about having to hand back the coat he was issued with. For him, it evokes memories of suffering and loss but also of comradeship and duty. In an example of one of the striking images scattered throughout the collection, he sees the coat lying across a chair in his bedroom. ‘One arm was thrown to the side and it dangled, empty, like a ghost. A dying coat.’

Artefacts and Other Stories is an intriguing collection exploring the feelings, memories and emotions associated with everyday objects. I received a review copy courtesy of the author and Odyssey Books.

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bekki-150x150About the Author

Rebecca Burns is a novelist and short story writer. Her two story collections, Catching the Barramundi (2012) and The Settling Earth (2014), were both longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the UK’s only award for short story collections. Her debut novel, The Bishop’s Girl, was published in 2016. She lives in the Midlands, UK, with her husband and young family. (Photo credit: author website)

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