Chloe AridjisSea Monsters

Abstract

Nota Bene Lindsay Tuggle Calenture Cordite Books From widely published and venerated Australian poet Lindsay Tuggle comes a stirring collection of poetry that draws strength from both its unapologetic entrenchment in the female experience and in its willingness to delve into the immensely personal heart of every issue that fills its pages. Performing poetic subversions of long-held notions about the subjects of death, loss, and the societal perception of femininity, Calenture is at once uncomfortable and hauntingly memorable. Tanguy Viel Article 353 Trans. William Rodarmor Other Press This terse novel uses the form of a legal deposition to unspool the complex set of events that precipitate a murder. Tanguy Viel uses the sprawling dialogue to critique the fraying threads of the French social fabric in the broader tapestry of twenty-firstcentury Europe. Nobody’s sure if the scholar of Nazi Germany jumped or was pushed. With a cast of treacherous academics and rumors of a pilfered Third Reich relic, The Republic has all the makings of a canny, if derivative, intellectual thriller. De Vries, however, is a comic novelist with metafictional inclinations. Mainly, he’s interested in exploring what it means to work within a milieu—in this case, the world of university publishing—that places a premium on developing new narratives. Why do humans build reductive tales out of discrete, often unrelated events? The travails of his protagonist, a Brik disciple named Friso de Vos, might help us arrive at an answer. The editor of a journal of Hitler-related scholarship, de Vos falls ill during a work trip.Whenhewakesup in a hospital, he learns of Brik’s death. Another Brik devotee, Philip de Vries (note that he shares the author’s last name), has stepped in and delivered a glowing eulogy. De Vos is crestfallen—he was supposed to be the one “giving Brik’s death meaning” by “fitting it into a story.” Eager to reinstall himself atop the Brikian hierarchy, he resolves to impersonate —and thereby humiliate—his rival. His increasingly reckless antics will draw the attention of Nazi artifact-fetishists and far-right politicos. De Vries’s tone is droll, nonchalant. The Dutch writer’s depiction of a punch-up at an academic conference is funny, but he has an unaccountable weakness for sight gags. One chapter includes images of inanimate objects that resemble Hitler, giving it the feel of a forgettable internet meme. Though de Vries’s plot is competently assembled, his narrative games are distracting. Many novelists have named characters after themselves , but his reasons for doing so remain obscure. His decision to import fictional professors from elsewhere—Jack Gladney, a Hitler scholar from Don DeLillo’s superb White Noise, makes several appearances— only reminds the reader of better books. Eyeing a snowy city square in Austria, de Vos notes that it’s “as white as an unwritten Word document,” ready to be filled with stories. There’s a promising yarn at the heart of The Republic, but it’s burdened by a glut of gimmicks. Kevin Canfield New York Chloe Aridjis Sea Monsters Trans. Anne McLean. New York. Catapult. 2019. 224 pages. One doesn’t have to see the carved face of the Grand Canyon to know water is powerful and mysterious but also beautiful. It is this combination of danger and poetic mystery that draws a middleclass teenager like Luisa out of her books and into the arms of Joy Division, indifferent romance, and the crashing waves of Zipolite, the beach of death. Chloe Aridjis crafts an undulating story not of innocence lost but innocence exchanged. Luisa exchanges her ordinary and unexceptional days to solve a mystery. This action will lead her to a beach where she meets strangers she believes will want to hear her story, though in truth, she lacks a tale anyone would find thrilling. Yet the title of the novel seems to promise malicious creatures. As one follows Luisa’s decisions, which lead her away from her predictable middle-class life, the sea WORLDLIT.ORG 107 Andrzej Franaszek Herbert: Biografia 2 vols. Kraków. Wydawnictwo Znak. 2018. 857 & 958 pages. Andrzej Franaszek once again undertook a gigantic task when, after his successful biography of Nobel Prize–winning Polish...