The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

TK

Eileen Battersby's take - her one firm thumbs down:

Making the longlist is the slight and frankly routine coming of age offering, Swallowing Mercury, by Polish poet Wioletta Greg (translated by Eliza Marciniak). This heavy-handed tale of growing up in rural Poland consists of random anecdotes and only very late in what is a small work does it begin to acquire resonance when the narrator re-imagines her dead father as a boy and young man whose life ended prematurely. Its inclusion in a longlist this good is inexplicable.

Hmmm - Eileen Battersby was a touch harsh but I see her point.

This was what I think of, somewhat pejoratively, as a typical MBI / IFFP book.

Short, almost a novella, with beautiful but straightforward prose, and the main innovation for the English reader being the unfamiliar setting rather than anything in the writing.

The one unfair part of her comment is heavy-handed, as this was very nicely written, but I would hope there are more innovative and substantial books on the longlist and don't see this as shortlist material.

Of all the Kindle samples I read so far, this was the one that grabbed me the most. In medias res and lots of immediate detail with lively metaphor, whereas the others waffled on a bit setting the scene. I associate the IFFP pejorative with dryness / coldness which wasn't what I saw here, but of course that was only a few pages.

It certainly isn't dry or cold, it just wasn't me. For me this is this year's A Whole Life.

And so far, 60 pages in, The Unseen is this year's White Hunger, which last year I rather like but as I recall you didn't.

Generally I get baffled why translators/publishers often decide to make up their own title, unconnected with the original (for those who haven;t read the book the original title translates as unripeness/unripe fruit).

Here though she may have perhaps have found that the word guguly was a more evocative term in the original Polish and the translation as "unripe fruit" less so (I don't think guguly is the standard Polish term for unripe fruit - indeed google translate doesn't know the word at all). But Swallowing Mercury, albeit taken from an incident in one of the stories, doesn't really convey the sense of the novel at all.

OK, so I am going to disagree with Eileen Battersby. I didn't find it "routine" or "heavy handed". In fact, I really enjoyed it and I am trying to work out how to have it on my personal shortlist (difficult as I already have 6 books on it that I would like to keep there).

Disagreeing with Eileen Battersby is perfectly acceptable. Disagreeing with me on the other hand .. :-)

Just didn't quite convince me as great literature although arguably it is no different in that regard to The Unseen, which will I suspect make my personal shortlist. A bit like A Whole Life (which I wasn't keen on) vs White Hunger (which I was) from last year. Ultimately comes down to subjective personal taste really rather than more objective literary considerations.

:-)

I'm in a similar position - only one of Swallowing Mercury and The Unseen can go on my shortlist. And it comes down to personal preference which, in my case, is Swallowing Mercury.

That said, I have 4 more books to read, so the final selection of 6 might get even trickier!