ManBookering discussion

A discussion thread for Wioletta Greg's Swallowing Mercury.

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.

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 was unripeness/unripe fruit). Here 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 evocative (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.

I agree with points both of you made, Paul & Anya. I like the fact that when I read a book from the MBI list, they can be about anything and anywhere. They transport me and are outside of my typical reading experience.
Short stories are not my favorite, but these work rather well together as a novella. I enjoyed the second half much more, possibly because I thought the stories with her father were written beautifully, whereas some of the other stories lacked that luster. I ended up enjoying the book more than I expected to.

I really enjoyed this one. I loved the writing and I liked the narrator. The episodes worked well together for me to form a consistent whole. I'm putting it up among my favourites, which is difficult as I already have 6 books I think worth being on the shortlist!