I'm afraid I've given the heave ho to my first read of the year that just wasn't quite clicking with me. I've become much better at doing this than previously. Actually I shouldn't be so flippant about it as it really isn't the book's fault. I just lost the thread and don't feel like reading it anymore (and I hadn't really gotten very far into the story anyway). The book in question is What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, which is a loose retelling of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina set in contemporary New York City. I like the premise and the writing is good, but I'm just not in the mood and rather than let the book sit on my nightstand as I keep moving it to the bottom of the pile, I think I'd rather pick something else. Sometimes I'm willing to persevere, but other times the reading just feels like a slog, and with so many other books waiting to be read... Instead I think I will pick one of the books from this list or maybe one of these new books.
And now any guilt I was feeling over picking up Maria Barbal's Stone in a Landslide is wiped away. I told myself I was going to keep my reading pile under control this year, but I am obviously very good at not only fibbing to myself but believing what I say (all the while knowing I'm actually going to turn around and do the opposite). Whereas the Reyn just wasn't working at the moment, the Barbal is. It's quite a slender novel--just over 100 pages, but I am not rushing it. It could easily be read in an evening, but the chapters are so short I like to just read a little at a time.
Barbal's style is very pared down. She tells the life story of Conxa, from her simple beginnings in a small village in the Pyrenees, through her adulthood and moves along at a brisk pace. And she does it all with an economy of words. I like first person narratives and being inside a character's head. In my teaser, Conxa is reflecting on whether the baby she is carrying will be a boy or girl.
"A boy will be a man. And a man has the strength to deal with the land, the animals, to build. But I didn't see it clearly. When I thought about the families I knew well, I saw the woman as the foundation stone. If I thought about my home, it was my mother who did all the work or organized others to do it. Not to mention Tia. The woman had the children, raised them, harvested, took care of the pigsty, the chicken coop, the rabbits. She did the housework and so many other things: the vegetable garden, the jams, the sausages... What did the man do? Spent the day doing things outside. When a cow had to be sold. When someone had to be hired for harvest. It wasn't obvious that the man did more or was more, but everyone said, What is a farm without a man? And I thought, What is a house without a woman? But what everyone had always said weighed on me. I only knew that I wanted a boy."
This is descriptive of how events in the story shape and carry Conxa along. She seems so accepting of life and willing to bend and conform. But war is soon going to break out in Spain, and war changes everyone's life, and I wonder how it will change Conxa's.