Back Reviews Reel: October 2016

Leafing back three years in my blogging calendar, there are two classical and two contemporary novels on my review list of October. I started with a less widely read work by the English recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature, namely The Dark Flower by John Galsworthy, showing a sculptor of animals passionately in love three times in three decades. Then I moved on to the red-light district of modern-day Antwerp in Belgium with four Nigerian prostitutes stuck On Black Sisters’ Street by Chika Unigwe with no way out. In Montauk by Max Frisch I went back to the 1970s to join an ageing Swiss writer on a week-end trip to Long Island in the USA with his young lover. And finally, I travelled Victorian England and Italy with a mother who sacrifices herself for her daughter, the child prodigy and one of the The Devourers by Annie Vivanti.

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A symbol of the overwhelming but short-lived fire of – forbidden – passion, The Dark Flower by John Galsworthy accompanies the English sculptor of animals Mark Lannon. Between 1880 and 1908, he falls for three women linked to a clove carnation of the darkest red, but for different reasons, neither of these infatuations is under a lucky star. His first passion as a youth strikes him unprepared and remains an unconsumed romance. His second passion for an unhappily married woman takes a tragic end in the heat of summer. And his third passion threatens his home and peace of mind. All the while another woman, pure and mild, is a stabilising presence. He has known her almost all his life, married her and has come to love her so dearly that he can’t bear to hurt her ever...
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Longing for a better life, four Nigerian women ended up working as prostitutes On Black Sisters’ Street by Chika Unigwe in the red-light district of Antwerp in Belgium. They don’t like selling their bodies and above all Sisi finds it increasingly hard to bear, but they have to pay rent to their madam and substantial instalments to the man in Nigeria who brought them to Europe. Despite all, even this life is better than the one they had back home in Lagos. Everything changes for Sisi, when a Belgian man begins to court her. He shows her how different her life could be and, not divining the tragic consequences, he encourages her to draw a line under her work as a prostitute. Then Sisi is gone and the three remaining women move closer together sharing their life stories…
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During a weekend in 1974, the ageing Swiss author in Montauk by Max Frisch stays at the seaside of Long Island with his young lover. The quiet atmosphere makes him look back on his life and, quite naturally, many of his memories surround the people who meant much to him at one point or another like his wealthy youth friend W. He also remembers not particularly flattering scenes from his two marriages, from his interim relationship with his Austrian writer colleague Ingeborg Bachmann and from short-time affairs that at the age of almost sixty-three make him admit to himself at last that his attitude toward the women in his life was rather egotistic, chauvinistic even. His current affair will inevitably end with his return to Europe, but this is perfectly fine with him...
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It’s never easy to be a mother, but to bring up The Devourers by Annie Vivanti is a particular challenge. Recently widowed Valeria prays that her baby Nancy will show exceptional talent, preferably for music like her late mother. In fact, poetry turns out to be the girl’s domain to excel in and just as Edwardian society expects of Valeria, she ceases to be a person of her own right and gets all wrapped up in her role as the child prodigy’s mother. Growing up, the girl becomes a celebrated teenage poetess who is even invited to read at the Italian royal court and Valeria revels in her success. But Nancy’s fate is sealed, when she meets the dandy Aldo and falls in love with him. Now it’s her turn to push her own self into the background to bring up a gifted daughter…
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