Astrid and Veronika

by Linda Olsson

This novel is about two women, Astrid, who is in her 80’s, living all of her life in a village in Sweden and Veronika, a young woman, who after a personal tragedy in New Zeeland, is looking for peace in the same Swedish village. The older woman is living a very secluded life, not going out of the house much and doesn’t communicate with anyone; the people from the village called her a “witch”.

When Veronika moves into the house next door, she notices that there are no signs of life in the house. The next day she goes for a walk and sees an old woman standing by the window and watching her. Days pass by but she never meets her neighbor. One day Veronika gets ill and doesn’t go out for a few days. Meanwhile Astrid, who has been watching the young woman since the first day, starts to get worried that something bad has happened with her. It takes all her courage to walk over to Veronika’s house and knock on the door. From that day forward a friendship starts between the two women.

This was the author’s first book. Even though the plot of this story seemed promising, it was written awkwardly. There are no dialogues between the women, only monologues and it didn’t convince me about the existence of their friendship. Olsson’s aim was to write a touching story about a beautiful and extraordinary healing friendship, but instead I felt the book that was more annoying than moving. However I can see the beauty of her story in this book, I just wish it was better written. I can’t really recommend this novel, but I am still looking forward to read another book by Olsson. I am pretty sure it will be better than “Astrid and Veronika”.

Naomi

By Junichiro Tanizaki

The story is set in Japan in the 1920’s. Joji is a 28 years old man, who falls in love with a waitress named Naomi, who is only 14 years old. When they start living together, Joji is planning to make her the ideal woman for him. He is paying for her education, buying her new clothes and taking her to the movies and concerts. Joji is very fond of European culture and with time Naomi also finds western culture more appealing than Japanese. Naomi’s personality starts to develop in an unexpected way, she becomes like a beautiful devil to Joji. She starts attending dancing classes and spends more and more time with her friends. Joji is very surprised when he discovers that she has only men friends from the dancing class. He gets suspicious and after a while he finds out that Naomi is cheating on him. They break up, but after few days Joji is ready to take her back, because he cannot live without her. She doesn’t want to even hear about getting back together with him, so she teases and humiliates him in every possible way, but he doesn’t stop begging her to come back to him. Even when he discovers that she has become a prostitute, he doesn’t stop loving her. Finally she is ready to live with him again, but with new rules. She wants them to have a relationship where both of them are free to see other people. In the beginning Joji hesitates to accept this offer as this is not how he imagined their life together, but after some time he agrees.

This novel made Tanizaki one of the most important writers in Japan. The book is saturated with obsession, eroticism and the contrast of Japanese and western cultures. It is captivating story, when you are reading it, everything around you disappears and suddenly you think you are living in post World War I Tokyo.  I can’t stop wondering about authors like Tanizaki who can make a book, written in 1924, seem like it was written today. The language he uses is so modern that it was easy to read and to follow the weird love story between Joji and Naomi. This is a great book, especially if you are interested in Asian culture.

The house of paper

By Carlos Maria Dominguez

It is a story about books. It begins with the death of a woman, who has had a car accident and in her hands is a book that she had just purchased – Emily Dickinson’s poems. Her name was Bluma Lennon; she was a professor of Latin American literature at Cambridge University. Several months after her death, a package that was addressed to her, arrives from Argentina. In the package is a book, covered with cement and has a weird inscription on the first page. So Bluma’s ex-lover goes to Buenos Aires to find the sender. When he arrives in Buenos Aires he discovers that Carlos Brauer, who was the sender, has disappeared without a trace.

The book is a mystery about Carlos Brauer, who has led a weird life. He was a real book addict; he had a precious library with lots of valuable books. Brauer spent all of his money buying books and had nothing left to make a proper storage place for all of them. He even sold his car to make more room in his garage to store more books, but soon even that was not enough. The last thing that his friend, who was also a bibliophile, heard was that Carlos had moved to Uruguay with all his books. There he built a house using them like a bricks.

I was completely in love with this book. It tells a story about people who are obsessed and dedicated to books. It was about reading and building valuable book libraries. One of my favorite quotes from this novel is: "It is often much harder to get rid of books than to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again."  This is so true at least for me, I can’t get rid of my books. I can’t even give them away, I need to own them. Sometimes I read a good book that I have borrowed from somebody and I feel like I need to have it forever and I buy it, even though I know I won’t ever read it again. It’s like, Dominguez says, building a life and saving moments of time that you don’t want to forget, books can help you to remember. This is a must read for every true book lover.