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A review by arirang
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld
2.0
Book 23/24 of my reading of all the past Independent Foreign Fiction Prize / Man Booker International and the 2012 winner, Blooms of Darkness, translated by Jeffrey M. Green from Aharon Appelfeld's Hebrew original.
I have been impressed at the quality of many I have read but this one left me a bit bemused, particularly as it beat off a very strong longlist that included Dag Solstad, Murakami, Knausgaard, Yan Lianke, Péter Nádas, Sjón and Diego Marani.
Set in an unnamed Ukranian town under German occupation in the second world war, it begins evocatively in the Jewish ghetto:
Tomorrow Hugo will be eleven, and Anna and Otto will come for his birthday. Most of Hugo’s friends have already been sent to distant villages, and the few remaining will be sent soon. The tension in the ghetto is great, but no one cries. The children secretly guess what is in store for them. The parents control their feelings so as not to sow fear, but the doors and windows know no restraint. They slam by themselves or are shoved with nervous movements. Winds whip through every alley.
From the Independent review of the book (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/blooms-of-darkness-by-aharon-appelfeld-trans-jeffrey-m-green-2369974.html) I learned:
In the novel, when 11 year old Hugo is unable to find a peasant to take him to shelter and relatively safety in the mountains, his mother instead entrusts him to the care of Mariana, who works in a brothel for the German troops. Hugo hides in her closet as the war, and the constant search for hidden Jews, unfolds around them.
I struggled though with two aspects of the resulting story. Firstly, as Hugo is hidden in a closet he sees or hears little of what is going on, and the narrative resorts not only to relayed reports but, rather less convincingly, to dreams.
Secondly, Mariana's relationship to Hugo, and I can't think of a better way to put this, verges on grooming. While the text is decidedly non explicit, she does take the 11 year old boy into her bed and their relationship does seem to get increasingly physical (as shown at one point, when, after they later free the brothel and she tries to pass Hugo off as her son, a family they seek shelter with thrown them out in disgust on the grounds that a mother and son don't sleep together like that).
Mariana also has a rather annoying habit of referring to herself in the third person, which starts to grate.
In the latter part of the novel, the Russians arrive and now Hugo has to try to help Mariana, who knows that she will likely be shot for sleeping with the enemy, although this part of the story doesn't really get anywhere (literally - after fleeing for some time they find themselves still close to the town).
The novel only really comes to life in the closing pages, when Hugo returns to the town and the area where he and his parents lived. He is surprised after he, his compatriots, and Mariana and her colleagues have gone through so much that actually very little has changed in the town itself. Except for one thing - the Jewish families are absent, their houses and business taken over by others, and those that returned clearly unwelcome. But a strong opening and close to the novel doesn't really redeem the 90% in between.
A disappointing choice of winner.
I have been impressed at the quality of many I have read but this one left me a bit bemused, particularly as it beat off a very strong longlist that included Dag Solstad, Murakami, Knausgaard, Yan Lianke, Péter Nádas, Sjón and Diego Marani.
Set in an unnamed Ukranian town under German occupation in the second world war, it begins evocatively in the Jewish ghetto:
Tomorrow Hugo will be eleven, and Anna and Otto will come for his birthday. Most of Hugo’s friends have already been sent to distant villages, and the few remaining will be sent soon. The tension in the ghetto is great, but no one cries. The children secretly guess what is in store for them. The parents control their feelings so as not to sow fear, but the doors and windows know no restraint. They slam by themselves or are shoved with nervous movements. Winds whip through every alley.
From the Independent review of the book (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/blooms-of-darkness-by-aharon-appelfeld-trans-jeffrey-m-green-2369974.html) I learned:
Aharon Appelfeld survived the Holocaust as a child, living like a wild boy in the forests of Ukraine. His remarkable memoir, The Story of a Life, tells how he briefly found shelter with a woman called Maria, the village prostitute. Maria drank, and was often despairing, but when she was happy she filled the hut with light. At these times she seemed like the smiling girl in a picture above her bed: perhaps, Appelfeld wrote, that was how she wanted to be remembered.which perhaps excuses the rather odd story that follows, but ultimately doesn't sufficiently redeem it.
In the novel, when 11 year old Hugo is unable to find a peasant to take him to shelter and relatively safety in the mountains, his mother instead entrusts him to the care of Mariana, who works in a brothel for the German troops. Hugo hides in her closet as the war, and the constant search for hidden Jews, unfolds around them.
I struggled though with two aspects of the resulting story. Firstly, as Hugo is hidden in a closet he sees or hears little of what is going on, and the narrative resorts not only to relayed reports but, rather less convincingly, to dreams.
Secondly, Mariana's relationship to Hugo, and I can't think of a better way to put this, verges on grooming. While the text is decidedly non explicit, she does take the 11 year old boy into her bed and their relationship does seem to get increasingly physical (as shown at one point, when, after they later free the brothel and she tries to pass Hugo off as her son, a family they seek shelter with thrown them out in disgust on the grounds that a mother and son don't sleep together like that).
Mariana also has a rather annoying habit of referring to herself in the third person, which starts to grate.
In the latter part of the novel, the Russians arrive and now Hugo has to try to help Mariana, who knows that she will likely be shot for sleeping with the enemy, although this part of the story doesn't really get anywhere (literally - after fleeing for some time they find themselves still close to the town).
The novel only really comes to life in the closing pages, when Hugo returns to the town and the area where he and his parents lived. He is surprised after he, his compatriots, and Mariana and her colleagues have gone through so much that actually very little has changed in the town itself. Except for one thing - the Jewish families are absent, their houses and business taken over by others, and those that returned clearly unwelcome. But a strong opening and close to the novel doesn't really redeem the 90% in between.
A disappointing choice of winner.