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S'està carregant… Landscape with Dog: and Other Stories (edició 2009)de Ersi Sotiropoulos
Informació de l'obraLandscape with Dog and Other Stories de Ersi Sotiropoulos
Cap No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. 1   akeela | May 9, 2010 | 
 Reading Ersi Sotiropoulos’s collection of short stories, Landscape With Dog, brings to mind the Surrealist masterpiece by Giorgio de Chirico, “Melancholy and Mystery of a Street.” Much like Chirico’s painting, most of Sotiropoulos’s stories are textual cul-de-sacs, seemingly expansive but surprisingly claustrophobic, tinged with dark corners, a series of streets that lead nowhere, leaving readers to puzzle over wonderfully unrealized moments and conclusions. There are no easily recognizable beginnings, middles, or ends in these stories. Ersi Sotiropoulos, a virtuoso of postmodern Greek fiction, masters the short story in her collection, Landscape with Dog and Other Stories. Sotiropoulos, whose 2000 novel Zigzag through the Bitter-Orange Trees won both the national Greek book award and the book critics award, continues to use her deft sense of psychological insight and poetic language to give us portraits of the intimate and the abstract. From the very first story, there is a familiarity that draws the reader in, that reminds of something comforting. But Sotiropoulos layers on top of that security a sense of foreboding. There is an ambiguity to her scenes and to her characters so that we are left to question our own instincts. She infuses the narrative of each story with a controlled terror that makes characters relationship seem like they could snap at any moment. Yet, she never gives us that release or makes it that easy for the reader, that definitive. The beginnings, middles and ends are blurry and we are left to decide where the story began and ended. This is not to say that the stories in this collection are not definitive, they are. They present the moments in life that fall into the grey area, that at one point may look white and then years later, pitch black. This requires a very deliberate prose, a deep understanding of narrative tension and skilled working knowledge of human behavior. Even more impressive is that Karen Emmerich’s translation let’s all of Sortiropoulos’ style and depth showcase itself in a sparse fluidity. Pertany a aquestes col·leccions editorials
"Let's just say that Giacometti was setting out to draw a face. If he started with the chin, he would worry that he might never reach the nose. The longer he sketched the face, the harder he tried to offer a faithful representation of it, the more it resembled a skull. The only thing left was the gaze. So what he ended up drawing was a skull with a gaze." Landscape with Dog and Other Stories is made up of countless such moments: transformations of the everyday, encounters between the known and the unknowable. Contemporary Athens wavers before us; the outlines of a sketch darken and blur; the face of a friend is at once beloved and strange. In Ersi Sotiropoulos's prose, the slightest event, the slightest change in the quality of the light, can alter everything. Karen Emmerich brings perfectly into English the precise, vibrant movement of Sotiropoulos's language, the mastery that has made her one of Greece's most acclaimed writers. These stories will be praised for their flashes of beauty and their crackles of dark humor, but what makes them so memorable is something else, impossible to pin down, something like the gaze of the skull. At once familiar and troubling, compelling and unapproachable, Sotiropoulos's stories give us a new way of seeing. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)889.334Literature Greek and other Classical languages Medieval and modern Greek Fiction 20th century 1945-1999LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (3.4)
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3
This well–crafted collection of stories is set in Greece, and Italy across the Ionian Sea, and includes snapshots of everyday life. Sotiropoulos skilfully builds intrigue, and one can sense the tension between, and within, characters. Sometimes the tension is so intense, it leads to physical fights. Yet, beneath the tensions between husband and wife, brother and sister, mother and child, there is an intimacy and closeness that binds these people, overriding all other anxieties.
Her writing is eloquent and the narratives become more enjoyable as the book progresses. By the end, I was totally hooked by the superb writing, the insights shared, and the excellent skill on the part of the translator, Karen Emmerich.
A number of the stories involved writers struggling to hone their skill. And there were many great lines, for example: "I'd spent many evenings in the half–light, trying to write a line, trying to fit two mutilated words together on a napkin...", and, "One by one the words, then the sentences of the half-finished story streamed through her mind with incomparable grace, like white snowflakes swirling before they dissolve."
The prose encompasses fine, descriptive writing: "He ... promised he would never abandon her again. They stayed like that a whole hour, hugging under the overhang at the station, while the snow came down around them. Everything was white, and the two of them a solitary black shape in a sea of ice."
Soitropoulos understands the communication dynamic between couples, as well as the limits they impose on one another. Her characters know instinctively how far they can push their partners, and when the thread will break: "By now he's learned to keep quiet ‒it makes no difference what he says, she's made up her mind, and whirls into the kitchen like a tornado."
Sotiropoulos' writing is special; it is vivid, and beautiful, and sensual, and she often takes the reader by surprise. I'm delighted to know that more of her works are becoming available in English!
This review was first published in Issue 3 of Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue3/reviews_4.php (