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River
After many years I had excised myself from the life I had led in town, just as one might cut a figure out of a landscape or group photo. Abashed by the harm I had wreaked on the picture left behind, and unsure where the cut-out might end up next, I lived a provisional existence. I did so in a place where I knew none of my neighbours, where the street names, views, smells and faces were all unfamiliar to me, in a cheaply appointed flat where I would be able to lay my life aside.' In River, a woman moves to a London suburb for reasons that are unclear. She takes long, solitary walks by the River Lea, observing and describing her surroundings and the unusual characters she encounters. Over the course of these wanderings she amasses a collection of found objects and photographs and is drawn into reminiscences of the different rivers which haunted the various stages of her life, from the Rhine, where she grew up, to the Saint Lawrence, the Hooghly, and the banks of the Oder. Written in language that is as precise as it is limpid, River is a remarkable novel, full of poignant images and poetic observations, an ode to nature, edgelands, and the transience of all things human.
368 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
67 people are currently reading
1962 people want to read
About the author
Esther Kinsky
65 books59 followersEsther Kinsky, geboren 1956, hat Slawistik und Anglistik in Bonn und Toronto studiert. Sie arbeitet als Übersetzerin aus dem Polnischen, Englischen und Russischen. Ihr übersetzerisches Oeuvre umfasst u. a. Werke von Ida Fink, Hanna Krall, Ryszard Krysnicki, Aleksander Wat, Joseph O'Connor und Jane Smiley.
Kinksy lebt in Berlin. 2009 wurde sie mit dem Paul-Celan-Preis ausgezeichnet und 2011 erhielt sie den Karl-Dedecius-Preis.
Kinksy lebt in Berlin. 2009 wurde sie mit dem Paul-Celan-Preis ausgezeichnet und 2011 erhielt sie den Karl-Dedecius-Preis.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
January 30, 2018
The river meant dislocation, confusion and unpredictability in a world that craved order.
Esther Kinsky's Am Fluß has been translated into English as River by Iain Galbraith, and published by perhaps the UK's finest publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions (Pond, Zone, Counternarratives ETC).
Her narrator has left her native Germany and is living in London and, towards the end of her time in the UK has, for reasons never really explained, moved to the outskirts of the town, to Hackney.
After many years I had excised myself from the life I had led in town, just as one might cut a figure out of a landscape or group photo. Abashed by the harm I had wreaked on the picture left behind, and unsure where the cut-out might end up next, I lived a provisional existence. I did so in a place where I knew none of my neighbours, where the street names, views, smells and faces were all unfamiliar to me, in a cheaply appointed flat where I would be able to lay my life aside.
In the opening chapter, in Springfield Park, she encounters a memorable and eccentric character, one of a number who will reoccur in her narrative:
The King wore a magnificent headdress of stiff, brocaded cloths, held together by a clasp adorned by feathers. The gold thread of the brocade and the clasp itself still gleamed in the declining light. He was attired in a short robe , with gold embroiled edgings shimmering around his neck and wrists. The robe, which hung to his thighs, was bluey-green and fashioned from a taut, heavy fabric with a woven feather pattern. His long black legs protruded beneath the cloth. They were naked.
[...]
The King stretched out his hands and the ravens gathered about him.
The area lies on the banks of the River Lea, and the main narrative thread tells of the walks she takes along the river over a number of months, ultimately tracing its path to its mouth where it meet the Thames. This is a run-down and unglamorous area of London:
Between the empty lands to the east of the river and the estates and factories along the other bank, I rediscovered bits and pieces of my childhood, found snippets cut from other landscapes and group photographs, unexpectedly come here to roost. I stumbled on them between willows under a tall sky, in reflections of impoverished housing estates on the town side of the river, amongst a scatter of cows on a meadow, in the contours of old brick buildings – factories, offices, former warehouses – against an exceptionally red-orange sunset, along the raised railway embankment where forlorn-looking, quaintly chattering trains receded into the distance, or when watching roaming gangs of children lighting fires and burnings odds and ends, fighting each other close to the flames, and unresponsive when a mother, standing between lines of flapping washing, held one hand up to shelter her eyes as she called them in.
And, as the passage suggests, as she travels along the river she recalls other rivers from her life - and that of people she meets, including the Oder, Thames, St Lawrence, Yarkon, Hooghly, Tisza, Neretva, Wear, Gironde, Po, Danube and, firstly, the Rhine on whose banks she was born.
What were my memories of rivers, now I lived on an island whose thoughts were turned seawards, where rivers looked shallow and pretty, noticable only when they frayed into flats, or cut deep channels as they flowed out to sea.
[....]
The Rhine was the first border I ever knew, and it was constantly present. It taught us what was here and what was there. ‘Our’ side, with its villagey ways in relentless decline, its factories, shacks and freight trains, stood opposite the other side where the sun set. That side, remote and blurry, a hazy land of melting shapes and washed colours, provided a background to many of our family photographs.
Rivers in the narrator's account, can be both benign and scenic but also threatening and hostile:
In primary school we had to learn sayings about Father Rhine, none of which had anything to do with the river I had walked along in the years before starting school. These sayings left an unpleasant aftertaste, which became much bitterer one day when the bow wave of a huge barge dragged a child in my class of the end of a breakwater. The Rhine had revealed Himself to be a nasty character. For days it seemed the river had taken our tongue and weighed so heavily in our clothes we could barely move.
and they denote both boundaries but also a strong pull to their destiny, the sea:
Could its flow, the incessant press of its water towards an estuary, be more powerful than its significance as a line fixed to determine belonging?
The story she tells of East London is a disconcerting one. She focuses on the local eccentrics, on the community of observant Jews (the area contains the largest concentration of Haredi Jews in Europe), itinerant Eastern Europeans, others packed into squalid and dangerous housing, travellers in their caravans. The epigraph of the novel is taken from a Charles Olson poem and reads: “Your eye, the wanderer, sees more, and at another point she observesit was a spectacle of foreignness in which, thanks to my own foreignness, I felt at home.
Aat times the narration stretches to the deliberate absurd. She takes a job in a radio-station, an exaggeratedly Kafkaesque version of the World Service, where the staff are given red caps, whistles in case they get lost in the catacombs of the vast building, are seemingly free to broadcast whatever they like as long as it is in their own language, and frequently remain in the office for days, weeks even months as to leave means handing in one's red cap and going through the job application procedure from scratch the next day. Her London is plagued by its 'famous' winds, with which the locals are adept at coping, but which often pick up strangers and deposit them in another part of the city altogether, and by frequent bombs leaving behind large craters which are left, unrepaired, for people to scavenge through the debris.
This aside there is a definite Sebaldian feel to the narration, albeit without his detours into learned discourses, with photography playing a key role: she is particularly fond of her polaroid camera as well as hunting (as Sebald the author did in reality, albeit not in his novels) through junk stores for old photos. Although there are some black and white photographs included, most of those featured in the story are described verbally, and typically the narrator has no knowledge of what the recovered photos show: they gave no hint of a narrative, revealed no intensity of feeling, no suspense of any kind, no loose thread of some drama to pick up. I found it impossible to attribute anything to these faces and figures, found no way into the scenes portrayed, and the emptiness that presented itself in this bundle of tiny segments of life O had purchased on some off-chance made me feel intrusive.
Overall a strange and unsettling novel, if (much as it pains me to say it) a little too long, and with
beautiful prose, thanks in no part to the three translators whose influence was brought to bear - the translator, the author and her husband. Although brought into English by Iain Galbraith, translator of, inter alia, W. G. Sebald’s Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001, the book is dedicated to her husband, Martin Chalmers, who died in 2014 (https://www.theguardian.com/global/20...), another prolific translator, notably (to me) of Thomas Bernhard's Prose, and the chapter on the St Lawrence River is an expanded version of his original translation (see below for a link to the original). Kinsky herself started as a translator into German, from Polish [notably Olga Tokarczuk's "Dom dzienny, dom nocny", later translated into English as [book:House of Day, House of Night|537611] and Magdalena Tulli] and English: notably Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clares Journey Out Of Essex by Iain Sinclair as well as the John Clare original.
To conclude, Kinsky's Poem Disturbed Land, from the New English Review, as also translated by Galbraith:
http://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction... (Martin Chalmers original translation)
http://partisanhotel.co.uk/Esther-Kinsky
https://granta.com/stratford-marsh
http://blog.fitzcarraldoeditions.com/...
Esther Kinsky's Am Fluß has been translated into English as River by Iain Galbraith, and published by perhaps the UK's finest publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions (Pond, Zone, Counternarratives ETC).
Her narrator has left her native Germany and is living in London and, towards the end of her time in the UK has, for reasons never really explained, moved to the outskirts of the town, to Hackney.
After many years I had excised myself from the life I had led in town, just as one might cut a figure out of a landscape or group photo. Abashed by the harm I had wreaked on the picture left behind, and unsure where the cut-out might end up next, I lived a provisional existence. I did so in a place where I knew none of my neighbours, where the street names, views, smells and faces were all unfamiliar to me, in a cheaply appointed flat where I would be able to lay my life aside.
In the opening chapter, in Springfield Park, she encounters a memorable and eccentric character, one of a number who will reoccur in her narrative:
The King wore a magnificent headdress of stiff, brocaded cloths, held together by a clasp adorned by feathers. The gold thread of the brocade and the clasp itself still gleamed in the declining light. He was attired in a short robe , with gold embroiled edgings shimmering around his neck and wrists. The robe, which hung to his thighs, was bluey-green and fashioned from a taut, heavy fabric with a woven feather pattern. His long black legs protruded beneath the cloth. They were naked.
[...]
The King stretched out his hands and the ravens gathered about him.
The area lies on the banks of the River Lea, and the main narrative thread tells of the walks she takes along the river over a number of months, ultimately tracing its path to its mouth where it meet the Thames. This is a run-down and unglamorous area of London:
Between the empty lands to the east of the river and the estates and factories along the other bank, I rediscovered bits and pieces of my childhood, found snippets cut from other landscapes and group photographs, unexpectedly come here to roost. I stumbled on them between willows under a tall sky, in reflections of impoverished housing estates on the town side of the river, amongst a scatter of cows on a meadow, in the contours of old brick buildings – factories, offices, former warehouses – against an exceptionally red-orange sunset, along the raised railway embankment where forlorn-looking, quaintly chattering trains receded into the distance, or when watching roaming gangs of children lighting fires and burnings odds and ends, fighting each other close to the flames, and unresponsive when a mother, standing between lines of flapping washing, held one hand up to shelter her eyes as she called them in.
And, as the passage suggests, as she travels along the river she recalls other rivers from her life - and that of people she meets, including the Oder, Thames, St Lawrence, Yarkon, Hooghly, Tisza, Neretva, Wear, Gironde, Po, Danube and, firstly, the Rhine on whose banks she was born.
What were my memories of rivers, now I lived on an island whose thoughts were turned seawards, where rivers looked shallow and pretty, noticable only when they frayed into flats, or cut deep channels as they flowed out to sea.
[....]
The Rhine was the first border I ever knew, and it was constantly present. It taught us what was here and what was there. ‘Our’ side, with its villagey ways in relentless decline, its factories, shacks and freight trains, stood opposite the other side where the sun set. That side, remote and blurry, a hazy land of melting shapes and washed colours, provided a background to many of our family photographs.
Rivers in the narrator's account, can be both benign and scenic but also threatening and hostile:
In primary school we had to learn sayings about Father Rhine, none of which had anything to do with the river I had walked along in the years before starting school. These sayings left an unpleasant aftertaste, which became much bitterer one day when the bow wave of a huge barge dragged a child in my class of the end of a breakwater. The Rhine had revealed Himself to be a nasty character. For days it seemed the river had taken our tongue and weighed so heavily in our clothes we could barely move.
and they denote both boundaries but also a strong pull to their destiny, the sea:
Could its flow, the incessant press of its water towards an estuary, be more powerful than its significance as a line fixed to determine belonging?
The story she tells of East London is a disconcerting one. She focuses on the local eccentrics, on the community of observant Jews (the area contains the largest concentration of Haredi Jews in Europe), itinerant Eastern Europeans, others packed into squalid and dangerous housing, travellers in their caravans. The epigraph of the novel is taken from a Charles Olson poem and reads: “Your eye, the wanderer, sees more, and at another point she observesit was a spectacle of foreignness in which, thanks to my own foreignness, I felt at home.
Aat times the narration stretches to the deliberate absurd. She takes a job in a radio-station, an exaggeratedly Kafkaesque version of the World Service, where the staff are given red caps, whistles in case they get lost in the catacombs of the vast building, are seemingly free to broadcast whatever they like as long as it is in their own language, and frequently remain in the office for days, weeks even months as to leave means handing in one's red cap and going through the job application procedure from scratch the next day. Her London is plagued by its 'famous' winds, with which the locals are adept at coping, but which often pick up strangers and deposit them in another part of the city altogether, and by frequent bombs leaving behind large craters which are left, unrepaired, for people to scavenge through the debris.
This aside there is a definite Sebaldian feel to the narration, albeit without his detours into learned discourses, with photography playing a key role: she is particularly fond of her polaroid camera as well as hunting (as Sebald the author did in reality, albeit not in his novels) through junk stores for old photos. Although there are some black and white photographs included, most of those featured in the story are described verbally, and typically the narrator has no knowledge of what the recovered photos show: they gave no hint of a narrative, revealed no intensity of feeling, no suspense of any kind, no loose thread of some drama to pick up. I found it impossible to attribute anything to these faces and figures, found no way into the scenes portrayed, and the emptiness that presented itself in this bundle of tiny segments of life O had purchased on some off-chance made me feel intrusive.
Overall a strange and unsettling novel, if (much as it pains me to say it) a little too long, and with
beautiful prose, thanks in no part to the three translators whose influence was brought to bear - the translator, the author and her husband. Although brought into English by Iain Galbraith, translator of, inter alia, W. G. Sebald’s Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001, the book is dedicated to her husband, Martin Chalmers, who died in 2014 (https://www.theguardian.com/global/20...), another prolific translator, notably (to me) of Thomas Bernhard's Prose, and the chapter on the St Lawrence River is an expanded version of his original translation (see below for a link to the original). Kinsky herself started as a translator into German, from Polish [notably Olga Tokarczuk's "Dom dzienny, dom nocny", later translated into English as [book:House of Day, House of Night|537611] and Magdalena Tulli] and English: notably Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clares Journey Out Of Essex by Iain Sinclair as well as the John Clare original.
To conclude, Kinsky's Poem Disturbed Land, from the New English Review, as also translated by Galbraith:
Disturbed lands so pointed and so sorrowfulExtracts from the novel:
a name marked by human violation
thrust into frail wildness
waste ground following devastation piles
of rubble dumped in a derelict
crumbling recess at the former entrance
surrounded by sorrel
nearby Good-King-Henry parsnip and pigweed
poor people’s food for poor times and conducive to wild
dreams thriving on heaps of debris this one too
demanding its own its heap for burying
this and that and out on top
the honest birthwort.
http://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction... (Martin Chalmers original translation)
http://partisanhotel.co.uk/Esther-Kinsky
https://granta.com/stratford-marsh
http://blog.fitzcarraldoeditions.com/...
January 28, 2019
This is an original book that is difficult to classify. Much of it reads like a memoir but there are occasional forays into more surreal territory that hint at unreliability.
The core of the book is the story of a period spent living at Stamford Hill in East London, and every fourth chapter describes her walks following the river Lea from there to its mouth on the Thames. These read a little like a hybrid of W.G. Sebald (especially The Rings of Saturn) and Iain Sinclair (Downriver), with a dash of Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts's Edgelands. There are also atmospheric grainy Polaroid photos whose relationship to the text is not always clear.
Other chapters recall memories of other rivers around the world (Germany, Canada, Israel, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, India) and the characters she meets there and in London.
The core of the book is the story of a period spent living at Stamford Hill in East London, and every fourth chapter describes her walks following the river Lea from there to its mouth on the Thames. These read a little like a hybrid of W.G. Sebald (especially The Rings of Saturn) and Iain Sinclair (Downriver), with a dash of Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts's Edgelands. There are also atmospheric grainy Polaroid photos whose relationship to the text is not always clear.
Other chapters recall memories of other rivers around the world (Germany, Canada, Israel, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, India) and the characters she meets there and in London.
Read
April 2, 2020Discussed this book here: https://youtu.be/MhE5BlhlXDw
December 20, 2018
Under a pale sun and in the whitish, shadowless light peculiar to this place and these seasons, I took to following tracks which, time and again, led me back through the alder grove. This partly mutilated wetland wood with its childhood flowers and wild birds secretly appealing to my memory was my gateway to the lower reaches, to the path downstream that gradually taught me, during the final months of my stay, to find my own names for a city I had already spent many years labouring to decipher—names only walking and looking could force me to extract and reassemble from a web of trickling memories, a debris of stored images and sounds, a tissue of tangled words.
More of a meditation than a novel, River is a very visual and often almost tactile book with little or no plot but plenty of atmosphere.
First, I have to make a comment about the translation. It is credited to Iain Galbraith, but Kinsky herself works as a translator (into German) as did her husband. All three, I understand, contributed to this translation in one way or another. Indeed, an afterword credits the original translation of one chapter to Kinsky’s husband to whom the book is dedicated (he died in 2014). The language is one of the outstanding things about this book: I lost count of the times I paused my reading to admire the choice of words and the beauty of the sentences (some of them are fairly long and seem a bit unsure about ending - that might put some people off, but I liked it).
I say “one of the outstanding things” because there are many others for someone with my particular taste in books. Early on in the book (I was making brief notes, so this became clear quickly), it becomes apparent that we are following a set of four narratives repeating in a cycle. Each cycle round the four is introduced by a black and white photograph. And photography plays an important role in the narrative itself.
Our unnamed narrator has moved, for reasons never fully explained, to the edge of London to remove herself from her old life (just as one might cut a figure out of a landscape or group photo) and one narrative strand follows her exploration of the River Lea. This river begins northwest of London and heads round the edge of the city until it eventually feeds into the Thames (I used to drive over it every day on my way to work when I lived in Welwyn Garden City for several years). To begin with, we read a lot about nature, but as we gradually draw nearer to the end of the river, move more into the city, there are more encounters with people.
A second narrative recounts memories of other rivers that have featured in the narrator’s life. She is well-travelled and remembers trips with her father, motherhood in Canada, grieving for her father in Tel Aviv and several other trips near to rivers.
In a third strand, our narrator explores the city of London. But it is not the city of London that its real life residents would recognise. At least, not quite. There are elements that are believable, but they are mixed with the fantastic - a radio station that has a Murmuration Room and a Purring Room, winds that literally lift visitors off their feet and deposit them somewhere else in the city, for examples. Here, our narrator observes aspects of London that draw her attention as an outsider.
The final narrative strand introduces us to a host of characters ”drifting in the river of the city”, also immigrants (a greengrocer, the Croat, a circus performer…).
Exploring, remembering, observing, interacting.
In an effect (but not structure) that is similar to the book Flights that I read (and loved) earlier this year, the narrative threads swirl around each other and work together to create an atmosphere and an impression rather than tell a specific story. Some of the narratives do make some tentative connections as the book progresses: characters recur, locations recur, chapters refer to events of previous chapters. But to say there is a plot is a bit of an exaggeration. Borders, storms, fires and swans make repeated appearances.
Some of my GR friends have commented that they found this book overlong. I have to say that I enjoyed the writing so much that I would happily have read a lot more pages of it. I am not worried that nothing is happening. As a nature photographer, I was captivated by the nature writing (landscapes and weather in particular) and the prominence of photography in the book. And, as I’ve already mentioned, I found myself lost in the language many times. The way the narratives combined to form a meditation
I understand that this will not be a book that everyone likes, but it pressed a lot of the right buttons for me. It has been cast as an outsider’s view of London, but I just enjoyed the writing more than anything else.
More of a meditation than a novel, River is a very visual and often almost tactile book with little or no plot but plenty of atmosphere.
First, I have to make a comment about the translation. It is credited to Iain Galbraith, but Kinsky herself works as a translator (into German) as did her husband. All three, I understand, contributed to this translation in one way or another. Indeed, an afterword credits the original translation of one chapter to Kinsky’s husband to whom the book is dedicated (he died in 2014). The language is one of the outstanding things about this book: I lost count of the times I paused my reading to admire the choice of words and the beauty of the sentences (some of them are fairly long and seem a bit unsure about ending - that might put some people off, but I liked it).
I say “one of the outstanding things” because there are many others for someone with my particular taste in books. Early on in the book (I was making brief notes, so this became clear quickly), it becomes apparent that we are following a set of four narratives repeating in a cycle. Each cycle round the four is introduced by a black and white photograph. And photography plays an important role in the narrative itself.
Our unnamed narrator has moved, for reasons never fully explained, to the edge of London to remove herself from her old life (just as one might cut a figure out of a landscape or group photo) and one narrative strand follows her exploration of the River Lea. This river begins northwest of London and heads round the edge of the city until it eventually feeds into the Thames (I used to drive over it every day on my way to work when I lived in Welwyn Garden City for several years). To begin with, we read a lot about nature, but as we gradually draw nearer to the end of the river, move more into the city, there are more encounters with people.
A second narrative recounts memories of other rivers that have featured in the narrator’s life. She is well-travelled and remembers trips with her father, motherhood in Canada, grieving for her father in Tel Aviv and several other trips near to rivers.
In a third strand, our narrator explores the city of London. But it is not the city of London that its real life residents would recognise. At least, not quite. There are elements that are believable, but they are mixed with the fantastic - a radio station that has a Murmuration Room and a Purring Room, winds that literally lift visitors off their feet and deposit them somewhere else in the city, for examples. Here, our narrator observes aspects of London that draw her attention as an outsider.
The final narrative strand introduces us to a host of characters ”drifting in the river of the city”, also immigrants (a greengrocer, the Croat, a circus performer…).
Exploring, remembering, observing, interacting.
In an effect (but not structure) that is similar to the book Flights that I read (and loved) earlier this year, the narrative threads swirl around each other and work together to create an atmosphere and an impression rather than tell a specific story. Some of the narratives do make some tentative connections as the book progresses: characters recur, locations recur, chapters refer to events of previous chapters. But to say there is a plot is a bit of an exaggeration. Borders, storms, fires and swans make repeated appearances.
Some of my GR friends have commented that they found this book overlong. I have to say that I enjoyed the writing so much that I would happily have read a lot more pages of it. I am not worried that nothing is happening. As a nature photographer, I was captivated by the nature writing (landscapes and weather in particular) and the prominence of photography in the book. And, as I’ve already mentioned, I found myself lost in the language many times. The way the narratives combined to form a meditation
I understand that this will not be a book that everyone likes, but it pressed a lot of the right buttons for me. It has been cast as an outsider’s view of London, but I just enjoyed the writing more than anything else.
December 20, 2018
This book is published by one of the leading UK small presses, Fitzcarraldo Editions an independent publisher (their words) specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays ….. it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language . Their novels are (my words) distinctively and beautifully styled, with plain, deep blue covers and a "French-flap" style, and are often complex and dense (perhaps a little too complex and dense for my tastes).
This book is an English translation of Esther Kinsky's “Am Fluß”
The first party, German-Jewish, London-dwelling narrator of the book has moved out to an unfamiliar (to her) area on the North-Eastern outskirts of the City, where she lives alone: gradually exploring the banks of the River Lea as it heads towards its mouth; remembering past rivers that that have featured in her life (the Thames, the Rhine and Oder of her childhood, a largely dried up river in Tel Aviv, and rivers from her travels including in Canada and the Balkans); reminisces on aspects of London which struck her as an outsider; observes and interacts with the multi-ethnic and multi-national community of shopkeepers and eccentrics near her flat; all the while taking polaroid pictures of what she sees as well as seeking out other pictures in junk stores.
The book was translated into English by Iain Galbraith, himself a poet, editor of poetry compilations, essayist and an award winning translator. His translations include a selection of W.G. Sebald’s poems in a collection Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001.
And the link to Sebald, as well as the title of the collection serves as an introduction to how I initially viewed this book : strongly reminiscent of Sebald with its black and white photography, its East Anglian setting, and travel writing combined with general reflections on life (albeit without the historical or literary references that Sebald bring in); focusing on land, water and in particular the area of confluence between them at the edge of rivers – marshes, wastelands - and the theme of crossings and borders.
Over time though I began to find aspects of the book a little disconcerting – London as described by the narrator is filled with bomb craters from terrorist attacks, plagued by winds so strong that people are physically lifted from one part of the City to the other and by torrential rail storms. The narrator works in a Borgesian/Kafkaesque variation on the BBC World Service.
Gradually I realised that there was a pattern to what at first seemed a disconcerting mix of aspects – the chapters cycle in sets of four which cycle though the four areas above: River Lea exploration and different areas of North East London; other rivers and the narrators experiences of them; observations on London which are almost entirely an outsider’s invented (or at best exaggerated) versions of aspects they observe (IRA attacks, poor weather, the BBC); a fascinating portrayal of a community of outsiders, migrants and eccentrics.
With this realisation my enjoyment of the book increased. Overall this is an enjoyable book – but one (not unlike other Fitzcarraldo books I have read) perhaps a little too long and best dipped into rather than (as I did) read from cover to cover.
This book is an English translation of Esther Kinsky's “Am Fluß”
The first party, German-Jewish, London-dwelling narrator of the book has moved out to an unfamiliar (to her) area on the North-Eastern outskirts of the City, where she lives alone: gradually exploring the banks of the River Lea as it heads towards its mouth; remembering past rivers that that have featured in her life (the Thames, the Rhine and Oder of her childhood, a largely dried up river in Tel Aviv, and rivers from her travels including in Canada and the Balkans); reminisces on aspects of London which struck her as an outsider; observes and interacts with the multi-ethnic and multi-national community of shopkeepers and eccentrics near her flat; all the while taking polaroid pictures of what she sees as well as seeking out other pictures in junk stores.
The book was translated into English by Iain Galbraith, himself a poet, editor of poetry compilations, essayist and an award winning translator. His translations include a selection of W.G. Sebald’s poems in a collection Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001.
And the link to Sebald, as well as the title of the collection serves as an introduction to how I initially viewed this book : strongly reminiscent of Sebald with its black and white photography, its East Anglian setting, and travel writing combined with general reflections on life (albeit without the historical or literary references that Sebald bring in); focusing on land, water and in particular the area of confluence between them at the edge of rivers – marshes, wastelands - and the theme of crossings and borders.
Over time though I began to find aspects of the book a little disconcerting – London as described by the narrator is filled with bomb craters from terrorist attacks, plagued by winds so strong that people are physically lifted from one part of the City to the other and by torrential rail storms. The narrator works in a Borgesian/Kafkaesque variation on the BBC World Service.
Gradually I realised that there was a pattern to what at first seemed a disconcerting mix of aspects – the chapters cycle in sets of four which cycle though the four areas above: River Lea exploration and different areas of North East London; other rivers and the narrators experiences of them; observations on London which are almost entirely an outsider’s invented (or at best exaggerated) versions of aspects they observe (IRA attacks, poor weather, the BBC); a fascinating portrayal of a community of outsiders, migrants and eccentrics.
With this realisation my enjoyment of the book increased. Overall this is an enjoyable book – but one (not unlike other Fitzcarraldo books I have read) perhaps a little too long and best dipped into rather than (as I did) read from cover to cover.
April 25, 2021
Kort geleden las ik "Kreupelhout" van Esther Kinsky, de zo ongrijpbaar- melancholieke roman waarin elk hoofdstuk vol is van rouw maar ook vol van ongehoorde schoonheid. En nu las ik "Langs de rivier", een ouder boek dat echter later is vertaald: ook weer vol onbestemde melancholie en ongrijpbaar gemis, maar nog voller van schoonheid dan "Kreupelhout" al was. Elke zin is een prozagedicht dat je eindeloos laat mijmeren. Elk hoofdstuk is een feest van poëzie voor hen die van "slow reading" houden. "Langs de rivier" heeft nauwelijks een plot, en wordt puur gedragen door stemming en stijl. Maar die stijl is naar mijn smaak geweldig, ook in de vertaling van Josephine Rijnaarts.
"Langs de rivier" neemt ons mee met de wandelingen, mijmeringen en stemmingen van een naamloze ik- figuur. Haar blik op de wereld is duidelijk die van een melancholieke buitenstaander: "Na jaren had ik mezelf uit het leven geknipt dat ik in de stand had geleid, zoals je een figuurtje uit een landschaps- of groepsfoto knipt. Onthutst over de schade die ik aan de foto had aangericht en nog niet wetend waar het uitgeknipte stukje terecht moest komen, leidde ik een provisorisch bestaan". De precieze redenen van haar melancholie blijven echter in nevelen gehuld: onbestemde treurnis over het recente overlijden van haar vader speelt een rol, maar daarnaast ook een niet benoemd, onverklaard en alleen tussen de regels voelbaar besef van de algehele helaasheid der dingen. Het lijkt vaak alsof de ik- figuur ook als buitenstaander naar zichzelf kijkt en zichzelf niet verklaren kan. Maar dat lijkt deels een keuze: de ik- figuur lijkt bewust te kiezen voor het onbestemde, het oningevulde, het ongedefinieerde, het marginale. Ook als ze het heeft over zichzelf. En ook lijkt ze te kiezen voor het veranderlijke en onbestendige: het motto van de roman is niet voor niets "the condition of everything is: river", en kenmerkend voor rivieren is de meanderende stroom. Of, zoals de ik- figuur zegt: "De rivier betekende beweging, verwarring en onvoorspelbaarheid in een wereld die naar orde streefde". Stromingen van rivieren zijn voor de ik- figuur zelfs "strofen van een gedicht, codes voor beweging, voor een elders". En die "beweging", met zijn niet ontcijferbare en juist daardoor zo suggestieve en dichterlijke codes, is bij uitstek kenmerkend voor haar binnenwereld, en voor hoe zij de buitenwereld ziet of wil zien.
De ik- figuur mijmert veel over wat ze in haar wandelingen langs rivieren ziet, tegenkomt, en met allerlei eerdere belevenissen associeert. Wandelen doet ze hoofdzakelijk bij de Lea, een minder bekende Engelse rivier in een nogal rafelige en vaak zelfs vervallen omgeving die weinig conventionele natuurschoonheid biedt. Maar juist dat rafelige, marginale en vaak veronachtzaamde in die omgeving trekt haar onverdeelde aandacht. Zo ook de gemarginaliseerde personen die zij aantreft: een waanzinnige die een vreemde dans uitvoert bij een groep raven, en bij wie de raven zelfs op zijn armen gaan zitten, groeit bijvoorbeeld in haar ogen uit tot een soort mythische en verbannen koning. En zijn dans is van een wonderbaarlijke, vogelachtige lichtheid: "Zo, met al die vogels om zich heen, begon hij lichte op en neer gaande en cirkelende bewegingen te maken met zijn uitgestrekte armen, alsof die een herinnering aan vleugels bewaarden". Maar ze kijkt vooral naar landschappen, die ze vaak ook fotografeert. Wat tot vrij raadselachtig- vage foto's leidt, die soms ook zijn opgenomen in het boek, en die door de beschrijvingen van wat op die foto's te zien valt nog raadselachtiger worden. Zoals ook Sebald dat doet, in prachtboeken als "Austerlitz" of "De ringen van Saturnus".
Bovendien zegt de ik- figuur over fotograferen het volgende: "En telkens voelde ik dezelfde verbazing als ik zag wat zich tussen mijn oog, de lens, de lichtinval en de werking van de chemicaliën had voltrokken. Zoals ik ook telkens dacht [...] dat de foto's meer te maken hadden met de persoon die door de lens had gekeken dan met wat er te zien was. Onder de losgetrokken ontwikkelingsfolie kwam op de zwart- wit foto met zijn talloze schakeringen grijs een herinnering tevoorschijn waarvan ik niet wist dat ik die had. Het waren foto's van iets wat achter de dingen lag waarop de lens zich had gericht en die de ontspanner ongemerkt een seconde opzij moest hebben geschoven". Dat is, naar mijn smaak, een opvallend fraaie en dichterlijke passage over fotografie. Maar vooral ook over hoe de ik- figuur fotografisch naar landschappen en rivieren kijkt, hoe haar stemmingen en herinneringen daarbij kleuren wat zij ziet, en hoe wat zij ziet omgekeerd die stemmingen weer kleuren en diverse vergeten of verdrongen herinneringen opnieuw oproept. En hoe dus elk beeld dat zij zich van het landschap vormt ook iets lijkt te zeggen en suggereren over wie zij is. Maar dat "iets" blijft even raadselachtig en ongedefinieerd als het landschap. Want alleen in raadselachtige en onbestemde schemerzones kan en wil de ik figuur wonen, zo lijkt het. Of in mistige zones ("mistige ochtenden die de dagelijkse gang van zaken ter discussie stelden"), waarin al het bestaande vervaagt, waarin niets is te zien behalve "een mistkamer, waarin, onzichtbaar voor degenen die op de oever stonden, misschien een experiment werd voorbereid - de onthulling van een nieuwe wereld". En uiteraard wordt ook die nieuwe wereld weer in raadselachtige nevelen gehuld....
Niet alle lezers zullen houden van al die mistige onbestemdheid. Maar ik hou juist wel van dit soort proza, waarin het raadselachtige van onze binnenwereld en onze buitenwereld zo prima kan gedijen. Ik hou wel van die onverdeelde aandacht waarmee Kinsky al het marginale bekijkt, en herschept in raadselachtig suggestieve poëzie. En ik houd ook erg van de manier waarop ze in die poëtische passages ook nog eens haar melancholische droefheid voelbaar maakt, zonder die stemmingen te verklaren en daarmee al te eenduidig te maken. Kortom, ik hoop dat er nog veel meer vertalingen van Esther Kinsky zullen volgen.
"Langs de rivier" neemt ons mee met de wandelingen, mijmeringen en stemmingen van een naamloze ik- figuur. Haar blik op de wereld is duidelijk die van een melancholieke buitenstaander: "Na jaren had ik mezelf uit het leven geknipt dat ik in de stand had geleid, zoals je een figuurtje uit een landschaps- of groepsfoto knipt. Onthutst over de schade die ik aan de foto had aangericht en nog niet wetend waar het uitgeknipte stukje terecht moest komen, leidde ik een provisorisch bestaan". De precieze redenen van haar melancholie blijven echter in nevelen gehuld: onbestemde treurnis over het recente overlijden van haar vader speelt een rol, maar daarnaast ook een niet benoemd, onverklaard en alleen tussen de regels voelbaar besef van de algehele helaasheid der dingen. Het lijkt vaak alsof de ik- figuur ook als buitenstaander naar zichzelf kijkt en zichzelf niet verklaren kan. Maar dat lijkt deels een keuze: de ik- figuur lijkt bewust te kiezen voor het onbestemde, het oningevulde, het ongedefinieerde, het marginale. Ook als ze het heeft over zichzelf. En ook lijkt ze te kiezen voor het veranderlijke en onbestendige: het motto van de roman is niet voor niets "the condition of everything is: river", en kenmerkend voor rivieren is de meanderende stroom. Of, zoals de ik- figuur zegt: "De rivier betekende beweging, verwarring en onvoorspelbaarheid in een wereld die naar orde streefde". Stromingen van rivieren zijn voor de ik- figuur zelfs "strofen van een gedicht, codes voor beweging, voor een elders". En die "beweging", met zijn niet ontcijferbare en juist daardoor zo suggestieve en dichterlijke codes, is bij uitstek kenmerkend voor haar binnenwereld, en voor hoe zij de buitenwereld ziet of wil zien.
De ik- figuur mijmert veel over wat ze in haar wandelingen langs rivieren ziet, tegenkomt, en met allerlei eerdere belevenissen associeert. Wandelen doet ze hoofdzakelijk bij de Lea, een minder bekende Engelse rivier in een nogal rafelige en vaak zelfs vervallen omgeving die weinig conventionele natuurschoonheid biedt. Maar juist dat rafelige, marginale en vaak veronachtzaamde in die omgeving trekt haar onverdeelde aandacht. Zo ook de gemarginaliseerde personen die zij aantreft: een waanzinnige die een vreemde dans uitvoert bij een groep raven, en bij wie de raven zelfs op zijn armen gaan zitten, groeit bijvoorbeeld in haar ogen uit tot een soort mythische en verbannen koning. En zijn dans is van een wonderbaarlijke, vogelachtige lichtheid: "Zo, met al die vogels om zich heen, begon hij lichte op en neer gaande en cirkelende bewegingen te maken met zijn uitgestrekte armen, alsof die een herinnering aan vleugels bewaarden". Maar ze kijkt vooral naar landschappen, die ze vaak ook fotografeert. Wat tot vrij raadselachtig- vage foto's leidt, die soms ook zijn opgenomen in het boek, en die door de beschrijvingen van wat op die foto's te zien valt nog raadselachtiger worden. Zoals ook Sebald dat doet, in prachtboeken als "Austerlitz" of "De ringen van Saturnus".
Bovendien zegt de ik- figuur over fotograferen het volgende: "En telkens voelde ik dezelfde verbazing als ik zag wat zich tussen mijn oog, de lens, de lichtinval en de werking van de chemicaliën had voltrokken. Zoals ik ook telkens dacht [...] dat de foto's meer te maken hadden met de persoon die door de lens had gekeken dan met wat er te zien was. Onder de losgetrokken ontwikkelingsfolie kwam op de zwart- wit foto met zijn talloze schakeringen grijs een herinnering tevoorschijn waarvan ik niet wist dat ik die had. Het waren foto's van iets wat achter de dingen lag waarop de lens zich had gericht en die de ontspanner ongemerkt een seconde opzij moest hebben geschoven". Dat is, naar mijn smaak, een opvallend fraaie en dichterlijke passage over fotografie. Maar vooral ook over hoe de ik- figuur fotografisch naar landschappen en rivieren kijkt, hoe haar stemmingen en herinneringen daarbij kleuren wat zij ziet, en hoe wat zij ziet omgekeerd die stemmingen weer kleuren en diverse vergeten of verdrongen herinneringen opnieuw oproept. En hoe dus elk beeld dat zij zich van het landschap vormt ook iets lijkt te zeggen en suggereren over wie zij is. Maar dat "iets" blijft even raadselachtig en ongedefinieerd als het landschap. Want alleen in raadselachtige en onbestemde schemerzones kan en wil de ik figuur wonen, zo lijkt het. Of in mistige zones ("mistige ochtenden die de dagelijkse gang van zaken ter discussie stelden"), waarin al het bestaande vervaagt, waarin niets is te zien behalve "een mistkamer, waarin, onzichtbaar voor degenen die op de oever stonden, misschien een experiment werd voorbereid - de onthulling van een nieuwe wereld". En uiteraard wordt ook die nieuwe wereld weer in raadselachtige nevelen gehuld....
Niet alle lezers zullen houden van al die mistige onbestemdheid. Maar ik hou juist wel van dit soort proza, waarin het raadselachtige van onze binnenwereld en onze buitenwereld zo prima kan gedijen. Ik hou wel van die onverdeelde aandacht waarmee Kinsky al het marginale bekijkt, en herschept in raadselachtig suggestieve poëzie. En ik houd ook erg van de manier waarop ze in die poëtische passages ook nog eens haar melancholische droefheid voelbaar maakt, zonder die stemmingen te verklaren en daarmee al te eenduidig te maken. Kortom, ik hoop dat er nog veel meer vertalingen van Esther Kinsky zullen volgen.
November 16, 2021
RIVER (2014). An unnamed narrator, probably a German Jewish woman, not unlike the author, moves to a London suburb near the river Lea. Her neighbors are people who live in the margins: there are Hassidic Jews, Kurdish, African and Central European immigrants. She watches them with interest, but hardly interacts with them.
She seems to be attracted to rivers, as she has grown up on the shores of the Rhine. She has many childhood memories related to this river. She takes frequent solitary walks along the Lea. This is a marshy, rundown area with crumbling buildings and scattered debris. A sad landscape of post-industrial wastelands. While exploring the area, she remembers other rivers she has visited in the past, in several other countries. She also takes photographs.
There is no plot in this novel, no action, only her meditations and precise descriptions of the weather, the landscape, the people. This is a book about close observation written in a slow, fittingly meandering prose, a contemplative narrative which reminded me, sometimes, of Max Sebald's writing. Both writers blur the edges of fiction and non-fiction and use photographs. However, Kinsky's prose seems more personal, secretive, intimate while Sebald's is mostly concerned about the Holocaust and WW2 destruction.
RIVER seems like a memoir, or a long essay, however Fitzcarraldo has cataloged this book as a novel despite the many evident autobiographical elements of the story. Ian Galbraith, who translated part of Sebald's oeuvre, also translated this book and the translation seems seamless.
She seems to be attracted to rivers, as she has grown up on the shores of the Rhine. She has many childhood memories related to this river. She takes frequent solitary walks along the Lea. This is a marshy, rundown area with crumbling buildings and scattered debris. A sad landscape of post-industrial wastelands. While exploring the area, she remembers other rivers she has visited in the past, in several other countries. She also takes photographs.
There is no plot in this novel, no action, only her meditations and precise descriptions of the weather, the landscape, the people. This is a book about close observation written in a slow, fittingly meandering prose, a contemplative narrative which reminded me, sometimes, of Max Sebald's writing. Both writers blur the edges of fiction and non-fiction and use photographs. However, Kinsky's prose seems more personal, secretive, intimate while Sebald's is mostly concerned about the Holocaust and WW2 destruction.
RIVER seems like a memoir, or a long essay, however Fitzcarraldo has cataloged this book as a novel despite the many evident autobiographical elements of the story. Ian Galbraith, who translated part of Sebald's oeuvre, also translated this book and the translation seems seamless.
April 3, 2018
River is a peculiar novel, quite unlike anything I have read before. A woman reminiscences the years she lived in East London near River Lea, a river that provides the main narrative structure to the novel. Lea reminds her of all the other rivers she has experienced, from the rivers of the Continent to the Yarkon in Tel Aviv and the Ganges in India. Every East London chapter, which depict in detail the progress of Lea from Springfield Park to its flowing into the Thames, is followed by three chapters of memories from abroad or elsewhere from London. This story is definitely in the heavyweight league of descriptive novels, said by some critics to resemble W. G. Sebald. Perhaps it is then no coincidence that Iain Galbraith, who has masterfully translated the novel into English from Esther Kinsky’s German, has previously translated Sebald’s poetry collection Across the Land and the Water.
The novel is curiously devoid of a traditional protagonist, and instead we have a narrator who is more of a lens than an active participant in the events. There are many characters in the novel, some who return, some who are only part of a brief memory, but the narrator himself is mostly in an observing role. Not only does she describe her surroundings, but she also takes polaroid pictures of the natural environment, and these photos are represented on the pages of the novel, not unlike the photos of animals on the pages of Sara Baume’s recent novel A Line Made by Walking.
Is River, then, more travelogue or memoir than a novel? I would argue not. Despite its meandering and verbose style, it is clearly structured with narrative pulls. For instance, we have recurring characters such as the King, a mysterious figure bookending the story. The narrator is keen to observe him. He makes an appearance in a park at the beginning, and later he is feared to have passed away. However, he returns at the end of the story in one of the novel’s most remarkable passages. It is not much of a spoiler to have a look at the last sentence of River, which is also a good example of Kinsky’s style:
Then a great torrent of light poured over the park, the fallen King and the birds, immersing everything in that glaring superabundance of brightness with which days begin that will pass away in rainy gloom, a luminosity that made each object stand out for a brief moment in sharp relief before squandering itself in an exuberant radiance that melted to fool’s gold and the sunburst delusions of cold spring days, glimmering, glistening, sparkling, and finally dissolving in a blinding, golden tremor, in which all that had accompanied me in the past few months evaporated like a cloud succumbing to sunlight, and this effulgence, which broke over all I could see, transformed the marshland beyond the river Lea and the Lea itself into a shoreline that could barely be distinguished from the sea, and which, as it rose and fell like the surf, let all that was built on it founder.
I cannot help admiring the beauty of that sentence, or of many other sentences in the novel. Not every sentence is that long, don’t worry, but Kinsky is amazingly skillful in conveying so much meaning in a descriptive sentence where nothing much happens. So much emotion is carried between the lines, in meditative sentences that on the surface only describe but implicitly evoke human emotions.
The relationship between humans and the natural world emerges as one of River’s themes. In the following passage, the narrator discusses rivers as bioregions, a casual thought which develops into a profound question of human identity:
Every river is a border; that was one of the lessons of my childhood. It informs our view of what is other, forcing us to stop in our tracks and take in the opposite side. The river is dynamic, a bustling stage, in contrast with which the otherland opposite is integral to the fixed picture, a background painting which impresses itself on our memory. What if the river, beyond its capacity as a border created solely by its own course, is also a border between countries? Could its flow, the incessant press of its water towards an estuary, be more powerful than its significance as a line fixed to determine belonging? Does the water carry something away with it, leaving the stateliness of state-borders diminished and apparently subject to depreciation? Isn’t it saying that what we really belong to is the gaze toward the other side?
In side with depictions of nature are observations of city life in London. The narrator has a habit of riding the double decker with no terminus in mind, realizing there that the upper deck is the way to learn what London is all about. Instead of looking at mere shop windows from the street level, she looks into people’s homes in all their day-to-day glory and misery. By scrupulously observing either nature or people through the course of the novel, she becomes a vehicle for readers to reflect on their own lives. While the novel’s rivers-as-borders theme often brought me back to my childhood city (which is built around a river that divided the city into a southern and northern side), these depictions of London are equally juicy bits of real life, memories of a time when I myself was getting acquainted with London.
So much has been packed inside these 350 pages or so that calling River a mere description of flowing bodies of water is very much slighting. It is true that reading it requires some amount of concentration, especially in the beginning when one is only getting accustomed to Kinsky’s style of writing, but its meditative flair is surprisingly addictive to follow. As long as you do not expect plot twists and are willing to go unhurried with the flow, you are in for a literary treat. Reading River is, in a sense, a meditative practice, a welcome exercise in an age of short attention spans. In fact, I don’t think River’s level of observation and focus on the everyday is very far from the actual experience of meditation.
Written for Helsinki Book Review.
The novel is curiously devoid of a traditional protagonist, and instead we have a narrator who is more of a lens than an active participant in the events. There are many characters in the novel, some who return, some who are only part of a brief memory, but the narrator himself is mostly in an observing role. Not only does she describe her surroundings, but she also takes polaroid pictures of the natural environment, and these photos are represented on the pages of the novel, not unlike the photos of animals on the pages of Sara Baume’s recent novel A Line Made by Walking.
Is River, then, more travelogue or memoir than a novel? I would argue not. Despite its meandering and verbose style, it is clearly structured with narrative pulls. For instance, we have recurring characters such as the King, a mysterious figure bookending the story. The narrator is keen to observe him. He makes an appearance in a park at the beginning, and later he is feared to have passed away. However, he returns at the end of the story in one of the novel’s most remarkable passages. It is not much of a spoiler to have a look at the last sentence of River, which is also a good example of Kinsky’s style:
Then a great torrent of light poured over the park, the fallen King and the birds, immersing everything in that glaring superabundance of brightness with which days begin that will pass away in rainy gloom, a luminosity that made each object stand out for a brief moment in sharp relief before squandering itself in an exuberant radiance that melted to fool’s gold and the sunburst delusions of cold spring days, glimmering, glistening, sparkling, and finally dissolving in a blinding, golden tremor, in which all that had accompanied me in the past few months evaporated like a cloud succumbing to sunlight, and this effulgence, which broke over all I could see, transformed the marshland beyond the river Lea and the Lea itself into a shoreline that could barely be distinguished from the sea, and which, as it rose and fell like the surf, let all that was built on it founder.
I cannot help admiring the beauty of that sentence, or of many other sentences in the novel. Not every sentence is that long, don’t worry, but Kinsky is amazingly skillful in conveying so much meaning in a descriptive sentence where nothing much happens. So much emotion is carried between the lines, in meditative sentences that on the surface only describe but implicitly evoke human emotions.
The relationship between humans and the natural world emerges as one of River’s themes. In the following passage, the narrator discusses rivers as bioregions, a casual thought which develops into a profound question of human identity:
Every river is a border; that was one of the lessons of my childhood. It informs our view of what is other, forcing us to stop in our tracks and take in the opposite side. The river is dynamic, a bustling stage, in contrast with which the otherland opposite is integral to the fixed picture, a background painting which impresses itself on our memory. What if the river, beyond its capacity as a border created solely by its own course, is also a border between countries? Could its flow, the incessant press of its water towards an estuary, be more powerful than its significance as a line fixed to determine belonging? Does the water carry something away with it, leaving the stateliness of state-borders diminished and apparently subject to depreciation? Isn’t it saying that what we really belong to is the gaze toward the other side?
In side with depictions of nature are observations of city life in London. The narrator has a habit of riding the double decker with no terminus in mind, realizing there that the upper deck is the way to learn what London is all about. Instead of looking at mere shop windows from the street level, she looks into people’s homes in all their day-to-day glory and misery. By scrupulously observing either nature or people through the course of the novel, she becomes a vehicle for readers to reflect on their own lives. While the novel’s rivers-as-borders theme often brought me back to my childhood city (which is built around a river that divided the city into a southern and northern side), these depictions of London are equally juicy bits of real life, memories of a time when I myself was getting acquainted with London.
So much has been packed inside these 350 pages or so that calling River a mere description of flowing bodies of water is very much slighting. It is true that reading it requires some amount of concentration, especially in the beginning when one is only getting accustomed to Kinsky’s style of writing, but its meditative flair is surprisingly addictive to follow. As long as you do not expect plot twists and are willing to go unhurried with the flow, you are in for a literary treat. Reading River is, in a sense, a meditative practice, a welcome exercise in an age of short attention spans. In fact, I don’t think River’s level of observation and focus on the everyday is very far from the actual experience of meditation.
Written for Helsinki Book Review.
September 4, 2018
A large and endlessly absorbing, yet intimate meditation on memory, restlessness and leave-taking, —delineated by the rivers that have flowed through the narrator's life, recounted during the course of an extended withdrawal from London where she has lived for more than a decade. Her reflection reach back to her childhood on the Rhine, as well as sojourns along rivers around the world.
My review for Music & Literature can be found here: http://www.musicandliterature.org/rev...
My review for Music & Literature can be found here: http://www.musicandliterature.org/rev...
March 9, 2020
Nope, not for me.
March 28, 2021
Een vrouw woont, tijdelijk, in Londen in een eerder arme buurt, nabij de rivier Lea.
Dagelijks maakt ze wandelingen langs de rivier waarbij nauwkeurig het landschap en de omgeving wordt beschreven, van bij haar woning tot de monding in de Theems. Het zijn zelden fraaie landschappen: vervallen gebouwen, oude caravans, afval in de struiken langs het water...
De hoofdpersoon blikt ook terug op andere rivieren die ooit een rol speelden in haar leven. De Rijn in Duitsland waar ze als kind woonde, rivieren in Polen, Frankrijk, Israël, Canada... Overal maakt ze wandelingen langs rivieren. Nergens heeft ze veel contact met anderen en lijkt ze eerder geïsoleerd te leven. Die mensen die ze ontmoet zijn ook einzelgänger, vaak mensen aan de rand van de samenleving. Er is op een gegeven moment sprake van haar kind dat later niet meer aan bod komt. Ik vroeg me af of dit al dan niet verdwenen kind de oorzaak van haar rusteloosheid en obsessie met rivieren zou verklaren. Maar zo een boek is "Langs de rivier" dus niet.
Ik las dit aparte boek graag omwille van de bijzondere en gedetailleerd beschrijvende taal. Het is een boek om langzaam en in kleine hoeveelheden tot je te nemen. Maar af en toe vond ik dat het wat minder en korter mocht, met iets minder rivieren.
Dagelijks maakt ze wandelingen langs de rivier waarbij nauwkeurig het landschap en de omgeving wordt beschreven, van bij haar woning tot de monding in de Theems. Het zijn zelden fraaie landschappen: vervallen gebouwen, oude caravans, afval in de struiken langs het water...
De hoofdpersoon blikt ook terug op andere rivieren die ooit een rol speelden in haar leven. De Rijn in Duitsland waar ze als kind woonde, rivieren in Polen, Frankrijk, Israël, Canada... Overal maakt ze wandelingen langs rivieren. Nergens heeft ze veel contact met anderen en lijkt ze eerder geïsoleerd te leven. Die mensen die ze ontmoet zijn ook einzelgänger, vaak mensen aan de rand van de samenleving. Er is op een gegeven moment sprake van haar kind dat later niet meer aan bod komt. Ik vroeg me af of dit al dan niet verdwenen kind de oorzaak van haar rusteloosheid en obsessie met rivieren zou verklaren. Maar zo een boek is "Langs de rivier" dus niet.
Ik las dit aparte boek graag omwille van de bijzondere en gedetailleerd beschrijvende taal. Het is een boek om langzaam en in kleine hoeveelheden tot je te nemen. Maar af en toe vond ik dat het wat minder en korter mocht, met iets minder rivieren.
December 6, 2022
Schitterende verhalen van een vrouw die haar dagen langs de Theems doorbrengt, mijmerend over haar verleden en de mensen om haar heen. Wat een schitterende stijl.
January 31, 2020
I am feeling very generous today.
May 18, 2020
I think River is a terrific novel. It's the 1st novel I've read in a long while that I wanted to start again as soon as I finished.
There's little story to it. It's a meditative work told by a young (I think) woman in a somber tone that'll remind you of W. G. Sebald. The woman is a seasoned traveler who's now living in the industrial margins of East London. The River Lea and the Thames and several canals move through the landscape of her wanderings. They stimulate thoughts of rivers she's known in her past, but the great river of the novel is memory. Rivers are analogous to the flow of memory within her, standing pools are collective reflections on her own past. In addition, she tells us rivers are borders forming an other; we have to stop and observe the other side, an important action for a woman who wanders. The idea of borders makes the recurrence of words like homeland, refugees, and exile that much more significant. As she's from somewhere else, she notices people who share her feelings of being different. The few characters of her neighborhood, which is largely Jewish, are obscure and identifiable by impressionable traits, like the Croat or the King.
It's from the Croat's used-goods store that she acquires an old Polaroid camera with which she takes snapshots of the marshlands and river scenes scattered throughout the book.
Individual chapters recall other rivers she's seen and reflect different periods of her life. In Toronto, in a chapter about the St. Lawrence River, she apparently gave birth to a son. She recalls the Neretva River in Bosnia and the stinking Yarkon River in Israel. The novel's longest chapter concerns a journey to Kolkata and the mighty Ganges.
Her journey down the Ganges with its burning ghats on the shore and floating garbage adds weight to the novel's atmosphere of a wasteland which has been building chapter by chapter. Googling the River Lea to acquaint myself visually with the region, I found photos of attractive, well-appointed suburbs. However, Kinsky's descriptions make a reader aware of an area of depressed industrialization. In this transitional boundary between city and country are broken sidewalks, the shells of old factories and warehouses. Flocks of crows throw shadows over the land and darken the woman's vision. The plaintive songs of early Neil Young--the albums After the Gold Rush and Harvest--pour out of the Croat's shop. Everything seems to be suffering. The atmosphere of waste and neglect is emphasized by the use of words and phrases like rusty remains, battered, infested, long ruinous decline, musty acrid fetor, cracked, derelict, and wan, scrubby grass. Because this is at odds with the pretty Wikipedia photos, I began to wonder if her mental funk caused her run-down vision.
A book is a river. We cast off into its current with vague anticipations but not otherwise knowing what we'll encounter and learn along the way. Sometimes at this point or that we begin to wish we'd paid more attention, particularly at the moment you begin to realize memory is in the wingtips of birds and poetry in the empty holes of windows. I'll travel this river again.
There's little story to it. It's a meditative work told by a young (I think) woman in a somber tone that'll remind you of W. G. Sebald. The woman is a seasoned traveler who's now living in the industrial margins of East London. The River Lea and the Thames and several canals move through the landscape of her wanderings. They stimulate thoughts of rivers she's known in her past, but the great river of the novel is memory. Rivers are analogous to the flow of memory within her, standing pools are collective reflections on her own past. In addition, she tells us rivers are borders forming an other; we have to stop and observe the other side, an important action for a woman who wanders. The idea of borders makes the recurrence of words like homeland, refugees, and exile that much more significant. As she's from somewhere else, she notices people who share her feelings of being different. The few characters of her neighborhood, which is largely Jewish, are obscure and identifiable by impressionable traits, like the Croat or the King.
It's from the Croat's used-goods store that she acquires an old Polaroid camera with which she takes snapshots of the marshlands and river scenes scattered throughout the book.
Individual chapters recall other rivers she's seen and reflect different periods of her life. In Toronto, in a chapter about the St. Lawrence River, she apparently gave birth to a son. She recalls the Neretva River in Bosnia and the stinking Yarkon River in Israel. The novel's longest chapter concerns a journey to Kolkata and the mighty Ganges.
Her journey down the Ganges with its burning ghats on the shore and floating garbage adds weight to the novel's atmosphere of a wasteland which has been building chapter by chapter. Googling the River Lea to acquaint myself visually with the region, I found photos of attractive, well-appointed suburbs. However, Kinsky's descriptions make a reader aware of an area of depressed industrialization. In this transitional boundary between city and country are broken sidewalks, the shells of old factories and warehouses. Flocks of crows throw shadows over the land and darken the woman's vision. The plaintive songs of early Neil Young--the albums After the Gold Rush and Harvest--pour out of the Croat's shop. Everything seems to be suffering. The atmosphere of waste and neglect is emphasized by the use of words and phrases like rusty remains, battered, infested, long ruinous decline, musty acrid fetor, cracked, derelict, and wan, scrubby grass. Because this is at odds with the pretty Wikipedia photos, I began to wonder if her mental funk caused her run-down vision.
A book is a river. We cast off into its current with vague anticipations but not otherwise knowing what we'll encounter and learn along the way. Sometimes at this point or that we begin to wish we'd paid more attention, particularly at the moment you begin to realize memory is in the wingtips of birds and poetry in the empty holes of windows. I'll travel this river again.
January 20, 2021
Esther Kinsky is more poet than novelist, and her book Am Fluß (River) shows it. It tells about encounters of the narrator with rivers, foremost the River Lea in London, and the function rivers can play in her inner life. Her intent becomes most clear in the chapter Oder (which constitutes partially the border between Germany and Poland).
Every river is a border; that was one of the lessons of my childhood. It informs our view of what is other, forcing us to stop in our tracks and take in the opposite side. The river is dynamic, a bustling stage, in contrast with which the otherland opposite is integral to the fixed picture, a background painting which impresses itself on our memory. What if the river, beyond its capacity as a border created solely by its own course, is also a border between countries? Could its flow, the incessant press of its water towards an estuary, be more powerful than its significance as a line fixed to determine belonging? Does the water carry something away with it, leaving the stateliness of state-borders diminished and apparently subject to depreciation? Isn’t it saying that what we really belong to is the gaze toward the other side?
The narrative (if one can call it that) is a strange mixture between personal and impersonal — it is as if we gaze at the author from the other side of a stream and watch her time pass. Little is there about events in her life — we learn a bit about her childhood, and later how she is affected by the death of her father. But the focus is on the process of taking in the foreign, from the moment she notices it to it becoming familiar, which again is mirrored by encounters with rivers.
From the branching fork of the Varta mouth to the Szczecin Lagoon, the Oder drew a border line up and down the country, writing a Here and a There in the sandy earth. Under it, however, countless watery question marks and intertwining letters tugged in both directions, east and west, a water-script of histories granted continuity through the river, under it, beyond it, its tributaries and ramifications annotating the landscape, reversing its sides with befuddling mirror images of the sky and its blues of Here and There.
Reading a book like this is different from reading a traditional narrative. I enjoyed contemplating her sentences like landscape images, a landscape that Kinsky uses both to encapsulate her experiences, and as a hiding place.
I have read the German original, the quotes here are from the excellent translation by Iain Galbraith.
Every river is a border; that was one of the lessons of my childhood. It informs our view of what is other, forcing us to stop in our tracks and take in the opposite side. The river is dynamic, a bustling stage, in contrast with which the otherland opposite is integral to the fixed picture, a background painting which impresses itself on our memory. What if the river, beyond its capacity as a border created solely by its own course, is also a border between countries? Could its flow, the incessant press of its water towards an estuary, be more powerful than its significance as a line fixed to determine belonging? Does the water carry something away with it, leaving the stateliness of state-borders diminished and apparently subject to depreciation? Isn’t it saying that what we really belong to is the gaze toward the other side?
The narrative (if one can call it that) is a strange mixture between personal and impersonal — it is as if we gaze at the author from the other side of a stream and watch her time pass. Little is there about events in her life — we learn a bit about her childhood, and later how she is affected by the death of her father. But the focus is on the process of taking in the foreign, from the moment she notices it to it becoming familiar, which again is mirrored by encounters with rivers.
From the branching fork of the Varta mouth to the Szczecin Lagoon, the Oder drew a border line up and down the country, writing a Here and a There in the sandy earth. Under it, however, countless watery question marks and intertwining letters tugged in both directions, east and west, a water-script of histories granted continuity through the river, under it, beyond it, its tributaries and ramifications annotating the landscape, reversing its sides with befuddling mirror images of the sky and its blues of Here and There.
Reading a book like this is different from reading a traditional narrative. I enjoyed contemplating her sentences like landscape images, a landscape that Kinsky uses both to encapsulate her experiences, and as a hiding place.
I have read the German original, the quotes here are from the excellent translation by Iain Galbraith.
November 19, 2022
River, Am Fluß, is heavy with long descriptions, but also lightened by beautiful sentences and stunning imagery. It's much more a memoir or lengthy series of reflections than a novel, with occasional blurred boundaries between the real and imagined. Longing and wistfulness color the narration. Kinsky's close observations of microcosms of the human and natural worlds amplified my own powers of observation whenever I set down this book.
The novel's melancholy narrator survellies her surroundings through the lens of her camera and the lens of her imagination and memory. It is primarily this attribute that makes the novel "Sebaldian." However, it lacks the quality of genius that sets Sebald apart. While Kinsky's prose is remarkable, the book, much too long for this style, meanders like a bulging St. Lawrence that never reaches the sea.
The novel's melancholy narrator survellies her surroundings through the lens of her camera and the lens of her imagination and memory. It is primarily this attribute that makes the novel "Sebaldian." However, it lacks the quality of genius that sets Sebald apart. While Kinsky's prose is remarkable, the book, much too long for this style, meanders like a bulging St. Lawrence that never reaches the sea.
March 27, 2023
I honestly don't have much to say about this one other than this: it's gorgeous. It's slow, it's ponderous, all that really happens is that the narrator walks around, often near rivers, describing the landscape, reminiscing, and meeting people and hearing their stories. But the prose elevates it to something heavenly. I felt as if everything I was reading were covered with a gauzy film that smeared the colors, the literary equivalent of a Thomas Wilmer Dewing Painting.
If you're looking for a riveting plot, you are absolutely in the wrong place. I'm reluctant to make a Sebald reference for another German living in England, but there it is--it's positively Sebaldian. (In my defense, they're both fond of long, aimless walks, photography, and hearing lengthy stories from random people they meet. Kinsky does not have a glorious mustache, however.) I think the implications of Kinsky's writing are a little less mammoth than what Sebald gets at, as well as less clear--if there even are implications. But the prose is beautiful, understated, and addictive. I am beyond excited to read more of her stuff.
My only complaint is that the title of this book is "River," she mentions Neil Young multiple times, but never mentions "Down by the River." Missed opportunity, but I think I can live with it.
If you're looking for a riveting plot, you are absolutely in the wrong place. I'm reluctant to make a Sebald reference for another German living in England, but there it is--it's positively Sebaldian. (In my defense, they're both fond of long, aimless walks, photography, and hearing lengthy stories from random people they meet. Kinsky does not have a glorious mustache, however.) I think the implications of Kinsky's writing are a little less mammoth than what Sebald gets at, as well as less clear--if there even are implications. But the prose is beautiful, understated, and addictive. I am beyond excited to read more of her stuff.
My only complaint is that the title of this book is "River," she mentions Neil Young multiple times, but never mentions "Down by the River." Missed opportunity, but I think I can live with it.
February 11, 2021
Als ik mijn eerste gedachten voor Langs de Rivier op papier zet, precies wat je nu leest, heb ik nog zo’n 50 bladzijdes te gaan. Normaal maak ik gedurende het lezen van een boek wel wat aantekeningen hier en daar, losse gedachten die zich later zullen vormen naar een complete tekst die op mijn blog zal verschijnen. Maar met Langs de Rivier wachtte ik af, in plaats van aantekeningen las ik het boek met een potlood in de hand, een berg tabjes naast mij. Ik las en ik las.
Langs de rivier, een boek van vele kanten: fictie en autobiografie, beschrijvingen van de natuur en observaties van de stad, de schrijver en de lezer.
Mijn volledige bespreking van deze roman is nu op Books & Macchiatos te lezen.
Langs de rivier, een boek van vele kanten: fictie en autobiografie, beschrijvingen van de natuur en observaties van de stad, de schrijver en de lezer.
Mijn volledige bespreking van deze roman is nu op Books & Macchiatos te lezen.
March 15, 2021
Er gebeurt weinig langs de rivier die stroomt van daar naar hier. Oevers aan de twee kanten, ergens in het schemergebied tussen stad en platteland. Er zijn mensen. Sommigen zijn van hier, sommigen zijn van daar, de meesten zijn passanten. Sommigen zeggen goedendag, anderen niet. Er gebeurt weinig in Langs de rivier.
De rivier is de rivier Lea. Ja, dat is ook die waar Adèle een liedje over gemaakt heeft. Een vrouw dwaalt daar rond, ze zit op bankjes en registreert. Veel blijft vaag. Ze zit schijnbaar in een soort pauze in haar leven, tussen twee levensfases in. Ze kijkt naar een landschap dat geen landschap is.
De rivier doet haar denken aan andere rivieren, aan andere momenten in haar leven, maar duidelijke antwoorden op de vragen wie ze is en hoe ze daar belandde, krijgen we niet. Ook de interactie met andere mensen is beperkt. Er wordt veel niet gezegd.
Wat overblijft, is verbeelding en de schoonheid van het banale. Een heg, een vogel, de weidsheid en de lucht.
Kijk: daar loopt een mens.
Esther Kinsky schrijft ‘terreinromans’. Die term is zo belangrijk dat hij zelfs op de kaft staat. In Langs de rivier is de verteller iemand die de omgeving registreert. Autofictie, maar dan zonder al te veel innerlijke beschouwingen. Ook de geschiedenis en de actualiteit zijn slechts sluimerend aanwezig. Dat is een verschil met het werk van Sebald, de grote voorganger van dit soort fictie. Bij hem worden uiteindelijk nog wel verhalen verteld, hier niet meer.
Langs de rivier leest enorm traag. Ik had voortdurend de neiging om stil te vallen, om zelf ook te beginnen peinzen. Niet dat dat belangrijk is. Het is een boek dat eindeloos kan doorgaan zonder dat er iets gebeurt.
Kinsky’s meditatieve proza heeft iets zen-boeddhistisch. Origineel is het zeker, maar of ik het nu goed vind of niet…daar ben ik nog niet helemaal uit. Kijk, ik val weer stil.
De rivier is de rivier Lea. Ja, dat is ook die waar Adèle een liedje over gemaakt heeft. Een vrouw dwaalt daar rond, ze zit op bankjes en registreert. Veel blijft vaag. Ze zit schijnbaar in een soort pauze in haar leven, tussen twee levensfases in. Ze kijkt naar een landschap dat geen landschap is.
De rivier doet haar denken aan andere rivieren, aan andere momenten in haar leven, maar duidelijke antwoorden op de vragen wie ze is en hoe ze daar belandde, krijgen we niet. Ook de interactie met andere mensen is beperkt. Er wordt veel niet gezegd.
Wat overblijft, is verbeelding en de schoonheid van het banale. Een heg, een vogel, de weidsheid en de lucht.
Kijk: daar loopt een mens.
Esther Kinsky schrijft ‘terreinromans’. Die term is zo belangrijk dat hij zelfs op de kaft staat. In Langs de rivier is de verteller iemand die de omgeving registreert. Autofictie, maar dan zonder al te veel innerlijke beschouwingen. Ook de geschiedenis en de actualiteit zijn slechts sluimerend aanwezig. Dat is een verschil met het werk van Sebald, de grote voorganger van dit soort fictie. Bij hem worden uiteindelijk nog wel verhalen verteld, hier niet meer.
Langs de rivier leest enorm traag. Ik had voortdurend de neiging om stil te vallen, om zelf ook te beginnen peinzen. Niet dat dat belangrijk is. Het is een boek dat eindeloos kan doorgaan zonder dat er iets gebeurt.
Kinsky’s meditatieve proza heeft iets zen-boeddhistisch. Origineel is het zeker, maar of ik het nu goed vind of niet…daar ben ik nog niet helemaal uit. Kijk, ik val weer stil.
January 14, 2019
An interesting meditation and love-letter to rivers explored, and wanderings embarked on in the author's lifetime. River reminded of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for Kinsky's dense, but beautiful descriptions of nature, and Reservoir 13 for the way she expertly captures the steady rhythms of everyday life. Waves ripple, birds warble, cows wander, flowers bloom, seasons come and go...if you're looking for action or conflict, be warned, there's really none in the book's 350 pages, but like a quiet walk in nature, if you can look beyond that and enjoy the author's prose and keen powers of observation, there's a lot to love.
River is a dreamy read, which at least I personally found best consumed first thing in the morning, over a cup of coffee, while my mind was relaxed and rested, and before the responsibilities, noise, and business of real life took hold for the day.
River is a dreamy read, which at least I personally found best consumed first thing in the morning, over a cup of coffee, while my mind was relaxed and rested, and before the responsibilities, noise, and business of real life took hold for the day.
August 18, 2018
The River Lea and the land either side of it form a green ribbon through East London and it was the border between London and Essex. It was not the best cared for piece of green belt, until various initiatives associated with the 2012 London Olympics cleaned it up, but it was possible to walk along it. The author / protagonist does so, from Springfield Park downstream, and describes the area in great detail, illustrated with some photographs.
She also describes the streets nearby and the people in them. Unlike her descriptions of the riverside area, which are factual, fixed and unchanging, the people and the streets they inhabit seem elusive and transitory, often eccentric, almost unrecognisable. The time seems fixed firmly in 2002 or 2003, between the reopening of the Millennium Footbridge (with dampers to stop the wobble) and the demolition of Hackney Wick Stadium. There are things which don't fit however and suggest a bleak near future: freak weather events, refugees whose countries have vanished due to rising sea levels, bombings and craters in the streets, etc. This may be impressionistic exaggeration or may be how the author imagines the future.
The protagonist also describes rivers she has lived beside of visited earlier in life. She grew up beside the Rhine and lived in Toronto as a young mother, beside Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Before moving to the edge, she had also lived more centrally in London and a chapter on the Thames describes a visit by her father. She paid a visit to Israel after her father's death and saw the sewer-like Yarkon (this was before efforts to clean it up), but this was not a river or place where she belonged. She also visits the Oder, where it forms the border between Germany and Poland and the boundary between Western and Eastern Europe, the Neretva not long after the end of the Balkan Wars, the Tisza, a major tributary of the Danube, and the Hooghly in northeastern India. These sections are closer to an author's contemplative memoir and the people more fixed in their landscape, perhaps because they have not turned away from their rivers, although I doubt if everyone living beside the Oder really wears red jumpers and goes about in pairs.
She also describes the streets nearby and the people in them. Unlike her descriptions of the riverside area, which are factual, fixed and unchanging, the people and the streets they inhabit seem elusive and transitory, often eccentric, almost unrecognisable. The time seems fixed firmly in 2002 or 2003, between the reopening of the Millennium Footbridge (with dampers to stop the wobble) and the demolition of Hackney Wick Stadium. There are things which don't fit however and suggest a bleak near future: freak weather events, refugees whose countries have vanished due to rising sea levels, bombings and craters in the streets, etc. This may be impressionistic exaggeration or may be how the author imagines the future.
The protagonist also describes rivers she has lived beside of visited earlier in life. She grew up beside the Rhine and lived in Toronto as a young mother, beside Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Before moving to the edge, she had also lived more centrally in London and a chapter on the Thames describes a visit by her father. She paid a visit to Israel after her father's death and saw the sewer-like Yarkon (this was before efforts to clean it up), but this was not a river or place where she belonged. She also visits the Oder, where it forms the border between Germany and Poland and the boundary between Western and Eastern Europe, the Neretva not long after the end of the Balkan Wars, the Tisza, a major tributary of the Danube, and the Hooghly in northeastern India. These sections are closer to an author's contemplative memoir and the people more fixed in their landscape, perhaps because they have not turned away from their rivers, although I doubt if everyone living beside the Oder really wears red jumpers and goes about in pairs.
February 25, 2018
A woman takes long solitary walks along the Lea River in NE London, observing nature and the post-industrial wasteland of the area with its abandoned factories and housing settlements. The surrounding neighborhoods, once serving the workers in the factories, belong now to the poor immigrant population. She discusses her London neighborhood shopkeepers, Jewish and Croatian, and the many colorful characters she meets on her daily outings. On her walks along the Lea, she reminisces about other great rivers she has known in countries she has lived or traveled and the memories of the people she has met in India, Hungary, Canada, and Germany. Her writing is artful, poignant, and melancholic. It is of an immigrant's experience in a foreign land. She has a certain grubbiness to her style of writing.
October 27, 2023
Prachtig geschreven. Geen vijf sterren vanwege de troosteloosheid. In deze terreinroman blijven we steeds rondzwerven over, rond, nabij, op en in eindeloze grauwheid en vuilnis.
Eerder las ik 533 dagenboek van Cees Nooteboom. Bij aanvang in vervoering, maar nadien toch afgehaakt wegens te elitair.
Ik zie wel overeenkomsten tussen het werk van beide auteurs, maar zoek verder naar een auteur die de middenweg bewandelt; niet enkel op grond vol kommer en kwel, aan de rand van de maatschappij , maar ook niet te jetset-achtig terrein.
Eerder las ik 533 dagenboek van Cees Nooteboom. Bij aanvang in vervoering, maar nadien toch afgehaakt wegens te elitair.
Ik zie wel overeenkomsten tussen het werk van beide auteurs, maar zoek verder naar een auteur die de middenweg bewandelt; niet enkel op grond vol kommer en kwel, aan de rand van de maatschappij , maar ook niet te jetset-achtig terrein.
November 7, 2022
I enjoyed the slow pace of this book combined with the beautiful descriptions of the main characters surroundings.The realism within Kinsky's writing blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction and her writing style blurs the lines between poetry and prose. Kinsky is a masterful writer and Galbraith's translation is excellent as it doesn't feel like it is a translation. I will include a couple of my favourite quotes below!
'On its back the river carried the sky, the trees along its banks, the withered cob like blooms of water plants, black squiggles of birds against the clouds.' (Page 22)
'From April to August I read what the big sycamore wrote on the one windowed brick wall' with 'shadows of leaves scribbling notes' loved this whole section personifying the tree (page 19)
'On its back the river carried the sky, the trees along its banks, the withered cob like blooms of water plants, black squiggles of birds against the clouds.' (Page 22)
'From April to August I read what the big sycamore wrote on the one windowed brick wall' with 'shadows of leaves scribbling notes' loved this whole section personifying the tree (page 19)
September 27, 2018
Fantastic novel. This is a writer at the top of their craft, words flow seamlessly together creating poetic observation and realistic scenes. It's difficukt to believe these events did not happen. The shear detail, down to the minitiuae of a place is truly astounding. The end of each chapter is finished with profound and often introspective paragraphs urging you to read on into the next or maybe stop and contemplate.
A couple of negatives. First, it is long. Perhaps too long though I hesitate to say this because of the (obviously) well thought out sentences and storyline but really, honestly the story is second to the writing. A negative depending on what kind of reader you are. For me it didn't bother me much but worth noting as some may find it drags on and on. Second negative, the story itself was somewhat weak. Some plot points seemed to be added to give it structure. Some were interesting albeit unnecessary. Id rather have seen the plot stripped away and let the novel rely only on the narrative of rivers and bodies of water. Leave it at poetic prose and nothing more.
In conclusion, highly recommend reading this if you're a fan of poetic, memoir like novels or are a fan of Gerald Murnane. Very similar in feel. The writing is a work of art. I'd love to see more of her works translated into English. Beautiful book.
A couple of negatives. First, it is long. Perhaps too long though I hesitate to say this because of the (obviously) well thought out sentences and storyline but really, honestly the story is second to the writing. A negative depending on what kind of reader you are. For me it didn't bother me much but worth noting as some may find it drags on and on. Second negative, the story itself was somewhat weak. Some plot points seemed to be added to give it structure. Some were interesting albeit unnecessary. Id rather have seen the plot stripped away and let the novel rely only on the narrative of rivers and bodies of water. Leave it at poetic prose and nothing more.
In conclusion, highly recommend reading this if you're a fan of poetic, memoir like novels or are a fan of Gerald Murnane. Very similar in feel. The writing is a work of art. I'd love to see more of her works translated into English. Beautiful book.
July 20, 2021
Between 3-4 stars, and something between poetry and prose. Some parts of the book are fantastic, and others are very boring. I think it needed a better editor. Kinsky brings us lovely long sentences, poetic musings of everyday life, reminds us that the small things can be a delight, that there is more to life than material stuff and stuff and stuff... This is like a celebration - of rivers, of the everyday, of the art of noticing and of a female wanderer - flâneuse. Definitely not for everybody and not for every mood. But when you want something slow and different, this is worth reading, diving into - taking a full breath and enjoying the slow pace of the text.
November 7, 2024
„Każda rzeka stanowi granicę, to była jedna z nauk w dzieciństwie. Rzeka otwiera widok na inność, zmusza do zatrzymania się, do uważnego przyjrzenia się przeciwległej stronie. rzeka jest ruchomą sceną, wobec której inny kraj obserwującego człowieka składa się w nieruchomy obraz, malowidło w tle utrwalające się we wspomnieniu.”
Jest coś na wskroś ludzkiego i mistycznego w chwili, gdy stajemy na brzegu jakiejś rzeki. Rzeki niekiedy zachwycają mnie bardziej, ponieważ widzę ich granicę, widzę przeciwległy brzeg, przyroda okalającą tę tajemniczą taflę. Esther Kinsky idzie o krok dalej i tworzy dzieło, w którym rzeki stają się głównymi narratorami i nośnikami wspomnień. „Nad rzeką” to próba zrozumienia granic, które przekraczamy, a Kinsky tym razem wybrała rzeki jako swój punkt odniesienia, cel wielu podróży i rozważań. Skupia swoją uwag głównie na londyńskiej River Lea, ale nie zabraknie tutaj podróży nad ojczysty Ren, Odrę czy Neretwę. Jest to książka po części autobiograficzna i na wskroś oryginalna, ponieważ rzadko spotykam się w literaturze, by autor opisywał swoje losy posiłkując się uważnym odczuwaniem przyrody. Kinsky przenosi nas w swoje imigranckie doświadczenie pełne nostalgii. Obejmuje role obserwatorki, która pozostaje w odległości aparatu od przeżywanego krajobrazu.
„Rombo” wydane co dopiero przez Drzazgi było niesłuchanie lirycznym opisem skutków trzęsienia ziemi we Włoszech, ale Kinsky już swoją wcześniejszą powieścią udowodniła, że opisy przyrody, które w latach szkolnych omijaliśmy w lekturach, tutaj stają się najwyższą formą odczuwania i przedstawione są po mistrzowsku. Nie nużą, płyną wartko po wyobraźni czytelnika.
Tak jak „ptaki wołają z ukrycia o pamięć”, tak pisanie Kinsky woła o uważne przeżywanie natury, krajobrazu oraz przyrody z wszystkimi jej kształtami. Trudno przejść obok tej opowieści obojętnie i odłożyć ołówek, którym zaznacza się cytat za cytatem. Pokłony w stronę tłumaczki, uchwyciła bezbłędnie cale to językowe piękno.
Jest coś na wskroś ludzkiego i mistycznego w chwili, gdy stajemy na brzegu jakiejś rzeki. Rzeki niekiedy zachwycają mnie bardziej, ponieważ widzę ich granicę, widzę przeciwległy brzeg, przyroda okalającą tę tajemniczą taflę. Esther Kinsky idzie o krok dalej i tworzy dzieło, w którym rzeki stają się głównymi narratorami i nośnikami wspomnień. „Nad rzeką” to próba zrozumienia granic, które przekraczamy, a Kinsky tym razem wybrała rzeki jako swój punkt odniesienia, cel wielu podróży i rozważań. Skupia swoją uwag głównie na londyńskiej River Lea, ale nie zabraknie tutaj podróży nad ojczysty Ren, Odrę czy Neretwę. Jest to książka po części autobiograficzna i na wskroś oryginalna, ponieważ rzadko spotykam się w literaturze, by autor opisywał swoje losy posiłkując się uważnym odczuwaniem przyrody. Kinsky przenosi nas w swoje imigranckie doświadczenie pełne nostalgii. Obejmuje role obserwatorki, która pozostaje w odległości aparatu od przeżywanego krajobrazu.
„Rombo” wydane co dopiero przez Drzazgi było niesłuchanie lirycznym opisem skutków trzęsienia ziemi we Włoszech, ale Kinsky już swoją wcześniejszą powieścią udowodniła, że opisy przyrody, które w latach szkolnych omijaliśmy w lekturach, tutaj stają się najwyższą formą odczuwania i przedstawione są po mistrzowsku. Nie nużą, płyną wartko po wyobraźni czytelnika.
Tak jak „ptaki wołają z ukrycia o pamięć”, tak pisanie Kinsky woła o uważne przeżywanie natury, krajobrazu oraz przyrody z wszystkimi jej kształtami. Trudno przejść obok tej opowieści obojętnie i odłożyć ołówek, którym zaznacza się cytat za cytatem. Pokłony w stronę tłumaczki, uchwyciła bezbłędnie cale to językowe piękno.
October 29, 2021
Three stars may be overstating my 'enjoyment' of this book. I quite liked 'Grove,' but 'River' is 'Grove' with any and all sense of movement or development eradicated. This one circles themes, and I'm not sure I can any longer be bothered with novels that circle themes and otherwise don't move. Honestly, you could read the chapters in almost any order, and have the same reading experience. It's also plutonium-dense with description, for which I have a very limited appetite, no matter how well done.
But there are certainly people who like that kind of thing, and they should absolutely love this book. It was very much worth writing, is well worth reading, and just isn't for me.
The less said about the idea of calling a chapter 'Transgression,' the better. I know all the kids are wearing '90s fashion again, but let's leave those ideas back where they, well, no, they didn't really belong then either.
But there are certainly people who like that kind of thing, and they should absolutely love this book. It was very much worth writing, is well worth reading, and just isn't for me.
The less said about the idea of calling a chapter 'Transgression,' the better. I know all the kids are wearing '90s fashion again, but let's leave those ideas back where they, well, no, they didn't really belong then either.
October 1, 2020
‘The River Lea [...] does not have a long journey. Rising among the low hills to the northwest of London, it flows through smiling countryside before reaching the frayed urban edgelands and snaking through endless suburbs […] flows into a Thames that is already bound for the sea. On its way, constantly brushing with the city and with the tales told along its banks...’
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I loved this strange novel, in which a woman explores the Lea Valley and its boundaries. Interspersed with her descriptions of London walks and the people she sees outside her flat each day are chapters on other rivers she has known, from the Rhine in Germany to the Ganges in India. I love this kind of writing, which is concerned with place, memory and environment and River is a really good example. In a bittersweet way it also took me back to the areas of East London which I miss. 4.5 stars.
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I loved this strange novel, in which a woman explores the Lea Valley and its boundaries. Interspersed with her descriptions of London walks and the people she sees outside her flat each day are chapters on other rivers she has known, from the Rhine in Germany to the Ganges in India. I love this kind of writing, which is concerned with place, memory and environment and River is a really good example. In a bittersweet way it also took me back to the areas of East London which I miss. 4.5 stars.
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