Sam’s Comments (group member since Nov 09, 2023)

Sam’s comments from the NYRB Classics group.

I will not begin this novel till January but thought I would open the topic to post the review from The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[This is the Topic for the January/February read of book:Effingers|223641781] by Gabriele Tergit translated
by Sophie Duvernoy 864pp

Three generations of German Jewish family undergo the tumult, upheaval, and brutality of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history in this panoramic and skillfully nuanced family drama, rich with gossip and incident, capturing a Germany now lost to time.

Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers is a novel both epic and intimate as it chronicles the lives and fates of three generations of a German Jewish family. Beginning from 1878—the year after the narrative of Buddenbrooks ends—and ending in 1948, we follow the Effingers, a family of modest craftsmen from southern Germany, who are joined through marriage to two families of high-society financiers in Berlin, the Goldschmidts and the Oppners.

The Effingers soon rise to prominence as one of the most important German industrialist families in Berlin, but with the outbreak of World War I, they fall on hard times, and must then navigate the tumultuous changes of the Weimar Republic.

Full of parties and drama and the most delicious gossip, and featuring a kaleidoscopic cast of unforgettable characters, Effingers is a vibrant and keenly observed account of German Jewish life in all its richness and complexity. Tergit’s journalistic precision and limpid prose dazzle in Sophie Duvernoy’s elegant, fluid translation.

Criminally underrated when it first came out in 1951, and only in recent years undergoing rediscovery, Effingers is a searching meditation on identity and nationality that establishes Tergit as one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century.

I am beginning this today and am curious if any of you are reading the Brother's Grimm fairy tale first? I was going to go right to the novel and then read the Grimms' story, but curious if anyone had a preference.

I had finally finished my November read of Malicroix which in truth wore me out a bit by the end. It is a wonderful example of an early Gothic novel but I needed more and the the last chapter took me out of my read. Still it was enjoyable enough for the topic and I ma now beginning the Juniper Tree.

Reviews

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
https://www.newyorker.com/books/secon...
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025...

Lucy Scholes on reprinting Barbara Comyns:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...

Articles on Barbara Comyns or The Juniper Tree:
https://lithub.com/the-literary-outsi...

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-...

Links to The Juniper Tree by The Brothers Grimm nad Wikipedia article:

https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm047...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jun...

Our December group read is :
The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns Sadie Stein (Introduction)

Bella Winter has hit a low. Homeless and jobless, she is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didn’t quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, she’s recently disentangled herself from a selfish and indifferent boyfriend and a cruel and indifferent mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comyns’s other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As Comyns’s novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Brothers Grimm’s macabre tale The Juniper Tree. Will Bella’s hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others?

Effingers by Gabriele Tergit and translated by Sophie Duvernoy has won a tight race in the poll for the January read. I was looking forward to any of the nominated books but like that a recent release was chosen since I think it shows NYRB is continuing to publish material the readers want to read. I am looking forward to this in January. There was only two votes maximum separating the top four books which also shows that NYRB is consistent in offering what the readers enjoy.

Last day for voting on the January group read. Pretty tight race at the moment.

At the halfway point of Malicroix, and loving the atmospheric nature. The novel is a twentieth century attempt at an early Gothic Romantic novel with a setting in the early nineteenth century on a weather ravaged island of Rhone river in the Camargue region of Southern France.

Well we are near the end of the month and I am finally getting to Malicroix. I need to prioritize my NYRB reads closer to the beginning of the month.

THe winner of the poll by twice the number of votes as A Time for Everything was The Juniper Tree!! I will add a group topic for this book in December. A Time for Everything did quite well and I will see it makes the nominations again soon. Alas, Diver did not have much support It still remains one of my must reads in the near future.

Our X-MAS tree titled novel is in front by several votes at the moment.

Paula wrote: "Yes please 🙂"

Excellent! The book not only has a bit of a Christmas theme if we stretch the meaning, but also might be considered preliminary reading for the author's "Morning Star series currently in progress.

Paula wrote: "I just received an email…40% discount on books, which includes some of their distributed presses. Any interest for A Time for Everything by Knausgaard?"

Did you wish to make this a nomination Paula? I think since NYRB is publishing Archipelago books it is welcome nad am glad to include it.

Today is the last day for nominations for December.

Last year we read Lies and Sorcery. I thought it might be fitting to try another publication with a higher page count from NYRB with the hope that the group read will help motivate us to get through another of these longer books. I am limiting the selections to three books published by NYRB Classics in 2025, one book from 2024, and one book from 2019 which begins a series that will be completed in 2025.

Effingers Gabriele Tergit 864pp
A Fortunate Man Henrik Pontoppidan
880 pp
Bomarzo Manuel Mujica Lainez 688pp
Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800 François-René de Chateaubriand 584pp
Chevengur Andrei Platonov

Any comments would be welcome. I will post a poll for the January 2026 group read as soon as the December poll closes.

I nominate Driver by Mattia Filice. This is just released from NYRB. 368pp but should read faster being a mix of poetry and prose.

A bracing novel of hybrid prose-poetry about a man who runs a high-speed train in France, the rail strikes and monotony and sometimes sheer intensity of the job, and the hypnotic effects of the work on his mind—a story born out of the author’s experience as a real-life train driver.

Sorry to be late with this. I was weighing whether to just select a book for December or to have nominations since it is a holiday month for many and I figured participation to be low. But let's have a brief nominations period followed by a quick vote. Nominations will run from today through 11/16/2025 followed by a vote from 11/17/2025 through 11/20/2025.
No specific topic this month.

I have been in a slight reading slum that has set me back in my reading but am now trying to push through. I will start Malicroix today but will be reading it slowly at first.

I won't start Malicroix till next weekend.

In the meantime, 1) Do any of you have a favorite haunted house story now or ghost story published by NYRB? 2) How about a favorite classic published by anyone? 3) What is a favorite film in the genre? 4) Why do you love ghost/haunted house stories?
5) Do you have a personal ghost or haunted house experience you would like to relate?

My answers to the first four, and I will cheat:

1) A) "The Jolly Corner,' The New York Stories of Henry James Henry James This is not as famed as "The Turn of the Screw," but quite eerie in the same ambiguous way.
B) Troubles J.G. Farrell This may not be known as a haunted house story but the mansion was creepy as hell. And what an ending!!

2) Another tie between A) The Haunting of Hill House and B) We Have Always Lived in the Castle both by Shirley Jackson

3) I will pick a film from this year's viewing. The Conjuring, directed by James Wan. 2013 My runner up would be the TV episodes, collected films, and spinoffs of the Addams Family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq_et...

4) The first answer is the thrill, the stirring of fear, but there also seems a desire to to put order and explanation to the unexplained. The Haunted House story allows that theme to be played out in our imaginations perhaps consoling us from the prospect of the real unexplained questions.

Number five I will address in another post.

I am not going to put up a separate folder for this month's group read since the choice of book is up to the reader. We can continue to use this folder for any thoughts on our books or the them in general.