Broken Glass (original 2005; edition 2011)

New purchases this week.....

[English Voices] - Peter Ackroyd - I'll be reading this for my Reading the Prime Meridian challenge
[A Lifetime's Reading: An Introductory Guide to Five Hundred Great Classics of World Literature for a Private Library] by Phillip Ward. Have just skimmed the intro and its a bit of an odd book. Ward is a librarian so this is his list of books everyone should read. It's organised by year - you're supposed to read 10 a year....

Two I picked up from a charity shop....at bargain price
[Sovereign] by C J Sansom. This is the third in the series featuring the lawyer Matthew Shardake. I read the first [Dissolution] earlier this month and enjoyed it hugely. So I just have to get book 2 now.

[Alexandria Quartet] - one of the books in Anthony Burgess's [Ninety Nine Best Novels] ( )

This book is written as the book the main character is writing as he sits in a bar in the Congo. With that in mind there are two things to remember. Firstly you may not like the writing style- huge paragraphs full of single sentences broken up with commas. This is jarring at first but you will get used to it and find the strange rhythm at the heart of this book. Was that pretentious enough for you? Secondly there are some surprisngly graphic and some might say vulgar episodes described here which may shock. That said this is a rare slice of life from a country we rarely get to glimpse in the Western world and for that it should be applauded. ( )

My expectations were high, after reading a NYT BkRev. I recall "new voice" and an indication of depth. Unfortunately, the philistine interpretation of depth is just another word for violent, and new voice is nothing but a bitter voice--which is certainly not new.
What this book has going for it is a clear an authentic voice, albeit not original nor new. Likewise the actions and motives of the characters ring true as well. Yet, not enough of the geo-political dynamics are brought into play to make this book about the Cameroon or Nigeria. It is a story about people. In that fishbowl, did the people evolve?
This is a book about a peter-pan man who enchantment is worn too thin to support their lives any longer as the monkey on their back is more persistent. Rather than rid themselves of the monkey the moniker of the blame they put on the women in their lives, who they mistakenly think they are loving, when they wield their penises. This is how the men began and ended. Since the book is not about the women, the fact they abandoned these men is not critical to the story. ( )

Alain Mabanckou (1966-) is a Francophone Congolese author who was educated in Brazzaville and Paris, moved to the US to teach at the University of Michigan in 2002, and currently is a professor in the Department of French and Francophone studies at UCLA. He has written six volumes of poetry and six novels; to date only African Psycho and Broken Glass have been translated into English. He has won several literary prizes, including the Prix Renaudot in 2006 for Memoires de porc-épic (Memoirs of a Porcupine) and the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for his first novel Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (Blue-White-Red). Last month Broken Glass received the French-Israeli Literary Prize at the Jerusalem International Book Fair.

Broken Glass is the nickname of an elderly regular at the 'Credit Gone West', a dive in a seedy Congolese town. He spends his days getting drunk on palm wine and eating bicycle chicken, after his drinking habits cause him to lose his teaching position, his wife of many years, and ultimately his home. The owner of the bar, the Stubborn Snail, recognizes his love of literature and gives him a notebook to record the history of the bar and its customers. The regulars eagerly tell Broken Glass of their conquests and downfalls, and he records them in narrative form. Broken Glass is an unreliable narrator, and the men embellish their stories for posterity, each claiming that his story is the most tragic and vital.

The characters are colorful but vulgar and pathetic, but Broken Glass tells their stories with great humor and wit, with numerous references to literature and popular culture. He also includes his own story, including his plan to reunite with his late mother.

This was a most enjoyable read, and I'll be looking forward to the release of his other books in English. ( )