Alex Capus

In Almost Like Spring, Capus tells the riveting story of a series of bank robberies in Switzerland in the mid-1930s. He begins the book like this:

This is the true story of Kurt Sandweg and Waldemar Velte, two bank robbers who set off for India from Wuppertal in the winter of 1933/34, intending to travel there by sea. They only got as far as Basel, where they fell in love with a shop assistant who sold gramophone records and bought a tango disc from her every day. My maternal grandmother went show more for a walk with the bank robbers on two occasions. A police squad almost shot my grandfather in open countryside because he vaguely resembled one of them.

This is the fourth novel I’ve read and enjoyed written by Capus who writes in a kind of oral storytelling tradition and with an irresistible “charm” (someone else’s word, not mine). He often writes about real people or events in history but when rendered in his style, the stories seem almost-but-not-quite legend or folktale-like, the effect lends us the space to see something…well…different. Reading his short novels, the four that are available in translation, has been pure pleasure and I look forward to reading more. show less

After reading and very much enjoying Alex Capus’s Leon and Louise last year, I went in search of more of his work in translation and found this novel, which I have equally enjoyed.

In a fictionalized account of very real events, Anton Ruter, a master shipwright, and his team build a steamship for the Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1913, that is then immediately dismantled and transported by ship and rail in pieces to Lake Tanganyika, in German East Africa. The shipbuilding team is sent along to show more rebuild the ship, which they hope to do within a year and then return home to their families.

Meanwhile, in England, Churchill sends two decrepit, mahogany gun boats named Mimi and Toutou, along with the eccentric Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simpson (and perhaps a motley crew), to the other side of the very same lake, in the Belgian Congo. But not before they have to transport the two boats by ship to South Africa and then overland through the African bush. The game plan changes when World War I begins ...

Some of the content of this short novel has been covered in other books, both in fiction and nonfiction, but Swiss author Alex Capus has given it to us as a kind of farce*, a type of comedy where “in which all rules of propriety, likelihood, and common sense are equally violated.” Where the real and the fictional lines are drawn in the details, I don’t know, but while the absurdities of war are certainly on show here, and the set up is certainly farcical, the author also deftly manages to elicit sympathy for the often colorful characters involved. A Matter of Time is an excellent little novel that is both interesting and entertaining. Capus is now two for two with me. Note: I couldn't help but picture John Cleese as Spicer-Simpson while reading the book... show less

Set in France beginning in 1918, Léon and Louise is a wonderfully diverting love story. Told by Léon's grandson as family history or, perhaps, family folktale, the story (all 265 pages) is filled with a wry humor.

When we first meet Léon Le Gall he is 17—no, that's not true—when we first meet Léon he's in a casket, dead. It's his funeral and all of his family is in attendance in the cathedral of Notre Dame waiting for the priest to arrive:

Then, far behind us, a little side door show more beside the main entrance opened with a faint creak. We turned to look. Streaming in through the widening gap came the light of a warm spring morning and the sounds of the Rue de la Cité. A small grey figure wearing a bright red foulard slipped into the nave....The front row of pews in Notre Dame was vibrating with suppressed excitement. Could the new arrival really be Mademoiselle Janvier? Had she really dared to turn up? The womenfolk looked rigidly to the front again and stiffened their backs as if the coffin and the eternal light over the high altar where their sole focus of attention. But we men, who knew our women, realized that they were tensely listening to the staccato click of the little footsteps that made their way sideways into the central aisle. They then performed a ninety-degree turn and, without the least hesitation, without any ritardando or accelerando, pressed on with the regular beat of a metronome. Those of us who were peering out of the corner of our eye could then see a little woman, light-footed as a young girl, climb the two red-carpeted steps to the foot of the coffin, rest her right hand on the side, and silently move along it to the head, where she at last came to a halt and remained for several seconds, almost like a soldier standing at attention. She raised her veil and bent over. Spreading her arms and supporting herself on the sides of the coffin, she kissed my grandfather on the forehead and rested her cheek against his waxen visage as if intending to stay there for a while. She did so with her face in full view, not protectively averted in the direction of the altar. This enabled us to see that her eyes were closed and that her red, carefully made-up lips were curved in a smile that grew steadily broader until they parted to emit an inaudible chuckle.

She released the dead man at the last and resumed her erect stance. Taking her handbag from the crook of her arm, she opened it and quickly removed a circular, dully glinting object the size of a fist. This, as we were to discover soon afterwards, was an old bicycle bell....Having closed the handbag and replaced it in the crook of her arm, she rang the bell twice. Rri-ing. Rri-ing. While the sound went echoing down the nave, she deposited the bell in the coffin, then turned and looked us in the eye, one after the other...When she got to the far right she gave us a triumphant smile and set off. Heels clicking, she hurried past the family and down the central aisle to the exit.

Leon is a bit of an everyman, moderate in most things, with a penchant for collecting up odd, cast-off items; while Louise is a bit of a spitfire. As we see in an early bicycle scene, Leon has to apply some effort to keep up with her. The story, which spans two world wars and beyond, is captivating and nimble, without sentimentality and syrup, and often makes one smile or chuckle. I'll not spoil it for you with an extensive plot summary, except to say that the two are more apart than they are together—you've read the ending, which is also the beginning, now go read the rest.

** I've tried to edit a bit out of the excerpt at an attempt at brevity, without much luck. What you are missing, as indicated by that very first ellipsis, is a brief detour by the narrator as he gives a general description and history of the Le Gall men. show less

One (dis)advantage of being a member of a book club is that you get to read books you would not select yourself. You get to know new authors (you might not bother about otherwise), new topics that might (not) interest you.
Reading about Sevilla bar in Olten is an eye-opening experience (to keep on reading one needs to constantly open the eyes that are trying to close). The bar owner is a likeable character with a lot of (somewhat) funny stories to tell. As a lifelong small-town resident he show more has many local friends (nearly all of them he cannot stand) and loyal customers (most of whom have nothing to say). They are lonely people glued to their mobile phones and beers. He is not like them, he refuses to get a mobile phone and he is a perfect family man, a loving father (rarely exchanging more than one sentence a day with his three sons) and husband (regularly calling his wife “you - stupid cow”).
I will likely (never) read another book of this author. I have to admit I did laugh out loud a few times (somewhat unexpectedly to myself). show less