History friends... I need to know.

Another Peirene book club offering and, for the first time in living memory, a book which isn’t bleak and depressing. On first reading, I quite liked this one: it’s quick, light and a bit silly, about a young woman with a lovely speaking voice, who embarks on a new career as a private reader, offering to read her clients books of any sort. Like all of Peirene’s translations, the writing is beautiful, and it was a genuine relief to not have to read something soul-destroyingly depressing on a Wednesday.

BUT, and there is a but, the more I thought about it - the more we discussed it, the more I realised that I don't actually like it all that much. It’s stylish, yes, but it lacks substance - the narrative is chaotic, and themes and tropes that you think might be threads end up just being dead ends.

The biggest problem, though, is that this book is painfully obviously written by a man. I have no problem with men writing books, but this is written in the first person by a woman - and with even the slightest bit of pressure, the cracks show. The male gaze permeates the whole novella. A charitable reading might be that the protagonist has somehow internalised that perspective - the way that men perceive and value her - and that her experience mirrors that of a text, written as one thing and read as another. I wanted to believe that of it to start with but, in the end, I just wasn’t sure that Raymond Jean was capable of such sophistication. 

In short, this is wonderful for an hour’s diversion, but doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. 

“The Blue Room” by Hanne Ørstavik

Handpicked by Guardian literary critic Nicholas Lezard as one of the finest paperbacks of 2014, The Blue Room, or Like sant som jeg er virkelig in its original Norwegian title, was published by the admirable Peirene Press and quickly rose to the top of my TBR list over the Christmas period. The novella is written by an author who, despite received multiple awards and much acclaim in her native…