Louise Kennedy, Trespasses ***

Trespasses tells the story of an affair between a young Catholic barmaid and an older Protestant barrister during the "The Troubles" in Belfast. Kennedy creates a convincing sense of the time and place, of the mental calculations necessary during everyday life. The narrative is generic and predictable, following the contours of any number of tragedies involving extramarital affairs and star-crossed lovers. 

R.F. Kuang, Babel *** 1/2

Babel advertises itself as a fantasy novel about the power inherent in the act of translation, but it's really an alternate history about the moral complexities of colonialism and revolt. The fantastical element is an energy generated when one inscribes each side of a silver bar with related words from multiple languages: the bar manifests the difference in meaning. It's an interesting idea, the physical manifestation of an incorporeal force like the daemons in His Dark Materials, but it's a MacGuffin. The story is an alternate version of events leading to the Opium Wars between Britain and China.

The full title is Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. The writing level and style are comparable to the Harry Potter books, with Oxford standing in for Hogwarts and Empire in place of Voldemort. Kuang does an excellent job of showing the radicalization of its main character Robin, and of communicating the tangled motivations of the colonizers and colonized. Our heroes' dilemmas have real weight. 

Reinhold Messner, My Life at the Limit ***

Reinhold Messner is as well known for his controversies as he is for his mountaineering exploits. He established the lightweight "alpine" style for high-altitude mountaineering and was the first person to summit all fourteen 8000-meter peaks –– many of them solo because he alienated all of his climbing partners.

Messner is listed as the author of My Life and the Limit, but it really a collection of interviews with the journalist Thomas Hüetlin. That's both good and bad. On the plus side, Hüetlin asks challenging questions that Messner would surely have glossed over in a traditional autobiography. On the down side, the format prevents Messner from elaborating on his worldview.

I've said before that the most interesting part of mountaineering stories is the psychology of the adventurer. My Life at the Limit assumes some familiarity with Messner's achievements and gives him the opportunity to explain his side of various controversies. Collectively, his answers paint a picture of a driven man who so relishes overcoming difficulties that he creates difficulties for himself. How is it possible that so many former partners tell lies about him?

Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone ***

I loved the first two chapters of Go, Went, Gone. In the first chapter, our protagonist Richard ponders his retirement as a classics professor.

He doesn't know how long it'll take him to get used to having time. In any case, his head still works just the same as before. What's he going to do with the thoughts still thinking away inside his head? ... The thinking is what he is, and at the same time it's the machine that governs him. Even if he's all alone with his head now, he can't just stop thinking, obviously. ... All these objects surrounding him form a system and have meaning only as long as he makes his way among them with his habitual gestures –– and once he's gone, they'll drift apart and be lost.

The second chapter introduces the group of African refugees protesting in front of Berlin Town Hall and sees them from a variety of perspectives, including the Berliners in the health club across the square.

Behind the windows they would see people on bicycles and people running, bicycling and running toward the enormous windows hour after hour, as if trying to ride or run across to Town Hall as quickly as possible, to declare their solidarity with one or the other side...

These chapters quietly establish parallels between the plight of the refugees, Richard's retirement, and the disappearance of East Germany. 

This introduction and Erpenbeck's reputation gave me high hopes for the novel. After the strong beginning, though, the story doesn't have much new to say and becomes one of those stories where a rich white guy learns compassion from the trauma of black immigrants.