For Gabon, I read The Fury and Cries of Women by Angèle Rawiri, translated from the French by Sara Hanaburgh and wow, this book was INTENSE. It may not be the darkest book I’ve read for my quest–that award probably goes to The Piano Teacher (Austria) — but it definitely deserves an honorable mention.

I do not often gives trigger warnings, but this book basically needed trigger warnings at the beginning of every chapter. The story begins with a graphic and disturbing scene of a miscarriage and that’s just the beginning of all the bad shit that happens. When I was in high school, if I needed to “process my dark feelings,” I listened to Portishead. The Fury and Cries of Women is the closest literary equivalent I’ve ever found to Portishead’s energy.

This book was published in 1989, and Rawiri used it as a platform to discuss all sorts of difficult (and often taboo) subjects that faced African women in the 1980s, like infertility infidelity, tensions between older and younger generations, and feminism. It is a feminist novel, but it’s not the feminism I was taught as a young woman attending an all-girls Catholic high school in Los Angeles in the 1990s. That’s not to say this book’s version of feminism is “bad” or “wrong.” It’s just different, and yet another reminder of why my Read Around the World quest feels so urgent.

If you are a feminist looking for a challenging book, then I heartily recommend The Fury and Cries of Women, but I’m not going to be forcing this book on everyone I know and love. You have to be in the right mindset for it. Even though I wanted to read it, it was brutal and I had to read it as quickly as possible because this is the sort of book that drains my energy and leaves me feeling devastated for fictional women I’ll never meet.

For France, I read The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer.

There are a lot of gaps in my experience with French literature. I’ve read Proust, but not Victor Hugo; tons of Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas, but nothing by Jean-Paul Satre or Simone de Beauvoir, and the list of authors I have NOT read goes on and on, so embarrassingly long. Not for the first time, I lamented the fact that my high school literature classes were called “English” and we never ventured beyond American and British authors. I felt a little panic when I was choosing my book for France–so many options! how could I choose one?!–but then I remembered this does not have to be the last French book I will ever read. I am not in school and can read whatever I damn please and if that means crossing all the neglected French authors off my TBR list, than so be it! (But we should probably not tell Brazil that.)

When I learned that a female French author won the Nobel Prize in 2022, I knew I had to at least consider her books for this project. When I did a little digging and learned Ernaux’s work is known for blending autobiography with sociology, I knew I had found my author. My mom really wanted me to read Madame Bovary but my intuition was screaming for Ernaux, and when it comes to this quest, I never apologize for my intuition. Even when that means reading a biography about Eva Perón for Argentina instead of Borges or rejecting my mom’s suggestion for France.

We now interrupt this blog post for a brief tangent! As I continue my Read Around the World quest, I am becoming more and more convinced that I will someday turn this experience into a book, but this is just a foggy notion. The book’s anatomy has not yet emerged. Will it be memoir? Or something less personal that examines world literature? Or will I blend the two together? With those questions quietly humming in my mind’s background, I was naturally drawn to Ernaux. Okay, now back to our regular programming.

For my quest, I picked The Years, a personal narrative of the years 1941 to 2006 that feels like a collective memoir of France while also being a very intimate examination of Ernaux’s life. This is not your conventional memoir. It is told from different points of view, shifting between the first person plural “we,” which makes it feels like Ernaux was elected as spokeswoman for an entire generation of France, and the third person “she” which cultivates a sort of emotional detachment, like you would find in an academic paper. I loved both perspectives.

Like Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time (Belarus) and Aida Edemariam’s The Wife’s Tale (Ethiopia), this book presented a much more feminine version of history than was taught by my college professors twenty-five years ago. It’s the sort of history that speaks to my soul, shifting easily between international events and the domestic sphere. After all, history is so much more than who was in charge and what weapons were used during a particular battle.

We see through Ernaux’s astute observations how the experiences of her generation shifted over time. Sometimes, Ernaux examines old photographs of herself and describes her changing outfits, hair styles, and demeanor, so we see how she grows from small child to grandma. These descriptions were extra poignant for me because I read this book only a couple weeks after my parents’ house was completely destroyed by the Eaton Fire, turning most of my childhood photos to ash.

Other times, Ernaux describes the dinner conversations at family gatherings, and we see how the subjects change. When Ernaux is a small child, World War II was the focus of these gatherings, but as the decades passed and memories faded, talk shifted to new matters. While reading The Years, I found myself often ruminating on time, memory, and change and applauding the way Ernaux crafted such an original style.

By the time I reached the twentieth page of The Years, I knew I will have to read everything Ernaux has written. My intuition demands it and when it comes to reading, my intuition knows her stuff.

For Finland, I read Fishing for the Little Pike by Juhani Karila, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers. This novel was my introduction to the Finnish Weird genre and here’s the description on the back of my edition:

In this utterly original, genre-defying, English-language debut from Finnish author Juhani Karila, a young woman’s annual pilgrimage to her home in Lapland to catch an elusive pike in three days is complicated by a host of mythical creatures, a murder detective hot on her trail, and a deadly curse hanging over her head.

If that description sounds intriguing, then this book is probably your jam. If not, move along. (If you are my cousin Julie, then you should read this. If you are my ninth grade English teacher Jill, definitely not.)

As the title suggests, this story has a major fishing storyline, and fishing is not something that I find interesting. I can usually summon at least a spark of curiosity for most subjects, but not fishing unless it’s part of a true crime story but then, let’s be honest: my curiosity is 100% about the true crime, and 0% about the bait or tackle or whatever that crap is called. The author’s passion for fishing, however, had me “hooked” and I was allowed to understand why some folks are intensely passionate about this sport. (And no, I will not apologize for that shameless pun.)

The author has a matter-of-fact writing style that sometimes veers into the poetic and is generously seasoned with dark humor. For example:

From the time she was in diapers, Young Lady Ylijaako always had her nose in a book. That oughta’ve been a red flag that the Filthy One had been having his way with her soul. No normal person reads that much.

Fishing for the Little Pike by Juhani Karila, pg. 136.

I don’t want to spoil the story, but there were a ton of delightfully quirky human characters having hilarious encounters with equally weird mythic characters. Over in the comments section of my video review for this book, I was told that the mythological characters (the knacky, a raskel that wants to go fishing, stripe foots, a wraith, and the fracas) are part of Finnish mythology, and now, I must make an embarrassing confession. Before my Read Around the World quest, I honestly thought I knew a lot about world mythology, but actually, I was really only familiar with Greek gods and heroes, a little bit of Viking lore, and Paul Bunyan of blue ox fame. How silly of me. My inner mythological landscape has been changing with this quest, adding in the likes of Baba Yaga and scheming talking animals from Bhutan. Thank god I have now met some of the mythological monsters of Lapland.

My life definitely needs a lot more Finnish Weird.