Book author: Fleur Jaeggy

There is nothing sweet about this novel. Though it is a short and quick read, every word resounds with a silent echo that makes the clean, sharp prose searing and intense.

Set in Switzerland, the narrator speaks of her time at various boarding schools and of one friend at a certain school in particular: Frédérique, a clever, beautiful girl who keeps her distance from the others. The narrator wants Frédérique for her own. Continue reading Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy, trans. by Tim Parks

The stories of this collection are undoubtedly precise. In their concision an air of disdainful melancholy hangs over the prose as if the terrors of ordinary life are too mundane to speak of and yet they must still be spoken of. Boredom, loneliness, sleeplessness, loss, all squirm under the surface of the characters who try so hard to make sense of it all that anger, violence or simple disinterest result.

Having only just finished reading the collection, I feel I must turn to the beginning and start again. There is an aesthetic quality, a vision that entices and repels me; it’s almost like learning the nuances of a new language: it takes study. Continue reading I am the brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy