Buddy Read for June 2019: Asja Bakić's Mars

[Bill]

Please join me and Marie-Therese for our June Buddy Read: Asja Bakić's Mars!

A quick selection of reviews:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
https://locusmag.com/2019/04/ian-mond...

Mars is available as an ebook and on paper.

Let's try to start early to mid next week!

[Marie-Therese]

Thanks, Bill, for the thread! I have this loaded and ready to go and have already dipped into the first story. Very zippy, propulsive style in that first tale. I look forward to reading the rest.

[Benjamin]

Thanks for sharing the link Mimi. I read the story. It was ok.. not enough there to entice me from my current reading exploits. Perhaps another time, I will give Bakic's another look. I hope you guys enjoy it.

[Benjamin]

Yeah... I'm a little hesitant to pick this story apart, as I completely acknowledge that certain nuance and ambiguity in language might have been lost in translation from the original Croatian, but something very much felt missing from this piece. Mind you... I certainly like subtlety and ambiguity, a la Aickman... but this story really didn't do it for me.

[Bill]

Just finished "Daytrip to Durmitor". It's a breezy, clever, and entertaining tale about the afterlife, not what I expected.

According to wikipedia, Durmitor is a beautiful mountainous area in Montenegro. I can't find any direct references to death, but again from wikipedia, it means "sleeping place" in Balkan Romance-Vlach.

[Bill]

I actually quite enjoyed "The Talus of Madame Liken". Yes, it's light and elusive, but that seems to be Bakic's style (at least from the early stories in the collection). Reminds me a little of the Laird Hunt novel we read here months ago. And I do like the constantly evolving exchange regarding the young man who died in the first paragraph.

I'm having trouble with "talus" in the title. It may refer to (among other things) an ankle bone, or a sloping heap of rocks. Or maybe just a distortion of "tale"? Hmm.

[Benjamin]

Oh that's interesting Bill... I will absolutely agree that Talus was pretty light, although I found it to be actually fairly straightforward and linearly conveyed... I don't think I had to do much out of the box thinking on this one, as it seemed pretty clear what was happening between the two women vis a vis their hobbies/vocations. I think where I thought the the story failed was in its ability to convey a sense of dread or menace. The flat and monochromatic dialogue between the two women really muted the effect. Just my two cents though. I did like the setting though and thought Bakic's did a reasonably good job at conveying a sense of remoteness and dreariness.

Is her prose style similar for the rest of the stories you have read?

[Bill]

I can see how the ending of "Talus" might be annoying. The last sentence was probably unnecessary. Maybe even the one before that?

I liked the flat exchanges between the two women. No one came out and admitted to having anything to do with the deaths, but it was relatively clear what happened. If one of them had said something like "I killed etc", it would have killed the story for me.

[Benjamin]

Oh no doubt... but I'm not suggesting that such an on the nose admission should have been made in the dialogue, just that a richer dialogue in this particular case, could have added more nuance and even depth to this narrative. Having such a lifeless dialogue did little to enrich the narrative... just a missed opportunity in my opinion.

That being said...what effect was actually achieved by this story, if any?

At the end of the day though... we are really talking about style here... and I think her style, through this specific story, made little impression on me.

[Bill]

Turns out not all the stories are like "Talus" after all. I was blindsided by "Asja 5.0" and "Carnivore". Marie-Therese, what's your take on these?

Then the next story, "Passions", starts like this:

For a long time I didn't know whether Vanja was a man or a woman.

Hmmmm.

[Marie-Therese]

Bill wrote: "Turns out not all the stories are like "Talus" after all. I was blindsided by "Asja 5.0" and "Carnivore". Marie-Therese, what's your take on these?."

Just a quick note to say that I finished this book, that I really, really enjoyed it, and that I'll be back to write more on it a bit later (pressed for time right now but want to stress how good this is and how worth reading).