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• W4230039088 abstract "terse prose perfectly captures the lives of these sad and forgotten outcasts from this small island nation. Melissa Beck Woodstock Academy, Connecticut Lidija Dimkovska. A Spare Life. Trans. Christina E. Kramer. San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2016. 532 pages. Zlata, a Siamese twin conjoined at the head to her sister, Srebra, is the unlikely protagonist of Macedonian writer Lidija Dimkovska’s remarkable novel A Spare Life. The girls’ names in Macedonian— “zlata” means gold and “srebra,” silver— ironically contradict the misfortune of their deformity. The twins grow up in the 1980s in a squalid Skopje apartment with parents who are ill-equipped emotionally and financially to meet the challenges of raising them. The girls’ mother is a caustic, miserly woman who never shows love, only resentment, toward her daughters; their father is withdrawn and emasculated by his domineering wife and the daily struggle of providing for his family while the country breaks apart. Neighbors encountering the twins cross themselves, brandish the evil eye, or spit over their left shoulders to ward off the evil and bad luck that afflicts the girls. Dimkovska’s memorable depiction of the twins’ claustrophobic existence is riveting . The girls’ conjoined heads restrict nearly all of their physical movements— bending, stepping, or turning by one requires the other, instantaneously, to do the same. Even going to the bathroom is a shared project: one sits on a trashcan next to the toilet while the other empties herself. Dimkovska’s depiction of the girls’ dismal lives is leavened with wry humor, as when Zlata concludes that replicating Sylvia Plath’s suicide would be impossible because standard-size ovens offer too little space to stuff two heads. The girls live with the awful reality that their joined bodies subjugate their separate, individual personalities, and the psychological consequences of this are enormous. Srebra enrolls in law school, forcing Zlata to become a law student as well. And when Srebra falls in love with Darko, Zlata is unable to absent herself from their every kiss and intimacy. Each girl is the other’s unwilling captor, and this fact erases nearly all sibling affection . The two cannot even argue properly because in order to make eye contact with one another they must be facing a mirror. Dimkovska explores these nightmarish burdens with sensitivity and beautifully articulated writing that shines in Christina Kramer’s translation. The twins decide to undergo a high-risk separation surgery when they are twentyfour . The procedure’s uncertain outcome parallels the existential threat facing Macedonia from ethnic hatreds roiling it. Through these intersecting public and personal tragedies, A Spare Life poignantly reveals universal truths about the inability to ever become completely severed from the circumstances of your birth. (Editorial note: Turn to page 54 to read an interview with Dimkovska.) Lori Feathers Dallas, Texas Laia Fàbregas. Landing. Trans. Samantha Schnee. Madrid. Hispabooks. 2016. 200 pages. Landing is a multifaceted book, written under two simple chapter headings, “Her” and “Him,” alternately throughout the book. These chapters develop the individual characters and allow the parallel stories to unravel little by little. The novel can be read from the beginning chapter starting on page 5 straight through to the last sentence of the final chapter or by following each character in their alternate chapters. Either way works and both ways add meaning to the title of the novel as each character searches for his/ her ultimate destination, getting on or off the train/plane at the appropriate moment in their life’s trajectory. Landing follows two sets of episodes of their characters’ lives. These are two distinct people who meet on the first page without realizing their parallel connections , searching for answers to their lives’ questions. She, a Dutch woman, travels often to Spain in her quest to find the “angel” who pulled her out of the burning family car. He, a Spaniard, traveled to Holland searching for work in the mid-twentieth century. On their first meeting, both are on their way back to Holland, she after yet another unsuccessful trip and he after many years away from the country where he met his wife, now deceased. She is the child of parents killed in a car accident, and..." @default.
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