Third day - Irena Rey

I read 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft a couple of months ago for my book group (yes, this is how far behind the reviews are). I knew I was going to love it after the first page, and even more so when I discovered she had translated for Olga Tokarczuk. I was perturbed to discover that most people in the book group did not like it very much (more book group issues to come).

So the book is about a group of translators who are going to stay with their author, Irena Rey, to work on her next book. This is her routine, to get them all together so she can supervise ... and control. In the first part of the book they are all just referred to by their language, as the story progresses they learn each other's real names. While the book appears here in English the story is being written by the Spanish translator (presumably in Spanish), and then of course translated by the English translator, a woman who is of course a character in the story. Others in the group did not like the 'translator footnotes', but I enjoyed the light it shone on the relationship between the two women. It's all about the layers. There is lots of talk about translation, and about literature. It's a very intellectual book, lots of obscure references, and vocabulary that I was not familiar with. It starts out kind of normal but then Irena disappears, and her husband, who usually takes care of the domestic stuff, is absent. The translators don't know what to do with themselves. They flail around waiting for her to return, but she doesn't. It wasn't until weeks after the meeting (shows it was a good book because I was still thinking about it) that it occurred to me that it was a grown up version of Lord of the Flies. They are dumped in a strange, scary environment (the house is on the edge of a strange and forbidding forest) without the usual support, they forage for food in the forest, leaders emerge, they create their own rituals, they explore their environment, rivalries develop ... and someone dies falling off a cliff. The whole book had a surreal, dreamlike quality, nothing they thought they knew about Irena or each other turns out to be true.

None of the quotes I noted down seem to make any sense now so I'm just going to give you this long bit because I feel it captures the atmosphere of the book. Book club people didn't like the 'descriptive' bits either so I was left wondering what they wanted from their reading:

"Dawn was impending; already the sky was blueish grey. I took Tropinka Street out of the village, east into the national park, walking carefully so as not to crush any of the infinitesimal frogs that burst from the pine needles half a dozen at a time; like translators, perhaps, they were invisible other than in motion. I shuddered to think what bad luck it would be ifI were to crush an infinitesimal being underfoot.

Because I didn't feel confident in my ability to detect the kugans and other unmarked graves around the forest, I determined to limit my purview to the known dead. Still, I wanted to feel at least a little brave, so I set out for a place I'd never been but that I'd read about, a so-called place of national memory about three kilometres away.

As I walked, I saw that some of the trees wore more strange symbols, white lines with red between them; their paint was fading, chipped. A massive sign at a crossroads listed all the things you weren't allowed to do inside the national park part of the forest: hunt mushrooms, smoke cigarettes, stray from the official path. Yet on either side of the official path the forest floor was soft with moss, opulent, beckoning, extending an almost opiate effect.

To my left, I saw smoke rising, and I strayed a little from the path. Beams of light that were so bright they seemed opaque, almost solid, embraceable, had touched down upon a mossy stump. the rest o0f the tree lay in the grass, the exposed wood rough as though after an explosion - just as Petra had seen in her dream.

I squatted beside it, searching for the fire. But there was no fire, and the smoke must have been steam, abundant and unfurling, the metamorphosing dew the moss had gathered overnight. I watched it a while: It was beautiful, but it was also disturbing. I decided to take a picture, not to keep as a souvenir, but to study later, after I was fully awake.

When I pressed the shutter circle on the screen of my iPhone, the artificial click dispelled any lingering ease. I rose from the ground and felt wild as a hunted animal. Leshy or the archer could be anywhere, I realised - in the moss, in the mushrooms, in the trees. I thought I heard steps, or something that sounded like steps. It was a deer, I told myself. Just red deer grazing.

I remembered the path, and then I saw it, and without thinking of the tiny frogs I leaped across the moss field and retook it. I began walking quickly without allowing myself to turn around. I knew that this was happening because I lost my lucky acorn, and because I had failed to understand Irena, and most of all because none of us had acted - had ever acted - -in time. The steps got louder, and I took off at a run." (p.149-150)

Stay safe. Be kind. May see you later with more books.