Things We Never Knew by Hamish Whyte
(Shoestring Press, £10)
Hamish Whyte runs Edinburgh’s Mariscat Press, which has been turning out quality poetry pamphlets since the 1980s. He spends a lot of time scratching away at the "bookface", as he calls the infinite dusty archives of the National Library of Scotland. Whyte’s own poetry is immersed in what time has preserved. In his new collection he looks back over his shoulder at life. The title poem is about the small pieces of history that can be discovered when flicking through old photographs. I’m Telling You Now is a pastiche of 1960s song titles, which cleverly encapsulates that sunny era. His style is familiar, but sometimes too casual, as though he’s just passing the time of day with a neighbour. But his life is a rich country to explore, and he shows occasional flourishes of real skill, such as in Out Of Sorts, which reminds us that with age "we become more and more/ the sum of our small ailments".
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
(Serpent’s Tail, £8.99)
Elfriede Jelinek’s unnerving style is the first thing that hits you when reading this strange novel, originally published in 1983. It is written in a claustrophobic present tense and her sentences remake the world time and again. You read on with relish, even as the prose becomes darker and more morbid. Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory. Her day job is steeped in sophistication but outside the classroom she wanders the streets – a voyeur of voyeurs – taking in the grubby, low-down life of the porn industry. She lives with her manipulative mother, who is obsessed with Erika’s failure to become a renowned classical musician. When she starts teaching Walter Klemmer, an 18-year old womaniser, she starts to lose control. As Erika starts playing out her fantasies, he starts his pursuit. Born in Austria, Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. Read this story about the violence of love and you will understand why.
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