Paul Fulcher's Reviews > I Am the Brother of XX

This is something of a "it's not you it's me" review as Fleur Jaeggy is clearly a wonderful talented writer, but this type of abstract short story isn't really to my taste, indeed had it not come as part of my And Other Stories subscription (a publisher I am proud to support), it is a book I would have been unlikely to read.

So despite the two star review, an author I would still recommend to others. Rather than my review below, I would instead direct the reader to:

1. One of my favourite stories in the collection - Perfect Choice - which is available in full on the Granta website, as a way to sample her work. https://granta.com/perfect-choice/

2. A review by someone far more erudite and better able to appreciate the book than me:
http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2017/07...

This from Joseph's review captures the experience of reading Jaeggy's contradictory style brilliantly

There is an unmistakable current of brisk, melancholic foreboding that courses beneath the surface of her prose. The chill can make you shudder, the stark beauty of her terse sentences catch your breath. Atmospheric. Disconcerting. And strangely alluring. It is a rare author who manages to sustain an emotionally intense voice that is at once distinct, abstracted, and tightly restrained.

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Jaeggy herself is a fascinating writer and well connected in literary circles with e.g. Thomas Bernhard, Italo Calvino, Ingeborg Bachmann (a strong friend) and Roberto Calasso (who she married). But she has a Ferrante like attitude to the role of the author in the interpretation of her work once published, as in this interview: http://tankmagazine.com/issue-71/talk...

Interviewer: Silence is omnipresent in your work; it’s the dense, cohesive medium of your stories, like highly leaded glass. In your stories, pervasive quietness is often cruel, brutal. A breeding ground for violence – and creativity?

FJ I believe you can almost write without me. Once I have finished a book, it doesn’t count any more; I don’t want anything to do with it any more. A little idea occurs to me now: about ten years ago I was in Germany, near Berlin, for a few months, and there I had a good friend – a swan. His name was Erich. I called him from my window, “Erich! Erich!” And he came. We took long walks together. This swan is very important to me. There were other people around, but he knew when I would get up, and he would come out of the water to see me. One time, someone in the park asked me, “Is this your swan?” In the winter, he swam under the ice.

Certain images reoccur in the collection - e.g. she is oddly fond of 'swamp green' as a colour of choice for clothes. Another was flowers, particularly purple orchids, mentioned in three stories - the quotes below giving a good feel for her work:

The walls of the room are bare, white and harsh. Bald. A sort of baldness adorns her rooms. On the bedside table is a little bell that hasn't been used for years now. In the corner of the room a bouquet. Regula prefers 'a bouquet' to 'a bunch of flowers.' About certain words she has prejudices. They are variegated orchids, minuscule, tattooed, humid. Who were they once? What were there intentions when they grew hidden in ravines and shadows? Once there were pictures on the walls. Regula can no longer bear to see art hanging on the walls.
(The Gentleman and the Lizard)

I bought little orchid plants. They came from Holland. From South America. I had seen them in the Mediterranean. Growing in the damp. White, with purple eyelets. Rosy, pale, an evil expression. Acidulous. Yellow. They last a long time. Not much earth. Not much nourishment. They reawaken in the dark, at night. Avid for company. When they wilt, they become small skulls in tuxedos. Tiny night birds. They look at me. I look at them.
(Agnes)

There was absolute stillness. An enamel landscape, innocuous, mute. And he, the boy, felt so well, in the shadowy peace. In the light malaise in the air. The flush of spring, the scent was nauseating, tainted and too strong. The solemn and glorious instant just before dissolution. In a field he saw flowers with small purple wounds. Tattooed flowers. A minuscule branding, such as is used on herds, or linens. Someone must have marked them as they went by. But who? He didn’t care. The flowers were coming back before his eyes, before his door. He had shut them out. When the vision faded, he saw the wall. He opened the door.

The mother was there, holding a tray. ‘I made you some dinner.’ Shellfish and something pink, boiled and grey, with two holes. His mother liked foods he couldn’t stand. Such as fish, for instance. No one could deceive him as to freshness. There are those who have an inborn gift for not being deceived in life. Neither by food gone bad nor by the Holy Ghost. She was pleased if the butcher gave her a beautiful cut of meat. And so, in the end, she was pleased with the death of her son. With the perfect choice. Understanding and charity begin in the mother’s womb. On the Via Mala.
Perfect Choice

In another story, Cat, she links how cats behave when toying with their kill to a style of writing, which she ascribes to de Quincey but would serve as a review for her own work:

On reaching the target, a cat suddenly becomes distracted. Animal behaviourists call this movement Übersprung. It happens just before the deadly blow ... as though he had forgotten the fluttering wings that only moments earlier had inspired his total dedication. That which had possessed him before, as thought it were an idea, a thought...

... maybe this Übersprung is a delectatio morosa. A melancholic doing away with any connection to the victim. Übersprung: a word that involves us, too. It is a turning away, going on to something else, manfacturing a gesture of detachment, like a goodbye. Wandering from the theme, escaping from a word - at once hunting for words and doing away with them: these are a mind's mode of writing. Some write according to delectatio morosa. Thomas de Quincey, for instance, once hinted at the 'dark frenzy of horror.'