by Laurent Gaudé

This story is translated from French and set in Naples, which could be an interesting combination, only the translation seems a little dry. Part of this is because some chapters are written in present tense, which I assume is true to the original. It might work better in French, but I had a very hard time getting into the plot.

Sometimes it would start to get interesting, then I would lose track of what was supposed to be happening. Eventually it became clear that a child had been killed and his mother wanted the father to track down the killer and murder him in revenge, but killing a man in cold blood is not as easy as it sounds.

In the process of trying to satisfy his wife's need for revenge, Matteo, the father, meets some interesting characters and finds himself examining some of life's deeper questions. An invitation from an unusual priest to visit the underworld leads Matteo on an adventure he didn't bargain for.

Although it took a while to get into this story, it certainly had some interesting aspects. Depictions of the underworld are always of interest and the characters were a strong point. The ending comes full circle and everything fits into place eventually, but it's the sort of story you would have to read twice to get the full benefit of what's going on.

Matteo’s world comes to an end when his 6 year old son Pippo is killed, caught in the middle of a gang war. Guiliana, Pippo’s mother finds the only way she can cope with her grief is to never think of her son again. Matteo meanwhile, finds himself driving around the city of Naples at night. It is on one of these lonely drives that he encounters a man who tells him about the underworld. The world where souls roam and the dead live. And so Matteo vows to recover Pippo from Hell’s Gate.

Though this is a short novel, it packs a lot into it’s 190 pages. Laurent Gaudé turns the idea of heaven and hell on it’s head. Here, in the harbours of Naples, there is a gate to the underworld, the place where souls go when the physical body has died. It is a dark, cold, horror filled place, one that Dante would be proud of. There are no golden gates and trumpeted angels in this version of the afterlife. The prose is brief but almost lyrical. Images of the underworld, of the sea of souls that must be crossed, of the vistas are vivid. The grief of Matteo and Guiliana is palpable and almost heart-breaking.

Hell’s Gate is not a murder mystery, though a murder does trigger everything. It’s a study in grief and how it affects everyone differently. It is a story of love conquering all, even death and of how love can break people, the loss of a person turning someone into a shadow of their former selves.

The novel was translated from French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken. As with all good translations it is easy to forget that the novel wasn’t written in English. The feeling that these are the intended, original words of the author is ever present in Hell’s Gate.

Hell’s Gate explores the taint that death leaves on those left behind, of how we each of us cope in different ways. Not always an easy read and certainly not comfortable, this is a thought-provoking, unsettling, often heart-wrenching and moving novel.

Eldorado was part of the Euregio Literatuur Prijs some years ago. This is a project that encourages people to read six selected titles, two each from Dutch/Flemish, French and German authors. It's a great way to get to know little know authors/books.

Original Title: Eldorado

This was the biggest surprise of the bunch of books I read for the Euregio Literatuur Prijs. I didn't expect much of it, so it actually blew me away.

It's about a very pressing matter, illegal immigrants trying to get to little Italian island and make their way from there to the rest of Europe. Besides the very slim chances of success it's also very dangerous. The main character is part of the Italian Border Control (which I can see must be an enormous hard and difficult job), but as the story advances he looses his touch with life. 

I thought it was very interesting to read, what a job like that can eventually do to a man. The writing was nice too, like I said I didn't really expect this book to be anything, and it's even better then when it actually turns out to be quite good. Such a shame it's so unknown (according to GR: 172 ratings).

Note: I read a Dutch translation of this book.

There and Back Again in Purgatory:

I know why I like it so much, that I can give half-stars here. Because sometimes a book is neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl. What better to do with such a book as to place it, where it belongs, right in the middle.

That's what happened with this story by Laurent Gaudé, who is new to me. This French author tells a story set in Naples, where between religion and Mafia a son and his father struggle with the implications of death. The son dies during a shooting, because he and his father are at the wrong moment at the wrong place... The Father, left behind, decides after he acknowledged he can't take revenge on the murderer to go after his son into the Underworld, to bring him back to life.

Parallel we get the tale of this rescued son, who fulfilled the revenge and goes on in search for his lost past.

This sounded interesting enough to pick this book up, but for most of it, the novel get's stuck with it's grieving and the losses, and get's nowhere else. There are books about coping with grieve and to move on afterwards, like sand on the shore, some of them are good, some are bad, a lot of them are kitsch. This book is nothing of the above and sure not as good as it could have been.

It remains in a self-made purgatory of it's own. Where it got my interest and engagement at first, it lost it over time, while the interesting support characters bleached out and got lost within the ongoing tale. Why the author choose to create a transvestite and an old barkeeper as the foster parents for the boy in the first place, was a riddle to me.

And then, there was the question, this book kept asking: Is it better if a father dies first, or is it better for a young son to stay dead? But the answer given was an ambiguous cope-out, I could have guest reading the book-blurb: It's shitty either way.

But really hard hit me the afterword of the author himself, in which he tells us, that he wrote the book for his own dead, trying to entertain them?

Really?

Dear Laurent Gaudé, you wrote a story about revenge, destroyed families and

people who can't cope with dead even if they tried for a moment.

If I say that I believed in an afterlife, like you seemed to do, do you really believe that those dead people would be happy to see everything destroyed what they left behind, to witness more murder?

I find that thought disgusting not encouraging. I believe that death is hard for everyone who is left behind, and I'm glad that the dead in my life don't have to see and feel the grieve and pain. I don't think they would find that entertaining at all.

Without the post-face the book might have gotten another half-star more, with it, I had a hard time not to lower my rating even more.

Hin und wieder zurück ins Fegefeuer:

Ich weiß warum ich es mag, dass ich hier halbe Sterne vergeben kann. Denn manchmal gibt es einfach Bücher, die sind für mich weder hier noch da, weder Fisch noch Fleisch. Was also besser zu tun als solche Bücher in die Mitte zu packen wo sie hingehören?

So ging es mir mit dieser Erzählung von Laurent Gaudé, von dem ich bislang noch nichts gelesen hatte. Der französische Autor wählt Neapel als seinen Handlungsort und erzählt zwischen Religion und Mafia, eine Geschichte von einem Vater und seinem Sohn, letzterer stirbt durch Schüsse, als er mit seinem Vater am falschen Ort zur falschen Zeit ist... und der Vater bleibt zurück, hilflos und beschließt, da er nicht in der Lage ist den Mörder seinen Sohnes zu töten in die Unterwelt zu steigen und seinen Sohn zurück ins Leben zu holen.

Wir erleben gleichzeitig in versetzen Kapiteln den Sohn, wie er die Rache für seinen Vater erfüllt und sich danach auf die Suche nach seiner Vergangenheit macht.

Das klingt eigentlich sehr interessant, aber eigentlich bleibt der Roman die ganze Zeit über den Verlusten hängen und kann sich nicht davon lösen. Doch Bücher über den Verlust eines Menschen und den Versuch mit der Trauer umzugehen, gibt es, gelinde gesagt, wie Sand am Meer, Manche sind gut, manche sind eher schlecht, viele sind kitschig. Dieses Buch ist nichts von alledem, und doch ist es nicht wirklich gut in meinen Augen.

Es bleibt in einer Art selbst erschaffenem Fegefeuer hängen. War ich am Anfang noch interessiert und engagiert dabei, so verlor ich dieses Interesse bald als die interessant klingenden Nebendarsteller mehr und mehr verblassten und bei der Frage hängen blieb, warum der Autor einen Transvestiten als Ziehmutter des Sohnes, einen Gastwirt als Ziehvater erschafft, nur um sie dann eigentlich fallen zu lassen.

Zudem warf das Buch zwar die Frage auf, ob es besser ist wenn der Vater für den Sohn stirbt, oder umgekehrt, aber die in der Geschichte gegebene Antwort ist im Grunde leicht selbst zu geben: Beides ist Scheiße für den, der zurückbleibt.

Wirklich unangenehm traf mich der Autor dann in seinem Nachwort, in dem er sagt er habe das Buch für seine Toten geschrieben und wolle sie damit unterhalten.

Wirklich?

Lieber Laurent Gaudé, du hast da ein Buch geschrieben das von Rache, zerstörten Familien und Menschen handelt, die alles andere als gut damit umgehen, das jemand verstorben ist. Wenn ich für einen Moment einmal annähme es gäbe ein Leben nach dem Tod, so wie du es zu glauben scheinst, glaubst du wirklich die Toten würden sich darüber freuen, wenn alles was sie hinterlassen in weiterem Mord endet und in Leben, die so kaputt sind?

Ich finde das klingt ziemlich krank und nicht sehr ansprechend. Der Tod ist schrecklich für alle die zurückbleiben und ich glaube die Toten selbst sind glücklich darin, dass sie dieses Leid nicht mehr erleben müssen. Unterhaltend würden sie es sicherlich nicht finden.

Ohne dieses Nachwort hätte es vielleicht einen halben Stern mehr gegeben aber so muss ich mich schon zurückhalten nicht noch mehr abzuziehen.

Thoughts right after the last page:

Not what I expected and a little bit to mediocre and to short... maybe just not for me, we will see what I think after some days have past.