Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub - Translated by Margaret Jull Costa #BookReview

"My grandfather didn't like to talk about the past, which is not so very surprising given its nature; the fact that he was a Jew, had arrived in Brazil on one of those jam-packed ships, as one of the cattle for whom history appears to have ended when they were twenty, or thirty, or forty or whatever, and for whom all that's left is a kind of memory that comes and goes and that can turn out to be an even worse prison than the one they were in."

A schoolboy prank goes horribly wrong, and a thirteen-year-old boy is left injured. Years later, one of the classmates relives the episode, as he tries to come to terms with his demons.

Diary of the Fall is the story of three generations: a man examining the mistakes of his past, and his struggle for forgiveness; a father with Alzheimer's, for whom recording every memory has become an obsession; and a grandfather who survived Auschwitz, filling notebook after notebook with the false memories of someone desperate to forget.

Beautiful and brave, Michel Laub's novel asks the most basic - and yet most complex - questions about history and identity, exploring what stories we choose to tell about ourselves and how we become the people we are.

***

The writing in this book is beautiful. By that, I do not mean it is pretty and flowery, but that it is a collection of short, succinct, spare chapters that convey emotion and meaning. It was very moving and each word was meticulously placed and really mattered.

It was hugely thought provoking and engaged me from start to finish. If I had to sum up it's theme in one word I would say that it is about guilt and how a childhood prank can affect the life of both parties involved, well into adulthood.

However, it is about so much more than that. Each section is divided into the story of a grandfather, his son and his grandson and it tackles the generational impact of the Holocaust. However, it is not a book about the Holocaust per se. In fact, there are no descriptions of the grandfather's time in Auschwitz but it's shadow hangs over the theme of the book.

Written in the first person narrative of the grandson, the book has an immediacy despite it largely being about events of the past. It tells a relevant and purposeful story and is very well worth reading.

This book is a significant addition to the Jewish fiction canon and I highly recommend it. 

ISBN: 978 1846557323

Publisher: Harvill Secker

About the Author:

Michel Laub was born in Porto Alegre and currently lives in Sao Paulo. He is a writer and journalist, and was named one of Granta's twenty 'Best of Young Brazilian Novelists'. Diary of the Fall is his fifth novel, and is the first to be translated into English. It has received the Brasilia Award and the Bravo! Bradesco Prize.

About the Translator:

Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator for nearly thirty years and has translated novels and short stories by such writers as Eca de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Jose Saramago, Javier Marias, Bernardo Atxaga, Diogo Mainardi and Albrto Barrera Tyszka.

She has won various prizes for her work, most recently the 2012 Calouste Gulbenkian Prize, with Teolinda Gersao's The Word Tree, for which she was also runner-up with her version of Antonio Lobo Antunes' The Land at the End of the World.