Book of the Week: MOUNTAINISH by Zsuzsanna Gahse (translated from German by Katy Derbyshire)
A narrator and her dog are criss-crossing the Swiss Alps. She travels with friends who share her interest in food, languages and their topographical contexts. They collect colours, even look for colourlessness, and develop the idea of a walk-in diary, a vain attempt to archive their observations. Gradually, other mountains appear in their observations and memories, as do the mountains of literature and art. Mountains may be sites of fear and awe, of narrow-mindedness, racism and ever-looming collapse; Alpine lodges may be places of hospitality, retreat and unexpected encounters; of nature under threat. In 515 notes, Zsuzsanna Gahse unfolds a finely woven interplay between her six characters while giving us a vivid panorama of mountain worlds, a multi-layered typology of all things mountainish. Recommended!
”In Mountainish, Gahse directs her reader through 515 notes, making it clear with great elegance and wit that an escape to the mountains is not an escape from the self; that the unconscious is bound to landscape and reverberations; that words haunt like ghosts; that the echo of self cannot be avoided. Each note is a story and each mountain or what is like a mountain is a language; it is a matter of orientation.” —Sharon Kivland