Eve Out of Her Ruins, by Ananda Devi

I've had Eve Out of Her Ruins on my to-read list for quite a while, so I was happy that my Women in Translation Book Club selected it. I originally picked it up to count for Mauritius in my world books reading project, but then I ended up reading another book from Mauritius: The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah, which I read in 2018 -- the year I didn't write about the books I read. I don't remember a lot about The Last Brother but I do remember thinking it gave me a real sense of the island and its geography. The same cannot be said at all for Eve Out of Her Ruins. Perhaps it's a good thing I'd already read something that did give me that sense. In some way, Eve feels like it could take place in any impoverished community where people feel trapped in poverty and cycles of violence. 

The titular Eve is a girl from a poor and abusive family who at a young age finds she can use her body as currency, not to lift her out of poverty but to bring her small advantages where she had none. She believes she has control of the situations she puts herself in, but from the perspective of the reader, as we learn more about them, it's hard to accept her claims of control. The book follows Eve and a few of her peers, who take turns telling us the story, in the events leading up to and after a brutal murder that's pinned on a repeat-offender youth from Eve's community. It's a dark book, but circumstances being as they are, things could be darker still. There is something that could almost be described as hope at the end.

In Concrete, by Anne Garréta

I'm in Paris at the moment, and I finished In Concrete a week ago before I left. I didn't like it nearly as much as the other two Anne Garréta books I've read, but it put her in my mind to the point that I spent my first few days here checking every bookstore I came across for her books — with nearly no luck. On my second day of searching, I went to a shop specializing in LGBTQ books and they had one book of hers: this one. I didn't really consider buying it. Having read it in English, I'm fairly certain the French would be beyond my abilities. The book is full of word play: it must have been quite an undertaking to translate. I wondered, as I read it, how it was done. (There is an afterword by the translator, which I read in part.) I assume much of it wasn't so much literal as thematic. In Concrete is a strange book about a pair of sisters who, as girls, help their father with his mad home improvement (muddernization) schemes until one of them gets trapped in concrete. While their father is out seeking help, the free sister (who is also the book's narrator) recounts stories of their wild childhood to entertain her sister and pass the time, and this makes up about half the book. 

Eventually, I found a bookstore here where they offered to order me some Anne Garréta books, so if all works out I'll be heading home with French editions of Pas un jour and Sphinx.