Quicksand

is conscious of the divinity he is duty-bound to serve, and wants to extend its empire to the furthest edges of the world; but he is also tormented by the doubt that this divinity is the devil itself.” A local sheik is compelled to mete out justice in response to a girl’s dishonor: “The unpleasant moment when one is forced to do what others expect of him was fast approaching . A judge is enslaved to the public will, as expressed by the law.” The actions of these men are prescribed by public obligations, but doubts weigh heavy on their ability to discharge them. A few of the Italian occupiers long to be understood and befriended by the indigenous people. One of the many ways to interpret the confining shadow of Spina’s title, and perhaps the most despairing, quarters no hope for such understanding : “The indigenous peoples’ presence is a shadow that pursues us and mimics our actions. Either we return to our ships, or we exterminate them and push them away to more distant borders.” Lori Feathers Dallas, Texas Steve Toltz. Quicksand. New York. Simon & Schuster. 2015. 359 pages. “Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us.” This quote from Franz Kafka kicks off Australian Steve Toltz’s Quicksand—his second novel after the 2008 Man Booker shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole—and suggestively predicts the destinies of Aldo and Liam, two lifelong friends and Beckett -like characters that occupy the core of this story. Aldo is a man who refuses to resort to any ordinary job but decides instead to make his fortune as an entrepreneur with endless unsuccessful ventures. His bad luck only gets worse after being erroneously charged with rape when he is still a virgin. From then on, he is constantly on trial—as his friend observes sharply, he is “not just the falling clown, but the falling clown who other falling clowns fall on.” Naturally, it is Liam who comes to his rescue whenever he is in trouble. Liam is an incompetent cop whose own sad tale is eclipsed by that of his brilliantly inauspicious friend, and yet they have a lot in common. Both lose sisters during adolescence. Both suffer broken marriages —Liam’s wife is disdainful of his literary ambitions while Aldo’s once-adoring wife grows tired of all his bills, and both have not been changed by their life-changing experiences. Now their stories seem intertwined as Liam determines to write a new book based on Aldo’s life, to demonstrate “the pyrrhic victories of old friendships” and the belief that only art can lead to salvation—otherwise, how can people face this maddening, absurd, and disinterested modern world? There is a burlesque of minor characters that abound within the book: Morrell , the art teacher whose book of banal aphorisms, Artist Within, Artist Without , becomes Liam’s bible to quote from as well as Aldo’s women: the singer-songwriter Luc Lang Cruel Tales from the 13thFloor Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith University of Nebraska Press The short stories in this collection from French writer Luc Lang spill human frailty and weakness from the almost stream-of-consciousness narration that serves as the connective tissue between them. Always engaging, these challenging microfictions come together as a catalog of missed moments and regret, shared from a fixed perspective of a central narrator who always seems to be standing just outside the reader’s view. Aleksandr Kushner Apollo in the Grass: Selected Poems Trans. Carol Ueland & Robert Carnevale Farrar, Straus & Giroux Apollo in the Grass collects Kushner’s poems from 1988 through 2010, documenting obliquely not only Russia’s transition from Soviet superpower to democracy-in-progress but also Kushner’s ascent as one of the most admired Russian poets of his age. Fueled by the poet’s clarity of ideas, the translators’precision of word choice, and a coy ongoing conversation with Russian poets of old, Apollo in the Grass is a wonderful introduction to Kushner’s sober yet lyrical verse. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 87 Stella, who uses Aldo as a tragic muse; Mimi, whose insanely jealous boyfriend, Elliot, happens to be Aldo

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