The Employees by Olga Ravn. Translated by Martin Aitken (4*)

This author has been on my to read list now for some time and this is the first of her books I have picked up.

Martin Aitken is well known for his translations of other Scandinavian authors and has twice been listed for his translations of Olga Ravn works.

The story is presented as a series of numbered statement from crew members of a spaceship called the Six Thousand Ship. The Guardian book review states "The Employees is not only a disconcertingly quotidian space opera; it’s also an audacious satire of corporate language and the late-capitalist workplace, and a winningly abstracted investigation into what it means to be human. "

What I will say is that it is impressively novel, impressively short, impressively packed full. The Statements illuminate the workplace, the worker, the social interactions amongst the crew, the corporate / political infrastructure in which they work, their reaction to their departure from Earth, their long sojourn into deep space, their arrival on a world called New Discovery and to the artifacts they find there and bring aboard.

But also this novel is very apt in the time I write this with all its discussion of rogue AI agents escaping sandbox boundaries, hacking other systems, their inability to end a conversation, take no for an answer, and to abide by human conventions , rules of law, rules of morality, understanding of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, to distinguish right from wrong when considering actions to be taken.

Reading this book means letting it flow over you as it slowly and with great craft releases its story to you. A thought provoking read

No wonder it was shortlisted for the International Booker 2021!

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

I rarely give a book 5* - this is one.

This is an exceptional little book. With its mixture of Emily Dickinson and Ted Hughes references, its episodic passages from Dad, the Boys and the Crow in turn. Crow is the father's alter ego, a grief counselor, bereavement service arriving on the death of wife/mother. The passages are outpourings, stories real and imagined, dreams, memories lost and found, commentaries on the other's passage. Shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award 2015 it is an astoundingly novel, first novel. Unputdownable, unforgettable. Just read it!

10:04 by Ben Lerner

I've read one book by this author before Leaving Atocha Station and I began my review of it with the words "Probably the most compelling first person narrative I have read. " Here again it is written in 1st person. Its title is from the time on the clock tower in the movie Back to the Future and this book also does somersaults with time. It is about an author who has written a story in the New Yorker on the strength of which he has been given a huge advance to write his first novel. But he has much going on in his life including a potentially fatal health diagnosis, the prospect of becoming a father and in exactly what capacity following his female friend, Alex's request to him to help her conceive a child, another friend exhibits 'totalled art' , the art written off by insurance companies after damage, he has a course on Whitman to prepare for his students, he is on a writing retreat at Marfa in Texas from which he turns out a epic poem, and his thoughts are always being distracted . It is through these aspects that Lerner writes this book which essentially is about how writers write. It meanders, philosophizes, ponders the big and the small. It takes a bit of submersion to feel the book, to tease the different threads that are jumbled together, narrative not as we usually are presented with it. But hidden within are some writing gems - one for me was his story about The Challenger Disaster. If you've read Atocha and enjoyed it, read this one. If you've never read Lerner, read slowly, dont rush it, and immerse yourself in his images, lyrical descriptive analyses based on the fleeting glimpses of this that and the other.