Book Review for “Birthday” by Jana Egle (translated by Uldis Boldis).
Summary: “Eight stories, eight women, an emotional multitude. In her short-story collection, Birthday , Jana Egle distinctly straps the male presence into the back seat and lets the female voice ring free. Not to be taken as “a book for women” or “women’s literature,” the themes and situations in Birthday present a familiar, yet uneasy, vantage point for any reader, regardless of personal, real-life experience. A design-firm employee who finds herself dating a potential sociopath, a woman suffering a terrible loss and having to find the strength to ask for help, the navigation of a mental health crisis, the fears of old age, revisiting a past love—Egle explores these universal themes, and more, with a scalding, narrative realism that leaves your skin crawling and your mind begging for more.”
Age: Adult; Genres: Literary, Fiction; Settings: Era/s: Contemporary; Location/s: Latvia; Other Categories: Novel, Translation, Short Stories, Women.
My regular readers know that I’m a big fan of short stories, and if done properly, they can truly be a joy to behold. Well, I think I just found someone who fulfills this totally. I’ve never heard of Egle, but boy do I wish more of her stories were translated into English, because these are really lovely.
So, these eight stories make a collection that isn’t really very long (only 140 pages, from what I can see), but they’re the types of stories that you need to read slowly in order to get their full impact. Now, I’m a slow reader to begin with, but I was surprised that it took me as long to read this as it did. But I can assure you that this didn’t bother me at all. It was like I instinctively needed to savor these stories, and I’m really glad that I did.
As the blurb says, these are stories that delve into real-life experiences. However, I disagree that this isn’t women’s fiction, because the voices here are all female, and for me that the definition of this sub-genre of literary fiction – looking into the human condition from the perspective of women. Now, this might be sexist of me, but I really doubt that a man could have written most of these stories with the same effect. For example, the one about the woman dating the potential sociopath, with its stark ending, just couldn’t be described as chillingly if it had been written by a man.
That said, the last story about a woman who is suffering from dementia, well… this was perfectly placed in the book, because it felt so… right. Now, I hope that Egle never has to experience this herself, but it is completely obvious to me that someone in her life went through this, because it very much reminded me of my father and his uncle who both had Alzheimer’s. That Egle could get into the head of this woman was the really profound part of this story.
Obviously, we don’t know how Egle wrote this in her original Latvian, so extremely high kudos must go to her translator, Boldis, for making the English version so poetic, and bringing a great deal of subtleties into the text. I noticed that there were a few words here and there that Boldis didn’t translate, but used the transliterations instead. That’s fine, because there were explanations for most of them, and the few that didn’t were pretty self-evident. Boldis also didn’t seem to hold back on any of the harsher parts, which also made sense.
I know this is a shorter review than usual, but I don’t know what else to say. These stories felt so real, so true, and were written in such a lovely prose that I can’t help but warmly recommend them, and give them a very worthy four and a half stars out of five. (Remember, Women in Translation month is August, so you might want to pick up a copy of this to read for then) Now I want to visit Latvia (I’ve been to Estonia, though, so pretty close, but… as they say, no cigar)!
The Open Letter US release date for “Birthday” by Jana Egle is March 18, 2025. This book is available (via the following affiliate links) from Amazon, Blackwell’s (prices include international shipping), Waterstones, WHSmith, Kobo US (eBooks and audiobooks), Booksamillion.com, Barnes & Noble, iTunes (iBooks and audiobooks), new or used from Alibris, Awesome Books (not an affiliate link) or Better World Books (promoting libraries and world literary), as well as from Bookshop.org and UK.Bookshop (to support independent bookshops, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic). I would like to thank the publishers for sending me an ARC of this novel via Edelweiss.
This novel qualifies for the following reading challenges: New Release Challenge (#9).
Published
