Hysteria, by the Canadian author Elisabeth de Mariaffi, is published by HarperCollins Canada and I Remember You, also by Elisabeth de Mariaffi, comes out with Titan Books in Britain. While publishers in different countries do redesign covers, a completely new title and marketing campaign in the same language is more rare. Why go through the effort at all? A closer look at the story within reveals an answer that lies in fear, feminism and who we choose to believe.
Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realise we don’t want to hold it together.
When I was around 50 and my life was supposed to be slowing down, becoming more stable and predictable, life became faster, unstable, unpredictable. My marriage was the boat and I knew that I could not swim back to it. It is also the ghost that will always haunt my life. I will never stop grieving for my long-held wish for enduring love that does not reduce its major players to something less than they are.
I am not sure I have often witnessed love that achieves all of these things, so perhaps this ideal is fated to be a phantom. What sort of questions does this phantom ask of me? It asks political questions for sure, but it is not a politician.
Great artists are known to have big egos — they can suck up all the air in a room if given half a chance. And living in the shadow of such greatness can stunt a person's growth, which is exactly what happens to the central character in Tom Rachman's new novel, The Italian Teacher. Rachman takes us through the life of Pinch Bavinsky, from his childhood adoration of his famous father to the disappointments of adulthood, and in the process, explores what it means to be an artist.