Daughters <\/em>by Lucy Fricke, translated by Sin\u00e9ad Crowe.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Paula <\/em>is Hoffmann\u2019s attempt to understand a woman who was stiflingly close to her but yet remained distant. Her maternal grandmother (the eponymous Paula) is a troubled and taciturn woman who has never revealed the identity of her child\u2019s father: a devout Swabian Catholic, Paula is typically depicted with one hand in her apron pocket, worrying her rosary beads as she works her way through the prayers that are the silent soundtrack to her granddaughter\u2019s life and narrative. Imprisoned in a silence that takes over the house and leaves her adrift into adulthood, Hoffman sets out to reclaim words never said, and so to understand Paula, \u201cas though all the unspoken words were seeking ways out of that mute body and into the room, forging the way to you.\u201d She is clear from the start that her imagination will fill in the blanks of a story she only knows in fragments (\u201cI am an unreliable narrator\u201d, she warns us and, later, \u201cmemory is inconstant\u201d). As well as words, Hoffmann considers the importance of photographs in reconstructing memory (or in constructing it where it is withheld). Static images of a moment fixed in time allow the person viewing the photograph to impose a story on them, but in the end they too are wordless and can never create a story beyond the moment that they capture. Fiction, then, becomes Hoffmann\u2019s only recourse to \u201cclose gaps between image and image, fragment and fragment.\u201d<\/p>\nI appreciated the truthfulness of the blanks and gaps, for there is no plausible way that Hoffmann could offer a full backstory of someone who, as she acknowledges, \u201ctook her whole life to the grave\u201d. Yet this all-pervasive silence is harmful, persisting doggedly even when the young Hoffmann was taken to family therapy because of the eating disorder that the deliberate silence passed down through generations has triggered. Hoffmann\u2019s narrative is prompted by her need to know who her grandfather was, to break through the schweigen <\/em>(a word I\u2019m delighted to have discovered \u2013 it opens the text and features in the excellent translator\u2019s note), but this is impossible as Paula died without revealing her secret, and left no posthumous clue. We only know fragments \u2013 for example, that Paula was engaged to a man who died in the war (but could not have been the father of her child), or that she drowned her sorrows in plum brandy when Hoffmann\u2019s mother was young \u2013 but we never get to know Paula beyond the melancholy of a life half-lived, and which is perhaps best summed up in this reflection: \u201cIt was as though her laughter forbade itself, as if taking joy from life was forbidden, as if she had sinned so severely against her God that only prayer helped now.\u201d<\/p>\nPaula has devoted her life to prayer, and this religious devotion is passed down to her granddaughter in the form of guilt and shame: as a child, Hoffmann becomes obsessed with saying five flawless \u201cOur Fathers\u201d to cancel out any involuntary negative thoughts she may have had about her grandmother, convinced that otherwise something bad will happen because of the bad thoughts. In this sense, Paula functions as a kind of malevolent deity, who her granddaughter believes is all-seeing and all-knowing: Paula is a difficult presence, suffocating and invasive in her silence, and fostering Hoffmann\u2019s fear that \u201cshe\u2019ll make me turn into her, she\u2019ll make sure there\u2019s no difference between her fear and mine, between her prayers and mine.\u201d \u00a0As secrets and silence swell around her, the young Hoffmann feels that there is no room in the house for her, and envies friends who have a space of their own with no grandparent constantly lurking outside their bedroom door. Ultimately, then, she creates her own \u201cterritory\u201d by writing: writing is not only an attempt to understand her grandmother, but also to free herself from Paula, to understand the difficult closeness of their relationship and to come to terms with it.<\/p>\n
The translation is, unsurprisingly, excellent. Derbyshire is a skilled linguist, sensitive to the nuances between her two languages and attuned to questions of register, syntax and lexical variety. Some of my favourite instances of word choices include verbs such as \u201cclouds scud<\/em> above us like flags\u201d, \u201cUp on the slope a fox skulks<\/em> past\u201d, but really you could open this book at any page and find a beautifully crafted sentence, paragraph, thought or thread. Derbyshire writes in her translator\u2019s note about finding Hoffmann\u2019s \u201cvoice\u201d in English (this is particularly important for the opening section of the text, but save the translator\u2019s note for after you\u2019ve read the book \u2013 it\u2019s well worth reading it once you\u2019ve absorbed Paula <\/em>rather than pre-emptively before you spend a few hours with Hoffmann\u2019s family), and though I can\u2019t read the original German, there is something distinctive and consistent in the melancholy, the care, the images, and the crystallisation of years of pain in single breathtaking sentences that mark this out as a superb translation.<\/p>\nI\u2019m delighted that Paula <\/em>has found its home in English, and hope that the new imprint of V&Q Books will continue to bring us great women\u2019s writing from German; in the meantime, I\u2019ll see you back here next week to talk about Daughters<\/em>.<\/p>\nReview copy of\u00a0Paula\u00a0<\/em>provided by V&Q Books<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Translated from German by Katy Derbyshire (V&Q Books, 2020) This week sees the launch of German publisher V&Q\u2019s English-language imprint: spearheaded by Katy Derbyshire, the new imprint brings some of the most exciting new fiction in German into English. Two of the three launch releases are by women writers, and so this is the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[375,515,727,803,1023],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann - Translating Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann - Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Translated from German by Katy Derbyshire (V&Q Books, 2020) This week sees the launch of German publisher V&Q\u2019s English-language imprint: spearheaded by Katy Derbyshire, the new imprint brings some of the most exciting new fiction in German into English. Two of the three launch releases are by women writers, and so this is the first […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-16T11:00:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/files\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Helen Vassallo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Helen Vassallo\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/\",\"name\":\"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann - Translating Women\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-16T11:00:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-09-16T11:00:19+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f6b5a23680f8533c3894aef4e6018f68\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg\",\"width\":235,\"height\":346},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/\",\"name\":\"Translating Women\",\"description\":\"INTERNATIONAL | INTERSECTIONAL | ACTIVIST | FEMINIST\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f6b5a23680f8533c3894aef4e6018f68\",\"name\":\"Helen Vassallo\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c32871912708eb310775deb9561113ed?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c32871912708eb310775deb9561113ed?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Helen Vassallo\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/author\/hmv201\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann - Translating Women","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann - Translating Women","og_description":"Translated from German by Katy Derbyshire (V&Q Books, 2020) This week sees the launch of German publisher V&Q\u2019s English-language imprint: spearheaded by Katy Derbyshire, the new imprint brings some of the most exciting new fiction in German into English. Two of the three launch releases are by women writers, and so this is the first […]","og_url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/","og_site_name":"Translating Women","article_published_time":"2020-09-16T11:00:19+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/files\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg"}],"author":"Helen Vassallo","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Helen Vassallo","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/","url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/","name":"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann - Translating Women","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg","datePublished":"2020-09-16T11:00:19+00:00","dateModified":"2020-09-16T11:00:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f6b5a23680f8533c3894aef4e6018f68"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/09\/Paula-1.jpg","width":235,"height":346},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/09\/16\/review-paula-sandra-hoffmann\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Review: PAULA, Sandra Hoffmann"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website","url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/","name":"Translating Women","description":"INTERNATIONAL | INTERSECTIONAL | ACTIVIST | FEMINIST","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f6b5a23680f8533c3894aef4e6018f68","name":"Helen Vassallo","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c32871912708eb310775deb9561113ed?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c32871912708eb310775deb9561113ed?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Helen Vassallo"},"url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/author\/hmv201\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}