A CAN OF SUNSHINE

New novel starring a woman, her mother-in-law and a dog.  Alternatively hilarious and heart-wrenching,  Leunens’s characters are vividly drawn, they become your family. Nancy was not expecting to marry both Julian and his mother, the extraordinary, excruciating, witty and ominipresent Edith. Nancy specifically told Edith they didn’t want a dog but she brings an old smelly bulldog for her granddaughter Chloe’s 7th birthday anyway; Nancy and Julian finally get away to Fiji and who should appear? Did Edith fake her heart attack to get her son to choose her over Nancy once again? Through joy and tragedy Edith remains a powerful presence in Nancy’s life and in the end it is Edith’s example, the way she embraces life to the very end, that gives Nancy the strength to be herself and love life again.

Nominated for the Prix Medicis 2007 and the Prix FNAC 2007

 

Little by little, Elsa leaked out of her enclosure, strayed out into every corner of the house. The table was two floors below her and on the opposite side of the room and even there she disturbed me, made her presence felt. In my bed at night, she switched places with me, she enjoying the softness of my bed, and I finding myself cramped up in her airless niche.

 

This extraordinary novel is seen through the eyes of Johannes. An avid member of the Hitler Youth in the 1940s, he discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl called Elsa behind a false wall in their large house in Vienna. His initial horror turns to interest, then love and obsession. After the disappearance of his parents, Johannes finds he is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house, the only one responsible for her survival. Both manipulating and manipulated, Johannes dreads the end of the war: with it will come the prospect of losing Elsa and their relationship, which ranges through passion and obsession, dependence and indifference, love and hate.

 

This gripping, masterful work examines truth and lies at both political and personal levels, laying bare the darkest corners of the human soul. An inimitable book that builds upon Leunens’ darkly comic and highly acclaimed first novel, PRIMORDIAL SOUP (Dedalus,1999; ‘a remarkable debut novel…’Sunday Times; ‘highly original’, Cosmopolitan; ‘a small masterpiece.’ Marie Claire.)

 

 

'Totally compelling.'
Woman’s Weekly

 

'The best part of this interesting novel is its ability to show parts of our history which others dismiss: why suffering can make some people more sensitive but others more cruel, and how a war, such an outrage to human dignity, blurs the line between the victorious and defeated.'
Elle

 

'It is a beautiful novel, powerful, different, and ambitious. It explores a less rare from of relationship, it appears, than one believes: love so total that it locks up, isolates and colonises the partner until destruction; annihilates the outside world. This kind of passion naturally implies the lie, the dressing up of realities and the construction of a wall to protect itself. It’s without a doubt in the malaise one feels when reading Caging Skies that one recognises the surprising, surprising power of the novel. A profound malaise, which lasts well after the read, sign of a very rare power, that of a truly good book, which knows how to carry the reader into a story. Christine Leunens [. . .] always has the immense merit of surprising and captivating. Caging Skies is one of these books that cannot be forgotten.'
Jean Soublin, Le Monde

 

'Christine Leunens’ novel Caging Skies begins in Austria at the time of its annexation to the German Reich. Narrator Johannes Betzler is [. . .] a boy who innocently embraces the Nazi dream. He becomes a member of the Hitler Youth but soon makes a devastating discovery: his parents are hiding Elsa, a young Jewish woman, behind a false wall in their house. That parents became afraid of their children is an electrifying element of the time. It’s rich ground for fiction. The Betzler family is a vital, believable group. For the reader, drawn into the subtle interactions of the Betzler house, Leunens’ clear, elegant prose and sometimes blackly comic tone, this would be satisfying enough. There is more to come, however. The madness of the war has entered Johannes.'
Charlotte Grimshaw, New Zealand Listener

 

'A novel that breaks all the rules. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, the result is a disturbing and gripping novel that has haunted me ever since I finished reading it.'
New Zealand Books

 

'A complex story of dark love.'
R. Garzon, El País

 

'An analysis of the uncontrollable fecundity of a lie, which gives way to life and concrete experience. The lie doesn’t mystify or disown reality, but rather becomes the plasma of one’s desires and the adjusting to one’s necessities. The liar himself falls into a spiral of self deception until he consciously cages himself in a virtual universe, whereby the internal truth and false, fiction and authentic constitute one.'
Ruggero Bianchi in La Stampa