Just finished
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron.
Disaffected youth as the narrator, but was everything Holden Caulfield was not (to me at least). And some beautiful writing to boot. Far too short - loved it.
Am currently reading a foreign book. I knew this because a number of times during the first two chapters I had to refer back to previous text and still couldn't work it out. Yes. It is American.
Now I've been reading American books since I was a child (
What Katy Did,
Little Women etc), and I thought I was used to mentally translating. But this one gives fewer clues as to context. I am beginning to understand why Merkins get Harry Potter transalted.
FTR the book is
The Birthing House by Christopher Ransome. No opinion on the text so far.
And for the pedants among you, who are wondering what could possibly confuse me to this extent; two examples:
Quote:
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He ordered the country fried steak with three over easy [ordered it again] Now lightheaded from all the hash browns and gravy...
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Whaaa? Don't know what three over easy means. I guessed it was eggs (which is just weird anyway). Where did the gravy and hash browns come from?
Quote:
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They went to a lunch of the locally renowned Cornish pasty stuffed with cubed beef, potatoes, onions and rutabaga. The miners' dish was hard and salty, even with the cocktail sauce you were supposed to splash all over it.
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WHAAA?
Okay, I translated rutabaga, it was in the Belgariad. But - salty? Badly made I say. COCKTAIL SAUCE? You what, you what, you-what-you-what-you-what? (Football chant, usually to refs)
I'm not saying either of the above is incorrect. But they are jarring to an overseas reader, and have jerked me out of the story in a way that the previous novel set in NY never did.
Cubed beef, I ask you.