Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor review – a multilayered tale of linguistic trickery

A New York translator is plucked from obscurity by a Nobel-winning poet in this tangled comedy about love and literature

Rachel Cantor’s second novel is an intricate and erudite study of literary translation, forgiveness and second chances. Shira Greene long ago abandoned her PhD on Dante’s Vita Nuova. She now moves from one low-paid, low-prestige temp job to another while co‑parenting her young daughter, Andi, with her friend Ahmad on New York’s Upper West Side. Shira is offered the chance of a new life when the Nobel-winning poet Romei selects her to be the translator of his new book, also entitled Vita Nuova.

Romei’s choice puzzles Shira, as does the fact that he appears to know so much about her slender and largely obscure translation oeuvre. As Shira works on Romei’s faxed excerpts she uncovers an untranslatable tangle of linguistic trickery filled with allusions and plays on words visible only to the translator. Cantor is excellent on the challenge of translation, the intertwining roles of traduttore/traditore – translator and traitor. Good on Paper is littered with illuminating and often amusing insights: “Being syllable rich, Italian condenses at the rate of four English feet per line.”

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