This book, my second from the author, contains all the ingredients that should make it an engrossing read: art, medieval history, and mystery. HoweverThis book, my second from the author, contains all the ingredients that should make it an engrossing read: art, medieval history, and mystery. However, after slogging through it for several days, I find the main mystery to be too contrived to be believable (that 20-page exposition at the end by the villain scarcely helps at all), and the other ingredients merely garnish instead of an integral part of the story. Sure, there are plenty of literary allusions (we are beaten over the head with the ones to the Sherlock Holmes stories and they become annoying after a while) and artistic references (Breughel, Bosch, Bach) but unlike, say in The Name of the Rose Including Postscript, most of them seem to be random and merely incidental to the main story. The ‘mystery’ contained in the painting, despite all the ominous hints earlier in the story, turns out to be scarcely any mystery at all, which is doubly disappointing after the weak main whodunit practically collapses under its own weight. That said, I must confess that the other ingredient in the story --- the chess game --- is completely above my head, and that I'm largely oblivious of its role in the mystery. What eventually save this novel are the strengths that become more apparent in Perez-Reverte’s subsequent books such as The Club Dumas: the atmospheric evocation of old-world European cities and the creative use of arcana.
SPOILER WARNING. Do not read the following if you don’t want to find out about the ending.
Munoz, the Sherlock figure/chess master of the novel, stumbles upon the solution of the mystery through a pseudo-Freudian analysis of his mysterious opponent in the chess game. His theory is that men and women players betray their gender identity by favoring certain pieces, and the homosexual villain is found out because he chooses to indulge his feminine side by favoring the bishop, “ the chess piece that best embodies homosexuality”, with its “deep, diagonal movement”. Munoz also has another theory about how chess is not only oedipal, but also “anal sadistic” --- but let’s not get into that. Later, it turns out that the villain has been using a computer program to play, thus disproving Munoz’s hokey analysis. It’s a clever subversion of the omniscient detective figure, but it also means that Munoz finds the solution through sheer chance instead of deductive ability. We also never find out whether Julia and Munoz go through with Cesar’s criminal plan for the sale of the painting in the black market. I wish that Perez-Reverte had told us and explored some of its legal and moral ramifications. It would have made him a truly excellent chess player in my book. ...more
“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”
Norwegian Wo“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”
Norwegian Wood is supposed to be Murakami’s realistic novel; there are no mind-bending revelations, or even cats that talk, but a strong sense of ephemerality pervades the novel in a way that is at times surreal. There is nothing extraordinary about Toru Watanabe, the first-year student protagonist; he is studying drama, though he seems to have no real passion for it, he is apolitical in the age of worldwide student revolts, a middle-class kid from Kobe and a mediocre student who works part-time in a record shop to make ends meet. He is also at that precious age on the cusp of adulthood when everything that happens takes a looming significance. The central drama of his adolescence revolves around Naoko, the pretty but fragile girlfriend of his best friend who committed suicide at the age of 17, and Midori, an outgoing fellow student who is a tenacious survivor of both her parents’ deaths from cancer. Torn between the two, Watanabe navigates through the haze of love and lust, life and death, only to find himself at “the dead center of this place that was no place”. Yet, for all the tragedies that it contains, the story ends on a note of battered hope, flitting though it is, just as ephemeral as a firefly’s fading light.
We also get a fascinating glimpse of Japan in the late 60’s/early 70’s, when the country was well on its way to become a mighty economic power --- a Japan with bullet trains and hostess bars, where the soundtrack was The Beatles and almost all the artistic references were Western. A Japan full of model students and overachievers, who most often than not ended up losing their souls. Hence the suicides are given a sort of poignant dignity; they just happen to see the pointlessness of it all and calmly, rationally, opt out. Here today, gone tomorrow, like petals that fall away with the rain and are swept away the next day, or perhaps, as in that old Beatles song, the “bird has flown”. ...more
I have a confession to make: I am allergic to sci-fi. The kind that has as its hero a humanoid who lives iThis review is for the first two books only.
I have a confession to make: I am allergic to sci-fi. The kind that has as its hero a humanoid who lives in 23345 AD on a dystopian red planet, where he must fight slimy insectoid aliens whose sole purpose in life is to lay and hatch their filthy eggs on human bodies. The guy is barely human anyway, with half his face swathed in shiny robotic gear with glowing red eyes that look like the battery-powered tip of my 10 year old’s toy laser gun. Or instead of being half-android, he is half Vulcan or Neptune or whatever and thus has the emotional life of a plant. He would speak in pseudo-scientific jargon, something like, “ I must get the quark-photon-intercellular battery on my jet-propulsion pack to work so that I can get back to my Hyper Drive Interstellar Pod and shoot off to Alpha Centauri XYZ2345 in 10,000 times the warp speed along the space-time continuum”. I could feel my brain slowly turn to mush after barely ONE page of dialogue like that. He would have a robotic sidekick that looks like my Brabantia Dome Lid Waste Container with a string of blinking Christmas light around it, except that it can also speak in a metallic voice that somehow sounds like my mother-in-law in one of her bad days. Oh, and there will be other more sympathetic alien life forms that look like the misbegotten offspring of a camel and an orangutan, or some rubbery stuffed toy that the dog had chewed to bits. In short, I just can’t see why I should care about the fate of these monstrous, barely human creatures. Why waste precious time reading about some trash can android or an alien that looks like the Elephant Man on a bad hair day while there are perfectly normal, realistic HUMAN characters out there?
My favorite genre is historical fiction; you know, those books about human beings who either have been dead for centuries, or never existed at all, written by people who cannot possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the period that they’re writing about? Nothing could be more different than science fiction, something that I have not touched in 20 years or so.
So, what am I doing with The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus, 832 pages of sci-fi drenched in techno babble and redolent of the smell of a million alien armpits?
Well, for one thing, it’s included in the BBC’s 100 Big Reads, which for some reason has become my guide to a worthwhile reading list that is not solely composed of the classics. The other thing is that it’s supposed to be one of the funniest books ever written ---I can always overlook the sci-fi for the funnies. And the characters are recognizably human, or at least sort of human, although one of them is called Zaphod Beeblebrox, (which, incidentally would make a good brand name for a laxative) and has two heads and three arms. The other two are genuine human beings from Earth --- or carbon-based ape-descended life forms --- take your pick, and the other one is a human looking alien with ginger hair (a hideous genetic mutation that should be bred out in real humans). And he is conveniently named Ford Prefect. No need to memorize ridiculous alien names when a simple English one will do.
And now that we are superficially acquainted with the protagonists, it’s time to summarize the plot of this sprawling intergalactic tome --- except that there is no real plot to speak of. Well, actually there is something about looking for the Ultimate Question --- ‘What is the meaning of life?’ --- which is of interest to all life forms in the universe, at least to those that have the brain capacity to ponder such things. But mostly they just bounce around from one bizarre planet to another, having weird adventures in which they meet, among others, a paranoid android, rebellious appliances, a comatose intergalactic rock star and a megalomaniac book publisher. Ultimately, the barely there plot is nothing but an excuse for an absurdist farce through which Adams pokes fun at organized religion, meat-eaters, politicians, big businesses, environmentalists, the publishing industry and other pet peeves. Some parts are brilliantly funny, especially in the first book, while others had me scratching my head and wondering whether he was high on something when he wrote them. Certain sections are mind-numbingly boring and confusing in that special sci-fi way. Oh, and the constant smugness and non-stop zaniness are grating after the second book or so, and I just lost interest completely after finishing it.
At least I know now that ‘babel fish’ is not just a strangely named online translation program. And that it is possible to write a book about what is essentially nonsense and have it become a major pop culture icon. But I’m also mightily relieved that I can stop hitchhiking through THIS universe, which is probably too cool and too clever for me to completely understand.
And this shall be my last sci-fi book for the next 20 years. ...more
In Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby returns to his favorite stock character: the emotionally stunted fanboy. He’s considerably older, though, and somehow moIn Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby returns to his favorite stock character: the emotionally stunted fanboy. He’s considerably older, though, and somehow more distasteful in his petty obsessiveness, perhaps because we are finally allowed to see him through the eyes of the long-suffering woman who wasted the best years of her life hanging around him. Duncan’s obsession with Tucker Crowe, an obscure singer-songwriter who has not released any new material after his seminal 1986 album, Juliet, is not just a weekend hobby. He drags Annie, his live-in girlfriend of 15 years, through obscure corners of America in a voyeuristic quest for his reclusive idol. At one point in their trip, Duncan asks Annie to take a photo of him pretending to pee in a smelly rock club restroom where he thinks something pivotal had happened to Crowe. Annie is glad that the toilet couldn’t talk, because otherwise, “Duncan would have wanted to chat to it all night”. It doesn’t get better back home; Duncan is also a self-appointed world-class ‘Crowologist’ who spends an inordinate amount of time on his website about the singer with his fellow obsessives. They have no time for marriage and children, and now, herself pushing forty, Annie feels that her chance for happiness has withered away along with their dead-end relationship.
When Crowe unexpectedly releases a demo tape of Juliet (subsequently known as Juliet, Naked by fans), Annie gets her double chance at revenge: first by listening to the album ahead of Duncan (unthinkable!), and then by writing a negative review of it on Duncan’s website (how dare you!). Duncan considers her lack of appreciation for the new album to be a fatal moral failing and leaves her for another woman. Surprisingly, the great Tucker Crowe himself agrees with Annie’s assessment and begins to write confessional emails to her, divulging nuggets of information that Duncan would give his right hand for. His own marriage failing, Crowe heads to England to visit one of his numerous children from former relationships, taking his youngest with him. Then, in a bid to escape reunion with assorted abandoned children and ex-spouses, he goes to stay with Annie in Gooleness, the dreary coastal town where Annie and Duncan live.
Will Annie find a second chance with Crowe? Will Duncan be cured of his obsession after meeting his all-too-human idol in the flesh? Will serial husband /absentee father Crowe finally gets it right? If this were an earlier Hornby novel, say High Fidelity, or About a Boy, the answer to these questions (after a certain amount of angst) would be a resounding Yes. But we are in a different territory here. The landscapes of middle age are different from those of early adulthood, and some people are probably just too set on their way to tread another path.
I am giving this novel four stars, but actually it’s more like three and a half stars. Hornby is in a fine form here, but the ending somehow feels anticlimactic after so much build up earlier on, and some parts with Crowe and Annie feel redundant to the point of dullness. There is no laugh-out-loud moments, instead, the humor comes from Hornby's ribbing of the internet fanboy culture and the earnest errors that it propagates. "Dear God", indeed.
What I learned from this book (in no particular order):
1. Brief, nameless lives are of no import whatsoever…to Galactus.
2. True gangsters live lives pWhat I learned from this book (in no particular order):
1. Brief, nameless lives are of no import whatsoever…to Galactus.
2. True gangsters live lives phony rap acts can only rhyme about.
3. Never write checks with your mouth that your ass could never hope to cover.
4. Trujillo, El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and F***face: they all refer to one man. A VERY bad man.
5. Some men are so very bad that not even postmodernism can explain them away.
6. Trujillo is the creator of the first modern Kleptocracy. He is also the USA’s favorite anti-commie boy in the Caribbeans.
7. Fuku killed Kennedy, not Lee Harvey or the ghost of Marilyn f****** Monroe, and also caused the US to lose to a Third World country, Vietnam. It is divine retribution for USA invading the Dominican Republic --- TWICE.
8. Weighing 307 pounds and talking like a Star Trek computer won’t get you any hot morena. And you can’t blame it on Sauron either.
9. It’s very un-Dominican for a dude to never have much luck with the females. The average Dominican male has four kids with three different women. No Dominican male has ever died a virgin.
10. Overheated libido is a Fuku on all Dominicans, be they residing in New Jersey or the Dominican Republic.
BUT SERIOUSLY,
The secret of this book’s success is the lyrical, scatological, and at times hypnotic narrative voice that convincingly tells the story of multiple generations of Dominicans, both in New Jersey and their homeland. The multi-generational immigrant saga with all its trials and tribulations is nothing new, and so is Oscar, the stereotypical fat nerd who could never get the girl. Magical realism (which is used sparingly --- and successfully --- in this novel) has been a familiar device for Latin American novelists since the 60’s. What makes the book is the voice; street-wise, angry, swaggering, funny, sad and poetic. It makes the story compulsively readable and renders the poignant climax believable.
I wish that there were a glossary at the back of the book for all the Spanish, though. No doubt the Spanglish successfully conveys the Dominican-American patois spoken by the characters, but as a non-Spanish speaker I also feel that I’m missing chunks of the dialogue and thus some of the nuances of the story.
I feel rather underwhelmed by this book, my first by Allende. This is a story about the making of Zorro, and it has all the incidents that we might exI feel rather underwhelmed by this book, my first by Allende. This is a story about the making of Zorro, and it has all the incidents that we might expect in such an account. Shoshone shaman grandmother who concocts magic potions; mute Indian sidekick/ milk-brother; Barcelona fencing master who is also the head of a secret society; lovely but fickle love interest; evil, sneering antagonist; fat Sergeant Garcia; gypsies; and even pirates. Everything that should make this a fun, swashbuckling ride that Zorro should be are there, but Allende writes of them in the driest, most uninvolving way possible. The prose is bland, cliche-ridden, and the characters, including Zorro himself, are scarcely more than cardboard cutouts. The bits of history that the author slip in to provide background to the story are somewhat interesting, but this is not a history book. Zorro should be the literary equivalent of a rousing, action-adventure matinee offering; in this respect this book fails miserably. Or perhaps I was expecting too much from the union of a character who is essentially a pulp fiction creation and a respected South American author. I expected better of Zorro, and I expected better from Allende. ...more
"Her skin was fair. Her body was slender. Every day her back was burdened with a large basket wrapped up in a cloth sling. She came to the nobles' hom"Her skin was fair. Her body was slender. Every day her back was burdened with a large basket wrapped up in a cloth sling. She came to the nobles' homes. Bought things, clothes, empty bottles, junks. Until her basket was filled to the brim. Only then would she sell them at the market.
Her husband was a failed farmer, a failed chicken soup peddler, was once a village official, also a failed one. Therefore every day she kept walking, from house to house and to the market. With the big basket on her back. Ever independent. "
Unfortunately, one can only wonder how the protagonist of this story, the Girl from the Coast, evolved from a 16-year old discarded 'practice wife' to an old, fiercely independent rag-and-bone woman --- the author's own grandmother. The novel that we now know as The Girl From the Coast is only the first part of a trilogy. The last two books were destroyed by the New Order authorities when the author was in prison. Which proves that long after the colonial period depicted in this novel was over, the spirit of the authoritarian, callous 'Bendoro' still thrived in independent Indonesia.
The Girl from the Coast is a powerful, searing indictment of the corrupt, hypocritical Javanese ruling elite during the colonial era. The Girl ( who is known only by that name throughout the novel) is uprooted from her carefree life as a 14-year old daughter of a poor fishing family to become a 'practice wife' for a rich Javanese nobleman, the Bendoro. She soon finds out that her body and soul exist only for her master's pleasure, and that she can be discarded any time he tires of her. Separated from her newborn baby after the Bendoro got rid of her, she realizes that she can no longer fit into the life in her fishing village, and decides to chart her own independent course in life. Like Nyai Ontosoroh in Pramoedya's Buru Quartet, The Girl is the embodiment of the author's idealization of the strong, self-contained Javanese woman who resisted their various opressors with uncommon valor.
It is a pity that we can only know the beginning of her story.
Note : the quotation from the preface is in my own translation from Bahasa Indonesia. I have not read the translated English version, but judging from the preview at Amazon, it seems that the preface is not included in it. ...more
This epistolary novel begins promisingly enough with charming, occasionally humorous, letters from the quirky members of the titular book club. SlowlyThis epistolary novel begins promisingly enough with charming, occasionally humorous, letters from the quirky members of the titular book club. Slowly, we learn more about who these people are, and what happened to them and their island during the German occupation. However, the charm wears thin for me about halfway into the book, and when Juliet and her publishing pals actually visit the island, everything degenerates into incoherent mush. The cutesy ending with the last minute romance between Juliet and one of the book club's members feels rather unconvincing, like the forced conclusion of a bad Hollywood romantic comedy....more
Amitav Ghosh's second novel is as beautifully written as his other novels, but the narrative, especially in the first part, somehow lacks cohesivenessAmitav Ghosh's second novel is as beautifully written as his other novels, but the narrative, especially in the first part, somehow lacks cohesiveness. It reads more like the disjointed memoir of a precocious Calcutta schoolboy than a finished novel, endlessly flipping between different eras, sometimes disorientingly so. The grandmother is the most realized character in the novel, the only character who has seen it all, and whose presence holds together the different narratives. The book ends with a heatrbreaking revelation about events that happened the grandmother's last visit to her childhood home in Dhaka.
Grace Tjan
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