A whimsical, difficult-to-classify, atmospheric, speculative novel of the kind I haven’t read in years but which I was ultimately (surprisingly) pleasA whimsical, difficult-to-classify, atmospheric, speculative novel of the kind I haven’t read in years but which I was ultimately (surprisingly) pleased was suggested in one of my reading groups. I felt a slight whiff of The Night Circus, a tiny hint of steampunk and the suggestion of inspiration from Philip Pullman. And yet the novel is entirely original.
The setting: Victorian London, and Japan.
The characters: a young telegrapher called Thaniel, a Japanese watchmaker called Mori, a young Oxford-based scientist called Grace, a girl orphan called Six, some Whitehall civil servants, an anglified Japanese dandy, other minor English and Japanese characters.
The plot: One evening, in his dingy Pimlico flat, Thaniel finds a fantastically delicate watch mysteriously left for him by an unknown and uninvited guest. Around the same time, Irish Clan na Gael (Fenian Brotherhood) have threatened to bomb Scotland Yard, a bombing which really took place in 1884 and for which the Fenians took credit. The watch warns Thaniel at the last minute, and he manages to save his life, but this ignites his curiosity – and that of the Yard – and he is off to Filigree Street where the maker of said watch lives.
Mori’s little watchmaker shop is full of dainty clockwork: watches, small birds, fireflies and a small octopus called Katsu. The meeting between Thaniel and Mori sets off a series of events which the rest of the book explores, going down various routes into a Japanese past and possible English futures. Along the way, we discover how Thaniel sees colours in sounds, how Grace believes in the existence of ether in the air, and how Mori’s memories are not what we, or Thaniel, at first thought.
Style: What raises this novel from yet another potential steampunk-ish pastiche with elements from magical realism (not fantasy) were the quirky sentences, the interest in turning out a good phrase to either explore character or create an ambience, and the occasional philosophical musings. It is not a plot-based page-turner. In fact, it took me some 60-70 pages to really latch on to the story, and there were some confusing moments along the way, not least in some of the dialogues. But the last third or so was magical, and it appeared that some of the confusion had been deliberate.
Below a few extracts, though there were many more:
War was punching the clock instead of looking at the broken mechanisms.
She moved like a faulty bicycle, by turns too fast, and then too slowly. (And later, about the same character:) Her joints were moving badly, all unoiled hydraulics.
There were a dozen languages fluttering under the chandeliers.
Matsumoto gave him the amused look of an experienced dandy meeting his younger self.
He tried to feel around the idea of prison. The edges of it were too sharp to touch.
And of course, the cover is suitably whimsical and lovely with a little peep hole through which you can see the numbers on the watch. Not something I would normally ‘fall for’, but upon closing I seemed to have changed my mind. I was charmed by this book.
The Book Thief is a wonderful novel that is at once bitter sweet and tragic, and which brought both a smile to my face and tears to my eyes. It is theThe Book Thief is a wonderful novel that is at once bitter sweet and tragic, and which brought both a smile to my face and tears to my eyes. It is the story of Liesel, a German girl who is nine years old when we first meet her, and her childhood adventures into books, reading, friendship, foster parents and humanity (or lack thereof) during a horrific time in European history, World War II.
There was something playful in the narration, which belies much of the content because the narrator is Death himself. And as he points out several times during the novel, he was busier than ever at this point in history, but it really wasn’t his fault. (The juxtaposition of dark and light in the novel, as seen especially in the narration, reminded me of how, decades ago, I first fell in love with the novels of John Irving: it’s not 100% realism, but it’s not exactly unrealistic either. I find the categorization ‘fantasy’, which some have chosen to file it under, inaccurate. It’s closer to magical realism).
It is a difficult book to review, I find, partly because it is situated somewhere between adult and young adult fiction. Had I read this at age seventeen, I think I would have been heartbroken, and I wonder how many teenagers have read it. Another reason why I find it difficult to review is that I didn’t really feel like reading another Holocaust story, most likely knowing the outcome, especially with a child at the centre of the story. I almost cannot bear it. And yet, despite the tragedy of it all, there is also hope and human warmth here, and that is what I liked most about the book and, I suspect, what has made it so popular. It really is a book to remind Europe of its own humanity. For those of us who mostly read English or American books it’s also an occasion for us to look at the war from inside Germany, from the perspective of ordinary Germans.
The form is interesting but probably not for everyone. It is sometimes poetic, sometimes staccato, often picturesque, sometimes amusing, with little info-boxes, quirky headlines, definitions and amputated sentences. I liked it a lot in the beginning and in fact was completely in love with the book for the first 50-100 pages. It then grew into a sort of love where I became more aware of what I felt to be minor flaws (e.g. metaphorical descriptions of clouds for the umpteenth time; the story dragging a bit about half way in), and it did detract a bit from the immense pleasure it gave me in the beginning. Another element that I’m ambivalent about is the complete foreshadowing (without subsequent suspense) of certain events, notably the deaths of some of the key characters. Death as the narrator (speaking with the voice of Zusak?) claims not to like mysteries:
“Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It’s the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest and astound me.”
I can sympathise with this preference of process over product, and it did have a certain effect on me (sort of like watching ‘Titanic’ for the third time and hoping that THIS time, they’ll miss the iceberg). But I suspect that it might have made a greater impact on me if these events had come as small surprise attacks instead, but that’s neither here nor there. The author chose to tell the story his own, unique way, and the story worked. The characters and the town of Molching, especially Himmel Strasse, felt utterly, devastatingly real, and I can highly recommend this novel to just about anybody (unless you roll your eyes at Death narrating a story). 4,5 stars
Having to read this for a book club, I lugged my way through it and didn’t exactly have a riveting plot to help me along. This is because it’s not so Having to read this for a book club, I lugged my way through it and didn’t exactly have a riveting plot to help me along. This is because it’s not so much a novel as a collection of stories that aren’t connected plot-wise but which feature a few of the same characters (well, mainly Jilly actually) and which all have some sort of magical, mythical element in them. Because of this construction it felt fragmented and disjointed to me – even though I liked some of the stories (but had expected a novel; my mistake).
The genre is supposedly urban fantasy (or magical realism or folkloric fantasy), though it’s more urban than fantasy to me. The cover belies the content and looks fantasy-like, but there’s nothing medieval about this book, unlike the majority of fantasy novels I’ve read. At one point one of the characters actually comments on the magic, saying that this isn’t Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, the universe – Newford, some typically North American, fictional city – reminds me more of certain cities in dystopian novels (e.g. the Chicago of ‘Divergent’). It doesn’t start out as depressing as that, but that changes as we move more and more into the underworld of Newford, peopled by delinquents, punks, artists, burnouts, bag ladies, gypsies, junkies and other marginalized people.
The magic is apparently most prevalent in this area – a cityscape consisting mostly of empty lots, trash, rubble, abandoned cars and the like and is aptly called the Tombs. There are comments elsewhere in the book about how the rich and the privileged have no empathy for the downtrodden in this part of the city, nor are they as susceptible to the magic. So despite the idea of parallel universes (in the same location), they are not experienced by everyone.
One of the recurring themes, therefore, is about believing (or not) in things that are magical, monstrous or otherwise extraordinary; it’s about perceptions of what is real and what isn’t, the message being that it IS real, but we need to open our eyes and minds to this alternate reality.
Another point made throughout the book, which I quite liked, is that it is about stories and how people step into each other’s stories for a short while or for years, and then step out again, and the stories continue, perhaps slightly altered or changed forever.
Music, as well, is part of the environment in that it plays a role in almost every chapter, be it through someone playing a flute, someone listening to Bach on the stereo, someone playing in a band or people going to gigs with punk bands. It is one of the arts present in the book, another being painting(s) (through Jilly) and another being storytelling.
There were a few strong or beautiful stories among them, but I definitely preferred the (few) uplifting ones with faeries and small enchantments touching people’s lives and not so much the bits with bad magic, which portrayed some fairly bleak street lives that were downright depressing, especially those involving children. The inter-textual reference to Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Little Mermaid’ was pretty interesting from a Dane’s point of view, especially one actually living in his home town, and it was one of several stories underlining De Lint’s leanings toward stories as myths or legends.
All in all, the mythical universe portrayed is relatively interesting, but I found it difficult to stay absorbed in the book due to its lack of a cohesive plotline and due to the changing characters. (2 stars for some of the stories, 3 for others = 2,5 stars total) ...more
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