Category: 2000 – 2007

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation Chunkster Crime

Grotesque – Natsuo Kirino

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Translated from the Japanese by Rebecca Copeland

Out is one of my favourite books and so I was very excited about reading Kirino’s second novel, < ?php echo amazon('0099488930','Grotesque’); ?>. Unfortunately, it failed to live up to my expectations.

Grotesque is very different in style to Out. It is slower, less gritty and without the moral dilemmas that made Out so special.

Grotesque centres around the murder of two prostitutes in Tokyo. The unnamed narrator was the sister of one of the victims and the best friend of the other. Her life becomes dominated by their deaths, as it is all anyone wants to talk about with her. We find out who the killer was very early on, so this book isn’t really a thriller, it is more like a character study. It deals with the motivations for prostitution and the process of grief following the murders of people who are close to you.

It sounds like a fascinating book, but unfortunately I found it quite boring. Some people think it is clever that the narrator was unreliable and meandered from one reflection to the next, but I found it very frustrating. There was no plot thread to drive the story forward and the ending was disappointing.  I think this quote gives you a good sense of the apathetic attitude present in this book:

You imagine Yuriko’s death shocked me, but it didn’t. Did I hate her murderer? No. Like my father, I didn’t really care about learning the truth.

I felt as though I was wading through depressive thoughts and didn’t see the point of the seemingly random snippets of their childhood lives.

There were several theoretically shocking scenes in this book, but they had no effect on me as I hadn’t bonded with any of the characters.

The writing was of a high quality and I didn’t find any of the jarring Japanese translation problems that I encountered with Out. I also loved the first chapter and her imaginative predictions of what her children would look like if she decided to sleep with various men. There were many other good paragraphs, but I’m afraid that overall the book was disappointing.

If you are interested in reading an investigation into the thoughts of a disturbed young woman then you might enjoy this book, but if you are looking for the best thriller on the planet I suggest you try Out.

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Have you read any of Natsuo Kirino’s books?

What do you think of them?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Graphic Novel Memoirs

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi (Book and Film)

Persepolis is often quoted as being one of the best graphic novels in existence, so I have been wanting to read it for a while. It is an autobiography about what life was like for the author growing up in Iran and her experiences of being sent away to school in Austria.

I’d describe Persepolis as being an important book, rather than an enjoyable one. A lot of it felt like reading a very good history book, rather than a personal experience of life in Iran. I loved the details of her personal life and did find some sections amusing, but overall the mood of the book was quite oppressive. It was very informative and I admit that there was a lot I didn’t know before reading it, but I would have preferred to learn more about her life than the politics of the country.

It was also quite slow to read. There was a lot of detail in each picture, so the pace was much slower than the average graphic novel. The illustrations were quite simple, but they portrayed all that was needed to be put across effectively.

Whilst I was reading the book I saw that the film was being shown on television, so decided to record it and watch it once I’d finished. It was an interesting comparison as I think it is the closest a film has ever come to following a book – it was just like seeing the pictures on each page moving in front of you, which meant that this is another rare example of a film being slightly better than the book.

I think that this is a book everyone should read at some point and it will probably become a classic of our age.

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Did you enjoy Persepolis?

What is your favourite graphic novel?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation

Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami

I love Murakami so much that Kafka on the Shore is in my all time top ten. Norwegian Wood seems to be one of his lesser known books. I had heard very little about it before I started to read, but had been warned that it would be depressing.

Norwegian Wood is primarily set in a Japanese University during the 1960s. It is a coming of age novel that has a strong resemblance to The Bell Jar. In both novels the issue of suicide is prominent, but Norwegian Wood is slightly darker. 

The story focuses on Toru, who has a complex, but touching relationship with Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend, Kizuki, who tragically committed suicide.

People looking for Murakami’s amazing imaginative narrative may be disappointed by this book, as it is a straight, simple story, that many people speculate as being largly autobiographical. As with The Bell Jar, I didn’t find it as depressing as I expected – I was never moved to tears, and I felt that the novel focused on hope, rather than tragedy.

Murakami’s skill for character development is evident, and I found it very easy to empathise with Toru’s difficult situation. I loved the complexity of the emotion present in this book – it more than made up for the simplicity of the story.

Murakami’s wisdom is scattered throughout the book. One quote that particularly stood out for me was:

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Overall, I felt that this was a well written book, but I prefer the uniqueness of Murakamis’s more imaginative books.

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What did you think of Norwegian Wood?

Which is your favourite Murakami book?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Other Prizes Science Fiction

Perdido Street Station – China Miéville

 Winner of the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2001 British Fantasy Award. Nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and British Science Fiction awards

When the Booker longlist was announced there was some anger from the science fiction community that China Miéville was excluded from the list. Damien Walter was particularly vocal on Twitter, and so, keen to ensure I wasn’t missing out on a great author, I decided to read one of his books. It was agreed that Perdido Street Station was the best and so I bought a copy. I was a little daunted when a 870 page chunkster dropped through my letter box, but I was still keen to find out why people were raving about this book.

Perdido Street Station began really well, with vivid descriptions of a strange world.

Sil lived and worked and slept in the tub, hauling himself from one end to the other with his huge, webbed hands and frog’s legs, his body wobbling like a bloated testicle, seemingly boneless. He was ancient and fat and grumpy, even for a vodyanoi. He was a bag of old blood with limbs, without a separate head, his big curmudgeonly face poking out from the fat at the front of his body.  

Isaac, the central character, is employed to study winged animals by a secrective creature who has lost his wings. I loved the character development and the imaginative plot – I was hooked for the first half of the book.

Everything started to go wrong at about the 500 page mark. The plot deteriorated into one long chase scene; I became bored by the continual fighting and longed for the thoughtfulness of the beginning to return. The ending was also a disappointment. It was such a shame, as I was really enjoying it.

I can see why this book won so many fantasy awards, but now I know why it didn’t win the Booker, or any other literary fiction prize. This book is beautifully written, but it doesn’t have the depth required for literary fiction. It is an incredible work of imagination, but in the end it lacked enough emotion or depth for me.

Recommended to people who are very passionate about their science fiction, but not to lovers of literary fiction.

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Have you read anything written by China Miéville?

I was very intrigued to read that he is planning to write a book in every genre. He is clearly a talented author and so I will read more of his books in the future. I am especially tempted by his latest book  The City & The City,which is described as detective noir novel. Has anyone read it?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Chunkster Historical Fiction

Labyrinth – Kate Mosse

Labyrinth had sat on my shelf for a long time, but for some reason it never stood out, so I kept reading other things. I then spotted that Kate Mosse was talking at the Cheltenham Book Festival, and so decided this was the incentive I needed to finally get round to reading it.

Labyrinth begins with a girl discovering a hidden cave while helping on on archeological dig in the French Pyrenees. The story then flips back to the 13th Century and follows a young girl who is living in the beautiful walled city of Carcassonne, France.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy reading it. The characters failed to engage me and the writing seemed be be of poor quality. I kept thinking of Timeline by Michael Crichton, which managed to make time travel back to feudal France, thrilling, thought-provoking and exciting. This book felt inferior in comparison.

It took a lot of effort for me to get to page 160, when I decided that I couldn’t take it any more. The thought of wading through another 500+ pages of below average writing was just too much for me.

I then went to hear Kate Mosse interviewed by Sandi Toksvig at the Cheltenham Book Festival. It was the best author interview I have ever seen. The two are good friends in real life and their warm friendship came across. Both were enthusiastic, intelligent and witty – I could have listened to them all day! Kate talked about her love for literary fiction and her passion for research – she likes to write really slowly, taking 5 years to complete Labyrinth.

Kate Mosse came across as an amazing woman. She co-founded the Orange prize and was named European Woman of Achievement in 2000 for her contribution to the arts. I have great admiration for her and the passionate discussion inspired me to give Labyrinth another try.

With renewed excitement I picked up Labyrinth again. I managed another 10 pages, before coming to the conclusion that Kate Mosse is a fantastic woman, but not an author I’ll be reading again.

If you’re after an amazing story set in Carcassone, try Timeline!

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(DNF)

Did you enjoy Labyrinth?

Do you love Timeline as much as I do?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Other Prizes

De Niro’s Game – Rawi Hage

 
Winner of the 2008 International IMPAC Literary Award, Shortlisted for the Giller Prize 2008

I picked up De Niro\’s Game‘); ?> after a recommendation from Claire at Kiss a Cloud, but I’m afraid that I didn’t love it as much as she did.

The book follows Bassam and George, childhood friends growing up in war-torn Beirut. As you can imagine it isn’t a pleasant read – graphic scenes of death and destruction fill every chapter.  The whole atmosphere of the book is one of helplessness and depression. I appreciate that this is probably a very realistic picture of what life is like for people living with war, but it meant that I found it a very difficult book to read. There didn’t seem to be any spark of hope, only choices between two equally terrible outcomes. I found it difficult to bond with the characters and their violent, vulgar attitude further distanced me from them.

I can see why Claire loved this book – the scenes were described vividly, and the story was both shocking and compelling.

That night, through the flames of a million candles that brawled inside the neighbourhood houses, I walked. Under those lights, hazy behind nylon sheets that covered our broken windows, I walked the streets with no dogs. I walked, and the candles danced inside a city with injured walls, a city void of light, a broken city wrapped in plastic, and plastered with bullet holes.

At times I became annoyed by the repetition. I realise that it was a powerful means to describe the situation the people were faced with, but if I read the words “Ten thousand bombs had fallen” one more time I think I’ll scream!

Overall, this is a beautifully written book, but the futility was too much for me.

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Have you read De Niro’s Game?

Can you enjoy a book which deals only with devastation?