A True Novel Review

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01/19/2014

A True Novel Review

I mentioned, a post or two ago, that Minae Mizumura's A True Novel was one of the best books I read in 2013. I review it in today's Japan Times.

A True Novel is, in part, an updating and relocating of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights to postwar Japan. That sounds like it could be quite awful, but Mizumura, avoids the trap of slavishly following Bronte, and in so doing makes her novel something different — not a copy of Bronte’s classic, but a commentary on it, and also on themes, most notably passion and social class, that also interested Bronte, but do not, of course, belong to her.

Read the whole thing here.

—David

Posted at 10:33 AM | Permalink

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Books David Finished in 2025

Carlsson, Christoffer: Under the Storm
This is a Swedish police procedural written by, I learned from the "about the author" page at the end, an author who has a PhD. in criminology and is "one of Sweden's leading crime experts." He seems to get the police procedures right, but given his background, I guess that's no surprise. What makes the novel more interesting than the run-of-the-mill is an exploration of genes and their possible role in making one a criminal. One of the main characters is the grandson of a man known to have been a depressive alcoholic who beat his wife severely, and the nephew of a man believed to have murdered a neighbor and burned down the farm where she lived to camouflage his crime. This character, whom we follow from boyhood to fatherhood, does experience rages and has been guilty of violent acts while in their grip, so the author, Christoffer Carlsson, does not entirely dismiss the role of genes. He makes it clear, though, that the manner in which the village treats this scion of a "bad" family has as much to do with those rages and the mistakes he makes as does any biological inheritance he might have. Since we seem to live in a time when people are eager to embrace a simplistic understanding of genetics, I was happy that Carlsson shows us vividly how important social factors are.
Sherman, Anna: The Bells of Old Tokyo
Like any sensible person who’s had occasion to read a few hundred accounts by non-Japanese of their experiences in Tokyo and/or Japan, I generally avoid books that fit that description. Readers I respect, though, praised Anna Sherman’s The Bells of Old Tokyo enough that I gave it a go. I’m glad I did. It’s different in several respects from the run of the mill. First, the quest she sets herself and upon which she hangs her narrative—visiting the bells of old Tokyo that remain and learning about those that don’t—is intrinsically interesting. Second, though this is not a scholarly tome, Sherman has done the reading (and the interviews) and weaves in what she gleans with aplomb. Third, except for the short section on love hotels, the only real pratfall in the book, we get none of the usual wacky Japan stuff. There are no hilarious accounts of her first visit to a karaoke bar, or of the time she forgot to remove her toilet slippers when leaving the restroom. Her prose has a quiet elegance to it that suits her subject. I liked this book enough that I’ve already recommended it to a friend.
Carey, Louise: Outcast
This is the second volume of Louise Carey's cyberpunk trilogy about a world in which corporations have replaced countries and people's minds are controlled in ways that make them servile and obedient to the corporate bosses. There is even a class of mind-controlled worker drones that staff warehouses on the outskirts of cities from which they pack and send merchandise to residents of the cities. Analogy much? Louise Carey's plotting is amazing. There are double crosses on top of double crosses, but because people are not always in control of their own minds, and because memories can be wiped clean, it is often difficult to know who is to blame for what. The narrative drive keeps us moving through the confusion.
Disch, Thomas M. & Charles Naylor: Neighboring Lives
This seems to be a work of psychogeography avant la lettre. As the title hints, it is not a narrative that moves its characters through places, but rather the story of a place, London's Chelsea, during the Victorian years, and the remarkable people who lived there or passed through: Chopin, Leigh Hunt, John Stuart Mill, Rosetti and assorted pre-Raphaelites, Browning, Lewis Carroll, and especially the now little-read Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane. It reads more like a collection of stories than a novel, but it is no less fun for that. The prose is slightly archaic in the best way: it captures the wit that was valued in the period. And among the wittiest of the characters is Jane Carlyle, who, as she laments herself, "never did anything." Her letters survive, though, and they reveal what a clever, gossipy woman she was. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to be convinced that the artistic milieu that sprang up in Chelsea during those years is fascinating, and to anyone who values sprightly prose. Maybe it's time to read Sartor Resartus?
Connelly, Michael: The Overlook
Another cracker in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. The novel has moved into a time after 9/11 but before bin Laden was killed, so terrorism, panic about imagined terrorism, and security theater come into it. I'm looking forward to the next in the series.
Forster, E.M.: A Room a With a View
I thought I had read this before, but now, having read it I think I only saw the Merchant-Ivory film. The film was great and so is this, the most recent entry in my year of reading Forster. The early scenes featuring English tourists at a Pension in Italy are superb comedy. I rather wish Forster had kept it in that vein and left his big ideas—love! Passion!—alone, but that’s a quibble. Forster’s prose carries one along. I think I’ll watch the movie, though I’m almost certain I’ve seen it before.
Allingham, Margery: Sweet Danger
Another romp with Allingham's Albert Campion: a little witchcraft, a little insanity (the witchcraft turns out to be insanity) and lots of Golden Age British silliness. Allingham wrote the first of these books in 1929 (Campion played a minor role) and the last in 1968. It will be fun to see how the books respond to the times through which they move.
Olubas, Brigitta (ed.): Expatriates of No Country: The Letters of Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene
Shirley Hazzard writes: "Literature, language, expression, writing itself—seem to be deteriorating in the machine and electronic world." "That doesn't mean that nothing more can happen for the better . . . ," she adds, and I'm glad she sees reason not to be entirely pessimistic. Me too, but reading through the correspondence of these two intelligent, cultured, literate people causes me to despair that literary letters are no longer much written and that few new collections of them will appear.
Moreno-Garcia, Sylvia: Mexican Gothic
As it says on the tin: This is a gothic novel set in Mexico (though with a little fiddling, I think it could have been set just about anyplace where there are isolated houses in cold and misty environs). There is an isolated house in Mexican Gothic, and it is cold, rainy, and misty, and there is a young woman, a Mexico City debutante, at its center who is ultimately imperiled. She's sent to the isolated house to see and perhaps rescue her cousin, who has married into the family whose ancestral pile the isolated house is. Horrible hijinks ensue. Cryptobiology—it's the mushrooms!—and eugenics come into it. All of that makes for a mix that is engaging enough, but I don't see myself seeking out more of Moreno-Garcia's work.
Robbins, Tom: Another Roadside Attraction
I first read this novel fifty or so years ago. I'm happy to have returned to it. The zany philosophizing is fun, and a novel in which hippies are the main characters and are treated lovingly is pleasant. The prose is a perfect accompaniment to the above: "A trombone of geese slides southward between the overcast and the barns;" "Is it true that Roland Kirk is the entire Count Basie orchestra in drag?" " . . . human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another;" "What an electric heater perched on the rim of the Bathtub of the World that dead Jesus was!" "His voice was like steel dog barking bricks." Maybe I'll read some more Robbins sometime.

Books Julian Read Recently

Percival Everett: James
It starts as a warm retelling of Huck Finn from slave Jim’s point of view before spinning off into its own narrative of the truths of slavery. As a gay man, I know about societal prejudice, but slavery is – to state the obvious -- an entirely different level of harm. I’m grateful for this eye-opener, and for a great story well told. (*****)
Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I plowed through this period piece as prep for Percival Everett’s “James”. It gets sour when a couple of con-artists latch on to Huck & Jim for chapters on end, then intolerable when Tom Sawyer shows up at the end and makes everything stupid. I cracked open James just now and was immediately rewarded for my patience by the first sentence (Jim/James first-person narrating) which refers to when Huck and Tom first meet Jim… and turns it on its head: Twain’s “Who dah?” vernacular morphs to “Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.” This is going to be fun!
Alan Hollinghurst: Our Evenings
These fictional memoirs of an actor growing up in the UK from the 1960s take in racism, class divisions, gay liberation and Brexit, An acutely-observed, vivid and enjoyable read. (***)
Samantha Harvey: Orbital
This entirely original sliver of a novel describes (an earth) day in the life of astronauts aboard an international space station, with gorgeous, evocative descriptions and startling perspectives on life, humanity, the universe and everything. A thrilling and extraordinary ride! (*****)
Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending
An Englishman remembers his life while probing the nature of memory. The final mystery is involving, and the solution is astonishing enough to almost compel rereading the whole book. I’m not sure if the whole adds up to more or less than the sum of its parts, but it’s definitely impressive. (I first read this in 2012, forgot it entirely [not inappropriate given that memory is the book's theme], and according to my earlier notes, I liked it better this time around.) (***)
Rachel Kushner: Creation Lake
Rambling, opaque ideas about the origins of humankind swamp a thriller about radicals vs. big business in impoverished rural France. On the plus side, the venal narrator is compelling, the short sections are highly readable, and there’s a great climax. (**)
Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha
A radiant account of a life searching for and finally finding mental peace. (***)
C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
It’s bracing and helpful to read this account of the excruciating pain of the loss of a dearly loved one. However, it is mostly an attempt to find a place in the author’s Christian beliefs (a wise God; some sort of afterlife; a purpose to life, etc.) for the tragedy, and to revise and clarify those beliefs in the face of it. The brutal honesty and logic brought to bear on this task makes clear that, whatever benefits religion might have, it sure can add an awkward and sad complexity to life… and death. (***)
Elizabeth Strout: Tell Me Everything
Elizabeth Strout again brings together the (mostly small town American) characters from her previous novels, but you don’t need to have read those to appreciate this. Here, post pandemic, Olive, Lucy, Bob and all are involved in a murder mystery, a bereavement, and a love story, but the everyday is every bit as absorbing. Strout’s world encompasses life, death, and what lies between: in a word humanity. (****)
Alice McDermott: Someone
The daughter of a New York working-class family, growing up mid-century, recounts her life in shards of recollection. Razor-sharp observation and disarming honesty make this a pleasure. (****)

Films Julian Watched Recently

Things NC Consumed Recently

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
More than forty years on since my last reading, this classic novel is remarkable not so much for its romantic longings as for its emphasis on American violence, its depiction of a country in which California hardly matters and its meeting of the Mid West and East Coast. Plus its succinct nine chapters, its elegant prose and its almost noirish tone: Tom breaking Myrtle's nose would seem to foreshadow Lee Marvin throwing hot coffee in Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat - and the use of flashbacks helps too. I'd like to thank the publicity for the recent film version and my current cold for sending me back to the novel (and my young self).
Isabelle Eberhardt
In 1904, Isabelle Eberhardt drowned in the desert, leaving behind, among other things, various writings in French (a novel, travel notes, a journal, short stories), Islam, Lake Geneva, a husband, debauchery in kif, sex and alcohol, and a small collection of male clothing, which she wore habitually, along with her man's name. The lazy say she was an early hippie, because of her nomadic, hedonistic life, and being the first one to die at 27. Lindqvist has her in a line from Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Celine and Genet. Her story can only get stranger and more fascinating. "In The Shadow of Islam", "The Passionate Nomad", "The Oblivion Seekers" and Annette Kobak's biography are one way in. You'll find there an apt fatal romanticism for vast desert spaces and a depiction of Islam to ponder. Among other things.
Listen to Britain - Humphrey Jennings
Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is in part an attempt to define the nation on the eve of its being invaded. But that invasion never came. A little prematurely, Humphrey Jennings's film records what left later, with something messier, less defined usurping through the back door. Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is one of the greatest things these islands have produced.
Patience (After Sebald)
Grant Gee's documentary uses a palette of pale black and white, maps and talking heads to comment on W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, an account of his walk through Suffolk. Unlike the book, where a variety of genres (and photographs) coheres to make a recognisable whole, the film suffers slightly from a lack of direction. It is too specific to serve as an introduction and lacks an overriding arc that might describe a thesis. However, with its archival footage, interviews with the author and shots of the route taken, it is essential viewing for those already in thrall to all things Sebaldian - even if the ending, alas, veers close to Conan Doyle and fairies-in-the-garden territory.