Men without Women

So a couple of months ago I wrote somewhat of a rant concerning Haruki Murakami's short story collection First Person Singular. It had nothing to do with short stories and everything to do with an old man writing his (partly fictionalized) memoir. Not a great experience.
Then I watched Drive My Car, the feels-like-never-ending film about a theatre director whose wife has died, who is driven around by a slightly awkward girl. It was a bit too long, but I really loved it. As it was based on a short story by that very same Haruki Murakami, I decided to give him another change. I borrowed Men without Women from the library (I joined the library as part of my new year's resolutions, which was the best idea ever) and dove right in. 

The collection consists of seven stories, all featuring a man who for some reason or other lives without women. Some are written in the first person, but most in the third. Although women feature in all of the stories, some of the men are even married, I could see the central theme running through them. It is one of the few things that connects them, apart from them all being set in Japan. Otherwise, they range far and wide.

'Drive my Car' is the first story in the collection. I really enjoyed it, I would almost say despite my preconceptions. It is a perfect example of a good short story; we fall right in the middle of the story, stuff happens, and then we come to some sort of a conclusion. The writing style (or perhaps; translation) is very nice and fluid and the characters are both recognisable but also likeable. The main character is there, who has lost both his daughter and his wife, who he knows started having affairs after their child died. The girl who drives his car is there, although her story doesn't really feature. They have deep conversations, he practises his Chekov lines, and she resists the will to smoke while they drive in his old Saab. In the end, the both come to some sort of resolution with their past or themselves. The film expanded way beyond the story to flesh it out to three hours, but it stands on its own well enough.

So after this first experience, my expectations were a bit higher. Perhaps I had judged Murakami too harshly.

The second story 'Yesterday' is a classical Murakami technique; man in the present tells about an experience he had when he was younger, generally concerning a girl. In this story, which derives its name from a somewhat weird Japanese adaptation of the Beatles song, we meet a guy who wants the main character to date his girlfriend. This doesn't really come to anything. When the protagonist meets the girl again years later, they remember their past, the guy and what became of him. End of story. It doesn't have a point, a message, something to remember it by. If it weren't for the Beatles reference in the title, I would probably have forgotten it entirely.

Sadly, that is true of almost all the other stories, the ones without the clear titles. The only one I can still remember and liked somewhat was 'Kino', about a man who opens a bar after he divorces his wife. This started nicely, describing how he creates the bar and then waits for customers while a grey cat naps on his windowsill. At some point people discover his bar and he starts sleeping with one of his female customers. There is also a somewhat maffia type who he dislikes at first but who saves him from a couple of thugs. This was all leading up to something; he was crawling out of his shell and starting to make something of his life.

Then the story takes a spiritual turn, with lots of crawling snakes and whispered warnings of his need to travel far away from the bar and not return for a long time. He goes on this journey, writing postcards home as instructed, but then suddenly makes a wrong decision and the story ends with him then and there. Again; no point, no resolution, just a string of weird events ending abruptly.

Then there was an adaptation from The Metamorphisis that felt very far fetched. There was also an adaptation of 1,001 Nights, called 'Scheherazade', which was fun because part of it was incorporated in the Drive my Car film adaptation but which otherwise didn't really strike a chord. And there must be two other stories, but I genuinely can't remember what they were about.

So all in all, not a great experience. It may well be that in the original Japanese there are several deeper layers, there were some references that I didn't fully get and the whole Yesterday translation story is almost impossible to translate. But apart from the language I just cannot see why these stories aren't going anywhere. I mean, I enjoy reading these flowing, stream-of-consciousness like stories, as in Ali Smith's work. But this is nothing like that. They are just random bits of events and characters, thrown together to make something happen, but they have neither heads nor tails. 

The funny thing is that I really enjoyed 'Drive my Car' and the first part of 'Kino'. So his stories do work for me, on some level. But apparently, I only enjoy about a quarter, the rest I cannot understand. Sadly, I don't think I will borrow any more Murakami books from the library, not with so many other, potentionally much more enjoyable, books waiting to be read.

The Last White Man

Mohsin Hamid has another novel out. Or rather, novella. Somehow, I have ended up reading all of his works, after being the only one to pick The Reluctant Fundamentalist in my trauma theory class, simply because I'd already read all of the other post-9/11 novels on the list. That one stuck, and I've read all of his other works since then. Exit West, his previous book, was at the top of my Books of 2017 list because it contains such a unique point of view, memorable ideas and beautiful language.

So my expectations for The Last White Man were pretty high (while a part of me was also prepared for something else, with the recent experiences of great authors turning out horrible books) and I was not disappointed. The premise is quite spectacular, especially in these tense times concerning colour: slowly but steadily every 'pale' person (Hamid's term) turns into a dark person. This happens suddenly, overnight. It is not just a complete change of skin colour, but a change of race (although none are ever named); eye colour, facial features, hair, build, etc also change. In short; no one can recognise you anymore, not even your own mother.

Now in the wrong hands, this premise can spiral out of control pretty quickly. But in The Last White Man, we focus on four people; the main character Anders (which incidentally means 'different' in my native language, so that was a nice word play) who is one of the first to transform, his father, his friend Oona, and her mother. We only get Anders' and Oona's perspective, the parents are described in general terms, mostly concerning their opinions of their children. The other two parents have died, which ties in with the theme of loss running through the story. But because the focus point is so small, we get to experience their realisations, feelings, expectations, interactions, without also experiencing the impact on society as a whole. There are some small references; Anders and Oona have to stay home from work because of riots, and Anders is driven from his house by a white mob when he is just one of the few that have transformed, but the perspective never really gets broader than that. Their experience is the center.

It is only a very short story, so going into the plot would be spoiling things, but the language is beautiful. Some sentences run an entire page, meandering from one person's view to the next, or wind through the experience of an entire afternoon, no stopping, stream-of-consciousness style without ever feeling contrived or artificial. One example, just the one, from when Anders has already transformed but hardly anyone else has, and he goes to work and experiences the following:

"Anders told himself the stares were natural, he would have done the same, it was not a regular situation, after all, and to reassure people, and to reassure himself too, he tried to engage in his normal banter, to be, as it were, like himself, to act undeniably like himself, but this was more difficult than he had imagined, impossible really, for what was more unlike oneself, more awkward, than trying to be oneself, and it was throwing him off, this artificiality, but he had no idea what to replace it with, and so he began instead to mirror the others around him, to echo the way they spoke and walked and moved and the way they held their mouths, like they were performing something, and he was trying to perform it too, and what it was he did not know, but whatever it was it was not enough, or his performance of it was off, because his sense of being observed, of being on the outside, looked at by those who were in, of messing things up for himself, deeply frustrating, did not go away all day."  

I only wish for two things: that the novel would have been longer, and that Mr Hamid won't take another five years to write his next book.

Great Circle

I finally finished the other book on a female pilot I allude to in my overview of 2022's books: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. Apart from it being shortlisted for the Booker and appearing in loads of great reviews, I also felt drawn to the story after reading Beryl Markhams autobiography. As it should be, Great Circle references that book, and several other books written by female pilots, at some point. But without the implied reference to Beryl Markham's beautiful prose, this is a fantastic book in and of itself.
The book centers around two women: Marian Graves, a female pilot in the 1920s, 30, and all through WWII, who sets out to complete a circumnavigation of the earth via both poles, and Hadley (who surely must have a surname, but I have no idea), a famous Hollywood movie start who portrays Marian in a film made about this final flight sometime in our days. There are some simliarties between these two women, mostly in that they were both raised by their uncle and have some unfortunate experiences with men, but they are two very distinct characters. The Hadley parts are written in the first person, whereas the Marian parts, which also travel into other people's lives, such as her parents, brother, childhood friends, are told in the third person. The two stories meet repeatedly, intertwining until only you as the reader can see the full picture. For if there is anything to learn from this novel, it is that the truth is never as straightforward as it may seem from the present. Even if you peel back the sugar-coated Hollywood layer that is of course enforced when making a film, people still make lots of assumptions without even realising they do.

The language is beautiful. I read one part early on, where an ocean liner sinks, with open mouth, so completely immersed I forgot my surroundings completely. When Marian finds herself in the cold of Antarctica, it is as if you are in the tent beside her. We never really get to know her fully, because of the third-person perspective, but Maggie Shipstead clearly gave both their own distinct voice.

If I could find fault with the novel in any way, it would be that it might be a tad too long. Too over complete, maybe. At almost 700 pages, it took me quite a while to get through. There were some revelations, which did not really appear as revelations, until the final chapters did bring something new, surprising me into loving the story as a whole even more. It has been quite the experience, reading this story, and I very much look forward to reading her other novels.

Books of 2022

Despite all of my best intentions, 2022 was not the greatest reading year by a long stretch. I was hoping to finish a couple of books (one fiction and one non-fiction, coincidentally both about flying) before the end of the year to add some volume to the list, but the last week of December proved to be a short version of the entire year; wanting to read more, but not actually reading more.
So I ended with a total of 25 books, my lowest since 2017 (23 books). Some of them were really great, reminding me why I love to spend time reading, while others were pretty big disappointments. I somehow managed to avoid any of my favourite go-to auhors (Atwood, McEwan, Mitchell Swift) and read a lot of new authors, which may have come at a cost in quality. Since reading so few books I would have liked for all of them to be great, but in a year with lots of changes and big events (all on a personal level, so I will not get in to these here), picking the right book is somehow more difficult. Also, NaNoWriMo in November always halts my reading pace and drives me to reread old favourites, since writing something new and reading something new at the same time doesn't work well in my head. These are, of course, all excuses.

Let's get on with the full list:

1 The Every

2 Breakfast at Tiffany's

3 Harlem Shuffle

4 Are you experienced?

5 Story of your life and others

6 Wake

7 The Roadtrip

8 Eight Detectives

9 The Constant Rabbit

10 Beartown

11 Station Eleven

12 The Song of Achilles

13 Grimm Tales

14 There but for the

15 The Reading List

16 The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club

17 Mr Salary

18 The Flatshare

19 The Glass Hotel

20 First Person Singular

21 West with the Night

22 Small Things Like These

23 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

24 What If? 2

25 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

So three rereads, the two Harry Potters (NaNoWriMo time) and The Flatshare, since I had read Beth O'Leary's The Roadtrip earlier in the year and was in the mood for more of the same.

I read only one 'classical' novel, or rather short story collection, Breakfast at Tiffany's. You could count the Grimm's fairy tales as classical literature, but Philip Pullman has edited them to his own taste, so we will not. No books in Dutch at all, either fiction or non-fiction. Only two non-fiction books in total, come to that. But on the other hand, many more short story collections than the past couple of years.

Best English novel

1 Station Eleven

2 The Constant Rabbit

3 The Song of Achilles

If I had finished the novel I am still reading this might have been a harder choice, but as it stands, Station Eleven is hands down the best thing I read in 2022. Maybe even the best thing I read in 10 years. I wrote a gushing review about it when I had just finished it, so I will not repeat that here, but I do want to add that maybe I am now actually ready to watch the tv series that has been made about the novel. If only just to return to that universe afresh one more time.

The Constant Rabbit is the newest novel by Jasper Fforde, one of my favourite authors who should really hurry up and get that sequal to Shades of Grey (not Fifty Shades of Grey) underway. But in the meantime we got this bizarre novel in which due to some mishap a couple of rabbits have been changed into human-size, intelligent creatures. Everything is completely absurd, with a serious undertone concerning segragation, exclusion of others and the will to reach across a divide and connect. Coupled with big-company greed and the destruction of the natural environment, there are so many current themes packed into what on the surface just appears to be mad scifi, it deserves a second and third look before you make any conclusions. I loved it, which was a relief after the disaster of Early Riser in 2019.

Which brings us to number three. I would not have expected the Song of Achilles to be third in this list, reading so many other great novels; Harlem Shuffle, Wake, or Beartown by earlier year favourites Colson Whitehead, Anna Hope and Frederik Bachman, an Ali Smith novel (There but for the), new stories by new writers (The Reading List or The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club) or even the other Emily St. John Mandel book that I read, The Glass Hotel. But, most of these disappointed or annoyed in some way or another. Maybe it was the overall sense of this year not being a really good reading year, but I couldn't get myself to put any of those in third place. So the Booktok sensation Song of Achilles, which I got as a present from a friend who teaches secondary school and assured me all the teens are loving it, gets the trophy. I didn't do Latin or Greek in secondary school, so most of this story was new to me, apart from a badly remembered evening of watching Troy. I was surprised by how well the story was written, how the perspective of Patroclus changes your view on the events, and how much the characters come to life. It is, of course, very much a product of its time in the changes Madeline Miller made to her source material, but that doesn't warp the story beyond recognition. If I were in secondary school now, I would be happy to study the classical tales with books like these.

Best Dutch novel 

None of these. I have just joined the local library, so I might actually start to read these a bit more often, but in 2022, nope.

Best non-fiction (including autobiographical)

1 West with the night

2 What If? 2

I cannot actually believe I forgot to write about West with the Night when I read it, but it must have been the NaNoWriMo craze coming on. So let's set things right here. West with the Night is the 1942 memoir by Beryl Markham, who has led at least four lives combined. She grew up in Kenya running wild on a farm with Masai, went on to train racehorses, then she became one of the first bush pilots, culminating in the first east to west non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic. Then she became a society lady. Now we cannot be sure everything she wrote about actually happened (apart from the records, of course), but the way she writes, the way the language flows from the page, is simply magical. It is a shame she didn't write more, but then her book wasn't really a raving success when it came out in the middle of WWII. Bizarrely, it took Ernest Hemingway to pull the book from oblivion. I am very glad he did, for it was a marvel to read, and has sparked some interest in other flying related novels and books which I am currently reading.

What If? 2 is obviously the sequel to What if? in which Randall Monroe from xkcd (which I visit almost religiously on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for new comics) answers scientific questions in a surprising way. Somewhat like the Ig Nobel prizes, it makes you laugh before it makes you think.

Best short-story collection

1 Story of your life and others

2 Breakfast at Tiffany's

3 Grimm Tales

It has been a while since I actually have some choices for this category, and I actually got to let one out as well (First Person Singular, which I discussed earlier). So Story of your life and others was a big surprise early in the year. The title story is the inspiration for the film Arrival, but differs so much from it that only the bare essentials remain the same. That actually made for a very nice reading experience. The other stories in the collection are a mixed bunch, as I wrote earlier, but the better ones have stuck with me for a while.

Breakfast at Tiffany's was happened upon me when I finished The Every while staying at a friend and had no other book to read. It was a fun read, the 'short novel and three other stories', although I can't actually remember anything about the latter. It made me think I should read more by Truman Capote, although I couldn't actually name any of his other works apart from In Cold Blood, which I read years ago. Grimm Tales are retellings of fairy tales by Philip Pullman, who added some clarification notes at the end of each one. I never really warmed to any of his other books, so I was a bit tentative about reading these. Most of them were nice, although it got a bit repetitive towards the end. But then again, these fairy tales are filled with almost interchangeable stock characters, so maybe that one isn't really Pullman's fault.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Station Eleven

2 The Constant Rabbit

3 Story of your life and others

See above for more on these books, but I'll say here it was nice to have such a mixed bunch of 'literary' works that are also intertwined with scifi elements. Maybe genre boundries are disappearing somewhat?

Best 'new' author

1 Emily St. John Mandel

2 Ted Chiang

This one can't really come as a surprise, reading everything above. Can't wait to get my hands on the proper edition of Sea of Tranquility and love that too. Ted Chiang doesn't seem to have any other collections out apart from the one I've already read but I'll see what I can do to find any of his other work.

Most disappointing novel(la)

1 Small Things like these

2 The Every

3 Mr Salary

I wrote a lot about Small Things like these and The Every earlier, which I won't repeat here. I just reread my disappointing novels from 2020 and I think The Every suffers from the same problem as The Testaments; the author just wanted to give their audience more of the same, to expand their world, when they should have just stuck to the one brilliant novel. Tacking new things on the sides doesn't help and in some cases even detracts from the original. Both novels do of course adress very relevant social issues, which I fully agree should be put into literature, but let it at least be good literature.

Maybe I shouldn't put the very short story that is Mr Salary in with this bunch, but it was yet another case of Sally Rooney disappointment. I read it in under an hour and forgot about the whole thing in less time than that. Really, why put these things out there? I hope to see better works from her in the coming time, but landing in the 'most disappointing' category two years running doesn't bode well...

Authors I read more than once:

- Beth O'Leary (2x)

- Emily St. John Mandel (2x)

- J. K. Rowling (2x)

Small things like these

It has been a while since I finished reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, but I am frequently reminded of the story by all the 'best books of 2022' overviews. These usually contain the novel (or rather; novella) and are generally very positive about it, some saying it should have won the Booker this year instead of the novel that did win (which I can't actually remember at the moment). My experience of the story was quite different, which is why I've decided to honour it with a post such a while after the fact.

I knew the premise of the story way before reading the book; it was in all the reviews. It's nearly Christmas when the coal merchant and protagonist of the story discovers something horrible in the all-girl convent in his small Irish village. He muses on this for a while, then comes to a decision.

And that, really, is the whole story. There are some bits on his past as an orphan, on how the church has shaped the lives of those in the little village, on how you can loose everything by taking one step wrong, and on how his daughters will suffer when he does. These are probably intended to cast a dark shadow across the whole novel, which make the ending a shining path out of this darkness, but for me it never felt that way. The protagonist felt like too much of a decent character, grown up to believe in the goodness of others and the ability to shape his own life to be actually burdened by the expectations of others. The inevitable outcome felt inevitable from the start.

Which made the story to me not that spectacular. Perhaps if I was expecting bleakness or horrors, I would have felt uplifted at the end. But already expecting exactly what did happen, I merely felt disappointed. Was this really everything there was to it? Was this the 'story of hope' that should have won the Booker in these dark times?

I can't really remember any of the exact writing, which isn't a great sign either. The setting was 1986s Ireland, which felt strange to me; descriptions of how people lived felt like they were more at home in the 1950s than the 1980s. I know I found none of the characters remotely likeable, including our dear protagonist. There were five daughters, but they all mingled together, their respective ages and characters blending into one perfect being, safe from all the supposed horrors the story would throw at them. 

It's not that I disliked the story, it just really didn't make any impression at all. Perhaps it is because I haven't grown up in a small town, or under the yoke of an all-controlling church, which makes it hard to relate. As it is, I found the story unremarkable, the setting unbelievable and the characters unlikeable. If this is indeed the best thing to have received a Booker nomination, I will refrain from reading any of the others.

NaNo Days 21 to 29: Winner!

I made it! It took a couple of long evenings writing, but I pulled it off!
Dire measurements were need, though, as the stats page indicated I would not make it if I kept up the pace I had on the 20th. So I set myself the goal of writing at least 2,000 words every day I could write, and writing at least 3,000 days on the weekends. This led to even more crazy roller coaster graphs:

If you count properly, I reached 50k in 20 days rather than 30. I can't remember ever having so few days to actually write on in November, but I didn't realise that it really was only 20 days until I finished this evening. Wow, that makes the result slightly more impressive...

One of the things that saved this NaNo was the World Cup. I like writing with something happening in the background, a sort of constant white noise, as long as it doesn't demand too much of my attention. Football for me is just the thing. I don't really care about the outcome, but it gives me a nice point to rest my eyes on whenever I need to think of where to move the story next.

Not that I had a lot of those moments with this NaNo story. I had planned out the main story points in advance, with all the characters I needed to make the whole come together. About two thirds through I feared I needed another character to flesh everything out enough, but I managed to get there in the end. Just, I might add; I finished at 50,018 words; perhaps the narrowest marging I have ever had over the 50k. But I was so done with writing at this point... Getting 1,667 words in every day is pretty doable, but putting in at least 2,000 whenever you write, with some days getting close to 5,000 words just to catch up again, is like doing small sprints during a marathon; exhausting.

But I made it! And I pretty much like my story! There were some inspired sentences in there, when I felt like was really in the writing flow. There were also some bits where I was just stringing words together, pretty sure I was already done with the topic, pretty sure nothing was gained from saying basically the same thing in yet another slightly different way, but as always with NaNoWriMo, it's not about the quality, it's about the quantity. 

And I got there in the end, even in just 20 days.

NaNo Days 10 to 20: The only way is up

I'm still writing! I just haven't been writing about the writing. But the NaNo'ing is still happening.

Somehow this November has work-wise turned out to be one of the busiest months in a while, which means that I can't find the time to write every day. This has led to more of the roller coaster behaviour on my daily written amount graph:

Yup, those are two days of not writing at all, followed by two days of pretty frantic writing to get back to par. There is also another write-in in there somewhere, where most of my writing group have already achieved 50k or are at least above 40k, whereas I was the one barely making it to the halfway point of 25k during that meeting. They applauded politely. We are group with team spirit.

But, today, for the first time this NaNo year, I managed to get my total word count above the par graph:

I'm at 34k words currently, the par is at a nice round 33,333 today. So not a very big margin. And I expect more work related things in the evenings for the coming week, so keeping up the high numbers might prove difficult still.

So it is hard to find the time to write. But when I do have that, the writing itself still flows easily. I have to struggle with the English vocab sometimes, and I think I am in dire need of adding another character before the story comes to an end, or I'll be left short before the finish line, but all in all the writing itself isn't the problem. If I'd had all the time of the world on my hands, I'd probably have reached the 50k by now.

So that's the good news. The outlook is optimistic, let's see how far I'll get in the final 10 days.

NaNo Days 1 to 9: rollercoaster time!

NaNoWriMo started nine days ago, which means I should be at 15k words if I were writing on par. As of yesterday, I am at a little over 10k. I haven't written today yet, so the number will be closer to the 15 at the end of today. But I thought doing the blog first and the NaNo after meant the blog would actually happen today.
So this year's NaNo has had a bit of a rollercoaster start. There were some days, including November 1st, when I didn't write at all. Then there were some days when I poured out 3k. My average word count per day is somewhere around 1,111 which is a nice number but not the greatest if par is set at 1,667. All of this is reflected in the nice daily word count graph NaNo provides me with:

Yup, pretty big ups and downs.

But when I write, it is easy. I like my story, I like my characters, I can rant on about customer service for 2k words without feeling like I should really be doing something better with my typing. So the NaNo vibe of just pouring out the words and see where they'll get you is happening. I just didn't have the time or space to make it happen every day of November so far.

Given what I've planned for the rest of November, I'm pretty sure this vibe will continue for the weeks to come. As long as there are a couple of really good days where I can put down 3 or 5k, I should be able to make it in the end.

NaNoWriMo 2022

November is creeping up on us slowly but surely, which means it is almost time for the National Novel Writing Month! Apparently last year I forgot (or ignored) all about it, but this year I fully intend to participate and win! I've been wrestling with a story inside my head for a while now, so I thought it might be the thing to try and get a move on for NaNo, but then a completely different thing popped into my head a couple of weeks ago. Since a new shiny idea is always better motivation in the world of NaNo than something you've been mulling over for months, I'll go with the second one. And I may even write it in English!

The only downside is that my laptop has become a bit old and short in battery life. Also, my license to Word was suspended a couple of months ago, so I don't actually have a text editor to write in. But these are all just technical bumps, the main thing is the inspiration, which seems to have hit.
As always, I'll detail my progress here, if and when there is any typing left in my hands! Wish me luck (if only in spirit)!

First Person Singular

I've read a couple of novels by Haruki Murakami, which were enjoyable but never fully understandable. Apart from novels, he's also written a couple of short story collections. Recently, I read his newest; First Person Singular.

Now I generally like short stories. If done well, they have all the fun of a novel, sharp characters, a coherent plot, a punchline ending, condensed in a one hour reading experience. Win-win. However, Murakami's novels are not known for these elements, they are more mystical and meandering and can resolve into absolutely nothing. So I was curious how this would work out.

There are eight stories in total, which are written from the first person singular perspective, as per the title. We never fully find out who these protagonists are, except for one story where he is clearly named 'Haruki Murakami'. Otherwise, we can deduce that the speaker is a middle aged Japanese man, mainly writing about his experiences in the past. These range from his first girlfriend in his teenage years, through his love for baseball and poems he wrote about the sport (poems which translate very poorly into English), to a mystical experience with a talking monkey in a hotel. This is the only story that felt properly 'Murakami-esque' when compared to his novels.

Although there is some structure, none of these stories have a coherent story arch, or theme, or goal. They are the musings of the past, in some cases probably the actual past, as there must be several autobiographical parts in these stories. The language is nice, but as I mentioned before, Japanese simply doesn't translate very well. I had the same issue with Kafka on the Shore, which has several layers of meaning in Japanese due to the characters used, but falls flat in translation.

So in the end, what we're left with is the ramblings of an older man, mainly concerning past relationships or his love for music or sports, without heads or tails. As I read through it, I wondered why this was worth publishing? Because Murakami is a big name, probably. Since he hasn't written any proper novels for a couple of years now, maybe his inspiration has run dry. And there are some philosophical elements in there. But if this was written by a random man of the same age and experience, no publisher would probably ever put this to print. 

The Glass Hotel

While in Portland I bought Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which I read immediately and enjoyed immensely. At the same time I bought another of her novels, The Glass Hotel, which I saved for later. But with great new authors, later always comes sooner than I expect, so when the weather turned grey I turned towards her fifth novel.

Now Station Eleven is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, but The Glass Hotel stays closer to home. We meet a couple of characters, who all at some point find themselves in the same hotel (mostly made of glass) on Vancouver Island. Afterwards they go their separate ways, but their lives remain interconnected less obviously but tied in nicely towards the end of the story.

Now apparently Barack Obama included the novel in one of his recommended reading lists, so it must strike a chord with some people, but it sadly left me a bit underwhelmed. I liked most of the characters, but I couldn't really sympathise with them. Some of them disppeared for long stretches of the novel, which made it unclear who exactly were the main characters. Also, most of them don't get a happy ending, but I wasn't particularly interested in their fates. 

Apart from the characers, the language and writing style were good, but the themes and subjects just didn't really grip me. Two searching millenials, trying to achieve something but at the same time trying to hold each other back doesn't make for happy reading. The most enjoyable part was the collapse of the business of one of the other characters, which is probably not supposed to be the high point of the novel.

I read somewhere that St. John Mandel is working towards an inclusive universe, where all her novels are interconnected and characters can be found in several places, like David Mitchell does in his works. In this novel, the Georgian Flu that wipes out most of the population in Station Eleven is quickly quenced, and we meet a couple of characters from that novel in more detail. However, they didn't strike me as the most interesting characters then, and they weren't that special here. It is a nice touch, but it doesn't give you the surprise element that often happens in David Mitchell novels, where you meet the grandson or best friend of a character from an earlier novel, and a throwaway remark suddenly brings the two together. Here, it was more on the nose, which clashes with her otherwise pretty subtle style.

So all in all, it left me underwhelmed. It is always hard to follow-up on a very good novel, as the recent example of Sally Rooney also proved, so maybe my expectations were just too high. Luckily, St. John Mandel already has a new novel out. The only annoying thing is that I now have these two novels in a specific edition and want to buy all her other novels in the same edition. Which are nowhere to be found. I may have to travel back to the US, possibly even Portland, to locate the right versions...

There but for the

During the summer, my newspaper features writers and the books they love. Most of them included at least one Ali Smith novel on their list. The last one included There but for the, saying it was one of the best novels they'd ever read. I recently read There but for the as well, but I found it the worst Ali Smith novel I've read so far. Not that it was a bad book, it just wasn't as good as her other novels I've read.

There but for the centers around Miles, who while at a dinner party of people he doesn't know locks himself in their upstairs spare bedroom. We never really get to know Miles, as the story is told in four parts by four characters somewhat surrounding him. The four parts start with the words there, but, for and the, which gives you the titel. We could go into a bigger explanation of what that title could mean and how the various words are found in their various parts, but I feel that would be reading too much into it.

So the story contains Miles, but he isn't really a part of it. We never find out why he locks himself into the room. We never find out why he wants to contact one of his friends from a long lost past, who in turn visits the house and meets the other characters of the story. We never find out why he befriended one of the other characters, who was at the dinner party, or why he opens his locked door to character number four. This is what annoyed me the most; we have the central motivator for most of the action, but it never really becomes clear why.

The style is classic Ali Smith, almost stream-of-consciousness reading. I really enjoyed the first two parts, which center around the long-lost friend and the recent friend who brought Miles to the dinner party. I got sort of stuck on the third story, which centered around a very old women who appparently had nothing to do with the rest of the story until suddenly she did. This feels like a trick Ali Smith uses in more of her novels, but in this case I really didn't care for the character. The final part is seen through the eyes of a too-clever young girl who featured in all of the other stories, but it didn't really add too much to the first two parts. 

So all in all, I wouldn't call it her best, but it was an enjoyable read all the same.

Station Eleven

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in the largest independent bookstore in the world (in Portland, Oregon) and despite the weight limit on my already pretty full suitcase, I was determined not to leave without buying a book. I had a list of books that I maybe somewhat wanted, and as I walked past the shelves stuffed with books, I managed to locate all of them. This was surprising in itself, since a couple of weeks earlier a bookstore in London (England) managed to contain exactly zero of the books on the list.

So which to choose, with so much to choose from? 

I will not bore you with my entire thought process, but in the end I walked out with Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (which actually took the longest to locate, as her name gives you so many options to place it). In the beginning of the pandemic, Station Eleven became a small hit because of its supposed prophetic qualities: we witness a global pandemic that quickly wipes out more than 99% of the world's human population. The novel describes the inevitable steps of food hoarding, the flickering out of the Internet, the beginnings of violence, until not much of civilisation is left

Luckily for us, covid proved to be less fatal than the fictional virus in the novel.

Also luckily for us, the pandemic brought to the limelight this beautifully crafted story, with its clever jumps in time, its well-crafted characters, its philosophical musings and its overarching plot that in the end combines all the threads of the story, all the lives of the characters, to Station Eleven. It is hard to write anything about the story without giving away major plot points. The character I loved best, Kirsten, finds herself some time after the pandemic travelling the world with the Travelling Symphony. They perform Shakespeare and musical pieces to the newly developing hamlets under the motto 'Survival is insufficient'. Just that image, of art being created in a world that is almost devoid of anything that we would call civilisation, is so beautiful. They are haunted by a Prophet and his gang, who proclaim to know the real truth about the pandemic and its cause, another chilling reflection of forces at work during the pandemic's worst times.

I loved every part of this novel, even when things turned very dark. It was one of those books which I wanted to finish to find out how everything connected, but didn't want to be over at the same time. Only the very best books bring this dual longing.

Luckily, I bought The Glass Hotel at the same time. And there are many more to read, including the just published Sea of Tranquility. 

I read somewhere that St. John Mandel is creating an interconnected universe in her novels, with similar characters appearing in different novels. I can't wait to find out how all of her novels are part of this greater world, and how many pieces we can puzzle together while reading.

Wake

After reading Expectation (and finding it much better than I'd expected), I went in search of other novels by Anna Hope. Opinions were pretty divided, but one of her earlier novels Wake seemed to get overall approval and I thought I'd enjoy the subject matter: women in the aftermath of World War I.

It starts with a threefold definition of the title:
Wake: 

1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep 

2) Ritual for the dead 

3) Consequence or aftermath

And to be honest, this must have been the most apt title I've seen in a long time, as this in essence is exactly what the novel is about. 

We follow three women: Ada, who lost her son to the War and is now estranged from her husband; Hettie, who lives at home with her brother who returned but is severly damaged; and Evelyn, whose lover was killed in France. Evelyn is the most embittered of the three; despite here posh background she chooses to work for the Pensions Exchange, helping disabled veterans in the best way she can without getting emotionally involved or connected. She finds little joy in life and seems intent on pushing away anyone who tries to get close. Ada is lost in her grief, imagining seeing her lost son on the street and trying to bring back a time that is now utterly lost. Hettie, on the other hand, can't wait for her life to start again, but cannot find the means to break free from the constraints the times put on her. 

The lives of these women are interconnected, although it takes a while for the connection to become clear. Plot-wise, the novel is very clever. The chapters on the women are interspersed with chapters in which the body of the Unknown Soldier is selected and moved to his final resting place in Westminster Abbey on the 11th of November 1920. This appears to be the culmination of the novel, the final day, but as always, life goes on after that. It is all very cleverly done, supported by beautifully poetic language in places.

However there was one thing that greatly annoyed me. The novel appears to be about the lives of these women after WWI, how the war affected them and how they are moving on, but the most impressive part of the novel, the story that has stayed with me in the days after finishing it, took place amongst men, in the fields of France. It is this event that has an effect on all three of the women, so it is obvious it must be included, but it somehow seems to take centre stage in the novel, pushing the stories of those the novel is supposed to be about to the sideline. The men in this scene find some sort of resolution by the end of the novel, whereas some of the women do not experience any 'growth'; they find themselves exactly where they started.

So even though it is beautifully written and well thought out, the way the experiences of the men do appear more important, more meaningful than those of the women, despite the whole goal of the novel being the opposite, annoyed me to no end. It is a missed opportunity in what is otherwise a great novel.

Story of your Life (and others)

A while ago I was talking about the film Arrival with a friend. I recalled how I was moved by the whole experience; the images, the music, the story (and plot twists), without actually really remembering the exact story arch. All I had were some images and a feeling of understanding. This was not helpful in any way when the friend started asking detailed plot questions like 'how did they create visuals for Heptapod B?' I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that he had been wondering about that ever since he read the story; how one would visualise Heptapod B.
This was when I found out that Arrival is actually based on a short story, 'Story of your Life', by Ted Chiang.

So the next I did was order the collection which contains this story, called Stories of your life and others, a title which I immediately loved due to its many possible meanings. It contains 8 short stories, some of which are really short-shorts, while other could be considered novellas in their own right.

'Story of your life' is by far my favourite; it is also a better story than it ever was movie. Or rather, the two are almost incomparable. I can't really explain without giving away too much of the plot, but in a story, you can move grammatically between the lines in ways that a film never could. A film can contain flashbacks, but they will always be linear to the main story (if we don't count really confusing films such as Memento). And a short story can explain background theory, in this case on how languages work, without it becoming boring or hard to follow. In a film you're stuck with narration, which breaks the suspension of disbelief and often doesn't really add something. Now I can see what they did with the film (which I rewatched after finishing the story), but I prefer the original written version.

Other stories I really enjoyed were 'Understand', where someone turns themselves into a super high-functioning human being, aware of everything and every interconnected event around them. It was tough going on a couple of instances, but a rewarding read when you actually got through it. 'Hell is the absence of God', about a world in which visitations by angels are a common occurrence, around which a whole industry of spotters and followers and support groups and motivational speakers has arisen. This is one of the stories in which the social commentary, which I think is an inherent part of a good SF story, shines through. The same goes for 'Liking what you see: a documentary', in which it is possible to turn off your ability to differentiate between pretty and ugly people. You attach no opinion to for example birth stains or burn marks, but 'see' all people as equal. A great premise to muse on; would you turn your judgement off? How would this effect our lives, our social interactions?

These were the highlight stories for me. There were a couple I didn't really like, especially 'Seventy-two letters', which is pretty long but doesn't really have a proper point (and was confusing in its time setting), and a couple which were nice reads but won't really stick with me for any time to come, like the three stories that are more of a social commentary.

It has been a while since I read SF, at least proper SF, but this was a really nice experience. Reading short stories is also always better than I remember it, so hopefully I'll discover some more proper collections in the months to come.