Genre: 19^th century literary fiction

Rating: Neutral

I’ve always had a bit of trouble with reading Russian authors. I have to confess—I didn’t even finish reading all of Crime and Punishment. There is this sense of self-loathing and self-pity in Dostoevsky’s writing that just turns me off from the story. Notes from Underground is not the exception.

Part I describes the philosophical perspective of the short novel, expressing ideas on suffering, why people would make others suffer, and various other topics of reason and logic. Unless you’re interested in varying modes of philosophy (it isn’t my personal interest), then this section is going to seem like a bunch of rambling thoughts on, well, thoughts.

When Part II comes around (named “Apropos of the Wet Snow”), the novel turns from philosophical thought into a narrative. The story is still rooted in philosophy, but this time it is told through various moments in the unnamed narrator’s life. Throughout this section, the narrator becomes obsessed with an officer, angered by his friends at a dinner party, and smitten by a woman named Liza. As mentioned earlier, the narrator is a self-loathing, pathetic character that is easily affected and debilitated by the things that happen around him. It’s a somber look into human existence and doesn’t offer much hope at the end. And so, my opinions have not changed in Dostoevsky.  

Genre: 20^th century fiction

Rating: Highly recommended

My commute to and from work totals two hours per day, which for me means two hours of reading per day. I’ve never received as many comments from strangers on the train as I have while reading Love in the Time of Cholera. It was as if the novel united many strangers in the quality of the story, and I found that a bit magical.

Love in the Time of Cholera is so superbly written that I became enamored with the novel as much as Florentino Ariza was enamored with Fermina Daza.

Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza upon seeing her after delivering a letter to her father. The two fall into a passionate, yet juvenile, relationship that is bolstered solely through letters and not actual contact. In her father’s rage, Fermina’s father travels with his daughter for a couple of years and when Fermina returns, the trick has worked, and she breaks off her engagement with Florentino Ariza.

Fermina Daza eventually gets married and lives a typical marital life with two children, infidelities, and unhappiness. Meanwhile, Florentino, still in love with Fermina and imprisoned by his promise to always love her, patiently waits for her husband to die so that he can once again court Fermina.

Half a century later, Florentino finally gets his chance, but the couple are now both in their seventies, and the definition of love has changed for both.

Genre: 21^st century children’s literature

Rating: Highly recommended

There are two reasons why I picked up this children’s book: 1) it won the 2011 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and 2) when I had mentioned the fact that a Vietnamese writer recently won the award, my mother read the book and then highly recommended it to me because she enjoyed it so much.

After finally getting a New York Public Library card (I only work a ten minute walk away from the iconic library on 5^th Avenue), this was the first book I decided to rent. It felt a little awkward walking into the kid section of the library where all the mothers were having story time with their two year olds, but nevertheless, I rented the book. Told in a poetic-like fashion, this story was a very quick read, but very powerful in its words.

The narrator named Hà, a young girl in war-torn Vietnam, flees with her family as one of many “boat people” after the fall of Saigon. They are soon absorbed by America as refugees and are placed in Alabama after a man (Hà refers to the man as “cowboy”) chooses to sponsor the entire family.

The tale describes the hardships of living as foreigners in a country which, at the time, was not friendly toward the Vietnamese refugees. Hà feels the torment of prejudiced neighbors who refuse to say hello, school children who refer to her face as a pancake, and not being able to give her friend a Christmas gift after receiving one for herself.

Even though this story is from a child’s perspective, the impact of the message is just as strong as if told in an adult voice. This story is touching in its reminder of the strength of families, even in the aftermath of a country destroyed by war and a new surrounding that is nothing like home.

Genre: 21^st century fiction

Rating: Neutral

It’s been a while, I know. But, to be fair, 1Q84 was such a long book, it seemed only fair that I took a long time to write this review.

My first impression with the novel gave me mixed feelings. I was concerned—I had never felt so wary about a Murakami book before. Usually I devour Murakami novels while feeling a deluge of emotions ranging from gloominess to motivation (the sign of a good novel, right?), and then raved about the book in this blog. I didn’t know why I was feeling so strangely about 1Q84. Maybe it was the length, or the hype. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the novel was, well, boring.

And then I realized why I felt this way. 1Q84 is written in the third person. The outside perspective took away from the personal emotional response I usually gave to the characters who told the story in their own first-person perspective. The detached third-person narrative made the characters less relatable. I just couldn’t get into their heads.

The other issue is that this novel is split into three parts. Part one was very slow moving. In essence, part one was only the introduction of the two main characters, Aomami and Tengo. Using 300+ pages to introduce two characters is a lot of space and time. Too much, if you ask my opinion. This definitely contributed to my feeling of boredom at the beginning of the novel.

On a good note, the middle section of the novel was intense, frightening, and a bit revolting—here is the Murakami that I was used to reading! It was a little bit mystery, a little bit weird sex, and a little bit of an unrequited love story and I didn’t want to lose the momentum that took so long to build up.

But that was when I got to part three. Sadly, the nice Murakami-tension in part two started to slow back down to a turtle’s pace. The love story became all too real and tangible—something that was a little too blatant for my taste. It even got a little sickly sweet. And you know how we all love Murakami endings because they end on the strangest, most nonsensical note? Well, in 1Q84 I actually felt that there was a resolution. It was almost satisfying. But I didn’t want to be satisfied. I wanted the mystery, frustration, and lingering question mark back.

I still have mixed feelings about this novel. I’m not sure I would have judged it so critically if I wasn’t such an avid fan of Murakami and didn’t already know his writing style (I’ve read every single novel he’s written). Overall, I think an average reader with no knowledge of Murakami would think this novel is too cumbersome and overwrought.  So unless you really love the guy and/or Japanese culture, go ahead and skip on this read and save yourself the entire month of time it took me to read this 1000 page tome.

Genre: 20^th Century Literary Fiction

Rating: Highly Recommended

It’s Murakami Madness! I’m about 100 pages away from finishing the monstrous 1Q84, but while I try to finish that up, here’s a teaser.

Okay, so I’m a little biased. You can pretty much count on me to rate Murakami as highly recommended every time. He is, after all, a brilliant writer.

My opinion of his writing can be found here in an earlier review of his short story collection. So for this review, I’m just going to include an excerpt from the novel South of the Border, West of the Sun:

“‘Slow down,’ she told me whenever my disappointment showed. ‘I need more time. Please.’

Actually I wasn’t in that much of a rush myself. I was just confused, and disappointed by all sorts of things. Of course, I liked her and was grateful that she was my girlfriend. If she hadn’t been with me, my teenage years would have been completely stale and colorless. She was basically an honest, pleasant girl, someone people liked. But our interests were worlds apart. She couldn’t understand the books I read or the music I listened to, so we couldn’t talk as equals on these topics. In this sense, my relationship with her differed dramatically from that with Shimamoto.

But when I sat beside her and touched her fingers, a natural warmth welled up inside me. I could tell her anything. I loved kissing her eyelids and just above her lips. I also liked to push her hair up and kiss those tiny ears of hers, which invariably sent her into a giggling fit. Even now, whenever I think of her, I envision a quiet Sunday morning. A gentle, clear day, just getting under way. No homework to do, just a Sunday when you could do what you wanted. She always gave me this kick-back-and-relax, Sunday-morning kind of feeling.

She had her faults, for sure. She was pretty hard-headed and could have done with a bit more in the imagination department. She wasn’t about to take even one step outside the comfortable world she was raised in. She never got so involved in something that she’d totally forget about eating and sleeping. And she loved and respected her parents. The opinions she did put forth—the standard opinions of a sixteen-, seventeen-year-old girl—were, not surprisingly, pretty insipid. On the plus side, I never once heard her bad-mouth another person. And she never bored me with conceited talk. She liked me and was good to me. She listened carefully to what I had to say and cheered me up. I talked a lot about myself and my future, what I wanted to become, the kind of person I hoped to be. A young boy’s narcissistic fairy tales, But she listed intently. ‘I know you’ll be a wonderful person when you grow up. There is something special about you,’ Izumi told me. And she was serious. No one had ever told me that before.

And holding her—even with her clothes on—was fantastic. What confused and disappointed me, though, was that I could never discover within her something special that existed just for me. A list of her good qualities far outstripped a list of her faults, and certainly far outshone my own, yet there was something missing, something absolutely vital. If only I’d been able to pin down what that was, I know we would have ended up sleeping together….”

Coming soon…my review of 1Q84!

paperbackgirl:

My breakdown of Murakami themes.

Genre: 20^th Century Literary Fiction

Rating: Recommended

Somehow—though I don’t know how—I spent 24 years of my life, and 6.5 years as an English major, without having read any Camus novels. Senseless, I know. Which is why I decided to buy The Stranger on a cold, lonely night and end the senselessness.

I really had no idea what The Stranger was about. I did, however, read the introduction by the translator, Matthew Ward, which informed me that Camus tried to emulate popular American writers at the time (read: Hemingway) with his writing in the novel. This was clearly apparent. The novel was very simple and did sound very much like Hemingway’s style—very stark and terse. The narrative said what it needed to say—no more, no less. Kinda like Mersault himself, a detached outsider [stranger] of society who floats through life with no emotions.

Mersault finds himself in a messy situation after his mother passes away. Some unfortunate circumstances lands him in jail, but he takes everything in with little to no reaction. In the final denouement and conclusion, he has an epiphany and cries out a long monologue about the meaning of life, which he ultimately concludes is nothing.

This is a very short novel and worth the few hours it would take to read it.

Genre: 21^st Century Literary Fiction

Rating: Highly Recommended

I don’t usually find myself buying and reading New York Times Bestsellers, but I do find myself reading National Book Award recipients and finalists. Even though this novel doesn’t advertise it, it was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award and therefore caught my attention.

One thing that confounds me about this novel is that the author is my age. I’ve spent the last six years studying writing, and yet her skill level is far superior. The writing is exceptionally skillful, which is what I believe makes this novel a fantastic read. There are three narratives that intertwine together through time and space. There is the first-person real-time narrator, Natalia, who describes her medical work among the Balkan borders. Then there are the tales of the tiger’s wife and the deathless man, which both happen in the past and span back many years before Natalia’s time. Obreht’s skill level in completing this incredibly difficult writing technique astounds me. There is no confusion or puzzlement—each story flows smoothly into the next and the ending finally culminates all three plotlines into one conclusion.

With that being said, the novel was also engaging, thoroughly detailed, and remarkably imaginative. Even if you don’t care to admire her writing style, the plot is a page-turner and a highly recommended read.

Genre: 21^st Century Short Story Collection

Rating: Highly Recommended

Speaking of the writer’s conference that I mentioned recently, this novel was an unplanned gift from the conference. Along with The Hunger Games trilogy, this novel was highly recommended by a startling amount of agents, and so I knew I had to read it.

The novel did not disappoint. The structure is a bit peculiar: eight short stories slightly overlap with each other. No main character is repeated, but all the stories seem to be loosely linked to a wealthy landowner by the name of K.K. Harouni.

To give short synopses on each story would reveal too much, but what I will say is that each story explains life in southern Pakistan and the complicated interactions between the working class and the privileged. The reason this book worked so well was because the stories were subtle, yet intelligent. A happy ending rarely followed each story, but rather a realistic conclusion of the rise and fall of human existence. Yet, the novel wasn’t depressing. In some strange way, I actually found the readings inspiring. Reading these stories will reveal tales rarely seen or heard for Americans, and so the adventure is exciting.

Genre: 21^st Century Literary Fiction

Rating: Recommended

I bought this novel at a second-hand bookstore because I recognized Ha Jin’s name and wanted to give his reading another shot (I read a few of his short stories in a literature class). I knew just by flipping through the pages that the book was a dense read. The pages were heavily filled with type after unbroken type.

After I was finally done with the semester, I decided it was time to devote some reading time to a solid novel. War Trash is written in a first person narrative by Yu Yuan, a former prisoner of war during the Korean War. Fighting on the side of communist China and subsequently North Korea, Yu Yuan is quickly captured by the South Korean military. Most of the novel surrounds around his hardships in the POW camps and the political struggles between choosing to remain loyal to the Communists in hopes to return to mainland China, or choosing to side with the Nationalists and live in Taiwan.

What I found most fascinating about this novel is the unique perspective. I knew a little bit about the Korean War, but only from the American perspective. I knew nothing about China’s involvement in the war, or how they treated their military personnel. I knew vaguely about the Communist takeover in China, but I knew nothing about the manipulation of both the Communists and the Nationalists in their efforts to control the people of China. This novel was extremely thorough and researched, as well as enlightening and entertaining. Even though it was a thick read, it was a satisfying learning experience.

Ha Jin is a gifted writer as evidenced in War Trash. If you’re interested in war novels and history, I would give this novel a read.