Book Review: Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi

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Ahmed Saadawi, Baghdad, Book, Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction, Frankenstein, Horror, Iraq, Reading

I was so eager to get started on this next novel that I made it my first non-Kindle read in quite some time.  Written by Iraqi author Ahmed Saadawi, it was originally published in 2013 and went on to win the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.  The English translation came out in January of this year and was released to a good amount of critical acclaim.

Set a few years after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and told from the overlapping perspectives of its diverse cast of characters, this is the story of how a truck bomb exploding in Baghdad’s Tarayan Square begins an extraordinary chain of events in these people’s lives.  It is from this tragedy that Hadi, a nearly impoverished junk trader, finds what he needs to complete his prized project: a human nose. For the past several months he has been covertly collecting body parts from bomb scenes and sewing them together in the hope that he can assemble a complete corpse that can get buried with dignity.  His plan, however, takes an unexpected turn when the newly completed corpse goes missing and a wave of brutal murders begin occurring in the surrounding neighborhoods.

I found this book to be thoroughly enchanting and a real joy to read.  The creature was a fascinating character that offered both a window into the hopes and fears of the Iraqi people and a statement on the madness of country’s internal conflicts.  More than anything this was a book about the average person’s struggle to find stability, and perhaps even some measure of success, amidst the constant violence and disorder of their everyday lives.  As such, it was the human characters who were the real stars here. People of particular note beyond Hadi include Elishva, an elderly Assyrian Christian widow longing for her missing son; Aziz the Egyptian, the owner of a local coffee shop and resident gossip; and Mahmoud al-Sawadi, an ambitious young journalist and rising star at al-Haqiqa magazine.  They collectively provide a gripping charisma and energy that brought the book to life and engulfed me in a world that combined the magical realism and ambiance of a Murakami novel with the grit of a war story.

This is probably my favorite book of the year so far and one that I highly to recommend to fans of all genres (with disclaimers about gore and violence).  Mysterious and thought-provoking throughout, this story was a captivating read that put a very human face on a country a lot of people may not think about much beyond the violence that makes the news.

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Book Review: The Last Days of New Paris, by China Mieville

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Book, Book Review, China Mieville, Fiction, Horror, Reading, Surrealism

And now for things to get a bit weird.  This 2016 novel is my second reading from author China Mieville and probably one of the strangest books I’ve read for the blog so far.  

The story takes place in 1950 in an alternate version of Paris.  In this world not only is the war-torn city still occupied by Nazi Germany, but certain events that occured in 1941 have also made it an epicenter of supernatural activity.  Demons, in loose alliance with the Nazis, prowl the streets, while bizarre apparitions called manifs, manifestations of Surrealist art, are springing to life throughout the city with motivations known only to themselves.  The novel follows a young French resistance fighter named Thibaut who has decided to try escaping the city after seeing his resistance cell wiped out.  As he makes his way through the distorted remains of Paris, he teams up with a mysterious American photographer and a massive exquisite corpse, both of whom seem drawn to him as part of some higher purpose.

This was a strange one, but I enjoyed it immensely.  I’ll admit that the concept might sound a bit out there, but the Mieville pulled the story off quite well by maintaining a tight focus on Thibaut’s wanderings.  He didn’t really spend a whole lot of time justifying or explaining the weirdness, opting instead to just throw the reader in and let it flow. Haunting and engaging from the start, I found it very easy to get caught up in the bizarre and often grotesque imagery of this world.  Not knowing a whole lot about the Surrealist movement, I occasionally found myself going on tangents to look up a particular person, concept, or work of art that got referenced and quickly came to enjoy these efforts in their own right. Although the ending was a bit rushed in how quickly it wrapped up the conflicts that emerged, this book was definitely more about the journey than getting sort of resolution, and in that regard it most certainly delivered.

If you’re on the lookout to read something unique and a bit weird, I highly recommend picking this up.  I certainly had a good time with this book and consequently will be adding more from this author to my reading list.

 

Book Review: Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami

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Book Review, Books, Fiction, Haruki Murakami, Reading

I’ve been a pretty avid reader of Murakami for some time now and as such made sure this new release got on my list as soon as possible.  As luck would have it, my hold came through only a few days after finding myself in-between books for the first time in several months.

Men Without Women is a collection of short stories featuring male protagonists and their complex, often troubled, relationships with women in their lives.  Rather dark in tone, issues of death, separation, and personal/societal estrangement are common features throughout all the stories in this volume.  Each character is lost in some way and have either resigned themselves to their situation or spend their days searching for something within themselves that may or may not be within their power to find.

On the whole I found this collection to be something of a mixed bag.  There were a few stories that I liked, but aside from those none of the others appealed to me as much as I had hoped they would.  The overall feel of the book was generally very bleak and it didn’t seem to have that same sense of magical realism that usually draws me into Murakami’s work.  While each story was without a doubt well-written, Murakami does an excellent job setting a scene and building characters throughout, these just wasn’t really what I was looking for.  None of the characters captured my interest all that much and as such I couldn’t get fully invested in their stories.  Appropriately enough, I didn’t make it through the one from which the collection took its name.

That said, there were two stories that I was particularly taken by.  Kino, my favorite of the group, is the story of a recently divorced man trying to open a new chapter in his life by converting his aunt’s tea house into a bar.  When something happens to drive away his two most reliable guests, a mysterious book-reading man and a stray cat, Kino is advised to get out of town for a while and lay low.  This was the one story that really left me wanting more and also the one that best captured the otherworldly mysticism that usually draws me into Murakami’s books.  The other note-worthy story for me was Samsa in Love, a tale far creepier and horror-like than anything I’ve read from Murakami to date.  It’s protagonist, a man named Samsa, regains consciousness in a boarded up room.  Disoriented and in a great deal of pain, he gradually comes to his senses and begins exploring his surroundings, taking step by excruciating step through an unfamiliar house.  As he does so, the reader slowly gets the impression that something is very wrong.  Samsa doesn’t seem fully comfortable inside his body and certain thoughts suggest that he may not have always been human.  His awkward interactions with a hunchbacked young woman he encounters adds to the sense of foreboding and gives the story a very eerie vibe that for better or worse goes unresolved.

Overall though, I surprised to say that I consider this book a miss for me, a rarity from this author.  After reading a number of other reviews I realize that I am in an extreme minority in my opinion here, so I’ll say that dedicated Murakami fans would probably find this worth checking out (I wouldn’t fault someone else for being more into these stories than I was).  That said, for someone new to the author I would personally recommend they start elsewhere.

Book Review: The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

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Book Review, Books, Fiction, Neil Gaiman, Reading

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book came highly recommended by my wife, who not so subtly hinted that I would really enjoy reading it.  Since we now have a son who will be spending a significant amount of time walking through graveyards and cemeteries with us, I saw potential in it despite some initial reservations; namely I wasn’t that into the last book I read by this author (American Gods – yeah, I know, you disagree) and I was wary of picking up a YA title.  Her persistence paid off, however, and I ultimately gave it a read.

The book follows the childhood adventures of Nobody (Bod) Owens, a boy who is orphaned in the first chapter after his family is murdered by a mysterious assassin.  Although only a toddler, he was able to escape from harm by hiding in a local cemetery, where the ghostly denizens decided to take him in.  Granted Freedom of the Graveyard, he is allowed both residence and certain powers within its domain.  Through a variety of otherworldly teachers and caretakers, Bod learns about life and survival in the graveyard and beyond.  Though there is an overall story, the book is divided into several episodic chapters each taking place at different years in boy’s life wherein he typically meets a new challenge and makes new discoveries and acquaintances.  As the story progresses, Bod grows into a young adult and eventually faces the man responsible for killing his family.

So here’s the part where I say that I ended up enjoying this book a lot.  It was a nicely told story that, despite a somewhat grisly opening chapter, was rather heartwarming and fun.  The author did a good job conveying a sense of child-like wonderment and adventure throughout.  I also really liked how the story came full circle by the end, with seemingly random bits and pieces from each chapter all coming together.  The other characters, though used somewhat sparingly, were all interesting and each added something of value to the story.  While this wasn’t a particularly deep novel, it was something that I am glad I took the time to read.  I might even look at the cemeteries we walk through a bit differently as a result.

Back to the Books: Two More from Murakami

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Book Review, Books, Fiction, Haruki Murakami, Reading

Next on my reading list were a pair of Murakami novels I first read a few years ago: Wild Sheep Chase and its sequel, Dance, Dance, Dance.  There are actually another two books in this series that take place before Wild Sheep Chase, but I have yet to come across English language translations of these.  Fortunately, they are not required to enjoy the books I do have access to.

Wild Sheep Chase takes place in 1978 and introduces us to the unnamed protagonist of both novels.  Living in an apartment in Tokyo, he is at a crossroads in life and seems doomed to live out his days in a rut with his sickly cat until two incredible events happen.  The first is beginning to date a girl with magical ears.  The second involves a picture of sheep in the Hokkaido countryside, provided to him some years ago by a recluse friend nicknamed “the Rat.”  When he uses this picture in a brochure for work, the protagonist catches the attention of powerful right-wing business leader, whose agent tasks him with finding one particular sheep from the photo, an animal suspected of carrying within it a means to access extraordinary powers of personal influence and intellect.  With only his girlfriend’s intuition and a set of cryptic letters from his friend to go by, he must find the sheep or face the consequences.

In Dance, Dance, Dance we are reunited with the unnamed protagonist roughly four and a half years after the conclusion of Wild Sheep Chase.  Shaken by the events of the previous novel, he finds himself inexplicably drawn back to Hokkaido and a certain hotel that changed the course of his previous adventure.  He is once again on a quest, this time for something that was lost during the first book.  As part of his search, he must navigate a world of eccentric artists, deceased call-girls, and random drives with a moody teenager to piece together the clues of this mystery.  Aiding him along are the only two friends he has left, a troubled 13 year-old clairvoyant and a rather famous former classmate with whom he has recently reconnected.

I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting these books, especially since enough time had passed since my first reading for them to feel fresh in my mind.  They had a sense of mystery and intrigue about them that really drew me into the world right away.  The way Murakami incorporated the supernatural elements of the story into normal everyday life and, inversely, made aspects of the magical world more mundane is something I found quite engrossing.  His combination of eerie gloominess, resigned acceptance, and a pragmatic hope really drew me to the story, presenting a gripping and an intense mix of surreal and grimly all-too-real elements.

Enhancing this mood were a wealth of sensory descriptions and references that brought greater intimacy to the story.  Murakami did a great job getting the reader into the setting of wherever the action was taking place; forests, beaches, bars, cars, hotel rooms, etc. were all brought to life in ways that almost took the reader there themselves.  Food and drink are also brought up frequently, giving the story a taste and smell as well; mainly noodle dishes and whisky, with some international cuisine and the occasional case of beer thrown in for good measure.  Most striking of all though was the music, as both novels referenced a rich catalogue of tapes and records that provided an excellent soundtrack to the reading experience.  Running the range from 1960s jazz (Arthur Prysock and Count Basie) and rock (Rolling Stones) to contemporaries like Michael Jackson, Talking Heads, and Styx, the diversity presented was almost as much fun to keep track of as the story itself.

The thing that united all this into an amazing story though was the protagonist.  It is from his perspective alone that we experience the action, gain insight to the world, and meet the precious few other characters.  He was no doubt stubborn, aimless, and more than once referred to as “abnormal,” but at the same time he was also sympathetic, engaging, and, perhaps most importantly of all, interesting as he confronted his own existential issues about work and modern society in the course of his bizarre quests.  Through his introspection we get such memorable lines as the following:

And the same can be said for collecting garbage and shoveling snow.  It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not – a job’s a job.  For three and a half years, I’d been making this kind of contribution to society.  Shoveling snow.  You know, cultural snow.  (Dance, Dance, Dance; Page 7)

While not verbalized in the first book, this concept of metaphorically shoveling snow was central to the character’s view of his job throughout both novels.  Work-wise, he’s just doing time to earn money while he focuses on and figures the important stuff.  He is perhaps equally cynical about society as a whole, as evidenced by his thoughts that:

Although I didn’t think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969.  All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police.  But with today’s sophistication, who’s in a position to throw rocks?….Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there’s another web.  Nobody’s going anywhere.  You throw a rock and it’ll come right back at you.  (Dance, Dance, Dance; Page 55)

We live in an advanced capitalist society, after all.  Waste is the name of the game, its greatest virtue.  (Dance, Dance, Dance; Page 12)

Like if you listen to the radio for a whole hour, there’s maybe one decent song.  The rest is mass-produced garbage. (Dance, Dance, Dance; Page 112)

Through these insights, along with his tendency to offer absurdist non-sequiturs, the protagonist became a character that I was able to get invested in as a reader and, as a result, he really pushed these books over the top for me.  After factoring in all the other things I liked about these novels, I can easily say that they are among my favorites from Murakami.  Together or separately they make for excellent reads that showcase the author’s literary skills and storytelling abilities.  Consider them highly recommended.

Book Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami

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Book Review, Books, Fiction, Haruki Murakami, Reading

My adventure in reading continues, this time with another book by perhaps my favorite author: Haruki Murakami.  Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was first published in early 2013 for the Japanese market, while the English version I read came out in mid-2014.  Going in I had read just about every piece of Murakami’s fiction available in English, so this one had been high on my reading list since it was released.

This book was the story of Tsukuru Tazaki, an engineer in his late-30s living in roughly present day Tokyo.  Through conversations with his girlfriend Sara and a series of flashbacks, we learn that he has spent a large part of his life struggling with feelings of emptiness and depression as a result of an incident that occurred some 16 years ago.  Growing up in Nagoya, Tazaki and four of his classmates comprised a close-knit, inseparable unit of friends that came together early in their highschool years.  Some time later, during his second year away at university in Tokyo, Tazaki was informed out of nowhere that the other four group members were severing all communication with him, no reasons or explanations provided.  With Sara’s urging Tazaki feels he is ready to seek out and confront his former friends about the past and get the closure he needs to move on with his life.

I really enjoyed this reading experience, but man was this a heavy book.  The overall tone was rather dark, as Tazaki’s moods don’t vary far outside the range of passively suicidal lows to “highs” of mild acceptance of, and resignation to, life.  It was never overly dramatic, but the mood simultaneously weighs the reader down and pushes them forward.  While the book did do a good job of getting the reader hooked from the beginning, I found that I got more and more engaged as the story went on.  By the middle, it had built up a lot of momentum and went by very quickly as it neared the end.  As I approached the final pages, I started to get very anxious about what the outcome might be and what sort of closure the reader would get.  The story had slowly built up to such an intensity, that I didn’t fully realize it until I finished the last page and would have done anything to have gotten more.  

This sense of involvement was developed by Murakami’s fantastic ability to tell a story and the strength of Tazaki as a character.  True to his form, Murakami fully engaged the reader’s senses as well.  Colors play a big role in the story and hint at tensions between the characters.  In Tazaki’s original group of friends, the two boys were “Red” and “Blue,” while the two girls were “White” and “Black.”  Unique among his group, Tazaki was the only one who did not have a family name that signified a color and instead saw himself a colorless vessel into which the others expressed themselves.  Music also featured prominently in the story, in particular Franz Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage.  Of course a record player was involved, as was a mysterious traveling pianist.  As for Tazaki, himself, despite not being the most charismatic or engaging person, he was none-the-less a fascinatingly likeable and approachable character whom the reader wants to follow along on his journey.

Another thing that stood out to me while I was reading was that for all of its stylistic familiarity, the book had something of a different feel to it than most of the other works I had read by Murakami.  Now that I think about it, there were two key elements that contributed to this feeling.  The first was that there was less of the author’s usual mysticism present in this story.  That’s not to suggest it wasn’t there, but unlike in some of his other works, most of the story and conflicts played out either physically or psychologically in the real world.  I think this was a good choice, as it made the story that much more foreboding.  The other thing that felt different was that this book took place closer to present day than any of the other Murakami novels I have read thus far.  Characters having access to things like email and cell phones seemed almost out of sorts with the types of worlds I’d grown accustomed to in these works.  I always think of his characters inhabiting a mysterious otherworld of 1980s apartments and smoke-filled jazz bars, but again, it just seemed to feel right having these characters occupy a more modern world.

I am really happy I took the time to read this book, and would readily recommend it to others as seasoned Murakami fans and newcomers alike can enjoy it.  Just don’t go in expecting something lighthearted.

The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami

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Book Review, Haruki Murakami

In 2008 I picked up a compilation of short stories by Haruki Murakami entitled An Elephant Vanishes. I loved the style and eagerly Skyped my wife, who was then halfway around the world in Korea, to tell her about my new discovery. Coincidentally, she’d just picked up Kafka on the Shore, also by Murakami, and was equally impressed. Since then, I have devoured every one of his novels that I can get my hands on, so I was quite happily surprised when I discovered a new short story/novella, The Strange Library, while perusing my library’s ebook catalogue. I immediately downloaded it and was quite pleased.

The novella is short and sweet with only a handful of characters.  Without giving too much away, it is the tale of a boy who goes to the library to read up on the tax codes of the Ottoman Empire but instead finds himself imprisoned deep underneath the building.  While there are no references to cats or scotch, there are many characteristic elements of Murakami’s style packed into the book; an eerie and fantastical other-world existing on the edges of our own, a mysterious woman, and even a sheep man (but probably not the one seasoned readers have come to know).  Adding to the sense of weirdness are a variety of images included throughout the text that offer up snapshots of the main character’s surroundings.

I enjoyed this book and flew through it in about half an hour.  It grabs the reader from start to finish and left me wishing there was more (in a good way).  I am really happy I picked it up as I haven’t read anything by Murakami since 1Q84 came out a few years back and am saving Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage for the Fall/Winter.  Not sure why exactly, but it feels more like that kind of book.  Reading this though certainly increased my anticipation for the next one.