Book Review: The Quick by Lauren Owen

The Quick was referred to me by Penguin Random House Hotline (Thank you, Bridget! So umm... what do I need to do to get your job, pretty please?) Uhm, anyhow... to be honest, I had absolutely NO EXPECTATION for this book. Usually I read reviews on Goodreads to get a feel for what to expect before starting a book, but this time around, I went in totally blind! And am sure glad I did because apparently, from the reviews I read after I had finished reading this book, I could tell that people somehow had the wrong sort of expectation out of this book. So, diving in blind was definitely the right choice.

As for The Quick, it's an adult fantasy book. It is about people who are, one way or another, dealing with vampires. "Quick" is a term used by vampires of this book, set in the victorian era England, for mortal humans. A fitting title if you consider the story. It really is about the mortals, and not necessarily about the vampires themselves. They simply shape the story of these "Quicks" that surround them; more accessories and less the subjects. I thought that was so smart! In many ways this book made me think of Interview with the Vampire, albeit the difference in subject matter (IwtV really was about the vampires themselves).

The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino

After reading Out and Real World, it is safe to say that Natsuo Kirino is currently one of my favorite authors of feminist noir fiction. She is not afraid to show the dirty and ugly sides of the female of the species, nor the weaker sides. A lot of the times I feel like real issues get overlooked, sometimes intentionally, in the name of feminism. We want to show that women do not have to be weak and live under the shadows of men. True, we do not. But it doesn’t help to sugarcoat things and completely disregard the fact that we are in fact, very different from the male of the species, both physically and emotionally. In my opinion, disregarding the unpleasantries only adds to the problem, not the other way round.

Natsuo Kirino’s protagonists, all women in the three books that I have read so far, are strong. Very much so. But they have weaknesses like real women do. They have limitations as to how much they can do or how far they can go within the socio-economic boundaries that are, sometimes unfairly, set upon us by the society that we live in. Natsuo Kirino is from Japan, so her work of course reflects the Japanese society and issues that are more pertinent to that culture than, say, the western one that we live in. But even so, as women, I think a lot of us can relate to certain characteristics that Ms. Kirino portrays in her characters.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang: A Review of a Re-read

I read The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Translated from Korean by Deborah Smith) for the first time earlier this year, way before it won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, and I read it right after I finished Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. And so, unfortunately, I read it ALL WRONG!

You see, Kafka on the Shore left quite an impression on me. Among all of Murakami’s books that I have read, this one left THE strongest impression and the after effects were quite severe. So, all along I was reading The Vegetarian while KotS was still weighing on my mind, refusing to let go at all. Needless to say, it wasn’t the right time to read a book that needed attention to details. I sped through The Vegetarian, reading the words, but barely retaining any meaning whatsoever. As you can imagine, the impression was not good. And I am ashamed to say, it wasn’t the book’s fault, rather mine from the beginning. I read the book all wrong at the wrong time. Ever since it won the Man Booker International Prize this year, I kept wondering whether I should give it a re-read. Also, one of my favorite and trusted book bloggers, Clare, at A Little Blog of Books had praised The Vegetarian a lot, so I was intrigued, and finally, couple of weeks ago, I decided to give this book another go.

The Face of Another by Kobo Abe

The struggles of a scientist who has lost his face to a laboratory experiment gone awry, is the theme of this book. The narrator, a successful scientist, was the victim of an explosion caused by liquid oxygen, and as a result his face was now full of keloid scars. A horrendous face that he is too ashamed to show in public, and it is most likely for the better anyway, because the horrible sight would make people simply too uncomfortable.

He settled with bandaging his face every single day so as not to show the scars beneath. But a face covered in bandage is still not a pleasant sight, after all, and the people around him reacted to it accordingly. Which made him feel alienated, if not worse.

The entire book is in the form of a diary (or three, rather) where the narrator walks the reader through his state of mind during the process where he devises a plan to create a lifelike mask in order to open a roadway between himself and the outside world who pretty much shunned him because of the terrible state of his outer appearance, in this case, a bandaged face, or a lack of face thereof.

Initially at least, that's what it was. A simple ploy to get out of this uncomfortable situation that his scarred face has put him into. But eventually, as the reader keeps reading, we see the narrator's own state of mind being changed. In the beginning it was him and the others. But as time passed, it became him and his wife. Basically, he was trying to make things right with his wife. The wife in question was obviously having trouble coping with his changed form, and so, the narrator, in a state of desperation, wanted to create a new face, or a mask, that will make his wife feel comfortable around him.

Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami

After finishing In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami (and liking it quite a bit), I wasn't sure what to expect from Coin Locker Babies. I suppose I expected something similar-- blood and gore, lots of creep, and psychologically repulsive yet engaging-- a book and the characters within that you hate to love, but do so anyway. Well, let's just say that this book surprised me. Did I love it? YES! Did it have a ton of blood and gore? YES! Was it creepy? At times, YES! And yet, the journey, the experience of going through the almost 400-page book, was nothing like that of In the Miso Soup. Coin Locker Babies had something in it that was absent all throughout the other book. The reality! As sad and unconnected from our everyday lives as the story had been, it was still real. OK, may be not all of it; there were surrealistic, isolated incidences throughout the book; but the people, the characters, were all, in one way or another, just so very humane.

Coin Locker Babies is about two boys, Kiku and Hashi. Boys who, by some tragic twist of fate, came to share very similar fates. They were both left, abandoned, in coin lockers by their respective mothers. They survived somehow, and were brought up in an orphanage, and later were adopted together by their foster parents. Friends as well as brothers, insanely protective of one another, these two boys grew up in a small island in Japan, seemingly normally, and yet forever haunted by their shared past of being abandoned in coin lockers. The book about these teenagers isn't really one of growing up... more like, growing up weird. While Kiku is a lone wolf, but well liked by his peers, Hashi is seemingly more socially adaptable, while hiding a bottomless well of darkness inside. They are both twisted in their own ways, lost in their own worlds, but also connected by their abandonment in coin lockers. Strong Kiku is vehemently protective of weak Hashi, to the point that he wouldn't even mind killing if necessary. But deep down this protectiveness is also a way to save himself from falling into a darkness that Kiku knows is buried deep within himself. Living for Hashi is what drives Kiku, keeps him sane. It is the same darkness that both boys share, but Kiku had found a way to keep the darkness within him dormant by sheer force, physical labor in the form of pole vaulting, and by becoming the protector of weak Hashi. Hashi on the other hand has no way to channel his rage, his fear. He is like a boiling pot of insanity ready to spill any moment without notice.

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

As I read this book, moving from one page to the next, I could almost see the events unfold, as if I were at a cinema. All good books are like that in the sense that we can visualize the scenes and characters and the interactions; In the Miso Soup does it on a whole another level. I have never been to Tokyo, or Japan as a matter of fact, but somehow, it was as if I were transported there while I was reading. It was as if, I was... I myself was part of the Miso Soup.

Kenji and his gaijin are not an unlikely duo in the streets of Tokyo's red light district, Kabukicho; at least not at first glance. Kenji has worked as a guide to these gaijins (foreigners) for a couple of years already, helping them navigate through the maze-like alleyways of this dingy neighborhood. What the onlookers do not know is that Kenji is walking on eggshells here. He is watching his back, calculating his every move, because one wrong move from his part will get him killed by the strange looking gaijin walking right next to him. That's right, he is a guide to a serial killer and there is nothing he can do to change it, or get out of this mess, except that he finishes doing what he is supposed to do -- be a guide -- and make sure that whatever he does, he lives to see another day.

This was my first book by Ryu Murakami. My introduction to the author's work was a couple of years ago, through a movie called Audition, which was an adaptation of Ryu Murakami's book by the same name. I loved Audition. It was a psychological, creepy thriller... really weird, and scary... just the way I like them. But it was still a movie, and I had not thought of reading the book, or any other book by this author. Few weeks ago as I was digging through Haruki Murakami books at the library, I found Ryu Murakami quite by accident, and this was the first book I came across. From what I have read by some other reviewers on Goodreads, it seems as though this was one of Ryu Murakami's lesser graphic stories. None the less, the one graphic scene that is in this book left me... wanting more. I have this urge to run to the library right now and find more books by this author.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

What makes one fall in love with a book? For me at least, it's when I can relate to the characters; when I get transported to the time and place the characters are living in. When the dialogues and narrations speak to me, and to my heart. Kafka on the Shore did all those things for me. It's a book that balances surrealism and reality perfectly, so much so that even the most bizarre things seem plausible in real life, or at least in some way they feel like metaphors. Which is just as well, because Murakami says in this book through Oshima (one of the characters): "Everything in life is a metaphor."

This is my first ever Murakami book. A co-worker suggested him to me so I picked up this book from the library. I can't remember what made me borrow this one out of the many others that my library carries of Murakami, but I'm sure glad that I picked this because I can tell, for a long time to come, this shall be one of my all time favorite books!

What I realized after reading this book is that Murakami understands the human mind very well; or at least he understands people like me. Throughout the whole book I felt part of the conversations between the characters. I felt as thought I was either one of the participants, or a bystander with a very good understanding of the people, in this case the characters, of a particular scenario that I happened to be reading. The backdrop for this book is contemporary Japan; but as I was reading, I felt that it could very well be the United States, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. I think it's safe to assume that Murakami can transcend time and place through his novels (or at least this novel because this is the only Murakami book I've read so far.)

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Before I start with my review I would like to share why I picked up this book in the first place, a couple of days ago, even though it wasn't initially part of my March reading list. Well, lately I have been seeing a lot of buzz on the internet about a book called What's Not Yours Is Not Yours by an author whom I've never heard of before -- Helen Oyeyemi. I dug around a bit on Goodreads and didn't really know what to expect of her work; but I decided to check out a book from my library anyway. Why this particular book you ask? The cover, really. I fell in love with the cover art. All I can say is that I was not disappointed; not at all!

Now on to the review:

I started this book with no particular expectation. I read a few Goodreads reviews, but they didn't really give out much (and I am grateful for that!) Now, how or where do I even start? I would say that White is for Witching belongs to the Young Adult going into New Adult genre, mixed in with Fantasy, Weird, Eerie, Horror, Gothic, Tragedy, and so on and so forth. It's a little bit of anything and everything, packed tightly in a book that's not even 300 pages long. You'd think all these things would be too much for one book; but no! Heck no! This book was perfection; I wouldn't have it any other way whatsoever! That said, I realize that this book is not for everyone. Most people would either love it or hate it. As for me, if you haven't figured it out already, I loved it.

White is for Witching is a weird little story, and at the same time, it strikes a chord that anyone can recognize. Loss. Tragedy. Grief. Most of us have experienced it at one point or another, and if not quite yet, then will experience it. Have you seen the movie that came out towards the end of 2014, called The Babadook? Well, this book reminded me of that movie in some ways. In both, we see a grieving family trying to cope and live with their individual losses. Take The Babadook, add more, much more to it, and you may have a little bit of taste of White is for Witching. It's grimmer, sadder, eerier, weirder, scarier, darker, BETTER.