Book Review: Nostalgia by M.G. Vassanji

Nostalgia is all about current affairs, written beautifully in the disguise of a futuristic, dystopian, literary fiction. Passages from this book remind me so much of the current ongoings in the Middle east, it's almost uncanny!

The plot is set in a future North America, Toronto, to be specific. Here, people who are rich can achieve immortality, so to speak. They can treat their bodies to look younger, be rid of illnesses, and get rid of old memories and give themselves a completely new memory and move on with a brand new life. The whole process is still under continual development, and therefore, not rid of its chinks. "Nostalgia" is a symptom among these immortal humans when old memory seems to threaten the well being of the humans with new memories. This nostalgia syndrome can be quite insignificant at times, but left unattended, can even threaten a person's life.

In this new world, a memory doctor called Frank is our protagonist. His life in this seemingly perfect world, in some odd way, gets tangled with a patient with nostalgia syndrome, and with a journalist in a faraway land who has nothing to do with Frank. Or does she?

Book Review: A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe

Transition. Transformation. A Decisive Moment.

A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe is a story about every man, every woman, every human being. It is a story of that decisive moment when we cast off our old, naive selves, and decide to move forward, become a grown up; knowing full well what it means to be a grown up, the things that need to be sacrificed, or compromised, so we can say – we did what we had to do so we can look at our image in the mirror and stand tall and hold our ground without crumpling or loathing ourselves.

A Personal Matter is indeed a very personal story of growth. The protagonist is Bird, a cram school teacher in post WWII Tokyo. His story, at first glance, is probably not all that new to anyone, not even in this 21st century. This very personal story of all human beings is still the same. Bird has been married for a few years now, and he is about to be a father. He is at the crossroads that every living human on Earth has stood at one point or another. Some may have been younger, some older. The circumstances may have been different for everyone, but the story is essentially the same. A choice is given to us. Do we stand our ground and face reality, or do we run away?

Book Review: The Curfew by Jesse Ball

William and Molly live a quiet life, in a quiet neighborhood, avoiding attention of any sort, minding only their day to day activities. And then someone from a life William is trying to forget as best as possible, suddenly appears before him. This man tells him things that William cannot overlook, and therefore, to find out more, he leaves the comfort of home, into the city at night, in the midst of an unspoken yet unanimous curfew, leaving Molly with their neighbors.

Molly likes her neighbors. Like William, this couple used to have a colorful life as well, before the life they used to know ended. Together with this elderly couple, Molly creates a puppet show, a show that recreates Molly’s whole life, from the days even before her birth, to that very same day up until William ventures out in the evening leaving Molly behind, and beyond.

Book Review: Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin

Amanda is dying, and David is asking her questions. Questions which may or may not help her understand why she is dying and where might her daughter be. 


It was a pretty short read and one that had me reading; I couldn’t put it down. The only reason I was able to put it down the first night I started reading, after halfway through, was because I was damn tired and just couldn’t keep my eyes open after midnight.

Amanda and Carla met one another not very many days ago. Amanda is in this small town for vacation with her daughter, and her husband is due any day now. Carla is a local and her husband raises race horses, but there are no more horses in the stables. Amanda and Carla hit it off right away, and then Carla starts to tell her a very strange story.

Book Review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Well, what I love about Hanya Yanagihara’s books is the complexity of the characters. Her stories are really all about the characters. Both in The People in the Trees and A Little Life, her characters simply rendered me speechless at times.

The issue I have with this particular book, if you will let me, is the fact that while reading it, it very much felt like reading a first draft rather than the final, printed and published copy. The repetitiveness of certain things, the redundant explanations of each and every single act and dialogue were pointless and so much in abundance that I had to wonder about the skills of the editorial team behind this book. I mean, I read The People in the Trees not too long ago, and now after reading A Little Life, I felt that the former was just so much richer in its delivery, that I simply could not help but feel disappointed.

Book Review: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

It looked like everyone I follow on Instagram had been reading this book this past month or so. For once, I felt as though I was part of this bookish community that I have been following closely for the past year.

All that aside, this was a good book. Pretty good for a debut novel. The plot was interesting. In some ways I could even relate to the narrator; in some weird ways.

This is a story about a young girl and the people around her. Her parents, her neighbors, peers in school and teachers. The description of a small town in Minnesota was kind of nerve wracking. I lived in a small town in Minnesota myself (albeit a small college town) for about three years, and the bone chilling winter months and hard-to-breathe kind of humid summer months that the author described were spot on! Her vivid descriptions, more than anything else, hooked me to this book.

Book Review: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Earlier this year I read my very first Helen Oyeyemi book -- White is for Witching -- and fell in love. I love the way Oyeyemi portrays her characters. The characters themselves pull me in more than anything else. Add a bit of a creepy plot, some creepy things, and a bit of moral ambiguity, and quite a bit of ambiguity in general, and there you have a masterpiece (for me at least). Well, that was White is for Witching. Right after reading that book, I picked up Mr. Fox. I suppose I was in the mood for creepiness galore, and I wasn't having that with Mr. Fox. So, I had to stop reading midway through (although I have all the intentions of picking it back up one of these days when I'm more in the mood for a bit of weird fuzziness). So, anyway, couple of days ago I was pondering over which book to read next, and I randomly picked out Boy, Snow, Bird from the library, and read it within a day. Did I love it? Well, not quite as much as I loved White is for Witching, but Boy, Snow, Bird still had the elements that are so Oyeyemi... the edgy characters, mischievous characters, smart ass characters, pained characters... the ones that give you the creeps, and the ones that makes you want to hug them and kiss them, and sing them a lullaby. OK, that was too much, I know... but oh well...

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

I started reading A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro without any expectations, good or bad. I was simply walking through the stacks of books at the university library, which I do often, when I came across the Ishiguro section, and was simply scanning over the titles when I spotted this book. Much smaller than most of his other books, which is why I randomly decided to check it out. I realized afterwards that it was also his debut novel, so I guess I was a bit intrigued, but not heavily expectant.

After I finished reading this book a few hours later (it's a small book so, it didn't take any time at all to finish it), I could not believe what I'd just read! This is going to sound crazy, but this is by far my first Ishiguro book! Not that I had not attempted, quite the contrary. Earlier this year I tried reading Remains of the Day as well as A Buried Giant, but in both cases, I wasn't able to finish them. Not because I didn't like the books, but somehow the timing was not right. Both of those times I was hit by the worst sort of reading slump, and simply had to switch to different books.

As I was saying, I just could not believe what I'd read. I was instantly hit by the urge to start reading it all over again, but I made the mistake of jumping on Goodreads and reading some of the other reviews which essential confirmed my suspicions.

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara tells the story of Norton Perina, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, who practically chanced upon the discovery of a lifetime while on an anthropological expedition in 1950. The book is written in the form of an autobiography from Norton Perina to his friend and colleague Ronald Kubodera.

Before I start, I should warn the reader that this book is in many ways extremely unconventional and pushes the boundaries of a lot of controversial things in several isolated instances. This book is, in many ways, a lot like Lolita in which the reader is pushed to the extremes. May be even pushed over! Depends on the reader of course. Truth be told, I loved The People in the Trees even more than I liked Lolita. I love a controversial book, and this one felt like it was testing me and my limits in practically every other turn of a page.

A little on how I came across this book before I delve into the plot and the characters: earlier this year I noticed a lot of hype about a book called A Little Life by the same author. I wanted to check out the book, but unfortunately, both the university library as well as the public library had a long hold list. The People in the Trees however was available, and I decided to give it a go as I had never read anything by Hanya Yanagihara before. And I must say, if you asked me to name my top 3 contemporary authors, she would now be one of them.

We Eat Our Own by Kea Wilson

I just finished reading Kea Wilson's debut novel We Eat Our Own. My thoughts? Hmm... let's go over what transpired from the beginning. I started reading the book and was sucked in from the very first page. The narrative was not something I was familiar with, and that alone was enough to spark my curiosity. Needless to say, Kea Wilson has a very weird way of writing... weird not in a bad way, quite the opposite actually. She has a unique style with her writing and her prose, which I found refreshing. And yet, on GoodReads, I gave a rating of 3-stars. Why? Because of the following:

Around three quarters into the book, I started to wonder when we will get to the climax. There was going to be a climax, that I was sure of. So I kept waiting. And Reading. I thought I knew exactly what the climax was going to be, but I didn't know how it was going to play out (more on this reference later in this review), so I was starting to get impatient. And then, when there was about 20 pages or so left in the book, something happened! And it was NOT the climax I was expecting...

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.

Real World by Natsuo Kirino

A week ago I finished reading Out by Natsuo Kirino, my first book by the author. As soon as I finished, I checked out the only other Natsuo Kirino book available in my library — Real World (translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel). Somehow, Real World turned out to outlive my expectations, and as crazy as it sounds, proved to be even better than Out! One uncanny similarity in these two books is that, they are both focused on a group of four girls. Well, in Out, they were more women than girls, considering the characters were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. In Real World, the girls are high school seniors. The story and the plot, as well as the characters are significantly different however. Somehow, even though the four girls in Real World are much younger, I felt like their characters had more depth than the characters in Out. I do not do star reviews anymore, however, if I had to, I’d give Out a 4.7 out of 5, and Real World… can I give it a 7.5 out of 5? Well, that’s just how much I liked this book.

Out by Natsuo Kirino

I am smitten with Japanese literature in translation. I mean, why else would I spend hours every week just admiring the stacks of Japanese novels in the library? I have also found some Goodreads reviewers who happen to read a ton of Japanese novels and whose reviews I have come to trust. And so, as I’m sure you can imagine, thanks to them, my TBR pile has been soaring lately, and the bulk of it happens to be works of Japanese authors.

Anyhow, setting aside my obsession for the time being, let’s now talk about the book I finished reading last week-ish. Out by Natsuo Kirino, translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder, is the latest addition to my favorite crime/thriller, contemporary fictions. I love a bad-ass, not so innocent, female protagonist, and Masako Katori is just that. She is smart, she appears to be just a normal, average, flawed being, unhappily married with a troubled, teenage boy at home, works a mindless job, and even at the age of 43, she has yet to fully figure herself out. Despite the choices she made and the things she’d done, I couldn’t help liking her. She has a strange charm about her, and Natsuo Kirino did a wonderful job of bringing out her charm. It’s like, I could totally see why everyone around her either depended on her or trusted her, or simple fell in love with her.

NP by Banana Yoshimoto

Since this is Women in Translation month and all, I figured I’d honor it by reading Banana Yoshimoto’s (translated from Japanese by Ann Sherif) NP. Umm, no scratch that, that was a complete lie. I just felt like saying it … anyhow, yesterday I was browsing through the Japanese Literature section in my library, admiring row upon rows of original Japanese texts as well as translated books, as I often do, when I came upon a smaller stack of Banana Yoshimoto books. I remember reading an interview of Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors, on the Paris Review, where he mentioned enjoying Ms. Yoshimoto’s books. I haven’t really had time to give her a try, but yesterday, as I chanced upon her books, it felt like fate. I chose N.P. purely based on its small size. It’s a short novella at less than 200 pages, and the book itself is pretty small in size, so I figured I’d be able to finish it in a jiffy. Which I did! Took me just a couple of hours to get through the entire book… and I have to say, it wasn’t solely because of it’s size, but also because I got hooked from the get go!

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Man Booker Prize 2016 longlist was announced almost a month ago, and I finally managed to read ONE book out of the entire list. The reason I chose Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh is because, one of my favorite reviewers — Clare of A Little Blog of Books — happened to describe Eileen as one of the creepiest books she had read this year. I love creepy, so I figured I’d start the list with this book.

Eileen is about a girl and her grand escape from her hometown where she was born and raised and spent most of her youth, being unhappy and neglected by her parents, always thinking less of herself, concocting up vivid imaginary situations that would make her feel important. She grew up in a dysfunctional family, and as almost always with the kids of such families, Eileen grew up a little off. Different from her peers in many ways that you wouldn’t know just by looking. The first person to see that she was a bit “different” just happened to be this eccentric young woman, who has issues of her own. May be it is because of that very reason, that Rebecca, the new (I already forgot what her post had been at the juvenile detention center that Eileen worked at, but if memory serves, she had been some sort of…) educational guidance counselor to the young prisoners, sought to take Eileen into her confidence. Eileen, on the other hand, was so distracted and, in search of a more appropriate word, enamored by her, who is the complete opposite of Eileen that she was ready to do anything to feel important, find a friend, akin to a lover almost, in Rebecca.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

That’s right. I finally finished reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I have always wanted to, but somehow never managed to pick it up. Last week or so, in the middle of reading Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, I happened to feel a reading slump coming. I put down Eileen right away (temporarily), and while trying to decide which book to pick out of my TBR pile, one way or another, I completely ditched the pile and decided to give Lolita a go. It probably has to do with a book review by one of my trusted readers/reviewers –Clare of A Little Blog of Books. You see, she wrote a review of The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara and happened to mention Lolita in there… so I checked out both books from the library, and started reading Lolita. The subtleties (or the mysteries) of life, eh?!

Well now, where do I even start? Lolita is a very disturbing book and from the very beginning, throws the sane and perhaps moderate reader into a chaotic mind — the mind of Humbert Humbert, our narrator of the day! Reading his narration is like listening to a madman who thinks he is perfectly sane. Which is not too far fetched in the case of Mr. Humbert. He is an unreliable narrator as unreliable narrators go. His relationship with Lolita was so one sided that at times I had to close the book, sit back and ponder what must really have been happening with this story. At times he made me mad, other times I did not know if I should feel sorry for him. Well, don’t judge me. I do not mean to lessen his crimes by saying I feel sorry for him. What he’d done is unforgivable, a criminal act or acts if you will, yes, and at the same time, may be the unstable and sick side of him made me somewhat sympathetic towards him.

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 Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

Inside a scorching, suffocating hole in the sand dunes by the sea, there is the man, a school teacher and an insect collector, and the woman -- the woman who is his captor, as well as his companion, and at the same time his one and only ally. Truth be told, for me at least, the title would have been better suited if it were something like "The Man in the Dunes", or "The Captive in the Dunes", as the story seemed more about the man than about the woman. Regardless, this book had my attention from the very beginning. The starting was quizzical and had me wondering what was about to come next.

The man, mostly referred to as "the man" in the entire book, except perhaps a couple of times by his real name, gets caught by a pack of villagers living in these sand dunes and is made to live with a single woman whose work seems to be collecting sand every night. The purpose is for him to work alongside her and may be, in time, get together with her. Read "sleep together, have babies, make a family, etc." From the beginning the whole sham seemed a little too absurd, and it seemed like the man himself thought so as well. But as unreal as it may have seemed, with time, the villagers proved that they meant business. First of all, the house he was a captive at, like all the other houses in the village, was at the bottom of a pit surrounded by sand. The only way up was by a rope ladder which the villagers took away as soon as he was lured inside, like an insect.

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.