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.

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 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.