kafka on the shore

My first novel by Haruki Murakami – I thought I will never manage to finish this murder mystery, love affair, storytelling and philosophical mixture. I loved it and now I can relate to everyone else saying how “beautifully weird” are Murakami’s books.

I can’t clearly explain in simple words what exactly happens but Kafka on the Shore is a story about a fifteen-year-old book lover who calls himself Kafka and runs away from home to look for his lost mother and sister and to get away from his horrible father whose crimes against him are never fully explained.

Fate draws him to a town where he meets two women who may well be his mother and sister, which doesn’t prevent him from having sex with them. His story is intersected with that of Nakata, a sixty-year-old man who can talk to cats. You quickly realize that Kafka’s and Nakata’s lives are interconnected, but exactly how this is doesn’t become clear until the end and maybe not even then. 

It would make a hell of a Japanese movie.

“That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving.

As I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect.[…]

If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. [Oshima, p. 119]

The Swedish Cavalier – Leo Perutz

I’m so far behind with my book reviews that I’m thinking so often not to make them anymore. Ah…

This book I’m writing about today I read on the flight from Prague to Bucharest while I was returning from Finland – back in July??

The Swedish Cavalier is written in the style of an old story that can be told from generation to generation – that type of tale which uses folklore myths to explore the human condition. It’s the story of a man who takes another man’s place in a world still rooted in medieval superstitions.

Combing myths, mystery and suspense and even comedy, Leo Perutz succeeds in creating a historical novel with a metaphor on the power of a man to create his own destiny as well as his incapacity to change it, even when he tries, and almost succeeds, to become who he is not.

The main theme is ok with me but overall the book it’s not my type of novel.

Coin locker babies – Ryu Murakami

Surrealist apocalyptic goodness – that’ how I can describe in 3 words Ryu Murakamy’s Coin locker babies.

It’s a fucked up book (in a good way) that starts like this:

“The woman pushed on the baby’s stomach and sucked its penis into her mouth; it was thinner than the American menthols she smoked and a bit slimy, like raw fish.”

So, if you can handle the graphic first page, you can probably manage the rest also.

Coin locker babies is a dark and desperate story of two brothers. Well, almost two brothers.  Both Hashi and Kiku, abandoned by their mothers in bus station coin lockers as infants, are discovered and sent to the same orphanage, where they become inseparable. Adopted by the same couple, they grow up together but along the way, one grows up to become a decadent pop star and the other, a disciplined pole vaulter.

Through their adventures the author has a way of building up the action and then suddenly drop a bomb on you, something terribly grotesque or horrible happens and you are left mouth open like “oh my god …”

In this sick and perverted story you love Kiku because he’s smart in a logical kind of way and you get captured by Hashi, the androgynous bisexual rock star always wondering if they are going to destroy or save the world.

Thing is, at some point, you realize there could be no happy ending to this story, which is fine, because by the time you get to the end of this book it’s hard to even want a happy ending for the protagonists.

A very fine read for the days when my psyche takes a break and the ideas of matricide, self-mutilation, hard-core sex and mass murder seem to make sense.

House of spirits – Isabel Allende

It’s the story of three generations of strong women, in a world where women aren’t supposed to be strong, with a man as the common thread between them – it’s an incredible family saga, a powerful history of characters.  They are funny, eccentric, temperamental, ideal.

 You hate some and you admire some, still, they are all interesting and well drawn. There is violent, explicit sexuality that is hateful and despicable but at the same time totally exciting. There is so much raw human spirit that you are constantly lifted up to the sky and then thrown back down to the ground. The thing is, when you feel like something bad will happen, it will happen.

What I didn’t love so much about The House of the Spirits is that it witnesses to the most important part of Chilean history: the Pinochet era and it shows us what it “might” have looked like behind the scenes, what the papers were not reporting about that political struggle. But in Latin America these kinds of events are part of the history and they can not be told for the very censorship that this story speaks of, so they are told in novels and are thinly veiled as magical and exaggerated.

Overall I enjoyed this book, it’s layered, it’s complex, plus, it has one of the best opening and closing lines I’ve ever read.

Vivaldi’s Virgins – Barbara Quick

“The sky on a clear night is a living, pulsating thing. The stars are like musical notes turned to light, and, like notes, they shimmer and swell and fade and fall. The painters have never captured it — but they never will until some painter teaches his colors to dance.”

Since last year I become interested in stories set in Venice and this book was intriguing for me. Loosely based on real life events of the young musicians who were taught by Vivaldi, the novel presents Anna Maria’s life, an orphan who plays violin and who is searching for her mother.
The story is told poetically through the voice of 14 year old Anna who is writing letters to her mother while the rest of the book is told from the view point of Anna Maria as a 40 year old woman, filling in the gaps that the younger Anna’s letters leave blank.
There is a bit of mystery involved in the story but having read many novels which use this as a plot device I find it less interesting than the descriptions of the setting which is brought vividly to life here.

The entire book is so focused on music and Anna’s love for music it really comes through in the writing style. It was so lyrical. I just felt the ending was too simple. I do have a lot of respect for people who write historical fiction and can tie all the loose ends together at the end in a way that is realistic and compelling. Unfortunately, this author fell short a little.

Still, I enjoyed the book overall.

Truman Capote – The grass harp

This is my first time reading Truman Capote’s stories and I can swear everything seems so familiar, bizarre and fantastic at the same time. I picked it up because it has an interesting title. Who was ever heard about grass harp? I for sure didn’t.

But the Grass harp is only the first story and for sure not the one that amazed me with its plot and characters.

Master Misery is so unbelievably life changing; one of the best reading experiences I had in awhile. How can one sell its dreams for a couple of bucks, feel empty but still go on with life?, this kept me awake at night wondering and frightened me a bit while thinking how someone else can make use of my dreams  just by knowing or writing them down on pieces of paper and stocking them in drawers like any other items.

Oh well, this is a hell of a book in the most wonderful way possible, you can read it over and over and each time feeling it differently, understanding it better.

I will certainly go and dig for other Capote stories.

Armand the vampire

Third book that I talk about lately and I’m still not impressed by anything I read these days. It’s not that I do not enjoy them but I feel there is something missing – from the stories or characters – or it’s just my mind playing games and wanting to write its own versions.

Anyway, for me, The Vampire Chronicles are the be-all-end-all of vampire novels. I have my favorites within the series and I find myself comparing every other vampire novel I read to the entire set.

Vampire Armand however is my least favorite of the series. It wasn’t very fun to follow Armand through his struggle with the past and neither in the last chapters when he’s struggling with the image of the veil and the desire to drink Lestat’s blood I did not found that amazing-ness that Anne Rice has put before in her stories.

Though this book contained much more sexuality than the other books from the vampire chronicles, Armand is not likable and it does not have the charisma, power and sexuality that Lestat has. It’s obvious that they are different characters and they carry a different life/vampire story but still … I have expected more.

Hmm, and thinking back to the moment I bought the book I might say I have enjoyed very much the venicean atmosphere around Armand, yup, definitely.

The woman in black

The woman in black by Susan Hill – is a ghost story in the very classic style.  More Edgar Allan Poe-ish and less Stephen King-ish, the writing style pulls you back into a different time right from the very beginning when Arthur Kipps starts a frightening story that he cannot even share with his family.

That being said the tale is descriptive and atmospheric but only mildly chilling, not scary like I have imagined.

As a young lawyer Arthur is sent to a little isolated village to take care of the burial and legal papers of an old lady living in a strange house in the swamps. There he witnesses the appearance of the woman in black which is supposed to haunt the place and brings unrest and diseases to those who see her.

Frightened and in disbelief the young lawyer returns to his duties, only years later to be stroked by the curse of the woman in black.

So, with a horrible ending the story has a true Victorian feeling that is worth seeking out if you’re a fan of ghost stories.

Eat pray love

Everybody talked so much about this book and also about the movie that stands from its pages that I think everything has been said before.

I didn’t hate Eat, Pray, Love but it left me really unsatisfied.  Chick lit is definitely not my thing. It was something like Sex and the City only with Italy, India and Indonesia substituted to New York and with sex substituted with spirituality, which is nice but not too nice.

The core story for me was that only you can bring yourself from an awful state to a better place, sometimes only you can help yourself just like her favorite Italian word “attraversiamo” says.

While reading I felt like being at a cocktail party and listening to someone telling a long involved story about themselves and alternately, annoyed and fascinated, saying to myself I’ll be leaving in the next 5 minutes – and so ending up sticking through the whole thing.

Monster love – Carol Topolski

I was gifted with “Monster love”. It may sound odd but it’s only a book title from Carol Topolski that I finished like a month ago but didn’t find the mood to talk about it.

Being transfixed by the story I had to let it aside for a while so I can make up my mind about the subject; and now it almost feels wrong to say that I have enjoyed a book that concentrates on one of the worst crimes possible.

Entering the minds of the two psychopaths and explaining their dysfunctional backgrounds without trying to blame or to take away the blame for their crime, Topolski manages to take also the romantic notion of the “soulmates” to its tragic extremes: Sherilyn and Brendan, a perfect couple, detached from everyone else, a bit distant but more than obviously in love with each other, are creating such a dependency, such a all-consuming obsession for one another that Samantha, the child that they accidentally have, is seen like the only thing setting them apart and stealing their happiness and freedom, meaning she must be out of their lives.

The scenes when Samantha is found at the beginning of the book are horrific and the descriptions of the different character’s reaction  to this are very realistic. I love the way the story is narrated by different people connected to the case and  in between we can find the inside story told by the murderers themselves.

It’s a good book that will make you think about humanity, about the way we can understand love and the ways in which it can go wrong. And when you read the last words you will be still wondering about whether you have read something horrible or something wonderful.

The year of the hare – Aarto Paasilinna

The Year of the Hare - a charming book about the man’s desire of escaping the hectic life in the modern world.

Written in the ’70s and yet more relevant now than ever, in the Finnish settings, the book describes a year in the life of Vatanen, a journalist who has been unhappy in his job and relationship and which by accident decides to walk out on his life and start over again. He puts an end to his life in Helsinki leaving the big city for nature and a modest life.

His companion in all kind of adventures is a little hare that, as we discover from the first chapter,  it’s the one waking him up and making him thinking about what kind of life he has and what he always wanted for himself.

 Overall, a charming enough story, making me wish I knew Finnish so I could read it in the author’s own voice.