Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro

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I finished another of Kazuo Ishiguro’s magical works and I had to write a review while the book was still fresh in my mind. Particularly a book such as “Never Let Me Go.” There are very few books that have left me disturbed and this is one of them. A summary:

Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatizes her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

Love and friendship are the two major themes that run through the book from the start. The story revolves around three students at Hailsham boarding school – Ruth, Tommy and Kathy. The book is divided into three sections, which are the stages of life – childhood, teen years and adulthood. We are introduced to the lives of the kids at Hailsham, their worries, aspirations and relationships, particularly through the evolving lives of these three characters.

However, it’s evident from page one that this is not a normal story about normal kids who are in a normal school. While I chuckled my way through The Remains of the Day, the first work of Ishiguro’s that I read, this was not the case with Never Let Me Go. A grey, bleak atmosphere hangs heavy right from the beginning and from page one I got the feeling that I was privy to the workings of a cult. I was introduced to “carers” and “donors” and “guardians.”

My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years…My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as ‘agitated’, even before fourth donation.

This is page one of the book and already I could see a lot of anomalies. The lack of a surname, the use of exclusive labels like ‘carers’ and the implication of something unpleasant with the words ‘fourth donation.’ As the book progresses I learnt about the mysterious Madame and her Gallery, the Spring Exchange, the big Sale and the Cottages. Another unsettling factor is that although the majority of the story is set in a school, there is no mention of parents, family or siblings anywhere. It’s as if these people exist in a vacuum, isolated from the outside world.

Little did I know how close to the truth (of the story) I was. Until the last few pages of the book, I thought the book was a bit off the curve, eccentric and complex in its portrayal of a world that I could not identify with and yet populated with seemingly average human beings. At times the book moves slowly, and at certain points I could not even wrap my head around things. There is an undercurrent beneath the coming of age portrayal with romance, friendship, discovery of sex et al, which you are aware of but you cannot put your finger on. 

But in the end, things fall into place. That is when your jaw drops and you feel an intense sadness and all the innocence portrayed in the previous pages becomes even more heartrending. If I continue I will have to reveal the twisted conclusion. So I will stop here. All I can say is, Ishiguro is brilliant in his construction of a parallel world, holding a mirror to what the future might be, where humans play with humans without a thought, in the name of saving lives. He reveals the possibility of unending paradoxes and shines light into a dark, dystopian tomorrow, which speaks very much of today. Slow but getting there. Just like the book.

Verdict: Brilliant. Depressing. Otherworldly
 
Rating: 5/5

The Beauty of Humanity Movement: Camilla Gibb

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I think currently the blog is owned by just Soul. Every weekend practically I see a post from her while I am ashamed to say if I write once a month it’s a bonus. It’s come to that. Life has intervened too much.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb is precisely about life and interventions. Here’s a summary first –

Old Man Hung makes the best pho in Hanoi. He opens his humble, makeshift “shop” every morning where a group of faithful customers throng without fail. One day, a new customer Maggie, joins the crowd. Maggie left Vietnam with her mother for the relative safety of the US when she was just a small girl amidst war while her father stayed behind, an important member of political groups.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement is about how the diverse worlds of Maggie, Hung and Tu, the tour guide, come together to tell a story of Vietnam itself.

I saw a review of this book on another blog, which was one of the reasons that propelled me to read it. The other reason is that I wanted to read a book set in a place where I had been and continue to cherish memories of. I loved Vietnam, the pho and the coffee all of which are the wheels on which the book runs. It begins without much ado, stating a couple of simple facts –

Old Man Hung makes the best pho in the city and has done so for decades. Where he once had a shop, though, he no longer does, because the rents are exorbitant, both the hard rents and the soft – the bribes a proprietor must pay to the police in this new era of freedom.

We have a story right there. It is in this vein that the rest of the novel continues. Stating facts, providing a feel of Vietnam’s culture and history and weaving all of these with three threads of fiction. Hung brings in the historical perspective, Maggie brings in a US-Vietnamese angle while Tu is the embodiment of the country’s young generation.

The book moves in a non-linear style, interspersing Hung’s past with his present. Hung plays a non-interfering and yet significant role in Vietnam’s underground political scene during the war. Hung’s noodle shop is a beehive of activity as a blazing young man named Dao holds forth and builds strategies. Hung slowly becomes fascinated with him and later forms an untold but special bond with Dao.

Even as the war is very real and palpable during Hung’s time, in today’s Vietnam it continues to live through tourist material plied at every corner of cities like Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. I liked this particular conversation between Tu and Maggie. Tu voices,

“Sometimes I feel it’s all about them, not really about Vietnam at all.” 

And he continues to think,

Has Tu been naïve in thinking his job has something to do with introducing people to Vietnam? But then, come to think of it, how can they possibly see anything beyond stereotypes when the tourism industry gives them war tours and movie tours and romance of Indochina tours…”

Tu feels quite unsettled. “Don’t you think they want to see the real Vietnam?” he asks.
“But what’s the real Vietnam, Tu? This is a country that erases its own history. Anything that goes against the Party. Your grandfather. My father. Millions of people. And if people aren’t being censored? They’re busy hiding anyway. Desperately trying to save face.  

 Vietnamese coffee

I experienced war tourism firsthand when I visited Vietnam. Indeed, everywhere there were tourist agencies promising to take us to see tunnels, tanks, bullet holes and every possible remnant of war. In souvenir shops you can even buy pieces of barbed wire, fragments of shell and what not. You could own a piece of the “real” history of Vietnam if you wanted to. War and reality were truly commercialized and I still don’t have the answer to “what’s the real Vietnam.” The friendly people and the wonderful pho and coffee that still linger in my memory lie at the core of the place, and perhaps that’s part of the real Vietnam. One of them at least.

Reading the book was a trip back to this country for me. I had really enjoyed my travel then and I enjoyed it now as well. Although the book held a little more meaning for me because I have actually visited some of the places in the book, it will be an interesting read for anyone. I suggest you sample some of Hung’s pho and read the book.

Verdict: a slightly meandering and languid read but interesting nevertheless
 

Rating: 3/5

The Elegance Of The Hedgehog : Muriel Barbery

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Every now and then you pick up a book simply because you have heard of it so much and so often. I found some delightful books recently in my favorite bookstore. Well, it's not going to be such a favorite any more because books with its low profit margins are making way for the more elegant things of life like video games and instant macaroni shelves. But yet...there are certain gems that I can find every now and then. Bit like how there is an 'always within the never.'

The Elegance Of The Hedgehog is not a book that skims lightly on the surface. It's one of the 'deepest' books I have read, to use a word that might make Paloma, the 12-year-old dual narrator of our novel cringe. To be fair, I understood Paloma's journal entries. It is Renée's writing that had my little head spin. I come from a literature background - art is not unusual for me, but it is not a passion that moves me. I cannot recognize a Picasso from a Van Gogh or a Mozart from a Beethoven. So the references to much of the art and literary allusions in this novel was not something I could easily ascribe to. But Anna Karenina I am familiar with. And that is one of Renée's favorite novels - and dare I say, my dear concierge, one of my mine too? But you perhaps, have understood Tolstoy's artistry better - the mastery over his art in ways that I can never comprehend. I do not have a cat named Leo. The last pet I had came named Bambi. And the other pets I know of respond/responded to names like Pluto or Bablu. Pluto at least has a planet named after him, or is it the other way round? Regrettably, I spend much of my lowly life mused in the contemplation of my ceiling - its white smooth surface inspires in me the mortal dread of living. I spend my days in languid grace, infused with the spirit of ennui. Mozart may be a tune on my cellphone, and photography is as much of still-life I would obtain.

But I am like Paloma. I wonder at the meaning of life and have always wished to surrender my pitiful self to Death's beautifully dark calling. She wants to commit suicide - sleeping pills and setting fire to her apartment - the same one where she contemplates the dead and decayed French society that she is so contemptuous of. I do not wish to commit suicide. I just inquire after life's self-destructive mechanisms. I despise the parties and pubs and today's fluffy generation - well, not all of them - but the ones that come with talk of the latest episode in yesterday's soap opera, and glorify incessantly the wonders of Fifty Shades of Grey over Bared To You. Yet, I am not Renée. I possess not her class, nor her understanding of philosophy. I think of myself not as standing at the edges of a shore, contemplating a glorious sunset, but rather on the edge of a gutter, breathing in the stinking putrid air and knowing that this is as good as it gets. Sometimes, one step too close to the gutter and you slip...

There is not a story I can recommend in this book. There are however, beautiful passages. Beautiful lines. And kind of like Keats you realize that somewhere that this is where something is forever...our illusion of it at least. That's why this book makes beauty attainable.

My favorite line:

“If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.” 

Verdict : A book of quotes that will make you sound 'awesome' at the next dinner party. Beautiful, nevertheless. Incomprehensible to lesser minds like mine nevertheless.

Rating: 3.5/5

Winter Of The World : Ken Follett

Image Credit: Ken Follet

Gosh! I started this book sometime back in November last year, I think. So much water has flown under the murky bed of life I stand on! It seems like every day is an age. I am discovering faster the genius of aging - just surround yourself with the vignette stars of craziness, and then spend the rest of your day counting your gray hair. My hairstylist, bless him, has artfully camouflaged both my gray hair and my baldness in a superb feat of defeating time. But as I try to review this book, I know that Time is probably one friend that Ken Follett has always, ready to stand by his side, and support him through all the thick and thins and all that mush.

I had finished the first of this trilogy, The Fall of Giants, which was a New Year gift by good ol' blogger friend, Vishy. That was my first initiation into Ken Follett, and I had liked it. Small wonder then that I decided to try Book 2 as well. Winter Of The World is one tedious long saga. I don't know why writers think that it's so smart to write long books. Some of my all-time favorite books have been those that have compressed words onto to a little ant's back. And therein hangs a tale. My ex-boss used to tell me that anyone can write long essays, it's when you have to be concise, crisp and short that it becomes difficult. I thought that was true. To ramble like I am doing in this review doesn't take genius. Or extraordinary skill even though those are two virtues that got thrown out when I was born by an uncaring nurse and I have been trying to find it ever since. Here's what Amazon describes the book as:

Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, Welsh—enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs.

Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until she commits a deed of great courage and heartbreak. . . . American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific. . . . English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism. . . . Daisy Peshkov, a driven American social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set, until the war transforms her life, not just once but twice, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war—but the war to come.

Ambitious, eh? Overly so. The Third Reich alone has inspired many books, The Spanish Civil War many others, and World War II? Right, I lost count. To combine all this into one book is an effort. And it shows. Too often, I missed the Ken Follett as the storyteller because he is writing gibberish sometimes without really bothering to 'write.' Many passages seemed to be written at different periods of time, and one smart editor must have had that laborious job of copying and pasting it all together. Having said that, the story moves along at a fast clip. You REALLY want to know what happens to all these characters. My favorite is Daisy - ah, social climber extraordinaire! To also be honest, I skipped a few pages here and there. The long political dramas bored me immeasurably. Conservative or Liberal? Who cares? I mean, really! Not making any difference to my small, mean, miserable life, certainly! And the number of characters! I am at a loss many times to remember my own name! Imagine grappling with 100s of them in a book!

Anyway, the only thing to take away from this rather bizarre review of mine is that Winter Of The World may appeal to you, if you have patience. I don't. It's readable. But that's about it.

Verdict: Readable. But that's about it. 

Rating: 2.5/5

The Fault In Our Stars : John Green

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I think that John Green doesn't sound like what an author should sound like. The name sounds absurdly commonplace, especially when you compare the writing that comes from this person called John Green. The Fault In Our Stars was undoubtedly one of THE books last year. The kind of book that people would love to talk about in parties. The kind of book that was thrust on you with the recommendation that 'you would love it.' As if anyone ever knows what anyone else loves. I mean, seriously?

But fear not, dear reader, I am not raving or ranting in this post. I read the last few pages of The Fault In Our Stars in a hospital where my Dad was having laser surgery for his cataract. As surgeries go, this was routine. Commonplace. Yet, the setting was a bit bizarre when I am reading a book that has cancer patients as its main characters. I wince a little as I write this, because really The Fault In Our Stars is not about this or that. It's a book that seems to arrive at the right time and filled with the lines that you want to hear. Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters meet at a Support Group meeting for those suffering from cancer. Not to disrespect anyone, but there was a point in which this book resonated with me - it made those suffer from cancer human. All too often, I read of cancer as this noble battle that heroic warriors have to win. They must win. There is no giving in. There is nothing but 'rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light.' And above all, they must show extraordinary stoicism, endurance and smile and show us the beautiful inspiration called life till they draw their last, painful breath. This book throws none of that at me, and for that I am grateful. Infinitely grateful.

Hazel Grace is living on borrowed time. Supposed to have died of Stage IV thyroid cancer at the age of 13, we find her now at 16. Her lungs don't work the way they ought to. And Augustus is this 'gorgeous' boy who is in remission, albeit fitted with a prosthetic leg. You don't have to guess the rest - yes, Hazel and Augustus fall in love. But this isn't a Mills&Boon fairy tale. Both Hazel and Augustus are wise beyond their years. Or perhaps, I don't know - maybe wisdom has nothing to do with age. A hole in your heart can make you wise at 13 or 30. And we adults seem to lead such messed up lives that I wonder if we learn anything at all as we age. Or rather we just age. We don't grow. Throw in a quest for a reclusive author who has written a defining book - one that Hazel loves, and the inevitable sorrow that cancer brings with it, and there is a book that moves fast, that reads well, and just sits in your mind long after you finish it.

There is much mush, but it is controlled. And beautifully written except for the last few pages that deteriorate a bit too much. Yet, it doesn't fault the rest of the book. My one grouse is that the characters really don't seem too believable - they speak much too poetically for that. See this:

“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” 

A kid who is not yet 19 saying that? Ahem. The boys I met at that age really had other four-letter words in their mind. Love was not one of them.

But these are minor quibbles. I enjoyed The Fault In Our Stars. Sometimes, I think the faults in my own 'star' are way too many - I think of the chains that I bind others with, and for a moment, I wish that my thoughts were just mere constellations, that my words are just words floating away on that blue sky that Hazel loves so much, that all I can say has already been said, and that the ones I love have already been loved, and told that they are loved. But yet...much remains. None of it has been said or done...and if a book can make me feel that, then it has done its job, ain't it?

Favorite quote:

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”

Verdict: Deserves its rating as one of the best books of last year. 

Rating: 5/5

Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

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I have just finished watching a movie called War Witch. This was nominated for the Oscars in the category of 'Best Foreign Language Film,' and well, it didn't win.  It should have. Really, it was brilliant. Stark and yet somehow managing to bring a sense of happiness where none exists. The soporific insomniac's delight called Amour won instead. Neither of these two movies have anything to do with the book I am about to review. But in a way they do. North Korea is technically a state at war. And the more I read about this country, the more I am shocked that the world continues to allow the brutality of its government to continue. And amour is certainly not something that Shin Dong-hyuk knew in his formative years in a labor camp in North Korea.

Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden sells Shin as the 'only person born in a North Korean gulag to ever escape.' The key word there is 'born.' Others have escaped from North Korean labor camps, but it appears that Shin is the only person to have been born there. Twenty-six years ago, Shin was born inside Camp 14, one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. The country has denied the existence of these labor camps for years, but Google Maps and satellite technology have proven to the world what Kim Jong Eun, the current leader, denies. This is where Shin was born. "His first memory is an execution." That is how the book begins. And then ten years later, he returns. To watch the execution of his mother and brother. And frighteningly, Shin feels anger - how could his mother and brother have thought of escaping?

In one particularly poignant sentence that stuck in my head, Harden writes that Escape from Camp 14 cannot be compared to the more famous Elie Wiesel memoir, Night. There, Wiesel writes of the torment of learning his entire family had perished in Nazi death camps. Wiesel was left 'alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy.' For Shin, it was different.

"Love and mercy and family were words without meaning. God did not disappear or die. Shin had never heard of him."

Somehow, despite all the details of the horrors of a stricken life that Shin had to endure, that one line is what resonated. To lose hope is one thing. To not know that hope exists. Well, that is where you realize the darkness that comes swirling in. Even before you knew there was light. What was life at the camp like? You drop a sewing machine? Chop your finger off. That's what happened to Shin. Your mother and brother were planning to escape? You get punished, of course. And the punishment for a teenager? Hang Shin over a coal fire and cast him into an underground prison. For a country that faces chronic food shortages, it was telling that the one motivating factor for Shin to consider escape was food. And indoctrinated into what his 'teachers' taught him, Shin only had one thing on his mind - survival. If that meant, snitching on your mother, so be it. Love was not an emotion that Shin was taught. Indeed, through the rest of the book, you sometimes wish that Shin would find it within himself to love. But there is always an enduring wish to survive.

"He had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend. He did not find it degrading to lick soup off the floor. He was not ashamed to beg a guard for forgiveness. It didn’t trouble his conscience to betray a friend for food. These were merely survival skills, not motives for suicide.”

His eventual escape seems almost unreal. Harden writes that there is no way of verifying what Shin tells him. And indeed, he is open in admitting that he has problems trusting Shin. But painstaking reports from human rights agencies have shown that Shin's story is true, as far as it can be verified. Having read the Aquariums of Pyonggang, I wasn't too shocked in reading about what happens in these labor camps. Perhaps, that is where the world also has to look into. Somehow, it seems that we don't care. Not enough. We have turned our lives into an immune wall that accepts evil as normal.

This is an important book. It isn't a book to cherish over a cup of coffee. But it must be read. It doesn't offer any easy answers at the end. I was left wondering about Shin, knowing that perhaps there isn't an easy life ever. I hope he finds happiness. And feels love.

Verdict: Important to read to understand the world we live in.

Rating: 4/5 

The Spare Room : Helen Garner

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This must be one of the most painful books I have ever read through. The Spare Room by Helen Garner is relentless - it spares no one in its stark depiction of one person's last rage against the dying of the light. Yet, I wasn't pained by that - I was pained because of the sheer bizarreness of the book.

Helen (the lead character in the novel, not the author), is the narrator, telling us through the course of three weeks the relentless torture she goes through when her friend of 15 years arrives in Melbourne, dying of cancer, and refusing to believe so, instead preferring to take alternative treatment at the Theodore Institute. Helen's recital is an endless monologue of all that she does for Nicola, the sacrifices she makes, and I couldn't understand the love she had for Nicola - it seemed frustration, irritation and anger. Especially anger that Nicola refuses to accept her impending death, putting her trust in shady Vitamin C treatments that leave her physically wrecked and mentally drained. It's not just Nicola, caring for her drains Helen as well. It disrupts her life, and turns it askew.

Does that make Helen a martyr? That's what she wants us to believe. She knows that the Vitamin C treatment is nonsense. She wants Nicola out of her house in three weeks so that she can holiday in Vienna. Just how does Garner expect us to like the narrator? It is almost as if it's designed to elicit sympathy for Nicola from the reader. We never really hear what Nicola must be going through nor is there a detailed review of the friendship that brings these two people together. Instead, we are told that Nicola is selfish, she is inconsiderate, and there is no doubt she is annoying - but well, what do you do say for someone who is dying? "Die faster?" Because that's what Helen seems to want. I wasn't sure if I could call this friendship - but perhaps it is. Like any other relationship, friendship hides its scars well. We pile the straws on friendship's broad back, and then watch it all collapse one day in surprise. I admire that Garner makes no sweet romantic notions of friendship - there is pain, there is anger, revulsion, heartbreak, annoyance, and times when you feel that Helen just wants Nicola out of her life.

This wasn't an easy novel to read. I wasn't too sure what I would say I liked here. I don't think I liked anything about it, except that it did offer a different perspective on the pains of friendship.

Verdict : I wouldn't recommend this even though nearly everyone online seem to have positive reviews. Maybe it's just me. 

Rating: 1/5

The Perks of Being a Wallflower : Stephen Chbosky

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Never ever try to review a book a full month after you have read it. Even if it is a book that you really liked. Time and its companion, memory, wait for no review - it's there in the lens of your eye, the corners of your mind, the story that you liked, and then like an artist swiftly erasing the colors of his canvas, it's gone. I haven't blogged much recently. I have barely read - I am struggling through three books right now at the same time, and I am getting stuck in even learning my beloved Chinese. Sometimes, you find that life and people intervene in ways and means that you struggle to control or even comprehend, and the resulting casualty are all the things that you love. It has left me thinking - I have always believed that we lead a life of our choice - yet, we chain our choices, and smother it with our expectations of a future dream. So right now, I think am I leading a life of my choice or have I abandoned these choices? I fear it's the latter...

These are kind of the thoughts that may come to you as well when you read Stephen Chbosky's marvelous The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Especially lines like these that resonate with what I have written above:

“So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”

Right now, the book is selling again after being made into a movie starring Emma Watson. I haven't seen the movie, but I read the book on Kindle. And a funny and heartwarming book it was too. Charlie is a unique voice. And the structure of the novel based as it is on Charlie writing letters to an anonymous friend may put some people off, but it doesn't detract from hearing the voice inside Charlie. In his freshman year at school, the novel begins with Charlie telling us of the suicide of his best friend, Michael. Original in thought, Charlie's voice is unfiltered, a beautiful compass on life as he knows it. We never really know if there is something 'wrong' with Charlie - throughout the novel only hints are dropped that indicate that he may be mentally unwell. But it doesn't matter. Befriending Sam and Patrick is the best thing that happens in young Charlie's life - I will remember for a long time that scene when they go driving in the tunnel:

"Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got to the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped up into a vacuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called "Landslide." When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

 That scene reminded me a bit of Kerouac's On The Road. And this quote especially:  “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” Charlie goes through all the teenage angst and all the experimentation - drugs, sex, booze. We learn that he was closest to his Aunt Helen, who died in an accident. And Charlie realizes that he loves Sam, that he cherishes his friendships, and understands his family as well. I seem to be filling up this review with quotes, but I have to, because really that is just how beautiful a book this is. And somehow, everything that he says makes sense. Really. Doesn't it?

“It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.”

And that's how Charlie does - he doesn't just pick random gifts. He makes gifts. Thoughtful ones. I guess at the end of the book somehow, you wish that Charlie was your friend as well. He really would have been. That's also kind of how you feel when you keep aside the book - like you have just lost a good friend. I end this review with a quote that I think I ought to wear and walk around with. It's what I do all the time - but somehow that seems weird in this world where we mask everything and live a life of pretense. This is just what gets me into trouble, and like Charlie, I just don't know how to be otherwise...

If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don't like, I'll tell them. 

Verdict : Do you need one? Really. Just read it, please. 

Rating: 6/5

The Buddha in the Attic : Julie Otsuka

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The Buddha in the Attic was on my wishlist for sometime. Except that it was almost $10. So I dithered and delayed buying it. And then there is the wonderful Landmark sale - and I found I could buy this book for less than $2. This is also the year I am trying to read more of Japanese fiction. Or at least, that's what I hope to. And like many of my hopes - they are destined to remain just that. A mere hope, a whim on a withering horizon.

Julie Otsuka is more famous for the When the Emperor was Divine. But there is a rare poetry in The Buddha in the Attic. It's narrative style is one of the most unique that I have ever come across. I don't think I have ever read a novel that is narrated by a 'we.' The 'we' here are the voices of hundreds of Japanese women who came over to the U.S. during the Second World War as picture brides. Beginning with their passage on the ship, Otsuka casts a haunting spell with the use of the first person plural. These were voices that seemed to me to be speaking from beyond the grave. The husbands who they had never met, turned out to be nothing like the photographs they were shown in distant villages in Japan. Indeed, the rabble that meets them as they step off is beautifully described:

"the crowd of men in knit caps and shabby black coats waiting for us down below on the dock… the photographs we had been sent were 20 years old."

And some cities as well. Life in America was not the luxurious escape from farming in Japan. No. They arrived in the U.S., and found that to break their backs working was not an option, but the rule. Some of the Japanese women work in the fields, and some as maids. 'Better than the Chinese,' their mistresses would whisper. Some would have affairs with the white men, and give birth to their babies. Still others would grow to love their husbands. Some would leave America for the shame that awaited them in Japan. And yet most would wait for the final denouement to their lives - the time when the Japanese are ordered to leave their J-Town.

At the end of the novel, I remember pausing to think of the sense of loss that these stories leave you with. There is something heartbreaking about small lives. I have never been fascinated by the heroes and heroines - they are meant to be so. But it's the extraordinariness in ordinary lives that move me. The lives that bear the little smudges and grimaces of life's wrinkles so well - those are the stories worth listening to. And that's what makes these stories  - all these Japanese women's stories a treasure.

Verdict : A little treasure. I just said that, I think.

Rating: 3/5