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Today I dragged Nick out to the park despite the heat. Even though it was morning, it had already reached upper 90s or 100 F. To make matters worse, I had insisted on donuts for breakfast. (I used to hate donuts until last year. Now I crave them a lot!)

I was actually trying to photograph a spider-web that had been built in this hollow; it was full of plant matter and was rather interesting to look at. Even though I ended up focusing on something different, and that the framing is slightly off, this is one of the best pictures I got today (after a portrait of Nick that I won’t share, since he doesn’t want his face on the Internet if he can help it [:).

There was so much light this morning that despite my best efforts messing around with the shutter, a lot of my pictures still came washed out in light. Even this one is really too bright.
I just love this plant; since it’s so hot and dry, most things around it were gold and pale green, but this red stood out so much against the rather flat background (not that there’s anything wrong with the hot gold and green of summer—I find it peaceful). Unfortunately, because of all the light, I didn’t capture a lot of the velvety texture of the seeds (or fruits?).

This park is basically clouded with spider-webs. Since so many people visit, the only real wildlife to be seen are bugs and rabbits. Technically I don’t feel this is a good picture—I didn’t pick up any of the web’s delicacy, the framing and focus aren’t the greatest, and the contrast could use some work—but I sort of like the imperfect glow of the sun on the center of the web. Okay, and I do like the bokeh and I also love how many leaves were caught in the web.

Author: Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
Edition: 0-679-76104-7
Pages: 175
Summary: In the snowiest region on earth, a wealthy idler and a mountain geisha meet and ignite a relationship doomed to failure.

This book is austere, crisp, and quiet: very in-tune with its landscape. Komako, a hotspring geisha, has moods that rise and fall sharply like the mountains. In almost a cold fog, the relationship between the women Komako and Yoko is hidden beyond reach, suggesting madness but never exploring the history between the two. Meanwhile, Shimamura who sees waste in everything, including his own excessively wasteful life, yearns for beauty and cleanliness that he only finds in the snow country.

Despite the premise, I would not refer to this as a traditional love story. Shimamura exhibits no passion at all, and Komako’s own passion is not solely for Shimamura but for her own shapeless life. There is no question to the characters, even from the start, that the relationship will fail in time. Where this story gets its core instead is from the landscape, from Shimamura’s idleness (almost as if he is not at all part of anything) to Komako’s divided personality to the tragedy of Yoko’s envy and loss.

While Shimamura quietly loses himself in the mountain landscape, we learn through his lack of fire about Komako’s contradictions—a woman who is paid to party and entertain, who drinks frequently, whose emotions are fleeting and constantly changing is also obsessed with order, cleanliness, and cataloging her life.

Some images recur again and again; there are the cedars, insects (particularly dragonflies and moths), and Japanese fine arts (such as noh). The twining of Komako and Shimamura’s unusual relationship with the unchanging elements of the mountains—the ancient tradition of bleaching Chijimi linen, hanging rice to dry, the way the insects are associated with seasons—poignantly sets off how brief and immediate the love affair is.

Like other works of Kawabata’s, this novel is delicately written with beautiful prose.

Shimamura too looked up, and he felt himself floating into the Milky Way. Its radiance was so near that it seemed to take him up into it. Was this the bright vastness the poet Bashou saw when he wrote of the Milky Way arched over a stormy sea? The Milky Way came down just over there, to wrap the night earth in its naked embrace. There was a terrible voluptuousness about it. Shimamura fancied that his own small shadow was being cast up against it from the earth. Each individual star stood apart from the rest, and even the particles of silver dust in the luminous clouds could be picked out, so clear was the night. The limitless depth of the Milky Way pulled his gaze up into it. p. 165

It’s a very subtle novel, and highly contextual. Without knowing a lot about Japanese arts, culture, and geography I feel I lost quite a bit of this book. I certainly finished the novel wanting more answers, but still thrilled with how peaceful and quiet it is set off against a rather stormy type of plot.

Oh, yes. I thought fellow book bloggers might like this. Before book blogging…

But even more than at the diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully catalogued every novel and short story she had read since she was fifteen or sixteen. The record already filled ten notebooks. p.41

Author: Alan Lightman
Edition: 0-446-67011-1
Pages: 179
Synopsis: While Einstein is working on his special theory of relativity, he has a series of dreams about time.

This novel has an interesting concept and a partially successful execution. It does tend to get extremely repetitive; Lightman refers to the same concepts and scenes again and again throughout almost every chapter. For instance, he seems quite obsessed with lovers, and these lovers frequently meet in a library. However, given that there are no actual characters to this book—even Einstein only shows up in extremely brief interludes scattered throughout the book—and also no centralized plot even though it has a tight focus, it’s amazing that this experiment is as readable as it is.

Essentially, each chapter is a different look at time, but not in the usual way. In each chapter, we’re taken to a different version of Einstein’s modern world and see how that world is shaped by a different kind of time. In one universe, time runs backwards. In another, time is experienced differently by each person. In another, time is localized and each city has a different rate of time.  In yet another, time runs slower at higher altitudes.

This book is extremely short. It’s a read of maybe three hours or so. Each chapter (or dream) is also very brief. Given how light and uncomplicated the writing is, this is definitely the kind of book to read in a stop and go environment; on the bus, the few minutes before a class starts, etc.

Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.

[...]

The eye of a needle. Dew on leaves, crystal, opalescent. A mother on her bed, weeping, the smell of basil in the air. A child on a bicycle in the Kleine Schanze, smiling the smile of a lifetime. A tower of prayer, tall and octagonal, open balcony, solemn, surrounded by arms. Steam rising from a lake in early morning. An open drawer. Two friends at a cafe, the lamplight illuminating one friend’s face, the other in shadow. A cat watching a bug on the window. A young woman on a bench, reading a letter, tears of joy in her green eyes. A great field, lined with cedar and spruce. Sunlight, in long angles through the window in late afternoon. A massive tree fallen, roots sprawling in air, bark, limbs still green. The white of a sailboat, with the wind behind it, sails billowed like wings of a giant white bird. A father and son alone at a restaurant, the father sad and staring down at the tablecloth. An oval window, looking out on fields of hay, a wooden cart, cows, green and purple in the afternoon light. A broken bottle on the floor, brown liquid in the crevices, a woman with red eyes. An old man in the kitchen, cooking breakfast for his grandson, the boy gazing out the window at a white painted bench. A worn book lying on a table beside a dim lamp. The white on water as a wave breaks, blown by wind. A woman lying on her couch with wet hair, holding the hand of a man she will never see again. A train with red cars, on a great stone bridge with graceful arches, a river underneath, tiny dots that are houses in the distance. Dust motes floating in sunlight through a window. The thin skin in the middle of a neck, thin enough to see the pulse of blood underneath. A man and woman naked, wrapped around each other. The blue shadows of trees in a full moon.

This this book has a wonderful theme, but unpolished and juvenile execution. For me it was a disappointing read.

Author: Joan D. Vinge
Edition: 0-440-17749-9
Pages: 536
Synopsis: Moon has a goal: to serve her people as a sibyl, a purveyor of knowledge in communion with the Sea. She also has a desire: to be with her best friend and lover Sparks forever.

This wandering, imbalanced, and over-burdened story surprised me. This book has been very well-received, and even won the Hugo award in 1981. Yet, it really only meets the qualifications for an average piece of fiction; I fail to see how this book has brought anything new to the table. Some things I forgive it because it’s been out for thirty years; others, I just can’t. On the whole, it’s not especially bad. Its prose is a bit much but it’s consistent and clear. There is a fascinating plot. Characters have motivations, histories, and futures. But it’s certainly not without its share of problems.

One thing that bothers me about this book is Vinge’s concept of cloning. In this story, the central character Moon is a clone of her world’s queen Arienrhod.  However, Vinge refers to these characters as being the same the same person.

[...] created using nuclear transfer technology is not truly an identical clone of the donor animal. Only the clone’s chromosomal or nuclear DNA is the same as the donor.

From Cloning Fact Sheet. By cloning, Moon and Arienrhod may look exactly the same, but they won’t be the same person. (A reproductive clone is made by taking a donor egg, removing its nucleus, and inserting the nucleus of the subject to be cloned. It’s stimulated with chemicals and electricity, so it doesn’t need sperm to grow. A host mother is then impregnated with it.) Even if they act the same, they’re not the same person. Arienrhod briefly accepts that Moon isn’t herself, but only because she sees Moon as an imperfect copy who has refused to do her will. Maybe this gets a little more thoroughly addressed in the direct sequel of this book, The Summer Queen.

This book also tries to be feminist literature without really having the class, research, or realistic ability to portray those issues addressed. Almost all of the characters are female. The ones who aren’t female exist to serve the female characters’ development. And yet, none of the female characters are really very interesting. Even though we spend so much time with Moon, she doesn’t have much personality beyond her surface; she’s one of those classic ‘perfect’ characters. Some of her acts are inconsistent (eg, sleeping with BZ) with her firmness of belief in other things. Basically, the issue that Vinge wishes to address about feminism (sexism) isn’t really built-up well enough to make a point. To go on with the feminism, there is also the ecological concern of slaughtering mers, a native animal whose blood grants the drinker extended youth and life. However, the execution of this, too, leaves something to be desired.

This book is surprisingly short for the number of pages. Very little is actually discussed. We never see most of Moon’s training; while Moon spends a lot of time off-planet, we never see much of that, either; BZ’s imprisonment is only given highlights; Sparks’ change mostly takes place without us watching. I’m amazed Vinge was able to use so many words on so little substance. This book would have been a lot stronger if she had cut out the fluff and focused on the things that would have developed her characters in her readers’ eyes. Perhaps trimming out chapters from one of the character’s perspectives may have solved this problem.

Another thing: Vinge’s machines aren’t very realistic, either. The sibyl machine and Pollux, for example, exert wills of their own when machines in her story’s universe aren’t supposed to have that capability. Even forgiving the sibyl machine’s control as something of the previous generation of technology (out of the Empire, which is now extinct), Pollux’s developing sentience is sort of random and out of place.

This point may be for the better or worse, according to the reader’s tastes. This book is highly sentimental. Extremely sentimental. More than a fantasy or science-fiction, it’s a romance. The meat of the story is Moon’s journey to Sparks, through space, time, and the events that change them. The rest, even the hastily thrown on bit about Moon deciding she must become the Summer Queen, is really just a method for this romance to happen with an overlay to protect it within the genre. This book does have occasional moments of romantic beauty; its most beautiful passages are those of its love scenes.

She leaned eagerly into his caress, drew him down onto the bed beside her, guiding his hands. “Show me how much you loved her….”

Sparks lay with his eyes closed, absorbing the messages that reached him through his other senses—senses heightened by the grateful heaviness of his weary body. He inhaled the warm, musky scent of Arienrhod’s presence beside him, felt the soft pressure of her body contoured against his own. There was no smell of the sea about her, but instead a fragrance of imported perfumes. And yet he felt the Sea’s presence in her: she who was the Lady incarnate, robed in foam, seabirds flying from her hair, with lips like sunrise, like blood…who had lain waiting for him for centuries. He listened to the rhythm of her quiet breathing, opened his eyes to look over at her face. Her own eyes were closed; smiling in half-sleep as she lay beside him, she could even be the one he had named her at the moment when he lost control…

It’s a shame I feel this way about the book, because it had good potential. It has a lot of interesting ground points. The world-building is really wonderful. Vinge successfully created a culture of the people of Tiamat based on their circumstances (living in proximity to the black hole, being primarily island-dwellers, responding to natural resources), and this makes the book far more readable. What the characters lack, their general cultures—while sometimes over-stretched—are far more interesting.

All in all, I’d recommend this book to readers of romance, not readers looking for hard science-fiction or even speculative work.

Author: Isaac Asimov
Edition: 0-44901-759-1
Pages: 223
Synopsis: A futuristic murder mystery that explores the strength of human fears, hopes, and societies. When a man is murdered on one of the Outer Worlds, Earthman Elijah Baley (star of previous novel Caves of Steel) is brought onto the scene. Here, on this world where being in the physical presence of another human is considered perverse, the greatest threat to discovering the truth of the crime is the culture itself.

Actually, this is my first read from the Foundation series. I don’t know a thing about Caves of Steel, this book’s direct predecessor, nor any of the Elijah Baley books that follow, so I can examine only this one independently for review. (I actually borrowed this book from a friend, which is why it’s sort of a random entry into the series.)

There are two sides to this book. First of all, it’s a very easy and brief read because the story is told through a fast-paced mystery story. Elijah Baley challenges social customs in order to bore down to the truth of the murder so he is constantly in social danger, and an attempt on his own life continues to spur him onward. His interaction with a cast of suspicious, sometimes annoying characters makes the book interesting and enjoyable. Definitely, this part of the story is good for winding down at the end of the day.

The second layer of this book is more interesting, and a bit denser. Asimov examines human culture through the mode of robots. He draws parallels from history into his work, for instance comparing modern Solarian society with those of the ancient Spartans and Athenians. Furthermore, Asimov extrapolates on the way humans rebel, from the origin of societal injustice on to how a world without this injustice would behave.

The three laws of robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws are examined in this book as Baley searches for the missing murder weapon, the criminal, and the motivation the criminal had to commit the murder. The three laws are an important part of the Foundation series in whole, and here the effects of these laws are examined, such as with this theme: A robot cannot harm a human now even if it will benefit the human later. Eg, robots cannot act as surgeons since making an incision on human flesh would cause irrevocable damage to its positronic brain.

The Naked Sun raises some interesting questions about fear by interposing two different cultural fears: the first that of Solaria, afraid of being in physical presence with another human; and the second that of Earth, afraid of being without enclosure. Yet these two fears stem from the very same element: population. On Solaria, population is carefully managed. There are 20,000 people and 200 million robots. There are huge distances between each neighbor, thus they see each other only through “viewing” apparatus that allows them to interact without physically being nearby. Meanwhile, Earth has the opposite problem of extremely high population; Earthmen are bound to Earth because of the Spacers, and Earthmen live in giant apartment complexes entirely sealed off from the outer world. This has led to a fear of open air, the sun, and everything else that belongs in the physical, natural earth. A good chunk of this book is dedicated to Baley overcoming this fear as he moves around open, unpenned Solaria as he solves the mystery. Meanwhile, the Solarian fear of physical presence also plays a huge role in the course of the mystery, from its inception to its discovery. This cultural fear manages to be so strong that no one performed an autopsy on the body, and by the time Baley arrives the body has already been cleaned up by robots and cremated.

The low population on Solaria also addresses another problem, and that is the lack of truly beneficial specialization. In this society, so reliant upon robots, every pursuit is a leisurely one or at least one that originates in a human’s whim, not his need. The population is so small that for many “professions” there may be only one acting professional, and this professional rarely has any expertise. For example, Baley goes to visit the planet’s leading—and only—sociologist, who is entirely unable to quantify data because he’s never actually been taught anything about sociology. He’s “inventing the science” on his own, as Asimov puts it in the book.

I really did enjoy this book for the most part, nowhere near deeply enough to call it a favorite but I enjoyed it all the same. My complaint is that sometimes the characters get downright annoying, especially as Baley cries Jehoshaphat almost constantly, and fetal engineer Klorissa sounds off with skies above! just as often. A reasonably minor argument I suppose.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes speculative science fiction, or at least murder mysteries that involve human nature centrally.

How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

Generally, I really like them. In novels, illustrations don’t detract from my own mental image, so I like seeing an artist’s representation of what’s happening. If the illustrations are part of the story themselves, it’s even better because it makes everything more authentic. In these two cases, the work is given more depth. Then there are the cases where writers use drawings to make the material easier to understand, eg. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This could get unwieldy quickly, so it’s important that an author is careful using illustrations in this way.
Obviously, pictures are an important part of children’s literature, and pictures help children learn to read. Then there are books like Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day or the graphic novel Korgi by Christian Slade where the story is told entirely in the pictures, with no words.

Nonfiction, of course, really often needs these figures. Graphs, charts, photos, and other visual elements make nonfiction more meaningful by giving another perspective on information, or presenting information in a way that’s more easily digestible. Again, it’s no good if an author issues too many graphics, but when used to help break down material they’re indispensable. Visual aids also promote memory retention, which is another good reason to use them well in nonfiction writing.

Furthermore, it’s really fun to go back and look at illustrations from years ago. I love space illustrations from the 50s. There’s something about them that captures a realistic sense of innovation as well as the less tangible hope and yearning to explore and know space.

Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Edition: 1-58243-022-5
Pages: 227
Synopsis: A collection of writings (novellas, short stories, and a play) that examine the lives of characters sensitively.

This collection of writing is just as subtle, atmospheric, and melancholy as Kawabata’s other writings (at least, of what I’ve read: The Old Capital and Beauty and Sadness). These moving, bittersweet tales show snapshots out of the lives of a variety of characters.

One thing about Kawabata’s writing that is very easy to notice in this collection is the sense of introspection of his characters. The stories, even when involving multiple characters, rarely look at the actual relationship between the characters but more the effects these relationships have on individuals. Thus, even stories about divorce or affairs really involve the certain people who have gone through these experiences, not the experiences themselves, which is why this collection is so poignant and enjoyable.

This Country, That Country — A married woman loves her married next door neighbor, and to satisfy her ache has an affair with a third man. This novella mainly looks at the aftermath of the affair, as the main character Takako is breaking up with her lover and coming to terms with her feelings. She deals with the sense of feeling like two people in one body, and as if a third person wants to arise in response to her neighbor.

This story quietly looks at the smaller incompatibilities of marriage, the things that prevent passion although they are not so large as to make a marriage unbearable. This story would probably resonate stronger for a person for whom arranged marriages are an important topic.

Like with Kawabata’s other writing, I was struck by the resonance of his characters with nature. The parallel of seasons, gardens, and mountains with his characters’ lives is such an important element in his writing.

The holly was speckled with tiny white flowers. Though it was plainly visible from the sitting room, Takako couldn’t remember when the flowers had started to bloom. It was strange that she couldn’t remember.

And now the flowers were falling—the black earth in the tree’s shadow looked white.

Takako picked up three or four of the small flowers and held them in the palm of her hand. Each blossom had four round, softly curved petals. The stamens were long.

Hirata might have noticed the flowers on the holly, but of course he would know nothing at all of the delicate form of the individual blossoms. So far neither Takako nor Hirata had mentioned the flowers this autumn.

A Row of Trees — A husband is particularly touched by the changing seasons as expressed by a row of ginkgo trees on his daily walk.

The bare branches of the enormous trees at the bottom of the path looked particularly sharp against the background of yellow leaves at the top, and the foliage that rose up over the path at the top looked richly colored and even more thickly layered than usual with all those bare trees in the foreground. The sense of great height that one feels looking at ginkgos was especially marked in these trees. Even the copious small branches of the bare trees strained toward the sky, as if attempting to embrace the tree-trunks, forming shapes tightly closed. The masses of yellow leaves conveyed a sense of volume as only layers of thick leaves can, but bathing in the morning sun they looked still and lonely.

This story is also about Soeda’s daughter, who has a purse stolen from her by a con woman. I feel I would enjoy this story more if I could understand the connection between the half-bare ginkgo trees and the theft.

Nature — In this nostalgic story, a man named Uragami visits a favored vacation spot of an old, deceased friend who was a famous novelist. While there, he encounters a fan of his friend’s work, Uryû, and listens to the man’s life story. Essentially it’s a look back on the War as Uryû explains how he avoided enlisting in the war by pretendinig to be a woman. To make matters more complicated, he’s an actor (who pretended to be an actress during the War) who has always specialized in female roles.

The scenery in this story is particularly well-written. I had a very clear sense of place while reading, both of the ocean and of the spa and of the room where Uryû and Uragami are talking.

Not only the horizon, but the color of the ocean itself was oppressive. I was amazed that my friend had been able to bear it, looking out on an ocean like this from his room at the spa, and I began to feel lonely. It occurred to me that the relative proximity of the aurora borealis might make the sunset beautiful.

Raindrops — An inspection of marital happiness and jealousy in a house boarding several families.

“I don’t know….You can’t tell whether it’s rain or raindrops just from hearing that it’s water, and that it’s making noise right now.”
“If rain makes noise it’s raindrops.”
“That’s not true. The sound of rain and the sound of raindrops aren’t the same.”

My favorite part of this story is a bit off topic, but it’s usually what I end up loving most about Kawabata’s writing. His attention to nature, the way he observes things like differences between the sound of rain or the sound of raindrops, always gives me something new. I’d never distinguished between raindrops and rain before, but after reading this statement I suddenly realized the truth of it. There’s a difference between the individual drops and the actual sound of the rain.

Chrysanthemum in the Rock — The narrator of this tale is contemplating what he would like to use as his grave-marker, relating his search to the legend of a ghost from his home town. This ghost lives in a rock and requires a chrysanthemum to be planted in a hollow there. As he’s thinking, the narrator imagines an exchange with this woman, discovering why she would linger by this rock.

“He told me to wait every day, so I’m still waiting.”
“No matter how many days you wait, it doesn’t look like he’s going to come. Your hands and feet must be frozen already. How about this—what if you were to plant a chrysanthemum in this rock, and let it wait here in your place?”
“I’ll wait as long I’m alive. If I die here, a chrysanthemum will bloom here and wait in my place.”
“He may not come even when there’s a chrysanthemum waiting.”
[...]
“If this autumn’s chrysanthemum dies, another chrysanthemum will bloom next autumn. If a chrysanthemum takes my place, I’ll be happy.”

His thoughts progress from discovering a work of art to use as a headstone, to the natural emergence of headstones of famous figures, to the end of his desire to locate his own headstone.

First Snow on Fuji — A pair of old lovers reunite and decide to spend a chaste night together. This story has the most subtle sadness of this collection; the clearly poor condition Utako has arrived in, the loneliness between the characters, Jiro’s wistful thoughts of reality, the very marital way in which they move despite the long years they have been apart, the tragedy of their past. Despite its sadness, it’s so graceful.

Utako felt relaxed, it was true. Yet at the same time she felt a loneliness, like a dying flame.

This story gives a forbidden look at what might have been, passion turning to love, emptiness leaving solitude, closure, even forgiveness. It’s the ability to say goodbye to a lover one has left long ago, knowing that even if what was once there is gone, at least for a moment it existed at all.

Silence — After suffering a stroke, a famous author Akifusa is paralyzed; he can no longer speak nor use his right hand at all. Despite that he could form characters if he wanted to with his left hand, he chooses to remain in silence while his daughter takes care of him. The narrator of the story goes to visit this writer, since he’s been a mentor in the past. Running alongside this story is the rumor of a ghost who appears in taxis at night; she never speaks, only rides for awhile and disappears. The silent, paralyzed novelist is no different than the ghost, and the story ends on an ominous tone as the taxi driver warns the narrator that speaking to a ghost will leave him cursed.

“That single letter ‘t’ would probably have more love in it than all the novels you’ve written during the past forty years, and it would probably have more power.”

Her Husband Didn’t — A young man finds solace after he discovers his first love affair has been no more than the execution of a rather foolish daydream for his partner. This story shows how discrepancies in communication, in this case the different reasons for the affair coming into existence, can affect a person.

Yet the cold feeling of that earlobe had instantly cleansed him of his filth. The earlobe was just as round and plump as an earlobe ought to be—it was small enough that Junji could squeeze it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, no bigger than that—yet it filled him with a sense of the beauty of life. The smooth skin, the gentle swelling—the woman’s earlobe was like a mysterious jewel. Her purity had remained intact there, inside it. The earlobe held dew-like droplets of the essence of female beauty. A sentimentality like yearning welled up inside Junji. He had never known anything with a texture like this. It was like touching the lovely girl’s soul.

This may be my favorite passage out of the entire collection. Junji’s perspective isn’t even about his sexual desire for Kiriko, nor thoughts of himself, but a fascination with something ordinary that to him is beautiful. When I read this passage, I feel really in touch with Kawabata. I appreciate the way he does this, how he makes me realize the variety of human likes and dislikes in existence, how we can look at the same things in different ways, how what’s beautiful to one person may simply be unnoticed by another. I feel like, here, he so accurately captures a perspective that isn’t often explored…this boyish, surrealistic fascination of Junji’s is comparable to any of our preferences that may seem out of touch or unshared with others, which, even communicated, remain private still. In a way, this story speaks to my need to communicate, too, and my difficulty in doing so.

Yumiura — What’s the emotional distinction between an event that could have happened but didn’t and one that’s been forgotten? This question disturbs an older writer when he’s visited by a woman who claims they met long ago. Even as he’s beginning to believe her (despite being unable to remember even the smallest detail), he discovers something about the town that she claims as their meeting place.

The Boat-Women — This historical drama takes place during the battle of Dan-no-ura, chronicling the events of a daughter and father reuniting. This one is a bit hard for me to review because I don’t know much about this time period, but it reminded me of several other dramas in small ways including King Lear and even La vida es sueño. Aside from the main story about Kagekiyo reuniting with Murasaki, this play also offers insight about the aftermath of this battle.

Oh how precious / the preciousness of this day / this life the life of a drop of dew yet still I chance to meet / the joy of this day. The sadness of this day / yesterday a dream / tomorrow an illusion / today in reality here on my lap / the b iwa I pluck and make sing / whose child listens / it is my own good child / oh how precious / the preciousness of this day.

My favorite stories in this collection are Chrysanthemum in the Rock, First Snow on Fuji, and Silence. To me, they are the most touching and interesting.

Another interesting review of this collection can be found here. Part of the first short story This Country, That Country is available online for free via NY Times here. No subscription is necessary.

Incomplete review.

Author: Margaret Atwood
Edition: 0-385-49109-3
Pages: 243
Synopsis: A collection of short stories about the relationships of men and women with each other, but more importantly with themselves.

This is an amazing collection; it’s intelligent, thought-provoking, and beautifully written. As a matter of fact, it may be all too much of these things for me. I finished each of the stories feeling as if I had just missed the point…like there is something eye-opening in each one but I can’t quite grasp it. Definitely, I will reread this collection once I have a copy for myself.

The characters, although we only get to know them briefly in each of their respective stories, are surprisingly well-fleshed out for short story characters. There is the sense of each of them having pasts and futures, of not existing only in the present of the story but having had lives before. These stories all feel very sophisticated to me, for lack of a better word, by relying on the strength of the characters and the effectiveness of the prose where other authors cop out and try to appeal to sensations to make their works seem more ‘grown up.’ Margaret Atwood doesn’t need such masks, her writing is mature on its own.

Aside from examining relationships between men and women—and what causes the many moments of miscommunication between the two—Atwood also explores madness in a lot of her characters, usually as they lose touch with the world around themselves and start seeing it unnaturally.

The War in the Bathroom — A woman who has just moved into a rented room becomes more and more paranoid with the routine followed by an elderly neighbor, and begins to see in his actions a challenge.

This story is so interesting partly because of the stark difference between what is actually happening versus the precise, normal, and quiet tone of the narrator. The main character is essentially separated from herself, speaking as a different entity that uses compulsions on the physical self to complete day to day activities such as getting out of bed, shopping, and bathing. The war against the elderly man using the bathroom is not really the main war being waged there; this is more or less the main character’s obsession with the bathroom as she monitors everyone’s activities and records the noises and suppositions of what happens there. The war is really all just the main character; the other characters never play any roles beyond the scope of the main character’s skewed awareness.

The old man is becoming intolerable. I am beginning to sense a certain aggressiveness about his activities in the bathroom. I feel that he does not want her in this house: he is trying to make her leave. This time he gargled, making a most repulsive sound. He must be discouraged; he must be made to understand that I cannot put up with it for long. She needs her sleep and must have peace. I am sure it would be possible for him to do that sort of thing in his own room, out of earshot.

The ending is abrupt and a little disturbing.

The Man From Mars —

Polarities —

Under Glass —

The Grave of the Famous Poet —

Rape Fantasies — (I wonder how many interesting search results I’m going to get from this story title?)

Hair Jewellery —

When It Happens —

A Travel Piece —

The Resplendent Quetzal — A married couple touring historical South America reflects on the friction in their relationship.

I want to disagree on the Wikipedia article for this story (link), which says the climax of this story results in failure for Edward and Sarah’s relationship. On the contrary, I ended the story feeling like things had improved between the two, or had at least been given an opening to improve. Sarah shows her vulnerability after hurling baby Jesus in the well, internally confronts her unhappiness at her miscarriage, and has a moment of self-awareness while eavesdropping on a pair of complaining women. Edward’s hope is rekindled as he finds the oriole that he thinks his wife had lied about—of course, there may be some symbolism in the fact that it gets away before he can find out what kind it is, and whether or not it’s a rare bird he’s been seeking—and he has a moment of fear when he misinterprets his wife’s action over the well and believes she’s going to throw herself in. However, assuming failure would make this story fit much more consistently into the rest of the anthology.

Margaret Atwood captures Sarah’s fear and loneliness poignantly and clearly, exposing a fussy and stubborn woman who is, at her core, terrified not just of what she’s already gone through but also of not being strong enough to carry on in the future—thus Sarah’s reasons for taking the birth control pill without telling Edward.

What had she done wrong? She hadn’t done anything wrong, that was the trouble. There was nothing and no one to blame, except, obscurely, Edward; and he couldn’t be blamed for the child’s death, just for not being there. Increasingly since that time he had simply absented himself. When she no longer had the child inside her he had lost interest, he had deserted her. This, she realized, was what she resented most about him. He had left her alone with the corpse, a corpse for which there was no explanation.

“Lost,” people called it. They spoke of her as having lost the child, as though it was wandering around looking for her, crying plaintively, as though she had neglected it or misplaced it somewhere. But where? What limbo had it gone to, what watery paradise? Sometimes she felt as if there had been some mistake, the child had not been born yet. She could still feel it moving, ever so slightly, holding on to her from the inside.

Of course, it’s not just leaving her alone with the dead baby that Sarah’s accusing Edward of, it’s also that Edward never dug deeper around when she was hurting. When she did something related to the miscarriage, eg disposing of the baby’s clothes, Edward never asked her about it. Furthermore, Edward can’t even confront Sarah about lying to him on the subject of the birds, and this lack of involvement highlights Edward’s own insecurities. It’s not that he had ever intentionally tried to inflict damage on Sarah, he’s just never known how to approach her.

Training —

Lives of the Poets —

Dancing Girls —

Giving Birth — How has a woman who has given birth different from one who hasn’t?

An interesting examination of this collection can be found here.

Author: Carlos Fuentes
Edition: 0-06-097063-4
Pages: 199
Synopsis: This is the fictional biography of Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist and writer, who disappeared in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.

This book is a bit difficult to talk about after only one reading, so consider this review a rough draft for subsequent readings. For such a small book, it’s dense—not so much by prose but by meaning. There is a lot of circularity; rereading early passages after later ones brings new light to everything. For this reason, I’m hesitant to share too much of any one of the beautiful passages because I don’t wish to spoil, but here’s a sampling of the writing:

Look, Arroyo said to Miss Winslow, as he had to the old gringo that morning, look at this land.  She saw a dry, ugly, but beautifully dramatic world, strong, devoid of any generosity, alien to fruit easy for the picking: she saw a land whose scanty fruits had to be born of a dead womb, like a child that goes on living and fighting to be born from its dead mother’s womb.
Both Harriet and the old man were thinking of other, more opulent lands, of fertile, long, lazy rivers, of the splendor of waving wheat fields on land stretching flat as a tablecloth toward smoky blue mountains and gently rolling mountainsides covered with forests. The rivers: the thought especially of the rivers of the North, a litany that rolled from their tongues like a current of lost pleasures in that dry and thirsty Mexican evening, Hudson, the old man said; Ohio, Mississippi, she answered from the distance; Missouri, Potomac, Delaware, the old gringo concluded: the good, green waters.

This book takes place during the Mexican Revolution, which in terms of literature is similar culturally to our American Western (according to a keynotes speaking I attended on this book). There are several themes I’d like to revisit once I’ve reread this book:

• [Spoiler] The circularity of the old gringo’s dream. He fantasizes of standing on opposing lines with his father in wartime. After becoming a father figure to Harriet and Arroyo, he stands on opposing lines with Arroyo, and it is Arroyo who kills him.
• Arroyo was conceived through rape. This theme appears again and again in Mexican literature; it’s important because Malinche and Cortés are considered the legendary mother and father of modern Mexico, and Malinche was certainly not a willing partner. A lot of Mexican literature’s heroes are children of rape victims. (I never knew this until I attended the keynotes speaking about this book as well…I learned quite a bit from that speaking!)]
• Fuentes doesn’t demean either the USA or Mexico. What I got out of this book is that Fuentes wants Mexicans and Americans to understand each other.

Author: Garth Nix
Edition: Various (The Fall: 0-439-17682-4; Castle: 0-439-17683-2; Aenir: 0-439-17684-0; Above the Veil: 0-439-17685-9; Into Battle: 0-439-17686-7; The Violet Keystone: 0-439-17687-5)
Pages: Various
Synopsis: Tal lives in a world of darkness, where the only light is provided by Sunstones. In need of one such stone to preserve his place in society as well as to heal his ailing mother, Tal prepares to climb beyond the Veil and into the light of the sun. Instead, he falls into an even deeper darkness that takes him into new worlds.
Review: (These books aren’t really meant to be read singly; each feels like part of the same book, which is why I’m formatting my review as one for the entire series.)

While the characters in this book are fairly archetypal, the unique setting creates a more interesting world than a lot of standard YA fantasy. Milla and Tal, despite their initial mediocrity as characters (they become more interesting with their growth), form a balanced team together and the emotional content of this story is mainly in the pair’s efforts in overcoming their prejudices and classism. For much of the early parts of the series they switch off judging each other’s cultures negatively (using words such as savage and barbaric) and slowly learn to accept and respect one another, which, as a theme for books aimed at middle-schoolers, is a good underlying story. The execution in this is reasonably strong because the pair’s adventures take them through both societies (Chosen and Icecarl) as well as neutral ground that is at least somewhat foreign to them both (Aenir). Over time, they become more sensitive to each other’s upbringing and even adopt traits from one another. Classism is also addressed in the Chosen world of the Castle, where Underfolk of natural shadows are responsible for all the menial labor required to keep the society going. Tal starts off the book looking down on the Underfolk, as the Chosen do, but grows  beyond this due to exposure to the Underfolk as well as an acquisition of knowledge and experience that teaches him that his behavior is wrong.

This series has a rather serious, dark tone to it (aside from the actual darkness of the world) that is occasionally spiced up with Garth Nix’s unobtrusive, and very cheesy, humor. (Eg: “The only combat skill Milla could practice in bed was her bad temper.”)

An interesting twist is that the world of sunlight and stars is actually the one from which people are protected; instead of safety being in daylight, it comes from darkness.

The writing quality isn’t spectacular (although I have yet to read his more popular Old Kingdom series, I imagine his writing is different between the two due to the target audience), and I wasn’t exactly expecting it to be. (This is, after all, promoted by George Lucas himself, so I expected action first quality later.) The use of words and phrases like “wonky” and “really weird” are perhaps too casual, but overall these books are at least solidly written and well-paced. The mechanics, while they improve drastically over the course of the series, aren’t the focus; it’s the adventure, the overcoming of prejudice, and the action. And in this sense, as an adventure series, it’s well-written. Milla and Tal face new challenges constantly, countering each other’s strengths and weaknesses. These adventures change them throughout the story. As soon as one near-death encounter is over, it’s time for the next; Tal and Milla spend a lot of time exploring new terrain in order to escape, pursue, or discover various threats. Despite the very action-intensive plot, it never seems to be overwhelming.

The first two books, The Fall and Castle, are a slow start for the series. It isn’t until the pair enter the spirit world of Aenir in book three that things start feeling more in-depth and exciting. Because while the cultures of the Chosen and the Icecarls are interesting and somewhat unique, it’s Aenir that’s the most interestingly created and the most influential on both characters. Aenir has a wealth of interesting creatures that Tal and Milla encounter, places of enchanted lure, and mythological inspiration that make it seem much vaster than the more limited Icecarl and Chosen habitations.

Throughout the series, I had a difficult time growing fond of Tal. Milla is much more interesting, from her initial introduction to her ascension as War-Chief. And finally, here is a female character who is legitimately strong; she remains consistently herself the entire time. A lot of fantasy heroines are damsels in a strong disguise, and this is perhaps the only type of character I don’t like. I love strong characters, and I love weak characters. I love characters who pretend to be strong when they’re not. I love variety. But I hate when authors guiltily try to make a strong character because that’s the type of character who is more acceptable in today’s fiction, when they really want to write a weak character. A well-written weak character is more interesting, and more human, than a poorly written stereotype.

My favorite scene with Milla is during her rebirth, when she’s cast out of her original clan (the Far-Raiders) and adopted by the Ruin Ship.

The shock of the sudden cold knocked the breath out of her.  She lay in the snow, the natural wind spraying ice crystals through her hair.  Her skin burned with the cold, and a deep pain stabbed her through the deep Merwin-horn scar on her stomach.
Her heart seemed to slow down and she felt the blood pumping deep in her ears. It grew slower and slower, but she wasn’t frightened or worried.  Whatever was happening now, this is what was meant to be.  Here, out on the Ice.
Milla’s heart stopped.
All was silent. She could no longer hear even the wind.
[...]

This is an unusual moment in what I’ve read of YA fiction. It’s so literal, and I really liked that particular angle.

I was sort of disappointed by the ending of this series, because I had wanted a few more important questions answered. For instance, will the people still visit Aenir, even if they don’t make Spiritshadows?

Despite the young target audience of the book, I myself would be wary of recommending this series to too young of an audience for several reasons. For example, Milla’s culture encourages suicide and this comes up frequently in the series. Within the confines of Icecarl society, it plays a practical role (they’re a mobile, warrior people with very limited resources). For that and similar reasons, I would encourage this book for middle-schoolers and older. While I think the language is simple enough and the plot straight-forward enough for earlier readers, there are a lot of these types of themes.

Revisions
2010-02-12 The Fall
2010-02-15 Castle
2010-02-17 Aenir
2010-02-17 Above the Veil
2010-02-18 Into Battle
2010-02-18 The Violet Keystone