Natsuo Kirino – Grotesque

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Jan
03

A story of decay… decay of the human nature. A story about how society and other people can influence one’s life and make them turn into a monster. A story about childhood in the Japanese society and in one of the most prestigious schools there. A story about prostitution and a story about murder. That’s what the author lays in front of our eyes.

Our storyteller is a Japanese woman in her forties, who has always lived in her sister Yuriko’s shadow. Hating her sister for the extreme beauty she possessed, she had always considered her to be a monster and always tried to be nothing like her. Turning into prostitution at a very early age, Yuriko ends up murdered by a Chinese man, who came to work illegally in Japan.

We also have Kazue’s story, a girl who has been taught that all you need to do is try your best and you can accomplish anything you want to. But this disillusion turned her into a monster who thought that by being both a career woman and a prostitute made her better than any other woman out there. She ends up being murdered by the same man who killed Yuriko.

We witness the decay of these people. We witness their actions and emotions in a cruel reality.

Grotesque is a novel that can really make you wonder. It makes you wonder about how your actions can influence someone’s life and how your decisions and choices can influence your own life. It makes you wonder about your dreams and hopes. What ever happened to them? Every one of us had dreams, we all have goals, hopes for a better life, but in the end, how many of us will actually accomplish them? How many of us can say that they had all their dreams come true? Every human being starts their life in the same way…what makes us who we are today?

Have you ever wondered where you would have been if you had made a different choice at some point in your life? There are many things we cannot control, that would change our lives, but it’s up to us to try our best to have the life we want and not the one decided by society or any other person.

I started rambling..sorry, but these are the kind of thoughts reading Grotesque had me thinking.

This is a preview of Natsuo Kirino – Grotesque. Read more.

Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day

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Nov
17

Remains of the Day CoverI think almost everyone could find themselves in this book. Thinking about what would have happened if you would have just said what you felt, or if you had just taken that risk, or if you wouldn’t have given everything up for your career. We make our own choices, but most of us don’t realize what they are losing until it’s too late.

This is what The Remains of The Day is about: Stevens, an English butler, living in the past and not being able to realize what he was missing until it was too late.

The author studies Stevens’ character with a handful of details and gives us an image of what dignity means in the eyes of someone who has done nothing else in his life, but try to be dignified at being called a great butler.

But all this striving for perfection had made him miss one of the most important thing is life – love. When he finally brings himself to take a risk he realizes it is too late and the person he once knew is not there anymore.

Ishiguro also mixes in a little bit of politics and England’s position in making a very important decision after the war.

When I first started reading the book I wasn’t very pleased with it, but as Stevens’ story began to unravel i got more and more pulled in to the subtle details of these beautiful words.

“But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of ‘turning points’, one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.”

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Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore

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Nov
16

kafka_on_the_shore-194x300This is the second Murakami I’ve read and I must say I liked it. The first one was After Dark, but i didn’t like it as much.

Murakami has a way of keeping the reader always interested and waiting for some new mysterious thing to happen. That’s why each time i started reading a chapter i couldn’t stop until i fell asleep.

We are in Japan..obviously. Kafka Tamura is a 15 year old boy that decides to run away from home after his father “cursed” him. The curse says that he will kill his dad and sleep with his mother and sister. So, the boy figures that if he goes far away from home he won’t be able to kill his father and the chances of meeting his mother – who left with his sister when he was a child – are pretty slim. Along the way, he meets these nice people that let him work and live at a library. One of those people is a woman in her fifties called Sakura, which he falls in love with.

This is when the boy comes face to face with destiny.

Nakata is a man in his sixties that can talk to cats after having an accident when he was in school. Without even realizing it, he finds himself in a journey to find a stone that will help put the world in balance.

I could go on trying to connect all the dots here for you, but then what fun would you have when reading the book?

Actually, this is one of the things i liked most about he book. How the stories are connected to each other and they all come down to one thing: you can’t escape what life has planned out for you.

I liked how the author surprises us with fish and leeches falling from the sky, or with unexpected turnarounds. I also liked the descriptions and that is rare, but Murakami’s descriptions are quite interesting.

This is a preview of Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore. Read more.

Mircea Cartarescu – Rem

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Nov
09

rem

I read it over the weekend and, to my surprise, I found it pretty interesting. I don’t have anything against Mircea Cartarescu, I just didn’t expect the book to get my attention as much as it did. But I guess, everyone has their own opinions and others might disagree with that.

The author takes us into a world filled with children’s games and plays with the thin line between reality and dream throughout the whole book. He takes the shape of an invisible spider crawling into the characters’ mind absorbing every word and thought. Every little detail takes the shape of a new world , where the little girls from our story make balloons out of soap that turn into eggs and they life to fantastic creatures, they create temporal lines with chalk and see each other growing old while walking on those lines, they play inside a giant man’s skeleton. In the middle of all these adventures, our protagonist, Svetlana, is trying to find Rem, being the only person in the world able to do that.

The images of Bucharest in the 1960’s are being described as seen through the eyes of a 12 year old, with all the excitement a child that age has for the world.One thing I didn’t like though is the extremely long descriptive passages. Yes, the details are meant to depict a stronger image, but honestly, sometimes those passages got me bored. But overall it was an interesting read.

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Italo Calvino – Cosmicomics

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Oct
24

4395821204I finally managed to read it. I took me a while though, i guess because some of the stories are too abstract for my taste.

Cosmicomics is a blend of astronomy, romance, evolution with mathematical characters that emerge from the core of the universe and seem to be immortal. Calvino’s characters are molecules, dinosaurs, humans, they feel love, hate and friendship, they are part of evolution in each one of the stories in this book. Their games create galaxies, they witness the beginnings of the universe, they bet on the outcomes of history, they evolve or they climb on the moon.

Every story starts from a scientific fact, known to us today, and then takes us into a fantastic world, where anything seems possible.

The stories are nice, but the more abstract ones are harder to imagine. Overall, I didn’t like the book very much, maybe because I felt like some of the stories were dragged pointlessly and the level of abstraction made them seem less fantastic and more scientific than I would have liked them to be. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against Calvino’s storytelling, I’m just not that into scientific stories.

I guess my favorite story was Without Colors, so here’s a quote from it:

And I realized, with grief and fear, that I had remained out there, that I would never again be able to escape those gilded and silvered gleams, those little clouds that turned from pale blue to pink, those green leaves that yellowed every autumn, and that Ayl’s perfect world wast lost forever, so lost I couldn’t even imagine it any more, and nothing was left that could remind me of it, even remotely, nothing except perhaps that cols wall of gray stone.

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Ryu Murakami – In the Miso Soup

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Sep
25

6a00f48cf01dff0002011016755f8f860d-500piWe are in Japan, a few days before New Years. Kenji is a twenty-year old nightlife guide for tourists in Tokyo who finds himself in the middle of a horror story when meeting a new client, named Frank.

Frank seems to be a bit strange from the beginning, but in his job, Kenji is used to all kind of people so he tries to ignore the bad feelings he has about this new american client. Most part of the action takes place on their first night out, going to different clubs in Frank’s search for pleasure. Things get gory in their second night, when Frank brutally murders all the people from a small club. Kenji then finds himself trapped between the duty of going to the police and turning Frank in and his disapproval of the life those people in the restaurant had.

The murder scene from the club is described in so many details that it makes you feel like you are there, in the club, watching Frank killing those people like it is the most natural thing for him and Keji being paralized with fear.

The story accentuates the Japanese life style that has begun to decay over the years, the american culture that has become a big part of japanese life and a society that has become inconsiderate to young people and their needs.

I can’t say i don’t like thrillers, though it’s not something i would usually read. But, In the Miso Soup is more than just that, it is an analysis of society and people and decisions that make them become monsters to those around them. What i liked most is the part that takes place in the abandoned building when Frank unravels the mystery behind his actions. The story makes him seem almost human looking for a certain purpose in his own existence, that he often finds missing in his victims.

I liked how many details the author gives us about the new years tradition, a tradition filled with spirituality and hope, that makes people feel optimistic about life. Also, the emptiness that can be felt in the most unusual way, a feeling of helplessness in front of life’s unexpected turnarounds, is something that made this worth reading.

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Mark Ravenhill Plays

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Sep
10

9780413760609I finally decided to write something about Mark Ravenhill’s plays. I’ve only read the first volume of his plays, but I am looking forward to reading them all. I don’t know why I didn’t write anything earlier, because I really liked them. Anyway, let’s skip the rambling.

Mark Ravenhill (born 7 June 1966) is an English playwright and journalist. He is one of the most controversial and successful British writers. His plays illustrate some of the most disturbing images of society.

In Shopping and F***ing we find ourselves in a world of gay men and consumerism, where the struggle for money forces people to make drastic decisions and the battle with drug addiction makes people drift away in an alternative reality. All images are depicted in a shocking manner, making you feel the deceit of the characters’ reality.

Faust is Dead takes cutting to the extreme. We are in a society where money and power are turning people intro slaves making them give in to the pain.

In Handbag we are face to face with careless parents who cause the death of their child and with the place of women and men in society.

Some Explicit Polaroids tells us the story of an activist, who just got out of jail, struggling in a superficial world, ruled by pleasure and seeking of happiness.

The characters live in a decaying society,where money, drugs and sex are taking control over human nature. The descriptions are explicit and shocking. Overall this was a very interesting read, I would love to see these plays in a theater.

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Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

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2

Aug
28

nocturnesI finally finished reading it. I can’t say I didn’t like the stories, but it did take me a while to read. It was an easy read though, the combination of music, shattered dreams and reality is nice but honestly not quite what I was expecting.

Five stories, nightfall, music and dreams.

The first story, “Crooner”, takes us to Venice, where Janeck, a musician coming from a communist Poland is playing his guitar for tourists. One morning, while playing inside one of the tents in a piazza he meets Tony Gardner, who’s music he grew up listening to. After talking for a while, Jan gets the unique chance to serenade with Tony for his wife, Lindy. The romantic serenade turns out to be just a last gesture of love before their divorce.

In “Come Rain Come Shine”, Ray a 47 year old single man wakes up being stuck in helping the marriage of his two university friends. They drifted apart after college, when music was all that mattered, and now after so many years, their lives aren’t as they expected. The story culminates with Ray impersonating a dog while trying to cover up a mistake.

“Malvern Hills” is a story about a young man’s struggle to follow his dream. He decides to quit school to be able to focus only on music, but after a series of failures he retreats at his sister’s place for the summer. While trying to work on his music and helping his sister with the coffee shop, he meets an old couple from Switzerland. They are both musicians, playing for tourists in different countries and they seem to have a beautiful life, but by the end of the vacation, their relationship seems to be fading away.

In “Nocturne” we are meeting with Tony Gardner’s ex wife, Lindy, again. She is recovering after a plastic surgery in a hotel, where her neighbor is a talented but unsuccessful jazz saxophonist, who was encouraged by his manager to get a plastic surgery hoping that it will boost his career. They meet and start a strange intimacy, walking around the hotel at night, talking of fame, talent and beauty.

In the last story, “Cellists”, a woman pretending to be a great cellist starts tutoring a young promising Hungarian. She cannot play the cello, but thinks she has a unique talent that shouldn’t be altered by trying to explore it. She ends up marrying a man she doesn’t love and the young cellist takes a job playing in a hotel restaurant in Amsterdam.

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Ripen Our Darkness – Sarah Daniels

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Jul
17

First, a few words about the author. Sarah Daniels is a british dramatist, born in 1957.Her works are considered some of the most politically provocative on the contemporary British stage. Methuen published two collections of her plays.

Ripen Our Darkness was the play that established her as a writer and was first presented at the Royal Court Theater Upstairs, London, on 7 September 1981.

The play brings together the life stories of several women. Mary is the wife of a church warden and a mother of three: two boys and a girl. Anna is Mary’s daughter and lives with her girlfriend Julie. Rene is married to a drunken asshole, Alf who beats and rapes her. Susan is Rene’s daughter and Julie’s half sister. She just gave birth to a handicapped boy, that died after he was born. Daphne is the church vicar’s wife and Tara, the wife of a psychiatrist.
Mary is stuck in a monotonous life with her husband David, who decided to dedicated his life to God. All she ever does are house chores and take care of the kids. That’s all she’s supposed to do, right?
In this world where men are superior, women are considered stupid, uneducated and expected to obey men, she finds herself lost, without a reason to live, trying to find her way.

“Dear God, why do people kiss? On reflection is seems so disgusting to put your mouth on somebody else’s. Dear God, where do other people find the motivation for living from?”

Being concerned about his wife, David sends Mary to a “conference” for women married to men of the church. While there, she visits her daughter Anna, a lesbian teacher, living with her girlfriend Julie, a lesbian anarchist, and tries to understand their relationship.

Back to Rene, Alf and Susan for a moment. After years of beating, raping and drinking himself into unconsciousness, Alf dies chocking with a scone. All Rene and Susan can feel now is relief.

After coming back from the women married to men of the church “conference”, Mary begins acting different. She starts making her own decisions and not obeying the orders of her husband anymore. This makes David call a psychiatrist to come and give Mary a consult prior to admitting her into a mental institution.

This is a preview of Ripen Our Darkness – Sarah Daniels. Read more.

Quotes II

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Jul
03

“What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.”


– Miranda July (“Making Love in 2003″, No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)


“Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can’t see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.”

– Miranda July (“Ten True Things”, No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

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