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wolfdan9's reviews
269 reviews
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
As far as writing style, I appreciate how Kitchen manages to maintain some literary authenticity despite its simplicity. Yoshimoto (at least in this story and Moonlight Shadow, its complementary novella) has a talent for writing in a sort of juvenile way, but that doesn’t detract from her storytelling or prose. The reader often feels nostalgic or that they’re breathing in Yoshimoto’s imagery because the youthful eyes from which they’re seeing the narrative seem to be authentically seeing the world from a young perspective. I found Yoshimoto’s observations thoughtful and delicate. She describes the seasons especially well; the feeling of being sick and breathing in cold air; the infantile buds growing from trees in the spring; and the slow-moving clouds dividing the world into light and dark. She illustrates scenes by focusing on the small actions and details in a person’s life. The menial tasks and quotidian thoughts that occupy a person’s day. Despite having such a small canvas (of ~100 pages), Kitchen is comfortably less of a plot and more of a window into the odd world of an unusual adolescent figuring out life and love after loss. It is a sensitive bildungsroman that provokes nostalgia and thought.
3.5
“She was my mother, my father…”
When I began reading as a hobby in 2017, I had read and really enjoyed Kitchen. I felt it must have been heavily influenced by Murakami, who was my favorite writer, due to a few of its motifs echoing a few of Murakami’s, like adolescent life, love, and loss in contemporary Japanese society and a curiosity about the possibility of other worlds. As I read now, there is certainly a thread of Murakami running through Kitchen, which I’ll explain more below, but Yoshimoto has also carved out a novel that is quite distinct in its themes. Kitchen is essentially a simple love story at its core with a few bizarre twists and turns. There is a prominent transgender character whom I enjoyed reading because Yoshimoto doesn’t imbue her story with boring and hackneyed social commentary, but rather writes a compelling and rather weird character who seemed to change her gender to cope with the loss of her wife. It highlights the strength of love, another cloying-on-the-surface theme which Yoshimoto handles quite delicately and idiosyncratically. Eriko, the transgender mother of Yuichi (the main character’s love interest), also exemplifies the escapism with which Yoshimoto seems fascinated. Her transition is a way of becoming an entirely new person, one who has more control over herself, and most importantly, a way to redefine her family unit amidst loss. Kitchen shows us, through the shifting members and recombinations of family members within a family unit, that loss and gain are both integral to family structure. Family members are binded by their experiences, and the unconventional family unit should be celebrated. Love is the glue within a family – sometimes romantic love between partners, and sometimes familial love – it’s all OK. As far as the blatant kitchen symbol, as the embodiment of family, I found it appropriate but not fully tied together. The kitchen is ever-present in the narrative and does cleverly represent the ultimate family gathering spot, but nothing really comes of it. There is no “delivery” on the kitchen as a symbol in the lives of these characters, which disappointed me, especially at the end.
As far as writing style, I appreciate how Kitchen manages to maintain some literary authenticity despite its simplicity. Yoshimoto (at least in this story and Moonlight Shadow, its complementary novella) has a talent for writing in a sort of juvenile way, but that doesn’t detract from her storytelling or prose. The reader often feels nostalgic or that they’re breathing in Yoshimoto’s imagery because the youthful eyes from which they’re seeing the narrative seem to be authentically seeing the world from a young perspective. I found Yoshimoto’s observations thoughtful and delicate. She describes the seasons especially well; the feeling of being sick and breathing in cold air; the infantile buds growing from trees in the spring; and the slow-moving clouds dividing the world into light and dark. She illustrates scenes by focusing on the small actions and details in a person’s life. The menial tasks and quotidian thoughts that occupy a person’s day. Despite having such a small canvas (of ~100 pages), Kitchen is comfortably less of a plot and more of a window into the odd world of an unusual adolescent figuring out life and love after loss. It is a sensitive bildungsroman that provokes nostalgia and thought.
The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck
3.0
“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded.”
The Moon is Down is a short novel that has some elements of satire and historical fiction, but for the most part is a critique of war. I actually got some unexpected Vonnegut vibes from some of the characterization, themes, and humor, but there’s an otherwise prominent injection of drama and overt melancholy that isn’t present in much Vonnegut. Like with Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck has clearly modeled his storytelling approach on the drama medium. The story attempts to understand the relationship between conquerors and conquered in a war setting and the role of power in this relationship. It analyzes the irony of fairness in this type of relationship and how individuals from both sides struggle. Of course, the cruel realities of war, which include the death of civilians and betrayal, are also showcased. Steinbeck’s colorful characters and elegant prose make this an enjoyable read.
The Moon is Down is a short novel that has some elements of satire and historical fiction, but for the most part is a critique of war. I actually got some unexpected Vonnegut vibes from some of the characterization, themes, and humor, but there’s an otherwise prominent injection of drama and overt melancholy that isn’t present in much Vonnegut. Like with Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck has clearly modeled his storytelling approach on the drama medium. The story attempts to understand the relationship between conquerors and conquered in a war setting and the role of power in this relationship. It analyzes the irony of fairness in this type of relationship and how individuals from both sides struggle. Of course, the cruel realities of war, which include the death of civilians and betrayal, are also showcased. Steinbeck’s colorful characters and elegant prose make this an enjoyable read.
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
3.5
“The pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.”
Henderson the Rain King is a picaresque novel about a man looking for life’s meaning. Essentially it’s a comic misadventure in which an aging man visits Africa and meets a king who offers him a remedy: become a lion. Bellow’s prose balances erudition and humor better than probably any other writer I’ve read. He writes some very funny characters. Overall, I didn’t love this novel, but I enjoyed some aspects of it. Henderson’s internal struggle (I want, I want, I want) is the guiding force of the novel. I felt that Bellow chose an interesting plot to represent a major transformative experience that results in a meaningful change in a person’s soul. This theme is not of major interest to me personally, but I basically liked the story and characters. I can acknowledge that Bellow and I share an interest in the hovering cloud of mortality, but I’m more fascinated by the psychological effects of morbidity and the inner turmoil of reconciling limited time and the certainty of death. Bellow touches upon this idea, and sets up a framework for this to be possibly discussed, but ultimately gives attention to Henderson’s spiritual transformation.
Bellow uses a lot of space in the novel to discuss Henderson’s background and key events in his life. Henderson never interacts with characters from these memories, but they’re often referenced again at the perfect moment. I enjoyed Henderson’s bromance with King Dahfu and, as an ESL teacher, had fun reading their interactions. Henderson comically speaks to some of the African characters without any consideration of their knowledge of English, so they often confusedly receive rambling, convoluted monologues with hyperspecific references to American or Jewish culture as his interlocutors. I’m weirdly interested in reading more Bellow soon even though this one didn’t completely do it for me.
Henderson the Rain King is a picaresque novel about a man looking for life’s meaning. Essentially it’s a comic misadventure in which an aging man visits Africa and meets a king who offers him a remedy: become a lion. Bellow’s prose balances erudition and humor better than probably any other writer I’ve read. He writes some very funny characters. Overall, I didn’t love this novel, but I enjoyed some aspects of it. Henderson’s internal struggle (I want, I want, I want) is the guiding force of the novel. I felt that Bellow chose an interesting plot to represent a major transformative experience that results in a meaningful change in a person’s soul. This theme is not of major interest to me personally, but I basically liked the story and characters. I can acknowledge that Bellow and I share an interest in the hovering cloud of mortality, but I’m more fascinated by the psychological effects of morbidity and the inner turmoil of reconciling limited time and the certainty of death. Bellow touches upon this idea, and sets up a framework for this to be possibly discussed, but ultimately gives attention to Henderson’s spiritual transformation.
Bellow uses a lot of space in the novel to discuss Henderson’s background and key events in his life. Henderson never interacts with characters from these memories, but they’re often referenced again at the perfect moment. I enjoyed Henderson’s bromance with King Dahfu and, as an ESL teacher, had fun reading their interactions. Henderson comically speaks to some of the African characters without any consideration of their knowledge of English, so they often confusedly receive rambling, convoluted monologues with hyperspecific references to American or Jewish culture as his interlocutors. I’m weirdly interested in reading more Bellow soon even though this one didn’t completely do it for me.
The Humbling by Philip Roth
3.0
Good, bad, and ugly: I can understand how The Humbling can be interpreted as an elderly Roth’s pathetic longing to return to his sexual prime. In the novella, an actor certainly modeled on Roth turns lesbians straight and has sex with women 20-40 years younger than him. That’s the bad. The ugly is that the women he encounters are portrayed less as people and more as objects whose sexual and romantic interest in him may restore his acting ability, which is the underlying conflict of the story. Performance anxiety appears as an obvious metaphor. The good is that I don’t think this book is terrible, or even bad really. From a readability standpoint, the prose is as crisp and comical as ever. Roth’s autobiographical style of fiction is well-written and Roth is wonderful at tying together a story. The end of the novel also does somewhat subvert the reader’s expectation about my “ugly” point, as Roth’s (“Axler” in this story) young mistress realizes that their relationship is substituting his creative career and leaves him, but Roth duly suggests that it’s because she was actually a lesbian the whole time, which reflects a pretty immature and insulting attitude toward homosexuality. Even though he walks this back at the very, very end, the mere suggestion is disappointing. So It doesn’t completely nullify Roth’s tone deaf exploration of sexual achievement as a metaphor for/solution to writer’s block. But there’s yet an additional layer that Roth reveals: Axler’s identity crisis. How he doesn’t know how to “act” even as himself. Roth absolves himself of some criticism by painting Axler as an ultimately tragic, pathetic, an unsympathetic character. There is therefore some distancing between author and character (unusual in Roth’s canon). Overall, it’s a spiteful and problematic book. But I did appreciate its quality writing and story telling.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
2.5
I’ve read a ton of Murakami. Hard-Boiled Wonderland is my 19th Murakami book. It’s safe to say I enjoy his writing for the most part. I didn’t enjoy this one much though. My major gripe is that it’s basically just a sci-fi fantasy novel. Normally, Murakami writes thought provoking magical realism, which can admittedly confound and frustrate in its apparent meaninglessness, but this novel did not seem to even attempt much metaphor. Surely I missed the point; I was surprised to learn that this is Murakami’s favorite of his own novels. The alternating narratives existing in two separate worlds (whose boundaries are much closer than the reader initially thinks) were nifty and well-executed, but the fantasy world (“The End of the World”) is much too fantastical. Dipping so much into fantasy, in my opinion, really hurts the quality of the story because very little in this world can be construed as relatable. And in its inaccessibility, it becomes useless to the reader.
The “real world” portions are also bogged down by their strong sci-fi bend. Even for Murakami who wears his influences conspicuously on his sleeve, he seemed to be ripping off Vonnegut with many of the sci-fi touches and language. Other than these complaints, the writing is normal Murakami fare, and it’ll be a take-it-or-leave-it book for many. It was a more fun read than I’m letting on, but even as a Murakami apologist, I don’t think it’s a powerful work.
The “real world” portions are also bogged down by their strong sci-fi bend. Even for Murakami who wears his influences conspicuously on his sleeve, he seemed to be ripping off Vonnegut with many of the sci-fi touches and language. Other than these complaints, the writing is normal Murakami fare, and it’ll be a take-it-or-leave-it book for many. It was a more fun read than I’m letting on, but even as a Murakami apologist, I don’t think it’s a powerful work.