Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

This is an unusual novel.  It has a story arc, it has characters, it has character development.  It just doesn't have continuous stretches of prose.   The entire story is told in either dialog, or in quotations from real or invented historical accounts of Abraham Lincoln's life. It reads a bit like a play, as pointed out by another bookclub member, and apparently there is also an audio book version, which probably works particularly well for this book.  

There was an interesting split in the reactions to the book at our meeting:  the four Canadians liked the book well-enough, or were indifferent to it.  The two Americans thought it was a masterpiece.  Our retired medievalist had a great insight about the split:  the American Civil War is one of the defining events of American history, and a defining part of the American experience.  So a novel about Abraham Lincoln has far more resonance for Americans than it does for the rest of us.

What did I think?  I thought the novel was very well executed.  The characters were well-drawn, as were their tragedies and obsessions. Saunders was very skilled at drawing a story together from fragments -- by a quarter of the way through, I was immersed in the Bardo and Lincoln's life. And I'm embarrassed to admit that it didn't occur to me until after I was finished the novel that some of the 'historical' accounts had been invented for narrative purposes.  In other words, they were convincing.

However, not being an American, I found the novel a bit unsatisfying.  After I finished, I wasn't sure why the author had written it.  What was George Saunders trying to say?  I'll have to accept that his goal was to comment on the Civil War and its place in the American psyche, because the book didn't speak to me.

The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

I found this a challenging book to read.  Not because it was unconventionally written, or had disturbing subject matter, or because it was poorly written.  Rather the contrary, actually.

It is the story of a Sicilian nobleman and his family, as they traverse a few crucial days and weeks of their lives in the 1860s and beyond.  It is a beautifully written and psychologically astute elegy for a lost way of life,  in a society and in a landscape that seemed like it could never change.

My problem with the book? Mostly that I am fundamentally not that interested in elegies to aristocracy.  Unlike the author, the actual last Prince of Lampedusa, I come from solid peasant stock on both sides of my family, and tend to look forward rather than back.

The End of Protest by Micah White

I didn't attend the Women's March that was held directly after Trump's inauguration.  I couldn't see the point.  Trump had just taken power, and there was no way that his plans would be changed by even a very large demonstration by those who hadn't voted for him.  He had won despite their hatred, so why should he care?   There was also no chance that public opinion would be changed.  The people who hated Trump would continue to hate Trump.  Those who supported him wouldn't change their opinion by seeing others mock him or publicly loathe him yet again.

Yet hundreds of thousands of people around the planet gathered to wear pussy hats, chant, and march together.  Was it a mistake?  Why did they gather?  What is protest for, anyway?

The End of Protest tries to answer the last question.  What is protest for?  What can protest accomplish?  And most crucially, what should protest look like?

The End of Protest is not the book I was expecting it to be.  Somehow, I thought that it was going to be a philosophical book making the argument that activists should be moving their energy from protest to electoral politics.  After all, there is certainly an argument to be made that in a democracy, protesting against decisions you don't like isn't as practical as participating in elections so that you can take power and be the one making the decisions yourself.

This isn't that book.  Instead The End of Protest examines the philosophy and history of protest, and then goes on to develop a theory of revolution that includes practical guidelines for protest intended to inspire activists to effective action.

White doesn't spend much time discussing his goals (which are along the lines of 'overthrowing captitalism'), instead choosing to focus on how to structure protest to achieve that goal.

 It's kind of a modern Rules for Radicals or Resource Manual for a Living Revolution:  in other words, on some level it's a kind of a handbook. Although unlike those books, White's instructions are not formulaic.  His thesis is that the authoritarian forces of power have a great ability to develop and widely and quickly share strategies to nullify (especially) radical and effective protest.   So activists have to constantly innovate rather than clone successful protest strategies from the past.

White's message is meant to be encouraging to radicals, by showing them a pathway to success.  But even White struggles -- one of the 4 quadrants of activists and protest that he outlines basically comes down to "and then a miracle happens".  That is, forces outside of rational control (gods, coincidences,  call it what you will) need to intervene in order for revolution to succeed.

Perhaps I'm too old and cynical for this book.  As White discusses the ways that authority uses the internet to influence and control social movements, the path forward for broadly effective revolutionary activism seems very narrow indeed.  Which is perhaps as well -- when you look at the movements that inspire him, like the Arab Spring, you have to wonder whether they were net positive developments, given the outcome in places like Egypt and Syria.

We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

This is a difficult book to review, because the author hides a key element of the plot until about a third of the way through the book.  If a reviewer mentions this key plot element, the reviewer subverts the author's intention of drawing you into the story in a particular way, and with a specific perspective. But any discussion of the book that doesn't mention the hidden plot point leaves a reviewer....hanging.   The review can't mention the issues that make the book so unique and compelling.  It's also going to be difficult to draw in the readers who are most likely to be interested in the book.

Most reviews discussed the hidden plot point.

Personally, I thought it was a wonderful book, even though I knew the secret.  My book group said that they couldn't imagine reading it without the surprise -- one member even said that the revelation transformed the book from not particularly interesting to one of the most compelling books that we've read.

You can make your own judgement:  this book was short-listed for a Man Booker prize in its year of publication, and the internet is lousy with spoilers, if you're interested in tracking down that kind of review.

I'm going to avoid the issue entirely by addressing a relevant but unrelated question:  is this book SF?

What makes a book science fiction?  Or, 'SF' as I like to think of it, where 'SF' means 'speculative fiction'.

Now that's a question with many answers, and a question that deserves a much longer and more thoughtful analysis than I'm planning to stick in a book review.

One answer is very simple:  SF is written by SF authors.  Karen Joy Fowler....does she qualify?  Maybe.  She hangs around with SF authors, like Pat Murphy.  Fowler is also one of the founders of the James Tiptree, Jr award, given each year to the SF work that best explores the meaning of gender. So at a minimum, Fowler has tight ties to the SF community.

Another answer:  is the book filed in the SF section of your bookstore or library?  Hm...second point in favour.  I found my copy in the SF section of Munro's bookstore in Victoria.

Third answer:  does it read like SF?   Again, yes.  As is typical with SF, the story explicitly starts in the middle.  SF generally launches into  the middle of a story, situation, or future that you'd never have imagined for yourself, and it's only as the book progresses that you begin to understand what's going on.  Why is SF structured this way?  Mostly because starting a novel with a bunch of exposition about the universe you're in, the future you've immersed in, or the technology that the story is discussing would be a very very boring way to start a book.

Fourth answer:  is the book about character, is it about events, or is it about ideas?  The *best* SF (IMHO), is about ideas, and We are all completely beside ourselves is definitely about ideas.  Big ideas, fundamental ideas about our society.  Check.

Final possible answer:  is the book about science or technology?  Contrary to popular opinion, IMHO, this is the weakest test.  In fact, this is why I prefer to think of SF as 'speculative fiction' rather than 'science fiction'.  Science fiction is, I guess, a fiction that explores science, science futures, or the implications of science on society.  In its degenerate form -- as long as you understand that I'm using 'degenerate' in its most positive possible sense -- science fiction is fiction that includes specific scientific innovations like space travel and laser beams.  And battles.  And very very big bangs.  While speculative fiction is simply fiction that asks 'What if'.

We are all completely beside ourselves definitely asks 'What if'.   Check again.

So, if you enjoy SF, particularly thoughtful, well-written SF that has compelling characters and asks challenging questions, you'll enjoy We are all completely beside ourselves.

But you are also very likely to enjoy the book even if you would never voluntarily read a book with a space ship on the cover.  There are no space ships in this book.  It takes place in the present (okay, 2007, but that's when the book was published), not the future.  And it does not involve a single piece of uninvented technology.

It only starts in the middle, and takes you to an unexpected place.

Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

I've joined a book group again!  This is the third book that I've read with the new group.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a brief novel told in the second person.  The narrator is a Pakistani who meets a stranger on a street in Pakistan, takes him for tea and then supper, all the while telling the anonymous listener the story of his life.

The narrator is a young Pakistani man from a 'good' but impoverished family who travels to the US for University, falls in love with an American woman, and works for an American finance firm for a couple of years before becoming disillusioned and returning home post-911.

This is a book that I didn't enjoy on first reading.   I'm all for artificiality -- I read science fiction! I enjoy meta-narratives! I am not opposed to the post-modern -- but the frame story felt contrived, and the ambiguous ending seemed like a gimmick.  Overall, it seemed to me that the book was an overly clever attempt to educate post-911  Americans about why they were not necessarily universally loved.

The night before the book group meeting I picked it up again in an attempt to figure out something more to say about the book during our discussion.  This was a useful exercise.   The book was actually more cleverly structured and written than I had originally noticed.  The narrator's American love....was actually a metaphor for America.  The title of the book was actually significant, and rather different than I had assumed.   No matter where I opened it, I found quotable text that not only moved the plot along, but illustrated the underlying themes of the book in ways that I hadn't noticed when I was concentrating on the plot.

The discussion during out meeting last night was also useful.  It reminded me of how immediately engaging the book was, and how the second person narration pulled you in to the story.  It pulled out details of the book, its plot, and its characters in ways that I hadn't thought of myself.

In summary, reading this book as part of a book club made me appreciate it much more than I would have had I encountered it on my own.   I still think that its topicality is one of the reasons that it was short-listed for a Man Booker when it was published in the mid-2000s.  But is that such a bad thing?  And the book is better-written and more complex than I initially gave it credit for.

Paris 1919

Read: November 2015
Pages: 496

Sometimes a book comes to right at the time it is most relevant to your life or to your understanding of the world.  Sometimes a book comes to you before you're ready for it, and you only realize later that you should have paid more attention.  And sometimes a book comes into your life too late.

I've been meaning to read Paris 1919 ever since it came out in 2000 to stunningly good reviews.  A copy even entered my house as a loan to Harvey in the intervening years....but I didn't get around to reading it before it departed back to its owner.   I finally read it this year and thought:  this would have seemed more relevant in the '90s or the Naughties, when the Wall had more recently come down, and the Bosnian war was fresh in everyone's minds.  The book has a lot to say about the ethnic and political divisions in the Balkans in particular, and understanding the post-WWI history of the region is quite illuminating in terms of understanding the events of the 90s.

But saying that I read Paris 1919 too late is too glib.  I'm sure it made a much bigger splash at the time of its release because of its discussion of the Balkans, and the immediate relevance of that history to then-current events.  But the book doesn't just talk about the Balkans.  World War I really was a global war.  It touched everywhere from Europe to the Middle East to the Far East, and understanding that war and its impact can help one better understand those regions and their history.  In fact, reading Paris 1919 even helped me better understand The Windup Bird Chronicle! not to mention Lawrence of Arabia (the movie, that is).  It also gave me some fascinating insights into the political background to the founding of the state of Israel.

The book itself delves into detail about the discussions at the Paris Peace Conference, and discusses in depth the personality, motivations, and political manueverings of all of the major players.  It's hard not to come away with an acute understanding of just how doomed that intensive 6 month period of "peace-making" was.  Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau between them tried to settle the concerns of many of the peoples of the world.  It was a task beyond any such group of men.

The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Read: Sept 1 to Oct. 2
Pages:

All of Murakami's books say "author of The Windup Bird Chronicle" on their covers.  My sister tells me that The Windup Bird Chronicle is on a list of "100 books to read before you die" that she downloaded from the internet.  The book was highly recommended to me by a friend.

So I read it this fall, after an abortive attempt to read the e-book version.

What is the book about?  Did I enjoy it?  What insights did the book give me? What thoughts did it spark?

Those are the kinds of questions that I think about as I'm reading a book that I'm about to review on this blog.  But as it turns out, for The Windup Bird Chronicle, those are all difficult questions.

The first question was the most difficult, oddly.

I could start by summarizing the contents of the book.  It's a novel set in contemporary Japan that follows about a year in the life of an unemployed legal assistant who lives in the suburbs of Tokyo.  It's told in the first person, and has fantastic and absurd elements.

But ....what is it "about"?

One of the blurbs on the cover claims that it's about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria that preceded the Second World War.

There are several characters in the book whose lives were fundamentally affected by Japan's wartime occupation of mainland China:  an elderly fortuneteller who appears only in flashback, an elderly retired schoolteacher who brings our protagonist a puzzling legacy and recounts his wartime experiences at some length, and Malta and Creta Kano, pivotal characters who as children fled the recapture of Nanking by the Chinese.

But if the book is about this invasion and occupation, why are only secondary characters affected by these events?  Why does the story follow the life of an aimless former salaryman, and why is the plot driven by his relationship with his wife, his lost cat, his teenage neighbour, his annoying brother-in-law, and the woman he meets while sitting in a square in downtown Tokyo?  And why is the book called The Windup Bird Chronicle, after the bird who briefly perches in his backyard tree and makes a noise like it is winding up the world?

Not to mention that I'm not convinced that the stories of wartime Manchuria are meant to be taken literally.  The story of the dry well reeks of metaphor, and the odour only increases when the protagonist himself finds a dry well, and enters it seeking (literally?) enlightenment.

In fact, the whole book is shot through with metaphor, dreams, dream-like experiences, coincidences, and obviously meaningful items and events that somehow never cohere into meaningfulness.

In other words -- no, I don't know what the book is about.  But the hints seem so numerous and so obviously planted that my failure to understand seems like a personal failing -- or conversely, beside the point?  I can't decide which.

Did I like the book?

Again, this is an oddly difficult question.  I read the first half in dutiful portions, more because I meant to finish it than because I couldn't put it down. But at the same time it was oddly compelling.  The story is told in the first person, in straightforward prose, in a very matter-of-fact tone.  Not a lot happens.  His wife goes to work, returns late, and doesn't want to eat the supper he's prepared.  He searches for the lost cat in the dead-end alley behind his house, and discovers instead an abandoned house with an overgrown yard that doesn't contain his cat -- though the bored teenager across the alley claims that she sees a lot of cats there.  An anonymous woman caller with a very familiar voice calls mid day and initiates phone sex without warning.  He meets a psychic by appointment in a downtown restaurant, who recognizes him even though he can't find and therefore doesn't wear the polka dot tie he was supposed to put on so that she will be able to identify him.  He dreams about a sexual encounter with a woman wearing his wife's dress, and then later discovers that the woman he dreamt about also remembers the dream.

Eventually I realized that I was allowed to enjoy the experience, even if I didn't really understand what was going on, and my reading accelerated.  Perhaps because it seemed that if I only read a bit more, things would start to come together and the whole book would make sense....

What insights did the book give me?  What thoughts did it spark?

There was a great quote from the protagonist that I meant to pull out and include here, before my copy of the book vanished into the chaos of my current home reno.   It went something like "I don't enjoy going to modern art movies, because as you watch them, things just happen."   It seemed as if the author was making an ironic nod to his audience.

I'm not sure what else to say.  I did enjoy reading it.  More than a month later, the book has stuck with me, and as I write about it I continue the effort to pull everything together in my head.  (Was the anonymous woman on the phone actually Kumiko, his wife?  Why are all of our protagonist's emotional reactions so muted?  He treats the teenaged neighbour no differently after she takes actions that could easily have lead to his death.  What's the significance of that particular brand of whisky, and why does it keep reappearing throughout the book?)

I might recommend it to a friend myself.  But I'm not sure.  What would I say if they came back to me and asked me what I thought about it myself?   Or if they asked me to explain the book to them?  Or perhaps worse, what if they explained the book to me?  :-)

Hm...following the ideal that excellence only follows egoless effort, I suppose I'd have to recommend the book.  It was novel.  It held my attention.  It entertained me.  It made me think.  And maybe, just maybe, the person to whom I recommended it would explain it to me afterwards, and I'd learn something.

So recommended, at least to readers who are willing to work at their fiction.