The Incident Report (Martha Baillie)

The Incident Report was an impulse buy after seeing it mentioned in a copy of Bookmarks Magazine. What first intrigued me was that the story unfolds as a series of incident reports filed in a library. Miriam, one of the librarians employed by the Public Libraries of Toronto, keeps an observant eye on the different violations, threats, and other disruptive behavior that occur within their walls. She gives the offenders and the regulars made-up names (like Suitcase Man and Fainting Man) and details her encounters with them in clear, brief sentences. But the book does not limit itself to the incident report motif; what ultimately kept me reading was the unfolding mystery that accompanied Miriam's seemingly orderly life.

Miriam finds handwritten notes in various places of the library, all referring to Verdi's opera Rigoletto. In case you'd rather not click the link, the opera is, in a nutshell, about a court jester with a father's curse -- he accidentally has his own daughter murdered. Miriam, who names Rigoletto as her first opera, is not bothered by the notes in the beginning but as they grow in frequency and in zeal, she soon shares these with the authorities. The Rigoletto references stir her own memories. Interspersed throughout the incident reports are Miriam's recollections of her own father, done in a more plaintive voice than the detachment she employs when reporting the disturbances in the library. I think that Ms Baillie is most effective as an author here, when she manages to create strong images of Miriam's father without revealing too much at a time, and juxtaposing those with the heightened emotions in the mysterious Rigoletto letters. Their story is told with a gentle and heartbreaking sort of longing which I truly admired.

Along with this mystery is Miriam's budding romance with Janko Prijatelj, a Slovenian artist and cab driver who has a missing finger. Miriam does not believe in love anymore ['I was immune and that I could not fall in love, that I'd done so once before and did not wish to repeat the experience. If someone had asked, I would have said that I was not the sort of person who recovered(p77)']. Yet she lets Janko in, he 'with the quiet oval face and the eager eyes (p182)'. I'm a romantic at heart so I suppose this had a lot to do with my appreciation for that particular plot point but I'm not sure if everyone will enjoy it as much as I had. I thought that all her relationships (with Janko, her absent father, her colleagues in the library and their colorful patrons) give the reader a subtle yet probing understanding of Miriam as a woman: her fears and insecurities, her hidden strengths. Through Ms Baillie's nuanced writing style, I found myself immersed in this refreshing character study.

Little Black Book of Stories (AS Byatt)

It's been years since I last read any of AS Byatt's works, so when a friend handed me Little Black Book of Stories I immediately jumped at the opportunity. My friend claims that the book is actually mine -- something I had lent her many many years ago (probably close to a decade) -- but it had completely slipped my mind. Upon re-reading, only two of the five stories in this collection came back to me; the rest all felt deliciously brand new.

'The Thing in the Forest' is one of those familiar ones, the tale of two girls who meet as evacuees in World War II Britain. During one of their respites, they wander into a nearby forest and briefly witness a strange and terrifying creature that will stay with them through adulthood. Whether the creature is real or imagined, it remains a strong metaphor for the horrors of war, changing the girls' lives even when they choose to go on different paths.

One thing worth noting is that as they travel through the countryside, Primrose and Penny note that hey pass by 'tiny stations whose names have been blacked out' and feel that 'the erasure was because of them, because they were not meant to know where they were going or, like Hansel and Gretel, to find the way back (p6)'. Though this sentiment is voiced in that first story, I feel that it is a common thread throughout the rest of the book. The tales seem to end right after their respective climaxes, leaving the characters in the middle of the tension, often after a pivotal point or decision. Each time I encounter it, I think back on those blacked-out signs, giving the characters no choice but to travel down the paths on which they have found themselves.

My words feel woefully inadequate when trying to capture the essence of Little Black Book of Stories. For such a spartan title, the collection itself is lush with images and descriptions. Consider the other stories: A doctor who encourages a young artist to explore her craft ends up curtailing her freedom in more ways than one ('Body Art'). A woman finds herself slowly turning into stone and journeys to a far corner of the world ('A Stone Woman'). A writer finds a rare tranquil voice among his class of tragedy-crazed students ('Raw Material'). A man encounters the ghost of his living wife ('A Pink Ribbon'). Each tale is populated with Ms Byatt's rich observations ('a necklace of veiled swellings above her collar-bone which broke slowly through the skin like eyes from closed lids, and became opal (p140)' and dark undertones ('the final two arms were crocheting something in an immense tangle of crimson plastic cords (p104)'. Her images pile themselves upon each other in wonderful layers.

I also felt that the stories showed the different ways that a woman's power can be suppressed by history, society, and circumstance. Ms Byatt features a gamut of female characters at various points of their lives and yet they still struggle to free themselves from their oppressors. I suppose this is why the last story, although not my favorite, drives home one of the strongest ideas of the collection (at least, personally): the spirit walking freely. Does it make me, a female reader, feel triumphant in the end? With all the darkness of the book, I'm still not sure. Despite this, I'm glad I re-read Little Black Book of Stories; it would have been such a shame if I had truly forgotten all the painfully chaotic elegance that this book has.

Manazuru (Hiromi Kawakami)

Don't turn your head. Keep looking at
the bandaged place. That's where the
light enters you.

And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself. – Rumi

This short verse from one of my favorite poets kept resonating with me as I read Hiromi Kawakami’s Manazuru, translated from Japanese by Michael Emmerich. Twelve years after Kei’s husband disappeared, she is still haunted by the loss. But that’s not the only thing haunting her. As she makes regular visits to the small seaside town called Manazuru, she finds herself constantly dogged by a mysterious spirit. Kei doesn’t know what is in Manazuru that draws her nor does she know what it is about her that draws the woman. In this restless year, Kei allows the reader a glimpse into the chaotic memories that invade her quiet, contained life.

It is easy to say that Kei is looking for closure. She remains adrift, trying to make sense of why her husband Rei left, uncertain whether to divorce him or have him declared legally dead. She still bears her husband's name though she lives with her mother (both surnames appear on the nameplates in front of their home). She has a long-term affair with a married man. She is unsure of how to deal with the changes in her teenage daughter. Rei lingers in every relationship that Kei has, and thoughts of him still follow her even when she escapes to the secluded fishing town of Manazuru provides a good backdrop for Kei's introspection.

There is an aimlessness to this whole novel. If the prose was meant to have that almost disjointed yet still poetic quality, then Mr Emmerich’s translation succeeds: 'As we were paying at the desk, I suddenly pictured the daybreak tangle of our bodies, and became wet. The rainy season was unusually long that year. We sauntered through a light rain, sharing an umbrella. Nesting dolls were arrayed on a glass shelf in a souvenir shop(p60).' From sex to rain to Russian matryoshka. I actually liked this strange jumble of images, as if I were joining Kei flit from one thought to the other, from the remembered to the tangible. I thought that this seeming incoherence and meandering underscored the surrealism in the text. You tend to ask yourself what is real and what is imagined, almost an echo of Kei's own questions about what had happened to her marriage.

I'm not sure if this is a characteristic that will be well-received by other readers. In the opening scene, Kei stays at an inn run by a family named Suna, which means sand. For me, the image aptly establishes the tenuous links between the events in this story, but I still found myself looking for something to anchor my reading experience. In the end, I found it in Kei's relationship with her daughter Momo. There is something so broken and disconnected and convincingly real about them, apart and together, and I was really invested in what happens to them. Many things are left unanswered (like who the woman is or what really happened to Rei), but then maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is that closure comes not as door slamming shut, but as a boat disappearing into the horizon, gradually drifting away until you are no longer aware where it is. Or maybe that's just my overly simplistic way of making sense out of a very complex journey.

The Noodle Maker (Ma Jian)

What Ma Jian has created with The Noodle Maker is a collection of lifestyles and ideals that grew under China's Cultural Revolution, were affected by the years that followed the adoption of the Open Door Policy while still under the Party's all-seeing gaze, and survived the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square incident. Here, a professional writer and his friend the professional blood donor meet regularly to chat and dine. The professional writer has been charged with creating propaganda about a hero who embodies the Party's ideals when all he wants to do is to write about the people who intrigue him. So it is to the professional blood donor that he confesses and this serves as the framework for this collection of tales.

There was a kind of horror and disbelief that I experienced when I first read Ma Jian's Stick Out Your Tongue. He was not shocking just to be shocking; there was a sorrow that permeated his writing, one that truly drew me in. That shocking feeling was absent for me here in The Noodle Maker but whether it is deliberately gone or I am merely used to his style is still open to debate. The sorrow is still there though, in the lives of people who wish to be more. Here the tales are similarly stark, and even if the characters branch off in different directions (an actress with an unusual idea for a live performance, the young man who runs a private crematorium with an added service) they find their lives weaving in and out of each other.

The collection is filled with truths that can be disconcerting and uncomfortable, moments of sharp insight. One of my favorites is a conversation between the professional writer and the female novelist about young writers. The female novelist is bemoaning the new generation's shallowness, to which the professional writer counters, 'Perhaps a purer form of literature will emerge from their numb minds. They have no prejudices, no interest in politics. Their problems are purely personal(p86-87).' In their exchange, I feel bitterness and resentment, even at the professional writers' words, despite his obvious defense. He is merely stating fact: '[the female novelist's] time is already over(p87).' Here is a generation introduced to the Self after years of dealing with just the State.

There are really so many layers that one can uncover while reading The Noodle Maker. Ma Jian's writing makes even the most jarring images a source of reflection not just of the self, but also of the world that controls us.

Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)

There has always been a sharpness in Kazuo Ishiguro's work that makes me feel inadequate and ill-equipped to write a review. His Never Let Me Go is one of my favorite books of all time but I couldn't even begin to find the words to do it proper homage. I'm attempting anew with Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall.

In his sparse yet carefully-nuanced narrative style, Mr Ishiguro sketches five stories that revolve around the process of creation and definition through music. Maybe 'sketches' isn't the right word, as it connotes something rough and unfinished, but it does fit: we stumble across each of the narrators at a certain point in their lives, as they tell stories that to me have a lovely way of trailing off. He opens at a piazza in Italy and ends there as well, coming full circle but never telling the same story twice. The first, "Crooner," is about a guitarist hired by a once-famous standards singer to woo his wife. The wife reappears in another story, "Nocturne," while what could be the same piazza is seen again in the final "Cellists." Familiar elements echo through the stories, like the theme in a musical composition.

What I really admired about Nocturnes is how Mr Ishiguro weaves introspective pieces that made me reflect on what defines an artist. In the more humorous "Come Rain or Come Shine," the narrator confesses in a moment of candor, 'It's hard to know where to settle. What to settle to (p85).' In "Nocturne," the realization is a bit more in-your-face: the narrator is undergoing surgery to correct his imperfections and launch his career into the 'right' direction. I had meant to give Nocturnes as a present to a good friend but after reading it I wasn't sure if my friend would want something more aggressive when it comes to how events unfold. I'm still hesitating. But for me, each of these five stories know how to sit with you one quiet afternoon, pat your hand before they leave, and that's the only time you realize something had been happening to you all along.

World Without End (Ken Follet)

To say that I found Ken Follet's World Without End rather disappointing would be an understatement. As someone who was really hooked on his Pillars of the Earth, chronicling the lives and the legacy of medieval lovers Jack and Aliena, I was really looking forward to reading World Without End because it was about their descendants and set in a similar tone, a familiar world.

Too similar and too familiar, I soon found out.

World starts as four young children witness a knight with a secret kill the men who are running after him. The children are from different worlds, unaware how the events of that day would have far-reaching effects that would shape who they would become. On paper, it sounds different from Pillars but somehow, this still echoes the previous work in characterization and plot so much that it feels like a mere rehash, and even then, falls short of its predecessor.

The characters seemed shopworn to me. They have no moral ambiguity that would have helped create tension or generate more sympathy: good characters are 'good,' bad characters are inexplicable driven by narrow-minded malice and evil. Merthin is the talented descendant of Jack Builder, so anything he touches turns to gold. He even survives the Black Plague in Italy, where he has established his fortune after years of struggling as an unrecognized builder in Kingsbridge. Stepping into Aliena's shoes is Caris, the intelligent daughter of a wealthy merchant and the love of Merthin's life. Like Merthin, Caris is written as if she has a halo around her head. Of course you know she is going to triumph against all adversity. There is no thrill here that suggests otherwise. Against these two would parade all sorts of envious, greedy characters, all cut from the same cloth, none coming remotely close to any sense or reason.

The only characters whom I thought might still surprise me were Gwenda, a thief's daughter and Caris' friend, and Thomas, the mysterious knight, but instead they are given such paper-thin existences. Gwenda, shrewd and capable but still of largely uninformed peasant stock, does an inexplicable job of sounding like a lawyer in one of the confrontations in this book. Sir Thomas is all but forgotten towards the end. There were so many times that I wanted to put this book down but I felt the need to finish it because I felt as if I owed it to the Mr Follet who wrote Pillars of the Earth.

I could go on and on about the things that I did not appreciate in this voluminous story (I haven't even started on the logical lapses in the plot) but I know I have to stop at some point. I still think Mr Follet is talented enough in bringing out the rich, even minute, details of medieval life and anyone interested in that might be persuaded to give this a try. I urge you to check out reviews from other readers, because I think this averages four stars on Amazon and GoodReads. But in the end, World Without End is not for everyone, and it was certainly not for me.

Minotaur (Benjamin Tammuz)

'He remembered what Chekov said about loaded revolvers: "If a revolver appears in the first act of a play it must be fired in the third act." [...] A revolver can appear in the first act and be fired pointlessly, and despite this it will be a play worth performing...(p180)'

So goes a passage from Benjamin Tammuz' 1981 English Book of the Year winner Minotaur. This powerful story revolves around an Israeli secret agent and his all-consuming love for a much younger woman. This is not Lolita; the two never meet except through letters and records exchanged over the years. Thea, the young woman, is about seventeen when forty-one year old Alex Abramov first sees her on a bus, yet something in her carriage and demeanor captivates the older, hardened man. He watches her from a distance, and in time engages her in an intriguing epistolary relationship. Thea is drawn to her mysterious suitor as well, accepting the strangeness of his existence while attempting to create a life of normalcy.

Aside from Alex and Thea, Minotaur also chronicles the lives of two of Thea's lovers: G.R., the man she almost married, and Nikos, her most recent lover. By shifting the perspective to these men, Mr Tammuz eloquently pieces together key moments in Alex and Thea's shared history. The result is not just a plot that oscillates with richness and passion despite its deceptive simplicity, but detailed studies in character as well. Minotaur urges you to come full circle: it starts with Alex, the secret agent, before moving to G.R., Nikos, and finally, Alex, the man. Alex's devotion to Thea is moving; throughout the novel, I came to view him with equal parts of ire and pity.

Minotaur struck a chord in me because I responded to the masterful way that Mr Tammuz drew me into these characters' lives. There was something almost voyeuristic in it, as if the reader has taken over Alex's role as a spy. I found the images brimming with emotion (my copy was translated from Hebrew by Kim Parfitt and Mildred Budny). It stirred within me questions regarding morality and devotion and forgiveness until its beautiful, bitter denouement. 'God gave signs, long ago,' Mr Tammuz writes, 'only to his prophets, not to simple girls, even if they were as simple as goddesses, according to their lovers (p96).' The novel is a prophet then, and the signs of the resolution of Alex and Thea's lives are laid bare on the page. It is a love story that I know will always resonate with me.