It might be fair to say that Daphne du Maurier wrote the book on suspense novels. That book would be Rebecca her 1938 romantic mystery that set the bar for its many predecessors. It embodies many of the genre’s tropes – twisted love affairs, a sprawling manor, breathlessly rendered settings – and proves that in literature, as in the rest of life, the first is often the best.

Rebecca begins slowly, with the unnamed narrator’s launch into British high society courtesy of a marriage proposal from the aristocrat Maximilian de Winter. Gentility does not become her, and about a third of the book is simply her acclimatizing to her newfound wealth and status. Once things get percolating, though, it’s evident why Rebecca was an instant literary sensation. Manderley, the enormous de Winter estate, is revealed to be a refined mortuary, where relics of the first Mrs. de Winter – some tangible, some less so – haunt every room. Slowly, the heroine realizes all was not as it seemed with the first Mrs. de Winter – the Rebecca of the title – and that the questions about her strange death are not content to lie unanswered.

A novel as old as Rebecca is bound to show its age. Certain aspects of this story are too dated to appreciate. The narrator’s tremulous tone and the many long, drawn-out passages about the pitfalls of upper-crust etiquette, for example, bored me. But for a book written in 1938, its darker elements retain their freshness and ability to interest.

Fiction Daphne du Maurier, Novel 3 comments

It has probably been two years since I read  In the Miso Soup, which I consider more than just Ryu Murakami’s flagship novel, but one of the few pieces of literature that I still draw on regularly when I want to ush and gush about fiction. I can still conjure what it feels like to read that book: Dreamy, terrifying and lonely, with a touch of nausea. And whenever I get into a conversation about books with someone I know can handle the dankest of dank, and the sourest of sour, the bloodiest of bloody – something that should be packaged with it’s own air sickness bag — I recommend it.

Since then, I’ve been working my way through his canon, but cannot find another instance of where Murakami gives the literary equivalent of a kidney chop like he did in Miso Soup.

Piercing, which was the followup to the greatest book of all time has moments of sublimely ishy text, but just doesn’t have plot flow that it requires. It’s like using fresh ingredients on day-old bread. Or, in this case, using freshly sanitized puncturing tools on a seasoned cutter.

Murakami gets to his trademark grit on impact, with Kawashima Masayuki watching his newborn daughter sleep in her crib in the middle of the night. Within three pages, he is caressing her cheek with an ice pick. Imagining what it would feel like to puncture the baby’s skin. Instead of following his brutal instincts, he makes himself a promise: He will instead stab a prostitute with the ice pick. Get it out of his system, and save his little family. Kawashima begins filling a notebook with elaborate plans involving gloves, a change of clothes, a falsified accent, and the size, shape and skin color of the victim.

“The woman must be not only young, but petite. A large woman would be more difficult to control in the event of any unforeseen glitches,” he writes after a dry-run with an aged masseuse.

Turns out this isn’t the first time that Kawashima has experienced such a craving. While he has gone on to become a successful graphic designer, a father, the husband of a woman who teaches classes in bread and pastry making in their home, he has had a troubled past. Abused, neglected, eventually raised by a foster family. When he was in his late teens, he got embroiled in a relationship with an older woman. A stripper old enough to sometimes mistaken for his mother, and who openly mocked him by bringing home strange men. One night, in a snit, Kawashima stabbed that woman in the stomach with an ice pick. The police were never involved. The woman lived. They broke up, but she did tell him that it really hurt during a few conversations they had in the aftermath.

When he makes the call to the escort service, Sanada Chiaki’s perspective comes into play. The young OCD prostitute is a cutter who has recently misplaced her sex drive. She’s got her own tales to tell, and when it finally comes down to go-time, things fail to follow the plans Kawashima sketched out so carefully.

Murakami – a Japanese novelist, musician, TV talk show host – still manages to write better-than average fiction even at his worst. He creates worlds that look normal on the outside, but when you lift the lid you find it oozing with lawlessness. Well dressed sociopaths camouflaged with manners and hygiene, and bystanders who don’t just turn a blind eye – they don’t pay close enough attention to notice that anything might be amiss in the first place.

This one is filled with black humor and picturesque words, combined in a way to provide ample opportunity for barfage:

Inspired by a magazine article he’d read and photocopied in the library, Kawashima had decided to buy a knife as well as an ice pick. The article was about a thirty-two year old ‘soap tart’ who’d been found murdered in a hotel room, with her Achilles Tendon severed. An anonymous police detective had volunteered this explanation: ‘When you cut the Achilles tendon, the sound it makes is as loud and sharp as a gunshot. The killer must have known that and taken pleasure in it.

Delicious and visual words, but the apex of the novel is long with frequent perspective shifts that make it a little clunky. So it’s good. It’s just no Miso Soup.

Fiction Novel, Ryu Murakami No comments

I think I came at Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man with the wrong approach. I saw the movie adaptation before I read the novel (I know. I know!) so I was expected some sort of eulogy, a soft and mournfully worded ode to a life about to end.

What I did not expect was a polemic, a collection of vehement little diatribes studded onto a thin skeleton of literary fiction.

A Single Man reminded me of the kind of books I was assigned to read in high school, books where characters took pains to spell out their (i.e. the author’s) views on social or political topics. It moves forward in fits and starts, pulses of plot serving only to move the main character, George, forward to another scene and another character to whom he can spell out his opinions on any of a number of issues. The novel format here was seemed utilitarian. This is not to say there weren’t good parts – the opening pages felt like being hit with a lead slug, so powerful was the sense of being deadened and devoid of life – but style and grace weren’t Isherwood’s motives for writing A Single Man.

That being said, I was startled by how fresh some of Isherwood’s attitudes remain. A Single Man was first published in 1964, yet some of Isherwood’s positions on higher education, American culture, suburbia, and social acceptance of gay men and women seem like they could have been made today. Reading it made me wonder if we’ve really come very far in this past half-century.

Fiction Christopher Isherwood, Novel No comments

Unable to read Mockingjay until three days after its release, I stayed off Twitter and Facebook to avoid spoilers. I ignored emails with Mockingjay thoughts or links to book reviews. I didn’t even read the book jacket. When I’m looking forward to a book, especially the last in a series, I want to dive in with a blank slate.

If you loved the first two books of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, you should do the same. Stop reading this review and dive into Mockingjay. It’s worth it; you’ll adore it. It may even make you cry.

If you haven’t started reading The Hunger Games series (Jodi, are you listening?), you should also stop reading and go get the first book. What’s not to love? A country divided and ruled by the ruthless Capitol, and a strong, smart girl challenging them at every turn. Succumb to peer pressure and start reading already.

If any of you made it this far, you’re the diehards, the ones who loved the first two books and have already finished Mockingjay. This review is for you.

The last time we saw Katniss, she was again defying the Capitol and living through the Hunger Games. The fight-to-the-death games, forced upon each District of Panem by the cruel Capitol and broadcast live across the nation, were just as violent as ever, but these games ended with half of the surviving victors whisked away to safety and the other half captured by the Capitol. Little did Katniss know, these games were actually a critical part in the uprising against the Capitol.

Mockingjay opens with the aftermath of the Capitol’s retaliation when we follow Katniss through the wreckage that was her home, District 12. Walking over skulls and on ashes, Katniss blames herself for those who died and she contemplates whether or not she can do what they’re asking of her in District 13.

District 13, thought to have been destroyed years earlier, is the home base for the uprising, and they need Katniss. Beloved because of her defiance in the Hunger Games, District 13 believes Katniss can unite all the districts and encourage them to fight.

Making Katniss the face of the uprising doesn’t necessarily sit well with her. Are they just using her as a pawn in a game, just like she was during the Hunger Games? Throughout Mockingjay Katniss questions this and the cruelty of war, from both sides of the conflict. Where do you draw the lines for what is acceptable in war? Can that even be defined?

Mockingjay is a great ending to The Hunger Games series, though it is unsettling and has its share of sorrow. Some of your favorite characters may die and the final question – will she choose her best friend Gale or her Hunger Games partner Peeta? – will be answered, though nothing really ends happily here. You will have some hope, but I just felt overwhelming sadness for Katniss, so the little bit of hope I had wasn’t enough. War is a bitch.

Fiction Suzanne Collins, Young adult 3 comments

It seems most of the MN Reads’ writers are on vacation. And I’m in the middle of about four books. So instead of a review, I’m going to ask you to help settle a raging debate.

Last week at Grumpy’s, a few of my classmates from The Loft’s Short-Short Fiction class were celebrating the our last session. Over some tator tots and jalapeno bacon we got to talking at Gary Shteyngart and how he’s coming to read at Magers & Quinn on September 21, which is the same night Jonathan Franzen is going to be at The Fitzgerald.

I mentioned how I’m in the midst of Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, which is kind of unsettling and creepy (in a very good way so far) and Will agreed that the book was kind of sad and depressing but that he mostly stopped reading it because of the author photo. Apparently he has issues with “neckwraps.”

“What the shit is a neckwrap?” I asked.

Will went on to fumble through a description of this alleged “neckwrap.” We were all confused. I was convinced it was something Mr. Furley had worn in “Three’s Company” (though I mistakenly claimed it was something Larry would wear to the Regal Beagle).

Last night, Will emailed me a picture of this alleged “neckwrap.”

I replied, “That’s a scarf. This, this is a neckwrap.”

“YOU LIE” was his reply.
“Dude, I am totally going to ask the internet,” I said.

So internet. Which would you consider a neckwrap and and which a scarf?

Book News gary shteyngart, mr. furley 5 comments