Normal People by Sally Rooney

Reviews of Normal People inundated bookstagram, booktube, and the book blogosphere in late 2018 and early last year. The premise of the novel lured me, and the critical acclaim it received promised some thought-provoking (or at least debatable) insights on contemporary life.

In other words, Normal People could be my favorite type of fiction: accessible yet substantial.

[A small note: this blog is alive!! I now review some of the books I finished on my Instagram account, but for books I have a lot of thoughts about, nothing beats enthusiastic word vomit on a good old-fashioned blog post.]

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If you have even a passing interest in contemporary book releases, you’d probably have heard a bit of Normal People’s plot. Connell and Marianne go to the same high school in Sligo, a small town in Ireland. Both are academically gifted and are in the running to become class valedictorian, though Connell is thinly beating Marianne.

As individuals, they match well. Socioeconomically, it’s another story. Marianne is from a wealthy family. Her family owns what is essentially a mansion in Sligo and a holiday home in Italy. To hit home the difference of economic status between Connell and Marianne, we learn from the opening pages that Connell’s mother is employed by Marianne’s family to clean their house several times a week. Because Connell drives his mom to the mansion for the work, he and Marianne have opportunities to chat and interact with each other outside of school hours.

Connell is very popular in school. He is well-liked and a regarded school athlete. His peers want to hang out with him, the popular girls want to date him. Marianne, on the other hand, is a social outcast (or what cruel high schoolers would call a freak). She’s awkward and doesn’t fit in. Worse? She treats her peers’ bullying with insouciance and even contempt.

A romantic relationship develops between Connell and Marianne (no surprise!). Both treat the situation as a hookup, but we as readers know that strong feelings are what propel their bond.

Normal People continues to follow Connell and Marianne as university students in Trinity College, Dublin. In university, their social standing is reversed. Marianne’s gamine physique, interest in politics, and manners earn her popularity with the cool crowd. Meanwhile, Connell’s lack of style makes him socially invisible. His easygoing mien and desire to please everyone, once an advantage in high-school hierarchy, removes distinction in university. He is even at times called a “culchie” – an Irish redneck.

Connell and Marianne’s relationship changes and evolves. They are friends, they are lovers, they are no-longer-lovers-but-more-than-friends. More than an intimate peek at their bond, Normal People is the story of their challenges and growing pains in early 2010s Ireland.

Though Normal People is marketed as a romance, I am more compelled by Connell and Marianne’s coming-of-age story. Sure, the romance could be unexpectedly compelling (awkward and immature in the right places), but I wasn’t always convinced by the depth of their connection or why exactly they couldn’t stay away from each other. Read from a pure romance lens, Normal People is a pleasant read but not memorable. It’s more affecting and thoughtful as a coming-of-age tale. Connell and Marianne’s struggles to come into their own as young adults were absorbing; the focus is on their relationship simply because it is a large part of them growing up and becoming more settled in who they are.

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When I read, I’m always waiting for the phrase or moment that will make sense of the book title. In Normal People, it unfolds when Marianne tells Connell that she wants to be like normal people; maybe it will make people love her. As time passes, Marianne learns that “normal people”, those popular and sociable, aren’t always good people. Often, people who try their best to be good have a bit of an outcast or fuck up in them. I love that. That’s life, isn’t it?

People sacrifice a lot to be normal and popular and liked. Sometimes you have to ignore who you are. Sometimes you must mute your conscience. There’s a line in Normal People about bullying that encapsulates this perfectly (which I won’t spoil!)

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Normal People is often described as a millennial novel. While no book can comprehensively represent an entire demographic, as a millennial myself, I found Connell and Marianne’s growing pains relatable. Normal People beautifully captures what it is like to be in your early 20s, that exhilarating yet fleeting period in your life, when anything is possible and the world is your oyster. When you think you are special and you believe profoundly that you’re going to, if not change the world, provide some value to it. As a nearly-30 millennial, it made me sad for Connell and Marianne; they will not feel this way forever.

The novel is also preoccupied with the concept of social capital and how it changes and yo-yos over time. Marianne is a prime example of this: ostracized in high school yet popular in university – likely for the same reasons she was an outcast at school. Normal People comments on how quickly social standing can shift: a new location, a nasty rumor, etc. Is popularity worth chasing when it is so fickle? At the same time, is the contemporary pursuit of social capital fairer now? Any student of classic novels or history knows how fixed social standing was in the past (largely due to the lineage you are born into and the income you would likely inherit). Today, fortunes are more mutable.

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To end this review, a miniseries of Normal People produced by the BBC (of course!) and Hulu is coming soon. I’ve attached the video trailer below. It looks like it’s going to be good (to me, at least). I am surprised that the miniseries will be 6 episodes long. Normal People is a short novel, so I had expected 4 episodes would be enough to wrap up the storylines. I’m curious to see if there will be added or expanded scenes. With the book’s author Sally Rooney writing the script, I think it’s likely.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

She sat in the airless vehicle, which was getting more stifling by the second. She could feel her heart pounding so quickly. She has just bought a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar diamond ring she didn’t much care for, a twenty-eight thousand dollar bracelet she quite liked, and a seven hundred and eighty-four thousand dollar pair of earrings that made her look like Pocahontas. For the first time in weeks, she felt bloody fantastic.

The quote above was on my mind when I saw these dramatic, near-shoulder-grazing earrings in New York City’s trendy SoHo neighborhood earlier this year. These earrings were obviously impractical, like the ones Astrid Leong of Crazy Rich Asians impulsively bought. Where was I going to wear them? How often will I wear them? I don’t really have the lifestyle for jewelry this dramatic. Most of my time is spent at work or at home or at coffee shops.

But it was love at first sight. I stayed away for an hour or two to make sure I really wanted them. I did. Every time I moved away, my insides protested, anxious that someone else would snap them up. I still haven’t worn them outside the house, but whenever I take them out to admire them, I’m still as much in love. Pure joy was a good enough reason to purchase them.

Don’t worry, I didn’t spend anywhere near 784,000 dollars on them. And with that heartwarming love story out of the way, let’s get on with my review of Crazy Rich Asians.

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In Crazy Rich Asians, two young New York University professors, Rachel Chu and Nick Young have been in a romantic relationship for a good while. Nick wants to bring Rachel home to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding. Rachel accepts, hoping Nick will soon propose.

What Nick omits is that he is heir to an illustrious and impossibly wealthy Southeast Asian clan. Upon arrival, poor and oblivious Rachel must deal with the culture shock, money shock, Nick’s unreasonable mother, class snobbery, and bloodthirsty single ladies.

So far, so cliché. A plot like this has the potential to be an entertaining, Austen-esque romp. Trouble is, Nick and Rachel are quite tepid and uninteresting. Their story never lifts above a clichéd romcom, even up to the ending.

Kevin Kwan provided several subplots, mostly a collection of rich people and their silly antics. Some of the dialogue is truly hilarious (and deliciously ditzy!). Overall, though, many of the characters felt like nothing more than caricatures.

(Don’t take only my word for characterization though. A friend whose diplomat family worked in Southeast Asia and a Singaporean Instagram pal said that the characters are pretty true to life.)

A notable exception is Astrid Leong’s subplot. Astrid is Nick’s glamorous and elegant socialite cousin. Her story succeeded in conveying genuine depth and feeling. Not necessarily a rebel, she does break away from certain conventions of her exclusive milieu. She married a middle-class man forging his own career instead of old money/a high-profile politician/a royal offspring/an emerging billionaire.

But if there’s anything money can’t buy, it’s a happy marriage. Astrid’s plot feels sincere because its conflict is believable. I actually wished for Crazy Rich Asians to center its story on Astrid. Plus, she is written as a chic lady with impeccable taste and a discerning eye for style, rather than throwing money at designer labels. Come on, you have to admit she sounds a lot more fun than an everycouple.

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I was skeptical of the Crazy Rich Asians series (it’s a trilogy) when it started getting hype. The plot sounded like a typical romcom and it probably gained traction because the novel detailed a socioeconomic milieu Western readers didn’t know about. Still, I’m not immune to hype. And wasn’t it my duty as a Southeast Asian to read a novel about Southeast Asians that convinced Hollywood to feature a majority Asian cast for a film in twenty-five years?

While I didn’t find it particularly interesting, I don’t discourage anyone from reading Crazy Rich Asians. It’s fun and glossy. It may not offer anything new or particularly thoughtful, but every bibliophile needs a glossy read once in a while. It would be a good book to jumpstart your reading if you’ve been in a slump. It would be great for vacation too.

When all is said and done, however, my primary purpose in writing this review is to show off those gorgeous earrings and talk about them.

Have any of you read Crazy Rich Asians? What do you think?

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Oh look! A novel I had planned to review last year because 2017 marked its 20^th birthday. What? It’s January 2018 now? Whoops. Oh well.

The God of Small Things wasn’t the best fiction I read in 2017 (That minor honor goes to Shelter by Jung Yun, which I have yet to review), but I couldn’t get it out of my head months after finishing it.

The God of Small Things focuses on a trope I have always loved and Roy built a family saga around it. The trope in question? A noble house in decay.

Roy chose a fascinating period in the decline of an esteemed house. The God of Small Things wasn’t written in chronological order, but as our mind figures out the story’s linear timeline, we realize that the story enters at a point where the house is already in decay and losing prestige. The current generation is simultaneously in denial and attempting to stave away the inevitable.

So we turn the pages awaiting a climax, after which the house loses all standing, good name, and even its income.

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The God of Small Things starts with church rites. Sophie Mol, the nine-year-old half-British and half-Indian daughter of family heir Chacko, is dead. We know that Ammu, Chacko’s sister, and her twin children Rahel and Esthra were somehow seen as responsible for Sophie’s death. They were ostracized and pointed at during the funeral.

We are then launched into stories of various family members: the current clan and the older generation. Their backgrounds and most revealing anecdotes are told, creating fully realized characters. No one in this sprawling family is likable. In fact, the whole pack seriously needed copious therapy. All I see, page after page, is delusion, hypocrisy, petty drama, incompetence, and recklessness.

But then, is it a surprise when the man who built the family name was odious? A violent husband and an abusive father, but toadying towards the colonialists, his family cannot escape his clutches long after his death.

Decay and suffocation are themes that infuse The God of Small Things. When the timeline starts, Kerala, where the novel is set, was verdant and beautiful. When twin daughter Rahel returned as an adult woman, her hometown has become a tourist trap where water no longer supports life. The fish are dead and belly-up. The house falls, the land polluted. There is decay and there is inertia, the sense that everything stays the same, yet rot inevitably infests. There are fathers with great hopes for their sons but sons grow up to be menial men with mediocre jobs and class stays unchanged.

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The prose of The God of Small Things is famously divisive. It took me a while to finally take the plunge and read as I feared the novel required complete focus, with a dense writing style and a tangled family tree. Nah. Everything’s easy to follow.

The poetic flourishes of The God of Small Things reads childlike and excited to my eyes, rather than esoteric. Makes sense. While we are given an omnipresent view of nearly all the family members, a sizable chunk of the novel’s voice is heard from the twins Rahel and Esthra – children when the story begins, devastated adults at the novel’s end.

Overall, I took pleasure in Roy’s writing style, but the prose can and does cross the realm into being irritatingly overwritten. The God of Small Things is deeply descriptive, lyrical, and lush. Roy turned her pen and her senses to describe absolutely everything. The season’s overripe mangoes got a page’s worth of writing. It does get tiresome and The God of Small Things isn’t even a long novel. My edition is around 340 pages, but 40 pages of the book’s excessive detail could have been easily cut to produce a stronger novel: beautifully written and focused.

(Because dear god, sometimes I thought: right, can we get on with the actual story? Please?)

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Despite my quibbles with the writing style, The God of Small Things is a rich novel, full of themes to unpack and beautiful imagery.

I thought the climax and mystery surrounding Sophie Mol’s death were predictable. I guessed what happened not even a quarter into reading the book. No matter – I don’t think Roy was ever invested in the mystery either: the themes, characters, and overall story were what was emphasized.

Here’s a question: why hasn’t the BBC commissioned a miniseries on The God of Small Things? I mean, it’s got the big themes they love: class and colonialism. That alone should have gotten the agents talking.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham (Review and Book/Movie Comparison)

Read and reviewed as part of my Classics Club Challenge

Hahaha, the last book review on this blog was uploaded in early July. I hope I’m not too rusty.

(Although the fact that I finished The Painted Veil in early July also does not bode well).

Having read this novel nearly four months ago means that I have forgotten the finer details. Overall, however, I really liked it, in spite of my inability to create neat conclusions of its message and/or themes. Yet, in a way, the lack of absolute coherence in The Painted Veil added to its charm. Especially as the novel tackles some topics that, in real life, defies easy categorization, such as: the irrationality of romantic feeling and the influence on religion on one’s character.

Kitty, a pretty and frivolous English debutante, missed her prospects in the marriage market. In a panic, she accepts the proposal of Walter Fane, a dull bacteriologist due to sail to Crown Colony Hong Kong for his post. They quickly marry and settle in the colony, where Kitty meets Charlie Townsend, a handsome, suave, and married British government official. Kitty and Charlie fall into an affair and The Painted Veil enters at the point when Walter discovers the infidelity.

At first, Kitty and Charlie dismiss Walter. He is Charlie’s inferior in the job ladder. He is far too besotted with Kitty. Instead, Walter pushed an ultimatum to Kitty: he will either file for divorce and humiliate her, or she must follow him to the cholera-infested Chinese interior, risking death. Charlie shows his true colors: craven and unsympathetic. Kitty has no option but follow Walter to the mainland.

The Painted Veil, at least the novel version, is the story of Kitty’s introspection and self-improvement. It is not a love story, which the 2006 film adaptation starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts might lead you to believe.

While I liked the film version for what it was, I much preferred the novel. The novel’s outlook on life is far less simple. Love, and the blossoming of romantic love, is never simple. In the film, Kitty sees Walter’s virtues: his devotion to patients, his kindness, his morals, learns the error of her ways and falls in love with him. Kitty’s book counterpart, however, never falls in love with her husband despite seeing and acknowledging his qualities. She grows to admire him, but eros does not strike.

I appreciated the book’s touch. The film, in a way, pushed a simplistic message: “women, be less foolish and frivolous and just fall in love with the nice guy, will ya?” Never mind the fact that one must wonder at Walter’s supposed kindness when he insisted on bringing Kitty to a region that may spell death.

(I inwardly applauded “That’s my girl!” when book-Kitty exclaimed, “It’s not my fault you were an ass!” at Walter’s misguided punishment)

Kitty’s journey towards self-betterment, almost a coming of age, really, is believable because of the missteps she makes along the way. No one can ever say that Kitty attained perfection. Despite maturing throughout The Painted Veil, she falls short again and again. But she does learn after every debacle. She becomes stronger, wiser. Yet even stronger and wiser, Kitty can still make dreadful decisions – with a particular error close to the novel’s end. But Kitty learns from that too.

At the start of this review, I wrote that I couldn’t eke out the message of The Painted Veil. But perhaps it is simply this: that we make horrible mistakes in life, then we learn and get stronger. We slip up again. But we survive.

Maybe it’s trite. But that’s the point of fiction, no? To make clichéd bumper sticker phrases fresh and true all over again.

What I’m Reading

Man, getting back to fiction reviews isn’t easy. So let’s try a fluffy post to get the writing juices flowing.

I am firmly on the “one book at a time” camp. And yet. There had been four books that I wanted to read next and I truly could not decide which one beckoned most seductively.

One of the defining traits of a perfectionist is a “should, should, should” mentality: I should have done more work today. I should be doing something productive. I should focus my attention to one book only since reading multiple books has never worked in the past.

Well, literary polyamory may have never worked for me in the past, but I am working on my perfectionism. So screw rigidity! Here are the four books that lured me away from book monogamy:

1. Social Media is Bullshit by B.J. Mendelson

In my efforts to learn more about marketing, especially social media strategies for modern marketing, I browsed the business shelves of NYC’s The Strand Bookstore. I ended up with two books from that section: The New Rules of Marketing and PR and Social Media is Bullshit.

I was excited to read Social Media is Bullshit, because I read a few pages of it at the Strand and found it gripping – plus, I think a contrarian viewpoint would be a refreshing antidote against the breathless thinking that social media is the answer to all your business ills.

Unfortunately, it’s not a very good book so far. I’m not finished, but I’m more than halfway through and I dislike the author’s dour and overly cynical tone. His analogies don’t always make sense and some of the math is wrong. I do hope those issues were caused by human error rather than an insidious attempt to get readers to agree with his arguments. The book wasn’t well-edited as well, I spotted grammatical mistakes here and there.

2. Kubah by Ahmad Tohari

 

Tohari wrote my very favorite Indonesian novel, the venerable Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk (English translation: The Dancer), and I love his prose in general (see here), so it’s no surprise that I’m enjoying Kubah (roughly translated as Dome) very much. In fact, Kubah gets the second-most reading time after Social Media is Bullshit.

 Like Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, Kubah’s plot thread is put in motion by the infamous 1965 coup in Indonesia. While I love how Tohari treated the subject in Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk – that is, with sensitivity and complexity, I have my concerns about Kubah. The main thematic of the novel seems to be rediscovering religion and spirituality and I worry whether the denouement of Kubah will be nuanced and satisfying. Fiction that tackles this theme can end on an overly moralistic or simplistic tone. I hope I am proven wrong, though.

3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Maybe it’s time to get a new one…

I wanted a comfort read to go along with the shiny new things. I tried to fight the desire, yet whenever I attempted to stop adding Pride and Prejudice on my reading list, my inner Catherine de Bourgh threw a tantrum. In her immortal and hilarious words: “I insist on being satisfied!”

What can I say about Pride and Prejudice? Saying it is one of my favorite novels ever is hardly original. Look at the state of my copy! I once dropped it into a wet bathtub during a reading session.

There really is no point in providing a plot summary. Who doesn’t know the story gist at this point? Suffice to say, every time I pick up Pride and Prejudice again, I just feel so damned happy.

4. Better than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love by Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo

 

I’ve been talking a lot about perfectionism in my last two posts and this book is a big reason why. I’m only forty pages in and haven’t gotten into the strategies to utilize in daily life, but I’m impressed so far. Better than Perfect is very easy to read while still being insightful. The first segment is more about what makes a perfectionist tick, and reading the first chapters feels like multiple slaps in the face.

Dr. Lombardo includes a Perfectionist Self-Assessment in Better than Perfect. I scored 109 out of 120, which made me cringe. I mean, I obviously knew I was a perfectionist, but 109 out of 120 seems pretty extreme.

I might finish the other three books first before devoting entirely on Better than Perfect. It’s probably a good idea to focus on the self-help tactics with no distractions.

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And we’re done! I must say, I’m delighted that Kubah and Pride and Prejudice are on my current reads stack. I’m so hopelessly behind on my Classics Club Challenge.

Checking In

 

When it became clear that my unannounced hiatus was stretching longer and longer; when my workload was piling up week after week; when – shockingly, it was becoming clear that I was in no mood to read and was whittling days with not a page of a novel being turned, I knew that I wanted to write a “Checking In” post. Partially to just get the writing going, partially to list down the heavy backlog of blog posts that I still wanted to write and were therefore pending.

At first, I wanted to finish my “Checking In” post by mid-August. But I got swept away by work. I would mentally note an arbitrary deadline but work was unrelenting. Finally, I told myself that I should just crank out and upload “Checking In” anytime before September 10, when I would be leaving for my USA vacation.

Well, it’s early October now and I’ve been in Indonesia for more than a week. Whoops.

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I’m always a flurry of apologies and excuses whenever I start blogging again. While I’m always genuinely sorry for absences and wish I could write more consistently (for myself too, since persistence and writing everyday will make me a better writer), I can’t pretend that blogging takes precedence over my job.

In my case, up until my flight boarding time to San Francisco, I was frantically wrapping up an article in an airport coffee shop. It was worth it, though. I got to spend my vacation work-free. Being an INFJ, sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from helping out my office here and there – until my own supervisor told me to knock it off and just enjoy my damned vacation.

So enjoy my vacation I did.

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After coming back and unpacking, it became clear that putting the brakes on book buying throughout July and August was the right thing to do. I bought no books in August and got two free hand me downs from my grandfather in July (details here).

Look! Just look at this pile. There are 16 books here. It took me a while to reorder the configuration of my shelves so these new books will fit.

Haul of shame

Bonus: I, uh, stole September’s start and bought the anthology Kumpulan Budak Setan prior to my USA trip  at the local Gramedia. I’ve wanted to read Intan Paramaditha’s feminist/Gothic short stories for a few years now. The book I actually wanted was her short story collection Sihir Perempuan (which I will roughly translate as Women Magic) but I couldn’t find it. On a brighter note, this anthology includes short stories by Eka Kurniawan (who I seriously need to start reading) and Ugoran Prasad (who I have never heard of, but who knows? He might be a new favorite author for all I know).

Kumpulan Budak Setan (roughly translated: Slaves of the Devil)

Another no buy is in order: no new books throughout October and maybe November.

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A “Checking In” post seems a good place to list down all the blog posts I wanted to write during vacation. Or even all the posts I had hoped to finish pre-vacation but didn’t, and yet I still want to write them anyway.

Here’s a list of pending book reviews:

1. Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops in official English translation) by Andrea Hirata
2. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
3. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
4. A Pocket Full of Rye (Translated to Indonesian as Misteri Burung Hitam) by Agatha Christie
5. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Additionally, I have plans to write about my USA trip and the book shopping I did. Combining all the material into one post is too much, though. I’ll need to split the post into three, denoting the three major areas I visited.

1. San Francisco and the South Bay Area in California
2. Seattle and Spokane in Washington
3. New York City Area

Each post will be about the books I bought, musings on local bookshops, and some of the photos I took. Since I have accumulated a backlog of food and general travel photos, I can write about that too (Let me know if you’re interested).

Well, look at how this simple “Checking In” post has bloated. Congratulations on making it this far and I hope it won’t be long until my next post.

July Desires

Around mid-May, I imposed a book low-buy upon myself for the rest of 2016 to control my swelling spending. But of course, there are books I currently want. There are always books I currently want. If I had a default mode, it would be: “always wanting books.” At the moment, these are the books that nags loudest of all:

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton

I have wanted this book ever since I was in high school, because the spice trade is so fascinating to me. No doubt it is related to my nationality – I’m Indonesian and Indonesia is widely known as the Spice Islands. Nutmeg and cloves are indigenous to Indonesia, actually. And it is this very wealth that lured centuries of colonialism to our shores. I had thought that Nathaniel’s Nutmeg would explore the spice trade and the political situation in Indonesia at the time, but online research is telling otherwise. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is more against-all-odds adventure caper, it seems. Boo!

However, my desire for Nathaniel’s Nutmeg has ebbed and flowed for such a long time that I suspect I may just pull the trigger and buy it. And yet, there’s probably a reason why I managed for years without it. It’s probably bad policy to buy a book unless you really, really want it. Gah, let’s just call my desire for Nathaniel’s Nutmeg low-level lust.

Anthony Bourdain Omnibus: Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour

This is another book for which my desire has waxed and waned. I have loved Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows ever since junior high school. Underneath his brash machismo is a deep respect for the culture of others. I specifically want this edition because it has two of his early books: Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour (also the name of the TV show that first put him on the map). Like Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, I have wanted this omnibus for a long, long time but have never pulled the trigger. Lately, I find myself wanting it again. Yet like Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, there’s probably a good reason why I haven’t shelled out my cash by now. I’ve never desired the book badly. And I guess I can always satisfy myself by binge-watching Bourdain’s television shows.

 

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, specifically The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron

Sometime this week, I watched Disney’s 1985 film The Black Cauldron following a dear friend’s recommendation. Such mixed feelings. The visuals were splendid, the score is moody and haunting, and there were moments full of childlike magic. But the storytelling and characterization left something to be desired.

According to the film’s Wikipedia page: “Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, was dismayed by the product and the animators felt that it lacked “the humor, pathos, and the fantasy which had been so strong in Lloyd Alexander’s work. The story had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it was heartbreaking to see such wonderful material wasted.””

When I found out Lloyd Alexander authored the source material, desire for the Chronicles of Prydain sharpened. He is another author I’ve wanted to read for a long time but somehow never actually picked up.

(Yes, there is a definite pattern here)

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

I squarely blame mudandstars for this lemming. Her review (link here) is irresistible for this literary horror lover. How could I resist a shrouding sense of menace, the specter of a break-up, creepy parents, and knotting dread and tension exploding into a climax? Ugh, I want this book.

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Weirdly, listing all these books and analyzing why I want them has deflated my desire a little bit. Perhaps I find my own desires ridiculous? And perhaps I should make my monthly desires a regular post for my own sake?

This low-buy will stick all throughout 2016 excepting the month of September, when I will attend my cousin’s wedding in the USA. If I’m going all the way to the Bay Area-Seattle-NYC (in that order), I’m going to take full advantage of all the wonderful secondhand bookshops. Take all my money, America!!

June Low-Buy Report

Um, hello. I’ve been a bad blogger: neglecting my blog, ignoring comments from lovely people. Work has been intense but that’s no excuse. Besides, I miss blogging.

Good news: I stayed within my budget this month. June was only my second month of noting all my discretionary spending but already I see results. My biggest spending is concentrated on reading materials and beauty products and in June, I only came away two books and one Urban Decay eyeshadow poorer.

Of course, it helps that two lovely friends gifted me two novels each. So in total, I got six new books in the month of June.

Clockwise from top left: Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson, Mariana by Monica Dickens, The Book Collector by Alice Thompson, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Bekisar Merah by Ahmad Tohari, and From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra

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I studied abroad in London as an undergraduate. That was when I found out about the glorious Persephone Books. I visited their shop and bought Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey for myself and Miss Buncle’s Book as a birthday gift for a flatmate. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is mediocre – the only dud Persephone I’ve read. But Miss Buncle’s Book stuck with me. My flatmate couldn’t stop thanking me and praising the novel to the high heavens. How charming it was! How funny! How adorable! And so I fell into book lust.

This was some years ago. A dear friend asked if she could get some Persephones from London for me, which was already lovely in itself and I didn’t want to burden her so I only asked for Mariana by Monica Dickens. I’ve wanted Mariana ever since I read that Persephone reissued it because they wanted to publish a book similar in feel to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle.

(I Capture the Castle is wonderful forever. Read it, read it, read it!)

The friend said, ”There’s something else you want from Persephone that you aren’t telling me. Spill!” Some persistent nudging and a recounting of my long lust for Miss Buncle’s Book later, here I am with both novels. Friends who trained to be therapists can be so eerily perceptive.

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I had asked for The Book Collector by Alice Thompson for my birthday this year. I was seduced by Salt Publishing’s description of the novel on their website, which reads:

Alice Thompson’s new novel is a Gothic story of book collecting, mutilation and madness. Violet is obsessed with the books of fairy tales her husband acquires, but her growing delusions see her confined in an asylum. As she recovers and is released a terrifying series of events is unleashed.

Gothic fiction might just be my favorite genre and The Book Collector promises to have the uncanny and the locked-up madwoman in spades. I’m also intrigued because the description promises touches of modernism and meta within the Gothic and the horror.

A good friend couldn’t find it online so she got me Kelly Link’s short story collection Magic for Beginners instead. She recently found The Book Collector on Book Depository, however, and pounced. Oh, and she added The Vegetarian by Han Kang on her cart since I’ve been eyeing it too.

(I have such wonderful friends, guys. Slap me if I ever take them for granted).

I’m sure most of you know by now that The Vegetarian won the Man Booker International Prize recently and tells the story of a South Korean woman who renounces meat in a society where vegetarianism is rare. It’s the themes that made me want the novel badly. Gender politics, mental illness, and societal imprisonment are all themes I love and cannot stop reading about.

—

My pangs of regret on buying Bekisar Merah by Ahmad Tohari waxes and wanes. Ahmad Tohari is the Indonesian author I adore most and I have resolved to reading everything he has written that is currently available. However, purchasing Bekisar Merah could have been delayed. I had several unread Tohari books already and now I feel guilty every time I approach my bookshelves.

Oh well. What’s done is done. And at least Indonesian novels are cheaper than imported ones. I remember little about the synopsis of Bekisar Merah except that it is a historical fiction novel that follows a mixed-race woman throughout her life in Java as she navigates a society that is hostile towards her.

—

Lately, I’ve been wanting to read more educational material. Maybe political, maybe historical. Usually, I would pick up Time magazine or the Economist when such desires flow but this time I wanted it in book form. I read the blurb of From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra in a local bookshop and was immediately fascinated. The Victorian era was a horrible time for Asia – most areas had been colonized and From the Ruins of Empire details the intellectual response of Asia. Some figures want to stick to traditional roots, some become moderates, and others became convinced that a radical ideology was the answer.

I might read From the Ruins of Empire first but I don’t know. My mood changes daily. Anyway, thank you for sticking through this unnecessarily long post. I hope you enjoyed oohing and aahing over my new books with me.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: More a Comparison than a Review

 

Read and reviewed as part of my Classics Club Challenge

My copy of Of Mice and Men. Inherited from my grandfather and published in 1938

Isn’t it strange how the fiction we completely adore are the most elusive to review?  When you are completely absorbed in another world, a world more real than our own, who has the time to analyze themes, symbolism, motifs, and all that faff? Sometimes fiction just works, no thousand words necessary. And I say this as someone who used to spend every day analyzing themes, symbolism, and motifs.

In case you haven’t guessed, I completely adored John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I couldn’t put it down when reading. I even spent my lunch break reading. I was desperate to know what will happen to George and Lennie. What I’m having trouble with is putting into words why I loved Of Mice and Men so much.

In Of Mice and Men, we enter the lives of two drifting California laborers during the Great Depression: George and Lennie. Both men have fled their previous employer because of an incident involving Lennie. It’s easy to infer that Lennie has a mental disability and is both devoted and dependent on George, but George cares deeply for Lennie as well. They are sustained by a shared dream of owning their own piece of land.

George and Lennie quickly find new employment, where they find friends and kind souls along with the new boss’ belligerent son and his dangerous wife. Characters and events weave around each other to a climactic action, leading into tragedy.

(I will never laugh again at generic blubs. It is difficult to write the synopsis of a book without spoiling key plot points while not sounding pathetically vague, which I have failed to do. Apologies)

Part of the reason why Of Mice and Men confounded me, despite my love, was how similar I found Steinbeck and Hemingway’s themes and dominant male presence. Yet I found Hemingway cold and dead. I reviewed Hemingway’s collection Men without Women very negatively last year. Meanwhile, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is heartfelt and exciting.

A dear friend and fellow Steinbeck lover suggested that Steinbeck had “sensitivity to injustice and personal emotions [and] deep commitment to realism and humanism.” I do think there’s something to her theory. Humanism and sympathy are key. There’s a tenderness to Steinbeck that Hemingway lacked. I cared for George and Lennie and Of Mice and Men’s cast. Fiction that inspires emotions just work, no thousand words necessary. Sometimes the difference between a magical author and a merely skilled author is the breath of life he gives his world and characters. I think, ultimately, that is the main difference between Steinbeck and Hemingway.

 

Belenggu (Shackles) by Armijn Pane

Read and reviewed as part of my Classics Club Challenge

Published in 1940, Belenggu (or Shackles in its English reincarnation) is widely considered the first modern Indonesian novel. I agree with this assessment. Prior, Indonesian prose focused on the dramatic romances of star-crossed lovers with rotten villains twirling metaphorical moustaches. Granted, early Indonesian literature had cultural and social commentary to make up for the soapy melodrama, but for the most part, novels like Sitti Nurbaya have always elicited eye rolls from my part.

Belenggu is a love story too. A love triangle, in fact. However, the novel was written in a radically different way than its predecessors. There is no antagonist; all the conflict is strictly internal. No one is a paragon of virtue or a symbol of all evil. It is also a city novel, unlike previous prose that favored rural settings.

Despite its revolutionary status, however, I didn’t like Belenggu much.

**

Tono and Tini’s marriage is fading. They scarcely spend time with each other and when they do have to face one another, Tini is angry and bitter while Tono is nonplussed and retiring. Worse, their ideologies clash. Tono wants a traditional wife who stays at home and takes off his shoes. Tini wants independence and freedom – she explicitly states that she has the right to go out anytime, just like her husband.

When Tono meets his childhood playmate and neighbor Yah again, he finds in her the woman of his dreams. Yah is warm, polite, and completely devoted to pleasing him. It is not long until they fall into an affair.

**

Despite the summary, Belenggu couldn’t be further from torrid. This is a thinky, Freudian novel – with massive amounts of thought processes and philosophical meanderings. My biggest problem with Belenggu is that for its modern storytelling approach to work, the fictional characters had to be at least somewhat believable. The characters in Belenggu are not, sadly. After a certain point, they even stopped speaking like normal people. Going further, they became symbols. Or conduits for Pane’s philosophical reflections.

My edition of Belenggu (I read Shackles, the English version) is only 162 pages long but the story dragged so badly. There really wasn’t much of a story to begin with – which makes all the thinking and philosophizing and symbolizing feel like copious padding.

Pane tried to tackle a myriad of themes in Belenggu: equal rights, politics, ideology, gender relations, philosophy, even the meaning of life. Yet all of them fell flat and none of them stood out.

The usage of shackles as a motif is good. Everyone in Belenggu is shackled by something: shackled to a marriage, shackled to an ideology, and most of all, shackled to the past. Motifs alone don’t make a good novel, though.

**

Overall, I think Belenggu is valuable mostly for scholars studying the development of Indonesian literature. If you’re a casual reader wanting a readable novel, look for something more contemporary.