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.

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Image courtesy of Goodreads

Suicide, depression, love, sexuality, crushes, cliques of popular, manipulative peers – the whole gamut of teen life is explored in this literary graphic masterpiece.

Above is the blurb for young adult graphic novel Skim. A bold claim, to be sure. But is it accurate?

I agree with the blurb – to an extent. Skim never delved deeply into any of the promised themes. They are all within the pages, but don’t expect a thorough examination.

My evaluation may not sound enthusiastic, but I think it was the right approach for the story. Whenever suicide, depression, or falling in love touches our lives – whether directly or through others, whether as teenagers or as adults who should know better, we are left with far more questions than answers. Worse, our sense of self and established beliefs are often shaken.

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The year is 1993. “Skim” is the nickname of Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a Canadian high school student with estranged parents. She lives with her mother, but the relationship is distant. She is into tarot cards, Wicca, and astrology. She’s starting to have differences with her best friend Lisa. She’s a misfit at school. And she’s falling in love for the first time.

Yet her story is essentially a subplot. Katie Matthews is one of the popular girls, whose outgoing and athletic ex-boyfriend committed suicide. The overarching narrative of Skim centers on the aftermath of this boy’s suicide.

The students at Skim’s high school don’t know Katie’s ex-boyfriend (they go to different schools), but everyone has a response. From insensitivity to ignorance (teenagers, eh?) to eye rolling at the random hysteria, everyone has a response.

What Skim captured well is the voice and reactions of teenagers. A lot of stupid ideas are executed with (likely) good intentions.

Skim is wonderfully realized. She is the way teen misfits usually are. Smarter, sharper, and wiser than the expectations of those around her, but not as wise and smart as she wishes she is.

I so love the page where the concerned but bungling school counselor pulled Skim into her office. Girls like Skim, with their gothic ways and “depressing stimuli”, were “very fragile.” In other words, girls like Skim were more prone to suicide.

To which Skim snarkily thought: “Truthfully I am always a little depressed but that is just because I am sixteen and everyone is stupid […] I doubt it has anything to do with being a goth.” Oh, and “John Reddear was on the volleyball team and he was the one who committed suicide.” I chuckled. Then cringed. Skim’s inner thoughts were close to those of my teenage self, though I was never a goth and always a humanities nerd.

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So ends my adventures into Groundwood Books’ graphic novels. I’ve read four so far (I’ve also read A Year without Mom, Harvey, and Jane, the Fox, and Me). All the graphic novels are quiet, slice-of-life stories of innocence’s transition into mature realization after one central event, and Skim is definitely my favorite. It’s the grittiest one I’ve read, which makes sense as the other three are targeted at much younger audiences.

Despite my reluctance to read young adult fiction as I often find the characters’ interests too shallow and juvenile, Skim is a winner. Sensitive topics are treated unflinchingly (though never deeply) yet with restraint and understanding. The characters and their reactions ring genuine, especially those of Skim and Katie.

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I know there’s very little chance anyone from Groundwood Books would read this, but it is thanks to them that I could read these graphic novels. During the 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair, their representatives very kindly let me take the books I was interested in off their stand free of charge as they didn’t want to take them back to Canada. It sounds like a win-win situation, but the reps were generous. Other publishers got rid of their books by selling them at a discount. Yet one of the Groundwood reps said she is more than happy if someone took the books to a welcoming home.

The publishing world is a business like any other. But stories like the one I experienced reminded me that book lovers are united in something wonderful. Loving books is often a personal matter, but the community created is tangible and passionate.

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.

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

I read Hotel Iris, my first Yoko Ogawa, last year (full-length review here) and had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I loved the prose: pure, pristine, and clear. But the story leaves something to be desired – its ending was rushed, abrupt, and anticlimactic. I loved Ogawa’s writing style enough to try again though, so here we are with a review of her short story collection Revenge.

Folks, I love Revenge. The collection is subtitled “Eleven Dark Tales” and it’s no joke. I was left feeling a bit grim post-reading. But if you wanted serial killers and vampires, Revenge isn’t for you. Revenge is more eerie than scream-inducing, its horror lies in atmosphere rather than bombast. And I do think Ogawa’s almost-surgical prose lends an iciness that adds to the creepy atmosphere of Revenge.

How to describe the stories in unison? Sometimes it feels as though they had a touch of magical realism. In “Old Mrs. J,” a murdered husband is buried in a garden patch, resulting in carrots shaped like human hands. In “Sewing for the Heart,” a nightclub singer’s heart is attached to her outer chest. Yet you can read all the stories as part of the realism genre. The heart condition can be waved off as a health anomaly, the weird carrots can be attributed to the seeds or the soil. But always there is an underlying sense of the uncanny.

Revenge plays into my favorite horror thematic: that the scariest actions aren’t caused by supernatural beings, but by the awful side of human nature. This is a short story collection about being lonely and adrift – and the horrifying things people do to feel a little less lonely and adrift. Misery loves company and if you can’t be a little less miserable, why not drag others into a state of misery?

***

I’m separated from my copy of Revenge as I write this review and I couldn’t find the full story list online, even Revenge’s Wikipedia page only noted eight stories. Surprisingly though, after some reminiscing, I remember the full list along with the general plot of each story. The incident speaks more of a strong short story collection than a superlative memory, sadly.

In case anyone is looking for Revenge’s story list, here it is in order: “Afternoon at the Bakery,” “Fruit Juice,” “Old Mrs. J,” “The Little Dustman,” “Lab Coats,” “Sewing for the Heart,” “Welcome to the Museum of Torture,” “The Man Who Sold Braces,” “The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger,” “Tomatoes and the Full Moon,” and “Poison Plants.”

If you have read a review of Revenge, any review of Revenge, you’ll know that the stories are loosely connected. The eponymous man who sold braces, for instance, is also the curator of the Museum of Torture. But you can treat each story as a standalone piece.

I didn’t structure this review well, sorry, so I’ll just talk about some of my favorite stories in Revenge.

Of all the stories, “Old Mrs. J” has the most traditional Gothic horror feel. There’s a creepy old lady, there’s a grisly murder, and there’s some, shall we say, odd-looking harvest. Now, I love Gothic horror a lot, a lot, but when I got to “Sewing for the Heart,” I knew Revenge was something special. In fact, all the stories following “Sewing for the Heart” are excellent.

In “Sewing for the Heart,” a bagmaker is asked to create a bag to hold the heart of a young woman who suffers a health condition – her heart is attached to her outer chest. Only the best of horror stories can create such a building sense of dread and trepidation. You are helpless to keep on turning the pages as the bagmaker’s obsession grows and grows, as tensions twist and knot to a climax. The bagmaker’s dastardly decision at the end is grisly but unsurprising, and the fact that Ogawa conveyed such a perfectly-contained story in under twenty pages is astonishing.

“The Man Who Sold Braces” is a character study first, and what a great one it is. Somehow Ogawa, in her unflinching, unsentimental, and unclouded prose, managed to make the eponymous man, despite his endless list of failures and misdeeds, sympathetic.

Prior, I wrote that in Revenge, people will perform dark deeds to be a little less lonely and adrift. But “Tomatoes and the Full Moon,” a quieter story than its predecessors, is an inversion. It turns out, people will also abandon self-preservation in their desperation to connect with another. People will go to extreme lengths, either way, to feel less unmoored in life, it seems.

The concluding story “Poison Plants” is also a quiet tale, with an unrelenting sadness rendered in Ogawa’s icy touch. This story made me fearful of aging, seeing how pathetic it made our narrator.

***

Bottom line: Revenge is an excellent collection, even if horror is not to your taste. Most of the horror is borne from a dark look at human nature, so I’d say Revenge is great for fans of literary fiction. It’s certainly one of this literary fiction devotee’s favorite reads of the year so far.

Jane, the Fox and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault

Translated from French by Cristelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou

At this point, I’ve read three of Groundwood Books’ graphic novels for children. Organized by reading order and incidentally, from least to most adored: A Year without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova, Harvey by Herve Bouchard and Janice Nadeau, and now, Jane, the Fox and Me. I’m sensing a pattern here: the artwork is always superlative, the stories quiet, gentle, and tender. So quiet, gentle, and tender are they – that all of them are a tad forgettable.

That’s not to say that Groundwood Books choose stinkers. Far from it. These are good graphic novels with some excellent qualities. To me personally, they just don’t have that special something that would push me to rate them higher. And in fact, I respect Groundwood Books for choosing subdued atmosphere over dramatic bombast. One of the elements I appreciate from these graphic novels is how precisely they capture a child’s innocence/self-centeredness. Political havoc in A Year without Mom matters not to little Dasha. She’s more concerned about her first crush and how her school friends treat her. A parent’s death is unreal to the titular protagonist of Harvey – he spends the night thinking of an old movie he once saw.

Jane, the Fox and Me similarly tells of a young child’s tribulations. Helene is not living in a war-torn country. She is not dealing with abusive parents. But she is struggling all the same. Girls who were once her friends are bullying her at school. Her mother, although loving, is too tired raising three children alone to notice. Helene finds solace in reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. She identifies with Jane, from her plainness to her mettle. But when Helene’s class leaves for a two-week nature camp, will Jane Eyre alone save her from the cruelty of other kids?

I’m not the first reviewer who has noticed that Helene’s world is drawn in black-and-white yet moments when she is recounting Jane Eyre are fully colored. A clever and beautiful touch, I think. Not to mention, long-term bibliophiles would relate – As a child, school is too mundane and gray to be real, fictional worlds were brighter and felt more corporeal to me.

So to conclude, I was mildly disappointed because I had heard such lovely things about Jane, the Fox and Me on booktube. Perhaps the hype ruined it for me even though there was nothing particularly wrong with Jane, the Fox and Me. Britt and Arsenault really captured Helene’s isolation and loneliness exceptionally well. You can really feel Helene and her perspective of the world.

Of course, the artwork is simply beautiful – I expect no less from anything Groundwood Books publish at this point. Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki is the final unread Groundwood graphic novel I own and I’m looking forward to it.

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.

 

Early Impressions: Nigella Bites and Some Baked Goods

This post was supposed to be a review of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but I forgot to take a photo of my copy and I’m away at the moment. Thereby, my review is postponed. Foreshadowing alert: I loved Of Mice and Men. It’s the second book I rated five stars on goodreads in 2016.

You may think it’s a bit silly to delay a book review just because of its cover. Yes, I can easily upload a picture of one of the hundreds of Of Mice and Men covers floating online. But my copy is dear to my heart. It previously belonged to my grandfather and was published in 1938, merely one year after Of Mice and Men was first released. I kind of want to give whoever is reading this blog a feel of how damn thick 1938 paper were. Reading my grandpa’s Of Mice and Men felt luxurious, even if I shudder to think of the unnecessarily murdered trees.

So instead, here’s a mini-review of Nigella Bites and some tested recipes.

I adore Nigella Lawson. I love her style, her personality, and her philosophy. As a young teenager, her television shows were a revelation. Wow, I thought, cooking really isn’t so difficult. I can do that.

Until little over two weeks ago, however, I did not own any of her cookbooks – even though I’ve always had lemmings for all of them. Cookbooks are notoriously expensive. The inside flap of Nigella Bites says it normally retails for 35 US dollars, but I scored it for around 11 bucks at the Big Bad Wolf sale.

Now, I haven’t read the cookbook from cover to cover. Nor have I tested all the recipes (who has?). But this is a lovely book to flick through when tired after work. Or when searching for practical recipes. Nigella has a wonderful “voice:” funny and charismatic, unaffected and unpretentious. Weirdly, I find that she is more eloquent when presenting her television shows; naturally rattling off quotes by Oscar Wilde and John Keats. Her prose is more restrained and simple, but no less charming. I like both her speaking wit and her writing, but it is funny when someone’s prose is more conversational than her actual conversations, is it not?

(Yes, yes, someone probably scripted her television monologues – but she always pulls them off with aplomb)

I’m more of a baker than an actual meal cook, so the recipes I have tried were the chocolate fudge cake and the breakfast orange muffins. What I loved most were how easy they were to make. I’ve tried plenty of Nigella recipes (mostly from online and by memorizing the telly shows) by now, and she has never lied about the practicality of her recipes. Texturally, the cakes turned out wonderful. Visually, they had that rustic/homey look yet were still somehow attractive.

Nigella’s Chocolate Fudge Cake

What I think the recipes lack were that extra kick of flavor. I wanted the cake to be even more chocolatey and the muffins to be even more citrusy. Although in this case, your mileage may vary. The Javanese have a word called medok, which essentially means thick – too thick, tasteless makeup; too thick a speaking accent; or too thick a taste – almost vulgar flavors. My preference is for my food to be medok. I rarely want subtle, delicate, or flimsy. I want overly flavored nearly all the time.

Breakfast Orange Muffins

People that I have offered the orange muffins were pleased with the subtlety. And the same people found the fudge cake very chocolatey already, so again, different strokes for different folks. They also appreciated the fact that the cakes weren’t overly sweet, I sentiment I happily share, even though I didn’t reduce the sugar content of the recipes.

Now I’m curious about the savory dishes listed in Nigella Bites. I’m already bookmarking the gingery-hot duck salad, although I think I’ll replace the duck with beef.

 
Oh, I still want Nigella’s other cookbooks, by the way.

 

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.

Rurouni Kenshin (Volume 1) by Nobuhiro Watsuki

I have two friends whose tastes I completely trust and align with mine 99% of the time. To the first, Rurouni Kenshin is the manga closest to her heart – not just because it was a childhood favorite, but because it is a great manga full stop. To the second, it’s meh in general. A good manga, but forgettable. How could their assessments differ so? I had to investigate.

Rurouni Kenshin is remonikered Samurai X in Indonesia

Rurouni Kenshin is a historical fiction manga and follows Himura Kenshin. Kenshin was once a fearsome and feared assassin, but we enter at a point where Kenshin now traverses Japan as a humble wanderer.

The manga is set ten years after the start of the Meiji Restoration. We find out that Kenshin was a pivotal warrior during the bloody struggle between the shogun era and the Meiji Restoration. Most samurais who fought for the Meiji cause were honored with key offices in the new government. But why Kenshin chose to wander instead is a mystery that I’m 100% sure will be central to following volumes.

Volume 1 is standard shonen fare. Kenshin meets Kaoru, a dojo master who teaches the way of the sword to protect humanity, and immediately forges a connection with her. Along the way, they adopt a young orphaned boy named Yahiko as student. Volume 1 ends with the introduction of fighter Sagara Sanosuke as a fight brews between Kenshin and Sanosuke.

So: whose review of Rurouni Kenshin do I agree with more? Drumroll please!

I side with my first friend, who adores Rurouni Kenshin. The manga is promising so far and the characters likable. Something about Rurouni Kenshin feels slow and staid in a good way, perhaps it’s the thick historical atmosphere. I read the first three chapters very slowly not because it was boring, but because I was immersed in the setting and the art. The following chapters offer a faster pace.

I was happy to learn a bit more about Japan’s history through Rurouni Kenshin; I’ve been fascinated by Japan for a while now but know little about its history. My second friend, who finds Rurouni Kenshin average has said the historical richness won’t stick. The manga will become more general and focus on friendship as it progresses. That doesn’t sound like a bad place to be, though. I’m excited to soak myself more in the world of Rurouni Kenshin.

Tintin in Tibet by Hergé

Because I am obsessive *cough,* I mean meticulous, I dug up facts about Tintin in Tibet in preparation of this post. My favorite was how prior to writing, writer and illustrator Hergé was tormented by dreams of endless white expanses. His Jungian therapist advised him to quit the Tintin comics. Hergé responded by creating Tintin in Tibet, a beautiful volume stuffed full with white snowy panoramas.

Tintin in Tibet is widely considered Hergé’s magnum opus. It is frequently featured in “Best of Tintin” lists. Hergé himself stated that Tintin in Tibet is his personal favorite. According to Wikipedia (make of my sources what you will), he said, “It is a story friendship the way people say, ‘It’s a love story.’”

***

It has been years since I last read Tintin in Tibet. Despite the accolades heaped upon it, Tintin in Tibet is not my favorite Tintin. That honor goes to Explorers on the Moon.

Yet I can see why critics value Tintin in Tibet so much. Sharp Tintinologists have spotted that it is the only Tintin comic book without a clear antagonist (though I would argue that The Castafiore Emerald is another). Tintin in Tibet is poignant yet subtle. The drama is never bombastic – a far cry from Hergé’s usual fare of swashbuckling adventures and international mysteries.

***

Tragic news assail Tintin and Captain Haddock on their vacation. The papers report a horrific airplane crash in Nepal – there are no survivors. Before reading the news, Tintin dreams of his old friend Chang barely alive and begging for help. After reading the news, Tintin receives a letter. Chang was in that Nepalese plane crash.

Believing his dream to be a vision, Tintin sets off to rescue Chang. Captain Haddock, ever crabby yet ever faithful, accompanies him. And so we have the set-up for our adventure.

Hergé is a man of his words. Tintin in Tibet is centered on friendship. Searching for a friend against all the odds is the most obvious motif. But more than Tintin’s telepathic connection to Chang, Tintin in Tibet is all about the dynamics between Tintin and Captain Haddock. Captain Haddock loyally supports Tintin despite his near madness (not without some boisterous swearing and temper tantrums, of course). The high point of Tintin in Tibet is seeing how one would sacrifice his life for the other. Tintin and Captain Haddock: truly a friendship for the ages.

Tintin in Tibet also beautifully shows the humanity of both Tintin and Captain Haddock. I loathed Tintin’s stubbornness. He was stringing people along into danger and that is not what a good person does. But his faith and his big heart are undeniable.

As a child, Captain Haddock could do no wrong in my eyes. But with this reading, I will readily admit that he could be a bit more respectful of others and their culture. But hey, Haddock’s irascibility is a great chunk of his charm!

In case you were wondering if Tintin in Tibet is too full of internal conflict and spiritual journeys to appeal to the kids, worry not! Hergé’s light comic touch is ever-present and always on point.

***

Why did I revisit Tintin in Tibet in the first place? Friendship, a reason befitting this comic volume’s main theme. One of my dearest friends and I are in a long-distance friendship. The Pacific Ocean separates us. In her last email, she asked me to talk more about Tintin – one of my childhood joys. No Tintinologist worth her salt can leave out Tintin in Tibet in the conversation. It is considered Hergé’s masterpiece.

I will see her in September and already I’m thinking of crafting a care package for her. I was wondering if Tintin in Tibet would be a suitable package stuffer. Reading Tintin in Tibet again today, I thought ‘yes, yes of course – in fact, she’ll love it more than I do.’ And I hope, she’ll think of me when reading her copy.