Foreign Language Friday: after the quake by Haruki Murakami

Dear blog,
So.  I wrote a review, finally!  You'll have to forgive me if it sounds badly written.  I am so out of practise, but it will be good to get back into reviewing again. 

Original title: Kami no kodomo-tachi wa mina odoru

Author: Haruki Murakami

Original Language: Japanese

Translated by: Jay Rubin
Summary (from Goodreads): The economy was booming. People had more money than they knew what to do with. And then, the earthquake struck. Komura's wife follows the TV reports from morning to night, without eating or sleeping. The same images appear again and again: flames, smoke, buildings turned to rubble, their inhabitants dead, cracks in the streets, derailments, crashes, collapsed expressways, crushed subways, fires everywhere. Pure hell. Suddenly, a city seems a fragile thing. And life too. Tomorrow anything could happen. For the characters in Murakami's latest short story collection, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent 30 years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children, and who now lives in Kobe. Did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Junpei's estranged parents also live in Kobe. Should he contact them? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Four-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Eathquake man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive worm burrowing under the Tokyo Security Trust Bank. "When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes" says Frog. "And right now he is very, very angry."

Review: So, this is a selection of six short stories all set directly after the 1995 Kobe earthquake.  I thought I would review each story one by one.

UFO in Kushiro- I think this is actually my least favourite of the bunch. That's not to say that I disliked it- I did, the same way that I like everything that Haruki Murakami writes, just within certain degrees of liking as opposed to active dislike- but I suppose that I just found it rather ordinary, with all of the trademark aspects of his work that you would expect from his writing.  Look at it this way: as a kind of introduction, a prologue that sets the scene with the things that keep all of the stories in after the quake interlinked: people's lives that are outwardly so ordinary in many aspects, but which are somehow thrown slightly out of balance, and the way that the Kobe earthquake is somehow relevant to their lives.  UFO in Kushiro, to my mind, kind of establishes all of that as a lead-up to the rest of the book.

Landscape with Flatiron- is quite possibly my favourite of the six, and also quite possibly my new favourite Murakami short story.  The surreal and supernatural is something that's often one of the most prominent themes in his writing, but this collection is (apart from Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, which I'll get to in a minute) kind of devoid of all that. Yet Landscape with Flatiron reads as quite dreamlike and surreal in a way that no giant frogs could ever be, with the imagery that it conjures up, the fleeting dialogue, and the way that the story meanders along quietly, like it's hardly there at all.  You hardly notice that it's finished, the way it kind of trails off in an unfinished thought.

All God's Children Can Dance- is best described as...slightly disturbing, or maybe slightly unsettling would be a more accurate description.  There are all kinds of vague underlying themes and undertones to the story, like everything is lurking just underneath the surface.  You wouldn't think it when you first start reading and meet the protagonist- who wakes up alone at home with a hangover- but it's the darkest story of the six, and the deepest, too.  I found the conclusion of this story particularly satisfying: it opened in one place, seemed to go on a slight detour as a kind of intense character study, before concluding in what felt like a full circle.  Though the story was only around twenty pages long, by the end I felt like I knew everything about the main character and the world he inhabited.


Thailand-  Is it possible for a short story to pull you in gradually?  If it is, Thailand did exactly that. I started out thinking, "well, this is an okay story," but then as it kept going I felt myself more and more gradually drawn into it.  All the stories in after the quake are linked in differing ways, but I found the way that this was connected the most interesting; the main character, Satsuki, wonders if her hatred of one man is what caused the earthquake. 

Super-Frog Saves Tokyo- Reminded me a lot of the story The Little Green Monster from the collection The Elephant Vanishes, and was just as much fun. It's as strange and as quirky as it sounds, but always in the most delightful way possible.  A bank employee named Katagiri comes home from work one evening to find a six-foot-tall frog waiting for him in his apartment, and, after the frog has asked Katagiri to close the door behind him and take off his shoes, Frog proceeds to warn Katagiri that they must both work together to "do mortal combat with"...drumroll...a gigantic worm, in order to prevent aforementioned worm from destroying Tokyo.  Every page gets more and more random, but for that I absolutely love it.

Honey Pie- I envy Haruki Murakami for his writing skills so much, and he makes me feel like such a mediocre writer. How are his characters so fully-formed and believable, even when we only stay with them for such a short period of time? I know that this is a highlight of the collection for a lot of people, but I was initially a little confused about where the focus of the story lay.  It started off in one place, with a young girl being told a story by her Uncle Junpei. Then it sort of takes a detour into the lives of Junpei and the girl -Sala's- parents, only it's sort of too long to be a detour and seems to become the central point or idea of the story, before coming back to Sala again at the end.  Still, whatever story the reader wants to get from it- and there are many within it- it remains ultimately heartwarming and hopeful.

In Three Words: surreal, profound, emotive.
Recommended for: everyone!  I think it's a good introduction to Murakami's short stories.
Rating: 4.

How to Make a Packet of Minstrels Last the Length of a Novel

Dear blog,
Now for something completely different.
 To explain: The other day I was reading a list put together by the food company Innocent about how to make a bowl of popcorn last the whole length of a film.I was thinking about this, and how similar it is to those times you sit down with a novel and a packet of minstrels*, but then have devoured them all by the time you’re at page 50. 
I am going to remedy this for you, readers.  Here's a guideline; depending on what you're reading, certain events should indicate how many Minstrels you should eat and when.
Note: some packets of Minstrels are quite small.  Some novels are like 400 pages.  This is why I'm referring to the packets of Minstrels that you can get at the cinema, which are a little bigger.
Another note: Eating a packet of cinema-sized minstrels in one go is discouraged.  It will probably make you feel sick and therefore ruin the whole experience.  It takes me a few days to read most books, so this is a sufficient time to eat a packet of minstrels.
Anyway.

If I Stay- eat two every time the word “cello”, “guitar” or “band” comes up.

The Princess and the Captain- Eat two every time you wish Orpheus was real.

Forbidden- Save all the minstrels for the end, and then devour them all to comfort yourself.

This is All- Eat three every time you feel enlightened, learn something new or have gained new insight into something.

Looking for Alaska- three every time Alaska is drunk or two every time there’s a gorgeous profound quietly beautiful quote.

Becoming Bindy Mackenzie- have two every time you’re all, “Pure genius. Jaclyn Moriarty is one.”

The Broken Bridge- Eat three every time you’re like, “Why does Phillip Pullman need to write those sweeping epic trilogies when, fantastic as they are, he can write such an engaging, refreshing but simplistic YA book about a sixteen-year-old girl?”

Tokyo- Eat one every time the writing style, which tries so hard, too hard, to sound like the POV of an eighteen-year-old boy, makes you cringe.

Anything by Haruki Murakami- two minstrels every time you fangirl squee.

The Hunger Games or Catching Fire- Four every time someone dies or is brutally beaten.

Notre-Dame de Paris (okay it's not really a YA book, but I feel like it deserves a mention as one of my favourite books of all time)- Read the book first, saving all the minstrels until the end. When you’re done, melt them, pour them between the pages and then eat the book.

Anthem (again, not a YA book, but.) - Two every time there’s some mention of “self”, “identity”, or “ego”.

Twilight- two every time Edward says something along the lines of “But Bella, it’s not safe for us to be together!” or half a minstrel every time Bella describes his porcelain skin, smouldering eyes and the like.

Crank or Glass- Two every time Kristina/Bree smokes or abuses some sort of illegal substance.

Eunoia (again, not YA, but every poetry lover should read it)- three every time you’re like “Dayum, Christian Bök has a way with words.”

any of the Ichigo Mashimaro volumes- one every time you laugh, snort, or fall out of your chair in a fit of giggles.

*or Maltesers, crisps, smarties, a bar of chocolate or some of those Tesco mini brownies. 

In My Mailbox 25 or The One with the Armchair Travelling

Dear Blog,
IMM is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren.
I got a lot of books this week, which is mostly the fault of the huge charity shop in the centre of town, which has shelves and shelves and shelves of secondhand novels. I've probably sung its praises before, and with reason.
A lot of the books I obtained are a sufficient transportation method to other corners of time and space; Japan, Korea, Greece, Russia, China and so on, which is entirely ideal because I've been wanting to read lots of books set abroad lately.

BOUGHT

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo (read, review here)

Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim

We The Living by Ayn Rand

Beijing Doll by Chun Sue

Stolen, er, BORROWED FROM MY MOTHER

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (she's reading this with her book club at the moment, and though I'm quite the Murakami fan I haven't read this one yet.)

FROM THE LIBRARY

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery (currently reading. Entirely fascinating, but pretty heavy going)

So, there you go.  I'm off now to push on with The Teahouse Fire and write poetry.  Over and out.

In My Mailbox 24

Dear blog,
IMM is hosted, as ever, by Kristi over at The Story Siren.
This week I got way more books than I actually needed to, because I own so many books that I haven't  actually read yet.  I really need to stop going to the library until I've gotten through some of them.

BOUGHT

Collected Poems by John Betjeman

An anthology of Yeats poetry that doesn't actually have a title...

FROM THE LIBRARY

Molloy by Samuel Beckett

Tokyo by Graham Marks

After Dark by Haruki Murakami (read.  *fangirl flail*) 

Under a Glass Bell by Anaïs Nin  (read. Really interesting, if not slightly pretentious)

So, there you go. How was your bookish wek?

Foreign Language Friday: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

Dear Blog,

another anthology review, even though because it's so late here it's almost Foreign Language Saturday.

Original Language: Japanese
Translated by: Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin
Summary (from Goodreads): When a man's favourite elephant vanishes, the balance of his whole life is subtly upset; a couple's midnight hunger pangs drive them to hold up a McDonald's; a woman finds she is irresistible to a small green monster that burrows through her front garden; an insomniac wife wakes up to a twilight world of semi-consciousness in which anything seems possible - even death. In every one of the stories that make up The Elephant Vanishes, Murakami makes a determined assault on the normal. He has a deadpan genius for dislocating realities to uncover the surreal in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary.

The Wind-up Bird And Tuesday's Women- turned out later on, much revised, to be the beginning to The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which I haven't read yet.  However, it certainly is a winning idea for a book, and certainly a strong opening to an anthology like this. 
The thing I like most about Haruki Murakami is the way that he manages to make the most ordinary, everyday things absolutely unputdownable reading. The narrator's cat disappears. If this was any other author, you'd be like, "It's okay, he'll turn up when he's hungry."  But in Murakami's writing you're like "Oh noes!  The cat!  He has to be found!"  Not just because of the writing style, but just because you care about the characters so much, you need the subtle balance to their lives to be restored now. 

The Second Bakery Attack- Is about (in my opinion) the most badass married couple in literature, who how after suddenly becoming ravenously hungry in the middle of the night, decide to hold up a MacDonalds in order to break a curse set on the husband. On one hand, taking a step back and saying to yourself "Hang on.  What are they doing..?"  it's quite hilarious, but on the other you can't help but take it seriously as you read it.

 The Kangaroo Communiqué-  I don't really have very much to say about this one.  One thing I do know; it was weird.  Even for this anthology. It didn't really make sense, it was shrouded in mystery; the narration sort of jumped about from one place to another. 


On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning-is only five or six pages long, but one of my favourites nonetheless.  It's short and sweet and the sort of thing that puts a smile on your face when you've finished, and seems to make your whole day brighter for having read it.  Even though you know it's just a story, it's utterly enchanting. It's kind of like a fairy-tale.  

Sleep-Would have been another favourite, had it not been for the ending, which seemed to let down what would have otherwise been a truly, truly fantastic story.  The ending was very sudden and didn't really seem to fit with the rest of the story, which left me kind of disappointed.  However, up to that point it was unputdownable.  I'm something of an insomniac, but not...not in the creepy sinister way of this story.  It gave me chills.

The Fall of the Roman Empire, The 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, And The Realm of Raging Winds-  Was another short one, and all the better for it. For all its length, it was pretty incredible in the way that it managed to weave in time and space to such a short piece. The writing style is beautiful; so clear and precise.   "I let out a short, maybe 30% sigh."    "The things on the line were all aflutter, whipping out loud, dry cracks, streaming their crazed comet trails off into space."

Lederhosen- Was a bizarre story; a woman goes to Germany, tries to buy some Lederhosen for her husband and then ends up divorcing him.    It was kind of "Oh.  Okay."  No real explanation is given for why she does this; the mind boggles.   But this is Haruki Murakami, dear blog, and if anything slightly out of the ordinary happens, you just nod and accept it.  Because thou shalt not question the master.

Barn Burning - Was quite a delightful escapade through the Japanese countryside, in which the narrator meets a young man who likes to burn barns out in the country.  It was around this point in the book that it started to strike me how similar the main characters are in all these short stories.  They're about thirty or so; they smoke, they drink, they listen to music.  Is that it?  Surely there's more to them than that.  Admittedly it's pretty hard to write full personalities with just twenty or thirty pages to play with; but they seem to be the same characters over and over, in different situations but with the same basic mold.

The Little Green Monster - This is a weird comparison, but The Little Green Monster reminds me somewhat of Andy Riley's Bunny Suicide books;  It's quite sweet in a mean sort of way, having you both laughing and going "aaw, no!  The poor rabbit/little green monster!"  at the same time.  So you do feel kind of guilty when you've finished it for finding the undersized verdant  lusus naturae's infatuation with the narrator amusing.  But you do anyway. 

A Family Affair- Was quite a "normal" story compared to some of the others; just the story of a brother, a sister and the sister's new boyfriend, whose name is Noboro Watanabe, a character who seems to appear in a fair few of the stories in the book.  There doesn't seem to be a link between all these people with the same name; they just are.

A Window- Is a beautiful story about letters, a part-time job and hamburger steaks; all are linked.  It's another short one that's quite similar to On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl.

TV People -  Is bizarrely apathetic.  A man is sat in his living room late one night when suddenly little people appear in his apartment and set up a television.  Mysteriously when it's turned on, the television doesn't show any channels, and then the aforementioned TV People turn up at his office to install a similar television, which nobody else seems to notice.  It's...just so weird.  The narrator never mentions the TV people to anyone, nor do they mention them to him.  He just sits there and watches them go about their business...it makes no sense. But then, I don't think it's meant to.

A Slow Boat to China- Is absolutely beautiful.  It's poetic in a way that none of the other short stories are; it seems calm and flowing; like the narrator is stood still while the rest of the world keeps going. 

The Dancing Dwarf - Imagine that The Little Mermaid and Stephen King had a baby. The Dancing Dwarf is the result, some sort of fairy tale set in a different world which gets darker and darker with every page, until the ending which is slightly horrific and entirely disgusting. 
 

The Last Lawn of the Afternoon- Another...strange one, in which when you think about it not an awful lot happens.  Outwardly, it seems like another one of the more "normal" stories, but on another there are still a lot of questions that feel like they need answering.

The Silence- Is quite touching and powerful in a simplistic sort of way.   I've read a couple of reviews that have mentioned how this could be seen as quite political, referring to the way that herd culture works in Japan.  I hadn't really thought about this the first time I read it; so I suppose in that respect it's one of those books that works on many different levels.

The Elephant Vanishes- Seems to pretty sum up the whole book; how surreal every story is, the quirkiness behind the every day. It's like the disappearance of the elephant represents everything else about the other short stories in the book; situations or relationships that have vanished, or could have been but aren't, if that makes any sense.

In Three Words: sufficient Murakami awesomeness.  

Recommended for: fans. 

Rating: 3.5

In My Mailbox 20

Dear blog,

Hosted as ever by Kristi of The Story Siren.

I haven't participated in IMM for about a month or so, which is mostly because I was trying to stick to my goal of getting through some of  the books that I -gasp- actually own, or at least get my to-read shelf on Goodreads down to 100 books. 

However, then I realised that I didn't actually own the majority of the books that were on aforementioned to-read shelf,  and this was a sufficient excuse to buy some of the books I had been after for ages.

BOUGHT

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Eunoia by  Christian Bök (already read.  Quite extraordinary.)

This is All by Aidan Chambers

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

So, that was my bookish week. What about yours?

In My Mailbox 18 or The One With Christmas

Dear blog,
In My Mailbox, as ever hosted by Kristi of The Story Siren fame.
So.  This is actually two weeks worth of books;

GIFTS/ FOR CHRISTMAS

Burned by Ellen Hopkins (read; review coming soon)

Now I Know and The Toll Bridge by Aidan Chambers (Now I Know review further down the page)

Wait for Me by An Na

Girl In Translation by Jean Kwok

BOUGHT

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami (currently reading)

Matched by Ally Condie

Sea by Heidi R Kling

The Tension of Opposites by Kristina McBride

The Mark by Jen Nadol

FROM THE LIBRARY

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (not pictured, 'cause I forgot I had it until after I'd started writing this entry)

To conclude: a satisfying bookish fortnight. 

Foreign Language Friday: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

Dear blog,
Because I haven't done a Foreign Language Friday, and Dance Dance Dance is one of those adult books that's so good I just have to review it.

Name: Dance Dance Dance (originally published as Dansu Dansu Dansu)
Written by: Haruki Murakami
First published in: Japanese
Translated by: Alfred Birnbaum
Summary (from Goodreads): In this propulsive novel by the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Elephant Vanishes, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work in any language fuses science fiction, the hard-boiled thriller, and white-hot satire into a new element of the literary periodic table.

As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Haruki Murakami's protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls; plays chaperone to a lovely teenaged psychic; and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man. Dance Dance Dance is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through the cultural Cuisinart that is contemporary Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs.

Review:  If you like Japanese fiction then it's kind of undoubted that you will have heard of Haruki Murakami, the hugely popular author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and other such novels.  He left the country after the huge success of his most popular novel, Norwegian Wood, when he became a national celebrity.  Most amusingly, the head of a newspaper claimed that "Haruki Murakami has escaped from Japan!"   This is enough to make me want to read his work.

Dance Dance Dance is, largely, a very confusing book. It's wildly chaotic, some characters and setting appearing for know apparent reason, and seemingly the un-named narrator already knows about.  The Dolphin Hotel, for instance.  Did I miss something there?  For a lot of the book I was expecting some sort of flashback to sort of explain everything, but largely most of it remained unexplained, and kind of threw the reader in at the deep end.  Kiki, for instance.  She was one of the most important characters in the book, but it was like, "this is Kiki, a high-class prostitute  that the narrator was once in love with.  She's disappeared".  Still, I think it was this air of mystery about her that made her so intriguing.  Who was she?  Why did she vanish?

Ditto the Sheep Man. The man who apparently ties everything together and connects thoughts and people.  He serves as a switchboard of sorts. Amusingly, the sheep man stars on the German cover , (the German title translates as Dance with the Sheep Man) although in the book he is actually described as an old man wrapped in some sheepskin, I prefer the idea of a sheep wearing human clothes.  Who wouldn't?  Anyway, I love the Sheep Man mostly for his whole "Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. Yougotta dance. Don'teventhinkwhy" speech, which is to my mind the Japanese "She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl." It's one of those quotes that there are about three different versions of in the Goodreads Quotes section.  With reason, I suppose.

And there are, of course, a multitude of other exciting characters: Yuki, a psychic thirteen-year-old and one of my favourite characters in the book for her frankness, Yumiyoshi, a constantly uptight hotel receptionist, and Gotanda, a divorced actor so handsome he's forever doomed to play dentists or teachers in teen romance movies. Oh, and look out for Yuki's father, Hiraku Makimura.  Stare at his name long enough and you'll get it.

The narrator is un-named throughout the book.  Still, his first-person voice seems very direct, as if he's speaking right to the reader, and how could you not root for him as he traverses across the far side of the world from Tokyo to Hokkaido to Hawai'i in his attempt to see how everything ties together?  He's humorous, realistic and quietly observant of the chaotic advanced capitalism of 1980s Japan, but more than anything he's just an ordinary divorced thirty-something trying to hold everything together.  His voice is realistic, slightly cynical and darkly humorous; it's very believable, mostly because he is nothing special. Until, that is, the string of encounters that throw him, the sheep-man and the other main characters together in the mysterious hotel room.  Still, aside from that obvious fact he is totally, 100%, undeniably ordinary.

And the plot itself is well-paced. I don't read mystery novels very often, mostly because I can't stand all the tension of the unanswered questions.  Maybe it's just me being unfortunate and reading the wrong stuff, but in the mystery novels I read the secrets either all get answered all at once in one big, life-changing scene or else they ask more questions than they answer (*cough* A Series of Unfortune Events *coughcough*).  But Dance Dance Dance is very engaging in how the author strings the reader along in a paperchase of murder, mystery and humour, slowly revealing things bit by bit.

The ending.  Hmm.  The ending, the ending, the ending.  I can't tell whether or not I liked it, actually.  One one hand it seemed like a nice enough stopping point, but it's clear that the narrator's search doesn't end there, and that he could spend his whole life traversing the globe trying to find answers to the multitude of questions left unanswered at the end of the book.  On the other hand, it was a little disappointing that the ending was so inconclusive.  Also, the penultimate scene in the book got on my nerves somewhat, because it seemed kind of "and then Harry woke up in the cupboard under the stairs and it was all a dream".  Let me say before you rip your hair out and scream "Oh my word she hasjust given away the ending", let me assure you that it was not all a dream.  However, mostly because so much of the book seems to surreal, I call into question how much of it was actually real (the obvious answer being none of it because it's fiction), and how much of it was just a figment of the narrator's imagination. The mind boggles, but such is the brilliantness, such is the author's writing that you have to doubt what really happens and what doesn't.

In three words: chaotic, surreal, engaging.
Reccomended for: Murakami fans old and new.
Rating: 5.