Reading Notes: Bastard (Lovely Bone?)

People were crazy on the subject of color, I knew, and it was true that one or two of the cousins had kinky hair and took some teasing for it, enough that everyone was a little tender about it. Except for Granny, people didn’t even want to talk about our Cherokee side. Michael Yarboro swore to me that Cherokees were niggers anyway, said Indians didn’t take care who they married like white folks did. [54]

Note: This is not a book review, but I feel compelled to share some thoughts. The little girl who is tough as steel is Bone, who was born illegitimate since her grandma ran her father out of the house. Anyway, Bone grows up with her mother, who works as a waitress at a diner. My first impression of the book is the striking resemblance to Their Eyes Were Watching God, except these are white folks in South Carolina. Women strive to establish independence from men, at least emotionally. Issues of race inevitably come up almost in any American literature that sets in the south. The blond wants to be a brunette, the dark wants to be light-skinned or at least fair. The straight hair craves the curly perm. Why can’t people just be comfortable with their own skin? Which brings me to my point, and this is digression from the reading. The Chinese weekly magazine makes me sick to the stomach when I turn page after page full of (deceptive) ads about weight loss, laser brow plucking (whatever that means), fat suction, skin whitening, skin bleaching…What happens to natural beauty? All you see are these kinky, anorexic-looking, straight-hair, LV-clutching, tofu-eating, unnaturally pale robotic clones that are just scaffold of bones. These new standards of beauty are in my opinion corrupting the society.

A Lovely Award

Weekend Reader has kindly awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award along with very flattering remarks. This is a great honor because upon perusing her blog, I’m excited to discover that she has been reading books that are either my favorites or ones waiting to be read, including Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel, the latest Booker Prize winner. Here are the fine prints of the award:

• Accept the award, and post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his/her blog link.
• Pass the award to 5 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know that they have been chosen for this award.

I have been very erratic and stagnant in blog reading recently; and as you have also noticed that I have be slacking in responding to your comments: I do apologize. When I do visit your blogs, I haven’t been commenting much. I do want to pass on this award for a few newly-discovered blogs:

English Major’s Junk Food. The blog title is just irresistible. The English Major is defying what a conventional education has taught us: close analytical reading and author intentions. The blog is filled with a variety of book reviews. It assumes a weekly rotation of themes including musings, reviews, and favorite children’s books.

Boarding in My Forties. Obviously Kathleen has been visiting my blog for a while but I haven’t had a chance to reciprocate until toward the end of last year. She has been a supportive commentator and her readings mirror mine. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, E.M. Forster, Daphne DuMaurier, and Ken Follett. How can I not favorite this blog?

My Porch. Thomas’ blog embraces what I have envisioned for my own: literature, GLBT fiction, dogs, and travel. A quick look of his reading list always affords new ideas for acquisitions.

Buried in Print. Every once in a while a new commentator would leave very refreshing and thoughtful remarks in the blog. It’s almost like that revolutionary Apple computer commercial in 1984 in which this female athlete threw a hammer (or was it a discus) at this gigantic screen. Buried in Print is such a commentator.

How Many Books at a Time?

I’ve seen several bloggers mention reading multiple books this week. Do you frequently read more than one book at a time? Do you try to limit this to a certain number? Do you have different books for different purposes/topics?

I very rarely read more than one novel at a time. I need to summon all my attention on reading about the development of one plot and not to confuse about characters from different novels. As you have have noticed from my reviews, I read books back to back with no break. There is always a book lined up when I finish the current book. Even if several books are vying for my attention, I only pick up one and peruse it closely, i.e. scribbling notes, jotting down passages, marking page references. A ho-hum book I would skim through to the end; one of which the story doesn’t take off at all I quickly abandon for another. When I do read more than a book at a time, it would be for collection of essays and short stories, a non-fiction on history or travel, something that doesn’t require an attention span that would distract me from fiction reading. David Sedaris is a perfect example. I do not prefer to read a novel over a long time, meaning, I don’t allow gap between two readings to disrupt coherence.

[259] A Meeting By the River – Christopher Isherwood

Duty often seems to me to be the only thing one can really count on, in the long run. Happiness may be thrown in as an occasional bonus, but one never knows how long it will last. [168]

A Meeting By the River is an epistolary novel about two brothers who are polar opposites in temperament and belief. They reunite at a monastery near the Ganges River in 1960s. Breaking a long silence, a young Englishman named Oliver writes to his older brother, Patrick, to announce that he has embraced monastic order and is about to take final vows. Although Oliver thinks Patrick, a successful publisher in London with a wife and two children, is least equipped to judge him, he longs for his brother to reassure him that the monastic teaching is true.

That’s why I fear for Olly. I suppose that’s what I was trying to express when I mentioned judo—Olly’s very strength, his terrific energy and manic determination, may actually hasten his defeat. [63]

Patrick can disturb me so terribly because he can make me question the way I live my life. I’m fairly sure he doesn’t do this consciously—he doesn’t have to know what he’s doing, because he does it by just being himself. [115]

1Until Patrick reveals his love affair with a man in Los Angeles, Oliver has always taken for granted that his brother has never felt any dissatisfaction with his way of life. As disparate as the brothers’ lifestyle and choices, they are both overcome a fear—fear of not doing what is expected of him. The sense of loss, which imposes in choosing between obligation and true happiness, slowly unfolds: first in the exchange of missives between brothers, lovers, and spouses, which abound in multiple subtexts as blindspots exist between them; then second in the brothers’ interaction. Oliver pursues a capacity for humanitarian concern that is not adulterated with ulterior motive and sentimentality, and yet such power is, ironically, inseparable from vanity. Patrick vexes over the social taboos of adultery, or rather bisexuality, and even sodomy. In a sense they are both at the mercy of social forces that demands assimilation.

I know only too well what loneliness can do to one—how, if one lets himself brood on it, it distorts everything into a nightmare of isolation and self-pity, until one simply doesn’t stop to consider the consequences of one’s actions, or just doesn’t care what they’ll be. [162]

Although A Meeting By the River is Isherwood’s last novel, published in the 1960s, it is subversively ahead of of its time. It provokes deep thoughts on love and need: Is the need to be needed stronger than love? It challenges the validity of marriage’s being the norm for civil union, when the meaning of marriage fails to acknowledge the human capacity to love. The social taboos, which plant fear and promote self-withdrawal, can never be more prophetic to our society that is so cowardly to address (don’t ask, don’t tell?) the rights of civil union to all people, regardless of their race and sexual orientation.

191 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Reading Notes: Isherwood

Is there such a thing as second best? Can one be in love with two people at the same time? How does one split the “love nerves”?

When I’m with you I’m a new, quite different person. That’s why you must never get upset, Tommy—you did, once or twice, you know—about any of the other people and relationships in my life. They simply cannot touch us, they couldn’t if they tried to, because what you and I have together belongs only to us. It doesn’t depend on anything else. It exists on its own.

I have never in my life met anyone like you. I only wish it could have happened sooner. I wish—I wish—oh hell! Forgive this drooling.

When shall I see you again? I have all sorts of schemes, as I hinted to you that evening I got so drunk up at your place. I know I oughtn’t to have mentioned them until I was sure—in my profession one should have learned the danger of making promises! But I just couldn’t keep them to myself. I suppose that was because I was so desperately anxious to hook you somehow! I mean, I’m not naive enough to imagine that anyone can be satisfied indefinitely by memories, especially if he’s young and full of life, like you. I did my best to help you build up a reserve to keep going on. That was why I didn’t leave until the last possible moment. But you must have something to look forward to, as well. Otherwise, I’d have no right to ask you to remember me at all. I ought not to be writing to you even. A Meeting By the River, Christopher Isherwood p.48-49

What beautiful and yet wistful passage. It touches my sore nerves. When relationship is one that is defined by long distance, maybe the best one can cope with the barrier is memory. A male lover and a wife. One of them ought to remain in the shadow.

(When I wrote this down in the journal, it looks so simple. But it’s really easier written than conceived. The verbalizing of thought is only possible when the intensity of emotion that impinges my blood vessel has subsided. maybe this what great literature does—get you in touch with the inner core.)

Curl Up With a Book

The northern hemisphere, at least, is socked in by winter right now… So, on a cold, wintry day, when you want nothing more than to curl up with a good book on the couch … what kind of reading do you want to do?

I’m very lucky that winter is mild here, despite the occasional dreary rainy days. Any given wintry day is like any Saturday. If I’m all cooped up at home, curling up on the couch with a book, it must be plot-driven, convoluted, suspenseful, or having a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. Anything that is redolent of stream of consciousness, polemic, philosophical harangue, and assertion would not do (some of my favorite authors are expert in these forms). A classic would be a good choice to while away a dreary cold day. How about something that will mentally distract me from the cold weather, like Molokai by Alan Brennert? Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim would transfer readers to the beautiful Portifino in Italy. How about a literary mystery caked with layers of secrets like The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco? What about you?

[258] Incendiary – Chris Cleave

“It is Christmas Eve Osama and this morning I decided you were right after all. I mean I’ve been thinking about it a lot what with not having much to do of an evening. Some people are cruel and selfish and the world would be better off without them. You were absolutely right the whole time some people only deserve to burn.” [232]

In an epistolary form, Incendiary is a black comedy about the war on terror and terrorism itself. The narrator is a woman whose husband and four year old son were blown into pieces when suicide bombers blow up the stadium during a soccer game. Kareem is made mad by a world gone mad: what fuels her madness and guilt is her cheating on her husband with Jasper Black, a journalist who writes social commentary. The aftermath of the terrorist attack sweeps her in a concatenation of events—political and sexual—that involve journalists and cops who are opportunistic and selfish.

When you touch me all I can see is that bloody explosion . . . I wish I’d never met you. I loved my husband and my boy but I waved them good-bye and I took you home and had sex with you on the bloody sofa didn’t I. And then my life blew up. [68]

Addressed to Osama bin Laden, the sardonic outcry of the widowed working-class woman does not, however, blame the terrorists. The terrorists bring out the worst and ugliest of humanity, and she has to thank Osama once for all to open her eyes to the truth of the society. The provocative voice, full of ragged and raw emotions, rebukes a selfish and self-indulgent society that is isolated (and ignorant of) from the suffering of the flesh. Cleave’s Orwellian look at the way we live is not only realistic, it also serves as a warning and satire. Like the narrator has noted, while the attack and explosion take place so quickly, the aftermath—the noise, the smell, the memories, and the hallucinations, live long after that it gets under one’s skin.

Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches old inside you and the noise never stops . . . The fire keeps on roaring with incredible noise and fury. . . I live in an inferno where you could shiver with . . . [165]

Satire is the measure of Incendiary’s force. An assertion and a prophecy, Chris Cleave stretches his imagination to an extent that challenges morality. As much as Osama who masterminds the terrorist attack, it is the cruel and selfish people, those who are our own and not of the enemy that is most threatening and evil. A tension-filled dramatic ending and plethora of moral dilemmas sum up to a very emotional read.

237 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

A Random Book for Musing Mondays

Go to your bookshelf and pick a random book. No cheating now, just reach out and pick one. Now tell us about it – where did you get it? Why? Was it a gift? Does it hold any special memories? Did someone recommend it to you? etc.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka was short-listed for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction. In spring 2008, when I was on a trip home, in Hong Kong, I was at a dinner party hosted by my friend James. A friend of his, who is a literary bluff, came with a gift for him: a trade paperback copy of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Judging by the title alone, it’s not a book I would have picked up at the bookstore. The title suggests non-fiction, which is not usually my cup of tea, let alone tractors in Uk- what? Of course, nothing is more solid than word-of-the-mouth recommendation. I was on it the very next day: to secure a copy of this viciously hilarious novel by a woman whom I have never heard of. It tells of feuding sisters who put aside their quarrels to disentangle their emigre father from a Ukrainian gold-digging divorcee named Valentina. It’s a dysfunctional family spinning out of control. The copy I acquired was a special edition by Penguin UK. It belongs to a series called Penguin Celebrations. The series consists of light blue (for big ideas), green (for mystery), orange (for fantastic fiction), pink (for distant land), dark blue (for real lives) and purple (for viewpoints). The damage at the cashier of PageOne Books was HK$95.30, which translates to USD 12.29. It took me three days to finish, from April 14 to 16 in 2008.

[257] Free Food for Millionaires – Min Jin Lee

“Experience was a funny thing: The downside of knowing things intimately was that she had also, in the process, degraded sex. She was still lost. What was sex for? She’d had good sex, bad sex, losses, and conquests. Stretches without. But more importantly, if she were to take off her clothes again and agree to another round, why? And whom would she love?” [517]

Even for a book told through omniscient narration, Free Food for Millionaires is too long. Convoluted but soapy. Set in early 1990s New York City, Lee’s novel follows Casey Han’s sojourn from naive pride to self-realization. While capturing the thoughts and encounters of the second-generation Korean American, who is a jobless Princeton graduate and dates a Caucasian man behind her parents’ back, the novel also branches out to Casey’s family and friends who, regardless of their class, social status, and religious beliefs, are all caught in deceit that ensnares them. From the beginning, the sexually charged debut hints at the drama would intensify in romantic hopes and losses, in series of betrayals and adulteries.

Yes, of course . . . but . . . love is not the same as a promise to be together always. [27]

Sorry. What I mean is, with love, you have to march into the possibility of losing. [28]

The dynamics of Ella and Casey’s friendship buttresses the novel. As Ella is drawn to her childhood friend for her energy and desires in the same way she is drawn to the hot-shot Ted and his exuberant ambition, Casey loses herself in the confusion between love and sex. Unlike the outward resistance to change and assimilation on the part of her parents, Casey is strikingly similar to her mother, a long-married woman who knows nothing of her world except for her husband and two daughters. As Casey indulges in sex that is sheer physical sensation without emotion involved, mother, a deaconess, commits adultery with the director of church choir. In fact, the entire cast of characters spends the duration of the book falling in and out of love, mistaking (selfish) ambition for love, using sex as gambling chips—all because they are repressed and restrained of their feelings.

They think we’re shit because we’re poor. They thought they didn’t need to go through the trouble— [283]

There is a scene the Han family exchanges wedding presents with the bridegroom’s family. Leah Han lavishes on the gifts in order to present her daughter, Tina, in a class that is equivalent and compatible to the groom’s. The money for the gifts comes out of retirement savings, but despite the luxury of the gifts, generosity is always suspect. Despite the characters’ being sympathetic, unlikable and emotionally train-wrecked, Lee does nail the truth: the worst discrimination there is comes from the very own clan. My verdict? Lots of meat for a romance with affairs going ill-starred and illicit, but for it to be considered literature, the writing is flat and monotonous.

560 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Books with a Twist

This week’s question: Do you like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings? What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

I enjoy books with multiple layers of meanings, complicated plots, subsidiary branches that accentuate the main story, twists, and unexpected endings. All of these elements are not prerequisite to make a great book. In Beloved, the past is told in flashbacks, stories, and plain narratives. Many of the passages are written in fragments and pieces that leave the impression of a frayed mind. Probing unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, Beloved transforms history into a story so original and yet so close to the root of suffering. The book nourishes a complicated plot but the ending is not surprising. Many twists and turns, convolutions, and suspense fuel the mystery of Rebecca. Daphane du Maurier furnishes one of the best unexpected endings in my reading. Also highly suspenseful, The Woman in White nourishes a surprised ending except that Wilkie Collins adroitly creates “blindspots” in everyone involved so that one is often led to court suspicion that is wrong for the sake of diverting himself from other suspicion that is right. The one ending that I didn’t see it coming was Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. The worst, or the most disappointing rather, unexpected ending is Bel Canto, which was before the time of the blog and I never reviewed it.