One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabrial Garcia Marquez

Before reading this book, I had only read Marquez's more recent novel Memories of My Melancholy Whores. I read it for a World Lit class. We were asked to read any novel by Marquez, and due to the pressures of other classwork, I chose the shortest, smallest book I could find--Memories of My Melancholy Whores fit that bill nicely. It was a quick read and I read it twice, the second time so that I could better write an essay about it for class. I found Marquez's writing magical and illuminating--simultaneously gritty and ethereal. One Hundred Years of Solitude, which must be at least 4 or 5 times the length of Memories is also a beautiful tale, apparently heavily influenced by his grandmother's storytelling. This novel seems much less obviously personal than Memories (in which the narrator/main character seems to be Marquez himself in many ways). Nonetheless, there is a sense of childlike wonder, as though Marquez has placed himself simultaneously in the position of storyteller (with his grandmother's straight face--even at the most absurd moments--and fantastic stories) and avid listener, eyes wide with excitement.

One of the things I found most interesting about this novel is the sense of time that is created as the story progresses. Ursula, a strong woman and the character who most clearly ties together the various generations (aside from her son Aureliano perhaps), represents a "wise" and grounded sort of figure--a woman who has seen everything and is ready to meet life head on. She repeatedly sees in her own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren the repetition of time, old habits, and dark family secrets. Despite the passage of time (100 years or so sounds about right!), one gets the sense that time is standing still, with new characters inhabiting a simultaneously different and similar realm as their ancestors. Almost like a parallel universe, but with the lingering shadows of the past very much present rather than completely unseen.

Unfortunately I'm writing this quite a few weeks after I finished the novel. The start of school has interrupted my thought process on this book. There are many characters with similar names, which gets confusing (thank goodness for the family tree at the beginning of the book). In a way I think this is appropriate, however, especially in light of Ursula's viewpoint, from which history appears to repeat itself. A somewhat disheartening notion lined with optimism...the idea that no matter how far we feel from our roots, we are all connected in an inescapable way.

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

I decided to mooch this book on a whim because I read Annie John a few semesters ago for a World Lit class. While Annie John wasn't exactly my favorite book from the class, I remember feeling like certain major themes in the novel stood out to me and stayed with me, and I was curious to see how it compared to some of her other work. It seemed like Lucy was a continuation of Annie John, which, if I remember correctly, ends with the main character leaving her family in the West Indies for North America to begin nursing school. Lucy is about a 19 year old girl who has begun a new life in North America as an au pair for a seemingly perfect family (which quickly unravels as the novel progresses) while pursuing an education to become a nurse. There's also a similar love-hate relationship between the main character and her mother and father. Again, this relationship and even the parents are almost identical to those in Annie John. I'm guessing Kincaid's novels are autobiographical in nature and that's why there are recurring characters and this almost obsessive examination of mother-daughter relationships. I've yet to read her book Autobiography of My Mother but I'm sure that would answer some of my questions.

Anyway, I was not terribly impressed by this book. It seemed bland and Lucy, the narrator, is so cold and pessimistic that it's difficult to feel any sort of connection to her. Perhaps a feeling of alienation was what Kincaid was going for, but I found it off-putting. Throughout the novel Lucy begins to realize herself sexually and also remembers some of her early sexual experiences back home. These too seem cold, like recollections of someone else's memories. Overall, I got the feeling that Lucy did not feel like a part of anything, nor did she desire to be a part of anything or create a deep connection with anyone. However, she has a "best friend" named Peggy and she claims to be friends with Mariah, the woman for whom she works during the first 3/4 of the book. Maybe Lucy is supposed to be a more dynamic character with a wider range of emotions, but the writing style (which is very straight-forward and dry) doesn't communicate that very well.

I did think Lucy was interesting because of her rebellious spirit. She is determined to carve out a life of her own, away from her family, and she does this without hesitation or excessive emotion. Perhaps she realizes that by moving to a new country and burning her mother's letters, she is violently cutting an essential part of herself off: her homeland and her family. Lucy certainly makes no attempts to cover up her bitterness and while she moves forward and gets an apartment with Peggy, begins a new job, and pursues photography as a hobby, perhaps the most crucial element that seems to be missing from Lucy's attitude is hope. Maybe that's the component that I felt was lacking here, but maybe I'm also being a little naive in that expectation.

Aside from Lucy as a character, I thought that Kincaid made some interesting commentary about colonialism and how the world as seen through the rose colored glasses of the coloniser is quite different from the shattered view of the colonized.

Overall, I think this book is worth reading but not fantastic...I definitely enjoyed Annie John more. However, if you're a fan of Kincaid's work then you'll easily make connections to her other books and admittedly, I did feel like having previously read Annie John added considerable depth to my reading of this novel (perhaps it would have been even better if Annie John was fresh in my mind!).

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

What miracle is this? This giant tree.
It stands ten thousand feet high
But doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands.
Its roots must hold the sky.

I loved this book. I first heard of it in the englishmajors community on LJ, and was instantly intrigued. It's been on my to-read list ever since, and this summer I finally had time to tackle this beast of a book. It really drew me in, so it took me less time to read than I predicted.

I loved this book for a few reasons: it's self-referential, it has an attitude, it pokes fun at scholarship, it questions assumptions. It is quite frankly pretentious, but in an amazingly fun way (is that possible? Apparently it is). There are extensive footnotes, some of which are composed of references to imaginary sources, some of which are written by Johnny Truant, who tells his own story of psychological and physical deteroration alongside the unfolding of the Navidson report.

In terms of being a horror story, I found Johnny Truant's portions far more chilling than those by Zampano, perhaps because, like Johnny himself, I too found myself in the position of reader. His mental breakdown seems to imply how books (or texts in any format--even just a bunch of mixed up pages gathered in a chest) construct a reality of their own, unencumbered by physical limitations or logic, but with a history of their own and an existence that will extend far beyond that of both author and reader.

Overall I found House of Leaves simultaenously amusing and thoughtprovoking. It's a simple enough plot: a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. But this simple idea is then expanded and entwined with the legacies of literature, philosophy, fantasy, mathematics, psychology, and all manner of imaginary academic writings. It's amazing how much work must have gone into writing this book.

Definitely a must read.

__(o)___(n)
A sun to read the dark.

Man Crazy by Joyce Carol Oates

Man Crazy begins on a seemingly "normal" note, albeit sad and heartrending. About halfway through, it takes a turn toward the bizarre, but I'll get to that in a moment. Ingrid, a young girl, is in hiding with her mother, Chloe. Her father is a wanted man, and despite his charm and "love" for Chloe, he is violent and possessive. Ingrid idolizes her father and desperately misses him, yearning for the day he will return and make their family complete again. Ingrid witnesses firsthand the many disfunctions of her family, including a brutal fistfight between her father and one of Chloe's suitors, who has been supporting her with a house, car, and job as his secretary.

Ingrid leads an awkward childhood, and develops a tic in which she compulsively picks at her face and body. She is smart, but anxious and shy, so her teachers and the other students often make fun of her. She is popular because of her beauty, but has no friends. She repeatedly describes how she has dozens of friends, and no friends--no one who wouldn't betray her in a heartbeat, that is. Ingrid soon finds herself in a situation similar to her mother's: she is a beautiful woman, and men's eyes follow her everywhere. She finds pleasure and power in this, but is ultimately disempowered completely because of her utter submission to being a sexual object, one whose sole purpose is to please and then be cast aside.

About halfway through the novel, Ingrid runs away from home. By now she's already involved with drugs and alcohol, but that pales in comparison to the latest trouble she lands herself in: she is abducted into a gang called Satan's Children, in which she is raped and tortured. Despite this, she and the other women worship Enoch Scaggs, the leader of the group, said to be Satan's own son. It soon becomes apparent that rape and torture aren't the full extent of the horrors committed by Satan's Children--they also engage in ritual human sacrifice. Eventually it is Ingrid's turn to be sacrificed, but she manages to escape. She's so emaciated that she manages to slip through the slit of an open window in the garbage dump of a basement in which she's being held captive.

Ingrid reconnects with her mother, and goes through rehab and psychiatric evaluations and therapy. She falls in love with her therapist, and tells her mother she plans on marrying him. Chloe, too, seems to be settling into a calmer life, one safe from her ex-husband. In the last chapter, Ingrid observes the results of a winter storm, and how many of the ruins aren't actually new, but have been there all along, years perhaps. The broken trees are evidently a metaphor for her own broken, but alive, state:

You wondered how they could survive but of course they did. In the skin were marks just visible through the ice-coating, like a secret writing, scars. Nor were they dead exactly, those fallen trees. They were alive, only not vertical. The heartbeat inside them had maybe slowed, only a murmur but if you squatted to listen, if you knew how to listen, if the wind would die down you would hear it.

Ingrid has her own scars, both phsyical and psychological, some more apparent than others. And although her time with Satan's Children resulted in some of the most brutal damage, it's undeniable that some scars run deeper and were inflicted much earlier in her life. Her mother, too, carries scars as well, and both women deal with their pain as best they can. They are alive, even if bent and broken.

I found a few aspects of this novel very interesting. The story is told from Ingrid's perspective, looking back on her life as though recounting these events to a therapist (perhaps the very one she speaks of marrying? It's unclear, and given her manic state, it almost seems like she may have relapsed and is not actually as well as she seems at the end of the novel). Her narration comes as a stream of consciousness, sometimes with a paragraph composed of a single sentence. Thinking back on it now, I'm beginning to think Ingrid may not be a reliable narrator. The novel begins with her entering a women's detention facility. She is on suicide watch. The doctor asks her to tell him about her life, and the story begins, although she tells the doctor that she will not tell him of her life. Is it not her life being recounted then? Perhaps all of it is merely a fabrication.

Anyway, aside from the narrative structure of the novel, it is also interesting how Oates creates a dynamic in which the main female characters (Ingrid and her mother) are located at the center of male violence. Chloe tries to use her beauty as a weapon and means of controlling men--she attracts suitors who can support her and uses them for her own benefit, giving in return, of course, her beautiful body. This power is taken from her when her husband asserts his own claim over her mind and body, beating her suitor and eventually murdering him (being sure to snap some polaroids, which he sends to Chloe just make sure she knows her place). Ingrid, too, attempts to hold some sway over men with her physical attractiveness, and flaunts her sexuality. She feels confident and strong (and perhaps tries to overcompensate for other insecurities), but one day she flirts with the wrong man, and is promptly taken home by Enoch Scaggs, who essentially makes her a sex slave to him and the other men in Satan's Children.

It becomes clear that neither Chloe nor Ingrid are able to assert their own sexual power because they are expressing their sexuality within the limited structure prescribed for them by society. They become prisoners of their own sexuality because what they are expressing is a male construction of female sexuality. While Chloe and Ingrid are both beautiful, intelligent women, in many ways independent and strong, they embody the opposite of the femme fatal trope (perhaps even parodying it). They need men because their very sense of sexuality is defined by them, but that sexuality and sense of self is also, at a basic level, what imprisons them in a cycle of abuse.

This is a compelling novel. Deeply disturbing, but compelling. I'm still not certain of how reliable Ingrid is as a narrator, but the question of reliability only adds to the intrigue of this twisted tale.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is an interesting book. It has a sci-fi, dystopian future vibe to it, but in a subtle way (which becomes less subtle toward the end). It technically takes place in the past--1990's in England--but I kept sort of thinking of it like it was in the future anyway. It's just sort of a natural assumption when my brain is in sci-fi mode. But the story itself does plausibly seem like it's set in the near-past because of a few cultural references, and just the general lack of totally out-there technology. The world is pretty normal aside from the fact that in the novel, humans are cloned and used for the sole purpose of organ-harvesting, and even that doesn't seem too far-fetched.

There were a few things that bothered me about this novel, however.

1. The character Ruth is absolutely intolerable. She's the hugest bitch ever, and I felt very little, if any, sympathy for her, even toward the end when she becomes a donor and all the fight drains out of her. I see how she fits into the whole dynamic of the plot and the entire subplot of determining whether or not the clones have souls--she's a very "human" character, complete with plenty of flaws. But she's still very annoying.

2. You know how sometimes an author will beat around the bush when it comes to bearing all the gritty details of the plot? And then there's suddenly a convenient chapter/scene when ALL IS REVEALED, and all the little hints throughout the novel come together when everything is spelled out clear as day? Well, this book has one such chapter. Learning all the details of Hailsham (an exclusive, progressive school where clones are raised as "students" before moving on to meet their inevitable fate as carers and donors) and about the clones themselves was cool and all, but it would have been nice if all that information wasn't revealed at once and under such weak pretenses.

Despite the fact that I didn't like Ruth, and I didn't like the cop-out of revealing everything in a single chapter, it does make sense in terms of the structure of the novel and the emotions I'm sure the author was trying to evoke. Throughout most of the first half of the novel, I felt like I wasn't totally sure what was going on even though my brother had told me a lot about the book before I even started reading it. That is, I began reading with full knowledge that the main characters are clones, and that they were made to serve as organ donors. That information isn't explicitly revealed until well into the book, and is only loosely hinted at through terms like "donor," "completed," "carer," etc. None of these things are actually explained while the narrator (Kathy) is telling her story. She narrates as though she's telling the story to a donor, who would presumably be privy to all this information. Also, throughout the story, Kathy constantly says "I don't know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham..." which implies that there was something special about Hailsham. It also implies that there are other places where clones are raised. You don't really find out why exactly Hailsham was so special until the tell-all chapter.

But anyway, this feeling that you, as a reader, are kind of left in the dark, is meant to mirror the way that the "students" are kept in the dark about what they really are and what their futures entail. Their guardians hint at it and the students are left only half aware--as Kathy says at one point, they are "told and not told." The structure of the narrative mirrors this idea, and the sudden revelation comes at the moment when Kathy and Tommy themselves are suddenly made aware of all the unpleasant realities of their existence.

Overall, it's a well written and captivating book. I definitely preferred the second half to the first half, but that's mainly because the second half is when it really starts to get into the nitty gritty of the characters' lives as carers/donors. The first half sort of seems like it's meant as an emotional/psychological precursor...it demands that you view these characters for what they are: humans (here is their childhood, here are their fears and joys and all the little moments that make up a person's memories). And then as they move out of the protective bubble of Hailsham it's like a wave demolishing a sand castle. All that work, those experiences, and they inevitably are torn down and reduced to nothing, because they can't escape their fate. In that way, this book is very depressing and there is something pathetic about the characters and how they try to lead "normal" lives. It's also depressing because it hints at how unethically exploitative people are capable of being...and that only a small minority will care (usually small enough to be stamped out easily enough, as occurs with Hailsham).

Definitely a good read...also amusing because the author lives in London (and the novel takes place in England) so there is lots of fun UK vocab throughout...haha.

N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto

I really enjoy Banana Yoshimoto's writing and have read a few of her other books as well (Kitchen and Asleep; Lizard is on my to-read list). She has a way with weaving the simplest language into a world that revels in the magical realism of everyday life.

NP is about the relationship that forms between four people who are all connected in some way to the writer Sarao Takase and his untranslated collection of stories entitled "NP" (North Point). I felt like this novel focused a lot more on despair and dysfunctional relationships than her other stories that I've read do (for example, a significant plot point is the incestuous relationship between Sui and Otohiko, and the incestuous relationship between Sui and their father, Sarao Takase). The narrator finds herself totally entranced by these people and their personalities, not to mention the fact that they are all bound by a common knowledge of Takase's work and are intimately tied to it through death; the narrator's boyfriend, who was working on translating the book, committed suicide, as did Sarao Takase. There really isn't a whole lot to the plot aside from the deepening connection between the characters, which unfolds over the course of one summer. It ends with the suggestion of new beginnings, and it seems that the characters are able to escape their "fate" as mere characters within their father's stories.

One of the things I found interesting about this book is the discussion of language, translation, and the connection to one's country. All of the characters except the narrator have spent extended amounts of time living in the US, and moved back to Japan only after their father died (he wrote his stories in the US, in English). Even though the narrator hasn't shared their experience of living in another country, she nonetheless shares their experience of knowing the world through both English and Japanese, and works as a translator just as her mother does and deceased boyfriend did. As a child, she also lost her voice for a while and describes how she began to interpret the world in colors rather than words. Considering the devastating effect that Sarao's stories had on his children, along with the many references to language and problems with translation, I think it's safe to say that this book is not only about language, but how language functions as an intimate, integral part of our lives and has immense power in shaping us. But language is fluid; it can be many different things to many different people, and one language doesn't simply and straightforwardly translate into another...in a way, everyone has his or her own language.

On the downside, I felt like the only character who was really well-rounded was Sui, although she is actually the last character to be introduced into the story. Even the narrator seems a little hollow. I feel like the characters were so defined by their relationships to one another that I have a difficult time describing them as individuals (but maybe that was the point).