Audition (* * * - -)
Kitamura, Katie
This is my first novel by Katie Kitamura. I did not read her earlier book, Intimacies, which received many accolades. The reason I picked this one up was because it was shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, and since Kiran Desai's book failed to impress me, I wanted to find out what else is there. This would be two partial disappointments in a row. Not that I did not like the book, but I would not name it as the best that was written during the year. So, once again, the possibility of a major prize biased my expectations, and it could not live up to it.
It is certainly a clever book. It is excellent in probing the characters, especially the middle-aged actress protagonist. It raises questions about relationships, how much we know the people we think we know, about fidelity, and about motherhood. The protagonist is rehearsing for a play, and the acting challenge also becomes the metaphor for understanding other people in her life. To what extent can we understand another mind? Then there is a transition towards the middle of the book that left me cold. The characters became less interesting, and the story lost its sense of direction. The transition is certainly intentional, but I failed to resonate with the author's intent.
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life (* * * * -)
Pinker, Steven
I have yet to come across a book written by Steven Pinker that failed to make me think, and this is no exception. This book is about "how we think about each other's thoughts about each other's thoughts, ad infinitum". That is, we not only try to be thought readers, but also think about how the other person is trying to read our thoughts, or how the other person is trying to decode our thought reading, and it goes back and forth. Sometimes we are aware that some fact is publicly known, and everyone knows that everyone knows this fact. These are termed as "common knowledge". In this book, Pinker explores this awareness and shows how deeply it affects everything we do, from social interactions to politics and economic activities.
Having read many of his books, I can say that this one contains many ideas that appeared in his earlier work. That is hardly a complaint, as there is essential continuity in everyone's thinking. But it is a very clever book that covers a wide range of scenarios. People familiar with Yuval Harari's popular book, Sapiens, will find some similar threads, but Pinker is more thorough in defining his thesis.
The book is also full of clever logical problems and anecdotes that should entertain any thoughtful and curious reader. Many of the behavioral experiments he describes are also delightful and thought-provoking. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who finds our species endlessly fascinating.
Flesh (* * * * -)
Szalay, David
This is my third book in this year's Booker Prize short list, and this is the best so far. It is undoubtedly an unusual read, both in terms of the narrative style and the language. The protagonist is a young Hungarian person who was sexually abused as a child, and after a stint in the military, moves to the UK. What makes him unusual is his total passivity and reticence. He only expresses himself in single words with almost no meaning. Yet, this cold vagueness makes us, the readers, understand the person. I have never read a book where so little is said about the character, yet it allows us to enter his world and psyche.
I cannot say the entire story was particularly convincing to me, especially his relationship with his rich boss's wife, but it didn't matter so much in the end. The attraction was to enter the inner world of this person, who never opens any doors or windows for us to enter. There is no attempt by the author to make the character likable, but the sympathy that emerges is not because we like him, but because we start to understand him.
Infinity: From Paradox to Cosmos (* * * - -)
Arden, JD
{did not write a note on
Perfection (* * * * -)
Latronico, Vincenzo
This is a remarkably original piece of writing, unlike any novel I have read before. It narrates the life of a millennial couple from a small town in southern Europe who move to Berlin to live a life of western comfort, urban sophistication, creative freedom, and be part of a new lifestyle that did not exist before. This is the first generation of people who we often call digital nomads. They are not tied to a 9-to-5 job, can pursue a profession of creative satisfaction, can work from wherever there is internet connectivity, earn reasonably well, free to travel, and form friendships with likeminded digital nomads. It promises to be a perfect life. The young couple lives this life, and initially congratulate themselves for making the right career choice.
As a reader, who was born a few generation ago, but having close contact with this generation through work, I started envying the freedom of the protagonists. The book is a dispassionate description of their lives as it evolves over the next twenty years. It does not describe many specific events, but brutally examines their daily lives. It the process we discover the failed promises they expected from their lives. They slowly discover the emptiness, monotony, and the lack of any genuine purpose. Berlin starts loosing its edginess. Pushed out, they go for a search for new exciting places to call home, yet they remain perpetual nomads.
The author shines a scorching light on a new lifestyle that did not exist before, and exposes the banality of what may seem like a life of ultimate creative comfort. Still, it is hard to say if this is any worse than what most middle class working people with conventional jobs live. Even if it fails to deliver the freedom it promised, isn’t there more agency than the life most of us end up experiencing. The book offers us a window into an alternative world that we have not seen before, but is a reality for many. It simply examines it with brutal honesty, without taking sides.
Stone Yard Devotional (* * * * -)
Wood, Charlotte
I often thought about the difference between being religious and being spiritual, but could never resolve it completely. I wondered whether one can be spiritual while keeping anything supernatural outside the door? Despite being a strong atheist, I still experienced feelings that can be called spiritual, yet I could never put my finger on where one crosses the line. What exactly is the essence of being spiritual?
In this book, Charlotte Wood describes the protagonist, a woman of unspecified age, who decides to leave her normal life and move into an abbey in the same remote part of Australia where she grew up. She declared herself an atheist and is completely unaware of the catholic rituals and beliefs. She is a misfit in the deeply religious environment, but she finds common ground in her attachment to nature.
The book is about grief, loss, death, and meanness and greatness among ordinary people. She repeatedly asks questions about forgiveness—can we forgive, can we be forgiven? Not much happens in the novel, except for three disturbances. There is a relentless mouse plague that is ravaging the abbey; the bones of a dead sister, probably murdered in Thailand, are returned to the abbey, and the appearance of a disturbing character from her school days. But the narrative is sprinkled with beautiful anecdotes, none of which tell a simple moral tale, but percolate through the reader's mind and leave behind a strange state of mind.
I cannot describe the book clearly, but it left me in a state of trance. It took me a while to finish because I had to reread so many sections just to prolong the hypnotic state. If you look for a strong storyline, then this book may disappoint you, but otherwise, it may change you in a profound way.
We Do Not Part (* * * * -)
Han, Kang
It is a hard novel to put in a box. I do not agree that it is primarily about the massacre on Jeju Island, though that acts as the moral background. The author also did not try to write a historical or political novel. Instead, it is a sensitive and haunted human reaction to a terrible time in history, where tens of thousands of civilians were murdered, but the country simply tried to hide and forget this shameful chapter.
The book starts with the arduous journey of Kyungha, a writer, to a remote village on Jeju Island during an intense snowstorm. She is trying to reach her friend's home in time to save her pet bird from dying, as her friend is recovering in a hospital in Seoul. Her intense sense of duty and commitment to meet her friend's request reminded me of the wonderful Kiarostami film called Where Is My Friend's House.
The constant backdrop of the entire novel is this relentless snowstorm. The author depicts the snow both as a threat and, more often, as gentle and mysterious. As she tries to walk to the destination through a blinding blizzard and darkness, she falls and loses consciousness. It remains unclear whether the rest of the novel is her hallucinations. She reaches her friend's home to discover that the bird she was trying to save has already died. With no heating available, she starts to hallucinate, which is the rest of the book.
The long passages about the snowy landscape also reminded me of Kawabata's Snow Country, though the snow here is less austere and more alive. The author somehow binds the snow to her commitment to her friend, the fragility of a bird's life, and the extreme cruelty of human beings who commit horrendous acts of brutality and callousness. All this leaves the reader in a strange trance and with deeply felt sadness.
What We Can Know (* * * * *)
McEwan, Ian
Over the years, I have come to expect thoroughly original stories from Ian McEwan. I may not have enjoyed all of them to the same degree, but I was always impressed by their novelty. His latest novel was no exception. It is one of the most clever storytelling I have come across in recent years. But it just doesn't stop there -- it is also one of the most thought-provoking books I have read recently. While being intellectually stimulating, it is also a page-turner. Very few books can do both.
The first part of the book is written from the perspective of a humanities scholar in the early twenty-second century who is trying to uncover the mystery surrounding a lost poem by one of the most respected poets of the early twenty-first century, which is the present time. In the process, we come to know the poet's family and friends, and particularly his wife, Vivien.
The world has changed a lot in the hundred years, and our time is correctly referred to as the age of derangement. The dystopian new world looks back at our time with a mixture of awe and disdain. The two academics try to make sense of the mystery, but we eventually realize that what historians discover is not the real history.
The second part is from the perspective of the wife of the famous poet and the subject of the lost poem. Her story destroys many of the myths that our historians wanted to believe.
The author jumps back and forth between two time periods with comfortable ease and makes both extremely believable. We discover the absurdity of both times, especially what we call normal today. He creates a way to see us through an outside lens without making it feel like science fiction. In the process, we start to question how much of personal reality can really be discovered by others. Is it even possible to write histories of people? Perhaps we are all too complex to be analyzed and understood.
A Guardian and a Thief (* * * - -)
Majumdar, Megha
In the last couple of years, I read several novels that are set in a dystopian future caused by a climate catastrophe. However, this is the first one where the events take place in a relatively near future, and it happens in Kolkata, a city I grew up in and know more intimately than any other place on the planet. The story follows a family of a child, her mother, and her grandfather as they prepare to migrate to Michigan under a climate visa quota to join the child's father. Over a span of a week, the family faces a series of crises and tragedies.
While the plot is clever, timely, and grippingly narrated, the book fails to be convincing. I generally do not like coincidences in literature or films, and this one is full of them. I could have tolerated the first few of them, but then it became one coincidence after another, almost predictable, and utterly improbable. Such plot devices may work better in comedies, but they are most ineffective when they lead to unimaginable tragedies. It undermines the gravity of the real tragedy by reducing it to a caricature.
I was impressed by her debut novel, "A Burning," and hoped that her next book would feel less contrived. Unfortunately, that was not the way it turned out. She decided to move in the opposite direction. Perhaps she is aiming for a different audience, and based on the response she received, it must have worked. I still hope to see more mature work from her, as she certainly has the talent.
Raising Hare: A Memoir (* * * * *)
Dalton, Chloe
I cannot imagine a better way to end the year. This absolutely remarkable book left me in a mood that is hard to describe; a mix of gratitude for the author's generosity, a profound love of nature, but not as a product of human imagination, a sense of deep tenderness, disappointment with human callousness and cruelty, and wonderment towards all the creatures we share the planet with.
During the pandemic lockdown, the author discovers a baby hare, a leveret, on her walks. Fearing it would die, she reluctantly brings the baby home. She immediately became aware that hares are impossible to domesticate or even keep alive in captivity. However, through personal research, she tries her best to raise this hare. She did not want to create a pet. With the utmost respect for a wild species, she protects it without impeding its freedom in any way. This book is a detailed memoir of the few years after that.
It is not a sentimental book about the relationship between a wild creature and a human being. In fact, it is just the opposite. Out of tremendous and unusual respect for the animal, she treats it as an independent entity -- free to do whatever it wants to do. She does not name the animal or personify the relationship in any way. What develops between them is mutual trust, the only thing we can hope to cultivate between two species. Any other emotion, like love, is a sign of imposing our values on another animal. What do we know about how a hare feels love? She grants complete freedom to her friend, to go in and out of her home as she pleases, and in return, she earns the ultimate trust of the hare when she trusts the human enough to let her own babies stay in her home.
The book is equal parts her memoir of this unique relationship, her discovery of what we know of this species from a biological perspective, which often contradicts her own observations, and a manifesto about human callousness and cruelty towards other creatures. However, each of these aspects is handled with rare detachment. She tries hard not to get too involved with her hare, which makes the story she tells so much more convincing and touching. She researches the science and uses it, but is also aware that a scientist's perspective may miss some behavioral details that arise from personal attachment. Her criticism of human cruelty is not as extreme as that of a passionate activist who would give primacy to animals over all human needs, but rather a balanced approach that can meet human needs without disregarding the needs of the animals we share the planet with.
Above all, it shows that true respect and attachment must start with individuals, and not with abstract groups. By deeply respecting and understanding an individual hare, she developed a broader sense of empathy. Perhaps this is why a good fictional work, or a powerful film, that deals with individuals, has far greater impact on our minds than volumes of statistics about human suffering. We are evolutionarily designed to feel empathy for individuals, not groups.
You must read this book. It is one of those rare books that may change you profoundly.
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