A Work in Progress

Reading Now: A Few Teasers

I am hoping to get back into the habit of picking up and reading classic literature.  For a while I was reading classics of all sorts including big hefty novels, but in the last few years I want to read them but seem to pass them by.  I know it is just a matter of perseverance and dedication.  I need to get into the habit of daily reading and spending time with classics as they are very much an investment and not usually something you can just idly dip into on occasion.  When I do that, it is pretty much a recipe for failure on my part.  (Think--A Suitable Boy, Undine Spragg's "follies" or my inability to even finish a short novel by Janet Frame.  There have been a few here and there that I have successfully managed--more modern classics or Japanese classics.

So rather than choosing something simply because it is a classic and I should really read "x", I have picked up a book I have for a very long time wanted to read.  Another Japanese classic, Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters.  Like so many other books, or genres, I have put off reading it for a couple of reasons--it is a heftier book with smaller print than others I have been reaching for in the last couple of years.  I was intimidated by the thought of a modern Japanese classic, which I thought might be hard to get into or understand.

However.  Stuff and nonsense as I am thoroughly enjoying it--even if I do take some time to work my way through it.  In its way it is not so very different than a novel by Jane Austen.  It was published in 1957 and the setting is 1930s Japan--in particular Osaka and Ashiya.  The story revolves around the four Makioka sisters, a once distinguished family now perhaps beginning to decline as the modern age (and the war) arrives. 

The two eldest are married and have children.  Tsuruko and her family live in Osaka and as the eldest in the family have the largest and most important home.  So far she seems to have been mostly off stage in the story.  Sachiko, her husband Teinosuke and their daughter Etsuko have some prominence in the story thus far.  They, as do the two younger sisters, live in Ashiya.  The youngest daughter Taeko (Koi-san as she is affectionately called) has a suitor she wants to marry, but as the youngest she cannot marry until Yukiko, the third daughter, does so first.  Alas, Yukiko is not inclined to marry and would happily stay and care for her niece Etsuko, for whom she has a great love and regard. 

Do you see where we're going here?  It is so interesting to read about the three sisters and the cultural aspects of Japanese family life in this particular time and place.  I have noticed this before in the Japanese novels I have read--the sadness of a way of life, of losing a particular Japanese-ness/or culture as the modern age brings so many vast changes.

So a few teasers from what I have been reading.  And this is a book to be read slowly and savored, too, I must point out.

"The best days for the Makiokas had lasted perhaps into the mid-twenties.  Their prosperity lived now only in the mind of the Osakan who knew the old days well.  Indeed even in the mid-twenties, extravagance and bad management were having their effect on the family business.  The first of a series of crises had overtaken them then.  Soon afterwards Sachiko's father died, the business was cut back, and the shop in Semba, the heart of old Osaka--a shop that boasted a history from the middle of the last century and the days of the Shogunate--had to be sold.  Sachiko and Yukiko found it hard to forget how it had been while their father lived.  Before the shop was torn down to make way for a more modern building, they could not pass the solid earthen front and look in through the shop windows at the dusky interior without a twinge of sorrow."

***

"The three were not monotonously alike, however.  Each had her special beauties, and they set one another off most effectively.  Still they had an unmistakable something in common--what fine sisters! one immediately thought.  Sachiko was the tallest, with Yukiko and Taeko shorter by equal steps, ad that fact alone was enough to give a certain charm and balance to the composition as they walked down the street together.  Yukiko was the most Japanese in appearance and dress, Taeko the most Western, and Sachiko stood midway between.  Taeko had a round face and a firm, plump body to go with it.  Yukiko by contrast, had a long, thin face and a very slender figure.  Sachiko again stood between, as if to combine their best features.  Taeko usually wore Western clothes in the summer and Japanese clothes the rest of the year.  There was something bright and lively about Sachiko and Taeko, both of whom resembled their father.  Yukiko was different.  Her face impressed one as sad, lonely, and yet she looked best in gay clothes.  The sombre kimonos so stylish in Tokyo were quite wrong for her."

***

"'What a nice smell,' said Sachiko.  They were walking down a hedge-lined street.  'The cloves are in bloom somewhere.'

'Only one month more to the cherry blossoms.  I can hardly wait.'"

This is such an interesting world to immerse myself in and Tanizaki had caught me from the first page.  I think my favorite filmmaker (or one of my favorite anyway) is Yasujiro Ozu and to read Tanizaki is to be in the literary equivalent of this particular Japan.  Are you surprised that I have already started collecting Tanizaki's other works?  And maybe it is time to revisit Ozu's films as well.  In any case a happy encounter with Classic Fiction once again for me.

The World of Books at Your Fingertips

I've been busy . . . (requesting), can you tell?  Maybe I am in an alternate universe?  While I keep walking into 'most anticipated books of 2020' lists, everything catching my eye of late has been books that are older or out of print.  One of the perks of working in a library has been being able to just walk up to the stacks and pull a book off the shelf.  And the books I want but we don't own?  Have a little patience and then request them from another library.  

I seem to be in an ILL request phase.  On the agenda (and bookcart) at the moment:

Francesca Woodman Photographs, 1975-1980.  This is an exhibit catalog.  The name caught my eye via Buried in Print's GoodReads.  I was intrigued by the name (a woman) and the subject of photography.  Francesca Woodman's photographs are amazing and you may well be familiar with them without realizing it, as more than a few have been book jacket illustrations (notably one for a book by Elena Ferrante).  Sadly she committed suicide at the very young age of 22 in 1981.  

The following books are from an article I read somewhere about books that are 'now forgotten' but much loved or admired by contemporary authors.  Sorry I have lost the link that spurred me to request these.

The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker is a young adult/juvenile title (I have several on the go right now--I guess this might be my year of more than normal YA reading).  The author was a mere 21 when she wrote this.  "Through a magic mirror Sebastian travels from his Victorian world of winter snow and Mrs. Parkin to a magic world of Melissa, Mantari the cat, a wicked Enchanter, and many other exciting people. Melissa, a pretty young girl, has been imprisoned in a large house by the wicked Enchanter. Sebastian first meets Melissa through the magic mirror and resolves to do everything in his power, and with the help of a little magic, to free her."

Translated from French Assia Djebar's The Mischief has been compared to (found the link for this book!) Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse (maybe I will read that as well this year).  And from the article noting this wonderful book: "It was written and first published in French in the mid-50’s, and is set over the course of a single summer. Its heroine is one of the jeunesse dorée, dissatisfied and bored despite her wealth and privilege. She drives a fast sports car, and idles away her days sunbathing on Mediterranean beaches and flirting with her boyfriend. She’s a capricious enfant terrible, and she’s stricken with jealousy at the happiness of a couple close to her, so she amuses herself by sabotaging their relationship, with unexpectedly tragic consequences."

We Always Wore Sailor Suits by Susanna Agnelli -- "A brief, charming, and somewhat puzzling autobiography by a woman who is currently Mayor of Porto Santo Stefano. The period of the author's girlhood and youth, which her book describes, coincided exactly with Mussolini's rule in Italy, yet this is a record not of Mussolini's Italy, but of Ms. Agnelli's, in which Mussolini was a distant and symbolic participant. The author was born into the comfortable upper reaches of the Italian bourgeoisie--her grandfather had founded Fiat and grown immensely rich--yet the family had little claim to the ultimate privilege of nobility."--1975 Kirkus Review.

And I am reading right now Richard Peck's Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, another YA novel that was made into a very good movie called Gas Food Lodging, which I recently watched again.  The novel differs somewhat from the movie, but I like it just as well nonetheless.  I read some of Richard Peck's work when I was a teenager, so it is fun revisiting his writing now.

I love these unexpected treats.  Sometimes the best reads are the ones that no one (or not many people) are talking about anymore.  I want to balance my reading of contemporary fiction with older and unknown (hopefully not completely forgotten) books.  What hidden gems are you reading now?

And a New Arrival: The Flower Arranger

Since I am going to write about this properly on a blog tour when the book is released, I will just give a little visual teaser now.  Agora Books is a small London-based independent publisher who I have been fortunate enough to have discovered last year.  When they asked if I would like to read The Flower Arranger by JJ Ellis, I could not pass up the opportunity as it works perfectly with my Reading Japan project that I have been enjoying so much.  

I have just started the novel, which came in the mail yesterday (note the very cool packaging--I love that they send out their books with a little added fanfare!).  This is a thriller set in Tokyo and featuring a British journalist trying to break into serious news, Holly Blain, and a detective, Tetsu Tanaka, who are going to cross paths and become involved in a series of murders.  I am not far into the story but I am already hooked.  This is apparently the first of a planned trilogy, so if I like this as much as I am anticipating I will have more to look forward to.

I am nearing the end of Yasunari Kawabata's The Old Capital, which is one of the books that helped the author win the Nobel Prize in 1968.  The story is lovely and very evocative.  I want to Google all the temples and festivals and places that are mentioned in the text as they are so lovingly described.  The story is almost secondary to the imagery.  The book has been adapted to film twice, but I don't think I can get my hands on either film, sadly.  The Ellis crime novel will be a decided change and I am always happy to switch gears to something new (especially as I let  the Kawabata sink in and percolate a little).  Is it too soon to look forward to the long upcoming weekend?  My reading is all set out and ready to go.

Coming Attractions: New Books

I've been really fortunate of late to get some good review copies in the mail and in a couple of cases I will be reading to be part of an upcoming blog tour or two.  One book is still en route but will be a perfect addition to my reading Japan project.  The other is a book I have fallen into quite happily as it is a charming first mystery by a British author, so, right up my alley.  Rule Brittania by Alec Marsh is set in mid-1930s England and features a Cambridge historian who falls into a murder mystery.  So far it has this wonderful slightly madcap feel to it with a very visual sensibility.  The chemistry between the characters really draws you in and has me turning the pages quickly.  It is due to be published in September by the indie publisher Accent Press (which I see has a slew of interesting-looking mysteries I think I need to explore further).

I know I have mentioned Rebecca Alexander and her newest Sage Westfield mystery, which was published earlier this month.  I couldn't wait to get my hands on it, but then I got wrapped up in a few other books (notably an Elly Griffiths/Ruth Galloway mystery whose heroine is also a forensic achaeologist), but I am ready now to jump into A Shroud of Leaves.  I needed a little palate change before picking up another novel about forensics.  This second novel is about the discovery of a girl's body on the same plot of land where another teenager went missing two dacades earlier, but was never found.  Titan Books passed this one on to me.

I must admit I went directly to New Vessel Press and asked for a galley of Ronit Matalon's And the Bride Closed the Door, when I saw the announcement.  As it is getting closer to the October publishing date I think it must be safe to start reading.  It is a slender novel by an important Israeli author who shortly passed away after this book was published in Israel, where it won the Brenner Prize.  Aside from having an interest in literature from the region I was intrigued by the plot in which a young bride locks herself in her bedroom on her wedding day and refuses to go through the ceremony.

I'm waiting anxiously for one other book published by another small/indie press, (I am very fond of these small presses which don't get as much attention as they deserve, I think).  You'll be hearing more about all these books in the coming weeks or so.

Reading Japan: Update

I have a few chunskter size crime novels by Japanese authors that I have wanted to dig into, but their near door stop size does make me hesitate.  With a really good read, the longer the better.  But the hesitation on my part is more a matter of carrying the book about.  Since most of my reading time doesn't take place at home, one hefty book can make my tote bag and daily walk something of a slog (the solution is to only carry that book with me . . .  not three . . .  what a thought!).  The Japanese crime novels I have been reading have been especially satisfying of late and I think at least one or maybe even two might make my best read of the year list.

Miyuki Miyabe is one of my great finds this year (as is Seicho Matsumoto who I wrote about not long ago).  All She Was Worth (Kasha in Japanese and translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum) is a crime novel that was a best novel of the year in Japan when it was published in 1999.  It is not only entertaining and interesting but quite timely, too, as it deals with identity theft and consumerism and the banking crisis.  I know that might sound a little boring as mysteries go, and there are a few places in the story where there might be more explication of how the financial world operates than some readers might like, but I found it all fascinating.

Perhaps it was the exotic nature of reading about how it all works in Japan.  Similarities to here but how the mystery pans out and how the stealing of identities was done was very foreign and particular to the place.  The story opens with a request to find a missing person.  Honma is a Tokyo detective on leave due an accident that has him limping and recuperating.  He is a single parent (his wife died) with a young son, Makoto.  Isaka is an older friend who does the cooking and helps take care of Makoto.  I must admit that part of the enjoyment of this mystery was the likable qualities of these characters.  They seem such a tight family unit.  Makoto worries about his dad and how he should be resting and not walking without his cane. 

A nephew of Honma's deceased wife shows up asking him to look into the disappearance of his fiancé.  Things were going along just fine until they decided to marry and he discovers she had declared bankruptcy and was in all sorts of financial difficulties.  Looking into the disappearance is no easy matter when Honma discovers that the girlfriend was living under an assumed name.  She took the identity of another woman close to her in age and appearance.  Now both women are not to be found and it becomes quite a twisty turny investigation.  One of the things I found fascinating was the use of a family register, which in the story anyway, appears to be a standard practice in Japan.  A family has a register of births and deaths and residences and the woman's name would be removed and added to her husband's when she marries.  In the case of the missing woman she had established a brand new one when she took on a new identity.  In every respect this was a wholly satisfying read and I wish the author would write more stories featuring Honma.

I found Banana Yoshimoto's Moshi Moshi (Moshi Moshi Shimokitazawa in Japanese and translated into English by Asa Yoneda) much more satisfying by story's end than I was expecting.  I was enjoying it with some reservations, but it all came together in the end.  The full Japanese title actually makes more sense now that I have finished the book than the English title, but I didn't know the reference to Shimokitazawa until I was reading the story.

This is a coming of age story of sorts.  Yoshie's father has died in a weird accident.  He was part of a lover's suicide pact, only he was not a willing victim, which makes it all the more strange.  The woman drugged him and then took him with her into death.  He had been having an affair with her and on the night of his death he left his cell phone at home.  That phone will make an appearance later in the story in the dream's Yoshie has.  She dreams her father is calling her on the phone.  Her mother is having similar dreams.  I am finding that it is not unusual for their to be ghostly appearances in Japanese stories (at least in the handful of books I have read).  I think there is something very different culturally with family and ancestor respect and the idea of the spirit or soul not necessarily being at rest at death.  

In order to make a clean start Yoshie moves to the neighborhood of Shimokitazawa, which is (or was--maybe now it has gone somewhat touristy or lost some of its bohemian flair?) where she begins working in a restaurant (another theme I am coming across--food and cooking) and trying to regain her equilibrium as she was quite close to her father.  Her mother soon follows her and moves into her small apartment, which Yoshie initially resents.  But this is a story about coming to terms with grief and finding this new environment--filled with good friends, good food and potential new loves both healing and life affirming.  

I have a nice healthy stack of books set in Japan and by Japanese or Japanese-American authors at my fingertips.  I think I have read about seven or eight now and hope to at least get to ten before I think about 'finishing' this project.  Or maybe I will just keep pulling books from the stack as I am finding Japanese culture and literature and film so very fascinating.  I am now trying to decide on a new read and am contemplating either something by Gail Tsukiyama (an American author of Chinese-Japanese heritage) or Nobel Prize winner The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata.  The choice is, of course, so hard as they all sound so good.

August Prompt: Something Borrowed

It's been kind of a crazy week and I have fallen behind in all my mental plans, so today something easy and next week time to catch up on other things.  Other things include July's Stillmeadow ramblings, finishing my "beach" book, telling you about the latest class I took earlier this week and just generally catching up on regular bookchat.  I can't seem to get back on to a normal blogging routine.  I admit my at home time has been very lazy and I don't much like the laptop I own so am often reluctant to pull it out and work on creating a blog post.  

For now, though, here we are in a new month, which I am pleased about.  I love turning the calendar from July to August.  I am always hopeful that the worst of the summer heat is over and there is the idea of fresh starts and a new school year to look forward to.  Fall is my favorite season and it seems well within my grasp suddenly.  I am not ready for cold weather, but I am ready for mildness.  I won't complain, however.  After a difficult week of over 100F days and nasty humidity, things have settled into nice normal (maybe even slightly below average) summer temperatures.  Nothing that I can't deal with, or at least feel strongly about complaining about.  

With a new month comes a new prompt and an easy one that I don't need to think too hard about (I am never unhappy about thinking hard about books of course).  "Something Borrowed" is this month's theme.  Unless someone quickly presses a book into my hands with the idea of me reading it and returning it, I get to sort through my current library book pile and here we go.  Instant selections.  I have a little variety here to choose from.

Desert Heat, J.A. Jance -- I think I was looking at her books at the bookstore.  I mean, you can never have enough mystery series to follow, right?  And this is the first Joanna Brady mystery.  "A cop lies dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun—a local lawman who may well have become the next sheriff of Cochise County. The police brass claim that Andy Brady was dirty, and that his shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna Brady, his devoted wife and mother of their nine-year-old daughter, knows a cover-up when she hears one . . . and murder when she sees it. But her determined efforts to hunt down an assassin and clear her husband's name are placing Joanna and her surviving family in harm's way—because in the desert, the one thing more lethal than a rattler's bite . . . is the truth." 

The Saturday Night Ghost Club, Craig Davidson -- . . . this one because I have started watching and am addicted to the first season of Stranger Things!  "Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined. With the alternating warmth and sadness of the best coming-of-age stories, The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a note-perfect novel that poignantly examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling."

Territory of Light, Yuko Tsushima -- I would like to read this for my Reading Japan project.  It looks really good!  "It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light streaming through the windows, so bright she has to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness, becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become."

Feast Your Eyes, Myla Goldberg -- I love the premise of this story and the way she tells it.  "Feast Your Eyes, framed as the catalogue notes from a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, tells the life story of Lillian Preston: “America’s Worst Mother, America’s Bravest Mother, America’s Worst Photographer, or America’s Greatest Photographer, depending on who was talking.” After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school’s photo club, Lillian rejects her parents’ expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight, and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter’s sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives and especially Lillian’s career as she continues a life-long quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition."

Costalegre, Courtney Maum -- "It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. In the haute-bohemian circles of Austria, Germany, and Paris, Hitler is circulating a most-wanted list of “cultural degenerates”―artists, writers, and thinkers whose work is deemed antithetical to the new regime. To prevent the destruction of her favorite art (and artists), the impetuous American heiress and modern art collector, Leonora Calaway, begins chartering boats and planes for an elite group of surrealists to Costalegre, a mysterious resort in the Mexican jungle, where she has a home."

Terrible, Horrible Edie, E.C. Spykman -- "EVEN IF she has lived ten terrible years, terrible, horrible Edie really isn’t terrible and horrible at all, but rather one of the most charming and engaging and gutsy children in American children’s fiction. It’s true of course that Edie does get into—and not always without it being at least a little bit her fault—some pretty terrible and horrible scrapes, and that sometimes she will sulk, but these are the kinds of things that happen to the kid sister of two snooty boys and one fancy-pants girl, not to mention having to deal with the distraction of two half sisters who are no better than babies. Edie’s father and stepmother have headed to Europe for the summer, and though the rest of the family can look forward to good times at a beloved summer house on the sea, Edie still has to fight to hold her own. Adventures on a sailboat and on an island, and the advent of a major hurricane and what Edie takes to be a military coup, all come to a climax when Edie solves the mystery of who stole the neighbor’s jewels and saves, at least for one day, the day."

The last book on the list sounds like a perfect summer read--the kind you squeeze in before vacation ends and you have to go back to school.

Now, though, the problem is how to choose as I want to read them All.

Points and Lines, Seicho Matsumoto

Seicho Matsumoto was a prolific Japanese writer of not just crime novels but short stories and history books.  He won numerous awards and had a number of his novels adapted to film (I watched one over the long weekend, but unfortunately the book was never translated into English).  His famous crime novel, Points and Lines (Ten to Sen translated from the Japanese by Makiko Yamamoto and Paul C. Blum) is only my first foray into his world of Japanese crime novels.  Alas, I better take my time with his books since there are so few available in English.

I think it is the case with many contemporary crime novels that the mystery, in a really good story, is informed by the ills of a society.  It might all come down to greed or lust or passion, but a story likely reflects the injustices in a society.  I always think that to get good insight into any culture, it is always a good idea to read some crime stories.  In the case of Matsumoto, his work from what I have read about him, deals with the dark undercurrents that occur in politics and business and he does not shy away from showing corruption in any segment of society including the police.  

In Points and Lines, though, while there is plenty of deceit, our detectives are after the truth, and it is all set against a backdrop of what to me seems quite exotic 1950s Japanese culture.  This is a carefully constructed and craftily thought out murder mystery of what at first glance appears to be simply a case of a love-suicide pact without a hint of any wrongdoing.  One tiny slip up that only by chance was caught--a dinner ticket on a train for one when, had this really been a suicide and not a murder should have been for two--results in a set of deaths that look suspicious.

It takes some very meticulous investigating and piecing together of clues to solve this crime.  Literally many, many careful hours are spent sorting through detailed lists and timetables from train journeys and lots of simple hitting the pavement and following in the footsteps of the man they suspect of the crime to come up with any tangible evidence.  Suspect him, they may, but none of their leads seem to pan out and offer any reliable proof, so utterly careful has the murderer been to cover his tracks.  This is more of a slow burn detective story rather than racy thriller, but it is a satisfying mystery and peek into the worlds of a Japanese salaryman and corrupt government officials.

So the premise--the story opens with a businessman having dinner with two colleagues in a traditional style Tokyo restaurant that he often frequents.  He is a regular client and knows his waitress who often takes care of the parties he brings.  His business finished, he will return home the following day.  He talks two waitresses from the restaurant into meeting him and accompanying him to the train station the next day with the offer of a free dinner, so he won't have to wait alone. 

Curiously as they are waiting on the train platform they spot his waitress boarding the train with a man they have never seen.  She has what appears to be a lover?  Of course this causes much surprise and no little amount of gossip.  She had never been known to have a boyfriend, they must get closer to get a better look.  Trains come, they depart, their view is blocked save for a few moments in between departures.  Indeed she is their coworker.  Soon their curious surprise and gossip will turn to mortification when they discover their friend and this man have committed suicide on a lonely beach far from Tokyo.  Unexpected it may be, but everyone has secrets and apparently she did as well.

It will come down to those few moments between train departures and that strange single meal ticket that don't add up.  Sounds almost implausible, doesn't it?  Such small things, tiny details when everything else points to a sad but not criminal case of suicide.  This was such an interesting peek into Japanese society as well as a classic crime/detective story.  There was a lot of detail on how the detective sussed it all out and the solution all tied into the dirty dealings of the business world.  I will be reading the other books by Seicho Matsumoto that I can get my hands on.  

I am now reading another, this time contemporary (rather it is set in the late 1980s) crime novel by Miyuki Miyabe called All She Was Worth, which was a Japanese bestseller, and has been hailed by the Christian Science Monitor as a "suspenseful tour of the 'new' Japan.  However, as this is about identity theft and possibly murder (so far no body but only two missing women--the real Shoko Sekine and her impersonator), maybe all that corruption is not so new.  She goes into some detail about the credit industry, so once again this is a novel of social consciousness.  The detective, Honma, who I really like, is a widowed father of a young son.  He is on leave from his police department due to a leg injury and agrees to look into the disappearance of the girlfriend of his nephew.  I am at that point of no return with the story and can't wait to finish.  I plan on reading more by Miyabe, as I love her storytelling.  It looks like she has a handful of books translated into English.  My next reading Japan choice, however, will be a regular novel--either historical or contemporary fiction.  I already have a few books set aside to choose from!

Just in Time for the Weekend: New NF

Choosing a new book to read is important business.  Particularly when we're talking about nonfiction as I tend to just stick with one book at a time.  I loved Ruth Reichl's memoir (have turned down some pages and will share some excerpts that were quite hunger/desire for a good meal-inducing), but for now I think the weekend calls for a little book selection talk.  

This is actually the second pile of books I have created.  I pulled a few books from my bedroom piles, but then I started thinking of some other books that appealed and so went in search for them in my book room and you know how that goes.  Standing in front of bookcases and your eye starts to scan the titles on the shelves and here we go.  Pile number two, which is made up of books that have long sat in piles or on shelves.  I seem to be leaning in a memoir/history (particularly WWII) direction.

A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile, Marjorie Agosin -- "In this unique memoir, Marjorie Agosín writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, who grew up as the daughter of European Jewish immigrants in Chile in the World War II era. Woven into the narrative are the stories of Frida's father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who arrived in Chile later with a number tattoed on her arm; and of her great grandmother from Odessa, who loved the Spanish language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep. Agosín's memoir is a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and of words."

Kisses on a Postcard: A Tale of Wartime Childhood, Terence Frisby -- "Carefully labelled, and each clutching little brown suitcases, Terry, aged seven, and his elder brother Jack, eleven, stand amid the throng of children which crowds the narrow platform at Welling station awaiting the steam engine which will pull them and their fellow evacuees across the country towards their unknown destination - and their new lives...Warm-hearted and moving, "Kisses on a Postcard" is a vivid and intimate portrait of our wartime history; a compelling and uplifting memoir of growing up in an extraordinary time."

Eight Women, Two Model T's and the American West, Joanne Wilke -- "A blend of oral and written history, adventure, memoir, and just plain heartfelt living, Eight Women is a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Weaving together a granddaughter’s essays with family stories and anecdotes from the 1924 trip, the book portrays four generations of women extending from nineteenth-century Norway to present-day Iowa—and sets them loose across the western United States where the perils and practicalities of automotive travel reaffirm family connections while also celebrating individual freedom."

Millions Like Us: Women's Lives During the Second World War, Juliet Nicholson -- I have read and enjoyed her books before which are very interesting social history.  Once again this appears to be anecdotal pieces.  "In Millions Like Us Virginia Nicholson tells the story of the women's Second World War, through a host of individual women's experiences. We tend to see the Second World War as a man's war, featuring Spitfire crews and brave deeds on the Normandy beaches. But in conditions of "Total War" millions of women - in the Services and on the Home Front - demonstrated that they were cleverer, more broad-minded and altogether more complex than anyone had ever guessed. Millions Like Us tells the story of how these women loved, suffered, laughed, grieved and dared; how they re-made their world in peacetime. And how they would never be the same again ..."  (And I see an extensive bibliography in the back of the book--always a good thing).

Maiden's Trip: A Wartime Adventure on the Grand Union Canal, Emma Smith -- I read an earlier memoir by her about her adolesence (and I have a novel as well that is published by Persephone Books!).  "In 1943 Emma Smith joined the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company under their wartime scheme of employing women to replace the boaters. She set out with two friends on a big adventure: three eighteen-year-olds, freed from a middle-class background, precipitated into the boating fraternity. They learn how to handle a pair of seventy-two foot-long canal boats, how to carry a cargo of steel north from London to Birmingham and coal from Coventry; how to splice ropes, bail out bilge water, keep the engine ticking over and steer through tunnels. They live off kedgeree and fried bread and jam, adopt a kitten, lose their bicycles, laugh and quarrel and get progressively dirtier and tougher as the weeks go by."

A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York, Angelica Huston -- "In her first, dazzling memoir, Anjelica Huston shares the story of her deeply unconventional early life—her enchanted childhood in Ireland, living with her glamorous and artistic mother, educated by tutors and nuns, intrepid on a horse. Huston was raised on an Irish estate to which—between movies—her father, director John Huston, brought his array of extraordinary friends, from Carson McCullers and John Steinbeck to Peter O’Toole and Marlon Brando.  In London, where she lived with her mother and brother in the early sixties when her parents separated, Huston encountered the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. She understudied Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet. Seventeen, striking, precocious, but still young and vulnerable, she was devastated when her mother died in a car crash. Months later she moved to New York, fell in love with the much older, brilliant but disturbed photographer, Bob Richardson, and became a model. Living in the Chelsea Hotel, working with Richard Avedon and other photographers, she navigated a volatile relationship and the dynamic cultural epicenter of New York in the seventies."

The Liar's Club: A Memoir, Mary Karr -- "The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. This unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as “funny, lively, and un-put-downable” (USA Today) today as it ever was."

It's sort of funny how you think you know what you want to read but when faced with a bookcase full of books, other books leap out at you.  The joy of choosing.  And with July soon approaching, it will be time for a new prompt (I guess June's book is going to overlap with July's . . .).

Reading Japan: Update

Ito Ogawa's The Restaurant of Love Regained is a curious and unusual read.  A story that subverted my expectations and wandered into the realm of the sensual and fantastical.  It reminds me of novels by South American writers who dabble in magical realism.  The premise made me think of a cozy story of love lost and found (or if not love found at least a sense of contentment)  and the delights of food as way to heal emotional wounds.  There was something of all that, but, too, there was more than a touch of the foreign and exotic that bumped up against my western sensibilities and 'fear' of the 'trying the unknown' (and here I mean--Japanese cuisine).

Rinko has been unceremoniously dumped by her Indian boyfriend.  She returns home to find her apartment emptied of everything she held dear to her life save a vase (she had tucked away in a closet) of rice bran (fermented vegetables) she used in her cooking.  There is nothing left but to return to her home village and her mother, a place she left as a schoolgirl.  She finds she has been replaced by her mother with a pig named Hermes, but her mother offers her a space where she can do the one thing she is good at--cook. 

Rinko has lost her voice, but not her talent to prepare meals as special as they are restorative to their diners.  With the help of an old friend who had worked at her school, she sets about transforming a shed of her mother's into a special place, The Snail, where she will prepare just one meal a night tailored to the person or couple who have booked the table.  And it is a magical experience, one that, mostly anyway, makes dreams come true--restores life and love and gives happiness.  

It's a lovely story, bittersweet in some ways, and for me anyway, quite different from the stories I am used to.  Of course, I am indeed virtually traveling here by way of stories, and Japan is a culture that is still quite foreign to me.  So where my experience of western culture butted up against eastern culture, I do admit, there were some meals that did not appeal to my own sensibilities.  I can't fault the author for that however, it just gives me a glimpse of the unknown.  The universal appeal, though, is the redemption she finds by returning home and reconnecting with her mother.

While I might forego a few of the meals she prepared, I will say I wouldn't mind a version of the fruit sandwich she makes for one of her customers.  She bakes a perfect raisin bread, on which she spreads a thin layer of melted milk chocolate then perfectly whipped cream and topped with pears at just the perfect moment of ripeness.  

If you are looking for something a little bit different, a story that will be both familiar and yet foreign you might try Ito Ogawa's story.

I am ready to pick up another novel but I am first concentrating on two mysteries.  I am mostly spending time with All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe, published in 1992 and named a best novel and best mystery of the year in Japan.  I really like the detective in the story, Shunsuke Honma, who is off work recuperating from an accident.  He is a single father of a young son who has agreed to look into the disappearance of a woman.  She is the fiance of his deceased wife's cousin.  It turns out to be like dropping down the rabbit hole as it is a case of stolen identity.  The mystery is to find out who the two women are and which or maybe whether both women are dead.  I am really enjoying this as it is a puzzle with, again, the slant of being both familiar yet foreign.  There is a lot about Japanese culture in the story and I hope to write more about it when I finish.

On temporary hold is Seicho Matsumoto's most acclaimed novel, Points and Lines which was written in 1958.  Another puzzle of the Agatha Christie class.  This is an unusual mystery--a couple is found on a beach, dead.  It appears they have committed a love pact suicide.  But something is not quite right. The pair were spotted on a train together yet the woman got off and only much later met back up with the man and shortly thereafter they were found posed and dead.  It might come down to a four minute window of opportunity when their express train was waiting to pull out of the station--just moments before and after the departure and arrival of two other trains.  Sound tricky?  I know all the facts are there but I have not sussed things out yet.  I can't wait to get back to it.  Now I want to read more of Matsumoto's books, and he was quite a prolific writer, but I think there are only a small handful translated into English and easily available.  Also, some of his books have been filmed, about which I will share more later.

Slowish progress in my Japanese reading, but all quite satisfying and I have a stack more (bought and borrowed) to explore.  Since it is going to be far too hot to be outside for the coming week, I plan on armchair traveling to Japan!

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

There are some books that are meant to be read slowly and deliberately and sometimes meant to be read multiple times.  In the case of Fumiko Enchi's Masks, both are true, but I will add that in this case there are other works to read and study alongside the text that will only enhance the enjoyment and meaning. 

Enchi is really a remarkable writer and I am not sure I would have picked this book up had I not set out to read Japanese literature in particular this summer.  In the past I've not really been drawn to that part of the world as either a real or bookish destination.  Not one that I searched out anyway rather than simply by chance.  Maybe it has always felt so foreign (and not just in the literal sense).  The language feels a little bit impenetrable to me and the culture unlike anything else I have ever encountered. 

I am finding that the more I read and look and watch (I have been watching quite a few films by Yasujiro Ozu as well--and he is amazing) that the more fascinated by it I am.  Watching Japanese films alongside my reading has given me a visual reference that has been really helpful.  The Ozu films have covered the years of the first half of the twentieth century in Japan, so I hope to expand and watch more contemporary films, too.  

So I have read the novel and have set it aside to let it percolate and hope that as I read other books that I can return to it later with a better understanding of the culture and history and literature to make a second reading (I hope sometime later this year) better.  Just a few things now, however, to tidy up my experience (and to come back to later).

Fumiko Enchi is, according to the Dictionary of Literary Biography I referenced, one of those most renowned in Japan.  She won more postwar prizes than any other woman writer.  She wrote not only novels, but plays, essays and translations of Japanese classics into the modern language. 

"She associates sexuality-and, in her later works, the problems of aging-with self-identity and self-expression, and she thus exposes the hidden world of women who have been taught to suppress such feelings and needs."

Her father was a Japanese linguist and professor at Tokyo University.  She was the youngest child and apparently "at the center of her father's affection", which meant she spent much time with him in his study surrounded by literature and scholarly works.  Her grandmother on her father's side told her bedtime stories from the Edo (1600-1867) period, and interestingly both exposed her to Kabuki plays.  Her mother wanted her to have more ladylike hobbies and must have shook her head at such a bookish daughter.  Enchi also read Japanese classics like The Tale of Genji and the works of Junichiro Tanizaki (both are on my reading wishlists).

Considering her background and early literary influences it is not surprising then, that Masks, such a slim story is quite rich in Japanese culture and literature in the telling.  The novel is split into three sections, each title references the masks used in Noh dramas.  The story is essentially a revenge tale at its most basic.  it is about a wife wronged by her husband and seeks retribution via her own daughter.  Sounds complicated and a little messy?  It is, but interwoven are references to The Tale of Genji and the meanings behind those Noh archetypes.  It is not impossible to read the novel and understand it without prior knowledge of the literary references, yet an inquisitive reader will be drawn to learning about those deeper meanings.  I don't feel equipped to tackle a reading of all these things, but I do want to share those masks with you.

The first section is "Ryo No Onna" which means "spirit woman".  This is represents the spirit of "an older woman tormented beyond the grave by unrequited love". 

The second section is "Musagami" which means "that of a young woman in a state of frenzy".

The third section is "Fukai" which means "deep well" or "deep woman".  The mask is meant to show a middle age/mature woman who understands the inevitability of death.

Spoilers here.  So, it all follows.  Mieko, a writer, the mother/mother-in-law has been wronged by her husband.  Her son has died in a mountain climbing accident, but her daughter-in-law, Yasuko, still lives with her.  Also, Mieko's daugher, Harume (a twin of Yasuko's deceased husband), who was born with intellectual disabilities, is cared for at home.  Yasuko is a love interest of not one man but two who happen to be friends--one a psychologist and the other a university professor.  I won't try and go into details or try and describe some of the nuances of the story, but Mieko and Yasuko sets up one of the men to unknowingly sleep with her daughter Harume.  The intent is to carry on the bloodline of her lover over her husband who had been unfaithful but at a very tragic cost.  The set up of the man is dreamlike and otherworldly and he does not realize he has slept with someone other than Yasuko, so you can see (though I am not explaining it well) the use of the Noh masks in describing the arc of the story.  

I borrowed a couple of books about Noh Masks that were very helpful in discussing Noh Theater and the meaning of the masks (which are used in the plays but seem to be somewhat interchangeable depending on who is staging the play) as well as offering lots of great visuals: The Secrets of Noh Masks by Michishige Udaka and a wonderful two-volume set, Heaven Has a Face, So Does hell: The Art of the Noh Mask by Stephen E. Marvin.

I want to try one of Fumiko Enchi's other works, but I will be choosing carefully as I suspect another book will only branch off in many other directions.  What I most loved about this reading experience is getting a feel, though barely dipping in a toe, of what classic Japanese literature and culture is like.