In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami is on the surface a gritty hard boiled thriller set in the Kabuki-cho red-light district of Tokyo as the approaching New Year leaves near empty except for the human wreckage of the city. Jimji a young illegal sex tourist guide makes a good but shady living from taking westerners around the girlie bars, peep shows, hookers that allow foreigners.

He meets up with Frank who hires him for three days but from the start Jimji feels something is wrong and he starts to be sucked into an ever deepening nightmare that threatens his and his girl friend existence.

The story is told in the 1^st person from Jimji perspective and is based on clear fluid writing equal if not better then Haruki Murakami, which evokes the place and time so that you have a movie in your head. Not necessarily a good thing given some of things that happen.

Beneath the surface is a very different story which leads to conclusions and beginnings that can be misunderstood if psycho thriller is the readers’ sole expectation. We are instead being lead into mediation through the events affecting two desperate characters on what the Western and Japanese experience of loneliness is. The key passage for me is this one.

I remember the American making this particular confession, and the way his voice caught when he said “accept it”. Americans don’t talk about just grinning and bearing it, which is the Japanese approach to so many things. After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you will get through if you just hang in there. I don’t think I could stand the sort of loneliness Americans feel.

Reflect on what is being said here and you will enjoy a taut psychological thriller whose outcome makes perfect sense. Highly recommended

The pirates! : in an adventure with scientists by Gideon Defoe has a humour based on a mix of slapstick,( pirates trying to use Jellyfish as a bouncy castle)Monty Python( pirates disguised as scientists disguised as women), Carry on( peering down on ladies missus) and Blackadder. The book is not aimed at children, as much of the humour relies on an adult appreciation of cliché and irony, though children may well enjoy it.

When they're not belting out a lusty sea shanty or arguing about the best way to prepare ham, there's nothing pirates like more than a rousing adventure. And this is what the Pirate Captain, (the best leader in the Pirate world because of his beard and rugged good looks but perhaps not the sharpest cutlass in the armoury) and his shipful of variously named pirates--the scarf-wearing pirate, the pirate with an accordion, the ill-fated balding archaeologist pirate are going get.

They are tricked by the dastardly Black Bellamy into scuttling the Beagle and so stop Charles Darwin from bringing a manpanzee back to defeat his evil rival the Bishop of Oxford. To make good their mistake the pirates decide to help further the cause of science, getting treasure and peering at girls from above and go to London where with a very loose historical accuracy the Pirates struggle to solve the mystery of the Circus Ladies nights.

It also only 130ish pages long in a hand size hardback so its not going to be a heavy long term read. Highly recommended first of series and according to Aardman Animations website, author Gideon Defoe is working with producer/director Peter Lord on the screenplay and with writers Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil Hyperdrive (TV series) to turn the first two books from the series into a movie.

The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner

Well could be fancy and say its a post modernist novel with a form that counters the tyranny of the outdated narrative and naturalist tradition. Its plot: son at father's failed execution; father enrolled in the State's lotto prisoner execution programme, son writes a screenplay is merely a rack for lots of streams of conciousness/montage pieces.

I love books that break with conventions but when they engage me and not being just fun for the writer. I loved 253 or The Saddlebag for example. This is supposed to be his most novel like book but it reads like he lacks the discipline to write for the reader. Or at least not the sober drug free reader...it must be a profound read if stoned

Uncle Petros and Golbach’s Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis

Uncle Petros and Golbach’s Conjecture was originally a best selling Greek novel and has now been published over 20 languages so don’t get switched off by the title and subject matter. Forget about it being about maths and in fact think of Moby Dick to place this book. It’s about obsession and pride in chasing the impossible dream. You understand the thrill and terror of chasing impossible dreams.

Right now let’s get the maths out of the way. Golbach’s Conjecture first stated in the 18th century suggests that:

Every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes.

But mathematicians lack proof that in all circumstance it would hold. For example think about Physics where if dealing with the very big or the very small ordinary scientific understanding ceases to work. So could this be the case in Mathematics? Yes over my head as well! But the author is a childhood mathematical genius who submitted original research at 15 before even starting his degree and also an acclaimed film maker and writer. So he both understands the mathematical issues and can write so that we understand and care.

We first meet Uncle Petros in the 1970’s through the eyes of the beloved favourite nephew as a teenager. Petros is dismissed as the family failure that supports him through the family business while he does nothing but read books and plays chess. He leaves his home only once a month to do the books of a charity founded by his father. The beloved favourite nephew is met by a wall of adult silence when he tried to find out what the anger of the family is about. A chance phone call and a subsequent letter lead him to discover that far from a failure Uncle Petros had been a professor of mathematics in the 20’s and 30’s at a prestigious German University. This makes him as obsessive as his Uncle as he struggles to discover the Truth of the family scandal.

He tries to become a mathematician to help him challenge and understand what had obsessed his Uncle. This causes huge family problems- this is a Greek family remember where honouring your family and Father is a top rule in life. He finally manages to get the story of his Uncles obsessive hunt out in the open but at a high personal cost to his own ambitions. It is clear that Uncle Petros is a genius who will never be known as his hopes are dashed in the 30’s by the publication of Kurt Godel’s Theorem. Yes more maths but not much so don’t leave. This solves the problem of completeness by showing that any theory of numbers will contain unprovable propositions. Alan During (him of how do we know a computer has human intelligence- asked before computers were developed- now that’s what being clever is about) then demonstrates that theorists have no idea which proposition is merely hard to prove and which are impossible to prove.

Hence, Uncle Petros has no way of knowing if spending all his life in trying solve the Golbach’s Conjecture is a possible but hard task or impossible task. He gives up, his dreams and hopes ended. The beloved nephew is finding the truth is released from his obsession and so escapes the fate of his Uncle but then realises that a psychological lie has taken place which he needs to lance but this has tragic consequences.

Uncle Petros and Golbach’s Conjecture is highly recommended Greek tragedy in less then 200 pages about theoretical maths and why love and life is about how you answer the Bette Davis Theorem:

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells

Melanie Wells is a Texan and a psychotherapist in marriage and family therapy and comes from a musical family which contributes to her rhythm of writing. She is also clearly a traditional Christian as this shapes the book imagery, plot and narrative. As a consequence don’t expect natural street talk as the bad guys don’t curse although this is not handled in a clumsy way.

The novel seen as psychological thriller/mystery is the 3^rd in a series: the first was When Day of Evil Comes when the 30 + redhead female hero, Dylan Foster a psychology professor in a Christian University, is framed for a murder and the second is The Soul Hunter which deals with a Psychotic stalker. The events and characters of first two are echoed and hinted at throughout this novel but it does stand alone. A constant theme in the three books is the fight between good and evil which is reflected in the every day fact that she is plagued by a demon called Peter Terry and helped by a guardian angel. She also prays and talks to God, has psychic insights from dreams etc. And to be fair it’s hinted at and suggested rather then clichéd white robes and wings or red eyes and horns.

To be honest not my type of Christianity but think TV shows where angels drift in to people’s lives and help them resolve emotional and ethical concerns rather then Buffy the vampire slayer. You don’t have to see this traditional Christian view as real and true as I am sure many bible-belt Americans would but as part of a narrative world to which you the reader enters. No difference really in entering the peculiar 1950’s Agatha Christie’s English social world of country houses, weekend parties, dressing for dinner, afternoon teas etc.

The story starts with a picnic in a park (the smart park rather then the local run down one) with Dylan out with two friends and their young children. Nicholas’s mother had been raped by the stalker from The Soul Hunter but had kept the child (anti abortion and forgiveness message). Christine the little girl is deeply sensitive to the supernatural and her parents are rich but caring- father and brothers out delivering aid and the bible to the staving masses (a rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven). Then Nicholas is snatched from the park and the hunt begins to save his life. USA statistics show that more then 76% of abducted children are killed within three hours of the abduction so tension amounts as time seeps away

Christine the little girl was also snatched but then rejected as the wrong one as we find that she is psychically linked to the fate of Nicholas. Dylan struggles to make sense of the events as they unfold whilst dealing with her stalled career and hapless love life. And the past comes back facing her to deal with issues left hanging in the previous stories.

Don’t expect big plot twists as this is a narrative and character driven story. Both of which are done well in a made for TV movie sort of way. It’s not cutting edge existential metafiction…and thank god for that I hear many of you say. Would I recommend it? Well it’s not a book I would have chosen to read as it was an Advanced Readers Copy sent to me for a review. I am not a fan of Mystery/Crime writing or supernatural going on so was I the wrong person to be contacted!! But actually I enjoyed it and may even read the first two as I warmed to the Dylan Foster character and can see the potential for a good TV series along the lines of Ghost Whisper.

March by Geraldine Brooks

A brilliant novel about Mr. March, the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. March is a dreamer and idealist thrust into the brutal action of the Civil War. As the year unfolds, he writes loving letters to his family while shielding them -- but not us -- from the worst of his war experiences. To himself and us, ruminates on his early life and shares his moral concerns.

The book would be a great story even without the Little Women connection, but it does manage to flesh out the character of Marmee who, as Brooks' mother noted, was too good to be true in the original. The other characters are there, too, the little women, Laurie, the neighbour boy and his tutor Mr. Brooks, Aunt March and others, peripheral to the story, but bringing a pleasing sense of recognition, something like greeting old, childhood friends.

March is based on Bronson Alcott and, in his reminisces we meet the New England intelligentsia/abolitionist community, the Thoreaus and the Emersons, encounter passengers on the UnderGround Railroad and get taken in by John Brown's schemes.

Did you know that Henry Thoreau invented an improved pencil? And I had certainly never heard of "contraband," slaves who came under Union control and fought for the Union or worked the plantations for pay under Northern lessees. I love novels like this, where you can trust the history because what isn't true is set out by the author.

And somehow it pleases me to find that Brooks is married to Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes, and one of my favourite writers.

http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0007165870

Thoughts on reading The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani

You are resting in the bath, lavender bath salts wafting away, candles flickering and as you doze your mind wanders to the big question of the day…how do you judge if a book is literature or not? Is Judy Astley’s Pleasant Vices or The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger on the same level? You enjoy one and not the other and that’s that some of you may say. But why do you enjoy the one rather then the other? Why is one on all the “best of” lists and in print for over 50 years whilst the other is forgotten once sold and read? Reading The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, which was published in 2000 and featured in Britain's Good Book Guide "Fiction Book of the Month”, got me thinking of ways to answer this.

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani is a Persian writer living and educated in the West and a follower of the Baha’i faith. This is important as a founder of Baha’i plays a momentous but hidden role in the story set in the mid 19th century. We follow nine characters over a 24 hour period as a caravan bound for Mecca and Medina is raided by bandits. The events prior and post the raid are told from the perspectives of each character so the meaning of events and behaviour alters as we visit and revisit. A connecting thread to all the stories is a saddlebag and its contents passing around each of the characters so driving some to death and ruin and others to salivation and joy.

So how do I start to judge or interpret this highly individual first novel? Once upon a time you read a book and its literary standing was its relationship to the great books that impacted on or shaped western thinking. Liberal Humanism argued these were your Vigil, Homer. T.S.Elliot, Shakespeare etc. In an affect a good book was what a group of elite academics said was good based on the authors intent and writing in relationship to western values and concerns.

In reaction was New Criticism with one of its roots in Russian formalism that ignored the authority of author or the cultural context but saw the words, syntax grammar, imagery, metaphor, rhythm, meter, etc of more importance in understanding a book then its subject matter. So yet another bunch of experts telling you what literature was.

So Liberal Humanism would judge The Saddlebag on what it said about what the big moral or political issues. Whereas approaches such as New Criticism would judge it on how it used language and literary techniques. So what you may say? But think cooking here: the first looks at how good say an Italian dish is as part of the rules and principles of good western cooking whilst the second examines how good the chopping, use of herbs, balance of colour was in preparing the meal irrespective of what the final dish is.

But what is missing is that a meal has a final act of judgement- I eat it! This is linked to a third way of looking at the problem in that books are a form of performance that needs an audience to make it complete. This gave rise to Reader-response criticism which seeks to understand literature by emphasising the reader's role in creating meaning and experience. So it would judge The Saddle for what it means to me the reader and what I bring to its interpretation. So I as reader become equal with the writer as both are necessary for the transaction to have social meaning.

Many other ways of “reading” a book exists so for example what does The Saddle say or not say about class, gender, sexuality? Or from the perspective of Eco-criticism how does it view and treat the environment and nature? Yet a book and reading are also material cultural events -think about all the factors behind reading a Dickens book printed on paper in the 19th century and reading the latest e-novel published on the internet and read via a portable electronic screen. And don’t get me started on Freud or Jung!

To put my cards on the table, I am always dubious of anything that says you understand from one perspective only. I prefer asking what this reading adds to the meaning of the novel so you build fresh and ever changing experiences. Judging becomes a journey of open ended discussions with peers defending the perspective(s) they prefer generating insights and ever deeper overlapping meanings. In affect a book is literature the more it is capable of sustaining this interaction.

To start the discussion on The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani let me ask three questions drawn from the perspectives discussed. These are as follows.

• How do its ideas connect or resonate with the intellectual concerns of both the West and the East?

• What does its use of language and literary devices suggest over and above the cultural ideas it plays with?

• What do I bring to the book and what does it bring to me to make the experience whole and complete?

How do its ideas connect or resonate with the intellectual concerns of both the West and the East?

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani takes the core incident of the plot from a Bahá'í historical narrative titled "The Dawn-breakers" which mentions briefly that a saddlebag belonging to the Báb - the prophet-herald of the Bahá'í Faith - was stolen during His pilgrimage to Mecca. She then used the language, metaphors, symbols and traditions of the major world religions to create her archetypal characters. They the Bedouin thief (a pagan), the Arab chieftain (an atheist), the Zoroastrian bride, the Indian moneychanger (who switches from Hindu to Moslem to whatever else the occasion demands), the Felasha(Jewish Ethiopian) slave woman, the pilgrim who has amalgamated Confucian, Buddhist and Moslem beliefs, the Persian Shi`ah Moslem priest, the English spy (a lukewarm Anglican Christian), and the corpse of a rich Persian merchant. Their fates reflect the impact of Bahá'í and it inner meanings: the pagan dies at last free, the chieftain abandons power, the Shi`ah Moslem priest torn between stamping out heresy and falling the driving force of Bahá'í love.

Another strand of the story is less explicit in that we are in the time period that western modernity starts to challenge and undermine the traditional elites in the Middle East. Copying the West and modernising became a central intellectual strain which was to lead to the modern Turkish State. But with the English spy and some of the other stories we see the political interference in the Middle East that lead to the carve up countries for western interests and so supporting the puritanical anti modernising practice of Islam that continues to be fuelled by the West’s attitudes and practices. It suggests indirectly that if each of the main religious traditions went back to their roots of ethical practices and love in action then the 21st century nightmare would end.

What does its use of language and literary devices suggest over and above the cultural ideas it plays with?

It has a lyrical prose style, and is a fable that skilfully weaves together nine tales by ensuring that the surroundings and characters are given a physical and sensual depiction. The Thief's story is perhaps best of the collection, in terms of the lyrical quality of the prose as well as the evocation of character but each story has a back story so we build up a richer understanding of each characters circumstance.

We have a glimpse of the next character in a story and echoes of previous characters so for example we hear a lot of the actions of the fanatic priest but then discover why he is so hard on himself. Each story is told from the inner dialogue and view point of the main character but the voice of the author is felt as she comments on the fates of individuals.

As in any fable the characters serve to illustrate the moral point of the storey so don’t expect naturalist dialogue or larger then life characters. But they are more then coat hangers for ideas/arguments so it reads well.

What do I bring to the book and what does it bring to me to make the experience whole and complete?

I have read and studied many of the key religious and political ideas of the different faiths and remain very interested in the West’s role in the political and historical roots of the region’s instability. I am also a keen story-teller so respond well to the ideas and structures of the story. I could see it working as an emotional and powerful play.

It’s clear from this review format what it has brought me. If you like the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho you have feel of the approach taken and if you can’t stand his books, fear not as this is much better. The author suggests that she wanted to write a book to show

how it was possible to weave the different threads so that the paths of a group of people from different races, cultures and backgrounds could cross and re-cross by perfect accident while making perfect sense. It seemed that if one could achieve this in a narrative form there was no reason why it could not be recognized as a valid metaphor at other levels: political, religious, economic.

I think she succeeds brilliantly and clearly demonstrates that it is literature in the way that I have argued. So get out of the bath, smother the candles, dry yourself, put on a warm cotton wrap and type a response. Become part of the democratic process of defining of what is literature. Even better lets hear what she says and build a more ethical and loving world. Highly recommended.