Book Review: 1Q84
25 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: alternate realities, cults, fiction, japan, metaphysics, science fiction, sex
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (pub date 10/25/11)
I have never read Murakami until now, and I read somewhere that if you’re going to get into his writing, this is not the book to start with. Oops. It certainly seems that this is a divisive book. People either love it or hate it, and even some of Murakami’s diehard fans were disappointed with it, as was The New York Times.
This definitely has to be one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. I joked that it should have been called “WTF84.” Clearly, it isn’t for everyone. But if you have the patience and the imagination to stick with it, you may find it as peculiarly endearing as I did.
The plot of 1Q84 is almost impossible to describe concisely. It’s a metaphysical science fiction story with crime, sex, and romance thrown in. The title refers to an alternate reality set in the year 1984, and is a play on words; the words for ‘nine’ and ‘Q’ are homophones in the Japanese language. The two main characters are Aomame, a fitness instructor and part-time assassin, and Tengo, a math teacher and aspiring author. Gradually they come to believe that they have been transported to an alternate world, and end up in a strange plot involving a religious cult, a teenage writer, weird sex, murder, a sky with two moons, and a malevolent force referred to as “the Little People.”
It’s weird. Really weird. And my summary doesn’t do it justice. But as it says in the book, if you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation. It’s a book that has to be experienced to be understood. And if you look past the weirdness, you can see some very simple themes emerge in the writing, and that is what makes this book so interesting. Underneath the convoluted plot are themes of love, longing, and free will versus fate.
One common critique of 1Q84 is that it’s repetitive, that the characters say the same thing over and over. While it’s true that some lines are often repeated by different characters, I wouldn’t go so far as to call the book repetitious. What some call repetition I call variations on a theme. The book shows how each of the major characters reacts to the same strange events. Each character makes his or her own discovery in a different way.
At over nine hundred pages, this book requires some commitment to get through. But it’s incredibly imaginative, amazingly detailed, and quite a mental workout. It’s heavy on exposition and backstory, but the slow-building drama is worth it in the end. Again I’ll say that this book isn’t for everyone. But if you’re tired of quick and easy reads and are looking for something different, 1Q84 is about as different as literature can get.
Neverwhere: A Blast From the Past
05 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Backlist Reviews Tags: fantasy, fiction, london, science fiction, secret worlds
I got hooked on Neil Gaiman after reading Coraline. It was one of the books I wrote about in my grad school application essay. A few months later I read American Gods and my mind was officially blown. So I was thrilled when someone gave me a copy of his much earlier work Neverwhere for my birthday. It sat on my ”to-read” shelf for a few months, but so goes the life of a book blogger.
By now, the plot of Neverwhere is pretty well known. It has been a novel, a TV series, a comic book, and a stage play. Supposedly it is going to be adapted into a feature film, but if that’s true I’m willing to bet it languishes in Development Hell for a few years and never gets made (as did the fabled Preacher movie). But to give a quick recap, Neverwhere is set in modern day London, only what very few people know is that there are two Londons. There is London Above, the one we know, and London Below, a secret city populated by strange and often dangerous people and creatures. Our guide through this journey is Richard Mayhew, an average joe who discovers London Below when he gets swept up in a young woman’s quest to avenge her family’s murder.
This isn’t your average “down the rabbit hole” story…more like Alice in Wonderland on crank. Gaiman’s story is engaging, satirical, and at times pretty scary. While I enjoyed American Gods more, it’s almost unfair to say that since they are such different kinds of stories. American Gods was just epic. But if you enjoy fantasy and science fiction in the same vein as Doctor Who, it’s pretty safe to say that you’ll enjoy Neverwhere. If you’ve heard of it but never made the time to read it, now is as good a time as any to start. And I’m looking forward to reading Anansi Boys sometime in the near future!
Early Review: Shatter Me
14 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: dystopian, fiction, science fiction, special powers, YA
Shatter Me is the latest entry in the already oversaturated market of dystopian YA novels. Written by 23-year-old newcomer Tahereh Mafi, it’s a book that starts off with a lot of promise and unfortunately deteriorates into a derivative mess of flat characters and exhausting, overused metaphors. Take X-Men and mix it with a 1980s Paul Verhoeven film (minus a good portion of the violence of course) and you’ll end up with this book, more or less.
Set in an undetermined point in the future, Shatter Me presents a world in which our natural resources are all but used up, where people live in disease and desperation, and a militant group known as the Reestablishment has seized control of the country. Seventeen-year-old Juliette is a girl born with an unusual ability: she absorbs the energy of anyone she touches, killing them in the process. Locked away in an insane asylum after accidentally killing someone,
Unfortunately, that’s where the book stops being good. After that it felt to me as if someone else took over writing the book and made it up as they went along. Gone is the moral conflict, the character development, and even the writing style, replaced instead by Juliette mooning over Adam for a hundred or so pages, and then a haphazard non-ending that naturally sets up for a sequel.
I get that this is a YA book, but I’m also willing to go out on a limb and assert that most teens are too intelligent for this book. The entire second half of the book reads like the diary of an overly dramatic 11-year-old, complete with obnoxious hyperbole and ridiculous metaphors on every other page:
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“Realization slams into me like two hundred pounds of common sense.”
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“My heart is a field of lilies blooming under a pane of glass, pitter-pattering to life like a rush of raindrops.”
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“I’m a cumulonimbus existence of thunder and lightning.”
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“My stomach is filled with beating drums pounded into synchronicity by my heart.”
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“He’s a hot bath, a short breath, five days of summer pressed into five fingers writing stories on my body.”
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“His eyes are a midnight moment filled with memories”
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“I’m oxygen and he’s dying to breathe.”
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“His skin is 100 degrees hotter than it was a moment ago.”
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“There are fifteen thousand feelings of disbelief hole-punched in my heart.”
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“His eyes are two buckets of rainwater.”
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“Every organ in my body falls to the floor.”
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“My heart is a stick of butter melting with reckless abandon.”
Book Review: Ready Player One
31 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: 1980s, computers, easter egg, fiction, pop culture, science fiction
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (pub date 8/16/11)
I simply cannot say enough about how awesome this book is. This is the most fun story I’ve read since I started this blog. And surprisingly enough it was quite touching at times. Part adventure, part romance, all one big nerdgasm.
Ready Player One is set a few decades in the future in a society that has completely gone to hell. Its only saving grace is the OASIS, a worldwide virtual reality system created by the reclusive game programmer James Halliday. People do everything through the OASIS: do business, go to school, play games, shop, and anything in between. At the beginning of the novel, James Halliday has died, leaving behind an ‘Easter egg’ somewhere in the OASIS and a series of clues with which to find it. Whoever finds the egg will inherit Halliday’s entire fortune. Enter Wade Watts, a lonely teenager and one of the millions of people who dream of finding Halliday’s egg. The hunt is on!
This book was a blast to read. It has an original concept, a ‘good v. evil’ storyline, great characters, and a sense of humor. Wade is the perfect ‘everyman,’ an intelligent, courageous and sensitive kid who you’ll root for the whole way through. What also makes this book so awesome is how unabashedly nerdy it is. All of the clues to finding the egg are based on 1980s pop culture trivia. DeLoreans, Atari, John Hughes movies, it’s all in there. Even references to more obscure movies like Ladyhawke (which I love, by the way). It’s impossible not to like this book!
Ernest Cline also wrote the screenplay for Fanboys, which I actually rented a few weeks before I read this book, not even realizing they were related. I thought Fanboys was a good movie, so if you liked Ready Player One, definitely check it out. Cline has a great way of combining humor and tenderness, something that is not easy to achieve. I hope to see more books from him in the future!
Early Review: The Postmortal
21 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: death, dystopian, fiction, overpopulation, science fiction, soylent green
The Postmortal by Drew Magary (pub date 8/30/11)
“It’s not that people don’t want to die. It’s that they don’t want to grow old.”
Prepare to have your mind blown. The Postmortal has everything that’s great about dystopian stories. It’s the “Soylent Green” for a new generation.
Set about ten years in the future, scientists have accidentally discovered a form of gene therapy that stops the aging process in humans, a so-called “cure for aging.” That’s not to say this is a cure for death; anyone who receives the cure can still get sick and can still die in a car accident or any other way a normal person can. But taking the cure means never growing any older, and in theory it means having the potential to live for hundreds of years. Soon after its discovery the cure is banned in the United States, leaving those who want it to seek it on the black market.
The novel opens with the protagonist, John, going to get the cure despite its illegal status. As we follow John’s story we also follow what happens to our society since the cure’s discovery. The book contains insightful and often scary commentary and speculation on how this cure would affect the world politically, financially, and socially. For example John realizes that he will never be able to retire since his extended lifespan means he’ll always need money. Unfortunately this is the least of the problems and horrors that arise as a result of the cure.
The story takes a different turn about halfway through the book, and personally I enjoyed the first half of the book slightly more than the second. But this is still a fascinating story, and absolutely worth reading. In an age where medical discoveries are making huge strides every year, this is a cautionary tale that needs to be told. In my opinion it’s destined to be a best-seller. I’d recommend The Postmortal to anyone who enjoys science fiction or dystopian stories, or anyone looking for an intelligent and imaginative novel.
