Sunday, April 19, 2009
More Book Reviews
Yann Martel - The Life of Pi *****
I'm generally suspicious of books that are trumpeted with great hype. Hence, perhaps, why it's been out for seven years before I've read it. It was worth the wait, and lived up to the fanfare.
Martel does a fine job of keeping us on Pi's side all the way, and we feel we are there with him in his lifeboat. Along with Richard Parker of course. Until near the end, in any case: it starts to unravel and become less plausible as it progresses so that by the last few sea-based chapters, it appears clear fantasy. But the last five chapters move the novel from likeable hokum to a deep and affecting work. It's in that coda that we grow to know more of our unreliable narrator and can truly admire his tenacity and courage. For a while before that, towards the end of his long journey, the reader can be forgiven for confusion and perhaps losing interest - but stick with it, as it all makes perfect sense by the end. An exceptional read that makes us question fiction v reality, humanity v the animal kingdom and hope v despair.
Haruki Murakami - Hard Boiled Underworld and the End of the World *****
As this was the third novel of the author's I have read, I'm starting to see his tics: the obsessive detail to meals and their preparation, quirky characters, pop culture, sex, moving to Greece. But he's drawing me in further to his world with every book: which is apt for a review of this novel, which sees two parallel narratives that start disconnected from their narrators and get closer and deeper as they progress. Without giving too much away, the examination of duality is a great concept for a book, and I can't imagine many other writers who could pull it off as well as Murakami. It reminds me of some of Philip K Dick's best works on identity and reality, and the closing couple of chapters have the elegiac beauty of Fitzgerald's 'the Great Gatsby' (which is about as big a compliment as I can give a writer). Murakami is a one-off, who tells his own stories in his own style, though, and ultimately could be confused for few other writers I'm aware of. If you're not a fan or like straightforward narratives, this might not be the work for you. If you are a fan you probably won't need me to tell you how good this is, but if you're not sure if you want to dive in to the complex whirlpool that is his mind, well, this seems as good a place to start as any.
