This Side of the Ditch

Last month it was all about NZ writers (here and here) - this time we're on my side of the ditch, catching up with some Aussie books I've read over the past couple of months.  Marg, from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader (among many others), has declared April 'Aussie Author Month', and this is a good opportunity to do my bit.  Also, it's about time I posted for Booklover Book Reviews' Aussie Author Challenge ;)  Here then are a few short summaries, with musical accompaniment (just because!).

*****
The Book: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
Where and When: Melbourne, Mid-1970s
What: Nora, a member of a group of bohemian dole bludgers, falls for the charismatic Javo, a rugged heroin addict.  Over a long year of heartache and hangovers, she battles with her misgivings about the relationship, balancing casual drugs and sex with her duties as a mother and her longing for the seductive addict in her bed.  The book of a generation - definitely not my generation though.  Good as it is, it says nothing to me about my life...
Soundtrack Song by The Smiths: This Charming Man

*****

The Book: The Gift of Speed by Steven Carroll
Where and When: Melbourne, 1960-1
What: In the sequel to The Art of the Engine Driver, we return to the Melbourne suburbs to watch the teenaged Michael in his quest to become a fast bowler - and to understand how girls work.  The book concentrates on two other characters: factory owner Mr. Webster and Frank Worrell, captain of the touring West Indian cricket team...  In an absolutely wonderful book, Michael must overcome annoying physical niggles and his shyness (which one could describe as criminally vulgar, I suppose...) to make the most of his golden summer.
Soundtrack Song by The Smiths: The Boy with the Thorn in his Side


*****

The Book: 1988 by Andrew McGahan
Where and When: Northern Territory, 1988...
What: As Australia gears up for its 200th (White) birthday, Gordon celebrates twenty-one fruitless years by heading to the Territory to work for six months on a remote weather station, hoping to kickstart his writing career.  Instead, he finds that when you're feeling down, the problem may not be where you are, but where you're at.  A fascinating Aussie road-trip story (with added crocodiles).
Soundtrack Song by The Smiths: How Soon is Now?

*****
The Book: The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow by Thea Astley
Where and When: Palm Island, Brisbane, Townsville, 1930-1957
What: Another tale of madness in the tropics, Heart of Darkness with a Queensland setting.  Based on a true story, the boss of a small island goes mad, shooting his workers and blowing up his own house - but that's just the beginning...  Told in multiple sections, each with its own different narrative voice, the book explores the endemic racism of pre- and post-WWII Queensland.  Gripping, poignant, unusual and thought provoking, The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow explores the way history has a funny way of repeating itself.
Soundtrack Song by The Smiths: Stop Me if You Think You've Heard This One Before

*****
The Book: The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Where and When: Melbourne, Recent times
What: A Melbourne grandmother prepares a room for the visit of her friend, a bohemian Sydney woman with cancer.  As she watches her friend throw her trust (and money) into the hands of charlatans, she begins to lose her ability to keep quiet and smile blankly at her friend's ever-more-delusional state of mind.  A short, but vibrant, novel, exploring how we cope when hope is all that's left, and what we do to cling onto that hope, even when it's time to let go.
Pessimistic Soundtrack Song by The Smiths: Girlfriend in a Coma
Optimistic Soundtrack Song by The Smiths: There is a Light that Never Goes Out

*****
Plenty more to come for me in terms of Australian literature in the coming weeks.  I finally have the third part of Carroll's trilogy, the Miles Franklin winning The Time We Have Taken, plus Praise, the book to which 1988 is the prequel.  More happy reading to come :)  What Aussie books have you been reading, people?

Yet Another Taste of Japan ;)

As promised earlier this week, after the first of my little summaries, here is the second of my J-Lit round-ups, this time featuring a couple of very familiar names...

The first is a writer who is fast becoming one of those whose entire back catalogue will someday be gracing my shelves.  After reading a few of Natsume Soseki's earlier works last year, I recently obtained one of his final novels, Kokoro (translated by Meredith McKinney), an absolute Japanese classic and a standard high school text back in Japan.

Kokoro tells two stories in one.  The first is that of a young student who makes the acquaintance of an older man he calls Sensei.  After numerous visits to his house, they become friends, but there is always a sense of reserve, something hidden from the narrator's consciousness, perhaps connected with the monthly visits which Sensei makes to a friend's grave.  The narrator is then forced to leave Tokyo, and his friend, behind to return home when his father becomes unwell.  Bored at home, he writes to Sensei constantly without reply until, finally, one day, he receives a letter - a very long, very unusual letter.

This letter is actually the second of the stories and takes up the latter half of the novel, telling the story of Sensei's life as a student and clearing up many of the mysteries that have puzzled the narrator.  We are told of his family background, his romantic aspirations and (most importantly) we finally learn about his dead friend K.  As the narrator returns to Tokyo, at a very critical time for his family, he is left to wonder what will await him there...

Kokoro is another wonderfully-written novel, poignant and elegant, but different from Natsume's earlier works.  Where Botchan and I am a Cat poked friendly fun at Japanese society, and Kusamakura sparkled with wit and sunshine, Kokoro is much darker, building progressively through the novel to a tragic end, for both Sensei and the narrator.

The novel discusses, among other things, the idea of duty and honour, and the way people behave (or fail to behave) under difficult circumstances.  Sensei's story reveals several instances of the dark side of human nature, some explaining his disillusionment with the world, others revealing more about his own character.  Ironically, the receipt of his letter is the catalyst for the narrator's own crisis of conscience, forcing him to choose between friend and family.

This novel began life as a novella consisting entirely of the third 'letter' section, and the section with the narrator came later.  Sadly, this was pretty much the last completed work Soseki produced as he passed away (unusually for a Japanese writer it seems ) of natural causes a couple of years after Kokoro's publication.  When I lived in Japan a decade or so ago, Soseki's face was on the 1000-Yen note, proof of just how important a writer he is in his home country.  It's a shame it took me this long to get into his work :(

*****

Another author whose works cause the slender shelves in my bookcases to groan under their weight (and who himself is a big fan of Natsume Soseki) is Haruki Murakami, and I recently read another collection of his short stories, entitled The Elephant Vanishes.  I had actually read this collection before, and I don't think I was overly impressed first time around, preferring his novels to the bizarre worlds of his shorter fiction.  However, as is often the case, this time around it was a very different story - I loved this book and discovered some excellent writing, as well as further insights into his longer works.

One aspect I had completely forgotten was the use of a female narrator in a few of the stories, something which has not happened (so far) in his novels.  One of my favourite stories, Sleep, a tale of a woman who stops needing to sleep at night, uses this ploy, and it gives the usual Murakami style an added twist.  In the story, a suburban housewife uses her extra eight hours a day to reevaluate her life, finding the time to rekindle her love of literature and think about whether she is actually wasting her life.  As a tale of taking stock of your life, a metaphor for sleepwalking through your daily existence, it's a good one, reminiscent of something Banana Yoshimoto would write (but in reverse!).

Another story, Barn Burning, actually reminded me of my most recent read, Marcel Proust's Du Côte de chez Swann, as strange as that may sound.  While comparing a simple fifteen-page short story to a 600-page epic of descriptive prose may be drawing a long bow, some of the ideas Murakami explores are similar to those Proust expounds upon.  One of these is the idea of memory and time, and the way these are individual, often brought back to our consciousness by random triggers, be they cakes (Proust) or marijuana (Murakami).  Memory, being less than perfect, becomes faded, blurring at some point into fiction - and who can say where that line is....

The collection has two translators, Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin, and I would have to say that I prefer Rubin's style to that of Birnbaum.  A good reference point here is the first story, The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women, translated by Birnbaum.  This later became the first chapter of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, translated by Rubin, and if you compare the first page of the two versions, Rubin's (for me, at least) has a much smoother feel.  Of course, the two original Japanese versions may have been different too (if only I could read them!).

There are a couple of strange, less-than-perfect stories in this collection, but all in all it's a worthy companion to Murakami's novels and well worth the effort.  I read it over about a day and a half, but I would recommend spacing it out a little more - these are stories to be savoured, individually wrapped.  Very Japanese :)

Another Taste of Japan

I have been avoiding writing posts for a while now, but I thought I might just do the occasional one to catch you all up on certain books I've been reading, and what better way to kick that off than to look at some of the Japanese literature I've encountered over the past couple of months?  None, that's what ;)

*****

After the understated beauty of Snow Country, it's back to the Japanese Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata, this time with the (very) slim novella A Thousand Cranes (translated by Edward Seidensticker).  Kikuji, the son of a tea ceremony master, is invited to a ceremony by one of his dead father's mistresses.  This seemingly innocuous event is the start of a tangled web of relationships involving another of the mistresses, her daughter Fumiko, and Yukiko, a beautiful young woman who has been suggested as a future bride for Kikuji.  Oh yes, and we mustn't forget the first mistress, the sinister Chikako...

It is Chikako who is planning events from the background, constantly interfering with Kikuji, pushing women in his direction and then pulling them away from him.  First, the young man falls for Mrs. Ota; then events conspire to bring Fumiko into his life.  For an experienced reader of Japanese fiction, a happy ending is far from expected, and Kawabata doesn't fail to satisfy (or disappoint!).

Thousand Cranes is another beautifully-constructed tale, but that's all it is - in the sense that it is deceptively short.  My beautiful new Penguin Classics edition is just over 100-pages long, with fairly large print, and I raced through it in an evening.  I enjoyed it, just as I did Snow Country, drinking in the elegant, sparse prose, but I was left wanting something a little more substantial, more than a three-act play of a novella.  I have The Master of Go winging its way to me from England as we speak, so we'll see if that scratches the itch ;)

*****

Moving from one end of the J-Lit spectrum to (pretty much) the other, one of the good things to come out of the collapse of Angus & Robertson was my $2.50 purchase of Hitomi Kanehara's Autofiction (translated by David James Karashima).  I'm ashamed to say that even at that price, I still almost decided to leave it as I was a little concerned that it was going to be a bit of a gory slasher book (a lot of contemporary Japanese fiction can be a little... well, let's just say aesthetically unpleasing).  However, I took the plunge, and I was pleasantly surprised :)

Autofiction, as the title suggests, is loosely based on Kanehara's own life.  In the first section of four, we meet Shin, a young, recently-married woman on her way back to Japan with her husband.  He goes to the toilet, she has a panic attack, thinking he is having a good time in there with another woman, and that is how we find out that she is a bit of a... shall we say a nutter?

Of course, where there is stress and angst, there is usually a very good reason for it, and Shin is no exception.  The reader follows her back in time, to when she was 18, 16 and 15, learning gradually what she has experienced and suffered though, and what exactly has made her so damaged.  By the time we make it to the end, or perhaps the start, of the story, we understand, and sympathise, with her feelings a little more.

As mentioned above, I had my reservations about this book as I have heard a lot about writers such as Ryu Murakami and Natsuo Kirino (who don't sound like my cup of tea), and Kanehara is often lumped in with them.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by Autofiction.  There are some graphic scenes, and some mind-boggling attitudes displayed (including a very blasé attitude towards an impending rape...), but on the whole the book is very well written, presenting Shin as a sympathetic character who has been toughened up by life's trials and tribulations.  The more we learn about her ordeals, the more we understand and condone her later erratic behaviour.  If written in reverse (i.e. in chronological order), it would all make more sense, but the effect would definitely be spoiled :)

Autofiction is Kanehara's second novel, and her first, Snakes and Earrings, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.  It's one that I may well end up buying one day...

*****
All for now, but not for this topic - look out for another J-Lit round-up in a few days :)

Kiwi Lit - Part Two

...and here's Part Two!  Who will be Number One?  The answer may surprise you...

Kiwi Lit - Part One

Part One of my wrap of the New Zealand Reading Month Mini-Challenge - enjoy :)

Links: Maree's Just Add Books Blog

March 2011 Wrap-Up

Another month gone, a few posts done at least (including a rather serious vlog effort), but the time for individual reviews has long passed - sigh...  Which makes my monthly wrap-up even more important!  Pay attention at the back there...

Total Books Read: 15
Year-to-date: 37

New: 15

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 3

From the Library: 6

On the Kindle: 6

Novels: 13

Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 1

Non-English Language: 5 (2 German, 1 Japanese, 1 Czech, 1 Russian)

In Original Language: 2 (2 German)

Books read in March were:
1) Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
2) The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes by Dan Holloway
3) Autofiction by Hitomi Kanehara
4) The Gift of Speed by Steven Carroll
5) Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
6) The Rector & The Doctor's Family by Margaret Oliphant
7) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
8) Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann
9) The Bone People by Keri Hulme
10) Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
11) Short Stories by Franz Kafka*

12) The Rope of Man by Witi Ihimaera
13) Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome 
14) Plumb by Maurice Gee 
15) Rudin by Ivan Turgenev

* A bunch of random selected free e-texts - 
In der Strafkolonie, Der Kübelreiter, Ein Landarzt, Ein Hungerkünstler, Großer Lärm, Betrachtung, Der Bau, Das Urteil

Murakami Challenge: 0 (1/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 1 (4/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 3 (9/15)

NZ Reading Month Mini-Challenge:  5/1

Tony's Recommendations for March are: Steven Carroll's The Gift of Speed and Keri Hulme's The Bone People

My reading appears very anglocentric this month, due partly to my being English and partly to the NZ Reading Month Mini-Challenge I decided to participate in.  Honourable mentions to Maurice Gee's Plumb (a wonderful book which I hope to say more about in an NZ round-up post!) and Thomas Mann's short but sweet Tonio Kröger.

The Gift of Speed, the sequel to Carroll's The Art of the Engine Driver, is a superb book and was always going to be a contender, especially for its poetical sections on former West Indies skipper Frank Worrell (I don't like cricket, oh no...).  However, it had to share top spot with Keri Hulme's tour de force, a stunning mixture of kitchen-sink drama, Maori mythology and Christ complex.  Sorry, not going to choose a winner here :)

That was March; see you next month...

Oliphant, Oliphant (not an Elephant)

Here's another lengthy Vlog to keep you all going, this time discussing why I bought a Kindle and the similarities between the best-known works of Anthony Trollope and Margaret Oliphant Oliphant ;)

Feel free to sleep through it...

Oops.  In the Vlog, I make mention of the University of Iowa - it should be the University of Illinois! Mea culpa...

Salem Chapel links:

Volume 1 & Volume 2

Other links:

Manybooks.net...

There's Something about Agnieszka...

Back in 2009, Dan Holloway, author of the excellent Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, blogger, indie publisher and generally someone with way too much time on his hands, started an intriguing project, deciding to write (and publish) his latest novel on the discussion pages of his Facebook group.  Twice a week, after some preliminary teasers and explanations, a chapter was released, and members of the group applauded, booed or pointed out typos as they saw fit.

As the novel neared its end, Dan took a break to concentrate on one of his many other projects, and the novel stayed suspended there, almost complete (at least in a draft form, anyway), until he finally got around to adding the finishing touches to the story, honing the draft into a finished form and releasing it electronically in various formats.  Mainly because I kept nagging him to get it finished :)  The result is the wonderful (and wonderfully-named) The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes.

Aggie, as it is familiarly known, is the story of Dan Griffiths, a photojournalist with the job of finding a new angle on a famous story; the tragic (and unlikely) demise of Agnieszka Iwanowa, a young Polish businesswoman living in London.  Thanks to a youtube video of her accident, along with a publicity stunt by the elusive artist Ludwig, the images of Agnieszka being dragged to her fate have become pop-art icons, and it is Dan's mission to find a way to put a fresh spin on the story.

Dan, however, has suffered his own loss, and the pursuit of the truth behind Agnieszka's fate leads him to confront the unresolved disappearance of his daughter Emma.  As his journey leads him into a painful underworld where art, politics and murder merge into a surreal parallel existence, the search becomes less and less about the Polish icon and more about his own, personal suffering.

As with Holloway's earlier book, Aggie has several nods to Haruki Murakami, with the search for a missing person and the blurred lines between the real and imaginary worlds reminiscent of both The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Sputnik Sweetheart.  However, this novel is decidedly darker and, with its focus on pain and suffering, is closer in style to works by other Japanese authors, such as Ryu Murakami, Natsuo Kirino or Hitomi Kanehara. 

Why mention all these Japanese authors (you may ask)?  Well, firstly, I happen to know that Mr. Holloway is a big fan of several Japanese writers; and secondly, one of the principal characters is Japanese...  You see, Shuji Nomoto, a teenage recluse and one of the main protagonists of the novel, lives in Kobe and, quite conceivably, could have come straight out of a story from Murakami's post-Dai-Hanshin-Earthquake collection, after the quake.  Shuji, just like the unfortunate Agnieszka, the elusive Ludwig, and the AWOL Professor Sydney Byfield is one of the many people tangentially, but inextricably, linked to Dan, and his missing daughter.

Dan (Holloway, that is) is obviously obsessed with art, and this comes across in the writing, with many a visual metaphor or leit-motif.  The role of lines is prominent in the novel, whether they be artistic (the style used in paintings or the contours of sculptures), human (there are many descriptions of people with a focus on the sharpness, or blurriness, of their outlines) or metaphorical.  In particular, the idea of crossing lines and boundaries, transgressing against moral norms or even crossing into alternative realities crops up frequently.

Associated with this is the idea of entropy, or (as a well-known author once wrote) the fact that things fall apart.  Faces sag, make-up hides wrinkles and scars (unsuccessfully), minds creak and snap under pressure - as do tendons and sinews...  The city itself seems to be falling into a spiral of dirt and decay, a natural consequence of the pain and fatigue felt by the people who live there.   Things. Fall.  Apart.  In the best possible way, of course.

As you might(!) have gathered from the post, my objectivity may well be a little compromised in reviewing this novel, but if you're a little hesitant about trusting my slightly-biased view, there's some good news - it won't cost you much to check it out.  The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is available as an e-book for just UK70p, or US99c, from Amazon UK, Amazon US and (for those of you without Kindles) Smashwords, where you can get PDF or ePub versions.  That's not much of a gamble now, is it?

Biased as I am, I was very happy to finally get the finished version of the book, and I am grateful to Dan for including us in the creative process - and for putting us out of our misery!  Rest assured, if you're looking for an entertaining, thought-provoking look at how media affects how we see life in the twenty-first century (one that doesn't mention Charlie Sheen), The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is well worth a read.

Did I mention that I was a little biased?

February 2011 Wrap-Up

You may (or may not) have noticed a silence around my computer activities over the last few weeks, and (sadly) that's not coincidental.  Unfortunately, I am once again being forced to abandon my blog, hopefully temporarily , owing to my usual aches and pains.  For the time being, at least, this monthly wrap-up will probably be all he wrote, so I'll do my best to be informative - and brief...


Total Books Read: 11
Year-to-date: 22

New: 9

Rereads: 2

From the Shelves: 3

From the Library: 3

On the Kindle: 5

Novels: 7

Novellas: 3

Plays & Short Stories: 1

Non-English Language: 4 (1 Japanese, 1 German, 1 Russian, 1 Chinese)

In Original Language: 1 (German)

Books read in February were:
1) Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
2) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
3) Plays and Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
4) Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant
5) Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
6) Rabbit, Run by John Updike
7) Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
8) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
9) An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
10) Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
11) Sanctuary by Edith Wharton

Murakami Challenge: 0 (1/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 1 (3/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 4 (6/15)

Tony's Recommendation for February is:  Ma Jian's Beijing Coma

I had Beijing Coma down as my February pick right from the start, but I did waver a little towards the end of the month.  Thousand Cranes was beautiful (but very short), and Siddhartha was intriguing (but also short).  However, it was Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World, with its wonderfully unreliable narrator and a gradual, insidious slide into uncertainty and confusion which almost changed my mind.  In the end though, I decided that Ma Jian's depiction of the events which took place around Tiananmen Square in 1989 was the winner by a nose!

That was February; I wonder what March will bring...

Political Sleepwalking

There are some events which are so wide-reaching that it seems incredible that anyone could be unaware of them, yet a couple of years back I had a slightly unnerving conversation with a young Chinese student I knew.  It was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, and I asked them if they had seen any of the coverage of the anniversary on television.  Not only had they seen nothing in the news, they actually knew nothing about the occurrence at all - and, initially at least, thought I was making the whole thing up.

To understand how something like this could happen, you need to find out more about the country, and the incidents of June the 4th, 1989, and there are few better ways to do so than by reading Ma Jian's celebrated novel Beijing Coma.  The story is told from the viewpoint of Dai Wei, a young student who is in a coma after being shot in the head after the students occupying Tiananmen Square were forced to leave by the army.  Through Wei's reflections on the events leading up to his shooting, and the little he grasps from his sick bed, we are given two parallel stories of life in China: the tumultuous build up to an infamous historical event and the following decade of corruption and denial.

The happenings in Tiananmen Square are certainly impressive.  A group of students somehow mobilise a demonstration which grows and grows, gaining support from the common people of Beijing and students elsewhere in China.  At its height, Dai Wei, a security officer assisting the real stars of the movement, looks across the square and estimates that he's looking at around one million people...  Of course, dictatorial regimes are not as easy as all that to shift, and as the weeks pass, not only does the revolutionary fervour dull a little, but the regime starts to quietly plan the protests' end.

Meanwhile, back in Dai Wei's flat in the future, he lies on his solid iron bed, almost fully aware of what is happening around him but unable to communicate with the outside world.  From visits from friends (and his mother's increasingly bitter and confused ramblings), he gleans information about the aftermath of the protests and the consequences for his friends.  With the passing of the years, although the state's interest in him wanes slightly, there is a new threat to his safety.  The Chinese government wants to attract the Olympics to Beijing, and old, decrepit buildings like Dai Wei's home need to be knocked down in order to make way for a new, shiny capital...

At one point, the author makes a telling comparison, saying:

"Your body is a trap, a square with no escape routes." Beijing Coma (2008), Chatto & Windus, p.266

These parallel versions of the story, with Dai Wei trapped and besieged both in the square and in his bed, make up the most important message that Beijing Coma has to offer, namely that in a totalitarian state nowhere is safe.  You have no home when the state can kick down the door at any time.  You have no family when many parents will deliver you to the authorities themselves.  However, the coma could also be seen as an allegory for the whole Chinese populace, who know what democracy is (and want it) but are unable to do the slightest thing about it.  Ma Jian's book is really a portrayal of a whole country trapped in its sleep.

In contrast to the oft-quoted 'Tiananmen Square Massacre' label, most of the students were funnelled out of the square by the enormous number of soldiers who went in to clear it, and Ma Jian makes this very clear in the book.  Nevertheless, this novel is (as far as I'm aware) banned in China, where any mention of the 'June the 4th Incident' is strictly taboo.  In my opinion though, the writer's criticism is focused less on the events leading up to the clearing of the square and more on the blatant human rights violations both before and after the crackdown.  For those of us living in (imperfect) democracies, it's only when we read about what actually happens in other countries that we realise how lucky we are to live in a country where two groups of professional politicians take it in turns to sort out the country and make snide comments at each other.

While the criticism of the ruling party is a given, what is a little more surprising is the way Ma Jian handles the demonstrating students.  Instead of a desperate, freedom-seeking gang of desperadoes, what we instead see is a horde of power- and publicity-hungry egomaniacs, each one afraid of being left behind in the latest shuffle of organisations and functions.  Dai Wei's low-ranking role enables him to observe the power games from the inside and the outside, the ludicrous screaming matches over who is really in charge (while the tanks slowly roll towards the square) are reminiscent of the Iraqi Minister for (mis)Information's denials of allied successes.

In many ways, this portrayal of the inevitable corruption of the students' ideals is very similar to what happens in George Orwell's Animal Farm - in Beijing in 1989, some animals students are definitely more equal than others.  As the student leaders lose their heads, arguing amongst themselves, changing their minds on an hourly basis and (some at least) kowtowing to the government, Dai Wei, the foot soldier of the student elite, strides through it all, hard-working, uncomplaining.  Just like Boxer in Animal Farm (and we all know what happens to him...).

Part of the beauty of Beijing Coma though is its pictures of normal life carrying on in less-than-normal circumstances.  They may be taking part in one of the most famous revolutions of the twentieth century, but that doesn't stop the students from looking around for someone to spend a few quiet moments in a shady corner with.  Dai Wei himself is guilty of spending more than a few moments lusting after a fellow student (although when you think of what is to happen, you can hardly blame him).

Sadly, at the end of it all, we know what happened, and we know what is still happening.  Despite the protests, Tank man and the loss of the 2000 Summer Olympics, little has changed politically in China, and there seems little prospect of any progress in human rights issues in the near future.  However, if the Chinese people are looking for hope, they could do worse than look a few thousand miles to the West.  The current events in Egypt show that people will only put up with repression for so long...