Welcome to the North

Well, you may (or may not) be surprised to hear that my return from 19th-Century England didn't last too long; to be precise, about as long as it took me to eat my dinner and pick up the next chapter in my Victorian odyssey.  So, without further ado, here are Tony's further adventures in the world of V-Lit :)

*****

With barely a pause for sustenance, I dashed straight from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights to the slightly less melodramatic, but equally wonderful, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by her sister Anne.  It is (like Wuthering Heights) a story within a story, a recount within a recount, as Gilbert Markham, a jovial middle-aged man, writes to his brother-in-law about events which happened earlier in his life.  He writes a letter in which he describes his encounters with a woman called Helen Graham, a widow who appeared one day in his village with her son in tow.  As Gilbert gets closer to the prickly Ms. Graham, he gradually becomes aware that she harbours a secret - and eventually we, the readers, are told it.

Markham's narrative is interrupted by Helen's diary, in which she relates exactly what happened in her married life to cause her to move to the relative obscurity of this northern village.  Once we are privy to her secret, Markham takes over again to tell us how the story ends.  Grim up north?  Not half as grim as it was down south, if Helen's marriage is anything to go by...

Anne is the least read of the three Brontës, a fact due both to limited output and sister Charlotte's oversensitive handling of Anne's book after her death.  While The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a wonderful exposé of the inequality of marriage in Victorian England, for many at the time it was simply too close to the bone - hypocrisy often trumped truth back in the 19th Century.

Ironically, in the 20th Century, it was criticised again by feminist theorists, who attacked it for its inherent support of male superiority.  The structure of the novel, with Markham's letter surrounding Helen Graham's diary extracts (which he has included in his letters) is said to perpetuate female submissiveness.  I'm sure Anne Brontë would have been amused to hear that her book was both too radical and too conventional at the same time... Whichever theory you subscribe to, one thing's for sure - this is a very good, and often overlooked, piece of writing.

*****

We'll remain, if you please, in the north of England for our second book today, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.  This staple of English literature classes follows devout southern belle Margaret Hale as family circumstances conspire to send her off to the smoky skies of Milton-Northern (AKA Manchester), where she encounters the rough but courteous Mr. Thornton.  As our heroine struggles to adapt to the ways of the industrial north, and their slightly confusing language, she and Mr. Thornton (Mr. Darcy with an accent) find that when it comes to behaviour they really do come from different countries.

The title though is slightly misleading; it's not that Thornton comes from the North as such that makes him so exotic (Gilbert Markham, for example is also a Northerner), it's his role as a member of the manufacturing mercantile class which renders him so foreign in Margaret's eyes (and probably in the eyes of many of Gaskell's readers too).  Throughout the novel, our two protagonists are simply unable to understand what the other is doing, let alone thinking, and neither has a real inkling of the respect they inspire in the other.

The last unit in my long-forgotten Master's course was in Intercultural Communication, and it was difficult to overlook the cultural differences dotted throughout the book.  One good example is the two main families' respective drawing rooms, seen through the eyes of the others on a visit.  The Thorntons regard the Hale drawing room as cluttered and unnecessary (and probably a nightmare to clean).  On the return visit, however, Margaret is appalled by the sterility of the Hale drawing room, a place to look at but not to sit in.

Even when Margaret and Thornton do decide to talk to each other, the cultural differences are evident.  Thornton is continually angered by Margaret's refusal to shake his hand, an offer she is unaware she is supposed to make, and their discussions on the conditions of the working class in the north generally deteriorate into point scoring and arguments.  As Margaret's father notes:

"One had need to learn a different language, and measure by a different standard, up here in Milton." (p.149), Wordsworth Classics Edition (1994)

The north really is a different country...

As an anthropological insight, North and South is a wonderful book, and it's not bad as a novel either.  However, the longer the book went on, the less interesting it became, and whatever the introduction in my edition claims, several of the plot strands (especially the one involving her brother's exile from Britain) seemed extremely contrived and convenient.  When the rather rushed and predictable ending arrives, you are left feeling that there was an opportunity missed.  If they had only stayed in the north and continued the story in Milton, the book would have been a lot better for it...

*****
So, is that all for V-Lit this month?  Pfft - as if.  Stay tuned for more antics in 19th-century England...

A Journey Through Rural England

As promised in a previous post, July has been reserved for old friends, and my first three books for the month are all very familiar friends indeed.  Let me take you on a little trip through time and space, from the south of England to the north.  It'll be a slow journey, but, I promise you, it will be well worth it...

*****

Our journey starts off down in Wessex, the ancient English kingdom appropriated by the wonderful Thomas Hardy as the setting for his Victorian novels.  Far From the Madding Crowd is a typically bucolic tale, describing a few years in the life of the young and beautiful Bathsheba Everdene.  This headstrong woman, who has decided to take on the running of her uncle's farm alone after his death, is pursued by three very different men: surly Farmer Boldwood; dashing soldier Frank Troy; and the honest, reliable shepherd Gabriel Oak.  While this early novel has a little more cheer than Hardy's later tragedies, there's still a lot that goes wrong for Bathsheba, and plenty of obstacles to overcome before she can settle down in peace.

I first read this at secondary school - and got an almighty telling-off from my English teacher when I did a surprise test in class on the book without having bothered to read any of it (I think it was the question where I said Bathsheba was a farmer with a beard that gave things away...).  Now, I love this book, with its luscious descriptions of the English countryside and its long, leisurely conversations between locals in ramshackle pubs.  Admittedly, Hardy never uses a short word when he can dig up (or invent) a horribly long and complicated one instead, but this minor fault is far outweighed by his elegant storytelling - which is why, on finishing this novel, I went straight to the Book Depository and ordered three more of his works :)

*****

Now let's (reluctantly) leave Wessex and move northwards, over the undulating southern hills, across the pleasant fields of Warwickshire, and onto the tranquil village of Hayslope in the (fictional) hilly county of Loamshire, for here we will encounter a fine example of the turn-of-the-(19th) century workman, Adam Bede.

George Eliot's admirable carpenter is one of the principal figures of her first novel, and throughout its 540 pages, he must learn to use his broad shoulders to support others in their time of need - and to bear the crushing disappointment he encounters in his own affairs.  Adam, a cut above the average English country-dweller (both mentally and physically), is in love with Hetty Sorrel, a beautiful (and empty-headed) young dairymaid.  However, when the heir to the local estates, Arthur Donnithorne, sees the pretty girl, events take an unfortunate and fateful turn (reminiscent of a certain Hardy novel), tainting the lives of all involved.

This novel, which I bought at a second-hand shop while I was living in Japan (and read to death!), has many similarities with Far From the Madding Crowd, and I constantly compare and confuse Adam and Gabriel (in my mind, they both look like an actor I saw in an ITV production of Hardy's novel!).  I'd have to say though that Eliot's story is the better of the two.  It has all of the wonderful depiction of how people in the country really lived, with less of the stark contrast between the language of the story and the philosophising.  Middlemarch is probably a better book, but Adam Bede is definitely my favourite Eliot novel.

*****

Alas, we must keep moving, and the way is becoming less pleasant now.  We pass through the bare, coal-stained hills of Eliot's Stonyshire, skirt the big industrial cities of the north, and venture out onto the wet, wild and windy Yorkshire moors - until we stumble, on completion of our journey, upon a pair of houses isolated on the moors: Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights...

The novel is actually a story within a story (within a story) as a large part of the tale is told third-(and occasionally fourth-) hand by the feisty, and perhaps not all that trustworthy, maidservant Nelly Dean.  Through her long fireside stories to the convalescing tenant of Thrushcross Grange, Mr. Lockwood, we learn about the strange events that unfolded in recent years.  All begins when Hareton Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, returns from a trip to Liverpool bearing a rather unwelcome sort of gift - a dirty, dark stray who soon comes to be known by the name of Heathcliff.  While Earnshaw's two children are initially repulsed by the intruder, his daughter, Cathy, quickly becomes the best of friends with Heathcliff, a tie which will endure lifelong... and perhaps beyond.

Emily Brontë's classic story is nothing if not divisive (as recent Twitter conversations have shown!), but I love this book.  Melodramatic?  Definitely.  Exaggerated?  Of course.  Stretching reality of behaviour to its limits?  Without doubt.  That's not the point though.  In the self-centred and slightly deranged Cathy, Brontë created one of the most fascinating heroines of the Victorian age (with the best theme tune too!), and as for Heathcliff... well, any character who bangs his head against a tree until it's covered in blood has to be worth engaging with.

This was probably the first piece of serious literature that I ever read (voluntarily anyway), back in those wonderful days when Penguin brought out their one-pound popular classics and widened general access to the literary greats.  I still remember struggling through the book, all the time trying to work out who Cathy/Catherine/Linton/Hareton actually was.  By the end of the novel, despite this difficulty, I was hooked on reading 'proper' books :)

*****
Alas, we must now turn our backs on the world of fiction; our time here is done.  And so, with our journey at an end, it's time to leave 19th-century England behind and return to the realities of 21st-century Melbourne: a large amount of planning to do for next term, a mountain of bills to pay and two noisy (but lovely) daughters to pay attention to.

Until next time :)

More from Marvellous Melbourne

You may have noticed a lot of Aussie books in my reading list this year, and the responsibility for that can be placed firmly on the shoulders of two places: firstly, Joanne of Booklover Book Reviews, whose Aussie Author Challenge has got me hooked on local literature; and secondly, the fine people of the Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation, whose excellent system enables me to read these wonderful books without having to actually buy them at the extortionate prices charged Down Under.

This post will have mini-reviews of three wonderful books by three great writers, all of them from my adopted home town of Melbourne, and it was actually going to be a celebratory finishing post for the Aussie Author Challenge.  Today's offerings brought me up to thirteen for the year to date (!), but just as I was getting ready to pop the (metaphorical) champagne cork, I noticed the small print.  You see, the twelve required books had to be by a minimum of nine different authors, and my thirteen were the work of just eight...  Back to the drawing board, or, as I like to call it, the library web-site.  In the meantime, enjoy these short reviews anyway :)

*****
The Reasons I Won't Be Coming is a collection of short stories by Elliot Perlman, the author of the wonderful Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity.  It's an interesting collection of short stories (mostly) set in Melbourne, with a fascinating use of voice and perspective to hook you in to the stories.  They often start very abruptly, some with the protagonist talking to the reader as if in a monologue in a play, eventually widening the scope of events to reveal the full story.

Not all the stories are a total success (a point Perlman probably knows already, but which I'd like to point out anyway, is that readers are not prone to sympathising with lawyers who have been dumped by their married mistress after getting her pregnant...), and some do take a while to get going.  However, on the whole, they do eventually suck you in and make you think - which is always good in a short story.

One of the most interesting stories is Manslaughter, the story of a trial from start to finish, told through the voices of just about everyone involved - judge, jurors, accused, bailiff, lawyer, widow.  In a matter of a few dozen pages, the writer successfully conveys the complexities of a seemingly open-and-shut case, letting the reader in on what really happens in a high-profile court case and leaving them to make their own judgement as to how fair it all is.

The news on the grapevine is that Mr. Perlman has a new book coming out later this year, and all I can say is that it's about time.  While you're waiting though, why not give this little collection a go?  It's not as if there's any hurry...

*****
A slightly more prolific writer (although not by much) is Helen Garner, author of the notorious Monkey Grip, and The Children's Bach is another tale from a slightly-left-of-centre (in many ways) Melbourne family.  Dexter and Athena's comfortable life is disrupted by a chance encounter at Melbourne airport, where Dexter spots an old friend, the rather icy Elizabeth.  While Elizabeth herself causes few problems, it is the people she brings with her - little sister Vicki and Elizabeth's occasional lover Phillip - who turn the married couple's life upside down.

The Children's Bach is a very slender book, but it is beautifully written, and the central question of casual sex versus comfortable monogamy works well.  Athena is jolted out of a rut by her new acquaintances, and the question is whether this is a welcome break or a wake-up call.  Meanwhile, Dexter has to decide how he will handle Athena's behaviour and balance her (and his) behaviour against his principles.

The book is short, elegant and witty, but while it's a nice read, it's hard to avoid thinking that it's a little underwritten.  I found it hard to engage with the characters over such a short journey, with a lot of gaps where the narrative jumps to the next crisis.  I found myself wondering whether another writer could (and would) have made a longer, more detailed book from this...

*****

...a writer, for example, like the extremely talented Steven Carroll.  Having read, and loved, his wonderful Melbourne Trilogy books earlier this year, I picked up his most recent novel The Lost Life from the library shelves with great anticipation.  It's a very different book in some ways, set in England in 1934 and based around a chance encounter with the famous poet T.S. Eliot.  However, once past the initial set up, The Lost Life slips into the mesmerising style that made Carroll's other novels such successes.

The central figure of the novel is Catherine, a young woman in the centre of the golden summer of her youth, enjoying the first flushes of love with Daniel, a recently graduated university student.  When they accidentally spy on Eliot and his 'special friend' Emily Hale during a walk around the parks of a local stately home, they become unwillingly mixed up in his tangled relationships.  As Catherine gets to know Emily better, she realises that there are parallels between their situations, which the older woman, an accomplished actress who seems to be playing roles rather than acting naturally, is determined to exploit for her own purposes.

Although the phrase Carpe Diem isn't actually mentioned in the book, it's one that instantly springs to mind.  Catherine gradually becomes aware that her love, an awkward affair devoid of any real privacy, may be more fleeting than she imagined.  Unless she takes her opportunity for a brief moment of intimacy, she may end up regretting it for the rest of her life.  Just as Emily Hale has her own, lingering regrets...

Carroll's usual time-jumping style lets us know in advance a lot of information while concealing the important, emotional events.  He also gets inside the characters' heads, describing matters from several viewpoints, emphasising both the similarities and the subtle differences between opinions on the same event.  As you can tell, I think he's great :)

All in all, another well-crafted story from my big discovery of 2011.  And the best bit?  He's also got a new novel due out later this year.  Marvellous Melbourne indeed ;)

Tony's Month of Rereading

The other day, as I was idly flicking scrolling through my reading list (yes, it exists - it's on Excel, and it's growing longer by the day...), I happened to notice that my reading had slipped into a worrying pattern of late, with the last few months showing an alarming lack of books read for the second time (or more).  I decided to investigate this phenomenon further and instigated a thorough audit of my list for rereads - with a disturbing outcome.  Where in 2009 (from 93 books read) 34 books were rereads, and in 2010 (from 91 books) 22 were old friends, the result for the first half of 2011, from an impressive 67 books, was just... 6 :(

While some of you may be starting to wonder what the point of this post is - and others may be applauding my turn towards unfamiliar fiction -, there is a method in my madness.  You see, as I took up my usual, nay habitual, stance in front of my bookcases to muse upon this issue, noticing the many hundred paperbacks arrayed in front of me, a novel, and quite unpleasant, thought occurred to me...

If I'm only going to read new books, and have no intention of giving them a second go, then what is the point of my buying any books at all?!

A scary thought, and one I dismissed rather rapidly; however, it did make me think that I had been neglecting my old friends in favour of new and shinier ones - all of which brings me to the point of this post (and yes, there is one)...

Welcome to Tony's Reading List's Rereading July :)

That's right - I have decided that for the following month, it's in with the old and out with the new, a hello to familiar friends while new books are ignored, shunned and left to gather dust in the corner.  There are only three rules to Fight Club Rereading July (and you may talk about it to your heart's content):

1) The book must be somewhere on my shelves
2) I must have read it at least once (and possibly several times) before
3) The last reading must have occurred before I began my blog (1/1/09)

After a leisurely perusal of my collection, the following books clamoured to be read:

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Adam Bede by George Eliot

One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Seven Shades of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The above list comprises a nice collection of old friends, representing a fair cross-section of my reading tastes: some V-Lit, J-Lit, a German-language classic, a smattering of translated fiction and a few good old Aussie novels.  I've already kicked off the fun with Far From The Madding Crowd and am very happy with my choice - in the long, cold Melbourne winter, it's nice to have a bit of comfort reading :)

You are welcome, dear reader, to join me (or not) - here's hoping for a wonderful month of things I've read before...

June 2011 Wrap-Up (and Giveaway Results!)

The end of June already!  Half a year gone, and I'm smashing all previous records (the reading ones that is - definitely not the blogging ones...).  As usual, for your perusal, here is the month of June at a glance...

But wait - at the end of this post (unusually), there will be the results of my F.C. Delius giveaway!  Patience is a virtue :)

*****
Total Books Read: 10
Year-to-date: 67

New: 10
Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 6

From the Library: 4

On the Kindle: 0

Novels: 7

Novellas: 2
Short Stories: 1

Non-English Language: 4 (2 Japanese, 2 German)

In Original Language: 2 (2 German)

Books read in June were:
1) The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata
2) Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by Goethe
3) Felix Holt: The Radical by George Eliot
4) Silence by Shusaku Endo
5) Sartoris by William Faulkner
6) Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau by Friedrich Christian Delius
7) The Reasons I Won't Be Coming by Elliot Perlman
8) The Children's Bach by Helen Garner
9) The Lost Life by Steven Carroll
10) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Murakami Challenge: 0 (2/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 3 (13/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 1 (13/15)
Japanese literature Challenge 5: 2 (2/1)

Tony's Recommendation for June is: Shusaku Endo's Silence

June was an exceptional month, with a number of high-quality reads.  There was another wonderful novel from Australian writer Steven Carroll, F.C. Delius' wonderful one-sentence book, the first of William Faulkner's novels set in his fictionalised hometown, Yasunari Kawabata's intriguing tale of games within a game, and Goethe's classic Bildungsroman - on which I spent half of May and the first few days of June...

However, even in such a distinguished field, Shusaku Endo's Silence was a stand out.  Very different from any of the J-Lit I'd read previously, this tale of a trial of faith in alien climes is well worth the effort - do try it :)

*****
Well, that's all for... sorry, the giveaway?  Ah, yes - I'd almost forgotten :)

I had around sixty entries for this competition, which is roughly ten times the number of people that usually even read my posts, so I was slightly overwhelmed by the number of e-mails dropping into my inbox.  I was very happy though to see that everyone was happy to comply with my cheeky request for manners ;)

And the winner?  As chosen by a random computer thingy, congratulations to Laura of Devouring Texts - I will be contacting you for a postal address very soon!

But wait - there's more!  Surprisingly, several of you expressed interest in the German-language version, and I have decided to be generous (the Aussie Dollar is doing very well at the moment!) and also award a German copy to one lucky entrant - and that person is Eva {the writer} - herzlichen Glückwunsch!  I'll be e-mailing you too

Thank you for the interest and attention - time for me to slip back into obscurity.  Night all :)

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop - A Mother of a Book

Greetings to all those visiting Tony's Reading List as part of the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop (and I hope you are going to visit all the other participants too!).  Today on my little blog, there will, as promised, be a giveaway - the down side is that you'll have to sit through the review first (it's a small price to pay, no?).

*****
Friedrich Christian Delius, the recipient of this year's Georg-Büchner Prize, is a well-known and highly successful German author, and as you would expect, Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau (Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman), a 2006 novella, is a wonderful piece of writing.  For those of you who are not fluent in the teutonic tongue, don't panic - the wonderful Peirene Press have an equally wonderful English-language version available :)

The story follows Margherita, a young, pregnant German woman, who has been left to spend the time leading up to the birth of her first child alone, after her husband was called away on business.  Which doesn't sound so bad until you hear that she is in Rome, in January 1943, and that the business her husband has been called away to is on the North African war front...

In one long sentence spanning 120 pages, we literally follow Margherita on her way through the eternal city.  Ostensibly, we are watching a young woman stroll to her church to watch a concert; in reality, we are privy to her internal musings and are able, by sifting through the confused thought patterns, to gradually build up an image of Margherita, her life, Rome, Germany, the War, Christianity - everything.

Margherita is a product of her time, a faithful member of the German Girls' League, conditioned to love her husband, bear many children and support the ideals of the Fatherland, and it is is tempting to see her as a vapid, clinging woman, unwilling to give an opinion and unable to function properly, even to stray from the straight line between her home and her church, without her husband.  However, the longer the story goes on, the more she opens up, and the less convinced she appears that what is happening back in her homeland (and all around the edges of Europe) is right.

The main source of her doubts can be found in her deep faith, and the quiet warnings from both her father and her husband about the way the Führer has effectively put himself on a pedestal alongside God.  Once we begin to see past her seemingly-blind obedience to her country, cracks appear in the facade.  Margherita worries about the difficulty of reconciling her national and spiritual duties, lamenting:

"die täglichen Konflikte zwischen Kreuz und Hakenkreuz", p.100
("the daily conflicts between the cross and the swastika")

In this light, her seeming indifference to what is going on is in fact a form of defence mechanism, protecting her from her own inner turmoil and doubt.

This Christian theme pervades the book, with Margherita stranded on an island of Evangelism in the middle of the most Catholic city in the world.  She seeks comfort in her church, comparing its rituals favourably with the more ostentatious scenes she sees elsewhere in the eternal city.  However, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that Delius is playing with the reader a little in this respect, with his portrait of the pregnant young woman, wandering around in a time of conflict, the father of the child absent and seen only in her thoughts.  Is it any coincidence that Margherita's trip to the Vatican takes place on the occasion of the holiday of the "unbefleckten Empfängnis" (p.17) - or, in English, the immaculate conception...

Whether this is really the author's intent, or a happy accident (or, more likely, just the blogger's overactive imagination), what it all adds up to is a brief, leisurely, compelling stroll through a beautiful city, a brief moment in time and a period of world history which will never be forgotten.  The magic of this novella is that Delius is able to cover all aspects of his story from the micro to the macro in such a short space of time (and in such a seemingly limited style).

And the sentence?  Well, I'm not 100% convinced, and there were a few times when I really thought it was continuing simply because it had already been going for so long that it would have been a shame to end it.  Still, I'm not going to criticise such minor details when the book is such a success overall - and especially not when (for the writer) it is a particularly personal affair.

If you want to know what I mean by that, just look up Herr Delius' date (and place) of birth...

*****

So on to the giveaway!  I will be giving away a copy of the book reviewed above, either in the original German or in the 2010 Peirene Press English-language version.  If you want to enter, simply:

  - comment on this post, stating whether you want the English or German version
  - write the word 'please' somewhere in your comment; manners are important :)

  - a contact e-mail would be nice, but I will endeavour to track down the winner!
  - commenting on my review is welcome but not obligatory ;)

This competition is open to all, but please note that I will be using The Book Depository to send this prize, so it is limited to people living in countries where The Book Depository has free delivery.  Entries will close at midnight (Melbourne time) on Thursday, the 30th of June, 2011, and I'll be announcing the winner shortly after.  Good luck to all, and to all a good night...

Triple-Choice Tuesday and Other Housekeeping

Today, over at Kimbofo's Reading Matters blog, I am featured on her wonderful Triple-Choice Tuesday feature, expounding merrily away upon some of my favourite reads.  If you want to see my thoughts on a favourite book, a book that changed my world and a book that should be read more, then just click here :)

If you don't, then what are you doing here in the first place?

*****
In my previous post, I challenged my readers to name a female champion to take down the ogre that is V.S. Naipaul in literary single combat.  In addition to my original trio of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and the mighty George Eliot, the following writers were suggested:

   - Wendy put forward Canada's favourite not-fantasy writer, Margaret Atwood
   - Biblibio agreed with my favourite, George Eliot.
   - Eva had a terrible twosome of Toni Morrison and Jamaica Kincaid
   - Em also mentioned Atwood, as well as praising Mary Shelley
   - Colleen chose Eliot too, but also thought Hilary Mantel could walk the walk

If anyone has any other suggestions (particularly from non-English-speaking backgrounds), please join in the misogynist-bashing fun :)

*****
On Saturday, June the 25th, there is going to be another Literary Giveaway Blog-Hop - and this time I have decided to join in.  Along with dozens of other bloggers in the literary corner of the Blogosphere (a nice, cosy, comfortable niche, with good books, fine wines and luxurious armchairs), I will be giving away a book to one of the people who comment on my blog post.

The post, specially written for the event, will appear this weekend and will feature an in-depth review of a book plus details on how to win it.  Yes, you have to wade through the review before you get to the freebies - life's like that sometimes :)  And the name of the book... well, to find that out, you'll just have to come back at the weekend, won't you?  Bye for now!

A Challenging Time for Me and V.S. Naipaul

No review today, but while I'm up and typing, I thought I'd just ramble on about a few things.  Belezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 5 started in June, and I'm already well under way, with reviews of Yasunari Kawbata's The Master of Go and Shusaku Endo's Silence already posted.  I have a copy of Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter waiting to be read, and somewhere in transit, at the bottom of a ship in the Pacific Ocean (possibly!), I have Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain and Beauty and Sadness straining to reach Australian shores.

This focus on J-Lit is also part of a slight change of emphasis for my blog.  Since the impressive collapse of book-by-book posts earlier this year, I have thinking about how best to balance my desire to review and my various aches and pains.  Recently, I have been trying to keep up with one post a week, particularly related to my favourite challenges, and I think devoting that post to a particular book, rather than madly trying to write one paragraph on everything I read, suits me better.

That doesn't mean that it will all be J-Lit around here though.  I have a German-language copy of Friedrich Delius' Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau, which some of you may know better as Peirene Press' Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, and I'm hoping to read and review that very soon.  Also, I'd like to continue to promote good Australian contemporary literature, so look out for more writers like Steven Carroll and Tim Winton.

Time permitting, of course...

*****

Finally today, I just wanted to give you my humble thoughts on the recent V.S. Naipaul incident (in which, as you probably already know, the always-cantankerous writer calmly dismissed all literature written by women as beneath him).  I'm not even going to bother discussing his misogynistic opinions (there is no discussion possible); rather, I want to pick up on something I saw in the reports.  The interviewer, from what I gather, asked his mightiness if he thought he was better than all female writers, even Jane Austen...

...and that's what interests me.  If you were going to choose a knight in shining garters, an Amazon warrior to slay the ugly dragon Naipaul, the one representative to defend female literary honour, would you honestly choose Saint Jane?  Really?  Austen wrote classic novels, stories which will endure long after old V.S. has been committed to the filing cabinet of history, but is she really the automatic choice?

Personally, I think there are other, worthier female writers to saddle the horse and joust with the nasty Nobel Laureate.  How about Virginia Woolf?  I'm sure she'd be handy with a sharp lance and an even sharper tongue.  Or perhaps Edith Wharton?  With her cool observational skills, she would be bound to find the chinks in Naipaul's metaphorical armour.

My choice, however, would be George Eliot, a titan(ess) of the arena, guaranteed to make any male writer think twice about crossing swords (or pens) - and thick-skinned enough to cope much better with any pre-fight trash talk than the demure Austen...

So, dear readers, do any of you have any champions you'd like to suggest for this imaginary grudge match?  Who should don the armour and put the Trinidadian motormouth in his place?

Yes, you're right - it is time I took my pills...

It's Oh So Quiet...

Last year, I read David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a novel set in 17th-century Japan at a time when Dutch traders were the only westerners allowed into the country.  While I enjoyed the book (it is a David Mitchell creation, after all), I couldn't help but feel that he had missed an opportunity as I was eager to learn more about life in Japan at that time, rather than just the trading post at Dejima where most of the novel was set.  Luckily for me, Shusaku Endo's Silence (translated by William Johnston) fills that gap nicely - and, more importantly, is a very, very good book.

Silence follows a Portuguese Catholic missionary,  Sebastiao Rodrigues, on a quest for the truth behind a rumour which makes its way back to Europe.  Cristovao Ferreira, the most senior priest left in Japan, has apparently committed apostasy (the act of renouncing one's religion) and has taken on a Japanese name.  In order to ascertain the truth of the information that has leaked out from behind Japan's curtain of exclusion, Rodrigues and two colleagues set off amid pomp and cheering on the long voyage to the Orient.  While the start of the quest is a joyous affair, the enormity of the task, and the strength and faith required to undertake it, gradually begin to sink in.  Having picked up an expatriate Japanese in Macao, the suspicious, cowardly and sly Kichijiro, Rodrigues eventually manages to reach his destination, where he goes into hiding and prepares himself for his greatest test of faith...

The first part of the book is written in the form of letters written by the Portuguese priest, and this is apt as the novel as a whole is concerned more with Rodrigues as an individual than with his mission as a whole.  In a country where Christianity, especially for those who refuse to renounce it, can be punishable by death, being a missionary is something of a suicide mission and only possible for someone with the strongest of beliefs.  However, when people suffer for those beliefs, when innocent souls are tortured, burned and killed, when God refuses to intervene... is it possible to maintain your beliefs?  Can you keep the faith in the face of God's continual silence?

As can be expected from the title, silence plays a major role in the novel.  Rodrigues, determined as he is to maintain his faith, must nevertheless question God's lack of intervention at a time when, in his eyes, it is most needed.  As the people he has come to save lay down their lives for his religion, he struggles to accept their sacrifices and see them as part of a greater scheme.

However, it is not only a metaphorical silence which pervades the novel, but also a literal one.  In several important passages, particularly those involving great pain and suffering, God's reluctance to act is married to an eery quiet falling upon events, further trying Rodrigues' strength. Villagers are drowned in the sea, and the only sound is the gentle murmuring of waves; a man is brutally beheaded for refusing to apostatise, and all that can be heard is the occasional cicada; Rodrigues stumbles upon the scene of a massacre, and all that remains are a few cats amidst the wreckage - and still God remains silent...

One of the more interesting points about this book is the idea of a western point of view, written by a Japanese author.  Endo is a Catholic himself, and his sense of confusion and compromise comes across in his portrayal not only of the suffering Rodrigues, but also of the intriguing Kichijiro (of whom more later...).  One thought I had at the start of the story was that it would be very easy to turn this book into a pro-Christian anti-Japanese tale, but the writer balances the sympathies very nicely.  For those Christians among you, it might appear that the Japanese behaviour is unjust, but the reality is that the missionaries were illegal spies in a foreign country, expressly breaking the law and inciting disobedience amongst the local people too.  And let's face it, the Catholic church itself was no stranger at the time to intolerance and cruelty against people with different opinions to their own..

The prevailing opinion seems to have been that whatever the intentions of the Christian missionaries, Japan was a 'swamp', a field in which Christianity's roots could not take hold, and the ensuing perversion of the tenets of the religion (along with the suspicion that conversion was paving the way for later subjugation to the European powers) proved that the best path forward was to eradicate the foreign faith, described by one of the characters as an ugly, barren woman.

Rodrigues suspects several times that the Japanese form of Christianity is not all that it should be, observing that many villagers appear to attach more importance to the Virgin Mary than they should, but is this any different to his own obsession with Jesus - in particular with the beauty and expression of his face?  In fact, in light of the immense sacrifice made by these early Japanese martyrs, who really had the greater belief in God?  This is a thought for the reader to ponder as you follow Rodrigues through all the stages of his own private ordeal, until he is forced to decide what his religion means to him and what is more important - theoretical doctrine or human kindness.

*****
I was going to end my review there until I remembered that I read a short story by Endo in The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories last year - and decided to go back to take a second look.  Unzen is the tale of a Catholic novelist who travels to the scene of the torture of early Christians to see for himself the place of their pain and suffering.  At the time, it wasn't one of my favourite stories among the collection, but after reading Silence, the tale takes on a whole new dimension.

The main reason for this, apart from the continuation in the main theme, is the reappearance of perhaps the most fascinating character in Silence, the apostate Kichijiro.  He plays the role of Judas to Rodrigues' Christ, and in Unzen we get a glimpse of his backstory as the novelist reads of his tearful attendance at the torture of those Christians who refused to renounce their beliefs - and were therefore scalded by hot springs for weeks, before being burned at the stake.

Throughout Silence, Rodrigues views Kichijiro with distaste, bordering on disgust, but despite his obvious cowardice, the Japanese apostate is a much deeper character than first appears.  His weakness is tempered by his inability to truly abandon his religion, and he finds himself continually drawn to his former friends, even following them on the road to their martyrdom, hoping to appease his conscience a little with offerings of food to the doomed Christians.  Indeed, it is also tempting to view his apostasy in a more positive light, seeing as he remains alive, yet still a believer.

Whatever you think of Kichijiro, he is somewhat of an enigma.  Is he a coward, a wise man, a traitor or a fool?  Or maybe all of the above?  Perhaps it's best to avoid judgement and leave the last words to Kichijiro himself:

 "The apostate endures a pain none of you can comprehend"

Happy Endings and New Beginnings...

I have spoken before about my guilty pleasure, a German telenovella called Alisa - Folge Deinem Herzen (follow your heart) which I downloaded (free!) from iTunes, and I recently finally made it to the end of the series.  After 240 40-minute episodes (which, considering that there were no adverts, would approximate to around fifteen years of your average American drama!), Alisa and Christian have finally tied the knot!  With the happy couple about to jet off to Canada, and with evil Uncle Oskar, the villain of the piece, safely behind bars, it's time to bid a fond farewell to Schönroda and look around for something else to watch...

Well, that was the plan :)  You see, the good people at ZDF were so pleased with the show that half-way through they changed their minds and decided to extend it for a further 130 episodes.  Thus, about ten episodes from the end, a few new characters began to appear, including Hanna, a chef who, though living in Hamburg, hails from our favourite little town.  On a short trip to the Spanish island of Gomera, she meets a friendly, good-looking German man (as you do), and after an evening of gazing at the stars, they kiss.  So far, so good, but the problem is that they don't ask each other's names!

Before you can say 'star-crossed lovers', Hanna is back in Schönroda to care for her sick father and attend the big wedding.  Meanwhile, her dream man is also there - he happens to be Christian's cousin (!) - and makes a big impression on another woman: Hanna's best friend Alex.  Unbelievably, Hanna and the mysterious Max somehow manage to miss each other completely, despite being in the same building for the same event... If you can't see where this is going by now, then you really have led a sheltered life!

So, I'll be continuing with my weekly visits to Schönroda, this time to see how Hanna, Max and Alex work things out (an unconventional ménage à trois would be interesting, but even the Germans might find that a little risqué for a show which airs in the early afternoon!).  And the best thing of all?  Another new character, Max's mother, Edith, has just visited Oskar in prison and appears to have a bit of a hidden past with him.  It seems that he might just be getting out after all - and that can only be a good thing :)