Reviews
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Review of Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
Mieko Kawakami’s novel Breasts and Eggs is a bold literary statement and another first person, modern, feminist novel from Japan. Staking a claim among literary celebrities like Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Natsuo Kirino, and Yoko Ogawa, it would almost appear that the future of Japanese Literature is female. It would…
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Review of Crash by J.G. Ballard
A 2008 interview with Vice quoted infamous mangaka, Shintaro Kago, saying: “Shit and sex are merely the starting points, and unless you can tick those off you can’t even begin thinking about a narrative.” Grotesque literature has its paramours, and Ballard sits in the ranks of William S. Burroughs and…
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Review of The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes
Antunes tunes into vivid illusions. Had I known of his work, I wouldn’t have bothered reading László Krasznahorkai. Mr. Lobo’s work has the same breathless fluidity, but the imagery is stronger, the dramatic pulse is quicker, and it appears far more inclusive, as opposed to the Hungarian’s stark Beckett-like isolationism.…
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Review of Parade by Shūichi Yoshida
Parade is a seamy novel by a Japanese novelist. It does not fit nicely into the “crime novel” formula. Its characters do not care if you are staring at them in horror and fascination. Its plot is not concerned with your level of patience. Though it has a similar texture…
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Review of The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
A very interesting book. No plot, no realistic characters, no dialogue. It’s not strictly philosophy, or poetry, or a diary. It is a mixture, a concoction. Aside from a few topical details, it might have been written by a Chinese, or an American, or anyone. Did you ever have a…
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Review of The Miner by Natsume Sōseki,
I didn’t expect this novel to leave such a big impression on me. It seemed like a throwaway novel in Soseki’s oeuvre, with hardly any character development, almost no plot and little adornment. But it is a subtle exploration of character, theme and atmosphere. It’s an adventure novel disguised as…
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Review of 2666 (2666 #1-5) by Roberto Bolaño
Read on a cruise ship. And I remember very little else about the cruise itself. This was eight years ago, but the book stands out in my mind, murky but stamped among the convolutions of my hippocampus. This book reaffirmed why I love reading. It is a book of literary…
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Review of The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann
Swept away by the alternately sensuous and utilitarian prose, the incredible diversity of emotions I encountered while reading this book defied strict categorization and boggled my mind. It felt like my brain had tipped sideways and any trite notions of innocence I might have held in reserve in the untouched…
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Review of Unbabbling by REYoung
This Dalkey Archive discovery is deceptive in its approach but memorable in the extreme. The prose is packed with slapstick, imagery and song, an equal ratio of panic and satire, passion and heartache, while it bubbles over with bombast, belligerence and, after acclimatization, brilliance. Truth be told, it took about…
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Review of Sea Above, Sun Below by George Salis
Sea Above, Sun Below by George Salis is a rich and masterful novel. While reading it, from the beginning to end, I never doubted I would rate it five stars. It is a balanced reading experience, told from differing perspectives, chockablock with symbolism and allusion and wordplay. The descriptions of…
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Review of Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
I devoured this scrumptious coming-of-age novel in two sittings. On the level of voice, character development, and humor it struck all the right chords. It’s Catcher in the Rye with a female lead, more modern, more swear words, and just more adult. Easily a cult classic, it was one of…
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Review of The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe
One of my favorite books of all time. One of the best film adaptations of a book as well, done by Hiroshi Teshigahara in collaboration with Abe. Both are equally mesmeric. Kobo Abe’s well-honed, surreal worlds became etched permanently in my mind, and this novel more than his others. Even…
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Review of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
I always enjoyed the line from Jonathan Swift – “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” This novel, much like Swift’s, is a scathing satire. Ignatius Reilly is both a truly sad main…
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Review of If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
Intrigued by the title, one day I opened this book, didn’t get it, put it back, saw it again years later, did the same thing, stumbled upon it again years later with a sense of déjà vu, read no more than a few pages. For some reason, it seemed as…
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Review of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest – the kind of book that, when it is mentioned, creates a hushed silence of mingled awe and fear in the room. A brick of a tome of a journey of a boy and his harried growth in spurts of tennis-fueled tragedy. An obsessive, compulsively readable, unreadable contradiction.…
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Review of Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
A literary apocalypse of compulsive cinematic ungendering. More Kafkaesque than Kafka. More borgesian than Borges. Less Shakespearean than Homer. These accolades mean everything and nothing. Because accolades, in any form, tell partial half-truths, like any communicable piece of information, as Kaufman shows us ad nauseam, in this Rabelaisian charade of…
