22 & 23/50: Waiti-Mulholland, Kirino
Isabel Waiti-Mulholland, Inna Furey. The bit at the back of the book lists four more books in this series, but I’ve never seen any of them (this book came out in 2007) and Google suggests that it’s not just me. Which is a shame, because this book is largely set-up, and I’d like to know where the author was going with it.
A new, strange, girl - Inna Furey - starts at Leanne’s school. When Leanne meets Inna late one night in the reserve outside her house, she discovers Inna’s secret - she can transform into a giant bird (Haast’s eagle, the largest known raptor - now extinct). But, when she changes, she isn’t herself anymore, and whatever she transforms into is taking over more and more often…
There are some nice moments in this - the thousands of birds, silent and watchful, who follow Leanne when she goes in search of Inna, Inna’s nest high in the mountains (although I was unclear how they got from what I’m pretty sure is Auckland to snowy mountains that quickly), the kidnapped baby in the bush in the Domain - and it’s an interesting idea, as well as one where the author doesn’t shy away from the less pleasant aspects (Inna’s transformation process is quite horrific, at times, and there’s also a bit where in bird form she rips apart and eats a dog). But it’s never clear why this is happening now (possibly this would have been filled in in subsequent books), and the ornithologist character is all too obviously there to solve a narrative dilemma, rather than because they’ve developed into their own person. The feel of the book is also more 80s than contemporary (I think it unlikely that Leanne, who’s 13, would compare a new good-looking boy at her school to Johnny Depp, for a start, but also the lack of technology references - internet, cell phones), and, again, given the main character’s age and the writing style, it’s odd that this is explicitly described as for “young adults”.
The blurb for the planned third book, in which scientists are bringing back Haast’s eagle (presumably via cloning) sounds the most interesting of the proposed sequels. The second sequel, however, sounds like it might have addressed more explicitly Māori themes, which are also rather underplayed in this - Leanne wonders if Inna’s Māori, and her grandmother seems to be (she has a moko), but again, this all feels like set-up for concepts that were going to be dealt with later. I might actually try writing to Huia (the publishers) to see if this is still going to go ahead.
Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque. Two women working as prostitutes in Tokyo are murdered. Years earlier, they attended the same exclusive high school, along with the first, unnamed narrator, the older sister of one of those murdered (Yuriko). Yuriko was abnormally beautiful - a beauty described as grotesque - and the subsequent distortions this created for her and her sister reverberate through their lives.
There are two other narrators in here - Kazue, the other woman murdered, who becomes successful in business, but then turns to prostitution in a destructive spiral, and Zhang Zhe-zhong,, an illegal Chinese immigrant who admits to only one of the near-identical murders. None of these people are particularly pleasant, and it’s quite possible that all of them are lying - Zhe-zhong, certainly, is (although not necessarily about the murders), but the others are also deeply untrustworthy.
A lot of the pull in this narrative is in watching people wilfully destroy themselves, and while I can enjoy this (the tragic flaw concept, for example), the characters here are not people I would want to spend time with even before their self-destruction. It’s a claustrophobic sort of story as well, with characters hemmed in on all sides (physically, culturally, metaphorically), and possibly because of this Zhang’s narrative - where we actually leave Tokyo - was the most dynamic, at least until his unlikely (and possibly literally improbable) pick-up by a party member’s daughter in Guangzhou. There’s also a lot of implied and explicit critique of Japanese society, particularly as it relates to treatment of women; how they’re judged by appearances and sexuality, and what happens when they try and use that to their advantage. Men don’t come off particularly well in this, but then neither do the women; and the ending does not suggest any hope of change in this, neither for these individuals nor their society.
A new, strange, girl - Inna Furey - starts at Leanne’s school. When Leanne meets Inna late one night in the reserve outside her house, she discovers Inna’s secret - she can transform into a giant bird (Haast’s eagle, the largest known raptor - now extinct). But, when she changes, she isn’t herself anymore, and whatever she transforms into is taking over more and more often…
There are some nice moments in this - the thousands of birds, silent and watchful, who follow Leanne when she goes in search of Inna, Inna’s nest high in the mountains (although I was unclear how they got from what I’m pretty sure is Auckland to snowy mountains that quickly), the kidnapped baby in the bush in the Domain - and it’s an interesting idea, as well as one where the author doesn’t shy away from the less pleasant aspects (Inna’s transformation process is quite horrific, at times, and there’s also a bit where in bird form she rips apart and eats a dog). But it’s never clear why this is happening now (possibly this would have been filled in in subsequent books), and the ornithologist character is all too obviously there to solve a narrative dilemma, rather than because they’ve developed into their own person. The feel of the book is also more 80s than contemporary (I think it unlikely that Leanne, who’s 13, would compare a new good-looking boy at her school to Johnny Depp, for a start, but also the lack of technology references - internet, cell phones), and, again, given the main character’s age and the writing style, it’s odd that this is explicitly described as for “young adults”.
The blurb for the planned third book, in which scientists are bringing back Haast’s eagle (presumably via cloning) sounds the most interesting of the proposed sequels. The second sequel, however, sounds like it might have addressed more explicitly Māori themes, which are also rather underplayed in this - Leanne wonders if Inna’s Māori, and her grandmother seems to be (she has a moko), but again, this all feels like set-up for concepts that were going to be dealt with later. I might actually try writing to Huia (the publishers) to see if this is still going to go ahead.
Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque. Two women working as prostitutes in Tokyo are murdered. Years earlier, they attended the same exclusive high school, along with the first, unnamed narrator, the older sister of one of those murdered (Yuriko). Yuriko was abnormally beautiful - a beauty described as grotesque - and the subsequent distortions this created for her and her sister reverberate through their lives.
There are two other narrators in here - Kazue, the other woman murdered, who becomes successful in business, but then turns to prostitution in a destructive spiral, and Zhang Zhe-zhong,, an illegal Chinese immigrant who admits to only one of the near-identical murders. None of these people are particularly pleasant, and it’s quite possible that all of them are lying - Zhe-zhong, certainly, is (although not necessarily about the murders), but the others are also deeply untrustworthy.
A lot of the pull in this narrative is in watching people wilfully destroy themselves, and while I can enjoy this (the tragic flaw concept, for example), the characters here are not people I would want to spend time with even before their self-destruction. It’s a claustrophobic sort of story as well, with characters hemmed in on all sides (physically, culturally, metaphorically), and possibly because of this Zhang’s narrative - where we actually leave Tokyo - was the most dynamic, at least until his unlikely (and possibly literally improbable) pick-up by a party member’s daughter in Guangzhou. There’s also a lot of implied and explicit critique of Japanese society, particularly as it relates to treatment of women; how they’re judged by appearances and sexuality, and what happens when they try and use that to their advantage. Men don’t come off particularly well in this, but then neither do the women; and the ending does not suggest any hope of change in this, neither for these individuals nor their society.