long overdue book post, fiction (part 1)
I thinnnnnk I've read twenty-one books since last bookblog -- six fiction and fifteen nonfiction -- but I dunno, I could be forgetting a few. Anyway, fiction in this post, non-fiction in the next, though really I want to crawl into a hole and not blog the nonfiction at all. (Laziness, or cowardice? You decide!)
The Ministry of Pain, Dubravka Ugresic
Good book: complicated, insightful, and disturbing. ^^ The narrator, Tanja Lucić, has a doctorate in Serb/Croat/Slovene/Albanian/Macedonian literature (taught together for political reasons -- or is it for political reasons that they are now taught apart?). When Yugoslavia starts to dissolve, she leaves Zagreb with her husband, a Serb professor of mathematics. They live in Germany for a few years before her husband is offered a position in Japan. Tanja refuses to go with him. Instead, they separate, and she moves to Amsterdam, where she's offered a temporary position teaching Serbo-Croatian literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her students are mostly fellow-exiles not much older than she is, and many are taking her course as a cover for their student visas, while also working low-wage jobs as housecleaners or assemblers of cheap bondage gear.
That's the set-up. The story is about Tanja's occasionally misguided attempts to use the class as a springboard for sharing memories of the old Yugoslavia, and about her relationships with her students and with Amsterdam. Plus, some really shocking events later on, which I won't spoil for you. The main draw of this book are the essays Tanja composes in her head about The Yugoslav Exile Experience.
After a little while it began to dawn on me that Tanja really wasn't a reliable narrator. Despite the authority with which she dissects the world around her, despite her high degree of self-awareness...she overlooks things. Maybe even willfully. She tends to see something things clearly but not others -- for instance, she is distanced enough to jokingly refer to the conversations she and her students are having as mental saliva (slobbering all over each other out of mutual loneliness, like the old Yugoslav men who play cards in the bars). BUT, she is not distanced enough to see that not all students are included equally, for instance, the one with the annoying Zagreb accent, or the ones who want to talk about events more recent that 1988. Though we learn a lot about the students, especially through their informal essays, what we learn is mostly the way they act in class, not really who they are as people. In the end, Tanja may be the most mysterious character of all -- we don't even learn her name until Part Two.
In the second half of the book, when events start to accelerate, Tanja continues to compose these mental anthropological essays, but they become more and more obviously dependent on her mood. All her essays incorporate some kind of system of analysis -- unlike those of her students with only a primary-school level of education, which tend to be more personal -- but which system depends on how much bleak hopeless despair she is feeling at that moment. In the novel's darkest hours, things get very dark, culminating in a dystopic view of Serbs and Croats as barbarians, followed closely by an essay on the new generation of business managers who are leaving everyone else behind. Latter, Tanja goes back to "safe" thinking -- "Can such a language communicate anything, stories for instance." Although it's kind of hollow, it's also kind of a relief.
Whether or not her essays are "true", they all get at a part of the truth, and they're striking. I could pull quotes till graduation day...I especially liked the parts about Amsterdam, now THERE'S a city full of contradictions. (Some passages reminded me of Tokyo: "I thought of the Eastern European Kens who had come to this Disneyland to entertain the grown-up male children here...how cute it all was. And what is cute is beyond good and evil; it is amoral not immoral; it is simply take it or leave it".)
Now the disturbing part. Spoiler, highlight to read:
Igor's rant in that terrifying scene in her apartment comes out in much the same style as her own rants, that is, it's as true as anything she's said, and it fits into the narrative in the same way. I may be overly sensitive, but I really don't think anything said by a student who has just handcuffed the teacher to a chair, and will later slash her wrists with a razor blade, SHOULD BE GIVEN THIS KIND OF WEIGHT. Even if it is true, even if the points are valid, neither Tanja nor the reader is in any place to consider them rationally. And, auuuuuugh, trauma.
The "where are they now" epilogue is kinda disturbing too, actually. XD;
And speculation (more spoilers):
I think Miahila was probably the one to "denounce" Tanja to the head of the department for the slipshod way she was running her class. One, because she's described as having a guilty look the last time we see her; two, because she's the one with the a University degree, who is best prepared for a "serious" academic class, and who (along with Janekka) toughs it out and lands on her feet afterward; and three (and most importantly), while the rest of the class responds to Tanja's call for written memories with personal, sometimes deeply moving and insightful accounts of their lives, Miahila writes down a recipe for stew.
The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce
Finally, a return to form! I knew I liked Tamora Pierce for a reason. What's great about this book is that the Empress -- technically the villain -- is an admirable character, unexpectedly. It's like...Sandry is anti-Empress because she's been successfully undermining the nobility, and now has her eyes on Sandry's hereditary estate. But at the same time, there's no denying that her reign has been very, very good for the Empire.
Oh right, plot. Sandry goes north to inspect her ancestral lands in Namorn, and Tris, Briar, and Daja go with her. Court intrigue, moral lessons ensue. Namorn is kind of like Imperial Russia, but not really.
Things I liked:
-About equal weight is given to the themes of "arrogance is a necessary and desirable trait o the nobility" and "too many people sucking up to you is bad for your character"
-Though Sandry has always been the nice, moral one, she is not so nice in this book, shirking responsibilities and behaving resentfully toward her foster siblings, who she feels have been moving away from her.
-The Empress' "I escaped a forced marriage, so other kidnapped women should be able to as well" attitude, as well as her approach to gardens ("I do so much, I deserve a little beauty"), and the way she and Briar relate as gardeners.
-Cute f/f romance subplot
I dunno, it's not rocket science, but for the fist time in a long time I felt that the soft history Pierce likes to work into her books actually worked.
Granted, the first hundred pages, dedicated to the four of them picking fights over insignificant and/or imagined disagreements, are VERY tough going. Though their interpersonal problems are understandable, Pierce's prose style -- every event explained in excccccrrrruciating detail -- makes reading about them kind of unbearable. Or maybe it's the genre? I expect problems in teen fantasy like this, once solved, to STAY solved. (Briar's reoccurring nightmares, while also realistic, are also not so much fun to read about.)
The End by Lemony Snickett.
Paged through purely out of curiosity XD I read The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room a few years ago, when you could still buy them in paperback. Though I liked the author's challenge-the-reader approach and dark sense of humor, I didn't continue...not sure why. Maybe because the plot did, indeed, consist of one horrible event following after another in sequence.
The End: not so great when read alone, but seems like a good end to the series. On the surface, it's about finding the antidote to a deadly fungus before everyone dies, but really it's about facing unpleasant truths and not settling for easy, ignorant, drugged happiness; doing what's right even when the (short-term) result is conflict; taking responsibility; and thinking independently. All of which themes are POUNDED INTO THE HEAD OF THE READER by the last chapter, but that's okay -- it is a children's book.
Now that the series is over, maybe I'll go back and read from the beginning...no, probably not.
***
Ah, company! Sorry, got to go. TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT POST:
English, August
Things Fall Apart
The Things They Carried
And THEN the nonfiction. *dies*
The Ministry of Pain, Dubravka Ugresic
Good book: complicated, insightful, and disturbing. ^^ The narrator, Tanja Lucić, has a doctorate in Serb/Croat/Slovene/Albanian/Macedonian literature (taught together for political reasons -- or is it for political reasons that they are now taught apart?). When Yugoslavia starts to dissolve, she leaves Zagreb with her husband, a Serb professor of mathematics. They live in Germany for a few years before her husband is offered a position in Japan. Tanja refuses to go with him. Instead, they separate, and she moves to Amsterdam, where she's offered a temporary position teaching Serbo-Croatian literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her students are mostly fellow-exiles not much older than she is, and many are taking her course as a cover for their student visas, while also working low-wage jobs as housecleaners or assemblers of cheap bondage gear.
That's the set-up. The story is about Tanja's occasionally misguided attempts to use the class as a springboard for sharing memories of the old Yugoslavia, and about her relationships with her students and with Amsterdam. Plus, some really shocking events later on, which I won't spoil for you. The main draw of this book are the essays Tanja composes in her head about The Yugoslav Exile Experience.
After a little while it began to dawn on me that Tanja really wasn't a reliable narrator. Despite the authority with which she dissects the world around her, despite her high degree of self-awareness...she overlooks things. Maybe even willfully. She tends to see something things clearly but not others -- for instance, she is distanced enough to jokingly refer to the conversations she and her students are having as mental saliva (slobbering all over each other out of mutual loneliness, like the old Yugoslav men who play cards in the bars). BUT, she is not distanced enough to see that not all students are included equally, for instance, the one with the annoying Zagreb accent, or the ones who want to talk about events more recent that 1988. Though we learn a lot about the students, especially through their informal essays, what we learn is mostly the way they act in class, not really who they are as people. In the end, Tanja may be the most mysterious character of all -- we don't even learn her name until Part Two.
In the second half of the book, when events start to accelerate, Tanja continues to compose these mental anthropological essays, but they become more and more obviously dependent on her mood. All her essays incorporate some kind of system of analysis -- unlike those of her students with only a primary-school level of education, which tend to be more personal -- but which system depends on how much bleak hopeless despair she is feeling at that moment. In the novel's darkest hours, things get very dark, culminating in a dystopic view of Serbs and Croats as barbarians, followed closely by an essay on the new generation of business managers who are leaving everyone else behind. Latter, Tanja goes back to "safe" thinking -- "Can such a language communicate anything, stories for instance." Although it's kind of hollow, it's also kind of a relief.
Whether or not her essays are "true", they all get at a part of the truth, and they're striking. I could pull quotes till graduation day...I especially liked the parts about Amsterdam, now THERE'S a city full of contradictions. (Some passages reminded me of Tokyo: "I thought of the Eastern European Kens who had come to this Disneyland to entertain the grown-up male children here...how cute it all was. And what is cute is beyond good and evil; it is amoral not immoral; it is simply take it or leave it".)
Now the disturbing part. Spoiler, highlight to read:
Igor's rant in that terrifying scene in her apartment comes out in much the same style as her own rants, that is, it's as true as anything she's said, and it fits into the narrative in the same way. I may be overly sensitive, but I really don't think anything said by a student who has just handcuffed the teacher to a chair, and will later slash her wrists with a razor blade, SHOULD BE GIVEN THIS KIND OF WEIGHT. Even if it is true, even if the points are valid, neither Tanja nor the reader is in any place to consider them rationally. And, auuuuuugh, trauma.
The "where are they now" epilogue is kinda disturbing too, actually. XD;
And speculation (more spoilers):
I think Miahila was probably the one to "denounce" Tanja to the head of the department for the slipshod way she was running her class. One, because she's described as having a guilty look the last time we see her; two, because she's the one with the a University degree, who is best prepared for a "serious" academic class, and who (along with Janekka) toughs it out and lands on her feet afterward; and three (and most importantly), while the rest of the class responds to Tanja's call for written memories with personal, sometimes deeply moving and insightful accounts of their lives, Miahila writes down a recipe for stew.
The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce
Finally, a return to form! I knew I liked Tamora Pierce for a reason. What's great about this book is that the Empress -- technically the villain -- is an admirable character, unexpectedly. It's like...Sandry is anti-Empress because she's been successfully undermining the nobility, and now has her eyes on Sandry's hereditary estate. But at the same time, there's no denying that her reign has been very, very good for the Empire.
Oh right, plot. Sandry goes north to inspect her ancestral lands in Namorn, and Tris, Briar, and Daja go with her. Court intrigue, moral lessons ensue. Namorn is kind of like Imperial Russia, but not really.
Things I liked:
-About equal weight is given to the themes of "arrogance is a necessary and desirable trait o the nobility" and "too many people sucking up to you is bad for your character"
-Though Sandry has always been the nice, moral one, she is not so nice in this book, shirking responsibilities and behaving resentfully toward her foster siblings, who she feels have been moving away from her.
-The Empress' "I escaped a forced marriage, so other kidnapped women should be able to as well" attitude, as well as her approach to gardens ("I do so much, I deserve a little beauty"), and the way she and Briar relate as gardeners.
-Cute f/f romance subplot
I dunno, it's not rocket science, but for the fist time in a long time I felt that the soft history Pierce likes to work into her books actually worked.
Granted, the first hundred pages, dedicated to the four of them picking fights over insignificant and/or imagined disagreements, are VERY tough going. Though their interpersonal problems are understandable, Pierce's prose style -- every event explained in excccccrrrruciating detail -- makes reading about them kind of unbearable. Or maybe it's the genre? I expect problems in teen fantasy like this, once solved, to STAY solved. (Briar's reoccurring nightmares, while also realistic, are also not so much fun to read about.)
The End by Lemony Snickett.
Paged through purely out of curiosity XD I read The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room a few years ago, when you could still buy them in paperback. Though I liked the author's challenge-the-reader approach and dark sense of humor, I didn't continue...not sure why. Maybe because the plot did, indeed, consist of one horrible event following after another in sequence.
The End: not so great when read alone, but seems like a good end to the series. On the surface, it's about finding the antidote to a deadly fungus before everyone dies, but really it's about facing unpleasant truths and not settling for easy, ignorant, drugged happiness; doing what's right even when the (short-term) result is conflict; taking responsibility; and thinking independently. All of which themes are POUNDED INTO THE HEAD OF THE READER by the last chapter, but that's okay -- it is a children's book.
Now that the series is over, maybe I'll go back and read from the beginning...no, probably not.
***
Ah, company! Sorry, got to go. TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT POST:
English, August
Things Fall Apart
The Things They Carried
And THEN the nonfiction. *dies*