Under the Eye of the Big Bird (2024) by Hiromi Kawakami

Book Review

Under the Eye of the Big Bird (2024)

by Hiromi Kawakami

Translated by Asa Yoneda

   I checked the latest book by Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami after reading the New York Times review a couple weeks ago.  The review ticked most of my boxes:  It's translated from a foreign language and combines literary fiction techniques with a science fiction story.  Under the Eye takes the form of a connected series of short-stories about a horrifying far-future scenario where the human population of the Earth has collapsed, leaving the remnants grasping for a means of survival.  For the first fifty pages or so, the reader has no perspective on the situation, and it makes for a strange reading experience.  For example, the first story is about a girl who lives near a clone factory where humans are made from the remnants of animals, leaving each human with a small bone embedded inside of them which resembles the animal from which they are constructed.

   About a third of the way through the book Kawakami fills us in: Earth is populated by clones, sentient AI and different groups of humans, watched over by two formerly human, now cloned scientists who have designed this plan to ensure human survival by promoting isolation in an attempt to press fast-forward on evolution and come up with a kind of human that can survive and repopulate the Earth.   It is weird, wild stuff, with a time-scale of thousands, even tens of thousands of years.  I really enjoyed Under the Eye and recommend it heartily to the literary fiction/science fiction cross-over crowd.

Training School for Negro Girls (2018)by Camille Acker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Training School for Negro Girls (2018)

by Camille Acker

4716 16th Street NW, Washington, District of Columbia

Washington DC: 1/12

   I went to undergraduate/college in Washington DC, at The American University.  Not the best university but I wasn't good enough to get into anyplace first-rate and they offered me a full scholarship so I took it.  AU is located in Northwest DC, i.e. the white part, and that part of DC is hardly represented in the twelve titles selected to represent the District within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project. This book is mapped just over the border from Northeast DC, a traditionally middle-class African American area but it is one of only two books set in Northwest.  Anyway, Training School for Negro Girls is a collection of short-stories. 

  If I had to characterize a theme for this collection it would be striving- all of these characters are trying to do something in their lives.  It was refreshing after reading so many struggle n' trauma driven books.  Not that these characters don't suffer their own trauma, but it's typically in pursuit of an actual goal:  Winning a children's piano competition, trying to help a neighborhood business, joining an exclusive African American social club.   This book by itself already distinguishes itself from the many African American titles from New York City- not one of which had an ounce of the hope or ambition of any of these characters. 

Orbital (2024) by Samantha Harvey

Audiobook Review

Orbital (2024)

by Samantha Harvey

   The New York Times review of Orbital by Samantha Harvey was maybe the first book review I read this year.  The way it was described made me wince- it's set on the international space station and switches between the perspectives of the multi national astronauts onboard as the travel around the planet several times (each orbit is another chapter).  They think about stuff, and stuff happens on Earth- a strong tsunami in the Pacific is the major earth-bound event- and that's the book.

  In January I told myself I'd read it if it got nominated for the Booker Prize.  It did. And then I put it off again because, again, my feeling was this is an example of the uninteresting side of the coin that is combining literary fiction with elements of speculative fiction.  There is, to be sure, a "realist" non sci fi literature of near-earth travel, but I'm just saying setting a book in space is a typical element of science fiction.  In Orbital we've got that and then the thoughts of these astronauts.  I told myself, "I'll read it if it makes the Booker shortlist, and there you go.  I was able to check the five-hour audiobook out of the library the day the shortlist was announced and listened to it at the gym and running for a couple of days.

  I can see the perspective of the Booker committee.  First, it's short, 144 pages, which is an UNDENIABLE advantage in competing for the Booker Prize.  Second it's got an international perspective- the most international perspective, you could argue, which suits the favor that the Booker Prize shows to outward looking fiction.  Third, she's an English lit insider who draws comparison Virginia Woolf for her writing style and themes and her 2009 novel Wilderness was longlisted.

  Personally, I thought it was a good Audiobook because of the length and the different voices of the astronauts- Russian, American, Japanese.  There are also several "set-piece" style descriptions of the Earth itself which are distinctive and memorable. But Orbital is def an example of modernist-inspired fictions where "nothing happens."  I'm sure that statement would drive Harvey nuts, but that is my opinion.   Whatever my personal feelings there is no denying that Harvey has the literary pedigree and that Orbital has the kind of moxy the Booker Judges seem to reward every year so...who knows. Maybe the winner.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) by Anne Tyler

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)

by Anne Tyler

Baltimore, Maryland

Maryland: 9/9

  Maryland, complete.  So easy! New York with its 100 books for the state and 80 for the city is way beyond the average number of books per state.  That number is more like 10.  Maryland with its 9 titles is just under that average, but you could also give it credit for most of the books in the DC chapter, since many of those characters go back and forth between DC and the Maryland suburbs.   There are no Maryland books representing the panhandle, nor are any cities discussed outside of Baltimore.  I thought editor Susan Straight did do a good job representing weird rural Maryland.  In terms of the Baltimore titles, it seems like the TV show, The Wire would be the best pick but that would require changing the name of the project to something besides 1,001 Novels.  That's the second state in a row (New Jersey, The Sopranos) where I felt like the best novel to represent a place wasn't a novel at all.

   Anne Tyler is one of those authors that I've consciously avoided because of her subject matter (sad families, or so I gather.)  If you want me to read a novel about a sad family or a wealthy, well-educated white couple whose marriage falls apart it had better be either a) foreign or b)a major prize winner or preferably both, otherwise... I've heard it already.  Sure enough, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant has a moment in the publisher provided auxiliary materials (Book club questions,  interview with the author), where she is asked a question like, "Most of your books deal with marriage and family, but this book is just about family, why is that?" It reminds me of the scene in the Blues Brothers film where they show up to a gig and are told that the bar has both types of music, "Country AND western."   

   Tyler has flirted with the major awards- she's got three books, including this one, that were Pulitzer Finalists and she's got two books that were Booker nominated- a shortlist and a longlist.  This book is about a sad family:  Mom, abandoned by her husband to raise three kids on her own.  Ezra, the oldest, a sad-sack restaurant owner, single, Jenny, a doctor going on her third husband and Cody, an efficiency expert who steals Ezra's girlfriend and marries her.   There wasn't anything "Baltimore" about Dinner except it's actual physical location.  As I've mentioned before, a characteristic of family-centered fiction is that the characters don't talk to anyone else, don't go anywhere (unless it is off camera, so to speak) and don't do anything of note.   Certainly that is the case here- it's simply true of this whole category of fiction, prize winning or not, domestic or foreign.  

Hum (2024) by Helen Phillips

 Book Review

Hum (2024)

by Helen Phillips

  I like American author Helen Phillips- I read her 2019 book, The Need and enjoyed it. I thought it was a good example of a way domestic fiction: A book out the difficulties of raising children, can be made interesting by the use of techniques drawn from speculative fiction: Throw some robots on top of that tired domestic routine!   This is the same kind of deal- Mom has just been laid off from her job in a decrepit future metropolis where the AQI makes outside a no-go.  The kids are shuttled from in door location to in door location and Mom and her task-rabbit husband live in a windowless box apartment.  Life is grim.  Mom agrees to undergo anti-surveillance facial modification surgery in exchange for a healthy payment and she uses part of it to buy her family a three day trip to the walled botanical garden in the heart of the city.

   The "Hum" of the title are future ai powered androids that serve as replacement humans in various capacities- mostly as representatives of the future government or minders of the public peace.   Although the over-riding theme is still the difficulties of being mom in the present/future world, the speculative elements make it less tedious than a book sent in the present or recent past that deals with the exact same subjects. 

Mason's Retreat (1995) by Chistopher Tilghman

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Mason's Retreat (1995)

by Christopher Tilghman

Chesapeake, Maryland

Maryland: 8/9

  Ready to wrap up Maryland!  Mason's Retreat is an example a rare but important genre in the 1,001 Novels project, a volume from a multi-volume multi-generational family history series.  This family is the Mason family, owners of a southern-style plantation in Maryland, of all places.  I was frankly unaware of this part of Maryland despite spending my college years in Washington DC, but it is out there.  It's a decidedly coastal location with much of the transit in this book taking place via boat, in a manner similar to the Maine coast, with folks popping by for visits on their sailboats and what not. 

  This volume is the first of four- each with a different time period and cast of characters.  Here, the Mason's are not the Mason's at all but a cadet branch who have inherited the plantation, called Mason's Retreat, after the death of a maiden aunt, the previous occupant.  The time is the great depression, and the inheritor, Edward Mason, is at the end of his financial rope after his airplane parts factory in Manchester UK is put to the rack during the Great Depression.  Mason and his wife, Edith (the protagonist) are both American but relocated to the UK as wealthy people did back then.  No one is particularly excited about relocating to a run-down plantation house, but hey, life could be worse, right?

  Once they make it to Maryland they meet the house staff- it never gets brought up in Mason's Retreat, but this is the same general area where Frederick Douglass was born a slave (and escaped).  Race kind of simmers beneath the surface but despite the inclusion of some black characters the author is mostly concerned with Edith.   They've hardly settled in to plantation life when Hitler emerges, followed by renewed interest on the part of the British Government in manufacturing more airplanes, and Edith is left to her own devices.  Her own devices being a lusty affair with a neighbor- class and race appropriate, thank heavens.

  Mason's Retreat was another title from the 1,001 Novels project that was great because it focuses on this specific place- but the humans in the book are less memorable than the plantation itself.

Creation Lake (2024) by Rachel Kushner

 Audiobook Review

Creation Lake (2024)

by Rachel Kushner

  I've been looking forward to Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner's new novel since I finished her last novel, The Mars Room, back in 2017.  Kushner is exactly the type of author I'm looking for:  A woman who doesn't write about women who are wives and moms.  Rather, her protagonists are women on the fringes of society, i.e. interesting subjects, and her books sparkle with life.   In Flamethrowers, the subject was biker gangs.  In The Mars Room, it was a woman doing life for murder.  Here the narrator and protagonist is "Sadie Smith"(a nom de spy), an American woman with a graduate degree in literature (or something like that) who has eschewed a life of academic stiving for work as, first, an undercover informant for the FBI (we call them "CI's" or confidential informant, in the biz) and then as a spy-for-hire.

  Creation Lake takes place during one of her gigs- an assignment to infiltrate a commune of rural eco-radicals who are "led" by Bruno Lacombe, a mysterious intellectual who lives in a cave.  Sadie is an interesting lady:  She's smart and funny and ruthlessly immoral. In quiet moments during the activities of this book, she reflects wryly on the case that got her booted out of the FBI CI program (she set up a young man and his older mentor in an eco-terrorism bust, only to see them both acquitted at trial on the grounds of entrapment).  She also enjoys reading the lengthy email missives from Bruno to his followers which have a distinctly Knaussgardian flair.  

  Equally at the center of Creation Lake is the French region of Guyenne- which is in the south-west of the country, with a rich tradition of Neanderthal cave artwork and rural despair.  Through the medium of Bruno's emails, Smith learns about the Cagot, a poorly understood caste of outcasts from the region.  Her contemplation of Bruno's emails and her own trips around the area in pursuit of her goal elevate Guyenne to supporting character status. 

  If this wasn't a Rachel Kushner novel, I would have been waiting for Sadie to develop a conscience but that doesn't happen.  Rather, Smith becomes determined to see the plan out and we are invited to watch the proceedings unfold.  Creation Lake isn't a spy novel exactly, but it does provide those pleasures in addition to introducing a character who could possibly establish some kind of IP franchise. I checked out the Audiobook because it was read by the author, and I thought she did a great job. Creation Lake deserves the Booker shortlist and it could possibly win that award. 

The Language of Light (2003) by Meg Waite Clayton

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Language of Light (2003)

by Meg Waite Clayton

Worthington Valley, Maryland

Maryland: 7/9

   The Language of Light is plot type 2 of the 1,001 Novels project:  Woman (or rarely, Man) comes home to deal with unresolved personal and familial issues; surprises are revealed.  I also call this the "Hallmark Movie" plot, which typically involves a busy professional woman throwing over her urban life for life in a small town in the middle of nowhere where she grew up.  Here, the protagonist is a young widow with two small children who moves back to Maryland "Horsey Country," which is a thing.

 Once ensconced in her familial estate- in the fashion of the generationally wealthy, money, or the need for money, is mentioned not a single time in the pages of The Language of Light.  Nelly, the protagonist, is not one of those Moms who spends all day worrying about her children, here, the childrearing is so effortless it makes the Mothers in countless other 1,001 Novels titles look like complainers.   Rather, Nelly spends her time thinking about her relationships: with her now dead husband, who she was on the verge of divorcing before he drove his car off the road and snapped his neck and with her father, a famous photographer/journalist known for his pictures snapped in war zones.

  Nelly, it seems, also once had dreams of becoming a professional photographer, only life got in the way.  Nelly befriends Emma, the wealthy widower who lives next door and when Dad shows up for the holidays, Emma and Nelly's dad rekindle an old relationship.  I found many of the plot points ridiculous, like the trip Nelly takes with her "portfolio"(mostly pictures of her kids) to New York City to try to land a solo show.  True, she laughs at herself, but maybe not hard enough. 

   In terms of the concerns of the 1,001 Novels project, The Language of Light is worthwhile because of the depiction of Maryland Horsey country but otherwise, no.

Brotherless Night (2023) by V. V. Ganeshananthan

 Audiobook

Brotherless Night (2023)

by  V. V. Ganeshananthan

Read by  Nirmala Rajasingam

   Brotherless Night is another great book coming out of the post-Tamil War Tamil diaspora. There's been a small flood of Sri Lankan authored books hitting the international market, typically by making it onto the Booker Longlist.  I heard about Brotherless Night after it won the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction-  I couldn't resist a prize winner about the Tamil War in Sri Lanka, which I think will prove to be one of the key current events from that period in world history- it lasted 26 years from 1983 to 2009, and Ganeshananthan's narrator and protagonist, Sashikala Kulenthiren is there to take us through it from the perspective of a young woman from a well-off Tamil family (one daughter, four brothers) who is destined to become a doctor.  

  There is nothing magical realist, post-modern or metafictional about Ganeshananthan's approach- which is so straight forward it often reads like a biography memoir vs. a novel.  Sashi is a bright, engaged young woman living in a momentous time, but hers is the only perspective we get from the book.  There's no secondary plot or skipping around in time- the reader gets Sashi's experience, having her normal life disrupted, losing all but her youngest brother to the liberation movement and then witnessing the horrors o the tamil's themselves, who were as ruthless to their own internal rivals and dissidents as the Sri Lankan government, the Indian Peacekeepers, who end up sowing more misery with their ill-considered troop deployment and of course the Sri Lankan government, which really seems befuddled more than anything else by a rebellion in a part of the country that was so thoroughly comprised of this one, rebellious ethnic group that middle ground became impossible to find.

  Ganeshananthan moonlights as a field medic at a Tamil jungle hospital and witnesses all manner of catastrophe before getting involved in an effort to document the atrocities committed on all sides.  This puts her in a rough spot with the Tamils, but her service as a field medic and sister of 3 Tiger brothers earns her a ticket to the United States, from where she witnesses the end of the war.   It is QUITE a journey- 100x more vital than ANY American author.  She's not particularly accomplished as a prose stylist but the story is so powerful it doesn't matter.

 It was also a fantastic audiobook because of the accents involved- all of which would be impossible for me to do in my head.  Fully recommend the Audiobook edition- 20 hours long.

The World Doesn't Require You (2019) by Rion Amilcar Scott

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The World Doesn't Require You (2019)

by Rion Amilcar Scott

Cross River, Maryland  

Maryland: 6/9

  The World Doesn't Require You is the second collection of short-stories which all take place in a fictional Maryland town that was the site of the only succesful American slave revolt.  The best of these stories have either a satirical edge, metafictional fuckery or some kind of speculative fiction vibe.  For me the clearest comparison would be Paul Beatty in terms of tone.  Unlike many of the white Marylanders in the pages of the 1,001 Novels project, the black characters of The World Doesn't Require You are interesting.

   You don't need any back story about the fictional backstory of Cross River, Maryland, or at least, the reader isn't provided any back story.  Cross River appears mostly through its institutions- the local University plays a starring role in the longest story/novella, about two dissolute university professors (Special Talks in Loneliness Studies).  That story and another striking story about a regional variation of the popular children's game of "Ding Dong Ditch" both wallow in the academic setting of a "campus novel."  The other important institutions depicted are local churches, the focus of a story about a local musician who breaks into and then out of the local church music scene in an endless quest for the regionally distinct "sound" of Cross River.

    The World Doesn't Require You was a good selection to hear as an Audiobook.  Each story has a separate narrator, so that gave the producers an opportunity to employ a constellation of voices to tell each story