The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Chronicle and personal epic. A major work by this leading Japanese contemporary writer. 607 pages of an individuals journey in detail, vaguely chronological, as this is a work of imagination, emotion, violence, philosophy and surreal/dream/ghostly journeying through crisis.

Toro Okada is the first person narrator and protagonist. He lives a very normal life in suburban Tokyo, with his wife Kumiko, sister of the powerful and strange Noboru Wataya. They are introduced by her family to Mr Honda deaf psychic and war veteran, in a comic first meeting. Then their cat disappears…

Another disappearance and a festering dislike are the starting points for an increasingly disparate narrative. An abandoned neighbouring house and a young neighbour, May Kasahara, haunt and challenge Toro. His life becomes a lonely search to solve a puzzle which becomes larger and more complex and irrational. His journey becomes unreal.

That’s enough narrative! The reader like Toru becomes surrounded by separate stories which Murakami keeps developing, switching from one to the other, keeping the tension and mystery drawing you on. There is much to take in, a lot of risks are being taken, thankfully the story telling and descriptions are more than equal to it.

I think it would be inadequate to call this book just a mystery, or fantasy. The novel deals with big themes of loneliness, loss and desire, individuality versus conformity. Duality and pairs feature, especially in Matla and Creta Kano and Nutmeg and Cinnamon Alaska. Power and control personal, political and criminal loom. History, in the very powerful memoirs from Japanese involvement in Manchuria, is faced. Big questions about identity, self, others, fate and prediction are explored. Reality versus the power of imagination and the role of unreality and dream are extensively explored. How do our minds work, where do we go in there, how do we get there?

A normal, passive even, main character engages in feats of free thought, fights for an escape from conformity is challenged by the forms of life in his own odyssey. Read this for a roller coaster ride not of fantasy, but of life!

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

Of the many novels by the author this is the one that eventually won her the Booker Prize, in 1978. The 501 pages of this edition are divided into three sections, “Prehistory”, giving the background of main character Charles Arrowby, “History”, a large central one enacting his retreat, from being a leading West End personality, to a run down house by the sea and a final “Postscript”, in which Charles reflects on the events during that supposed retreat.

“Shruff End” the chosen retreat its coastal surroundings and weather effects are wonderfully described. Contemporary when written the book now has a certain atmosphere of its time, without detracting from the story; the house being said by critics to be a Plato’s Cave for Charles inner life, or maybe a purgatory. The peaceful beginnings of the retreat are unfolded by Murdoch’s male first person narrator focused as Charles.

Suddenly, he encounters Hartley, a former youthful love, who lives in the local village and is in a hum drum marriage, to which she is resigned. Then various characters from his former life invite themselves to Shruff End, coming and going at will: Gilbert, James, Rosina, Peregrine and Lizzie, also Titus, Hartley’s estranged son. In intense detail Charles’s wilful and arrogant self is expressed by a determination to control events. The pace intensifies and spirals as Charles forces his will forward. Unintended consequences develop the story in dramatic ways. The cadence of the writing remains high for a long time and should carry readers along with it.

Murdoch maintains an enviable balance between the absurd, the comedic (e.g. Charles’s meals) and the very human. She is adept at drawing developing human emotions and inner deliberations in such a way the reader can experience them, as well as seeing the person in a wider and often embarrassing perspective. The interplay of the characters provides a complex tension with continual revelation and some large coincidences, which Murdoch must have delighted in dropping into her writing!

Which is bigger and real, our egos and obsessions, or the universe? No contest surely, but we often live with a centric perspective which clashes with reality. This seems to be a message of the story and a common Murdoch theme. One of an impressive body of work, a book with dexterity of writing and humane story telling.

Sojourn by Amit Chaudhuri

A short literary sojourn of 126 pages depicting an Indian visiting professor in Berlin and his increasingly amorphous and alienated experiences away from home, not being a German speaker.

Impressions of the unnamed man center around his flat, a couple of acquaintances, including the exiled poet Faqrul, Birgit a vague romantic interest and the urban landscape. The man takes great care to locate himself in the city and is haunted by echoes of history in the now concrete consumer metropolis that is Berlin.

The story is not driven by plot or action. The tone of the pages is everyday and quiet, the man moves in a world that is both foreign and becoming a home in his memory. The narrator introduces an unreliability which is echoed in the man and his increasingly persistent attempts to feel safe and located, taking consolation in the flat and meals. His world seems to be small and getting smaller.

Is he temporarily loosing his grip, or just disconcerted by the foreign location and the historic echo of the place blended with a bland modern ennui? This seems to be strongly reflected in comments people have written about this book, which is fascinating. Generally commentators seem reluctant to accept, or state, that the man, who is older, is suffering from a shift in progressive memory loss. However, the book even signals this with increasing white spaces, some pages near the end only have four lines of text.

A confusion and loneliness is evoked, “I’m looking for some kind of confirmation” and “Calm dreariness reigns”. What is happening to the man is quietly tragic as he settles for small and smaller consolations and rationalisations of his shrinking capabilities.

The book is written as a succession of micro scenes told in compact description and dialogue. One way or another the story is about memory, communication, what is gone, the unknown future and a grey present. As the writing of memory loss it is effectively perceptive and disconcerting.

Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks

A voluminous 609 page novel in the Victorian tradition covering decades, lives and obsession. Thomas and Jacques, both born in 1860 meet when 16 and develop a joint determination to practice medical psychiatry, Jacques inspired to help his brother Olivier and Thomas to discover the origins of human psychiatric illness, they also become brothers-in-law.

The first half of the book follows the upward and optimistic trajectory of the pair as they learn their profession and establish a sanatorium in Austria. Their enthusiasm is a reflection of the bounding optimism of psychiatry at the time emerging rapidly from very, very, basic understanding and treatments. The story is illustrated by many fictional and real examples of cases, lectures, notes and observations, following methods ideas and personalities-many of these episodes don’t spare detail. This historical fact/fiction is a fascinating exposition of the development of psychiatry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for non-experts, like me.

The progress of the two may seem somewhat smooth and easy, but there will be a price to pay. The combined expectations of the young men and the their profession begin to encounter challenges with experience and reality, maturity and more emerges, in professional and personal lives.

Faulks’ novel has a packed itinerary, with diversions to California and east Africa. Sometimes dialogue is used to present ideas, some of the later developments seem bolted on to complete the family panorama required of the framing “Victorian” format. The final trajectory though ends not in 1914 but 1920, Victoria usurped by World War One.

Do Thomas and Jacques solve basic psychiatric issues, no of course not, but they leave traces behind like early man in Africa or the patient records, which they studied. The accessible immediacy of this novel brings a big step forward in our self understanding alive for the reader.

The Girl Who Reads on the Metro by Christine Feret-Fleury

A tale about the transformation of the life of single young book-lover Juliette. A short novel translated from French of 197 pages (wide margins).

Juliette lives a safe life of everyday predictability working in an estate agents. Her first love is reading and observing other readers on the Paris Metro. She meets an eccentric bookseller, Soliman, at his run down premises and becomes attached to him and his unusual mission to pass suitable books to observed strangers.

The story does not dwell to much on practicalities as it is essentially a fantasy. Some of the odd incidents and descriptions though seem a bit clunky and “dropped in” to the narrative. Relationships are sketched and developments just seem to happen as given.

However, this is an encomium to books, reading, literature and fellow feeling. It speaks of the human effect they can have as revelatory and life changing. The progress of the story is charming and touching, the characters sympathetic. Overall, It is a nice dream with an “if only” quality.

The author has written many children’s books and this has a certain innocence and informative quality about early adult life regarding self-education and development. A worthy and likeable tale.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

A book that exists in its own bell jar surrounded by literary and celebrity mythology. The semi-autobiographical description of mental descent and partial recovery by a writer. One month after publication the author is dead aged 30. What was the writers intention?

Self-help, self-knowledge, self-publicity, honesty about mental health issues and how it is/was treated, plea for help, something darker? All this took place in the 1950/early 60’s when electric shock treatment and experimental drugs were seen as solutions, which Plath was subject to. What she suffered from is a devastating problem many people go through daily with themselves as first responders.

It is an achievement then the book was written with such literary poetic skill. It cannot be easy writing about your self like this in the face of societal disapproval then and now from various angles and publishing, even under a pseudonym. Elements of detachment and obsession are not surprising, along side anxiety, fear, uselessness, and compulsion evidenced in the vivid progress of the story, repeatedly.

We cannot know if in, even slightly, different circumstances, Sylvia Plath would have gone on to write more, lived long and become a leader in revising attitudes to issues of well-being broadly. She had the abilities. She has left behind a recognised testament in courageous honesty.

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

The provocative title of this 2020 novel by the (pseudonymous) Italian writer could be spoken by Giovanna the adolescent girl protagonist and probable narrator. Over 322 pages we follow her from the age of 12 to 16.

Giovanna and her immediate family and friends live in middle class Naples, she discovers her other relations in working class Naples as the story unfolds. Secrets and antagonisms are revealed relationships develop and change. The first person narrative and present tense dialogue deliver an intense and astute psychological insight into the complexity of emotions experienced by a child growing to adulthood. Giovanna’s micro observations, reflections and responses battle with the revealing adult world in a flux of thought and feelings.

Vittoria, the aunt from “old” Naples is, apparently, the family string puller and antagonist, appealing and appalling at the same time. The lies of her and others, especially her father, dawn on Giovanna who is repulsed by this, but learns to play the game of melding truth to protect from guilt, shame, buy time and play tactical games, especially with her parents, friends and potential boyfriends, well everyone! Ferrante seems to be saying lies are part of the oil that enables the adult world to exist and we learn this as we grow up. The book could be seen a development of the aphorism, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive”.

Ferrante makes Giovanna into an adept liar, or is that storyteller, yet the girl is not particularly a fantasist for her age, but is dealing with the real world around her. Ferrante links real life and fiction in this quote from her essay “Histories, I”.“The genuine real life, as Dostoyevsky called it, is an obsession, a torment for the writer. With greater or lesser ability we fabricate fictions not so that the false will seem true but to tell the most unspeakable truth with absolute faithfulness through fiction.” Truth can be unspeakable, that sounds true.

Accomplished and human story from a popular novelist and acute observer of people.

She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai

A short book of 153 pages translated from the Japanese in 2022 by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

The story follows a cast living normal lives in urban Japan. The (excuse me) twist in the tale is the presence of the cats and one dog, who have the lions share of the parts.

The theme is the title times four with four human/cat pairs, beginning with Miyu and Chobi, providing the interrelated stories and contrasts between the individual people, cats and the pairings of each. The melding of human and cat lives and life cycles is clever, aided by a sinuous writing style, in which the mutual incomprehension of animal and human translates via dependency and affection into something else in shared domestic space.

Plot development moves from a sequence of to parallel stories in which the humans make life choices in a micro society determined by the cats territorial geography. The writing reflects a simple style that projects the determinist and uncluttered thinking of the animals. This has interesting results in the view they take of humans and the use of language and communication between the characters. The people, meanwhile, are often pre-occupied and have an emotional need answered by the cats, who they partly know and partly imagine, or suspect.

It is a gentle and considerate story, which does not shy away from issues and challenges, but is essentially on the side of the characters. Not one for those who dismiss talking cats, or talking to cats. Some of the incidents might be the product of imagination, but they are grounded in everyday events happening naturally. This just shows that the book is a well formed creative piece, worth reading.

Human Kind by Rutger Bregman

A wide review of human nature and motivation by this Dutch historian and journalist, who has gained a reputation as a “young thinker”. The book contains 463 pages including notes and index. The multi-disciplined approach could be dry and obscure, but is written in an approachable and engaging way.

The book concentrates on the deconstruction of widely held assumptions about human nature and the philosophies that are based on those assumptions, which are held as broadly accepted truths. Bregman focuses on the influence of Hobbes’s selfish nature of mankind and its influence on the enlightenment and modern society, with Rousseau as an opposing voice.

He then follows how these assumptions were reinforced by brutal experiences, especially in World War Two. Following the war psychiatrists, such as Zimbardo and Milgram seemed to add scientific weight to the selfish orientation of human kind view. He then exposes some the major flaws in these (overexposed) experiments.

Contrary evidence is based on the assumption that humans as hunter gathers were not selfish and not particularly warlike. Indeed that our basic instincts are cooperative and indeed social. The idea that civilisation is only a thin veneer is disputed as a front for power structures and ideologies which require conformity, division and resignation and crowd out other philosophies, which become marginalised.

Bregman asserts that as individuals and societies we are all prey to a “faulty self-image”, which stifles our “intrinsic motivation”. Despite everything “humans have evolved to be fundamentally sociable”. This means there is enormous scope for doing things in improved and better ways, examples are discussed.

This is a broad brush and possibly wide-eyed analysis, some of the realisations about human nature seem a bit egocentric in tone; this is an ancient and crowded discussion: there is a wider context to all these questions and the spectrum of answers which humans have always debated. There is also a lot of thought and practicality in the book too. Of Bregman’s target, Montaigne in his essay, “Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law” (1572-4) says, “Is there any worse kind of vices than those which attack our conscience and our understanding of one another?”

The book is a much needed counter to pessimism, negativity and resignation. After all, voices which offer a philosophy of positivism and optimism are, at a society and individual level, surely needed.

The Outsider by Albert Camus

This review contains spoilers, I find it difficult to write about this story, sometimes called “The Stranger”, without them. In Camu’s short book Meursault, the modernist anti-hero meanders through life, commits an impulsive crime and is tried, the crime dividing the story in two halves.

Camus illustrates Meursault’s ordinary daily life in a vivid sun baked Oran, French Algeria. What the smooth first person narrative and dialogue reveals is a character indifferent, easy-going, harmless. As he progresses the questions increase, alienated, sociopathic? His ease is slowly, inevitably taken captive by circumstances, which leads to the shooting. He leaves clues, evidence behind, but it is all circumstantial, here-say, apart from the bare fact of murder (self-defence?) He imagines the others knife, “gouging into my eyeballs”.

At the trial Meursault does not defend himself, law and society increasingly condemn him for innocuous social behaviours seen to contributory. At the same time he does not seem self-deluded or in denial, but internally honest and rational. Is Camus drawing a flawed a Christlike figure? In the condemned cell scene he finally erupts in the face of the priest and comes to his own peace, “I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe”.

Paradox in Meursault’s behaviour leave him wide open to be condemned, to death. It is fascinating how his behaviour is exploited by those around him, when living normally and when on trial. The character is really holding a mirror up to society, here are your behaviours and ethics.

This is a terrifying story if you identify even slightly with Meursault, with influences from Dostoevsky, Kafka and Orwell. Its power must have been especially impactful and relevant in the 1940/50’s. A lot is achieved in a short space. As well as being classified as an existentialist classic, it is a great read.