Review: "Life & Times of Michael K" by J. M. Coetzee

With this book, Life & Times of Michael K, I think it is safe to say that J. M. Coetzee, along with Haruki Murakami and a few others, is one of the greatest living writers, and he has a lot of awards to show for it, including the Nobel Prize, something I hope Murakami gets in the next few years. Again, it is that mixing of narrative power with keen sense of empathy for whatever subject he is writing about. It is never mere protest or social fiction; it is always something much deeper that goes straight to the human heart. Life & Times of Michael K, his first novel to win him one of two Booker Prizes, is set in a south Africa besieged by civil War. The title character, Michael, is born with a cleft palate and lives in Cape Town with his mother. To all those around him he is a simpleton, who gets the most joy out life by tending to the gardens at work. His mother eventually becomes sick, forcing her and Michael to journey to her birthplace in Prince Albert. On the way there, she dies, leaving the simple, non-violent Michael to fend for himself in this paranoid volatile landscape. We see him arrested, escape, move into his mother’s old house and live off the land, which leads to his near starvation. Throughout all these hardships, Michael never loses his singular sense of dignity. He refuses to pledge allegiance to any side in the civil war, but also willingly participates in exercises and activities in the camp, even when he is inches away from death. He, according to the doctor he meets in the second half, has transcended beyond his need to be a part of anything. He has realized he is not a special person, yet still fights for his right to be free of the need to be a part of anything. There is very little dialogue in the book, maybe no more than a hundred line in the 184 pages. It seems to simplify things, which allows for the profound meanings in the text to shine through the elegant prose stylings. It reminded me a lot of Albert Camus The Stranger, in that Michael is aware of his powerlessness in the face of oppression, and by becoming aware he is able to move beyond the tangible realm of reality into something that is almost too beautiful to understand. Again, what I like so much about books like this is how broad the audience can be for them. It is a short read that can be finished in two or three sittings, but it is still a full meal, with a plot that moves along like a brush fire, and a character who both inspires sympathy and does not ask for it. I really cannot wait to read more books by this living master. If they are as half as good as this book was. I am in for a great treat.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Wonders of the Invisible World" by David Gates

I have to make a confession regarding the way I have been reading short stories recently. I picked the books I picked simply to be able to have read that author, even though they might not be famous or even well-received, but I wanted to have read a certain amount of authors in a given year, and had to make it up by reading short story collections one story at a time. It was a mistake, and I won’t do it again next year (although I have one, which I will read in the summer, but only one. I am also reading three other before the year is out, but those collections are more my speed). Having said that. David Gates’ The Wonders of the Invisible World, is not a bad book, like most of the other collections I have read this year, it is just boring and forgetful. He is a simple storyteller, a little more meat to his prose than a Carver, but less than Updike, and his stories never have any surprises or twists, even if they would make the story better. They are just about people and how they interact. To some, that would not be a problem, but to me, it can get boring when plot is tossed aside in favor of dry realism. Not all the stories fall flat. Surprisingly, the two best ones center on gay themes, which would usually put up a social justice red flag for me, but these two are pretty good, and remain the highlight of the collection. “Star Baby” tells the story of a gay man who must take care of her drug-addict sister’s kid while she is in rehab. It raises a few good questions on what it means for a kid to live with a gay relative and genuine concern on how the stereotypical gay lifestyle might adversely affect him. “The Intruder” is a very funny story, with the funniest coming-out anecdote you may here. All in all, a plain collection with a few bright spots. I can only blame myself for reading books in such a way, and I have learned my lesson.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead

Now, from one zombie story, too another, albeit one with a different agenda, and from a very unlikely source. Zone One is the first book I have read by Colson Whitehead, and being aware of what he has written before, I don’t think it would be right to judge him on this book alone. He is a black writer known for chronicling the black experience of the late twentieth century. He, like ZZ Packer, writes about black people who are more directly affected by the modern age than they are by the civil rights movement because they were born after it. I have not read any of those books, but I will give them a try. Now this zombie tale, taking place in Buffalo after the outbreak of zombies has been contained, follows Mark Spitz (not his real name) as he, along with a few other, go around cleaning the city, and searching for stragglers, which are zombies stuck doing things they used to do as living people. He recounts his job in monotonous detail, has interactions with bureaucrats he works for and loose cannons he works with and reflects on his relatively plain life before the night things went to hell.  Eventually things begin to take a turn for the worse, and the peaceful containment is about to be no more. The real treat with this book is hearing about Mark’s past life, where he was always in the middle and happy to get by with little recognition or infamy, and how that contrasts with his important job after the zombie outbreak. It really shows the compassion he has not only for the characters, but also for the horror genre itself. But a lot of the time, I felt like I was reading a too well written zombie novel, with no real distinguishing factors besides its eloquent descriptions of violence. It was a bit of a let down having slept on it a few days, but check it out, especially during the Halloween season.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Pinball 1973" by Haruki Murakami

Me reading this book came right on the heels of the release of what may be Murakmi’s greatest achievement, 1Q84, being released in America. I finished it the same day, October 25^th. Anyone who knows me knows that Haruki Murakami may be my favorite writer. I try not to have favorites, and my opinion of him may change, but right now, no other writer makes me think about the world in such a different way, and whose books still echo in the folds of my mind months after reading them.  For someone who has very little interest in Asian culture, it is pretty odd from an outsider’s perspective that I like him so much. But the beauty of his best work lies in how the themes he presents in his stories, such as loneliness, lost love, and grief, are universal, and he writes about them in a way that is universal. Mix with those hardcore themes a sense of narrative playfulness and ferocious originality that makes his books stand firmly on both the scholarly and entertaining sides of modern literature. Anyone can read these books and be entertained by the storytelling wizardry, and still take something profound away every time. He may be one of today’s greatest writers of fiction. After that mouthful, it is easy to see why a book like Pinball, 1973 is not published in America. It is one of his first novels, and it shows like a wine stain on a cotton tablecloth. It tells the story of a man and his weird encounters with unnamed twins, his friend, called ‘the Rat” and a mythic pinball machine, which I think is supposed to be a real spaceship. It is shoddy, elementary, but still entertaining like the not-so-good Murakmai books are. Really, only for completests, since these version cost about 25$. But if you haven’t entered Murakamiland at least once DO IT NOW!!!

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Warm Bodies" by Issac Marion

This book came as a total surprise to me. It looked like, judging from the cover, to be a very pedestrian book that was trying to cash in on the recent zombie craze that has been brought about due to the success of The Walking Dead, but I closed this book feeling very moved, and it may just be the most humane and heart-warming tale of the zombie apocalypse ever told. We first meet R, the main character, as he is living out his existence as an abnormally sentient, yet still bloodthirsty flesh eater. He has a best friend names M, (no one can remember their names from the their original lives, as expected) and a new family with a wife and two kids whom he found in wandering in the airport terminal. He lives out his zombie existence with little question as to why he devours human flesh, until he east the brain of a man named Perry and begins to relive that man’s memories. R immediately falls in love with the Perry’s girlfriend Julie, whom he saves from the rest of the zombie horde. The more he lives out the past events of Perry’s life, the more he falls in love with Julie and the more he begins to become human again. He speaks using more words and syllables and is able to think of ways out of dire situations. Could it be that true love is the key to ending the zombie epidemic, and thus saving the world? The novel goes on to answer this question and more, as the action moves forward. It sort of becomes like John Ajvinde Lindqvist’s novel Handling the Undead, where the zombies represent something in ourselves, instead of an outside force acting upon us. While that novel used the undead to show the stages of grief and letting go, this novel uses them to show how die-hard optimism in the face of pessimistic events is sometimes the greatest tool of personal survival. Optimism, which is somewhat frowned upon by most people, is very underutilized by creative people as a means to tell stories. I think it is just cooler to be that misanthropic person who makes it seem like they know a lot about the world because they think negatively of everything. But I digress, and the story itself is probably more about hope being important no matter how hard it is to achieve or how far away it might be. Like all great zombie stories, the human element can be just as terrifying and in this case, those antagonistic humans are the ones who don’t see any way out of there zombie filled world and are simply waiting to die. At the end of this novel though, as cheesy as it is, it’s main theme is that love is what separates those who live life to the fullest, and those who would rather see the world burn than have the courage to give optimism a chance. Maybe I am too mushy, but I was very touched by this tale of zombie love, and it is a perfect life-affirming book to read this Halloween season.

Rating: 5/5