Review: "Foe" by J. M. Coetzee

Sometimes a book does not have to answer any of the questions it poses to be a great and wonderful book. As long as the questions themselves come with certain qualities and bring with them an interesting idea that the reader can branch off of and present different questions themselves, a book does not need to have any answer to create a lasting memory of the emotions the book evoked while reading it. It is one of the reasons that Kafka on the Shore is my favorite Haruki Murakami book. It is confusing at times, but has a certain air about what is going on, and a certain profundity, that to add a concrete answer to whatever is happening would seem cheap and make what is happening in the book or story less important. It is fine line between being vague and interesting and vague and boring. For every Murakami there is a Pynchon, who at his worst is horribly unreadable. Luckily for me, J. M. Coetzee, one of the greatest living writers, is one of the former category with his novel Foe, a mediation on storytelling and the biases that can create or destroy a good story. Told as a framed narrative, with Susan Barton telling Daniel Foe (a fictionalized version of writer Daniel Defoe) about her time spent on a deserted island after the ship she was on suffered a mutiny on her way back from searching for her daughter in Brazil. There she meets Cruso, a man who chooses to live on the island, and his servant Friday, who has had his tongue cut out. It remains the most interesting part of the novel, setting up the basis for what is to come and bringing real interesting ideas about what life is like on this island with a new, female member. Susan has questions about the lifestyle. Such as why does someone as crafty as Cruso not build a boat to escape, or why does Friday sprinkle flower petals over a certain spot just off the island’s shore. She slowly comes to terms with Cruso’s rigid ways and Friday’s erratic, yet harmless behavior, and a year after she lands there, the group is rescued and Cruso dies on board. Then we get a different perspective on the tale we just heard. Is it being told by Foe, who was propositioned by Susan Barton to have her story told? Or is Susan merely making this part of the story up, and Foe is in no way connected with her life? And why is Foe so interested in Susan’s time in Brazil and not the island? And does it have to do with the woman who came in Susan’s life claiming to be her daughter? All these questions do not have answers, and while it sounds annoying, it really isn’t. Sometime the journey to a possible answer is worth the time spent searching for one, even if the ending leaves you shaking your head. This book is a truly profound work on the art of storytelling by a true living master.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Winter's Bone" by Daniel Woodrell

While not as disappointing as Tomato Red, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, the novel that made him sort of famous, is a far cry from the power of The Death of Sweet Mister, but is least interesting enough that it’s slim and quick 190 odd pages are just that. While I think on a sentence for sentence basis, Woodrell is one of the best I have seen, he seems to be lacking in a certain narrative drive that should create a sense of urgency in books, especially dealing with the genre of country noir. It is easy to get lost in his little nuggets of clever sentences and phrases, but the stories that these sentences built have a very weak foundation and are not as original as id like them to be. But do not underestimate the power of some of Woodrell’s more impressive turns of phrasing. They are worth at least half the book’s price. We meet Ree Dolly as her and her family are on their last leg as far as their financial woes go, which is not helped by her father, a known crank cook, has gone missing, and if he doesn’t show up for a scheduled court date, Ree’s family is out of a house. Ree, a determined strong willed female the likes of which I have rarely seen, goes off into the woods of the famed Ozarks to find him, only to be confronted by the power and violence that blood relations can bring. We meet a wide cast of characters, all with similar first names, but they seem to blend together and I bet you won’t remember specific ones after reading the book. A shocking act of violence will jar some readers to plow through the final fifty pages, but this book leaves little proof of Woodrell’s much touted abilities.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "As God Commands" by Niccolo Ammaniti

I am glad to say that Niccolo Ammaniti is just as good at bigger books as he is at slim ones, maybe even better. I have been enamored with Ammaniti since reading his breakthrough hit, I’m Not Scared early last year, and with reading As God Commands, I think it is safe to say that he is one of my favorite writers on any continent. He blends high-octane tension that moves the book along at lightening speed, but never at the exclusion of real emotion and the feeling that what is happening is important and urgent. The way he writes about children is also very special, accurately portraying adolescent boys on the cusp of adulthood being forced into the sometimes violent and cruel world of the grownups around them, who just so happen to have the tendency to be bullies and sociopaths. His novels capture that feeling well, and it makes for great fiction. In I’m Not Scared, the main character had to come to terms with world that didn’t always protect the innocent and weak, in Me and You, the main character had to come to terms with his own selfish isolation at the expense of his older sister, and in As God Commands, a very similar young boy has to find out in the harshest of ways how the hands of fate can cut deep and without remorse of malice. Young Cristiano lives with his father, a somewhat reformed skinhead who yearns for something more, although he does not know what that is. His two friends Danilo and Quattro Formaggi (a play on the Italian word for pizza) decided to rob an ATM. Each of these friends brings different needs to this risky task. Danilo wants to use the money to buy a boutique to get his ex-wife back after he accidently killed their infant daughter. Formaggi is the town’s undesirable, walking with a limp and obsessed with a certain porno movie, wants to find someone who looks just like the actress in said movie. All the while Cristiano is navigating his way through the barren wasteland of his small town life, looking for something that is slightly better than not living at all, finding only trouble in the form of a cool bully at school and two girls he is in love with showing little interest in him. All four see this robbery as a way to change who they are and become something more than what they have been labeled in this small community. But on the night of the robbery, with possibly the worst rainstorm I have read in fiction, things go horribly awry as fates entangle one another, leading some on the path toward despair, others on a possible path of redemption. This book is never boring, even when it slows down once everything that happens that night as hit the fan. As always with Ammaniti, the book ends on an ambiguous note as to whether the main character is going down the right path, but sometimes that slim chance is just as sweet as the real thing.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "In the Heart of the Country" by J. M. Coetzee

I really enjoy J. M. Coetzee’s books even though I really shouldn’t. They are about specific places and specific issues, which usually makes me pass on most books that fit into this category. I cannot stand it when a book puts an issue before telling a story. It is a stance that handicaps me in the classroom, but has made me a better reader in the long run. But somehow, Coetzee’s books are a real thrill to read, and proof that a Nobel Laureate need not do away with entertainment value to write important fiction (Murakami will win eventually). I don’t really know what it is that makes books like Disgrace and Life & Times of Michael K such joys to read that are still memorable years after reading them. It could be how simple and slim they are and never overstay their welcome, which sounds like kind of a backhanded compliment but it isn’t. And while In the Heart of the Country is too inaccessible to be as good as what I have read before, it still struck a nerve with me. A middle-aged woman lives with her aging father, never having lived a full life due to his controlling ways. She is obsessed with the fact that she is still a virgin and will likely remain so for the rest of her life. When her father begins sleeping with the servant’s wife, her mind collapses, with events happing that contradict one another leaving us having no idea what is real and what is made up. It is a disorienting technique that left me somewhat out of breath, but acts like a sort of brutally realistic take on The Yellow Wallpaper. And with what I am going through personally, I found some solace in what was happening to this woman. A little too much at points, but it is short enough to get a recommendation.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Tomato Red" by Daniel Woodrell

I hate to be the one to give a somewhat poor review of a book by someone I really, really respect, but Daniel Woodrell’s Tomato Red really fell flat for me, and it pains me to say such a thing. He is such an underdog in American writing, and feel he deserves heaping amounts of praise for when he is doing quality work, but this book does not fall into that category. Maybe it is because I changed my reading schedule for the rest of the year to read the entire catalogues of writers I really like and did not let enough time pass before reading another one of his books after The Outlaw Album, but I felt this book lacked a certain amount of emotional drive that made The Death of Sweet Mister such an emotional thrill ride. The great prose is there, as it always is, but there isn’t much else. It starts off really good, narrated by drifter Sammy Barlach whose current stop is in Woodrell’s infamous Ozarks in a place called Venus Holler, where he takes up with a group of criminals and begins to take out his frustrations on a mansion they break into. It uses this violent and aggressive image to convey the plight of life’s losers and the impossibility of change in a stunning and eye-opening fashion, only to lose balance once Jamalee and her brother Jason are introduced. Jamalee, whose red hair is where the book gets it’s title, desperately wants out of Venus Holler, and sees her ambiguously sexual brother as an opportunity, and Sammy as there ticket out. It never fully comes to fruition, leading to the typical violent Woodrell ending that pales in comparison to the devastating final pages of Sweet Mister. Chock it up to other things on my mind, but Tomato Red is a dud.

Rating: 3/5