??/?? Abdulrazak Gurnah,
Admiring Silence 
+
It’s not possible for any author’s works to appeal equally or even to be of precisely the same quality. And so I must confess my disappointment that this ranks as my least favorite of Gurnah’s novels (it’s my fifth book by him). The more so since I am astonished to discover that it is one of his most well-regarded books on both goodreads and Amazon (though, in fairness, all of his books fall within a particularly narrow range on both sites as well). The unnamed narrator, born and raised in Zanzibar, moves to England for university, marries, and stays on in England despite a marriage that shows every sign of failing and a career and life that seem equally unrewarding. About halfway through the book, he returns “home” to the family he has completely ignored for decades. I found the narrator not only unsympathetic but distinctly disagreeable, if not worse. He has not done well in life and he appears to be entirely responsible for his failure(s). Gurnah is very good at depicting the immigrant experience and at addressing post-colonial issues. Unfortunately, the narrator’s often understandable hatred of everything—including himself—is unrelenting and several hundred pages of little but loathing and disgust inevitably takes a toll. The narrator’s return to Zanzibar unsurprisingly changes nothing (though Gurnah devotes a substantial portion of the book to it) and, at the end of the book, when he finally goes back to his wife and daughter in England, what happens next can hardly be a surprise. I don’t question the accuracy of Gurnah’s portrayals or interpretations but accuracy—indeed, truth—doesn’t always make good reading. A great disappointment.
??/?? Anjana Appachana,
Incantations
Appachana was born and raised in India and came to the U.S. for postgraduate study; she has lived and taught in the U.S. ever since This collection of stories all take place in India in the 1980s and (with two exceptions) focus on women, each in very different circumstances, who are damaged or destroyed by the patriarchal system then so prevalent and powerful. Appachana has a great talent for creating exceptionally believable characters and placing them in impossible circumstances, each story highlighting a different way in which women were powerless and, worse, victimized by a system that could not be altered. Among the most powerful stories were "Bahu," the recounting of the life of a woman whose identity has been reduced to “daughter-in-law” as her in-laws and even her husband make painfully clear that she has no other purpose in life than to serve. The compelling title story tells about a woman raped by her brother-in-law on the eve of her wedding and then regularly after that. What makes the story so enormously powerful is that it is told through the eyes of her 12-year-old sister…and its effect on her. Finally, in “Her Mother,” a daughter goes abroad to study. Most of the story takes for form of her mother’s internal dialogue as she struggles to write her daughter, simultaneously setting out her hopes and dreams even as she gives largely unwanted advice. What makes the story so poignant is that the advice is not only well-intentioned but precisely right while the reader knows that it will fall on deaf ears. It is a heart-breaking tale because both the daughter’s and the mother’s views are set out sympathetically and with enormous understanding.
?? Randolph Stow,
The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea
An Australian writer who is new to me but both prolific and very highly regarded. The German word that would describe this book is probably
bildungsroman: a coming-of-age story ostensibly about Rob (six when the book opens, fourteen when it ends) who idolizes his older cousin Rick. Rick is absent for much of the book because he is a Japanese POW in World War Two. The tale describes Rob’s day-to-day life in his small hometown and at family sheep stations in western Australia. Although I was never captivated by Stow’s writing (more than any other Australian writer I’ve read, he makes use of Australian idioms), he is nevertheless masterful at depicting the life of a maturing young boy and, even more, providing a sense of place. He has a gift for imagery and, indeed, the book is in some ways a love letter to place. In fact, it’s this very aspect of the book that I find puzzling because Stow left Australia in his early thirties and stayed away for the last 36 years of his life (he died in England in 2010 at the age of 74). Toward the end of the book, the focus largely shifts from Rob to his cousin Rick and Stow moves from nostalgia to poignancy. Much as I was impressed the first two-thirds of the book, I thought he hit his stride in this last portion. I never loved the work but still consider it a very impressive novel and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.
?? Tanizaki Junichiro,
Some Prefer Nettles
I continue to marvel at the range of Tanizaki’s work; some of it I have loved, some of it I thought just a little too strange. This falls pretty much in the middle for me. The title, in a roundabout way, is the translator’s paraphrase of the American saying “to each his own”; in other words, everyone is entitled to his own taste (or preference). The book, which is often said to be among Tanizaki’s best works, takes place in Japan in the late 1920s and focuses on the conflict between traditional and modern (or Westernized) culture in Japan. Tanizaki uses a variety of oppositions to illustrate this conflict, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely. Ambiguity is omnipresent. Thus, he sets the customs and reputations of some cities against those of other cities, traditional (Japanese) arts against Western(ized) ones; customary modes of behavior and dress against modern ways; and so forth. The setting is a disintegrating marriage which the wife—with her husband’s knowledge and approval (an indication of his embrace of Western behavior, he believes)—has taken a lover and the husband has become increasingly attached to his father-in-law’s young mistress and even with his father-in-law’s devotion to traditional Japanese culture. Both husband and wife are too weak-willed, despite their unhappiness, to take any definite steps toward divorce, or even to tell their son anything. The subject and Tanizaki’s way of telling the story strikes me as exceptionally Japanese, much more so than other works of his that I have read. I can’t particularly say that I enjoyed it but I can readily understand why it is well-regarded.
