Book Review | ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison

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african american literature, beloved, infanticide, literary fiction, love story, Sethe, Slavery, toni morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way.”

This is Morrison describing why and how she went about writing ‘Beloved‘. When I first came to read the novel, I noticed a very uncomfortable gap, or rather ‘jarring’ between what Morrison was trying to say and what she ended up saying. Nothing was straight forward, even the first opening sentence felt as if it had been dragged out backwards from the psyche. The ‘slave experience’ that she mentions, and the claustrophobic memory of the dead that continually pervades the living is the catalyst Morrison uses to break down the hindering effect of language.

As a novel of extremities, ‘Beloved’ explores the limitless depths of love and hate, showing the places where they intermingle and become almost interchangeable. This is much more than just a ghost story, much more than the angry, persistent haunting of a mother who loved her baby so much, she had to choose between the better of two evils. The haunting is one that clings to the skirts of an entire race. I have often heard people say how disconcerting Morrison’s prose is apt to be, and how many have turned away from this fine novel with confusion, misunderstanding or even sheer disgust. I implore that they look again, for their own good.

Personally, after much wrestling with the novel, I have found that this disjointedness provides the perfect rhythm to a story about a people whose hearts are scarred by the unspeakable. This is not just about slavery, the evils of that practice nor how people escaped. It’s about what happens after; how a person goes about mourning for ones own wasted life, but also for those that came before them and those that might come after.

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind–wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

Because it is only after, when fate or a change in ones’ circumstance allows a moment of reflection, that the sting of the whip begins to reverberate in the soul.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

Every character in this novel has their own tragedies. Even though Sethe is the main character and her infanticide the focal point on the novel, there are other more gruesome events. I can sympathise with Sethe, because Morrison boldly takes the reader down a very dark path to her particular reasoning. It is not something I could personally achieve on my own, but thanks to characters like Ella and Baby Suggs, I felt I could access the delirious logic of a woman on the edge of reason.

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”

This is not an easy book, it is hard to read and harder to understand. It works on many levels and tackles a lot of very thorny issues. Not for the faint-hearted nor the narrow-minded. It’s a mental workout which leaves you drained at the end. I’ll not be re-reading it for a while, because I feel this one will be staying in my mind for a long time. However I am glad I read it, because no literary work I have read thus far has ever looked at slavery as boldly as ‘Beloved’.

If you like your novels to have a bold streak in them, then ‘Beloved’ is for you.

View all my reviews

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Book Review | ‘Beginners’ by Raymond Carver

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book review, Haruki Murakami, love story, raymond carver, short story, south of the border west of the sun, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Beginners by Raymond Carver

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I picked this up, I didn’t look at the author properly. I saw the ‘Raymond’ and briefly a ‘C-er’ and just grabbed it thinking it was a gritty detective novel by Chandler. I was disappointed when I got home; however my embarrassing misobservation turned into delight, as I discovered what I could probably call the perfect example of the short story.

Yes, Carver’s precision and execution of this understated and overlooked
writing form had me reeling with wonder and envy. Here was finally an author I could enjoy on a reader’s level yet also learn about from a writerly angle, which goes to show the literary value of this collection.

Originally published in 1981 as ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love‘, these short stories soon gained a lot of attention in America and around the world for their candid and gritty exploration of ‘real’ relationships. As the title suggests, the stories are about love in all its’ various guises and is as bold an attempt to capture what love really is, as opposed to what we expect it to look and feel like. Carver’s stories oscillate between extremes, as he looks at what happens to the chemistry between two people when things willingly or unwillingly go wrong.

In ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’ and ‘Viewfinder’ Carver examines the different ways people respond to a break-up. The former story stands out as the most powerful, as the protagonist completely guts the house of its contents and sets them up on the lawn outside exactly as they were when inside the house. This ‘gutting’ and remodeling stands as a metaphor for loss and underlines how spaces are sometimes saturated by relationships and become an extension of the lover lost.

In ‘Gazebo’, Carver paints the death-throes of what was once a stable relationship. The dialogue between the couple is key, as Carver times speech and prose perfectly to reproduce that unbearable ‘tug-of-war’ between two wills; the betrayed and the betrayer. The chemistry here is extremely volatile and is nicely offset by a side-story of the perfect married couple. This time a motel acts as the setting, showing the absence of ‘home’ and  how the negative energy of a space whose function isn’t to contain and nurture  a single relationship but is designed to be let out to strangers has a devastating effect on the couple.

Houses feature heavily in all Carver’s stories, no matter what aspect of love he is trying to capture. This gives his work a very sharp ‘domestic’ edge which when added with his eagle-eyed observations from real-life, makes his prose believable yet ascerbic and exceedingly uncomfortable. Having said that however, his stories aren’t all in this vein. In ‘A Small, Good Thing’ Carver approaches the tragedy of child loss with language that is throbs with anticipation and transparent fear. The story however ends on a gossamer-like thread of hope, showing Carver’s more merciful side, as the grieving parents find peace in the most unlikeliest of places.

What I ultimately loved about these stories was their honesty and how Carver did not sacrifice nor dilute his narratives for aesthetic or marketing purposes. These stories are also different because they come from a man’s perspective. Carver’s observations teach us that there is nothing separating either sex from the pain of betrayal, nor the act of betraying. Contrary to what we have been taught, there are no separate types or textures to the stuff of heart-break. We are all wonderfully and mutually the same; the only marked difference being perhaps how we deal with it as men and women.

Carver’s little medley of love stories are a rare treat, and for those who have enjoyed them I recommend Murakami’s ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’. Again it follows along the same lines, except this is an even rarer thing; a confessional where the protagonist (a happily married thirty-something man)  begins a narrative documenting all the rights and wrongs he has done in the name of love.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in studying the art of the short story, or indeed any form of writing. Satisfaction guaranteed.

View all my reviews

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Book Review | ‘Rape: A Love Story’ by Joyce Carol Oates

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American, book review, Gulf War, joyce carol oates, literature, love story, Rocky Point Park

Rape : A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“After she was gang-raped, kicked and beaten and left to die on the floor of the filthy boathouse at Rocky Point Park. After she was dragged into the boathouse by the five drunken guys – unless there were six, or seven – and her twelve-year-old daughter screaming Let us go! Don’t hurt us! Please don’t hurt us! After she had been chased by the guys like a pack of dogs jumping their prey, turning her ankle, losing both her high-heeled sandals on the path beside the lagoon. After…”

This is how Oates’s story begins, with the unspeakable brutality of a gang of drunken youths on the fourth of July. After making the fateful decision to walk the ‘long way’ home, Teena Maguire’s life would never be the same again. For that night, she would be raped in the presence of her daughter Bethie, and left for dead. The horrible event rocks the sleepy city of Niagara Falls as Teena is discovered the next day by NFPD Officer Dromoor. As a Gulf War veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm and who had seen the worst of human suffering, the sight of Teena’s broken body was something he would never forget.

But that isn’t the end; there is an ‘after’ and it is this dreadful ‘after’ that Oates focusses on with such alacrity. What happens to the victims? The assailants? Their families? The community? What happens at the hearing, and how does it affect peoples’ opinions? For Teena, Bethie and her elderly mother, every day is a battle to survive through the shame of what has happened and the fear and loathing of the community and their attackers, who only live two blocks away from them.

However, something strange begins to happen. First, one of the rapists is shot dead, then another two go AWOL. Before long people begin to suspect that there is a silent angel of justice at work. But who is this mysterious person taking the law into their own hands?

In ‘Rape: A Love Story’, Joyce Carol Oates takes the common themes and transforms it into a uniquely intense and uncomfortable experience. She achieves this by cleverly alternating the narrative between third and second person perspective, which in turn is largely addressed to Bethie as if it were a kind of confessional. This has two effects; it helps to convey at times the pure, raw emotion that needed to bring the past to life and at other times the statistical objectivity that is crucial to the parts dealing with the scenes of the trial and the hospital. This places Oates’ novel apart from others, as it enables the reader to see the story from different perspectives.

Oates also casts an eye on the corruption of the justice system as the trial rapidly turns Teena from victim to the accused party. A whole slew of social prejudices crop up as Teena, an attractive single mother, is looked upon as a provocateur that ‘had it coming to her’ and is ostracized along with her daughter. As with all small communities faced with big tragedies, this strange dynamic suddenly unearths many suppressed feelings, grudges and misgivings that Oates is especially successful at portraying.

Other themes that are explored are luck and destiny, justice and closure. Although the book is fairly short (150 pages), Oates manages to cover a great number of the difficulties that face women with this kind of tragedy.

“There was a final shake of the dice. Another time it might have been averted. When Casey said, ‘Teena, let me drive you two home. Wait a minute, I’ll get the car,’ and your mother thanked him and kissed him on the cheek, telling him not to bother – ‘We want to walk, don’t we, Bethie? It’s a perfect night.’”

Bethie in particular keeps thinking about that fateful night, about what would have happened if they hadn’t taken the walk through the park. The desperate wish to somehow go back in time and set things right is an impossibility that permeates the text and makes a very strong impression on the reader. Despite everything though, Teena and Bethie do get a closure of sorts and are even able to carry on with their lives thanks to their saviour who liberated them from the crippling fear of living with their enemies. Even though this is about a rape, elements of sacrifice and of a ‘fatedness’ with the unknown saviour adds the unexpected, unusual ‘love story’ twist to this tale. I think this book will stay with me for a long time to come.

I give this 4/5 stars.

View all my reviews

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Book Review | ‘The Story of Blanche and Marie’ – Per Olov Enquist

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50 books a year, book review, Fiction, love story, Nobel Prize, Old-World, per olov enquist, Radium

This is the unusual story of Marie Curie and Blanche Wittman; two extraordinary women caught between the ordered mathematics of science and the symbolic alchemy of love. The novel deals with amputated emotions, the desire for detachment and its antithesis; a longing for reconnection. Set during the dawn of a new century; Enquist explores the questioning of the rational ‘Enlightenment’ period which nurtured cut and dry methods of modern science and the unfathomable, fledgling studies of psychology.

In the heart of this revolution, the arcane gods of alchemy clashed with the new generation of scientific thinkers who championed the sloughing off of Old-World superstitions to make way for solid fact. Amongst this tumult, Enquist recognises Wittman and Curie as major players and revolutionaries as well as victims of the struggle between the increasingly masculine world they inhabited and their feminine needs.

“The word ‘medicine’, Charcot told her, ‘comes from Medea, the mother of Witchcraft.”
“Does that mean you are a magician?” she asked.
“No”, he said, “I am a prisoner of reason, with my feet buried deeply in the mub from which magic is composed.”

At the crux of this strange narrative lies the eternal battle between the rational senses and the repressed, animal psyche. Enquist builds a masterful framework based on these opposing principles on which to hang and analyse the passions, obsessions and martyred freedom of these women. The result is that he draws many fine connections between the frustrating incompatibility of what we are, and what the world expects us to be.

Inspired by Wittman’s diaries, Enquist finds ways to weave her erratic accounts with historical documents of that time. The story itself is divided into three colours; red, black and yellow which represent the colours of the three diaries Wittman used to record her thoughts.

To begin with, I found Wittman’s personal history infinitely more fascinating than Curie’s; purely because of the sheer bloody-mindedness of her devotion for a science that she was not only a guinea-pig of, but later to which she was a major scientific contributor. While Curie is meted as one of those rare female geniuses that made science her life; Wittman emerges as a little short of a saint, who surrendered her body piecemeal to that wondrous and deadly discovery known today as radium.

At the beginning of the story we are introduced to Wittman in the final stages of her life. She is quite literally only half the woman she once was, having lost three limbs to the radium research that eventually killed her. As an amputee riddled with tumours, she dedicates the rest of her life to recording her experiences as an inmate of the mental institution at Saltpetriere and later as research assistant to the Curie’s. Already a celebrity when she first met the Curie’s, Wittman was famous for her performance of hysterical séances conducted by Prof. Charcot, who later became her lover.

“If you share your darkness with the man you love, sometimes a light appears so strong that it kills.”

Wittman is presented as a woman riddled by obsessions so severe that they manifest in the form of her withering limbs, but Marie Curie is not immune to this form of hysteria. In the final chapters of his book Enquist shows us an alternative Curie; one stripped of that infallible, sterile image that we associate with the founder of radium. We meet a Marie restored to femininity, a Marie who has had been deserted in the wilderness of her deepest sexual desires without a compass to guide her. Enquist’s Curie is so far from the persona we are familiar with, that the tale of forbidden love that ensues serves as a deeply embarrassing and candid account of an average woman’s fall from grace.

The ways in which ‘love’ manifests throughout the novel resembles the chemical transmutations that the Curie’s concoct for their radium research. Science itself becomes a metaphoric element that Enquist shows as having transfused into the lives of these two historic women.

Radium, the cause of Blanche Wittman and later Marie Curie’s death is used as a clever device to represent the toxic, cancerous quality of love.

“He is reposing, secure and painless like a cancerous tumour of love, in her life.”

The luminescence and radiation of unbearable desire is seen as the true culprit in the demise of the women. Enquist takes ‘hysteria’ (a psychological condition synonymous with feminine weakness) and turns it into the guiding light. The phosphorus burn of love remains ever elusive, as neither woman has sufficient words to describe it in the various forms it takes. In conclusion, the formulaic sum of its parts are far too dispersed making them irreconcilable.

DEATH, LOVE and SCIENCE

Time and time again we see Wittman trying to rationalise ‘love’ through the use of scientific methods of questioning, however this falls apart at the seams as the story verges on a narrative hysteria of sorts. The overuse of exclamation marks indicates over excitement that is associated with Wittman’s previous occupation at the mental institute, where she would stimulate bouts of hysteria with the aid of hypnotism. The use of the three colours red, black and yellow are reminiscent of the ancient method of classifying different physical maladies (research). Enquist also uses her amputations to refer to many different folktales where this takes place.  I was surprised and moved at the reference to the Danish storyteller Hans Christian Anderson’s tale of the girl with the red shoes, as it beautifully mirrors the moral tale of the price one pays for one’s vanities and obsessions.

I give this 4/5 stars.

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Book Review | ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ – Goethe

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1001 book list, 50 books a year, German, Goethe, Lotte, love story, romantic, suicide, the sorrows of young werther

Book Challenges: 50 Books A Year (no.2), 1001 BYMRBYD (no. 957)A beautiful and tragic novella written by the master wordsmith Goethe about forbidden love. Told in a series of letters this is the story of one young man’s struggle against the dilemma that torments him. Werther, a German painter who epitomises the often too-sensitive temperament of the Romantics, is the unfortunate hero who falls for the beautiful and vivacious Lotte.

Does true love exist?
Do you only find your soulmate once in a lifetime?
Has anyone ever died from love?

The story itself is simple enough, but it is the varying degrees of pain that comes with rejection that Goethe so masterfully explores in this slim study of human depression. The opening scenes of the story with it’s sweeping, detailed landscapes exude the highest philosophical ideals of the time and offers an excellent insight into the workings of the Romantic mind. The beauty of nature-worship seems to occupy every facet of the story, and becomes the ultimate initiator for the series of events to come.

The descriptions are, as you can imagine, very beautifully lyrical. Goethe seems to have put a lot of himself into this novella, and it shows with its candid and often naked approach to the turmoils of heartache. To love and to have lost someone to death is one thing. To love and to have the beloved betray your love is quite something else. But to love and to know that you can never consummate it, to distance yourself from the very thing you draw life from is unbearable for Werther.

As he slowly descends deeper and deeper into melancholy, the reader also follows him into territories they possibly have never been to. The descent is gradual, but the ending nevertheless still has an element of sadness and shock, as we realise that Werther was an ordinary person, just like us, had a bright future ahead of him with everything to live for. Highly recommended as a good quick read, that has none of the heavy language that comes with a book of its type. This is a cornerstone of Romantic literature that inspired many poets and should be a key text for anyone studying the genre. Perfect for a summer read, but note: not recommended to those who have recently gone through a rather painful break-up.

I give this 3/5 stars.

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Quick Review | ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’ – Haruki Murakami

Tags

book review, Fiction, Hajime, Haruki Murakami, japanese, love story, south of the border west of the sun

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The passage of time is hard to understand. It runs to its own improvised beat, slowing down and speeding up according to the moment – just like a jazz tune. There are times when the world seems to grind to a painful halt, your breath catches in your throat and your heart beats wildly at the sight of a ghost from the past. Then there are times when it seems the years have slipped by like a thief in the night, taking with it your youth, your dreams, your very ‘self’.

“There are some things in this world that can be changed and some that can’t. And time passing is one thing that can’t be redone. Come this far and you can’t go back.”

Yes, the hours of our borrowed life come and go like the tide of a distant shore rising unexpectedly to the cusp of our existence. Sometimes it leaves cryptic messages in its wake, dredged from the murky depths of memory; and at other times it withdraws in cruel silence, erasing the delicate footprints to our past.

Murakami’s novel follows Hajime, a middle-aged man, who recounts the erratic ups and downs of his incomplete life. It documents his loves and losses, his betrayals and sacrifices, his fears and desires. ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’ is a story full of a very human reminiscence of what might have been, if only things were different. It underlines the instinctive need felt by all people for recognition; a recognition that can only be fulfilled as a reflection of the self in another human being. In Murakami’s novel this translates into a fervent, never-ending search for Hajimes first love Shimamoto, a mysterious girl with a lame leg.

What began as childhood friendship slowly blossomed into something more, but just as Hajime and Shimamoto began to bond, Hajime had to move to another neighbourhood. However this separation does nothing to sever the bond between them and years later when Hajime has settled down with two children, Shimamoto once again enters his life; this time with devastating consequences. Hajime must cope with the burden of choosing between right and wrong and the intoxicating desire that has matured within him for Shimamoto.

Despite the bad decisions that permeate Hajimes life I found myself thinking of him as a character. I neither liked nor disliked him. Instead to me he was just a disembodied voice, narrating the erratic flow of his story – pointing bravely to the rights and terrible wrongs of his personal journey. The women however were very vividly portrayed. I identified with their emotions far more readily than I did with Hajimes’. The fates of the women in particular concerned me, especially the haunting state of Izumi, a girl full of life and laughter, that experiences a most mind-blowing betrayal she certainly does not deserve.

Murakami is a word-artist in this beautiful, realistic yet painful analysis of love and heartache. He paints as honest a portrayal of male mid-life crisis as can possibly be written laden and the consequences of uncontrolled desire. Recommended to men and women alike, especially those who wonder why we sometimes do the things we do, and suffer the fate brought onto us.

I give this 4/5 stars. I’m still thinking Murakami has a better story in him, and I’m hoping to find it.

View all my reviews >>

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Book Review | ‘Paradise’ – Koji Suzuki

Tags

Asia, book review, Fiction, japanese, Koji Suzuki, love story, millenia, Mongolia, paradise, soulmate

Imagine: a man and a woman are at a party, they have never met before. Suddenly their eyes meet from across the room, life stops, the music dies out, and their hearts simultaneously skip a beat. They gravitate towards each other, following an instinct deeper than animal attraction, and one says to the other, ‘I’m sorry, but you remind me of someone’. And the other smiles knowingly, and replies, ‘Yes, it’s like I’ve known you my whole life’.

I know it sounds slightly clichéd, but love at first sight does happen. But the question remains; how and why? With ‘Paradise’, Suzuki tries to explain the phenomena of love through ancient mythologies, by underlining that love is a promise made between two souls who swear to find one another again; a promise that resurrects and renews itself with every body it gives life to, ready to find the lost ‘other’.

“What if your soul mate isn’t encountered once in a lifetime but once in a millennia?”

As the quote above states, this book is a unique love story that spans a millenia. We begin with the scene of two young lovers who are cruelly separated on the wild steppes of Mongolia, just as the long prophesied freezing over of the ocean between Asia and the ‘lost continent’ occurs. One of them is fated to travel across this icy wilderness to reach the promised land of what is now called ‘America’, the other travels South and eventually reaches a paradise of tropical islands. Yet despite the wanderlust, this undying love traverses the unchartered world, only to meet again thousands of years later, incarnated in the bodies of two strangers.

This novel shows a side of Suzuki that is not well-known. His writing of love is that of high, spiritual immortality. In ‘Paradise’, Suzuki teaches us a thing or two about soul mates. He allows us to travel from one moment in time to the next, visiting different people, and watching how the destiny of two souls finally converge to fulfil the promise they made to each other.

A very powerful novel, and perfect for those who do not care for soppy romanticism. Definitely worth a read.

I give this 5/5 stars.