Review - Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore
by Murakami
Translated by Philip Gabriel
2006 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

I went into this novel with high hopes for two reason. The first was that I had never read a Japanese novel before; not even Tale of the Genji. I've read more than my share of manga but using it get a perspective on novelists is like looking at current superhero comics and trying to work out what the US literary scene is like. I have read novels from other Asian cultures so I was interested in how Murakami would use the medium and how it would compare. The other is that Haruki Murakami is one of the big names in literature at the moment. Big enough that I've heard some people seriously suggest a Nobel prize in literature could be in his future. Consequently I expected something special.

I have to say that I did get something special. Kafka on the Shore is a strange, dreamy novel. I was left at the end puzzling over it; trying to come to grips with the how and why of the story. It's going to stick in my mind for a long time to come. It's definitely not a novel for entertainment (though there are aspects of that); Kafka on the Shore is there to be interesting and intriguing. It is something to be examined and pondered.

Kafka is a fifteen year old boy with a pronouncement of doom hanging over his head. To escape his fate he runs away from home to hide on the far side of the country where he hides amid a special library. Nakata is an old man who lost part himself in his childhood. He lost his intelligence and literacy but gained supernatural abilities. Kafka's fate puts the two of them on a collision course dragging those around them along with them.

There's a lot of literature and mythology mixed up in their story. Fate in particular as a mythological theme is deeply engraved in it. This does mean that it helps to know your mythology when reading Kafka on the Shore. In particular there is an aspect of Japanese mythology which is important to understanding the conclusion and it never explained in the book. I wouldn't have even remembered it myself to put everything together except for the fact that I've run across the story in four different places in the past two months.

The novel rests securely on the shoulders of its characters. I almost called them "quirky" in my plot description but that doesn't do Murakami justice. There's a few off the wall characters but only the minor ones push the "Isn't that strange?" button. The others are simply richly drawn people each of whom is struggling with fate: recognizing it, running from it, accepting it, or dealing with its consequences.

Kafka himself is not a pleasant protagonist. He's a lost, confused child trying to grow up and often doing it the wrong way. At the same time he's interesting to read about because he is so broken. I never got the impression that the reader was supposed to sympathize with Kafka beyond his desire to escape a bad fate and his confusion. That makes it more effective in my view than trying to justify his behavior to the reader.

The plot itself left me bewildered at the end. It drifts through the book giving the reader moments where the direction is clear but for the most part things happen and run together. I have to give the weight to the character arcs for making the Kafka on the Shore interesting instead of the plot developments which play out as afterthoughts.

I have to mention Philip Gabriel's translation as an exceptional peice of work on its own. It is a monumental achievement to take the Japanese text to English and giving the work a distinctive tone that helps carry the reader through it's strange landscapes.

Kafka on the Shore is a strange book. I can't propperly describe it and do it justice. It is an exceptional novel that I am going to be left considdering possibly for the rest of my life and it has definitely left me with a desire to read more from Haruki Murakami.

Review - Tooth and Claw

Tooth and Claw
by Jo Walton
2004 World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel

There's a lesson to be learned in books like Tooth and Claw. This novel is a book about a society of dragons and how their biology drives certain behaviors. It takes its plot from nineteenth century romance novels and justifies the strange behaviors as part of dragon biology. That's an interesting concept and yet Walton doesn't managed to turn it into an interesting book. The lesson is, of course, that ideas are not novels.

A family of dragons gathers for the death of their patriarch where a misunderstanding over the inheritance leads to conflict between most of the family and the in-laws. One unmarried sibling must live with her social climbing sister and wicked husband while another is shamed by the sexual advances of a priest. One of the poor sons sues his rich brother-in-law over the inheritance and the other son cannot reveal the truth that would resolve the case without shaming himself. Naturally all of these plot threads collide.

I suppose I should say at this point that I didn't hate Tooth and Claw. My problems with the book essentially come down to it being as bland as a saltine cracker. There's nothing that terminally annoyed me but at the same time there was nothing that thrilled me. Most of what I would consider flaws in it can be excused since they develop from the form that Walton is mimicking but at the same time she never manages to draw me in.

The prose is a good example of what I mean. Walton tells the reader directly that the plot of the novel comes from nineteenth century literary conventions but she is half-hearted in using that influence. She uses completely modern prose that's very terse and is completely lacking in poetry. That's a fine style for some stories but Walton is mimicking romance novels (that's "romance" as in the literary style not "romance" in terms of love story). Compare Tooth and Claw to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell which won the World Fantasy Award next year and you'll see how the latter book completely embraced that style and was a better book as a result.

Without completely embracing that style it makes the limitations of the plot stand out. There's lucky coincidences, multiple deus ex machinas, and a leisurely pace that completely lacks tension. Those are things that Walton took from her source along with other things that are plot contrivances with humans that she incorporated into her dragons. I can't hold these problems against Tooth and Claw since they were intentional and yet they clash due to the fact that Walton chose to use a modern style for so much of the book.

There are other problems with the plot separate from Walton's mixed signals. There's a particularly ugly attack of expository dialog at the beginning that's just terrible. Walton avoids making the rest of the exposition as bad as a son explaining dragon society to his own father lying on his deathbed but there's a lot of clumsy exposition. At a few points Walton puts out the idea in the narration that Tooth and Claw is a book by a dragon written for dragons which makes these pieces of sloppy exposition worse.

The formula that Walton chose to follow also interferes with the reader's ability to connect with her characters. Again this is not necessarily a flaw since she chose to depict dragons in a society that is very different from humanity. The problem is that she doesn't manage to connect her biologically driven caricatures back to the human reader. I can overlook character development I would consider abrupt and jumpy in a human but I never cared about any of the characters.

So with Tooth and Claw I'm left looking at a book that was an interesting idea that the execution never managed to match. It's a book that I just couldn't care about one way or the other. While my criticisms may be deflected by Walton's concepts she doesn't manage to put anything interesting beyond that concept into the book.

Review - "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge", "At the Rialto", and "Ripples in the Dirac Sea"

It's time to wrap up the 1980's for those Nebula winning short stories and it's a quirky set of tales this time. Both of my unread winners from 1989 were focused on quantum physics in a way that isn't normally dealt with in SF. As for the other story I think it's obvious right from the start that one of Morrow's biblical reworkings will be odd.

I have finished my collection of the Nebula Awards/Winners anthologies and I have to double check from this point on if the stories I want are in the Nebula Showcase volumes since several of that newer series lack that year's winners. The anthologies were not easily available in hard covers; nearly all of my set are former library books and several show some extreme signs of wear.

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge"
by James Morrow
1988 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story

As the world floods to wipe out an evil humanity Noah and his family are safely aboard their own boat. A few days into the deluge something unforeseen happens: they pick up a survivor, a whore who contains all the terrible things that were being washed from humanity. Since the flood was intended to kill everyone should they fulfill that purpose or show mercy?

If you've read Morrow's Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah then you'll find this story much the same only condensed. To his credit Morrow glosses over the ludicrous nature of the flood and goes straight for the moral implications. The story has at its heart that interesting question of what is the right choice to appease an angry god that contradicts themselves? There was a small misstep where the whore shifted into some very modern psychological concepts in making her argument. I can accept 600 year old men building boats containing two of every species to deal with a flood that covers the planet for a story but a prostitute from 3000 BC suddenly talking like a college student from 1988 strikes a sour note for me. Still I think on the whole the story works well.

"At the Rialto"
by Connie Willis
1989 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

At a conference for quantum physicists held in Hollywood nothing goes right. Half the attendees are more interested in seeing the town, the presenters are missing more often then they are there, and the hotel staff is clueless. One physicist tries to keep things on track but finds herself become distracted by the prospect of love.

I'll get the nice things out of the way fast: this is a comedic story by Connie Willis so it's light, fluffy, and fun. It has its charm and if you like Willis at all then you'll almost certainly enjoy this story. There is an ugly aspect to it, though. Willis makes "At the Rialto" about how no one really understands quantum physics and while I personally only grasp the big concepts I know a few physicists who would feel a bit insulted at the idea that they don't understand their field. You only have to look at the short story winner from the same year to realize that at least some people understand some aspects of it. So I can't agree with her message or her conclusion but I appreciated the ride along the way.

"Ripples in the Dirac Sea"
by Geoffrey A. Landis
1989 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story

Consider the possibility of time travel in a universe where cause and effect cannot be broken. The traditional way to deal with this is the method of the ancient greeks; the universe is fated to be a certain way and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Landis looks to quantum theory and gives us time travel where any changes made are written in sand that is washed away when time rolls back over them. His time traveller can do anything he wants because when he catches up to his point of departure his changes are wiped away; a universe that only exists because one person is there to observe it. Landis does cheat a bit since if the hypothesis he was expanding on is true then the time travelers could not even retain memories of his voyage but I can't hold that against him since it allows him to tell a story about a the painful complications of a very different kind of time travel.

That's as much of a plot summary as I'll give on "Ripples in the Dirac Sea" since part of its impact is how those complications play out for its narrator. The story is a fascinating hard SF take on what is usually a soft topic and it is very effective.

Getting Some Nebula Audiobooks

StarShipSofa has made all of the Nebula nominated short stories for 2009 available as podcasts via iTunes. I plan on listening to them on my commute next week though I've found that I can't focus on the language as well with audiobooks. Of the ones I've read "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" is my favorite so give it a listen.

Review - The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life
by Graham Joyce
Tied for 2003 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

I think I'm getting a grip on modern urban fantasy. All you have to do is take an innocent protagonist, send them on a spiritual journey (particularly if it's a coming of age story), and have them encounter a series of strange things which you assemble by randomly selecting adjectives and nouns. You can pad things out by giving the protagonist a dysfunctional family life.

Of course it helps if you tell this story as well as Graham Joyce does. It's just that this structure has become almost as rigid as the epic fantasy quests and that's not a healthy thing for a genre.

Our protagonist is a boy born into a large family living in Coventry just after the end of World War II. The family is touched with magic that lets some of them be aware of spirits around them. His mother is flighty and prone to vanish for days at a time so it is arranged that he will be passed from family member to family member. As he grows the child encounters the strange quirks of his family members and learns to appreciate each of them in their own way.

What makes The Facts of Life really stand out in the crowd is that Graham Joyce gives the book an impressive voice. For the first ten pages I thought it was going to annoy me. There's a shift after the first chapter to a different style that Joyce uses through the rest of the book. It's a style that is colloquial to the 1950's UK and it gave the book a very friendly tone. It turned the narrative voice into one of the extended family that is at the heart of the book and by extension brought me as the reader in closer.

The family itself is a mix of familiar archetypes and unusual breaks in convention. The negligent mother, for example, is not negligent due to any of the usual reasons (though that might be expected given that this is a fantasy novel). On the other hand the benevolent dictator of a matriarch who keeps the family together is an archetype that will be very recognizable even when Joyce adds his own tragic spin on it.

The only real misstep in this that I found was an unfortunately heavily cliched trip to a commune where college intellectuals attempt to put their radical beliefs into practice. It fits the novel's themes but this group of characters is about as interesting as dishwater.

The city of Coventry itself places a large role in the novel. It grows from the ashes at the same time as the child grows and the history of the city is often referenced. I'm sure it is something that will be familiar to any readers in the UK though American readers might have some trouble with the references.

One more positive thing about The Facts of Life is that Joyce never loses the thread of his novel like some urban fantasies do. The book is a collection of vignettes from the protagonist's childhood and Joyce remembers that it is the story of that child growing up which means they flow into each other. Even the digressions exist to illuminate what happened to this family. It's a shame that I have to mention that but too many books I've read lately are a random assortment of anecdotes that drift around until the book ends. I can't say that The Facts of Life really builds to a climax since there is no moment of revelation or dramatic confrontation; what it has is an ending that let's the reader know that life has changed and it will be better.

The Facts of Life is a familiar story told very well and for that reason I recommend it. Graham Joyce painted a picture of a family that will be instantly recognizable to anyone and at the same time has their own unique quirks. The result is a very enjoyable book.

Review - "The Blind Geometer", "Rachael in Love", and "Forever Yours, Anna"

I'm not sure what it was about 1987 but there seemed to be a real rise in Campbellian scientists in that year's Nebula winners. All three stories feature that old science fiction cliche of a scientist working in isolation coming up with an amazing breakthrough that would revolutionize the world if someone noticed it.

"The Blind Geometer"
by Kim Stanley Robinson
1987 Nebula Winner for Best Novella

There's a point in most badly written conspiracy fiction where I get annoyed beyond the breaking point. It's inevitable that the agents of the evil corporation/government agency/religious sect/whatever will do some obviously illegal things to get the macguffin and yet the protagonist refuses to do the most obvious thing: be public about it. Go to the police with a reporter in tow and drop that massive pile of evidence in their laps. Even if the evil conspiracy can buy their way out of court (and in pretty much every one of these stories they couldn't just based on the sheer quantity of witnesses and physical evidence they leave behind) the evil scheme inevitably would fall apart when placed under public scrutiny. Bad writers ignore the plethora of options available to someone under such harassment or try to hand wave it as "They control everything" without thinking of the implications of "controlling everything".

Obviously "The Blind Geometer" is one of those stories and in it our conspiracy harassed victim doesn't go to the authorities or make the situation public even when he has handy evidence to shut them down and send them all to jail for a few decades because he's "self-reliant". The protagonist is blind and refuses assistance whenever possible even when it takes suspension of disbelief well beyond the breaking point.

A coworker of the titular blind geometer approaches the mathematician with some special government work. The population of a scientific outpost on the moon has vanished with the exception of one woman who has been drawing complex geometric projections. The projections look like something similar to what the mathematician has been working on so he agrees to look and is pulled into a web of conspiracy.

Besides my problems with the plot structure the story also lacked interesting characters. The protagonist was defined more by his handicap than any personality; everything was about how he was blind and that made him boring. And since he's the only major character in the story who isn't "mysterious" there's no one else for the reader to attach to.

There's nothing in "The Blind Geometer" worth reading. It's a poorly told story about an uninteresting character doing stupid things because the author demands it. It definitely is not worth seeking out.

"Rachael in Love"
by Pat Murphy
1987 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

A scientist develops a technique for placing a mind into a new body and after a tragic accident uses it on his own child. When the scientist dies, though, the child is forced to depart into the world where the robot becomes a superhero...

Hang on, I seem to have "Rachael in Love" mixed up with Astroboy.

Okay, in "Rachael in Love" the scientist overlaps his daughter's mind with that of a chimpanzee. When the scientist dies she is caught by animal control and is sent to a research center where they breed chimps for labs. And there Rachael has to figure out what her place with human and chimpanzees.

The most surprising thing to me in this story is that Murphy didn't spend the story preaching about the evils of animal testing. The humans treat Rachael like an animal and are consequently indifferent to her but that's goes back to the story's theme of trying to find the dividing line between human and animal when someone has poured in an equal mix of both. Murphy pokes at that theme from a variety of angles though many of them are used subtly.

It's her exploration of Rachael that makes "Rachael in Love" worth reading. The tension between human and animal, instinct and thought, childhood and maturity, and child and parent are all given an interesting perspective.

"Forever Yours, Anna"
by Kate Wilhelm
1987 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story

In a world where graphology isn't simply a scam along the lines of astrology a graphologist is asked to analyse some love letters between a scientist who died under mysterious circumstances and an unknown lover. The letters have all been carefully edited to remove anything that could identify her but the lover must be found because she is in possession of the results of the scientist's research. As the graphologist examines the handwriting he becomes obsessed with finding the woman himself.

There's a twist at the end of the story which gives me a headache. I won't say what it is since I hate spoiling stories; it's just that in this case I can't work out how the story comes together with the new information. It falls apart when examined and so it left me at the end with a bad taste in my mouth.

Even before that I wasn't feeling much affection for the story. Wilhelm's use of graphology as a science struck another sour chord for me and I didn't care about the graphologist. He was a boring non-entity for the majority of the story and at the same time he was really the only character in it. On the positive side of things Wilhelm is just as skilled in forming her prose as she has demonstrated for me in the past. This time out I just couldn't care.

Review - Ombria In Shadow

Ombria In Shadow
by Patricia A. McKillip
Tied for 2003 World Fantasy Award Winner

I have become convinced that Patricia McKillip ranks among the greatest authors in the world. That's not because Ombria In Shadow is a brilliant novel; I just found it to be interesting. It's not because I'm impressed with her body of work; I've only read her World Fantasy Award winning novels. It's not even any particular aspect of her writing. The reason is simple: twice she has over the course of a book taken me from something I hate to something I enjoyed.

Here's the arc I followed when reading Ombria In Shadow:

Starting out: Generic fantasy? Ugh... this is going to be terrible.
Half way through: Well the novel's skillfully done but it's not really my thing.
At the end: That was pretty good.

Any author who can do that to me twice is brilliant.

Ombria is a kingdom in chaos. It's old ruler died leaving a child as his heir. An ancient witch has worked her way into power and is acting as the regent. Those who care about the child have been separated from him: the old ruler's mistress dumped into the harsh streets of the decaying city and a bastard who might have shielded the child has been threatened into inactivity. There is a legend of two Ombrias existing, one in shadow and one in light, and when the kingdom is broken they switch places.

There are two things I found effective in that story that managed to win me over. Neither of those was the setting which was yet another psuedo-medieval thing. In fairness to McKillip she kept the focus narrow enough that I was constantly rubbed the wrong way by modern concepts in her setting. At the same time it wasn't drawn in great detail at the broadest level. So I wasn't pushed away but neither was I pulled in.

Similarly McKillip's villain isn't really villainous for the bulk of the novel. People talk about her like she's a monster but this is a novel of intrigue. What people say could simply be rumors, deception, or general dislike. The villain does turn nasty at the very end of the book though for the majority of the book I was wondering why everyone hated her.

What worked for me were the rest of the characters. In McKillip's previous World Fantasy Award winner The Forgotten Beasts of Eld I was impressed with how well her characters were developed. She has continued that in Ombria in Shadow where the majority of the small cast was effectively developed. The protagonists in particular are exactly what I appreciate: they're flawed, they grow, and most importantly of all they are interesting. An illigitamate son divided between his desire for peace, an offer for the throne, and family loyalty is inherently interesting and McKillip plays up the conflicting drives. While I had no doubt as to what would be done in the end the journey was interesting because of how it was internalized.

The other thing is McKillip's prose. She has an interesting style that pulled me along. Occasionally I found it be obscure; "Was that metaphorical or not?" and then I'd have to reread that section a few times until I worked it out. That just emphasized how well McKillip did with the atmosphere of the novel. Her world is an uncertain hazy thing and this style emphasized the magic in the setting.

I can't say that I'd seek out more books by McPhillip. She writes novels that as a rule I shouldn't like and the subject matter doesn't interest me. So with Ombria in Shadow I'll depart on good terms, appreciating the book and recommending it. Perhaps someday our path will cross again and I hold out hope that when happens that I am once more similarly impressed.