"The Turn of the Key" by Ruth Ware (2019)

 

[This review is spoiler-free]

Ghosts and mind games...

Murder and mystery...

Choices and consequences...

The Turn of the Key or should I say "A Series of Unfortunate—yet completely avoidable—Decisions" is my first book by the British psychological crime thriller author, Ruth Ware. I was searching for quick thrillers and the book kinda popped up. I picked it up, fully unaware of Ware's style or how she develops her plots.

The story follows Rowan, a nanny who is not quite happy with her current job, so she decides to apply for an ad about a well-to-do family living in a remote and isolated house somewhere in northern Scotland. But the tempting job doesn't come without a catch—other nannies have come and gone... or ran away. 

My reading experience was positive. The book starts really slowly trying to build up the bleak and dreary atmosphere, but when I reached the 55% mark, things got interesting. 

I read the book as a thriller, not as a horror. Sure, there were a couple of spooky moments but that was it. I guess this is the reason why other readers didn't dig this one by Ware either because of high expectations (In a Dark, Dark Wood for example) or they didn't get what they bought in terms of horror. 

What made the book successful for me was how it engaged me to figure out what was going on. It made me suspect everyone and I made lots of hypotheses. None of it worked because the ending was like a slap to my brain; it was so unexpected and disconcerting.

Regardless, The Turn of the Key is about parental negligence and its psychological effects on the children later, about the roots of such carelessness and how it hides its ugly face beneath the polished surface. Ware summarized the whole book in the following quote:

"It’s like a metaphor for this whole thing, Mr. Wrexham. It’s all connected. The beauty and luxury of this house, and the seeping poison underneath the high-tech facade. The solid Victorian wood of a closet door, with its polished brass escutcheon—and the cold, rank smell of death that breathes out of the hole."

Summary:

The Turn of the Key is a slow-burn thriller/horror with so many twists going on about the last 30%. The 337-page-long book could benefit from extensive editing of the first 50%. The payoff of the final part was worth it.

"Audition" by Ryu Murakami (1997)

[To read the review, fast forwards to the separating line]

 

This is the second novel I read by the Japanese writer, Ryu Murakami. The first being In the Miso Soup. That one was a real doozy. Anyway, for those unfamiliar with Ryu Murakami, it's necessary to note that he's not the celebrated Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. In fact, they are not related at all. By closely examining the body of their works, however, one might notice the similarities between them, considering the fact they come from the same background and the same generation. (Haruki was born in  1949; Ryu in 1952). 

Personally, I always felt that Ryu is like the renegade young brother compared to the wise and mild Haruki. While Haruki adopts an objective approach to his narrative, presenting his characters and events as they are to his readers, Ryu, on the other hand, doesn't shy from directly and bluntly saying what goes in his mind. To Ryu, subtlety is a foreign language. It's not something bad in and of itself, being subjective that is. Ryu is just sick and tired of maneuvering through social niceties and being an apologetic about how fucked up today's society is. He's artistically ruthless and bloody when it comes to storytelling. The reason why Ryu diverts from Haruki's magical realism and surrealism to thrillers and horrors.

What I really like about Ryu are his social commentaries strewn here and there in his stories (about depression, consumerism, social dynamism, xenophobia, etc) which Audition stores an example on each. Check out this excerpt:

"Within two or three years of World War II’s end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depended on it. Why? To create a more abundant life? If so, where was the abundance? Where were the luxurious living spaces? Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn’t a better life, but more things. And things, of course, were a form of information. But as things became readily available and information began to flow smoothly, the original aspiration got lost in the shuffle. People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder."

Such comments are valuable gems I always cherish.

Another thing that I like about Ryu is how dynamic his narrative style is, how graphic and violent and disturbing it is (not surprising when Ryu's main themes, in general, are about sex, murder, drug use, exploitation in the entertainment industry, etc).

___________________________________________________________________

With that being said, Audition is about a man (Aoyama) who has become a widower after his wife died of cancer. He makes it his life's mission to compensate his son (Shige) for his loss by staying as close to him as possible. After some years pass by, Shige asks his father the dreaded question: "Why don't you find yourself a new wife, Pops?” The question serves as permission from the fifteen-year-old son to his father to get married. Although Aoyama was quite reluctant at first, his friend (Yoshikawa) hammers his head to change his mind. In fact, he thinks thoroughly about a way for Aoyama to find the perfect wife, which is by auditioning female artists for a movie that may/may not see the light.

Since this is a thriller, I'm not going to expose more of the plot. My focus here would be on my impressions. The English translation is coherent and fluid and I found myself leafing through the book at a supersonic speed. Everything was going perfect until I reached the 30~35% mark. I started to have suspicions (thanks to Yoshikawa, my favorite character here) and the repetitions of certain things throughout the chapters. The plot thickened and the tension was real. 

The ending was expected (the cover is a real spoiler. Bad choice), but I really didn't care for what happened or the reasons behind them. Like I said, Ryu is no fan of subtlety and leaves nothing for readers to speculate on. That's one of the reasons why (if I were a writer) I would stop the novel right after [spoiler alert] Yamasaki Asami disappears from Aoyama's life after a night of wild, wild sex. In this case, this would leave more room for the readers to think of the worst that could've happened. Imagination is a powerful thing, even more so than graphic descriptions.

Summary:

Audition is a fast-paced read about grief and the cyclical nature of abuse. I'd recommend it to those who want a fast thriller for their weekend. 

 

It's impossible to talk about Project Hail Mary without spoiling anything. So, all I'm going to say is that it's a sci-fi story about a man who wakes up in a room with two other dead people.

When I put it like that, it sounds like an instant gripper of a novel. It was, actually. At least, the first 30%. The protagonist seemed like a nice guy with highbrow humor. He managed to squeeze a couple of chuckles out of me. Or perhaps, it was due to the phenomenal voice acting of Ray Porter who narrated the audiobook.

I was having a fun time reading until I came across the first wave of calculations. It was too much for me that I was about to quit if it weren't for the good people of Facebook's Book Recommendations group encouraging me to carry on. So, carry on, I did... And I wish I hadn't. The technicality of astrophysics and the quasi-realistic nitty-gritty detailing of the interstellar spaceship project didn't go away. In fact, it got worse to the point that I suspected that Weir gets high off of flaunting intellectual superiority. But that wasn't the problem as much as Weir expecting the readers to gulp it all without questioning. The interactive role of readers (in contemplating the text, actively seeing beyond it, even predicting where the story is going to go) has been rendered passive. Readers of PHM are mere receivers of spiritless information and the writer is expecting us to feel wowed.

Do you know what's a good idea for fun, Weir? Not mathematics. Take notes.

PHM is, without a shadow of a doubt, a prime example of 'info-dumping' at the expense of the plot, a plot that is more of a generic end-of-the-world cliche.

I understand that many fans will boo me for this review (considering the bloated 4.5/5 stars on GoodReads), but that's how I felt during my reading experience. Heck! I didn't get to the issues of how two-dimensional the characters are or how they lack development, or the issue of the know-it-all hero, which the protagonist clearly is. By the 60% mark, I completely lost my interest and finally quit reading. The protagonist, Ryland Grace (aka Gary Sue), was so unrelatable to me, even though I'm a high school teacher and in love with science. If I were a heterosexual woman, my thoughts about Grace would be like this: "he's the kinda guy who is genuinely good, the kinda guy whom you could hang out with, but definitely not make out with".

The only redeeming quality about PHM was Rocky, the alien. He was the only reason why I soldiered my way through two-thirds of the book.

Summary:       

Project Hail Mary presents an interesting concept of life-threatening danger, but sadly, fails in impactful delivery because of its realistic narrative approach. 

This got me thinking. Was the book about saving Earth or just a scientific jargon pissing contest? If this is a How-To book, I bet the title would be: 'How to make science more (less) appealing to the masses?'

Anyway, PHM is like Cast Away meeting Arrival...while being the opposite of Don't Look Up.

Midway through, the plot lost its momentum and was like drifting through space. Ironic, isn't it?

Andy Weir has done his homework...with overkill.

"Dune: Book one" by Frank Herbert (Dune Chronicles #1, 1965)

Simply, one of the books I regret NOT reading earlier. It's easily one of the well-written epics ever produced after Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Since my time back in college, the name was on my mind, but it never grew more than another title in my long-buried, dust-gathering TBR list. First, there were Frank Herbert's first six books and the other ones written by his son. And second, there's David Lynch's Dune (1984) flop of a movie adaptation. Both reasons weren't encouraging enough to make me embark on this long journey. That changed anyway since I watched Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021). It had the one thing I really desired to see in a sci-fi/fantasy epic—culture. Not just another medieval replica, but that of something unique, mystical, and exotic.

Dune (published in 1965) is a coming-of-age epic exploring themes like self-discovery, betrayal, revenge, extremism, religion, and politics, but what sets it apart from J. R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (published in 1996) in this regard is its heavy focus on the spiritual. 

“On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power. Here, we must scrabble for desert power.”

                                                                                                  —Duke Leto

Humans have always looked at the desert as something that inspires awe and reverence. And indeed, there's something serene and even romantic about it. Something to fear. Something to admire. That's what makes Dune unique in its approach to spiritualism and sophism.

Some readers may find the writing style to be a bit stilted or constrained. There's some truth to that. Still, it's not a deal-breaker if you consider the time of the story's events, which is about 10,000 years in the distant future. Of course, by then, language and culture and interactions would divert and become different from that of our time.

On the contrary, for me, the writing style felt rather compulsive, a bit of a page-turner, despite the fact that the book is crammed with a plethora of new and even odd concepts. To make the reading process enjoyable and far from monotony, Herbert was fully conscious of not to info-dump world-building concepts on his readers. Instead, he exploits the setting/context/plot to his advantage and introduces each concept one at a time. This is pro writing. I never felt that I was being dictated to what the world of Arrakis was. Rather, I felt there was a hunger within me, compelling me to flip the pages and discover more about the Gom Jabbar, Kwisatz Haderach, the Spice, the worms, the Fremen, etc. 

One of the most important aspects that the book excels at is 'character development'. Never before did I read about such distinct and remarkable characters, and that wasn't in the sense of being them ideally painted in black-and-white. The morality of Dune is complex. Each character undergoes apparent change over time, from Thufir Hawat, Gurney Hallack, the Baron, Stilgar, Chani, Jessica,..., to Paul. In fact, this change plays an important and critical role in shaping the characters' lives because of the choices they'll have to make.

Some might argue that the book falls into controversial traps ranging from cultural appropriation, the 'white savior' narrative, to touching on sensitive religious issues, especially if equating Paul with the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh). I'm an Arab and a Muslim. If anything, I've never felt so overwhelmed and awed by the richness of the world of Dune. The narrative is subjective, I admit, but it was done in a positive way. Indeed, there are similarities in the process of making the Kwisatz Haderach but the outcome of Paul as a character diverts from any real figure. 

Furthermore, I didn't detect any kind of looking-down orientalist narrative towards middle-eastern cultures (if the Fremen are indeed a projection of such ethnic group that is). Far from it, Herbert paints this fictional group of nomads as proud and free.

There are of course some issues I've had with the book which prevent me from granting it a rating of 5/5 stars.

(some spoilers are ahead)

a) I would have loved it better if we had gotten to know Chani more and more. The ending was kinda sad and unjust. Now, I know that being a Kwisatz Haderach required Paul to marry the Emperor's daughter even though he's in love with Chani.

Perhaps the only solace I'll get before reading the second book is in Jessica's words to Chani:

"Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives."

b) The fighting scene at the end against Feyd-Rautha was waaaay off. First, there was no depth to either his character or background. We didn't get to know him better. The reason why we didn't grow to hate him. Feyd-Rautha didn't do anything to Paul. In fact, he was going to do him a favor by assassinating the Baron.

c) The book could benefit from the element of surprise to create some kind of a shock. I didn't like Herbert's approach, for instance, when exposing Yueh, the traitor, right from the beginning, or when Princess Irulan keeps spoiling things about Mua'Dib for us.

Summary: 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dune. It was a gratifying experience. The characters are so relatable and the plot is interesting. I have some reservations about the ending though. I'll definitely continue reading through the second book. 

"The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges

 

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

                                                                                          

                                                                                          — Jorge Luis Borges

The Library of Babel is a prime example of Jorge's close examination of the concept of infinity. The short story taken from Ficciones is a grand metaphor for the universe, life, and mankind's endless pursuit of meaning.

The premise is so simple: Borges imagines that the universe is a library with identical hexagonal chambers stretching in all directions. The books in the library are a combination of 22 orthographical letters, the comma and the period. This means a great number of books will be complete gibberish, so the occupants of the library spend the entirety of their lives leafing the books for meaning.

I have to admit, the ten-page-long story was a challenge to read. I had to read two versions translated into English and another into my native Arabic. The used diction is detached and dry and a bit scholarly. Perhaps, it was precisely chosen to reflect the dominating atmosphere in the librarians' world, which is the complete opposite of paradise, a kind of Kafkaesque air that permeates the chambers, depressing and smothering.

It was an exhaustive--but also an entertaining--read. Through his dense metaphysical labyrinth, Borges manages to reduce the entirety of humanity's thirst to explain the world around them.