"First Person Singular" by Haruki Murakami (2020)

A collection of eight short stories told from the perspective of male protagonists' first person singular. The stories essentially muse on loneliness, alienation, living and death, memory, and the nature of love. 

 1. Cream (3)

A young man living in a state of being 'an academic ronin', a state of limbo between high school and university. He retells a strange story where he received an invitation from a girlfriend he used to play piano with a long time ago to attend a recital at the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. 

A very strange story. It could have a very deep meaning, and at the same time, no meaning at all. It depends on readers and how much they're willing to delve deep down to discover 'the cream of the cream'.  It could be a metaphor for life and how ephemeral it is and that 'everyone will die' eventually, and it's up to you to make sense of it and make the best of it.

Thinking about the riddle of the circle, I think it could be about discovering 'who we are', or even rediscovering ourselves. I'm reminded of a Voltaire's quote: 'God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.' Maybe the circle is us. And the center is our essence, what makes us who we are. But we are not reducible to only one thing. We are many, many things. We are multifaceted, halls of mirrors, iridescent crystals. There are more truths to us waiting to be discovered.

Anyway, the atmosphere is phenomenal. It's eerie and weird. To top that, the plot is ambiguous/meaningful/meaningless and it stirs one to give their head a scratch or two. In simple words, this short story retains what Haruki Murakami excels at and captures the essence of 'magical realism'.

2. On A Stone Pillow (2.5)

A man recalls a one-night stand with a girl he used to work with in an Italian restaurant.

A story about unrequited love, obsession perhaps... about loneliness and death. It's very poetic and packed with many symbols and metaphors. But it didn't leave an impression on me.

3. Charlie Parker Plays A Bossa Nova (3.5)

A man recalling his time in college and how he wrote a review about a fake album of Charlie Parker mixing his style with Bossa Nova.  Years later, he went to New York and discovered that the album was on display in a record store. Even though he didn't buy it, he regrets it wholeheartedly.

This is the best story in this collection so far. It starts really slowly with the review, but then, the atmosphere grabs you by the hand and takes you to territories unknown. It's a love letter to music and its power to shift and change and transform our very core. It's about living life and trying new things while we're still alive and kicking.  

4. With The Beatles (1)

A man remembers his first girlfriend and two encounters with her older brother.

A story about memory and music. Murakami is kinda repeating himself. It's a long story with a lot of ramblings. No story to tell.

5. Confessions Of A Shinagawa Monkey (3)

Using Murakami's own words, the story 'is just about an old monkey who speaks human language, in a tiny town in Gunma Prefecture, who scrubs guests’ backs in the hot springs, enjoys cold beer, falls in love with human women, and steals their names.'

It's magical realism at best, where reality and fantasy blend seamlessly to spotlight the things that are important but have faded into the background. It's Murakami's trademark and the reason why his style is unique and loved by many readers.

6. Carnaval (1)

A married man realling the time when he used to hang out with an 'ugly' girl and live a platonic relationship based on their interest in classical music. 

A story about not letting looks define who we are, about the facades people wear in their lives to hide what's beneath.

It was so boring to read to the point that I didn't bother youtubing Schumann's Carnaval. I skimmed the short story like reading a newspaper.

7. The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection (2)

A memoir of Haruki Murakami talking about baseball and writing poems about baseball.

A genuinely boring piece to read. Murakami was most likely writing to himself. However, there's one thing that struck a chord with me.

"Winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn’t affect the weight and value of the time. It’s the same time, either way. A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can—that’s what’s the most valuable."

It seems that Murakami is coming to terms or accepting the reality of life and death. It's a sad thing. But he isn't feeling that way at all. All he's saying is that we should live the moment for what it is regardless whether life treats us fairly or otherwise.

8. First Person Singular (3)

A casual married man who likes to dress up in suits once in a while just for the kick of it goes to a bar and meets a woman he never met who's upset with him.

A story about freewill, turned-downpossibilities, regrets, loneliness. It's ambiguous, but I'm loving it!

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Summary:

First Person Singular uses the same ol' Murakami's so-called 'bingo': jazz, symphonies, the Beatles, baseball, weird fetishes, lucid reality, you name it. The collection doesn't add anything new to the table. Personally, it's Murakami's least favorite when compared to Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman or The Elephant Vanishes. Heck! I didn't even like it. The reading experience was a drag and was doing a lot of skimming. I had to continue reading 'partly out of duty, partly out of habit', to quote Murakami.

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it to Murakami's died-in-the-wool fans or new ones. It seems that Murakami has run out of his 'fuel' to write a decent work lately. His themes and the way he plots his stories have become repetitive and inane. Or more accurately, I've had my fill with Murakami. At any rate, I hope things will turn around and surprise us in the future.

"The Couple Next Door" by Shari Lapena (2016)

The Couple Next Door is about a couple who were having a dinner party next door who left their infant daughter in her crib but took shifts checking on her. When they decided to head home, they discovered that their baby daughter, Cora, is gone.

What a roller-coaster of a ride the book was! Loved every minute of reading it. An absolute page-turner! Lapena has constructed a very intricate puzzle in which every teeny-tiny detail mattered and had colossal consequences later on. Chekhov's gun is fired and It. Is. Jaw-dropping!

The used diction isn't poetic and relies little on similes and metaphors, but in thrillers, the plot is the author's number one priority. This isn't a minus, mind you. Anyway, it isn't pretentious, and it presents its characters and settings in an accessible, straightforward way that allows readers to move forward at a super-sonic speed.

The characters felt alive and three-dimensional driven by their own motives. Yes, they can be described as foolish, dangerously reckless, or even psychopathic. For example, what could a slasher movie be any good without foolish characters running toward death? Thrillers need these kinds of fucked-up characters so we get to be entertained vicariously.

Summary:

The Couple Next Door is an enjoyable thriller loaded with twists and turns. It's really fast-paced and well-balanced in terms of length and distribution of plot points. What sets it apart from other thrillers is how realistic it is when it comes to its turning points. The twists aren't in the WTF category because if you put yourself in the character's shoes, it does make sense. 

I'd recommend the book to those looking forward to spending quality time reading during the weekend.

 

"Room" by Emma Donoghue (2010)

 

From the perspective of a five-year-old boy, Room tells the story of how the boy and his mother are locked up in a room for several years.

I'm not gonna treat Room like America's sweetheart Meryl Streep. Just because it deals with a painful, heart-wrenching experience and received high praise doesn't mean it's immune from objective criticism.

So...

I'm not gonna lie. This didn't click with me. I thought it would. A friend of mine likes it. People on GoodReads like it. The guys from the Academy Awards like the movie. So, what's wrong? I must be the odd one out. 

I was soldiering my way through from the beginning until the end (with the exception of the 40~50% bit which was the escape). There were times when I wanted to quit, but I had to give it another chance, and another, and another...

One of the major turn-offs for me was the author's choice to tell the story from the perspective of a very young boy, and not a normal one at that given the circumstances he found himself in. I respect her choice. It's her story after all. In fact, I found it extremely creative and imaginative, but after some time, it gets frustrating to the point of annoyance. For example, the way his thoughts/sentences/paragraphs are crammed together in a stream of consciousness kind of way and his constant 'butting in' in certain exchanges where we, as readers, wanted to know what's happening.

But I could deal with that. What I couldn't deal with was the fact that his perspective was like a dam between me and the other characters' emotions. Their feelings weren't accessible to me. In the case of short stories, it's solvable by the technique of inferring and extensive reliance on pragmatics. But when you're talking about a four-hundred-page-long book, the experience is so tiring and you feel like you're drifting through space. I'm not saying it's a hard book to read. It's just exhausting, mostly annoying, and not rewarding at all.

Summary:

If you're reading Room as a thriller, you're doing it wrong. It's not about escaping but rather about the trauma that arises from such an escape. The book raises questions about the development of children, about PTSD, and the trauma that survivors of rape and imprisonment are going through.

If you're into heartbreaking stories, this is for you.  This book is like raising a child. To enjoy it best, you have to be really patient. 

"Cursed Bunny" by Bora Chung

 

This is my first attempt at reading Korean literature. I just wanna know the background of movies like Parasite, Squid Game, or Sweet Home. What are the social factors that give birth to these works? What is it like to be born in South Korea? To get a better sense of what makes a Japanese individual Japanese, or a Korean Korean is reading their literature. 

Cursed Bunny is a collection of short stories that hops from genre to genre: body horror, gore, gothic ghost stories, fables, and fantasy. There's an undeniable sense of aloofness that blurs the lines of what's real and what's not. It reminded me of Charlie Kaufman's movies, like all these over-the-top weird happenings going on and the characters reacting to them matter-of-factly

It's a mushroom trip, a fever dream on period. There are ghosts, heads out of toilets, never-ending periods, fox spirits, multiplying bunnies, and more. Chung grotesquely amplifies her settings and plots to highlight the things she wants to convey.

Here's my take on the ten short stories:

1. The Head (2.5/5)

This is batshit KA-RAAI-ZY. To give you an idea of how crazy this story is, check out the first few lines:

She was about to flush the toilet.

“Mother?”

She looked back. There was a head popping out of the toilet, calling for her.

“Mother?”

The woman looked at it for a moment. Then, she flushed the toilet. The head disappeared in a rush of water.

She left the bathroom.

I don't even know how to describe it. It's horrifying, disgusting, disturbing, even funny in an absurd way? The atmosphere in The Head has an unmissable quality of nonchalance and detachment. Crazy things are happening and the people in this world go like 'so what'. But as a rule of thumb, the crazier a story gets, the meaningful it becomes. I tried to come up with an explanation. All I could hear is the story whispering to me things like: 'live in the now', 'cherish your body', 'accept yourself', 'don't settle for less',...

I guess Chung is playing with the expression 'down the drain' and the things that the protagonist dump on the toilet are a metaphor for her life, her youth.

2. The Embodiment (3.5/5)

A young woman is having a problem with her period that lasts for two weeks. She goes to a doctor and the doctor prescribes a two-week course of contraceptive pills. After three weeks, the problem isn't cured, so the young woman repeats the treatment only to discover later that she is pregnant.

Is the story about the importance of family as a unit? The pressures imposed on women? A criticism about patriarchy, that a baby isn't complete and whole in such a society? That women can't be independent and raise a child? You tell me.

3. Cursed Bunny (3/5)

A grandfather retelling a story to his grandson, about his distiller friend who lost everything to a competitive company that sells cheap wine.

A story about capitalism, corruption, how flawed the legal system is, greed, and revenge.

4. The Frozen Finger (3/5)

A woman trapped in a car sinking slowly in a swamp.

This feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone. The atmosphere is phenomenal: dark and eerie and scary in the sense of not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-going-on. It's also confusing, but you'll get the gist of it. A line got stuck in my head:

"It’s not her fault that her husband had an affair … Don’t you think it’s unfair?"

Maybe, it's about the double-standards women suffer from a patriarchal society, that men do whatever they want to do and not face the same consequences as women. 

5. Snare (4/5)

Written in the style of ol' school fairytales, a traveling man comes across a fox caught in a trap, liquid matter pours out from its wound. When it dries, it turns into gold.

I didn't expect this one to veer into dark, dark territories. My absolute favorite of the collection. 

6. Goodbye, my Love (2.5/5)

A developer working in a company that manufactures artificial companions transfers the data of her first model to a newer one.

Although this one deals with AI's, it soaks with emotion... and blood. Just another cliche.

7. Scars (2.5/5)

Dragged by unknown figures, a young man is thrown into a cave with shackles restraining him for good. A monster comes to feed on him regularly. 

I don't know how to rate this one. I simply don't know what it's about. I mean, I thought I was, but then, that ending! But I'm sensing a sense of 'departure from the departure', whatever the departure is.

8. Home Sweet Home (1/5)

A young couple buys a four-story building and moves in.

9. Ruler of the Wind and Sand (3.5/5)

A princess sets out on a quest across the desert to lift the curse of a blind prince.

This one feels different in tone and style. Reading about strong female characters is a breath of fresh air.

10. Reunion (1/5)

A Korean woman listening to a Polish old man telling her about his grandfather.

A PTSD story.

_______________________________________________________

A couple of issue I must point out:

- the prose of some of the stories felt like a script. It felt cold and detached, mainly made for the purpose of advancing the plot.

- the stories at the beginning of the book had more oomph than the rest. In the second half, the stories kinda lost their appeal as their themes became paler due to the stories' length. 

- the recurrence of unnamed characters throughout the book bothered me. For example, Chung referred to her characters as the following: the young man, the youth, the female, the woman, the little girl, the grandfather's friend, the grandfather of the old man, etc.

Maybe, Chung wanted her characters to be 'culturally free' and marinate them in a sense of timelessness and objectivism, but the outcome occasionally confused me trying to figure out who was speaking to whom.

______________________________________________________

Summary:

Cursed Bunny is the Korean Love Death + Robots but with an emphasis on women's issues. Relying on the WTF factor, each short story is a genre of its own with themes teetering between capitalism, feminism, greed, gender inequality, patriarchy, etc. 

First impressions are not entirely true. Be patient with the collection. Read one story at a time, and then attack the book the next day. I promise you'll get gems out of it. 

"Tender is the Flesh" by Agustina Bazterrica (2020)

What the flying flamingo did I just read?!

Most importantly...

Why on earth did I continue reading?!

It's not disturbing. It's beyond disturbing. It has the whole package: talk about cannibalism, racism, rape, animal cruelty, you name it. But other than all of that, 'slavery' is bad. Like are you for real?!

Anyway, Tender is the Flesh is about this man, Marcos, who works at a meat processing plant, a plant that processes 'human' meat. Yep! That's right. In this apocalyptic world, cannibalism has been normalized since all animals have been infected with an uncurbable virus that causes death to humans. So, say goodbye to your chicken breasts and beef stakes and chocolate-flavored whey protein shakes. In this world, you'll get all your precious protein from your fellow humans, ones who are considered literal pieces of meat, bred in farms and enhanced genetically and pumped by hormones. Imagine that dreaded skin-flaying scene in Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle stretched to two hundred pages. 

During my read, I felt mostly light-headed, like literally, I felt nausea. The graphic descriptions were too much. I understand that the whole book is about making a statement, a bloated and a very biased one, from the perspective of veganism, but come on, Agustina, you gotta admit, this shit went beyond the stratosphere. I mean, if this is how vegans see the world, I gotta say it's a hell of a nightmare.

Anyway, the book is a comment about how humans put their species above all other species and how hypocritical we are. The main character sees his society in a different light and sees how false and self-blinded it is with its emotionless technicalities and euphemisms, but in the end, he isn't any better. That's how conformity works. You see what your peers do, and you decide—consciously or subconsciously—to follow the herd. You might have thoughts in opposition, or even might give voice to your thoughts... but you will not. Why? But deep, deep down, you wanna survive, even at the cost of your values, morals and what you consider ideal.

“After all, since the world began, we’ve been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we’ve been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical.”

Summary:

On the surface, Tender is the Flesh is a thriller/horror that inclines towards shock rather than gore and violence with a hell of a plot twist. But if you remove the bones, the marrow of the book is simply a satire about crowd/mob psychology and everything it entails: consumerism, how societies collectively manipulate words and attitudes based on their needs and priorities.

It's a book that will affect you for days and make you think. I wouldn't recommend it for the weak-hearted. If you can stomach bloody plots, then this is for you. If you don't and still are intrigued by its premise "however absurd and refutable it is", read it but don't take everything literally.

"The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig (2020)

 

I remember when I was but a little boy my father asking me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I remember looking him in the eye and saying with absolute conviction, "I want to be an astronaut." In retrospect, naivety mixed with a buttload of space cartoons was doing the answering for me back then. But putting all of that aside, my words were true and honest, and I believed them.

But then... life happened.

And I found myself dragging my ass through medical school, switching to architectural school right to majoring in English. And here I am, the sum of all my past experiences and disappointments and even achievements, a modest high school teacher.

The Midnight Library tells the story of Nora, a fixer-upper low-achiever. After many regrets during the course of her life, from abandoning pursuing swimming professionally, quitting the band, not venturing into Australia along with her friend, not committing to a serious relationship, getting fired, right to blaming herself for her cat's death, Nora decided that life wasn't worth living.

Nora was so real and relatable to me that made the reading experience extremely painful. I don't usually get emotional, but I understand where she's coming from. I bet we all have been there. Disappointment after a disappointment after a disappointment... until depression becomes your shadow trailing you everywhere, even in your sleep. 

Luckily, The Midnight Library isn't about falling into the pit of despair, not about rising out of it like a phoenix, but rather about understanding why one descends into depression in the first place. It's about the struggle between what we are and what we might become, about one's potentiality, their abilities and interests, and how they could redirect them in a way that may bring happiness and meaning to their lives. It's a self-help book in disguise as a well-written story. It doesn't offer a magic recipe for overcoming failure, but it guides you towards whatever end you desire in life. 

I appreciate the short chapters and their witty, remarkable titles and Matt's light-hearted humor. His words are charged with emotion and filled with objective wisdom. He made me sad and laugh. He made me tearful and thoughtful.

Summary:

The Midnight Library is a sci-fi/fantasy story about regrets, lost and wasted opportunities, and crushed hopes. The reading experience is therapeutic and rewarding. It's Square Enix's Life is Strange (the first installment) meeting Blake Crouch's Dark Matter... or at least, the vibe of them. 

I'd recommend this book for those who have lost their way in life, for those who can't see beyond today, for those who are in desperate need of love and connection. 

"Dune Messiah" by Frank Herbert (Dune Chronicles, #2, 1969)

 

[This review contains mild spoilers as it delves into the character of Paul.]

The saga continues. The Harkonnens have been defeated. The Emperor of the Known Universe dethroned. And his daughter, Princess Irulen, to be wed to Paul Muad'Dib. That's how the story in the first book ended. It's a standalone book. The ending is a happy one. But naturally, I was curious to know what would happen in Paul's rein. What about the bloody future he saw? So, I decided to continue reading.

Dune Messiah is told in the third person omniscient. It continues the story of Paul Muad'Dib focusing on the consequences of his reign that lasted twelve years after the events of the first book. Where the first book was all about the rise of a hero, the second is about his downfall. It's like a balance. Paul is an example of "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain".  

In the first book, we all were rooting for him; he was but a fifteen-year-old child when he was indirectly uprooted from his homeworld Caladin by decree of the emperor Shaddam IV, his father was killed by the Harkonnens and was forced into exile along with his mother. His rallying the Fremen against the Harkonnen usurpers was just and his jihad was justifiable. I felt exhilarated throughout his journey as he gained his abilities, from being a Mentat, a Bene Gesserit adept to a full-blown navigator of prescience. 

By the end of the first book, anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that Paul is turning into another perfect Gary Stu: the Bene Gesserit paving the way for the Fremen's Mehdi through their Missionaria Protectiva, Paul's royal blood of both houses Atreides and Harkonnen, and all his powers. All these attributes condensed in a single character are overkill. In short, he got it easy. There's nothing unique about him because hidden hands were at work. What matters then for the readers to feel and relate to him are his choices and actions, which the second book will highlight these aspects.

Dune Messiah tells a different kind of hero, one readers of sci-fi and fantasy aren't accustomed to. In the introduction by the author's son, Brian Herbert, he says that editors rejected the book and called it the "disappointment of the year". They "loved the majestic, heroic aspects of Dune and hated the antithetical elements of the sequel. Readers wanted stories about heroes accomplishing great feats", not stories that take into account the realistic and humanistic nature of the hero.

In this sense, Paul's quest in the sequel isn't outwards. It's inwards. He's still the same  (At least, he thinks so), but his ability of prescience leads him eventually to be the very thing he always feard of becoming—a figurehead, even a god, for militant religious fanatics of an interstellar religious government. Throughout the book, Herbert keeps reminding us that Paul didn't want any of it. He snatched the position of Emperor to prevent a bloody future, but when that bloody future came to be, Paul stated that it was better than a bloodier future. It's a cycle, a vicious one, Paul finds himself trapped in... because violence only leads to violence. He's just a player, a mote of dust stirred by the wind, and the wind is Jihad. He thought that he could control it, and he did, when he used it to free the Fremen, but then things got out of hand and Jihad became Paul's boogeyman. 

"He didn't use the Jihad. The Jihad used him."

How? Because Jihad is an idea that existed long before him, and once ideas embed themselves in one's consciousness, they become hard to kill.

“You can’t stop a mental epidemic. It leaps from person to person across parsecs. It’s overwhelmingly contagious. It strikes at the unprotected side, in the place where we lodge the fragments of other such plagues. Who can stop such a thing? Muad’Dib hasn’t the antidote. The thing has roots in chaos. Can orders reach there?"

 

Since the first book, everything Paul ever did was an attempt to put an end to this holy war. Guided—or misguided—by his visions, he committed unthinkable atrocities in the name of peace. 

“Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since—   

Paul just replaced a blood-thirsty emperor with a worse one. In the book, the guy equates himself with Ghengis Khan and Hitler, and even smirks at their not-very-impressive statistics of people killed in their wars. I was like, "Whoa! Wait a sec!" That was the tipping point when I lost interest in him.

But then again, Paul isn't that clear-cut and prone to easy interpretation. Remember that he's just a man who happened to have certain abilities, who thought he could do something good, who fucked up, who realized later that, 

"there are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Nothing. Nothing can be done."

That's the reason why he realized that he shouldn't have tampered with the flow of the future in the first place. But the realization was too late. It came at the expense of his reason to live, at the expense of his beloved Chani.

Summary: 

Dune Messiah is a book that plays with the ideal hero image and presents something realistic. It's about political intrigue, power struggle, ideas of morality, and immortality. 

To get the best experience of the second book, do NOT approach it while having the first book as a reference. Read it as a standalone book. 

Even though the rating is lower than the first book, I still want to invest in the third book, Children of Dune.

"Verity" by Colleen Hoover (2018)

[This review is spoiler free]

Nothing ever good comes out of a job offering a substantial amount of money. There's always a catch. Take a note for a future reference. Lock Every Door; The Turn of the Key. And now Verity.

When I finished the book, I was like:

Verity follows Lowen Ashleigh, a reclusive, unknown writer with a failing career and finances who recently lost her mother to cancer. She accepts a tempting offer to co-write and continue the series of a famous writer called Verity. Of course, she doesn't accept right away, but the man [who comforted her after she witnessed the death of a random dude in an accident, the man who happened to be going to the same meeting that day who happened to be Verity's husband] is too charmingly persuasive. She drives to the Verity's house to pick up everything related to the stories so that she can make a layout of the remaining books in the series. When she reaches the house, she discovered that Verity is in a coma...

This is pretty much how the 336-page-long book starts. It was a quick, quick read. I really enjoyed the writing style, but I didn't expect how mature and graphic the content was since this is my first experience reading a book by Colleen Hoover. All I ever knew about the author was that she wrote YA fiction or new adult fiction. So, this was a shock to me. Not that I mind such content if the plot is worth it. 

The book is linear in its approach. It doesn't sidetrack. It doesn't stretch a section of the story at the expense of other sections; the chapters are equal and short. And the choice of diction is well done: completely comprehensible and not pretentious.

I have mixed opinions regarding the characters. Lowen, for example, wasn't the kind of character I'd root for; many of her choices were poor. Yes, I related to her at the beginning, being a struggling writer such as myself with no fanbase before I decided to quit once and for all... but the way she decided to handle things at the end... well, I'm not a fan. Jeremy, on the other hand, is painted two-dimensionally. Hoover has 'bespoke tailored' him to be the perfect husband. Who'd buy that?! That's the reason I had my suspicions wrapped around him right from the get-go [don't worry. This is not a spoiler]. As for Verity, for the sake of not spoiling anything, I'm not going to talk about her.

As for the ending, well, I understand there are mixed reviews concerning it. It's a hit-and-miss; either readers may like it or not. Personally, I'm inclined to say nothing about it. I mean, yes, it's totally unexpected, I get that, but the premise of the plot promised something more. When I reached the ending, it felt flat, like where the hell did all that momentum go?! While I was reading, I thought of so many cool and extreme hypotheses to figure out Verity... but I got nothing except for a meh ending. But, I must point out, there's a slight chance, the ending is open. If that's the case, then I'm good with that. In fact, I think it's brilliant.

One of the major issues I've had with the plot is [spoiler alert] how could anyone fake being in a coma. To borrow Jeremy's words "It doesn't make sense". No one can hold still for minutes, let alone hours. They're bound to make a move, any move, at least involuntarily. Besides, there are procedures for doctors to check on coma patients, the Glasgow Coma Scale, for instance. I'm sure that for such a critical medical case, a doctor will examine her occasionally at home to see if there's progress. S/He would examine her reflexes to stimuli, be it auditory/visual/physical. She will make a response: her pupils contracting or her knee jerking. It's a given. [end of spoiler]. I could overlook this detail, but the whole book is based on Verity's state.

Summary:

Verity is like the new Gone Girl... except it's not. It's a thriller/horror. It's extremely disturbing and equally disgusting. It's understandable that many readers would find it difficult to continue reading, but the ending would explain why it only has to be written that way. 

Anyway, it's a story about lust, obsession, parenting... but the heart of it is about the process of creative writing. I'd recommend Verity for readers who like disturbing thrillers with a not-so-bad ending.

"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.