Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata (1964)

An aging man revisits his involvement at 30 with a teenage girl.

Book Review: Beauty and Sadness, beyond the impeccable title, is a deceptively simple story of wrong emotions and wrong actions. Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) subtly mixes emotions, memories, motives in this novel so that the reader is left unsure who is loving, who is hating, what is remembered, and what's been forgotten. Traditional views are crossed with the modern, and there are psychological issues, cruelty, revenge, and many shades of love, including jealousy and obsession. Innocence is here too: the innocence of an infatuated young girl, the innocence of a son who loves tradition. More than passion (though there is that), this is a novel of the mind, colder, more analytical. When one seeks revenge, is it revenge for another or for herself. A seduction many years before leads to another seduction many years later. In Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata looks at the variety of human connections, and uses descriptions of art as a vehicle for emotion, for love. Apparently simple, everything laid out, yet nothing is certain. An older man, an author, remembers and wishes to see his young lover from 20 years ago, which story he obliviously made into a novel. The once-young woman, now older, a successful traditional artist, still beautiful, still holds the memory of her young love. A beautiful young woman ("frighteningly pretty," "frighteningly beautiful"), an exponent of modern art, heedless of tradition, transforms all. Despite the two lovers' feelings, Kawabata explores whether love can be so wrong, so harmful, that it becomes poisonous decades later. A love, seemingly beautiful to the lovers, that causes so much sadness for everyone. "Beauty" and "sadness" are not opposites. Part of the sadness of external beauty is that it fades, is only a temporary trait, but inner beauty, for those who perceive it, may last forever. Beauty can be used to create sorrow here, but Beauty and Sadness is not a sad love story. There are moments of Mishima and Murakami. Typically I dislike May-December stories, such as older professors preying on female students. What aggravates the issue is when it's a 30 year-old man and a 15 year-old girl. With that caveat, there are Shakespearean levels of tragedy here.  [4★]

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese (2012)

The story of Saul Indian Horse, an Ojibwe, from child to man.

Book Review: Indian Horse is a book that hurts. It hurts the head and hurts the heart. Richard Wagamese (1955-2017) wrote a book that the reader is compelled to read, wants to read despite the pain. The life of Saul Indian Horse is a mirror for First Nations people in Canada. He sees the casualties in the battle to survive the deep forest, the divide between the old religion and the new, the horrors of the government residential schools, the lure of drink. The injustice of being the "other" in your own country. The saving grace for Saul, his only means of escape, is his love for ice hockey. A love that could only be had by a Canadian or by someone who had nothing else left to love. It's a story that needs to be told, that needs to provide witness. The writing can be quite simple and quite beautiful: "My mother seemed almost weightless by now. I was always surprised that she left footprints." Indian Horse is not directly autobiographical, though it certainly reads that way. Wagamese was a member of the Ojibwe (also known as Ojibway (as here) or Chippewa (in the States). The descriptions of ice hockey are exhilarating initially, but later pale somewhat as it begins to seem like a teen sports novel in which our young hero will surely save the day. In fairness, this makes the gut punch of the ending that much more visceral. Wagamese makes this an important novel, tying the Indian role in the hockey world to their role in Canadian society, for playing hockey will surely make one Canadian just as for earlier waves of immigrants playing baseball made one American. Wagamese tells a story in Indian Horse that is just as real today in Utah or South Dakota, and the horrors Wagamese describes still occur in residential schools for students with disabilities. A compelling read written well about an important subject. No matter how much it hurts.  [4★]

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (2017)

Half human, half robot, cyborg, android, "construct," call it what you will but it calls itself Murderbot and seeks its own life while protecting those annoying and pesky humans.

SciFi Review: All Systems Red, the first in a series, is fun, light, and a quick read. It's SciFi, it's a mystery, it's a thriller. There's a whole lotta fun packed into this novella. Murderbot is a security unit protecting a human advance team exploring a newly discovered planet. All Systems Red won the Nebula Award (2017) and Hugo Award (2018) for best novella, but while wonderfully entertaining, it's not that amazing: it's what a good SciFi story should be. The key to All Systems Red is Murderbot's reclusive, idiosyncratic, half-robot personality. Will appeal to the misanthropic introvert in so many of us ("when I do manage to care, I'm a pessimist"). Like any good millennial, it just wants to binge on Netflix. My only quibbles are that the ending is too neat and tidy, and Murderbot's dialog with humans is too human. That's explained within the story, but it still felt jarring, like any two humans interacting. On the other hand, I found Murderbot's internal monologue to be charming and irresistible. Much like my own. Hmm, I hope I'm not identifying a little too much ... .  [3½★]

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath (2019)

A young woman leaving home for the first time takes a train ride to self-discovery.

Story Review: "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom" is a story Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) wrote in 1952 while a student at Smith College and submitted to Mademoiselle magazine for publication, but was rejected. This thin volume would be a well-placed incentive for a new edition of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. The edition seems  be a bit of a rush job since there's a font error, Ted Hughes is listed as "Tim" Hughes (or is that an intentional jab?), and the wonderful Ariel: the Restored Edition is called the "Restores" Edition (hopefully these have been corrected). Written when Plath was 20, Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom gives hints of her future genius. In her apprenticeship, Plath seems to be working intently with colors and description, sometimes clumsily: "the wheels clocked away like cogs of a gigantic clock" (?). The story does, however, relate well to the autobiography that she made a significant part of her work. I hate to dwell on that since I believe Plath is underrated as a poet because too much attention is paid to her tragic life instead of the poems, but the relationship to her history is an interesting part of this "new" story. As we've read in her journals and letters, Plath assiduously tried to be a dutiful daughter while at the same time was consumed with vaulting ambition, a massive capacity for hard work, and a certain instability that was both daring and uncontrollable. In this allegorical, symbolic, other worldly story, a young woman (the Maiden) is pressured to take a train ride: "It's not my fault I took this train. It was my parents. They wanted me to go." An older woman (the Crone, source of wisdom) on the train counters: "You let them put you on the train ... and did not rebel." The train apparently takes its riders inevitably to some unpleasant end of the line, unless one acts (makes an "assertion of the will). The Ninth Kingdom is "the kingdom of negation, of the frozen will." The people on the train are (figuratively) blind that they're heading to some horrid destination. It's not difficult to see the train as the average life that leads to boring mundanity unless one makes the effort to slip the surly bonds of conformity. Plath did not  want to be limited by her mother's (very real) need for security. Interesting that the father character is described as "anonymous" and "incognito," a far cry from a "man in black with a Meinkampf look." The story seems to be written for herself more than anyone else. Plath is giving herself permission to be daring, to buck the rules, to "jump the track." She's trying to find a way to justify becoming the writer she would be, rather than sticking to the script provided for women in Fifties, while not bringing unhappiness to her mother. It's striking how much Mary needs the Crone's approval. Early on "the woman's eyes were upon her, level after blue level of reproach, and Mary felt herself sinking, drowned in shame." She feels a doom of guilt for not resisting her parents. On the next page, after Mary decides to take action: "The woman flashed Mary a sudden radiant smile, and her eyes lit with admiration." Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom is an enjoyable and compulsive read, apart from biography. While much is suggested, much is left undeveloped; it even has a little echo of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" about it. The older woman's statement that "I could not tell you. I could not help you until you made the first positive decision" reminds me of Glinda the Good Witch telling Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz that she had the power to return home all along. But for all the good moments in Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom, it didn't take the author of Ariel and The Bell Jar to write this. As much we love Plath and her work, she deserves our clear-eyed honesty. I'm still glad to have read it, to have a glimpse of the younger Sylvia Plath, as I'll read anything and everything she ever wrote.  [3★]

Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze (1953)

An escaped convict and a call girl on the run try to build a future based on a mutual lack of trust.

Mystery Review: Black Wings Has My Angel is more crime novel than mystery, with more than enough hard-boiled suspense. Elliott Chaze (1915-1990) follows the James Cain and Jim Thompson anti-hero school of writing, and if you enjoyed books such as Double Indemnity or The Grifters you'll enjoy this one as well. Our leads are Virginia and Tim, both tough as calculus and as unpredictable as Colorado weather (much of the story takes place in the Centennial State). An early pulp cover of Black Wings Has My Angel warns: "She had the face of a madonna and a heart made of dollar bills!" Although Virginia is described as your typical ravishing noir dame, moll, femme fatale, don't let the heavy-breathing descriptions of her startling legs blind you to what's really going on behind those lavender eyes to die for. She's more than a match for her untrustworthy lover in every way. The two main characters are equal in their unholy character, with Tim consistently underestimating his capricious partner (although he describes her as "a tough, elegant adventuress with plenty of guts and imagination"). The dueling love between the two paired with a clockwork plot makes it a noir classic. Although Black Wings Has My Angel includes some graphic violence ("Alive he was nothing but trouble") that may approach torture porn for some readers, most should be able to make it through unscathed. Well written, quick reading, the whole package.  [4½★]

Stoner by John Williams (1965)

William Stoner, the child of farmers, becomes a university literature professor and lives life the best he can.

Book Review: Stoner reads like a biography, it's a literary portrait. A life to read and watch and learn what life is about. Here everyone is distant from others, there are emotions, but hidden and controlled and masked by distances. No one wholly bad or wholly good. While reading I thought of The Secret History and felt that Stoner was somehow the opposite of that book. The humble man of the earth discovers literature at college, and becomes what he has to be, even at pain and cost to others. "He wondered at the foolishness that drove men to do the things they did." This is a simple life, not much different really than the lives that many people live. Not much success, not much failure, a lot of making the best of it and learning in between, dealing with the obstacles. "He felt at times that he was a kind of vegetable, and he longed for something -- even pain -- to pierce him, to bring him alive."  John Williams (1922-1994) tries to create a real and credible life story. In any life, we mostly try to do the best we can, there are moments of happiness, sorrow, terror, disappointment, and of what might have been. There's confusion and events that don't make much sense. We try to do what we want to do, and sometimes we find value in what we do. We don't achieve as much as we want, and we're not always as good as we imagine ourselves. Williams catches all of that in Stoner. Although written from a man's point of view, the novel is full of women, and the reader will puzzle over the wife, pity the daughter, and hope for the lover. "They had been brought up ... that the life of the mind and the life of the senses were separate." We're left with the story of a long enough life that wasn't easy, wasn't meant to be. But it was the life he had, interwoven with the lives of others. The salt of the earth from one family to another, reading his literature, teaching his students. Life and life only.  [5★]

The White Book by Han Kang (2016)

A meditation on and exploration of life and loss.

Book Review: The White Book is an indescribable mix of memoir, fiction, poetry, nonfiction -- it probably shouldn't even exist. It's much more postmodern and meta than all those postmodern writers you hear about, without even trying. Divided into three sections: "I," "She," "All Whiteness," it's the opened tap of a creative mind, imagination as tangible power, splashed across 157 short pages: "the ruins of seventy years ago might be startled into revealing themselves." Described as a meditation on the color white, that's not quite right. The White Book is meditative, but on life and loss, fragility. Han Kang uses "white" as a mantra to focus her thoughts, part of the semiotics of life, a stimulus to goad her imagination, a totem, a talisman, a conscious breath, a reminder: "The warm white candle wax creeps ever downward ... eventually out of existence." In secular language Kang creates her own religious interpretations. Even the loss of an older sister in infancy which led to Kang's birth, ostensibly the thread of the book, is used to interview a host of issues: "a white butterfly stuttering forward might snatch at her gaze." The White Book is an observation, a memory, memory transformed into possibilities, creating the now, imagination changing reality. Kang uses an isolated time in Warsaw ("I think of her coming here instead of me") much as Federico Garcia Lorca used his visit to New York City (Poeta en Nueva York), to employ the strangeness, the foreign world to free the imagination, unmoored by the familiar. A quiet book, contemplative, virtually plotless, philosophical ("the only things that the mind cannot examine are memories of the future"), sinking deep into the underground streams of life, in lines such as "at some point you will inevitably cast me aside ... and I cannot now return to the time before that knowledge."  [5★]