BOOK TALKS: NORTH POINTS HERE

by Mahros Abaño


There are things that I know I should be doing. What was it, I have no idea yet; I know I will find it. I just knew it.

While waiting for that time to come, I got my hands on Banana Yoshimoto’s book, N. P. This is a book that I read not because I wanted to read it during that period; it was just the first book that I grabbed when I went to the loo one day. When I was still carrying that book afterwards (I washed my hands, of course), I knew I got myself hooked.

The plot of N.P. is simple. There was this famous writer in exile who killed himself. His ninety-eighth short story, which was entitled N.P. or North Point, was said to be cursed because whoever translated it in Japanese from English would later commit suicide as well. The book fell in the hands of Shoji, Kazami’s boyfriend, who after translating the story also committed suicide.

The story began a few years after Shoji died, and for some reason Kazami got entangled into the lives of the writer’s offspring who were still living in the shadow of their father’s death and his ninety-eighth story; and a mysterious woman who was as passionate with the story as they were.

The simplicity of the narration and tone to which that story was written makes N.P., at first glance lightweight. As the story progresses, I began to see otherwise. Yoshimoto juxtaposes summer to the turmoil that the characters were undergoing, with their past, among themselves and with their own demons. I believe it was not an accident that one of the characters was a psychologist, with all the mania going on around them.

Then of course, there is the connection between the four characters held by a short story that represents all those bittersweet memories.

Also, there were a few controversies, such as incestuous relationships, thrown in for good measure. It was handled with such savoir faire by the author that unless another reader was extra squeamish, will take this turn of a father-daughter, brother-sister sexual relationships with an equal sense of indulgence.

The theme of a May-December affair was recurrent throughout the story. It can be seen as another juxtaposition of hope and the loss of it as was depicted in the life of the characters. Youth is seen a sort of vibrancy, of summer, of life. In the story, these young women, like Kazami, came into the lives of these men like a ray of sunshine but gave not enough hope to them to not take the next bus to the afterlife.

The use of language is another theme of the story. As N.P. revolves around the translation of the ninety-eighth story, there was of course the issue of how language could be both a bridge and as a wall to those who were using it. How one translates his action into words could be either misconstrued by the other because of what words he used and how he used it. It can be seen that metaphorically, Kazami, who works as an English translator, served that duty throughout the course of the book.

It was not just a matter of language per se, but it was how one expresses oneself to another. As man further progressed in the use and facility of the language, there was less communication going on. And this sort of confusion was later on increased because of fear of speaking all together with the characters because the idea of hurting the other looms above them. Here is where Kazami works as the translator for all of them. She might have not succeeded fully with the task; her efforts were did not go for naught.

What I liked and disliked about this book, however, is that the ending was a bit contrived to make up for a happy ending. It was not really that of a happy ending in Disney terms but the author seemed to decide she needs to tie all those loose ends before the story ends. It was still beautifully written although it became too comfortable towards the end.

That being said, I still like N.P. despite its flaws. It was an easy read despite the themes that were tackled throughout the book. Unlike the other Japanese authors that I am fond of, Yoshimoto writes in the manner that hits the target, takes the readers in but would not spit them cruelly out. One would be assured of a relatively happy disposition after reading the book. To which unfortunately some her characters were not.


Readvolution Note: N.P. is available for borrowing from Bookcase 2 (currently in Content).


About the contributor
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Mahros Abano writes because she was absolutely useless in her Home Economics’ classes; she wishes to learn how to knit a tablecloth in the future, preferably before hell freezes over because of global warming. She is from Healthcare.

BOOK TALKS: BOOKS BY KATHY REICHS

Kathy Reichs during a lecture

BONE JOUR

By Mahros Abaño

There was a phase in my reading life that I would read a particular author and get all excited, and quicker than you can say “Anne Rice,” I am out the door and hoarding all the books that that author wrote. Then I will be enormously pissed that the rest of his or her stuff stank like three-day-old eggs (you hear me, John Grisham?).

Nevertheless, I never soured at reading genre fiction although this time in a less-obsessive manner. My taste in genre fiction as of late has been leaning towards the macabre and gore category, so it was a blast for me that I have discovered Kathy Reichs. And my obsessive hoarding has begun its vicious cycle once more.

I discovered Ms Reichs while watching the television series, Bones. For all those not familiar with this show, this is a procedural drama in the likes of CSI and Crossing Jordan. I might be hearing a collective groan of disgust, “No, not another show about corpses,” but this is a really good show. Its protagonist is the forensic anthropologist, Temperance Brennan (played by Emily Deschanel), and she helps the FBI (with Special Agent Seeley Booth, played by the hunka hunka burning love, David Boreanaz of Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) identify the bones of the mutilated, burned or long-buried victims who are in need of justice.

The show was based on Kathy Reichs’ main character in her books, Temperance Brennan. Tempe is based on Ms Reichs, as she is also a forensic anthropologist in North Carolina and Canada. She already wrote nine books and I’ve already got my filthy hands on five of them. Ironically, her books are not very famous here, judging that the only book of hers that I have bought at Powerbooks was her third one, Deadly Decisions, and the rest I have scoured from the shelves of local Booksale shops. She was usually compared to Patricia Cornwell who has Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist, as her heroine but since I am reviewing Kathy Reichs, I’ll stick to her bones (pun intended).

Like all genre fiction especially the ones with a recurring protagonist, the plot is basically the same with each of the five books. Her first novel, Deja Dead, is set in Quebec, Canada and tackles a series of grisly murders of women that seemed to not be connected; one of the victims’ skeletons was found in the grounds of an abandoned of a monastery. It turns out there is a serial killer on the loose and it came to the point that Temperance became its next target. She eventually killed him, of course, when he broke into her apartment and she stuck a knife in his eye during the struggle.

One of my least favorite, Fatal Voyage, was about an airline disaster. This is her fourth book and it was set in North Carolina. As she helps identify the remains of the crash victims, she stumbles upon a secret organization of modern-day cannibals who mutilate old people. Like any fiction worth its salt, this secret organization’s members are from very high places so the heroine not only encounters a lot of corpses in the way but also a lot of red tape that almost killed her reputation. This book, as Reichs’ mentioned in her foreword, was inspired by the work she did with the 9/11 attacks. The plane crash was what she meant of course, not the cannibalism, which metaphorically could be seen as that if you watch the news.

Reichs set her next book, Grave Secrets, in Guatemala where Tempe Brennan was commissioned to work for the Historical Society to identify the victims of mass graves, who were killed during a series of rebel cleansing by the Guatemalan government. Of course, there was again an attack of a serial killer who put her victims in septic tanks and she was asked to help solve it.

What is fascinating by Reichs’ writing is that her heroine is not perfect. Sure, she may be smart and gutsy but she is also a recovering alcoholic, a divorcee, a single mom and has a nasty crush on her partner, Agent Andrew Ryan. I am not familiar with how much Kathy Reichs is in Temperance Brennan other than the career profile but it is refreshing to see a character who doesn’t wear Chanel pumps and getting the bad guys.

Another thing that I like about the series is that I don’t have to be a forensic pathologist to get the jargon. Maybe it also is an advantage for this writer that she knows what she’s talking about and can explain it to her readers without making them fall asleep. Stuff like forensic entomology or cranial reconstruction in writing can be really boring but Reichs was able to make it interesting and relevant to her novels. Her character’s continuous pop culture references also help the readers identify with her as being human not just information-spewing machine.

Its not that the novels doesn’t have its faults, it has. Inasmuch as I am enamored with the heroine, there are a lot of times I find her annoying. She gets herself in situations that usually get her into trouble. Reichs makes no bones (pun again intended) in making her heroine transition from a lab habitué to an action hero after a few pages. And sometimes the change of pace is not as fluid as it should. There are a few “how did she do that?” moments and at one point I just wanted to move along.

If the heroine was well-written, sadly, the others were not. Some of them are so stereotypical I have to roll my eyes when they were introduced. Then again, this is a suspense novel, not a Pulitzer Prize winner anyway.

All things aside, I cannot say enough that reading these novels is an enjoyable experience. A nice balance of geekiness and action. A love story that is not sappy. I can’t wait to read my next Kathy Reichs’ book.

READVOLUTION RECOMMENDS

These are among the many books that READvolution — a project of the Writers Guild that promotes love for reading in the workplace — recommends for your read in the month of February.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways that even after the last page is turned, the reader is left to wonder what really happened. In the hands of a less gifted writer, unraveling this tangled web could easily give way to complete chaos. However, under Krauss's watchful eye, these twists and turns only strengthen the impact of this enchanting book.

The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed.

"The poetry of her prose, along with an uncanny ability to embody two completely original characters, is what makes Krauss an expert at her craft. But in the end, it's the absolute belief in the uninteruption of love that makes this novel a pleasure, and a wonder to behold." --Gisele Toueg

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

According to Arthur Golden's absorbing first novel, the word "geisha" does not mean "prostitute," as Westerners ignorantly assume--it means "artisan" or "artist." To capture the geisha experience in the art of fiction, Golden trained as long and hard as any geisha who must master the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival beauties, and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. After earning degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard and Columbia--and an M.A. in English--he met a man in Tokyo who was the illegitimate offspring of a renowned businessman and a geisha. This meeting inspired Golden to spend 10 years researching every detail of geisha culture, chiefly relying on the geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who spent years charming the very rich and famous.

The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute--and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumor spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."

Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow--the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity--the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world, and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors.

The Zahir by Paolo Coehlo

The press chat cites 65 million copies of Coelho's eight previous novels in print, making the Brazilian author one of the world's bestselling novelists (150 countries and 56 languages). This book, whose title means "the present" or "unable to go unnoticed" in Arabic, has an initial staggered laydown of eight million copies in 83 countries and 42 languages. It centers on the narrator's search for his missing wife, Esther, a journalist who fled Iraq in the runup to the present war, only to disappear from Paris; the narrator, a writer, is freed from suspicion when his lover, Marie, comes forward with a (true) alibi. He seeks out Mikhail, the man who may be Esther's most recent lover and with whom she was last seen, who has abandoned his native Kazakhstan for a kind of speaking tour on love. Mikhail introduces the narrator to a global underground "tribe" of spiritual seekers who resist, somewhat vaguely, conventional ways of living. Through the narrator's journey from Paris to Kazakhstan, Coelho explores various meanings of love and life, but the impact of these lessons is diminished significantly as they are repeated in various forms by various characters. Then again, 65 million readers can't be wrong; the spare, propulsive style that drove The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes and Coelho's other books will easily carry fans through myriad iterations of the ways and means of amor.

Eleven Minutes by Paolo Coehlo

From SPi Writers Guild
Eleven Minutes tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heart-broken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that 'Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer...' A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune yet ends up working the streets as a prostitute. In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love while at the same time developing a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake or risking everything to find her own 'inner light' and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

In this gripping and daring new novel, Paulo Coelho sensitively explores the spiritual nature of sex and love and invites us to confront our own prejudices, demons and embrace our own 'inner light'.

Love You Forever by Robert N. Munsch

The mother sings to her sleeping baby: "I'll love you forever / I'll love you for always / As long as I'm living / My baby you'll be." She still sings the same song when her baby has turned into a fractious 2-year-old, a slovenly 9-year-old, and then a raucous teen. So far so ordinary--but this is one persistent lady. When her son grows up and leaves home, she takes to driving across town with a ladder on the car roof, climbing through her grown son's window, and rocking the sleeping man in the same way. Then, inevitably, the day comes when she's too old and sick to hold him, and the roles are at last reversed. Each stage is illustrated by one of Sheila McGraw's comic and yet poignant pastels. (Ages 4 to 8) --Richard Farr

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From Library Journal

While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots the barely pubescent Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love. What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength. Florentino remains faithful in his fashion; paralleling the tale of the marriage is that of his numerous liaisons, all ultimately without the depth of love he again declares at Urbino's death. In substance and style not as fantastical, as mythologizing, as the previous works, this is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kabbalah: A Love Story by Lawrence Kushner

Sometime, somewhere, someone is searching for answers……

in a thirteenth-century castle
…on a train to a concentration camp
…in a New York city apartment

Hidden within the binding of an ancient text that has been passed down through the ages lies the answer to one of the heart’s eternal questions. When the text falls into the hands of Rabbi Kalman Stern, he has no idea that his lonely life of intellectual pursuits is about to change once he opens the book. Soon afterward, he meets astronomer Isabel Benveniste, a woman of science who stirs his soul as no woman has for many years. But Kalman has much to learn before he can unlock his heart and let true love into his life. The key lies in the mysterious document he finds inside the Zohar, the master text of the Kabbalah.

Share your books in BOOK TALKS this February 23rd at SPi Night Cafe. HAPPY READING!

Reviews from Amazon.com, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and SPi Writers Guild .

BOOK TALKS: FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY

by Ivy San Diego

Dark.
Horrific.
Gloomy.
Brute.
Violent.
Abominable.
Gory.
Vile.

Anyone can come up with his/her own list of contemptuous description of Frank Miller’s Sin City: The Hard Goodbye. But this graphic novel is more than what is stated above. Aside from the exceptional illustrations, Frank Miller’s story line has a lot more to say.

Marv, the protagonist may be called a monster personified but behind his atrocious features, is a man who longs to be loved, a man who appreciates kindness and a man who values the people who cares for him.

Marv fell in love with Goldie a high-class prostitute who was the only person who showed him kindness and love despite who he is. Unfortunately, Goldie was murdered and this prompted Marv to carry out justice to Goldie’s murderers. He searched for the cannibal Kevin and Cardinal Roark and killed them both.

The story ended with Marv’s demise via electric chair. He paid for the crimes he did, fought for what he thought was right but he died not really knowing why he even existed.

“Hell? You don’t know what hell is. None of you people do. Hell isn’t getting beat up or cut up or hauled in front if some faggot jury, Hell is waking up every goddamn morning and not knowing why you’re even here. Why you’re even breathing”

Marv, The Hard Goodbye

And if I were to describe this graphic novel as to how it affected me, I would say that it is:

Tragic.
Poignant.
Pitiful.
Desolate.

Life is indeed a tragedy if you don’t know what you live for. It may have a dismal ending but it is an exceptional story. Again, hats off to Frank Miller.

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Ivy San Diego is

BETWEEN THE STANDS: BOOK REVIEW

ELEVEN MINUTES (by Paolo Coelho)

By DYG

In a chic restaurant in Geneva, the walls of which are adorned by paintings of Joan Miró and while seated on the very table film director Federico Fellini had dined, Maria stopped being a child and started becoming a woman – more aware of the ways of the world and more willing to face her fears.

In what may be Paolo Coelho’s first book on sex and about prostitution in particular – inspired by Irving Wallace’s 1970’s book Seven Minutes – lead character Maria embarks on a journey from the desolation of Brazil to the world stage that is Geneva, Switzerland with three things in mind: adventure, money, and finding a husband. Bored by routine in a small town in Brazil, Maria is offered a job in Geneva by a French impressario who, as it turned out, comes to Brazil often to recruit pretty women to work for his Cabaret Cologny in Geneva.

Upon her arrival, she discovered that she was to get only a tenth of the salary promised her, and she was bound to work for the cabaret for a year. Stucked, lost, without a future in sight, Maria went on to spend her one year watching television, thinking of Brazil, confiding in a Filipina, and falling in love with an Arab man.

Unfortunately, Love – the word that either brings the world to its knees, or exalts it – is currently not in Maria’s vocabulary. Knowing that she can pleasure herself without a man (she learned masturbation as a kid), she only lived to experience pleasure and adventure, not to love. But when she met a man on the pilgrimage route called the Santiago Road, she discovered the power that true love can bring.

Eleven Minutes opens us to a world many of us may never know or personally experience but despite this, Coelho is not judgmental. Rather, he provides the female character a chance to redeem herself.Once again, master storyteller Paolo Coelho spins a web of unparalleled literary gem only Brazilians could possibly create.

Fresh from the success of Cry of the Valkryies and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Coelho – known in all corners of the globe for his seminal work The Alchemist –finally returns with a story that tugs at the heart but is food for the mind as well. Direct to the point but with the occasional segue ways that make this work completely amusing, Coelho provides us readers a new way to have fun, relax, and get away from our own miseries.

Like the works of Latin American writers before him and even those by his contemporaries, his new work allows us readers to conjure in our minds endless adventures, sometimes even make little decisions for the girl Maria as if her life was our own, and we want to urge her to go on and reach for her dreams. This is a book of endless possibilities, following a manner of exciting story-telling style – definitely not a book you can put down. Add to the fact that Maria is a true living person, now living with two kids.

If you are sick of conspiracy theories and church-bashing literature that are so the rage these days, this is for you: a return to basic good storytelling, with humanity captured in a new light - not in an intellectual or snobbish way - but in a manner that appeals to your sense of personal conviction. It is not preachy – Coelho is, in fact, never preachy – but draws from your own life experiences.

Eleven Minutes challenges your beliefs, and questions the morals and values that you hold dear, and finds in you the necessary affirmation that yes, life is good, and that life indeed is how we make it.

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"L'exactitude est la politesse des rois" (Louis XVIII) "Punctuality is the courtesy of kings."