The School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan: I’ve been dying to read my dear friend Jessamine’s novel since it was announced, and that only intensified after another good friend read an advanced copy and couldn’t stop raving about it. She lent it to me so that I could read it while awaiting my “bookshelf” copy to ship in January. I was so absorbed in it that I told my partner I wanted to watch something with him as soon as I finished the chapter I was on, and really meant that…and then I read another chapter…and another…and literally could not put the book down. It’s gripping, inventive, and terrifying, with impeccable prose. I would have read it in one sitting if I didn’t start it in the middle of a period of work and travel.
The Guide, by Peter Heller: Heller’s The Dog Stars made me cry as much as a book ever has (well, it was one passage specifically that was up there with Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” and one of the short stories in Jesus’ Son), but I think I recall the romantic element in that novel feeling a little forced, and the romantic plot line in this felt similar. What I did like about The Guide were the descriptions of fishing and the way COVID was a realistic presence – similar to how the world feels now – and less a threat for its own destructive capabilities and more for how people are able to weaponize isolation in nefarious ways under the auspices of health. I had a very difficult time imagining the main character as a 25-year-old man – I could have believed mid thirties or forties – and overall the narrative was a bit hackneyed. But I read most of it while unable to sleep for a period of 90 minutes in the middle of the night and it was entertaining enough. I did have a good time trying to figure out what the sinister secret would be (I was incorrect).
Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata: I loved this novella, which a friend recommended to me as “engrossing and short.” In some ways it reminded me of Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen – not because both are set in Japan but because both are set in highly particular spaces (kitchens, a convenience store) and the attachments to those spaces provides so much information about the respective main characters. Furukura, the titular protagonist of Convenience Store Woman, reads as autistic and perceptive of the ways in which she is and isn’t able to/interested in fitting into the cultural mores of modern society (get married, strive for a high-paying job, etc) and how unable others are to accept that her interests and aims are different from theirs. She recognizes that her life will be easier if she pretends to have the trappings of a “successful” adult life, and that creates the central plot of the story. I found the second most important character nearly unbearable, but Furukura’s observations about him made me reconsider…at least momentarily. After the novella ends, there’s an essay by the author that made me wonder how directly autobiographical the book was – the author, too, was a convenience store worker for years, and although there’s a sense that the essay is playful and not entirely serious, there’s also a sense that it’s actually pretty literal. Of course this made me immediately look up the author to find out if she’s written any other books, and there’s one that came out just two months ago in English – a full 250-page novel, which will be my next read if I’m lucky enough to find find no waitlist at the library.
Earthlings, by Sayaka Murata: I was indeed lucky enough that the ebook of Murata’s second novel was available immediately. (Side note: I don’t know where I got the 250+ page figure – it’s actually just under 200.) And…this was tough to read. The main character is substantially different from the protagonist of Convenience Store Woman (in some ways, the main character’s sister has some of the elements of Furukura, though the main character herself abstains from societal norms like marriage), but the major themes are similar. The things that happen to the protagonist, though, are far more upsetting. And as the novel continues…it didn’t pull me in the same way that Convenience Store Woman did. It becomes increasingly disturbing in a similar vein to Eugene Marten’s Waste or Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God (though there is no necrophilia), but less effectively, and the tone of wide-eyed innocence and lack of comprehension of social mores felt forced rather than illuminating.
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, by Matthieu Simard: Another novella? Yes! Another eerie, present or near-future dystopia of human folly? Definitely! Another translated work? Correct. There’s a deep sense of dread throughout, and even though elements of both the past and present of the primary couple are spelled out, somehow both feel murky, as if the present tense of the novel is a spotlight around which all else is dark. Deeply unsettling.
