Book 63 - Hiroko Oyamada "Weasels In The Attic"

Hiroko Oyamada "Weasels In The Attic" (Granta)




It's easy to dismiss this book if one is unaware of social pressures, societal change, and a rapidly aging population in Japan (and most of East Asia).

The heart of this brief collection of interrelated short stories is about childbirth -- the social pressure to have children, the changes in society (particularly with young adults) that diminish the desire for children, and the changes brought by having a child -- but the story is told obliquely. In some ways, each story is a small slice of life told as if a fable. It would be difficult to give a plot summary for each story or for the overarching story without telling the whole story. Suffice it to say that the fish in the first story and the weasels in the second are real, but also serve as metaphors for childbirth and childrearing. I enjoy Oyamada's surreal writing, but if your expectations are for a strong plot or character development, look elsewhere.

Book 64 - Cormac McCarthy "The Road"

Cormac McCarthy "The Road" (Picador)





Add Cormac McCarthy's The Road to the list of reasons why I have developed a strong allergic reaction to "literary fiction." One would have thought McCarthy had penned the answer to the meaning of life given all the popular and critical adulation The Road received, but the book is nothing more than science fiction cleverly marketed to an audience that turns its nose up at the genre...and is thus unable to spot how unoriginal and mediocre this novel really is. (Struggle for survival in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world? The origins of which are left largely unexplained. Yeah, that's never been done before.)

McCarthy relays his narrative in a series of choppy, disjointed vignettes, and although he is to be commended for showing in many places where he could have told, this abruptness when combined with McCarthy's self-consciously affected style of writing ("Look at me! My negative contractions don't have apostrophes (although my possessives do)!) seriously annoys. I'm rather conflicted as to whether the novel's length is a detriment or an asset--nothing much happens in its latter 200 pages that hasn't already happened in the first 40, but perhaps the grinding horror of The Road's setting would have been less convincing without the repetition. Although McCarthy's descriptions of this nightmare world can be downright engrossing, he frequently spoils the effect by ending these sections with overwrought "philosophically deep" observations in the "How can you go on living...if you're already among the living dead!?!" mold.

And then there's the problem of the ending. After 230-odd pages of having the message that humanity is a lost cause outside of the unnamed protagonist's love for his son drummed into one's head, an altruistic, empathetic couple just happens to be waiting in the wings just in time to provide a loving home for said son upon his father's death. Perhaps noting that this happy coincidence would strain the disbelief of even the most credulous reader--even without the novel's previously unflagging realism--McCarthy adds some throwaway dialogue to the effect that they've been trailing the boy and his pneumatic father for some time. This begs a question--why on earth didn't they step in to help sooner--that is ultimately as unsatisfying as their appearance in the narrative would have been had it been left unexplained.