Colorless Tsukura Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami (Book Review)

Title - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Author - Haruki Murakami

Summary -

Tsukuru Tazaki is a young man who has experienced incredible loss. He has lived the majority of his adult life alone, but unable to connect with anyone on a relationship level that is sustainable. He doesn't know why and until it is pointed out to him by his current girlfriend.

He retells the story of his teenage years and the four friends he had. All of their names translated into a color, except for his. He always felt that somehow that showed how he was less than them. But they cared for him anyway and with them he felt part of something very special.

Until the day he returned back home from college, on a weekend break, to have each of his friends refuse to take his calls. Until finally one of them calls him and tells Tsukuru that the group wants nothing to do with him any longer and that they would rather he never called them again. Shocked, he agrees to leave them alone. This episode has shaped his whole being into adulthood. Leaving him a solitary and untrusting man. Unable to sustain or build a true relationship with anyone.

"...Perhaps he didn't commit suicide then because he couldn't conceive of a method that fit the pure and intense feelings he had toward death. But method was beside the point. If there had been a door within reach that led straight to death, he wouldn't have hesitated to push it open, without a second thought, as if it were just a part of ordinary life..."


His girlfriend convinces Tsukuru, that after all these years, he needs to search out these friends and find out why they cast him out. That he would never truly be complete until he finds out why they abandoned and shunned him.

Reluctantly, but knowing he needed to, Tsukuru begins his pilgrimage to find out the truth. In doing so, he will unravel truths and secrets about himself and his friends. And the lies they have weaved around one another for the last decade. This journey for Tsukura is one of self discovery and redemption. Of forgiveness given and needed for all involved. Of friendship and memories that can never be reclaimed, but yet, perhaps better left to the past.

Review -

I am left with mixed emotions on this novel. For that alone it should be read. Any book that can illicit from the reader a sense of emotion should be recognized for what it truly is.
Damn good writing.
My issue is simple. If I had known Tsukuru Tazaki, I would probably have asked the depressing, self involved, emotionally handicapped whiney ass to stop calling me too and that I no longer wanted to be friends with him. Like ever. But I would have told him why. That he was a depressing, self involved, emotionally handicapped whiney ass but wipe and honestly, because your name does not translate into a color you are less than everyone else? Seriously? Instead his friends simply refuse to talk to him and he, for his part, simply accepts this proclamation and tries to go on. Spiraling even deeper into what can only be a suicidal depression.
So what is good about this story?
Writing. Damn good writing! And did we mention that this damn good writing is a translation as well?
I am convinced that Haruki Murakami could write out my grocery list and make it dramatic and compelling. The depths of Tsukuru's mind that Murakami plumbs to describe the pain and confusion he feels by being ostracized by his friends is handled with a grace and poise that is rarely seen in American novels. Murakami does it with effortless ease, or so it seems. For all of this is from Tsukuru's thoughts, dreams and muses. On the outside, as is true in Japanese culture, nothing is shown.
Murakami is exploring not only the human mind, but the tender and often confusing emotions that dwell within.
Damn good writing. A very good read.

The Secret Place - Tana French (Book Review)

Title - The Secret Place

Author - Tana French

Summary -

In an upscale boarding school for girls, a young boy was found murdered over a year ago. Teenage Holly Mackey finds a photo pinned to a board, a community board the school calls The Secret Place; the photo is of the murdered boy, sixteen year old Christopher Harper. The caption under the photo reads, I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.

Holly is not like the other girls who go to St. Kilda's, she doesn't come from a well off family, she is the daughter of a cop. A Detective and she knows what she has to do. But she cannot take this to her father so she takes it to the only cop she knows who has treated her like an adult.

Cold Case Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get the attention of Dublin’s Murder Squad and move up in the department. So when teenage Holly Mackey walks in with the photo of the deceased boy, he knows this is his one chance to work a homicide and get a shot at being part of the Murder Squad. Only problem is, the Detective he would have to work with is Antoinette Conway, a tough as nails female Detective who guards her secrets even better than the school of teenage girls they will have to investigate.

Together Moran and Conway investigate the year old murder of Chris Harper and unravel the rumors and innuendos of teenage lust and hate amongst bitter cliques and fierce enemies. Between loyalty and lies. Only Conway doesn't trust Moran, his ambitions or his ties to Holly Mackey and her father. The school itself would rather keep this death in the past and its influential patrons are not above calling the Detectives superiors to stop the investigation.

In one day, Moran and Conway must find the killer and who put the photo up in the Secret Place.

Review -

Tana French is wicked. The lilt and drive of her novels are fierce and there is a very strong ring of truth to all her characters. Young Detective Moran must weigh between his sense of the truth and his own ambitions as he unravels the truths amongst all the innuendos and lies told by this entire school of teenage girls. Truths that will both shock and sadden you.

If you ever hated high school. French shows you why in HD and surround sound. The cliques between the cool kids and the outcasts are powerful and honest. Both with blood on their hands and heartlessness to preserve their place above all else.

The mystery is tight and well woven, each strand unraveling slowly with more than a few red herrings to have you guessing until the very end. The dynamic between the two Detectives is intriguing as they struggle to work together while not fully trusting one another.

A terrific and very well written novel. Another great mystery by Tana French.

Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (Book Review)

Title - Annihilation

Author - Jeff VanderMeer

Summary -

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Twelve expeditions have been sent into Area X to investigate what is happening. The first returned with tales of a pristine landscape. A virtual Garden of Eden. The second expedition committed mass suicide. The third turned the guns on each other. The eleventh expedition returned, shells of their former selves, all soon dying of an unexplained cancer. This is the record of the twelfth expedition.

"...If you looked out through these areas, toward the ocean, all you saw was the black water, the gray of the cypress trunks, and the constant, motionless rain of moss flowing down. All you heard was the low moaning. The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you..."

The Southern Reach, the government agency charged with investigating all things doing with Area X, has prepared a twelfth expedition. Hoping to use all that had been learned previously, they believe they are ready to learn the secrets of Area X. How it came to be. Why it affects so many so differently and why it is changing now. They send in four researchers. A biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor and a psychologist.

"...I would tell you the names of the other three, if it mattered, but only the surveyor would last more than the next day or two. Besides, we were always strongly discouraged from using names. We were meant to be focused on our purpose, and "anything personal should be left behind." Names belonged to where we had come from, not to who we were while embedded in Area X..."

The four researchers arrive in Area X and immediately understand that where they are cannot be natural. Changes occur to the world around them, but it is the changes that occur within that haunt them most. Inside Area X, they will face that which can destroy them. In Area X, they will lose what little is left of themselves.

Review -

Annihilation is book one in the Southern Reach Trilogy and it gets the tale of with a haunting and deeply unnerving start. It is a book onto itself. If it wasn't for the cover stating it is part one of a trilogy, you would not know it from the story. It is its own tale. Complete and disturbing.

VanderMeer does a terrific job of building suspense and isolation. Not only are the four researchers separated from the rest of the world, but they also immediately feel a sense of distrust and apprehension from one another. In refusing to name the characters, only allowing them their titles, VanderMeer does a brave and bold act. He does humanize his characters, making it difficult for the reader to relate to them. The biologist, the narrator of the story, does an admirable job of weaving the life she left behind with the happenings of Area X. Her own secrets perhaps leading to her being chosen as part of the expedition and at once a strength but also a great weakness. Her survival depending on how well she can leave those parts of her behind until all is left is what Area X will allow.

Annihilation has all the hallmarks of a good horror story. It is in effect a haunted house tale without the brick and mortar. It is the landscape, so lush and green, yet able to fill all who enter it with such an overwhelming sense of desolation, that serves as the structure of the haunted house. Together or separated, the team must tear out its secrets, while guarding their own. The atmosphere is one of dread, as thick as a rolling fog, and fills you from within and without.

An excellent start to the series, I hope the next novels are just as good.

Alice in Zombieland - Gena Showalter (Book Review)

Title - Alice in Zombieland

Author - Gena Showalter

Summary -

Alice Bell doesn't live a normal teenage life. With a paranoid and fearful father, Alice and her sister are not allowed to go out at night. They are not allowed to even play outside unattended. Her social life is nil and at school her and her sister are outcasts. But that is all going to change. On her sixteenth birthday she asks her parents for one thing and only one. To watch her sister dance in the school play, after dark. One night, outside the house, after dark and then everything changed.

"...My names is Alice Bell, and on the night of my sixteenth birthday I lost the mother I loved, the sister I adored and the father I never understood until it was too late. Until that heartbeat when my entire world collapsed and a new one took shape around me.
My father was right. Monsters walk among us..."

That night her family is in a one car accident and her sister, her mother and her father are killed. Alice is lost to a coma for weeks. But what she doesn't tell the police and what they don't tell her is that the bodies of her mother and father were mutilated beyond the results that could have come from the accident. As if something had come upon them and begun to feed. What Alice doesn't tell them is that she had been awake at that time and she saw what came for her parents.

Alice's father had been terrified of monsters that came out at night. Creatures that would haunt him until his dying day. Alice knows that these creatures exist and that they killed her family. But she also knows that no one will believe her and so she keeps quiet. Sent to her grandparents to live. Alice must prepare herself for the day she will face these creatures.
But for now there are even worse creatures to face. A new high school. New friends and enemies and a young boy who knows more about her and what lurks in the night than he is letting on. Alice must decide who she can trust and who she cannot in her battle to face what comes out only at night.

Review -

Gena Showalter's foray into teen paranormal drama is fresh and inventive. Her adult novels rely heavily on the sexual themes to help drive them, which she doesn't use in her teen books and it is refreshing to see that she can absolutely create a story with pace and tempo without the adult themes.
Alice Bell is the lost awkward teen whose grief drives her forward to discover what it is that truly killed her parents and sister. She knows what she saw cannot exist but she also knows that her father was afraid of this very thing all her life.
The zombies in Showalter's novel are not the of the flesh eating variety but rather spirits who attack their victims in the spirit world and whatever damage they afflict there, manifests itself in the real world. Alice must learn to fight them in this spirit world to defeat them and protect what is left of those she loves.
If there is a negative in the story is that it only relates to Alice in Wonderland in name alone. There is little correlation between this tale and the class story. I had hoped that Showalter would have used more of the background of the Alice in Wonderland story to set the background for her novel. Perhaps that will show in the next book.
A good well paced read.

The Poor Boy's Game - Dennis Tafoya (Book Review)

Title - The Poor Boy's Game

Author - Dennis Tafoya

Summary -

When US Marshal Frannie Mullen gets one of her best friends shot during a sting operation, her career is over. Still reeling from the loss, Frannie is trying to sort out her feelings for Wyatt, the reformed outlaw who loves her, and to support her newly-sober sister, Mae, as she struggles with the fallout of their unstable, violent childhood. The murder of her own mother at the hand of her father.

Their father Patrick Mullen is a thug, a vicious enforcer for a corrupt Philadelphia union, and when he escapes from prison, bodies of ex-rivals and witnesses begin piling up. Now Frannie is suspected as an accomplice in his escape and targeted by shadowy killers from the Philadelphia underworld, the US Marshals she used to serve with and the local police. Unsure who to trust, drawing on the skills she's learned as a Marshal and her training as a boxer, Frannie is forced to fight to protect her shattered sister and Patrick’s pregnant girlfriend from the most dangerous criminal she’s ever faced—her own father.

Review -

This is Noir. This is what Noir is suppose to be. Not the Hollywood pretty boy in dark lighting Noir. This is dirty cold live in the shadows with disfunction every second of the day and how can you save those you love when you are barely able to hold yourself up Noir. How? With guts and a gun and more than a few scars. This is Noir and I freaking loved it.

Tafoya writes about the streets of Philiadelphia with grit and determination. His prose is direct and solid. No flash or overindulged prose to set the mood. This is Elmore Leanord and Cormac McCarthy territory. Tafoya may be new (three books to date that I know of) but he is staking his claim and growing.

Frannie Mullen is a deeply flawed character. Her traumatic childhood at the hands of her violently abusive father has left deep emotional crevises in her soul. More so because she knows she is way too much like him. The position with the US Marshals was all she had to show she wasn't Patrick Mullen's daughter and when she loses that she falls into a spiral of depression. But when Patrick escapes she knows she has to pull herself out of it. Because Patrick swore to kill everyone who had anything to do with putting him away and that included his two daughters. With the Marshals believing she had something to do with Patrick's escape, her resources are limited to protect herself and her sister. But Frannie knows, the only way she is going to beat Patrick is to allow herself to become Patrick.

Tafoya allows Frannie to carry the novel, there is no prince to save the day. She has friends, and they help her, but in the end its Frannie making her way through the past and the present to secure the safety of whats left of her family.

A very well executed and strong read.

Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan (Book Review)

Title - Crazy Rich Asians

Author - Kevin Kwan

Summary -

Rachel Chu has a boyfriend she has been dating for the last two years. He is Chinese with a British accent, well educated, charming and totally unassuming. But her boyfriend, Nick Young, has a secret he hasn't really told her about. A secret that will tear her world apart. Nick Young comes from a family of crazy, rich Asians.

Nick is heading back to Singapore to be best man at his childhood friend Colin's wedding. He takes Rachel along to meet the family. But Nick doesn't understand the true nature of his family. He has always been sheltered by the snobbery and bigotry that his mother and grandmother have. Worse, he has no idea how brutal the women in his family will treat an outsider. Once they feel could never be worthy of them.

A bloody cut open fish in her hotel room. Rumors of Nick's escapades whispered in her ear from cousins. Gold digging cunt written in blood in her room. All this and worse await Rachel. Even her family and their history is not out of bounds as the women in Nick's life decide to destroy this American Born Chinese girl.

Review -

Crazy Rich Asians is a sad, funny, tragic, uplifting and demoralizing novel of family and bloodlines. How far some will go to protect them and how far they are willing to go to maintain the class status they believe they are entitled to. It is cruel and yet at times very funny. The actions and attitudes are those expressed around any table by moms. aunts, sisters and cousins when a favored son is in love with a girl they don't approve of. Only here it is done with an unlimited supply of money behind it.

This is high drama with a more than a little reality show thrown into it. A mix between the old Dallas soap opera and Wives of Beverly Hills or some nonsense.

But the writing and prose Kwan uses raises it above that level. This is a throwback to the old Irwin Shaw novel, Rich Man, Poor Man. The large scale operatic novel of families and dynasty but with a little more humor tossed in to temper the cruelty.

A well paced and enjoyable read.