The Temple of Dawn, the third novel in Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetralogy, takes place in the years immediately preceding World War II, just after the “China Incident” of 1936, and Shigekuni Honda, having abandoned his formerly altruistic ideals, is still trying to develop his own beliefs about life, death, love, the transmigration of souls, and reincarnation. War is imminent now, as Japan, Germany, and Italy have signed a treaty against the Americans. Having given up his judgeship, Honda lives in partial retirement, but he takes a business trip to Bangkok, where he also hopes to meet Prince Pattanadid and Prince Krisada, former school friends from his youth. The Thai royal family has gone to Switzerland, however, and the palace is empty. The only person there is a “mad princess,” age seven, who lives as a virtual prisoner, claiming publicly that “I’m not really a Siamese princess. I’m the reincarnation of a Japanese, and my real home is in Japan.” Having been exposed to the idea of samsara, Honda eventually becomes certain that this little princess, “Princess Moonlight,” is the reincarnation of Kiyoake/Isao. A total believer in the old samurai traditions, Yukio Mishima despaired of the western influence he saw appearing in post-war Japan, and he never forgave the emperor for denying his divinity in the capitulation which ended the war. Just after author he finished the final novel in this “Sea of Fertility” tetralogy, the Decay of the Angel on November 25, 1970, he disemboweled himself in a ritual suicide—seppuku—committed in the presence of four members of his private army.
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The vibrantly descriptive opening lines of this novel set in Nairobi, Kenya, introduce a chapter that is a textbook example of good writing, drawing in the reader, establishing an atmosphere, suggesting character, hinting at a father’s relationship with his son, and presenting a familiar scene in which that child is just itching for his first bicycle. By the next page, the author has created a much broader, more dramatic context for these characters, expanding the setting, placing this small episode in the context of the larger community, and suggesting ominous new directions for the action. In less than three hundred words, I was hooked. The author’s writing is so confident that I, too, became confident that this debut novel would deliver a well-wrought story with well-developed characters within the fraught atmosphere of Nairobi in 2007, and that it would do so with style and intelligence. I was not wrong. Author Richard Crompton, a former BBC journalist who now lives in Nairobi with his family, understands the city’s social, economic, and political conditions and reveals them through his precise descriptions, his insights into his characters’ motivations, and his appreciation of the tribal loyalties and conflicts which affect virtually every aspect of daily life within this complex society. The main character, forty-two-year-old Police Detective Mollel, has been a national hero for his selfless actions during one national emergency, but he is now a pariah within the department for challenging his superiors and often expressing his rage at the lack of “justice” he sees in society. He is called upon to solve the murder of a prostitute, just as the violent 2007 elections are about to take place.
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Told by Aaliya Saleh, a woman who “long ago abandoned [herself] to a blind lust for the written word,” this remarkable literary novel by Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine allows readers to follow the speaker into worlds which often feel familiar because of the emphasis on books the reader knows, but also into other worlds, previously unknown, based on her life in Beirut. From the opening pages, Aaliya, in her seventies, is totally honest with the reader. Within a few pages of the book’s opening, we learn that Aaliya is now a divorced, single woman who translates one novel every year from English or French to Arabic. Gradually, Aaliya fills in further details of her life, eventually bringing the chronology to the present, but it is a wayward journey, one the literature and music lover will thrill to take with her, reading slowly to savor her observations and the way she connects her life to observations by dozens of novelists and philosophers from all periods and from all over the world, often to the accompaniment of musical references to provide additional mood. Despite its lack of strong plot, there is nothing bland about this fascinating and absorbing novel, and booklovers will smile at the ironies involved in the conclusion.
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Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, Biography, Book Club Suggestions, England, Historical, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Jamaica, Literary on Oct 3rd, 2013
A professional dancer from the age of eleven, Noel Coward (1899 – 1973) spent the rest of his life in “show business” as a playwright (of thirty-nine plays), composer (of over three hundred songs and sixteen musicals and operettas), film maker (of fifteen adaptations of his plays), and actor-director-producer connected with two dozen additional productions. Now, however, it is 1971, as this novel about his life opens, and he is seventy-two and dealing with an endless series of heart and lung problems, no doubt exacerbated, if not caused, by his persistent smoking. As the narrative evolves, impressionistically, Coward’s mind is seen wandering, and he frequently dozes off. He dreams of the Jazz Age and Gertrude Lawrence, and he sometimes relaxes by reading one of several children’s books by E. Nesbit which he loved as a child and still enjoys reading. He drinks too much, eats too little, refuses to see many people, and becomes annoyed if his life partner Graham Payn is not at his immediate beck and call. Often Payn is with Cole Lesley, “Coley” (formerly known as Leonard Cole), who began his association with Coward as a British valet, then became his secretary, manager, and occasional cook. At a time in which rap music is popular and raves are ubiquitous, the witty and clever lyrics for which Noel Coward was so famous, and which depend so much on word play and the rhythm of educated (British) speech, may be completely unfamiliar to readers of this book. Indeed, Noel Coward himself, once a household name, may also be an unfamiliar name to many readers of this book. Fame is fleeting, and never more obviously so than with an author/writer/composer/screenwriter like Noel Coward, who was also brilliant, articulate, and gifted beyond measure.
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From the opening page of this simply narrated story, author Hiromi Kawakami establishes characters who, in their disarming complexity and iconoclastic behavior, behave differently from the expectations that many American readers of Japanese novels may have come to expect. Tsukiko Omachi, a single businesswoman of thirty-eight, introduces herself as the narrator of the novel by describing her meeting with Mr. Harutsuna Matsumoto at a crowded bar after she finishes work. Tsukiko is not a traditional Japanese woman, and the man she meets is not a contemporary trying to pick her up. She is aggressive, accustomed to living her own life without interference from anyone else, Matsumoto, a man about thirty years older than she, has recognized her from the past – she was a student in one of his Japanese classes in high school, years ago. After two years of casual (non-exclusive) meetings, Tsukiko begins to be able to predict what Sensei will say under various circumstances, and when she takes walks alone she begins to wonder what Sensei is doing. Though some readers may become frustrated by the excruciatingly slow pace at which the relationship between Tsukiko and Sensei develops, with long months often elapsing between some of the key events, the author’s ability to show the subtle changes which occur between these two strong and independent people will delight lovers of precise writing and careful development.
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