The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Genre: (Translated) Adult General Fiction

There is no shortage of stories and literature about amnesiacs. For some reason, memory fascinates authors and readers alike. Perhaps, they think it remarkable that the mind can hold—like files in a cabinet—all the events and faces and facts that make one’s identity so dear and unique. Yet, with something as singular as an accident or a knock to the head, all these memories may disappear—and the files burst their box and fly loose.

Ogawa blends this fragility of memory with the subtlety of building relationships, describing the decay of the mind and the budding of communication in the precise and beautiful language of mathematics.

The ornery Professor lives in eighty-minute chunks, his brain a tape recorder erasing itself after every hour and twenty minutes passes. For him, mathematics is a lifeline, a way to claim some semblance of constancy and familiarity in a world that wildly renews itself eighteen times a day. In fact, numbers are all that’s left for the Professor to trust until the Housekeeper becomes his newest caretaker and brings her son along to keep him company.

In simple language, Ogawa teaches some nifty things about math and illuminates the differences and similarities—and the growing closeless—among these three unlikely characters. You will grow attached to one or all of them.

Rating: Leaves a Lasting Impression

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Genre: Adult General Fiction

As soon as I finished the first chapter of this book, I thought to myself, “Gee, I bet the folks who make Lifetime movies would love to make an adaptation of this.” Lo and behold, there is one.

The father, Dr. David Henry, delivers his wife’s babies, and, upon discovering his daughter has the signs of Down Syndrome, gives her away to his nurse in order to spare them all grief. Or so he thinks. The courses their lives take are marked by subtle tragedies and misunderstandings that stem from this secret David must harbor from his family. All this—in just the first chapter! Edwards has certainly started her novel at a brisk pace, managing to package and gift-wrap poignancy, urgency, secrets and melodrama in the guise of a book about family and love all in the first twenty or so pages.

Meh, but it goes downhill from there. At the deepest point of the ravine, the characters, whom Edwards desperately tries to paint as struggling and sympathetic, fall flat and unconvincing. Norah, the mother and Dr. Henry’s wife, is insipid and volatile even when I give her allowance for losing her daughter. Paul, the healthy son, is more tolerable as a child than as a rebellious adolescent. Caroline, the nurse who whisks the baby girl away, is strong but stiff. Out of everyone, I actually liked Dr. Henry most, though he basically brought these troubles on everyone. He is conflicted and believable, a human being who wants the best for people he loves and who makes mistakes and wrong decisions like we all would. With even his family growing distant, he has no choice but to immerse himself in his clinical work and his passion for photography.

And this was the most clever thing Edwards did in the whole novel: depicting photography as a metaphor for Dr. David Henry’s internal struggles. It brings to my mind a quotation I rather like— “Life is like photography. We develop from the negatives.”

Rating: Could be better

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (series, #2)

Usually sequels are lackluster compared to their wildly fast-paced and fresh predecessors. But, Catching Fire proves to be one of the few that defies the sophomore slump effect.

Although the beginning dragged on and on—and I raise my same complaints about Collins’ excessive fixation on minor details again—, the narrative quickly picks up as flickers of subversion and rebellion ripple throughout the Districts. For 75 years, the Capitol has used each District as a mere cogwheel, a tool only useful enough to produce a sheaf of paper here, a basket of fish there, a stack of robes over there. Under the regime of the Capitol, each District traditionally never interacts with another District, except for participation in the annual Games. Now, as they brew with revolt, I was reminded of a principle of Gestalt psychology: that the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts. I am looking forward to reading the final book about what becomes of this new unity.

But, before that, let’s talk about our heroine, Katniss, shall we? In a rather predictable turn of events, she enjoys merely a short-lived victory lifestyle. Thrown into another inferno, Katniss comes across as more vulnerable in Catching Fire, and, for some reason, that endears her to me more and makes her stronger than any of her displays of tough callousness in the first book. I hope to see her character mature more, because Katniss as a 17-year-old is still not only headstrong and defiant but so dumb at times too. She seems so decisive in the Games arena, yet she cannot resolve her love triangle, ultimately dragging both boys into an emotional and life-endangering mess. (However, this surely must be Collins’ aim—to elongate our pain and to preserve the interaction for the final book). I expect more development of Gale’s character and some surprises coming from Peeta, too. As for Finnick—joy! another key male character thrown into the mix. I can see why many of friends gush over this bronzed, athletic, selfless Adonis-Achilles-Hercules heman. If Katniss is not careful, life could get a lot more complicated later. For even in the midst of dangerous uprisings and the prospects of death by the hands of brutes, sweet, sweet adolescence is still marked by dilemmas over boys.

Rating: Exceeded expectations; I want the third book NOW

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Genre: Adult General Memoir

Rarely can a story be told best through moving simplicity.

There are no lengthy chapters. There are no fancy literary devices or sentence structures. There are no frills. There is only the shining narrative that, through its starkness, speaks volumes about the indomitable human mind and spirit.

At the prime of his life and, arguably, his career, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffers a massive stroke and enters a coma, only to wake up in a new sort of nightmare. “Locked in” save for his left eyelid, he no longer retains any control over speech, movement or even the necessary—eating, excreting—functions one always seems to take for granted in full health. However, whether for boon or bane, Bauby’s mind is preserved, crystal clear in thought and perception. A more easily defeated one would probably curse this awful irony—-total paralysis without any respite offered by ignorant bliss.

But, not Bauby. He breathes life into his memoir. The scenes are simple, the events, maybe even mundane in the words of someone less humorous, passionate, spirited. On one page, a sentence makes me chuckle at its wryness. On the next, I could be moved to tears from its tone of nostalgia.

I could not help thinking of the French term—joie de vivre—when I finished. Bauby is French..how fitting, right? No, but more than that, joie de vivre is the joy of living…yet even this definition seems lacking and wrong in description. Just as the Mona Lisa cannot merely be a painting, an individual such as Bauby cannot be summated into a single state. I must go by its less common meaning. The exultation of spirit. His story captures and elevates the human spirit.

Rating: Leaves a Lasting Impression

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (series, #1)

Oh my, where do I even start with this one? Not since Twilight have I heard such a unified clamor over a book series (of course, the main difference is that people bonded in hatred over Twilight, but I have heard only good or even glowing comments about The Hunger Games). And on top of that, I’m about two years late starting the book, and the hubbub and hype only seems to grow greater, what with the upcoming movie adaptation and fan-casting and all.

To start off, The Hunger Games is promoted as a fine example of juvenile young adult dystopian literature. If I didn’t hear so much about it, I admit I probably would not pick it up at the bookstore. I’m not extremely interested in stories about fantastical and crappier versions of our world.

With echoes of the psychologically dark Battle Royale, The Hunger Games centers around a gladiator-like arena where 24 helpless and not-so-helpless children are dumped to survive and fight to be the last one standing. I’m not going to explain the lead-up in detail, because Collins, for God-knows-what-reason, loves to rhapsodize about every little thing about the ceremonies, the preparation and the clownish, Oompa-Loompa TV host. I wish she could’ve wasted more breath on the actual Game itself with better descriptions of the locale, the children, the dangers, the fear, the desperation, the madness of having to kill to live. There are so many directions to go, but, alas, none are taken.

Anyhow, the focus of the book is of course Katniss Everdeen, heralded as “a strong female character”. She supports her family, speaks her mind and can kill rabbits and squirrels. She is strong out of circumstance and necessity. Her life is lacking and deprived, yet she fights tooth and nail to cling to it. But, is Katniss really all that? Pay attention to what lucky breaks she receives and how she achieves them. I wouldn’t put her up on a pedestal just yet. But then again, I’m not the one thrown into a forest full of people wanting to kill me. If nothing else, The Hunger Games makes me glad that the Hunger Games don’t exist.

Rating: Exceeded expectations; Beware hype

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

Genre: Adult Historical Mystery/Fiction

A novel set in the esteemed Harvard (or rather, Hahvahd) institution’s locale in the 19th century—kinda dry, right? A mystery hinged on a book club comprised of several bearded scholarly men—*yawn*, where is this even going?

Stuffy, erudite language and rhetoric aside, The Dante Club will dispel any notion of its being an utterly boring book. You want gore? You got it. In the form of chopped up corpses and writhing worms. You want a gripping mystery? Pearl serves it right up with plenty of wild geese chases and red herrings—bon appetit. You want a touch of actually well-researched and logical historical fiction (not the The Other Boleyn Girl stuff)? Yep, and you may actually learn quite a few new things about Dante’s Inferno or the poet Henry Longfellow or how to tell a regular maggot from a live-man-eating maggot. This book can surprise you if you let it.

Rating: Exceeded expectations

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Genre: Young Adult General Fiction

Actually, bits and pieces prelude this novel. For some reason, hipsters love to quote “So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” It is certainly a lovely quote, but I’m not sure if many actually read the book in its entirety.

For me, Looking for Alaska was equal parts frustrating and provocative. For most of it, I hated the characters. I hated the main character Miles, who went from a friendless loner in tenth grade all of a sudden to a horny, smoking, boozing and vaguely awkward douche in junior year. I hated the drunken and puking mess they all were. I hated these high schoolers’ imaginary invincibility and their constant masturbation of their self-righteous egos and pseudointellects (seriously, who memorizes every country’s population?).

No, I am too harsh. Maybe, I’m the one who doesn’t understand. Maybe, underneath all that carefree, happy-go-lucky, who-gives-a-shit attitude, there is a glint of something more. Do I envy them?—maybe, this is the high school life and childhood I could’ve led had I wanted to and been able to.

In the end, Green’s snappy dialogue and eloquent prose is powerful enough to overcome the dregs of teenage angst and hormones. There are well-written parts, but the reader may need to wait patiently.

Rating: A Drunken, Blindsiding Dark Horse