book-reviews

Post Number 90: The Burden of Untold Secrets (in Seichō Matsumoto’s ‘Point Zero’)

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.”

-The City in the Sea, Edgar Allan Poe

What is the future of a relationship built on a foundation of secrets? That is the question that runs through the core of Seichō Matsumoto’s ‘Point Zero’, translated from Japanese into English by Louise Heal Kawai. Set in 1958 and told through the circumstances in the life of its 26 year-old protagonist Teiko, the story follows her search for answers when her husband, 36 year-old Kenichi Uhara goes missing days after their honeymoon.

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Post Number 89: The banality of perpetual niceness (in Ann Patchett’s ‘Whistler’)

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

‘“Everybody lives,” Eddie said, because the creation of narrative tension was not his objective.’

That pretty much summarises Ann Patchett’s ‘Whistler’. 

Ambling through the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 53 year-old Daphne senses that a stranger is following her. When he reveals himself to be Eddie Triplett, a man who used to be briefly married to her mother, the revelation unleashes a dam of memories from her childhood.

This chance meeting, 44 years after they last saw each other, leads Daphne down a pleasant path of recollections, reconnections, and realisations. What a joy to be reminded at 53 that someone will always see you how you used to be at 9! To piece together a chapter in your history that was nearly forgotten to the ebb and flow of time. 

Eddie Triplett is written to be a dream character. He’s kind, tender, well-read, easygoing, and charming to no end. Who wouldn’t enjoy the company of such a person? He works in publishing, has stacks of books by his bed, treats the children of his (ex)wife as if they are his own, and in the wake of the divorce, when asked to vanish, simply does. This last bit, the disappearing act of a generous man, is it an act of deference or indifference? We never know because Ann Patchett shuts down all possible opportunities for uncomfortable discussions. 

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Post Number 86: Martyr! and the dream of a meaningful life

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

“My God, I just remembered that we die.” – Clarice Lispector

Last month I read (and adored) Kaveh Akbar’s novel, Martyr! My friend and I had decided to buddy-read it. It took us longer than we had intended because jobs, travel and illness – all impeded our progress (this dash is not AI, I promise). Nevertheless, we kept peppering our Whatsapp chat with observations and voice notes, thoroughly engaged in Akbar’s fiction. 

Martyr! (exclamation intentional) is the story of Cyrus Shams, a near-30, queer, Iranian poet living in Indiana, USA, recovering from addiction, and desperate to devote himself to a life that has meaning. A globalised denizen with a fleeting connection to his Iranian side, Cyrus is very much at a crossroads in his life. Still processing the senselessness of his mother’s passing in the shooting of the Iran Air Flight 655 (which I was horrified to learn was a real event), he is obsessed with death, dying, and the ideas that propel people to sacrificing themselves. 

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