Saturday, March 26, 2005

Wrong About Japan

Wrong About Japan
by Peter Carey
reviewed by Adelynn

Manga and anime inspired the pages of this book, as how it inspired the whole pilgrimage to the "real Japan". Though this book is thin compared to some of the chunks of travel novels I've read, it attempts to pack an entire
culture into its pages, and succeeds quite well too. In fact, it sometimes left me reeling from the sheer load of information.

The author, his son Charley, and their guide Takashi (a teen who indulges in what Harajuku is well-known for: cosplay), explore the side of Japan that is immersed in its unique brand of comics.

By hard work or sheer luck, they manage to meet quite a number of personalities, the most famous of whom is the elusive Hayao Miyazaki, who produced the animation movies My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and the most recent, Howl's Moving Castle (plug: which is still screening at Orchard Cineleisure at several timings).

The author's tender love for his shy son on the brink of teenagehood seeps through his narration, especially in the opening chapters when Charley first discovers manga. As if to remind the reader that the tale is not simply about the exploration of a foreign culture, in small print on the front of the bright pink cover are the words: A father's journey with his son.

Larking About in Ireland

Larkin About in Ireland
by John Larkin
reviewed by Adelynn


"Home is where the harp is..."

The Ireland-born, Australia-residing author sets off in search of his spiritual home but finds that it has changed greatly since his father's time in the 50s.

I opened the book to its first page a few months ago but did not manage to read past the first few pages. However, when I took it up again last week, I fell under its spell quickly and wondered why I could even stop the previous time.

What sets John Larkin's writing apart from Bill Bryson or Peter Moore is that he frequently inserts hilarious imaginary conversations (between the people he encounters on the road) in the middle of his prose. The first few times I came across them, I was taken aback. I was even sure that there were "???" above my head.

I gradually got used to this quirkingly quirky quirkish quirk of his and was soon sniggering to myself on the bus, on the train, and wherever I was reading this book.

Towards the end, there was even a highly "polished" parable from the Brothers Grimm, which ending got removed by the Publisher who commented "Due to the graphic and frankly tasteless nature of the remainder of this paragraph, we have been left with very little choice than to remove it in its entirety and refer Mr Larkin to the appropriate counselling body."

Curious? Read the book to find out!

The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman

Reviewed by Claudine

The Roman Polanski movie led me to this book. Being the book nut that I am, I borrowed "The Pianist" from the library after watching the movie and the book is as good as the movie.

‘The Pianist’ is the memoir of Szpilman, a Polish Jew pianist who managed to survive the ‘resettlement’ of the Jewish Holocaust in Warsaw, where he lived. The book describes the plight of the Jewish people under the cold heartless systematic control of the Germans. To be able to fight to survive under such extenuating circumstances is what I admire about the author, who lived mostly by following his intuition and gut feeling. At times, he followed an innate sense of foreboding, forsaking his hiding place for another, just in time to have his previous hiding place raided, missing liquidation just in the nick of time. It makes for great suspenseful TV, except when you realise it was his life you are reading about.

After the war, he went on to become an accomplished pianist, tucking his horrific experiences away into this memoir, which his son published only after the death of his father.

Reading this book, one tries to understand how one human race can so intensely despise and loathe another. The ways in which the Jews were treated were appalling --transported around in trucks and literally stuffed into train cars like cattle to be deported to their fate or taunted or shot at will by German officers. I think animals in SPCA are more humanely put down than the Jews in that period and I'm not speaking in jest.

The language used in the book makes for easy reading, very much like listening to him talk about his wartime experiences. No melodrama, just the narration of events that happen to him and those around him one after another as if he were an observer, neutral and unmoved. But it is this numbing narration that conveys the effect of muted anguish and horror, which assaulted and paralysed the Jewish Community then. But by the end of this book, readers are inspired with the triumph of the human spirit – to hope and survive against all odds.

Both the book and the movie are highly recommended.

For movie buffs, here's the url to the movie : http://www.thepianist-themovie.com/pianistel.html