The Elephant Vanishes: stories

The Elephant Vanishes: Stories by Haruki Murakami is a peculiar collection of short stories, each differing from its predecessor in its odd plot line, but I found the characters in each story to be oddly similar, yet poorly developed. For the most part, each was narrated by a male or female bored but content with their repetitive life style. In most of the stories, the narrator was married, but rarely had children. When describing their husband or wife, the narrator seemed detached and often uncertain of their love. The narrator was always comfortable, but their perception of that comfort differed. My favorite story in the collection is about a man who dreams of a dancing gnome. The gnome inhabits his body in order for the narrator to be able to dance to woo a pretty colleague on the condition that if the narrator speaks, the gnome will steal his body. The gnome turns the woman into a rotting mess of maggots and puss to encourage the narrator to speak, but the narrator triumphs. These deranged premises are unlike anything I’ve ever read and each had a message to uncover between the weird occurrences.

Extremely Loud and Indredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is an incredible story of a young boy, Oscar, suffering from the devastating death of his father after September 11th, and the intertwining pasts of his relatives. Looking through his father’s belongings, Oscar finds a key in an envelope labeled “Black”. Oscar decides to find the key’s lock by contacting everyone with the surname “Black”, hoping to gain closure. The story is alternated with letters: letters written by Oscar’s mute grandfather to his son (which were never sent) and letters telling of the almost-love story between Oscar’s grandparents. Although I found this confusing at first, not knowing who was writing what and to whom s/he was writing to, but as the story progressed, everything cleared up. I think this added to the reader’s insight of how Oscar perceives events. When Oscar’s grandfather described his devastating memories of the bombing of Dresden, I found it interesting to draw parallels between this event and September 11th and the varying effects it had on its victims. The novel is extremely well written and depicts a very real situation with the emotion and sentiment it deserves.

Poisonwood Bible

Although I really like the concept and general plot of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, I have decided to take a break from reading and temporarily abandon the book. The premises of the book—a southern Christian family moving to Africa—is fascinating, but the plot is too slowly paced. I also find the characters of the book to be interesting, as they rotate narrator. However, I really only particularly like one of the characters (Adah), as the rest seem to describe their uneventful lives, tainted with racism and complaint. I plan on returning to this book when I have more time to read.

Margaettown

Margarettown by Gabrielle Zevin is an interesting book, following the intricate love story between Maggie and a narrator called N. The book sought to express that nothing is what it appears at face value. It described that reality is simplistic and irrelevant. Mostly narrated by N. (it jumped between several subplots narrated in the third person) on his deathbed, the novel was a letter to his daughter, informing her to reject what people say about her mother. N speaks of the town in which Margaret and her “family” live in. Maggie’s family consists of variations on “Old Margaret”—the same woman at different stages of her life. Zevin literalized a metaphor, never distinguishing between reality and perception, while conveying that the distinction is unimportant. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the plot twists of Margarettown more than any other book I have read this year.