This has literally everything I like about non fiction in it. Some memoir, some philosophy, a bit of true crime, interesting factoids seemingly unrelated. Everything is woven together into something equally unexpected and revelatory.

DNF at 12%. I liked the narration and the setup for the mystery, but everything else felt trite. I try to accept commercial fiction, and any book, on its own terms, but this felt artificial, even in structure of the chapters to artificially boost pacing and engagement, but really it’s spinning wheels.

Another RTC I never returned to… but have done a video review of: https://youtu.be/sk1WHy2E-xk

Coming-of-age literalized interiority abstraction. Best to go in not knowing anything about this, I think, as an explanation of “what is going on” is the only thing the fiction has to convey.

Usually when I at least complete a book I will give it two stars, but I honestly don’t think this deserves that. It is technically inept at a craft level in every way except for being readable and clear. It ranges from terrible dialogue to the worst pacing I have ever experienced in a maximalist effort, to not only really bad characterization—especially in regards to women, which Murakami simply cannot write—but every character is inactive, many are as superfluous as much of the actual text.

It does manage to produce an interesting conceit by the end, then the conceit ironically all but invalidates the entirety of the fiction. There are no interesting ideas being explored, there is no definitive answers, nor would they matter. The conceit itself isn’t explained satisfactorily and neither is there a point being made. It is quite literally a pointless, aimless work that attempts to garner satisfaction from the reader by way of innocuous gotcha moments that stack up to say something like, maybe, if you have love, you can escape the darkness we ourselves create in our internal worlds. Except that may not be true either, since there are many doubts as to what the actual outcome is.

The conceit also handwaves the many problematic elements of the fiction and as such feels like an adolescent indulgence in pointless sex, assault on minors, and other trauma. This feels like a pattern with Murakami, who uses verisimilitude as armour in every work I’ve read.

The final book is also sinfully boring until the very end. Neither is any book structured to be a complete story, so you basically have to just plow through to get any answers whatsoever. Yet the advancement of most of the plot is in the first two volumes.

Where I fall on this is, because of its length, it has even more of an obligation to justify the craft in the final product, which it simply cannot do. It is by far the worst maximalist effort I have ever had the misfortune of consuming. The junk food of the form.

Coming-of-age + feminism intersections in Zimbabwe, pretty much means I was destined to really like this, and I liked it more than I expected. A pleasant surprise was my getting along very well with both the narration on the audiobook as well as finding the authorial voice for the character having a lot of personality in the prose work, which can really flatten out in this format.

It is fairly challenging, but in the ways you expect. And it has the device in which an older, erudite version of the narrator is telling the story, so the reading isn’t stuck with a childish and simple voice. I really like that; it’s almost a requirement for me these days in coming-of-age. The protagonist is whipped and harmed in other ways during her struggle to find some measure of autonomy, primarily through education. The characters are well realized; the plot, probably predictable but executed well. It falls into the solid bit of writing camp, for me.

I have not read much poetry and struggle with it quite a bit, typically. The exceptional has been productions like this, where you can listen to a performance and hear the cadence. It never sounds right internally, for me, and I certainly can’t mouth it myself.

This I found somewhat uneven, but with excellent, evocative and affecting highs. But again: I would not really trust my opinion on poetry, so this rating, more than anything, is my enjoyment, rather than an evaluation of craft like when I review fiction.

“The room you’re crying in is called America.”

While not quite as refined as EM, I really liked this. Her style, with poetic vignettes evoke vivid imagery and scenes. It feels like it is more of a nonfiction than nonfiction sometimes, rarely conjuring direct quotes and continuity, instead focusing on those memories that are particularly ensconced, and conform to the theme of family and culture in Vietnam, though fictionalized, presumably informed by the author’s early life.

A very organic post-MFA, MFA book coupled with optimism, a very rare endowment in that particular trend, I feel. More concerned with granular experience than anything else, structurally, I think this is slightly uneven for me, at times, but absolutely fantastic when in its particular stride.

Primarily centered on two highly misogynistic men, one impoverished, one coming from privilege, who collude in taking out their aggressions upon an object of desire in a rich, gated community in which one of them works a menial job.

This reminded me quite a bit of Lolita, in so far as the perspective is able to tap into the consciousness of Polo, the main protagonist and labourer, and is primarily concerned with his spiralling thoughts as we get closer to the actual event the two men perpetrate. It’s coached in excuses and justifications in an attempt to garner sympathy from the reader even as it doubled back on itself and illustrates the way some of the information we get is completely false, or else altered, in an effort to allow Polo to think of himself as the protagonist of his story. It’s quite clever and I think works increasingly well as the narrative builds up its tension incrementally from the very first line.

The issue I had with this is a structural one. I get hung up on perspectives of narrators, and this feels so odd it shook me out of the fiction quite often. It’s privy to odd details while purporting most of the time to be a steam-of-consciousness like thing for Polo. It’s malleable with time, it separates from Polo for a time to look at the other perp. It just doesn’t actually seem like anyone could be telling the story in the way it is. It’s not a campfire story, it’s not a person; it’s just framing that doesn’t work for me. And on top of this the text is incredibly dense. Walls and walls of text for 10-15 pages at a time. Luckily, the prose work is excellent and flow is great so it isn’t too taxing, though hard on the eyes.

But it, again, seems like it communicated initially that Polo is racing toward the end and frantic perhaps, spiralling. But then because of the framing it makes no sense, as it sometimes is not Polo and so why is it solely possessing that characteristic in the dense paragraph structure? It reinforced my gripe over and over, a constant irritant. However I buddy read this was a great reader who had no problems at all, so I do think this is just a me, thing. But it does degrade my rating because I don’t measure my enjoyment, but do think it’s a legitimate craft issue.

Otherwise, it fulfills a lot of goals. It’s an intense story that humanizes the men, illustrating the systemic issues unaddressed, leading them to their crime. But also indicts them and holds them to account while it articulates their, frankly, lame excuses and privileged-as-men outlook as to what had happened. It’s a disgusting point-of-view, being in their heads, and that’s the point. A difficult thing to pull off that feels relatively effortless for the author. A lot here to like, I think. I’ll certainly pickup Hurricane Season after this effort.