Monthly Archives: January 2024

The Kingdoms of Savannah (2022) by George Dawes Green

Posted in Books, Crime by

I read quite a lot of crime but since I don’t do any reading statistics, I have to guess the percentage. Maybe 40%. Given that that’s a relatively high number, it’s rather frustrating that I end up not liking three out of four crime novels or thrillers I read. I’m sure you can imagine how pleased I was to finally find one that I didn’t only like but absolutely loved. The Kingdoms of Savannah is such an amazing novel. Neil Gaiman called it a Southern Gothic Noir and I’d say that’s spot on.

Set in Savannah, the novel tells the story of a murder and a disappearance. Luke and Stony like to have a drink at one of Savannah’s most popular bars, the Bo Peep’s. Stony loves to watch the beautiful bartender Jaq and Luke, well, he likes to hang out with Stony and have a few drinks too many. They are both homeless and most of the time not able to pay for their drinks. Jaq is very fond of them and doesn’t mind. Like most nights, they drink and talk a lot and Jaq, who is doing a documentary for an MFA application, is filming them. After their last beer, they leave together. Outside of the bar, Luke is stabbed and Stony disappears.

Luke’s body is found in a burned-down empty house that belongs to a notorious real estate shark, Archie Guzman. Guzman is promptly arrested for murder, but he swears he didn’t do it. He hires an unlikely private detective, Morgana Musgrove, the head of one of the richest and most influential families of Savannah. Morgana will accept but only if her homeless son Ransom helps her.

Jaq, who happens to be Morgana’s granddaughter, is less than thrilled that Morgana wants to help Guzman. Guzman pretends that Luke was high on drugs, but Jaq knows he didn’t do drugs. Besides, what happened to Stony? Nobody seems to think that her disappearance is linked to the murder. Soon, a police detective, Morgana, and Jaq are all trying to solve the riddle of Luke’s murder and Stony’s disappearance.

The solution, it appears, lies in the kingdoms of Savannah which Stony mentioned all the time, even on the video Jaq shot on the night of her disappearance. Unfortunately, nobody knows what and where they are. Or if they are even real. I won’t say more, as this is not a terribly long novel and some of the twists and the unexpected ending could easily be spoiled. I will just say this – many crime novels have less than satisfying endings. Not this one.

The Kingdoms of Savannah offers so much. A great atmosphere, colourful characters, a setting that comes to life, a suspenseful plot and some very big themes. The most important theme is the role slavery played in Savannah’s history. Themes that are just as important and often linked to slavery are the power of certain families, corruption, and social injustice. So many of the people in this novel are homeless. Many of them, like Ransom, Morgana’s son, live in camps that the police empties and destroys regularly. Reading about this and Savannah’s history made me uncomfortable a few times. Tourists come to Savannah to visit the beautiful houses and gardens, to go on ghost tours. But how many think about Savannah’s history as a city of slave owners? Or how many know that hidden from view, there’s a huge homeless population living a precarious life?

I hope I was able to convey how great this novel is. If you like a Southern Setting, the atmosphere of a noir, and crime novels that have far more to offer than a suspenseful story, then this is for you.

 

 

 

 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Posted in Books, Novel by

Just like last year, my first, but hopefully not last, review of the year is a contribution to Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge 17.

I mentioned it last year too, I’m always looking forward to Bellezza’s event. The only difference this year – I had no clue what to pick. My Japanese TBR has grown a lot during the last couple of years and I simply had too many choices. I finally picked Convenience Store Woman because it was the one, I’ve seen reviewed the most in the last couple of months and I wanted to find out whether it really was that good.

The first-person narrator, Keiko Furukuma is a 36-year-old woman who has been working at a convenience store since she turned eighteen. She is someone who never fit in. She doesn’t understand the rules and expectations of society which leaves her confused and unmoored. The day she discovers the convenience store and starts to work there, everything changes. She loves the store, loves working at the store, loves the store’s workings, and has almost literally become a part of the store. It has entered her body and mind. And it makes her happy when it works flawlessly. The beautiful machine her life has become thanks to her dedication to the store, stops abruptly when her sister and old friends start to ask repeatedly why she’s still doing the kind of work that normally students or housewives do part time. Keiko doesn’t really know how to be a real person, as she says, but she is aware that her family and friends do not accept her way of life. To keep them off her back, she lies about her health. If she had a husband, then maybe, they would leave her be. So maybe she should look for a husband? Too bad that she’s not really interested in men. This is a very short book, so I’m not going to add much more about the story.

The book focuses very much on the present but there are a few stories from Keiko’s past which show us that she really is rather peculiar. As a small child, they find a dead bird on a playground and while all the other children cry, Keiko wants to take it home and eat it. There are also small instances of violence. Maybe this wouldn’t be so peculiar if Keiko were able to understand that some things that she did aren’t acceptable, but she doesn’t. Japanese literature is full of quirky characters and most of the time I find them endearing. Not Keiko though.

I found this book very interesting and thought-provoking. I know many readers read it as a piece of feminist fiction, but I feel it’s more than that. In the book, men who are like Keiko face the same pressures. There might be less pressure to get married and have children but the expectations to get a “real job” might be even greater.

It is never said, but while reading this book one gets the impression that Keiko is neurodivergent. That means, there’s even more societal pressure because anything she might do or say alienates people. She knows this but she doesn’t know why and not how to be different. The people around her think she must be unhappy with her life but the only thing that makes her unhappy is their pressure. The way she describes work at the shop made me think of those monks who rake Zen gardens to perfection. Making them look tidy and neat is a meditative endeavour. Keiko’s efforts to keep everything clean, tidy, and running smoothly, is more obsessive than meditative but there is a similar satisfaction in a job well done. I loved reading about the shop, about the way weather and seasons affect sales and many of the other things that are important like how to promote certain foods or display goods in an advantageous way.

What I liked most about the book is how it shows us the arrogance of society in general towards those who do these kinds of tasks. Some people enjoy this kind of work very much and that should count for something, but it doesn’t. Maybe the pressures are a bit extremer in Japan, but Western society also judges people who don’t want to have a career or a family. We still have a long way to go to accept diversity in lifestyle.

 

The Best Books I Read In 2023

Posted in Books, Literature by

This is a bit of a déja-vu situation. At the beginning of last year, I returned to blogging with my best of list and then wrote a post for January in Japan. I had every intention of blogging regularly again but so many things went wrong, so many heartbreaking things happened. GLM was the date I had fixed to finally return but plans were made without me. I wish I had at least been consulted or informed . . . It felt like having climbed a mountain only to be pushed down again upon arrival. In many ways, that fit well into the overall theme of 2023. What a sad and exhausting year. But enough of this. Lets get to my list.

At the beginning of 2023 I went through an Elizabeth Strout phase, reading many of her books. I didn’t get to the Olive Kitteridge books or they might have been on the list but I read all the Lucy Barton novels and really loved them. Reading them felt like listening to someone tell you about their life. I can’t remember all the details but I remember how much I enjoyed them.

Maybe one could say, this was the year of life stories as I’ve read a few of them this year. Marzahn Mon Amour was one of my favorites. At forty, the author, an unsuccessful writer,  decided to become a chiropodist and was working in Marzahn. Marzahn used to be the biggest prefabricated housing estate in the former GRD.

When I visited Berlin, I went to see Gropius Stadt, which is similar, but not as huge. The atmosphere in Marzahn is quite oppressing, yet the people Katja Oskamp meets are full of life, colorful, eccentric. I highly recommend this book. I read it in German, so I don’t know who translated it but since it was published by Pereine, I’m sure it was done very well.

I don’t think that Volker Weidermann’s  Mann vom Meer has been translated yet but since other books by Weidermann have, it is posible this will be picked up by an anglophone publisher. I liked the idea and the book very much. It looks at Thomas Mann’s life and novels by focusing on his love for the sea. It contains a lot of quotes from his masterpieces like Buddenbrooks or Der Zauberberg. The book made me want to reread and read everything Mann has written. I also learned quite a few things about his life I didn’t know or had forgotten.

Josie George suffers from a condition that causes her incredible pain. She’s had it since she was a child and it has affected every area of her life. Most days she can barely walk. Doing things takes immense strength, leaving her exhausted. But A Still Life is more than an account of an incurable illness and the frustrations that come with it (also regarding doctors and medicine). It’s a story of remarkable resilience and of someone who is able to capture the beauty of the smallest things. The book is full of beautiful descriptions and observations. Its wise and gentle and ultimately very uplifting.

Whenever I read one of Eduard von Keyserling’s novels, it is bound to be among my favorites. I just love his writing so much. Abendliche Häuser is another one of those mournful tales of a dying society. In this novel, duels and class consciousness are slowly perceived as being less honorable than absurd. At the heart of Abendliche Häuser is a strong, independent young woman who follows her own heart and convictions. It seems this novel, which was published in 1914, was translated into English in 1927 but I don’t think it’s still available.

In Ascension is such a haunting novel. I always find it fascinating to read about people who are so passionate about what they are doing. The protagonist of this novel, Leigh, is a microbiologist. She first joins a team that explores an unexplainable deep vent in the ocean and then  goes on a space mission. The story of this book is captivating but what I liked even more was the atmosphere. It’s hard to describe but it’s so lovely and amazing to see and experience the world trough Leigh’s eyes. Some parts towards the end reminded me a bit of the movie Gravity.

At Weddings and Wakes was my second Alice McDermott novel and once again, I was in awe of her writing. Is there anyone else who writes scenes like she doe? Her style is so amazing. But I also like her protagonists and settings. Most of her books are set in Brooklyn among Irish Catholic immigrants. Needless to say, religion plays a role. The family in this story is very eccentric which I enjoyed a lot. It was often like reading about big Italian families and since I’m half Italian, many characters felt familiar.

Cold Enough For Snow might be my favourite novel of 2023. It’s a bit surprising as initially I didn’t think it was all that good. Funny enough, I’m still not sure it is but I loved it. I loved it because it spoke to me and reminded me of places and things that are important to me. It also reminded me a bit of some of Tabbucchi’s stories. The main character and her mother are on a vacation in Japan. The descriptions are beyond beautiful. But there are other descriptions of places which I liked even more. The protagonists mother is from Hong Kong and there are passages describing the beauty of Hong Kong that capture it exactly as I remember it. The landscape around it, the mountains, the lights and skyscrapers and that balmy air I’ve experienced nowhere else. The book also explores a theme that fascinates me a lot – the way families tell their stories and how sometimes they tell various versions of a  story. In the end, nobody knows, which is the true story.

Ogai Mori’s The Wild Geese was the only book I reviewed last year. Here’s a snippet from my review:

What impressed me the most, is how immersive this story was. Reading it felt like making a trip to a distant place and time. The imagery, themes, and story are so haunting, I don’t think I’ll forget them any day soon.

The link  to the review is here.

Kick the Latch is such a unique book. Until you pick it up for yourself, you’ll probably never understand what makes it so great. It is based on a series of interviews that Katrhryn Scanlan did with Sonia, a horse trainer from the Midwest. Scanlan herself stays completely out of this, also its not rendered in interview form but like short and very short accounts of a very unique life and a world most of us haven’t experienced. To say, Scanlan stayed out of the story is misleading though. She’s not present as a character or the interviewer but she is very present in the way she chose to tell this story, in the way she condensed, chose titles for even the shortest chapters. It’s brilliant. I loved the book as much for its style and form as for the subject matter. Its touching, moving, heartbreaking and infused with a strange, wild beauty.

I might not have read as much as I usually do, but I’ve read a few books, especially at the beginning and towards the end of the year, that I’m not likely to forget.

How about you? Which books stood out for you?