1001 Books Round-Up October 2023

This months winners and losers…

Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata. BOTM#1. Synopsis from GR: Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father. He is shocked to find there the mistress’s rival and successor, Mrs. Ota, and that the ceremony has been awkwardly arranged for him to meet his potential future bride. But he is most shocked to be drawn into a relationship with Mrs. Ota – a relationship that will bring only suffering and destruction to all of them. Thousand Cranes reflects the tea ceremony’s poetic precision with understated, lyrical style and beautiful prose. Relationship? Suffering – for sure!

My Thoughts: I firmly believe most of this went over my head, yes there was a tea ceremony, yes he met his father’s mistresses, yes he had sex with one of them (relationship?), yes he was drawn to the future bride, yes he was also drawn to the daughter of the woman he had sex with, yes it all ended badly…for the women.

The only thing I think I understood was the Thousand Cranes referred to the pattern of his potential bride’s handkerchief. In terms of Japanese culture the Crane signifies long life as they are supposed to live a 1000 years ironic as the people in this story die young. Perhaps irony was the point?

This book is beautifully descriptive when it comes to the tea ceremony itself and the implements used however it is not so good at making the reader understand or like the characters.

3 Stars – Other readers loved the sparse prose, me I wanted a story, you well who knows until you read it.

Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley. BOTM#2. Synopsis from Goodreads: Written at the height of his powers immediately after Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s highly acclaimed Eyeless in Gaza is his most personal novel. Huxley’s bold, nontraditional narrative tells the loosely autobiographical story of Anthony Beavis, a cynical libertine Oxford graduate who comes of age in the vacuum left by World War I. Unfulfilled by his life, loves, and adventures, Anthony is persuaded by a charismatic friend to become a Marxist and take up arms with Mexican revolutionaries. But when their disastrous embrace of violence nearly kills them, Anthony is left shattered—and is forced to find an alternative to the moral disillusionment of the modern world.  Ugghhh

My thoughts: I think I missed a lot of what was going on is this book and I partly put that down to the shifting timelines the reader is plunged between 3 distinct time periods throughout the novel and it always took me a few pages to orientate myself as to what part of the story I was in. For me the adult years were far less interesting than the school boy years.

As a school boy Anthony is dealing with grief and with finding his place within the hierarchical structure of schooling, will he stick by his friends even if they are not the cool gang or will he abandon them in exchange for acceptance?

As adults the school boys are all present and much less likeable but the same old divisions remain will they reveal what they know about each other or allow them to be unknown adults with a fresh canvas.

Love and war step into to destroy the best laid plans and it doesn’t end particularly well for anyone and they almost all do things that are despicable and that grown-ups really should know better than to do.

3 Stars – A good aid for sleep with some interesting plot points.

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. Year Long Read. Synopsis from GR: Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague promises of marriage are accompanied by unwelcome and increasingly brutal sexual advances. And yet, Clarissa finds his charm alluring, her scrupulous sense of virtue tinged with unconfessed desire.

Told through a complex series of interweaving letters, “Clarissa” is a richly ambiguous study of a fatally attracted couple and a work of astonishing power and immediacy. A huge success when it first appeared in 1747, and translated into French and German, it remains one of the greatest of all European novels. Its rich ambiguities — our sense of Clarissa’s scrupulous virtue tinged with intimations of her capacity for self-deception in matters of sex; the wicked and amusing faces of Lovelace, who must be easily the most charming villain in English literature — give the story extraordinary psychological momentum. This does not describe the book I read!

My Thoughts: Despite the romantic, whimsical description given above the book I read was about a holier than thou girl who is to all intents and purposes kidnapped and raped by a man with no moral compass or courage. A man who conveniently forgets his role in the whole affair to become a grief stricken reformed (hmm) character by the end of the book.

In its day this was probably a riveting read, I mean they had no telly, no computer games and a limited choice of other fiction all things that the modern reader takes for granted. Waiting for each new letter was probably the height of excitement but nowadays sadly not.

The plot at the beginning moves at the pace of a glacier. Letters go backwards and forwards but the action stays static. Clarissa stays home refusing to her marry, Lovelace plots to kidnap her, her family plan to marry her to a man she detests and so it continues for pages and pages.

By the midway point I wishing that Clarissa would forsake men and run away for a torrid affair with her bestie Anna. Spoiler alert this does not happen.

By the end of the book I was glad to be waving goodbye to this cast of characters none of whom I felt any bond with. Clarissa is too holy and good while everyone else with the exception of Anna and her Beau are basically horrible people.

3 Stars – This is a loooong slog but if horrible people are you thing dive right in.

Have you read any of these? Let us know what you thought.