Review: The Dinner by Herman Koch

The Dinner by Herman Koch (Translated by Sam Garrett)

Published: 2013, Hogarth (Originally 2009)

Genre: Adult Literary Fiction

Source: Library

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Happiness needs nothing but itself; it doesn't have to be validated. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way.

Brothers Paul and Serge have arranged to dine at a fancy restaurant in Amsterdam with their wives Claire and Babette. It’s the sort of restaurant that Paul hates, ridiculously overpriced and full of waitstaff fawning over his brother. But this dinner is more about the conversation than the food, and the conversation is one that neither family can afford to ignore any longer.

The events of The Dinner take place over the course of the single dinner had among the brothers and their wives. But perhaps that’s not entirely correct. The present-day action takes place over the course of a few hours, but much of the novel’s present day gives way to flashbacks that help better explain the characters and their motivations for the dinner meeting. It’s an unconventional authorial choice that Koch made, but for the most part it works well.

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Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Published: 2006, Vintage (Originally 2005)

Genre: Adult Literary Fiction, Science Fiction

Source: Library

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It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I’d known, maybe I’d have kept tighter hold of them, and not let unseen tides pull us apart.

Kathy H. is proud to admit that she’s a really good carer. So good, in fact, that she’s been doing the job for over eleven years now, long after her friends and peers have moved on to the next stages of their lives. But being reunited with her childhood friend Ruth has helped Kathy to reminisce about their past, back from when they were classmates at the idyllic and isolated private school, Hailsham, in an alternate 1970s England. There the students were given a solid education and rewarded for their creativity, yet kept separate from the rest of the world.

As Kathy’s memories progress through time and become intertwined with her current relationships with Ruth and their friend Tommy, she slowly reveals the truths about their education, their lives, and their futures.

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Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Published: 2013, Little, Brown and Company

Genre: Adult Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Source: Library

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They will not be able to keep my words for themselves. They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.

Along with two other people, Agnes Magnúsdóttir finds herself sentenced to a public execution following the murder of two men. As rumors spread about Agnes’ life and actions, the people of Iceland lose any semblance of sympathy for her. Because the government officials need time to prepare for the execution, it is decided that Agnes will spend the last few months of her life sharing the home of a poor farming family.

No one is happy with this decision, least of all the family asked to house a murderess. Agnes spends her time helping out with farm chores and refusing to discuss her past with the young priest chosen to help her repent. It is only gradually that Agnes begins to open up and reveal the circumstances that have led her to this place.

The story’s trajectory is pretty clear from the beginning. Plenty of allusions to Agnes’ ultimate fate can be found on the cover jacket, other promotional materials, reviews, and history itself, so that really should not come as a surprise to readers. Burial Rites is not a story that should be read for the plot, however, but rather a book that should be read for the pure pleasure of reading. This is literary fiction at its finest.

The Agnes presented in Burial Rites is not necessarily true to life, but she offers readers a potential insight into the life of this woman. Kent’s Agnes is literate and intelligent, but also hardened by all the tribulations she’s had to endure. In her life, Agnes has worked at one farm after another in the hope of avoiding complete poverty. She had never allowed herself to become close to many other people and now Natan, the person she cared most for, is dead, supposedly at her own hands. Agnes’ first-person narration shows the desperate beauty of someone with little hope left. She is not quite a likable character, but she is a character with whom readers can empathize.

I tend to prefer my stories to feature only one narrative style, and the beginning of Burial Rites did little to alter my opinion. As the story continues, however, and its scope becomes clearer, I began to understand just why Kent chose to feature multiple narrators and documentation related to Agnes’ case. As I mentioned earlier, this is Agnes’ story. But not just hers. Kent’s story is narrated equally between Agnes’ point of view and a more omniscient third-person narration that focuses on the thoughts of those who come into contact with Agnes. The third-person narrative mostly cycles between Jón, a local district officer, his wife Margrét, their daughters Steina and Lauga, and the priest Tóti.

By choosing not to focus solely on Agnes, Kent is able to present a much fuller picture of the sentiments surrounding the murders supposedly enacted by Agnes and her two accomplices. Kent admits to taking some liberties in her story - primarily in her depiction of the characters, I would assume - but by making the story’s focus broader than on Agnes’ perspective, Kent is able to better display the impressive research she has done regarding this trial and time period. Also because of this, however, I do think that individual secondary characters are not distinguished to to the fullest degree; I just never had as clear an understanding of who they are and what they want.

The Icelandic setting provides the perfect atmosphere for this story. Like Agnes’ fate, the landscape is desolate, any spots of warm weather and bright light infrequent. By virtue of its cold and barren climate, the Icelandic people are virtually closed in during the winter. There’s almost a sense of claustrophobia as Agnes, the family that houses her, and the priest Tóti gradually lose control of their independence. It is only when they are all stuck together in the farmhouse during those long winter nights that Agnes really reveals what led to the deaths of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson.

As much as the story centers around murder, it is also a quiet book full of subtleties. It is introspective, reflective, and layered, much like Agnes during her time at the farm. I took my time reading it, savoring the poetic language and teasing out larger meanings from Kent’s words. It’s a book that definitely works better if you take your time with it, and I can see myself appreciating it even more with further re-reads.

Burial Rites is unlike any book I’ve ever read. It’s not that its aspects are far out of the ordinary; dark, atmospheric settings, enigmatic protagonists, and evocative, lyrical prose are nothing new to literature. And yet, it is the way that Kent skillfully combines these elements together that makes Burial Rites such a memorable book.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 
Published: 2007, Riverhead Books
Genre: Adult Literacy Fiction
Source: Personal copy
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It's never the changes we want that change everything.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I got off to a rocky start. I fully anticipated on loving this from the very beginning, with such a highly acclaimed author focusing on the lives of a Dominican-American family, but unfortunately that was not the case. It took time and a little patience for me to connect with the wonderfully complex and nuanced members of the de León family, as well as the rather crude narrative style, but the experience of reading this novel was worth every moment I struggled at first.

The title and synopsis suggest that this is the story of Oscar, of his brief and wondrous life, but Oscar proves to be only one of many players in this story. More than anything else, this is the story of the de León family as a whole, of the lives and experiences of family members from the past three generations: Oscar and his sister Lola, their mother Belicia, and their grandfather Abelard. Readers witness the maturation of Oscar and his sister Lola as they grow up living in Patterson, New Jersey under the strong cultural influence of their mother and family members. Readers are also transported back to the Dominican Republic to see how Belicia's transformation into a desirable young woman leads to many bad influences, and even further back in time during Trujillo's dictatorship, where Belicia's father Abelard struggles to find a way to protect his family from el Jefe. Deftly integrating elements of a family story with historical events, contemporary struggles, and cultural significance, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a celebration of the ties that bind people together.

The eponymous character is perhaps the most unlikely protagonist one could imagine, for Oscar defies the stereotype of the Dominican-American man in every possible way. He's overweight, spends hours reading and writing works of science fiction, participates in role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and has barely a drop of machismo in his body. Yet what he wants - more than anything - is to find love and get laid. He's a romantic at heart and the majority of his sections (as well as his life) are dedicated to the pursuit of finding his one true love. It is easy to sympathize with Oscar, but he's not the easiest character to like. At times he's a bit too self-effacing, socially awkward to an unbelievable point. But as this story chronicles Oscar's maturation, so does it also chronicles his growth into a more self-confident and assured young man. 

But Oscar is not the sole focus of this narrative, and the portrayal of his family members is just as important to the story as a whole. Along with Oscar, Lola seeks meaning in her life as the two of them grow up in in the 1970s and 1980s. In many ways, Lola is a traditional teenage rebel, while Oscar epitomizes the social misfit. The significance of the Dominican culture and how it continues to be a powerful force in the de León family's lives can be seen through Belicia and Abelard's sections. Beli has had a difficult life, and, while that doesn't excuse her later harsh treatment of her children, it at least explains her actions a bit better. Her transformation from the most desirable young girl in her town in the Dominican Republic to a single mother working multiple jobs in order to raise her children is sad and yet all too easily imaginable. Abelard's section is as much about his life as it is about the time period in general: 1940s Dominican Republic, under the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Through footnotes and narrative asides, the narrator explains the difficulties that Dominicans had under Trujillo's reign, and the measures that some would take to ensure the safety of their families. Readers are able to witness both the triumphs and tragedies of these four central characters, how they affect each other, themselves, the narrator, and those around them.

Although the novel is narrated in the first person tense, Diaz does not reveal the narrator's identity for quite a while. Early on I could tell that the narrator was not Oscar, Lola, or Belicia. With an absent father and the majority of their relatives still living in the Dominican Republic, the list of potential narrators grows thin, until the narrator himself enters the story as Yunior, potential boyfriend of Lola and friend of Oscar's. Diaz's decision to have the story told through an outside perspective is an interesting one. In many ways, it works well to have a more impartial party narrating the story of the de León family. As much as Yunior claims to have known Oscar and Lola, how accurate can his portrait of this family truly be? What family doesn't keep its secrets, after all? Not only is Yunior physically distant from many of the events he relates, but he's emotionally distant as well. More than any other aspect of the novel, Yunior's narration brings to question the validity of the stories we hear, and whether the validity really matters.

A major draw of this novel for me was its focus on Dominican-American culture. One of my majors in college was Spanish, one of my best friends is Dominican-American, and I already had a brief introduction to Dominican culture through Julia Alvarez's wonderful In the Time of the Butterflies. While the focus of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is on the family members themselves, their culture is an ever-present theme. In the prologue the narrator describes the origins of fukú (a curse that the de León family blames for their misfortunes) and zafa (its couterspell), as well as a brief history of the Dominican Republic. By itself, the prologue could leave readers anticipating more of a magical realism type story, the genre that is primarily used by Hispanic authors such as Allende and Garcia Marquez, but Diaz does not ultimately take that route. Their culture (and, perhaps, family fukú) may influence the decisions that the de León family makes, but, as Yunior himself wonders, how long can we avoid blaming ourselves? Who should take responsibility for our actions? Through the constant reminder of the curse and other, smaller traces of Dominican culture and life, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao forces its readers to consider many a complex issue.

As much as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao focuses on the difficulties people encounter in life, it is also a story about love. Romantic love as well as familial love. Much of Oscar's life is guided by his search to find love, but love also dictates the actions of his family members, from his sister Lola's decision to run away from home to his mother's choice to be with a certain man - regardless of the powerful enemies she makes - to his grandfather's determination to sacrifice all to save his family. Misfortunes may affect them all, but it is through their love that they continue to survive.

It is worth mentioning that the story is written in a rather unconventional style. Bits of Spanish phrases and dialogue pop up on pages, not italicized and generally with no definition or explanation. Most are easy enough to figure out with context clues, however, and the use of Spanish language definitely adds to the sense that there is a clear clash of cultures present within the book. The narrator also curses frequently and uses footnotes to explain both historical context and add little anedotes. Neither of these techniques make the reading experience easy necessarily, but they do help readers better understand both Yunior and the history of his people.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is literary fiction at its finest. I read with the sense that Diaz had everything meticulously planned out, from the tiniest details to the great overarching themes. It's a book that merits re-reading and, if possible, a discussion with others. I was fortunate enough to spend some time talking with some co-workers about this book, although I do wish I could discuss it again in a class setting and really be able to unravel all the minutiae that help emphasize the complexity of Diaz's writing style. Highly recommended for those who aren't afraid of crude language, who want a thought-provoking, lasting read that offers a glimpse into another culture and its history. 

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