2023: The Finished and the Unfinished

It’s so funny that only now (it’s April!) do I think of making a summary of my reading activities last year. I did plan to write something, but then laziness overcame me as I faced writer’s block. I just thought, “Oh, well. I’ll just pass this year’s wrap-up,” though I had TheStoryGraph generate my overall 2023 wrap-up in a nice, pretty little collage. Be that as it may, lately I somehow found my motivation back to do so. So here it is.

As everyone generally does, I have my yearly reading goal of what to read and what to finish. Last year, I particularly put Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, Lord Seventh, Olive Kitteridge and Kura-kura Berjanggut on my “top priority” list. While I managed to finish Lord Seventh and Olive Kitteridge (plus Sang Raja!), which I started the year before last, I didn’t do so with Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber (because I was bored with the plot) and Kura-kura Berjanggut (because it’s thicker than anything and I was distracted by other, “thinner” books). I also got to finish The House of Mirth by the genius Edith Wharton, and now am planning to write an article (analysis?) on Bertha Dorset. Yep, you read it right. Bertha Dorset. You just wait.

There were also things unfinished: The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo and Home Remedies by Xuan Juliana Wang. What hurtful the most wasn’t that I DNF-ed them―which I rarely do to a book―but the fact that I had been wanting to read them for so long. I had racked my brain as to how to get my hands on Home Remedies for years and once I did, it didn’t work for me. It just didn’t. And The Old Woman with the Knife worked for me even less. Stories with older women protagonists were not anything new to me, and I loved all of them. But not that one.

So, overall, I read 20 books in 2023 but “only” finished 18. And you may call me a cheater becase among those 18, two I enjoyed in an audiobook format. Seriously, if you’re a slow reader like me, audiobooks help―especially when you’re “reading” a book as boring as Murakami Haruki’s First Person Singular. I miss those days when I read Norwegian Wood and felt in awe and thought I would have the same experience with First Person Singular, but I apparently did not. Hallowe’en Party is another disappointment. Not for the movie adaptation, though. When I feel bored or distressed, I usually go and read some Christie for fun and murder. Alas, after struggling for 2-3 months, murder I had, but not the fun.

Where there were bad surprises, there were also the good ones. Love in the Big City and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous are only two of the examples. It’s not that it was the first time I read queer literature, but both were definitely the most surprising and the most exceptional. Not definitely Lord Seventh was on a par with them. It was actually pretty good, with good three-dimensionally portrayed characters, a good, long (and windy?) plot, good humor in the middle, good battle scenes toward the end―the problem is that it didn’t suck me into the story. I can say it was good, but then what?

There were good and bad, and there was also the “mixed” category. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan has been hailed as an outstanding book; as I read it, however, I couldn’t find what it was that made it “outstanding”. I could understand the political message and why it is such an important work in Irish contemporary literature, I just didn’t feel anything strong toward it as I did toward Anna Burns’ Milkman I read in 2022. Cursed Bunny is another widely praised book that I didn’t have much feelings for. I did respect its good quality: good writing (and translation), good bizarre vibes, good unusual ideas. But that’s it. I felt nothing more.

If I have to mention my last year’s favorites, they were definitely (in no particular order) Love in the Big City, Olive Kitteridge, Sang Raja, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and The House of Mirth. At least these five books got me hang on through a difficult year where there was a long period of reading slump and boredom, writer’s block here on my blog, and my mom was seriously ill (twice).

I really, really hope this year will be a better one. I have finished four books so far and three of them were so good. Not something that could pull my heart’s string but really good. They were something that got me wonder, while reading them, how could stories be written this way. The writers must be geniuses.

And the plan for this year?

No. I don’t have any plans.

Baca (Ulang) Pamuk

Mungkin tidak bisa dibilang saya penggemar berat atau penggemar setia Orhan Pamuk, tetapi ada suatu masa ketika saya membaca karya-karya Pamuk secara beruntun. Hingga saat ini, saya sudah menamatkan delapan karya fiksi Pamuk (My Name is Red, Snow, The Museum of Innocence, The New Life, The White Castle, The Black Book, Silent House, dan The Red-Haired Woman) serta satu karya nonfiksi beliau (Istanbul). Ditambah (sayangnya, jika bisa dikata demikian) saya masih di tengah-tengah (atau terengah-engah?) membaca A Strangeness in My Mind sejak 2019. Sudah lima tahun dan saya masih di angka 56%, belum ke mana-mana. Belakangan, saya iseng-iseng meminjam Other Colors dari perpustakaan digital dan baru selesai membaca 2-3 halaman.

Harus saya akui, ada kalanya saya merasa Orhan Pamuk adalah salah satu penulis favorit saya dan saya akan membaca karya-karya beliau lagi dan lagi walau saya rasa sungguh membosankan (A Strangeness in My Mind), biasa saja (The Red-Haired Woman) atau amat mengecewakan (The White Castle, The Museum of Innocence). Tetapi ada kalanya pula saya merasa saya tahu apa yang membuat saya kagum pada beliau setelah membaca karya-karya luar biasa macam My Name is Red, The Black Book, atau Silent House. Sudah bertahun-tahun sejak pertama saya membaca My Name is Red (jika dilihat dari rekam jejak di Goodreads dan resensi saya di sini), dan meski My Name is Red akan selalu menjadi salah satu buku favorit saya, selalu ada semacam perasaan campur aduk selama bertahun-tahun yang berlalu itu. Kadang saya bertanya kepada diri sendiri: benarkah Orhan Pamuk (salah satu) penulis favorit saya? Mengapa setiap kali melihat nama beliau saya selalu tergerak untuk membaca karya beliau (lagi); tetapi sering pula saya merasa terlalu lelah dan tak bertenaga (malas?) untuk membaca karya beliau? Apakah lantaran perhatian saya teralihkan oleh buku-buku karya penulis-penulis lain? Ataukah semata-mata saya sudah bosan?

Namun, di luar segala perasaan campur aduk nan tak menentu tersebut, selalu tebersit di dalam hati saya satu hal: saya ingin membaca ulang buku-buku beliau yang sudah saya baca serta buku-buku lain yang belum saya jamah. Mengapa membaca ulang? Bukan semata-mata karena saya ingin mengingat lagi jalan cerita/isi masing-masing, melainkan juga karena saya ingin mengingat-ingat kembali mengapa saya menyukai buku yang satu tetapi tidak yang lain; mengapa bagi saya buku yang satu lebih baik dari yang lain. Mengapa saya sangat menyukai My Name is Red? Mengapa, sementara orang lain mungkin memuja-muja, bagi saya The White Castle sangat jelek? Apakah ada yang salah dengan pembacaan saya? The Museum of Innocence merupakan kritik terhadap gaya hidup orang kaya Turki yang kerap “sok kebarat-baratan” dan seharusnya menjadi novel yang apik di mata saya, tetapi mengapa saya memberi penilaian yang rendah? Sedangkan Silent House, yang menurut saya amat luar biasa, sangat jarang dibahas di luar sana.

Penilaian, selain sangat subjektif, juga sangat mungkin berubah seiring berjalannya waktu. Ini pulalah yang menjadi alasan saya ingin membaca ulang karya-karya Pamuk, untuk membandingkan “cara berpikir” saya ketika membaca Pamuk dulu dan sekarang. Dan guna “merekam” perbandingan cara berpikir ini, saya juga ingin membuat semacam catatan khusus (anotasi?) selama proses membaca ulang yang saya rencanakan. Saya tidak berani bilang saya akan membuat analisis tiap-tiap buku (walaupun ada gairah untuk itu), tetapi saya akan berusaha untuk menangkap apa yang dulu luput dari pengamatan saya dan menjabarkan lebih lanjut apa yang sudah pernah saya catat.

Jujur, saya belum tahu proses membaca ulang ini akan dimulai kapan dan dimulai dari buku yang mana; saya juga belum tahu apakah saya akan menuliskan catatan di blog ini atau di blog tersendiri (pernah ada rencana untuk itu). Semuanya masih berada di luar bayangan saya.

Untuk sementara itu, saya mungkin akan mencoba melanjutkan membaca Other Colors (dan A Strangeness in My Mind, mungkin?) di tengah mencoba menyelesaikan buku-buku lain yang ada di tumpukan CR saya. Itu pun kalau saya tidak tergoda untuk membaca buku-buku lain di perpustakaan digital atau TBR saya, atau yang berseliweran di linimasa media sosial saya (ha!). Yang jelas, keinginan yang tebersit di dalam hati saya ini tidak akan pernah padam, dan saya sangat berharap dapat (segera?) terwujud.

N.B.: Saya ingat pernah menulis tentang mengapa saya sangat menyukai karya-karya Pamuk di sini. Jika berminat, sila baca ;).

Brooklyn

First published in 2009, this movie tie-in audio released in 2016 and narrated by Kirsten Potter, Brooklyn is an immensely moving novel by Irish author Colm Tóibín. Set in both Ireland and the United States in the 1950s, it captures not (mainly) the protagonist leaving her family for Brooklyn but (mostly) what entails the decision when she says yes to the offer and the choices she makes later on. Throughout the book, readers are presented with details of Eilis Lacey’s journey across the Atlantic and her new daily life in New York and, most importantly, her always indecisive mind and complicated feelings in dealing with people around her―whose importance varies but is never none.

Knowing Eilis’ potential, and her dead-end job at the local grocery store under a bitter, stingy employer, Rose, Eilis’ sister, and their mother sort of push her to take an offer made by Father Flood, who comes from New York for a visit, to work in Brooklyn. Eilis feels reluctant―she doesn’t want to leave her family, her home, her country for somewhere else so far away despite the lots of opportunities to have a better job and future. She wishes Rose would go instead of her, but Rose already has a steady job in Ireland and doesn’t wish to go abroad. And so, Eilis takes the offer and leaves everything and everybody―not only her family but also her friends―behind.

After her horrifying experience on the voyage between two continents, Eilis has to deal with a predictably unexpected situation once she lands on the United States: living in a boarding house under a strict and unbelievably sneaky landlady and with fellow boarders having wide-ranged characters and diverse backgrounds; doing a boring and not-so-much-different-job in a shop floor; meeting people who are but not really different from those in her country; going through the same but not really the same seasons as in her home. Every day feels mundane yet unsettling for Eilis until she meets Tony at a charity dance party one Friday.

She likes him, falls in love with him (she thinks?). Tony is not being secretive about loving and pursuing her; and while Eilis welcomes his feelings for her and his pushy behavior, it is pretty clear from her train of thoughts that she’s sort of uncomfortable with their relationship. When bad news arrives from Ireland, and Eilis has to go home to her family, Tony forces her to marry him before she departs just so he won’t feel anxious during their temporary separation. It is crystal clear that Eilis doesn’t want to, but she says yes.

Eilis seems so obedient, acquiescent to whatever demands of other people: her mother and sister, her landlady, her boyfriend. She never thinks of the consequences of her half-hearted actions until it’s too late, and she is left to endure hardships and pick up the fallen pieces all her own. While she can, more or less, handle the difficulties she faces in Brooklyn, what she has to deal with once she’s back in Enniscorthy is a lot more complicated―what with her mother’s unspoken wish that she’s back for good, her silently burning romance with Jim Farrell, and some townsfolk knowing about her secret marriage.

This character of Eilis, thus, goes hand in hand with the entire storyline―which seems linear, with a calm and quiet atmosphere, yet bafflingly unpredictable. Other characters also contribute to its disturbing sense of uncertainty; their attitudes, their demands, their behavior toward Eilis only add to her indecisiveness―which Tóibín, as the writer, hides so well until we see clearly its unsettling effect.

Brooklyn is, in itself, the kind of novel that doesn’t actually need any sequel. It is a “let it be what it is” book which can stand alone on its own, displaying a replica of life where nothing is as we wish it to be, nothing is as we plan it to be, and that not everybody will make our life easier. Uncertainty is the blood of this book, so it’s only natural that it runs through the vein of the plot. The story is not supposed to be continued, it is supposed to stay as it is. Adding anything afterward might, or might not (it still needs to be proven), reduce its power. 

All in all, Colm Tóibín has written a stark reflection of not only what life could be in the past but also in the present. It takes place in the historical period but its echo carries till today. It’s a very beautiful novel, even though in a very haunting and devastating way.

Rating: 4.5/5

Olive Kitteridge

How do you see people? How do you understand their character? Do you even understand their character? What if your understanding of someone’s personality is shallow, one-sided, or, worse, totally wrong? Reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout feels painfully like being reminded that we can never ever fully understand somebody, that we will always be mistaken. Skilfully, brilliantly crafted as a series of short interlinking stories, it provides the reader various perspectives on our titular character which may or may not be right.

As a whole, Olive Kitteridge tells stories of people of Crosby, a fictional little sea-side town where our main protagonist lives for almost her entire life. Some of them are about her ex-students, some about her neighbors, some about her and her family. These stories are usually composed of pieces of memories or broken fragments of (unreliably narrated) incidents.

Pharmacy is the story where we can see Olive Kitteridge for the first time, and merely in a glimpse―through her husband’s eyes, and what the narrative sees might be her reaction in a certain situation. Henry Kitteridge is a pharmacist and usually has an assistant, but his old assistant passed away so now he has a new one, a young woman named Denise Thibodeau. Olive doesn’t like her, of course, as she never likes most of the people in town; but Henry likes her, has sympathy for her. And it is all the more so when Denise’s husband died after his friend misfired his gun and shot him on a hunting spree. Denise’s world turns upside down and Henry is so ready to help her get back on her feet. Olive can see through that, as she can see through almost anything, and shows her cynical attitude by calling her “your girlfriend.” When it comes to Olive, however, cynicism is rarely in the wrong place.

But Olive and Henry never do have a harmonious husband-and-wife relationship, as hinted throughout the book, and clearly described in A Different Road, told from Olive’s own point of view. Their relationship has very much deteriorated, especially over the past year, that their neighbors all agree: they have changed. A neighbor’s daughter is even so bold as to make a suggestion for them to go to a crisis counseling. What the people of Crosby don’t really know, though, is that Olive and Henry haven’t changed after their only son, Christopher, moved out to California with his wife, but, rather, after the horrible night in a hospital where they are held hostage by two young boys looking for drugs. All of the anger, disappointment, accusations, distaste come pouring out their frightened mouths under the guns. In only one incident, we can see both Henry and Olive have totally different views on one same thing. And just because it is told from Olive’s side doesn’t necessarily make her argument and “facts” valid.

Olive’s view has also seemed to be proven wrong in A Little Burst. When her son Christopher is finally married at the age of 38, Olive can’t help but feel the intense anxiety, worry, shock and fear of a mother who thinks their children will never leave their side. She wants to feel happy, but the fact that Christopher only dated Suzanne for six weeks before deciding to marry her, to Olive, feels too much of a sudden. To make things worse, on the wedding day, she unintentionally eavesdrops Suzanne’s conversation with her friend in which she says, “Christopher’s had a hard time,” and Olive seethes with rage―thinking that Suzanne does not know anything about her son yet acts like she does. Olive’s wrong view here might seem only to be validated by an unreliable character in an unreliable conversation, but it can be definitely confirmed in Security where Christopher himself expresses all of his bottled up feelings―mostly anger and disappointment, just like what Olive has toward her husband.

How Henry and Christopher see Olive, as a wife and a mother, seems so distant and thus hard to believe (and wrong, according to Olive herself); but this is in line with how she is described in her neighbors’ stories. She seems to be that unfriendly, cynical, grumpy old lady. She is a good person, but not one anybody can easily make friends with. While in The Piano Player she, and Henry, only appear in a flash and are not much told of; in Winter Concert people are whispering about them, and mostly in an unkind tone.

One particular story, though, entitled Tulips, shows a quite disturbing “revelation.” Told from Olive’s point of view, it initially tells about a son of her neighbors who murdered a woman by stabbing her with a knife 29 times. The Larkins then inevitably become the talk of the town and are shunned―no one talks to them, no one visits their house. But Olive, out of gratitude, visits Louise Larkin after she sent a message to deliver her sympathy knowing Henry has a stroke. Olive means well, and though Louise doesn’t seem mentally stable they have a nice chat―until she strikes Olive with a punch. In a mocking tone, she says she’s sorry for Olive because Christopher is not by her side when Henry is seriously ill and only came once. What hurts Olive is not Louise’s unpleasant remark, but the truth it implies: that even when Christopher is divorced from Suzanne, he stays in California and doesn’t come back home.

The way Olive’s ex-students remember her in the past is generally much better. She had always been their strict yet compassionate math teacher at high school. This impression is somehow proven right in Starving, in which we can see her put her heart and soul to persuading a student to eat and encouraging her to be cured of her anorexia. But not everybody she taught has the same impression, or so it seems, especially in Incoming Tide. Kevin Coulson comes back to his hometown, brooding over his totally miserable life while watching his sort of childhood friend working in a café near the bay. His father died of cancer, his brother is a drug addict, his mother suffered from depression and committed suicide with a pistol, and, to make it even worse, his girlfriend suffers from the same illness. When Olive suddenly appears by his car and gets into it without his permission, somewhat comforting him by telling him that her own father also died of suicide, Kevin feels far from being comforted and secretly wants her to just leave him alone.

Olive Kitteridge is a prism of her character, where different people occupying different stories make up different shades of her personality. Nothing can be claimed as the truth, even when Olive tells something from her own perspective other people (or, perhaps, the reader) will not 100% believe it. And even if they do, their bias will not allow them to entirely understand her. The way Strout writes, and structures, each narrative of the stories here makes Olive’s character uncertain, indefinite, and her person―with all her thoughts and sayings―untrustworthy. But this what makes the core strength of the whole book. Strout doesn’t write about a heroine, a “reliable” narrator, a person with goodness and kindness and no flaw whatsoever. She writes about your neighbor next door, literally. An ordinary old lady who is unfriendly to almost everybody, despises her husband, but loves children and, especially, her child.

The pain of reading this book does not come, most of the time, from the fact that the protagonist is horrendously flawed, but that the protagonist reflects everyone of us; and that the ironic remarks she makes are almost always right. Many writers are able to write real life into their fiction, but not many as painfully accurate as Strout is able.

“Bad things happen,” she wanted to say. “Where have you been?”

Rating: 4.5/5

Sang Raja

Iksaka Banu is widely known for his historical fiction, most of which are set during the Dutch colonial era in the East Indies before Indonesia gained its independence and became a sovereign country. Sang Raja, first published by Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia in 2017, is one of those. Focusing on a vastly, and fastly, growing cigarette business in Central Java this time, Mr. Banu makes the most of his resources, researches and writing skill to present a magnificent, based-on-a-true-story novel about the king (sang raja in English) of cigarettes who saw not only the ups and downs of his business kingdom, but also the Dutch’s losing grip on his homeland and the coming and going of the Japanese toward Indonesian independence in 1945.

The book opens with the passing of Nitisemito, the king himself, on 7 March 1953, attended by officials, famous fellow businessmen, the people of Kudus and―the one who will later lead us to the main story―a determined journalist named Bardiman Sapari. The latter intends to write an in-depth account of the life of the legendary cigarette mogul for his newspaper, hence trying to find the right person(s) to tell it―who, he highly assumes, will attend the funeral. His assumption has proven right and he finds the ones he is looking for: an old Dutch man named Filipus Rechterhand and his long-time Javanese friend and partner, Goenawan Wirosoeseno.

Once both agree to Sapari’s unwavering request for them to share their “inside story”, the reader is not led directly to Nitisemito and how he builds his business from scratch; rather to each story of their own. This preliminary then, while in the interval still not showing Nitisemito’s start as a businessman, sets the path to their finally meeting each other at the Bal Tiga office―feeling that they hit it off straight away despite their different races and classes. This viewpoint of theirs, as the employees of the company, continues to let them be the witnesses of Bal Tiga’s unstoppable rise in the cigarette industry. But the impending doom cannot be avoided: Nitisemito’s promiscuity (which Rechterhand deems unhealthy for their financial stability), intense competition with new, emerging cigarette companies, World War I in 1918, the rise in clove price and the increase in taxes on any tobacco-related products, baffling tax evasion allegedly done by Karmain (Nitisemito’s son-in-law and right-hand man), and the expected yet unexpected appointment of Akoean Markoem (Nitisemito’s legitimate son) as the man-in-charge replacing Karmain. Despite his legal status, there is literally no one in Bal Tiga would expect him to succeed his father for, in the eyes of the employees, Soemadji, Nitisemito’s illegitimate son from his sort of “second marriage”, will instead. Rumor even has it that Karmain’s doomed fate and his imprisonment are due to Akoean’s involvement in the business.

Of all these calamities affecting the Bal Tiga company, the one when Karmain is accused of embezzlement is the most intriguing―implying that the money is actually given to Soekarno for their underground fight for independence. But it is only mentioned fleetingly because there is no proof and nobody can really be sure. The real disaster, however, is when the Dutch gets worried over the German occupation of their homeland and starts to lose their grip on Noesantara while the Japanese finally arrive after conquering Malaysia and Singapore. 1942 is the doom year for the Dutch (for having to surrender without fight to Japan) and for the people of Noesantara (for having to fall into the hands of another colonizer). And this is also the point where Bal Tiga receives its final blow―the Japanese taking over their company, plundering and destroying everything in their factory and taking away their Dutch employees, including Rechterhand.

The history of Indonesia as the Dutch (then Japanese) colony intertwines with the history of the Bal Tiga company, while the history of the world (both World Wars, German occupation across the Europe, Spanish flu) unfolds thinly yet clearly under the surface. Iksaka Banu is very clever at putting everything together and still fill the story with very human, rounded characters. Everybody in Nitisemito’s family is not particularly described in the best characterization possible, and even some of his employees are not there to be “good persons”. Even Wirosoeseno, whose loyalty to Nitisemito and his company is unshakable, is too “innocent” for his own good. Rechterhand seems to be the wisest of all, and his fate as a Dutch man whose heart only lies on the land he is growing up and living in is the most heart-wrenching. And yet, all these characters combined, and seen from a third-person point of view this book wants the reader to have, make up an ensemble who delivers a long-spanning, exciting story of a huge cigarette company that rises, struggles and falls during the era before Indonesia can even see its independence coming.

The plot is not the best at some points, the structure is definitely simple for a historical novel, but Mr. Banu’s writing here is undoubtedly better than in his two previous works, Semua Untuk Hindia and Teh dan Pengkhianat, which are both short-story collections. It might be because he is actually better at writing novels than short stories, or simply because he has improved altogether. He expertly blends history, family drama and business mechanism together into an enjoyable, flowing, engrossing story. There are only two unfortunate flaws: he is too matter-of-fact and “deadpan” in telling historical facts, as if this is a nonfiction instead of a fiction book, acting like he is a history teacher telling students in a class about the dates and places of certain past events. This, most of the time, pulls the reader out of the story and the enjoyment of reading it. Secondly, toward the end Mr. Banu talks too much about Indonesian history rather than the Bal Tiga company, which should be the main focus till the end because this book is about its founder and owner, the king (hence Sang Raja) of the cigarette business. But he is too keen on elaborating the aftermath of the Japanese occupation and how Indonesia finally gains its independence.

Despite the shortcomings, though, Sang Raja is still a very satisfying read. The flow, the characters, the historical details and even the ending are all pretty much to the reader’s preference. With this book, Iksaka Banu seems to want to, and succeed, establish himself as the father of Indonesian historical fiction.

Rating: 4.5/5

Galatea

Galatea is a short story by Madeline Miller, written after The Song of Achilles and in the middle of her working on Circe. As an expert in classics and a teacher in Latin and Greek at high schools, Miller is surely expected to draw her inspiration from their host of works. This time it’s Metamorphoses by Ovid―a classic hailed by many as a romantic, happy-ever-after love story but, to Miller herself, has a disturbingly misogynistic undercurrent in it. Hence the need not only to retell but to twist it.

Unlike Circe, which is a retelling but still in the mythical world, Galatea seems to be a blend of everything. It’s a classic with mythological elements set in our modern narrative―which, as we can see it widely in almost every aspect and any sense, is not that much different from that of the ancient times.

The story starts with, and this might raise a question in any reader’s mind, Galatea being and waking up in a closed room with only a nurse attending her and a doctor who regularly checks up on her. She is confined in bed, she must lie down, and every time she suggests an idea of her taking a walk outside to warm herself in response to the nurse and the doctor finding her body too cold, they banish it immediately. The reason is―it seems likely so―none other than their being afraid of her husband, besides being paid by him.

As for the motive behind this confinement, though, it is not clear until Miller takes us through the already known narrative by Ovid, which serves as the backstory. Galatea was a statue, “born” out of an ivory, and the man sculpted her eventually married her when she came to life. They have a daughter, Paphos, who is smart and rebellious and has no qualms about saying no to her tyrant of a father. And Paphos’ smartness is not enough for a governess, so Galatea asks her husband for another tutor (the previous one was sacked for looking at her, which her husband detested). And, of course, her husband refuses the idea.

Unfortunately, if you want to say so, Paphos is not a daddy’s girl and, unlike her obedient mother, cannot be confined in anything by anybody. When she is not allowed to go outside and learn more she is restless, up to the point of not caring if she disturbs her father working at home with her behavior. So Galatea, who loves her daughter so much that even her husband is jealous of her, takes her to the countryside to play just as they usually did. Galatea tells Paphos not to tell her father, for he will surely be very angry should he know; and then, together, they walk out on the street as secretly as they can. But they are too conspicuous―with their looking “as pale as milk” and Galatea herself is an obvious, outstanding beauty that makes her husband wary and anxious and keen on keeping her from anybody else. Long story short, they are caught, and this is why Galatea is consequently punished.

Galatea, as a story, is not being subtle. It tells the reader loud and clear that there are always disturbing ideas about women in society―either it’s ancient or modern. Ideas that the most perfect woman (wife?) is the one with a perfect, outstanding beauty, moral purity and total obedience; that if a man kiss you and you’re not blushing then you are shameless; that any (other) man cannot look at you when you are strikingly pretty; that your sole and only function as a woman is to bear and rear children for your husband and to satisfy his sexual needs. A pretty woman in a cage, full stop. Nothing else.

These ideas have taken root for generations and no amount of protests, negation, or feminist movements could pull them out or even, at the very least, prevent them from spreading wider. They do not apply to everybody, yes, but still, they exist in almost every culture we know, in almost every society there is. If this is a strong enough reason for some (many?) women to feel angry, then it is justifiable. If this is a strong enough reason for Miller to sound angry in her writing, then it is justifiable. Galatea’s voice is as calm as she seems obedient, but her rage is there and profound. She looks like a “yes, Sir” wife but she is not stupid, and the dissatisfaction with her caged life is secretly seething until finally she chooses her own way.

Madeline Miller’s Galatea is merely a short retelling, but its twist is impactful. And what makes it even more relevant (today) is not only our constant need to rebel against something which is badly against our will, but also our need to state firmly that these ideas cannot go on any longer.

Rating: 4.5/5

Without You, There Is No Us

What if we can get a chance to enter a closed place nobody knows what’s inside? And what if we have some sort of connection with the said place? North Korea is not only “closed”, it is isolated―with almost no contact with any other countries (except for its allies) and no one can come and go so easily. Every time we see or read news about North Korea it’s always something bad. Suki Kim, a Korean-American journalist and writer, dared herself to set foot in the opposite side of her own motherland to see what was going on.

First published in 2014, Without You, There Is No Us tells the reader about Kim’s third visit in one summer years back when she was permitted to enter North Korea to teach English to students at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. When she visited the small, communist country before (to make a report on a sort of international-scale cultural event), as a Korean herself, she felt at home but only got to get a glimpse of it. But now, on her stay as a teacher, she saw more―more rules, more customs, more shocking (yet as expected) things: more alerting and, to her dismay, more horrifying.

One of the first things she noticed was that the leader (or, here, is referred to the president)’s pictures and slogans were everywhere, but you couldn’t talk about him (openly, of course, in this case), and in general you had to (had to, just for the sake of emphasizing it) watch your mouth. That might sound so natural since we’re talking about a country where a leader is worshipped like a god and freedom of speech is something you never heard of. But what so ridiculously eyebrow-lifting was that you couldn’t take pictures―perhaps so you wouldn’t have any documentary of what’s behind the closed door―and communication was also “understandably” limited. 

Speaking of ridiculous, the fact that Kim was there to teach English is worth a questioning. DPRK hates the US so much, so why bother learning its language? They didn’t even allow their people to wear jeans because it was so “American”. Was it merely (suspiciously so) because they wanted to understand the “American language” so they could spy on them (politically speaking)? And why hiring an American citizen to do that? Was it because she was a Korean by blood so they thought it was “safer”?

Kim herself, though, didn’t feel safe. She felt (suspected?) that everybody was watching her: her words, her thoughts, her every move. When her students asked her questions at times she thought it was out of pure curiosity, as they were children afterall; but at other times, she felt they asked those questions to secretly interrogate her and waited for her to blurt out the wrong answers. She even felt her stundents didn’t have any qualms about lying right in front of her face. She sometimes wondered if it was because they didn’t know what’s right what’s wrong, if they didn’t actually know that it’s a lie, or if it was just a way of survival. She eventually, however, got used to it.

But she loved them still. For her, they were just kids―normal kids. Their innocence had even made her believe and optimistic they would grow up like those outside of North Korea; a wish that would not likely become a reality. And this is not without any reason: they lived in their own world, literally and figuratively. They lived in a world where they thought their country was the greatest, that everybody spoke their language and ate their food. They lived in a world where―despite the writer’s and her teacher friend’s efforts (teaching them to write essays and biography, introducing them to American products and movies, telling them about the transportation systems abroad, and even trying to teach them to use knife and fork at dinner table)―they stood firm, unmoved, and refused them all. Despite their curiosity, they did not want to learn anything Western, anything international; because their country and everything in it was enough. Knowing what they knew was enough.

At the end of the day, however, what is truly shown in the book is Kim’s compassion, affection and love for the kids―even though there was nothing she could do about their situation, as they themselves could not (would not?) change it. What’s so striking, though, at the very end of the book when Kim was about to leave the country, and after all the “differences” she felt filling the gap between them and herself, is one student saying, heart-achingly clear, to Kim that she and them were not different, that they were all the same.

Rating: 4/5

The Plotters

Indonesian edition’s cover

The Plotters by Kim Un-su (Indonesian edition is translated by Ingrid Nimpoeno) is more about the joke of life than it is about assassins. Unless readers think those two things are intertwined, in some sense, then this book doesn’t necessarily fall into thriller category. It does show the reader this and that murder, this and that plot with all the tricks the plotters do, but it is the game behind it all that constructs the entire story: power play, politics, revenge―all of those lead us to the nature of human beings and how ridiculous the life we all live can seem.

The narrative mostly focuses on Reseng, an assassin adopted, raised and trained by a veteran plotter called Old Raccoon. He is supposed to kill his latest target quickly and leave the body as it is in the crime scene, but he’s done none of those. His out-of-plan actions stir unnecessary turmoil in the plotters’ circle, and angers Hanja, a “plotting” plotter who has something bigger in mind than merely planning assassinations for money. Hanja wants power: he wants to topple Old Raccoon down and replace him as the “leader”, hence targeting Reseng for all the wrong actions he’s done―for Reseng is the Old Raccoon’s key right-hand man.

Since the story circles around Reseng, though it is not actually about him, so many aspects and sides of his life are told in flashback: the one time he had to run away and almost gave up his life as an assassin and married the girl he liked, the fond memories of him and his best friend Chu (and then the sad ones when Chu died)―all these are not necessarily to shape, or describe, Reseng’s character as a whole but largely to show to the reader what a harsh life an assassin has to live. And later, when he thinks he has no way out, comes Mito, a “plotter” who thinks she can end it all. Unlike Hanja, who wants to topple Old Raccoon down in order to become the new leader, Mito wants to topple down everybody in power so she can end the power play and create a new world―a dream (ambition?) that Reseng deems impossible.

Like the few Korean thriller/mystery novels I have read so far, the “thriller” is not a thriller, and the “mystery” is not a mystery. In short, it is not what it is. Or, it is not conventionally so. This book lacks of thrills and is not mysterious at all in its plot. It has layers, yes, a lot of it, but those layers are there to convey one by one the plot behind the plot and the “shocking” revelation in a very laid-back manner. It doesn’t give any excitements, it doesn’t excite the reader.

What so outstanding about The Plotters, though, and quite amusingly, contradictorily so, is the in-depth characterization and the narrative through which it is delivered. Readers can see clearly what kind of person Reseng is since the first paragraph of the first chapter, all throughout the book to the end―his defiant actions, his temporary choice to leave the assassin’s life, his steadfast friendships and loyalty, his pains and difficulties, all are described in detail between the lines. Even Old Raccoon’s character looks standout, albeit not overshadowing Reseng as the main protagonist. And the female characters here are also uniquely depicted, even the victim and the weakest―making them not merely tools of the narrative.

And all these characters speak matter-of-factly, unapologetically, because life is already cruel as it is and they don’t need to be sentimental or beat around the bush about it. Reseng even points out to Mito that her goal is too impossible and childish to reach. Though, at the end of the day, Hanja also points out to him that he is too simple-minded to think that Old Raccoon―the man who adopted and raised him, the man who trusts him, and the man whom he trusts―is someone he truly knows. And, surprisingly, or not, Reseng is not that different from the sly, wicked Hanja (or any other person working in this “killing industry”, for that matter). They are all the same, so what’s the point of changing the world?

Kim’s The Plotters is really a thought-provoking, engaging read, if you just ignore the fact that it is not thrilling at all. Through a story of murder and death, power and revenge, it shows you what a joke life is and that the idea of  “changing the world” is even more ridiculous. What’s there to change, if human nature stays the same?

Rating: 4.5/5

Three Years

Indonesian edition’s cover by Bentang Pustaka, translated by Sapardi Djoko Damono

What can happen in three years? Life changes, or not? Three Years by Anton Chekov may not provide the best of an answer but at least it describes what the characters in it are going through in such a long (short?) span of time.

When the book starts off with Alexei Fyodorovich, or Laptev, our protagonist, falling in love instantly with Yulia Sergeyevna readers might think the story flows too much in a rush; and the fact that he proposes to her very impulsively doesn’t help them either to grab the essence of the initial plot. But soon it’s pretty clear that this is about Laptev and Yulia’s journey, along with other characters surrounding them.

One of the most significant other characters here is Polina Nikolayevna Rassudina, a woman in Laptev’s life before he met Yulia. They meet again after each is married to someone else and has to live through it without love. Both are unhappy with their respective marriages, and feel uncomfortable with each other every time they have a chance encounter. Polina clearly still loves him, but Laptev, of course, cannot accept that. She, naturally, feels upset about the fact and turn unfriendly toward him. Meanwhile, Laptev and Yulia’s marriage goes from bad to worse; there is only pain and nothing else. Yulia finally decides to go back to her hometown to have a space for herself―a long journey she shares with Laptev’s brother-in-law Panaurov, where they share a moment of sparks together.

The passing of Laptev and Yulia’s little child only makes things even worse, and Yulia understandably needs a very long time to heal herself from the sadness it brings. As the time flies, however, Laptev turns to feel unsympathetic toward his wife and all the love he has for her has gone. Instead, he feels upset when Polina, who used to love him so much, becomes colder and colder toward him. On the contrary, though, Yulia starts to love her husband, to have some kind of bond with him, and care for her father-in-law and his family.

But Three Years doesn’t only talk about Laptev’s marriage life, but also his family and its business and the turbulent times it has to go through. It subtly tells the reader about the economic system and ideology where Laptev’s family business leans on. Laptev never likes his family business, and never likes the way his father runs it. It always, on his part, reminds him of how his father “educated” him as a child―which was strict and cruel. That was also how his father treated his workers―like they were all some kind of lowly lives who did not deserve better treatment and wages. But now that his father is blind and his brother Fyodor is mentally ill, Laptev has no choice but to take over his father’s store.

While the premise of the book is superb, the entire narrative writing is a poor match. The plot could be more engaging but the style just decides to make it so flat. Page-turner as it might be, there are no emotions emanated from every word even when there is potential for that in Laptev-Polina’s conflict or Laptev-Yulia’s cold marriage life. It is not boring, it just feels like we’re reading newspapers at a glance because we’re in a hurry. Each character, thankfully, can save this book from its utter fall. They are all vividly, strongly described―they are the ones who carry the story till the end so that readers are willing to stay where they are to witness what difference those three years can make to the characters’ lives.

Anton Chekov’s Three Years can really depict the progress and the decline of things simultaneously: changes of hearts, changes of relationships, the rise and fall of a family, the end that is not truly the end. The problem, however, is that―since it’s a novella―it is too short and too condensed. Reading it is like reading a piece of brief information without any necessary elaborations or emotions. It’s like a collection of deadpan words staring at the reader while telling its stories. Well, it could be for Mr. Sapardi’s translation, but I seriously don’t dare to question his skill.

Rating: 3/5

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

Indonesian edition’s cover by Gramedia Pustaka Utama

What are the unknown errors of our lives? Stepping out of our boundaries? Stepping into unfamiliar lands full of things strange to us? Feeling the forbidden feelings? Thinking that other places are better than our own places? Being strangers to our own people? If they are, then this book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has summed them up in a way that is pretty emotionally devastating. First published in 2001 (Indonesian translation by Gita Yuliani K. released nine years after), the collection consists of nine short stories guaranteed to make readers ask themselves if they’ve ever been in the same shoes.

The book opens with a rather heart-jerking piece, Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter. It would be just another “migration story” we ever read somewhere else were it not for the unsettling daily life our protagonist Mrs. Dutta has to live. When she first comes to the United States from Calcutta to live with her son Segar, her daughter-in-law Shyamoli and her grandchildren, she has no idea that every day will be so difficult to endure. She initially thinks, believes, they will be happily reunited. She clearly doesn’t foresee the cultural (and social) gap she has to face once she lands on the foreign land, even when she lives under the same roof as her own family.

Imagine and old lady, fragile already from age, dreaming of living happily with her son and his family but finding out later on that they don’t eat what she eats, that they go to sleep and wake up at different times in the morning and, worst of all, that they don’t actually feel comfortable with her presence in their house. And to top it all, she herself doesn’t feel comfortable in their environment―what with the “distant” neighbors and the fences separating their homes.

The idea of being a stranger to one’s own people is also represented in The Lives of Strangers. Leela loves solitude, and she inherits this quality from his parents―which is why they migrated to the United States. One day, however, she decides to try and go to her parents’ homeland, India. Unexpectedly, she likes it there, where everything is the opposite of what she usually sees/feels/happens in the US, and is contradictory to her own nature.

The actual story unfolds during Leela’s pilgrimage with a group of other women, when she meets Mrs. Das―who is the talk of the entire group and is said to bring bad luck everywhere, especially to herself. Leela isn’t afraid, though; instead, she feels sympathy toward the old widow and is willing to help and accompany her going down the mountain when Mrs. Das hurts her feet. But soon she sees the “bad luck” coming to herself, and she can only blame Mrs. Das for every single bad thing happened to them after she offered to help the older woman.

Having conflicted, somehow blurred feelings is not something only Leela would experience, but so would Aparna in What the Body Knows. Aparna knows exactly her feelings for Dr. Byron Michaels is not right, though she seems to keep it to herself not for that particular reason but because she can feel it unrequited. Long after she was discharged from the hospital they meet again; and she should be happy seeing that there is a twinkle of admiration in Dr. Michaels’ eyes, but no―the fact that his admiration only comes from her fresher and prettier looks after she recovered from her postpartum depression shows her what kind of man he is (read: just any other man).

Women should be able to control their own feelings and choose what they want to feel, what they want to do or to have, even if it would be their mistakes in life. This is also what Divakaruni seems to imply in The Blooming Season for Cacti. Well, they―more often than not―cannot control anything that happens in their lives; what with Radhika being married off to a man she never knew before and it turns out that he has already a wife and children, and Mira witnessing women being raped during a religious riot in India. They become friends and heal each other; and at that very moment they should be let to feel what they actually feel for each other, should be able to choose what they have for each other―but, unfortunately, no.

There are indeed many complications in life―especially when we migrate from one place to another, move from our own safety to uncertainty. Mistakes done, errors happened―especially when we move from one heart to another, searching for love in one person to another. The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, the titular story of the collection, shows how dangerously unpredictable this “heart migration” can be. When Ruchira meets Biren she thinks she finally finds the right man. They are so open about each other: their pasts and mistakes; and they can make each other so passionate. Everything seems so right until just before their planned wedding Biren’s ex-girlfriend comes to Ruchira saying that she’s pregnant. Worst of all, Arlene, the said ex, reveals that Biren asked her to abort her pregnancy but she refused. At this very point it would be incredulous were Ruchira not angry and disappointed with Biren. She even puts his name in her book of errors she’s had since she was a teenager. But what is life without errors? She’s even

“[…] come to terms with misjudgements and slippages, she’s resigned to the fact that they’ll always be a part of her life. If there are errorless people in the world, she doesn’t want to know them.”

Stories in this book point out what’s so basic about people’s lives: that they’re fated to have errors. It can be for whatever decision we make but mostly, here, it’s because we decide to move, either we want it or not. Different places take different measures, different environments provoke different thoughts―and Divakaruni’s narrative style renders it subtle yet so sharp at the same time. Her stories are simple and down-to-earth, and she doesn’t even try to be artsy in writing but her sentences often do not pull any punches. They are matter-of-factly throw harsh truths to the reader’s face so that even though readers do not feel comfortable sometimes they still have to face them. The one shortcoming, however, is that at times those punches do not hit the right places, making the reader not feel anything even when the truth is in front of them.

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni touches so many areas in just one “migration” theme; shows so many effects of only one “cause”. It might not be the most emotional book about immigration and adaptation but it can be considered as one which is so unapologetic in telling them.

Rating: 4/5