Silent House

It’s been a very long time since I read Orhan Pamuk, and the last time only left me a bitter memory of deep disappointment. I went into Silent House, the 2012 English translation of the Nobel laureate’s 1983 Sessiz Ev, with a feeling of cautiousness, bracing myself for another dull narrative I’ve had to bear in The Museum of Innocence. It seemed likely that I would experience the same thing, especially after several first pages, until finally the long, winding road took me to the ideological conflict banging loudly from behind the silent lines.

As anyone might expect, Pamuk brings out the recurring theme that always swirls in his every novel: the tug of war between the East and the West, traditions and modernity, Islam and secularism. A bit to my surprise, the issues of communism, anti-communism and nationalism also emerge from this book. All those clashes of isms are told so subtly through the silence of a family of which members hold different ideas, also in the occasional interaction between said family and the outsiders forming their neighborhood. Fatma, a ninety-year-old woman, lives alone in her old, almost crumbling house in Cennethisar with a dwarf of a servant, Recep, who is actually the bastard son of her dead husband Selâhattin. In the summer, as usual, her three orphaned grandchildren come to spend some time of the holidays. However, instead of taking care of and accompanying their grandmother through the days, they’re busy doing their own business: Faruk struggling to accomplish his history project, Nilgün swimming and reading communist newspapers, and Metin having fun with his upper-class, “society” friends. All these daily repetitions continue to weave the narrative the whole time while a gang of extreme nationalists lurking among them, represented mainly by Hasan, Recep’s nephew. It is this young, zealous, big-dreaming boy who stirs the storyline with his enthusiasm for nationalism and his love, tragically, for the leftist Nilgün. Being in a right-wing extremist gang, who are determined to spread their political ideas by writing slogans on the walls, Hasan can’t help but feel conflicted. And so, in the throes of confusion over his stance and of his unrequited love, he unconsciously does what the reader might, or might not, expect him to do.

Much like in My Name is Red, here Pamuk elaborates each of his characters’ viewpoints through a certain chapter, where those characters tell the story the way they see their lives. So unfortunately, the character of Selâhattin, who represents the ideas of Westernization and secularism, and Nilgün, who represents communism, do not get the same treatment as the others do. While Selâhattin appears only in the vivid memories of the old Fatma, Nilgün is merely told in bits from Recep’s and, mostly, Hasan’s points of view. On the other hand, as much as Recep, Faruk, Metin, and Hasan might be drawing much of the reader’s attention with their stream of consciousness, it is Fatma whom I think of as the central character of the book. She is portrayed so silent and introvert throughout the story, so traditional, so afraid of God and the threat of sins, so unwilling to say so much as a word, much less fight the horrible things she despises. And yet, at some point, she can be so narrow-minded and cruel, so unforgiving. In some ways, I saw her as a representation of the centuries-old Turkey as a whole, the one that I know Pamuk always perceives in his mind, and channels through his stories. The silent conflict between the religious, conservative Fatma and her secular husband who messes up religious teaching in the name of modernity and development of his country behind the closed door of their inharmonious marriage more or less depicts the tug of war which has been wrecking for years and years the seemingly quiet yet continuously rioting nation.

Readers of Orhan Pamuk must have known, I believe, that scrutinizing his long-plotted, winding narratives needs patience and willingness to read on no matter how unbelievably tiring they might be. Devouring this one is no exception. It is not for a complicated, nonsensical storyline just as the case with The Museum of Innocence, though, because Silent House has a surprisingly simple one, but for the elaborateness of all thoughts and behaviors and actions of the characters in each chapter. Through all these can readers see the whole picture of what is being told, and Pamuk has expertly accomplished the mission of delivering it to us. The main tools of this story to unfold itself to the reader are obviously the thoughts and memories narrated by the main characters, and although the annoying unquoted past-time dialogues got in my way of enjoying every each one of them, I still think this kind of storytelling is quite riveting. The most appealing about this book, however, are the slow-burning climax, which is so emotionally grueling and obnoxious at some point, and the way Pamuk puts the entire story to an end, which is a bit shocking and cliffhanging. The translation is also well done, thanks to Robert Finn, it helped me tackle the general difficulty in reading this book.

Overall, Silent House is so much more satisfying than the latest Orhan Pamuk’s work I’ve read. Despite some flaws, it lives up to my expectation and more. It has a great idea, a tiring yet beguiling narrative, strong characterizations, also a proper ending. It’s just mesmerizing the way it is.

Rating: 4/5

9 dari Nadira

It was the second time I read Leila S. Chudori’s work, after Pulang, and the second time I felt quite disappointed with her narrative tone. First published in 2009, 9 dari Nadira is a short story collection meant to read like a novel. The contents were written at different periods of time, and some of them had been subjected to revisions in order, I assume, to synchronize them with the entire plot. They are all great stories, and I marvel at their capability to have dragged me along the book without even blinking and held me hostage to the last page. If only Chudori weren’t too judgmental.

All the nine stories are intertwined with each other and tell of one main idea, focusing on one figure, Nadira Suwandi, a journalist born and raised in a troubled, tortured family. Through each title we will see the course of her life in a particular order: the death of her mother (Mencari Seikat Seruni); the hatred her older sister Nina has for her and their inharmonious relationship (Nina dan Nadira); the familial responsibility she has to shoulder on her own (Melukis Langit); married to the wrong man and unaware of it (Ciuman Terpanjang); filing for divorce (Kirana); and finally realizing her true love when it’s almost too late (At Pedder Bay). But my favorite is definitely Tasbih, in which Chudori elaborates on Nadira’s character through an encounter with a psychopathic psychiatrist, a serial killer she has to interview for her crime report. Just a few seconds after they sit face to face in the prison, Mr. X, the psychopath, can figure her out completely. He can even guess what happens in her family, how her mother dies and why, and what her relationship with her sister is like. It sort of freaks her out and rises her temper, and I guess the reader would feel the same. But to me that is the most engrossing moment, the best story of all nine, because Chudori somehow shows us not only that Mr. X can understand Nadira, but that they are in the same state of mind.

And that is what I love most about Leila S. Chudori, the way she describes her characters. She seems to excel in opening up layers of a person and making them appear so normal albeit a little bit unsettling. Among so many characters in this collection, I think Nadira and Nina are the most intriguing ones. Nadira is described as a smart woman, a bookworm, so introvert and full of grief and sadness. Everything about her is told in great detail: her complex nature, her mourning, what’s inside her heart, her choice of life, and her saddening psychological condition. Chudori doesn’t put it word by word, but everything is there. Chudori lays her character bare throughout all the nine related stories for all the readers to see. The same applied to Nina. Despite her brief appearance in a few titles, Nina’s character is so vivid that we can see clearly her anger, her jealousy and her bitterness alongside her sense of responsibility and burden. Readers may find her so hateful, but I can understand her conflict inside. It might be hard to be Nadira, but being Nina is even harder.

Unfortunately, while Chudori succeeds in putting her created characters into the “gray area”, she doesn’t seem to feel it’s necessary to do the same with her tone, which tends to be judgmental. It’s like all people involved in the New Order are bad guys, all rich people are corrupt, all members of Indonesian Communist Party are innocents, and all journalists are angels. All of a sudden the narratives become a set of fairy tales for kids where all we get is merely black vs white, good vs bad, and all people are classified and put into boxes that, consciously or not, she creates a certain stereotype in the eye of the reader. The second most disturbing flaw I found in this book, much like in the novel Pulang, was the grammar. Chudori mixes both slang and formal/poetic language that sometimes the reader will find an inappropriate word in an inopportune sentence and the whole writing reads so awkwardly. Be that as it may, this book is not without some pluses. All the stories might have been written randomly (looking at the date put at the end of every piece), but the plot is nicely put and arranged, allowing the reader to enjoy it without being periodically misguided. And all the narratives, or rather the entire narrative is surprisingly strong, absorbing and quite sensible (though I believe there is a miss within one story). What I found so interesting about 9 dari Nadira was its main ideas: trauma, emotional wound, unrequited love, and a very, very exhaustingly complicated romance and family conflict.

Overall, I can say that I liked 9 dari Nadira. It’s just I had a problem with the tone, and I couldn’t stop myself from frowning at the sentences the whole time I was reading it. It’s great, but with great minuses, too.

Rating: 3.5/5

Hotel Iris

newest Vintage edition’s cover

Once again, Yōko Ogawa has mesmerized me with her simple yet wondrously enigmatic narrative. Reading Hotel Iris, I couldn’t help but let myself drowning in its every line that I wasn’t capable of just passing through the plot without scrutinizing what actually happened. I honestly didn’t think Ogawa set the atmosphere to be so nuanced on purpose, and yet it managed to flip my emotion endlessly from down flat and calm to violently churning and disgusted. Ogawa really has it in her to create a story which gets the reader reeling and thinking even when they don’t realize it.

Set in a seaside little town, the story of Hotel Iris begins as Mari, a 17-year-old girl, recounts the first time she meets a strange old man whom she knows to be, and henceforth calls, the translator. It is just a day before the summer arrives and the translator takes a lodging at the title hotel apparently to spend the night with a prostitute. But things go wrong as suddenly the middle-aged loose woman starts shouting and screaming names at the translator, leaving him to bear the shame and pay the rent and more. Mari should be afraid of him, or at least disgusted by the sight, but she feels none of those. Instead, she feels attracted and enchanted by the voice of the translator, which radiates dominance and power yet so soft and deep that she finds it lulling. At this point the reader must be starting to think that there is something wrong with Mari, for from then on we can see the girl and the translator forge a complicated, inexplicable relationship nobody nor nothing can explain. They meet in secret, with Mari stealing times between her grueling duties at her family-owned hotel, and involve in lurid actions of unusual, bondage kind of sex. But what they have together doesn’t only go as far as physical intimacy, for there are also affection and “otherworldly” love. Somehow Mari knows that they cannot stay together the way they want it, but she also realizes that there is definitely no way out for their situation.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that both Mari and the translator are particularly unique characters I’ve never encountered in any fiction books before. But they do have complexity of their own, one that gets the reader wondering, “There must be something wrong with them, but what?” It is not my first time having a taste of something about bondage sex with layered characters, but these ones created by Ogawa are really mind-boggling because she doesn’t seem to present them to the reader deliberately as troubled persons. Reading them through, we will only think that they are just ordinary people, a young girl and an old man we see everyday in the street. However, once they shift to their secluded world, they sort of change all of a sudden into people we do not recognize anymore, people with totally opposite natures. It is not merely about a quiet, obedient girl versus a sexually inexperienced virgin eager for some humiliating, thrilling sex; nor is it merely about an awkward, seems-so-normal old man versus an anger-ridden dominant. There is something more to their characterizations, something more than meets the eye, and it is trapped in the shore road they tread on every time they feel like bringing their intricate love to the territory of pain and pleasure.

Though not as cryptic and eerie as all novellas in The Diving Pool, Hotel Iris is still surprising in some ways, especially when Yōko Ogawa shows Mari’s daring to pursue what becomes her heart’s desire and indulge her passion for commanding love behind her pitiful helplessness. The narrative is just as simple, and doesn’t really have any twists nor turns, but shocking all the same. On the surface, it seems so smooth without so much as a bump that the reader can read it easily and enjoyably, but when we look at it more closely, there are more unpleasant moments than we actually want to know. Ogawa seems to want the reader to see, even though not understand completely, the nature of Mari and the translator’s relationship—what happens between them and what they have together—through the melancholy narration voiced by Mari herself and the gloomy love letters written by the translator, which in turn compile the whole storyline. The sex scenes might be a bit disturbing for those who never read anything like this before, and way too horrible for those who find BDSM thing quite abnormal. Be that as it may, I think Ogawa can handle them pretty elegantly that they don’t look too much vulgar nor terrible to my liking, and feel rather saddening instead. The way to the ending is too short in my opinion, but to be fair, it’s only a novella so no one would expect Ogawa to prolong it in any way. Besides, the conclusion is what I expect from a story like this.

Overall, Hotel Iris by Yōko Ogawa is a truly marvelous work. I wouldn’t say that it’s flawless, but it’s up there. By this book, Ogawa has really made me fall in love with her, not because she is a brave author who dares to write something disturbing, but because she can do it with clever elegance.

Rating: 4/5

Burial Rites

Indonesian edition’s cover

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is perhaps not the only historical novel I have read so far which puts its center figure into an area of ambiguity in an attempt to coax readers out of being judgmental toward whatever there is in the history. But I can tell it has a stronger narrative than any other to convince them that the history hasn’t often done justice to women. Hence the need for this fictionalization, where Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the center figure here, has a huge possibility and opportunity to somewhat retell everything from her own point of view, even if only to defend her action.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir, an orphaned domestic servant with no clear parentage despite her surname (Magnúsdóttir means “the daughter of Magnús” in Icelandic), has to face a death sentence for evidently killing Natan Ketilsson and another man by the name of Pétur Jonsson one night in an isolated farmland of Illugastadir. She is not alone during the incident, for she’s in company with Sigrídur Gudmundsdottir and her boyfriend Fridrik Sigurdsson. But she seems to be the only one who has to take all the blame and heavier hit, mostly because of her alleged practice of witchcraft and people’s rushed conclusion on what seems to happen. Before her execution, she is transferred to Kornsá and forced to live with the family there, or should I say, the family there is forced to take her into their custody while the certain date for the penalty has yet to be set. The family, of course, cannot accept easily her presence in their tiny farmhouse, cannot bear the very idea of having to sleep under the same roof with a murderer, a criminal soon to be sentenced. But that does not become her concern, at least not anymore after Assistant Priest Thorvardur “Tóti” Jónsson comes to help her prepare for her execution, mainly guiding her back to “morality” and the path of God. But Agnes doesn’t want any assistance, nor guidance for that matter. She wants to be heard, she needs to be heard. And so Tóti, who has more compassion than any other people do in that place at that time, sits with her and listens to everything she has to say—about her childhood, her family, her earlier life, and what actually happens.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir is a real figure in the past. And while Burial Rites may not be a completely true story, it is historically true that her character is portrayed with a very little respect and a lot of judgement; that she is a murderer, a witch, and a daughter of nobody knows who. The narrative developed by the writer seems to show how the society of Iceland back in late 1820s mistreats an illegitimate girl and accuses her of being a witch merely because of her high intelligence and broad knowledge, giving me the impression that to them a well-read woman literally is a dangerous creature. It feels equally unfair that the apparatus of justice of said society has more mercy on a woman with beautiful looks like Sigga than on a woman with brain like Agnes, as if she really is an old, ugly, cunning witch flying on a broomstick. In short, Agnes’ image and reputation in the history are so unjustly bad that, in this book, Kent feels an obligation to drag her character into the gray area so that she can be free of people’s judgement and defend her unforgivable action.

Through her fictionalized account, Kent also tries to show how the old Icelandic society treats women, generally, in a humiliating, second-sex kind of way; how they seem duty-bound to put off men’s shoes, be compliant and resign themselves to being the objects of their masters’ sexual desires unless they want to lose their job and what little money they can get from it, how they are discouraged from learning and studying and knowing anything. However, on the other hand, there is this woman, Rosa the poet, who seems so smart in the art of language and so confident and doesn’t even feel the slightest shame nor guilt about having an affair with another man while she’s under her husband’s roof. Well, since the whole story focuses on Agnes and what she has to go through, it is the oppression toward women that takes the main spot for all the readers to see.

Burial Rites is a tightly-plotted, convincing story, despite its being half fiction. I have to give some credit to Hannah Kent for giving the reader such a detailed account of what happened in a faraway land in a period of which society and its system were more patriarchal than today’s, even if it means including some interjecting documents and historical reports. The opening narration voiced by Agnes is compelling enough to urge the reader to read on and endure the flipping way of storytelling, especially because it is done in both first and third points of view, between beautifully crafted sentences of Agnes and matter-of-factly written ones of others. Once again, in spite of its being only half true, the whole narrative of Burial Rites succeeds in casting a spell on readers that they will find themselves believing the entire story told by Agnes and feeling sympathy for her. But then again, I think that is the purpose of this book. I myself have to admit that I felt heartbroken knowing how everything turned out and what actually laid behind Agnes’ decision, at least in this fictionalized version.

All in all, Burial Rites is truly a brilliant work of historical fiction. Everything about this book is absorbing, really sending us reeling a bit after closing the last page. I found myself wishing it could have a different ending, but I reckon its decided conclusion is the best way to end all the mess. Moreover, by having otherwise, it would only ruin the history altogether.

Rating: 4/5

The White Queen

Beauty can be a double-edge weapon, as being implied in Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen, the first in The Cousins’ War series. It is as much about wars between kinsmen over the throne of England as it is about the invisible power of women which is embodied in the figure of Elizabeth Woodville, or Lady Elizabeth Grey, who later becomes the Queen of England. Disliked for her status and alleged witchcraft, the former widow has to witness endless bloodshed King Edward IV goes through to save his crown, and keep her position and family safe from those who want to see her fall.

At the beginning of the book, Gregory brings the reader directly to the year 1464, when the war between the House of York and the House of Lancaster ends with Yorkists being the winning side, despite the still ongoing fights against the usurper king, Edward IV. As a true Lancastrian, Elizabeth Woodville would never think of the new ruler as anything but her enemy, and the son of her enemy, but her widowhood and the loss of her dowry lands force her to ask for his help to guarantee her sons’ future and inheritance. Enchanted by her charms, King Edward grants Elizabeth her request and, predictably so, seduces her into becoming his mistress. But Elizabeth would not sell herself so short, and determines that the only way for them to be together is by marriage. So they marry in hasty, in secret with only a few people witnessing the ceremony. Edward has allegedly secret marriages with several women and bears legitimate children, but it is his marriage with Elizabeth that he officially declares to the public and brings to court, a marriage that sparks anger and rebellion from both his most trusted man, Warwick the Kingmaker, and his own younger brother, George of Clarence. But the worst comes when Edward dies and his youngest brother, Richard of Gloucester, tries and snatches up the throne of England from the legal heir, his own nephew, Edward V. This betrayal is what leads people to the famous story of the missing princes in the Tower.

Elizabeth Woodville, the then Queen of England, as the central figure of the story, can be said to be a very interesting, attention-gripping character. Described as strikingly beautiful and the descendant of Melusina, the goddess of water, Elizabeth is secretly practicing witchcraft as her mother does, as many people accuse her of doing. Though that’s not exactly why, or how, Edward IV is so enchanted by her, as the narrative suggests, it is what she wields as a weapon against her enemies. She doesn’t seem to be a strong woman at first, relying much on her mother and her brother, Anthony, to give her advice and political help. However, over the course of the story, her character evolves into someone more determined and more decisive, especially when it comes to spinning conspiracies, beating her enemies, and handling her husband’s promiscuous behavior. At some point in the book, the reader will find her becoming stronger and more ambitious, even more hateful and vengeful after the death of the king. She becomes the sly and shrewd dowager Queen who has to plot with her enemies against her own kinsman in order to safely put her son on his rightful throne.

As standout as Elizabeth Woodville seems to be, other figures of history in The White Queen do not just fall behind her. They’re not depicted in silhouette, they’re vividly described; especially Elizabeth’s mother, Lady Rivers, and her brother, Anthony, who, looking at their constant presence in her support, indubitably have the most carefully-handled portrayals of all and rooms to show them. So unfortunately, the supposed-to-be-highlighted figure in this story of Wars of the Roses, King Edward IV, is not told much and given many scenes to showcase his role. He is described waging wars—against the Lancastrian, Warwick, and his own brother George—wars which are, thankfully, pictured pretty well by Gregory, but his appearance is so brief and, before the conflicts even start to get more complicated, he’s dead. But that’s not something to bemoan, though, for the first-person point of view Gregory uses to tell the narrative already poses a problem. It is fine when Elizabeth is involved in the plot being told, but when the plot jumps to those involving other characters in other lines of time, the narrator’s voice sounds so vague and it doesn’t seem like it is told from Elizabeth’s perspective anymore. All that makes the sometimes-awkward narration excusable is the smooth pace. It doesn’t matter if the story is too long to follow, or if the conflicts seem to never end and even get more intense and intricate in the last 1/3 of the book, because the pace set by Gregory keeps it enjoyable to read on. The cliffhanger ending might become a problem for those who want a definite end to the journey of Queen Elizabeth of York, or an answer to the case of the missing princes, but I’m sure Gregory has a particular reason to end it with an open conclusion.

All in all, The White Queen is a fabulous story, a great read for historical fiction fans: full of conflicts, multicolored characters, meanderings of a plot, and a tense yet easy atmosphere. Though not quite satisfying in its use of viewpoint, it is still hugely impressive and a page-turner.

Rating: 4/5

Selama Kita Tersesat di Luar Angkasa

This book by Maggie Tiojakin begins with the meaning of absurd, literally, more or less as it is explained in the dictionary. The intention is obvious: to forewarn readers of the unpleasant absurdity her stories would definitely present. Selama Kita Tersesat di Luar Angkasa consists of solely absurd short stories of which narratives expand beyond the reader’s comprehension. They might not be stories readers will go for if they want something easy, despite the simple plots, but the stunningly crafted tales offer us something more than just an introduction-problem-conclusion pattern.

Selama Kita Tersesat di Luar Angkasa has nineteen short stories with different spans of lengths, some of them are short and some are quite long. But however long it takes the reader to finish all of them, and no matter how many scenes each of them is comprised of, they are created and meant to faithfully give the reader one “single effect” that, as far as I know, is what a short story is all about. The feelings come and go as the stories pass by, yet the satisfaction of reading them stays longer. Tiojakin doesn’t intend her stories to answer any question derived from any premise expressed subtly in their narratives, instead, she slips questions into them for us to ponder what the answers are. All of them are beyond our reason, but not totally unfathomable. Somehow, at some point, the reader may find themselves understanding some of the ideas, especially of those less frown-worthy. Stories like Tak Ada Badai di Taman Eden, Lompat Indah, Labirin yang Melingkar-lingkar di dalam Sangkar, Suatu Saat Kita Ingat Hari Ini, Selama Kita Tersesat di Luar Angkasa, A Business Trip, and Sunday Mass are those which will force the reader to think hard, think twice, before they even get the faintest idea of what each is about. And while the depths of Fatima, Kota Abu-Abu, Ro-Kok, and Violet are not quite difficult to reach, the rest of the contents such as Kristallnacht, Panduan Umum Bagi Pendaki Hutan Liar, dies irae, dies illa, Saksi Mata, Dia, Pemberani, Jam Kerja, An Evolutionary History, and The Long March are very much easy to devour.

Among so many short stories included in the book, there are particularly three which caught my very attention. The first number that starts the book, Tak Ada Badai di Taman Eden, has truly had my head reeling even after the full stop passed by. It’s about a married couple who doesn’t seem to be happy, or at least the wife doesn’t. Looking at the narrative, you’d think that she doesn’t in any way love her husband, and really wishes her husband, Barney, to just go away and never come back. But, as we all can see throughout the plot, Barney seems to be loving and protective. When rain comes and brings along with it storm on to their house, he hugs her and comforts her, no matter how she behaves and what attitude she shows him. There certainly is a problem between them, a problem that the writer refuses to reveal even at the end of the story. So, how will they survive in the midst of the storm upon them? The second magnetic tale to capture my attention was Ro-Kok. A man is given an ultimatum by his girlfriend to stop smoking, or else she will end their relationship. By the look of the premise, this is a very common case in my society, but Tiojakin executes it in a way that no one would imagine before. The couple indeed go separate ways, but it is not, bewilderingly, because the smoker keeps smoking. And, among my top picks, Saksi Mata is the best one. Imagine total negligence spreads among human beings and sips through their thick blood, subtly yet dreadfully. When a young woman living in a complex of apartments is being attacked brutally by an unknown person, no one in that complex seems to care. They hear those faint voices, those hushed screams, those mumbled arguments, but they don’t get into action even to find out what’s actually happening. They either don’t care, or are just too tired to care.

All the characters in Selama Kita Tersesat di Luar Angkasa have bizarre, unusual names, even for a foreign cultural background. They are no heroes, nor villains. They are, to my favor, ordinary human beings with human characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, familial backgrounds, and ways of thinking. As absurd as the stories they are in might be, they are not in the slightest depicted as something extraordinary, or something equally strange. This might strike the reader as odd, looking at the beyond-comprehension narratives, but I didn’t feel anything but comfortable with it. Moreover, the smooth plots, both linear and flashback, help the reader immensely in wading through all those tales. Don’t get them wrong, the narratives are not as hard to swallow as you might think. In fact, they are pretty simple. Bu it’s their basic ideas and how Tiojakin develops each of them that are guaranteed to get the reader frowning deep. They are not plotted in a usual introduction-problem-conclusion pattern, but only stop at the problem without any answer whatsoever. The style of writing with which those stories are being delivered to readers is also simple, with no embellishment, no trying to go slang nor pretentiously literary. Every diction chosen feels right, and the grammar is just how I expected it to be, though I did still feel a little sense of “Westernness” in Tiojakin’s writing. It might probably be because of her creative writing education abroad, or the reading materials she, I assume, mostly consumes. Whatever it is, I don’t really mind as long as it still sounds genuinely Indonesian, not like translated English. The only flaw I found during reading all the nineteen stories is the little awkwardness in some of the sentences and dialogues.

Overall, Selama Kita Tersesat di Luar Angkasa is a riveting short story collection. From this book, I learned that fiction does not always have to be reasonable or logical. The important thing is that we enjoy them, and the meaning/basic idea will reveal itself.

Rating: 4/5

The Diving Pool

newest Vintage edition’s cover (source: amazon.co.uk)

It’s disturbingly beautiful, and beautifully disturbing. Yōko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas, had me trapped completely in its quiet eeriness while I was marveling at the absorbing writing. This was my very first try at reading Yōko Ogawa and already my third one at Japanese literature, though I wouldn’t say that I’ve finally been able to wrap my mind around it. Even now, I’m still finding it difficult to fully catch the very basic idea that lies beneath every narrative written by Japanese authors. This may be an evidence of my low understanding of Japanese literary art, but I can assure you that it doesn’t stop me at all from thoroughly enjoying it.

In the first novella, of which title is also used as the book’s title, Ogawa tells a story of a teenage girl who lives in an orphanage. The dreadful loneliness that surges through her comes from the fact that she, as the only child of the orphanage’s owners, cannot have her parents’ love and attention to herself, while she cannot possibly cut ties with them to join the ranks. The heavy burden of that loneliness on her shoulders becomes more intense as she falls in love with one of the orphans her parents take care of, Jun. For some reason, she cannot tell anyone, even Jun himself, about her feelings for him. She is so caged in her own secret love that she consciously, or not, does bad things to someone else weaker.

The second story sees a single woman’s keeping record of his sister’s pregnancy every so often, if not regularly. In this novella entitled Pregnancy Diary, instead of talking about the growth of the baby, the woman seems more interested in capturing her sister’s changing mood, seemingly endless morning sickness, strange food craving, psychologically disturbed condition, the husband’s doting attitude, and their reluctance to talk about their baby. Oddly enough, as the narrative moves forward, the single woman doesn’t appear to feel any sympathy nor empathy for her sister. She may not understand how it feels to be with child, but her nonchalant attitude makes the reader wonder if she ever cares about her sibling at all.

Dormitory is the simplest yet the most mysterious story of all. It tells about a woman who comes back to the dormitory she lived in all those days of her study at the university, her intention being helping her much younger cousin register and get a room there. She feels a rush of memories and that nothing has changed, physically. However, the fact is that there isn’t a single student living there anymore, and the Manager, a disabled old man with a weakening body, lives all alone to keep the building. Every once in a while, the woman goes to the shabby dormitory to visit her cousin. But instead of meeting him, she always, and only, gets to meet the Manager. Through their frequent encounters and long conversations, she comes to know what drives people to leave the place and not to come back forever: a boy has gone missing, and everyone throws their suspicion at the Manager. No one knows where the boy has gone, and why. It remains a mystery, and the Manager remains lonely in his last critical days.

All the main characters of the three novellas feel, and present, the same thing: loneliness. At least, that’s what I got throughout reading them. They seem to be isolated, unattached to anything and anyone, despite their familial relationships. They are also unbearably gloomy, depressed, sad in some ways… All the words that can possibly describe them seem to lead the reader to anything but social and happy. It makes me wonder, is this the basic idea? The sense of loneliness? Isolation? Unattachment to anything and anyone? Or is it their response to those senses? However, what I noticed most was that they have quite different characterizations. Thus, in turn, the nature of their actions and deeds differ from each other. While Aya tends to be abusive, and the single woman aloof, the lonely married woman in Dormitory seems to err on the side of caring.

The Diving Pool is very nice to read, very easy to devour. Despite the eerie atmosphere and cryptic message, all the three novellas are so beautifully written in great detail that readers will not miss a thing. Every inanimate object, every token, every scene are depicted as meticulously as possible, allowing the reader to have a clear picture in their minds and follow the plot without difficulty. The pace set by Ogawa for every single story is comfortably steady and not too hasty, and the tone she immerses into it resonates very much strongly even from the simplest word or sentence. Yōko Ogawa has presented us with a writing of profound beauty, with gripping characters to boot. And, surely, I have to thank Stephen Snyder, the translator, for the smooth translation so I could enjoy that writing.

So, despite my lack of intelligence in fully comprehending the prose style of Japanese literary works, I can say that I did enjoy The Diving Pool. Perhaps its cryptic, enigmatic nature is a part of its charm and attraction. At some point I even thought that the stories in it are more mysterious than any mystery novel I read recently.

Rating: 3.5/5

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl has been booming for over two years now, and yet it seems unlikely for the book to see its echo die anytime soon. Labeled as a thriller/mystery novel, it surprisingly does not have lots of thrills this kind of book needs and, unfortunately, the mystery encasing it only lasts for the first part of the story and then dissolves mysteriously into thin air. So much like Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling, this Flynn’s third work of such fiction focuses more on its drama and the psychologically disturbing characters employed to twist its already winding narrative. It does have a mind-blowing idea of mixing marriage and murder, in a very unusual yet very real way, but calling it pure crime fiction wouldn’t feel comfortably right.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick’s wife, Amy, is gone and no one knows where she is or where she goes. There is no clue or trace left to lead to her whereabouts, but there are some horrible, convincing evidences of violence and aggressive attacks on Amy before she is, presumably, being kidnapped. The police wastes no time in getting up and investigating the case, throwing suspicion at Nick in the process. Nick insists he is innocent, unfortunately all the evidences found say the opposite, and he doesn’t have an appropriate alibi to prove that he doesn’t kidnap or kill his own wife. Moreover, his negligent demeanor undeniably mirrors the state of guilty he must be in, showing that he doesn’t care, and is even happy, if his wife is gone missing or dead. With more and more proofs, the police finally arrests him and gets him awaiting for trial. But then, something strange happens and the trial has to be canceled. Nick cannot feel relieved, though, because he must be forever glued to his guilty status and will never have the free life he fervently desires.

I would say that the two main characters here are the main attraction of the book. Amy and Nick are not, basically, normal characters by fiction standard. Throughout the story, the reader can see that Amy is everything that Nick is not. Even the subtle description of Nick being an average man while Amy is an above-the-average woman leads us to the fact that Amy is more than Nick in everything: smarter, brighter, richer, and frighteningly, more hateful, more vengeful, more selfish, and more insane. It turns Nick’s insecurity even lower, rendering him suffering a crisis of confidence not only in front of his wife, but also within himself. It is no wonder then that Nick feels like he gets stabbed right in his male pride and dignity and eventually, when it’s already too much for him, runs to some average young woman who can match him in everything.

So this is where the problem lies, the spot that, in my opinion, gets the brightest light so the reader can see it crystal clear. The conflict between men and women is what actually drives the whole narrative—the wrecked marriage, the cheat, the murder, the mind-boggling scheme. Men have a certain standard of how women, physically and characteristically, should be. And when women fail to meet that standard, or marvelously go beyond that standard, they will not have it.

“[And] the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even

pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be

the woman a man wants them to be.”

—Amy Elliot Dunne

This book, with all its idea, characters, and storyline, vehemently tries to fight against the pattern of fairy tales. I noticed that at some point Amy really mocked how women usually behave in romantic fiction books through her voiced narration, making me raise my eyebrows both in agreement and tame disapproval. However, on the other hand, Flynn also seems to want to create criteria for perfect men through Amy’s demand on Nick to be a “loving, doting, caring, understanding, faithful” husband. Alas, eventually, all we are forced to see is how people are trying so hard to be the ideal, and how exhausting and brain-consuming it can be.

Divided into three parts, Gone Girl is told from two different, changing points of view. The story unfolds in a very deceptive, frustrating, overlong narrative, with all its misleading clues and distractingly convincing evidences. Well, at least for the first part of it, for then the reader is entertained with a sucking marital drama and psycho characters. Flynn deftly leads the reader through her puzzling, twisting initial plot without so much as a little clue until we arrive just at the first page of part two. Such a shame, the most mysterious part of the book is also the most boring one. It was really a struggle to finish it. It wasn’t until the end of it that I could completely enjoy the whole storyline, albeit I had to lose the exciting thrill, for all of the mysteries seemed to have been answered already. Starting the second part, every strange description, every enigmatic sentence, seems to dissolve itself and leaves the reader able to guess what they will find next. However, though all the excitement seems to end there, finally seeing everything through Amy’s honest lens and looking at what truly inside her head is are very much tensely enjoyable. But there was something that bothered me quite much: why did Nick have to realize his wife’s way of thinking all of a sudden after the first half through the book? After all those clues? Why the suddenness? The plunging ending Flynn sets to conclude the entire story also left me unsatisfied. I almost hoped she would have prolonged the third instead of the first part. To me, it’s just a little too fast.

All in all, I must say that Gone Girl is a fabulous psychological crime drama, but not a proper thriller/mystery novel. I adore the magnificent idea it has, but I’m left unenthralled, even now, by its overly long plot and awkwardly executed ending.

Rating: 3.5/5

Supernova: Ksatria, Puteri, dan Bintang Jatuh

the very first edition’s cover

Science and fiction are two different fields of study, as we generally know, unless you want to take science fiction into account. But, what if it’s not science fiction at all? What if science and fiction are blended together to form a romantic story inside a story? Supernova: Ksatria, Puteri, dan Bintang Jatuh by Dee is the answer. Previously known as a singer/songwriter, Dee released this debut novel of hers in 2001 under her own independent publishing company. It has and continues to gain critical acclaim as well as popular response among readers. It’s heavily strewn with theories of psychology and physics and philosophy, and is guaranteed to force the reader to view this world from a different angle.

Ruben and Dhimas, a homosexual couple first met when taking their undergraduate program in the United States, finally decide to work on the masterpiece they’ve planned on and promised to do ten years earlier. Their intention is to fuse science with literature, a bunch of grand theories with a wave of romanticism, in order to produce a work of fiction interwoven with nonfiction facts. So they choose to pluck the characters of Ksatria and Puteri from a comic book, and make up their own story featuring those two lovebirds. Ksatria, a successful young man with a dull, monotonous life, meets Puteri in what seems to be a predestined encounter. They fall in love each other almost in an instant, succumbing to their lust and love regardless of her having already been committed in a marriage. Things appear to run so well in their secret affair, until their desire to be freely together feels more urgent than ever and their hush-hush feelings overwhelm both with no restraint. Puteri has to decide whether she is going to leave her husband for the one she loves, or stay in the marriage she never feels passionate in. And in the middle of it all comes Diva, a catwalk model/highly paid prostitute whose attitude towards the world is so bitter and cynical that the reader may find her too much self-righteous for a woman of her profession. It is her, the Bintang Jatuh, who saves Ksatria from his tragic fall. But she cannot stay and return his love, for it’s been her nature to go and shoot away.

There are several characters in this first book of Supernova series, in and out of the “story”. But there’s only one that captured my sole, vehement attention, and that’s Diva, the Bintang Jatuh or the Falling Star. To me, she’s like standing head and shoulders above everyone else, not for her divinity-wanna-be portrayal, but for her significance in stirring the course of events of the “inside story”. She’s described as cynical and sarcastic, bitter towards anything and everything, like nothing is right to her in this pathetic world. As a matter of fact, her self-righteousness made me feel cynical in return towards her. To her, selling her body is like selling any other commodity in the market, like selling our labor, time, our soul. The way she thinks made me see her as an ungrateful person, for instance: condemning her beautiful, straight, long hair when so many women out there would die for it. She is indeed a do-gooder, trying to “change the world”, but what she does is too small to compare with the bigness and complexity of the universe. Really, I’m being so cynical towards her now. What’s worse, she is created, by the authors (Ruben and Dhimas), to become an Avatar, a Cyber Avatar, who has a divinity of a monk. Dee, as the writer of this whole narrative, perhaps only wants to show to the reader, through this Diva character, that in being a human, it’s all about your thoughts and good deeds, not the label you have on your forehead. I cannot say anything to this but that I have mixed feelings.

Supernova: Ksatria, Puteri, dan Bintang Jatuh is an interdisciplinary novel not all readers would get. The writer seems to want to prove something to them, and it’s probably for this very reason she makes up a narrative in which order and chaos become its main focus and goes to such great lengths elaborating and mixing so many scientific theories into one. Her intention is, I believe, to present a fictional romance that brilliantly emerges from those theories. However, the result is, the way I see it, only an “ordinary” rectangular love story which is so simple and easy to read that you don’t have to bother dwelling on those fruits of science experts’ thoughts. Fortunately, the narrative is shrewdly constructed, subplot being layered upon subplot, proving yet another thing that there are indeed no boundaries in time and space. The whole plot is also dense, without so much as little ramblings about anything. It’s very complex, however, and has no predictable direction as to where the story will actually lead. It is amazing, technically speaking, but I don’t have a consistent opinion when it comes to the language being used. I don’t know why but I felt it’s like a “translation language”, awkward and unnatural. And when it comes to male dialogues, I felt it was a woman talking instead of a man. What’s worse, I found some misplaced diction and less than correct use of marks, especially those in repeated words. In other words, linguistically (if I may say so), it’s quite a mess.

On the whole, Supernova: Ksatria, Puteri, dan Bintang Jatuh is actually a pretty great book, though not as fantastic as I might have thought before. The basic idea is stunning, but the execution, especially that of the “inside story” used to embody all those theories, is not what the reader could hope for. The question is, why bother elaborating such grand scientific theories if you only want to tell something simple?

Rating: 3/5

The 100-year-old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

“It’s never too late to start over,” reads the front cover of the book. The world is too old and tired now to endure another war, so we might as well stop seeking any cause for making one. The 20th century had seen so many wars with weapons and bombs taking ridiculously innumerable lives, so many clashing ideologies and thoughts and maniacal egos. First published in English in 2012, Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-year-old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared cleverly, and packedly, summarizes the unpleasant international political history of the 1900s in a form of comically satirical fiction. Using an unbelievably old man character to represent the world we’ve been living in, the book brazenly makes fun of all those people and nations involved in the hideous, long-running war over isms and suggests that this old planet cannot bear it any longer, and that we should stop and start a new life altogether.

The story starts on May 2, 2005, when Allan Karlsson turns 100 but is all reluctant to celebrate his birthday. Without anyone knowing it, he climbs out his Old Folks’ Home’s room window and lands on the bed of flowers. Quite impulsively, he decides to go and walk to the local church, where his close friend is buried under its deserted yard. After a moment of life-pondering, which includes some wonder about his unbearably old age, Allan climbs an impossibly-high-for-an-old-man wall and sets off, determined to go to any place he can set his foot on. He already knows it, I suspect, that this time his sudden journey will be quite adventurous although not, of course, as grand as his long, explosive journey around the warring world in his young age, where he has to face and insincerely involves in the turbulence of then ideologies: fascism, socialism, communism, capitalism. Fate, or rather the ever-happening war, takes Allan from one country to another, and with his expertise in explosion he helps the world’s leaders plan and execute their battle against their enemies. He, as a forever apolitical person, does that not to gain any advantage, but rather just to save his own skin, to pay his debt, and sometimes because he is already sick and tired of killing innocent people.

Through its alternating back-and-forth narrative, The 100-year-old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is blatantly trying to show the reader the folly and the blunder of 20th century’s wars taking place in almost every corner of the world: the World War I and II, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese communists against the Kuomintang, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. Almost along the 1900s the world was never at peace, restless and ruthless in its inhabitants’ attempts to fly their ideological flags and get hold of the whole globe. And sadly, as it unfolds along the plot, flying flags was not enough, and so making bombs was in order. In fact, only bombs would do. However, it is plain to see in this Jonasson’s debut novel that it was awfully useless to wage a war over political views and ideologies, wasting so many innocent lives while we already knew who would win it, namely the fittest one (if you know what I mean). And now, the world is growing old and tired, as if wanting to die on its doomsday after witnessing countless deaths on its blood-flooded land. It’s time to stop, and it’s time to start a new day with a new hope.

The 100-year-old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is written in a layered narrative, alternating the past with the present. The two distinct plots are not made intertwining, but neatly revealed in separate chapters. The stories of the history run as smooth as silk, no blotches, no creases, no holes, taking us readers along with Allan in a ride throughout the chaotic world. The flow of the present events, on the other hand, is a little bit in a mess and awkward at some point, making the reader question the writer’s judgement. But it’s still nice to follow, proving his capability to capture the reader’s attention with his charming ideas and humor despite the rutted storyline. On the whole, the narrative is relentlessly gripping, with its moves steady and never leaving the plotted path, even though it seems to be overlong, presumably to accommodate the many events in the history being told. I can tell that it is fast-pace and keeps the reader so far away from unnecessary boredom with its witty, implicitly sarcastic, satirical humor which I found achingly hilarious and, to be honest, sometimes annoying. In a way so fictional that no one should believe it, the book describes the world’s top influencing leaders of the 20th century behaving in a silly manner and doing fabricatedly unbelievable things. Yet I, somehow, find those made-up narrations quite representative, looking at how the world went back then. Unfortunately, I cannot say that any of the characters making appearance here is extraordinary or something, even the extraordinarily old Allan Karlsson. I just wish that more people have the same tendency to be apolitical as he does, and maybe this world won’t be so noisy with bombs. And frankly speaking, I quite like the way Jonasson pokes fun at those political leaders he’s chosen to describe, but not really the way he implies that Indonesian people are “dumb and corrupt”. Thank you for reminding us about that, Sir, though I don’t believe that we are too blind to see it.

Last words: The 100-year-old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is definitely an exceptional novel, no doubt about that. The road to the ending and how Jonasson executes it are a bit groggy, but that’s the funny peculiar thing about this book. All I can say is that it’s not merely a comedy. It’s a comedy with wit, critique, and hopes for a better future.

Rating: 4/5