'Minotaur' by Benjamin Tammuz

The keen readers amongst you will have noticed a few Europa Editions posts amongst my reviews of late; this, the third, is Minotaur by Benjamin Tammuz. Minotaur, an Israeli novel originally published in Hebrew in 1989, is the story of a handful of individuals who form the four-corners-of-a-love-square, if you will, bound and connected by obsession, desire and perverse, destructive love. Each character takes a part of the narrative, which begins with an Israeli secret agent noticing a beautiful teenager on a London bus on his forty-first birthday...

I found this book to be an addictive and riveting novel of doomed noir, reminiscent of John le Carre's European spies, but backlit by Middle Eastern dust, sunshine and politics. The telescopic narrative, narrated by the four to the story's conclusion, felt akin to moving down a tunnel which progressively narrows and tightens until it collapses in on itself, trapping the reader, as well as all the characters, as the title might suggest. It is claustrophobic, thick with secrets and ambiguities, and written/translated in a sparse and elegiac hand. I read it in a day on holiday, falling further and further into the twists and turns of the story, before reaching its conclusive and satisfying end.

Surprisingly, given the Israeli and European links of both the author and the story, this story felt quite Japanese to me, and reminiscent of the characters and tone of a number of modern Japanese writers, such as Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami. A number of the main motifs are there: the distant, nostalgia-fulled, almost-invented relationship between the central male character and his idealised object of affection - who seems to offer beaming salvation to him based  purelyon a look, a face, a memory - wasn't dissimilar to the relationship between Shimamoto and Hajime in Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun. This book also features crippling, inescapable loneliness as well themes of delayed gratification, narcissistic love and ambiguous self-concealment, which felt Japanese to me in description and tone. This gave it a langourous elegance and an extra layer of interest which might serve to expand its possible readership if anyone else picks up on that also. This, layered upon the dry heat of a settlement and several of the most intriguing corners of Europe, adds up to a cosmopolitan and complex novel which unfurls slowly and deliberately until its final page.

My only criticism would be based around the structure of the book: I found the final section to be a bit long and in need of different voice or another type of variation, but overall I found this to be an unsettling, beguiling and addictive literary thriller, awash with noir and atmosphere, which has stayed darkly in my mind in the weeks since reading.

Title: Minotaur

Author: Benjamin Tammuz, translated from the Hebrew by Kim Parfitt and Mildred Budny
Publisher: Europa Editions
Publication date: Original 1989, translation 8th May 2013
Format: Paperback, 185 pages, and I was sent it by Europa as an ARC.






'Lizard' by Banana Yoshimoto

'Lizard' by Banana Yoshimoto was a spur-of-the-moment buy due to its slim volume and flashy neon cover, and I read it in a single evening in a cafe. It's six short stories, plus two afterwords, published in the original Japanese in 1993 and translated into English in 1995.

Out of the six stories - 'Newlywed', 'Lizard', 'Helix', 'Dreaming of Kimchee', 'Blood and Water' and 'A Strange Tale from Down by the River' - 'Newlywed' was my favourite. In it, a tramp turns into a beautiful woman next to a drunk male newlywed on the train late at night, after the man shows him the kindness of not moving away from him when he sits down; a little like a depressing, grown-up version of the beginning of Disney's 'The Beauty and the Beast'. They, the man and the beautiful woman/tramp, talk about why he might not want to go home and why he might: his wife has so quickly spun such a perfect web of domesticity that he is unnerved and a little repulsed by it, as well as being in awe of her and grateful. He finds her slightly unknowable and bemusing, and he finds her a little intimidating too, I think.

Thankfully, he chooses his wife over the other ever-present routes that the beautiful woman/tramp represents - as the tramp says to him, he could just not get off the train - by going home to her even though she is freaking him out; I felt really bad for the wife, as she really hasn't done anything wrong. This story was neat, compelling and sober, I thought, and kinda spot-on about the adjustments and anxieties that accompany settling down, domesticity and marriage.

The other stories were good, covering a lot of the same themes. 'Lizard' also deals with the past and violence, 'A Strange Tale from Down by the River' talks about the changes that accompany motherhood. The others....have kinda merged into one in my head. 

Yoshimoto tells these stories in a sparse, slightly trippy way that resembles a lot of other modern Japanese fiction, and utilises a lot of the features both of it and modern representations of Japanese life: as in, she stays on the surface of characters, rendering them rather unknowable, close individuals and even lovers are completely alienated from one another, and memory and family are dangerous, confusing things. Unfortunately, I experienced very little emotional engagement, which is why the stories probably now escape me. Also, apart from the emotional and psychological revelations, very little happens.

This were nice stories, and I'd pick up a book of hers again, but ultimately I found them a little shallow and forgettable.

Title: Lizard
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Date: 1995
Format: Paperback, 180 pages, and I bought it.

  





Review: 'South of the Border, West of the Sun' by Haruki Murakami

This is the latest in a vague, meandering odyssey through Haruki Murakami's books that I've been making over the last few years, and I'd estimate I'm now about halfway through. I picked it up in Waterstones the other day as I fancied something new to read and I'm totally attracted to slim volumes at the moment after my epic Dickens tomes, the complete reading of which has turned into a total non-starter, not that I'm too sorry about that.

'South of the Border, West of the Sun' is the story of Hajime, the narrator and central character, who we follow from early adolescence to his mid-thirties in Tokyo, where he goes from awkward schoolboy to lonely twenty-something to a married, jazz bar-owning early middle-aged man. The story starts with his quiet friendship with a similarly lonely girl called Shimamoto, with whom he plays records after school and feels his first confusing feelings of teenage lust. He then moves schools and they lose touch. The story then moves forward detailing his few failed love affairs, his sad, maladapted twenties and then marriage and fatherhood, before Shimamoto reappears, just in time for his tragically-impending mid-life crisis.







A Year in Japan: Kate T. Williamson

This might be a bit more niche than the books I usually review, but I've been dipping in and out of Kate T. Williamson's illustrated travelogue 'A Year in Japan', and I love it.

Kate T. Williamson is an American writer and illustrator who went off to Kyoto for a year to work as a sock designer (!), which is especially awesome because she did it at around the same time as me; who knows, we may have met at some point. She wrote 'A Year in Japan' about the little, idiosyncratic memories that make up your impression of a place, which is wonderful because whilst everyone knows about the cherry blossom and the kimonos, the things I really remember, as she does, are random things like the 'safe fruit' in completely OTT packaging that cost an extortionate amount (there was always a box fresh melon in my local supermarket for

¥10,000 (about £50) that I never saw anyone buy), and the delicate gloves and fresh flowers of the taxi drivers, who drove spotless cars with automated voices and automatically opening doors. It hasn't got the best reviews on Amazon (I added a nice one to even things out) because I'm not sure its description there makes it clear that this is a book of nostalgia, rather than information, which is why I particularly enjoy it, but also why someone who knows nothing about Japan may not.







Literature in Art, Part One: Yohji Yamamoto at the V&A

     Last week I went to one of my favorite places on earth - the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the V&A for short - to see the retrospective exhibition of Yohji Yamamoto’s work that has been on show there since March. It was, as expected, beautiful and interesting, and put me much in mind of several writers, nuggets of literary history and distinctive literary styles, as things are apt to do.*







Floating Over Tokyo

     Now, I had planned and written this post about a Japanese photo blogger prior to the events of last Friday, but I think, publishing it as I am today, that it's only appropriate that I place it within its current context. 

     Like everyone, I am truly humbled and horrified by the earthquake, subsequent tsunami, nuclear reactor uncertainty and the height of the likely death toll.  Combining that with the resultant economic worries and the psychological and emotional impact of losing one's loved-ones, posessions and homes, it's clear that those in Japan will need to stay in our thoughts and our prayers for some time to come.







Flash Fiction: Snow

Dizzying snow fell in helixes from the black, catching on thick white branches and roofs, and then drifting, with grace, onto the glistening ground. Akiko's half-shadow, cast through the window, was haloed across the snow within a rectangle of yellowing light. The television was off behind her, allowing her to appreciate the quiet poetry of the falling snow, but without it the silence was large. She watched, through the glass, as her footprints slowly disappeared beneath the mounting white.

Snow rendered her ambivalent: how could she fail to revere the beauty of it, a timeless beauty that fell and lifted with the audacity of love? It was treacherous though, and fleeting, and inevitably became sullied with the movement and trampling of life. She'd be seduced by its purity and forget that it was actually cold, drifting and thick with secrets.

  

She'd told Kosuke this one evening in Tokyo whilst lounging on cushions and drinking in wine, so he'd brought her here deliberately, smiling at her cynicism, telling her that she'd love the light. Admittedly, she had, and had painted the blues and pinks of it on the clear days whilst he traversed the ski fields, and then had revelled with him beneath the lacquer black night. On days it snowed and the view was obliterated behind the clouds, she had lain beneath the kotatsu heater watching classic films and game show repeats, blowing happy cigarette shapes against the two-tone window backdrop of white. They'd found warmth there, and the dove sky fascinated her. Icicles became ice pops, snowflakes were kisses and their lodge became an island in a sea of ice. He'd bought her a lipstick in the supermarket and presented it in paper, so she might throw her art outward, he'd said, and cast bright red against the pale outdoors. She'd been dazzled by the brightness and forgot to fear how easily the snow might make her slip. Kisses were currency and everything was free. Too soon though, their paint pots and cigarette packs were empty, signalling that it was time to return to life. Happier than they'd been, they vowed to return again soon. The purchasing of a little Akita pup had stated the intent in life.

  

Now she was there again, alone, pale on the tatami, next to the dog that was now grown. The light during the daytime had been the same sakura pink and cornflower blue as in her paintings, but the night now felt different: empty, cavernous and without stars. He was not there.