Moto Hagio was truly ahead of her time. Her artwork is stunning, and its beauty both complements and contrasts the dark themes she explores in this st Moto Hagio was truly ahead of her time. Her artwork is stunning, and its beauty both complements and contrasts the dark themes she explores in this story. Describing the story as heavy would be an understatement—it's intense and disturbing. What happens to Jeremy is horrific, but Hagio never sensationalizes his trauma. Instead, she shows the insidious nature of his abuser's psychological and emotional warfare, convincing Jeremy that he is somehow to blame and should be ashamed of being sexually assaulted.
In contrast to the story's disturbing content, Hagio's imagined Boston feels almost picturesque. Her vision of England also feels fairy-talesque, drawing inspiration from various eras and images associated with the UK. I found it amusing that no one remarks on Jeremy's American accent, or that we are repeatedly told the UK is colder than Boston.
I first read this when I was but a sad sprog, and it left a lasting impression on me (i even created a playlist that i could listen to while reading this). Hagio shows profound empathy in exploring Jeremy's psyche, alleviating the story's relentless darkness through beautiful imagery—often of landscapes—and touching interactions that serve as reprieves in a story centred on abuse.
A word that would adequately capture this series is haunting, so read at your own discretion. ...more
i am so done with books where i n c e s t is portrayed so casually. give us a warning or something. gesù. not the kind of plot poin you want to discovi am so done with books where i n c e s t is portrayed so casually. give us a warning or something. gesù. not the kind of plot poin you want to discover while reading it on your work commute.
I bought this as a birthday present (from myself to myself) to read on my work commutes (to the 3rd worst place i have ever worked at). This book was meant to make my work commutes better, however, it succeeded in making me look like a total weirdo given all of the grossed-out faces I must have made while I was reading this. I like Kawakami, I usually find her style to be whimsical without lapsing into contrived sentimentality. her storytelling is playful, while her plots and characters often veer into the absurd. 水声, published in Italian as La voce dell'acqua (something along the lines of 'the voice of the water/the water's voice') is tinged by the same melancholic atmosphere that characterises much of Kawakami's oeuvre, as our narrator, Miyako, and her brother, Ryo, move back into their childhood home. Miyako's reflections on the past and the passage of time, certainly add to the overall sense of nostalgia, and I did find myself lulled by her recollections and her insights into her childhood and family dynamics. I also liked the slice-of-life feel given by the narrative's focus on those seemingly mundane interactions and moments that make up everyday life. So there I was, enjoying this book while pretending not to be bothered by the overcrowded tram I was in (one of the many perks when working in venice when living on the mainland) when i n c e s t! I had to re-read that passage several times because it came really out of the left field. and then the novel devolves into this incesty romance that not only felt hugely unnecessary but was surprisingly corny. maybe this is due to Ryo's character, someone whose whole personality could be described as being 'there', or to his scenes with his sister being this weird mix of sappy and icky, but I found their relationship to be little else besides gross. the narrative tip-toes around the taboo nature of their relationship and seems in fact unwilling to confront just how and why their relationship is so 'forbidden' (read: yuck). Not only that but as I read on I was confronted with even more incest making this one of those rare incest² types of incest-y books. If I was depressed before reading this I found myself even more depressed after it (thinking that i'd just wasted my money on it). the thing is, i know that to portray something doesn't mean to endorse said something, and can put up with topics/dynamics in fiction that i find gross/problematic/whatever-else (a couple of my favorite books deal with incest). but if you are going to depict incest, i except some angst, some nuance, something more than whatever wasn't going on here. Even if you, like me, are a fan of Kawakami, I'd advise you to read this one at your discretion (as of now it has yet to be published in english but i'm pretty sure it won't be long till it will be)....more
Stylistically and thematically the stories collected in Racconti Romani/Roman Stories resonate a lot with Jhumpa Lahiri’s previous collections. UnlikeStylistically and thematically the stories collected in Racconti Romani/Roman Stories resonate a lot with Jhumpa Lahiri’s previous collections. Unlike those however Roman Stories features stories written directly in Italian. Having loved Lahiri’s previous Italian work, Dove Mi Trovo/Whereabouts, I was prepared to once again be pulled away by her quietly melancholic storytelling. Most of the stories in RS however came across as ‘labored’, from the studied language to the storylines themselves. For instance, whereas the lack of proper names in Whereabouts didn’t bother me, here, perhaps because it is a ‘thing’ in almost every story, it felt gimmicky. Characters are referred to by their ‘role’, job, age, and or gender. While there are quite a few stories focusing on foreigners, we never learn much about their pasts, be it their language, culture, or even their family histories. Consequently the characters felt as vague, representative of their role, age, or whatever, rather than individuals with personalities and histories.
While I did appreciate how Lahiri highlights the experiences of those who are subject to xenophobia and racism in Italy (having recently returned to italy after nearly 10 years abroad i was taken aback by just how proudly bigoted many italians are), aside from one story in the latter half of the collection which deals with a violent hate crime, I do think that the episodes she portrays were slightly too ‘tame’, or maybe not tame but more ‘sanitised’...so things are never said but alluded to, which I am sure happens but like I said, there are also so many Italians who have 0 qualms about being vocal when it comes to their shitty opinions on ‘stranieri’.
I appreciated the themes Lahiri explores throughout this collection, as many of her characters seem mired by their own past and present choices. Change too is a motif in this collection: from changing family dynamics to changing landscapes to changing seasons. There is a sense of movement, yet, we also get that typical slice of life Lahiri excels at, so that it feels as if we are glimpsing an intimate moment in the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ people. Although the characters deal with grief, unrequited love, ageing, and hopelessness, yet, the stories retain a lightness that makes them exceedingly readable and far from heavy going. The dialogues sometimes lacked immediacy, in that most of the characters spoke this rather formal Italian, which sure enough, give the stories a nostalgic vibe, but they don’t always sound ‘credible’, or at least true to life. Especially considering that these stories are set in Rome, I was expecting a different type of vernacular, especially in those stories that seek to juxtapose older and younger generations. Overall far from a bad read but not on the same level as Lahiri's other collections. Still, I think readers who aren't familiar with Rome or Italy might find this more enthralling than I was....more
“Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found hap
“Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.”
The Charioteer meets All Quiet On the Western Front in this haunting and elegiac debut novel that juxtaposes the horrors of war with a powerful love story. It’s a novel about love, survival, death, and the reality and the aftermath of witnessing and being participants in unthinkable violence. The idyllic landscapes and the trivialities of youth we encounter in the opening chapters belie the violence and pain that are to come, making those earlier moments all the more precious, all the more bittersweet. This novel broke my heart. It made me cry, it made me despair, it made me feel all of the feels. In Memoriam is a gut-wrenching novel revealing the brutality and the banality of war: time and again we are made to read of young men, boys really, dying in the most horrible and random of deaths, and we see how their bodies are merely replaceable cogs in the machine of war. But I am getting ahead of myself.
“He went there in the mornings, sometimes, and gave himself to that strange country rapture, that deep, bonewarming feeling that England was his, and he was England’s. He felt it as strongly as if his ancestors had been there a thousand years. Perhaps he felt it more strongly because they hadn’t.”
The opening pages transport us to 1914, to Preshute, the idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. Here we see the petty disagreements and secret entanglements between various students, most of whom have grandiose visions of the English Empire, of honor, of war. Despite their different temperaments Henry Gaunt and Sindey Ellwood are best friends. Their friendship is complicated by the unspoken feelings they harbor for one another. Each believes that their love is unrequited and that acting on it will inevitably ruin their friendship. So, they spend their days pining for each other and trying to hide, not always successfully, their true feelings. In this rarefied world, they spend their days talking about meaningless and meaningful things, yet, news of the war puts a strain on their days of idleness. Gaunt and Ellwood, alongside their friends, are particularly drawn to the ‘In Memoriam’ section of their paper, and while soon enough the names on those pages are of boys and men they know, these also seem to promise heroic tales that speak to them given that they are well-versed in the classics. Gaunt, however, who is half German, feels differently about these things from most of his peers. Yet, despite his anti-war sentiments he finds himself pressured to enlist by his mother and his sister after they reveal that it will put to rest rumours questioning where their family’s loyalties lie.
“Ellwood’s England was magical, thought Gaunt, picking his way around nettles. But it wasn’t England.”
Ellwood, a year younger, initially stays behind, keeping a correspondence to Gaunt that reveals the unbridgeable gap between his reality at Preshute and Gaunt’s one on in the trenches. They continue to yearn for one another, but their love is soon obscured by the horrors Gaunt experiences on the front. Class privileges continue to be felt in the army and Gaunt, a boy still, is in command of men who are twice his age and did not grow up in the sheltered walls of Preshute. Concerned for Gaunt, Ellwood eventually decides to enlist as well, and he is joined by most of his friends. Soon enough he realizes that his former visions of honor, glory, and England have little to do with the day-to-day reality of war. From the living conditions to the landscapes punctuated by bodies and gore. And always so much death all around them. Death that is not always a result of enemy fire. The men around him die because of infections, a literal misstep, or a mild malady turned deadly. They also die because they waver, and their hesitancy is deemed an act of cowardice. They are driven mad, by the violence they see, and the violence they do.
“It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children . It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.”
Gaunt and Ellwood’s love seems a foreign thing in a reality like this. Yet, their proximity to death is also what makes them now more than even desperate for the other. Their relationship is a fraught one given the circumstances that have led to their coming together. Gaunt in particular being Ellwood’s superior, and haunted by his own actions at the front, is committed to keeping their relationship one of convenience, something that pains him as much as Ellwood. Ellwood, who still retains at this point an easy-going insouciance, tries his best to be of comfort to Gaunt, but, eventually, their paths diverge. During the months and years following their enlistment, we watch them trying to survive but retaining one's body and one's mind in war is no easy feat. The more of his friends die, the more Ellwood begins to change, and his attempts to immure himself to pain see him turn into someone who is jaded, cruel, and angry. Gaunt, who had for so long suppressed his feelings, and rarely allowed himself to feel things fully, is reunited with some old friends and their companionship, as well as the possibility of seeing Ellwood, spur him on.
Oh, my poor heart. At first, I was fooled by the beautiful prose and by the dazzling intensity of Gaunt and Ellwood’s yearning. Once we leave Preshute behind, there are only echoes of that earlier beauty. There are moments of kinship, of comradeship, between the men. Their banter is a temporary reprieve from the fear, uncertainty, and brutality of war. Against this unforgiving landscape, punctured by violence and agonizing waits, Gaunt and Ellwood’s feelings for one another, as well as their faltering relationship, appear almost as if bathed by a quietly luminous light.
“I wish I could be more articulate, but the English language fails me. It sometimes feels as if the only words that still have meaning are place names: Ypres, Mons, Artois. Nothing else expresses.”
Alice Winn doesn’t hold back from portraying the realities of war or from being critical of the British. Except for one character, Gaunt’s sister, the novel is populated by characters who for better or worse struck me as real. Given the period and depending on a character’s background, they would inevitably express troublesome views. Rather than indicting or condoning them, Winn allows her characters to be flawed, messy, and idiosyncratic. Notions of duty and honor, as well as cowardice, are recurring motifs, as we witness how these have shaped and continue to shape the characters. Some find themselves holding onto patriotic beliefs, others are unable to reconcile the realities of war with their lives so far. Some are driven mad, lashing out against their fellow men, or retreating inward, so inward that their physical body no longer matters. Time and again we are reminded of how young these soldiers are, and the myriad of banal ways their lives can be cut short. We see the disconnect between those on the front, and those who dispatch orders from afar, often sending hundreds or more to meet avoidable deaths. But you keep on reading, hoping against hope for a miracle, a way for Gaunt and Ellwood to be brought back together…
“My dearest, darling Sidney, There was nothing else.”
In Memoriam really tore me up. Yet, the majestic prose, the urgency of the story, and the bond between Gaunt and Ellwood kept me turning pages. There are so many scenes and passages that are harrowing, raw, and unsparing in their brutality. And maybe those make those moments of stillness, of quiet, all the more agonizingly tender.
“Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clean of him no matter how he tried. He thought perhaps all the pain would sour the love, but instead it drew him further in, as if he were Marc Antony, falling on his own sword. And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.”
And the more I read, the more worried I became, as it was clear that no one was safe and everything goes. And it was fucking heartbreaking to see just how unrecognizable some of the characters become. They may not have died but they are certainly not living. And Winn succeeds in capturing that specific terror of being confronted with the possibility that someone you know, someone you love, is there but not. Their body is, it may even look eerily unchanged. But their minds are no longer the same. You may lie to yourself into believing that they will be restored to who they were, that time will heal their wounds, but eventually, you might have no choice but to confront the reality: that they will never be who they were.
The novel’s exploration of love, queerness, and of morality, definitely brought to mind works such as The Charioteer, The Absolutist, and Maurice. Winn’s writing has this pictorial quality and melancholy that really brought to mind the style of Mary Renault, so much so that even the way the characters speak, their inner turmoils, and the way they interact with one another, all made me think of Renault's work. The characters are continually faced with difficult choices, but the rhythms of war and the chaos of a battle rarely allow the time for them to question whether what they are doing is right, wrong, or another thing altogether. What do you do when you know you are being sent to your death? What do you do when the people around you are losing their minds?
“Ellwood was surprised to find that he was not glad either, although his hatred grew and grew. But he could not hate soldiers. He longed to destroy, to hurt, to kill, but he wasn’t sure whom. Possibly the civilians.”
My one quibble lies in Maud, Gaunt’s sister. She is the kind of female character that you can find in Natasha Pulley’s books or other historical fiction featuring a gay romance, that is a young woman who is a source of conflict for the couple, and always finds a way to excuse their callousness and selfishness (often by reminding the other person of the limitations imposed on her by her gender). Her presence annoyed me. Winn does, unlike Pulley, try to make her readers feel for Maud, but I had a hard time ignoring how uncaring and sanctimonious she was, especially towards Gaunt. And she never seemed to listen or to allow for someone else’s perspectives, presenting herself instead as the wronged party. But maybe a re-read will make her character more tolerable...
“Ellwood had never been interested in ugliness, whereas Gaunt […] feared that ugliness was too important to ignore..”
The main characters, Gaunt and Ellwood are compelling, and so are their differences and similarities. Not only does Winn render the patterns of their thoughts, but is able to convey their voices: the way they speak, the kind of things they would say, and so. The cadences of their speech, and the way their minds work, however exasperating, Winn captures all of this, so that they both felt like real people. This makes the way they change all the more heartbreaking. Having grown to care for them, to see them become so unlike themselves, it was truly harrowing. Their feelings for each other are beautiful. They long for each other, but they are unable to articulate their love. Yet, they do form a love language of sorts, as they borrow the words of other men, quoting poetry and the classics to one another. Even at Preshute their love is clouded by worry, by the possibility that their feelings are unrequited, and later on, it is obscured by the war. Trauma changes them, and it changes the way they can love, and I cannot stress enough how that scene, that scene you were waiting for so long, has none of the happiness and warmth you’d expected. This may seem like an exaggeration but I felt bereft. But it would have been disingenuous to have that scene go any other way. We encounter so many men within these pages. Some live, but a sentence, others live longer, but their safety is never a guarantee.
“How alive it all seemed, and how gracious—to die in an era when your death bought you a brief moment at the centre of something. To be important, rather than one of millions.”
Time and again Winn juxtaposes the beauty, the poetry, and the blissful freedom of their time at Preshute, with the newfound reality, which is oppressive, brutal, and bloody. In portraying Ellwood and Gaunt’s experiences on the front, Winn never takes the easy option, by making all of their actions and behaviors heroically selfless acts. Gaunt cannot wholly shake himself of his anti-war sentiments, nor can he ignore that he is fighting against the Germans, a people he still feels part of. Ellwood instead grows bitter towards that and those he’d loved, from the poets he admired to the civilians back home who easily speak of the war without even knowing its ravages first-hand.
“It was a common conversation. In 1913, you might ask a new acquaintance where he had gone to school, or what he did for a living. In 1916, it was this: what part of yourself did you most fear losing?”
The time period is depicted with startling realism. From showing the constraints experienced by Gaunt and Ellwood, their awareness of their difference from others, not only when it comes to their sexuality, but Gaunt is half-german and Ellwood has Jewish roots. We also see how Preshute both insulated them from the real world, but not wholly, as there they are still expected to obey certain hierarchies and traditions, and they are taught that displays of emotions are a weakness.
“He did not know that it was the first thing homesick little boys in their dormitories learnt at boarding school: how to cry in silence.”
In Memoriam is a novel that hits hard. It’s beautiful, theatrical, and romantic. It’s brutal, tragic, and devastating. It’s a book about war, death, trauma, and grief. It’s also a book about love: the love between friends, between brothers in arms, between allies, and, of course, between lovers. It’s by no means an easy read but it’s a gripping one. If you don’t mind sobbing, and feeling as if your heart was in your throat, In Memoriam is a soul-stirring and arresting read that has your name on it.
A symphonic meditation on love, brotherhood, masculinity, death, grief, and trauma, In Memoriam is a startlingly evocative and deeply excruciating debut novel that I am planning on losing myself into again and again....more
Hirayasumi is a wonderful slice of life manga that will definitely appeal to fans of the iyashikei sub-genre. There is a lulling, comforting even, qua Hirayasumi is a wonderful slice of life manga that will definitely appeal to fans of the iyashikei sub-genre. There is a lulling, comforting even, quality to the Shinzo's storytelling, from his characters to his art style. With little preamble the manga explores every-day experiences of its central characters, giving insight into their lives and the characters themselves (what to they believe in? what makes them happy? what are their anxieties? do they desire, from life, from each-other?). Shinzo portrays their routines in such a soothing yet compelling way that I found myself unwilling to interrupt my reading.
Ikuta Hiroto, one of our protagonists, is a self-described freeter who is in his late twenties and leads a content carefree life. He has no interest in having the kind of life that his peers and his society expects of him, and he is satisfied working part-time and drifting along. He eventually inherits a house that belonged to a neighbourhood granny, who he had struck an unlikely friendship with. He is joined by his cousin, 18-year-old Natsumi, an aspiring mangaka, who has moved to Tokyo to attend university. Natsumi however feels out-of-place in the city, and struggles to make friends.
I cannot praise this manga enough. It was a balm to my soul. I liked everything about it. From Shinzo's reflections on modern work culture, to his exploration of loneliness and hope. There was something so refreshing and nonjudgemental about the way he depicts his characters (their personalities, their struggles) and I found the focus on, often unexpected, friendships to be delightful....more
“At any given moment, I have no idea what’s true about any of us.”
The Arena of the Unwell is a gritty and exhilarating exploration of loneliness and longing, obsession and jealousy, queerness and male intimacy.
tw: self-harm & suicidal ideation
Our narrator is Noah, a 22-year-old gay man who lives in London. He works in a record shop, shares a place with his best friend, and spends most of his nights exploring North London’s indie music scene, getting increasingly drunk at venues and pubs. He’s seeing a counsellor but knows that his NHS allocated hours are running out and soon enough he will be left alone to cope with his debilitating self-hatred and depression. His two closest friends are not only together romantically but they have a band together, and Noah, feeling that he’s being left behind, spirals into self-destructiveness. One night, after a venue with his favorite band, the enigmatic Smiling Politely turns awry, Noah seeks refuge outside where Dylan, a charismatic barman from Australia, comes to his aid. When he starts getting to know Dylan, who is a couple of years older than him, he sees him as a cure to the overwhelming emptiness that has become increasingly hard to keep at bay. His infatuation with Dylan is complicated by the fact that Dylan is ‘straight’ and by his living arrangements: Dylan lives with Fraser, an incredibly mercurial man who doesn’t take kindly to Noah ‘inserting’ himself into their lives. Noah becomes entangled in their very toxic relationship but soon finds his attraction to Dylan shifting to Fraser. As Noah spends more of his time with them, getting drunk and high, neglecting his mental health and physical wellbeing, he finds himself alienating the people in his life. His friends try in vain to reach out but Noah is unwilling or unable to ‘lean’ on them. Eventually, his dishevelled appearance and tardiness get him in trouble at work, and Noah finds himself crashing at Dylan and Fraser’s place. Noah becomes wholly consumed by their relationship, to the point where he compromises himself to belong with them. He becomes a participant in the unhealthy cat-and-mouse dynamic between Dyland and Fraser. Their volatile relationship and living situation do not make for a good environment, as they seem to enable each other to engage in harmful behaviours. Konemann renders with heart-wrenching lucidity Noah’s vulnerabilities, his yearning to fit in, to be loved and to belong. He also captures with brutal intensity Noah’s his anxiety, his self-hatred and his self-harming, without ever romanticising his spiralling mental health. We see how difficult it is for Noah to rid himself of the deep-seated and poisonous belief that he doesn’t matter, that he is worthless, a non-entity. We also see how this deeply affects him in his day-to-day life, and how careless he is with his own safety and wellbeing. Both Dylan and Fraser use him, ignoring all of the warning signs that point to Noah’s ‘unwellness’. They never really let Noah in, keeping him in the dark about the true nature of their relationship, nor are they honest about their intentions with him, hell, sometimes they do not even consider him at all. Once again Noah finds himself an outsider, a witness to the jealousies and manipulations running between Dylan and Fraser. His alcohol and drug consumption lends a murky quality to many portions of his narration and further adds to the gritty atmosphere of the story. His unreliable, often unintentionally so. His self-deception becomes a dangerous coping mechanism, and he can survive only by ignoring his problems and current circumstances. There is a sense of unease permeating much of the story, so I was never able to let my guard down, always worried about people’s nefarious intentions’ toward Noah or Noah’s own self-sabotaging. The author articulates with painful precision the anguish, desperation, and loneliness in Noah, and my heart really went out to him. I could really relate to him, and his conviction that he doesn't really fit in with the queer community. This story is less of a coming of age than a coming undone. The indie music scene serves as a backdrop to Konemann’s troubling character study, which really adds to the novel’s edgy atmosphere. The fraught and disconcerting relationship between Noah and these two older men brought to mind Barbara Vine’s urban tales of psychological suspense (The House of Stairs, Grasshopper). Like Vine, Konemann has given his narrative a very nostalgic vibe, one that doesn’t see the past through rose-tinted lenses, quite the contrary. I also appreciated the thorny exploration of queer desire, and how he underlines how dangerous it is to become wholly consumed by someone you love, to the point where you are cutting yourself off from everyone and everything else. While music is an undeniable component in Noah’s narrative, Smiling Politely serve a rather underwhelming function in the story. Noah’s chapters are interrupted now and again by articles or snippets of interviews with two of the band’s members, Ryan and Claire, and these were kind of unnecessary. They would have made more sense if the band, or at least their music, would have played a bigger role in the story, but they don't. I also would have liked Isaac to be given more page time, at least before Noah becomes wholly obsessed with Dylan/Fraser. The finale was slightly a bit too rushed, but I appreciated the realistic note things ended on. I would definitely read more by Konemann and when I next feel like getting emotionally sucker-punched I will be giving this a re-read for sure. I loved Noah’s compelling voice (ragazzo mio !), the vivid descriptions (of often very grotty & sweaty places), and the realistic dialogues (from the small talk, to the banter and the arguments). Throughout the course of the story, Konemann presents his readers with an uncompromising interrogation of the contradicting and often obscure nature of love and desire. The jealousies, lies, manipulations, and small acts of cruelty add complex shades to his portrayal of love, affection, intimacy, and desire. While in many ways Noah’s narration is limited by his naïveté, his social commentary is interspersed by whip-smart observations and wry assessments that often serve as sources of levity. There are also moments of euphoria that starkly contrast against the novel’s darker themes. I would definitely recommend this to fans of Caroline O'Donoghue's work, as both Promising Young Women and Scenes of a Graphic Nature feature self-destructive main characters becoming entangled in unhealthy dynamics & toxic relationships. The gritty nostalgia in The Arena of the Unwell made me think of Elizabeth Hand, specifically Wylding Hall and Generation Loss. Anyway, I inhaled this novel in less than 24 hours (it really served as a distraction to a particularly sh*tty shift). It was a gripping and heart-wrenching read, one that I won't forget anytime soon....more
“Languages aren’t just made of words. They’re modes of looking at the world. They’re the keys to civilization. And that’s knowledge worth killing for.”
Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution is an incendiary indictment against colonialism. Within this superbly written slow-burner of a bildungsroman, R.F. Kuang presents her readers with an extensive critique of eurocentrism, scientific racism, white supremacy, elitist institutions and the hoarding of knowledge, and British imperialism that is by turns didactic and impassioned. If you are a reader who isn’t particularly into nonfiction but you are keen on familiarizing yourself with discourses on colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonialism, or are interested in linguistics (translation, interpretation, language contact), or learning more about the circumstances that led to the First Opium War, you should definitely consider picking Babel up.
Babel is a rare example of how—in the right hands—telling can be just as effective a storytelling method as ‘showing’. Kuang’s storytelling is quite frankly superb. And not only is the narration immersive and encompassing, but it is also informative and thought-provoking. Undoubtedly readers will feel angry by what they will read, and the unrelenting racism, discrimination, physical and emotional violence experienced by the story’s protagonist, Robin. This is a decidedly heavy-going story. And yet, thanks to Kuang’s bravura display of storytelling, readers will find themselves persevering, despite the foreshadowing that presages worse is to come…
The majority of the novel takes place in an alternate 1830s Oxford where Babel, the University's Royal Institute of Translation, is the ‘pioneering’ centre of translation and 'silver-working', an act that catches what is lost in translation and manifests it into being. After cholera decimated his family, Robin, a boy from Canton, is whisked away from China to London by the imperious Professor Lovell, who happens to be a renowned professor at Babel. Robin has no choice but to follow and obey Professor Lovell’s strict study regimens. Not only does Professor Lovell impose a punitive lifestyle on Robin, forcing him to dedicate his every waking moment to the study and learning of languages, but he devests him of his ‘former’ name and makes him relinquish any remembrances of his former life. Additionally, Professor Lovell subjects Robin to many forms of abuse: from spewing ethnocentric and white supremacist speeches, to physically ‘punishing’ Robin. Growing up in this environment Robin grows to resent his ‘mentor’, and yet, even so he is desperate to belong. Besides his tutors and Professor Lovell, Robin only really interacts with his mentor’s housekeeper, who, despite being the only person to show him any tenderness, is nevertheless complicit in Professor Lovell’s continued abuse of him. Robin’s childhood is not a happy one, in fact, it is not really a childhood at all. The setting combined with the misery of it all brought to mind the work of Charles Dickens. Unlike Dickens’ heroes, Robin is not only disadvantaged by his being an orphan but by not being white, something that ultimately makes him a very un-Dickensian character. Professor Lovell’s oppressive ‘rule’ instils in Robin a sense of fear: while he does have a lot of questions (how did the professor find him? why him? why is he 'bestowing' on him such an education? what will await him at babel?) he is weary about disobeying him. Moving to Oxford opens Robin up to a world that is both awe-inspiring and terrible. At Babel he can master languages in even more depth, he can be surrounded by hundreds of years of knowledge, and by (supposedly) like-minded individuals.
“They’d been chosen for privileges they couldn’t have ever imagined, funded by powerful and wealthy men whose motives they did not fully understand, and they were acutely aware these could be lost at any moment. That precariousness made them simultaneously bold and terrified. They had the keys to the kingdom; they did not want to give them”
But even Babel has its own set of hierarchies, which prioritize whiteness and European cultures and languages. While Babel, unlike other colleges at Oxford, admits a more diverse student body, compared to his white peers, Robin is treated with a mixture of fascination and disdain. The older students seem unwilling to mingle with first-years so inevitably Robin becomes close to his cohort: Ramy, Victoire, and Letty. Robin and Ramy become particularly close, and their bond is one of the novel’s strengths. It isn’t a particularly straightforward relationship but their similar experiences and circumstances intensify their kinship. There is a chapter relatively early in the novel that focuses on their early days getting to know each other which was immeasurably bittersweet.
“[This] circle of people he loved so fiercely his chest hurt when he thought about them. A family. He felt a crush of guilt then for loving them, and Oxford, as much as he did. He adored it here; he really did. For all the daily slights he suffered, walking through campus delighted him.”
You feel such relief for Robin to have found someone who just gets what it means to be seen as ‘other’, to be treated as ‘inferior’, 'un-English', and to have been deracinated from their homelands and to feel such contrasting emotions at being at Oxford, an institution that upholds racist ideologies. In this ‘alternate’ setting this contrition is even more felt given the role that Babel plays in silver-working and of how silver bars are enabling the British empire to amass even more power and wealth and to further ‘expand’. Robin believes that by staying at Babel, he is surviving. Ramy however is more openly critical of Britain. The duo is later joined by Letty and Victoire, who, being girls are also subjected to discrimination. Like the boys, Victoire, who is Black and was born in Haiti, has an extremely fraught relationship with Babel. Letty, who is white and was born and raised in Britain in a relatively well off family, is in some ways the odd one out. Yet, she seems intent on portraying herself as a victim, in any circumstance really, often referring to her own experience with misogyny to negate Robin, Ramy, and Victoire's experiences with racism and colonialism. Additionally, her brother died, which Lety, we are both told and shown this, uses to earn her ‘friends’ sympathy. We are meant to hate her, and hate her I did. Imagine the most annoying aspects of Hermione Granger’s character and you have Letty (stubborn, sanctimonious, a stickler for rules). She is a colonialist apologist who, despite being ‘exposed’ to the perspectives/realities of people who have been colonized or have experienced violence at the hands of the British empire, remains firm in her stance (we learn this quite early on so i don’t think it’s that much of a spoiler). I recently came across this quote by Oksana Zabuzhko, a Ukrainian writer, that very much applies to people like Letty: “This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful.’ Certainly, we can see why at first Robin, Victoire, and Ramy would not oppose Letty’s presence in their group. These opinions have been instilled in her by her upbringing. But, when the months and years go by and Letty's belief in the British empire remains unwavering…well…her presence in the group didn't make much sense. I couldn’t fathom why the others would keep her around. I get that she existed to make a point, and sadly I know people like her (who resort to self-victimization whenever confronted with anything resembling criticism, who believe themselves to be 'nice' and 'kind' but only have empathy for themselves) but I just found her beyond irritating and obnoxious. She has no redeeming qualities. And it annoyed me that she took the center stage in many of the group interactions and took away page-time from characters like Ramy and Victoire. I wish she could have been pushed to the sidelines more, and maybe for her then to take more of a role when sh*t starts going down. But I digress.
At Babel Robin finally learns more about silver bars and dio mio, it isn’t good. He learns just how powerful language can be and has to reconcile himself with the knowledge that he is contributing to the enrichment of the British empire. Robin is approached by a member of a secret organization, Hermes Society, whose aim is to sabotage the silver-working that goes on at Babel and disrupt the status quo. Robin feels at a crossroad, damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. While he does still experience racism and discrimination at Babel, it is there that he can access knowledge that would otherwise not be accessible to him. And, of course, it is there that he was able to meet Ramy and Victoire (i should really include letty because robin does care for her but i cannot bring myself to). Babel also has shielded him away from Professor Lovell, who he now sees only on rare occasions, and given him the kind an opportunity that many others will never have...but that doesn't make him unaware of how, beneath its 'enlightened' veneer, Babel is rotten. Can he help Hermes Society if their acts of sabotage include or result in violence? Is violence inevitable in a revolution? And by choosing not to act does he become a cog that keeps the British empire running?
“He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it – because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speak to its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.”
Robin is torn between his hatred for the British empire and the safety he believes he can only experience at Babel. Kuang renders his inner conflict with painful accuracy and extreme empathy. While other characters may be critical of Robin’s unwillingness to ‘choose’, readers won’t be as ready, and in fact, they will find themselves unable to judge him. He tries to help but inevitably his indecision leads the Hermes Society to decide for him. It is only when Robin is forced to confront the consequences of the opium trade—on China, on the Chinese population, and on the Indian farmers who harvested it—that he finds himself ready to act. But, things do not exactly pan out as the story takes us on a The Secret History kind of detour that will undoubtedly appeal to fans of whydunnits and dark academia. While the atmosphere prior to this event was by no means light-hearted after this happens Kuang ups the tension all the way up. The shifting dynamics within and outside of Robin’s group also change, and not necessarily for the better. And the stakes are just sky-high.
Like the summary says, Babel ‘grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire’. We witness the many forms that power takes, and one of them is in fact language. Language can be in fact a tool of oppression. Kuang’s interrogation of the act of translation is utterly compelling. My mum is a translator and I am bilingual (yet have a foreign accent in both italian & english *insert tiny violin here*) and have recently started studying two other languages. Suffice to say, whenever I see a book exploring linguistics, I am interested (be it sci-fi like Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series, literary fiction such as Batuman's The Idiot, or nonfiction like Lahiri's In Other Words). And Kuang really presents us with so many interesting facts and insights into translation and untranslatability. Kuang pays incredible attention to words and their various meanings, which truly enriches Robin’s story and his experiences at Babel. Kuang discusses contact-induced change (which sometimes results in language death) and reading about it even feel guilty about having neglected my ‘mother-tongue’ (on a side note: i have noticed that here in england people seem less interested in learning languages as they rely on english being the most widely spoken language worldwide…). While Kuang does acknowledge Morse code, braille and sign language and other nonverbal forms of communication do not really get a mention which is a pity. Nevertheless, Kuang presents us with such nuanced discussions around language and translation, I loved the attention she pays to the etymology of words, double meanings, doublespeak, and the ambiguity of language and interpretation…
“In Classical Chinese, the characters 二心 referred to disloyal or traitorous intentions; literally, they translated as ‘two hearts’. And Robin found himself in the impossible position of loving that which he betrayed, twice.”
Like I said early on, the writing sometimes shifts into a telling mode, so we have swaths of time which are summarized into a few lines, or certain events or arguments are related to us indirectly. But, Kuang storytelling is such that what we are being told feels incredibly vivid and—for the better and worse—immersive. Some of the lectures Robin attends may occasionally seem a bit too long or pedantic, and I wasn’t always keen on the footnotes (more on that later), but I was never bored. Robin is such a compelling narrator and my heart went out to him. This povero ragazzo really can’t catch a break. And when he finds some solace, with Ramy and Victoire, we have Letty to stir things up or spoil the group’s rare moments of contentment. He hates Professor Lowell who is just so f*cking despicable and full of vitriol but also ‘perversely’ wants to earn his approval. He is also burdened by the realization that as the years go by he struggles to recall his mother and his early years in China. Once in England and under Professor Lowell’s ‘tutelage’ Robin feels caught in a constant state of alterity: while the story mentions that there are occasions where he can ‘pass’, he experiences overt racism, disenfranchisement, and microaggressions on the daily. And he isn’t given the tools or words to express this profound sense of injustice and alienation. Ramy and Victoire become his lifelines as he is finally given the chance to try to name the difficult thoughts and feelings he experiences living in a country that sees him and those like him as ‘barbarians’. Speaking of barbarians, I really appreciated how Kuang highlights the irony and hypocrisy of those British people who will claim that the people they are colonizing or waging war against are ‘violent’, ‘savages’, and ‘uncivilized’ and therefore deserving of being colonized, oppressed, and killed.
‘How strange,’ said Ramy. ‘To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.’ ‘Not as odd as you’d think,’ said Victoire. ‘There are people, after all, and then there are things.’
I found Robin to be such an endearing character. Kuang captures the disorientation of living somewhere where you are and will always be perceived as a perpetual foreigner. His longing for a place to belong to is truly heart-wrenching. He is not flawless but I genuinely believe that he always tries his hardest to do good by others. Sometimes self-preservation kicks in and he finds himself at a standstill. He feels a moral obligation to help the Hermes Society but is not quite ready to be responsible for the destruction of Babel. Yet, when he realizes that he is becoming complicit in the injustices perpetrated by Babel..well, he has to question whether his loyalties can even align with those responsible for maintaining unjust systems of power.
“Yet didn’t he have a right to be happy? He had never felt such warmth in his chest until now, had never looked forward to getting up in the morning as he did now. Babel, his friends, and Oxford – they had unlocked a part of him, a place of sunshine and belonging, that he never thought he’d feel again. The world felt less dark now. He was a child starved of affection, which he now had in abundance – and was it so wrong for him to cling to what he had? He was not ready to commit fully to Hermes. But by God, he would have killed for any of his cohort.”
Ramy, who is more impassioned and outspoken, balances Robin perfectly. Their shared moments together do have certain undercurrents but these remain largely unspoken. And in some ways, it is this elision that made it all the more obvious. Letty…I have said enough about her. She, similarly to Professor Lovell, remains unchanged throughout the course of the narrative. We know the kind of people they are from the very first and I am afraid that in some ways Letty is worse than Professor Lovell. Her acts of self-dramatization and victim playing drove me up the walls. Victoire was sadly underused. Her characterization sometimes relied too much on opposing Letty’s one (we will have letty responding in a sh*tty way to something and then we will get a different response from victoire who usually acts as a pacifier). I just would have liked less page-time spent on Letty—who, however believable she is, is neither an interesting nor compelling character—and more on Victoire. In the latter half of the novel, Victoire is given more room to breathe but due to the pace of the plot, the storyline can't really focus on her. I liked how many secondary characters come into play in the latter half of the novel and I was surprised by the role some of them play in the story. Reading about Britain’s ‘past exploits’ is by no means fun. Yet, somehow, Kuang is able to make Robin’s story wholly captivating and hard to put down. The anxiety I felt for him, and later on Ramy and Victoire, made me go through this nearly 500+ pages tome of a book at a relatively fast speed.
There is much to be admired in Babel. [due to word count the rest of the review is in the comment section or alternatively here]...more
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