my relationship with awad's works seems to be very much one step forward and two steps back. while this did not frustrate me as much as bunny it was jmy relationship with awad's works seems to be very much one step forward and two steps back. while this did not frustrate me as much as bunny it was just...boring...lacklustre. a lot of scenes and exchanges were too reminiscent of all's well. the first chapter sees a woman of the not-feeling-too-good variety giving Patrick-Bateman-lusting-after-business-cards energy as she is hiding away watching a video promising wellness or a better improved happier self all the while someone is calling her name.
anyway, rouge felt like a short-story stretched out into novel form that amounts to a series of not particularly shocking or interesting dream(y) sequences that might appeal to fans of, i don't know, mulholland drive (love lynch but, at the risk of incurring the wrath of cinephiles, that film was not it). i found the commentary on beauty and ageing terribly on the nose and not particularly clever or subversive (that a character references 'eyes wide shut'...subtle). the 'french' elements embodied by the mc's mother, were laughable. the dynamic between the mc & her mother, seemed reminiscent of shirley jackson's work (her 'mother/mother' refrain was very much giving The Haunting of Hill House). the novel reveals little and, worst still, failed to entertain me the way the author's previous novel at least managed to. murky scene after murky scene, in which we are meant to question our mc's sanity. maybe if awad hadn't immediately blurred the line between reality and fantasy, maybe then i would have felt some unease at whatever was going on, but i didn't. i felt bored by awad's writing which often relies on the same stylistic 'tricks': the use of 'you', repeating words, the avoidance of a subject matter, 'fragmented' yoda-like sentences, and tumblr-esque phrases ("You nodded. An ache opening up inside you. Deep, deep." / "Cynical smile of the beautiful who know they're on the downhill slope." / "Don't know why I came here. Can't afford this place, not at all" / "She's brimming with it: a longing for delusion." / "A friend of a co-worker. Lonely. We both were." / "Shake her lovely head." / "I lean in and kill him on the lips and he kills me right back."...i mean this last one is truly giving dark fantasy ya). and sure, these choices can be effective, if used sparingly or increasingly to reflect the mc's delusional state of mind, but that's not the case here. reading a page felt like wading through molasses, and i soon felt mired by awad's laboured prose. whereas all's well managed to provide a few diverting plot-points and scenes, i felt nothing while reading rouge.
as per usual, the opinions above are very much based on my very subjective personal taste and i would recommend my fellow readers to check out some different and more positive reviews out....more
The Premonition is textbook Banana Yoshimoto: we have a lively yet inexplicably melancholic narrator prone to navel-gazing, character(s) with3 ½ stars
The Premonition is textbook Banana Yoshimoto: we have a lively yet inexplicably melancholic narrator prone to navel-gazing, character(s) with psychic abilities, domestic backdrops, and plenty of understated conversations which are often of an idiosyncratic realism while at other times they are of a more amorphous nature, their currents and logic closer to those of dreams.
Yayoi, the 19-year-old protagonist and narrator of The Premonition, has lately fallen into a strangely pensive mood as she feels that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. She moves in with her eccentric aunt, Yukino, a teacher who moves through life as though half-asleep. Despite her unusual ways, Yayoi finds her to be a comfort and soon seems to adjust to the rhythms of her aunt’s lifestyle. Although there are no huge family secrets that emerge during this time we (readers) learn more about Yayoi’s past and present circumstances, for instance, that she has been harboring more than brotherly feelings for her adopted brother. Yayoi’s aunt retains an aura of mystery, one that is intensified by her sudden disappearance. As Yayoi and her ‘brother’ set out to find her, their mutual feelings for each other come to the fore. The motif of the house, forbidden romance, as well as the nostalgic atmosphere created by the narrative’s focus on memory, childhood, and old secrets, made The Premonition something of a slice-of-life-cum-fairy-tale, a meeting point between humdrum reality and dreamspace. As much as I found myself lulled by Yayoi’s simple yet whimsical inner monologue, or amused by the characters' peculiar antics, the story’s romantic elements left a lot to be desired. Not only do we get an incest-y love story but we also have a side romance that is anything but romantic given that it involves grooming (yet this whole teacher-student dynamic is made to seem quirky). So, yeah...icky on multiple levels. Still, Yoshimoto's storytelling has this soothing quality to it that is hard to dislike, no matter how twee or yucky her stories may get. I ultimately found Yayoi's realizations on life, remembrance, and growing-up, to be comforting, and I liked the melancholic ambience of her story. If you are, like me, a Yoshimoto fan, you'll likely enjoy The Premonition. If you happen to be on the fence about Yoshimoto, well, you might want to give this a miss given that The Premonition is typical Yoshimoto fare....more
Bloated and bloviating, despite its 500+ page runtime, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a colossal failure of a book. You would think that at oneBloated and bloviating, despite its 500+ page runtime, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a colossal failure of a book. You would think that at one point or another (its sheer length provided ample opportunity) this ‘novel’ would at least, however briefly, be able to convey some sort of meaning, or at least be able to elicit some sort of meaningful emotional response (beyond irritation) in the reader...but Special Topics in Calamity Physics failed to do so. That this book was written by the same person as Night Film (which i loved) makes it all the more boggling yet somehow despite its huge word count, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is Special Topics in Calamity Physics doesn’t even manage to deliver on style, as the academic setting and elements are entirely derivative of the academia genre. The novel is bogged down by verbose and densely self-referential language that is pretentiously self-indulgent and for all its aspirations of cleverness and uniqueness is lamentably lacklustre. It took me 3 months to bring myself to finish it, having come across several reviewers that made it seem like the latter half of the book would deliver on the mystery and the drama that was woefully absent in the former. But turns out they lied, Godot is a no-show.
Oozing with unearned self-satisfaction, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is the type of book that once completed makes me wonder: What was the point in any of it? I don’t always seek ‘meaningful’ books but at least they should provide some sort of diversion. This book was the opposite of that. Reading felt like a chore, and maybe the only reason why I persevered in reading it is that I have masochistic tendencies. But jokes aside, this book was a waste of my time. Why does this exist? How is this a book?
The novel supposedly has a plot that goes something along the lines of: precocious Blue grows up all over the U.S. due to her father’s job. An obnoxious narcissistic professor, her father has very much informed and shaped her education, so that by her final year of high school Blue, unlike her peers, is endowed with vast literary, philosophical, scientific, and historical knowledge. Her father’s latest placement sees them taking residence in North Carolina where Blue is enrolled in the elite St. Gallway School. Of course, this being an academia novel, Blue begins spending her time with a clique of students who have been handpicked by the supposedly intriguing Hannah Schneider, a teacher at their school.
There is little if any character interaction so most of the novel consists of Blue’s gratingly self-congratulatory internal monologue which is mostly made of real and made-up references to real-life individuals, books, films, and so forth. There is an abundance of 'quirky' asides, to the point where we have asides within asides. Their purported quirkiness falls short of genuine wit. Footnotes also litter our girl's narration, but these too add little if anything to the overall narration, and they merely seem like a gimmick, an unnecessary way of underlining how witty and bright Blue is. Everything and anything is described in this densely turgid language. This reliance on bombastic metaphors and labored asides weigh down the text of the novel. Getting through Blue’s narration was akin to wading through a quagmire made up of this pompously high-register yet ultimately empty language that achieves nothing when it comes to conveying the story’s atmosphere or the characters’ personalities.
No one is interesting and the characters who get the most spoken lines, Blue’s father, and this annoying girl from the clique, are dull. No one is funny, clever, or fascinating. Blue is the worst offender. I read an interview where the author says that this dissonance between Blue’s internal and external self is intentional, but that means fuck all when in both instances she’s a one-note bore. No, she is not funny or clever. Her supposedly intricately Dickensian internal world is shallow. Her verbosity did not make her into a compelling or intelligent character. And this is coming from someone who can put up with a lot of navel-gazing and books that are very much vibes over plot. But here the vibes are stodgy, and the navel-gazing reveals nothing about Blue’s ‘rich’ interiority. I wasn’t charmed nor outraged by any of the characters, finding their passive presence in the story as annoying as a buzzing mosquito.
The lofty and pretentiously self-referential prose, the puerile characters, the shallow exploration of any and all topics touched upon by the narrative, the bathetic 'mystery', the derivative nature of it all made Special Topics in Calamity Physics into a tortuously overwritten novel that seems to operate under the belief that it is doing so much while in actuality doing little if anything at all.
It was a painfully cliché yet drawn-out affair led by an infuriating main character whose convoluted narration incurred the risk of triggering dissociative states. I bought a copy of this book soon after reading Pessl's Night Film but I kept putting off reading it as I was 'saving' it for later...and I shouldn't have bothered really. Special Topics in Calamity Physics was such a let-down I have a hard time reconciling it with the author behind Night Film. If this book is on your radar, I recommend you proceed with caution. What you get in those first chapters will keep on happening, ad nauseam. ...more
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