This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 19, 2017.

number9dream

By David Mitchell – Random House – December 18, 2007

Review by Robin Marx

I enjoyed The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and when I discovered Mitchell had an earlier book set in Japan, I was eager to check it out. While there are some great moments and I was eager to see where the story led, overall I was disappointed.

This book tells the story of a Miyake Eiji, a youth from rural Japan who travels to Tokyo in a search for the father he never knew. Eiji also has a propensity for vivid dreaming, both of the waking and nocturnal varieties, and as a result the line between real world events and fantasy are frequently blurred.

The book is at its best when Mitchell describes Tokyo (a city in which I've lived nearly half my life) and the island of Yakushima (which I've had the pleasure of visiting), but the surrealistic interludes became more and more unwanted and intrusive as the book continued. Very few of them enhanced or illustrated the core narrative, and the recurring “Goatwriter” meta-fiction sequence was particularly extraneous and masturbatory.

Apparently this book was a sort of blatant homage to Murakami Haruki (who is name-checked in this book), and had I known that in advance, I wouldn't have bothered. I've assiduously avoided reading Murakami, as everything I've heard about his work has convinced me that his work is tepid surrealism for boring people too timid to venture outside of the capital-L Literary ghetto and pick up a decent fantasy or weird fiction novel. The more tedious portions of this book certainly mesh with the perception I've formed of Murakami's work.

I'm a big fan of surrealism, from classics like Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories to more modern work by people like China Mieville, but it just didn't work for me in this book. The more grounded parts of the story—like Eiji's childhood interactions with his sister, reading his grandfather's diary, his letters from his mother, even his somewhat unconvincing romance with a piano student—worked far better than the dream interludes.

Even more so than the hallucinatory fever dreams, it was the dialogue of this book that I found the most unrealistic. The characters all spoke like New York literary novel cut-outs, not living and breathing Japanese people. All of the customer service staff presented throughout the book speak in aggressive or dismissive manners that ring false to anyone who has spent any amount of time in Japan, for example. His characters are all demonstrative and outspoken, not indirect or concerned with propriety or hurt feelings in the way most Japanese people tend to be with acquaintances and coworkers. Early on in the book there's even a pun (“Company?” “No, I came alone”) that only works if the Japanese characters are speaking to each other in English. Mitchell apparently spent eight years living in Hiroshima and has a Japanese wife, but I suspect he never picked up much of the language. His portrayal of Japanese people is frustrating because his portrayal of Japan itself is so good.

Mitchell is a talented writer, there are glimmers of that here, but he wastes too much verbiage on stylistic trickery when a more straightforward approach would suffice. There's an entertaining portrayal of Japan and a nicely human story here, but it's absolutely suffocated by literary wankery and cruft.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on April 21, 2012.

The Tokaido Road: A Novel of Feudal Japan

By Lucia St. Clair Robson – Forge Books – November 29, 2005

Review by Robin Marx

This historical novel was a mixed bag. It had the best sense of place of any Westerner-penned novel about feudal Japan I've read and the characters were appealing, but its length and incredibly slow pace as well as the relatively unexciting plot hurt an otherwise appealing book.

This book was incredibly well-researched. I'm fairly well-versed in the Edo period and fluent in Japanese, and I could find very few nits to pick. The author demonstrated such a broad grasp of Japanese history that I was surprised to find out that her other books are set in historical America. I was pleased to see samurai Japan faithfully brought to life, and everything seemed authentic.

While I thoroughly appreciated the detail that went into the book, there were also times where it was overkill. Much of the detail explained at length for Western reader's benefit described facets of life that a Japanese character of the time would've found unremarkable, and probably could've been safely glossed over.

The plot was also slightly disappointing. It's sort of a prequel to the Loyal 47 Ronin historical incident, which all Japanese people are intimately familiar with through theatre, film, and novels. The basic premise involves a revenge plot against the conniving samurai Lord Kira, who provokes rival Lord Asano into drawing his sword while in the Shogun's estate, a capital crime. After Asano's death, 47 of his retainers lie low for a couple years before avenging their former lord in a bloody, dramatic fashion. That's the historical tale, but this book focuses on Asano's fictional illegitimate daughter Cat. Hoping to round up her father's remaining loyalists and prepare for vengeance, she escapes from the brothel she works at and makes an epic journey along the eastern sea route (the eponymous Tokaido) to her father's fief. Her journey is mostly entertaining, but the book reads almost like an unabridged travelogue, with no detail spared. Several colorful characters drift in and out, but most are largely inconsequential to the narrative. Without giving too much away, her journey concludes in a less than triumphant manner, and the actual Loyal 47 Ronin revenge saga is resolved in about a dozen pages, with our heroine relegated to the sidelines. If you're familiar with the story through film and history books that's not a critical flaw, but those less of a background in Japanese history might feel slighted by the abrupt resolution.

While plot and pacing were a little on the weak side, I did enjoy the characters. Cat is beautiful, brave, and determined, but those qualities are balanced out by arrogance and occasional episodes of pettiness and imperiousness. Ronin bounty hunter Hanshiro lives up to the archetype while still avoiding becoming a cliche. He seemed like the kind of character Kurosawa's favorite leading man Mifune Toshiro would play. Peasant girl Kasane is a gullible bumpkin, but her loyalty and fundamental kindness endear her to both Cat and the reader.

Overall this book was a bit of a slog. Rich in detail, but meandering and overly long. I enjoyed the world it presented and the characters appearing within, but probably a third of the book's length was extraneous. I'd recommend it to fans of Japanese history and samurai, but those with only a passing interest in these topics would probably find this book frustratingly slow.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 5, 2015.

Gentlemen of the Road

By Michael Chabon – Ballantine Books – October 30, 2007

Review by Robin Marx

Impishly nicknamed “Jews with Swords” by its author, Gentlemen of the Road is a historical adventure tale about a pair of rogues—a giant African soldier named Amram and a German physician/fencer named Zelikman—and their journey through the (largely unfamiliar to me and apparently scantly chronicled) city-states of Khazaria.

Pleasingly reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Amram and Zelikman are introduced in a very amusing fashion that immediately familiarizes the reader with the most salient aspects of their personalities. They overcome their baser instincts to grudgingly become involved in what looks like a simple escort mission, only to find their task rapidly balloon in importance, until they end up having an inadvertent and significant political impact on the region.

While this book is dedicated to Michael Moorcock, to me it felt more like a swashbuckling yarn in the tradition of Robert E. Howard or Harold Lamb. The narrative travels along at a brisk pace with no wasted verbiage, and characters are mostly rendered in broad, archetypal strokes. The episodic format (the novel was originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine) and monochrome illustrations by the excellent Gary Gianni (who also handled the Del Rey Conan and Solomon Kane books, etc.) also contributed greatly to the pulp adventure appeal.

My only complaint with the book is that there isn't more of it. I would love to read more of the “Gentlemen's” adventures, but with his “literary” pedigree Chabon is probably loath to be perceived as repeating himself. Indeed, parts of the included Afterword seem a bit like a defense of him writing the story in the first place, saying effectively “Yeah, I mostly write New Yorker-style slice-of-life stories, but adventure tales are also really great!” Personally, I'd rather see him continue to experiment with genre rather than write any more “Jewish writer has marital struggles” stories, but it remains to be seen when he'll release his next “fun” novel.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 7, 2012.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

By Michael Chabon – Random House – September 19, 2000

Review by Robin Marx

Unfamiliar with Michael Chabon and his work, I began this book with some amount of trepidation. As a geek, I've often found it a negative experience when mainstream literature intersects with genre fiction. You've got Margaret Atwood's prissy denials that she writes science fiction, and J.K. Rowling's irrational resistance to having her work labeled as fantasy. (While I haven't seen much commentary from Cormac McCarthy about the genre of The Road, his fans sure seem quick to disavow any relationship with Skiffy.) Sure, they'll happily play with SF and Fantasy's toys (i.e., themes and tropes), but when they get called out on the playground they deny any association with those two weird outcast kids. So I wasn't sure what to expect when presented with a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two comic book creators. The back of the book also made it sound like a fictionalized retelling of “two Jewish kids made good” Jerry Spiegel and Joe Shuster's creation of Superman, and that's not a story that's particularly fresh and new to most comics fans.

Fortunately, my skepticism was assuaged early on. Chabon proves right off the bat that not only does he understand comics, he (gasp!) enjoys them. In fact, this book is an ardent love song dedicated to the golden age of comics. While he doesn't hesitate to point out the “sucker born every minute” cynicism and lowest common denominator pandering that went into the creation of many comics (as he should; a lot of comics are dumb), he also never fails to show the lasting value of comics and costumed superheroes, why they resonate so much with fans. He also earns bonus points by specifically calling out the parallels between the experiences of his protagonists Josef Kavalier and Sammy Clay and Superman's Spiegel and Shuster, rather than leaving it an unacknowledged source of inspiration.

While it's always nice to see a facet of geek culture get a fair shake in this mainstream media, this book is much more than just a refreshingly pro-comic story. It ends up being rather epic in scope, covering not only the trials and tribulations experienced by a pair of young men and the evolution of their friendship, but also the first few decades of the comic book industry and America's entry into World War II. There's even a bit of enigmatic magical realism added to the mix, involving the Golem from Jewish folklore. That's a lot to cover in one book, and it can't be denied that this is a long, meandering read. Length and pacing are the only issues I had with this book, but this complaint ends up reminding me of Emperor Joseph II's “too many notes” gripe to Mozart. Everything turns out to be a thread in the greater tapestry, and in retrospect I find it difficult to locate passages that could safely be trimmed.

While the plot and ambition of this book are certainly praiseworthy, it's the characterization that is most remarkable. Clay and Kavalier (and to a slightly lesser extent, Kavalier's surrealist paramour Rosa Saks) are incredibly well-rendered. They feel like real people. We've all had the experience of watching close friends make regrettable decisions while at the same time fully understanding their motives for doing so, and this is something that happens several times over the course of the story.

Foreshadowing is also used to great effect, although it's almost always under sad circumstances. Two characters will have a blissful exchange, luring the reader into a sense that things are finally starting to go well for their fictional friends, and it'll be immediately followed with “This was the last time they saw/heard from each other again.” This caught me off-guard time and again. Well played, Chabon.

There are more agonies than ecstasies over the course of Kavalier and Clay's amazing adventures, but things never become too overly morbid, and in the end it comes to a perfect, immensely satisfying conclusion. (Albeit one tinged with melancholy.)

Just before finishing the book, I did some reading up on Chabon and his approach to writing. He's written that so much of modern literature boils down to “the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story,” and that, first and foremost, his aim is to tell an entertaining story. I think it's a pretty damning sign of how influential (corrupting?) postmodernism has become that this can even be considered a controversial goal. He's gotten some flak from critics about his attraction to genre themes that basically can be summed up as “you're too good for that stuff!”, but so far it looks as if he's staying the course, and that he sees no incompatibility between nuanced literature and plot-driven stories with fantastical elements.

If that's the case, I can see no incompatibility between his particular brand of high-brow lit and myself. I've added all of Chabon's other books to my To Buy list. I think I'll read a shorter, less dense book next, however...

★★★★★

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 14, 2012.

The Final Solution

By Michael Chabon – Fourth Estate – November 9, 2004

Review by Robin Marx

The Final Solution has a compelling premise, but the execution (perhaps a poor choice of words when dealing with a book that obliquely refers to the Holocaust) leaves a bit to be desired.

Although he's referred to solely as “the old man,” it's immediately apparent that the protagonist is intended to be Sherlock Holmes at 89. The idea of Holmes coming out of retirement during World War II to solve one more mystery is intriguing, but the reason why he becomes involved in this particular case (a murder and a bird-napping) seems a bit flimsy. While I'd hoped to see the master detective—even a Holmes diminished by age—there wasn't much in the way of brilliant deductions, just a few “Easter egg” references to past cases and an admittedly clever allusion to the title of what was intended to be Holmes' final case, “The Final Problem.”

The characters were too many in number, and too sketchily rendered to leave much an impression. This surprised me, since characterization was such a strong point in his previous novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Another issue I had is that the viewpoint character for the climactic scene is a parrot. This isn't an unforgivable sin—it was an interesting portrayal—but it IS pretty goofy.

Finally, detective novels (even self-consciously literary ones) live and die on their mystery, but here Holmes solves the lesser one while ignoring the larger one. He nabs the murderer while failing to uncover the nature of the German numbers constantly recited by the parrot at the heart of the case. The reader will likely figure it out right away, but Holmes never does. I imagine this was intentional on the part of Chabon; he seems to want to say that even a master detective is incapable of realizing the scope and true horror of the Nazis' depravity. However, it didn't feel right or authentic that Sherlock Holmes would let this particular puzzle slide.

While I don't feel like my time was wasted reading this book, I do feel like the interesting premise was wasted on an undercooked story.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 15, 2012.

Heart of Darkness

By Joseph Conrad – Blackwood's Magazine – 1899

Review by Robin Marx

While Apocalypse Now gave me a vague idea of what to expect in the original novella, Heart of Darkness still ended up pleasantly surprising me.

This book can be best summed up with two key words: tension and intensity. Heart of Darkness reads almost like a Gothic horror novel, with a creepy sense of uneasiness and isolation that grows over time.

After narrator Marlowe arrives in Africa, the reader is treated to a continuous series of vignettes showing the brutal reality of slavery and the methods used to keep the ivory trade going. African characters are presented as bestial savages, but the white characters Marlowe encounters are also contemptible without exception. They're brutal thugs, incompetent stuffed shirts, or conniving cheats. They stand in stark contrast to Kurtz, an almost mythical figure spoken of with awe, fear, and jealousy. With mechanical failures and hostile natives, Marlowe's steamboat trip grows more and more hellish and desperate over time, while Kurtz himself becomes even more mysterious and sinister.

Just as this narrative tension reaches its height, we finally come face to face with Kurtz himself. Despite being weakened by illness and insanity, Kurtz is nothing if not intense. Marlowe finds himself horrified by the jungle theocracy Kurtz has set up for himself, but even he can't help being cowed by his charisma and force of will. Marlowe finds himself marked by his brief contact with the man, and left with a decidedly grim view of humanity as a whole.

Literary Classics™ are frequently imposing, monumental works, but Heart of Darkness turned out to be an unexpectedly swift read. So much has been made of the book's exploration of the “duality of mankind” that I'd expected a dry, verbose story, but this wasn't the case at all. Instead, the book was engaging throughout, and its exploration of man's inhumanity to man avoided becoming didactic and impenetrable. I found the book to be much more vibrant than the dense, fossilized analysis and criticism that has accreted around it.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on December 11, 2012.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

By Michael Chabon – Open Road Media – December 20, 2011

Review by Robin Marx

I'm not a huge fan of lit fic, and if this was by any other author I never would have picked it up. The book is about a diffident, sexually-confused youth and the tragically hip, too-cool-for-school circle of friends he's drawn into during his last summer of post-college, pre-career freedom. It's a coming of age story and a journey of self-discovery. Definitely not my usual thing, but Chabon impressed me with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and his willingness to admit his love for genre work has earned him a spot on my shelf as the “acceptable” lit-fic author.

As expected, the whole book was extremely beautifully written. The fact that this was Chabon's creative writing graduate project and his first novel is intimidating to aspiring writers, as he's incredibly skilled right out of the gate.

Unfortunately, the plot doesn't quite live up to the prose. There are two main plot threads here—the narrator learns about himself through interacting with his colorful new friends, and his uneasiness over his gangster father's criminal dealings—and they don't mesh as perfectly as they could. Chabon links them by having one of the narrator's friends, Cleveland, become drawn into Mafia-related dealings, but the connection between the two worlds comes late in the story and is rather tenuous, as it happens after Cleveland's interaction with the group of friends has dwindled considerably. As a result, the “clashing of worlds” the book describes is a little understated.

The bisexual love triangle at the heart of the story is more interesting (I never thought I'd find romantic troubles more captivating than an organized crime story) and sensitively rendered, and it seems that's where Chabon concentrated the bulk of his efforts. Some reviewers complain that the narrator is unsympathetic. I don't entirely agree, but I did find him to be a little fragile and theatrical for a twenty-something man, apt to turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat. His friends are simultaneously interesting people I'd like to meet AND overwrought, tiresome hipster phonies. People like this aren't uncommon at universities, so I'm willing to chalk this up as super-realistic characterization rather than Chabon creating people that aren't as appealing as he imagined.

The ending was a bit abrupt but satisfying. Without giving anything away, I think the narrator made the best possible choice under the circumstances.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 11, 2011.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

By David Mitchell – Random House – June 23, 2010

Review by Robin Marx

This book turned out quite differently than I expected. I'm not familiar with Mitchell's other output, but articles led me to expect capital-L Literature. The New York Times Book Review blurb on the back cover promised “an achingly romantic story of forbidden love.” The book starts out with way, with the first 175 pages chronicling a Dutch clerk's first few days in the Japanese port of Dejima and his fleeting encounters with an enigmatic local woman, but the historical romance plot is sidelined pretty quickly. The book soon turns into an almost C.S. Forrester-style adventure story—you know, the “rollicking” type—with a despicable bad guy leading an evil cult right out of a Fu Manchu yarn.

Betrayed expectations might lead some to put the book down, but if you can keep up with the sudden changes in tone, the book is consistently good throughout. I couldn't find many faults with the Japanese historical details (something that has been a frequent disappointment when reading English language books set in Japan), and Mitchell's occasionally purple capital L Literary stylings are balanced out by an earthy sense of humor. Worth a read if you like historical fiction as a genre or have an interest in Japan.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 12, 2014.

Werewolves in Their Youth

By Michael Chabon – Open Road Media – December 20, 2011

Review by Robin Marx

This collection of short stories is mostly fluff. Highly engagingly written fluff, but fluff nonetheless.

While Chabon has a reputation of being a little more plot-oriented than most modern capital-L Literary authors, most of the stories here are primarily character studies and little “slice of life” stories, many with a minor epiphany towards the end. Almost without exception, the protagonist harbors some sort of deep-seated resentment towards another character (embittered husbands abound in particular), then something happens and they show some small sign of either moving on or hinting towards a reconciliation with others.

Only a few of the stories stood out for me. One involves a husband trying to cope with his wife's decision to bear her rapist's child—heavy and sensitively rendered—and another is one of Chabon's August Van Zorn series of Lovecraft pastiches. The latter stood out not only because it deviated from the formula used by the preceding stories, but because it was so much fun. Chabon gleefully borrows tropes and names from Lovecraft while still telling a legitimately good and spooky little story about a town with an ominous secret. This is the Chabon I like best, one that doesn't discriminate between high- and low-brow genres, instead mixing the best of both worlds.

Had it been written by any other author, this collection would probably warrant two stars. But even when the plots are so thin and meager, Chabon's voice and characterization are so consistently strong that even his more bare-bones, samey output is still undeniably a pleasure to read. While not recommended as an introduction to Chabon, existing fans should enjoy it.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 31, 2012.

Siddhartha

By Hermann Hesse – S. Fischer Verlag – 1922

Review by Robin Marx

As an atheist fascinated with religion, I have an especially ambivalent stance towards Buddhism. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by its complexity and counter intuitiveness, other times—a bit disappointed—I wonder “is that all there is? A lot of cruft surrounding a few basic recommendations?” I've read D. T. Suzuki's writings on Zen, a translation of the Lotus sutra and even Buddhism for Dummies, and still my confidence about “getting” Buddhism wavers. Happily, Siddhartha wasn't just a pleasant, lyrical read, I felt it furthered my understanding of Buddhist concepts as well.

Despite having five translators listed for the Project Gutenberg edition I read, it was a surprisingly smooth read. The story was told in a fairly straightforward fable-like manner that reminded me a bit of Lord Dunsany, of all people.

The characterization was especially deftly handled; there are several places in the narrative where the reader is subtly tipped off that Siddhartha is straying from the path towards enlightenment or becoming a bit sanctimonious, only to have that become a major plot point later on. I also enjoyed that this wasn't a story of one righteous man surrounded by fools and the misguided. Although Siddhartha himself has an ingrained tendency to be skeptical of teachers and condescending towards those he calls “the childlike people” (i.e., you and me), all of the other characters in the novel, from the exalted to the lowly, end up playing a crucial part in his journey.

Although it's never called out directly, the Buddhist precept this book seems to deal with most directly is mindfulness, one facet of the Noble Eightfold Path. Siddhartha sees the most when he's quiet and receptive, willing to pay attention to the small things in life. Like a lot in Buddhism, it's almost childishly simple but sometimes hard to put into practice.

★★★★☆

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