Author Archives: Lynda Clause

Because Haruki Murakami’s birthday was yesterday, and because this is a library blog, this week I’ve chosen to write about The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami. While this is available as an audio book, I must recommend the Knopf print edition if you are able to read that instead. The book design is by Chip Kidd, and it’s lovely. The cover alone references the narrative in several creative ways, and the illustrations within the book are plentiful and thoughtful.

The art design struck me even more as a vehicle for the story, a vehicle almost approaching a translation of the story, because of a recent article about Murakami. If you’re interested in Murakami, you should read “The Murakami Effect” by Stephen Snyder, which appeared on Literary Hub on 01/04/2017. You may agree or disagree with the writer’s arguments (here’s a clue to its contents: the subtitle is “On the Homogenizing Dangers of Easily Translated Literature”), but reading a critique of the translation of Murakami’s work does give you an insight into how the author structures his works. Murakami does not write about complicated ideas as much as he juxtaposes unexpected, easily visualized entities and actions, which allow the reader to fill in the complicated ideas themselves, around those entities and actions. This happens to make him very easy to translate—or, he writes this way because it’s easy to translate, according to Snyder.

I have more of an appreciation for Murakami after reading the Lithub article, which may not have been the author’s intent. Snyder attempts to take some wind out of the literary sails of Murakami’s reputation, comparing him to other Japanese writers (like Minae Mizumura, whom you might want to learn more about) and finding him, in the end, pop.

But I like pop. Murakami is nuanced enough to be quality while being accessible. And letting the reader draw some conclusions is one of my favorite things that an author can do—I love this about Flannery O’Connor, for example. It is important, though, not to take Murakami’s work as any sort of object lesson about Japanese life, just as we can’t expect to learn all we need to know about the South from O’Connor. This is another point in Snyder’s article—how Americans see Murakami’s writing as synecdochical for all things Japanese, overwriting reality with a magic key they think they learned from some magical realist novels. Readers need to try to be smarter than that, and I think we can be.

The Strange Library is a quick read—for a less marketable author, this would have just been a short story in a magazine. So hipster grad students won’t be able to carry it around as long as they can carry around their copies of 1Q84… but it’s a good introduction to Murakami if you’ve been interested and yet haven’t taken the leap. And you know you want to read a book called The Strange Library. And yes, that’s all I’m going to tell you about the actual text.

Fun facts about Haruki Murakami: not related to writer Ryu Murakami (whom I recommend if you want something grittier) or artist Takashi Murakami (if you want something even more pop). And if there’s anything more precious, predictable, and yet still enjoyable, than a McSweeney’s humor piece about Haruki Murakami, I don’t know what it would be, so here that is.

Murakami, Haruki, and Ted Goossen. The Strange Library: 107. , 2014. Print.

Frankenstein is a remarkably modern book that’s just shy of its bicentennial birthday. Often called the first science fiction novel, it’s a parable for how mastering technology (and the pursuit of knowledge and success that comes along with that) can ruin us if we don’t keep our goals in perspective. Mary Shelley manages to warn us to remember to keep things in balance—without ever coming across as anti-modern or anti-technology. (And she wrote this when she was a teenager—there’s your real Halloween scare.)

Sure, you may have been required to read Frankenstein in high school. You’ll get a lot more out of it when you read it as an adult, trust me. First of all, the structure of the narrative is totally bonkers—it should not work, but it does. I can tell you this without giving away any spoilers: One character is telling his story and another character’s story (and that second character is telling the story of some other characters) and it’s all wrapped up in the narration of yet another character, who is in the middle of writing letters about the whole story he’s hearing—along with his own story. It’s a nesting doll structure that any writer would be wary to imitate. The heavily mediated structure helps illustrate the isolation being experienced by most of the main characters, and at the same time, lends the story an authenticity—a feeling that this may really have happened.

Reading Frankenstein as an adult also allows the reader a lot more insight into what motivates the characters… as well as some skepticism about whether they’re really coming clean with each other. You’ll enjoy giving it a second (or a first) chance.

Frankenstein is available to you in many editions and from many avenues. (Here at the Nebraska Library Commission we even have it as one of our book club kits.) Two common editions are from 1818 and 1831—I’d recommend the 1818 edition myself. Because of the age of the text, it’s available in the public domain, and the Internet Archive has a few editions to choose from. You can also listen to a free audiobook from Librivox here and here, and those are only a couple of the audio versions they have available.

Happy Halloween… and remember, don’t go out there and create your own worst nightmare!

Shelley, Mary W, and Marilyn Butler. Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness is a medical memoir that may have caught your eye on library shelves—an attractive young woman on the cover, an author’s name spelled in a way that patrons (and maybe even staff) would search for incorrectly—it’s Susannah Cahalan, not Callahan. You’ll see buzz about it again soon, because a movie based on the book is in post-production—starring Chloe Grace Moretz.

Brain on Fire is the compelling tale of a young professional who exhibits disturbing behavioral symptoms, which are easily misdiagnosed by medical professionals looking for horses instead of zebras. Their incorrect diagnoses lead to treatments that do more harm than good. Cahalan’s symptoms seem to suggest mental illness, which doctors are eager to label her with since she’s a young woman in a stressful profession. One doctor is sure she’s “partying too much.” But the truth is more complicated, because her brain and body are in battle with each other. She has a rare autoimmune disease, only recently discovered. It’s only because of Cahalan’s tenacity that she keeps searching for better treatment—and she knows that’s she’s lucky to have the skills to advocate for herself, and to be able to find a doctor current enough on research to be able to see the real problem. Not every person with the illness would be so fortunate. (This is where the reader gets scared, if they aren’t already frightened by the author’s symptoms which are reminiscent of Friedkin’s Exorcist.) Her family is a big part of her confidence, and her recovery, and she writes about them with compassion and honesty. Getting to the correct diagnosis is the first half of the journey—then the treatment and recovery are dramatic as well, and will keep you turning the pages.

Brain on Fire is different from other examples of the popular genre of medical memoir because it’s not written by a medical professional (where, suddenly, their field is humanized for them) or by a complete layperson (where the author is at first lost in jargon but comes to an understanding about their disease). Our author, Susannah Cahalan, is an up-and-coming investigative reporter at the New York Post at the beginning of the book, and she uses her journalistic skills both to research her illness and to describe her journey through her illness. Her disease takes away her ability to work, and her career is very important to her. This book is her way of showing her chops in her field—she wants to prove she’s ready to get back in the game of newspaper work. Writing the book is an act of redemption for Cahalan—a way to illustrate that she has her identity and ability back. Cahalan also co-wrote the movie screenplay with director Gerard Barrett (who’s helmed gritty Irish dramas Pilgrim Hill and Glassland). The author’s perspective on her illness and her life make this medical memoir cross over into a coming-of-age story—a young woman fighting to establish her place in the world, and in her own life, and even in her own body and mind.

I’d recommend Brain on Fire to medical memoir fans, and the New Adult/Mature YA reader. It is a surprisingly quick and attention-grabbing read for a heavy topic, so it’s a good plane read as well. You might think that since Cahalan was a reporter for the New York Post that the book would have a “Man Bites Dog” tone to the narrative—I was hesitant about the book for that reason at first, but I was pleasantly surprised by her enjoyable style. The tone is approachable and authentic, like an especially engrossing magazine article; but it’s still written with the authority of a piece that’s been thoroughly fact-checked. No one’s going to come back and tell you it was boring.

Cahalan, Susannah. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. New York: Free Press, 2012. Print.

Chigozie Obioma’s book, The Fishermen, is one of those novels that’s perfect for book groups or for individual reading, because you can feel through it, or think through it, or both. This compelling page-turner has characters that the reader will be emotionally invested in, but it’s also a novel that’s good for discussion for groups who want to take more time with the unpacking. It’s a good recommendation for the reader wanting a straightforward narrative, as well as the reader looking for symbolism, mythic undertones, and classic themes, all written with a fresh voice.

The story is set in 1990s Nigeria, and our narrator is Benjamin, one of four young brothers in a loving family. When their father’s job takes him to another city away from the family home, the brothers must navigate growing up and being young, with each other as role models. Their relationship with their mother is strong, and tender, but they want to grow up as much as they want her acceptance and affection. After a man in their town makes a prediction about their future, their love is tested—and there is a battle of wills, within and among the brothers, to see if the prophecy can be ignored.

Because the story is from a child’s point of view, you don’t need have any previous knowledge about Nigeria or the 1990s in order to enjoy the book. Some details of the story might inspire you to do more research, but all the reader needs to know is in the book. The author includes a few words of the vernacular languages, but the meanings of those words are clear from the context. The themes of the story would work whether the setting was Nigeria or Nebraska: how much we can love and despise our siblings, how mistakes made by the people we look up to can shake our security in the world, and how the sacrifices parents make for their children are often misunderstood by those children.

The Fishermen was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and received glowing reviews from the New York Times, here; and The Guardian, here; and from many other publications. The author is currently living in the United States and teaching at the University of Nebraska.

The Haunting of Hill House tells us the story of Eleanor and her visit to Hill House, where she has been invited to take part in the exploration of its possible haunting. Eleanor is in a bad place in a sad life as she travels to the house—she has been the caretaker for her recently deceased mother, and her remaining family is caught up with their own busy lives, and they don’t seem to care about her health or well-being. At Hill House, she meets colorful characters she never would have met otherwise. There is Dr. Montague, who wants to scientifically quantify any eerie occurrence they find, to finally connect science and the supernatural. There is Theodora, who is a free spirit who seems to have figured out a lot of things about life that continue to baffle Eleanor, but who still doesn’t have all the answers. And there’s Luke, who will inherit Hill House someday, and all the baggage the house represents—and symbolizes. The group of psychic adventurers has to work out their interpersonal dynamics with each other and with newcomers.

 
Jackson’s novel is a quick read of, as Dorothy Parker says in the blurb on the back, “beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders.” The text can be enjoyed as a breezy distraction, or there are plenty of plot points to reflect upon if the reader wishes. For example, Eleanor has been invited to the house by Dr. Montague because of a psychic experience as a child—what does it mean to have been a “special” child who grows up to be an adult that seems quite ordinary? How much can we rely on childhood memories and how do they affect us? How do we use memories to reconstruct traumatic family events?

This is one of those stories that will have you questioning what the characters believe—and will inspire you to think about what is really frightening in life. Ghosts? Loneliness? Bad architecture? Home ownership? Letting someone else do your thinking for you?

 
The Haunting of Hill House is a great example of the female gothic novel, where issues affecting women are explored through the themes of gothic literature. These themes include the influence of place, power dynamics, our struggle to reconcile logic with nature, and the reliability of memory, among other interesting issues.

 
This novel was adapted to make the 1963 movie The Haunting, which is enjoyably stylish but less nuanced than the novel. (The movie was remade in 1999 with an impressive cast and poor result.) Shirley Jackson is also the author of many other novels and stories, including “The Lottery,” which you may have had to read in school. If you already appreciate Shirley Jackson, you might enjoy this quiz: http://the-toast.net/2015/04/20/how-to-tell-if-you-are-in-a-shirley-jackson-story/