One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Márquez #NobelPrize

Goodness!

What a read. Or more accurately, a reread. I bought my Penguin edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude on the 3rd April 1996 in Sydney. At a guess, it must have been the Easter school holidays and I was visiting my sister, who lived in Coogee, for a few days. I cannot remember if I read it straight away, or waited until I went home. Either way, I have very little memory of reading this book, except that I found it challenging and often confusing. It was also funny and disturbing and completely different to anything I had ever read before. 

It was my very first magical realism and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.

The huge cast of characters confused me the most. I couldn't remember who was who, with so many of the six generations sharing exactly the same names. The family tree in the front of the book only added to my confusion.

Since 1996, I've read a lot more magic realism and many more books set in South America. I've learnt that I enjoy magic realism when it is firmly embedded in the real or natural world. Ghosts, in particular, are something I can accept in a story. For me, it's simply taking the idea of being haunted by a memory to the next level. 

Dreams are another element that can carry over into the real world. We've all had those dreams that blur the lines between waking and sleeping, conscious and subconscious. But it's the mixing of the ordinary with the extraordinary that I find really exciting in magic realism. It can become a way of describing something difficult or traumatic in a palatable way - turning our troubles into a fairytale or conflict into a something beautiful and strange. It can become a way of telling our story, especially the really tough stories, by turning them into a story, that makes it possible to get out of bed every day and face another day.

Magic realism can give us hope when despair is everywhere. It mythologises our daily lives and turns us into heroes and demons. It can make sense of the chaos and it can challenge the status quo.

One Hundred Years of Solitude does all of this and more, I simply didn't appreciate that the first time around.

I underlined and asterisked so many sections that it will be impossible to pull out a favourite, but the one the sums up the book the best is,

...always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude is not an easy read or a comfortable read. At times it's overwhelming and so dense that you feel like you're brain might explode. But it is also subversive, humorous and utterly beguiling. Now, more than ever, it's important to be reminded that the world is bigger and more diverse than our Western minds and Western beliefs often take into account. There are other ways of seeing and experiencing this world we all share.

Facts:

• In Spanish - Cien Años de Soledad - 1967
• Translation by Gregory Rabassa published in 1970
• Translated into 37 languages
• Márquez was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."
• The chapters are not numbered on purpose.
• Márquez was friends with Fidel Castro.
• “What actually strengthened our friendship were books. I discovered he was such a great reader that before publishing a book, I would send him the original. He could spot contradictions, anachronisms, and inconsistencies that even publishing professionals fail to notice. He is a very careful and voracious reader. The books he chooses to read reflect quite well the breadth of his tastes."
• Latin American Boom - 
• A common criticism of the Boom is that it is too experimental and has a "tendency toward elitism" - García Márquez who, in Benedetti's view, "represent a privileged class that had access to universal culture and were thus utterly unrepresentative of average people in Latin -America." Donald L. Shaw (1998), The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction.
• "It is no exaggeration to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the Cuban Revolution (although Cuba is not in South America) and its impact both on Latin America and the Third World generally, and secondly, the Boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971." Gerald Martin (2008), Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.

First sentence:

• Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
• What a first sentence! It tells us all the main things we need to know about this story - the passing of time, the acceptance of craziness and unexpected occurrences, the guarantee of death, pathos and memory, and the promise of an entire life from beginning to end.

Gabriel García Márquez:

• Born: 6th March 1927, Aracataca, Colombia.
• Died: 17th April 2014, Mexico City, Mexico.
• Moved to Paris in 1957 -
• “What was important to me in Paris was the perspective that the city gave me on Latin America. There, I never ceased being a Caribbean, but rather I became a Caribbean conscious of his culture.”
• In 1958 he married a friend from his uni days, Mercedes Barcha.
• Nickname - Gabo.
• "The most frightful, the most unusual things are told with the deadpan expression" - McMurray, George R. (1987), Critical Essays on Gabriel García Márquez
• “Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale..”
• "To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life." Gabriel Garcia Márquez (1982) Nobel Lecture: The Solitude of Latin America.
• "What matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it."
• “[Critics], in general, have a scripted right to pontificate, but they fail to realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is devoid of seriousness and full of nods to my most intimate friends, winks that these friends alone discover. Still, the critics claim responsibility of decoding the book, thereby covering themselves in ridicule.”
• "The world of One Hundred Years of Solitude is a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain." Michael Wood (1990) Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude. Cambridge University Press.
• "There is always something left to love."
• "If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already." Love in the Time of Cholera 

A huge thank you to Silvia and Ruth for hosting The One Hundred Years of Solitude readalong. It was the excuse I needed to tackle this rather unwieldy book again. I'm glad I did and now I'm ready for Love in the Tome of Cholera!

Flames by Robbie Arnott

It's a long weekend in Australia, and for the first time in over a year, we've enjoyed a lazy, nothing-to-do-but-flop-around-the-house kind of weekend. It has been blissful. Even with the ghastly high temps and even higher humidity, or maybe because of, it has been the perfect time for reading, snoozing and listening to music as we sporadically clean and tidy the house.

Typing up reviews has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Lots of changes (the good, positive, life-going-forward kind of changes, but changes nonetheless) are coming our way this year - starting next week when B18 goes away to Uni.

The teenage years are not easy for anyone to live through, which is maybe Nature's way of making it easy for both teens and their parents to let go. But as tough as the last few years have been (and there were times when I thought my sanity would not survive intact), I wouldn't now swap them for anything.

Which brings me to Flames by Robbie Arnott. Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

The Tasmanian environment is one of the prominent characters throughout this genre-defying story which Arnott uses to stress the interconnectedness between us all. Fire, water, trees and the gods play their parts too.

Flames has a fablesque quality and is mythological in tone with different writing styles to suit each characters story. Arnott plays around with magic realism, an epistolary chapter, report writing and the fabulous chapter with the female private eye that reads like a Tasmanian Philip Marlowe, just to name a few. It should have felt disjointed and all over the place, but just like a teen, it somehow made sense and seemed like just the right thing to do at that time.

Through his various characters, Arnott explores the wild, raw nature of grief, mourning and love. We watch them come to terms with letting go of what they thought they knew as they learn to embrace the unknowable future and whatever it might bring. No matter how far apart you may seem to be, you are still family, you are still connected, and it will ultimately keep you afloat, if you let it.

Arnott is a young Tasmanian copywriter. Flames has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, the Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction, and the Queensland Literary Awards: University of Queensland Fiction Book Award 2018.

Facts:

• Longlisted | 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
• Winner | Margaret Scott Prize | Tasmanian Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2019
• Longlisted | Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction 2019
• Shortlisted | UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing | NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award 2018
• Shortlisted | Kathleen Mitchell Award 2019
• Longlisted | ALS Gold Medal 2019
• Longlisted | Miles Franklin Literary Award 2019
• Longlisted | Voss Literary Prize 2019
• Shortlisted | Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize UK 2019

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

I've loved Japanese literature for many years now, but since visiting Japan earlier this year, my fascination and interest has exploded! Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto popped up on several lists as a great contemporary example of Japanese literature.

Kitchen is a slim book containing two stories - Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow - both deal with death, grief, mothering and healing. Kitchen is the longer of the two and I was enchanted from page one. The language is deceptively simple and at times I worried that it was too simple. I wasn't sure if this was a translation issue or part of Yoshimoto's urban grunge charm. Except that somehow, very quickly, with no fuss or bother, Mikage's tragic tale crept into my heart and stayed. 

Yoshimoto has created two beautiful, tender tale about loss and how to move forward from it. Her writing is suffused with innocence and warmth. Although her characters experience discontent and confusion, loneliness and urban angst, ultimately there is hope and love. 

In her Preface, Yoshimoto says,

Growth and the overcoming of obstacles are inscribed on a person's soul. If I have become any better at fighting my daily battles, be they violent or quiet, I know it is only thanks to my many friends and acquaintances.

Both these stories are testimony to this belief. Friendship acts as a band aid for heartbreak. Being connected and making room for others in your life is what gets you through the tough days. For Yoshimoto's characters, this connection often occurred around the rituals of food, eating and tea drinking.

A dream-like almost mystical element imbued her work as well. Both stories have a dash of magic realism or other-worldliness, that I found to be appealing in a very Japanese way. The emotion is subtle and subdued and the cast of characters quirky and eccentric in a 1980's version of Harajuku style. I suspect that this particular version of Japanese gender fluidity might meet with some raised eyebrows by current Western thinking, however it felt culturally and historically appropriate to my burgeoning knowledge of Japanese society.

Yoshimoto said that her two main themes are 'the exhaustion of young Japanese in contemporary Japan' and 'the way in which terrible experiences shape a person’s life'.

I'm not really sure that I spotted the exhaustion of which she speaks, but there was certainly an ennui and disconnect with the more traditional values of Japanese society.

I decided to not include any quotes in this post, because when I tried, they didn't work out of context.

If you enjoy minimalist, zen-like Japanese literature, then I think this will work for you. But if Murakami, Yoko Ogawa, Hiro Arikawa or Takashi Hiraide are not your thing, they stay away from the Kitchen!

In 1987 Yoshimoto won the 6th Kaien Newcomers' Literary Prize for Kitchen. In 1988 the novel was nominated for the Mishima Yukio Prize and in 1999 it received the 39th Recommendation by the Minister of Education for Best Newcomer Artist. In 1988 she also won the 16th Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature for the novella Moonlight Shadow, which is included in most editions of Kitchen.

First published in 1988 and translated into English by Megan Backus in 1993.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I like to think that I have taken my 'what to read whilst travelling' choices to an inspired level of brilliance, but I really outdid myself with our recent trip to Japan. Reading Murakami in Japan now feels like the ONLY place to read Murakami!

Not only does the usual Murakami weirdness make sense when you're actually in Japan, but you also realise just how important the environment is to Murakami and his characters. His descriptions of the trees, forests, waterways and urban spaces are everywhere as you move around the country. As are the crows.

In this case, the boy named crow is a mentor to our young protagonist, Kafka Tamura, perhaps an alter ego, a Japanese Jiminy Cricket. Whatever crow is or isn't, right from word one, Murakami is flagging that symbolism, mythology and psychology will be our prime concerns in Kafka on the Shore.

In Japanese mythology, crows are seen as a sign of 'divine intervention in human affairs' (wikipedia). Western mythology tends to associate the crow with bad news or as a harbinger of death. They're selfish, spread gossip and neglect their young. And they're everywhere in Japan. They sit on telegraph wires, fence posts and roof tops. You often wake up to their cawing, even in the city.

Cats are the other creatures that dominant not only Murakami stories, but many Japanese stories, yet curiously I didn't see one single cat in three weeks, let alone a talking cat! The opposite of the crow, cats are creatures of good luck, although still often associated with death and hauntings.

Silence, I discover is something you can actually hear.

There is no denying that Murakami is on very intimate terms with kooky.

If the talking cats weren't enough, a cameo appearance by Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders of KFC fame might tip you over the edge. A reference to the (fictional) Picnic at Hanging Rock as an example of another group loss of consciousness event caught my eye. Did Murakami know that it was an urban myth? Is that what he was implying about his own story? The sense of mystery and other-worldliness was certainly a shared atmosphere between the two stories.

I was also amazed by truck drivers who suddenly became classic music afficiandos, quiet librarians who turned out to be sex fiends and sex workers who quoted philosophers. What's not to love? The kookiness gets under my skin and into my head. Just like what happened to me with his previous books.

1Q84 is still roaming around in my head, Colourless Tsukuru less so, but it's still a memorable book experience.

Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside you. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time your stepping into the labyrinth inside. 

One of the really enjoyable aspects to reading Murakami in Japan is the place names. Suddenly they really mean something. Most of the action in Kafka takes place in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku. 

We didn't get to Shikiko with this visit, but we did see one of the huge bridges, from a distance, that joins Shikoko to Honshu and we spent some time at the station that is the interchange for the JR line that goes to Takamatsu. Seeing the name of the city featured in my book up in lights suddenly grounded this surreal story into reality.

This is only my fourth Murakami (see my Author Challenge tab for details) so I'm not sure I can safely name all his common themes and ideas, but there are a few that I've clocked. Going into the woods/fear of getting lost, weird sex, talking creatures, dreams, random jazz references, loneliness and silence. And for me, the reader, there is an over-riding sense of bewilderment (WTF was that about?) as well as an overwhelming sense of wanting more (whatever it was a think I like it!) 

I'm caught between one void and another. I have no idea what's right, what's wrong. I don't even know what I want anymore. I'm standing alone in the middle of a horrific sandstorm. I can't move, and can't even see my fingertips.

Murakami doesn't wrap his stories up with a neat, tidy bow or resolve many of the story lines. This should be totally frustrating...and it is, but somehow you love being kept in the dark and confused at the same time. Perhaps it's the likeable characters? Or perhaps it's the not so subtle way he plays with your head? Or perhaps it is the hope that the next book he writes will bring you one step closer to understanding this maddening man and his ability to suck you into his world. 

Every one of us is losing something precious to us....Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's how I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories.

Image source

Murakami likes to do the whole books in books thing. Kafka's backlist was an obvious start -The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony in this case. But he also referenced The Arabian Nights, the complete works of Natsume Soseki, a book about the trial of Adolf Eichmann (I can only assume it was Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem), Electra by Sophocles, The Tale of the Genji and 'The Chrysanthemum Pledge' in Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari.

So many tangents, so many connections, which one should I tackle next?

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree has been attracting my attention for several months now, however it took its recent longlisting for this year's Stella Prize to finally make me pick it up. I'm nothing but a Stella groupie!

The cover alone might have been enticement enough (a collage of three of Azar's art works), but the promise of a mystical, magical tour through the horrors of revolutionary Iran, 'using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling', was the final prompt I needed to make this my first book to read from this year's prize.

Magical realism can be a problem for many readers I know. I'm happy to embrace some forms of magic realism more than others. I especially like those that draw fairy tales, fables and myths into our modern real-world setting. (FYI: I'm not so keen on the type of magic realism that brings in a lot of deliberately disorientating layers and details. I like my magical realism to still make sense somehow!)

Azar's use of magic realism did that and more. It's quite a skill to weave a story that allows your somewhat sceptical reader to accept the existence of ghosts, jinns and mermaids. But Azar did it for me - I was with her from the start, on that level at least.

However, it did take me a while to get going. It may have been a translation thing or it may have been a slightly different approach to sentence structure. Many of the books I gravitate towards lately are ones with concise, short sentences. So maybe it was simply my lack of practice in reading longer, flowing, complex sentences. Whatever it was, I found the start of The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree choppy and erratic.

It wasn't until the special circumstances of our narrator were revealed at the beginning of chapter 5 that I was hooked. Suddenly the 'playful, poetic and deeply melancholy' Alice Pung quote on the back cover came to life.

I dropped into a dreamy, almost trance-like state every time I picked up the book. Jinns and groves of trees haunted my own dreams as fleeting childhood memories of news items about the 1979 Revolution were triggered by events in the story. It was angry, it was heart-rending, it was glorious, mesmerising and confronting.

Azar has given us a classic story of good and evil. Her words are fluid as is her approach to time and truth. Belonging, love and loss are the major themes while the search for solace is the main concern for her characters. Given the horrific events that occurred during the Iranian Revolution, it is easy to understand why and how an author would choose to wrap these unreal events up in mythology. When the real world you live in suddenly gets turned on it's head, sometimes the only response is imagination and the only hope is magic.

I, for one, hope with all my heart, that this story gets shortlisted for the Stella - it deserves to get as much attention as possible.

Translated from Farsi by Adrien Kijek#AustWomenWriters
#Stella2018

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid has divided many readers and reviewers. (For an interesting cross section of responses try My Booking Great Read, Michael @Knowledge Lost, Rachel @Pace Amore, Libri, and Kate @Books are my Favourite and Best).

I was therefore prepared for the pared back, deceptively simple writing style that has kept many reviewers at an emotional distance.

Curiously I embraced it - I never felt distanced or detached at all. Every word and phrase popped with restrained emotion and hidden depths.

I am not an effusive, flowery kind of person.
I consider myself to be discreet and reticent in person. But I'm often a seething, swirling mess of contradictory feelings underneath.

Nadia and Saeed felt like versions of me. Cautious, quiet, thoughtful, understated, but with a lot going on inside.

Hamid's writing style suited my temperament to a tee.

Exit West also came into my life at the right time.

I began reading Exit West immediately after I finished the wonderful award winning The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose and straight after seeing the ABC's Book Club episode that featured the book.

Generally speaking, if Marieke Hardy likes a book, I do too (one obvious exception being her love affair with Amis which I simply do not share). It felt like the book gods (or at least Marieke) were telling me that this book had to be next. I was ready and receptive and the book was on hand.

The Museum of Modern Love contained themes of silence, connection, time, loss and love.
So did Exit West.

As I began reading, it felt in a weird way that is hard to adequately explain, that the love and connection I had for the language, art & ideas in Rose's book flowed straight into what I was experiencing in Exit West.
So much so that Hamid's startling (but sparing) use of magic realism ended up being an added bonus for me, not a distraction or in the least off-putting.

From the rather terrifying appearance of the very first door, I was intrigued...and hooked.

In an interview with Cressida Leyshon in The New Yorker last year, Hamid discussed the use of the magical doors that transported refugees from a place of danger to a place of greater safety in an instant.

I don’t entirely believe in the reality of realism. Lived human experience is too weird. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains are constantly constructing a representation of the world that is useful but is also inaccurate, invented. Mystics tell us much the same. I’ve always had an element of the unreal in my books. A little bit of the unreal can heighten our sense of reality by allowing us to experience something that knows it is a fiction but feels at the same time true. In the past, the strand of unreality I’ve explored has mostly been a formal strand, one rooted in the form a novel takes, the way it sets up the story it is telling. This time, the strand of unreality is in the plot, in the physics of the world, with the existence of these doors. The doors felt quite real to me when I was writing them. I could imagine them existing. And they allowed me to compress the next century or two of human migration on our planet into the space of a single year, and to explore what might happen after. 

Once I got over the unexpected shock of the first door, I liked this device a lot. It took the journey out of the story and made it instead, a story about the gradual disintegration into chaos and war of a once civilised society. And a story about adjusting to a new place - a new place that may not be exactly welcoming.

The new refuges also became Hamid's point of hope for the reader.
In some near distant future these purpose built cities could give us all a way out of our current world-wide refugee crisis (Hamid discusses this further in The New Yorker article linked above).

A colleague felt that the end left too many things unsaid or unexplored in Nadia and Saeed's relationship, the two young lovers at the heart of this story. I've been trying to work out why this didn't concern me and I think it was simply because the ending felt real to me. It wasn't resolved or tied up in a neat bow. I appreciated the layers, the nuance and the messiness of their love. None of the changes or choices that Saeed or Nadia made surprised me - they felt consistent with my perception of them.

Another link between Exit West and The Museum of Modern Love was the occasional reference to art and artists. In this instant, Saeed and Nadia are discussing and sharing images by the photographer, Thierry Cohen.

Nadia thought about this. They were achingly beautiful, these ghostly cities - New York, Rio, Shanghai, Paris - under their stains of stars, images as though from an epoch before electricity, but with the buildings of today. Whether they looked like the past, or the present, or the future, she couldn't decide.

French photographer, Thierry Cohen, Darkened Cities series - Shanghai

The past, the present and the future all played their part in this beautiful story which has become one of my favourite reads for 2017 (and a potential reread as soon as possible).

N.B. One of the other panellist's on The Book Club, Omar Musa, also thought very highly of the book, but his praise was qualified as he felt that Hamid's previous works were stronger and better. Needless to say, I'm now on the lookout for a copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Moth Smoke.

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

I haven't read a lot of teen/YA fiction lately - it has been boring me to tears to be perfectly honest.
Which is difficult, when it's my job to read children's book!

Thank goodness then, for Meg Wolitzer and Belzhar.

I was reluctantly, then wholeheartedly, drawn into this sad world of teens with 'issues' and their special school, The Wooden Barn.

Wolitzer's writing was enchanting; her characters were believable and before I knew it, I was sucked into this strange world of inspired teaching, mysterious journals & teen angst.

Belzhar was also a story about the power of words - "great writing (does) make a difference" - and the healing power of story in helping us through life.

The trick being, of course, to know when it's a story we're telling ourselves "because the truth was unbearable."

Wolitzer referred to the stories & poetry of Sylvia Plath throughout this book, as well as creating her title in homage to The Bell Jar, which has only made me more determined to read it!

Belzhar is an October release for Simon & Schuster Australia.
Highly recommended for teens, YA and adults wanting an easy but compelling read.

Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Ninth Ward was published two years ago, but has just been released in Australia.

Jewell Parker Rhodes has written a number of adult novels, but this is her first foray into junior fiction. She has picked a doozy of a topic - Hurricane Katrina.

Lanesha is a twelve year old girl living with her Mama Ya-Ya in New Orleans. Rhodes captures the time and place beautifully, weaving a story of magical realism and survival even as Katrina does her worst.

The images from the aftermath of Katrina were horrific and Rhodes has done a superb job to get inside those images and make them accessible for young readers. She describes the horror and fear, but also the hope, determination and will to survive that inspire us all.





I couldn't put this book down. I devoured it in one sitting. It's not often that a book so obviously trying to do something worthy is also so readable.

I admit that the cover is not very inviting and I wish they had gone with the cover on the right that I found on google, but the slightly dowdy cover hides a wonderfully rich story that I recommend for mature 10+ readers.