Hunter S. Thompson- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Fear and Loathing on the Campagin Trail '72

Simon & Sschuster

Hunter S. Thompson

1973

"A week earlier I'd been locked into the idea that the Redskins would win easily — but when Nixon came out for them and George Allen began televising his prayer meetings I decided that any team with both God and Nixon on their side was fucked from the start."

In hindsight, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 was probably the wrong book for me to choose to read. Like many, many others, my first exposure to Hunter S. Thompson was through Terry Gilliam's strange film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and not longer after that I read and massively enjoyed the source material. That book remains Hunter's most famous work, existing as the prime example of gonzo journalism in action and remaining up there with Thompson's spiritual predecessor William Burrough's Naked Lunch as one of the most popular examples of drug literature an excitable and easily-influenced student can buy. Curiously though, none of Thompson's other work has gotten anywhere near as close to infiltrating the shared consciousness of the wider reading public, and so in that respect Thompson stands out as somewhat of an enigma, yet to be fully explored. When I came across a copy of what's arguably the author's second most famous work (and one that relies on the title of the first to catch a browser's initial attention more than it does its own subject) I couldn't resist picking it up, despite a nagging feeling that the subject matter would alienate me rather quickly.

Initially serialised in the magazine that Hunter will be forever related to, Rolling Stone, this book is essentially a hard mix of Thompson's self-defined gonzo journalism and serious, legitimate political journalism, as the author dedicates himself to covering the race for the presidency between eternal rivals the democrats and republicans across the year of 1972. Now, straight away there was a conflict for me between the subject matter and the literary style that, had I not been so amused by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, could have pushed me away from this book entirely. It's not that I'm completely against trying to read about politics (I even took a module on US government and politics during my late teenage years, albeit rather unsuccessfully), but reading about US politics including its transitory figures and minutia of forty years ago was something this reader was always going to struggle with. I was hoping for the pure gonzo to shine.

The result is somewhere in between; though Thompson begins his coverage with a level-headed approach, sticking to his established, entertaining style to portray the varied characters making the initial moves in the national election race. To me particularly, they were all characters, most of whom I'd never heard of before. Even Richard Nixon, political superstar was someone who I mostly looked at as the President of Earth as a head in a jar. As a result of my own uninformed perspective I lost a lot of the context and with it some of the humour. As Fear and Lo odyssey of Hunter S./Raoul Duke as a twisted, mythical adventure through the overworld, the writing style in this book presented to me a similar kind of effect; real political figures become literary caricatures under Thompson's gaze and collaborative illustrator Ralph Steadman's pen.

As the story continues further and further into the campaign, Thompson seems to become more and more exasperated by his attempts to somehow make sense of the bizarre world around him, and his grasp of coherency suffered in my eyes. It became harder and harder for me to track what was going on, and my interest in the book wained. As I said at the beginning, this was probably the wrong book for me to read, because it became near impossible for me to keep up with. Thompson focuses strongly not only on the campaign, but mainstream US media's coverage and presentation of it. This in itself is interesting, but again the line between fantasy and reality is further blurred as these mainstream presentations almost completely overwhelm any semblance of actual truth, and the whole thing becomes a kind of mutated public relations monster, controlled by nobody but prodded from all angles. Considering the cocktail of drugs Hunter was likely on at the time, it's somewhat of a surprise that he had the mental fortitude to finish the project.

Ultimately, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 will, to a certain extent, live and die with the reader based on his or her prior knowledge of the people and places involved, or at least their willingness to try and work it out. I lack the patience or professionalism to make such an effort, and as a result found this book a mish-mash of satirical adventures that kind of exhausted me on the subject. Thompson's writing is as good here as it is anywhere else, and I don't want to try and downplay any of his efforts, as he delivered a historically relevant journal of an important time in the only way he could, but its intensity just didn't capture me. 

Terry Pratchett's Discworld 01- The Colour of Magic

Weighing in at a very hefty thirty-nine books and counting there's an admittedly decent chance that I might never finish this attempt to go through now-legendary comic fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, an ongoing collection of books that I fell for back in my early-to-middling teen years and have treasured ever since. It'd be fair to call this little vanity project of mine naivly quixotic, but there's a lot to write about and perhaps sheer stubbornness will get me through it. Also, Pratchett's richly imagined and often brilliant fantasy world has covered far more satirical ground than even the author could have ever initially imagined, and, more importantly, caused a serious stunt in my own social development as I was too busy reading the damn things to actually go out and meet people.

The Colour of Magic

Corgi

Terry Pratchett

1983

Other Terry Pratchett Reviews- The Colour of Magic - The Light Fantastic - Equal Rites - Mort - Sourcery - Wyrd Sisters - Pyramids - Guards! Guards! - Eric - Moving Pictures - Reaper Man - Witches Abroad - Small Gods - Lords and Ladies - Men At Arms - Soul Music - Interesting Times - Maskerade - Feet of Clay - Hogfather - Raising Steam - A Blink of the Screen - Sky1 Adaptations- Dodger - The Long Earth (w Stephen Baxter)

 "It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows."

Okay, first of all, to clarify; The Discworld is a large, flat world that rests on the shoulders of four gigantic elephants that themselves stand balanced on the humongous shell of a galactic space turtle, a turtle that swims through the vastness of space for reasons of its own. The major plot device, the explanation for this and for every strange, yet somehow satirically familiar oddity that Pratchett introduces here and in every other Discworld book is simply magic. The Disc is completely made up of magic, and so anything that people think can exist, does exist, and so the author can both invent whatever he wants and use any already established fantasy cliche he likes. The Colour of Magic is full of fantasy cliche's carefully plucked from their sources, turned upside down and shaken violently until fit for new purpose. Pratchett's respect for the original genre he infiltrates is clear and apparent in his fantastic imagination and the sheer scope of the ideas and landscapes he creates, whether humourous or not, and it's that which establishes this book as something distinguished and special rather than a simple parody of genre that's easy to make fun of.

The plot begins with the tale of the Disc's first ever tourist, a simple, innocent man named Twoflower hailing from the mysterious Agatean Empire (or as the reader recognizes it; China) arrives in the city of Ankh-Morpork (kind of a fantasy medieval London, soon to be the setting for many future Discworld books) and hires the infamous wizard named Rincewind as a tour guide. Infamous, by the way, because he can' do any magic and is an abject coward. General hi-jinks and excitement about the sheer amount of coinage Twoflower posses ensues, and the two lead characters quickly high-tail it out of the city on a Tolkien-esque odyssey around much of the Disc. It's a chaotic roller-coaster of a journey that jumps from one idea and setting to the next rather quickly, as the then-young author excitedly shows the reader as much as he can of his imaginative new world. Since the overlying main plot is almost entirety revealed in this book's sequel (The Light Fantastic) the majority of The Colour of Magic is disjointed, somewhat episodic fare.

The characters are great fun, generally built on the foundations of many a British sit-com creation by being far from heroic, wise or virtuous. Rincewind especially is cowardly, cynical and dishonest, but all of these traits are a survival tactic in a world he recognizes as insane. Still, despite the author's wonderful imagination the prose is obviously raw, written by an author trying to define his style, and who hasn't yet gained the skill of creating a more well-rounded tale from beginning to end.Furthermore, there's an abundance of action and pace that's sometime negative to the structure and character development, and with all of the rushing around there isn't enough focus on the hinted-at cataclysmic world-ending main plot, as Pratchett saves too much for his follow-up and gives an inconclusive cliff-hanger ending that seems rather sudden.

Ultimately, while The Colour of Magic represents a work in progress in regards to how Pratchett would later come to define his satirical style and widen his targets from fantasy and adventure cliches to practically everything the human race has to offer, it remains a favourite of mine thanks to the power and impact of its imaginative thrust, as Pratchett veers wildly from one idea to the next, never sticking to one for too long so it wears out its welcome, but instead rushing off to another. As a result he leaves behind fragments of an unexplored world with endless possibilities, taking the best from the genre that he satirizes by pushing the reader's imagination into overdrive regarding what might have been and what might be to come. Thankfully there's still quite a lot to come.

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Naomi Klein- No Logo

No Logo

Naomi Klein

1999

"The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products." 

It was none other than comic book superstar author Grant Morrison who convinced me to read this book. Not personally, of course, but in his recent history of comic books/autobiography Supergods (to be reviewed here at some point), Morrison pointed to this vastly popular, now twelve-years-old negative dissection of the corporate culture of big brands as the definitive tome on the subject, and if the author of Final Crisis said so then who am I to argue? Morrison's not the only famous figure to have proclaimed No Logo as important reading; most notably career campaigners Radiohead recommended it to fans. It's not surprising, considering that, in the most simplistic fashion, 'billion dollar corporations are bad' isn't a hard statement to sell to the new new-age hippies of the twenty-first century, to whom buzzwords like globalisation immediately summon pessimistic connotations. This book has an immediate appeal, but is it any good?

First of all, I must confess that I'm not a politician. In fact, you might accuse me of barely being aware of anything that exists outside of the bubbles that are my personal life and entertainment culture, and so I headed into this book with a mixture of naivety and a vague cynicism regarding the notion of someone else trying to sway my opinion on a topic I know perilously little about. Some time later, when I was finished, I exited No Logo with... well, not a huge amount regarding actual personal feeling. The vague concepts surrounding extreme commercialism and massively huge brands were solidified somewhat with some genuinely interesting facts, figures, and human interest stories, but an actual sense of activism was almost completely lost on me, since No Logo does rather firmly establish, if unintentionally, that for the average person any acts of rebellion against these giants is like throwing rocks at the moon.

Naomi Klein writes with a personal, friendly tone that allows her to successfully mix up potentially dull facts and figures with heartfelt stories of victimized consumers and abused sweatshop workers that directly humanize the negative impact that the methods used by corporate giants to gain such huge lumps of cash and expand their territory. From her home country of Canada to the sweatshop factories of China, Klein finds people to talk to and subjects to talk about. There's so many contentious issues to highlight that she has plenty to write about, and does, but to varying levels of interest from this reader. In many ways it reminded me of Richard Dawkins' book on evolution The Greatest Show On Earth in that it's so completely dedicated to covering a massive topic that it doesn't really care about appealing to the casual reader in regards to homogenizing or downplaying elements that simply don't make for an interesting read. That's certainly admirable, but does ensure that some segments of this book are a drag.

Perhaps much of No Logo's success is that it manages to achieve its goal of 'taking aim' at its targets and throwing some explosive ammunition without seeming like a single-minded vendetta designed to appeal to a majority. Klein is a personable author who strikes this fine balance between propaganda and the rabbiting of fact through careful presentation, but I found it very hard to get exited or worked up about anything in this book, and towards the end found my inclination to read more to become less and less. Perhaps that's because I'm not quite the target audience and I was reading in the hope of being more impressed by the writing than its subject. Or perhaps, in the decade since original publication this post-9/11 world has inundated the media-absorbing public with other worrying topics that have taken the attention away from this subject. Either way, No Logo left me with some thoughtfulness and some respect for the presentational abilities of Naomi Klein, but sadly little else.

Michael Crichton- Pirate Latitudes

Pirate Latitudes

Harpercollins

Michael Crichton
2009

Back in around 1994, at the age of 8-years-old, Michael Crichton introduced me prematurely to the world of grown-up people's fiction with his magnum opus, Jurassic Park. Being an impressionable young lad with a passion for all things dinosaur, I loved it immensely, and proceeded to re-read it at least once a year for about ten years. In the meantime, I gravitated towards many of his other novels, and while I didn't enjoy any of them as much as I did Jurassic Park, that's not to say that I didn't get enjoyment out of them. Books like Congo, Sphere, The Lost World and Timeline were great adventure stories wrapped around a frame of pseudo-science, eventually made into sub-standard movies. Unfortunately at some point, I feel, Crichton lost his spark a little, and his more recent novels such as Prey, State of Fear and Next were all lacking in ingenuity and  character for me. Then, in 2008, Michael Crichton suddenly died. The man who played a major part in my personal literary development was no more.

One year later, Pirate Latitudes was published, having been discovered on Crichton's hard drive, fully formed. Apparently he'd been working on the book for around thirty years, but clearly was never happy enough with it to publish it. Posthumously he didn't have a choice. Pirate Latitudes, as the title suggests, is a book about pirates (yargh!), set around the Caribbean in the 17th Century. Unlike most of Crichton's work, this isn't a sci-fi parable regarding the misuse of technology, it's purely an adventure story, about a motley group of pirates led by a fearless captain out to do some piracy on the hated Spanish navy. To be honest, it's not a complicated plot, relying more on character presentation and scenes of action and adventure more than anything else. Captain Charles Hunter is Crichton's lead protagonist, and, even though he sticks to many pirate stereotypes, he's a typical Crichton lead in that he's brave, intelligent, and ultimately takes the moral high ground. The other characters are all cliche variations on typical pirate motifs.

Ultimately while I hesitate to condemn Pirate Latitudes as bad, unfortunately there's not really much to endorse, specifically nothing that helps the novel stand out amongst the deluge of new and old adventure fiction available. It's certainly better than the shit that Clive Cussler produces, and it has its moments of excitement and amusements, but it's lacking the incisive sharpness and general masterly feeling of control that Crichton's best quality works contain. At his best the man was a master of the thriller genre, combining a solid presentation of interesting science (not being a science-minded person I can't tell you if it was at all realistic, but it did seem authentic in context) with solid, gritty characters and some great plot twists. Pirate Latitudes doesn't live up to his standards, which is undoubtedly why he didn't send it for publishing while he lived. Readers who enjoyed Crichton's previous work and read all of his best should consider this, but anyone looking to try it for the first time would be well advised to pick an earlier effort.

Ray Bradbury- The Illustrated Man

The Illustrated Man

Doubleday

Ray Bradbury
1951

"If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed with all his sulphurous color, elongation, and anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man's body for his art. The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. Here, gathered on one wall, were all the finest scenes in the universe, the man was a walking treasure gallery. This wasn't the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whiskey on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius, vibrant, clear, and beautiful." 

My first exposure to the work of the highly prolific and well-respected sci-fi author Ray Bradbury went rather smoothly with this, an anthology of previously published thematically-linked short stories given a new framework to link them together. I'm not a fan of sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi, but I do appreciate how the unlimited scope and opportunity for imagination can be used by talented authors to enhance their philosophies beyond that of normal drama, and also how perhaps less naturally talented writers can still make an impact and write an interesting story through a striking imagination. After reading this book, I'd initially place Bradbury in the middle of this; perhaps lower on the totem than the likes of Arthur C. Clarke or William Gibson, but talented enough to strike a chord with the reader through coming up with stories with a greater meaning than they initially present.

The framework involves the story of the eponymous illustrated man and a narrator who meets him; a tattooed vagrant whose magical body art twists and turns to show a multitude of animated stories. It's not particularly important, but does help a little to link these stories as warning prophecies of the future. The book comprises of eighteen short stories of varying quality and imagination. A few of them, such as 'The Veldt' (a 'smart' house with a holographic nursery that gets stuck on an unsettling scene), 'Marionettes, Inc.' (a man tries to use a life-like animatronic doll of himself to escape his wife's obsessive nature) and Usher II (in an Orwellian book-burning future, a man escapes to Mars to build a real version of Poe's House of Usher, using it to kill those who come after him) are conceptually brilliant, and Bradbury's decent prose is enough to bring them to life and imprint them on the reader's memory. Others, though, are bland and a little repetitive, focusing on similar themes and ideas that left no memorable imprint for me.

While I believe that this collection would be better if trimmed of the excess fat, overall the themes are similar and strong enough to justify the concept, and Bradbury's straightforward and consist ant style of prose contributes to an impressive feeling of often downbeat, sinister parable-telling, with a hint of foreshadowing towards a self-brought end to humanity. But, while it's a little silly to complain about a short-story collection featuring too much content, the concept is watered down through the weaker offerings and prevents The Illustrated Man, in my mind, from being a true genre classic; though I'll definitely get back to Bradbury at some point.

Dashiell Hammett- The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon

Alfred A. Knopf

Dashiel Hammett
1930

"Cairo, speaking with difficulty because of the fingers on his throat, said: "This is the second time you've put your hands on me." His eyes, though the throttling pressure on his throat made them bulge, were cold and menacing.
 

"Yes," Spade growled. "And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it."."
 

My experience with classic crime noir literature is fairly limited; prior to reading this only to a selection of Raymond Chandler novels and Roger Simon's The Big Fix. I've read/watched a far greater number of parodies of the genre than I have the genre itself, which is somewhat silly considering the whole style is massively appealing to me. After watching and greatly enjoying the 1941 Bogart film, I happened to randomly find a copy of this book in an Oxfam charity bookshop (a place that has become my spiritual home recently) and had to pick it up. It was short, absorbing, and massively entertaining read and I'm very glad I did.

The phrase 'hard-boiled dialogue' is perhaps somewhat cliche, but Dashiel Hammett's quite brilliantly striking back and forth dialogue between his fantastic protagonist Sam Spade and the unfortunate characters who have to deal with him is surely the phrase's defining representation. Hammett crafts an intriguing tale of mystery, as private dick Spade is suddenly caught up in the middle of the proverbial storm; his partner shot dead, shady criminals and police trying to both bargain and threaten him, and an untrustworthy femme fatale of the highest caliber trying to use him to her advantage. It's fantastic stuff, genre fiction at its very best crafted and presented at a break-neck pace.

The Maltese Falcon is likely to appeal to anyone who's enjoyed any classic film noir, anyone who appreciates and enjoys incredibly sharp and witty dialogue, and anyone who isn't interested in a happily-ever-after ending. It's certainly a cynical novel, with a downbeat tone towards humanity in general, but this is offset by the sheer magnetism of Sam Spade and a healthy dose of intrigue and drama. It doesn't pretend to be high-literature, but revels in its own dirty pulp styling, and is all the better for it.

Douglas Adams with Mark Carwardine- Last Chance To See

Last Chance To See

Pan Books

Douglas Adams with Mark Carwardine
1990
  

'For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon—even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, and then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches.'

Douglas Adams is most commonly known as the comedic genius behind the beloved Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (and the less-beloved Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency series) who sadly passed away prematurely all the way back in 2001. This book is one of his lesser-known ventures, but it's certainly the most serious of all his written work and, to me, the most poignant as well. In Last Chance To See (which accompanied a BBC radio series of the same name) Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine travel the globe in a quest to find and observe several of the planet's most endangered species, as well as the efforts of those trying to prevent their complete annihilation. The pair travel from Indonesia to Brazil to look for the Aye-Aye, the Komodo Dragon and the Northern White Rhinoceros amongst others, as Adams puts to paper these experiences with his typical mix of dry humour and fantastic depictions of the odd range of people and creatures they meet on the way.

Often funny, sometimes sad, this book is certainly a triumph in presenting an uncensored look at some depressing statistics and circumstances regarding the vast rate of wildlife extinction occurring on this planet due to direct human influence. It's partly a travel book too, with Adams offering some of the funniest passages when describing his experiences with the people he encountered around the globe, as well as some more serious musings on the state of the former state of Zaire- now the Democratic Republic of Congo- a place I am determined never to visit under any circumstances.

While this book is too short and reliant on humour to be considered as any kind of zoologist textbook on the subject of animal extinction, Adams' talent as a writer ensures that it should stick in the mind of casual readers of the subject (like myself) and transfer a few facts along with a meaningful tone, hopefully raising some awareness- though for two of the species explored in this book (the Northern White Rhino and Yangtze River Dolphin) it's too late for that.

George R.R. Martin- A Song of Ice and Fire- A Game of Thrones

A Song of Ice and Fire- A Game of Thrones

Harper Voyager

George R. R. Martin
1996

Game of Thrones - A Clash of Kings - A Storm of Swords: Book One: Steel and Snow -  A Storm of Swords: Book Two: Blood and Gold - A Feast for Crows

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."

Like many, many other people, I made the decision to read the first part of George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy (is there any other kind of fantasy?) series thanks to the fantastic television adaptation Game of Thrones. I'm not usually a fan of serious fantasy literature, so without the show it's unlikely I would've considered reading this book. Upon finishing it I must conclude that, again, without the TV show I probably wouldn't have finished it, either. That's not really a complaint, though, just a personal confirmation that I could have quickly lost interest in this book had I not already been guided through the plot, and I'm glad I had that mental assistance because it was ultimately worth it.

Martin is far from a prose stylist, and as a result I found it took some time and plot development for the characters to appeal to me. While Martins does his best to constantly present the viewpoints of a wide array of different types of people, their similarity did initially seem off-putting at first, but after time it does seem to come together to provide a coherant tone for this universe, and the author's efforts do eventually pay off. This is certainly a character-driven book (translate well on to the screen), and it's through caring for, or being intruiged by some, if not all of them, that the plot is driven forward with force. The more I read, the quicker my reading pace became, helped by Martin's straight-forward language and quality dialogue.

I can see why so many people have so quickly began to enjoy this series, although I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get through. I have the next book, A Clash of Kings, sitting on my to-read pile, and I should get around to reading it before Game of Thrones- Series 2 begins in April, although it's also tempting to watch the show first. Whichever happens, I'm pretty sure I'll read every book eventually, having been drawn in to this fantasy world by an author with a strong imagination and the impressive ability to open up the niche world of serial epic fantasy fiction to the widest audience since Lord of the Rings.

Haruki Murakami- 1Q84 Books One and Two

1Q84- Books One and Two

Vintage

Haruki Murakami

2009 (Japanese)/ 2011 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

'Autumn quietly deepened… Aomame tried her best to keep her mind clear of any thoughts, but it was impossible not to think of anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very least, thought, she felt that now there was nothing for her to hate. There was no need to hate her classmates and teacher anymore. Aomame was no longer a a helpless child, and no one was forcing her to practice a religion now. There was no need to hate the men who beat up women. The anger she had felt before, like a high tide rising up within her–the overwrought emotions that sometimes made her want to smack her fists against the closest wall… She wasn’t sure why, but those feelings were entirely one.'

It was not without a great deal of excitement that I began reading this book, and I certainly wasn't the only one. Such is the popularity of the once-obscure translated Japanese author's work that bookstores in the UK were reported as opening at midnight for the release of this, the first two volumes of 1Q84, elevating Murakami to the appearance level of a Harry Potter novel; somewhat bizarre on the surface when you consider the strange nature of the stories woven by an author described as a modern-day Kafka.

1Q84 is Murakami's first 'epic' length Odyssey of crafted characterization and surrealism since 2002's amazing Kafka on the Shore, and like that book contains two main protagonists, Tengo and Aomame, living initially separate stories that begin to entwine with greater and greater detail as the book progresses. Tengo is an aspiring author who is enlisted by a publishing friend to ghost re-write a powerful and mysterious (Murakami-esque, in fact) surreal fantasy novella by a 17-year-old school girl, only to find himself becoming entwined within her own strange personal history. Aomame, meanwhile lives a dual life as a personal trainer and as a hired killer with specific targets. One day she gets out of a taxi on a crowded Tokyo expressway and climbs down an emergency escape staircase, advised by the taxi-driver that doing so might change the very nature of reality itself.

As the story continues it throws up new twists and turns at a quick pace, as Aomame and Tengo discovers the differences of the parallel world of 1Q84 that Aomame stepped into, including a religious cult, it's mysterious leader, and the even more mysterious but entirely sinister 'Little People'. It's a thoroughly absorbing and exiting trip through a world of uncertainty and underlying themes that, with Murakami's usual smooth effortlessness, become overlying plot points and events without skipping a beat. This isn't a tightly-constructed mystery, instead reveling in its tangents and unexplored questions while at the same time hurtling towards certain inevitable confrontations. Despite his relatively new found worldwide fame, Murakami pulls no punches, makes nothing simpler for his readers, and this book is all the better for it.

While the Japanese readers had to wait a year for the unexpected third installment of 1Q84, the English was published very shortly after, and although I almost can't wait to get to book three, this first installment of two parts reads well enough as a stand-alone story, leaving plenty of both solid and vague philosophical questions for the reader to think about, if you're partial to that sort of thing. This might be Murakami's magnum opus, which is no small feat. Simply phenomenal literature from the best author of the millennium so far.

Paul Auster- Invisible

Invisible

Faber & Faber

Paul Auster

2009

Other Paul Auster Reviews- The Invention of Solitude - The Country of Last Things - Moon Palace - Mr. Vertigo - Timbuktu - The Book of Illusions - Oracle Night - Invisible

"Fear is what drives us to take risks and extend ourselves beyond our normal limits, and any writer who feels he is standing on safe ground is unlikely to produce anything of value."

Paul Auster made a name for himself with the trifecta of novellas that comprised The New York Trilogy (1985-1986), where he combined a modern day take on crime fiction with a masterfully weaved post-modern surrealism, giving literary students things to pointlessly argue about for years to come. In the decade and a half since then, he firmly established himself as one of the world's premier fiction writers, releasing an unbroken chain of quality work, each varying in their usage of the strange but managing to retain an essence of the surreal through carefully constructed prose and the author's willingness to experiment with both conventional storytelling and form itself. Invisible is a tour-de-force of character-based storytelling, with Auster again playing with the modern novel in superb style.

It tells the story of a man who's life is permanently changed after one violent incident in the company of another, and how his life changes as a result. To attempt to summarize the plot here would probably result in failure, so I'll resist the urge to divulge the details of this human drama, other than to say that it's gripping stuff, thanks to the intriguing, fleshed out portrayals of humanity living on the page. It's all presented within the framework of a novel within a novel, as it is revealed early on that what we're reading is an autobiographical 'manuscript' of one year in a life, sent by the protagonist character to another author for perusal. As such, each main segment of the book is framed within the development of this context as well as the main events. Furthermore, Auster changes the perspective of the narrator with each segment; from first to second person, and more. It's an interesting, daring choice that serves to distance the text from a definitive truth, to a more ambiguous, uncertain retelling that flows within the context of the often strange events being told.

Invisible is a hard novel to define, as I'm discovering right now, but it is a fantastic read, and one that remains easy to follow and constantly enjoyable despite its experimental style. I recommend it to anyone as an engaging human drama containing enigmatic figures who help the author explore varying issues of identity and retribution with the former permeating not just the plot, but the style of prose itself.