Conspicuous Consumption

 I’m pretty sure this is the first novel I’ve read by an “internet sensation.” The author, who writes under the pseudonym Uketsu and appears on his YouTube channel wearing a mask and using a voice modulator, writes novels that are at the same time puzzle mysteries and horror, and employ visual aids—strange pictures—as important pieces of the puzzle. In Jim Rion’s translation, the prose in Strange Pictures is simple, making for a quick and easy read. I’m guessing the target is young people, less sophisticated readers who enjoy the dark and mysterious. And this is quick, simple, and enjoyable, but also very dark. Indeed, almost no characters who could be called good even in the simplest way appear until toward the book’s end. They’re not missed. It’s a fun diversion.

Every time I think I’m done with contemporary American literary fiction, especially of the divorce in the suburbs type, I stumble upon work in that tired category that convinces me it can still be worth one’s precious reading time. Edith Pearlman is definitely an author whose work is worth one’s time. I guess one reason I enjoyed her stories is that she’s willing to venture far outside the generic bounds which bind so many other writers. Several of the stories are set in a fictional Boston suburb, and yes there are divorces, but several venture far beyond it to Europe, for example, and Central America. The connected stories featuring a woman who works with “displaced people” (Jews escaping the Nazis) in London are among my favorites. Likewise, the view she gives us of a community slightly removed from the mainstream, the Jewish bourgeoisie in the US, is fresh. Mostly though it is her skill as a writer. Her characters are alive, and it is her exquisite prose which makes them so. My only...

   I'm on record as saying that I don't like children's literature. This is not because there is anything wrong with children's literature, but I'm not a child, and neither am I a "kidult" (I thought Will Self had coined that, but apparently it's much older) who revels in the books and media he or she enjoyed or would have enjoyed as a child. I've never read Harry Potter, and probably never will. And yet, here I am writing about a children's book that I enjoyed. I enjoyed the first in the series The Wolves of Willoughby Chase , more, but that's by way of saying that this is not even the first children's book I've read in recent years. I moved on to the second book in the series because I had enjoyed the first a great deal. What both books share is a clever plot, elegant writing, and rollicking humor.   The thing that makes it possible for even as curmudgeonly a reader as me to enjoy these novels is that Aiken does not assume that ch...

  I have concluded my year of reading E.M. Forster with the work that many consider his magnum opus, A Passage to India . It was good in the way that all Forster's fiction is good. The prose is shapely, the characters well-drawn, the humor humorous. Those who like that sort of thing will probably also applaud his philosophizing, but I much prefer the wit. As the title indicates, Forster has stepped outside of England and Europe, and in spite of his being a pre-postcolonial, he does a good job of treating Indian culture and people with respect. He doesn't make them into downtrodden saints or paragons of goodness, but rather allows them to be human. Likewise, he gives us a clear view of how inhuman were the colonialists in the country they administered.  It's hard to say which of Forster's novels I like best, but although I did enjoy Passage,  it is certainly not my favorite of his works. Perhaps that would be  A Room With a View as it's the most humorous of the lot ...

  Somerset Maugham worked in the British Secret Service during World War I. This series of stories about the British agent Ashenden are, therefore, to some extent autobiographical, though Maugham reminds us in his introduction that his experiences have been "rearranged for the purposes of fiction [because] fact is a poor storyteller." Ashenden / Maugham is no James Bond (though one is certain Fleming read these stories). He is diffident, and is not always confident that he doing the right thing in the operations with which he is involved, or that the outcomes he achieves actually make the world a better place. He moves from country to country, but does not live a glamorous life, and it is unclear whether he possesses a gun or would know how to use one if he does. Don't, therefore, open this book in search of a thriller. Rather, read it for the gentle humor and the astute observation of a gallery of human beings. Ashenden was recruited, after all, because he is a writer, a...

        During the second World War my father served on a PT boat that was active in the South Pacific. I once asked him whether, when the war ended, he ever thought about staying in the Philippines or in New Guinea, both of which he had experienced during his service. He said that he had never considered staying, and never in his life did he return to Asia, except once, much later, to Japan to see his son. There are, of course, obvious reasons why someone whose primary experience of a place is war would want to leave that place—that war—as expeditiously as possible. I learned much later that one of the first things my father did upon his return to the States was to burn his uniform. Clearly those years, those places, did not hold happy memories for him. But there are Americans and other foreigners who encounter Asia (all too often as members of a military force) and do elect to stay or to return. Roy Hamric is one of those. Reading his memoir Searching for Hunter S....

   This is the second (of many, I'm sure) Molly Keane novel I've read, and once again we're among decaying Irish aristocracy. The aristocrats on their uppers in Time After Time  are decaying, or perhaps decayed, in more ways than one. The brother and three sisters who share the now dilapidated manor in which they grew up are old and have not escaped the ravages of life and of age: one is deaf, one has a mangled hand, one is missing an eye, and one is an undiagnosed dyslexic and perhaps mentally challenged in other ways. The world they were born into—a functioning, well looked-after big house—is gone. Leda, a Jewish cousin with whom they grew up and who was banished from the house for a relationship (consensual?) with the father, returns. She is blind and wants revenge for having been cast out. She aims to attain this by destroying the working truce—it can't be said that they like each other—the three sisters and their brother have established. Keane's eye is cold, b...