The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 26 Aug 2012 12:39 AM PDT SOONCHILD is a baby who's a little leery about being born. She is the daughter of Sixteen-Face John, a shaman, and No Problem, a big, strong woman with a face that makes you "not want to make her angry". Soonchild tells John that she doesn't want to be born because she doesn't believe that there's a world for her to be born into. She doesn't believe there's a world because she can't hear any World Songs. "The world is made up of ideas that live in the Mind of Things but before the idea comes the song," John tells his wife and he decides that there is no alternative but to go find the World Songs so his daughter can be born. So far so strange? Well, it gets stranger ... a lot stranger. Reading Soonchild by Russell Hoban, I felt like I was drifting in and out of a wild and wonderful, totally weird, extremely vivid dream that made perfect sense to the dream-me, but made absolutely none to the awake-me. Occasionally, the edges around the dream would melt inwards and turn horrifying. Yet, no matter how nightmarish and disturbing and violent things got, there was always an underlying sense of calm. Perhaps, as Soonchild is marketed as a children's book, I knew it couldn't possibly end all that badly. Perhaps that reassured me and helped me take the horrors in my stride. Also, Hoban's tone throughout the story is very calm and matter of fact. No matter how strange or spooky or unreal things get, there's Hoban, writing like he's describing an ordinary day in the ordinary life of an ordinary person. It works because this is no song and dance, this is life and it's serious. You just want to get on with it, you want John to get on with it, deal and move on. No reason to get all melodramatic. No need to get into a flap. So ... there are trances, and magic brews, and animal spirit guides. There are demons, and death, and the dead (who are alive and well, playing poker and swilling vodka). There is the past and a shameful memory. There is the present and the chance to make amends. And there is the future – or there will be if John manages to save the World Songs. Some will wonder if this is a suitable book for children. The illustrations by Alexis Deacon are not what many adults would think of as belonging in a children's book. They are as fine and exciting and powerful as the art by Jim Kay in A Monster Calls and by Bagram Ibatoulline in The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane – books whose contents provoke much debate about what is deemed appropriate, in terms of both story and visuals, for children. Deacon's pictures move and swell, like smoke, like dreams and thoughts, like magic incantations released into and carried by the wind. They are shadowy and tender, mysteriously shapeless and terrifyingly shaped. The pictures and the story will frighten some kids. The pictures and the story will frighten some adults. I think it would be easy (and such a shame) to get distracted by the strangeness of this book and miss its wisdom. Read slowly, savour the magic, understand the truth it speaks. The world – this earth – is our home. All living things are connected. All living things matter. All living things should be respected. If we forget this, there will be no future for our children and their children. Keep on singing the World Songs. Daphne Lee reads to wonder and wander, be amazed and amused, horrified and heartened and inspired and comforted. She wishes more people will try it too. Send e-mails to the above address and check out her blog at daphne.blogs.com/books. |
| Posted: 26 Aug 2012 12:35 AM PDT FOR the month of August, 2012: Non-fiction 1. The Magic by Rhonda Byrne 2. Talk Language: How To Use Conversation For Profit And Pleasure by Allan Pease & Alan Garner 3. A World Without Islam by Graham Fuller 4. To Heaven And Back: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account Of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, And Life Again: A True Story by Mary C. Neal 5. The Magic Of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins 6. Madeleine: Our Daughter's Disappearance And The Continuing Search For Her by Kate McCann 7. It Worked For Me: In Life And Leadership: Lessons In Leadership And Life by Colin L. Powell & Tony Koltz 8. Chicken Soup For The Soul: Boost Your Brain Power! You Can Improve And Energize Your Brain At Any Age by Marie Pasinski & Liz Neporent 9. Hospital Babylon: True Confessions From The Front Line Of Accident And Emergency by Imogen Edwards-Jones 10. Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know by Barbara De Angelis Fiction 1. Fifty Shades Of Grey by E.L. James 2. Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James 3. The Lucky One (movie tie-in) by Nicholas Sparks 4. Don't You Forget About Me by Alexandra Potter 5. The Best Of Me by Nicholas Sparks 6. The Time Of My Life by Cecelia Ahern 7. Conqueror by Conn Iggulden 8. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami 9. 11/22/63 by Stephen King 10. Zero Day by David Baldacci This month's list compiled by MPH Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur; www.mphonline.com. |
| Posted: 26 Aug 2012 12:34 AM PDT 'Judge not without knowledge' is the message our reviewer gets from this powerful, moving story. In One Person LET'S start with William Shakespeare, who kindly but unwittingly lent the title for this book: "Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented" – Richard II. And move on swiftly to more Shakespeare, As You Like It, for instance, a comedy in which a woman dresses up as a man to woo the hand of a man who can then fall in love with her when it turns out that she is a woman after all. Shakespeare is important in the life of In One Person's protagonist, William Francis Dean Jr, because his mother is the prompter for the local amateur dramatic society and his uncle frequently assumes the society's leading female roles. In Shakespeare's comedies, the gender confusion is resolved so that a harmonious ending can be achieved. In real life, gender confusion rarely has as neat an ending and for William Francis Dean Jr, the roles, or "many people", it leads him to play certainly add up to his being "none contented". John Irving's 13th novel is set in the town of First Sister, Vermont in the America, and much of its early action centres on Favorite River Academy, an almost-but-not-quite good school. Billy Abbott, as William Francis Dean Jr is known after his mother's re-marriage, has "inappropriate crushes": on Miss Frost, the town librarian and on Kittredge, the hero of the wrestling team. He confides these to his best friend, Elaine, an androgynous creature whom he remains close to throughout his adult life as a successful novelist in perhaps the book's most touching relationship. He also confides them to his stepfather, whose constructive sympathy stands in marked contrast to the school's laughable attempts to deal with what it believes is a passing phase, like teenage pimples. In due course, after an enlightening (and in many ways rather unlikely) encounter with Miss Frost, Billy enters the feral world of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. While his uncle's desire to play female roles is confined to the safety of the theatre and his home, times have changed from the inhibited 1950s and Billy is free to explore his options in the more liberal 1960s and 1970s. Potential readers should be warned that Irving spares very few blushes here. Billy's explorations are charted in graphic and sometimes sordid detail. And then come the 1980s, which means the onset of HIV/AIDS. For Billy, this provides something of a turning point and he returns to Favorite River Academy where he eventually secures a teaching position and directs the drama club, in the process becoming the mentor and public guardian of Gee, (or George or Georgia, as you will). So is this the comedy ending, in the sense that it is an ending that ties everything up so that harmony prevails? For Shakespearean comedy, remember, is about structure not humour. Well, yes and no. Certainly, loose ends are tied, not the least important of which is Billy's meeting with his biological father and also with Kittredge, both of which events contain surprises and, to some extent, reconciliations. In One Person is a challenging and provocative book; it is also a very powerful one in places. Scenes involving the death of Billy's childhood friend Tom are particularly moving, and most readers will also emerge from them far better informed than they might wish to be about the process of dying from AIDS-related diseases. Irving leaves us in no doubt about his intentions with In One Person. "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me – don't make me a category before you even get to know me," says Miss Frost to the young Billy, and they are words that have stayed with him throughout his life. They might as well be addressed to the reader. For most of us, Billy's world is one that is on the fringes of our consciousness and towards which we may have strong moral reactions. Irving demands that we get to know it before we make our judgements. Readers of Irving's other work will not need telling by me that he is a powerful and gripping writer. I might argue a little over the length of In One Person (dare one edit one of America's greatest living novelists?!) but there is no denying its artistry or the vividness of its writing. Irving is famed for his humour but I found little evidence of it here. What I did find was compassion, sympathy and a deeply humanitarian approach to the subject matter. This book, given its contentious content, may not be for everyone but approached with an open mind, it is one that will not be forgotten in a hurry. Irving, by the way, is the only living novelist to have been inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame – and In One Person certainly smacks the reader down on the canvas with a bang. |
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