The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
- Review: One Day, Three Autumns
- Review: Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing
- Review: How I Killed Margaret Thatcher
| Review: One Day, Three Autumns Posted: 13 Jan 2013 05:03 AM PST One Day, Three Autumns SOMETIMES a book stands out not because it reflects the mood of the moment but because it doesn't. Liew Suet Fun's One Day, Three Autumns is just such a book. It's not the usual tome favoured in this fair land of ours – neither an idiot's-guide-to-what-have-you, nor a bunch of articles reincarnating as a book, nor an angry political pronouncement. Nope, none of the above. (The divine be praised.) Instead, here's what the book's proposes: that we set aside – for a while at least – the chatter and clatter of the world at large and turn our attention to the everyday things which surround us but which we too often fail to see, like your pet and its antics, that prized teapot, the very act of baking a loaf, or the sound and fury of a thunderstorm. One Day, Three Autumns is an invitation to meditate on the things that we take for granted; not so much an admonishment that one is missing the forest for the trees as it is a reminder, if you will, to pay heed to such things as the insects and the birds, the quality of the air, the way the light is diffused by the canopy in that metaphorical wilderness. In short: to be in the moment. And why not, considering we are so caught up with the rat race, the political debate, the latest and greatest from the grapevine and the marketplace, our minds going round and round like a dog chasing its own tail, in that never-ending quest for something, we don't quite know what, in this "wired" world of ours. Gratification instant, contentment never. Loop the loop. The book flits randomly from topic to topic as Liew writes – in a tone that's personal and yet detached – of the enchantment of the mundane and the everyday, the nothings and everything. Essentially, hers is a journey inwards, of settling down to a long conversation with the self. To take up this book, then, is to embrace silence and stillness, out of whose deep and vast expanse the memories of years gone by come flooding back, and inanimate objects take on life, and fleeting moments are frozen in time. It's a kind of magic, is it not, when words are infused with imagination? There is melancholy and yearning and nostalgia, but most of all there's that keen sense of appreciation for the here and now, for the mysteries and delight that await discovery in the people and places and objects all around us, if only we would still our ever-spinning mind and see. A song sung by a crew of Indonesian workmen, for instance, gives rise to thoughts on homesickness and the plight of the immigrant. An old Chinese tune conjures up in the mind of the writer a person not quite her, someone at once familiar and mysterious. Inanimate objects speak to her: the old metal trunk and its to-be-guessed-at story; the old teapot rich with history; a loaf of bread and its evocations and promises. Such rich tapestry to be weaved from such simple pleasures ... Liew's prose is measured and lyrical, sometimes plain and profound ("How we all begin, and how we all end. And in between, our brief lives."), sometimes soaring and beautiful in its cadence (as in The Things I Love, which begins thus: "Love. It's a big word. It means more than like. It means your heart above your head. And your head over heels.") City folk will chuckle at her piece on the inexplicable act of cutting down shade trees for some exotic species of palm or other, where she wonders if this March of Man were not so "someone can ride a red-hot open top convertible down this boulevard of dreams." Occasionally, though, the writing stumbles on errant commas, a wrong word ("My mother would bode no sulky ... expression" – "brook" would the proper word), or one word too many. A more thorough editor would have helped smooth out such creases, but at the end of the day, these are mere quibbles. All in all, One Day, Three Autumns is an enjoyable little book that marches to its own beat while speaking in an unmistakably Malaysian voice, casual and yet deep-rooted, as it should be. One Day, Three Autumns author Liew Suet Fun will read excerpts from the book, share brief insights on each piece, and answer questions at 11am on Jan 19 at the Good Friends Cafe (G-G-8 Block G, Jalan PJU 1A/20E, Dataran Ara Damansara, Petaling Jaya). Entrance is free but, as seating is limited to 30, please book your seat by Tuesday by sending an e-mail to suet24@gmail.com or calling/texting her at 012-239 5569. |
| Review: Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing Posted: 13 Jan 2013 05:03 AM PST Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing NOVELIST Neal Stephenson starts his introduction to Some Remarks by saying that certain publishing types have assured him that he has "reached the stage in my life and career" to release a collection of shorter works. While he is probably being droll in his usual self-depreciating way, this may well explain why Some Remarks is a hodge podge of all manner of things. Aside from essays, long-form journalistic pieces, and fictional works, there is a college lecture, an interview with Slashdot readers (slashdot.org is a website based on and running the Slashdot-Like Automated Story-Telling Homepage software) and even a foreword written for a book by the late David Foster Wallace. The only thing that prevents the collection from being completely schizophrenic is Stephenson's passion for all things geeky that shines through his writing. Those familiar with his novels will know that Stephenson takes great pains to explain things to his readers. Since his speculative fiction tends to deal with highly technical (cryptography) and sometimes obscure subjects (Sumerian mythology), the explanatory passages do not intrude into the narrative but rather, move things along. In shorter non-fiction writing, however, it appears that Stephenson cannot move far beyond just explaining things. That is not to say that he does not have some astute observations bouncing about, or that he writes poorly. Metaphysics In The Royal Society 1715 – 2010, for instance, is a surprisingly readable account of the history of the rivalry between mathematicians Gottfried Leibniz and Issac Newton; despite the jargon, you find yourself engaged in the piece if only to share the writer's excitement. The pièce de résistance of the collection is Mother Earth, Mother Board – something that the Some Remarks editors must have realised as well since it easily takes up a third of the book. Originally written for Wired magazine in 1996, the essay is an enormous travelogue about the setting up of transoceanic cables. Or more specifically, the privately-funded FLAG (Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe) project involving a 28,000 km-long submarine communications cable literally stretching out across the world. While the subject matter would glaze most people's eyes over, Stephenson manages to make the geekery involved both accessible and riveting. Aside from explaining the technical details of what these cables are and why we should take an interest in them, he also weaves in the human drama involved. As Wired published some fantastic photographs to accompany the initial report, it was a bit disappointing to not have them included in this collection. For the most part, however, many of the essays feel like they had just been plucked out of an intelligent person's notebook – random interesting ideas that are smashed together in a forced narrative and that do not really go anywhere. A case in point is the opening essay, Arsebestos, in which Stephenson argues that sitting at office desks the whole day may spell a certain doom for us all. From his own chiropractic problems, to using Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to illustrate that class division literally translates into your ability to walk around, Stephenson veers off into so many points that it becomes quite a chore to locate the point of it all. If you are a huge fan of Stephenson, or want a primer on his ideas, then this collection is for you. For more depth, however, his fictional works may be more on the money. In Mother Earth, Mother Board, Stephenson describes his approach to writing the piece as such: "Our method was not exactly journalism nor tourism in the normal sense but what might be thought of as a new field of human endeavour called hacker tourism: travel to exotic locations in search of sights and sensations that only would be of interest to a geek." Reading Some Remarks feels a bit like being a hacker tourist visiting Stephenson's thought process – the problem is that you barely feel grounded enough in his ideas to go past being just another tourist. |
| Review: How I Killed Margaret Thatcher Posted: 13 Jan 2013 05:02 AM PST How I Killed Margaret Thatcher JUDAS Iscariot's here, look. Here comes Judas Iscariot." Growing up in a close-knit working class family in the industrial Midlands of England, nine-year-old Sean Bull knows nothing of family feuds – until the day Margaret Thatcher comes to power as Britain's first female prime minister and Sean's grandfather finds out that a member of the family had voted for her, the Judas Iscariot of the . On the surface Anthony Cartwright's novel deals with the consequences of the betrayal of a family's long-standing political leanings, the underlying story is about the effect the Thatcherite government had on the lives of a large percentage of the British population. The novel serves as a reminder that before the rise of globalisation and the ubiquity of cheap consumer goods from China, Britain was a manufacturing nation. It is at the tail end of the British manufacturing boom in the industrial Midlands town of Dudley that How I Killed Margaret Thatcher is set. Sean's family – his parents, grandparents and traitorous Uncle Eric – all come from a long line of factory workers, making things with the "Made In England" stamp that are sold domestically and exported internationally. When Thatcher comes to power, the eventual closure of factories and the start of the high rate of unemployment for factory workers is just the beginning of the end for the Bull family. Typical of the era and class system, working class men go to work while their wives stay at home to look after the family. It is no different for the Bull family. Dependent on the earning power of one person to maintain a growing family and provide occasional assistance to the grandparents, the Bull family finds that money is always tight. Sean doesn't fully understand the problems until he overhears his parents talking about the lack of money and the possibility that his dad's job in the factory could be on the line. It is not long after this "adult talk" that Sean learns that his Uncle Eric is not the only political traitor in the family; someone else in his family may have also voted for Mrs Thatcher. As the novel progresses, economical, financial and political matters begin to affect the Bull family, and Sean, trying to comprehend the changing political and economical landscape around him, develops a very personal hatred of Margaret Thatcher. How I Killed Margaret Thatcher is told from Sean's point of view, and Cartwright does a good job of employing an element of naïve innocence. For instance, he hones Sean's comprehension of the political and economical world around him down to simple logic: if Sean's dad loses his job, it is because of Margaret Thatcher, and if his dad loses his job, Sean will not be able to get the next cool thing that makes its way around the school yard, and this would definitely be the fault of Margaret Thatcher. Thus, as the novel progresses so too does Sean's hatred for Margaret Thatcher. His hatred grows to the point that he becomes determined to do as the title of the novel suggests: kill Margaret Thatcher. While the title is admittedly eye catching, How I Killed Margaret Thatcher has nothing to do with an actual assassination attempt on the Iron lady. Rather, it is Cartwright's rant about and point of view (disguised as that of his nine-year-old protagonist) of the Thatcherite era and its effects on Britain's working class population. The novel is shot through with pieces of local history, familial love and touching childhood moments, held together with steel rivets of righteous anger forged in the ailing factories of the Midlands. The insight this book contains makes it both an exceedingly enjoyable work of fiction and an interesting take on recent British social history; through it Cartwright explains Thatcher's role in shaping many of the social problems of today, and puts the lie to many right-wing assumptions of working class laziness that still persist. Despite its political leanings, How I Killed Margaret Thatcher can be described as a social commentary on the state of Britain (and perhaps the world) today. Though the manner in which Cartwright presents his novel may not be appealing to everyone (there's no proper intonation for dialogue, and the bulk of the novel belongs to Sean's internal monologue), How I Killed Margaret Thatcher is an easier novel to read than Cartwright's previous offerings, Heartland and The Afterglow. Margaret Thatcher is still not the easiest book to get into but for those who enjoy their novels with a socialist and political slant, this would make for interesting reading. |
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