The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

In 1800, a Dutch man encounters the closed Japanese society.


This novel is about Jacob De Zoet, exiled to the Dutch colony off Japan in order to make a fortune. His fortune making is interrupted by his fascination with the scarred young Japanese woman learning to be a midwife. Therefore, I suppose this is a historical novel, so in addition to the pleasure of the story, we will also learn something about Japanese history.

I seriously considered bailing on around page 50, did so on page 90. Part of it may have been my American addiction to dramatic tension, and part of it may have been that it was taking too terribly long to to set up the story. Although I felt we were headed in the right direction, with the vivid introduction of the two lovers in two wonderfully written set pieces. But then we got pages and pages and pages of hundreds of characters speaking in a sprightly manner about things expository or bills of lading. I just was not keeping track of anyone of them and only wanted to get back to the lovers, though Jacob seemed a milquetoast.

To me, it was like watching stick figures placed on a diorama.  Zzz.

Eight White Nights by Andre Aciman

An overarticulate young man and overarticulate young woman discover they are soul mates.

I liked this book much more than  "Call Me By Your Name", even though this book was probably twice as annoying. Once again, the stakes are too low, the narrator is a question mark, the girl, the love object, is highly precious and an emotional sadist. Don't these kids have jobs? Clara is sketchily described as beautiful but all she eats are massive mounds of muffins and French fries. But I just couldn’t put the book down. The subject is romantic love.

The first twenty pages were difficult to get through, but then I relaxed and let the exquisite sentences wash over me. Our narrator is a nervous Nellie who is so terrified of screwing things up he never advances. This story is not so much about sex, in fact it’s not about sex at all – it’s about recognizing your soul mate. Clara and her Prinz Oskar, highly educated New Yorkers, enjoying themselves in modern day Manhattan. Because of the tragedy of Nazism long ago, these two are exiles from their true home of Europe.

Is love a delusion? What is the evolutionary purpose of romantic love? Clara becomes an obsession with him and he with her. And sometimes the novel degenerates into a fascinating study of telephone tag.

This was one I read on the plane so I had more patience, perhaps more patience than this deserved. I was really entranced.

Trespass by Rose Tremain

Trespassing has severe consequences

This was such a well constructed novel. I felt like I was in the hands of a master. The story is a puzzle, with mirrored characters and circumstances, and concerns two brother sister pairs, coming to the end of their lives, in the drought stricken south of France.

The English pair is Anthony and Veronica Verey; the French pair Aramon and Audrun Lunel. The French pair are certifiable, the English pair merely eccentric. The plot is that the rich Anthony, who has decided to leave his faltering antiques business, wishes to settle near his sister and her lover in the south of France. He would like to buy the Lunel’s house, or mas, but it seems that there is a family feud about ownership of the French property. Also, Veronica’s lover is not happy to see Anthony arrive.

An air of creepiness hangs over the story, established by the child’s scream at the end of the first chapter. The novel is not just about property disputes and surveyors lines and guests who stay too long – it’s about horrible crimes of omission and commission against innocent children. One technique was to reveal a memory and throughout the course of the novel return to that memory until the reader understands its full terrible scope.

What was humorous to me was how easily these supposedly dried up old women felt into murderous fantasies. Or murderous realities.

And finally, the prose was simple, beautiful and poetic.

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

Four horse races and their stakes


This is all about the dialogue. A no doubt about it American dialogue. This novel reminds me of two I’ve read recently – Fat City by Leonard Gardner and Galveston by Nic Pizzolato.  Fat City because of its plunge into the life of a bunch of losers soldiering on only through their love of a dirty sport, and Galveston because of its hard eyed view of American losers, though I think Galveston had, in retrospect, a phony marshmallow heart and Lord of Misrule has a legitimate heart.

The prose was ornate and hard and poetic and enjoyable to read. The only problem was that about 15% of the time the explaining got over convoluted and I had to go back and reread to figure out what was going on. But when the prose was good it was very very good.

The characters were extremely colorful losers and racetrack hangers on - a shared sense of fate, and luck and a sacred love of horses. The plotting was seamless, but then sort of fell apart and the book ended like an episode of Charlie’s Angels from 1976.

Health and Happiness by Diane Johnson

Doctors are only human


A hospital is its own little world, filled with greed or lust or petty malice. At the same time, hospitals and Western medicine are pinnacles of our civilization because they halt death and restore patients to life.   Sort of like Jesus.  A hospital can also kill patients, which is one of the subplots in this novel. Once again, as I read my way through her collected fiction, I was very impressed by Diane Johnson's world creation skills.

The story begins a little stiffly, then I was immediately sucked in. The major characters are Philip Watts, senior professor of medicine, an excellent thoughtful doctor, though also something of a goody two shoes martinet; Ivy Tarro, a slightly dippy flower child who comes to the hospital with a minor ailment and is almost killed; and Mimi Franklin, the slightly pitiful divorcee who is head of Volunteers.

This book is as elaborately plotted and as filled with characters as a tv show’s bible - - and yet this is not cliché genre fiction – real things are happening inside the walls of this building. I think Diane Johnson’s approach is to use a comic vision to observe many things, including tragedies, such as the gifted young man with sickle cell anemia, the thoughtful old lady who is being kept alive by artificial measures, the brain dead meathead who overdosed on cocaine. Much of the book is not politically correct, but it’s inherently interesting. A glimpse into a San Francisco hospital is a look at the cultural mish mash that is America.

I learned something about modern medicine and something about plotting, the way the minor characters are used as plot points. Also there’s sort of a quiet political commentary on the high cost of health care, the inability of seemingly rational people to pull the plug on a near death loved one, and the hardly suppressed materialism of most doctors.  Excellent writing.

Girl Factory by Jim Krusoe

A nerd tries to rescue naked women held in suspended animation

My final conclusion is that this weird novel is subversive, though it started slowly with a boring chessplaying dog. The story got better once our very literal minded lonely hero Jonathan discovers the naked ladies suspended in giant tanks downstairs of the frozen yogurt shop where he clerks. Jonathan has had bad luck with women in the past – his two prior loves dropped him with zero explanation. And one of the tank ladies strongly resembles an old girlfriend. The plot then takes over and the story becomes gripping as Jonathan tries to figure out a way to revive the ladies. I don’t want to give away the surprise, but huge chunks consist of Jonathan dragging bodies to the Dumpster. And it is very funny, but you feel you shouldn’t laugh at dead women being tossed in the dumpster. That’s probably where the subversion comes in.

The story is set in the here and now except it’s really not. The world of Girl Factory is completely imagined but feels like a candy colored version of our own. I loved the dialogue, though overall I think this novel is not making a bold statement about American society, but a well crafted humorous statement about life extending machines in the basement of a suburban frozen yogurt shop.

My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

Nannies and mommies are wary of each other in affluent West LA

I enjoyed this absorbing old fashioned novel addressing two traditional subjects – love and money. Not the love of a man  – but the love of a Baby. The novel is about Claire, a composer in her late thirties who is overwhelmed by caring for her infant, as well as baffled by her husband, who suddenly wants to change careers and coasts to become a comedy writer with ungodly work hours. They decide to hire a nanny and luckily end up with Lola, a fiftyish down to earth Filipina. The novel switches between their narrative voices. Lola has the much more powerful and distinctive voice. Claire is passive and sometimes you feel like she’s whining about being rich – but that’s part of the satire, I think. All of the American mothers depicted here come off as shallow materialistic commodities.

The world of wives and nannies are shown with small cutting little scenes – the two worlds are completely different. One group drives BMW’s, one takes endless bus lines. The nannies’ world is harrowing and tragic – and yet the women, all recent immigrants, really strive together and protect each other from the various degrees of exploitation. The American women are competitive about their producer husbands, mansions, kids and pools. (Pools play an important thematic and plot point.)

The book’s not perfect. If I was complaining last week about Philip Roth’s characterization of women, then I must point out the tissue thin characterization of men. These sex avoiding women aren't in thrall to their men the way they are to their babies – Guys only contribute $ and an X or Y chromosome. And the ending of the novel is rather dubious.

But overall a really valuable look at LA.  America need more novels like this.