Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle *** 1/2

Although in form and shape the thing before her could have been nothing but a submarine, it looked instead like some kind of symbolic sign — or an incomprehensible metaphor.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a strange book, and I mean that as a compliment. Murakami's style blends mundane details with uncanny incidents. The story starts with a commonplace search for a missing cat, but already on the first page our narrator receives a phone call from a mysterious woman trying to entice him into phone sex. The ratio of ordinary events to extraordinary events tilts in favor of the latter as the book continues.

The English edition consists of three sections, which were published as separate books in Japan. In the first two sections, I felt a connection between the narrative and recognizable metaphorical themes (section one: "How much do we really know about our family and friends?"; section two: "How much do we really know about our own nature and motivations?"). In the third and longest section, events start to feel untethered and somewhat random. I think Murakami means to explore the role of fate, but as I said the first time I reviewed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I "started to lose track of the theme, which made it all seem strange without a purpose."

Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track.

It's too bad, because there are scenes and stories of great interest spread throughout the book.

Jeffrey Frank, Ike and Dick ***

I was hoping and expecting that this Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage between Dwight David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon would show how the two men misunderstood each other due to their vastly different temperaments. However, the book mostly describes how Nixon interpreted Eisenhower's passive/aggressive conflict avoidance without a counterbalancing account of Eisenhower's interpretation of Nixon. And since Ike and Dick is about their feelings, the descriptions of the political events themselves is perfunctory.

The story is strongest during the episodes that most clearly and directly relate to Eisenhower's non-committal public statements: the "fund episode" that led to Nixon's Checkers speech; the choice of VP for the second term (with Eisenhower trying to convince Nixon to take a cabinet post instead); and the 1960 election ("If you give me a week, I might think of one [policy that Nixon spearheaded as VP]"). There is also the time when Eisenhower wanted Nixon to fire his chief of staff Sherman Adams, which showed the same behavior applied to someone other than Nixon.

When describing his sources, Jeffrey Frank notes that historians now consider Eisenhower "a man skilled in the art of forceful indirection... [and] a leader who had patience and purpose, particularly in foreign affairs." You would not get that impression from Ike and Dick. It omits any discussion of his accomplishments, and the general comes across as an amiable timid jerk. 

Paul Jaskunas, Hidden ****

On page 1, Maggie Wilson barely survives a violent assault. She accuses her husband, who goes to prison, but six years later another man confesses to the crime. Maggie spends the rest of the book trying to reconcile her memories with the apparent facts of the case.

I first read Hidden in 2005 when it came out in paperback, and I stand by everything I said in the four-star review I gave it then. I would add that the descriptions of the Indiana backroads are strong, and they complement Maggie's introspective nature. Overall, the book has a hushed tone, as if it's being told around a picnic table in the summer twilight. My only complaint is that Maggie and Nate's marital troubles seem to develop too quickly.

I ended my 2005 review by saying, "I look forward to Paul Jaskunas' next book." Alas, Jaskunas has yet to publish a second book.

Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy **** 1/2

Wondrous things do happen here, but they take place amidst great tranquility.

If I may use cinematic analogies to describes this lovely, odd, short book, it reads like a collaboration between Terence Malick (for framing the story with quiet beautiful natural context) and Jean Pierre Melville (for its objective distance and focus on routine) with a dash of Tarkovskian spirituality.

A rabbit skitters forward in the priest's garden and twitches a radish leaf with its nose before tearing it loose. Ears tilt as it hastily chews and settles over its paws.  

The story takes places in 1906 at a convent in upstate New York. Mariette is a 17-year-old postulant whose attractiveness and fervent piety inspire diverse reactions from the other Sisters of the Crucifixion, even before she starts to show signs of ecstatic contact with Christ.

Hansen maintains the meditative spirit of life in the convent even as events grow more "wondrous." He conveys the personalities of the nuns and their differing reactions to Mariette with very few words, using the same kinds of telling details as he does for the natural descriptions.

John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers ****

The Mapmakers is a history of cartography. It explains the technical innovations of mapmaking in the context of the contemporary worldviews and the adventures of discovery. It nicely balances concise scientific explanations with personal tales about the innovators to tell a compelling story of progress. The prose is classic technical writing: clear presentation that you never notice.

The book becomes less interesting once it reaches the 20th century. The advances are almost purely technological at that point, so the story loses the momentum and interest that came from the adventures of early explorers. The loss of narrative balance makes you notice the incompleteness of the technical explanations.

B. Catling, The Vorrh ***

The Vorrh is "easily the current century's first landmark work of fantasy" (says Alan Moore) and makes Terry Gilliam "realize how little imagination I have." The title refers to a vast, sentient, magical forest that sounds like the planet in Solaris, and the back cover promises a story that will "rearrange the molecules of your being." Cool and possibly difficult, right?

I'll grant that The Vorrh is imaginative and that it is chock-full of sensuous imagery. The author is particularly fond of ascribing concrete adjectives and verbs to abstract nouns.

[His mother] would come to say good night while he was in the bath...but she never stayed, and the nanny was always left to dry his cooling hope and dress it for sleep. (p 54)

One section that demonstrates Catling's strengths comes when a formerly blind character gains her sight. He describes how her perceptions changed, not entirely for the better. An interesting perspective comprised of distinctive imagery.

One of her favourite times was the evening, when the city's sounds folded down to allow the distant forest its full voice. She loved to feel the exchange, the tides of human and animal sounds passing each other in the growing dominance of the night... High above, the swallows turned into bats.

However, the individual scenes don't pay off in longer narrative threads. For example, one character is a Cyclops living under the care of robots under an abandoned house. (Robots made of Bakelite and filled with a milky fluid.) A mysterious cabal provides material for the robots to educate the boy... to what purpose? We never find out. Another character dispatches the robots, and the Cyclop's character arc has nothing to do with his unknown origins. The same concern applies to Peter Andrews and his bow made from the remains of the prophet Irrinipeste, the tribesman sent to intercept Andrews, and the Scottish foreman who oversees the mindless Limboia in their forestry.

The Vorrh is apparently the first book in an intended trilogy. Is it all just an elaborate origin story for the Cyclop's unborn baby?

Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers ***

Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired killers, headed to San Francisco and the gold country for their latest job. Eli, our narrator, is questioning his choice of profession and showing compassion for his slow, one-eyed horse Tub. His laconic, off-beat, and humorous musings set the tone for this pleasant Western story. 

Eli is most concerned with the question of what makes a man's life good. His vision of the perfect future is the quiet, orderly life of a shopkeeper; Charlie would like to become a rich, dissolute man like their employer the Commodore. Over the course of their travels, the Sisters brothers encounter a number of people who offer other potential models, such as their current target Hermann Warm who lifted himself up by his bootstraps using his own ingenuity. Eli's consideration of the various lifestyles provides the thematic underpinnings to the story.