Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

By Jamie Ford

Read in your best Estelle Getty:

Picture it. Seattle, 1942. Like most North American cities of the time, whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, their children attend different schools and prejudice is worn proudly on one's sleeve. Henry Lee’s father is a Chinese Nationalist with a deep rooted hatred for the Japanese, who are waging war in his former homeland. In Seattle, he sends 12 year-old Henry to an all-white school with an “I am Chinese” button pinned to his shirt. Naturally, he is the target of bullies who don't see the difference between Japanese and Chinese. His only deliverance is Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom he develops a lifelong bond. Although circumstances keep them apart, Henry never forgets her.

Picture it. Seattle, 1986. An older Henry, recently widowed reflects on the war years and his time with Keiko before and after her family's interment. The coincidental discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans in the basement of a downtown hotel inspires Henry to reveal the story of Keiko to his own son in an effort to repair their own fraying bond. 

/Estelle Getty

Jamie Ford's debut novel is a strong declaration of purpose from a promising writer. Although not without fault, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet deserves some applause its characterization of an era that doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literary community (The Japanese Internment) and deserves a certain measure of comparison to Julian Barnes's Booker Prize winning novel A Sense of an Ending in that both novels bookend of the protagonist's life via a story that begins in childhood and ends in old age (while, it would seem, stagnating during the middle part of life). In fact, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet reveals virtually nothing of Henry's forty year marriage to his wife, a two-dimensional character rendered with so little characterization that the reader is left confused as to whether Henry really ever had feelings for his wife at all. 

But that's okay because that is the sort of characterization that gets to the heart of the Chinese sense of familial duty and the complexity of the relationship between Chinese father and Chinese son. Ancestral obligations are often stronger than any personal bond one might make outside the family and Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, in that respect is an interesting examination of Chinese experience in America and the cultural shackles that stretch across the Pacific. Henry's father, though fiercely proud that he is able to live and educate his son in America, never once identifies himself or any member of his family as American. The button he forces his son to wear to school, ostensibly to keep him from being identified as a Japanese, speaks volumes about Henry's fathers ancestral and familial morality. It is equally important that Henry be identified as Not Japanese as it is for him to be identified as Not American, a point that causes more than a little friction between father and son.

Which brings us seamlessly to the subject of prejudice in this novel. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is, at its core, an interesting examination of the ingrained prejudice both within American society toward visible minorities (especially toward Japanese Americans) and the prejudices that were imported along with ethnic populations from abroad onto American soil. The racial tension not only between White Americans and Japanese Americans (which, retroactively speaking, makes a degree of sense) but also the tension between White Americans and Non-Japanese Asians (i.e. Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese) and the tension between the Chinese and Japanese populations speaks volumes about the very real anxiety of the time and how very close it all came to boiling over on the home front. Though the inclusion of Sheldon, the black jazz musician did seem a tad contrived (one too many ethnicities in the literary melting pot spoils the broth, apparently). 

But not everything works in this novel. The tone is, at times, overly sentimental.

"I was so worried about my family. Worried about everything. I was confused. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what good-bye really was."

Emo during World War II? Apparently, yes. A good lesson: Let the reader feel rather than force the feeling.

As well, the prose is often repetitive. If an author employs a flashback it seems rather unnecessary to include the actual account of flashback to another character in the present, but that is precisely what Ford does at several points in this novel, giving Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet an unpolished feel. Also, Henry speaks in an unnatural, stilted manner that makes you wonder whether he was ever actually 12 years old.

But don't let saccharine sentimentality and wooden dialogue stand in the way of a decent debut. Jamie Ford's got a lot of promise as an author and overall, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is as good as any debut novel you're going to read this year or next. I mean, if you can't forgive an author a few transgressions for the sake of a good story and an interesting backdrop well, who are you anyway?

City of Thieves

City of Thieves

By David Benioff

Writing historical war fiction is a precarious endeavor. It's not a genre to be entered into lightly. To be sure, many writers have waded into the troubled waters of historical war fiction only to be overwhelmed by the demands of the material. It takes a particular sort to venture into the genre of historical war fiction. I find that once finished, you can usually organize their efforts in three distinct categories.

First, many writers tend to get bogged down in the violence, tragedy and gore of war. These novels tend to be very heavy-handed and the moral lessons via graphic violence are more than a little blunt. War, by its very nature, is brusque subject matter and it is tempting to bludgeon the reader with death and disfigurement but, as in actual war, readers desensitize and writers paint themselves into a gory corner from which they cannot hope to escape. While I am certainly not suggesting that writers censor violence in the hopes of a better novel, sometimes enough is enough.

Other writers err on the side of caution and tread far too lightly on the topic of war. What you get is war rendered of all its violence and chaos and emotion. These sorts of novels strip the subject matter of any real emotional or psychological meaning. Of course, the story trumps all, but war provides such an interesting backdrop, it deserves proper development. I often wonder why some writers choose to set their novels in a time of war if they aren't fully prepared to dish the full spectrum of the time. If you wanted to distance the narrative from the conflict, why incorporate it in the first place? But I digress.

The best writers of historical war fiction know how to walk the razor thin line between war's relentless tragedy and absurd comedy. War is humanity at its most extreme. There is no future or past for those caught in the tumult of a major conflict, only now and the hope of later. There is an immediacy to war that forces us to live entirely in the present, whether it is dealing with the dangers at hand or appreciating a small act of kindness. Writing war fiction is an un-ending balancing act between comedy and tragedy.

David Benioff, falls into the latter category. His best seller novel City of Thieves finds that balance with almost perfect symmetry. The novel oscillates so fluidly between the horrors of war and the small joys of the human experience. Like the best war novels, the conflict weaves through the narrative like a character unto itself, presenting itself when it needs to be presented and disappearing when it is time to disappear. Benioff personifies the war with a deft hand.

The story chronicles a week in the life of Lev Beniov, a teenage chess playing Jew born and raised in Leningrad who, upon the arrival of the Nazis in 1942, opts to stay in the city and ride out the siege. Lev is arrested for burglarizing a dead German paratrooper and imprisoned. His life is spared by a Russian army official who, along with a Red-Army-deserter-turned-aspiring-novelist Kolya, sends him out on a mission to find a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake... by any means available. Arms with a letter from the official and a few hundred rubles.

If this doesn't sound absurd enough for you, Benioff's narrative takes any number of twists and turns once the unlikely duo set off on their impossible mission. What makes the story even better is that Benioff reveals much of what is to come in the first few pages of the book, though he leaves out the who, what, where, when, why and how. Having the outcome firmly in hand only accentuates the tone and tempo of this novel. The story veers so wildly from disparity to hilarity the reader can only assume much of this story is actually true.

This novel reminded me so much of Roberto Begnini's film Life is Beautiful. While not strictly the same, the way Benioff incorporates humor and absurdity into the story which is neither funny nor absurd. To be sure, the Second World War was a catastrophe in Europe, and perhaps doubly so in Russia, but it is all in the way it is presented. Benioff could have presented the Siege of Leningrad with the severity and seriousness of a historian, but what would it have accomplished? We'd all be a bit more knowledgeable about the war in Russia, but the human factor would have been denied.

It's a rare treat to find an author that can handle such sensitive subject matter with the care David Benioff displays. Few authors have the ability to simultaneously depict the gravity and absurdity of war the way Benioff does here. Highly, highly recommended.

The Postmistress

The Postmistress

By Sarah Blake

Disclaimer: Forgive this review... Despite the fact that I understand that The Postmistress is a well written novel and a fine example of what a good book should be, I actually had very little feeling for this book. I think it shows in this review. Not my best showing.


If a reviewer is allowed to get away with one word reviews, my review for the Postmistress would be thus: Good.

Good. In all its mundane glory. Good. Not "great" or "fabulous" or, as the bloggers say: "awesome sauce." Just plain, workman-style, meat-and-potatoes "good." So let's see if I can elaborate a bit on its all-around goodness...

The Postmistress is Sarah Blake's second novel (that's Sarah Blake the writer not Sarah Blake the porn actress... I should have been a bit more specific when I did my Google search... I truly... didn't.... know). The Postmistress is a well-paced, interlocking tale of personal tragedy and perserverence in the years preceding America's entrance in World War Two. Although there is no shortage of novels set during the Second World War, I have read very few that concern themselves with America during that inter rum period following the outset of war and America's entrance. Few people realize that America remained neutral for a long while after the beginning of the war and opinion was very much divided about whether America had an obligation to get involved. This division is adequately emphasized in Blake's narrative.

Historical quirks aside, The Postmistress is the concurrent story of three American women, two living in Franklin, Massachusetts (Emma and Iris) and one, a war correspondent based in London (Frankie). All three are loosely connected through various degrees of separation and their lives invariably collapse upon each other.

Through the eyes of Frankie, Blake is able capture the migratory chaos in Europe in the early years of the war, prior to the sealing off of the European coastline. Blake's descriptions of Blitz-torn London and war-torn France is well-done. Through Frankie, the reader gets a series of snapshots from across Europe as Jews from all over were frantically attempting to get off the continent. Thousands of people migrating toward the ports of Lisbon and Bordeaux in the hopes of gaining access to the dwindling number of ships en route to anywhere not under fascist rule. Frankie serves as both the ears and the conscience of the novel. Also, I couldn't help read her bits with a hard-boiled, transatlantic accent a la Jennifer Jason Leigh in the Hudsucker Proxy. I liked that.

Emma, the wife of Franklin's young doctor is frail and uncertain. She seemed to me to perpetuate the stereotypical young wife of the pre-war era (or perhaps Sarah Blake as a novelist?). When Emma loses contact with her husband who has volunteered to serve as a doctor in Blitz-ridden London, Emma stays behind and seems to progressively disappear once contact with her husband ceases (I'm skirting perilously close to spoilers here, so I'll pull back). In my mind's eye Emma has wide, staring eyes and finds spaghetti and meatballs to be exotic cuisine. I liked that, too.

The lynchpin of the story is Iris, the postmaster of Franklin's post office who stands at the center as the stories in the novel weave in and out of her hands via letters and visits to the post office. As postmaster (America does not make any gender-based distinction for the title therefore the title of the novel gains a certain irony), she performs with the diligence and attention of a bygone era, something that always makes me smile. I love characters that take their work seriously and perform their tasks with weight. It's a quality you so rarely find in anyone these days, outside of books. She also probably wears turtle necks and drinks copious amounts of Earl Grey tea.

A series of interesting secondary characters (including a fictionalized Edward R. Murrow) colors the novel in nicely. While this is not going to make any of my year end lists (best of or worst of) it is a very competent novel that had me locked in from the earliest pages. My only complaint is the title. While there's nothing wrong with The Postmistress per se, it felt like there needed to be some sort of relation tacked on the end such as The Postmistress's Daughter or Cousin or Accountant or some such thing. Perhaps I'm a littler jaded by all those similar titles that have over-populared bookstore shelves for far too long.

Regardless of my sarcasm, If you are looking for something nice for your late-summer reading, you could do a lot worse than pick up a copy of The Postmistress. Blake's narrative is satisfactory. While it rarely takes any great leaps or chances, it holds its ground like a steady bass line. Blake allows the story unfold with the patience of a much older, more experienced author. She avoids the temptation of surging through scenes that deserve careful attention, she savors each scene as a pristine moment in history. These are the habits of an effective fiction writer and she executes well. Through her three main characters she serves up a neat slice of life on the Atlantic Rim circa 1941.

Like I said, it's good. Is it worth reading? Sure. Could you pass it by? OK. Would you be missing anything? Maybe. It's interesting that The Postmistress is often compared to Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Neither book offended me but both will be long forgotten by this time next year. But, if nothing else, this novel has me intrigued about what Sarah Blake might have to offer over the next few years. She has certainly stakes a certain claim on the literary landscape, despite my sardonic take on The Postmistress and its characters.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Einstein: His Life and Universe

By Walter Isaacson

I've been hearing a lot about this guy Walter Isaacson over the past year. From what I heard he is the world's pre-eminent (or at least the world's most famous) biographer. Isaacson is noted for his in-depth biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissenger. He achieved runaway success with his most recent biography of Steve Jobs (which just happened to coincide with his death.... hmmmmm....). Which such a wide array of subjects (from such a wide breath of history) I figured I needed to get my hands on one of his biographies just to see what all the hullaballoo was all about.

I finally tracked down a copy of an earlier biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe and it's easy to see why Isaacson has garnered such a stellar reputation. Writing a comprehensive account of the life of one of the 20th century's brightest and most enigmatic scientific minds is no simple task and the sheer volume of primary sources (including all of Einsteins papers and correspondence as well as his wife, Else's) must have made the research for this tome Herculean in nature.

Furthermore, since Isaacson is dealing with a genius whose name is synonymous with being a genius, he is unable to hide behind his writing skills in an attempt to distract the reader from noticing that he, like virtually everyone else on the planet, doesn't particularly understand the intricacies of general relativity and unified field theory. No sir! Isaacson went out and figured this stuff out and wrote about it. Trouble is, Einstein's science as filtered through Isaacson remains as unintelligible to the average reader as it was when he scribbled his equations on the backs of old envelopes at the Patent Office in 1905.

I have read books that have presented Special and General Relativity in a far more engaging and entertaining fashion (after reading David Bodanis's book E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation I walked around for about five days explaining it to anyone who would listen.... then promptly forgot it). However, one can forgive Isaacson for his scientific opacity as it pertains to Einstein. After all it is Albert Einstein and after all again, you probably didn't pick up his biography to learn about relativity, photons, unified field theory or quantum physics. If you did, you're doing it wrong.

I imagine that you, like me, are more interested in reading about Albert Einstein the boy, the husband, the father and the unabashed pacifist as opposed to Albert Einstein the scientist. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated all the science (when I understood it) but I was more interested in reading about his relationships with his contemporaries, most notably his complicated relationship with Max Planck, his close kinship with Niels Bohr and his lifelong rivalry with the anti-Semitic (and later Nazi party member) Philipp Lenard. These are names that are familiar to most of us from high school (or university) science class but rarely get discussed as human beings.

Isaacson is an objective observer of Einstein's aloof and often chilly demeanor in reference to his own family. I was completely unaware of his (and his first wife, Mileva Maric's ) first child, Lieserl, who was taken to Maric's home country of Serbia and raised by family members. Her memory is so completely erased from Einstein's personal records that her fate is still unknown. Einstein also maintained tumultuous relationships with his two sons Hans Albert and Eduard of which Isaacson presents Albert as an ofttimes cold and uncaring father (though one may argue that it was just his way). And yet Einstein maintained a tender side that, which not often visible to his friends and family, existed for those close to him, most notably his second wife (and cousin) Else.

Isaacson also delves deep into Einstein's notion of pacifism and his flirtation with Chaim Weizmann's brand of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s. Einstein's obsession with personal freedom and his abhorrence for political parties and the machinations of the establishment made him the perfect spokesperson for the burgeoning notion of militant pacifism that gained a certain credence during the 1920s. Though he retreated from this stance when Adolf Hitler attained power in Germany and even played a small part in the development of the atomic bomb (another fascinating portion of this book), Einstein remained astutely anti-war throughout his life and was an early proponent of a United Nations (though his vision was of a much more powerful UN with a standing army to settle international disputes. This militant pacifism, unsurprisingly, would later get him in a degree of trouble with J. Edgar Hoover during the Red Scare that followed World War II, though absolutely nothing came of that nonsense.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book (for me) was Einstein's relationship with God and religion. I was surprised to note that a young Einstein (not Yahoo Serious... the real young Einstein) dabbled in devout Judaism before abandoning the notion of organized religion and ascribing to a more Spinoza-esque notion of the divine. I was always under the impression that Einstein was either atheist or, at the very least, non-practising. But it turns out that he was quite the spiritual fellow and loved to wax intellectual on the nature of the divine with anyone who would listen.

There is so much more to this book. Isaacson presents a complex man and his world from literally millions of pages of reference. Isaacson discusses his relationship with Germany, Charlie Chaplin, his two wives, his parents, Robert Oppenheimer, his involvement with women, communists, socialists, Caltech, Princeton, Switzerland and Marie Curie. There is dimly no end of the layers in which Isaacson peels away.

I could go on for hours about how Walter Isaacson reclaimed, re-constructed and humanized a figure that long ago was co-opted by though who scarcely understand him or his work. It is a testament to Isaacson's well-deserved reputation as a biographer that he obliterates the lies and half-truths that we have come to accept about Albert Einstein (He never failed math in school, he did finish high school and although he spoke later than most children, he never exhibited serious developmental problems). From the rubble of such obliteration, a comprehensive (and I would add definitive) biography of science's greatest mind has been created. If you think you can stand the science, it's worth the read!

An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World

By Kazuo Ishiguro

What I enjoy most about Kazuo Ishiguro novels is the manner in which he compels the reader to continue reading without much notion of what, exactly, they are reading. Last year, when I finally got around to reading Never Let Me Go, I was fascinated by the way in which he maintained interest without ever telling the reader what was going on. The first person narrative style assumes the reader is familiar with the world Ishiguro has created and thus it is up to the reader to piece much of the story together over the course of the novel. Certainly Ishiguro is not the first nor, by any means, the only author that maintains an element of mystery via exclusivity in his narrative, but he does it with such skill and grace I have been excited to read another of his novels ever since.

Ishiguro's 1986 novel An Artist of the Floating World (short-listed for the Booker Prize) is very similar to Never Let Me Go in structure and style, if not story. Set during the immediate post-war years in an unidentified city in Japan, the narrative focuses on an aging artist by the name of Ono who is struggling with his role as an artist during the war while trying to arrange a suitable marriage for his aging (she's... GASP! 26!) daughter. He worries that his past may have contributed to the failure of a past arranged marriage whose negotiations fell through for unknown reasons.

Much like Never Let Me Go, the entire novel is a joy to read on both a narrative and stylistic level. Ishiguro is a well-honed wordsmith. His sentences are pregnant with poignancy and wonderfully crafted works of art unto themselves. He writes sentences as silky smooth as the refined Japanese world of his story. I forget who said this, but an author once noted that a great work of fiction can be measured by opening a book to any page and reading that page (out of context) as a stand-alone piece of poetry. By such standards, Ishiguro is a genius.

But, in this novel at least, it is his dialogue that takes center stage. Ishiguro writes all the dialogue in a sort of refined, highly polished Japanese that leaves the reader wondering not what has been said, but rather what has been said while not being said. Young people let elders dictate the direction of the conversation, never contradict what his said and always downplay or deflect any praise given. The dialogue is worth the price of admission itself. Each dialogue is two, often three conversations at once and it's a joy to read between the lines and try to cut through to the core of what is being said.

Ono seems rather unsure of his ability to recall his past. He is often muddled about the order of events or the exact phrasing of something an old colleague might have said. This unreliability adds to the uncertainty of the narrative in that we cannot fully trust our protagonist, not because he may be lying but rather because he is simply fallible. It is therefore difficult for us to believe much of what he says and thinks about his own career. In this respect, Ono reminded me a lot of Barney Panofsky in Mordecai Richler's classic, Barney's Version... though with less lechery and more grace.

Ishiguro also explores the nature of art in society. He questions its importance (very important) and compares that to the importance of art through the eyes for the artist (inflated). As the story progresses we discover that Ono, despite what he has told us, is not the influential artist he seems to believe he is. While most certainly talented and well respected within a segment of the art world, he comes to realize that unlike politicians and businessmen, artists were never and would never be held accountable for the atrocities committed during the war, and for good reason. While artists did attempt to capture the over-arching emotions and ideas of a time, there is never a sense that the artist's neck is threading a noose via their work. Ono's sense of self-importance had lead him to believe that his art was something to be ashamed of and a serious detriment to his family's future when in fact very few people remember him at all. In time, Ono comes to terms with his marginality, an indication of his acceptance of the shift away from Imperial decadence that was occurring in post-war Japan.

In this respect, Ono represents the older Imperial generation while his daughters and grandson represent the newer, democratic generation unimpressed with the lavishness of their fathers. Throughout the novel Ono refers to something called the "floating world," a scene of opulence and self-aggrandizement throughout the 1920s and 30s that occupied the artistic world of Imperial Japan. In the wake of the war, there began a shift away from such a lifestyle toward simplicity. Due to this shift, there exists a latent tension (but in true Japanese style, no overt conflict) between generations as Ono cannot understand how Japan can change itself wholesale overnight from what it was to what it is. He insightfully muses that perhaps we are discarding the good with the bad and Japan shouldn't be so hasty to sidle up to the Americans.

This juxtaposition is best exemplified in the wonderful scenes between Ono and his eight-year-old grandson Ichiro. A fan of Popeye Sailorman (sic) and the Lone Ranger, the precocious (and mildly disrespectful) Ichiro is the very personification of the post-war Japanese infatuation with American life. He doesn't seem intimidated by his elders while Ono laments the fact that he is so very much out of touch with his grandson's world.

An Artist on the Floating World isn't covering new literary ground, but it is treading old ground with a fresh pair of geta. Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese by descent but raised in England, has attested to the fact that he knows very little about Japan and cannot be considered a Japanese writer,. Nevertheless, this novel is an interesting insight into a very interesting period in Japanese history and Ishiguro has done well to characterize the period and its uncertainties and insecurities. Whether or not the novel is historically accurate (I cannot say whether it is or not) he captures the emotions of the time in a bubble and packaged them with a deft hand for our consideration.

And, after all, isn't that what art is for?

Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895 - 1945

Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895 - 1945

By George Kerr

Apologies. There doesn't seem to exist a cover for this particular tome. You'll have to do with a map instead.

For anyone out there who is an not expert on (or even familiar with) the history of Taiwan and the far east, George Kerr is a rock star in the genre. Kerr is the author of the now legendary Formosa Betrayed and a giant in the field of Taiwanese history during Japanese occupation, the handover to KMT forces in 1945 and the subsequent invasion of KMT loyalists in 1949. In short, if you're into Taiwan, George Kerr is your man.

Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895-1945 is a definitive overview of Taiwan during its time as a Japanese colony. Kerr spends a lot of time setting up the geopolitical reasonings for the annexation and colonization of Taiwan by the Japanese and their attempts (albeit uneven) to assimilate the Taiwanese populace into the "greater Japanese empire."

Kerr divides the book neatly into decades beginning with a pleasant overview of Taiwan history before the Japanese occupation. He is careful to point out that never once in the years preceding Japanese control did China have control over the entire island nor where they especially concerned with governing it. In fact, when control of Taiwan was shifted from Imperial China to Japan following the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, it seemed as though China was glad to be rid of the burdensome island. To put it more bluntly, China's current claims on the island of Taiwan are an historical fabrication. China's control and interest in Taiwan before 1895 was cursory at best and more likely leaned toward indifferent.

As for Japan, they were keen to add a colony. Taiwan was an image boost for the emerging power and a global showcase, a way in which Japan could demonstrate their unique ability to govern and rule foreign a colony. They leapt into the mission in earnest, modernizing Taiwan and laying the essential infrastructure that would help the ruling Chiang family catapult Taiwan's economy into the stratosphere in the late 1970s.

However,ended up making many of the same mistakes their western counterparts made in other parts of the world, especially in their dealings with the Taiwanese aboriginal people. While governing the Chinese population was relatively smooth, especially in and around the new metropolis of Taipei, the resources that Japan so sorely coveted lay in the mountainous interior, the ancestral home of Taiwan's Atayal and Bunun populations, both of which would be a consistent thorn in the side of the Japanese occupiers from day one. Japan showed little deftness in dealing with these populations and relations with the tribes remained volatile and often violent (head-hunting remained a cultural mainstay among the aboriginals well into the 1930s, much to the dismay of Japanese policemen stationed in the mountains along the east coast). By the onset of the Sino-Japanese War in the mid 30s, Taiwan was still only nominally Japan-ized and the population's tolerance of the Japanese colonists had more to do with them not being Chinese. Japan was bad, but not as bad as China. In the end, Taiwanese just wanted to be left alone.

Kerr does a wonderful job of introducing the major players on the island during the occupation from hard line Governor General Kodama Gentaro, uber-builder Nitobe Inazo to the forward thinking Sakuma Samata whose lenient policies came closest to building a real and working relationship between crown and colony. Kerr paints the occupying Japanese as more nuanced and complicated than simply a trigger-happy whip-wielding force brow-beating a population on a whim. In fact, the political and social climate, especially during the early years of the Japanese occupation (read: Sakuma's time as Governor General) was such that a very health home rule movement was allowed to ferment and gain momentum.

Under the nominal leadership of Lin Hsien-Tang, a prevailing zeitgeist manifested among the small but influential sphere of Taiwanese intellectuals in Taipei and other major cities and while Taiwan only gained full representation in the Japanese Diet during the waning days of the Second World War, the Home Rule Movement did garner some very notable successes along the way, namely free and open elections (rigged by the Japanese, of course), a more lenient policy toward the aboriginals (after the Musha Rebellion) and the Kominika, a period of real social and political detente between Japan and Taiwan.

While the political and social history in this book is great, where this book really excels is its ability to paint a vivid picture of life on the island during the half-century of Japanese rule. Kerr takes the reader into the homes and schools of average Taiwanese. He depicts the lives of east coast aboriginals and middle class Taiwanese merchants. He discusses the differences between the Hakka and Hoklo populations and the one can practically small the salt in the air as he describes the vibrant trade between Taiwan's west coast than Fuchian province on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, something that a current native of Taiwan would never understand. Kerr really nails the mixed feelings among the Taiwanese in relation to their colonizers. On the one hand, the Japanese brought modernity to the island in a way that the Chinese could never have done, but on the other hand... they weren't Taiwanese.

For anyone remotely interested in the greater history of Asia in the 20th century, this book is essential reading. It lays all sorts of framework and back story to many of the current issues currently plaguing this part of the world and hints at the travesty that would occur after Japan relinquished the island following their surrender to American forces in 1945. It is a balanced overview of an often overlooked (both in Taiwan and the rest of the world) era in Asian history.

Good book.

Helmet For My Pillow

Helmet For My Pillow

By Robert Leckie

I'm going to cheat a little for this blog entry. My mother sent this book my way and left an interesting note inside the pages that seems to speak more about this book than any drivel I would have written. So instead of my usual bloviating, allow me to reprint my mother's note verbatim. It's way more interesting:

Fabulous book. I thought of (my) Dad and Uncle Bill throughout the entire read. Uncle Bill (Charles) died in 1975 in a road accident with his grandson. Uncle Bill married Aunt Lottie, a widow, and fell in love with her daughter (Irene P-----) and adopted her. You know Irene. Uncle Bill was fun loving and up for anything. I remember him as loving to play cards.

When the war started Dad got his mother to okay that he could join the Royal Navy (as the youngest son he needed his mother's okay). Uncle Bill and dad joined together and spent the war on all the same ships and subs.

Stories I remember:

Dad and Bill were invited to an elegant home in New York and both of them threw up all over the place as they were so drunk.

Bill finding Dad passed out drunk around a toilet in South Africa.

Bill and Dad on guard duty in San Francisco letting their shipmates back on board as they had left the ship unauthorized to party it up.

Bill so drunk on their return to the sub that he thought that the entrance to their sub was a pool and dove in. Dad says that was why he had a hearing problem.

This book was according to the stories I heard was as it really was.

Substitute the marines with the navy and I think Dad would have also agreed that it was a true account.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Love, Mom.

P.S. Dad always said the best looking women in the world are from Malta. I always wondered about that.

Did you know I was named after a British nurse when Dad was in the hospital in Britain. Also, he refused to meet the Queen when she was touring that hospital during the war.

My grandfather, Harrison Pelley, died in 2002 when I was 28 years old. While he was always a little reluctant to talk about the war, especially with my grandmother around, you could always get a few great stories out of him when he was alone. One of my greatest regrets in life is not taking the time to listen to more of his stories.

I miss my grandfather very much, but just a little more while reading this book.

Highly recommended.

Atonement

Atonement

By Ian McEwan

I broke a cardinal rule.

I'm a fairly disciplined individual who likes to live by a certain set of rules, most of them self-imposed (I have no idea why I seem to function better via self-discipline, but I do). I have self-imposed rules is virtually every facet of my life. It helps me stay organized. It helps me stay focused and it keeps me out of a lot of trouble I would otherwise find myself in (read: no alcohol on weekdays).

I have rules for reading. Some of them cardinal. One of my cardinal rules is that I must read every day. This is a rule I have not broken in over three years. Most days I read in the vicinity of 50-100 pages depending on how interesting the book is, font size and time. I also never leave a book unfinished, no matter how bad it is. Oddly enough, because of these rules I tend to read books quicker if they are bad. I can't set them aside or put them down, so I blast through trash as quickly as I do gems.

Another cardinal rule is that I never, ever read a book if I have already seen the movie. Like I wrote in a previous blog, I don't often go to movies, but I have seen a few along the way. I generally avoid novel adaptations figuring that I might one day like to read the book. Plus, I think that movies and novels should be mutually exclusive. Just cause a segment of the population doesn't want to take the time to read a story we should have to pander to them by making good books into sub-par movies.

But I digress.

I've seen Atonement. I can't for the life of me remember having seen it, but I have. I know I saw it because it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars a few years back and it was one of those years where I decided to watch all the nominees (before they went to ten nominees and I completely lost interest). I remember because that was the year of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two movies I actually liked a lot and I watched them back to back. A rarity.

Despite the fact that the novel was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2001, I wouldn't have even bothered to pick Atonement up if I weren't so desperate. But I've been reduced to Douglas Coupland and Crime and Punishment on my bookshelf, neither of which are all that enticing. Breaking a cardinal rule and reading Atonement seemed like a better alternative to either of my other options and I figured the book would give me some insight into the characters that appeared in the movie (once I remembered the plot).

Well, it didn't really matter. Even at the end of the book I could not recall a single scene from the movie and the plot was completely unfamiliar (I don't watch movies drunk and I'm not prone to blackouts, so I'm at a loss for how this happened). In a way, I lucked out. I got a first-time read out of Atonement, and it turns out that it's a pretty decent read... if a bit plodding.

The first half of the novel center around Briony, a foolish young girl who fancies herself a writer of fairy tales and has her head firmly entrenched in her own fantasy world Through a series of tragic misunderstandings and misinterpretations, Briony mistakenly vilifies her older sister's (Cecilia) lover (Robbie) for a crime he did not commit, sending him to prison and social disgrace.

the second half of the novel fast-forwards a few years into the early days of World War II and the evacuation of Dunkirk. Briony reappears as a slightly older, slightly less foolish girl who works in London as a nurse. Robbie has spent time in prison and Cecilia has broken all ties with her family over the false accusation. Over time, Briony has realized the severity of her deception and has developed an overwhelming desire to set things straight and clear Robbie's name. At this point it's best to stop. I will not spoil the end. The plot is thin but what McEwan lacks in events he more than makes up for in emotional and psychological deconstruction.

McEwan explores the depths of some pretty intense human emotions, especially love, hate, guilt, shame, redemption and, well, atonement. It offers a wonderful introspection on the relationship between truth and fiction, love and hate as well as war and peace. McEwan balances between these dichotomies with a deft hand. It's a book deserving of the accolades it has received and a tour de force for the author. a must read for anyone who enjoys books that explore the depths of human emotions and the complexities of familial relationships.

I was truly surprised by this book and glad I broke a rule to read it. I figured it was the sort of book that would instantly hate but it turns out it is a very readable book. Perhaps I should break more of my rules.

Recommended. (Just don't see the movie. It's entirely forgettable).

Every Man Dies Alone

Every Man Dies Alone

By Hans Fallada

"Would you rather live for an unjust cause than die for a just one?"

Every Man Dies Alone is Hans Fallada's extraordinary novel of crippling repression, resistance and the triumph of life in Germany under Nazi rule. It follows the compelling story of Otto and Anna Quangel, an aging couple whose only son has been unceremoniously killed in France early in the war. In response to their grief, they begin to write anti-Nazi postcards and drop them around Berlin. Although this is a work of fiction, this novel is based on the true story of Otto and elise Hampel who committed similar acts of civil disobedience and were executed in Plotzensee Prison. Italian chemist (and holocaust survivor) Primo Levi called Fallada's book: "The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis."

Concurrently, the novel follows the antics of several characters inside the Gestapo as try, fail, continue to fail and then ultimately succeed in solving the case. While the story of the Quangels and their circle of everyday Germans is interesting, I found the murderous and petty machinations of the Gestapo far more riveting, especially knowing that these monsters agents will eventually get their culprits and the fear that goes with not knowing exactly what they will do once they get them.

In discussing the Third Reich it is so easy to lose site of the fact that there existed a large population within Germany who actively plotted against the Party from distributing anti-Nazi leaflets to harboring their Jewish friends and neighbors.

Before I get to my more philosophical musings on this subject I should review this book a little. If you are looking for some light summer reading, pass this one by. I was glad that the weather remained gloomy and cold while I read this book, otherwise it would have really brought me down. Every Man Dies Alone is one of the bleakest books I have ever read. Along the lines of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and George Orwell's 1984, Every Man Dies Alone starts off bleak, remains bleak and ends on a sad note. However, along the way there are glimmers of hope and, like I mentioned before, the triumph of the human spirit.

To say that this book deals with some weighty issues is an understatement. To say that this book, first published in German in 1947 (not translated to English until 2009), has little value upon readers in 2011 is categorically false. I found that this book spoke to me in a way that many other books with similar themes have not. Through its bleak, hopeless tone, Hans Fallada speaks a message through the generations and, if anyone is listening, it could very well save us a repeat performance of these historical shenanigans.

When I started this book, I was caught up in a discussion over Facebook about the usefulness of conspiracy theories and whether or not their vocal and ofttimes obfuscating manner was not perhaps a detriment to a large cause of change and social justice. Whether a horde of people yelling often nonsensical theories perhaps clouded issues that might otherwise gain more tread in this world. I wasn't speaking against freedom of speech (I would never, ever do that), just the jumbling of messages that could be something more fluid, more tangible, more cohesive. Millions of voices screaming billions of theories seemed counter-productive against an establishment with one common, conservative and potentially dangerous voice.

After reading Fallada's novel and delving into the tyrannical fear of Nazi Germany, I think I may have changed my tone on this point. Shouting from the rafters is exactly the sort of thing we should all be doing, and often. Silence is equal to support. If you don't speak out when you have a chance, what will you do when you lose that chance? This is the sort of stuff we as citizens of this world are dealing with every hour of every day.

Got a problem with your leader? Do something about it. Dislike the environmental practices of a local industry? Make it known. Think someone in a position of power is lying to you? Call them on it. Sitting idly by and saying things like: "That's somebody else's problem" is exactly the sort of attitude that allowed for the emergence of the Nazi State in Germany and, given that Adolf Hitler is poised to exit from our collective consciousness in the next generation or so, this sort of rampant, oppressive power is very much ripe for a return. Question everything. We owe it to ourselves.

For Otto and Anna they began their revolution far too late but at least they had the guts to do something. Far better people did far less. They realized an inherent truth about their government at a time when doing even the smallest act against the state meant death not only for them but also for anyone associated with them. In a climate of crushing fear it's a wonder that people had the courage to do even as little as the Quangels. Far more simply kept quiet and hoped and waited for it all to end.

There is so much to gain from reading Every Man Dies Alone. This should be required reading for any student of critical thinking.

Silence can be violence.

The Cider House Rules

The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

An open letter to John Irving:

Dear John,

Please excuse my sudden interuption of your highly successful career. I realize that an author of your caliber has very little time to answer open letters addressed to himself on random blogs scattered about the internet but if I could just ask you to put down that enormous bucket of money for a second and hear me out, I think it would do you and your readers a little good.

It's odd that I feel a little like your character Wilbur Larch who, in his ever-so-gradual descent into an ether-fuelled senility begins writing to President Roosevelt (and later Truman and Eisenhower) to plead his case for the legalization of abortion. Perhaps I should have begun this letter: Dear Mamie.

Ha ha. Just a joke, John. Just a joke. I'm not senile.

Not yet.

First, I must confess that I have not read a lot of your books. This is not entirely my fault, as you might not know. I don't often come across your novels in Taiwan (you should talk to your agent and publishers about that, by the way). But I did read A Prayer For Owen Meany way back in high school and recall enjoying it quite a bit.... High school, John. That was over 20 years ago. Jeez, we're getting old, huh?

I remember that Owen Meany freaked me out. Not the book, but the character. Can't remember why, though. I have forgotten most of that book.

Anyway, I just now got through your 600 page opus, The Cider House Rules. I want you to know, John, that I didn't enjoy this book and I want to tell you why: I can see by the clothes on your back and the bushel-full of currency you have at your feet that you must be doing something right. You don't spend your days unloading stacks of Benjamins if you're doing it wrong and who am I to sit here hunched over my keyboard in the early hours of an Asian morning to tell you otherwise?

(Benjamin is apparently a slang term for an American one hundred dollar bill, John. I just looked it up, Kids, these days, huh?)

Well, since you are still reading, I can only expect you want to know. It occured to me while reading The Cider House Rules that you have trouble commencing a book. It's lucky for you that I'm not the sort of person that puts a book down, John. It took me over 250 pages of random nonesense to get even a feel of where you were going. The story meandered around with no apparent sense of direction or purpose. It got so bad that I expected you to wax intellectual about a crowd of golden daffodils at one point.

Oh, it's not like I demand predictability from a novel. If you continue down this blog, you will see that I quite enjoyed the entirely unpredictable work of Kazuo Ishiguro and who doesn't like a good Kurt Vonnegut novel, hey John? Anyway, I certainly don't want to know the plot before it happens but I do want a book to catch my imagination before I am a full third into the reading. And since you're such a verbose and pleonastic fellow who often write books in excess of 500 pages, a third of a book is a hell of an investment to make just to get interested. It makde me wonder: Did you know where this book was going when you started it? Hell, there wasn't even a damned cider house until 300 pages in!

Wait, wait! I know you are checking your watch. I know you are thinking: I've sold millions of books, many of which have been made into movies that star Michael Caine and John Lithgow, why should I listen to the critique of one guy, living in the outskirts of nowhere, writing a blog read by the bare minimum of his friends and suffering from attention deficeit disorder.

Well, you shouldn't.

But, if it's all the same to you, I still felt it necessary to let you know, personally, why I didn't enjoy your novel (or, more precisely, why it took me 250 pages to develop even the slightest interest in the development of your characters, setting and plot). That's the sort of thing that makes me not want to read your other work, which will very marginally affect your vast and more-than-adequate income which, in turn, should be infintisimally disconcerting to you.

Sincerely,

Your Almost Fan

Ryan