Book Review: Coin Locker Babies

From Goodreads: A surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today. 
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile. 
Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan.

Thoughts: This was our July book group read and I found it hard going. So hard I actually put it down because I was not going to the meeting so didn't feel a pressing need to finish it. Then the meeting got postponed,  as did the next one and we finally decided we would have a long lunch meeting and discuss all three books. So I picked it up again and while I won't say I found it easy reading, I did hit my stride with it.

Coin Locker Babies is just one of those books you have to go with the flow with. There's not much point trying to delve to deep, just be carried by the current and grab the snatches you can in the hope it will come together finally. And it did, sort of. I'm sure I missed stuff, but I got the general feeling of the book. Basically being dumped in a coin locker and then bought up in and orphanage and foster family really, really messes with you head. It's incredibly obvious that Kiku and Hashi are damaged. Their ways of dealing with that damage are vastly different, but their loyalty to each other as brothers, while twisted, is as strong as any siblings. A very strange read.

Coin Locker Babies gets 2 stars

*        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it

*****   It was amazing 

Book Review: Norwegian Wood

From Goodreads: Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.  Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.  As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.

Thoughts:  I read this as part of my 100 Best Books List challenge for the love category.
I was vaguely aware of this before I read it. One of those things where you know it's been made into a movie, you know it's been raved about, but you don't actually have any idea what it's about. With this huge sum of knowledge, I entered the world of Toru Watanabe, student, survivor of his friend's suicide, searcher of...who knows. Watanabe comes across to me as I imagine many people are at 18/19 - not really sure what they want and just killing time until it becomes obvious. His friendship of Naoko is a tortured exploration of first love, complicated by her mental illness. Add into this mix Toru's friendship with the rebellious Midori and you have a story that takes many twists and turns and leaves the reader feeling just as confused and unsure as any one was at this stage of their life.
It's hard to judge Murakami's writing as this is a translation. In reality you are judging the ability of the translator to convey the original meaning. If it's any reflection of Murakami's writing, it's lyrical and moving. Reviews and other information I've read suggests this is the most straight forward of Murakami's books which makes me wary of reading anything else he's written.
Norwegian Wood is a unique love story. I'm not sure you could call it beautiful, although I found the prose to be so. If Murakami's other writing is more "out there" than this I think I will steer clear. I find translated books often lose something in the translation and I feel a story not so straight forward could lose much of it's impact.

Book Review - The Elephant Keepers' Children

From Goodreads: Peter and Tilte are trying to track down two notorious criminals: their parents. They are the pastor and the organist, respectively, of the only church on the tiny island of Finø. Known for fabricating cheap miracles to strengthen their congregation's faith, they have been in trouble before. But this time their children suspect they are up to mischief on a far greater scale.
When Peter and Tilte learn that scientific and religious leaders from around the world are assembling in Copenhagen for a conference, they know their parents are up to something. Peter and Tilte's quest to find them exposes conspiracies, terrorist plots, an angry bishop, a deranged headmaster, two love-struck police officers, a deluded aristocrat and much more along the way.

Thoughts: This is one of those books where I feel I should have got more out of it than I did. That's not say I didn't enjoy it, I'm just not sure what it was all about.
The elephants referred to in the title are not literal elephants, instead they are elephants that some of us carry inside, the things that elephant keepers have inside them that is much bigger than themselves and over which they have no control.
Peter and Tilte are concerned that their parents elephants have lead them to do something dangerous and desperate. Rather than trust the authorities to find out what is going on, Peter and Tilte set off on a fantastical, at times dangerous, at others funny journey to find out what is going on.
Peter is the narrator. As a fourteen year old boy he had some pretty incredible insights. His sister, Tilte who (I think) is sixteen has the most amazing effect on people, being able to get them to do what she wants. Personally I found her a tad annoying.  
The whole story is slightly (very) unbelievable. Events happen that make you question their authenticity and whether or not what is happening is real or simply the product of Peter's very active imagination. He himself is a very intense and resourceful character, lending an air of boys-own-adventure to it. The prose became a bit wearing after awhile, with constant promises of explanations later and things heading off of seeming-less pointless tangents. In the end most of it comes together, but  in all truth by then I just wanted it to be over. 

 

The Night Watch

Title: The Night Watch
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
Series: The Night Watch Trilogy - Book 1
Genre: Fiction
Audience: Adult
Format: Personal copy

From Goodreads: Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are the Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy parallel world existing in parallel to our own, each Other owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light. The "Night Watch," first book in the "Night Watch" trilogy, follows Anton, a young Other owing allegiance to the Light. As a Night Watch agent he must patrol the streets and metro of the city, protecting ordinary people from the vampires and magicians of the Dark. When he comes across Svetlana, a young woman under a powerful curse, and saves an unfledged Other, Egor, from vampires, he becomes involved in events that threaten the uneasy truce, and the whole city...

What I thought:  This was the only thing available to me when my Kindle died during our camping trip. I was devastated! Thankfully my husband had brought along a paper based series.
This series sounded intriguing - walking among humans are The Others. Some are Light (good), some are Dark (evil). There is a treaty between the two groups and the Night Watch monitors the Dark Others to ensure they stick to it.
This series is translated from Russian and unfortunately I think it loses something in that translation. Basically if I'd had any other option, I wouldn't have gone onto the second. However, it was all that was available so I went with it. 

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