50 Books // The Bell Jar // # 4

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was written in the first person and it couldn't have been written in any other way. The immediacy  and urgency of the words allows the readers to feel exactly what she is feeling. Most books allows its readers to sympathise and relate to the characters they describe but this managed to make you feel like you are the character. So when she was descending into madness you felt like your mind was slowly eroding as well. When she doesn't sleep you suddenly felt lethargic. This is a dangerous book to read but it is well worth that risk.


The very first sentence mentions the Rosenbergs, a couple sentenced to death by electric chair for passing on sensitive information to the Soviets. It sets the scene perfectly. Historically, it reminded readers of the post-war ennui, the paranoia, the simmering panic brought upon a looming nuclear war. The image of the electric chair foreshadows the shock treatments Esther, the protagonist, undergoes. The execution, an untimely death, seems fitting for the story of a woman faced with the recourse of self-execution. 


The writing is what you would expect from a poet. Heavy use of imagery and emotive language but there is a plainness and frankness to it that made the prose complex without being overly rich. Plath's voice is strong and unique. I have not come across a narrator or a character like her but one thing that caught me by surprise was the humour she managed to inject into it. At times she was incredibly witty and darkly funny. Her sense of humour added another layer to her character I was not expecting and fortunately it did not disrupt the heavy, dire tone of the novel.


This is a hard book to recommend but it's one of those books everyone should read at least once in their life.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Top image was edited by me. Bottom image is owned by me.

50 Books // The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle // # 2

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami's masterpiece (I seem to always say this about every Murakami I read) is about a young married man named Toru. Toru loses a number of things. First his cat, then his wife and then slowly his sense of reality. In search of these things he encounters characters both bizarre and amusing ranging from war veterans, a politician, an introspective sixteen-year-old girl and even mind prostitutes. Yes, prostitutes who pleasure you in your dreams. 

To describe the plot of the novel is near impossible. At more than 600 pages this is an epic that crosses various time periods, various character viewpoints while managing to weave in and out (and sometimes in between) the real and the imagined. It sounds confusing and complex but it's actually deceptively simple. The way Murakami writes allows the surreal nature of the narrative as well as the layered plot to be as digestible as a children's fairytale. There are so many things going on but somehow Murakami never leaves you behind. This is probably because he never embellishes his sentences more than he needs to. At one point there is even a story within a story within another story. As one character tells Toru one of her stories Toru observes:

"Without explanation, she would

reverse chronological order or suddenly

introduces as a major character

someone she had never mentioned 

to me before...

She would narrate events she had

witnessed with her own eyes, as 

well as events that she had never

witnessed."

 Upon reading this I realised Murakami was describing how he tells his own stories.

I would read this before I go to bed and I remember how strange my own dreams end up becoming. It was as if Murakami's prose somehow rearranged my brain to allow it to gaze at the world in a distorted, convoluted and even a perverse kind of way.

I tend to read fast and usually whizz through books but this one made me slow down and cherish every sentence, every moment and every chapter. I gave it time and it deserved it without question.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Image was edited by me from this original image.

50 Books // Bonjour Tristesse // #1

Hurray for the first book I completed for the 2012 Fifty Books Challenge! It wasn't that difficult since Bonjour Tristesse is only over a hundred pages long.

I'm thankful that it was very brief because I found the main character, Cecile, extremely irritating, selfish and arrogant. If I wanted to witness the lives of privileged people living colourless lives then I would have turned on an episode of a Kardashian TV show.

This was written by an eighteen-year old about a seventeen-year old and you can pretty much sniff out the teenage angst and boredom right from the very first page.

Although she does provide small glimpses of introspection and an occasional acute observance of a character's behaviour, most of the time her words aren't very penetrating and lacks a bit of depth.

This was set in the South of France, arguably the country's most glamourous area, during the most elegant of all decades but Sagan never really took me there. Again, I had brief glimpses of it but the language is so restrained I felt like I was witnessing the story with a cloak thrown over me. I was reading a Murakami and Bronte novel at the same time I was reading this and every lacklustre sentence I read in Bonjour Tristesse made me long for the rich, vibrant and complex storytelling from those accomplished writers.

However, I don't really regret reading this. It was a quick and easy read and I actually had fun mocking and despising the characters in the novel.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Images are owned by me and cannot be reused without permission or crediting the original source.

Gross Und Klein // Sydney Theatre Company

The painful, awkward and ill-at-ease experiences of an outsider is perfectly and delicately realised in the Sydney Theatre Company's final main stage play Gross Und Klein. Lotte, played by Cate Blanchett is an outsider in every respect - social, societal and even self. She is gauche, bizarre and suspiciously wacko. But she is also terrifically funny, simple and inspires so much empathy that I found myself wondering and worrying about the present state of this fictional character.

"I wonder how she is now", I thought after leaving the theatre. I haven't had this kind of a reaction since seeing Fellini's Nights of Cabiria the very first time. In fact, the final scenes from that film and the final scene from this play struck a similar chord. With Cabiria's final glance into the camera and Lotte's final lines and her walking back into the blackness of the world, they both let us know that circumstances may not be ideal but they are going to be just fine.

Both characters stand on the fringes of society and Lotte even more so but she never lets that get in the way of her unyielding desire to connect with other human beings. This connection is something we all crave for even if it is only brief and shared with a complete stranger but rarely do we act on it unless it is accidental. Lotte on the other hand is very deliberate in her interactions, nothing is accidental and sometimes it even feels like she's trespassing over a tenuous social boundary. From the very first scene we feel we are an accomplice to an intruder. She eavesdrops over a conversation of two "philosophers" and even physically trespasses into a couple's bedroom. This trespassing persists throughout the play but the people Lotte disturbs become more and more unwelcoming. 


This is a sad story but comedic moments punctuates the play and the laughs are sometimes uncomfortable and even feel unsure. It's funny to see a grown woman dance awkwardly across the stage wearing a shimmery, gold dress but then it feels a tad sad as well. Like a stand up comedian going through divorce and cracking jokes about married life.


One of the strengths of the play comes from its thoughtful visual design. Alice Babidge's costumes are timeless and does not indicate a particular time or place. This could be set in any decade. It could be set in Germany or Australia, it doesn't really matter. The costumes serve a universal purpose that smartly takes the attention away from itself. Costuming is a language that can sometimes speak too loud or too weakly. Thankfully, Babidge finds the right balance. Although there is one costuming choice that feels out of place. Not Blanchett's gold dress but Sophie Ross' tube dress that barely covers her and makes her look like she came in from a night out at King's Cross. To be fair though, that's exactly what the character was supposed to be.


Johannes Schutz' set design is clever, functional and bold without overpowering the actors. There's a white beam going across the stage that serves several purposes throughout the play from waiting room seats to a faux catwalk. The clean geometry of furniture, props and their placement on the stage reflect a modernist feel. The sets are reduced of unnecessary clutter and details. It feels so restrained and empty that it's as if the space is visualising the cruel, cold commands of modern living.


Lotte is shoved around this cruel environment and though it feels empty she seems to inhabit the space as humbly and as pleasantly as she can make it.

Directed by Benedict Andrews from the Botho Strauss play and translated by Martin Crimp.

Images are edited from these original sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Norwegian Wood and marginalia

Reading as a little boy I always wondered why there were blank pages at the end of books. Wikipedia offers us a technical explanation. Those blank pages are a result from the convention of printing books in large sheets of paper and therefore sometimes one or several pages are left intentionally devoid of content at the end. 

When I was ten years old however, I concluded that those pages were meant to be written on for the reader. Sometimes I would write alternate endings for books. For someone like me who was left utterly depressed by the endings of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, I found joy in writing a happier conclusion for the Baudelaire triplets. 

Or I would play pretend-critic and wrote what I thought about the book or noted down chapters and pages that I know I would want to revisit later on. 

Now I've moved away from writing solely on the end pages and now habitually write on the margins of all pages in the book, underlining quotes, writing of-the-moment reactions (usually immature) or just thoughts inspired by the writing. 

It made reading an active experience which is an essential part of this pastime. This is important especially for younger generations who are used to media acting as interactive spaces for them. 

I found this act particularly useful when I read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. A deeply saddening story about damaged, fragile minds. I found myself angered, depressed, amused and frustrated and writing about my thoughts was completely liberating. His writings are so beautiful that so many passages bore the underlines signifying their amazingness.  Murakami writes in a way that even the descriptions of the most banal object, character or setting can instigate a cleansing weeping session in one's room. It's like his words are stained with melancholy.

He is also quite blunt. He declares a character's death as if he was proclaiming the day's weather. The first sentence of the last chapter was written so plainly I had to re-read it several times to grasp what it actually meant despite its simple statement. A combination of shock and mournfulness swallowed me and I had to close the book to give me time to breathe. It was the first sentence of that chapter.

The characters are colourful, dark or just plain bizarre and they go in and out like ghosts. Once you start reading about one you end up forgetting about the others until you are jolted back to them.

Murakami is also a master of time. The narrative would weave the past, the present and the near future so seamlessly. It feels tightly constructed without being too antiseptic. 

If you have ever been interested in human beings and their minds and feelings, then please don't neglect reading this. 

All images are owned by me and cannot be reused without permission or crediting the original source.