Tokyo Redux

I waited 12 years for David Peace to write the final installment in his Tokyo Trilogy, plus an extra year for it to come out in paperback, and somehow another year after buying it to actually read it. Sometimes anticipation makes me wary. I loved Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City. Peace’s writing in this trilogy draws from the style of Japanese authors, particularly Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. It’s a dark and unsettling series, meticulously researched so that his fiction feels like it fills the gaps in the historical record with truth.

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10 Books of Summer 2023

Cathy at 746books.com announced the annual 20 Books of Summer reading challenge a few days ago and I’ve been giving some thought to what I might read from the 60 books I’m trying to knock off my To Read pile this year.

A Very Normal Man

A Very Normal Man, the first book by Vincenzo Cerami, who is better known to me as the screenwriter for Roberto Benigni’s film Life Is Beautiful, follows the dark turn that civil servant Giovanni Vivaldi’s life takes when he seeks revenge on an enemy. The English title is a dull approximation of the Italian Un Borghese Piccolo Piccolo – a very small, very middle class man.

Keeper

Keeper is the debut novel by Jessica Moor, published in 2020. It tells the story of Katie Straw, who works in a women’s refuge, and flicks between time periods labelled Then and Now. The plot explores violence against women and girls. Moor herself has worked in the violence against women and girls sector. Her experiences inform her narrative.

Goldilocks

An interstellar event that happened 30 years in the past is at the centre of Laura Lam’s Goldilocks. The novel begins with one of the people who was involved in the event and its consequences finally deciding to break her silence.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Notes On A Scandal to Ladies in Lavender

October has begun with a Saturday, which means yesterday was Six Degrees of Separation in the literary blogosphere. The Six Degrees meme is hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite And Best and you can find the rules here.

This month, the starting book is Notes On A Scandal. I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen the film.

Under the Skin

Under the Skin is Michel Faber’s debut novel. I borrowed it from a friend after watching the film of the same title, directed by Jonathan Glazer and starring Scarlett Johansson. I’m glad that I read the book after the film, because there is only a loose connection between the two. I love the film, but I wonder whether I would feel the same if I’d read the book first and seen the film as an adaptation of the book.

The Box Man

Kōbō Abe is a writer I struggled with when I read his most famous book, The Woman in the Dunes. His dreamlike, psychological horror bent my brain. The Box Man promised a similar trip, as it follows a man who chooses to live inside a cardboard box, rejecting the normality of his previous existence in favour of the tenuous reality contained within his mind.

I’ve had the book on my To Read pile for almost 5 years, so I decided to add it to my 10 Books of Summer reading list. It turns out that its claustrophobic setting fitted well with the unusually oppressive sweltering heat of July in the UK.

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is a new kind of crime novel for me, from a Japanese genre called ‘honkaku’. The story is split between a series of murders that took place in 1936 and the attempts of two young men in 1979 to solve the mystery when a new piece of evidence comes into their possession.

Six Degrees of Separation: From True History of the Kelly Gang to The Talented Mr Ripley

The first Saturday in May is upon us, and here comes Six Degrees of Separation, the book meme hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

This month, to start us off, Kate has chosen a book that I haven’t read yet by a favourite author of mine.