Some Book Reviews

Reading week came to a close recently here at the university. To honour the reading bit, here are some reviews of the books I’ve been taking in. They’ve all been very strong so I won’t bother scoring them or anything, they’re recommended.

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Human Acts by Han Kang

Recent literary fiction is new to me, but if this is the level of inventiveness we’re at, then the novel is in a healthy place as an artform (reaffirmed by the next book as well). It’s like a tasting menu of form, all in service of evoking strong feelings in the reader. The opening four chapters especially, which range from heartbreaking first-person to strikingly accusatory second-person, are some of the stickiest I’ve read. Parts of the overall feeling I’d compare to The Road—know that there are a number of sickening passages too, as in that book. In both cases, you’re being guided by a preternatural stylist. I’m looking forward to reading more by Kang.

Movie pairings: The Florida Project by Sean Baker and Lessons of Darkness by Werner Herzog

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The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Halfway through reading this I pitched it to Tristan as elite three-dimensional minds having to tackle a four-dimensional problem… and then that metaphor quickly became a key part of the story. On Substack this is a book that’s been adulated to death, but for good reason. It’s essential reading as we potentially enter the hinge of history and face the prospect of bringing alien intelligence to our world. How many people will take Elon Musk’s position and side with the AIs over humanity? Will world governments play nicely together? What will be the next paradigm breakthrough in basic research? The book is all head and minimal heart, but the head is good.

Movie pairing: Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog

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The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

I love Stevens. He is perhaps my favourite protagonist in any novel and a big part of that is because he’s the most charming narrator and his voice is feeding us every page of this story. If this were narrated third-personally like Don Quixote, it would be a farce: ‘Look at this collaborationist butler, look how he’s thrown everything important away to shine silver real good!’ But the novel is the artform of true empathy, a portal into other minds, and this is a better portal than most. Throughout you cannot help but marvel at the achievement that is his professional life, even while you puzzle over what it amounted to, and mourn for his voids.

Regarding the film adaptation—Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton is great casting, but it’s a shame how little of the effect of the book you get out of it.

Movie pairings: The Green Ray by Éric Rohmer and Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

If you enjoy Shakespeare as a feast of language, then this is naturally self-recommending. Just from the first couple chapters, when our narrator is first encountering the demon Heathcliff:

‘Wretched inmate!’ I ejaculated mentally, ‘you deserve perpetual isolation from your species for your churlish inhospitality.’

…then, hatless and trembling with wrath, I ordered the miscreants to let me out—on their peril to keep me one minute longer—with several incoherent threats of retaliation that, in their indefinite depth of virulency, smacked of King Lear.

There’s a raw animality to the two personalities in the centre of the story, especially Cathy, that is at turns frightening, exciting, and exhausting to read about. I was initially powering through it quite quickly, but I’m coming to see it might be better experienced over a handful of weeks.

Movie pairing: The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers

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Selections from Petrarch

As grandiose and out-of-proportion as he can sometimes be, Petrarch is a master of phrasing feelings in these deliciously dramatic ways. I’ve found him to be a weird form of comfort poetry for a couple years now. I’ll just offer some excerpts:

17
A bitter rain of tears pours down my face
blowing with a wind of anguished sighs
whenever my eyes turn to look at you
for whom, alone, I am divided from mankind.

It is true that your sweet and soothing smile
does calm the ardour of all my desires
and rescues me from burning martyrdom
as long as I keep my gaze fixed in you;

but then my spirits suddenly turn cold
when I see, as you leave, those fated stars
turning their gentle motion from my sight.

Let loose, at last, by those two amorous keys,
the soul deserts the heart to follow you,
and deep in thought from you it is uprooted.

159
How did a heart collect so many virtues
the sum of which is my death?

134
One keeps me jailed who neither locks nor opens,
nor keeps me for her own nor frees the noose;
Love does not kill, nor does he loose my chains;
he wants me lifeless but won't loosen me.

35
Alone and deep in thought I measure out
the most deserted fields, with slow, dark steps,
with eyes intent to flee whatever sign 
of human footprint left within the sand.

I find no other shield for my protection
against the knowing glances of mankind,
for in my bearing all bereft of joy
one sees from outside how I burn within.

128
      You, in whose hands Fortune has placed the reins
of these beautiful regions
for which it seems no pity moves your heart, 
what are the swords of strangers doing here?
In order that the verdant plain
be painted red with that barbaric blood?
      Flattered by futile error,
little you see, thinking you see so much, 
for you seek love and trust in venal hearts—
he with more followers
is more surrounded by his enemies.
O deluge that was gathered
from what strange wilderness
to inundate all our sweet countryside!
If by our very hands
this has been done, then who will rescue us?
      Nature provided well for our condition
when she raised up the screen 
of Alps between us and the German rage;
but blind desire fighting its own good
then managed to contrive
a way to make this healthy body sick.

Movie pairings: Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino and Casablanca by Michael Curtiz