The Decay of the Angel (The Sea of Fertility)
by Yukio Mishima
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Read in October, 2007
Decay of the Angel is the stunning final to the Sea of Fertility series. Honda seeks to save yet another reincarnation from death at 20 years. He hopes to achieve this by turning him into a cynic deprived of beauty, since that's what he figures drove the others to their doom. The boy he adopts is a hyper intelligent, manipulative jerk, who may or may not have been born too early to actually be the reincarnation.
What's great in this series of novels, is that it's not only the story itself th...more
What's great in this series of novels, is that it's not only the story itself th...more
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Stunning ending to a stunning series. Whenever I try to explain what actually happens in this book, it sounds lame, but after 900 pages or whatever Mishima gets you to let your ironic guard down about Buddhist philosophy/reincarnation/etc. The back cover compares it to Proust, which I'm sure is right, but in a way it's more compelling because the whole tetralogy is tied to a metaphysic according to which the recurrence of memory is something real and something religious instead of just something...more
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The darkest, emotionally sickest book I've ever read. There's not a happy thing about it, but not in the self-flattering tortured artist way, this is true true misery, and the author gutted himself with a long knife only hours after finishing this, the last volume of his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility.
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This is a haunting conclusion to the tetralogy that could not have ended more perfectly. Just like Honda, we are finally betrayed by reason and thus by our own beliefs. This final message is so prescient, so apt to present day that it's actually sad.
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Read in June, 2006
I guess this is my favorite Mishima book. It may also be the most pessimistic, which isn't too hard to believe, given that he went on to commit seppuku after finishing it.
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Read in December, 2007
a shockingly pure portrait of evil. nasty, enthralling, religious, wary, naked, clean, somehow inevitable. by far the most direct and boldly modern of mishima's tetralogy.
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Read in May, 2005
recommends it for:
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I was attached to the first and second books however at the end of this book I found a bit too political. Much like Mishimas trials in his last few days.
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Read in December, 1997
I was perhaps too young to understand this when I read it, although it still left a strong impression on me, another one I want to re-read.
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This has to be one of the top ten (maybe top five) books I've ever read. You have to read the rest of the Sea of Fertility first, though.
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