Alice Poon's Blog, page 12

Book Review - The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



As Oscar Wilde once said, there’s nothing sane about the worship of beauty. For me, the saying certainly rings true for this ethereally beautiful novel. My passion may be irrational and even skewed, given that I am an ethnic Chinese with a penchant for oriental art, especially for Japanese gardens, but that doesn’t make it any less of a passion.

In this poetic drama, two seemingly unrelated elements – brutal sufferings in war and the Japanese ancient art of gardening and tattooing – are masterfully juxtaposed and coalesced into a seamless narrative with themes of hatred, loss, redemption, friendship, love and war-born stigmas. Set in the misty and unfathomable depths of the Cameron Highlands during and after World War II, the novel explores the philosophical blending of polar extremes in life, like in the Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang, while galloping along twists and turns of the storyline. This blending is vividly present throughout the novel. Deep hatred is eventually turned into undying love; the mind oscillates between memory and oblivion; physical pain becomes an addictive pleasure; real garden scenery is designed to create an illusion for the viewer.

Having visited many temple and private gardens while on a visit to Kyoto in the mid-80s (I was lucky to have been invited to visit the Nomura Villa there, which was breath-taking), I’ve always been bewitched with how the Japanese garden design can evoke a soulful mood in viewers. Now that I’ve read this novel, I understand a little more about the concept behind the design.

The plotline glides along in velvety prose, often stoking picturesque imagination in the reader. This is a passage that I particularly like:-

“Think of the seasons as pieces of the finest, most translucent silk of different colors. Individually, they are beautiful, but lay one on top of another, even if just along their edges, and something special is created. That narrow strip of time when the start of one season overlaps the end of another is like that.”

In the back matter under “Author’s Commentary”, the author likens the art of Japanese gardening to that of creative writing. He thinks that both arts require artifice and lies, and that for a novel, or a garden, to succeed, the lie has to convince, to beguile. I must say that the novel has deluded and charmed me.





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Book Review - 2015 on Goodreads

2015 on Goodreads by Various




In 2015 I read 4 non-fiction books and 18 novels - a total of 22 books, which is not bad considering I was engaged full-time on a writing project for the first half of the year!

Of the non-fiction category, my favorite would be Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, with Marie Antoinette: The Journey trailing right behind.

Of the 18 novels that I read, these found their way to my heart (not in any order):-

Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
A Woman's Life and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Odyssey by Homer
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
Wolf Of The Plains by Conn Iggulden









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Book Review - Marie Antoinette: The Journey

Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was my second Antonia Fraser book, the first being The Wives of Henry VIII. Thorough research and minute attention to details is the clear mark of both. Personally I found the writing of Marie Antoinette: The Journey to be more lucid and less confusing.

Perhaps this passage in the Epilogue best sums up the book:-

“A scapegoat was in fact what Marie Antoinette became. Among other things, she would be blamed for the whole French Revolution, by those who optimistically looked to one “guilty” individual as a way of explaining the complex horrors of the past.”

I am inclined to think that Marie Antoinette probably had a lethal fault in her stars that put her in the wrong place at the wrong time. Be that as it might, she, and for that matter, the French aristocrats, could have used more common sense and curbed her/their appetite for pleasure-seeking and extravagance at a time when most French commoners were seen to be poverty-stricken. These vested interests were simply blind to the public’s seething disgust for their hereditary privileges (like exemption from taxes, among other things). Added to this apparent obtuseness on the part of the royalty was the rapaciousness of France’s monarchic neighbors (including Austria, the Queen’s homeland), who had been prowling on her borders and waiting for her domestic troubles to explode in her face. It would not be surprising, under these circumstances, to see the “Austrian woman” (as Marie Antoinette came to be called) becoming the receptacle of the French people’s full wrath, through the vicious manipulation of public opinion by power-hungry demagogues.

This biographical work on whom one might term as “the most slandered French Queen in the history of France” also reminds one of how deadly calumnious propaganda can turn out to be. Wicked lies, if repeated often enough, can very easily become verity in the minds of the less enlightened. It also brings to mind how little we’ve advanced in terms of achieving social equality and fairness since those revolutionary days.





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Lana's 5-star Text Review of "Fated and Fateless"

Here's the link to the latest 5-star text review of Fated and Fateless by Lana:-

Lana's Review of Fated and Fateless

Book Review - A Place of Greater Safety

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I was reading this epic novel non-stop for the last seven days and, with a sigh of relief, I finally reached the end yesterday. While mulling on how to write this review, an immediate thought that came to mind was that the novel could’ve been tightened and slimmed down by a fifth to a quarter. I’m giving it a rating of 3.7 stars out of 5.

On the whole, it is a rigorously researched work of historical fiction describing in minute details the emotional, sexual and political lives of the three leading actors who played pivotal roles in the French Revolution (Maximilien Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins and Georges-Jacques Danton) and who were surrounded by a myriad cast of secondary characters; and the entangled and mind-boggling relations and interactions, sexual or political or otherwise, between the one and the other.

In terms of crafting a spell-binding historical novel, Ms. Mantel is a talented storyteller who knows how to titillate her readers. I was particularly impressed with the last third of the book, where the irony of bad-outcome-from-good-intentions helps to build up hair-raising tension. Having said that, I still came away with a tinge of disappointment that the author chose to bypass the chance to examine some salient issues from the viewpoint of ordinary French folks (for example, the underlying reasons as to why they thought there was no better alternative than to resort to bloody violence; how the epochal ideological shift affected the average Parisian on the streets and what his/her reactions to that shift were).

Set in one of the bloodiest and most tumultuous periods in French history, the novel no doubt gives a kaleidoscopic view of important historic events and personages. But the fictional elements of the novel tend to dwell interminably on Danton’s sexual and material voracity, Desmoulins’ bisexual perverseness and Robespierre’s frenzied self-abnegation. Couldn’t they have been simply hot-headed, starry-eyed young idealists who started out thinking it was their ineluctable duty to reform a rotten system in their beloved country, but ended up being sucked into the vortex of power addiction, which ultimately destroyed lives unnecessarily, including their own? If Robespierre’s ascetic traits were still credible, the salacity attributed to Danton and Desmoulins just seems to me to be a bit forced.

All in all, this made for good complementary reading alongside Thomas Carlyle’s non-fiction title The French Revolution: A History, which I commenced reading before starting on Mantel’s novel. With these two books, I’m learning a lot about this cataclysmic phase in French history.




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Book Review - The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



About a decade or so ago I had seen on TV for the first time the 1993 film adaptation of this novel that starred Michele Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis. It had made a deep impression on me, especially the performance of supporting actress Wynona Ryder, who played May Welland. After that I saw TV repeats of it a few more times, which left me ever more bewitched. Last week, I finally came round to reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The power of Wharton’s beautiful prose, along with the pathos of a tragic-ending love story plotline, made it a sublime reading experience.

What the author brings into the novel, set in 19th century New York, is much more than pathos of forbidden love. Her clear-eyed insight into the hypocrisy and pretentiousness of high-society New York in what was called the “Gilded Age”, which insight her upper-class up-bringing had chanced to cultivate, gave that much more emotive profundity and even raison d’etre to the storyline.

During the reading, I had that nagging feeling that the author seems to treat the devious and cold-hearted May Welland and her lot with too much leniency. Then I found out from Wikipedia that Wharton meant for The Age of Innocence to be an “apology” for her earlier novel The House of Mirth, which had been much more critical and brutal about the same theme - how social dogmas restricted individual freedom. It just goes to show how unforgiving and oppressive certain moral fetishes can be, under the guise of preservation of family/social traditions.

I don’t know if I’m the odd one out here, but the one character in the novel whom I admire is the joyously obese Mrs. Manson Mingott, if only because she is as generous and non-judgmental in her compassion as in her appreciation for food.

Lastly, I just have to say that I love the satirical ring to the title name. Allegedly the title was inspired by a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was originally named A Little Girl and later changed to The Age of Innocence. It makes me think that the story’s protagonist should be May Welland rather than Countess Ellen Olenska. Welland’s innocence is the “invincible” kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience.






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Book Review - "The Lasting Honour: The Fall of Hong Kong 1941" by Oliver Lindsay

The Lasting Honour The Fall Of Hong Kong, 1941 by Oliver Lindsay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The book was published in 1978 and was the result of thorough research into wartime official documents as well as interviews with survivors then living in Britain, Canada and Hong Kong. The author himself was with the 2nd battalion of the Winnipeg Grenadiers (from Manitoba, Canada) during the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941.

If reading “Not the Slightest Chance: The Defence of Hong Kong 1941” makes one feel like watching a documentary with grotesque images popping up now and then, then turning the pages of “The Lasting Honour: The Fall of Hong Kong 1941” is like sitting through a heart-rending war movie that makes one feel anger, despair and repulse about the inhumanities of wars. I couldn't help shedding a few tears out of reverence and respect for the honorable soldiers who defended Hong Kong to the best they could, even though they were aware that it was a lost cause at the outset.

For the Hong Kong folks, the 18-day battle was only the beginning, horrible though it was, of a protracted period (lasting three years and eight months) of great trepidation, starvation, homelessness and utter destitution under the merciless rule of the Japanese. By May 1945, one million Hong Kong Chinese had left the Colony for the Mainland, leaving only 650,000 behind.

This particular part of Hong Kong’s history is probably unknown or unfamiliar to many of Hong Kong’s young and not-so-young generations. To them, and others who might have an interest in the subject, I would highly recommend Banham’s and Lindsay’s books.




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Book Review - "Not the Slightest Chance: The Defence of Hong Kong 1941" by Tony Banham

Not The Slightest Chance: The Defence Of Hong Kong, 1941 by Tony Banham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a factual and blood-curdling slideshow of the eighteen days of horrifying fighting against the Japanese in Hong Kong in the not-too-distant past.

I belong to the post-50s group who were lucky enough to be born just after the war. While I was growing up, my mother and relatives belonging to her generation seldom talked about their war-time experiences. It was only recently that I heard about some traumatic personal stories told by a primary school teacher of mine, which ignited my interest in reading books about war-time Hong Kong. Reading "Not the Slightest Chance" had a bone-chilling effect on me, and it makes me want to read more.

The valiant men and women who sacrificed their lives (some suffering unspeakable tortures in enemies' hands) either in action during the war or later in concentration camps in the defense of Hong Kong deserve our and our past generation's utmost and lasting respect and commemoration. The fact that the Hong Kong garrison (or at least the high-ranking officers) were well aware that Hong Kong was in an untenable position, but nonetheless resisted the Japanese invasion with dauntless courage, makes this part of Hong Kong's history especially poignant.

The book just makes me ponder as to why the Chinese Communists and Nationalists were conspicuous by their absence from the scene of the battle.





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Book Review - The Death of Ivan Ilych

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I had expected this novella to be all dark and depressing. But it turned out to be dark with a silver lining. Through telling a story about the life of a Russian judge, who falls ill at the height of his career and life accomplishment, Tolstoy leads the reader into the inner struggles of the protagonist as he is confronted with the threat of death. The writing is simple and calm but has an intimacy and immediacy about it that it rattles one's nerves and fibers. The questions raised about life and death will haunt the reader probably for as long as he/she lives, but there is still a glimmer of hope and salvation.



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Book Review - De Profundis

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A piece of beautiful, honest, philosophical writing that flows from a chastened soul.

Passages that tug at my heartstrings:

"To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."

"Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit."

"Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul."

"Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought, the imagination can transcend them and move in a free sphere of ideal existences. Things also are in their essence of what we choose to make them; a thing is according to the mode in which we look at it."





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