Kyle > Recent Status Updates

The girl’s got moxie, as those roaring ‘20s-types used to say, and kind of sad not getting to know her union-flunky dad a bit better before he is long gone by Part Two. As much as I am getting into this tale, starting to sense that every corner of New York, in any era, was really just a pissing contest between marginalized communities more upset with others on the margins than with those elites putting them down.

Not surprised to hear that this novel will soon be a Netflix series, as l’objet du désir has so many connections to well-known films. The Sea of Flames is cherished like Titanic’s Heart of the Ocean, as ominous as the Ark of the Covenant, and with Marie-Laure’s fascination with Jules Verne, a possible location sung about in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Guess where it’ll end up!

The desperate and disparate situations of Marie-Laure and Werner show the cruelty each country had to endure: respectively France under German occupation and German National Political Institute students suffering under their peers. Throwing the balance off just a little is the story of gemologist von Rumpel following clues to the Sea of Flames, making at least one intersection between characters in Etienne’s attic.

The full spectrum of World War Two, as seen through the opposing poles of a German wunderkind Werner and blind museum moppet Marie-Laure. What sets their familiar story apart from others, so far, is the senses both children use to navigate the utterly senseless invasion of one culture against the rest of the world, inviting the readers to feel through each escape and bombed out city, the smell of oil and fire nearby.

What makes this book frustrating to read is that for every ten pages of confused timelines and conflicting motivations, there are maybe two paragraphs that show a clarity of purpose, how the growing list of side characters are trapped in a world they can do little to change. Just a few paragraphs show some attempt to change something anyways, like Louise refusing to apologize or Gaëlle fleeing her child’s killer.

Remember when the story was about Nozias searching for his missing daughter that he was soon to give away? He and Gaëlle make a brief appearance near the end of Part One, seen from a distance by minor character Max Junior. His return from a decade-long toil in Miami sets up an intriguing look at separated families, ones who leave and are left behind. Maybe Claire got off the island to build a better life on her own?

The next two chapters provide backstories for who may be minor characters, organized around the themes of non-human entities that both Gaëlle and Bernard encounter kind of like dominoes set up to push over other plot elements that will explain why the titular Claire (who was barely present in the first chapter) went missing. All stories so far reinforce the town of Ville Rose being presided over by figures of death.

Naming must be a big part of Haitian village life, at least for the circles that Nozias moves in. This novel especially takes the eponymous title of his daughter’s Anglicized name, with her triple surname often printed in full, even it dialogue. Other villagers have multiple names, or they don’t and go by their job title. It is going to take a singular Nozias forever to find his daughter with all these syllables!

Well, there is a bit of appeal for young kids who grew up reading the grouchy sarcasm of Garfield at school, but otherwise it reads like a self-pitying attack on strawman social justice signallers. If the book (series no less) is anyway autobiographical, Jerry must’ve hated every part of his education despite the award-winning career he established poking fun at the Richie Riches he barely takes time to understand.

I should not be so quick to judge, even though I am already halfway through the graphic novel that I started reading today, but it is a strange mix of preteen comix and pedantic parenting guide. Jordan takes to his Archie and Betty elite school like a fish to the frying pan, and uncovers the many subtle ways that the Man keeps down this Everyman artist while espousing their big lies of diversity and cultural harmony.

The final part of the novel inverts the old Miltonesque statement, in terms of the Coates’ narrative: it is worse to serve in the North as an agent, howsoever free, than to rule over the Coffin even with the support of the Underground. It is such a reversed homecoming that puts Hiram on to top and most of his oppressors are servants to Corrine. Amidst all the conductive confusion he unmasks the most harmful helper.

As much as I started out enjoying the various voices Hiram encountered across the pages, keeping up with a regular reading schedule became a bit hard to manage with work and whatnot, so I switched to the audiobook. Not to knock Joe Morton, but the pained outrage sounded very different inside my head, plus, it felt like I was being conducted across whole sections of the book without really knowing who was who anymore.

It started to dawn on me a chapter before the end of Part 1 that Georgie’s escape plan was more for his benefit than Hiram’s, and the following capture and indignities were a gruesome showcase of how low humanity can sink. But then in a moment of Conduction he is lifted out of this sorrow to join the Underground and he questions if all his torments were a simulation teaching him how to survive. Is this also real?

Here’s a story of oppression and injustice that I can get behind, in literary terms not literally, with Hiram being a kind and conscientious soul enduring his double life as a slave and better half of his master’s legacy. Not only does he see the decimation of slaves sent off to horrible places, but also dissipation of Virginia, conquered by his white ancestors, drying up and becoming barren by their descendants.

Am I doing myself any favour trying to finish this novel that I barely enjoyed from the first chapter? The whole bit about some random hook-up with a woman at the aeronautics convention who offers the recently widowed grandfather a banana soon after their tryst and is never heard from again. This is pretty much the entire book, an account of horny urges and violence, and the next fifty pages aren’t going to change.

Of all the places for the narrative to slow down for a storyline consistent from one chapter to the next, it is about grandfather’s imprisonment at Wallkill minimum security that gets the sustained attention and I can’t even remember which of the many disconnected events brought him to the clink. Nevertheless, I could see would happen with his abandoned daughter and an uncle, at whom she shot an arrow in his eye!

The motif of matches has begun to make sense, as they are the small details that the narrator has picked up on so accurately: how someone lights a cigarette, how grandfather carelessly tosses one away in a barn, sets a trash can on fire. So many of the big picture details, like the plot, characters, are muddled by memory, and even grandfather complains about the nonlinear storytelling. Will he burn grandson’s book?

Chapters begin to cohere, presenting a storyline directly related to what came before, not that the random elements cease for a few dozen pages. Grandfather is marching towards Berlin, staying in a priest’s sister’s farmhouse and discovering a secret stash of V2 rockets. Just when the coagulating narrative starts to get comfortable, we’re heaved forward to the Florida swamp and then back to post-war Halloween.

The personal history continues to ping-pong between the formative past and the widower’s present, I am not getting too attached to any single storyline as until it appears in another chapter. What I am starting to wonder about are the innocuous symbols: the section breaks that are a sequence of waxing moons, or the matchstick Roman numerals for chapters, with the second digit of XI pictured on fire for some reason.

The random chronology of family history, from a child’s cat curiosity to a young man’s attempted invasion of a nation’s capitol and grumpy old man’s take on a failure in space exploration, it is really hard to piece together the eras in which each story happened. Especially daunting as the young, sexy couple are constantly referred to as the narrator’s grandfather and grandmother. She also reads the future.

One of the greatest parts of his memoir, starting off strong with an extended quote from Carl Jung and is set around the time of Francisco’s graduate studies. He takes to heart the lesson taught in Part 2, where the many million of migrants suffering needs to by multiplied by one. He writes the sad equation for Jose, an undocumented colleague whose deportation is a grim account for a nation so proud of its freedom.

The office job that Francisco enters give him lots of time to mull over statistics, documented case studies and interviews as well as his family history and scary Sicario-like dreams, He is still pursuing the human factor in the impersonal work of monitoring the influx of migrants and the the excess of mutilated bodies. Significantly there is the image of wolves as controlled population and connected to his namesake.

A personal and plain-spoken (literally his own voice reading the audiobook, not sure how fictional his experiences are) account of Cantú working on the border, at one of the most contentious periods in North American history. He sees his work as perhaps field research, while his mother, a Parks ranger, sees him joining forces with government oppression. He is still learning the ropes while she is at the end of hers.

As a child’s bedtime story, the book is exhausting with so many unnamed key characters, past sorrows clouding over indefinite locations and a not-so-subtle allusion to puberty as magic to pretend not to pay attention to. There are wonders about the world and love among all people to discover, too, but who can really keep track of it all when the whichness of each chapter keeps droning and lulling one to deep sleep.

Storylines begin to converge, and it makes it seem like the book could have been several dozen pages shorter if it wasn’t trying to build up a mystery over what seems inevitable: the sun clears away a town’s fog, children are reunited with parents, evil characters pursue their tigerish plans, and even the volcano comes back to life as if on cue. A much shorter story if the parade of plot points wasn’t plodding.

It is a trite expression, but the story is really for the birds. Whether they are made of paper, transformed humans or something else allegorical, there are plenty of winged creatures fluttering around, almost as if their murmerative movements meant something. The characters shuffle around in the forest, like game pieces being set in final positions yet without a clear view of forest, tower, town or bog to play upon.

At the halfway point, and characters have waned to their thinniest motivations: Xan is ready to die, Antain ready to kill (along with high-ranking citizens of the Protectorate), Luna ready to lose her mind like dear d mum and Furian ready to shed off his childish skin. Only Glerk is prepared to stay the same way he is, older than the world itself. But nothing is no longer what it had seemed in the two dozen chapters.

Reading the fast-forward button on the narrative, each one of the lead characters: Luna, Antain, Xan and the madwoman, gets a life stretched out with maybe one or two events noted that might have an impact on the story. It is kind of like a book that had hopes of becoming a Studio Ghibli movie yet a little too much Earwig when it should have aimed more in the direction of Kiki’s or Porco.

The worldbuilding goes into some unusual places, like interstellar space, alchemical study of bog vegetation or the poetic creation of the world. And at least three competing versions of events: the official account of the Protectorate, the actual events of Xan raising Luna and the story version of whoever keeps scolding an inquisitive child. It is anyone’s guess at which proverbial blind man can sense an elephant.

It is hard to tell which parts of this book are sing-song sleepy storytelling for ready-for-beddie young children, and how much are sly attempts at satire for the adults reading the bedtime story. The peculiar framing device of a parent admonishing a doubtful child is one-sided and repetitive. The small community of magic creatures in Xan’s circle, including baby Luna, at least seem to be a sincere nurturing place.