When the Rain Stops Falling is a play that I think relies heavily on staging and choreography for its dramatic heft. On the page it is fine, just a liWhen the Rain Stops Falling is a play that I think relies heavily on staging and choreography for its dramatic heft. On the page it is fine, just a little flattened. Without costuming to evoke the various time periods, actors’ line delivery to inject humour and pathos to the script, it can be a touch colourless. The characters are not well delineated in the text and the plot seems truncated, like a CliffsNotes version of a multi-generational saga.
Where the play really shines is in the technicality of its stage directions—overlapping scene transitions that allow settings decades apart to bleed together; a wordless opening sequence that involves the whole cast in a reverting canon of repeated movement. This, together with several characters sharing the same name, adds pattern and rhythm that amplifies the otherwise minimal plot and characterisations. As a theatre experience, I’m sure this piece could be truly impressive when done well. A great example of how stagecraft and acting can elevate a fairly thin underlying story....more
The Trees is a chimera. Its predominant tone is one of puerile, derisive humour. Its subject is a provocative race-revenge fantasy. Its method is The Trees is a chimera. Its predominant tone is one of puerile, derisive humour. Its subject is a provocative race-revenge fantasy. Its method is schlocky horror with a little buddy-cop banter thrown in. The resulting loopy comedy/horror/history lesson is (at times) hilarious and (always) a powerful Black Lives Matter polemic.
This is a novel that reaches its top gear right out of the gate—delivering multiple shocks with grisly (and impossible) murders, grotesque, openly racist characters (who make frequent use of the n-word) with kooky names, and a never-let-up pace. This is exhilarating but the effect wears off somewhat as the book settles into its rhythms.
The story then advances by adding volume rather than variation or intensity: more murders, more victims, the same M.O. repeated ad nauseum. I think this was purposeful, a way to mirror the banality and repetitiousness of the crimes being avenged—centuries of lynchings (and as one character says ‘I consider police shootings to be lynchings’). But if so, the aim was better achieved by the inclusion of two lists: a roll call of victims of race-hate violence, and later, the locations of the crimes. With their gravity and use of real victims’ names—some recent, painfully recognisable; others lost to time—these litanies puncture the book’s generally waggish tone to sobering effect.
I admit I was waiting for a twist of the knife that never came, a final implication or provocation. No one reading The Trees would ever recognise themselves in the gormless idiots that are Everett’s over the top caricatures of white racism. And by focusing on ‘lynchings’ as such, there is a glaring lack of attention given to racist violence against women throughout history.
The Trees is audacious, farcical, perverse, and ultimately potent, utilising the schlock-horror-comedy genre to examine Black trauma in a unique way. 4 stars....more
How to Die Strangely in a Science Fictional Universe
How High We Go in the Dark is a science fiction novel-in-stories tracking the effects and aftermatHow to Die Strangely in a Science Fictional Universe
How High We Go in the Dark is a science fiction novel-in-stories tracking the effects and aftermath of a fictional pandemic called the Arctic Plague.
Although this book has ‘A Novel’ printed right there on the cover, it really reads more like a story collection. Typically jaunty sci-fi trappings like space flight, robo-dogs, virtual reality worlds—even a talking pig—are rendered in macabre, sombre tones due to the mass deaths caused by the plague. This is not so much a book about grief as it is about the physical process of death, funerary rites, and mourning customs. Nagamatsu imagines a world overburdened by death in which there are euthanasia rollercoasters, ‘elegy hotels’ for the dying, hologrammatic urns, a group of neighbours planning to commingle their ashes. It’s inventive, but I was never quite sure whether I was reading attempts at black humour that just weren’t funny or attempts at earnestness that were too absurd to take seriously.
Despite being, at a surface-level, extremely topical, How High We Go in the Dark labours under the shadow of its influences. The sadsack loser working a degrading job in a dystopic theme park is classic George Saunders, but Nagamatsu is not able to conjure Saunders’ compassion and empathy. There’s a physicist whose predicament brings to mind Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan. A recurring tattoo à la Cloud Atlas. I was constantly being reminded of other books by everyone from Ray Bradbury to Elizabeth Tan.
What’s more, Nagamatsu retreads his own ideas, with some chapters feeling very similar to earlier ones, repeating story beats about estranged parents, or unrequited crushes on the dying. A traditional novel format would not have allowed for such redundancies. The repetitiveness also extends to word choices (characters ‘sprint’ across rooms; scenes are ‘punctuated’ by some detail or other) and a sameness to the various characters’ narrative voices.
A few intriguing details did crop up—like the transmuting, possibly luminescing internal organs of plague victims—and I wish these had been explored more. But its focus on the practicalities of death in a heightened sci-fi setting is enough to make How High We Go in the Dark an interesting entry in what is shaping up to be a glut of pandemic literature. 3 stars....more
Love Marriage — a London-based culture clash soap — has to be one of the most lacklustre reading experiences I’ve had in a while. It’s about junior doLove Marriage — a London-based culture clash soap — has to be one of the most lacklustre reading experiences I’ve had in a while. It’s about junior doctor Yasmin, daughter of Muslim Indian immigrants, her white fiancé and their respective families. Between Yasmin’s indecision about the wedding, more than one sexual awakening, and some long-buried family secrets, there should be more than enough fodder here for a solid domestic drama, or even (if you want to go a different way) a fizzy chick lit. And yet…
Rania sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of semai. ‘This is so delicious, Mrs Ghorami, how do you make it?’
‘You have to boil milk for long-long time,’ said Ma. ‘Some people are using condensed milk but then all flavour is gone. You will not taste the ghee or cardamom or even raisins or cashew nuts. I will write this recipe for you.’
All the interesting, flavoursome bits of this novel are smothered by a condensed milk of blandness. The prose is drab, the plotting is flat, and we spend all our time with the dullest characters — whingy Yasmin; insipid fiancé Joe, who can’t even make a sex addiction interesting; his overbearing, self-obsessed mother; even, for some reason, Joe’s therapist who I actually thought was an unfunny parody but, nope! Turns out we’re supposed to take him seriously.
Ali’s prose is workmanlike, but still manages occasional clunkers like this:
Dusk came. Above the steaming rooftops, above the city jotted faintly in mauve the moon hung pale and patient. Soon it would be its turn to shine.
While the writing isn’t at the level required for literary fiction, the story is also not entertaining enough for commercial fiction. It plods. It doesn’t know where to focus. And it leaves several story threads, like Joe’s childhood trauma, and Yasmin’s career woes, hanging in a most infuriating way. A character named Flame just sort of disappears.
There are a few cashews and raisins underneath. Ali manages social commentary on prejudice, faith, authenticity, performative culture and performative wokeness with a deft touch. It’s just a shame this novel doesn’t seem to be playing to her strengths.
We were not a love marriage, this book and I. We stayed together far too long and now — blessedly — it is time to go our separate ways....more
Recitatif is a short story about two women, one Black, the other white, who cross paths several times over the years. The twist: their races are nRecitatif is a short story about two women, one Black, the other white, who cross paths several times over the years. The twist: their races are not revealed; it’s left up to the reader’s interpretation which character is Black and which is white. This is not a ‘colour blind’ story though—race is in fact crucial to the characters and their understanding of the world.
If this story had been written by anyone else, I would have been sceptical. A cheap gimmick? A thought experiment best left to English Lit classrooms? But this is Toni Morrison, stone cold genius, and this story is as potent and nuanced today as when she wrote it 40 years ago.
Morrison wrongfoots the reader at every turn. While you are wondering about Twyla and Roberta (who is Black and who is white? is there a right answer? does it actually matter?), and wondering what your wondering says about your own biases, a third character creeps in unnoticed and turns this story on its head, bursts your little balloon of cleverness, and throws out an allegory of historical revisionism for good measure.
Be sure to read Zadie Smith’s excellent introduction (which is longer than the story itself!) afterwards, which expands on Morrison’s own stated position that race can be at once fictive, a social construct, while also being central to identity. Both real and unreal. A paradox that this story manages not just to convey but to occupy....more
Cold Enough for Snow begins as a hypnotic travelogue—soothing, almost meditative in its cadences and imagery of a rainy Winner of the Novel Prize 2020
Cold Enough for Snow begins as a hypnotic travelogue—soothing, almost meditative in its cadences and imagery of a rainy Tokyo—and develops into a haunting, poignant elegy.
To me, ‘Ishiguro-esque’ is the best descriptor for this slim volume. It reminds me most of A Pale View of Hills and even the titles evoke a similar feeling, almost like a line of haiku. The narrator, an Australian woman travelling with her mother in Japan, is classic Ishiguro: a little melancholy, a little pompous, aloof in a broken, alienated kind of way. Not so much ‘unreliable’ as she is under an illusion; as the story evolves it drops subtle hints at her blinkered state.
Elision is the order of the day here. Unwanted texts, sent by a customer at the restaurant where she waitresses, clearly distress the narrator a great deal but are never described beyond simply ‘messages’. Meanwhile, Au devotes lyrical, attentive paragraphs to a collection of textiles in a museum, porcelain bowls, a hotel room. These are deft choices—what to evoke in precise, elegant detail; what to leave up to the reader’s imaginings—that make this book much larger in the mind than its page count should allow.
This ability to reverberate, to create echoes in the mind and to linger with you after you finish reading, is also reminiscent of Ishiguro’s novels. But Au has created something all her own here, a thoughtful, elliptical work whose uncomplicated prose style belies its depth. 4.5 stars...more
Loading...
