Review: Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb

Title: Fear and Trembling
Author: Amelie Nothomb
Genre: Literary / Memoir
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
First Published: 1999 (as Stupeur et tremblements)
Pages: 144

This is a gem of a little book, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading!
Part novella and part memoir, it is based on the true experiences of the author, Amelie Nothomb. She is a Belgian woman who goes to work for a Japanese company. Even though she is knows Japanese customs inside and out, and is fluent in the language, she finds herself continually making cultural blunders, and gaining the hatred of her superiors despite her efforts to reverse their opinion of her. Despite the lack of reciprocal feelings, Amelie is fascinated and deeply loyal to her direct supervisor, the beautiful and confident Fubuki Mori, with whom she shares a tumultuous relationship.
This book is easy to read, but has a sort of simplistic beauty to it that leaves it without need for fancy wording or flowery prose.
Nothomb is a brilliant writer, and she peppers her story with dashes of culture, insight, clever wording. Without taking up much space, every character is strong and distinctive.
I loved the sense of Japanese culture, so deeply ingrained in its people, that this book showed a glimpse of.
I will remember this book for a long while, and I am looking forward to reading more by Amelie-San.

Review: The Snow Fox by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

Title: The Snow Fox
Author: Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Published: 2005
Pages: 438

Rating: 3 out of 10

I am always hesitant about starting long books by an author that I do not know, because I have a sometimes regrettable need to finish every single book that I begin, no matter what. And if a very long book is awful from the beginning, I just know that I'll have to torture myself through the rest of it.

The Snow Fox was such a book.

It is the odd story of a coldly beautiful woman, Lady Utsu, in medieval Japan, and the men who love and obsess over her. Lord Norimasa longs to possess her, while Matsuhito spends his life wishing that they could have been together.

For the first half of the book, dominated mainly be Lady Utsu's story, there is little but dialogue. I often felt as if I was reading a bad play, because nothing was described except for what the characters said aloud. Just as I was beginning to grudgingly get accustomed to it, the style changed to suit a different character.
I had thought that the book could get no worse, and yet it did. After this point, I really cannot say what the book was about. A samurai wanders through the woods for months (or perhaps it is years, or perhaps only days - the author is very bad at giving the reader any indication of how much time has gone by). During all of these hundreds of pages, he does little except let a fox lick him.

The last portion of the book, yet again, grew even more ridiculous. Lady Utsu, now an old woman, finds Matsuhito, and they fall in love all over again. However, their supposed love story fell flat, and they must be the most annoying couple that I have ever had the unfortunate privilege of reading about.
Most of their relationship, especially toward the end of the story, went something like this:

Utsu: Our foxes will die! They will go into the woods and never come back!
Matsuhito: No they won't.
Utsu: The child will die!
Matsuhito: No it won't.
Utsu: We are cursed! I see an evil spirit!
Matsuhito: No you don't.
Utsu: You will die! You will leave me! You will stop loving me!
Matsuhito: No I won't.
Utsu: I will die! I will keep getting old and I will die!
Matsuhito: Well, erm, um, eh.....
Utsu: *weeping disconsolately*

And so it went.

Lady Utsu is constantly being described as a cold, cruel woman. I got the feeling that Schaeffer wanted to depict her as a sort of ice queen, regal and fascinating in her terrible beauty. And, indeed, this is exactly how the other characters of the book see her. But as the reader, I saw no such thing. First of all, I saw little cruelty from her, but rather a misunderstood woman who makes painful decisions that she thinks are, nevertheless, best. I had been anticipating a complex heroine-villain from the inside cover's description, so the Lady Utsu that I found was disappointing, as well as rather boring.
Also, she is a hard-as-nails, somber lady in the first part of the book, an essential aspect to the feeling of her character.
By the last portion of the book, when she comes back into the story, she has inexplicably become a weepy, pathetic woman who sees tragedy and evil spirits lurking behind every corner.

There was a story of Utsu's children that I thought would have been interesting. I was truthfully hoping that the story would switch to them, since I disliked Lady Utsu so much.
They are built up as if they will later come into the story, and yet, they never do.

The single enjoyable sentence I found in this book was - "Memories are a dark wood. Do not enter them."
However, I repeat, that was a single sentence. The rest of this book is dreadfully written, and I will not be reading any more of the author's work.

Not recommended.

Review: Samurai Women by Stephen Turnbull

Title: Samurai Women 1184-1877
Author: Stephen Turnbull
Illustrator: Giuseppe Rava
Genre: History
Publisher: Osprey
Published: 2010

Rating: 6 out of 10

This is the second Osprey book I have read, out of the huge pile that awaits me. I suppose I'll just pick one up every now and then when I feel in the mood for a bit of quick, but very detailed, history. Maybe I'll have read all of them in ten years.

I liked this writer better than the last one I sampled (Carola Vogel: The Fortifications of Ancient Egypt 3000 - 1780 BC), and again, the addition of illustrations was one that I really appreciated. The visual aides in this book mainly consisted of photos of museum relics and historical artwork, but there were occasional drawings that took up a whole page, and I loved them. The illustrator, Giuseppe Rava, did a great job, though I didn't get why his work was placed on the page diagonally.

At the beginning of the text, Turnbull calls the female samurai warrior "a very elusive creature," and this shows itself to be quite true. I have studied Japan during the samurai times pretty heavily, but have never heard of actual female samurais.
On the next page, there is a time-line listing events involving woman warriors. Even though the book spans nearly 700 years, only 8 specific women are named.

The title doesn't need any inventive subtitles to make it sound appealing - "Samurai Women" in the context of a history book already sounds fascinating enough. However, it turned out that none of the ladies featured were actually samurai. There was a queen, and one or two deemed "warriors," and a handful of women who seek violent revenge, bravely commit seppuku (the customary, ritual Japanese way of suicide by disembowelment, considered synonymous with honor), defend their castles in the absence of a male figure, or finish their husband's feuds when their spouses perish.
I felt that the author didn't have enough material to create enough of a 'history book' on the topic. The book was very short, but still felt stretched out.

It also ended rather abruptly, and I hate coming across that in non-fiction. Maybe it's just that I'm more accustomed to reading fiction, where a "The End" closing scene is present 99% of the time. But then again, I don't think it would be all that difficult to tie up the book with a nice, conclusive paragraph or two.

Review: The Hidden Flower by Pearl S. Buck

Title: The Hidden Flower
Author: Pearl S. Buck
Genre: Literary
Publisher: Cardinal Pocket Books
First published: 1952
Pages: 234

Rating: 2 out of 10 stars

Although I have no doubt that Pearl S. Buck is a great writer, there is also no doubt in my mind that this is a horribly written book.

The Hidden Flower opens a few years after World War II has ended. Josui Sakai is a young college student in Japan, who grew up in America before her family decided to move back to their home country when they were threatened with internment for Japanese-Americans. Josui's father feels that America betrayed him, and now forbids any Western customs in his traditional, strictly run household. So when Josui meets and falls in love with a handsome young American officer named Allen Kennedy, it is not well received by her family. They are forbidden from seeing each other, and yet, they have a hurried wedding and head back to the states together. After being turned out by one family, Josui finds her new in-laws to be even more hostile, and must decide if her love can withstand the difficulties that accompany it.

This story was absolutely ridiculous. It's a shame - I was very excited when I found it in a used book store. I love finding books by famous authors when the individual work itself is relatively unheard of.
However, there is apparently a good reason why this one has been overlooked. It deserves to be.

Josui is a stupid, timid creature that I certainly never felt any warmth toward. She is made out to be intelligent and good and wonderful (as everyone in the book is always telling us), but I saw no evidence of this.

I think that this book has to contain one of the worst romance stories I have ever read.
Josui meets an American officer, Allen, one day while walking to school. Though she knows she shouldn't, she tells him her name and where she lives after he presses her.
A few days after that, the two meet and Josui gives him a tour of Japan. They only spend a few hours together, and after that, they are saying that they are in love, and Josui is already planning her marriage to him and the children that they will have.
A few months later, (they never see each other again in this time) they hastily marry.

Buck constantly gives us phrases such as "And he did love her. With all his heart." And this is within the first few hours that Allen has ever met Josui. The author builds up a grand romance in the character's heads, but this is firmly where it stays - in their delusional minds.

I intensely disliked the character of Allen.
He isn't in love! He simply wants to have sex, but the thought of doing it with just any cheap prostitute is a turn off for him. Sophisticated, proper women are his thing, but he will only be allowed to have such a girl if he marries her. So, he goes about marrying (and telling himself that he is passionately in love with) the very first high-born, traditional Japanese girl he meets. Or sees, rather.
He is very annoying with his sappy exclamations of adoration, and selfish in everything he does.
When his mother refuses to let Josui stay in her home, instead of standing up to her, he lies to Josui about it and tells her they must move somewhere else. When Allen's mother invites him home for Christmas, but refuses again to let Josui come visit, he simply goes without her.
And he is constantly dwelling on the idea of Cynthia - he should have married Cynthia (even though he doesn't actually feel that way), Cynthia is his match, Cynthia is perfect for him, Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia.
He doesn't actually feel any love toward her - I think that he just wanted to convince himself that every girl in town wanted him.

Another annoyance was how every character seemed to have some sort of psychic ability to know what people were thinking.
One day, after Josui has secretly met with Allen, her father says to her "Something has happened. I see it in your face. You have met someone." And this is when she has just walked in the door!
Another time, when she is sad about Allen, her mother somehow knows exactly what is going on the moment Josui looks into her eyes when she wakes her.

In short, this wasn't a successful attempt at a romance. The entire story, I just wished that Allen would die, or something - anything to stop them from carrying on with their ridiculous supposed "romance." Surely, this is not the thoughts a reader should have in a love story!

I am very glad that this book was relatively short, because it was already hard enough to get through.
I am also glad that Pearl S. Buck has other, far better novels I can read, and comfort myself with. I guess that we all have our bad days, even famous authors.