brief book reviews

please contact me if you've read any of these books and would like to talk about them more.

let me sleep until this is just a dream by ellisiv stifoss-hanssen (dalkey archive): bought this norwegian autofictional book about cancer treatment because it and the author are mentioned in the norwegian autofictional book monsterhuman by kjersti skomsvold (who also blurbs it). this is a short, fragment-based novel about the narrator getting a cancer diagnosis, undergoing intense radiation treatment, and navigating the fallout of 1-2 doomed romantic relationships. the chapters are not sequenced temporally and i found myself often confused about who some of the characters were and when the various relationships started/ended and whether certain medical scenes were set before or after ones during the first half of the book. realized too late, probably, that the sequencing probably just alternates between two timeframes, but the fragmentary/occluded nature of the narrative makes this unobvious. also felt confused about certain scenes and later learning what was going on, e.g. a scene about her vagina burning because of soap used to ameliorate the smell from the cervical tumor presented before establishing that it's cervical cancer, so the vagina scene seemed bizarre and unexplained, at the time. but i also enjoyed not really understanding/following what people were talking about sometimes, because of the lack of explanation or context, which seems intentional, like as a means of recreating a sense of confusion and fogginess in the reader, or, equally likely, as an exploration of anxiously trying to navigate interpersonal situations the narrator doesn't fully understand herself. Vaguely thought it kept some things too vague/confusing in a way that I sometimes see in poetry where the author obviously includes details that are personally meaningful but do not evoke any emotion in the reader, which was frustrating, but also probably wrong, and I also often enjoyed not fully knowing what was happening or why things happened scene to scene. Felt like various lines were very good and impactful, well-observed and thought-provoking, but the clipped, fragmented language also seemed predictable as a means of creating tension/drama. enjoyed the end, especially re: the relationship(s) subplot, and the narrative decision to restrict the scope of the book so much -- overall enjoyed the book, feeling like it would be good to reread...curious about the conceit of short books that are designed to be read twice in a row.

the setting sun by osamu dazai (new directions): troy recommended this. i had read and vaguely disliked no longer human a couple years ago. enjoyed this book more than i remembered enjoying that book. this is dazai's first novel, i think, and is interesting for a variety of reasons, e.g. it features a 1st person female protagonist and it incorporates many fictional letters between characters. i usually don't read introductions/forewords/etc. but this time i did, and feel mixed on it – i felt like it helped me appreciate/understand some of the plot points, but also primed me to see some seemingly ham-fisted symbolism. i generally enjoyed the first half more than the second half, roughly when the narrator/protagonist unexpectedly announces an obsession with some novelist and writes him many insane letters about wanting to get pregnant by him -- felt strange/unexpected because this guy is never really referenced prior to this. but overall i enjoyed all the insane characters, brief moments of nature writing and daily minutia, and focus on the fall of the aristocracy in japan and the different ways the conflict between classes is made manifest. favorite moment was the (maybe unintentionally) comical moment where the mother develops an ailment consisting solely/inexplicably of a painful tongue tip. also enjoyed the emphasis on death, suicide, and self-destruction. style-wise it felt relatively contemporary. 

the weasels in the attic by hiroko oyamada (new directions): have read and enjoyed her previous two very short novels, the factory and the hole. this one is seemingly shorter than them, felt like possibly the shortest novel i've ever read; i read it over the course of maybe 2 hours. i liked the characters, settings, primary images, themes, and plot, but felt like it was too short, went by too quickly, mainly because i liked what of it theree was. also felt a little let down by the denouement hinging on a japanese-seeming trope (haruki murakami uses this a lot, i feel) of having the protagonist have a strange dream which precedes an inexplicable change in the real world. mostly enjoyed the vague hints at horror through mystery and obfuscation e.g. the emphasis on the protagonist often rarely getting a full glimpse at the various babies/old people, his disconnection from others regarding parenting, and the central focal point story about his wife's family's weasel situation from her childhood. enjoyed the understated and effective characterization of the protagonist by how he perceives and comments on the other characters. also enjoyed also the depictions of food and nature, made me very hungry for some inarizushi. weird, great, just not enough. would very much enjoy reading a 600+ page oyamada novel, i think.

people from my neighborhood by hiromi kawakami (soft skull): short collection of interlinked stories about the narrator's magically real hometown, emphasizing a small cast of recurring characters. while the early stories are brief character sketches, the latter half seems to pivot to being about the town itself and absurd, silly, large-scale happenings, such as "a low gravity event" and "an asteroid almost destroying the planet". felt at first like the stories individually were too brief and self-satisfied-seeming, but later came to fully enjoy the continuity across stories and the consistent vibe and style -- reads well as a cohesive work. enjoyed moments of characters being unnecessarily mean, dismissive, or weird. didn't so much enjoy some of the droll images/humor. enjoyed when she really leans into japanese folklore-seeming absurdity, like the description of where babies come from (a long, complicated, multi-stage process involving a shapeshifting creature traveling across the country) and moments where something is described as looking like a person but then on closer inspection turns out to be a bird, etc. laughed at one of the blurbs describing the book's strangeness as "cultural." interested in reading one or more of her novels, based on this book. enjoying adding this book to this blog post, cementing myself as some sort of literary fiction weeabo and abandoning my role as joyless indie lit critic.

chapbook bonus round

ajebota by precious okoyomon (bottlecap press): heard of precious in vague connection to tao lin...i think he's published her on muumuu house and she had a piece in pets. this is from 2016 and reads as decidedly in the vein of peak alt lit in terms of style and phrasing and typos, including several poems that sort of read like a cut up of older tao lin poems (a disaffected couple considering a hamster, the phrase 'out of control asshole', neutral facial expressions, etc). several other poems are short and directly about lesbian sex (lines like "finger fucking / fingers pushing / fuck" and "licking ur leaking cunt") which felt interesting and aggressive. half the chapbook is formatted as a text 'conversation' where every message is an unrelated poetic image -- felt frustrating to read, i kept thinking 'these people are not communicating well...they're being very selfish interlocutors.' enjoyed various individual lines throughout, including "nothing in the sky", "bleeding animal", and "no more burritos."

chicken poems by emma alice johnson (bottlecap press): an collection of 'earnest' and simple 'nonfiction poems' about the author's chickens. felt interested because i also have chickens and i like collections of poems about a single topic. each poem in this is about a particular chicken and is followed by a short explanatory essay, usually about the chicken's breed, which i thought was interesting, unique, and effective. but most of the poems themselves don't grip me in terms of style or execution -- some pretty low-effort seeming (simple observation of a thing that has happened) and/or with a lack of substance, i felt, and a few with extensive rhyming, which i have a hard time taking seriously. enjoyed the poem about the chicken that rides a pig. also enjoyed the "triumphant lavender floof" and these lines from the poem about the chicken styling her feathers: "what products do you use? / the sun and the wind / a bit of dust now and then."

some bugs by alex youngman (bottlecap press): have briefly talked with alex on twitter after he bought several books from flat dog distro. each poem is about bugs (are barnacles a type of bug? i guess rolly pollies are technically crustaceans, like barnacles are, so...i vote yes: bug ⊃ crustacean & bug ⊃ insect). enjoyed the ones that surreally treat the bugs as people/roommates/friends and felt less interested in the more general pondering-of-bugs poems. felt surprised and endeared by various moments of poetic clarity and image. enjoyed this stanza in particular: "he makes shapes in the air with his butt light / and it's almost as good as the tv". 

the future sound of blanks by fawzy zablah and brian van gold: bought from fawzy over twitter based on the intriguing title. relatively straightforward, short comic book about a real estate grifter in the 1890s and his descendant in the 1980s who ends up being an olive oil grifter. felt interested in the subplot about the 1980s guy wanting to make it in the music business and his friend stringing him along trying to get him to snitch on people -- would have enjoyed a longer story with more about this part. didn't feel like the computer-drawn art style was particularly gripping, struck me as kind of flat albeit colorful.