My New Friend, "HEAVEN" by Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd

 

Me, Bobby Keniston, with my new friend "Heaven" by Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd

Hi. My name is Bobby Keniston, and, as the name of this blog suggests, my only friends are books. You might be thinking, "Huh, that's sad," but it's not really. Books don't bully you or one day just disappear...

Which brings me to my new friend, Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd. But before I get into the details of my new friend Heaven, I would like to share a quote from author Mieko Kawakami:

"We have to confront and examine our mistakes, and write stories to pass down our folly and ignorance. Literature should not just portray our ideals. We have to examine our past mistakes, our past ignorance, without turning our eyes away." (from an interview/conversation between Kawakami and Fernanda Melchor for "Broadly Speaking" through the Wheeler Centre. You can watch the full interview on YouTube by CLICKING HERE... I highly recommend it). 

Kawakami certainly does not turn her eyes away from harsh realities in Heaven. The word "unflinching" really had no solid meaning to me until reading this book. It is indeed a work of art, so let's talk about it. 

HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND

I heard about Heaven from a booktube channel called Books and Bao, hosted by Willow Heath, and they had so much praise for the novel and Kawakami (you can watch their video review HERE). I would like to think I would have heard of the book when perusing the International Booker Prize longlist and shortlist, but, who knows? Willow's recommendation certainly encouraged me to check it out sooner. I am glad to have read the book before the winner of the prize is announced. 

ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Heaven is a first-person narrative of an unnamed fourteen year-old protagonist who is bullied. Constantly. In myriad, painful ways. Please believe me when I say this. The bullying is graphic, but often told in a simple, almost understated manner to highlight just how tragically normalized it has become for our narrator. Though perhaps understated isn't the best way to describe it-- perhaps it is better to say that it is presented flat-out as a fact of our narrator's life. His tormenters, led by a cool, beautiful boy named Ninomiya, call him "Eyes" because of his lazy eye, and they punch him, kick him, and hurt him, and he waits for it to be over with. 

But the novel actually begins with our narrator receiving a note in his desk at school, a note saying "We should be friends." It turns out that the note is from a girl in his class, Kojima, who is also bullied. When they meet up, they do become friends, and though they can never intervene to help each other at school (indeed, they never even really talk at school), the secret notes they share offer a great deal of comfort to each other. 

This is a short novel, and I don't want to give too much away, but I will say this: to suggest that the book is simply about bullying is like saying Moby Dick is just about trying to catch fish. Kawakami uses bullying to look at the bigger picture behind power structures, and the meaning, if any, behind them. 

Short and sleek, but absolutely painful and beautiful. 

BULLYING

I know I have already said it, but I cannot stress enough how unflinching a portrayal of bullying resides within these pages. If you were someone who was bullied (as I was), this book will bring up the memories and the pain (at least it did for me). Kawakami captures the constant stress, anxiety, fear and shame that comes with the territory of being bullied. Please do not misunderstand me here--- I don't mean to suggest that is like some afterschool special about bullying for a YA or middle grade audience. It most certainly is not. Kawakami delves deeply into the philosophy behind bullying, truly exploring what it means to have power, what it means to be weak, and whether that weakness can really be a strength. 

It is not easy to read sometimes, but still an important read, in my opinion. 

If you are someone who had no experience with being bullied, and that's really great if that's the case, you may think it is perhaps exaggerated here. I don't know. Maybe a little. But it felt very real to me. I didn't have it exactly as bad as our narrator, but there were some similar moments. 

Things you never forget. Things that, many years later, your realize are permanently a part of you. 

Special note: if you are being bullied, do not make the same mistake I did. There are things I kept to myself, never told my parents or a teacher, not even my closest friends. I know, believe me, I know, there is shame attached to being bullied and it is not easy to talk about. But please try to talk to someone, even if it is anonymously. There is support out there. CLICK HERE for some resources. 

BEAUTY

And yet, amongst all the pain, there is still beauty. And Kawakami's writing is absolutely beautiful, and lovingly translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. 

"His eyes shifted, the way the shadows of clouds pass the sun on windless days."

I can't even tell you how much I wish I could write a description so beautiful in its simplicity and precision. 

FINAL TAKEAWAYS

This book hurt my stomach at times, and I mean this as the highest compliment. Great writing does hurt sometimes, great writing should be unflinching and honest. I am so happy to have finally read Mieko Kawakami and can't wait to read her other works in translation, like Ms. Ice Sandwich, Breasts and Eggs, and the recent release, All the Lovers in the Night. Clearly Kawakami is a writer at the very top of her powers, and she has a brand new fan. 

Thank you for reading my thoughts on my new friend Heaven.  Come back Monday to meet a whole new friend, and please feel free to comment any thoughts below. 

My New Friend, "SEA OF TRANQUILITY" by Emily St. John Mandel

 

A photo of me and my new friend, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Hi. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. This isn't such a bad thing. There are many dashes in the "Pro" column, in fact. Books don't have to stay away from you during a pandemic, for one thing, right? No nasal swabbing a book before you can invite them to your party or to share your home...

My newest friend I want to talk about today is Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Mandel has blown up on the literary scene, especially since her fourth novel, 2014's Station Eleven was a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke award. Station Eleven, which centers around a pandemic, has been discussed widely again these last few years (wonder why?) and has been made into a critically-acclaimed limited series for HBO Max. Mandel's most recent novel was The Glass Hotel, one of my favorite novels of 2020, which centers around a Ponzi scheme and a kind of ghost story. 

Before I get into many details about Sea of Tranquility, my new pal, I should start by saying that Emily St. John Mandel is quickly becoming one of my favorite novelists, along with the likes of Jesmyn Ward, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Neil Gaiman. True, I have only The Glass Hotel and my new friend, but both novels are just that good. 

HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND

As I mentioned above, I read Emily St. John Mandel's previous novel, The Glass Hotel, back in 2020. I picked that book up at the Thompson Free Library. It became such a good friend, that I anxiously looked forward Mandel's next book, and, well, here it is. I purchased a copy, and have since ordered Station Eleven as well. It is my intention now to go back and get her first three novels, too. 

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Sea of Tranquility doesn't have an easy "elevator pitch," as Mandel has said herself in an interview. But here is a basic rundown:

Sea of Tranquility goes through different time periods, beginning with 1912, where we follow Edwin St. John St. Andrew (yes, a young man with two saints in his name) who ends up "exiled" after anti-colonial remarks at a dinner party to the forests of Canada in the fictional Caiette (also seen in The Glass Hotel). It is here that the young man has a strange experience in the forest, as if being transported and surrounded by violin music. He also meets a mysterious man pretending to be a priest who calls himself Roberts. 

Next, Mandel transports us to 2020 for a section called Mirella and Vincent who were both characters in The Glass Hotel ( don't worry--- you don't have to read The Glass Hotel  to understand this book, though I do highly recommend it just the same). Mirella's husband was a victim of Vincent's husband's Ponzi scheme and lost everything. Vincent disappeared years ago, and Mirella wants to know what happened to her, so she goes to a concert being held by Vincent's brother Paul. Paul shows an old video tape of a strange occurrence videotaped by Vincent when they were children. It is a brief moment, and very similar to what happened to Edwin in 1912. After the concert Mirella meets with Paul, who is also being spoken to by a strange man named Gaspery. But Mirella seems to remember Gaspery from somewhere...

From here, we can (literally) fly to the moon when we meet Olive Llewelyn in the year 2203, a writer on a book tour, currently on Earth. Olive lives in the second colony on the moon, and is overwhelmed a bit by the tour, missing her husband Dion and their young daughter Sylvie. Olive wrote a very successful novel about a pandemic and may be close to finding herself in a very real pandemic of her own. After meeting a "journalist" by the name of Gaspery Roberts, named after a character from her book, she wonders if it may not be wiser to cut the book tour short. 

And this brings us to the very heart and crux of the book, which is why I don't really want to say anything more. Clearly, Gaspery is the unifying character of these three threads in time. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Sea of Tranquility packs the richness of an epic into 255 quick-turning pages. Mandel is skillful at weaving plot threads into a beautiful tapestry--- so skilled, in fact, that I find myself succumbing to this completely unoriginal metaphor. But I'm not the great writer, here. That would be Emily St. John Mandel. 

Everyone is talking how this is Mandel's most speculative fiction to date, and while that may be true, it is still, at its core, a very human story and one we can all relate to, especially now. 

Olive Llewelyn, the writer, while not a complete stand in for Mandel, was clearly written with a deep knowledge of what it is like to be a successful writer of a pandemic novel who is now living during a pandemic. These insights are some of the most poignant in the book. 

"I suppose anything written this year is likely to be deranged," a character says of a piece being written during the pandemic lockdown. I am sure Mandel said the same thing time and again, but make no mistake--- Sea of Tranquility is only deranged in the most relatable way for those of us who have survived 2020 and 2021. This novel could not or would not have been written without the pandemic, at least not in the way it is given to us now. 

I suppose we can chalk that up to a little bit of bright side. 

FINAL TAKEAWAY

Enough of this. Just go get the book. 

Thanks for reading my thoughts on my new friend, Sea of Tranquility. Come on back when I make a new friend! 

My New Friend, "THE SWEET RELIEF OF MISSING CHILDREN" by Sarah Braunstein

 

Me and my new friend, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein. I'm the one in the hat. 

Hello everyone, my name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. Don't worry about me--- perhaps there is a sweet relief that comes with being friendless except for stories, perhaps even like The Sweet Relief of Missing Children, the new friend I will be talking about today. This is the debut novel of Sarah Braunstein, an MFA alum of the distinguished Iowa Writers' Workshop who currently lives in Maine, and, according to her website (which you can visit by CLICKING HERE), teaches at Colby College. She has also been the recipient of a "5 Under 35" award from the National Book Foundation and a Ronna Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. So, yeah, she is far too accomplished to be my friend, but at least I have her book. 

HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND

Constant readers of my blog (Hello?! Hello?! Do you exist?!) know that I started this project with a number of Maine authors, as I am a Maine writer myself, and wanted to read more from Maine voices that didn't belong to Stephen King. When I was doing some research about writers based in Maine, Sarah Braunstein came up. I was completely captivated by the title The Sweet Relief of Missing Children, found it dark yet lyrical, a mite unsettling. The book proved to live up to these initial feelings about the title. 

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

My new friend was the recipient of the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Fiction, and deserves a higher rating on Goodreads (though many great books are divisive). 

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children begins with a short passage about Leonora, a 12-year-old girl who is taken. This is not a spoiler--- this is how the story begins and is mentioned directly on the jacket. We do not know right away how she was taken or by whom, only that she has been taken. Leonora and her story becomes the structural foundation on which the many wings of this house are built, and meant to be the device which connects them all. In this regard, it mostly succeeds. 

The several threads of the novel, which Bitch magazine called "akin to the film Magnolia (if Saul Bellow had written the novelization)", include Paul, who we meet as a young, serious boy, ditched by his mother "Goldie" on his birthday, who goes out with a photographer in hopes of becoming a model. Unbeknownst to Paul and Goldie, they are often spied on by a genuine Peeping Tom--- Tom Grant, an abortion nurse with a daughter, Jade, Paul's age. The reader will meet Paul and Jade when they are teenagers in what turned out to be my favorite section of the book. 

Other threads include Sam, the only survivor of an "accident" after his mother drove their family into a train. He is adopted by his Uncle Joe and his wife, Constance. Joe is great friends with Hank and his wife Grace, who have a daughter named Judith who one day goes missing. Sam, who would rather be losing his virginity to his high school girlfriend Helen, becomes instrumental in bringing Judith home. 

My friend jumps around in time and in perspective frequently. I am a fan of stories that are not afraid to be non-linear, and was happy to take the journey. There are a few other threads I feel I can't get into without distinct spoilers, but we do see Paul, Sam, and Judith grow up (sadly, I felt that Jade was kind of written away in just a few sentences), and, in-between, we learn more details about Leonora's life, a strange encounter she has with an adult, and, ultimately, her abduction. 

I understand that some people are frustrated by non-linear novels. I understand this fact, but don't quite get it. Novels should stretch your mind at least a little, don't you think?

FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

I like the dark, unsettling feel to much of the novel. Braunstein does well at creating emotional reactions with clear, yet lyrical prose. I wrote down many lovely quotes from the book, sentences that say far more than the number of words would suggest. When a character thinks how he "felt a desire to smash love into his body, to smash love into the world, to allow love to be the violent act he'd always suspected it was," I was struck by the beauty and darkness of the image, and impressed by the very mechanics of creating such a sentence. 

SOME CHALLENGES WITH MY NEW FRIEND

Even the best of friends can sometimes overstay a visit a little bit. After the major threads are resolved, including Leonora's, there are another fifteen pages to the book or so. And while they are not completely out of place, I would be lying if I didn't say they felt a tiny bit anticlimactic. 

FINAL TAKEAWAY

I am very happy I discovered this book. I had to get it on interlibrary loan from the Bangor Public Library. But I am happy I found it and read it. Sarah Braunstein's website says a new novel is in the works, and I will definitely read whatever she puts out next. 

I need as many friends as I can get. 

Come on back to my next post and meet the new friend I have made. Please feel free to comment below about your favorite friends, too.