Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Japanese 2013; English translation 2014) By Haruki Murakami

Wow. That one word could suffice as a description of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, were I not so eager write more.

Mr. Murakami is a major force in literature in Japan and in English translations throughout the world. He’s also rather prolific, though this is the first work of his I’ve read. Now for a cliché: were it not for having to work, I would have read this book straight through, that’s how good it is. 

The main character is a young man named Tsukuru Tazaki who grew up in the suburbs of Nagoya, Japan. In high school he was part of a 3-guy, 2-girl clique of friends. Each of the other members of the clique have names that include a color; i.e. one of the guys is named Akamatsu, which means “red pine,” another is named Oumi, meaning “blue sea.” Tsukuru’s name means “builder.” He has no color to claim, hence the nickname of “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki.” Nicknames can define you, for life.  Colorless Tsukuru developed a self-image of boring, average, nondescript.

After high school Tsukuru goes away to engineering school in Tokyo. The others enroll in universities in Nagoya. For a while, they remain as close as always, with Tsukuru frequently coming home from college on weekends to see his friends. Then suddenly Tsukuru gets the feeling he’s being left out, no calls, no emails. He comes home to find out what’s going on. No one will see him. Finally, one of them returns his calls, informing him they’ve jointly decided to expel him from their group. No explanation, just a leave us alone.

Tsukuru returns to Tokyo devastated. 

For several months he just goes through the motions of living, and considers if even that is worth the effort. Eventually, he puts it all in the past and moves on. But the experience has left a permanent scar on him, an inability to become emotionally close to anyone. 

Sixteen years later, and still single, he begins a dating relationship with a woman named Sara. She calls him out on his intimacy issue, and he explains his life story to her. Her reaction is sympathetic, but she tells him she can’t continue with him as anything more than a casual friend until he confronts his four childhood friends and seeks an answer to why they ostracized him years ago.

The remainder of the book deals with Tsukuru’s efforts to find that answer. He eventually does, but in the process opens up several other mysteries which remain unsolved after the final page, not the least of which is the status of his relationship with Sara -- all the perfect set-up for a sequel. I suspect, after researching the author, that I won’t be disappointed on that front; his first published works after all, formed a trilogy titled The Rat.

Also, from reading over the Haruki Murakami website, and through Wikipedia, I’ve learned he has a reputation of dropping lots of musical themes into his writings. In Colorless he utilizes two: one a classical recording of Franz Listz' Years of Pilgrimage as performed by Lazar Berman; the other for contrast, Elvis Presley's Viva Las Vegas.

Reviewers have noted that Murakami’s writing is very “western.” While true, I think it’s because he writes about modern Japan, not the traditional one readers might be expecting, though at least in Colorless, he tips his hat to traditional writing, making a great cultural blend.

Recommendation:  You bet.

The Mathematician's Shiva (2014) By Stuart Rojstaczer

More fun than a barrel of monkeys! Imagine being surrounded by socially awkward geeks-on-a-mission for seven days, then sprinkle in a few serious sub-plots and themes, and voila, you have a novel titled The Mathematician’s Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer. Life (and death) is funny sometimes, and then life moves on.

The woman who dies is Rachela Karnokovitch. She was a world famous mathematician, a genius, whose colleagues worship her. Most of them, though an exceedingly bright and overly educated group of people, are not of her intellect.        

As a child, Rachela and her parents fled their native Poland in advance of the German invasion (1939) taking the only route available to them, Russia. They were sent to a refugee camp on the Barents Sea, where her mother did not survive. After the war, Rachela and her father made their way back to their village which had been annexed into the Soviet Union. School officials soon recognized her intelligence, sending her to the University of Moscow as a child prodigy. She distinguished herself academically and became a professor by age 22. She married and had a son. As time went on, she realized that no matter how intelligent she was, her academic career would be severely limited because she was a Pole, a Jew, and a woman. Eventually she defected while at a seminar in Berlin, knowing her husband and their son would figure out a way to follow – two years later they did, heading to the border on the day Joseph Stalin died, knowing the Soviet guards, along with the rest of the country, would be distracted with their mass grief.  

The family eventually re-united and ended up at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. There, Rachela joined the faculty and re-established her academic and intellectual credentials, though still battled with institutionalized sexism. 

Her Russian-born, American-raised son Sasha narrates the book.

At the time of her death, there was a rumor spreading rapidly in academic circles that Rachela had solved a century old problem, the famed Navier-Stokes equation – a proof she apparently decided to take to the grave with her. While mathematicians from around the globe descended on Madison to celebrate her life, they also came to hopefully uncover the Navier-Stokes proof among her papers. During the shiva they searched her home, ripping up floor boards, looking behind pictures, ransacking the attic, and even at one point attempted to interrogate Pascha, her Polish-speaking parrot. Shasha put a halt to their insistence on an open casket.

Eulogizing Rachela with this book also gives the author ample opportunity to provide insight into her family as a whole. From Sasha we learn of the challenges of being an immigrant in the U.S., the difficulties of being the son of a genius, and are offered an interesting subplot when his child from his short-term marriage, who he is aware of but has never met, attends the funeral. Another character who plays an outsized role in the story is Shlomo, Rachela's brother.

While the field of mathematics may have its equations, so too the field of literature has many classic formulas – one of which is using a funeral as the setting for a story. Rachela Kornokovitch mastered the mathematic equation.  Using the voice of Sasha, Stuart Rojstaczer has expertly mastered the shiva.

American Visa (Spanish 1994, English 2007) By Juan de Recacoechea

A few days ago I finished an interesting little novel titled American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea. It was a winner of Bolivia’s National Book Prize. It’s been made into a Spanish-language movie, with English subtitles. While I haven’t seen the movie, I did watch the trailer for it on YouTube. From it I get the impression the screen adaptation took a great many liberties with the script – way too many.

The book is a mystery, and a sad comedy. The main character is Mario Alvarez, a high school teacher often called “the Professor.” He’s originally from Uyuni in the south of Bolivia, but has lived his adult life in Oruro, just south of the capital of La Paz. The book includes a map of Bolivia for those of us new to the geography.

Before the book begins, Mario’s wife has abandoned him and their son, running off to Argentina to “find herself.” The son has also moved on, immigrating to the U.S. back when immigration policies toward South Americans weren’t quite as absurd as they are today. The story begins when Mario receives a letter from his son asking him to join him in Miami. Obtaining the American visa needed to go “visit” his son becomes the crux of the story. 

Mario gathers all of the documentation he will need, says goodbye to a lifetime of friends, and heads to the American Consulate in La Paz to apply for the visa. Only at the last moment does he realize the Americans will actually seek to verify the authenticity of his forged documents (one must prove, among other things, net assets of over $50,000) – he leaves before the interview begins. The rest of the novel details how he attempts to gain the visa through bribery.

While the book is a mystery (his favorite author is Raymond Chandler), it also serves as a significant commentary on Bolivian politics, the drug trade, and their intersection; military and patronage politics; and crippling poverty & unemployment … not to mention immigration policy. 

There are, of course, multiple subplots revolving around his fellow guests at The Hotel California (I kid you not) in La Paz, and his developing relationship with a prostitute named Blanca - all of which are interesting, yet definitely not the tales that would be approved by the Bolivia’s Tourism Bureau.

Recommendation: Not a world classic, but an interesting read for those of us who know little to nothing about Bolivia.

Mr. Loverman (2013 UK, 2014 US) By Bernardine Evaristo

I think I’m in love. His name is Barrington Jedidiah Walker, and he’s the title character in the novel Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo. He’s the most original, most memorable, and definitely the most interesting and sometimes charming new character in literature since Tales of the City gave us Mrs. Madrigal.

Mr. Walker, Barry, is 74. He was an immigrant to Britain from Antigua in the Caribbean, and has made a comfortable life in London’s Borough of Hackney. He’s been married for 50 years and has two polar opposite daughters. His good friend Morris also immigrated from Antigua decades ago. They went to school together back on the island and have remained close all their adult lives. Morris was once married. However, a happy marriage was never in the cards for either of them, but getting married is what one did if one was gay in the 1950s & 60s, in Antigua, or the United Kingdom (or the United States).

Twenty-five years ago, Morris raised the subject of moving in together.  

“This is 1980s London, Barry,” Morris said, sitting up and facing me. “Not 1950s St. John’s. Why we acting so backward? It is legal. We are legal. Nobody goin’ arrest us. Tis we own blasted business what we do, and everybody else can keep their small-minded noses out of it.” He put his hand on my wrist. I didn’t realize it was shaking.

“This is some heavy crap we dealing with, Morris. You asking me to turn my life upside down. I don’t know if I can take the upheaval.”

The subject was then dropped until 2012 when, with Barry’s marriage in shambles, and Morris’ long over, he brings it up again. Yet, Barry is still not ready to take the next step, disappointing and angering Morris.

The author, Bernardine Evaristo, handles this story expertly, accurately portraying the character of a gay man. She is also able to capture Barry’s other characteristics: his status as a black Caribbean immigrant, a father, an older but wiser curmudgeon, and even as a husband. Her writing style is superb, skillfully narrating both what Barry is saying, and what he’s thinking, which is not always the same thing. Her ability to tell, and care about, the underlying love story in this book is refreshing and appreciated.

Through her writing Evaristo also expertly captures one of new challenges facing the gay community as a byproduct of the movement’s breathtaking advances, the development of a monumental generation gap.

Barry & Morris are of a generation in which being gay was often a death sentence, either through acts of violence, “cures” like electro shock therapy, or suicide. I (at age 61) am of a generation when it meant bar raids, employment discrimination, political warfare, and AIDS. The younger members of today’s LGBTQ community -- while still far from living in a perfect world -- have never experienced gay invisibility or faced the “am I the only one” personal crisis. They realize marriage equality in all 50 states is only a matter of months away from a probable favorable Supreme Court ruling in the U.S., and is already the law in Great Britain (March 2014). The chronological difference between 74 year-old Barry and today’s “gay kids” is only fifty years, but culturally speaking it’s a millennium. We have much to learn from each other.

Yes, the book has a happy ending, but it is not a piece of so-called gay propaganda.  Gay people weren’t the only people hurt by this history, so were the people they married and the families and friends they often had to deceive to survive in the larger community. This book does not sugar-coat anything, it does though put it in perspective.

  

Recommendation: read it for its history, and definitely read it for its entertainment value.  Barry is a keeper.

A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka (2014) By Lev Golinkin

The title seems a bit cutesy, until you know its meaning. A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka by Lev Golinkin, is a remarkable book. Hilarious in parts, it is an autobiography covering some not so funny topics. 

 

In most major cities in America during the 70’s and 80’s, one routinely saw countless demonstrations under the banner of Save Soviet Jews. Golinkin’s life today is a result of those demonstrations. He was just ten years-old when his family was finally able to flee the Soviet-era Ukraine. The book tells of the Golinkin family’s life in the Ukraine and the bureaucratic process of leaving, blocked by the Soviets, and bureaucratically hampered again by the West. It covers their time as refugees without a state, and their eventual settlement in the United States.

While it seems unusual for someone so young to be writing an autobiography, Golinkin has experienced more in his still young life than most people will witness in their entire lives. Talk about cultural shock, he went from Kharkov in the Ukraine; to Vienna, Austria; to West Lafayette, Indiana; to East Windsor, New Jersey; and then on to Boston College, run by Jesuits; with side trips to Appalachia and Tijuana.

But the book is not simply about the politics and geography of what happens to refugees, it is also about what being a refugee does to people as individuals.

   

Throughout the USSR and its vassal states, Jews were second class citizens subjected to civil, social and physical abuse. In the Ukraine the day-to-day reality was so all-encompassing that Lev’s self-esteem was rock bottom as a child, and destroyed entirely once he entered school. He was a “Zhid.” While the etymology of that word is open to debate, its use in the Russian vernacular was not. It meant not just a “nasty Jew,” but as a group “an epidemic, a sinister cancer that Russians felt was ravaging their country.” That’s what his classmates were taught in school. Lev stayed away from school as often as possible, and stopped looking at himself in mirrors because the reflections confirmed his status.

 

The stateless refugee time period added more layers to his esteem problem. Though they were relieved to be relatively free from overt discrimination, his family was now dependent on the generosity of others.

Once in the US, the Golinkins faced the challenges common to all immigrants: language, lack of documentation (birth certificates, education degrees, etc.) and other employment barriers. His father was a prominent engineer in Russia and his mother a doctor. But they had to start over again in their new home, his father in a clerical job, and his mother as a coffee barista. Perhaps worse was the increasingly evident realization by Lev that having freedom of religion is a complicated right, especially when religion was a factor in one's years of oppression.

 

The impact of the psychological damage was/is lasting; dealing with its consequences is what led Golinkin to write about it. After years of holding it in, he needed to acknowledge everything that had happened to him and his family, and hundreds of thousands of others, and how it impacted every aspect of their lives. This process was an essential step to begin moving on.

    

At the onset of this review I mentioned that the book is hilarious, though by now you probably don’t believe me.  Yet, it is.  His stories, about learning English, about how and when to use the “f” word [always], about discovering there are 18 towns in the U.S. named Lafayette, and more -- is all great material, particularly when one considers the tradition of Jewish humor.  Whether this humor is a defense mechanism on Golinkin’s part, or a literary ploy, it works to make the story bearable.

Recommendation: a must read!