Joyous: Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter

Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter

"There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact." -Milan Kundera (opens the last chapter, with the title name)

Fast Facts

• Walter has been a finalist for the National Book Award and won an Edgar Allen Poe award
• Journalist-turned novelist
• Beautiful Ruins (a great name for a book) took him 15 years to write
• He provides an afterward explaining how obnoxious this admission is, and detailing his blue collar work ethic and approach - it made me love him even more
• Do you want to travel to a small Italian village and fall in love?
• You do?  Then just buy this book.  Immediately.
• Funny and down-to-earth and descriptive and a great, engaging story
• Time period jumping, character jumping, stylistic jumping - Walter does it all, and does it well
• This book is an easy-to-digest joy.  Judge it by its cover and enjoy how delicious and sad and romantic it all is

How this Beautiful Story Starts

Where to begin, recapping a book I enjoyed so thoroughly that its perfect, no-ends-left-untied finish felt bittersweet.

If it takes me 15 years to write a book that brings someone else such relaxed pleasure, then it was a 15 years well-spent.

Walter's novel jumps fluidly between the small fishing village of Porto Vergogna in 1962, the present day, and points of interest to the characters in between.  This makes a summary somewhat difficult, but here goes.

Pasquale, a handsome college student in 1962, lives with his newly-widowed mother and his crazy, ugly witch of an aunt in their 6-room "hotel": the Adequate View Hotel.  No one comes to this fishing village, which is quickly losing its fishermen to larger vessels and faraway factories.  Pasquale's dream is to transform the village into a tourist destination, given its location - it's the bastard cousin of the Cinque Terre, and lobbies unsuccessfully to be the sixth town in that beautiful Italian coastal string of villages - why?  Well, it's smaller, more remote, and less picturesque.

The hotel gets its name from its only guest, an alcoholic American World War II veteran and unprolific writer named Alvis Bender.  Alvis finds the word "beautiful" to be too inflated, and tells Pasquale's father Carlo that it has lost its meaning after the war.  To have a real effect, Carlo gives it this name, and like the title of the book, I find it wonderfully satisfying.

Pasquale is a replacement son for parents who lost both their boys in the war, and when we meet him, he is scraping away at a dusting of sand near the water, trying to make it into a beach (failure).  He also spends his days moving rocks on a cliff at a task that even Sisyphus would laugh at - Pasquale wants to build a tennis court.  On a cliff.  Never having seen an actual game of tennis played, and only imagining that the American tourists who will flock to the hotel will never miss, he doesn't realize that every ball will fly off the cliff into the sea.

He's just that kind of romantic.

And who better for him to fall in love with than a beautiful American starlet who arrives (accidentally?) at his doorstep?  Dee Moray, with a supporting role in the movie Cleopatra, filming in Rome, has had the misfortune of comforting star Richard Burton, when Burton was on the outs with Elizabeth Taylor. (Glamorous much?)  She experiences horrible bouts of pain and vomiting, and is told that she is dying of cancer before she is sent to Porto Vergogna, and then on to Switzerland for treatment.

I Can't Tell You Any More

Really.  I can't stand it.  What happens to Pasquale and Dee is too interesting to read that I can't bear to spoil it.  I've already blathered on too long about just the first couple of chapters.  Instead, let's talk format and characters.

Format and Characters

If novels struggle to keep your attention due to conventional format, Beautiful Ruins will feel like a breath of fresh air.  The chapters are told not only from the perspectives of different characters, all fascinating and fully formed, but Walters frequently varies the formats. You read:

• the first and only chapter in Alvis Bender's wartime novel of his 20-second love Maria, before her fall
• the final chapter of Alvis, years later and still a romantic, through the eyes of his wife as he asks for another round of drinks
• the rejected chapter of legendary film producer Michael Deane's autobiography about his rise to power on Dee's back, struggling to keep the passion between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton alive in order to make back the money that the studio sunk into Cleopatra
• a movie pitch for Donner!, a far-too-expensive biopic about settlers heading west and into cannibalism
• a play about a drug-addicted, lost, manipulative, and charming comedic musician who looks like someone famous

In the present day, we're given Claire Silver, Michael Deane's production assistant, a lover of great movies who is forced to hear pitches from Michael's friends for zombie thrillers and reality garbage.  She's spent years dating a beautiful zombie extra with a porn addiction.

Then there's Michael Deane himself.  We see him, an unflattering portrait of a man at any point in time, and in the present day he is so old but so preserved by plastic surgery that he has a smooth baby face that causes strangers to stare.

And Shane Wheeler, a thirty-something living in his parent's basement, divorced and out of a job and out of his characteristic confidence.  He has tattooed "ACT" on his arm as an inspirational reminder to "act as if Ye have faith and it shall be given to you."   He finds out years later that this quote he'd lived by wasn't biblical as he'd thought, but was instead pulled from a Paul Newman movie.

And they're all just in supporting roles.



The Beautiful Part



Each of these characters - Michael and Claire in Hollywood and Shane on its cusp; Pasquale in the past and the present; the lovely, enigmatic Dee - they're all, as Dee tells Pasquale, waiting for their lives to start.  This idea, that everyone is waiting for their big adventure, climax, and true meaning, feels real beyond the novel and beyond the movies.

Watching them as they wait, and as they live through the most significant moments of their lives, making big decisions and falling in love and traveling and finding themselves and trying to make right the wrongs of the past, is a joy.

Of course, I've left out the big details about Dee, just as the novel circles around her without actually hearing her voice until the gorgeous ending.  But as I've said, I refuse to be a spoiler about this book, because I loved it.

So go and enjoy Beautiful Ruins the way you would a long afternoon on Pasquale's non-existent Porto Vergogna beach, never wanting the moment to end but just glad, whatever its flaws, that it existed at all.

Meh: The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles: A Novel, Karen Thompson Walker 

Fast Facts

• 304 pages
• Walker worked as an editor for Simon & Schuster, writing in the mornings before work and sometimes on the subway
• The story of a teenage girl detailing her life when the earth's rotation slows
• Reads a little like a teenager wrote it...
• That's not to say I didn't like it!
• Nice and light
• But not at the top of my recommendation list

Remember That Time, In Middle School?

If you do, and it wasn't your favorite time, this book may not be for you.  It's not quite science fiction-y enough for a science fiction lover, and fits more snugly into the "coming of age" genre.  Julia recounts her experiences as a sixth-grade girl, awkward and lonely, in the months when the earth's rotation first begins to slow.

Julia's best friend forever (they even have bracelets!) ditches her in an instant, the way middle school girls are wont to do.  Bullies on the bus pull up Julia's shirt to prove that she doesn't need, and isn't wearing, a training bra.  A mean girl uses her as a good-influence alibi, so that the mean girl can drink and spend time alone with boys.  Julia loves a boy named Seth on a skateboard, but he doesn't know she exists (or does he?)  Her social life is mainly limited to hanging out with her neurotic mother, distant father, and depressed grandfather (who gifts her a gold pocket watch - a relic of a time when the clocks and the sun were aligned).

Earth Slow-Down - Interesting Idea, Not Enough Follow-Through

As you may be able to tell from this description, the story itself would be sweet and relatively unmemorable if not for the Vonnegut-style imaginings:

• birds falling dead out of the sky
• whales washing up with the tide
• radioactive sun shining bright for 40 hours
• political and social adaptation to the new planetary reality

So, as Julia tries to get Seth's attention and observe the shifting environmental situation, Thompson Walker has a formula that's interesting enough to keep a reader's attention.  In the midst of the mundanity of Julia trying to fit in with a pretty, confident, and mean classmate, ensconced in a fancy house with an impressive emergency supplies shelter, there's a small detail to remind you that everything is changing - Julia eats what will be her last can of pineapples.

Trees crash and fall in the ever-lasting night.  Homeowners create rock formations to replace the dead grass.  The sun has gotten closer, and going outside in the daytime means horrific skin burns and severe dehydration, sometimes causing seizures, and relegating people to the confines of their homes.  "Gravity sickness" afflicts everyone differently.  The canned goods aisle of the grocery store quickly empties, as supply hoarding ensues.  Greenhouses are erected to replace dying crops.

Most interestingly, a sect of "real timers" breaks off when the government orders U.S. citizens to remain on a 24-hour clock, in order to maintain economic and social equilibrium.  The real timers, as their name suggests, struggle to remain on the clock dictated by the sun.

I wish the author had gone into more about the interactions and perspectives of these real timers, some of whom form a colony in the desert called Circadia.  The snippets we do learn form a compelling social commentary on how non-conformists are abused by a fearful majority:

• real timer hippies who grow pot in the basement and are turned in by their angry neighbors 
• real timer Orthodox Jews are shunned for their adherence to the Sabbath
• a real timer piano teacher (who happens to be sleeping with Julia's father, in an uninteresting plot twist) has her home defaced, and leaves in a moving van (where is there to go?)

Another interesting and relatively unexplored plot twist occurs on New Years Eve, when Julia's mother, suffering from the beginnings of gravity sickness, passes out at the driver's wheel, hitting a real timer bum in the street.  He dies, in part because we're told that such accidents are more frequently fatal due to the change in gravity, but there are no repercussions - the incident is glossed over superficially.

The Ending: More of a Fizzling

Julia realizes her romance with Seth, who becomes a real friend and companion, until gravity sickness sends him to Mexico.  (How is it going to be any better there?)  And as soon as that plot element is tied up, the power goes out, the servers go down, and everyone loses touch with their loved ones - Seth included.

A fast-forward with no explanation shows that the story of sixth-grade Julia is being recounted by Julia at 23.  The earth has continued to slow, and a rocket has been invented to take people away from earth (where?)  Schools are closing, and it's only a matter of time before the fuel runs out.  We're told, inexplicably, that Julia wants to become a doctor, though some universities have closed.  Our narrator, all grown up in a matter of paragraphs, contemplates the artifacts that will be left behind to show that she and Seth were here, on earth.  And that's it.

My Take

A sugary-sweet coming-of-age tale, that rings true to the experiences of a sixth grade girl (though really, who wants to re-visit that era?)  The science fiction plot device makes what would be a forgettable story into a more interesting tale, to be sure.  However, I still wouldn't call it great, or put it on the top of your bedside book pile.  But it was a nice way to spend a few hours.

Avoid: Last Man in Tower, by Aravind Adiga

Last Man in Tower, Aravind Adiga

Fast Facts

• Adiga won the Man Booker in 2008 for The White Tiger
• If he wins again for Last Man in Tower, I'll eat my hat
• 480 pages
• Author currently lives in Mumbai, which I can barely imagine visiting after this book
• Depressing without a trace of redemption - just say no!

Not-So-Ringing Endorsement
Have you ever hated a book entirely because of its ending?

If not, then please - read Last Man in Tower. It will give you the unenviable feeling that the admittedly somewhat-enjoyable hours you spent getting to the end were really just an exercise in masochism. It may also destroy your sense that there is good at the core of every human being. Truly, the end of this book is so terrible that I regretted picking it up in the first place, despite Adiga's talent for storytelling and character development.

This Lord of the Flies (Indian adult version) doesn't have enough in it to redeem how depressing it became. No phoenix rising out of the ashes. Just a feeling that you got smacked around a little at first, only to get punched in the gut as your reward.

Plot Summary

Masterji, a recently-widowed retired physics teacher in his 60's, lives in the Vishram Society, which refers to the occupants of two crumbling apartment towers in Mumbai. The towers have stood for years, and the residents seem to be solidly middle class. They're certainly not wealthy, but they live comfortably, and many of them have maids. The population is decidedly older, and though the group is somewhat gossipy, it is clear that their years of living in close proximity have established significant bonds between them.

Pure Evil rears its ugly head, though, when corrupt Dharmen Shah and his left-hand man, Shanmugham, enter the Society offering nearly twice the value of each apartment to the Society members. Shah is a sleazy builder with a rebellious son, a "kept woman" named Rosie who has essentially been blackmailed into staying in his company, and a terrible cough that seems a harbinger of doom. Shah has astrologically-approved plans to raze the Society and build luxury condos, given that this section of Mumbai is fast-changing due to an influx of finance companies. The catch is that every Society member must give his approval for anyone to receive the easy cash.

Nearly everyone is in favor of the offer, and people start to spend the money not yet in their pockets on expensive trinkets and status symbols. The opposition to the deal includes teacher Masterji's best friends, the Pintos, an older couple - Mrs. Pinto is blind and can't imagine moving from the Society she knows by feel. Mr. Pinto and Masterji have a little book in which they keep account of all the money they owe one another for small items, so that finances never tear their friendship apart. How very ironic. Because of their opposition, Masterji also opposes the deal, along with a social worker.

Social pressures and the promise of a "sweetener" of additional money from Shah eventually break down the Pintos and the social worker, who is bitter because her husband left her and stole her dowry. 

Among the social pressures: Mrs. Puri, a ringleader in the Society who has an 18-year-old son named Ramu, who has Down's Syndrome and struggles with basic functions. Mrs. Puri is an object of sympathy at first, given the difficulty of her role as caregiver and her desire to find a nurse for Ramu, and a more comfortable place to live.  Mrs. Puri, Ramu, and Masterji have a nice relationship at the outset - Ramu loves the old teacher, and he shows great kindness to them both.

Masterji holds out in the real estate deal because he knows that the Pintos truly don't want to leave.  He also feels attached to his home - this is where his beloved wife lived and died, where his daughter grew up before being thrown off a commuter train and left to die on the tracks, where he raised his money-grubbing son (who is fast-friends with Mrs. Puri.)  He has taught the children of the Society science lessons after school, and this is his community.  His hope is that the offer from Shah will expire, and life will go back to normal.  To this end, he visits a lawyer for protection, but the lawyer's true motivations lie in reaching an even sweeter settlement with the builder.

So what happens?

Spoiler Ending: Why I Hated It

Mrs. Puri and her conformist, spineless neighbors enlist neighborhood thugs to break into Masterji's apartment in the night and beat him until, afraid for his wellbeing, he agrees to take the money and leave the Society.  While this beating occurs, the neighbors - including the Pintos! - put cotton in their ears to dull the screams.  Masterji fights back and, incredibly given his age, scares the teenage thugs away.

When this doesn't work, Puri and her compatriots wait a few days, provide more cotton balls for the neighbors' ears, and then she and her associates beat Masterji brutally and drag his wounded body to a railing by the courtyard.  They then throw his body over the railing, and he dies.

Is that enough to destroy your faith in mankind?  No?  What about the postscript to this lovely tale, wherein Masterji's son is thrilled to inherit Shah's money; everyone moves into an only-slightly nicer apartment; and the social worker and neighborhood children sing a song by the banyan tree about how wonderful Masterji was?

Yep, that's how it ends.  With a song about Great Masterji, written by his murderers and their co-conspirators.

Vomit.

Well-written isn't enough.  Interesting characters aren't enough.  Scenes of Mumbai that make you feel like you're there?  Not enough.  Certainly not enough to redeem this story that has nothing but misery, greed, death, and finally, the self-righteous rewriting of history to make these horrible neighbors seem less horrible than they really were.

Final Word
Second novel slump? The White Tiger author should have pulled some of the murder-mystery of his first exciting, fascinating novel and infused Last Man in Tower. After this throttling, though, it'll be hard to bring this initially-hopeful reader back.

First post: The Orphan Master's Son

The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel, Adam Johnson

http://www.amazon.com/The-Orphan-Masters-Son-Pulitzer/dp/0812982622

"Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn't matter what they were about. It didn't matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack - if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous."

Fast facts

• 445 pages
• Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (among other notable awards)
• Johnson grew up in Arizona and didn't step foot in North Korea until three years after he started research for Orphan Master
• This is one of my favorite books - ever
• Yes, the book features:
• An ejaculating ox
• Stoning
• Bloodletting
• Kidnapping
• Starvation
• Tattoo removal with a knife
• No, I won't pause to think too long about how I may be voyeuristic/sadistic for loving it
• Have I mentioned, it's also a love story?  Think Casablanca

Bottom line

If you have the stomach for (horrific) adventures, including torture and killing as a matter of course, the pay-off is worth it.  I promise that despite all the gore, the exploits of protagonist Jun Do are fascinating, humorous, sometimes uplifting, and surprisingly beautiful.

No interest in or prior knowledge of North Korea is required, but once you're finished, you'll feel like an expert on what it's like to live under the oppressive egomania of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. The author's white bread name and some terrific (and funny) encounters with Texan diplomats in the book are the only real clues that Johnson isn't from Korea.

All-in-all, I'm still upset that I've finished the book, and though the dark subject matter was difficult to read in long spurts, I had trouble putting it down.  Johnson is ambitious and terrific, and anything else he's written or will write is a must-read for me.

What you can expect - long-winded plot summary

Orphan Master is split into two parts chronicling parallel lives.  In the first part, "The Biography of Jun Do," we meet our hero, the John Doe Everyman of North Korea, an orphan (who swears he's not an orphan,) in the countryside of Chongjin. 

Some chapters are structured as propaganda announcements over the omnipresent loudspeakers installed in every home.  These announcements paint a picture of idyllic life in the country, and give hints of the narrative to come.  The opening announcement features:

• North Korean recipe contests
• Tales of American atrocities
• Reporting on the defection of an Olympic American rower to North Korean shores
• A description of military Commander Ga and his golden belt award
• Praise for the national actress and Ga's wife, the beautiful and talented Sun Moon
• Baseless rumors of Japanese kidnappings involving an opera singer

When we meet Jun Do, he's at an orphanage called Long Tomorrows, experiencing abuse at the hands of his father, the Orphan Master, who is heartbroken because Jun Do's mother, a singer, was kidnapped and taken to the city.  The stigmatized orphans, all named after important "martyrs of the revolution," work in fields and in factories and are forced to memorize Juche speeches on Kim Il-Sung's political theory.

The region is flooded and Jun Do, quickly losing what passes in the book as childhood, becomes familiar with death, as orphans are snatched into the current or fall into paint vats in the factories.  He observes the famine known as the Arduous March, and at age 14, becomes a tunnel soldier.  The skills he learns in the tunnels, primarily the ability to fight in the dark, become influential throughout his misadventures.

As though "zero light combat" were not terrible enough, an individual called Officer So appears to take Jun Do away from the tunnels.  Together with Gil, their translator, they take a boat to the Japanese coast.  Their mission?  Practice kidnappings of random Japanese citizens who have the misfortune to be alone on the beach, in preparation for their big catch: an opera singer named Rumina, with whom a Korean official has developed an obsession.

• Aside: It is hard, at this point in the novel, to decide whether Jun Do is simply an object of pity, for whom acts of evil are a means to survival, or whether he is meant as an anti-hero.  Regardless, he feels remorse for the lives that he ruins, and a western reader can only wonder how they would ever survive in a place like North Korea - would I have made these difficult choices?  Would I have faced culture shock and fear of the unknown and fear of the Dear Leader's reprisal for defecting?

After a stint in language school, our protagonist begins a "listening post" aboard the Junma, a fishing vessel, where he listens to foreign communications over a transmission device and tries to assimilate with the fishermen, each of whom bears an image of a faraway wife tattooed on his chest.  The crew's run-in with an array of Nikes lost at sea, and with an American ship, are memorable and fraught with tension.

Jun Do's language skills and heroism aboard the Junma earn him a spot on a diplomatic mission to Texas: my favorite part of the book, and too good to spoil.  The entertainment of the culture clash with stereotypically brash Texans is much needed, given Jun Do's next stop at a prison camp that can only be described as a concentration camp on steroids.  It is here that we are told that the orphan known as Jun Do disappeared, and the first section of the novel ends abruptly.

In the second part, "The Confessions of Commander Ga," we find that our hero seems to have pulled off an impossible feat, impersonating the legendary martial arts champion military commander, living in the commander's home on a hill with his movie starlet wife and children, and rubbing elbows with the Dear Leader himself. 

Ga's journey is narrated in part by a nameless first-person narrator who works in Division 42, essentially a state-operated torture chamber in the heart of Pyongyang.  Though this narrator is a torturer himself by any definition, he composes biographies of his victims, which makes him believe that he is morally superior to the Pubyok, a group of old-school torturers who care less about their subjects' stories than about breaking their bodies in creative, terrible ways.  The narrator, too, is an object of pity, living on the top story of a high-rise with his elderly parents, who live in abject fear of him, spout propaganda, and (possibly) pretend blindness to avoid being truthful with their own son.

This second part of the novel is extraordinary and fast-paced, and it offers a spirit of hope and a love story that make all the terrors Jun Do experiences somehow less depressing.  Ga's interactions with Sun Moon and her children are poignant, and a testament to finding joy even in a dark place.

All done?  Food for thought

• How much of Johnson's vivid story was realistic?  How much could be tracked to true events in North Korea? 
• Blood-letting - really?
• If you became too sick, medical personnel would drain you of several units of blood till you died
• Labor camps - how common?
• The common knowledge/assumption was that if you defected, your family would be sent to labor camps
• But this was also hero treatment - Jun Do was sent to a camp, the Captain was sent to a camp, Pubyoks were sent to a camp, all begging the question why - simply because the government has no use for you? 
• How much of the population is in these camps? For example, when the first-person narrator stays out past curfew and is picked up by a bus on a work detail - how often does this happen?
• "Retirement" communities - where did grandma go?
• Elderly people were sent to retirement communities on the beach that, as Jun Do discovered, simply didn't exist
• Why doesn't Jun Do defect?
• He seems to be offered countless opportunities -
• At the end of a tunnel, as a soldier, when we know he has the opportunity to get out?
• When he wanders the streets of Japan with Gil, unsupervised?
• "In this whole stupid country, the only thing that made sense to me were the Korean ladies on their knees cleaning the feet of the Japanese."
• When Americans of USS Fortitude board the Junma?
• On the life raft with the Second Mate?
• During his trip to Texas?
• After Prison 33?
• And the kicker - with Sun Moon and the kids at the end of the novel?
• Role of women
• It's treated as common knowledge that women who are too pretty, particularly in the countryside, are kidnapped and forced to become officers' wives or into other forms of slavery.
• What ever happened to the Second Mate's widow?
• Sun Moon as heroine
• Her tenacity has brought her fame, along with a life under the Dear Leader's control
• Yet she's reliant on the Dear Leader for her role in North Korean society and film, as well as on Jun Do for her escape
• Mongnan as a mother figure
• Of far greater help than the Captain as father figure, she gives Jun Do true survival skills in the camp.  Meanwhile, like the Orphan Master, the Captain's instinct is to throw Jun Do under the bus
• The Rower
• Like Jun Do, she has killed, although her role in the death of the other rower is unclear.  And yet, like Jun Do, she becomes someone to root for.
• Is she a symbol for America?  She is responsible for keeping Jun Do full of hope on the Junma, and she becomes the vehicle for Sun Moon's escape
• Role of sex in a repressed society
• The real Commander Ga's homosexuality is a recurring theme
• Sad irony is that he is renowned for "purging the army of homosexuals"
• He has no outlet for self-expression other than cruelty to others, but is this supposed to make him a target for pity?
• The Division 42 narrator describes feeling sexual attraction for one of his victims through basic animal scent. 
• The reader is made to wonder whether the narrator has ever had a sexual experience in this repressive/oppressive society
• But again, like Commander Ga, is the narrator's sexual repression a mechanism by which the reader is manipulated into feeling pity for this torturer?
• Jun Do and Sun Moon only consummate their relationship when they're less than 24 hours away from experiencing freedom - largely, it seems, because no one can let their guard down long enough to trust anyone else