Coraline

#116
Title: Coraline
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Year: 2002
Genre: Children's/young adult, fantasy & science fiction
195 pages

This is a cute enough horror/fairy tale, but I'm mystified by the awards it's received. Gaiman's setting is his usual "not here but not quite anywhere else" intersticial world whose distorted and malevolent denizens wish the protagonist no good. Like all hero's journeys, Coraline's includes guides and magical appurtenances (the latter lending a somewhat deus ex machina feel to the proceedings, but hey, it's a fairy tale). The description of the evil characters as having literal button eyes was jarring and took me out of the narrative repeatedly; they belong in a different story. True to his usual concerns, Gaiman gives us an inadequate, cool mother (it's asserted that she's emotionally attractive, but she comes off much less so than the father) and a frightening alter-mother, though it is refreshing to read something from him that is not about a sympathetic male protagonist with an unpleasant, inaccessible female love interest.

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation

#115
Title: Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Author: Michael Zielenziger
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2006
Genre: psychology, anthropology
344 pages 

Fascinating and generally accessible, though not always as well integrated as it could be, this look at Japan's modernization argues that several culture-bound psychological syndromes present in Japan today are consequences of Japan's economic, political, and cultural course. This is an interesting topic and Zielenziger does a reasonable job of describing the features and treatment of hikikomori (withdrawal to one's room, often by a young male), parasaito (young adult women who live with their families and spend their money on luxuries), and to a certain extent, futoko (children and adolescents who refuse to go to school because of bullying), all of which I might characterize as disorders of quality of engagement with others. Zielenziger's more abstract historical and cultural chapters are much drier than those in which he describes people and specific situations, but he demonstrates why this more removed information is necessary for an appreciation of the context of these syndromes. One might assume from his description that everyone in Japan works in an office shuffling papers, or in technical manufacturing, but other than that the material seems relatively complete and coherent. A comparison with South Korea provides an interesting comparison and underscores the possible differences between a society's taking on outside cultural practices and acquiring the cultural beliefs that inform those practices.

As a psychologist, I'd have liked more about hikikomori, parasaito, and futoko, particularly about their historical rise, sociopsychological disorders that have diminished during the push for modernity, and empirical data (of which there is little). A Japanese pediatrician recently told me at a conference that hikikomori is considered a bio-psycho-social disorder in Japan that warrants, among other diagnoses, the label "depression" as defined in DSM, but I did not see this perspective reflected here. Read with Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask for a more intimate and visceral description of school bullying and ways in which social conformity is enforced.

Zielenziger includes a glossary, good notes, and an index. I mention these only because I will bemoan their absence when I finish reading and review Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond.

Interpreter of Maladies

#114
Title: Interpreter of Maladies
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Mariner Books
Year: 1999
Genre: Fiction
198 pages

The general malady relentlessly presented in this short story collection is tension in relationships--particularly marital relationships, but others as well. The more specific malady is the existential and pragmatic shock of the Emergency--the 1947 partition of Pakistan--and the later secession of Bangladesh. These sociocultural and political ruptures form the nominally-explicit back story that informs the protagonists' emotional wariness and disillusion.

The best stories are about contemporary Indian-American families, either alone or interacting with Euro-Americans or other South Asians. The less-successful stories take place away from this context and are more forced and less interesting ("A Real Durwan" is an example ). At her best, Lahiri conveys a great deal of historical information (with which most U.S. readers are unlikely to be unfamiliar) with very little exposition and in a way that is relevant to the characters' conflicts. Read the collection in order as it hangs together well as a sequence. Read with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things for a very different tone, and with the first few chapters of Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond for tediously rendered but informative history.

The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon Book 2)

 
#113
Title: The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon Book 2)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
384 pages

The Lost City of Faar picks up with Bobby's second adventure thwarting the evil Saint Dane, whose goal is to destroy all worlds and all times. This time he journeys to the water world Chloral, where he teams up with a local named Spader and his Uncle Press. Together, they must identify the turning point Saint Dane will attempt to exploit and counter his attempt to throw this world into chaos.

The series' basic tasks, character roles, and terrain are similar to Diane Duane's Young Wizard series. A major difference is the presence of Courtney and Mark, witnesses who are generally removed from the action and only read about it post hoc in Bobby's journal. In The Merchant of Death, they were called upon to perform some important functions for Bobby. In the present volume, they must thwart their classmate Mitchell. Their role in the story is interesting but as-yet underused. I will hope for more involvement from them in the future.

This series has enough to offer that I've decided to keep going, but I have some misgivings about doing so. My concerns are about certain kinds of poor writing, not word choice or overuse of exposition, for example, but lack of internal consistency about the rules of the universe the author has constructed. I can live with the fact that MacHale is no stylist and that the only voice truly characterized is Bobby's. I can live with the idiocy of Mark and Courtney being frightened that Mitchell will betray them to the police and that the police would actually believe him. I can even live with the ferociously clunky ending of this volume, which has its own disturbing problems related to unreliable exposition (not unreliable narration, but actually telling the reader that events happen and then undoing them in a poorly rendered reveal). Rather, I'm talking about instances where an author undoes physics, not in a way that is consistent with the world s/he has constructed, but for authorial convenience or due to oversight. The Lost City of Faar offers several choice examples of both of these inconsistencies. If you're a person who didn't care that Niven's Ringworld rotated backward in the first edition, or about the order in which the spirits of dead people erupted from Voldemort's wand, you won't see what I'm talking about as a problem. If you have to call your friends when Homer Simpson's shirt is ripped in one shot and then suddenly not ripped in the next, heed my words: In order to enjoy the Pendragon series, you must suspend your annoyance. MacHale comes dangerously close to Funke's cavalier attitude in Inkheart and Inkspell, which can be paraphrased (to avoid spoilers) as "Gee! I don't know why that happened when it's never happened like that before and that's not how it's supposed to happen in the rules of this universe, but oh, well!" Travelers can use hypnotic powers of persuasion--except when they can't. Travelers can recognize Saint Dane in disguise--except when they can't. I will spare you my diatribe about "children's literature" that seems to be based on the assumption that children are idiots and that good crafting is not just as important as it is in adult fiction. I'm sure you can imagine how it goes.

The Glass Castle

#112
Title: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2005
Genre: memoir, psychology, sociology
290 pages

I had a lovely review that was eaten by a missed keystroke, so I'll try again.

Walls has given us an elegant memoir of growing up with difficult parents. When we first meet the family, though we as adult readers may experience some concern, Walls' child narrator sees only the adventure and excitement of her circumstances. Her father is a smart, charismatic eccentric; her mother, an artist from a privileged background who has renounced her own family's values and social class. Walls and her siblings adore and admire their parents (while already having some uneasy inklings that parents ought to protect their children more assiduously). As the narrator ages, her perspective on her parents shifts; it's also probably the case that their oddities became more pronounced. Her father's drinking and inability to manage the interpersonal aspects of a job become more prominent, while her mother withdraws farther from reality and responsibility. An especially grim section of the narrative takes place in West Virginia, where they appear to be the poorest of the poor in their community.

Walls is a good writer and the effort of reading this is emorional, not literary. I hope we'll see more from her. Read with Laura Love's You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes for another narrative about growing up with an unstable mother, and Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast for a fictional similar situation and developmental dynamic between father and child.

For some reason, narratives about families are classified under "sociology" these days. I'd put it in "psychology" myself, but suit yourself.

Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital

 
#111
Title: Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
Author: Alex Beam
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Year: 2003
Genre: history, psychology
278 pages

This rather superficial book can't decide whether it's a history of McLean Hospital outside Boston, or celebrity dish about famous people who have been McLean patients, or a critique of psychiatry. It doesn't quite manage to be any of these, so it comes off as fairly meanspirited and catty. Adding to the problem is Beam's writing, which has an airy tone and seems to assert that author and reader are complicit and in agreement about Beam's negative views, coupled with Beam's lack of knowledge about the history and contemporary practices of psychiatry. Beam seems to relish describing treatments such as hydrotherapy and coldpacks that are not used today and would be considered bizarre in contemporary psychiatry. Because he does not place McLean's practices in the context of contemporaneous psychiatry, he implies by omission that only McLean was stupid enough to use these practices. This isn't so. Beam's knowledge of current practice also seems scant. His diagnostic impressions when he speculates are often reductive and inaccurate, and his assertions about current diagnosis and treatment are strangely incomplete.

As a person who has worked in four inpatient facilities (both public and private, both before and in the era of managed care), I find myself in vehement disagreement with statements such as "A certain cynicism attends any hospital's long-term treatment of wealthy patients who pay their bills in full and who subsidize the care of less fortunate souls" (210). I disagree not because I think that all hospitals are great, or believe wholeheartedly in their interventions, or think they don't consider their bottom line, but because this is not how hospital staff think about and talk about patients. This is Beam's cynicism, not the attitude of the majority of people working in psychiatric facilities.

For better books about psychiatric hospitals, read Winchester's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Hunt's excellent Mental Hospital from 1962, or any of the many complex and insightful accounts by patients and staff alike.

River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam

#110
Title: River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam
Author: Jon Swain
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Year: 1995
Genre: memoir
291 pages

The subtitle appears only on the paperback edition. It's inaccurate since much of this memoir concerns Cambodia.

Swain is one of the reporters who covered the fall of Phnom Penh in the film The Killing Fields. His was the spare passport that the group unsuccessfully tried to counterfiet for Dith Pran. I've read a number of reviews that blast this account of Swain's time in Southeast Asia; most accuse him of admiring the Khmer Rouge (which is not supported by this text), of not writing a complete history (which is not the intention of this book), and/or of being a sybarite whose recollections are primarily of the opium and sex he enjoyed in the region. While it's true that he is nostalgic for his quondam pleasures, I saw very clearly that he contrasts his younger and more mature perspectives, that he counters the hedonism and cynicism of the pre-war period with the wars' horrific effects, and that what he longs for (as in so many narratives of transition) is an imagined gentleness and naivite. I'm certainly a feminist and have my own concerns about the genre of the war narrative as told by men, in which women are only gruff authorities, prostitutes, or protective mothers. However, Swain's narrative is much more complex than that, and often succeeds in showing the transformation of peoples and countries as well as of Swain himself.