Enter the Quaniverse

I heard the buzz about this book. It was making the rounds of all my friends and the reviews were positive. So, it was a good push for me to give Tsiolkas another try, I’d read “Jesus Man” and found it a hard go, the writing voice itself didn’t resonate with me, and the exploration of the darkness of the narrator also repelled. I don’t need fiction to be sweetness and light, but I’m more drawn to hope than despair.

With that in mind, I’m bowled over by “The Slap”. The darkness is there, characters that hate and have violent thoughts and want to annihilate themselves and others, but they’re balanced by other wavelengths, sometimes in the same people. I found the eight main characters who tell this story believable and interesting, and a compelling look on the whole at the society they make up. I’ve met these folks in Australia, read about them and see them on TV but I’m not sure I’ve read about them, deeply imagined, conflicted, human, Tsiolkas inhabits his characters so that readers have the opportunity to move beyond judgement – though it sounds like that is one of the things that is making this novel so exciting is how readers are taking sides, of the characters and on the book.

I wanted to get back to the story as soon as it put down, a page-turner in the best sense, not driven by a formula for suspense but a real interest in where the story will go, who gets to tell it to us, and what happens next. Tsiolkas is not a writer whose prose I particularly notice, I don’t get caught noticing a particular turn of phrase, but the way that he describes his characters, their lives, and drives the story along: I thought it was magnificent. And as hinted above, I like a happy ending – and the novel’s end, with both its resolution and happy possibility, made me smile, top to toe.

I’m looking forward to the TV series adaptation!

[Thanks to Chris for my copy!]

For someone who has written two books of poetry, I am, perhaps, not as regular a reader of poetry as I should be. I do not keep track of the many vibrant internet publications, nor read literary journals regularly. Because I want to support my fellow poets, I end up buying (or sometimes trading) books at readings and events, and reading local poets and new books by friends and acquaintances. Sometimes this is less than rewarding, wanting to like the work, but discovering that even though I find the writers amiable and engaging in person, I don’t quite click with their writing. Though sometimes I do, which is a joy.

I have found that when I read good poetry, and poetry that I connect with, that it often sparks a poetic impulse in me, much more so than the connection between reading prose and writing my own. So, I’ve made it a habit to occasionally buy favourite poets, as well as new ones. This I tend to do whenever I am visiting my family in Hawaii, or on occasional trips to another part of the USA. The American book market is so huge that even in bookstores with vastly reduced poetry sections, there are still interesting books and they are not expensive (unlike in Australia).

By now, I think I’ve bought all of Sharon Olds’ collections, as well as Mark Doty’s (two of my clear favourites), and have a few volumes of James Merrill and Gerald Stern. If in Canada, I make sure I’ve got whatever John Barton has published lately, perhaps Lorna Crozier or Patrick Lane, or as afore-mentioned, poets I’ve met. I usually buy the Best American Poetry series, which I love for allowing the poets to talk about the poems that were selected; and feel neglectful that I have not read one of the two Best Australian Poem anthologies that are published yearly (it surprises me that the Australian market can support two competing anthologies, but I’ll have to explore that further).

On a trip to Hawaii in December 2010, I decided to get to know Mary Oliver. A number of months beforehand, at a ‘5 rhythms’-inspired dance meditation session at the university, the facilitator had closed our two hours with an Oliver poem. It was beautiful: simple and lyrical, evoking the natural world and asking of our place in it. I made a mental note to look her up. And here, at Borders, at an extremely disappointingly reduced poetry section (not even a few shelves) were a few of her books, included two of selected poems. I like ‘Selected Poems’ for the range of work that they offer, and the way they provide introduction and overview. I chose the second Volume, as it includes 42 new poems, as well as 69 older poems chosen from 6 of her 8 last books. I was intrigued by the cover notes announcing that she has won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award and is according to the New York Times, “Far and Away, the country’s best-selling poet”.

Right away, I recognised the voice that I’d been introduced to earlier this year. In ‘Mysteries, Four of the Simple Ones’, she addresses the seed-grain, the catbird, the turtle and blue heron in turn, then ties the natural world, her preferred subject, to the act of observing and writing poetry (‘to pluck from the basket the brisk words/ that will applaud them’). I find the form of the poem perfect. The seed-grain gets a short question, and longer questions go to the three animals, she steps into the poem to make a simple summation and celebration, addresses the animals once more by name, and gives the final word to the seed-grain, as if the initial question asked (‘How does the seed-grain feel/ when it is just beginning to be wheat?’) had been suspended in the reader’s unconscious to be completed by the final image of the seed-grain ‘kneeling in the dark earth, its body/ opening into the golden world?’

I was also struck by her openness, her simplicity, and the declarative quality of her words. ‘Today again I am hardly myself./ It happens over and over.’ she explains in “Reckless Poem”. Describing a period of teaching in Indiana, she asks ‘You tell me if it was worth it.’  It reminded me of the collection of Rumi’s work that I read last last year. Simplicity, emotion, and a direct address to the reader. Completely unfamiliar with Rumi, I felt it important to be open to his voice (or the translation of his voice), from a different time and place, in such a different style than other poets I know. I wanted to take him on his own terms and I was charmed (as well as finally understanding why so many people have referenced Rumi over the years.)

In the same way, I wanted to be open to Oliver’s unique voice. But I feel self-conscious to discover that I didn’t love this collection over all. How could I not enjoy such a popular, well-read and celebrated poet? I tired of poem after poem, personifying nature and animals. I found the sentiment veered towards mawkishness (usually avoiding it but teetering on the edge). And while I welcome her celebration of life, I have the feeling that I’d enjoy the poems read individually and occasionally, to remind me of the beauty of silence and nature–instead of, for example, seven poems in a row in the book where she make odes to silence while freshening flowers, then speaks of the virtue of beans, encounters with animals in Indiana, snow crickets and lilies, the natural world, and snow geese with words like delicious, wonderful, good, fancy, happy, lovely and joyfully – I found a sameness in tone and theme, broken sometimes with a tougher vision that appealed to me more: ‘sing of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.’

“Tongue” is Kyung Ran Jo’s first novel to be translated into English, but she’s the author of four short story collections, another novel and a collection of essays. The scuttlebutt on the book is that the author was a judge of a writing contest. A novella with similar writing and the same story was submitted by a woman, Ju Yi-ran, who claims that it was stolen from her for the writing of Tongue. She’s now published the novella, in its own right, with a cover that says something like “the book that Jo stole from”.

For me, the novel would have been much better as a novella: a barer plot, the interesting descriptions of food and cooking and eating to move it along, and the more dramatic incidents not dwelled upon. More of a modern folktale than a novel, and where individual chapters don’t feel as weak.

I can see the book’s appeal. It’s a book for foodies, and the descriptions of a young woman chef, the restaurant she works in, and the dishes she creates and cooks, are fantastic. It’s interwoven with folkloric anecdotes – Mitterand’s taste for the endangered ortolan, Roman women who baked cakes in the shapes of their intimate parts, how to smuggle foie gras. And yet, it’s a fine line between poetry and nonsense: “Love shatters with the rumbling of thunder, but thunder causes truffles to grow”; “the taste of love encompasses the wilted, the overly ripened, the rotten, and the bitter.” I think it will really depend on the reader how much they love the style and language of these food-related passages.

I had problems with both the narrator and the plot. The book is basically a gothic horror story, so I shouldn’t demand realism from it. But it was hard for me to become emotionally involved. At the same time, I DO find some fairy tales emotional, even though they are fantastical. At some deep level, they make sense to me.

But this story doesn’t make sense to me at all. Is it cultural? Gender-related? I’m not sure. The narrator, told over and again, that her relationship is over by her ex-partner, still wants to be with him. He sounds like an arse. There’s no compelling reason for her to love him. At this stage in my life, I don’t find unrequitted love romantic. I understand the pain of break-up, and the pull of inappropriate relationships, but a whole book with no emotional progress or growth? Nope.

Meanwhile, when she first catches him in bed with his new lover, instead of confronting them, she stays silently by the door, watching and then describing to us the scene in full detail. This seemed ridiculous to me. The woman who he leaves her for forces the narrator to be their personal chef at the restaurant (and yet we only read of this about to happen, but none of the action or outcome). Then the same woman kills her partner’s dog with a frying pan. The narrator’s supposed best friend does a special feature on the ex and his partner in her magazine. Every possible betrayal, every possible cruelty is crammed into this story. Earlier in the book, it is recounted that the narrator’s uncle wife commits suicide by hanging herself, but not before covering her naked body with oil. Does that image impress or appeal to anyone?

I guess that not being a fan of the horror genre, this book wasn’t for me, but I picked it up because of my love of food. But chapter after chapter of cruelty, misery and pain… the “shocking” ending just felt distasteful to me… and gave me the feeling that the whole book had been constructed to lead up to it. A disappointing read… and literary feed.