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ghoti, since it's a book she likes and it contains cute ears and I have very little exposure to Japanese lit. I found the book very mind-expanding and different from most of what I normally read, which is exactly what I was hoping for.I don't want to spend too long wracking my brains over which genre A wild sheep chase fits into, because it's just not like the typical Anglo publishing categories. It's probably most like magical realism, in that the central story about the sheep possessing people appears to be taken entirely seriously, even though it doesn't appear to fit into the otherwise mundane, mimetic setting. I was interested in gradually learning more about the history of this slightly fantastical sheep, but equally interested in getting to know the protagonist along the way, even though he's not a particularly sympathetic POV character.
I found the book extremely vivid in its depictions of banal scenes from everyday life and very ordinary human relationships, against the bizarre background of the eponymous sheep chase. The final section where the protag tracks the sheep down to a remote villa is very evocative, a really good ghost story or psychological horror (though nothing at all gory or monstrous occurs). There's a lot of pages devoted to the protagonist's relationships with women, a lover remembered from his youth, his recently ex wife, and his current girlfriend with the beautiful ears. The relationships are again beautifully observed, but the women themselves don't seem completely real, they exist to evoke feelings in the protag and then disappear. Male characters are also seen through the first person narrator's eyes, but the book contains a lot more information about their lives and experiences outside their interaction with him. I enjoyed the glimpses of the narrator's relationship with Rat and J.
I found the book not exactly depressing, but melancholy, perhaps? Very beautiful writing, but in quite a bleak way.
Currently reading: A time of gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, as recommended to me by
I've nearly finished the section where he crosses Germany, noting the presence of the newly ascendant Nazi party but not dwelling on that to the exclusion of talking about the history and culture of the country and telling anecdotes about the various German people he meets on the way. The moment where he describes crossing the border from the Netherlands and seeing swastikas everywhere is a brilliant piece of writing, a paragraph of description of some Dutch St Vincent de Paul nuns, and then:
The officials at the Dutch frontier handed back my passport, duly stamped, and soon I was crossing the last furlongs of No Man's Land, with the German frontier post growing nearer through the turning snow. Black, white and red were painted in spirals round the road barrier and soon I could make out the scarlet flag charged with its white disc and its black swastika.
Up next: Not sure. I'm still looking out for
A book with a color in the titlefor my very old Bringing up Burns challenge, or I may well read Novik's Uprooted.
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