I hadn’t known much about the history of Catholicism in Japan, and the translator’s introduction proved to be helpful in providing some background information. Missionaries, mostly from Portugal, had achieved considerable success in establishing themselves in Japan and had built churches and seminaries with the approval of local daimyo before Japan went through political upheavals that changed the attitude of authorities to Western influence and culture. Foreign priests were banned from Japan, and any Catholics caught were tortured until they denied their faith. Silence thus tells the story of a young Portuguese priest, named Rodrigues, who secretly enters Japan in order to find out what happened to his former teacher, Ferreira, a missionary to Japan who has apostatized. (Ferreira is a real historical figure, while Rodrigues is not.)

As a Korean Catholic, I’m familiar with stories of martyrdom: I’ve heard all my life about the forty Korean martyrs who were executed by the government during the Yi Chosun dynasty, not to mention read my share of hagiographies of early Christian saints under the Roman Empire who died in pots of boiling water or by arrows or on spiked wheels. But the description of tortures in Silence seemed particularly alien and cruel: being tied to wooden posts in the middle of the sea or hung upside down in a pit filled with excrement with holes cut behind the ears to let the blood drain. The goal was not to kill them for the crime of being Christian but rather force them to deny their faith in front of their families and neighbors.

Rodrigues enters Japan with a fellow priest, Garrpe, and spends some time ministering to the Christian villagees he finds, while hiding from authorities. He is, however, eventually betrayed by the guide he hired, Kichijiro, whom he (arrogantly) considers as his own personal Judas. Rodrigues sees the Japanese villagers who helped hide him undergo torture and eventually die, while clinging steadfastly to their faith; he however is spared any suffering. He begins to doubt his faith, wondering and even raging at God’s silence while Christians die ingloriously without any sign from the universe that their martyrdom has been acknowledged. Only in the moment of his own apostasy, as he is about to step on an image of Christ, does he hear God’s voice again: “Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here.”

Rodrigues’ anguish at the silence of God reminded me of some of the post-Holocaust literature that also asked how could a benevolent God let such atrocities happen. Of course, I don’t equate the persecution of Catholics in Japan with the Nazi attempt at systematic genocide, and perhaps that was why I felt impatient at times with Rodrigues’ self-absorption: what right did he have to be angry at God when he hadn’t suffered nearly as much as those who did undergo torture? (Then again, what right do I have to judge Rodrigues, when I myself have never experienced what he has?) I think though that Endo intends Rodrigues to come across as a priest who has always been somewhat complacent in his faith, who has never been so challenged until his trip to Japan. Rodrigues anticipates hardship and expects to at least be given the chance at a glorious martyrdom: it is all the more dramatic when he apostatizes without even being tortured. It strikes a deliberate contrast coming after his patronizing albeit compassionate attitude towards the Japanese villagers, as well as his wholesale condemnation and judgment of Kichijiro. Rodrigues is human and imperfect and weak—weaker, perhaps, than Kichijiro. The novel moves from a first-person voice in letters to a limited third-person narrating from Rodrigues’ point-of-view to a series of documents recording what happened to Rodrigues after his apostasy. Is the outward progression in perspective meant to mirror Rodrigues’ own progression in self-awareness about himself and his faith? Or is it intended to detach the reader from Rodrigues’ character, giving us space to draw our own conclusions as Rodrigues is forced to grapple with more and more contradictions?

On a final note, Endo questions whether Christianity can truly exist in Japan, whether the Japanese can really be Christian. It seems to be an extremely personal question (Endo himself is a Japanese Catholic) to which he has no answer. Ferreira tells Rodrigues:

This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp. [...] But in the churches we built throughout this country the Japanese were not praying to the Christian God. They twisted God to their own way of thinking in a way we can never imagine. If you call that God [...] No. That is not God. It is like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web. At first it is certainly a butterfly, but the next day only the externals, the wings and the trunk, are those of a butterfly; it has lost its true reality and has become a skeleton. In Japan our God is just like that butterfly caught in the spider’s web: only the exterior form of God remains, but it has already become a skeleton.

I’m not certain why Endo believes that there is a fundamental incompatibility between being Japanese and being Christian—or for that matter, what that incompatibility consists of—but it does become clear that Rodrigues drastically redefines his image of Christ in his moment of apostasy. Can he still claim to be a priest, a Catholic, a Christian? I don’t know, but I can relate to him more in that moment than in any previous part of the book because I too find it easier to believe in the Christ who suffered than the Christ who saved us.

Thud!, by Terry Pratchett: Another Sam Vimes book in the Discworld series. Pratchett has that rare gift where he manages to satirize serious social issues in our world (ethnic conflicts, religious extremism, prejudices in all its forms, etc.) but also creates a uniquely Discworld flavor. Both the dwarfs and the trolls do remind me of various immigrant groups here, but what’s also striking is that Pratchett’s dwarfs and trolls are never made to map exactly to real-life counterparts. The dwarf culture has a specific Discworld context—how everything revolves around their original occupation of mining—and likewise for the trolls. It is those details of worldbuilding that really defines for me Pratchett’s strengths as a writer. Ironic isn’t it that I appreciate Pratchett most for writing good fantasy rather than good satire? Anyway, I particularly liked the concept behind Thud. The most crucial moment in the book would have to be when the dwarf Helmclever, who works for the grags but secretly is a master at the game, breaks down:

“It was the club the troll Mr Shine gave me for winning five games in a row,” he wailed. “He was my friend! He said I was as good as a troll so I should have a club! I told Ardent it was a war trophy! But he took it and bashed that poor dead body!”

Actually, the more and more I think about it, the more and more complex this novel becomes. It touches on so many issues: second-generation dwarfs wanting to go back to their roots to be more “authentic”, Brick’s drug problem, Vimes finally forced to employ a Black Ribboner in the Watch, the way history is changed and rewritten…One of these days, I’ll reread it again, even if it wouldn’t quite make it as one of my top favorites in the series. I’m so excited about the last scene though; I’m convinced that Ankh-Morpork will have a new subway system by the next book.

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman: The general consensus seems to be that Anansi Boys is the most mainstream out of all of Gaiman’s novels so far, or at least the one most likely to have mainstream appeal. Same universe as American Gods, by which I mean that it works by the same rules and assumptions; otherwise the characters and tone of writing are all very different. I think what’s most notable is that Gaiman doesn’t seem half as dark as he usually is: not even Tiger really creeps you out the way his creations do in other books. I still liked the book though. I thought there was a playfulness to the story that was in keeping with Anansi himself.

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami (trans. Philip Gabriel): All right, to be entirely honest, I didn’t like this book as much as I did the two Murakami novels I’ve read before. Actually, the disappointment mostly lies with the last third or so. The chapters alternate between two storylines, one from the perspective of Kafka Tamura (a first-person narrative) and one following an old man who can speak to cats, named Nakata (third-person). The two apparently divergent narratives do end up intersecting in various elusive connections until they collide—and while I can’t exactly explain the collision, I must say that the aftermath was what disappointed me. Usually, at the end of a Murakami novel or short story, I might feel that I couldn’t explain (not in rational terms anyway) everything that happened, but I always did feel as if I understood it on some nonverbal level, that at the very least the story had some sort of thematic coherence with no loose ends hanging out. Kafka on the Shore however ended before I was ready for it to be over. The ending unraveled, if that makes any sense. That isn’t to say that I didn’t like the entire book; for most of it, I was (as usual) enraptured by the writing and the characters. It’s so odd how matter-of-fact Murakami’s writing is (I would call it almost “bald” at times) and yet how precise—it renders his most fantastical ideas a psychological realism that bowls me over whenever I read his novels. I didn’t sympathize much with Kafka—he is the character I understood least in the entire novel, and I wonder if that may have to do with the first-person narration—but everyone else was vividly real, especially Oshima and Nakata, who are ironically enough the most unusual (if we were to talk in terms of people we are actually likely to meet).

Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L. Sayers: What I have to emphasize about Gaudy Night is that it’s not a mystery. Oh, to be sure, there is a crime, or rather a series of crimes, with an unknown perpetrator, as well as a detective, Harriet Vane, who looks for clues and questions witnesses or suspects to discover the criminal. But the book isn’t about the mystery at all nor its solution; the book is about women and how it is possible to be both an independent human being and to be specifically female, in every sense of the word. It is a difficult problem even now. I was startled to realize how much of Harriet’s own doubts and concerns applied to me in the here and now. The American lady who believed in the marriage of intelligent women to intelligent men (the influence of the American eugenics movement, no doubt), the dons of Shrewsbury who choose academia over marriage and motherhood (and hence are perceived to be unnatural women), the young college girls who preoccupy themselves with beaux, and most of all Harriet herself, who must come to terms with her relationship with Peter Wimsey. The resolution only comes when Harriet finally realizes that Peter will not force her to make a choice and that it is possible to be in love with a man without losing one’s own personal integrity in the process. As obvious as that sounds, it’s more difficult to realize than one would imagine. Love by itself involves loss of autonomy, and when women are forced, by external circumstances, to be socially and economically dependent on men, emotional dependence becomes all the more dangerous. It takes a lot for Harriet to realize that she can afford that risk. It’s not only a matter of whether Peter himself would or would not subsume her—clearly he is too much a gentleman to deliberately do that to her the way her former lover did—but a matter of whether she could trust herself.

Wimsey drops his frivolous facade almost for good here. I wonder if that’s due to Harriet or simply his evolution as a character. It’s interesting to see him from the perspective of the people who knew him, like his nephew St. George or his old college classmates. Gives him much more dignity too; like Harriet, we were too used to Peter to realize just how impressive he appears to others.

One final note: I really liked reading about Shrewsbury dynamics because so much of the college system in Oxford uses the same terminology as the system here. But the atmosphere is extremely different. Our Houses don’t have that sense of character, the shared community, the rarefied touch of academia. It’s true that my university exists in a bubble, but I can’t say that it really has the ivory tower atmosphere. People are focused on studying for exams, but so much of our mindset is oriented towards a professional future; while I do believe that students at heart do enjoy knowledge for its own sake, this mentality remains personal rather than social.

Sethra Lavode, by Steven Brust: All I can say is, I felt like crying at the end of this book. Poor Khaavren! I must admit that most of the storyline with the Jenoine and the Duke of Kana didn’t really interest me all that much, and I was even starting to get a little tired of Paarfi’s neverending exposition and circuitous dialogue, but the ending reminded me why the books hooked me in the first place. Ultimately, it was Khaavren’s story we were reading—how he lived and changed—and while there is a happy ending, there’s also irreversible loss.

His Grace of Osmonde, by Frances Hodgson Burnett: I must say, I never knew that Burnett wrote any books for adults, and it’s kind of odd reading a very characteristic Burnett novel with typical Burnett characters, except that there’s an actual love story involved. His Grace of Osmonde seems like a cross between Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy. I didn’t quite like Osmonde with his impeccable chivalry, and I think Burnett is a little too fond of children upon whom “Fortune seems to smile from birth” (Cedric from Little Lord Fauntleroy, Sara from A Little Princess) but are forced to endure hardships that the cruel world inflicts on them. I mean, I enjoyed both those Burnett books, but they don’t hold as dear a place in my heart as The Secret Garden, where bitter, sullen Mary and sickly, paranoid Colin actually seem like real children, full of imperfections. They are not wholly likeable, which perversely makes me like them better. In any case, I also didn’t quite like the foreordained quality of the romance here—wherein Clorinda is the only possible woman worthy of the shining perfection that is Osmonde—although I suppose the arbitrary circumstances that keep them apart make it truly tragic. I really did like the ending; a nice change from Burnett’s usual instinct to moralize. Good people are sometimes forced to do bad things. I never would have expected her to put in such a twist.

Sputnik Sweetheart, by Haruki Murakami (trans. Philip Gabriel): Oh, what to say about Sputnik Sweetheart. The writing literally overwhelmed me from the very first paragraph. More so than Norwegian Wood, which may be due to the different translators (I read Philip Gabriel’s translation of Sputnik Sweetheart and Jay Rubin’s translation of Norwegian Wood). The book seems relatively normal until about halfway through the book, when Sumire disappears, and Murakami becomes progressively more and more surreal until you don’t know what’s metaphor and what’s literal anymore. But of course, that’s not the point. You aren’t supposed to ask, wait, what’s really going on, because that isn’t what’s important. It shocked me how comprehensible the book was. I mean, usually with avant-garde writing, there’s a certain leap of thought required before it makes sense, that is to say, it takes a little time for it all to sink in, but not so here. Sumire disappearing, Miu’s hair turning white, the strange music on the hilltop: it all made sense. Although now that I try to articulate what it meant to me, it comes out sounding rather flat and banal. I was a bit disconcerted by the sharp transition when the narrator returns to Japan, and in fact, a part of me wondered at first if those final chapters were even necessary. And then I realized that the break in the narration, almost like a snap, is exactly like the narrator’s own transition. This kind of writing awes me to no end. Murakami’s style (at least from what I can tell in English translation) is deceptively simple, open, even dryly humorous (I forgot to mention that he’s really funny, which is not exactly what one would expect from the summaries of his novels), and yet this sensation of something powerful. I wrote in my LJ that it’s hard for me to say that I “like” Sputnik Sweetheart because the experience can’t be classified in those categories of liking or disliking. The analogy used: “when you glimpse yourself in the mirror and see yourself as a stranger, not-self, and yet the person you see is intimately familiar.” (Oh dear, to think that I would resort to the conceit of quoting myself.)

The Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy L. Sayers: To be entirely honest, I found this mystery to be rather tiresome and not one of Sayers’ best. Too many suspects, too many details, too many detectives. We didn’t even have much opportunity to at least enjoy Wimsey’s conversation, which used to be a delight when the mystery itself fell short of expectation. Also, I do like attempting to solve the crime along with the characters, but not when I’m forced to juggle timetables in my head. I daresay real detectives have to deal with these kinds of messy mysteries all the time, but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily make good narratives. Oh well, I managed to finish it in the end though. The solution to the crime was equally disappointing.

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash is one of those books that when you look at it piece by piece, you wonder how the story ever managed plausibility in the first place, but when you look at it as a whole, you find it absolutely cool anyway. Hackers! Mesopotamian mythology! Linguistics! Viruses! Seriously, Stephenson comes up with the most awesome (if far-fetched) ideas. The first chapter, by the way, is a brilliant piece of writing: if you read it out loud, you notice the rhythm he’s built into the narration. The puns are…kind of obvious and bad, but I forgave him anyway. I also forgave him for equating glossolalia with fanaticism and mob mentality (not that I can exactly blame him, but “speaking in tongues” does not send you off into a mindless euphoria). Oh yes, and Stephenson’s definition of agglutinative language is incorrect as well. But quibbles aside, the whole Asherah idea—the impulse to conformity, and not just conformity but irrationality being transmitted as a virus to which human brains are particularly vulnerable—reminded me of Dawkin’s original concept of the “meme”. Also, the Babel phenomenon being responsible for inspiring human diversity was pretty interesting too, especially considering that I’m taking a course on language acquisition taught by a Chomskyite professor. The Metaverse was well designed although I wish Stephenson had included some more notes on how the user interface worked. I mean, how exactly does Hiro get his avatar to fight in the Metaverse? Is it tied into his actual physical movements? Wouldn’t that be kind of limiting? I mean, imagine if he had to stand still but his avatar had to walk? Or is it connected directly to his brain? Eye movements? Hand movements? Yes, I do obsess over worldbuilding details like these. Juanita is awesome although the way Hiro perceives her is definitely different from the person she really is, I bet. Also, why on earth does Hiro keep changing from washed-out delivery boy to hacker legend to kenjutsu master to some sort of secret agent to way too many personas for one individual? He can’t be that talented. I would call him a Gary Stu except it occurred to me that Hiro Protagonist reflects how men (or at least many males of my acquaintance) see themselves: a mix of both unrecognized genius and insecure failure. Anyway, the reinterpretation of religious history in terms of Enki’s nam-shub might require gross generalizations but what a brilliant idea nonetheless.

Have His Carcase, by Dorothy L. Sayers: A much better mystery than Five Red Herrings even though again there was much agonizing over alibis and timetables. At least the solution was quite clever this time, and it all fit together pretty well, even if the cryptography seemed a little excessive. I mean, are murders, even premeditated ones, ever that elaborate? Of course, that’s beside the point because no matter how interesting the sleuthing, what this book really is about is Harriet and Peter, and Harriet’s inability to reconcile her need for independence with her very genuine affection for Peter. The author makes it more than obvious that she loves him back, but nonetheless, we must watch the painful dance. Oh the difficulties of being a Modern Woman! I must say that this book is the first where Lord Peter’s been so consistently wrong in his theories, even if he comes up with the right answer in the end.

Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami (trans. Jay Rubin): I always thought of Murakami as one of those authors that everyone expects you to read in order to be sufficiently hip in literary circles. Since I’ve never managed to be hip, he wasn’t particularly high on my reading list, until a friend recommended him to me, saying he was—what was the phrase?—”really psycho”. Well, how can you resist a recommendation like that? Norwegian Wood turned out to be (relatively) normal, but nonetheless remarkably satisfying. How to explain it? There are some books that one must read at a certain time, and if there is ever a time in my life to read Norwegian Wood, it ought to be now. The narrator, or rather the remembered self of the narrator, is in college and about to turn twenty; I don’t so much relate to him as find him intensely real. All of the characters are intensely real—I see them in my friends, my classmates, everyone around me—and their various inabilities to understand or adapt are equally as familiar. If one writes in order to capture the experience of a moment or even an epoch, defying the transience of memory and the erosion of time, then one could say that Murakami has successfully written what it is to live these short, uncertain years of college…at least the way I have lived my college years so far. May I say, “essence”, without sounding pretentious? The translation occasionally hiccups, but for the most part, one gets a sense of what seems like sparse yet also vivid language. I am in love with the paragraph that ends the novel:

Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

I have no idea why these words move me so, but they do.

Strong Poison, by Dorothy L. Sayers: I’ve finally met Harriet Vane, and while I still feel our acquaintance as of now is purely formal, I am nevertheless convinced of Wimsey’s love for her. How nice to be so sure that one is in love! I’d like to be cynical and say that it can only occur in books. I liked the way the mystery unraveled here, not so much for any feats of deduction (the crime itself, in both method and perpetrator, wasn’t particularly challenging) but for all the stealth work involved. The secretary (oh dear, what was her name?) learning how to pick locks and opening secret panels, Miss Climpson going undercover as bogus spiritual medium! I would almost say that those two stole the stage from Wimsey. I must say though that I rather like Wimsey in love: he is as nervous as ever, alternately bold and afraid, but a gentleman to the end.

Issola, by Steven Brust: To tell the truth, I found most of this book boring. It didn’t quite follow up on the shocking revelations in Orca (I suppose Steven Brust wanted readers to be able to jump in without having read all the prequels), and there were no new narrative tricks involved other than the usual “breaking the fourth wall” that Brust has mastered with such flair. (I also like Vlad’s constant commentary on his own mental processes, I admit.) The main thread of the plot seems to concern the Jenoine, who are not at all interesting and incredibly hard to visualize to boot. (What on earth are they supposed to look like? I am able to imagine everyone else—gods, Dragaerans, Easterners—but not the Jenoine.) But the ending won me over. This book is aptly titled: its main character turns out to be Lady Teldra, although one doesn’t realize it. As I keep saying, nothing Brust writes is superfluous, and in the end, the book is not about the Jenoine at all, which is why I found it worth reading.