Oct 13th 09
Posted by David in Books, Reviews
Tagged:book review, Clarrisa, I, Jonathan Lethem, mystery novel, Northern Lights, P.S, pace, Scandinavia, story, vendela vida, Vida
My, Vida
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
After reading Jonathan Lethem, I wanted something with equally tight prose so I grabbed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name from the shelf.
The story of Clarrisa is moving, both emotionally and pace. The story unfolds as Clarrisa’s father passes away only to discover that he was not her biological father. This opens a story identity that is, at times, overly extreme and at others surprisingly barren. Clarrisa follows her desires to find out “who she is” fully and travels to Scandinavia to try and find her biological father. The barren open land of the area known as Lapland is a great backdrop for this sense of “erasing and redrawing” on oneself.
I found Clarrisa at times an emotional wreck and at others having more fortitude than I gave her credit for. I found myself cheering her on, but at the same time finding her unlikable. I think that contrast actually worked and is hard to articulate well. Her travels and want to find her past to find herself is redeeming but ultimately she is no better than those she scorns. I found the end of the book very fast and out of pace with the initial portion. Granted, the story is about the identity crisis and not the before or after, they are there to round things out. But at the end I both felt redeemed and defeated. The author really threw an emotional curve ball.
Vendela Vida
I think Vida’s writing was as sparse as the landscape of Lapland. Though in the P.S. segment she mentions going three times to visit the area. Seems a bit extreme on the research end of things. Regardless, I found the text tight and the pace moved like a mystery novel (at times). The emotions run high and I did find myself afterwords putting the book down with a sense of wanting to be done but glad I went on the journey.
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Oct 10th 09
Posted by David in Books, Reviews
Tagged:America, book, California, Chaos, Fransisco, Jonathan Lethem, Philip K. Dick, projection booth, San, sparse, sparse prose, William Gibson, Wyoming
Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amnesia Moon is the first Jonathan Lethem novel I have read. This book was written in sparse prose with a downward feel and attitude.
Chaos is a loaner and loser living in the projection booth of an abandoned movie theater which is only playing “Chaos, Chaos, Chaos”, or is he? In an area of Wyoming in a post-“apocalypse” America, Kellogg rules. He controls the people with dreams. And one day, Chaos decides he has had enough and moves on, takes a car a moves on to discover in a road trip what has happened. He heads to California and soon starts having his own dreams of a home and a woman he knew before. He also starts to discover a former identity and finds other isolated communities with different rules and leaders. The McDonaldians, a group of 3 employees that still run McDonald’s, a town where people are required to move 2 times a week and the government employees are the movie stars on propaganda TV shows. And then he is reunited with his former “friends” in San Fransisco. All while discovering more of his past and his quest to go back.
The symbolism in this book sits on a couple levels and Lethem’s prose is as sparse the landscape. Chaos’s want to get to his past and rediscover where he came from and who he was is a compelling story and reminds the reader of their own past and the scattered memories we use to recreate who we were. The book really lives in the present of the character who constantly redefines who he was depending on the past he is shown. I found myself relating to this relationship with the past. We live now, but remember then and look to tomorrow as a reflection of the past when the reality is moving and unsure.
One feature of the book that may frustrate some, but I found really interesting, is the lack of discovery. We never find out what happened to cause the apocalyptic turn. Different people have different stories, much like the past lives that Chaos is shown.
The book had a bit of the paranoia that Philip K. Dick’s writing has and the sparse writing at times echoed William Gibson, though I found Lethem’s prose more lyrical and elegant. I think overall his writing was serving the story without ever getting bogged down in the externals of over running the reader with complete descriptions and unfocused side stories. I found the sparse writing rewarding in the book. It felt like the story, it matched.
Jonathan Lethem writes all over the place, some sci-fi, some mysteries, some coming of age stories, some of the above all run together. I love authors that write like this, that the story is what it is and weak genre defining terms are not there to limit their writing.
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