Music to Accompany Lauren Beukes' near-future South Africa

Part of my Around the World Challenge is an endless hunt for the perfect music to accompany a book. If a book is historical or blatantly references music, it is easy.  In reading Moxyland, I knew I wanted to be listening to something frenzied and tech-heavy, and came across a genre of music in South Africa called Drum and Bass.  It is largely dominated by a band called Counterstrike, and this is EXACTLY what I had in my head.  Enjoy!

The Postmortal by Drew Magary

The Postmortal by Drew Magary
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up because it was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and it jumped into my arms at the public library.

I like the premise of the story, and the overarching storytelling technique. The premise is that an American scientist discovered the cure for aging, and the main narrator in the story had the cure. Most of the book chapters are accounts from his e-mail or the news during the time, and a few break and go into plain narrative.

This isn't just an idea book though. The author takes the idea and really follows it through, decades later, to see what would truly happen to a world society that had the potential not to age. There are changes in religion, the family unit, war, and government control. Somehow it all feels like it goes on too long (I started consistently looking for how many pages I had left around 240), but I'm not sure what to cut. Maybe the love story. Maybe the final career. Maybe the bizarre ending. Maybe some of the side tidbits that are thrown in just to show one detail of the issues with never aging (interesting, but not as critical to the central story). It isn't bad, but all these side trips keep the book from being as riveting as I think it could have been.

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
Around the world: 4 of 52 countries (South Africa)
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Publisher summary:

You think you know what’s going on? You think you know who’s really in power? You have No. Fucking. Idea. Moxyland is an ultra-smart thriller about technological progress, and the freedoms it removes. In the near future, four hip young things live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone’s got to stand up to government inc., whatever the cost.

This might be one instance where an audiobook has the potential to lead a reader (listener) into confusion more than reading the print might do. Moxyland is read by Nico Evers-Swindell, best known for his portrayal of Prince William in the made-for-tv movie William & Kate. While he does a good job with the voices and South African accents, the intertwining stories are hard to keep up with, particularly with the way the reader is dumped right into the center of everything already going on.

That's how living in a totalitarian, nearly-post-Apartheid South Africa can be sometimes. The four main characters in Moxyland don't seem to have a grasp of the big picture either, and can hardly keep up with navigating the landscape where your cellphone can punish you, viruses can be used as crowd control, and your body can be turned into an irrevocable product advertisement.  There isn't much that is easily discernible as being distinctly South African, except the threads of apartheid that have forever changed the political and interpersonal climate, little turns of phrase like ending a sentence with "good as," and the names.  I had read so many Booker nominees and other books set in South Africa, that I really wanted a different experience for this country's pick.  Mission accomplished, except it was probably closer to other books I read a lot of, because of the themes.

This has tastes of William Gibson and Cory Doctorow, and the realism is helped by the ten years Beukes spent as a journalist, where she started thinking "What would happen if...?" The world she has created is scary, but not difficult to imagine. After all, some of us are already living it.

Part of this review was cross-posted on SFFAudio.com.

You've Got to Read This

You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe by Ron Hansen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been reading this throughout the past month with my reading buddy Mikki in GoodReads.  It is SO HARD to talk about this anthology. For the most part, these stories were fantastic, some because of the visuals and beautiful writing, some because of the completely disturbing twists or ends, some because of the well-written raw characters.

My absolutely favorite story has to be "Reflection" by Angela Carter. The concept of a mirrored world with a knitter in between, constantly joining the opposite parts to keep the universe running smoothly - genius. The language is what elevates it - "the odor of her violence," "vegetable slowness," and my favorite - "the proud, sad air of the king of a rainy country." I can't wait to dig into the volume I have at home with her collected stories.

My favorite line comes from Labor Day Dinner, by Alice Munro.
"I think maybe we're destroyed already,' Ruth says dreamily."

Other favorite stories - "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid, "The Star Cafe" by Mary Caponegro (a bizarre story for sure but very thought-provoking), and "Goodbye My Brother" by John Cheever because I became so emotionally invested in it, I woke up angry the next day.   It isn't often I'll have such a strong reaction to a story.

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alif is the handle for a teenage hacker living in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, one where the flow of information is controlled and monitored by the state. He has made a name for himself (not his actual name, obviously) by helping various groups subvert the system at various times. He becomes an unknowing rival to someone known as The Hand, and as he tries to escape he ends up in a world where jinns exist.

This novel is an entertaining read combining hackers with partially unseen beings, legends with protest, and manages to still present the complexities of this region of the world very realistically - Alif is only half Arab, for instance, and his skin tone alone creates problems in some situations. It was written before the "Arab spring" and will come out in July 2012, so it manages to turn into a very believable world. I might start looking for the Unseen Alley in my own city.

I'd recommended this for fans of YA hacker novels (Ready Player One or Little Brother) in particular, and also readers interested in learning more about the complexities of the Arab world.

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson
Relation to Orange Prize: longlisted in 1997
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I love her writing as always, this is not my favorite Jeanette Winterson. That honor still belongs to Written on the Body or The Powerbook. It is funny because both of those books have less plot than Gut Symmetries, but I think it is some of the plot in this book that made me enjoy it less.

The story focuses on three people - Alice, a theoretical physicist, who has an affair with Jove, and then also his wife Stella. Each chapter is told from a different perspective, with the title of a tarot card, and some chapters even focus on telling the stories of the parents of the three. I think that and the unfatal cannibalism created an environment where there was too much going on to really capture the intensity of the relationship.

Still, the language is gorgeous. The quotations I've typed up are just more to demonstrate that side of it.

"I know I am a fool, trying to make connections out of scraps but how else is there to proceed? The fragmentariness of life makes coherence suspect but to babble is a different kind of treachery. Perhaps it is a vanity. Am I vain enough to assume you will understand me? No. So I go on puzzling over new joints for words...."

"I know I am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations and exaltations that light us up... I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other. The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love."

Ah, her language! This one made me laugh, because it passes by before you realize what has been said:
"Inevitably it is not only the gastric juices that are stimulated by luxury and fresh air. What could be nicer than preprandial fellatio in a foreign tongue?"

"When we killed what we were to become what we are, what did we do with the bodies? We did what most people do; buried them under the floorboards and got used to the smell. I've lived my life as a serial killer; finish with one part, strangle it and move on to the next. Life in neat little boxes is life in neat little coffins, the dead bodies of the past laid out side by side. I am discovering, now, in the late afternoon of the day, that the dead still speak."

"I do not want to declare love on you... I would love you as a bird loves flight, as meat loves salt, as a dog loves chase, as water finds its own level. Or I would not love you at all."

"The surprise of wings was this love. We did escape gravity. If I flew too close to the sun, forgive me."

"Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough."

I have another unread Winterson at home that I hope to read this year, and I am eagerly anticipating her autobiography, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? that is supposed to come out in March.  She is one of my top three favorite authors of all time, and I'd recommend her to anyone!

Frangipani by Celestine Vaite

 

Frangipani: A Novel by Célestine Hitiura Vaite
Around the World: 3 countries!
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An enjoyable story of Tahitian culture and the conflict between mothers and daughters. I have the sense it won't stick with me for long, which is why I only gave it three stars, but I didn't have to struggle to get through it.

For the purposes of this Around the World challenge, I really do appreciate when a novel can also describe the setting or the culture in a succinct and memorable way. All the bits and pieces about the connection to the flora, the feminine wisdom passed down, and the use of some of the less universal customs made me feel like I was learning something. The best example was the idea of marriage. In the Tahiti of Frangipani, very few couples are marrying, as traditional wisdom says you should have a child with a man to see what kind of person he really is before you'd ever consider marrying him.

Here is a great example of a description of Tahiti, which just happens to fall during a moment Materena talks to her unborn daughter:

"Materena talks about Tahiti to give her unborn baby girl a general idea of her soon-to-be home.  That place is the scorching sun at midday, the heavy and still humidity before the rain...Materena describes to her the sweet smell of flowers as they are opening up early in the morning, the aroma of coffee brewing in the kitchens, and fresh bread being baked at the baker nearby. She talks about the bright colors everywhere you look; the red and orange hibiscus edges....."

The book traces the theme of mothers and daughters throughout.  Older women often give Materena advice (sometimes requested) on how to raise Leilani.  Some examples just from the pages where she is giving birth:

"Girls hurt their mother from the day they come into the world..."

"It's more painful to push girls into the world because they don't want to be born. They resist. They know what they're in for in this world of miseries."

This was a book I enjoyed but probably wouldn't read again.

Tahitian baked good/dessert: Po'e
Recommended album: Tahiti, Belle Epoque - Tahitian Favorites