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The Diving Pool - Yoko Ogawa
by miwa The Diving Pool is a collection of three novellas. Each novella is stand-alone, but the protagonists have connecting features: they are all women, all lonely, all observers, as are we. In the eponymous first novella, The Diving Pool, teenage Aya is our insight into the world Ogawa has created. The only biological child to ... parents who run an orphanage, Aya develops a sexually-charged obsession with one of the orphans, Jun, who is around the same age as she. The two have grown up together under the "green darkness" of The Light House, their family home, among hoards of other children, the gingko trees and the grasses. As Jun is essentially her foster-brother, there is an undercurrent of dread within the prose: a dread of facing up to the fact that Aya's desires are taboo and will never be fulfilled. Unprepared to deal with her overwhelming emotions, Aya falls willingly into the thrall of Jun's sensuality. Every day she follows him to the school swimming pool and watches him practice his diving forms. Ogawa's descriptions are luscious, yet understated. It is as if Aya is breaking Jun down to mere shapes by describing each muscle and the way the water drops glisten, in a kind of anesthetization of want. As in Newton's law of motion, for every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction: while Aya is in the secret thrall of Jun, she also becomes increasingly abusive towards the youngest orphan at The Light House, two year old Rie. While obviously on an empathetic level any and all child abuse is obviously unconscionable, we as readers experience Aya's thought processes as she goes through both the motions of yearning for Jun and giving into her sickening compulsions to hurt Rie, with the same finely detailed yet numbed narration. "My desires," Aya tells us, "seemed simple and terribly complicated at the same time: to gaze at Jun's wet body and to make Rie cry." Pregnancy Diary follows The Diving Pool, but though the scenes, circumstances and characters change, the overall tone and mood slip seamlessly from one story to the other. If The Diving Pool is anaesthetised, then Pregnancy Diary is painfully clinical. Our unnamed protagonist lives with her sister and brother-in-law; they appear to have been trying to conceive for at least two years (if basal temperature charts are anything to go by) and within the first few paragraphs her sister's longed-for pregnancy is finally confirmed. However, at her sister and brother-in-law's lack of reaction - lack of outward joy - our protagonist is chased into dissociation, to quote: "I wonder how she broke the news to her husband. I don't really know what they talk about when I'm not around. In fact, I don't really understand couples at all. They seem like some sort of inexplicable gaseous body to me--a shapeless, colorless, unintelligible thing, trapped in a laboratory beaker." The story is composed on short snippets of daily life, dated, over nine months. Routine situations, such as meal times, become strangely dislocated from reality as our protagonist's sister suffers severe morning sickness and haunted by phantom scents. Meals become alien, repulsive. Our protagonist is pushed so far from her comfortable normality that she is forced to make and eat dinner alone, out on the lawn, in the dark. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, she finds it difficult to connect the pregnancy controlling their lives with the arrival of an actual baby. Thus she wraps herself in vague knowledge of chromosomes and possible birth defects, as the story takes a slide into the sinister. Food is the most prominent theme in Pregnancy Diary, whether it is the sister's inability to eat any of it for the first three months or the protagonist's obsession with making batch after batch of possibly-toxic grapefruit jam for her sister's greedy mouth and distended belly. It remains ambiguous whether she is truly feeding her sister toxic food, or if it is all a delusion, in Ogawa's bizarre tale of one-sided psychological warfare. Dormitory is the final novella included. A woman is waiting for her husband to summon her to come to him in Sweden. Meanwhile, she finds herself "rattling around empty days" and begins to add stitch after stitch to a quilt she makes just to pass the time. Her cousin rings her up out of the blue and asks her for a favour, to come and stay with him in the student dormitory she had once lived in several years before. There, perhaps intensified by memories, her perception of reality seems almost too vivid; the mouths of tulips garish, the scent of honey suffocating, sickly. Ogawa's descriptions in Dormitory are lush and grotesque. Nature itself seems to hang in a state of half-rotting, half-blooming. The caretaker, despite having no arms and only one leg, can feed and cook for himself, as well as hold down a job - but only by deforming his body by using his remaining foot as a hand, to stir coffee, write and so on. Because of this constant twisted posture, his heart is being crushed by his distorted rib-cage in a protracted, excruciating death. He expresses a strange, compulsive interest in the individual body parts of able-bodied men, so when her cousin suddenly disappears, she begins to suspect the caretaker of something more sinister. As much as the male gaze in fiction is often charged with lust, in The Diving Pool the female gaze is charged with dissociation. It is because of this, in a gradual layering of loneliness, obsession and internal pressure, that we can view the lives of Ogawa's characters as if through a keyhole. If we were able to break out of that mesmerising narration to tap them on the shoulder and ask 'Why are you doing this?' it is likely they themselves would not know. The Diving Pool is suffused with a soft power, letting our eyes gaze in from another perspective into seemingly normal lives, suffused with strange, subconscious compulsions and the undercurrents of dark desires. Somewhere along the way from the mundane to the harrowing, we found ourselves empathising with, and even find ourselves attempting to justify, characters' casually cruel behaviour. The haunting aftertaste of these three novellas can be boiled down to a simple question: if such seemingly normal people have such monstrous distortions, then could anybody? Price: £9.00 Translator: Stephen Snyder Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: Harvill Secker (3 July 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 1846552176 ISBN-13: 978-1846552175 Read the complete review |
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The Edge of Never - JA Redmerski
by linzeelou About the book The Edge of Never is a New Adult book by J.A. Redmerski. It is published by Harper on 14th July and the book is 480 pages long. I received an e-copy for review through Net Galley. Plot Synopsis Since the death of her high school sweetheart, Camryn Bennett's life has never been quite right. She's not ... the same person she used to be, is definitely not interested in dating and doesn't really have a lot of fun any more. After one crazy night she can't stop thinking about, Cam knows it is time for a change. Without a word to anyone, she heads off on a bus to a random place based on a baked potato. Although she doesn't really have a clue what exactly she is doing, Cam feels much better for not being at home. On her long and boring bus journey she meets Andrew, who is more like her than she can imagine. Although not wanting to even talk to him to begin with, he gets under her skin and offers her the chance of a lifetime... the opportunity to really know what it means to live. Instead of travelling on her own, Andrew joins her and they embark on an exciting road trip without a set plan. The attraction is burning between Cam and Andrew but both have secrets and pasts which could affect everything. What I thought Although New Adult is a new genre, this book had such a buzz about it and I had heard so many great things. For some reason though, I left it sitting on my Kindle for ages before I got round to reading it. Once I had started it though, I couldn't put it down. I somehow managed to read the whole thing on my phone during a shift at work. Twenty year old Camryn has had a hard life. Her boyfriend died in a car accident and then later, her brother was jailed for causing a car accident. Cam completely changed after these events and at the beginning of the book, she is very unsure about who she is. I can't say that I liked the beginning of this book though. While it gives the opportunity to get to know Cam in her hometown and her friends, I don't think it was needed. I think the beginning created an unneeded reason for Cam to run away as she already had enough of those. I would have loved for The Edge of Never to have begun with Cam sat on a bus, beginning her road trip. Once away from her hometown and on her adventure, I absolutely loved Cam. She instantly became a different and much more interesting person to read about. She has a quick and witty personality and has some great lines as soon as she meets Andrew. At this point, instead of being solely narrated, Andrew gets his say as well which was something I liked. The reactions from each character about the other were so funny and made for a great read. What I wasn't expecting from this book was for so much of it to be set in transportation. Cam and Andrew spend a hell of a long time either on a bus or in a car but it never got boring. Their personalities and conversations were entertaining and exciting. Both characters have had some tough things going on in their lives but neither let it really get to them as much as I thought it would. Not that this is a bad thing. As Cam and Andrew head off on an adventure together, the book is about really getting to know yourself and being open to new experiences. I loved this aspect of the book as it was really inspirational. It also showed how one little thing like getting on a bus can change your whole life forever. It also shows not to dwell on the past too much or these wonderful things might not happen. Together, Cam and Andrew are just as fantastic characters as they are separately. These two have sizzling chemistry and a hell of a lot of sexual tension between them. However, they are also super cute at times, goofing around and teasing each other but at all times, they are themselves and quite open. As they are on a road trip and spend a lot of time travelling, this gives the opportunity to really get to know these characters. We get to find out their hopes and dreams, what food they like and don't as well as things like musical preference. I know some things sound silly but I think these are well thought out characters with a lot of depth. As for the plot, you can probably already tell that I loved the road trip element to this book. There is much more to it than that though. As I already said, the book is about the characters really getting to know themselves as well as each other. Along the way, certain events change the way in which one of the characters thinks, or the way in which they see other people. I loved the excitement of not knowing where they would travel to next or what they would experience. As well as these two fantastic elements, The Edge of Never is extremely deep and heartfelt. There is so much passion and emotion put into this book and my own emotions were constantly changing throughout. While I didn't like the beginning of The Edge of Never, I absolutely loved it afterwards. It was funny, heart-breaking, passionate and exciting all at the same time. Read the complete review |
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Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella
by brady58 Shopaholic is one of those books that is so easy to read that I devoured it in an afternoon when the kids were at their dads. The book tells the story of Becky Bloomwood who is a journalist at a financial magazine which is a job she hates as she bluffs her way through most of it by going to launches and just copying the information from ... the press releases. She would much rather be working on a beauty or fashion magazine. Although she works on a financial magazine and so should know better Becky also has a problem when it comes to shopping. Namely she can't get enough of clothes and items that she is convinced will make her life better. Once she decides she wants something she obsesses over it until she gets her hands on it much to the chagrin of her bank manager and credit card company. During the course of her work Becky meets Luke who is a successful business man and although sparks fly between them the course of true love never runs smoothly and can Becky curtail her shopping habits and get her life under control. I adored this book and thought it was hilarious. It is the beginning of a series featuring Becky and she makes a great heroine and one who is immediately relatable to most of us. She is a good person who just wants nice things in her life and who is willing to go in to debt to get them which is something that I and I am sure a lot of other women can relate to. She is also really likeable straight away even when she is doing all these mad cap things. The book is littered with laugh out loud parts and I found myself sniggering when reading it. I am only glad I wasn't on the train or else I am sure I would have gotten a lot of strange looks from people. There are some really funny parts which made me cringe as well as laugh. The romance part of the book works really well and I found myself rooting for Luke and Becky to get together. The romance was a bit predictable in parts but no less enjoyable for it. Luke was written so well that I found myself having a crush on him by the end of the book and unfortunately am still on the lookout for my own Luke. The rest of the supporting characters are also really well fleshed out especially Becky's best friend and her parents. Becky's mother gets more to do in further books as she is a standout amongst the supporting cast. This is the first in the Shopaholic series of books and although you could get away with reading them in any order as there isn't a lot of plot to speak of you really should start with this one as this and the second are my favourites in the series and while the rest of the books are good fun they haven't managed to reach the heights of the first. Read the complete review |
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Paperback: 518 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Michelle Granas / Published: 28 Jan 2013 |
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Hardcover: 304 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Bloomsbury / Published: 28 Mar 2013 |
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Paperback: 294 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Simon & Schuster / Reprint: 4 Jan 2011 |
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Paperback: 500 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Quercus / Published: 31 Jan 2013 |
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Print Length: 384 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: HarperCollins / Published: 13 Oct 2009 |
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Print Length: 404 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Pocket Books / Original Edition: 27 Sep 2011 |
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Paperback: 448 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Mira / Published: 1 Jun 2012 |
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Print Length: 219 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Head of Zeus / Published: 10 Oct 2012 |
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Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: Pocket Books / Published: 25 Jun 2013 |
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Paperback: 400 pages / Fiction Book / Publisher: HarperPress / Published: 2 Sep 2010 |
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