Yoshitake Mashiba is the CEO of a Tokyo company, and despite being married to the “perfect wife”, he wants to end the marriage because she can’t provide him with children. He has put everything in his personal life on hold until he accomplishes this, his one and only goal. Needless to say, he isn’t a particularly sympathetic character. Ayame, his wife, leaves town to visit her family, and Yoshitake dies suddenly, two days later, from poisoned coffee. Though she has a motive, her alibi is […]
The first Murakami is….much like any other Murakami
I came to Murakami relatively recently. I’d heard the name before, but, like Margaret Atwood and numerous others, my perception of his work was that it existed on some literary plain far beyond my understanding. So it wasn’t until 1Q84 that I decided to give him a shot. And I don’t really even know why. After devouring every book I could find as a teenager, my reading habits tapered off in college. It wasn’t until 2009 that I really started to pick up the habit again. […]
“They bred dogs for everything else…why didnt they breed them to live longer?”
Yet another post-apocalyptic novel set in the not too distant future. I know. It’s like every fifth book written these days is set during the end of humanity. I suppose that says something about the fatalism of America in a post 9/11, post-truth world. But this isn’t the Walking Dead. There isn’t a zombie in sight, in fact. The Dog Stars is more The Thin Red Line meets The Road. It’s a somber reflection of the end of the world, at times haunting and told in a lyrical […]
Write your own ending
Last year, the estimable yesknopemaybe reviewed this book and found it arduous and almost iredeemable. But her summary of the book left me fairly curious, especially after reading The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino last year, which sounded vaguely similar. Her comparing it to Crime & Punishment didn’t hurt, considering that’s one of my favorite books. So, given what I expected based on her review, I can honestly say that I was pleasantly surprised for nine-tenths of the book. Though I did find […]