Mysterious Setting by Kazushige Abe

Published in Japan in 2006; published in translation by Pushkin Press on July 2, 2024

Kazushige Abe’s 2006 novel tells the story of a teenage girl who finds meaning in her brief life that she was denied when she realized she would never be a troubadour. Shiori had her heart set on being a troubadour ever since she looked up the word and decided that it described the life she wanted to live. It turned out to be a poor choice for a girl who is tone deaf and afraid to compose lyrics that don’t capture her true emotions as fully as the sounds that her audiences interpret as screeches. Maybe she's a young Yoko Ono.

The narrator learns Shiori’s story from an old man in a park. The narrator returns repeatedly until the old man brings the story to a resolution.

Shiori was tormented by her older sister’s brutal honesty. Her sister recognized that Shiori’s first boyfriend was only with her because she paid for his CDs when they went shopping.

Shiori shopped for cat food at a pet store. She became captivated by the parakeets. The birds seemed to be upset by her singing, although Shiori thought they were encouraging her. Shiori blames herself when things do not go well for Japanese birds.

Shiori makes no friends at music school (she refuses to sing or to compose lyrics) so she begins to correspond with random pen pals. One is a Peruvian drummer who invites her to hear his band. The other band members quickly realize that they can take advantage of Shiori’s generous and gullible nature. The Peruvian takes the story in a different direction when he entrusts Shiori with a suitcase nuke — or maybe it’s just a suitcase.

Shiori is a lonely teen who has no talent for making friends. Even her family abandons her. But Shiori is true to herself. While the inclinations to which she is true might be unwise, Shiori will win hearts for standing her ground.

Mysterious Setting is odd and unpredictable, qualities that make the story a pleasure to read. Shiori is initially incapable of recognizing her faults and then is unable to stop blaming herself for them. There’s some of that in most of us, although Shiori’s tendency to take those qualities to an extreme generates the story’s dark humor.

The end of the old man’s story tests the boundaries of plausibility, but this isn’t a story the reader is meant to believe. Absurd situations fuel its humor while the dark ending makes Shiori even more likable.

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The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins

Published by ‎ Little, Brown and Company on July 2, 2024

The Entire Sky is a story of choices, primarily the choice between suicide and endurance, but also the choice to notice when people need help or to leave them unseen, to help those we see or to condemn them. The story is heartwarming because good people dealing with tough circumstances, including poor decisions they've made in the past, decide to make the right choices.

Justin lived in Seattle. He wasn’t big enough to protect his mother from her boyfriend’s physical abuse, but he tried. His mother didn’t have the physical strength to protect Justin from her boyfriend’s retaliation and didn’t have the emotional strength to make her boyfriend leave. So Justin left instead, running away at first, later going to Montana to live with his mother’s brother Heck.

As the novel begins, Justin is running away again, this time to avoid the consequences of caving in Heck’s head with a maul. Justin’s backstory leading to that violent moment is interwoven with the story that unfolds in the present.

A key to Justin’s personality is his physical resemblance to Kurt Cobain and his love of Nirvana’s music. Apart from committing a murder (and nobody will be sorry about Heck’s death), Justin is polite, kind, and respectful — a young man readers will easily like.

With his guitar and a backpack, Justin hitchhikes to Billings, where he earns a few dollars busking. He doesn’t understand why people appreciate his “tribute” to Cobain until he reads about Cobain’s death in a newspaper. Justin’s travels end when a rancher finds him hiding in a bunkhouse and leaves him breakfast.

The rancher is Rene Bouchard. He’s old and battling pain in his knees, but he still tends his flock of sheep. His wife has just died. His daughter Lianne returned to Montana to help her father care for her dying mother. Lianne teaches at a community college but has separated from her husband and isn’t sure she wants to return to her former job, particularly after she shags Ves, her old friend from high school.

Justin is astonished at how easily he fits in at Rene’s ranch. He loves watching lambs being born although he is appalled by the harsh realities of Rene's business. Rene and Lianne display decency and kindness that Justin has rarely experienced. Ves’ daughter Amy shares Justin’s appreciation of Nirvana’s music. Justin is even thinking of enrolling in school under a new name, but remaking a life is never easy. Justin will have more than his share of troubles to overcome as the novel moves toward a resolution.

Suicide is the novel’s primary theme. Cobain’s is probably the most notable celebrity suicide of his generation, the most notable in American life since Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe. Rene is planning to end his life when Justin’s sudden arrival causes him to postpone his death. Justin reminds Rene of his son Franklin, who also committed suicide. The novel asks why so many boys choose to take their own lives, why American society fails to identify and help them.

Prejudice against gay men, harbored by Montanans who think of themselves as cowboys, is a secondary theme. Justin isn’t gay, but his long hair and earrings make him gay in the eyes of rednecks. Men like Heck who are ashamed of their attraction to other men use violence as a substitute for self-awareness. Franklin was gay and was targeted by other boys (and even some girls) despite his efforts to hide his sexual identity.

A third theme is the difficult relationship between fathers and sons, particularly when fathers (like Rene) find it difficult to express (or even feel) their emotions. Rene blames himself for Franklin’s suicide, as does Lianne for not responding more urgently to Franklin’s cries for help. They both regret that they didn’t listen to him.

Joe Wilkins conveys the unassuming lives of his Montana characters, finding virtue in their hard work and unselfish lives. Without wasting words, he strings together robust sentences to tell a powerful story. He calls attention to all the boys we don’t notice, the boys who succeed at being too small to see, the boys who drift, who sleep in the weeds or in the back seat of an abandoned car or, if they are very lucky, on a friend’s couch for a few nights. The story reminds us that we can look away when we see them, or we can see them as possibilities.

I didn’t try to guess how the story would end but I dreaded a realistic outcome. Wilkins satisfied me by offering two endings, perhaps to emphasize that life is about possibilities and choices. One is a little sad but far from hopeless. The one I preferred is closer to happy. Either one is a fitting conclusion to a powerful story.

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Happy Independence Day!

Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías

First published in Uruguay in 2020; published in translation by Scribner on July 2, 2024

Pink Slime is a jigsaw puzzle assembled from pieces that don’t quite fit together. The novel is driven by an unexplained environmental catastrophe, but there is also an eating disorder story and a dystopian food story and some domestic drama for flavor. The pieces might have fit more snugly without the kid who can’t stop eating.

A phenomenon described as “the red wind” carries something — a toxin, a virus — to coastal cities, afflicting those it touches with a disease that rots their skin. The root of the environmental disaster seems to be algae that causes waters to “expel the fish like a giant stomach.”

Birds have disappeared. Fires are beginning to break out. Food shortages have inspired factories to produce a protein-rich food called Meatrite (people call it “pink slime”) by spinning animals at a high speed until they dissolve into goo. Why not just barbeque the animal? I guess the theory is that Meatrite makes use of all parts of the animal — waste not, want not — but the manufacturing process seems implausible. Perhaps we’re not meant to take it literally, but I’m not sure how else to take it.

Warning sirens direct people indoors when the red wind blows. The narrator lives in a coastal city in South America. She can’t afford to move inland to escape the red wind as more affluent people are doing, although she is saving money to fund her dream of moving to Brazil.

The narrator regularly visits her mother, with whom she has a difficult relationship. Her mother pays cheap rent to live in one of her neighborhood’s mansions, abandoned by its owners during “the evacuation.” The owners wanted someone to keep the hedges pruned in the event they were ever able to return. The mother’s purpose in the story was never clear to me, apart from the apparent belief of some authors that a story isn't complete without illustrating the perilous relationships between mothers and their adult daughters.

The narrator is divorced from Max, who one day ignored the warnings and walked outside to fetch some firewood. Max is no longer in quarantine, but he’s been in a clinic for a long time. Apparently, he’s being studied. Qualifying for chronic care is like winning the lottery. Like many of the novel's unanswered questions, why Max merits study is unclear. I suppose he has some sort of immunity since he hasn't rotted away yet. Why Max decided to take a stroll in the red wind is also unclear. Max might make a greater contribution to the story than the narrator’s mother, but not much.

The narrator used to work as a copywriter but now has a gig taking care of Mauro when his parents are inland. Mauro has a ravenous and insatiable appetite, an eating disorder that will eventually kill him, since he’ll eat wallboard and paint and frozen chickens and possibly his fingers if nobody stops him. Mauro fights with the narrator and steals the pickled vegetables she is hoarding against the food shortage. Mauro is revolting but the narrator must remind herself that his condition isn’t his fault. Whether the condition is related in some way to the environmental catastrophe is never made clear.

Sentences between chapters — “If you’re given a box full of air, what is the gift?” — seem like something a writer might scribble in a notebook. Other times, meaningless fragments of conversations serve as an interlude between chapters. All of this contributes little to the story.

The characters and the environmental catastrophes never come together to build a satisfying story. Mauro’s eating disorder is a distraction from the environmental story, but it occupies a large part of the novel. The purpose it was meant to serve is a mystery to me.

In an effort to make sense of Pink Slime, I read a review in The Scotsman. The reviewer suggested that the pink slime is not algae or wind or Meatrite but the people who have failed their roles as caretakers of the planet. I think that’s a strong insight, although I was frustrated (as I always am) by the unexplained origin of the catastrophe. Is the algae a consequence of pollution? Are germs mutating because of global warming? I like apocalyptic novels to demonstrate cause and effect, but it’s common for modern writers to focus on effects and leave readers guessing about the causes. That seems like cheating to me, but I grew up reading science fiction and scientists tend not to invent a phenomenon without explaining it. My frustration may be my own quirk and not one shared by the general population of readers.

Fernanda Trías has a soothing prose style that almost won me over. Unfortunately, the story didn’t, so I can’t give Pink Slime an unqualified recommendation.

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River's Edge by Kyoko Okazaki

First serialized in Japan in 1993 and 1994. Published in translation by Kodansha/Vertical Comics as a graphic novel on June 27, 2023.

Its publisher describes River’s Edge as “a celebrated work that shows the hardships and the realities of growing up as a teenager in early 90s Tokyo.” Ichiro Yamada’s hardships are harder than most. Boys beat up Yamada because he’s quiet — and probably because girls like him. They suspect (correctly) that he’s gay. Girls like Yamada because he’s stylish and has a pretty face.

Yamada is dating Kanna Tajima but she doesn’t know he’s gay. Yamada thinks he might start liking girls if he dates one. Not surprisingly, he only ends up hurting Tajima. Yamada should really tell Tajima that he's gay since she’s overdosing on teen angst about why Yamada isn’t getting physical with her. I guess teen angst knows no geographic or cultural boundaries.

Haruna Wakakusa rescues Yamada when her boyfriend Kannonzaki locks him inside his locker. Yamada confesses his secret to Wakakusa and they become friends, much to Kannonzaki’s displeasure.

Yamada found a dead body in a field (more of a skeleton at this point) and thinks of it as his “treasure.” There’s something about seeing a corpse that comforts him. The only other person who has discovered the skeleton is a pretty actress with an eating disorder named Kozue Yoshikawa. Kozue is strange in a warped and unpleasant way. Readers who don’t want to read about animal abuse might want to avoid this graphic novel, while nearly all readers will find Kozue’s interest in dead kittens to be unattractive. Wakakusa befriends homeless kittens, which makes it all the more strange that she isn’t repulsed when Kozue kisses her.

Wakakusa envies Rumi, a high school friend whose 38-year-old boyfriend buys her expensive cosmetics.  Wakakusa had sex with Kannonzaki just to experience sex (she finds it filled with “contradictions and mysteries”). Rumi has sex with him for fun (and is much more into it than Wakakusa) but she becomes pregnant, possibly by Kannonzaki. Now Wakakusa is ghosting Kannonzaki, which his ego can't handle despite having a second girl to use for sex. Naturally, Rumi has teen angst in the form of jealousy about Wakakusa.

Characters lose control and gruesome acts of violence occur the story’s second half. One is accompanied by this narrative explanation: “Tragedy doesn’t just occur at random. That’s not how it works. The truth is that it slowly, gradually prepares itself. In the midst of our stupid, boring daily lives, that’s how it comes, and when it happens, it’s like a balloon popping out of nowhere.” That passage sums of the graphic novel’s theme: life is boring until it becomes tragic, but both boredom and tragedy suck.

The story has some interesting insights, including a character’s observation that teenage girls gossip incessantly to avoid saying anything meaningful. The characters ruminate about death quite a bit, sometimes imagining they see ghosts. They don’t seem capable of imagining a future in which they are still alive, with new friends and new ways of seeing themselves, but that’s what it’s like to be a teen.

I’m not an art critic, but the comic is drawn in the simple, sketchy style I associate with Dagwood and similar comic strips. It’s sometimes difficult to tell characters apart, particularly when they are drawn without a face. The style didn’t bother me, but this isn’t a graphic novel that enhances the story with impressive art. At least the characters don’t have ridiculously big eyes.

Fans of Japanese manga and/or teenage angst might understand why River’s Edge is a “celebrated work.” I can only say that the story is sufficiently interesting (in part because Japanese culture is interesting) that I remained engaged from chapter to chapter.

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