"The Shining" by Stephen King (1977)

"Something - luck, fate, providence - had been trying to save him.  Some other luck, white luck.  And at the last moment bad old Jack Torrance luck had stepped back in.  The lousy run of cards wasn't over yet."

Stephen King has been discussed here many times before.  Will he be discussed here again?  I'm not sure, but after wading through The Shining I don't have much desire to read its sequel, Doctor Sleep.

And as I bring up Stephen King and The Shining, another figure looms his way into this one-sided conversation, this figure being none other than Stanley Kubrick, who directed the movie adaptation of Stephen King's novel.  

But first, the book.

In The Shining down-on-his-luck writer Jack Torrance (who is in no way, shape or form a stand-in for Stephen King) gets a job as caretaker at an old Colorado hotel shutting down for the winter.  Along for the ride are his wife, Wendy, and his psychic son Danny.  Danny's presence in the old hotel piques the interest of the sinister powers inhabiting it, and this interest, coupled with Jack's troubled past, is the source of much distress between the three family members.

The Shining was an early work for King, and the third of his books to be published, following Carrie and Salem's Lot, both of which were also adapted into movies.*  Carrie and The Shining were very much in line with the late 70s craze for psychic powers, a craze signified by everything from the In Search of... TV show to Project Stargate.

The Shining rode this telepathic wave to the bestseller lists, and its subsequent popularity led to a movie version which hit theaters in 1980.  This film version, though greeted with some skepticism at the time, has since become a horror classic.  It's also one of director Stanley Kubrick's best remembered films.

The problem being that Kubrick wasn't entirely happy with the story as laid out by its original author.  He rejected King's initial draft of the script, and instead rewrote the story with the help of Diane Johnson.  Kubrick, it should be said, wasn't a big believer in the supernatural, and he wasn't fond of King's ending.  His and Johnson's script is more a mix of gothic horror and Freudian psychology, two elements that King was somewhat removed from when writing his novel.**

Kubrick was, moreover, very dismissive of King's book in the interviews which followed the movie's release, a development which rankles The Shining's author to this day.  "Not part of great literature," said Kubrick, who went on to describe the novel as "a very bad book" and also "quite pretentious."

King returned the favor, dismissing the film in his own interviews.  King's biggest issue with the movie is Kubrick's ending, which diverges sharply from what he'd written years before.  I won't divulge either ending out of consideration for those who haven't yet seen the movie or read the novel, but I can tell you that the conclusions of the two narratives are very different.  Kubrick's movie ends in a more nihilistic manner, while the ending of King's story is a confrontation with the unknown and unknowable.  I think that both endings work, but I have to say that Kubrick's ending makes a more lasting impression.

As a novel I found The Shining rather hard to get through, and of the Stephen King books I've read I'd rank it near the bottom.  Like many of King's books it's really too long, and as I was reading it I kept thinking about sentences, paragraphs and entire chapters I would have excised were I its editor.  It's not bad so much as long-winded, and I think the tension it was trying to generate would have been more present if the author had skipped over certain parts and limited the amount of foreshadowing in earlier chapters. 

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*Salem's Lot first appeared as a TV miniseries, but nowadays most people would be watching it in a single sitting.

**There is a section in the book where Jack and Wendy take Danny to a doctor.  After a cursory examination this doctor offers a rational/scientific explanation for Danny's psychic powers.  This explanation, however, is later dismissed by both parents.

"Mistborn" by Brandon Sanderson (2006)

"'We fought our way to the palace, but there were Inquisitors.  They chased us, and Kelsier fought --' She stopped, looking at Dockson, 'Kelsier?  Is he --'"

Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy writer living in Utah, where he teaches Creative Writing at Brigham Young University.  He's the creator of the Cosmere Universe, of which his Mistborn novels are a part.  

The book discussed here is also known as The Final Empire, the first book of the Mistborn Trilogy.  My copy of the book is simply titled "Mistborn," so I'm calling it that.  Hopefully the distinction doesn't confuse anybody.

Mistborn takes place in the Final Empire, a kingdom whose geography is only vaguely outlined in the book.  The Final Empire is controlled by the Lord Ruler, a shadowy figure only seen near the end of the novel.  The Lord Ruler rules over the Final Empire with a magical ability known as Allomancy, which involves the ingestion of different metals and the harnessing of the magical qualities of each.  Standing against the Lord Ruler is a rebellion led by Kelsier, a former slave with a longstanding grudge against him, and Vin, his young apprentice.

"Mistborn" in this context refers to someone able to harness more than one metal to perform magic feats.  Ranked beneath the Mistborn are Mistings, who are only able to harness one metal to perform more specific magic feats.  Ferochemists, also introduced in this book, use different metals to store and retrieve different physical abilities, and beneath the Ferochemist is ranked the Ferring, who, like the Misting, can only use one metal instead of several.

The world in which these Mistborn, Mistings, Ferochemists and Ferrings operate is very hierarchical.  As already stated the Lord Ruler sits at the top of the food chain, often playing one side off against the other.  Beneath him are the Obligators and the Inquisitors, a kind of magical secret police force which enforces his will.  Beneath the Obligators and the Inquisitors stand the noble houses, which run the mercantile side of things, and below the noble houses are the skaa, a race of slaves without rights or legal representation.

It's a lot to take in, but keep in mind that the author sets most of it up in a very lengthy novel, and the concepts introduced above are only partly explained in Mistborn.  They are further refined and expanded on in further books, and at the conclusion of Mistborn even Vin, the main character, questions a lot of what she knows about both Allomancy and Ferochemistry.

When reviewing any fantasy novel (especially any fantasy novel forming part of a series), I tend to focus on three components, these being a) story and characterization, b) world building and c) systems of magic.  When thinking along such lines I am to some extent comparing any fantasy novel to both Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, the two pillars of the genre and its two best-known series.

In terms of story and characterization I'd give Mistborn a passing grade.  Vin, the protagonist, is a fully realized character, but her mentor, Kelsier isn't.  Kelsier's other crew members are even less actualized, and seem to pop in and out of the narrative with little consequence.  Elend, the member of the nobility that Vin quickly falls in love with, is slightly more three-dimensional, but the Lord Ruler, the shadowy figure touching his family's life, remains an unsatisfying enigma.  The story that these characters inhabit isn't bad, but it's length is daunting and I'm still not sure if the economics (not to mention the climate) of the Final Empire makes sense.

World building?  Well, let's just say that Mistborn isn't either Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.  At the outset we're invited into a world that resembles the plantation economy of the Old South, but this quickly gives place to a Medieval city which somehow functions on magic first and commerce second.  None of it quite hangs together properly, and the prehistory provided by the author doesn't go far toward fleshing out or explaining any of the events in the story.  We know that the Lord Ruler has been in power for a thousand years, but there's little sense of what happened before the present day or why.

The systems of magic presented in this book, however, are its real strong point.  These systems are, if magical in nature, well explained and relatively logical, and also open-ended.  These systems of magic make for some riveting fight scenes, and the moments when Vin or Kelsier use their Allomantic powers against various adversaries are far and away the best parts of the book.

I think this is/was a strong first novel that is probably improved upon in later books.  It has a few issues -- in places it seems cardboard-thin -- but it's an inventive story that does hit the right notes overall.  It's not Lord of the Rings, it's not Game of Thrones, but it is at least a creation unto itself.  I'd be glad to read the sequels if and when I come across them.

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"The Passenger" by Cormac McCarthy (2022)

"In Juarez Mexico.

"Yes.

"What happened to the cabin?

"It burned down.

"Was there anyone living in it?

"No.

"How did it happen to burn down?

"I don't know.  Maybe it was struck by lightning.

"Struck by lightning.

"One might suppose.

"You left school after that.

"Yes.

"Why?"

Cormac McCarthy's books have been discussed here several times already.  My sometimes almost coherent, sometimes barely incoherent thoughts on All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, Outer Dark, Suttree and The Crossing are linked here for the sake of a dubious posterity.

The Passenger is McCarthy's second-to-last novel.  His last novel, Stella Maris, is a companion novel to The Passenger.  In this review of The Passenger I may be missing aspects of a much larger story, but I have no idea when I'll be reading that more recent book, or even if I'll happen upon it anytime soon.  Whatever the case, I find that I have to take breaks between McCarthy novels, and I'm not in a rush to read Stella Maris, however entertaining (or turgid) it might be.

On to the novel at hand.  The Passenger is about a man by the name of Western mourning his sister's recent death.  This story opens on a salvage operation involving a missing plane, and to some extent the novel leads you to believe that this salvage operation will somehow tie into the book's conclusion, but no, it adds little to the final chapters aside from both a sense of paranoia and the protagonist's reason for being in a certain place at a certain time.  Ultimately he doesn't know what forces are acting against him or why, and in this respect he's no different from you or I, however world-wise we may think we are.

Apart from the salvage operation there are digressions into quantum physics, automotive maintenance and several other, seemingly unrelated topics.  The section on quantum physics seems especially detached from the plot, and one gets the feeling that the author was using this section to parade his knowledge of obscure subjects at the expense of the story he was trying to tell.  I'm not sure, again because I haven't read Stella Maris.

The Passenger is also a long book, and at several junctures I found my patience tested.  Given the way in which conversations are described (or not described) in this book, I had trouble keeping track of who was talking and why.  This approach to such exchanges also makes interactions between three or more characters almost impossible, given that it would be very, very hard to know what was being said and to whom.  This (dare I say it) shortcoming also makes these conversations seem somewhat artificial, and especially so given how well similar conversations worked in previous novels by the same author.

Was The Passenger entertaining?  I'd have to say that no, it wasn't, and that compared to many of McCarthy's other novels this one gave me the most trouble.  It seemed very random to me at times, and far from the concentrated effort that I enjoyed in Blood Meridian or the author's Border Trilogy.

It's possible that after reading Stella Maris I'd find that the parts which don't seem to fit in The Passenger suddenly make sense within a larger narrative.  Maybe.  Whatever the case, I'm in no hurry to read that other book.

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"Circe" by Madeline Miller (2018)

"Ariadne's light feet crossed and recrossed the circle. Every step was perfect, like a gift she gave herself, and she smiled, receiving it. I wanted to seize her by the shoulders. Whatever you do, I wanted to say, do not be happy. It will bring down fire on your head.

"I said nothing, and let her dance."

Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles was also reviewed here recently.  Circe is her second and most recent book.  She's had two short stories published but I haven't read them yet.  At the time of writing she's working on a third novel which incorporates the Persephone myth.

If you've read The Song of Achilles, Circe is more of the same: Greek myth told from an alternate perspective, tragedy mixed with a sense of optimism, fatalism tempered by the idea that clever people can change their fate.  Circe tells the tale of the immortal witch sentenced to life imprisonment on an island, with Circe's desire for mortal companionship proving both her undoing and her ultimate salvation.

Odysseus/Ulysses shows up about halfway through the book, and I think the author did a great job bringing both him and Circe to life.  Their personal struggles feel at once immediate and faithful to the the epic poem they represent, with enough room left for each to develop in surprising ways.

I suppose the real question for most readers will be how this book compares to The Song of Achilles, the book that broke its author into the mainstream.  I think I can say without equivocation that The Song of Achilles is a far superior book, but this isn't to say that Circe is by any means bad.  Miller wrote her Song over a period of ten years, and if Circe feels more rushed by comparison that's to be expected.  It's still a very good book, and I never felt bored by it.

Miller's as-yet-unseen third novel?  Sign me up, I'll read it.

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"The Sea, the Sea" by Iris Murdoch (1978)

"We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason.  But we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around.  Most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge.  We are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value."

Iris Murdoch was a British novelist and philosopher.  She was raised in Ireland and studied philosophy at Cambridge.  She was awarded the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea during the year of its publication.

In the novel James Arrowby, retired actor and director, moves to a small village in the vicinity of London.  Tired of previous amorous adventures and wanting to pursue a more contemplative mode of existence, he nevertheless seeks romance with an old flame.  His misunderstandings with various women inform much of the plot, and throughout the novel his idealizations of these women and their circumstances contend with the larger social reality he inhabits.

The book starts out well even if it's on the slow side.  I liked the meditative nature of the protagonist's personality and his way of recollecting younger episodes in his life.  He's arrogant and egotistical, but this seems a given when one understands his career on the stage up to that point.

What I had trouble with was the turning point which comes about 1/4 of the way into the book.  After this point the protagonist seems to exceed himself, and his behavior becomes erratic in the extreme.  His behavior, in other words, seems very inconsistent, and the other characters' behavior exhibits this same inconsistency as the book progresses.  You would think character A would never do action B because that is one of his defining traits, but no, character A goes right ahead and does action B because... reasons.

After a certain point this aspect of the book makes the plot seem arbitrary.  The characters don't act in accordance with the way they're introduced, and as a result everything starts to seem very random.  It's as if the author was just smashing this cast of characters into an established plot, regardless of whether their roles in this plot are in harmony with what they as people would actually do.

With this in mind no, I wouldn't recommend The Sea, the Sea.  It's just too frustrating to bother with.  Yes, it won the Booker Prize, and yes, a lot of people like it, but it either lacks a feel for its characters, or the author does a bad job of explaining why her characters do what they do - I really can't decide which it is.

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"It" by Stephen King (1986)

"Beverly screamed.  The clown had left off its antics when Ben moved his hand.  It rushed toward them, its paint-bloody mouth gibbering and laughing.  Bill winced back but held onto the book just the same, thinking it would drop out of sight as the parade had done, and the marching band, and the Boy Scouts, and the Cadillac convertible carrying Miss Derry of 1945."

Carrie, The Shining, Christine, Pet Sematary, The Dark Tower... everybody knows Stephen King, so there's no need to go into the details of his long (and profitable) career.  Sure, his books don't seem to exercise the power over the popular imagination they once did, but he's still a big deal just the same.

His enduring popularity aside, I've haven't read any Stephen King in several decades.  I've seen the movie adaptations of course, but prior to starting It I hadn't read one of his books since I was in high school.

I suppose I just needed a break.  I can remember reading The Stand, Misery, and many other of his works back then, but by the late 80s/early 90s he was starting to seem old fashioned compared to edgier/more obscure writers like Clive Barker and H.P. Lovecraft.  

At the time my biggest complaint about King was that he often seemed to stretch a story that should have been 200 pages into 400 pages, drowning interesting concepts in a sea of unnecessary detail and character development.  "Keep it simple, keep it pure," was my thinking back then, and with a few rare exceptions Stephen King's books seemed to do the opposite.  In this respect The Stand was the last straw for me, being as it is a bloated corpse of a book, burdened by chapter after chapter of unnecessary exposition.

But, like many people, years later I saw It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two in theaters.  And, like many people, I loved the first one and thought the second was just OK.  The movies renewed my interest in Stephen King.  I'd never read the novel, and it seemed like a good way of reappraising the author.

The verdict?  The book is a lot better than the two movies.  I'm not trying to put down It: Chapter One when I say this - it was quite possibly the best horror movie of 2017 - but considered alongside It: Chapter Two the book tells a much better, much more cohesive story.

One reason for this is plot structure.  Another reason is the fundamental difference between movies and books.  A third reason is related to content which couldn't be incorporated into the film.

The movies are fairly linear.  It: Chapter One takes place in the 80s, and It: Chapter Two takes place in the 2010s.  This is a change from the novel, in which the first conflict with It takes place in 1958 and the second in 1985.  It made sense for the movies to move the events forward by a few decades, given that the change makes it easier for viewers to relate to the characters.  The years in which the book sets the same events isn't all that critical to the story.  

In both the book and the movies a group of seven individuals contend with It, or Pennywise the Clown, two times - once when they're children and a second time as they're approaching middle age.  But in the book these two conflicts are described alongside one another, with events in the past echoing forward into the present and vice versa.  This adds a lot to the book's conclusion, in that both the first and second confrontations occur at the end of the novel.  In the movies these conflicts are presented one after the other, and this not only makes It: Chapter Two seem repetitious, but also makes it difficult for the viewer to connect both movies together into a unified whole.

Could the films have told the same story in the same way?  Maybe, but that would have made for a much longer venture, something more like a TV series.  This was done back in the early 90s, but as I haven't seen the TV series I can't comment on whether it was successful or not.

There's also the matter of Derry's history.  The novel goes to great lengths to present the depraved doings of Derry's earliest residents, and it's this backstory which contributes a sense of dread to the book.  The movie tries to incorporate some of this history, but in six hours including all of it would have been impossible.

Last of all there is a sexual undertone present in the novel that just isn't the sort of thing large scale Hollywood productions do.  I'd rather not go into detail with regard to this sexual undertone - I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it - but let's just say that the kids found in the pages of King's novel are a lot more ready to "explore" in a number of other ways.  There's no way any wide release movie is going to show (or even hint at) little kids doing or thinking those kinds of things.

All of the above said, I think the two movies were successful in artistic terms, and director Andy Muschietti should be congratulated on his achievement.  It's just that the book is a really, really complicated affair, and there was no way to do it complete justice in movie form.

Check out the book if you enjoyed the movies - just be warned that it's long, and requires a fair amount of concentration.  I think it's one of the best things King ever wrote, maybe the best thing he ever wrote.  It might even be the Great Expectations of his extensive bibliography.

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"Suttree" by Cormac McCarthy (1979)

"Supposing there be any soul to listen and you died tonight?

"They'd listen to my death.

"No final word?

"Last words are only words."

Cormac McCarthy has been discussed here many times.  This is the eighth of his novels I've read, and the seventh to be reviewed here.  You're welcome to check the sidebar for other reviews of his books.  Suffice it to say that Blood Meridian remains my favorite.

Suttree is the story of Cornelius "Buddy" Suttree, a fisherman living in a houseboat on the banks of a river in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Suttree lives a somewhat Bohemian existence fishing and collecting an odd assortment of friends.  He spends time in and out of jail, and is content to live life in the moment, no matter how unpleasant that particular moment might be.

As a character Suttree is definitely among the most interesting of Cormac McCarthy's creations, probably because McCarthy modeled the character on himself.  I don't think I've gotten such a sense of personhood from any of McCarthy's other books, and this was a nice change from his other, bleaker stories in which characters who are little more than ciphers ask existential questions and try not to die.  Suttree felt like a living, breathing person, and his story - although seemingly random at times - felt very personal and very real.  There are certainly McCarthy novels that end with a bigger bang, but the depth of characterization that went into Suttree gives it both a beating heart and an easy smile.

This aside, the first few pages of this book are no picnic.  In his descriptions of Knoxville McCarthy pretty much outdoes himself in terms of obscurity, and those unable to skim will find themselves consulting the nearest dictionary.  The good news is that after the first few sections it gets much easier; the bad news is that those first few sections require a well-lit, quiet room where you can think over what you're reading.

It should also be said that Suttree isn't without a sense of humor.  It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but the characters often find themselves in humorous situations, and these situations make the book much better.

All in all I'd recommend Suttree, but only if you've read McCarthy's other novels.  It can be maddeningly verbose, and I was sometimes tempted to skip over certain sections.  I didn't however, and I'm glad I saw it through to the end.

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*Cormac McCarthy probably wouldn't like the last two books listed above.  He has voiced a distaste for magical realism.

"Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

"As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low on her bosom."

Is it the great American novel?  Is it the great novel of the South?  Is it racist propaganda?  Is it undeserving of its reputation?  Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind is is certainly some of these things, but not all of them.

For the record, I enjoyed this book immensely.  For me it worked both as a love story and as a historical novel.  And I say this as someone who approached it without either a great interest in love stories or Southern history.  I also say this as someone who tries to approach every novel with an open mind, and as someone ready to accept a novel on its own terms, without too much thought about what kind of message it should impart.

Even so, a book as old, as celebrated, and as fashionably reviled as Gone with the Wind has drawn many criticisms over the years.  I feel the need to address at least some of these criticisms here.  The four major criticisms are as follows:

1. It's too long.

This I think is a valid complaint.  There are moments in this book when the level of detail is a real strength, and when it lends to the events described an immediacy and vividness that they wouldn't otherwise have, but there are also times when this book just gets SLOW, and when I began to ask myself if it wouldn't be better just to skip ahead.  The passages centering around Scarlett and Rhett's relationship are always interesting, but I feel like some of the early Reconstruction stuff could have been left out, particularly the business about Scarlett's mill.

2. It's racist.

Well... yes, of course.  It's a book about a society predicated on racism, so of course it's racist.  The real question is, does it promote racist values?  I don't think so.  When Mitchell uses words like "nigger" and "darky," when she describes African-Americans in animalistic terms, she's describing a worldview prevalent in the South at that time.  Using vocabulary other than that used in the pre- and post-Reconstruction South would have made Gone with the Wind feel anachronistic, and would have distanced the reader from the story.  

The descriptions of African-Americans in this book are indeed degrading, and fail to tell the whole story of who these people were - but that's the whole point.  People of Scarlett and Rhett's class would have failed to see them as the individuals they truly were, and would have also failed to recognize the personal struggles that shaped their behavior.  In this, I think, Mitchell is only holding true to the time period she's describing.

3. It glamorizes the Ku Klux Klan.

This is a really weak argument.  It will ring false for anyone who's actually bothered to read the book, especially given the fates that befall several Klansmen and the Klan itself in the novel.  None of the main characters take the Klan all that seriously, and the characters that do end up looking somewhat ridiculous because of their devotion.

4. It's boring.

This depends on what sort of books you favor.  If you like sprawling Victorian novels you'll love Gone with the Wind.  If you like authors such as Faulkner you'll find in this novel the "foundation" over which they wrote.  If you like Dickens, you'll love Rhett Butler.  If you like historical novels you'll like this one, too.

If, however, you like clipped, modern sorts of novels, you'll probably hate Gone with the Wind.  If you're looking for philosophical abstraction and impressionistic prose, you'll find almost none of that here.  This book is a slow burn, and if you have the patience you'll be rewarded.  If you lack the patience, however, you probably won't be bothering with this novel in the first place!

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"The Sympathizer" by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)

"Everything my guidebook said was true and also meaningless.  Yes, the East was vast, teeming, and infinitely complex, but wasn't the West also?  Pointing out that the East was an inexhaustible source of riches and wonder only implied that it was peculiarly the case, and not so for the West.  The Westerner, of course, took his riches and wonder for granted, just as I had never noticed the enchantment of the East or its mystery.  If anything, it was the West that was often mysterious, frustrating, and really interesting, a world utterly different from anything I had known before I began my education."

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Professor of English, American Studies, and Ethnicity* at the University of Southern California.  The Sympathizer is his first novel.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. 

In The Sympathizer, the son of a Vietnamese woman and a French priest becomes a spy for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.  He later moves to the United States after the U.S. military withdrawal from Indochina, and later still takes part in a doomed expedition to retake Vietnam from the very communist masters he is serving.  As a man caught between races, cultures, and political affiliations, his motives and actions fall under everyone's scrutiny, and he spends much of the book alienated from all but two of his closest friends.

To say that author Viet Thanh Nguyen has a way with words is putting it mildly.  He not so much writes as performs acts of literary subterfuge.  It's been a while since I encountered a writer with both a talent for the language and a mastery of the subject matter, but in The Sympathizer I found both qualities in excess.  It's an almost perfect novel, about which I have only one small complaint.

And that complaint is?  Only that he indulges in "the aspiring immigrant writer" trope, which can be seen in any number of recent books, from Shawna Yang Ryan's Green Island to Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.  The whole "protagonist as struggling writer" thing has been done to death by some of the most famous names in fiction, and adding "immigrant" to that description doesn't improve it much.  Thankfully the author doesn't spend a lot of time on this somewhat masturbatory, always self-referential plot device, so as said above I voice here a small complaint, not a large one.

This aside, The Sympathizer has a great (and strangely uplifting) ending.  I don't want to give too much away, but let's say it avoids many of the major pitfalls this type of novel tends to encounter, while at the same time bringing all of the elements of the plot together nicely.  I have a hard time imagining that any of the other books nominated for the Pulitzer in 2016 ended in such a resounding fashion, imparting a message that should resonate with any person, regardless of race, culture, or ideology.

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*Not sure if it's "American Studies and Ethnicity," or if "Ethnicity" is an area of academic specialization now.  The Wikipedia article presents his job title without commas.

"Green Island" by Shawna Yang Ryan (2016)

"It was true: the Generalissimo had sent more troops from the mainland.  He held the philosophy that it was 'better to kill a hundred innocent men than let one guilty go free.'  Rumors claimed that the troops began strafing the shore before they even disembarked."

I can see Green Island from the roof of my apartment building.  I live in Taitung City, less than an hour away from it.  I've lived in Taitung County, where Green Island is located, for 12 years now - much longer than the book's author has ever been resident in Taiwan.  If you add the time I lived on the other side of the island, I've been in Taiwan 18 years altogether.

It's also very possible that I'm more familiar with Taiwan's language and culture than the author herself.  Her biography states that she was born in Sacramento, to a Taiwanese mother and a non-Taiwanese father, and that she only visited Taiwan as a Fulbright Scholar in 2002.  This seems to imply that most of her knowledge of Taiwan comes secondhand, which is of course understandable given both her background and the distance between herself and many of the events she describes.

...and then there's the fact that I've been studying Taiwan's history - in Chinese - for a while now.  I don't consider myself an expert on the subject, but I've been reading books on the topic since at least 2006.  Aside from Education, my academic background also extends to History, and I've been trying to understand Taiwan and how it came to be since I first moved here.

Perhaps I begin with a statement of my credentials because I'm worried about sounding arrogant.  "But she's Taiwanese!" I can imagine someone saying, "What do you know, Mr. Foreigner?"

But is she Taiwanese, really?  Culturally perhaps, and of course everyone's free to choose whatever culture they identify with.  But the fact remains that I've lived here longer, I've studied Taiwanese history for over a decade, and I also have plenty of Taiwanese in-laws to explain how things were, once upon a time.

First, some history:

Up until 1947 Taiwan was a colony of Japan.  Japan won both Taiwan and Penghu (which were then considered separate entities) in the Sino-Japanese War.  After the Ching Dynasty's humiliating defeat, Taiwan remained part of Japan for about 50 years.  After World War II ended, the Allies handed Taiwan over to the Kuomintang (KMT), Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist army.  The KMT subsequently lost their hold over the Mainland, and Chiang Kai-shek and his followers found themselves "marooned" on Taiwan, where they began exercising a repressive amount of control over a restive population.

In Green Island, a doctor is imprisoned on Green Island just after the KMT has taken control of Taiwan.  Unaware of what happened to him, his wife moves from Taipei to Taichung, where she raises her children with her parents' help.  Eventually the doctor returns to his wife, but he is a changed man, beset by a paranoid distrust of authority.

Their story is told from his youngest daughter's point of view.  She outlines the circumstances of both her birth and life in Taiwan before her father's disappearance, and then the narrative flashes forward several years to discuss her father's return.  From there she describes her early 20s, and soon after she details her married life in Berkeley, California, where her husband is involved in anti-KMT activities.  After a mutual friend is assassinated, she and her husband return to Taiwan, where her husband eventually runs afoul of the authorities.  The story concludes in 2003, as the Taipei 101 is being built and the SARS "epidemic" is underway.

I enjoyed the first part of this book... with a few reservations.  The narrator seemed too American at times, especially given the fact that the events described took place in the 1970s, and that her family was very traditional.  I think certain sections could have also used more description, and I often wondered how readers outside Taiwan would picture the events unfolding.  The author doesn't spend much time explaining how things look, and I have the feeling that non-Taiwanese readers would probably transpose elements of other Asian countries into their mental image of Taiwan.

But it's in the California section that, I think, the author really gets into trouble.  The whole espionage subplot is entirely unconvincing, and in this section the characterization of the protagonist is even less consistent, wavering between dutiful Taiwanese wife/daughter/mother and modernized American woman.  Never once does she consider asking other friends and family for help, even though she is at one point cornered by KMT agents.  Never once does she think about calling the police, even though she suspects her husband was involved in a bombing.  She also exhibits a strangely cavalier attitude toward divorce and separation from her husband, even though such sentiments would have been anathema in the village where she grew up.

I don't want to give the ending away, but her return to Taiwan is where things get truly ridiculous.  What happens during her and her husband's "getaway" is completely implausible, given the fact that they were, by that time 1) American citizens, 2) not directly connected to any subversive activity IN Taiwan, and 3) resident in the States for YEARS up to that point.  I get that Taiwan was under martial law, I get that Taiwanese society and Taiwanese law enforcement methods were less permissive than they are now, but I'm just not buying that particular plot twist.

Oh, and that part at the end with the SARS "epidemic."  I was already living in Taiwan at that time, and it definitely wasn't as big a deal as the author makes it out to be.  Yes, people were worried, but it wasn't exactly panic in the streets.  This facet of the book seems particularly manipulative, and points toward a lack of faith in the story the author was trying to write.  A reasoned reflection on the White Terror would have been enough, and it wasn't necessary to liken a momentary media frenzy to the Black Death.

There's also the book's title.  That Green Island spoken of?  The one I can see from the roof of my apartment building?  As it turns out, it only features in one paragraph, very early in the book.  And instead of describing it to anyone's satisfaction, the author uses it as a lazily applied symbol for Taiwan as a whole.

I wouldn't say that Green Island is all bad.  As said above, the early part of the book is surprisingly good.  It's just that the novel seems to collapse under its own weight after a certain point, or perhaps it falls victim to its own, far too wide-ranging intentions.  If you're Taiwanese, or if you're living in Taiwan, I suppose you'll enjoy it, but I wouldn't expect a Taiwan-centric version of The Gulag Archipelago.

Come to think of it, do you know where I first read The Gulag Archipelago?  On Orchid Island, another island visible from my roof!

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