I’m off to Berlin today and can only hope I find flats that have at least half as much potential as the ones below for built-in bookshelves, including those going over doorways, to maximise space.
I’ll not be posting anything this coming week, while I am in Berlin, but you may expect some pictures from favourite neighbourhoods and the Caspar David Friedrich exhibition afterwards.
The only expensive hobby I have (other than ordering mochi from the Japan Centre every few months) is book-buying. But sometimes I get lucky and have books given to me by friends. Here is a pile I acquired this month of April – a fairly normal rate monthly rate of acquisition, I would say.
From the top:
I enjoyed Antal Szerb‘s Journey by Moonlight so much that I ordered several of his other books that have been translated into English, but only this one Oliver VII has arrived thus far, a sort of Prince and the Pauper retelling.
I think Selva Almada’s Not the River got lost in the post when I first ordered it for the International Booker longlist reading, so I had to reorder it, and am very glad I did so, as it was one of my favourite reads from the longlist, and has deservedly been shortlisted too.
Three new books in Romanian published by Cartier, a publishing house from the Republic of Moldova, hand-delivered by the lovely journalist and author Paula Erizanu. Valentina Șcerbani’s Orașul Promis (The Promised City) and Lorina Bălteanu’s Legată cu funia de pământ (Tied with a rope to the earth) are stories of rural families, seen through the eyes of a child, while Gelu Diaconu’s Kaulas is the little-told story of growing up gay in Romania in the 1980s.
Strange, horror-tinged Korean stories appeal to me immensely, and The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre by Cho Yeeun seems to fall nicely into this category.
To Hell with Poets by Baqytgul Sarmekova is probably the first book from Kazakhstan that I’ll be reading for our London Reads the World Book Club.
I was supposed to receive an ARC of The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft, but that too might have gone missing in the post. A book about translators in primeval forests in Europe by one of my favourite translators? I’ve heard the author speak about it too online. Bring it on! This one was very kindly passed on by my blogger friend from Lizzy’s Literary Life.
Kakuta Mitsuyo is a very popular author about contemporary Japanese women’s lives, but hasn’t been translated all that much into English. However, several of my blogger friends who are interested in Japanese literature have featured her, for example Tsundoku Reader.
Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers by Deborah Heiligman I saw reviewed recently on The Scientific Detective’s blog – and, since I am so fond of Van Gogh’s work, I had to get it.
I have to admit that I am at that stage in my bookish love in which I need to get rid of books just as fast if not faster as I acquire them, for fear that it will cost a fortune to ship them abroad, and that I’ll have no room to store them in my much smaller next house (flat). Can I help it if I fall so easily into temptation – as soon as a publisher sends me a newsletter, as soon as I attend an event, as soon as I read a review? Although I use libraries extensively too, I have to repeat to myself: ‘You do not have to buy every single book that sounds interesting.’
Having said that, I might have a wander through the bookshops of Berlin as well next week.
I actually had to buy a copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Years to reread it for the #1937Club hosted by Simon and Karen. I’m pretty sure I have a copy of it somewhere at my parents’ house, because Virginia Woolf has been one of my firm favourites since I was about twelve and determined to become a writer, so I bought all of her books that I could find at the English Bookshop in Vienna. But it’s probably a good indicator that it was NOT my favourite by VW, because it was one of the few of her books that didn’t accompany me on my moves abroad (another one was The Voyage Out).
Although it was one of her most popular and well-sold books when it appeared (perhaps because it adheres more closely to a conventional family saga format), it has not fared so well in later years. I suppose I bought into that whole ‘most average of her novels’ post-war assessment by critics (and Leonard himself thought she’d failed to accomplish what she wanted with this book, but kindly did not tell her, for fear it might cause a nervous breakdown). However, I think it also has to do with the fact that as a teenager I did not enjoy reading so much about the passing of time, and seeing characters I’d been introduced to as children suddenly become wrinkled and wizened. Rereading it now at a grand old age, it feels like an even truer and more touching description of the passing of time and the ravages it wreaks upon human bodies and minds than To the Lighthouse or The Waves (although those two remain my top favourites). There is a resilience and yet a wistfulness to many of the characters as they age which really spoke to me this time around.
The book presents snapshots of certain days in the life of various members of the Pargiter family (and their acquaintances) from 1880 to the present-day (i.e. 1936). Those were years of extraordinary historical changes: loss of empires, revolutions, several wars – including a world war, the introduction of the automobile and airplanes as normal means of transport, the massive changes in women’s clothing and appearance, the coal strikes, the Spanish Flu and so much more. Yet we don’t get to see any historical figures or dramatic scenes from battlefields, and there is only one scene where a house party gets interrupted by a bombing raid. Instead, this is all filtered through genteel (albeit occasionally heated) conversations in drawing-rooms – where Parnell and the Irish home rule question are the main topics, while the farms in Africa where some of the protagonists spent several years seem delightfully remote, maybe even quaint. I couldn’t help wondering if this reflected the type of conversations that Virginia’s own circles might have engaged in, but then I remember that Leonard was quite a politically engaged writer so they would have been at the very least more aware of all the social changes than most of the Pargiter family seems to be.
There are, of course, exceptions: Rose, the rebellious younger daughter, turned suffragette and imprisoned for her activities, Eleanor who is a tireless worker for charity and later travels the world, and North, who experiences both the front line during WW1 and a failed attempt to run a farm in Africa. But overall, the focus is on the domestic rather than the epic: how those great social and political movements shape individuals and families – or not. From her diaries and letters, it emerges that Virginia intended to write a ‘state of the nation’ novel, taking in all those significant changes, especially about expectations for women, but this book doesn’t quite work in that respect. Instead, it is in the small, intimate moments, in the beautifully written insights into individual minds, and in the gorgeous descriptions of the countryside and the city, a real love letter to London as the time of day, the seasons, the years pass.
I will finish with this very appropriate quote for this time of year, the opening passage to the book, which demonstrates why even a less than perfect book by VW is still superior to many other writers’ offerings. Just listen to the melody and elegance of these carefully-wrought sentences, how she appeals to all the senses, such vivid recreations of time and place, yet instantly recognisable even today.
It was an uncertain spring. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and purple flying over the land. In the country farmers, looking at the fields, were apprehensive; in London umbrellas were opened and then shut by people looking up at the sky. But in April such weather was to be expected. Thousands of shop assistants made that remark as they handed neat parcels to ladies in flounced dresses standing on the other side of the counter and Whiteley’s and the Army and Navy Stores. Interminable processions of shoppers in the West end, of business men in the East, paraded the pavements, like caravans perpetually marching, so it seemed to those who had any reason to pause, say to post a latter, or at a club window in Piccadilly. The stream of landaus, victorias and hansom cabs was incessant; for the season was beginning. In the quieter streets musicians doled out their frail and for the most part melancholy pipe of sound, which was echoed, or parodied, here in the trees of Hyde Park, here in St. James’s by the twitter of sparrows and the sudden outbursts of the amorous but intermittent thrush.
Last week we had beautiful houses in the UK that can be used for film locations, so this time I thought I would venture a little further afield, in Europe. And some of the houses on offer are absolutely incredible!
Claire Kilroy: Soldier Sailor, Faber & Faber, 2023.
I’d been quietly resisting this one, because I feared that something bad might happen to either the child or the mother in the story, and my heart can’t really take things like that since I had children myself (which is why I found the books Love by Hanne Orstavik or Days of
Abandonment by Elena Ferrante so heartbreaking, or watched the film Full Time with Laure Calamy as a single mother heart-in-mouth). I find it far too easy to believe that we only just narrowly miss disaster when it comes to raising children: they are so fragile, especially when they are small, and so much can go wrong. And we as mothers are so fragile too, especially during those hazy, sleep-deprived, hormonally-challenged early years.
But yes, I finally got a chance to borrow it from the library, after a long waiting list (and even now it has three reserves on it, so I need to return it soon). Which is why I’m taking a short break from my #1937Club to review it.
A few years ago, when I helped to organise a ‘Meet the Agents’ session, I remember them all saying that no one wants to hear the self-indulgent whining or anger of a mother of young children. Certainly there was a bit of an uproar when Rachel Cusk wrote about this in non-fictional form back in 2001 and this book has had very angry 1 star reviews, which seem to prove the agents right: ‘nothing happens’; ‘boring, bleak, the story is all too familiar’; ‘bilious and tiresome’. And yet there are queues at the library to borrow this book and five star reviews too – and I personally had tears of recognition in my eyes when I finished reading it.
We might not all have Claire Kilroy’s talent at describing those moments of anger, confusion, mourning… but also all-encompassing, fierce love. There are some scenes and dialogues that are both recognisable and funny – the trip to Ikea, for instance, the running late for everything, the awkward socialising at the mother-and-child groups – while others are recognisable and heart-stopping (losing a child in a shopping centre, having a feverish baby late at night and waiting for the doctor to call back). The resentful anger is of course deliberate, showing us that we can’t believe everything that the narrator says. Yet that lack of full credibility does not make the things she says any less true.
I heard that there are some articles in papers that blame books such as these for the drop of birth rates. Women are put off having children because it is so difficult, they say: not because they no longer have an extended family to support them, or because it is expensive, or because some husbands are still not sharing the burden equally, or because employers and childcare options are still not great. No, of course not, it’s just these silly women authors complaining how hard they’ve got it!
Ah, but she does it so elegantly – and in second person POV, addressing the infant (Sailor) directly, in sweet complicity. It may sound reproachful at times, but the anger is never directed at the baby.
It was all so stupid. So manual and relentless and stupid… It was all about killing the days when you were small, getting them over and done with. Before you were born, it was all about living them.
I remember those long days and the utter boredom and relentless repetitiveness, but of course once the children grow up and leave home, you feel that it’s all gone by in a flash. And then there was the quote below, which reminded me exactly what I said to my mother, who refused to let me go to all-night parties when I was in my late teens and still living at home, for fear it would kill off my brain cells – at the time when my brain cells were all dead because of the babies waking up every two hours at night.
Eat it, smoke it, stay up all night for it because the memories of the damage you wreak upon your body when you are young will sustain your spirit when you are old.
The loss of identity – being forever known as X’s Mother at the school gates and beyond – is described perfectly as the narrowing of one’s world, and maybe my sense of humour is strange, but I find this passage very funny too:
When you were born, you didn’t enter my world: I entered yours. I crawled through the small door that had appeared in the wall and there you were, oh my God, perfect. It took me some time to realise your father was no longer with us, not quite. He was there in the beginning but at some point wandered off, stepping out to make a phone call from which he never fully hung up, popping his head in from time to time to see how we were doing, would we like a cup of tea?
I know many will say that the husband’s passivity is exaggerated, but I can vouch for the veracity of that portrayal – so many of my friends have experienced that kind of behaviour from their partners. Even the well-intentioned ones. And of course there is her friend, a stay-at-home dad, who shows that there are other types of fathers as well – although is he real or a case of wishful thinking, an imaginary companion that will help her get through her feelings of extreme isolation and feeling unprepared/clumsy.
In the final section, anger gives way to catharsis, as the mother realises that there is never enough time, that the relationship is too precious, that all this love has to go somewhere… even though we may forget from time to time. So, in the end, I found the book uplifting, despite my worries before reading it (and, if I’m being honest, at various points while reading it too)
I read this book in one sitting, spending the morning in bed to do so, and neglecting the many things on my To Do list, because it was such a poignant and visceral read. But also because I’ve survived that stage, my children have left home and I can afford to so for the first time in 21 years.
You can read other reviews of this book by Claire McAlpine, Jacqui and Eric Karl Anderson (Lonesome Reader).
Antal Szerb: Journey by Moonlight, transl. Peter V. Czipott, Alma Classics.
I’m late to this book, which everybody assured me I would love – and guess what, they were right! In fact, I loved this dreamy yet incisive look at nostalgia and romance so compelling, that I promptly ordered all of the other Antal Szerb books I could find in translation. His life was tragically cut short in a concentration camp in WW2, but he was quite a prolific author and literary historian, so there is lots to explore. With his Jewish heritage, widely travelled European sensibilities and beautiful prose, he reminds me a lot of my favourite Romanian writer, Mihail Sebastian, and has the same clear-eyed view of the charm but also the shortcomings of the Hungarian bourgeoisie and aristocracy that Miklos Banffy conveys so well in his Transylvanian Triology. But I am basing these comparisons on this book alone, and as far as I can see, his other books seem to be wildly different (a parody fantasy novel, a surrealist political novel, a historical novel etc.).
Mihaly and Erzsi are travelling through Italy on their honeymoon, but, although Mihaly prised his wife away from her first husband and might therefore be considered a happy man, he seems to prefer to wander off on his own, dwelling on the past, and his friendship with the sophisticated but strange siblings, Tamas and Eva. Tamas has died and Eva has disappeared, but he never loses hope of finding her again. While weltering in nostalgia, Mihaly misses the train to Rome that he and Erzsi were supposed to take together, but instead of jumping onto the next one, he seems to relish his freedom and embarks on a detour, meeting new people but also confronting his own past. Meanwhile, Erzsi starts questioning her choices too – obviously.
Mihaly is really rebelling against the expectations of his family and society, that he should take over the family business (which he has no interest in). His marriage was his last attempt to fit into the conventional bourgeois lifestyle, while for Erzsi it was the elopement with him that was the act of rebellion. With such mismatched expectations for their union, it is not surprising that they drift apart. Mihaly is lost in reflective nostalgia, as opposed to restorative nostalgia. As the translator points out in his afterword, restorative nostalgia is all about coming back home or reconstructing the lost home, while Mihaly thrives in the longing itself and delays the homecoming, for fear it might not match up to his memories.
For so many years I did everything to conform, and when I thought that at last everything was in order and I’d finally made my peace with the world, then I married you to reward myself. And that’s when all the demons assailed me: my entire youth and all the nostalgia and all the rebellion. There’s no medicine for nostalgia. Perhaps I should never have allowed myself to come to Italy. They built this land out of the nostalgia of kings and poets. […]
The world doesn’t allow a man to give himself over to nostalgia… it doesn’t tolerate any deviation from the norm, any escape and defiance…
This melancholy musing is of course right up my street, but the book is full of humour too. Mihaly is often very observant and funny about the countries he has been in, for example when he says that ‘November in London isn’t even a month, but a spiritual condition’. He encounters the spirited, good-natured but vacuous American girl, Millicent, and that leads to some humorous exchanges.
The book is of course full of local atmosphere of Italy: the colours, smells, sounds and sights which Szerb clearly adored and also wrote about in a diary of a trip to Italy. His protagonist Mihaly is initially more ambiguous about Italy, a place he avoided visiting. And now that he is there, he loves the country but can be quite critical about the Italians, and much of what he says sounds chilling and prophetic in 1937, not just for that country:
His instincts told him that, in Italy, the identity of those who wielded power – and the principles in the name of which they ruled the people – didn’t matter at all. Politics only touched on the surface; the people – the vast, vegetative Italian people – bore the changing times on their backs with amazing passivity, and they didn’t acknowledge having anything to do with their magnificent history.
This was probably my favourite of the books that I read for the #1937Club, and that includes Virginia Woolf’s The Years, which is saying something, since she is one of my favourite authors (although The Years is not my favourite of her books).
There is another translation of this book by Len Rix, who is also the translator of Oliver VII, both published by Pushkin Press. I cannot pronounce myself on that translation, but I really enjoyed this one, which has the dreaminess but also a certain world-weariness that I can imagine might have overcome many European authors in the second half of the 1930s. I should also add that there is a further translation by Peter Hargitai, which was the first of them all, and that there is quite some controversy surrounding the Len Rix translation, which Hargitai claims is plagiarised. You can catch a glimpse of this in the comments to the excellent review post by Max Cairnduff. Other reviews of this book, which each emphasise a slightly different aspect than I do (so you should read them all): Emma from BookAround, Simon from Tredynas Days, Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Tony Malone.
Witold Gombrowicz: Ferdydurke, transl. Danuta Borchardt, Yale University Press.
Polish writer Gombrowicz was born into a well-off family who were probably not entirely pleased with him giving up his university studies to embark upon a literary career, especially when he persisted in producing absurdist, scandalous works such as Ferdydurke, his first novel, which scandalised Polish society of its time. Not long after its publication, at the start of the Second World War, he went into exile abroad and never got to see his homeland again, although he continued writing in Polish.
One of the key themes of his writing, which is apparent even in this early work, is about youth and immaturity, age and so-called wisdom, putting on masks and trying to escape the confines of society. He also is highly satirical about Polish nationalist rhetoric and elitism – and perhaps (as Susan Sontag says in the introduction to the edition that I have) all of the ‘sacred monsters’ (of being mature, cultivated, superior, discreet, reserved) have been thoroughly killed off in today’s obsession with youth, ‘authenticity’, openly sharing your opinions and emotions online with strangers etc.
And yet it remains a very strange, scurrilous and scandalous piece of work, with few direct interlocutors that I’ve read. The surreal events and sudden tonal shifts designed to shock remind me a little of Urmuz, while the meandering asides and non sequiturs are similar to Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. I can’t claim that I was always able to follow everything in the text, including some invented or repurposed language, which the translator takes care to explain in the Translator’s Note, but I was always eager to read more, to see what next bizarre flight of fantasy the author might be on.
The story in brief, if one can even attempt to summarize the plot: The narrator is a thirty-year-old writer who is still struggling to find his place in the world and find ‘maturity’. He gets abducted by Professor Pimko who turns him into a seventeen-year-old schoolboy and imprisons him in a boys’ school with other ‘immature’ youngsters like him. He is hosted by a family with a very modern girl whom he gets a bit of a crush on. And he befriends Kneadus, a vicious schoolboy who only dreams of corrupting young, good-looking farmhands. All the while, the narrator dreams of reverting back to ‘maturity’ and normality, but gets embroiled in all sorts of fights and farcical situations. I simply don’t know how to describe it any better – it’s hard to make sense of it all, a case of ‘you have to read it to believe it’.
There are many very quotable, witty passages, and they kept me going when the plot (and, let’s face it, at times blatant misogyny – whether the author’s or the characters’ is not entirely clear to me) confused me. At times you feel like the author predicted the rise of social media:
Mankind is accursed because our existence on this earth does not tolerate any well-defined and stable hierarchy, everything continually flows, spills over, moves on, everyone must be aware of and be judged by everyone else, and the opinions that the ignorant, dull, and slow-witted hold about us are no less important than the opinions of the bright, the enlightened, the refined. This is because man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man’s soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.
There are plenty of sharp digs at the education system or the literary scene of his time, and I can’t help feeling that many of his darts still hit the mark. For example, this passage about readers’ attention spans:
…doesn’t the reader assimilate parts only, and only partly at that?… Quite often he’ll read a couple of segments then toss the book aside, not because he has lost interest in it, but because something else came to his mind. And even if he were to read the whole – do you think he can visualize it in its entirely and appreciate the relationship and harmony of its individual parts unless he hears it from an expert?… Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants it, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog.
The digressions were sometimes the best part of all, for this is not a book to be read in a hurry. My advice would be: a chapter at a time, dipping in and out, enjoying the acrobatics.
To my great surprise, I discover that this book (which feels to me unadaptable) has been made into a film (see film poster above). I read this for Simon and Karen’s #1937Club, which runs throughout this week (or, in my case, for the whole month of April).
Since I’ve been watching so much TV lately, I was intrigued by this selection of houses that you can rent by the hour for filming, all in the United Kingdom.
The 1930s were of course the hey-day of the so-called Golden Age crime novels, and both of the authors below were prolific during this period, so little wonder that I managed to find a book each of them published that year.
Ngaio Marsh: Vintage Murder
This is the fifth novel to feature Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn, but the first to be set in the author’s home country of New Zealand. Alleyn is on a prolonged holiday in that country, recovering from surgery. On the train he meets a British theatre company currently touring New Zealand. Although he tries to keep his identity as a policeman a secret, he gets tangentially involved when there is a case of theft on the train and the impresario/director Alfred Meyer of the company claims someone nearly pushed him off the train.
Once they arrive at their destination, he not only gets to see the acting troupe perform but is also invited to the birthday party of the charismatic leading lady Carolyn Dacres, who also happens to be the wife of the director. Meyer has planned an elaborate contraption with a magnum champagne bottle descending from the ceiling. However, in spite of numerous successful rehearsals beforehand, the champagne bottle falls down on Meyer and kills him. So the good inspector has to step up and help his NZ colleagues to solve the murder.
Marsh was passionate about theatre and had personal experience of touring companies as an actress in her youth, so she fills this book with a lot of technical theatrical terms, as well as all the ‘types’ of actors you might find in a professional company: the bitter older comedian, the young ingenue who’s there largely because of nepotism, the motherly character actress, and even the hangers-on. While some of the characters feel a little thin, and the discussions of the props and balancing of the weights a bit too detailed, this is very much in keeping with the writing of the time (think Dorothy Sayers and bell-ringing, Agatha Christie and poisons) – and perhaps with readers’ patience and expectations of a crime novel, rather than the present-day obligatory corpse on the first page (or at the very least the first chapter).
While the puzzle is quite intricate, and there are added psychological complications with a leading man who is in love with the beautiful Carolyn – and Alleyn too succumbing to her charms, what I found particularly interesting was the introduction of Maori elements to the story. There is a Maori doctor (educated in Britain) who plays a significant part, and a Maori fertility pendant that is given to Carolyn as a present. There are some openly racist remarks from certain characters in the book, and we are supposed to feel indignant about those, no doubt. However, even Alleyn musing about cultural differences can skirt dangerously closely to ‘noble but dangerous savages’ territory:
His fingers encountered the box that held the tiki. He took the squat little monster out.
‘This is the right setting for you, only you should hang on a flaxen cord against a thick brown skin like Te Pokiha’s. No voluptuous whiteness for you, under black lace, against a jolting heart… Sweaty dark breasts for you, dark fingers, dark savages in a heavy green forest. You’ve seen a thing or two in your day. Last night was not your first taste of blood, I’ll be bound.’
Nevertheless, Doctor Te Pokiha makes some very interesting and far more nuanced observations about colonialism, which must have been quite forward-thinking at the time:
The pakeha [white man] has altered everything, of course. We have been unable to survive the fierce white light of his civilisation. In trying to follow his example we have forgotten many of our own customs and have been unable wisely to assimilate his… Most of my people are well content, but I see the passing of old things with a kind of nostalgia. The pakeha give their children Maori christian names because they sound pretty. They call their ships and their houses by Maori names. It is perhaps a charming compliment, but to me it seems a little strange. We have become a side-show in a tourist bureau – our dances – our art – everything.
Another interesting element is the weight of the year 1936 (when the action takes place). There are some troubling clouds on the horizon, after all Hitler and Mussolini were already in power, and the Spanish Civil War had started. Although Europe must have felt remote to New Zealanders, the memories of the First World War are not too far away:
‘What do you think, Mr Alleyn? If there’s another war will the young chaps come at it, same as we did, thinking it’s great? Some party! And get the same jolt? What do you reckon?’
Agatha Christie: Dumb Witness
There is far less political and social topicality in Christie’s novel published that same year: this is mostly a family drama about inheritance, extravagance, domestic rivalries and guilt. I’m not entirely sure to what extent the title is ironic: it refers to the dog Bob, who is witness to a possible murder but cannot talk. I’m not sure to what extent ‘dumb’ was also used to mean ‘stupid’ at the time in Britain. Certainly, the Americans opted for a different title that same year: Poirot Loses a Client (although this might have more to do with selling it as a Poirot novel). Aside from the problematic title, reviews at the time concluded that ‘it’s not Mrs Christie’s best’ but still above average. I have to agree with that – it’s not particularly memorable, but a fun read.
Wealthy spinster Emily Arundell writes to Hercule Poirot in the firm belief she’s been the victim of an attempted murder after falling down the stairs in her house. By the time Poirot actually receives the letter, however, she has indeed died, apparently of natural causes. The only problem is that her nephew and nieces, who expected to be her heirs, have been thwarted, as she left her fortune to her lady’s companion, Minnie Lawson. Is that an indication that the second attempt at murder was successful and that she was pointing the finger of suspicion at her family? Or is Minnie a far more scheming and devious creature than she appears at first sight?
Poirot feels guilty that he was unable to prevent her death, so he sets off to investigate, initially pretending to be a possible buyer for Emily’s house in the countryside. He proves to be willing to deceive people in his attempt to discover what’s going on, which shocks the strait-laced Hastings. However, I did enjoy the interaction between them in this book, it feels like they are growing to be more serious partners, rather than Hastings being the ‘dumb’ foil for Poirot’s brilliance. And the interactions with the dog are utterly delightful – Christie clearly loved her dogs, and it’s in fact a portrait of her own dog, Peter, on the cover ‘who disclaims any connection with the events of the tale’.
While waiting for Ripley to appear on Netflix, I thought I needed a break from grim news and the International Booker longlist (often on bleak topics), so I thought I’d dive into something very untypical for me: a light-hearted rom-com series. I was initially planning on finding something Korean, but memories of my trip to Japan were too powerful, and I finally opted for a Japanese comedy set in a hospital (even more unusual for me, as I was never a fan of hospital dramas), based on a comedy manga (hence, full of over-the-top acting), An Incurable Case of Love (in Japanese Koi wa Tsuzuku yo Doko made mo – Love Lasts Forever). The series was rather silly and reinforcing a lot of gender stereotypes, but I was rather taken with the main male actor, Satō Takeru.
So I turned to another TV series where he’s the lead, First Love, and did something even more uncharacteristic: I binge-watched it. And then searched for more, and found Why Didn’t I Tell You a Million Times? (in Japanese – 100 Mankai Ie-ba Yokatta), which I also binge-watched.
So now I am steeped in contemporary Japanese language, culture, music and escapism, and could see some common themes emerging, although each of these series is quite different.
Even a comedy is sad and death is always nearby
The hospital drama was the most purely comedic of the lot, but even there, you had emergencies, moments of despair and death of patients or loved ones. Some of it was tear-jerker fodder for the storyline, of course, but then there was the moving scene when the hospital staff handle the dead patient, and still tell him what they are going to do (‘we will now take off your top’, ‘we will now wash your torso’ etc.), just as if he were still alive. The amount of respect shown to patients (and the level of staffing and care in hospitals) was mind-blowing, but that probably wasn’t realistic.
First Love switches between different time frames, as high-school sweethearts find each other many years later, after they have each led very different, smaller lives than what they’d initially dreamt about together. But it’s not a straightforward romance, because the woman had actually lost her memory in an accident and therefore doesn’t recognise him as her first love. I’ve been told that memory loss is a very common trope in romances, but since this is not my usual fare, it felt fresh enough to me.
The contrast between the joyful, sparky teenagers and the middle-aged people who’ve lost their oomph and learnt to cope with disappointments and loneliness was very touching, and there were moments of interaction between mother and son (in the present-day) and mother and daughter (in the past), which were very well-observed, and meant that even the side characters had depth and their own stories of failure and disappointments. There were also links to historical events (such as the war in Afghanistan or the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, or Covid in 2020), and descriptions of working-class lives and the ‘Lost Generation’ of job hunters as Japanese economy took a downturn, which grounded the story, rather than making it all wishful thinking.
The penultimate episode ends on a bittersweet but realistic note, with the lovers parting as they realise that the past cannot be recaptured, and perhaps the original intention was for the story to end there. But then in the final episode, we get the Disney happy ending, which felt a little like pandering for the audience. But, as someone said on Reddit ‘we don’t watch romances for realism, we watch it to escape from our daily lives’ – I suppose it’s only human to want a good outcome for those people who’d been through so much!
Why Didn’t I Tell You a Million Times? (shortened from here on to WDITY) also has a common supernatural trope (so I’m told, but have yet to discover myself): a loved one who dies but his spirit is still around. I can only remember Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and Truly, Madly, Deeply with Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman – and certainly this story combines both themes (trying to solve a murder and for the survivor to learn to move on). But it is also about regrets – for all the words that were unspoken, all the things that they didn’t get to do together, the years wasted – and the pain of watching someone rebuilding their life without you, even though you know it’s the best thing to do.
Although the ghostly special effects were a bit cringeworthy and the police drama side of it somewhat predictable, the chemistry between the three leads (the dead lover, the surviving girlfriend and the police officer who’s the only one who can see the ghost) makes for some very good comedic moments. But, as is often the case in Japanese fiction or films, there is a sense of wistfulness and an ending that is unsentimental, satisfying but sad.
Gender Stereotypes and Wishful Thinking
As far as appearances go, the girlfriends tend to be cute (kawaii in Japanese) rather than beautiful, with quite a few of them exuding manic pixie girl energy, while the men have that slender, graceful, slightly androgynous beauty that the Japanese call ikemen. However, when it comes to personalities, the men are often very ‘verklempt’ (as the Germans might say) – unable to express their emotions, or expressing them in rather macho, bullying ways, while the girls have to do all the emotional labour. The men are often mysterious, hiding troubled pasts, seldom smile, keep a stiff upper lip, which of course makes the inevitable admission of their feelings and succumbing to passion all the more precious.
Ikemen balance their good looks, fashionable clothes and masculine desire to protect their girlfriends with so-called feminine qualities such as patience, sensitivity and tenderness. They also want whatever is best for their partner, even if they have to sacrifice themselves at times, encouraging her to study abroad or try a new job. This is where wish fulfilment might come in, unless Japanese men have changed dramatically since the 1990s when I was more involved with studying Japanese society.
There is also quite an obsession with marriage in these TV series, which perhaps reflects society norms that remain strong, even though there are a few new series that try to subvert that (I am currently watching yet another one about dating in your 30s which seems to question whether marriage is of any benefit to women). However, there is a recognition that marriage does not equal a happy ever after, and stories of divorce and single mothers appear far more frequently than they did in Yuko Tsushima’s time (Territory of Light would not be as revolutionary in Japanese culture now as it was back in the 1970s).
The topic that comes up again and again in these series, whether addressed directly or indirectly, is loneliness. Which is indeed a huge problem in Japanese society – there are an estimated 1.5 million (out of a population of 122 million) hikikomori, recluses who’ve withdrawn from society and barely leave their houses. With society expectations, working hours and pressures still so high, many in the younger generation are refusing to settle down, while others simply disappear – Japan has one of the highest rates of suicides and deliberate disappearances in the world (there are even professional handbooks or companies who can help you drop out of your life). Even before the pandemic, 55% of Japanese reported feeling lonely. The maid and butler cafés, the hostess and host bars that are on nearly every street corner in large Japanese cities are not so much about sex, as about having someone pour out your drink and ask you about your day, making you feel slightly less lonely for a couple of hours.
And that’s exactly what these TV series do as well. The main characters are initially self-sufficient but lonely, they feel something is missing from their lives, but in the end, once they’ve worked on themselves and are strong in themselves, they find companionship and love. They give all those lonely people hope – and perhaps a blueprint for being in a viable relationship: be more resilient and independent (if you’re a girl), be more sensitive and empathetic (if you’re a boy).
Travelling and Language Learning
For someone like me, who used to speak Japanese fluently but has forgotten most of it, these series are an excellent way of refreshing my language skills. I’ve watched anime series with my sons before, but the vocabulary there is more limited, while these show ontemporary language and social interactions that you might encounter in real-life.
I love noticing cultural nuances that don’t always come through in translation. For example, the main character, the nurse in An Incurable Case of Love, continues addressing the doctor as ‘sensei’ even after they get together as a couple.
The men tend to refer to their girlfriends as ‘ore no kanojo’ (my she), while the women use a more varied vocabulary such as kareshi, koibito, boifurendo, which all signify lover. To say ‘I love you’, they generally use ‘suki’ or ‘daisuki’, which is also used for like/fancy (you can use it for food or music or hobbies too). Which makes the scene in WDITY all the more powerful, when he finally repeats ‘aishiteru’ – which is the proper, formal way to say it.
With the exception of First Love, which seems to have had more budget thrown at it, and therefore features a diversity of backdrops, including lots of snowy scenes in Hokkaido and Iceland, these series are largely sitcoms, so feature a small set of interiors – their apartments (they always seem to live in separate flats if they’re unmarried, even if they’ve been together for a while) or houses, which seem to be less cramped than in real life; their offices or business premises; a local restaurant or bar. Yet we also get street shots of the cities where the events take place: lots of images of the Tokyo Skytree Tower and a bit of Osaka and Kagoshima for An Incurable Case of Love, Sapporo (and rural areas of north Hokkaido) in First Love, Yokohama in WDITY. Now all I need is to find a series set in Kyoto and Fukuoka, and my vicarious travelling will be complete! But I suspect those two locations tend to be used more for historical dramas, which are not quite as useful for boosting my Japanese vocabulary.
Food and Music
One of the rules of Japanese TV series is that in each episode there will be at least one instance of people sitting down to eat together, saying ‘Itadakimasu’ and then making a really strange face with their mouth full, after which they burst out (with tears of joy in their eyes): ‘Oishii!’ or ‘Umai!’ – meaning ‘delicious’. Food is very important in Japan, and people cooking for each other is a declaration of love. (In the TV series I saw, the men were just as good if not better at cooking than the women, so at least a bit of equality there.)
However, I was slightly disappointed that there weren’t more complicated recipes on offer: omuraisu (rice omelette), or hamburger steak (without a bun), or ramen or spaghetti Napolitan (with sausage and bacon in ketchup – only in Japan, the Italians would disown this) seem to be the popular dishes, and they are mostly inspired by Western cuisine.
An added bonus has been listening to the soundtracks and songs on these series. First Love is actually based on two songs by a hugely popular Japanese artist Utada Hikaru (one from the 1990s called First Love and one released 20 years later called Hatsukoi – which also means First Love).
This reminded me of all the J pop I used to listen to back when I was studying Japanese in the 1990s – and they’re still as upbeat and poppy as ever in An Incurable Case of Love. There’s more of a mix of English and Japanese rock and R&B in First Love, while WDITY has a more suitably haunting piano-based soundtrack.
If you’ve made this far in this very long blog post, congratulations!
In spite of my attempts to make this look like a research project, the truth is, it’s simply been great fun reliving my youth (but with more access to digital media about Japan than I had back then). Like all of my passing fads, this too will fade into oblivion after a while, and so it should, as spending 4-5 hours every evening in front of the TV is not the best use of my time or conducive to good health. Besides, it makes my cat Kasper (who usually sleeps on my lap while I’m watching TV) then want to get up to shenanigans at midnight, because he hasn’t played enough.
However, it has given me an idea for a story… and no, it’s not going to be a rom-com, even if it starts out as one!
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