Shannon Hale

"Princess Academy" by Shannon Hale Bloomsbury: 2005

I bought this book in the train station in Busan, Korea. I was there trying to find anything I could in English. This book looked interesting and I read young adult fiction. I wanted to love this book, but I ended up not liking it at all. It was a best seller and had on it the seal of the Newberry Prize (honor). It had to be good but not only did I not like it as an adult but I doubt if I would have liked it as a youngster either.

It is the story of a 14 year old girl who lives on a mountain where everyone else works the quarry. There is a separation between those who live in the mountains and those who are in the valley. Then comes the improbable news that it has been foretold that someone from Mount Eskel, where she lives, will become the wife of the crown prince. All of the girls in the area who are of marriageable age must attend a special princess academy and compete to be the princess bride.

This whole story centers around girls trying to find husbands although some other things happen but the basic thrust is getting the prince. Secondary is the protagonist, Mira's, crush on a boy of her own village. This story seemed to be a Harlequin Romance story for girls. Boring, boring, boring. Fourteen years of age is way too young to think seriously of marriage and to have it in a book aimed at girls seems outrageous.

Someone else gets the prince and Mira finds herself the envy of the village when the boy of her dreams finds her attractive too. Sorry if this spoils it for you, but there are lots of wonderful young adult novels that do not encourage young ladies to just opt out for marriage. There has to be something else out there for women. I knew it when I was a young girl and I certainly know it as a senior citizen.

Someone must of loved this book. I would rather have my money back. Still, the book was written well and there is a group of people out there, I suppose, who love romances who might like this one. I love romances too, but again there is more to life than a marriage and children. I think I got bored just writing this.

Additional Note: "The Hero" By W. S. Maugham

Additional Note: "The Hero" by W. Somerset Maugham Google Books: 1908

If you have your own book journal, you can stop the presses, so to speak, and add something to what you published. I wish I could add this to the last post I wrote on this book, but once you put the pictures in a post, the post itself becomes unstable. This additional note will have to do.

I thought about this review all day. I knew I left something out regarding my reactions to this book. I still like the book. There is no question on that, but it addresses a situation that I have argued in my life with friends and family. It is the question of Captain James Parson's reluctance to marry his fiance, Mary. She had been waiting for him for five years. He had asked her to marry him when he left to go to war in South Africa. It is basic to the plot of the book. James no longer wants to marry her and learns to finally detest her and finds he would do anything than marry her.

During the last election, there were two people running for election, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. One of the criticisms that some of my friends had was that when McCain came back from Viet Nam he was a POW, he did not want to be married to his wife anymore although she waited for him. She had gained weight from an automobile accident she had. He divorced her and married a wealthy woman who was very beautiful. I agreed with some of the those who said that he did a dishonorable thing.

Then I remembered in my childhood my aunt who was so good to me as a child who raised my mother when they left Harbin, Manchuria to live in Beijing, China. She had met my uncle in Beijing and they fell in love and she came to this country and then sponsored my mother five years later. It was later that I found out that my uncle divorced his wife to marry my aunt. My aunt and uncle were happily married for over 50 years until he died.

I could go on about people I knew who left one spouse to marry others because they were unhappy and went on to live happy lives. I decided that no one should be forced to live with a spouse they don't want to live with. That is like living in the dark ages. In the book, I thought with the present state of things that maybe James could have married Mary and just had affairs on the side, but he was not the sort to do that. His parents were happily married and he wanted the same.

I was a bit of a prig when growing up. Luckily, I grew out of it. I was raised by a church culture who stated that once you are married you are married for life. A man does not have a right to divorce a wife and get a new one. It is hard on the woman, but harder if she has to live with a man who can't stand her. I still hear those so-called rules in Christian churches that the only way a man can get a divorce is for adultery. If a woman's husband is an alcoholic and beating the crap out of her she is out of luck according to their rules. He has to leave her for another woman for her to get a divorce and for her to be able to re-marry.

Maugham was writing that book during a time when honor and those rules were more strict than they were when I was a kid and certainly worst than the 21st century. Maugham was a gay man who could never come out but stayed in the closet for his entire life. James was in an intolerable situation and his way out may have seen a bit extreme but it was in keeping with who James was.

W. Somerset Maugham

"The Hero" By W. Somerset Maugham Google Books: 1908

Captain James Parsons comes home from the Boer War in Africa to a small town in England, injured and a hero with the Victoria Cross. Everyone is so proud of this local son of Colonial Parsons. What they did not count on was the boy they sent off to war is not the same man who comes back. They are not happy with what war and the world has done to him. The same goes for James. He does not like how he and English life has changed either.

I thought I read all of Maugham's novels but was surprised to find it in Google's Books. This is a faulty novel to be sure, but the faults are minor to the really important things that are in this early novel. The character, James Parsons, is well developed and balanced and the reader sees how much he loves his parents but hates the life style that they live in. He also has learned while in Africa how very much he is capable of full blown passion and love although the woman he had fallen in love with was part of the current world and ambitious she is still a woman that sets his blood racing. Still, he tears her letters up because to love her means to hurt too many people he loves in his life.

The people in his home village are set in their ways and so sure they are right. They are Christian and of course God is on their side. When James questions this saying that the Boers were equally convinced that God is on their side and were just like the British people except they could not survive the war they were scandalized. They told him that he had no idea what he was talking about. James was there to fulfill their expectations of the world and not the other way around no matter what his experiences were.

This book could have been set in today's world except for the solemn promise of James' engagement to Mary. James was caught in the wishes and desires of the people he loved. He no longer wanted to marry Mary because he found out what it was to be in love with a woman who could make him desire her. Mary just wanted to do what was expected in her society.

If people stood out and were different, then society would trim him down to fit. They attempted to do this with James with tragic results for James. Over and over again they used the excuse that if he cared for them he would buckle down and do what was was honorable instead of what he wanted to do. Maugham used foreshadowing effectively to show this. It was done well in this book and an indication of the use of it in later works. The author never tells the reader everything to complete the story in the book. They can look for it in the hints and details in the story. Maugham does not enter the story like Hercule Poirot and spell it out for the reader. I like that aspect of his writing.

The writing was excellent although some parts of the book did seem like a play. I never lost interest in the story or in what was to happen to James. Mary was very well developed as well as James parents and Mary's mother. I would like to see this book more read than it is currently. Everyone can read it as it is either free or the cost very nominal.

Haruki Murakami

"Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin Vintage:2000

There is a fast food restaurant next to the book store all under the big roof of Home Plus in Daejeon, Korea where I go to see people when I want a break from my writing. I still write, but I do it by hand instead of the laptop in my apartment. In the summer, I came to sit in the yellow and orange chairs and tables to escape the oppressive humidity and heat and so did a large number of Koreans.

Before I buy by rice burger, I often make a run into the bookstore and go to the section on the back wall that has the sign, "ESL" and there are several books there in English and I search most of the time in vain. This time, I spotted this book by Haruki Murakami and grabbed it. He is one of my favorite authors and although I had this book sitting on a shelf at home, I had not read this particular book of his although I had read several of his others. I was very pleased to see it there and it was the only one there. I bought it.

When I read it, I was careful not to mark it or spill anything on it as I am going to donate it to the English Library of the University across the street. They do not have any of his books there. Most of the books that they do have are the books one can get for free off Google Books for they are public domain books with some exceptions. One of them are the Harry Potter books which the bookstore also has.

The author is a Japanese citizen born on January 12, 1945 and is a writer, translator, teacher, professor, former jazz club owner and marathon runner. He has lived in Japan and in the United States. Many of his books feature music including "Norwegian Wood". He got the idea to write his first novel when he was 29 years old while sitting at a baseball game and started it when he got home writing between working at the jazz club. He had no training in creative writing. He sent it to a contest and won first prize. His success with this novel, "Hear the Wind Sing", encouraged him to keep writing. He is now considered an important figure in postmodern literature.

I have read several of his books but "Norwegian Wood" is not among my favorite. I am inclined to like such novels as "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Kafka on Shore." I loved his autobiography, "What I talk about When I Talk about Running." I have not read all of his books he has written as of now but plan to keep finding other titles when I get back to the States. "Norwegian Woods" is a novel that is still well worth reading. It was a huge hit with the Japanese especially the youth when it came out in 1987.

"Norwegian Wood"'s title is from a Beatles song of the same name. The novel is a basic coming of age story of a young man, Toru Watanabe told from the perspective of the older Watanabe who is remembering his youth as an university student living in Tokyo in the late 1960's. There are many people in the novel that play a part in Watanabe's life but there are three main people who cast a shadow over the entire novel, one who was his best friend but commits suicide early in the novel. The other two are women who represent sexuality although they are not similar. One of them is his best friend's old girlfriend and the other is the new girlfriend with a complete different set of issues. All of the people Watanabe meets all have a hand in shaping the man he is to become at the end of the novel.

Joseph Campbell said boys need rituals to become men. Women have their first period and presto they are women. It is far more complicated for boys to achieve manhood. Maybe that is why there are so many coming of age stories and books for men than there is for women.

In "Norwegian Wood", the protagonist becomes a man with the help of women. Sometimes men need a male mentor but in this book Watanabe gets his help through women. Maybe this coming of age issue with men left me outside the bubble of understanding here as I am a woman. I don't know. There were so many people willing to help this young man grow into a self-sustaining and independent man. I could not help thinking that much of what was happening here was a little autobiographical. I never had this feeling with this author's books before.

Campbell is right. Girls just become women with our first menses when we become capable of bearing children. At that point, we spend much of our time convincing the young men we don't want to have children until we are ready. Men just want to have sex. Watanabe never spent much time worrying about getting any of the women he slept with pregnant. He just wanted to have sex. Then later when we have husbands or a permanent partner, we are too busy with children and husbands to wonder if we are women or girls. We are mothers and that takes most of our time. Of course, this is a gross generalization, but I think an appropriate one.

As I wrote earlier, this is a book well worth reading for other reasons other than the simple fact that it is a coming of age novel. There are other things here that are worth considering. Murakami is a writer, a great writer for many reasons and it shows in this book. There are levels of meaning that reach down into the reader, male or female that make it well worth the investment of time in reading this novel. For instance, there is a viewpoint that the student movement of that period of the 1960's was largely weak willed and hypocritical and that maybe most student movements are doomed to fall into this category. There is also a great deal about mental illness and about self-healing vs. the mental health field and how effective it really is.

A professor at the university said it was just a Japanese book. I was surprised that he would think that. It may have been popular in Japan, but it is far from being just a Japanese book. Murakami is far from being just a Japanese author. The book has implications that reach far beyond Japanese shores. Murakami has always expressed a fascination with American culture. His books show a worldliness that makes his books not only remarkable but a necessity for all readers to consider.