Book Awards Reading Challenge

A prose re-telling of the famous traditional ballad of Thomas the Rhymer. Thomas bargains away seven years of his life inadvertantly for a kiss form the Queen of the Fairies who takes him to her fair realm. She was attracted to him for his harping and bardic skills. The time passes in days and Thomas asks to live out the full seven years in the fairy land as her lover and harper. He can stay as long as he only speaks to her (apart from when he is performing of course) and is careful to eat only the human food she provides for him. At the end of the seven years when he returns to the mortal realm, she makes him True Thomas and he can never tell a lie.

The story is fleshed out further with the relationhips Thomas has with elderly, childless couple Gavin and Meg before he is taken away as well as his mortal love Elspeth amongst his many other conquests. The tale is told in four sections starting with Gavin's tale, then Thomas Meg and finally Elspeth. There were also two beautiful stories within the main text in the fairy realm about a white dove who cries tears of blood and Thomas' invisible servant.

I really enjoyed this tale. A mixture of fantasy, romance and fairy tale it was everything I enjoy in a novel. There are two previews of some of Kushner's other novels which I will read at a later date and I do hope to read more of her tales in the future.

Mr Norrell is on a quest to be the only magician in England and to being back English magic. He is sick of all the theoretical magicians with no other practical magicians besides him, that is until magical prodigee Jonathan Strange enters the scene. At first Strange becomes the pupil to Norrell's master, but things change after he does a stint with the Duke of Wellington in Portugal and Spain in the war. Both men seem subject to a prophecy told by a street sorcerer from London called Vinculus and they have an unseen enemy, a man with thistle-down hair and no name.

A world of fairies and magic set mostly in England in the 1800's against a backdrop of the war with Napoleon, the mad King George and famous poet Bryon. The differences between the two magicians is pronounced, but separate they are not as strong and have no one else to share their interests with.

The supporting characters (especially Stephen Black and Childermass) are what really made this book for me. The other was Clarke's incredible attention to detail. The book is set in a real period of history, yet she works in many foot notes citing events that did and didn't occur as well as books that do and don't exist. Don't be put off by the length, once you start reading it, it becomes impossible to put down again.

Ellen Kushner’s novel Thomas the Rhymer is a retelling of the old Scottish ballad of the same name – the story of a Harper who, after kissing the Queen of Elfland (and in some versions, more), is spirited away to Faerie where he lives as her lover/slave for seven years. After that time, he returns to the world of men with two cruel gifts: the gift of foresight, and “the tongue that never lies” – the complete inability to tell lies.

This novel won both the Mythopoeic and the World Fantasy Awards. When I picked it up, the very first thing I saw were the extremely enthusiastic blurbs by people like Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Terri Windling, Charles de Lint and Orson Scott Card, all writers for whom I have the greatest respect. Needless to say, my expectations were very high. And I’m saying this so that you understand how much it means to say that I was not disappointed at all.

Ellen Kushner approaches this familiar story from an original angle. The book is divided in four parts, each with a different first person narrator: Gavin, Thomas, Meg and Elspeth. Gavin and Meg are an old couple who lives in the countryside of a mythical old Scotland – the Scotland of tales and ballads. The story opens with Gavin describing how a Harper, Thomas, asks them for shelter one stormy night. He turns out to be ill, and Meg nurses him back to health. As time goes by, the childless couple becomes very fond of the young man, who begins to visit them regularly. He seems to develop feelings for a local girl, Elspeth, and these also seem to be reciprocated – except that the young man and woman’s loveplay is in the form of constant arguments.

As the years go by, Thomas comes and goes. He visits the courts of powerful men and harps for them, and when he needs a place to rest, or to hide from trouble, he returns to Meg and Gavin’s. Until one day, in the middle of one of his visits, he goes for a walk on the hills alone and doesn’t come back. His possessions, and, most importantly, his harp, are left behind. Meg, Gavin and Elspeth never see him again – not for seven years, anyway.

As you must have gathered, each of these four narrators tells us a piece of the story. Gavin takes it until Thomas’ disappearance; Thomas describes his years in Elfland; Meg narrates Thomas’ surprising return; and Elspeth’s story takes place many years later, when Thomas is an old man. Together, these four narratives form a complete, rich and multilayered whole. Along with the different perspectives, the different narrators bring different moods and emotional tonalities to the story, which complement each other perfectly. Gavin’s tone is matter-of-factly, and his tale is intriguing. Thomas’ story is a deeply sensual one, and a meditation on longing and despair. Meg’s story is tender, and Elspeth’s is both sorrowful and resigned.

As Neil Gaiman put it, this is “an elegant and beautiful book that manages both to create firmly real, breathing people, and to evoke the magic of faerie." Indeed, one of the book’s greatest strengths is the perfect combination of the eerie and the very human – often in the same moment.

This is a novel about Faerie, but it’s also a novel about the world of men. It’s a story about the cost and weight of the truth, about the importance of stories, of ballads, of music and of art, and about longing and passion and love and regret. Tom’s acute humanity is made all the clearer by the otherness of Elfland. There he learns things about himself that he never dared suspect – things that are truth of humanity as a whole.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, the novel is also superbly written, and full of passages I’m dying to share, such as:

But the question had been asked; the hole had been opened in the fabric of things, and there is something about a hole, a tear, a rent in anything that is irksome to people of character. One wants to fill it, to mend it, to close it. I have heard Elves say that humans' greatest strength and weakness both is their curiosity, which leads them to invention. Elves are not very good liars; they're not even very good storytellers, as we account storytelling: most of it is not invention, for with the rich stuff of Elfland in their hands, they've no need to invent.

One of my favourite moments in the novel is a brilliant scene in which Tam Lim, another Scottish ballad about a young man and the Queen of Elfland, is sung and played in Thomas’s hall. But of course, explaining the full significance of the scene without giving away the whole plot (which goes beyond the plot of the ballad) would be difficult.

I highly recommend this novel to fans of books like Stardust, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Lud-In-The-Mist. And also to fans of timeless stories, and good, unputdownable and memorable books.

“Kafka on the Shore” is the story of two characters, who we follow in alternating chapters: a 15-year-old boy who calls himself Kafka Tamuta, and who decides to run away from home on his birthday; and a man in his sixties, Nakata. Nakata experienced a very strange accident during WW2, when he was only 9 years old, after which he lost his memory, the ability to read and write, and became, in his own words, “dumb”. He gained, however, some very unusual abilities in return.

This story begins realistically enough: a boy decides to run away from home, and so he takes the night bus from Tokyo to Takamatsu, a small town where he has no friends or relatives, and where, thus, he is not likely to be looked for. Soon enough, though, the reader is confronted with a series of surreal events: cats speak, fish and leeches rain down, spirits walk about, prophecies are made, and entrances to other worlds are opened. And there are appearances by popular culture icons like Johnny Walker or Colonel Sanders (the Kentucky Fried Chicken logo guy, in case anyone is wondering).

There was something about this book that reminded me slightly of Neil Gaiman's “American Gods”. The use of these two last figures helped, but there’s something else, something about the mood of the book I cannot quite pinpoint.

As the story advances, a lot of questions are raised, and we realize that there is a connection between the boy Kafka and the man Nakata. However, not all the questions are answered at the end. At some point in the book, one of the characters says:

“I went all over Japan interviewing people who’d survived lightening strikes. It took me a few years. Most of the interviews were pretty interesting. A small publisher put it out, but it barely sold. The book didn’t come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn’t have one. For me, thought, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine.”

This made me smile, because it so obviously applies to Murakami’s books. Not that they have no resolution, but, like I said, there are many questions that linger. This got me thinking that in a way his books are a little like songs. A song doesn’t necessarily have to make sense – in fact, more often than not, the concept of “sense” doesn’t even apply to music. Its realm is not that of logic. And yet, it still moves us, it still makes us experience a myriad of emotions; it still has power over us. The same can be said, to some extent, of Murakami’s novels. They don’t always make sense, but they still resonate within me. And music is very often mentioned in this book. For an interesting take on the relationship between Murakami and music, read this post by Dark Orpheus.

Books are another thing that is very important in this novel. Kafka is an avid reader, and this drew me to him immediately. There is a delightful library where Kafka ends up working and where many important scenes take place. And there are a lot of books that are mentioned or quoted throughout the story.

A little warning that perhaps not everyone will find relevant – this book contains a very disturbing scene involving cats. I am a cat lover, but more than that, I am a person who is extremely disturbed by any violence towards animals, especially cats. It’s the kind of stuff that haunts me and seriously gives me nightmares. There is a horrifying scene in this book, and I know that the emotional effect it had on me is exactly what Murakami was trying to achieve, but it was still very painful for me to read. It’s a scene I sincerely hope to forget. I’m not saying that this scene should keep anyone from reading the book, but I think it’s good to be prepared for it.

I really liked this book. It had a very unique mood, interesting and memorable characters, and it was a story I responded to emotionally, even if I’m not sure I completely made sense of it. I will certainly be reading more of Murakami’s work in the future.