three novels

suddenly i am reading novels again. it started off with haruki marakumis ‘sputnik sweetheart’. a young girl falls madly in love with an older woman. this ends up being an obsession that leads her to the far ends of the earth and finally completely takes over her. this was my first murakami novel and the poetry he is able to see in contemporary japan is amazing.

then there was michael cunninghams ‘specimen days’. three characters living is different times in new york are connected through walt whitmans ‘leaves of grass’. characters quote the poem and live its themes of continuity and perpetual continuity. in the first story a young man surrenders himself to the jaws of a machine to save the woman he loves; in the second a woman finds herself at the center of a series of killings involving young men blowing themselves up and in the third a humanoid finds a form of love with an alien in a future wasteland.

the third novel was john lecarre’s ‘the mission song’. the heroes of his novels are always torn between complicated loyalties that rents their world apart by the end of the book. in this one half african half british interpreter is in the middle of a corporate and british plot to exploit the natural resources of the congo through manipulating the democratic process prodded along by the british secret service. his disintegrating marriage to a journalist and his new love for a nurse and her idealism lead him down a path that could make him a hero. almost.