Erik's Book Club: May Selections

It seems that four books are what I can manage to read in a month.  It's a wildly diverse group for May.

First book is Klara and the Sun by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a novel situated in the not-too-distant future, narrated by Klara, an AF, Artificial Friend, who is one of the robots that have been created to be companions for children. This novel is like the sister piece to Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.  They are similar in that they gradually unveil a secret dystopian world where things are a bit sinister and not at all what they seem at first. Inevitably it is a book about love and what it truly means to be human. If you are fan of Ishiguro's works, you will appreciate this one as well.  And even if you've never read Ishiguro, I think most readers would find it a compelling work, most notably the memorable narrative voice and insights of Klara the robot.  Highly Recommended.

Next is The 100-Year-Old Man who Climbed out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.  If that name sounds familiar, it is because I read his novel "The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden" in April.  And like last month's book, this one is a madcap, wild romp through history and the present moment. What book do you know features the exploits of a Swedish centenarian who escapes from his nursing home only to get swept up in a crime caper, on the run from a group of desperate drug dealers?  The centenarian also has played an accidental role in a century's worth of history and Truman, Mao, and Stalin, among others, make cameo appearances along the way. It is simply incredibly crazy fun.  I don't usually laugh out loud when I am reading a book, but Chapter 25 is so funny I couldn't help but let out more than a few guffaws, and the rest of the book constantly amuses as well. And as an unexpected bonus for me, much of the last part of the book takes place in Indonesia, satirizing the island nation as it goes! If you are simply looking for pure fun, highly recommended.

The third book I read is a very troubling novel, by Yuko Ogawa:  Hotel Iris. It is the disturbing story of a young woman, a high school dropout, who is forced by her cruel mother to work in their small, rundown hotel in a Japanese beachfront town after her father has died. She encounters a man in his 60s who befriends her and then they develop a dysfunctional sexual relationship, to put it mildly.  This novel makes Nabakov's Lolita seem like a Pixar movie. If you read reviews of Hotel Iris in a forum like Goodreads, half the reviewers find the book appalling and distasteful, the other half praise its extraordinary writing, mood, and imagery.  Both sides of the argument are right, I suppose. It is, if nothing else, a meditation on how various forms of loss can warp and distort the human soul, as all the characters are emotionally crippled by the losses they've endured. Yuko Ogawa is an extraordinary writer and I would recommend you start by reading her novel: The Housekeeper and the Professor, which is one of the gentlest and most-humane novels I have ever read and it is in my Top-20 best novel list.  It's hard to believe that a novelist could write such diametrically opposite works.  As for Hotel Iris, not recommended unless you are very brave and willing to enter a dark and horrifyingly dreadful, yet beautifully described, world. 

Final book is a Longmire mystery novel by Craig Johnson, Death Without Company. The Longmire series is about a sheriff in rural Wyoming, solving mysteries with a distinctly Western, cowboy flair. It is what it is, a mystery novel.  I found the plot a bit convoluted, but Johnson's characters and the setting are well drawn and entertaining, and the banter everyone engages in is often quite humorous. Nothing super, but a nice escape from Hotel Iris. 

I already have the June Book Club lined up.  Even if the May books aren't available, or don't suit your fancy, find something to read. It will enrich your warm summer months.