It starts like such an ordinary book. A young man, an artist, newly separated from his wife, needs a place to stay. His friend’s father, in a nursing home, has an empty house in the mountains near Tokyo. But this opening scenario is where the ordinary stops in Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore.
The artist, who is unnamed throughout the book, finds a meticulously packaged old painting stored in the attic. Called to it by the sounds of an owl that has taken up residence, he unwraps it. This unleashes the strange happenings that soon begin.
A neighbor, wealthy, handsome, almost perfect, hires him to paint his portrait for an exorbitant amount of money. A young girl, just thirteen, especially perceptive and obsessed with her developing body, who may or may not be the daughter of the neighbor, makes up the third of this triad.
In the middle of the night an ancient bell rings in the forest summoning the artist to investigate. Before long there is a dark pit reminiscent of other caves and holes; there is a mysterious constricting dark passageway he must traverse to reach the light; characters in a painting materialize and speak just to him; teleportation occurs as he visits his estranged wife without leaving his bed.
There is a lot going on here. Murakami is interested in communication of abstract ideas through music, art, and especially metaphor. He also wonders if there is something out there that occasionally communicates with us to provide a helpful nudge. How thick is the line between the real and not real and how is it bridged? I suppose that communication is a subject of great importance to a writer, and in this novel Murakami is doing riffs on possibilities just like his beloved jazz composers do.
While all these intellectual ideas are flying around, a very traditional plot is buried beneath them to anchor the story, ordinary after all. “Something happens to a young man to make him leave home; he is compelled to search for something; he finds it and returns home.” It’s the plot of the hero’s quest, an ancient archetypical myth, also a very good example of a metaphor. Does our hero find something valuable to take home? I think so, but it is up to each reader to decide.
Shortly after I read this book I read Frank Bruni’s column in the NYT, Our Semicolons, Ourselves, also about the difficulties and joys of taking something inanimate (an idea) and turning it into something that exists and can be seen in the real world (writing).
“Transmitting ideas into written words is hard, and people do not like to do it… Writing is thinking, but it’s thinking slowed down — stilled — to a point where dimensions and nuances otherwise invisible to you appear.”
Also in that opinion article is another paean to studying the humanities: “(they) reject the assumption that value and utility are synonyms… literature and philosophy seemed to begin from a quietly revolutionary premise: There is thinking that does not exist merely to become work, and knowledge that does not exist merely to become capital.”
In The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey, a little boy plays with the candles lighting a festive outdoor party. When his sleeve catches fire, his ayah rushes to throw herself on him, thus saving his life. Several days later she is mysteriously accused of attempting to induce an abortion and taken to jail.
Why should her heroic action be punished so badly? It is 1922 and Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer, is determined to answer that question. Her investigation encounters murder, rape, attempted land fraud, and the wall of male privilege.
While character and plot are well done it is the setting that dominates. This mystery is rich in detail about Indian food, dress, customs, religions, prejudice, paternalism – and the British. Massey, whose parents were Indian and German, shares the intricacies of a culture she has learned to love.
It is probably unnecessary to say that it rains a lot in the Shetland Islands north of Scotland, but in Cold Earth by Ann Cleeves, it is worth repeating as torrential rain is a crucial part of the story. It causes a landslide which demolishes a supposedly uninhabited house, exposing the body of a woman dressed in red silk.
When he learns that she has been murdered, inspector Jimmy Perez must call in his superior Willow Reeves, a woman he is starting to think of as more than a colleague. Together they follow every small hint to learn the dead woman’s identity. When they discover her connection to a prominent councilman and mysterious deposits into his second bank account, they unearth a secret hidden in Perez’s rural hometown. But even closer to home are the suspicious behaviors of his neighbors and his daughter’s schoolteacher.
In this mystery, the plot is the thing. Intricate, with red herrings, it’s a page turner. Cleeves’ Shetland series is the basis for the television program of the same name.
As always you have me reviewing and revising my current reading list. Mahalo