ephemerry

James' charm is buried underneath excessive alliteration, prosaic repetition, & dissonant personability. The shortcomings in the story are likely due to the nature of its serialization.

Note: I have never seen the film, so this is a fresh off-the-pages review!

Trainspotting is a slice-of-life, period piece following the wild misadventures of a band of drug-using, gang-banger miscreants. The novel is mostly laid back, the main two exciting parts being 1) the main cast is diagnosed with HIV, this isn't a spoiler, it is told to the reader at the beginning of the tale, and 2) the heist, which will involve spoilers, so I won't mention them here.

This is my second Irvine Welsh novel, the first being Marabou Stork Nightmares: still my favorite published work by him. Although, I described the story as primarily being “slice-of-life,” i.e. a group of thugs bantering to one another, it is compelling. Welsh tends to make every character interaction jaunty, fresh, and humanistic; so, unless you're bothered by the dialogue being written in tangents of Scottish accents, there isn't a problem.

As for the characters, I think the cast was a bit too large and it was hard to differentiate at times. The main two that I remember are Renton and Sick Boy. There was anticipation for Nina towards the beginning, but the only female character that gets a fair amount of interaction is Dianne. The switch in characters and perspectives reminded me of sprawling narrative in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

There were a lot of references to eighties bands: there's a chapter called There's a Light That Never Goes Out, based on the ballad by The Smiths, a nod to Ian Curtis from Joy Division, and a quote from the Sex Pistols (one of the greatest excerpts from this book); “I remember in the punk era, the Sex Pistols saying that no one is innocent. Too true. What also has to be said though, is that some are more guilty than others.”

Amen to that.

After wanting to read this for a few years... it was not what I expected! I was originally introduced to this series from watching Rintarō's adaptation and it seemed much more of a horror thriller with supernatural elements... rather than a more Greek tragedy with contemporary horror elements. The writing reminded me a lot of “Saint Seiya”... but if the target demographic were girls instead of young men.

Something that I kind of miss, that would be considered bad character writing now, is how unaffected characters were by witnessing death in old series; the heroine is just unaffected and resilient, and that's weirdly refreshing. It's kind of strange that she is inhabited by a proto-Sailor Moon-like alter-ego that is Deimos's ex-lover/sister?? My favorite arc in the first volume is the short where it is revealed that Princess Kaguya was actually a werewolf, that was an interesting twist on the legend. Overall, “Deimos no Hanayome” seems to have been a big influence on other series, like the ever-iconic “Glass no Kamen”.

This is my first Jane Austen novel. Before this book, I was only loosely acquainted with Austen's works through the BBC adaptation of Emma and Austenland (2013). Though, I was personally not taken with the story or characters, I must admit that Austen has a way with words. Her style is both decorative and pragmatic, the writing is exceptional in a few instances, such as “No; you will continue the same; unconscious of pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any changes in those who walk under your shade!”

Most of the relationships came off as supercilious, at best. As a fan of the Brontë sisters and Charles Dickens, Austen's Victorian prose is much more concerned with wealth and status, and less on the human condition. The idea of romance in Sense and Sensibility is a man coming up behind up, cutting off a lock of a woman's hair, and kissing it as he walks away. It's a very traditional, romance novel-type of affaire du cœur.

The men in the novel are victims to arranged marriages, which forces the purpose of star-crossed lovers in the narrative. The “trysts” and turns of the story are conveyed through gossip, because all women are apparently gabbling geese, playdates, and dinner parties. It's very easy to see how one could get swept up in the romanticism of it all, but it personally isn't my cup of tea.

“You comedian!” Georg could not resist the retort, realized at once the harm done and, his eyes starting in his head, bit his tongue back, only too late, till the pain made his knees give.

—excerpt from the Willa and Edwin Muir translation of “The Judgement”

The shame and guilt imposed by ones' family can cause great grief. Put simply, that is the point of the story. The ending has no direct, moral catharsis. It isn't a conclusion, laden with high-minded irony, nor is it an exemplification of schadenfreude, where the reader experiences a bad person getting their comeuppance.

The lines are blurred, the idea of right and wrong are less black and white. The story is about a young man, who has decided to leave his ill father, in order to pursue the prospects of marriage. Little does he know that his wise old man already knows of his scheme to abandon him, and has devised a way to emotionally torment his son.

This eventually leads to the young man's suicide: by drowning, emblematic to the suffocating pangs of conscience that a pre-wed person feels; leaving behind their home and known familia, in the process. It's not certain whether this is supposed to be perceived as an allegorical death or literal. The father telling him to drown himself, might be a signifier to immerse himself in his new life. On the opposing interpretation, the old man holds onto a stopwatch, in the story, and refuses to part with it, he keeps fiddling with it. This is an indication of the fixation on the past and memories.

I have been pretty middle-of-the-road with Mr. Kafka's bibliography, so far, but this one really jumped out at me! Great story, an intensely meaningful double entendre!