Unaccostomed Earth ***1/2

By Jhumpa Lahiri.
A Borzai Book Published in 2008  by Alfred A. Knopf.
333 pages.

I'm trying to keep these entries short, but something tells me that this one will be difficult to keep short.  First of all, this is Lahiri's second book of short stories.  A comparison to her first book would be vital to the discussion, though it's been a while since I read that book. Second of all, I'll probably have to delve into detail on a couple of the stories.  So I'll be looking at deatils of the stories and overall impressions, themes and trends.

Her first book of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies,  was also her first book and a Pulitzer prize winner.  It's truly a fabulous book and one of my all time favorites.  So how does this second newer one rate?

It's a very fine book.  She continues writing with much emotional detail.  She paints her characters with fine detailed strokes.  The characters are likable and the reader feels empathy.  Really, it's a close call of which book I like better, but perhaps Interpreter of Maladies is the better of the two books - slightly.  It's been a while since I read that book, but the feeling that remains in me about that book is that it was more dynamic, adventurous (in her style of writing - not thin the narratives) and fresh.  The stories are shorter so events have to happen quickly.  Being Lahiri's debut book, like many authors' debuts, narratives tend to be punchier and quirkier.  Not that Interpreters is a quirky book, just perhaps a little more than this one here - Unaccustomed Earth.

On the other hand, this newer book seems more mature and nuanced,  (though even her first book had characters that were nuanced - she's a great writer when it comes to character).

In Interpreters, her stories were set in The United States, Britain (if memory serves me right) and her native land of India.  It showed an author (or to extrapolate) or a people who struggle with self-identity.  Especially the stories that took place in The West.

In the newer book, all the stories take place in the U.S.  None take place in India except for perhaps references to trips back to the homeland.  Again, the author is dealing with issues of self-identification.  But I also think she has more interest in interracial relationships.  Almost all the stories touch on this subject.  Even in the stories that have Indian to Indian relationships, there are past experiences of the characters of dating/marrying non-Indians. 

So what can I conclude is her opinion of these relationships?  In the first book, I remember at least one story where it was an Indian to Indian relationship.  That was a troubled relation.  Who gets the blame for the failure of these mixed marriages.  Well, she certainly doesn't throw the blame at the westerners.  Most of the fault lays with the Indians,.  Why?  maybe, like many cultures that are trying to adapt to new ways, they are struggling with their identities.  They're not sure how to go about things and are confused.  They are not sure of which is the best way to act and behave.  The blame might lay at the feet of the Indian-American (or is it Bengali - Americans), but the author certainly has empathy and understanding of what these characters are going through and might even hint at what the issues are for these confused characters.

Perhaps that's a good way to discuss the stories individually.  By using the theme of inter-racial relationships as a string that holds the stories together,I will discuss each story.

Unaccustomed Earth is the first story as well as the title story and the longest story.  It focuses on an Indian wife and her visiting widowed father.  She is married to an "American" guy and he is shown in a pretty good light except for maybe that he's not around a lot because of business, and doesn't always understand his wife's concerns.  But this story is one of the few that is less concerned with the marriage and more concerned with the father and daughter and even the grandson.

Hell-Heaven is the story of a Bengali man that became very close to a Bengali family.  When he eventually dates and marries a white woman, the family, especially the mother, who became very close and had a crush on him was very upset.  Everyone said how the relationship was wrong and that she would treat him badly.  Well the reverse happened.  The marriage ended but because of the husband's philandering ways.

A Choice of Accommodations is a story about a married couple, White wife and Bengali man who go away to a wedding in hopes of rekindling some of the old romance.  Things don't turn out the way they had hoped, but there is a sweet ending.  I liked this story a lot because both characters were shown to have flaws, yet it was hopeful at the end.  It's difficult to lay the blame at any one's feet.

Only Goodness is a story of a sister who tries to help her brother who eventually becomes an alcoholic.  She eventually marries a rich English guy and starts a family with him.  When her brother comes back in the picture, it strains the relationship.  The man seems  a bit cold to her, but he's also correct about her brother and his problems, which the rest of his family has trouble accepting. So this is about a teenage boy trying to adapt to American ways and the blinders the parent wore in respect to him until it was too late.

Nobody's Business is one of the few stories where the main couple is Bengali, but the point of view is that of the American room mate.  The girl in the relationship lives with two Americans, but she has a boyfriend.  She's very beautiful and the guy roommate has a little crush on her but is respectful and never acts on it.  The relationship between the couple is poor.  They Bengali guy is not a nice person, and his Bengali girlfriend seems to have blinders on (just like the family in the above story). 

The second half of the book is actually 3 short stories that are linked together by two characters who meet when they are adolescents.  It is called Hema and Kaushik.  The stories track their lives, and there are relationships with Americans for both characters.  n the last story they do hook up, but things don't seem to work out even though the initial part of the relationship is great.

I have enjoyed immensely every book that Lahiri has written and she will continue to be one of my favorite authors.  I guess I like it so much because of the way she treats her characters.  I really emphasize with them and what they go through in their relationships and marriages.  In some ways, I see my self in these characters because I had an interracial marriage and I could understand what the characters are going through.

Here's a reading and discussion of the book.

The Ask **1/2

By Sam Lipsyte.
Published in 2010 by Farrar, Staus and Giroux, New York.
296 pages.

I first heard of this book in the pages of a popular music magazine.  I don't remember - maybe it was Mojo or Uncut,  but it got good reviews so I took it out from the local library.  And of course since it was reviewed by a major music magazine, most likely the book would be considered "edgy".or hip  So what does "edgy" mean?  Well if you were to use this book as an example "edgy" you would say its a book in which the main character is a screw up.  It  has lots of humor, sex (talk about sex in this one at least - not so much sex) and the abuse of substances taken as a natural course of things.  The last three (sex, humor, substance abuse) don't surprise me but the screw up, irresponsible characters do surprise me a little.  I see it as a pattern.  In Rocket Man (see review several weeks back) the character is like that too.  Like the character in this book, Milo, just doesn't fit in.  Though I guess those types of characters are sort of slackers, and slackers have a certain (perceived) hipness in literature and especially film .

So the story goes that Milo works for a university (Mediocre University) trying to get donors to contribute to that university.  The process of getting those donations is called the Ask.  Actually getting the donations is called the Give.  Milo is not so good at his job and he gets fired after scolding and insulting a young female student whose daddy has big money.  He then gets  an offer to return in spite of all this because an old friend who is rich (Purdy) has asked that Milo service him in his Give.  So Milo gets another chance.

Meanwhile, he's pining for his glory days when he was a painter and was (supposedly) destined for glory - so he's bitter.  He's lost his job and his marriage is in trouble and he's having a rough time.

The book goes off on a lot of tangents and rants which are kind of fun, but it does get a little convoluted and out of left field at times.  One of the more interesting ideas, and he ends his book with this, is the idea of parallel worlds verses the here and now.  In his parallel world, he becomes a famous painter and his marriage works, his future is bright.  haven't we all had thought like that.  "What if..." But no he's in the here and now, which still isn't looking so hot (not a happy ending to the book - not very hopeful) "I was digging in for the long night of here." he says.

Eventually the plot does pick up after all the flashbacks and meandering (not necessarily a bad thing and kind of fun) that takes place in the 1st half of the book and it is discovered that Purdy has a bastard son (Don) by a woman he was in love with during college whose mother had died and Purdy is trying to keep it hushed.  This is the reason that Purdy wanted Milo to take care of his Give.  The narrative definitely starts moving at this point.

This is a fun book and there are some splendid ideas to null over here.  An over all enjoyable read.

Here's a reading by the author.

Give Us A Kiss - A Country Noir ***

By Daniel Woodrell.
Published in 1996 by Henry Holt & Company, New York.
237 Pages.

I first heard of this author when I saw a movie Winter Bones based on one of his books by the same title.  I was deeply impressed, so comparisons will be made despite the fact that the books are different (but same author remember).

The author was born and raised in the Ozark hills and a certain amount of love is shown to the culture and especially the land.  The culture you say?  What kind of culture is there in the Ozark Mountains?  Why hillbilly culture of course.  This book is a celebration of that culture and land.

When I saw the film Winter Bones, it was the seriousness of it that impressed me.  It showed the poverty, drug addiction, rebelliousness against the law and the misogyny of the people who lived in the Ozarks.  It was a serious film - violent and intense.  Give Us a Kiss has all this, but it also has some humor.  The author makes fun of the characters' white trash roots.  He also gives the reader a sexy romance in which the protagonist hooks up with a an Elly May character right out of Beverly Hillbillies.  He even references that actress who plays her.  So funny, sexy violent  and add to that some good writing and what's not to like?  Well, it does have a lighter tone than the film Winter Bones so it was harder to take seriously.  But all in all a quick satisfying read which I read in the course of two days.

The story goes that a struggling author (Doyle Redman) who writes a series of crime novels based on his life in the Ozarks, returns to his roots and family to encourage his older brother (Smoke) to give him self up to the authorities to save the parents from the daily harassment that they are receiving from those same authorities.  He half-heartedly tries talking to his brother about it and then ends up joining his brother, the brother's girlfriend (Big Annie, named for her big boobs) and the girlfriend's 19 year old daughter (said hottie - Niagara) in a money making scheme involving the growing and selling of some marijuana.  But there is another tribe or family that is even more dangerous and despicable than our heroes' family, and of course they get involved and old and new feuds are lit up.  It ends in violent gunfight to the end.

I will be investigating more of this author's books.  I like gritty realism and you get plenty of that in his books.

Here's a trailer from the movie Winter Bones. I have halted my reviews of films since I keep finding my self terribly behind, so I never got around to blogging about this one. I couldn't find anything specifically about Give Us Kiss, this trailer does give a a taste of what the book/s are about.

The Master Butcher's Singing Club ***1/2

By Louise Erdrich.
Published by Harper Perennial.
Originally published in Hardcover  in 2003 by Harper Collins Publishers.
This edition published 2005.
388 pages.

This is one of those books that are very popular with book clubs.  I usually try to stay away from those books, but I had to read this for a book club.  It's not that the typical book read for book clubs is bad.  Usually they are quite good. To have a good book discussion, a book that has some depth is necessary. And this is certainly an example of a typical book club book.  It is very good with lots of things to discuss.  It's just that when I talk to people about books, the same books keep coming up in conversation.  It seems to me that people don't take chances or look for anything different that might be out there, so I avoid those books.  Probably because of my desire to be cooler than thou. I want to be able to say, "Oh yeah, Everyone has read that! I haven't, but  you should really check out this alternative and different book instead."  (I don't mean alternative in the most recent sense of the word (ie. alternative music).  So sure, perhaps I am arrogant and elitist, but I also have the soul of a teacher and I want people to wake up and realize there are options out there.  That you don't have to read what everyone else reads.

Luckily, I am forced to read certain books that I would not necessarily read on my own through the book clubs.  And many book club selections are excellent, so I am able to keep relatively current with what's popular.  And this is one of those excellent books.

In fact it's a near masterpiece.  The characters are well developed, the narrative is excellent and organized in an interesting manner (It keeps shifting from one character to another right when the reader is eager to find out what will happened next). The prose is poetic and descriptive and beautiful.

Perhaps there are personal reasons that I liked it so much too, or better said, perhaps my personal tastes have a lot to do with why I liked is so much.  It's dark!  Very, very dark!  Yet there is always hope.  The characters seem almost superhuman in their ability to survive their hard scrabbled lives. They are heroic and inspiring.   It is set in the time period between the two great wars, so that makes this book historical fiction - one of my favorite genres.  It takes place in small town North Dakota.  A place that has unbearable heat in the summer and vicious cold in the winter with nothing to protect the citizen because of the flat treeless land.  So it's a gritty book, another characteristic that appeals to me.

I have some issues with this book but I am not necessarily sure that they are really issues or if they add actually add to the feel and tone of the book.   At almost 400 pages, it seemed at time that the plot moved a bit on the slow side.  Masterful as the authors descriptions were, I  at times had the feeling of wanting to get on with it.  And I am a patient reader.  It took forever for the butchers wife to die, for the butcher to finally declare his intentions for the heroin, fir the characters to clean out the filthy house that the town drunk lived in etc.  But this might be appropriate since small town living in the first half of the 20th century must have been very slow paced.  And it's our fast paced lives that make us impatient.

Also, I felt that Erdrich developed the woman characters better than the men characters.  It's not surprising seeing as Erdrich is a woman author and knows more about women which would make her more invested in the woman characters. The men are outside drinking beer or participating in the singing club,.  The women are inside cleaning and caring and taking care of the house.  The butcher is dark, silent and kind of mysterious.   The main character, Delphine becomes close friends with the wife.  We seem to learn much more about the female characters - even the minor ones. It's a pattern I see in much historical fiction.  In many cultures and in the past, women and men led very separate lives.  The men were outside and the woman remained inside.  Modern times have changed this dynamic quite a bit (for the better I believe).  So maybe these less developed characters are appropriate for the time and place considering the story is mostly from the point of view of a female.

I usually get to the plot way before now.  The two main characters, the butcher, Fidelis, and the traveling vaudeville girl, Delphine, start out in separate places.  Fidelis is from Germany and immigrates to the U.S. after the 1st Great War with nothing more than his butchering tools and a case full of German sausages which he sells to make money to cross the country until he arrives in Argus, North Dakota.  Meanwhile, Delphine is out traveling doing a Vaudeville show with a sexually confused acrobat who loves her, but more like a sister.  They come back to Delphine's hometown where they meet her drunken father, who lives in a filthy house and may have accidentally left a family in the cellar to die while he was out on a drunken binge.  Delphine gets a job with the butcher and meets and befriends his wife.  The rest of the story is pretty much the story of the two families and all that has happened to them up to and after the Second World War.e money

The author happens to be part native American, French and German.  She apparently writes quite frequently about Native American, particularly the Ojibwa tribe, which is where her roots are from.  I had always been on the look out for writers that write about the Native American Experience.  I think I might have found one and I hope to pursue more of his books.

Asterios Polyp ***

By David Mazzuchelli.
Published by Pantheon Books, New York.
Copyright 2009.

Seeing as I had read this just after reading another graphic novel, it will be difficult to avoid comparisons, so I won't try to avoid them and state those comparisons right out.  Like that last book, Curses, it does some philosophising and can get heady at times.  The one big difference is that's much more fun to read.  It's a little sexy and it has a sense of humor,  The drawings are also more stylish (or stylistic if you like).

So the book starts out in our hero's (Asterios Polyp) apartment.  It is destroyed and set on fire by a bolt of lightening.  This bolt of lightening is a motif that occurs though out the book.  At times it symbolizes the differences or dichotomies of life ( A bolt will come through the frame separating it in two parts) and of course it also symbolizes destruction.

So Asterios , a famous architect, is seemingly off on a journey of self discovery and gets hired as a mechanic in a small town.  During this journey we learn of his past life in which he was divorced from his wife.  We learn that he is a conceited man and snobbish.  He doesn't treat his wife very good and he thinks he's smarter than everyone.  During his journey though, his persona is much more humble and ready to listen to what people say.  So there is a transformation.

All in all, an enjoyable read.

here's a review. Just listen to the first half since there are two reviews here.



A little hype for the book...

Curses **

By Kevin Huizenga.
Published by Drawn and Quarterly, Montreal.
Copyright 2006.
145 pages

Drawn and Quarterly is an outfit you can count on for off beat comic books, and this one fits the bill.  I admire the authors ambitiousness, but frankly it's a tad boring and difficult to get through.  The ideas and narratives are so convoluted and academic it's difficult to read.  And I read a lot, so I am not so easily confounded.  I almost gave up in the middle of the first story.  So for those who think that comics are for dummies, I challenge them to try this one on for size.  There is some nice poetry in the merger between images and context.  One of the more memorable stories is about how excited he gets when he gets those advertisements in the mail that have the missing children information.  He goes into length describing them and explaining what his interest in them are.  Then, inexplicably, he ties them to the Lost Boy of Africa from Sudan. 

And this 'novel' is actually a book of short stories.  Many of them have a fantastical or spiritual bent to them, which made it harder for me to read.  I tend to like grittier and more realistic stories.  When stories start to get into the realm of fancifulness, I star to lose interest.

Here are some of the topics of the stories:

1) During researching the topic of visions, the narrator starts to have some visions which scare him and then midway he tells the tale of an 18th century ghost tale in which a man has visions.  He never really ties in the first part to the second part of the story.

Here's a quote to demonstrate just how difficult the language really is.

"You sir, know my tract on 'The cardinal Functions of the Brain.' There, by evidence of innumerable facts, I prove the high probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its mechanism, through the nerves."

And that is actually one of the easier ones to understand.  I must confess, on rereading parts of this book while I write, the prose is a bit more understandable, but not much.

2)The story about the missing children mentioned above.
3) A story about how he and his wife have tried everything possible way to conceive a child. Finally he tries to find a feathered ogre, which if he gains the ogre's feather, all problems would be resolved.  It is based on a folktale, but it gets silly.  Even some of the conversation is silly.
4) A discussion of how the birds Starlings came to America and the history of that bird. Perhaps one of the more interesting excerpts from the book. 
5) The exact text of adoption papers describing the child's circumstances contrasted to some Asian style  landscapes.  An interesting study of contrasting the profound and the profane.
6) An odd story in which the majority is spent on some friends that get together at a  restaurant and we get to hear snippets of their conversations.  This story is booked mark by some inexplicable scenes in which they are in a grave yard, for no apparent reason and in the middle there is a bike ride by the author and his wife in which winds are whipped up... and then nothing is made of that.  One of the most confounding stories of the whole book.
7) A very short story on "The Hot New Thing"  in which the history of this thing is shown even with out ever saying what that thing actually was.  In other words, these new fads and such seem to repeat the histories of old fads, so the Hot New Thing could be described in such a generic manner.
8)  And finally, a story about a conservative evangelical who is writing a paper in which he defends the traditional Hell in which sinners experience eternal suffering against his more progressive peers who have a more humane version of Hell.  They believe that Hell is Eternal in that you are eternally dead, but not that a person necessarily suffers for eternity.

As I reread parts of this, I can appreciate the book better.  This is therefore a book that needs to be reread and even discussed to appreciate it better... if one can find the motivation to do so.

And finally, one cant talk about a graphic novel with out talking about the illustrations.  His style is very simple which contrasts his herky jerky story telling style.  He does like to use bold and thick lines which help his creatures look a little more spooky.  The stories in back, which are in full color, tend to lose this boldness of line, so perhaps these are later drawings.  While easier on the eye, they do seem less dramatic.

Here is a much more eloquent review of the same book. You can also see the illustrations. He likes the book much more than I . I also like his comment about the drawings of suburbia.



And another discussion by a professional - A Librarian!

Rocket Man***

By William Elliott Hazelgrove.
Published by Pantonne Press Inc.  Chicago Illinois.
copyright 2009.
377 pages.

If this isn't one of the best books I have ever read, I certainly enjoyed my self while reading it,.  It is laugh out loud funny.  Because that is what I did when I read it - i actually laughed out loud..  I read it for a book club, and I think that most of the older group didn't care for it.  It is certainly not a subtle book.  The author pretty much hits the reader over the head with the ideas.  But they are some interesting ideas.  My book groups also complained about the editing.  Something I didn't notice until it was mentioned, or perhaps most of the problems come at the second half of the book. ( I was only half way through when we talked about it).  It is a small press so perhaps that is the reason for the poor proof reading.  It is supposed to be rereleased in a hardcover edition.by a large corporate press and those problems should be taken care of.

So what are some of the ideas the book discusses? It discusses, suburban life and the conformity that comes with that kind of life.  It discusses the concept of happiness.  Are those conformists suburbanites as happy or even happier than the misplaced behemian artist?  In other words, what is happiness and how does that happiness differ for different people.  Those are the two main ideas.  Some other subconcepts are some discussions of how people live beyond their means - a subject that is surely current in this post housing boom failure era.  And the character is frustrated.  Is it his surroundings that stunt his creativity or is he just creatively spent?.  The book also talks about the difficulties of keeping up with the responsibilities of keeping up with modern life and families.

So, the story goes that our protagonist, Dale Hammer (Alias Rocket Man) is a transplant from the city to the distant suburbs of Chicago.  That's right, the story takes place in Chiacgao, though the names of the towns are thinly disguised.  He's a writer and is accustomed to the multicultural, liberal environment of Oakland (alias Oak Park).  But becasue of crime and schools, he and his wife decide to move out to the richer suburbs, though seemingly they are now living in a house they can't afford even though they made money on the sale of their old house. 

Well, Dale just doesn't fit in and between his own incompetence, his refusal to conform and the Fascist like (in his opinion - they are painted that way anyway) community members like gym teachers and scout leaders.  His life is falling apart and it is hilarious to watch/read about. 

But he has a goal.  To make up for the miserable parenting he has performed for his son, he promises his son that he will perform his duties as Rocket Man.  This is a once a year event in which all the scouts blast off their rockets in an open field.  It is turning into something more than he bargained for, but he perseveres for the sake of his son, who is also struggling in his new environment.  The ending is a beautiful, chaotic dance of joy and rebelliousness that brings the close to the happy ending novel.

In fact that was something that the book group had a problem.  The ending was too easy.  It seemed forced they said.  I thought it was perfect and glorious. It was all leading to this point anyway, so why not a happy ending.

By the way, the author is a writer in residence at the Hemmingway House and wrote this book from Hemmingway's attic.  Here is a reading of his book by the author from Hemmingway's attic.

Family Matters ***

By Rohinton Mistry.
Published 2002 by Borzoi Books/ Alfred A. Knopf a Division of Random House.
Originally Published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart.
434 pages.

I like novels by Indian authors.  They tend to be really sad.  Two books in particular are so sad that they reach into your chest and pull your heart out and then jump on top of it to smash it to pieces.  They are incredibly powerful and sad.  One is (forgive me the full names - they are Indian and I don't remember very well) Roy's God of Small Things about an illicit love affair between disparate castes and the horrific consequences.  The other is A Fine Balance by this same author as the book I am reviewing now in which two characters from the Untouchable class also have horrific consequences for their behavior and actions.

This book, Family Matters does have it's tragic moments but it is a decidedly lighter book in feeling, though not necessarily in content.

My son has been teasing me about how I like sad or dark books as of late "Why do you always read those kinds of books" he said to me while I was reading this one.  I said, "hey, this isn't so dark it's all about a faimily who are just trying to survive and even hopefully thrive".I have heard this comment before about books being to sad or dark.  When I facilitated a book club for teachers, one of the comments was why we couldn't  ever read anything fun or happy.  One person, I think a co facilitator, said that great literature is not usually light and whimsical.  That may be true, but I would also add the explanation I gave to my son.  Part of the structure of all stories is that they all have problems that need to be resolved.  From these problems come the darkness.  We all have darkness in our hearts becasue we all have problems, even the perkiest person in the world, and all books have a darkness that results from the problem that is trying to be resolved.  True some are darker than others. That would depend on how the author decides to end the stroy.  Will it be resolved with a happy ending or will the ending be less obvious, hence darker?  I ramble I know but those are the thoughts that this book has inspired in me.

So this story goes that an old man, Nariman, is living with his step children, Coomy and Jal, who are unmarried.  When he seriously gets hurt and winds up bed ridden, the selfish siblings, especailly Coomy, foist him off on their half sister (and daughter of Nariman) Roxy becasue he is too difficult to care for.  Roxy has a complete nuclear family but she loves her father and takes him in their much smaller apartment.  Nariman is well loved, and well cared for but his presence causes problems and the family struggles with lack of space and less income.  While there are some tragic events, funnily enough, the book ends with your tradtional happy ending.  Everything is resolved.  But the author adds a very intriguing epilogue.

It's five years later, and Nariman has passed away, but the family seems to be embroiled in trouble once again.  The son of Roxy is continously battling with is father (Roxy's husband) over a girl that is from a different religion.  The signifiicance of this is that much of Nariman's tragic troubles started in the same way. He when he was younger he also had a love with a girl that was not of his caste and he and his family suffer for it greatly.  This ending seems to say several things to me.  Life is cyclical in that problems get resolved and then new ones arise.  So happy ending and all life continues and new crap comes up.  Of course it also says something to the idea of religious intolerance anf the fact that the family hadn't learned from ther grandfather's troubles.

My only real criticism is that I didn't care for the parts where Roxy's husband started to become religious.  It had described the scene and rituals of the religion, which I know should be interesting because I know nothing about Zarathustra religion, but I found all the details a bit of a chore to read.  Of course this conversion of the father was necessary for the important ending, but I wonder if the point could have been made in a shorter way (damned American attention span I got).  Other wise, this seems to me an almost flawless book.

Solar **1/2

By Ian McEwan.
Published in 2010 by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, The Random House Group Ltd., London.
287 Pages.

On Face Book there is an application called Shiite gifts for academics and it's really funny.   You can send really crappy gifts to your friends in academia.  For example you can send obsolete and broken technology and there will be a picture of a beat up old overhead projector.  You can also send people as gifts such as the creepy, ogling colleague or the spoiled coed with the car that's nicer than yours.  There's one i really like.  You can send a professor who behaves like a character in a Phillip Roth novel.  The implication is that these characters are pretty despicable (and I tend to relate to Roth's character - oh no!)  This book reminds me of a Philip Roth book because here we have a character that behaves pretty despicable, yet the reader is attached to him because we see everything from his point of view.

So the story goes that this middle aged, balding and fat man named Michael Beard is a scientist who many years previously won the Nobel Peace Prize for some formula or concept he had thought up.  After that he had been pretty much resting on hi laurels and accepting institutional positions and opportunities to speak to make money.  The book starts out with him involved in one of many marriages and affairs.  He's constantly cheating on his wives and lovers - despicable.  He's fat bald and middle aged yet he's still able to get the girls (writer's fantasy?)

He's appointed to be head of a new facility that is opened in England to compete with America's program on alternative energies.  After some faltering first steps, the organization decides to put it's energies into Micheal's idea of producing wind turbins on a small scale so that every home in London can afford one.  After a while Beard realizes that it is a horrible idea, but everyone is so gung ho about it, he decides to go with the flow.

That is until one of his young superstar upstarts starts to talk with him about an idea of using Solar Energy that is converted to electricity in a unique and efficient new way ( I can't remember the exact process).  Beard is reluctant though he knows his idea is a terrible one. 

Then there is a freak accident and the young man is now out of the picture.  Beard decides to take the kid's idea and run with it claiming that it is all his own in hopes to garner attention and to frankly save the world (from global warming of course).  Despicable!  The novel progresses by describing his current relationship/s and the onward march to the revelation of his project to the world.  But with all the bridges he's burned (he doesn't do well in social situations either) and all the hearts he has broken, everything catches up to him at the finale when he is ready to unveil his much loved project.

I like McEwan's sense of humor, something that has not been a focal point in any of the books I have read by him previously.  Some of the technical jargon gets to be a little too much and can be a bit frustrating, but I can manage to follow most of it.  Not his greatest work but funny and thought provoking.  And current in today's science and politics.

Here are two videos. One is an interview and one is a reading by the author.



And an excerpt...



here's an interview.

Bad Night: A Criminal Edition ***

Written by Ed Brubaker.
Illustrated by Sean Phillips.
Compiled and published by Marvel Publishing Inc.
from Criminal Volume 2 #1-4
Copyright 2009.

This is the third graphic novel from the award winning series Criminal.  I'm big fan.  This is probably the best mainstream comic available.  I'll read anything by Brubaker (several years back he wrote a portion of the Daredevil comics.)  The books are gritty, violent and the story telling is simple and straightforward.  The pages are filled with creeps, weirdos and the violently psychotic.  It's good fun reading.

So what about this one?  It's the story of a widowed and lame guy that use to be a counterfeiter but now is on the straight and narrow, mostly because of the death of his wife for which he suffered terribly.  His suffering was heightened by the fact that the cops didn't believe he was innocent in her death and neither did the underworld (who the parents of his deceased wife was connected to).  He was beaten horrible and walks with a limp.  This all takes place before the actual story starts.

Our (anti)hero has insomnia and walks the streets at night.  One night at a diner he meets a violent couple of which one was a beautiful woman.  Her boyfriend is looking for a fight and the cook has to subdue him.  Our hero seems to have run away though.  he sees the girl on the street, and finds she's almost as crazy as her boyfriend, but she's a knockout.  they end up having an affair.  The boyfriend finds out about it and because of fear, the counterfeiter is forced to work for these petty criminals.  Meanwhile he still lusts after the girlfriend.  There's going to be a job to be done, and there's a series of twists and turns where everything goes awry.

The story starts out great and is typical of the quality i expect from the series.  It seems to fade in the end though.  I wasn't satisfied with the ending,. Usually I look forward to the straightforward stories the series has, but the ending is a little  convoluted involving the ghost of his wife (we do find out what really happened to her) and a voice inside his head that is one of his characters in the comic strip he publishes.

Still a great book, but I'm afraid not as strong as the previous two.  Start with those first, though you'll also enjoy this one too.

Ludmila's Broken Accent ***

By DBC Pierre.
Published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2007.
336 pages.

The book has two seperate stories that come together into one finale.  One story is much better than the other one.

That's the story about Ludmila, a peasant girl in the Caucuses who knows a pinch of English (hence the broken accent).  This is the better part because it is hilarious.  The family have this way of daily conversation that is all East European.  They constantly curse each other out in the most outlandish, wildly humilaiting ways.  It's a veritable reference book on how to curse someone out.  The story is fairly simple (which I prefer to convoluted twisted narratives).  Ludmila kills her grandfather when he tries to rape her, but his pension is the family's only money source. She is forced to go to town to sell the family tractor and get a job at the local family or whorehouse - which ever.

The second story , which is weaker, is about two conjoined twins who, at the age of 33, finally become separated.  They had been institutionalized their whole life and are having issues when they finally get into the real world.  Inexplicably, they are invited to a party, get a job and discover some sort of potion that gives you confidence and vigor.  They are sent Eastern Europe where they collide with Ludmila.  Notice how the last sequence of events just kind of tumble off the page.  There is no rhyme or reason, that can be deciphered in any way.  What's the deal with the potion?  Why did they get a job?  Who is this mysterious government man that brings them to the party?  Why do they got to go to the party?  All these questions and their answers are sort of glossed over or are poorly presented as to make sense to the reader.

Overall, it's an enjoyable read becasue it is so damn funny, but it is a very flawed book.

The Road ***

Directed by John Hillcoat.
Based on Novel by Cormac Mccarthy.
Screenplay by Joe Penhall.
With Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pierce, Molly Parker.
Made by Dimension Films, 2009.
Seen in theater.

I've already gave the summary of the book back in the summer of 2009, which is pretty close to that of the movie.  The movie eclipses and speeds up some events, but stays pretty close to the book.  My biggest worry was that the movie would be Hollywoodized and focus on the marauding parties, action sequences and relationship between the father and the wife played by Charlize Theron.  I figured with a major star like Theron, they would have to give her a bigger part. In the book these sequences were only a small part the whole. Thankfully, the film treated these sequences with the same amount of narrative weight as the book more or less.  The film remains true to the original source material by being dark, grim and foreboding.

I was very excited by the fact that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis were doing the sound track to the film.  To my surprise, the soundtrack was very subtle.  Some light piano tinkling and some violin playing.  It was not something that stood out, but complimented the film well.

As I probably said in the book review, there is some hope in the film, represented the boy and his future. There is much discussion of good people and bad people, abnd the father is desperately trying to teach the boy about being a good person, but the stresses of their journey make it hard to generous to the few people they meet on the road.  The boy is his conscience.  So there is a dependency that the two share with each other.  On one hand you have the boy's purity of heart and on the other hand you have the fathers undying love and protectiveness for the boy.  They need each other.  When the boy goes on his own, one senses that the goodness will prevail, if the human race can survive, which is not a for sure thing.

And the performances are very good. I'm no expert on the elements of quality acting, but there are some excellent reputations on the screen, and I didn't find any of the acting to be false.

All The Lovely Bad Ones **

Written byMary Downing Hahn.
Published by Sandpiper 2009.
192 pages.

        This is a ghost story about two mischeivous children who visit their grandmother's bed and breakfast which had a haunted reputation. But since Grandmother bought it, that activity  has disappeared.  The two kids hear the stories and decide to put on a little spook show themselves.  But they find out that they have woken up some ghosts.  Ghost children to be exact.  These children are mischeivous too, but in the end, we learn that they want help from the live children.

It seems that the bed and breakfast used to be an orphange run by a selfish, cheating violent woman who mistreated them.  In fact they all had died at her hand.  They want to put her spirit to rest, so that they may rest their spirits since this woman still haunts them, even in the afterlife.  The two live children feel obliged or perhaps coerced into helping the children ghosts and a series of adventures and scary happenings occur.

I'm not a typical horror book reader, so it's difficult to judge this book.  It seems fine to me, though the characters mightt seem a little undelineated and sketchy.  They don't seem to be fully devloped, but I believe that is a typical thing with the horror genre and other fantasy genres.  The genre is long on fantasy and short on character devlopment.

There is a nice rendering of the incidents that happens in the orphanage's past which are pretty spooky an kind of grim.  Over all, I enjoyed the book.

Heart Shaped Box **

By Joe Hill.
Published by Harper Paperbacks  2009.
400 pages.

This is a fun, but silly little book.  I guess it's a best seller, though I generally don't read mass media best sellers.  This is a horror book.  Specifically, it is a ghost story.  Since I generally don't read this genre, I have no point of reference of how it compares to other books of its ilk.  This was nothing special.  I wonder how less well received books are.  Maybe they are just plain silly.  This at least was well paced and the characters were well drawn.

An aging death metal rock star, who had a hobby of collecting morbid artifacts found himself in possession of a suit of a recently dead man, who was now a ghost.  The ghost had started to haunt him.  Some of these scenes were pretty creepy.  Being a rock star, he has a goth girlfriend.  She's one of many, but since she's around when the haunting and terror starts, she becomes very close to him and him to her.  Apparently the ghost is haunting him because our hero had an old girlfriend who was mentally unstable and killed herself after the break up.  The ghost is the stepfather of the dead girl and is out to revenge his stepdaughter's death.  There are the requisite twists and the journey into other, after life worlds (an especially silly part), but it turns out the rock star hero isn't so bad at all.  He wasn't the cause of the suicide etc, and the ghost tried to kill him for fear of our hero interfering in the sordid lifestyle he had had previously with his stepdaughters.

I think one interesting idea is the presentation of the metal rock life style.    In real life, most mainstream people tend to fear people who dress in leather and all that other paraphernalia that rockers wear. This book does show these people as real feeling and sensitive people.  It shows the home life and consequent problems that they often have endured.  The thesis here is that most metal heads/ punk rockers are the way they are because of their dysfunctional family life in which they grew up.  A thesis I don't necessarily agree with.

Here's an interview with the author, who by the way is the son of Stephen King.

Julie & Julia **1/2

Directed by Nora Ephron.
Screenplay by Nora Ephron.  Based on book by Julie Powell.
Released August 2009.
With Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Edmond.
Seen in Theater.

Over all an entertaining night at the cinema, if not a little on the light side.

The premise is that Julie Powell has decided to take on a whole cook book by Julia Childs, day by day - recipe by recipe.  And she blogs about her triumphs and tribulations.  The blog gets a lot of followers.  Concurrently, the film also is kind of a bio - pic of Julia Childs in which it shows her life when she starts to become a cooking professional. It shows her relationship with her husband Paul Child.  Eventually Julie accomplishes all the recipe, her piece de resitance being Stuffed Deboned Duck.

For me, I was more interested in the Julia Child's portion of the film, as I remember seeing her on TV when I was just a kid.  And it was interesting to know that she was the one who popularized French Cooking in the states as there were no French cooking books in the States at the time.  It was also cool seeing some of the ingredients and techniques that simply are not being used today.  Also Ms. Childs was played by One Meryl Streep who always seems to have the gravitas (the new word of the times) to pull off any role she likes no matter how trivial.

On the other hand, the Julie portion, while nice, did not have much to say.  Sure there was her obsession with the project that strained the relationship with her husband and she was cute as all heck, but with this much time passing (always the case with these blogs that I am several  months behind) there is simply not much that comes to mind when I think of those parts.  This lack of impresion after the passing of time is an indicator of how much of an impression the movie made on me.  If I don't remember much, then it didn't make much of an impression.  Clearly, I was able to remember more scenes from the Julia part, so to me that was the better part.



And an interview.

Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life **1/2

By Wendy Mass.
Published 2006 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Hachette Book Group.
1st Paperback edition 2008.

I put the website address of the publisher just for fun.  Don't know if it will really work.  I think I tried to put a link in previously in other entries and it didn't work.  I guess we'll find out.

Again, it's almost unfair to use the same rating system for kid books that I use for adults.  Becasue this is a much better book than most for young adults.  But as said before, young adult books rarely have the same profundity or nuance as adult books.  Neither do they have the same content as an adult book.  They just can't go there.  The last young adult book that I gave 3 or more stars was Alexie Sherman's  Part Time Indian (Not complete title)  That was aimed at high school kids and  had content that would not be appropriate for junior high kids - Sex , drugs domestic violence etc.  Sherman is also first and foremost, a novelist for adults.

So anyway, this book is about Jeremy Fink and his best friend Lizzy and their adventures over one summer.  The adventures start with Jeremy receiving a package in the mail.  It was from Jeremy's father who had passed away ten years previously.  It was sent by someone who was charged with the responsabilty of sending the box to Jeremy on his 23th birthday.  When it was opened, they found a wooden box with the keys missing.  Engraved on the box was the mesage that says the meaning of life is within.  But there are no keys, so Jeremy and Lizzy go searching for the keys and in one of their attempts, they run a foul of the law and end up having to serve community service.  An old rich man, who started his life as a pawnbroker, gave them jobs returning items to people that had pawned them long ago.  Jeremy and Lizzy meet these people, and each one of them sits down with them and discusses their own philosophy, or what life means to them.

I really liked how the novel is structured. Each visit is an opportunity to hear a different opinion of the meaning of life.  And the author gives the reader, and Jeremy, different types of philosphy.  Three to be exact.  One religious, one more new agey or spiritual and one more scientific.  It was very engrossing reading, though I wonder how my students from a low income community dealt with all those heady ideas.  They don't have a whole lot of experience with existentialism, or perhaps they do, seeing how difficult their lives are, but they haven't had these ideas articulated before.

And the characters are realistic and likeable.  Both have had tragedies in their lives which they are trying to cope with and the emotions seem real.  And there was some humor in the story as well as between stories.  The kids do, on some level, really behave like kids.

I was disappointed in the ending.  Without spoiling it, I'll just say that it seemed forced or too contrived (in fact part of the narrative is this contrivation).

Okay, here's a trailer for the book, just to give you a better idea of what it's about.  I know - Trailers for books!?!?!!?

Suna no onna / The Woman in the Dunes ***

Directed by Hiroshi Teshigara.
Screen play and novel written by Kobo Abe.
Released 1964.
With Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Hioko Ito, Koji Mitsui, Sen Yano and Ginzo Sekiguchi.
Shot in Black and White.  Seen on DVD.

Having read the book, a comparison is inevitable.  Seeing as the screenwriter and the novelist are one and the same, it's not surprising that the film follows the book pretty rigorously.  It does dispense with much of the inner thoughts and musings of the lead character which is the novel's opportunity to wax philosophical, but otherwise it is a faithful reproduction of the novel.

The director of the film does add a visual style to the book.  While the novel does a good job of painting a picture of the settings, this director adds some interesting visuals.  Some objective close ups of the sand that has graphic elements as well as showing the different characters of how sand looks and flows.  The setting is very claustrophobic as is appropriate, and the shack is shown in as an integral part of the characters.  The characters are shot through windows, between posts etc.  It demonstrates the importance of their home, which is a major theme of the film.  (Discussed in detail in the review of the book). The woman stays where she is because it's her home, and her life and self are intertwined with this structure.  To the man, I think it seems more menacing.

So perhaps its time for a short summary, which has been done once already in my review of the book. An amateur entomologist goes to the sea to look for a rare insect.  He is invited and more importantly convinced to stay over the night by the villagers.  He is then led to a hole in the dunes, and thinking that this residence, inhabited by the woman of  the title,  is temporarily, he happily and gratefully climbs into the hole in the dunes.  He later finds he is trapped in this hole in the dunes by the village, who expect him to move, carry and shovel the endless sand that persecutes him and tortures him with it's constant presence.

The movie is more erotocized than the book. The book had some erotic moments, but the film accents these moments more forcefully.  In one scene when they first make love, they are covered in sand (which is always the case) and it made me wonder just how comfortable that love making was.  Wasn't there any chafing with all that sand?

Here is that scene.


In one pretty surrealistic scene, the villagers gather around the hole and he is told he can have a short leave for a short walk, if he will have sex with the woman in front of them.  Why they want this is pretty unclear, what's the point of this public humiliation?  It doesn't go with my theory that the endless sand and entrapment is a symbol of modern working mankind daily drudgery and its struggle with the monotonous work a day life they lead.  Mankind is held to this slavery with the promises of home family and a few material trinkets.  So why this public humiliation?  Clearly the villagers are morally bankrupt as is demonstrated by their capturing of  the innocent entomologist.  Does it represent the authorities and their dominance over the everyday person and the willingness of the authorities to humiliate  people to keep them in line.  It's an idea.

In this scene, the man decides it's worth it just so he casn get out of the hole even for a brief moment and struggles with the woman and tries to even assault/rape her.  His efforts are rebuffed and during this struggle, the villagers are watching with all sorts of weird masks and there is a drumming soundtrack, like the beating of a heart.

Ther is some more interesting imagery at the opening and closing sequences.  Bits and scraps of official Japanese documents are shown on collage form and make for some very pretty imagery.  The idea is that the man who has been entrapped eventually becomes an official missing person, hence the use of official documents for the collages.

Also the soundtrack was interesting.  It was very experimental  and modern.  It reminded me of early King Crimson with acoustic instruments att heir most dissonant moments. I want to say that it was like John Cage, but I don't know his material enough, I can only say that it was definitely experimental.  It was spooky and droning at times, and then sudden and noisy at other times.

Overall a very interesting film experience.

Here's another clip.


And here's a trailer.

The Woman in the Dunes ***1/2

By Kobo Abe.
Published 1964 by Alfred A. Knopf.
264(est) pages

This is a book with a big idea.  It's full of metaphors and symbolism.  It about philosophy as opposed to the minutiae of a day.  The narrative could never happen in real life, so everything has to be thought of as an allegory, to understand the book properly.  If your looking for realism, one needs to look elsewhere.

So the story goes that a man, an everyman - a teacher, decides to take a retreat to pursue his favorite amateur hobby - entomology.  He hopes to find a rare insect so that it can be named after him in the field guides and be immortalized  in the world of entomology.  This insect lives in the sand, so off to the dunes he goes.  Meanwhile he has left no clue of his whereabouts back at home so as to not be bothered on the trip, or to escape or whatever reason.

The villagers of  the sand dunes invite him to stay over night and he sleeps in the home of a  woman who lives in a hole in the sand. So he climbs down, never to climb up again.  The villagers have imprisoned him, so that the young woman, a widow, would have help in her chores and so that she might have a family.  The man of course is outraged and tries to escape, but he can't.

There are many, many themes in the book to discuss, but it has been about a month since I read it and details are shaky, though I will try to tackle a few of the ideas.

The first symbol or theme is the sand.  The book starts out with a discussion of the properties of sand - how it's like water because it flows, but then it's a solid.  It marvels at the physics of the material.  Then, the sand becomes a trap for the man.  It is everywhere.  The characters are continuously covered in sand and protecting their food, possessions and selves from the sand.  It reminded me of a car ride coming home after a day at the beach.  One can never make that sand go away.  And it's always flowing into the widow's and man's living place.  They are constantly working to clean out the sand.  In fact their role in the community is to clear out and gather the sand.  (The villagers sell it in the black market - it's illegal because it doesn't have the proper composition to use for building materials).  This is a signal to how morally bankrupt the village is, as if keeping an innocent man prisoner, wasn't enough to signify that.

To me, this imprisonment is a symbol of how society tries to suppress man's free-will for the sake of the society.  When asked why the woman stayed in such a horrible situation, she replies (the gist anyway, I don't remember the exact words) that this is home and one stays where the home is.  Man(kind) is made to work in mind numbing and physically exhausting work, seemingly never ending and inconsequential as the couple's job of removing sand.  Wht is it that enslaves man to this lifestyle?  Home, family and the few trinkets that they can buy with the money.  The woman says herself that she is saving for a mirror or a radio.  These material items is what keeps her working harder.

Eventually after several attempts to escape, one of them particularly humiliating, the man resigns to his situation.  Now the people in the book club thought this was  positive ending, showing that man (kind) can tolerate and survive anything.  I beg to differ.  I think it is a demonstration on how easy it is for man (kind) to lose their free will and independent spirit.  How easy it is to conform to society with out thinking for one's self.  When the woman become pregnant, and is taken away because the baby's and mother's life are in jeopardy, he has a chance to escape.  The ladder has been left in the hole.  He chooses not to.  Perhaps he feels a responsibility to his home and family.  One might say that is a good thing, but one must remember, he was innocently ensnared into this trap and gradually had the will sucked right out of him.  Coincidentally, the radio arrives here at the conclusion of the book.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ***1/2

Seen on DVD.
Directed by Mark Herman.
Based on novel written by John Boyne. 
Screenplay by Mark Herman.
With Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, Zac Matoon O'Brian, Domonkos Nemeth, Henry Kingsmill, Vera Farmiga, Cara Horgan, Zsuzsa Hoil, Amber Beattie, Lazlo Aron, David Thewlis.
Released in 2008.

I have often bemoaned the fact that media for children should have a different rating scale as it is almost impossible for any book or film to have the subtlty, nuance or profundity that an adult work has.  Here is a case in which my theory is proven wrong.  This is one powerful movie.  I feel that it transcends the childrens' film genre.  Of course it should be said that this is hardly a kids film.  You don't want to set your 8 year old in front of the Tv and let him/her alone.  It would either bore them becasue of the complexity or scare the dickens out of them.  The only thing about this film that slightly resembles a typical kids' movie is that it is told from the point of view of an 8 year old.

Why do I like this film?  Just becasue it is so hard hitting.  The childrens' part are very believeable and there are lots of small, subtle moments in the film.

A German boy, Bruno, is taken to the country during WW II so that his soldier dad can take over his duties at his new assignment.  That of commandant at a concentration camp.  Bruno discovers, unwittingly, the camp and attempts to make friends with a Jewish boy on the other side of the fence.  Both boys are especailly good at portraying their innocence, but the boy in the camp is especailly good at portraying a mix of  innocence and hopefullness, while also demonstrating a wary, traumatized persona.  The two boys just don't understand, even the Jewish boy who has gone through scads of trauma doesn't understand the enormity of the situation.  I'll skip the ending, but I'll just say that it's gut wrenchiung tragic.  The hope is that the adults have learned a heavy and hard lesson.

And I think the mother does.  When she first moves into their new abode, she is wary of the Jews.  She saw no problem in the idea of the camps, though she didn't want it in her backyard.  When one of the Jewish servants helps Bruno with a cut on the knee, she reluctantly thanks him and reluctantly becomes a little more human.  She is very upset when she finds out the true mission of the camp and she and her husband have a serious argument over it.  I guess it was ok to imprison the Jews, but not to massacre them.

A strongly reccomended film!

Here's a trailer...

Waltz With Bashir (Vals Im Bashir) ***

Seen on DVD.
Released in Isreal 2008.
Directed and written by Ari Folman.

This is a flawed film in many ways. It's slow, and confusing. But I admire the intent and the ambitions of the director to make this film the way he wanted. For that reason i rated this film 3 stars in stead of 2 1/2 stars.

First off, it's a documentary but it is an animated film. This animation allows the film to show some eerie and spooky, settings. It's also an interesting premise. The director is trying to remember his involvement in the invasion of Lebanon and subsequent massacre that happened in 1982. He does an excellent job of getting to the psyche of the people he interviews and their memories of the war. For some reason the limits of the animation techniques they used, made people move very slowly which contributed to the slowness of the film. The film makers understood this and instead of trying to hide this fact, they embraced this limitation. The characters tend to float off into space making them seem ghostly. This adds to the level of psychological confusion and angst of the film.

So, the story is that the director is interviewing old veterans of the Invasion of Lebanon. He seems to have forgotten the whole incident, especially those moments of the massacre. He is curious or perhaps more precisely, haunted to know (he doesn't remember) just what his role in this massacre was. So we learn the stories of many of his comrades and the emotional trauma they had went through during the war. Eventually he closes in on the people who were there ( I believe the Lebanese town was laid to siege) at the massacre. What is discovered is that the Christians were mostly responsible. They entered the town and took care of things themselves. There's a hint that it might have been a retribution for the assassination of their Lebanese presidential candidate Bashir (hence the title of the film). But the Israeli army is not entirely off the hook. After all, they witnessed it all. The foot soldiers and lower ranked officers did try to report it, but the upper echelons of the Israeli army either told them not to worry and that nothing was happening, or they said they would do something and instead looked away from the atrocities.

One of the most interesting aspect of this animation as documentary is the ability to reenact the stories of the veterans. Because it was animation, the filmmakers could craft how they thought the incidents really happened and could dramatize it with out silly actors or such. It actually added a dimension of reality to it.

Here's a trailer...