(Accessed from When dogs fly: cower in place 43)
*The book 1Q84 is a fascinating dystopian novel written by Haruki Murakami in 2010. A review in Google books described 1Q84 as “The long-awaited magnum opus from Haruki Murakami, in which this revered and bestselling author gives us his hypnotically addictive, mind-bending ode to George Orwell’s 1984.”
Some of the action in the book takes place in 1984, but most takes place in an alternate universe in some ways identical to our own (or at least identical to the fictional version of our world described by Murakami), but in some ways wildly different. The heroine of the novel is at a loss to describe this new world she finds herself in, so she names it 1Q84, substituting “Q” (for Question) for the “9” in 1984. (I suspect the title of the book involves wordplay that works better in Japanese than in the English translation.)
It’s a spooky, dark, often creepy book involving among other things, golems spun from air and murderous elves with inscrutable motives. Indeed, most people in the book are murderous, including the heroine, and some of the action was painful to read. But, if you’ve got a strong constitution, I can recommend this wild ride into another world.
Speaking of magical other worlds, I just finished Piranesi, a delightful new book by Susannah Clark. Her earlier book, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, wove a story of a nineteenth century England that is undergoing a slow collision, or recollision, with Faerie, the magical fairy world. I really liked Jonathan S. and Mr N., because it painted the time and place so richly. It read like an encyclopedic anecdotal history of pre- and post-magical England, complete with voluminous footnotes written by wizards and professors of magic from the time.
Jonathan S. and Mr N. is not for everyone. Many people were turned off its length, density of words and ideas, and ploddiness (I thought its very ploddiness lended credibility to the historical writing style). But Piranesi, in my opinion, has all of the magic of Jonathan S. and Mr N. with none of the drawbacks. It is also a story about an intersection of our “real” world with a magical realm, but it couldn’t be more different in density and length.
Piranesi is about a third as long as Jonathan S. and Mr N., and the plot is simple, almost dreamily so. It unfolds like a lyric poem that slowly introduces you to a fantastic world of halls, stairways and statues, reminiscent of (and probably inspired by) the weird “imaginary prison” drawings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The world and its natural laws are are first inexplicable, but as you acclimate yourself to them, they start to make more and more sense. Even the story’s calendar conventions, which at first seemed unnecessarily overlong and complex, eventually reveal themselves to be just right for this strange universe. I thought Piranesi the easiest and best read of all of these stories of other magical lands, and I suggest you order a copy from your library!
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Since I somehow got on this topic, I should also commend to you another book I liked, what’s been called an “unappreciated masterpiece” written by Hope Mirrlees in 1926, Lud in the Mist. Wikipedia describes the plot thus: “In this novel, the prosaic and law-abiding inhabitants of Lud-in-the-Mist must contend with the influx of fairy fruit and the effect of the fantastic inhabitants of the bordering land of Faerie, whose presence and very existence they had sought to banish from their rational lives.” It’s a fun, imaginative book written in an earlier style of story-telling that you don’t see much of today.
Here’s the portal back to my flying dog story and the normal world.
Thanks,
Dorn
1/1/2021