Post
by honeysucklepie » Thu Jul 11, 2013 5:18 am
I just finished it tonight, maybe I went to fast. There are two reasons that I enjoy reading JAL:
-there is such a human element to all his novels, a real, flawed, human experience.
-as disturbing as LTROI was, more than anything I have ever read, it didn't feel sensationalized. I appreciate this. It makes the "horror" more palatable. Same here, with the non-Hollywood zombies. I wish they had a different cover for the US version. I don't think it represents the novel at all.
These two things let me enjoy JAL's very novel approach to the genre (is there a better category than horror?), and I don't mind letting things be a bit ambiguous, or unexplained. I'll take it! It is such tasty storytelling. I also like Murakami, who I have read enough of to say that his novels can be...annoyingly similar in some ways (painfully Murakami-esque). Like JAL, I don't care! I want to go there! I want to ponder the mysteries of such a story!
Yes! I loved the scene of Mahler digging out his grandson. Utterly bizarre that Mahler has this erotic hallucination inspire him to continue to struggle. I loved it, in a non pervy way, sort of fun I guess, and surprising. wolf-child---what puzzled you about Anna,s change? And what change? She flip flops a bit, going from denial that Elias is still in the body, and also on the island she sort of turns on her father. I sort of chalk it up to being a mother, one who is conflicted about the situation, and then very in tune psychically with her son, when he becomes a bit more "alive". this is where I just accept the weirdness and enjoy it. I enjoyed the worms too, as out of place as they felt to the story, beats a rising mist for the soul.
I got to figure out appropriate spoiler usage here.. I apologize!