I loved The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and found the balance of humor and pathos just right. Maybe it takes the voice of a young narrator to really convey the hilarity and heartache of childhood, or maybe it’s the more direct relationship to Alexie’s personal biography, but it moved me in a way that neither Smoke Signals nor The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven quite did. Don’t get me wrong, I also loved Smoke Signals, but mood is different, partly because the characters there are older when they make it off the rez. I also found it difficult to get into The Lone Ranger and Tonto…; I’ll go back to it again and make a better effort.

What more can I say about the book? I would say that Sherman Alexie is the most well-known contemporary Native American author around, and Part-Time Indian offers a direct view into his beginnings. While many of the experiences Alexie relates are particular to growing up on a reservation in the Pacific Northwest, the special weightiness and attendant costliness of adolescent choices is something that resonates across class and cultural lines.

At a key point in the story, the narrator says, I used to think the world was broken into many tribes. By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not. I think it’s also fair to say that there are people who had the kind of childhood related in Part-Time Indian, and there are people who did not. For those who did, the book is also a beautifully written tribute to the determination of those younger selves who brought us to adulthood.

I hated this book. I know that it’s super popular and everyone has raved about how Khaled Hosseini is a rising star, and The Kite Runner is an ingenious and personalized look at the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, I wanted to throw it across the room every few pages. Truthfully, I only finished it because I figured the positive reviews had to be based on something (anything!). But no, they’re really not.

The major overriding issue with this book is that the narrator is not sympathetic. At all. He is a spoiled, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, post-hoc rationalizing loser. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as mentioned above, I was looking for anything to redeem this book and didn’t find it. The worst of it is, the novel holds out hope of redemption — which is fine, great, good, I’m totally ok with a narrator’s repulsiveness being a lead-up to a character-challenging moment of introspection and change — and then doesn’t deliver. To say that it doesn’t deliver is also, unfortunately, the understatement of the year. The narrator’s choices at the end of the book, while in character, make the narrator in the beginning of the book as appealing as a beagle puppy. Had there been character growth by the end of the book, the entire novel would be a different experience. The choices made by the narrator early on are the choices of childhood, which are categorically forgivable. Or would be forgivable, if the adult narrator behaved differently. Which, as I think I’ve made clear, he didn’t.

The icing on the cake of this book, though, is the racialized brother. It’s not enough that he’s to be low-caste, born out of wedlock, raised by a cuckold, a servant in his father’s house (as was his mother before him), and subjected to violence. He also plays the part of the idyllic slave, the character who forgives any wrong done him out of an innate (pastoral) goodness and better nature. Blech. Maybe this portrayal is meant to make the narrator’s treatment of his brother less repulsive, but it only serves to make the entire thing more unpalatable.

Now, maybe I missed the point of this book entirely. Maybe the point is something like ‘caste systems really mess up the people who grow up in them and teach them to act like repulsive human beings all the time.’ Or, ‘no matter how much you try to move beyond your early choices, you will always be inherently the same.’ Possibly even ‘just when you think it can’t get any worse, meet the Taliban.’ Which are all good true points. About life. Not so much the makings for a novel, though.

I suppose it’s telling that there is so little information available in the United States about daily life in Afghanistan — before, during, or after the Taliban — that books with even a tiny window into that reality are hailed in this way. Nonetheless, my advice is this: read something else.

This book I did very much enjoy. I purchased it after reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and was looking forward to another novel where I could give myself over to the writing free of expectations. Although it sat on my shelf for some time before I got to it, Kafka On the Shore didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t as layered as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; I didn’t find it to be as immersive. Nonetheless, it was engaging and unexpected and lyrical at points.

With just these two novels, Murakami is becoming one of my favorite authors. I have read the odd short story of his and plan to sit down with the anthologies that are now available in the States. I checked a stack of other books by him from the library this fall, but returned them unread after getting swamped with other things. The pleasure of reading his works is definitely diminished when pressed for time, so I plan to return to them when my life is a bit more leisurely. Yes, I know, I work at home, how much more leisurely can it get, you’re wondering. I work at home, is my answer, and autumn has emerged as a busy season even outside the framework of the academic schedule.

Returning to Murakami: his writing is reminiscent of two other Japanese authors that rank among my favorites, Kazuo Ishiguro and Banana Yoshimoto. I tend to prefer the less traditional of Ishiguro’s works, as they provide the same ability to release expectations and get lost in the writing. I’ve realized that I enjoy that way of reading a book, getting carried along without being sure what kind of experience you’re having, unable even at the end to label or evaluate it. This only happens with excellent writing, of course, although there seem to be nations and cultures whose writers are more in this style than others. At any rate, I see similarities to Yoshimoto’s narratives in Murakami’s plots (such as they are).

If you were only going to read one book by Murakami, I’d still recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, mostly because I imagine you’d be hooked after that one. Once hooked, Kafka On the Shore is a nice follow-up.