Review: Of Things Gone Astray by Janina Matthewson

Of Things Gone Astray by Janina Matthewson
Publisher: The Friday Project. February 3, 2015
Pages: 288
Genre: Literary Fiction with Magical Realism
Source: Publisher
First Line: Mrs Featherby had been having pleasant dreams until she woke to discover the front of her house had vanished overnight.


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Now this was a weird book. Of Things Gone Astray is a beautifully intricate webs of strange nonsense, that often hits surprisingly close to home. It definitely pushed every quirky and whimsical button of mine. It was fun and playful, but could be poignant and sad. And wow, this is some of the most fun dialogue I've ever read.

This is a charming novel following a cast of characters who have each lost things. Things you don't normally lose. The front wall of your house, your sense of direction, your place of work (like it's physically gone), your piano keys. But it's also about the power of relationships with other people. Oh and somebody turns into a tree. Not a spoiler. Trees take a long time to grow, ya goof. And the best part is that all of these stories intertwine, some lightly and some heavily. I love when that happens.

Overall, reading Of Things Gone Astray was a pretty good time. Each chapter switched to a new character, keeping me mostly interested in everyone's stories, and they were often quite short. And pretty funny or totally on point. If you need logical explanations for the weird magical whimsy that goes on, stop here and back away from this book. Of course, most of the characters needed to lose something to find something else, which appears in several beautiful ways. But like there's no scientific reason for a tree girl.

My only real qualm with this book is the lack of character and story development with a few characters, but specifically Marcus. Marcus is an old man and famous pianist who loses his piano keys. He's also grieving the loss of his partner/husband (not sure if the term was specified or what it would be in the UK) and a strained relationship with his college aged daughter. There was so much potential here, but most of the time he seemed like an after thought. His story was not as connected as the others and the ending to his story isn't completely satisfying.

I also had issue with the ending in general. Many of the characters had kind of rushed, frayed ends. But it was still charming. Perhaps I'm just one who either wants an ending wide open or very resolved. It's a personal problem that's hard to reconcile. But I did think, with how much layering and interlocking of characters there was, that it was going to build up to something bigger.

But it was sweet. It was soft and strange. It made me think about what's really important in my life.


Some Quotes:

"One simply cannot be a believable recluse when one is cursed with a transparent wall."

"Pfft. If you realized you do need help, you wouldn't need as much help as you need."

"'Morning Dee,' her mother trilled as she walked in the front door. Her mother had started trilling. Delia hadn't realised things had gone that far."



Outlandishness Rating: 9/10

She grows into a tree! What!

Weirdest Books of 2014

Finally, what we've all been waiting for. The weirdest books I've read in 2014! And it did get pretty weird. Bonus: Half of them were published in 2014.

Check out my Best Books of 2014 and Best Backlist of 2014 posts, too!

 

1. Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck. Actually the weirdest stories I've ever read. Surreal, Scandinavian tales that can become very, very dark. Many involve strange creatures (some that can be grown in a pot), women who are fed until they burst only to find a new tiny woman clinging to the old heart, men in love with machines, alternate dimensions, and so much more. Often disturbing, always whimsical and beautiful.
2. Cock & Bull by Will Self. Let me make this clear, reading this book was a waste of time. It's a wildly self-indulgent attempt at satire that isn't original or profound in any way. The writing was overly pretentious and it felt like I was just watching him jerk off the whole time. But it was still one of the weirdest things I'd read this year. A woman grows a penis out of nowhere and a man grows a vagina behind his knee. It's very bizarre and there's weird rape stuff, and I just couldn't get into it. Credence to the idea that weird isn't always good.
3. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. By this I really mean the entire Southern Reach Trilogy, but it's easier to just say Annihilation. Nothing makes sense in Area X. There's a border nobody can see. Fungus grows in the shape of words. There are strange creatures. Maybe people turn into animals? Doppelgangers? Psychosis? SO MUCH WEIRD.
4. The Troop by Nick Cutter. Tapeworms. Giant, genetically modified tapeworms that really like to eat people from the inside out. What.
5. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Carnies. High stakes dramatic relationships between carnies. A family trying to breed children with more deformities. Dwarves, conjoined twins, deformed limbs, tails, etc. Intense, borderline Grecian drama and power struggles.
6. Equus by Peter Shaffer. BESTIALITY. A dude who worships horses and just likes to get naked with them sometimes. It's no big deal. Ok, it's a really big deal. A very weird, profound play.
7. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride. Probably the weirdest format of book I've ever read. Or, if not format, writing style. It's all in this strange borderline stream of consciousness style, but it's written in like non-grammatical fragments to represent how people think. But it was so impossible to read most of the time that I just couldn't imagine that this is how anybody really thinks fundamentally. Very little punctuation. Didn't feel like I was reading English.
8. Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball. Written almost entirely in collections of interviews. Some photographs. Write-ups of cases. And the story itself is bizarre, featuring murder of the elderly, a man who confesses to a crime he probably didn't do and then refuses to speak, contradicting stories about seduction and deals. It's slow and subtle, kind of creepy, and very interesting.
9. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. Written backwards chronologically. I love experimental formats, and this one really worked. We got closer and closer to the main event that triggered the rest of it, and it was paced so well. The idea of a mail in role-playing game is pretty weird too. The book involves itself in an interesting, niche gaming culture.
10. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa. A collection of horror short stories that are often bafflingly surreal. A woman's heart exists outside of her body, carrots grow in the shapes of hands, a mysterious woman show's up in someone's hotel room with a bundle she won't open, and so on and so forth. They're very dark, covering murder and torture, as well as surprising. Finding out that all of the eleven dark tales were connected to one another was a delight.

What are the weirdest books you read this year? Here's to keeping it weird in the new year.

Review: The Planets by Sergio Chejfec

The Planets by Sergio Chejfec
Publisher: Open Letter Books. June 2012
Pages: 227
Genre: Literary fiction


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A very strange and surreal book. I don't really know how to explain the plot, so I'll let the publisher do it for me:

When he reads about a mysterious explosion in the distant countryside, the narrator’s thoughts turn to his disappeared childhood friend, M, who was abducted from his home years ago, during a spasm of political violence in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. He convinces himself that M must have died in this explosion, and he begins to tell the story of their friendship through a series interconnected vignettes, hoping in this way to reanimate his friend and relive the time they spent together wandering the streets of Buenos Aires.

Ok, that sounds about right. But this book isn't so much about the politics in Buenos Aires. This book is about memory, friendship, and loss. The narrator goes over many different segmented memories of himself and his time with his friend, M. The book meanders around, sharply focusing on certain instances for a while, then tumbles right into a new memory. I was tugged about by the narrator's thoughts, not by any real chronology. The unconventional structure was difficult at first, but it sort of parallels how memories really are.

The Planets was definitely a slow read, but I do believe that it was worth it. Sometimes I would get so wrapped up in the strange stories told about M, or told by M with no apparent connection to any reality, that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about them for the rest of the day. They seem hard to tie together as you're reading them, but taking the time to concentrate while reading definitely becomes worth it by the end. The narrator comes more clearly into focus, time starts to align, and we essentially see the impact of M's disappearance. I almost gave up on the book at the beginning, but I'm glad that I didn't.

Some Quotes:

"They say that one could avoid innumerable problems, mistakes, and catastrophes if one knew how things were going to turn out, but this is an impossible dream. The most extreme example of this is that we are all certain of death -- and even, expanding things a bit, about the decline of civilization, the destruction of the environment, and the inevitable ostracism of the sun -- but are still unable to avoid the end. What keeps us from losing hope in the face of this inescapable truth? A belief in the interim, in the fact that, in the meantime, things happen that are worth experiencing."

Outlandishness Rating: 7/10 

The structure definitely makes this a weird book, but I think the memories that stick with the narrator make them weirder. But, at the same time, which memories stand out can reflect how certain things can't be known to be important until long after they happen.

Recommended For:

If you have the time to slowly read, and you don't mind a bit of philosophizing, I think this book is worth a shot. Especially if you have weird hang ups about/interest in memory. Like I do.