Q

This weekend, J and I both made rewarding entertainment choices. He bought Divinity: Original Sin, and promptly shed his worldly self and could only be found gleefully tweaking the stats of his in-game characters. GEEK. I’m no better: started on The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi and COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. It has been a long time since i found myself willing and able to finish a novel within two sittings. We spent most of the day together but reading/gaming respectively, and it was rather late in the evening before we couldn’t ignore our hunger and wandered out to Nando’s for dinner (before rushing home to continue haha).

The Crimson Labyrinth was, simply put, an exciting book. It’s somewhat a cross between Battle Royale and Hunger Games, although i loathe to associate a good book with HG. I take it back, besides the broad premise, it is nothing like HG. Fujiki finds himself awake in a strange – almost alien – place, with only a GameBoy giving him vague hints of a game he seems to be in. Eventually he finds other participants, who like him seem unable to recall the immediate events preceding their awakening.

From there, it gets increasingly sinister. What i loved most about the novel is the way it unravels. It may not be brilliant stylistically, but does a neat job dishing out hints – just enough for to thrill, for the reader to feel like the hints were cleverly caught than served. There were also grotesque plot features that shocked enough to be fascinating: cannibalism, the devolution of humanity, all strung together in a stimulating pace.

It was so exhilarating, in fact, that J read the last parts with me. I must have looked very tense or disturbed, because he paused his game and made me read aloud. A few paragraphs in, he was hooked too. We read the last couple of chapters together. Midway through i was so eager to get ahead of the story i started speed-reading verbally… we ended up just sharing the book haha.

If you don’t mind a ***spoiler***, what i especially liked about was it’s departure from the ‘dystopian future’ easy route. It made references to very real events in contemporary history i.e. the Japanese economic bubble burst. Although elaborate and almost unfathomable, it appears that the entire ‘game’ was for an extreme snuff film, based on someone’s obsession to bring to life a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game existing in the market. So, unbelievable but fully plausible.

A strong plot without a distinctly brilliant style. For one, it’s translated, so i really can’t say for sure. Secondly, it didn’t need too stylistic a narration… it may even have detracted from the simple, clear presentation the plot details required. Either way, it was a direct juxtaposition to the book i read right before it: Anne Enright’s The Portable Virgin.

This is an example of postmodern gone awry. Although pretty, it is a hollow glass vase. I was so drawn to its minimalist aesthetics in the first few pages, that i decided to give it a chance despite prior warnings. It’s the literature version of the emperor’s new clothes, you tell yourself that unlike others, you ‘get it’. But there really is nothing to get. I give up.

The short stories in this collection get exponentially more fragmented and meaningless, and not even in a good way. Its only saving graces are images, striking and sublime. The Portable Virgin was more a viewing gallery in words than literature. It describes casual sex with a baker found at a bar:

“…(he) sort of dodged in, like I was an alley on the way to school. I didn’t know whether he had come, or a picture had slipped on the wall… True love.”