Chronicle of a Blood Merchant – An Artfully Written Story of a Family’s Will to Survive Malevolent Forces of History

“Since it’s my birthday, I’m going to cook a meal for each of you with my mouth, and you can eat it with your ears. You won’t be able to eat it with your mouth because there’s nothing to eat, but prick up your ears, because I’m going to start cooking any moment now…”

In the 1980s, Yu Hua wrote short stories that were known for its ‘incisive lyricism’ and established himself as a key figure in Chinese avant-garde literature. Born in 1960, Yu Hua was working as a dentist when he started publishing stories. In 1990s, there was a major shift in the author’s style as he wrote two best-selling novels, which depicted the extraordinary struggles of the ordinary Chinese men and women. To Live, Yu Hua’s first novel (published in 1993), was adapted into a critically acclaimed movie by Zhang Yimou. His second novel, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (published in 1995 and translated to English by Andrew Jones in 2004) follows a small-town factory worker, from his youth to old age in the second half of the 20^th century – a period that marks the early days of Chinese socialism (1950s), the ambitious yet brutally forced collectivization of the Great Leap Forward (in 1958) and the famine that ensued as a result, the bloody Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and the relatively better (economically) post-Mao era.

Like To Live’s central character, the no-good-gambler Fugui, Xu Sanguan of Chronicle of Blood Merchant is a unheroic figure, molded by the regressive sociocultural practices and restricted by financial instability. He earns meager wages, working as a cart-pusher in a silk factory, situated in his small rural town. Xu Sanguan hears from his favorite fourth uncle that people in their village sell blood to hospital and earn money, the amount even if they toil six months in the field can't dream to earn. Selling blood was traditionally a taboo subject in China, but in the 1980s Chinese authorities and commercial companies set up a network of blood plasma collection stations in public hospitals especially to tempt the impoverished peasants. When Yu Hua wrote this novel the malpractices and corruption surrounding the system didn’t come to light (the unhygienic blood-buying practices led to HIV infection, afflicting at least half a million peasants in Henan province). Yet, Yu Hua’s portrayal of Xu Sanguan giving blood till he is too weak to even stand presents an alarming picture.

Earlier in the novel, the writer treats us to painful description of things-to-do before donating blood. Xu Sanguan meets two peasants on the road who asks him to drink lots of water to dilute their blood so that there’s more to sell (“drink until our stomachs are so swollen that it hurts and the roots of our teeth start to ache”). Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, however, isn’t a story steeped in misery and melodrama. Yu Hua details Xu Sanguan’s crisis-ridden life in the provincial village with a caustic wit. He is definitely not a likable character in the early chapters. Learning that the first of his three sons, Yile, is actually the child of his rival, He Xiaoyong, he abuses his wife Xu Yulan and bullies the boy. At one point, Xu Sanguan calls up his sons, Erle and Sanle, to promise him that they would rape He Xiaoyong’s daughters when they have grown up.

Xu Sanguan also often offers his twisted logic on why he can’t treat Yile as his son (ladened with casual misogyny). He leaves Yile at home during the famine and takes the rest of the family to eat noodles at a local restaurant. The image of hungry Yile stumbling through the streets, searching for his family, enrages us. Quite a few readers may get offended by Xu Sanguan’s absurd logic and callous deeds (strengthened by regressive social and cultural thinking). Even the other characters’ behaviors and motives may baffle our politically correct bourgeois sensibilities. But gradually Xu Sanguan takes the path of redemption that largely avoids blatant sentimentality. And as the state deprives the family of private existence, the political and social turmoil of the nation also invades their domestic space in myriad ways.    

Despite a clear-sighted portrayal of a vicious totalitarian world, what distinguishes Yu Hua’s novel is the humane portraits of the unenlightened people, who gradually learn to set aside their prejudices and false sense of pride. With this novel, the author has deftly mixed his humanistic notions with his early stylistic innovations (credit also belongs to the translation work of Andrew Jones). The result is a vivid story of flawed people who emerge from the period of intense fear, finding joy in small things and solace in family unit. 

 

Newcomer – Yet another Cleverly Plotted and Emotionally Involving Keigo Higashino Mystery

“Aren’t you supposed to be investigating her murder, Detective?”

“Oh, I am investigating the murder; of course I am. But my job as a detective should go beyond that. People who’ve been traumatized by a crime are victims, too. Finding ways to comfort them is also part of my job.”

I love reading Keigo Higashino mysteries from the time I first read The Devotion of Suspect X. His simple, to-the-point prose (translated by Alexander O. Smith or Giles Murray), his attention to details, the way he generates deeper questions out of seemingly insignificant actions, and his fly-on-the-wall observations of the idiosyncrasies of Japanese culture and society are all my favorite aspects in the tales of mystery master. Moreover, there’s unparalleled humanist quotient in his novels which most of the procedural authors drop off in an effort to construct a ‘cerebral’ mystery. Higashino’s whodunits or howdunits does possess an inscrutable crime and an ever-deepening conundrum at its center, but what I eventually take away from his tales are the moments of grace and humane gestures which gives off the feeling that an order is restored and the chaos of reality temporarily averted. 

Newcomer is the eighth novel in his Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series (published under the title ‘Shinzanmono’ in 2009). But it’s only the second Kaga series novel to be translated to English (in November 2018 by Giles Murray), following Malice. Kaga is an eccentric sleuth who despite his uncharacteristic clothing sense (a blue short-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt) is good at tracking down the truth using his Holmesian skills. While his methods are laser-focused, Kaga is also very good at discerning people’s emotions. In Newcomer, Kaga is recently transferred to the Nihonbashi precinct, a district in Tokyo where old and new Japanese culture intersects. The story sets in motion when another newcomer to the district is murdered in her apartment (strangled to death). Forty-five year old Mineko Mitsui, a divorcee living by herself, is the murder victim. Teamed with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Kaga scrutinizes every aspect of the woman’s lives, starting with the people she met or called on the day of her murder to the objects found in her small apartment.

Newcomer is structured in the form of (eight) intricately connected vignettes, each answering the different strange aspects in the case and eventually points to the perpetrator. Kaga’s investigation first unfolds by him tracing the truth behind little discrepancies surrounding the case. An insurance agent’s lie, a man who has supposedly the last person to visit Mineko, takes Kaga to a rice-cracker shop run by an ailing old lady and her caring motherless granddaughter. A wasabi-spiked sweet pastry found in Mineko’s apartment brings Kaga to investigate the restaurant’s owner. Most of the vignettes are seemingly unrelated to the central mystery of Mineko’s killing. Yet by solving these mysteries, Kaga gets to know the area (like us readers). The wit and humanity of all these shop owners, apprentices, and clerks whom Kaga repeatedly investigates (or nags) keeps us thoroughly hooked, even though it is only in the second-half of the novel, Mineko’s recent past and possible motives for her murder are explored. And in each episode, Kaga comes off as the guardian angel bearing good news. Since the Japanese family dynamics revolve around some unwritten rules of etiquette (where lot of things are left unspoken), the truth Kaga unearths comforts these disparate set of people.

Few of the episodes (especially towards the end) could be accused of being too sentimental. But most of these stories of failed relationship, unexpressed love, and sacrifices carry the scope of mystery/crime novels beyond gory details and last-minute twists. At its core, Newcomer is a microcosmic as well as a dramatic examination of the Japanese family dynamics, the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of it. Adding to the fun is the author’s portrayal of the uniqueness of Nihonbashi district (it’s social and cultural relevance).Kaga’s impressive observational skill generates one intriguing small mystery after another. And every time we think of a loose-end, Higashino comes back and ties it all neatly (up until the last page). Some of the answers to the mysteries in Higashino’s novels may seem mundane or too simple (considering the built-up). But the author’s stories are never boring and offers good emotional payoff (especially for a procedural about solving crimes).

 

The Tidal Zone – A Mesmerizingly Written Novel about Contemporary Parenthood

“Civilization, after all, survives on repression: probably all marriages, all families, require the silencing of words that, once spoken, could not be unsaid.”

Few pages into English writer Sarah Moss’ The Tidal Zone (published in 2016), I was thoroughly engrossed by the beauty of the author’s prose and the deeper truths it discloses. Moss brilliantly decodes human emotions in a way that immediately makes us recognize, understand, and empathize with the characters she has sketched. This is my first Sarah Moss novel and although the synopsis didn’t seem that interesting, I’m glad to have had the determination to give it a try. The Tidal Zone is an exploration of 21^st century family life and parenthood, which opens with a rather gloomy incident, pushing a middle-class English family to look beyond the drudgery and bliss of their domestic life. It sounds like something director Michael Haneke could make, even though Moss’ tender observations and intimate point-of-view narrative isn’t saddled with misanthropy.

Sarah Moss’ fifth novel unfurls from the perspective Adam Goldschmidt, a stay-at-home dad who does a bit of hourly-paid teaching at the local university. He also spends his free time researching on the postwar rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. However, Adam’s biggest joy is being the primary caregiver to his two lovely daughters: bookish and assertive 15-year-old Miriam and the precocious 8-year-old Rose. Adam is married to Emma, a workaholic GP with no talent for domestic duties, but greatly qualified to be the family’s sole breadwinner. There’s neither a sneering commentary on how children are affected when the parental roles are reversed nor unbridled scorn is reserved for the mom who ‘chooses’ career over children. Frustrations are expressed over Adam-Emma’s increasingly distant married life, sans the usual cliched message of motherhood.

What’s primarily interesting about The Tidal Zone is the inner monologue of an anxious Adam. He thinks (and worries) a lot, but like every one of us, he endlessly edits his inner flow of words to offer the allegedly prompt replies. As an unemployed PhD, Adam provides insights on range of themes: from post-World War II England to healthcare politics and the design of corporate housing estates. His insights about his family members are equally interesting, particularly his concern for his rebellious elder daughter, who says “patriarchy and hegemony and neoliberalism, several times a day”. And through his perceptions, we can discern the kind of person Adam is: a caring, generous, absurdly anxious, and an imperfect husband and dad. Adam’s existential malaise is stoked when Miriam, at school, goes into anaphylactic cardiac arrest. For some unknown reasons, Miriam heart has stopped. But thanks to CPR performed by a teacher and perfect timing of the paramedics, Miriam is saved.

Nevertheless, the family’s life and dynamics is transformed irrevocably. The sudden discernment of his daughter’s mortality evokes great fear within Adam. He has to face the hardships of the domestic life in the wake of this, while also enduring the fears about his children’s future. An incident from the past makes Adam wonder whether Miriam’s situation is genetic. But he curbs his anxieties and holds the family together. He still takes Rosie to school, who can’t easily fathom the reasons behind her sister slacking off at hospital, watching TV. He puts up with Emma, who approaches the crisis in a very GP-like manner (offering diagnosis rather than acknowledge the chasm of uncertainty). But we understand this is Emma’s coping mechanism. And although we might be far removed -- culturally or socially -- from the Goldschimdt family, the emotional unrest described here could be understood and easily related with. From capturing the boredom, desperation, and joys of family life to the silent horror of hospital environment, Sarah Moss’ has written a very 21^st century story with admirable clarity and depth.

The Tidal Zone, however, seems to fall a bit short of greatness since  I began to lose interest in the story in the middle-portions. I can understand that the novel is a character study and an exploration of contemporary English life. Yet the historical aspects of the novel (Coventry Church) and the story of Adam’s hippie father’s journey in chase of American dream weren’t as absorbing. It brings a sort of thematic depth to the tale, which I didn’t care for much (from an emotional viewpoint). The most intriguing aspect of the novel was Adam’s attempts to connect with Miriam, once after learning the fears and restrictions she has to put up with. These father-daughter conversations not only reach emotional depths without a bit of sentimentality, but also contain a fine dose of caustic wit (Miriam says, “If it happens again and I don’t survive, burn me, OK? It’s better for environment; there isn’t room for everyone to be buried”, to which Adam remarks, “It can’t be better for the environment. Burning requires energy and generates smoke. Burial’s just entropy.”) Moreover, everything about Adam and Miriam’s relationship is beautifully depicted; the father who is very proud of his daughter’s bold assertions even though he publicly plays the role of typical dad (“You can’t speak like that” he says to curtail her declamations). And you get the sense of how Miriam is both frustrated and moved by her father’s overwhelming attention. Overall, The Tidal Zone despite its minor structural flaws is a poignant and extraordinary novel about parental love.