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Lester Tan

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Lester Tan is currently reading

Bad Feminist

by Roxane Gay (Goodreads Author)

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Feb 22, 2015 02:36AM

Lester Tan is currently reading

The Book of Strange New Things

by Michel Faber

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Lester Tan said: " Hello!

I'm new to this site so I'm still trying to figure out how it works. It looks promising so far though. I chose to get an account mainly because I'm getting older and my memory is no longer functioning as well as it used to which results in me f Hello!

I'm new to this site so I'm still trying to figure out how it works. It looks promising so far though. I chose to get an account mainly because I'm getting older and my memory is no longer functioning as well as it used to which results in me forgetting the plots of novels that I read. One day, if I were to meet my long-lost lover(who by the way has been in hiding for way too long) at a tea party and if we were to engage in a conversation about books(which we will because I'm assuming that she's a bookaholic like I am otherwise I would rather remain on the shelf thank you very much ooh I just made a book-related pun), I would be making lots of idiotic comments about I don't know how pretty the author in question used to be or I would get the names of characters mixed up. Writing about books seems like the best cure for literary amnesia and doomed bachelorhood so here I am fellas!

I've been reading Michael Faber's "The Book of Strange New Things" lately. It's a behemoth of a book(anything that is beyond 400 pages is a behemoth to me which explains why I would probably take a few lifetimes to finish "War and Peace") but it's definitely worth reading. The book tells the story of Peter, a Christian missionary who has been sent on a mission to a distant planet Oasis to meet the spiritual needs of its natives. He leaves behind a pregnant wife who communicates with him via a machine called the "Shoot" which operates like an updated fax machine. Over the course of the novel, their relationship is tested as a yawning chasm starts to form between the both of them.

I am a little leery of novels that deal with Christianity for various reasons. My main contention with some of these novels is that a lack of critical distance is established between these novels and Christianity. There are novels that run on fervent anti-religious sentiment while others rely too heavily on sentimental value and pathos ("Gilead" falls under this category). One needs restraint and critical objectivity to write about a religion as multi-faceted as Christianity. This novel, however, manages to achieve that elusive balance between emotional appeal and intellectual heft. It throws up compelling questions about the nature of faith in a world that is riven by unimaginable catastrophes. Does the existence of suffering negate the existence of a benevolent God? If one is unable to justify God's existence with incontrovertible scientific proof does that necessarily mean that one's faith is built on sinking sand? These are just some of the questions that ran through my mind as I was reading the novel.

The parts of the novel that I found the most poignant are the exchanges between Peter and his wife Beatrice. Ultimately, we are forced to confront the quandary that all lovers grapple with at some point in their lives: can love really transcend physical distance? If proximity and physical intimacy are necessary conditions for a relationship to work then is that relationship doomed to fail from the start? The novel also explores the complex relationship between love and memory. The importance of memory and the intellect in shoring up a relationship seems to undermine the notion that love is just a feeling or a form of charged electricity between two individuals. Soon, as Peter finds himself unable to remember his wife's physical appearance (how apt that I started this post with a little reflection on my ailing memory), his relationship starts to slip through the cracks in his memory.

"He thought of Beatrice, whose cheekbones were worthy of a French chanteuse. At least, that's what he'd told her sometimes; he couldn't actually picture Bea's cheekbones now. A vaguer, more impressionistic vision of his wife's face flickered in his brain, half-obliterated by the sunlight beaming through the vehicle's windscreen and the swirl of recent memories of various Jesus lovers. Troubled, he strained to envisage her in sharper focus. A string of pearls in the dimness of another time and place, a white bra with familiar flesh inside."

I know I'm throwing up a barrage of questions but this is what the best novels leave us with: questions. The novel is also filled with beautifully- rendered descriptions of the Oasan landscape and its inhabitants. One of the reasons why this novel has been described as "genre-defying" is that the descriptions of Oasis are so plausible and realistic that it's hard to identify the planet as a fantastical creation. I particularly enjoyed reading Fable's descriptions of the rain in Oasis--one of the true litmus tests of a writer's talent is his ability to describe weather conditions--which falls in "great shimmering veils" that swirl "majestically across the plains" of Oasis. On a random note, there's a section in "The Awl" that is devoted to poetic descriptions of the weather in New York for those of you who were torn between becoming a meteorologist and a writer when you were growing up.

In one particularly memorable scene in the novel, the narrator describes how the body of a deceased Oesan is treated by its fellow natives. Its body, which is described as being "obscured under a shimmering, shivering layer of insects" is left out in the open. We then find out that the death of an Oasan native is utilised for animal husbandry: dead bodies are used as breeding grounds for insects to lay their eggs and to produce nectar. Peter's revulsion towards this "nightmarish spectacle" is understandable especially since death is still treated as a sacred event in modern societies but his revulsion soon gives way to a deeper spiritual revelation of the division between the body and the soul. One's body may be ravaged by decay and disease but according to Christian theology, one's soul would be safe in heaven. I will remember this scene for a long, long time.

Oh dear, I think I just wrote a full-length essay. I've not finished reading the book--I intend to savour it slowly--but I can say with absolute certainty that this is one of the best books I've read in a long while. This books is strange and interesting and deeply philosophical all at the same time. How can that be a recipe for disaster?

That's all folks! I will be posting my next review soon! ...more "

Feb 22, 2015 02:11AM · see review

Lester’s Quotes

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

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“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

tags: love

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“I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

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“...home lies in the things you carry with you everywhere and not the ones that tie you down.”
― Pico Iyer, The Man Within My Head

tags: home, traveling

54 likes

“I know loving me isn’t easy – the all-night

helicopter parties, the glow-in-the-dark haircuts, but when I look at you

it’s like praying with my eyes. I know it’s stupid to not own a gun yet have

so many triggers, but in some other world gigantic seashells hold humans

to their ears and listen to the echo of machines.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

34 likes

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