PenguinRandomHouse – LisaAnnReads

I received a free version of Rainbirds on CD from Penguin Random House via LibraryThing. I’m grateful to Penguin Random House and LibraryThing for their generosity in providing a copy for me to review. All opinions are my own.

“Remember this, Ren. Sadness alone can’t harm anyone. It’s what you do when you’re sad that can hurts you and those around you.”

Synopsis
Rainbirds follows Ren Ishida on his journey to the fictional, remote town of Akakawa in the wake of his sister’s murder. What should be a short trip to wrap up her affairs becomes an escape for Ren—an escape from the expectations and failures of his own relationships in Tokyo and into the life of the sister who hid so much from him over the last decade. Ren stays in Akakawa, taking Keiko’s job and moving into her rooms in a local house. The farther he steps into Keiko’s life, the darker things become, until it isn’t clear that Ren himself will survive the trip unscathed.

Genre
This is a book that perhaps was mis-billed for me. That is to say, I expected a thriller going into the book—the beginning chapters set in motion the story of a grieving brother, come to the small town where his sister lived and was recently murdered. Ren is on a quest to find his sister’s killer, though he quickly comes to realize he didn’t know her nearly as well as he thought. While this plot provides the scaffolding for the book, at its heart, Rainbirds is less a noir mystery and more a character study into grieving Ren. That said, the noir feel remains—this may not be a noir thriller but it starts dark and stays dark. Throughout the book, I had the feeling of impending storm clouds—an expectation, a crackling of electricity in the air, the surrounding foggy darkness. If you like dark, slightly creepy literary character studies, don’t let the early chapters turn you off. This book may be right up your alley.

Audio
I have mixed feelings about the audio of this book. On the one hand, I usually enjoy audio of any books set in different countries or with non-American characters. The audio usually adds to the experience, setting forth the cadence of the speech, the different emphasis and pronunciation of what are otherwise familiar English words. And the names and places are almost never ones I could get right without audio—case in point here, the book takes place in the fiction “Akakawa.” If I had to read that, I’d probably have emphasized (very incorrectly) the middle “kak” where the audio narrator pronounced it “Ah-kah-kah-wah” – no kaks involved.

But I digress. Rainbirds seemed like the kind of book I usually love on audio. My issue here, however, was that this book was gloomy in the extreme. I do most of my audiobook listening while driving so the combination of the gloomy mood, melodic male narrator, and almost no action meant that there were times when I had to stop listening. This was, for example, not the book I could listen to while driving three hours home at 1am after a concert and stay awake and alive.

This is not to say that I don’t recommend the audio of this book. The voice of the narrator was well-chosen and it was produced well—I just personally need a little more action in my audiobooks.

Lolita
One of the characters Ren becomes entangled with is a student at his cram school—Rio Nakajima, whom Ren nicknames Seven Stars after the brand of cigarette she smokes (much as Humbert Humbert renames Delores, “Lolita”). Though Rio is not prepubescent, she is seventeen and Ren (though in his early 20s himself) is her teacher. When the two inevitably become sexually involved—I say inevitable because by the time it finally happens it has been so long set up that it’s impossible to miss where this going—it reeks of Lolita. Seventeen is a good distance from twelve and she does attain the age of consent in the book; however, in the process of discovering what happened to Keiko, Ren also uncovers family events that have led Rio to be as damaged as she is. This is not a well-adjusted seventeen year old who happens to be wise above her years. This is a damaged, childlike, aged-too-fast seventeen year old who has no business becoming romantically entangled with her teacher. This entire relationship still bothers me, even though I finished the book over a week ago.

With that said, Goenawan is a talented writer—though Ren tries to avoid scenarios where he would be alone with Rio, the course of events forces the intimate meeting. The set up allows you to sympathize when Ren, even where the idea of a teacher engaging in a sexual relationship with a student is something that you normally think of as a hard line “no.” Though Rainbirds wasn’t ultimately a book I loved, the ability of Goenawan to make me empathize with someone I found morally problematic—during the very scenes I found problematic—makes me want to read her future works.

Connections
The characters were more interconnected than I expected, with the players forming a web—much like small town America, everyone knows everyone and one person is always related to another. These connections also created a bit of a subplot where Ren uncovers and solves another little mini-mystery as he digs for more information about his sister. These chapters could have felt like a tangent; however, learning more about the people in his sister’s life opened doors to him to learn more about Keiko. The diversions were short but worthwhile.

These connections and diversions also provided some unexpected little bursts in the book of “I didn’t see that coming.” The problem for me and why I’ve been sitting with this book is that, for all the little bursts I didn’t see coming, the one I would have wanted—the identity of the murderer and some kind of conclusion—never popped. Instead, the conclusion fizzled, like a balloon slowly leaking air.

Ending (Very, Very Mild Spoilers—No Killer Identified)
Having had more time to think about it, I found the ending ultimately unsatisfactory—Ren does achieve a sense of closure in that he (and therefore the reader) determines whodunit, but by this point, the story had petered out so much, that it felt lackluster. Does Ren even care that he got his answer? I honestly couldn’t tell. He’s discovered something of himself—something perhaps he didn’t want to know. Where the previous connections and reveals crackled, the final reveal felt as if it didn’t matter. If Ren didn’t care that he had his answer, should we?

And here I come back to the thought that perhaps this book was mischaracterized. When I set aside my disappointment over the finish, over the sense that the mystery was no mystery at all, I’m left with a character study. A slow-burn, creepily noir character study into Ren, yes, but more his sister. In searching for his sister’s killer, the person Ren really finds is her, but far too late to do anything about it.

Notes
Published: March 6, 2018 by Penguin Random House
Author: Clarissa Goenawan
Date read: May 2, 2018
Rating: 3 ½ stars

I feel like I’ve done something terribly wrong
when all along
I’ve just been trying
to be good

Synopsis
This Impossible Light is a young adult novel in verse about Ivy, a fifteen year-old whose body betrays her as it grows, takes up the space left behind by her shrinking mother, leaving father, and missing best friend. As Ivy strives to perfection she comes to the seemingly logical conclusion that perfect lives in a place that can only be reached by restricting food and hours of biking up Seattle’s endless hills.

Before I go further I will explicitly say that this book, while beautiful and a book I think is a must-read—particularly for those who are or know teenage girls—comes with a giant trigger warning for disordered eating.

Shrinking Women
This Impossible Light is Meyers’s first novel, grown from the themes of her award-winning slam poetry piece, Shrinking Women, about the accidental inheritance of the women in her family, the messages passed along like the uneaten bread crumbs along the path. She’s also published a few articles online and in anthologies, largely about modern feminism.

Novel in Verse
I have not picked up many novels in verse, with Brown Girl Dreaming one of the first (if not the first) I can remember reading. I’ve never been a particular fan of most poetry—I enjoy it but I always feel like I’m trying really hard to like it more than I actually do. (The struggles of the book-snob life are real.) With well done novels in verse, I don’t run into the problems I do with other poetry—there are metaphors, sure, and there is meaning beyond the immediate words—but there is also a plot and character development so I feel like I can see where the poem is going and the message its conveying. I know the point of view of the speaker, I know her struggles and the supporting characters in her life. So when she tells me something, I know more of what she is saying that just the words on the page. Her life gives me the background I need to see the metaphor. With this foundation, I can appreciate the cadence and the crescendos—I can appreciate the poetry as poetry.

This Impossible Light satisfied my taste in novels in verse—the writing was spot on, the word choice itself fairly straightforward and easy enough for a middle schooler, though thematically (both for the disordered eating and kids that party their way into alcohol poisoning), I wouldn’t recommend this book until 8^th grade. It had the cadence of a spoken word poem, with many poems standing alone with an internal crescendo. The individual sections themselves built to internal conclusions, with the poems speeding up, feeling more frantic, as Ivy’s loses hold on the control she’s desperately seeking to gain by restricting her food.

So was everyone else really being this “bad” in high school?
It has seemed that over the last several months, every book I read set in high school features kids partying and/or sleeping around. My first thought is usually that I’m getting old and kids these days are drinking way more and having more sex than we were in high school. Shortly after this thought comes a sneaking suspicion that probably everyone else was drinking this much and having (almost) this much sex and just no one was talking to me about it because I would absolutely have judged them for it (I wasn’t very kind in high school). It’s funny how reading YA has made me realize how sheltered my own high school existence was—sheltered both by my parents and by the other kids leaving me out of things. (It’s okay. I eventually turned out alright.)

Here too I identify with Ivy. She was actually invited to the party (I was too—exactly one time) and drank a little bit before deciding it wasn’t for her. I deeply appreciated that Myers’s main character wasn’t into drinking, that she felt left out and somehow younger than everyone else when she made this choice. This resonated with what I remember feeling in high school. In many ways, Myers undercurrent of self-acceptance and self-love in This Impossible Light extends not only to Ivy’s body but also to her likes and dislikes. That math worksheets or watching movies with your mom can be an entirely acceptable way to spend a weekend.

Control

When you’re told enough times
the way you are
it doesn’t seem like
you’re allowed to be
anything
else

From experience the “good girl” thing becomes a double-edged sword. On the one hand, knowing that you’re a math nerd at heart can be a thing to embrace, though the line between self-nerd-love and defining yourself as the perfect mathlete, perfect scholar, perfect daughter can be razor sharp.

Though I never really fell prey to true disordered eating, I can identify with Ivy’s desperate need for control. I am a perfectionist at heart—if I’m perfect, if the world I order is perfect, then no one can be disappointed. There is no room for upset—either literal or emotional—from me or anyone else. Indeed, this need for control, the high-achieving perfectionism as a response to a less than perfect home life (which, side note—no one’s home life is ever perfect. That’s a myth we should just give up now) made Ivy seem familiar, as if I were looking at a version of myself in high school. I do not think this need for control is unusual and, though I have absolutely nothing to back this up beyond my own subjective experience, I think it is likely that this sort of desire for control lies at the heart of most high-achiever girls. That “perfectionism” is just a pretty word we use to describe someone with an intense need to control their environment and themself.

Recommended
As I indicated early on, I do think this is a novel most people should read—particularly anyone who teaches or interacts with teenagers. There is no right way to be a person when you’re a teenager—you can love what you love and hate what you hate—but the struggle is not having those things become what defines you. Part of the way you learn to love yourself without having the things you love become the things that rule your life (whether that be math or boys or both) is by having teachers, parents, and friends who walk that line with you—who show you where the difference is between healthy self-love and unhealthy obsession. Books like This Impossible Light can be signposts on that journey—both for the teenage girl and for the adults in her life. If you are in a place where you can read a book about disordered eating that includes the internal monologue of the person caught up in it, then this is a book I highly recommend.

Notes
Published: June 6, 2017 by Philomel Books (@philomel), imprint of Penguin Random House (@penguinrandomhouse)
Author: Lily Myers
Date read: February 3, 2018
Rating: 4 stars

Tag: PenguinRandomHouse

Review: Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan

Review: This Impossible Light by Lily Myers