I am currently 25 pages into Karen Tei Yamashita's Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, and I am hooked. After drudging through Faust, this book feels like a breath of fresh air. Reading through each character's introductory chapter I love how each character seems that they have some kind of supernatural tie to nature and to each other. Each seems to have a finite purpose in their lives and I'm very interested to see how their storylines bring them together. A point which I found to be particularly interesting is the POV from which the narrator is telling the story. Although he/she/it(?) floats only six inches in front of one of the character's face, this tiny ball presents a very original, otherworldly, and omniscient point of view. Between this class and my Lit 499 I've felt like I've been reading many books at a very quick pace which I haven't really been able to enjoy, but thus far I am really enjoying this book and I look forward to seeing where this tiny floating ball of a narrator takes me.
Yes! The novel's structure of independent stories that intersect beautifully is also what drew me in. You can really sense the simultaneity, the cohesion of the chapters in instances like the passage: "Just as Chico Paco set forward on his journey, Kazumasa and I were on a rickety train somewhere in the state of Minas Gerais coming out of a long tunnel, old Mane Pena was carving a footworm out of the sole of his foot, and Batista and Tania Aparecida were rolling away from their early morning lovemaking" (28). It's not the independent, supernatural stories, but their collective ability to comment on our relationship to nature that's truly sophisticated.
ReplyDeleteI agree..I feel that it is so hard to keep up with all this reading and work! I do not get to enjoy the novels I read as well as I want to. However I agree as well that this novel had me hooked, especially after reading Faust. It is an easy read and it is also an interesting read. I was scared that I was not going to like this novel in the beginning because it seems to be out there in the sense that a mole on a guys face is the narrator. And then when you go on to read more of the novel a lot of the people and situations they are in are bizarre. It seems as though there is a supernatural power that is in this world that they live in. However, it works in this novel. I do enjoy reading it as well.
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