Untold Night and Day

Book Title: Untold Night and Day

Author: Bae Suah

Date Started: June 22nd 2022

Date Completed: June 30th 2022

Genres: Adult, Magical Realism

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

In the note at the end, Deborah Smith who translated Suah’s novel describes it as a poetic fever dream and, having read this in chunks commuting on the London Underground in humid summer, that summed it up pretty well to me.

This is one of those stream-of-consciousness-meets-surrealist glimpses through the looking glass that I personally find more interesting from an analytical perspective than an immersive one. There are really fascinating cycles and parallels, patterns and whimsy, and distilled moments of reality that are almost uncomfortable with how close to home they hit. It’s about the worlds we build up in our heads, in our dreams, that are so close to reality sometimes maybe they are, until someone turns a light on or an alarm goes off, or we wonder how we possibly got to his place.

I would recommend reading Smith’s notes in the end if, like me, you were a little lost but also because it’s always fascinating to read about how a translator constructs a translated piece of work - and with one such as Suah’s writing which feels so distinct (this is the second story I’ve read by her) but must be so challenging to translate due to the style. It’s an engaging piece of writing, but I just wasn’t that into it.

Babel

Book Title: Babel

Author: R.F. Kuang

Date Started: May 27th 2022

Date Completed: June 22nd 2022

Genres: Historical, Fantasy, Thriller, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Writing this review is hard, for a number of reasons. One of them is that I'd need an essay to fully explain how great and clever and thoughtful and dreadful and magical it is. Another is that I want to shove you in the direction of other people's reviews and thoughts (reading reviews from different people with a variety of backgrounds, preferences and specialisms is a good thing, kids). And, really, it can all be summed up by saying R.F. Kuang is an exceptional writer, storyteller and academic.

Babel, at its heart, is a love letter to Oxford, to etymology and language and things lost in translation. It marvels at technology, at communication, at friendship, at culture. And it exposes its cracks and its shadows and the selfish people who control it, and the people who go along with it, and the people who very quietly say no. It is so well-balanced and articulated; how do you communicate the endlessly dreadful conflict of dearly loving something that comes from terrible, ignorant, colonial roots. What is our responsibility in acknowledging these things, and what is our responsibility for changing them? This isn't what Babel is wholly about - it is about so much more - but it is the thing that many people reading it may not have been confronted with before, even though we all should have been a long time ago.

Aside from all that, it's also a gripping and enchanting thriller. The characters are lovable and fantastically rounded and flawed (what else do we expect from Kuang?). I'm endlessly impressed by the author's ability to write and execute her stories just as brilliantly in different genres. The Poppy War was astounding, the complexity and fantasy and scope that was so readable that you just got absolutely lost. She's done it again with a historical thriller, a setting worlds apart and yet so close. She's writing a rom-com? I cannot wait. If she published her college thesis I would devour it. I will read everything she ever writes at this point.

Kuang also knows how to write endings that fit the stories she's telling. I don't think it's unfair to say that the majority of stories we process have endings that might be pleasing, or nice - bittersweet even - but few of them align the themes of their story so perfectly that it is seamlessly right for the story being told. Often because, as human are fallible and flawed and problematic, these endings aren't necessarily perfectly happy, or they might even in some way seem hopeless. The dragon isn't slain, never to return; he lives on. But Kuang hangs her endings perfectly in the balance of reality and resolution, and they are so endlessly satisfying as a result. And somehow, by acknowledging the hopelessness, it can, just maybe, feel hopeful. The dragon wasn't slain - but now maybe we know that it can't always kill us either.