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2025: A Change in Attitude

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2025 marked a change in my attitude: toward reading, rating, reviewing. Not that significant of a change in reading, though, but still…

I’d set up a 25 books for 2025 earlier last year following a trend on X, and I’d chosen many books that, as an act of cheating, were already on my currently-reading list so I would only have to finish them and got on forward without feeling guilty (of course). But, alas! I dropped some of those “current reads”, read other, unplanned books, and only managed to read and finish seven from the list. What an embarrassment of a number. But this is not the change I’m talking about (since I do usually stray off plans), but last year I tended to read wilfully, free of any limitations, of any restrictions―be it number, genre, gender of writers, theme. I didn’t join any reading challenge (except for Short Story September, which suited me) and I finally put down the books I had kept for so long from my bookshelf and read them (so I could sell them after I finished). I planned only to read 15 books but thanks to Legend of the Condor Heroes manhua I could get to 21.

To be honest, I never care about the gender of writers I read. I never intentionally set to read more female writers (but ended up read quite many), I never really like to read non-fiction (but I did read four), and I finally (finally!!!) finished reading Tian Ya Ke (what a horrible book by Priest’s own standard), after so many delays and setbacks (because, you know, it’s a horrible book, compared to Shan He Biao Li I read in 2024). So, overall, I read (and finished) books I didn’t intentionally want to read, and left behind what I did put on my TBR.

For the rating aspect of my reading activity, the change was quite radical (if I may say so). I usually gave full marks or added 0.5 point (based on Goodreads’ rating system) to all the books I read. I never considered to give them 4.25 out of 5, for example, even if the book didn’t actually wow me but indeed was more than very good. However, last year I started to use Storygraph’s rating system to be fairer in judging the quality of the book I finished (though it’s still very rightly subjective). So although I still have to follow Goodreads’ system on Goodreads (needless to say), I didn’t do it anymore on Storygraph and here on my blog (as you can see in my recent reviews).

I also made a change in the way I wrote reviews. My previous attitude was: write a full review, or none at all. But starting 2025 I (well, finally?) set myself to do a short review of the books I managed to finish but on which I didn’t have time to pour all my raging thoughts. That’s why you can see some unusually short reviews put together here lately.

2026: No Goals, No Plans, No Challenges, Just #ReadMoreClassics
So, now, what will I do, what will I read in 2026? I don’t want to commit to anything, I just want to read whatever happens to cross my mind. But if I am to set something for myself, it is #ReadMoreClassics. No, it is not a plan, nor a challenge, it’s a long-term commitment so that I, as a contemporary fiction aficionado, will have more references from the past and be able to widen my horizon in classic literature. I have a list already of the books I want to delve into in that area, but that doesn’t mean I can’t add, change, or abandon them altogether.

That’s all my recap of last year’s reading and my “plan” for the future. What about you? Do you have any “plans”? Or are you going to read just as loosely?

fiction, review

Malam Seribu Jahanam

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All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

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But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Malam Seribu Jahanam, Intan Paramaditha’s second novel after the critically acclaimed Gentayangan in 2017 (published as The Wandering in English translation in 2020) is a picture of a common, next-door family heavily shaken by issues of gender, class and religion. The book depicts the lives and values of the Indonesian majority―Muslims, middle-class, patriarchal, though the characters are not Javanese; and what lies beneath those identities is what causes the cracks in their fragile ties.

The story opens with suicide-bomb incidents perpetrated by a married couple bringing their kids in two places: a church and a transwomen’s Qur’an reciting gathering. Without having even to watch the news or read any papers you can guess that these incidents were motivated and driven by Islamic extremism―because, to be honest, in this age and time, who would have done it other than Muslim extremists? The bombs take lives, of course, including the bomber couple and one of their children, leaving behind one nagging question: who is actually behind this evil deed, and why?

As the media throw that question to the curious public and use their “journalistic” trick to get the answer, Mutiara has to keep calm and clean up the mess her little sister has done―as she usually did with her broom all the mess and dirt and litter her family left at their home. All the while Maya, the second sister, is away in the United States, wandering and running away from God-knows-what and trying to reconstruct the life of their grandmother into a work of fiction. But that doesn’t mean she is not affected by the news, or by the fact that, back in the day, there was a time when she and Mutiara had secretly wanted their youngest, prettiest sister to die.

All the mess aside, there was so much pain left in their childhood spent mostly at their grandmother’s home in Tanjung Karang: an oldest daughter who had always to do everything in place of their mother and be relied upon, a second daughter who felt unloved and was cast away in their grandmother’s house because their parents had just had a little baby, and the little “baby” who was everybody’s darling because she was the prettiest and who drew her sisters’ jealousy. But that’s not it. There was other pain nobody could see―the pain endured by the son of their housemaid, the pain he’s been carrying throughout his life and he’s intended to ask for payback.

Malam Seribu Jahanam doesn’t merely show the reader how a normal family is just a normal family―with all their financial problems, sibling fight, husband-and-wife arguments, hatred toward the in-laws, the mysterious matriarch with her oppressed scapegoat of a servant in tow. It shows the reader how all these problems basically stem from the culture, the worldview, the religion that we, intentionally or unintentionally, embrace. Mutiara saw in her mother how disadvantageous it was to be financially dependent on men and that’s what she refuses to be, Maya saw how unloving her family was and that’s what she runs away from, while Annisa saw how suffocating her father’s love and protection were and that’s what she tries to break. And, on top of it all, Rosalinda saw in her status how oppressive the people of majority could be and that’s what she wants to avenge. This book is about the unspeakable, incurable pain we have to deal with because our society is too patriarchal, too structural, and too feudal that many people are unfairly put in the margin and left unheard. And the result? A blow that takes many more other lives.

Intan Paramaditha writes very beautifully, in rhymes that you can see and feel in almost every sentence as if it’s magic. Her writing sounds so much like a sad poem that inexplicably blends with the story she is telling―a tragedy of family and society. This kind of style can be a double-edged sword, though, for at the beginning it’s sometimes too flowery to even make sense. But that, if anything, is the only flaw this book has and is not even worthy of mention.

It is very rare to have a book like Malam Seribu Jahanam in Indonesian literary landscape. Many works talk about religious extremism and patriarchal society, but only a few can dig deeper below the usual surface and show us the roots of our problems, individually and/or socially. It deserves all the praise and hype, and, luckily for the international readers, to be translated into other languages.

Rating: 4.75/5

fiction, review

Home Remedies

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Home Remedies by Xuan Juliana Wang, first published in 2019, is a collection of twelve short stories divided into three parts: family, love, and time and space. As a Chinese migrant herself, Wang seems to draw her inspiration from her own experience as a foreigner in the US. In many stories, however, she seems to look back to what China was like in the early 2000s and what did it feel like to live in that era―which, most of the time, led up therefrom to moving abroad to seek a better life.

The first story of the first part, Mott Street in July, portrays a small, poor, Chinese migrant family living―or, rather, struggling―in a certain part of New York. As it unfolds, we can see that they’re not only struggling to make ends meet and fit themselves into the new land, but also to make the whole family stay together. As the three children grow up, they never see their baba (father) smile even once, except in the wedding photo with their mother. Lucy, the youngest one, can sense that their baba is not happy: with his wife, with his life, with everything. So it’s no wonder that one day he decides to leave them―with no notes, nothing. Their mama is pretty much convinced that her husband never actually loves her, but still she calls the police, with no apparent result. Long after that, when she has won a gambling game, it is her turn to leave them―with no money, nothing.

For Our Children and for Ourselves is the complete opposite of the first story. If Mott Street in July depicts struggling Chinese migrants living in a less than average condition in the US, this one shows the success story of a hardworking, determined, clear-minded businesswoman. She offers Xiao Gang, our protagonist, the same chance of success (meaning: a better job, a better life, a better “future”) by giving her daughter’s hand in marriage. The question is: should Xiao Gang leaves everything behind in China (family, friends, a chance to marry well with the beautiful woman of his dream) for a freer, financially more stable life with a Down’s syndromed, middle-aged woman he has no interest in? Or, should he stay in his country and live his poor life with no progress and no prospects?

Days of Being Mild, the second and the best story in the family part, showcases a different side of China in the early 2000s. Freer and more prosperous, the country shows a brand new face and sees a sudden surge of “bei piao”, a new generation of young people moving to Beijing, being exposed to newly absorbed Western culture and in search of their dreams and life goals―what their dreams and goals are, they never exactly know. It is freedom they pursue, and a strong wish not to be, or live, like their parents. They don’t know what they want, they only want to live their lives to the fullest and spend their youth in a “cool way”.

The second part of the collection, love, opens with a celebrity-gossip-like piece, Fuerdai to the Max. With love as the main theme, the story doesn’t show the reader an exact romance of two people, but, at its base, how a certain feeling of crush on somebody can drive you to do the foolest thing in your life and drag the people around you down with you. The biggest problem, however, is that you are not only young and fool, but also rich with a certain family background that will definitely attract people’s attention and make them want to dig deep into your family’s secret and expose it to the public.

While Fuerdai is not really about “love”, at least not from afar, Vaulting the Sea is exactly what it is, and a gay one. Set not long before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, it tells of the deep friendship developed between Zhao Taoyu and Peng Hai―two teenagers picked by the government’s talent scout to join the national training camp to become China’s future professional athletes competing at the said international stage. Shaken by the fact that he has to be separated from his beloved mother, Zhao Taoyu relies heavily on Peng Hai―only Peng Hai’s company and easy-going nature can console him. As the years pass and they are paired as swimming double, the feelings between them become stronger and take another form, something that Taoyu recognizes and secretly embraces, but that Peng Hai refuses to admit even to himself.

Stories in third and last part, time and space, show the reader how time goes by (sometimes slowly, sometimes so fast) and how space is an enigma. Algorithmic Problem-Solving for Father-Daughter Relationships is about a father who keeps wondering how his relationship with his daughter Wendy takes a bad turn while thinking back to the time when she was still a little kid and nothing seemed to be able to separate them. Echo of the Moment narrates a strange tale where Echo, the protagonist, suddenly becomes a fashion star after wearing luxurious branded clothes left behind by a previous influencer who is found dead committing suicide on the railway―and that she is not the only one experiencing such unbelievable, inexplicable weirdness.

Even more inexplicable is Future Cat, where a wine ager can age not only a bottle of wine but also everything and everybody, including the protagonist herself, who is stuck in her past (relationship, memories) even though she has moved on with somebody else and with the career path she has chosen. The Art of Straying Off Course spans the protagonist’s lifetime, from her childhood to her old age when she’s eventually divorced her husband (who was not necessarily the one she loved). And after living in the US for almost her entire life, she finally comes back to her home village in China and sees all the surprising changes that she cannot recognizes it anymore. She then reflects on her whole life―that it is merely a series of changes she cannot avoid or hold back.

Xuan Juliana Wang’s writing leans toward the surreal, the strange and the unreal, although what she tries to tell the reader is very much painfully realistic. Beneath all the subtle jokes and humor, there are sadness and sorrow and unspeakable sufferings of financial struggle, of broken families, failed romance, confusing life events, and of course, of being uprooted and planted elsewhere while at the same time blood and traditions cannot be forgotten or washed off easily.

The most prominent theme in the collection is definitely the new face of China and its people in the early 2000s, around the time the Beijing Olympics was held―the finally seen existence of homosexual people (legalized though not recognized), the free sex lifestyle (though porn was, and is still today, illegal), the changes in the entertainment industry (it’s easier for artists to make money by doing a livestream than to get a good script and director), and the boom of the country’s economy resulting in the emergence of the second rich generation a.k.a fuerdai. But if there is one thing that is truly obvious in almost every number is the stories of divorced parents, either because the father doesn’t love the mother enough, or it is the mother who seeks freedom and independence.

Home Remedies is really an incredible short story collection. The strength lies in both the ideas and the execution, although one or two are not quite impressive. Wang’s talent is displayed in the clever way she concocts her wild ideas and put them on paper―showing to the reader what it feels like to be Chinese both at home and abroad at a certain period of time without making us judgmental toward the country we think we know.

Rating: 4.5/5

fiction, review

Fuerdai to the Max, from the collection Home Remedies by Xuan Juliana Wang

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Fuerdai to the Max, the first short story in the second part of Xuan Juliana Wang’s collection Home Remedies, reads like those celebrity gossips posted on X-like Chinese social media Weibo, if you ever encounter one. What could be more scandalous than being second-generation rich kids sent to study in the US with money your parents earn by doing God-knows-what and living a free, wild life nobody in the Mainland can imagine and still having the guts to bully others in a country where the local law will not help you cover your evil deeds so you cannot possibly get away with whatever you do?

Skinny Sam (because there are two Sams in the gang) barely got away with his reckless driving and is now back in China. He is picking up Kenny at the airport, who has just landed in Beijing from the US and was one of his pals back in the day. They’re still friends, relatively speaking, but their relationship is no longer what it was after what happened in California. Blindly in love with Lily, the only girl in their group of five, Sam brought his friends to “give a lesson” to a girl named Wey who slandered Lily―saying her parents were in a huge debt so they made her stay in a luxurious hotel to whore. Sam thought Wey wouldn’t dare to fight back, but she reported them to the local police and got them caught one by one. Sam was lucky to be able to escape early and back to China without any scratch. At best, his parents are keeping him on a tighter leash now. But Kenny was put in jail and had to go through all the shitty things possible and would’ve not been able to come back home if it hadn’t been for his aunt. With his parents’ identity, if what he―they―did in the US gets out, people will want to dig deep into his family and discover where they got their money from. With the anti-corruption law in China, nobody will want that.

Fuerdai to the Max more or less depicts contemporary China where everybody can be rich by any means (legal or illegal) and where they start to think that having education abroad is one way to upgrade themselves to another level, to have a “better” life and status. But at the heart of it, it also portrays their young generation who rely heavily on their parents’ money and think they can do whatever they want or are bent on without having to be held responsible. What they obviously forget is that money cannot buy everything―especially not the law (not in their own country, not in other’s), and certainly not the love of their parents, or of anybody else.

Like any other number in the collection, Fuerdai to the Max is filled with quirky humor and given a twist at the end which is perhaps pretty predictable but very thoughtful of the writer. Xuan Juliana Wang is definitely talented―not only for her diaspora ideas and the way she crafts her stories, but also for her deftness in tackling her narrative. Home Remedies, as a whole, is surely a short-story collection anybody should pay attention to, and for this very reason a review of the entire book is needed… and will come up soon here.

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*This review is posted for the #ShortStorySeptember challenge hosted by ANZLitLovers.

fiction, memoir, others, review

Short Reviews: Three Recent Reads

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1. Educated – Tara Westover (4.5/5)

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Sometimes what makes a memoir a memoir is not how complete it is as a linear story―that is, from the earliest times to a certain period before the writer starts to put pen to paper. Sometimes the more fractured the memories are, the more complete the account is. Educated by Tara Westover is not only fractured―in a sense that Westover herself admits she has forgotten some things and has to ask her brothers for confirmations about particular details of the incidents she describes―but also that it is somewhat non-linear in its timeline. It is also precariously unclear as to how Westover feels about those incidents―and, most of all, about her family―that her stream of emotions seems like a rift of so many uncertainties.

Educated is a book as fragile as Westover’s relationship with her family; but unlike the latter which brims with lies, manipulations and mind-boggling fanaticism thicker than blood, this book is so fragile because it is so strong in its narrative and depictions―of the pain, of the horrendous blindness toward the pain, of the terribly unacceptable things done in and by her family, of her trying to find a way out yet being hindered by her own reluctance, of the crumbling of the brittle structure they call home, of its blatant devastation. All these are so suffocatingly strong that sometimes readers need to take a break and look away so as not to see what acts of domestic violence next that Westover’s family will do to her (and that she tries to look away from, too) physically and emotionally and take a deep breath before letting every word and sentence choke them again with distress and stinging discomfort.

Educated is one of those books that readers will definitely love for all the tortures it does to them, and for all the hopes it gives at the end.

2. Let Me Tell You What I Mean – Joan Didion (4/5)

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Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion is a collection of essays that’s obviously without any single, common theme. It talks about everything and anything, ranging from Didion’s travel to places, encounter with people, personal experience of rejection (and how to deal with it), to her writing life and how she feels about women’s image in media (created by men, of course). While her writing itself is unfailingly informative and communicative, it is both elegant and seems to be willing to tell you things in a very friendly way. It talks to you, if anything, not merely tells you; hence its unputdownableness despite the random things she writes about that you don’t really understand.

The most prominent quality of this book is that it exudes “Americanness”. We can say the same, of course, of any kind of writing coming from or written by any American writer. But it’s not only about Didion’s way of putting her pen to paper; the said quality is clearly seen―and strongly felt―in the mood her sentences emit, the certain topics she chooses to write, and the “American culture” she lets us look into. When these couple of essays are read by American people they surely will just nod their head in recognition and understanding but not in amazement nor with their eyes wide-opened or their brows furrowed. When read by non-American, however, they’re likely giving the reader a sense of and a glimpse into what “Americanness” means.

3. Sawerigading Datang dari Laut – Faisal Oddang (4.75/5)

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There are now more and more literary voices from the eastern part of Indonesia worthy of our attention, but Faisal Oddang is always among the most prominent ones. Armed with his unusual stories about Bugis culture and society in South Sulawesi, he has established himself as some sort of a representative speaking out about their problems, conflicts and painful history.

His short-story collection, Sawerigading Datang dari Laut, has pretty much the same theme as his breakout, award-winning novel Puya ke Puya, but with something more. There is still a look into the complicated consequences of holding on―or leaving out, for that matter―the custom and tradition, into the tug-of-war between the old ways and the new ways, into what could happen in the realm of the dead and what actually happens in real life on earth. But Oddang also in this book includes the heart-wrenching events before and after the declaration of Indonesia’s independence in 1945: the last fight against the Dutch, the Japanese occupation (the rape and the forced prostitution), the DI/TII rebellion. The most attention-grabbing in the entire collection, however, is those stories featuring bissu as the main characters―the agender priests of the ancient religion held by Bugis people in South Sulawesi―stories about their same-sex love, their fight against the Dutch and the oppressive government ruling after, and their betrayal of their religion and their own people.

What’s lacking in this book―seemingly unimportant but it is quite the other way around―is Oddang’s writing style. It’s such a shame that his writing seems to decline since Puya ke Puya. All stories included in this 2019 collection were written after the hit novel (which was published in 2014), but instead of getting better and more mature, Oddang seems to have become more childish in his diction, phrases, and even in the structure of his sentences. This could be a truly perfect short-story collection about the complexity of history, culture and society, but for this one reason that’s definitely not the case.

fiction, review

Jalan Tak Ada Ujung

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Mochtar Lubis’ Jalan Tak Ada Ujung (or, A Road with No End in English translation) is a historical fiction set in 1946, a modern era in Indonesian history where the independence declaration the year before didn’t stop the Dutch from coming to its former colony to occupy it once more. First published in 1952 (this particular Yayasan Obor Indonesia’s edition was reprinted for the seventh time in 2016), the story doesn’t follow any heroic actions, though it does seem so, of our protagonist―rather, it depressingly, and disturbingly at times, displays his cowardice and lack of enthusiasm for fighting the colonizers. This book is clearly not about being a hero; instead, it is about a road that has no end, a road that the protagonist has to blindly walk on to reach not only true independence, but complete freedom.

The novella-length novel starts with a bleak, thunderous rainy night where two trucks of NICA troops riding on the road and making loud noises with their guns. It keeps going on till morning when, around Gang Jaksa – Kebon Sirih area, they randomly shoot people on the street: police officers, pedicap driver, little children playing their kite. This brutal action seems out of the place, and yet, looking at the situation, it is also something that the local people are already used to. In the middle of it is our protagonist, Isa, who’s trying so hard to hide and run for his life. Through the first series of events readers can already see that he is not meant to be a savior, he is merely an ordinary person in the middle of a war wanting to stop it but will not do anything about it.

But then in a nightwatch meeting Isa meets Hazil, a young man with a burning revolutionary soul. It is through their love for music and their talent in playing violin are they connected to each other and become friends. Standing together, though, they are like two unrelated persons walking on two separate paths. Hazil yearns for total independence from any controlling nation; he is eager to be involved in war, be it underground or open. He doesn’t mind holding and smuggling guns; and if he has to oppose the Dutch openly, then so be it. Hazil is brave and reckless, wild and thoughtless. And he has his eye on Isa’s wife, Fatimah.

The condensed narrative is miraculously packed with so many details of events and feelings of almost every character. Lubis deftly blends Isa’s cowardice and Hazil’s bravery with their underground revolutionary activities and the horrors and, through their joined points of view, shows how the oppressed people can also be the oppressors, that years of being colonized can make people mimic the cruelty they have experienced and take it out on “the other” who have been living on the same land generation-to-generation―hence projecting racism they’ve been receiving onto innocent people.

Jalan Tak Ada Ujung is also heavy with triangle romance between the three main characters. Living in unspeakable fear as he is, Isa is chronically impotent that he cannot make his wife happy, much less having children. Fatimah is initially determined to be faithful to her husband no matter what, but the lure of desire and Hazil’s charisma have broken down her defense. Unfortunately, it’s not that Isa is not suspicious, he just refuses to believe what’s obvious.

Jalan Tak Ada Ujung is a thorough short novel. While it narrates the revolutionary struggle of Indonesian people against the still coming colonizers, it didn’t fail to lay open those people in their true color: a coward, a cheater, a liar, a thief, bullies, warlords wanna-be, people who think being colonized by one nation is better than being colonized by the other (rather than thinking not being colonized is better than anything at all). But it didn’t describe those people as one-dimensional characters, either, because we can also see that they’re multifaceted―and growing; especially Isa who, at the end of the book, finds himself accepting his deep-rooted weakness and making peace with it so that he becomes braver and stronger.

All in all, despite some sexist view on women, and the unsettling vibes the characters give the reader, Jalan Tak Ada Ujung by Mochtar Lubis is an almost perfect modern historical fiction for those who want to know a little bit about the events following Indonesia’s independence declaration, and how the people still struggled for the true―and whole―freedom.

Rating: 4.25/5

fiction, review

Past Read-Books I Want to Talk About

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Well, here are some very short reviews of the books I had read but not had the time to talk about…

When I Was Mortal – Javier Marías (4/5)

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First time reading Marías, who is dubbed one of the best writers from Europe. I didn’t expect anything when I delved into this short story collection, but what I got was an intriguing mystery which is not in the usual form of mystery. No case solving (nothing is solved), no who dunnit (nobody seems to be doing anything), no why dunnit (it blurred more often than not). The most obviously outstanding about this book is Marías’ excellent writing, which shows why he was such a great talent in Europe worth his name.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong (4.5/5)

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Originally a poet, Vuong writes beautifully. He talks in his otherworldly sentences about generational and familial pain, past war affecting his current life, social and self acceptance. This can be a super excellent book if it is not for the sexist nuance under Trevor’s character.

Madonna in a Fur Coat – Sabahattin Ali (4.5/5)

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Being a fan of Orhan Pamuk for years, I very rarely read Turkish literature by other Turkish writers. I had wanted to read this book for so long and finally picked it up quite randomly from my digital library. I was so emotionally shocked by the melancholy underneath it. The story is not only captivating, but also dragging the reader away into the depth of its sadness. The novel is pretty short, but the effect is quite long-lasting.

Winter in Sokcho – Elisa Shua Dusapin (4.25/5)

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Dusapin writes more about identity than subtle love story, more about loneliness than living in a remote area. The prose is very engaging, and the pain is lurking beneath almost every part and every conversation. Since the book is very short, the heart-tugging effect feels sudden but so strong.

Ular Berbisa dan Buah Delima – Anton Kurnia (ed.) (4/5)

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Another world short story collection curated and translated by Anton Kurnia, this time from Asia-Africa region. It tells stories from several Asian and African countries so it displays various perspectives on various topics. My favorite is Obat Mujarab by the renowned Chinese writer and Nobel laureate, Mo Yan.

fiction, review

The House of Mirth

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The House of Mirth is one of those Edith Wharton’s most prominent works alongside The Age of Innocence, which landed her a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921. The former was first published in October 1905, following its serialization in Scribner’s Magazine in January of the same year. The novel brutally depicts New York’s high society’s hypocrisy where money still speaks louder than morals; and where you either marry for money and are looked down on for being “greedy”, or marry for love and are looked down on for being poor.

The book opens with Lawrence Selden running across our heroine Lily Bart at the Grand Central Station, and is stunned, still after years of not seeing each other. This incident in the first paragraph of the first chapter is enough to describe how beautiful and charming Lily Bart is, and herald what these two qualities will bring her to. Her father’s sudden death sees her fast downfall from New York’s elite and takes away all of her previous privileges. She has no money, and when nobody is willing to take her in, finally has to resign herself staying with her aunt Mrs. Peniston. Mrs. Peniston is kind, but doesn’t give much to Lily for her to stay in her expensive bubble―fancy gowns and pretty jewelry, and a costly hobby: gambling. So she sets herself to marry high, and sets her eyes on Percy Gryce, a rich and awkwardly innocent heir.

But her plan doesn’t run smoothly despite her charms she thinks she can make use of. It’s not that her secret feelings for Selden becomes an obstacle―on her part, that is; but a begrudged “friend” sells her out because this friend, our despicable Bertha Dorset, thinks Lily is in the way of her and Selden’s secret relationship. Gryce decisively runs for his life, leaving Lily alone and baffled in Judy Trenor’s country house with no other choices but to sell her charms to Judy’s husband, Gus Trenor. Unbeknownst to her, however, her using her way with men to merely do business and make money is interpreted differently by Gus, who truly falls for her and thinks that she is so willing to betray her beloved friend to become his mistress. Upon rejecting his offer, not only does Lily see a huge amount of debt in front of her, but also the crumbling of her friendship with Judy.

Lily has another way, though, to solve all of her problems―to pay off her huge debt to Gus Trenor and take back what she lost on her father’s and aunt’s dead beds and at the hands of Bertha Dorset: marrying Simon Rosedale. The rich Jew has long been attracted to Lily’s undeniable charms and intended to make her Mrs. Rosedale; but Lily despises him, just like the entire upper class despises him for his blood and his inexplicable rise to his current position. And she will definitely never give him Bertha Dorset’s secret letters to Selden to help him climb up the social ladder―because that means she will betray Selden, betray what they have between them. Selden also gives her another choice, but marrying for love and going straight to poverty is never her intention.

The House of Mirth is a novel about New York’s upper class in the very early 20th century, but its theme is still relevant today. The idea is basically not that we cannot live without money, but that we cannot live without privileges. Lily can choose to live a simple and modest life the way her friend Gerty Farish does, but she chooses not to; because she was born rich and with many privileges, and seeing her character and how she was brought up, it is definitely impossible for her to let go of them easily. She even refuses Selden’s loving, helping hand for Selden cannot give her those and his love is not something that she needs.

It is worth notice, too, that this novel also mainly shows how women struggle in such condiction―capitalist, patriarchal, misogynist―a condition which is also faced by women in general today. If they want money and privileges they have to fight hard for it, and their only weapons are their pretty face and petty tricks. You can see it in how Lily pursues Percy Gryce, and in how Bertha Dorset tries to keep her status and status quo―if she can betray Lily and slander her to make herself look innocent and keep her rich husband at her side, why not? There is certainly nothing she can do in a society where men cheating is just fine but women cheating is totally sinful. And Bertha is obviously unhappy in her marriage, otherwise she won’t be running around having secret affairs with younger men.

If there’s one thing this book wants to say it’s that society is not a kind place for women―not for Lily, not for Judy, not for Carry Fisher, and not even for Bertha. Women are forced to compete with each other and stab each other’s back to solve whatever problem they have and the slogan “women help women” will never be realized as long as they still need men’s approval to be happy and have money. This is mainly what makes The House of Mirth feels so real and relatable. And the fact that every character is flawed in their own way makes this book a mirror of reality―life is cruel and so are the people living it, be it men or women.

Wharton’s The House of Mirth is truly a classic; an unforgettable novel with a timeless theme and relatable characters. It deserves its reputation, and even more. It should be put on a high pedestal of women’s literature, not only in the past but also today.

She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used to say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: “But you’ll get it all back–you’ll get it all back, with your face.” . . .

Rating: 5/5

fiction, review

Cinco Esquinas

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Indonesian edition’s cover

Cinco Esquinas, or Lima Sudut in Indonesian (translated by Alloysius Joko Purwanto) might not be Mario Vargas Llosa’s best work. It addresses a sensitive issue (in certain countries, that is) of authoritarianism and how journalism works under such government. This could be a good idea―a really strong premise, in fact―if only it was executed with great care and meticulous narrative, not as though it is a soap opera-ish novel with a lot of unnecessary sexual content.

It starts with a sex party scandal involving one of Peru’s richest men and a famous engineer named Enrique Cárdenas, or simply Quique. He didn’t realize that he was somehow “involved”, and more than that, he didn’t realize that he was secretly photographed―until Rolando Garro, a journalist from a weekly cheap magazine Destapes (or, Exposed), comes to him with the scandalous pictures. The despicable magazine director blackmails him, of course, but Quique chooses not to fall into the trap. The rest is just predictable: Quique’s photos in which he was having sex with prostitutes are on the front page, and almost every page, of the magazine and seen by almost the entire country. His marriage is doomed, his reputation is ruined, and he cannot do anything but to hide from everyone’s sight.

But there’s something more than meets the eye. There is someone behind the scene. It at first subtly shows when Rolando Garro is found dead by the police and Quique is suddenly (but not illogically) accused of revenge murder. He is arrested, as Julieta La Retaquita wishes him to be, but then she realizes that the truth is not that simple. The true culprit comes and picks her up and reveals himself to her―El Doctor, the country’s chief intel and President Fujimori’s right hand man. Killing Garro is not about punishing him for blackmailing Quique―the richest man in Peru whom should not be bothered―but about “maintaining order”. It is about El Doctor stating his authority in the country and that he will always have his way―nobody can challenge him, nobody can challenge his power, not even the president himself.

In a blink of an eye La Retaquita, Garro’s most devoted journalist at his magazine, has become El Doctor’s pawn just like he himself was. El Doctor wants to control the country’s journalism through her the way he did it before through Garro. But little does he know that La Retaquita’s guts are much bigger than her body, and that she’s ready to take her revenge.

The book is actually nicely paced, and pretty addictive to read; but the narrative strikes the reader as average. It feels even more trivial as Llosa insists on inserting lebian love affair even from the very start, which definitely has nothing to do with the whole story. Is it merely to describe how rich people live their superficial lives? Is it to bring up a certain issue, while there is a main one which should be addressed and explored in more detail? Is it to state that under authoritarian government there should be fights for freedom in everything, not only freedom of speech and press, but also freedom of sex?

Cinco Esquinas seems to want to unfold how cruel authoritarianism is and how it works, but it doesn’t show anything that anybody hasn’t known. And the average writing doesn’t help, either. It is clearly something that nobody will expect from a Nobel laureate. It is merely something that we can read to make fun of dirty politics and an evil government.

Rating: 3/5

fiction, review

Cursed Bunny

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Cursed Bunny is the phenomenal short-story collection by South Korean author Bora Chung. Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur and released in English translation in 2021, it shot through the international literary landscape and made a name for itself. Wrapped up in horror atmosphere, it contains ten pieces mostly focus on women’s problems and human greed. The “horror” presented here is not the common one, though, as the ten stories feel more strange than frightening and raise the eyebrows rather than make the heart beat faster.

The Head, the first piece, for example. It produces more of disgust than fright in perhaps anybody reading it, as it describes vividly how a new body, starting with the head, is gradually formed out of human feces and strands of hair in the toilet. The woman whose solid waste and hair are what give birth to this head, and, later on, a whole new person, spends almost her entire life trying to get rid of the annoying head, but to no avail. The head keeps appearing in front of her in every toilet she uses―and, finally, it materializes into a new human being just as the woman is already an old housewife with a kid―bored and lonely, too―ready to be replaced.

The Embodiment also talks about women’s problem, which, the way patriarchy sees it, can only be resolved by getting married. The female protagonist here is having a problem with her period, and the doctor prescribes pills to stop it. When she’s running out of the pills, she decides to buy them without the doctor’s prescription and green light. Oddly, that practice makes her pregnant out of nowhere, without even ever having sex with any men. When she asks the doctor about it, he only suggests that she try and find a father for the baby, so the baby will grow healthily. But finding a good husband―a good father in that case, is by no means easy to do. And when she fails at that, a horrible thing happens.

Chung seems to want to show that the problem with men is not only the inherent patriarchy, but also greed. In Snare, a man finds a wounded fox in the forest and, instead of helping it and dressing its wound, takes it home and wounds it even more because, instead of dripping blood, it drips gold. With that gold the man prospers, having a good business, getting married and twin children―a boy and a girl. But then he realizes that his boy is just like the white fox, dripping gold when injured―and he gets this gold blood by attacking and drinking the blood of his twin sister. And again, out of greed, the man lets his boy hurt his twin sister so that he can drip more gold.

Greed is also on display in Scars, although it is not the main theme. To save an entire village from plague and disaster, a witch suggests to its people to offer young children as sacrifices to the monster which is the source of all those. Our young protagonist is the latest sacrifice, and it takes him years of torture until his adulthood to realize what he is and to plan his escape. But when he finally gets out of the monster’s den, he has to fall into another trap of being a hostage to fight for money. Never-ending suffering and a certain feeling for a young, blind girl eventually prompt him to kill the monster to end every bad thing happening in that village. But little does he know that it works otherwise.

In Ruler of the Winds and Sands a defeated king marries his blind son off to a princess to end the curse imposed upon his family. His son and the princess are in love with each other so she agrees to try and meet the lord of the desert to ask him lift his curse. The lord of the desert tries to warn the princess that her husband and his father are not what they seem to be and that they deserve the curse. But she keeps begging so he lifts it anyway. Only by then she realizes that her love is no bigger than their greed.

The biggest merits of this collection are definitely the idea of each piece and their execution. The unusual narrative and its eerie vibes can truly reach the reader and leave a certain impression on them. Although some are not “horror stories” in the most basic sense, they still give some kind of strange feeling and twisted plots that are not comfortable to read. Some are definitely of fantasy genre, so they are not really meant to make readers jump out of their seats; and some are not so easy to digest, both in their essence and storylines.

Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny is actually not that difficult to devour, thanks to Anton Hur’s translation; it’s just some stories are too fantastical and beyond any reader as to why there are such ideas. It’s enjoyable most of the times, but not really at other times. It is this characteristic, though, that makes this book what it is.

Rating: 4/5