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Apr. 2nd, 2009 10:40 amI will admit, I pretty much grabbed David Mura's Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire off the shelf because I was intrigued by the title. Having read it, I continue to think the title is amazing! Although I am not quite sure how I feel about the rest of the book.
The book is told by Ben Ohara, the last surviving member of his troubled family - his father committed suicide, his mother died of cancer, and his genius astrophysicist brother wandered off into the desert and was never seen again. Naturally Ben is chock full of Issues about all of this, which he tries to work through by attempting to finish his dissertation, which coincidentally has the same name as the novel. Ben has a wife and kids also, but they never really come clear as characters or individuals in their own right.
The strongest parts of the book, for me, were the flashbacky parts with Ben's childhood in Chicago - especially the section in the middle, when he goes to reform school. The strongest character was Ben's mother, who refuses to talk about the past and stoically keeps on going despite the fact that her life has taken a complete left turn from all the places she expected it to go. And the backstory about the Japanese-American 'No-No Boys' who refused to agree to the loyalty oath vs. the Japanese-Americans who fought in the war was really interesting.
I had a harder time with adult Ben, I think mostly because I just have very little patience for midlife crisis fiction - even though Ben has some extremely legitimate issues, I tend to get very antsy around middle-aged male malaise. I also found the parts about Ben's brother's downward spiral (with sex! and drugs! but not much rock-and-roll) very hard to read, and I'm not sure why. So basically, there were parts when I was reading through this book like a fiend because I was totally engrossed in it, and parts where I was reading through it like a fiend because I just wanted to be done with it, and overall my feelings are still very mixed! But I did very much appreciate the way David Mura acknowledges and deals with fiction-stereotypes throughout the course of the novel.
The book is told by Ben Ohara, the last surviving member of his troubled family - his father committed suicide, his mother died of cancer, and his genius astrophysicist brother wandered off into the desert and was never seen again. Naturally Ben is chock full of Issues about all of this, which he tries to work through by attempting to finish his dissertation, which coincidentally has the same name as the novel. Ben has a wife and kids also, but they never really come clear as characters or individuals in their own right.
The strongest parts of the book, for me, were the flashbacky parts with Ben's childhood in Chicago - especially the section in the middle, when he goes to reform school. The strongest character was Ben's mother, who refuses to talk about the past and stoically keeps on going despite the fact that her life has taken a complete left turn from all the places she expected it to go. And the backstory about the Japanese-American 'No-No Boys' who refused to agree to the loyalty oath vs. the Japanese-Americans who fought in the war was really interesting.
I had a harder time with adult Ben, I think mostly because I just have very little patience for midlife crisis fiction - even though Ben has some extremely legitimate issues, I tend to get very antsy around middle-aged male malaise. I also found the parts about Ben's brother's downward spiral (with sex! and drugs! but not much rock-and-roll) very hard to read, and I'm not sure why. So basically, there were parts when I was reading through this book like a fiend because I was totally engrossed in it, and parts where I was reading through it like a fiend because I just wanted to be done with it, and overall my feelings are still very mixed! But I did very much appreciate the way David Mura acknowledges and deals with fiction-stereotypes throughout the course of the novel.
