not gaby

I bought this book in a Kinokuniya in Singapore, believing that I would get the most bang for my buck with its nine hundred pages costing the same as a standard two-to-three hundred-page novel. I absolutely did get a bang for my buck. This epic follows four generations of the Georgian Jashi family through the fall of the Russian Empire, the establishment of the Soviet Union, and its subsequent fall and the unrest following it.

Haratischivli employs the recurring motif of a "cursed" but irresistibly delicious hot chocolate, the recipe for which is passed down through generations, as a metaphor for intergenerational trauma. No member of the family intentionally feeds the chocolate to another; it happens always by accident. The older generations try to guard it under lock and key, keeping it away from younger generations. But the harder they guard and suppress it, the longer it continues to infect younger generations.

Our narrator Niza inherits the recipe for the chocolate from her great-grandmother Stasia, who the story begins with. Niza then retraces the steps of each member of the Jashi family, retelling their generations-long history for her niece Brilka, thus confronting the trauma they have faced. When Niza lays it all in front of Brilka, Brilka is finally able to break the "curse" and break through these generations and layers of trauma, as represented by her refusal to eat the chocolate. Brilka is the only person who has ever resisted the chocolate.

I read a lot of Goodreads reviews that didn't understand the point of the chocolate as a plot device. I think this is a story that may resonate more with Eastern families: from the Caucus, the Middle East, and all parts of Asia. Intergenerational trauma is a concept that is very difficult to portray in literature, and even more difficult to grapple with and confront as Haratischvili has her narrator do in this story.

Haratischvili tells a beautifully crafted story of love, family, secrets, and sacrifice. It's amazing how every character is unique and their own individual stories are so memorable. Yet, Haratischvili manages to weave them all together, painting a picture of how their lives are intertwined. She writes such that readers hold empathy for all members of the Jashi family: even as they hurt and betray each other, one can understand why they make the difficult choices they make.

Bright moonlight before my bed, reads the opening line of Quiet Night Thoughts, my favorite classical Mandarin poem (and probably the only one I know) by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai. As a child, I would receive prideful applause from my grandparents for the rising and falling of my clunky Mandarin tones, a perfect recital of words I didn’t understand. The poem itself has become something of an inside joke among Chinese and Chinese diaspora communities as “that thing we all had to recite as kids”. Having read analyses of the poem and becoming somewhat literate in Mandarin as an adult has offered me a new perspective on it, but every time I contemplate, another layer is revealed, sinking me to a new depth hidden beneath its four lines. Simple in language, each word and the way they interact holds a far more complicated meaning. An English version of the poem goes:

Bright moonlight before my bed;

I suppose it is frost on the ground.

I raise my head, regarding the bright moonlight.

I lower my head, thinking of my old hometown.

After moving away from home, I understand the poem more than ever. The cold, yet satisfyingly still solitude which the poet emanates through the neutral “thinking” of his hometown. It is not longing he feels for his home, nor excitement at being elsewhere. It is something entirely different, something that lies within the words of the poem, and yet cannot be communicated in those words. 

We discuss the moon as a metaphor, a symbol, even as a character in a variety of folklore, poetry, music, and other media. It’s been used to represent everything. The Moon Represents My Heart, sings Teresa Teng in a romantic Mandarin ballad, the words of which I belt at every karaoke session. Bruno Mars talks to the moon while Frank Sinatra asks a lover to fly him there. Lee-Ann Rhimes and Toploader are bewitched by its light. Many cultures share legends of deities who ascended to the moon, greeting us every night from their luminescent vantage point. 

There’s a scene in my favorite sitcom, Parks and Recreation, where daft but lovable Andy consoles his girlfriend about their long-distance relationship by telling her to look at the moon when she feels lonely: “Just remember every time you look up at the moon, I too will be looking at a moon. Not the same moon, obviously, that’s impossible.” However incorrect it may be, I think about that quote sometimes when I feel homesick and look up into the sky. Wherever I’m walking, or whatever window I’m peering out of, it’s always the same moon every night. Oddly, something feels different about it in each place I see it from, almost like I’m looking at a different moon sometimes. Obviously, the moon is always the moon and that never changes. Regardless, it looks different at each viewpoint, each angle from which I observe it.

I remember exactly how the moon looked — and how I looked at it — when my great uncle died. It was a clear winter night in France and I was walking home from a late dinner at my friend’s apartment when I received the news. I spent a lot of time as a child in the company of him and my grandparents at their house. The last time I saw him was the summer before, when I was back in Singapore. I thought about him sitting at the dining table, playing the radio from an app on his phone. It was a station that played old-timey hits popular among Singaporeans in the fifties and sixties. I asked him for the name of that familiar song playing on his phone speaker, and he supplied me with Kyu Sakamoto’s Sukiyaki (a comedically unrelated choice of English title). Remembering this, I played it as I continued to walk.

I look up as I walk

So that the tears don’t fall.

Remembering spring days

On this lonely night.

Deaths have never really upset me very much. Especially when they’re sudden. But as I listened to the lyrics of the song, I looked up at the moon and felt tears beginning to well up, my eyeballs feeling icy as the wind blew against them. That indescribable feeling. The Japanese used in the lyrics is similar to the language used in Quiet Night Thoughts: it hides layers of depth within simple words. I clung to every one with each step I took home. Looking up as I walked, it felt like I was walking towards the moon rather than towards my apartment. 

I first read this book as a very young teen, bored in my parents' study, having exhausted most of the reading material at my school's library. Captivated by the colorful, kitschy design on my mother's copy of the book (attached to this post), I absolutely did judge a book by its cover and picked it up.

Reading A Tale for the Time Being as an adult is a vastly different experience. During my first tussle with the book, I took nothing from the dull experience. I'm not even sure I finished it. Living in Tokyo now, I decided to borrow a copy from my university's library's extensive collection of Japanese and Japanese-American literature. This time, Ozeki's storytelling moved me to tears as I clawed for the last pages over my dinner in a soba shop.

Similar to the character of Ruth, I couldn't pull myself away from Nao. I had to find out what happened to her. I was literally itching to know more every time I was forced to part with the book to get on with my day.

This is one of those books that seriously moved me to my core. It's one of those books that inspires me to open a blank document and write. One of those books that, once you turn the final page, changes the way you look at life.

A Tale for the Time Being predates Makoto Shinkai's 2016 film Your Name, though the stories draw several parallels. There's a common theme of two previously unconnected characters being drawn together by some forces of the universe to save lives, though A Tale for the Time Being involves theories of quantum physics and Japanese Zen Buddhism. Enjoyers of Your Name will also probably love this.

It was particularly moving to read A Tale for the Time Being while living in Tokyo. The themes of old-culture-meets-new-culture, shame, and loneliness are all things I observe in my own daily life. What Ozeki puts across through her storytelling has given me a new lens to view life through.

Eugenides's writing is best described as deliciously haunting. I have had the fortune of reading really good books lately: well-written with captivating plots that suck me in and place me in the world of the characters.

Similar to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, this isn't really a story about the subjects whom the narrators describe. Instead, it's a story that beckons you to step into the shoes of the narrator; to observe the world as they experience it. You're invited to join the Greek chorus of the neighborhood boys in their obsession, following every scrap of evidence they can piece together about the Lisbon girls.

I ended the book knowing every minute detail about the girls, while knowing nothing at all about them.

I think a lot about what Eugenides said once in an interview: "I think that if my name hadn't been Eugenides, people wouldn't have called the narrator a Greek chorus."

This one is up there with my top books of the year. In language that is never frivolous, Min Jin Lee tells the tale of a Korean family who immigrates to Japan. With few and simple words, Lee paints vivid scenes and animates a cast of characters, each one carefully crafted and deliberately positioned to complement the others.

Pachinko explores religion through a refreshing lens. I tend to scowl at the use of religion as a plot device, or to demonstrate the virtues or villainy of a certain character. Lee uses Christianity to explain philosophies of love, life, family, and sacrifice which would otherwise be difficult to encapsulate. Furthermore, she neither antagonizes nor glorifies religion, instead making it an integral and defining part of her characters.

Even though it revolves around a vastly different culture and experience to my family, Pachinko hits very close to home for me. The sacrifices the women make for their husbands, children, lovers, and for each other is reflective of the sacrifices my own mother has made for her husband, children, and parents. Through the stories of Sunja, Kyunghee, and Yangjin, Lee captures the labor of love: "a woman's lot is to suffer."

SECRET GARDEN

kyoto, june 2023. agfa optima 1535 sensor, kodak portra 400.

STAIRS I

singapore, august 2023. agfa optima 1535 sensor, kodak portra 400.

POOLSIDE

singapore, august 2023. agfa optima 1535 sensor, kodak portra 400.

TAKI

karuizawa, july 2023. agfa optima 1535 sensor, kodak portra 400.

MENA

kanagawa, august 2023. agfa optima 1535 sensor, kodak portra 400.

TORII

kyoto, june 2023. agfa optima 1535 sensor, kodak portra 400.

ROOFTOPS II

ROOFTOPS

paris, august 2022. optima 1535, kodak portra 400.

LE FUMEUR

paris, june 2022. optima 1535, kodak portra 400.

CANAL

venice, june 2022. optima 1535, kodak portra 400.

NONNA

BENCH

murano, june 2022. optima 1535, kodak portra 400.