Book Review: My Revolutions, by Hari Kunzru

After reading Hari Kunzru's God's Without Men, I was very interested in reading more of Kunzru's work.  Without too much thought to which of his previously written works I'd select, I picked up My Revolutions.  The lead character of this novel, Michael Frame (or Chris Carver, as we come to find out), doesn't present a lot of positive qualities the reader can latch on to.  He is an emotionally numb, middle aged man who barely presents the picture of working, largely being supported by his entrepreneurial wife.

The separation of his values from hers triggers memories of his youth, inserts distance between them and leads him into a chase to find his old self, or his old self in the eyes of an ex-lover, who he believes he has seen (despite being dead) on a trip to the south of France.

This vision triggers his memory of his past as a radical revolutionary, fighting against a capitalist establishment, the very embodiment of which he now sees in his wife.  So he runs away...  he escapes in search of his dead former lover, in search of some vision of himself that he wants to see, something better than what he has become.

As a reader, I'm never convinced that the "self" he is searching for is better or worse than the "self" he feels he has become.  I don't see a lot of positive qualities in either character.  This is the meat of what Hari Kunzru seems quite good at, which is to keep me reading despite not really liking the reality I'm reading about.

When describing the younger years in Michael/Chris' life, there is an absolute grittiness overwhelming any sense of the "youthful revolutionary cool" that one might expect.  Parties, love affairs, drinking, and drugs do nothing to glamorize the criminal, addiction-fueled and often violent moral righteousness he and his group of friends impose, all from the dingy dwellings they overtake.

Kunzru's ability to turn emotional revulsion into a somewhat morbid curiosity, be it to find out how low the character can sink, or whether he'll emerge in any way more positive a light, keeps the reader plugged into this novel.  It's a page turner you never really feel good about, but don't want to walk away from either; something under the covers you wouldn't sign up to see but can't take your eyes off.

While I much prefer God's Without Men, My Revolutions was a great read.  What it confirmed most in my mind is that Kunzru is one of the most exciting authors of this generation, and I'll certainly add him to my list of must-buy authors (Mitchell, Marukami, etc..) as I eagerly await his next book.

Monotone Book Reviewing

Andrew Sullivan points us to this chart depicting that the overwhelming majority of the books reviewed by the New York Times are by white authors.

It's yet another reminder of the deep divide in this country on race, here extended to the book reviewing community (given that the NYT is one of the most respected book review outlets in the States). I myself also typically read only white authors; when I step away from my race, it's typically through the international community, like with Hari Kunzru and Haruki Murakami. Different viewpoints lead to new and more interesting thinking, so this tendency is alarming and something to be aware of when picking out new books in the future.

How about you? Do you typically stick to your race when reading (or writing about books)?

Book Review: Gods Without Men, by Hari Kunzru

If you have read any reviews of Hari Kunzru's fourth novel, Gods Without Men, then you already know that it consists of a number of overlapping stories, each of which takes place near a rock formation in the Mojave Desert known as "The Pinnacles."  Some of the stories are as old as Indian legend.  Others are more recent, including the central story, that of  a hedge fund quant who travels to the desert with his wife and his autistic son as the global financial markets begin to crash.

Significantly, the stories have more in common than simply the setting.  Characters from one story re-appear in other stories.  And so do various happenings, including killings, alien sightings, and disappearing children.  Good and bad occur, but the white hot desert is implacable.

Given the novel's structure, several reviewers have linked this novel to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, although I think the similarity is superficial at best.  While Kunzru moves between voices, he doesn't shift between genres, and the concerns that he highlights are more metaphysical than metaliterary.  (The better comparison would be to Mitchell's earlier novel, Ghostwritten.)

At first, it felt to me that Kunzru had something profound he wanted to share about human searching and interconnectedness -- something that perhaps he felt could not be said directly, but would only be revealed by piecing together the book's scattered coincidences.  But as the book progressed, I unfortunately concluded that Kunzru was playing the same trick as the X-Files television series -- simply laying down an ever expanding series of connections so that it feels like there is some central truth at the core (if only the audience is intelligent enough to understand) when in fact there is none. 

But nevertheless, oh boy Kunzru can write.  Even with all of the dovetailing, many of the stories feel historically perfect, such as that of Francisco Garces, a Franciscan friar who leads the mission at San Xavier del Bac.  In the other tales, however, Kunzru simply lets his imagination fly such as in the tale of the renegage Mormon vigilante, Nephi Parr.  Here, Kunzru veers into Cormac McCarthy territory as Parr begins to feel the effects of mercury poisoning :

As he rode he raised his hand to his face and saw the bones glowing inside it and a coyote howled and the sun shone through the palm of his hand like glass.  And by this he knew his body was shrugging off its animal nature it and it would soon come time to make the crossing. Oh God, he whispered, hear the words of my mouth; and the whole jumble of his life wheeled round him, bare running feet cut bloody by winter stubble, a cutlass and a fiery wheel and a camel and a steamboat bolted together on the floodplain of the Colorado.

The writing is equally strong as Kunzru describes UFO cults, Iraqi immigrants, and hedge fund software.  If nothing else, Gods Without Men is a page turner:  I finished the 370 pages in just a few sittings.  If you've read it, let us know what you think! 

Related posts:
Gods Without Men, by Hari Kunzru