Reading beyond recipe books

Mrs Osmond is a sequel to Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. Portrait was written in the late 1800s with a cliff hanger to the fate of the female protagonist, Isabel. Banville takes off from there, adopting the voice of James. The pace is languid, if one can even recall one. Right towards the end of the story, the reader is still clueless as to what Isabel's plot towards her cheating ex-husband, Gilbert Osmond, is. Isabel Archer, heiress to her cousin's fortune, is American. Her life in Europe spans from Italy where married life is based, to London where her dying cousin bids her. In between are her encounter with friends in London and high society contacts in Paris that has scant bearing to the direction of the plot. Despite the different locations where the story moves, the pace is glacial.  The reader enters Isabel's world in the first half of the story to see her world where she battles against vultures as a rich heiress. In the second half,  ...

This book is a short read. Murata did a good job maintaining the tempo of the story, mostly in the form of the thoughts of store worker, Keiko. Keiko does not think like the typical Japanese person and has her own interpretation of her role in society. But to fit in the mould of a rigid society, she found that she conformed best as a store worker in a convenience store. For 18 years, she was a cog in the human network and blended in. But when Shiraha, a good for nothing male, joins the store with his useless lofty ideas and Keiko's self worth is questioned, she made a decision to change so that she can be accepted by all. When she make the decision to 'house' the bum like a pet and quit her job, it was accepted by family and friends, thinking that she is finally 'one' of them. Life lost meaning and direction as she grapples with too much free time after she quit so that she could look for a 'proper' job. Meanwhile, Shiraha pressured her to l...