I’ve tried reading this book before, but the dutch translations didn’t feel right. Now, having finished the french version, I realize how difficult it is to make a correct translation. Most of the names are puns on characteristics, so to ignore a translation is to ignore the rich language that Hugo uses. Then there are other names that can’t be translated because of their historical context, so there you have the first problem, and unfortunately most translators solve this by a mix, which feels too artificial. A second problem is the setting. Hugo dedicates at least 50 pages to a description of Paris, a description that would make no sense to someone who doesn’t know the city or speaks french if a translator decides to leave it like that. But a translation of all the location names damages the setting, since you don’t recognize Paris anymore. There where several streets that I know, but that I failed to recognize in the dutch translation, making it more difficult to get a good feel of the environment and atmosphere.

Regardless of these small remarks, Notre-Dame de Paris is a wonderful book. The prose is rich and beautiful, the story still excellent and moving. There are only a few books where an author manages to transform a building into a character (Mishima Yukio’s Kinkakuji being another example), but Hugo is certainly the master. The Notre-Dame isn’t intrusive, it isn’t the explicit center of the story, but it still manages to serve as a vital aspect, take it away or replace it with another building and you won’t get the same effect. The three main characters, Claude Frollo, Quasimodo and Esmeralda are all drawn to it, as a way to escape the difficulties they encounter (Frollo wants to get away from worldly temptations, Quasimodo sees the Notre-Dame as the only place that accepts it. and Esmeralda just wants to live), so even without words, the cathedral stands at the heart of the story.

Another reason why I liked the book is Hugo’s talent to analyse history, like the evolution of architecture being replaced by printed media as a way for humanity to express itself (one of the most enjoyable things I’ve read over the past year, check it out at the Gutenberg Project), or the history of the Notre-Dame. This novel proves to me that Hugo is, just like Dumas, one of the best French novelists.

This is definitely one of the more complex books that I’ve read in the past months. The various layers of the narrative (the Navidson documentary, the academic discussion of the documentary, Zampano’s interpretation, Truant’s interpretation, the editors’ version and finally the author’s story) make it way too difficult to explain what is going on in the book, I tried to summarize it, but failed. The complexity is one of the things that made me enjoy the book, but also one of the things that annoyed me the most. The strongest point of House of Leaves is ironically the only one that never existed, the Navidson documentary. The story of the house and the darkness inside is well written, and the academic discussion that was created around it kept me interested until the end. It is well written, has some memorable passages (Navy burning the book as he reads it, the analysis of Navy’s decision to return to the house).

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t stop here, and ends up being too complex. The main flaw is Johnny Truant’s story. The writing style here is annoying, the character speaks in long sentences that fail to keep your attention (especially if you compare it to Jose Saramago or Oe Kenzaburo, who manage to create complex page-long sentences that are just begging to be reread for their beauty and structure) needlessly distracts, and is in general uninteresting if you take away the growing madness. I had no interest in his family, so the inclusion of the letters written by his crazy mother served no purpose. Another aspect that gets annoying is the typography. Again, there are some nice finds like the scène where Navy climbs a ladder and the layout follows this process, but most of the time it feels too random, and it interrupts the flow of the story (you have to read parts of the book in front of a mirror, other moments you end up constantly turning the book around to keep up with the typographic structure).

The Navidson Record was an enjoyable read, but the rest of the book, the other layers of the story, the countless footnotes and especially the appendices that only add to the confusing atmosphere, taking the fun of reading out of it. This is the only novel by Danielewski that I’ve read, but it was interesting enough to check out his later books, hoping that he strays from making his books to complex.

I haven’t finished this book completely, simply because it creates spoilers for other Murakami works that I haven’t read yet. It is an enjoyable read, mainly for the various trivia and anecdotes about Murakami, but it’s nothing more than that. Most of the works that Rubin analyzes don’t offer anything new, although a comparison of the various interpretations for the Wind-up Bird Chronicle for example is interesting.

The main aspect that bothered me that Rubin writes too much as a fanboy, he never seems to be critical enough for Murakami’s work, aside from Kafka on the Shore. He fails to point out obvious flaws in Murakami’s earlier work, and he just isn’t objective enough for my taste. This is a shame, since he quotes various Japanese sources that are critical and offer an objective analysis, and it’s a shame that he chooses to ignore this. He addresses the criticism, but he easily dismisses it, trivializes it. For example, he only casually mentions Oe’s critique, dismissing it with a snide and unwarranted remark, not even taking the time to see why exactly Oe is so critical. A more objective view would benefit the Murakami’s work, but I guess that a fan like Rubin isn’t the best man for the job (Murakami Fuminobu does a much better job at a literary analyis).

Before a review, let me say that I’m a bit biased towards Houellebecq since I LOVED Possibilities of an Island. I read it a couple of years ago, and it completely blew me away, stayed in my head for months. Now I’ve finally found a copy of Elementary Particles, the book that made him famous and notorious in France, often labeled as homophobic and racist, and hated by everyone who considers himself a product of the seventies. Incidentally, it took me a while to find the book in french, you’d think that your average book store would offer novels in our two official languages, but nooooooo.

What starts out as a vicious rant against the sexual revolution, that Houellebecq sees as the beginning of the end of humanity, turns into a portrait of our society falling apart. The story focuses on the two children of a hippy mother, the symbol of everything that went wrong since the 60s and 70s. Bruno became a sex addict, an obsessed pervert who desperately tries to find a place within an even more perverted world by hanging around in sleezy brothels, new age communes and Cap d’Agde. His brother, Michel, is the opposite, as he has no sex drive at all, he doesn’t care, he isn’t capable of love, he just displays complete apathy towards the world, and spends his days in a laboratory until even that starts to bore him.

Houellebecq is quite possibly one of the most pessimistic and nihilistic contemporary French writers. You can sense from his reading that he is bored by everything that he describes, that he despises our society. The There isn’t one word that gives you a good feeling in the entire book (which is quite the achievement if you think about it). He paints a picture of a society that is on the verge of a major transition, comparable to the spread of Christianity, or the rise of modern science. Houellebecq is such a misanthrope that the only outcome of this transition is the death of humanity, the extinction of our species (how much more depressing can you get).

Just like Possibilities of an Island, this novel was a thrilling ride, I couldn’t put it down (finished it in two days). You know where it’s going, the outcome is clear from the first page, but you continue to be fascinated by the incredibly dark vibe that you get from the way Houellebecq describes everything, from the apathy of Michel towards everything to the large number of sex scenes. As I said, you know how it will end, but the final pages still came as a huge shock to me, when Houellebecq finally puts all his cards on the table, and reveals how far his misogyny goes.