Author: Fong Min Hun

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ARC Review: Willy Vlautin’s ‘Don’t Skip Out On Me’

Hey folks!

First, a big thanks to our suppliers APD Singapore, MPH Distributors, Pansing and Times Distribution for the advance reading copies they’ve kindly given to us. They really help us make our buying decisions, and keep us in the know of what’s going on out there. This week’s ARC of Willy Vlautin’s Don’t Skip Out On Me comes to us courtesy of Times Distribution. Thanks guys.

Generously blurbed by Donna Tartt, the late Ursula K. Le Guin and Colm Tòibìn, and featuring a sketch of a horse on the front cover, I was expecting a gritty western with tobacco chewing, hard-as-nail cowboys and swaggering chaps. Perhaps a bit of a romance, some fights, and characters with quick tempers and penchants for vengeance. ‘Don’t Skip Out On Me’ is and isn’t that kind of novel.

The story revolves around Horace Hopper, a half-Irish, half-Indian ranch hand with dreams of becoming a champion professional boxer. Strangely, he believes that he has to pretend he is a Mexican in order for this dream to come true because ‘Mexican boxers are the toughest… They go toe-to-toe. They’re true warriors who never quit, who never back down, who are never scared’. This despite being unable to learn the most rudimentary Spanish and a latent inability to stomach Mexican food.

This naïve outlook on his route to success is bolstered by the teachings of a third-rate self-help guru — “To be a champion you have to create your own future… You have to build your boat little by little and brick by brick until it’s unbreakable and unbeatable” —, an almost unbearable fear of failure and, arguably, an overly coddling adoptive father/employer. But perhaps this is preferable to the alternative of viewing one’s self an unwanted half-breed, good for nothing except as a drain for a bottle of cheap grain whiskey.

The caricature of the half-Indian may seem harsh but it is nevertheless not an untrue one. In the two years that I spent in Indian country as a news reporter in Fort Smith, Canada, I bore witness to the systemic abuse faced by many native Americans — abuse that came from both within and without. I’d met a few native Americans, who like Hopper, had internalised the worst of these. Unlike Horace, the majority of them fell into a spiral of self-debasement leading to substance abuse and generational cycles of recrimination.

From this perspective, Horace’s optimism for himself — even if he has to reject his identity to don the trappings of Hector Hidalgo, an el boxeador — is heartening. But, as with all adopted identities, it is a fragile shell and one that is easily cracked. To his disgust and immediate regret, he lies to protect his identity as Hector Hidalgo with the most preposterous of claims:

“Horace Hopper is the name I was given later on, it’s what’s on my ID, but my real name is Hector Hidalgo. That’s the name my dad has — that’s the name he gave me before he got murdered… He got murdered in front of me when I was 12. In the driveway of our house. he stood up against a drug cartel and they killed him for it. After that, my mother was so worried she changed our name to Hopper.”

Meanwhile, he ploughs onward in life the same way as he does in boxing: He gets hit a lot, but hits back harder. It didn’t matter how many punches he had to take to get his hard, solid punches in so long as he was the only one left standing in the ring. The strategy works for a while and he enjoys some early success with his boxing career. But success earned under a false name and identity always rings hollow, and leads to difficult questions about the suppressed self.

Who: Willy Vlautin is an American author and was the lead singer and songwriter of the Portland, Oregon band Richmond Fontaine and is currently a member of The Delines. His previous novel Lean on Pete was adapted into a major motion picture and screened at the 74th International Venice Film Festival.

Verdict: I finished Don’t Skip Out On Me in two sittings. It’s not a boxing book and it’s not really a Western, but Horace is a sympathetic protagonist. The setting of the novel may seem a bit alien to local readers, and the Latino flavour of the book may not be up everyone’s alley but it’s a book that sits well with perseverance. (7.5/10)

In-store Availability: Trade paperback, RM86.95

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‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders

Who: George Saunders was, prior to Lincoln in the Bardo, an award-winning short-story writer, with his collection of stories Tenth of December particularly singled out for commendation. Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunder’s first novel, won the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

What: Young Willie Lincoln, the most beloved child of the 16th US President Abraham Lincoln’s children, is dead. For one night, he finds himself in the bardo — that intermediate space between life and death in the Nepali tradition — mingling with other of his ilk. The dead who remain (they are slightly freaky a la Beetlejuice) are unaccepting of their fate; they believe they aren’t dead but merely ‘sick’ and their coffins are ‘sick-boxes’ where they recuperate. They cling on because they believe that they can be healed of their ‘ailment’ and thereby return to the material life that they are unable to give up.

Although most young children tend not to linger on in the bardo, Willie, believing that he has instruction from his father to stay, resists the call to move on. However, his guides in the bardo — a homosexual suicide, a printer engorged with lust and a terrified man of the cloth — know that to remain and wallow would bring about a grievous end to the boy. Matters are made worse by late night visit of Willie’s grief-stricken father, which convinces the young boy that his waiting is justified.

Why: Lincoln in the Bardo is one of the most deserving Booker prize winners in recent memory. Centrally a study of grief, suffering and loss, it is also the role of attachment in contributing to these psychological states. Lincoln in the Bardo is an explication of the Buddhist concept of suffering as a self-inflicted pain brought about by the inability to separate the essential self from its desires. Being caught up in the tendrils of attachment prevents the ensnared from pursuing good, final ends — or again in the Buddhist tradition, from pursuing enlightenment. Attachment is fundamentally selfish, and the selfishness manifests physically in those unwilling to leave the bardo, i.e. those unwilling to set down their lives in the ‘former place’. Willie’s guides, for the first time in a long time, find themselves in a position to go beyond themselves to see that the young boy ‘passes on’.

Saunders’ narrative structure takes a little getting used to at the onset. He uses a pastiche of actual works to set the context for the night Willie dies, filling in the missing bits with his own accounts. He borrows extensively from the copious amount of Lincoln literature to set the background, revealing not only just how divided opinions over Lincoln and the Civil War were at the time, but also the fundamental untrustworthiness of eye-witness accounts. These divergent accounts are scattered throughout the novel, but a particularly telling one was a passage where these various eye-witnesses failed to provide a single, coherent account of the moon the evening before Willie died:

Many guests especially recalled the beautiful moon that shone that evening. (In A Season of War and Loss by Ann Brighney)
In several accounts of the evening, the brilliance of the moon is remarked upon. (In Long Road to Glory by Edward Holt)
There was no moon that night and the sky was heavy with clouds. (Wickett, op. cit.)
A fat green crescent hung above the mad scene like a stolid judge, inured to all human folly. (In My Life by Dolores P. Leventrop)

Nevertheless, the various individual voices, each tinged with their own specific set of attachments and back stories create a greater texture to the novel by providing, in various times and places, comedic relief, lush historic background and character tension to the overall narrative. But perhaps the winningest element of the novel is Saunders’ descriptions of loss and grieving — the beloved are not easy to give up.

Best/Worst Line: “’This is the hardest trial of my life,’ he confessed to the nurse, and in a spirit of rebellion this man, overweighted with care and sorrows, cried out: ‘Why is it? Why is it?'”

Verdict: A masterful study of loss, longing, grief and suffering with a touch of the whacky. Touching, funny and poignant. (9.5/10)

Trivia: The movie rights for Lincoln in the Bardo have been acquired by Megan Mullaly and Nick Offerman. No cast, director or release date available as yet. It is a dark and atmospheric piece with fantastical elements, and would require the disciplined whimsy of someone like Guillermo del Toro. Just say no to Tim Burton.

Availability: Hard cover, RM79.95.

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Huzzah! The first book arrivals of 2018!

I’ve been staring nervously at our depleted stacks these last few weeks, wondering if anyone else had noticed that our stacks were growing barer by the day. Some creative shelving helped mask the growing number of brown spots, as did some emergency runs down to one of our distributors’ warehouse. But deliverance was at hand — the first of what I hope to be many shipments of our January stock came by way of our favourite delivery guy Ayau yesterday. Definitely some interesting stuff in the package yesterday, with two books from the frontlist. Here’s a quick run-down:

Front List

  • What the Hell Did I Just Read by David Wong: The latest book by David Wong of John Dies at the End infamy, What the Hell Did I Just Read promises a good time. Check this:

    While investigating a fairly straightforward case of a shape-shifting inter-dimensional child predator, Dave, John and Amy realised there might actually be something weird going on. Together, they navigate a diabolically convoluted maze of illusions, lies, and their own incompetence in an attempt to uncover a terrible truth they — like you — would be better off not knowing.

  • The Vagina Monologues (20th Anniversary Edition) by Eve Ensler: Hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the publication of the original Vagina Monologues. The monologues, which delve into a wide range of female experience, has become a cultural marker of the 20th century, and continues to remain relevant in the 21st. Not uncontroversial, this edition of the book includes six previously unpublished monologues and a new foreword.

Mid and Backlist

  • How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster: The English novelist’s final work before her death in 2016, How to Measure a Cow is the story of a former convict who is seeking a new beginning in a northern English town. She fosters an unexpected relationship with the curmudgeonly widow, Nancy, across the street who–and I am guessing here–teaches her how to measure a cow. Quite looking forward to this one.
  • Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns: A classic, overlooked tragicomedy where a flood in a small English village brings more than wet shoes and socks to a cast of poor village sops. Subsequent to the flood, they are afflicted by a madness causing each of them to summarily commit suicide in, from what I gather, not uninteresting manners. An introduction and summary to this edition is available here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-9844693-1-4
  • The Man from the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman: I first stumbled onto this book after Googling ‘Diogenese Club’ after listening to Stephen Fry’s excellent 60-hour performance of the Sherlock Holmes’ novels. I was somewhat familiar with Newman’s Anno Dracula series, and thought this could really work given the impressive summary provided by the publisher:

    The debonair psychic investigator Richard Jeperson is the Most Valued Member of the Diogenes Club, the least-known and most essential branch of British Intelligence. While foiling the plot of many a maniacal mastermind, he is chased by sentient snowmen and Nazi zombies, investigates an unearthly murderer stalking the sex shops of 1970s Soho, and battles a poltergeist to prevent it triggering nuclear Armageddon. But as a new century dawns, can he save the ailing Diogenes Club itself from a force more diabolical still?

  • Deep Red by Hisashi Nozawa: We picked this up because of the cover, if we are going to be absolutely honest. But it helps that it’s also a prize winner that has been well reviewed. From what we gather, it’s a Japanese thriller where lots of people have been killed, and a protagonist who has to make sense of it all and survive. Why not?
  • 50 Greatest Stories: Ah, the short story compilation, edited by an unknown editor, published by a company that bills itself as the House of Bestsellers, this is a book of enigmatic provenance but nevertheless contains a good selection of classic short stories including The Gift of the Magi, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and features an author list including Chekov, Dickens, Fitzgerald and Conrad. Makes for a nice gift for a young reader embarking into the world of classics.

We’re looking forward to more books coming in this week and we will be reviewing some of these in the near term so look out for them. Signing out for now with a modicum of relief.

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‘Reservoir 13’ by Jon McGregor

Who: Jon McGregor is the author of four novels and a story collection. Reservoir 13 was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2017.

What: Reservoir 13 is a novel about a mystery, but is not itself a mystery novel. The book opens with a girl lost upon the moors of the rural English countryside. Nearby villagers anxiously search for the missing Rebecca, Becky or Bex, as she is sometimes known. Her disappearance would anchor the novel which unfolds over 13 years, during which life in the village carries on — people are drawn in, people leave; they fall in love, they fall apart; new lives are had, older ones die. The foxes, badgers and bugs observe their natural cycles, as do the birds, butterflies and bees. But the spectre of the missing girl remains in the collective psyche, appearing in dreams, hallucinations and memories.

Why: One of the finest novels we’ve read in recent memory, McGregor’s narrative structure ingeniously pulls the reader into the book. It’s incredibly meta and sets the reader up from the start to think that a mystery is there to be solved. There are hints and foreshadowing that the resolution is in the very next line, or paragraph, or page, or chapter. The reader is driven by this singular temptation, but meanwhile McGregor creates a lush, vivid background, ostensibly to contextualise the mystery. The man lies. He is not creating a background, but another, richer foreground that will supersede the mystery.

With his austere but elegant prose, his omniscient camera flits from scene to scene in his massive single paragraph structures, controlling the attention of the reader — first to the park keeper who is conducting his annual test of the river water, next to a group of teenagers drinking down a bottle of stolen wine, then to a farmhand who is necking with the parish council’s chair’s wife, and then to reports of sightings of the missing girl who may or may not be responsible for the various incidences of arson in the village. Each year that passes in the village is told within a chapter. The villagers grow a year older, perhaps not wiser, and the same narrative device is repeated to remind readers that though everything is different, it is nevertheless the same.

This may sound a painful and clumsy attempt to stall the progress of the plot; on the contrary, the reader soon finds these secondary arcs to be more important than the resolution of the missing girl. How does Irene deal with an abusive special-needs son? Will the Jackson boys’ flock survive the winter? Will the career-minded Su Cooper adjust to being the mother of rambunctious twin boys? It is these moments in the lives of these villagers — arrayed as a field of snapshots of many separate but interconnected moments — that carry the readers’ sympathies. Resolution, he reminds us, is not found within the solving of a grand mystery, but in the consummation of each individual moment in our lives.

Best/Worst Line: ‘The girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. She had been looked for everywhere… There were dreams about finding her on the night she went missing, stumbling across her on the moor in the lowering dark and helping her back to her parents. In the dreams the parents said thank you, briefly, and people muttered something about it being no problem at all.’

Verdict: Friggin’ incredible. It’s not a perfect 10 because readers stubbornly clinging on to the need for plot development (a justifiable need, in our opinion) may be frustrated by this book. (9/10)

Availability: Trade paperback, RM79.90.

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The first 14 days…

Hi folks, Min Hun here. Every now and then, I will be writing a bit about what’s been happening at our store, and what I’ve been reading. This would be an example of such a thing. 

It’s been two weeks since Lit Books opened its doors to the public, and lessons have been learnt:

  • Malaysian readers  are an enthusiastic and sometimes zealous bunch;
  • It’s difficult to not hoard books for one’s self;
  • The logistics of the book business, especially for a small, independent bookshop, can be infuriating.

Two weeks is no doubt insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but the level of enthusiasm greeting our presence has been humbling, to say the least. We are very grateful to visitors who dropped by after reading about us on social media (special thanks to TimeOut KL, Poskod.my, Tongue in Chic  and Says.com for the feature pieces) as well as to our friends and neighbours in the community. Your presence has helped alleviate some of the anxiety associated with all new enterprises, and we look forward to seeing you again.

In the meantime, we are playing around with some ideas of what we would like to do events-wise in the new year, and we will keep everyone posted via this blog as well as through social media. These include:

  • Author readings – which local author would you be interested in?
  • Book clubs – we’re hosting our first group in January, but perhaps an in-house book club?
  • A collaboration with a broadcast partner?
  • Group of book reviewers – if we can swing an agreement with our distributors and publishers, we’d like to form a group of book reviewers. We might be getting advance review copies and there’s no way Elaine and I can go through them all.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Stuff I’ve recently read (that just happens to be available in store)

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Who: Matt Haig dips his pen in myriad ink pots, writing in various genres. How to Stop Time is his first adult novel.

What: How to Stop Time is about the life of one Tom Hazard who suffers from anageria, a genetic disease that slows his ageing process to about a fifteenth of a regular person’s. There is both loss and suffering in the centuries he’s been alive and the story picks up in the here and now where Tom attempts a reconciliation of his existential grief and a normal life. Oh, there’s also a Secret Society in the mix.

Why: At its heart, How to Stop Time is a romantic fantasy. It feels like a confessional, similar to Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire sans the supernatural gothic horror. It probably wouldn’t give away too much to say that witch hunters are involved. And did I mention a secret society?

Readers expecting a lush adventure with the protagonist at the centre of key historical events in the past 500 years will be disappointed. However, there is a brief encounter with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in the roaring 20s, as well as a run in with Beethoven and Shakespeare.

Best/Worst Line: ‘The first rule is that you don’t fall in love… There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. If you stick to this, you will just about be okay.’

Verdict: It’s a straightforward book which tries hard to transport the reader away to Tom’s fantastical life. Unfortunately, the protagonist is a bit of a downer, which gets in the way of his, and our, having a good time. A good book to pick up in between heavier reads and for a quick one whilst lying down by the beach. 6/10

Trivia: English character actor Benedict Cumberbatch will produce and star in the film adaptation of the book – makes sense with the book’s cinematic romp across time.

Availability: Paperback, RM55.90. Mention the phrase: “Time is Money” at our cashier to get 10% off while stocks last.

A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert (Published 1 Aug 2017)

Who: Author whose debut novel The Dark Room was shortlisted for the Booker in 2001, and whose subsequent work has been listed for various other prizes.

What: A Boy in Winter is set over three nights in Nazi-occupied Ukraine in 1941 following the retreat of the Soviets. Apprehensively greeted by the Ukrainians as liberators, the Nazi occupants quickly become instruments of terror and fear, shattering all trepidatious hope of a return to a bucolic, pre-Soviet countryside. The story is told mainly through the lens of three protagonists and their families – Yasia, a peasant girl who dreams of hearth and home; Pohl, a high-minded and moralistic German engineer grudgingly enlisted into the Nazi army; and Yankel, the boy in winter of the title.

Why: Seiffert is unsparing but sympathetic in the book. She accurately captures the terror of the Nazi invasion, and the fear and dread inspired by the Schutzstaffel’s (SS) assault squads – legions who defy all demands of morality, justice and rationality to comprehensively destroy hope in the mercy of conquerors; in the compassion of neighbours; in the basic tenets of human decency. The lives of the protagonists are intertwined in despair with little room for heroism. The novel’s inflection point is obvious–it plays off the illusions of the main characters, each of whom respectively thinks that pragmatism, heroism and morality will see them through. Then the SS officers round up the Jews.

The complacency builds to the point where one gets an almost irresistible urge to shake them by their collars and shout at them to wise the #$! up! But that doesn’t happen. It seems unimaginable even within the scope of poetic license that hundreds of men and women would allow themselves be led to slaughter; irrational, even. The complete surrender described is unthinkable save that history does bear out this sad point.

A Boy in Winter is not an unfamiliar story (think The Book Thief), but it is one that is nevertheless refreshing in Seiffert’s adroit hands.

Best/Worst Line: ‘He could have taken twenty, thirty, forty. He could have selected so many – men and women both: they wanted to be chosen. But he refused them. He did nothing. And Pohl could see nothing on the pages but his own pride and blindness; nothing but a rope to hang him with.’

Verdict: Spare prose reasserts the bleakness of the Ukrainian winter and the grey terror of the Nazi occupation. The book fails to delve deep enough into the psychology of the players so character motivations and responses are sometimes left to the reader’s own imagination, especially that of the titular boy in the winter. 7.5/10

Availability: Hard cover, RM122.00. Mention the phrase: “Winter is Coming” at our cashier to get it for RM99.90 while stocks last.

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First look at our store

Hi folks,

A quick post to give everyone a first glimpse of our store. We’ve finalised the design and we’re excited about what our wonderful designers, Wunderwall, has come up for us.

At this point, Elaine and I are trying our best to hurry the process along because we can’t wait to start filling the shelves with books and merchandise. We can assure you that no one is as eager as we are to get things done so that we can throw open our doors. We hope you’re looking forward to it too.

In the meantime, do subscribe to our newsletter from the link on the sidebar. We haven’t been sending many updates yet but that will change soon. Cheers!

Min Hun

Here are some of the 3D renders of our proposed store:

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Holy $@#&! We’re opening a bookshop!

The story of how this bookshop came to be shares similar beginnings with most of our other Really Good-Bad Ideas. It typically begins when the excited party (me) decides to share his fun but impractical idea with the sober voice of reason (usually Elaine). The conversation goes something along the lines of the following:

— Hey, I’ve got a fantastic idea!
— What is it now?
— Let’s open a bookshop!
— No.

Unfortunately for Elaine, my outlook in life is somewhat Hegelian in the sense that statements antithetical to mine own are seen as opportunities for synthesis and evolution rather than an outright denial of the statement. Chagrined but unbeaten, I kept at it.

For three years.

During that time, clandestine market research was conducted typically involving my chatting up cashiers at local bookstores, some advice was sought, and distributors consulted. I must admit that my findings were not entirely encouraging. Bookselling, at that time, seemed was on a downturn: internet things, the decline in Malaysian reading habits, dodgy retail environment, etc.

It was enough to dampen my enthusiasm for the project. But strangely, even as my enthusiasm waned, Elaine’s began to grow. So much so that after another six-month season of soul-destroying, ball-shrinking corporate consultancy, she said let’s do it. And do it we did.

But if we are going to do this damned fool thing, she said, we have got to do this damned fool thing right (I paraphrase). She was right, of course. My vision of an industrial shack piled high with books helter-skelter in some godforsaken corner of the city was probably not going to be sustainable over the long-term.

So it looks like yes, holy $@#&! We’re opening a bookshop.

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Our Location

Our shop is located at:

Unit P-1-11, Level 1, Tropicana Avenue
12 Jalan Persiaran Tropicana
47410 Petaling Jaya
Selangor

Tel: +603 7886 6988
@: info@litbooks.com.my

Opening Hours
Monday: Closed (Except on some public holidays)
Tuesday to Sunday: 1pm to 7pm

Getting Here via Public Transportation
The easiest way to get here via public transportation is to hop on to the Sungai Buloh-Kajang MRT line and get off at the Surian MRT Station. Exit via Gate A and get on board the feeder bus (T807) at the station. The busses depart regularly and you should get off at the second stop ‘Tropicana Avenue’.