Customer Reviews

The Floating World (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Floating World is a book packed with surprises. The first chapter hints that it may be a mere coming-of-age novel in an exotic setting, and while it does offer a new twist on that genre, it is a bottomless work that only reveals more with a second reading. As a former ex-pat in Japan, I was intrigued to find a book about personal experiences in Tokyo that went far beyond the simplistic stranger-in-a-strange-land format to which so many ex-pat novels succumb. The Floating World provides deep personal insights into the culture of Japan and, by extension and contrast, the culture of sex, art, and personal revelation in the West.

Grallas first novel is a novel of ideas, and while it certainly packs in enough breathtaking prose, startling imagery, and erotic scenes to keep the pages turning (despite the density of its content, I found it impossible to put down), it is essentially a novel that questions what it means to explore ones self in the most violent ways. Using a fascinating form of dance called butoh as a framework, The Floating World explores a theme that is distressingly relevant: how can a culture move beyond trauma and a history of devastation? Gralla wonders about the connection that butoh and Japans sex industry might have to the leveling of Tokyo during World War II, and in its meditation on the beauty that may rise from the ashes of war, this book is, needless to say, remarkably timely for a nation on the brink of war itself. Grallas take on the subject is thought-provoking and sophisticated, and the passages describing the history and legacy of butoh are particularly hypnotic.

It is a shame that complex literary fiction like this often has to struggle to find an audience, but I hope that people will take a chance on this first novel. You wont regret it.

I picked up this book in the store because I was intrigued by the cover and the subject matter, particular its Tokyo setting. But after I was up all night reading it, I found that it covered an unexpectedly wide range of themes: relationships, love, dance, art, war, being in a foreign country, and anorexia (to name a few!) Specifically, this book gives probably the most lyrical and complex description of the experience of anorexia that I've ever read. The passages about Liza's body and dance training are haunting. Although there is no explicit sex in the book, it is deeply erotic. People who like the films of David Lynch will love this book -- it has that same dreamlike quality. Evocative, engrossing, and full of sensuous writing, it's a very rare and special read. Highly recommended.

Gralla's first novel has left me feeling a bit on-edge, as if I was caught off guard and saw something I wasn't supposed to see or wasn't quite ready for. The world she describes is gorgeous, seductive and terrifying. And her style of writing matches it perfectly. I'll have to reread it soon to try to get a better sense of what was real and what might have been hallucination, though I'm not sure it really matters, the two are seamlessly interwoven into Liza's reality. I may actually have nightmares about the maiko; I envision them as pale, pale creatures with sweet, quiet smiles and razor sharp teeth. I was unable to put this book down until I'd finished it; this is the book I'll be buying for all my friends!

THE FLOATING WORLD stunned me with its beauty. Gralla's book uses a charmed lyrical language to capture the spectre of a great city traumatized by the legacy of the war that destroyed it and built post-modernity out of its rubble. The story maps onto the frantic and ecstatic bodies that float and trail through it all the psychic scars of a nation still hearing the terrible echoes of the radioactive blast.

Liza, the book's main character, finds herself literally dissolving between the hedonistic world of the pleasure quarter where she works as an escort and the universe of divine movement -- no less ordered, but free from the corrupting influence of money -- in the butoh dancing she loves. In the end, her life becomes an hallucination that is both beautiful and deadly.

I can't wait to sit down and read it again. Better yet, bring on Gralla's next book!

Cynthia Gralla is a fabulous new voice in fiction. The novel draws the reader into Liza's world of beauty and image, risk and reward. Beautifully written, Gralla's work calls to mind the lyrical and visceral prose of Ondaatje's English Patient, exotic and richly-spiced, with the intelligence and historical framework reminiscent of Nabokov or Durrell. The reader comes away changed, as though Liza's journey into her own "dance of utter darkness" had served as a scrying mirror in which one could divine those things hidden and secret within us all.

This novel is a sensuous meditation on the giddiness of extremes.

The willingness of the author to spend time with her reader, dissolving the boundaries of disbelief, imbues the book with the feel of a hostessing club. You are being sweetly, insistently, nearly innocently led by the hand towards that light-headed four-martini intuition of what it could feel like to step outside of yourself. At that point you begin to wonder about the horizon-line of your absorption in the "Floating World"-- how long are you going to feel the solidity of your body, the sureness of your identity, the rational measure of your plans?

Truly, the reason it is so difficult to stop reading is that, from the first sharp page, from your indrawn & held breath, from the stillness of your attention while you watch men watching tiny morsels of raw fish & seaweed borne up & down by the delicate rising & falling of a woman's naked body-- you have already left your own life like a crumpled dress on the floor. You have stepped out of yourself and into a tenebrous bare-skin sensitivity.
It is a lovely thing to shiver like that, inside a novel.

I have read the book and think it's beautifully written, provocative, philosophically engaging, and sexy.

Gralla is clearly a student of the art of writing, and I expect more great things in the future...

With its foreign setting and foreboding atmosphere, "The Floating World" reminds me a little of Alex Garland's novel, "The Beach." While I can guess why some people might take issue with the language, especially if they're expecting a light summer read, I absolutely loved it. The images just wrap around you, and the idea of the "floating chapters" was particularly ingenious. Despite the density of the language, it's a surprisingly fast read, or at least it was for me, because I couldn't put it down. The plot is unusual but gripping. If you like novels that are evocative and lyrical, then I think you'll like this one. Trust me.

This was an excellent book: the quality of the writing, the compelling nature of the story, the mysterious and exotic characters. Although other reviewers, and the novel itself, point at an exploration of post-war issues particular to Japan, it seemed to me that what was driving Liza, and the story, were issues of boundaries, body vs. soul, objectification, attraction to death, questions of who one belongs to, and so forth that carry forward into adulthood following childhood sexual violation, whether it is remembered or not.

Reading this book was like reading a drug and becoming entwined in a foreign boundary-less netherworld of the senses. To say it was lyrical is totally inadequate. It was a labyrinth of discovery, a mesmerizing, poetic, erotic journey into the unknown. I've never, ever become immersed in a book the way I did with this one. I felt as if I'd tumbled into the story and become Liza. It left me dizzy, dazed, exhausted and wanting more. I highly recommend this book if you want to truly experience another culture. The language is pure magic and the plot ingenious.