Customer Reviews

Quiet Life

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book has a slow start and proceeds at a similar pace for most of its length. As the title suggests the lives of the two principal characters are quiet and have little impact on the world beyond their family. One of the six chapters is devoted to an analysis of a Russian art house movie. A French novelist with fascist leanings is discussed at similar length - and in sympathetic terms!

This description might sound dull, but for readers not put off by the paragraph above, this is a great novel, a stroll through the mind of one of the best novelists of the latter half of the twentieth century. The self-effacing narrator Ma-Chan and her handicapped musician brother Eeeyore are the main focus for the book's little dramas, but we learn as much, perhaps more, about the absent father (presumably a thinly disguised portrait of the Oe) - and many readers may feel that he is the principal character, albeit one who is observed from afar.

The meditations on Celine and Tarkovsky do not slow the book down: they are intriguing and drove me straight to the nearest bookshop selling the neglected French writer. The diversions to the family's home village; Ma-Chan's introspection and Eeeyore's piano lessons at the home of the Shigetos are all beautifully rendered by Oe. There are echoes of Shusaku Endo's novels and the gentle poetic films of Ozu. The villian is too crudely sketched, but this one of the few weaknesses in a great novel.

Oe's most recent, and purportedly final, novel is a profoundly honest look at himself, as he imagines he seems to his daughter, his mentally handicapped son, others in his family, and his friends. The bravery of the writing makes one yearn for such honesty on the part of other writers. Here is someone who does not pretend to be wise, or to tell us how to live properly, but who is unflinching in his assessment of his own weaknesses and their unintended impact on those he holds most dear.

Shizuka na seikatsu or A Quiet Life by Oe Kenzaburo, is a good solid read. At first the story starts out very slow and doesn't really pick up the pace until the last section called, Diary At Home. But the in depth fleshing out of the two principal characters, Machan and Eeyore, more then compensate for lack of plot points. This gives the whole story a very Ozu style atmosphere. Oe, like Ozu, is concerned with side streets instead of busy highways and like the scene in Ozu's Early Summer, where the family visits the great Buddha in Kamakura, the focus is on the family's conversation and the Buddha is ignored. You really feel like you don't want the story to end as you allow yourself to get wrapped up in the characters in their simple everyday lives. This also gives the novel an Ozu quality in that in an Ozu film you don't want the story to end. I was amazed that this book could accomplish such a similar quality. Do yourself a favor and read A Quiet Life. Then read Kaifuku suru Kazoku or A Healing Family, the book that won Oe the Noble Prize.

Simply put, to open this novel is to enter a world of doubt and self doubt where singularity and mundanity co-exist easily.

Ma-Chan a young woman of 20 is our narrator in this slim novel. While Ma-Chan's older brother has a handicap, he has a recognised gift for musical composition. Ma-Chan's younger brother is cramming for his examinations. Ma-Chan's mother's life revolves around caring for her oldest son and supporting her husband who is a famous novelist. Ma-Chan's father accepts a visiting professorship in America and his wife accompanies him. This sudden change to the dynamics of the family finds Ma-Chan accepting new responsibility and each one of the siblings finding different dimensions to their lives. The narration covers a period of 6 or 7 months. Sparse, well chosen prose brings this novel to life.

This is a novel which invites the reader to think: to look beyond the obvious and to accept that perspectives are relative. To do all of this so beautifully within 240 pages is a precious gift indeed.

I have not previously read any work by Kenzaburo Oe: a situation I will now address thanks to the recommendations of an Amazon friend. I understand that there are echoes of Kenzaburo's own life in this novel and I hope that the thread of hope and the blossoming of these characters is a reflection of that.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This novel is like a bonsai tree - spare, carefully trimmed, yet exquisite. The clarity of its language makes it a deceptively easy read, yet there are many layers of meaning in this quiet tale.

Parental daughter Ma-chan's simple narrative of paternal narcissism and abandonment unfolds to a riveting climax. Eeyore, the "accursed child" turns out to be fully human and, in fact, the hero of the book. Don't start reading it on a work night!

Ever since Oe's handicapped son was born in the early 60s (see A Personal Matter), the writer's life has been turning around the challenge to his family in raising the child, and around his feelings of guilt about initial reactions to the shock. He has written about it in various permutations and from different standpoints.

The situation pretended by this novel is this: Eeyore, the son, is now 25, he is a stable element in the family, he works in a workshop for handicapped people, he is a talented composer, and he still has occasional fits. He has two 'normal' siblings, a sister of 20 and a brother of 18 or so. The parents have been so preoccupied with the eldest, that the father has neglected his relationship with the other kids.

The father is a prominent writer, but he has his problems and depressions. He accepts a guest job at a UC campus in California for a year. His wife is worried about him and decides to accompany him to the US. The responsibility for the family in Tokyo rests with the daughter, Ma-Chan, who has her own insecurities. She takes charge and she writes the book, which she will give as a gift to her father in the end.
An important part of how she sees 'K' is as a semi-religious person, somebody who alleges not to have a faith, but seems to have made his way at least half towards the church.
And Ma-Chan shows her own mettle with her mantra of defiance: Hell, No! She will not succumb or give up or do the wrong thing.

What do we have here? Autobiography clad in fictional garb? A new look at the own life? Is the obsession that KO obviously has for this subject a reason to reduce the star count? Everybody talks about KO as 'K' in the book. So we have Kafka's K, Brecht's K, and Oe's K?
While KO is no humorist by far, he is using the alleged authorship of the daughter for unabashed Oe-bashing. His friends are outraged with him. He is irresponsible in leaving his kids alone in Tokyo. He is an egocentric, he is selfish, arrogant, a coward, his attitude to action when needed is lukewarm..
And do not take the title too literally! There are a molester, a rapist, a murder story with unclear culprit, cancer, funeral, epileptical fits, and literary encounters with Aitmatov, Ende, Celine, Vonnegut...

I would say, if you want to get to know Oe, this may not be an ideal starting point, since the subject may be too deep inside Oeland for a newcomer.
For me, it was an ideal read for a flight from Shanghai to San Francisco.

The title is indeed a fitting summary of this loosely constructed novel's tone and impression. The stories told by Ma-chan are of seemingly ordinary, small incidents (with a few exceptions, notably at the book's end), but they are told with quiet grace. The compassionate view and portrait of Eeyore in particular is well-done, in which a mentally challenged person is not overly sentimentalized nor portrayed as somehow less than human. Clearly the autobiographical elements in Oe's novel have helped to fill out the rounded portraits of the children.

The diversions into the novels of Celine, the films of Tarkovsky, etc. are not irrelevant, but I think they might pose a barrier to readers unfamiliar with those references.

This novel is full of interesting philosophical and psychological insights into the lives of self-described "nobodies." Oe gives these "nobodies" a compelling voice, in the midst of a society that discriminates against the mentally handicapped. A worthy effort.

"A Quiet Life" is the first person narrative of Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old university student and the daughter of a famous Japanese author. When her father accepts a visiting professorship at the University of California, and her mother decides to accompany him abroad, Ma-chan is left at home in Japan to care for her older, brain-damaged brother Eeyore (like the character in "Winnie-the-Pooh") and her younger brother, Oh-chan, who is studying for his university entrance exams.

"A Quiet Life" is a slow-moving story with little action and a deeply realistic, human touch. Like much of Oe's writing, "A Quiet Life" is a fictional work that is powerfully marked by a real-life event--the birth of Oe's brain-damaged son in the mid-1960s. Thus, Ma-chan, the narrator, grapples throughout the narrative with her feelings about Eeyore, as well as her feelings about her intellectual and emotionally distant father.

Much of the novel is devoted to exploring Ma-chan's thoughts and feelings as she follows a mundane, day-to-day existence shepherding Eeyore to music lessons with Mr. Shegito, a professor and friend of her father, and to swimming lessons with Mr. Akai, a somewhat cold and sinister character of questionable motives. Along the way, Ma-chan continually realizes that Eeyore is, in many ways, a remarkably sensitive and gifted human being, despite his disability.

Oe's narrative is enigmatic and subtle in its suggestiveness. Oe, through the voice of his narrator, makes much of words that Ma-chan repeats in her narrative, words that are italicized in the text and linger in the reader's mind like ontological talismans. The text, too, reflects the intellectual groundings of Ma-chan's distant father-seemingly the author Oe himself-when it delves into extended discussions of Tarkovsky's film, "Stalker" (based on the classic, if somewhat obscure science fiction novel, "Roadside Picnic" written by the Strugatsky brothers), and the writings of Celine, notably "Rigadoon" (in a somewhat disturbingly sympathetic literary riff on a notorious, albeit fascinating, anti-semite).

While I am familiar with Oe's biography, this is the first novel I have read by him. He is an interesting and intellectually impressive writer who perhaps deserved the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. I know I will read more of his work. However, as Ma-chan's mother comments when Ma-chan tells her of the title of the diary she has kept: "'Diary as Home' sounds bland and dull." She then elicits a different title from Eeyore, who suggests: "How about 'A Quiet Life'? That's what our life's all about." It is, indeed, the narrative of a quiet life, but Eeyore's title unfortunately does not save Oe's book from being bland and dull. While "A Quiet Life" is redeemed by the sensitivity, the enigmatic feeling and the profound intellect of its author, the story ultimately falters on a sometimes mind-numbing banality and what seems to be a stilted English translation. Thus, while I enjoyed reading "A Quite Life," I often had difficulty maintaining my interest in Oe's narrative.

Kenzaburo Oe is easily one of my favorite writers. This book is probably the most sentimental and tender that I've read by him. For something brutal read, "The Silent Cry."

I thought the amazon editorial review summed up the book well enough without spoiling anything. It's kind of shocking how well Oe pulls off the narrative voice for, "Machan." As a fan of Oe's work I wanted to say that out of the several books I've read by him this is easily one of his best. I think it's his most accessible too so this would be great for both fans and newcomers alike. Although this book gives a lot of attention to the "handicapped son" as with quite a few of his novels, Machan is certainly the main character. Their relationship in this book is touching and inspirational. Highly recommended.

Though not lacking in sensationalism (several foiled molesters of young women), this "novel" like other recent Oe "fiction" bogs down in literary discussion (plus an endless discussion of a Russian film, "The Stalker"). I find the voice and interests of the narrator (Oe's daughter) implausible. The device does allow self-flagellation for the as-ever guilt-ridden author, and another angle for celebrating (sentimentalizing) his handicapped but musically gifted son, Haraki.