The Ship of Fools

#896
Title: The Ship of Fools
Author: Cristina Peri Rossi
Publisher: Readers International
Country: Uruguay
Year: 1989
224 pages

There's some enjoyable and often amusing language:

The best way to get to know a city is to fall in love with one of its women, someone inclined to mother a man far from home and also appreciative of different pigmentation. She will trace him a path that does not figure on any map and instruct him in a language he will never forget. She will show the stranger the bridges and the secret corners of the place, and, nurturing him like a babe, teach him to lisp his first words, take his first steps, and recite the names of birds and trees. Actually, I am not quite sure about this last point: in the big cities where we live the names of birds and trees are no longer familiar, and anyway, for all the notice we take of them, the trees could be made of plastic, like the tablecloths. p. 33.

There's also a beautiful section about identifying with ducks and water. However, a lot falls flat. Though I am a person with a few learned degrees, who has managed Irigaray and Kristeva and Wittig in graduate semiotics and women's studies courses, I can't quite make sense of this book, and from the limited reviews I can find in English, it's not clear that anyone else can, either. The best spin I can put on this is that it's an anti-novel, one that undoes itself (as the protagonist Ecks [X?] triumphantly undoes his/the imaginary king's virility by shouting "virility!", as the tapestry representing creation is incomplete). See the problem? I'm not going to put spoiler tags on this because it's pre-spoiled, a pastiche of genres, foci, tones, and, relentlessly, no particular plot except Ecks's ongoing travel. I began to admire how relentlessly it managed not to cohere. Perhaps that's its point.

Preludes and Nocturnes (The Sandman, #1)

#895
Title: Preludes and Nocturnes (The Sandman, #1)
Author: Neil Gaiman
Illustrators: Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg & Malcolm Jones III 
Publisher: Vertigo
Year: 2010
240 pages

Surprisingly good, with some illustrations (covers?) that are simply gorgeous. The last story sounded like Gaiman, and indeed, in the afterward he says that he found his voice in that installment. This first volume concerns the ensnaring of the god of dreams and his subsequent quest to re-acquire his symbols and sources of power. Sandman is portrayed as a sympathetic protagonist. Interactions with humans are sometimes limited by the genre (horror), sometimes formal, and often funny because of the disjunction of attitudes each party brings to the transaction.

The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman

#894
Title: The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman
Author: Ken Bugul
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Year: 1984/2008
180 pages

Senegal.

Without at all intending to diminish the importance of post-colonialism as a destroyer of group and individual identity in this disconnected, often anguished memoir, there appears to be more going on than that. Whether her account is accurate or heightened for literary purposes, Bugul would seem to have a personality disorder as well as cultural disruption and dissonance. Certainly both forms of alienation and fragmented identity could co-occur and heighten each other. Her behavior and emotions are so extreme and self-harmful that, rather than being wrenched by the conflicts of post-colonial existence, the reader may simply see Bugul as dangerous to be close to.

Bugul uses symbolism and returns to pivotal events that are reductive and serve more as emblems than explanations. The style is poetic but the descriptions and assertions are often ultimately incoherent. As an artifact of drug abuse and emotional splintering, it's vivid. Ultimately, though, African writers such as Alain Mabanckou, Abdourahman A. Waberi, and Donato Ndongo express themselves more effectively in similar styles. Granted, Mabanckou and Waberi are also sardonic and poke fun at themselves, so there is an ironic distance. Bugul's anger and apparent disorientation may not provide sufficient separation from the subject for her to craft an effective narrative.

Redshirts

#893
Title: Redshirts
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor
Year: 2012
317 pages

Many of Scalzi's books are like the block print Indian bedspreads you buy in a head shop--they're colorful, they have a lot going on, and they serve their purpose. At the same time, the closer you look, the blurrier and less differentiated the details appear, and the weave is loose.

Redshirts is fun for Trekkies, probably more fun for adolescents, and a reasonable way to spend a few hours poking fun at schlock SF writing. It cost about the same as the bedspread and gives the same amount of pleasure.

The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis

#892
Title: The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis
Author: Matt Groening & Bill Morrison
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Year: 2010
208 pages

As others have remarked, both The Simpsons and Futurama are funnier in motion than statically presented. However, the comic format allows time to explore visual details. The production on this volume is of high quality with crisp inking. Line, color, and composition seem slightly pitched toward the Simpsons style.

Te Korokarewe

#891
Title: Te Korokarewe
Author: Tebuai Uaai
Illustrator: Buatia Kauea
Publisher: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Education
Year: 1987
20 pages

The Gilbertese version of Cutting Toddy in Kiribati, which I'm using as my updated Kiribati book for my world challenge. Purchased at the University of the South Pacific bookstore in Suva, Fiji, visiting which had been a goal of mine since I began ordering Pacific island books online from USP several years ago. It's a wonderful bookstore and I would have browsed for hours quite happily had we not used up much of our time in Suva by walking to campus from the Fiji Museum.

Givers of Wisdom, Labourers Without Gain: Essays on Women in Solomon Islands

#890
Title: Givers of Wisdom, Labourers Without Gain: Essays on Women in Solomon Islands
Author: Alice Aruhe'eta Pollard
Publisher: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific
Year: 2000
112 pages

A set of essays on women's issues in the Solomons by a scholar and advocate who is herself a Solomon Islander. Readable, informative, and a useful glimpse into a changing culture and its challenges for women.