Review: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami (Translated by Yuji Oniki)

Shogo calmly continued, "I'm sure you must know this Shuya...but loving someone always requires you to not love others.

Imagine being in your first year of high school and going on a class trip with your friends. You're excited, it should be a good time. But while on the bus suddenly everyone passes out. When you wake up, you're in a classroom and a strange man is telling you that your class has been selected to participate in the annual program the government runs. The program? A game where you and your classmates are pitted against each other to the death. Only one of you can ever get off the island. And there's a time limit. If no one has died in 24 hours, than you'll all die.

This is the premise of Battle Royale. It takes place under an alternate government, an extremist government in Asia, notably Japan. The government is merciless in keeping power over the citizens, anyone who opposes them is usually killed on the spot. The program, the game, as it is so often called is seen as just another random event the government does because they can.

This is the situation Shuya finds himself in and it doesn't take long (despite his intense disbelief that it's real) for him to realize that some students will be willing to kill. Each student is provided with a daypack that contains a random weapon. Some are useful, some are not. The students randomly leave the school and head out onto the island.
What follows is a gripping psychological account of what it means to be forced into a situation where your life depends on killing the very people you have considered your friends up until that point. Who can you trust? Is everyone playing the game or are others willing to help try to find a way out?

The book is hefty at over 600 pages but they read quickly. While the book does spend more time focusing on some groups of students rather than others, you do see the eventual fate of all of the students.

I really thought the author did a great job of providing just enough backstory for each student for me to often sympathetic and feel such a loss as the game progressed. I found myself tearing up a few times. The constant battle of the mind the students underwent...could they really trust whatever classmates they had teamed up with was both fascinating and tragic. There are no easy choices here, and while I certainly didn't understand many of the choices made, I couldn't fault many of the students for doing what they felt they had to.

Another thing I appreciated about the book was the believable government. Having spent some time in Japan, I like that the conditions of the government made sense. I think it was really developed and built around the fears that are common in Japanese society. I even appreciated the comment that the young population was decreasing ( a big problem in Japan) but yet they still had this ridiculous game.

The book does have some flaws. The main one being the translation. It often feels very direct, the point of view switches clumsily and the writing feels choppy. Apparently there is a newer translation, but I can see this being a huge barrier for some readers. Also the book is heavily focused on the boys in the game and some readers felt the boys feelings towards the girls smacked of sexism (the idea that they were too good to kill anyone). It probably did, but that's pretty typical for Japanese culture. Before the game even starts, the man in charge makes a point of saying the winners had been pretty evenly split between boys and girls. Additionally, I think this element was just more the disbelief of the situation than anything else. It reminded me a lot of when My Hands Came Away Red and the main character, finding herself in a situation of extreme violence, says something to the effect of having a hard time believing anyone wanted to hurt her. I just don't think we grasp the true violent nature of man, the darkness that hides away in our souls until we are confronted with it. And that itself is a coping mechanism.

That's not to say that this book is full of darkness. It's not because there are students who choose not to play the game, who risk their lives to try to save each other and while they pay the consequences it's a testament to the fact that there will always be some goodness, some who will fight. There's another element of resistance to the story but I don't want to ruin the whole book for you.

I have to admit I picked up Battle Royale after I read The Hunger Games because so many people said it was similar. And while the idea of kids being forced to kill kids is similar these are two very different books. I found Battle Royale to be intense and thought provoking, to dig a little deeper into the psychological complexity of the situation and in the end I think the book says much more about mankind. That's not to say I don't still love The Hunger Games, I do, but I think they fulfill different roles. I could easily see while I was reading why those who read Battle Royale first were disappointed with The Hunger Games.

I don't think this book is for everyone. The violence is quite severe and graphic, though it reads in such a straightforward manner that it never really bothered me. The translation is choppy, though I think it's a testament to the story and the ideas raised that it didn't bother me enough to stop reading. There are teenagery feelings like crushes that are still very existent in the middle of a fight to the death. But there's also hope, friendship, love, sacrifice, and resistance. The last two sentences of the book are pitch perfect and will make you think. The more I think about this book, the more I'm glad I read it.

Rating: 4.75/5
Things You Might Want to Know: Yeah, foul language, some sex, violence...um...kids killing kids?
Source of Book: bought it
Publisher: Viz Media

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Review: A Tale of the Dispossessed by Laura Restrepo

"How can I tell him that he is never going to find her after he has been searching for her all his life?"

I made the mistake of going to the bargain bookstore last week. You know, the store that doesn't pay for a real sign, doesn't use the air conditioning even though it's 100 degrees out and all the books are remaindered or look like they fell off a truck? That one!

Anyway, I thought I'd check and see if they had some authors I was interested in reading, and while they didn't have the specific authors I was looking for, I was able to find plenty of other great books! Plenty.

I was drawn to this particular book because of the title and cover. I wouldn't call this a full length novel, it's more of a novella. They manage to pass it off looking like a book in the edition I have because it includes both the English and the original Spanish!

A Tale of the Dispossessed is the story of a refugee center in Colombia. Amidst the turmoil of the country, a young woman who tends to the refugees falls in love with one of the men staying there. He is on a lifelong quest to find the woman who has taken care of him since he was abandoned as a baby and she is full of jealousy and hope. And basically this is the story of him, and how she sees him and how they come together.

I really liked the writing and themes of homelessness and longing for home and belonging in this novella. The ways in which we try to build bridges between us and the aching loneliness in us all is strong throughout the story. The story itself is short, but the writing and imagery is lovely and thought provoking. I liked it enough to be curious to check out more of Laura Restrepo's work. Something that is interesting to me is that I normally shy away from Latin American work as I've shared before, but I'm finding that I have a strong interest in the country of Colombia. Also, I should probably be more interested in Latin American fiction since my only sister and all three of my nieces live in Costa Rica! Anyway, here's one of my favorite passages:

"Heaven protect me from your scolding, my Deep Sea Eyes" --he calls me this, "my Deep Sea Eyes," as if my blue eyes belonged to him, as if all of me were his, and when I hear him, I surrender myself unconditionally to his ownership. Though I understand at the same time that this way of addressing me confirms the distance between us: large blue eyes come from another race, social class, and skin color; another kind of education, another way of handling the knife and fork at the dinner table, of shaking hands in greeting, of finding different things funny;another way of being, difficult and fascinating, but definitely "other." When Three Sevens calls me Deep Sea Eyes, I also understand that between my eyes and his there is an ocean. But he knows that by using my --my Deep Sea Eyes--this my is like a little boat: insufficient, frail, and precarious, but a vessel after all in which to attempt the crossing. That is how my desire reads this, because the only certainty I can find lies in just a few uncertain words.

Rating: 4.25/5
Source of Book: Bought at the bargain bookstore