bookynooknook's review
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
elipep's review
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
shaileebasu's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
“An earthquake fractures the present, shatters perspective, shifts memory plates."
Rarely does one come across prose as raw and resplendent as this one. The emotions of the characters was portrayed beautifully in Neuman’s Fracture. It is rare for me to cry while reading a book but I cannot help it when an author writes with such unusual vividness to detail and memory.
Mr. Watanabe is a hibakusha– someone affected by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book starts with Mr. Watanabe feeling the tremors of the 2011 earthquake that preceded the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The earthquake brings old wounds and experiences to the present. The novel is intermittently narrated through the eyes of four women- Violet from Paris, Lorrie from New York, Mariela from Argentina and Carmen from Madrid who speak about their acquaintance with Mr.Watanabe as well as politics in their respective countries, love and intimacy among others. They tell their own stories of loving Mr. Watanabe to a journalist who is obsessed with uncovering the past. Each character in the story has multiple perspectives and stories to tell and at the intersection of them all is the will to love in the face of catastrophes.
At the heart of the novel is the fatuousness of weapons and wars and the many lives that they affect, countless victims that they produce and the immeasurable amount of suffering that runs rife for a lifetime. Societies across the world are built around wars and its lingering memories, so imagine the multitude of emotions they still continue to evoke- from loss and longing to love and belonging.
One of the things that stood out for me is Yoshi Watanabe’s description of his admiration for the ancient art of Kintsugi (when a piece of pottery breaks, the Kintsugi craftspeople place powderd gold into each crack to emphasize the spot where the break occured) and how human beings are more or less the same- beautiful things emerge from broken things. [quoting Neuman, “Exposed rather than concealed, these fractures and their repair occupy a central place in the history of the object. By accentuating this memory, it is ennobled. Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful.”] Fracture is about so many things but it is mostly about the fault lines and scars- whether physical or emotional or both- that each of us carry within ourselves for a lifetime and that remembering and acknowledging them is a braver exercise than forgetting. Our pain and our past experiences, whether good or bad, make us who we are and we must adorn them. Why strive to forget when there is beauty in remembering, in knowing and in being who you are?
Last year, I spent a considerable amount of my time researching on weapons, disarmament, war and humanitarian law so I was very keen on reading a novel that touches on these themes and one that is a blend of fact and fiction. This book is not only a book about war and love but also about grief, language and culture. I was a little confused at the end of the novel but I loved the first 95% or so. Fracture is a remarkable multi-layered novel, one that I’m hoping many more people will read.
I read the edition published by Granta books, which was kindly gifted to me in exchange for an honest review.
Rarely does one come across prose as raw and resplendent as this one. The emotions of the characters was portrayed beautifully in Neuman’s Fracture. It is rare for me to cry while reading a book but I cannot help it when an author writes with such unusual vividness to detail and memory.
Mr. Watanabe is a hibakusha– someone affected by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book starts with Mr. Watanabe feeling the tremors of the 2011 earthquake that preceded the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The earthquake brings old wounds and experiences to the present. The novel is intermittently narrated through the eyes of four women- Violet from Paris, Lorrie from New York, Mariela from Argentina and Carmen from Madrid who speak about their acquaintance with Mr.Watanabe as well as politics in their respective countries, love and intimacy among others. They tell their own stories of loving Mr. Watanabe to a journalist who is obsessed with uncovering the past. Each character in the story has multiple perspectives and stories to tell and at the intersection of them all is the will to love in the face of catastrophes.
At the heart of the novel is the fatuousness of weapons and wars and the many lives that they affect, countless victims that they produce and the immeasurable amount of suffering that runs rife for a lifetime. Societies across the world are built around wars and its lingering memories, so imagine the multitude of emotions they still continue to evoke- from loss and longing to love and belonging.
One of the things that stood out for me is Yoshi Watanabe’s description of his admiration for the ancient art of Kintsugi (when a piece of pottery breaks, the Kintsugi craftspeople place powderd gold into each crack to emphasize the spot where the break occured) and how human beings are more or less the same- beautiful things emerge from broken things. [quoting Neuman, “Exposed rather than concealed, these fractures and their repair occupy a central place in the history of the object. By accentuating this memory, it is ennobled. Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful.”] Fracture is about so many things but it is mostly about the fault lines and scars- whether physical or emotional or both- that each of us carry within ourselves for a lifetime and that remembering and acknowledging them is a braver exercise than forgetting. Our pain and our past experiences, whether good or bad, make us who we are and we must adorn them. Why strive to forget when there is beauty in remembering, in knowing and in being who you are?
Last year, I spent a considerable amount of my time researching on weapons, disarmament, war and humanitarian law so I was very keen on reading a novel that touches on these themes and one that is a blend of fact and fiction. This book is not only a book about war and love but also about grief, language and culture. I was a little confused at the end of the novel but I loved the first 95% or so. Fracture is a remarkable multi-layered novel, one that I’m hoping many more people will read.
I read the edition published by Granta books, which was kindly gifted to me in exchange for an honest review.
arirang's review
3.0
An earthquake fractures the present, shatters perspective, shifts memory plates.
Un terremoto fractura el presente, quiebra la perspectiva, remueve las placas de la memoria.
Fracture is the translation by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia of Andrés Neuman's Fractura.
Originally published in 2018, the book begins, in Tokyo, with reports, and the first effects being felt, of a natural disaster, which leads to a run on toilet paper in the shops. But this isn’t Covid-19 but rather than Tōhoku earthquake, the associated tsunami, and (more man-made, and not immediately known to the protagonists in the opening pages) the resulting Fukushima nuclear incident.
The novel revolves around the figure of Yoshie Watanabe, a retired international business executive for the consumer electronic brand Me (眼 in Japanese which means 'eye').
Mr. Watanabe is a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima blast. Further, he was actually on a trip from Nagasaki to the city with his father (who was killed in the explosion), and the subsequent bomb in Nagasaki wiped out the rest of his family (Yoshie himself only narrowly missed an evacuation train that would have taken him back to Nagasaki in time for the 2nd attack). And the Watanabe family originated from Kokura, the original target for the 2nd raid before cloud cover forced the diversion to Nagasaki. Neuman has acknowledged the inspiration of the only acknowledged double hibakusha Tsutomu Yamaguchi (https://elcultural.com/Andres-Neuman-Dividir-las-desgracias-por-paises-es-una-forma-de-ceguera).
As the present-day story progresses, an Argentinian (the other side of the world to Japan) journalist (perhaps an authorial stand-in) is trying to arrange an interview with Mr Watanabe, to discuss his views on the Fukushima incident seen in the light of Hiroshima/Nagasaki (an interview he strongly resists), and Yoshie himself decides to make a visit to the Fukishima area.
But much of the novel looks back to his past. Parts of his story are told my an omniscient third-person narrator, in an journalistic type of style (is what we're reading the eventual results of the journalist's probing?) but this is interspersed with four first-person accounts of their relationship with Yoshie by his lovers in different cities where he studied and then worked
Violet, in 1960s Paris, dealing with the independence war in Algeria, as well as the legacy of the Vichy regime
Lorrie, in 1970s New York, at the time of Vietnam and Watergate
Mariela, in 1980s Buenos Aires, beginning with the Malvinas war and the fall of the military dictatorship
Carmen, in 1990s and early 2000s Madrid as the country's economic boom builds, and then Madrid is struck by the Atocha station bomb
(The latter two locations felt they were evoked in more depth, perhaps reflecting the author's own background)
Each story presents their own perspective of Yoshie and how he does or should deal with his own trauma. But each of the settings has a historical fracture of its own, and each of their relationships with Yoshie also eventually fractures, typically when he is rotated to another country, and they explain how this impacted their own lives. It is a fascinating device, particularly when Yoshie himself is largely silent on his own views. As the author explained (https://www.lazonasucia.com/andres-neuman-fractura-las-cicatrices-del-presente/):
The Japanese art of 'kintsugi' is also a key reference, this quote coming early on as Yoshie clears up his collection of banjos some of which have been damaged in the quake:
He is convinced that things which have been on the verge of breaking for whatever reason—slipping, falling, smashing, colliding with one another—enter a second life. An amphibious state that makes them meaningful, impossible to touch in the same way as before. This explains perhaps his growing admiration for the ancient art of kintsugi. When a piece of pottery breaks, the kintsugi craftspeople place powdered gold into each crack to emphasize the spot where the break occurred. Exposed rather than concealed, these fractures and their repair occupy a central place in the history of the object. By accentuating this memory, it is ennobled. Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful.
But this isn't a philosophy he applies to himself. Another key reference for both the novel and Watanabe himself is Kenzaburō Ōe's [b:Hiroshima Notes|2331238|Hiroshima Notes|Kenzaburō Ōe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347296029l/2331238._SY75_.jpg|1096197] (title of the English translation):
Watanabe had been born in the same year as Ōe, in a neighbouring region, just one prefecture away. They were both from towns close to Hiroshima, brought up under a militaristic nationalism, but had opposite approaches to dealing with the past.
His near neighbour wrote about the lessons the world could learn from the nuclear tragedy. About respect for the victims. The dignity of the survivors. Or promoted these ideas with the best of intentions. The problem was that Yoshie himself felt very far from embodying those supposed lessons. He had no sense of being ennobled by everything he’d experienced or lost. All he retained, with brutal clarity, was the fear, the harm, the anger, the shame.
The novel is at times a little exposition heavy, and it felt some of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Fukishima facts could have been omitted as they are relatively well rehearsed, albeit stylistically this could reflect the journalistic shadow-narrator and Yoshie's own training as an economist. The original Spanish version included an author’s note listing the various references consulted (and hence possibilities for further reading), including Ōe's book, which was disappointingly omitted from the English version (it can be found from google books - part of it shown below).
The other obvious question mark over the novel is that of appropriating voices - the main characters, in this novel written by a Spanish-Argentinian male author, are a Japanese man and four women from very different backgrounds, and there is a lot of commentary on Japanese culture (at times a little cliched) and language (Neuman's degree was in philology). However here this is an explicit intent in the novel, to tell a story through a different gaze. As Watanabe comments:
I didn’t realise I was Japanese, he would joke, until I left Japan. He maintained that what we call culture is invisible to us from within our own environment, that we only see it when somebody else observes is from outside.
And from an English-language interview with the author (https://observer.com/2020/04/andres-neuman-fracture-interview/)
and this is certainly no The Pine Islands, although one might debate if Solnit's quote extends to writing of novels as well as the reading of them. (NB a link to Solnit's essay that, although it didn't invent the term mansplaining, certainly captured the concept very well https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/)
At one point when discussing kintsugi the novel comments that it can be artificial where objects are deliberately broken to be restored in this way - and that seemed somewhat resonant with this novel which at times felt rather artificial in its construction.
Overall, an ambitious but flawed novel. 3.5 stars - rounded to 3 as I think ultimately it didn't quite live up to my (high given the author) expectations.
Un terremoto fractura el presente, quiebra la perspectiva, remueve las placas de la memoria.
Fracture is the translation by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia of Andrés Neuman's Fractura.
Originally published in 2018, the book begins, in Tokyo, with reports, and the first effects being felt, of a natural disaster, which leads to a run on toilet paper in the shops. But this isn’t Covid-19 but rather than Tōhoku earthquake, the associated tsunami, and (more man-made, and not immediately known to the protagonists in the opening pages) the resulting Fukushima nuclear incident.
The novel revolves around the figure of Yoshie Watanabe, a retired international business executive for the consumer electronic brand Me (眼 in Japanese which means 'eye').
Mr. Watanabe is a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima blast. Further, he was actually on a trip from Nagasaki to the city with his father (who was killed in the explosion), and the subsequent bomb in Nagasaki wiped out the rest of his family (Yoshie himself only narrowly missed an evacuation train that would have taken him back to Nagasaki in time for the 2nd attack). And the Watanabe family originated from Kokura, the original target for the 2nd raid before cloud cover forced the diversion to Nagasaki. Neuman has acknowledged the inspiration of the only acknowledged double hibakusha Tsutomu Yamaguchi (https://elcultural.com/Andres-Neuman-Dividir-las-desgracias-por-paises-es-una-forma-de-ceguera).
As the present-day story progresses, an Argentinian (the other side of the world to Japan) journalist (perhaps an authorial stand-in) is trying to arrange an interview with Mr Watanabe, to discuss his views on the Fukushima incident seen in the light of Hiroshima/Nagasaki (an interview he strongly resists), and Yoshie himself decides to make a visit to the Fukishima area.
But much of the novel looks back to his past. Parts of his story are told my an omniscient third-person narrator, in an journalistic type of style (is what we're reading the eventual results of the journalist's probing?) but this is interspersed with four first-person accounts of their relationship with Yoshie by his lovers in different cities where he studied and then worked
Violet, in 1960s Paris, dealing with the independence war in Algeria, as well as the legacy of the Vichy regime
Lorrie, in 1970s New York, at the time of Vietnam and Watergate
Mariela, in 1980s Buenos Aires, beginning with the Malvinas war and the fall of the military dictatorship
Carmen, in 1990s and early 2000s Madrid as the country's economic boom builds, and then Madrid is struck by the Atocha station bomb
(The latter two locations felt they were evoked in more depth, perhaps reflecting the author's own background)
Each story presents their own perspective of Yoshie and how he does or should deal with his own trauma. But each of the settings has a historical fracture of its own, and each of their relationships with Yoshie also eventually fractures, typically when he is rotated to another country, and they explain how this impacted their own lives. It is a fascinating device, particularly when Yoshie himself is largely silent on his own views. As the author explained (https://www.lazonasucia.com/andres-neuman-fractura-las-cicatrices-del-presente/):
La historia está compuesta de fantasmas que recurren, pero lo que más me interesa en realidad como narrador, porque no soy sociólogo ni politólogo, es contar una historia de amor que sucedía en diferentes lugares, lenguas y edades. Hay cuatro mujeres que lo narran, tienen otra cicatriz y otra fractura, de cómo llevamos nuestras fracturas a las relaciones que iniciamos, como llevamos nuestros sismos literales y metafísicos, qué papel juegan nuestras cicatrices en cada presente que iniciamos con alguien nuevo.
History is made up of recurring ghosts, but what really interests me most as a storyteller, because I'm not a sociologist or political scientist, is telling a love story that happened in different places, languages and ages. There are four women who narrate it, they have another scar and another fracture, of how we carry our fractures to the relationships that we start,how we carry our literal and metaphysical earthquakes, what role do our scars play in each present that we start with someone new. (Google translation)
The Japanese art of 'kintsugi' is also a key reference, this quote coming early on as Yoshie clears up his collection of banjos some of which have been damaged in the quake:
He is convinced that things which have been on the verge of breaking for whatever reason—slipping, falling, smashing, colliding with one another—enter a second life. An amphibious state that makes them meaningful, impossible to touch in the same way as before. This explains perhaps his growing admiration for the ancient art of kintsugi. When a piece of pottery breaks, the kintsugi craftspeople place powdered gold into each crack to emphasize the spot where the break occurred. Exposed rather than concealed, these fractures and their repair occupy a central place in the history of the object. By accentuating this memory, it is ennobled. Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful.
But this isn't a philosophy he applies to himself. Another key reference for both the novel and Watanabe himself is Kenzaburō Ōe's [b:Hiroshima Notes|2331238|Hiroshima Notes|Kenzaburō Ōe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347296029l/2331238._SY75_.jpg|1096197] (title of the English translation):
Watanabe had been born in the same year as Ōe, in a neighbouring region, just one prefecture away. They were both from towns close to Hiroshima, brought up under a militaristic nationalism, but had opposite approaches to dealing with the past.
His near neighbour wrote about the lessons the world could learn from the nuclear tragedy. About respect for the victims. The dignity of the survivors. Or promoted these ideas with the best of intentions. The problem was that Yoshie himself felt very far from embodying those supposed lessons. He had no sense of being ennobled by everything he’d experienced or lost. All he retained, with brutal clarity, was the fear, the harm, the anger, the shame.
The novel is at times a little exposition heavy, and it felt some of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Fukishima facts could have been omitted as they are relatively well rehearsed, albeit stylistically this could reflect the journalistic shadow-narrator and Yoshie's own training as an economist. The original Spanish version included an author’s note listing the various references consulted (and hence possibilities for further reading), including Ōe's book, which was disappointingly omitted from the English version (it can be found from google books - part of it shown below).
The other obvious question mark over the novel is that of appropriating voices - the main characters, in this novel written by a Spanish-Argentinian male author, are a Japanese man and four women from very different backgrounds, and there is a lot of commentary on Japanese culture (at times a little cliched) and language (Neuman's degree was in philology). However here this is an explicit intent in the novel, to tell a story through a different gaze. As Watanabe comments:
I didn’t realise I was Japanese, he would joke, until I left Japan. He maintained that what we call culture is invisible to us from within our own environment, that we only see it when somebody else observes is from outside.
And from an English-language interview with the author (https://observer.com/2020/04/andres-neuman-fracture-interview/)
"This approach cannot be naïve or merely spontaneous. In this case, it certainly took very long, careful and respectful research, before I felt I could start writing,” he said. He invoked Rebecca Solnit, whose essay, “The Mother of All Questions,” suggests that the point of reading might be to transcend your own experience and explore what it’s like to be other.
and this is certainly no The Pine Islands, although one might debate if Solnit's quote extends to writing of novels as well as the reading of them. (NB a link to Solnit's essay that, although it didn't invent the term mansplaining, certainly captured the concept very well https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/)
At one point when discussing kintsugi the novel comments that it can be artificial where objects are deliberately broken to be restored in this way - and that seemed somewhat resonant with this novel which at times felt rather artificial in its construction.
Overall, an ambitious but flawed novel. 3.5 stars - rounded to 3 as I think ultimately it didn't quite live up to my (high given the author) expectations.
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