The Big Finish

It's always slightly nerve-wracking when we arrive at the homestead here in KL as to the condition the place is in. I harbour less than fond memories of arriving here years back with various nieces in tow only to find that there was no power at all on the premises. We ended up spending the night in a hotel much to their delight. But, happily, we experienced no such trauma yesterday. Indeed, we even found ourselves with an ample supply of hot water which I'd not expected at all given what I assumed was the failure of our solar panels the last time we were here. When we departed in December last year we did so in the belief that we were lucky to have enough tepidly warm water left to allow us to shower without freezing and that we'd most likely struggle on returning until we could get the company who installed the panels to do some fixing. Mind you, the hot water we enjoyed yesterday wasn't exactly of the red-hot variety so it could be the panels have only partially failed. Or the days have been hot enough to heat whatever water is stagnant in the tank. We'll see.

But we were able to enjoy a reasonably seamless transition to these quarters, which meant I found myself with time enough to read the final pages of Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters. This was quite a relief, I can tell you, and not just because I was able to tick off Item 3 on yesterday's checklist. The relief stemmed from now being able to set aside a novel that paradoxically I very much enjoyed yet somehow became something of a trial for me.

When I last posted here about it at the end of April it was with some enthusiasm for a great read and I can remember thinking then that I'd probably finish the tome towards the end of a busy May by reading a few pages every evening as a way of winding down. That was not to be, and it wasn't the fault of the novel. Being impossibly busy meant not reading anything at all of literary note other than what was required for work. Which meant that I was only able to pick up the book again in late May having forgotten ninety percent of the detail I needed to remember of an extremely detailed text.

So getting going again was difficult and, unfortunately, I was still busy. And I also realised it wouldn't be wise to spread my reading over the June break since at some deep level I was fed-up with the book despite its rewards. The possibility of abandoning my reading faintly occurred to me, but I felt that would be to let Mr Tanizaki and his engaging characters down. So I got down to some deliberate, forced, I will-concentrate-and-get-through-this reading and that worked, I suppose. 

Since I've been able to close the book I've found myself considering with quite a degree of puzzlement just what kind of novel it is. At one simple easy-going level, a soap-opera-ish tale of a typical Japanese family doing what families do in a way that means the reader feels you come to know them almost as friends and want the best for them. But then there's so much to contradict that way of seeing the text, not least the implication that there's something deeply wrong with these people and they're wilfully, witlessly, walking through the years into a kind of disaster. How many stories end with a key character about to be married (finally!) yet suffering from persistent diarrhoea?