MW, Osamu Tezuka (365 Books, Day 226)

MW is seventies Tezuka, the God of Manga in his darkest period, the time when he was observing and partially creating the men's-magazine style of manga with its James Bondish action and adventure and nudity, but also exploiting the content allowed him by that style to produce absolutely lacerating commentary on human cruelty and darkness. Which is to say, this is the darkest of noir, saved from total nihilism only by tiny and astonishing moments of a rare and vanishing kindness. It's hard to read, which is why I've been putting it off for a few years, but it's also absolutely brilliant. It's basically Tezuka doing gekiga, and it's one of his natural genres.

The manga centers around an unlikely couple: the up-and-coming young bank executive Yuki, notable in his office for his good looks and his celebrity Kabuki actor brother, and the Roman Catholic priest Garai. They're bound by shared secrets on all sides: their affair, of course, which Garai is desperately metaphysically tormented over, but also the fact that Garai is half-intentionally using the seal of the confessional to shield Yuki from the police. Yuki is a brilliant sociopath, who kills and robs with an amazing indifferent cruelty, and Garai is his only real emotional connection. Garai believes with all his heart in the sanctity of the confessional, and is genuinely trying to save Yuki's soul, but they are inextricably entwined not only sexually but because of a horrific chemical weapons accident fifteen years previously. Yuki and Garai are the only survivors of eight hundred and fifty people in the area, as well as the only witnesses missed by a massive government coverup, and brain damage brought on by chemical exposure is part of what destroyed Yuki's conscience. So Garai is willing to work for a shared revenge-- but is that actually what Yuki wants? How much of what Yuki is is what he has been made, and what things really made him? Where should the responsibility for crime be placed, and whose crimes, in this world full of them, are worst?

Believe me, I'm not telling you too much of the plot. There's a lot of plot here to go around. The book's main weakness, in fact, is the sheer amount of plot; there is so much going on here that portions of it don't quite hang together, and areas where the action makes more sense thematically than in a rational way, or where character motivations turn on a dime with no explanation, or where the logistics of what is going on are too complex for even Tezuka's spectacular panel layouts to adequately get things across. But it all makes emotional sense, always, and there are indications that some of the incoherency is intentional expressionism, the gripping confused urgency of nightmare. I admire a sequence in which a perfectly ordinary conversation between Yuki and Garai has its visuals morph into seamless pastiche of Aubrey Beardsley, so that when Garai admits his utter helplessness against his lover he is drawn as the head of John the Baptist, and Yuki in a precise and grotesque fusion of his own face and the original is a coldly chilling Salome.

This makes me want to have read Yukio Mishima, because I suspect it of being a homage and riff on that writer's politics and life. I think Yuki was named after Mishima, whose suicide was six years old when the manga ran; there is a sequence in which Yuki toys with and uses a writer who runs a political/terrorist student group similar to Mishima's cult of personality. In the end Yuki drops the writer: for not going far enough. And the central questions around Yuki's identity, the way he takes on the roles and personalities and appearances of the people he betrays and kills, the way he is all things to all people, also remind me of things I've heard about Mishima's ruminations on identity and appearance, and a part of Garai's backstory reminds me very much of something I've seen mentioned as a major plot point in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. But this is all speculative, because I haven't read any Mishima, so I could be totally wrong. (I should read some Mishima and see.)

Not an easy book. It's extremely violent, physically and emotionally, and it has sexual violence in a direction so appalling it had not crossed my mind as possible, and the most charismatic and interesting character is, intentionally, Yuki, who is also vilely, disgustingly, but sadly not unbelievably evil. It has no answers to the questions it raises about responsibility and justice, religion and mercy, crime and existence, and it means to have no answers, to sear into you that there may not be any. But it's one of those works of art that is so incredibly well conceived and executed that I cannot find it depressing, so beautifully done that its very existence belies its own negationism: it is too good to mean nothing. If you can cope with it, I recommend it.

MW, Osamu Tezuka (365 Books, Day 226)

MW is seventies Tezuka, the God of Manga in his darkest period, the time when he was observing and partially creating the men's-magazine style of manga with its James Bondish action and adventure and nudity, but also exploiting the content allowed him by that style to produce absolutely lacerating commentary on human cruelty and darkness. Which is to say, this is the darkest of noir, saved from total nihilism only by tiny and astonishing moments of a rare and vanishing kindness. It's hard to read, which is why I've been putting it off for a few years, but it's also absolutely brilliant. It's basically Tezuka doing gekiga, and it's one of his natural genres.

The manga centers around an unlikely couple: the up-and-coming young bank executive Yuki, notable in his office for his good looks and his celebrity Kabuki actor brother, and the Roman Catholic priest Garai. They're bound by shared secrets on all sides: their affair, of course, which Garai is desperately metaphysically tormented over, but also the fact that Garai is half-intentionally using the seal of the confessional to shield Yuki from the police. Yuki is a brilliant sociopath, who kills and robs with an amazing indifferent cruelty, and Garai is his only real emotional connection. Garai believes with all his heart in the sanctity of the confessional, and is genuinely trying to save Yuki's soul, but they are inextricably entwined not only sexually but because of a horrific chemical weapons accident fifteen years previously. Yuki and Garai are the only survivors of eight hundred and fifty people in the area, as well as the only witnesses missed by a massive government coverup, and brain damage brought on by chemical exposure is part of what destroyed Yuki's conscience. So Garai is willing to work for a shared revenge-- but is that actually what Yuki wants? How much of what Yuki is is what he has been made, and what things really made him? Where should the responsibility for crime be placed, and whose crimes, in this world full of them, are worst?

Believe me, I'm not telling you too much of the plot. There's a lot of plot here to go around. The book's main weakness, in fact, is the sheer amount of plot; there is so much going on here that portions of it don't quite hang together, and areas where the action makes more sense thematically than in a rational way, or where character motivations turn on a dime with no explanation, or where the logistics of what is going on are too complex for even Tezuka's spectacular panel layouts to adequately get things across. But it all makes emotional sense, always, and there are indications that some of the incoherency is intentional expressionism, the gripping confused urgency of nightmare. I admire a sequence in which a perfectly ordinary conversation between Yuki and Garai has its visuals morph into seamless pastiche of Aubrey Beardsley, so that when Garai admits his utter helplessness against his lover he is drawn as the head of John the Baptist, and Yuki in a precise and grotesque fusion of his own face and the original is a coldly chilling Salome.

This makes me want to have read Yukio Mishima, because I suspect it of being a homage and riff on that writer's politics and life. I think Yuki was named after Mishima, whose suicide was six years old when the manga ran; there is a sequence in which Yuki toys with and uses a writer who runs a political/terrorist student group similar to Mishima's cult of personality. In the end Yuki drops the writer: for not going far enough. And the central questions around Yuki's identity, the way he takes on the roles and personalities and appearances of the people he betrays and kills, the way he is all things to all people, also remind me of things I've heard about Mishima's ruminations on identity and appearance, and a part of Garai's backstory reminds me very much of something I've seen mentioned as a major plot point in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. But this is all speculative, because I haven't read any Mishima, so I could be totally wrong. (I should read some Mishima and see.)

Not an easy book. It's extremely violent, physically and emotionally, and it has sexual violence in a direction so appalling it had not crossed my mind as possible, and the most charismatic and interesting character is, intentionally, Yuki, who is also vilely, disgustingly, but sadly not unbelievably evil. It has no answers to the questions it raises about responsibility and justice, religion and mercy, crime and existence, and it means to have no answers, to sear into you that there may not be any. But it's one of those works of art that is so incredibly well conceived and executed that I cannot find it depressing, so beautifully done that its very existence belies its own negationism: it is too good to mean nothing. If you can cope with it, I recommend it.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.

Red Glove, Holly Black (365 Books, Day 227)

This is the sequel to White Cat, and you should really read that one first.

These are a fascinating combination of boarding school book and fantasy noir, twisty and full of moral ambiguity and double-crosses. They take place in a world where a not insignificant percentage of the population has the ability to curse other people through the touch of a hand-- unsurprisingly, being seen without gloves is in some ways worse than being seen naked. Curse workers face discrimination on legal and societal levels and are heavily concentrated in criminal organizations and Mafia families as a result.

Cassel, the protagonist, comes from a family who are not quite entirely Mafia (though not quite entirely not), a group of professional con men and grifters. His mother, for example, is an emotion worker, who can make anyone feel what she wants them to feel, and as a result almost never pays her own way anywhere. Cassel is in a complex situation involving the general amorality of his family, the general ubiquity of the Mafia, and the to-him unusual fact that he has real friends in high school for the first time ever. Also, things about his life have attracted the interest of the federal government. I would not dream of telling you anything about the plot, except to say that this is one of those books where the ramifications of things that happened in the first book are fully gone into and explored and taken seriously, which is awesome because the nature of those things was such that that needed to happen.

The first one was actually based somewhat on the fairy tale of the White Cat, but if this one is based on a specific fairy tale I have yet to identify it, although I note that Cassel is the youngest of three brothers and therefore metaphysically Most Likely To Succeed, which does I think show.

There is one way in which this series is a little odd for me to read, because one of the principal characters shares my first name, and it's an unusual first name, so I have not had the opportunities to get used to that that people do who have common ones; this is in fact the character I've run into in fiction with my name who has the most pagetime, and also the only one who isn't some kind of succubus or sex android. So it feels weird, though of course I am not letting it stop me.

Seriously, read these. This is some of the best work going on in YA today, although I have trouble thinking of it as YA-- it's YA the same way that, say, Megan Whalen Turner is, where at least one bookstore I know of shelves copies of the Attolia books in both adult and teen sections.

Because this only just came out, please indicate in comment titles if you intend to put spoilers in a comment. I've been trying not to spoil the first one in this review, either, which isn't easy, so warning for that in comments would be nice of you but I don't require it.

Red Glove, Holly Black (365 Books, Day 227)

This is the sequel to White Cat, and you should really read that one first.

These are a fascinating combination of boarding school book and fantasy noir, twisty and full of moral ambiguity and double-crosses. They take place in a world where a not insignificant percentage of the population has the ability to curse other people through the touch of a hand-- unsurprisingly, being seen without gloves is in some ways worse than being seen naked. Curse workers face discrimination on legal and societal levels and are heavily concentrated in criminal organizations and Mafia families as a result.

Cassel, the protagonist, comes from a family who are not quite entirely Mafia (though not quite entirely not), a group of professional con men and grifters. His mother, for example, is an emotion worker, who can make anyone feel what she wants them to feel, and as a result almost never pays her own way anywhere. Cassel is in a complex situation involving the general amorality of his family, the general ubiquity of the Mafia, and the to-him unusual fact that he has real friends in high school for the first time ever. Also, things about his life have attracted the interest of the federal government. I would not dream of telling you anything about the plot, except to say that this is one of those books where the ramifications of things that happened in the first book are fully gone into and explored and taken seriously, which is awesome because the nature of those things was such that that needed to happen.

The first one was actually based somewhat on the fairy tale of the White Cat, but if this one is based on a specific fairy tale I have yet to identify it, although I note that Cassel is the youngest of three brothers and therefore metaphysically Most Likely To Succeed, which does I think show.

There is one way in which this series is a little odd for me to read, because one of the principal characters shares my first name, and it's an unusual first name, so I have not had the opportunities to get used to that that people do who have common ones; this is in fact the character I've run into in fiction with my name who has the most pagetime, and also the only one who isn't some kind of succubus or sex android. So it feels weird, though of course I am not letting it stop me.

Seriously, read these. This is some of the best work going on in YA today, although I have trouble thinking of it as YA-- it's YA the same way that, say, Megan Whalen Turner is, where at least one bookstore I know of shelves copies of the Attolia books in both adult and teen sections.

Because this only just came out, please indicate in comment titles if you intend to put spoilers in a comment. I've been trying not to spoil the first one in this review, either, which isn't easy, so warning for that in comments would be nice of you but I don't require it.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.