A young man in Japan in the 1960s. already shamed by his drinking and self-loathing, must come to terms with his handicapped newborn son.

It is a coming-of-age story, although the protagonist is in his late 20s when the book begins. Nicknamed Bird, he is an instructor in a cram-school and one of the least appealing protagonists I can recall in a modern novel, spending most of the narrative attempting to fly from the crises and failures of his life through a seamy mis-en-scene.

He undergoes a fairly explicit rebirthing journey characteristic of the genre, but it didn't feel cliched to me. The inventive writing evokes Tokyo's unglamorous side, where shame, despair, and anomie are the dominant feelings, to be overcome only with great courage. And the translation by John Nathan is fluid and almost totally without anachronisms.

At the end, I came to like Bird, and recognize his courage and evolution. ( )

A twisted narrative of (emotional and physical) decay, cowardice, and sex, among other things. Wrenching and shocking, but somehow satisfying. The language is beautiful without being ornate. As a novel it simultaneously repulses and attracts. ( )

This is the first time that I read a book and the main character repulsed me so much that I found myself directing some of that repulsion towards the writer… and I really don't like that to happen (only after reading a little about Oe was I able to overcome this transference). The main character’s name is ‘Bird’ and his physical description made me think of a pale vulture (picture Mr Burns from The Simpsons). Bird is likened to a toad, retching cat, puny demon, scuttling crab, sewer rat, softshell crab, sea urchin, and garden slug. How can he be likeable?

His story is about how circumstances can trap or cage you in like, well, a bird. His wife just gave birth to a defective baby and his dreams of going to Africa are threatened. It’s this threat to his freedom that makes him decide whether to keep the baby or kill it and obsess over the consequences of that decision.

Oe can write creepy, disturbing scenes. Even the humor is creepy like with the following conversation Bird had with the father of a liverless baby: "I said babies with no rectum have been fitted out with artificial rectums so you ought to be able to figure out an artificial liver. Besides, I said, you take a liver, it's got a lot more class than an ordinary asshole!" ( )

Dark until the final pages. ( )

Dark, unsparing examination of what goes on in the mind and heart of a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose escapist dreams are shattered when his wife gives birth to a braindamaged child. What he thinks and does in reaction to this is as monstrous as his own verdict on the baby, yet also uncomfortably and universally human. ( )

http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com/20... ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/513371.htm...

It's an intensely written novel about a man whose wife gives birth to a baby with a damaged brain; and he slips back into alcohol and the arms of a former girlfriend while deciding if he will let the child live or die. The prose is very direct, so much so that I found the sex scenes spell-binding but not particularly erotic or arousing.

I found the geography of the book particularly intriguing; the landscape of the city is described in detail, yet nothing seemed particularly Japanese about it - perhaps showing how well Ōe manages to grasp the essentials of the human condition. At the same time there is a sub-plot with a small Balkan diplomatic crisis (probably Bulgarian, though the author is vague) and with Africa portrayed as a place of escape and refuges - an interesting contrast to the colonial approach of the last novel I read!

Tough reading for me, for a number of reasons, but worth it in the end. ( )

Oe, Kenzaburo. A Personal Matter. Book-of-the-Month Club, 1995.