HIEKKAA (1962)

A wonderful Kafka-ish tale wrapped in an okay, very mid-century novel, and stuffed nearly to death with bad mid-century-existentialist 'philosophy.' The conceit is great: man gets trapped in a house amidst sand dunes; he and the woman who lives there have to continuously excavate the sand that threatens to destroy the house; he meditates ways to escape. The novelistic stuff is okay, but surprisingly recognizable as a Sixties period piece: lots of obviously unreliable free indirect and 'dramatic irony'.

The 'philosophy' is dreadful. Sex and death and existence and big themes and none of it really tied to anything interesting at all. I like lots of thought in my books, but this one made it pretty clear that for me to really care that thought has to be about something, and the so-called major themes are not something. ( )

Interesting book. Strange Premise. I was down that hole for the whole book looking up at the sky. I've never really been claustrophobic but I could imagine this would be a book to avoid if you were. The premise, simply put, is of a man who is held captive down a sunken shaft in the dunes where a single dwelling is constantly threatened with the engulfment of the ever blowing sand. The only thing that holds this terrible fate at bay is to spend the time digging the sand out and for your captors to hoist it away in exchange for supplies. The woman of the title is the sole occupant of the house before the arrival of the man.

I guess you could read this story as a parallel of anyone's life in any country. Whilst being a Japanese novel it's inner truth is more global. I'm glad I read it ( )

Sand under your tongue
in the corner of your eyes
caked to sweaty skin. ( )

I loved the beginning - lyrical prose, whimsical, humorous, nerdy, it made me think I'd love this book. And it clearly is of great literary merit, I'm not denying its artistic value. It's really deep, has powerful symbolism and opens up further when studied in depth. BUT on Goodreads, my rating reflects my personal enjoyment, and this one was pretty arduous to read, felt very claustrophobic (which I didn't really enjoy while staying in quarantine myself), the characters were far from likable (although I did empathize with them) and it was very, very bleak.

The full misery of human existence, unvarnished. But without the love, the possibility of greatness, of heart-breaking beauty, that gives meaning to suffering. There is a glimmer of the emergence of kindness and love at the end, but it remains pretty painful and bleak anyway.

So, if you're the literary kind of reader who likes hard-hitting, powerful allegories about human life, you'll probably really like this. It just wasn't really for me at the moment. ( )

I'm not gonna lie there were quite a few moments when I considered putting the book down, it was pretty slow to me. I think it was well written, I think it was incredibly interesting thematically and many times I found myself thinking about what Abe was really trying to say with some sections. Unfortunately I couldn't get myself to care very much about the main character, which is understandable I don't think the book was character driven. But I just found it difficult to latch onto anything which personally I think regardless of what you're trying to do or say with a story it's your obligation to keep your reader captivated. It's a good book, I think a lot of people will appreciate it more than I did. ( )