PositiveVoxSimply by virtue of the fact that Gessen doesn’t treat the occupants of those prams as an obstacle to his writing career, he’s done something unique and valuable... I have to say: I feel seen ... Gessen is particularly good on the sheer bewilderment of the very earliest days of parenthood ... There’s no single line in Raising Raffi as good as Gould’s description in the Cut profile of her husband as \'the Christopher Columbus of mommy blogging.\' Modern dads may be far more involved than many of their own fathers were — let alone Gessen’s male literary antecedents — but on average we still spend barely more than half the time mothers spend with their children. We desire some recognition that the act of modern fatherhood — a book we’re all in the process of writing — is worthy of close attention and effort, something Raising Raffi provides, but we’re also smart enough to know that our partners face even more pressure.
Haruki Murakami, trans. Jay Rubin & Philip Gabriel
PanTIMEAll the usual Murakami elements are there: the detached protagonist, the creepy authoritarian cult, the mysterious quest, the moments when the bizarre bleeds into the buttoned-up world of modern Japan. Yet too often the words simply lay there on the page—all 932 of them. The effort feels all too forced, as if Murakami set out to write something that simply approximated a great novel … 1Q84 unwinds as a result of its looping plot. There are still wonderfully Murakami-esque moments...but what I missed in this long-awaited Murakami novel was Murakami himself. With 1Q84, the author decided for the first time in his career to fully abandon first-person narration, and the absence is felt.
