Book Review: Somersault by Kenzaburo Oe

Strange book. I don't know if it's strange because of the author's style, or if his style is typical of Japanese authors, or if it's simply how Japanese writing is translated into English, or a combination of all three. But I finished it, far more quickly (by 3 months? than it took my husband to finish Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon, a book I could not finish and still have no desire to try.)

The story is about 2 older men who once had their own church, and what would be considered a cult following though it was based on Christianity. Ten years earlier the leader now called Patron performed a "somersault" essentially denouncing his own religion as silly, stupid, and totally wrong and his followers fools for going along with it. Apparently, this was to prevent a radical sect of his group from performing an act of mass suicide while possibly killing other innocent thousands in order to bring the end of the world closer.

The religion apparently was about the end of the world and how the world should repent and they would lead the way.

Ten years later the 2 leaders, the other called Guide who translated Patron's undecipherable mumblings from these trances he had into something coherent their followers could understand have decided it's time to embark on creating a new church. They gather up a small group of helpers, a few true believers and hangers on. Of course, the 2 old church radical sects still exist and also returned with their own agendas.

What follows is essentially, what can happen when these 3 different groups plus a fourth they run into when they move the church to its new location all want the new church for their own purposes and ideologies. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? The problem to me is the writing style which is all talking. And I mean talking. A group of people will discuss an idea, then they will dissect that idea and then discuss what they think the other person was saying, and what another person also thought of what that same person was saying. There's a lot of retelling from different points of view of the same subject. There is very little of what I'm used to seeing which is the thought processes inside the characters head while they watch something unfold. There is very little action. I'm not sure I'm describing it well but everyone is always talking. As I said at the beginning, it's just possibly a language barrier thing. It was not enough to keep me from reading on though occasionally I had to reread a page or two to know what was being talked about.

The main characters are Patron, Guide, Dancer and Ogi, the first new members, Kizu an artist, and Ikuo who Kizu and Dancer ran into many years earlier. Apparently, that has "meaning" to these 3. I never really "felt" for any of these though I suppose my favorite character was Ogi if only because I felt he was "in the dark" as much as I was about what was going on. I do recommend reading the book. I, myself will be looking for one of the author's earlier books, ones that earned him the Nobel prize in literature, just to see if this book was slightly "off". With this book the author himself claimed his writing was going in a new direction after all. I'd like to see what he meant