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01-24-2012, 07:43 AM | #16 |
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Although this is a work of fiction, it's unnerving to know that it was based on the writings of people who were there.
What of that fellow who suffered PTSD? The one who kept running under trucks and planting sticks? I've known folks who suffered from that, but never to that degree. |
01-24-2012, 08:20 AM | #17 |
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I'm posting this before reading the rest of the reviews, so as to not unduly influence my thinking... I finished it a couple of weeks ago, so my memories of it are not quite as strong as they could be.
As I previously said, this should be mandatory reading for anyone going to war, and particularly for those with their fingers on the button. It is a cautionary tale that reads more like non-fiction than a novel, and whilst it is very bleak in parts, it also manages to relieve that depressing litany of horror with absorbing peeks into the lives of the survivors. One would think that to have lived through something as devastating and life changing as that would make it difficult to function normally any more. Truly life must go on. The early stages of Black Rain felt very much like a modern post-apocalyptic novel, and I suppose to those in and around Hiroshima at the time, that's exactly what it was. A fascinating (for me) insight into Japanese life at the time, and into their psyche. The concepts of honour and duty go far beyond those of most modern-day Western societies. For example, I was surprised by the way the workers felt that they still needed to report for work, and do their utmost to keep the companies running, after such an apocalyptic event. But then maybe hindsight makes that seem stranger than it was to them at the time. I did find some of the unremitting descriptions of the dead and disfigured almost too much to take at times, possibly because it felt like it was a recounting of actual experience rather than a fictional account. And it did make me angry at times - how could any human being visit this destruction upon another? Once again, hindsight is a fine thing, and I'm sure at the time it seemed like a necessity, though I'm not sure bombing Nagasaki as well can be quite as easily explained away. As an aside, I had to buy this as a paperback, as I couldn't get the eBook, and I must say it was a pleasant experience. The "nearly new" book I received was pristine (I doubt it has ever been read), was actually printed in Japan, and came with a dust jacket - unusual for a pb here in the UK at least. So, not a book I'm going to be in a hurry to revisit, but certainly a reading challenge I am glad I took part in. Thanks to whoever first nominated it (can't remember right now), and I look forward eagerly to the next. |
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01-24-2012, 02:13 PM | #18 | |
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One thing I found chilling, and fortunately it never came to pass, is in the film where Shigematsu is listening to a broadcast about the in progress war in Korea and hears that the US led allied powers are discussing whether the use of the atomic bomb may prove necessary. I know from actual history that this is not fiction. Last edited by Hamlet53; 01-24-2012 at 02:21 PM. |
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01-24-2012, 02:20 PM | #19 | ||
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I always look for, in a novel, an ending that really sums things up and captures the novel. I think the ending here did that: Quote:
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01-24-2012, 03:09 PM | #20 | ||
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Quote:
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01-25-2012, 09:03 AM | #21 | ||
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01-25-2012, 09:21 AM | #22 |
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Yes, the film definitely took poetic license with that behavior.
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01-25-2012, 12:12 PM | #23 |
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So the main characters in Black Rain (the book) were actual people, correct? Did Yasuko survive the radiation sickness/poisoning?
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01-25-2012, 12:49 PM | #24 |
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01-25-2012, 01:25 PM | #25 |
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01-25-2012, 01:34 PM | #26 |
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I'm not sure if they were or not, but the journals in the novel were at least based on the journals of actual survivors.
Last edited by WT Sharpe; 01-25-2012 at 01:38 PM. |
01-25-2012, 04:12 PM | #27 |
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I guess I was expecting Yasuko to pull through. There was another character that appeared to have much more contact with radiation and miraculously pulled through, so I thought that Yasuko had a chance.
The thing (for me) about reading a book like this is that it tells me how startling little I know (or have forgotten) about the subject. Much of the narrative of them walking about reminded me of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. |
01-25-2012, 05:20 PM | #28 | |
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Haven't heard of The Road. |
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01-26-2012, 01:40 PM | #29 |
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For me, the best thing about this book is that I’m done with it. And I can check off a square in my 2012 personal reading challenge….
With due respect to the subject matter, I did not care for it at all as a novel. The writing is, for the most part, terribly stilted. The dialogue, in particular, is just unbearable. Whether that is the original or the translation, I don’t know; so the result on the page is all I have to go by. There is maybe 20-50 pages of material that is stretched into 300, numbingly repetitive -- just like Shigematsu’s endless trudges from one town to the other and back and forth and on and on. |
01-27-2012, 04:34 AM | #30 |
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While I agree the writing was (for lack of better word) "stilted", and I too wondered if this was from the translation or if it might be the way it was written.
I suspect the latter , and I find that an interesting part of the book: Reading something that was written in such a different way than what we westerners find "normal". Writing styles and traditions differ around the world, and it's interesting to read works displaying those differences. Sort of widening my horizons, I guess. |
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