I don't get the title

The Constant Gardener
John Le Carre
2001

Maryann did an excellent job of breaking in the mass paperback edition of The Constant Gardener. The spine was broken, the covers a bit wrinkled. Physically, it was a pleasure to read. That's maybe 60 percent of the reason I finished it.

At one point, all these characters' computers are wiped out by viruses (planted by the forces of evil, of course), and they all lament the loss of their e-mail, possibly including unread messages. I am willing to believe that some people were using programs like Lotus and Outlook to download their e-mail automatically. But all of them? Especially because some of these people were dealing with sensitive and irreplaceable information.

Also, there is no "constant gardening." Our protagonist had a garden, and there's intermittent talk of it, and freesia are a plot point. But a better title might be The Former Gardener or Mediocre Thriller where the Main Character Likes Plants.

Or maybe it's a metaphor -- even though his wife's dead, he's a constant gardener of her work. Right.

Kafka on the Sho-ore

Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
2005

The book gets its title from a song one of the characters wrote about 30 years before the book begins. And I want to sing the title to the Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma." Of course "Kafka on the Shore" is one syllable short, so I am merely driving myself crazy.

"Kafka" is the name a 15-year-old runaway gives himself, and I'm uncomfortable with such obvious allusions. So, there's the song "Kafka on the Shore," then there's the boy Kafka Tamura, who has nothing to do with the song, oh, except that he does. And, also, "kafka" apparently means "crow," in some language. Czech, maybe?

The story of Kafka the runaway alternates chapters with the story of Nakata, sort of an idiot savant, though that's oversimplifying matters. Nakata, who talks about himself in the third person, can talk to cats (because we all have our talents!) until he can't. Then they intertwine. Of course.

Interspersed is a lot of talk about literary and musical theory. And things get a bit heavy-handed. People have monologues, and I get bored. But not so bored that I didn't want to finish.

No, the other June

Three Junes
Julia Glass
2002

A friend told me to read Three Junes a few years ago, so I can finally cross that one off my list.

In my mind, it was always about three women named June. But it's about three Junes in three different years, so a plot involving three women named June remains up for grabs.

Julia Glass gives us a family from different perspectives -- a husband, one each from two sons and a an outsider. The life of family is hardly just one thing or one way, and you're pivotal experiences may be lived completely differntly by the others involved.