There’s a chill in the air, the leaves and turning, so don your favourite pair of fingerless gloves and join us for another edition of the Windmill Friday Feeling.

Will Self’s writing room has been on the blog before, and today I read his amazing piece The Trouble With my Blood. Beautiful and not a little discomfiting.

As the half life between ‘Thing’ and ‘Ironic tumblr about Thing’ decreases yet more, we have Sh*t That Siri Says, dedicated to people trying to trick the robot inside the iPhone 4S. (One day soon there will be ironic tumblr blogs about things that don’t even exist yet, at which point I will give up on the internet forever and live in a cave. Probably. Until I get bored.)

The peerless xkcd on picking passwords you’ll actually remember. (Now was it wmillbooks with two zeros and a z, or one?)

Ever wanted to see what people were searching for on Wikipedia? No? Well…you can anyway, with this strangely mesmerising website.

Here’s lookin’ at you kid - a gallery of ultra-close up animal eyes. Brilliant.

And finally, we’re a bookish blog so here’s a wordy game from the OED to pass the time. Good weekends all!

Zoë Nielsen was just like any other ten-year-old walking to school, not knowing that a chance encounter with Thurman Hayes would lead to her abduction and imprisonment in a converted nuclear bunker, 4,000 miles away, beneath a remote ranch house in Arizona. Enslaved in her underground tomb, deprived of food and light and water, the girl Zoë once was steadily begins to disappear… But over time Thurman grows tired of the rapidly maturing Zoë, and when he decides it is time to get rid of her, Zoë must finally make her bid for freedom.

Forgetting Zoë is a moving, epic tale of courage, survival, horror and loss, that explores how a bond of affection and intimacy can develop between captive and captor.

Kick of the discussion of this brilliant and thought provoking book with the discussion points below.

1. Who is your favourite Forgetting Zoë character? It doesn’t have to be the one you ‘like’ best in terms of personality. For example, as much as you may hate Thurman as a person, and the things that he does, but you may like the way he is drawn, the details of his speech or idiosyncrasies and mannerisms.

 2. Why do you think Robinson chose to tell the story of Forgetting Zoë in the third person and to explore the lives of three protagonists - Zoë, Thurman, and Ingrid - rather than just focusing on Zoë’s story? Do you think the novel would have worked as well, or better, narrated by Zoë in the first person? If so, why?

3. What are some of the ways in which Zoë’s development has been stunted by growing up as Thurman’s captive? Describe the dynamic between Zoë and Thurman. Did Zoë and Thurman’s relationship feel credible to you?

4. How would you describe Ingrid? Did you warm towards her as a character, or find her cold and distant? Did her suicide feel credible?

5. The various types of power dynamics between the sexes - Thurman and his parents; Zoë and Ingrid; Zoë and Thurman; Ingrid and Jon; Zoë and Red Bess and Bob - are at the core of Forgetting Zoë. Describe and discuss some of the important relationships in the book.

6. What conclusions can you draw about Thurman’s ideas regarding sex and power?

7. In Forgetting Zoë the novel’s wild landscapes and weather can be seen as characters in the novel, in that they reflect the mental landscape of the protagonists — from the fictional, windswept island of Unnr, to the cauterized, unforgiving landscape of the Arizona desert. Both are, in their way, dangerous and claustrophobic landscapes. Robinson explores the relationship between these physical landscapes and emotional suffering, but how do these aspects of the protagonists’ inner and outer lives interact? Or rather, what was unique about the settings of the book, and how did the settings enhance or take away from the story?

8. Forgetting Zoë has an unusual structure for a thriller about captivity: Zoë escapes two thirds of the way through the book. Why do you think this is?

9. Robinson has been praised for not telling the reader what to think, and allowing the worst scenes in the book to take place in the reader’s imagination. Also, the words ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ are never used in the book, though at its core the book explores the syndrome and its effects on both Zoë and Thurman. How convincing or realistic do you think the portrayal of Stockholm Syndrome is, and how important is it that the syndrome is never mentioned?

10. In relation to the previous question, most of the information about the actual kidnap itself, on the morning of October 8^th, 1999, is missing from the novel. Why do you think Robinson chose to do this?

11. Robinson has been praised for his taut, spare prose. Why might the prose in Forgetting Zoë be characterized as ’spare’? Discuss examples or particular passages that highlight this quality of Robinson’s writing. What effect does this style have on the novel as a whole, or on your ability to imagine the time and place in which it is set?

12. What were you most affected by in the novel?

13. On page 33, Thurman’s mother says, ‘we all suffer at the hands of those we love’. Can you relate to this statement? If so, to what extent do the characters remind you of yourself, or someone you know? In what ways do lines such as these reveal evidence of the author’s worldview?

14. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way?

15. Discuss the title of the novel, particularly with regards to the final scene in the book in which Zoë walks away from the burning ranch house. How might Zoë’s qualities of self-possession and self-awareness be reconciled with the conclusion? How do you feel about the end of the novel?

16. What sort of problems do you think Zoë will face now that she is out there, on her own, in the real world? What does joining the outside world do to Zoë, and what might it mean for her future?

Greetings millers, and welcome to another fantabulous edition of the Windmill Friday Feeling - all the links you can handle and then some.

First up, the dark and strange world of bizarre Amazon products. The items themselves are odd enough, but it’s the reviews that make it for us. The baby AIDS bib! The framed print of a uterine fibroid! The 20 inch canvas Paul Ross! You know the one - Paul Ross!  That…guy! And don’t forget the canvas of Paul Ross speaking in mid-sentence! A canvas of a man biting into a hamburger! Photographic print of a woman rejecting a plate of food! (’A study in post-modern angst’ according to one reviewer.) And from our American cousins we have the ultra-safe steering wheel laptop desk! (Check the product images…) Or the horse head mask!

Best stop now before I go completely insane.

Back in the real(ish) world, here’s a great article from Slate about one contemporary reviewer’s hatchet job on John Keats’ Endymion, and what we can learn from it when it comes to reading and writing reviews today.

Beautiful and mysterious paper sculptures have been turning up around Edinburgh - what could this be about I wonder?

Want to make your own website look pretty? Here’s a hand guide called Don’t Fear the Internet, which will tell you about WordPress CMS, html, and much else.

And finally, Burgerac, a blog devoted entirely to finding the best burgers in town. It’s like they have seen INTO MY VERY SOUL. Happy weekends all!

‘Literary fiction.’ What is it, exactly?

When I get asked what category of fiction Who Is Mr Satoshi? falls into, I generally do a bit of protracted umming and ahhing before telling the questioner that my novel is ‘probably literary fiction’. This usually meets with a facial expression which can be roughly translated as: I’m not going to read anything by this halfwit; he’s not even sure what genre he’s writing in.

What I generally fail to go on and explain is the source of my hesitation. For some bookworms, literary fiction is whatever a prize committee decides it is: if a book’s on the Booker longlist, or gets a nomination for the Costa, it’s ‘literary’. For others, a literary novel is simply one written in prose which seems somehow to stand above the average piece of writing. But, for many readers, ‘literary fiction’ is synonymous with ‘unreadable’, ‘pretentious’, ‘plotness’. And - here’s the trouble - I sort of agree that those last three epithets do aptly describe a big swathe of contemporary literary fiction.

It’s not that I’m opposed to lyrical, self-conscious prose (I’m partial to the odd ‘epithet’, ‘aptly’ and ’swathe’, after all). But I do fear that ‘literary fiction’ has become the sweep-up category for a lot of middle-of-the-road novels that have abandoned the pleasures of narrative tension in favour of over-excited similes (’her hair was like, like … a mane of overflowing … hair’).

The author Monica Ali recently suggested on Twitter that ‘the most basic element of plot is suspense … some students [of literature] struggle with that, as it’s associated with popular forms of fiction.’ That struck me as very interesting, and mingled in my head with another observation aired at around the same time. On the Culture Show I’d seen Sue Perkins describe her experience of being a Booker Prize judge, and spilt my coffee in surprise when she casually mentioned that out of the 134 novels she’d had to read for the award, at least 100 were ‘completely plotless’.

Depressing, I thought, tending to the second-degree burns and sofa stains. But maybe not surprising. I’ve lost track of the number of literary novels that have passed through my hands in the last few years which have contained not a shred of suspense. It’s as if suspense itself has become associated with cheap tricks, with a ‘genre’ approach to fiction-writing which is deemed to be both lowbrow and gimmicky, and if you want to be taken seriously as an Artist (the capital letter is essential, Darling) you need to steer well clear of it. Either that or many modern literary novelists are simply unable to pull off narrative suspense - plot is not in their writerly toolkit - which is perhaps even more worrying.

In the past, authors from Dickens right through to Somerset Maugham, Christopher Isherwood and Beryl Bainbridge have put absolute faith in the power of story-telling, in the spell-like allure of an engaging plot. The writing was beautiful, but it was employed in the service of a compelling story. Even arch stylists like Woolf and Joyce knew better than to turn their noses up at narrative tension (in Mrs Dalloway we wonder whether Septimus will kill himself, and whether Clarissa’s much-hyped party will be success or disaster; in the deceptively sprawling Ulysses we are plunged straight into the tension between Stephen and Mulligan, the latter making a cruel remark about the former’s mother). Plot, tension, suspense - these were not dirty words as far as the great novelists of the past were concerned.

Could we say the same about many of today’s literary novelists? Would John Banville be pleased or put out if we approached him at a literary event and told him his Booker-winning novel The Sea was ‘entertaining’, or ‘a good read’, or ‘a page-turner’? Is calling a novel with literary aspirations a ‘page-turner’ a compliment these days, or a patronising pat on the back, like telling Heston his latest Triple-Dipped Liquid Nitrogen Scallop & Dairy Milk Risotto ‘filled a hole’?

A lot of my favourite books are what critics might call ‘dense’, ‘difficult’, or ‘inventive’ - but on some level they also fill a hole, offering me a narrative that makes me want to keep turning the page. I don’t need dead bodies, Harvard symbologists or girls with dragon tattoos - but I do need the character to want something (risotto? coffee? a new sofa?) and be changed in the getting or not-getting of it. And if I find myself staying up past my bed time, turning that page and then the next one, caring about the character, I don’t dismiss the author as one who makes effortful nods toward genre convention. I think to myself: oh, this writer knows what they’re doing. Writers like Sarah Waters, David Mitchell, Paul Murray, Tim Pears - they know what they’re doing. They combine thoughtfully plotted, elegantly suspenseful stories (yes, actual stories!) with thoughtful, elegant, challenging prose. But too many supposedly ‘literary’ novelists seem to see the very concept of ’story’ - of having a beginning, middle and end (which don’t need to be carefully signposted, of course, or even in that order) - as being a cheap concession to the numbskulls who buy their books.

Those Artists often produce works which more closely resemble rambling, structureless blog posts than novels. And who, in the end, wants to read one of those?

Who is Mr Satoshi? is available now at Amazon, Waterstones, or your local bookshop.

Join Jonathan Lee for a live chat on Twitter this Friday 29th July, from 12-1 - details here.

It is our pleasure to bring you the second Windmill Book Club choice, Who is Mr Satoshi? by Jonathan Lee. It’s our pleasure to bring you the second of our book club choices, WHO IS MR SATOSHI? by Jonathan Lee. On the day his mother dies reclusive photographer Rob Fossick - forty-one and already in the twilight of his career - finds among her belongings an unexplained package addressed to a ‘Mr Satoshi’.

So begins a quest that will propel Rob, anxious and unprepared, into the urban maelstrom of Tokyo. With the help of a colourful group of new acquaintances - a vigilant octogenarian; a beautiful ‘love hotel’ receptionist; an ex-sumo wrestler obsessed with Dolly Parton - the scene seems set for him to unravel the secrets surrounding Mr Satoshi’s identity. But until he has faced his own demons, and begun to reconnect with the world around him, the answers Rob craves will remain tantalisingly beyond his reach …

Combining several interlocking mysteries spanning sixty years of history, Who Is Mr Satoshi? is a uniquely inventive story from a dazzling new voice in British fiction.

Click below to download the reading group guide and kick off the discussion today, and join us on Facebook to see what other readers thought! 

Download the WHO IS MR SAOTOSHI? reading group guide (pdf)

Here we go, getting you in the mood for the weekend, it’s the Windmill Friday Feeling!

Something bookish to start: the 100 best opening lines in literature according to Stylist. My favourite is 1984’s ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ Instantly tells you that this is a world where something has gone seriously wrong.

Something Facebookish to continue. Which Facebook user are you - the troublemaker? The peacemaker? Read this analysis of a typical Facebook debate and decide. (I hope I’m the Thoughtful One, I fear I’m the Bait Taker.)

Two poignant links here and wonderful with it. J K Rowling responds to a fan letter with grace, humility, and intelligence. And perhaps even more emotional, Dear Photograph: a lovely idea, beautifully executed.

And finally, to leave you on a happy note, here’s a guy doing impressions. The Morgan Freeman is scarily good. Scarily.

Good weekends all!

COMPETITION CLOSED

Congratulations to our winners Carol De Brikasaan, Melanie Gardiner, Olivia Demosthenous, Laura Sanderson and Tracey Wright! You will recieve your books in the post in the next few days.

*** 

A great competition for all you crime fans - we are giving away 5 copies of Craig Russel’s new Jan Fabel mystery A Fear of Dark Water.

Just as a major environmental summit is about to start in Hamburg, a massive storm hits the city. When the flood waters recede, a headless torso is found washed up.

Initially, Jan Fabel of the Murder Commission fears it may be another victim of a serial rapist and murderer who stalks his victims through internet social network sites, then dumps their bodies in waterways around the city.

But the truth of the situation is far more complex and even more sinister. Fabel’s investigations lead him to a secretive environmental Doomsday cult called ‘Pharos’, the brainchild of a reclusive, crippled billionaire, Dominik Korn.

COMPETITION CLOSED

Well slap my thigh, if it isn’t the Windmill Friday Feeling!

Social networks: a 21st century phenomenon right? Wrong, according to this article, which tracks Voltaire’s 18th century Republic of Letters, a powerful influence on the Enlightenment.

While I’m not exactly a ‘grammar Nazi’ (I make far too many mistakes myself to ever be called that) I do wince at the state of some people’s Facebook spelling. Others do rather more than wince, as these Obnoxious Responces to Misspellings on Facebook attest.

One of the things I love about the internet is the random stuff that you come across that makes you think afresh about something extremely commonplace. So, we have this: The Unsung Heros of Biscuit Embossing. Brilliant!

AND FINALLY, because we are a publishing blog after all, it’s only right that we end with The World’s Most Inspiring Bookstores according to Salon.com. Good weekends all!

It’s week two of our book club for the fantastic Vaclav and Lena - I hope you’re enjoying reading this wonderful book (the Financial Times certainly did). Now you can download the handy Vaclav and Lena Reading Group Guide, to get the discussion going in your group!

Next week: Haley Tanner tells us what inspired her to write the book.

Vaclav and Lena is out now. Buy it from rbooks, Amazon, Waterstones, or your local bookshop.

There’s music playing now. It fills the room as Mr Satoshi stands over me, pressing his thumbs into my scalp.

Mr Satoshi is a hairdresser. Before every haircut, he toys with my skull as if testing a mango for ripeness. And halfway through this toying, he gives me a look in the mirror. It’s a look that suggests he wants to put the mango back on the shelf and exchange it for a better one.

“I can only do best I can,” he says, staring down at my double crown. 

Dire Straits blasts out of Bose speakers, rebounding off metal and glass. My hairdresser back in London always plays gentle muzak - a panpipe version of Celine Dion, or the sound of blue whales making love to other blue whales, or perhaps having a fling with a high-pitched dolphin (it’s not always clear). But Mr Satoshi prefers classic rock.

There are probably better barbers in Tokyo, but on my arrival in Japan a few months ago this was the first one I found. As an expat living in Japan I find myself craving routine. I don’t want a different hair salon every time. I am a creature of habit, and so is Mr Satoshi. He tosses the gown around my neck like a magician, every time. He launches straight into the head-squeezing routine, every time. And he always greets my description of the Ideal Jonathan Lee Haircut with a silent wince that causes his glasses to ride up his nose. The lenses are the thickness of bullet-proof perspex. This is disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as the fact that he only ever seems to peer over the top of them.

“You have a thick hair,” he announces, the same words he utters every time I visit. “This a method to best thin it.”

He shuffles around and strokes his beard. Beneath the mirror is a ledge bearing an open box of scissors, clippers and razors. He inspects my fringe closely, then attacks a huge clump of it.

* * *

It is only when he starts to trim the sides that his methods become less dangerous. This is when we talk. I tell him my impressions of Tokyo. He nods now and again. When he speaks, which is very occasionally, he teaches me something new.

We talk about how on the one hand the population has a huge affinity for the traditions of Japan’s past, but on the other Tokyo is a city in which everything is sparkling and new - the ultimate 21st century playground.

I mention how I walked into a bar on Saturday and saw a Japanese man drinking a pint of Asahi. On the stool opposite, his tiny son was swigging froth from a brown glass bottle with ‘KidsBeer’ printed on the side.

I tell him that the toilet in my apartment has more buttons and levers than a 747 cockpit, plus a built-in bidet which, as AA Gill put it, leaves you questioning your sexuality. 

Mr Satoshi tells me that ‘AA’ is not a pre-name that he has come across.

One minute you’re trying your hand at an ancient art like ikebana or calligraphy; the next you’re buying ice cream from a vending machine that also sells used schoolgirls’ knickers. On Saturday a local host takes you to a 1,000-year-old temple, and on Sunday you dine in a high-rise waterworld where customers catch their own supper with a miniature fishing rod. As an expat I am confronted with the twin Japanese obsessions - tradition and newness - and it makes for a place that is difficult to access but fascinating to behold.  

Mr Satoshi enjoys the fact that I am intrigued by these contrasts. He tells me that Japan is the land of variety.

* * *

One day I tell Mr Satoshi that I am thinking of writing a novel. I might drop my main character, a confused Westerner, into the middle of Japan’s contradictory capital. A photographer, perhaps. Someone who has lost his creative urge. Maybe lost something else, too: someone he loved. He’ll be searching for a mysterious individual - that will be the thing that propels the narrative forward. And in the process, he’ll come to understand himself a little better.

Mr Satoshi queries this last bit. “Understand himself?”

“Yeah.”

“I do not like it when a book is full of chiizu,” he says, and uses his hand to fan away a pretend smell.

“It won’t be cheesy,” I say. “At least, that’s not my intention.”

“Good,” he says. “How many words complete?”

I make my thumb and forefinger into a zero. He laughs harder than I’ve ever heard him laugh before.

“Maybe I’ll call one of the characters Mr Satoshi,” I say. “It’s a mysterious-sounding name.”

“Yes,” he says. “A better name than AA.”

Who is Mr Satoshi by Jonathan Lee is out in paperback in July. Order it from Amazon, Play, Waterstones, or your local bookshop.