Personal Matter

Oe's most important novel <i>A Personal Matter </i> has been called by <i>The New York Times</i> close to a perfect novel. In <i>A Personal Matter </i> Oe has chosen a difficult complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child? Bird the protagonist is a young man of 27 with antisocial tendencies who more than once in his life when confronted with a critical problem has cast himself adrift on a sea of whisky like a besotted Robinson Crusoe. But he has never faced a crisis as personal or grave as the prospect of life imprisonment in the cage of his newborn infant-monster. Should he keep it? Dare he kill it? Before he makes his final decision Bird's entire past seems to rise up before him revealing itself to be a nightmare of self-deceit. The relentless honesty with which Oe portrays his hero -- or antihero -- makes Bird one of the most unforgettable characters in recent fiction.