Revered in his homeland as a delicate observer of life in Osaka, Miyamoto has been little known in English until now....
Epistolary novel detailing the gradual enlightenment of a divorced couple, the noted Japanese author’s U.S. debut.
Aki and Yasuaki’s marriage at first seemed blessed. Not only was it a love match, he was the heir apparent to her father’s successful construction firm. But Yasuaki succumbed to his obsession with a former schoolmate and nightclub hostess. When he was found in a hotel room, survivor of a botched murder-suicide, Aki’s father insisted on a divorce. Now, ten years later, the estranged pair’s paths cross at a mountain resort where unhappily remarried Aki has taken her handicapped son. Yasuaki initiates a correspondence, and the two pour out their emotions. Since Yasuaki almost died at his lover’s hands, he’s done little except get involved in bad business ventures, take out bad loans and hide out from angry gangsters. Things begin to look up when his girlfriend, Reiko, a supermarket cashier with a savings account, enlists his help with a promising plan to sell brochures to beauty shops. When a thug shows up at Reiko’s door to collect on one of Yasuaki’s debts, she pays it off with most of her savings, indenturing but also anchoring him. Aki, meanwhile, decides to let her current husband, Katsunuma, go and concentrate on raising her son, who is showing signs of improvement. Miyamoto’s gentle touch with these well-meaning and generally honorable characters lends subtle drama to his treatise on loss.
Revered in his homeland as a delicate observer of life in Osaka, Miyamoto has been little known in English until now. Readers will want more translations, and soon.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2005
ISBN: 0-8112-1633-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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