Tag: Asian fiction

The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha

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The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha

Indian fiction

Source personal – copy

As it is Jubilee weekend here in the Uk I decided to try and read a couple of the books from the Jubilee list and this is the first one I choose to read as I just love the title of this book that is the only reason I had to on my TBR pile it was in the small shop in Bakewell that sells second-hand books and it just caught my eye with the title and then being described as an Indian coming of age novel on the front cover(which I think is maybe deceiving ) The writer Raj Kamal Jha has written five novels and is editor in chief of The Indian express. This was his debut novel he has won a number of prizes and his literature has been said to take its lead from the news he works on as an editor in a newsroom.

I could begin with my name but forgot it, why waste time, it doesn’t matter in this city of twelve million names. I could begin with the way I look but what do I say, I am not a young manny more, I wear glasses, my stomach droops over the belt of my trousers.

There’s something wrong with my trousers. The waist, where the loops for the belt are, folds over every time, so if you look at me carefully while I am walking by, on the street or at the bus stop, you will see a flash of white, the cloth they use as lining, running above my belt, peeping out

The opening lines of the book as he sits to write to the baby that is to be adopted tomorrow

The blue bedspread is a bedspread from a family and this night it has a small newborn baby on it and we are in a house in Calcutta as we see a man writing a long note to this babe the babe is the daughter of his dead sister and is due to be adopted in the morning and what he is writing here is a description of the events that lead up to that moment. In the story of a lower-middle-class Indian family. As the brother recalls the events of the past the blue spread iOS is a sort of recurring motif in the book. As the past and what has happened within the family are slowly revealed. the book is formed of chapters around each family member but starts with the narrator’s visit. the police station after a call telling him of his sister’s fate that she has died. What happens is we see what lies behind those curtains and here in this family it is a broken twist and as the book moves on becomes more so to its shocking last story of the last eight words of the narrator!

Blue bedspread

The bedspread was ten feet by nine feet, dark blue, almost purple, but her the years it had faded until it was blueish white, like our breakfast of milk and cornflakes. When we returned from school in the afternoon, we would lie on the bed, sister and I, our cheeks pressed against the thick fabric, our eyes fixed along the surface, imaging we were looking at the sky. And that the discoloured patches were clouds

The Blue bedspread I also think the fact they are on the bed together is maybe more than it seems!

This is a slow-burning book that sees what has happened in the family and between this brother and sister and their parents to get to that night as our unnamed narrator sits and writes this note to this newly born babe. As he puts it He could begin Wirth his name but he has forgotten it. This is a book that lingers with the reader long after you put the book down it is lifting the curtain into a family broken and twisted. The last book I remember hitting me so hard was Besides the sea although on a totally different subject it has the same impact and this book has an ending which is horrific. The book iS at times here and there in how the story is told,  but for me, this was the style it was meant to be as our narrator is a drinker and to me, this was how his mind was remembering events not in order in a linear way but as he thought of one person then he connected it to the next and as he kept longing at the babe and the blue bedspread it was as thou was the Proustian Madeleine as it was part of the family home and like the memories, it is worn and old. I was reminded in part of the Beautiful south song “The table” where a table is almost a character and this is the same the bedspread keeps cropping up and recurring in the stories this is a style I have also seen in the story collection Timoleon Vita come home where a dog is a recurring motif in the stories. Have you read any book like this that lifts the lid on a dysfunctional family?

Winstons score – B is an interlinking collection of stories told over the course of a night a family history that is horrific in parts.

Solo Dance by Li Kokomi

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Solo Dance by Li Kotomi

Taiwanese/Japanese lit

Original title – 独り舞, Hitorimai

Translator – Arthur Reiji Morris

Source – Review copy

Over the years World editions have sent me some wonderful books and this is the latest from them and it is a gem it is written by Li Kotomi a Taiwanese writer that lives in Japan she has written in both her native Mandarin and Japanese which she started to study when she was 15 and went to university in Japan to study and has lived there since this was her debut novel in Japanese . She is known for addressing LGBT issues in her fiction and has won a number of prize last year she was the first writer to win the Akutagawa prize(aOne of the largest Japanese book prizes previous winners include most of the best writers from Japan like Endo and Oe and more recently Sayaka Murata. The main Character in this book is also a Taiwanese woman living in Tokyo.

She was drawn to Danchen the moment she saw those eyes. Though she was to young to understand the meaning of eve in even its most basic sense, she knew that squirming, rolling wave of emotion in her chest was the same one felt between those fairy tale princes and princesses.

She spent her days watching Danchen but never managed to exchange a word with her.

To Young to see what this meant it haunts her still in her twenties this and other events in here years in Taiwan.

Cho has end up living in Japan and working in an Office but this Taiwanese woman has a number of events in her past that we find out as the book unfolds.She is just at them moment trying to blend in as she tries to hide her sexuality at work where the talk is all of marriage and kids, She is a woman that is walking a tightrope and is always looking into the abyss of death as we she what in her previous life made her leave her life in Tawian. To set up a new life in Japan a loss in her past of a girl she loved a girl she never told how she felt. which we see the after math of this event  in the middle of the book where the book shifts from the observance of her life to her inner most thoughts and diary of the time and the event that lead to her going to Japan the loss of a close friend that she was in love with. this and another event which locks her off just as she should bloom as she goes to university This is a book that has many threads office life trying to be yourself in a world where people are expected to conform. A look at grief , mental health and how death can lie round every corner.  It is about trying to escape but do we every really escape what has happened in our Past ?

Her solitary nature made a lot of the fellow students on her course uncomfortable around her. Unlike most of her classmates, she had been studying Japanese since Junior high school and had already progressed to reading a lot of Japanese literature in the original, making her top of the class. This only served to worsen her solitude. Tachung Girl’s Senior High School was prestigious, and so a lot of its students went on to study at National Taiwan University, which meant that news of the assault a few months ago had spread among the students in her degree course.

We what has happened  to Cho sets her apart that event just before University

The turning point as Javier Cercas put in his essay collection The blind spot he says a lot of great books have that point from has with the whale for ahab our waiting for Godot there is that event never seen that is the turning point here it is the death of a girl Danchen the aftermath of which with another even more horrific event  is the whole kernel of the book and how Cho ended up as the Cho we meet. But it is a look at grief unspoken grief. The pressure of hiding ones sexuality and also a novel about growing up it packs a punch in its 250 pages as we wind up this year booker international maybe I have read the first book from next years list ? I was also remind of the main event in this book the loss of the girl she was in love with at a young age is a similar story to that we find in Tarjei Vesaas The ice palace where we see a girl coping with the loss of a friend she was in love with. For me the book is like the Art piece Shedboatshed (where a shed was made into a boat then back to a shed ) The image of a person taken apart as this even has done and then like in the piece sailed across the water and then rebuilt on the other side not quite the shed to was !! this is about how we can never quite come back to what we were when that event happens like the death in this book it is always there ! Have you read this book or any other book set in Japan by a writer not from Japan ?

Winstons score – -A a book that sees how grief and hiding our true selves can eat us up !

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree

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Tomb of Sand by Geertanjali Shree

Indian fiction

Original title – Ret Samadhi

Translator – Daisy Rockwell

Source – personal copy via subscription

Well I have finally got round to reviewing this book as I just struggled how to get across how wonderful Tomb of sand is I have read it twice and still struggling with how to put it across. It is the fifth novel from the Geetanjali shree her earlier books have also been translated into English but not by Daisy. Geetanjali was brought up in Uttar Bradesh and she said the lack of available children books in English made her write in Hindi and her rich connection in Hindi( I was lucky with my shadow Jurors to have a zoom chat with daisy where she said Geetanjali loved word play and sometimes just put pieces in the book for the word play ). This is the first novel translated from Hindi to be translated into English to be longlisted and now shortlisted on The booker shortlist. I agree with daisy when she said there is a real blind spot in the UK for translated works from India and South Asia, The lose of a couple of prizes although I now know there is a new Prize in India The JCB prize Which I will now be watching for books to read from India.

Serious son got up and left. The world, wrecked by destructive humans, rematerialised all about him. The sand, defiled beer cans and plastic bags, the earth, colonised with white people, the flabby Indian bandar log, the cacophony that fancies itself music and makes nature weep, the laughing screaming stupid people, laugh, they told him; what’s there to laugh about- look at all you’ve done to this Nation! Fume fume fume. Serious Son went back to his room , fuming. And fell asleep.

The older son was said to not laugh or smile a serious young man.

Well to the book well first the title Samadhi which is a Hindi word with a multitude of means and the English title was suggest by Daisy as it has part of what the word means but also makes you think about it (For meI felt it was in a way about the sand of time running out but that was my view when first reading the title). The book allows an 80 woman she has lost her Husband at the start of the book and has gone into a slump the first hundred odd pages is her at her daughters just in her bed with Grief or I do wonder is the grief the loss of her husband or the loss of time in her life ? maybe that is just me what is captured we’ll her is the household the coming and goings around Ma as she gets to life together, there is also a lot about how her being on with her daughter which I didn’t know isn’t very common. As she  comes out of her room and starts to live again. This involves reconnecting with Rosie a Hirja( a trans woman) on the cover it says they meet after the husbands  but at times in the book there is reference to them, spend time as kids as Ma visits Lahore this is the later part of the book and is about the loss of identity when partition happened and how it had a knock on effect on Ma as Her and her daughter Beti visit. That is just part of the book add a lot of sidetracks about the locals , birds and Hindi religion and myth you see how hard this book was to get over.

A coolness descends into her heat which is pleasant, calm, not the kind of numbing chill from outside .The peace of the wall, not the carrying-on occurring behind her back. That painting behind her that makes her wonder how the breathing of the whole world has caused her own to collapse.

Ma closes her eyes, finesses her silence, stops her breathing so that no one will know  there’s one breath left: one tiny life form. Let it slip into the wall, let it slowly glide forward, let nothing get in its way to ruin its rhythm, let nothing break its stride, suppress it, make it fall off the edge

Early on Ma still in her bed viewed by Beti

I loved how this was put over in English when it dropped through the letterbox I went oh no a 700 page novel but it is actually maybe 500 page novel what they did between the Hindi version of the book and the English is add chapter breaks also the fact that in Hindi the books fill the pages this was 300 pages of tightly packed text. This is a story that was hard to get into English as it had the Untranslatable tag Daisy said the wordplay at times is hard to convey but what she found at times is that if she had to cut something another wordplay would appear in the same passaged. The book has a number of controversial stories the first is Rosie there is very few books written in India with Hijra portray or even mentioned. I did feel that Rosie was a real person that the writer may have meet the mannerism and speech it just jumps off the page. This is one of those books that is hard to put across it dislike doing into a world outside your own for a time it is Ma’s world we see the world through her eyes , add to this some great wordplay and a mix of myths this is a blend that maybe for me deserves to win the Booker prize. I felt that after the first reading earlier in the year and even more after this reading this is a book I will read again and again over time which for me is something I never think of doing. Have you read this book or any books Translated from other Indian languages into English ?

Winstons score – +A just breathtaking in the world we enter but also in the translation which draws t=you into that world.

Heaven by Mieko kawakami

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Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Japanese fiction

original title – Hevun ヘヴン

Translators – Sam Bett and David Boyd

Source – personal copy

I move on with my booker longlist reading, I still want to call it the man booker anyway I’ve been trying to read as much as I can so I can get through the list asap anyway it means I”ve not blogged much this week but I have got through two books still a number to read but this is the first one I finished it is from the Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami it is the first book I have read by her. The other book that came out before by her Breast and Eggs was one of the buzz translations when it came out and as you know I tend to try and avoid them or leave to a later date my reading of the book. Anyway, Mieko Kawakami was a bar hostess and a well-known singer before she became a writer she had brought out three albums before turning to become a writer full-time n 2006. She has written a number of books and won a lot of Prizes in Japan. This is a harrowing account of being bullied at school ( I think we all in some way experience bullying in school or out of school).

One day towards the end of April, between classes, I unzipped my pencil case and found a folded triange of between the pencils.

I unfolded it to see what was inside.

“We should be Friends”

That’s all it said. Thin letters that looked like little fishbones, written in mechanical pencil

The opening lines and the first note from Kojima to our narrator

Our narrator is unnamed and is 14 when writing this book it follows a year in his life as ever the is a target for bullies because of a lazy eye. I remember for me it was just I was tall very slim (what went wrong !!) and ungainly it doesń take much at this age. anyway, he has an imagination and imagines how the bullies might get him to do this and that Iḿ not sure if this is a way to make the actual bullying seem less as if he pictures the most unimaginable acts the actual acts areń as bad but they are every time it brings him down a little more. The only solace in the book is when he starts to get notes from what seems to be someone that is experiencing bullying as well this is how the book opens. The notes lead to him meeting and becoming friends the one part of light in this book is the relationship and the initial hope it brings to him with Kojima. But then the bullying increase and we also see when our narrator tries to talk and reason with one of the bullies. ut his point of view when the bullies reply. Shows how much has changed over the years he had what would maybe be a Japanese view(not just Japanese maybe that traditional male role of breadwinner fighting man etc ) from years ago about the weak well not weak it takes real strength and courage to face bullying and carry on. His views are just outdated and but is maybe the centre of the book two views and paths in life and with human nature.

“Not so fast,Eyes.”

Class was over, butI turned around, becauser I had no choice, as rotten as I felt. One of Ninomiya’s friends grabbed me by the neck and dragged me back into the classroom. This happened all the time. Ninomiya was in the middle of the roo,, sittingon a desk. That was his style. When he noticed me, he laughe, then said, “Hey buddy.” He told me to hove a stick of chalk up my nose and draw smoething hilarious on the blackboard with it, something that would make them shit their pants. His firends all cracked up. One of them dragged me to the blackboard and the rest of them circled around to watch.

One of the numerous cases of him getting bullied in the book.

I wasn’t looking forward to this book I am just not into books that are maybe aimed at YA  audience which this looked like when I read the blurb. But when I read it it has an insight into the human character and also human suffering we all experience bullying on some level that is life life is a hierarchy whether it is violence, abuse, in your job or in the family. but the scars of it can last a lifetime or long into adulthood our narrator Eyes as they call him will probably have these events for most of his life playing in his head like movies in this case horror movies (sorry stole that from counting crows). Anyway it is a horrific bildungsroman that maybe is right for the target audience which is kids around 14 I feel it shows the horrors of bullying also the outdated nature of the bullies view although with recent events some adults are still bullies like Mr Putin the world has moved on but has it will bullying ever go no it is part of life which is sad people are more aware of it but as in Eyes case and mine it doesń take a lot even my young niece about this age who is rather like My brother Duncan and I in her build has struggled with bullying it is so sad. It is fair to say the book hit an old nerve and I related to our narrator’s woes transported back to the 80s. how did you interact with reading the book?

Winstons score – B a solid YA novel about how it feels to be bullied

Happy stories , Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu

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Happy stories , Mostly  by Norman Erikson Pasaribu

Indonesian fiction

Original title –  Cerita-cerita Bahagia, Hampir Seluruhnya

Translator – Tiffany Tsao

Source – personal copy

I was pleased that I decide to try my first subscription last year and chose Tilted Axis it paid of when there were three of the books I had been sent from them on the long list of this year’s booker. I had partly read this one but then as happens it had been in my bag for a while then I just put it on a shelf and hadń gotten back to it as I am like a magpie attracted to the next shiny thing. This is the debut fiction collection from Norman Erikson Pasaribu one of the leading writers in Indonesia he has written both poetry and fiction and was said to be in the long tradition of queer catholic writing by English pen. the book also has a very insightful conversation-style interview between the writer and translator which I found very insightful. This collection came out in 2014 and was a huge success in Indonesia and lead to him winning the best young writer in South Asia. This collection of 12 stories vary in length from the first which is a single page most are between 10 and 20 pages long.

Mama sandra would bring some home for him whenecver she worked the morning shift, beofre she returned in the evening. The cart she brought it from could usually be  found at the intersection by the clothing factory in Bojong menteng where whe used to work. The Vendor liked to hang around the middle school nearby. from there , shé walk back to their house in Rawalumbu, a bag of sweet fluffy cloud swinging from one hand. Once home shé recline on the mat in front of the tv, her head propped up on one elbow, cradled her palm. Bison would sit nearby , leaning against the wall. Piching off pieces of cotton candy, heý warch the family quiz show that came on every evening, laughing at impatien fathers and micomunicating siblings, The last hindred times shé recalled this ritual they shared, mother and child, Mama Sandra had cried

A long passage but capture the power of a foood memorey and the loss due to suicide which is so hard .

I chose to just mention three of the stories in the collection and leave the other for you to find the first is the so whatś your name, Sandra? the tale of Mama Sadra who had recently lost her son Bison (she named as she liked the word and how it sounded). She has chosen to use all her leave and do something to go to My son in Vietnam. As her friend Mama Anton says she and Sandra grew up in a small village and they know of no one that has ever been abroad. She arrives in Vietnam where we see her eating cotton candy. She visits a temple at the end of this story it has a very strange twist. The next story is the following story about a broken heart this story has a couple of lists of how to get other a broken heart as a student tries to get over that lover. Then we have the story Welcome to the department of unanswered prayers which sees someone in a sort of corporate version of heaven where they are introduced to the job in the department but also told about what happens and how they are expanding as more Koreans are becoming Christian.I loved this story it was a fun look at the afterlife in fact in a way it brought to mind the world of Brazil the film where we have a world of bureaucracy gone mad.

Welcome to the department  of Unanswered  prayers ! Hereś your ID. When itś time to go home, put your badge in your bag and leave your bag in your car, tather than tossing it some drawer, I mean, or chucking it somewhere inside your room, Doń worry no one will steal it. And doń to forget to bring it tomorrow and the day after and all the days after that . You need to get past security anc to access the main entrance, the department, the sub departments,the letter storage facility and the archive

This made me smile the beaucratic take of heaven !! rememeber the badge.

really got into this collection when I started it again it goes here and there but it was after the reading when I read about how he wrote and the use of Food like cotton candy and in other places there are macdonalds meals he uses these as a springboard as memories are strong around food and can take you to a time and place so well. Then he also so mention music in the second story I mentioned he had chosen Blue by Joni Mitchell as his heartbreak album. For me, my heartbreak song isń on an album but going to Macclesfield college and passing Ian Curtis’s house most days as I walked into the town where he wrote Love will tear us apart which for most guys of my generation is a break-up song. He is a writer that uses surreal images, traditional Batak imagery and his love of food and music he talks tough subjects like Suicide which is part of the So whatś your name story a subject that always need talking about. One of three strong books from Tilted axis for this year Man Booker. Have you read this book?

Winstons score – +A a new voice from a country that hasń been translated enough

Men without Women By Haruki Murakami

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Men without women by Haruki Murakami

Japanese short stories

Original title – 女のいない男たち

Translators- Philip Gabriel and Ted Goosen

Source – Personal copy

I reviewed a non-fiction book By Mjurakami earlier this month and decided it was time to read this as since I was gift this book there has been another short story collection come out which I must get. I got this as a leaving gift for my last job which was nearly five years ago. I hadn’t plan to read ot but one afternoon after finishing one book and looking around my Library I decided it was time to get to this as it had been seven years before that when I had last reviewed a book by him so I felt a short gap was needed anyway he has always been a favourite and yes the last couple of novels hadn’t quite lived up to what I had wanted from Murakami there is always a feeling he has that true Opus Magnus to write still that defining book maybe that is just my view of him he is a great writer but would love that epic book he has yet to write that I’m sure he has in him, anyone else feels this about him? Anyway, let’s get to this collection of seven stories by him.

The first time I heard Kitaru sing “Yesterday” with those crazy lyrics he was in the bath at his house in Denenchofu (which, despite his description, was not a shabby house in ashabby neighbourhood but an ordinary house in an ordinary neighbourhood, an older house, but bigger than my house in Ashiya, not stand out in any way – and, incidentally , the car in the driveway was a navy-blue Golf, a recent model). Whenever Kitaru came home.he immediately dropped everything and jumped in the bat, and , once he was in the tub, he stayed there forever.

I was rtemind of the bath her of Douglas Adams love of Baths somethig that cfrept into his fiction I wonder if Murakami is the same!!

The collection opens with the tale of Kafuku in the story Drive my car he is an actor that has lost his license show hires a young woman to be his chauffeur in her mid-twenties to drive him around as she does he start to unload his life his wife that had affairs. A typical Murakami character is the lonely man older but so is the writer a world-weary soul with more life lived and ahead ! Then  Yesterday is a story about a trio of restaurant workers Tanimura and then a couple Kitaru and Erika the two split in the story just because he isn’t paying the attention she wants and she has then gone on a date with another man. He then moves on just a few days after this event.the story then jumps year later and Tanimura bumps into Erika now in the thirties she is married she asks Erika about the man she dated she hadn’t slept with him but still sees Kitaru and both are single and now lives apart the title is a hook on the Beatles song that is misunderstood and sung by Kitaru this reminds me of a friend many years ago that had misunderstood the meaning of a song by U2. I will just mention one more story leave the rest for you readers that haven’t read the book to discover the last story is Kino a middle-aged man who opens a bar called Kino’s his name the only name he could think of encouraged to open the bar this after his wife cheats a recurring motif in some of these stories. He has few customers one may be a Yakuza he sees of some wrong customers Kino also meets a woman also scared by her own life they talk Jazz. For me, this was classic Murakami a bar Jazz hark right back to his first two books dark alleys and men with no future all traits in his works over the years, The story also has a few surreal moments  when events in the bar change another of his traits.

kino couldn’t remember now what had led him to sleep with the woman that night. Kino felt, from the first, that there was something out of the ordinary about her. Something had triggered an instinctive response, warning him not to get involved. ANd now this cigarette burns on her back, He was basically a cautious person. If he really needed to sleep with a woman, he could always make do with a professional, he felt. Just take care of things by paying for it, And it wasn’t as it he were even attracted to this woman.

Kino sleep with this woman but why ? are they just two damaged souls ?

 

Do you ever get that feeling when you read a book that had been on your shelves for years why did I wait so long and wish you would have got to it sooner? I had like the other collections I had read by him other the years for me this has a lot of his traits cheating wives, single men now aging like the writer himself. This is like the Espresso shot of his work a little Amuse Bouche of the writer you hit with every story of echoes reminds of his earlier works he is a writer that uses similar characters and always has he use a sort every man of Japan how many of the male characters in this book are there wandering around Tokyo middle single men either single for a long time or widowed separate. Also things like Jazz, late-night bars western music all motifs that have cropped up before. The first story Drive my car has been made into a film I hope I can see it sometime? Have you read this collection what were your thoughts about it?

Winstons Score – A , well worth the journey for any fan or anyone maybe wanting an into to him this has so many of his traits in this collection in small chunks!

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

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The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

Japanese fiction

Original title –  猫の客

Translator – Eric Selland

Source – personal copy

I now head back to Japan for the third book for this years January inJapan event and I decided to look at my TBR pile of books and one I had brought just because I liked the Cat on the cover I worried the book was going to be one that I wouldn’t enjoy but I decided as I had just brought another Japanese bestseller about a cat it was time to read this cat book. The book was written by the Japanese Poet Takashi Hirade he was born in Moji and lives in Tokyo with his wife who is also a poet. He was described by Kenzaburo Oe as a poet who creates new prose from poetry. He has published over twenty books and edited a series of books in Japan.

Another one pf Chibi’s characteristics was that she changed the direction of her cautious attention frequently. This active behaviour wasn’t limited to her kittenhood. Perhaps because she played alone most of the time in the expansive garden, seh reacted strongly to insects and reptiles. And there were times when I could only conclude that she must be reacting to subtle changes in the wind and light, not detectable by humans. It may be that most cats share the same quickness, but even so, in Chibi’s case, it was acute – she was after all, the cat of Lightning Alley. My wife got into the habit of pointing to the cat whenever it went by, extolling its virtues.

Early on in his time with the couple.

The book in some ways is autobiographical to the writer’s own life as he was a writer. The story follows a couple in the mid-thirties in the mid-1980s as they move into a small house that is part of a larger estate within the grounds just of an alley in a quieter part of Tokyo. When they rent they are told early on that they can have no children or pets. They are a writer and proofreader so spend their days at home. So when a cat appears a white cat with patches of brown(I thought of my parent’s cat truffles she was pure white but in that coat, you could see what was a tabby pattern in white anyway back to the book) The cat they invite in as a guest to there home and Call him Chibi’s and his independent nature and his skill when he plays with a ping pong ball. He initially bits the wife but she gets to like him. The cat gives this couple that is in the same house but may be caught up in themselves something to focus on. The cat comes and goes as we view them interacting with him and what he meant to them as they see the world starting to change due to events around them.

We made a door to the rooom that only Chibi could get through, not any other cats.Below the lagrge window on the south wall, there was a floor-level window of frosted glass about sixteen inches tall running the full length of ones above it, for sweeping out dust. By opening this window just three inches , a gap was leftnwhich allowed only Chibi to squeeze through. In order to prevent cold air and insects from getting in, we hung a thick cotton curtain of royal blue over it.

On the wooden floorbardfs in a corner of the Japanese style room, we placed a cardboard box, which had orginally contained mandarin oranges, to act as Chibi’s own special room. we put a  towel in the box and a dish for her food. Then we set a bowl for milk beside  the box.

They make him feel welcome as their guest with his own door and box !!

This is one of those gentle books that are a pleasure to sit and read at its heart is maybe the loneliness of city life even a couple can be a part in the same small cottage til Chibi’s appearance. Also, another thread in the book is the garden is so well described with the bird’s trees etc described the garden is almost like an oasis in the city. This is like those films I love and Myamanda happens and that is where nothing happens but the world we see and are drawn into is the beauty of the journey. The time in their house gives them a breathing gap in the chaotic world of Tokyo this oasis and that stray white cat that has come into their lives is may be a way for them to move on in their own lives anyway that is what I felt this is one of those books that was a bestseller because it is one of those books that grab the imagination of the reader and gives you a couple of hours in the company of a couple and their guest cats. Have you read this book or any of his other books?

Winstons scores – B The tale of a cat that likes to visit families as a guest.

People from my Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami

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People from my Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami

Japanese microfiction

Original title – 大きな鳥にさらわれないよう

Translator – Ted Gossen

Source – Library copy

I decided to go to the library for the first time in a long time as I thought I had a fine left from pre-Covoid as I had tried to order some books the other week but when I went in I must have paid the fine at the time it was just the card needed an update it was fun to browse again it had been to long and with the Booker international longlist coming up I will be trying to find some books I haven’t read before. One of the first \i found was this very short collection of micro-stories from Hiromi Kawakami who is one of those writers who I had read when she had her debut book out here 9 years ago but haven’t got back to even though I like the Briefcase when I reviewed it so it felt like it was time to try her books again and this was the perfect afternoon read and the second book for this years January in Japan reads. The book is narrated by an unnamed narrator.

A white cloth was lying at the foot of zelkova tree, When I walked over and picked it up, I saw a child underneath.

“What’s the big idea?” Thwe child glared at me, It had narrow eyes but thick eyebrows. I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy.

Ooops. Sporry! I apologized. But the child kept glaring at me. Are you playing hide and seek or something? It shook its head vigorousily from side to side.

“I live her,” it said

The child in the story the secret lives under a cloth under a tree

The book is a collection of very short stories of a neighbourhood very odd one thou, with a collage made of sweets a town full of odd characters and time has a fluid nature as some stories are immediate other last decades. Oh, people changing to pigeons in their habits. I knew this was an odd collection when the first story is about a child that lives on a cloth under a tree that then adopt and stay young and has a weird dance after showers. This is followed by a description of chicken Hell in the second story. Other stories describe a dog let loose they call black that dies. The Dog is a recurring theme as is a girl called Kanae first crops up in a tale about her clever sister then we see her become a model after going off the rails in her younger year a look at how peoples perceptions can change over time.

Blackie was vicious.

Blackie was the name we gave the black dog that belonged to Kiyoshi Akai. He called it John, but there was nothing John-like about it. No a common black Japanese mutt like that could only be called Blackie

Blackie was a barker. Not only did he bark, he nit – and not playful little nips. His bites were serious the kind that draw blood we often saw his victims in the front of Akais house complaining. “Look at the blood!”they’d bellow. “What are you going to do about it?” Yet the boy and his mother always appeared quite unpertubered.

The Black dog Blackie is a dog left to room and bite the locals til something happens !!

This is an odd collection of stories. They are very funny and surreal in nature they have a fun feel to them and you can tell she must enjoy using the voice of this narrator and the town she describes. I loved the way she lays in recurring characters like Kanae and her family the black dog and its own a man that no one seems to like and dogs, Birds chickens and pigeons. I was reminded of studio Ghibli films at times with humans becoming like Pigeons was like something out of those films also the neighbourhood with its mix of real and fantasy I have seen in a film like Totoro by them were the modr=ern japan mix with an ancient spiritual past. This book mix real life and surreal things happening like win a wish lottery and how different winners use their three wishes which one man changes his wife which is very funny as it backfires on him. That is one of the things I felt there is a fable-like feel to these stories a warning behind the fun nature of these stories. This is a collection hard to pigeonhole as the stories are very interlinked with the recurring themes and all being set in the same neighbourhood as she builds up the layers it is almost a novella with short chapters or a micro-fiction collection it is 90 pages and read within a couple of hours. Have you read this collection or any of her other books?

Winstons score – B solid fun collection ideal for a commute or an evening read

 

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Japanese Memoir

Original title – 走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること
 Hashiru koto ni tsuite kataru toki ni boku no kataru koto

Translator – Philip Gabriel

Source – Personal

I’m on my third book of the year and the first for this month January in Japan is a book I’m rereading something I haven’t done a lot of in recent times but this year I thinking I may throw a few books in like this books I read pre-blogging days this one IO had thought I reviewed but it appears I haven’t so when looking for books for this month this one jumped out at me as I had recently seen it mentions in a book vlog video and remembers how much I loved it the first time around and wonder if I would second time round. I am not a runner but like a walk every now and then here and there. The book is a memoir of his running life and how it has had a knock-on effect on others.

I began living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the end of MAy of this year, andf running has once again becomd the mainstay of my daily routine ever since. I’m seriously running now. By seriously I mean thirty-six miles a week. In other words, six miles a day, six days a week.It would be better if I ran seven days, but I have to factor in rainy days, and days when work keeps me too busy. There are some days. too, when frankly I just felt to tired to run . Taking all this into account, i leave one day a week a week as a day off. So, at thirty-six miles per week. I cover 156 miles every month, which for me s my standard for serious running

He average weeks running and his reigme is comitment six days a week.

The book follows Murakami’s journey as a runner. He used running as a way of keeping fit this was the time of aerobics and Jogging had all become big activities and he moved to Cambridge in the US and then started to put the miles in and build to long-distance running . We get little gems like when he thought he would become a writer he said he can remember the exact moment April fools day in the late seventies watching a baseball game. I think this is where I was first drawn to read his first two books long before they were republished as I read his description of writing and publishing them and then the discovery they were hard to get I ordered mine via library and they came from a US Library. One of his runs that stuck out is the one that gave the Marathon its name when he is in Greece running from Athens to Marathon the Greeks think he is made solo running in the middle in the summer in the Heat. Later another Baseball game and he is in Boston watching the red socks and doing another marathon. He connects the memories oft these runs training and the events around his life give a small glimpse into his life and his motivations

After this, while still running my Buisness, I wrote a medium length second novel, Pinball, 1973 and will working on this I wrote a few short stories and translated some sort fiction by F Scott Fitzgerald. Both Hear the wind sing and pinball, 1973 were nominated for thwe prestigous Akutagawa prize, for which they were said to be strong contenders, but in the end neither won, To tell the truth, though, I didn’t care one way of the other. If I did win it I’d become busy with interviews and writing assignments, and I was afraid this would interfere with running the club

His Jazz club days running the club and his early wriing days here

I enjoyed this second time round I am still not going to take up running but since this came out I have found my exercise thing swimming. I get how it made him feel getting fitter. I also see how the running and his running life is like his writing life is similar all about endurance and building up in a way this is visible just in the length of his books and how they grow in length. The main thing I noticed was the change in reach he talks of CDs, Md players things we don’t use and how tech has changed things like running where the is now just a playlist and we don’t just have a limit of a disc or tape. I do feel it maybe isn’t as insightful into him as a person it is more about the running and his writing than any insight into him as a person which I maybe hadn’t noticed as much the first time I read the book. The book is still a book I loved this time around which is something that always worries me about rereads I liked it a lot the first time round. I did enjoy discovering his running life again and the place he had run also the nostalgic tech made me smile. Have you read this book and even reread it since the tech in the book has moved on?

Winstons score – -A would liked a little more insight into the man but still loved it as much this time around .

 

Love in the Big city by Sang Young Park

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Love in the Big city by Sang Young Park

South Korean fiction

Original title –  (대도시의 사랑법)

Translator – Anton Hur

Source – Personal copy via subscription

This was one of the last books I read at the end of last year I subscribed the last April to Tilted Axis I am looking to join other subscriptions but this was my first and as they are locally based in Sheffield it was an easy choice to pick them also the books they have brought out this year so far are ones that appealed to me as they cover a broad area of subjects and countries around Asia. This was the one that caught my eye mainly due to the cover it is the debut release in  English by the New star of Korean fiction Snag Young Park. He was born in Daegu, which is an interview I saw with him he described as a conservative city he went to Sungkyunkwan University to Study French ( the same as the Narrator of this book ) He said he felt more at home in the cosmopolitan Seoul where he now lives this is his first book to be translated to English although some of his short stories have been translated and are among the most on words without borders website.

Things moved along quickly after Jaehee announced her marriage. For the three months before the weddin, I got to witness how shitty it was for a man and a woman in Korean society to unite as One family, which made me cease resenting the fact I couldn’t even dream of marriage. Not that I was confident it wasn’t jealousy,

Meanwhile, Jaehaee had a whole lot of things she needed from me. Her promotion came with a murderous workload, and with her future husband being largely absent from the preparations, I was her stadin groom.I accompanied her to the bridal shop, to the hanbok shop, to interior design firms and so on, helping her pick things out

The end of their time together is come close.

Our narrator in this novel or interlinking story collection the book grew out of one story follows the narrator from his years as a student where he shares an apartment with his good friend Jaehee as they experience the nightlife and the men they meet one of the things I discovered is putting cigarettes in the freezer, I wonder what difference this made to the Malboro a brand I did smoke when I smoked it made me wonder what the sensation was like. I often go off on little tangents like this what we get in the first part is a student life free wild and as these things are ends this happens when the two drift apart when she meets a man. Then we see our narrator heading home and looking after his mother a devout Christian and at this time he also has a relationship with an older man. The next story follows Kyu-ho and our narrator this is his big love affair they travel to Japan as But as a past lover reveals an HIV diagnosis or as he calls it Kylie this overshadows the couples happiness and his life with Kyu-ho as it restricts travel options and ultimately has a long term effect on their relationship.

I first met Gyu-ho at what’s now a defunct gay club in Itaewon it was Chuseok and they were having an all you can drink Tequilla event. Not having a family to join for Chuseok- being a certified unnatural focused in bringing shame to the family ( not much has changed since then) and genrally stuck in poverty (yup, still)_ I could hardly afford to pass up such an opportinity. I left the foloewing mesage in out group chat:

Hey guys theres an unlimited teguilla eent at G today

See you all there.

How he meet the main romance and relationship in the book Gyu-ho one what is the equivilant of Korea thanksgiving

I don’t read a lot of LGBT books well not enough is translated into English, so it is great to see some new voices getting translated into English the beauty of the book is in Anton Hur’s translation he has given it a clarity that must be in the original version of the book, our narrator live pops of the page but it is also an insight into the LGBT world of Korea which although open in Seoul this shows that there is an undercurrent of Homophobia and what faces most modern people loneliness our Narrator is a character but at its heart, there is a man trying to find his way in the world as we all our but also dealing with his feeling with his black Humour cutting at times. This is the first of my subscription and one of the best books |I read last year I hope to see it on the Man booker list let’s hope. Have you a favourite LGBT book that has been translated? How has your new year reading started ?

Winstons score – +A simply brilliant one of the strongest narrators I have read in years.

Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun

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Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun

Korean fiction

Original title – 레몬)

Translator – Janet Hong

Source – review copy

I now head to South Korea and a collection of interlinking short stories from the Korean writer Kwon Yeo-Son. She has won a number of Literary prizes in Korea and is known for her style that shows the cracks in Everyday life it says on her Korean Wiki pages with an honest and unstoppable voice. This book was initially a short story. she has published ten books and this is her first work to be translated into English. The book follows what is called “The high school Beauty murder” that happened in 2002 as the World Cup was happening in Korea it is a good way of framing the timeframe of the events as the world cup unfolding helps form a time line of the events.

I imagine what happened inside the police interrogation room so many years ago. By imagine, I don’t mean invent. But it’s not like i was actually there, so I don’t know what else to call it. I picture the scene from that day, based on what he told me and some other clues , my own experience and conclussion. It’s not just this scene I imagine. For over sixteen years. i’ve pondered, prodded and worked every detail embroiled in the case known as “THe High school Beauty Murder” – to the point I often fool myself into thinking I’d personally witnessed the circumstances now stamped on my minds eye.

The opening lines of the first chapter of the book as Han Manu is at the police station but in hidsight his view of events maybe isn’t the same as then!

The book opens with the integration of Han Manu he was on his scooter when he saw Kim Hae On and is one of the two main suspects of the killing of the teen Beauty queen. He is getting interviewed but never charged and as the threads and suspects all run cold the case is dead we then move back and forward in time as we view the three points of view that make up the collection of eight short stories. As we see what happens and has happened since the murder. It is more about the ripples from that event and the two main narrators are the sister of the victim Do- on she is stuck after her sister’s death and eventually takes steps to look like her sister more and we see that her sister boyfriend who had an Albi but maybe is more involved in the death as he was the other person apart from Manu that spent the last evening in his SUV that he was driving kim around in the evening before she was found murdered. The other narrative is kim’s classmate Sanghui now her narrative gives another angle on the events during and after the Murder.

I asked myself; Did I want to go back to that time, too? When I’d been so wld about Joyce that I’d written my poem ” Betty Byrne, maker of Lemon Platt?” if we could actually go back to that time would I ? I didn’t know . But I still remember  the first lines of that poen

Today again I burned the platt

nothing ever goes right for you, Betty Byrne

The connection to Joyce is here about Da On and Eonni chat about her poetry

The book is told in A Joycean style  well a little. As the book it isn’t about finding who killed Kim at the time.  it has dark elements also a lot about the class system in Korea. The difference in how the two suspects are viewed is the rich Shin thew boyfriend and the poor delivery boy that is suspected more even though he says Kim wouldn’t look at him. Kim was rich but it is more a look at the aftermath of the killing of High School Beauty Murder.  There is a part where James Joyce is discussed there is a stream of conciseness style I also felt it had a fragmented nature to it like little clues to what had happened and what had happened since almost like a puzzle and we the readers, we can fill the gaps as we want. It looks at the aftermath of death on a family members Murder like Suicide is such a life-changing event for those living behind it effects last forever. I enjoyed this book it is an interesting look at murder that isn’t really a crime novel in the sense of a dective novel more a series of reflections and glimpse of what happened on that night. As it says the facts and what happen to the people on that day can blur and had.

Winstons score – -A near-perfect look at the aftermath of a murder from three perspectives.

To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young

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To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young

Korean fiction

Original title – 해가 지는 곳으로(

Translator – Soje

Source — review copy

I move to Korea and one of the rising stars of Korean writing Choi Jin-Young initially both a poet and fiction writer her first works appeared in the early 2000s.  Whilst working part-time in a cram school. Then when she took up writing full time she treats it as a job working office hours whilst she writin was initially in the style that was described as Kitchen table fiction. But this owes more to the writers she has said she likes in interviews which are Franz Kafka, Jeon Sungtae, and Cormac McCarthy the latter of these for me was a huge influence on this book especially his book the road. as this is another post-apocalyptic world.

I think about only pone thing: to never leave Joy behind on her own. So I must survive no matter what I must do my part as someone who’s stiull alive. This imperative is a Da sap eithout a Fine, a prayer I dedicate tomyself. As  mom died, she asked dad to look after us. As dad died, he asked me to look after joy. Like a secret key in some legend. Joy was handed down  from Mom to Dad, from Dad to me. What could I ask od Joy in my dying moment ? I love you. I Will ask her to look after love. Joywith my love handed down to her, will survive somehow. Withlove in her arms, she’ll dash towards the end of the world.

Dori and her sister she has to make sure is safe after their parents died.

What we have is a group of Koreans that are on the road to head to a place that may be in Russia that is clear of a virus that has wiped out the world around them. What we have is the story o the story is told by each character from the two younger women Dori that is with her deaf sister on the way to the warm horizon. Then Jina who is heading with what remains of her family being lead by her father the stories twist and twine overlapping as they head to what is viewed as a safer place. Then the is an older voice Ryu he fills in the background to all that has happened to lead to all the characters being on the road and how the world they lived in fell into chaos. There is also the falling in love of the two younger women among the chaos of the world they are faced with. The threads are woven together in the end with an epilogue that fills in the gaps of what happened.

Jina wore lipstick every day. ANd she was alway by my side. We slept together, and we ate together. WE scavneged through the cities rogether. What i used to never glance at, things were completely useless in these times, which wer easy ti procure because they were useless- things like makeup or a hairpin or a scar, which made Jina happiuer above all else – became jusr as important as canned food and matches .I never walked past those things anympore I started thinking about whether something would look good on jins or if it was something she would like.

Jina on the road again but trying to keep up her appearance as she heads on the road.

Well, this isn’t a book full of joy and hope no it is maybe with the way the world is a warning a virus that keeps mutating and thus making vaccines useless as we see how the population of Korea was wiped out in the hundreds of thousands a day until there is a handful of souls trying to find a place to rebuild the world. But are they even there there is a passage near the end where one character says they feel like a ghost walking in a ghost world are they? is this a book of souls trying to find peace on the warm horizon? When they hit the cathedral in what may be Russia they see what they feared the full effect of the virus on the world as it has wiped out most of the world. Yes as I said in the intro this has a nod to McCarthy’s the road and other books like Stephen Kings The Stand or even films like Mad max or tv shows like survivors which i recently rewatched there is the same sense of the empty world they see of empty buildings and nature creeping back in. A book that with what has happened since it was written 4 years ago maybe seems less sci-fi than real life !!

Winstons score – +B a slice of a post-apocalyptic world that maybe seems more like real life given recent events.

 

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

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Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

American fiction

Original title – Dove mi trovo

Translator – by the writer herself

Source – personal copy

Long before I blogged I had read the first book of short stories from Jumpa Lahiri a writer that has traveled the world from growing up in  London til; three,  then her parents emigrated to American when she was very young, her father was a librarian at the University of Rhode Island where she grew up she also spent time in India mainly in Calcutta where her family was from originally. She has lived in recent year in Rome where she has taught herself and started to write in Italian this experience she described in a non-fiction work in the New yorker Teach yourself Italian which is here. I had read her early works like Interpreter of Maladies and The namesake but hadn’t read her recent works but this appealed as it was her first book in Italian she had translated herself and it used one of the first phrases she learnt in “Italian” where is it ?

It’s hard to focius here . I feel exposed, surrounded by colleagues and students who walk down the hallways, Their movements and their chatter get on my nerves.

I try in vain to enliven the space. Every week I turn up with a shopping bag heavy with books from home to fill my shelves. That pain in my shoulder, that wieght, all that efforts amounts to little in the end. It would taketwo years, three, to fill the bookcase. It’s to capacious, it covers an entire wall. In any caser, my office is now vaguely inviting, boasting a framed print, a plant, two cushions. And yet it’s space that perplexes me, that keeps me at arm’s length.

In the office chapter we get the distance she wants from the world here.

So the book is a novel that is built from a series of very short vignettes of a woman that has no name and she is living in an unnamed city. But that means there is a universal nature to the narrator’s life and that is of a woman single in her mid 40’s a career woman but one that has apart from her work no real friends or real family so what we get is glimpses of this life from the mundane everyday events shopping, buying a book, watching people like the locals in the shop which could be a shop anywhere really. few highlights nights away in a friend’s empty house but no friend a visit to the sea a visit to parents all have the sense of a woman that has tried to make herself vanish from the world a silent observer of all that is around her.  What builds is a life lived on the edges how often will we pass a narrator like this a smart dressed middle-aged woman that has on the outside a career and a few friends or maybe people she has worked with struck slim bonds with but no real touchstones this is a tale of the aged that avoids the rabbit hole of tech in her life and paints a solitary as would have been called years ago of a modern spinster !!

In Spring

In spring I suffer. The season doesn’t invigorate me, I find it depleting, The new light disorients , the fulmating nature overwhelms, and the air, dense with pollen, bothers my eyes. To calm my allergies I take a pill in the morning that makes me sleepy. It knocks me out, I can’t focus, and by lunchtime I’m tired enough to go to bed. I sweat all day and at night I’m freezing no shoe seems the right temperamental time of year.

Every blow in my lifetook place in spring. Each lasting sting, That’s why I’m afflicted by the green of the trees, the first peaches in the market, the light flowing skirts that the women in my neighbourhood start to wear.

Her life in spring also reflects a sense of a life full of loss.

Now there is a difference from her ealry works which largely look at India and being Indian in America but there is a loss of identity of the narrator of her story that also widens the story as it makes it a universal this could be Rome,London,New York or Kolkatta or any large town or city there are hiundreds of woman like the narrator of this book that have drift out of the personal to merely live and observe there world live but on the surface never getting that attatchment from emmotions I loved the voice and the simple mundane world we had glimpses behind the curtain at the change of languange has maybe freed her as a writer to persuae a new style a different way of thinking having liuved in Germany for a couple of years and learning German as it was just by being there and immersed in the world I view the world a different way and this I feel in the way Jhumpa has approached this book she joins the cannon of great writers like conrad, Nabhakov, Achibe and Beckett the last name is maybe one I thought of another writer that had a detactched nature to his narrators like the unnamed woman in this story waiting for her life !! Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – -A would loved another 100 paes of this  but a great evening read !

I Live in the Slums by Can Xue

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I Live in the Slums by Can Xue

Chinese fiction

Original title – the stories were published in various publications and collected here.

Translators Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

Source – personal copy

Well, this is the second book from Can Xue or as she is known Deng Xiaohua. I have read the first was the longlisted love in the new millennium which was longlisted for the Booker I read it but wasn’t a huge fan of it I have struggled with Chinese fiction over the years but was willing to try as this was a collection of short stories and  I remember reading at the time I read her novel that it was her medium as she had written over a 120 short stories over the years. Known for her Avant-garde and abstract style of writing. She had worked as a metal worker and then with her husband started a tailoring business before she wrote more she took the pen name Can Xue early on in her career.

The Old man sat up in bed, about to bandage his heel with a rag. He had prepared the rags earlier for this purpose. He made a lot of noise tearing up the cloth. He seemed top be strong, He kept wrapping his foot until it was encased in one large package. The pig squealed more and mpore incositently. they were on the verge of leaping out of the pen. He got out of bed and stepped on the floor without putting a shoe on his injured foot. He went outside to feed the pigs. What was this all about? Whu did he let the house mouse bite his heel ? Was therre a tumor there and he was letting the house mouse perform surgery? What admirable willpower ?

The foot getting nibble and the old man then wakes

I Live in the slums is a collection of 15 stories with the longer story the story of the slums being more of a novella than a short story. As with the story of the slums, the main story is a dark tale of the Chinese underclass our narrator opens with a bone of an old man being eaten a dead man I thought but no he then wakes this is the view of the underclass and later the story goes full circle as the same thing happens to the narrator with his foot being eaten and nibbled by a mouse. The stories view the poor lost voices of Modern China from the urban sprawl to the countryside. It captures that journey of many young chinese from the country to the town.  Almost what I felt is this is the reverse of the American dream as the characters are poor in the country but also those left behind those elders struggling. Then the nightmare of the city is captured catfish pool which shws the urban sprawl destroying the places. The stories are all avant garde and sometimes make the reader struggle but also make the stories hard to describe they are more absorb by the reader.

THe slums were my home, and also the hardest place for me to understand. Genrally speaking, I didn’t make a deliberate effort to understand it. Destiny drove me from one place to anpther. I’d been underground, I’d been to the city, and \i’d lived in all kinds of homes in the slums. There was often crises in my life; the threat of death was ongoing, but I was still alive. Could this be because my ancestors were living in the depths of memory and protecting me? Oh – that boundless pasture, that eagle disappearing into the vast qi, those kin who lay on their stomachsin the underbrush! Thinking of them, I felt I knew everything and was capable of anything. But this was in my memory. The reality was absolutely different. In reality, I knew almost noting, through I had experienced so much.

Near the end of the novella the story of the slums the narrator talks of his life in the slums.

I enjoyed this collection more than I had her Novel I was reminded at times of Herta Mullers writing there is a similar richness to her writing style. also a similar abstract sty;le that takes tiome to absorb as a read this is rich in images and is more about atomspehre setting and events than narrative. The stories have lots of little nods to what is wrong in china the underclasses Building come and go the sort of chaos that follows the unending urban sprawl that has eaten the countryside and spilt people from where they were. The main novella is very dark and has a feel of Kafka an unnamed narrator a downward spiral of life. I will be trying more books from Can Xue whch is a change as before this collection I wouldn’t have picked her up. But I know feel her style is more suit to the short form. Have you read Can Xue ? where next ?

WInstons Score = B  It grew on me.