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The Kitchen Book

The Kitchen Book

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the other Marukami guy – I LOVED this because it was so easy to parody and gave me my top scoring review (While I was reading it was a different story)

I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get around to reading The Kitchen. It's been a subtle suggestion for my reading list from a fair few people since it was published in 2015. That said, I'm very glad I didn't postpone it any longer. This was an incredibly enjoyable read. There's something about Japanese writers. They have the unparalleled ability of transforming an extremely ordinary scene from our everyday mundane lives into something magical and other-worldly. It starts simple with one of the wives making rounds around the city to collect debts in her husband's place. She has no other source of income after all.

When I finished this tale, I thought of love won and then lost, tragedy, pain, and suffering that I had just encountered but then beauty, hope and optimism are also there. What a marvellous mix. In addition, there are innumerable turns of phrase that are unforgettable but I particularly liked:

So when these wives all team up they begin to take over their husbands business. Collecting, putting the fear in advisories, and building a empire. However, the deeper they get into the mob life the worse it gets. They drift apart, some becoming more evil than others, till the point where everyone is out for themselves. It's a shame that the storytelling doesn't live up to the story. The narration is monotonous and obvious, telling the reader what we're seeing depicted in the panels. The way it assumes the reader is dumb is a frequent distraction. Although one may notice a certain Western influence in Yoshimoto's style, Kitchen is still critically recognized as an example of contemporary Japanese literature; The Independent, The Times, and The New Yorker have all reviewed the novel favorably. Mikage and Yuichi's lives are brought together by death. They are on the cusp of falling in love or living as strangers.

Success!

I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop. Houses always feel like that after someone has died." After a particularly egregious section of stilted psychobabble, one character says, "What kind of talk is that? Sounds like it was translated from English." I guess the author is aware of how clunky it is. Odd. In Kitchen, Mikage Sakurai had just lost her grandmother, the last person in her family to pass away. Alone in the world and unable to cope with her university schedule, Mikage falls into a bleak existence. One day, a classmate named Yuichi Tanabe invites her to live with him and his mother in their apartment because Mikage's grandmother had a profound effect on him. Although reluctant to accept the kindness, Mikage agrees and the Tanabe's couch becomes her new home. Yuichi Tanabe — Son of Eriko Tanabe. Main character. His mother died of cancer when Yuichi was a very young child. He lives with his loving transgender mother and supports Mikage in her time of grieving. He eventually loses his mother, and relies on emotional support from Mikage. Yosimoto es minuciosa en el tratamiento de temas escabrosos y delicados (muerte, soledad, familia, sexo…) y lo hace de manera natural, sencilla, nada soez. Y, aunque su visión es realmente pesimista, parece que al final deja un rayo de luz para la redención.

Such interesting characters are to be found in this rather philosophical work, individuals in fact who I continued to think about after I finished the book.

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During the time that Mikage spends with Eriko and her son, Yuichi, the latter who appeared to be a quiet unassuming person, was slowly transformed into a soul-mate of Mikage which rather stunned her. She felt he knew her very soul. Moonlight Shadow is the other short story in this edition and it is... short. It covers much the same ground as Kitchen and feels like an earlier work. It was too sparse for me, too blank. Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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