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This surreal and existential Japanese novella packs a sensory punch that will leave you wanting more.
Oyamada crafts an eerie and frightening exploration into loneliness and the many holes it casts us into. We follow our dazed and dreaming narrator Asa who has just dutifully joined her emotionally distant husband back in his small hometown, where the cicadas drone like fighter jets and mysterious animals slink the streets at night. We join her as she tries to parse through her new reality, be it factual or a series of anomalies.
This one is for everyone who has ever felt like a stranger in their own life, and pairs amazingly with sidewalk cafes and springtime.
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This book blew me away. I’d seen it all over the instagrams of bookshops in London (Daunt Books in particular promotes it like crazy) but even then I didn’t realise just how rich, nuanced, and self-analytical it would be.
Asako Yuzuki is raw and authentic in her depiction of female relationships, in a way that is so real, it’s piercing. From every angle she is able to analyze act of care, how it’s feminised, what it means to give and sacrifice, how that can result in self-negation — and how it ultimately affects all women from all backgrounds, shapes, and sizes.
And she *gets* food.
Nov 5, 2024
A widowed mother in her forties goes on a trip to a cabin in the Austrian mountains and wakes up one morning to find that she is trapped there by an invisible dome. She is alone, save for a few animals who are the other characters in the story. Everything outside of the dome is dead, their corpses frozen in the positions in which they suddenly passed. A coffee cup halfway to their lips, dogs curled at their feet. The book is written as a log of her years in the dome, on the final pieces of paper she can find in her cabin. The result is an extended soliloquy that jumps between the past and present to account a life shed of time and societal expectation and instead ruled by the rhythms of nature and the necessity to care for herself and her animal companions.
I read it this year, have already done a reread, and I still want to read it again after typing this out! It’s surrealism lite and an ecofeminist meditation on death, isolation, memory, and the nature of reality. Can’t recommend it enough!
“But if time exists only in my head, and I'm the last human being, it will end with my death. The thought cheers me. I may be in a position to murder time. The big net will tear and fall, with its sad contents, into oblivion. I'm owed some gratitude, but no one after my death will know I murdered time. Really these thoughts are quite meaningless. Things happen, and, like millions of people before me, I look for meaning in them, because my vanity will not allow me to admit that the whole meaning of an event lies in the event itself.”
Dec 21, 2024
Beautiful (and quick) read - two short stories about loss and all it engenders in our lives. Heartwarming, funny, and magical, this book brought me answers to questions I didn’t know I had and closure I didn’t know I needed - I am attaching one of my favorite passages here, it served as a sweet and gentle reminder to appreciate the past, surrender to the present, and that tomorrow is not promised… #ouroboros #style
Dec 2, 2024
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The magic of Camus is his ability to blend heady philosophical ideas with compelling storytelling. This is not to say that the dullness, and banality that plagues his peers works is not present here, but rather present with intention.
His character is morally bereft, apathetic, and unreflecting until the bitter end, yet somehow sympathizable. Meursault speaks to the little voice in all of us that wonders if life really might be meaningless, just an absurd series of events, choices, and consequences that ultimately amount to nothing.
Take your time with this one, it's short but every word counts. Great for a long flight, a week of forecasted rain, or after a full day of corporate jargon and niceties.
Mar 23, 2024
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An apple away keeps the doctor away? Not really, but a tablespoon of Carlson's Wild Norwegian Cod Liver Oil might. I am about a year into taking this daily and the benefits are astounding. My skin and hair have never looked healthier thanks to its high Vitamin A content, and the omega-3s are supposedly fighting depression and boosting my heart's health. To be honest it's hard to care about the internal stuff so much when I am walking around looking like a damn pedigree collie. The only downside is choking down a spoonful of fishy tasting oil every morning, but as a purist, I wouldn't have it any other way. I think they make a gel capsule if you have a less adventurous palette than I!
Jul 26, 2024