Lizard - Hardcover

Yoshimoto, Banana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802115640 ISBN 13: 9780802115645

Publisher: Grove Pr, 1995

Synopsis

A collection of short stories by the bestselling author of Kitchen and N.P. demonstrates her magic realism and her very Japanese postmodernism--a blend of the traditional with the latest in popular culture. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

Japan's Yoshimoto (N.P.) delivers an engaging, rather lightweight collection of six stories chronicling the romantic adventures, spiritual yearnings and familial troubles of a hip set of young, Japanese professionals. Each story is told in a spare, quizzical, highly conversational style, through the eyes of characters who encounter odd coincidences and spiritual epiphanies while attempting to negotiate life's turning points. In the title piece, a man salvages his relationship with his lover, an antisocial acupuncturist with mysterious healing powers whom he calls Lizard, by making a pilgrimage to an ancient temple and sharing disturbing childhood secrets. In "Blood and Water," a woman flees her parents' Buddhist sect in a provincial village, falls in love with a man in Tokyo who makes amulets and gradually comes to terms with her own religious aspirations. "A Strange Tale from Down by the River" is an allegory about a woman who abandons a life of shallow sexual exploits, recognizes her own spiritual affinities with the natural world and gets married. A lesser effort from Yoshimoto, yet there's a fleeting pathos to these offbeat tales of a contemporary Tokyo interpenetrated by the routines of modern office life and the animistic forces of the ancient world.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Six short stories from Japan's popular literary star (N.P., 1994, etc.) offer pallid bromides, blending postmodern cool with superficial explorations of ``time, healing, karma, and fate.'' Products of an affluent society that has embraced the West but not forgotten its fundamental traditions, the characters are uncertain of the future, skeptical of materialism, yearning to end the anomie and existential pain they feel. In ``Lizard,'' the title and most notable story, a doctor who works with emotionally disturbed children loves a young woman in whose reptile eyes ``I see my own lonely face, peering down, looking for something to love and cherish.'' Haunted by a brutal attack she witnessed as a child, Lizard has become an acupuncture practitioner dedicated to healing those in pain, but she cannot forget her past; only a confession of a similar painful memory from her lover offers them both solace. The protagonist of ``Blood and Water'' leaves the religious commune she was raised in, but finds that, troubled by ``the sorrow that clings to life,'' she can only be comforted by her lover's ``tough resilience.'' Other stories describe a date in an empty restaurant that helps a writer and his girlfriend understand that, though the way they think may be completely different, they are the ``archetypal couple'' whose relationship is the ``dance of two souls resonating like the twist of DNA'' (``Helix''); a man's encounter on a train with a stranger who reveals to him a universal life force that encompasses even ``the slight feeling of alienation'' he experiences in his marriage (``Newly-Wed''); a young wife's liberating realization that her marriage is secure (``Kimchee''); and the revelation of a family secret that offers hope to a woman with a sexual past (``A Strange Tale from Down by the River''). In general, the stories are too slender to support Yoshimoto's attempts to detail spiritual awakenings. As insubstantial as sushi without the fish. (First printing of 75,000) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Enormously popular in Japan, Yoshimoto has gained an American audience with her hip novels Kitchen (LJ 12/92) and NP (LJ 1/94). Her first collection of short stories will appeal strongly to "X-ers." Articulate and young but already jaded and wistful urbanites populate these reflective tales of relationships and discovery. Lacking faith, hope, and a substantive cultural context, the protagonists compensate with self-scrutiny and emotional intrigue. Sometimes they stumble upon magic, as in the figure of the enigmatic healer Lizard or a trenchant shape shifter on a commuter train. Unfortunately, between writing and translation, Yoshimoto's concepts consistently outshine her execution; facile descriptions and narratorial overinterpretation weigh down these thoughtful stories. For young adult and fiction collections.
Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L, Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Yoshimoto, young and Japanese, has delighted millions of readers all over the world, first with Kitchen (1993), then with N.P.. What is her appeal? It could be her direct and confiding voice, the telegraphic intensity of her terse stories, the way she tackles emotional complexities with a reassuring clarity, or, perhaps, her starkness and stoicism. In Yoshimoto's literary universe, even the most wrenching or mysterious events are accepted with a certain amount of resignation: life hurts. But here, in this set of precise yet lyrical love stories, Yoshimoto has extended her reach and entered a mystical dimension. Each of her heroines must face the inescapable consequences of the past--a troubling psychological legacy or the fallout from a tragedy--but fate also grants "moments of comprehension," redemptive awakenings, and lasting transformations. Yoshimoto's frequently surreal, elegantly geometric yet richly hued, and gently spiritual stories celebrate the wonder of love at first sight, the rightness of certain relationships, and the gift of hope. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802115640
• ISBN 13: 9780802115645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180