Synopsis
Three extraordinary novellas narrate the individual stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep--a sleepwalker mourning a lost love, a woman unable to remain awake who is involved in an affair with a man whose wife is in a coma, and a woman whose dreams are haunted by a woman she once confronted in a love triangle. 60,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo.
Reviews
Writing in her customary spare yet luminous style, Yoshimoto's latest work consists of three short novellas set in nameless contemporary Japanese cities, each one narrated by a young Japanese woman who has been frozen into a temporary literal or psychic sleep as a result of trauma. Although we meet each woman during a hiatus in her life, these periods are not tragic or ominous, but merely pauses for recovery; part of the charm of the book is the characters' lack of fuss or self-importance. Although each is sufferingAone in mourning for her beloved brother's death, one fragile at the end of a painful affair and one deeply involved with a man whose wife is in a comaAeach woman sees herself as an incidental or supporting character, in refreshing contrast to Western self-involvement. The characters' poise means that they calmly accept dreamlike or supernatural events. It feels utterly right and logical when Shibami meets her lost brother in a strange encounter with his son; when Fumi, with the help of a midget psychic, makes contact with Haru, the woman she had so bitterly resented when they shared the same abusive lover; or when Terako begins to share the deep sleep of her lover's comatose wife. These women share a kind of observant detachment, creating a deceptively casual style; while one does not particularly notice the language, words are used as in a haiku, with as much emphasis on the silences between them as on the space they take up. Especially appealing are the relationships between the cool but very likable female characters. At the core of each novella are two deeply attuned young women, and part of the discovery in each story has to do with the narrator's realization of the importance of this female connection. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Three intense, otherworldly novellas, each about a young woman for whom sleep is not a state of rest but an indication of spiritual malaise: the latest from Japan's ever-popular Yoshimoto (Amrita, 1997, etc.).In the first, Night and Night's Travelers, college-aged Shibami still reels from the accidental death of her older brother Yoshihiro, but her pain seems pale in comparison to that of her cousin Mari, who was Yoshihiro's lover and confidante. Wholly incapacitated by his death, Mari moved into Shibami's house and Yoshihiro's room, becoming a part of his family for nearly a year until her grief subsided. When she appears outside Shibami's window one snowy night, however, barefoot and wraithlike, the time has come for the truth about Yoshihiro's other girlfriend, the American Sarah, with whom he moved to Boston and without whom he returned to Japan. Voyage to the House of Sleep charts a different course through grief as a hard-drinking woman, before she plunges into sleep, hears eerie music--sounds that her boyfriend identifies as a call from the dead. Sure enough, a woman the drinker once knew as a rival for the affections of another man has died--drunk herself to death, in fact--and, with the help of her boyfriend and a midget medium, the two women make contact, if only to explain that although they treated each other abominably, they were also friends and could have been more than just that. The title story features a woman who sleeps more and more in an effort to escape from joblessness, the death of her closest friend, and the fact that her boyfriend's wife is in a coma, unlikely to awaken. Only a dreamlike encounter with that wife, who tells her to go out and get a job, frees her from her lethargy and allows her to resume a normal life.Astute, darkly atmospheric, and charged with the uncanny: Yoshimoto's best in quite a while. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Sleep, love, and death serve as the central themes for each of the three short stories in Yoshimoto's (Amrita) latest work. Yoshimoto narrates each piece from the perspective of a strong, central female protagonist. In "Night and Night's Travelers," Shibami tells the story of her sleepwalking cousin, Mari, who is mourning the death of her lover (Shibami's brother, Yoshihiro). In "Voyage to the House of Sleep," Fumi describes her difficulties with Haru, a woman with whom she had once shared a male lover who, although now deceased, haunts her in her sleep. And, in the title work, readers meet Terako, a woman with an unusual penchant for sleep, who must deal with the recent death of her best friend, Shiori, while at the same time struggling with her trying relationship with her boyfriend (a married man whose wife is in a coma). The writing is introspective and, although simple, extremely thought-provoking as Yoshimoto takes her readers on a journey in search of absolution for each of her characters. Followers of Yoshimoto's work will want to read this one. A good selection for academic libraries as well as Asian fiction collections in larger public libraries.
---Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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