Hardboiled and Hard Luck (First Edition)

Banana Yoshimoto (author) Michael Emmerich (translator)

ISBN 10: 0802117996 / ISBN 13: 9780802117991

Published by Grove Press, New York., 2005

About this Item

New York, Grove Press, 2005. First edition. First printing. Correct number sequence, including the 1. Very Fine in a very fine dust jacket. A tight, clean copy, new and unread. Comes with archival-quality mylar dust jacket protector. Price intact on front jacket flap. Shipped in well padded box.

Seller Inventory # 3003

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Hardboiled and Hard Luck (First Edition)
• Publisher: Grove Press, New York.
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802117996
• ISBN 13: 9780802117991
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Japanese Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Presents two novellas, one about a young woman's dream about an ex-lover while on a hiking trip, and the other about the sister of a woman lying in a coma.

Reviews

Like twins whose paths diverge dramatically, these two gentle stories share little beyond the mesmerizing voice of their creator. The surreal subject matter and dreamy narration of "Hardboiled" make it read rather like a bedtime story gone awry. When the young female narrator realizes that it's the anniversary of her lover's death, several curious events suddenly make sense: a stone from a creepy shrine that finds its way into her pocket; a fire at an udon shop where she'd just been eating; and a nighttime visitation by the ghost of a woman who committed suicide. "Harboiled" drags a bit, but "Hard Luck" is a pleasure, even if it's almost as downbeat as its predecessor. This time, a young female narrator is standing watch over her older sister, Kuni, whose brain is slowly dying after a cerebral hemorrhage. As their parents gradually lose hope for Kuni's recovery, the narrator makes her own peace by forging a bond with her sister's fiancé's brother. In this gemlike story, Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi) takes a subtle, graceful look at the relationship between the sisters and the fault lines in this grieving family, elevating her little book from fine to downright moving.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In her seventh book of spare, piercing fiction, Japanese writer Yoshimoto once again portrays strong-minded young women coping with heartbreak, traumatic family fissures, drastic illness, and fatalities. This sounds grim, but Yoshimoto is tenderly ironic and keenly attuned to nature's beauty and the mystic dimension of life, and her characters' ability to tough their way through painful predicaments infuses her elegantly insightful stories with hope. Here two novellas portray two self-possessed yet besieged young women. In "Hardboiled," the narrator is on a solo journey that begins as a simple mountain trek and turns into an intense confrontation with otherworldly forces, including a ghost in a hotel and overwhelming memories of a lost lover and her terrible demise. In "Hard Luck," a tale all the more poignant in the wake of Terry Shiavo, the narrator's sister lies in a coma as her family struggles to find a way to say good-bye. Yoshimoto writes of profoundly complex matters of love, life, decorum, guilt, and death with the precision and grace of a traditional calligrapher. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved