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Book: Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto
Oct. 8th, 2006 07:22 amI've had a soft spot for Banana Yoshimoto's quiet prose since picking up Lizard on a whim a few years ago, charmed by the author's strange pseudonym. She writes strange, semi-detached and timeless stories about Japanese women, and what strikes me most about her writing is how she can take the strangest configuration of relationships and bring out their innate humanity. I've read once that she's considered an icon for Japan's current twenty-something to thirty generation of women.
Asleep is a collection of three novellas, each dealing with issues of sleep. I think I liked the first one best, the one about mourning and time for love and the line between familial and romantic love, but that might have been because I read it in the best place for reading a story like that one: an airport, waiting.
The other two - one about a woman dreaming of an old lover's other lover, and the other about a woman involved with a man whose wife is in a coma, and how she finds herself falling asleep more and more often - are also quiet and charming and so female. What I really liked was the way "normal" cliches are not followed: there is empathy between the rival lovers, and the girl in the last one makes a choice to persevere in her relationship, find hope in a hopeless love.
Sleep in Asleep is a metaphor for depression. Mentions and fears of suicide - passive suicide of pills and simple giving up on life - appear in every story. Yet it's all so quiet and, in the end, uplifting: even if the ending isn't happy, there is a joy in the moments of life, and missed chances are acknowledged and forgiven.
I pick up Banana Yoshimoto books when I see them, not look for them on purpose, so I still have quite a few left to go. I'm looking forward to reading them once the next one falls into my hands :)
Asleep is a collection of three novellas, each dealing with issues of sleep. I think I liked the first one best, the one about mourning and time for love and the line between familial and romantic love, but that might have been because I read it in the best place for reading a story like that one: an airport, waiting.
The other two - one about a woman dreaming of an old lover's other lover, and the other about a woman involved with a man whose wife is in a coma, and how she finds herself falling asleep more and more often - are also quiet and charming and so female. What I really liked was the way "normal" cliches are not followed: there is empathy between the rival lovers, and the girl in the last one makes a choice to persevere in her relationship, find hope in a hopeless love.
Sleep in Asleep is a metaphor for depression. Mentions and fears of suicide - passive suicide of pills and simple giving up on life - appear in every story. Yet it's all so quiet and, in the end, uplifting: even if the ending isn't happy, there is a joy in the moments of life, and missed chances are acknowledged and forgiven.
I pick up Banana Yoshimoto books when I see them, not look for them on purpose, so I still have quite a few left to go. I'm looking forward to reading them once the next one falls into my hands :)
