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Sep. 16th, 2011 10:26 amI have been recommended Banana Yoshimoto from enough different directions that finally I realized I had no excuse not to just pick up her books as soon as possible. I actually read Hardboiled and Hard Luck more than a month ago, but I've been putting off writing it up because I don't really have all that much to say except that: now I get it.
I can plot summarize these two stories for you very easily and it will not really get across what makes them so excellent, but all right, here's the one-sentence summary version:
Hardboiled: A young woman on a solitary trip passes a creepy shrine; has an evil black stone follow her home; encounters a ghost or two in an old hotel; and gets closure on her ex-girlfriend's death, of which this is the anniversary.
. . . all right, I guess the summary of this one is pretty cool in and of itself, but the actual story is better.
Hard Luck: A woman is watching her comatose sister die of a cerebral hemorrhage, while growing closer to her sister's fiance's brother.
This sounds like the summary of a cheesy nineties tearjerker, probably starring Sandra Bullock, right? But really it's not like that at all - it really is about all those things that the cheesy movies purport to be about, grief and acceptance and the way your life stretches to accommodate it.
The thing about Banana Yoshimoto, I think, that makes her literary stories work for me so well when many others do not, is that her voice isn't pointing out the cruelties of the world to be cruel about them, to make you feel like the world is an empty place. Bad things happen in Banana Yoshimoto's world for no reason, but so do funny and wry and hopeful things, because real people live in it and they're not hollow people. It's a world I'm okay living in.
I can plot summarize these two stories for you very easily and it will not really get across what makes them so excellent, but all right, here's the one-sentence summary version:
Hardboiled: A young woman on a solitary trip passes a creepy shrine; has an evil black stone follow her home; encounters a ghost or two in an old hotel; and gets closure on her ex-girlfriend's death, of which this is the anniversary.
. . . all right, I guess the summary of this one is pretty cool in and of itself, but the actual story is better.
Hard Luck: A woman is watching her comatose sister die of a cerebral hemorrhage, while growing closer to her sister's fiance's brother.
This sounds like the summary of a cheesy nineties tearjerker, probably starring Sandra Bullock, right? But really it's not like that at all - it really is about all those things that the cheesy movies purport to be about, grief and acceptance and the way your life stretches to accommodate it.
The thing about Banana Yoshimoto, I think, that makes her literary stories work for me so well when many others do not, is that her voice isn't pointing out the cruelties of the world to be cruel about them, to make you feel like the world is an empty place. Bad things happen in Banana Yoshimoto's world for no reason, but so do funny and wry and hopeful things, because real people live in it and they're not hollow people. It's a world I'm okay living in.
