Top Story: 5.October 2006

Hardboiled / Hard Luck

Banana Yoshimoto is a name that is well known abroad, due to her fantastic books like Kitchen or Amrita. Latest translation of her novel Hard Boiled / Hard Luck fills it's expectations.

It's deep, it's nostalgic, it's sad. It handlesdifficult and painful topics with sensitivity and gentle humor. It's naturally moving. This time the theme is dark, much darker than N.P or Kitchen. It has also something a bit sinister in it, but nothing too much. Just enough to give a little chill in your spine.

Hard Boiled / Hard Luck tells two stories. Another one is a story of a woman who remembers her long lost love when having a stroll in mountains. Her lover perished in a fire many years ago, after she separated from her. Ghosts from her past starts to haunt her, and a strange woman appears to her hotel room.

Another story tells about sister of another female narrator, who quietly lies down in hospital bed, in coma. Together with her father, she goes through the painful loss of her sister while preparing a visit to Italy. During this time she meets young man Sakai, who happens to be a brother of her sister's fiancee.

Both the stories are dark, but transparently beautiful and appealing. There is a sparkle of hope. This time, Yoshimoto writes with hidden passion and open honesty, I get a sense that this is something even more developed than her masterpiece Kitchen was.

There is less pathos but more gentle appeal, more something hidden. You get the sense that you are playing tennis with the novel, you might realize that you know someone in your own life who are struggling with the exactly same issues than characters in the book.

The characters in the book seem so real, so vivid, and so naturally human. The writing is so simple, so economic and streamlined. There are no fancy tricks, just the well written content - and a lot of meaning. This book will be equally deep as it's reader. The reader's imagination will be the limit.

Translation, made by Michael Emmerich is fantastic again - I truly continue to be fan of his work. Obviously Banana Yoshimoto's simple style of writing is reflected in the easy going translation. The english is easy to understand even for those (like me) who's english isn't the greatest. I only wish there were more pages in this book.

"Her novels can have the effect of addictive drugs... Pathos, nostalgia the sense of exquisite sadness at the the fleetingness of life are key elements of beauty in Japanese aesthetics, and all are themes central to Yoshimoto's books." - The Times.

[Hard Boiled / Hard Luck 160 pages, Paperback, Faber and Faber (July 27, 2005) ISBN:0571227821 ]

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