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Title: Kitchen (A Black cat book)
ISBN: 0802142443
Author:
Banana Yoshimoto
Publicate Date: 2006-04-17
Publish: 2006-04-17
List Price: $13.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.75
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $4.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.40
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A beautiful, gentle trio of novellettes
"Kitchen" is not at all what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a "magical kitchen" type story, similar to Like Water for Chocolate where the kitchen is a metaphor or someplace where things happen. I was expecting cooking and ingredients, detailed recipes, manic energy and that sort of thing.
Instead, I got three sweet novellas, only two of them directly connected, about unspoken emotions and complex relationships, with the kitchen playing little more role than the title. Much of my expectations came from Banana Yoshimoto's being hailed as a "young author" in Japan. A young author she may be, but she carries the legacy of Japanese literature and influence, and her subtle, underplayed emotions and simple/complex characters and plots are as alive and moving as Soseki.
There is magic here, of a quaint sort. And a ghost of two. A transvestite. But for the most part, this is the real world. The three novellas are connected in tone, if not in plot and characters. Each has its own charm, and each carries and ocean of depth beneath a seemingly shallow surface, which is the hallmark of Japanese literature. Love moves the world, but lovers must find and recognize each other.
Simply, a great book.
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2: The First Banana
A couple of years ago, while waiting outside my Japanese teacher's office, I was flipping through a book of Yoshimoto Banana's essays paying particular interest to one titled Oyogu hitobito or "People Swimming." It was a simple essay concerning a drunken Yoshimoto and an outing that she had with her drunken friends. Anyway, while I was reading the book, a visiting professor from the Kyoto University bent down, I was sitting on the floor at the time, and he asked me what I was reading. I showed him the book, he laughed, and said that Yoshimoto was only for young women.
Oh well.
I read my first Yoshimoto novella during the summer of 2001 between readings of a couple of Murakami Ryu's novels and, of course, that novel was Yoshimoto's debut novella Kitchen. Judging the book by its cover, I can definitely agree that it looks like it belongs in the "chick-lit" section, as do the rest of her novels, but I believe that Kitchen carries a bit more weight than say the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
Yoshimoto is often lumped with her fellow contemporary writer Murakami Haruki because their writings are quite well-received in the West and that they both weave fictional worlds threaded with magical realism. Another similarity is that the theme of death looms over the majority of their fictional landscapes. However, unlike the gloomy, Lacanian worlds of desire that Murakami weaves, one can never acquire again the object of one's desire because only substitutes for said desire exists, Yoshimoto's characters, although still in a melancholy state, are able to heal the emptiness left by the loss of a loved one.
Kitchen centers on Sakurai Mikage, a young woman whose grandmother has just passed away. In a state of shock, Mikage spends her nights sleeping in the kitchen next to the constantly humming fridge. However, the apartment is too big and too expensive for her to live in alone, so she must move out. Yet, because of her current situation she is unable to gain the motivation to do so. At that moment fate enters the story. One day while tidying up some magazines for recycling, Tanabe Yuichi rings her doorbell. A fellow student, Mikage knows little about Yuichi besides the fact that he works at a flower shop and that her grandmother favored him highly. Therefore, she is quite surprised when he asks her to move in with him and his mother... While quite shocked at first, Mikage soon falls in love with the Tanabes' couch and kitchen and slowly with Yuichi himself because she can see a lot of herself within him.
Yoshimoto's book is quite simple, but it does work its way into one's heart especially if one has recently gone through a loss similar to the one Mikage has suffered from. While she has written many more novels, novellas, short story collections, and essay collections, Kitchen, which she wrote at twenty-four, is still quite a slice of nostalgic sweetness enwrapped in almost dreamlike language. Easy to read in one sitting, and if liked or not, I believe that Kitchen should be read by most individuals interested in contemporary Japanese literature.
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3: A beautiful book
This is the story of a young Japanese woman who loses her grandmother (her primary caretaker) and goes to live with a boy and his mother. It addresses the subject of loneliness and reads like poetry.
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4: Heartbreaking and beautiful
From the first page you are effortlessly thrust into Yoshimoto's universe. Mikage, whose parents and grandfather passed on earlier in life, has been living with her grandmother. The start of the book is a bit after her grandmother has died,leaving her alone in her old house and in life. Yuichi, a friend of her grandmother's, appears to invite her to live with him and his mother. Mikage agrees and the three live together for a while in bliss. When tragedy hits this newly-formed 'family,' Mikage and Yuichi learn what it is to be absolutely alone.
Yoshimoto's characters are crisp and unique, each with their own good-humored twists. The situations these unfortunate characters are dragged into are unbelievabally tragic, yet their responses, both emotional and physical, remain believable and poignant. I started reading Kitchen around 1AM, wanting to read a few pages before sleeping. I didn't turn off the light until I'd read all of it, and my pillow was soaked with tears.
It is one of the best books I've ever read.
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5: Pretentious and Boring
Overly verbose and try-too-hard quirky. I didn't like it, although it came highly recommended by a couple of friends. I'll try re-reading it.
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