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kitchen
banana yoshimoto
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| (Kitchen & NP) I can’t really remember which book I liked better, but I love the healthy, soignée style of Banana. If she had written forty books, I would have read all forty. I just like her voice. |
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reviewed by: kristen |
September 2000 [link] |
recommend
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banana
banana yoshimoto
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| What I haven't added this book to my reviews? Stupid me. It's set in Nippon and is very dry and urbane and so oddly touching... like hearing "One of These Days" by Neil Young blaring out of a Japanese male's headphones on the Tokyo subway. |
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reviewed by: kristen |
January 2001 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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goodbye tsugumi
banana yoshimoto
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In this book, Maria Shirakawa--a 19 year old or so girl--moves from her rural japanese fishing village (where she lived in a hotel with her mother, her aunt and her two cousins Yoko and Tsugumi) to Tokyo, where she lives with her mother and father. Upon finding out that the seaside family inn will be closing in the fall, Maria insists on returning and spending the summer with Tsugumi, Yoko, and their new friend Kyoichi (who is also Tsugumi's boyfriend). Tsugumi is constantly sick and ailing, but her outrageous spitfire spirit drives her throughout the novel.
A short exerpt: "Tsugumi plopped down on our plastic spread. She gazed out at the ocean, squinting against the light. Just beyond her, the curve of our beach umbrella cut sharply into the blue sky, flapping crazily, noisily in the wind. It was such an amazingly bright, vivid scene that I lay there unable to tear my gaze away. My heart felt as if it might flutter off to some place far away."
Banana Yoshimoto writes such beautiful, haunting, spare prose that somehow, without being ridiculous or over-the-top or Hallmark-card-esque, she can make you cry. |
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reviewed by: victoria |
May 2005 [link] |
recommend
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