Vintage Classics Revenge

Yoko Ogawa is one of Japan’s most read contemporary novelists and is the author of The Memory Police, a lyrical dystopia which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Since 1988 she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, and has won every major Japanese literary award.Revenge is a collection of connected short stories subtitled ‘Eleven Dark Tales’. Each story is its own little character portrait introducing either the theme or character of the next, creating a connective tissue which keeps you moving from story to story.Yoko Ogawa weaves a dark and beautiful narrative that pulls together a seemingly disconnected cast of characters – doctors, hairdressers, elderly men and women, torturers, lovers, adulterers, the jilted, the lost and a Bengal tiger.‘The desires of the human heart know no reason or rules’, she says.We meet a woman buying a birthday cake for a long-dead child, a nightclub singer with her living heart on the outside of her body, a room full to the brim of kiwi fruit, dead hamsters and fake novelists.Yoko Ogawa has an anatomist’s skill of showing such beauty in ugliness that you cannot help but be drawn to it, like blood spatter on snow. Her writing style has a brittle grace, beautifully translated by her long-time collaborator Stephen Snyder.In an interview, Yoko Ogawa said, ‘Stories are necessary for us to be able to come to terms with our fears and sorrows, and the one question that cannot be answered logically. That is, all lives end in death. And finding something in nothing, which is essentially what telling a story is, is the only way to understand the existence of death’.I once read an article about the cherry blossom season in Japan and almost untranslatable phrase 'mono no aware' which refers to the bittersweet realisation of the ephemeral nature of all things. It is the awareness that everything is temporary, that youth, romance, love should be cherished because they do not last. Their brevity and impermanence is their beauty, like a short story.I heartily recommend spending an afternoon in the company of Yoko Ogawa. ‘Sometimes, I imagine,’ she writes, ‘in an unknown town far away, in a therapy or hospital room, someone in a broken, hopeless state, is verbalising the maze he or she has wandered into. Sitting alone in the dark, not knowing their words even mean anything, they just talk.I’m sitting in the corner of that dark room, writing everything down. In order to explain that the story they need to help their lost soul exists in the world, I’m jotting everything down, one letter at a time.That’s what my novels are…’

I’ve just recently gotten back into reading after years of neglect and this was a read like no other. I am one to lose attention very quickly but this book gripped mine from start to finish. It’s so beautifully written and it’s received rave reviews from fellow friends whom I’ve recommended this book to. Highly recommend you buy this book. It’s a short read but worth it.

I loved this book. It is one of the best short story collections I have read. They are all connected in some way and are so vivid. I will read more by this author. I am going to try to read more Japanese authors, there are quite a few in translation now. A wonderful collection.

Lovely collection of short stories.I'm fast becoming a fan of Japanese writers as their style of writing is so different from the type of stories I'm used to in English books - I find the stories to be so much more unique, and even surreal at times, depending on which author you're reading.Yoko Ogawa's Revenge is a lovely little collection of slightly strange, and at times eerie short stories that seem unrelated, but hints at an overall, deeper connection at different point within the book. It's a quick read (might take a day, if you're a fast reader), and though I tend not to read a book again for a while after I've read them, I find myself coming back to this one from time to time, to revisit certain stories.Great purchase, and will look into buying more of this authors work in the future.

A wonderful collection of short stories some dark some a little weird but all cleverly written. There is a loose connection theme running along side the clear prose that is always prevalent in Japanese literature. Highly recommended.