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Title: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto ISBN: 0-671-88018-7 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (94 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Did I miss something?
Comment: This was one of the first books that I read in Japanese because the language is simple (with few chinese characters), it is short, it was very popular in Japan, and Banana Yoshimoto's father is a famous Japanese thinker/philosopher: Takaaki Yoshimoto who writes books with such titles as "The Theory of Shared Fantasy" and "What is beauty according to language." He is one of Japan's most famous postwar intellectuals.
Familiar with the dense philosophical prose of Banana's father, I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of her books. I enjoyed Kitchen, but also I found it rather lightweight and lacking in impact. This troubled me. In view of the success of the book and the famous-brain father, I worry whether in fact it was really deep and I just missed the point.
These days I think that the absence of a point is partly the point of the book. In this respect, Yoshimoto is quite representative of Japanese fiction today. The non-analytic, fade-off-into the distance plots, the soft, light, visual emphasis of the prose, the sensitivity of the characters who suffer terrible disaster without seeming to suffer terribly. Life is so light, and pointless, in modern Japanese fiction such as that by Murakami Haruki and Tsuji Hitonari, both of whom I prefer.
I agree philosophically. I enjoyed the read and my computer keyboard is a pale shade of blue-grey. I do not think that I missed anything.
Rating: 5
Summary: Deceptively Simple and Beautiful
Comment: Kitchen is a deceptively simple but gorgeously written book. Banana Yoshimoto, in a work of what may be genius, manages to capture profound and deep emotions in a beautiful but unadorned writing style.
The characters are real. I mean really real. You won't find any cardboard cutouts here. And you won't find glamour girls or jet-setters. These are people we can really relate to, from the bottom of our heart. I came to love and cherish these characters and to really, really care what happened to them and their lives.
There isn't a fast-paced plot but the subjects explored by the author touch you so deeply that you would gladly trade her insight for plot any day. I think it would take a cold and cynical heart not to love Kitchen and its characters. I cherish them and I cherish this book. I know I'll be reading it again and again, for just as the main character is comforted by a kitchen, I am comforted by Kitchen.
Warm, wise and wonderful. If these elements appeal to you, then you will no doubt love Kitchen as much as I do.
Rating: 5
Summary: Beautiful
Comment: This is one book that does live up to its reputation, that became a pop-culture phenomenon because of the its quality, and not because it was bland and inoffensive. It may be short and simply written, but it deals with important themes in a major way. You get that sense of restrained power - like with Hemingway - that what's said is only the tip of the iceberg, and that the author's imagination could fill out a volume many times as long. It isn't sentimental or 'cute,' either. It's very different to explain why it works, and the only real answer is the incredible talent of the author.
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Title: Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich ISBN: 0802138209 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 09 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: NP by Banana Yoshimoto ISBN: 0671898264 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich ISBN: 0802139914 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, Edwin McClellan, Soseki Natsume ISBN: 0895267152 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: AMRITA by Banana Yoshimoto ISBN: 0671532855 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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