This is an anthology of interconnected short stories that takes place in Tokyo in an indeterminate time, but presumably sometime in the 1990s.
Each of the stories (of which there are eleven) is from the perspective of a different character, and shares some commonality to the story that immediately precedes it. In “Afternoon at the Bakery”, for instance, the narrator enters a bakery for some strawberry shortcake. It’s her son’s birthday who (it is revealed) is now dead. That is what his last birthday cake was, and that’s how she’s choosing to commemorate the anniversary of his death. While sitting at the counter, she sees a woman weeping in the back of the store, and she watches her, waiting for her to finish. The second story, “Fruit Juice” is about this woman, and why she ends up crying in the bakery.
All the stories are gruesome, even horrific. There’s a story about a woman born with her heart outside of her chest, and she hires a man to make a bag for it. The man then becomes obsessed with her heart. There’s another story of a woman who visits a museum of torture, full of carefully curated implements of pain and trauma.
This book was a singular experience. I don’t read much short fiction – but I’ve never read a book like this before. The stories were pretty consistently good – I don’t think there were any weak links, here. And they all connected pretty seamlessly. I cared about every story, and loved finding the connections between all of them.
Yoko Ogawa is a writer I don’t think I’ve ever heard of before – but she’s been writing since the ’80s, and has won every major Japanese literary award. She’s also won some international awards, like the American Book Award and Shirley Jackson Award.
I liked this book enough to immediately grab another of her books from Audible (review forthcoming).