Yoko ogawa revenge mobi

View all 10 comments. Jan 07, Kris rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction , japan , releases , reviewed-for-clr. Yoko Ogawa has made a name for herself as a writer who can unsettle her readers with her precise, detailed, impassive prose.

Two of her previously published books, Hotel Iris: A Novel and The Diving Pool: Three Novellas , introduce themes of unsettled families, unhealthy relationships between characters and food, and sado-masochism.

Another of her novels, The Housekeeper and the Professor , is a much gentler story, showing Ogawa's range as a writer. In Revenge: Stories , Ogawa revisits her earlie Yoko Ogawa has made a name for herself as a writer who can unsettle her readers with her precise, detailed, impassive prose.

In Revenge: Stories , Ogawa revisits her earlier themes in an elegantly macabre collection of eleven linked stories. Ogawa slowly and exquisitely shows her readers the perverse side of human relationships, almost as if she's moving a log to show us what is crawling underneath.

In many ways, her stories are all the more effective -- and terrifying -- because of their bland settings. They could be taking place in Japan, or the US. For all you know, they are unfolding right next door to you Yoko Ogawa is a household name in Japan.

She has published over 20 books, short story collections, novels, and works of non-fiction. Only four of her works have been translated into English. Her most recent short story collection, Revenge , is likely to garner her attention from English-speaking fans of literary fiction, Japanese fiction, and horror alike. Ogawa begins by showing her readers the apparently boring, normal face of human society, and then slowly lets this face of normality slide back to reveal decomposition, death, and emptiness.

Ogawa is masterful at depicting a seemingly normal scene with a tinge of fear that all may not be as bland and routine as it first appears. The sky was a cloudless dome of sunlight. Out on the square, leaves fluttered in a gentle breeze along the pavement. Everything seemed to glimmer with a faint luminescence: the roof of the ice-cream stand, the faucet on the drinking fountain, the eyes of a stray cat, even the base of the clock tower covered with pigeon droppings.

Families and tourists strolled through the square, enjoying the weekend. Squeaky sounds could be heard from a man off in the corner, who was twisting balloon animals.

A circle of children watched him, entranced. Nearby, a woman sat on a bench knitting. Somewhere a car horn sounded. A flock of pigeons burst into the air, and startled a baby who began to cry. The mother hurried over to gather the child in her arms. You could gaze at this perfect picture all day—an afternoon bathed in light and comfort—and perhaps never notice a single detail out of place, or missing. After the dinner, the two classmates come across an abandoned post office. They break in to find it filled with kiwis: Indeed, they were kiwis, just like the ones they sell at the grocery store.

But the scene before us was grotesque and dizzying. We moved slowly into the room, which was cluttered with shelves and desks and cardboard boxes.

A pencil sharpener, a red ink pad, and a dusty scale sat on the counter. But the rest of the space was filled with kiwis, enormous heaps of them. The air was both sweet and sour.

She reached down to pick up a piece of fruit. I watched, afraid she might disturb the pile and bring it tumbling down on us. The kiwi was perfect, not a bruise or a blemish anywhere. I could hear her teeth sink into the flesh.

For a long time, she stood there eating kiwis, one after another. She consumed them like a starving child, dizzy with hunger. Her carefully ironed blouse and her beautiful hands grew sticky. I could only watch and wait until she ate through her sadness. Ogawa changes narrators from story to story, but they all share a sense of isolation and displacement from their surroundings and fellow characters.

The apartment is located on the top of a hill with an idyllic view of the town below. At times I found myself thinking they might fly away at any moment. J called as she came barging into my apartment one day. I was in the kitchen making potato salad for dinner. It was indeed odd: a carrot in the shape of a hand. The greens looked like a scrap of lace decorating the wrist. J said. As the story continues, the narrator feels ever more trapped by her proximity to Mrs. In several stories, a Museum of Torture figures prominently.

The collection of torture implements, all which the caretaker swears have been used, is held in a mansion, where dining room tables and overstuffed armchairs share their space with chains, stocks, and other torture devices. The furniture included a pair of couches; a claw-foot cabinet; a long, narrow table like something from a church; a rocking chair; and a record cabinet.

There was a real wood-burning fireplace at the end of the room. But there was one strange thing about it: every bare space was covered with some devise for torture. They were crammed in the cabinet and lined up on the table, stacked in the bay window, on the mantel, under the chairs, behind the curtains.

Even hanging on the walls. At this late stage in Revenge , Ogawa has moved horror directly into a home. The characters do not have to break into an abandoned post office or dig in a garden to find the macabre. It is on display in plain sight, used just as a table or a chair or a record player. As the perspective and point of view change from story to story, the reader feels ground shifting constantly.

In Revenge , Ogawa introduces us to the ultimate horror, not confined in a haunted house, but surrounding us every day.

View all 40 comments. They had all been so alive just yesterday. Each story is connected to the previous one via a characteristic feature.

You will discover the clues as you go along the way, as pain, oblivion and death are standing by, watching you. What makes Revenge stand out is the seamless way in which brief scenes of daily life, vivid and sharp and tender and melancholic are intertwined with the strange themes of the stories.

Somewhere a horn sounded. Outside, the world lay under a blanket of white, just as my uncle had said. The air was still, and large snowflakes drifted out of the night sky. The street was empty, and the car that had been lurking near the entrance had disappeared.

I walked gingerly over the unmarked snow. When I turned to look back, the window was dark. But the boy died twelve years ago… Fruit Juice : A young woman tries to reconcile with her estranged father, with the help of a classmate.

Old Mrs J : The haunting story of a writer and an old lady who is very fond of kiwis. And strangely-shaped carrots. A tale of family, tigers and Brahms.

Lab Coats : Two young women work in the morgue. Their job requires them to empty the pockets of the lab coats of the deceased. Sewing for the Heart : A young woman has a strange order for a bag maker. She needs a special bag for her heart. Perhaps, too fascinated… The Man Who Sold Braces : A young man reminiscences of his uncle, a strange man hiding a few dark secrets.

Tomatoes and the Full Moon : A moving story of a strange woman and bitter memories. And what is the link between the full moon and tomatoes? Poison Plants : The saddest story in the collection. A woman who has been fighting a chronic illness befriends a young man who becomes her sole support. But will it last? Just read it. My past is full of ghosts. View 2 comments. Jul 10, Jaidee rated it really liked it Shelves: four-stars-books.

Ogawa, published in was highly creative and somewhat bizarre. Themes of disconnection, hurt and various forms of revenge permeate this group of stories. Each story is linked to others and it is difficult and challenging to tease out which ones are based on reality and which are imaginal or perhaps even supernatural.

All but one story ranged from excellent to superb. Tha 4. That in itself is a remarkable feat. In my usual fashion I will name the story, give a rating and state an impression or snippet. Afternoon at the Bakery: a dead son and strawberry shortcake View all 24 comments.

Jan 25, Robin rated it liked it Shelves: japan , , translation , literary-fiction , short-stories. I adored her dystopian, poetic The Memory Police. Then I was blown away by her ruthless Hotel Iris. I love how she is able and willing to create meaningful stories with a darkly wise perspective, and without a trace of North American squeamishness. So I wasted little time to pick up her short story collection Revenge. The collection is written in her trademark simple elegance and translated by the marvellous Stephen Snyder.

And it's kinda "Olive Kitteridge-y" in that the stories are all linked to each other, even though they are stories that could stand on their own. All stories are disturbing and strange, and reading them is sort of like watching a thousand dominoes fall, one after the other, one hitting the next, causing an avalanche of weirdness.

A child folded up in a refrigerator, carrots that look like hands, a coat made from a tiger's fur, strawberry shortcake for a dead boy's birthday. Well, maybe not an avalanche. Because an avalanche implies power and high drama. Even if they are haunting and strange, these stories didn't have the impact for me that I experienced in her longer fiction.

I was waiting for the bite, and the "horror" that I was promised, the nasty pinch on the ass that makes you bleed Believe me though, I still enjoyed spending time in her pages. There are a LOT worse places to find yourself at the end of the day. View all 23 comments.

Apr 14, Jamie rated it it was amazing Shelves: , own. One of my favorite books this year. Every story was dark and had a somber feel to them, all the while, every short story linking perfectly to one another. View all 3 comments. From the mundane to the creepy in eleven tales of loss of, and separation from, loved ones The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again.

From a story centered around a mother trying to order strawberry shortcakes for the birthday of her son who is coincidentally dead, having suffocated in a refrigerator to a landlord who turns out to be a murderer, the tales in Revenge have From the mundane to the creepy in eleven tales of loss of, and separation from, loved ones The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again.

From a story centered around a mother trying to order strawberry shortcakes for the birthday of her son who is coincidentally dead, having suffocated in a refrigerator to a landlord who turns out to be a murderer, the tales in Revenge have a way of turning the mundane in the creepy through plain but effective language.

All stories are interconnected in at least two ways to other stories in the bundles, reminiscent to Ghostwritten of David Mitchell , if not driving to one overarching conclusion as this novel. Loss or separation from loved ones, often by death or divorce, seems to be the heart of the stories in this bundle. Revenge does not seem to be the most accurate of translation for the title. Getting lost or being lost comes back a lot and serves as a catalyst to sometimes almost supernatural, or at least improbable, events unfolding.

An example of the dark nature of the tales is included below: At fifteen, I took an overdose of sleeping pills. Perhaps I was just fed up with everything. At any rate, I slept for eighteen hours straight, and when I woke up I was completely refreshed. My body felt so empty and purified that I wondered whether I had, in fact, died. But no one in my family even seemed to have noticed I had attempted suicide. Only thing I liked less was the use of I perspective narrators in all stories, making it sometimes very hard to get a feel of the individuality of the narrators, their voices are quite the same and even their genders are only known halfway in most of the tales.

In an interesting take on this, in Japanese the verbs and in the way someone is addressed the gender is much more clear. Feb 29, Brina rated it liked it Shelves: mystery , japan , novella. All through March, I will be reading books written by women, mainly about women, some fiction, and many biographies and memoirs. Over the last five years one of the books that sticks out for me is The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa.

This touching story is centered around two things I thoroughly enjoy- baseball and a boy who loves both the sport and math. With that in mind, I decided to read another book by the same author, only this time the genre changed to mystery. I have seen people include Revenge on reading through the decades challenges as their s selection, and the book has gotten many positive reviews.

Revenge is only pages in length and a series of interlocking vignettes rather than a full length mystery. Had I known that, I probably would have passed on this book as I favor longer whodunnits.

The writing along with the translation by Stephen Snyder are impeccable just a tad dark for my liking. The premise of these tales takes place in one town over a course of what could be days, weeks, or months. The author allows the reader to decide that for herself. None of the protagonists knows of the others existence until they pop up in another story, so one has to read carefully in case they miss a detail that could occur later on.

The first story begins with a woman at a bakery. With ten more vignettes, I knew that this might be tough going. There is the love triangle of a doctor, his wife, and lover. It turns out in another story that this doctor was a world renown respiratory surgeon.

He was going to perform surgery on a cabaret singer whose heart had been outside of her body when he turned up dead. Later we find out that she had been murdered as well. This news is so far fetched and yet it keeps popping up in the other vignettes. A lady donated tomatoes to the hotel kitchen, and the fruit made its presence felt in all of the items ordered by the travel writer.

This lady and her black Labrador keep following the writer around, making him feel a tad uncomfortable. She was even his audience of one while he was swimming.

Sorry to say, but if I saw a total stranger staring at me swim, I would be calling security. Even though no one actually died in this particular vignette, it was just a little strange. What completely downgraded this book for me was deaths of dolphins and a bengal tiger. Between that and the death of a six year old, I was done. Having kids and cats, having both die in the same book had me realizing that maybe this is not the book for me.

Maybe it is the cultural gap between Japan and the United States. Maybe something was lost in translation although this I highly doubt because Snyder is well regarded as a translator. Regardless, I know Yoko Ogawa has been lauded for her ability to tell mysterious tales. With my over active imagination and my dislike of the dark and macabre, I will stick to cozy mysteries or at least the series that I know best. As for Ogawa, I will stick to her heartwarming tales of baseball.

If she wrote another book featuring the characters in that book, provided it is not too macabre, I know I would read it.

Yoko Ogawa is a fine author, just Revenge was not my taste. View all 17 comments. Sep 16, Sofia rated it liked it Shelves: what-just-happened , horror. Revenge tries too hard to be horrific. Following the stories of seemingly unrelated people and the gruesome events that tie them all together, it would seem as if this is the type of story that leaves you wide awake in the middle of the night.

But it's not. Is it disturbing? Seeing the mental health of others deteriorate before your eyes is terrifying - but it's just not scary enough. I came looking for a horror novel, and got a rather poetic collection of short stories. And I'm defini Revenge tries too hard to be horrific.

And I'm definitely not complaining. I know from her other works that she's a talented storyteller, perfectly capable of capturing the reader from the very first sentence she spins. And yet this collection fell a bit flat for me. The motives of each character were there, yes, but I failed to comprehend why , exactly, they were acting as they did. Why did she want to torture her boyfriend? Why did he want to be in the possession of someone's beating heart?

The perspectives started to blur for me. Every character seemed diabolical in the same twisted way. Which was perfectly fine, at first. Ogawa's subtle way of relating horrific incidents is morbidly fascinating.

Revenge relies too heavily on the dramatic endings of each short story, which are the only real terrifying or grisly parts. The stories are almost comforting, until someone is suddenly murdered in a ghastly way for no good reason. And this caused the whole book to fall apart. There are many adjectives I would use to describe this novel. Genius is one of them. The connections cunningly woven between characters? But the short stories themselves? The hints were heavy-handed, and the book as a whole relies on the shock aspect more than anything.

Feb 22, Teresa rated it really liked it Recommended to Teresa by: Kris. I admire writers who can write such deceptively simple sentences and with no exposition make everything clear that they want to be clear.

Ogawa, at least with these stories, is one of those writers; yet she doesn't want everything to be clear, another thing I admire. I especially loved her subtle, wicked sense of humor, even about herself, or at least about writers. Each story from the first to the last is linked either by a mysterious happening or, in some cases, what seems like the passing of a I admire writers who can write such deceptively simple sentences and with no exposition make everything clear that they want to be clear.

Each story from the first to the last is linked either by a mysterious happening or, in some cases, what seems like the passing of a baton in a relay, each story ratcheting up the tension, until the last story turns us back to the first in what almost seems like an Escher painting.

I'm thinking specifically of his "Drawing Hands," as there are meta elements to some of these stories as well. Every story is told from the first person point-of-view, though each narrator is a different person. At times you're not even sure right away whether the speaker is male or female, adding to the unsettling feelings.

I will be reading more by Ogawa. View all 9 comments. Dec 07, JimZ rated it it was amazing. This was fantastic. Read it in one sitting The stories were separate from each other they were standalone stories but connected.

I find the concept very appealing I got the novel, The Wonder Years Lauren Acampora under the promise of a similar style intersecting lives of one small town And here's a very nice and insightful interview of Ms. Japanese Gothic Revenge begins and ends in old, discarded refrigerators. The theme of fruit - growing, discarded, consumed and going bad - pervades the text. Characters, bizarre in their motivation and behaviour, appear and dissolve like vapour. Events become self-referential but which text precedes the other is unclear.

The atmosphere is spectral but not supernatural. T Japanese Gothic Revenge begins and ends in old, discarded refrigerators.

That there is a plan to Revenge and a key to understanding this plan therefore is therefore certain. Without this key, the work is intriguing but incomplete. But what such a key could be in Revenge is, at least for the moments, beyond me. Anyone with insights, please get in touch. Jun 02, Lynne King rated it really liked it Shelves: short-stories. I had never heard of Yoko Ogawa before.

What an extraordinary selection of eleven short stories and what an imagination the author has. One of my two favourites was "Old Mrs J" and what a lot she has to hide. For a start, the death of her husband is quite a mystery. Well I kept on thinking about that and wondered what could possibly result from this. Well that was superb and yes, despite reading this short story, I do still love eating carrots in whatever form they come.

And as for the poor hamster; well that was sad. Also the so important final sentence or paragraph to each story that says it all. A woman with a bundle, a black Labrador, some tomatoes and theft of a manuscript. It is so simple but so meaningful. This is indeed my favourite story in this collection.

Death, murder, suspicion, blood, mystery, poignancy, libraries, etc. View all 8 comments. Jun 27, Paquita Maria Sanchez added it Shelves: literature. Compared to other Ogawa books this one is weak, but as a standalone it is no more and no less than meh, fine by me. It is just fine, a "woo" without an exclamation point. A straight-faced, monotone "woo" probably accompanied by a lethargic blink and some dried up streamlets of slobber. Seriously, it is totally just fine. The thing with Ogawa that I love is the way she renders a scene.

She's makes these little minimalist snapshots in these muted pastels like polaroids, but with horrifying subject Compared to other Ogawa books this one is weak, but as a standalone it is no more and no less than meh, fine by me. She's makes these little minimalist snapshots in these muted pastels like polaroids, but with horrifying subject matter that seems totally out of place frozen in time all bright and milk n' honey like that. She's generally a more sensory than intellectual reading experience, more like art-uh films-uh than lit-uh.

Or something. This novel or short story collection or whatever you want to call it has some of that awesome icky-in-the-light-of-day going on, but seems to rely on the disturbed feelings these images rouse simply by the nature of what they are - creepy, disturbing things, rather than using them as foundational blocks to build up from via craft.

She doesn't really play with her sick-twisty ideas as much here, rather just throws them on the page and lets 'em do all the work. And they are lazy buggers. Oh, and stringing together a bunch of different stories by having the characters cross paths at some point doesn't turn your short story collection into a novel about "murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders, their fates converg[ing] in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.

Look, I get that Tokyo is crowded enough that it probably blows your mind when you even see the face of your upstairs neighbor more than once in an entire lifetime, but that doesn't mean every crossed path has some crazy-profound meaning.

Besides, none of these people should even know each other in the first fuckin' place. Y'ask me, they are all far too psychotic to be building any webs together, beautiful or otherwise.

It is for the best. It just seems like maybe Ogawa got pressured to release another novel, and all she had was this notebook full of sketches for novels, and she just couldn't bring herself to flesh any of them out because life happens, so she scotch-taped them all together and gave us this instead. And it is stupefyingly just okay.

View all 7 comments. This is a fascinating collection that weaves together the lives of broken people unable to cope with lingering memories and pains.

United by a sense of commonality in the quest of gaining triumph against their personal devils, the stories move hauntingly, enveloped with an off-kilter atmosphere, told with a chilling precision often eerie. There is even a dreadful sense of self-awareness in the collection when one story would be read or alluded to in another.

Ogawa also manages to playfully inser This is a fascinating collection that weaves together the lives of broken people unable to cope with lingering memories and pains. Probably, however for a vengeful theme I expected a bit more. View 1 comment. This is a BR. Not a Buddy Read. With the most awesome Sillyhead and it was her idea too!

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