Okay so. I'm on a train, I'm on a bus, I'm on a plane. I'm in transit. For "transit" read that time that exists outside of time. The time between times. I'm neither in one place or another. I'm between zones. Transit is the perfect place for Banana Yoshimoto, because I can't quite make up my mind about her.
I liked "Kitchen" and I hated "Amrita". Just so you know where I'm coming from. I thought "Kitchen" was intriguing in a Douglas Coupland-y way. I thought "Amrita" was dull dull dull. "Amrita" was one of those books you read where you spend half the time checking how much you've read (am I half way yet? am I half way yet? does this book go on forever? you get the message).
It could be a translation thing. What was it Shelley said about translation? Something about how translation is like putting a violet in a crucible? Something like that.
"Asleep" is funny. Not funny haha. Funny peculiar.
Three shortish stories making up one shortish book. Each story has its own characters. None of the characters from one story decamp to another. Yet, there is a sense that you tread similar ground three times here. There are dead people at the heart of the book. Dead brothers. Dead lovers. Dead friends. Dead rivals. Living people mistaken for ghosts. Mourning girls who walk through snow without noticing the cold.
It's kind of half "Kitchen" and half "Amrita". Parts of it are intriguing - in that parts of it suggest there is more at work here than the casual unfolding of ordinary lives - and parts of it feel bad. Parts of it feel badly written. Or badly translated. Hard to tell. Certain passages read like excerpts from a teenager's diary or a New Age self-help book.
"Asleep" is like some weird kind of textual anemone : it draws you in, it knocks you back. You want to praise the fragility of the emotion, you want to curse the blandness of the thoughts.
You get the impression that Banana enjoys dreams, the significance of dreams, the roles that dreams play in life and sleep. This is true in "Kitchen" and "Amrita" too. Banana appears to enjoy using dreams as a function. Dreams tell you as much about Banana Yoshimoto's characters as suits and ties do in HG Wells.
There is contrivance here. Elaborate contrivance for little or no effect. At one point - in the story "Asleep" - a character visits a dwarf medium ("Twin Peaks" anyone?) to lay nagging doubts to rest. The doubts are eased. And that's that. It is as if you have been presented with an enormous velvet firework only to find the gunpowder is damp.
There is no centre here. "Asleep" lacks heart or head or a combination of the two. Something.
It's like the time spent in transit I mentioned right at the start : you don't quite know where you are at any given time and you don't quite remember what you passed through when you arrive at your destination. You only wish you could have passed the journey in a more satisfactory way.
