Customer Reviews

Asleep

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

yoshimoto banana has a way of looking at the world through literature that is unique of any other in the world. She tells as it is and reflects upon any emotion the character may be feeling. In this way, just as our memories are a constant stream of events, Yoshimoto's characters are free to reflect, to dwell on things, and to suddenly remember something. She isn't afraid to mention things again or to say something that you don't see coming. Her endings are very true to life as well. She's not afraid of tragedy and her characters show this. Asleep is an incredible and VERY REAL book. Another winner for Yoshimoto. I liked ASLEEP best of the three novellas. Her characters seem so complete as to have such complicated pasts. Pick it up today for something truly unique.

Slumber, Drunkenness, Death and Love are the topics explored in Banana Yoshimoto's "Asleep." As with "Kitchen," there are three novellas linked thematically but not by characters or plot. Three women, all in love with someone emotionally of physically dead, all troubled sleepers, all drinkers, try to find rest and quietude that is not found in sleep. Each aspect is a metaphor for the unconscious, where perhaps the answers lie. For in this sleep of death, who know what dreams may come? Girlfriend in a coma, I know, I know it's really serious. Drink, don't think. Seeking answers, the women look to their friends, their family, magical dwarfs or anyone who can help.

"Asleep" is told in Yoshimoto style, like a story overheard with half-open eyes while drifting off to sleep. It is semi-magical and dreamy, but still in touch with the real world. The pacing, the narrative are all influenced by classical Japanese literature. Her writing is very gentle, very feminine. And poetic.

An enjoyable, lazy book. Good for seekers of love and those who cannot sleep at night.

Banana Yoshimoto's novels have touched me in so many ways. Her lucid, subtle and disarming writing style is a work of art. She is a tour de force in contemporary fiction. I have waited a long time for the release of Asleep, and I am not disappointed.

The three novellas in Asleep are earnest, sensuous, eccentric, and extremely surreal. The three female characters in the book are bewitched into a spiritual and magical sleep. In Night and Night's Travelers, the first story, a woman finds herself sleepwalking at night. In Love Song, a woman's sleep is haunted by a rival whom she once competed with in a love triangle. And in Asleep, a woman loses her best friend to suicide. Also, she is having an affair with a man whose wife is in a coma. Things take a strange turn when she finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. The stories are very ambiguous; you have to pay attention to every detail in order to grasp their meaning. The magical realism in the stories is as mystical as a ghost story and the language is deceptively simple -- it is meant to play with the reader's mind.

I am awed by this incredible piece of fiction. The stories are very well done and interestingly nuance. This is her most creative work since Kitchen and her best collection of stories since Lizard. Powerful and spooky, Asleep will capture your heart. I strongly urge you to read this one!

Banana Yoshimoto is an interesting writer. Her writing is very dreamlike and delves deeply into the world of magical realism. Many people dislike her writing because it is not on the same level with Mishima, Kawabata, or Tanizaki. Well, fine. But these peope are doing her books a great injustice comparing them to the writings of the older male writers. Yoshimoto is writing for another group of readers, she is writing for young Japanese women who have graduated from two year colleges and are working as Office Ladies. These young women are the freest residents of Japan. They work minimal jobs performing minimal tasks, and are able to use their money for trips and expensize clothes. Of course all this ends when they get married.

All that aside this is a pretty enjoyable book. "Night and Night's Travelers" is the first and my favorite story in the book. It is narrated by a young woman named Shibami whose brother was killed in a dcar accident. The story revolves around Shibami's relationships with her cousin Mari, who was Shibami's brother, Yoshihiro, and an American girl named Sarah who was also one of Yoshihiro's lovers. It is quite a sad story about making amends with the dead. "Love Songs" is the second story and my least favorite it is about a young woman is drinking herself slowly to death. At night she hears a beautiful song she thinks that it is a woman she knew a couple of years back, a rival for a man's love. After finding out that the woman is dead. The young woman goes to see a dwarf medium. This one is really a story about enemies who grow to love each other. The third story is titleD "Asleep" It is about a young woman who cannot seem to stay awake, and the only thing that seems to wake her from her deep slumber is when her boyfriend calls her. This is a sad little story about a young woman wasting away in the shadow of her boyfriend's comatose wife. Must be read to grasp the full emotion behind it.

Thi sis a pretty good book. It is 14 years old though so Yoshimoto wrote these stories when she was only 25. Although she wrote kitchen when she was 24. If after you read this book you think that Yoshimoto's writing is not on par with her older stuff. Just remember that this is the older stuff, just took a while to be translated. A good book, check it out.

I've enjoyed all of Banana Yoshimoto's books, my favorite being the short story collection "Lizard." What I loved about this book of three novellas is that we have three entirely different tales with identical elements: sleep lending itself as a catalyst or barrier in the womens' lives; and each grieving over the untimely death of somebody who touched their lives. What struck me most -even above the theme of sleep- is the varying impact that those who passed away have had on the people they left behind. In "Night and Night's Travelers," the see the loss of Yoshihiro through his sister's eyes, yet the story shows how his short life had a rich impact on two other key characters. "Love Songs" takes an interesting twist when a young woman learns that a woman who was her nemesis (they battled over a selfish lover) has died, and works to make peace the departed. The third tale "Asleep," gives us a narcoleptic young woman who copes with a close friend's suicide, and simultaneously deals with the fact that her lover's wife lay dormant in a coma. To tell much more of the plot would be giving away enough the wreck the enjoyment of these stories. Ms. Yoshimoto uses the hint of apparitions to paint a moving portrait of three women who must cope with these losses too soon in their lives. I am a complete mark for Banana Yoshimoto's work, I praise the page she writes on! That said, I would still recommend this book to someone who is unfamiliar with her work.

I read N.P. and was impressed by the thoughts, careful translation, and almost campy combination of subject matter (lesbians, incest, suicide, etc.). Asleep touches on some of this, but somehow without developing a single memorable character. I read and read and lost interest with every page. B.Y. gets hung up on the main characters' man problems, and after a while it just isn't engaging to read about how sleepy she is, or how weird her dreams are.

"Asleep" is a collection of three stories about three different women having issues with their sleep cycles for different reasons. In accordance with Banana Yoshimoto's style, the stories possess a surrealist, dream-like quality that defies logic yet is very easy to follow. I enjoyed reading all three stories even though it felt like Yoshimoto wrote them without a goal or destination in mind. Nevertheless, I found them to be satisfying and make a coherent, lovely collection together. I will definitely re-read this book in the future!

Asleep is a collection of three short novellas, all of which focus on some aspect of death and also a sleeping, either literal or psychic, born of trauma.

"Night and Night's Travelers" is a tale of the literal death of one and the resulting temporary emotional death of another. The narrator is Shibami and she tells the story of her "vibrantly charismatic" brother Yoshihiro and her dreamy cousin Mari. Yoshihiro and Mari are not only cousins, but lovers. After Yoshihiro's death, Mari withdraws and enters a year of dreamlike fog and sleepwalking.

"Love Songs" tells of the haunting of one woman by another. Fumi has found herself at the end of an affair and drinking to excess. She often hears a "soothing voice singing." This voice belongs to Haru, a dead woman with whom Fumi once shared her ex-lover. Fumi is drawn to this voice from the beyond and, through consultation with a midget psychic, is able to meet with Haru. In life, the two women were in a relationship of bitter resentment and jealousy, yet in this meeting of life and afterlife they find peace and friendship.

"Asleep" is the story of Terako who shares the deep sleep of her lover's comatose wife. Mr. Iwanaga has an unusual effect on women ... he puts them to sleep. His wife is in a coma and his lover, Terako, becomes increasingly sleepy. As Terako separates herself from Mr. Iwanaga and creates her own life, she finds a new energy.

Supernatural occurrences seem natural throughout the stories in Asleep. The language is sparse, creating silences and the stories lack any attempt to draw the reader in emotionally. Yoshimoto's writing style reminded me of minimalist Japanese decor. The setting is sparse, but what is there is beautiful. The writing often seems like a prose version of haiku:

"Late at night the trees in my garden seemed to shine.
Awash in light from the street, the quiet glittering green of the
leaves and the deep brown of the trunk seemed startlingly vivid."

Those looking for an exciting read will not find it in Asleep. What the reader will find is a quiet and beautiful collection of stories that take the vicissitudes of life in stride.

These three novellas, written early in Yoshimoto's career, share the theme of sleep as a refuge and an escape. In each story, all told in first-person, a young woman moves from her sleep-cocooned state to walk the liminal space between her life and the death of someone close to her.

Although the translation is a little harsh at times, and doesn't always catch Yoshimoto's ambiguous, moonlit tone, this book is a welcome escape from reality into the silence and uncertainty of night.