| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Of Stone and Fruit,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Hardboiled and Hard Luck (Hardcover)
I have been a fan of Yoshimoto's body of work since 2001. After reading her debut novella Kitchen, I read her other translated works: N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep, and Goodbye Tsugumi. While by far not my favorite Yoshimoto work, Hardboiled and Hard Luck is a decent work that includes a number of themes that are present in almost every Yoshimoto novel: memory, death, and the precious moments of life which deeply root themselves into our hearts.The narrator of Hardboiled is a young woman traveling on her own through Japan's countryside. One day while walking upon a little used road the young woman comes across an old, dilapidated shrine where ten black stones are placed in a circle. Feeling an ominous air emanating from the stones, the young woman hurries back to town. However, inside an Udon noodle shop the woman finds one of the stones in one of her pockets. Later, she discovers that another one of the stones was used to build the bath within the inn in which she is staying for the night. At first she is unsure of why such odd things are happening to her, but soon it dawns on her that on the same date a year ago her friend and ex-lover Chizuru had died. Similar to the works of Murakami Haruki, it is not impossible to make amends with the dead in Yoshimoto's literary world. Hard Luck details the final days that the nameless narrator spends with both her brain dead sister and her fiancé's older brother. In my opinion the more powerful of the two short novellas, Yoshimoto creates a gentle, delicate work that details not only the emotions of losing someone close, but the healing process one goes through when a family member who has suffered long is about to die. Yoshimoto has often been criticized as a writer of fluff fiction, however, while she may not be in the same realm as Oe Kenzaburo or Takahashi Takako it does not mean that she does not bring something important to the world of Japanese Literature. Through her simple words, Yoshimoto can touch the hearts of readers. Something that a number of more literary writers are unable to do.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Yoshimito, Again,
This review is from: Hardboiled and Hard Luck (Paperback)
My first book by this author was 'Goodbye Tsugumi' and since then, I have always been on the look out for books by yoshomoto.Both Hardboiled and Hard Luck explore themes that have been prevalent in yoshomoto's previous works. Themes like friendship, death, grief, memories and love wove their way through these two short stories. Hardboiled, the first of the stories, is about a young woman visiting a town on her lover's anniversary. A series of strange things happen to her on the way, and she flits into dreamworld and memories. The story takes us along as she comes to terms with her friend's death. The second part of the book, hard luck, is the story of a young woman dealing with her brain damaged sister. As a result of an ebolism in the sister's brain, she goes into a coma, and then begins the progress of her death infront of her loved ones. The narrator, the younger sister, visits her sister in the beginning of the novel and reflects on her state and is plagued with memories of the past. There she also meets her sister's fiance's brother for the first time and her reaction towards him makes her realize that altho grieving, she is also getting back to her normal life. Both stories, although written simply as the norm with yoshomoto's novels, are filled with a myriad of strong emotions. Goodbye Tsugumi still remains my personal favorite of her novels.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I Was Hoping For More,
By Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Hardboiled and Hard Luck (Hardcover)
I am a big fan of Ms. Yoshimoto's work. Her ability to evoke a spiritualism in a modern Asian context is fascinating to me. And her prose has a gentleness even in the face of stories of tragedy that I find soothing.So it is with the two stories in this volume. In "Hardboiled" we have a young woman hiking and spending the night in a hotel on the anniversary of a friend/former lover's death. In the hotel she dreams of her friend and encounters the ghost of another woman who has committed suicide in the hotel. In "Hard Luck" we have a young woman whose sister is dying in a hospital because of an embolism and she is about to be taken off life support. In the course of the vigil and through the funeral she encounters the brother of her dead sister's fiancé and feels the first stirrings of love--the realization that life must go on. Of course, my summaries do not do these stories justice. As always, Ms. Yoshimoto has produced simple, yet beautiful and truthful stories. My complaint is the dearth of text here. Almost all of Ms. Yoshimoto's books are brief but it amazes me the publishers had the nerve to put these two stories between hardcovers and price them what they did. Another couple stories of this caliber would have made it much more worthwhile. It's difficult not to feel you're getting a bit cheated.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
|
|
