Customer Reviews

NP

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have read other books by Banana - Kitchen and Lizard. She always makes me feel as if I'm being followed, though I'm not sure by whom. Her remarkable stories of transvestities, lost love and in the case of NP, incest, awaken a surpressed sense of guilt inside of me. Though my morals, scruples, or just plain common sense tells me it is wrong, I can't help but feel oddly touched by the posioness, romantic love of Otohiko and his sister, Sui. Yoshimoto's stories defy logic, they are about a more spiritual and accepting way of life, they force me to try to strive for such honesty in my own life. My only criticizm lies in the fact that it is a translation of Japanese into English. It pains me that I cannot read and understand this book as it was actually written. At times the words seem overly simplistic, I'm sure it has lost some of the poetry of Banana's style in the translation. Perhaps this is just the kind of inspiration I need to go out and learn Japanese.

I have read "Kitchen" -- it is actually one of my favorite novels. I simply love Banana's descriptions and eccentric characters, and she managed to impress me one more time with "NP."

This quirky novel left a funny taste in my mouth. It dealt with such controversial issues such as incest and suicide -- but it is done with such humanity and vulnerability that you can't help but adore the characters and wish them the best. The translation was done nicely, although I'm sure that the original Japanese version (and Banana's actual words) is much better. I'm looking forward to her new novel, "Asleep" -- I will buy it on the first day of release.

Having devoured Huraki Murakami, Yoshimoto seemed like the next progressive step.

And really, they do have some similarities. There is something beautifully refreshing about their aloof, sweet descriptive style and their covert intellectualism.

However, Yoshimoto's works seem to lack a certain something, a certain zest or life. While they are compulsively addictive, they tread so lightly as to be almost unmemorable.

'Y.P' is certainly less impressive than her tiny bestseller 'Kitchen'. In both works, there seems to be a lovely layer of foggy glass between the reader and the characters, yet in 'Y.P', this is tainted by a sense of distachment from the work.

I found myself liking the book, enjoying the descriptions and the complexity of the characters, but not really caring about the outcome.

'Kitchen' is undoubtedly the better read.

After the success of the English translated version of Kitchen, Yoshimoto Banana's next novel to be released in the English speaking world was N.P. which she originally wrote in 1990. While a decent read, fans of Kitchen will notice that N.P. basically has the same core theme as Kitchen: death and memory. In Kitchen Yoshimoto created a truly dreamlike work in which the thin membrane between reality and fantasy was quite porous and the reader was left wondering if some parts of the novella were taking place in the novel's reality or its fantasy world. In N.P. Yoshimoto attempts to capture some of the magic that made Kitchen such a delightful read, but it comes off as being a bit more forced than her earliest work.

N.P. centers on the life of Kano Kazami a young woman who works as a research assistant at a local university. Energetic and fun-loving, Kazami has a delightful personality, but like Sakurai Mikage in Kitchen she has a shadow cast over her heart. When she was in high school, the then seventeen year old Kazami dated a man twice her age named Shoji who worked as a professional translator. At the time that they were dating Shoji was embroiled with translating the stories of a Takase Sarao into Japanese. While this might seem odd at first for a translator to be translating a Japanese writer's writings into Japanese, it should be noted that Takase was an expatriate living in Boston and wrote his fiction in English, ala Samuel Beckett writing in French instead of his native English. A highly depressed and strange man, Takase committed suicide leaving being a collection of stories entitled N.P. N.P. seems to be a cursed work, because while Shoji was translating the ninety-eighth story, he too committed suicide.

With a manuscript of the ninety-eighth story and a Rolex watch as mementos of Shoji, Kazami tries to live her life normally enough, but as time passes she meets again, she had saw them at a party a few years before, the children of Takase: Otohiko and Saki who are both hounded by the memory of their dead father and the collection of stories he created. If this wasn't complex enough there is also Sui: who is not only the half-sister of Saki and Otohiko, but also Otohiko's lover as well, apparently he did not know they were related when their relationship began. It also seems that Sui engaged in an incestuous relationship with her father: the elder Takase and their relationship is the basis of the ninety-eighth story.

Along with the myriad of relationships listed above, N.P. also takes a keen interest in the role of language, especially the translated word. In one of the best parts of the thin novel Kazami's mom describes how deeply the translator becomes one with the work he or she is translating and how one through translation can share emotions with the writer. Maybe it is the sheer sadness and madness within Takase's book that leads its translators to suicide.

A decent, quick read N.P. has some interesting ideas, but it seems that some of them were a bit too big for a twenty-six year old Yoshimoto to tackle. However, it is a lightly recommended read for the Yoshimoto fan.

This is the 3rd book that I've read by this author. Goodbye Tsugumi was far better than this book. Perhaps the reviewers claiming this is her best book have not read Goodbye Tsugumi ("GT").

This book superficially reminds me of Watch Your Mouth by Daniel Handler in the sense that there is a lot of incest. Because of that, it is difficult for a non-incestuous human being to apply the lessons of the book. This is unlike GT, which has many useful life lessons. It's the same with the translation element. Although I myself used to do translation and could sympathize with how you can get drawn in, I didn't find that part of the book to have any greater meaning yet it takes up so much of the book.

A lot of nice imagery but I found the book to lack profundity. The plot seemed secondary (in importance to the author) to the primary focus on vivid descriptions of the beach, park, and hot weather.

Again, Yoshimoto Banana captivated me with her clean style and unique take on everything. It's interesting that she questions some feelings of her characters--for example, they wonder why they feel depressed or happy at a certain time. She really takes time out to look at things we take for granted. That's definitely part of her charm.

As for N.P. my only wish is that she would have delved further into the topic by perhaps having the characters translate the entire novel and to figure out WHY these people all were driven to suicide. Another hit. I'll be sure to buy the last three--Lizard, Amrita, and Asleep.

Banana Yoshimoto's literary return. Yoshimoto's second book, and first novel, "NP" is a dark and beautiful success.

"NP" is for us a novel written in Japanese, translated into English about a novel written in English that is in the process of being translated into Japanese. Confussed? That tends to happen a little with this book.

Well written in Yoshimoto's wonderful and flowing style, this is a story of sucide, love, sex, death and depression. Dark, oft times funny and always powerful, Yoshimoto has come up with another hit.

This is a wonderful story that takes Yoshimoto's wonderful prose to places that it has never traveled to before. The most impressive things about Yoshimoto are her style with its unimpossing voice and her way to get inside her characters and to bring such devistated and yet hopeful people to life in so few pages.

Yoshimoto should be on the reading list for all young Americans. She is gifted and brings the life of twenty-somethings in Japan, to us clearly and quickly, and in doing so, shows us a people that really are just like us, deep down where it counts.

Typical of what I've come to think of as Japanese fiction. Written in stark, simple prose; an odd lilt to the dialogue - a combination of all the characters sounding the same and English not really being spoken that way; the surreal situation, the strong hint of the supernatural and the characters' automatic acceptance of that supernatural element.

The idea is very haunting. An author who writes short stories so powerful he, as well as those who try to translate them (from English to Japanese), end up committing suicide. The author's children and the translator's ex-girlfriend meet, become friends, fall in love and part after one summer. Yet it seems like this novel only skims the surface of possibility. Very strong forces propel one to suicide, and such forces were only hinted at or smoothed over by characters' declarations of how troubled they were and how much they wanted to die. What about the first ninety-seven stories - what part do they play in the characters' lives as well as the novel itself? The characters of Saki and Otohiko don't emerge as individuals either.

At times this reminded me of (also Japanese) movie 'The Ring', with the mysterious deaths and its general eerie unsettling undertone. But its explanations are hardly convincing enough.

N.P. was the first novel I've read by Yoshimoto. I was not so captivated by it because it seemed too dry. The characters, except for perhaps Sui, are all very dense, including the narrator, Kazami. The plot is a bit scattered, and the speech is a bit difficult to follow. However, it is interesting and worth while to the open minded. Her metaphors are enchanting and the symbolism of the environment and events are easy to catch. I think Banana would make a great poet, as I've heard others say before. But she is young and future novels by her should tend to only get better. I'm still willing to read her _Kitchen_, which I heard was 10x better than _N.P._ I think Yoshimoto summed it up best herself, to read this book: "On a sunny November afternoon, with a cold, eating a persimmon." To spend much more time on it would be wasteful.

This was the first time I've read Yoshimoto's work and I'm really impressed. Not so much because of the storyline or anything like that, but I just couldn't put it down. Banana Yoshimoto writes in such a way that captivates anyone who's willing to take time to read her work.She deals with very deep subjects in "NP" without getting too heavy and depressing...she has such a simplicity that makes you more and more interested. Read it!