On the other hand, when they are in a nice and jovial mood, they make a low, yet impactful high-pitched sound, like an excited whistle. He doesn’t answer her question about “the scale from one to ten”, but he does think about it: “I liked kids. Kate Manne’s book Entitled she cites a US study (the novel is Japan, of course, not the US, but the ideas still apply) that ‘ working women took on around two-thirds of at-home child care responsibilities’, and of the 46% of male participants who said they were coequal parents, only 32% of their partners agreed. Certain deterrents like motion sensor devices are also a great tactic to use to shoo away those meddling weasels from your chicken coop. Nothing, said the grandmother, is nearly as effective as the death agony of a mother weasel: “The mother’s the best.

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada | New Directions

If you are simply trying to keep them away from your property, set up an exclusion, and save yourself from their meat-eating desire. The small details, such as a nightmare of being crushed by a fish, add up to a successfully eerie atmosphere, but it never feels like enough and seems so washed out in too many other details. I burst through the bedroom door to see a gigantic rat sticking its head through a gnawed-open hole in the wall. And a dinner party during a blizzard leads to a night in a room filled with aquariums and unpleasant dreams.They prey on small animals like mice or chipmunks, but are known to take on much bigger prey like rabbits, fish, voles, birds, and other small mammals.

Book Review: Weasels in The Attic – Hiroko Oyamada

The moss biologist tries to explain to anyone who will listen that while he’s an expert on moss, he doesn’t know the first thing about green roofs.Food is a constant theme here, such as the story of Urabe giving fish food to eat to a young girl whose family cannot afford food. She is currently a student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College and an OER Fellow at the CUNY Office of Library Services. Rather than being known or referred to as a friend as the unnamed narrator is, his wife is simply referred to as “wife”. Again, this reinforces the collections critique of how women are treated in Japanese society, at once required to do all the housework and childrearing yet not allowed to have their own interests or personalities, or in this case a name.

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada | Goodreads

There is also the ageist sense where finding a younger woman more desirable betrays the social stigma against women aging, a double-standard in most society as men are allowed more grace for an aging body than women, as argues Le Monde diplomatique editor and journalist, Mona Chollet, saying there is an ‘ additional power [men] have is that of making it so that their decay is not counted against them.

Much like Oyamada’s other stories, this tale teeters on the edge of bizarre surrealism, giving her writing an almost dreamy and nostalgic effect. After a reprieve of several minutes, long enough for us to fall back asleep, the scratching grew more insistent. The other friend lives in a newly refurbished home with a terrible weasel infestation and a room with tanked scleropages jardinii – a menacing, carnivorous fish native to Australia.