The US edition of Revenge is billed as Eleven Dark Tales, but the eleven episodes are connected, a detail from one appearing in the next -- and then eventually more, as the sequence not only comes full-circle but turns out to be self-contained, making it ultimately more novel-like than just a collection of short stories. Frequently, she explores the theme of memory in her works. For instance, The Housekeeper and the Professor follows a mathematics professor who cannot remember anything for longer than eighty minutes, and The Memory Police is about a group of islanders who gradually forget the existence of certain things, such as birds or flowers. [4] Human cruelty features as another prominent theme in her work, as she is interested in exploring what drives people to commit acts of physical or emotional violence. [4] She often writes about female bodies and the woman's role in a family, which has led many to label her as a feminist writer. Ogawa is hesitatant about this label, stating instead that she "just peeked into [the world of her characters] and took notes from what they were doing". [4] The Japanese title, 寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い, also offers a bit more frisson than the simplistic English one; Google translate suggests as a literal translation: 'Indecent dead quiet funeral', which isn't any more insightful than 'revenge' but certainly is more suggestive of what's on offer here.] Fittingly, each tale seems to be its own torture chamber--dark and meticulous… More disturbing than the bloody imagery is the eerie calm with which each plot unfolds, as if one act of violence must necessarily transform into the portal for another.” — The New Yorker

Revenge - Yoko Ogawa - Google Books

Using economical and precise language, Ogawa conveys intensity of emotion. (...) Ogawa's landscapes are frequently bizarre and contain startling images" - Lucy Popescu, Times Literary Supplement A storehouse of creepy and vicious behavior… [Ogawa's] touches of horror sometimes put me in mind of the grown-up stories of Roald Dahl.” — Jim Higgins, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel People passed by the shop window—young couples, old men, tourists, a policeman on patrol—but no one seemed interested in the bakery. The woman turned to look out at the square, and ran her fingers through her wavy white hair. Whenever she moved in her seat, she gave off an odd smell; the scent of medicinal herbs and overripe fruit mingled with the vinyl of her apron. It reminded me of when I was a child, and the smell of the little greenhouse in the garden where my father used to raise orchids. I was strictly forbidden to open the door; but once, without permission, I did. The scent of the orchids was not at all disagreeable, and this pleasant association made me like the old woman.A secret garden of dark, glorious flowers: silky, heartbreakingly beautiful...and poison to their roots.” —Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns I was happy to see they have strawberry shortcake," I said, pointing at the case. "They're the real thing. None of that jelly, or too much fruit piled on top, or those little figurines they use for decoration. Just strawberries and cream."

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales - Wikipedia

No, it couldn't be," I said to the old woman nearby. "He's just sleeping. He hasn't eaten anything, and he must be exhausted. Let's carry him home and try not to wake him. He should sleep, as much as he wants. He'll wake up later, I'm sure of it."

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Yōko Ogawa's prose is concise, intriguing, and beautiful. I know from her other works that she's a talented storyteller, perfectly capable of capturing the reader from the very first sentence she spins. And yet this collection fell a bit flat for me. Somehow it didn't bother me that he was talking about a completely different person. Nor did I try to correct him. My son had read his picture books so well that it seemed quite likely he might have had a leading role in a play one day. Alison Flood (8 April 2014). "Knausgaard heads Independent foreign fiction prize shortlist". The Guardian . Retrieved April 10, 2014. How had I not noticed before? I rose slightly from my seat and looked past the counter. A doorway behind the cash register was half open, and I could see into the kitchen. A young woman was standing inside with her face turned away. I was about to call out to her, but I stopped myself. She was talking to someone on the telephone, and she was crying.

Yoko Ogawa’s “Revenge” - Words Without Borders Yoko Ogawa’s “Revenge” - Words Without Borders

Six. He’ll always be six. He’s dead.” This book is a first of its kind for me. It has no character names, no locations, no dates, no times, and no specifics of any kind. It’s one of THE MOST pure forms of storytelling I have ever read. I can sum up my review in just one quote from this very book itself. “The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again.” There is a coldness in this book. A feeling of detachment towards life that comes with life being a bitch to you, taking away something from you that you couldn’t ever bear to lose. A loss that makes you indifferent to many things that should matter and curious about things that should be morbid. Almost no one is willing to speak out or go against the grain: life -- and death -- continue like always, even if or as they have been shaken to the core of their existence. But what a strange shape,” I said, pausing over the potatoes. It was indeed odd: a carrot in the shape of a hand.This technique is other-worldly and leads to a narrative style where a sense of dread and unease develops slowly. It has a flaw though. Even as characters and their gender shift, the same fugue voice is moved through. This often makes it hard to tell if the narrator is male or female, old or young, or was a minor character encountered in a prior story. This flattening of the voice, which may be in the original or may be a function of the translation, emphasizes the fugue-state of consciousness and dread. It, however, de-emphasizes the specific feel of each character. Proxies for the writer enter into the story, but it is often hard to extract out the specific voice from the meta-fictive elements and as a result both blend into each other and can be lost in confusion. Still, Ogawa is aware of this flaw and even comments on it through a proxy narrator: “The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy undercurrent running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again” (148). Novels that are so highly aware of there artifice are generally take a lighter note. Using spare strokes and macabre detail, Ogawa creates an intense vision of limited lives and the twisted ingenuity of people trapped within them.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air In addition, the deaths themselves are almost all presented as distant, off-scene, or at some remove -- the murder in the apartment above; a death years earlier resurfacing in one form or another; newspaper or other second-hand reports -- even as their effects (and occasionally physical traces) linger, one way or another. I repeated to myself what I would say when she emerged into the fading light of the shop: "Two strawberry shortcakes, please." The Diving Pool (Daibingu puru, ダイヴィング・プール, 1990; Ninshin karendā, 妊娠カレンダー, 1991; Dormitory, ドミトリイ, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, New York: Picador, 2008. ISBN 0-312-42683-6; published on The New York Times in 2006

Ogawa - Wikipedia Yōko Ogawa - Wikipedia

The thrills are sometimes cheap and the connections between stories membrane thin, but Ogawa makes it count with her precision and dedication to bringing the vision full-circle." - Publishers Weekly Fruit Juice: A young woman meets her politician father as her mother is dying...a hapless friend tags along (4 stars) Not one person in the crowd on the square knew that a young woman was crying in the kitchen behind the bakery. I was the only witness. Throughout the book, we get introduced to a series of colourful characters; some were selfish, some were cruel, some had an evil hidden side, some had a softness that made your heart ache, and some, especially the ones in the last story, had an ethereal beauty to them, one that had you both startled and, surprisingly satisfied, when you reach the end.The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again. Everything looked delicious. But I knew before I entered the shop what I would buy: two strawberry shortcakes. That was all. The Man Who Sold Braces" (Gibusu o uru hito, ギブスを売る人, 1998); translated by Motoyuki Shibata, Manoa, 13.1, 2001. Ogawa is original, elegant, very disturbing.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies This is not without flaws, however, as the second half of the book is weaker than the first, and it becomes hard to tell the gender or age of the various voices because, at least in this translations, the voices are not as distinctly different. This can be a problem for a collection of stories so dependent on first person narratives. The fairy tale quality and even the meta-fictive overlapping, however, thematically justifies some of this de