Revenge

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a b "Writer Ogawa Yōko's Stories of Memory and Loss". nippon.com. 2020-03-27 . Retrieved 2022-02-09. Don’t they look delicious?” she said, gazing at the mountain of fruit. “More than you could ever eat!” Then she bit into the one in her hand. I could hear her teeth sink into the flesh. 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. As the story continues, the narrator feels ever more trapped by her proximity to Mrs. J, perplexed by her landlady’s increasingly odd behavior, and unsettled by the carrot hands that proliferate in Mrs. J’s garden. The Housekeeper and the Professor (Hakase no ai shita sūshiki, 博士の愛した数式, 2003); translated by Stephen Snyder, New York: Picador, 2008. ISBN 0-312-42780-8

Revenge by Yōko Ogawa | Goodreads

The Memory Police (Hisoyaka na kesshō, 密やかな結晶, 1994), translated by Stephen Snyder, Pantheon Books, 2019.Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ...

The Housekeeper and the Professor - Penguin Books UK

Mold can be quite beautiful," I told my husband. The spots multiplied, covering the shortcake in delicate blotches of color. As I pushed through the revolving door of the bakery and walked inside, the noise of the square was instantly muffled, and replaced by the sweet scent of vanilla. The shop was empty. Scott Shane's outstanding work Flee North tells the little-known tale of an unlikely partnership ...

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Some of her most well known works include The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Diving Pool and Hotel Iris. 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

Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge - Chautauqua Journal Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge - Chautauqua Journal

He was an intelligent child. He could read his favorite picture book from beginning to end aloud without making a single mistake. He would use a different voice for each character—the piglet, the prince, the robot, the old man. He was left-handed. He had a broad forehead and a mole on one earlobe. When I was busy making dinner, he would often ask questions I did not know how to answer. Who invented Chinese characters? Why do people grow? What is air? Where do we go when we die?

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And the ending. Well that was superb and yes, despite reading this short story, I do still love eating carrots in whatever form they come. Arresting images abound: a mountain of kiwis in an old post office, hand-shaped carrots, a Bengal tiger, a protective pouch for a still-beating heart, not to mention various torture devices collected in a museum (all genuine -- meaning they're certain they were: "actually used to torture someone", rather than just for decoration ...). 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. A woman who lives in the same building where the woman from apartment 508 use to live, gets dumped by her boyfriend when she tells him about what did that woman from apartment 508 did to her boyfriend “Dr Y”. Now the woman roams around the plaza next day where the bakery and fountain is, after walking a little further she finds a house and it is named “the museum of torture.” She felt an urge to go inside and explore so she goes in and finds no one. The house looked like someone rich lived in it. Suddenly a man comes in, pretty old but well built and dressed. He then asks her if she’s here to contribute an object of torture or to take the tour. She asks for a tour so the man takes her inside. They explore various torture items from 18th century and before. The woman is a hair dresser and when she is shown a torture object related to hair, she decides that she’ll take it and torture her boyfriend with it. She imagines it and feels really good. At the end of the tour, she asks the guide if she can come again, the guide answers that she’s welcome anytime, he’ll be expecting her to come soon.

REVENGE | Kirkus Reviews

An eleven-year-old girl who was raped and buried in a forest. A nine-year-old boy abducted by a deviant and later found in a wine crate with both of his ankles severed. A ten-year-old on a tour of an ironworks who slipped from a catwalk and was instantly dissolved in the smelter. I would read these articles aloud, reciting them like poems. Ogawa's language, in Stephen Snyder's translation, is spare, quiet, content with being nimble rather than dwelling on beautiful phrases. It's a language that doesn't announce its own frugality and refuses to make a minimalist's daring and obvious cuts. The seeming ease is the outcome of hard work, but it doesn't make the reader sweat. Ogawa moves swiftly; she has the power to move.” —Stefan Kiesby, Los Angeles Review of BooksOgawa's fiction reflects like a fun-house mirror, skewing conventional responses….[Like] Haruki Murakami, Ogawa writes stories that float free of any specific culture, anchoring themselves instead in the landscape of the mind.” — The Washington Post Book World At this late stage in Revenge, Ogawa has moved horror directly into a home. The characters do not have to break into an abandoned post office or dig in a garden to find the macabre. It is on display in plain sight, used just as a table or a chair or a record player. Pregnancy Diary" (Ninshin karendā, 妊娠カレンダー, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, The New Yorker, 12/2005. Read here I could tell he was angry. But I did not understand why he would speak so harshly about our son's birthday cake. So I threw it in his face. Mold and crumbs covered his hair and his cheeks, and a terrible smell filled the room. It was like breathing in death.