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Discussion questions
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
I just read this in one go, just couldn’t stop. I just love how it’s written and how weird (for the lack of a better word) it is.
I find it harder than the last book we’ve read. The grammar isn’t too bad unless it’s a bit of a convoluted sentence, but I keep looking up words all the time. I wish my brain was a bit more sticky.
Especially words like ぎゅっと, じっくり etc. are usually a bit of a pain in the ass. But there have been a few I had troubles with that I get right most of the time now, so… time’s gonna fix it I guess
By the way I’m a bit unsure whether most of the times 間 appears it’s been read as あいだ or ま. They both have time and space/gap as meaning, but my guess is that it is usually あいだ? There have been a few examples this week, e.g. 父の入浴の間 or 私と先生の肌の間
Also what the hell is the bolded part of this sentence: 私は睫毛の隙間も、唇の奥も、全て綺麗に拭きとってやった Two of those all purpose words put together. I get what it means, but can somebody explain what this is exactly?
I haven’t done this week’s reading yet but I think I can help with your questions.
As for あいだ vs ま I pretty much always default to あいだ unless I know it’s ま from a set phrase (e.g. 瞬く間). This hinative post seems to support that. I also found this kanshudo article that says “ま” can be used in a more figurative sense.
As for 拭きとってやる, 拭き取る means “to wipe off; to wipe up”, and てやる is a casual speech version of てあげる.
2/3 of the way through. Just checking, but is the main character deliberately not dissuading her friend from dieting because she’s keen to see what it looks like for an emaciated person (a mummy) to move about and whether she will grow thick black hair…? Rather callous, no? The moth scene also seemed needlessly sadistic.
I find the contempt she feels for her mom and her behavior that pervades all of the narration very striking and disturbing. Striking is maybe not the word I want.
Still plugging along, but not sure if I’ll be able to catch up. So. Many. Words. To look up. There were also a couple of sentences that took forever for me to parse.
I agree with this one - The mother might have some issues (like not sure what is up with the laundry), but
I was also struck by the “not like other girls” feeling when she is describing how her friends are all into dieting and having boyfriends. Not that I’m one to judge - I definitely had a strong case of not-like-other-girls-itis as a teenager, ha.
I don’t think, however, that we are fully supposed to fully approve of the narrator’s behaviour. I think that is partly the point of the mummy statement - we’re supposed to see that while, yes, she is not caught up by dieting culture, she also seems does nothing from stopping her friends from going down that route. In that way she is perhaps not that different from her mother after all. Willing to do things out of a sense of duty (like bandage up the tutor), but also somewhat selfish in the end.
Fingers crossed I can finish this story before the end of the week.
I like that you drew parallels between the mother’s behavior and hers. I think both characters have pent up emotions that they lack a proper outlet for. Her mother vents them out by obsessing over neatness: organizing the father’s underwear drawer the second he messes it up, throwing away “unneeded” food to preserve a sense of symmetry and aesthetic when she cooks, and, as we saw in this section, washing her hands repeatedly.
Her daughter, in contrast, seems to get things out of her system through mess. There’s of course the very Murata scene of that poor, defenseless moth, but she also seems to enjoy more abstract mess. There’s the comments about her friend who clearly has an eating disorder, as well as all of the judgments she passes over her parents, with special attention paid to her mother. Perhaps those thoughts make her feel superior, so that she doesn’t have to focus her attention on herself. The moment when she looks at herself in the mirror after messing up the clothes in the bathroom is striking, since it allows her to view herself clearly. The vocabulary used to describe her isn’t particularly flattering.
I have to say, I really enjoy how Murata portrays teenage girls in this. It really strikes at something that I think トリプル kind of lacked. I’m really looking forward to the conclusion of this one.
I just love how it’s written and how weird (for the lack of a better word) it is.