With each of these stories I try to pick the thread that links them to the previous night (if there is one). As mentioned previously, I have the idea that the next night narrator might choose their story based on something that resonates in the previous evening’s tale. For this one, we have the unusual/unexpected encounter (though that is very much a recurring theme in Ogawa’s stories as a whole), but more obviously we have the 亡くなったおばあさん (albeit that links to the evening before rather than to the javelin throwing boy).
As we’ve found before, the second half of this story was hard to anticipate from the start. I confess to finding the second dead grandmother story hilarious. It was amazing to hear the lengths that the lodging grand daughter went to to maintain the grandmother’s delusion. But throughout this tale, and even more in the last part of the night’s story, this episode was suffused with a quiet melancholy. (The closing revelation becomes even more plangent given what we know happened to the narrator).
I’ll be honest, the violin grandma went on too long for my taste. I nearly had to break my reading session into 2 because I lost interest after the first few pages of her.
On the other hand, the stories ending was excellent.
The way she reflects on her life, how she reminded so many people of their grandmothers, but in the end she will never be a grandmother herself.
Yeah as others have pointed out, I thought the reveal was well done - I think this one went on for a bit too long for my tastes but I still enjoyed it a good bit. The stories have been very hit or miss for me so far. The better ones have me ready to pick up a full length novel from Ogawa, while the others have me shying away more. To any of you that have read more of her works, could you speak to them relative to this so far? Very curious to see how they fair
Her full length novels are absolutely worth reading. There was an IBC club for 博士の愛した数式 a few years ago. It is brilliant, though has a fair bit of specialised maths and baseball vocabulary (I found the latter harder than the former).
We have read two others over on Natively. ミーナの行進 is brilliant. Very readable, sweet, and humorous. Probably easier than 人質の朗読会. Her novel 密やかな結晶 is the other well known one. Like some of her short stories it is strange, deep, and dark. Highly recommended.
I also found this story a bit more of a miss, personally. I also enjoyed the very ending sentences, but up until that point I was kind of like, “ok…?”. It felt like several stories were being shoved into one in a way. Also the bit about the grandma dying in the empty zoo and ‘it’s a good thing the monkeys had been moved out!’ got a dark chuckle from me.
This was an interesting mix of grandmother stories! I also really liked how the granddaughter tried to accommodate for her senile grandmother‘s delusions… or maybe memories?
To me the throwing together with the reflecting about a deceased person was the strongest connection. I think reading the stories in quick succession made this stay on my mind much more, compared to reading at the club‘s pace.
Other than that, I really like the reflection about deceased people. Japanese usually have a very deeply rooted connection with their ancestors, starting from obon once a year and being reflected daily in the house altars where the ancestors receive food and drink every day. So it’s no surprise that the stories in this book also revolve around these topics regularly.
