I did warm to this story in the end.
I found the relationship with the landlord fascinating, and it was very interesting that even if her behaviour remained extreme, I certainly felt more sympathy towards her by the end.
(The landlady/tenant relationship also appears in a very striking story in Ogawa’s story collection 寡黙な死骸, that I was reminded of when reading this).
yes, those look very much as I was imagining them!
(I didn’t go very far in my search, but I wonder if there is a real-life equivalent of やまびこビスケット? I’ve sometimes been able to identify analogues of some of the elements of Ogawa’s story).
The thing that I found most moving in this story was the tiny description at the end about our narrator. We had a tiny description of her subsequent life - much as you might expect to find in a newspaper after a tragedy - age, career, why she was at that location. It was interesting to compare that with the richness and singularity of the anecdote from earlier in her life, and of course all the more poignant to reflect on what we know happens to her. I think this corresponds with my hypothesis last week about what Ogawa is doing with these stories.