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Summary: Love, Death, and other warm feelings connected with food.
Review: Banana, while opening to us, her heart, mind, and...stomach, has shown us another emotion. Strength. Strength to go on everday, while the ones closest to us pass away. Strength, in how we deal with it. Whether it be Jogging, cooking, drinking, or even dressing in their clothes, this book is our guide in teaching us to deal with pain. Banana touches us, with a stirring literay style, and characters, that are so much more. They are friends. This is heart felt story telling, of the rare kind
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Summary: Transsexual perspective
Review: My, what a popular book to review! The local bookstore chain threw it on their "nobody is buying this, lets get rid of it" shelf, so it must be good. (grin)
I am a transsexual, and enjoy that Banana treats TS with respect. She presents sex changing as a way of mourning the loss of a significant female. In a cosmic sense, this may be true, but at a personal level, true causes are far more complex.
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Summary: This is a great book!
Review: Some have derided this book for its lightness, but I believe it to be far deeper than most suppose
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Summary: Evocative tales of loss
Review: Ms. Yoshimoto has stunned me by her ability to use descriptions of ordinary objects to convey a feeling. Kitchen begins, appropriately, thus... "The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!)." 20-ish Mikage has recently lost her only living relative, her grandmother, and is sleeping next to the refrigerator because the hum keeps her company. Soon she is taken in by strangers, a young man and his transsexual "mother", who become
the family she so craves. Kitchen is paired with a second novella, Moonlight Shadow, in which another woman grives for the death of her young lover. Delicate and affecting, Ms. Yoshimoto's prose represents the best in modern fiction.
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Summary: Better than Amrita
Review: Read the book in about half an hour. It's a bitter sweet tale of loss and friendship. I enjoyed this book much more than Amrita. Banana Yoshmoto is best at creating short scenes that flit from thought to thought which Kitchen does so well.
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Summary: Poetic poise
Review: A few years ago in a time that one could still watch "Inside the Actor's Studio" with a straight face until the moment that Will Ferrell parodied its pompous host James Lipton to the kingdom come, Robert De Niro was a guest. In answer to a question of the perennially self-possessed audience on what advice he could give them in their own work, he answered that mankind has explored any issue from so many angles that the best advice to those trying to start a career in the arts is "to make it personal". In this book Yoshimoto shows that the personal touch can bring new and meaningful life to even the most explored themes.
Kitchen consists of the short novel by the same name and the short story Moonlight Shadow, which was the writer's debut. Both deal with the themes of love, loss and recovery. Apart from the simple, precise and highly expressive prose, Kitchen derives strength from the juxtaposition of very common themes with less conventional elements like the hermaphroditic transsexual Eriko and her murder by a client. This juxtaposition generates an element of tension that helps to energize the tale. This combined with the writer's expertise in evoking atmospheres and feelings result in a very personal and highly engaging story.
Like Kitchen, Moon Shadow explores the process of a mutual recovery after loss of loved ones. While there is some overlap, this story more than holds its own. While in most hands the metaphor of crossing the bridge and the time ripple might degenerate in clichés both work very well in the story's context and, man, can Yoshimoto make you feel cold.
In conclusion a very engaging book, that makes it easy to understand why Banana Yoshimoto is so popular in her native Japan.
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Summary: Charming, Thought-Provoking Stories
Review: These two short stories by Banana Yoshimoto deal with love and loss in the simplest and yet most complex of ways. Sprinkled with humor, Yoshimoto has created unforgettable three-dimensional characters, full of inhibitions and quirks -- just like the rest of us.
The novellas are a quick read, and my favorite was the first one, "Kitchen." After I had finished this story, I wanted to read more. What happened next for Mikage?
One thing to note before you start reading is that these stories were first written in Japanese. The translator has done a fine job with them, but you will notice some metaphors that could not be translated; they just don't work. The language does not flow in the same manner of a typical English writer, but if you know this going in, you might find as I did that the writing is that much more beautiful.
If you want a book full of suspense and horror, this is NOT the book for you. However, if you are looking to read something that will make you laugh -- and maybe make you cry -- and certainly feel like life is precious -- pick up Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
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Summary: I can't be the only one who hated this book!
Review: Maybe it is just the translation-but reading Kitchen is like reading the diary of a manic depressive. "I am SOOO happy"-(5 minutes later) "I want to kill myself" (5 minutes later)- "I am happier than I have ever been!"...etc. ALL of her characters do this- ALL OF THEM! Apparently LITHIUM is not available in Japan. Banana Yoshimoto's Tokyo seems to be peopled entirely by the insane. These characters have no grasp of each other's feelings-or even of their own. We're not talking a kind of Forster-ish "only connect" thing, either. These people are just plain nuts. One of the main characters has had a sex change-apparently for no reason at all. On a whim? Really? You are sad because your beloved wife died-so NATURALLY you have a sex-change operation. Of course! This same character writes a very GIGGLY will-mentioning how very FEMININE s/he is. So FEMININE she can barely bring herself to write in the masculine style. A couple of weeks later this character beats a man's brains out with a barbell-how VERY feminine! I'm sure s/he brained this man in a very GIRLY way. All of the characters think thoughts and make pronouncements about themselves and then moments later disprove them. It's all very "your sister/your mother/your sister/your mother". The grieving man who just ups and decides to wear women's clothing seems to be a theme in these two stories (the story "Moonlight Shadow" is also included in the book). "Moonlight Shadow" had a certain sweetness, but by and large these stories are off-putting. The characters are just too bizarre to relate to in any way. Ms. Yoshimoto gives us a picture of a Japanese people so repressed that their emotions spill out in strange and inappropriate ways. They all seem to live their whole lives in that over-amped, high-strung adolescent blur of hormone-induced high (but unformed) emotion. They think that they feel ALOT of SOMETHING-they just don't seem to know what it is. Nor do we after reading this book.
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Summary: Delicious food for thought: two courses
Review: Kitchen contains two stories, both of which concern a different young woman living her life in the aftermath of a terrible loss. In the title story, Mikage has just been left alone in the world after the passing of her grandmother, who was her last living relative. She is generously taken in by an acquaintance, a boy named Yuichi who knew her grandmother, and his transsexual mother Eriko. Eriko lets her stay for free as long as she promises to cook for them from time to time, and the three of them build a new family of sorts. Eventually, though, Mikage finds herself confronted with another tragedy.The second story is called "Moonlight Shadow." Satsuki has lost a boyfriend in a car crash which also claimed the life of his younger brother's girlfriend. One day she meets a mysterious woman with a secret she wants to share. This story has a slight element of fantasy to it, a touching piece of magical realism. The author has a deceptively simple style of writing which enables her to deal with weighty issues without them feeling oppressive. These works are deeply affecting, but they are poetic rather than doom-laden. I preferred the second story, which is tighter and has a definite resolution, whereas the first is more of a slice of life and though longer, felt a little incomplete. As always, I enjoyed the look at Japanese daily life.
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Summary: Two stories
Review: This book by Banana Yoshimoto is a refreshing story (actually two novellas). The book is comprised of two stories, Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow. Kitchen is about a young woman who encounters a lot of tragedy in her life and finds a companion in the least likely of places. The story takes place in Tokyo, Japan and you see a part of Tokyo's' culture you weren't aware was there. You take a trip with Mikage (the main character) as she goes through loss of family, gain of family and twisted emotions over love and hate. The second story in the book is called Moonlight Shadow and it is also about loss of a loved one. You see how Satsuki and Hiiragi get through their hard times in different ways and how friendship can help you through the most difficult times. The most important part of the story is how hoping can pull at a person. You see hope act throughout this whole story. You see it in every crevice and street corner Satsuki turns. You see it through Urara (the strange woman) and you see it through the ending of the story. Hope is the theme of this last story, make no mistake of it. These two stories will excite you and puzzle you and twist your emotions. You will feel their tragedy and pain. I highly recommend this book to anyone. Two thumbs up for kitchen!!
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