Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

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Summary: Beautiful collection of short stories!
Review: House of the Sleeping Beauties is one of my favorite anthologies, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on another book from this brilliant author. The stories in Palm of the Hand are full of poetic and philosophical undertones and magical realism. My favorite one is "Bamboo-Leaf Boats," a poignant tale about a woman who grieves the loss of her fiance. The pain the protagonist goes through moved me. The other stories are beautiful as well. I suggest you read this wonderful book...

Rating:
Summary: Warped and disturbing, a must read!
Review: I adored this book. It was very disturbing, yet really made you think. Kawabata is an incredible writer. This book is unlike his others, yet it was very good! To this day, some of the stories still haunt my mind. I strongly suggest you get this!

Rating:
Summary: A must for short story lovers!
Review: I found a copy of this book in a used book store. After flipping through it and reading only the first story in the book, I was hooked! Kawabata is a literary master. He captures moments of life and dreams in each of his stories, spinning them out to the reader in delicate simplicity. I most enjoyed reading Lavatory Buddha. I dare readers to step outside their usual genres and pick up a copy of this book!

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Summary: No Generic Syrup
Review: If you like Sudden Fiction as a genre but not the usual silliness which accompanies it, this is the perfect union of very short fiction, craftsmanship and seriousness. Not always serious in tone but in effort. For the most part they are tender stories of rememberance, loss and the betterments of life. They are brief and dream-worthy, almost as if they were prose acting as poetry:

"Startled by a sharp pain, as if her hair were being pulled out, she woke up three or four times. But when she realized that a skein of her black hair was wound around the neck of her lover, she smiled to herself. In the morning, she would say, "My hair is this long now. When we sleep together, it truly grows longer."

Quietly she closed her eyes.

"I don't want to sleep. Why do we have to sleep? Even though we are lovers, to have to go to sleep, of all things!" On nights when it was all right for her to stay with him, she would say this, as if it were a mystery to her." from Sleeping Habit

Even when the stories are harsh they aren't beleagured with excess, but consequential life and its misgivings with some ironic humor interjected amongst the living ghosts. The same can be said for the norm: lush stories that are kindly felt but never over-sentimentalizations and mush. A great bed-side companion to make you dream better and wake a little more human.

Rating:
Summary: sad and touching, very modern and ultimately cinematographic
Review: Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata is a collection of over 100 stories written over 40 years time period starting in early 1920s. This collection includes the 6 page compressed version of novel a "Snow Country"; "Thank you", a masterpiece of minimalist expression (made into a movie); other stories where themes familiar to Kawabata readers are told. Kawabata pen has a sharpness of the journalist; immediacy of the witness and wisdom of a contemplator. Frankly, most of those stories are so sad, that I could not read more then a few a setting. However, I always returned for more. I do not think your Kawabata collection will be complete without it.

Rating:
Summary: Haiku as a short story
Review: This book is filled with over 100 short stories, most between 1 and 3 pages long. Each story is somewhat plotless, but is more of a brief character study. A quick sketch, at the most, that captures the essence of the character rather than the details. Each character and situation is a glimpse into the past, of Japan at that time. The stories have the quiet patience of a haiku, and the miniature perfection of a well-tended bonsai tree.

Like a haiku, the limitation of form requires that each sentence be important. There are no throw-away lines in any of the "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories." The sparse loveliness of the English language as used is interesting because the book is translated from Japanese. The book was translated by two translators, and each story is signed so you know who translated what. This allows for subtle variance in the stories.

Kawabata is Japan's first Nobel prize winner. This is the first book by Kawabata that I have read, and I will be sure to seek other's out. A final recommendation, because of the length of the stories, I have found this to be one of the best bedside books I own. I can read a quick story before going to sleep.

Rating:
Summary: Short, short stories that pack quite a punch
Review: This was the sixth Kawabata book that I have read. As other reviewers have said before me, this book contains over 100 short stories. When one at first thinks of 100 short stories in one book one yends to think that the book must be massive. This book is 238 pages long. At first I was taken aback by the shortness of the stories. I mean after reading 20 pages I had finished something like 8 stories, but as i continued to read the stories started to have a larger impact on me especially the story "Bamboo-Leaf Boats" This little story was about a young girl whose fiance had not returned from WW II. She had lived her life thinking that she would never married because she was crippled by polio, but a marriage had been arranged with this young man. But he didn't return from the war, so what she saw as a silver lining in a dark cloud turned into more cloud. "The Grasshopper and the Bell Criket" was one of the sweetest stories in the book. It like many other stories in this book is hard to describe, but I found myself with a big smile on my face after i read it. It is just a sweet story about young love.

Read this book I believe you will enjoy it if you are interested in Japanese literature, but for those unuse to Kawabata, I believe you should read Thousand Cranes or Snow Country first.

Rating:
Summary: The ideal coffee table book
Review: When I read my first of Kawabata's palm of the hand stories I can't admit that I was hooked, but I was definately intrigued. On the edition I own there is an entire story on the back cover, and after reading it I could pull NO MEANING from it what so ever. I thought, like one of the other reviewers put it, that the story was pointless. I have come to learn a harsh lession however. If there is one thing that Kawabata's works are not it is pointless. Every part of every word is overflowing with meaning. The truly pitiful part about his work is that to someone ignorant of Japan and Japanese culture it is sometimes hard to grasp what the meaning is. The simple enjoyment I received from reading the stories helped to inspire me to learn more about the country. I am by no means saying that you can't realish every word of this collection without knowing Japan, but I am saying to attempt to fully UNDERSTAND some of them it is truely a desireable asset.

Rating:
Summary: The ideal coffee table book
Review: When I read my first of Kawabata's palm of the hand stories I can't admit that I was hooked, but I was definately intrigued. On the edition I own there is an entire story on the back cover, and after reading it I could pull NO MEANING from it what so ever. I thought, like one of the other reviewers put it, that the story was pointless. I have come to learn a harsh lession however. If there is one thing that Kawabata's works are not it is pointless. Every part of every word is overflowing with meaning. The truly pitiful part about his work is that to someone ignorant of Japan and Japanese culture it is sometimes hard to grasp what the meaning is. The simple enjoyment I received from reading the stories helped to inspire me to learn more about the country. I am by no means saying that you can't realish every word of this collection without knowing Japan, but I am saying to attempt to fully UNDERSTAND some of them it is truely a desireable asset.