NP

Rating:
Summary: An engaging, but ultimately hollow attempt.
Review: A fast, breezy, strange little tome that covers a number of well-worn theme and subject matter (incest, lesbianism, the supernatural, love, death, writing, the art of literary translation, etc.) yet ultimately rings hollow as it fails to effectively join the pieces together. "N.P." interestingly enough reads like a Junior Varsity version of a Haruki Murakami novel with it's similarities in existentialist theme, vapid characters, morose setting and minimalist brush-stroked prose. But where Murakami often succeeds masterfully in creating vivid and riveting (albeit strange) storylines, "N.P." comes across as incomplete and fragmented with a disjointed narrative and stilted dialogue that is often hard to follow. Nevertheless an engaging poolside read if you have (at maximum) two hours...

Rating:
Summary: Dark, scary: beautiful
Review: Banana Yoshimoto's literary return. Yoshimoto's second book, and first novel, "NP" is a dark and beautiful success.

"NP" is for us a novel written in Japanese, translated into English about a novel written in English that is in the process of being translated into Japanese. Confussed? That tends to happen a little with this book.

Well written in Yoshimoto's wonderful and flowing style, this is a story of sucide, love, sex, death and depression. Dark, oft times funny and always powerful, Yoshimoto has come up with another hit.

This is a wonderful story that takes Yoshimoto's wonderful prose to places that it has never traveled to before. The most impressive things about Yoshimoto are her style with its unimpossing voice and her way to get inside her characters and to bring such devistated and yet hopeful people to life in so few pages.

Yoshimoto should be on the reading list for all young Americans. She is gifted and brings the life of twenty-somethings in Japan, to us clearly and quickly, and in doing so, shows us a people that really are just like us, deep down where it counts.

Rating:
Summary: review of N.P>
Review: Being a fan of Banana Yoshimoto and intending to read ALL her books, I finally came to N.P. after a long break from `Kitchen' and `Asleep'.

In N.P., a collection of short stories by Sarao Takase mysteriously leads to the suicides of translators. While this suspense is held well for more than a third of the book, its intrigue dissolves as the novel takes a turn to focus on the characters of Kazami Kano, Otohiko, Saki and Sui. This is one letdown of the novel, though there is a somewhat weak attempt to resolve this `mystery' which is really non-existent.

The characters are youthful drifters, lost and aimless in trying to seek and understand love and life for some reason or another. Sui, the most forlorn and in some ways most abandoned of them all, lives a life of self destruction in her love for her stepbrother Otohiko and her incestuous affair with her father Takase. There are also hints of her love for the female narrator Kazami, and innumerable affairs with other men.

The novel deals with a variety of issues, ranging from incest, lesbianism, divorced parents, and some hints of supernaturalism such as telepathy and curse etc.; which is somewhat ambitious especially for a condensed book (194 pages) like N.P. I would credit this book for its poetry and its wide range of themes or issues addressed; however, this book lacks a central plot or focus and thus causes readers to lose sustained interest.

While Banana Yoshimoto writes in her afterword that she tries to express `the notion that such people should be able to live as they please, without interference from others', I think she is also showing possibilities of surviving forlorn lives and self-destruction. In N.P., her characters are somewhat redeemed from suffrage ultimately. This is in some ways very Dostoevskian, except without the religious element. The good thing is Banana Yoshimoto does not provide a totally utopian or rosy ending. There is a tinge of poignancy and acceptance which I find both realistic and poetic.

All in all, this book is NOT recommended for readers who want to begin a Banana Yoshimoto book. (`Kitchen' and `Asleep' are recommended for that purpose.)

This book is recommended for all looking for a light reading that is mature and serious.

Rating:
Summary: Something oddly addictive about Yoshimoto...
Review: Having devoured Huraki Murakami, Yoshimoto seemed like the next progressive step.

And really, they do have some similarities. There is something beautifully refreshing about their aloof, sweet descriptive style and their covert intellectualism.

However, Yoshimoto's works seem to lack a certain something, a certain zest or life. While they are compulsively addictive, they tread so lightly as to be almost unmemorable.

'Y.P' is certainly less impressive than her tiny bestseller 'Kitchen'. In both works, there seems to be a lovely layer of foggy glass between the reader and the characters, yet in 'Y.P', this is tainted by a sense of distachment from the work.

I found myself liking the book, enjoying the descriptions and the complexity of the characters, but not really caring about the outcome.

'Kitchen' is undoubtedly the better read.

Rating:
Summary: deceptively simple, spare, yet descriptive prose
Review: I could read this novel a million times, it is so good! I have read every single book by Banana Yoshimoto, and I think NP is the best, or at least my favorite! most reviews don't even begin to give the book justice. Although the main themes are suicide, loss, and even the supernatural, Yoshimoto writes with such an uplifting tone, that you can't help but feel good, or at least it wil arouse some deep thought! Although the book's narrator is Kazami, the real star of the book is Sui. what an exquisite, complicated mess she is! And yet you can't help but love her! If everyone in Japan is like the characters in this book, i want to live there! Almost all of Yoshimoto's characters have an appreciation for the small things that make people happy, and I think that is a wonderful gift to have! I hate to sound so cliche, but this book has changed my life! It is simply magical!

Rating:
Summary: a definite style
Review: I first tried yoshimoto on a whim. At first glance, I felt I didn't understand what she wanted me to understand... but then I found I could not put the book down and was captured. I highly recommend this book --- but not to everyone, I think it's definately not for everyone. But those who appreciate it will love it!!!

Rating:
Summary: odd.
Review: I just finished reading this book for the second time. I went a little slower this time reading this book than the first time i read it so i was able to absorb more from it than i did the first time through. This book follows the life of a young woman named Kazami Kano and the interesting people she meets: the twins Otohiko and Saki and Otohiko's lover, Sui. What makes this story interesting is that all of the characters are brought together by a book titled N.P. authored by Otohiko and Saki's father Takase. The relationships of the characters is quite complex: Otohiko and Saki are Takase's children. That is a simple enough statement. Sui, however, makes everything much more complicated, because not only is she Otohiko's lover, but she had also been his father's, and to make things even more strange she is Otohiko and Saki's half sister. Kazami is brought into the mix because her boyfried, who was 17 years her senior, killed himself while translating N.P. from English into Japanese. Takase was a Japanese living in America when he wrote N.P., so although he was Japanese he wrote the book in English. The book delves deeply into the taboo of incest and has a superficial lesbian flavor because of Sui's and Kazami's relationship. It is a good little book. Check it out!

Rating:
Summary: Banana Rocks!!!
Review: I've only read two Japanese authors: Yoshimoto & this guy who the Japanese really revere but who's name I can't remember. His book I remember mostly because it was totally depressing, and I understand he killed himself while still fairly young. After reading *his* famous book, I wasn't surprised to find that out.

Yoshimoto's books are paradoxically quite the opposite - lots of death but when I finished reading them I felt completely excellent and refreshed and positive. I'd say her stories talk at leastt in part about finding ways out of really bad situations - finding hope or life or...

I have no idea if Yoshimoto will ever win the Nobel Prize. If it takes a real understanding of the soul to write something worthy of a Nobel, then IMHO she's made a good start.

Rating:
Summary: not purposeful
Review: NP, unlike Kitchen, is an awful mass of banal dialogue centered around a bewitched story by a fallen author. The four lives, really six, have nothing better to do than pity their own sorry selves. NP goes nowhere.

Rating:
Summary: Shockingly beautiful
Review: The second in the English translations of Banana Yoshimoto's novels into English is N.P. The story circles around a young woman named Kazami and a book of stories by darkly eccentric writer Sarao Takase. Takase committed suicide after finishing the book and since, translators attempting to finish a Japanese version have shared the same fate. One of these translators was Kazami's boyfriend during her high school years. Left behind, shocked by the dark power of this novel, Kazami becomes aquainted with Takase's children, who are around her age.

From this meeting, Kazami begins to learn about the power of N.P. Takase's children--fraternal twins--are still fixated on their father's story and its legacy of suicides. Through the two of them, she is also introduced to Sui, a slightly mysterious woman and the former lover of Sarao Takase. She's also involved with Otohiko, one of the twins. The twist? She's his half-sister.

Yoshimoto crafts very realistic characters through everyday events. Through daily events, the character of each person is developed. All is seen through Kazami's eyes and she is a perceptive, quirky narrator. She juxtaposes her own thought patterns onto the people and the experiences described and, true to Yoshimoto's style, the results are off the beaten path.

Perhaps the story's greatest strength is the quiet, gentle reflection upon its themes. We see these themes examined again and again through conversations many readers likely recognize from their own lives. Love, loss, moving on, obsession, and social taboos are examined with startling clarity. And Yoshimoto isn't afraid to be blunt: where some authors would rattle on, attempting to "show, not tell," Kazami often says and thinks what I found myself thinking at the time. It is such intuitive choices that makes N.P. fun.

The text's strength can at times be its weakness. Daily events can bleed together and some of the conversations are less than memorable. Still, after reflecting upon it, there is nothing so much wrong with N.P. as there is different. It is simply a different writing style and a different way of looking at these themes. Instead of jarring us with events that are so full of action that it is difficult to follow, N.P. is more subtle but no less powerful.

I believe that N.P. is at once the most dark and beautiful of the books translated into English. It is about love and loss. It is about suicide and longing. But most importantly, it is about living life without regard for what is acceptable.