NP

Rating:
Summary: sick of chick-lit? have a banana!
Review: This is the first I have read of Banana Yoshimoto, and I was blown away by her simple writing style that conveys such a multi-layered intriguing plot. Set in japan, the novel shows Kazami, a translator whose older lover has killed himself, taking on his last translation assignment. It is a collection of short stories by a now-dead writer. She met his two grown children at a party years ago, and reconnects with them the summer she takes on the project. She also meets their half-sister --- who turns out to be the girlfriend of her own brother and is obsessed with their father's last written work.

Filled with incest, friendship, death, and possible mental illness, NP examines one summer in Japan and all the complicated relationships between a quartet of people.