Kangaroo Notebook : A Novel

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Summary: Kangaroo Notebook
Review: Kangaroo Notebook is a darkly surreal novel, at turns bizarre and ridiculous then just as easily becomes normal and calm. While lacking a sense of continuity through a few odd narrative choices, Kangaroo Notebook remains an interesting experiment into imagination.

One day, our nameless narrator wakes to find that he has radish sprouts growing from his knees. Not particularly alarmed at this, he soon discover to his pleasure that they are edible and quite tasty. A doctor's appointment lands him in the hospital where he is knocked out with drugs. From there, using his trusty Atlas bed as a transportation device, we are led through bizarre scene after bizarre scene, from hairy American martial arts experts to the souls of aborted children who perform plays on the banks of the river Sai for charity.

The narrator is on one hand an interesting fellow - he IS growing radish sprouts from his knees, after all - and his adventures are quite entertaining, but there is a lack within him. He show no great curiosity as to why everything is happening to him, nor does he really seem interested in getting everything back to normal. He is content to go with the flow, and throughout the novel, he acts more as a spectator than an actual character. Almost, but not quite, he is an omniscient narrator, in the sense that his voice does nothing more than record what is happening. Not quite though, because he does participate in a few interesting conversations along the way. Unfortunately, his lack of personality is a definite crutch.

The nameless narrator ricochets from bizarre sequence to stunningly normal locale, then back to bizarre with a speed that is at time dizzying. Often, scene changes are precipitated by the narrator being knocked unconscious, a fairly weak literary device that is used far too often here. The end sequence is the most bizarre of them all, juxtaposing the lengthy normal hospital scene that proceeds it.

The novel ended, to my mind, abruptly and without closure. There is a cryptic message at the end - which, I'll admit, I was expecting something of the sort - but I couldn't really decipher it at first. But, after thinking about the novel for a few hours after I had finished, I realised that the ending was, in fact, perfect.

To my mind, appreciation of this book comes down to a personal choice. If you enjoy bizarre series of events that don't seem to be going anywhere but suddenly illuminate at the end, then by all means read it. If however, you don't like barely connected scenes with a personality-less narrator, steer clear.

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Summary: Increadible! A must read for fans of Japanese literature.
Review: Kangaroo Notebook is a difficult novel to understand, but you'll love it anyway. The plot is bizzare, to say the least. A man discovers that he has radish sprouts growing from his shins. His condition baffles the doctor at a local dermatology clinic, who sends him away in a self propelled hospital bed, telling him to try hot spring treatment. While en-route to the hot springs, he is cast down a dark tunnel and ends up on the shores of hell. From there, the plot gets really weird (but very addicting) as the narrator meets a child-demons, a vampire-esque nurse intent on drawing enough blood to win the "Dracula's Daughter" award, and an American photographer interested in achieving population contrl through traffic accidents.

The novel's symbolism becomes less obscure when one considers the great shame and self loathing "deformed" or "imperfect" members of Japanese society feel. Early in the novel, the narrator comments that marsupials are essentially inferior versions of mammals. The narrator, a terminally ill or deformed individual, feels like a marsupial, followed, wherever he goes, by his deformity (just as the narrator is followed by his hospital bed). At the novel's conclusion, the narrator sees himself in a box, perhaps a coffin, readers are presented with an exerpt from a newspaper regarding the discovery of a man found dead in a train station with self-inflicted slashes to his shins. The police, the article mentions, do not believe the slashes to the man's shins were the cause of death. The reader is left with the vague impression that the narrator, seeing his impending death, committed suicide (or perhaps was assisted).

Kangaroo Notebook is often compared to Burroughs' Naked Lunch or a cross between Kafka and Alice in Wonderland. I found the novel to be far more. Kangaroo Notebook is more than a strange story; it's an honest and deeply personal look into the mind of an individual whose disease is turning him (quite literally) into a vegatable. Read the novel, and see why Abe was considered Japan's leading author of modern fiction before his death.

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Summary: Inventive, intriquing, ambiguous reading
Review: Kangaroo Notebook is the last book written by Kobo Abe; in many ways, it is a reflection on the approach of death, on being an outsider, and, perhaps, on outsider as a kind of death. "Perhaps" because this book is written in a very ambiguous style that allows, even encourages, readers to find different interrelationships between the parts.

The narrator begins the story at his suggestion in his workplace being selected as the best - his suggestion, originally a joke, was a product, a kangaroo notebook. This leads to the proposition that marsupials are outcasts - the mammal version of each species being more viable than the marsupial counterpart. Within this context, the narrator notes that his shins are sprouting radishes.

Seeking treatment at a dermatologist is the beginning of a series of occurrences - real, dream, illusion, post-anesthetia confusion? This are absolutely delightful, humorous events - a bed traveling in the city through the narrator's mental efforts, of a hell-based sulfur springs treatment, of child demons, of dead mothers in cabbage fields, of an American graduate student studying fatal accidents, of euthansia ...

This astounding romp is a serious consideration of death, our beliefs regarding death (the limbo children) and of suicide/murder/euthansia/accident.