I was immediately drawn to this collection from the cover alone; the immaculate vibes of angst, punk, and smeared makeup say so much about the author, Izumi Suzuki, an infamous Japanese actress, and writer in the 1970s. These bizarre, fantastical sci-fi stories are the perfect representation of “art imitates life.” Well, Suzuki’s life, at least. Each story has a palpable heartbeat of counterculture, an almost elegantly-feral feminine rage against the ideals of a patriarchal society.

If you’ve read Izumi Suzuki’s other work, Terminal Boredom, I dare say you might find yourself a little disappointed. I wanted to love these a little more than I actually did. Yes, we have handsome aliens, witches, doctors removing the tops of heads, and the exploration of new planets, all of which are uniquely their own concepts, but some of the stories can be almost overwhelming in their fiction. Considering this collection was initially published in 1980s Japan, I can rationalize some of the more outdated cultural concepts and understand it’s from a different time, but they didn’t go unnoticed. However, I will say, these stories are a delightful glimpse into a mind with such a rich, uncommon imagination that I won’t be forgetting them any time soon.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Verso Books for an advanced copy of this collections of short stories from a Japanese author who was at the forefront of science fiction writing, many years ago.

Science fiction for a genre that is supposed to be of ideas can be pretty staid. There is lot of talk about dangerous visions, and stars being filled with wars, but until recently a lot of science fiction was men facing an unknown something or another, and fighting, dying, making friends, or transforming. There was a sense of wonder, but not a sense that these were real people, facing odd threats, strange aliens, or weird things. Women were coming into there own, but a lot of women were still outliers in science fiction, making strides, gaining acceptance but not really breaking through. I can't imagine what it was like in Japan for a female writer of speculative fiction. Especially one who was an actress of films that were considered risque or pink films as they were called. Izumi Suzuki was an actress, and writer of skill and imagination, and it is nice to see that Suzuki is finally getting a chance to shine again. The collection, Hit Parade of Tears features a variety of shorter works some contemplative, some shocking, but all very different, and in a few ahead of certain sub-genres that were just coming to fruition.

The book is comprised of eleven stories, ranging from science fiction, to fantasy to wish fulfillment, and a little bit of brutality. One story is a love story between an alien and a young woman he meets by a train station. Another is about a woman who is given a gift that helps her deal with her drunken womanizing husband, a gift of magic she can't control well. The story Hey, It's a Love Psychedelic? is considered by many to be a precursor to cyberpunk in the ideas of a Net and information flow. That could be a reach, but it is a good story, with a lot of nice scenes. My favorite is the story that starts off the collection My Guy, because of the uncertainty of the character and what she thinks might have happened to her true love, and if he was real or a charlatan of some sort. The last couple of paragraphs really make a reader go ahh, hmmm. Also Full of Malice is a story that seems to come from our newspapers about making happy people through surgery, something that Florida will probably mandate soon.

The stories are from a different era of thinking and writing, and also from Japan, so there is a lot of views that might seem odd to modern eyes. The treatment of women, a few slurs, but nothing to surprising. I enjoyed the collection quite a bit, this being the first that I had read by the author, who passed away in 1986. A few stories were not for me, and in any collection there are always a few, but all in all I was impressed by the stories, their execution and the ideas that Suzuki had. The women were very well written, and seemed real, sometimes smart, sometimes dumb, but that is how people react under pressure, not the way we want them, and not the way they want to themselves. The translations by four different translators was good, I didn't notice a change in style, and as the stories are so different I doubt one would. A very good collection.

Recommended for those that like their science fiction a little different and want to try new authors from new locales. A collection worth investigating.

Thank you to Netgalley and Verso Books for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

I judged this book by it’s cover and it really surprised me. I assumed I was in for a lot of teenage angst, drugs, parties, and instagram poetry. Instead, I got aliens, insanity, and murder. I would have been fine with either, but it was an unexpected pleasant surprise.

What’s more surprising is that the author passed away in 1986 but her stories feel fresh and relevant today. Her story reads very tragic, but this short story collection is not as heavy as I thought it would be.

Translated for the first time from Japanese, these stories reinvent psychological science fiction.

In the collection, I notice flickers of homophobia and fatphobia that would have been commonplace in 1980s Japan, and probably in the spirit of keeping Suzuki’s work true to form, those flickers were left in the finished work. In a modern atmosphere, that no longer has a place in literature.

My Guy (5)
A woman is followed home by a mysterious man claiming to have flown to Japan on a UFO, and instead of finishing his mission and returning to his home planet, he wishes to stay on Earth with her. Everything you really want in a short story.

Trial Witch (3.5)
A housewife is selected to become a witch for a short trial period. She discovers her husband having an affair and transfigures him into a number of wild animals of all shapes and sizes. Funny and entertaining.

Full of Malice (3)
A woman is given a medical procedure in which they remove the top half of her brain and adorn her with a wig to remove the malice from her. They create a perfect society of nuclear families, full of happy people with arranged marriages.

Hey, It’s A Love Psychedelic! (2)
A judgemental young woman listens to old tapes with a friend. After a while she begins hallucinating and believes that time is moving differently for her. The Timekeepers move her through the past and present to try giving her a better future.

After Everything (2)
A very short story about what is life after death. Snakes writhing on the beach, reflections of all the ugly things you witnessed in life.

The Covenant (5)
Three school girls unsatisfied with their lives and families prepare to sacrifice a middle-aged man to prove that they are not human.

Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise (2)
A rag tag crew of an intergalactic spacecraft explore a new planet to trap wildlife for research, and come upon a human infant of mysterious origin.

The Walker (3)
A shocking short tale about decapitation and not paying for your meals.

Memory of Water (4)
A woman struggles to leave the house due to a mystery illness but she leads a double life that she isn’t even aware of.

I’ll Never Forget (2)
An alien poses as a human model and I truly have no idea what happened. It lost me.

Hit Parade of Tears (2)
About 150 year old man. The last story lost me, and I feel that this collection is maybe two stories too long.

My overall thoughts on the collection, I like it and many of the stories intrigued me, but I found them either very strong or very weak. The last two stories really lost me. Overall, it would be a three star read.

A startlingly refreshing collection of short stories. The title of the collection is apt, as each sentence feels like a pinch to the gut that shocks the reader out of lit-fic complacency.

I thought this collection was really fun. The stories have interesting turns to them that I found very intriguing. I will say it wasn't what I expected, but not in a bad way. These do feel like stories you may need to reread to really find all of the nuances though.

I've heard wonderful things about Terminal Boredom and was very excited for this new collection, especially seeing that its translators were David Boyd and Sam Bett, whose work with Mieko Kawakami I've loved. Unfortunately, I ended up feeling a bit disappointed by this. The first story really captured my attention, and I enjoyed how it left you wondering what actually happened -- whether its events were the work of a scammer or a real alien from a UFO, and which, ultimately, is more absurd? These stories all capture the eerie uncanniness of a liminal space which I thought was interesting. However, by about halfway, I was struggling to maintain interest. The vastly different lengths of stories threw me off, from the long, almost novella-length Hey, It's a Love Psychedelic! followed immediately by the four-page After Everything. I think this is a collection that's really strong in setting and atmosphere, and though that's interesting in its own right, wandering wayward in these rich, liminal settings wasn't enough to keep me interested without a strong plot to grab my attention or compelling characters to hold it until the end. I think Izumi Suzuki is an imaginative writer, and that there are readers who will really enjoy this collection, especially readers who are looking for the magical realism and musical references of Murakami. However, it sadly did not resonate with me.

Izumi Suzuki’s Terminal Boredom was a surprise hit for me—and by “surprise” I mean that I spotted the collection on my bookshelf with no memory of purchasing it—because it felt so modern, stories and ideas newly imagined, unbelievable that the world could have changed so much in the decades since she wrote these stories and yet I found so much of today in those pages.

I’ll admit I feared that her best stories had already been collected in Terminal Boredom and that Hit Parade of Tears would read like leftovers. These stories feel their age, which is fine, of course. But without that magical prescience that made Terminal Boredom feel so fresh, the stories in Hit Parade of Tears were almost tedious. Even the most stand out stories in this collection fell flat for me in some way. But maybe the times haven’t changed quite enough yet, and Hit Parade of Tears will find a new relevancy in future years.

Bold and amusing enough to enjoy, but not truly memorable to me. The writing was okay, it took me some time to get used to the author's style. I've already forgotten the plots of some of the stories, unfortunately. Maybe I'm just not that big on sci-fi? But I could totally see other people enjoying this one, so it's possible I will be recommending it to certain readers.

This was a fun ride; I was familiar with Suzuki's previous work before heading into this new collection, and the images and structures used are classic Suzuki. I found this collection relatively easy to read, although I had to go back to a couple of the stories since I found myself missing details in the first time I got through them. All in all, I would recommend this collection to those who like well-rounded female characters, scenarios that lean towards sci-fi elements, and have a bit of a taste for adventure.

I really enjoyed the other collection of short stories I read by Izumi Suzuki, Terminal Boredom, so when I saw this was coming out in English, I was keen to read it. Alas, I feel a little let down - I didn’t enjoy it as much as Terminal Boredom. The stories in Hit Parade of Tears are more thematically aligned, and deal with aliens and other worlds, through a number of different lenses, but I found it to be a somewhat disjointed collection despite that.

There were a few really fascinating stories, but far more meh ones for me in this collection.

I really enjoyed this book, but feel I need to maybe read it again to appreciate it. I adored Terminal Boredom and am a big Suzuki fan, but none of these stories have stayed with me or stretched my mind and the first book did. I love her writing and the way she lays out her stories and would love to read these stories as dull length books to find out more about the characters and the plot. Overall I liked the book but I loved the first one.

thank you for the arc <3

i honestly didn't care for this one, which is sad cus i started out really excited for it. i found the writing weirdly stiff, didn't like the prose much. i found a handful of the stories hard to get into and hard to finish, mostly cus of that & also cus i didn't like the narration in many of them. the concepts themselves were super unique and compelling but the execution was just not it for me. i'm not opposed to giving her work another try down the line but this one just wasn't for me!

more accurately 2.5 stars but i'll round up to 3 for the creativity, which i can definitely appreciate here.

Following on the heels of the English-language translation of Suzuki's first short stories collection, Terminal Boredom, Hit Parade of Tears offers fans and newcomers alike another glimpse into the unique, compelling, and satire-laden science fiction works of Izumi Suzuki. Suzuki had a distinct talent for writing snappy, accessible prose that still manages to pack enough world-building into short pages. This collection features some of the weirdest, most out-there concepts I've seen in sci-fi. Some of the stories unfortunately fall flat, as they are riddled with endless dialogue between characters that fails to move the plot along in any meaningful way. But there is still something charming about finding this slice-of-life quality in a science fiction story.