Record of a Night too Brief

How to describe this stunning, strange, disturbing, chilling, brilliant collection of stories?

It’s part horror, part magical realism, all beauty. It’ll suck you in and spit you back out much too quickly. What I mean is: I wanted more! There’s something mysteriously charismatic about the writing; I can’t quite place my finger on why I loved it so much. (For some reason, I was getting Alexandra Kleeman vibes here, if that helps explain my immediate liking for it.)

The first “story” is more like a collection of vignettes—snappy bite-sized bits of seemingly nonsense (but beautiful!) writing yet something tells me that if we take a step back and examine these short scenes as a whole, there’s more to glean than what you would guess on the first read through. (Perhaps more knowledge of Japanese culture, folklore, or even gender roles would be helpful.) This would be a really, really fun story to carefully analyze. It feels like a puzzle that I’d like to solve, and the promise of exciting re-readings in the future makes me enjoy the collection all the more.

The remaining two stories were just fantastic examples of magical realism. My skin crawled and my heart soared. Loved it.

I was hooked on this collections of short stories from the opening line: “What was that itch on my back? I wondered. And then I realized that it was the night — the night was nibbling into me.”

Beautifully translated from the Japanese by Lucy North, Kawakami’s trio of stories leave a striking impression on the reader. Reading these tales is like being caught in a surreal recounting of dreams, or rather more like recalling and reliving the dreams of another, ethereal, dark, and sublime. With these stories the reader can’t be distracted by over-concentrating or over-thinking — you have to give yourself up to the reading, to the journey into something akin to the absurd. Fantastic events occur on nearly every page and no one, not even the narrator, gives any of these occurrences a second thought. The fantastic blends with the mundane seamlessly. The nearness of these stories to magical realism had me thinking of Marquez or Murakami, but Kawakami’s approach is entirely her own.

Kawakami’s writing is lovely, expressing an expansive imagination and a unique approach to storytelling. The stories are contemplation provoking, touching something deeper than mere analytical in the dedicated reader. I’d not experienced her before, but I will definitely be delving deeper in the worlds of Kawakami in the future.

Great characters, compelling plot, amazing setting. Will definitely recommend this book. Can't wait for the public to discover it!