Banana Yoshimoto: Kitchen

Sometimes you meet a person that reminds you so much of what you don't like in yourself, you hate them on sight.  What makes it worse, your similarities mean you travel in the same circles, compete for the same attention, and generally can't escape each other.  This is not a bad thing, necessarily.  Viewed properly, it give one the chance to reflect on her or his own behavior, on the way it affects others, and perhaps make adjustments.

It is unsurprising that the same phenomenon can exist in writers.  I didn't hate this book; in fact my response is rather positive.  Even that positive response, however, is muted by the realization that what weakens her writing is the same thing that weakens my own attempts at fiction.  Her engaging heightened reality, the vivid and memorable characters experiencing deep, recognizable, and universal thoughts and feelings, and her purposefully oblique scene-painting were all effective and engaging.  But they grabbed me in the way that an instagram story does, when they really could have held the weight of a full season of television.

So much was touched upon, underdeveloped here.  I suppose it's a testament that I was left wanting more, wanting to dive more deeply into this world, but wanting more is only a virtue when there is more to be had.  If this novella were the first in a series, I would be addicted.  But after the last page, all I'm left with are withdrawals.