Okay, a few things are definitely going on here, and I'm happy to clear up the confusion for anyone who may not have my depth and breadth of knowledge on the subject. People are crazy or sane, things are happening or not happening, supporting characters are flesh and blood or mental constructs, and there's honey. Or blood. A body or a beehive. Okay? You're welcome.As you can see, I actually had no idea what was real at least half the time while reading this, but I love it. I like the sparse prose, the often stoic characters, the subtle psychopathy, the constant droning sounds pulling the nerves slow-mo taut, and the overwhelming creepiness spun out of totally mundane and few threads. The Japanese are apparently just forevergood at churning up sinister moods out of teapots, flowerbeds, and grapefruit jam. How do they do it? Well, I guess when your country is about 75% mountainous terrain and you have the 10th highest population in the world, you sorta have to embrace the utilitarian spirit, and it spills over into so much of their artistic expression that isn't, like, Hentai or Harajuku street fashion. No matter how much I love a good verbosity vomit, I am still like a little kid seeing bubbles for the first time with the wonder and the drooly-mouth and the dumb, big-eyed stare at how emotionally manipulated a reader can be even despite so many self-imposed constraints on the part of the author. Don't say much, but say everything, never clearly, using clear-cut imagery. So, yes I did just say and mean all of that, but the first story, for which the collection is named, is also both my favorite of the three and the most straightforward, narratively-speaking. I wish it had been approximately five berzmpillion pages longer. I mean, it definitely manages everything it sets out to do within the short space it occupies on the page, but it's just a terrible and beautiful world that I was sad to leave. On the surface, it's a simple love story, but a twisted one, in which a dour, sadistic pessimist of a young girl falls for her clean as the driven snow foster-brother, and expresses it through various acts of cruelty toward a toddler. Yeah. She simultaneously esteems her brother's good nature, and is deeply wounded by how little of it she can see in herself. It's this that she craves from him, like he could somehow flush her spirit clean with his peeny-fluids. At the same time, she appears to see herself as a necessary counter-balance, like reveling in her own vile nature by debasing herself and others serves to accentuate the things she finds most beautiful about him, to reaffirm and then cast a spotlight on them. Yes, there are also some elements of simple sexual frustration in her tortures, but you could Freud some sex into just about anything, and it would be insulting to the nuances of this story to neatly call it just that and wipe your hands of everything else that's going on here. I mean, I'm definitely familiar with self-destructive, doom-y feelings with friends and lovers of "if you only knew, and oh boy, when you do find out..." I know what it's like to feel like your soul is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and that if mind-reading existed, you'd be deservedly all alone in the universe. That is going on here, along with some other stuff. And it's pretty heartbreaking.Pregnancy Diary is a little more ambiguous in nature, though on the surface it is just what it says: a dated diary of a woman's pregnancy, as seen from the cold, almost clinical perspective of her sister-slash-roommate. This one goes into the way a person can begin to feel burdened and worn down by another person's proximate suffering, to feel hostile toward someone for something they cannot help simply because it's inconveniencing you in some minor way. Here, it is pushed beyond irritation to covert retaliation, as the narrator, after enduring the stormy moods and demands made by a particularly lengthy, grueling bout of morning sickness, embraces her sister's late-term, voracious appetite in order to overfeed her pot after pot of sugary jam made from imported fruits which are potentially developmentally harmful to the fetus. Her actions are so calculated yet robotic, almost as if even she doesn't realize why she's doing what she's doing except in a subconscious way, but still goes about it mechanically and compulsively. This one's twisted like all the rest, yet one of the two that have a debatable basis in reality.The final story, The Dormitory, is definitely the most head-scratching of the bunch. I went looking around for some explanations as to what the hell might be going on here, but it appears that at least the English-speaking world is at a bit of a loss across the board. A woman helps her young cousin get a room at her former dormhouse, and begins to visit the triple-amputee who manages the property. One boy had vanished from the dorm during the prior academic term, just as her own relative drops out of the story inexplicably. Do I know whether the amputee is really there, or if she's actually talking to him, or if her cousin exists, or existed and is dead, or is really on a trip as the amputee says? Do I know what the ending means? Fuck no, I don't. However, I do know that, open to interpretation as it may be, it is an eerie and engaging look inside a mind undone by the tedium of housewife life, and the tick-tick-tick of time. Can we just call it a Japanese Yellow Wallpaper while leaving room for additional interpretations? Sorry, that's all I've got. It's totally worth a read if you don't mind stories without neat endings, or any real sense of closure, pretty much at all.This book is so entrancing, seriously. People who say everything that needs to be said has already been said are full of shit, and need to read more tight, minimalist Japanese literature. You know what they say: when life hands you lemons, make a psychological horror story about slowly, calculatedly poisoning your sister's baby with them.
Well, if I ever want acid indigestion, I know just the book to turn to. I've been very lucky this past year with contemporary Japanese authors, and Yoko Ogawa has been one of the top on that list. This novella features three standalone stories, all united by recurring themes. In each story, the main characters assume the role of the incongruous outsider, distant and apathetic, but frothing underneath with violent undercurrents of obsession and desire. Perhaps most significantly, these outsiders are all female, each seeking companionship but falling just short of getting it. Isolation is a running thread in the three stories, and it is through the lens of isolation that Yoko Ogawa warps each protagonist's view of her world. Beauty is perverted into revulsion. The human aesthetic is reduced to a scientific specimen. Repressed sexual desire, oftentimes misplaced or unrequited, is expressed through sadism and abuse.The most compelling aspect of this novella was just how capable of casual cruelty we are in everyday life, particularly in the first two stories, and how powerful and maddening isolation can become.I planned on finishing this book in one or two sittings because of its relatively short length. But after reading the unsettling, mind bending first story that was The Diving Pool, also the title of the book, I realized I could only take this book in bite-sized pieces (and if you’ve read The Diving Pool, you’ll know how ironic that statement is). THE DIVING POOLAfter reading this story, I just wanted to curl up in a fetal position and rock back and forth. I actually had to set this book down a few times after reading some particularly disturbing passages.Out narrator is Aya, the daughter of a husband and wife who run an orphanage. Despite being her parent’s sole biological child, Aya is still treated like an orphan, exacerbating her feelings of displacement and isolation. Aya’s one comfort is secretly watching Jun, her foster brother, dive at the local pool and reveling in his sleek physique and elegant form. However, as Jun is technically Aya’s “brother” and her increasingly obsessive feelings can never be requited, Aya alleviates her emotional frustrations in sadistic and grotesque ways. What struck me most about this story was how seamlessly the author wove cruelty into the narrative. It seemed almost like a natural human reaction simply because of its selfishness and the longing that drove it. This was a gem of a story, albeit a haunting and disturbing one.Story rating: 5/5 THE PREGNANCY DIARIESWhile The Diving Pool revolves around the psychological workings of a young girl, this story draws inspiration from physical, commonplace things like pregnancy, ultrasound imaging, and food. However, despite its reliance on the physical world, the story has a surreal quality about it, as if it were a dream laced with nightmares.Similar to The Diving Pool, the protagonist is a cool, detached woman who lives with her pregnant sister and brother-in-law. Already the proverbial third wheel, the narrator further emphasizes her alienation in her journal entries that detail the progress of her sister’s pregnancy. But rather than the musings of a concerned sibling, the entries have a cold, stilted quality that tips off that reduces pregnancy into something repulsive and gluttonous. One of the ways the narrator does this is through her descriptions of food. Food is never just food. It is in turns fragrant and tasty, slimy and revolting, poisonous and corruptive. The narrator’s pregnant sister goes so far as comparing noodles to tiny intestinal tracts. Like Aya in the previous story, the narrator never expresses her emotions outright, but the darkness of her observations hint at a boiling resentment. Again, cruelty sinks into the narrative like a subtle poison. It’s a disorienting feeling, one that keeps you on the edge of your toes in expectation of the dire consequences such resentment can bring about.Story rating: 4.5/5 DORMITORYI’d have to say Dormitory was the least surreal of the three, and while the theme of isolation permeates the story, the main conflict resolves itself very differently. Again, the main character is a woman. While waiting for her husband to call her to Sweden, she remains in Japan to pack and settle their affairs before she leaves the country. When she gets a request from her cousin to find housing, however, the woman recommends him to live in an old dormitory run by a paraplegic man, a place in which she had lived years earlier. The story quickly morphs into something resembling a mystery at the dormitory as the woman increasingly shuts out her distant husband and focuses more on her young cousin. Unlike the previous two stories, there are barely any mentions of food or graphic cruelty. The outer layer of the story is a murder mystery in a strange, offbeat environment. But Yoko Ogawa flips the murder mystery genre on its head at the very last page, instead posing questions about the nature of self and its lonely drive toward madness. Though the least shocking and toned down, I thought this was probably the most carefully crafted story of the three. Story rating: 5/5Overall, these stories were not comfortable reads. But they have a strange and disturbing pull, an elegant allure that does not let you look away. Despite my own fanfare, I hesitate to recommend this book to everyone just because of its subject matter and the bizarre circumstances in which certain topics are addressed. However, if you’re in the mood for something that will disturb and shock you from your daily routine, definitely think about reading this book.5 STARS AND HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, though with reservations.
Do You like book The Diving Pool: Three Novellas (2008)?
Ogawa writes about dark and disturbing materials. But you don’t really get that, she sucks you in her everyday-normal-life vortex with its usual dialogues and people. But stories are chilling, although you don’t know why you feel like you are subtly creeped out. I like it when nature is one of the crucial characters – here it seems like rain never stops and light is circling around grey shades. In 'Dormitory', she writes about this sound that she can’t explain. It’s something close to a vibrating whir when you during the winter throw a coin into the cold water of a fountain. Or like a tremor that you hear in your ears when you’re jumping off the carousel. Or like the sound of night that whiffs off your palm of the hand with which you are still tightly holding your receiver. She gets your senses twisted and she captivates you because you’re questioning yourself: this is not strange, is it? Writer just a bit reminded me of Murakami, but while he goes right into the heart of unconscious, Ogawa does it more walking on earth. She is playing with a human psyche, but on the tip of her toes, in a numbing way. You feel like you are normal, but you are actually one step away from madness. I can’t explain it. Ogawa’s life seems ordinary, but it’s just not.
—Jana
I think she should have made a novel from "The Diving Pool". I thoroughly enjoyed our hero empowering herself and expressing love through brutal cruelty to another: "Rie's terrified tears were particularly satisfying, like hands caressing me in exactly the right places – not vague, imaginary hands but his hands, the ones I was sure would know just how to please me." Yikes, huh?"Pregnancy Diary" - Eerie. Weird. More of Ogawa's nourishing cruelty."Dormitory" - Again, cruelty in place of communication. Loved it. Fabulous ending, read the last pages four times."It occurred to me that he was young to have lost so many important things: his chicken, his girl, his father."
—David
When I picked up this book of three novellas, I did not expect it to be so dark. I’d previously to this read one book for the Yuko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor, and it was one of my favorite books in 2014. This book of novellas was pretty great as well but for me, it took a whole new tone than what I was used to from the author. The first novella, The Diving Pool, is about a girl who essentially has a thing for her foster brother and likes to watch him during his diving practice. We get this story from her point of view and while things may seem innocent, this girl’s inner thoughts and psyche are a lot darker than what they seem. This girl is actually psychopathically unstable and this juxtaposes nicely with her foster brother’s clean-cut goodness. throughout this 50-page short story, you delve deep into the capabilities that this girl has for cruelty and it makes you cringe so much and feel so unsettled. This was, however, my favorite story in the book, because it made me feel so strongly towards the main character and her misdeeds. The second novella, Pregnancy Diary, was a curious one. It’s about a girl who lives with her sister and her husband and who keeps track of her sister’s pregnancy symptoms. It at times implies that the pregnancy may be made up. Again this story also had weird mentally dark cringe-worthy moments that unsettled me. The pregnancy symptoms were exaggerated and you start to feel the sister’s burden of having to put up with her pregnant sister’s constant demands and whims. Things start to take a turn for the “dark” when the narrator starts to feel hostile towards her pregnant sister and drives her to commit small – almost inconsequential – acts that makes the reader feel dread. Again, this story made me feel as uncomfortable as the first one and because of the way this was executed through the author’s prose, I thought it was brilliant. The third novella, The Dormitory, was the last and probably my least favorite of the three. I honestly didn’t quite understand this one. The ending still confuses me and I probably still can’t tell you what it’s about. The story builds up and makes you think you know where it’s going, but then I didn’t quite grasp where it eventually went. A story about a housewife living alone while her husband is in Sweden for work purposes wiles away her days until she gets a call from her cousin who decides to move into the old dormitory she lived in during her university days. The dormitory, run by the old amputee, isn’t quite what it’s been back in her days and holds the mystery of a disappearing boy, etc...This story was creepy, and I was enjoying it up until the ending, which I guess didn’t really bother me much. Bees, though.I loved how Ogawa manages to pack quite a bit without crowding the story to give the reader the full understanding of the plot and the characters. The writing style is very straightforward but the content is actually very twisted. Throughout all three stories, I felt the dread deep in a my belly and because these three novellas successfully managed to illicit a response like that from a reader proves the successfulness of the author’s writing and the atmosphere she manages to create.
—Farah
