Birthday Book Recs 7/50 : Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Thoughts on Books

Dec 14

Birthday Book Recs: 7/50
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Maybe there’s someone I went to high school with who follows me here and can confirm, but I feel like this slim book with the kicky cover was sort of a thing for a hot second? I don’t know if I bought this one at that point or if it was a slightly later purchase, but here’s the deal: The cover art is cool. Does cool cover art make up for bad text? No, sir. Did this particular cover art lure me in as an impressionable teenager and then unwittingly expose me to what is likely my first taste of translated literature in addition to two lovely little stories/novellas (Kitchen plus its companion story, Moonlight Shadow) and then make me want to continue reading its author’s work? Yes, ma’am.

I really loved Banana’s (with a name like that, I feel like I can be on a first-name basis with her) novels The Lake and The Premonition, both translated from the Japanese. (I mean, perhaps that’s obvious. I don’t speak nor read Japanese…) The Lake doesn’t appear to be printed in the US any longer, but contains a phrase I think about often: “The placeness of a place.”

{PS: I have a running mental list of extremely, extremely niche Halloween costumes I’d like to whip together one of these days. The woman on the cover of Kitchen is one of them. My best couple contender is the “get the gear” couple from Portlandia. Ay-Oh River!}