Book Review
Title: Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
Genre: Short Stories, Horror, Contemporary
Rating: 4.25 Stars
As I tend to do with short stories, I will be reviewing each story individually and then wrapping up the review with my thoughts on the collection. Since I picked up Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its sequel, I have been wanted to read more translated story collections and when I spotted Revenge in a charity shop, I immediately bought it.
The opening story in this collection is Afternoon at the Bakery, which was ominous, however, it was also a gut-wrenching tale of grief and dealing with the death of a loved one. Our unnamed protagonist is heading to local bakery to buy strawberry shortcakes for her son’s birthday, but he has been dead for a while after suffocating in a fridge. The way she reflects on how overwhelming her grief is and the distance time has given her allows her to read grief and death in other people including the woman who works at the bakery. It shows that death is all consuming, but life goes on for the people affected as they still need to work and that it seems inconsequential to the people around them.
The next story is Fruit Juice which was another look at grief but in the sense of someone’s impending death rather than already being dead. The unnamed male and female characters go to the same school when she asks him to go to a lunch with her and he agrees. He soon learns that her mother is dying and the person she is bringing him to meet is her father, a well-known politician. The dinner is awkward, and tense given the fact this man hasn’t been a part of her life and doesn’t know her and she is grieving for the mother she is going to lose. The use of fruit to show how grief consumes people mirrored in the way the girl consumes huge amounts of the fruit without stopping was interesting and thought provoking.
Old Mrs. J is the next story, and this one is the first one that deals with some darker topics. Here the protagonist lives in a building owned by Mrs. J and takes note of her daily habits. They notice that Mrs. J seems more lively and less old in the gardens that she loves and grows fruit and vegetables in and gifts them to the tenants she likes including our writer protagonist. Eventually we learn that Mrs. J was the one putting kiwis in the old post office from the previous story, but we don’t know why. However, it does come to light that she murdered her husband and buried him in the garden, missing his hands and this seems to change the light of the hand shaped carrots. Previously, they were just odd but now they stand out as a sinister clue as to what was hidden in the garden by Mrs. J.
So far, I was enjoying the collection, the next story is The Little Dustman, and it links with Old Mrs. J. The protagonist here is the former stepson of the unnamed female writer from the other story. That woman has now died, and he is heading to her funeral, but the train is stopped by snow. He and other passengers are paying the time, and he reminisces about the woman he called Mama. Apparently, she has psychological issues which is why his father divorced her after two years, but she did have some success as a writer creating a short story about an old woman that murdered her husband and buried him in her garden just like Old Mrs. J.
Lab Coats was the first story to feature true horror and it links with the previous story. We are following the mistress of a doctor who also works in the hospital as she and another unnamed character are logging lab coats. The woman complains about her lover claiming that he doesn’t want to leave his wife and children and asks her to keep waiting, claiming he was stuck in a train because of snow like in the last story. She doesn’t believe him and confesses to killing him before the other finds his tongue in the pocket of the lab coats. The tongue seems to be the message of being honest and not telling lies to people you claim to care about and it came out of left field and left the fate of the other person in the air.
Sewing for the Heart is a story about a woman whose heart is outside of her body but still attached to her. She goes to a bag maker and asks for something to cover the heart beginning their obsession with it. However, one day the woman informs him she is having surgery to correct the issue and doesn’t need the bag anymore, but the maker’s obsession has led them to go to the hospital with the intent of cutting the woman’s heart away. This story ends before any action happens, but the build-up creates this vivid image in your mind of the horror set to unfold.
Welcome to the Museum of Torture was exactly what it says on the tin. It was about a woman who lives beneath the doctor who was murdered by her mistress. After her boyfriend misunderstands her intentions one night he leaves, and she finds herself at the museum of torture. There she gets a tour which seems to inspire a darker, more gruesome side of her before she heads home.
The Man Who Sold Braces was about the curator of the museum of torture. it follows his nephew being notified of his death and he reflects on the man he knew, loved and perhaps feared. His uncle was always a little strange, jumping from job to job or woman to woman without much sadness or regret. However, anything he touched broke, possibly reflecting his personality that seemed built on impermanence. We learn he had an affair with the woman from the museum of torture story, but it ended quickly when he was sent to jail. His story is tied to the next as he was a butler for elderly twins who collected torture device and one of his jobs was keeping an eye on the Bengal tiger they owned.
The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger was an interesting story tying more of these characters together. This story had more connections than I thought it connects the old man from Museum of Torture and the wife of the cheating doctor. The wife is heading to confront the mistress while her husband is away at a conference but ends up stumbling upon the old man while he was still a butler for the twins. In the garden the tiger they owned is sick and dying so the woman stays with the man in the tigers last moments alive embracing both the sadness and magnificence of the moment. Once the tiger passes, she returns home without competent what she set out to do seemingly content with life once more.
Tomatoes and the Full Moon follows the paranoid author mentioned earlier but she is a secondary character and is the stepmother of the young boy in a previous story. A journalist is writing a piece on a hotel that the woman is also staying at, and they form a friendship in a strange way meeting several times over the next few days. She even claims a book in the hotel library is her own which turns out to be the first story in this collection, but it is written by someone entirely different before she vanishes without even saying goodbye. While this was one of the longer stories it was my last favourite in the collection.
The final story is Poison Plants was in rereading as it follows an elderly painter who becomes infatuated with a young man. She sponsors him as he wants to get into a conservatory in exchange for him visiting her every week. She is in love with him but never expressed this but gets jealous when he tries to miss one meeting for his girlfriend’s birthday. In the end he repays her money but cuts contract with her. She ends up finding her own dead body in a fridge whether this is murder or suicide isn’t confirmed all she mentions is that she ate poison plants making me think it was intentional due to her young man leaving her behind.
Overall, the collection was interesting, it’s themes and messages were mixed from the sad to the disturbing, but it is blended in such a way it is difficult to distinguish the entombed you should be feeling when reading the stories. I will be reading more from this author in the future.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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