Yoko Ogawa

I have read several other books by Yoko Ogawa with pleasure, but did not enjoy reading Revenge. This is largely due to the structure of the book, where each story tells what went before. However, each story is gruesome in itself, so the book is a reverse cascade of violence, both physical and psychological. To me, basically only the first and second story were interesting, soon after that I could not follow. Reading the book in reverse order probably wouldn't work either.

The idea probably works well with the title, as revenge stems from retribution for things that have gone before, but to me the story-line became too blurred.… (more)

The Memory Police is one of the most stunning works of literature that I've read in the long decades of my life. I've finished reading it, and am feeling a cavernous sense of loss for the words, sentences, and paragraphs that I've left behind, and even more grief washes over me as I re-enter the world after the ideas that permeated me while I read. There is, just above me in the air, a headache or perhaps a hangover that threatens to descend upon me. I may cry. The power of this novel cannot be overstated.

It took me three tries to get into this book. Is it possible that this book has guardians that prevent a person from reading this book until they are ready to receive it? At this point I would believe it; they'd be carved Japanese figures, light, as if from balsa wood. I kept putting the book back on the shelf again and again, whereas other books I'd just put in a box to donate somewhere. However, having read Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor a few years ago, and having bought this book to have the pleasure of Ogawa's writing once again, I decided not to give up. It was an excellent decision.

Three people, none of them named, live on an island where things are disappearing over time. Flowers, fruit, hats, birds, things more and less vital are one day simply gone. The silent goons who are the Memory Police take offending items away and also take away those offenders who have kept forbidden items. The oddity, to me, is that people actually begin to forget these items, much as someone's face might become less defined as time goes by once we've seen them.

I think that the book is about loss, not only of items, but of people we have loved or simply known, and of our own faculties as happens with the very old. I found the book not sad, but melancholy, like the first Christmas after someone's death when things are not quite right because of the empty seat at the head of the table.

The stunning power of the book for me is that I discovered that the old man in it was my father. No, it wasn't written that way, but my goodness, the old man and the feelings that the female character has for him are so much like my relationship with my dad, who has been dead for almost four years ago. The old man and my dad share two traits; both have huge hands; both can make practically anything, do anything. As a child I thought my father omnipotent, as an older woman I still see him that way although by now I do know his weaknesses and foibles as well. They do not detract from the renaissance man that my father very clearly was. I find myself wondering if other people have had this reaction to the book and its characters.

It is not an easy book to read. Some passages need to be re-read; some other parts of it need time to absorb into the brain and the heart. It is worth every struggle. This novel will go onto my special bookshelf where favourite works are stored. I'd say more but I'm suddenly really tired - I think my excursion into the book and into the memories of my father have worn me out psychologically, and my body is responding to that massive outlay of psychic energy.

Please read this book.… (more)