This is my favourite Banana Yoshimoto novel. Banana is very observant. She listens to rock and roll and writes stories about strange events and then writes about her favourite rock musicians in the introduction to her book. It’s so delightful! Sometimes in some of the photos on her book jackets she looks a little cross eyed (in the most endearing way). Honestly, I think her U.S. publisher/distributor needs to think a little more about getting most of her book covers re-done because so many of them are so horrifyingly awful. It’s like they didn’t know what to do with a female Japanese author so they made it half purple and half pink, superimposed the image of some Amy Tan type finished it off by slapping on some scripty font and voila! The horror, the agony, the visual confusion. It’s like they didn’t even want to try selling the book. Anyway! That’s just me though.

Thus far in the Murakami studies, this is my favourite novel to recommend to people. It’s a good introduction to his longer work of which I feel is not as strong or effective as many of his short stories. He is still someone I am learning more about though.

It was at a dinner party about a month ago when Annie said to me “I’ve just recently discovered this and you really must try one!” It was a one of the P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves stories I’ve heard so much about. While it was still fresh in my mind, I decided to give it a go and although I found it to be jolly fun summer reading, I could hardly stand an entire book of the same old formula. I mean to say that at this rate I’m probably better off watching the television adaptation, what? (Yes it is on my queue, by the way.) So in summary, it was worth trying for the sake of cultural literacy but the other Jeeves tales won’t be on my reading list.

Lahiri is a good writer, she knows how to tell a story and most of these stand well on their own. As a collection, however, it presents the same themes over and over again and becomes a bit dull. In the end, I found myself frustrated with the lack of variety in characters and settings.