Book Review: "Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto

Hi Steemians!

Today we're doing a book review for a teeny-tiny novella called Kitchen by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.

According to the blurb, this is a novella which juxtaposes two tales about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy in contemporary Japan and it's apparently a pretty famous and well liked little book.

Unfortunately, I personally really didn't enjoy it all that much and actually had to force myself to finish it, despite its length of only 150 pages. I was just so bored.

The first story was particularly bad as I didn't really see much of a point to it, and given that the main character barely knew the person that passed away her grief didn't feel as real to me. The second one did that part much better, and because it was shorter it also felt more to the point.

However, my biggest issue with this book - which is possibly a little unfair, since it's not the author's fault - is the terrible translation. The writing style is stilted and contrived and knowing Japanese it's quite obvious to me that it was translated much too literally. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at several lines or choices of words that really only made complete sense when translating them back into Japanese. I really should just go and try to read the original version I guess.

I don't know if it was lost in translation, time, or if it just went over my head, but the supposed magic of this book was lost on me entirely. I was expecting a revolutionary story about transsexuality from within a country in which this is still a very taboo subject (and was even more so at the time of this novella's publication in 1988). Instead I got two disconnected stories, one of which I would say is actually more about crossdressing than actual transsexuality, and even the one that openly included this element did not discuss it in any way. Maybe my expectations were skewed, but I just really didn't see the point to these stories.

If you have read Kitchen and enjoyed or didn't enjoy it, definitely let me know why! I'm super curious to see what other people thought about this one :)

Happy reading!
xx
ivymuse