Revenge

Product Information

Book Genre: Asia, Asian Literature, Contemporary, Cultural, Fiction, Horror, Japan, Japanese Literature, Literary Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Short Stories Fruit Juice: A young woman meets her politician father as her mother is dying...a hapless friend tags along (4 stars) Briefly Noted Revenge by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Picador)." The New Yorker. February 25, 2013.

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales: Ogawa, Yoko, Snyder, Stephen

The Housekeeper and the Professor (Hakase no ai shita sūshiki, 博士の愛した数式, 2003); translated by Stephen Snyder, New York: Picador, 2008. ISBN 0-312-42780-8

These are] haunted characters who could have walked, quite coolly, out of a Joyce Carol Oates or Koji Suzuki creation…. Not recommended for bedtime reading.” — The Boston Phoenix How had I not noticed before? I rose slightly from my seat and looked past the counter. A doorway behind the cash register was half open, and I could see into the kitchen. A young woman was standing inside with her face turned away. I was about to call out to her, but I stopped myself. She was talking to someone on the telephone, and she was crying. Japan's best teller of macabre tales… Ogawa is such a master that she pushes the boundaries and suspends the mystery… You never know ‘why,' only that humans are slaves to time, and we keep on with our lives so that someday we might understand.” — The Daily Beast

Revenge (Vintage Editions) eBook : Ogawa, Yoko, Snyder Revenge (Vintage Editions) eBook : Ogawa, Yoko, Snyder

In addition, the deaths themselves are almost all presented as distant, off-scene, or at some remove -- the murder in the apartment above; a death years earlier resurfacing in one form or another; newspaper or other second-hand reports -- even as their effects (and occasionally physical traces) linger, one way or another. Fittingly, each tale seems to be its own torture chamber--dark and meticulous… More disturbing than the bloody imagery is the eerie calm with which each plot unfolds, as if one act of violence must necessarily transform into the portal for another.” — The New Yorker Cheuse, Alan. " Under Ogawa's Macabre, Metafictional Spell." National Public Radio. February 18, 2013. Retrieved on May 31, 2015.The strawberry shortcakes were displayed right on the upper shelf of the pastry case, the most prominent place in the shop. Each was topped with three whole strawberries. They looked perfectly preserved, no sign of mold. Using economical and precise language, Ogawa conveys intensity of emotion. (...) Ogawa's landscapes are frequently bizarre and contain startling images" - Lucy Popescu, Times Literary Supplement He was an intelligent child. He could read his favorite picture book from beginning to end aloud without making a single mistake. He would use a different voice for each character—the piglet, the prince, the robot, the old man. He was left-handed. He had a broad forehead and a mole on one earlobe. When I was busy making dinner, he would often ask questions I did not know how to answer. Who invented Chinese characters? Why do people grow? What is air? Where do we go when we die? Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist for Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales (Japanese; trans. Stephen Snyder) [9] Their sudden appearance -- and also the small bridges between episodes Ogawa builds -- are often particularly well done, and much of the fun of Revenge is in the smaller (and then larger connections).

Revenge - Ogawa Yoko - Complete Review Revenge - Ogawa Yoko - Complete Review

The reason she was crying didn't matter to me. Perhaps there was no reason at all. Her tears had that sort of purity. Not one person in the crowd on the square knew that a young woman was crying in the kitchen behind the bakery. I was the only witness. Oh, that's too bad," he said. "I was looking forward to seeing him." He sounded genuinely disappointed. Yet even when they snap -- the woman in the first story, trying to go to her son; the murderers -- the narratives, and the lives of the narrators, continue as coolly as always. a b "Writer Ogawa Yōko's Stories of Memory and Loss". nippon.com. 2020-03-27 . Retrieved 2022-02-09.Yoko Ogawa is an absolute master of the Gothic at its most beautiful and dangerous, and Revenge is a collection that deepens and darkens with every story you read.” —Peter Straub He died twelve years ago. Suffocated in an abandoned refrigerator left in a vacant lot. When I first saw him, I didn't think he was dead. I thought he was just ashamed to look me in the eye because he had stayed away from home for three days. Turkewitz, Rebecca ( Ohio State University MFA candidate). " Review of Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa; translated by Stephen Snyder." The Journal, Ohio State University. Some of these deaths are entirely everyday, from old age and disease; others, the senseless tragedies that occur everywhere (as is the case with the death of a boy in the opening story).

Revenge by Yōko Ogawa | Goodreads

As I pushed through the revolving door of the bakery and walked inside, the noise of the square was instantly muffled, and replaced by the sweet scent of vanilla. The shop was empty. Welcome to the Museum of Torture” and all the rest of the short stories are excellent but what is remarkable is that there is a continuous flow from one story to another and that is so skilful in itself. “The Man Who Sold Braces” for example is followed on by “The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger” and they both have the “tiger" as a common denominator. Also the so important final sentence or paragraph to each story that says it all. Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor convinced me that she is not just a writer but also a complex and subtle intellectual. That there is a plan to Revenge and a key to understanding this plan therefore is therefore certain. Without this key, the work is intriguing but incomplete. In The Housekeeper and the Professor, it was the mathematical Euler’s Theorem. But what such a key could be in Revenge is, at least for the moments, beyond me. Ogawa's fiction reflects like a fun-house mirror, skewing conventional responses….[Like] Haruki Murakami, Ogawa writes stories that float free of any specific culture, anchoring themselves instead in the landscape of the mind.” — The Washington Post Book World The cakes here are delicious," she said at last. "They use our spices, so you know there's nothing funny in them."Ogawa's language, in Stephen Snyder's translation, is spare, quiet, content with being nimble rather than dwelling on beautiful phrases. It's a language that doesn't announce its own frugality and refuses to make a minimalist's daring and obvious cuts. The seeming ease is the outcome of hard work, but it doesn't make the reader sweat. Ogawa moves swiftly; she has the power to move.” —Stefan Kiesby, Los Angeles Review of Books