Hardboiled and Hard Luck

by Banana Yoshimoto

Book Overview

In cherished novels such as Kitchen and Goodbye Tsugumi , Banana Yoshimoto's warm, witty, and heartfelt depictions of the lives of young Japanese have earned her international acclaim and best-seller... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802117996
• ISBN13: 9780802117991
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Yoshimito, Again

My first book by this author was 'Goodbye Tsugumi' and since then, I have always been on the look out for books by yoshomoto. Both Hardboiled and Hard Luck explore themes that have been prevalent in yoshomoto's previous works. Themes like friendship, death, grief, memories and love wove their way through these two short stories. Hardboiled, the first of the stories, is about a young woman visiting a town on her lover's anniversary. A series of strange things happen to her on the way, and she flits into dreamworld and memories. The story takes us along as she comes to terms with her friend's death. The second part of the book, hard luck, is the story of a young woman dealing with her brain damaged sister. As a result of an ebolism in the sister's brain, she goes into a coma, and then begins the progress of her death infront of her loved ones. The narrator, the younger sister, visits her sister in the beginning of the novel and reflects on her state and is plagued with memories of the past. There she also meets her sister's fiance's brother for the first time and her reaction towards him makes her realize that altho grieving, she is also getting back to her normal life. Both stories, although written simply as the norm with yoshomoto's novels, are filled with a myriad of strong emotions. Goodbye Tsugumi still remains my personal favorite of her novels.

Read this!

Banana Yashimoto has a voice that is honest, tough, tender and more than a little quirky. Her character lives through everyday annoyance and tragedy in a seamless, and reflective style--just as we all do, when life throws the mundane and major events at you without pause, and in the same aggravatng breath. Somehow, the character makes her way through it all without evoking pity or demanding admiration. I felt like I had been invited into a real life. Read it and enjoy.

Bananamania continues

I can only say that these two stories are up to par with Banana's older books like Kitchen. Just read it.

Of Stone and Fruit

I have been a fan of Yoshimoto's body of work since 2001. After reading her debut novella Kitchen, I read her other translated works: N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep, and Goodbye Tsugumi. While by far not my favorite Yoshimoto work, Hardboiled and Hard Luck is a decent work that includes a number of themes that are present in almost every Yoshimoto novel: memory, death, and the precious moments of life which deeply root themselves into our hearts. The narrator of Hardboiled is a young woman traveling on her own through Japan's countryside. One day while walking upon a little used road the young woman comes across an old, dilapidated shrine where ten black stones are placed in a circle. Feeling an ominous air emanating from the stones, the young woman hurries back to town. However, inside an Udon noodle shop the woman finds one of the stones in one of her pockets. Later, she discovers that another one of the stones was used to build the bath within the inn in which she is staying for the night. At first she is unsure of why such odd things are happening to her, but soon it dawns on her that on the same date a year ago her friend and ex-lover Chizuru had died. Similar to the works of Murakami Haruki, it is not impossible to make amends with the dead in Yoshimoto's literary world. Hard Luck details the final days that the nameless narrator spends with both her brain dead sister and her fiancé's older brother. In my opinion the more powerful of the two short novellas, Yoshimoto creates a gentle, delicate work that details not only the emotions of losing someone close, but the healing process one goes through when a family member who has suffered long is about to die. Yoshimoto has often been criticized as a writer of fluff fiction, however, while she may not be in the same realm as Oe Kenzaburo or Takahashi Takako it does not mean that she does not bring something important to the world of Japanese Literature. Through her simple words, Yoshimoto can touch the hearts of readers. Something that a number of more literary writers are unable to do.

When death comes along

Yoshitmoto's new book (actually composed of two short stories) is about the human reaction when death comes along. It reveals our weakness to reject it and the urge for bravery and perspective to deal with it, as a living human being. In the first short story, 'Hardboiled', the narrator went to stay in a country hotel on the anniversary of her ex-girlfriend's death. The narrative is interesting as the living and the dead are all woven together in the plot. Perhaps, it is really hard to distinguish who is living, or non-living (dead and non-living are different, in a metaphorical sense). There's a particularly interesting, which is about that it is not the dead that we should be afraid of, but the living. The story talks about the pain of losing a partner and the nostalgia of their romance. In the second story, 'Hard Luck', another narrator has a sister who is going to die of a brain damage. This story is not as gothic as the first one and the suspense created by the notion of death is absent. Instead, it gives you a sweet account of the sisterhood between the living and the dead-to-be. There is also a romantic subplot in the story, between the narrator and the brother of her sister's fiance. The last chapter on the relationship between musical enlightenment and death sounds familiar in Haruki Murakami's fiction, especially in Kafka on the Shore and Dance Dance Dance. The stories are written in plain English. There's no fancy description on the setting and the psychology of the characters. But the plainness works effectively in order to bring out the theme, death. There are a few regrets upon reading the book. First, I was expecting Yoshimoto to explore the theme of lesbianism or sexuality a bit more in the first story, as she did in Kitchen. I was trying to compare it with Murakami's Spunik Sweetheart. Second, I was looking for a more substantial work since her last publication. The stories are just too short to satisfy her readers. Perhaps, she might have published more in Japanese. I always don't know why the English version needs to take so long. Or are they not translating all her works?