Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Reviewer: Deb Alig, Circulation Assistant
Genre: Contemporary Japanese fiction
Suggested Age: Adult
What is this book about? Kitchen is a novel that features two different stories that have similar themes but different characters and plots. The first story is Kitchen named after the novel. The second story is Moon Shadow which I think should be a stand alone book. Kitchen is about a young Japanese woman named Mikage who is raised by her grandmother after her parents die when she was young. She faces loss again when her grandmother unexpectedly passes away. She experiences loneliness and despair and can only find comfort sleeping in the kitchen which is her favorite place to be. Fortunately for Mikage, a young friend of her grandmother’s named Yuichi Tanabe, invites her to come and stay with him and his transgender mother Eriko. Without any living relatives, it’s easy for her to accept. Yuichi and Eriko live in a very comfortable home with a wonderful kitchen which brings Mikage much joy. The three form a little family, but eventually Mikage has to move out to start a culinary job. Months pass without Mikage hearing from Yuichi, and that is because tragedy has struck again. Mikage receives a difficult call from Yuichi. Eriko is dead. She was murdered by a stalker. Now Yuichi is the one falling apart, and Mikage is devastated too. Though the two feel like orphans, they have each other. Can their love for each other overcome their despair?
In Moonlight Shadow, a young woman named Satsuki loses her boyfriend Hitoshi in a terrible car accident. She becomes friends with his brother Hiirgi whose girlfriend was killed in the same crash. One evening, while out for a run to the site of the crash, a woman bumps into Satsuki and knocks her thermos out of her hands and into the water below. The woman apologizes and introduces herself as Urara. Urara arranges to meet with Satsuki to give her a new thermos. She meets up with her at the crash site on the bridge and shares some magical insight with her. She explains that once every hundred years or so, near a big river, when supernatural forces are aligned just right, paranormal phenomenon may occur. People who know about this call it The Weaver Festival Phenomenon. It’s when “[t]he residual thoughts of a person who has died meet the sadness of someone left behind, and[a] vision is produced” (147). And so magically, Satsuki sees a vision of Hitoshi at the crash site where he was killed. He smiles and waves to her as he walks off into the mist. Will this experience finally help Sastuki attain some closure? Can she now grow emotionally closer to Hiirgi?
My Review: I enjoyed each story of the novel, but I would have rather read them separately. While both stories shared similar themes, their plots were very different. I think that Moon Shadow could have been longer on its own allowing for better plot development. I also would have been more satisfied just reading Kitchen as it is. I’m not quite sure why the editor chose to include these two very different stories in one novel.
Rating: 3/5
Three Words That Describe This Book: despair, compassion, hope
Give this a try if you like: Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (The Go Between, #1) by, Mizuki Tsujimura; The Lantern of Lost Memories by, Sanaka Hiiragi; and The Kamogawa Food Detectives by, Hisashi Kashiwai
