Mark Derricutt's Disturbing Thoughts
Strangers
posted Sunday, 10 July 2005
 | Strangers Taichi Yamada Date: 2005-07-10 12:14:12 — $10.17 — Book Rating: |
Recently there has been an uptake on the release on americanized horror movies from Japan with the likes of The Ring, Dark Water, and The Grude, and I've also noticed a rise in Japanese novels being translated and brought to the english speaking world. This is the first Japanese novel I've read, thou I'm sure if there's others out there like this I'm sure I'll be reading more of them...
Strangers is described as "A cerebral and hauting ghost story, which compleately wrong-footed me" and I don't have much more to say than repeat that sentinment. The story centers around the life of Harada, a recently divorced TV script writer whose forced to live in the apartment complex he uses as his office. Life for Harada hasn't been great; his parents died in an automobile accident when he was 12, his marriage is destroyed, his son little more a "fact" than intimate part of his life, and with the exception of one other tennant - the entire complex is empty outside office hours.
The novel contains a overt sense of numbness, beyond all the tradgedy, life goes on, but theres no enjoyment, no spark, just tomorrow. But all that changes when Harada returns to his home town and meets a young couple who appear to be his mother and father, who died 30+ years ago. Finally there's happyness, there's contentment, there's someone to share a beer and a laugh with; someone to break the mundane bleakness that was last week - but what is the true cost of happyness?
Strangers is described as "A cerebral and hauting ghost story, which compleately wrong-footed me" and I don't have much more to say than repeat that sentinment. The story centers around the life of Harada, a recently divorced TV script writer whose forced to live in the apartment complex he uses as his office. Life for Harada hasn't been great; his parents died in an automobile accident when he was 12, his marriage is destroyed, his son little more a "fact" than intimate part of his life, and with the exception of one other tennant - the entire complex is empty outside office hours.
The novel contains a overt sense of numbness, beyond all the tradgedy, life goes on, but theres no enjoyment, no spark, just tomorrow. But all that changes when Harada returns to his home town and meets a young couple who appear to be his mother and father, who died 30+ years ago. Finally there's happyness, there's contentment, there's someone to share a beer and a laugh with; someone to break the mundane bleakness that was last week - but what is the true cost of happyness?
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