The Kite Family

by Hon Lai-chu, Andrea Lingenfelter (Translator)

A patient escapes from an asylum, to spend his life as the perfect mannequin in a department store display; when living alone is outlawed, a woman who resides quietly with her cat is assigned by bureaucrats to a role in an artificially created "family;" a luckless man transforms himself into a chair so people can, literally, sit on him. These are just a few of the inhabitants of Hon Lai-chu's stories, where surreal characters struggle to carve out space for freedom and individuality in an absurd world. The Chinese version of "The Kite Family" won the New Writer's Novella first prize from Taiwan's Unitas Literary Association, was one of 2008's Books of the Year according to Taiwan's China Times, was selected as one of the Top 10 Chinese Novels Worldwide, and was awarded a Translation Grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, China

232 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Hon Lai Chu was born and raised in Hong Kong, where she currently resides, and is the author of several novels, including Mending Bodies and The Border of Centrifugation, as well as a recent book of short stories, Lost Caves. With Dorothy Tse, she co-authored the 2012 short story collection A Dictionary of Two Cities, which won the Hong Kong Book Prize in 2013. In 2004, she was awarded the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature (Fiction) for her short story collection Silent Creature. Her 2006 novel Kite Family, first published as a novella, won the New Writer’s Novella first prize from Taiwan’s Unitas Literary Association; the extended version was selected as one of 2008’s Books of the Year by the China Times in Taiwan. Andrea Lingenfelter’s English translation of Hon Lai Chu’s The Kite Family was published in 2015.

Reviews

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 2 out of 5]

2★
Not for me.

I like Franz Kafka's well-known The Metamorphosis, which I've described as the Granddaddy of Weird, and I think these stories seem intended to inhabit that space.

I also like short stories, including quirky ones, preferring a tight, well-written short story to an (often unnecessarily) wordy work. The introduction by the translator is interesting, attempting to explain some stories, and the translation seems to be smooth. I liked the writing style, and I liked the ideas--I just didn’t care for how they were developed.

The first story, “Spoiled Brains”, on the surface, is about a boy obsessed with drawing maps of brains and describing how and why he escaped his homeland and wondering if other people had swapped their memories for his.

He’s eventually put in a department store window as a kind of living mannequin and told to memorise where everything is in this shopping mall so he won’t get lost. He’s told he’ll recognise the shop names in different malls (oh, yeah, we know about that all right), and that these are the coordinates and cardinal directions of his life.

I often refer to Mall World. If you feel at home in a mall, you’ll probably feel at home in malls almost anywhere in the world. There is a McDonald’s sameness about them, but with local accents and spices.

I can certainly see how that might be allegorical – arranging your life around some artificial map to the extent that it takes over your life.

The title story, The Kite Family, reminds me of the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape with a young Johnny Depp and then child actor, Leonardo Di Caprio. I’ve never read the book (which I’ve linked here), but I sure have vivid memories of the mother in the movie growing too large to sit and then too large to move out of her bed.

The grandmother of the Kites is just such a woman, and blocks a door much as Winnie-the-Pooh blocked Rabbit's rabbit hole when he ate too much honey. But this woman becomes more like Monstro, the whale in the Disney version of Pinocchio, where Geppetto sets up camp and waits (sitting on a bench, no less!) to be rescued.

The Kite family has some odd eating / metabolism disorder that makes people Eat-Getfat-Eat-Getfatter-EatEverything (rings, knick-knacks)- and then? Some of them revert to skinny, too.

I would recommend this for anyone wishing to study this kind of thing seriously. It’s not for me, I’m afraid.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a preview copy, which specifically requested no quoting--hard for me to obey! Sorry I don’t have a more favourable review.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andrea Lingenfelter, the translator of The Kite Family by Hon Lai Chu, gives us a captivating introduction why these stories are an important part of Hong Kong's literary fiction, as issues such as humanity, migration, xenophobia, family dysfunction, and deformity are presented. Compared against mainland China's fiction, which mostly focuses on China's particular themes and settings, HK fiction never had any restrictions. Her enthusiasm for this translation project made me look forward to delve into this collection.

Sadly, I didn't make it too far into each story. Surrealistic, unconventional and pretty odd, I couldn't get into them. Neither did I feel any connection to the characters. Everything was just way out-there, any metaphorical meaning and symbolism flew right past me. I tried every story, but in the end I simply gave up and stopped reading.


Review copy supplied by publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a rating and/or review.

[Evelina | AvalinahsBooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man, do we have some deep literary shit here. Been reading this since September, and was it a tough cookie. Parts sparked my interest, and then... the stories would get so mixed up I wouldn't know what to make of them.

When I stumble upon books like that, I always wonder - is it me? Or..?

However, I'm not going to judge. Maybe it's just not for me. And I have to admit, as crazy and all over the place the stories are, they do paint quite strong impressions of the world the author wants to show us. Maybe the right way to read this is like looking at an impressionist painting - from far away, not trying to make sense of the details, but simply following the emotions it stirs up. The closest of a simile I can find for the storytelling in this book is... dreams. You get into the story, maybe start seeing through the metaphors... And then suddenly a giant pterodactyl sweeps by and the story changes and completely  runs away from you.



Well, okay. Not literally a pterodactyl, but the comparison is really quite close to the reality. It's just so... weird. And yet - there is a certain logic, certain laws. But they're so otherworldly - all I can compare it to are dreams.

I have the feeling though that the author wanted to put everything in code, use metaphors for literally everything she wanted to say. In a way it's interesting, but I can get only like 25% of all of those - the rest is too complicated. I wonder if someone else gets the rest - it would be interesting to try to see where she was going with it.

But I'm always like that. I'll always first assume IT'S ME. The other reviews though, point in the direction of me being in the majority. I do read literary, but man, was this too literary for me :D I'm glad it's received awards in Hong Kong, and maybe some things just get lost in translation? God only knows.



To give you a taste of how weird this book is, have a quote. And if you think that's a good metaphor, well, it DOES sound good when it's on its own... but this book is MADE of these:

"We've arranged new housing for you. In addition to basic furnishings, the unit is equipped with a father, mother-in-law, a husband and a younger brother."

This is Gregor Samsa, in roach form, but on crack, with a glass of beer and a smokin' joint. In a burning spaceship. Closest I can get to what it felt like.

So needless to say, it missed me. It totally missed me.

You can find this post on on my blog, but I advise you to look for some reviews for better books on there.

[Max Bean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each Short is sumarised below:

The opening explains that the translator is friends with the author and they would hang out in Causeway Bay together.

Every short is WEIRD, to say the least.
It’s like you are stuck in a dream, the contents of which are nightmarish, but the people in the dream are completely passive and emotionless.

.

Spoilers:

.

1 Spoiled Brains 3.5*
Weird, very weird, but the theme seems to mock anti-revolutionary sentiment.

The protagonist, Blanc, got smuggled away in a truck full of other refugees and tomatoes. He is the only survivor. He goes to hospital and spends his time drawing pig brains. He tells Drs that he and his mum lived in a glass box in a mall next to a public toilet and he hated it, hated the smell. His mum always told him to ignore his nose and that it’s not so bad. The hospital finds Blanc a ‘job’ as the display item in a glass box in a furniture shop. “You just have to learn to put up with things.” A man with a high-bridged nose accuses Blanc of stealing locals’ jobs. A wrinkly woman agrees that no matter where you go, you have to learn to ‘put up with things’. Blanc’s year there is up and he gets relocated to public housing development. But he gets apprehended by police for being involved in ‘the unlawful buying and selling of brains’.
The end.

.

2 The Kite Family
3* It is so weird. The plot advances so much to the point where it leaves me wondering how important ‘plot’ even is in general.

The Protagonist can’t remember when the drilling started and when everything had begun. Her Grandma had said, “Change is the beginning of new hope.” But TP doesn’t believe that.
Some of the story reminds me of Hong Kong:
*Constant noise from construction
*Improvised shops in narrow streets
*Competing at school and being overworked

The grandmother is constantly getting fatter and is dying. She says she will float away like a balloon.
Being obese is like a disease in this story. A genetic disease where what you eat is irrelevant. The mother catches this fat disease, but somehow gets on top of it and becomes skinny agin. The protagonist also gets it and stops recognising herself in the mirror. Almost every time food gets mentioned it is about how much food gets wasted nowadays and how there wasn’t enough in the past.

TP talks about how everyone is ‘playing roles’, when she was a child, she played the role of a child and her teacher played the role of teacher. 2 boys in her class, Zero and Dusty, were playing a game like hide and seek and when Dusty opened his eyes, he saw that Zero had sawn off one of his legs. This was ‘just a child’s game’. TP likes pushing Dusty around in his wheelchair, she likes the way his open wound smells like rotting fish.
TP’s mother secretly buries the grandmother and tells her that all the women of their family will be subject to the same death: ‘death by swelling up’. Before she had died, she started eating everything from jewellery to the walls surrounding her.

TP’s sister hides under the table ripping up magazines. Mother spends all day rambling away, and TP just unexpressionally listens. She talks about TP’s Dad. How he was so fat and had such a dark shadow. How she loved that shadow. How if they had less furniture, she would have been able to live in his shadow forever. How if he had tied a fishbone to his finger, she would have stayed with him for life (this, like many things, never gets remotely explained). How she wanted to outlive him to learn his secrets.

TP starts staying with her morbidly obese aunt. She waits for ‘The Man’ to visit every week at the same time. He waits outside her window, but the Aunt is too scared to look at him. She hides under a curtain. The Aunt is not sure he was ever real. She asks TP to look at the man. After a few weeks of these 'meetings', TP does look at him. She asks if it is him who is carving names into all the local trees. They establish a weird relationship and do things like go to the aquarium together. The Aunt spends all her time clapping hands in order to loose weight. One day, TP tries to imitate her on a hill and, as a result, the man never returns. The stone in his stomach continues to grow, but he wrongly believes it has stopped growing... And so TP returns to her mum.

One day, a workman drills a hole through the wall and into her sister’s head. Mother asks TP to put her in the freezer. TP remembers that they used to tie a piece of string to her and then TP would go running on windy days trying to lift her sister into the air as a kite (they succeeded only once). TP also remembers that her sister used to stand naked at the window and bite passersby who tried to touch her (unless they brought her snacks). Anyway, the sister dies. The mother never returns and TP stares at the ever-changing walls in her home. One day, the workmen drill a corridor into a wall and tell her that it leads straight to the museum where all the dead fat people are kept. She goes there because she wants to lay on her Grandma. She takes a bath and settles for laying on a fat man instead. She thinks about being her sister and getting swept into the sky, like a kite.
The end.

.

3 Forrest Woods, Chair
4.5*
M tells Mrs Woods that her son has become a chair and he would like to buy it. Forrest’s brother held a seminar where people declared what they were and a few days later, Forrest realised that he was a chair. He let his GF sit on him, something that continued after they broke up. The book keeps mentioning the unemployment rate and, now that it is decreasing, Forrest feels more compelled to stop being unemployed. He becomes a full-time chair, giving his clients letters as their names. One of his clients, L, suffers from a bad back and has tried every chair known to man. She is obsessed with sitting on Forrest Woods. He continues to devote himself to being more chair-like. He stops eating and his skin becomes canvas-like and his bones become wood. L wants to give him the highest honour for a chair by selling him. She ships him off overseas and explains this to Mrs Woods. She is ‘proud of him’ for getting a good job and working abroad.
The end

.

4 Front Teeth
2.5*
A dentist’s clinic has lots of doors (like a maze) and an ever-smiling receptionist.
A dentist remembers being a boy and stealing his mother’s teeth as they randomly fell out at night. His father and he watch TV together and says that his mother used to be a famous actress playing prostitutes. He gets one of her movies and for the first time feels a connection to his mother, colouring all her teeth black (the same as the character from the movie).
A woman, Pearl, who has teeth growing from the roof of her mouth goes to see him to get them removed, 4 at a time.
She remembers her brother prying open their black pet rat’s mouth and it suffering a long agonising death as its teeth continued growing through its jaws.
The Dentist remembers how his mum used to constantly berate him and his father and how they silently enjoyed this. When her last tooth falls out, she never speaks again, and their household becomes silent.
The nurse quits.
Pearl remembers how she saw a psychic who told her she needs to bury one of her teeth in order to cure all her misfortune.
Pearl’s teeth start growing back and she returns to the Drs (I think he sees that a tree is growing out of her mouth and it is the thing producing the teeth, but I am not sure if this was just a metaphor).
She asks if she can become the nurse, but the Dr says that she can’t because nurses need to smile.
Pearl gets assaulted by a child (because she’s so ugly… the police do not care).
She decides to bury a tooth, but before she is able to, ‘Everything moves into the realm of the unknown.’
The end.

.

5 Heartbreak Hotel
3.5*

BBL Tower randomly collapses. Amber (and other survivours) leave the wreckage and go to the nearest hotel. She asks for the smallest room. The hotel attendant gives her vouchers ‘for breakfast’ which she can use at the Hotel Store. She remembers her ex, The Man With The Black Shoes, who was late to work a few times (due to problems with the 656 bus), got fired and then gave away all but one pair of his shoes. They lived in BBL behind a purple door. She understood what he wanted to say by his actions, which were mostly abusive and routinely featured him throwing shoes at her. Her sister, Dot, told her to leave him, but she valued his companionship too much.
One day she goes to the hotel store and buys a man with no memory, calling him Clay. She gets him a sofa to sleep on. Dot comes over and tells her to sell him and move in with her.
One day Clay takes her on the 656 bus and shows her fragments of his past life.
Later, she remembers that her ex was also named ‘Clay’.
When she returns, she realises that the walls in her room have changed.
The hotel clerk tells her that’s impossible, however he has to negotiate the conversation carefully as he ‘doesn’t want to upset the heartbroken’. She asks to borrow the Hotel laptop and sell Clay online to the highest bidder. She takes Clay to the train station to make the exchange and hands the new owner the red ribbon around Clay’s wrist.
The end.

.

6
Notes on an Epidemic
3.5*

Survivors of a virus wake up in hospital and feel something’s changed. They have to leave the hospital soon to free up space. One reason the virus hit them so hard was because they were loners. The patients are assigned families to move in with. The Protagonist remembers her family. Her mother was nuts and wanted to methodically buy everything to fix up their apartment. The mother finds a replacement for her duties and leaves. Her replacement smiles from time to time. TP offers her father a deal: he will pay her way and she will leave, repaying when she is older - he agrees. She moves out and lives next to a 7- and 10-year old on either side.

Snap back to the hospital: TP gets moved to her assigned family. None of them are related and all struggled with the illness. The matriarch says that they all need to ‘act the part’ and play the roles they have been assigned. She orders TP to sleep with her ‘husband’ in full view of anyone who wants to watch.
TP remembers how her dad and grandma were close (physically close). She wonders whether it was because her grandma had weak bones and needed support, or (as her sister pointed out) whether they were lovers.
TP enters the room with the onlookers and needs to ‘graft herself’ to her husband.
She remembers having a cat, and how during the epidemic, all pets were destroyed in order to contain the virus. Unwanted people were taken in by pet shops and rented out as companions to the petless.

I assume it’s a new day now: The Thin Man (the husband) lies to the mother, saying he’s feeling unwell and needs to leave the house. TP and TTM go out. He talks about how he yearns for a ‘single-occupancy flat’ and after they board a crowded MTR, TP can see why.

TP wants to return to City-S. The family are getting better and want to start leaving the house, but Mother forbids it, saying that her illness is coming back and is now terminal. Father wants to throw her a party until help can arrive. They hire her a professional mourner who cries until the ambulance arrives. After Mother is gone, TP feels so happy and free.

The Father gets worries that ‘the count is off’ at home and so TP and TTM consider renting an old lady. TP remembers how her sister asked her to rent a little girl so that she could run away.

Younger Brother asks TP for a brother reference so he can leave and find employment as a brother in another family.
TP sees Father constantly sleeping on the sofa and is reminded of her cat.

Years later people ask her how she survived the epidemic and she tells them that she just ‘kept on living’… they don’t believe her.

[Jule · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

To be precise, my rating would need to be an 2,5 out of 5, but since I am leaning a bit towards the positive rather than being completely undecided, I will leave it at 3/5.

Short stories are difficult. I still have memories of school, having to interpret them and find the "right" solution. It was only later in life that I learned to read them for fun. Unfortunately, this collection by Hon Lai Chu reminded me a lot of these stories from school. Her short stories were, may I say traditional, by which I mean they needed to be "solved" by associating meaning with metaphors and symbols. Sure, they are all well written (or rather: well translated, thank you Andrea Lingenfelter), very intriguing and interesting. But the big problem was the meaning. Every time I thought I had understood a story, another scene made my interpretation meaningless. Thus, I wrote down "got it" behind every title on a notepad, only to later add "kinda", "maybe halfway" and "?".

From what I could understand - the last two stories "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Notes on an Epidemic", as well as "Forrest Wood, Chair" worked better than the other three - this collection talks a lot about modern society. Finding work, being lonely, exploitation of workers, these sort of problems. There was also a thought or two about philosophy. In the end, though, I blame the missing cultural link for my lack of understanding (because the stories themselves, as I said, are well written). I am sure somebody involved or interested in Hong Kong / Asian culture could get a lot more out of these than I did.

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Oh goodness. I had such high hopes for this book. Unfortunately this was not the book for me. I am sure that the work was translated accurately- however the style of writing was not what I was accustomed to and I found it to be confusing. The book is described as being prose- so I never expected it to be literal or straightforward. Though I was prepared for this collection of short stories to be different from what I am used to reading, I found them to be a little too out there for me. They felt super trippy and focused on things in a way that made it seem like they were supposed to be significant- but I couldn't understand why or how.
It could be very possible that I just was not the right audience for this work.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

In her introduction, translator Andrea Lingenfelter mentioned Hon's "spare, elegant prose". Then in the title story,

But the sound of drilling merged into and became one with my ears, and my tears and anger hardened like dried cement into a wall that only the most physically fit could hope to climb.

I probably have a different notion of "spare and elegant", or there were challenges in the translation that I'm not aware of. I'll try to hunt down a copy of the original to check out that sentence.

I did enjoy the concepts behind some of the stories. But the prose could be quite distracting.

[May · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can't say I entirely enjoyed it. The writing was good and unique but I gave up reading some stories because it was too bizarre to understand

[Elizabeth Bolin · Rating 2 out of 5]

i liked the weirdness of the stories but i found the message or meaning so obscured that none of them really did anything for me. finished all of them like “huh. ok i guess”

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had really, really high expectations for this book. I mean, true, I'm not very well-informed on Hong Kong's literary scene (all I know is about Lee Bo), but I have grown up watching Hong Kong dramas. So I figured that I should enjoy this book.

Unfortunately, my expectations were certainly set too high.

The introduction sounded really good, and made me really excited. But the stories... were confusing. It wasn't that they were surreal - I can deal with surreal, it's that I couldn't find a plot. Let me deal with them one by one:

The first story is 'Spoiled Brains'. I had absolutely no idea what it was about. I think it's about immigration?

The next was 'The Kite Family', the titular story. Ok, I sort of understood this one. It's about a family who is genetically predisposed to become extremely obese. I do not get the point of the story though, it felt like it was just describing a family.

The third chair was possibly the one that I liked the best. "Forrest Woods, Chair", is about a man who realises that he was meant to be a chair. Yes, it's weird, but it made sense in its own way.

The fourth story also made sense, which gave me a bit of hope. It's called "Front Teeth", and it's about a lady who has way too many teeth. And the dentist, though I didn't really understand what was going on with the dentist.

Next was "Heartbreak Hotel", which I'd rank as somewhere between "The Kite Family" and "Forrest Woods, Chair". I sort of understood it, but I wasn't sure what it was trying to say. It's about a woman who goes to live in a hotel after the building she was living in collapses.

Lastly was "Notes on an Epidemic", about some strange epidemic for which the cure is social interaction. I got the setting, but not the plot, and definitely not the ending.

While I was reading this book, I had this sense that the author was trying to make a point about Hong Kong society. It's a bit like reading Catherine Lim, only I know what she's complaining/making a point about because she's slightly more obvious and I'm Singaporean, so the references come faster to me. Here, I "catch no ball", as we say in Singlish.

It's a real pity. I was hoping to find a Hong Kong author that I could become a fan of. I guess I'm not meant for Works With A Point (which makes me a terrible ex-Literature student, I guess)

Disclaimer: I got a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of six short stories set in Hong Kong (or China). They're hard to review since they're full of metaphors and symbolism; they're also quite different, tackling different issues.

Now, they're not an easy, fun read - like the novels we read to relax or forget about our day. They're thought-provoking, and they make you question what the author really wanted to portray.

I'll say my own interpretation of the stories. I hope I got it right.

Spoiled Brains - tackles immigration and how people treat different people. Also, how replaceable people see other people.

The Kite Family - family and people whom's body are disappearing. I think the idea was about how people put so much accent on the body and less to the mind and spirit.

Forrest Woods, Chair - people who cannot find their place in this world, who feels useless, like objects.

Front Teeth - talks about our obsession with exterior beauty, such as pearly white teeth. And how perfect white smiles can be so cold . . .

Heartbreak Hotel - depressed people and how people are treated as commodities/objects.

Notes on an Epidemic - talks about how people these days tend to be very self-centered. They care only about themselves, and no one else. Such people also tend to live alone or use people to fulfill their basic needs/desires and that's about it.

In general, these short stories are about people's lives and how they are treated in their society. It is also about appearances vs reality.

I will re-read this collection. I'm sure I will understand it even better after a re-read. I also think that if I knew more about China and Hong Kong I would've got more out of them. This is on my part, and not the author's fault.

This short-stories are not for everyone. If you only read to forget about reality, these stories are not for you. However, I urge you to give it a try - they're interesting.

[Amanda Rogozinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction to this collection of short stories, translated from Chinese, is fascinating. Andrea Lingenfeiter explains the political situation for writers in China and gives succinct explanations for the stories that provide a lot of clarity. The Kite Family is a voice aimed to shock capitalistic society out of its absurdity in treating human beings like they are a commodity. The images in this collection are quite striking--an obesity problem so uncontrollable that a woman cannot be physically contained in a house, a stowaway set up as a real-life mannequin in a furniture display, or a man purchased from a store of salvaged wreckage. Still, I enjoyed the introduction's synopsis of the stories more than the stories themselves. Though the big picture message was easy enough to grasp, the stories had many additional elements to them that seemed important yet eluded me. I suspect this is due to how foreign the phrasing read and my own lack of familiarity with societal/political themes. I did not finish this book but I do hope to revisit it at a later date. Perhaps with maturity it will grow on me.

Find more reviews at: TheWillowNook.com

[Maria Beltrami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Belli questi racconti, ma di una bellezza forse un po' troppo aliena. Scenari di tipo occidentale, ma storie che funzionano solo se calate in una realtà orientale, con personaggi che hanno desideri, modi di vedere la vita e psicosi lontani dai nostri. Lettura difficile, interessante, capace di dare una migliore comprensione di un mondo lontano dal nostro, ma faticosa e non entusiasmante.
Ottima traduzione, che non cerca di addomesticare l'alienità.
Ringrazio East Slope Publishing Limited e Netgalley per avermi fornito una copia gratuita in cambio di una recensione onesta.

These short stories are beautiful, but of a beauty perhaps a bit too alien. Western-style scenarios, but stories that work only if lowered into an eastern reality, with characters who have desires, ways of seeing life and psychosis far from our own. Difficult, interesting reading, able to give a better understanding of a world far from ours, but exhausting and uninspiring.
Excellent translation, which does not try to tame the alienness.
Thank East Slope Publishing Limited and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange and mesmerizing stories that range from the slightly grotesque (Spolied Brains), to the delicate, ethereal title story, The Kite Family. These may not suit all readers, but I found myself transported by the very personal, bizarre vision at work in the author's writing. For me, this was most effectively done in the stories 'Heartbreak Hotel' and 'Notes on a Epidemic'. These to stories directly tap into their respective main characters' sense of loneliness and loss. Each story took awhile to digest but it was worth it. I am sure this was not an easy book to translate, but Andrea Lingenfelter has done a fine job with these stories, and they read smoothly. Altogether delightful reading experience.

[Bookspective · Rating 2 out of 5]

Try hard as I may, I absolutely did not get this book, the essence was completely lost on me. What I had been reading in this book was so bizarre and unfamiliar that I gave up half way and moved on to read other books. But I never like leaving a book unfinished, so I tried picking it up a few months later and just speed read through it.

I guess this book really was "lost in translation".

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my opinion.