Three Scenarios In Which Hana Sasaki Grows A Tail

by Kelly Luce

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is a debut collection of stories from Kelly Luce. Hana Sasaki will introduce you to many things—among them, an oracular toaster, a woman who grows a tail, and an extraordinary sex-change operation. Set in Japan, these stories tip into the fantastical, plumb the power of memory, and measure the human capacity to love.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Japan, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection

152 pages, ebook

First published October 1, 2013

About the author

Kelly Luce is the author of Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (A Strange Object, 2013), which won Foreword Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize for Fiction, and the novel Pull Me Under (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) a Book of the Month selection and one of Elle's 33 Best Books of 2016. She grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years.

Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross Foundation, Sozopol Fiction Seminars, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Salon, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Sun, and other publications. She received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin in 2015. She is the editor of Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading Commuter and was a 2016-17 fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives in an old grist mill in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Twitter: @lucekel

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads recommended this book to me just now based on what I'd read recently. Turns out I've already read it! Good call, goodreads.

[alpacaman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, weird little book.

[Julianne (Leafling Learns・Outlandish Lit) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5, but rounded up]

I'm not sure why I expected this collection of short stories to be creepy, but I did and I was slightly misled by that. Though certainly strange, they're often delightful or beautifully haunting. Bizarre things happen, like people growing tails or a toaster predicting how people will die, but these are fully stories about reality and humans' relations to one another.

All of these stories are based in or focused on Japan, where Luce lived for three years. What was so lovely about these stories was how they were all told by or about outsiders, be they gaijin (foreigners) or Japanese people who feel like they are on the outskirts of their communities. I was startled by the appearance of demons and magical karaoke machines just as much as I was by how gently Luce could break my heart and tenderly stitch it back together again with her hope for our world.

FAVORITE STORIES: The Blue Demon of Ikumi, Ash, Rooey, Cram Island

Full review: Outlandish Lit - 3 Startling Short Story Collections

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

The elements of Kelly Luce's writing sneak up you. There is subtle humor, understated emotion, patient action. Even the fantasy is maintained at a slow boil, so you can watch as each bubble grows then pops. One could make the obvious comparisons - Aimee Bender and Kelly Link, for example - but the surreal and supernatural parts of Luce's stories read as whispers. Each story seems only half-aware of the magic within itself. These are high-concept stories in which the story masks the concept. The effect can be jarring, or maybe the opposite - being jarred by the lack of jarringness. Even more than matter-of-fact, the surreal elements are forgettable, at least for the characters who experience them. But the internal irrelevance of the surreal makes it somehow more compelling for a reader.

I don't know anyone who's written magic realism (or whatever you want to call it) quite like this, and I can only hope that Kelly Luce keeps the stories coming. In addition, this book is a great debut for the new press A Strange Object, and I look forward to their future offerings.

[Erika Dreifus]

Please see my interview with author Kelly Luce (based on a complimentary advance reading copy of the book) right here.

[Sara Shakouri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book out of sheer boredom: it was short and I felt some traces of Murakami are within, which makes me dislike a book without any sense of disappointment. Surprise! SURPRISE! This is how Mr. Murakami should learn to write his short stories: elements of magic/extraordinary/whatever you name it are there, but the stories are way way more humane. With precision, compassion and a wry humor, Kelly Luce makes deep cuts into the lives of her characters, and offers a closer look ofthese (mostly) outsiders.
Definitely a recommendation.

[Lesley R M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok so I love this author’s, Kelly Luce’s, brain 🧠 and how she has used it to blow me away. Many of these short stories I did not want to end and she does that to the reader so well! If you are a fan of the whimsical, weird (the Toaster and the Tail), and lovely with some dark tones this is your book.

This is a fast and easy read and I was pleasantly surprised by the imagination, well written, absolutely gorgeous short stories! Try it!!

[Allie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is both the debut collection of Kelly Luce and the debut title from the Austin-based small press A Strange Object. My, do they make a good team.

Beautifully written and meticulously edited, Hana Sasaski contains a little over a hundred pages of stories that circle the subject of Japan. Writing from both insiders' and outsider's perspective, Luce constructs stories that sneak up on you. I found myself thinking about stories and images from this collection long after I finished reading it.

The strangeness in these stories is wonderfully understated, and the surreality comes just as much from the characters' emotional lives as it does from the hills of golden volcanic ash or the titular tail. The stories are concrete rather than abstract or allegorical, and even the strangest ones seem populated with real people inhabiting a real space. I especially enjoyed Luce's clear, deadpan prose, which had a sharp eye for detail and an ear for humor.

You can read the collection's closing story, "Amorometer", here. I recommend you do.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luce’s carefully observed, contemporary Japanese settings include Tokyo, small country towns, and an out-of-the-way inn. Her stories feature Japanese teenagers, pensioners, and academics, along with American expatriates. As for her plots, well, Hana Sasaki is not the only character to grow a tail. The fantastic slips unobtrusively into her narratives. There is a toaster that can predict the cause of a person’s death. A rundown karaoke joint houses a gateway to another world. Coins tossed into a fountain tell their stories to the old man who collects them. There is also practical advice on how to handle the Tokyo legal system. (Hint: plead guilty.)

There are only ten stories in this elegantly produced book by a new small press, but they contain an imagination that suggests a world that crosses path with our own in surprising, sometimes melancholy ways. Luce’s prose leads the reader into her world, and it proves to be a wonderful place to spend time

[Marie-Therese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I unreservedly loved this and am tempted to give it five stars. So, let's say, 4.5

Just a terrific collection of brief, often ambiguous, haunting tales. Saying too much about any of them would likely spoil their initial impact, so I'll just note that all the stories reference Japan in some way (most are set in Japan) and Japanese folk lore and aesthetics inform each of them (sometimes subtly, often in a more overt manner). Luce's prose is masterly; concise and graceful, her sentences bespeak a writer who knows not only what she wants to say but also precisely how she wants to say it. There is nothing excessive here, almost nothing that doesn't serve the story. These are clean, controlled tales that somehow incorporate magical imagery and rich imagination without adding bloat. A very special blend, too little found. I think I've just talked myself into adding that last half star.

Very highly recommended for anyone who loves a good short story.

[James Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

If imaginations were muscles Kelly Luce's would look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. This book is full of clear, precise, beautiful writing (not "pretty" writing; there is a difference) and surprising insights to, as some writer once said (George Saunders?) "what it's like to be a goddamn human." If you're looking for something a little different, in a really good way, read this one.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hypnotizing selection of stories told with an insightful, lyrical voice. There is an air of danger, but also some humor, lots of heart, and a touch of magic—a very unique POV. I hear bits of Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, and Haruki Murakami in here, but Kelly is her own storyteller, and this slim volume was a pleasure to read.

[Rom Mojica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always have a problem with short story collections for two reasons.

1, something in my brain keeps wanting to find meaning, throughlines, reasoning for things like order of the stories and where they fall in the books. A lot of times they're there, and it's not so hard to find them (this collection seems to be a way of examining small magics, real or imagined, that affect every day life, though a lot of it also deals with loss, death, and major life changes), but sometimes a collection is just writing they did for other places, and there isn't necessarily an easy throughline, but I keep thinking about it still. It just kind of distracts my brain while I'm reading them, and I know it's entirely mental, but that's part of why I don't read too many short story collections.

2, the stories always feel, to me, like they end right before they have a point, or right as they get to it, but in a way that doesn't quite make it land and hit you the way it seems like it SHOULD. The best short stories I've read have stuck with me for days, the concentrated burst of story something that can still affect me like new later on. And that's the big problem with this collection - almost every story ended and I found myself going "uh... huh. ok."

Which I thought the stories were very well written, and Kelly Luce does a fine job of creating characters that feel like they have real inner lives, real relationships with each other. They feel lived in, for lack of a better term, and like we're seeing the snapshot of this particular moment in their lives, which was always welcome to read, and grounded it so that a lot of the more magical elements felt like they fit, too.

Kelly, who moved to Japan from Illinois and makes me go "hmmm" when I think about a white woman introducing all these magical elements to a sort of 'mystic Asian country' and writing stories from the perspective of Japanese people despite not being one herself, does at least capture, in some of her stories, the feeling of being an outsider well, especially in the one where the ash rains from the sky. It's these spots where she has the awareness to write about this from her own lane that I think it shines a bit more, too. But I do tend to balk at a white American author putting out a series of stories where multiple of them are from the perspective of a native Japanese person.

But I think my main issues with it kind of go back to point 1 and this nagging feeling that I just didn't read this right. That I was looking for something else, or my mind's just set up in a way to where I'm not finding myself marveling at the strange ways realism and fantasy come together in these stories. The book sets the stage early with this in the story of Ms. Yamada's toaster and its ability to predict death. Where other reviews I've read seemed to marvel at these being included in the stories, it felt oddly expected to me. And it left me with just the questions that, as in point 1, I keep wondering about. Sure, she grows a tail, but why? Does it relate to the other woman from an earlier story, named Saki, who also said she grew a tail? Did either of them ACTUALLY grow one, and if so, for what reason? Is it just a thing that happened, or is it a symbol I don't get?

And on and on until I finish the book.

So yeah this one didn't really work for me super well in terms of What It's All About but I did like Kelly's writing, so that leaves me in a weird middle-ground of hoping that her next work is just about something better, and like wanting people to read it for the style, but also not wanting them to read it for the content. If that makes sense. Hana Sasaki can grow as many tails as she wants and they can be described as beautifully as possible, but if I don't have more of a reason to care about it, it's really not going to hook me into the book.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Kelly Luce before reading this collection, and I'm pretty impressed. Her style is very imaginative and, at times, surreal. Her best stories are enchanting to read. The last four or so stories were all so wonderful that I had to read them in one sitting. I enjoyed the theme of expatriatism in this collection--many of Luce's characters are outsiders, which provides intriguing internal conflict. All of the stories (if I'm not mistaken) take place in Japan but are narrated by/incorporate expatriate characters who have varying reasons for ending up where they did; I enjoyed that aspect of this collection, particularly, because it made the stories feel like they were all situated within the same universe, like one character from one story might bump into another character from another story on the subway. I appreciate the care Luce took in compiling these stories for this collection.

That said, however, I did not like a couple of these, though they did all fit in with the themes of the collection. All in all, this is a solid debut, and I'm intrigued to see what Luce puts out in the future.

[Corrie Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Transported me to a foreign land where, when something odd happens, well... it's still odd, just not quite as odd as it should be. Captured my imagination and made me wish for more stories!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully weird, off-kilter short stories set in Japan. Ghosts, tails, mysterious devices, and people who aren't who they seem to be. <3

[Scott Semegran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was turned onto this book at my local bookstore by the store manager who said it had hints of magical realism and was also their bestseller. My interest was piqued. Plus, the author had spent time in Austin at the Michener Center, which I thought was pretty cool. All the short stories had some relation to Japan, whether they were set in Japan or have Japanese characters or characters obsessed with Japanese culture. There were only 10 stories in this small book and I'd break them down into three lengths: micro, shorter, and longer stories. The shortest story was 3 pages; the longest was 26 pages.

Both micro stories were unsatisfying, too short to unfold in any meaningful way besides being impressionistic. Like a skilled painter using a one-inch wide paintbrush on a 2 by 2-inch square canvas, the skilled stroke of each micro story didn't paint much of a scene or story. The writer in me thought, 'Kind of interesting.' The reader in me thought, 'Wish there was more.'

The five shorter stories were hit or miss: two being exceptional, one having a funny premise but lacking some background information about the narrator that made the story feel under baked, and two that were eerie yet lackluster. The story titled Ms. Yamada's Toaster had the funny premise of a toaster that could predict how people would die--soon after many did die in their predicted fashion--then the omniscient toaster with the penchant for predicting someone's mortality suddenly breaks. Pretty funny story idea! The best of these shorter stories, Wisher, was an amazing piece about a gardener who could hear the wishes of the people who tossed coins into the garden fountain. It was poignant, magical, and heartbreaking--all at once.

The longer stories were where the author really shined. Having a larger canvas to build her worlds, the three longest stories were the best of the book: Rooey, Pioneers, and Amorometer. The longer story-length gave the author enough room to explore the themes of these stories: loneliness, relationships, death, repressed sexual feelings, desire, and depression. The author skillfully fleshed out her characters with all the ticks, mannerisms, and personalities of three-dimensional human beings, a hard task to accomplish in short stories. And the author's ability to use imaginative similes didn't go unnoticed. "He scratched his beard. He'd stopped trimming it, and these days it resembled a storm cloud about to burst." Fantastic imagery! In Amorometer, a widowed college professor writes a lovelorn letter to a former female research participant from the 1960s who had the highest score of all the participants in his important study using the Amorometer, a device capable of measuring one's capacity to love. Out of curiosity and loneliness, she agrees to meet him even though she's married. But as powerful as the Amorometer seemed to be to measure one's capacity to love, it couldn't measure one’s capacity to lie, a characteristic which the former female research participant had in spades.

Now, I see this book as a primer for a longer work like the novel Pull Me Under, which I look forward to reading. I wish this small collection of short stories contained more but, if the longer stories in this book are proof, then I look forward to diving into the novel Pull Me Under. Kelly Luce is a fantastic writer!

[Casey Hannan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rare time I pick a book off the shelf and it's the right book for me beginning to end. There's a lot here that's magical, and you'll see many comparisons to the authors you'd expect, but I found myself comfortable in these stories in the same way I am in the stories of Alice Munro. If Munro's stories coil long and spiral in and out of their own tails, Luce's stories are the abbreviated versions and no less vivid and polite in their completeness for that abbreviation. Each story is a whole "strange object," writing that's not continuously one-upping itself with surprising lines but rather sits in your thoughts later like a song. (And as a writer, I commend Luce's ordering of these stories. Perfect cohesion. The stories hold hands gladly.)

[June Amelia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

some really great, tight short stories from an expat-like perspective about various little vignettes in Japan, love, ghosts, sex, relationships, and wonder. i really love Kelly Luce's writing and must revisit her first novel again

[Peter Spaulding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe more of a 4.5.

Some of these are really delightful, and some smell a bit strongly of an MFA. I like the overlapping theme of porous identities, something that interested me a bit as a writer when I was younger.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borderline 3.5/4 stars so it deserves the round up to 4. This is one of those collections that I look back on quite fondly - maybe even more so than while actually reading. Which is a good thing.

Kelly Luce writes beautifully. That needs to be said first. Her prose is really stunning and I could read her writing for hours on end without stopping. So this collection of ten, I think, short stories was perfect for the readathon I was participating in. Many readers have drawn comparisons to Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Haruki Murakami, and even George Saunders. And I do agree that if you like those authors you should give Luce a try.

Luce often sets her stories in Japan - from the perspective of both insiders and outsiders. And I think she carries off both perspectives well. There's a lot of honest human emotion within this very short collection. And that takes talent. I remember many of the individual characters quite clearly which almost never happens. I think the reasons I didn't feel totally enamored with this while reading was because these stories almost sneak up on you. She writes with such subtlety (especially her more fantastical elements) that you may not realize how deeply you were affected until days afterward. Even her story about a toaster that can predict a person's death doesn't feel like a story about a toaster that can predict a person's death. The absurdity that idea might initially present is almost erased by these long lines of humans desperate to know how they'll meet their end. She makes the realistic aspects mean more than the fantastical while still managing to make the fantastical matter. It almost feels like magic.

I'd like to re-read this collection before the year is out. I think this is a collection that could continue to flourish upon subsequent re-reads despite its brevity. I also think Luce is a writer who could sustain a magical realism plot for the full length of a novel and so if she reads this, lmao, I'd be down for that. :)

[Marko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the way this author uses imagery. Every story has its own color; for example, 'Reunion' is yellow-and-orange-colored (because of Asian lady beetles), 'Amorometer' is red-colored (because of a tube of red lipstick called "Shhh"), 'Cram Island' is neon-colored (because of Karaoke Live!), etc. My favorite stories are: 'The Blue Demon of Ikumi', 'Rooey' and 'Cram Island'. This collection kept my attention (what a rhyme!), so I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

[Nik Maack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in Austin Texas, looking for weird books, when this one caught my eye. Published by a small, local press called "A Strange Object", the book is just that. Dreamy stories of relationships, culture, pain, love, heartache, longing. The physical book is an odd shape and the cover has a strange almost rubbery feel to it.

The only reason I didn't give this book five stars is the occasional flicker of, " Oh god, these are such literary short stories its almost a cliché." A literary short story will sometimes just end, for no reason. Or it's all a kind of prose poem to make you feel a certain emotion. This book flirts with that pretentious vibe of high fallutin nonsense.

But overwhelmingly, it rises above those foibles and is excellent reading. I have two other books of short stories I am (supposedly) reading at the moment, and I find myself unwilling to pick them up very often. Short stories don't satisfy me the way a novel does. But these short stories in this little book are very satisfying.

I particularly liked the story WISHER, although many if the stories linger in my mind after having finished the book.

[Courtney Maum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sparse, eerie, odd and haunting, the Murakami-esque stories in this slim collection will leave you wanting more. Contrary to many story collections, this one picks up steam as it goes along, with its strongest stories near the end. At times, I was distracted by Luce's dialogue-- although the stories take place in Japan, many of the characters use distinctly American idioms, which pulled me out of the otherwise impeccably styled tales.

The book is a sensual pleasure-- beautiful to read and hold.

[Amanda]

Dear Elizabeth McCracken,

You were wrong. Luce is not my "new favorite short story writer." I did however find her stories to be a worthwhile read full of imaginative flourishes. "Wisher" is probably the most interesting and well constructed of the collection. "Reunion" is my personal favorite, mostly due to its use of whimsy, bordering on the surreal, to convey truth. And "Amorometer" is for all of us who know that reading novels can drive you mad, yet madness can be sublime.

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I'm not normally a fan of short stories, I found this collection quite enchanting. I absolutely loved the story "Wisher" -- just incredibly touching & wonderful. Also really enjoyed the story "Amorometer" -- fun & hopeful. The author is American, but the stories all revolve around Japan in some way & most contain elements of magical realism. Definitely recommended.

[Thekelburrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like 50% of my reviews of short story collections contain the phrase "... from a writer that definitely has a lot of talent and potentially has greatness to come ..."

*ahem*

I mostly enjoyed these unusual, quirky stories from Kelly Luce, a writer that definitely has a lot of talent and potentially has greatness to come.

[Chaitali Sen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming stories, extraordinary sentences.

[Amanda Corbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I started each story, I had to finish it. "Reunion," a very short story near the beginning, I found particularly striking.

[Charles Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What fantastically odd stories. Light and heavy and weird. Like breathing a different kind of air.