Title: Hardboiled & Hard LuckAuthor: Banana Yoshimoto
Translator: Michael Emmerich
First Published: April 1, 1999
Publisher: Grove Press
Pages: 160
Genre: LGBTQ, Literary Fiction, Paranormal, Short Stories
Format: Ebook
Source: Purchased
Rating:
Synopsis:
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 bestseller status. Her insightful, spare vision returns in two novellas possessed by the ghosts of love found and lost. In Hardboiled, the unnamed narrator is hiking in the mountains on an anniversary she has forgotten about, the anniversary of her ex-lover’s death. As she nears her hotel—stopping on the way at a hillside shrine and a strange soba shop—a sense of haunting falls over her. Perhaps these eerie events will help her make peace with her loss. Hard Luck is about another young woman, whose sister is dying and lies in a coma. Kuni’s fiancé left her after the accident, but his brother Sakai continues to visit, and the two of them gradually grow closer as they make peace with the impending loss of their loved one. Yoshimoto’s voice is clear, assured, and deeply moving, displaying again why she is one of Japan’s, and the world’s, most beloved writers.
Review
Hardboiled & Hard Luck is a collection of two novellas that share a theme of grief and loss. Both stories read like a gentle goodbye as each narrator explores their feelings through memory. The stories together elicit a warm, comforting feeling despite the heavy subject matter in its sparse prose. It was an easy read to calm my anxieties and unplug while wrapped up in a blanket. A great pair of stories overall that I really enjoyed and it got me interested in checking out more of Banana Yoshimoto’s backlog. The collection explores grief with sensitivity and it’s an easy recommendation.
Individual Story Notes:
♥ Hardboiled: This story follows the journey of a narrator as she walks along a country road to visit a small village on the anniversary of her ex-girlfriend’s death. She meditates on the circumstances that brought them together, her complicated feelings on their relationship, and how things came to an end. It is a deeply spiritual journey for the narrator tinged with just a little bit of the paranormal, as she reflects on love and the inevitable loneliness that comes with it.
♥ Hard Luck: On the other hand, this story was a tragedy in motion, opening with the narrator visiting her dying sister lying in a coma in the hospital. The story showcases a family going through various stages of grief, the gradual loss of hope, and the way that life continues to move despite the shock of loss. There is some hope as the narrator meets the man who would have been her brother-in-law had her sister gotten married; a man who is a little eccentric and takes an interest in the narrator despite the borderline humorously poor timing. Emotionally this was the stronger of the two stories, but together they make a nice collection of stories to soothe the soul.
Rating Breakdown
| Hardboiled: ★★★★☆ | Hard Luck: ★★★★☆ |
Quote
“She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn’t know how to handle.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Banana Yoshimoto
Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto (吉本 真秀子), a Japanese contemporary writer. Along with having a famous father, poet Takaaki Yoshimoto, Banana’s sister, Haruno Yoiko, is a well-known cartoonist in Japan. Growing up in a liberal family, she learned the value of independence from a young age.
She graduated from Nihon University’s Art College, majoring in Literature. During that time, she took the pseudonym “Banana” after her love of banana flowers, a name she recognizes as both “cute” and “purposefully androgynous.”
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