Yoko OgawaResenhas

A delicate tale of affection, the novel resents of some evanescence in plot and definition of characters' traits, typical of some Japanese literature of last decades. That said, it's a very pleasant reading; the professor is an unforgettable character, a mixture of spontaneous kindness, vulnerability and moral strenght, able to deeply change the lives of people around him even in his darkest hours at the end of his life.

This is a quiet book. Little happens. Things are set up - the valuable stack of old baseball cards, the possibility of an accident - but nothing happens with these possibilities. The housekeeper and her son come across as real characters, but there is something unbelievable about the professor - he is too much the poet to convince.

I'm not normally a fan of dystopian fiction, but I found this a powerful and unsettling read. Simply yet lyrically written , the writer - this is told in the first person - lives on an island in thrall to the Memory Police. Things comprehensively disappear: in the early days, simple things like roses, and the inhabitants soon lose any memories of the things that have vanished. Those unfortunate people who find they do not forget - and the writer's parents seem to have been among them - simply are removed by the Memory Police and never seen again. The 'writer' of this book is herself a novelist, and we are privy to her latest effort, involving a young typist whose story in some ways moves in parallel to the story the author is living through. She hides her editor in her house, because his memories do not fade, and he is therefore in danger... We never find out more about the Memory Police, or know to whom they are answerable. But we are left with a lot to think about - totalitarian regimes, life, death and the process of letting go and of dying. I'll go on thinking about his book.

2.5 at best. Normally I love surrealism in literature and art, and the first half of this book was no exception, but by the end I was left with the same unanswered questions as the beginning, and ended up strongly disliking the narrator to boot. Though I understand there's supposed to be a deeper meaning symbolized by the surreal events happening on the island, I would've appreciated some hints on how the Memory Police came about, how the "disappearances" happen and are chosen... something! Instead, we just get a bunch of idle speculation. The time and setting are unclear, though the characters live similarly to how we do today, which gave me the impression that more details/worldbuilding were to follow. Grounding the story further might have driven its message home a little better, instead of the nebulous way it's delivered here.

Also, I was absolutely done with the main character when she risked everything for no reason by walking into the Memory Police headquarters (apparently without suffering any consequences though, so it's all excused I guess?) and somehow managed to ignore the repeated signs of an oncoming stroke in her friend the old man until the day he died of one (for context/contrast, she took the dog to the vet at the first sign of illness). I can understand unlikeable characters, but I cannot abide inconsistent or stupid ones, and the unnamed narrator of this book unfortunately happens to be both. In fact, she hardly qualifies as a main character for me because she takes a backseat in almost all the events that matter - she tells us what happens to her, what other people are doing (the old man does pretty much everything, for instance, when it comes to their rescue operation) carries on an icky affair with a married man she's hiding (contributing nothing whatsoever to the plot), and then just kind of fades away at the end. Good riddance, honestly.

Se volete leggere qualcosa di inquietante, potete sempre contare su Yōko Ogawa. Ne L’anulare abbiamo una storia che ricorda vagamente quella del nostro Barbablù: abbiamo una donna che, nonostante tutti i campanelli di allarme che sente suonare – e noi con lei – continua a lavorare per lo strano e inquietante laboratorio del signor Deshimaru, che finisce per regalarle il paio di scarpe forse più terrificante della letteratura mondiale..

Sono delle belle scarpe, ma dall’aspetto assolutamente ordinario: voglio dire, non è che mordono non appena le infili. Ma Ogawa è molto abile nel fare di un accessorio così comune e così quotidiano un tramite per mostrare la capacità di annientare le donne che possono avere gli uomini con le loro esigenze e le loro richieste che non tengono conto delle libertà e dei bisogni altrui.

Fin dalla prima pagina di questo libriccino sentiamo montare un’inquietudine che quasi fa venire voglia di urlare tanta è la tensione che si finisce per accumulare. Meno male sono “solo” centotré pagine altrimenti mi prendeva un infarto.

Another beyond weird translated book with an interesting concept! Though I feel this book holds the reader at a distance, for example, none of the characters have names. A novelist lives in a place where occasionally things disappear from the island. One day it's birds. One day it's roses... Interspersed with a bit of a novel that the character was writing makes it a bit more interesting. I don't regret reading it, but wish I had liked the execution better.

Story: 8.5 / 10
Characters: 7.5
Setting: 7
Prose: 8.5

Themes: Family, work, memory, relationships, time, personality, mathematics, leisure

Story: 6.0 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 8.5
Prose: 8

Any work where the main character is also an author stands on a tightrope and threatens to plunge into self-aggrandisement (looking at you [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg]).
But it works very well here, a novel about what happens when the process of defamiliarization menaces a community like a monster out of a b-movie. Other reviews for Ogawa's novel focus on the arbitrariness of the Memory Police's rules and the political connection to cruel and absurd laws today, but to me the fact that nature itself collaborated with the authorities was more horrifying. The authorities were merely agents of some natural force that imposed insane restraints and demanded people recontextualize and relearn through these painful fetters. Anyone who's had music lessons or been to a writer's workshop can sympathize.

A novel of love, loss, becoming a family, and the beauty of math. Elegantly told, with small details conveying deep emotions. I'm glad I read it.

3.5....I think. Parts of the book were a bit slow but I suspect this very unsettling story will stay with me.

Super raunchy, but kind of beautiful.

So charming - a story about a mathematics professor who, after a head injury, has only 80 minutes of memory- and a housekeeper and her son and the mathematical perfection they reach.

I loved the imagery of the multiple pieces of paper pinned all over the professor’s suits to help him remember, how they rustle when he walks.

A story about non-romantic love that won my heart.

A woman takes a housekeeping job for an elderly mathematician who has a memory disorder where he can't remember more than 40 minutes or so into the past. She is a single mother with a 10-year-old son, and she starts bringing her son to work. The three of them create a lovely, if sometimes challenging, friendship.

This heartwarming book is about the joys of loving math and baseball, and the power of friendship.

Quiet, brilliant, beautiful, and haunting. I am unsettled and stunned in the best possible way.

In Japan is Yoko Ogawa een bekende schrijfster. Niet alleen schreef zij sinds haar debuut in 1988 al meer dan vijftig boeken, ook won ze zo ongeveer elke grote Japanse literaire prijs. Toch is maar een heel klein deel van haar werk vertaald in het Nederlands of Engels. We hebben de Nederlandse vertaling van het dystopische ‘De geheugenpolitie’ waarschijnlijk te danken aan de nominatie van dit boek voor de International Booker Prize in 2020. Omdat ‘De geheugenpolitie’ in Nederland goed werd ontvangen moet de uitgever het aangedurfd hebben om ook ‘Het onvergetelijke jaar van Tomoko’ te laten vertalen, een boek dat al in 2006 in Japan verscheen.

‘Het onvergetelijke jaar van Tomoko’ is een heel ander boek dan ‘De geheugenpolitie’. Het is een veel kleiner en persoonlijker verhaal. Kort samengevat gaat het over de 12-jarige Tomoko die het jaar 1972 doorbrengt bij haar tante. Tomoko komt uit een eenvoudig gezin en het contrast met het leven bij haar tante kan bijna niet groter zijn. Niet alleen omdat er bij de tante veel meer geld is en zij in een sprookjesachtig huis met eindeloos veel kamers woont. Of omdat de tuin bij het huis vroeger een dierentuin was en er nog een Liberiaans dwergnijlpaard met de naam Pochiko in rondscharrelt. Maar ook door de bijzondere personen die er wonen, zoals tante, die kettingrokend jaagt op spelfouten, Mina, een broos maar zeer fantasierijk nichtje dat luciferdoosjes verzamelt, een charismatische oom die soms maanden spoorloos is en Mina’s Duitse oma, voor wie de tijd in 1917 stil is blijven staan.

Tomoko vertelt haar verhaal zelf, als volwassene en terugblikkend op die tijd. Daardoor kruipt er melancholie het verhaal binnen. Want 1972 ligt inmiddels in een ver verleden en de herinneringen aan die vervlogen dagen hebben een gouden randje gekregen. Het zijn kleine herinneringen die ze ophaalt. Herinneringen aan de karakters van haar huisgenoten. Aan twee oude vrouwen die op een bankje zitten in de ondergaande zon. Aan het komen en gaan van de seizoenen. Aan een middag op het strand. Aan de ademhaling van haar astmatische nichtje. Om van dit boek te genieten moet je echt in de stemming zijn voor traagheid en een poëtische sfeer.

Veel zinnen in het boek deden denken aan haiku’s, niet in vorm, maar in inhoud. Ze geven de ervaring van een kort ogenblik weer in bijna verstilde scènes. Een hoofdstuk kan bijvoorbeeld eindigen met een zin als “De stethoscoop die van zijn hals hing, wuifde heen en weer in de bries” of “Kijkend naar de regen dronken we in stilte, ik mijn fruitmelk en meneer Kobayashi zijn koffie verkeerd”. Ogawa beheerst de kunst om kleine dingen zó op te schrijven dat ze ineens magisch lijken. Als je daarvan kan genieten is dit precies een boek voor jou.

How do you feel after waking up? There is disorientation and irritability, and you're trying to remember what you dreamed about - but it all slips away. If you could distil that feeling of disorientation and grudging acceptance that comes when you have awoken and compressed it into a novel - it would be The Memory Police.
There's so much and yet so little to talk about this. You could say that the novel has its own Kafkaesque and Orwellian sense of prose and humour, true, but that would be doing it a disservice - Ogawa has her unique brand of melancholy that has to be seen to be believed.
Then again, many questions are left unanswered - how and where does this island exist? How was the technology for selectively discarding people's memories made in an environment where even aeroplanes and mobiles are not present? Why do some people remember everything? What is the moral, if any, of the story-within-a-story? Ogawa doesn't bother answering these questions, and for a good reason - her focus is on the characters more than the setting.
The characters are the fulcrum of the story - but the mute girl and the typing teacher, the Memory Police and the island have a life of their own. I think that is what Ogawa's entire point is, about how inanimate objects and sensations dictate our life. "Hole in the heart" and "hollow soul" are terms that repeatedly pop up when even something like calendars disappear - and I began to wonder if these weren't hyperbolic terms after all.
As a story, The Memory Police is amazing - but as a thought experiment, it is even better - I would rank it amongst the classics of dystopian fiction. Reading this amid a rewriting of history through politics around the world imbued me with a sense of nervous energy I didn't know I had.

This was a very strange story and I'm torn on if I liked it or not. It takes place on an island where things "disappear" from the island and its residents. One day it could be roses and the next it could be novels; no one knows in advance what will disappear. Within the story is another novel that is being written by the protagonist. There is no real overlap between the stories until the end of the main novel. That was an interesting finish and I'm debating on giving this book 3 stars or 4. For the time being I will give it a 3 if only because it was a strange read. If it turns out to be the type of novel I think about long after reading, then perhaps I will bump it to a 4.

A well-done novel altho I kept expecting it to become more. It's interesting and very creative.

This is a very intriguing and satisfying group of short stories with revenge as a core component.

Il primo racconto è carino, il secondo ansioso. Entrambi però nulla di particolare. Il terzo non l'ho letto.

This was my first experience reading this author. I have had this little slip of a book sitting on my shelf for quite a while now, but am just now getting to it. I have mixed feelings about each of the stories. The first with the same title as the collection, The Diving Pool, about a girl with a crush on her foster brother, took me by surprise in the cruelty of the main character. She is the only child to parents who run the Light House, an orphanage. She has seen children come and go from the home, never quite feeling the sense of family life—or that of a home—she wishes she could have. Something normal. She is lonely and bitter. And at times jealous. Jun, the boy she has a crush on, has lived at the Light House for a number of years, the two growing up together in a sense. As Aya secretly watches Jun, sneaking into the pool where he dives every day, observing him at home and plotting to run into him at various times where they can be alone, she does not realize that Jun is also aware of her. He sees how she treats others and knows she visits the pool where he dives. I was satisfied with the way this story was wrapped up, but overall found it disturbing and at times difficult to stomach.

The second story titled Pregnancy Diary was interesting to say the least. An unmarried woman is living with her sister and her husband. She keeps a diary of her sister’s pregnancy, noting the moment the pregnancy was announced to her sister’s behavior and habits during the pregnancy. The woman records her own feelings of discontent and even disgust and eventual retaliation. The story takes a dark turn, just as the first one did, and the reader cannot help but wonder what is real and what isn’t. Not to mention what it is behind the disturbing thoughts and actions of the narrator.

The final story in this trilogy of novellas, Dormitory, is about a woman waiting for word from her husband about their pending move out of the country. She is feeling restless and lonely when approached by a young cousin setting off to college. He needs a place to stay, and she recommends the old dormitory in which she had once stayed. When she first takes her cousin to meet the landlord of the building, I could not help but feel sorry for the landlord. Armless and with one-leg, he has managed to get along on his own for many years, and yet it is clear he is lonely and his health his beginning to fail. The young wife returns to the dormitory under the guise of wanting to visit her cousin (who is never there), and often falls into conversation with the landlord. He tells her the story of a missing student, the subsequent police investigation, and the decrease in interest in his dormitory by students that followed. The story then takes a weird turn, which I have come to expect from Ogawa. Would this turn into a mystery to be solved or a horror story? I wasn’t sure. The ending was a surprise, and I am still not sure what to make of it.

I imagine each reader could take something different away from these three stories. There is a lot left open for interpretation. When all is said and done, my favorite is probably the first story, even despite how disturbed I was by it, only because I seemed to have a better handle on what that story was about. Did I like this collection? I am not sure I can say yes. Not exactly. These three stories will definitely stay with me awhile though. Haunting, indeed.½

Maybe even 4.5*

2.75

first of all i wouldn't call that horror, it's more of a slightly weird literary fiction story?? i liked how all the stories intertwine, it was fun unraveling it all. the writting is a bit dry, it gets boring at times and overall i just expected something else from this

Ghost stories, dystopia, magical realism, I generally avoid. My willing suspension of disbelief is too unwilling to get lost in a story when things fly on their own or people live in three different time zones.

This book of short stories, while having touches of that, so compellingly mixes concrete objects with fantastical scenarios it was easy to get lost in the words. I particularly loved the way she weaves something from the previous story into the next.

Head's up: there is one story that takes place in a torture museum that I did not read. I found the beginning too graphic and disheartening.