In this stream of conciousness novel, a 40-something housewife living an ordinary somewhat mundane life goes through her daily activities--planning, shopping for and making meals, taking care of her kids, going shopping with her mother, helping with her elderly father, and so on. It reminded me very much of Ducks, Newburyport (which, true confession, I didn't finish yet, but still intend to...one day).

The novel was originally published in installments correlating to 8 sections, each roughly correlating to a particular subject. There are two anomalies: About three-quarters through the book there is printed verbatim for several pages a review/essay that the housewife, Natsumi, read, about a photography exhibit at an art museum. This led me down the google-hole, as this was a real exhibition by real photographers. So I learned about Kineo Kuwabana, who documented Tokyo life from the 1930's through the 1980's/90's, and Nobuyoshi Araki who took avant-garde photographs, some of which were said to verge on the pornographic.

The other unusual thing was the Afterwood, which I initially thought was a separate story, but part of the book. Instead of being in the mind of a Tokyo housewife, we are in Brooklyn with two female writers, Sophie and K. K has been engaged to write an essay about a recently translated Japanese novel, and she has taken on the job because she need the money, because her daughter needs dental work---and so on. We get to the end and I find that this was written by Kate Zambreno, whose work I discovered earlier this year, so that was nice.

This is all a bit convoluted, but I liked the book.

3 stars ( )

fiction, translated into English from Japanese - modern feminist-leaning narrative about the monotony of a housewife's daily activities, at once underwhelming and overwhelming with its litany of tedium and unending consumerism. Originally published in serial in a women's magazine, so perhaps best appreciated in sections, as the stream of consciousness prose can bring feelings of exhaustion.

I appreciated it more after reading the afterword. It was sort of hard to get into (and I thought perhaps something was lost in the translation?), but once you understand that it's ok to let your eyes gloss over the page, and not register every word of every mundane thought, it gets easier, and more interesting. ( )