Published: 2005 (Scribner) Setting: 2000’s U.S.A. Summary: Chuck Klosterman’s third major work of non-fiction explores how the death of a rockstar changes our memory of them. Klosterman further posits the question: How does how we remember the dead highlight what we think of ourselves, and how we see ourselves in relation to popular culture? Klosterman, having been sentContinue reading “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story-Chuck Klosterman”
Tag Archives: books
Kitchen/Moonlight Shadow-Banana Yoshimoto
Published: 1988 (MK) Setting: 1980’s Tokyo Summary: Banana Yoshimoto’s first novel, Kitchen, and her novella, Moonlight Shadow, both deal with how lose makes us examine our distance to those we care about. Mikage, the protagonist in Kitchen, lives in a tiny world filled with pots, pans, couches, and plants. What she lacks is genuine connection to others afterContinue reading “Kitchen/Moonlight Shadow-Banana Yoshimoto”
Earthlings-Sayaka Murata
Published: 2018 (Shinchosa) Setting: 1990’s and 2010’s Tokyo and rural Nagano Summary: In Murata’s second novel to be widely-translated, Earthlings, an idiosyncratic young girl named Natsuki confronts childhood trauma in an unorthodox and revealing manner, ultimately ending in total detachment from human “Earthlings,” and their society at large, twenty years later. Natsuki, unfit to be in her normalContinue reading “Earthlings-Sayaka Murata”
The Face of Another-Kobo Abe
Published: 1964 (Kodansha) Setting: 1960’s Osaka Summary: In this follow-up to Abe’s award-winning novel, The Woman in the Dunes, a leading plastics scientist’s face becomes disfigured from a chemical burn, spiraling him into isolation and alienation from others and his past self. This novel is split into three journals which the unnamed scientist uses to explain to hisContinue reading “The Face of Another-Kobo Abe”
Will Reviews Things 