Book Review: Hardboiled and Hardluck
My love affair with Banana Yoshimoto’s work continues unabated. Somehow, her narratives, in which nothing really happens, distill a sense of loss and love into the perfect bittersweetness. Sparse yet still passionate.
I began reading Hardboiled and Hardluck back in November. The first novella kept me up until 3am on a weeknight - which wasn’t the brightest move ever. I had thought after a few pages, i would be able to put the book down and fall asleep. Nope. Hardluck was an even darker tale - about a woman studying Italian literature whose sister suffers a stroke and is slowly dying although already brain-dead. How loss can be so beautiful, i will never fully grasp. A quick read, you paradoxically find yourself feeling very alive with the realization that sadness is life. A good realization really.
