Kangaroo Notebook: A Novel [Paperback]

One day, our nameless narrator wakes to find that he has radish sprouts growing from his knees. Not particularly alarmed at this, he soon discover to his pleasure that they are edible and quite tasty. A doctor's appointment lands him in the hospital where he is knocked out with drugs. From there, using his trusty Atlas bed as a transportation device, we are led through bizarre scene after bizarre scene, from hairy American martial arts experts to the souls of aborted children who perform plays on the banks of the river Sai for charity.

The narrator is on one hand an interesting fellow - he IS growing radish sprouts from his knees, after all - and his adventures are quite entertaining, but there is a lack within him. He show no great curiosity as to why everything is happening to him, nor does he really seem interested in getting everything back to normal. He is content to go with the flow, and throughout the novel, he acts more as a spectator than an actual character. Almost, but not quite, he is an omniscient narrator, in the sense that his voice does nothing more than record what is happening. Not quite though, because he does participate in a few interesting conversations along the way. Unfortunately, his lack of personality is a definite crutch.

The nameless narrator ricochets from bizarre sequence to stunningly normal locale, then back to bizarre with a speed that is at time dizzying. Often, scene changes are precipitated by the narrator being knocked unconscious, a fairly weak literary device that is used far too often here. The end sequence is the most bizarre of them all, juxtaposing the lengthy normal hospital scene that proceeds it.

The novel ended, to my mind, abruptly and without closure. There is a cryptic message at the end - which, I'll admit, I was expecting something of the sort - but I couldn't really decipher it at first. But, after thinking about the novel for a few hours after I had finished, I realised that the ending was, in fact, perfect.

To my mind, appreciation of this book comes down to a personal choice. If you enjoy bizarre series of events that don't seem to be going anywhere but suddenly illuminate at the end, then by all means read it. If however, you don't like barely connected scenes with a personality-less narrator, steer clear.

The narrator begins the story at his suggestion in his workplace being selected as the best - his suggestion, originally a joke, was a product, a kangaroo notebook. This leads to the proposition that marsupials are outcasts - the mammal version of each species being more viable than the marsupial counterpart. Within this context, the narrator notes that his shins are sprouting radishes.

Seeking treatment at a dermatologist is the beginning of a series of occurrences - real, dream, illusion, post-anesthetia confusion? This are absolutely delightful, humorous events - a bed traveling in the city through the narrator's mental efforts, of a hell-based sulfur springs treatment, of child demons, of dead mothers in cabbage fields, of an American graduate student studying fatal accidents, of euthansia ...

This astounding romp is a serious consideration of death, our beliefs regarding death (the limbo children) and of suicide/murder/euthansia/accident.

On a morning that should have turned out like any other morning, the first person narrator of Kangaroo Notebook awakens to find radish sprouts growing out of his shins. Although his doctor in repulsed, the narrator finds he now possesses the strange and unique ability to snack on...himself.

An eerie adventure to rid himself of his malady takes the book's protagonist into an increasingly hostile and mysterious world, one that in turn, is surreal, playful and almost unassailably enigmatic.

The plot is a weird and wild ride to say the least. Unlike Kafka's narrator in Metamorphosis, our slowly unraveling protagonist checks into a dermatology clinic and soon finds himself hurtling on a hospital bed to the very brink of hell.

An attractive nurse, known only as Damselfly, straps him to a hospital bed and begins to administer huge quantities of unknown drugs. A short time later, still strapped to this hospital bed, still hooked up to his IV and still suffering from his mysterious malady, our protagonist is summarily discharged.

A cast of spooky characters is then introduced via visits to a glitzy department store, a cabbage field that serves as the final resting place of the narrator's dead mother and Damselfly's own apartment.

One of those characters, the hirsute Mister Hammer Killer, an American karate expert, has such a love of violence that our narrator once again finds himself confined to a hospital.

His situation only worsens with the arrival of the "Help Me! Club," a club whose members consist solely of demonic chanting children.

The sexy Damselfly, herself, turns out to be a bit of a vampire. Her quest to collect enough blood to win the "Dracula's Daughter" medal is nothing short of relentless. Despite these bizarre plot twists and turns, the finale of Kangaroo Notebook is undeniably perfect and, almost surrealistically, makes perfect sense.

Abe's typical protagonist is an "outsider" who is haunted by a sense of alienation and anxiety over the fragility of individual identity. Although seeking relief from society's pressure to conform, he still yearns for communal emotional connection.

These universal themes, combined with an ironic, satiric and often bizarre manner of expression, have led many to assume that Abe's writing bears a closer resemblance to Western writers, Kafka, in particular, than to traditional Japanese literary models. Yet Abe's fiction reflects his strong Japanese heritage in its vividly imagistic prose, its abundant incorporation of Japanese cultural icons and its satirical treatment of Japanese psychosocial dynamics.

Kangaroo Notebook is one of Abe's signature triumphs. He deftly uses a swiftly-moving barrage of morbidly fascinating images, characters and places to reflect cleverly-disguised, but recurring themes, and he balances hysterical humor with deadpan lines, such as, "Something's really odd." Sure, we think. You don't say.

Surrealistic fiction is so often not given its due since the bizarre and original happenings must, of necessity, supplant traditional storyline and character development, thus distancing readers emotionally. But for those readers who have achieved intellectual maturity and originality of thought, surrealistic fiction offers insights surely lacking in more mainstream works.

In Kangaroo Notebook, Kobo Abe takes us on a masterful, dizzyingly original romp to the razor-thin line between life and death, a theme-park of his own life and art.