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Hardboiled & Hard Luck (Hardcover)

by Banana Yoshimoto (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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6 new from CDN$ 5.06 15 used from CDN$ 3.87

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Product Details

Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Grove Atlantic Press; Tra edition (Jun 8 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802117996
ISBN-13: 978-0802117991
Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13.2 x 2 cm
Shipping Weight: 273 g

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #407,591 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#10 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Fiction > Short Stories > Lesbian
#10 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Gay & Lesbian > Short Stories > Lesbian

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Like twins whose paths diverge dramatically, these two gentle stories share little beyond the mesmerizing voice of their creator. The surreal subject matter and dreamy narration of "Hardboiled" make it read rather like a bedtime story gone awry. When the young female narrator realizes that it's the anniversary of her lover's death, several curious events suddenly make sense: a stone from a creepy shrine that finds its way into her pocket; a fire at an udon shop where she'd just been eating; and a nighttime visitation by the ghost of a woman who committed suicide. "Harboiled" drags a bit, but "Hard Luck" is a pleasure, even if it's almost as downbeat as its predecessor. This time, a young female narrator is standing watch over her older sister, Kuni, whose brain is slowly dying after a cerebral hemorrhage. As their parents gradually lose hope for Kuni's recovery, the narrator makes her own peace by forging a bond with her sister's fiancé's brother. In this gemlike story, Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi) takes a subtle, graceful look at the relationship between the sisters and the fault lines in this grieving family, elevating her little book from fine to downright moving.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In her seventh book of spare, piercing fiction, Japanese writer Yoshimoto once again portrays strong-minded young women coping with heartbreak, traumatic family fissures, drastic illness, and fatalities. This sounds grim, but Yoshimoto is tenderly ironic and keenly attuned to nature's beauty and the mystic dimension of life, and her characters' ability to tough their way through painful predicaments infuses her elegantly insightful stories with hope. Here two novellas portray two self-possessed yet besieged young women. In "Hardboiled," the narrator is on a solo journey that begins as a simple mountain trek and turns into an intense confrontation with otherworldly forces, including a ghost in a hotel and overwhelming memories of a lost lover and her terrible demise. In "Hard Luck," a tale all the more poignant in the wake of Terry Shiavo, the narrator's sister lies in a coma as her family struggles to find a way to say good-bye. Yoshimoto writes of profoundly complex matters of love, life, decorum, guilt, and death with the precision and grace of a traditional calligrapher. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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	81% buy the item featured on this page: Hardboiled & Hard Luck 5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
	14% buy Kitchen 4.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 12.37
	5% buy Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman 4.0 out of 5 stars (2) CDN$ 13.83

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5.0 out of 5 stars Japanese Ghost Tales, Feb 7 2007

By	Kelly Rossiter (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

These two stories by Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto reveal very deep emotions while at the same exercise exquisite restraint. Both stories centre on the lives of young women touched by the untimely death of other young woman. Hardboiled is a ghost story where the ghost appears on the first anniversary of her death. Hard Luck has the ghost-like spectre of a woman who is just about to die. There is serious grief involved in both stories, but with an air of detachment that is completely believable. Yoshimoto's prose is spare and delicate and cuts directly to the heart. These stories are deceptively simple. There is sadness and grief but there is also the resurgance of hope that fuels the two narrators by the end. I think this is a book you could keep on your shelf and take down every few years and find a new insight on rereading.

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