re:mote voices

Title: N.P.
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
Publisher:Faber and Faber

banana yoshimoto's books tend towards the slight end of the spectrum, which takes in anything under 200 pages really. previously i read kitchen, which was one story split into two parts, with a second story tacked on as filler, and lizard which was a handful of short stories. both had their moments, but i found something about them lacking, though still there was a certain attraction.

which means i have been wary of reading more of her work, but NP appears to hit the spot. as a novel it is actually a novel, it fills the entire book and sorts out a lot of the issues i was coming across in those other works. thematically NP explores the same territories - love and death, with a dose of the "out there" and not entirely explicable.

a curious circle is created with the narrator who was dating a man who killed himself after attempting to translate the story collection NP, and the three children of the original author. this gives us four characters, three connected by blood and other more sexual relations and this fourth outsider.

but at the core it is the book that connects them, creates some special connection between them. this creates an uneasy energy, which could lead the narrator into a sexual relationship with any of the three, while at the same time anticipating that anyone of them could be the next person in a line of people to kill themselves.

like her other work there is a certain wandering, spacey feel to the narrative, but it works well here. so that in the end i rather enjoyed NP, and undoubtely it is the best of her work that i've tackled so far.