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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Wow. This was a slog for me. The 2 stars are not a reflection of the writing, but of the way I felt when I read the book. It's a very philosophical, allegorical story, and that's just not my jam.
I don’t like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
To me, Abe’s Woman in the Dunes reads like an allegory for life in industrialized society. Trapped in a pit with no means of escape and forced day after day to endure mindless work for the benefit of those that live outside the pit, Niki Jumpei spends a vast majority of this book trying to escape the work and romantic partner chosen for him. It’s an interesting concept that was marred (at least in the edition I read) by some - hopefully - clunky phrasing that was lost in translation and a section in the middle where the protagonist gets lost mediating on his sex life and penis, which culminates in an awkwardly written sex scene.
What is going on? This is an oneiric masterpiece? A surrealist dreamscape? A postmodern Japanese Kafkaesque tale? This?
This, from the moment our insect falls into his hole till the last page, is a misogynistic hellscape.
I am so disappointed and confused with this book. It had everything I was looking for: an insect collector on a strange holiday, an eerie, partially submerged, city in the dunes, a strange kidnapping, a Japanese classic - so what went wrong?
Our protagonist, Jumpei, is put in a nightmare situation. Trapped in the bottom of a sand pit lies a house, rotting away with damp. To earn food and water he must rise every night and shovel the sand that has blown in over the course of the day into buckets. All attempts at escape are thwarted.
He is not in there alone.
His companion is the unamed, eponymous woman of the dunes who has lost her husband and child and now gets through the day-to-day toiling away in her sad kimono.
Naturally, Jumpei, becomes frustrated with her compliance to this life of drudgery. He argues with her, screams at her. And then quickly his thoughts turn to sexual violence and an ingrained hatred manifests.
It starts normally enough. She sleeps naked, to avoid the abrasion of clothing on her skin. But he lingers on observing her body. Methodically describing the way the sand clings to her. My version even had an illustration of this scene - her breasts sitting unnaturally high, her face covered in a towel. And then it starts to feel off.
I'm going to write out some quotes to illustrate this.
Page 20, he's decided to give her the cold shoulder.
(Spoiler: he's realising his small hobbies and obsessions are simply an escape from the inactivity of his life).
The next day, realising he is trapped and that the woman is resigned to it:
She never sleeps naked in his presence again after he awakens her that first night. He notes, often with some sneering, that she sleeps like a bug, wrapped in her kimono. But naked underneath.
As their tepid existence continues, he continues to assume she is obsessed with him.
And later, when she jabs him playfully on a lighter day, as he recovers from a fall:
Also this:
And don't worry, near the climax of the book this ends up being a physical rape, not just a spiritual one. A violent assault while men around the pit watch and cheer. Although she does master him and fight back - showered with boos from the onlookers of course.
This attack comes on the heels of consensual sex, where he describes lathering up her course, sand scoured body with great disgust.
How does this end? Well, she gets fridged (pregnancy complications, naturally), he doesn't even meet her eyes as she's hauled out of the pit into the ambulance. And he, well he decides to stay in the hole. I guess the meat-eating plant snared him with her wiley ways after all. Don't trust women, folks!
Sorry, I have nothing else of substance to say. I am enranged. Maybe I'll end with this quote from the introduction of my edition. David Mitchell writes:
If you can look past the quotes above and take this book as an allegory for some, unnamed, political commentary - then good luck to you.
A still from the '64 adaptation.
P.s.
Sadly, there is one passage, very early in the book, that I adored. This could have been a favourite.
This, from the moment our insect falls into his hole till the last page, is a misogynistic hellscape.
I am so disappointed and confused with this book. It had everything I was looking for: an insect collector on a strange holiday, an eerie, partially submerged, city in the dunes, a strange kidnapping, a Japanese classic - so what went wrong?
Our protagonist, Jumpei, is put in a nightmare situation. Trapped in the bottom of a sand pit lies a house, rotting away with damp. To earn food and water he must rise every night and shovel the sand that has blown in over the course of the day into buckets. All attempts at escape are thwarted.
He is not in there alone.
His companion is the unamed, eponymous woman of the dunes who has lost her husband and child and now gets through the day-to-day toiling away in her sad kimono.
Naturally, Jumpei, becomes frustrated with her compliance to this life of drudgery. He argues with her, screams at her. And then quickly his thoughts turn to sexual violence and an ingrained hatred manifests.
It starts normally enough. She sleeps naked, to avoid the abrasion of clothing on her skin. But he lingers on observing her body. Methodically describing the way the sand clings to her. My version even had an illustration of this scene - her breasts sitting unnaturally high, her face covered in a towel. And then it starts to feel off.
I'm going to write out some quotes to illustrate this.
Page 20, he's decided to give her the cold shoulder.
Taking such a stand in front of her was actually an expression of jealousy at what bound her; and was it not also a desire that she should put aside her work and come secretly to his bed? Actually, his strong feelings were apparently not simply anger at female stupidity. There was something more unfathomable.
(Spoiler: he's realising his small hobbies and obsessions are simply an escape from the inactivity of his life).
The next day, realising he is trapped and that the woman is resigned to it:
Apprehensively, he returned to the hut. He went directly to the woman, who had remained crouching. He raised his left hand threateningly. His eyes glittered as he stood there agonizing. But halfway through the gesture, his arm, which he had raised with such purpose, suddenly collapsed. Perhaps he would feel better if he just slapped the naked woman. But wouldn't this be just the part he was expected to play? She was waiting for it. Punishment inflicted, in other words, would mean that the crime had been paid for.
She never sleeps naked in his presence again after he awakens her that first night. He notes, often with some sneering, that she sleeps like a bug, wrapped in her kimono. But naked underneath.
As their tepid existence continues, he continues to assume she is obsessed with him.
She looked like some kind of insect, he thought. [sic] . A monotonous existence enclosed in an eye. She had probably spent her whole life down here, without even the memory of a comforting word from anyone. Perhaps her heart was throbbing now like a girl's because they had trapped him and given him to her. It was too pitiful!
And later, when she jabs him playfully on a lighter day, as he recovers from a fall:
Her charms were like some meat-eating plant, purposely equipped with the smell of sweet honey. First she would sow the seeds of scandal by bringing him to an act of passion, and then the chains of blackmail would bind him hand and foot.
Also this:
Yet the average woman was firmly convinced, it seemed, that she could not make a man recognize her worth unless every time she opened her lefs she did so as if it were a scene in a soap opera. But thi very pathetic and innocent illusion in fact made women the victims of a one-sided spiritual rape.
And don't worry, near the climax of the book this ends up being a physical rape, not just a spiritual one. A violent assault while men around the pit watch and cheer. Although she does master him and fight back - showered with boos from the onlookers of course.
This attack comes on the heels of consensual sex, where he describes lathering up her course, sand scoured body with great disgust.
How does this end? Well, she gets fridged (pregnancy complications, naturally), he doesn't even meet her eyes as she's hauled out of the pit into the ambulance. And he, well he decides to stay in the hole. I guess the meat-eating plant snared him with her wiley ways after all. Don't trust women, folks!
Sorry, I have nothing else of substance to say. I am enranged. Maybe I'll end with this quote from the introduction of my edition. David Mitchell writes:
The woman's passive acceptance of enslavement and the spectre of rape troubling the book are undeniably at odds with 21st century feminism, but so too were pre-war, war-time, and post-war Manchuria and Japan.
If you can look past the quotes above and take this book as an allegory for some, unnamed, political commentary - then good luck to you.
A still from the '64 adaptation.
P.s.
Sadly, there is one passage, very early in the book, that I adored. This could have been a favourite.
Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn't unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a fixed position and abandon oneself to the movement of the sands, competition would soon stop.
Nightmare fuel for those who think there's a way out.
A schoolteacher named Niki Jumpei interested in insects goes to the dunes to seek out beetles. Having spent longer there than he intended he needs a place to stay. One of the older villagers recommends a house owned by a woman but it's beneath a vast pit of sand, surrounded on all sides. What follows is a claustrophobic horror story of a man being unable to escape this house, the sand impenetrable, the villagers (and the woman) seemingly unmoved, having trapped him there deliberately for reasons unknown. He tries to climb up the sand but cannot, he threatens the woman but she seems either ignorant of what is happening or resigned to their circumstances; he screams at the villagers who laugh at him from above. Mostly, he plans his escape because there must be an escape. Surely, there has to be a way to escape.
Having read a few pages of Abe's Box Man a long time ago and found them painfully dull, I was a little worried about reading this. But the first half of the book absolutely had me gripped. I was turning pages rapidly, fascinated by the man's dilemma, trying to work out if he was indeed being held against his will, or if there was just some huge misunderstanding that had not yet been revealed. I'm tempted to describe the book as Kafkaesque but that probably isn't accurate since Kafka dealt with the oppressive weight of bureaucracy (even in Metamorphosis, his change into an insect is not as important as how he will explain it to his employers, support the family, etc). I also don't think it's an accident that the main character here is interested in insects. But this book is more allegorical in nature, the themes focusing on the relentless struggle of existence, the inability of ever escaping the daily drudge of work and sexual instinct, the constant search for a literal way out. The book is saturated in oppressive heat, constant sand, and lack of water. I could almost taste it at times, the gritty texture in my mouth, until I had to swallow some saliva and clear my throat. The book is just relentless.
And that's where my main criticism comes in; after the halfway point, I was slightly losing interest. It just goes around in circles and overwhelms you with more sand, more woman, more sand. Even when he momentarily escapes, the book had somewhat drained me by that point. I just wanted the nightmare to end. I knew what was happening. I knew where it was going and, worst of all, I knew how it would be resolved. Because there is always something to keep us attached to life, always some pointless thing which we imbue with meaning so that we can justify persevering with a delusional sense of hope. Work and sex. They both make life seem like it's worthwhile (though Abe's descriptions of sex were intensely abstract and vague, perhaps very Japanese, and I did need to reread a few sections just to confirm... yep, they're having sex).
So not without its flaws but a fantastic entry into the existential nightmare genre. This one was as dense as the claggy sand itself and after a while, I wanted out. I wanted out of this book as much as he wanted out of that sandpit.
A schoolteacher named Niki Jumpei interested in insects goes to the dunes to seek out beetles. Having spent longer there than he intended he needs a place to stay. One of the older villagers recommends a house owned by a woman but it's beneath a vast pit of sand, surrounded on all sides. What follows is a claustrophobic horror story of a man being unable to escape this house, the sand impenetrable, the villagers (and the woman) seemingly unmoved, having trapped him there deliberately for reasons unknown. He tries to climb up the sand but cannot, he threatens the woman but she seems either ignorant of what is happening or resigned to their circumstances; he screams at the villagers who laugh at him from above. Mostly, he plans his escape because there must be an escape. Surely, there has to be a way to escape.
Having read a few pages of Abe's Box Man a long time ago and found them painfully dull, I was a little worried about reading this. But the first half of the book absolutely had me gripped. I was turning pages rapidly, fascinated by the man's dilemma, trying to work out if he was indeed being held against his will, or if there was just some huge misunderstanding that had not yet been revealed. I'm tempted to describe the book as Kafkaesque but that probably isn't accurate since Kafka dealt with the oppressive weight of bureaucracy (even in Metamorphosis, his change into an insect is not as important as how he will explain it to his employers, support the family, etc). I also don't think it's an accident that the main character here is interested in insects. But this book is more allegorical in nature, the themes focusing on the relentless struggle of existence, the inability of ever escaping the daily drudge of work and sexual instinct, the constant search for a literal way out. The book is saturated in oppressive heat, constant sand, and lack of water. I could almost taste it at times, the gritty texture in my mouth, until I had to swallow some saliva and clear my throat. The book is just relentless.
And that's where my main criticism comes in; after the halfway point, I was slightly losing interest. It just goes around in circles and overwhelms you with more sand, more woman, more sand. Even when he momentarily escapes, the book had somewhat drained me by that point. I just wanted the nightmare to end. I knew what was happening. I knew where it was going and, worst of all, I knew how it would be resolved. Because there is always something to keep us attached to life, always some pointless thing which we imbue with meaning so that we can justify persevering with a delusional sense of hope. Work and sex. They both make life seem like it's worthwhile (though Abe's descriptions of sex were intensely abstract and vague, perhaps very Japanese, and I did need to reread a few sections just to confirm... yep, they're having sex).
So not without its flaws but a fantastic entry into the existential nightmare genre. This one was as dense as the claggy sand itself and after a while, I wanted out. I wanted out of this book as much as he wanted out of that sandpit.
i’m not the target audience for this and that’s okay
I didn't really like this book. It was so stark, so bleak. I know it's good, but it didn't ever draw me in.
I don't know if I actually liked it or not. It was definitely an interesting book and I don't regret reading it.