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rorikae's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
'Fifty Sounds' by Polly Barton is a memoir of Barton's life in Japan through fifty Japanese onomatopoeia. Barton connects each onomatopoeia to a moment in her life that elicited a similar feeling or experience to showcase what it was like for her moving to Japan and learning Japanese. It is a deeply personal memoir that does a great job of using its form in a creative way. This memoir focuses a great deal on being isolated, learning how to convey oneself in a different language and a different culture as well as how messy that gets. Barton isn't afraid to paint herself in a very stark, often unflattering but truthful light. I found this incredibly brave and her vulnerability made it easier to connect with her stories. At parts, it did drag a bit as the form makes each snippet feel relatively isolated and it takes awhile for all of the pieces to come together. Ultimately, I did find this a very thoughtful look at language learning and finding ones place (or lack of a place) when living in a different country.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Racism, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Xenophobia, and Sexual content
georgiarose888's review
2.0
Glup-glup: the sound of mournful tears glupping onto the page as you write your self-indulgent memoir.
Look, if there is any person who should love this book, it is me. Ms. Barton and I came to Japan in bizarrely similar circumstances. We were both 21-year-old BA Philosophy graduates, who applied for the JET Programme mainly because a boyfriend-at-the-time was applying, (who happened to be way more into Japan than us) and both ended up getting in while the boyfriend-at-the-time did not. We both broke up with said boyfriends, and came to Japan alone, with a beginner's textbook in Nihongo clutched under our arms.
That being said, I did not love this book. At face value, Fifty Sounds is a Wittgenstein-filled exploration of a language lover's journey. What I saw it as was a collection of melancholic lamentations that never quite reach the level of self-realisation that you want them to.
Either create a very dry, bare-bones novel about literary translation and the Japanese language- OR transcribe your therapy sessions into prose. Doing both leaves the whole endeavor feeling unsatisfying on both ends.
Look, if there is any person who should love this book, it is me. Ms. Barton and I came to Japan in bizarrely similar circumstances. We were both 21-year-old BA Philosophy graduates, who applied for the JET Programme mainly because a boyfriend-at-the-time was applying, (who happened to be way more into Japan than us) and both ended up getting in while the boyfriend-at-the-time did not. We both broke up with said boyfriends, and came to Japan alone, with a beginner's textbook in Nihongo clutched under our arms.
That being said, I did not love this book. At face value, Fifty Sounds is a Wittgenstein-filled exploration of a language lover's journey. What I saw it as was a collection of melancholic lamentations that never quite reach the level of self-realisation that you want them to.
Either create a very dry, bare-bones novel about literary translation and the Japanese language- OR transcribe your therapy sessions into prose. Doing both leaves the whole endeavor feeling unsatisfying on both ends.
hellosagar's review
5.0
Absolutely, absolutely delightful. It's structured in a really engaging way, but proceeds in a relatively clean narrative, with a few asides here and there. Barton is such a charismatic writer and is so open and vulnerable with her audience that you can't help but be carried away. Doesn't hurt that her prose is a joy. I read this while at the hospital for my first kid, and it whisked me away and settled my mind.
alyssarider's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 - like reading abt a sally rooney character except it doesnt work as well bc she exists in real life and you know she's out there deeply annoying someone as you read
anasothershelf's review
4.0
Fifty Sounds alludes to the 5 x 10 grid system used to organize Japanese syllabaries by the phonemes that comprise them, something akin to Western alphabetical order. Polly Barton adopts this concept to produce fifty vignettes about her life, headlined by a Japanese mimetic, a way-marker of her language and cultural immersion journey. The book is a deeply personal, self-indulgent memoir heavily influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. Despite delving into linguistics and philosophy, Barton’s witty and relatable narrative remains approachable and inviting to the reader. At certain moments, it feels like trespassing through places and moments that you have not been invited to. Even so, I can’t help feeling a special pull towards translation and languages, “a rope leading all the way back” to a childhood learning a foreign language, to adulthood as I pursued my studies at University, and, finally, to a career I briefly dipped my toes into.
Full review here: https://thelagomfiles.com/2021/06/17/the-languages-that-speak-to-us/
Full review here: https://thelagomfiles.com/2021/06/17/the-languages-that-speak-to-us/