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thebobsphere 's review for:
Mild Vertigo
by Mieko Kanai
While I was reading Mild Vertigo, I couldn't help comparing it to Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport: both are about a housewife's musings about day to day domestic duties and also there's the use of long sentences. Obviously there are differences and I'll go into that.
Natsumi has moved into a new apartment and it is full of modern devices, this leads to her describing the kitchen and how it differs from the how Japanese houses were structured in the past. This is a launching pad of sorts as each chapter then focuses on different aspects of her life, from shopping, recipes, marriage, divorce, cinema and pet cats, just to name a few but the clever thing is by describing these mundanities, the reader is seeing getting a deeper picture.
Mild Vertigo is a book about capitalism, the materialism that is seeping into Japanese society, the embracing of western traditions. The book is also a feminist novel as there are passages about the shunning of divorced women (something also expanded on in Yuko Tsushima's Territory of Light) and the actual role of a housewife in Japan.
One cannot ignore Polly Barton's translation in this book either, the fluidly labyrinthine sentences are a joy to read and, at times, are poetic. As I know a translator is supposed to replicate an author's voice and, as I have read that this is difficult to achieve with Japanese so definitely a big round of applause here.
Mild Vertigo, despite it's external simplicity, is the kind of novel that sticks with you. It is not the easiest of reads but definitely an enriching and rewarding one.
Natsumi has moved into a new apartment and it is full of modern devices, this leads to her describing the kitchen and how it differs from the how Japanese houses were structured in the past. This is a launching pad of sorts as each chapter then focuses on different aspects of her life, from shopping, recipes, marriage, divorce, cinema and pet cats, just to name a few but the clever thing is by describing these mundanities, the reader is seeing getting a deeper picture.
Mild Vertigo is a book about capitalism, the materialism that is seeping into Japanese society, the embracing of western traditions. The book is also a feminist novel as there are passages about the shunning of divorced women (something also expanded on in Yuko Tsushima's Territory of Light) and the actual role of a housewife in Japan.
One cannot ignore Polly Barton's translation in this book either, the fluidly labyrinthine sentences are a joy to read and, at times, are poetic. As I know a translator is supposed to replicate an author's voice and, as I have read that this is difficult to achieve with Japanese so definitely a big round of applause here.
Mild Vertigo, despite it's external simplicity, is the kind of novel that sticks with you. It is not the easiest of reads but definitely an enriching and rewarding one.