mondyboy 's review for:

Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami

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Another fine collection from Hiromi Kawakami, who continues to bewilder and astound and discomfit with her fiction. Here we have eight stories that feature everything from an octopus con man, kitchen gods, a meditation on turds (don’t ask me to repeat it, you read it right the first time) and a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor. All the characters in these stories strive for something - mostly to love and be loved and to find a modicum of happiness. Kawakami’s prose is plain, matter-of-fact even. This is no insult. The simplicity only makes her fiction all the weirder and funnier and shocking. There’s nowhere to hide when you read a Kawakami story, and that’s what I love about her work.