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A review by blchandler9000
House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
3.0
(note: I was only able to obtain a copy of the title story, so my review is only about that, not the other 2 tales in this edition)
A strange tale that weaves between lovely, dark, and melancholy, sometimes from sentence to sentence. A sad, old man goes to a sort of brothel where he is allowed to sleep next to a young woman. She's been given a powerful sleeping drug, so she has no idea about who she spends the night with or how. The old man's thoughts run from nostalgic to angry to sad, all brought about by odor and minor physical details of the sleeping girls. He recalls past relationships, both with family and with lovers. He also experiences nightmares and mentally toys with strange desires.
Some of the book was quite lovely, with evocative passages—especially the more nostalgic moments. Other parts turned me off, though, like his reoccurring thoughts about hurting the girls or killing himself. But the goods outweighed the bads and my curiosity about this author's works has been piqued, so I'll be reading more from Kawabata.
A strange tale that weaves between lovely, dark, and melancholy, sometimes from sentence to sentence. A sad, old man goes to a sort of brothel where he is allowed to sleep next to a young woman. She's been given a powerful sleeping drug, so she has no idea about who she spends the night with or how. The old man's thoughts run from nostalgic to angry to sad, all brought about by odor and minor physical details of the sleeping girls. He recalls past relationships, both with family and with lovers. He also experiences nightmares and mentally toys with strange desires.
Some of the book was quite lovely, with evocative passages—especially the more nostalgic moments. Other parts turned me off, though, like his reoccurring thoughts about hurting the girls or killing himself. But the goods outweighed the bads and my curiosity about this author's works has been piqued, so I'll be reading more from Kawabata.