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A review by ursulagaylewin
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
3.0
kitchen is a sweet, quiet, tender, lonely meditation on grief that (although im not grieving) felt like a really almost uncomfortably close reflection of what my life has been like lately (themes of love as a verb, coming into ur own, 'tending to' other people, feverish coping obsession with domesticity, an almost insufferable awareness of ephemerality ETC) so i appreciate it for that however not very memorable and it was also very transphobic which threatens to ruin it
[spoiler] aside from the obvious, lots of things about the way erikos character was handled is weird to me, almost lazy or clumsy, e.g. the huge time skip between meeting eriko for the first time and then skipping right ahead to her death... in a way it's authentic because life really does feel like it progresses that fast and nonsensically sometimes. but as a reader it was just jarring
moonlight shadow was pretty much of the same caliber, sweet and lonely and sentimental. i liked it maybe a little more than kitchen
[spoiler] aside from the obvious, lots of things about the way erikos character was handled is weird to me, almost lazy or clumsy, e.g. the huge time skip between meeting eriko for the first time and then skipping right ahead to her death... in a way it's authentic because life really does feel like it progresses that fast and nonsensically sometimes. but as a reader it was just jarring
moonlight shadow was pretty much of the same caliber, sweet and lonely and sentimental. i liked it maybe a little more than kitchen