Banana Yoshimoto

Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost lover, finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. A third finds her sleep haunted by another woman whom she was once pitted against in a love triangle. Sly and mystical as a ghost story, with a touch of Kafkaesque surrealism, Asleep is an enchanting book from one of the best writers in contemporary international fiction.

Asleep

She talked to me about her heart, how it closed up as she waited. 

Each time I looked out on that scenery with drunken eyes I’d be overwhelmed by the unbelievable purity of these colors, and I’d start feeling as if nothing really mattered, like I wouldn’t really care at all even if I were to lose everything I had. This wasn’t resignation, or desperation. It was a much more natural form of acceptance, a feeling that arose from a sweep of emotion that was quiet and cool and crystal-clear. 

No doubt the coming of the storm had made her feel lonely. 

The harder I would try to make him understand the more my words would turn to dust, the more they’d get caught up in their own momentum, a wind that would blow them out of existence—this much was clear to me, and so I said nothing. All those words I’d thought up wouldn’t communicate a thing. 

Because when you’re sleeping next to all these exhausted people, it’s like you start matching your breaths to theirs, slowly, those deep breaths…maybe you’re breathing in the darkness they have inside them. 

I was much too tired. My thoughts kept changing directions, heading one way and then circling back, like someone wandering around at dusk, no destination in mind. 

May every sleep in this world be equally peaceful. 

Marie

I feel like just being with him makes it possible for me to keep changing, turning into something new, like I'll be able to make my way to someplace really far away, but in a way that's totally natural."

"I often got pretty depressed myself back then. It felt like I was standing at the very edge of this world, that's the kind of mood I was in, the kind of emptiness I felt."

“and I’d start feeling as nothing really mattered, like I wouldn’t really care at all even if I were to lose everything I had.

This wasn’t resignation, or desperation. It was a much more natural form of acceptance, a feeling that arose from a sweep of emotion that was quiet and cooland crystal-clear.”

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