Asleep
Reviews
related way too much to the last story đ
Finished this before Iâm going off to bed feels like you just wake up from a foggy dream. I was enchanted of how Banana Yoshimoto speaks so directly yet so beautifully illustrated. You read one line, and begging for yet another line afterward - wishing for it to never reach the end.
The last story âAsleepâ resonate so deep within me, Iâve known people who have trouble sleeping but to avoid yourself to face reality, you choose to sleep; and I felt that â right to the bone.
The right book to read before bed.
âIt occurred to me how splendid it was to be able to look around at this night - this night, when we could do all these things - with a mind and a spirit so marvelously clear. It felt almost like I was praying. May every sleep in this world be equally peaceful.â
oh, banana. you somehow write so directly, yet convey a sense of faraway feelings every time. i liked this collection better than Lizard; the bleary, half-asleep roaming of each main character felt startlingly familiar and relatable. yes, the relationships were a bit uhhH... unconventional, but i felt like they provided a deeper sense of disorientation and a blurring of reality. an aside: for fun, i've been working on a short story drawing somewhat from banana's literary voice and it's been e n l i g h t e n i n g. some defining characteristics that i've observed in her writing: matter-of-factness, tension between beauty and sadness, colloquialism, meditative snapshots of nature or nostalgic scenes, random superlatives (awesome, fantastic, etc.). i just wish i could read her writing in the original japanese bah
I always say that sometimes the books you really need to read find you. I was a fan of Banana Yoshimoto's before I read this, having read her sublime "Kitchen", and had purchased this the next item from her bibliography to read. And I needed to read it. I connected with every character, understood every moment, and it just sang to me. I'm very thankful I found this book and shared quiet hours with it, listening to the characters and empathizing with their pain. Thank goodness for Banana Yoshimoto.
literally could not put it down. felt like a dream that youâre half awake for, just following in your mind. i loved it.
3.5
I finished this book and immediately felt like it wasnât enough. Itâs so easy to get caught into Banana Yoshimotoâs characters that itâs always a sudden and much too quick goodbye.
** spoiler alert ** Io capisco che il sonno nel racconto sia solo un modo per rappresentare la situazione della protagonista, ma mettendomi nei suoi panni non ho potuto non trovare le sue azioni veramente assurde. Vai a dormire prima di mezzanotte, dormi fino alle 2 del pomeriggio e già wow, che dormita e la cosa non ti stupisce? No, lei se ne stupisce veramente poco. Esce, non riesce a svegliarsi nemmeno dopo due caffè, e cosa pensa? "muoio di sonno, meglio se torno a casa a dormire" ma hai dormito fino ad ora! Torna a casa e ovviamente dorme, ma fino a quando? Le cinque del mattino. Si sveglia e "ops" ma non ti viene il dubbio di avere qualcosa di grosso che non va? No, lei piuttosto pensa che la ex moglie del suo amante le abbia mandato qualcosa, assurdo. Altra assurdità nell'altro racconto,come fa Marie a sapere sempre tutto? come mai nessuno si spaventa? Lei incontra il probabile ( sicuro per me!) figlio del fratello morto e quando incontra Marie la tocca e pensa che abbia incontrato il fratello e sa anche dove ( nella hall di un albergo ) solo che ovviamente poi si corregge dicendo che "ah giusto, è morto era solo una sensazione" ma la protagonista sa che questa sensazione è in realtà vera perchÊ lei ha incontrato il presunto figlio e come potrebbe saperlo marie? ma per lei è una cosa normalissima. Tolte alcune assurdità il libro è carino e si legge bene.
Highlights
âEven if all this has been nothing but the story of a few small waves that shook me when I lost my friend and wore myself out doing all the little things one does every day, even if all this was nothing but the story of a small resurrection, it still makes me think that people are very strong.â
Excerpt From
Asleep
Banana Yoshimoto
This material may be protected by copyright.
No, I just wanted to recapture the incredibly vivid love we'd had at firtâthe love I'd shared with the tall man standing next to me, with the man I adored. I wanted to hold everything in place with my thin little arm and my weak spirit. I wanted to do what I could with my unreliable body to try and deal with all the many scary things that were going to start happening to us from now on. I wanted to try.â
âI'd absorbed the darkness of his exhaustion-I liked acting that way. There was something lonely between us, and we protected that ever so carefully in the way we loved each other. And so things were fine as they were. For the time being this was fine.â
âBecause when you're sleeping next to all these exhausted people, it's like you start matching your breath to theirs, slowly, those deep breaths⌠maybe you're breathing in the darkness they have inside them.â
âThe only thing I'd understood right rom the very beginning was that our love was supported by loneliness. That neither one of us could haul ourselves up out of the deady numbness we felt when we lay together, so silent, in darkness so isolating it seemed to shine.
This was the edge of night.â
âI don't know how to explain it, but when I was with her it was like, you know, like those times when life starts weighing down on it felt like that weight had been reduced by half.â
"Even travelers who brush sleeves on the road are bound by ties from a former lifeââŚâ
âand Iâd start feeling as nothing really mattered, like I wouldnât really care at all even if I were to lose everything I had.
This wasnât 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.â
"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."
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."
May every sleep in this world be equally peaceful.
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.
Because when youâre sleeping next to all these exhausted people, itâs like you start matching your breaths to theirs, slowly, those deep breathsâŚmaybe youâre breathing in the darkness they have inside them.
The harder I would try to make him understand the more my words would turn to dust, the more theyâd get caught up in their own momentum, a wind that would blow them out of existenceâthis much was clear to me, and so I said nothing. All those words Iâd thought up wouldnât communicate a thing.
No doubt the coming of the storm had made her feel lonely.
Each time I looked out on that scenery with drunken eyes Iâd be overwhelmed by the unbelievable purity of these colors, and Iâd start feeling as if nothing really mattered, like I wouldnât really care at all even if I were to lose everything I had. This wasnât 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.
She talked to me about her heart, how it closed up as she waited.
This book appears in the club Cottagecore Shelf
