Mieko Kanai

Housewife Natsumi leads a small, unremarkable life in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes on trips to the supermarket, exchanges gossip with neighbours. Tracing the conversations and interactions she has with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying inability to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that make up a life confined to the home, where both everything and nothing happens. With shades of Clarice Lispector, Mavis Gallant and Lucy Ellman, this late-period novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, and film and literary critic Mieko Kanai - whose often dark and cynical work occupies something of a cult place within the Japanese canon - is a disconcerting and astute portrait of life in late-stage capitalist society.

Mild Vertigo

軽いめまい

This is the first of 金井美恵子 Mieko Kanai's books I've read (unfortunately, despite having written more than 30 books and enjoying a cult following in Japan, very few of her works have been translated into English, and even this one was written 25 years ago but only translated into English last year), and I loved it. So much so that I already ordered her "Oh, Tama!: A Mejiro Novel" from the local bookshop.

It's almost entirely an inner monologue, written in long, meandering sentences, that quickly makes you feel you are right inside Natsumi's head, a middle-class housewife and mother in Tokyo, describing an often stifling, routine life. But it's not without humour, and there are some very funny and sharp observations that made me laugh out loud. And while it may seem chaotic on the surface, it's cleverly constructed - e.g. I loved how a passage where Natsumi lists the layout and exact contents of her local supermarket in painstaking detail makes an identical reappearance right at the end of the book.

And Polly Barton's translation is stunning - it can't have been easy to translate a book like this, whose dense sentences more often than not span multiple pages (the opening sentence alone is at least four pages long), and wildly skip between first and third person perspectives and narratives. 

Mario Menti 

This is the first of 金井美恵子 Mieko Kanai's books I've read (unfortunately, despite having written more than 30 books and enjoying a cult following in Japan, very few of her works have been translated into English, and even this one was written 25 years ago but only translated into English last year), and I loved it. So much so that I already ordered her "Oh, Tama!: A Mejiro Novel" from the local bookshop.

It's almost entirely an inner monologue, written in long, meandering sentences, that quickly makes you feel you are right inside Natsumi's head, a middle-class housewife and mother in Tokyo, describing an often stifling, routine life. But it's not without humour, and there are some very funny and sharp observations that made me laugh out loud. And while it may seem chaotic on the surface, it's cleverly constructed - e.g. I loved how a passage where Natsumi lists the layout and exact contents of her local supermarket in painstaking detail makes an identical reappearance right at the end of the book.

And Polly Barton's translation is stunning - it can't have been easy to translate a book like this, whose dense sentences more often than not span multiple pages (the opening sentence alone is at least four pages long), and wildly skip between first and third person perspectives and narratives. 

aemouh

Sarah

J★

In this intoxicating stream-of-consciousness novel, Mieko Kanai tackles the existential traps of motherhood, marriage, and domestic captivity.

The apparently unremarkable Natsumi lives in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes to the supermarket, visits friends, and gossips with neighbors. Tracing her conversations and interactions with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her own infernally buzzing internal monologue, “Mild Vertigo” explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home, where both everything and nothing happens.

With shades of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante, and Kobo Abe, this verbally acrobatic novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, and critic Mieko Kanai—whose work enjoys a cult status in Japan—is a disconcerting and radically imaginative portrait of selfhood in late-stage capitalist society.

Mild Vertigo

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