Name: The Word Book
ISBN: 9781564785664

Mieko Kanai

The newest addition to Dalkey Archive s Japanese Literature Series is a complex and beautiful tour de force.

The Word Book

Fraser Simons

Fantastic bits of writing that are thematically interlinked, conflate or playfully, artfully distinguish between the person consuming the written word and the person who wrote it. Borges-esk at times in its fluidity in moving from story to story without typical framing to alter the readers perspective of the narrator, using their inbuilt assumptions. 

Major themes are grounded in memory and the act of writing, but it ranges broadly on that theme and often in surprising ways. A character’s reliability can be called into question at any given time, and the character may be the author. And the author could be a woman calling the author, complaining about a “bad” piece of writing that was published. There is a frustration, it feels like, with the way people internalize stories and what that act then reflects in the author. And the inability of people to reckon with the notion of two completely separate selves performing the act of writing and reading. Mix that with the fragility and subjectivity of memory and a kind of awe in the verisimilitude and you get a pretty unique style of writing. 

It’s always engaging and very artful. It very much feels like an artist displaying their craft. The prose, especially with first person does feel slightly formal—I’m wondering if that is due to translation or due to the time period, as it is a collection and she has been writing for quite some time. Anyway, the stories went in delightful directions and were moving.

“You were looking at the moon, weren’t you?”

The Word Book

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