Summer Reading: 'Cocktails for Three,' 'N.P.'
ROXANNE: glamorous, self-confident, with a secret lover -- a married man
MAGGIE: capable and high-achieving, until she finds the one thing she can't cope with -- motherhood
CANDICE: honest, decent, or so she believes -- until a ghost from her past turns up
AT THE FIRST OF EVERY MONTH, when the office has reached its pinnacle of hysteria, Maggie, Roxanne, and Candice meet at London's swankiest bar for an evening of cocktails and gossip. Here, they chat about what's new at The Londoner, the glossy fashion magazine where they all work, and everything else that's going on in their lives. Or almost everything. Beneath the girl talk and the laughter, each of the three has a secret. And when a chance encounter at the cocktail bar sets in motion an extraordinary chain of events, each one will find her biggest secret revealed.
Fun, breezy reading; not, as I thought upon first glance, a trashy-fun romance novel but a fun read nevertheless, in a kind of "girl-power!" way. Although the men are obviously important, and play a large role in the women's destruction and subsequent rebuilding, it's the women who are at the emotional center of the book.
At points the story falls prey to the irritating cliche of "If They Were Only Honest With Each Other, Everyone's Problems Would've Been Solved So Much Earlier And Without Heartbreak." Also, there's a Single White Female subplot that gets frustrating because the main character of that story is so good-hearted (read: stubbornly oblivious, with guilt stemming from a Tragic Past).
Last year, to resounding best-selling acclaim, Grove brought "Bananamania" to the United States with the publication of Kitchen, sparking a literary love affair that melted international boundaries. Now "Bananamania" continues with the publication of N.P, a novel of uncanny subtlety, style, magic and mystery.
In Yoshimoto's story, N.P. is the title of the last collection of short stories by a celebrated Japanese writer. Written in English while he was living in Boston, the book may never see print in his native Japan: each time a new translator takes up the task, death gets in the way.
Four young people, each intimately bound to this writer and his work, are brought together by N.P. and its unsettling legacy of secrets and suicides. But with the strengh of their remaining innocence, their desire to nurture, and the healing message contained in the final story, they are able to defy the devastating pull of pain and loss.
I don't think this could be anything but a summer book -- it takes place during the summer, it celebrates, encapsulates summer-- brief acquaintances that light, and flare, and extinguish with the approaching fall.
The writing is disarmingly direct and personal-- the narrator often addresses the reading audience (it's the standard "so quiet you could hear a pin drop" type of impersonal address for the most part and once, towards the end, a more personal and prolonged monologue).
passage:
"She turned over on her stomach. For a while, I could see that she was building a mound of small chips of broken concrete with her fingers. Then she just lay there with her eyes closed, and that made me uneasy. I leaned down to make sure that she was okay and saw that she had fallen asleep. I shook her awake.
She rubeed her eyes and pushed herself up into a sitting position. 'I was dreaming about a grave. It's bad not having anyone underneath us here.'
'Yes. It's one big grave,' I said. 'Let's get out of here.'
She nodded. We climbed down to the bustling street again, and went to get something to drink. When I look back at that night now, I know that it didn't hurt me. It seemed good, like a time when I was wrapped in something like a childhood dream." (138)
MAGGIE: capable and high-achieving, until she finds the one thing she can't cope with -- motherhood
CANDICE: honest, decent, or so she believes -- until a ghost from her past turns up
AT THE FIRST OF EVERY MONTH, when the office has reached its pinnacle of hysteria, Maggie, Roxanne, and Candice meet at London's swankiest bar for an evening of cocktails and gossip. Here, they chat about what's new at The Londoner, the glossy fashion magazine where they all work, and everything else that's going on in their lives. Or almost everything. Beneath the girl talk and the laughter, each of the three has a secret. And when a chance encounter at the cocktail bar sets in motion an extraordinary chain of events, each one will find her biggest secret revealed.
Fun, breezy reading; not, as I thought upon first glance, a trashy-fun romance novel but a fun read nevertheless, in a kind of "girl-power!" way. Although the men are obviously important, and play a large role in the women's destruction and subsequent rebuilding, it's the women who are at the emotional center of the book.
At points the story falls prey to the irritating cliche of "If They Were Only Honest With Each Other, Everyone's Problems Would've Been Solved So Much Earlier And Without Heartbreak." Also, there's a Single White Female subplot that gets frustrating because the main character of that story is so good-hearted (read: stubbornly oblivious, with guilt stemming from a Tragic Past).
Last year, to resounding best-selling acclaim, Grove brought "Bananamania" to the United States with the publication of Kitchen, sparking a literary love affair that melted international boundaries. Now "Bananamania" continues with the publication of N.P, a novel of uncanny subtlety, style, magic and mystery.
In Yoshimoto's story, N.P. is the title of the last collection of short stories by a celebrated Japanese writer. Written in English while he was living in Boston, the book may never see print in his native Japan: each time a new translator takes up the task, death gets in the way.
Four young people, each intimately bound to this writer and his work, are brought together by N.P. and its unsettling legacy of secrets and suicides. But with the strengh of their remaining innocence, their desire to nurture, and the healing message contained in the final story, they are able to defy the devastating pull of pain and loss.
I don't think this could be anything but a summer book -- it takes place during the summer, it celebrates, encapsulates summer-- brief acquaintances that light, and flare, and extinguish with the approaching fall.
The writing is disarmingly direct and personal-- the narrator often addresses the reading audience (it's the standard "so quiet you could hear a pin drop" type of impersonal address for the most part and once, towards the end, a more personal and prolonged monologue).
passage:
"She turned over on her stomach. For a while, I could see that she was building a mound of small chips of broken concrete with her fingers. Then she just lay there with her eyes closed, and that made me uneasy. I leaned down to make sure that she was okay and saw that she had fallen asleep. I shook her awake.
She rubeed her eyes and pushed herself up into a sitting position. 'I was dreaming about a grave. It's bad not having anyone underneath us here.'
'Yes. It's one big grave,' I said. 'Let's get out of here.'
She nodded. We climbed down to the bustling street again, and went to get something to drink. When I look back at that night now, I know that it didn't hurt me. It seemed good, like a time when I was wrapped in something like a childhood dream." (138)