People From My Neighbourhood was a perplexing reading experience.
Hiromi Kawakami delivers a collection of 36 stories featuring the people and places of a Tokyo community as seen through the eyes of an unnamed female narrator. This is no cosy, “normal” neighbourhood however — almost every character we meet or every situation described is strange in some degree.
The first story gives a taste of the peculiar atmosphere that pervades the book. The Secret relates an encounter with a small bossy child who lives under a tree. He takes up residence in the narrator’s home, dancing naked around the room after a shower. Why? “It’s a secret,” he tells her.
As the book progresses, we get more into the realm of surrealism and magical realism. In Pigeonitis every resident bar one starts clucking and cooing like a pigeon. Some even take on physical characteristics of these birds, laying eggs and scattering droppings all over the town. Then six months later the contagion disappears as suddenly as it came.
This neighbourhood houses extraordinary facilities like the House of Music (entry permitted only on your birthday) and the House of Sweets made of chocolate and ginger snaps. Its inhabitants are frequently witness to extraordinary events that they seem to take in their stride:
For the first time in ages, we had a no-gravity alert. ‘This is the Disaster Preparedness Office Speaking. We have been informed that a no-gravity event will take place between two and five o’clock this afternoon. Please remain indoors during these hours. If you must go out for any reason, please make sure you are well weighted down. This has been a message from the Disaster Preparedness Office.’
The stories are enticing and intriguing but their brevity left me unsatisfied. Actually the term “short stories” is a bit of a misnomer. Few of them run to more than 2 or 3 pages of widely spaced text and the whole book just about makes it to 121 pages. The publisher Granta, describes them as “palm of the hand’” stories, which is apparently a phrase coined by Japanese Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata.
Most of the tales contain a mystery or an unresolved element. They are so short that The publisher describes People from My Neighborhood as “super short ‘palm of the hand’” stories, a phrase coined by Japanese Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata about his stories which he said would “virtually fit into the palm of the hand”.
People From My Neighbourhood is clearly the work of a highly imaginative brain but I do wish some of the ideas had been fleshed out more fully. By the time I got to the end I felt I’d been at a banquet comprised entirely of amuse bouche and hors d’ouevres. I’m still wondering when the main course will arrive .
