Revenge

Product Information

I repeated to myself what I would say when she emerged into the fading light of the shop: "Two strawberry shortcakes, please."

Yoko Ogawa’s “Revenge” - Words Without Borders Yoko Ogawa’s “Revenge” - Words Without Borders

He died twelve years ago. Suffocated in an abandoned refrigerator left in a vacant lot. When I first saw him, I didn't think he was dead. I thought he was just ashamed to look me in the eye because he had stayed away from home for three days. Everything looked delicious. But I knew before I entered the shop what I would buy: two strawberry shortcakes. That was all. At this late stage in Revenge, Ogawa has moved horror directly into a home. The characters do not have to break into an abandoned post office or dig in a garden to find the macabre. It is on display in plain sight, used just as a table or a chair or a record player. Somehow it didn't bother me that he was talking about a completely different person. Nor did I try to correct him. My son had read his picture books so well that it seemed quite likely he might have had a leading role in a play one day.

Need Help?

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales ( 寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い, Kamoku na shigai, Midara na tomurai ) is a collection of interconnected short stories by Yōko Ogawa. It was published in Japan in 1998, [1] and in the United States by Picador in 2013. Stephen Snyder translated the book into English. Yo ni mo utsukushī sūgaku nyūmon, 世にも美しい数学入門, 2005 ( An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics) Pregnancy Diary" (Ninshin karendā, 妊娠カレンダー, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, The New Yorker, 12/2005. Read here An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon is approached by a cabaret singer, whose beautiful appearance belies the grotesque condition of her heart. And while the surgeon's jealous lover vows to kill him, a violent envy also stirs in the soul of a lonely craftsman. Desire meets with impulse and erupts, attracting the attention of the surgeon's neighbor---who is drawn to a decaying residence that is now home to instruments of human torture. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders---their fates converge in an ominous and darkly beautiful web. You're right," she said. "I can guarantee they're good. The best thing in the shop. The base is made with our special vanilla."

Revenge - Ogawa Yoko - Complete Review Revenge - Ogawa Yoko - Complete Review

Eleven carefully calibrated creepy stories… This deliciously dark new collection should bring new fans to the prolific Japanese author Yoko Ogawa.” —Jane Ciabattari, The Daily Beast Excuse me," I called hesitantly. There was no reply, so I decided to sit down on a stool in the corner and wait.The Diving Pool (Daibingu puru, ダイヴィング・プール, 1990; Ninshin karendā, 妊娠カレンダー, 1991; Dormitory, ドミトリイ, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, New York: Picador, 2008. ISBN 0-312-42683-6; published on The New York Times in 2006 A woman moves into an apartment next to a large kiwi orchard. She lives across the courtyard from her elderly landlady, Mrs. J, who owns the orchard and cultivates a large garden in the complex and distributes produce to her favorite tenants. The narrator finds herself watching Mrs. J often, becoming familiar with her daily routine. After the narrator tells Mrs. J that the best way to keep the cats away from her produce beds is to spread pine needles around them, Mrs. J brings her fresh produce and comes over for tea frequently, often remarking that the narrator seems tense and that she would gladly offer her a massage for free. When the narrator asks Mrs. J where her husband is, Mrs. J states that he was a drunk who gambled away all the money she made from rent and didn't work and that one night he disappeared, presumably falling drunkenly into the sea. One night, as the narrator is up late working on a manuscript, she sees Mrs. J on top of a middle aged man on her bed. She remarks that it appears Mrs. J is strangling him, though she is just giving him a massage. Another night, she sees Mrs. J running across the kiwi orchard, carrying a large box entirely full of kiwis away at a full sprint. Soon afterwards, Mrs. J begins to dig up carrots that look like pudgy human hands. She gives the first to the narrator, but as they become more plentiful, begins to distribute them amongst her tenants. This brings the attention to the local press, and Mrs. J is photographed with the narrator and a few other tenants holding the oddly shaped carrots. After what seems like some time, the narrator is interviewed by the police, who ask her if she knew what had happened to Mrs. J's husband, or if she had seen anything strange. The narrator repeats what her landlady told her about her husband and tells them about the incident with the kiwis. The police search an abandoned post office nearby and find a large number of kiwis and the corpse of a cat, but nothing else. It's only when they bulldoze the garden that they find the body of Mrs. J's husband, whose hands are missing.

Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge - Chautauqua Journal Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge - Chautauqua Journal

Not one person in the crowd on the square knew that a young woman was crying in the kitchen behind the bakery. I was the only witness. He was an intelligent child. He could read his favorite picture book from beginning to end aloud without making a single mistake. He would use a different voice for each character—the piglet, the prince, the robot, the old man. He was left-handed. He had a broad forehead and a mole on one earlobe. When I was busy making dinner, he would often ask questions I did not know how to answer. Who invented Chinese characters? Why do people grow? What is air? Where do we go when we die? She smiled faintly, in a way that seemed perfectly suited to the quiet of the bakery. I found myself wondering whether she understood that my son had died. Or perhaps she knew only too well about people dying. Disturbing… the delicate, slow-burning eeriness [lingers] long after the book is put down.” — Time Out (New York)

Revenge

As one character admits: "Everyone I know has died", and death does come to seem unsettlingly commonplace here -- even as it still comes as a surprise how and when it pops up in some of these tales. A storehouse of creepy and vicious behavior… [Ogawa's] touches of horror sometimes put me in mind of the grown-up stories of Roald Dahl.” — Jim Higgins, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales (Kamoku na shigai, midara na tomurai, 寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い,1998) Translated by Stephen Snyder, Picador, 2013.