The Kitchen Book

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Mikage Sakurai has lost her dearly beloved grandmother whom she had been living with, and she feels lost, alone and vulnerable. She’s now an orphan as there are no other relatives. The tide has gone out and she doesn’t know when or whether it will return. She knows she has to find a new apartment to live in but hesitates. So when a casual acquaintance, Yuichi Tanabe, who used to work part-time in her grandmother’s favourite flower shop, invites her to stay with him and his mother, Eriko, she agrees, especially when she sees the enormous sofa, which would be her bed, in the living room and finally the kitchen. She was a particular lover of kitchens. When you’re travelling, every night the air is clear and crisp, the mind serene. In any case, if nobody was waiting for me anywhere, yes, this serene life would be the thing. But I’m not free, I realized; I’ve been touched by Yuichi’s soul. How much easier it would be to stay away forever. After the funeral she is invited by Yuichi Tanabe, a student from the year below who she barely knows but who worked at her grandmother's favourite flower shop to live with him and his mother Eriko. Yuichi lost one mother through cancer when he was young and Eriko is his second, transgender, mother, a nightclub owner. If I had lost a parent, partner or child, maybe I'd have been more engaged with this book, but I suspect my experience would be so different as to be barely comparable. I'm grateful that I'm not in the position to compare. John Ota was a man on a mission–to put together the perfect kitchen. He and his wife had been making do with a room that was frankly no great advertisement for John’s architectural expertise. It just about did the job but for a room that’s supposed to be the beating heart of a home and a joy to cook in, the Otas’ left a lot to be desired. And so John set out on a quest across North America, exploring examples of excellent designs throughout history, to learn from them and apply their lessons to his own restoration. Along the way, he learned about the origins and evolution of the kitchen, its architecture and its appliances. He cooked, with expert instruction. And he learned too about the homes and their occupants, who range from pilgrims to President Thomas Jefferson, from turn of the century tenement dwellers to 21st century Vancouver idealists, from Julia Child to Georgia O’Keeffe, and from Elvis Presley to Louis Armstrong.

The treatment of transgender issues in the novel is a little of its time and place (deadnaming, misgendering and confusion between transgender and transvestite all feature), although rather less cringeworthy now than another translated novel I read recently, Ruth. See Yuri Stargirl's blog for a well balanced take on this aspect. Kad su stripovi u pitanju, Marvel uvijek ima prednost pred DC-em. Uvijek. Ali Sergio Bonelli ima prednost čak i pred Marvelom. Nije to ista crtačka tehnika, a niti narativi im nisu bliski pa ih, možda, i ne možemo u pravom smislu usporediti, ali stari su mi se stripovi o "običnim" ljudima uvijek činili uspješnijima u narativnom smislu. Later, Eriko asks Mikage to live with them, which she accepts. The apartment her grandmother left was too expensive for her to continue living in. The rent was free in exchange for soupy rice, and the stress of living with an elderly person was lifted. Mikage's ex, Sotaro, calls and informs her that Yuichi's girlfriend slapped him due to her living with him. Two broken people together don’t make a whole necessarily and sometimes the narrative steers into overly sweet territory. Still the katsu don scene is *chefs kiss*, and would work perfectly in an anime. There’s some decent character work on at least one of the women (Raven) while the other two remain more or less forgettable wallflowers. The other characters though? The very definition of cookie cutter characters: the hooker with a heart of gold; the male love interest (who at least isn’t a cop, working that star-crossed lovers angle); the fat Italian mob boss who’s actually introduced eating a plate of pasta. Gee. Neric. No cop characters at all though - where the hell were the cops anyway? Were there just none in Noo Yawk City in the ‘70s? It felt lazy of writer Ollie Masters to leave out/ignore this element entirely in a crime story.I know what Masters is saying: these women were property of their husbands. They weren't allowed to earn. They weren't considered people by their husbands or by other men (mobsters). By murdering and torturing people, they become their own agents. The men around them start treating them like human beings with agency instead of possessions. That's what the book is trying to say. But the reality is very ugly and not truly empowering IMO. I will start by saying that I have not seen the movie adaptation of The Kitchen. I've heard it's mediocre at best. Which is disappointing because I really enjoyed the book. But since I haven't seen the movie please don't ask me to compare them or answer any questions about it! Chosen, constructed families feel warmer than many societal more acceptable constructs. The protagonist gets unhappy at her university and with her former, more conventional boyfriend, while her oddball roommates don't judge her, but support her in overcoming grief. I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit,’ Eriko tells Mikage, ‘ It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me.’ Life will always be hard, but finding love and happiness must still go on and we must always get up and keep going. ‘ Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.’

From a cultural perspective I was embarrassed to see Japanese people represented uniformly as spoiled, privileged, emotionally isolated and selfish, devoid of effective introspection, and socially cold. The theme of loneliness and isolation comes across as a national character flaw rather than a universal aspect of grief and it makes me uncomfortable on a personal and political level. If you're a fan of mob stories you'll adore this. It has all the familiar tropes, but with lots of twists, turns, violence and betrayal - exactly what you'd expect from a gangster book! Without a doubt this is definitely an understated gem. Hay cosas tan duras que dan ganas de apartar la vista. Ni siquiera el amor puede salvarte del todo” Hell’s Kitchen, the 1970s: Irish and Italian mobsters, dirty streets, crime, money, power (you can practically hear Gimme Shelter fading in)… now imagine the mobsters have vaginas! Whaaaaaaaaaa… Mind. Blown.

Success!

There were glimpses of something deeper. When overtly self-analytical, I don't think they worked, but some were genuinely poignant and thought-provoking. She turns to her kitchen. But she is also invited to live with the family of a young man she has known since childhood. Now here’s a modern family: just two people, the young man and his mother. But did I tell you his father is his mother? Or, to phrase that more correctly, his mother is his father? It’s a transgender situation. The two young people are drawn to each other but then he is hit by loss. They grapple with trying to help each other, maybe love each other, or maybe just pity each other, and try to stop each other from jumping over the edge. I balk at the idea that these three women come into their own power by murdering people and torturing them and extorting money from business owners etc. Instead of becoming powerful, I see them as becoming weak. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto comprises of two stories. One is a novella (Kitchen) and the other is a short story (Moonlight Shadow). Both the stories center around two young women as protagonists and their perceptions of life and death. (Kitchen) being my favorite of the two so, I'll be talking about that one here. They know what they want and do what they need to to get it. They're incredibly strong but also flawed, just as all humans can be. It's a multi-dimensional story for multi-dimensional readers.

Satsuki often goes to the bridge where she used to meet Hitoshi and one day she meets a young woman called Urara. And due to this meeting, Satsuki and even Hiiragi have these metaphysical experiences. This story is all rather dream-like and so different to Kitchen but still excellent in its own right. Now, it's not exactly a heartwarming tale of love and redemption, but fans of those gritty crime stories might enjoy this one. Normally, I wouldn't lump myself into that group, but I'll make an exception for this story becauseUnfortunately, this involves killing loved ones, brutally murdering and torturing people, etc. etc. etc. Women's "strength" is represented by being as violent, horrible, abusive, and brutal as the men around them are. The visual design of the 70s setting is detailed and marvelous, but beyond that the illustration is pedestrian. Action sequences are disjointed. The male mobsters are all kind of a confusing blur...Johnny, Jimmy, Tommy, Tony, even their names sound the same. There have been two films made of the story, a Japanese movie in 1989 and a more widely released version produced in Hong Kong by Yim Ho in 1997. I cannot say that Banana Yoshimoto will be a contender for the Nobel Prize, but I can say that she delivers a strong argument for being one of the great writers currently writing today. One of the many things I love about goodreads is that a person is able to see what other “friends” think about a novel before committing oneself to reading it. I would have never read KITCHEN had I not seen that Mariel, Oriana, and Jason Pettus, three of my friends, all thought highly of this slim book.

Instead, the words are short, sweet, and sharp, as each narrator falls upon their knife of grief and attempts to walk it off. Here, there is no sweeping away of the tragedy into a neat compartmentalization, a time to mourn and a time to thrive coexisting in carefully delineated measurements of a person's history. For how can the horror of a beloved one being taken away in such an unfairly abrupt and often nonsensical manner ever be reconciled, as if the matter could heal as cleanly as a broken bone knitting up in a predictable number of days? As if the evolution of coping with an overwhelming loss could be graphed for all affected, and therein calculate a formulaic equation specifically calibrated for speeding up the resolution as efficiently as possible. As if it was a lie that when it came down to it, one is alone and will always be alone with one's mind, and that is how the battle of mournful reconciliation must always be fought. I really like the story beats, the plausibly different way that The Life affects the three female protagonists, their determination to maintain their independence once they've experienced it, the astronomical costs of doing so. Mensen bezwijken niet onder omstandigheden en krachten van buitenaf, ze worden van binnenuit verslagen, dacht ik uit de grond van mijn hart Kitchen es un libro de personajes rotos descritos con elegancia. Es un libro que habla de la muerte como lo que es, totalmente natural e irremediable. Morirán personas amadas de tu vida así como el río fluye, encontrarás con quien tomar un té después y buscarás la forma de que ese dolor desaparezca, o de hacerte creer que ha desaparecido. Minister of Education's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists – August 1988 [1] ((this prize was awarded for Kitchen as well as two other novellas by Yoshimoto: Utakata and Sanctuary)

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The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White the catching the light (ting! ting!). Kitchen es un puñal y una venda. Te recuerda que estás solo y que tu vida tiene los días contados, pero te enseña que justo en eso se encuentra la belleza de la vida.