Fearing that a curse taints his family bloodline because of his siblings' suicides and betrayals, Miura's unnamed protagonist attempts to expurgate the demons in his life by following his own tortured yet honor-bound path. In these six short overlapping stories, originally published in Japanese as Shinobugawa, Miura vividly depicts a young man, loosely based on himself, who is struggling to build a life in 1950s postwar Japan. Translated competently by Driver, the work deserves consideration, as relatively few Akutagawa Prize-winning novels have been translated into English. The story itself is repetitive at times, with six different tales overlapping and describing similar subjects and events. Despite these flaws, the book is uncommonly affecting and noteworthy for its honest portrayal of an artist finding his voice amid crushing poverty, distressing family circumstances, and youthful confusion. Also made into a film known in English as The Long Darkness (1973). Recommended for larger collections of Japanese literature in translation at public and academic libraries.-Andrew Weiss, LIS student, Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
A young man struggling under his cursed family history marks Japanese author Miura's first work translated into English, an intricately layered if claustrophobic collection of six stories from 1960. Five of the six stories are set in postwar Japan and treat in a chronological jumble a university student narrator's courtship with and marriage to a young Tokyo waitress and his decision not to have children because of the fate of his siblings: the narrator's two older brothers ran off, two sisters committed suicide and several of them were visually impaired, leaving him, the youngest, feeling ashamed and sinful. He marries the cheerful, hardworking waitress Shino, but won't find a job, and despite the money Shino brings in, they descend into penury. Upon the death of his father, the narrator rescinds his decision not to have children, and with Shino pregnant, they return to his family's home in Honshu, hoping for a "fresh start." The sixth story involves different characters but similarly treats a husband's hope to "start fresh" after he learns his wife was raped before marrying him. The five connected stories, despite their erratic time lines, present an intriguing and kaleidoscopic view of a life. (Dec.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
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