God, that's such a fun pen name isn't it? "Kitchen" Is Yoshimoto's debut work, a novella that in the release I read was also accompanied by another very short story called "Moonlight Shadow". "Kitchen" was written during their downtime as a server in a restaurant, which I cant help but find incredibly endearing. It is a short work, only stretching to the 150pg mark with the help of a smaller than normal formatting and an attached story. And it moves briskly enough in the way that Japanese novels tend to. Briskly and to the point this is a story that delves into loss. What it does to us, how we deal with it, and how we are ultimately shaped by the partings in our lives.
We follow the main character after losing her grandmother, her last blood relative close to her. The loss threatens to tear her apart before she is invited to life with a family friend. In moving in with them, she grows, heals, and ultimately changes. As they navigate complicated new feelings and losses.
That's the novel in a bottle. Something of note that cannot go unstated that I struggle to find my feelings on, is the handling of the family friends transgender mother Eriko. This book was published in the 80's and one could argue that their handling of such a character was well done and progressive for its time, but even with this knowledge at hand at moments it just feels . . . in poor taste.
While Eriko is referred to as "she" and "her" by main characters and others, it is her son Yuichi that will still refer to them as "My mother. . . No, my father." And while the main character seems constantly in awe of how beautiful and graceful they are as a person. It's often through the lens of "Even though they were a man. . ."
The fact that the novel is translated does not help it in this regard, its hard to tell how much of those bits is culture at the time, translation, or poor choice. There is one joke in the book made between the main character and Yuichi that struck me as just offensive, but it was hard to tell if that was the translation getting in the way of the prose. Eriko themselves has mixed feelings and talks about their transition in interesting monologues, talking about the "male" them and the "woman" them but acknowledging that they are them, regardless of when in their life they are referring or looking towards.
The events surrounding Eriko's transition, the perspective of Yuichi as a child of a transgender parent, and the main character seemingly having had minimal to no interaction with transgender people in their own life leads to interesting moments and conversations. But, be warned. While in its time the book was progressive through a modern lens I don't think it holds up as well as one might expect. Especially when filtered through a translation. Ultimately, I feel a combination of being written in the 80s, a different culture, and a translation on top of it all resulted in this aspect of the book stumbling more than it walked. But, there is grace in my mind in how the book never feels outright disrespectful or de-meaning in it's handling of Eriko.
Aside from this. The story itself is a hauntingly familiar account of what it means to lose those you love and how life often hands us things we couldn't even imagine and expects us to simply deal with them. For those familiar with Japanese novels and the associated writing style, they will find it easy to slide right into Yoshimoto's style. If this is your first time, it may take some getting used to, but once you do you will find a touching, quick moving story that might just reach out and grab you if you relate to the material.
3.5/5 This book is so close to a 4 for me, and I can see how to the right person its a very high 4, could be a 5 to the right person. But there are just enough stumbling blocks that I found myself unable to FULL immerse myself in the work, though, I can say that I recommend it to those familiar with Japanese novels, as long as one is aware that while it may have been progressive for its time, it might not hold up in the same way today.
