Strangers

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-06-13 rating:
Disappointing
the first 80 pages or so of this book is pretty much summed up in the synopsis. As the story develops. i use this word loosely as there is not much development at all. the characterisation is poor ,not going into any great detail about the main character. (guy grew up in japan countryside , parents die , moved to city. its not hard to predict what will happen. there's meant to be a an emotional aspect to this book , for me it really did not come through. overall disappointing

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review by: katywheatley date: 2008-05-22 rating:
Haunting Novella
I don't really think this can be classed as a novel, more of a chunky novella. Nevertheless it is a great find if you are into ghost stories with a distinctly cerebral edge, or Japanese literature in general, this reminding me very much of the work of the awesome Banana Yoshimoto.

This is an eerie story about the nature of solitude and friendship in a big city and how difficult it is to connect with people in a meaningful way. It has a wonderful air of creeping menace which intensifies into a fantastically horrifying crescendo.

It's not gory, it's not lightweight, it's a profound, tense, spine tinglingly well written story that is a really great read.

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review by: date: 2007-12-08 rating:
A mesmirising ghost story
Sometimes you pick up a book and find yourself so lost in the story that whenever you put it down -- if you can put it down -- that you find yourself thinking about it, and counting the hours, minutes, until you can resume reading it again.

When I initially picked up Taichi Yamada's Strangers, a slim volume with slightly too-large print, I had no idea what to expect from it. Little did I know the stranglehold it would have over me for the three days it took me to read. Every time I had to close the book, owing to my deep and abiding need for sleep during a hectic working week, I did so reluctantly. And every morning I'd wake up, a little knot of excitement in my tummy, knowing that this magical, haunting, little book was awaiting my eager eyes.

Paradoxically, as much as I could not wait to reach the final, chilling conclusion, I also did not want the story to end, and I admittedly dragged it out for at least a day longer than was truly necessary.

Strangers is one of those beguiling tales told in simple, hypnotic prose. The first person narrative by 48-year-old Harada, a depressed and slightly jaded TV scriptwriter living in Tokyo, is strangely addictive despite the sometimes clunky sentence structure and the not-quite-right dialogue littered with American slang (perhaps a fault of the translator rather than the author?)

The story opens with Harada admitting that life as a newly divorced man has left him a little cash-strapped. Unable to afford a nice home, he is now living in an apartment that was once his office. His aching loneliness is mirrored in the silence that surrounds him each night, the only resident in a seven-storey building on a busy traffic route. The silence unsettles him.

This unsettled feeling gets worse when he discovers he has a neighbour living on the third floor, an attractive 33-year-old woman, whom he suspects is as lonely as he is. They have a nodding acquaintance but Harada lacks the courage to ask her over for a drink. This creeping unease turns to shock when he finds out that his longtime collaborator, Mamiya, is going to marry his ex-wife. And just when you think things couldn't get worse, or the narrator couldn't possibly begin to feel any more confused or out-of-sorts, on a spontaneous visit to the suburb in which he grew up he runs into a man that looks exactly like his long-dead father.

From here on in, the story becomes slightly surreal and totally mesmirising, as Harada resumes contact with the parents that left him orphaned at the age of 12. His mother and father seem not to have aged since their deaths and he grapples with the realisation that a "thirty-something couple could not possibly be the parents of a 48-year-old man". Harada finds himself living in a kind of twilight world, unable to determine what is real and what is not...

At its most basic level Strangers is a ghost story, but the simple detached prose style belies a much deeper pyschological anaylsis of modern life and how the relationships between men and women, parents and children shape our personalities and our lives. While the core of the story is eerie and edgy, this is not a horror story but a very human tale about grief and longing. I found it enormously sad and know the mood -- and memory -- of this book will stay with me for a long, long time. If only every book I read was like this!

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review by: date: 2007-11-12 rating:
Haunting Tale
A good read for my 100th title this year. A moving short novel, only 200 pages, translated from its original Japanese.
It is a strangely moving `ghost story' the protagonist is recently divorced Hideo Harada, a scriptwriter for television. Already somewhat disillusioned with life and feeling lonely, he discovers that one of his closest work associates, friend even, Mamaiya is involved with his ex-wife Ayako. Is it therefore his depressed mood that leads him into the eerie relationships with his long dead parents and his young neighbour Katsura, also know as Kei.
As the tale progresses it seems that Hideo's life blood is draining away, but just in time help comes from an unexpected source.
I actually found it captivating and `ghost stories' are not a genre I am normally interested in. Unlike some of the other reviews I have read I did not anticipate it to turn out quite as it did!
This haunting tale is to be recommended.



review by: bengaligirl date: 2007-09-02 rating:
A modern Japanese ghost story
A middle-aged, cynical and now divorced TV scriptwriter Harada is living a lonely life in his work-come-apartment when on the spur of the moment returns to the dilapidated downtown district of Tokyo where he grew up. Orphaned at an early age and raised first by his grandfather and then Uncle Harada is removed from emotions, unhappy but not knowing he is unhappy he is looking for something that he is not able to find in the modern world that he has to live in.

Whilst wandering through his old childhood home he visits a theatre and meets a man who looks exactly like his long-dead father with a wife who is the image of his equally long dead mother.

And so begins Harada's journey, as he's drawn into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they had died so many years before.

Is he living a dream? Are these people real? What is happening to him? A spooky ghost story with a modern twist, well worth a read.

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