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Blurb
Asa’s husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family’s home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for wor...
Specs
Page Count:
208
ISBN:
4101205418
ISBN13:
9784101205410
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Honto
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Kinokuniya JP
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Reviews
(3.54/5)13 ratings2 reviews
Entertainment(3/5)
1 rating
Language learning(3/5)
1 rating
_Minossays
January 6, 2022
Three (somewhat connected) short stories about rural life. Quite surreal, which is great. The titular story is the longest and best, about a woman moving to the countryside and falling into a hole. Won an Akutagawa price. Easy read language-wise.
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June 28, 2025
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February 26, 2025
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December 18, 2024
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August 27, 2024
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April 26, 2024
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August 10, 2023
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July 23, 2022
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July 3, 2022
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The premise (woman moving to the countryside and falling into a hole) seemed weird and creepy, but in my opinion it was less creepy/scary than I expected. Yes, there are some weird things happening, and the author is very good at invoking this base-level creepiness throughout the (first) story.
Some of the creepy things involve the grandfather always watering the lawn day in day out, there being weird holes in the ground that some animal dug out, protagonist being bitten by a weird bug, everyone being very pale, no people ever being out on the street. Just a base level of these sorts of inexplicable and slightly weird things, really.
I liked the ending as well. I wish it had gotten a bit more specific other than „a lot of things the protagonist saw were just her imagining things, they actually never existed“. It did make for a nice twist, though.
The characters in the second and third story are the same, so I wouldn’t call them separate stories, but rather two chapters of one „story“. The second story, いたちなく, I probably enjoyed the most, the ending was interesting (a very short story-esque ending, but I liked it).
Language-wise, the author has some interesting quirks that made it a bit more difficult to read than your standard, say, 森 博嗣 or 小川 洋子. The author’s favorite expression is probably ~だの、~だの. She also loves listing several possibilities with ~か~か~か, which takes some time getting used to. But compared to other Akutagawa books, it’s not that difficult.