穴らしきものに入る

Brilliantly absurd short stories with only a tiny hint of horror

The book won the 18th Japan Horror Award for the first short story. I should note that the author himself said he was surprised to find himself in the horror category, and I agree. There were some elements that could have been horror if they were treated differently, but the stories were basically brilliantly weird, with only a light touch of the unsettling.

This is the only book by the author as far as I can tell, and it shows in the relatively unpolished writing (although this also means it's quite low on language difficulty). But the ideas behind the five stories in the book more than make up for it. It's been a while since I read anything this crazy, and I enjoyed it immensely.

I'll try to give the basic premise of the stories in just one sentence (these are all revealed in the very beginning of each story, but I'll spoiler in case you want to go in completely blind):

In the first, award-winning story, a man accidentally realizes he can enter holes of any size (like the water hose in his garden), after which he begins to compulsively enter any hole imaginable.

In the second story, a bereaved family finds out their dead relative had bones of pure gold after his cremation.

In the third story, a woman uses all means necessary to never be exposed to sunlight.

In the fourth story, a man wakes up with a mask on his face, and removing it only results in a new mask appearing underneath.

In the fifth story, a couple comes across an old vending machine which gives you a chance to win a baby with your drink.