11月のギムナジウム

An early 萩尾 望都 short story collection

11月のギムナジウム is comprised of seven short stories; the following overviews are a bit brief, but it's difficult to talk about each one without spoilers, given their length:

• The titular 11月のギムナジウム: a new student transfers into an all-male boarding school and meets another boy who looks exactly like him. See my full thoughts in the forum. Eventually expanded into トーマの心臓.
• 秋の旅: A young man goes to meet a professor that he idolizes.
• 塔のある家: A very cute story about a group of fairies living in an old attic who befriend a young girl, and then watch her as she grows up and moves through life.
• もうひとつの恋: A pair of twins, each with their own beau. What happens when one twin suddenly dies one night and comes back as a ghost? This story was definitely on the wackier end of things.
• かわいそうなママ: A man, hearing that a former love of his has died, goes and meets her husband and child to hear about her last days.
• 白き森　白き少年の笛: A young, lonely girl, recently moved in, wanders the woods one day and meets a mysterious, laughing boy.
• セーラ・ヒルの聖夜: A young girl goes to visit and live with her grandmother over Christmas-time, and almost immediately meets a boy who looks just like her; they decide to get to the bottom of things.

Only now am I noticing all the similar themes the author likes to play with; each story deals with the theme differently, however, so it never felt like I was reading a retread of the same story.

While the vocabulary and (usually) grammar were not particularly difficult or specialized, the overall text density and small panel size (when reading on a Kindle, at least) definitely contributed to this being a slower read for me. That, plus the author's love for multiple sentences per small text bubble, which, combined with the manga penchant for no punctuation and oftentimes very samey-looking character designs, led to the most difficulty in my reading. Full furigana throughout at least, even if I couldn't read it 50% of the time.