I’d been wanting to read this for a long time so when it was on sale I snapped it up. The book had amazing reviews when it was first published in 1993 (1986 in Japan) and several of my friends raved even years later. Sorry to say I didn’t quite see the appeal, but maybe it was innovative at the time. There is another shorter and separate, but thematically related novella included – it’s called Moonlight Shadow.

*******
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshiimoto
20. – 117 pages
read by Emily Zeller – 4h 24m
rating: 5 (mixed) general fiction
*******

Mikage Sakurai is a very young Japanese woman who’s only relative, her grandmother, has just died. She’s invited to stay at the house of a young male friend of her grandmother, Yuichi Tanabe. Eriko Tanabe, Yuichi’s “mother,” lives in the house, too. She is transgender and a very strange but beautiful woman who owns and manages a night club.

The novel is about grief and youth and love and food – kitchens. It’s likely a very good book, but I really wasn’t in the mood.