I randomly grabbed the book The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada because it was cheap and had an interesting cover (pink with a steaming trash can). At only 116 pages I figured it would be light fluff for a lazy afternoon. Crikey was I wrong. Although the writing style is straightforward enough, the book is a mindwarping puzzle, a really cryptic allegory that leaves you thinking for months. Anyone else read it?

It's tempting to stamp it 'Kafkaesque' due to its use of surrealistic metaphor. It presents the goings-on at an enormous, all-encompassing corporate campus known as "the factory". Like Kafka there's a sneaky dark humor to it all. But where it deviates from Kafka and becomes an original is in the fact that there's no outright surrealism or absurdity happening. Sure, some characters are bizarre and creepily hilarious, like the the mysterious "forest pantser" who jumps out of the forest and pulls people's pants down, but overall everything is pretty true to life, mundane and typical. It's as if Oyamada finds her Kafkaesque voice in everyday life.

I immediately ordered her follow-up book The Hole and I'm sure after that I'll grab her most recent Weasels in the Attic. Those are her only 3 works translated to English as of now. It's pretty exciting for me because this is the first time in decades that I've been instantly affected by a new author. It's kinda like that feeling of discovering a cool new band just when you'd given up on music.

Received her 2nd book The Hole the other day and inhaled it all in 1 night. It's another short one, around 100 pages, but it really packs a punch. In fact it may be the book's deceptive simplicity that makes it so powerful.

The Hole (original Japanese title Asa, the name of the main character) begins with the seemingly mundane story of a woman who moves out to the country with her husband who has just accepted a job transfer. For the time being she embraces a life of complete inactivity, bordering on maddening boredom, as she adjusts to life in a stagnant little village that seems mostly deserted. One day while running an errand she sees a strange black animal and follows it to the river bank where she falls into a hole. She gets out, but after that she begins meeting strange people, particularly a man who lives in a shed and claims to be a person of significance.

If you sense a parallel with Alice in Wonderland, you're on the trail. The book itself alludes to Alice once or twice. But it becomes so much more as it takes us on an absurdist journey through reality. Moreover, it presents a puzzle for us to solve. The titular "hole" refers to the hole she falls in, but it also alludes to empty spaces in our lives, from unfulfilled expectations to outright holes in our memory, holes in our existence where we forgot, overlooked, or forcefully suppressed things. The plot itself leaves us with deliberate holes which we must fill with some detective work. Can't say more without spoiling it, but the main plotline touches on something that, if you've ever experienced it (as most people have), will leave you paralyzed with thoughts & questions, maybe a few regrets.

I didn't think Oyamada coud outdo her debut effort The Factory but this one really knocks it outta the park. Couldn't get to sleep the rest of the night thinking about it. 10/10