Fantastic new Japanese author Oyamada (The Factory, The Hole, Weasels in the Attic)
Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2023 7:54 am
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.
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.