Review by Booklist Review
Preface any storytelling format with "traditional," and audiences will have no expectations of feminist agency. Thankfully, prizewinning Japanese writer Matsuda imagines reclamation and brilliantly transforms fairy tales and folk legends into empowering exposés, adventures, manifestos. The 17 stories--adroitly translated by UK-based Polly Barton--are loosely linked via recurring characters who work for the enigmatic Mr. Tei in his not-particularly-discernible company. His name--汀 in kanji--means "water's edge," fitting for a man who exists between the living and the dead. While each story easily entertains, there are standouts. In "The Peony Lanterns," two mysterious women visit an out-of-work salesman one late evening and ply him with melodramatic stories. The aggressive pair briefly reappear as competition for "Team Sarashina," about an outstanding 10-women working group (job descriptions unknown) in Mr. Tei's employ. In "Silently Burning," a woman recently dumped by her boyfriend gets a visit from her dead aunt, who killed herself over a lover and demands her niece avoid that fate. In "A Fox's Life," the refrain "I'm just a girl" sidelines a woman from achievement until she discovers her own invincible magic in middle age. She reappears to empower others in "A Day Off," about "a professional dream team"--of woman and toad!--who protect the vulnerable. Matsuda enthralls with both insight and bite.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Matsuda's groundbreaking collection (after the novella The Girl Who Is Getting Married) turns traditional Japanese ghost and yōkai stories on their heads by championing wild, complex women. In "The Peony Lanterns," recently unemployed Shinzaburō gets an eerie visit from two women, Tsuyoko and Yoneko, who try to sell him peony lanterns. Yoneko, the elder of the two, tells Shinzaburō of 30-something Tsuyoko's tragic life: a motherless daughter with a cruel father, she was forced to leave home before completing high school. Shinzaburō refuses the lanterns, though he gains an epiphany from the women's unusual sales tactics: "nothing terrible would happen if you broke the rules." In "Quite a Catch," a young woman named Shigemi carries on a sexual relationship with the ghost of a woman who was killed by the man she refused to marry. Not all of Matsuda's stories captivate. "Team Sarashina" is about a group of women who are assigned to various departments in their company and offer their support to flailing coworkers, but it's too obtuse to get a handle on. Most of Matsuda's stories, though, hit their mark, particularly her queer, feminist fables, including "A Fox's Life," about a woman who passively internalizes sexism in her workplace ("I'm a girl. I'm just a girl, after all") until she realizes in middle age that she might be a fox. Matsuda's subversive revisionist tales are consistently exciting. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In these contemporary reimaginings of Japanese folktales, writer/translator Matsuda (Stackable) effectively communicates a sense of traditional Japanese culture while delivering a keen understanding of Japan today. A fashion-conscious young woman obsessively removes excess body hair until her dead aunt's ghost frees her to be her truer, wilder, hairier self. Arriving late at night, two otherworldly businesswomen so unnerve a mopey unemployed man that he's on the job trail the next day. In one noteworthy story, the skeleton of a woman from the Edo period cruelly used by a samurai is reembodied after being fished from the river by the protagonist, and the two women launch a tender affair. VERDICT At once elegant and unsettling; a delight for smart readers.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Women find more freedom in death than in life as Matsuda reimagines traditional Japanese ghost stories and folktales for modern times. In "Smartening Up," the opening story of this linked collection, a woman who lives alone and has embarked on an elaborate self-improvement agenda that includes affirmations, fine foods, decorating with pink that "maximizes [her] romantic potential," and hair removal is visited by the ghost of an abrasive dead aunt who convinces her to unleash the raw power of her body rather than harness it. In the next story, "The Jealous Type," a woman whose husband is gaslighting her has jealous tantrums that rise to the level of performance art, a hilarious but also layered commentary on violence, rage, and domestic strife. Almost all the narrators play with stereotypes of women like the jealous wife or "the Middle-Aged Woman Who Wouldn't Shut Up." The narrator of "My Superpower," a columnist with severe eczema and allergies, says, "My eczema has given me...keen observational skills….Those who see others as monsters don't notice that those monsters are looking back at them in turn." This sentiment reverberates throughout the book, which is conversational in tone but not without wisdom and insight about human nature, mortality, and the ways in which family and society repress the spirit. One narrator exclaims, "The very idea that you have to rein in your heat even as love's passion sets you ablaze...how restrictive life as a functional adult is!" The title story does allude to the children's book Where the Wild Things Are and shares the same universe of characters as the first story. Indeed many of the stories connect through characters, time, and dimensions, and the way Matsuda executes these links is a highlight. The author has a light but lasting touch. A delightful, daring collection. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
