Hardboiled - Banana Yoshimoto

Sensitive, refined and graceful, Yoshimotos writing is simple and clear. i-DHardboiled opens as the narrator, a woman in her thirties, treks high above her secluded mountain hotel. As so often in Yoshimotos supremely atmospheric stories, it is memory that forms the backdrop against which the present unfolds. In this case it is the memory of an old lover - the only woman she ever had intimate relations with - who died a year to the day previously. What unfolds is a night of intimation and blurred memory, disturbing signs and half-forgotten moments, as the narrator confronts the fears and the sense of loss that haunt her.In Hard Luck we find another female narrator, this one keeping vigil by the side of her sister who lies in a coma. Together with her father, she appears almost trapped in a void as she waits for the sisters death. Can her burgeoning relationship with the brother of her sisters absent fianc offer any kind of release? Collectively these two stories brilliantly explore themes of love, loss and the ties that bind.