Gay & Lesbian Books
Hardboiled and Hard Luck
RRP: $21.00
Our Price: $16.38
You Save: $ 4.62 ( 22% )
Usually ships in 10 to 12 days
Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
Author: Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $16.38
You Save: $ 4.62 ( 22% )
Usually ships in 10 to 12 days
Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
Author: Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Average Customer Rating:
Experimental feature: Order Hardboiled and Hard Luck from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
Hardboiled and Hard Luck Description
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.635
EAN: 9780802117991
ISBN: 0802117996
Label: Grove/Atlantic
Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 160
Publication Date: 2005-06-10
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Studio: Grove/Atlantic
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.635
EAN: 9780802117991
ISBN: 0802117996
Label: Grove/Atlantic
Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 160
Publication Date: 2005-06-10
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Studio: Grove/Atlantic
Editorial Review of Hardboiled and Hard Luck
Banana Yoshimoto's depiction of the lives of Japanese youth has changed her country's literature and earned international acclaim. In Hardboiled & Hard Luck, this internationally best-selling author delivers two tales of resonant grace, of young women coming to terms with change and heartbreak. In "Hardboiled," the narrator is hiking in the mountains on an anniversary she has forgotten about, the anniversary of her ex-lover's death. As she nears her hotel, a sense of haunting falls over her. That night she dreams of her ex-lover, and is visited by a woman who may not exist-perhaps these eerie events will help her make peace with her loss. "Hard Luck" features a young woman whose sister is dying and lies in a coma. Her fiancé left her after the accident, but his brother continues to visit, and as the two of them make peace with the impending loss of their loved one, they seem to find new hope for the future in their own new bond. Hardboiled & Hard Luck is a small jewel of a book, a work of resilient sweetness that will move readers deeply.
Customer Reviews of Hardboiled and Hard Luck
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Read this!
Review: Banana Yashimoto has a voice that is honest, tough, tender and more than a little quirky. Her character lives through everyday annoyance and tragedy in a seamless, and reflective style--just as we all do, when life throws the mundane and major events at you without pause, and in the same aggravatng breath. Somehow, the character makes her way through it all without evoking pity or demanding admiration. I felt like I had been invited into a real life. Read it and enjoy.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Intrigue, mystery and superstition
Review: I read the hard copy version of this book. It is a convenient size B5, easy to put in a bag and carry on the go. This book is divided into two stories, Hardboiled and Hardluck. Both stories describe and explore death and its impact on individuals. Yoshimoto's style is light, informative and personal. She explores a wide range of topics through both stories, for example: friendship, emotions, secrets, betrayal, deception, loneliness, animosity, passion, memories, spirits, superstitions, personal dreams and the hardships of life. In Hardboiled, she shows the linking of unrelated events into the creation of a new one single event, that creates more introspection and worry. Yashimoto's perceptions allow us to see what her characters see and feel as they deal with a range of emotions, obstacles and situations. Hardluck reveals the complexities of relationships, the simplicity of objects, the lack of responsibility, love, shared experiences and the pain of losing a loved one. A good translation, an easy to read book, that is personal, warm and intriguing. She provides an array of powerful and insightful quotes. For example: "Little by little, as we lived a life fueled by convenience store meals in that old apartment, I began to train my mental muscles, which was what I needed to do to become an adult".
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bananamania continues
Review: I can only say that these two stories are up to par with Banana's older books like Kitchen. Just read it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Of Stone and Fruit
Review:
I have been a fan of Yoshimoto's body of work since 2001. After reading her debut novella Kitchen, I read her other translated works: N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep, and Goodbye Tsugumi. While by far not my favorite Yoshimoto work, Hardboiled and Hard Luck is a decent work that includes a number of themes that are present in almost every Yoshimoto novel: memory, death, and the precious moments of life which deeply root themselves into our hearts.
The narrator of Hardboiled is a young woman traveling on her own through Japan's countryside. One day while walking upon a little used road the young woman comes across an old, dilapidated shrine where ten black stones are placed in a circle. Feeling an ominous air emanating from the stones, the young woman hurries back to town. However, inside an Udon noodle shop the woman finds one of the stones in one of her pockets. Later, she discovers that another one of the stones was used to build the bath within the inn in which she is staying for the night. At first she is unsure of why such odd things are happening to her, but soon it dawns on her that on the same date a year ago her friend and ex-lover Chizuru had died. Similar to the works of Murakami Haruki, it is not impossible to make amends with the dead in Yoshimoto's literary world.
Hard Luck details the final days that the nameless narrator spends with both her brain dead sister and her fiancé's older brother. In my opinion the more powerful of the two short novellas, Yoshimoto creates a gentle, delicate work that details not only the emotions of losing someone close, but the healing process one goes through when a family member who has suffered long is about to die.
Yoshimoto has often been criticized as a writer of fluff fiction, however, while she may not be in the same realm as Oe Kenzaburo or Takahashi Takako it does not mean that she does not bring something important to the world of Japanese Literature. Through her simple words, Yoshimoto can touch the hearts of readers. Something that a number of more literary writers are unable to do.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: When death comes along
Review: Yoshitmoto's new book (actually composed of two short stories) is about the human reaction when death comes along. It reveals our weakness to reject it and the urge for bravery and perspective to deal with it, as a living human being.
In the first short story, 'Hardboiled', the narrator went to stay in a country hotel on the anniversary of her ex-girlfriend's death. The narrative is interesting as the living and the dead are all woven together in the plot. Perhaps, it is really hard to distinguish who is living, or non-living (dead and non-living are different, in a metaphorical sense). There's a particularly interesting, which is about that it is not the dead that we should be afraid of, but the living. The story talks about the pain of losing a partner and the nostalgia of their romance.
In the second story, 'Hard Luck', another narrator has a sister who is going to die of a brain damage. This story is not as gothic as the first one and the suspense created by the notion of death is absent. Instead, it gives you a sweet account of the sisterhood between the living and the dead-to-be. There is also a romantic subplot in the story, between the narrator and the brother of her sister's fiance. The last chapter on the relationship between musical enlightenment and death sounds familiar in Haruki Murakami's fiction, especially in Kafka on the Shore and Dance Dance Dance.
The stories are written in plain English. There's no fancy description on the setting and the psychology of the characters. But the plainness works effectively in order to bring out the theme, death. There are a few regrets upon reading the book. First, I was expecting Yoshimoto to explore the theme of lesbianism or sexuality a bit more in the first story, as she did in Kitchen. I was trying to compare it with Murakami's Spunik Sweetheart. Second, I was looking for a more substantial work since her last publication. The stories are just too short to satisfy her readers. Perhaps, she might have published more in Japanese. I always don't know why the English version needs to take so long. Or are they not translating all her works?
Review Summary: Read this!
Review: Banana Yashimoto has a voice that is honest, tough, tender and more than a little quirky. Her character lives through everyday annoyance and tragedy in a seamless, and reflective style--just as we all do, when life throws the mundane and major events at you without pause, and in the same aggravatng breath. Somehow, the character makes her way through it all without evoking pity or demanding admiration. I felt like I had been invited into a real life. Read it and enjoy.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Intrigue, mystery and superstition
Review: I read the hard copy version of this book. It is a convenient size B5, easy to put in a bag and carry on the go. This book is divided into two stories, Hardboiled and Hardluck. Both stories describe and explore death and its impact on individuals. Yoshimoto's style is light, informative and personal. She explores a wide range of topics through both stories, for example: friendship, emotions, secrets, betrayal, deception, loneliness, animosity, passion, memories, spirits, superstitions, personal dreams and the hardships of life. In Hardboiled, she shows the linking of unrelated events into the creation of a new one single event, that creates more introspection and worry. Yashimoto's perceptions allow us to see what her characters see and feel as they deal with a range of emotions, obstacles and situations. Hardluck reveals the complexities of relationships, the simplicity of objects, the lack of responsibility, love, shared experiences and the pain of losing a loved one. A good translation, an easy to read book, that is personal, warm and intriguing. She provides an array of powerful and insightful quotes. For example: "Little by little, as we lived a life fueled by convenience store meals in that old apartment, I began to train my mental muscles, which was what I needed to do to become an adult".
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bananamania continues
Review: I can only say that these two stories are up to par with Banana's older books like Kitchen. Just read it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Of Stone and Fruit
Review:
I have been a fan of Yoshimoto's body of work since 2001. After reading her debut novella Kitchen, I read her other translated works: N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep, and Goodbye Tsugumi. While by far not my favorite Yoshimoto work, Hardboiled and Hard Luck is a decent work that includes a number of themes that are present in almost every Yoshimoto novel: memory, death, and the precious moments of life which deeply root themselves into our hearts.
The narrator of Hardboiled is a young woman traveling on her own through Japan's countryside. One day while walking upon a little used road the young woman comes across an old, dilapidated shrine where ten black stones are placed in a circle. Feeling an ominous air emanating from the stones, the young woman hurries back to town. However, inside an Udon noodle shop the woman finds one of the stones in one of her pockets. Later, she discovers that another one of the stones was used to build the bath within the inn in which she is staying for the night. At first she is unsure of why such odd things are happening to her, but soon it dawns on her that on the same date a year ago her friend and ex-lover Chizuru had died. Similar to the works of Murakami Haruki, it is not impossible to make amends with the dead in Yoshimoto's literary world.
Hard Luck details the final days that the nameless narrator spends with both her brain dead sister and her fiancé's older brother. In my opinion the more powerful of the two short novellas, Yoshimoto creates a gentle, delicate work that details not only the emotions of losing someone close, but the healing process one goes through when a family member who has suffered long is about to die.
Yoshimoto has often been criticized as a writer of fluff fiction, however, while she may not be in the same realm as Oe Kenzaburo or Takahashi Takako it does not mean that she does not bring something important to the world of Japanese Literature. Through her simple words, Yoshimoto can touch the hearts of readers. Something that a number of more literary writers are unable to do.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: When death comes along
Review: Yoshitmoto's new book (actually composed of two short stories) is about the human reaction when death comes along. It reveals our weakness to reject it and the urge for bravery and perspective to deal with it, as a living human being.
In the first short story, 'Hardboiled', the narrator went to stay in a country hotel on the anniversary of her ex-girlfriend's death. The narrative is interesting as the living and the dead are all woven together in the plot. Perhaps, it is really hard to distinguish who is living, or non-living (dead and non-living are different, in a metaphorical sense). There's a particularly interesting, which is about that it is not the dead that we should be afraid of, but the living. The story talks about the pain of losing a partner and the nostalgia of their romance.
In the second story, 'Hard Luck', another narrator has a sister who is going to die of a brain damage. This story is not as gothic as the first one and the suspense created by the notion of death is absent. Instead, it gives you a sweet account of the sisterhood between the living and the dead-to-be. There is also a romantic subplot in the story, between the narrator and the brother of her sister's fiance. The last chapter on the relationship between musical enlightenment and death sounds familiar in Haruki Murakami's fiction, especially in Kafka on the Shore and Dance Dance Dance.
The stories are written in plain English. There's no fancy description on the setting and the psychology of the characters. But the plainness works effectively in order to bring out the theme, death. There are a few regrets upon reading the book. First, I was expecting Yoshimoto to explore the theme of lesbianism or sexuality a bit more in the first story, as she did in Kitchen. I was trying to compare it with Murakami's Spunik Sweetheart. Second, I was looking for a more substantial work since her last publication. The stories are just too short to satisfy her readers. Perhaps, she might have published more in Japanese. I always don't know why the English version needs to take so long. Or are they not translating all her works?