Life in the Cul-De-Sac (Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature) [Paperback]

This is a beautiful sequence of interwoven short stories about four Japanese families living on a suburban cul-de-sac in Tokyo. If you like Raymond Carver-esque/magical realism, you'll love the lyrical, almost spooky connections and poignant near-misses of Life in the Cul-de-Sac. Very readable, often quite funny, full of surprises.

I actually got turned onto this book by the translator, who's also done a lot of Haruki Murakami stuff (novels & in The New Yorker)...

A great read for anyone looking for new adventures in fiction.

Kuroi gives us the merging of tradition with the modern world in the Japan of the 1980's. Some families run to the future, some are dragged kicking and screaming into it and others have no idea how to deal with it.

In twelve interrelated stories, we meet the residents of five homes in a cul-de-sac - another name for which is dead-end street. Many of these folks are already at a dead-end, while others seem destined to get there soon. Some would escape it if they just knew how.

All of the stories are about every-day folks (though the mixture of extremes is unlikely in such a small group). There is no real central conflict, but rather the reactions of the characters to the challenges of keeping families and themselves 'healthy' amidst real world struggles.

Translator Philip Gabriel captured the modern Japanese style while presenting us with a very readable book. Writing a novel through linked stories is quite common in Japanese literature and Kuroi did a good job with the threads that tie them together.

Far easier to 'figure out' than many modern Japanese authors, Senji Kuroi wrote a book that I found quite enjoyable.

"Life in the Cul-de-Sac" is a novel told in a series of twelve connected stories about four families that all take place in a suburban Tokyo cul-de-sac. This is not a spacious cul-de-sac as one would find it in the US; these houses are close together, the yards unfenced, everything is cramped together. One would think that the families would interact and be aware of each others business, but they might as well exist in bubbles. Each family lives alone with their own problems, interacting with the neighbors in only the most superficial ways.

Each of the families grapples with how Japanese society is changing. One middle-aged couple finds themselves separated because his employer has relocated him, but she refuses to leave the house they raised their children in. One couple with a teenage son deals with his insistence on living his own life, rather than showing respect to his parents. One family seems haunted, living in a new house constructed over the spot where the house he grew up in was, seeing things that were there before, a palimpsest of architecture. The final couple is younger; the husband is self employed, the wife refuses to have children, dressing up a pet raccoon (or a stuffed animal; I was never entirely sure which it was) and finding work outside the home herself. All of the adults seem to be alone and isolated. At times they get glimpses of each other; through the trees and shrubs that bound the properties, through open windows. They wonder what is happening, but do not ask.

The stories span several years. Nothing dramatic happens, but there is a lot of strong emotion. At times, there is a touch of surrealism. The stories are bleak but compelling. Kuroi has scratched the hard surfaces of the everyday people and shown us the troubles and emotions that lie beneath, hidden by civility. The women come off as stronger characters than the men; while the men see to just follow the current of life where ever it takes them, the women make decisions and stick by them. That was a first for me in Japanese literature; most of the Japanese authors I've read stick to the male POV! Despite being so much about everyday life, this book is creepy in an odd way. I very much liked it.