The Town Called 'Around Here'.

I like Hiromi Kawakami's writing. I don't mind her books' English translations as well. I finally got around to reading her newest collection of whimsical short stories in English, 'People from My Neighborhood' (published in 2019), 川上弘美『このあたりの人たち』. It's translated in 2020 by the indefatigable Ted Goossen. 

Borrowed it from the library and had to finish it in two sittings because I was a tad busy, and there're 36 stories! Granted, they're very very short stories, but they require some mental effort to link them up. (Reviews here, here and here.) The first story is titled 'The Secret' and it totally got my attention.

I've come to realize that he can't be human after all, seeing how he's stayed the same all these years.

Humans change over time.

I certainly have. I've aged and become grumpy. But I've come to love him, although I didn't at first. I bought an apartment. And a dog. And three cats. I developed a fear of death.

The dog died, and the cats too. Now only the child and I remain. Before too long, he'll be the only one left.

"Why did you come here?" I asked him once.

He though for a moment. 

It's a secret," he said at last.

Majority of the 36 very short stories are centered around a small community in a tiny Tokyo town. (そこは〈このあたり〉と呼ばれる「町」。) Readers are introduced to the inhabitants of the town and their homes, and their family lives by way of the narrator's memories and described visuals. Some of the stories broached on the supernatural and the fantastical, like 'The Six-Person Apartment', and 'Grandpa Shadows', an old man who lived not he outskirts of town and he had two shadows, one docile and submissive, and the other rebellious, and would attach itself to other humans. 

The narrator remains unnamed throughout. She owns a mixed breed dog, and seems to be in her late forties or early fifties. She has a good friend during childhood named Kanae. They hung out together, till a 'scandal' put the the friendship on hold. Kanae was a name that was spoken of with derision and spit in the hometown as a rebellious teenager who didn't conform. She went to France to study and eventually became a famous fashion designer with her own cult brand and when the narrator bumped "into one of the neighborhood women, she praised Kanae as "the pride of our hometown". It was the very same woman who had told me about Kanae's impure relations. I was amazed at her use of the word hometown."

I loved all the little stories! After a while, I really couldn't be sure if the narrator made these all up from her child's mind or this town is truly as she described. I enjoyed all the stories anyway, and happily finished them all. ‘The Bottomless Swamp’ was hilarious.

The bulk of the school was made of chocolate. Dark chocolate, rich in cocoa. The surrounding fence consisted of ginger snaps. The roof was shortcrust pastry with an egg-yolk glaze that shimmered in the sun, while the light that passed through the hard candy windows sparkled. The walls and floors were a mosaic of cookies, and the railings were Mikado biscuit sticks, baked especially big for the purpose. The blackboards were enormous Bourbon Alfort biscuits, topped with dark chocolate, while sweet pastries and salty rice crackers helped complete what was a highly detailed and intricate piece of architecture.

The weirdest parts of the school were the students' chairs, which were huge doughy dumplings, and the staff room, which was made of vegetable-based crackers and the like. The chairs were soft and comfortable—too comfortable, perhaps: their one drawback was that those who sat in them quickly drifted off to sleep.