In response, she begins to make jam which her sister loves but with imported grapefruits which she knows might be bad for the unborn child. The sister's pregnancy is reminiscent of the toothache in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and the strain in the house is tangible. She details the morning sickness, the appetites, and the discomforts suffered by her sister in a clinical, detached way. In Pregnancy Diary a women living with her sister and brother-in-law keeps a dated diary throughout her sister's pregnancy. Her frustration and self-loathing are displaced into the subtle torment of an orphaned toddler. He is good and pure and everything that she is not. In the eponymous story an angry teenage girl is infatuated with her foster brother and secretly watches him from high in the bleachers as he dives.
Enough that the air is thick with palpable tension. In a matter of mere pages Ogawa beckons you forward, envelops you in a distinct world which seems familiar enough on the surface, and then tilts it all on its axis just a single degree. I've just been blown the fuck away by the three stories in this book. I finished this yesterday but needed a full day to digest. Where is her cousin? What is that dark spot on the ceiling? What happened to all the other tenants? My heart was in my throat as she gathered her courage to investigate further.
What begins as a routine story, however, evolves into a horror tale of sorts. It’s somewhat dilapidated but the price is right. In the final story, The Dormitory, a young woman tries to help her cousin find accommodations at the university, suggesting the same building she stayed in when she was in school. There is a rather other-worldly feel to this narrative, and the ending makes me wonder if the whole thing is a dream. The narrator, who lives with her sister and brother-in-law, records how her sister feels about her pregnancy, and how it impacts everyone in the household. Pregnancy Diary is NOT the diary of a pregnant woman, but rather of that woman’s sister. As she contemplates this infatuation, we learn more about the family and how she feels set apart, not only at school but at home. In the title story, a lonely teenager has a secret crush on her foster brother and spends time each day watching him practice his dives at the school pool. It is the kind of literary fiction I love. Regardless, I really enjoyed this collection each was very different from the other two, but all dealt with relationships.
The subtitle calls them “three novellas”, but none is longer than 56 pages, so they are more accurately categorized as short stories.
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