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A review by peixinhodeprata
Salmonella Men on Planet Porno by Yasutaka Tsutsui
4.0
This was a different and interesting book. As I said several times before, I am enjoying a lot reading book from Japanese writers, or about Japan, as they are so different from ourselves and our culture that sometimes it doesn’t even seem we live on the same planet. And that’s why I feel we cannot appreciate these short story on the same frame of values as our occidental culture, we have to be more open minded.
We can immediately see that on an opening line of the first short story:
Yes, we were still using a double bed even after five years of marriage. Well, our bedroom was rather small. There wasn’t enough room for two beds.
This already hinted me that I was in for a treat.
Some of the stories were amazing, like the Daba Daba Tree, Rumours About Me, The Edge of Happiness, The Last Smoker, and the one that gives the title to this book. They had this surrealness about them, but at the same time we can see our day to day life being unfolded, and it’s amazing how they also have this timeless quality, as if they could apply to humanity as a whole on any given time of History.
It is a book well worth reading and discovering. You need to like reading short stories, and you need to be prepared for some awkwardness, but if you pass all that, prepare to be amazed.
“We lived through the horrors of war, survived post war austerity, and for what?” Asked Kusakabe. “The richer the world becomes, the more laws and regulations are imposed on us and the more discrimination grows. And now we are not free at all.”
We can immediately see that on an opening line of the first short story:
Yes, we were still using a double bed even after five years of marriage. Well, our bedroom was rather small. There wasn’t enough room for two beds.
This already hinted me that I was in for a treat.
Some of the stories were amazing, like the Daba Daba Tree, Rumours About Me, The Edge of Happiness, The Last Smoker, and the one that gives the title to this book. They had this surrealness about them, but at the same time we can see our day to day life being unfolded, and it’s amazing how they also have this timeless quality, as if they could apply to humanity as a whole on any given time of History.
It is a book well worth reading and discovering. You need to like reading short stories, and you need to be prepared for some awkwardness, but if you pass all that, prepare to be amazed.
“We lived through the horrors of war, survived post war austerity, and for what?” Asked Kusakabe. “The richer the world becomes, the more laws and regulations are imposed on us and the more discrimination grows. And now we are not free at all.”