In this famous postwar Japanese novel, the first of Abe's to be translated into English, Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist in pursuit of a rare specimen of beetle, wanders into a strange seaside village, whose residents all live in sandpits. He is taken prisoner, and, along with a widow cast out by the community, he is forced to move into her sandpit and continually shovel away the sand that threatens to take over the village. In Niki's struggles to escape his prison and his developing relationship with the woman, he gradually comes to understand the existential nature of life
Es curioso que me cuesta evaluar este libro. No tengo claro si decir que me ha gustado o no... Porque lo cierto es que quería seguir leyendo para saber qué cierre le iba a dar a la obra pero a la vez he estado esperando todo el tiempo un giro sobrenatural que nunca ha llegado... Y es que realmente el libro nunca da pistas de que eso vaya a ocurrir pero prefería pensar que iba a tirar por ahí la cosa en lugar de pensar que me estaba tragando semejante estupidez de concepto.
This is one of those books that has a misleading premise and misleading Goodreads tags. I am not into philosophy, existentialism, or asshole protagonists(? Did this book even have a protagonist?), and yet that's essentially all there is here. If any of my friends added this book to their TBR list based on Goodreads' writeup specifically, remove it. You won't like it.
So the main character is an unlikable entomologist whose trip to the seaside to find some sort of sand beetle goes terribly awry when he gets himself captured by a sand press gang. This village, beset by mountains of sand dunes on all sides, has to resort to coercion to keep enough people to shovel the sand away on a daily basis. Weirdly enough, villagers leave and don't come back, so anyone unlucky enough to wander remotely close gets stuck here. The main character's companion during this is …
This is one of those books that has a misleading premise and misleading Goodreads tags. I am not into philosophy, existentialism, or asshole protagonists(? Did this book even have a protagonist?), and yet that's essentially all there is here. If any of my friends added this book to their TBR list based on Goodreads' writeup specifically, remove it. You won't like it.
So the main character is an unlikable entomologist whose trip to the seaside to find some sort of sand beetle goes terribly awry when he gets himself captured by a sand press gang. This village, beset by mountains of sand dunes on all sides, has to resort to coercion to keep enough people to shovel the sand away on a daily basis. Weirdly enough, villagers leave and don't come back, so anyone unlucky enough to wander remotely close gets stuck here. The main character's companion during this is a woman who clearly has been there for some time, drunk the sand kool-aid, and is basically this passive presence in the story who doesn't seem to ever want to leave. And, scene.
Really, not a lot, magical realism or otherwise, happens. The man attempts escape a few times, has increasingly violent outbursts against the woman, and even seems to force himself on her a few times. This was not a fun book to read, by any means.
Clearly there's something intellectual going on under the hood based on other people's experiences here, but I can only rate based on my own enjoyment and I did not enjoy this book. Short as it is, I still had to basically force myself to finish it.
