229 pages
English language
Published Nov. 8, 1979 by Grove Press : distributed by Random House.
made me sad and not in a good way. not here for the portrayal of trans women and killing her for the character development of the cis protagonist.
Well that was incredibly touching. ...And I'm crying now. Yep...
I found this to be very endearing, and a lovely look at love and grief in a slice of life style. I have to say, I much preferred Kitchen to Moonlight Shadow, which felt very Murakami to me (in a bad way). I thought the way the author approached dealing with death to be novel and refreshing. And I found the way the author approached love to be realistic and gentle. The pairings of these themes felt forced at times, but overall, I enjoyed the stories.
1) ''The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).''
2) '''Soon after that she died, and the pineapple withered, too. I didn't know how to care for plants and had overwatered it, you see. I stuck it out in a corner of the yard, and although I couldn't have put it into words, I came to understand something. If I try to say what it is now, it's very simple: I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. …
1) ''The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).''
2) '''Soon after that she died, and the pineapple withered, too. I didn't know how to care for plants and had overwatered it, you see. I stuck it out in a corner of the yard, and although I couldn't have put it into words, I came to understand something. If I try to say what it is now, it's very simple: I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness. So I became a woman, and here I am.'''
3) ''In retrospect I realize that fate was a ladder on which, at the time, I could not afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one scene would have meant never making it to the top, although it would have been by far the easier choice. What motivated me was probably that little light still left in my half-dead heart, glittering in the darkness. Yet without it, perhaps, I might have slept better.''
