I had wanted to bring you thoughts on one of my book group choices, however as it has been postponed from this evening until everyone has finished it I thought I would hold fire and share when we have discussed. I don’t want anyone else from the group peaking at my thoughts in advance now do I? So instead I thought I would bring you something else… I first heard of the author of ‘Hotel Iris’, Yoko Ogawa, when her previous novel ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ became a huge, and wonderfully touching and unusual, hit novel with the blogosphere. I eventually read it and thought it was incredible, this then made me slightly worried about ‘Hotel Iris’ and how it might compare, what I got was a completely different novel I simply wasn’t expecting and strangely cannot stop thinking about.
When a woman runs out a room at the ‘Hotel Iris’ screaming and wailing that the man she has been spending time with is a depraved pervert it causes somewhat of a scene. Watching this all first hand is Mari, a young 17 year old girl who both lives and works in the hotel, for it belongs to her mother, in a rather rundown seaside area of Japan. The scene soon settles, dealt with rather sharply (and also rather telling of her personality) buy Mari’s mother. However something about the event and the mystery man in question, in particular his voice which seems to awaken something in Mari from the instant she hears ‘shut up, whore’, stay with our heroine. So when Mari sees him a few days later in town she decides to follow him, not ready for the fact she soon gets confronted and with surprising consequences.
What follows on from here is a rather bizarre and brilliant reading experience all in one, and quite unlike any other books that I have come across. Without giving too much away a relationship of sorts starts between Mari and this sixty plus year old man (who we come to know only as ‘the translator’) and one with some rather sado-masochistic tendencies, which proves to be a rather touching and also deeply disturbing love story as well as a coming of age tale too. This to me is a brave and absolutely masterly piece of writing and one that I don’t think many authors could pull off.
Her writing is short and succinct in this novel, everything is very to the point and almost blunt, This is all quite different from her other novel ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ which I wondered was because she matched the tone of the book to the subject matter and I think shows that Yoko Ogawa is a versatile writer we should all be paying attention to the future career of. Here I do think it should also be mentioned that I think the translator of ‘Hotel Iris’, Stephen Snyder, has also done an incredible job too, it could have been easy to try and lengthen the novel yet it is kept short (in fact only 164 pages) though not quite so sweet.
So what happens with this unlikely duo, will it end well or could there be a dark climax to it all? Well you would have to read the book to find out, something that I strongly recommend people do, even if you feel the subject matter might make you uncomfortable. To miss out on ‘Hotel Iris’ is to miss out on a rare and unusual reading experience which you will be left thinking about long after the single sitting read you have awaiting you (I would be amazed if anyone could stop this book once they have started). Some books you read, some you experience, this is certainly the latter. 9.5/10
This book was kindly sent by the publisher.
I must mention that it was Kimbofo’s review that made me put this book much higher up the TBR than it originally was. I do like a dark and unsettling read now and again and this ticked all the boxes for me. Can you recommend any others that might have the same effect? Have you read ‘Hotel Iris’ or any of Yoko Ogawa’s work and what did you think? Has anyone else read this novel and ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ and were you impressed/shocked by how very, very different they were?
P.S Sorry bout todays layout changes, iPad’s/Apple and wordpress aren’t mixing well today!
‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ is really a tale of two lonely people coming together and it changing their lives forever. The unnamed housekeeper of the title has come into her job after becoming a single mother disowned by her family as a disgrace. Her latest job happens to be for the professor of the title (sorry they don’t have names, so if it starts to sound a little samey in my bookish thoughts be assured it never is in the book) when she is hired by his rather severe sister in law. The professor was once a rather renowned mathematician though after a tragic accident has a memory that lasts no longer than 80 minutes yet he remains obsessed by numbers always asking what peoples shoes sizes are, their date of birth etc and analyzing what lies behind that number and judges people accordingly.
Savidge Reads 