This book consists of a novella called Kitchen and a short story called Moonlight Shadow. Of the two, I preferred the latter. Both address the sorrow people contend with after the loss of a loved one, as well as loneliness. Kitchen follows Mikage who loses her last living relative and ends up being taken in by Yoichi and his parent. The novella focuses on the relationship between Mikage and Yoichi and how it grows and changes in the face of loss. Moonlight Shadow also follows a female narrator, Satsuki, who loses her young lover of four years. Although shorter (and involving some magical realism which normally is not my favorite, lol), I felt this story was more powerful. I cared more about the protagonist and her loss felt more acute to me.

Regardless, I had a strong gut feeling that this book lost something in translation. Something about the book comes across as very simple in its use of language, and I'm just guessing here, but I bet in Japanese, there was beauty and power in the simplicity, but in English, it just isn't special. There were places where I thought the author had interesting things to say and that she was thoughtful, but I couldn't help but wish I was reading this one in its native language.

All in all, I enjoyed reading this one, but it's also not a book I'd really go around foisting on others. I'd love to speak with a reader who read this in its original language to hear their reaction to it. I'm betting anything that its much more special.

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Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto is an English translation of the Japanese novel about a young woman recovering from the death of her grandmother. Read my book review at John C Adams Reviews.

https://www.johncadamsreviews.com/single-post/kitchen-by-banana-yoshimoto ( )

This was definitely the kind of book you'd like to keep reading for a long time after it's finished. Not really the kind of book I normally go for, but something I really enjoyed. Comforting, peaceful, beautiful. Makes me want to get to know the author better. ( )

i know it probably was bananas intent but the story just felt a tad too disjointed for me. furthermore i feel like the layout of this edition didn't make it clear at all that "moonlight shadow" was a completely seperate story to kitchen and kitchen 2, which was very confusing. i really appreciated the handling of eriko, which felt respectful for the time it was written and region it was written in. this just makes the essay at the end more infuriating (which was written at a later time!), in which the author misgenders eriko throughout. in the end it was simply different than expected, which impacted the level of enjoyment i had reading it. ( )

High 3/ 5

It's like an average slice-of-life anime. Nothing much at the beginning, but leaving you that sweet feeling if you continue it.

My copy includes a short story called "Moonlight Shadow" and in my opinion, it's a much better story.

But, I don't know if it's just because of the bad Indonesian translation leaving out much nuances or anything else. There's many repeated description cliches, but I've seen some pieces of the English translation that convinced me this book may be better than what I had in mind.
(Also, I notice by reading other reviews that Eriko is supposed to work at a club; my copy had the character works at a SHOP. *facepalms*) ( )