Weasels in the Attic: Hiroko Oyamada

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Their size is exactly the reason as to why an extra-small, or small live trap is necessary. How Long Is A Weasel? This amazing natural mechanism is a great asset during the winter because it camouflages the weasel while it’s in the snow! It works so well, that this feature is the primary reason as to why weasels can still catch their prey in the snow, and continue to eat. Here are some of our favorite products Ominous snippets of text like this build the sense that the scenes of domesticity aren’t all they seem. The overwhelming scent of plums, roast boar and fish food that punctuate the story are the cherry on top of concoctions of unease that Oyamada brews with a slight of hand. Hiroko Oyamada’s modus operandi is exploring the odd corners of modern Japan and she certainly does so, as the title immediately indicates. I cannot recall ever reading a book where weasels play a significant role.

Home Remedy for Getting Rid of a Weasel | Hunker Home Remedy for Getting Rid of a Weasel | Hunker

BOOK REVIEW: VERA WONG’S UNSOLICITED ADVICE FOR MURDERERS (2023) BY JESSE SUTANTO – A WHOLESOME INVESTIGATION OF THE UNCONVENTIONALAs we know Urabe has died, the narrator and his wife are still trying for a baby. Saiki, however, has, to the narrator’s surprise, has got married. As he works from home, he has moved to the country, which he is beginning to regret, particularly as the eponymous weasels are getting into his attic. He traps them and dumps them fifteen miles away but still they come. The translation is probably fine, but I can't help feeling like it 's done by someone who doesn't have an ear for music. Dialogue translated from Japanese to English loses a lot of nuance, and it's difficult to attribute much thought and depth to characters. Here's an example of something that made me cringe: there are certain very common daily phrases that should just be put in italics, such as when you're announcing you've arrived at your front door Tadaima! without translating it as "Uh, I'm home." I hope you agree.

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada, Paperback | Barnes Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada, Paperback | Barnes

Although the frigid winter months are hunger-ridden for the weasel, they still manage to get a couple of bites in with the local winter animals like squirrels, owls, or even the occasional wood frog. The narrator and his wife visit the couple. It turns out that the narrator’s wife’s family had had the problem of weasels when she was a child and they had found a way, albeit cruel, to deal with the problem. In The Hole, the bland formality of corporate life has spread, like an infection, to the family home. In Weasels in the Attic, it extends to the bedroom. When forty-year-old married couples are forced to discuss intimate matters with each other, they speak with the stilted bashfulness of middle schoolers in sex-ed class:It’s a good thing we got the mother, said the grandmother. Father weasels grow belligerent. Babies scream for help. Nothing, said the grandmother, is nearly as effective as the death agony of a mother weasel: “The mother’s the best.” Weasels in the Attic, Hiroko Oyamada, David Boyd (trans) (New Directions, October 2022; Granta, November 2022) What?' I asked, but Saki didn't answer. 'H-Hey, Urabe...' Saki's voice shook. I didn't understand. they looked like ordinary shrimp to me. The implication is obviously that the narrator, like other men, isn’t heavily invested in children. The impetus to start a family must come from the narrator’s wife. But although he has kept his feelings to himself to spare her, the narrator is just as eager to become a father as she is to become a mother. He doesn’t answer her question about “the scale from one to ten”, but he does think about it: “I liked kids. I wished I could have one of my own. I couldn’t give it a number, but I knew it was what I wanted.”

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada, David Boyd - Waterstones Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada, David Boyd - Waterstones

This book is comprised of three connected stories centred around meals shared between two friends. Fertility, motherhood and masculinity are the loose theme of the stories, however all three stories suffer from being underdeveloped and too brief. Ideas are touched upon... then the story is over. To say I didn't get much out of this would be an accurate summation. Perhaps I'll fare better with the author's other books. PDF / EPUB File Name: Weasels_in_the_Attic_-_Hiroko_Oyamada.pdf, Weasels_in_the_Attic_-_Hiroko_Oyamada.epubThe book consists of three linked stories, featuring, more or less, the same set of characters and more or less, the same themes.

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada | Goodreads

So if you have a lake or personal body of water on your property, you can potentially expect a burrow that tunnels underground through your home. Will A Weasel Kill A Cat? The book is short but certainly a fascinating view of life in Japan that we do not normally see in novels and an interesting story. Publishing history But mainly, for me, the problem is that the book is poorly written. The kind of writing failure I have in mind is not an effect of translation, and it isn't a matter of cultural differences. I know this because the issues I have in mind are problems in narration. This is just poor writing. This "novel" is comprised of 3 brief, well-written, connected short stories, each with a seemingly different focus: 1) high-end fish collecting; 2) Weasels at friend's new house; 3) friend and new bride's new baby, and high-end fish and fish tanks in the guest bedroom. Is there a larger through-line here? I'm not going to say no. Our protagonist and his wife are trying to get pregnant...kind of. They're going through the motions of getting tested, etc., and she seems to have a deep affection for the friend's new baby. The solution for the weasels in the second story, brought to light by the protagonist's wife (that of drowning a female weasel so the other weasels will hear its warning screams) was disturbing. That the friends never had a weasel problem again and it was all thanks to her was also disturbing but thankfully occurred "off-screen." Oyamada drops hints that something about these friends and their homes is vaguely sinister. She’s a writer who skates uncomfortable facts over the skin of her readers. She never brings readers the relief of looking at a problem straight on—and of course she never resolves a thing.The Hole is narrated by Asa, who is so indistinguishable from The Factory’s shredder that she might as well be the same person. Nearly thirty, Asa quits her job as a temporary worker when her husband is transferred to a branch office in the countryside not far from his parents’ home. Or homes—his mother owns and rents out the house next door. The previous tenants have just left, she informs her son. A rent-free house, next to the in-laws: What could go wrong? Urabe took another one, took a sip from his cup, then said, 'Great stuff.' His giant Adam's apple slid up and down. Now the typical weasels that you may be thinking about are only slightly bigger. Take the long-tailed weasel or the tropical weasel. On the low end, their weight can be around 3 ounces, while becoming as heavy as 12 ounces. That’s impossible, Saiki explains. His house, in a remote countryside, is old and riddled with gaps and crevices. “When you think about it,” writes Oyamada, “Japanese homes are full of holes.” But for some reason the weasels ignore Saiki’s neighbors. Clearly fertility is the key theme, Both Urabe and Saiki have shown little interest in marriage and sex but, when they do marry, a child is produced fairly promptly, while our narrator and his wife struggle throughout the book to have a child, though the fact that they are older may be an issue. The fish and weasels seem to have few problems in this area.