People from My Neighborhood: Stories

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The subtle strangeness of this neighbourhood is hugely reminiscent of Royston Vasey in The League of Gentlemen: a place full of usual people who behave unusually or are subject to unusual circumstances, be they quietly supernatural, antisocial, or plainly bizarre.

The Bottomless Swamp: a House of Sweets that turned to School of Sweets, made of chocolate. Dark chocolate, rich in cocoa. Love the bizarreness of this story. The mystery of Rokurō, I actually think it was real!A juvenile delinquent turned good, a boy who sneaks into people's gardens to plant foul-smelling chrysanthemums, a 103 year old man with two shadows, a mysterious council estate that has strange powers, a contagious disease that turns you into a pigeon, a doctor who believes some humans are hatched from eggs, Aquí sin embargo me he encontrado con una Kawakami muy diferente, casi jugando, pasándoselo bien y contagiando ese sentimiento de divertimento a quien la lee.

People From My Neighbourhood’, de momento no disponible en español, es un conjunto de cortísimos que giran, como cabe esperar, en torno a las personas que viven en un barrio. Pueden leerse forma independiente como pequeñas pildoritas pero quizá recomendaría leerlas más o menos de seguido para captar la multitud de hilos que van uniendo todos los relatos y que conforman un pequeño universo. No porque sea difícil entenderlos sino, más que nada porque quizá se te olviden algunos detalles si nos espacias mucho. People from My Neigh­borhood delivers a heartfelt, beautiful, dreamlike rendition of urban life that is both glorious on its own merits and will emotionally resonate with those of us who, due to the pandemic, have been required to stay at home, kept at arms lengths from our fam­ily, friends, and community.”—Ian Mond, Locus POLAR4 and Adult HE 2011 were produced using Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) in England and Wales, Intermediate Zones (IZs) in Scotland and Super Output Areas (SOAs) in Northern Ireland. The familiarity with these characters, particularly the narrator’s grumpy best friend, Kanae (who early on we learn will join a motorcycle gang and abandon the narrator’s friendship), and her older sister who will one day have statues erected around the world in her honor, ushers you into the increasingly surreal and folklore-like events. There is a sense these are minor myths in the making, hiding in the open to remind us that magic lurks just behind everyday life. Zero-gravity events, pandemics, visits from the gods, lotteries for wishes and more pass with little fanfare, life always returning as it was as if these breaks from reality were another mundane phase of life. It is like hearing fairy tales, never are the fantasy elements questioned but only stated as obvious facts in the mechanisms of life.It’s an absolute joy to see a writer as keenly insightful as Hiromi Kawakami dabble in surrealism and comedy. At times, People From My Neighbourhood feels like a science experiment. People undergo avian transformations. A stranger moves to the area with whispers of her dark past behind her. Gravity leaves them behind for a day. A new baby, undergoing numerous transformations along the way, shows up in the neighbourhood looking for a new family.