Strangers

Product Information

Ijintachi to no Natsu" a aparut in 1987 si il are ca protagonist si narator pe Hideo Horada ce traieste in Tokyo-ul anilor '80 fiind un scenarist de seriale de televiziune de succes. Ramas singur, divortat de sotie si cu finantele imputinate acesta incearca sa-si continue viata cum poate. Ajunge sa locuiasca in cladirea de birouri unde isi face si meseria. Acolo cunoaste o femeie stranie cu o cicatrice pe piept pe care incearca s-o evite dar care il si intriga.

It sounds like the starting point for a dark, terrifying descent into mania and doubt, or else a paranoiac thriller. However, Taichi Yamada takes a more subdued approach. The protagonist, Harada, has a quiet life: recently divorced, he rarely socialises and lives in a near-empty building. A secondary plot strand involves his burgeoning relationship with a neighbour, Kei, who shies away from the world because of the scars caused by a severe burn across her chest. Harada's encounters with his parents are disconcertingly ordinary. A note of horror creeps in when others notice Harada physically declining, though he is unable to see the change.Strangers has also been made into a movie, Ijintachi to no Natsu (1988), directed by Obayashi Nobuhiko, and apparently released in the US under the titles The Discarnates and Summer Among the Zombies La trama è molto coinvolgente ma bisogna accettare i lati surreali (un altro giapponese letto faceva vedere il mondo dal punto di vista del gatto di casa, quindi basta abituarsi). Devo riconoscere che ci sono alcune "sbavature" nel racconto che non collegano bene i due filoni principali, 'genitori e amica", questo mi ha lasciato un po' perplesso (ma non posso svelare il contenuto). urn:lcp:strangers0000yama_p2o1:epub:f3e38884-e90c-4339-86a8-8dcfdde58c99 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier strangers0000yama_p2o1 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1fk2715g Invoice 1652 Isbn 0571224369

Nevertheless, it is still an engaging story: told from Hideo's perspective his desperate wanting to believe allows the reader to do the same.

Preview Book

Kei isn’t convinced his trips to Asakusa are good for his health. She sees Heido changing day-by-day, becoming hollow-eyed, aged and emaciated. She’s even more worried because Heido himself cannot see these changes – when he looks at himself in the mirror he looks as healthy as ever. Can Kei save him from the ghosts of his past? Or is his desire to make up for the lost years of his relationship with his parents too strong to resist? This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Meanwhile he also become more involved with the woman in his building, Kei, with a real relationship developing between them. How can that be possible he wonders? There is only one possible explanation he concludes – they are an hallucination caused by his solitude and grief. He thought he’d buried his grief for his parents but seeing them makes him realise that “Somewhere deep inside of me I had been yearning desperately for the warm embrace of parental love. This terse novel by Taichi Yamada, a successful scriptwriter for Japanese television, is a ghost story that pens in spare strokes a portrait of urban alienation. The narrator is 47-year-old Hideo Harada, also a TV scriptwriter: he is working, he tells us wryly, on "a comedy of manners about men and women who spent a hell of a lot of time playing billiards and tennis". Harada is divorced from his wife and hasn't spoken to his 19-year-old son in a long time. He lives in his office and hardly sees anyone, and doesn't want to. Until one night when, looking up at his building from outside, he notices another lit window. As the story fairies would have it, there lives an attractive younger woman, with whom he starts a desperate affair.