Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Yōko Ogawa ( 小川洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Macabre, fiendishly clever, and with a touch of the supernatural, Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge creates a haunting tapestry of death-and the afterlife of the living. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders-their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him.

The characters also seemed to have the same excited way of envisioning tortured bodies…which got old fast.Sinister forces draw together a cast of desperate characters in this eerie and absorbing novel from Yoko Ogawa.Īn aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband.

I wasn’t horrified or afraid, merely disgusted. Personally, I find that relying too much on obvious sources of ‘discomfort’ (such as detailed descriptions of dead animals or torture methods) is a ‘cheap’ way to repulse your readers. However, truth be told, I found that at times she sacrificed potentially terrifying moments for gratuitously grotesque scenes. I believe Ogawa succeeded in creating interesting connections between these different, or perhaps not so different, people. What drew me the most was to ‘discover’ what linked these various characters together. The characters within these pages are morbid, obsessive, prone to macabre thoughts and obscure actions. Ogawa’s magnifies the sense unease that usually permeates her narratives (even The Housekeeper and the Professor has its unsettling moments), as these stories seem intent on unnerving their readers. Having read two novels by Yōko Ogawa, I was curious to read Revenge, a collection of interconnected short stories.

Revenge by yōko ogawa