“The place I like best in this world is the kitchen.”
I didn’t quite get to Kitchen for the Japanese Challenge, but I’m still glad I read it shortly afterwards. I liked the book, but I didn’t love it.
Food and kitchens play a central role int he book, but it’s essentially about two people finding their way through the grief process. Mikage has recently lost her grandmother, whom she lived with, and her friend Yoichi and his mother Eriko take her in. Yoichi ends up losing someone close to him as well, and the bond between the two of them becomes even closer.
Note: This book has been added as one of the new titles in the latest edition of the 1001 list.
1988, 1993 for the English translation; 105 pp.
4/5
I enjoyed Kitchen, too, but Amrita might still be my favorite Yoshimoto book. Reading that book taught me to like Miso Soup before I had ever had any.
For those of us in a grieving process, Kitchen and Amirita are lifesavers (I am two years into grief over the sudden death of a soulmate, and I am 67, and others in my family are ill as I write…). These books are not about youthful Japanese people who are confused about life – these books get to the heart of the flood of life which flows through us and everything, and they say about grief what we have difficulty finding words for, as we are so lost in our grief. Thus they lift us a bit out of it, juxtaposing the grief with happiness, slowly, slowly, slowly drip feeding a desire to live back into us and showing us by example how to do it for ourselves… Thank you for these books.