Reviews and Comments

Kuang's story surprises. This coming-of-age (and coming-of-revolution) story introduces us to a world where the the 19th-century Industrial Revolution is made possible not by steam and worker oppression but by the magical powers of translation and colonial exploitation. The experiences of the protagonist, a Cantonese boy that adopts the English name Robin Swift, lead us to an imagined Oxford that is as intriguing as Hogwarts but that has sins that Kuang not only does not whitewash, but makes the centerpiece of her novel. The historical notes and especially the etymological explanations are fascinating, if occasionally pedantic. Once you get your head around this world and how it works, you'll want to hang on to the end to see how a postcolonial critique during the height of the British Empire can possibly turn out.

Originally published individually between 2012-2014, these three short stories titled "Death in the Family," "The Last of the Weasels," and "Yukiko" feature a couple struggling to have a child. This struggle is figured and explored in three strange dinner parties with friends and acquaintances. As with Oyamada's other stories, animals have great significance for the humans , but in these the there are more metaphors than actual transformations. As always, you can never guess where Oyamada's storytelling is taking you.

Like the other works of hers that I've read, The Hole and Weasels in the Attic, Oyamada begins by easing readers into the situations of her characters. Before long, though, their worlds begin to unravel. Following four characters in their strange occupations on the enormous campus of an unnamed factory, Oyamada builds suspense as questions about the factory mount and the surreal becomes more and more real.

Like the other works of hers that I've read, The Factory and Weasels in the Attic, Oyamada takes readers on a journey that begins in the world of the familiar and mundane and ends up in fantastical situations that you could never predict. In The Hole, a young woman and her husband move out of the city to a rural town, next door to his parent's home. In a claustrophobic, single-perspective narrative, we watch as the implications of this choice for the narrator unfold.