Record of a Night too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami

"The nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed glossy and bright. The night had only just begun"

I couldn't miss the opportunity to hear Hiromi Kawakami speak when she was in London recently and, thanks to Foyles on Charing Cross Road, I got the chance to attend a brilliant Q&A session and book signing. The main topic was Kawakami's celebrated recent novels (previously reviewed on this blog) Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nagano Thrift Shop but we also got to learn more about the so far untranslated work that might one day make it into English.

Hiromi Kawakami occupies a unique position alongside other contemporary Japanese women writers. Her work is characterised by strong female leads who are often at odds with mainstream society in some way. Kawakami's writing is intimate and personal but in A Record of a Night too Brief we find a more whimsical and ephemeral style.

A Record of a Night too Brief is a collection of three novellas which are stylistically though not narratively linked. For me the strongest of the novellas is the eponymous A Record of a Night Too Brief about a woman who travels through a dreamlike world of never-ending night with her porcelain girlfriend (yes that's right). This is a story of extraordinary love, loss and matter-of-fact tragedy; "The girl was already showing signs of no longer being a girl.. the ends of her arms and legs had begun to divide into branches; her hair had fallen out".  The pithy chapter titles 'Lion' and 'Apoptosis' are the only breaks in this endlessly surreal nightmare. At times the story reminded me of Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away; a young girl unknowingly enters a magical parallel world inhabited by animals and silent masked creatures.

Anyone new to Kawakami would be better to start with the more conventional novels before moving to these less complete but enjoyable fables but it is brilliant that Pushkin Press have packaged them in this way. The cover artwork by Nathan Burton Design is instantly covetable and I'm pretty pleased to have a signed copy on my bookshelf!

I read this novel in paperback on the train into Marylebone

Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami published by Pushkin Press, 160 pages.