Book #041: Kenzaburo Oe - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids...*
Synopsis: "Oe, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, was just 23 in 1958,
when he published this wrenching first novel in Japan. From the opening
paragraph's description of a river "bearing away at tremendous speed
the corpses of dogs, rats, and cats," it is clear that this is a story
of innocents?or at least relative innocents?carried violently by forces
beyond their control. In the waning days of WWII, a group of Japanese
reform-school boys are evacuated to a remote village in a densely
wooded valley. The villagers treat the teenagers horribly, making them
bury a mountain of animal corpses, locking them into a shed for the
night and feeding them raw potatoes. The unnamed narrator?one of the
group's leaders?discovers that a plague is ravaging the valley. When a
couple of people are infected by the disease, the villagers panic.
Believing the boys to be infected, the villagers remove themselves to
the other side of the valley and block the only road out of town. At
first, the boys can think only of escape,
but then, like the boys in
Lord of the Flies, they start to make the village their own: they bury
the dead humans and perform a sort of sacrament; they care for an
abandoned, infirm girl; they hold a hunting festival to ensure
continued abundance. The narrator becomes the girl's lover; his younger
brother adopts a stray pup; an unexpected snowfall sparks a midwinter
celebration. But each pleasant turn, every apparently liberating step
away from unremitting brutality, serves to make the characters'
inevitable future suffering even more painful. The end arrives with the
suddenness and fury of a tornado, as disease and war catch up to the
boys. Oe is considered by many to be Japan's greatest postwar novelist.
It's easy to see why. Here, his writing is crisp and lovely and
gruesomely perfect." (from Publishers Weekly)
Impressions: Humanity infects its children.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.
Impressions: Humanity infects its children.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.
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