The Girl Who is Getting Married (Keshiki): 5

Brand: Strangers Press | Status: Hết hàng

330.000₫

The girl who is getting married is getting married. The girl who is getting married lives on the top floor of her building. An unnamed narrator is on her way to visit the girl who is getting married — she has known the girl who is getting married since before she was the girl who is getting married. They first met at school. They first met at a part-time job in a soba shop. They first met in a train carriage, when the narrator fled to escape the wide-spread legs of a man. And so on. Aoko Matsuda’s modus operandi in ‘The Girl Who Is Getting Married’ is to unsettle, to put forward so many competing versions of the truth that they flicker and fizz in and out of view, like the bubbles in a flute of champagne — it becomes all but impossible to tell which one of these competing stories, if any, are true, and in any case, it’s besides the point. You don’t try to count the bubbles: you just delight in them popping on your tongue.

KESHIKI is a series of exquisitely designed chapbooks, showcasing the work of eight of the most exciting writers working in Japan today.

An unnamed narrator visits her friend, the girl who is getting married, in her apartment on the fifth floor of an anonymous building. With each flight of steps, the narrator recalls different memories of the time they have spent together their time in high school, their first jobs, a chance encounter on the train. However, just as the building's corridor twists and turn toward the flat, we realise that the story, too, is shifting under our feet. As details go missing and memories are contradicted, we are left wondering whose eyes we re looking through.

Translated by Angus Turvil