They’re not scary or overly disturbing, but they are captivating and always leave you wanting more. I didn’t like this story as much as the first two, it felt unfinished and I still have so many questions.Įach of these stories is subtly unsettling in their own way. The narrator in this story helps out her cousin by recommending her old college dormitory as a place to stay and in turn reacquaints herself with the dorm manager, an aging triple amputee. The final story is ‘Dormitory’ and out of the three, this novella reminded me the most of Ogawa’s other work, particularly ‘Old Mrs J’ from “ Revenge“. This troubling story was actually award winning on its own when published in 1990. Unlike in “ Revenge“, there is no connection between these stories and they can be read completely independently from one another.

The second story is called ‘Pregnancy Diary’, a somewhat sinister record of the narrator’s sister’s pregnancy and her relationship with food throughout it. Jun is a diver and Aya spends her time hanging around the pool just to spend time with him. The first of these novellas, ‘The Diving Pool’, focuses on teenage girl Aya who’s obsessed with her foster brother Jun. Each tale begins gently and slowly increases in intensity, allowing you to ‘discover’ the story at the same time as the narrators. It’s the third book by Yoko Ogawa that I’ve read and the third that I have really enjoyed.Īs I’ve said before, Ogawa writes simplistically without the need for lengthy description and the style of writing means when I read these stories, I feel like I’ve entered someone’s dream. “The Diving Pool” is a a collection of three novellas.

Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination-but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister’s? A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg. A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool-a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life. Publisher: Harvill Secker (first published 1990)įrom Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent. By Yōko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder ( Translator)

Revenge by yōko ogawa