Weasels in the Attic
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of The Hole and The Factory, a thrilling and mysterious novel that explores fertility, masculinity, and marriage in contemporary Japan
In three interconnected scenes, Hiroko Oyamada revisits the same set of characters at different junctures in their lives. In the back room of a pet store full of rare and exotic fish, old friends discuss dried shrimp and a strange new relationship. A couple who recently moved into a rustic home in the mountains discovers an unsettling solution to their weasel infestation. And a dinner party during a blizzard leads to a night in a room filled with aquariums and unpleasant dreams. Like Oyamada’s previous novels, Weasels in the Attic sets its sights on the overlooked aspects of contemporary Japanese society, and does so with a surreal sensibility that is entirely her own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sharp and surreal latest from Oyamada (The Hole) charts a 40-something unnamed narrator's peculiar interactions with his friends and their wives. The narrator recalls a strange dinner shared with his old friend Saiki and Saiki's friend Urabe, in which the two discussed their mutual obsession with tropical fish while the narrator spoke with Urabe's much younger wife about her newborn and marriage. Later, the narrator learns Saiki has gotten married to a younger woman named Yoko ("It was just like Saiki to mention her age," the narrator thinks). The narrator and his wife visit Saiki and Yoko and discuss the weasels that have mysteriously infested the house's attic after they moved in. When they return to see Saiki and Yoko's three-month-old baby, the narrator and his wife spend the night, during which they are surrounded by tropical fish and the narrator has a nightmare. Throughout, the narrator expresses anxiety about his and his wife's struggle to have a baby ("peak fertility nights that we'd missed because I couldn't do my part"), which, along with the narrator's tacit acceptance of others' obsession with younger women, rounds out Oyamada's sly critique of her characters' attempts at masculinity. The simultaneously disparate yet related elements at work in the novella create an odd yet vivid dreamlike effect. It's a unique and unsettling tale.
